Transcript of Cohen Miles-Rath (on psychosis and recovery) New

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. Experts on Expert. I'm Dan Shepherd. I'm joined by a crying Lily Padlet.

No, there's like dust on my face.

You're having an allergic reaction right now?

Well, we didn't finish something we started, and that's upsetting for me.

Are there high winds in here that I don't know about?

Maybe.

Okay. This is one of the most interesting episodes we've ever had. Yes. Our guest today, Cohen Miles Rath, is a mental health advocate and speaker, and he has a memoir out now called Mending Reality: An Advocate's Existential Journey with Mental Health. This is a firsthand account of someone who had a psychotic break, um, a schizophrenic episode, uh, that resulted in them trying to kill their father.

Yes.

And the amount of bravery and honesty that Cohen brings to this is incredible.

It really is.

It is very helpful to hear the firsthand account as opposed to the outsider's view of it. It is very powerful.

I agree.

Please enjoy Cohen Miles Rath.

He's an object. He's an object.

He's an object. Jax, nice to meet you.

Nice to meet you. Thanks for coming.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Where do you live currently?

Saugerties, New York, so about a couple hours north of the city.

Saugerties?

Saugerties. Good name.

What's up with all like Schenectady?

Oh yeah.

What happened up there with the naming?

I think it's a lot of the Native American.

Yeah. Is it Native American?

Yeah.

I guess we have some silly stuff up in Michigan. Mackinac Island.

Yeah, that one's wild.

Sounds like almost like a saltwater taffy flavor.

Detroit.

Detroit's okay. What do you think about Detroit, Cohen? That's fine.

I've never been to Detroit.

You haven't?

Never been to LA either.

This is my first time. Oh, welcome.

I would've said you're not missing much, but I will say the city has really rebounded. Detroit. Rebounded. Detroit. Yeah. You remember my review from January. I couldn't believe how nice it's gotten.

Yeah.

And you're up there with wife and baby?

We're not married. Partners for life. And new baby in December. December 27th. She's adorable. Sweet little girl.

So just months old. Yeah. 4 months last week. Oh, I love it.

Cheers.

Over the course of the last 8 years, we've got to interview a lot of folks I didn't think I would ever get to talk to. And in particular, kind of a new wave of people being honest about some of these conditions that you only could learn about in an abnormal psych class, like I did in college, right? And we'll get to what my current understanding of schizophrenia is based on a 28-year-old class I took. But increasingly, people with these conditions are coming out and talking about the experience. I have to say it has an incredibly powerful effect in that— take sociopathy. You're like, oh, sociopaths, write them off, stay away. And then we interview someone who's clinically diagnosed as sociopathic, and you're like, oh yeah, you're just born that way, and you're different from your peers, and that's a rough situation.

Exactly.

And then we have someone with borderline personality, and it's like, oh, stay away from those people. And you're like, no, those people too just got dealt a hand. And so you will be the first person I think we've talked to who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia. Schizophrenia.

Yeah. Schizoaffective.

Yeah. Tell me all the differences.

Yes. The difference is schizoaffective can have symptoms of schizophrenia, such as delusions and hallucinations, but also bipolar or like mood type disorder diagnoses, depression or highs and lows. Right. So it's kind of a combination. But I will say that how I like to frame it is I have a mild form, right? A mild severity because there is a spectrum to it. And obviously in my story, there's a lot of other factors involved, such as substance misuse and other things. So my particular incident is It's a unique and rare one, but it's one of the more difficult situations to talk about. But that's why I share my story.

Yeah. For sure. Now, what I learned again, 20+ years ago now, 28 years ago in an abnormal psych class was schizophrenia has a genetic component. It can be seen in the genome. We know the loci for it. It can get passed down and that it can be dormant unless a very stressful situation happens and that there's a window of vulnerability between like, I don't know, 16 and 25 where carriers of the gene can express it if something traumatic happens or stressful. And if nothing happens in that period, they may carry that gene and nothing may happen. Is that still kind of the—

Yeah, I will say that I'm not in the psychiatry field. I do more of macro mental health work, which I could expand upon that. But that is my understanding of it. But there's a wide range of perspectives on these diagnoses. And definitely though, the science, I would say, still sticks with that. Okay. Thank goodness.

Have the stuff I've learned is unraveling. All your anthropology stuff. Every time I pick up any kind of journal, I'm like, "Oh, that wasn't right." Yeah. But let's start at the beginning in upstate New York, because as you already say, there's all kinds of variables in this stew that leads to senior year of college. So explain early childhood.

Yeah, so I grew up in Cohocton, which is another Native American name. My parents were separated early on, about 3 or 4 years old. Actually, the first memory that I have is in my dad's arms, and I'm crying and pleading for my mom not to take me because they had separated early on. You know, I go back and back and forth between these two homes. One's in Cohocton, one's in Dansville, about 10 minutes away. So not super far from each other, but these two homes look very, very different. One side is my mom— she married someone else who had two children, so I grew up with five siblings in a small three-bedroom home. And on my dad's side, I was an only child.

Yeah, so going back and forth between these two homes were very different, very unique, because you had an older sister whom mom had before she married your dad.

I'm the youngest, so my mom had three children before having me with my dad.

Okay, so when they got divorced, mom was leaving with 4 children. Yep. One of which was your dad's biological child, you. Yeah. And then, yeah, new stepdad has 2 children. Yep. Okay. You're very generous in your book to say, look, this is my memory. I remember wanting to stay with dad. Dad remembers that. Mom does not remember that and doesn't think that even happened. Yeah. All is possible, right?

Yeah. It's a bit of a chaotic mess, but that's okay because both of them were very loving at the end of the day. I write about it in my book because when I think about mental health, we have to look at the whole person and across the lifespan. And we know that adverse childhood experiences increases the likelihood of later mental health difficulties. Not everyone, though. It all depends on the person. You know, you could grow up in a perfect household and still face something difficult, of course. But, you know, I think that is an important part of my story is just to look back at that childhood.

Yeah. And ACE scores, as they mount, the statistics get pretty unavoidable. There's all these really staggering markers as they mount up and you get above 6 or so ACEs. Yeah. So in the household you went to, there were 2 bedrooms for all the kids, right? There's a bedroom for 3 girls and a bedroom for 3 boys. Yep. Mom's working her ass off.

Yeah, she was working as a nurse, or, well, actually as a lunch lady at the start, and she became a nurse eventually. Still is one.

Did they get along or no?

That's a great question. I think they got along for the most part. Definitely when I got into high school, I remember them being very friendly with each other.

Okay.

And what was your stepdad like? You said you don't really remember what he did for a living.

Yeah, he definitely brought some challenges into the home. But I will say that actually later on in my story, and I don't write about this because I don't have the space in my book for it, but, you know, I actually lived with him at my mom's right after I got out of jail. And he's super, super supportive. And he continues to be.

Oh, wow.

He continues to reach out. So I wish I could have included that nice little story arc with him in there. I didn't have the space for it.

But that became weirdly an entry point for him to have a relationship with you that was—

different.

Yeah. So obviously money was scarce. You guys were on welfare and had food stamps and the whole nine. Yep. I can only imagine. But what was it like when you would go visit Dad?

Well, you know, my dad would take me everywhere. He'd take me down to Pennsylvania just to get Philly cheesesteaks. We love to drive places. We love to go to Florida, Disneyland. So he took me everywhere. I was his only child. So he was able to, even though he was fuel delivery driver, didn't make a whole lot of money, But since I was only his child, he was able to invest more into that type of relationship.

And he lived modestly, right? He's living in a trailer in a rural area.

Double-wide trailer. You know, he definitely brought a little bit more structure to the home, a little bit more cleanliness, I would say. So when I moved in with him in the 6th grade, a little bit of a privilege there to have a space where I could start to become who I was.

My favorite parts of your book are how honest you are about telling on yourself for your own less attractive qualities.

Yeah.

Of which I had so many growing up. But just talk about this dynamic of having these 5 siblings who are living in one situation, and then you're kind of going off one day a week and every other weekend, and what's happening in that social structure from that?

Eighth grade, those teenagers' years, like, it's a really rough time overall, but I definitely formulated some judgments for my siblings for what they were doing.

You just feel a little better than them?

Yes. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that can sometimes come with that privilege. And like, no one was going to Disneyland in my mom's house, right? I was doing that.

And you were kind of rubbing their nose in it at times? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Honestly, yeah. That's how it was. Even when they were smoking weed or stuff like that, I'd judge them for that, even though I would partake. So it's a weird dynamic.

Yeah, your dad sounds like the sweetest dude. Oh yeah, he's a single dad. He's trying his best. He wanted you from the jump. You finally convinced Mom to let you come live with him at 11, I guess, and he's taking you to church.

Yeah, we go to church every once in a while. You know, he definitely wanted that to be a part of it, but also like, I feel like he wasn't completely invested because the church felt like a hypocrite to him to some sense.

Well, that's why I think he's even better. It's one thing if you're just super religious and you go. To me, it just He was like, I'm gonna try to do all the right stuff with this young boy.

Yeah, that's so sweet.

Yeah, the values, like taking care of each other, that's what he really wanted to instill in me. Yeah, I think that was more important than going to church.

And he bounced permanently because you had left during service and they wouldn't let you back in. You went to go pee.

That was a breaking point. The church basically kicked me out and I was a little kid, right?

Because you had to go to the bathroom.

This is what he had told me. I don't really remember this. We were in service and then I went out of the main room to go to the bathroom. And when I tried to come back in, the priest was like, you know, we can't let you back in because they were in service already. And my dad was like, what?

Yeah, that was crazy.

But also, Dad's rocking a fucking mullet.

I was rocking a mullet too. I mean, that thing was sexy, I must say.

Dad's wearing leather jackets. He's got earrings, a mullet. He's fucking driving fuel around. Like, he's presenting as a rough customer, but then there's this completely sweet side. How did he get labeled bipolar, and when did that diagnosis come about?

So yeah, I didn't learn about that until after everything had happened, until many, many years later. So he had lost his brother early on in his life, 13, 14 years old, my uncle that I never met. I can share this because he has shared this. He's had some suicidal thoughts after that. I think around that time he'd been diagnosed with the bipolar, but again, he didn't really believe in it or want to talk about it.

Yes, so he's receiving this term bipolar. It's certainly the first time he's ever heard it. Nowadays everyone No one's quite familiar with that word, but I'm sure when he heard it in the '80s—

different time. Yeah.

He's like, what? No one had heard of bipolar. What does that mean? If he had not felt any discomfort about it, embraced it, and was open with you about it, who knows what your kind of base awareness would have been?

Yeah. It would have taken a very special person to be very open about it back then.

Yeah, I think big time.

Especially, I think, being a man, too.

Yeah.

So once you get in with your father, walk me through middle school and high school and Finn and kind of finding yourself then.

I meet my best friend Finn in 6th grade. He was wearing a Tupac shirt with bling on it. We had a school project together. We just meshed, we vibed, and he becomes a brother to me during that time when I kind of like lost my siblings, although they were still there. But, you know, it's a different home. I didn't really care about academics. I didn't really care about studying. I was a slacker, 100%. But then I find like a talent in distance running. I was just fast. Eighth grade, I started to just win races.

It also gives you an identity in a moment where you're really trying to figure out like, oh, what is my thing? This dude's that and she's this. It's a nice little anchor, I think. Oh yeah, I'm a runner. People around school know that I'm the runner.

Yeah, especially when you start winning, you gain some popularity. Like, I was made fun of for my mullet. I was picked on. I did in eighth grade get rid of it. I conformed to the teenage fashion standard and started to gain some popularity. And that definitely brought that identity in me.

At this point, you've started playing drums. You and Finn form a band.

FISM, Five Incredibly Sexy Men.

Were there 5 members?

There was, and there was some drama, band drama. You know, we went down to 4 at some point. Okay. But it still works. Still works.

FISM, that's great.

Yeah, if you drop below that, you might have to start using different languages.

Yeah, you got to.

Yeah. To keep the letters working.

50 or something.

Now, how good of a runner were you? Then go ahead and brag. I'm going to give you full license to brag. Like, walk me through the progression to 12th grade.

I made my first state championship. Oh man, I haven't thought about this in forever. It must have been 10th grade, maybe. I mean, cross-country states for the first time, which is a big deal. In junior year, I get some records, and then senior year, I actually qualify for nationals.

And when does Dan the coach come into your life?

Dan came in in my freshman year. Okay. And he definitely instilled this idea of being a 24-hour, 7-days-a-week athlete. And because showed some success, he really wanted to bring me out because he was, you know, a runner himself. He was very passionate, and now he still coaches at SUNY Geneseo, actually. So he's, he's a role model for me, a huge protective factor, a huge role model. And I get to the point where I qualify for this national race.

I had finished second in state, second in state, New York State, New York State, almost the state champion.

There's always one.

All that at this point, this is kind of also a pivotal because you start becoming open to the notion like, wow, I'm actually going to get to go to college for this. And initially you were like, I got to go Division I, and you weren't getting any bites on those applications. Yeah. And then Dan convinces you, you know, "Fuck all that. Go DIII, be a big fish, and just win. Your times will speak for themselves." So you've kind of adjusted, right? You've recalibrated by the time you go to State?

I definitely had this big vision, right? This idea of being a D-I full scholarship. 'Cause, you know, money was also an issue. No one in my family had graduated college. It wasn't on the radar of my siblings. My dad and I, we really didn't want that financial burden. Going back to aces here. Running got me there. That completely shifted it. And I now had a chance to do something I was really passionate about, but it became the only thing. I, like, definitely was like, "I'm going to college for running." And that really set this standard and this pressure on me from the start.

You gotta wonder what overlaps and what's driving what, but you're already smoking weed in middle school. You're also having these elevated experiences physically through running, right? Mm-hmm. So you're touching this other realm of, like, very heightened experience kind of frequently.

Yeah. And then going to Nationals, when I get to the big stage and I have this just lights-out, best race of my life.

So there's 20 entrants and your goal is to hit 15, right? You're like, that'll be a good showing.

I was just happy to frickin' be there. I didn't think I even belonged there. I did good in States, but not national level. So I was definitely just aiming for, like, you know, top 15. It's a big wish. But then I just have this lights-out moment. And it was a combination of just this passion, this drive, and then that heightened experience. Because when that last lap came and I kicked down 2 other runners' ass. I think it was a 63-second last lap in a 5K. And, you know, ended up finishing, like, in 6th place.

Wow. Which makes you All-American. That's the cutoff for All-American.

Right on the cuff.

And I'll add, you're younger than everyone. You have a November birthday, so you could have either been a year young or a year older.

Yep. November 21st is my birthday.

So here's where we get into a little bit of, like, all the different variables that add up to a life. It's like, who knows, maybe if you had been a year older and you had done that in 11th grade, That would have been, like, scholarship path right there.

Full ride, potentially to a D1, completely altering the trajectory of Pablo Lumiere and my running career.

But you'd think this, being 6th, would still get you there.

It was too late in the season.

Oh.

Yeah. Everyone's already declared, right?

Everyone's already declared. I think I got actually a really last-minute offer from, like, a D2 college. But I was like, I'd already made my decision. I'm gonna respect that.

Okay, so you go to SUNY, which is in New York.

I actually go to St. John Fisher first semester.

Okay.

Yeah, which is up in Rochester, Pittsford area. I pretty much transfer after a semester there into SUNY Geneseo.

How does that go?

You know, I think I wanted to join Geneseo because they had a better team. Their team often qualified for nationals on a regular basis.

Freshman year, not so great.

Freshman year, I was the first freshman at the university to break 15 minutes in the 5K. I don't know, did you see this marathon that just happened? Broke 2 hours in the marathon. I can't even remember the name.

2 hours? Oh my God.

So they're running under 5-minute miles the entire time.

Oh yeah, yeah. They're like 4:30-something. That is crazy. I couldn't run a 5-minute mile.

5-minute mile for a billion dollars.

For also continue—

23 years.

I couldn't run 1.6 miles.

Yeah, couldn't run a single mile away.

Oh my God, that's insane.

Wow. What is the vibe? I have a stereotype for like symphony musicians, right? It's like, that's all they do. So what is the vibe for these kind of elite long-distance runners? Is there a personality type?

Yeah, I would say so. And I mean, at Geneseo, when I was there, you know, I got a mix. I had those who were the 24/7 athletes, right? The ones who were like pure dedication, dry seasons, no drinking, no partying. And then you also had people on the team who would like to be a part of that running culture atmosphere, but also, you know, want to party. You're in college.

And you flop back and forth between those two groups throughout your time?

Pretty much. So when I was a freshman, you know, I had that stellar 5K time. I had qualified for this junior national championships, which is for the fastest 19 and younger athletes. So I'd qualified through my time, but then I got my first injury, and that was the first time that I had experienced an injury.

You fractured a foot bone, is that what it was? Uh, it was a stress fracture, I think, my shin.

So you take like 6 weeks off, or maybe more than that, I can't remember. But you know what do I do when I have that time off? I want to engage in partying. I want to let loose. It's college. I want to have fun like I had friends who did.

So you partied and then you recovered.

Mm-hmm.

And then how long do you go until your next injury?

Pretty much in the next season of cross-country, I faced another injury. I showed some success a little bit, not even close to what I wanted to, but then I faced another injury. And this actually happens pretty much every year where I would show that success, work really train really hard, and then get injured, and then party. And that happened every year.

You'd regulate. You would be depressed, and you would be directionless, and your identity would be in threat, and then you would medicate.

Yeah. And, you know, I wasn't shy about smoking weed or drinking. I liked that experience, that heightened type of experience, and that made me feel better.

So there's one terrible race.

Yeah, and it was the big one, cross-country nationals. You know, I had really shown some success early on in that season, and then once I hit— Nationals, my entire team has a bad race. And this is my last chance at cross country.

Also the day you're turning 21. Is it on your 21st birthday?

Day before I turned 21, which is a big deal in college, right? Have this horrible race. I finished like, I think 100-something, which was back where I finished freshman year. So that was very crushing. And, you know, in between seasons, you took time off to rest and recover, prepare for the next one. What did I do? I did what I'd become used to doing, probably a lot more because now I was 21. I could go to bars.

We bought booze for the bus ride home from the Yes.

Me.

You started medicating the second that race was over.

Pretty much.

Okay, now we get into a nice, real degenerate level of use. You're coaching, but you have a fucking one-hitter on you at all times. You're like stealing hits from the pipe while you're coaching. You're smoking when you wake up, all day long.

Smoking what, weed?

Weed.

Yeah. Okay.

Okay. You're an addict at this point when you're carrying around a one-hitter and you're supposed to be coaching people and you're stealing hits.

Yeah. While they're doing Malawi pizza out in the airport field, I'm like smoking weed by my car. Yeah.

It's getting too to that point that it's isolated. You're not at a party, you're not with friends, there's nothing social going on. No, you are just like regulating, regulating, regulating every minute.

And did you recognize it? You recognize like, this is a little— I know this isn't great.

No, I was like loving it.

You traded the one high for another. Unfortunately, this one has a very predictable law of diminishing returns. So it all works for a while. That's why we all become addicts. If it didn't work, we wouldn't do it. Yeah, it's True, but that isn't necessarily even what takes its course. So when does your sense of reality start getting questionable, or what things first start happening?

So this is about a year after I basically quit running, close to it, and I actually become really obsessed. Now that running was no longer in the picture, I was like, I need something else to do. And for some reason, I became obsessed with screenplay writing, movie writing. And it's mainly because I had I had this big idea for this movie. I was like, "This is gonna be an instant hit." The movie happened to relate with the relationship with my coach, Dan. Write what you know. And I would just spend hours in the library studying screenplay literature and movie writing late into the night. I'm kind of like not really caring about my school academics anymore. My GPA drops. So that was an early sign of mania. Rapid thinking, grandiosity.

Ramp-up. That ride-up. Is also kind of euphoric, right?

It is.

You're like on meth without being on meth.

Pretty much. I love that I was passionate about that, but it was to an unhealthy level.

Mm-hmm. Right. I was gonna save this to later, but I guess now I want to know about right now. There's all these elements of it. One of them I think that's unavoidable is, like, there is some bizarre level of narcissism that accompanies the manicness. You're important. You're gonna write the best screenplay ever. It's kind of fantastical thoughts of grandeur.

Yeah. You think you're, like, bigger than what you really are.

Yeah, yeah. And there's like this lovely dose of it. Everyone in college should think they can be Spielberg.

It's complicated.

But there's just like, I don't know what the line is.

Yeah, because you don't actually get to be any of those people without some level of grandiosity. You do have to believe, like all of us, that we came here and we're like, well, out of these millions of people here, I guess it'll be me that rises to the top. We don't come off as grandiose.

You dance on the line.

Because it worked out. But if it doesn't work out, yeah, it's a weird feeling. Fine line.

And even as I hear your story, everything's a spectrum, right? I can see my own life really riding a little bit of a similar wave, but just not reaching those heights.

Even my vision of being a professional runner, that was kind of an early flavor of that for me.

Yeah, that was at least backed up by some really concrete evidence that that was a possibility.

There's still possibility, right? Even though it's always like less than 1% ever really make it big in anything, even relating to like artwork, right? It's the same So yeah, that was definitely going on and it was taking new form.

And how many months would you say that period was?

A few months throughout the fall semester.

So just feeling really kind of energized with this new pursuit, ignoring other things. And then what's kind of the next step?

I like to share this specific example. You know the movie Inside Out? Of course you guys know Inside Out, right? Fantastic movie. I saw this movie at some point during this time. I think it had come out at some point. And I remember just sitting in this theater and I'm watching it and, you know, it's about these cartoon characters and the main character's head Each color represents a certain emotion. I'm watching this, and I'm starting to think, "Are there little beings inside my head controlling me? Who is controlling me? Who am I?" And this started to be some bizarre thinking, right? Which I would say resembled an early sign of psychosis. So that was starting to come into play.

And colors take on some really heightened relevance for you, right? Break down what's happening with colors at that point.

I would get to the point where, as my symptoms kind of worsened throughout the fall semester and then into the spring semester, colors and patterns Things definitely started to capture my attention in a certain way. And this is not uncommon for schizo-related illnesses. Red became a sign of danger, which, you know, is, but it was a bit different for me. It was like, when I see red, I'm literally in danger. And it could be just, you know, like a book or something like that.

Oh, interesting.

Wild that you put red on the COVID of your book.

That was my idea.

Yeah. Intentional?

It was intentional because I really wanted to be forward with it. I wanted to just— own it, and I wanted to really portray that I'm coping with that, right? I'm comfortable with it.

It's like if you see red, it's a sign that something bad is going to happen, or is it imminent danger?

It's hard to really justify any logic in psychosis states. It varied. One specific example is when I was driving, if I saw a red car on the highway, I'd have to stay behind it because if I passed it, it might start following you or something. Well, I might be in some form of danger or risk is gonna happen if I pass that car. Right. That was—

D, a little.

Every one's a comorbidity of the other one. Yeah. Yeah. When did the hallucinations start? These are arbitrary definitions. Like, the emphasis on the colors is already some interesting form of a hallucination, but very low-grade.

Yeah, and it could also be considered a delusion of reference where you're interpreting something in your environment as of special meaning to you. But yeah, there's a combination of hallucination and delusions going on simultaneously.

I do want to take one second because I thought it was a really great definition to know as we go forward. It was hallucinations are defined as internal-generated voices or images that your brain labels as coming from the outside world. Like, if you can really think that through, it originated— it was your own concoction, but you seem to receive it from the outside world. So this is how the breakdown of reality is occurring. These things you've generated, you think you're witnessing. Typically the senses, right?

Touch, tactile hallucinations. Smell is olfactory hallucinations. And then you have the visual and the auditory. And then what's the last sense? Taste.

I've never even considered— when I think of hallucinations, I only think of people hearing voices, auditory, or seeing things. I've never thought taste or touch. Did you experience any of those?

I definitely did at some point. Yeah, I experienced all of them at various points. I think when it become a lot more severe later on in my story, it was all things.

Yeah. So I guess a couple of the touchstones along this route are like, you see glittering gold running through your veins.

Yeah, at some point. It's a blister on my toe, but I'm thinking that I'm a god at that point. That was pretty later on and when I was at a very severe level. So I thought it was gold. I thought my blood was gold.

Yes. When you watch TV, you're seeing naked gods dance on TV.

Yeah. Commercials, the visualness from our screens and even the phones was completely altered to what it was actually being on screen.

Yeah. When you experience it, is the frontal lobe are you still pressure testing this and saying like, well, hold on, this can't be happening? Or is that voice gone?

That was gone.

It's gone.

But do you know enough to like know not to tell anyone else?

Being in that state, it was just honestly like a completely different person, completely different identity. I feel I actually lost my identity at some point where I was like nothing.

But you were a god at some point.

I was a god. I was Jesus. I was, I think, Lucifer at some point.

Wow. But were you telling people that? I guess that's my question.

Do you tell a professor, which causes your first kind of red flag you should be concerned about.

I guess it's good. At some point, I mean, I want people to be saying it because keeping it under wraps is the scary part.

Yeah. And I even had a conversation with my dad about my theory. There was a delusional narrative that was happening, and I was vocal about certain things, but also like not. And I don't really know why.

Yeah, yeah.

But that delusional narrative, if it related to what I was determined to do, which was write a sentence to discover the truth of the universe, I was pretty vocal about that.

And when his dad recounts this experience, it's so sweet. Sweet. He's like, you know, he's gone to college, he's become really smart. I don't know, maybe what he's saying is true, right? You would think Dad would focus on the merit of this story or the logic of it, but I would imagine interpersonally Dad's just going— or I would be going— oh, my child's entered a world I might not be able to join him. I mean, who knows what he's going through when you're on that rant. You would think he'd be going, that doesn't seem to make sense, but more he might be like, "Oh no, are we gonna have a relationship with this new egghead version of my son?" Who knows what he's experiencing in that moment?

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This is my spring semester, so I was taking humanities, right? Philosophy, studying human nature. And that's where this idea, you know, the idea of the screenplay transformed into a theory to explain everything. It was kind of stimulated by that. A unified theory for the universe. Yeah. Yeah. Wild, wild line of thinking. I feel like maybe a couple weeks into that semester, I do meet with the professor because I had this burning idea about this theory and I wanted to talk to him about it. I always question, like, what is a hallucination? What's a delusion? I never really know unless I go back and talk. But basically, I was given the task to create this one-sentence summary. And then I did that. I achieved what I thought I achieved.

Probably couldn't wait to share that.

As soon as I discovered it, it was a Thursday. I had a humanities class, and that's when I share it with the And he called the police? I don't think he called the police. He connected me with someone at the university, a support person, 'cause he'd noticed my bizarre behavior in class. Because after I write this sentence, I fold up a piece of paper and I put it onto his desk. And I'm late to class by, like, a couple minutes 'cause I was focused on this— this big idea. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Casual big idea. And I sit down, and I'm, like, drawing out my theory now in, like, this bizarre—

Cartoon that only makes sense to you.

Yeah, piecing it together. And he's watching this. He's definitely like, "Something is wrong." when this comes up, I'm going to connect this student of mine with a support professional. So that when I got home that day, there was an email from him saying, like, I should go see this person, and it's someone he trusted.

Yeah.

And at that point in that class, he talked about how I was the prophet, but that was an auditory hallucination.

So probably you thought, oh great, he's sending me to the next rung of the ladder by which I'm gonna disseminate this great truth I've discovered.

Yeah.

You don't know you're walking into a situation where someone's going to challenge your delusions.

No, because he became a voice of sacred commands to some sense. So if he said, go I see this person, no question, no question in my mind, because he had declared that I was the prophet.

Yeah, it's obviously going to help you. Yeah. The result of this is you do get prescribed medicine. You're on a 5-day kind of hold.

After that class, the next day is when a police officer shows up at my door. I think it was a support person at the college who made that call. And that's when I get taken to the emergency room and then into my first psychiatric hospitalization.

Do you remember what you thought was occurring while the police was taking you to a holding area?

I did not think he was a police officer. I thought he was working for the professor. He He did an amazing job. I commend this officer. He kept the situation de-escalated. He worked with me. He didn't challenge me. I think he said something like, the professor would want you to do this, right? So he worked within my, my state of mind because he could clearly tell that I was very unwell. And building that trust in that type of situation, it's hard to do, but he did an amazing job.

Oh, can I ask quickly, how much sleep do you think you're getting in this period?

I was not sleeping for days. I was not eating. I was also just not taking care of that basic physiological medical need, that was out the door.

And smoking weed the whole time?

It did fall off at some point, but I had been— in the weeks leading up to this time, I was smoking regularly, yeah.

Okay, so you get a diagnosis in that 5 days.

They kind of go back and forth between diagnoses, right? And this is sometimes a challenge because they say, oh, maybe it's bipolar, maybe it's schizoaffective, maybe schizophrenia, maybe cannabis use disorder.

They write you a prescription for Zyprexa.

Risperdal.

Oh, Zyprexi. That becomes the second goal.

Is that an antipsychotic?

It's an antipsychotic. And I remember a lot from this hospital visit, but I remember before getting into the psychiatric unit, they had put me to sleep. They had injected me with, like, Ambien at the emergency room. So I had finally slept for, like, hours, right? So when I woke up, I was, like, in this very stunned state. Cobwebs were, like, in my mind. I couldn't even process what I had just gone through, let alone explain it to them at the hospital.

How long was that chunk of time, would you say, that you were in the manic state? How long was the spell before you ended up in the holding?

You know, it definitely was a progression. I would say probably at the highest point, maybe like a couple days, maybe like a week.

Okay.

So you get out, Dad is informed, and how do you and Dad process what just happened?

It's so interesting 'cause like I kind of go back to my typical state. I'm like all of a sudden Cohen again and just ready to get back to college class, back to my campus job. I mean, we have a meeting with like a psychiatrist at the place who says I'm a good role model for the other patients in the institute 'cause I was very social. I'm a social person.

Social butterfly.

A little bit. And I didn't want to take the medication. Any idea that I had someone in a psychiatric unit was like what I saw in movies growing up. Yeah. People acting crazy, wild.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. You're like, that's not me.

That's not me. I did not want to be associated with mental illness at all.

That's so common.

So therefore, I also did not want the medication. I agreed to take it so I'd get out of the hospital. Yeah. As soon as I left, I stopped taking it. And my dad, he agreed as well.

And he himself had decided to not take the medication that was offered to him with the bipolar diagnosis. Yep.

He'd kind of always had some sense of not wanting to partake in that level of treatment.

Right. But he didn't really see you in your manic state.

He did in a way, but I don't think he knew what was going on. The extent, yeah. So, she's kind of seeing me act bizarre and all this, but not really understanding what I'm actually going through.

Right.

Right. Okay, so what's the timeline between then and your dad's kitchen?

I think it was about a month in between those two times.

Were you allowed to go back to college? During college?

Yes. Those 5 days happened during spring break.

Very convenient.

You timed that nicely.

What a coincidence. It was almost like it was a sign. A couple weeks go by. I'm just kind of like my typical self. And then I remember going to play a show at a bar with my friend Finn. I play the drums, he plays guitar, and we stayed at one of his buddy's house. I remember waking up at that house, and for some reason, I brought my humanities homework with me, 'cause I was like, "I'm gonna do homework." And I was studying Sigmund Freud's Civilization and Its Discontent. And I remember sitting in the kitchen, reading the book, and he talks about this oceanic feeling. Oceanic feeling. I don't know if you're familiar with the oceanic feeling term. No. Freud is struggling with the concept because it talks about this feeling with the universe, this kind of like oceanic, like, uh, high, right? In some sense.

Connection to everything.

Connection, spiritual connection.

We're all moving together.

We're all moving together. It's kind of like this flow. And Freud is struggling understanding the science behind that. But I read this concept, I'm like, that's what I was experiencing before the hospital. That was that feeling. So I remember as soon as I read about it, I'd stored my work in my backpack, the work that I'd done in my manic, the sentence. It was a blue folder, actually, in which I kept all these paragraphs, all these writings. For some reason, I just kept it with me, but I'd never opened it until that point. But then once I start reading it, that's when I was basically all back in. Someone shows up in the kitchen in the morning. There's someone at the house. I don't know who it was, who I would later associate with Jesus because he had like this long hair and this flow. And I was back in it at that moment. Yeah.

Yeah. When you break the window of the—

so how the timeline went, when I regained my belief that I'm the prophet, that I have to do this mission, I had my truth, I had the sentence, and I want to share it with the world.

Do you have it memorized?

Yes. Yes, I do.

Is it triggering to say?

It's not.

What is the sentence?

Yeah, so the sentence was, eternal life occurs when you balance thinking and doing while feeling both.

I don't know that it unlocks the truth to the universe, but it is a very nice sentence.

I think it was my mind's way of trying to find some wellness and comfort in the existential portion of my experience, which is interesting.

Okay, so you leave the house, a couple things go down.

I actually end up due back in the hospital again. Before the incident, before breaking the window, I end up back in the hospital. And I would consider myself being in crisis at this high severity of psychosis for about a week. And I had this idea, like, now that I have my theory, I had to share it with the world. I had created a Facebook page to do that because social Social media had become a big thing at the right exact time in my life. And I also thought that I had to marry my ex-girlfriend. I would show up at this church with the big red doors thinking that my ex-girlfriend was just going to be there to marry me.

Yeah.

And I went there often, right? Just believing that it was going to happen. So a couple of days go on and it was a Thursday night. I go there at like 2:00 in the morning. I like sneak out of the house. Actually, I think my dad did wake up at that time. 'Cause as soon as I got to the church, cop cars are there. He had, like, knew where I was going because I'd said something prior to this. So I get there, and they take me back to the hospital. I go back to the emergency room, and it's kind of similar to the first time where I finally sleep, and I wake up, and I'm kind of in this hazy state.

They probably gave you IV medication, would be my guess. Or maybe not.

This one's a little fuzzier. There's a common knowledge that the more often you experience psychosis, the more it's hard harder to come back and to process it. So time was a little bit more fuzzy for me. And, you know, I've read the medical records from this hospital visit, and it's so strange because I'm saying things like, "I'm excited to graduate. I'm excited to go on to a professional job." I don't remember any of that. Yeah. What I remember is saying something about color coordination. So it's almost like psychosis dominated my consciousness, and yet a part of me was still there.

Yeah, man. How do you unravel— Ugh. Yeah, you have a memory of what was happening, and there's a record of what's happening. Of course, they don't match. I mean, there's the whole point of the psychosis.

But also what you were saying, you were seeming normal, so then they're going to be like, okay, well, I guess he's not that bad, let him out.

Yeah, you're also in the emergency room and you're trying to work through the highest probability explanation. It's like, this dude hasn't slept, this dude's probably been on meth, or this dude's been on Adderall. Like, you're not going to jump to he has one of the rarer conditions. Yeah, not necessarily. I mean, or maybe they do. But I can see where you would also get easily misdiagnosed.

I don't blame anyone. I mean, I've showed those records to colleagues of mine, you know, being a social worker now. They said like, we would have let you go too.

Yeah, right, of course.

So I get out and I was pretty much still in severe psychosis. Unlike the first hospital where I kind of reverted back to my typical self, this time I did not. And it was only one night too. I was there for one night. Could they have justified keeping me there just knowing how early that I was starting to experience the symptoms? Maybe. But I like to say that the system worked in getting me to a place where support was possible, but it failed to give me that actual support when I was there. So I get out and I'm immediately back on my mission and my theory. And 3 days later is when I tried to kill my dad.

I think people would love to know what in your mind could convince you, "I must slash dad's throat." So, you know, I had this Facebook page in which I was sharing my theory.

I was supposed to get married on Sunday. Before that day, it happened on a Monday. And the way that psychosis works, it justifies when things go wrong, right? There's always a way to justify. At least that was my experience, right? I can't speak to everyone's. Even though I had gone to the church several times and my ex-girlfriend was never there because she was never gonna marry me, I was like, oh, Sunday's the day. And that makes sense because it's God's day. Why would I get married on a Sunday? So I go there at like 1 o'clock in the morning. So again, still not sleeping. And I go through this very bizarre experience of like a self-sacrifice. I mean, there is some wild shit happening in my mind and just in my mind. But basically I don't get married. So now I'm lost. I'm starting to become lost. The things are not lining up in the way that they should be.

Yes.

And I'm starting to get really confused. Confused, scared, and looking for signs in any way that would make sense to me.

Yeah.

So that day, on Monday, I was supposed to go to school, work, and I don't. I do go back to the church thinking once more, maybe she'll be there. She's not. So I go home, and on my way home is when I had this idea, back to colors, that red was Satan, and I had to remove all the red things in my car. So I stop at this restaurant called Steve's Place, There was this connection to my uncle, Steven, with this place for some reason. And it was also like a white and red building. But I break into this restaurant, I throw all my red stuff into this place, and then I bleed red. A lot of things happen that just continue to foster this uncertainty and confusion about what I was supposed to do with my mission.

Right.

And then you go home, and you're in there before Dad, or Dad's there before you?

I'm there before my dad. You know, I had stopped at this, like, old junkyard outside of town to dispose my car, 'cause I couldn't get the tow truck. Lights off because they were red. Yeah. So my grandma picks me up, she takes me there, and she tells my dad. So my dad shows up while I'm already there.

How does your dad look to you? What is he representing to you?

So being a fuel driver, you know, he often wore black pants and black shirt under his uniform. He's wearing these black clothes, and also black was associated with evil and demons.

Wow, we're literally all wearing black today.

You're right.

He was He's frustrated, right? 'Cause I wasn't doing what I was supposed to do. I wasn't going to college.

He's scared. He's so scared.

He's so uncertain himself.

He loves you so much. He's taking you to all the places.

Yeah. And here I am just almost throwing it away to some degree. So he's frustrated and justifiably so. But he has these red cheeks, right?

'Cause he's getting mad.

'Cause he's mad.

Yeah.

When I talk about intervening when someone's in crisis, right, de-escalation is one of the top things that is very key to helping someone in that type of state. And my dad did the opposite.

Opposite.

Sure, sure. But that wasn't the only sign. I was on my phone again, going back to this theory, and there was several things that happened on the phone that brought me to that state of mind.

But you're convinced your father has been taken over by Satan, and do you think you're gonna liberate your father by killing him, or you might not even be able to remember that?

There was two specific signs on my phone that led to me thinking that the devil was in my dad, in combination with his black uniform and cheeks. It was a random Facebook message that literally said Satan, and this was a real message. Like, I went I pulled this message from the Facebook profile. And it was real. It was just some coincidental message.

Oh my God, bastard.

Sometimes strange shit just fucking happens, man. So there was that message, and then there was another image just on my Facebook feed that was like someone smashing their hands on someone else's head, and this angry ghost was flying out from this person. And there was some, like, yellow and orange colors near that action. So I connected the dots. Well, my psychosis connected the dots. I had to save the world with my mind. My theory, now the devil's in the picture. The devil has to go.

Right. Oh my God.

The devil was inside my dad.

And you see a knife with a white handle.

You know, it had like this holiness aspect to it. So I was like, that had to be the knife that I would use. And I didn't want to kill my dad. And when I read the police records after this, I say this in my statement, like, I did not want to kill him.

Yeah.

I wanted to save us.

Kill Satan.

I wanted to kill Satan to save us. Right. So my intention was never to hurt my dad. Yeah. But that's just how my psychosis narrative ended up.

So you grab the knife and you go at Dad?

I make some motion behind him. I'm also really troubled at this moment too, 'cause I'm like battling with this idea of killing him. 'Cause it's like, this can't be the next step. Like, I'm really challenged by this.

Right. Yeah. This is the biblical moment where the guy has to kill his son to prove his love to God. It's like that test.

Basically. Yes. That's how it felt. I was like, this is the ultimate test. I was pacing back and forth. Back and forth saying, "This can't be the next step. This can't be the next step." You know, I have the knife. At some point, you know, the knife gets out of my hand. I start finding something else. My dad was remodeling at the time, so there was drills and stuff in the house, but none of it was white. It was all red or black. So I had to use that knife.

Tell us about the physical struggle that happens.

We're about the same height. He might be a little shorter than me now, but he was definitely bigger, stronger, 50 pounds heavier, being a laborer for a long time. All his life. I was still an athletic kid, but he's stronger and he's your dad.

Thank God.

He's got dad strength.

He does. He does have dad strength.

Now you have dad strength.

I do. I do. That dad bod, you know? Yeah, so we start to fight and he fights me off. I think he punches me at some point. At some point, we tumble onto the ground. In that heat of the moment, I just, for some reason, bit his ear as like a reaction to like losing the battle.

Like bit his earlobe off?

A piece of his earlobe off. At the bottom, he still has the scar today.

He and Holyfield have a lot to talk about if they ever run into each other.

Exactly.

And then, you know, at some point, I have the blade at his throat. I keep coming at him. I'm not even me.

It's life or death for the whole universe.

Yeah.

So, at some point, I have the blade at his throat, and he's blocking it with his thumb. And at some point, he's just like, "I gotta get out of here." And he does. And he bolts.

His hand gets cut pretty bad. Mm-hmm. He then runs out of the house. Okay.

Yep. He runs out of the house. And I had this moment of like, "What the fuck did I just do?" You did have a little snap of clarity. A little snap of clarity. And I was like, "Holy shit. Did I actually just do that?" And I run out of the house. I'm looking for him because I'm like, "Sorry, Dad. I'm sorry." And I go out by our dog cage to look at my dog. He was a cute little husky that we grew up with. And that's when the police arrived.

Also, Grandma was here during this whole thing.

Grandma was there the whole time. And actually, Actually, at some point when she was trying to stop me from completing my mission, I had a thought that I had to kill her.

Right.

She was wearing a green shirt.

She was wearing a green shirt.

Oh.

Okay. What does it mean to me?

Green was good?

Yeah. Yeah. This is a total digression, but the brain is so fucking fascinating. It's just so endlessly fascinating because I have had a couple of those moments of complete clarity when clarity should be completely impossible with, like, my level of inebriation, right?

Yeah.

Or, like, I got in this situation where I got Tried to mug me, and I was on top of him in the street in Santa Monica at 3 in the morning. There's nowhere to break it up. I'm afraid he's got a gun. I'm banging his head in the ground, and I was hammered. And I all of a sudden, like a bolt of lightning, I was like, oh, you're killing someone. This is that thing that happens, and you're doing it, and you need to stand up and leave. But it's like, I don't know where that bolt came from of, like, super object clarity of, like, oh, this is happening. Get away from this. It's wild.

And it happened again right after this moment, because when I'd gone out to the dog cage, police officers were pointing their guns at me. They were ready to arrest me. They were like, "Raise your hands, raise your hands," because that's what they do. And I did, right? Instead of running— Right. —because they're wearing black. Instead of bolting, I had this moment of, "Raise my hands, get them up." Yeah. And thankfully, I did, because I think if I didn't, if I ran, I'd probably not be here right now.

Yeah. Or if you're still holding the knife. There's 80 ways this could have gotten worse and worse and worse.

It's really a miracle.

A terrible miracle that brought you here and a terrible miracle that keeps you from— Yeah, yeah. And you're very good about, at the beginning of the book, book listing, like, there's so many people that it didn't go that way. There are in the US 300 parents a year are killed by their kids. Really? It's 2% of all homicides.

Really? I would never have guessed that.

And you go into it, and that's how I want to end this, is like all the things we should know and how we help deal with all this. But it makes so much sense because your interaction with your family is going to be the most interaction you have. Yeah. You know, there's all these different reasons Reasons why, in a bizarre way, it's kind of predictable. Anyways, you are arrested and you're put in jail. Tell me what happens after that.

Yeah, so I think I'm on my way to hell. The mission continues, basically, but now I'm going to hell. I failed the mission. There's glimmers of hope in jail where I think I can escape. I think I can fight Satan. And I mean, at that point, I'm just experiencing so many hallucinations and delusions just for about a week into jail, solitary confinement. At some point, I think I'm on the outside of the universe and I see the universe on the floor.

I wouldn't eat because the food smelled like dead bodies. Here comes the gustatory and the olfactory delusions. Oh, man.

And I think time had a big factor in me coming back. Also, like, I remember one of the correctional officers giving me a book about an architect. I can never remember what the name of the book was. I would love to find it again. But I remember starting to read that book in solitary confinement. And I like to think that it started to really ground my thoughts and just maybe help me come back to realize where I was.

And when did they start medication on you?

So it would take a while to get prescribed. You know, the psychiatrist there had checked in on me often throughout that week. And basically, once they realized that I was back to myself, I could vocalize that I'm in jail, right? Because they kept asking me a question, do you know where you are? Do you know where you are? Right. When I could finally say, "I'm in jail," that was a sign to them like, "Okay, he's coming back." They moved me to a general population area so I could get out of my cell, interact with the other people in the jail. And that's when I started to take the medication. And at that point, I had a huge cognitive shift in my mind because I was like rock bottom. I was like, "Holy fuck. I'm gonna do my hardest to understand why it happened because I don't ever want to happen again." happen again.

Yeah, my full mission now in life has to be preventing that from occurring again. Okay, at this point, there's a potential of probably 10 years in prison on the table.

Two felonies. Yep. One for breaking that window, a criminal mischief, and the other one was an assault against my dad. So the felony with my dad, they got rid of, fortunately, because your father wouldn't press charges, right? My father didn't want to press charges. I feel like he felt like he was pushed to do that. He writes me a letter without 'Cause we had an order of protection too. He's still obviously going through his own trauma challenge, but he's still more than willing to help me get out of jail.

It's really interesting. Like, had I heard this story before I had kids, I'd have one opinion. And then hearing the story having kids, all of it makes so much sense to me. Like, yeah, either of my daughters could try to kill me, and 100% the next day I would be there to help 'em get out. I just couldn't ever click into, "Let's throw him away." It would be impossible. And all I would feel is sadness and pain and hurt for them, not really anger and defensiveness, you know?

Yeah. That's how my dad felt. That unconditional love. He really stuck by my side. And I thought at that time, like, he was never gonna talk to me again.

I was terrified. You've come out of this thing. You know how vulnerable you are now. You know, it's anyone who's got a disease that is terminal that comes into remission. It's like you just live with this thing hovering over your head. So it's like you're dealing with that reality But then even, I think, probably worse than that is like, "I tried to kill this man I love more than anything, who's been nothing but loving to me. Have I ruined that forever?" That piece to me feels as scary as the other thing that's looming.

Yeah, and honestly, I had gotten several letters from my family and friends that first day I came back and into the general population cell. I just remember reading all through these letters. I'm bawling because I'm just like, "There's still hope here." I was not feeling very hopeful, but those letters, made the biggest difference. Yeah, lovely.

Oh, it's so important to love people when they're at the very worst.

Tell them.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you get out in 30 days?

Yeah, which is amazing in and of itself because they didn't have to. The psychiatrist that I'm seeing is amazing. She's balancing this firmness with me, like, kid, you're in the fucking deep water here, but also a very empathetic and caring nature because she really understood seeing me in the cell.

Yeah, this isn't It ain't your fault, but it is your fucking responsibility now.

Yes. That just brought me to a point where I was like, I can do this. And I get out of jail after 30 days, and I'm ready to start anew. Who's in the parking lot? So when I go to the courthouse, you know, I'm chained up, I'm in a green uniform, I stand before the judge, and I agree to everything, whatever he had said. At that moment, I was just like, I don't even remember what he was saying for the most part, but I'm not sure if I'm leaving. I don't know. I'm just lost. At some point, an officer comes by, unchains me, and lets me go. Me out the door, and it's a sunny day in our small little town, and there's my dad just standing by the car.

Aww, I love it. I love it. Yeah, they share a big hug.

It's like, ah. Yeah, and the story has so many miracles, beautiful things mixed with tragedy.

I see the scar on his ear, and I'm just like, holy shit, that really happened? But yet, he came in for a hug. Aww.

Oh, fuck, dude. Dude. Oh, what a good— oh man. Wow, powerful. Now here's a piece of the story that I didn't see coming, and I have to say makes me nervous because I know some people who have a lot of things and they won't take their medication, and it drives me insane. So you decide to wean off the medication.

I was very hesitant on doing that. So basically my conditional discharge was I had to see substance use group therapy, substance use counselor, nurse practitioner, mental health counselor. 4 things every week. I didn't even need to be told to do that. I was, like, all about it. I was like, I'm gonna take full advantage of all these resources in my community. And it was actually my nurse practitioner. I'm taking 10 milligrams of Zyprexa. They started me on that in jail, so I'm continuing to take that. You know, he has at some point an idea to potentially wean me off.

Can I ask you, is it miserable being on that medication? Yeah.

So when I was taking it, it reduced my creative thoughts. It made me feel sedated all the time, like struggling to think and foggy. Like, definitely. And I don't think anyone wants to be on medication.

I guess for us on the outside, we're constantly looking at everyone going like, okay, you're foggy versus the— like, we're a little bit like, you know, fuck you, if I'm being dead honest. And probably a lot of people are listening, they'll feel this way. It's like, yeah, tough shit versus, you know. So I don't know, I just want to deal with that. I think a lot of people will be curious about that.

Yeah. And I still get that. But how I view medication and I learned through that in my therapy was that it's a very effective tool to kind of be in a place where— to me, what was most important to my recovery was the therapy, talking through it, learning the skills, learning about the symptoms, having these terms, having this knowledge, and practicing with it. I was hesitant to go off medication, but I would have not done that without a professional's guidance. That is very, very important. So since he was willing to work in that space, all my treatment providers My daughters knew that I was tapering, starting to taper off. Yeah. Right?

And is it fair to say in this process you're also learning these actually don't come out of nowhere? Sleep is an enormous piece that's integrated in this. Your diet, using weed. You're learning like, oh, there are a lot of things lead up to this. Is that fair to say? Yeah.

And I would use the 8 Dimensions of Wellness. I'm not sure if you're familiar with those. No, tell us those. But it's spiritual wellness, intellectual wellness, mental wellness, physical wellness, emotional wellness. Oh man.

There's no way you're getting it.

It's a lot. It's a lot. It's a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I remember you have the mental illness, the diagnosis, the DSM-5, which gives you this language to help you understand these symptoms. That's one part of it. And then you just have general mental health and wellness where like you're working on making sure that you feel like you're financially well, you're physically well, and that you kind of feel good in those spaces as well, because when you start to lose some of those things, they add stress, they add pressure.

Yeah, stress was the one I left out that's huge, right?

Yep, stress was a big trigger. When I'm under high pressure and stress is when I start to really feel unwell. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

So you start applying all these things and then you get kind of a list of things to look out for. Like, can you be objectively good at recognizing when it's slowly starting and what's been your— because that was 10 years ago, the situation with your dad. Yeah. From leaving and a year afterwards, titrating off of the medication and having like a game plan. What's been the ride over those 9 years with that approach? Recovery.

Therapy is hard work. It's not easy, and it's a never-ending process of change, internal change, and constant diligence.

And I— we say you get a daily reprieve.

I actually have this tattoo on my arm, right? It's the mental health ribbon, and it's my daily reminder to always think about my mental health and where I'm at. And that's how I approach it, right? And the skills that I was learning in therapy, I continued to go on to practice them. And when I got to grad school—

you had been kicked out of your school, we should say. Oh yes, completely kicked out of your school. Expelled. Yep. And are you even nervous to start that process again? Like, will that be another trigger? Will I get interested in returning. I don't know how one evaluates which things are going to be too much.

I mean, yeah, I had to go before the college and testify. I remember being actually triggered in the moment because it's a corporate field, people in black suits and microphones on the table, and I have to sit here and tell my story so I can get back into college and finally finish my undergrad degree, right? Yeah. And my dad has to do it with me, and he does it though, and he breaks down. I get back in. It was triggering in the, in the moment. It was It was definitely not easy, but I was doing the work to do what I had to do to get my life back on track.

It's funny, too, how your life makes sense in reflection only, but, you know, this whole running history, this is where that comes into play. It's like you have lots of experience with extreme dedication and routinized behavior. This isn't your first go with—

You know how to be disciplined if you know how to be. Yeah, yeah.

That I attribute to my athletic identity, that drive, that character, work to just be dedicated to something and push through pain, push through discomfort.

Yeah.

And that definitely helped me get on that path.

So you end up— yeah, you get a master's, you become a social worker. Have you had any periods where you've had to return to the medication?

In my graduate school, the first sign of a mental health challenge, what did I immediately do? Go see a therapist. I always kept the medication door open. It's a very important tool. I never would ever push against that. But my first step was to see a therapist, do what I loved, which was to talk about what I was going through. So that's what I did in grad school when I started to be really challenged because there's a lot of stress and pressure. I had an on-campus job. Like, master's in social work can be demanding. A lot of classes. I don't go back on medication, but there is— when I get ready to graduate with my master's degree, I'm struggling to find a job. And I had like a dozen interviews probably, and I just could not get a job. Part of me always felt it was like these news articles. We didn't talk about the news articles, but after the incident, you know, my name was in the headlines. This man who bit off his dad's ear, crazy person. There was 7 articles. So like, I'm really struggling with this job search. I think it's that.

I think it's multiple things. And there was a time I had actually had to move back home to my dad's house after graduating, and I was really defeated because I had done all this work, and financial wellness was a very important part. You need a job, right?

I need a job.

So I was like very stressed out, and I got to another crisis point at this moment to where I was willing to take myself to the hospital.

Okay, good. Of course, the paradox of it all is like, you need your mind to evaluate whether you're losing your mind. It's very tenuous. Yeah.

And I was willing to go back on medication when I had kind of got to the point where— it's actually a very touching story. So I actually had a job interview where I went to grad school. It's a 7-hour drive from my home, and I got the hint that my interview didn't go so well. And this was after 12 failed interviews, so I was like, I'm not gonna get this job. And I'm driving home on this long drive. It's late at night and I'm starting to fester on everything. I'm having rapid thoughts about everything that was going wrong in every single interview, just bam, bam, bam. I get home, it's late at night. I say good night to my dad. I didn't want to be vulnerable with him. I was not in the headspace to open up about what I was going through. I was just like, I'm going to go straight to bed. And I go into my bedroom and I can't sleep.

Yeah, yeah, you're ruminating, ruminating.

And at like 3:00 in the morning, I look at my alarm clock and I'm just like, holy shit, I should be sleeping right now. This is not I'm not good. And then there's a light coming through my window from my neighbors, and it's a bit too symmetrical. Oh, and I'm just like, I'm really, really unwell. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's when I was like, I want to go to the hospital. Yeah, good for you. Yeah, yeah. I thought about waking up my dad. I thought about calling my friend Finn, but that shame and stigma— I had also like woken up my dad late at night before during all of this. Yeah. So I was like, I feel he's gonna be afraid and it's not gonna go well. So I did what I knew I could do, which was mindfulness meditation. I'd practiced this, right, over the years. This is 3 or so years after the incident at this point. So I've gone through this process and I was aware of these symptoms, right? At some point I may have not been able to be aware of it, but I was aware of it and I was able to catch it in the moment.

And I did what I knew what I could do. I put on my headphones, I put on an instrumental playlist, and I meditated and I put my hands hands on my chest. Because you were dysregulated, extremely dysregulated.

And there's all kinds of tools to get regulated, and this is one of them.

And I fall asleep for like a couple hours, and then I wake up at like 6 AM, and I'm still feeling like this feeling of like, I still gotta do something. So I go to the living room, and I wait for my dad to wake up, and I'm thinking about how I want to approach this with my dad, because I want to tell him. And this is, you know, keep in mind, the same space where everything happened. Yeah. So he sits down, and before he turns on the TV, because he always did that, I was like, Dad, I need to I need to tell you something. And I said, I'm very unwell.

I do not feel good. Yeah, good for you.

Yeah. And it was clear to me in my dad's response that he had done some work with his mental health as well, because he kept the space de-escalated. He worked with me. He helped me find a resource that actually happened to be right in my community where I could access crisis intervention therapy. Great. Which I would compare to like urgent care, right? I didn't have to go to the hospital, but I could get a therapy appointment with a crisis therapist in a couple hours. So I go there and turns out I didn't have to go to the hospital. I just had to make mental health my priority again. Basically, his instruction was to just focus on your day-to-day chores, like your sleep, chores, go for a run if you can. Do that for a couple weeks. Forget about the job because that was the big stressor.

Yeah. I'm always astounded by how much overlap there is is with all these things, they seem so different, but this is the same roadmap for addiction, right? Which is like, there'll be all these guys that'll be like, well, I can't go to a meeting because I have X, Y, or Z, or I got my kids this and I have this work thing. And it's like, yeah, but you'll have none of that shit permanently if you don't make this number one priority. That stuff is only a result of you keeping this number one priority in check because the other stuff you think you need to miss it for, you'll lose. Yeah. It's hard to get us to accept that. That's hard to accept. This is so hard. Wow. So, in just doing that, the refocusing, "Fuck the job, we're not getting anything if we don't get right," was effective.

Good for you, because you were able to recognize, like, "It's happening, and I gotta get on the right track." Still kept the medication door open there, right?

I was like, one of the first things I actually said to the crisis therapist, like, "I'm gonna go back on meds. Give me something." He held back. He's like, "Let's try this first." Wow. I started seeing him. Weekly. He was monitoring me, and we were working together, and I didn't have to go back on meds. And then a few weeks later, I had another job interview. Or not a few weeks, it was probably a couple months at this point. I had another job interview, and then I got the job. Oh, wow.

And now you work for the New York State Mental Health—

Office of Mental Health. Office of Mental Health. So I do suicide prevention. I work more in, like, a system, you know, statewide approach to designing programming, advocacy, and I like to think in systems. But, you know, being in the Office of Mental Health, like, they have an office around peer specialists, which is people with lived experience who can help provide another valued support system for someone aside from your traditional clinical support. Yeah.

Like a sponsor in some ways.

Yeah. There's many spaces to go here, and I'm just happy to be a professional in this space. Yeah.

And now you also do public speaking, and you're a huge advocate to spread awareness. So what is your message? Your approach. I think you're great, and you should list some of them. As much as you focus on, like, some of the ACEs in childhood, you're very readily listing all the many lucky things that were happening in your life.

The first time I shared my story, I wrote a blog post for the National Alliance of Mental Illness. I actually mainly did that because of those news articles, because I wanted to regain who I was, reclaim yourself. And that kind of turned into, like, when I did that, I got all these responses from people that And they were like, "Wow, thank you for sharing your story." So, like, I didn't go in that direct service work, but I was starting to experiencing the impact of being vulnerable in the public space. And that kind of started to fuel this drive for me to share my story in much greater depth. And that's kind of how I ended up with, you know, the book.

Well, and you reached out to a guy who had written a book about his brother killing their mother.

Vince Granata, incredible man. When I reached out to him, to him. I was at some draft in my book, and when I read his book, because it had just come out, I just related so much to his story. Although he, you know, he brings a very different brother perspective, but I was like, I gotta reach out to him. And I did, and I did not expect a response. You know, cold calls, you never get responses that often. But he responded, and we connected, we met, and we just had this great bond.

And he ended up writing a beautiful foreword to your book.

Mm, that's right. He became another role model for me. And when I think throughout my story, I mean, my dad has always always been consistent. But Coach Dan was a role model. The psychiatrist in jail was a role model. The person who's my supervisor in my master's degree, my job on campus, was a role model. And Vince became my next role model.

And your best friend. And my best friend.

Yeah. And I'll add, the other siblings that lived in the other houses with less resources, some end up in jail. They had a rough road. A lot siblings. Yeah, yeah, they did.

I mean, I won't go into a lot of details about their experience, but there's been a history of mental illness, addiction. I've gotten to a position where I've had a lot of success, and I think there's a great privilege in my story that I had my dad and running that helped my trajectory as compared to my siblings. Not every kid finds hope, right?

Yeah, yeah. Do we have any sense of what percentage of the population's wrestling with this?

1 in 5 experience mental illness at some point in their life. I don't know the exact percentage of psychosis. I think it's a smaller percentage, right? It's usually not common. Right. Pretty uncommon. And then going towards, like, the violent aspects, right? Because that's a unique part to my story. 4%, I think, is the number that says that kind of results in some form of violence.

Yeah, only 4% of people with delusions and psychosis will be violent.

But they tend to get the most attention. Right.

Yeah. Definitely. So I don't think people need to be overly alarmed about that aspect. Again, it's It's a very small percentage. But for the people who are listening who have someone in their life, because yes, as rare as it is, I know two people, they haven't gotten violent, but they've left for months and done stuff. You're like, what is happening? Yeah. And so all the people in this sphere, if you think people want to do with addiction, no one knows what to do in the medication issue and all this. So what do you advise people who might have a loved one in this situation? What's the best approach?

I get this question when I do— solve this for us. Presentations, I get a lot of parents reach out to me, and it's always the most difficult situations, and I'm just like, I don't have an easy answer.

Well, de-escalation right there, that's a good thing to have heard. Yeah. And maybe even indulging the delusions while we get you to the safe place. Like, these are kind of simple things that I think maybe are helpful to know. Definitely.

And I think I try to be that role model, that source of inspiration as a peer with lived experience who, you know, If someone is going through this and they hear my story or someone else's successful story, maybe they'll potentially come to a realization that they need help. It's a treatable condition.

I find the system to be very annoying in that so much of the mental health space is voluntary. Like, you have to check yourself into places unless— unless something has escalated to this very scary thing. It's frustrating. Because as we were just saying, your brain has to tell you that you're in trouble. And when you're deep in the psychosis, it's not gonna do that. Then they're not gonna check themselves in, and I just hate that.

The powerlessness of it.

Exactly. Both my hospitalizations were involuntary. I didn't want to go there. Yeah. And I immediately resented that. It created this wall that I was just like, "Fuck no." It's such a complicated scenario because, you know, I was driving around 100 miles per hour because I couldn't— I believe the universe protected me. You can't do that. Yeah. Like, if a police car chased me, I don't know what would've happened. My story could've been very different. And this was before the incident, right? The violent aspect was only one result, but many other things could've happened before that. It's something I think we're still figuring out how to approach this because it's super complex.

It is. Yeah, you also have to protect individuals against the state from willy-nilly being able to take people, You know, there's a lot of things you're weighing against one another.

When police are involved, it does seem like it gets taken more seriously, which is something to maybe consider.

And I think if you look at the history of psychiatry and this, where, like, lobotomies were a thing, you know, going back to The Cuckoo's Nest. Yeah. It doesn't have a great history in this space. I think we've made a lot of progress in the community mental health space. I just think it's such a long-term long-term game to some degree to where we've gotten to a place where people can be open with the most severe instances and get the help that they need and not be shamed by that.

And not be excommunicated from society is huge. Again, you're like one of the first alcoholics to be in public saying, "Yeah, I'm a recovering alcoholic." No one did that in the '50s. And then now no one has a problem doing that. And I would hope that's exactly where we're trending with this and the sociopathy and the— All of it.

All of it. All of it. Yeah.

What a rebound, dude. So you've been with a woman now for 3 or 4 years. Yeah. You had to tell her you're on a date and you're like, I got to get out in front of this.

She's going to Google me. Yep. I never truly felt that my ability to overcome the trauma and find my resilience was really valued. Right. It was always the opposite where people would hear my story and they'd be like, get away.

Right. Shame on you.

Scared of you. Yeah. I'm too scared.

That has and still continues to be actually looming shadow Although I've found a healthy way of doing it and finding a significant other, right? I wanted to find someone who I could live with and grow a family with. So I had to really consider how to approach that when I was on the dating scene. So I chose a social worker, you know, people who I know trend high empathetically.

Yes. And understand the space.

It's a risk assessment. She's a social worker. She might be open. You know, I'm very strategic with how I enter rejected my past, left the door open. She had the choice. It was our third date. You know, if it stopped, it stopped, right?

We'll move on.

Yeah. But she was open and she continued seeing me.

But people in her life discouraged it. She had to kind of— yeah, yeah, yeah. I also think of, again, another overlap with being an addict is like, you have to tell people, and what you're signing up for is like, people monitor you more. Mm-hmm. And that is what it is. You deserve it. It's how it's got to be. But also, no one loves being monitored, you know, like no one loves that sense that people are like trying to evaluate all the time, like just studying you. That's kind of a little bit of an uncomfortable feeling. And I guess it's just the deal. That's what it is. But it's not the best feeling, right?

It's not. And I definitely, with people who don't really have an open conversation with me about my past, I sense that all the time. Right. But what we've created in our relationship is that it's, it's an open door. And it's not just about me, right? She has struggles with anxiety.

She has her own thing.

None of us are fucking— Yeah, everyone has stuff. It's the family interpersonal culture there that we both happen to be good talkers in the sense of social work too. So that helps just having that background. But like, we've created a space where like, if I'm going through another challenge, I'll be open with her about it. About it. If I'm going through something and I'm not really aware of it, she's in touch with the signs. Yeah. And would know what to do to step in and get me the help that I needed.

Right. You're co-piloting. Co-piloting. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Not being oppressed.

You're co-piloting. Yeah. And if you're understanding of yourself, then hopefully you are open to being co-piloted. You're open.

Yeah. And you have to be sharing in the— like, it's not great. It's like, I just do normal thing someone else would do. And all of a sudden it's like, wait, what?

And I'm like, you know, like, it's just that feeling of like, everyone, no, it is kind of like the thing we were talking about earlier of, well, sorry you have to be foggy, like the rest of us don't.

Sorry, if I was someone else, I'd have that opinion of me. And as the person that is in the situation, sometimes it's just like, yeah, I understand, you know, hey, I want autonomy too. This might not even be fair to do, but I gotta say, I've watched watched a few different docs on psychosis, and there is this really common pattern where people think they're the Messiah, there's good and evil, it's Satan. Yeah. And I'm gonna be very exact with my language. I love religion for people who it benefits their life. But I will say, that is my issue with the whole thing, this notion of evil. Again, the delusions emanate from inside. So you somehow have picked up along the way, even though you guys weren't like crazy religious, this really, I think, caustic concept of evil in Satan and God and perfection and good and bad. And I think it's so fucking dangerous, and it's in there. And if you feel like you're fighting to defeat Satan, you're capable of anything. I just wonder what psychosis looks like on an alternate planet where those concepts don't even exist.

Yeah, it is so fascinating that there's that common thread with psychosis and even big ideas with science too. That was a part of my story with E mc² being associated with my sentence and all that. Yeah. These big existential ideas. And I don't think this really probably talked enough about in the framework of psychosis. And that's something I really tried to make a part of my book. It's called Mending Reality. Because when you break from reality, when you have this break, you're in this other world, this other space, and it is kind of like you're trying to know. I think that's why there's that thread, because you're trying to find some sense of greater understanding. And it's the same—

simplest story. Yeah, it's such a simple, clean story. There's good, there's evil, there's Satan, there's God. Yep. It's very grounding and it's very comforting.

And you see it, you see the churches. I think that's why it becomes kind of a part of it.

And you're right, I read this great book called Maniac, or there's no one— everything we know ceases to exist. There's a lot of these physicists who have come up with these things in psychotic states or psychosis states. One in particular, this guy who has this crazy allergy during spring, he gets all these hives, he has to go to a little island in Germany, he's got a caring for him. He loses his mind for 6 days, and in that time he writes down all these matrixes. And when he comes out of them, he doesn't understand them. He doesn't know where they came from. And they are the math that proves quantum physics. And it's like, what is that? Yeah, that's fascinating.

How do we, like, have the psychosis we want? I listened to your podcast with Michael Pollan talking about utilizing mushrooms and these psychoactive things to kind of get in that space where you're experiencing some form of psychosis, right? Alternate reality. To get into a space where you could think like that, right?

Well, I was thinking so much as I was reading your descriptions of these things, I'm like, oh yeah, I've been there. But when I've been on lots of psychedelics, the voice is still present that goes, this is just the shrooms, this is just the acid. And then without that voice. That's the only difference. Yeah, right. I could go like, oh, this is that, and it'll end. Yeah. Well, it's a beautifully written book. You're a very good writer. I'm so glad you came. Congrats on that. It's called Mending Reality: An Advocate's Existential Journey with Mental Health, and it's out now. I really encourage people to read it. It's a beautiful, touching story.

Tell your dad we said hello. I know, I really like your dad.

Will you give him a big hug for me. I will. Yeah, tell him I hope to be the dad that he has proven to be.

He'll be listening. He called me on my way out here and he's like, he's like, is it Monday? Is it like live? And I'm like, they record it, it's gonna come out at some point.

But he's so supportive. Is he so happy to be a grandpa? Oh yeah.

Oh yeah. Yeah, that's so sweet.

I'll fire up the fucking truck. Oh, he's got a muscle car.

What's this? It's a Roadrunner. Yeah, '68 Plymouth Roadrunner, silver. Good for him.

Yeah, that's his other baby. He's got two kids. Yeah, it is.

Sometimes it's like, oh, who's more important?

It's a car collector. I don't know either. Well, Colin, so nice meeting you. Thanks so much for sharing your story. It's very important. Yeah, so brave in a world where people would be really wanting to hide this whole chapter of their life and move on, and I applaud you for not doing that.

Thank you so much for having me.

Yeah, good luck with everything. Hi there, this is Hermion Permian. If you like that, you're gonna love the Fact Check with Miss Monica. Welcome to the Fact Check. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Oh, you're doing a character. Your first character is me.

Do it again. No, no, that's not how you sound. How do I sound? It wasn't an impression, it was another guy. Oh really? Yeah, a competing podcaster who also says welcome, welcome, welcome. Yeah, he's copying.

I'm not gonna sue. Okay, you should. I'm not. I don't believe in suing. Yes you do. For liable, maybe. You know, there's a certain paradox with suing, which is I think so often the people that get sued, they don't have anything. I know, it's a real waste of time.

I know, but it's justice. It feels like justice.

Yeah. Ever sued anyone? No. You've been sued? No. No. Okay.

I think I was— I had a threat of suing. Some light— there was some light threatening. It didn't, um, come through. Didn't materialize. Yeah. No one's named Sue anymore. Women?

Suzanne? Susan?

I know, but Susan Downey? Does anyone— right, right.

Suzanne Randan.

She doesn't go by Sue.

No, you're right. Yeah, I don't know a lot of Sues. Yeah, I had an Aunt Sue. You did? Yeah, that was one I thought was so beautiful. Wait, what? Yeah, she's not my blood relative. This is my uncle's wife. Who?

Your dad's brother's wife?

Uh-huh, my dad's brother's wife. And I just thought she was so beautiful when I was a little boy. What did she look like? She was so kind.

That's nice. You loved— you thought she was beautiful on the inside?

Both the inside and the outside. Yeah, she was just so generous to, you know, my mom. She worked too, but I think she worked nights. Somehow she was around in the summer when I'd be at my Papa Bob and Grandma's. We'd hang out at my cousin's house a lot, and she was always around to make macaroni and cheese.

Oh, did she make mac and cheese Kraft? And it was so good. And like, when your mom made it, it sucked.

Well, we never had Kraft. We had fucking Crosscutter brand, the Kroger in-house brand. It was called like Kostkutter, but they spelled it with a K. It was garbage. I hate to disparage— Kostkutter, both Ks? No, the C was a C. We weren't in the South. Oh, yeah.

But Kroger's. Oh, right.

K. Kostkutter's. I think it was the brand of all this generic food they would sell us, my family. Oh, okay. Yeah. And when I really wanted, because my papa bought— first of all, my grandma had worked for Kraft when she came up from Kentucky. Oh, right. Yeah. With the honcho clam. They all went off murdering and thieving, but Grandma Yola's got herself a really good job at Kraft. She invented the mac and cheese. And worked there for long enough that she had a pension from there before she went and got her double master's degree and became a teacher. Yeah. So we—

Did she get free mac and cheese for life?

Well, the family was very loyal to Kraft because of that. So we had all the Kraft products. And then as you know, my Papa Bob worked for Wonder Bread Bakery, which either owned Hostess or Hostess owned them. Right. So Twinkies, Ding Dongs, the pies, all the Hostess products he would pick up from the thrift store. And with his discount, it was virtually free. Wait, from the thrift store? Yeah. So there in our— in their town of Livonia, there was a little standalone Hostess thrift store, and it's where all the damaged Hostess went. So you'd get a box of dented Ding Dongs and it'd be like $0.90. And then Papa Bob got some kind of discount count. So it was one— he's like, how many do you want? And I'm like, like, how— he's like, just get as many as you think you can eat. Dented— I was like, I think I can eat 48 of those for sure. Wow. Like, great, let's get—

it's $1. Dented Ding Dong sounds like a diss, you know? It does. You dented Ding Dong.

Well, I had a dented Ding Dong during my Peroni scare for a year, so for me it really hits close to home.

Is a ding dong a penis? I guess it is.

Yeah, get your ding dong out of my face is a comment.

I think it's just dong. Yeah, I think ding dong is just a dummy. It's also that, yeah.

But a dong, a dick, is also a jerk. Is, you know, all these words, thank God, have multiple meanings.

A jerk, of course, of course. But why didn't your grandma and grandpa give your mom Kraft if they were just getting it all the time for free? They should just given that to your Why does your mom have to have Kroger Krogs?

Right. Crosscutter. Yeah. Well, you know, yeah, maybe they should have sent us home with some fun stuff, but they also might have felt like that would have maybe offended my mom or hurt my mom's feelings that we needed groceries. Now, they did come out with a generic brand— wasn't a generic brand, but it was a sub-brand, right? It wasn't as expensive as Kraft macaroni and cheese. If I recall, those were $0.49 a box. Really? When I was a kid. Yeah. Wow. And there was a, a brand called Draft Golden.

Let me look it up.

Golden Harvest. Golden Harvest. Well, just maybe go do Golden Macaroni and Cheese, 1980s. Golden Grain. Yep. Yes. So that was about a third less in price than the Kraft.

It's the same brand behind Rice-A-Roni.

Okay, great. It had bigger noodles and it was damn good. I was like, okay, I can definitely live with Golden Grain. Was that it? Yeah, it's really good stuff. Oh, and cheap, but a little more expensive than Cost Cutter. Okay, so that's where it's fallen into the mix. Or you just had the black and white box of macaroni and cheese. That was also terrible.

Okay, I also— I didn't have mac and cheese, um, but then, you know, I'd go to friends' houses and their moms would make it. It was so good. It was so good. How did they make it that good? And then finally, my— I like convinced my mom to make it.

Yeah.

And then it wasn't good.

I'll tell you what parents I think do. Probably skim milk. No, I'll tell you exactly what happens because I've watched it happen in my own household. Okay. The parents, kind of rightly so, they look at the directions and it says use a quarter cup of butter, which is a half stick of butter. My grandma didn't give a fuck. She's like, yeah, eat, eat 10 sticks of butter. But I think my mom and most moms were like, I bet we can get away with a quarter stick of butter instead of a half. Like, I'm feeding my kid a half of a stick of butter— margarine in my case. Margarine. And so I think they skimp on the butter. And I even notice Kristen will prepare it that way. And when I make it, the kids are like, oh, Dad, you make the best mac and cheese.

I'm like, yeah, because I'm— 2 packs of cheese.

I also use 2 packs of cheese. And they use a full quarter cup/half stick of butter. Yeah. I go, here's my thing, like, if we're doing it—

If you're doing it, exactly. I agree. I think my mom used margarine and skim milk.

And probably didn't put the right amount of margarine. Maybe, I don't know. I'm sure she was like, that's gotta be too— It looks crazy. I know, but I used it. And I ate a whole box, so I'm like, I am eating a half stick of butter. Yeah, whatever.

Yeah. I had to drink skim milk 'cause I had high cholesterol. As a baby?

Yeah, as a little kid they knew you had— I don't think I ever had my cholesterol checked.

Yeah, they would do physicals and check your cholesterol.

Yeah. And you had like the cholesterol of a 7-year-old man.

I had high cholesterol as a kid. That's why it's very— it's like when I have it now, I'm just like, yeah, duh, I've had it since I was a baby.

Literally a baby. I had it for 15, 20 years from whenever I was getting it tested until 2 years ago, 3 years ago.

Yeah, I don't anymore.

Mine is fucking like mid to low. Are you honest? I can't believe it. I'm not on a statin, but I'm on red— oh yeah, rice yeast. Red yeast. Yeah, which is nature's golden grain. I think it's the same active thing that's in a statin. Yeah. But then additionally, I'm on a medication called Zetia, which old Dr. Richard Isaacson gave me. Yeah. And that dropped it significantly. And it doesn't work the same way as a statin, right? I guess you can attack on a cholesterol scenario, you can either attack how much there is overall or how quickly your body absorbs it. He's like, I think you have an absorption problem. Let's get you on Zetia. And that fucking overnight, Monica, I was like, well, now we're talking. This is what I was supposed to be. And I kind of went almost resigned, like it sounds like you have.

Well, no, I'm on a statin and I'm on the GLP-1, and now it's, it's normal.

It's It's normal now after all these years. Yeah. I hope you didn't do any damage. I hope it's all reversible.

I mean, I was born with this. What am I supposed to do? I was just a baby, baby, baby.

Yeah, no wonder your mom was cutting the margarine short. She's like, I can't feed this kid cholesterol, she's gonna have a coronary episode. Exactly. In 5th grade. But when you would go to your grandparents' house in Savannah— yeah— would they dump the butter in there and make it good?

I don't think they made Kraft either, but My grandpa would every day, he'd pick me up something from like, um, Cassie's. Exactly. From Crystal's. Crystal's. Like Crystal's every day. Yeah.

Um, this is what the, this is what grandparents do.

It's so fun. Or Taco Bell or anything your heart desired.

Anything I wanted, he would get it for me. He loved you.

He loved me so much. Oh, he loved me so much. It's crazy.

Yeah. Oh my God. So did my grandpa. Grandparents. Isn't it the greatest?

You love me till the end.

I think that's how you're supposed— that would have been a big chunk of our lives if we grew up the way we're supposed to. You're supposed to live with your whole fucking family. I know. And it would have been so nice. Everyone's so— they weren't— I'm talking about Aunt Sue. She might have turned on you.

No. Yes.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Aunt Sue remained— she liked the sweetest woman. Yeah, I'm sorry. I loved her. I love her. Such a wonderful woman.

How did she pass? Cancer. Yeah. Is Uncle Randy still with us? Fuck yeah.

I was texting with him yesterday. He's in California. Actually flew home last night. Yeah, he was out visiting my cousins and we tried to get a breakfast going. I was going to say you guys, we failed, but we tried. But no, Uncle Randy, every text he sends me, it's him playing either pickleball or full court basketball. He's always been an athlete and it's It's just like, yeah, he is reaping the rewards of that. That's cool. Like, my dad— I think about this all the time. I'm 51. Yeah, I was hiking the other day. Yeah. And when I graduated college in 2000, I would have been 25, which meant he would have been 51. Who, your dad? Yeah, or 52. Okay. He could not do anything with us. Like, they all came out for the graduation, and we went to, like, to Panga to get my favorite sandwiches, and we took a little walk, not a— and he's like, I'll stay in the car. Everywhere we went, he couldn't, like, couldn't get away. He was large. He just had been so hard on his body. He had so many heart attacks at that point. And, um, yeah, I just think of our— I think about him so often now because, yeah, I'm at the age where I remember thinking, well, that's it for him.

He's like not walking anymore. Oh my God. Fell asleep in the hot tub, that whole story. We got in a fight. Like, Dad, you You can't be in the hot tub by yourself when I leave. What are you talking about? I'm like, well, because I woke you up. You were dead asleep in the hot tub and your fucking nose was a quarter inch from the water.

Yeah, but also, I'll handle it. Okay, but imagine your kid now, you're going up to you and saying, Dad, you can't go in the hot tub without us. You'd be— you would be like, what the fuck?

First of all, I'd be smart enough to go, okay, great, I won't. And then I would just go in it if that's what I was gonna do. But I would have been smart enough to not get— no, I would recognize it for what it was, which is I was concerned about him. He should have felt loved.

Fine, forget if it's your kids. If I said it, then you'd be mad at me.

Well, clearly, because I've not yet been discovered in a hot tub sleeping.

I'm saying if you were, and I was like— or you didn't know you were, but I was like, hey, you, just so you know, like, I don't want you to go in the hot tub again without anyone else there, you'd be like, yeah, fuck you. Yeah. And I'd be like, I'll decide. Listen, I saw you almost die.

I mean, this Hard hypothetical, because I have to imagine that that happened, that I passed out in the hot tub.

Well, you've done some things that you don't like being called out on. Trying to think.

That's a big statement. There's like 3 or 4 things in the chamber, but it happened last night. You fell asleep in the hot tub? I fell asleep, which I know that this is starting to happen. Listen, I said we had a guest today and I had to watch that guest show, so we all got in bed and we were watching it. And like, you know, it wasn't voted. We had a detractor. We had one member that wanted to watch something else, but three of us wanted to watch this anyways. And, um, I said, or someone said, well, Dad has to watch this for work, so we'll watch your show tomorrow night. So we're watching our show that we are watching because I have to. Yeah. And I fell asleep. I dozed off.

Oh, that's okay. It was like 8 o'clock.

We had had a—

we had a big—

yeah, that's not falling asleep on the phone, but is what woke me up, I hear. Well, if he's gonna sleep through this whole thing, can we just turn my show on? I agree with that, and it's a great point. Yeah. So then I woke up indignant. No, I'm watching this whole time. I said, a guy can't close his eyes for 2 minutes? Oh, you know, it's like being a funny grandpa. Oh, uh, and, uh, and, and then I was awake enough to finish the episode, and then one another. But I was like, oh yeah, we're at a phase where I fall asleep watching TV sometimes. I, I welcome it.

I don't think that's an age thing. Sometimes—

no, you know when you're at like a Thanksgiving and it's past Thanksgiving and like all the men go watch football on the couch, and about 45 minutes into the game, 60% of the men are asleep? I would always watch that and just be like, what is up with these guys? They can't stay awake all day, you know?

Because I was young. That's tryptophan. And also that is, um, not an age thing. Like, I think people fall asleep all the time at young ages.

I think it increases as you get older, for sure. Grandparents are always falling asleep. My grandma Mid, she'd always go, I'm not sleeping, I'm resting my eyes. She was clearly asleep all the time, you know. She would fall— if she sat down for more than 8 minutes, she would take a little nap. So yeah, I think it's age-related, and I think I'm there.

You better listen when people tell you you can't go in the hot tub.

Well, I will say, this gets me further down the road into accepting that you could discover me dead asleep dreaming in the hot tub. Yeah. Or not, what, at the sauna?

I was gonna say sauna. That's more likely. It's—

you're too miserable to fall asleep in a sauna.

No, but you could pass out and then die. Yeah. Don't go in there.

I'm gonna go in there right after work. I already think I already turned it on, but I'm gonna stay wide awake. Okay.

Okay. Oh, I have something I wanted to talk about. Okay. Um, I had a really crazy sim. Oh wow, tell me. Really crazy. After the play, no. After Delta's play? Yeah, Delta's play. Okay, the day before Delta's play, Friday, I went to dinner with Jess and Anna at Oi Bar, a place in Studio City. Delicious. I really should, again, I say all these places and then I can't get in anywhere and it's really annoying, but whatever. Bar. Fantastic place. And we don't go there a lot. It's like a— it's not in the rotation really. It's more random. That's the first I'm hearing of it. Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic place. And we went and we had a server. Wonderful. Loved her. She was great. Have our dinner. Next day we go to Delta's play. After Delta's play, we decide to go somewhere for an hour.

You and Ana? Or you, Ana, and Jess?

Me and Ana. But then we, we texted Jess and said, We're going, we're going to Black Cat, another place we almost never go.

Okay, where's that located? Silver Lake. All right, other side of town.

Exactly. Not even anywhere close to Studio City where Hoy Bar was. So we go to Black Cat because it was so nice out and that was like outdoors. So we sit, Jess comes to meet us, he goes, that's our server from last night. Same server, two different restaurants, not even close to the same part of out of town, not places we normally go. That is crazy.

That is a duplicate. Yes, it was a duplicate, a dupe. Well, my thought would be, because you do like Black Cat— I like it, yeah. And you love the other place she works. I would be like, excuse me, where else do you work? I gotta try that. Huh? Because she's— she has good taste in where she works.

That's true. I mean, we did say like, whoa, this is so weird. She was like, I know.

Yeah, it seemed juggles two serving schedules at two different restaurants. Are they owned by the same company, maybe? No. Wow, did she get into the logistics of her—

she just said she needed two jobs, basically.

Yeah, but, and then one allows her to— that just seems hard. Like, they're going to call for sure on the same day. They don't. She's juggling it.

Well, no, she's not, cuz she's made up. She only does lunches one place and dinner— she's not real. Are you listening? Okay, I'm so sorry. She's made cut-up lady. Okay. And she's a cutout.

Oh, okay. And it's like, where else will you see her?

Exactly.

What if she said— well, what if she had no memory of meeting you and then she said she had a different name?

Well, I know that's like, we are gonna see her again and she's not gonna notice, and then Jess will be like, oh my gosh, you! And then you'll see this little, like, a little flicker. Reboot. Reboot. Okay. And then she's like, oh yes, oh my gosh, yes, I also work here.

They'll just fed her a lie. Uh-huh. A believable lie. Yes, yes. That they modeled on all these different AIs. I think you guys should get her in the friendship group.

She's busy working. Yeah, that's true. But I just thought that was so weird.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, I mean, what's next?

I know, I know.

I got nervous. I did, you know, I was like, uh-oh, you know, when we get— Eric says when it's getting too obvious they're gonna pull the plug on us. So like, yeah, that did worry me because that was way too obvious. Two days in a row makes no sense. Yeah, yeah, lazy.

It's weird that AI is lazy because that's what we think. They're industrious. Well, yeah, maybe to save energy. They— exactly, there's a bigger goal they're servicing or something.

They have to save water that day.

Water and power.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, all right, should we do some facts?

Yes. Please stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

This is an intense episode. The bravery of Cohen, mm-hmm, is astonishing. It is. I hope people listen and give him what he deserves.

I I think they will. This is a very fascinating, unique, privileged perspective to hear someone. I know. You hear about schizophrenia and psychotic breaks. You hear about it academically or reported on. Yes. You never hear from the person experiencing it. I know. I know. I feel quite lucky. Me too. We've gotten really lucky between sociopath. I mean, that's so cool. O.C.D. Yeah. Borderline. Getting to hear the personal perspective has been so cool.

It really has. It really has.

And every time it makes me— it deepens my empathy.

Same. Yeah, same.

It is. And this one really challenged my preconceived stance on the medication. I know you've really been— Yeah, I've been kind of open to this notion that, yeah, it's one of the tools. Yeah. And yeah, you could say, well, why isn't every alcoholic on Antabuse for the rest of their life?

That would be a solution. Yeah, that's a medicine that makes people—

You throw up if you drink alcohol.

Yeah. How much can you drink on it? You can't even have—

No, I don't think you can. I've never been on it, but I know my dad was on it when he got out of treatment. It was like standard. Used to be very standard when you got out of treatment. I don't know if it still is, but when my dad went in the '80s, you were recommended to be on Antabuse for the first month out of treatment. Oh.

Is it a pill? It's a pill. Interesting. Yeah. Um, yeah, no, it's like, what if it's a placebo?

Like, if you're told this pill will make you throw up the second you drink alcohol, who tries it? Clearly people have tried it.

Well, definitely.

But I wouldn't try it. I'm like, if I'm gonna throw up the second I have it, I won't be able to get it in me. What is the point of trying?

Wait, no, you don't throw up. You throw up from drinking.

As soon as you have alcohol. Yeah, yeah. The medication makes you throw up. Right. So you can't get blood in your alcohol or in your— you can't get alcohol in your bloodstream. Yeah. And you've just thrown up, which I don't mind. As you've witnessed, I've become very comfortable.

But if you throw up, then can you have more? Because if you're an alcoholic, yeah, throwing up doesn't do anything. You don't care.

If it can't get in your body because you're going to throw up every time you have it.

That's true. It just prevents it from entering. Yeah.

Wow. So you could argue why every alcoholic should be on that for the rest of their life.

Maybe some people should. I don't know. But I mean, I'm with you. It's a deeper issue. There are things that are emotional and mental health-based underneath that, that need addressing. Yeah.

And there's many, many things you could employ. And then if those are not working, and you can use that.

I know it's tricky. I have a complicated relationship with medicine because I, and this is not fair probably, but it is a little fair because I am medicated. I'm like, just fucking take it. For sure.

But your medication also doesn't turn you into a zombie.

Exactly. And I understand that. That's right. Does not affect me negatively, that I, that I know. Um, I mean, you can imagine a scenario where the medicine makes life so unenjoyable to live that you just assume be dead. I know, that's exactly that. And that is what the claim is, that it's just like, I— and I— yeah, so I know, but it's complicated, but it's so hard.

It's like, I have, I have categories. I'm, I'm up for that approach. I think you need a co-pilot. Like, he's he has someone in his life that can observe if he's not sleeping, can observe a lot of things. If you're fucking lone wolfing it, I think you should take the medicine. I know.

And I know it's selfish on my part because I just can't stand the feeling of being around someone who I feel like might be unstable.

Yes.

Unpredictable. Unstable. That's very triggering for me. Gives you anxiety. Yeah, it gives me anxiety.

Did it help to learn that only 4% of schizophrenics are violent? I found that helpful. I guess my barroom understanding of it was like, if you were schizophrenic, my hunch was like, you have a 30% chance of getting violent at some point. Well, not necessarily that you kill someone, but that you're going to be in a fight with cops or you're going to be in a fight on the street. Yeah.

For some reason, for me, it's not even the violence part that's triggering. It's like, what's going on in that person's mind? Yeah, I find that scary.

I bet it's just something like alcoholism too, where it's like it affects almost everybody. You think you're the only family dealing with it, but like, I know, I know now in my life several people who have disappeared for periods of times and they've done really wild things. Yeah, this woman that we knew very closely, family family-ish member just left her family. She bought a crazy car. She just was in 5 states over on some journey that no one could comprehend what she was experiencing. And then we have a friend that that's happened to. I bet more people have maybe—

I mean, I have— I can't go into too many details, but I have a very close person in my life that had a psychosis and it was horrifying. And yes, everyone was not just affected then, is still affected and constantly affected in a constant— again, there's like— low-level anxiety at all times. Always. And that's not— their fault, you know. But it— that's why when it's like, you're not taking your medicine, like, okay, well now my anxiety has to be higher. I mean, that's also, again, like, it doesn't— I can work on myself and say, like, that's not about me. I'm powerless over you. Exactly. But it's hard. It is really, really hard. Um, and it does affect absolutely everyone in your orbit.

It's hard to watch people you love hurt themselves. I know. Or hurt.

Yeah, yeah. Not have control over their brain. Like, it's— I mean, none of us have control over our brains, really. I guess it's a sliding scale, but, um, yeah, yeah, I think it's closer than we think. Yeah. Well, no, I'm not— that's— then I had like major PTSD after that. You were good? Incident? Yes, because I was like, oh, I'm— that's me. Like, I'm— I have that too. Uh, yeah. Um, so Is schizophrenia a genetic— also, my dad's oldest brother had schizophrenia. Really? Mm-hmm. Much older than my dad. Uh, but, and I met him, he was the ni— he was very gentle. He was like a very nice, nice boy.

And he had been an admiral or something too, right?

No, he was just— no, the oldest who then like had a caretaker and, and stuff. I met him only when I was 4 in India. Um, but he was like a nice boy. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. Okay. Yes, it has a strong genetic component, but it is not determined by DNA alone. Genetics account for roughly 60% to 80% of the risk, meaning environmental factors and life experiences also play a critical role in triggering the condition. I wonder how many people just like have it latent and it's not been triggered.

Oh, I think a lot of people make it through cuz again, there's this window of vulnerability. Exactly. Exactly.

But like, what if I have it?

No, no, you've exited the window.

No, I've exited the window for it to express itself in me, but what if I have the gene?

You wonder if you have the gene.

Yeah. Oh, but it does say it's not caused by a single schizophrenia gene. Oh, okay. So that's good. It's probably what we learned, what's it called?

Polygenetic. Polygenetic. Yeah, I had a girlfriend whose mother was schizophrenic, and I remember then learning about it and going, ooh, I'm now scared. Yeah, it's scary.

Yeah. It does say if one identical twin develops schizophrenia, the other twin has a 50% chance of developing it despite sharing the exact same DNA. This is the strongest evidence that genetics are powerful but not the only cause.

That would almost imply that half the people with it are getting it activated. Yeah.

Oh, I just wanted to remind people of the ACEs. Okay. Um, do you want to take the test again? Yeah, it's only 5 minutes. It's only 5 minutes. Yeah. Okay, sure. This is discovering your trauma type.

This is a crude childhood— what is it?

Yeah, ACEs, Adverse Childhood Experiences. There we go. Okay, but rate each statement based on your personal opinion. I noticed these are a little hard though because I have taken this a few times.

Yeah, but this seems different for some reason, like food scarcity Hunger is an interesting one. Yeah. Like, no, I was never starving. Right. And also, you went to the store and you got, you know, there was a gallon of milk and there was X amount of ground beef. There was a period where it was like you were hyper-conscious of how much food there was. Yeah. You got in trouble if you ate too much of the food.

Well, again, yeah, it's all nothing. But that's not starving.

It's not like I went days without eating. It's just like, oh, I remember there was a period were, were there was stress around the food in the house.

Yeah. Yeah. That's hard for sure. Okay. So I'll read this real quick, but then the, the test, the 5-minute test is different, but I still wanna do it.

Um, are you sure you're not gonna have to pay at the end of it?

I'm not sure, but I don't think so.

Oh boy. You're not sure.

So for ACEs, there's categories. So it's like abuse and then under abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse. Abuse. Then there's neglect, under that physical neglect, emotional neglect. 3, household challenges, under that mental illness in the household, incarcerated household member, substance use by a household member, parental separation or divorce, domestic violence. Mm-hmm. Um, and then other common childhood stressors such as community violence, systemic discrimination, food insecurity, and unstable housing. Yeah, so that's in there. But this fun test— fun ACE test— is about what kind of trauma, or your trauma.

Tell me about your trauma. Tell me about your trauma.

Okay, now this is strongly agree, you know, you know that whole thing. Um, I notice small shifts in people's moods immediately. Strongly agree. I often feel like I am, quote, on my own even when I'm in a crowd.

Yeah, I agree. Okay. Oh man, this is nothing. That's the other tricky part about answering these questions, like now versus now versus most of my 20s and 30s. Let's do now. Let's do now.

Let's see how your trauma is. So what do you think now? There's also neutral.

I'm gonna go between neutral and agree, but I think agree. I still think agree. Okay, I gotta do this or it's not—

yeah. Okay. I find it very hard to say no when someone asks for a favor. Disagree. Certain smells or sounds can instantly change my mood. I strongly agree. I am very cautious about who I let into my inner circle. Neutral. I prefer to sit facing the door in a restaurant or public space. Yeah, I strongly agree squared. I pride myself on not needing help from anyone else. Strongly agree. I worry that if I show my true feelings, people will leave. Agree. I sometimes feel like I'm reliving a past argument in my head.

Oh my God, yeah, strongly agree. When am I not? There's no moment that in the background I'm not having an argument with somebody.

An old argument. Yeah. I pay more attention to what people do than what they say.

Agree.

I'm easily startled by sudden movements or loud noises. Disagree. Except when, um, Eric sneezes.

That's human. That got us all. Yeah, that really got us. If you're not startled by Eric's sneeze, you're dead.

That's the only time I think I've ever seen you like, like, actually—

and then I got angry, right? Yeah, it makes me angry if I get startled the—

oh, that was so funny. Oh my God. Okay. I tend to shut down when a relationship gets too intense.

That has been the pattern. That's, you know, not currently what I'm doing. Yeah, I say agree.

I feel responsible for making sure everyone around me is happy. Yeah, strongly agree. I have specific triggers that make me want to hide away.

You're shaking your head yes. Okay, I'll say agree.

I am always waiting for the other shoe to drop in a good situation. Yeah, strongly agree. I find it difficult to fall asleep if I hear unfamiliar noises.

Yeah, yeah, I strongly agree.

I feel trapped if someone depends on me too much. Yeah, strongly agree. I apologize even when I haven't done anything wrong.

Oh God, yeah, yeah, this is the endless— this is the Shepherd. I mean, you haven't done that. I have a— just my brother and I are always in trouble. Oh, every— it's like, first question is, am I in trouble?

Oh, right. But are you— what did I do? Okay, you know, so agree. Yeah. Okay. I often feel like my life is a series of before and after moments. It's abstract.

Yeah, it is. What do you think that means?

Huh. I feel like my life is a series of before and after. I mean, maybe— is it like, maybe this is who I was before?

Yeah, like this is before sobriety. This is before I had made it. This is before I had kids. Yeah. Okay, I'm gonna agree.

Okay. I have a very hard time forgiving people who lied to me once. Disagree. I am constantly scanning my environment for for potential problems. Yeah, 100%. I'd rather solve a problem myself than explain it to someone else.

Oh yeah, agree. Not strongly agree.

I am the peacemaker in my friend group or family.

To some degree, yeah. Neutral. I have that middle child thing, right? Like, if I'm with my family, I'm, I'm trying to adjust everybody's mood, and as tensions are swelling, I'm, I'm on it. So in that way, I think I agree.

Okay. I can be physically present but mentally miles away in past.

I would say neutral.

I am suspicious of people who are overly nice for no reason.

Oh yeah, strongly agree.

God, I hope I don't have to pay. I feel un— because I want to know. I feel uneasy in large, uncontrolled crowds. Uncontrolled crowds. Yeah, right.

Well, it's interesting. Uneasy versus aroused. I'm also quite aroused, but you're also— I'm like, I'm on high alert, but I think I can handle my business, so I'm kind of aroused.

I mean, I don't think you're at ease.

No, no, no, no, I'm not at ease. I'm like, I'm like, fucking, this guy's, this guy's popping off. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So agree.

Okay, I'll agree. I value my freedom more than emotional intimacy.

Yeah, freedom's huge for me.

Yeah, so agree. I find myself changing my personality to fit in with different groups. Strongly disagree. I get a heavy feeling in my chest when I think of certain years. Disagree. I feel like I have a shield around my heart most of the time. Oh, I don't disagree. Yeah, yeah. I notice exit signs and escape routes where— whenever I enter a new building. I find it difficult to share my deep secrets with anyone.

Disagree.

I feel a deep need to be liked by everyone I meet. Strongly agree. I often have dreams that my, uh, that feel like warnings from my past. Oh Strongly agree. I struggle to believe people when they give me a compliment. That's evolved. Neutral. Yeah. I'm highly sensitive to the tone of someone's voice. Yeah, strongly agree.

Yeah, too sensitive to that. I prefer to— I'm actually imagining things, I think, a lot of times.

Oh God, wait, when you hear someone's voice, like, we'll—

you and I will be in a fact check and I will detect something in your voice. Yeah. And then I will get like defensive. Aggressive, right? And then I will hear it later. Yeah. And I'm like, oh my God, I don't even hear it now. You know what I'm saying? I'll go like, this is curious, was I wrong then or am I wrong now, right?

But that's— do you have that? Yeah. Well, I, um, I'm very sensitive to changes in— yeah, tone, or, or— but I don't normally.

But then when you're editing, are you like, oh, I, I, I, I— it was much more, uh, no, it stays consistent.

I feel that I'm consistent. Okay, great. But I wonder if it means like, like Kristen is like auditorily very sensitive. Mm-hmm. Like if someone has like a weird voice or something, it's like she's really gonna notice it. I don't think I'd notice it. Mm-hmm. I don't know what that means. Whatever. I already put agree. Okay, great. Um, I prefer to live a life with as few strings attached as possible.

Again, that evolved. That's how it was and that's not how it is now. Yeah. So I would say disagreeing now.

Okay, great. I prioritize other people's comfort over my own needs. I'm gonna go neutral. Great. Yeah. I find it hard to—

I don't think you can be a family member and not do that. You can't function if, if you prioritize— if you don't prioritize other people above your own things. It's like it has— it won't function.

It's a given. Take though. If you're always doing it, that's one thing. If you're— but I think you make your needs known. Yeah, yeah. But you also then decide it's not necessary.

Like, you should have heard the debate. Like, how we ended up at mess hall last night was like a fucking hour-long thing, right? And at some point I'm like, I'm gonna surrender to whatever, anything they agree on, I'll go along with at this point. There's a lot of that when you have kids, right?

But you have like, you have a need to be yourself. Sure. That's some— that's a need for you. Yeah. Like to not compromise who you are. That's true. So you're not going to not do that so that someone else feels comfortable?

No, I'm not going to be someone else to suit somebody. Yeah. No, no.

Okay. I find it hard to focus on the present because my mind wanders. No, disagree. This is a lot longer. They said 5 minutes.

Yeah. And they didn't say it was going to cost anything, but we're going to find out.

Oh my God. We're at the cost part? No, but there's a lot more. Okay. Should we just call it?

I see the pattern emerging. I feel like I can predict what the outcome is.

I don't even know what the options are though.

Super duper kind of— what is it? Kind— you're kind of this— you're super duper whatever is— I don't even know what word they're going to use. Traumatized?

Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Oh, fine. You know what, I'm going to, um, give up my need for the audience's comfort.

Wow, good job. Thank you. Good job. Thank you. Although I don't know if it's a good job because we didn't find out if that if that's good or bad, but—

well, there's no goods or bads. It's just who we are. Um, who broke 2 hours in a marathon recently? Um, a Kenyan runner, Sebastian Sawe, and Ethiopian runner Yomif.

God, I love when you get these.

That sounds German. It's K-E-J-E-L-C-H-A. It's— I just don't know how to do it. Um, but yeah, two of them. That's bonkers.

What is the time? I know. Uh, and what's a mile? Uh, marathon's 26.4 miles. Yeah, 26 point—

I don't know, maybe. Yeah, 4 sounds right. Um, Sebastian was 1:59:30.

Okay, so 1:59:30 is a 100, uh, is 119— 119.5 minutes divided by 27— 26.4, we think. 26.2. 26.2. So it's a 4-minute and 30-second mile 27 times. That, that is— that does not— oh, in That does not feel possible. I, I couldn't run a 5-minute mile to save everyone on planet Earth.

Well, you probably could for that, but only once. You couldn't do it for 26 miles.

I don't even know if I can run that fast, like full. I don't know what my sprint is. I know we could figure out how many miles an hour they're running.

Okay, is this a need? No.

Oh, I could do it really easy. Okay. Oh yeah. How many miles per hour are you running if you're running a 4 minute and 30 second mile? There's so much better than me trying to remember.

It was more fun when you were doing fast math.

13.3 miles an hour. That is full line. I think when you're on a treadmill and you try to run at 9 miles an hour or 10, you're like sprinting. Yeah, you are. Yeah. Fuck me. 13 miles.

I don't even know if I could ride a bike for 26 miles. Fuck. Oh my God, they're— God bless them. Um, okay, party schools. Let's talk about the top party schools in America 2026.

There's a few I better be on there.

UCSB. No way, it made it. That's a, um, that is an Easter egg. It's an Easter egg for an upcoming—

one of the most likable guests we've ever had. Incredible guest.

UCSB, that's number 1. Number 2, Florida State.

FSU and ASU are always right there.

They're always duking it out. Yeah, but you know what's number 3 on this list? Although this is from niche.com.

What the hell is that?

I'm not so sure, but this says Tulane is 3. Well, that makes sense. New Orleans, I guess. That can make sense.

I was just there. It felt very academic.

Yeah, it can be both.

Okay. As you'll see, UCSB, that's a damn good school.

Well, and number 4 is USC. Wow.

I don't believe this list, but go ahead. Oh my God. I mean, do you think, do you think USC is a bigger party school than ASU?

I mean, I find—

ASU, they have a lazy river around one of the dorms, we found about, right?

Well, I think I said that, but then they—

well, we were saying it was at the school, which turned out to be not correct, but I do think it was at one of the living— the housing. I mean, I agree, I'm very—

I'm skeptical of USC. Yes, but also, well, mainly because I'm like, where do they go?

Yes, you're in the middle of the fucking raunchiest part of LA, right?

Okay, now this— 5, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

6, Roll Tide. Yeah, I mean, they got above USC.

Alabama. Exactly.

You go there to black out. Okay, there we go.

Um, 7 is Syracuse. Never even heard that.

Syracuse, this is a big school. No, I've heard of the school. I've never heard it's a party school.

Well, we've never been. Um, 8, go Dawgs! UGA.

ASU has not been on this list yet, right? Just confirming.

I'm literally not seeing it at all. And I'm like really— now I'm scrolling. Yeah. Okay. This list forgot one, but Georgia. Good job. Happy it's on there and it deserves it. And it is so fun. I just had a really interesting meeting with someone at Georgia about me getting involved. They're doing some really— I'm really proud of it. They're doing some really cool stuff there to help get people pumped about you. UGA? Well, to school. Uh-huh. It's great. All right, we're gonna discard this list because ASU isn't on it.

And if I went to ASU right now, I would be taking action against this list.

Okay, this is— wow though, I'm looking at some other— UCSB is on all these though, so that seemed—

that's comforting. Yeah. Okay, good.

Okay, wait, what about College Vine? Let me just do a quick— just like, do you trust that one?

I never heard of that either. Oh, this one?

Yeah, no, this one has Alabama first.

I believe that.

So UCSB second. Okay, okay, it has Georgia. As long as it has Georgia. 7. ASU? None of these have—

they clamp down at ASU.

What is that? I mean, something, because these are all like— I am curious. Oh, Business Insider. Let's look at that.

I am curious curious, as male attendance has fallen dramatically at all these colleges— oh, if it's affected— how much it affects the partying. Boys are much more rite of passage, go too far, you know.

Yeah, but in Georgia, the girls be getting— everyone— yeah, it doesn't feel like that. Okay, it's like as many fraternities as our sororities, everyone's downtown the whole week. Weekend. Okay. And football games are everywhere, you know. So yeah, drinking, it's egalitarian. Yeah. Um, all right, well, Business Insider made me pay, so I didn't do that. Okay. Um, what are the 8 dimensions of wellness? Oh, this is good, it has an acronym. SAMHSA.

Sam Harris? Sam Hussain Minhaj?

S— yeah, this is not a good acronym. You can't say it.

You got to be able to do better with those letters.

Okay, if I'm going to rearrange it, I'll do sashimi. No, mosh. Oh, mosh. No, ma— mash ass. Oh, I like that.

Well, read me that. Yeah, read.

Okay, physical, emotional, social, social, intellectual, spiritual— you're already yawning. No, sorry. Spiritual, environmental, occupational or vocational, and financial. Ow! Just get stung by a bee over there? No, I have a burn. Oh, and like something weird is happening to my burn. I think because it's getting heated up by the sun. I haven't been wearing sunscreen on it. Okay, it's learning again. Yeah. Um, okay, so physical, emotional, social, intellectual, spiritual, environmental, occupational, and financial. Those make sense to me. Yeah, me too.

All right, I believe them. Me too. Unlike that list that would exclude ASU.

Well, like you said, maybe it's changed.

We didn't read that they had shut ASU down. There is too much partying, we gotta end this.

Okay, percentage of people with psychosis— who have approximately 3% of people will experience a psychotic episode at some point in their lifetime. Whoa. While a diagnosable psychotic order like schizophrenia is less common, affecting roughly 0.25 to 0.64% of the population— good, that's better— psychotic symptoms can affect anyone and frequently appear during late adolescence or early adulthood. Remember the Armchair Anonymous? Which one? Remember Bad Roommate? That girl was like, had a psychosis.

Yes, I do remember. Yeah. She thought that the boyfriend was abusing her. Yeah. Oof.

All right, well, that's it.

Okay, great job. Great job.

And I'm going to let it go that we don't—

that we didn't finish. Yeah.

Okay. We didn't finish our quiz. I'm going to let it go.

It seems like it's rolling right off.

Yeah, really doing a great job letting it go. All right. Love you. Love you.