Eben Britton's Comeback Story

00:00:10 Speaker 1: Welcome back, everyone to another episode of Comeback Stories. Grateful to be here with my co host Donnie Starkins as always, who's remote today, but I feel his energy and feel his love from across the way. We have an amazing guest with us here today, a man who has a brother of mine in the NFL, A six year NFL veteran, really in the trenches, the offensive line, but who is now so much more than that. Just a health advocate, a yogi, a podcast host, a cannabis advocate, I mean, you name it. It's hard to, you know, box this guy into one particular thing, but he's a man who is really wanting to push forward into the lives of people and help them grow, help them be the most authentic selves. We'd love to welcome Evan Britten to the show. Evan, thank you for being here. Man, Darren, thank you so much, Donnie, thank you, guys. It's a I appreciate the invite. I love I love, I love everything you guys do. And Darren, I'm a big fan. I've been a fan since I think since you've just exploded on the scene the last few years man, and everything you've been doing on the field and knowing your story off the field. I think it's amazing what you've been able to do, and it's only the beginning for you. Man like able to to watch a guy, a young guy, come into himself to have the awakening that you've had during your football career. You're you're setting yourself up to do brilliant things in life beyond football, and it's super awesome to see that. Man, So thank you for inviting me, and I really appreciate being here with you guys. Wow, man, thank you, thank you for saying that. Wow, I say, you don't have to say anything, just keep doing your thing. Thank you. Man. I was thinking about this because initially we were all three going to be in person, and then I was on a flight. I was on a plane. I wasn't on the flight yet, but I was on the plane about an hour and a half ago, and the plane wasn't going to make it to the interview so to Vegas. So I got off the plane, deplaned and jumped in the car and ran back home. But I was thinking of a couple things if we were going to do this in person. One between your two voices, Evan and Darren's voices, I mean, there's some pretty epic radio voice going on. And I was also thinking about that post picture. Just two really really big dudes, and Darren and I take pictures all the time together and I always feel so so small next to him. So the next time in person, which we will do this in person for sure, will make that happen. But it's dude, it's great to have you here. Man. I've been following you for a while and just I don't know you speak my language, and so much of your story is what we want to dive into here. So start us off and just tell us what was growing up for you, like you're gonna start with the big one always. I love that, man, Thank you, Johnny. I appreciate that a lot. Growing up. I was born in New York City, lived in Brooklyn until I was ten years old. Parents got divorced when I was seven. My mom moved my brother and I out to Los Angeles when I was ten. You know, I was I grew up in a family of artists and athletes. And I was saying this earlier. I did a podcast earlier, and it's funny to think about how so many aspects of my life are this middle way the essence of the middle Way. There's a great there's a great astrology book called the Book of Birthday, I think, and it's a huge book. It's got every single day, it's got all the astrological signs and these really in depth readings about all the zodiac signs and literally a breakdown of every single day. And my birthday's October fourteenth, which is the day of moderation. And that's truly been the essence the spirit of my life is going through the middle way and always finding myself. Throughout my life, I've lived in one extreme and the other. I've lived you know, with in you know, with no money, I've lived with a lot of money, and always it's always been like finding my way back to the middle. And I grew up in this family of artists and athletes and which blessed me with a lot of gifts. I've two very holistically minded parents who believe food is medicine. Move your by, drink plenty of water, find whatever natural means are available before going to a doctor to be prescribed some sort of medication or another. Both of my parents are artists and yogi's to say the least. My mother's a master body worker. My father's an artist, a painter, who both have very disciplined personal practices, and that was such a gift for me as a child to watch that, you know. And simultaneously, there was a lot of darkness in my childhood, a lot of alcoholism, a lot of mental health, a lot of depression. I come from a family of people who believed, who have believed, that life has got to be really hard, and you've got to do it the hard way, and it's going to be a grind and toll of problems. We go to war, and that that was truly a blessing, as it pertains to me reaching the NFL sometime around there, I was seven or eight years old. My parents had been divorced. I found myself in just immense pressure, you know, my my parents were separated. I was the oldest son. I had a little brother. He was three years younger than he is, three years younger than make us. And so when that occurred, I really took it on my shoulders to be the head of the household, you know, the alpha male of my home. And that's really that's a lot to put on a little seven year old kid, you know. And I remember It was one summer in the custody agreement. Thank god it was arranged. My brother and I we'd go up to my grandparents' house in Connecticut. We lived in Brooklyn, New York. In the summers, we'd spend the entire summer up in Connecticut with my grandparents and my three uncles, and we'd literally play sports from sun up to sundown. Whatever it was. We'd go out to the park and be shooting hoops or playing football, or throwing the baseball, hitting baseballs, playing golf, whatever it was. It was just sports and movies and books and this really just rich experience growing up. It was so rich. It was such a blessing to be able to have that, to be able to escape that that heaviness in Brooklyn. And you know, there were still the issues, and it was still this environment of we go to battle to solve problems, we go to war. You know, there's a lot of shit talking. There's not a lot of grace, there's not a lot of space for you know, talk about we don't cry over spilled milk as being you know, saying that was never heard at our home, you know. And I remember it was one summer I was probably eight years old, and I'm watching the news and the Jets and the Giants and training camp come on the TV, and this seed was planted in my mind of that's what I want to do when I grew up. That's what I'm gonna do, to transcend to this darkness that I found myself in, this heaviness, this intense chaos that I had been grew up, that I grew up, and that I was groomed in that i that I lived in, and my mom would never let me play football. Finally, my freshman year of high school, my mom lets me. With the help of my dad, I convinced her to let me play. And it was just like this straight line rocket ship to the moon. Just everything I did, how I carried myself, how I lived, how I ate, how I trained, I lived and carried myself as though I had already made it to the NFL. And everything I did, every single moment of my life, was in alignment with achieving the stream of playing in the NFL. And then finally, one day, when I was twenty one years old, I was a redshirt junior left early from the University of Arizona and was drafted in the second round, thirty ninth overall by the Jags. And in two thousand and nine, and you know, going back to that idea of it's always got to be hard, you got to do it the hard way, you know, my football career, looking back, while it was an incredible adventure of immense highs and immense lows and achievement and success and failure and all of the stuff, and such an incredible warriors journey that I went on. My football career was essentially me doing everything I could to prove to the world how big and scary and to be feared I was, and to validate myself as a man, and to validate myself as a human being beyond just a man, you know, and to prove my worth. And I destroyed myself in the process of that back surgery, shoulder surgery, torn ligaments all around my body, my appendix exploded. My last year in Chicago, had to have an emergency appen deck to me. Had back surgery that was then there was an infection in the disk. After the surgery, I was paralyzed from the waist down for about six months. Basically had to one step at a time learn how to walk again. Started you know, I could barely get up off the couch before I would collapse because my legs would give out underneath me, you know, So dealing with all of that pain and trauma, though, it really set me up for everything I was actually destined to do with my life. Everything I'm I'm built for everything that all of these gifts that I was given throughout my childhood of experiencing mental anguish, alcoholism, depression, all of the things that come with the addiction disease, and learning about who I was as a human being, as a man underneath all of that, and that took a lot of time, you know, one step at a time, baby steps really, you know, in twenty so I retired in twenty fourteen from football, and it was this roller coaster ride of relief. Like Darren, you just finished the season, And that was always such an immense feeling of relief when the season came to an end, because you just worked so hard, no days off for like the last eight months, right, You've just been non stop grinding, giving it everything you have, pouring blood, sweat and tears. And maybe the season went well, maybe it didn't go well. You know. For me, I was on very few teams that we had a good season, that we had a season that really felt like a success. And I never made the playoffs when I was in the NFL, which was just it's brutal when you're on when you're on teams that aren't having success, it can really be brutal football in particular. And you know, so you come to the end of that season and it's just like you could take a deep breath, you can lie to you could take a moment and take a nap. You know, like, what a fucking gift that is to have a moment to just lie down and relax. And so when it came time that you know, I saw, I just knew. And we can go into that. My last year in Chicago, a lot happened, and we can talk about that if you guys want to. But I really it was just so clear to me that I had done everything I could possibly do in football. I'd given it everything I had. And I literally was in a meeting room watching film in Chicago, looking up at myself. I'd just come back from this rupture appendix and I was starting to practice again. There are probably three games left in the season. I'm in pain from the top of my head to my big toes. I've got it pop, like you know, indocent or cataflam, just to like sit there in the chair and not to mention the adderall or whatever it was I was taking. I'm thinking myself, man, I have no killer instinct left. Like I used to want to step on the field and fucking kill people. I wanted to end people. I had so much rage inside of me that I wanted to that I had to take out on other people in the field. And I had none of it left. And I was watching myself on film and I'm looking at the d ND that I'm blocking, and I'm thinking myself, man, I used to want to kill that guy, and I have none of that left in me. That dude's my friend. I don't want to do this anymore. You know. In football is one of those games, man, if you're not, if you've got one foot in the door, you can't do it. You've got to be all in because you're gonna get somebody hurt, You're gonna get yourself hurt. And right then I knew. I was like, there's a thousand things I'd rather be doing right now than playing football, And I was like, that's it, that's it. That was it for me. So I came out of that season. Actually, there's a there's a documentary I'm a part of called Take Your Pills, which documents the story of how I failed the drug test for riddling. I was taking adderall on a therapeutic use exemption. I was out of my adderall prescription, took a guy's riddle in one day, failed a drug test, got the letter, and sometime January, the season was over, and basically they wouldn't let me appeal it, and I was hammered with a four game suspension going into the next season. And it was this moment of the universe going, It's okay to be done. It's okay to be done. Even after like the infection in my disk, which happened my third year in Jacksonville. I had back surgery, came back eleven weeks after surgery, I get hit with this infection in my disc, which literally paralyzes me from the waist down. Even then, I'm like, fuck it, dude, I'm gonna work my ass off. I'm gonna be back next year. I'm gonna have a better year than I've ever had. Next year, you know over and over again, just wheeling my way through it. It's got to be the hard way, you know. I'm gonna get it done. I'm gonna do it. I'm a warrior. This is what I do. I'm gonna show up on the field. I'm gonna give it everything I have. I'm gonna basically, I would, I would, I would die on the field. That was where I was at mentally until finally that moment in Chicago and I thought to myself, I had nothing left to give to this game, and I knew it just it was over with. And so I get that letter that I'm going to be suspended for four games, and even after that, Chicago says they're not going to resign me. At that time, I'm married, I've got a four year old daughter, and I say to my wife, I'm like, let's just move back to La I'm from. You know, it's pretty much where I grew up. I went to middle school, in high school here, my mom, my brother here, my wife's whole family was here, is here, and I'm just like, let's go back, let's set up shop, let's see what happens. So we moved back to La. I'm still getting calls. I've got calls from like the Bills, the Falcons, they want to bring me out, want to work me out. And I'd get off these phone calls and I'd start to think about it, And when I really felt into it, it was so clear to me. I thought, I can't even get on that plane. I can't even get on that airplane. So I'm just not there anymore. I don't have that. I don't have that in me anymore. And so initially coming to that realization and having the clarity about being done with football, it's just like this immense relief, like, oh my god, Wow, I'm done. You know I'm done. And it was very clear. You know, there's nothing in me that regretted any moment of that. However, that doesn't you. I was not prepared, even as a guy who, like I said, I have this background of artists and athletes, and even during my football career, I had this underlying vibration of being a writer in life after football, and I majored in creative writing at the University of Arizona, and even with that, always being a guy like during my football career, I mean, I'm team captain, I'm doing all the stuff. I was a you know, I was the guy that coaches always looked too to set the example for my teammates. Even with that, I always had this thing like I'm more than this. And I came out of football and pretty quickly I was hit with the realization of I have no fucking idea who I am beyond this game. I have no fucking clue what do I like? Who am I? Every relationship I've ever had is coming through the filter the lens of me being the superstar athlete, YB what do you want to eat? What are we doing after the game, What do you want to do tomorrow? What are we going to do next week? All of it was. Every relationship I had, friends, family, otherwise, was all coming through the lens of me being this pro football player. And so I really had to start this painstaking process of figuring out who I was outside of that. And around twenty sixteen, it was just like my entire life was coming crashing over me in a fucking avalanche, you know everything. I didn't know how to relate to my wife, I didn't know how to relate to anybody. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I realized that I had willed my way to making millions of dollars in the NFL, never had to have a real job, never had to negotiate my own self worth, never had to ask someone for money. And I'm just like, holy shit, how do I make money? How am I going to make money? I don't even know how to get a job, Like, don't I don't know anything. I know nothing. I barely know how to pay bills, you know. And that all culminated in watching myself scream into a phone at my wife saying I'm gonna kill myself or I'm gonna kill somebody as I got on the on ramp onto the one seventy freeway to drive to this CBD company I had started out in Chatsworth and from there, God bless her. My wife went to my mom and my aunt and I was just in tears and said, I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do with that anymore. I don't know what's going on with him, where he's at, how to help him. It just seems sort of, you know, in a lot of pain. And I didn't know that at the time, but by the time I got to the office, my mom called me and said, EB, how are you doing? I said, I could barely talk. I was just so choked in pain and agony. And she said, why don't you come over for dinner? Why don't you come over for dinner, have dinner with me, your aunt Martha, and your brother Gus. I said, okay. The next night I came over for dinner and my mom, my aunt, my brother, we're having dinner, just talking through everything that was going on, and you know, they basically just reminded me of our background and our family disease of alcoholism and said, eb, you know there are tools that can be helpful. Twelve step program in particular, Alcohol was never the substances were never really an issue for me. It was the thinking, you know, it's my own thinking. I didn't have a drinking disease. I had to thinking disease. And so for me, it was going to alan On. Alanon is for families of alcoholics, and my brother had been going to a men's meeting and he was like, yeah, why don't you come with me check it out, just see what's going on. And so I went in there and the first guy just started sharing. The lead started sharing, and it was like he was saying, talking about my childhood, you know, and I went in there just cloaked and darkness and heaviness and shame and guilt, and somewhere through his share, I just started bursting into tears and it was like the clouds parted, the light shine through. I could breathe for the first time in you know, a few years, maybe maybe forever, and I walked out of there with the sense that there was hope, you know, there was hope back. There was hope back in my heart, and I had some faith that something bigger than me was looking out for me. And that really just started this process of me putting myself back together and finding these tools to live a life that's full of joy and love and compassion and connectedness and everything that I've ever wanted, you know. And it was only through really hitting rock bottom and then by the grace of God finding or at least because at that time I didn't really even have the ability to pick up the phone and tell anybody I was in pain, you know, but I was just blessed. I had people around me who came to me and said, app we can help. And I just was so broken down that I was just surrendered to whatever they had to offer. Wow, I mean, thank you for going into such a great detail. Man Um, I mean just through I can relate to you, know, the pain that you've faced in the league, Um, just the exhaustion of the of the killer instinct. I feel like there's some days where I feel like I I still have it, but there are still there's some days where I'm like, I don't know, man, I don't, I don't. I'm not a guy's gonna bury somebody. I'm the over the pile and like drive their face into the dirt, like I love people, like I'm compassionate for people. And uh, I can relate to that. So much of me talk about like the indocent and all those things, and just like how much pain you're constantly in physically, and how it's there's not a day that goes by. I mean, there's a guy on the injury report, you don't even have to be on the report, and you'll have three things bothering you at least. And it's just like all all these ways of if we don't learn how to care for ourselves, we don't learn how to put ourselves first, find and identity. I feel like I'm blessed to be here because I had to crash and burn off of pills like I was an addict in my life. I went to the twelve step programs because of me. I had to go to rehab, you know, and and really be broken down and really sit there. And that gift of desperation, that gifts of despair allowed me to really step away and look at Darren Waller the person. And that serves me today because I'm now in the game and I'm like, you know, I'm gonna go out all my terms when my terms are and not feel attached to this game. I mean, of course I'm gonna miss it. It's it's taught me so much, it's exposed me to so much. But at the end of the day, it's not who I am, and it's not what I enjoy doing the most, like straight up. And so I'm grateful for you painting that picture because I don't think a lot of people have that have a picture like this of an athlete, of an NFL player that's you know, gotten to this point and you know, my dream was this, My goal was this, Like it's so romanticized in our culture of having a great goal having a great dream of being this athlete, being all this, but it's like what about the other side? Like what am I What is the cost of pursuing that goal? So anybody that I'm close to you, I like to try to challenge them as far as like okay, like this is great, like achieve these things, but like what is this for? What is the purpose behind the achievement? And you know, it can just be such a dark road it has been for me. And I'm grateful that you know, people like you can come on here and I'm learning from you. As you spoke, I'm just soaking it all in, absorbing it, absorbing just your resilience, your ability to overcome and to be where you are today. It's just like it's it's beautiful, man, Like these are the these are the things that I want to talk about. Uh, I probably won't ask you a football question on here about you know, the day and the day out of the grind? Is that the third like just the fact that you share that that's a part of your story is and how it led you into the healing like and we just want to know more about your healing journey to be honest, Like I know there's there's plant medicine involved, you know, just the overall seeking of God, Like, can you take us more into you know, what those tools are for you today? Absolutely? Man, Yeah, um, And I think that's really important, Darren. You know, it's really important what you're doing. And it's amazing to see this evolution of athletes that's happening because we are so romanticized, I mean, professional athletes in particular NFL football players are like, we're the demigods of modern of the modern world, you know, and I believe it's super important to show people the complete picture of what that is. You know, I learned a lot. I got to do this podcast with Mike Tyson called Hotboxing for a couple of years and we probably did a hundred episodes. And you know, Mike is one of the most polarized figures in the world, and he's Hercules of the modern era essentially. And you know, not only was Mike such a vicious, incredible athlete heavyweight, one of the maybe the greatest heavyweight champion of all time, and he's also such a deep thinker and such a profound has such a profound heart. I mean, getting to spend time with him I learned so much about myself and really came to terms with a lot in myself that I wouldn't have otherwise recognized had it not been for coming into contact with a guy like Mike, who is this epitome ultimate alpha male character who was also extremely sensitive, vulnerable, and willing to share his pain. And that was really the journey we were on, you know, I was in some ways shepherding him through coming into terms with a lot of his darkness and his pain. And at that time I met him, like coming out of my first ayahuasca ceremony, So I had really learned so much about myself and come into so much wholeness with myself. And then I got introduced to Mike, and he was in a pretty dark place when I first met him, and then we were able to go on this journey together and all along the way just like learning from each other, supporting each other, giving each they're insight and feedback. And that's why it's just that's why this matters, you know, sharing our story, sharing our pain, sharing our experiences, And really that's the only thing I've ever been interested in doing, you know, is just sharing my experiences of what I've been through the pain, the suffering, the darkness I've experienced, and the tools that helped lift me up out of that. And essentially those tools, you know, I wrote a book. I published my first book beginning of twenty twenty two, the EBB and Flow Basic Tools to Transform Your Life. And essentially it's it's my story from childhood through the NFL, how I emerge from my football career completely mentally, emotionally, physically destroyed, and then the tools I used to put myself back together again. And there's a little bit of what I shared with you guys just a minute ago. And like I said, I was I was blessed by having two holistically minded parents. So these things, the blueprint was there, it was available to me. I just I had forgotten a lot of it, you know, Like my mom was taking my brother and I to yoga classes from the time I was ten years old, you know, and I did yoga for much of my football career until my back injury essentially in the NFL. And I just I was in so much pain, I wanted nothing to do with yoga. You know. I had a herniated disk in my back, those creating excruciating psiatic nerve pain down my right leg, making my right foot and numb, and I wanted nothing to do with down dog or anything like that. You know. So only when I was completely broken down and had to start putting myself back together again did I go. You know, I used to do yoga and then I found my way back to yoga in twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen, and first of all going back to alan On and twelve step program. You know that group work twelve step programs in particular. You know, it's called a spiritual program, and there's a reason for that because it breaks down the spiritual awakening process into twelve steps and it's super accessible, and it basically has to do with recognizing coming into acceptance of where you are. Your life has become unmanageable. The tools that have helped you survive for however long, they're no longer working, and your life is completely unmanageable. You're thinking, your thoughts, your emotions, your relationships, your behaviors have become totally unmanageable, and it's not working for you anymore. Your life is starting to basically the train is coming off the tracks. So recognizing that, okay, that's happening. Great, let's recognize that that's okay. Then you get to recognize that there's a higher power. You don't have to believe in God, you don't have to be religious, just recognizing that there's a higher intelligence, a higher power that's always been here for me. I feel like, as well, that's another place that I've really been blessed from the time I was a little kid, from the moment I was conscious, however long ago that was. And I feel as though, you know, I've memories that I won't I've memories of like being in our apartment in Brooklyn and I took a dump on the floor, like that's how little I was, Like I was probably still in diapers, you know what I mean. And I was running around the apartment naked and shit on the floor, like that's how early. That's one of my earliest memories. I must have been three, three years old, four years old maybe at the time, at the oldest, probably around three or something like that, maybe even a little younger than that. And for as long as I can remember, I knew there was like this divine guidance, there was something outside of myself that was moving me through my life and guiding me and protecting me, and so recognizing that there was a higher power wasn't that big of a stretch for me. It was actually really welcoming and nourishing for me to remember that, like, hey, I'm not alone. You know there's something there, there's something beyond me that's got me, that's got this. So recognizing that and then really it's like taking an inventory of your life, like all the shit that you've been through, all the mistakes you've made, all the harm that was done to you, all the harm you've done to others, Just taking inventory of that, getting really clear on that what's happened, Because then you can take accountability for your life. You can become accountable for your for everything you are and everything you want to be in your life, everything you have been, you become accountable in your life. That's really one of the things that modern culture is somehow it's convincing people not to be accountable, not to take accountability for their lives, and it's the fucking quintessential peace to living your life in your highest greatness is to being accountable, and that starts with being accountable to yourself. It's the number one thing. So you take accountability. Then you get to make amends. You get to make amends for all of your hurts and the damage that you've caused. You get to forgive, to come into forgiveness. Super powerful things, super powerful because these start to fill the godhole when you start this work, you know, this really starts to fill the godhole. We're all, we've all got somehow along the line, we get convinced that we're not enough, we need something else. That's why we take the drugs, that's why we go to the fucking strip clubs. That's why we seek out the sex. And you know, dude, I mean, you know, that's why we're all. We're trying to fill this hole, the food, but whatever it is. We're trying to fill this god sized hole because we've decided, or we've been convinced that we're not enough just as we are. And so you start to fill this hole with all of this good stuff, with accountability, with forgiveness, with making amends, and then you get into service, and you get into service and you really become a service to your life. And that that was a big that was an interesting realization to have for me because I come from this family, you know, and very common in that type of environment, A very common misconception is to be a martyr or to self sacrifice, And there's a big difference between self sacrifice and being of service. Are you sacrificing yourself or are you being of service in the situation and learning and that really comes with learning how to draw boundaries, to create boundaries in your whole life, which was another thing that was just a miraculous transition for me to realize, I have no idea how to create boundaries, just say yes to everything, get steamrolled. Then I get so pissed off I explode on somebody because I didn't set the boundaries. I wasn't being accountable to myself, I wasn't living in integrity with myself and having the inner strength, the inner courage to set boundaries when they needed to be. Learning how to say no to things, which allows me the opportunity, which has allowed me the opportunity to be to actually be in service in my life. So you be in service and then somehow you have this spiritual awakening all through that, it's all just part of the process, and maybe it's many spiritual awakenings along the way, and for me, it definitely has been that. You know. It's like you jump, you take that leap of faith into the unknown, and you find yourself and it's a miracle and there's your life totally opens up and it becomes so big. You couldn't even possibly have imagined it could be so amazing and big and beautiful and miraculous. And then all of a sudden you realize, oh, there's another leap to make, and another leap to make, and you just keep making these leaps of faith into the unknown, you know, and it's uncomfortable, and you're going through your fears and you're facing all the shit, all of your darkness, over and over again. You're just facing it over and over again, and it becomes easy year and it becomes you know, and then it comes in different forms, and you're always being challenged by God, by the universe because it's constantly happening, it's constantly moving and changing and shifting. You're constantly being challenged to face your fear, face your darkness, step into the unknown. And usually that's all it is. It's just like, oh shit, I don't know what the outcome of this might be. However, something in you is telling you that's the leap you got to take right there. That's the next step that you have to be willing to take to take your life to the next place. And you know, so the Alanon brought me into group therapy, brought me into the spiritual work. This spiritual work is like I just laid out there and I started going to therapy. It was in therapy my therapist said to me, you know you might like meditation. You thought about meditating, and I had to laugh because I'm thinking myself. My brother has said to me, eb you should meditate about a thousand times and I've said, nah, fuck that, dude, I don't have time for that. And of course here I am, and I just go, okay, I'll try meditating. And she turned me onto this app that doesn't exist anymore. Unfortunately. It's a great app. And I just every morning i'd wake up, I'd wake up about five o'clock in the morning, I'd get i'd take my dog, I'd grab my phone, I'd turn on this app. I'd put in a guided meditation. I'd just go for a walk. And every morning, little by little, I'm tapping into this infinite space, this infinite stillness inside myself, this place of immense peace and clarity, and just little by little, I'm just starting to break down all the ship. It's like just been these walls up in front of me that I've been staring up at, these thousand foot walls for my entire life, and slowly but surely they're just starting to crumble and I'm starting to see. I'm able to see a little bit at a time, and then I can breathe. And so the meditation, it led me into breathwork, and then it led me back into yoga, and then from the yoga if I met, you know, all along the way, I'm meeting these people who are showing me the way, and I met some incredible mentors who brought me into plant medicine. First it was Combo, which is an incredible medicine which comes from the green monkey frog. It's not a psychedelic necessarily, however, it's it's an immense purging experience. A shaman burns these holes into your skin and then speckles this frog venom in and you have this incredible purging experience for about fifteen minutes. You're throwing up everything inside of you, and it's baring and mentally clearing it's almost men as like the war plans. And then from there I went and Iowa was another profound medicine, and you know, and all along the way, I'm just picking up these pieces and learning about who I am. And sometime I'm in there, I'm meeting my mentor, Van Kim Kirk Westwood, who's an incredible dude. Really, I owe a lot to Kirk for just showing me the way back to myself. And he said, Ebb, you need to learn about your lineage. You need to learn about who you are because you come from a line of mystics and shamans and witches and people who have this is in your blood. I'm like, really, Literally two days later, I get a letter from my grandmother. Her name's is Stelle Parsons. She's an Academy Award winning actress, and she says, EBB, I want to share with you about your first American ancestor, a woman named Mary Bliss Parsons. She came over to America and about sixteen forty she was on trial for witchcraft three times. She had eleven kids. One of them was named Evan. He was killed in a battle with Native Americans. She had all these feuds or all these books written about her, and I started reading these books and about this woman, Mary Bliss Parsons, and she lived to be somewhere in her eighties. And I got to share this information with my mom and my aunt, who, for whatever reason, my grandmother never shared any of this with And it really was this very healing moment for our family, because you know, the dark side of mysticism or ancient knowledge is that if you don't have any recognition of it, the dark side of it is it turns into addiction because you go seeking God, you go seeking spirit in substances, because that seems to be the only route to fill this void that you're feeling, this craving for the unseen realms, for tapping into spirit essentially, and so being able to give that that information to my mom and my aunt really filled a big void for them and helped them put some pieces into two things that they had experienced in their life, you know, dealing with alcoholism and drug addiction. And my mom, God bless her, she's forty years sober at this stage. My aunt was, you know, she was on the other side. She was an allen On like me, and she is an Alan on like me, and you know, it was just it's been a very healing experience. And all I can say is that it's been a testament to me letting go of the reins and following the guidance of spirit of my highest self, allowing that to shine through rather than fucking just wheeling my way through it all, just bulldozing my way through life, you know, wreaking havoc here, destroying things there, making a complete mess of my life, in which of which I would have to at some point remedy and make an amends for. You know, I don't know if I answered any of your question, but that's a little bit of it. Following you for a while. I've always known that this conversation, I don't think we've Darren, I'll maybe speak for both of us that we've never had a guest that's probably more aligned with our path, our message, and our mission and what you're doing. And I think about the similarities to my background, which our guests probably know. They've heard Darren and I story, but maybe you haven't heard mine. So my parents also divorced when I was seven, played college baseball at your arrival at Arizona State, had a massive surgery on my knee senior year. I know, I don't even really care anymore about that viral at all, actually, but yeah, so I had a massive surgery and that surgery sent me down a long road of addiction. The surgery was what I blamed blamed it on, you know, cadaver transplant on my meniscus, my fifth surgery on my left knee, eighty percoset a week for a month straight. Doctor cuts me off cold turkey, and so I'm thrust it into this world of non baseball. And instead of having any kind of tools to deconstruct like this athlete identity, I didn't. When I got into rehab years later, I got really curious on what the fuck happened to my life. And when I got honest and took ownership like you said, and stopped blaming the doctor who screwed me over and you know everybody else that didn't understand it was I didn't want to feel the emotional pain of the loss of baseball, the love of my life, the only thing I ever knew, And so that ownership and I'm so thankful fiction today because it streamlined me into this process where you talked about it with yoga, Like my mom's the one that got me into yoga, and she I was dying in my addiction and she would say, you need to go to yoga, and I would say, yogas for girls and hippies. I'm not doing that. Ship. And then I went once and I knew I would do it the rest of my life. And then I became a yoga teacher and I've been teaching ten years now, and so just the paths are so similar in so many ways. Yeah, I'm just really resonating with your story, your ability or story, and I know just this is going to be a two part series, so maybe the next one we can get you in person, so so we can have the next fifteen minutes on this session or so too continue talking because we're just scratching the surface right now. Thousand percent. Dude, I'm there man. I want to come hang with you guys in person for sure. Yea. I think the other pieces Darren and I are, you know, have this identity, especially as we started this journey with comeback stories of sobriety and a year ago, about a year ago today, I tapped into the plant medicine world and did my first psilocybin journey and since then have done a couple of combos, couple of Buffo ceremonies, a couple of those that were together. I've heard you share your stories with combo, and I also enjoy the medicine of rape um. So it's just interesting that we're able to even like you speaking twelve steps and you really being able to explain the twelve steps better better than I did through a different program involving alcohol, but being really hits some point. There's sober people that came before me, a friend, the Lukes stories that gave me permission to do the same. So I love that we're diving in and talking about this and really just the transformations that it's had in my life personally have been like years and years, one hundred years of therapy couldn't have gotten me or what I've gotten through these medicines thousand percent. Man, It's really it's profound that there's really a coming back together that occurs. You know, it's hard to explain because you're not any different. You know, before I did ayahuasca, I was like there was a part of me that was really afraid. I was like, fuck, am I going to be even recognizable. Am I going to be the same person when I come out of there? And really, what it does is it just peels away all the shit that's unnecessary, and it crystallizes who you are, and it brings you into recognition and reconciliation with who you are, who you truly are. And there's a wholeness that comes with that, you know, there's this there's a wholeness that is cultivated through those medicines that nothing else really does other than meditation. Honestly, I mean meditation. If everybody did minimum ten minutes of meditation every morning, we'd live in a much different world, you know. But a lot of people just you know, and I've been having this conversation with a buddy mind a lot lately. We live in a really interesting time where people are because our perception of reality is based on the belief matrix that exists in our subconscious mind, and that belief matrix is built on all the conditioning that we've been programmed with over the last however many years, since we were little kids. It's a lot of input from parents, school authority, figures, religion, society, culture, advertising, marketing. All this stuff has been taken in by our subconscious mind, and we have this, We literally view life through this belief matrix, this matrix of belief, and that dictates our perception of everything we see here, feel, taste, touch, smell, all of it comes through this belief matrix of how we perceive life to be what we think it is supposed to be. And there is nothing that can obliterate that belief matrix, like plant medicine, like psilocybin, dmt LSD, any of these things. They just obliterate that subconscious belief matrix because you're walking around and you're perceiving things in a very specific way that you're not even conscious of. And the only way, sorry, if you guys keep hearing that dinging, I'm getting text I hate that, like laptops in the Phone's okay, good. So we're going around experiencing life through this belief matrix and until the only way to tap into your subconscious essentially is to experience discomfort and to be uncomfortable, and because then you get to see these triggers, your triggers start to arise. Like That's why I'm a devote essentially of hot yoga. I go and I do, I teach it. I take it. Bakram is what it used to be called. I don't know what we call it anymore. It's a profound practice because it's ninety minutes in a one hundred and five degree room with fifty percent humidity. The moment you step into the room, you start producing stress hormones adrenaline and cortisol. Your amygdala starts firing the center of fight flight freeze fix. Your amygdala starts going haywire. You get on your mat, you start doing breathing exercises praniyama, six seconds in, six seconds out. You deactivate your amygdala, you activate the prefrontal cortex, the center of the executive decision making, the godhead, and you're able to cultivate resilience and space in your nervous system. And so that's one pathway. Psychedelics, plant medicine or another pathway, because they literally plunge you into discomfort, and yes, of course sometimes it'll be a super blissful, beautiful, amazing, love filled experience. However, why it works is because it plunges you into discomfort and adversity and challenge, and you have to face all of this shit, your darkness. How do you react? When shit gets really heavy, ice tubs or another great thing, Darren, I wish that I knew what I knew now and when I was playing football. So I just get into the ice tub up to my neck for three minutes rather than sitting up to my waist for like fifteen minutes, which was a complete waste of time, you know. And so you get to go in there and you get to confront your darkness. You get to conf runt your beliefs about who you are, what you are, how it's supposed to be, what it's got to look like, all this shit, and you get to unravel it. You get to dissolve all that shit, and you get to be really clear about what is who you are. How do you want to spend your time? There's no greater commodity that we have than time, beyond money, beyond anything. Time. How do you want to spend your time? I don't want to spend a moment doing anything that does not enrich my life. It does not enrich and nourish my heart and soul. I just don't have time. I don't have time for it, you know. And when you get really clear, you start to recognize that it's like so it's like, what do you want to spend your time doing. I want to spend my time with my loved ones, with my friends. I want to spend my time doing really fucking purposeful, meaningful work. And outside of that, you know what else is there? Which is interesting with the meditation, which a common response is, as I also teach meditation, is I don't have time to meditate, which is I get that answer because that's probably what I used to say, But it's this is what actually gives us more time because it's it all comes back to what you're saying. It's awareness and having the awareness to know of where you're wasting your time. And so what meditation actually does is it gives you more time and it completely opens up your perspective in your life because you start to see and you're aware of the things you can't control, the things that are stressing you out, and so you actually get so much time back thousand percent. It's such a I mean, that's the that's such the ultimate selling point of meditation. It's such an important point. Dude. I totally agree, and it has been that for me. It's like it's like it's like our same thinking mind it's that those The reason we don't want to meditate is because of the thinking, all of those that internal negotiating. I don't have the time. I well, the other common responses, I can't meditate. My mind never stops thinking. My response is always nobody does. So you just give your mind something to focus on, right, And so, Yeah, the madness of the mind and what it can talk us into or out of doing is quite interesting, but it always comes down to awareness thousand percent. Now, I love that. I totally agree. Darren. How's your Darren? How's your meditation practice these days? Darren's pretty dedicated. I mean he's dialed into the work and the morning routines like nobody I've ever seen before mornings. I've been on twenty minutes a morning for a minute. Now. Now the season's over, I'm like, you know, let's let's get like at least two twenty minute blocks, why not three? Why not sixty minutes a day? Like, I like, there's there's nothing really really stopping me right now. So I'm really just enjoying the fact that I've been that consistent, because there's been ebbs and flows over the years. You know, I've been consistent for a large part of it, and there's some parts of it where I'm not asked excuse some creaming. To my mind, it's like, oh, man, like, I'll put a time limit on my morning routines because I gotta get to football, or I gotta get to this, or I gotta get to that. Like so I'm really like putting my practice, putting my daily healing and processing and reflecting on a timer, which is you know, I can't put a timer on my heal and I can't put a timer on my growth. And I feel I feel that sometimes amidst trying to navigate my career, but in seasons like this, it's it's just incredible to be able to sit for that long and just like, man like, I'm like, I haven't done this in a long time. I'm sitting this consistently for this long and bring it into the evening as well, like it's it's really been. It's really been paying off for me, especially with this trying season that just was This is why it's why I fucking love you. Man. You know you're different and even though being different used to be your core wound and now being different is your superpower that most would probably cut back on their meditation practice because a lot of people's intention of meditating would be to get good at football. Like I'm going to meditating, get focused so i can perform where you understand that meditating is about getting good at life, it's not about getting good at football. So you're actually extending your practice out, which is just so beautifully said. Right, I'll be in there if I'm not, I'll be in there taking everything personal. I'll be demanding that I get this from these people. I get these opportunities, yea, better throw me the ball this many times. And it's just like there's no way to approach anything because I'm trying to, like like everyone's saying, like, impose my will on things and bulldoz my way into what what I think will make me feel better about myself, which really will not. Is really just an empty longing and an empty chasing for things outside of me that are gonna I think are gonna make me feel better. So it's uh, whenever I come back to that, the dog feels me on that one. But yeah, anytime anytime you know that I'm not looking outside of myself as really when it's serving me the most and I've really felt that my meditation lately. Barking on the truth. Dude, you're so far ahead, man, You're so You're fucking light years ahead during It's amazing, Man. I love that. Just keep going, it's gonna be like the sky. Other galaxies are not even the limit, bro. You know. And I've been meditating every day for the last basically since twenty sixteen, so like six seven years every day meditating, and that discipline pays so many dividends, and things start to happen in your perception of reality that you couldn't even possibly imagine. Becoming a better listener, becoming more engaged in relationships, able to communicate yourself more clearly. You know, everything that I am here, everything that I'm able to do on any podcast or anything that I do, it's all because I've just dedicated my life to getting fucking clear. And meditation is the key element of that whole process. Because yes, the plant, medicine, ceremonies, the yoga, it's all good. Those are these blocks of time, you know, These are these one these segments of experience that show me things, give me information, bring me clarity, clear out the well, so to speak. But the daily practice of getting getting into that stillness, getting into that space of peace and quiet, like that shit transforms who you are. It literally transforms who you are and how you show up in the world. And there's nothing more powerful than that nowadays, man like, we need we need people who are engaged and present and showing up compassionately in the world, you know, especially fucking big men, big alpha male men. You know, men in particular. We've been bamboozled into this, this this strange idea of what masculinity is, you know, and the truth of being a king, of living in your divine masculine is being the fucking mountain. Dude, You're still You're unshakable no matter what chaos comes your way. You're fucking unshakable. You're immovable. You can endure, you can hold the space for whatever chaos, storm, whatever comes your way. You're able to hold the structure of the universe with your presence. And you do that benevolently, You do that compassionately, you do that lovingly, and you shine a light. So everywhere you go, into every room you step into, every place you go, you're just this beacon of fucking light that people are just like they don't even know what to do because they've never seen anything like that. They've never seen that combination of immense physicality with incredible inner stillness and peace and grace. Like it's just like it's perhaps the most powerful combination you can possibly imagine. And that comes from having the daily practice. You know. It doesn't just happen, you know. You know, dude, you've been through You've been through ship, you've been through hell to get to where you are right now, you know, And it's a testament to who you are that you keep showing up that way, you keep showing up as you're explaining that. I was just looking at, you know, two big, big dudes that really embody everything that that you're explaining right there, and it's I mean, you can hear it whether you're listening to this on audio or you're watching it on video. I mean, you've got some pretty two big, massive dudes that also embody this feminine quality that really balances out to be the mountain. And I think a lot of it comes back to this place of the middle ground that you talk about. I always like to say the middle ground is the holy ground, that place of neutrality in the middle where we can you know, not be you know, wavered or pushed off kilter too easily. Which it always all comes back to the practices, the habits and the rituals, which is like the essence of self love and keeping yourself accountable. I think a lot of people talk about self love and all these like you know, pedicures and body work, but it really is comes down to accountability. It's keeping the promises you make to yourself, to your habits and your rituals. Because you slip from those habits, you become so much more vulnerable to the noise, the internal noise and the external noise. But when you keep those promises, you become unshakable, like you're talking about and and me is and just for context again, like Darren and I, I started as Darren's coach and we became just really close friends and started this podcast, And but I look at him and just so fucking consistent with the work in his journal and his notebook that if you're again just listening, you can see it like always taking notes and dialed into his practices and hearing you and your words and how you explain. This is a direct reflection to the dedication to the work, the work becomes a labor of love and the labor of love lifestyle, and this is just how we roll. That's right, dude, A thousand percent, no doubt. Well, Evan, man, I'm It's just like, there's so much more. I feel like we could dive into as far as your purpose, as far as how you show up, how you serve, the benefits of you doing your practice, and how that shows up in the world. And with the part two, we'd love to dive more into that, into what you're doing, into what you embody on all the different platforms that you take the stage on. And but yeah, man, just for today, I say thank you. I appreciate you for being vulnerable, showing the greatest skill that a man could possibly display. In my opinion, that vulnerability, the way that you stand on the front lines with it is admirable and I respect you so much and thank you for your time. Bro. Thank you, my brother. I appreciate it so much. Darren and Donnie, thank you as well. You guys are the best. And we'll definitely do a part two in person. Just let me know. I mean, I'm around, dude, so we'll figure it out. We'll get it done. And I can't thank you guys enough. Yeah, we got to do round two. We'll connect with you to make that happen and try to get a little hang either pre interview or post interview in Vegas, and we'll bring a little light to the darkness out there. Yeah, definitely, all right, Thank you brother, We appreciate you. Yes, sir, thank you guys. What's up? Comeback stories, family, It's Donnie dropping in here. So did you know that Darren and I's relationships started by me being his personal development, mindfulness and mindset coach. I want to let you know about both my one on one coaching program, The Shift, and my group Mastermind Elevate your Purpose. He's coaching programs are specifically designed for people who are ready to take the next step in their purpose and level up their career, personal finances, and have more connected, deep and meaningful relationships. My gift and part of my purpose is to help others take that next step in leveling up their lives so that they can have a greater impact on the lives of others, create success that sustainable yet evolves and grows, and help build a legacy that will outlive your life. If this is calling You just go to Donnie Starkins dot com and apply for either one of my programs.