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9. Speak Up, Open Up, Share Experiences, Mental Health Matters!
53 Plays3 years ago
This episode I talk about how it shouldn't take a legend like Stephen 'Twitch' Boss to pass away for everyone to start talking about mental health. We need to keep opening up about our own struggles! We need to continue to share with family and friends about how important mental health is! Keep this convesation going.
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Transcript
The Rise of Mental Health Awareness
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome back to another episode of Unlocking with Adam Pike. Thanks for coming by once again to listen to me go on some rants about some stuff. Now over the last 24 hours
00:00:18
Speaker
All I've been seeing is everybody posting about mental health and depression. And this is great, right? This is totally great. I love to see it because we should be talking about this more often, right?
The Shock of Stephen 'Twitch' Boss's Death
00:00:34
Speaker
People should be opening up more often, but it takes somebody like Stephen Boss, and you guys may know him, has Twitch,
00:00:48
Speaker
He was the DJ that was on Ellen DeGeneres. He was on So You Think You Can Dance. He was on Magic Mike. He's all over the internet. He's a very big, positive light in this world. Every time you see him, he's dancing, he's smiling, he's making people laugh. A lot of fun. But he took his own life. It's very sad to see. It's very shocking to see somebody that has so much
00:01:15
Speaker
love and energy to give the others. Um, he was a husband. He just celebrated his, his ninth anniversary. He has three children. I was going through his Instagram page last night and him and his wife just posted a video about, it was three days ago, dancing in front of the tree. I, I, I don't understand and we'll never understand.
00:01:44
Speaker
what people are going through and you never really know what people are going through.
The Need for Persistent Mental Health Conversations
00:01:51
Speaker
And the reason why I jumped on this podcast today to talk about this is because it's almost like it takes somebody like Twitch to take his own life for everybody to start speaking up.
00:02:09
Speaker
You know, before this happened, yeah, I would, I would see the odd posts here and there, but like not as much as I'm seeing right now. So it shouldn't take somebody like this to take their own life for people to start speaking up. It should just be a conversation that's always being had. People should always be like, if, if you have the opportunity to
00:02:36
Speaker
speak about mental health or if you're going through something yourself and you're open to talking about it.
00:02:42
Speaker
Talk about it. Share it more. I talk about my struggles all the time. I don't have struggles to the extreme as taking my own life, but I mean, I definitely go through things and I talk about it openly as much as I possibly can. That's why I started this podcast, because I wanted to talk about my own personal struggles, because I know that people can relate to what I'm talking about. And I know that there's many, many other people out here
00:03:12
Speaker
that are also going to things, but they're keeping in it. And they have too much pride in themselves to open up the better. I know people, I've had friends that was just going to things and they didn't want to open up the better, because they just had too much pride. And what does everybody do nowadays? Hey, how you doing?
00:03:40
Speaker
I'm good. How you doing? I'm good. Okay, great, man. See you later. Like, my last job. You walk by someone, what's up, man? Oh, it's all good. Everything's all good. Sit, right? That's just such a common thing to say, right?
00:03:57
Speaker
And I'm even I like, I'm even somebody that has done this many times before, like you've gone through a bad breakup, or you're just having like, you're just going through it, right? And no matter who asked you, how you doing? What do you say? I'm doing good. I'm doing good, man. Yeah, that's great. You never like want your family to know that you're struggling. Right? So it's only it's only recently that I've been really
00:04:26
Speaker
really opening up about how I've been feeling and things that I've been going through. And everybody should be also doing this.
Exploring Online Mental Health Support Platforms
00:04:36
Speaker
Everybody should be working on talking about their struggles, opening up to people. And if you don't feel comfortable
00:04:45
Speaker
opening up to your friends or your family, there is so many apps and people that you can talk to online, like there's addiction apps, there's apps for anxiety, there's apps for mental health, there's apps for depression, there's so many online platforms now, there might even be like free services where you can just talk to a professional and just tell them what you're going through, right?
00:05:16
Speaker
This has probably helped thousands and thousands of people. There are probably millions. I haven't really done my research. I just know that there's tons of apps and tons of online platforms that you can just go on there and talk to a professional and get the help that you need.
00:05:35
Speaker
and you might even feel more comfortable doing this over like online instead of like doing it in person because it's gotta be hard like sitting down in front of somebody that you don't know and opening up to this person and telling them everything about what everything that's going on in your mind like that gotta be hard like i don't even think i'd be comfortable doing that.
00:05:59
Speaker
So with these online platforms you know i'm not sure if you're on like a zoom call or if you're just talking over the phone but it's it probably would make me feel more comfortable.
00:06:16
Speaker
you know, just talking over the phone with a professional about what's, what's going on. And it's, it's always good to open up and it's always good to talk to somebody. And I know most people like don't want to open up to their friends and whatnot, but trust me, if, if one of my buddies came to me and told me that they were going to some shit, I would, I would like, I would listen and I would give them my honest, my honest advice, right?
00:06:46
Speaker
Now I want to just jump back to Twitch.
Reflecting on Twitch's Positive Influence Amidst Struggles
00:06:51
Speaker
Everybody knows this guy is Twitch. And I've been following him for such a long time. He's been on Ellen DeGeneres. I actually watched the video last night.
00:07:02
Speaker
It was a tribute that Ellen made of him, I guess, when because their their show ended and she wanted to do a tribute to him about like all their past memories and like, oh, my God, I was crying last night watching this. I was crying sitting on the couch sobbing.
00:07:23
Speaker
because it's really, really, really sad to see somebody that's just so happy and just brought so much energy everywhere this guy went to just the energy in the room, like you just own the room.
00:07:39
Speaker
and just making people laugh. And people love this guy like so much. He had a family of three kids and a beautiful wife. And like you go on their page and they just look so happy. That's the key word, look. And like their family's probably happy, but clearly whatever was going on in his mind, it took over, I guess.
00:08:11
Speaker
It's, um, it's, it's really sad to see because this happens every single day, right? This happens every single day. People are taking their lives every single day.
The Impact of Kindness and Negativity
00:08:25
Speaker
Yeah. I don't know somebody personally, but I, I was, um, working in Regina. Um, I was doing the Regina bypass. I was, uh, doing like heavy equipment.
00:08:40
Speaker
And we had a safety officer and then honestly, every time he came in the room, big smiles, cracking jokes, always happy, you know, had a wife. I'm pretty sure they just had a baby or they had a baby on the way. I'm not really sure. Beautiful truck, beautiful house, you know, seemed like he had everything going for him. And like no signs of any sort of like mental health issues or anything like that.
00:09:09
Speaker
shows up one day and we were told that he killed himself. So it's like you really, really don't know what people are going through. So it's just so important to be nice. Like just be fucking nice. There's so many shitty people out here. Like I'm sorry, but yeah, there is a lot of fucking shitty, rude people that
00:09:38
Speaker
are just mean to other people. They're just really mean for no fucking reason. Like they spend more energy being angry and mean and saying mean shit and talking about people behind their back and making up stories about other people behind their back and like just being a shitty fucking person. I don't have no fucking time for that. I really don't have no fucking time for people who are shitty.
00:10:09
Speaker
The same amount of energy that you are putting into being shitty, you can just be a nice person. It's very effortless for me to just be nice. And it's very effortless for you to be nice too, but you're just choosing to be.
00:10:31
Speaker
fucking shitty person. Just kidding me. It's getting me angry because honestly I've dealt with a lot of people like that in my life. Just rude, angry, mean people for no reason that just don't like you for no fucking reason. And I just try to make your life a living hell or not a living hell but like they try to do things to like
00:10:56
Speaker
make you mad or just go out of their way to say shitty things. What the fuck is wrong with you? What is wrong with you? I truly believe it's all about how you were raised as a child because people are not born angry. People don't just come out of their
00:11:17
Speaker
People don't, people are not born angry. It's just, it's your environment that you're, you're, you're raised in. It's the people that you surround yourself with. And, you know, obviously as you get older, if you're surrounded by a bunch of shitty people, that's going to rub off on you. You know what I mean? So just be nice. Just be nice. Because clearly when you look at a guy like Twitch, you would say he's the happiest person in the world.
00:11:46
Speaker
He probably was very, very happy. He had a lot of happy moments, but clearly something else that we'll probably never understand was going on in his mind for him to take his own life.
Effects of Negativity in Relationships on Mental Health
00:12:01
Speaker
Just think about, for example, husband and wife. Maybe the husband is really going through something in his mind.
00:12:14
Speaker
but he don't, he don't open up about it to his friends or his wife or his mother or anybody. Right. And the husband and the wife, they argue a lot like more than, more than normal. Well, what is normal? But like they argue a lot and the arguments get really nasty, like really, really fucking nasty. And they're just saying,
00:12:41
Speaker
mean shit to each other and it just always it always goes too far maybe the wife ends up saying things that she regrets and she don't like she don't mean right one of these fights can possibly push this guy over the edge and all these thoughts that he's already having you know on his own time is now like amplified because
00:13:07
Speaker
this relationship that he's had for the marriage that he's had for the last 10 years is just not working out. And, you know, they're always fighting and it just, there's no like light at the end of the tunnel, right?
00:13:20
Speaker
So the reason why I'm giving you this example is because there's a lot of people out here that are in relationships and that's all they know is fighting, right? They have a good day. Oh my god, they have a good day and then they're fighting. Oh, we just had a really good week but we also just spent a week fighting and it's just constant fighting and fighting and arguing and yelling at each other.
00:13:50
Speaker
And I can only imagine like when you're going through it and you're already depressed and you already have like anxiety through the roof and then you're adding like a really huge argument with your girlfriend or your boyfriend or your wife or whatever, that they got to amplify that shit. Like that really got to amplify that shit. So the reason why I'm talking about this right now is because you don't need that in your life, right? You don't need to be yelling at each other.
00:14:20
Speaker
You don't need to be screaming, saying shit you don't mean. And if I understand that people are in marriages and they have children, houses, and it's a lot more complicated than when you're just in a relationship of like a couple months and suddenly, you know, you're in a toxic relationship. You just leave, right? There's just someone else out there that's not going to treat you like this. When you're in these marriages and whatnot like that,
00:14:47
Speaker
That's when you should get a therapist, right? And there's no shame in getting a therapist.
00:14:54
Speaker
A lot of people will, it's like a shameful thing to have a therapist. It's not a shameful thing. Everybody should have a fucking therapist. I guarantee you, I could definitely use a therapist in my life. And, you know, I've just been dealing with things on my own and I've been, you know, I'm very grateful for a microcybin and the microdosing because I really feel like that has helped me tremendously with, you know, my mental health and things that I was going through and
00:15:24
Speaker
It's really, really helped me.
Potential of Psychedelic Therapy for Mental Health
00:15:26
Speaker
So if I never had that, a therapist probably would have been beneficial. You know what I mean? Um, there's, there's so many ways of therapy nowadays, you know, I don't really, for someone to take their life, I don't, I don't know what goes on in their mind, obviously, but I do know that
00:15:53
Speaker
There's so many psychedelic therapies now that will really change the way you think. There's even a documentary on Netflix that you can check out. I'm pretty sure it's called Change the Way You Think. And there's even a book on it. But there's
00:16:12
Speaker
But there was nobody in this documentary talking about them wanting to take their lives. I don't think so. Maybe there was. Sorry, don't quote me on this. But I do know that there was one guy with, he had really bad OCD and he went in and he did this guided therapy with psilocybin. What I don't like about this documentary is they never added how much they gave the patient.
00:16:39
Speaker
And I would imagine that it was a really, really large dose because I've done mushrooms and I've never had an experience like anything these people were talking about. So I would imagine it was like a really large dose, right? So anyways, this guy had OCD. He did the gaudic therapy and he came out of it and they ran tests on him, test after test after test.
00:17:05
Speaker
And he does not have OCD anymore. Like it's, it's just, it's just, there's no OCD. It's gone. He's had it his whole life. He said he had an experience where he watched himself die and like decompose into the soil and grow into this tree. And he like seen him and his wife and his dog, I think walked by and like, he grabbed a piece of the tree. Like,
00:17:35
Speaker
That sounds crazy. I've never experienced anything like that in my life from doing mushrooms. So I'm only willing to bet that this guy probably did like a big massive like 20 gram dose. I don't know. I'm just going by personal experiences. I've never experienced anything like that before in my life.
00:17:56
Speaker
But it just goes to show that having these larger doses, it does something to the brain and it literally just changes the way your mind works. There's another guy I heard on Joe Rogan podcast and he had a stutter his entire life. He did all these classes, all these kind of therapies to try to get rid of his stutter.
00:18:19
Speaker
And it could never work. Nothing worked. And he was saying, I'm pretty sure this is a story, but I'm pretty sure he did mushrooms. And he was like out in the jungle or the forest or something. And there was like a huge storm and there was lightning. And he wanted to like get up top of the tree to like
00:18:41
Speaker
see the lightning. And apparently when he got up there, the storm was like coming in really fast towards him. So we just like hugged the tree and the storm came over him. It was raining. It was like windy and crazy. The next morning he woke up and he never had a stutter ever again. Now, now explain that, explain that this, this guy, like there's a whole life had a massive stutter.
00:19:10
Speaker
And then he does much from this big large dose one night has crazy fucking experience gets up the next day and he's talking like normal. Never had a stutter since. So it doing psilocybin, you know, micro dosing with LSD, it creates new pathways in your brain.
00:19:30
Speaker
And it just gives you new ways of thinking, right? And there's like a chart that you can see like your brain not on psilocybin and your brain on psilocybin. It shows all the different pathways and connections. You'll still have these old thought patterns that you would normally have, but you have these new ways of thinking now.
00:19:53
Speaker
I should probably research this, but I don't know. Like people, people that like has depression and maybe they are suicidal, you know, maybe this is an option, right? Cause maybe that if you do some sort of therapy like this, it'll change the way you think, change what's going on in your mind, right? Give you this new light that you never even thought about before. And like that, that it could save your life. You know what I mean?
00:20:24
Speaker
Now this is not for everybody. You know, psychedelic therapy is not for everybody, right? It's something that I've been doing personally myself and I've been seeing really big positive changes in my life. And you know, a lot, hundreds of people actually have been, since I've been talking about my own experiences, they've had been coming to me and telling me how, you know,
00:20:50
Speaker
micro dosing has changed their life and you know, larger doses of mushrooms has changed their life, right? But like I said, this is not for everybody and that's why there's all these other sorts of therapies out there, all these apps and whatnot that you can use if you are going through something like this. You are thinking about taking your life where you do have severe depression. There's people you can talk to and there's ways that you can
00:21:20
Speaker
you can better yourself. But taking your own life is not the answer. It is not the answer. So I just want everybody to continue this conversation that they're having. Continue to share things. Because two days ago,
00:21:44
Speaker
All these people that I see, trust me, I appreciate it. I love that everybody's sharing this stuff right now. But they're only sharing it because of Twitch. So maybe this will be like a movement or like a shift. But you guys gotta continue to do this.
00:22:05
Speaker
Normally, it takes somebody close to you to pass away for you to really, like, open up your eyes about things. And I had this kind of happen to me. A really, really close friend of mine, Taylor Rodberg, we lived together in Saskatoon, and he just became a really close friend of mine.
00:22:32
Speaker
And he, he ended up moving to Kamloops, BC. And he was a crane operator. He had a girlfriend. Family loved him. He's just a really good dude.
Coping with Loss and the Impact of Drugs
00:22:46
Speaker
And everybody like, he was like the glue to everybody, right? He was like the glue to his family. And he was just a really good dude.
00:22:58
Speaker
I had a lot of good times with that guy. I went out there for two weeks with him on a summer vacation. Just wanted to hang out. We had the best time. We had the best time. We went to Kelowna and we rented a boat for the day. We were just fucking having a blast, man. Just living it up.
00:23:22
Speaker
We went mountain biking at Silver Star Mountain in Vernon. We went mountain biking for the first time in the mountains. That was such a crazy experience. Anyways, I ended up coming home and I was pulling into the gym one day and a sister calls me and she's like, Taylor passed away.
00:23:48
Speaker
And he overdosed from fentanyl in cocaine. And just like that. I was just talking to him like two days prior, telling him that I was buying a car and, you know, we were chatting with everything. And it was so fucked up because Mac Miller passed away from fentanyl six days before he passed away.
00:24:17
Speaker
And he was literally no word of a lie. He was, he was telling me that like, he didn't want to do that stuff anymore. And like, you know, he wants to live a better life and get more healthy. And look, we're talking to Jim and all this stuff. And, um, six to six days later, he passed away. Like to me, that's, it's so fucked up. It's so fucked up.
00:24:46
Speaker
It's really fucked up, so. I know we're getting off topic, we're talking about drugs and stuff like that, but like, that Spetanol is, it's in a lot of drugs, and you really don't know, you really don't know where you're getting your shit from. A lot of, and I've heard this so many times before, oh yeah, I know where I'm getting my stuff from, you know, I trust my guy.
00:25:13
Speaker
Okay, where is he getting it from? And where is he getting it from? And where is he getting it from? Like, do you sit down and test every single drug that you take? No? It's scary shit. It's scary shit. And then people just take a chance just to have a good time. Right? That's why I like mushrooms. Because they grow from the fucking ground and not laced with fentanyl. And
00:25:41
Speaker
It brings positive things to your life. I've done a lot of large doses and it just brings nothing but positive things in my life. I appreciate things so much more. But I don't want to get off topic of Taylor right now. The reason why I brought that up is because when that happened, that's when I was like, holy shit,
00:26:08
Speaker
Life is so short and I'm going to start living it and I'm going to start doing this. But look, it almost took that to happen to me, for me to open up my fucking eyes. And that's, it takes that for most people, right? You know,
00:26:29
Speaker
It shouldn't take that.
Promoting Open Mental Health Dialogues
00:26:30
Speaker
It shouldn't, it shouldn't take someone's life being taken from you for you to open up your fucking eyes and it shouldn't take, you know, someone like Twitch to pass away and everybody start talking about mental health and everyone start sharing about mental health. Like continue to do this, right? If you see, if you see something online talking about mental health, share the video. If you have your own personal experiences about mental health and
00:26:56
Speaker
Maybe like you, you bad, you battled depression or you had like severe anxiety and like, just fucking talk about it. Talk about it. No one's going to judge you. If anything, people are going to look at it and relate to it and appreciate that you, that, that someone else is going through what they're going through. And you know, maybe they'll open up to you and talk to you about it. You know what I mean? So anyways, guys, um,
00:27:27
Speaker
Rest in peace to tWitch. Rest in peace to Taylor. And just be nice to everybody. Just be nice. Just be nice human. Keep spreading the message about mental health. Keep talking about it. Keep being there for your friends. You see them going through a tough time. If you're going through a tough time, just open up.
00:27:57
Speaker
open up to your friends, you know, even if you're not going through a tough time and they say that they're good, just fucking bring up the conversation, talk about it. Maybe that will like open up something, right? So anyways, I hope you continue to spread the message and we'll see you in the next podcast.
00:28:27
Speaker
Thanks.