Just Chill with Oliver George #66 - Alex Wood

we don't have to fight but we don't have to kill everybody in the wide world really just needs to chill no we don't have to fuss no no no hello everybody welcome back to another episode of just chill with oliver george this is episode 66 and it is also the season premiere for season three my guest is someone i've been trying to get on here for a very long time a very funny comic and i just finished reading his amazing book which we will obviously get to but before we get into it i want to remind you if you're watching on youtube right now and you would prefer an audio only version you can get that on spotify apple podcast iheartradio and other places like that if you're listening on one of those though and you didn't realize there was a visual side to the show please come check it out on youtube while you're there if you would subscribe it really does mean a lot to me we recently hit a thousand subscribers and it really warms my heart so if you've supported the show in any way thank you so much if you want to reach out to me maybe with a cool guest idea or some general feedback you can hit me up at justchillpodcasting gmail.com while you're there let me know if you're interested in one of these uh show logo stickers and i'll mail you one for free now back to the man of the hour as i was mentioning a very funny comedian you've performed at just for laughs on more than one occasion massey hall you've had an article featured in vice you've got a successful podcast and now this book i'm so happy to have you here alex wood thanks and for coming on thanks for having me i am absolutely astounded by how professional this whole thing is thank you man it is something else i can't this is look at this look at this prep work this is unbelievable i never you're single yeah yeah there you see i don't even this is the one pointing directly at me and i'm like where's my camera look at this this is crazy you're you're very impressive yeah oh my god man there's a lot that's even really nice oh really thank you i always write in caps i don't know i read a lot of comic books so kind of just where my mind goes when i start writing um dude well thank you because you're a professional and you know watching your comedy and reading your book i'm really enamored with this book right now i just just wrapped it a couple days ago and i was already in deep but the ending threw me for some loops too so i do really want to get into that but first off just how are you man like you're in ottawa back back where your roots are from yeah man it's nice like just doing uh you know absolute this week i'm headlining and it's like the club that i really for the first time ever felt like it's like oh [ __ ] i don't suck at this like i'm not i'm god awful at this because it was like probably the 10th set i ever did was there and i went into it like okay i've heard that this place is great i'm quitting tonight if i don't do really well high stakes and then the first two people that night still i've never seen anybody have this bad of a set on a wednesday two people like just tanked and so did the host and i was like this is just like every other spot i'm gonna bomb and then yeah i had so much fun and was like okay all right and then i've been chasing that dragon ever since instantly hooked wow and well that's interesting you brought up that you're at absolute because you recently parted ways with yuck yucks right yeah wow yeah i mean it's like kyle brownrigg also did the same thing recently friend of the show yeah well i i left in august i was with yuck yucks for like 10 years i still uh have like fun memories of all this [ __ ] i mean massey hall a lot of the stuff you just mentioned was was through them and i mean i've always just been like this uh like canada is so shitty for comedy like i don't have ill will towards oh no personally some comedians yes very much so i don't want to pretend that that's not true but like for like entities or properties i want them all to do well i have no like team allegiance anything i'm so glad that no i was just a fan of comedy yeah i want yuck to have like 60 locations i want absolute to have 60 locations amen yeah the rumors everything like places i've never played i get so sad when comedy clubs close in canada cause i was like [ __ ] we don't have a lot yeah well you never thought about making the move to the states because of those reasons or i have a lot um i'm even i guess kind of kicking tires on it again right now it's just so difficult i don't understand where the money comes from i order uber eats too much [Music] i'm a fraud this book of self-restraint is all [ __ ] i i should have enough money to go there too but i'm like wow i just really have spent that much on takeout over the last like savings hard man it's so incremental you really gotta you know be disciplined with that mm-hmm yeah i should uh get a nap or something forwards like we got them for everything else yeah exactly i'm sure there's one out there like hey before you like order donuts from mcdonald's who the [ __ ] does that they suck too they're not even that good well i like them and i don't know why because they're small so i'm like yeah yeah exactly exactly you understand so yeah that's how i'll save once i stop eating mcdonald's donuts i would go to america a lot of my friends have done well there and they have fun there and like i've always wanted to live in new york city so i felt like i feel like i could move there um that's the nice thing about uh you know some of the bad [ __ ] you were talking about from the book trauma has this way of like really lowering your life expectations too so i've always was like if i could just live in new york everyone else is like oh if i could go to new york and and take over the scene there or something like if i could not die for five years in new york and live there not even making any money just don't if i could be there for five years that would be like the achievement of my life like you could tell you were passionate about the city when i read the parts about it in the book like you were so stoked to be there when you finally got to go i mean i don't know how you're not there's like so few things in life that live up to the hype i said it's like for me it's like the sopranos pizza the simpsons and new york city ninja turtles like actually kind of vegas too vegas is also oh yeah [ __ ] that's in there too but uh yeah there's fun vegas isn't as much of like a comedy mecca as uh no but i was surprised how now granted i would i have no interest in never going back unless it was for a fight to watch now but um at the time when i was still like using and drinking i was like oh this place is as great as everybody says it is i'm sure everyone's having their own like movie in like their little like oh it was such a crazy night we did this we did this we did this do you think you could have fun sober or anyone could have fun sober in vegas though or something other people there's so much to do there but for me it was so like i mean i literally thought about not going home i was like i don't why am i wasting my life trying to get to a place where i'm like can have uh like 20 to 40 drinks a day and nothing else and i was like oh [ __ ] i didn't realize you could do that here like okay guys you can play gambling games at like four in the morning buy like one case of water and sell each bottle for two dollars you're good you can live off 48 a day and i could have at the time i should say i'd say you like the royal you yeah yeah i could have lived off 48 a day in vegas for years years well unless something killed you if you overindulged or something like that actually that's a really good point i mean i could see a lot of people oding in vegas it seems like a hot spot for that so when i i don't know what it would be like now but when i was there this is a before fence and all uh i was trying to grab cocaine off this guy he's like i only have weed by the way don't get cocaine off of anybody here and i was like why and he's like street cocaine in vegas is like half it's like this uh he said it's this air conditioning powder from overseas so it's this white powder that is like used for air conditioners i don't know what they do in airplanes but and it's like it like has a lot of the similar properties of coke and like you'll get that numbness if you put it on your gums yeah uh just like though oh and obviously not i mean i read a stat that like 80 of street coke in north america has uh at least trace amounts of battery acid good lord and apparently that like is very important in like one of the production methods anyway so i i've told that to people who were like on the you know um supply side and they were like oh yeah that's that makes sense i was like what that's brutal dude so anyways yeah vegas coke is like mostly that air conditioning fluid and then i eventually got cocaine later that night and i was like oh [ __ ] he wasn't lying but it's still i still like it it's not too bad it's not that bad i've heard they uh cut lots of things with um i mean i dabbled in some things when i was younger for sure and and one thing was cut with uh fructose or some some sort of white powder that you're like it's kind of orangey when you got the drips or whatever you know it was like that was a nice little do the listeners know who's behind the uh tech side of this um my dad's never been on camera i don't think but they do know it's your dad yeah yeah that's awesome he has a mic yeah you were just like i used to you know i i won't say exactly how much heroin i shot into my dick but well he probably wasn't privy to all of the specifications i'm sure there have been some things i've said on the podcast where you've been like oh [ __ ] i wasn't aware of that but they knew in high school i gave them a run for their money for sure with you know coming home drunk all the time and smelling like wheat all the time they definitely knew that stuff was up uh but i had very brief interactions with harder drugs i mean i did lots of shrooms and stuff but if we're talking cocaine and stuff like that i maybe a couple months when i was 18 and then one really bad experience and i was like all right [ __ ] this is not for me because i'm gonna get hooked i was like i know i'm gonna get sucked into this it was just i have an addictive personality to some degree too so um yeah yeah you know the truth i keep learning new things what a great voice and what a perfect choice of words that was it's true though like you'll find out like oh you remember that thanksgiving yeah it was on acid or something that's good [ __ ] yeah well i don't think i told you that actually that was more something that a friend brought up to me and it was kind of like a weird flashback kind of thing that i knew i had done acid when i was in grade nine or something i knew the friend i had done it with but i had completely like removed it from my memory database for whatever reason that it was thanksgiving too yeah he told me like oh no we were at this baseball diamond and then it sort of just started flooding back to me and he's like you had this dinner to go to i think it was thanksgiving and then the more details he kind of filled in the more that everything kind of flooded back as much as i could remember but this is i mean i must have dad this is the coolest [ __ ] ever that's so funny it was probably a half tab or i tried many times and i got ripped off with like face fake pieces of paper and [ __ ] you know people would put like it was like one guy gave me a decal for a warhammer guy i was oh man that's so funny no acid was the one that always scared me like i was just like i don't want to have a bad trip that sounds quite uncomfortable if you watch fear and loathing or something right and i was always big on stimulants and um even opioids i liked better than i mean would go stimulate stimulants for me and then downers and then psychedelics yeah psychedelics hallucinatories if that's even a word well with acid you see at least in movies and stuff it's like the one drug they really portray as you're gonna see stuff that is absolutely not there like donald duck's gonna walk up to you or some [ __ ] like that whereas shrooms it's like oh the room is breathing with me i can wrap my head around that you know but it's not as bad as as they describe acid generally speaking mike mcdonald had like one of the best jokes about acid it was like i don't understand why people don't think it's their favorite drug let's look at other drugs cost 300 lasts a couple hours or even less cost seven dollars you're high for a day yeah and then you can get high 20 years later out of nowhere that's return that's maybe not great depending on the situation but when you get a flashback you know at somebody's wedding or something maybe that's not so a platoon but yeah uh hallucinations in general are very uncomfortable whether auditory or visual if it's something scary for sure visuals i never had anything scary a lot of like it was more like uh lights [Music] when they would flash back and [ __ ] that was weird i'd be like at a call center like totally feeling fine and then like oh jesus christ like just flashing wild as lights damn yeah strobing kind of yeah uh and then like trails from things like out of nowhere like tracers or whatever yeah yeah like i really gotta chill out on some [ __ ] when you were talking about um the nasty stuff they might be cutting coke with it made me think of a drug that we did in high school have you ever done poppers oh yeah you know the [ __ ] it's like a vial you just smell it and it smells like oh no i thought i would poppers was always you cut a little bit of the cigarette for us was cut a little bit of cigarette off put it in a bong and then it makes it you gotta like it the weeds very difficult to pull through oh and it gets tighter and tighter and tighter until it actually pops through and then you get a cherry huge [ __ ] hit huh and you have to smoke cigarettes to be able to handle it because you also like that cigarette and that's what eventually but it's just a way of making you light the entire it's actually exposes how like if you're if you're smoking weed out of a bong do you pull through uh it depends how how big the initial i was always a pull through guy because i liked it i felt it was more impactful but you weigh so much weed that way definitely yeah you waste so much weed that way and i still was like i don't care i'll just [ __ ] buy more it's worth it for that huge pop like filter the screen i never thought like i got a good enough rip yeah so poppers give you that huge rip still but you light all the weed because the cigarette's blocking it until all the lee or the weed has been lit enough that it can pass through and then you have to light the cigarette part at the very end i'm amazed i've never heard of that oh you got to rip it for like i know gravity bombs and [ __ ] oh poppers are big sorry but what are smell poppers yeah so um i'm surprised you never heard of them but i guess they're not that popular it was uh i guess early 2000s and my friends the only place they could buy them was at the gay pride store because gay guys were known to use them as muscle relaxants because it makes you feel kind of uh to facilitate you know all in business isn't it animal nitrate thank you i was going to say bueno nitrate for something it's ammo nitrate so yeah it smells like very chemically you smell this and you're like oh this is like to clean vcrs or something like it's very not something you should probably be inhaling and it would always have um you know like those old batman punchy type symbols would always say bang and they were like different flav not flavors but different strains you would almost call them and you would get if you had too much bang you would get immune to it and you'd have to switch to rush and there was all these different ones i don't know man someone knows what i'm talking about wow i never thought there could be a dumber like potency description than uh salvia oh salvia 10 x 20 x 30 x my friend i was explaining salvia to him i was like oh man it was so much fun you got to do it and then he's like what the [ __ ] salvia what the hell is this and i was like look there's just do like 10x he's like what the hell are you talking about i was like i remember it goes in different strengths so it's 10x 20x and 30x and you just said the [ __ ] is an x what does an x mean what does it represent and i was like i don't know how [ __ ] up it gets you're an idiot just do it i always thought it was x10 like times 10 times 20 as far as potency or whatever the drug levels were in it or something yeah i mean i i i don't think they knew have you done something i think x was oh yeah it's so [ __ ] weird i thought it was weird i didn't enjoy it much i loved it to be honest with you i loved it i only did it once um and it made people go catatonic and i would see people drooling and then like two minutes later you're back to normal and i was like all right oh i would see for me i got the laughs like it was the hardest laugh attack in my life i ripped it out of a bong uh which kids is the only way to smoke salvia yeah and it's gonna be very hot yeah and um yeah my friends were sitting across from me on the couch i was on like a chair i got the magnet thing like everybody has happened right and then after that went away i was like oh that's cool and then it felt so tangible like you know when you're on drugs i was like oh like this feeling is in the air i could grab it there i felt judgment off yeah and i went to tell them like guys it honestly feels right now like i'm on trial and you're the jury sitting across from me like and you're and i go to tell them this and halfway through just burst into laughter like commit this man laughter like that kind and they went for like 10 minutes straight and then just stopped and then i felt like a gross kind of hangover for like an hour hour and 15 minutes and then that dropped out of nowhere too and i was like this truck kicks ass because yeah i found it gave me ins almost instant feelings of distress when i did it it was like everything kind of just like warped and i couldn't get words out right and i've seen a lot of people in even worse shape from it it's a weird drug and it was in this sweet spot where it was legal so people were trying to you know you could buy it at like skateboard shops yeah or earls head shops whatever yeah it was a very weird drug is it illegal now you think probably i think it is i think they got on that while i was still a young chap yeah it's heavy duty well because that's why i probably didn't do it that much i heard so many people starting to be like oh yeah like you didn't hear what happened to like a guy school over and it was like we were we all saw it happen like he was sobbing crying for like 15 minutes saw horror stories yeah and then when it went away he was like so weird for like another couple hours and then that person was like i don't want to talk about it and i was like well i mean i'm really enjoying all the other drugs i'm doing maybe i don't like [ __ ] that's why like you know psychedelics i was always like the other ones you know it's funny because obviously you'd obviously with alcohol and i mean all of them but i was like i don't know like those are the ones that make you lose control i'm like [ __ ] yeah driving without a driver's license to like steal money from my mom to buy cocaine and i'm like oh those drugs make you really out of control i wouldn't want to make any bad decisions [Laughter] my faculties are in order right now and i'm i'm making nothing but right life choices well that's that's why i uh liked versus salvia going back to that that's why i i preferred poppers when i was doing those things was because there was a very similar experience of getting really high for a very short period of time and then feeling pretty much sober pretty quickly after except the buzz was just better i just felt like it was pleasure instead of kind of this panicky feeling that i got from salvia so poppers i mean i'm gonna look it up yeah i heard the guy from psum41 talking about them once in an interview and i was like okay he knows that's a very jaxx thing or no where the hell are they they're from they are from yeah avril was from napanee there you go yeah that's a very ajax uh uh move right there a drug that's like oh i'm gonna have bang tonight are you sure people try the rush kaputz is uh is the one i like or the [ __ ] yeah man it's kind of a country bumpkin drug i would say and uh another one would be uh i had a buddy who was really into doing whippets nitrous yeah so i mean i couldn't get behind that i couldn't get it i don't know he would because he would act really weird after he took him and his voice would go really deep when he took him and it would be weird and he'd talk really loud he would lose his sense of his volume and we'd be like dude like calm it down man and then you'd he'd be fine in a couple minutes but it wasn't fun for the rest of the people not doing nitrous you know what i mean much like many drugs i suppose yeah i mean whippets is one that i was always like again hilarious uh that i was like those are beneath me well it seems kind of ghetto whippets is very who the [ __ ] what kind of farmer [ __ ] is this yeah or like you know a 12 year old at a party or something like that you know what like city kids are are all about bit bits they love it so easy to get that's how you knew that's how you know what are they doing in like the heart of downtown oh cool whip yeah i didn't know i didn't if i would have known like like oh you're talking about new york if i would if i'd have seen one person doing whippets in new york city in a movie like well i don't know i gotta do whippets that's the new york thing to do [ __ ] man oh you brought up mike mcdonald which is kind of a great segue because i wanted to get obviously into your book but i can't just get into your book because there's so many things that led you to writing this book like the podcast and the vice article and stuff but that all kind of came from comedy and mike mcdonald was a big part of comedy for you and and i wanted to know really where your roots were i know you watched just for laughs growing up but what made you want to like try it for yourself or did you always know you were going to do it you know yeah like my answer is like nothing like super romantic or easy to trace like i always knew i was like okay professional funny person is what i want to be and it honestly wasn't until i never thought it would be stand up i was always like standup's the hardest one to do you got improv collaborative no like film tv it was like i and i'm a horrible actor so it's funny that i thought that that's where i'd be like i'm an actor writer and i was like that way you know if you have multiple chances at being funny and the editor just helps decide and there's this collaborative like i can be funny but i need help and i need to be around other funny people and i'm conversationally or improv that kind of stuff but i was like stand up they [ __ ] those they write it and then that's why at the time and i still kind of feel this way it's like there's like 40 good comedians in the whole world like really good comedians the best of the best and i was like how i you can't how do you [ __ ] and i think it's changed since then i think there's like probably like 44 now but i think 400 or so there's so many people doing it right but um yeah i just never thought that that would be the avenue and then i didn't get into film school and i'm very defeatist so i was like well i guess my [ __ ] dreams are over i guess i'll never [ __ ] make it in showbiz and that was another thing that like instantly like which is ridiculous like this is um [Music] not inspiring in any way it's like if any like that's like not the right attitude to have at all i was like i think it was yeah one film school i applied to mel hoppenheim in montreal turned me down and i was like that's it i'm done like i will never and then that probably contributed to like why i really got into drugs and alcohol that year when i was 18 a little bit i was like well i mean so i made two dreams yeah instead of like well why don't you like make a [ __ ] um apply to as many as possible yeah or just go start making something yourself or whatever instead i was like okay i'll go to carlton and i didn't go very much and then uh a friend of mine carrie gates sorry a friend of a friend her name's carrie gates she was a total monster she did uh homegrown just her last homegrown uh three years into comedy maybe a little more maybe even a little less was just like and my friend mel uh is uh you're still a close friend of mine she was like oh you know my friend actually does stand up now she just mentioned it and that was it i was like oh [ __ ] i thought these people are like grown in a lab like yeah yeah winter sols inaccessible to get in that yeah not inaccessible more like i just thought like they were like like stand ups right i was like well there's 40 good ones and then the ones underneath that are also like mind-numbingly funny to be able to do it as yeah and then to just hear like no this is just somebody who works at [ __ ] wild wing with your friend and this is their thursday just conceptualized it to me like oh my god so people do this you know kind of thing and then i went to see a show uh i went to yuck's wednesday amateur night because they make you see and make you go to an amateur talent showcase yeah which at the time you think is like oh so you know you're getting into but now you realize like oh no they need that [ __ ] six bucks for [Laughter] uh so um going to shows is definitely the best way to make no it is a good idea and i was just joking but cause you'll see people who are just not that great and you're like well i could that's exactly that well at least that's exactly the next part of the story then i went to that amateur night and i was like i'm gonna [ __ ] take over and then oh no it's hard so what age would you have been when you finally dabbled 18 oh yeah you said that okay no it's okay uh where does that intersect with your your substance issues starting to get out of control around the same age or oh yeah like i wish that i could say like i did cocaine before i oh so many things it's wild i did cocaine before i had sex before i did comedy before i mean i was 17. now i'm born in december so it's a little first year so it was like i still remember um and it's funny because that's just the way drugs are like i can talk pretty freely about cocaine without getting like triggered to use but when i talk about the first time like it's [ __ ] brutal oh it's like there's a romance it was incredible it really was so anyways um well don't talk about it it's gonna be like brutal you know well whatever i gotta sometimes what are you doing after this by the way do you know anyone well sorry uh so yeah no i i did it at my buddy's house and um it was november so i was like you know technically 17 but okay you know so it was a month before my 18th birthday and then um it's a good time to dude if you get arrested you're like hey i'm not 18 years i don't even consider that that's genius now i feel like i just wrote a time cop movie in my head he goes back in time so he can always do cocaine starts at 13 or something instead yeah that's great oh man just killing science so wait the first time you did comedy you were high uh off weed i mean uh actually i think the first time i probably was like yeah i didn't like stone cold sober like i mean there's i mean residue left from like smoking weed earlier that day probably yeah but you weren't like but didn't even have a drink i was like uh i was i had to like i was like i was so nervous that first time like that whole day it was like i was crazy nervous like it was even that whole first year um was brutal for each show and then i i talked about that said it absolute and then i started doing really well there and then that gave me confidence i started doing well at other rooms so like by my tenth set i felt like i started doing well um but even that second year because that was ottawa at the time first year doing accommodated ten sets like you could do ten sets in a month now if you start in ottawa and ten in a week if you started introducing like two thousand five five okay and then uh yeah it was like the next year still so nervous before i reset even though i was now doing well and had confidence it was like a whole body experience that i was like okay i either have to learn to stop getting this nervous or quit because now i'm i'm still this nervous and i'm doing well so it's like wouldn't does this ever go away and then i think it for i don't know maybe did it ever because i've had people on here who are established comedians who said they still feel like that every time they go up you know not that kind of like petrified nervous but i almost and i know a lot of people relate to this now like i feel nervous when i don't feel nervous now like tonight was a little bit of that like ben mckay like really ripped it up and i was like oh yeah okay so they're they're rippable tonight which means like i have to go do that now and then that got me that little like well this is so easy if you have any kind of anxiety or ocd like me to just start playing out those scenarios in your head of like what if i just forget oh [ __ ] did i just forget now what's my jokes again and then you just spiral out you know i never have a good set when i'm pouring over the first thing i'm going to say and sometimes for the bigger sets like tapings or contests whatever it is you're like you'll go in your head for a joke you've told a million times yeah like okay so i have a lazy eye and i also played hockey i'm like why are you rehearsing this joke in your head right now when you know it front to back inside out and then i go on stage when i'm doing that for a joke i don't rock solid and i'll be like yeah so i have a goalie for a i might no my eyes are [ __ ] i don't i'm and then it's like what is this [ __ ] you know i actually had a recent experience it was kind of like that where i uh went and jammed with these guys last weekend i'll actually bring that up later too because it ties into some other stuff but they sort of accompanied me doing my musical songs which i i've always done them solo to you know drunk people at bars i never really needed it but i was always curious what it would sound like with a bass player and a hand drum and it sounded really great but i was towards the end there was a lot of times where i was doing the same thing we're forgetting these lyrics that i know i know so well but it's like this new dynamic i don't know these guys that well and the social you know situation is just a little bit throwing me for for a loop you know it's like anything in life right it's that flow state you want to get in when you're thinking but not thinking well so when did um your substance issues start to or did they ever start to become a real problem in comedy for you oh yeah i mean that story we've talked about before it's okay like primarily i would i mean i don't know because it's this dangerous thing where you don't want to like hang all of your problems on the substance abuse issues for a variety of reasons you don't want to do that but yeah no for sure it affected me the most and like there's a lot of people that didn't see me as professional and and and you only make a first impression once like that's very true in comedy yeah um i mean it's funny because a lot of people i guess didn't know but like i mean yeah no my substance abuse issues really [ __ ] me up for sure in comedy and in like my life i mean i lived in my mom's basement until i was 25. there's still times i look back like hmm i'm left a lot of potential on the table like i got homegrown when i was 22. like that's a pretty like significant industry push i was like less than four years into comedy oh really pissed away that opportunity yeah but that's not a way to live though you know what i mean like well no i know i i i ruined the day but i mean i just i'm honest too it's like yeah i i when people are like i have no regrets i'm like [ __ ] you that's so healthy if you're telling the truth [ __ ] you and you're probably not so [ __ ] you yeah yeah but uh i for sure like sometimes ruminated but then again like you uh said you're right because but i do have to remind myself for that when i am like going through it because regrets are this weird [ __ ] thing where like if you don't click back in like you'll keep [ __ ] up by just being too yeah like uh fixated on how you previously [ __ ] up yeah you got to be able to like let it go that's something i but if you never reflect then you don't get those opportunities for growth as well so there's a balance yeah yeah yeah of course but yeah i know my substance abuse issues for sure limited me in comedy in a variety of ways i mean it must be i was thinking though when reading your book that it must be kind of uh hard to navigate when you are having there's a story you tell when you're going to do just for laughs and you're like super [ __ ] hungover you didn't sleep barely at all and you're thinking you're gonna [ __ ] do terrible and you end up slaying so how does that play into your mental narrative when you're like oh i should probably stop this this is gonna [ __ ] me up and then lo and behold you do well on stage and you're like oh maybe i can make this work you know yes must be seductive somebody asked me it is that's that's a good word to say it like somebody asked me in vancouver at like this writer's it's vancouver's writer's fest and i was doing uh a reading and like live podcast with charlie demers and they did a q a at the end and this lady asked me that's like the best question i've been asked by like journalists or anybody and she was just like an audience member at this thing she was like what do you think about like people who say that like substance abuse fuels creativity like do you think that's true do you think there's and it's like i think it is true but there's other things you can do to mimic the feelings or whatever you're getting from that yeah so it's like a lot of people i know think that like oh but like i have to be like a [ __ ] up mess to be able to be good at comedy and i for sure feel that too i i don't know like any comedian that's not at their best when they're not going through some kind of turmoil yeah but like you can also still do well when you're uh you know on the straight and narrow as well yeah and your brain is firing on all pistons and your memory's working a little better like there are advantages to that as well yeah exactly and then also too you start to realize you're like i know so many people that are really really [ __ ] good at this that maybe don't have that much industry recognition uh that are like complete piss hounds and people like i don't understand why this festival doesn't book this person and i'm like well this person just got super drunk at comedy bar two weeks ago and i heard and then they're still doing that kind of [ __ ] all the time and they care about that they don't want you it's a we forget like this is supposed to be professional because we all probably started it to like not be professional you know what i mean well it's the one i mean granted i'm not like a touring professional comedian but i can only imagine it's the one job where you at times feel like you're not doing a job like you know what i mean it's more comfortable like you get to swear you get to [ __ ] be yourself in a lot of ways that other people can't in their professions you know there's definitely an appeal to that and i can see how that's you know something that's really enthralling for a lot of people yeah they give you free drinks at like all the shows and people come up and tell you how awesome you were after them give you their number [ __ ] yeah like it's that that that stuff like you start to think you can like normalize so many things that aren't normal yeah because you're like oh it's part of the job it's like oh it's not like i know the east coast run used to be like the comedians would all complain about it like i can't [ __ ] make money on the east coast run and then i was like i mean we get like more than we get in toronto when we're at home and they cover our flights and hotel yeah that's pretty sweet why can't you make money out there yeah okay like i [ __ ] bombed every night and i eat takeout every night even though like they put us up in condos where we could cook our food and it's like so that's a choice you're making this isn't a vacation where we're supposed you're [ __ ] you're on the road for work well recently uh i mentioned to you that i this interview lined up really well because i was already planning on trying not to drink during november and uh i've been trying not to eat dairy and bread and stuff like that it's mainly a dietary thing i'm trying to just live a little healthier but uh i did notice as much as i don't think i i wouldn't classify myself as someone who needs to go to aaa like a raging alcoholic i don't drink in the morning i don't drink and drive but the frequency was what was really bothering me and i i kind of realized today i think the biggest problem was finding a way that i don't have a problem you know what i mean where you're like you're drinking every day almost every day more than most people would drink in a week for sure but it's never really [ __ ] up my life so it's able to continue because there's no like rock bottom moment you know what i mean and i think that's a really slippery slope in itself fooling yourself into thinking you can you know be the one person that's immune to the effects of these these substances well dad do you want to tell them or should i this is an ambush intervention actually this isn't a podcast we're not we haven't been recording a damn thing that's the functional alcoholic yeah i suppose but i mean i don't go to work drunk like i'm pretty in check but if it's end of the night and someone's like hey you want to get drunk and play some board games or something it's very very hard to say no that so here's something that they really don't tell you about like aaa and meetings and stuff like that um a lot of the people i don't want to say like a lot like it's a majority but there's a lot of people that go there more than like an insignificant amount let's say that you know and i know how this sounds like when i [ __ ] hate when people do this with addiction and stuff because i welcome these people too whether it's like you you drink like three nights a week one of those nights kind of to excess okay welcome in we're we're all trying to quit something it doesn't matter do you know what it's a problem for that person yeah there's people i know that like got off heroin like straight shooting heroin like to them like i'm a [ __ ] peon nothing like oh okay mister had a cocaine problem are you [ __ ] serious like i shot heroin they don't do that to me yeah um and and that's where it's like if you've decided you have a problem [ __ ] everybody else do you know what i mean so it's like i for and then just for me i've always said i know that i like i'm just a [ __ ] brutal addict because all of these things like a sober october or i know a wretched alcoholic who's actually now sober but he's always been a wretched alcoholic but he told me he's like yeah i actually took a whole year off when i was like 32 and it stunned me i was like you did and he goes yeah like i just wanted to see if i could and i was like i i i wanted to quit every single monday like i was like yeah i've had that before every monday i was like i gotta no drinks this week none not even one it's a clean slate and it was maybe monday night at the oslington it's like all right even though it's been only seven days i forgot that tall cans are four dollars on mondays and i was like so i can't afford not to drink yeah and now i'm gonna no but just monday and then i'll start and then oh sh oh campbell asked me to do excuse me propane that's tuesday well i got a drink if i'm going to comedy bar and doing propane and hanging out with the boys and everything like that and then it's like oh yeah wednesday right is spirits like me it's always the summer time it's always [ __ ] barbecues and birthday parties and pool parties and oh you want drink man you wanna drink everybody's always trying to you know get you liquored up and the nice weather i find yeah i mean that's another thing that made me feel like a through and through addict is everybody would talk about the summer like it's this i'm like you gotta catch up i've been drunk all winter and i loved winter the most for drinking actually because i felt like i was like yeah the bars aren't cluttered you can actually [ __ ] catch a cab at the end of the day this is the people who actually [ __ ] wanna drink i'm not here to do anything but drink and be drunk that's a hot girl summer type people who are just you know don't get me wrong that part's that part of it's fun too but it always kind of annoyed me because i was like i'm not i'm not here for this well it's like when someone's like oh i can just have a cigarette when i'm drinking and you're like [ __ ] you if you're someone who quit smoking like i am i used to find those people so annoying because it's just it's envious of course is what fuels it but uh yeah i would feel the same way with with alcohol too if someone's just oh yeah i just have one drink like well usually when i have one i definitely want to have at least two you know and you know they're enjoying that cigarette more than you are you're like you're [ __ ] you're right because it's free of consequence you know no i mean physically liking it more i mean that's anything in life if you deprive yourself of it you're going to be enjoying it more than you know what i mean yeah if you over indulge then things become kind of exactly benign yeah and then you're you're going at the feelings not the actual like act or or taste or whatever it is well speaking of all this and me trying to live the the healthy life um from monday to friday last week no bread no dairy no alcohol so there was a real nice like refresher friday came along after working overnight at the hospital i was low willpower it was pizza night with the kids i drank had pizza like i've had like you know four five beers at the most it wasn't insane for a friday night but i felt very disappointed in myself uh and i felt like somehow you were disappointed in me because i'm reading your book and it was very you know helpful for keeping me stronger in that week and like let's do the sober thing and then somehow i felt like when i had that beer like you were out there like and then uh you you showed that picture of your busted ankle and i'm like now he's not gonna be able to come on the podcast it's [ __ ] karma that's so funny crazy man that's why my brain works too and i'm such a sadist i'm like [ __ ] i kind of wish i pulled off now just so that would have happened in your brain like now i have to i'm like maybe i'd [ __ ] say this guy's life maybe be sober forever uh yeah i mean i don't know i i uh well sorry the long winded point i was going to get to was that um the next day was when i felt a little cheater because that was the day i went to jam with these guys and i had felt bad about drinking the night before and of course they had a case of beer i'm you know it's a good social lubricant jamming with these guys playing some music it just i cracked and then i ended up buying more beers that night and that was it that's ever since then you know i'm back on track sunday to what are we today tuesday so it's not that impressive but you know one day at a time still i'm feeling healthier so no that's super impressive man like any time somebody's like stacking them all at the same time i'm like dear god yeah i tried not to overdo it those were the only three i was like all right and it's been hard with the food has been harder than the beer almost because like no cheese no bread it's it's not that i only need to eat those things and i have been enjoying like broadening my palate with eating more vegetables and all this other [ __ ] but sometimes you just want to [ __ ] grill cheese or something and i'm just i've been really really strict about it so you know now i'm thinking i'll probably end up drinking every friday this month and just working for the weekend lover boy style you know yeah that's a good idea you know this reasonable middle ground i think i'm trying not to beat the [ __ ] out of myself and and luckily your book kind of came full circle in the end in that uh we'll get to it more but it was showing that you're still a work in progress you had relapses with certain things since and that kind of made me feel like okay we're all human like alex isn't going to judge me for my failed attempt here imagine if like the book ended with me being like so now you're reading a book by a guy who's four years off of all of these things plus an additional few years of hard drugs and alcohol like people would be like one i don't believe you two where are the bodies you're for sure eating people's faces at night there's no way you know what i mean like sugar alone it's like how can you quit that forever yeah and honestly and not to like dissuade anyone who wants to try it but then have a meaningful fulfilling life with a zero added sugar forever i'm like that's for the [ __ ] birds a lot of the stuff that you you swore off were some of them were things i wasn't expecting and a lot of them it was interesting to see the results that's what i loved about this book and your podcast i suppose as well which i'm looking forward to getting more into is it's kind of like a science experiment where you're using yourself as this guinea pig and reporting the results for all of your listeners or readers you know to follow along with so well to be honest with you too like it's it's so this is the thing with being an addict it's like such a paradox all the time where it's like you have to know when to be good to yourself and you don't have to know when to be hard on yourself so like i have for an example that i'm like well you gotta be good to yourself after you've relapsed but also not so good to yourself you're like it's okay that i'm doing coke again you know so good that you don't beat yourself up into doing coke but also not just like no no no we're doing great yeah uh so we're gonna keep doing coke yeah you have to walk that middle ground and it's like that with um like moderation too uh it's all like this like the advice is so counterintuitive sometimes and you really gotta like just figure it out for yourself so okay this is one of the things about the book which relates to your whole life but i was a little weary going into this because i didn't know how much i wanted to talk about because i want people to go read your book and some of it's kind of spoiler heavy in that sense that there are some pretty big things in here that i would like to leave for readers so uh but i do want to give them a feel for the book as well so let's talk about when did uh substance abuse start to become such a problem that you you made that move i'm gonna try and get off this [ __ ] you know for real after events like what we talked about before the podcast where you did uh eric leclair told us on the show how he watched you once vomit into and fill up an entire picture with your vomit on stage only to then finish your set and apparently crush so yeah that's in the book and also like it overflows over the past the cup and then into it and eventually into a garbage can too um in fact you could still get people to laugh with you after that and not just be revolted and they were quiet the whole time like it wasn't like they were laughing while i was puking they were like it was stone cold silent in the room and you know that place it was like 200 sold out people yeah you've been watching me puke on this tiny stage and they're like what kind of art show is this um so when did you really decide i'm gonna [ __ ] reel it in and then yeah so funny because that story is i was 20. and i'm like uh a mere seven years later is when i realized i had no problem yeah i was like i was 29 and i had pancreatitis twice in the same year so pancreatitis is like an inflammation of your pancreas that you get from primarily too much drinking but they also think it's linked to like smoking and fatty kind of deep fried foods and unhealthy lifestyles yeah basically i'm like well that's all that's my entire life is those three things so you were not surprised when you found out the diagnosis no i still was because i was like doesn't this [ __ ] happen to people when they're older too yeah you were young that's true and then so i got it the first time doctor was like yo this isn't nothing to [ __ ] around with i was like no yeah doctors always say that about alcohol and [ __ ] right so i took a month off which is like the longest i'd ever gone i did antibiotics and i was like oh yeah it feels better like almost right away like a contract yeah i mean it pretty much very quickly came back after that month i was like i mean i got a staph infection and then that was like they gave me opioids for it and i was like i mean so i did what i always did when i got opioids i would like save them i wouldn't use them during the actual thing and then wait till like just smoke a [ __ ] ton of weed to get through any like pain or anything like that and then for pleasure yeah and then uh and then use them to like drink and was like oh yeah right getting [ __ ] up is the best so the rest of that summer was like it was weird it was like as soon as that month was up from antibiotics was like massive bender like amongst the worst i've gone on which is saying something and then that lasted for like three or four months and i was like oh god the pancreas like hurts way more than before like way worse and then i went in the second time and the doctor was like okay buddy like it's you're so [ __ ] right now you're so close to like i hope that's verbatim yeah oh yeah my doctor was just a total bro but i should have mentioned that we're like lifting dude he's like oh [ __ ] bro you can't be doing this so my doctor spokoli was all like yo dude you gotta really clean this [ __ ] up because acute pancreatitis is like you could die no i'm not even i'm not doing the thing anxiety i didn't hurt so much i was like well now i kind of believe you because this thing hurts um pancreatitis is brutal you have stomach ulcers and [ __ ] too right yeah at the time i i didn't even know that too but i kind of like always knew my stomach was [ __ ] so i was like my stomach always hurts so that's but this one up high is like just so [ __ ] so then um yeah the second time i got it i was like well i'll probably quit for a year like that one guy actually said to do i thought i was like well if he could do it i could quit for like a year and that'll like really reset my body and then i even knew too i was like i can't maintain the way i use and drink for the rest of my life so i was like so this would be my one year break before you know early 30s i'll i'll switch to like coors light at barbecues it was always kind of that easy to just switch yeah oh yeah he drinks scores late all the time there you go so then i was like i was ready i was like yeah i'm gonna quit drinking in like a couple weeks uh but it was like he told me like i got that second diagnosis like december 16th or something december 15th 17th around there i went to ottawa to go home for christmas i got drunk with my friends december 19th 2015 and uh i mean i guess technically the 20th cause went past midnight but okay i had my last drink at like 4 a.m it was just like everyone else was asleep which is usually like what my night ended at this guy's house my friend who lives in canada and i was just like walking around drinking listening to music by myself like going room to room looking everyone passed out and then it was like five six in the morning went to michael i'll have like a few hour nap before everyone else wakes up and then we'll get driven to breakfast and we'll go do breakfast and uh it was like so weird because like as soon as my head hit the pillow it was like i thought it burst oh jeez like i was like oh [ __ ] like like working pain has got to be unique not a heart attack or like a pancreas whatever the [ __ ] i was like oh [ __ ] as soon as i felt it i was like oh this is what the doctor was talking about and i'm about to die i was like my pancreas just exploded or is lacerated or some [ __ ] yeah yeah and it hurts so much so i couldn't even sleep and i was like sweating tuna i was like oh [ __ ] this isn't good at all so i was like obviously even me i was like i can't it was i had to show it yucks that night it was saturday and then sunday so it was like saturday morning didn't sleep didn't sleep all the way till and i was going hard that week anyways because i was like gonna quit for like a year so that saturday night i still can't believe i got through that saturday and sunday shows like i've done shows like with some like [ __ ] up [ __ ] going on but those were the ones where i was like wow why didn't you just go to the doctor if you felt like it had exploded well because i wanted to finish the show oh yeah so i did saturday and sunday and did not sleep which is like a different kind when you're not sleeping because you like a like a weekend without sleeping was not a big deal to me then but this was without alcohol and drugs i was like oh [ __ ] so sunday night was like wicked bad and it's hurting more and more my pancreas and i'm getting like the shakes now and like really bad sweats and what i didn't know at the time are called delirium tremors and i was like oh [ __ ] and then i had an alcohol withdrawal seizure at my mom's house and she had to take me to the emergency room this is sort of how the book starts right yeah okay and then uh honestly like you go through an alcohol withdrawal seizure and delirium tremors like i was like i was pretty dead set at that point i was like i will go this next year without alcohol this is like [ __ ] and i was like but it's gonna be impossible hard and i'm gonna be a different person i'm gonna be fun to be around all this [ __ ] but like i have to do it clearly like i [ __ ] myself yeah um and then yeah like i just didn't want to go through that experience again it was so bad like it's well i've seen you throw uh like throwback pictures you put up sometimes and let's just say you look like the picture of health now compared to some of those bloated versions of you i've seen yeah it's uh it's trippy you look back on those actually i'm like [ __ ] man that that's like that's like greasy not not to be mean or anything like you're in better place you know it's i can still i can still get pretty greased up so yeah i just was like okay i'll take that year and then honestly it was just like pretty instantaneously when does that switch into i'm gonna write this article now about that years later okay years later this is like so january 2016 was like i like embraced it's called the pink cloud um but like i loved it right away i was like once i got over the delirium tremors and took like benzos to like cure those symptoms i was like i've never felt this sane in my entire life i felt like i would go crazy if i quit drinking like crazy yeah and mid-january i was like my emotions i've never been this regulated like i sensed it right away she just felt fantastic i was like i've never been like this like not stressed out and i thought my stress levels would go in the complete opposite direction well it's because when you first try to quit the first couple days even i get that with my limited amount of drinking i have a sensitive disposition and chemistry i suppose and when i quit drinking after heavily drinking a bunch of nights in a row i get pretty shitty withdrawal and i can't sleep insomnia so it's right to assume that that's what's going to happen you would think it'd be right to think that you know but you go past that wall and then you get to the glory zone or the pink cloud as you describe it every time you say something like that you're like when i go hard man i still get withdrawal for like a couple days i'm like dad i'd be taking notes over here dude little red flags i can't do anything but uh some of it's linked to my anxiety in my opinion oh i'm just [ __ ] around i spiral out i think pretty easily when i'm in those states because of pre-existing mental you know conditions whatever you want to call it no i know and uh like everyone's so like don't get me wrong there's times also too where i was like oh i've never felt crazier down the line but like right away i was like wow this is shocking it was just the complete opposite of what i ever thought stopping drinking would be like because especially that for that month i went off earlier the first time i had pancreatitis which at that time was only like six seven eight months earlier i was like i had an end goal yeah right i was like and i was like oh i'm gonna [ __ ] smoke an ounce a week again of weed yeah and eat like take out every night because like i'm getting through this like month without drinking and then this time i was like yo you're just gonna have to be your life right so like i didn't have that end thing to like also keep me and also too i was probably like super saiyan that month and thinking well it's because i know i get to drink again like no it's because you're just not drinking yeah so then anyways yeah that year was like when i originally decided i was like oh man and i'll quit all this other [ __ ] because i like you said i had ulcers which i didn't know at the time so then i go in for uh now this is uh ottawa emergency rooms where i had all the alcohol withdrawal seizure and they gave me the benzos and stuff my mom was with me then i moved back to toronto i go back to toronto after christmas and then uh in toronto they're like my family doctor's like okay let's like check out your stomach with a camera to make sure this pancreas isn't like [ __ ] lacerated and we gotta check out a bunch of other [ __ ] and they were like yeah your pancreas is crazy and flamed that's [ __ ] watch it like we said but yeah you're lucky it's still in like one piece literally and they're like but you have stomach ulcers i was like oh yeah and they're like and bad ones so i was like okay what do we do about that and they're like you just cut out out out out coffee dairy ready they're gonna say cut out cigarettes cut out ulcers cut out a hole well i didn't know it was like a surgery required no no you're smarter than me i shouldn't ever be condescending towards you no no it won't stop me from doing it a couple more times oh please it's it's comedy and you seem like a smart dude yourself so no it's just the glasses believe me i got like the glasses and i dressed like [ __ ] steve jobs that's awesome so yeah i i i got the ulcers and they told me i had to quit all that [ __ ] and i was like pretty right away like oh i'm gonna go jump into the harbor i'm gonna drown myself this is [ __ ] and then got home and kind of just realized like okay you thought this was alcohol like let's give it a shot and then the next day felt like super confident like okay i could do this and you know i mean i could i'll probably get in like good shape so i was like this is all like beginning of january right and i then i went to a boxing class and it was like and i'd been to a couple but never like really in earnest i just loved it even though i puked and was like okay like very clearly that's when like it was like you know stones moving into place to like [ __ ] like a wall opening up like oh [ __ ] like i was like okay yeah this is like the path for me um and then i i don't know i was much like the way i used i was like oh don't do anything small though like if i'm quitting all this [ __ ] in a year i was like i'll write a book about it do you have any formal training writing long form prose or even experience doing it no but i'll write a [ __ ] book and then like so freshly sober too what a crazy idea and yeah it did not that crazy oh yeah no you're right it is an important step it's the kindling for what would become this this fire hearing well i would say it was more like there's like cow dung underneath the kindling of like it was so anyways i was like i'll write a book about it and then that year was also like curveball got thrown at me with like a bad family news and [ __ ] like that and your uncle yeah tried to like maintain on the straight and narrow but then he died and he like helped raise me lived like around the corner from me and um and then i don't like want to hang the whole relapse up on that or anything like that which is very tough time for that and then well i did notice a pattern sort of cut you off um that a trig i was going to ask you what some of your your biggest triggers are for for some of your things that you've quit but it would seem from the book that grief was one because when mike mcdonald passed away that was another time where you almost kind of faltered and went and grabbed a drink so i was just wondering if there was any other things that really stuck out as as big triggers for you yeah i don't process like specifically death like uh well at all it goes like it spikes right away really brutal and then i just turn it off to like a low hum for months and months and then comes back i'm working on it now like therapy is a really good idea for right now everyone yeah it's the only thing that i am i'm not preachy at all about like sobriety or anything else i even say i was like yeah i would never be sober if i could have a few drinks even like whatever i wouldn't have done it i had to for me um but so but therapy is the one i am like everyone must go you're not in therapy you must go you'll be a better partner a better parent a better son a better daughter like that kind of [ __ ] well i had a huge impact on you as well when you found out later that you had a neurological issue right that was the only thing that really helped from what i read in the book yeah so um sorry to jump ahead there no it's okay well i mean yeah we don't want to go through like the whole like beats of the what the book maybe yeah you can no i meant like along the whole way no uh yeah and then yeah eventually like for a variety of reasons uh but one very predominantly i had i was diagnosed with what's called functional neurological disorder and uh it's like as i say in the book and this is the way it was explained to me the day i got diagnosed like here the hardware of your brain is fine it's the software the signals for whatever reason are [ __ ] that's all my doctors talk to me like they didn't know why it was genetic or no no no i meant like they talked to me like they work at popeye supplements like bro your shit's [ __ ] man you know what you gotta do uh progressive overload so yeah that was like um a long time to get diagnosed with that too but i was already long sober by that point in there they think it was from substance abuse or something you were born with they they don't really care about like the cause as much it's so weird functional neurological disorder like is really uh and i see i could see it growing with this modern stressful world we live in but i bet you it's always been a thing and like before that is called it like oh he's got the deep down crazies and then now it's like autism never used to get recognized right right so now we take things seriously but uh yeah i i had it for a very very specific reason that actually ends up uh when you do research about and i feel so bad because anyone with fnd like i don't know man this is like you can it's so [ __ ] crazy it's just google functional neurological disorder then google uh freud conversion disorder because that's what he called it and basically and i'm not presupposing why anyone else would have fnd but i it was a conversion disorder that i had i was processing uh different traumas that had happened to me and one very specifically okay uh and just refuse to like even say it out loud and then um that can happen though the body can attack yeah it's crazy it really it's it felt like uh like the venom symbiote or some [ __ ] like taking over me it was like so [ __ ] and like the more i would bury because there'd be times where i would be like you know this is probably a mental health related and maybe you should go say some things that you've never said out loud and every time i think of that i would be like no i it would make it worse so it would make the physical worse there's a book that everyone was recommending to me now and recommending to a lot of people called the body keeps the score and i can't read it because it's just way too like hit home the way everyone describes it to me i'm like i can't read that book um and i just kind of wrote the comedy version of it so i don't want it like fair yeah but yeah it's like um it's interesting how the body can can attack itself it is very very interesting it is shitty and it was doing that i mean it did that to push me to like i'm gonna make you [ __ ] deal with these mental health issues like i am going to physically like some part of my brain or my body or whatever just went like no yeah we're not continuing on like this yeah yeah immune system stuff is crazy i um i'm divorced and there was obviously a point in any marriage that ends in divorce where the marriage wasn't going so well and back then i didn't work out i was uh i had quit smoking cigarettes and all that but i wasn't a really healthy person and i ended up having to shave my head for like three years because i got alopecia and i had like random chunks of my hair were falling out and stuff it's all back because i changed my life around that's super cool congratulations i love that i love hearing that i love having hair again i mean it's i got used to being bald for a while but you know but yeah that that's a big one that manifests right like stress induced people rashes yeah for sure so i used to have like very sensitive skin very sensitive skin would not take a lot to set it off like a little bit of febreze getting on my arm and i would have an all body rash than within 24 hours this one i was using all the time and super you know dealing with like undiagnosed ptsd a variety of things and then now like a little bit of febreze gets on me and i'm like oh that spot might be a little itchy i'll just go wash it off and nothing yeah and it wasn't even like stressing about the febreze getting on me as i was at a constantly elevated level of stress my entire life yeah well you release a [ __ ] ton of cortisol which is supposed to be terrible for your skin oh god yeah the next thing that's gonna happen to me is they're going to be like he's got the heart of a 65 year old [ __ ] flight navigator i'm like yeah i bet you for sure it's it's hard to know where it's all going you know what i mean what was the most challenging part about putting yourself in the club atmosphere which we all know is full of alcohol probably cocaine weed a lot of other stuff clearly you didn't want to give up on comedy because you love it so much but it's it's entrenched in all that other stuff so what was the hardest part about trying to get back out there honestly it's um it's the amount of free alcohol and it still is the only thing that trips me up is when it's free um even like someone's just holding a shot up i'm trying to eat better right now because i had like a rough go of it in september october for me like i put on a few like pounds and it's not like healthy way sometimes i'm like oh i know it's not from like lifting and [ __ ] so um and i was like oh god i'm really going to clean it up i was doing well and then saturday i was doing this show in all in toronto and they they had pizza and everything for us backstage i was like well it's free i'm powerless and it was like with alcohol i obviously didn't uh partake but it's still very difficult when i'm on a show and so gratitude we got like free like pines for you guys i don't know what it is but it's just like oh right that that's sweet uh that is and it's almost at every show right uh even discounts i could be like okay i can deal with like a good drink deal yeah but when it's full free i'm like [ __ ] like it's very difficult but hard to say no yeah but in general just being surrounded by alcohol i knew right away i was like you're gonna have to get very good at that because um [Music] you can't i was already out of free chances like i was like you've had a substance abuse meltdown that lasted months very publicly in comedy you do it again you're that guy no one's gonna you can't so you just mentally prepped the [ __ ] out of your brain before going back to the clubs i didn't there was no like time off i didn't i mean i had that last drink december 19th and i still did the shows the next two nights and then my next show would be new year's eve if not a couple warm-up ones before that anyways that was so like i didn't take any time oh yeah it was i had a show boxing day that year so the delirium tremors uh were like maybe like just stopped from like the benzos and then was like okay it's been three days i gotta i got a show at yucks tonight and then i got a new year's show oh i got this big theater show on thunder bay in january it was all very very quick yeah so this stuff all eventually leads to the podcast the podcast came before the vice article or the other yeah yeah the podcast well the vice article came out midway through the podcast towards the end with like three months left okay and that i mean blows up the podcast got a lot of great reception from people you helped a lot of people who were struggling on their own it sounds like and got a lot of positive listener feedback but then vice picks up your article later you end up going on nbc today with what's her name kelly megan kelly santa is white megan kelly the [ __ ] barbie of fox news the original barbie of fox news um but you must have started to go okay this is that's when you started getting the inklings to write this i would think when when the theme was working so well for you honestly i'm such like a [ __ ] lucky bastard i wrote the vice article and uh the first draft was so [ __ ] like i have a very natural inclination to be lazy and like bare minimum here it is i handed in a draft they were like one paragraph for this is good the rest is [ __ ] dude and like it's what an adult publication like vice tells that to you like they didn't say this outright but i could tell like oh i handed in another shitty draft like sorry buddy this is a great idea for an article but you suck and i knew too when i even handed the first one i was like this sucks and i still did it i was like who cares the podcast is almost done i got everything i wanted out of it blah just get me in and then vice is like we don't just get you in because you want i'm like okay i'll try so i wrote that article and then it came out and my a guy that i met um a great comedian who uh had his own imprint at a publisher uh and had published like six books himself like or sorry had six big books published charlie demares uh read the vice article he was like a buddy kind of like through comedy we had like one meal together at that just for last in the book from 2009 and he was like you messaged me already like man i loved your vice article you ever thought about writing a book and i was like god damn i was like this is now full circle because like originally that's what yeah what it was gonna start as so then i and then i we he gave me a lot of time he's like you're a first time writer you know i signed the book deal it would have been like february 2018 it came out april 2021 so like we knew like yeah you're gonna have to like on the job learning and there's a pandemic shoved in the middle of there and the pandemic was a great thing to have happened for having a book on deadline yeah like i really was able to stars aligned yeah a lot of people were saying you know like i just don't know what to do and like during my writing times i was like i got lots to do well let's go back before the book then and talk about the podcast so alex wood quits everything because it does heavily tie into the book and this is where originally i thought it was going to be 12 episodes and you were going to do just one per month but there's many more it's like 50 or so there's one a week for a whole year so yeah so there were some that didn't pertain to these 12 things right there were like i noticed one was video games and a couple of the other ones that i was surprised weren't on this list but for the people who haven't read your book let's go over the 12 things that you were quitting for both the podcast and eventually the book cocaine alcohol weed caffeine nail biting cigarettes red meat dairy porn credit cards gossip sugar social media and smartphones mm-hmm yeah so it would be undertaking well they weren't all at the same time right there's one a month the first of the month but they carried over yeah they carried over everything there was a point where i was off all of them uh yeah that was again just from like well i don't do things like half-assed or or actually that is i just said i do lots of things half-assed but like oddly enough like yeah i don't know again it's a paradoxical thing with like with addicts where i'm like i must consume as many things or like uh like deprive myself for so many things but also still be lazy at the same time somehow it's it's interesting but um yeah i just was like okay well the problem is me i was like i keep like i was [ __ ] drinking like you know i hate when people brag or whatever but like literally like 80 to 100 drinks a week for years and years and years and i was like i have a cocaine problem i would tell that to people how's your liver i would be hammered and be like i have a cocaine problem you cannot let me around if i have cocaine and people would be like yeah i think that might and i could see them being weird and i was like nah i know i'm an alcoholic too but like cocaine's my real problem and i'd be like uh okay yeah you're pissing on my shoes right now or something yeah exactly like i just saw you puke into a pizza pizza box and then reach into that same box a few minutes later like did you forget what happened like yeah there's one part in the book where you talk about uh like licking cocaine off of a bathroom rug or something like oh no not uh actually i probably didn't do that it's snorting maybe no i i looked it up my my bedroom floor rug like several times yeah that's not even like that's your that's not like a one-time incident that's not as bad as somebody else's bathroom where you don't know yeah see i'd like to think i didn't do that but um okay well actually first of all a lot of these things make tons of sense obviously you're gonna try and quit the big ones but some of these choices were kind of interesting like nail biting it seems more like a bad habit than an addiction per se but i'm also guilty of of that one so it was interesting to have on there gossip was one i was not expecting to see but it seemed to be one of the most profound sort of uh instant reaction or positive reactions that you got out of quitting one of these things well i mean any comedian is a [ __ ] awful gossip a one-person sewing circle so i i yeah i just kind of like when i was making the list it was like some of them seemed so obvious and then i kind of realized i was like yeah man i'm [ __ ] always [ __ ] talking like always and then you hear those things about like well yeah now people don't like that like they're listening right and then they might be but then they walk away they're like what's he saying about me when i'm not there and i realize too i'm like i talk about talk [ __ ] about like my best friends my favorite people in the world nobody escapes my like wrath of complaining about them like people hear gossip and they think i'm like spreading their secrets and i'm actually like half decent and not doing that especially compared to comedians but just talking [ __ ] about them like no i'm [ __ ] horrendous my best friends instead of like oh you know what he did that was really funny the other night or you know how he's always got my back or something instead i'm like you know this [ __ ] one annoying thing he keeps doing and i tell it to everybody all the time that snorting noise he always makes something like random and kind of you know minuscule really yeah like to fixate on that instead and it's just like so i realized i was like i want to change that it was just stuff i wanted to change right well you said a really cool thing about like why am i going to spend 20 minutes [ __ ] on this person when i could spend that 20 minutes working on myself you know well that's why you do the [ __ ] that's why you [ __ ] on them because then it prevents you from having to do that yeah it's an avoidance tactic yeah true yeah um okay well i want to ask you then were there any things that almost made the list but didn't oh that's a great question i've never been asked oh nice i always get i love when i get one that they've never been asked um the first time i tried to because this is the list from the podcast the first time i was gonna do it as a book it was only ten things so really like a couple of the ones on there almost didn't make it were yeah like i was like oh [ __ ] could i like porn probably i was close to being like wait wait wait i don't need to cut this out and i was like you probably do you do that all the time as well and i was like [ __ ] i mean if i watch it every single day and some days multiple times a day i was like well then i have to um i couldn't believe gambling wasn't on there and that's that's probably the one that i was just about to land on for like the not having been on because people ask me that one and i do gamble on sports play poker like to go to the casino scratch lottos probably actually going to the casino after do this but that's just to meet uh friend whose birthday it is um damn how late is the casino open i guess it's yeah it's open this all night yeah um yeah i gambling would be the one but i honestly didn't put it on because i was like i just feel dishonest like i'm like i've never felt i needed to quit gambling that i had like a significant problem and that's because i'm like no this i need money to get the other things that i do have a problem with and this like um like prevents me from doing that most often because statistically you lose money when you're great yeah and then also too i never related to the rush as much as other people that had gambling problems you hear people who are have gamma problems like i don't even care what i lose and i was like what the [ __ ] are you talking about they're like i do but it's different like i don't care it's i'm the it's the rush of they're talking about the rush of waiting to find out if they're gonna win or lose and that's what they're addicted to and i was like oh that's the worst part for me i'm like and i'm always thinking like please god pay off so i can afford to [ __ ] eat like a monster this whole week or or [ __ ] get top shelf or whatever you know it's more stressful than anything yeah where they enjoyed that feeling and i was like well that that's so that was the one i didn't put on cause i was like this just feels like i will because it'll sound like well my dad had said before the podcast uh you should ask him which ones he didn't want to tackle like that you're like yeah you know what and porn sort of sounded like it was on the verge of being that but yeah porn didn't want to for sure smartphone and social media i was just like don't put that on there you need this for your job and also it'll make things so much harder and then when i started having those thoughts i was like that's why you should put it on yeah [ __ ] okay cool i like your thought process on this and just you know how you approached this well yeah too also too like i thought i was like well if you're trying to like reprogram your brain and the first thing you thought it was like oh i can't [ __ ] do that it'll be impossible it's too hard for these ones then that they should definitely be on and i was like god damn it yeah sure the more pushback you get mentally the more it's probably meant to be on there yeah um i will actually throw to my do you have a question dad or no usually he he brings a question for the guest but we may have already gone over it that happens sometimes too he just stole this question that's yeah yeah it covered a lot of ground yeah you can always circle back to it if you don't want it i guess one thing i would wonder about is did you find i mean obviously this was a process that you had to go through so did you find that for the different types of addictions that the process was the same or did you have to modify the process for different things and just expand on that when you see a schlub like me that just has the normal problems like geez i wish i didn't eat so much because i'm getting fat like food is an addiction for me do i follow if you told me well here's what i did would your process work for me or is this a voyage of self-discovery that everyone has to go through to figure it out that's another that's a fantastic question there's a couple questions so i'm gonna answer two of them the one about is the process the same on like was this the same between each thing i was like amazed by that um so when you're quitting when you've already quit coke and booze like it is like it is like training for for a lot of these things nothing on cigarettes would be the next closest but nothing on this list was as difficult as quitting those two and those are the three you've never gone back on am i correct yeah exactly yeah like hard drugs alcohol cigarettes and even right now i'm off everything caffeine weed i'm glad to hear you never went back to cigarettes because that would have been an easy one for all the [ __ ] yeah that's the stupidest i play the tape out cigarettes now that's how i i specifically get by that one just very easily i'm like i won't enjoy that first cigarette back i'll enjoy like the tenth one back why would i smoke this first night of your tar layer again yeah exactly so [ __ ] that i don't want to get a head rush i think about what that first cigarette actually would be back like it would be a head rush gonna feel gross nauseous yeah why the [ __ ] so yeah so i'd say the process was like oddly similar though like it wasn't like nearly as intense physically like withdrawal symptoms but like i could not believe the sugar headache i got when i was on my second day off sugar i was like this is [ __ ] intense and i did not expect that it was like worse than a caffeine withdrawal headache because like a caffeine withdrawal headache was like pressure kind of headache is what it feels like um and then it's you find out it's because you're actually getting the appropriate amount of blood sent to your brain that's why you're used to it yeah uh that's the pressure you're feeling like no it's actually getting the right amount of blood yeah and then with um sugar it just felt like piercing like it was like this is uncomfortable like it was closer to uh like a hard drug like headache expected that no i know it was it was stunning do you have an insane sugar intake before that i mean everybody does well i mean there's people who go around eating snickers every day and [ __ ] like that and then there's people who eat you know i probably turned it up because i um yeah like i was already off so many things so i was trying to like subvert it with sugar so at the time i probably wasn't it was like sugar was january first so like december's over goddamn sugar month so i probably was on like so true somewhat particularly bad bender i mean i was already off the red meat and dairy so that goes yeah probably like a lot of like well you know it doesn't have you know you can find the candy bars that don't use real milk all that kind of yeah yeah and then yeah as far as the second part which is the most important part is like oh man it is a lot like sometimes people when people ask for like advice i'm like get help that's what like oh i mean if people think i'm about to like say something like profound that's gonna help and i'm like no that getting help is what helped me that's what i'm like so i said with therapy that's the only thing i'm really um like dogmatic about uh because like that's when i really started getting a lot better at everything is when i got like serious help for it like a neurologist a therapist like okay now things are getting manageable and also everyone's like so different so for instance what i always say is like um mantras work really well for me and um i thought i had like i was like you can't have worse self-esteem than i have either then i found out i just read this like one study about like mantras actually having a negative effect on people that have very very poor self-esteem because it just like actually makes their cycle go faster they'll like um so a mantra that was like huge for me when i was uh getting right up after my mdma binge which is like in there it's so funny so like where the [ __ ] did any of this happen i don't know it's time that's [ __ ] mixed in there it's always back and forth so i was i can i will which is something roman reigns the professional wrestler was saying at that time but i liked it so much i can i will it was working so well for me and some people with like like it's hard for me to conceptualize but worse self-esteem than me when mantras have the opposite effect for them i can i will now i can't what the [ __ ] am i talking about and it's actually it's actually way worse for them and then they get mad that the mantra is not working i can't even get a [ __ ] mantra right i'm sorry where i'm like holy [ __ ] i believe in the mantra yeah so it's almost like like so mantras worked for me but i can't go telling everybody well you know a good way is like a mantra that's how and like a lot of the things that work for me too like i [ __ ] really start confessing to this now too if i didn't have comedy like i really wonder like i'm like yeah i probably would have just drank myself to death sometimes i do think that um i wonder like what would have happened without boxing like these are the things that worked for me so like i'm not gonna tell everybody to like go to a [ __ ] boxing gym starting to start going to open bikes or whatever but like for sure like find something that you can transfer over these like addiction beams to redirect like exactly like and i also realized too was like well that's my thing like i have an addictive personality to the nth degree so can i really change that i'm gonna try but i think it's easier to just set my phasers in other directions yeah and and then as far as like food goes i i want mine i mean i don't know if i would write one or i will have the opportunity to but if i do write a second book i won't i just i don't know exactly how but it's gonna be about and related and surrounding food because like especially when you get sober everyone i know puts on weight um or like a lot of people should i should say and and so many things and you can the relationship between food and how it affects your brain is so similar and i feel like i can speak from like pretty good lived experience on it like it's crazy it trips me out all the time how similar it is to drugs like when i'm eating ice cream i the whole time i'm eating ice cream i'm talking like while i'm eating it i'm thinking i'm already getting depressed of like [ __ ] this is gonna be done and then my brain goes but don't if we go out and get like [ __ ] why don't we eat like seven pints of ice cream tonight and and and it's nuts like specifically that one and ice cream is right it's anything with that much sugar and that much dairy at the same time oh [ __ ] look out and the same thing with pizza i eat a pizza in like 18 minutes i'll eat a large pizza and like by minute 16 i'm so sad that there's like one slice left and then i'm like [ __ ] okay well eat this slice and then we'll figure out where we're getting the next pizza like that [ __ ] still goes through my brain amazing and you got to eat every day so obviously it's it's very difficult to like navigate that so like and then again everyone's gonna be different with like that so like for instance food like a big thing with me is like um like exercise really helps me conceptualize okay so that 10k you ran today is two like snack size bags of doritos was that 10k worth as much as i enjoyed it it still works sometimes is it worth two [ __ ] measly ass bags of doritos and then i'm like no it's not yeah so that's why i like exercise when i'm exercising and i i actually eat better and most of those foods make you want more of those types of foods yes exactly that too yeah i'd say the one thing for that i would be also dogmatic about i guess he's playing the tape out like really play the [ __ ] tape out like like i really want chips tonight and i really want all these things they're gonna be awful for me and it's like you gotta you gotta [ __ ] really like tap into your feelings your star wars [ __ ] of like how are you going to feel when that bag of chips is done yeah not and there's times where i get in touch with myself like pretty great you've been super disciplined lately in the internet chips and months and i'm like yeah okay so i'll go that's what i'm doing well but like right now i've been eating like uh like very poorly for like a couple months and i know i'm like i'm feeling bad after every single meal right now that's bad for me i gotta get it back on the straight and narrow tonight after the show i was like ugh i'll take a [ __ ] chicken garden salad i desperately wanted nachos desperately but i was like you're you're gonna be miserable after you have them the minute they're done you're gonna be miserable and those small battles add up too yeah exactly so i was like okay so like and then the key to that is that's why it's important not to beat yourself up like i was saying earlier it's like a weird sorry that probably picked up so much uh we're selling beard oil now tonight so then like when i'm uh like in the moment like so tonight after i finished the chicken salad i really i spent like a good like like just minute a moment of like this tasted really good and you feel great right now in every way like emotionally that you did and then also physically so much better than the nachos right like really remember that for you have a meal to eat after every show this whole week and none of them can be nachos because you're also doing kingston next week and then this and then it's christmas time like do you want christmas time to be like oh i can actually enjoy a few [ __ ] awful things or do you want it to be like oh god i'm just doing this to fill the hole inside good lord so it's like when you mess up remember that feeling and like you know what i mean like get in touch with like so instant this is so funny so last night i ordered i was doing good like kind of good since that show saturday where i said i had the free pizza it was like slip and then last night i ordered um chicken gyro i was like okay i've earned some rice and some pita bread some carbs this is okay not too bad finished it was like yo let's get some sushi and i was like alex this would be 50 you spend on food just for dinner from ubereats you're not a [ __ ] sultan and i was like yes i am and then i ordered uh sushi i ordered 16 pieces of the deep-fried california roll oh man and ate it like after eating like four chicken skewers and like uh some potatoes and rice it was a gorgeous it was miserable too like and the other thing is too is like i only like non-seaweed wrapped sushi and i don't know how to [ __ ] order it and i don't know what it's called and i don't even know if it's technically sushi at that point but anyways this one was seaweed red brown great you just you're a [ __ ] idiot and then ate it miserably didn't really even enjoy it that much and it put on a ton of [ __ ] sodium and all that [ __ ] and then when it was done i went well don't escape this feeling you gotta fully feel it because it's been a while since i was at that low off food of like you just ate purely for sport there was no reason you weren't even emotionally that in a bad place like you ate just a [ __ ] because you were bored and just really got in like remember how this feels because this doesn't feel good but that's so cool to see how you've trained your brain like that you know that you've developed that discipline level well i mean you're not bulletproof you got it yeah you gotta like you can like [ __ ] [ __ ] up all the time and then you know what i mean like you gotta like remember what that's like so you can not [ __ ] up again yeah um okay well we're definitely gonna have to get in this book i know we're getting a little late on time but um before i wanted to point out that i'm drinking this this sparkling water uh definitely not a mike's hard lemonade [ __ ] you mike's hard lemonade a bit of a thing it's become every episode now we uh say [ __ ] you mike's hard lemonade there's a story there if you want to hear it we can if not you know well i'm not looking to get sued no no it's it's i feel like i owe it to my maybe not to this audience but people friends on facebook were following along with it something that happened this contest i was in they kind of [ __ ] me over so i feel like i don't owe an explanation for how that kind of went um so for anyone who's interested i joined this contest i found on on instagram and facebook and it was all over that on their social media to come up with the next slogan for their mike's hard lemonade uh lemon seltzer or whatever the hell it is oh yeah i know this okay and they had mclovin as their spokesperson all that i got in on the contest it must have launched 27 minutes or something earlier so i was really really early in there weren't that many comments and it said to just post a comment to submit your your slogan and i put in meet your new main squeeze which i thought was like a really clever one and i was checking the comments sections making sure nobody else had done it i'm like sweet you know this is my slogan it's in there uh in the following days i would reinsert it just to make sure that they remembered my slogan and you know about a month goes by and they finally announced the the eight finalists and sure enough my slogan is there and i'm like yeah i make this big facebook post i start telling my friends like make sure you vote for me and then it made it through to the top four and at that point for whatever reason they decide to tag the creators and all of a sudden it's being tagged for somebody else and it's their creation not mine um so long story short as per their rules they didn't break any rules is what i learned because they were shady ass rules um but i kind of just feel pissed about how the way that they ran the contest because there was no uh authority to who submitted something first it literally says like let's say we get 70 votes for this meet your new main squeeze which they claimed they had gotten 70 submissions for that one then they just randomly pick from all of those submissions even if it was you copy pasting mine you know no original content of any means and then you get the five grand yeah at least look it up on the timestamp because then you could say i had all that yeah i was arguing the timestamps and not only that but the main ways that i had seen people submitting were through facebook and instagram in a comment section simple lazy that's how most people are there was a third way you could do it which was through some sort of online form that would redirect you to a website i tried that it kind of was glitching on my phone i was like whatever i've done my facebook my instagram according to them because i got all these people rallying for me all these people came to the comments section and said hey like oliver came up with this we got the time stamps like all these people were backing me up and then that's when they told me well we actually got 70 submissions for meet your new main squeeze six of them were yours and i'm like okay well then where are the other 64. i scanned facebook comments i scanned the instagram comments from those original posts i couldn't find any certainly not 64 of them uh and then they told me that there was over 9000 submissions in total and i again i go back to the facebook and instagram comment sections which were one of the ways you could submit only 800 comments in each so that's only 1600 so they're saying roughly 7 500 applications went through this online portal website way that you could submit which is only verifiable by them it's not public in the ways that these comments sections are so i just got to take their word for it that yeah no we had 64 other people who said the same and sorry we you didn't get drawn so anyways in a nutshell that's kind of what happened they're technically not at fault but i think they ran a bogus ass contest where they exploited creative people hey there's a good slogan for all i know someone from their company copy pasted my [ __ ] and then randomly got selected you know what i mean it's just the whole thing seems kind of fishy so for anyone who was wondering there you go a little definitely i think i speak for everyone listening or i say like i kind of mike's hard side on this one oh you're on mike's hard stuff yeah i get it i get it well it's bureaucratic [ __ ] is kind of the way i looked at it like hey really you're on their side i like how it first you're okay with it you're like really well no i mean you're entitled to your opinion and i gave you the kohl's notes here so i might be omitting uh little details but well i was just joking but there's no way you admit it omitted any details there that's that's for sure what happened please stand by okay i'm gonna have to jump in here because i actually did manage to forget a pretty crucial detail when i was speaking to alex about this whole mike's heart lemonade fiasco i briefly mentioned that there was five thousand dollars on the line with this contest but what i forgot to mention was that my my slogan ended up winning the whole thing so i'm sure you can imagine how that would add some extra salt in the wound that being said i've been doing a lot of thinking and uh honestly i don't want to carry around this negative vibe of this whole mike's hard lemonade thing anymore so uh i'm dropping it i'm not gonna be doing it in the show the whole [ __ ] you mike's hard lemonade still [ __ ] you mike's are lemonade i'm gonna i'm gonna have it in my heart but uh i'm not gonna bother trying to put it in every episode i'm just gonna move on you know what i mean uh i don't need that [ __ ] bogging me down so uh sucks that it happened but life keeps it going uh while we're doing corrections here too i want to mention at the beginning of the episode i noticed that uh when alex asked me if anyone knows or has seen my dad i said i don't think he's ever been on camera before um okay you can tell uh i smoke too much weed because i interviewed my dad for like two and a half hours on episode 21. so uh yeah brain fart there but if you haven't seen that episode with my dad go check it out it's uh not the best audio quality we were still figuring things out but anyways back to the podcast uh anyways back to this amazing book float like a butterfly sting like or drink mint tea jesus i almost said the original okay um so this i wanted to ask you a question studio muhammad ali well you're a massive fan of his which is something i thought was really cool and something i wanted to talk to you about because you are in this cross section of what was very rare when we were younger people that like sports and like geeky things because you talk about spiderman in this book but you also talk about how much you love boxing and hockey and basketball the raptors and all that so i found that interesting i always find it interesting when people are really into sports but they're also kind of a geek because those things don't really run together as much they do now more with mcu and things becoming cool to be a nerd and all that but yeah i guess so i mean i don't know i look around this place and that's where i'm like man my [ __ ] nerd credit [ __ ] like well we amped it up a bit [ __ ] um yeah i i mean i don't know i like uh i guess it wasn't really a question where's the passion for boxing is more where i was leading with that how did you fall in love with boxing and and clearly the book showcases that it had a profound effect on some of your recovery as well i was always like a huge fan and i always looked to it for like inspiration in my life um obviously really turned up when when but i looked at all sports too for that too but i do find boxing is like the number one most it's just so i mean you're training like you're running a marathon but at times during the marathon you're gonna sprint which you don't do during a marathon but then also like the punching and getting punched so it's like just from that physical standpoint it's just you know oh my god it's unbelievable i i i don't even get eloquent when i talk about boxing because it's just so how the [ __ ] do they do this it as their job and all the time and by the end of your career you're like 30 to 70 fights you you went through 30 to 70 training camps which is like all encompassing like food is gotta it's so like lonely to do and it's so um difficult to do i cannot help but see the parallels with comedy as you're saying yeah oh yeah too and then like nobody gets out alive in it like successful people and it's oh there's a lot of parallels there and you don't get paid on the come up and so few people like actually make any serious dollars off of it oh yeah just brutal comedy is actually one reason why they talk about cte like oh we got to stop these players because they won't stop themselves like because so many players like right i know the risk of football i don't give a [ __ ] i want to play and people are like no we got to stop save these people from themselves and i don't know man that argument doesn't hold a lot of water with me because i always think like you could say a lot of besides like the physical obviously [ __ ] you could say a lot of things about comedy you could say about all these other no one ends up [ __ ] uh without some kind of scars and and makes money no one's happy blah blah you can say that about comedy easy 95 people even the successful people don't they always miserable blah blah all this [ __ ] so i'm gonna stop you from doing comedy and it's like no you're not i'm decided i want to do this like i wouldn't want anybody taking my agency away from me so maybe comedians should be wearing helmets in some cases yeah oh yeah for sure i did want to say about this though that i am not like a huge book reader which makes me sound like a bit of a derp but i you know i love graphic novels i read on the internet and stuff like that but it's not often that i pick up like a no pictures book which again they sound like a kindergartner but um very much so because it's so funny you call it a non-graphic novel i usually don't read non-graphic novels that's a really good way to like even further a book should be a non-graphic novel normalized comic books oh you're you're a non-graphic novel fan what's that a book a book but you know normally when i try to approach a book it feels like a book report or something right it's like a chore and this book i was genuinely like excited every time i got to go pick it up again and find a time in my day to sit down and absorb a little more and just keep chipping away at it because it was really you know sucks you in it's great you're a great writer and uh i wanted to know if it was always your intention to break the fourth wall as much as you did and sort of you you talk about the literary narratives that you're using as you're using them stuff like that and i thought that was really cool jumping through time a lot and yeah i do it a lot in standup and uh i guess to a degree like not like there's a fourth wall in life but like i editorialize a lot of what i'm thinking while i'm saying something it was very direct to the reader a lot of the book yeah so i i felt like and it was just very early on like it's just such a good avenue for jokes too right so i was just like it's so easy to break the fourth wall then just like here's a joke because i broke the fourth wall now i don't need a setup i can just tell you this joke and you break the tension a lot of the time too with those moments which is kind of nice right yeah you get heavy in this book yeah and then i also wanted to be funny right so i was like i mean like anytime something was like super i was like sad or dark i was like you need lots of laughs in the pages before this or after this because like this can't i don't want this to be like wow the last 20 pages have been [ __ ] emotionally taxed yeah i can't do i got to put this down yeah yeah well the other thing i loved about it was your uh recurring joke about like the things you almost named the book there's one right at the beginning one right near the end but i want to say there's like seven or eight of them in the book i don't know yeah i don't know how many but like that was another one whereas like the first one i felt like i was like okay that's all right and then the second one and i was like okay well now i have to make this like uh a through line throughout the book where it's like it's easy it was a great choice i loved it every time another one came up i was like oh yeah thanks yeah i know i i felt like it was like yeah again it was just like oh this feels like an easy avenue for jokes and then there was i would just be like placeholder title later and come back and then do the punch up on it nice okay well cool i'm glad to hear the behind the scenes stuff on that a bit man um i wanted to know uh what got you to start doing the podcast again because i know you took like almost exactly to the day a two two-year break was it when you made some relapses for some of the things that kind of wanted to motivate you to get behind the mic again or yeah like i always plan to like i mean at first i was like this is gonna be one year and i'm done with it i don't to do like this this podcast recurring all the time and then towards the end i was like no i do this has been like really good for my mental health too and and obviously the response and everything else like there's a variety of reasons to continue doing it on a regular basis and then i was like oh uh but i got fringe coming up and i can't do during fringe and started making some excuses and then started writing the book in earnest like the one from the book deal and was like oh [ __ ] i can't do both of these at the same time and then when i finished the first draft of the book i was like okay well now i can start doing the podcast again that was my end goal of when i will bring the podcast back and then now i've honestly stopped doing it again because i just there's a lot of reasons that i'm not doing it currently it takes a lot of time no it's not even really that it's post primarily it's because the second like season was going to be like now i'm quitting like a lot of things that are like bad for the planet and that's what i wanted the focus to be and now i'm not sure if that's right for a few reasons one of which is i was told by somebody who works at like a very important green organization that we don't want to encourage people to start focusing on quitting individual things we want to put pressure on the corporations and the government and then that makes me think well yeah that makes a lot of sense but aren't we putting the pressure on those organizations to then say to us hey you can't use or do these things anymore yeah like you want me to put pressure on them to make us do it where and i do understand like if people aren't gonna [ __ ] do it on their own and i'm like yeah you're right so i don't know and it confuses me then also just as far as like an artistic level of like i don't know if something with like a double-barreled scope makes any sense like that where it's like so this podcast is about staying clean and sober while also being funny and also being [ __ ] a tree hugger or whatever and i'm like that might be too big too broad yeah and then and i've really struggled with that and next time i bring it back i want it to stay back forever and uh uh now on now i could say that go stand-up's coming back the pandemic was hard so like i could make a variety of different excuses so i'm trying to figure it out right now like i really let things boil for a long time and i'm like yeah like it will come back i just really now have to decide like also too if it is just addiction focused will i continue quitting things just to see what it's like i'm like that could be interesting if it doesn't have to go for a year and quit weirder and weirder things but then also too i'm like well i have to start interviewing people that are not just comedians yeah and then it's like that's very hard because they have to be a [ __ ] addict to quit something this is the pros and the cons of having like a niche podcast you know because for me i'm the opposite end of the spectrum this show is all about having every week it's a different rant sometimes i have teachers therapists a lot of comedians as well but like it's kind of all over the place but that's possibly also why it's taking longer to get traction because i'll have some people come by and watch one episode and be like oh yeah we love spenny but then they won't watch any of my other episodes you know so stuff like that it's you know i i think if you go too broad then there's there's a detriment to that as well so it's you pick your lane i guess yeah i mean then spending has his own like you know uh fan base and draws like us yeah well that helps for sure yeah but i mean having a niche is a great way to get an audience you know where you're like these people came for this very specific topic but it limits you in the ways that you were just talking about now where you're kind of like oh well am i getting too broad here now you know you've already created that niche you kind of got to stick to it so but not really you can do whatever the [ __ ] you want you could just start a new podcast with a new kind of you know completely different then you lose the notoriety of the name you've got going with your current one though yeah yeah i'm thinking it over i i uh i'll figure it out whatever you decide to do i'm sure it'll be great yeah i might not bring it back too i don't know i really like it's uh i should even think about it more like right now i'm like i can't even really say i'm letting it boil away i should i'm like well i mean put some water in the pot first then buddy yeah um [ __ ] man we got to wrap it up soon but i i did want to talk to you about um how you did a q a for aspiring comics here in ottawa and i read that and then i thought i [ __ ] remember seeing this on facebook and debating going to it and i couldn't make it out for whatever reason i had to work or something but i just thought that was a really rad thing to do for people who had already done just for laughs and you know experience comics to try and give a little bit of that yoda wisdom to some of the up and comers honestly it wasn't about that at all and if i'm being like completely forthright i think those like q and a's are like it's not much you're going to hear here that you couldn't if you just like came out to a show actually that's not true because i [ __ ] hate when people do that so you said there was only like seven people who came so it must have been intimate in that respect yeah but we were mostly i i shouldn't have said like i don't think you could gain anything from it i think you actually can and you should be asking for advice and that is a good forum because then it's like you're not we agreed to do it this is what it was and you're not like after a show like hey i'm trying to sell my merch or whatever the [ __ ] like i can't answer all your open mic questions but the main reason we did it was to like because like well the reason to to get in was you have to bring like a donation to food drive yeah it was like food clothing or like because it was like their christmas drive so it was everything food clothing and um that's why we were like well this will be like a you know a good double-edged sword where it's like okay we'll we'll answer some questions like some really basic ones that are like easy to answer and then it's more like okay that's a complicated question for comedy and [ __ ] like that but just give these people a form and then mostly like yeah and then we'll have like a [ __ ] time we had like an entire like huge ass like truckload to bring them and like that was like super cool and then uh yeah it just felt so easy like and it was just so easy like that's why i was just a good idea i was like oh this is [ __ ] i comedians do that [ __ ] all the time oh come on it's a q a and it would always just for me upset me when they were like charging and i was like this is [ __ ] like here you guys let me take money off you to tell you how hard it is to make money at this like well that's not if you're doing this to like [ __ ] but then i was like well yeah they should have some skin in the game and there's got to be like a good way to transfer that and i was like yeah okay this is super easy because hey bring some cans from your house on a shitty old tv you're not going to use anyways anymore some little clothes you're not going to wear anyways and you get to do all this like this is win-win it's easy for them to do uh we [ __ ] sit there for like an hour and answer some comedy questions and then you know a bunch of people in need get like a bunch of [ __ ] once i go through it and really pick out the good stuff man that's awesome uh well i'm glad you guys did it like i said that's right did you get that joke i thought that was a good joke but i think i went sailing i got over my head over og's head yeah yeah i just said i like steal the best stuff from the donation but oh [ __ ] i didn't even hear that it's okay it's okay i slid it in it was pro move but then let it just low key i'm getting sleepy yeah there we go okay i'm almost done here anyways i got uh two more questions the first one is i noticed uh how much of a dog lover you are we were talking about that and if i'm not mistaken one of the five people you had to mention at the end was that that bob yeah yeah oh yeah so that's why i wanted to ask why do you think your dogs had such a profound uh impact on you because everyone loves dogs you know but i love my dog but i don't know that i would thank them in my book so it's next level [ __ ] you know i don't know i guess i'm just that white and it must be like a thing in my family like oh yeah like every every one of my aunts and uncles every everyone has a [ __ ] dog on both sides of my family wow so my grandma had a dog growing up her uh oldest uh son did like it's it's everyone i'm not gonna go through the whole list i have like so many it's like you're a dog family it's like [ __ ] like 20 dogs and it's nuts it's unbelievable and completely ironically before it was all like meme stuff or anything like no everybody talks about them like they're their kids they how's this dog doing how's this dog doing and like the answers are so deep they're not just like oh this is you know i think he's actually been bothered by the weather but like in his heart and i gotta figure out does he have like a seasonal effect on himself yeah exactly so i i don't know i think it's innate like i don't really like that's it's just it's like yeah it's gotta be like it's primal like oh yeah my family for sure didn't leave cave we were like the last people to leave caves and then and then they're like oh these dogs make me feel safe let's not eat these ones yeah i thought you were gonna say something maybe along the lines of uh at some of your worst moments the dog wasn't judging you you know you hear stuff like that that an animal still loves you even when you're at your worst yeah i could see that but i mean at the same time i mean they pick up on your emotions so i don't know it's like they they're empathetic yeah well they pick up but then sometimes you make them sad you're like i'm i would recognize that with my current dog otis and my old dog pablo i'm bumming you out i gotta [ __ ] it and stuff yeah vibes totally oh man that's one thing i didn't want to forget there was a quote i wanted to say that i thought maybe you've heard it before but i thought it was really cool in in regards to addiction which is uh rock pop rock bottom is a great place to start building that was a cool quote i don't know poetic i didn't say that no no it's not your question i was like what the [ __ ] a cool quote that i thought you might know that is good i i've heard that one before too i'm sorry i misunderstood it sorry sorry i was like oh [ __ ] i got so scared i was like did i steal that and claim it's mine in the book [ __ ] yeah it's a tweet when you were on a binge man yeah okay well last question we have a new question for season three we always have one question that we ask every guest for the season uh and this one is going to be if you are weren't doing what you do for a living what would your dream job be i feel like it might be boxer so maybe give me another one but yeah i mean i list a bunch of dream jobs exactly so like it's a weird one to have it's gonna be an athlete for sure it's like nhl goalie starting point guard for the raptors it's going to be yeah for sure yeah that okay well what about dream dreams you think you could actually attain because i know in your book you describe it's not a dream job i hate what [ __ ] people do this all the time i see this on social media a lot and it drives me [ __ ] nuts when someone's like just uh became a real estate agent my dreams have come true i was like what kind of [ __ ] shitty kid were you that you were like well one day if i reach hard enough for the stars and real estate is just a great job you make more money than me so i'm allowed to say this [ __ ] you yeah but it's like no way you're dreaming dream's crazy to say this is three years ago you started at [ __ ] algonquin college and now you're managing uh a hotel you didn't dream of managing a hotel you started hospitality and tourism and you're like i wonder if i'm gonna be able to get a job in this industry and three days [ __ ] off that's crazy talk so if they have to be but an attainable one like okay and to walk it in the middle i am a very good long distance runner like exceptionally good nice so like okay like i'm not saying i could be but in a dream world yeah like okay like olympic like you directed all your efforts towards that no even then probably not but like i run like exceptional times so like i probably could have been like university uh scholarship good but not like [ __ ] world-class good so then i don't know what you mean by dream job that's what i'm talking about hey man that's how we feel it's a [ __ ] dream job my dream job would be beast from oh [ __ ] oh no no it's magnets that scared the [ __ ] out of me i was like oh no i just ended the party now you're saying oh [ __ ] because there was a nugget of weed there no that's hilarious [Music] that's what i've been talking about the whole time i just outed him right here no when mike rita came over um and we smoked a lot of weed oh no he's down he's trying to pull the hole it's my friend that's not me well i found it on the ground the next day and it was kind of just like the most mike rita thing ever to find like weed from the weed fairy the next day so i'm actually he forgot his grinder here as well so i'm gonna print the photo that we took together and put that piece of weed the papers that he signed and his grinder that he forgot into some sort of display case or something and make a little you know another thing to hang up on the wall oh that's cool speaking of which yeah i don't know if you got that oh [ __ ] yeah no i put up the book in the book anyways man so i started like the preview but didn't open it no but i don't have it oh yes i brought uh this little piece right here i'm gonna try and catch your show tomorrow night too so okay cool yeah business cards sometimes people just doodle something here so it's you know what i have a bunch of old pictures of myself i can actually and i think they might still be in the car i can actually give you one before i leave yeah i got a greasy picture amazing okay well yo dude thank you so much for spending your time with me and sharing all these cool experiences yeah thanks a lot for having me buddy high fives yeah let's go let's do one doubles is too much all right bye everybody

Channel: Just Chill with Oliver George

Views: 1,867

Keywords: Just Chill with Oliver George, Oliver George, Alex Wood, Alex Wood comedy, Alex Wood comedian, Alex Wood author, Alex Wood Quits Everything, Float Like A Butterfly Drink Mint Tea, recovery, addiction, substance abuse, therapy, podcast, podcasting, interview podcast, interview, Alex Wood interview, Alex Wood comedian interview, WoodComedy, Woody, Canadian comedy, standup comedy, stand up comedy, standup comedian, Ottawa, Ottawa comedy

Id: d6nBOJeHU0o

Length: 112min 18sec (6738 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 29 2021