Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyOLA-IuvqA
the jurogan experience i decided not to go to i could have gone to some of these places in scottsdale or la or malibu um and i could have gotten massages and had the green smoothies and stuff like that which which can help a lot of people but me after having like a 15 year off and on battle 10 years where i was i was pretty solid um and i you know i'd come out of it i'd get right back on the horse and i'd be good for you know years um i decided i needed fight camp i needed a training camp i needed the right coaching the right strategy and i needed people to to to ride me like like you know be hard on me this is sober yeah this would get sober so that's that's what i wanted and so i sought out one of the toughest places in america to go to it's kind of a like a 12-step completion program it's a big book boot camp but it's also like a uh it's developed a little bit out of like militaristic style and um i was really hard on you you know i mean while we were there people were being called you know masquerading clowns you fake as [ __ ] [ __ ] and uh you dr jekyll mr hyde i mean just like they would just grill people and you're up at five is that good um i i i don't i don't know exactly but it was what i needed at that moment um is what i need at that moment because i needed to not run from it i needed to face it and i needed to look at the the stuff are the people running are people that have gotten clean this way yes and they have it they have an 87 success rate for the people that do 90 days now a lot of them only do 45 some of them only do 60 days and then i would say probably more than half of the people that went there uh ended up leaving because of how hard it was but the only reason they wanted people there is if you really truly wanted to get sober right because for years you've been stuck in the cycle of
addiction and for me the easiest way i mean they explained it and i drawn it on white boards a lot but for me whenever you have that first use you would have this what they call an allergy set off you you have an abnormal reaction to a to a substance just like someone else can't have peanuts i can't have drugs or alcohol because when i do an allergy goes off that says in my body i have an abnormal reaction that says you know i know rationally that one is too many but whenever i have that first use a thousand is not enough i got to keep having it and this is explained to you by these people at this rehab or this is just your own feeling no no this was explained and there's this doctor that's really great his name's dr uh kevin and he's got like a irish last name but he's he's got some stuff on i think netflix and amazon and he was a navy um surgeon and basically like he ended up writing himself scripts for oxy and then he was injecting himself with other stuff and he got put in a a prison a military prison that one that got taken down in uh like kansas i forget what it's called but anyway leavensworth or something like that he was put in that prison anyways now he spent his time there really trying to help people in addiction and that cycle of addiction basically is explained as after you have that first use and that allergy set off now you go on your spree because what that doctor did while i brought him up was he shows scientifically through brain research that addict's brain brain's different like they don't have enough dopamine receptors and whenever that hits now all of a sudden it goes back to that almost hunter-gatherer brain where it says this is a priority for survival like that's why some addicts will prioritize it above food
or water or family and you see them do irrational things and then they go on this run and then when they after after that spree after that run they come out of it and they emerge remorseful they feel terrible i've had moments like that and then all of a sudden you you make a firm resolution that's what you back it up with is that what you felt when you did it the first 30 days you did it for 30 days yeah i came out i emerged remorseful and then i promised myself i promised my wife at the time i promised my family uh friends that this isn't who i want to be and and what they say about an addict is you could hook them up to a lie detector and they absolutely 100 mean it that they never intend to use again but then what happens is they back with that firm resolution i promise this was the last time all of a sudden you get restless irritable and discontented well whenever an addict gets wrestle's irritable discontented i i would ask the question what's the what's the difference between discontent and discontented you know this can discontent you might be a little restless but discontented basically says well if discontent is i'm thirsty discontented is there's not enough water in the whole world to quench this thirst and so you get in that place where you have this mental obsession so you have this mental obsession you get restless irritable and discontented and then you go back to that first use and then you get stuck in that cycle of addiction again and that's where i lived for five years from 17 to 23 was i was just looping back and forth so you get sober for a little bit then go back again from 17 to 23 no i wouldn't get so hardly at all i would get sober for my fights the eight weeks of fight camp ten weeks of fight camp nothing that's why um that's why grudge training center had to kick me out you know i mean brendan was on that vote i think rashad nate marcourt um shane carwin
uh duane bang ludwig all those guys that invited me on the team after i got off the ultimate fighter it was just a short while later that they were having to ask me to leave the team it was like a vote elliot marshall trevor whitman i think justin gates was just starting to come up i don't know if he was actually training full time then but he was still at north northern colorado state or northern colorado wrestling there but they said you know justin like um you we love you but you gotta go you gotta go get help and i should have went and got helped but that's when i found my purpose with the pygmies i i've heard this quote that said no act of kindness no matter how small ever goes wasted and so i started at the local children's hospital became a local volunteer went through night school for it later you remember hdnet and inside mma with boss rooting yeah um those guys came out to the denver children's hospital this was like nine months of me being sober all of a sudden now i have rashad visiting um the kids at the in shane carwin dwayne bang brennan shop visiting the kids that i would push around in the wheelchairs and stuff it gave me purpose so and that purpose helped me stay sober sorry so 2020 this was the first time you had had anything since 2000 and like when uh it wasn't i i'd had three pretty big relapses so so 10 whole years of sobriety pretty much but i had relapsed three times in that time oh in the ten years in the ten years i'd realized for 30 days i'd relapse for nine days and then relapse for five days oh because these are different relapses yeah this is not the ones you're talking about the recent ones with your shoulder uh no that let in that five day then led into a big a big one i'll go ahead and i was confused because when you said 30 days no i thought you meant this year no no not this year um basically
march to may 15th when i was out i was out there using and um i felt so much shame and so much guilt um because i mean i've i've been on your show i've been doing good things i've been um really trying to live the right life and my marriage failed which is okay that happens and i just took on a lot of like shame i couldn't i couldn't you know have that relationship be a success then whenever i went back to weed all of a sudden that weed i i just kept going more and more and more and more and then often i found oxy then also i found coke so you started with weed yeah but then i went right to the oxy and i would i would what i would do as in my addict mind i would think it would sound rational i'll just have weed so i don't go back to oxy and and that will help me with pain if i'm injured because i i'd actually hurt my neck training with raphael a little bit and um he was sweeping me and i i put my head out whenever i put my head out i crunched right on top of my my neck or my head and it just sent this like crunch down into my cervical neck and it was hurting i was hurting um more emotionally and i was stuffing it i wasn't looking at it i was stuffing it stuffing it stuff in it and then what happened was i felt so much shame i told i told my board i needed rehab and i said i need i need help like i've relapsed i need help and they've always supported me but i was scared that would they support me in this you know if i'm the leader of the organization or the founder and the spokesperson you know we got an incredible internal team but like we've had donors from thousands uh thousands of donors from all 50 states and 59 countries you know did i just let everybody down you know and is this going to be taken from me as this life of purpose that i found you know am i going to lose it all um and i felt so much shame
they were going to send me to a place in oklahoma not not to knock it at all but i had known people from the recovery world because i had been going and sharing my story of recovery in rehabs in in uh in uh different silver living homes and now i'll send them back to where they are what is this rehab place you said this hard ass rehab place that has a an amazing percentage of people get successful it's it's out of dallas fort worth and it's called stonegate and i don't think they advertise it is that hard but it is that hard and i wanted a place once i talked to him i realized like so they get their chewing [ __ ] they do they actually they did yell at me really i had a 21 year old kid yelling at me that was what uh over a green towel did you want to tackle them uh i was just like bro i kind of wanted to at first uh what they think is they got to humble you and i'm like me and life has humbled me that's why i'm here right and i've been humbled enough and now i came here to get help and but their whole thing is if if there's no [ __ ] if they get to you to actually look at your if they call you on your your [ __ ] why would then you can start working through it yelling at you over a green towel because you were only allowed to have white towels that they gave you so you get there they give you walmart shoes they give you paper underwear and they give you this hideous butt paper paper underwear why they have paper underwear uh because they they take your clothes and they put them in a hot box and then they try to kill if there's any because there's guys coming from all over the place right and um i mean we had people that were ivy league professors professional athletes i'm not sure what people also know from like homeless shelters and what do you mean hot pockets hot box kills any of the the like bed bugs oh so if someone were to bring bed bugs in um and get in the mattresses and things like that like if someone came from a
homeless shelter or from the streets how could they afford it uh i don't know honestly i think there was like a scholarship program because some of the people were paying 895 dollars a day there but that i think that's what they charge insurance um it was expensive man so i just went through the divorce and i i basically gave the finances we had so she could go back to school and i was going to restart and then um then also i needed rehab and that's expensive um insurance helped but then i had do you find yourself this is a weird question but i think it's i think it's valid do you find yourself always in like a new problem do you do you create problems do you think i think i try to help find a solution to problems but i think for me um you asked me a question after we got the treatment on our shoulders or knees and you asked what are you manifesting to have this like sickness you know these all these sicknesses inside of you i think now i don't that's not exactly know i said it i said do you wonder if you were getting that you're right because sometimes people do you wonder if you're bringing this into your life yeah sometimes people do create problem it's like fine they find themselves in this eternal state of conflict like some people they figure their way through life with very little conflict they're magical people i know a few of them it's rare some people are constantly engaged in some insurmountable problem and then they also go and like in your case you find insurmountable problems like what you're doing with the congo and the pygmies in uganda and and helping these people like it gives you purpose and it helps you define your life in a positive way yeah then when you're not there problems come up again like all kinds of major problems there's always
something right i've had some health problems for sure and then these relapses that had happened were really tough the the biggest one was this one in march and let me let me tell you what happened because i didn't want to go to this rehab in oklahoma that that i had known people that were there that talked it had a reputation for people using while they're even there because they could have their phones at five pm they could have visitors they could go to walmart two or three days a week and then you can call your your connection and they could leave it to you at walmart they could throw it over the gate and it's on 110 acres and they can send you a picture of where it's at right and you can just go dig it up or find it and use and i wanted a place where there that i wasn't going there for that i knew i was going to get sober but i didn't want to be around other people so they take your phone away from that yeah you don't have your phone paper underwear paper underwear you can uncomfortable or paper underwear it's terrible but you get it back uh the next day or that night after he gets out of the hotbox one day that's how i get my towels back i brought nice towels and i got they gave me my towels back well this guy's doing room checks room checks are every day at least once a day and uh anyways they found my green towels it's my first like 24 hours being there at our youtube know that i know you can't have green towels they give them them back to me so also i was using that and he gave me an infraction for uh and if you get three infractions you lose your phone call that week you don't get you don't even get one phone call until you've been in there three full weeks because normally when guys go to rehab and then they start calling their families they start feeling like i gotta get out of here i gotta get home you start telling yourself this like my
family's more important to take care of than me right now when really you're in crisis mode and you got to take care of yourself before you can take care of anyone else and so um i gotten two infractions for the two green towels i had and i was about to lose my phone call at the three week mark and uh if because you're getting three if you get three infractions in those first three weeks you lose your phone call i got two for things i didn't even know i couldn't have what was the other one um no that was the green towel he took one green towel he started walking off with it looked back and saw in my like cubby that there was another green towel there so you got two infractions for the same thing right and so um what a dick so but but i would say that the counselors that were there and the recovery advocates they're really hard on you because some of the guys that have left there if they let them leave they're over confident that they've got their problem nicked um then they can go right back out and relapse so how do they keep you from doing it again for me well they can't you have to keep yourself from doing it no one can keep me sober no no no therapist no sponsor it's got to be me but what what do they do to give you the tools to let you do it yourself i think you really start to unwind the the tangled web of why um you use and for me it's always been like self-worth it's been uh like that bullying moment when i was a kid my my record can go right back to the three things the kids told me and so i dressed up for a costume party i went um to my middle school crush's birthday party i crushed there because i was dressed up like a dr pepper transformer your 24 pack i had 12 packs on my arms i went all out everyone was excited because she loved transformers optimus prime i went as dr optimus pepper
anyways i get there go the backyard when the door opens i get hit with a couple flashes of light and it's them taking pictures i hear the sound of laughter i see that no one else is dressed up and my middle school crush said i can't believe you thought you were good enough to come to my party right next to her a boy said you're worthless and then my notorious bully from like third eighth grade said you should just kill yourself and so that leads to basically whenever i would relapse i would say to myself you're not good enough you're worthless maybe you should just kill yourself you know i was suicidal at 13 i didn't kill myself because my mom i thought what would this do to her do you still go back to that one day like that one day when you were a child hurt you so badly that's that's still in your mind almost as like a benchmark for who you are i did and that's why i think i've really come to a place of like self-love seeing myself that like when i'm needed well the last six months but this is after your ufc career after your bellator career yeah all the amazing things you've done with fight for the forgotten all the time we built the congo i would know it but when i would relapse i would feel like such a piece of garbage i would feel like i was a disappointment to myself but also to everybody else catch new episodes of the joe rogan experience for free only on spotify watch back catalog jre videos on spotify including clips easily seamlessly switch between video and audio experience on spotify you can listen to the jre in the background while using other apps and can download episodes to save on data cost all for free spotify is absolutely free you don't have to have a premium account to watch new jre episodes you just need to search for the jre on your spotify app
go to spotify now to get this full episode of the joe rogan experience