EVERY SPOKEN WORD
155 min read · 30,913 words- 0:00 – 15:00
(drumming music) Joe Rogan podcast,…
- JRJoe Rogan
(drumming music) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.
- NANarrator
The Joe Rogan Experience.
- JWJustin Wren
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (rock music plays) Oh hey, Justin. What's up, my man?
- JRJoe Rogan
What's up, buddy? You got a, a, a whole book of stuff to talk about.
- JWJustin Wren
Yeah, my-
- JRJoe Rogan
You're prepared.
- JWJustin Wren
I'm prepared a little bit.
- JRJoe Rogan
You're like a professional.
- JWJustin Wren
Like, there's something special. There's something special and we're gonna kick this off with a bang.
- JRJoe Rogan
Uh-oh.
- JWJustin Wren
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Something I don't know about?
- JWJustin Wren
Something you don't know about.
- JRJoe Rogan
Uh-oh.
- JWJustin Wren
But we'll get into it.
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay.
- JWJustin Wren
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Special.
- JWJustin Wren
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Tell me.
- JWJustin Wren
You wanna do it now?
- JRJoe Rogan
Sure.
- JWJustin Wren
Awesome. Let's do it.
- JRJoe Rogan
What's happening?
- JWJustin Wren
Well, you and your team, you, uh, picked Fight for the Forgotten, uh, my non-profit, as charity of choice with Buffalo Trace.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- JWJustin Wren
And we're gonna do something really special for all your fans.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- JWJustin Wren
But first, um, (smacks lips) I wanted to do something ni- ... I talked with Bo Beckman. His great-grandfather's great-grandfather, I think his name's like T-H, I don't know, uh, Eckert or something like that. He, um, (smacks lips) he started basically the modern day bourbon in America. So, anyways, I asked him, I was talking with Bo and said, "Could we do something special for Joe?" And he was like, "Yeah. What are you, what are you thinking?" And so I talked with my buddy Ryan, who's the vice president of our board, and we thought about it and we were like, "What if we could get a barrel from Buffalo Trace and we could give it to Joe?"
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, Jesus.
- 15:00 – 30:00
You ate ... That's…
- JWJustin Wren
go in there. And they can, um, hunt and gather. They can get wild hog. I mean, I've had, uh, duiker, this little antelope. I've had, um, hog. I've had a parrot. (laughs) I've had a monkey there. Um-
- JRJoe Rogan
You ate ... That's what we talked about.
- JWJustin Wren
I ate monkey, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
You ate monkey. We talked-
- JWJustin Wren
And so-
- JRJoe Rogan
There's a amazing documentary from the BBC on, uh, the Congo. And one of the things that it covers is the duiker, and that the duiker actually swims under water. And, uh ...
- JWJustin Wren
I didn't know that.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, they swim under the water and they eat fish.
- JWJustin Wren
Wow. I had no clue.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, this is what's crazy. What the, the documentary was discussing was the, how rapid it was that these, uh, grasslands turned into rainforests. Apparently, it was a very drastic climate shift and a lot of these plains animals got stuck in the Congo. It's pretty wild 'cause you can see, like, these-
- JWJustin Wren
It is wild.
- JRJoe Rogan
... these, like, herds. I guess they would be herds, like-
- JWJustin Wren
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... of, uh, antelope running through the swamp.
- JWJustin Wren
Oh.
- JRJoe Rogan
They're like, it's, it's trampling through this ... Like, all these animals you would normally see, like, in these l- grassy plains, they're running through the water.
- JWJustin Wren
Wow.
- JRJoe Rogan
And this little duiker, that little antelope thing, swims under water. They can swim under water as, as long as 100 yards.
- JWJustin Wren
That's wild.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JWJustin Wren
I didn't know that. Have you ever seen a okapi or an okapi?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. Yeah.
- JWJustin Wren
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Cool looking.
- JWJustin Wren
Yeah, they're, they're incredible.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's like a zebra or a-
- JWJustin Wren
It's like a zebra butt and a giraffe head-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JWJustin Wren
... and then the body of an antelope-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- 30:00 – 45:00
Is that good? …
- JWJustin Wren
wearing clowns. "You fake as fuck motherfucker," and, uh, "You Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde." I mean, just like they would just grill people. And you're up at 5:00.
- JRJoe Rogan
Is that good?
- JWJustin Wren
Um, I, I, I don't, I don't know exactly be- but it was what I needed at that moment.
- JRJoe Rogan
Really?
- JWJustin Wren
Um, it was what I needed at that moment because I needed to not-... run from it. I needed to face it and I needed to look at the, the stuff and-
- JRJoe Rogan
Are the people running it people that have gotten clean this way?
- JWJustin Wren
Yes. Yes.
- JRJoe Rogan
They've gotten clean through this?
- JWJustin Wren
And they have a, they have a 87% success rate-
- JRJoe Rogan
Really?
- JWJustin Wren
... for the people that do 90 days. Now a lot of them only do 45. Some of them only do 60 days, and then I would say probably more than half of the people that went there, uh, ended up leaving because of how hard it was.
- JRJoe Rogan
So-
- JWJustin Wren
But the only reason they wanted people there is if you really truly wanted to get sober.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- JWJustin Wren
Because for years, you've been stuck in the cycle of addiction, and for me, the easiest way ... I mean, they explained it and I had drawn it on whiteboards a lot, but for me, whenever you would have that first use, you would have this, what they call an allergy set off. You, you have an or- abnormal reaction to a, to a substance. Just like someone else can't have peanuts, I can't have drugs or alcohol because when I do, an allergy goes off that says in my body, I have an abnormal reaction that says, you know, I know rationally that one is too many, but whenever I have that first use, a thousand's not enough. I gotta keep having it.
- JRJoe Rogan
And this is explained to you by these people at this rehab?
- JWJustin Wren
Yeah. Sure.
- JRJoe Rogan
Or this is just your own feeling?
- JWJustin Wren
No, no, this was explained, and, and there's this doctor that's really great. His name's Dr., uh, Kevin, and then he's got like a, a Irish last name, but he's, he's got some stuff on, I think Netflix and Amazon, and um, he was a Navy, um, surgeon. And basically, like he ended up writing himself scripts for oxy and then he was injecting himself with other stuff and he got put in a, a, a prison, a military prison, that one that got taken down in, uh, like Kansas. I forget what it's called, but anyway, Leavenworth or something like that. He was put in that prison. Anyways, now he's spent his time there really trying to help people in addiction. And that cycle of addiction basically is explained as after you have that first use and that allergy's set off, now you go on your spree because what h- what that doctor did, why I brought him up was he shows scientifically through brain research that an addict's brain is different, like they don't have enough dopamine receptors, and whenever that hits, now all of a sudden it goes back to that almost hunter-gatherer brain where it says, "This is a priority for survival." Like that's why some addicts will prioritize it above food or water or family and you see them do irrational things.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- JWJustin Wren
And then they go on this run and then when they, after, after that spree, after that run, they come out of it and they emerge remorseful. They feel terrible. I've, I've had moments like that. And then all of a sudden you, you make a firm resolution. That's what you back it up with.
- JRJoe Rogan
Is that what you felt when you did it the first 30 days? When you did it for 30 days, you got-
- JWJustin Wren
Yeah, I came out, I emerged remorseful and then I, I promised myself, I promised my wife at the time, I promised my family, uh, friends that, that this isn't who I wanna be. And, and what they say about an addict is you could hook them up to a lie detector and they absolutely 100% mean it, that they never intend to use again, but then what happens is they back with that firm resolution, "I promise, this was the last time." All of a sudden you get restless, irritable, and discontented. Well, whenever an addict gets restless, irritable, discontented, I, I would ask the question, what's the, what's the difference between discontent and discontented? You know, discont- discontent you might be a little restless, but discontented basically says, well d- if discontent is I'm thirsty, discontented is there's not enough water in the whole world to quench this thirst.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- JWJustin Wren
And so you get in that place where you have this mental obsession. So you have this mental obsession, you get restless, irritable, and discontented, and then you go back to that first u- use, and then you get stuck in that cycle of addiction again, and that's where I lived for five years from 17 to 23 was I was just looping back and forth.
- JRJoe Rogan
So you'd get sober for a little bit, then go back again and-
- JWJustin Wren
From 17 to 23, no.
- JRJoe Rogan
No.
- JWJustin Wren
I would not get sober hardly at all. I would get sober for my fights, the eight weeks of fight camp, 10 weeks of fight camp, but then that's why, um, that's why Grudge Training Center had to kick me out, you know? I mean, Brendan was on that boat. I think Rashad, Nate Marquardt, um, Shane, Shane Carwin, uh, Duane "Bang" Ludwig, all those guys that invited me on the team after I got off The Ultimate Fighter, it was just a short while later that they were having to ask me to leave the team. It was like a, a vote. Eliot Marshall, uh, Trevor Whitman. I think Justin Gaethje was just starting to come up. I don't know if he was actually training full time then. Uh, but he was still at North, uh, Northern Colorado State or Northern Colorado Wrestling there, but they said, you know, "Justin, like, um, you, we love you, but you gotta go. You gotta go get help." And I should have went and got help, but that's when I found my purpose with the Pygmies. I, I, I've heard this quote that said, "No act of kindness, no matter how small, ever goes wasted." And so I started at the local children's hospital, became a local volunteer, went through night school for it. Later, do you remember HDNet and, uh, Inside MMA with Boss Rutten?
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm. Yep.
- 45:00 – 1:00:00
Do you still go…
- JWJustin Wren
Pepper. Anyways, I get there, go to the backyard, and when the door opens, I get hit with a couple of flashes of light. And it's them taking pictures. I hear the sound of laughter. I see that no one else is dressed up. And my middle school crush said, "I can't believe you thought you were good enough to come to my party." Right next to her, a boy said, "You're worthless." And then my notorious bully from, like, third to eighth grade said, "You should just kill yourself." And so that leads to basically whenever I would relapse, I would say to myself, "You're not good enough. You're worthless. Maybe you should just kill yourself." And I was suicidal at 13. I didn't kill myself because my mom... I thought, "What would this do to her?"
- JRJoe Rogan
Do you still go back to that one day? Like, that one day when you were a child-
- JWJustin Wren
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... hurt you so badly that's, that's still in your mind almost as, like, a benchmark for who you are?
- JWJustin Wren
It... I did. And that's why I've, I think I've really come to a place of, like, self-love, seeing myself that, like, I'm-
- JRJoe Rogan
When?
- JWJustin Wren
... I'm needed. Uh, well, the last six months.
- JRJoe Rogan
But the, uh... This is after your UFC career-
- JWJustin Wren
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... after your Bellator career.
- JWJustin Wren
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
All the amazing things you've done with Fight For The Forgotten. All the times-
- JWJustin Wren
I, I would know it.
- JRJoe Rogan
... you've been to the Congo.
- JWJustin Wren
I would know it. But when I would relapse, I would feel s- like such a piece of garbage. I would feel like I was a disappointment to myself, but also to everybody else. And that... Well, let me, let me tell you what happened in Mexico. So I, I, I end up going... I, I asked to go to a different place, and they just wanted to get me into rehab as soon as possible, which I really admire and respect. But I knew it was a place that didn't have a good access, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
In Mexico?
- JWJustin Wren
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Why in Mexico?
- JWJustin Wren
I got on a, a plane and I thought it was, I thought it was pretty symbolic. There was... It was COVID, so everything shut down. And then I, I... Man, there's a, there's a statistic that was on CNN, and it said that in Japan last month, and I don't know if this was last month in December or November, but in one month they had more suicides than all of COVID deaths in Japan. In one month.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JWJustin Wren
And it's because all these people are isolated. And I know that w- when I'm in active addiction, what I do is I isolate, I sedate, I suppress, and I numb out. And, uh, and there's so many people that are going through, um, this right now, what I went through. And I think COVID was a big part of that, you know, going straight from a divorce to then all of a sudden you're in isolation.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JWJustin Wren
Um, and then I just decided to use and then that's all I had to do, and then kept going and-
- JRJoe Rogan
What, what was the feeling when you, when you decide? When you say, "Okay, I'm gonna use." Like, you make a conscious decision. How do you get the weed? Like, where, what, what sets you off?
- JWJustin Wren
I was just hanging out with two people and they brought it out, and I was like, "You know what? I can do this once and, and show myself."
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, okay.
- JWJustin Wren
So this is, this is what the, that mental obsession is, "It'll be different this time."
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- JWJustin Wren
"I can use it this time and put it down." And-
- JRJoe Rogan
See, I know people that are drunks that have figured out that they can smoke weed. They can't drink, but they can smoke weed.
- 1:00:00 – 1:11:09
Like you found your…
- JWJustin Wren
was so real. And I come out of that vision feeling like they were forgotten. And I just knew all this stuff, like their suffering. And I cried a little puddle of tears. I had no idea who they are. Not a puddle, but like a little silver dollar size of, like, tears. And I wept, and I never wept like that for anyone in my life. I didn't know who they were, where they were, anything like that. And three days later, I meet this guy named Caleb. And Caleb had done humanitarian mission trips all over the world and he had lived with the Vanuatu people who... And I thought I was crazy, bro. I- I literally thought I was crazy. Is this some psychic break? Is this some sort of- or mental breakdown, like then- that I saw something that, like, I didn't try to conjure up? I just- I just had this experience. I thought I would never tell anyone about it. And then when I tell Caleb, who had been buddies with Bear Grylls, had done survival training with him, uh, had- had- had went and visited the Maasai tribe that hunt lions, I thought if there's one guy I could tell this to, it's- it's this guy. And, um, I end up telling the vision. He says, "I know who they are."... and I said, "What?" And he said, "Those are the Pygmy people. They live in the Congo basin rainforest. There's in eight or nine African nations." I'm like, "Who are they?" And, uh, he goes, "They're in the Congo. They're in all these other places." And I'm like, "Where are they?" This is how I found out about the Pygmies. (laughs) This is where this all began, at 23 years old, like y- this guy tells me, "The people from your vision are the Pygmy people." Then, I tell him the vision. He goes, "I'm supposed to go there in three and a half weeks." This is crazy that we met, because I had a team of three other people that were, um, who were going with me, but they're all husbands, they're all fathers, and the State Department, the US State Department just said, "No, no Americans go there for any reason." That there's rebel groups that were actually decapitating people and different crazy things. And he said, "Look, like, come tell my wife this vision." Her name's Jess. And he said, "If you come tell Jess, she asked me to cancel the trip, but you tell her this vision." And so I told her the vision and literally he said, he looks at me and he goes, "Justin, if you go, I'll go." And Jess said, "If you go, he'll go." And it was like the craziest thing to me that, like, he can go, he's married, he's got a kid, and like, he, but he was already planning on going in three and a half weeks. And so we brought a buddy, Collin, along with us, who took the, the, the photo. That was just a candid photo that's the cover of my book. It was my first hour in the Congo. And so the sober vision literally took me there, and then all sudden we land on this grass runway. Monkeys are jumping off the runway. We get out. We drive six to eight hours. We, we get on a dugout canoe. We go across the river. We start walking, and then all sudden we hear drumming, and then we hear singing, and then we come into a clearing and the first guy we meet has tuberculosis, and he's coughing. And like, I, they start telling us how they're hungry, they're thirsty, they're poor, they're sick, they're oppressed. But before that happened, like before they started telling us their stuff, I just had to drop down into like a full squat. I put my elbows on my knees. I literally took a knee, 'cause I felt weak in the knees, 'cause I had never experienced... I didn't know stuff like this actually happens, and I felt like it's, "Who's gonna believe this?"
- JRJoe Rogan
Like you found your purpose.
- JWJustin Wren
Yeah. I found my, I found my purpose. But it was so wild to me that I was like, "Why did this happen?"
- JRJoe Rogan
That it came to you in a vision?
- JWJustin Wren
How did this... Yes. It came to me in a vision.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JWJustin Wren
How did this happen? Why did this ha-
- JRJoe Rogan
Did you-
- JWJustin Wren
I couldn't make logical sense of it.
- JRJoe Rogan
Did you tell people about the vision, other than this one friend?
- JWJustin Wren
I told Caleb, I told Collin, and I told his wife, Jess. That's it. And I had a piece of paper that I wrote down, "Forgotten," at the top, then "Hungry, Thirsty, Poor, Sick, Oppressed, Enslaved." And they, they knew it, and it's been really cool actually. Uh, Jim and Susan, who helped me run Fight for the Forgotten, we had a dinner in Caleb's house in Nebraska, and Caleb and Jess were able to tell (laughs) Jim and Susan their version of the story, which was awesome. You know, he had this vision. We went. It happened.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- JWJustin Wren
Cale- Caleb was grabbing my shoulder, like my trap. He was like, "This is your vision! This is your vision!" And I didn't know what to do with it. I felt like it was nuts. And, but the chief came to us, and he gave us, after we stayed there for a couple weeks, he said... He gave me the one thing. You know, this is our ten-year anniversary of Fight for the Forgotten. We're calling it Ten Years of Promise, because they gave me the one promise that I could keep. And they said... I knew that they needed land, but I didn't know how to do that. I didn't know how to drill water wells. I was just a fighter. I didn't know how to start farms. And literally, he said... He, he... Caleb and Collin are with me, and he looks at me and says, "We don't have a voice. Can you help us have one?" And he's looking right at me. He motions to me. "Can you help us have one?" I start tearing up 'cause Caleb and Collin know my vision and how it happened, and, "What are you gonna do with this?" You know? And I'm like, "I don't know what to do with this. I don't know what to do with this." But it, that, that's whenever it set in, because I said yes. I said yes, but it was almost like my soul or my heart screamed yes. Like, "This is my purpose. This is what I'll do. I'm not just gonna fight against people. I'm gonna fight for people." (sniffs) And so that really helped me for a long time, like being able to go there and help. Um, and then I'll, I'll, I'll tell you, since we're on these visions, like I had not... I had only had one other time that I had experienced anything like this. It's ten years later. I was in Sedona, and I was with Aubrey and Fit for Service, and there's like 178 people from all over the world, and we met up in Sedona, and there were classes, and, uh, not classes, but like breakouts on meditation. And I never had like formal teaching, training on it, but we did a breath work session, and they split us up into three different groups, and there's 178 people, so there's like maybe 50 people, a little over 50 people in each of the three groups. And they were gonna take us through three hours of breath work. Now, it's a 30-minute teaching on the front, a 30-minute kind of integration at the end, but you're gonna do two hours of breath work. And I guess to, to actually set that up, in, in Mexico, I, I, I, I took a cocktail that honestly I thought was gonna stop my heart. I took five Oxy 80s, 80 milligrams, and basically they do five milligrams, they do 10 milligrams, they do 20 milligrams, they do 40 milligrams, and then they do 80. So five Oxy 80s is equivalent of like 40, uh, or no, what is that? I don't know. It's, it's five Oxy 80s is what? That's 80 5 milligram pills. That's 80 5 milligram pills. That's like almost three prescription bottles of 30, you know, 10 shy. I took all that at once. I took the biggest line of coke I'd ever taken. I drank like half a bottle of tequila, one of those smaller bottles, but I took like half a bottle of tequila, and then I had bought what I thought was molly, this like crystallized molly, and my motor skills were slowing. This was April 5th. The night of April 5th was the darkest night of my life. Actually, it wasn't the night. It was, it was about noon or 2:00 PM. Like, April 4th was the darkest night of my life, and then April 5th, when I woke up, I was just like... I was tired. I felt like the addiction had snagged me, that I, I wasn't gonna escape.
- JRJoe Rogan
What was the-What did, what did you think the crystal stuff was?
- JWJustin Wren
I thought it was molly.
- JRJoe Rogan
And what was it?
- JWJustin Wren
Turned out to be red phosphorus meth.
- JRJoe Rogan
Red phosphorus meth?
- JWJustin Wren
Red phosphorus meth.
- JRJoe Rogan
What is the-
- JWJustin Wren
I guess that's the strongest meth in the world. That's what the addictionologist at, at rehab told me. And they said, "Literally, Justin, just the cocktail you took was 100% a heart-stopping cocktail if you hadn't had that crystal of that meth. That meth is the only thing that kept your heart beating."
- JRJoe Rogan
What?
- JWJustin Wren
Wh- when I sat down, when I sat down on the bed, because the five Oxy 80s, the cocaine, the, um... Oh, I had five Xanax, two milligrams also.
- JRJoe Rogan
Jesus Christ, so the meth kept you alive?
- JWJustin Wren
The meth kept my heart beating. And the next morning, I woke up. I remember my motor skills so low to where if I would have tried to talk, I wouldn't have been able to. Um, the table was maybe right where you're sitting and the bed was where I was sitting, so it wasn't that far. But I remember I only too- I didn't take the, what I thought was the molly until after everything started getting dark or just kind of cold. And then, uh, the last thing I did was I crushed up that, that molly, or what I thought was molly, and I crushed it up and I snorted it on both sides of my nostrils. And I never felt a burn like that in my life in my nostrils 'cause it was this, whatever, this chemical of methamphetamine. And I sat back on the bed, and I remember I, I laid back with my arms out and my feet were off to where the next morning my ankles were swollen, because I just fell back and passed out. I woke up at maybe like 6:00 AM the next morning, it was right before the sun rose, and I remember I woke up and I woke up with a gasp. It was like a (gasps) like a... And I thought in my head, I was like, "Shit, I'm alive. Fuck, I'm still here." And I went out and I was in my clothes from the day before. I mean, bro, I was passed out for like 18, 20 hours, something like that, from like noon until like maybe 6:00 AM the next morning or 2:00 PM to like 6:00 AM the next morning. And, uh, people that take meth, like they can't sleep. And that was my first time or only time, but, um, they, they normally can't sleep for days. And then all of a sudden, I pass out for that long because I had all that other stuff in my system. Well, I went out and I got in the water, and I take my shirt off and I, I, I just get in, and I remember I was sitting on my knees in the, on the sand, in the water. The water's coming up kind of on my chest and over my shoulders. And it was kind of grounding, but I just remember trying to connect to my breath and also my heart, 'cause my heart was racing like crazy. And I remember like saying, "Thank you (laughs) for the beating heart in my chest." Like, "Thank you," 'cause I, I wasn't planning on waking up the next day, and I did. And then I was saying, "Thank you for the beating heart in my chest." And then, and then I started saying, "Thank you for the breath that's in my lungs." And I had my eyes closed, and before I started saying thank you though, I remember like these waves coming over me, and it was almost like this shamefulness was coming over me with every wave, like just so much shame because of what I did the night before, day before. And then whenever I started thanking myself or thank- being thankful for the breath in my lungs, being thankful for that crazy beating heart in my chest, it's like it kind of switched to like gratefulness all of a sudden, and maybe like the shamefulness was leaving. You know how waves can kind of come over you and then they go back out and they kind of come over you? It was kind of like just all of a sudden it changed to like gratefulness and a little bit of the shamefulness kind of left. And I, I just felt a sense like, "Open your eyes," like a thought in my mind, "Just open your eyes." And when I opened my eyes, like literally on the horizon in Playa del Carmen, like a, a, the sun just pops up over the sunrise, or the sunrise starts to appear on the horizon. And I just sat there and I was like, I was dumbfounded where I was like blown away because I watched the most beautiful sunrise I've ever seen in my life.
Episode duration: 2:43:16
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