EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,015 words- 0:00 – 1:36
Soft White Underbelly: why the name and what the show captures
- NANarrator
(drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience.
- JRJoe Rogan
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (instrumental music plays) Hello, Mark.
- MLMark Laita
Hey, Joe.
- JRJoe Rogan
How do you do what you do and maintain any-
- MLMark Laita
Mental health?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MLMark Laita
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs) Let's just tell everybody-
- MLMark Laita
Let's-
- JRJoe Rogan
... you, uh, you have the YouTube show, Soft White Underbelly, which, uh, I, I found a while back and I, I just watched one video and then I went down the rabbit hole. And now, today I binged a bunch of them preparing for this and poof. Dude, it's so sad and so heartbreaking and, um, you interview all kinds of people, addicts, uh, prostitutes, johns, uh, gang members, and, uh, why Soft White Underbelly? Why'd you come up with that name?
- MLMark Laita
Um, I, you know, I remember my dad when I was in the '60s, '70s, talking on the phone with, you know, I, I heard that ter- that term being used to, you know, it's, it's like a, an al- an analogy for the, the vulnerable part of, of whatever you're talking about. I don't, I don't hear that term anymore, but I remember it back then. And I always thought it was a cool name. Blue Oyster Cult used it as their original name before Blue Oyster Cult, um, so I just ... It was a fun name. Makes people wonder what the hell it's all about.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, it's very appropriate.
- MLMark Laita
Yeah, yeah, I think it's fitting for what I'm doing.
- JRJoe Rogan
Completely. How did you get involved in interviewing all of these people that are sort of downcast from society?
- 1:36 – 3:08
From slick advertising perfection to documenting real life
- MLMark Laita
So I'm, uh, I've been an advertising photographer since I was 14 years old, or, or after high school really and went to college for it, but I was always into photography and then I got into advertising and I did that for decades and decades. Had a great career and then what happened is, you know, you do it... My advertising work was so slick and beautiful and perfect and everything's retouched so it's, it's better than life. And you do that for decades and you get burnt out and you, you just get fed up with the perfection and all the aspirational aspects of advertising and I just wanted something that was real. You know, I, I recognize that there are things going on in the world that weren't so perfect and I, I just felt like my life was out, out of balance because e- you know, like I didn't wanna grow old and have my kids say, you know, "What, what did your dad do?" "Oh, he, he shot advertising his whole life." I wanted to do something different and I've always done these side projects even when I was a teenager in Chicago. I, uh, I was always fascinated with the drunks on Madison Avenue on the west side. You see these guys sleeping on park benches and just with a paper bag and a bottle in their hands. It's like, what? It was such a, it's such a interesting lifestyle to me because I didn't grow up like that. I grew up, you know, in a pretty perfect household. Mom and dad, parents loved me, it was great, but I was fascinated with all that dark stuff and, uh, that continued throughout my career. I was always like doing portraits of people like that and, you know, I didn't really do much with it until about 1999 I started, uh, working, you know, while I was doing advertising I would
- 3:08 – 5:09
Created Equal: a 10-year road map to finding American subcultures
- MLMark Laita
sneak away whenever I had a hole in my schedule which wasn't often but I, you know, for 10, over nine or 10 years I went to each of the lower 48 states and started photographing everything that exists in the US, uh, cowboys in Wyoming, drunken Indians in New Mexico, ballerinas in New York City, repo men in Oklahoma, auto mechanics in Alabama, peda- uh, uh, pedophiles (laughs) in, uh, all over the country, um, polygamists in Utah, Am- the Amish in Pennsylvania. Just everything, like everything that kind of fits for... Oh, that's Pennsylvania, they have Amish there so I would pick that and I'd hunt it down and find it. So I got really good at finding these subcultures that we've all heard about but you didn't really know if, you know... Some of them are easier to find. Drug addicts are easy to find, um, but there's other subcultures that I've found that are, that are more difficult to find and certainly difficult to photograph and now it's really difficult to interview. So I did that book, came out in 2010, cre- it's called Created Equal and I was really proud of it. Put, you know, my heart and soul into it, but it, it didn't really... Like I would, I would sit at, at a table and somebody's looking at it and they would go, "Oh, what did he sound like? What did the cowboy sound like? What did he... How did he get like this? How did, how did he get this career? What was his childhood like?" You know, all these questions. And I didn't, honestly, didn't know it for each of these 200 portraits in that book and I realized if I'm gonna make this really stick the way I wanted it to, I'm gonna have to do it with, with an interview as a backstory. So it's a portrait and then I would just do these interviews that might just exist behind the, the portrait as you're looking at it and that's how I started. And you know, I had, I had... I always had studios like, like on Skid Row like while I was doing advertising in LA at my LA studio I'd had another studio down on Skid Row which was, you know, cheap and, you know, I would just sneak away there on, on s- slow days and just photograph all the cr- the, uh, the drug addicts, the, the prostitutes, the transgenders, the mental health,
- 5:09 – 7:58
The first Skid Row video: discovering the interview format
- MLMark Laita
you know, the people that are off their rockers, everything, gang members and, uh, I loved doing it but I never really did anything with that until I started... Canon came out with a Canon 5D which is a cam- uh, a still camera that did video and I just was playing around. I do- I never shot video in my life and I'm like let me just put this thing on a tripod and interview somebody and there was this girl Caroline who was a, a heroin addict prostitute down on Skid Row and I was like, "Hey." You know, I got to know her and I said, "Hey, would you wanna just sit and tell me your life story?" And she goes, "Sure, I'll do it." So she sat down and did this and it was heartbreaking like Jesus Chri- I just hit a grand slam my first time at bat, like, like a really like horrifying story and she, uh... So I did that and I was like wow, that was, that was amazing. I started doing a few more and they were all interesting in their own way. Every single one was diff- you know, very different and interesting and I'm like, "May- maybe there's something here."And, uh, went through a divorce, went through, you know, my mom, uh, went through a lot of stuff. My mom died. Uh, went through a divorce. Uh, my advertising industry- you know, advertising industry changed a lot in th- in those years. Like, th- this was like f- seven years ago, seven, eight years ago. And I just, I gave up my studio and I just kind of like didn't know what I was doing with my life. And I, I had all these storage units for all my studio equipment and my furniture. I was building a house, so I had all my furniture in the house. Had like four or five different storage units around the city. I'm like, "Let me just consolidate all these into one big space and maybe I'll have room for a studio up front and I'll start doing those portraits and those interviews I was doing on Skid Row before and s- just see if I enjoy doing that." 'Cause I didn't know what I want to do with the rest of my life. You know, I was like, I wasn't doing advertising anymore and, uh, I didn't know what I was. You know, I just, I was just drifting and I started doing these and I just loved it. Just loved it. And I started doing them every day. And I've done it pretty much every day for over three years now.
- JRJoe Rogan
What you're doing is almost the exact opposite of advertising.
- MLMark Laita
Almost the e- it, it's a reaction to that slick-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MLMark Laita
... aspiration. I, I, you know, I shot Apple for t- for 10, 12 years and made these products look amazing, right? They had to be perfect. And I'm like, "Life isn't perfect. Life is messy."
- JRJoe Rogan
Hm.
- MLMark Laita
Life can be really messed up. And I just, I, I, I longed for that. So that's what this is. It's, it's a, and I, I learned, I got all these skills, all these chops of how to intera- how to find these people, how to interact with them, how to con- how to find them, how to connect with them, how to get their trust, uh, from doing Create Equal where I did that for 10 years and I was interacting with all kinds of people from Hell's Angels down to from pedophiles, everything, you name it. Everything that exists in the US I, I got. When I first started, I was really shy and r- this, this is gonna be really hard. I decided this was my project, this is what I'm gonna do.
- 7:58 – 10:51
Gaining access and staying safe: trust-building in dangerous places
- MLMark Laita
But when I first started, it was like, man, (laughs) this is, this is not my personality type to go u- up to strangers and, and tell them what I, you know, "I want to photograph you." That was so hard. But now I've gotten so good at it that it's, it's a breeze. You know, I've, I've, I got to a point, I remember early on, I was just like so nervous to do this, to th- to just walk up to a stranger in, in a casino in Las Vegas and say, "Hey, I think you're interesting. I'd like to photograph you." That was the first one I did. And then by the end, I was like, I remember I, I wanted to photograph the Hell's Angels, uh, the motorcycle c- gang up in, uh, Oakland is like their main headquarters. And, uh, I just flew up to Oakland. You know, you can't really arrange that. You can't call them up on the phone and say, "Hey, I want to do a f- I'm a photographer in LA, I want to photograph you guys." That's just not gonna happen. So I, uh, I just flew up there and I, uh, it was a morning and I, (laughs) I ring their buzzer at their headquarters in Oakland and, uh, no answer. It's like 9:30 in the morning. I ring it again. Nobody answers. I ring it a third time and somebody comes, uh, oh, this, this junkyard dog of a biker opens the door and says, "What the fuck do you want?" (laughs) And I'm like, w- I'm, uh, I start telling him. He just slams the door in my face. He goes, "Fuck off." He just sh- slams the door. Okay, that didn't go well. But I've, I've done this so much now that I'm so good at it that I knew to give him some time, allow him to say no. I'm not gonna force, I'm not gonna pressure him. Went across the street, there's a Mexican restaurant that was serving breakfast. I got breakfast for a bunch of guys and I brought it over and, uh, I ring it again. He opens the door and I had breakfast for them. And, uh, eventually they let me in and we chatted and I event- eventually photographed, uh, the, uh, the president, you know, uh, the head of that, uh, chapter, uh, Cisco Valderrama and Flash and, uh, this guy's name was, uh, Marvin. And it wa- it was a great portrait. I'm proud of it. You know, it was like, uh, that made that happen because of my ability to just go up to anybody, killers, anybody, and just walk up to them and say, "Hey, I'd like ... This is what I like to do."
- JRJoe Rogan
Did you ever read Hunter Thompson's book on the Hell's Angels?
- MLMark Laita
No.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's really good.
- MLMark Laita
I'll bet.
- JRJoe Rogan
D- that was his breakthrough book. And, uh, he was embedded with the Hell's Angels and hung around with them for long periods of time.
- MLMark Laita
No, it's a hell of a lifestyle.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. And that's sort of where he invented that sort of Gonzo journalism-
- MLMark Laita
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... aspect of it.
- MLMark Laita
No, I lo- I love that kind of, um, uh, William Vollberg is another author that's kind of like that. I l- I love Bill Vol- Vollberg's work, um, where it's just like you, you immerse yourself into these really fucked up dangerous situations.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MLMark Laita
And you come out with gold or you get killed or shot or knifed or whatever.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm. That is a fear of yours.
- MLMark Laita
For, for sure. Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MLMark Laita
I've been robbed so many times on Skid Row. I've had, you know, I came around the corner once and there's a gun to my face and it's like, "Fuck."
- JRJoe Rogan
But you still do it.
- MLMark Laita
Yeah, I still do it.
- 10:51 – 14:11
Advertising ethics, social media illusions, and ‘selling perfection’
- JRJoe Rogan
Uh, d- did you feel when you're doing adverti- uh, advertising is so strange, right? Because it doesn't bother me, you know, and I, I, I have this sort of relaxed attitude on certain things like, "Well, that's not gonna trick me." You know, some guy's talking about the hollow Earth. "Well, that's not gonna trick me. That doesn't bother me." But when you think about the overall impact of what it's doing, it's giving people ... it's sort of like the, the, w- part of the big problem that people have with social media is it creates these unrealistic expectations and then it also has people comparing their life to what they see in advertising.
- MLMark Laita
Yeah. Ad- advertising and social media are kind of following the same-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MLMark Laita
... pattern.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, this is the main concern with, uh, advertising of pharmaceutical drugs 'cause it's all people having the best time.
- MLMark Laita
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like at a picnic, uh, running through a wheat field, h- and like, "You ... This could be you. Why isn't this you right now?"
- MLMark Laita
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
"This could be you if you just do this thing or take this thing or buy this thing."
- MLMark Laita
That's the manipu- manipulation of advertising.
- JRJoe Rogan
And what did that feel like when you were a part of that? Did you-
- MLMark Laita
W- I'm, I'm-
- JRJoe Rogan
You were acutely aware of it.
- MLMark Laita
I'm part of it.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MLMark Laita
I'm, I'm part of the, that process and I hated the feeling of that after a while. Initially it was great. When I first started doing Apple, I was so proud of myself.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- MLMark Laita
And, and I'm still proud of my career. Uh, I love what I did in advertising and I'm m- I'm still proud of that work, but-I have to admit, as I got older, it started feeling really, like, I'm tricking people.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- MLMark Laita
I'm tricking people and I'm, I'm not cool with that. It just, it didn't sit well with me at the end of the day and I'm just like, "So that's how I made my money? That's, that's how I've ... That's how I spent my life on this planet?" A- and I just wanted to do something that mattered.
- JRJoe Rogan
Do you think-
- MLMark Laita
And that-
- JRJoe Rogan
... that advertising should be regulated or do you think we should leave that up to people or educate people on the effects of it, the same way people are trying to educate people on the effects of social media and w- what it, what it does to peoples' mental health when you compare these unrealistic lives to yours?
- MLMark Laita
I mean, it, it comes down to greed. It's human greed, corporate greed. Th- th- they want what they want, and they're gonna get it by creating these ads that are just better than life, you know, just so amazing. Everything's ... Your, your life will be perfect if you drive this car, if you buy this pro- you know, this phone, this, uh, take this drug, whatever.
- JRJoe Rogan
I even wonder if, in this day and age, that's necessary with what ... I feel like today more than ever, because of social media, because of, like, people that actually review things and talk about things on social media honestly, without, you know, bias and without being paid to do so, you can do stuff and sell stuff and it just has to be good.
- MLMark Laita
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, look at Teslas, for instance. They don't even advertise.
- MLMark Laita
They don't.
- JRJoe Rogan
And it's, like, the number one car in America.
- MLMark Laita
Yeah.
- 14:11 – 21:36
The mental toll of witnessing trauma—and why he keeps filming
- JRJoe Rogan
When you first started doing these videos, did you have to figure out a way to balance your own mental health with interviewing these people? Because I gotta tell you, like, I watched a bunch of videos today in the gym while I was working out and I felt like shit.
- MLMark Laita
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs) And I always feel good after I work out.
- MLMark Laita
W- well, it ... I know, it affects people in different ways.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MLMark Laita
Some people make, like, "Oh my god. My problems are not s- so bad. My life is pretty great." I've, I've heard that many time ... I've heard that more often, but I get what you're saying 'cause, like, I'm immersed in it.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MLMark Laita
Y- you know, what you see on my, on my YouTube channel is 1,200, maybe 1,300 videos. I've done over 5,000-
- JRJoe Rogan
Whew.
- MLMark Laita
... b- 'cause I ... Not, not everything I shoot ... Like with you, you're shooting ... You're doing interviews with, uh, Elon Musk and Dave Chappelle and, you know, Huberman and they're, and they're great. You know they're gonna great. They're b- ... You don't need to do e- eight or 10 in a day like I do.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- MLMark Laita
Like, I'll, I'll do six, seven, eight, nine, 10 in a day hoping to get one or two.
- JRJoe Rogan
But even the ones that you have where the people can barely communicate, they, they're almost more disturbing.
- MLMark Laita
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, I watched a, a couple today of homeless people-
- MLMark Laita
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... where, you know, there was this one woman. She d- was missing one of her toes and, you know, that woman.
- MLMark Laita
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And, and she's ... Just the movement and th- the c- th- the mental health, th- the obvious signs that she's very troubled and probably on some drugs and it's just ...
- MLMark Laita
Yeah. It's s-
- JRJoe Rogan
Do you have children?
- MLMark Laita
I do. I have two daughters, 19 and 22.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, so that, to me, was ... Like, the, the hearing the stories of how they were all abused sexually and physically when they were children and (sighs) and seeing what it leads to, to at least-
- MLMark Laita
Right. So I, I'm aware that these things go on.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MLMark Laita
You know, I've been, I've been down on Skid Row for 12 years now, maybe 13 years, and so I, I know what's going o-
- JRJoe Rogan
You live down there?
- MLMark Laita
No, no, no, no, no. I, I (laughs) I live in Pacific Palisades, which is, like, the exact opposite.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs) Yes.
- MLMark Laita
I live in Bel Air basically, but then I go-
- 21:36 – 25:20
Skid Row explained: geography, drugs in the open, and the Cecil Hotel lore
- MLMark Laita
(sighs) Well, I mean, it's, it's a, it's such a complicated problem. You, you look at homeless. You have y-, the, the homelessness problem. You have it a little bit here in Austin, but in, in LA it's really bad.
- JRJoe Rogan
Let's explain Skid Row to people.
- MLMark Laita
Skid Row is a neighborhood. It's probably, I don't know how many square blocks, but maybe it's ... it goes from like roughly, 'cause it spreads out a lot and it's spread out since I've been there, but let's call it like from 4th or 5th Street to 8th Street. This is just east of Downtown LA. And Downtown LA is cool. It's nice.
- JRJoe Rogan
Eh ...
- MLMark Laita
But just, just east of Downtown is-
- JRJoe Rogan
Eh ...
- MLMark Laita
Oh, no, I know, I know, but it, but it-
- JRJoe Rogan
Eh ...
- MLMark Laita
... but it's, it looks like Austin basically.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's ... I wouldn't recommend people visit.
- MLMark Laita
(laughs) No, no, you wouldn't want-
- JRJoe Rogan
It's not a place-
- MLMark Laita
No, you wouldn't go to Down-
- JRJoe Rogan
... like if you wanna go to LA, you don't go d-, eh-
- MLMark Laita
No, the-
- JRJoe Rogan
Every other town, you go downtown.
- MLMark Laita
Right, every, every other ... I'm from Chicago. Every ci-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, I was gonna say Chicago.
- MLMark Laita
You spend the whole ti-
- JRJoe Rogan
But downtown, yeah, it's nice.
- MLMark Laita
When you go to visit Chicago, you spend the whole time downtown.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MLMark Laita
In LA, you should not go downtown if you-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MLMark Laita
... if you're visiting.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's what I'm saying.
- MLMark Laita
That's exactly right. Um, but Skid Row is this neighborhood just east of Downtown that is the-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, Jamie's got, um, an image of it.
- MLMark Laita
Yeah, there it is. So-
- JRJoe Rogan
Let's, let's find some photos of it, 'cause it's, it's kind of an enormous swath of land that's been completely abandoned it seems like. The dr-
- 25:20 – 1:09:14
Peeling the layers: homelessness → addiction → mental illness → broken families → no opportunity
- MLMark Laita
There's mental health that's mixed in. I mean, the, the whole pro- like, y- you asked me what the problem is with, with all this. So you see homelessness. You see all these homeless people on the street in LA, or in San Francisco, or Seattle, or Portland, or Vancouver, or ... You see it in a lot of cities. I- it's really bad in LA and San Francisco, and the, the West Coast for some reason has a ton of it. So, oh, you just ... Like, what LA's doing, you put them up in housing. Problem solved, right? And we're done. (claps hands)
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs) Not really.
- MLMark Laita
No.
- JRJoe Rogan
No.
- MLMark Laita
'Cause you peel back the layer, the first, the top layer of that, the homeless, underneath the homelessness is, uh, drug addiction. Pretty much 100% across the board. None of these ho- none of these people are down and out and just like, "Oh my God, I'm homeless." That doesn't happen. They're, they're all drug addicts. And even when they tell you they're clean, they're, they're still lying. So you peel back the drug addiction layer, and what are you gonna do? Get 'em, put 'em all in rehab, which is gonna be tremendously expensive, and it's not gonna work all the time. But that would be part of the solution, but it's not gonna be the solution. So you peel back the layer of drug addiction, you've got mental health. The- they all have mental health issues. And you can't just magically fix their mental health. You know, the d- the damage was done when they were little kids, when they were five, six, seven, eight years old.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- MLMark Laita
With, with whether it's neglect or abuse, you know, physical abuse-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MLMark Laita
... sexual abuse, whatever. J- just terrible parenting.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MLMark Laita
Terrible role models.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MLMark Laita
Terrible ... And they don't learn this, you know ... Like, l- l- that's how you fix ... Let's say you got them off the streets. Let's say you, um, fix the drug addiction. You get them therapy for years, and you fix the mental health issues somewhat, but they still don't know how to do all the things that we all know how to do, like build trust in others, gain the trust of others, how to handle money, d- d- uh, delayed gratifica- uh, delayed gratification. They don't ... They have no concept of that. Everything is just like, "How do I make a quick buck right now?"
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MLMark Laita
That's the only thing they know. If, you know, if they have a job interview on Monday, like if I, if I had something like that or a meeting to go to, I would, I would know how to show up, and I'm gonna kick ass on Monday. These people don't know how to do anything like that. They might not ... They probably won't even show up. They don't know how to be on time. They don't know how to do anything in order to, like, advance their, their lives. They ... I think it's, it, it boils down to their self-worth is so broken that they don't believe they deserve anything better.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MLMark Laita
So it's like i- if you don't believe you deserve anything better, you, you could be handed a million dollars. Here's a winning lottery ticket. Go cash it in, and you've got a million dollars. They're gonna fuck it up as fast as you can see it, you know, as, as fast as you can imagine.
- JRJoe Rogan
Have you had any drug addicts or, um, like, sad stories like that in your own friendship circle?
- MLMark Laita
No.
- JRJoe Rogan
No?
- MLMark Laita
No. No, like all my friends are clean as a whistle. I've, I've never smoked pot.
- JRJoe Rogan
Really?
- MLMark Laita
Never smoked pot.
- JRJoe Rogan
(smacks lips) Nothing, huh?
- MLMark Laita
Nothing.
- JRJoe Rogan
A little alcohol every now and then?
- MLMark Laita
Yeah, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah?
- MLMark Laita
I mean, I haven't lately, but you know, I used ... You know, I'm not a drinker. I'm not ... I don't have a problem with drinking.
- JRJoe Rogan
How-
- 40:04 – 1:11:18
Addiction as a universal pattern: gambling, sex, exercise, and substitution
- JRJoe Rogan
When I was 23, uh-
- MLMark Laita
You're watching them drown.
- JRJoe Rogan
I moved to New York, and I started hanging out at this pool hall, and, uh, I met a lot of drug addicts. And I had known a few people with drug problems from my hometown, a few people with drinking problems that couldn't stop drinking, but I'd never been, like, really close to someone who had, like, a legitimate drug problem. And, uh, I had a friend named Johnny, and he had a crack problem. And, uh, he was a great guy, a really intelligent guy. Could play musical instruments, could do complex math in his head. Like, you could say ... You could have a calculator, and you could say, like, "500 times 50 minus 30 divided by 3," and he could give you the number.
- MLMark Laita
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
It was amazing. And you could do, you could do it with a calculator in front of him, and he would be as fast as the calculator.
- MLMark Laita
Wow.
- JRJoe Rogan
He was a brilliant, brilliant guy, and he was a pool hustler. And, uh, I, I met him when he was homeless, and he was, you know, sleeping in these 24-hour pool halls, or he would get a, you know, a bed in these flop houses, and he was just addicted to drugs. And he, you know, he had mental health problems, and he would self-medicate. And, uh, I would ... You know, I drove him to get drugs on multiple occasions, and I tried to get him to get off of them, and ... And he would be on this rollercoaster ride where he would smoke crack, and then he would need to come down, so he would get alcohol, and he would go and drink these 40 ounces of Olde English and, and just try to, like, bring himself down from whatever the fuck he was on.
- MLMark Laita
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And then I moved out here. He came out to visit me once, and, uh, I thought we were just gonna hang out and go places and play pool, but he was coming out to try to kick heroin. And, uh, when he came out, he just stayed in the bedroom for like a week. He was just all fucked up. He was just sick for a week. And then finally at the end of the week, he came out of it, and, you know, he hadn't had any heroin in his system in a week, and he was starting to come clean and feel better, and that was the last time I saw him. And then the, the next time I talked to him ... I, I think I saw him one time after that, but, you know, he had kinda resumed his ... I had moved to Hollywood, and I was on a television show, and we were still friends. But he had kinda resumed his life of being homeless and, and drug addiction, and then I got a call from another friend that he died.
- MLMark Laita
Hm.
- JRJoe Rogan
And, uh, that was around ... A little bit after 2000, and it was ... It was so ... It was such a helpless feeling because I knew him as a human, and he was so funny, and he was so smart and so interesting.
- MLMark Laita
No, some of the greatest minds-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- MLMark Laita
... greatest ... The most charismatic, most interesting people ever-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MLMark Laita
... super intelligent and talented people-... are living on the streets-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MLMark Laita
... addicted to drugs.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MLMark Laita
Because, uh, like, it go- it almost goes hand-in-hand. You get these great minds that are so creative, and they're also so self-destructive.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, I don't know why those two things go together, but so oftentimes, creativity goes along with drug addiction.
- MLMark Laita
Look at all the dead people in your lobby, all those pictures on the wall.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes, yes, yeah.
- MLMark Laita
They all died at 27.
- JRJoe Rogan
All these mugshots-
- MLMark Laita
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... of the rock stars and stuff. Yeah. It's, um ... It's very confusing when you don't have that problem, when you're like, "Why don't you just do this?"
- MLMark Laita
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
"I would just do ..." And at the time when I met him, like now, uh, I like to smoke pot. I occasionally do mushrooms. I ... You know, I don't fuck with anything that's dangerous, you know? But, uh, back then, I didn't do anything. So for me, it was very strange to be like clean and sober, and trying to like ... I was like focused on my life.
- MLMark Laita
You, you're just not prep- you're not prepared because you don't have the knowledge of w- what he'll do for that drug.
Episode duration: 2:26:21
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Transcript of episode J8aE1MOPjMs
