Matthew Quick 3rd Time: Mental Health, Alcohol, Anxiety and Getting Healthy

hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf YEA, thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Matthew Quick. This is matthews third time on The One

You Feed. He's a New York Times best selling author of several novels, including The Silver Linings Playbook, which was made into an Oscar winning film. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages. His new book is the Reason You're Alive. If you value the content we put out each week. Then we need your help. As the show has grown, so have our expenses and time commitment. Go to one you feed dot net slash Support and make a monthly donation. Our goal is to get to

five of our listeners supporting the show. Please be part of the five percent that make a contribution and allow us to keep putting out these interviews and ideas. We really need your help to make the show sustainable and long lasting. Again, that's one you feed dot net slash Support. Thank you in advance for your help. And here's the interview with Matthew Quick. Hi Matthew, Welcome to the shows.

You are the first three time guest. I am very proud of that is in the honor of some sort I suppose, but I feel like I actually get a jacket or something. Well, I was looking before I left. I was like, I wish I had a T shirt in your size, but I didn't didn't have one. So you know the podcast, I mean, I love your work. And then secondly, it's just a thrill for me that you actually listen to the show a lot. So it's kind of cool to have somebody that I really want

to have on who also knows the show. So we've done this twice, and this time is different for listeners because we are in person. We are in Cleveland making eye contact, making eye contact Matthews doing a book tour, and I live about two hours away, so I figured i'd come up and we do it in person. So this is a live one. So let's go ahead and start with the parable. Take three on it as a

grandfather's talking with grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and thinks about it for a second, looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins. The grandfather says, the one you feed.

So I'd like to ask you your take on that parable. I've answered twice already. And one of the things I've noticed, and again I listened every week a lot of I shouldn't say a lot. Some guests come on and maybe try to pick apart the parable, or they'll say they're not comfortable with the parable, and I'm always at home, you know, arguing back, and I always take their point. I understand what they mean. But I think the parable is is great because it's very simple and for someone

who struggles with anxiety. If we think of anxiety as as the dark wolf, for you know, the bad wolf, it's very simple. And lately, UM, I've been using this little thing called cats. I think I picked us up on another podcast, but caffeine, alcohol, tobacco, and suites and for me, I know that I've got to eliminate or lower that stuff in order to deal with my anxiety.

But my wife is very quick to add an eye in front of that, and it's called eye cats because she says, Internet, you know, and the thoughts that you're taking in UM is really a big one. And especially on book tour, UM. You know, there's a lot of things that can trigger anxiety on book tour, public speaking UM.

And people will say to me like, you're a great public speaker, but they don't know that for three hours before I get up on stage, I have to do breathing exercises and I've I've got to be alone and calm myself. And I share that because you know, it normalizes it for other people. But also with the information on book tour, you're constantly getting reviews and people writing about you. And I'm definitely a perfectionist and the book is very Every one of my books is very personal.

But when people read the book, even if they like it, if they don't like it for the reasons I intended, like that could be you know, troubling, um and Chris, if you want to find someone to tell you that you suck and you know you're you're a terrible writer, there are plenty of people on the internet line enough to do that for you. So, you know, limiting the flow of information and um, what you access even just

stuff like news too. You know, Um, my wife and I try to not be looking at the news all the time, but you're in an airport and you're seeing newspapers, headlines, uh, TV screens everywhere. When I'm traveling that I'm not used to sing in it is this horrible, horrible stuff makes you think that, uh, something bad is going to happen

to you every second of the day. And so I try to reframe my thoughts and think, well, there's all these people in this this hive of an airport and yet you're safe, like and somebody just smiled at you and somebody held the door for you. And so, you know, trying to control my thoughts as well. Um, you know, feeding that good wolf. You know where you're gonna put

your attention. And I understand when people come on the show and they want to, you know, intellectualize the parable, but I think you're really missing the point if you do that, right, I mean, that's why it is a parable. Although I heard the other day that a parable has humans in it and a fable has animals, so it might be a fable. But I'm too late to change. That's okay. But yeah, I mean I agree on one

level it is. It's a very simple thing. You know, where do we choose to put our attention or energy or actions. And I think too, especially when you you published a novel, people do want to intellectualize things. And I get it. You know, I've been you know, the m f A student. You know, I've been the the the academia person like I've been the lit snob, and the order I get, the less important that stuff becomes.

You know. I used to think when I got on stage, like, oh if I confuse like a fable with analogy or whatever, like it would be the end of the world. But I make mistakes in public all the time. You know, I use the wrong word, and you know what, that's okay. You know, the world goes on, And I think the meaning is more important than than specific six. I think when you let go of of being right, you actually take in more information that's good for you. You definitely do.

Not having to be right helps in so many different ways. I mean, having to be right for me is a limit on what I actually even listen to or learn, because if I'm thinking I have to be right or I am right about this thing, I'm just not really listening anymore. And I've more and more thought about that and and looked at that and tried to just step back and go, well, maybe I don't know. Open my

mind to the idea that I don't know. Yeah, And there are times in the past where I've said I don't want to tweet something because maybe I'll make a spelling mistake, or I don't want to get up on stage and speak because maybe I'll say the wrong thing, or I'll say um or like or you know, all the things you're not supposed to, Chris, I'll get rid of those for you. I appreciate that. Um. You know, any time I speak or any time I put a book out, like the people that I really connect with,

they're not interested in that. There are definitely people in the audience that will kind of every time I say that, and they'll they'll point to that. But there are other people that say, what is this guy about? What is his core value? What is his truth? And that's what they're interested And you want to connect with those people. And so when I'm on the road, I'm constantly checking in. There abe moments when I'll replay something I said in

an interview at two o'clock in the morning. Anxiety wake me up, and I'll sit up at three in the morning and say, what did I say in that interview and the one you feed and I'll get very nervous, and I have to remind myself that it's not the specific thing I said. It's it's a collection of all the things you say over time, um, and that's what people are gonna remember. I think that's a great way to transition into the new book. It's called The Reason

You Are Alive, and it has a character. The main character is somebody who would be challenging for a lot of the people who listen to this show. Right he's a very strong right wing um. You know, some of us would call, you know, nut job, right um. I found it fascinating, though, to start the book with him and then watch over time as you realize on some

level a wonderful person he is. And that's one of the things that you know, after this election and all that, And I've stayed out of politics because when I've wandered in, it's you know, it's not really my space. The thing that's troubled me the most about it, though, is that it seems like we picked the worst example of the other side and use that as a representative for all of them. And I just don't think that's the case.

I mean, there's been a lot of work about conservative versus liberal values, and they're they both have really strong values, they're just different. And so I loved the book because you start with this guy. Again, I think a lot of people listening to the show will immediately be like, wait a minute, because I think our audience skews left. But over time, you really get to know this guy

and you see that despite certain things, he's a wonderful person. Yeah, and thank you for saying that, because that was one of the things that I wanted to explore. I should say that I finished writing this book before the last presidential election heated up. You knows, before we imagine that Trump when president. That wasn't that wasn't mindset. I wasn't

even thinking about Trump when I wrote the book. But I grew up in a very conservative Christian home, and if you had asked me when I was sixteen to describe myself, I would have said Republican, fundamentalist Christian proudly. Uh. And when I went to college, I remember my grandfather saying to me, you need to get your degree, but I don't want you to believe anything that the people at school tell you, because they're all liars. All your professors are gonna lie to you. And that was a

really confusing message for me to get at seventeen. But of course, when I went to liberal arts school, and I was an English major secondary yet I was everyone I met was extremely liberal, and immediately my needles started to move left. And now I work in you know,

and publishing, and I work in the movie industry. In l A. And everyone is extremely liberal, and so when you have something like the election and people make comments like about a right wing nut job or you know, like all of those people in the other states, and you pick a color and you go with your team. Um, it's it's frustrating for me, you know, because, uh, I might agree with the politics of the people making those comments, but they're dismissing a whole group of people that are

human beings. And so something like my grandfather was a World War Two that he was extremely conservative, grew up in the Great Depression, that there are reasons why he had the opinions. There was reasons why he was so tribal um, but he was also so wonderful and loving

and caring to me. My uncle Pete, who was a Vietnam vet um, he said a lot of offensive things, but he was also the first person to recognize when I was in my twenties and I was struggling with anxiety because he spent a lot of time at the v A and so why he might say some things that I thought were offensive. He's also the guy that called me and said, hey, you seem awfully stressed out. You know, you're getting out, you know, don't hold up. You know, I spent a lot of time with veterans.

You got you can't make those mistakes like you have anxiety, that's what you have. And he was the first guy to reach out. He's one of the first people that encourage me to write UM. And so when people just dismiss whole groups of people, especially I work a lot of people who have never met anybody, like my grandfather and my uncle, it's frustrating. It's just as frustrating when I go home to my family and they make a comment about the people on the left. You know, it's

the same. And so oftentimes I find myself in isolation in the middle, not not politically in the middle, but just I don't want to pick a team and dismiss a whole group of human beings based on their political preferences. I don't want to demonize them and say, you know, this is the snowflake over here, so they're idiots and these are the right wing nuts jobs over there, because

there's no communication and it's it's a lie on both sides. Yeah, And I think one of the ways to bridge the divide, I think is meeting people that are different than you talking to people that are different to you, which is very difficult to do. Like you talked about the industries you work, and you're not gonna find many people like that.

I happen to be in Columbus, Ohio, which is like, you know, it's like right down the middle, you know, and sohi, it was an interesting place to be because I am exposed to both those things, and it's just interesting and it's it's disheartening to me, you know, these days kind of what the overall political discourse is, not just among the politicians, but even more among I mean

certainly the politicians too, but just people. Your book, to me was a very thoughtful and useful way to look at that, and you know, to use art to shine a light on a current situation. Yeah, And I think um comfort disturbed and disturbed the comforted. I know that most of the people who are going to be in charge of promoting my book and most of the the people who are going to read it are probably gonna skew left, and that that was a conscious choice for me to

set it from David's point of view. One review called it subversive, which you know, the punk rocker and me back in the Day was very proud of that. But you know, I I do think it was a conscious decision to say, Hey, I'm gonna give you a character that is going to really frustrated you for fifty pages, but you're gonna fall in love with this guy by the end, and it's gonna make you chat. It's gonna challenge your worldview, and it's gonna check to see how

tolerant you really are. And that's one thing that sometimes frustrates me about the left because we always say about tolerance. Tolerance. Tolerance is set for, you know, toallenge for people on the right who don't agree with you, who don't agree with us, and so um. You know, for me, I practice tolerance all the time when I'm with my conservative family members, especially with my grandfather, whom I loved, or

my uncle Pete, whom I was really close with. In order to have a relationship with him, I had to practice tolerance and he had to practice tolerance with me, you know, and that was that was a real strong bond I had before they both passed. And so I was hoping to provide that same experience, you know, through the vehicle of a novel or art for for the reader. You didn't. He really gets fleshed out as a as

a whole person. You know, he would be the opposite of politically correct, right, And yet some of it is just hilarious the things he says. And I'm gonna go here, which I'm going to regret later, But I'm always interested in racism. I think we all are, and we're looking at it and trying to understand where we fit. And I look at people of a certain generation and this

guy was a Vietnam vet. I look at my mother, and there is this interesting categorization of a group of people, like you know, uh, David does this in the book all the time, right, He's like, you know, you'd be an idiot to hire a straight man to do your flowers, right, or you'd be an idiot to hire a white man to mow your lawn. Like, because these groups Gays and and Mexicans are known for Gays are known for being good at arranging flowers, and Mexicans are known for mowing lawn.

So they're making these generalities about people. But the interesting thing about him that I found found about David was he has nothing against and even likes the people in those groups. So he's grouping them, and he's sort of judging them by some stereotypes, which sometimes stereotypes become stereotypes to a certain extent because there's some there's a kernel of truth in there. But yet he bears he likes those people. There is his friends. And I look at

that and I go, is that racism? And it you know, and again I'm gonna get this is gonna get into a debate that I don't want to get into. But I notice that in people, particularly of an older generation, and I see that very quality. They're sort of stereotyping people, but they like those people at the same time they're friends with those people. And so it's just an interesting take on, you know, what is racism? Yeah, and I'm not so sure that I was trying to tackle with

the book what is racism? But the one thing I did want to question is I think in this day and age, we've come to a point where if somebody uses a certain phrase, or if somebody says a certain word, or somebody fails to keep up with you know, the changing political or the etique vocabulary, um, then all of a sudden we're supposed to put them in a box.

And we know every single thing about that person. And I've met people, um who use offensive language who have good qualities too, you know, and that that's that I think it's a lie when you say if somebody's says a certain word, then therefore they don't count as a human being and we should just eradicate them from the planet. Also, you know, with my grandfather, I struggle with this all the time. You know, he grew up in the tribal

system and field literally rough on the streets. You stuck with the people in your neighborhood, and if you straight into another neighborhood with a different ethnicity, they would beat the hell out of you, you know. And that's that's the way that he grew up. Um. Same with you know, my uncle in Vietnam. You know, you spend a year where everyone you see who is Vietnamese is trying to

kill you. You know, obviously that's going to affect you in a way that if you grew up in New York City at the time, it wasn't worth obviously, it's it doesn't cost you anything to be tolerant, you know. And so you know, you never want to excuse racism, But I think You're never gonna solve racism if we don't really get to the heart of why people are thinking what they're thinking. And if we just shame everyone for their thoughts before they get a chance to explain him,

they were never going to understand them. I agree. I think it's shutting the conversation down. And it's a I've heard the phrase, you know, we live in a culture of outrage, and and that's the thing that I see most is just everybody is always all bent out of shape about something. And I look at it a lot of it and I go, well, I don't think that's really what that person meant. Like we can take that thing that they said, and we can make them out to be an horrible person because of them, but I

think we're taking it way out of context. Um. There was one the other day where showed Donald Trump UH and a foreign leader and she walked past him to shake his wife's hand, and the video that was all you saw, and it looked like she snubbed him. Well, she shook his wife's hand, then she turned, you know,

it's just like she was already seeing her. And I looked at that as an example of of taking something and sort of twisting it in a way to make it look worse than it really was, to justify a worldview. And I don't like that. I mean, again, politics aside. I'm not gonna get into who I prefer and don't I mean, And I think there's a lot of things that are really going wrong at a political level, but at a human level, I think that's what we're losing, and we just are all looking for something to be

angry about. And I don't know why. I think because we're afraid, and it gives us the illusion of making us feel safe, you know. Um, I mean that's all the rays like safe spaces, and you know, we're gonna we need language that's not offensive. Um, but people use offensive language to express emotions that exists. And you can't

just shut down people's emotions, you know. Um, just because somebody doesn't say a word, or you know, they don't use a phrase that's deemed offensive, doesn't mean that they're on the inside and not offensive, you know. It just means that they've learned to mask that. And so one of the things that my character David Granger is, because he's had brain brain surgery, has no filter. He says,

everything that comes to his mind. And so I think one of the reasons why a lot of people are enjoying him so much is because when he says the most horrific thing that comes to his mind, you think, I can't believe this guy just said this. But it makes you believe him when he says the good stuff

because he's saying everything. So when he tells you how much he loves his granddaughter, or how much he loved his wife, or how much he loves his country, or that he's befriended um this gay couple, or he you know, he's befriended the quote little yellow woman in spin class, like, you believe that those intentions are good because he would

tell you if he had other intentions. There's no there's no masking, there's no academic language or flowery language where that he's using as a key to get through a door. He's just being himself. And I think that's one of the things I want to get to with this book. I think that's one of the things that people have loved about Trump is that he just says anything. Now, I don't think that's a great quality for the president of the United States, but I get it right. I mean,

you don't have to wonder what he thinks. Well, I think the big difference between my character in Trump is, uh, any politician is not saying what they think. They're saying what is going to get empowered. Whereas my character David Grangers at the end of his life making this confession. Um, it's kind of almost like he has nothing to lose and he's coming out and just telling you he's not gaining anything from except for perhaps um redemption or some type of closure at the end of his life. But

I get your point. I think it's different. I think, but that's what even though it may not be that case, you know, that's what people think is happening. They think somebody is finally saying or somebody somebody is not being silenced and shamed into silence. They're saying the things that you've been told you're not allowed to say. And I think I'd probably be get in troubles. But it's an American to say you can't say things. To make a list of words and things and opinions that you can't express,

is it just goes against but what America is. And that's not to say we don't have a right to say that we don't like those opinions. But when we try to shut people down and say the way that we're going to protect everyone is by silencing these groups, are taking away the language of these people, or you know, make a list of rules that is constantly changing about what you're allowed to say. And by the way, you

know that that is politically motivated as well. Um, I think people find that frustrating, and I think people, you know, like I think Trump and other people can exploit that frustration. And I think that's dangerous too. It's all around well, I think, honestly and discussion and transparency, you know, I think that's that's a big thing too. And I think my character, David Granger, he's completely transparent, and I think

that's why the people who have really enjoyed him. I love him because he's honest, and I think he's funny because he says the things that he thinks. And I've often heard that humor is experiencing the unexpected. That's it. You know, why do we laugh when someone trips when they're walking on the sidewalk. It's not because we want them to get hurt. It's because we didn't expect it to happen, and it just triggers the thing and us that you know, the person trips, they didn't get hurt.

We can laugh up because it's a release and we I think we live in a time when everyone is feeling so tense um that we we we laugh when somebody says something audacious because we're like, oh, we we forgot we're allowed to say audacious things. We forgot that we're in America and we can say whatever. So hold on before you hit the fast forward button past the mid role. I've got Matthew Quick here with me who were doing the interview, and he has been kind enough

to donate ten signed copies of his new book. So we're going to do the content us that we've done before. For everybody that sits as a signed copy. For everybody that pledges you will be entered in a contest to win a signed copy of his book. And based on the donations, I bet you've got a really good chance of winning that. So Matthew, Yeah, And the reason why I donated the books is because I believe so much in the show. It's it's helped me and I want

to help promote the show. Um, and when I found the show, I was getting it for free every week and and you know, at some point I thought this is something I would definitely pay for, and I have donated to the show and and um, you know, if you if you win a book, the book would run you about twenties six bucks. That's quite a bargain if you win the book. Yeah, and it's signed. So again, within the next week, sign up for a donation and you'll be entered into a contest to get a signed

copy of Matthew Quick's Greatest book, which is wonderful. And now back to the interview with Matthew Quick. I was thinking back to our first interview and I think one of the things that we talked about was you were talking about Silver Linings a book, and how some people laughed and some people cried and totally different reactions. But the thing that I said and I still stand by in this book is another great example is that I feel like I can laugh and cry nearly in the

same page. It's that blend that is so powerful to me in fiction, to be able to trigger those two emotions simultaneously. And you know you're very good at that, Thank you. That's why I come on the show for comments like that. It's wonderful. But I think when you think about laughing and crying, um, there are two emotional

responses that accomplished the same thing. You know. They release tension. Yeah, you know, so they're they're very closely related, you know, for me being someone who's very anxious and someone you know who's nine f J who is an EmPATH, like I feel tension all the time, you know, and some at a very young age it became a coping mechanism to try to get people to laugh because it changed

the energy that they're putting out, which would give me relief. Um. And so you know, people will say like do you consciously try to make jokes in your books? Like do you try to make them funny? Or are you trying to trigger the you know, tears, And no, I'm just going through the emotions of the characters. And I know that if I'm crying while I'm writing, or if I'm laughing while I'm crying, that's probably a pretty good sign. But it's not like I said, what is gonna make

me laugh or cry? I try to channel those emotions in the honest way. You're talking about your anxiety. You're you know, you'll mention to me you're on a book tour this time, and it's a little bit different from you and that you've made some changes in your life to be healthier. Is that something you want to talk about. I'd love to talk about that, and I like to give you a lot of credit for that too and

not too embarrass you. But uh, you know, I've been listening to the show for three years now and it's become a really important part of my life every week just because it's just a reminder and I almost think of you as like a friend. You know, it just comes into my my ears every Tuesday or was Wednesday morning or whenever I listened to it, And uh, you know,

it's funny because like feeding that good Wolf. You know, I and I first heard this show, and I first heard the concept of it, I said, you know, this is this is a good thing for me. And I had known that I had a problem with food, I had a problem with alcohol. Um, I had a problem with being obsessive about internet information like I was talking about in the beginning. But there was a big part of me that thought, because I have anxiety, I can't function without alcohol. You know, I can't go to a

party without alcohol. I can't do a book tour without you know, clon upin or something, and like that was a belief I had for myself. Um, But as I listened to your show, and I listened to other podcasts and read widely over the years, and I started this journey in my twenties of trying to figure out what was going on inside of me. And my wife's been a big part of it too. About a year ago, I said, all right, now it's time to face that lie.

You know, it's time to like and you know, and so I started running a lot and that started to give me relief from anxiety. And um. Then I said, well, you know, I'm reading all this stuff about you know, eating processed food and bad food and you know, get rid of that. And that started make me feel better. And then the last thing was it was alcohol, you know. And I'm not completely off alcohol. I have a drink

every once in a while. But I started off with um saying I'm not going to drink for a month, and you know, my friends and my wife said that will never happened. You know, it's the way he's making it. But it was the first time, and I said, yeah, the only time I had done that was when I had gotten a blood test that said my my liver was damaged, and so I had to go off alcohol

for um a month. And it turned out that the test was a fluke and so I was fine, and so my wife was upset and she thought, like I would stop, you know, drinking everything, and I just went right back to it. So this was this big test of going off alcohol for um a month. And what I found this time was that my my sleep was better, and the anxiety went way down, and my depression started to lift. And you know, it's funny because you would think, okay, like I have depression, so I'm gonna put you know,

depressive into my body every day. It's it sounds so ridiculous now, but it was a habit for so long, and so I just made this commitment to getting healthy into drinking less, and I've lost forty eight pounds, I've been running a lot. Well, thank you. And it's funny because people will say that you keep saying, you know, you get a lot of affirmation, you look great, you look great, But I didn't do it to look great

at all. I did it to like clean out my mind. Um, and it just got to a point where I just was tired of waking up every morning a little hungover and a little anxious and you know, counting down the hours. So you know, I could have that drink at the end of the day and and it's it's been really

freeing in. You know. I had to take because to say all this because for so many years, whenever I would hear this message like if you stopped drinking, you sleep better, I was like, yeah, but I'm not gonna stop. Like that's it's so uncooler, Like everyone's drinks. What am I gonna do? Go out to the bar? And I have another friend that runs all the time and he always comes to bed at nine o'clock. And when I first started hanging out with him, I thought, you know,

it's so lame. But now that I'm running and eating healthy, like I love going to better early, it's it's it's so weird. It's just transformed everything in my mind. But it's been much better. In this tour has been a lot less anxious for me. You know, surprise, surprise, right, you know, Um, I've been running every day on tour, and working out and no alcohol, no clonic pin, so there's no thought getting up in the morning like I need to take another clon a pin or you know.

And the other thing that would happen on book tour is I try to get off the clone pin. I go through withdrawal. And there are people that say clonic pins, you know, as addictive or more addictive than heroin. You know, a lot of people will say that. And I would go through really really bad withdrawal, and I'd be depressed for weeks after book tour, and you know, it's just not a good way to live. I got tired of it,

you know. I got tired of looking at the lie like looking in the mirror and saying, you're justifying all these things that you know aren't good for you. And uh, you know, I guess I'll be a little bit candid too. I think one of the things that I really started to square up with was the fact that there's a big part of me that thought I didn't deserve to be healthy. There's a big part of me that thought, um,

you don't deserve the success you've had. You know. There's a big part of me that thought, if you don't deserve the love that you're getting. And you know, looking back, I almost you know, I I say this with with a little hesitation, but I really do believe it. I think it was a slow form of suicide. I really do like I think it was a big part of myself that said, you're not worth it, you don't deserve this, and you should put poison into your body every day

and make yourself sick because you're not good enough. And and the drinking perpetuates it, right, because every time that you think I shouldn't be doing that and you do it, you reinforce that message. Look, I'm not good enough, right, I said I was not going to do this, and I did it again, So you know, here I am.

And I think that's the that's the insidious thing. And you know, addiction is like such a weird thing because it's it's such a spectrum, right, There's you know, there's like one end is you know, people who just have no tendency towards too and the other end is people who you know, I you know, not being able to quit, and and then and there's a lot of people in between.

But I think the insidious thing about it is that it does work for a while, right, There's a reason people keep going to alcohol or other things because it does work. I mean, when I if I were to take two drinks right now, I would feel better than I felt probably in a month, I mean, or in a long time, for about fifteen minutes, right, and then it would kind of go downhill from there. And then then I don't feel good. So how do I get to feel good again? I drink again. And when more

I drink, the less good I feel. And so I mean, it's just this just such a tough cycle, it is. And you know this time around, you know, the first night of books Are it was my hometown and there's gonna be a few hundred people there, and there's gonna be a lot of people I haven't seen for a while. Expectations were super high, as you know, And in the

three hours before, we're really really tough for me. And I wanted to drink for the first time in months so badly, Like not because socially, or wasn't just that. It was because I I felt like I needed a drink.

I needed the clone up in um. But the funny thing was when I did the event, it was great alcohol drunk free, and afterwards I was talking to my wife and I said, you know, I think I'm gonna go to sleep by It was a really cool event and it was good, and she's like, you do realize that, you know, you're way different now, like on the other side of it, you know, because I passed on the short term relief. You know, I get sleep that night, and the next day I get up and I was fine.

So you you get through that three hours window of the struggle, it doesn't carry over to the next day, and the next day gets a little bit easier. Yeah. I always say I think people think about not drinking or cutting back on drinking, and when you do it, at first, it feels terrible. It does, and you think that's what consuming less alcohol or being sober is like You're like, this sucks, and you know it's it's the hanging in there long enough to get to the other

side of that. I always say that getting sober is horrible, but being sober is pretty great, you know, And I stay sober a lot sometimes just on the fact I don't ever want to have to do it again. Yeah, I don't ever want to have to cross that divide again, because it is really difficult. I don't know that I'm an addict in the sense that like I would get up in and you know, get the shakes. You know. It was more that I have social anxiety and that was a cheat for me, and it be I became

very dependent on that in social situations. But I will say that, Uh, since I've cut down on drinking, I learned a few things that one beer doesn't really do anything for me. And so if I'm really exercising and accounting my my calories, all of a sudden, I don't want to drink it anymore. And you know, I'm I love Scotch, um, and you know I've I've found that. Um it used to be, you know it's six months ago,

would take me four scotches to get high. Now I just have one Scotch and I feel pretty buz, And you know, like that's I can do just one, you know, like once a week or once every two weeks. The key right there. I don't think everybody needs to be completely abstinent, right, Um. Some people are able once they can turn it off, to sort of use it like

a normal human being can. And boy, if I could pick a superpower to have, I think that's the one, but I've proven to myself over and over it doesn't work. I don't have just one yea and everyone train gets rolling and it it's just it happens fast. And so I'm just different in that way. But I certainly don't think that you have to be, you know, completely abstinent to improve your relationship with alcohol. Yeah, it's different for everyone. Yeah.

You know, a guy had a talk to the day with a good friend of mine who struggles with anxiety, and you know, he needs to take anxiety. Man's like, that's that's his game. You know, he he can't not you know, that's he has to have them. And so I would never advocate for him to give up his anxiety image. You know, I just knew for me that the clim up him is something that I wanted to not do and then see if I could do it,

and it worked out for me. So everyone's path is difference, right, And I like to emphasize that I just knew in my heart that I wasn't being the best version of me and there were dark reasons for that. Um and my wife knew it too, And you know, I just kind of woke up and said I do want to be the best version of me, and that includes drinking lesson eating healthy, and exercising, and it's made a big difference.

There were a few themes that ran through the book. Obviously, you know, we talked earlier about the political theme or the you know, respecting people of different views. The other one really is the power of the past to continue to live on. And you're you're describing a Vietnam veteran who has suffered greatly and continues to suffer in his life, and so I just thought we could maybe talk about that for a minute. You know, how strongly does the

past control what we do today? And I think, you know, it was probably different for everyone, right, and what you went through. But I've read things like that before, and every time I do. When I read about what somebody went through in war, I have a completely different perspective about who that person is and what they went through. And unfortunately, I don't think it sticks as well as it could, because then when I read another one again, I'm like, oh, yeah, you know, it reminds me. But

it was really powerful about the trauma he suffered. Yeah, you know, I was having a conversation with my buddy down in No Bi X and we're talking about karma and I won't get exactly how he said it, but a paraphrase, and his thought was basically, it doesn't really matter if you believe, if you have faith in karma or not, because every experience that you have on earth creates a memory, and that that changes the software of your brain, so it will literally affect the rest of

your life. You know, every memory, so you know, whether you believe in karma or not, you know the things that you do and the things that you experience are going to radically affect the rest of your life. And I think that that's true. And there are definitely people who would read David Granger's voice in my book and you know, closely after five pages just say no, like I I Am not gonna listen to this, like he

checked off whatever box. And you know, I've met people um that I would not have introduced to my grandfather it was a World War Two that or my uncle was a Vietnam Vet, because I knew that they would just say no. And I think that that's a shame because my relationship with those two men really colored my life in a profound the way like they were to the only men when I was a child who showed me love in a real way. Um, and they were

really unlikely people to do that. I've told the story often, but my uncle would always threaten to kill me if I hugged him, like he was like, don't hug me. I don't do hugs. And in somewhere in my twenties, I just said, you know, I'm gonna do this. I remember I said, Pete, I'm gonna hug you. I'm gonna hug you. It's my Vietnam vett uncle. And he said, I'll kill you if you hug me. I'm gonna punch

you in the face. And I remember I just went for him, put my arms around him and held on and he started punching my back as hard as he could kidney punches, and I saw, I'm just gonna hold on, and I held on for thirty seconds and the punch is slowed, and then he just his face just broke

out and his like wonderful smile, you know. And it was one of these profound moments in my life because I learned that this man who was outwardly projecting, you know, this image of being tough and owned all these guns, and you know it was always talking about violent things and tribalism. He really wanted to hug you know that that's what he wanted. You know. He was this guy that that had been thrown into this situation that was unfathomable, that would scare any of us. You know, there's a

quote in the book that I talked about. You know, anyone who's been in more for a certain amount of time is considered legally insane. That's going to affect you. And then on top of that, of course people with mental health syndromes or PTSD is one of those. Uh, you get the added stigma of you know, being called crazy or whatever, and you know that that's that's frustrating, you know, And so I think, you know, the book

I try. I hope it's a call for you know, looking a little bit deeper and you know, seeing that sometimes really unlikely alliances can be made if we're willing to be compassionate and tolerance and sometimes those alliances are

the things that that change your life. And quite literally, Um, you know, my uncle was one of these guys that you know, he was one of the few people who really encouraged me to take a chance on my art, you know, really unlikely source of inspiration, but um, you know, he was not somebody who understood the publishing route and how that works, but he was somebody who loved me and encouraged me at the time that I needed it. Yep. It's an interesting concept to me about the role of

the pastor karma, like you speak. I agree. I think it's kind of self evident that what we've done in the past affects who we are today, sort of like believing that the mind is different from the body, right, there's a connection. I don't It seems completely self evident

to me. One of the things that I find really interesting though, And we had gabble or mate on and he's an addiction specialist, and he was saying to a certain extent that at a certain point, the damage is so severe, the trauma is so great, that the range of recovery is really limited. Yeah, you know, and I think that's a really interesting concept, and it it raises so many questions legally and and in so many different ways about what extent and what degree of choice do

we have. You know that if you if you get determinists on who are like you know, strong and the physics will say, well, there's no free will at all. Everything is determined, which to me also sounds like all right, hold on, you know, it doesn't that doesn't make sense. But I do think we're simultaneously freer than we think we are and not as free in certain ways as we'd like to believe. I think there's probably a range, right, you know. I think we're each with the experience that

we're given. You know, if it's a scale of one to ten, you know, some of us are gonna be able to succore two to five, and so you shoot for the five. You know. You know, some people might be in the five to eight range, and so you shoot for the eight. Um. And I think in my relationships with people, especially family members, um, that you can't

just edit out of your life. You gotta look at it and say, you know, like with my uncle Pete with some things, you know, and it came to like being tolerant, you know, like he's not going to change his range on some things might have been like one to three and if you hit that three, it was a good day, you know, And um, you know, I

think that's what's interesting about human beings. You know. That's why you can't make these blanket rules like thou shalt not or if then statements like if this person does this or says this, then it means that thing that's just simply not true. You can't just have a blanket

statement for everyone because everyone's different. YEA, yeah, I find that that idea of you know, one to five because I've I've read, you know a lot about you know, happiness and mental health, and they say there's a happiness set point for certain people, right and some degree you can move it, you know, up or down based on what you do, and and there is a relatively good amount of movement you can do that depends on your actions and your environment what you do, and then there's

just a certain point. And so with me, I've kind of accepted to some degree, like I think that happiness set point just isn't real high, you know. I think I've worked and I do the best I can to get to a point where I don't suffer right by and large, and I think I'm kind of happy. But I'm not one of those people that's just going to be bouncing around all day every day, thrilled about everything,

like it just doesn't. And it's so it's relieving to me on one hand to be able to let go of that and just say, you know what, this is kind of who I am, and I'm going to do the best I can with what I've got. Um and again the range, maybe I can make myself twenty or thirty percent happier, which is a lot. We've got a

lot that we can do in our own lives. And yet at a certain point, experience, biology, genes, all that stuff does have a role also, And so I guess I would say when I think about that, and I'm kind of talking out lout, it kind of gets back to the what can you control and what can't you write, and and focusing your efforts on what you can control and saying with the stuff you can't like, well, that's just kind of what it is. There are times, especially

on book tour, and I really wish I was an extrovert. Yeah, I really, because my job on book tour is to sell books. And if I was a salesman, you know, if I was an extrovert who could gain energy by being around people, I would probably be much better at

selling my books. But I'm an introvert, and that means I'm good at spending time alone in a room and I'm good at writing books, you know, And and and sometimes I I started to feel well, it's how unfair is it that most authors I know are introverts, and yet they expect you to go on book tour and do social media all the time and be this extroverted person. And then I say to myself, you know you're thinking

about it the wrong way. You know you can reframe it and say, I'm an introvert and I'm I'm managing on book tour and it's i had some really awesome experiences, and I'm gonna do this for a couple of weeks and I'm gonna go back and I'm going to do these events and that you know, they're gonna if I reframe like what I'm trying to get out of them. So what I say to myself is, you know, I'm not trying to get on the news or sell a

billion copies. I'm I'm going to give a talk, and if I connect with one or two people at that talk, if a couple of people come up to me and say, hey, you know something you said, especially about the mental health stuff really connected with me and thank you for coming. It made me um feel better or made me feel less alone. Even if they don't buy a book, I say, that's a win. That's on mission for me, you know, because that resonates with me at the core level. That

makes me feel less alone in the world. And of course I'm trying to sell as many books as possible, but if I focus on that, um, that's where the depression starts to right, you know, for another thing to control that. No, And it's always you know, uh, focus on process, not results. You know, it's this show is always about and it's constantly reminded me. And you know,

sometimes you get what you need along the way. You know, I think when you you focus on process and and that's different for everyone, but you know it's somebody who has had some nice successes in the past. Before you get those successes, you think that's what you need and you think that that will be the place where you feel okay, and it's not. You know, it's never. It never. The anxiety is it was even more present when the successes came. And right, yeah, yeah, I mean I think

that's another theme on the show. Talk about a lot that is you know, it's that external stuff isn't gonna fix what you think is wrong with you again. And you know, for people who live in extreme poverty and deprivation, let's take that out of that. You know, it's not what we're talking about here. But for most of us that live a fairly comfortable, you know life, it's it's

not becoming more comfortable or having more money. You know, for me, it's not getting you know, in the top ten list of iTunes, Like that's not gonna change the things that go on with me mentally, right, that's just not gonna do it. It's gonna feel good for a little bit, but that's not that that's not what the game is about, or it becomes a new addiction. Like I mean, for me, when I was in m f A, the only thing I wanted more than anything in the world is to be a New York Times So like

that's what I wanted. And then as soon as I became a New York Times bestseller, the thing that would happen would be people would ask me, when is your next book going to be a New York Times bestseller? And then it became this this bar that oh I gotta do it again, and I've got to perform the trick again and again, and you get on that hamster wheel and you forget why you start a writing books

in the first place. And the truth was, when I started writing books at sixteen, it wasn't because I didn't even know what the New York Times best sellers was. When I was sixteen, I was this blue collar kid that had all these weird feelings going on. And when I wrote words down in a notebook and made those

feelings go away and gave me relief. And when I shared the stories with my girlfriend at the time or my friends and and they thought it was cool and maybe you know, it made them feel a little bit better. I I enjoyed that communion and I do to this day. And when I get back to that, that's when stuff

starts feeling better mental health wise, you know. And um and at these events, you know, if I start looking at you know, where my book is in the bookstore, or like, what's the best seller or do people, yeah, the the the the book owner like my book. Because you can always tell when they, you know, they instead of just saying there's somebody in the audience right now, it's given me eye contact the whole time, and they're

getting something from what I'm saying today. And it doesn't matter if they bought a book, because I've been given a lot and I'm here to give back. I'm not here to focus on sales or all that other distraction that leads to misery. I'm here to engage with my core values with other human beings are going the same stuff I'm going through on this, you know, Big Blue Marble. And that's when the anxieties starts to dissipate, you know, And that's when you get on mission, You get on point,

and you just have to keep going. But you gotta keep taking yourself back to that good place of you know, what is the thing that you really really want to do? And you know, again your show has been a great reminder of that. And you know, even this interview, I had no anxiety coming on this because it was something that I've really wanted to do because I believe in the mission of the show and I knew we were gonna have a great conversation that I'm really enjoying it.

So I didn't feel any anxiety walking in here. And that's how I know I'm the right question. I was like, you know, I agree with you. Feel like, all right, I'm gonna get to meet a friend. So yeah, it's been a great talk. Thanks for coming on. Congratulations on your success. The book is called The Reason You Are a Live and it is really great, so i'd encourage folks to check it out. All right, thanks so much for coming by. Matthew. Hey, my absolute pleasure. Thanks for

having me. Bye. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to the One you Feed podcast. Head over to one you Feed dot net slash support