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A podcast that explores human connection, meditative depth, minimalism, sober living, and stories from authentic builders.
Of course, here is the full transcript of the podcast episode.
**Podcast Transcript**
**Henry Shukman:** [00:00:00] It's the readiness to sink into our most ordinary consciousness. That is where we find these deeper and deeper levels of what our consciousness actually is, which bring us to what our existence actually is. So we're not studying rarefied states of mind. We're coming home to absolutely ordinary states of mind, but coming to know them more intimately, and therefore more sort of thoroughly, and finding that in our just most ordinary experience is everything we could ever want.
[Music]
**Kevin Rose:** [00:00:51] That was Zen Master Henry Shukman. One of the reasons I'm excited to have this podcast is that it is a brand new, clean, blank slate that I can experiment with and share with you all another side of who I am.
[00:01:06] I realized there is nothing more important than being comfortable in your own skin. And ever since I was a little kid, the reason I got into computers is I hid in my room and my computer was more or less my best friend for quite some time. And that caused me to have certain deficiencies as I got older in social situations, and my comfort and anxiety around interacting with others. And I hid it quite well. And and quite frankly, I hid it with alcohol. Alcohol was a great escape and a way to numb the anxiousness I would have around certain situations.
[00:01:51] And that's what this episode is about. It's about exploring that. And that's what this podcast is about. It's about exploring these other parts of our lives that largely go untalked about.
[00:02:03] With this show, I really want to come to the table with a level of honesty and just raw transparency around the things that I struggle with, and how I'm trying to navigate the world with a more open heart, with a sense of openness. This idea that we are lifelong learners, that there is much work to be done.
[00:02:23] This episode in particular is going to be a walk down memory lane for myself because I'm talking to my old buddy, Jason DeFilippo, who we were drinking buddies for many, many years. We've known each other for over 20 years. And we've had some wild times. Many pints of beer consumed together. And I say that laughing only because we're both in a hell of a lot better place now.
[00:02:51] I was really freaked out when I had lost touch with Jason, hadn't talked to him for a few years, and we connected again. And I heard that he had a stroke that almost took his life.
[00:03:04] Um, so we got together and he said, you know, I'm sober, and I quit drinking. And this is, this is my buddy Jason. This is my drinking buddy. This is the, I mean, we, we could do some damage together. So I was like, okay, you know, tell me more. And he talked about how he had gotten some help from a 12-step program and some of the tools and tactics that he had put into place. And also how deep he had gotten into drinking, which I wasn't aware of. And I heard it, but it sounded like, oh, that's a bummer for him. And I just went back to my normal alcohol consumption.
[00:03:40] But something really strange happened. I was recording a Diggnation episode with, with my co-host Alex. And after three drinks, I noticed on the podcast after I started watching the episode again, that I was slurring my words a little bit. I was like, that is so weird. Like, how can I not handle my alcohol with like three drinks? Like, and I'm not a, a big drinker, meaning like, I've, I've never gotten blackout drunk. If I have more than four, I, it's, it's danger zone in terms of like hangover headache, that kind of thing the next day. So I've always been kind of more consistency than uh, total amount of alcohol. Now, obviously when I was younger, that was, there was more alcohol consumed. But as I've gotten older, and the hangovers get worse, it's always been about consistency.
[00:04:24] Well, in, you know, drinking more often than not, I got a call from my doctor and my liver enzymes were through the roof, which was, is not a good sign. That means your liver is putting up a fight here and it's saying, no more.
[00:04:37] So that scared the crap out of me. And I had to make a change. And so one of the first people that I called was Jason. You could just tell it in his voice that that something had changed here. And he wasn't reliant upon alcohol any longer. And I really wanted to make it 90 days. As of this recording today, actually, I'm at 60 days.
[00:04:58] And I said, what, what, what tips and tricks do you have? Like, how do you, how do you navigate this world? How do you go, you know, I could go a week or two or, you know, maybe three, but I couldn't go 90 days. And so I started asking questions.
[00:05:13] I know 12-step programs are not for everyone. There's a lot of baggage that comes with even the mention of them. But I certainly know one thing to be true. This is the longest I've gone without alcohol since I was probably 20 years old. And I've put a few of his practices into place in my own life, and they're working.
[00:05:35] For me, I like to look across multiple disciplines of people that have figured something out that I haven't and put together my own toolkit when approaching any new problem. And this is just a problem to be solved. For me, going without a drink has caused a lot of anxiety and I'm starting to pick apart and understand actually what is the root of that anxiety? Where is it coming from? That feeling of being uncomfortable in your own skin in certain situations. If I can address that and fix it, then there's a chance that I'll have a better relationship, both with those around me and with alcohol.
[00:06:11] But my hope here is that you'll enjoy the stories. And a few of you listening might just say to yourselves, gosh, I've kind of been hitting it too hard as well. Maybe I should dial it back a little bit. And that would be a huge win. So with that, meet my buddy Jason.
[00:06:26] **Kevin Rose:** What kind of timeframe you looking at? Do you have a hard out or whatnot?
[00:06:28] **Jason DeFilippo:** Uh, I should get back to my little ladies at some point. I'm going to play with the kids this afternoon. So probably like maybe an hourish?
[00:06:34] **Kevin Rose:** You just tell me. Yeah.
[00:06:35] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah.
[00:06:35] **Kevin Rose:** I, I, I, I am at your disposal. I'm just, I'm here to record and...
[00:06:39] **Jason DeFilippo:** Thank you.
[00:06:40] **Kevin Rose:** You talk. I'm excited. Let me know when you're ready.
[00:06:43] **Jason DeFilippo:** Uh, I think I'm good.
[00:06:46] **Kevin Rose:** I am super excited to have you on the show today because we can talk and go deep about alcohol consumption.
[00:06:55] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah, we can.
[00:06:55] **Kevin Rose:** Because we've been there together. Many, many times.
[00:06:58] **Jason DeFilippo:** Many times.
[00:06:59] **Kevin Rose:** In the early days. Well, not early days, but like, you know, in my 20s, I think I was still in my 20s, the late 20s, something like that?
[00:07:06] **Jason DeFilippo:** It was early 2000s.
[00:07:07] **Kevin Rose:** It was early 2000s, yeah. So that was very uh, early in my professional drinking career.
[00:07:13] **Jason DeFilippo:** Okay, yes.
[00:07:13] **Kevin Rose:** Um, I don't even know where to begin. I think it would be fun to bring the audience along for the ride in terms of I've never talked about my origin story around alcohol.
[00:07:22] **Jason DeFilippo:** Okay.
[00:07:22] **Kevin Rose:** And I would love to hear yours as well, because I haven't heard, I, I know bits and pieces of yours.
[00:07:27] **Jason DeFilippo:** All right.
[00:07:27] **Kevin Rose:** But it would be fun because we're both uh, recovering in the sense that I am 46 days into not having drinks and you are, how long into your journey?
[00:07:39] **Jason DeFilippo:** Let's take a peek here. I just passed my...
[00:07:42] **Kevin Rose:** You got an app?
[00:07:42] **Jason DeFilippo:** Oh, always have an app. I'm at 886 days, so two years, five months and four days.
[00:07:48] **Kevin Rose:** Dude, that's amazing. Congratulations on that.
[00:07:50] **Jason DeFilippo:** Thank you very much.
[00:07:51] **Kevin Rose:** And that's uh, what app are you using to track that?
[00:07:53] **Jason DeFilippo:** Uh, I am using the Everything AA app because it has a great free tracker in it. So I highly recommend it.
[00:08:00] **Kevin Rose:** Does it put a widget on your home screen too?
[00:08:01] **Jason DeFilippo:** No, it does not.
[00:08:02] **Kevin Rose:** Okay, cause I had a widget at one point and I ended up taking it off. But...
[00:08:05] **Jason DeFilippo:** There's some that you can do the widgets with that are paid apps. And it was like 60 bucks a year and I did it for the first year and I'm like, why am I paying 60 bucks for a counter that I can just, you know.
[00:08:15] **Kevin Rose:** I know. There's enough vibe coding now with the AI stuff. I feel like we could code one up in about 10 minutes. Yeah, at the most, at the most.
[00:08:21] **Kevin Rose:** For, let's go back to the beginning. So for me, I would say, and we can, we can swap stories here. But for me, I was thinking about this the other day and I remember it was church for me.
[00:08:32] **Jason DeFilippo:** Okay.
[00:08:32] **Kevin Rose:** And so, you know, as a Lutheran, which is what my dad raised us as, you would go in and we would drink Christ's blood, which is like, what, literally what they told you.
[00:08:44] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah.
[00:08:45] **Kevin Rose:** Which I always, still to this day, I'm like, why were we drinking his blood? I, I, I know it's kind of gross.
[00:08:49] **Jason DeFilippo:** I know exactly.
[00:08:50] **Kevin Rose:** Like it was, it was a thing, but Christ's blood was represented as red wine.
[00:08:54] **Jason DeFilippo:** Mm-hmm.
[00:08:54] **Kevin Rose:** And so they had, like literally they had like a chalice that was like in, and eventually they learned about germs and what not, not that they didn't know, but they poured it in a little individual sippy cups.
[00:09:04] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah.
[00:09:04] **Kevin Rose:** And you would like walk up there and take communion. You would take that little wafer in a sippy cup. And my dad was like, yeah, you can do this. And I was probably, I don't know, like 12 or 13 or whatever, but maybe a little bit younger. And I, I remember sipping it and then coughing. And my dad would be like, don't cough. Like don't cough in church. And cause it like the alcohol was, it would sting.
[00:09:27] **Jason DeFilippo:** You're right. Yeah.
[00:09:27] **Kevin Rose:** And it would hit my throat. I'd be like, oh gosh. But I, then I remember this like warmth of Jesus's blood just overtaking me and being like, this is good, you know? Like I remember just thinking like, wow, I get a little warm, like, like fun little sensation out of this.
[00:09:43] **Jason DeFilippo:** Mhmm.
[00:09:44] **Kevin Rose:** That was my first exposure. What was yours?
[00:09:46] **Jason DeFilippo:** I grew up in, in like suburban Pittsburgh. So I, my grandfather was a coal miner, and he would come home from work every day. And I would spend a lot of time there because I was kind of one of those kids where they would just dump me off on my grandparents on the weekend.
[00:09:59] **Kevin Rose:** Yeah.
[00:10:00] **Jason DeFilippo:** And when he would come home from the coal mines, he would sit down in front of the TV, he would open an Iron City beer and he would pour himself a little Corby shot of Corby's whiskey and he would sit there and nurse the whiskey and drink the beer until he went to bed. And we would watch John Wayne movies and I'd sit on his lap and all that stuff. And from what my dad said, I'd had alcohol from the day I got home from the hospital as a baby because they would, you know, put whiskey on your gums and all that stuff to start teething.
[01:10:23] **Kevin Rose:** Yeah.
[01:10:23] **Jason DeFilippo:** Exactly. And it was just that, I mean, I was born in '71, so, you know, times were a different back then. But I remember distinctly my first drink where you could call it an alcoholic drink. Because I would have sips of his beer all the time. And then one day, I'm like, can I have a sip of your whiskey? And he's like, just a little one.
[01:10:39] **Kevin Rose:** Wait, how old were you at this point?
[01:10:41] **Jason DeFilippo:** Five.
[01:10:41] **Kevin Rose:** Wow.
[01:10:42] **Jason DeFilippo:** I was five.
[01:10:43] **Kevin Rose:** Now, I don't know a single five-year-old that liked the taste of beer.
[01:10:46] **Jason DeFilippo:** I loved it. Oh, I absolutely loved it.
[01:10:48] **Kevin Rose:** What, what was the beer called?
[01:10:49] **Jason DeFilippo:** Iron City.
[01:10:51] **Kevin Rose:** Iron City. It's just like a local?
[01:10:52] **Jason DeFilippo:** It's a Pittsburgh beer because we were iron city.
[01:10:53] **Kevin Rose:** Is it still around?
[01:10:54] **Jason DeFilippo:** I don't, I think it's still around. It might have been sold off or whatever. I mean, it was swill, it was garbage.
[01:10:59] **Kevin Rose:** Yeah.
[01:10:59] **Jason DeFilippo:** And then he had Corby's whiskey, which I'm sure was a bottom, you know, bottom shelf whiskey.
[01:11:04] **Kevin Rose:** Working class man, just like doing his, I mean, I, I remember very similar. Like there was like Coors Light in my house and Miller High Life and, you know.
[01:11:12] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah. Oh yeah. And uh, I just remember when I had that sip, it burned, but it felt like, just the clouds parted, the angels sang. I wasn't in church, but man, I saw the Lord. That was, that was pretty much it. And at five, because even then, you know, there's a lot of talk about, are you born alcoholic or are you made alcoholic? And I come from the, the mindset that we're, we come out of the factory this way. You know, we are predestined to be alcoholics if you run across alcohol because we think different. Or at least me personally, I thought different. I always felt like I wasn't part of whatever was going on. I wasn't, you know, I just wasn't part of the crowd. Even at five, I didn't get it. I always wanted to be by myself. I just didn't get why kids played with each other, you know. I'd see the kids playing and they're like, go play with the kids. I'm like, what the hell am I going to do with them? You know, I always hung out with the adults because they would leave me alone. But then as soon as I started to have that Corby's and I felt that thing, it just like within that one sip, I'm like, my shoulders dropped and I mean, I can just envision it now and I'm sure it wasn't as spectacular and, you know, like David Fincher-esque as I'm making it out to be, but in my head it was. And then after that, it's like, I was just off to the races. I would always sip whenever the adults weren't looking. I would be, you know, stealing drinks across, uh, on the tables when people would go around. I'd always get people drinks for, you know, up until I could drink legally. From five till 20 years old, I was the guy that was always just stealing alcohol from wherever I could possibly get it.
[01:12:45] **Kevin Rose:** Wow.
[01:12:45] **Jason DeFilippo:** And we were a party family. Up until like I was 13, we would always have Christmases with a huge group of people and they would, they, the whole thing we did was get drunk and play cards. Yeah. And I was always the go, go-getter for the drinks and mixing drinks and getting beer and whatnot. And of course, I had to take my tax off the top.
[01:13:02] **Kevin Rose:** Yeah.
[01:13:02] **Jason DeFilippo:** And of course, when everybody passed out and went to sleep, there were just half empty drinks lying around and I would just gobble them all up.
[01:13:08] **Kevin Rose:** Wow. So what age do you think was the first time you got drunk? Do you remember like actually being hammered for the first time?
[01:13:16] **Jason DeFilippo:** As a matter of fact, I do. I remember the time, I was like, I had to be like 10 years old. And my cousin had got like a little bottle of brandy or something. It was just this nasty stuff. Yeah. And uh, he took a swig of it and just like gave it to me and he's like, oh, this is nasty, take it. I took a swig of it. The next thing I remember was waking up in the morning, my feet were dirty, my clothes were gone, and I'm just like laying under the covers going, what the hell? That was my first blackout. You know, I was like, you know, 10 or 11, and then I woke up with a hangover and everybody's like, did you go outside last night? Like the neighbors saw somebody streaking around the night...
[01:13:53] **Kevin Rose:** Oh my God.
[01:13:55] **Jason DeFilippo:** I just, I, I just dropped trow and went for a run, I guess.
[01:13:59] **Kevin Rose:** That's a early streaker.
[01:14:00] **Jason DeFilippo:** I know, right? At 11. Oh my God.
[01:14:02] **Kevin Rose:** That's when you like call the police and shit. Like there's a little kid running naked at midnight. Like what's going on?
[01:14:07] **Jason DeFilippo:** Exactly. Is he running from or to someone? Whatever is going on, that's not a good thing. So...
[01:14:12] **Kevin Rose:** Holy crap. So, yeah, for me, I was told that my dad, I don't remember my dad drinking, which is, which is great, uh, and that he wasn't like, it was, alcohol wasn't a thing around our house. But I was told that he used to entertain before I was born or when I was very young because I remember being in second grade and finding a box of alcohol in the garage, like tons of bottles.
[01:14:35] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah.
[01:14:35] **Kevin Rose:** And I was like, oh, interesting. So at one point, he used to drink. And then in the garage fridge, we had a fridge in the garage, um, there was just like, he was like Miller High Life. So he would just sit there in the fridge and he would have like a couple a year kind of thing. And so it was, it was no big deal, which was great. And then I talked to my mom and my mom was like, I found out later that her sister, I'd never met her because she passed away, and she was an alcoholic. And so my mom would not touch the stuff. She was just so scared of it. Never had a drink because her sister was just like so dependent upon the stuff and died from it.
[01:15:08] **Kevin Rose:** And so, um, alcohol wasn't a big thing in our household. I, oh gosh, my sister's listening to this, I apologize, Carrie. Uh, I remember my sister getting a little hammered later and my dad getting really pissed. But that was the first time I saw like family members getting hammered. And then, um, it was probably I was around 17 or so. And I was so into computers. And like you...
[01:15:33] **Jason DeFilippo:** You? No!
[01:15:34] **Kevin Rose:** I mean, we're cut from the same cloth there. Like I, I remember there being just an awkwardness around not feeling comfortable in my own skin. And the computer was my friend. I didn't have a lot of friends at school. And so for me, the neighbors were like, I remember somebody being like, hey, can you sneak some out of your house? And I remember my garage was like that place where no one really paid attention to what was being drank because it was so, so old.
[01:16:03] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah.
[01:16:03] **Kevin Rose:** And then also there was like the beers in there that if there one or two went missing, nobody's gonna know.
[01:16:07] **Jason DeFilippo:** Nobody's gonna know.
[01:16:08] **Kevin Rose:** Right? I tried a beer and I remember being like, this is horrific. And then somebody was like, we need to get some wine coolers from the grocery store. And my first wine cooler, I remember, you know, I think it was Zima. I don't know if you remember Zima. That was horrible.
[01:16:23] **Jason DeFilippo:** Oh yeah, Zima was like way later though.
[01:16:25] **Kevin Rose:** Yeah, but I mean I was like 17 or something like that. This was like...
[01:16:28] **Jason DeFilippo:** Okay, so that tracks, you're about 10 years younger than me, so.
[01:16:32] **Kevin Rose:** And so I had Zima and I remember just being like, oh, there's that warm feeling again from church, but it lasts longer the more you drink.
[01:16:40] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah, imagine that.
[01:16:41] **Kevin Rose:** But then all of a sudden I was just like the life of the party. All of that anxiety around, I was, you know, smaller than most boys. I hadn't hit my growth spurt. I had awkwardness around girls. Everything was awkward, everything. And all of a sudden, I just got a new energy from it all. And there was this moment where I'll never forget this moment when I, and this is probably a little bit later when I was like maybe 21 or 22, but I, I was drunk and I thought to myself, why aren't we like this all the time?
[01:17:11] **Jason DeFilippo:** All the time, exactly. It's like, why, what, why are people not doing this all day, every day?
[01:17:17] **Kevin Rose:** We should just be in this state.
[01:17:19] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yep. Yeah. 100%.
[01:17:21] **Kevin Rose:** And it wasn't scary to think that. I was just like, we should just be like this.
[01:17:25] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah, it's like, what's wrong with this? There's nothing wrong with this. It's great.
[01:17:28] **Kevin Rose:** Yeah.
[01:17:28] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah. Oh.
[01:17:30] **Kevin Rose:** So how did it start to like, I mean, obviously at 10, streaking, you were off to a good start.
[01:17:36] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah, yeah. And, you know, there was a spot between, um, I think around 14 to 20 where I didn't have easy access to alcohol because I got kicked out of my mom's house and had to go live with my dad in another state. We lived, we originally lived in a hotel for a while. Uh, but, um, and the funny thing is my mom would let me drink in the house. And she would invite, she said, I know, she was one of these parents. She's like, I know you're going to go out and do it with all your friends, so I'd rather you do it at home.
[01:18:05] **Kevin Rose:** You hear that story a lot.
[01:18:06] **Jason DeFilippo:** I had that too. My sister actually said that to me. She was like, I'll buy you alcohol. She's nine years older. She's like, I'll buy you alcohol, but you have to kind of like drink it here where we can watch you, you can be safe, blah, blah, blah.
[01:18:17] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah. And that was kind of a cool thing to do. It was seen as a responsible thing to do, actually.
[01:18:22] **Kevin Rose:** It really wasn't.
[01:18:22] **Jason DeFilippo:** It really wasn't. Uh, so I got in some trouble there and, uh, so I, I did not have access to alcohol. So what I did was, and this is a common thing with alcoholics is you, you find something to substitute. I substituted skateboarding and computers. Those were the two things that I did, you know, just relentlessly. If I, if I can't drink, I'm going to be on my skateboard all day. And if I can't, if it's raining, I'm going to be on my computer and playing video games. Those were the things, you know. And as soon as I turned 20, I ran into a friend who would buy alcohol for me. Fuck skateboards, fuck computers, I'm going straight for it, you know? And, uh, I did, fortunately, I stuck with the computer side of it because that really worked out well. But the skateboarding went away and I found, you know, I had a car, girls, alcohol, good to go. So, um, because then I really, you know, I, this is all in retrospect, I figured out that the skateboarding was the, the proxy for alcohol because I needed something to take me out of who I was and skateboarding did that, you know.
[01:19:22] **Kevin Rose:** Same for me. Yeah, I got into punk rock and skateboarding. And the punk rock was the outlet of angst and just kind of rage and a lot of that was dodging a lot of the heavy emotions that I had around, um, growing up in an environment where my dad was very verbally abusive to my mom. And so that was tough to watch, um, especially because my mom took it so, uh, physically, not in terms of like getting beat or anything, but like she would always have, always be itching, always be kind of like, you know, really bad eczema and bad, just like just always of physically manifesting in anxiety and eczema and skin conditions and sicknesses and illness and things like that. So it's like to to be in that environment, it leaves you as an anxious teenager and and you need to have outlets, right? And so for me, it's like, what can I, you know, what can I fuck up? What can I ruin? What can I damage? How can I be, you know? I used that as an excuse to, to take it out on other people, you know, people I didn't even know.
[01:20:29] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah.
[01:20:30] **Kevin Rose:** It was very, alcohol ended up being a very bonding thing because I, a lot of my friends came from broken homes and we could get drunk together and talk about those shitty moments, you know. Just be like, ah, like my, I had a good buddy that didn't know his dad and we go get 40s. Then it, I graduated to 40s. Wine coolers to Mickey's and St. Ides and, you know, like...
[01:20:51] **Jason DeFilippo:** Mickey's.
[01:20:52] **Kevin Rose:** But you would walk in there and at the convenience store, I don't know if you remember this, but the bright stickers would be like 99 cents or $1.99, you know? And I'm like, that's a great deal. Like a big ass 40 for a buck 99 of, you know, malt liquor. That's perfect. And we would just take our skateboards, we'd go skate, get a little exercise in, and then we'd go behind a building somewhere and just drink a 40. And then when we're done with them, we'd slam them up against the wall so they'd shatter and then we'd take off and skate out of there, you know.
[01:21:18] **Jason DeFilippo:** Get rid of the evidence.
[01:21:19] **Kevin Rose:** Yeah.
[01:21:20] **Jason DeFilippo:** It's funny, I started with when I, when I met my friend at 20, uh, I was buying Mad Dog 20/20 because I like the bottles and the colors and everything. And I would, I would say, well, I'm using it for my photography experiments and all. And he's just like, no, you're not, you're getting, you're getting messed up. So when I would do, when I was still in college, uh, I, I took photography. I went to college for photography. So when I was forced to start taking regular Gen Ed classes to get a degree, I did not want to do it. So I would just drink on my way through class. I would go to 7-Eleven on my way to, on my way to school and get, you know, remember 7-Eleven had those big like 96 ounce mugs that you could refill?
[01:21:57] **Kevin Rose:** Yeah.
[01:21:58] **Jason DeFilippo:** I would go, I'd get a 96 ounce Slurpee, pour out half of it, pour the other half in lemon lime Mad Dog. Oh shit. And go to class.
[01:22:06] **Kevin Rose:** Wow. Because no one can really smell that at that point, right? Because you have half Slurpee still in there?
[01:22:09] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah, it's half Slurpee. So it tastes tasty. And it's like Mad Dog, you couldn't really smell anyway, you know. It's like whatever that is. It's like, you know, half Slurpee material anyway. It's just, you know, electric goo.
[01:22:20] **Kevin Rose:** Yeah.
[01:22:20] **Jason DeFilippo:** And, uh, so I obviously didn't pass any of my Gen Ed classes, so I ended up just walking out of school and sticking with the computers from there. But yeah, I even then I was, I was starting to drink, you know, every, every day, whenever I could, because it was the same thing. I felt that same thing. It's just like, why doesn't everybody do this all the time? You know? And and since I had such like terrible social anxiety, just getting me to the point where I could go to class. You know, I'd need that alcohol just so I could walk in the door of the school because otherwise it's just like, you know, I'd almost have panic attacks being around other people. Photography, I didn't have a problem with. It was kind of my tribe. But going into the regular area of the school and meeting just regular kids who were there for whatever the hell they were there for, I couldn't do it. I just could not do it. I needed the alcohol to do that.
[01:23:08] **Kevin Rose:** Do you think that was due to some way in which you were raised? Like what, or do you think you were just born that way? Like what, what gave you that kind of anxiety and and a little bit of shyness or whatever you would consider that?
[01:23:20] **Jason DeFilippo:** I've never not had social anxiety and shyness. And one of the things that I've learned in the past two years, you know, going through the, the therapy of sobriety is that shyness is basically, if you see a kid who's shy, be careful of that kid because he's sitting there probably trying to take, planning and plotting to take over the world because shyness is selfishness. You are, you are all thinking, you're thinking about yourself, you're not thinking about other people. And it's just this, you know, this really deep-seated selfishness that causes the shyness. And that's kind of what I've been coming to terms with is that that whole time, I was always thinking about myself. I was never thinking about anybody else. And so I've just had that my entire life, you know, up until recently that I finally come to terms with what that was, it was just this terminal selfishness.
[01:24:09] **Kevin Rose:** How do you, well, how would you frame that as selfishness in that, like some people, like for me, when I've always thought about my shyness as a child, I thought of it more out of anxiety of vulnerability. Like not being able to, oh, they might not accept me if I talk to them. They might not understand me. Maybe I'll say something awkward. There was that side of it. And so I didn't feel, I didn't see it as selfishness as much as I was just afraid of the world, you know?
[01:24:36] **Jason DeFilippo:** But you noticed that everything you said in there was me. Me, me, me. I'm worried about what they're going to think of me. You know? And and it's, it's all this thing, it, it, it keeps coming back to what you think of you and what you want other people to think of you. Not, you know, what you can do for other people or be around other people. It's, you know, if you flip, flip it around and look at it from the other side, it's like, oh, normal people don't, don't think that way, generally. They don't come up and go, oh, I'm just, you know, I am so in myself that I can't be around other people. Yeah, they think about it. Everybody thinks about themselves. They're the hero of their own story. But I think with really selfish, not selfish, just really shy people, that just is just ticked up to a notch where it becomes kind of unpalatable for the soul, almost. You know? It's just like, that's why when you feel that alcohol takeover and it takes this, that little notch away, that you can be around other people and really you can come out. The real you can come out. Of course, you have too much alcohol, too much you comes out, pants come off and you're streaking at 10. But, um, that's kind of how I, I saw it. But yeah, I can't remember a time when I wasn't scared of other people and shy and whatnot. I didn't have a bad childhood. Before five, I can guarantee you nothing bad happened to me to cause me to be in the position where I would need a drink, you know? So...
[01:25:56] **Kevin Rose:** Yeah. And then as we both got older, it sounds like you kind of had a good constant steady run at it, whereas a big turning point for me was when I was in my 20s in San Francisco and I used to have this thing where I would never drink after I was hungover.
[01:26:11] **Jason DeFilippo:** Okay.
[01:26:11] **Kevin Rose:** Or I thought to myself, like, oh man, my head hurts so bad. I'm never, I'm never drinking again, you know?
[01:26:16] **Jason DeFilippo:** Best time to drink.
[01:26:17] **Kevin Rose:** Well, that's what I found out, right? So what happened is one of my buddies was like, Hey, let's go get a Bloody Mary. And I'm like, what are you talking about? He's like, no, no, no, no. That's what you do when you're hungover. And I'm like, dude, I just had alcohol last night. My head hurts. Why would I drink more alcohol? And he's like, hair of the dog. I'm like, hair of the who? Like, and and then...
[01:26:37] **Jason DeFilippo:** Let me teach you, son.
[01:26:38] **Kevin Rose:** Yeah, exactly. And then I went and I had alcohol when I was hungover and instantly I was like, oh, you just keep drinking.
[01:26:47] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yes.
[01:26:48] **Kevin Rose:** And it makes it go away. And that was a very dangerous next step in the evolution of my drinking, because I realized that there was this thing where you just would say to yourself, well, this is my soft landing. That's what we used to call it. The soft landing. Like the next day like, oh, I just need a soft landing. You know, I just, a couple of drinks just to kind of like, just to reset things, you know, to bring me back to zero.
[01:27:14] **Jason DeFilippo:** I never heard that before. That was a good, I'm glad I didn't have that.
[01:27:17] **Kevin Rose:** Did you would you continue to drink every day or were you, would you take some time off as you got into your 20s?
[01:27:22] **Jason DeFilippo:** Um, I generally would take, I wasn't a day drinker that much, you know. I would drink at night and things like that. It wasn't, it wasn't like a super hard drinking thing. I loved to drink. And when I moved out of my dad's house and got, got my own place with my friends, my, a couple of my friends and I would drink a lot.
[01:27:40] **Kevin Rose:** Yeah.
[01:27:41] **Jason DeFilippo:** Um, we would go to, we would go to the pub before we would do the overnight shift at Kinko's. And we would each have two pints, I mean, two pitchers of the stout that they made with a straw.
[01:27:51] **Kevin Rose:** Yeah.
[01:27:52] **Jason DeFilippo:** We would load up. So when by the time it, the, the trick was we would pound the stout and then try and get to work before it hit. So, so we had that, that gap time.
[01:28:02] **Kevin Rose:** Stout's good though because it it kind of, it's not as fast hitting, I feel like. It's more like you have to digest it a little bit more, maybe.
[01:28:09] **Jason DeFilippo:** A little bit, a little bit. I have a stout story later on in my drinking career. But, uh, this was just and we would get, we, this was racing, you know, because we were, we were trying to be professional. We wanted to be responsible and not drink and drive. So we would drink and we would try and get to work before the alcohol hit. So it technically wasn't really drinking and driving, you know?
[01:28:27] **Kevin Rose:** Yeah, I'm sure that would have, uh, gone over quite well in a court of law.
[01:28:30] **Jason DeFilippo:** No, it would not have at all. And then we would just, uh, we'd end up just being drunk all night at the, we never bring alcohol into the store, but those two pitchers would last us quite some time. So I think I was like 23, 24 then.
[01:28:43] **Kevin Rose:** Did you ever think to yourself like, this is too much, like I have a little bit of an issue here, like this is getting out of control?
[01:28:48] **Jason DeFilippo:** No, it was just like, no, this is just normal.
[01:28:49] **Kevin Rose:** Yeah, just normal.
[01:28:50] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah, same. And there, there came a time when I was about 30 where I talked to my dad and I said, Hey, I, I really think I'm an alcoholic. And, uh, he says, he puts his arm on my shoulder and says, no son, you're not an alcoholic. In our family, we abuse alcohol. And I'm like, wow, okay. And the difference is, what?
[01:29:09] **Kevin Rose:** Yeah. Wow.
[01:29:12] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah. And, uh, yeah, so, but that, at least I had the knowledge of like about 10 years into it when I hit 30. That didn't really stop.
[01:29:23] **Kevin Rose:** So when did you move to SF? When were you in...?
[01:29:26] **Jason DeFilippo:** I think, um, because I met you when you were at Technorati, you were an engineer over there.
[01:29:30] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah, I had been there probably six months by the time I met you. We met at the Lucky 13.
[01:29:36] **Kevin Rose:** Yeah.
[01:29:37] **Jason DeFilippo:** At that bar. Because you had said something nice on TechTV about Technorati.
[01:29:41] **Kevin Rose:** Yes.
[01:29:42] **Jason DeFilippo:** And I was just like, oh, I'm going to go buy that guy a, buy that guy a beer. And at that point, I had been at Technorati for probably about six months because I was in the inner sunset at that point.
[01:29:49] **Kevin Rose:** What year was this?
[01:29:50] **Jason DeFilippo:** Jeez, man, I don't know. I have, it's like maybe 2004, two to four-ish maybe?
[01:29:57] **Kevin Rose:** I think it was like, yeah, something like two, I think it was like 2002. Cause '04 I started Digg. So it would have been 2002.
[02:00:03] **Jason DeFilippo:** Right. Okay. It's pre-Digg. Yeah, it was, it was before Digg.
[02:00:08] **Kevin Rose:** Yeah.
[02:00:08] **Jason DeFilippo:** So, not much more. Maybe like a month before, actually. Because then after that you and I talked about me coming on to Digg, but I you couldn't pay me what I was making at Technorati. I'm like, I'm staying where I'm at.
[02:00:21] **Kevin Rose:** That's right. That's right. Well, I remember I was just like, oh, wow, finally meeting a PHP engineer that knows, like you were like a really outstanding engineer helping Technorati scale, which for people that don't know, a lot won't, uh, just like they don't remember, people don't remember Digg from back in the day, but like Technorati was a, a big search engine essentially, right? Of what did you crawl? What was...
[02:00:42] **Jason DeFilippo:** It was just, it was a blog search engine. It was just for blogs because I had started a company called Blogrolling.com before that, which was kind of like a sidebar widget so you can have all of your latest blogs and, you know, back in the day when we were blogging.
[02:00:54] **Kevin Rose:** So cool. The one thing that I really wish I would have done is patented some of that JavaScript stuff that I came up with at Blogrolling because I would own islands now.
[02:01:03] **Kevin Rose:** Oh man.
[02:01:03] **Jason DeFilippo:** Uh, but I was crawling all of the blogs at that point. So when people would come to your site, you would have your blog roll and it would show you who, who just updated most recently.
[02:01:11] **Kevin Rose:** Yes.
[02:01:11] **Jason DeFilippo:** And then they could click on that. So I, you could, I could go to your site and I would see all of your friends.
[02:01:15] **Kevin Rose:** Right. It was just a quick jumping off point. It was brilliant.
[02:01:18] **Jason DeFilippo:** So at that point, I had written all of these crawlers that was clogging, basically crawling everything in the blogosphere at that point. Dave Sifry had created Technorati, which was a search engine, but he wasn't very good at the crawling part of it. So he would call me in the middle of the night and say, Hey, can I get a data dump? And then, oh crazy. He was, he, he'd already had an exit with the company and, you know, was getting VC for Technorati and I'm just some bumpkin literally in a, in a rented house in the middle of winter in Chicago, just coding, coding up stuff. And he's like, do you want to come work for me? Because you do most of the stuff that I'm doing already. So that's when I went up to Technorati and kind of skipped the, taking Blogrolling as a bigger company. I ended up selling that to two cows for nothing and just kind of went up there. And I was there, yeah, as an engineer for just a couple months. And then because I, I, I remember when I was coding Blogrolling watching you on TechTV in the middle of winter in Chicago.
[02:02:18] **Kevin Rose:** That's crazy.
[02:02:18] **Jason DeFilippo:** Because I was working with Chris Pirillo at that time. I ran, I ran Pirillo's company. He came to LA, he and I came to LA and we did a bunch of stuff.
[02:02:25] **Kevin Rose:** I forgot about that.
[02:02:25] **Jason DeFilippo:** And I drank a lot back then. Oh man.
[02:02:28] **Kevin Rose:** Yeah, so I mean, let's, let's run people through us hanging because I mean, I'm not going to remember a lot of it. I don't know how much you remember this. I, I remember bits and pieces. But like what, what were we like back then? Like how did we, cause I remember a lot of our sunset hangs obviously.
[02:02:42] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah.
[02:02:42] **Kevin Rose:** We we went to this one bar over on, I can't remember what street that was, but like...
[02:02:46] **Jason DeFilippo:** Like 9th, 9th Avenue? Because we lived by 10th and Judah. You were like one up, one up from me. I was on 10th and Judah.
[02:02:51] **Kevin Rose:** Yeah.
[02:02:52] **Jason DeFilippo:** And yeah, there's all those little bars in the neighborhood there.
[02:02:54] **Kevin Rose:** Totally.
[02:02:55] **Jason DeFilippo:** And then there, the, the one night that at your place where you and the guys, I think it was Prag and that camera guy you used to, to live with up there.
[02:03:02] **Kevin Rose:** Teef, yeah.
[02:03:03] **Jason DeFilippo:** You guys got me so messed up on pot that, and I was not, I was never a pothead. I wasn't a drug guy. I mean, I, I, I liked, I liked powdered alcohol, you know? That was, that was my favorite, the sniffable powdered kind.
[02:03:15] **Kevin Rose:** I didn't know you did coke.
[02:03:16] **Jason DeFilippo:** I did coke when I was 13. I was a 13 year old coke addict.
[02:03:19] **Kevin Rose:** Oh my God.
[02:03:20] **Jason DeFilippo:** But I could get off of it. I could start and stop that all the time.
[02:03:22] **Kevin Rose:** Because that was never around my circle in SF.
[02:03:26] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah, Los Angeles it was, but okay. Yeah, you didn't see it much in SF, did you?
[02:03:29] **Jason DeFilippo:** No, never actually. Nobody, nobody ever did that up there.
[02:03:34] **Kevin Rose:** Yeah, there wasn't, not in the tech scene.
[02:03:35] **Jason DeFilippo:** No, not at all. Not at all. But you guys got me so stoned one night. I lived a block away from you and it took me an hour and a half to walk home because I was, my steps were so small. And it was raining and I was just like, that's after you guys made me watch Rambo.
[02:03:48] **Kevin Rose:** Did you, did you, yes, we watched Rambo. And you didn't bring an umbrella right or did you?
[02:03:51] **Jason DeFilippo:** No.
[02:03:52] **Kevin Rose:** Yeah, you didn't. That's right. I remember that because you called me up the next day. And because we watched Rambo. This is when I used to like weed. I don't like weed anymore, man. I, it used to, I used to like it when I was younger.
[02:04:03] **Jason DeFilippo:** Mhmm.
[02:04:04] **Kevin Rose:** You know, and then for some reason, I, I used to be able to sleep, fall asleep on it and now it's just like, I can't even fall asleep on it. Like I just, I'm out of touch with that stuff. I haven't touched it in a long time. Yeah, but we used to just drink a lot of beers.
[02:04:15] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah.
[02:04:15] **Kevin Rose:** I remember you and I would put back like five or six quickly. We drink fast. We were both really fast drinkers.
[02:04:20] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah.
[02:04:21] **Kevin Rose:** You know, and I remember like people would comment on how quickly I could put back like a whole pint.
[02:04:25] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah.
[02:04:26] **Kevin Rose:** It was like a thing, you know?
[02:04:28] **Jason DeFilippo:** And and we would generally be going out to some event. Like we went to with the Federated Media thing that one night. Um, I remember that and that was, you were, I was way ahead of you because I pre-gamed before that. And you had cogent conversations that, you know, I, I think because you were selling ads for Digg and I was selling ads for the company I did, Metblogs at that point. And I was just a blithering idiot and they were like, I'm not selling ads for that guy. And then you got all the ads and kept going. It was great.
[02:04:55] **Kevin Rose:** Oh, yeah. Remember that time when, uh, I mean, there was the, the, the, for you and I, the one of the craziest times was when you didn't make it home one night and lost your wallet and all that.
[02:05:04] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah, there were, there were actually two nights in San Francisco I didn't make it home. That, that was the second night actually, that I, I got, I basically came out of the bar and instead of going left to go home, I went right and ended up in a doorway with my wallet basically strewn all over the ground.
[02:05:21] **Kevin Rose:** I remember we were hammered that night.
[02:05:23] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah, cause I had just gotten, I was in the middle of a bad breakup at that point.
[02:05:26] **Kevin Rose:** Okay. Yeah.
[02:05:28] **Jason DeFilippo:** And, uh, yeah, you came out to help me commiserate.
[02:05:31] **Kevin Rose:** Yes. Trying to be a good friend.
[02:05:33] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah. Oh man.
[02:05:35] **Kevin Rose:** But that was, um, I mean, those were days when I look back on that and I think, gosh, like the, the, the just the sheer volume of what we consumed back then was just impressive.
[02:05:47] **Jason DeFilippo:** It was extremely impressive. But the thing is, did you ever wake up any morning and go, man, I shouldn't be doing this anymore?
[02:05:54] **Kevin Rose:** I felt hungover, but they weren't, it wasn't until my 30s and later 30s when I started really feeling the hangovers. Like they were really starting to get worse. And I've been told that's actually a good thing where some people get into a lot of trouble is when they don't, they love to drink and they don't get hangovers.
[03:06:10] **Jason DeFilippo:** Right.
[03:06:11] **Kevin Rose:** And so my actually my wife is like this and that she does not get hangovers.
[03:06:14] **Jason DeFilippo:** Mhmm.
[03:06:15] **Kevin Rose:** Or they're just very minimal. And I'm just like, I don't see how. That was never me. How were your hangovers really bad or?
[03:06:23] **Jason DeFilippo:** No, I was always really good about, um...
[03:06:26] **Kevin Rose:** Hydration?
[03:06:26] **Jason DeFilippo:** Hydration and exercise the next morning. I would always go for a long walk. I was a, I think that's what basically saved me in my 50s because when I finally got out, got clean, like I did all my liver tests and everything and like my basic, my body's fine now. But, um, I, I never really had like really crazy hangovers. The only crazy time I had hangovers if I had something that had a lot of sugar in it.
[03:06:50] **Kevin Rose:** Yeah.
[03:06:51] **Jason DeFilippo:** Like one time I drank a bottle of port wine and I just, I just wanted to die the next day. But I never in that time thought, man, I have a problem with alcohol, I should probably stop drinking. It was more like, uh, let's mitigate this next time by trying to do, uh, maybe I'll just switch to wine for a while or I'll switch to beer for this week and then go back, you know. It was just always juggling and trying to find the easy way to get through it. But I never really thought about, yeah, I should stop drinking. Why would I do that? That makes no sense.
[03:07:18] **Kevin Rose:** Yeah, it kind of continued for me in that, you know, it was a social thing. It was very easy for me, obviously, just to have alcohol during social events because that was not my happy place. So that was, and when I had a company that I started that started to get some traction, I was obligated to do more and more social interactions at various events. And then the podcast happened. Yep. Diggnation. And that was like, okay...
[03:07:46] **Jason DeFilippo:** I forgot about those nights. Oh my God.
[03:07:48] **Kevin Rose:** Oh, yeah, our live Diggnations where we'd go and just get hammered afterwards and all that. Like...
[03:07:51] **Jason DeFilippo:** Before.
[03:07:52] **Kevin Rose:** All the above, like every hour on the hour. Like it was, it was a, yeah. It was, but when I look at those times, I'm like, okay, here was somebody that was deeply uncomfortable in that, I didn't want to have to learn the skills. I just wanted to, because it was so easy just to skip all of that, right? Because I could skip straight to being comfortable by having three drinks in me. That would take me from totally uncomfortable to totally comfortable. And that was in the dating scene, that was in anything that I would do that would be social, right? Yeah. And so podcasting fed into that. You know, people are like, oh, you do a podcast, like, you must be comfortable in front of large crowds. I'm like, no. No, in fact, when I do the live events, I would want to just get drunk because it makes it a hell of a lot easier.
[03:08:37] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah.
[03:08:37] **Kevin Rose:** You know, and people would laugh at the crazy stuff we would say. I wanted to say crazy stuff because it was just, just stuff you wouldn't normally say and it was just kind of like pushing people's buttons and it was kind of fun.
[03:08:47] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah.
[03:08:47] **Kevin Rose:** It kind of never, it continued on and on and on. And you and I actually bonded over the fear of flying, too. We, you and I used to drink a lot before flights.
[03:08:56] **Jason DeFilippo:** A lot. Yeah. Uh, I, I...
[03:09:00] **Kevin Rose:** But that's back to the ego. It's me me me. Yeah. This is about, I don't want to die. Talk about the ultimate me me me.
[03:09:04] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah. Exactly.
[03:09:06] **Kevin Rose:** That's like the, the fear of, a fear of death ultimately.
[03:09:09] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah. No, it was that, yeah, me on, me on planes was bad. It was, it was, minimum of three double vodkas before I would even get to the gate. I mean, that was just the way it was.
[03:09:19] **Kevin Rose:** Oh my God.
[03:09:20] **Jason DeFilippo:** So, and then now it's like the last time I was on a plane, they're like, would you like a to-go cup, sir, from the bar? And I'm just like, why, yes. That's amazing.
[03:09:28] **Kevin Rose:** I know.
[03:09:29] **Jason DeFilippo:** But going back to the Digg thing, I remember when you first started to, started to break and had to go to all those events. I'm like, that's not going to go well.
[03:09:37] **Kevin Rose:** Right.
[03:09:37] **Jason DeFilippo:** Because I, I knew exactly, we, we talked about this, you know, we're both are the same way. We just did not want to be around people. We're both introverts. Like computers, stay inside, do your thing.
[03:09:47] **Kevin Rose:** Computer's my best friend. Yes.
[03:09:48] **Jason DeFilippo:** Exactly. And then it's just like, I see you at parties and shit. I'm like, oh man, that's, he's not doing good.
[03:09:52] **Kevin Rose:** I know. I know. And where we've turned a page here, mine more recently than yours. Do I regret not cutting back? Of course. Like my body regrets it. I'm sure I aged prematurely quite a bit. I will say we did have some fun times together.
[04:10:06] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah.
[04:10:06] **Kevin Rose:** You know?
[04:10:07] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah, there's a, there's a saying in recovery, it's like alcohol starts, it's fun, then fun with problems, then just problems.
[04:10:13] **Kevin Rose:** Right. You know. And I think that's where it eventually got for me. And we can, we can jump to that. I eventually got to this point where I realized that I could always point to the upside up until not too long ago.
[04:10:27] **Jason DeFilippo:** Right.
[04:10:28] **Kevin Rose:** Okay, COVID happened, we're all going to die. Sure, I'm going to have some drinks like whatever, right? Oh, the fresh hops are coming out in Portland and like it's the fresh hop season for the beer. Oh, there's a reason. Oh, guess what? It's it's winter time and the winter beers are coming and, ooh, I wonder how the pumpkin beer is going to be during October, you know? It's like, there was always a season to drink. There was always a reason to drink. And there was never a time to take off. And I could do a week, I could take off two weeks. I, I once time really forced myself to try and get to a month. You know, but there was never really truly giving it up.
[04:11:01] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah. During COVID, in the room that you're, you're sitting in right now, there was a stack of White Claw this high.
[04:11:07] **Kevin Rose:** Wow.
[04:11:08] **Jason DeFilippo:** I would order it in like they would come in pallets.
[04:11:10] **Kevin Rose:** For people that don't know, you're saying about like five and a half feet high.
[04:11:13] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah, yeah. It was, it was massive because I did the last thing I wanted to do was run out, you know.
[04:11:17] **Kevin Rose:** So that was your, like everybody else is like toilet paper. I'm white claw. Yeah, you're like white claw will save me during this time.
[04:11:25] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah, because I don't, I don't know why. It was just one of those things where I'm like, okay, it's light, it's refreshing. I'm hydrating.
[04:11:30] **Kevin Rose:** Right. You know.
[04:11:31] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah, that didn't, that, you know, just to skip ahead, I'll I'll get to the the the end times because it was, my body at that point, like that was one of the only things I could drink at that point was the White Claw because it was, it was nice and easy on me. I had had so much whiskey, so much wine, so much beer...
[01:11:48] **Kevin Rose:** What do you mean by easy on me? In what way?
[01:11:49] **Jason DeFilippo:** My stomach couldn't handle it anymore.
[01:11:51] **Kevin Rose:** In terms of you just be chewing on Pepto Bismol all day long?
[01:11:54] **Jason DeFilippo:** I would be throwing up or...
[01:11:56] **Kevin Rose:** Oh wow.
[01:11:56] **Jason DeFilippo:** ...crapping blood.
[01:11:57] **Kevin Rose:** Oh my God.
[01:11:58] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah, it got, it got to that point for me. Uh, so my stomach just couldn't handle it anymore. And then I eventually come to come back around to stout. The last four years of my drinking, all I had was Guinness. Because a, it's got iron, it's good for you. Guinness for strength.
[02:12:14] **Kevin Rose:** Yeah, I've heard there's a lot of vitamins in there.
[02:12:16] **Jason DeFilippo:** There's lots of vitamins. They give it to pregnant women in Ireland. Uh, that's an, that's an old wives tale. It's not true. Um, but also it's low calorie. So I was drinking 18 Guinness a day.
[02:12:27] **Kevin Rose:** Holy...
[02:12:28] **Jason DeFilippo:** For four years. For four years. And...
[02:12:31] **Kevin Rose:** How do you know that it was 18?
[02:12:32] **Jason DeFilippo:** Because I'd, I, I would buy three six packs every morning.
[02:12:35] **Kevin Rose:** Every morning?
[02:12:36] **Jason DeFilippo:** Every morning. Yeah. My guy down at the liquor store, he had, he had a special stack for me.
[02:12:41] **Kevin Rose:** Not to get technical or or, why didn't you go to Costco and just get a better deal?
[02:12:45] **Jason DeFilippo:** Because I like my guy down the street.
[02:12:46] **Kevin Rose:** Okay, that's fair.
[02:12:47] **Jason DeFilippo:** We support local business. Every town I've been to, those guys are my family. Remember the liquor store right down the quarter from us in San Francisco? Those guys, those guys gave me Christmas cards and they were Muslim. You know? It's like...
[02:12:58] **Kevin Rose:** Yeah.
[02:12:59] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah, support local business. But, uh, and these guys, one of the guys ended up being my bookkeeper for a while.
[03:13:03] **Kevin Rose:** That's amazing. Did they ever say anything to you? Like, uh...
[03:13:06] **Jason DeFilippo:** No, they knew...
[03:13:07] **Kevin Rose:** Who are you buying this for?
[03:13:08] **Jason DeFilippo:** Oh no, they knew it was for me. Yeah.
[03:13:10] **Kevin Rose:** And... How do you start off a day like that? You just show up there at like 8 a.m., 9 a.m.?
[03:13:15] **Jason DeFilippo:** Well, no, yeah. Basically, they open at, uh, 8 a.m. So I just go over and pick it up. And I would probably have like two left in the house. So if I got up, I would have one or two, because if you think about it, 18 beers over the course of a day, if you're drinking from the time you get up to the time you go to bed, I was just maintaining. I was just maintaining a very light buzz for the entire day. I wasn't getting drunk or anything like that. You know, there would be days where I would, you know, just snag an extra six pack because it was a Friday and then, you know, just get messed up. But this was just to maintain because I wasn't really getting drunk anymore. There comes a point where you just don't feel it. You don't have hangovers. You just, you just need it. You just need it. And I, I finally my roommate got me to go get my blood work done. And, uh, came back and they called me immediately. They're like, you need to come back here now. And I'm like, what's going on? My triglycerides were at 4,000.
[03:14:05] **Kevin Rose:** Holy...
[03:14:06] **Jason DeFilippo:** That, I didn't even, I think the machine would probably be broke. Like the, the...
[03:14:10] **Kevin Rose:** Yeah.
[03:14:10] **Jason DeFilippo:** The asset for that had to be like... They thought it was wrong. Yeah. They didn't think it was, it was right. And they did it again. It was 4,000. And, uh, like, you are, you know, you're basically a walking stroke at this point.
[03:14:21] **Kevin Rose:** What was your liver enzymes at?
[03:14:22] **Jason DeFilippo:** They were all high. They were all like...
[03:14:24] **Kevin Rose:** Okay, so...
[03:14:24] **Jason DeFilippo:** Like a couple hundred kind of thing? Yeah, but the triglycerides were the one where they're just like, we've never seen this before.
[03:14:29] **Kevin Rose:** Wow.
[03:14:29] **Jason DeFilippo:** And so, I didn't have a stroke for the next year. I, I worked my way down. I got it down to, I thought I was proud of myself. I got them down to 1,000. And 1,000, I don't know if you know, is still about, you know, 800% more than they should be.
[03:14:45] **Kevin Rose:** Or order magnitude higher than they should be. Yeah. Exactly.
[03:14:47] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah, I think 140 or what mine are at now. That was the point where I finally had a stroke. I finally stroked out just from...
[03:14:55] **Kevin Rose:** What were you consuming when you had the stroke? How many, how many drinks a day?
[03:14:59] **Jason DeFilippo:** 18.
[03:15:00] **Kevin Rose:** Still?
[03:15:01] **Jason DeFilippo:** Still 18.
[03:15:01] **Kevin Rose:** And how did you get them down then if you were just doing 18? Oh, you got them down by going to Guinness from something else?
[03:15:07] **Jason DeFilippo:** I was still on Guinness, but I was drinking, I was, like I said, the 18 was a baseline. I was drinking a lot more then. I was probably doing that with, you know, another six pack a day. Because I can do 24 Guinness and you would never know that I was drunk.
[03:15:19] **Kevin Rose:** Oh my God.
[03:15:20] **Jason DeFilippo:** Um...
[03:15:21] **Kevin Rose:** Dude, I never knew this.
[03:15:22] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah.
[03:15:23] **Kevin Rose:** I wish I could have helped out in some way, but I guess, you know.
[03:15:25] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah. I, I just never knew this that you went that far. I mean, I knew we would go and have like, you know, on a hard night, I, I don't know about pre, I don't know if you didn't tell me about pre-gaming stuff, but like I know that we would go out and have six-ish drinks.
[03:15:41] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah, that's just start, that's just starters, you know.
[03:15:43] **Kevin Rose:** Yeah.
[03:15:44] **Jason DeFilippo:** Um, I would always pre-game. I was always, always drinking stuff like a lot. And and back then, because I had money because you know, it was the, I was doing decent at Technorati, I would be knocking back a bottle of Lagavulin a night, and that was like a hundred dollar bottle of whiskey.
[03:15:56] **Kevin Rose:** Holy shit.
[03:15:57] **Jason DeFilippo:** And that stuff zero hangover. Wow. Um, so, but the thing is, it's like I was always, I always did my job. I was always great at my job. That was the one thing I always, I always like to, uh, channel Cal Newport. Like, you know, always be so good they can't ignore you.
[04:16:13] **Kevin Rose:** Yeah.
[04:16:14] **Jason DeFilippo:** So no matter what I did in any of my jobs, I never got fired from a job. Ever. You know, no matter what I did except for Warner Brothers Records. It's the only job I ever got fired from. And you figure a music, you know, record company, all that stuff. I drank too much for the record company.
[04:16:28] **Kevin Rose:** Wow. How does one define alcoholic? You've worked with people, you've you've seen these programs that exist to help alcoholics. You've you know, been in this world a lot more than I have.
[04:16:39] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah.
[04:16:39] **Kevin Rose:** How do you define that for for folks that are listening?
[04:16:43] **Jason DeFilippo:** See, I think alcoholic is a is a term that is uh, it's an unfortunate term because alcohol for most alcoholics is the medicine. It's not the problem. The problem is a mental, a mental problem and a kind of a spiritual problem that you can fix with a cocktail of different things. There's no real fix for it. They haven't figured it out. And if you look at the science behind it, there's a way that alcoholics metabolize alcohol wrong. You know, the acetone doesn't quite hit the right spot in the metabolization process. It's fascinating to look at, but they haven't figured out how to really fix it yet. I don't think there's a lot of research going into it because it's one of those things where it's like, you're kind of outcast and nobody cares. It's like, just just stop drinking, you know. It's very stigmatized still to this day. Even though it's like you see it on TV all the time. You see Alcoholics Anonymous on Saturday Night Live and all this other stuff, and it's very stigmatized. So I don't think that there's a lot of research going into it. But, you know, an alcoholic is somebody who has a physical defect where we can't metabolize alcohol properly and a mental affliction, which basically is just grandiose selfishness.
[04:17:52] **Kevin Rose:** Do you think it has to be both of those things to be an alcoholic or can it be one of those things?
[04:17:55] **Jason DeFilippo:** I think it needs to be both. Yeah, I think, uh, after the thousands of alcoholics that I've met over the past couple of years, it's a, it is a, it is basically the same story. That's why you go into any meeting for any kind of recovery group, you're going to hear your story over and over and over again. It's not, and that's not, you know, just happenstance. That's, that's for a reason. There's, there's something wrong with everybody in almost exactly the same way.
[04:18:19] **Kevin Rose:** You know, it's interesting is there's two, um, two different drugs out there that I, I can't recall the names of them off the top of my head, but one of them uh, kind of suppresses the dopamine effect of alcohol. And the other one's more hardcore where if you drink alcohol, you actually end up throwing up.
[04:18:31] **Jason DeFilippo:** I think that's Antabuse.
[04:18:32] **Kevin Rose:** Yeah, the second one's Antabuse. The first one that kind of blunts the receptors to give you less of the a drunkness high of it all. I have a friend that will take those and then they continue to drink. So there's something there where it's like they can be on a prescription drug from their doctor being like, this is not good for you, and still continue to drink more.
[04:18:56] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah.
[04:18:56] **Kevin Rose:** You have to imagine there's something else going on there that we're just not aware of when it gets to that point. Now, for me, I'm so interested in this, in these different frameworks. And I've been looking at a bunch of them. And I, there was one, I think I told you about this, that woman that does that no drinking, uh, course that uh...
[04:19:14] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah, you were trying that like when when we first hooked back up when you came to Socal.
[04:19:19] **Kevin Rose:** Yeah, it's basically a course that that helps you reframe how you think about drinking. And for me, if I'm being honest with myself and I'm being honest with everyone here, it's not that I would need to drink every single night. That's not it for me. It's just that I really could not go three months without drinking. I could not go more than a month. And so that was telling me something. I just don't like this idea of dependence. And I felt like, wow, I need to pay attention here because two things were happening. And then I want to get back to your stroke because it's very important we talk about that. But two things were happening. One, when I started this Diggnation up a second time and we did this little rebooted series, I noticed for some reason, I was getting really kind of slurry on the show. It was, I wasn't even drinking that much. I was having like three or four drinks and I was getting really slurry. And I was like, what is going on here? And I went and had my blood work run and my liver enzymes were just like through the roof. And my doctor was like, your liver is not happy. Like, like Kevin, no, you need to stop, you know?
[05:20:23] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah.
[05:20:24] **Kevin Rose:** I just didn't feel myself. Like I didn't feel, all the happiness and joyousness of having drinks went away.
[05:20:31] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah.
[05:20:32] **Kevin Rose:** And all of a sudden I was like, well, wait a second. This is not right. It felt more just chasing the dragon than it felt like pure pleasure of alcohol.
[05:20:40] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yep.
[05:20:41] **Kevin Rose:** And this is just within the last six months. And I was like, huh, well, that is new for me and I don't like this. And I got to pay really close attention here because I don't like where this is going. Like nothing about this is, if anything, it's wanting, it's making me have to drink more to chase that effect. This feels like a very slippery slope for the first time in a way that it hadn't before. And then I coupled that with this connection in my head where I was like, well, now you also know that you can't quit for three months. And wait, Kevin 15 years ago could have quit for three months if I really wanted to.
[05:21:13] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah.
[05:21:14] **Kevin Rose:** This does, I don't like how these are, the numbers are starting to add up. Like this isn't going in the right direction. And plus, dude, I'm in my late 40s. What the hell am I doing? I've got a couple of kiddos. Nothing about this is leading to a more productive version of myself or a better version of myself in any way. And so that's when, you know, I hit you up, we started talking. I was like, what resources are out there? Who can I talk to? How can I learn more about this? Just to get me to that three month mark because I really want to make the three months work. But now that I'm a little over halfway there, I'm like, you know what? It's funny, I was, I, I don't want to say the person's name, but I was, another really famous podcaster that quit drinking recently. I was texting with them and we're all kind of hitting the same spot where we're like, around the same age, around the same amount of consumption, where it's like, everyone's like, oh, 20 years from now, we're not gonna be like, I'm so glad I had that last 20 years of drinking, you know what I mean?
[05:22:06] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah, exactly.
[05:22:07] **Kevin Rose:** So that's where I was. And I would say, if you can't quit for three months, I don't know, that feels like a little bit of an alcoholic to me.
[05:22:15] **Jason DeFilippo:** I'm going to tell you right now, normal people don't think that way. That's, you know, that right there is your, your bellwether. It's like, do, do normal people think about, oh my God, should I, can I stop maybe so? They don't have, it's not even, it's not even on the radar. It's not on the map. That is not a thing. And, you know, another, another way to think about it is, um, because the, the goal for me is just to not have the first drink. That's it. That's all I care about is not having the first drink. Because if I have the first drink, I don't know how many I'm going to have after that. And I don't know when I can stop or if I can stop. It did skip over a very, very, very important part, which was your, your stroke. Like I'm so glad you're here with us today.
[05:22:57] **Jason DeFilippo:** Me too.
[05:22:58] **Kevin Rose:** But like, dude, that freaked me out when I first heard about it. I was like, what the fuck? Cause I'm just like, no, no. Cause like you and I, we lose touch, we don't talk for six months or a year or whatever. Like, we've been in different cities and like, but I always consider you a dear friend and homie. And it's like, when I heard that, it kind of like, it scared the shit out of me because, because I don't want you to die because you're a friend. But like, dude, like what happened that day? What was that like for you?
[05:23:24] **Jason DeFilippo:** So, the funny part is is that, uh, I, I'd found out that Lagunitas had come out with a new beer called like Daybreak or something like that. Literally, they made a beer for day drinkers, which was a lower, a lower alcohol beer. And I'm just like, well, I'll try that. Why not? So I'm having that. Tasted like shit by the way. It was god awful. That's why, that's why it's for day drinkers because you don't want to drink more than one. And I'm doing that and I'm just cleaning the house. I'm like mopping the floor. And then boom, it felt like like a sniper shot me through the left eye with just like an AR-15. My just like my head exploded. And I'm just like, I gotta go and sit down. And then I went to lay down and like sat on the edge of the bed, felt really, really bad. I'm like, okay, maybe this is just a new kind of migraine that I'm having because it was in my eye.
[05:24:10] **Kevin Rose:** And you've had migraines before?
[05:24:11] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yes, I started getting migraines when I was 40. I'd never had them before 40 and then they started to hit me. And I sat on the bed and then I just, I laid down for like 45 minutes and I got up and then the rest of the day I was just off. I didn't have any more to drink that day and my roommate said that I was just really off that day. And then in the, about 11 o'clock at night, I'm in bed, it's just dark, I'm sitting there and I'm just like, I'm just not right, you know. And then boom, the second one hit. So I had two strokes in one day.
[05:24:37] **Kevin Rose:** Holy shit.
[05:24:37] **Jason DeFilippo:** And that one was terrifying.
[05:24:40] **Kevin Rose:** Same eye or same area?
[05:24:41] **Jason DeFilippo:** Oh, it was a whole different thing. I couldn't breathe.
[05:24:44] **Kevin Rose:** Wow.
[05:24:44] **Jason DeFilippo:** Like even thinking about it now, I have a hard time. I had to, I had to like focus to swallow. And it, it just like, because my stroke was in my medulla, which takes over a lot of the autonomic stuff, like, I don't know, breathing, which is the terrifying part.
[05:24:59] **Kevin Rose:** Yeah.
[05:25:00] **Jason DeFilippo:** And the, and swallowing and just there's a lot of stuff that happened to it. I just, I just sat there in bed for just freaked the fuck out for a long time. And I, I finally, I was just, I was sitting up. I was sitting up in the dark. And it was good that I was sitting in the dark, actually it was probably bad. I should have, if I'd have turned the lights on, I'd have been at the hospital faster. Because I stayed in bed till about five in the morning when my roommate got up to feed the dogs. Because we feed our dogs, um, we have two separate rooms and she feeds her dogs. I was getting up to feed mine at the same time usually. And I got up and I turned the lights on and the room was spinning.
[05:25:32] **Kevin Rose:** Holy shit.
[05:25:33] **Jason DeFilippo:** It was just like, I had to grab something because I was starting to fall over because what had happened was my eyes pointed in different directions.
[05:25:38] **Kevin Rose:** Oh my God.
[05:25:39] **Jason DeFilippo:** So...
[05:25:40] **Kevin Rose:** Did you, could you tell they were pointing in different directions?
[05:25:41] **Jason DeFilippo:** No, I had no idea at that point. It's called diplopia. I had to figure all this stuff out afterwards because healthcare in America sucks ass. I had to do a lot of this on my own. So I, I just like, I got to the door and I'm like, I think I had a stroke. Feed the dogs. I'm going to get some stuff and then take me to the hospital. Because I'm a prepper. I know what I'm getting myself into. So I got a power cord for my charger and an extra battery for my phone, all this stuff and like some breath mints and all that stuff because I'm like, I know they're going to take, they're not going to give me any water, so I'm going to sneak a breath mint to keep my, all this stuff goes through my head. Yeah. She has to help me get to the car and they get me in there. They don't know what happens to me for a long time. I didn't even get, I got there at like 6:00 in the morning, 5:30 in the morning. I didn't get an MRI until 10:30 that night.
[06:26:24] **Kevin Rose:** Oh my God.
[06:26:25] **Jason DeFilippo:** Uh, because it was COVID time, like it was tail end of COVID time and like one of the guys, one of the people that ran the MRI is called in sick, so they were backed up. And then the guy who read my MRI said there was nothing wrong with me. So I'm just sitting there like, what the hell's going on? They thought, um, there's a, oh, there's another disease that they thought maybe I had where your face falls and all that stuff. I didn't really have a lot of that. I had some of it. But they couldn't figure out what was going on with me. And then the next morning, a neurologist came to see me. And he looked at me for like three seconds and he just picked up his phone. He's like, find it. He had a stroke. And then like five minutes later he called back and he's like, oh yeah, we found it.
[07:01] **Kevin Rose:** Wow.
[07:01] **Jason DeFilippo:** But it was about a 9 millimeter bursted blood vessel in my medulla.
[07:07] **Kevin Rose:** So where is the medulla for people that don't know?
[07:08] **Jason DeFilippo:** Base of the skull. It's a little thing at the base of the skull. And it was right on the the left side of it. Because my right side is the one that was really, um, affected. But they, they sent me home with, they're like, if you can, if you can feed yourself and wipe your ass, they'll send you on your merry way. They gave me some worksheets for, uh, my physical rehab. I ended up doing all my physical rehab by myself. I taught myself to walk again. I taught myself to see again. I taught myself everything again, which took a long time. And I stopped drinking for seven months.
[07:41] **Kevin Rose:** Did you have any, um, withdrawals at that point?
[07:45] **Jason DeFilippo:** Well, the thing is, fortunately, I was going through a stroke at the same time as the alcohol withdrawals hit. So I just felt like crap no matter what.
[07:53] **Kevin Rose:** Right. But you didn't have shaky hands or just like, you know, because that can be very dangerous if you just quit cold turkey off of alcohol.
[08:00] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah, I've done that a couple of times and I've been through, I've had DTs three times on my own.
[08:04] **Kevin Rose:** Wow. What's that like?
[08:06] **Jason DeFilippo:** Uh, if you look up any of the standard definitions where people talk about bugs and all that crap, yeah, it's that.
[08:13] **Kevin Rose:** So it feels like there's...
[08:14] **Jason DeFilippo:** I felt like, I felt like there were just ants under my skin for days, like two to three days. And, uh, then I would just give up and start drinking again. I'm like, this sucks.
[08:21] **Kevin Rose:** Yeah.
[08:22] **Jason DeFilippo:** So I went through all the hell and never got the, the good parts.
[08:25] **Kevin Rose:** Yeah, you probably needed like one more day and you would have been okay.
[08:27] **Jason DeFilippo:** I'd have been fine on the other side. This, we wouldn't be having this podcast. Um, but yeah, the, fortunately, since I had had the stroke, I had so many other things going on that I didn't really notice the alcohol side. And I was so dizzy that I felt like I was drunk anyway. Because I was dizzy for a couple of months after it because my eyes were still pointing in a different direction. They still are in a little bit of a different direction, but I trained my brain to recognize, you know, I had to retrain it to see basically. Um, which is a whole other, I can go on that for a long time, but there was a, there was a lot of brain training that went into that.
[09:01] **Jason DeFilippo:** And I stopped drinking for, basically eight months. It was eight months. And during that time, the world was, it was great. It was fantastic. But people started to tell me, oh, just because you had a stroke, I figured since I had a stroke, I can't drink anymore. I thought because I, the stroke, the drinking caused the stroke, that I shouldn't drink anymore because it gave me a stroke. But then people are like, oh, you can drink after a stroke. That's fine. These people weren't alcoholics. These were just normies who could have a cocktail. And then I remember for my birthday, I went over to, uh, Sol y Luna, one of my favorite spots. I've been going there for 10 years for my birthday. Got the sombrero, they brought me my, my, I had a double Cadillac Margarita, which was what I had every year.
[09:41] **Kevin Rose:** And you had had zero drinks prior to this?
[09:42] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yes.
[09:43] **Kevin Rose:** Okay, so you're going eight months sober, clean, straight into a double Cadillac.
[09:49] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yep.
[09:49] **Kevin Rose:** Oh my God.
[09:53] **Jason DeFilippo:** And it's going to hit. It hit me exactly like I was when I was five.
[09:56] **Kevin Rose:** Wow.
[09:57] **Jason DeFilippo:** The same thing. And I, I, I had this, oh shit moment. I just felt like, and I'm like, oh, you know, it's just an, oh fuck moment. Like I'm like, here it comes again. It's like I, I felt like I was free.
[10:16:08] **Kevin Rose:** But why can't you stop? What, if you, if you really dig in there to your mental capacity, like, what, what is it?
[10:16:25] **Jason DeFilippo:** It really felt like something grabbed me and just had me. It just literally felt like I was being grabbed. Like my, my chest, like something grabbed me and was like, gotcha.
[10:16:35] **Kevin Rose:** Wow.
[10:16:36] **Jason DeFilippo:** That's what it felt like to me.
[10:16:37] **Kevin Rose:** Almost like a, um, out of body, kind of entity or something, some kind of like, out of your control completely?
[10:16:42] **Jason DeFilippo:** Completely out of my control. And I even, when I visualize it, there's this scene at the end of Highlander, the first Highlander, the good one, where there's this like, you know, they had this animated monster that's like, when he's having the final quickening that just grabs him and chomps him. And it felt like that looked. That's what it, that's the only way that I can explain it. Because the problem then is I'm clean for eight months. All of, you know, the tolerance that I'd built up...
[11:07] **Kevin Rose:** Yeah, I was going to say that's like 3x the, the normal amount because your body's just going to treat it like you're a five year old again.
[11:13] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah, but the thing is, your brain thinks you can pick up exactly where you left off. There's another saying in in the groups where it's like, while, while you're inside the rooms, your alcoholism's out in the parking lot doing pushups waiting for you.
[11:25] **Kevin Rose:** Interesting.
[11:26] **Jason DeFilippo:** Because that's how a lot of people go out. They stop for a while and then they they they go out, they go out, and they're dead in a week because they go back to exactly where they were, thinking that they can drink the way that they used to drink, and they can't. And that's a problem. And that's what happened to me was I went back to it where I was, and at that point, my stomach had healed enough where I could drink whatever I wanted. From my birthday till, it was five more months. It took five months for me to burn my life to the ground. I went from having a studio, a couple hundred grand in the bank, to right now, no studio, I'm 300 grand in debt. I can barely pay rent. I'm just this is called cleaning up the, uh, the wreckage of our past stage that I'm in right now. But I did this in five months because I just burned it to the ground because I didn't care. And I was drinking like, I could back in the day. And I couldn't sign my name anymore after five months. And I was an alcoholic that could drink 18 Guinness a day and you would never know I was drunk. At this point, I was slurring, I was walking into walls. It just basically almost killed me.
[12:31] **Kevin Rose:** Holy shit.
[12:31] **Jason DeFilippo:** And that's why, you know, that's why I got worried about you when you kept saying, I'm going to take a month off, I'm going to take three months off because when you come back, you come back harder. So every time, it's like, it's like you people go on yo-yo diets. It's like they go on a diet, they lose some weight, they come back fatter. They go on a diet, they come back, they, they jump back fatter. So somebody that's 180 pounds after three years of yo-yo dying is like 280, you know?
[12:52] **Kevin Rose:** Right. Right.
[12:53] **Jason DeFilippo:** It's the same concept.
[12:55] **Kevin Rose:** What pulled you out of that?
[12:56] **Jason DeFilippo:** My last day, it was, um, it was January 3rd of 2023. Was I'm two years, 2025, 2023. Yeah, January 3rd, 2023. It was just a normal day. Actually, my roommate's mom had fell out of bed and broken her hip. She was like 94. So my roommate was at the hospital. I'm just trying to take care of everything at the house, taking care of the dogs, cooked a mean stir fry dinner with all this Momofuku stuff that I got for Christmas.
[13:21] **Kevin Rose:** So good. I love that stuff.
[13:21] **Jason DeFilippo:** Talked to my dad on the phone for like an hour. Everything was peachy keen. I don't remember drinking at all that day. And then I'm talking to her at 6 o'clock at night. We're on the couch. Lights go out. I wake up, it's 3 in the morning. I'm in Northridge ER with two tubes coming out of me in a black room.
[13:38] **Kevin Rose:** Holy shit.
[13:39] **Jason DeFilippo:** I had a complete blackout. I, I like I woke up, I ripped the tubes out of my arm. I'm like, where the fuck am I? And they're like, oh yeah, you're at Northridge ER. And I'm like, what's going on? He's like, oh, you came in, you blew a .38.
[13:51] **Kevin Rose:** Holy...
[13:52] **Jason DeFilippo:** A .38 is like, if I'd have had one more drink, I'd have been in a coma and probably died. And she said I walked in with the EMTs. I was, I was, and I was joking, having a laugh with them. They, they said I was like Mr. Mr. Life of the Party and then I passed out right there at the desk.
[14:07] **Kevin Rose:** Holy shit.
[14:07] **Jason DeFilippo:** They had to take me in for a CT scan because I hit my head and all sorts of shit. But it was over the course of the next couple days where I found a dozen little airline vodka bottles hidden, stashed around the house that I don't remember drinking at all.
[14:21] **Kevin Rose:** So you don't, you have no recollection as to how you got started that day?
[14:24] **Jason DeFilippo:** None at all.
[14:25] **Kevin Rose:** Wow.
[14:26] **Jason DeFilippo:** So at that point it was like, I need help because I can't do it. And and this was at the point too where my roommate was like, you're going to get help or you're going to get the hell out of my house. Um, and she was going through her, you know, her own stuff with her mom just that day, you know, breaking her leg, 94 year old mom breaking her leg.
[14:43] **Kevin Rose:** Yeah.
[14:44] **Jason DeFilippo:** Major stuff, you know. And here I am, the selfish asshole, trying to just do whatever I'm doing. So, and and the worst part about it was, she thought I had another stroke, but I'd had a um, a alcoholic seizure when we were talking. That's when she ended up calling, why she called the EMTs to take me in. And then she called my dad and told my dad that I had another stroke. And then just the shame was just, it was just, you know, unbearable shame from just drinking, you know. And it was at that point it was like, okay, it's, it's time. So.
[15:15] **Kevin Rose:** Yeah.
[15:15] **Jason DeFilippo:** At that point, the next, that, that next night, so on the, I went to the hospital on the second, the third was basically the, the next day where I was kind of recovered. I was still so drunk, I could barely, you know, spell my name. And that night I found, uh, some online meetings. Because the thing about the pandemic is it, it created this amazing recovery network of Zoom meetings around the world. And I just started, I found a, a directory of them and I just started hitting them all, just to find, just to learn because I'm one of those guys who before I walk in the room, I want to know where all the exits are. I want to know what the lay of the land is. I want to know the lingo so I can fit in, you know. It's just one of those, just the way I'm, I'm built. And it turns out a lot of alcoholics are like that too, because there were a lot of people just like me wouldn't turn on the camera, just listen to whatever. And then after 30 days, I finally went to my first in-person recovery meeting. And that one was really the game changer where I was like, I went into a room of just men. It just happened to be a block away from my house. And I walked in and it's like all these guys laughing and having a good time. And then the meeting started and they started telling stories, these horrible stories that I was just like, and everybody was laughing. I was laughing too. I'm like, oh yeah, I did that, you know. And it's like, oh, that's where I kind of found a fellowship of people who were just like me and knew what I was going through. And at that point, I still didn't, they're like, oh yeah, you got to get a sponsor and you got to do all this other stuff. It took me another two months before I even went down that road. Uh, once I started to go down that road, then it just went off like a rocket and I learned what I needed to know to get and stay sober. And, fortunately, I had what they call the gift of desperation because I, I hit the ground so hard, my bottom was so damn hard that I'm not going, I'm, I need this to work. I really need this to work. I could also see when I walked in that room, you can see like their eyes were clear. When you see just normal people on the street or whatever, you can tell when somebody's like, you know, just walking through life or whatever. But when you see a recovered alcoholic, their eyes are like crystal. And like all these guys had that look. And I also kept saying to myself, I'm like, you can't, you can't half-ass this. And in my head on a loop was Morpheus saying, there's a difference between knowing the path and walking the path. And I'm like, I got to go in here and actually do it if I'm going to do it. And that was the hardest part was getting myself to the point where, like, I'm going to go in and do it.
[16:26] **Kevin Rose:** Yeah, it's interesting because after you had told me about these different 12-step programs, I went, of course, to chat GPT and all the AIs and I was like, hey, tell me about all these different programs. What do they have in common? Where, where do they differ? What are the core tenets of some of these things? And like you, I looked at this stuff and I was like, oh my god, like another religion. I don't want to become, you know, whatever, Scientologist or whatever, you name it. And I was like, that's not for me. But the thing that was interesting is, um, you know, I was driving back from Las Vegas to see my mom and visit her. And you sent me this link and you were like, hey, like, here's a Zoom that's happening if you can, you just want to tune in. And so I put it on speakerphone while I was driving back. I was like, oh, these stories are fantastic.
[16:54] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah.
[16:54] **Kevin Rose:** Like they're really entertaining, you know? Because you just realize like there is a whole cohort of people out here to the tune of like hundreds of thousands or millions of people through these various different programs that are sharing their very intimate experiences about some of the stuff that they've run into. And some of it is really hardcore and it's crazy, but you just realize like, hey, there are people out there that want to change for the better. They want to give this stuff up. And they're supporting each other like only they would know how.
[17:10] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yes.
[17:11] **Kevin Rose:** Which is really interesting because that's one of the things that when I was doing my research on these programs, it's like, it's very clear that rather than you just going into a place where someone is speaking to you from a place of like, uh, being a superior person to you, like you'd get with a traditional religion or something like that. This is like, no, no, we were, we are like you. We run into the same issues and we're speaking from a place of, I'm just gonna tell you what I went through, and it's a sharing environment, which I thought was quite nice, you know.
[17:29] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah.
[17:29] **Kevin Rose:** It's different than than I am better than you. It's more like, let me just know, let me actually be a friend, you know, and someone that's been through this, which I thought was interesting.
[17:40] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah, a lot of the, a lot of it boils down to one alcoholic talking to another. That is the core core tenant of it. And you never give anybody else advice. You never tell anybody what that you think that they should do. Ever. You just go, Hey, this is what worked for me. This is, you can do what you want, you know. Yeah. And I, I learned very early on, I'm responsible for my own sobriety. So I can't blame anybody going in the room like, you gave me some bad advice. I'm like, well, a, nobody's supposed to give you advice. You learn from what people have gone through and apply it to yourself. And you just learn from other people's stories. And everybody has a different story, but there's always a common thread, you know? It's usually some form of, uh, loneliness that goes along with it as the drinking progresses, you know, the world shrinking and it's, there's a lot of, a lot of similar stories. And you can always find something in somebody's story. They, and they say, look for the similarities, not the differences. Because if you just look for the differences, there's a million differences. You know, I never went to jail. I never got a DUI. But I drank like a hero. And but the, the commonality is what really kept me coming back and keep me coming back. And that's why I got two and a half years almost, you know, knock on wood and I'm going to keep going.
[17:58] **Kevin Rose:** Can we talk about that first one without calling out the organization in which you're a part of?
[17:59] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah, they're all the, all the, all the 12 steps are about the same. It's, you know, you admit that you're powerless over alcohol and that your life has become unmanageable. That is the, the genesis of basically all 12 step programs.
[18:03] **Kevin Rose:** I mean, let me ask you a question. This is, I don't mean this to be so fucking self-fucked up, but like, isn't that pretty straightforward for you being like, yeah, I kind of took it too far here. I feel like you wouldn't need to spend six, six weeks on that one. Couldn't you just agree like, uh, I don't know, this is not, I kind of don't have control here.
[18:12] **Jason DeFilippo:** You'd think. You'd think. What, why'd you need to spend six weeks on that one? Because you have to have it beaten to your head. And if you look at any of the literature out there, uh, uh, there there are multiple books, but just, just for reference, I'll talk about the the Alcoholics Anonymous book, because that's the one that most people will know. They don't even talk about the second step for like 40 or 50 pages. And in that book, the 100 first 164 pages are the entirety of 12 steps. So they spend even more time in that literature on step one than any other step. And and the other ones do it as well because it is that important. You really have to believe that. You have to know that because if you just go, yeah, that's what it is, you're, you're just going to get drunk again.
[19:07] **Kevin Rose:** Mmm.
[19:07] **Jason DeFilippo:** There are very specific words in step one, especially powerlessness. Powerlessness is one of the key tenets of sobriety because you have to let go of your ego because you know we talk about being selfish and self-centered. Shy people are selfish and self-centered because that's, we're over, over indexed on that. So you have to understand the powerlessness because in the the subsequent steps, you it's really about ego destruction. It is about getting rid of your ego because when you, when you skip to the end, spoiler alert, you stay sober by doing things for other people. It is about service for other people. It's not about you. If you are the one that is taking and not giving, you're doing it wrong and you're going to go back out. You have to be giving. So it starts with that kernel of powerlessness at the beginning and you really have to get that through your head. And I was in the middle of step four and it, it was still coming to me like, oh my god, I'm powerless over this. This is why I have fear and I have anger because of this and I'm scared of this and it's because I'm powerless over that. You know? And I just, I shared at one meeting. It's like, I got here and I was, I was terrified that my sponsor was going to be angry with me because I was late. And it all comes back to, oh my god, without him, I'm powerless over my program and he's been, it's, you know, all of these things kind of tie into together. It's really, it's really beautiful when you can step back and look at it as a whole and see how they all kind of intertwine, but it all starts with that seed of powerlessness. And that's why it is so important. And the unmanageability is you giving over to that power and really giving yourself to saying, hey, I need, I need help. I can't do it on my own because I tried that, didn't work, you know. And so I think that's why they spend so much time on it because it is such a core tenant of the rest of sobriety for the rest of your life. You need to understand that powerlessness. And it, honestly, it just makes the day better too when you realize that there's so much out there that you have zero power over. Yeah. And it's like, oh, okay, I, I can manage this. I don't need to drink over this because there's something that's going on in the world that I, somebody was wrong on the internet. I better have a beer, you know?
[19:06] **Kevin Rose:** Yeah. Yeah. So true. One of the things that I would say gave me a lot of anxiety or I think about these, these programs and historically how we've been programmed to think of them, you know, you mentioned Saturday Night Live, like we've seen all these different programs that, especially the 12-step programs that get a lot of shit for for various reasons. The religion thing for me was a no-go. You know, if I have to become or turn my life over to insert fill in the blank deity, I'm not going to do it. And then somebody said to me, they said, well, like listen, do you, did you believe that like you created everything that's in front of you? And I'm like, no, I think that's kind of like a construct of my mind and like I didn't make the universe and all of that. And they're like, well, what if you didn't see it as like having to give yourself to any one capital G God, but more you saw this universe as kind of like a gift and you're, your presence here is a gift that you're even existing.
[20:02] **Jason DeFilippo:** Right.
[20:02] **Kevin Rose:** And that's something that you should respect because it is such a gift to even be and have an existence to begin with. And I was like, well, I can get a little bit behind that. And then, and then you said to me, and we can always cut this if you don't want to say it, but like, you said to me, you said, I see it as like the force from Star Wars.
[20:17] **Jason DeFilippo:** Pretty much, yeah.
[20:18] **Kevin Rose:** And I was like, I see it like the force too. Like I've always kind of believed that. You know, and a lot of my Zen training and meditation and things like that have always kind of pointed to the unity and oneness of the entire environment where we're all interconnected in some special way and very much of a force like way.
[20:32] **Jason DeFilippo:** Mhmm.
[20:32] **Kevin Rose:** I guess two questions for you. One, why is it important to have something like this as a, as part of the program? Why can't you just cut that step out all together? And then, you do believe it doesn't have to be a, a Ten Commandments kind of like version of God?
[20:47] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah, it does not have to be the Ten Commandments version of God. It can be anything that is a greater power than you. That is the, that's the core tenet and some people say, group of drunks is God, you know, it could be the people that you go to at your meetings. Anything that is a greater power than you, it comes back to the ego destruction. You have to be willing to say that you are not in control. You're not playing God anymore because we think that we play God all the time. We want to make the decisions. We don't want to be out of control. I don't want to get on a plane because I'm not flying the plane and I don't know how it's going to end up, you know? But it, it all comes back into, like I said, they build on each other. All these steps build on each other. And by the time I got to step three and I needed to be give up that that control, I could do it because I'd done the the previous steps and it it worried the hell out of me too. I'm like, I, I first I walked in the meeting, I read those things. I'm like, I can't do that. That is no. No, I came in as a militant atheist and I'm going to stick by it. And almost everybody in the room I talk to was just like, yeah, we were too. Get over it. Get over it. But what is it about that though? When you can say, how do you right size that in your head when you say like, I believe in the force? Like, why is that freeing? Why is that important?
[22:01] **Jason DeFilippo:** I don't know. For me, it's like ever since that, ever since I gave up and and went down that road, I, if you, if you want to call it enhanced serendipity that I just see things happen that generally weren't happening before because I'm open to seeing them and opening myself up to the opportunities that the world is giving me, my life has gotten a hell of a lot better. Things just happen better. When I am in the, when I'm right-sized with my higher power, as they like to say, and I've, and I feel, I don't know, I feel lighter. I, I just, it's really hard to explain, but it's like I've stepped out of a level of darkness into a level of lighter being, not angels and all that shit. But I'm more in touch with the world around me. I can tell when people are are sad and I can help them. You know, I can tell when people are angry and I can help them. I don't know, you just, I just become more attuned with everything. And like I said, I just call it enhanced serendipity because things just tend to happen.
[22:55] **Kevin Rose:** There, there's something to all of this.
[22:56] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah, there really is. Yeah.
[22:58] **Kevin Rose:** There really is. And now I have, you, one, two, three, I think there's four people in my life that are now completely sober that have gone through some type of a 12 step program. And no one's pissed. It turns out no one's pissed that they did it. And they all have those damn white eyes that you're talking about, that like clean look where you're just like, damn it, you know, I'm pissed because I'm not like them, you know what I mean?
[23:24] **Jason DeFilippo:** You'll get there, you'll get there.
[23:25] **Kevin Rose:** I know, but you know what? You probably were this way as well where you're like, how can these people do it? And is it real?
[23:32] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah.
[23:32] **Kevin Rose:** Is it real? Like, are they bullshitting their way through it and they're just white knuckling it the entire time? But it turns out some of these steps when you read about these programs, they're about making amends with people that you've wronged in the past. They're about going back and doing and dealing with that dirty laundry that you've had stuffed away in the closet for decades. And it turns out, guess what? You get vulnerable, you get loose, you let that stuff out, you address it. Now, sitting in my apartment by myself or my room by myself isn't as big of a struggle as it once was because all these little microdemons that are behind the scenes have been brought to the surface and excavated and dealt with. Is that your experience as well?
[24:20] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah. Yeah. Um, and I tell you, once you get through, once you get through the amends, the world changes.
[24:26] **Kevin Rose:** What are the amends about? Tell people real quick.
[24:28] **Jason DeFilippo:** The amends is about, uh, clearing up the things that you've done wrong that you knew that you did wrong and making, making it right by that person.
[24:39] **Kevin Rose:** So this isn't like praying to God and saying, God, forgive me of my sins or anything like that.
[24:42] **Jason DeFilippo:** Oh no, no, no, no, no. This is calling somebody up and saying, hey, you know, I banged your wife, you know? Right. But there is, there are some outs for that.
[24:50] **Kevin Rose:** You didn't do that, did you?
[24:51] **Jason DeFilippo:** No, no, no, no, no. Because there is an out that says without without causing harm to others, you know?
[24:55] **Kevin Rose:** Right.
[24:56] **Jason DeFilippo:** Um, without causing harm to them or others.
[24:59] **Kevin Rose:** Mm-hmm.
[24:59] **Jason DeFilippo:** But what it did for me was, I'm not going to talk about specifics, but what it does is that I can now not worry about seeing this person on the street and having to go run the other way.
[25:13] **Kevin Rose:** Mmm.
[25:14] **Jason DeFilippo:** You know, just think about it that way. It's like, oh my God, I don't have to worry about getting a phone call from them. I don't have to worry about seeing them or their friends or whatnot because I have, I have cleaned up that relationship in a way that they are happy with. Because I go to, I want to, I go to them and say, I've done wrong. What can I do to make this right between us? So you're amending the relationship. You're not apologizing per se, but you are giving them the opportunity to tell you what you can do to make it right.
[25:44] **Kevin Rose:** And so if they say, Jason, no, FU, you did something to my wife, then it's fine because you, you extended the olive branch. And it's it's now it's in their court. Right?
[25:58] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah. If they say, I never want to see you again. Okay. It's fine. It's clear.
[26:01] **Kevin Rose:** But then if you see them on the street, you're like, I did my best. I did my damndest. I did everything I could to try and make amends here. And that's what gives you the freedom from that obligation.
[26:10] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yes. 110%. And it took, it took me a couple months to get through all of them.
[26:16] **Kevin Rose:** How do you find that stuff? Because I feel like I've, I would have forgotten half the stuff that I did that were as...
[26:22] **Jason DeFilippo:** Then well that's your, your fifth step. You go, you make a very long list of things that you've done. And that takes a while. It took me a couple months to go through it.
[26:34] **Kevin Rose:** Do you ever remember something where you're like, ah, I screwed that person over. I shouldn't have done that.
[26:37] **Jason DeFilippo:** Oh yeah. And well and I, and also, I had the, I had the gift of a stroke. My memory was shot. Fortunately for me, I've been a photographer since I was 15 and my family had photos everywhere. But when the first, you know, digital camera came out, I was there. I was writing Perl scripts to do mobile blogging back in the day, if you remember, you know? So I have a very long history for me to go through. And I went through every photograph I've ever taken and looked at all the people that I thought that I screwed over.
[27:08] **Kevin Rose:** The only thing I guess I can start now is uh, making amends with you for buying you all those drinks and uh, and getting you to chug them with me.
[27:16] **Jason DeFilippo:** That doesn't count.
[27:17] **Kevin Rose:** We definitely, we definitely raced on a few uh, pints, I'm pretty sure at some point.
[27:22] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah. That's why we stopped hanging out because we were bad for each other.
[27:24] **Kevin Rose:** We were bad. We were not healthy. It was like two dudes that just got together and be like...
[27:29] **Jason DeFilippo:** The answer...
[27:30] **Kevin Rose:** The answ... Wonder Twin powers, activate!
[27:31] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah, exactly.
[27:32] **Kevin Rose:** We were like Voltron, a force of two where it's like if you got us together, it was like there was never a question whether there was another pint to be had because the answer was always yes.
[27:40] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah. Yes. Until one of us couldn't either pay for it or walk out of there.
[27:44] **Kevin Rose:** Yeah, or close the place. And at the time...
[27:46] **Jason DeFilippo:** Well, anyway, uh, Jason, I want to say thank you for, for being this transparent and honest with me and helping me along this journey. And you've picked up my phone calls when I've called you with questions and just really helped me uh, consider this to be a, a thing that I'm taking very seriously now as you can see, you know?
[28:03] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah. No, when you called me and told me that I was the happiest I could have been, I'm like, I, I knew you were going to get here at some point because I can see, but it just made me, it made me so happy that that you were, you know, taking this step to, to really, you know, be serious about it.
[28:17] **Kevin Rose:** Yeah.
[28:18] **Jason DeFilippo:** So, because I, I think that once you, once you get through and get on the other side, you know, six months in, you're going to see a whole, it's, you're going to, it's a whole new world six months in. That's when you really start to see the real difference, the physical side of things change, the emotional side of things change. There's a real physical difference at 180 days.
[28:36] **Kevin Rose:** You know what's crazy is you are like, I would say every single one of my friends that have gone through a similar thing has said, hey, you think 30 days is great? Yeah. Get to six months, get to eight months, get to a year. And you'd be surprised how much damage your body eventually repairs.
[28:52] **Jason DeFilippo:** Oh, all of it.
[28:53] **Kevin Rose:** Which is what's crazy because normally I think about, okay, oh, I'm hungover. I just go a day and I'm back to my normal self. But it's months and months and months of slow repair that your body has to do.
[29:04] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah, we did a lot of damage. Yeah. But it's, it, it comes back. I mean, there are people that, you know, that have done way too, there's some people that do damage that there's no coming back from. People that get wet brain and, you know, liver failure and things like that. But I've seen people come back from, you know, a lot, a lot. And, uh, yeah, I think that in, in your case, I, I kind of know your, your drinking history. I think in, I think in 180 days, you're going to be like, wow. I'm excited. I'm really going to see it.
[29:31] **Kevin Rose:** I'm super excited. Well, well, dude, always good to do a podcast with you and, um, where can people, can people reach out to you? Like you're doing, you're still doing freelance stuff with on the podcasting front for people that want to, you know...
[29:42] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah, you can just, I'm at Jason.fyi. I got, I got that. So...
[29:45] **Kevin Rose:** You've been, you've been helping me, Tim Ferriss, my wife, like a whole, Joey Ito, you've done a whole wall of people that, Jordan Harbinger, you've done all these podcasts, uh, which have been awesome in terms of like, you know, editing and video and audio and all the things.
[29:57] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah.
[29:57] **Kevin Rose:** Very successful shows that you've produced.
[30:00] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah, no, it's been fun.
[30:01] **Kevin Rose:** How much did you pay for that bad boy?
[30:08] **Jason DeFilippo:** $18, baby.
[30:09] **Kevin Rose:** That's amazing.
[30:10] **Jason DeFilippo:** You know me, me and you, we're both the early days with, you know, the domains. Yeah. But you can email me at j@jpd.me. Um, and or check out Grumpy Old Geeks, my podcast. We just did the 700th episode on Friday. So...
[30:22] **Kevin Rose:** What's it like listening to the old ones when you used to be drinking? Are they totally different?
[30:26] **Jason DeFilippo:** They are bad. They're bad.
[30:29] **Kevin Rose:** Yeah.
[30:30] **Jason DeFilippo:** Yeah, no, they're they were not good at all. Yeah. But it's so funny to go back because we've been doing that show for 13 years. So, you know, we, we started that show when Elon was a hero. That's how we like to put it. So...
[30:42] **Kevin Rose:** Wow.
[30:44] **Jason DeFilippo:** But yeah, I, yeah, just reach out if anybody wants to talk. Uh, I'm, I'm an open book, so.
[30:49] **Kevin Rose:** Awesome. Well, good seeing you, brother. Thank you.
[30:50] **Jason DeFilippo:** So good seeing you.
[Music]