Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULSEjCKTGZ0
with Drake and Josh I felt pissed that started this whole mess he's an actor comedian one half of Drake and Josh a staple of my childhood the headline of the first 10 years of my life was a single mom never knew my dad didn't have enough money for a slice of pizza 15 years old Drake and Josh one would assume that you'd be like set for life there was no residuals and I'm as worried about next year's financial status as anyone else I don't have that security and I I do want to say that I was not properly appreciated for my work if I wanted to at will I could blow that up 18 years old you lose 127 pounds yeah one would assume that dropping 127 pounds would make you feel different about yourself I dealt with the effect but I didn't deal with the cause it was anger at my dad it was anger at my circumstance everything was going right and I still didn't feel like enough substituting what I used food for with drinking and with other substance at 21 it all came barreling down on me I hurt relationships and work I worried the people that love me and I realized that I needed to do something and what you do in that moment government decides what's going to happen next for you you cannot think your way in the right acting you have to act your way into right thinking is there anything that's really helped you that you might recommend to someone listening at home yes so before this episode starts I have a small favor to ask from you two months ago 74 of people that watch this channel didn't subscribe we're now down to 69 my goal is 50 so if you've ever liked any of the videos we've posted if you like this channel can you do me a quick favor and hit the Subscribe button it helps this channel more than you know and the bigger the channel gets as you've seen the bigger the guests get thank you and enjoy this episode [Music] having read through your story extensively it's quite clear to me that the the most pertinent part of your story and really like the through line Begins the sort of dot in that through line begins with this Dynamic your parents had when you were very very young can you take me back to 1980s in New York to give me the context that I'll need to understand to
understand the things we're going to talk about today sure I I was born in 1986. I uh was born to a single mom and I never knew my dad I was sort of the result of a I guess what you would call a fling um my mom always says you were a surprise not an accident so I like the way she the messaging she's attached to that but basically my mom and dad knew each other sort of through business they had a night and nine months later came me so sort of so many different especially now having two kids of my own knowing how the process of creating life can be uh tenuous and random and arbitrary and it can be incredibly easy or incredibly hard to know that they were together once and it just sort of happened that way is uh kind of crazy makes you believe like oh maybe I'm meant to be here at least that's what I tell myself but yeah I uh I was the result of that and my mom who was 43 at the time knew that she'd always wanted to have a child but wasn't sure if she ever would and immediately took it as sort of this gift and my father who was in his 60s at the time and had a whole other family looked at it differently and decided not to be in my life and I wound up never meeting him and so my Origins were very much my mom and I sort of navigating the world together I at an early age did you get a feel for what your mom's your mother's perspective was on your father did you did you feel the emotion of that how her perspective on him my mom was weirdly unemotional about my dad I would say it was almost like the fog of war or I remember when I I interviewed Laird Hamilton and I asked him the very corny cliche question of when you're on a 90-foot wave what's going through your head and he's like you know your body will sort of give you a bit of Amnesia so I really can't tell you when you're in extreme circumstance your body is a way of like washing your memory and we see that phenomenon too with like childbirth right because if those hours during childbirth really were as strong as as they are when you are experiencing it we'd all be only children right but the brain has a wonderful way of washing
that away so my mom did a really good job of presenting all the good qualities of my dad that he was a great business person that he was Charming that he was handsome I you know he was like the Jewish James Bond walking the streets of New York this handsome raccoon tour I I say in my book you know he seemed pretty Sterling his only sort of negative was that he really didn't want anything to do with me so I think it wasn't until I got older that my mom sort of elaborated a little bit more with details what was that what was the emotion between you and your mother and the emotion in the household at the time growing up only money was tough and things were slightly difficult especially because your father had chosen not to be part of your life but what was the emotion in your household you know below the age of 10. the emotion in my household growing up if I had to if I had to find a headline right because sure if you zoomed in on any moment I could have been bullied at school or feeling insecure or feeling less than than my friends who had traditional family systems or how come I don't get to experience that surely there was plenty of that but if we're talking about a headline of the first 10 years of my life it was a very extremely loving childhood um not without its challenges and we would sort of oscillate between moments of of being extremely middle class and then having not enough money for a slice of pizza between us but inevitably even through the struggles we were there was a level of of comedic relief you know we were always taking the piss out of ourselves my mom's a natural comedian her being a self-made businesswoman especially in the 70s and 80s when she had to be uh forced her to be extremely funny and extremely Savvy and um sort of puckish about the way in which she navigated the world and men and institutions and so I would say that um most of the time we were laughing and there were certainly times where we were we were crying but but it was mostly laughter when you um when you talk about your mother is the words you use will miss make it sound more like a partnership than a mother-son
relationship it sounds like you were like you know partners certainly we were Partners I mean a single mom and an only child you are immediately elevated to co-pilot whether you like it or not I always say that traditional families growing up were more like I viewed them as close corporations and that kids were employees and the parents were upper management and the upper management was sort of beckoning down orders from the top and maybe they were seniority because there was an older sibling but inevitably everyone sort of had the same Pace structure and then for my mom and I we were more like a startup right so one day I was pitching the clients and she was sweeping the floors and uh most days it was the other way around so yeah I was I was the man in my mom's life yeah did you have any um you know when you start talking in your book about the pain that you were experiencing that led you to to food and that you know ultimately led to bullying and all of those things what was that pain well I think I could make it I'm going to speak generally as a reflection of something specific that went on with me but I I dare I project that we're all in a certain level of of pain um the veil of adolescence Falls for for all of us at different times in our lives where we realize that the world is unfair or we become more attuned to where we are not enough in certain areas and the universe having a beautiful level of balance it's it's inevitable right I don't know of any of Tom Brady's shortcomings but he's got to have one he's probably hiding it from the world but um there's always something that that for for us is is a challenge or something that's uncomfortable and I think you'd be hard-pressed to zoom in on any kid and especially pre-teen and teen who doesn't feel like Ultra sensitive that the world is unfair wrestling with their place in this world their identity forming their identity so
for me I just feel like that was impressed upon me at a really young age if what's particular to me as I was really young and uh I think that was because of the dad stuff I think that was because I was overweight so I just knew that life was going to be more challenging with the set of circumstances that were at that point felt like sort of thrust upon me I didn't know that I was sort of eating in a in an unhealthy way I just felt like I eat fruit snacks like every other kid I just you know do it um in an excessive way so I think that pain was just born out of what we all feel is that it hurts to be different and it hurts to know that life is going to be challenging you earlier when you said the word comedic relief when you're talking about the relationship with you and your mother comedic relief the word relief almost makes it sound medicinal like some kind of medicine in your household what what role did comedy play in your your early years a comedy is for my mom and I it's it's everything it's everything we loved watching movies and television together sitcoms and stand-up comedy it was a release it was a superpower it was something that came to both of us naturally I'm sure as as a byproduct of my mom's rearing and upbringing and she even talks about her her dad who I didn't know my grandfather who sounds like a pretty deeply imperfect guy but was a showman and did love to tell jokes and be funny and a bit of the center of attention and so for us it was uh it was a currency it was something that worked immediately and it could control the energy of a room it could endear people to you so you could really use it to your advantage but if anything it was a wonderful distraction the other thing you describe as a distraction is um is TV yes you refer to it as an escape View at that time in your life um and you said in your book happy people are annoying um that sitcoms were your favorite why were they your favorite
well sitcoms especially at that time I talk about how my best friends growing up were The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore and um sitcoms had some Universal sort of qualities in my experience it projected a healthy family right so it was family matters it was I guess Full House was sort of it was a healthy sort of um non-classic family right because it was the dad and the uncles but these were people that these were families that I I wanted to be a part of and then there was a Justice to the comedy in the sense of you didn't have to interpret it it wasn't objective or I'm sorry it wasn't subjective it was objective it was clear what worked and what didn't it got a laugh and at that time it was a live studio audience so you know something Gotta Laugh and uh and I would just lose myself in hours of watching these television shows and I was absorbing The rhythms and the qualities through osmosis I didn't even know it at the time but it also served as this wonderful escape and I say that becoming an actor was like for me going to work for the hospital that cured my disease you know it felt like my way of saying thank you for taking care of me during that time what was the disease well I I that's a metaphor but yeah it's just like sort of a metaphor for my discomfort for um having a lot of time on my hands because I was an only child uh because my mom had to work a lot to support us because there was some Financial insecurity just sort of all of the discomfort going on in between my ears um was sort of muted when I was losing myself in those shows one of the other things that we've touched on briefly that you describe in a medicinal manner um I think the quote in your book is actually I didn't know it at the time but obviously I was definitely medicating something deep within for me when I think about my childhood the singular powerful and all-consuming memory that comes to mind as being fat it wasn't a habit it was a love my first love when you're talking about food oh yeah
well that's how you put on the weight yeah food is great I mean you're a very fit person but I imagine you're you're a fan of food I love food everybody does the whole world does you know it's not like the biggest food guy who John Stamos and I don't mean to drop names here but we did a show together and he's like you know I could eat a turkey sandwich and be okay with it like most days and it's like sometimes I'll forget to eat and yeah I like a nice meal here and there but I'm not too absorbed with it and I'm like I don't identify with this you and I are built differently John well we know we know John Stamos is built different um but yeah I mean the whole world's obsessed with food I was obsessed with it in a way that led to me being very overweight when you say very very of a weight how much is that in I guess the metric here is pounds isn't it I can give you kilos no I can't but what's kilos about two and a half pounds 2.2 um you want to do stones I know you're from the UK pounds well 14 15 cents yeah I think well like basically it's funny because I was just kind of like a normal sized human until around eight or nine and then I got kind of chubby and then I put on a lot of weight but it was only from about 13 to 18 uh where I was about uh 100 pounds overweight I was about 290 pounds okay which is 130 kilograms probably and you're you're in nine or ten you said uh no I I really put that weight on probably around nine or ten I was probably 180 190 but I was only you know five foot and then as I got a little bigger and older and also could you know go to restaurants or grab fast food by myself I I put on the pounds I've come to learn over the the years actually quite recently the um the role the link between how I feel and how I eat yes you know I mean there's lots of these links in our lives you know one of them is how we feel and money um how we feel and how we eat um I'm sure there's many many more but um these are all like psychological Tools in many respects and medicinal tools often was there a point when you realized that the link between your relationship with food and how you
were feeling yeah I mean it came later uh understanding the nuance and the correlation but I mean this is why actors smoke right like traditionally whenever you see movies where where it's it's about show business and you see the actor sort of hanging outside of a Sound Stage because you do a take you do a scene you're not sure how it went you think you were good you hope you know there was one take that was good but maybe they're going to use the take kind of sucked and you're full of emotion and you're unsure and you're insecure and there's a table of food waiting for you right beautiful craft service like you've never seen hot and cold and then but instead you're like what can I do to give me that sort of dopamine hit without you know giving me the calories so you know people go outside and smoke obviously now smoking's not as uh in fashion so you see less of it but I remember once I was working with this actor Paget Brewster she's just a gem brilliant actor and she played my mom on this TV show and I I'll never forget once they were serving pizza as sort of of like the late night meal because we're working long hours and and I remember her pulling the cheese and like pepperoni off the top of the pizza and eating it and she just sort of said this is the actress pizza right without the bread I was like how perfectly set right and so yeah I think we we all run to food because it's represented to us as this it's a celebratory thing it's also something you do when things don't work out it's a cheat day but like think about those words right we reward ourselves with cheating um right it's a funny sort of corollary but um and it's ubiquitous it's holiday it's pumpkin spice season at uh at Starbucks like all of these every great event is accompanied by a meal even the worst events right like what do you hope for after a funeral well there'll be a nice spread we'll go back and we'll have a nice spread when you say you were you were medicating something deep within it seems like a relationship with food was a little bit more um unique shall I say yeah so I think a lot
of I don't think a lot of people would say that they are using food as a way to medicate something deep within well they're probably using it it's in some version of uh to medicate but maybe not it I I did it in excess right I did it to an extreme in an extreme way yes there's a paradox there which you highlight in your book where you say that like you're doing it to ease pain but it caused more pain which is um I guess is the is the case with a lot of things where we have a unbalanced relationship with them where like there's the short-term reward of the dopamine hit that you describe but then the long term punishment is like the critique right and the self the self-talk I guess and the the teasing is you you refer to it in your book hmm that's you you experience that that the kind of like short-term pursuit of the dopamine history short-term pain or um short-term gain long-term pain yeah yeah I mean it's a paradox of addiction right it's it's us running to I heard it said once someone in in recovery said my disease lies in my dis ease I become uncomfortable and my coping mechanism the thing that my brain is trained to do is to go to these things that numb the feeling uh it's another great term numb and run you know uh it numbs the feeling it cauterizes it temporarily but inevitably it never deals with the underlying issue so that continues to grow and push the boulder up so it requires more and more medication and thus you know it makes you more and more unhappy so you know whether that's food or drug or drink or smoking sex you know gambling debt whatever your thing is it's I mean it's it's just whatever's triggering I would I would think that dopamine serotonin sort of response it's pretty crazy that at like eight years old you were already doing stand up yeah that's that's boggles my mind at eight years old I was doing nothing productive I bet you were doing uh probably the things eight-year-olds should do like times tables and yeah geography and yeah stuff like that like kicking a ball against the wall yeah on my own or with a friend you were doing stand up at eight you
know I had a I had I had a couple of comedians on this podcast and they all there's this ongoing collect stereotype that like a comedian is depressed or something and one of the comedians said to me that um a better question to ask I think it was Jimmy Carr he said a better question to ask is like which one of your parents were you trying to make happy ah Jimmy Carr is so fun he's funny isn't he what a super like he's like a Jedi he's on another level sure what parent are you trying to make happy what girl are you trying to impress I just think that we know that most assets are born out of feelings of being not enough you know uh how many great athletes were were created because they were trying to impress their fathers right admonishing fathers help make very ambitious young men you know and and young women I don't mean to gender it um the problem is is the duality of that because inevitably once hopefully you've achieved that you realize that there's no there there that there's no perfect moment that's going to heal that relationship with that parent or worse you don't you don't attain those things and then you're left to wonder well what what could it have been and I fell short I wasn't enough but comedy is one of those more specific things because there is there's a Justice to it um it's there's not a lot up for interpretation it's clear uh it's more like boxing I think Chris rocket can akin to boxing which is why they call it a punch line and you know it's on the cards that punch connected that one didn't you get a point for that you don't get a point for this and yeah I think it's just born out of you know being funny usually comes from very unfunny reasons and you know growing up and I I don't mean to say this even now like when I'll I'll meet someone who's like really uh I'll just name names it's like and he is funny but it's like sometimes when I watch Like Ashton Kutcher go like in a really hard comedy and he's done some really really funny things I know this is what you're gonna clip me like trashing I I want to be Ashton Kutcher I look up to him I love you Ashton I'm available for friendship
and I love your wife I love them both but it's like it's sometimes it's hard for me to reconcile how someone can be that gorgeous and handsome and um and also funny right like sometimes I do feel like no Funny's got to be reserved for us you know who who who weren't necessarily that because yeah it was used as a defense mechanism did you know you wanted to be a comedian or an actor and if so when did you when did that idea become cemented in your brain that that's the path you were going to pursue being an actor professionally didn't seem like a reasonable career path sometimes it still doesn't but here I am um it was ridiculous I grew up in New York I'm not a nepo baby I have no connection to show business other than a very sticky mother do you know this word schtick yeah okay you're like I have a mom who loves a bit and she's a natural performer it's a beautiful singing voice but no literally no connections to show business in any way so it was not reasonable to think that there would be any opportunity to do it professionally and then I was in sixth grade and my mom and I were having a really tough moment financially we're living in an apartment on the east side of Manhattan it was like a studio apartment and we would sort of switch off between the bed and the couch one night I'd get to bed one night I get the couch and and I remember my mom saying you know there's a performing arts high school that you should audition for and I said but I'm gonna go to the high school in my district like where my elementary school was she goes you don't have a district anymore we don't live there anymore and I realized okay well yeah maybe I'll give this the school a shot because I'm not going to be in high school now with my friends who I grew up with and I auditioned and I went and I got in and suddenly I'm walking the halls of this school the professional performing arts school which is in the Theater District in New York near Times Square and they had alumni like Alicia Keys and Jesse Eisenberg and Claire Danes and they were all older than me but all of a sudden I'm seeing kids who are in
Broadway shows TV shows and they're studying but they're also successful on this like grown-up level and it seemed possible that you could make a living doing this thing that I loved so I remember that was the first time where I had a suspicion like oh this this might be a long-term gig and eventually then once I basically once it became a way out of my circumstance and it allowed me to sort of contribute to the family financially I was I was all in it just seemed like an escape and you were what age then like 12 16 I think I was 12 yeah and then by 16 a chance meeting with someone from Nickelodeon sends things in another Direction no that was 12. oh when you were 12. I used to audition like every other day um and Nickelodeon their their Viacom headquarters was in Times Square I've been yeah yeah another one yeah and I auditioned for a movie I got it they fly me to Canada never been out of the country now if you're going to go out of the country for the first time making Canada because it's lovely and I'm sitting there one day in in Calgary Canada making jokes to some 40 year old guy with a great laugh and a huge Park up and my mom Saddles up to me and she goes you know who that is so you're making laugh that's that's the president of Nickelodeon a guy named Albie hacked you should tell him that you want to be on all that which was kind of SNL for kids at that time it was my dream so I told them and nine months later he called and said Josh I'm gonna move you and your mom out to California to go be on The Amanda Show which was the spin-off for Amanda Bynes from all that and that was kind of what changed my life and brought me out to LA and gave me my first TV show and kind of started this whole mess this whole mess ing way to describe it it boggles my mind that you're doing that at 12. I I am I I don't even know how that's possible for you know it feels like there's a lot of other things we're meant to be doing when we're 12. you were you were working essentially yeah yeah it was what did you miss did you miss anything I'm in hindsight a lot I mean you can
speak to a better I don't know what I didn't miss I mean but you if you had a more traditional sort of adolescence right did you yeah I did yeah yeah yeah so like school stuff like the prom and playing football and with the team and you know Primary School primary school as well yeah figuring yourself out more than anything uniforms I wish I went to school in the UK it seems awesome yeah it's not bad yeah yeah I loved Matilda room for improvement um it's dope it's uh it's such a classic I am um yeah I I missed out on a lot absolutely um you know it's funny people love this question it kills me I don't know why because now I have two sons of my own and they're always like you got to put them in Show Business like it's weird I I don't know why that is I don't know if people say to lawyers or Carpenters like is your son gonna hit nails like are you gonna like read your son depositions I guess because the idea is that why wouldn't you want them to and while I would love for them to if they love performing to to find some joy in it my upbringing my circumstance was so specific it was inevitable that if this was meant for me that it was going to be meant for me and I mean that as we could move 3 000 Miles because it was just me and my mom you know we could uproot our whole life I I was an overweight kid so I didn't get a lot of self-esteem from the traditional systems that people the kids gain it from but I found this performing thing so of course my mom goes well I'm going to nurture this the way I would if it were little league or it was an instrument so my environment my upbringing allowed for me to go on this really non-traditional path my kids don't have that they have a very different experience they have like a very rooted household they have a huge family they have a mom and dad and it's not necessarily that one's better than the other but it's just like their experience will be different and if when my son's 18 and he's like I want to go to Juilliard or I want to do it professionally that's great but maybe his circumstance won't lend itself to
start that early it's so interesting yeah but it makes so much sense you know that circumstance and struggle are factors that orientate us towards um towards our mission and it's so you know I I think we often understate how like trauma and things we'd never wish on a child end up creating their Brilliance you think about like the the Brilliance you've created the work you've created that is brilliant so much of it has a through line way back to things that you would never wish on your kids yes right 15 years old you start um filming the pilot for Drake and Josh one of the things I found really interesting when I was reading through your book is one would assume that such a hit show a show that we all knew very very well in the UK off the back of it one would assume that you'd be like set for life financially yeah and you write about how that's like that's that's that was certainly not the case yes and I I do want to say that my first Kids Choice Award was one at the UK Kids Choice Awards in London now I had been nominated a lot a lot I had said sour grapes but allow me to continue I was not properly appreciated for my work in the American Kids Choice Awards but it took you brilliant people in the United Kingdom to appreciate my my my overweight but wonderfully comedic work as a young actor so I want to thank you um yeah I I think look I'm so pleased to talk about this stuff with you someone who's like has wonderful insight into the book and and is interested and it felt like the book for me was sort of like I don't I I really I don't do a lot of this anymore and because the book felt like sort of a chapter ending in my life it was me editorializing my life it was commenting on the things that I felt were perhaps misunderstood or didn't have enough clarification or description and also in an effort unknowingly to sort of say like and now I'm not I'm going to talk about it less and if someone is interested like they can you know read the book and it's it's now you
know in the the Library of Congress but and so to that point I felt the need because over the years people would either say it in a cheeky way like oh well you don't have to worry because of the residuals or they would see just something random like you know it would actually be part of decision making or something that it would apply to me they're like well Josh doesn't have to worry and I was like well I'm not complaining but I'm I'm as much you know worried about next year's financial status as anyone else because I don't have that security so yeah with Drake and Josh there was no residuals and kids CV didn't have that at that time and I got really honest and I sort of broke it down because Ryan holiday my friend and sort of advisor on the book was like if you don't it's he's like it's gross to talk about money but if you don't actually give a a sort of exact picture of what it was then people won't understand and so I sort of talk about that you know while doing the show we made about a hundred thousand dollars a year for the four years we were making it which is great money in a lovely middle class lifestyle but no one would assume that once you stop working that you never had to work again so I just wanted to give some clarity to that to sort of explain the choices that I made after and why I was so passionate about finding more work because I um I had some people to take care of makes perfect sense and I think it's really important context because um you're right it's very easy when you don't know entertainment contracts especially for for a young person that's 15 odd years old to assume that they made millions and millions in perpetuity from that piece of work and then a lot of the the decisions and the choices they're after don't have are lacking in context yeah when I read that it was like I understood of course if you make a hundred thousand dollars in the United States living in California whatever it is for five years in a row you do need to go back to work and yeah after Drake and Josh ended was there was there like a pivotal moment where you realized that that show was big um it wasn't until much later funny enough I am
I think because when we were making it it was only popular with kids who were sort of younger who I didn't other than if I was at a mall or at a theme park I didn't have a huge amount of uh interaction with and then I would say that the the power of the show to its credit was that it was slightly Timeless because it had a very sort of classic through line of any sitcom it was about a family and a lot of kids shows can be more Fantastical and have more of a Sci-Fi bent or something more fantasy or whimsical this was just like very straight down the line two brothers who are very different trying to get along uh and an evil little sister so because of how much it was rerun more Generations would come to the show and these people grew up so it wasn't as though it was this moment in time it was every year we were picking up new fans because there was what 60 episodes or something yeah just like there was so much more I know it's weird why is that I guess reruns yeah it played for so long over the last couple of how long maybe four months I've been changing my diet shall I say many of you have really been paying attention to this podcast will know why I've sat here with some incredible Health experts and one of the things that's really come through for me which has caused a big change in my life is the need for us to have these superfoods these green Foods these vegetables and then a company I love so much and a company I'm an investor in and then a company that sponsors this podcast and I'm on the board of recently announced a new product which absolutely spoke to exactly where I was in my life and that is huel and they announced Daily Greens Daily Greens is a product that contains 91 superfoods nutrients and plant-based ingredients which helps me meet that dietary requirement with the convenience that hewell always offers unfortunately it's only currently available in the US but I hope pray that it'll be with you guys in the UK too so if you're in the US check it out it's an incredible product I've been having it here in La for the last couple of weeks and it's a game changer ladies and gentlemen our newest brand partnership will come is no surprise to regular listeners on this podcast the first episode of 2023 I was joined by
the incredible Professor Tim Spector to hear more about his work at a company called Zoe using data to understand our bodies better so that we can live more fulfilled higher potential lives Zoe was born from the truth that our overall health is impacted by our gut health by helping you to understand how your body is working so he can help you to reduce your risk of long-term disease and increase your energy levels for me this is the future and that is why I became an investor in the company and that is why they are now a sponsor of this podcast you can read up about everything they're doing and you can pre-order your Zoe program at join zoe.com and they've been kind enough to offer an exclusive 10 off code CEO 10. so you can put that code in at checkout CEO 10. after Drake and Josh ended and as you go into you're like you you know the next chapter of your life 18 years old you lose a lot of weight I do a lot of weight 127 pounds yeah how how does that's not an easy feat how does that happen I certainly made a decision that I was ready to do it um I think I just I always knew that I was going to do it and also in writing the book it's when you put pen to paper and I know you're a writer yourself it's amazing how these I feel as though we make these um everything in our brain is sort of shorthand right it's like these picture memories that are connected uh and sometimes they're connected by these really strong connections and sometimes it's just like short little hits but when you're forced to actually explain it on a page it makes you look at it differently and I was like wow I was only heavy from like 13 to 17. of course they're the years that have been enshrined in television history forever so it feels much bigger but had I just been like a normal kid I would have burned my yearbooks and sworn my family to secrecy and I'd never bring it up so I think it was a number of things I was ready I think naturally like my body was ready to let go of it and I just knew that I I felt like because I was so insecure I had missed out on a lot of my teenage years
um it wasn't without lack of opportunity to go out and and be a knucklehead and experience life I just didn't want to do it because I didn't love the body that I was in so I felt like if I didn't if I didn't act now I was going to lose some really important years is there is there a process that helped because I'm thinking about how you referred to it as being like medicinal your relationship with food and that's like deeply psychological so to like append that deep psychological force or that relationship with food there's no easy feat so like what what's the process is it therapy is it what that that makes your that kind of appends that psychological force or replaces it or I think it was I I had been I've I've had a therapist that that I've gone to since I was 15 and and I still see here and there so my mom kind of knew I think she saw it in me early on that there was just a lot going on be it my dad or the weight stuff and then I think I would just in the way that that change is born you know pain is a great motivator I was sort of sick and tired of being sick and tired and I I knew that I had to let go of something I don't think I knew exactly what it was but if I'm looking back at it now it was like it was this anger it was anger at my my dad it was anger at my circumstance and I just remember I was 17 years old my mom and I would drive back to New York every year for like two months and we would just go and see family and hang out in the city and I just started to walk and up until then I would do these really intense you know attempts at keto or these extreme diets on a Monday and I would fail by Wednesday morning and then it would be back on again but this time I said I'm just going to try to make a small change every day and I would walk the city for miles and I would listen uh to music and I would dream of what my life could be and I started eating better and slowly but surely that summer I lost like 40 pounds and then over the next year I lost another 40 and then over the next year I lost another 40. in chapter five of your book you say you had a new body but the exact same self-hating mind
one would assume that you know dropping 127 pounds one would naively assume that dropping 127 pounds would would make you feel different about yourself yeah well it's um to sort of the themes that you've mentioned throughout this interview it's it's cause and effect right like I dealt with the effect but I didn't deal with the cause and unfortunately there were some issues at play there were some um unresolved pain and work that needed to be done that I wasn't even aware of but it was all at play Under the surface so when I no longer had that thing that was helping to sort of keep those feelings at Bay they reared their head and I needed to find something else I didn't know that it was going to be in the form of uh you know drinking and and sort of uh alcohol's cousins but I uh I just knew that when I finally did find those things and I did sigh that bit of relief that I'd been looking for I I think there was even a moment in that first night when I went out with some other kids my age and really tied one off and thought I was having like a proper teenage time I remember this this voice in my head being like oh this is it like this is what we've been looking for um drinking yeah the drinking and drugs and I I I I think I see something in the book of like if you've been carrying this invisible bag of stones around your whole life a weight vest with 50 to 100 extra pounds I mean I quite literally was but let's just say it's like emotional weight vest and eventually you almost forget that it's on you just know your knees hurt you know you're exhausted it's like why am I so tired why did why does why do things feel tougher for me than it does for my friends and then if in an instant that weight vest is lifted off of you and your knees hurt less and you're walking around and you're like oh you wouldn't question it you just be like whatever just took that weight vest off I'm in and that's that was the reaction that I had such an interesting analogy the the weight vest you know you said the term self-hating mind for someone that hasn't experienced a
self-hating mind what is what is that like in detailed reality is it literally thoughts that you can recall that are saying being pessimistic hmm I I probably if I could um edit my book now I would be probably less um I'd be less revealing no I would I would be less um I would be a little harder on myself and say I it's self-centered if we're talking about the root of it I remember when I got in when I got sober people would say you're self-centered and I would say self-centered that's reserved for people who think highly of themselves that's reserved for the quarterbacks the models the good looking the self-absorbed people to me felt when you would see that in movies it was someone who was staring in the mirror and perfecting their hair and they would say no if you spend all your time thinking about how great you are or how you are all you're thinking about is you and you are self-centered it doesn't matter whether it's great or bad so I wouldn't yeah I would substitute self-hating with self-centered I was obsessed with self my trauma was real my challenges were real and that played a part in it but I was just so wrapped up in my feelings of feeling less than an uncomfortable and not proverbially not at the cool table that um I you know found myself in a place to numb my my feelings because those thoughts were were unrelenting Nothing in life nothing in life is free and so even a temporary lifting of the weight vest comes with a long-term cost as we talked about with food what was that that long-term cost of temporarily getting to lift the weight vest once in a while I just became a cliche quick I I heard relationships and work I worried the people that loved me I I just started to accrue a lot of wreckage quickly it's it's funny I interviewed Hillary Duff on my podcast um Good Guys the other day and we made a joke I was asking her about like um we were she brought up something about
like oh I love an alcoholic beverage and she kind of looked at me and said sorry Josh and I was like no I love an alcoholic beverage too unfortunately whenever I drink it leads to my other favorite beverage Percocet which is a very popular painkiller in this country um and I remember people sort of saying like they were so sort of they just didn't know sort of my um they they didn't know that part of my history right so it was something that I it was this thing that I was sort of navigating and balancing kind of how much I would sort of talk about it and and uh and reveal and then also sort of this this balancing of like the things that I also wanted to keep private when did you realize that that you had a a problem with alcohol or an unhealthy relationship with alcohol and drugs was there a because at the time I imagine you don't the first time you do it you don't know it's not a problem then is it but at some point you must have maybe got some feedback or something indicated that this was not oh and I'm sorry I forgot the point I was trying to make with the Hillary thing but oh someone wrote a comment on that clip and that video said damn Josh Peck got sober at 21 he really went for it so to answer your follow-up question yeah I mean I think that I basically was substituting what I used food for with these you know with with drinking and with other substance but it was all sort of connected so it wasn't this four-year run it was really like since I was 9 or 10 years old it just was again validating and reconfirming this idea of like you overdo things and nothing is going to fill up this hole in the soul no matter what you try to fill it with and even like the things that our um World tells us is a value even success isn't going to do it even if girls like you it's not enough and so I remember at 21 having a moment like that when it all sort of came sort of barreling down on me and I realized that I needed to do something now I think people have those moments
and they don't do anything and they lose another four years or five or ten or Twenty um but I do think the world and life catastrophe challenging circumstance some version of a bottom whatever you're going through being fired from something a health scare has a way of temporarily waking you up and what you do in that moment um decides what what's going to happen next for you you said that happened for you at 21 years old was that was that in the wake of the film The whackness it was yeah that was certainly a moment tell me about that moment well again I I had accrued plenty of wreckage but I remember I I had done this movie The whackness that I was extremely proud of with my favorite actor sir Ben Kingsley you know and I mean literally my favorite actor like getting a you know have my rookie season with Michael Jordan and and it went to the Sundance Film Festival and I was so proud and we got a standing ovation and it just felt like such a confirmation for me as an actor that there was going to be that that there was going to be opportunity and there was there was more to come for my career that it wasn't just this sort of anomaly that I did this one show and that that was sort of gonna be it but I remember in that moment all those similar feelings that mind that had gotten me in trouble so many times before was still yelling at me and all those feelings were flooding in they weren't there the night we got they weren't there during the 90 seconds of the Sandy Innovation they weren't there you know when I was smiling in front of the camera but they were there when I got home they were there when I got in bed they were there when I was waiting in line for a coffee the next morning or whatever else I was doing so it was like so short-lived and it just confirmed this idea of like oh like even at your best even when everything's kind of going right because it's easy to use when when life throws you challenges there's a reason to sort of you know co-sign your bad behavior
but everything was going right and I still didn't feel like enough and I knew at that point that I needed to make a change or or I might never do it that next day off to the standing ovation at the Sundance Film Festival you talk about you know how you might have felt standing in the coffee line or the next day when you woke up Etc is this are they are these specific thoughts or is it just an emotional state is it just like a lowness it's totally emotional and it's ugly like the way like how we're all pitiful in those moments I I don't think you have to be um suffer from addiction or it's just like when we realize that our way isn't working anymore and a change needs to occur and so yeah I I certainly it's taken 15 16 years to articulated correctly I think it was just the feeling you you your solution to that feeling appears to be you know when when you hit that proverbial Rock Bottom moment um to be getting some help and that's where you turn to AAA Alcoholics Anonymous hmm what what is that Pro like what is what is Alcoholics Anonymous and like how how did it help you turn things around and get sober well you know it's sort of in the name Anonymous that there's there's an anonymity portion to it so I I I always want to make sure it said that I'm in no way sort of a representative or Ambassador for it in any way it's just how I have found a way in which to get and stay sober over the last 15 years is through through uh 12-step program and it's just a way it's it's ancient truths um repackaged to make sense to a guy like me it's the best way it helps to mitigate the worst of my Character defects and it's just age-old um it's just a sort of for me an age-old way of of cleaning up your past and and looking at bad patterns and habits in my life and making amends and trying to implement things that through history we have known to work gratitude surrender acceptance if you want self-esteem do a steamable acts restrain a pen and tongue you know just like
um you know it's not you know your higher power is up to you as long as you know that you're not God that one's a that one's helpful it just presented some ways in which for me to to apply things to my life that helped me to to get and stay sober so I think if if the efficacy wasn't there if I didn't see quickly that I started to feel better then maybe I would have sought a different way this this was a way that happened to work for me and you've been sober for some what 13 13 years 15 15. recently yeah just uh February 15th congratulations thanks it works for me yeah it's an incredible incredible um achievement you know everyone's got their own relationship with with alcohol and whatever else but it's always incredible to hear um someone being able to turn a corner in the direction they wanted to turn it it's the best way I can describe it thank you 2013. you kind of start from reading your book it sounds like you start on a new a New Journey and that's the journey to understand who your father is you're 27 at this point so almost 30 years old and your father passes away um and you make the decision at that point having not met him before and having not seen a picture of him until you were 24 years old to figure out who he was hmm what did you learn about him and how did that change your perspective of him well I remember I'd always sort of toyed with this idea of meeting him and yet I think I knew deep down I never would because my creation of him in my head the way that I sold him to my friends or or the way I would portray him to people felt like my weird Cosmic consolation prize like I don't get to have him in any way but I can present him to people in the way in which I choose not that I was telling people that my dad was you know the first man on the moon or anything like that it just was like you know my mom knew that he was that he was Jewish and that he was Sephardic which is um a type of Jew that tends to be from either the Middle East or from Morocco or or French or or can be South America
Mexican and and so for me I would just like Ping Pong where he was from you know sometimes he was from Spain sometimes he was from Israel sometimes he was from like I just would kind of present it as I so fit and and it felt like if I ever met him well then I I lost Stephen the illusion or this creation of my dad that I wanted to make so I but when I found out that he passed away it also felt like a little bit of this thing that I've been carrying around this emotional grenade that I could you know I had the power in the sense that I could show up and he had this whole other family and these grown kids and a wife and if I wanted to at will I could blow that up for him if in theory he never had told them anything I was never going to do it but it was nice to know right like whatever version my head was telling me like to keep me warm at night so when he passed away I was like oh damn he won right perfect record like he set his mind to something and he stuck to it he's like I'm never gonna meet that kid and he did it and I never got that moment to sort of say like how dare you I don't know if it would have been that probably wouldn't have been it probably would have been like hey I'm your kid what's up like do you want to get a coffee um but you know all of that was sort of taken away from me so I felt I felt pissed that I had to mourn this guy that I never knew and that I was mourning like morning is in theory sort of the worst part of it's sort of the other side of love right it's that the gift is you get to love and the Embrace of someone and then what comes with that is that eventually if they're not here anymore you have to mourn them you have to mourn what was I was like there was nothing like and I still have to get the crappy side of this doesn't seem fair but it forced me to do something that inevitably led to my men's and my amends that I gave myself which was I randomly looked up uh his kids on Facebook my friend figured out a way to my friend a buddy of mine basically was looking with me and was like oh I there was a connection between him and my sister they had attended a similar like Workshop or some kind of like
education program he's like maybe under the guise of that I could become her friend and like then you know I could see if on her profile she has any photos to your dad I had never seen what he looked like she accepts it and I am immediately given this like Treasure Trove of photos of his life and I'm seeing him at their bar mitzvahs and and weddings and all these events and I'm seeing these beautiful tributes said his friends and family are making to him after he passed away and it made me realize that like what my dad was for me wasn't the only part of him you know it certainly was a real part of him but he also was this great dad just not to me and that's not uh valid there are that's not not valid that's um that's a part of this imperfect man so it like gave me a little bit of forgiveness for this guy and it made me realize that he was probably scared and he had probably had this great perfect record with his family and then this blemish occurred and he did the best that he could so in a weird way seeing that he was good to them made me a little more okay that maybe he wasn't great to me and and then of course having the son of my own and being the dad to my two boys now uh that I wish my dad was for me was sort of like the ultimate amends to eight-year-old Josh what's that Journey been like you know from I almost view it as like a an emotional Journey on like some kind of like graph or something almost like a roller coaster from when you were young to where you are now in terms of the perspective of your father and the relationship you know was there was there resentment at one point you seemed to have gotten to a better place with it now yeah but what's that Journey like the resentment I think at its at its highest is uh showcased in me being 100 pounds overweight right or you know my struggles after that I I think that was certainly um it was all that resentment and anger and frustration and unexplored feelings presenting itself as as whatever that was as those
addictions right they were in the manifestation of a deeper issue they were a symptom of a deeper issue I was just pondering because I've I know people that haven't had a relationship with their father obviously nothing is definitively causal like it doesn't necessarily mean you can attack any other way but um one of the the trends you tend to hear about is when is that connection between not believing you're enough and your father not being around are they connected for you like the the do you know what I mean I'm saying does the absence of your father did that ever leave a thought that said he left but you know that means I'm not enough because he chose not to be here it must right I I don't see how it couldn't be right but what we what I've also learned in Being Sober this song and hearing a lot of other people's experiences it my um my story my feelings are not rare but they're not a monolith they're not singular yeah I've heard plenty of stories of people who had like pretty idyllic uprightings and they just happen to suffer from this thing where they do too much and this particular mental bend that makes them look at life or makes them seek out a way of numbing their feelings so what I know now is that certainly I think you're right it it was part of my story but it's it's not the only way I I think I've kind of grown in that Trend in my mind has grown a little bit because I spoke to gabo mate who's there's a lot of childhood trauma stuff and one of the things he said is that as children we're narcissists I've never been able to forget that and we think everything is about us so right if you know if the father leaves for example instead of thinking well that's because he has another family or because he's scared or whatever it's that's about me when you when you're younger um and then you as you say you had your own boy yes now two boys crazy two boys you have kids not yet I could tell because you're in such good shape were you scared to become a father because of your own terrified because I I just didn't I didn't have any work-life experience yeah um I just didn't know look I'm I'm a mute I'm a I'm a formerly chubby musical theater kid from New York like I don't I
never thought anything that was masculine I never thought I had the prerequisites for that that was like inherently dudeish like I've always been like a guy like I love boxing like I've always broke down I've always you know had all those inherent qualities but those things that felt felt like presentationally Macho or dude-esque I was just like oh I don't I don't have that and uh and so yeah I wanted to have a girl and then when my son was born my wife and I didn't find out the sex and so you know at nine months and nine months and a couple days when the doctor was like what is it Josh and I got to announce to the room like it's a boy I was like oh of course because it was required for me you know my life turned into man school you know especially in sobriety I had to learn and and I don't mean to make it this blanket a definition I for me what it meant to be a man and the qualities that I had had to sort of accrue the things that no matter how great my mom was couldn't give me because she was just limited by what one person can do the things that I learned from my big brother Dan I've had a big brother in in the states we have the big brother Foundation I've had a big brother since I was eight years old and things that I learned from him and then eventually my father-in-law who I really look up to and all the great men in my life and all these these assets these tools that I had learned you know when I had my son Max I was like okay here's my opportunity now to implement that and see everything that I've collected what I can give him and uh it just felt perfect it felt like God's way of like having a laugh and be like you you knew this was going to happen right you married Paige yes you had they teach your wonderful children um I had a guest on the podcast quite recently who said who described somewhat of a similar upbringing where the father wasn't around and him and his mum acted almost like pilot and co-pilot and he one of the terms he said to me I can't remember it was something something ancestral or something I know that sounds strange but it was something to do with the fact that when you have such
a close relationship to your partner to your mother and they end up indirectly or unadvertently offloading some of the emotional energy around the parent that's not there it can make your own personal relationships difficult yeah can you relate I can accept that I think that everyone is bad at relationships and I think just like I believe that even if you have a perfect parental structure we will self-parent there's always going to be gaps in our rearing there's always going to be spots that were missed as a result of your upbringing and your circumstance in the way in which you've experienced life up to a certain point and it's incumbent on you to fill in those gaps that's growing up right to even know what those gaps are yes right what for you what were those gaps you had to fill in well I think it was with the dad stuff it was about in relationships up into my wife I had this like I would call it like the Tony Montana approach to life which was like if anything went wrong if there was any sort of adversity or any kind of I mean at this point right like I'm I've dealt with the dad stuff and then I've been in Showbiz till you know since I was 10 right which is the ultimate rejection right you're you're being you're going on a job interview at best even if you're on a TV show you're interviewing for a job once or twice a year and if you are an out of work actor you're you're interviewing for a job four times five times a month sometimes more during pilot season right so you really have to calcify or uh calcified yeah like you have to become uh callous to rejection it's like if you ever talk to a doctor like about death they have a very interesting bet on it because they can't be overly emotional about it because it's a part of their job so until this point in relationships if anything went South I just would go this is a preview of more bad to come this isn't natural Growing Pains this isn't natural um discourse or or just like the natural arguments that you get in and then you get through them and you become closer I would just go this was great I'll be fine without you thanks and I would just go leaving people in my wake to be like
what the hell happened how did you reverse that's the point that you were able to find someone and get married luckily I was in a state of doing the work I was willing to be I was not doing that specific work but in general because I was in a recovery program because my mom had put good people around me and because I had done therapy since I was a kid I like knew I was self-aware enough to know like oh there's there's certainly work to be done here but it wasn't until I had a woman like my wife in my my life who taught me a better way who came from a family that doesn't leave and she reiterated that so when we get in these fights and I would look at her and be like so I guess we should call it like this was great right she'd be like what like no like I'm not going anywhere and neither you and we can be mad at each other we can be mad we can go to bed mad I love that and people go you don't go to bed man I'm like I don't know not in my experience like you can go to bed you're gonna be mad for a couple days usually it doesn't last that long no one wants to be that pissed that long but it's like but when we work this out I'll be here because I'm not going anywhere because my siblings never went anywhere my mom and dad never went anywhere like we stick around through the good and the bad and that was a revelation for me I can so relate in so many ways I have the same avoidant attachment stuff for various reasons and then I met a person I always say that like God over the wall you know like yeah you know and changed you from the inside um definitely so I can totally totally relate that's why you have to have a that's why if if it's for you you have to have a kid because in my experience and I say it in the book you don't we all work on ourselves and especially with incredible podcasts like this and we're in the age of optimization and self-realization and everyone's listening to a dozen podcasts at a time and wants to be their best version of themselves and that's great but we can't be Faberge eggs right like we can't be these perfect pristine things and then we get jostled around a bit by life and we shatter and so to me I think there's
only so much work you can do on your own and then it has to be like applied into life and then you put some skin in the game and you get in a relationship and that forces you to go deeper and you're like I don't want to and they're like well you better otherwise this thing's not gonna work but you meet someone of value and you do the work and it reveals itself to be worth it and it gives you a deeper understanding and then once you guys get really perfect you throw a kid in the mix and that little jerk makes you go even deeper and work even harder and become even more selfless hopefully and less self-centered and again new truths are revealed in new ways of living are revealed so yeah on all the things we've talked about today the the mental talk the voice in your head the feelings of um you know quote-unquote self-hatred self-esteem happiness where where are you as you sit here today on that Journey I I'm I'm in a wonderful place my life you know is a reflection of how do I say it my life is is that of a good man's now I I say that not in like some big self-congratulatory way but I just did the things that I was told to do by people whose life I wanted you know I surrounded myself with the people who weren't telling me the things I wanted to hear but their life looked attractive and it wasn't because they had a nice car or they had an impressive job those things don't hurt but it was because they seemed deeply decent that they had a good spiritual life and that they were good partners there were good Fathers there were good sons and that was attractive to me so I implemented that into my life on a regular basis and the byproduct of that was a really good life that I'm completely overpaid to have today um and I still just as much as I say I rarely wake up in the morning in the mood for a salad I usually want french toast I wake up in the morning most times it's usually not the morning I am a morning person it's usually at four eight four a.m at night or 2 A.M or five in the afternoon when I'm over tired and I had too much sugar when my mind starts going just remember it's all going to be bad you know that right
but I have tools you know I have ways in which of dealing with that to get out of those thoughts to break that bad cycle um so it's just the voices are never gone but the volumes turn down I have to ask you've got one last question here in the diary that the last guest has left for you but when you said you have tools I was compelled because I know that there's someone at home who can completely relate and they're sat there thinking Josh what are the tools is there anything that's really helped you sort of turn down the volume on that that you might recommend to someone listening at home I would just say and um my friend John AKA Wheels um his motto was action is the magic word and you cannot think your way in the right acting you have to act your way into right thinking and I always felt like I'm reasonably articulate and I've you know I've prided myself on having what I thought was like a good mind I gotta be able to think my way out of this thing like I have to be able to impress my will on this thing and wrestle it to death like I I just can't believe it and it's the duality of these things because didn't I get myself this far didn't mean taking my life and my will into my hands didn't I get all this success and notoriety and blah blah blah and it's like well there was a part of it that that but maybe you got that in spite of it you know maybe the truth is is that these things you know it they need to be governed they need to be throttled because inevitably they'll pervert they will they'll ruin you know that I just learned this they say a couple bad apples but the next part of that is a couple bad apples ruins the barrel right so it's like I have to be careful with those thoughts and those feelings because they can ruin everything so what I would say is when when I take the action to get out of self when I become in service to others when I do some reading when I listen to a great podcast like this about people who are Seekers who are trying to better themselves if you take the action something will change if you sit and you try to wrestle it in my experience it'll
it'll never work the question left for you who is the one person in your life that deserves the greatest thanks and if you were to give them the thanks today what would you say well I I I almost don't want to because it it almost like because she loves she loves her flowers but yeah I gotta give it to my mom it all starts and ends with my mom and we have a deeply imperfect relationship because we're two deeply imperfect people but at its core she did more than I could have ever imagined and especially being a father and seeing what how challenging it can be with all the help in the world and she did it all by herself and I just give her all the credit in the world so much of why I'm here today is because of her so thanks Mom I hope you don't watch this but thank you I love you Josh thank you so much it's been a an honor to meet you and learn about your story and um I'm a big following out of your YouTube channel so please do post a lot more because it's enjoyable to watch you bring an important energy to the world and your book is one of the most vulnerable revealing but wisdom-laced books I've had the privilege of of reading in my research for a podcast wait I recommend everybody to go grab a copy I love the title happy people are annoying um it's a truly important book Thank you Josh as you might know the show's now sponsored by Airbnb absolutely love Airbnb always have always been a you know saved my life on so many occasions and my team when we first got in touch with Airbnb were talking about how most people don't realize that their place where they currently live could become an Airbnb and I guess the second question there is how much could your place be worth and it turns out you could be sitting on an Airbnb gold mine without even knowing it some people Airbnb their entire homes when they're away that's what I did in New York whenever I left New York my place was on Airbnb and people rented it out sometimes for a day sometimes for two days sometimes for a week and it's a great way to cover some of the bills while you're away so whether you're looking to go on holiday or you just
want some extra cash for bills or you want to buy something nice for a valentine that you love whatever it might be head over to airbnb.co.uk host and you can find out how much your current property where you live can earn while you're not there I suspect it might blow your mind because it certainly blew mine [Music] uh [Music]