Joe Rogan Experience #1822 - Chris DiStefano

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   (drum roll) Joe Rogan podcast,…

   1. CDChris DiStefano0:00

      (drum roll) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

   2. NANarrator0:04

      The Joe Rogan Experience.

   3. NANarrator0:06

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (instrumental music plays) And we're up.

   4. JRJoe Rogan0:13

      Chrissy D in the place to be. What's happening, baby?

   5. CDChris DiStefano0:15

      Thank you for having me, my friend.

   6. JRJoe Rogan0:17

      My pleasure. I'm glad you wore that shirt.

   7. CDChris DiStefano0:18

      Oh, yeah. I know.

   8. JRJoe Rogan0:19

      'Cause I was gonna wear one just like it.

   9. CDChris DiStefano0:20

      Like this? Like-

   10. JRJoe Rogan0:21

       No.

   11. CDChris DiStefano0:21

       ... Miami vibes?

   12. JRJoe Rogan0:23

       (laughs)

   13. CDChris DiStefano0:23

       I, um-

   14. JRJoe Rogan0:23

       Where'd you get that?

   15. CDChris DiStefano0:24

       This is from a company called RSVLTS, um, R-S-V-L-T-S, and, um, they sent me a bunch of shirts. And I got that kinda body where I'm like ... Somebody said once that I had leading man face, best friend body, a casting director, which was crushing, but-

   16. JRJoe Rogan0:38

       Casting director said that to you?

   17. CDChris DiStefano0:38

       ... but an accurate description. Yeah, and I was like, "Oh, that's nice." So-

   18. JRJoe Rogan0:42

       Here's the thing though.

   19. CDChris DiStefano0:43

       Yeah.

   20. JRJoe Rogan0:43

       You can change your body. You can't change your face.

   21. CDChris DiStefano0:45

       Yes. That's the truth.

   22. JRJoe Rogan0:46

       'Cause you have ... Leading man face is a great thing to have.

   23. CDChris DiStefano0:49

       Yeah, I-

   24. JRJoe Rogan0:49

       The rest of it is, like, workable.

   25. CDChris DiStefano0:51

       I have these, like, like ... No matter ... Since I been a little kid, I've just had, like, these, like, puffy nipples. Even when I was, like, skinny and ripped, I just always had just nice nipple fat.

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:01

       Hmm.

   27. CDChris DiStefano1:01

       And this shirt, what I've learned is wearing shirts with a lot of patterns like this distracts from the nipple fat. I actually was flying out here yesterday, and I was wearing this green shirt, and I, when I went to the b- And I was wearing a book bag. And when I went to the bathroom, my tits were, like, pointed out like this. I was like, "I gotta change my shirt."

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:16

       Hmm.

   29. CDChris DiStefano1:16

       And then I just changed my shirt in the public bathroom at JFK, and then I just threw that shirt out in the garbage.

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:22

       Wow, it was that bad?
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   Top 10 of what?…

   1. CDChris DiStefano15:00

      say in everything." And they gave it to me and they, they put it on and it was tr- on the Trending Now page for a, for a l- pretty long time and I think that's because of the podcast fans and the internet fans, like, pushed it over. It didn't make the top 10 or anything, but I'm, you know, pretty proud of it. I think John Travolta-

   2. JRJoe Rogan15:15

      Top 10 of what?

   3. CDChris DiStefano15:16

      You know how the Netflix top 10, it makes it into the-

   4. JRJoe Rogan15:19

      (clears throat)

   5. CDChris DiStefano15:19

      Netflix does a top 10. Oh, these are the top 10, like, most viral, uh, shows we have.

   6. JRJoe Rogan15:25

      Yeah, but come, dude, they have hundreds of thousands of shows.

   7. CDChris DiStefano15:27

      Yeah, I guess that's right.

   8. JRJoe Rogan15:28

      You can't, I mean, you can't think like that.

   9. CDChris DiStefano15:29

      I fed the bad wolf again.

   10. JRJoe Rogan15:30

       Yeah, the, fuck that wolf. Yeah, you can't think like that at all. The top 10, like, what, what, why? W- what, w- why do you care?

   11. CDChris DiStefano15:37

       I know, I'm, uh, well, because-

   12. JRJoe Rogan15:38

       You can't.

   13. CDChris DiStefano15:38

       ... I go through, I go through phases-

   14. JRJoe Rogan15:39

       (clears throat) Yeah.

   15. CDChris DiStefano15:40

       ... where sometimes I care, sometimes I don't.

   16. JRJoe Rogan15:41

       But I've, I was fascinated by that 'cause you're this good-looking guy. You're a very good-looking guy and I-

   17. CDChris DiStefano15:45

       Thank you.

   18. JRJoe Rogan15:45

       ... I pay attention to your stuff and you, you have all this anxiety talk, anxiety talk.

   19. CDChris DiStefano15:49

       Yeah.

   20. JRJoe Rogan15:49

       And I'm like, you know how many fucking ugly people would be so pumped to look like you?

   21. CDChris DiStefano15:53

       I (sighs) I-

   22. JRJoe Rogan15:54

       Do you know how many people, like, like, your successful comedy career, you know, you've got a family, you've got a lot going on.

   23. CDChris DiStefano15:59

       Yeah.

   24. JRJoe Rogan16:00

       You, you've got all this positivity, but you have some sort of weird thing.

   25. CDChris DiStefano16:05

       I think that there's a, a thing in me where I- I always feel, um, I always feel like, um, like th- like a, like an impersonator. You know, like, I'm- I'm- I'm sorry, an imposter where I'm like-

   26. JRJoe Rogan16:18

       Yeah.

   27. CDChris DiStefano16:18

       But I've felt that way since I've been a little kid.

   28. JRJoe Rogan16:19

       Yeah, but everybody feels that way.

   29. CDChris DiStefano16:21

       Yeah, so I think what happens with me, what, everything... Well, hold on. Let, uh, do you want me to finish the Travolta story?

   30. JRJoe Rogan16:27

       Oh.
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   (laughs) …

   1. CDChris DiStefano30:00

      just put my son back in school, okay? Easy-breezy, no problems asked, I'll sign whatever forms you want, he goes back to school." He goes, "The second option, and again, this one sucks for you..." He goes, "I'm gonna come over there and I'm gonna break both your kneecaps." And he goes, "You may think I heard that line in a movie." He goes, "I'm one of the guys they write the movies about." He goes, "I will..." (laughs) And this is funny. He goes, "I will call 911 right now." He goes, "I will give them my address, my Social Security number, whatever." He goes, "Because I'd rather go to prison for the rest of my life and be back with my friends, than you throw him out and me have to listen to his mother's fucking mouth for the rest of my life, that he got expelled from school." He goes, "So either way, I'm in jail. I'd rather be with my buddies. So the choice is yours." And then white as a ghost, brother Rob was like, (sighs) "Okay. Well, let's, let's put him back in school." And he goes, "Simple. Easy-breezy." He just kept saying easy-breezy to my dad. I was like, "Stop saying easy-breezy." (laughs) So he kept saying easy-breezy, and my dad... And he goes, uh, he goes, "What we'll do is, he gets detention before and after school, and he's thrown off the basketball team. Does that work for you?" And brother Rob was like, "That works for me." And I was like, "That doesn't fucking work for me. I wanna play ball, I don't wanna go to detention." And my dad's like, "No, you hit somebody, it's not good." He goes, "Who, I, I didn't raise you to be that way." I was like, "You just threatened to fucking kill somebody in front of me."

   2. JRJoe Rogan31:16

      (laughs)

   3. CDChris DiStefano31:16

      "What are you talking about?" (laughs) . And he goes, "I didn't raise you to be that way." And then that's what I did my senior year. Before and after school, every day, um, no basketball. And my father and brother Rob actually became like r- uh, friends at th- at graduation, they were shaking hands, friends, everything was all good. And it was one of those things where like, my dad, he's not that way anymore, but growing up, like, my dad was just that guy. He was like right intention, wrong move, is the best way I could describe my father. And now that I'm a father, I wanna take some stuff from him, but, you know, be more of the right intention, right move. 'Cause my dad, he genuinely was coming from a place of love when he was like, "I'm gonna hurt this principal 'cause they're hurting you." But obviously the wrong moves. But he just grew up in a time when it's like, you wanted to get something, you got violent. I'm very not violent. I'm like a very big pussy. Grew up around my mother, kind of anti that. Um, but, you know, the anxiety I think comes from that. The, the, the pan- the Pandora's box was, you know, my mother's a very nervous woman to begin with, the 9/11 thing happened, I thought she was dead, it opened up all these emotions to like, what, how will I navigate life if she is dead? And then my not being as tough as my father was like, well, how do I protect her? How do I protect any woman in my life? That was a thing that I started to, like, grasp with. And it wasn't until I had children, my first daughter, who's now seven, did I start to realize the narcissism in anxiety. And I, and, and I know that, you know, that might not be the same for everybody, but to me, I started attaching narcissism to anxiety. And I used to be proud of the, hey, I'm the anxiety guy.

   4. JRJoe Rogan32:52

      Hmm.

   5. CDChris DiStefano32:52

      I look like I don't have anxiety, but I have anxiety. But now when people bring up, "Oh, you have, you have a lot of anxiety," I almost hate that version of me. I, I'm almost like, that guy was very, very weak. And I'm still, you know, have a lot of work to do, but I did ata- I'm like, I can't have, uh, all this mental energy be eaten up by my self-serving narcissistic anxiety. If I'm gonna die, if that's gonna happen, I need to be like a present good dad, and I need to figure... I, I wanna have questions answered for my daughters, when and if they ask me to them, I wanna give them my full attention. So little by little, my anxiety's been going, been going down. I think it still will always be there, 'cause that Pandora's box thing was open. And I think a ce- uh, some-

   6. JRJoe Rogan33:34

      Wait a minute, hold on. So there was no anxiety prior to September 11th?

   7. CDChris DiStefano33:38

      No.

   8. JRJoe Rogan33:38

      And then all of it came after that, and you've never let it go?

   9. CDChris DiStefano33:41

      Yeah. I ne- it got to the point where every woman that I was with, every girlfriend I ever had, if they, if I texted them and they said... You know, and th- and if I texted them and they didn't write back to me in 10 minutes, all that anxiety of September 11th would rush onto me and I couldn't get out of it. I- I played college basketball. It got so bad, to the point where I used to bring my phone out onto the bench. Like in my warmups, I would, like if the coach subbed me out of the game, I would run, make believe I'm going to get water, and I would rummage through the warmups and have my phone there to make sure my girlfriend at the time texted me she was home. And if she didn't, I couldn't function. I had a free throw average before when, when I didn't have a girlfriend, I almost had no anxiety, but when I did have girlfriends, insane anxiety. I'm the all-time or second all-time leading scorer now in my college's history. Division III, so it's like bullshit, doesn't really count, but still, it was like, I guess something. But, uh, I, the years when I had a girlfriend, my free throw percentage would be like 52%. The years when I didn't have a girlfriend, it was like 90%. So it com- And at that point mental health wasn't understood. My coach used to yell at me, be like, "Get, get your fucking phone off the bench," or they would fuck with me on the bus. They, 'cause they, my teammates started to figure out like, "Oh shit, Chris gets really nervous about his girlfriends." So they would text me sometimes, like from these random numbers or call me, like press the *67 to like block the number, and be like, "Hey," you know, it's, it's your girl... My girlfriend's Maria. They're like, "Hey Maria, uh, uh, I, uh, I'm, uh, I'm, I just saw your girlfriend Maria, I think she got hit by a car, I think she's dead, man." And like, they didn't understand at that point, they were just like trying to fuck with me, as we're 18, 19 year old guys.

   10. JRJoe Rogan35:16

       Yeah.

   11. CDChris DiStefano35:17

       But I was paralyzed, like on the floor, just got suicidal at times. Couldn't-

   12. JRJoe Rogan35:22

       Jesus Christ, dude.

   13. CDChris DiStefano35:23

       I couldn't talk to anybody about it, 'cause it just wasn't understood.

   14. JRJoe Rogan35:26

       So how did you work your way out of that?

   15. CDChris DiStefano35:29

       I think nature did, when I had my kids. Before I had my... I was 29 years old. I was, yeah, 20, uh, 30 when I, uh, no, 29 when I had my daughter. But at-... 28, I had the anxiety like of, that I had at 19. I couldn't get out of that.

   16. JRJoe Rogan35:43

       But, so how'd you get into stand-up comedy then? 'Cause I would imagine that that would give you a high level of anxiety too.

   17. CDChris DiStefano35:48

       Doing stand-up comedy is the only place, still to this day, where I feel almost zero anxiety.

   18. JRJoe Rogan35:53

       Really?

   19. CDChris DiStefano35:54

       No matter how good or bad the shows go, I almost feel zero.

   20. JRJoe Rogan35:57

       No matter how bad the shows go?

   21. CDChris DiStefano35:59

       Even if I'm bombing. Dude, you have to see. I did the Netflix Comedy Festival two weeks ago. I did a show for, um, with Amy Schumer. She was like, Amy Schumer And Friends, and I had to go out and do a seven-minute set. I fucking bombed. Like a full zero. Like, just an ab- at the end of the set, I was like, "I'm gonna kill myself." That's what I, and I just walked off. And I was like, "You know what?" Like (laughs) in the middle of it, I was like, "I don't, I, I just still feel like no anx-" Like, I knew I was bombing, you know, I feel the sweat and all that and, and I was like, "This is gonna-"

   22. JRJoe Rogan36:29

       So why are you saying that you wanted to kill yourself?

   23. CDChris DiStefano36:31

       Um, because I think that, you know, I didn't give the people a good show, so that's what it was k-

   24. JRJoe Rogan36:36

       That's not anxiety?

   25. CDChris DiStefano36:37

       I guess it is. I guess it is in some ways. Um, but it's not, like, for me, like, I wasn't like... My body, I'm saying, the symptoms of it, my heart wasn't beating any faster.

   26. JRJoe Rogan36:47

       I think you're right about it being narcissistic.

   27. CDChris DiStefano36:49

       Yeah.

   28. JRJoe Rogan36:50

       Yeah. I think you're thinking, I think that you nailed something when you said that. That there's something about anxiety that's narcissistic.

   29. CDChris DiStefano36:58

       Yeah.

   30. JRJoe Rogan36:58

       Like, you're thinking entirely about yourself. You're thinking entirely about your feelings.
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   Caffeine is what helps…

   1. CDChris DiStefano45:00

      had taken... She had kind of overcome. She was had taken a lot of drugs in her life and, you know, uh, she knew what to do. She was like, "Get... Go and take a cold shower. I'm gonna give you some big glass of milk." That's an old wives' tale or not, but that's what she said.

   2. JRJoe Rogan45:12

      Caffeine is what helps the most.

   3. CDChris DiStefano45:14

      So she said, "Big glass of milk," and, and, and, and I wish it would've been caffeine, but... So she gives it to me. She goes, "Just get in the shower." I get in the shower with my socks on. I forgot that I even had socks on. I got these soaking wet socks, and I was like, "Oh, fuck," and then I go. I remember just being in my daughter's room. She was asleep and just talking to all her stuffed animals and being, and holding her stuffed animals and being like, y- you know, "Calm down, Chris. Calm down." I remember I was like... My daughter was in the bed. I was petting her feet and (laughs) , and then it just, like that, it came over me. The high went from bad to good, and I remember just, like, relaxing, laughing. Everything was all good. And, but that experience, the bad part was so bad for me that, that, um, I haven't really taken them s- I've take them sometimes. I'll take... I used to on my Patreon episodes of the, of my podcast, I, I would take them. Um, but they started to give me bad headaches.

   4. JRJoe Rogan46:08

      Well, listen, first of all-

   5. CDChris DiStefano46:09

      Yeah.

   6. JRJoe Rogan46:09

      ... edibles are very different.

   7. CDChris DiStefano46:11

      Okay.

   8. JRJoe Rogan46:11

      When you're eating it, your, your body's producing a completely different chemical. It's called 11-hydroxy metabolite. It's like when, when you're eating it, it's processed by your liver. That, that compound, that metabolite is five times more psychoactive than THC. So what you're-

   9. CDChris DiStefano46:25

      Damn.

   10. JRJoe Rogan46:25

       ... experiencing is like a full-on psychedelic. That's why it feels like you're on acid. It feels like you're, you're on mushrooms or something. Like, there's something, like, very wrong. Most people think they, they got dosed. They think somebody put something in there-

   11. CDChris DiStefano46:37

       Right.

   12. JRJoe Rogan46:37

       ... 'cause it's just different than being high. But even being too high from smoking it, if you're not a person who gets high all the time, your body doesn't know what the fuck to do with that experience, and y- y- it, it can trigger all sorts of weird paranoid thoughts and, and freak you out, and it's not necessarily always gonna be okay. Like, this whole idea, like, you're gonna be fine when you sober up, that's not really true because there's legitimate evidence that a certain percentage of the people have some sort of a psychotic break or some sort of a schizophrenic break that coincides with the consumption of either edibles or a lot of smoking pot. Like, Alex Berenson, uh, who's a reporter from The New York Times, wrote a book on it. It's g- I think it's called Tell Your Children, and a lot of the cannabis people pushed back on it, but n- not me, and I'm, I smoke a lot of pot. I was like, "I think he's right."... because I know m- multiple people who have never been the same, who've gotten really fucking high one time and then (snaps fingers) something went off. And I don't think it's something that people should take lightly, because I think most people come back from it, but I think there's certain people that have schizophrenic tendencies that, if they do have what w- you would call a breakthrough edible experience, like they're eating 250 milligrams or something crazy like that, which is, you know, for Joey Diaz, is a normal Tuesday, but for a r- regular person, that'll send you into the fucking dark realm. And those kinda people, oftentimes, when they have these schizophrenic breaks, they're never the same again. I know multiple people, two people that are close to me, that are not the same after they've had, uh, like, severe marijuana experiences.

   13. CDChris DiStefano48:16

       So, should I do drugs or don't do drugs?

   14. JRJoe Rogan48:18

       Uh, uh, do you have schizophrenia in your family? Do you feel like you've ever had a schizophrenic moment? Were you worried and paranoid and think that everybody hates you and the government's out to get you, or you hear voices in your head, or...

   15. CDChris DiStefano48:29

       Um, no.

   16. JRJoe Rogan48:31

       Do you have a therapist?

   17. CDChris DiStefano48:32

       Yes.

   18. JRJoe Rogan48:32

       Does the therapist think that you have schizophrenic tendencies?

   19. CDChris DiStefano48:36

       No, the therapist-

   20. JRJoe Rogan48:36

       No?

   21. CDChris DiStefano48:36

       ... just thinks I'm gay.

   22. JRJoe Rogan48:38

       Does he?

   23. CDChris DiStefano48:39

       She.

   24. JRJoe Rogan48:39

       She?

   25. CDChris DiStefano48:39

       He.

   26. JRJoe Rogan48:39

       Guy or girl?

   27. CDChris DiStefano48:40

       Yeah.

   28. JRJoe Rogan48:40

       He thinks you're gay?

   29. CDChris DiStefano48:40

       Well, I had one therapist be like, "I think you might be gay."

   30. JRJoe Rogan48:43

       Really?
5. 1:00:00 – 1:04:01

   Predators, yeah. …

   1. JRJoe Rogan1:00:00

      at night, and that's why we had to hide at night, you know? And that's probably one of the main reasons why people developed shelters, to avoid predators.

   2. CDChris DiStefano1:00:07

      Predators, yeah.

   3. JRJoe Rogan1:00:07

      So, if you talk... That's another thing too. If you talk to a small child, what are children afraid of? They're not afraid of child molesters. They're not afraid of fucking car accidents. They're afraid of monsters.

   4. CDChris DiStefano1:00:17

      Right.

   5. JRJoe Rogan1:00:17

      Like, why is a little kid afraid of things with big teeth? It's weird. It's because there's an ingrained-

   6. CDChris DiStefano1:00:21

      Wow.

   7. JRJoe Rogan1:00:21

      ... fear of cats.

   8. CDChris DiStefano1:00:23

      Interesting.

   9. JRJoe Rogan1:00:24

      Yeah.

   10. CDChris DiStefano1:00:24

       I don't like... I, I don't have cats in the house. I feel like I'm allergic to them.

   11. JRJoe Rogan1:00:27

       Not, like, regular... Well, you probably are, but not regular cats-

   12. CDChris DiStefano1:00:29

       (laughs)

   13. JRJoe Rogan1:00:29

       ... house cats. I'm, I'm talking about, like, big cats, like jaguars and leopards and stuff.

   14. CDChris DiStefano1:00:34

       Yeah, I-

   15. JRJoe Rogan1:00:34

       They were eating people from the beginning of time.

   16. CDChris DiStefano1:00:36

       I hired, um, like, a, like, an MMA trainer, really to train my daughter, 'cause I... She's, you know, just turned seven. But I just want her to, like, like it. She's gonna start a school. I just want her to, you know, be able to defend herself. And, um, and, uh, the guy started training with me a little bit. And, um, and he was like... I was like, "What can I do?" Like, "What, what do you do to, like, get over, like, a fear?" He was like, "Sometimes, before a fight, I'll, um, I'll go run... I'll go jogging through the woods at night."

   17. JRJoe Rogan1:01:04

       Mm.

   18. CDChris DiStefano1:01:04

       Like, just because I'm like, "If I can overcome that, uh, uh, you know, a man in the, in the pure daylight is not gonna scare me." And I was like-

   19. JRJoe Rogan1:01:10

       That's not true at all, though. That's so-

   20. CDChris DiStefano1:01:11

       Well, I said I was... I couldn't even walk in... I wouldn't be... I... Sometimes when I'm driving at night by myself, I think that there's somebody in the trunk.

   21. JRJoe Rogan1:01:18

       Yeah. I, I started fighting when I was 15. And I'm really lucky I did. I'm really lucky, 'cause I was dumb back then, and my, my brain wasn't fully formed, and I wasn't smart enough to realize how dangerous it was. So, I engaged in it when I was very young and I got used to these violent encounters on a regular basis, 'cause I was competing and fighting-

   22. CDChris DiStefano1:01:36

       Right.

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:01:37

       ... in tournaments all the time. And that helped me so much. It helped me so much.

   24. CDChris DiStefano1:01:41

       Right.

   25. JRJoe Rogan1:01:41

       Because regular scary is not as scary as fight scary.

   26. CDChris DiStefano1:01:44

       Right.

   27. JRJoe Rogan1:01:44

       Like, fight scary was like, "It's coming up Saturday."

   28. CDChris DiStefano1:01:47

       Right.

   29. JRJoe Rogan1:01:47

       "Tournaments on Saturday. Here it is Tuesday, I'm fucking shitting my pants, I'm stretching, I'm warming up."

   30. CDChris DiStefano1:01:52

       Right.

Episode duration: 3:35:23