In this episode we discuss the new documentary "Bigger, stronger, and faster" and how it sheds light on the history of performance-enhancing drugs in the sports industry. We also discuss the dangers of using performance enhancing drugs and how they may have contributed to the deaths of athletes. We also talk about the doping scandal that has been going on in the UFC for years and the impact it may have had on the sport and the way it could have changed the way we think about doping in sports and the future of the sport in general. We are joined by the director of the documentary, John Grisham, who talks about his experience with the documentary and how he feels about it. Also, we have a special guest on the show to talk about steroids and doping in the sport of MMA and other sports. Thanks to John for coming on the podcast and sharing his knowledge and experience with us. We hope you enjoy this episode and that you enjoy listening to it! -Jon Sorrentino Subscribe to our new podcast, Bigger, Stronger, Faster, Fairer, Fitter, Faster! Subscribe on iTunes and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. Have a question, suggestion or topic suggestion? we'd love to hear from you! Jon and Jon are looking for the next episode? Jon is looking for a new podcast episode and we'll get them on the next one out in the next week! Timestamps: 0:00-8: 5:00 - What would you like to be interviewed? 6:30 - What do you have a guest? 7:40 - What are you looking for? 8:15 - What's your favorite piece of advice? 9:30-10: What s your favorite part of the movie? 11:00 12:00 +15:00 Is doping? 15:00 Can you give me a question? 16:00 Do you like it better? 17:00 What is your biggest superpower? 18:00 Should I try it? 19:00 How do you think I would you want me try it again? 22: Is doping more? 21:10 - How would you think it's a good thing? 27:00 Are you looking forward to doing it more than that? 26:00 Thank you? 24:00 Would you like me to send me a compliment?
00:00:04.000Bigger, Stronger, Faster was a documentary that I could not...
00:00:09.000There were so many people that were talking about it.
00:00:11.000You couldn't avoid having a conversation about it, especially in the UFC, because so many fighters have been accused of taking performance-enhancing drugs, and there's so many conversations about that.
00:00:22.000So I always wanted to talk to you guys.
00:00:44.000Great documentary, and interesting and honest.
00:00:46.000It was really hilarious when you're going over the people that, like, what's the number one reason to go to the hospital, and then they, like, ask Aspirin, fucking vitamin C, and then below that was steroids.
00:01:59.000But like you said about the narrative that they want you to believe, the narrative doesn't come from health problems.
00:02:05.000The narrative comes from, you know, nobody's concerned about the health of the athlete.
00:02:09.000We say that, but nobody really is concerned about the health of the athlete.
00:02:13.000They're concerned about an unfair advantage.
00:02:16.000Yeah, they're concerned about someone being able to do what we suspected the Russians were doing back in the 50s.
00:02:22.000And that was really enlightening, too, when you were talking to that guy that was saying that they had found out about it from the Russians doing it in the 1950s.
00:02:32.000They were actually hanging out with the Russian strength coach, and he was, you know, a little loose, loosey-goosey, and he sort of slipped up and was like, yeah, we're giving our guys testosterone.
00:02:42.000So as soon as that got out of the bag, Dr. Ziegler raced home and he created Dianabol, which was even a stronger steroid than was currently available on the market.
00:02:51.000And they started testing guys with like five milligrams of dianabol.
00:02:54.000And of course they found other ways to get it through the testing facility or however they were getting their hands on it once it was manufactured.
00:03:01.000And that's when it became, you know, the Wild West basically.
00:03:04.000It was like people started taking 20 milligrams and getting way stronger.
00:03:08.000It's kind of crazy because if you want to get better at something, people don't have a problem with people using certain means or people don't have a problem with someone going to a supplement store and purchasing something that doesn't work.
00:03:19.000But as soon as you take something that's powerful, people are like, well, wait a second, we don't want you doing that good.
00:03:23.000I was always telling people that the strongest shit I ever took, they made illegal, but you used to be able to buy it at GNC. It was called Mag10.
00:04:44.000You know, that's interesting, but Mark and I had this talk the other day, and I think that this whole, like, gender issue and transgender and all these different things, like, I don't know how much that's linked to testosterone levels or not.
00:04:56.000Like, I don't know if there's that many definitive studies on, like, whether your testosterone, like, if you have a high estrogen level, are you going to be trained and they don't have testosterone levels?
00:05:05.000Yeah, there's a lot of people that are gay that have very high testosterone levels.
00:05:08.000And a lot of people can kick ass, too.
00:06:13.000But, you know, the issue is really interesting, and that's why I want to, like, you know, talk to him and try to help people just better understand it, because people get so mad.
00:06:22.000That's the thing that I don't get is...
00:06:24.000I do understand voicing your opinion and saying, fuck, man, that's weird.
00:06:59.000Every day another cop's shooting somebody and we're worried about, you know, we concern ourselves so much more with the tabloid media than we do with what's really going on in this country.
00:07:07.000Well, the cop shooting part is a horrible thing, but cops on steroids is something that people don't talk about too much.
00:07:14.000It's kind of hilarious when you see cops busting people for steroids, because we all know, anybody who knows people that take steroids knows that cops are on steroids.
00:08:18.000Look, if you taught those guys what you know in jujitsu, they'd be much more effective than taking steroids, but that's probably the easier route, right?
00:08:25.000That would help, but the reality is you're dealing with guns and knives and shit like that.
00:08:30.000Yeah, so no matter how big you are, it doesn't even really matter, right?
00:09:57.000Smashing Machine, as a documentary filmmaker, that was my favorite documentary, I think it still is, probably ever.
00:10:03.000It's an amazing documentary, and for folks who don't know what it's about, it's about Mark Kerr, who was, at the time, one of the most dangerous MMA fighters in the world.
00:10:11.000A guy who you would look at and you'd say, well, that is what an MMA fighter should look like.
00:10:16.000260 pounds, fucking jacked to the tits, just giant, and smashing people.
00:10:21.000But they caught him, there he is right there at his prime.
00:12:13.000And he's an interesting point, because Vitor, for the last year and a half, was on testosterone replacement, last like two years, and had the most spectacular results of his career.
00:12:25.000It was really crazy to see a guy who'd been fighting since 1997 in the UFC, and he's knocking out Michael Bisping, he's knocking out Luke Rockhold, he's knocking out Dan Henderson, he's wheel-kicking people in the head, and the way he was It was just fucking crazy to watch.
00:12:41.000He head kicked three of the best fighters in the world and did it with muscles grown out of his fucking teeth.
00:13:16.000And if you don't think those tests get manipulated by what you need to do, in Bigger, Stronger, Faster, I show you how to get human growth hormone and basically go to your doctor and do this and that.
00:14:00.000Well, they also, they say if you eat a very large, fatty meal, like cheeseburgers and fries and shit, like a big burger, like right before you take the test, like within an hour of the test, your shit just plummets.
00:14:10.000Your test plummets, your growth plummets, everything just goes, oh.
00:14:15.000There's ways to beat all these tests, even the guys that are beating the test to compete.
00:15:42.000The future of sports with the records and all these things, like who can hit the most home runs and who can, you know, play the longest and all.
00:15:49.000Yeah, it's like there's a word that's a banned word.
00:15:52.000Steroids is like, you know, it's a negative word.
00:15:56.000And that word will never be polished up.
00:18:00.000I did a movie called Trophy Kids, and it's about parents that push their kids in sports, and that was on HBO. And the thing that is so crazy now is the way that parents have access to all these things we didn't have.
00:18:12.000Like you'll go to a, you know, a baseball camp and they have like this, Nike makes this hand-eye coordination thing that you wouldn't believe how it tells you like what position your kid should play.
00:18:23.000It tells you, you know, and parents are actually going and getting genetic testing on their kid.
00:18:27.000They swab the inside of their kid's cheek and they send it off to this company and it'll tell the parent what sports the kid will be good at.
00:18:34.000This is when they're like a An infant.
00:18:36.000So there's some crazy stuff going on where technology is far exceeding what we've been able to do before.
00:20:53.000And, you know, you showed on the documentary the myostatin inhibitors that they're doing with these cows that make these cows grow enormous amounts of muscle.
00:21:00.000Well, they're going, first of all, they can do it now to pigs, and they're going to be able to do it to people.
00:21:11.000If we live another 100 years, if human beings survive 100 years, and asteroids don't blow us up, or we don't get hit by a fucking nuke, we're going to have myostatin-inhibited people that look like the Hulk.
00:21:27.000What do you think about steroids in the UFC? What's your take on it?
00:21:30.000Do you think they should be illegal, or monitored, or...
00:21:32.000Well, I think it's going to be a moot point once you get to genetic engineering.
00:21:36.000And I think ultimately what steroids are is it's a form of engineering.
00:21:41.000It's a form of biological engineering.
00:21:43.000You're taking these substances and you're adding them to people.
00:21:46.000But as you pointed out in your documentary, look at the guy who was the Tour de France guy that had this oxygen tent, these hyperbaric or these altitude chambers.
00:22:28.000It's all about optimizing what you already are.
00:22:31.000And I think when people go beyond that, that's when it becomes like, okay, well then it's cheating.
00:22:35.000I don't know why people think that, but that's what it is.
00:22:37.000It's like, you know, if you say, well, I'm on TRT, nobody really cares, you know?
00:22:41.000And the same commercials for TRT, I don't know if you noticed, but during the World Series, the same sport that they condemn for steroids, during the commercial break, the first commercial, do you have low T? You know?
00:22:52.000That's the very first commercial that comes on.
00:22:54.000I think that the issue with steroids also for a lot of people is they believe that it's going to get kids into them and that the kids are going to get sick or they're going to get hurt or they're going to commit suicide like the guy in the documentary had.
00:23:05.000He was convinced that his kid who he had on Lexapro, who was a teenager, you know what I mean?
00:23:10.000He was convinced it was steroids that made this kid commit suicide.
00:23:13.000And steroids very well may have played a factor.
00:23:16.000Abuse of anything is bad, whether it's abuse of alcohol.
00:23:19.000There's a lot of different drugs, painkillers that you can abuse that'll make you suicidal.
00:25:11.000Yeah, yeah, but there's also, you know, while they improve mood in some people, a lot of people commit suicide on them because they are so low down.
00:25:19.000Like, you'll see a person that's, like, severely, severely depressed.
00:25:22.000They can't even get out of bed to kill themselves, and then they put them on SSRIs, and now they have just enough energy to, like, say, fuck it, you know?
00:25:34.000Also with steroids though, that kid, he just stopped cold turkey.
00:25:38.000He stopped the steroids right away and then went on those other drugs.
00:25:42.000But stopping him, as you mentioned earlier, like if you're 48 years old, you want to get the energy boost from him.
00:25:47.000Just like coming off him actually puts you at a lower state than you ever were before.
00:25:52.000So with that kid coming off him, his testosterone levels were probably low, his estrogen levels probably came up.
00:25:57.000He's probably just insanely depressed.
00:25:58.000That does get you depressed and that's a big issue with fighters and football players and people that have had a lot of head injuries.
00:26:05.000Dr. Mark Gordon, who was in your documentary for a brief amount of time, I saw his face in there, he works with a lot of traumatic brain injury people and one of the things that he finds with them, they almost all have low testosterone.
00:26:15.000And something about getting the pituitary gland rattled, whether it's through an IED or football collisions or head kicks, whatever the fuck it is, almost all those guys have low testosterone.
00:26:25.000It's almost like you're getting kicked in the balls.
00:26:26.000You ever pose the question to this, like, you know, Nevada State Athletic Commission, you know, all these guys are getting pounded in the head in the UFC. They get punched a lot, they get kicked a lot.
00:26:39.000Head trauma is an on-the-job injury, but you're not allowed to treat an on-the-job injury with something that works like human growth hormone.
00:26:47.000He'll tell you one of the best things they can do to treat these concussions and traumatic brain injuries is to supplement with human growth hormone.
00:26:56.000You can get them, and if you're a normal everyday person, you can be treated, but you can't be treated if you're a fighter or if you're an athlete.
00:27:05.000As well now, they're not allowing them to use IVs to rehydrate.
00:27:09.000And the reason why is because IVs and use of IVs can mask some of the signs of steroids.
00:27:15.000So something that was ultimately very beneficial, now you can't use because people can use it to cheat.
00:27:22.000So even though it's just to rehydrate you, and even though they can prove that it's just rehydrating you, you can't use it because it could be something that you're doing because you're trying to cover up.
00:27:31.000Probably healthier for the fighter like a day before to have all those electrolytes in them and everything in them, right?
00:27:36.000I mean rather than fight, fight depleted.
00:27:39.000Since they're cutting weight, yeah, that's the argument.
00:27:41.000But there's some arguments, some people, I don't know, I haven't researched it, but there's some people that say that it's actually more effective to rehydrate orally.
00:28:38.000If you can make the weight, you can fight.
00:28:39.000You just have to make the weight 4 o'clock on Friday and then Saturday, you know, whenever your fight is, the fights don't start until 4. Do you think this IV thing will change the game?
00:29:01.000You know, I think that for fighters that are like tweeners, you know, there's guys that are like a little bit too big for this weight, but a little bit too small for that weight, they could use a 195. I think every 10 pounds would be pretty reasonable.
00:29:10.000Seems like it would be an advantage to actual, you know, to the fans and everything.
00:29:30.000I think to answer your question about steroids in the UFC, I think the real problem is what we said earlier, that the word steroid is tainted.
00:29:50.000Fuck, we have Muscle Farm that sponsors the UFC. They sell a ton of shit that's supposed to help you recover and protein powders and all this jazz.
00:29:57.000Think about creatine, absolutely clinically proven to enhance performance.
00:30:01.000There's a lot of stuff that you can get that's legal.
00:30:19.000I posted something on Facebook the other day, and people went crazy because I posted this thing about fish oil and the effectiveness of fish oil not being really scientifically...
00:30:54.000If you're trying to prevent heart disease and all these things like that, they're saying that the link isn't there, and if you eat fatty fish, you probably get enough in your diet.
00:31:04.000Yeah, well, really good fish like salmon that's high in those healthy fats, everybody should eat that once or twice a week.
00:31:19.000I'll read, like, okay, this doesn't work, this barely works, and whatever.
00:31:21.000And the next thing I do, I go open up my cabinet, and I take 20 pills.
00:31:26.000Because, like, because it doesn't fucking work, I don't know.
00:31:28.000I mean, it's like that placebo effect is really, really strong, and, you know, certain things I take, because I, oh, I heard this works for, you know, alpha lipoic acid, when you eat carbs, it'll help shuttle it in your muscles.
00:33:30.000I remember talking to you about, it was kind of amazing, and it was kind of a good example for me, talking to you about, you were talking about going on the road and traveling, and you said, oh man, I need to find a Whole Foods.
00:34:49.000I think when you're dealing with things like UFC fighters, you're dealing with a level of performance that they're requiring of their body that's so extreme.
00:34:57.000Because even boxers, like, the average boxer, they do their boxing workout, they'll spar a couple of times a week depending upon the philosophy of the camp, and in the morning they usually run.
00:35:07.000Like, maybe they'll have a strength and conditioning session instead of a run, but they're doing two workouts a day and one of them is pretty mild.
00:35:15.000So, they're, you know, they can get through a six to eight week camp, and most likely, they never pull out of fights.
00:35:21.000It's very rare that a championship fight, like, Manny Pacquiao almost pulled out of Floyd Mayweather fight because he apparently tore his labrum, but he wound up fighting, and now there's a lawsuit because he pushed through the injury.
00:35:47.000Even Conor McGregor, when he fought against Chad Mendes after Aldo pulled out of the fight, McGregor had been getting stem cell shots in his knee.
00:36:08.000The amount of, maybe genetically basketball, you know, but the amount of effort it takes to step into the octagon, the amount of mental focus, it's like, to me that's amazing.
00:39:09.000Female fight I've ever seen in my life.
00:39:11.000This girl's nose was smashed, a giant gash across her nose, and this Joanna chick from Poland was just beating the fuck out of her, literally.
00:39:20.000To the point where you're watching and saying, please stop this fight.
00:39:27.000Because when Rhonda beats chicks up, she knocked out Betch with one punch, and most of the time she flips chicks on their back and armbars them in the first round.
00:39:36.000This bitch beats the fuck out of chicks for like four rounds.
00:39:39.000That's gotta be cool calling that stuff because I saw your excitement and it was like so genuine.
00:39:44.000You know, you're so pumped to call that fight.
00:41:45.000You know, you got guys, like, I know you talk about it a lot in your podcast, you get into steroids here and there.
00:41:50.000And, you know, a lot of guys don't even look like they're doing it.
00:41:54.000Like Gilbert Melendez or Hoist Gracie.
00:41:56.000You know, it's like you can't tell anymore.
00:41:58.000Well, Hoist actually did look like he was doing it when he got popped.
00:42:00.000When he got popped, we were there for that fight, and I was there with my friend Eddie, Eddie Bravo, and Eddie was like, dude, when was the last time you saw Hoist with traps?
00:42:39.000Ali Bagutinov got popped for it when he fought against Mighty Mouse Johnson for the flyweight title, and he's still suspended because of that.
00:42:46.000Yeah, but there's guys who fought on it.
00:42:47.000Because I know that EPO test is pretty, it's a little wishy-washy.
00:42:51.000When we did Bigger, Stronger, Faster, we looked heavily into the EPO test, and there's a guy that came up with a definitive EPO test.
00:42:58.000Definitive like just either you're on it or you're not Synthetically and the he got a letter from the Olympic Committee saying from the US Olympic USOC saying we can't use your test because we'll be at an unfair You know will be it'll be unfair to the Americans because the other foreign countries are Relying on a loosey-goosey test.
00:43:28.000Well, we have to be able to cheat just as much as the rest of them.
00:43:31.000If you look at the, you know when they do these testosterone ratios, like 99.9% of human beings should be at a 1 to 1 ratio, epitestosterone to testosterone kind of thing.
00:43:42.000And they allow it to be like 4 to 1 or 6 to 1. They used to allow 6. Now they allow 4. Yeah, now they allow 4, right?
00:43:47.000So you can take a little bit and be under the radar.
00:43:49.000We've had guys pop at like 50 to 1. Yeah.
00:44:27.000I think that there's a benefit to being a certain weight, but there's a negative effect when you get over a certain weight.
00:44:35.000And I think 240 is around the right weight.
00:44:37.000I think how lean you are is probably a big thing, too.
00:44:44.000I think once you get under 10%, I think is when you start to get in trouble, unless you're used to that, unless your body's always under 10%, then you could probably operate at that body, being that lean for a while, you know?
00:44:55.000I just think if guys have good defensive skills and they can avoid the bum rush for the first couple rounds, guys who are like over 240, they have a real hard time getting into the third, fourth, and fifth rounds.
00:45:05.000It's just too much mass to carry around.
00:45:07.000The bones and the muscle and all the blood.
00:46:34.000It's interesting you bring up those two fighters.
00:46:36.000It makes me kind of think like maybe there's a upper weight limit of muscle mass that you can carry around because like neither one of those guys is real lean.
00:46:43.000So maybe around a 200 pound mark is probably almost like the cutoff.
00:46:46.000If you start being more jacked than that, maybe you can't sustain it for three rounds.
00:46:50.000Yeah, I think it's a matter of durability.
00:46:52.000Like, you want to be big enough so that you can take shots, but you can't be too big because you just can't carry it.
00:47:12.000I still maintain to this day that if somebody got a hold of Brock Lesnar early on and said, listen to me, and you can be the best heavyweight fighter ever, like a Firas Zahabi or a Matt Hume, like someone who's a real expert in MMA, who Brock listened to, And just said,
00:48:43.000I was kind of bummed but happy when he decided to quit MMA. Recently, he had a moment where he was trying to figure out whether he was going to keep going with the WWE or give one more shot at the UFC. And I know he talked to Dana.
00:48:54.000He talked to the UFC. He was really thinking about it.
00:48:57.000But ultimately, he decided for himself.
00:48:58.000You don't want to see him go down a bad path of being the guy that gets...
00:52:13.000Well, they didn't think that about the XFL. I guess not, yeah.
00:52:17.000I think the real problem is the talent pool.
00:52:19.000There's just not that many good fighters.
00:52:21.000The UFC owns the contracts for 500 fighters, and they're all the best fighters.
00:52:26.000There's not one fighter in any weight class outside the UFC that you can make a rational argument that's the best fighter in that weight class.
00:52:32.000So once they have that, It's like, boy, it's hard to sell a league when you know the UFC. Like, this is our 170-pound world champion.
00:55:43.000But all these people are complaining, like Tim Kennedy complaining, Stitch Duran complaining, he gets fired, all these fighters are complaining, lots of fighters are complaining, Brendan Shaw complaining, all these different guys complained.
00:55:54.000That's all negative press towards their brand.
00:56:09.000Is it good to see a big-name brand attached to a sport like the UFC? Absolutely!
00:56:15.000I feel like whenever you're in a situation where the fighters are going to lose money, that's always the number one concern that people have.
00:56:23.000Everybody knows the window of opportunity for a fighter is extremely small.
00:56:26.000Should have a few years to make some money.
00:56:28.000So when you take some of that money away from them, in favor of prestige, the prestige, which is inarguable, Reebok's a huge brand.
00:56:37.000It's great to be in business with a big brand.
00:56:39.000But if it costs fighters money, boy...
00:56:51.000It's bigger than anything, because if you bitch about something on Twitter and someone says, holy shit, Chris Bell just went off about that, and then some newspaper gets a hold of it, and then boom, it goes viral on Facebook, and people repost it and tweet it.
00:57:05.000And so anytime someone like Stitch gets fired because he said something about, hey, Reebok, this deal kind of sucks for me because now I'm not making as much money, so they fire him, and then all of a sudden, boom, that becomes a way bigger issue than it was just with him saying that.
00:57:19.000If he just said that and that was it, it would have been a small issue.
00:57:22.000But him saying that and then getting fired for it, it compounds the issue.
00:59:03.000Yeah, I've been at it for a long time.
00:59:04.000I started when I was 12. Two older brothers that are dicks that forced me to lift weights even though I was a pussy and I didn't fucking want to.
00:59:10.000Now what are those bench shirts, those vests?
00:59:16.000It's like wearing a denim jacket backwards is what it's like.
00:59:19.000Originally it was designed just to be protective and then people were like wait a second not only is it protective but I can lift more Wait with it.
00:59:27.000And so then they started making them more and more extreme.
00:59:29.000They used to be like one layer, then they started making two layers, and they started making them out of a pair of fucking jeans, and they started making them out of a canvas, and all kinds of weird different material.
00:59:37.000And it got to the point where people revolted against that, and now everybody lifts raw.
00:59:42.000Everybody lifts without the bench shirt.
00:59:42.000A lot of people lift raw because you could say, oh, how much do you bench?
01:00:05.000Well, what happened was, is there was a girl...
01:00:07.000That was trained in her gym, and she's running the squat rack.
01:00:11.000The squat rack is called a monolift, and when you release this lever so that I don't have to walk the weight backwards, you understand that?
01:00:20.000I don't have to walk the weight backwards, the lever moves out of the way, and I pick the weight up and go.
01:00:25.000The problem is, the girl's hot, and she's in a sundress.
01:00:28.000And I'm trying to I'm trying to fucking concentrate on a lift here and so a midway down on the squat one knee shoots out to left the other knee shoots out the other way and Next thing I know is on the fucking ground.
01:00:38.000So was it on your back or in front of you?
01:00:40.000Well, luckily I got kind of unloaded from the weight quickly it it fell back behind me and I fell forward I was fucked up for months from that.
01:01:17.000So why wouldn't the MRI reveal damage?
01:01:19.000Well, he was just saying, like, your knees are probably, there's probably slight tears here and there, you know, because I've had knee pain and all kinds of different things for years.
01:01:28.000So he was just saying, like, yeah, they're going to tell you that you're fucked up.
01:01:31.000He's like, what are you going to do about it?
01:01:32.000Well, shoulders are a big one for guys who bench that much, right?
01:01:56.000Yeah, I never tore it all the way through to where it was like bleeding down to the bicep and all that nasty shit that can happen with a torn pec.
01:02:01.000I did it with my tricep and it's brutal.
01:02:03.000Yeah, I've seen a lot of people that get the bicep where it curls up like a golf ball.
01:03:17.000We were talking about on the way up here is just slowing down in your workouts, just taking time to actually think about what you're doing all the time.
01:03:24.000There's 1,036 pounds and 1,085 pounds.
01:04:00.000Oh, yeah, that's Amadeo Novella, who is a trainer of some UFC fighters, Chad Mendes and Joseph Benavidez and a bunch of other small dudes that can fuck people up.
01:04:13.000Yeah, it's funny that they have a whole camp full of those dudes, isn't it?
01:04:21.000Yeah, and so when it happened, when I fell, it didn't hurt that bad initially.
01:04:28.000But then as time wore on, it got worse and worse and worse.
01:04:31.000The swelling just started getting fucking crazy.
01:04:32.000I stayed at the competition, and I'm a coach for all the athletes that are in that video, basically.
01:04:38.000And I stayed the whole time and helped everybody, just like I normally do.
01:04:42.000And then the next day, when I woke up, by the time I got home, I couldn't even...
01:04:48.000Couldn't even get upstairs to go to bed.
01:04:50.000I just fucking sat on the couch or sat on the chair and just slept in the chair for the night and slept right there for the next, like, two or three days.
01:04:57.000You know, one of the interesting aspects of your film was Louis Simmons.
01:06:30.000So that would probably aid in explosive shit like football or punching people.
01:06:34.000And then also a huge benefit of it is that the weight is lighter at the bottom.
01:06:38.000Same thing kind of happens with the slingshot.
01:06:39.000But with the weight being lighter at the bottom, it creates a safer environment because the bottom of a squat and the bottom of a bench press are kind of somewhat dangerous positions to be in.
01:07:12.000It was the only information on strength training in the entire world that a kid, 15 years old, growing up in Poughkeepsie, New York, could get his hands on.
01:07:20.000So I would read that, and I'd go to the gym, and I'd try out all these weird things, and people were like, what the fuck are you doing?
01:07:25.000And when I was a kid, I was squatting 500 for sets of eight reps, and people were like, what?
01:07:29.000He squatted 675 pounds in high school.
01:08:43.000But all you had to do was, like, clean up your diet.
01:08:45.000He's always had kind of a conflict with his, like, build.
01:08:48.000He's always been trying to get in better shape, and so I think that steroids is a quicker and easier route, in some cases, to get in a little bit better shape, you know?
01:08:57.000I totally understand that, but, I mean, you were...
01:10:59.000They're actually having, next week, next Monday, at the Comedy Store, there's a tribute to Rowdy Roddy Piper and all the people that knew him are going to come in and talk about him.
01:11:08.000I never got a chance to meet that guy.
01:12:50.000Well, he basically just told me the different moves he wanted to do, and I was like, all right, well, it just sounds like I'm not really getting in too many moves.
01:12:58.000Yeah, but what happened was, he did the superfly move, right?
01:15:42.000And they asked me to get behind it really early.
01:15:44.000So when I went down to their house to work on the movie...
01:15:47.000He's like, I'm going to take you through this yoga thing.
01:15:49.000And I'm like, okay, what is this bullshit?
01:15:51.000Within 10 minutes, he had a heart rate monitoring.
01:15:54.000My heart rate was up to 155. And he's like, okay, we got to slow you down to keep you at like 145. So this is like this constant cardio, flexing, moving, awesome yoga thing.
01:16:06.000That somebody like me needs for mobility.
01:16:08.000I think it's actually a really cool thing that he's doing.
01:17:31.000My dad has two fake hips now, but he didn't get them until way later.
01:17:34.000So what happened was, you know, who knows if wearing down to the hips, squatting all that much and whatever, I don't really blame it on powerlifting because I don't think that that's...
01:17:44.000Really the cause because there's a million power lifters out there and I'm the one with two fake hips, you know, so It's not like all this happens every power lifter, you know, it doesn't you think it has must have some effect I think everything has everything has an effect, you know, it's like they played football you wrestled shit like that.
01:17:59.000I mean, yeah, but he's he's He doesn't have two fake hips and he's the same genetics, you know, as you know, you know as me So I got it from my dad, you know, my dad has the same.
01:18:09.000What do they call what are they classified as?
01:18:35.000I've been in pain my whole life, you know, and there was a certain point when I got the hip surgery that I wasn't able to handle it anymore.
01:18:44.000And they started feeding me pills, you know, like crazy.
01:18:48.000And I got into that really hardcore because that was something that, you know, at first you do it because it helps the pain, and then after a while you do it because it's fun.
01:18:58.000So this is post Bigger Stronger Faster.
01:19:01.000Yeah, right after Bigger Stronger Faster.
01:19:02.000So after Bigger Stronger Faster, you get your double hip replacements, and then you have the pill problem.
01:19:15.000It's happened to a lot of people I know.
01:19:16.000Do you think a little bit of that had to do with, like, the recovery?
01:19:19.000Because you had both of them done rather than just, like, one of them done at a time?
01:19:22.000Yeah, I would always suggest to anybody that has to have double hip replacement surgery, get one done at a time because at least you have one side that's good and the other side that heals.
01:19:30.000He literally couldn't really move at all.
01:19:32.000I was sort of like in a point in my life where I'm like, you know what, just do it.
01:19:40.000And, whew, Jesus Christ, double hip replacement at 33. And if you don't know what a double hip replacement means, they cut off the top of the bone, and they literally have this long screw that they drive into the meat of the bone where the marrow is, and it locks in place this new fake hip.
01:20:09.000Yeah, they had complications with mine.
01:20:11.000So on one of the sides, they had complications getting it in, because they're like, oh, all this muscle from squatting, your ass is like a rock.
01:20:17.000So they're trying to, they had to pound it in with a hammer.
01:20:20.000It looked like, I saw the surgery, part of the surgery back on camera, and it looked like an auto body shop.
01:20:26.000It looked like they were fixing a car.
01:20:27.000Yeah, there's a video of Tito Ortiz getting his disc replaced in his neck.
01:22:10.000Let me find this picture real quick and I'll show it to you because it's one of those where I show people and they go, what am I looking at?
01:22:16.000He but anyway his scars on his knee it looks like like like you're gutting a fish Yeah, like they go all the way down the side of the knee and they opened it up and this was just in the 80s My dad has that my dad has you know fake knees also and he's got those big scars Man your dad's got it rough.
01:22:52.000I'm going to try to hold it off as long as possible and I think that the best way to go is trying new therapies like stem cells, other things that are coming out.
01:23:01.000I know that certain, there's actually a gel that they can put into your knee to replace cartilage.
01:23:10.000It's a very advanced technique that You know, they're just basically, they use very sparingly.
01:23:15.000Well, I know that they're doing, they have this new meniscus surgery that they're doing where they are taking this, like a scaffolding, and they implant it inside where your meniscus used to be with these proteins in it.
01:23:29.000And somehow or another, your body grows meniscus in this scaffolding.
01:25:40.000I even do seminars and stuff a lot for free.
01:25:42.000I just did one at a Deuces gym in Venice.
01:25:46.000And a lot of times I'll do some down in downtown LA at Barbell Brigade.
01:25:51.000But just if I'm in town somewhere, I'll just email the owner of the gym and just say, hey, I'd love to come in and Teach your people how to squat or deadlift, and they're like, okay, well, what does it cost?
01:26:09.000I just kind of have a passion for inspiring people and not so much just instructing them, because I think that the main message is to get people moving, get people doing shit, rather than just...
01:27:35.000And this is based on your experience in getting hooked on pain pills after you had your double hip replacement?
01:27:41.000Yeah, sort of based on a lot of people's experience.
01:27:42.000You know, after Bigger, Stronger, Faster, our older brother passed away about eight months after making that movie, and he had a really We're good to go.
01:31:00.000And if they don't ever reach it, they never feel satisfied.
01:31:03.000And the thing is that he, despite all that, he's like the nicest, like, coolest guy in the world and would have our backs, you know, on everything.
01:31:16.000They have good friends, and then they get into drugs, and then they don't have good friends, you know?
01:31:20.000So you have a lot of enabling people, a lot of people that will allow you to keep doing what you're doing, a lot of people that will put up with your bullshit.
01:31:29.000My father was somebody who put his foot down and was helping him get clean.
01:31:36.000Weren't able to catch it in time, you know, and so people are listening to this I think it's really important to talk about these issues It's just you know people want to always try to push these issues under the rug So if you know someone who's struggling try to your best to reach out to them and just see if you can get to the bottom of the problem I know it's the worst fucking thing in the world to try to approach somebody about it But see if you know whatever you think is a good way of going about doing it and try to reach out to the person because You don't know how much longer will be here for It's just so hard to get people to listen to you,
01:32:12.000I ended up, it's kind of crazy, halfway through this film that I was making, relapsing, and started popping Xanax and all sorts of other stuff.
01:32:22.000Halfway through the film on prescription drugs, you start relapsing.
01:33:53.000Like, when you made the film, you said, I want a lot of people to see the movie.
01:33:56.000What's interesting is your language, when you say it gave you this feeling of inadequacy, but isn't that maybe the way you approached it yourself?
01:34:05.000I mean, it seems like it's not giving you anything, right?
01:34:12.000You feel like, oh man, you know, and as many people tell you that you do good, You're still looking for like you said you're still searching for that thing so for me it was all about finding balance so when I Relapsed and realized I need help.
01:34:27.000That's I reached out I didn't really reach out like but once I once I knew I needed help and everybody sort of figured me out my girlfriend Helped me a lot with it.
01:34:36.000She sort of found me really fucked up one day Drunk and on on Xanax in the middle of the night and She called me.
01:34:45.000I don't really answer my phone a whole lot.
01:35:51.000His friend called me a few times and said, hey, man, you know, your brother's, you know, he's fucking up with some pills and doing this and that here and there.
01:35:59.000Then I would communicate with that person again, and I'd find out that he's doing a little bit better, and then he'd be doing a little bit worse.
01:36:06.000So it kind of went back and forth, and having my other brother die from it, I was like, fuck, man, I don't have the energy to fucking go down that road again.
01:37:50.000I can't even get my mind to stop racing.
01:37:53.000Thinking a lot of times, or so I thought.
01:37:56.000So I always thought that I needed something, whether it was alcohol, whether it was pills, and I realized through the whole journey that all I really needed was to believe in myself again, to believe in who I really was and what I started doing when I started out trying to make films in the first place and tell the truth and be honest.
01:38:13.000The problem was I couldn't be honest with myself.
01:38:15.000I had a real hard time being honest with myself, and that's what recovery has brought to me.
01:38:23.000I don't know how much he's allowed to talk about the film, but I'll talk about it a little bit.
01:38:26.000Yeah, he basically interviewed somebody for the film that ended up helping him.
01:38:32.000He interviewed this guy, Richard Tate, who owns a treatment center in Malibu.
01:38:37.000For his film, he researched it and they had like a 95% success rate with people that were there, I think for over 60 days or something like that, correct?
01:40:34.000You go sit in a group with people that are fucked up and you talk about your problems.
01:40:39.000And in a good facility, they had such good counselors there that these people, it was more about being loved again, feeling part of your...
01:41:02.000So to be away from your family and this whole time and not feel like any love from the world is a tough thing.
01:41:09.000A lot of people don't really express that.
01:41:11.000It might sound kind of wimpy or something like that, but it's true.
01:41:14.000There was no feeling of comfort or safety or security in anything that I did.
01:41:21.000So regaining that through being around people with like-minded experiences.
01:41:26.000And there's just some counselors there that will break you.
01:41:31.000There's people that go there, hardcore heroin addicts, that will sit there in group therapy and not want to be Analyzed you know and these guys will break them down until they're you know punching pillows and shit saying this is my father and that you fucking piece of shit,
01:41:50.000It's like it's a really intense Therapeutic thing that allows you To see yourself in a different way and it's a very humbling the number one thing is I The number one thing that I had on my side was a desperation to get better It was one of the fucked-up parts of the film bigger stronger faster was your dad saying they knew that your older brother was gonna die that way and To go through that and then to have your brother die that way and then for you to get hooked on pills yourself That
01:42:20.000that had to been a helpless feeling well, that's why I felt like I couldn't tell anybody So I went to my parents and I was doing an interview with them and I really wanted to tell them But I was like, you know, I don't know if I can tell them so early on in the movie Before I before I had relapsed I said hey listen,
01:42:38.000I had a problem with this My mom cries and she's like well, why didn't you tell me?
01:42:42.000I'm like how am I supposed to tell you you just lost a son?
01:42:44.000I'm gonna tell you like I'm gonna go you know next or you're gonna worry about me Because I'm not there, you know what is if you can Try to describe what is the feeling like when you want to take that shit when you want to take a pain pill like what what is There's no feeling.
01:43:11.000It's a pathway, a neurological pathway.
01:43:15.000You just talked about before Brock Lesnar, somebody got a hold of him and built those punches and kicks into his system, right?
01:43:21.000It becomes ingrained and built in your system.
01:43:23.000It becomes a neurological pathway in your brain, and you tend to habituate the things that make you feel good.
01:43:30.000You know, so that's just something that an addict will do more so than other people.
01:43:35.000You're saying that like this is a very distinct black and white thing that it's not the addict's fault, but the addict has to be sober first before they can get fucked up, right?
01:45:27.000You get the hip replacement surgery the first time, then you get hooked on pills, then you get off pills, but two years later, they want to reopen you up.
01:46:06.000Yeah, it's a really up and down thing.
01:46:07.000So there's a drug called Suboxone, and Suboxone sort of mimics the way that a painkiller will feel in your body, but it doesn't get you high.
01:46:18.000It'll just basically make you not feel sick.
01:46:20.000So that's the biggest problem is withdrawals.
01:46:24.000It's like the flu times 100. So the thing is that when you're coming off them and you want to get on Suboxone, so my insurance would cover all the pills.
01:46:33.000So there was 10 bucks a pop, you know, 10 bucks for like 180 pills of Percocet or Vicodin or whatever the drug I was taking.
01:46:41.000When I wanted to get off of them, I had to consult with a doctor every month for $250 and I had to pay about $225 to $250 for the drug and insurance doesn't cover any of that.
01:47:08.000I mean, like, if you look at it, if you want to, it's like, you know, like, yes, if you take painkillers, it's your fault for getting addicted, kind of.
01:47:19.000But if you actually look at the history of Oxycontin, that drug was designed to hook people on drugs.
01:47:24.000What's basically very similar to heroin.
01:47:27.000The drug company that made it, Purdue Pharmaceuticals, they lied.
01:48:30.000So, the feeling that you get, like, when you have this relapse with Xanax, the feeling that you get, is it just, do you just feel helpless?
01:48:45.000Yeah, like, for example, so Xanax was a drug that would help me.
01:48:50.000I would drink a lot, you know, like I wasn't because I was an addict.
01:48:56.000He'd kind of drink to the point where, you know, it was compromising the next day type of thing, and then also you ended up in the hospital a couple times from drinking.
01:49:04.000I ended up with some serious bouts of drinking, but it wasn't like...
01:49:07.000Nobody really knows this, but I went to the urgent care or emergency room, I think 10 times within a matter of like 20 days.
01:49:16.000Yeah, because I'd go to urgent care and I'd go get Xanax because I had hangovers so bad because I would drink so much, you know, and it was continuous like every day.
01:49:47.000That wasn't something even on my radar when I did Bigger, Stronger, Faster.
01:49:51.000I would drink here and there, but I should have known back then because when I did drink, it was like binge drinking, and that's when you know That you'll probably have a problem somewhere down the road.
01:50:01.000If you're the guy that drinks once a month, but you get completely hammered, you know that you might have a problem.
01:50:08.000I wasn't the guy that could ever put it down.
01:50:10.000So what does it feel like to make a documentary about prescription drugs while you're hooked on prescription drugs?
01:51:45.000What happened to me was in the third, so you asked how they helped me, and I could tell you that I think part of it, a big, huge part of it, they talk about like AA and all these other programs and everything, everybody talks about a spiritual awakening.
01:51:58.000So like the third day that I was in rehab, I went and took a shower, and it was like, I don't know, four o'clock in the morning or something.
01:52:05.000I couldn't even, couldn't sleep or anything, and I went in the shower and I just cried for like three hours.
01:52:26.000It wasn't it wasn't anybody else really, you know another thing that happened to him in treatment was Cliffside Malibu is beautiful multi-million dollar facility.
01:52:36.000It's in fucking Malibu, California, which is beautiful But I think once you were there for like two weeks they took you away from there and threw in some shithole, right?
01:52:44.000Yeah, what happened was so I was there for I personally think it's all part of the plan, but yeah, I was there for ten days and and after ten days I was being helped by the facility.
01:52:58.000So since they were helping me out because I was part of this movie and the guy just had compassion for me, Richard Tate, and wanted to see me get better.
01:53:06.000The guy was suspicious that you had a problem when you came there the first time to interview him anyway, right?
01:53:55.000I mean, I walked in there and saw this guy with no teeth, and he's like scratching his nuts, and he's like, you're not gonna like it in here!
01:55:08.000And then when they had room for me back at Cliffside, I ended up going back to Malibu and living out the rest of it in Malibu.
01:55:17.000And what was really nice about that was I was still able to work.
01:55:20.000So I was going to treatment every day for three hours in the morning, and then I would drive to, like, LA, and I would work on the movie the rest of the time.
01:55:29.000It's pretty twisted, but it all worked out.
01:55:32.000But you pretty much feel like you were done after you went to that shithole, right?
01:55:58.000Drives people every day to do bad shit, you know, and continued support, right?
01:56:03.000Yeah, you basically just need yeah, you know basically like a lot of it's set off by trauma like things that happened in your life a lot of it's You know, but I didn't really have that like one main trauma That like set it off people go.
01:56:18.000I think well that was it wasn't as traumatic as it sounds like of course it's Traumatic, but but I was I was doing stuff before that so what was before that?
01:56:27.000I don't even know maybe the hip surgery didn't seem to me I think a big part of it for me Was having the hip surgery took away something that I really loved which was like lifting You know something that like if you couldn't fight anymore you'd fucking hate it You know you'd be like bummed grumpy because it was a part of you just in your everyday life and now it was gone and Yeah,
01:56:45.000and it might sound stupid, but it's part of it's something that you do, you know?
01:57:00.000And you didn't think about maybe, like, trying something healthy and trying to, like, engineer your life in some sort of a way where you do something positive?
01:57:08.000Okay, so when you take away working out, what's healthy?
01:57:12.000Well, you couldn't do any working out?
01:57:38.000They moved to California, but we all live in Northern California.
01:57:41.000And when it came to, like, holidays and some different things, I mean, we'd call him and communicate with him a little bit here and there, but, you know, he kind of just seemed like he didn't give a fuck.
01:57:51.000No, he's in L.A. Yeah, he's in L.A., yeah.
01:57:54.000Yeah, so he was only in L.A., and we were in Sacramento, but it wasn't, you know, not that far.
01:57:58.000It's a one-hour flight or whatever, but we'd communicate with him here and there and just, you know, even, like, on his birthday or something, call him or whatever the case might be, and then he'd come up to Sacramento or I'd come down here and We'd meet up with each other here or there, but we just didn't really realize how severe the situation was in terms of just his,
01:58:22.000Somebody doesn't just, like, pour out their fucking feelings.
01:58:24.000They're like, oh, I'm doing good, you know?
01:58:26.000And they just leave it at that, and you kind of move on to the next thing.
01:58:28.000I have people that are in my film that have relapsed.
01:58:31.000You know since the film and I have people that I have a guy who I had to get a release for the film like somehow somebody slipped up and didn't didn't get a release for the film and Just like this is like two days ago.
01:58:43.000I have a guy who who relapsed and he's all fucked up We're trying to get a release of the film.
01:58:47.000We can't even get in touch with him So I did send somebody to his house and then we found out that he's Relapsed and he's a mess and he needs treatment, too.
01:58:55.000So it's like this it's a dangerous powerful And part of the whole program is helping other people.
01:59:35.000When somebody has something like that, you kind of feel like they have cancer or something and you don't know how to help them.
01:59:41.000A lot of people just think, like, oh, I can help him.
01:59:43.000Like, hey, if we go, like, work out together, if we hang out together, if we go eat together, like, that shit will be fun and, like, take his mind off it.
02:04:59.000They figured out ways, special ways to make it out of other things that are like normal bases and change the chemical makeups of them somehow.
02:05:08.000We're too stupid for this conversation, aren't we?
02:05:25.000How strange, man, that we live in a world where 200 million prescriptions for super highly addictive pain pills get prescribed in a year.
02:05:35.000And we're supposed to be like an educated country and stuff too.
02:05:37.000And you think that like that's an epidemic and you look at what we're prescribing to the kids.
02:05:41.000We're giving kids, you know, Adderall, Ritalin, and that's, you know, five million prescriptions written for that for kids every year, you know.
02:05:55.000I have a mom in my film, and she has a daughter that has ADHD, and so she brings her to the, you know, psychiatrist or whatever, and they prescribe her ADHD pills, you know, Adderall, and the mom starts taking it.
02:06:09.000And then the mom convinces the daughter she doesn't have ADHD and she shouldn't take it.
02:06:13.000So then the mom starts taking the other kids.
02:07:16.000You know, when I talked about Purdue Pharmaceuticals and OxyContin and how that invaded America and all that stuff like that, if you look at it, the government at some certain point...
02:07:25.000Got fed up with it and they said, listen, people are dying, right?
02:07:29.000So it's cool that you guys are selling all these drugs and everything.
02:07:32.000We'll take your lobby money, but people are dying.
02:07:48.000So what they did, what happened After they figured out how you couldn't crush it and snort it anymore, once they did that, the sales dropped 80%.
02:08:28.000Here's the problem with a study, right?
02:08:31.000So everybody wants to think that they read the studies and the studies are good and the studies are valid.
02:08:36.000What happens is you need two studies that prove that your pill is more effective than a placebo.
02:08:43.000Not more effective than anything that's on the market.
02:08:46.000Just more effective than a placebo to get your drug passed.
02:08:49.000So it costs a lot of money and a lot of money through the FDA and a lot of testing and all these things, but it's still not very hard to get a drug passed.
02:08:58.000They just passed one called Zyhydro, and it's more powerful than OxyContin.
02:09:05.000So now there's another drug on the market that's more powerful.
02:10:38.000Yeah, I definitely have known a lot of alcoholics, and I know a lot of people, like more than half a dozen people whose lives have been wrecked by pills.
02:11:06.000I always just used to think, like, well, if I could just be on these forever, because I still have a lot of pain in my back and my hips, and, like, not in the hips necessarily, but, like, in the lower back because of the hips were messed up and because my knees are messed up and still have a lot of pain.
02:11:20.000But I know that what happens with the pain pills are it's diminishing returns.
02:16:58.000So then he'll be going, now that he's a born-again Christian, he'll be like telling me, look, bro, now that you're sober, now you need God.
02:17:05.000And he'll be like, look at this chick's tits that just texted me.
02:17:07.000It's like, he's such a walking contradiction.
02:18:07.000Yeah, so if you want to see what can be done about it, first of all, just ban advertising on TV for drugs because that just creates an environment where people go into the doctor and tell them what they have.
02:18:47.000That's one thing, but I think also education is the most important thing that we can have for anything, whether it's steroids, whether it's prescription drugs.
02:19:04.000You've been doing a documentary about all the different components of addiction, of selling these pills, and yet you still got sucked into the web.
02:20:16.000Just the fact that you have this free gym and these free seminars, and I saw in the documentary that you really love working with kids and helping them out.
02:20:26.000Yeah, I think seeing my older brother, like, he just, like, his life was really hard, and he had to, like, evade stuff and lie and, like, go through all these crazy things all the time.
02:20:43.000Yeah, because of the pills, and it also put a lot of heartache and stuff on a lot of other people, so it sort of made me go the other direction.
02:20:50.000You know, like, sometimes people have...
02:20:52.000A parent that's an alcoholic or a parent that abuses them and it makes that person go the complete opposite way and then other times you have someone who has a parent that's an alcoholic and they end up becoming the same thing.
02:21:04.000I think for me it just made me steer clear of that.
02:21:06.000I just remember like seeing my brother like hide alcohol like in bushes and shit like that from my parents and lie to my parents and my parents are About as awesome of parents as you can have.
02:21:18.000So I was always just like, man, that just seems like a lot of extra work to go through.
02:21:22.000Even if you told them that you were having a drink, they probably wouldn't care.
02:21:26.000Not like they would be like, hey, go for it, man.
02:21:28.000They're not going to be like your buddy and have a drink with you.
02:21:30.000But at the same time, I don't think our parents would really care, especially if they were in the house.
02:21:34.000They'd probably be like, fuck it, man.
02:21:36.000I'd rather have you doing it here safe.
02:21:38.000I know you're not driving and causing a lot of other problems.
02:21:40.000So I just saw a lot of baggage that came with all that shit.
02:23:56.000I wonder if it's the responsibility of having children.
02:23:59.000Yeah, it's having somebody else in my life that cares about me, somebody else that's supportive, and she's as much as part of the company's success as I am, so all that definitely plays into it.
02:24:11.000That's such a scary number of the 8.76 million people that are abusing it and that being 2010 and not knowing what it is in 2015. That's terrifying to me.
02:24:22.000The idea that we could be in that state and it's sort of like something that flies under the radar for the most part unless you know somebody and then you think of that person as an isolated incident.
02:24:31.000You think that person's crazy or that person's doing it, like you said, doing it to themselves.
02:24:35.000There is definitely personal responsibility in all of this, whatever it is.
02:24:41.000But at a certain point, when things are so addictive that people don't really know about it or the doctors are just handing them out like crazy, for a while, a couple years ago, and they shut these all down, there were pill mills.
02:26:05.000Yeah, while we had Nancy Reagan, you know, up there saying, you know, just say no, her husband's lifting the bans on big business that allowed the pharmaceutical companies to grow so big.
02:26:17.000Wow, so this documentary, the newest one, what takes place in it that you found was shocking?
02:26:26.000Going through this journey of putting together this documentary, was there anything that shocked you?
02:26:32.000Yeah, a lot of the numbers, but also I interviewed this woman, Gwen Olson.
02:26:37.000Gwen Olson used to be a pharmaceutical sales rep that quit when her daughter killed herself on psych meds.
02:26:48.000And just meeting somebody who actually worked through the system to know that people in the pharmaceutical companies get pumped up when they have a new drug coming out that can actually fix the side effects of another drug they already have on the market.
02:27:04.000And they're so excited because they know how much money they're going to make off of this.
02:27:49.000The way we fix problems is not to bribe congressmen.
02:27:52.000I think that that's a huge thing, and a huge thing is for regular, average, everyday citizens to say no to what's going on and stop and write to their congressmen and make us think.
02:28:32.000Costco is like all going organic now because people want it.
02:28:35.000So if people want, you know, a drug free society, a society where their kids aren't dying and killing each other over drugs, a society where people can live in peace and harmony and not have their families ruined by these problems, they can they can basically start that front, you know, just like they did with all these other things.
02:28:52.000It's a groundswell, you know, it's like something that has to start.
02:28:56.000I just don't know how you would ever stop that amount of money.
02:29:00.000It seems like the amount of money is so fucking terrifying and that these companies can just live with themselves.
02:29:05.000It's so bizarre that they can justify the production of these fucking pills when they know that 9 million people, or whatever the number is, are abusing them just in this country alone.
02:29:15.000A massive amount of the drugs on the market, pharmaceuticals, they don't even work.
02:29:20.000You know, they're not proven effective.
02:29:23.000The psych meds that we put our kids on were never tested on kids.
02:29:27.000So if it's not tested on a kid, don't give it to my kid.
02:29:30.000That's what people need to start saying.
02:29:36.000Everybody wants to make the exception.
02:29:38.000Every parent I talk to says, yeah, yeah, but my kid's different because I put him on Adderall and now he's fine rather than to search out all the other options.
02:29:46.000I think people want to try to solve stuff with money or with a pill rather than with their time.
02:30:10.000The idea of sitting in a classroom, especially with some fucking teacher that's unmotivated.
02:30:15.000You sit there and you're just supposed to absorb these numbers.
02:30:18.000For just fucking hours on end, day after day.
02:30:19.000There's a lot of people that's just, they're not designed for that, yet they would thrive doing something in life.
02:30:25.000They just have to figure out what that something is.
02:30:28.000They can absolutely contribute and just not care about geometry or not care about history or not care about whatever it is that's uninspired.
02:30:46.000And that's like with him, you know, he always had trouble in school, learning disabled, diagnosed with all these learning disables, put in a class with the kids that eat glue and all that stuff.
02:30:55.000Like, the typical case of that, you know, and he's become, you know, very successful off of passion.
02:31:01.000If you just find what it is you're really good at.
02:31:04.000People have different personalities and there's different occupations.
02:31:08.000You just got to figure out what works for you.
02:31:11.000All that aside, the sheer numbers of the drugs is what's freaking me out in this conversation.
02:31:19.000This almost seems like some crazy plague that no one's talking about.
02:31:44.000We haven't announced a release date yet, but Samuel Goldwyn's the one that's putting it out, Samuel Goldwyn Company.
02:31:50.000So it'll get a theatrical release and it'll get a big digital release, so we're excited about that.
02:31:54.000Well, let me know when that happens and I'd be happy to tweet about it and let everybody know about it and put it up on Facebook and whatnot.
02:32:28.000You're really close to getting something made.
02:32:30.000And, you know, finally, after a while, like nothing was happening.
02:32:33.000And I said, if anything in life is going to happen for me, I need to make it happen.
02:32:37.000I can't be sitting here waiting for somebody to go, you know, I really like your script.
02:32:41.000I'm going to make it or blah, blah, blah, blah.
02:32:42.000So long story short, Bigger, Stronger, Faster was...
02:32:47.000The brainchild of me and my partners Alex Buono and Tamsin Buono, they were a couple that had experience with documentaries and stuff like that.
02:32:57.000And just through conversations with them, we're like, fuck it, let's go make this on our own.
02:33:01.000So we raised all the money, we went out and we made it on our own.
02:33:05.000The second film I did was called Trophy Kids.
02:33:07.000I did that with Peter Berg, who was the executive producer of that.
02:33:10.000And that was a film that, because of Bigger, Stronger, Faster, Pete's like, hey, I want to work with you.
02:33:15.000So we did a movie about crazy sports parents that ended up on HBO. And that'll actually be available on demand November 17th.
02:34:32.000Yeah, in reality, Jon Jones is going to be Jon Jones coming out of the womb, you know, killing you.
02:34:37.000Yeah, the thing about the trophy kids or the thing about parents that are really into that that's always disturbing is it seems like they're trying to live their lives, their failures, through the kid.
02:34:47.000Like they want to sort of reimagine their own life and have some success through the kid's work.
02:34:53.000I have a basketball dad who's like, you know, he'll say, I say, do you think you're living vicariously through your son?
02:34:59.000He's like, not vicariously, man, directly.
02:35:02.000I'm in every shot, in each move, in each go, and that's why the referees make me want to pull my hair out, or in my case, make me pull their hair out.
02:35:10.000It's like, you're listening to this going, you're fucking crazy.
02:35:37.000Mark and Tom Mernovich, which is another similar story, but to the extreme.
02:35:41.000It's a great movie that ESPN did as part of 30 for 30, which I actually pitched them that.
02:35:47.000I pitched them that before they did it, so that somebody else had pitched it, I guess, right around the same time, and they did a great job with it.
02:35:55.000Yeah, and it's a very disturbing story, but it really highlights the problem because here you've got a guy who's an all-time great NFL strength and conditioning coach, understands the science of strength and conditioning and preparing someone for a sport almost better than anybody,
02:37:53.000When I had a passion to make films and do that stuff, it was sort of hard to tell everybody, like, hey man, I don't really care that much about lifting anymore, I want to go this way, or whatever.