Khalil Rafati: How Raw Foods and Juicing Saved My Life After Years of Drug Abuse | TUH #189

Most people don't want to change.

They want the outcome of what change would give them, but they don't want to go through the change.

I desperately wanted to change. I was in so much pain and there was so much self hatred that drugs just were a great solution. If you think about the fact that how many decades did I smoke cigarettes, how much poison did I shoot into my veins?

And then to be sitting in front of me right now, you look healthy, your eyes are clear, you're obviously very vibrant, you're successful. That is the power of the resiliency of the human body.

My willingness to raise my hand and have the humility to ask for help and then go work began to purify my soul.

What makes you so passionate and purpose driven is that you used a lot of juices, whole foods, nutrient dense foods to actually heal you.

I want everybody to have the same experience that I had once I started putting good in my body and stop putting bad in my body.

It is astounding what happens to human beings when you give the body the raw material it needs to do its job.

I went from feeling like a worthless piece of shit that had no value to feeling powerful.

What was the aha moment where you said, I'm going to open a storefront, I'm going to build a brand.

It was overwhelming how much money was coming in. The challenge was.

Hey, guys, welcome back to the ultimate human podcast. I'm your host, human biologist Gary Brecke. Where we go down the road. I'm of everything anti aging, biohacking, longevity, and everything in between. And you know, I always talk about how podcast, you know, the, the most powerful, passionate, most driven, impactful people in the world have solved a problem in their life. And today's podcast guest, I think has solved a problem that I pray none of you or your loved ones has ever faced and overcome it to be one of the most impactful in this industry. And I, I can't wait to run this podcast with him. Welcome to the podcast.

Thank you so much.

Khalil Rafati, man, you know, I've, I've really followed your stories. A lot of my team members have actually read your book and found it to be really inspiring and really impactful. And like I said, so many of the passion, purpose driven folks that have come on my podcast are not the most credentialed. You know, I've had people on the podcast that have had chronic Lyme disease. Modern medicine had nothing to offer them. They became a citizen scientist, solved this problem, and now they've Cured hundreds of thousands of people of this debilitating condition. And a lot of my audience is not familiar with your story. And I think that your story of being homeless, addicted to drugs £60 later than you were right now. I can't believe that you've took 60 pounds off that frame. In a time where being homeless and I've heard you talk about this was not as popular or as convenient as it is now. You know, where they gave out needles and crack pipes and blankets and bottled water, it was a time where when you urinated, you got arrested. When you slept on the sidewalk, you got arrested. When you were dealing drugs, you got arrested. There wasn't a compassionate sort of community around to really prop this up. And it's always fascinating to me when people that don't have a mentor, parent, a family member, a figure in their life to. To pull them out of something somehow find something within themselves that turns their entire life around. Can you talk a little bit about that? That moment, that tipping point, and maybe for my audience edification, that don't know who you are. Talk a little bit about where that started and we'll talk about where the journey's gone.

Yeah. God, there's so much I want to unpack, and I'm grateful that those people, compassionate people, weren't there, because compassionate people can also become enablers. And if people were doing what they do now and, you know, giving me clothing and tents and food and money and water and clean needles and crack pipes, Oda kept going.

Yeah, it's kind of convenient.

Yeah, yeah. And I. And I. And I hate to say that, but you don't clean up unless you bottom out. And it's hard to bottom out. That's why you see all of these luxury rehabs popping up all over Florida and Malibu and all these, you know, coastal cities, because you. You have people that have unlimited funds. It's really difficult to bottom out when you have unlimited funds. So in my particular case, it took homelessness. It took being destitute. It took being completely with no. With no other option. I was brought to my knees by my own ego. I literally just kept going until the fucking wheels came off in the beginning. Binge drinking and blackout and, you know, drugs and partying and all that stuff, which led to ultimately later because it is progressive. Shooting heroin, shooting cocaine, smoking crack. I was trying to extinguish myself. I was trying to nullify myself. I was trying to do anything other than feel me. Yeah, I didn't want to be me.

Your book titles, I forgot to Die.

I forgot to die. Yeah, yeah, I, I, I was so, I was in so much pain and there was so much self hatred that drugs just were a great solution, so.

Yeah, and were they a great solution because you just, you didn't feel the pain, you didn't feel the, the loss, you didn't feel the hatred. You just were numb.

Yeah. I mean, particularly with heroin and cocaine mixed together intravenously. Because I'm a control freak, I was able to, I think, you know, maybe our buddy Andrew would probably tell us why, but control chemicals going on in my brain. I felt, I felt love, I felt peace. I felt close, I felt close to God. I felt like that I was, I was higher than a fucking kite. And it felt so good. And then I would come down and I would feel so awful. And it's just, you just keep going.

You know, I've had the fortune of working with quite a number of addicts and addicts in different categories, and I've developed a philosophy and a saying that the, the absence of dopamine is the presence of addiction. And the reason why I say that is because dopamine is this neurotransmitter that's the main driver of behavior. And when we don't have it, we seek things that reward us with dopamine. And this could be as simple as an everyday American that has a sugar addiction or as complicated as someone who has a cocaine, heroin, or narcotic addiction. And it runs the full spectrum. Workaholics, work alics, you know, compulsive gamblers, compulsive promiscuity, these dopamine seeking behaviors. And I noticed a pattern in a lot of addicts, if not all of the addicts, is that they never said, I woke up one day and said, I want to get really banged up. Yeah, they woke up one day and said, I want to feel normal. And it was like the search for normalcy. And it's interesting that you describe it that way because it's like that became your comfort zone.

Yeah.

Not your, you know, you sought that because that's where you felt normal.

Yeah, I felt I could make all the ouchies go away. And there were so many layers. There was so much trauma from my childhood. My parents were immigrants. My father was born in Palestine before Israel, and was there, I think he was 12 years old when Israel became a state or became what it is today. Wow. So he became a refugee in the land that he was born in. And regardless of which side of the aisle you're on, pro Palestinian Pro Israeli. What a horrible fucking thing to go through.

Yeah. For anyone.

Yeah, for anyone. So he went through that. My mother was abandoned on a doorstep at 4 years old by her biological mother and left with two sisters during World War II, and she was put into a work camp. So both of my parents went through an incredible amount of trauma and. And had horrible lives and had really, in hindsight, almost no business bringing someone into this world because they were so broken. I mean, they were really, truly broken.

Do you think that trauma's generational? Do you think that trauma can transcend? I mean, we know there's no gene for trauma. You don't inherit it per se. It's not transferable. But it does seem that, you know, and I've heard people talk about this a number of times, that, you know, trauma can be generational. You know, your parents went through really traumatic experiences, and now maybe that shaped the way that you deal with stress and experiences because you moved to LA to be an actor.

I did. Like most idiots.

Yeah.

Well, because I'm going to become famous and that's going to fix all my problems.

Yeah. I'm sleeping on the sidewalk shooting hero.

I mean. Yeah, yeah, that's the. That. That's. A lot of people come from the Midwest with those hopes. I think a lot of it has to do with lack of exposure to sunlight. And I'm sure you and all your friends could speak more to that, but I definitely suffered from seasonal affective disorder.

Oh, I'm a huge believer in that. I went to grad school in Chicago. Yeah, and same thing. You don't see the sun for seven months.

Toledo, Ohio, in the dead of winter is so cold and dark and miserable.

And everything's dead and gray.

Dead and gray. And God doesn't exist.

Yeah.

I mean, it is so depressing. And then you add in, unfortunately, incest and violence, whiskey, and just all of the horrible shit that was happening to me as a child.

It was.

It was. It was fucking terrible. I mean, it was a terrible. I'm laughing because it almost sounds like I'm describing a book, but I've done so much work on it that it doesn't. It doesn't grab me like it used to. I've done. I've done a tremendous amount of inner child work. Every Wednesday for 90 minutes, I work with somebody and I've healed a lot of that. Epigenetic imprinting, a lot of that. Generational curses, a lot of that. There's this woman, Kimmy, in Austin, Texas, who has pretty much held my hand and walked me through a lot of those ouchies. And interestingly enough, you know, oh, whatever. Somebody touched my naughty spot. That's not why I shot heroin.

Right.

And I'm not trying to diminish what happened to me, but a lot of my real trauma came from when I was 3 years old with spinal meningitis and was dying in a hospital bed. And I never knew that. I never tapped into that. She took me back into that, and we walked through that and I went back into.

You could get into a memory of that.

Ketamine assisted therapy. Wow. Yeah. So I was able to go back and remember exactly what it was like laying in that hospital bed. First of all, where the are my parents? Why aren't they here today? Someone gets sick, the, you know, the parent is in the chair next to the hospital.

No doubt.

Not in 1973.

They drop the office.

Not in rural Ohio.

Call us when he's ready to leave.

When your parents are immigrants and they. And they went through wars of their own and they don't know any better. So, yeah, I very unfortunately remembered what it was like being alone in Toledo hospital with spinal meningitis, with them doing a spinal tap to me, hearing them whispering off, you know, like, oh, he might not make it, or whatever. That was the stuff that really fucked with me. Like, hey, I'm a child. I want someone to hold me. I want someone to. To love me. I want someone to, like, take care of me. But my father, who was extremely violent, held my mother captive. My. My mother was born a Jew, but she was raised Catholic. My father was born a Muslim, but he was an atheist.

Wow.

And my mother was this like, angelic little five foot, being so white, she was almost translucent. And she thought she could fix him. She thought she could change him. And she was st. She was suffering from Stockholm syndrome. So.

I always felt in love with your captor.

Yeah. I always felt unlovable. And I always makes statements like, I'm unlovable, I'm a piece of shit. You know, I mean, my father certainly said many things like that. But throughout much of my adult life, I felt like a worthless piece of shit. And I felt like I wasn't worth anything. Well, it turns out there's a reason for that. In a plant medicine ceremony. When I was 17 years clean and sober, I did my first plant medicine ceremony. And I actually saw why I felt like a piece of shit. It's because my mom didn't love me. Doesn't make her a bad person.

Right.

She wasn't capable of loving me, but my mom didn't love me. My mom was being held captive through Stockholm syndrome by my violent, abusive father. And, you know, he had his own set of shit and she had her shit. And here's this little boy that's growing up in the midst of that. And I felt no love. I, I didn't feel love. I didn't feel love until I was, I think 12 in my, in my first kind of like girlfriend relationship with the girl named Corey Kiefer. She was my little, my little junior high.

She might want to come back now. Things are going pretty well.

Cory, we're best friends.

Oh, you are? Okay.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We're best friends. I love her, I love her daughter.

That's awesome.

Yeah. Yeah. That was the first time I felt love, was 12 years old. So it was tough. It was really, really tough.

You know, I think it's for people that have never been an addict or known a true addict, I think it's hard to conceptualize. I mean, I think a lot of public perception is that it's a sign of weakness, that it's a choice. And you know, I, I, I, I've read a lot and, and looked into your story. You know, you went out to la, and it's sort of a slow progression to then being on the street. And at some point you, you got comfortable being on the street. But was there a community there? Like where there did you feel welcome there because other people at the same level and you could openly do drugs and nobody's judging you?

I mean, I just wanted to get high.

You just wanted to get high?

I just want to get high. I didn't want to feel like myself.

And at all costs, even if it just meant sleeping outside on the sidewalk.

When I was a child, whether it was shoplifting or vandalism or masturbating or video games, or at 10, 11, 12, drinking with the older kids in the neighborhood, taking a puff of a joint, drinking beers that were still full from my Billy Beer beer can collection. Do you get that reference? Billy Beer? Are you old enough to get that reference?

Yeah, sadly, dude, we're the same age. Oh, great.

So I had a bunch of Billy Beer because I had a beer can collection and they were full. And I would just go downstairs and just crack one open and drink it and feel kind of that warmth, which, you know, eventually the warmth came from the heroin, but in the beginning it was alcohol. I think, like with, with many people. So anything that I could do to not feel like me was what I Was looking for.

Right. Dysfunctional relationships to be present, anything to avoid being present.

Character assassination, you know, drama. I was. I was addicted to anything as long as I didn't have to feel me. Which is so crazy because right here, right now, all I want is to feel more.

Right. Me. Yeah.

I just want to feel like me.

Yeah.

So.

So it's. At some point, which is fascinating to me, you came to a tipping point. There had to. There was a point where you just raised your hand and said, enough is enough or I don't want this anymore. And somewhere in the cloud of, of addiction and not ever really being, you probably never were truly sober. You know, you had this, this epiphany or this tipping point. I mean, what was that about? Like, what?

So physically I couldn't go on. I. I mean, I had open sores on my face. I had open sores all over my body. I had scabies, I had ringworm. I was filthy. I smelled. I'm not built for the streets. It just was disgusting. I couldn't go on anymore. I didn't, I didn't. Like.

I've heard you talk about that. You said, I'm a pussy. I don't like to be dirty. Yeah, I don't like that.

Yeah, I wasn't, I wasn't like, not.

Cut out for the virtuously like, oh.

Gosh, I should try sobriety. No, Like, I was in so much fucking pain that I had to stop. And so I stopped. Reach out to Bob Forrest. Bob Forrest put me in Pasadena Recovery Center. Pasadena Recovery center kept me there, drug tested me, you know, triage. It was triage. And then eventually went to New Perceptions and there was a charity named Musicians Assistance Program maps, which is now Music Cares. They've. They've merged together.

But they.

Because I was making music and you know, doing the whole, like, want to be a rock star? Want to be an actor or whatever.

Right.

Anything, you know, to. Because that was going to fix me. If I could become a rock star, then I would.

Yeah, that would have been great. Now you would just have money in an addiction.

So they, they kept me and in, in that sober living, transitional living home. I was with a bunch of other people that were total fuck up losers. I think the word was. Is it indigent or Indigent? It's.

I think it's indigent.

Okay.

But I don't know.

So we were all like basically food stamps, like, had nowhere to go, had no family, had nothing. And which was good because you put all the fuck ups together. And then somehow, for some reason, like you can't go any lower. So we shared our cigarettes. We rolled the cheap cigarettes. We went to Smart and Final, bought the big prego things of pasta sauce and made pasta for one another. We got that horrible fucking coffee. We survived. But we used gallows humor. We made wildly inappropriate, oftentimes racist jokes at one another because everybody there was different. Black, Mexican, Jewish, Arab, white, English would actually, I was going to bring up somebody's name, but you can't. But, but there was somebody that was actually English, whose father was like a famous rock star and he was very white. And we would murderously make fun of him and call him a woman and, you know, this and gay and whatever. Nothing was off the table. We used gallows humor, dark humor, inappropriate humor, whatever the term you want to call. We used humor as a means of making it through the day. And those belly laughs were so fucking healing. All of that trauma that.

Yeah.

Pushed inside and pushed inside and pushed inside. The beginning was. The beginning of the recovery was. Was humor and laughter, which I get into a lot of trouble because I still make wildly inappropriate jokes.

Yeah.

With this whole cancel culture thing, people want to take something you say out of context.

Dangerous time.

Yeah. And it's just. And it's silly. These are just words.

Yeah.

These are not, these are not like weapons. I'm not drawing blood, you know.

Right.

So there was a bond there and we bonded together and. And strangely enough, Frank, my buddy who is my roommate, still clean and sober, he's. He's.

You're still connected to this.

He's an archaeologist. Bob Forrest, the guy who helped me get in there, he's doing fucking amazing. There's a bunch of people from early on that were just all time fucking losers that were never ever going to make anything of themselves are living these amazing lives now.

Wow. Yeah. Listen, there's what I share on this podcast and then there's what I share with my inner circle. If you've been following me for a while, you know how I hold nothing back here but my VIP community. That's where the real magic happens. Picture this. You're struggling with energy crashes, brain fog, or just feeling like you're not operating at your peak and you don't know where to get real answers. But here's what really sets this apart. You're not just getting my insights. When I have incredible guests on the podcast, VIP members get to submit questions for a private podcast segment. So that world renowned expert we just interviewed, you get exclusive access to their knowledge, tailored to your specific situation. This section is under the private podcast section in the Ultimate Human Community. And speaking of exclusive, you're getting my personal protocols, the exact tools I use for water fasting, gut optimization, and morning routines that have taken me decades to perfect. This isn't theory, this is what works in the real world. The community launches challenges throughout the year where you get direct access to me and my network of experts. It's like having a personal health advisory board for less than $100 a month. Your health is your wealth and this investment pays dividends for Life. Join the VIP community at theultimatehuman.com VIP and step into your ultimate potential. Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human podcast. So, you know, even after the addiction is dealt with, and so now you're getting sort of clear minded for the first time as you're waking up and sort of having this epiphany and really seeing the world around you for what is truly around you. And you don't have the addiction as a crutch anymore. Like to me that's almost more frightening than raising your hand and asking for help because at least you had comfort zone and something you could always go back to, which is, you know, drugs and alcohol and being in that space where you were numbed. But now you got to make something out of your life because now you're, yeah, awaken sober.

We were encouraged to become self supporting through your own contributions. That was the thing they said in, in 12 step meetings. So that was, you know, literally I had to like raise my hand and say like, hey, I'm still technically homeless. My sponsor's letting me sleep at his house. But like I need work, right? And this guy Darrell Cobb picked me up at Starbucks at 7am the next morning and gave me some, you know, manual labor to do the, the work. And my willingness to work, which I think, I think comes from jeans, I think that that polo in me, that Arab in me, that industrious kind of like my willingness to raise my hand and have the humility to ask for help and then go work, that very difficult menial labor in the very beginning began to purify my soul.

Wow.

But then I got very, very lucky. And a guy that I used to get high with who just decided one day to quit, this yogi guy named Sean who lives in la, drives a Volkswagen van the whole nine yards.

Yeah.

Vegan, you know, with the Mason van driver juice.

Yeah.

He was one of the only people to take my phone calls. And I reached out to him and I Was like, hey, man, I'm alive. I, I barely made it. But like, I'm, I'm like, I'm, I'm like a hundred thousand dollars in debt and I'm on food stamps. But like, I'm sober. I'm not doing any drugs ever again. Like, I need, I need help. And he was like, where are you? I said, I'm staying up at Topanga Skyline. He's like, I'll come visit you a couple few years, maybe six years older than me. Drove up there. Brought me mason jars of green juice and burdock juice and ginger and turmeric. Brought me pure synergy greens powder. This is 2003. Bought me goji berries, brought me cacao beans, brought me raw macadamia nuts from Hawaii and sprouts. He's a fucking hippie guy. And he brought me this stuff and I didn't like it, but I obviously consumed it because I was starving.

Yeah.

And two things happened. Number one, I immediately felt a life force.

Wow.

Coming into me. Immediately.

Because you just hadn't had nothing.

Food, nothing.

Nothing nutritious.

I all of a sudden tapped into that life force. Those sprouts that he gave me, those raw macadamia nuts, avocado. He also brought. Oh, that was another thing. He brought me avocado. And when he cut it in half and he goes, gimme that. What are you doing? I was going to throw the avocado seed away and he grabbed it out of my hand and he washed it off. And he held the avocado seed in his hand. He goes, do you see this? This is gold. This is life. This is life force. Hold this in your hand. I'm like, okay. And I held it in my hand. He's like, now go outside and throw that as far as you can into the woods and let it go. Do what it's supposed to do. It was a very pivotal moment for me. I've actually never talked about that before, but I just remember that, that, that moment, I actually felt something in that avocado seed. And I felt something as I ate that avocado and the macadamia nuts and I drank that ginger burdock, nasty tasting juice. So one thing is life. Life force entered into me. Secondly, I began to expel like nobody's business. The more of that stuff that I consumed, which kind of made me feel high in a way.

Yeah.

The more bile and. And that came out of me.

Wow.

Because my body all of a sudden was like, oh, wow. We got a hold of real nutrition.

Yeah. Some nutrients.

Let's start to expel some of the toxins. And just like any drug addict would, there was nothing special about me. I grabbed onto it and I started to chase it. And we started hanging out all the time. And any money that I could make doing menial labor, I would immediately go with him to Air1, the original Air1 and Really Boulevard. Absolutely.

Back in the.

Back in the day, back in 2003, 2004, Real Raw Live was another place in Hollywood. Giuliano's had a raw place. Now this was all vegan shit. And I wasn't a vegan by any stretch of the imagination. But it didn't matter. I was getting that life force inside of me. And eventually what happened is this lunatic named Agents opened up this place called Rawsome or like Raw Garage in Venice. And they sold raw dairy and raw butter and you had to be like a member to make it legal. And we, and so crazy that raw.

Dairy and raw butter is shady, you know.

Well, and, and, and by the way, and me, me and my buddy Elijah would go there and we would take raw liver from Amish farms and raw butter and berries and raw honey and raw cream and we would put it into a blender and we would blend it up, we would drink it. I swear to God, it felt like drugs when that shit got inside my body. It felt like drugs. And I just became obsessed. I became obsessed with it. The crazy thing, I'm a Libra, I'm insecure and I'm very vain. People started complimenting me. What, man, you look great. What are you doing? Because my face began to fill out, right? The collagen began to return to my body and the life force began to flow through me. So as any good addict would, I just fucking kept going and kept going for that. I became obsessed. So much so if anybody out there knows what Expo west is, it's the, you know, Expo west, right?

I've heard it.

Anaheim, it's the biggest. Whole Foods, health food, whatever.

Oh, yeah, Okay.

I would literally like pretend I was like somebody else. And I would sneak into Expo west, get the gift bags on Sunday because nobody wanted to pack up the. They just want to give it away.

Yeah.

So every Sunday at the end of Expo West, I would literally fill my, you know, 17 year old Volvo car with 250,000 miles on it. I would fill it to the ceiling with all of the samples that they were giving out. All of the chlorella, all of the spirulina, all of the nuts, all of the granola, all of The.

Wow.

Basically life force, the things that my body was depleted of. And it made me feel high, it made me feel good, and so I'm gonna chase that. And when I started doing the turmeric and the ginger.

Yeah, we're gonna fire these up.

Yeah.

Sun Life, by the way, is. Is your brand?

Sun Life is my brand.

Which one of these should I try first? The Fast Eddie.

I. I like the Fast Eddie. Yeah.

All right. It's green apple, lemon, ginger, and cayenne.

Yeah, it's got a little kick to it.

All right.

Yeah.

So let's try this.

So that was. That was similar to some of the stuff that. That Sean was making me do. He would also encourage me to do these cleanses.

Dude, smells so fresh.

Is that great? Ah.

Oh, that is spicy.

It's got a bite.

It's got a little bite.

It's got a bite. He would encourage me to do these cleanses where I would fast and only drink these types of juices for like five days, seven days.

Really?

Yeah. And you were able to do it? Yeah, and take psyllium husk and then we would go get colonics. And like, I got. I got weird.

Dude, this is a. That's not weird, by the way. That's healing. I mean, those things have been around for thousands of years, and it. You know, sometimes in modern medicine, we. We want to poo poo things that haven't done a randomized clinical trial, but things don't make it a thousand, two thousand, three thousand years in the practice of medicine, Chinese medicine, or any other form of medicine, Ayurveda, without working.

Right.

I mean, something that they were doing 3,000 years ago, that didn't work. It probably didn't make it to today. And so.

That's true. That's true.

I think, I think there's. I mean, we're like, you know, coming around to the benefits of dry sauna. Well, you know, welcome to the 21st century. The Finnish have been doing that for hundreds of years. So Russians.

My buddy Ryan had gone to whatever that. I don't want to disparage any religion, but whatever that religion is in Hollywood that the celebrities do.

Scientology.

Scientology. So my buddy Ryan went to a Scientology rehab and he came back and he looked great. And I said. I said, what are you doing? Because now I'm addicted now.

I do a lot of sauna there.

So he told me they would do 20 minutes of sauna, three to five minutes of cold shower, 20 minutes of sauna, and they would do rounds of it. And he said, and we would take niacin. And I'm like, niacin? I remember when I was a little.

Kid trying to lift weights.

And he goes, yeah. We would take niacin and get flushed and we would scrub ourselves in the sauna with a boar's hair bristle brush. So I began scrubbing my lymphatic, you know, my lymph nodes, my crotch, my groins. And I'm not, I'm not giving anybody medical advice. I don't know if any of this shit works or not works. I'm gonna tell you what I did to go from £109 junkie who couldn't walk from here to the door without getting winded to being 173 pound athlete that is insanely strong and vibrant and full of life.

Yeah.

These were the things I did. I did the colonics, I did the saunas. I scrubbed my body with a boar's hair bristle brush.

Okay.

I drank water first thing in the morning.

It's. Yeah, good for you.

Put salt in the water, a little bit of lemon juice, and did yoga. Sean, he's not just a yogi, he's also a masseuse. That's how he makes his money. That's how he supports himself. So he would come and he would massage me and we would laugh. And another thing, it was very healing to have a man touching me in a way that was healing me and not harming me. Because as a child I was touched for, for the wrong reasons, right? And it made me feel dirty and gross. On the streets, I would let people do stuff to me so I could get money or drugs, which made me feel dirty and gross. But now all of a sudden, I'm putting this life force into my body and my friend's coming over and he's massaging me, right? I'm doing the saunas, I'm scrubbing my lymph nodes, I'm doing colonics. I'm, you know, taking. I mean, we were, we were pounding.

God for this guy. Man.

Thank God. Thank God. Yeah.

Would seem like, you know, out of, you know, psycho is actually knew what he was doing. I mean, you know. Yep, whole foods, nutrient dense foods, you know, get your waste elimination pathways going. Onics, sauna. He's movement.

He's 63 years old now and has the body of a 28 year old. I believe everybody shredded. Yeah, he's shredded and strong and vibrant and has never done traditional medicine. So, you know, this isn't like, I don't want to say, oh, traditional medicine. Is bad or whatever it is.

But.

But I will say that the solutions that the people that were credentialed for people like me, going back to my childhood, through my young adult life and into my adult life. Narcotics, Wellbutrin, Lexapro, Seroquel, Trazodone. I mean, that. That was the solution.

Yep.

Yeah, that was. Yeah. 19. I was 19 years old when I first got pres. Xanax. So the solution was, put this into your body and you're gonna feel better. And. And. And for a moment, it works. I mean, Xanax is a bit of a panacea if you're anxious or you're on a transatlantic flight or, you know, there. There is a time and a place for things like Xanax, and there is a time and a place for things like opioids if. Especially if you're getting something amputated or doing surgery or dental work or whatever. But. But to think that we should just throw a farm. Farm. Pharma. Pharmacological. Or what?

Pharmaclo.

At. At. At someone versus addressing why that person is feeling that way in the first place.

Yeah.

I mean, 22 years later, after years of yoga, years of breath work, years of all kinds of different modalities of healing, I don't want to feel anything other than how I feel. In fact, I want to feel more.

You want to be present, which is the polar opposite of where you are.

Yes.

Y. Yeah.

I went from feeling like a worthless piece of shit that had no value and was totally unlovable to. To feeling powerful. We won't go into what we were talking about before the camera started, but do you remember when I was talking about the negotiations in my business thing?

Yeah. Yeah. That was interesting.

The man. The man that sat in that chair that felt bold and powerful enough to do those negotiations came about as a result of putting clean, healthy food into my body, lifting heavy sweating every day, getting exposure to sunlight in my eyes. So all the basic. Yeah, all the basic shit.

Isn't it astounding how, you know, we're returning back to the basics to actually find that life force within us? You know, I was on your Instagram and I saw one of the. My industry peers that I hold in very high regard. Andrew Huberman.

Yes.

At your place here in New York.

Yeah.

Urban mate. Yeah. Taking pictures and having herba mate with folks and. And I think he's absolutely one of the most brilliant pioneers in our space and one of the more authentic, you know, behind a microphone. He and I text each other a Lot. I saw him at your, your. He's a good human. Yeah, I saw him at your place and how. And, and then I started looking into your story, you know, in advance of the podcast and I was like, wow, far this guy's come to have, you know, someone like Andrew Huberman endorsing and participating and, and, you know, putting his products in your, in your stores. And now I'm starting to understand that, you know, again, what makes you so passionate and purpose driven is that you used a lot of this, you know, juices, whole foods, you know, nutrient dense foods to actually heal you.

Yes.

And I've actually had PhD MDs from Harvard University on my podcast that are treating patients with drug resistant mental illness with things like keto diets and whole food diets. I've heard and read the studies about Dr. Amen looking at the brains of ADHD children, ADD and ADHD kids and putting them on whole food diets, taking things like processed foods and grains and things out of their diets and having these dramatic shifts in 14 to 21 days, just getting those. So in your case, a lot of it was getting real toxins, real poisons out of your body, but replacing it with nutrient dense foods that are actually, I call it feeding the temple. Yep. And so was that the genesis of sun life is how sun life was born? Okay, that.

So I, I eventually, through a lot of hard work and being, as I said, I think I do think genetics, I do think ethnicity has a lot to do with it. I like Arabs and Polish people are just some of the most resilient people on the planet. When you put, when you put that together, I'm like a fucking fire hydrant, you know, it's very difficult to harm me. And, and I am very, very resilient. So I rose up in the field of recovery. I, you know, became an interventionist and a sober companion and working at high end treatment centers in Malibu, eventually opened up my own place, Riviera Recovery.

Wow.

Yeah. Was making money. I mean, hand over fist. I mean, it was insane how much money was coming in. It was overwhelming how much money was coming in. The challenge was most of the people didn't want to get better. Most of the people didn't want to change. Most people don't want to change.

I agree. And that's what they want, the outcome of what change would give them. But they don't want to go through the change.

They want their toys back.

Yeah.

They want someone to listen to their sad story.

Yeah.

But do they really want to change?

Yeah.

I desperately wanted to fudgeing change. I desperately wanted to fudgeing change. And I had just enough humility, which I struggle with, but I found just enough humility to ask for help. And addiction then became a superpower. It became a superpower.

Well, beating it becomes a superpower. Right. Because it's like, did you have this attitude like, I'm better than that. I'm not going to go back. I'm not going to.

Did I beat it or did I switch ingredients?

Oh, that's a good. That's a good point.

I don't think I beat it.

Yeah, I don't think anyone ever really beat addiction.

If you're does have a tendency to shift. You're an addict. You're an addict. That's how you're wired. I am that. That's how I'm wired. I've made peace with it. I wake up three to five times in the middle of the night and I'm obsessing about the fact that my holy cow smoothie was a little bit runny yesterday when I was at Sun Life and it's eating me alive. Three to five times in the middle of the night.

Right.

I'm fucking obsessed.

Yeah. That fixation.

Yes. Because I want everybody to have the same experience that I had once I started putting good shit in my body and stop putting bad shit in my body. Put the cigarettes away. Eventually put the process sugar away. Via Rick Rubin, who was a tremendous mentor in my early recovery. Stop putting the gluten into my body. Which I don't think it was necessarily the gluten. I think it was the, the, the, the nature of the wheat. Right. The glycosphate and all the. I'm probably so true.

Yeah, no, you're so true. My audience is well aware of that. I mean, a lot of people are not actually allergic to gluten. They're allergic to the glyphosate and the folic acid and the things that are in GMO modified crops that are mainly the gluten based crops. And because it has gluten, we've started this massive. And I think it's good to be gluten free because you're avoiding the things that are generally bad for you anyway.

Right.

Because in most of those gluten containing foods, you have the highest amount of, you know, genetically modified foods, you have the highest amount of, you know, sprayed with folic acid. You know, there, there are crops that are generally saturated with glyphosate. So there are a lot of other toxins that are on their way in. Just like we talked about before. Your. The. The old adage of I go to Europe and I lose weight eating the same foods.

Yeah.

Like a tick on over here.

Every summer. Every summer for the last. I don't know how many. I have rich friends and they invite me to Europe and I hop on their jet and I go over there and eat the. Out of pasta and pizza and.

Yeah. Olive oil and wine.

And I come back. I don't drink wine, but I come back and I'm like, this is crazy. I haven't put on any weight and I was eating like a pregnant woman. And the difference is, is because it's real food over there.

Yeah.

We don't have real food. What. What happened? And I don't know how it happened, but I know why it happened. It's greed. But what happened is all of a sudden God gave a woman the ability to procreate in her womb. A woman.

Good point.

I know. Well, because, I mean, Tim Cook might argue with me because I know there's a pregnant emoji on my phone of a man, but is there a pregnant.

Emoji of a man?

If you put in pregnant, it'll show a man. Yeah. Which I didn't ask me as a.

Human biologist that follows me.

But. Yeah. So God gave a woman that. Right. I swore I wasn't going to get political and I'm. And I'm actually not. Yeah, do it. Okay, so. So God gave. God gave women the right to procreate in their womb. And these beautiful, perfect beings come out and immediately they are just subjected to all of these horrific aborted fetal tissues and mercury and all this poison and they're just fucking. Yeah, right. Attenuated virus and then aluminum, all of that. And then, then the water that they are bathed in, that they drink is, is loaded with, with fluoride and chloramine and all this shit. The air that they're breathing is filled with all this whatever weird shit that they're spraying aluminum. The food is loaded with, with, with. With pesticides, insecticides. All this, everything is. Is designed to turn you into a domesticated animal bred for taxation. That's what happened. Wow. That's what happened.

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Yeah, it's what's fucking terrifying. Yeah, I don't want to be a domesticated animal bred for taxation. I am a particle of God. I'm a human being. I'm here to bring light to the planet. I want to shine. I want to dance. I want to do my dance. This is my dance and you're enjoying my dance. And it's not, it's not for everybody, but this is my dance and this is, this is what I'm here to do. And somehow, thank God I was strong enough to survive all of that bullshit, all of that man made and I have returned to the source, which is when you take a sip of that, you're eating the sun. That's sun life. That's the life force.

Oh, I like that.

That's the life force that Sean brought to me up at the top of Topanga when he made me hold that avocado seed in my hand, when he handed me those sprouts, when he handed me those raw macadamia nuts, when he handed me the pure synergy greens powder and the macadamia nuts and the, and the, I mean, and the goji berries. And I began to put that stuff in my body and feel that like, oh my God, I feel this life force. And like, right I am, I am so fucking strong now. I am, I'm insanely strong. I'm insanely driven, I'm insanely energetic. And if you think about the fact that how many years, how many decades did I smoke cigarettes? How much poison did I shoot into my veins? How much processed fucking food? I grew up in Toledo, Ohio, for God's sakes. Yeah, we didn't know that that was junk food.

There's so.

It was just food.

The body is so resilient. You know, it's fascinating to me. I've actually seen images of a human liver which is, you know, roughly the size of an odd shaped basketball.

Yeah.

Big, big organization. Shrink the size of your fist and completely regenerate. And I've seen fibrotic lung tissue images become non fibrotic and which we used to think was not reversible. I have seen and met people and known their stories that have healed from autoimmune cancer, multiple chronic disease, type 2 diabetes. I am fascinated and deeply believe in the human body's capacity to heal itself. And I was reading a nature journal that, you know the, the estimate of the total number of cells in the body, Some, let's say 32 trillion, 52 trillion, whatever it is, there's a lot of them every day, 300 billion cells in our body turnover. So 300 billion cells that were with you yesterday are not going to be with you tomorrow.

Wow.

And what this journal was talking about was the reason why most healing does not occur and does not become permanent. And we talk about five year survival rates and not cures, or we talk about the percentage of remission and not permanent remission is because we don't change the frequency that we send those cells. We don't change the nutrition that we send those cells. We don't help those cells eliminate, waste, repair, detoxify, regenerate, and we expect this different result. It's like the definition of insanity. Yeah, right. Doing the same thing and expecting a different result. And we think that for a period of time we're going to put a pharmaceutical or a chemical or a synthetic in the body, fix whatever the specific issue is that we need to address at that moment and then go back to bathing our cellular biology in a toxic soup and get a different result. And you can, and I think you epitomize that because I don't think there is a greater level of poison and abuse that a body could take to have shriveled to the state where you were and to. I mean, God only knows what your organs and your inside look like. If you had blood work done that.

It would have been amazing.

Like a chemical experiment.

Yeah.

And then to be sitting in front of me right now, you look healthy, you know, full of color, your eyes are clear, you're obviously very vibrant, you're successful. You made millions of dollars. That is the power of not just the human spirit, in my opinion, the holy spirit, but it is also the resiliency of the human body.

Yep.

It is astounding what happens to human beings when you give the body the raw material it needs to do its job.

100. And it's for anyone, any, anybody out there that's suffering, Anybody out there that's hurting can change. It doesn't matter how old you are. It doesn't matter what the circumstances are. Anybody can change. But I would Strongly encourage anybody, everybody, rather, to tap in to the one true source of power, and that's God. It's as simple as that. I'm not sitting here because I'm strong. I'm not sitting here because I'm smart. Quite the opposite. I'm sitting here because in 2003, on day three or four of my horrific withdrawal that, that lasted about a month, I physically dropped to my knees and I said, God, please. Meaning, like, if you're there, if you exist, God, please take this hell away from me. Those were my exact words. God, please take this hell away from me. And in, in that moment, in a, in a very real way, I felt the power and the presence of God. Now, the withdrawal did not go away, the cravings did not go away. I'm not going to bullshit people.

So you really wanted to get high? You're so, of course, crazy.

Oh, I was, I was sweating through my fucking jeans. I wanted to get high so bad. But I, I knew in that moment I felt the power and grace of our living, loving father. I felt it in that moment.

Wow.

I knew it was real. And I'm like, okay, I'm going to grab onto this. I'm going to grab onto this. Kind of like, imagine like you're in the fucking wilderness and you're fucked and it's freezing and you're going to die. But, you know, you somehow managed to get a spark and you've got that weird shit bundled up and you're fucking. Oh my God, you know, and you're trying to, like. I did everything I could to keep that spark going. Everything I could. And by everything I could, because I, I was simple and not educated. It was just. God, can you please be with me now? God, can you please be with me now? God, can you please hold my hand? God, can you please hold my hand? God, can you please. I'm scared. God, I'm scared. Can you please be with me now? Fervently, just over and over and over again, all day, every day. From the moment I woke to the moment I went, I went to bed and to, to go back into Malibu. Malibu is not a place you want to be broke. No, definitely not to go back into Malibu. Living at my sponsor's house, which I was stoked to be by the beach for sure. And I was stoked for the free rent in exchange for detailing his cars, washing the dogs, whatever, but having to go down to Sherman's Place and, and wash people's dogs as a grown man, 34, 35 year old man, I'm washing dogs, I'm washing cars. And people are walking in to drop their dogs off at this dog place, and they're fudgeing, laughing, they're pointing, and I'm in the back and I'm covered in fucking dog hair. Like, it was. It was. It was horrible to go through, but whatever it was that, you know.

Yeah, yeah.

The spark and, like, keeping it going and. God, please be with me now. God, can you please be with me now? I built this relationship with a living, loving God. Not. Not my dad's. Well, my dad didn't have a God, not with my mom's. God, because my mom got really into Catholicism as a Jew. She got very into Catholicism because that's how she was raised. So she wanted me to be into Catholicism.

Right.

Catholicism was fucking weird to me. And I had some bad experiences with some priests at St. Patrick's of Heather Downs. You know, keep an open mind, son. Like.

Right.

Yeah. Not, not. Not my jam. And I don't want to disparage any religion because all religions are great at their core, but men, everything up.

We sure do.

Men, everything.

My wife would agree with you.

Yeah. So. So I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about God. I'm talking about there's one God, like, right now, she can go look at out that window, and he can go look out that window. We can go look out that door. If we're all looking at the sun or the remnants of the sun or the rays of the sun. Right. We might call it different names. We might describe it differently. If we go up to a certain level of stories, we might even see it as totally different. It's still the one and only son. To me. That's God. And. And I'm. I'm going to do something you're not supposed to do. You know, talk about religion. But, like, I don't have a religion.

Mm.

I was exposed to a lot of different religions. And I've. I've read about. I don't want to say study, because I don't want to falsely represent myself like I'm some fucking scholar, because I'm right. I may. I make smoothies for a living. I make smoothies for a living. But I've been jammed up in my life real fucking bad. So many times in my life, I've been jammed up. Terrifying situations. At the scariest of scariest moments, I always went to Jesus. Now why did I go to Jesus? I think because that's what I was exposed to as a kid, going to St. Patrick's of Heather Downs spent a year at St. John's I had a lot of exposure to the teachings of Jesus Christ. I love the idea of Christ and Christ consciousness. And I'm happy to report that every time I was in those foxhole type of situations, and I went to Jesus and asked Jesus for help, and Jesus, hold my hand. Actually, one time in a fucking journey that went awry, I was like, no, no, no, no, no. I'm with Jesus. Jesus is my Lord and savior. Whatever. Every time I've done that, help came and everything worked out.

Wow.

I've never been let down. Now. Am I praying to air? Am I. Am I delusional? Like, I don't. I don't think so.

Oh, you're definitely not.

I feel in those moments, a real. Almost like a yellow light of protection and help. Here's the problem. When. When the challenge goes away and the ego kicks back in. Yeah. Then I want to go back and become as important. I want to go back to the cool necklaces, and I want to talk about my journey to India and Indonesia and my chanting and my TM and my this and my that. I'm seeking for the truth, but I will just be transparent with you and whoever cares to listen.

I'll tell you. I deeply identify and believe every word you're saying. Oh, yeah.

Okay.

I got saved years ago at a Promise Keepers convention in Chicago. And it's. It was like a Christian men's movement.

Okay.

70,000 men joined hands, said the Lord's Prayer in Soldier Stadium.

Wow.

Soldier Field. And the. The power of that impacting me. You know, I just said to myself, 70,000 people can't be getting this wrong.

Yeah.

And I was in grad school.

Yeah.

At the time. And I'd gotten way away from the church because I was also raised Roman Catholic.

Yeah.

But it's hard when you're a kid to really identify with the church, because we had a little church in. In Lothian, Maryland, called Our lady of Sorrows. It's a great church. Remember, sometimes the mass was in Latin, but it was very ritualistic to me. Stand up, Sit down, sit up.

Stations of the Cross.

Do you remember that Communion?

My knees smoke, and I'm like, what the going on here?

And, like, the body and blood of Christ.

I'm like, whoa, that's very Dionysus. Like, what?

Yeah.

I set all that aside and. And just go to Jesus because I don't understand all that stuff. That stuff's probably. All right. It's probably the truth and. And all that, but, like, I don't depend on a book. I don't depend on a man in a hat. I don't depend on anything.

You don't need an institution.

I just. I go to God and, and. And that God made me perfect. That God made me perfect. I mean, I'm misshapen. I got really short legs. I got a long torso.

I got a massive, nice tracksuit on that, bro.

I appreciate that.

The Celine tracksuit is fire.

You see the Basquiat socks, But the.

Fact that you know the brand of your socks. What do I got? I got the artist. Oh, okay.

Yeah, that's the artist. John Michelle Basquiat is a famous artist.

Well, so is Adidas. Adidas.

Adidas, yeah.

Adidas. He' very famous.

So I'm. I'm. I'm misshapen. I have a massive skull. And kids teased me mercilessly when. When I was a child and called me pumpkinhead and Charlie Brown and whatever. I'm not saying, like, I'm. I'm perfect. Like, esthetically, like, it's a lot of fucking hard work to keep this together. Got to keep the hair super short and got to build the shoulders and, you know, build up the. Yeah, exactly. So I'm doing the best with the vessel that I'm in to be the man that God intended me to be. And I'm nowhere near there. And I don't know the truth. And I am not a Christian, and I don't claim to be a Christian, and I'm not a spiritual man. I don't claim to be a spiritual man. I like to appear like I'm spiritual. I like the necklaces and the bracelets and I like taking photographs with hugging saints and all that. But that, that. That's all ego. That's all ego. That's the little 5 foot 7 Khalil who's still deep down inside, wants people to like him and whatever, but on a daily basis, to the best of my ability, I try to get 1% better each day, which I first learned about through Tim Ferriss Kaizen.

Oh, yeah.

The first book that he wrote about Kaizen and the Japanese car manufacturers and how they overcame.

I've read a lot of his League of Titans, Four Hour Body.

Yeah. And then. And then I read the Power of Habit, which blew my mind. I only could get through about a third of it. And then I read Atomic Habits.

Atomic Habits.

Yeah. And I. And I realized that, like, I'm just a conglomeration. I'm just like a, you know, composite of these Little habits that I do every day. So, like, if I get up in the morning and I drink some really healthy, clean spring water and then I put some good stuff into my body, I can't wait for you to try that coffee stuff.

Yeah, I'm ready to fire that up, man. I like your products so far. I appreciate that mushroom thing gave me a little. I was like, woo. Palm started sweating there before the podcast. I was like, all right, yeah, well.

That'S just a little ancient wisdom coming in to, to help us, hopefully. Here. Here's my goal. I don't know what your goal is for this, but there's somebody out there that's hurting, and there's somebody out there that does want to change. There's somebody out there that does want to change. I'm your poster child. I, I'm the guy that can show you that against all odds, if a like me with the, that I went. I put myself through can become.

You're a millionaire. You can say it. I'm successful.

I, I, I be, I became successful. I, I, I, I brought something of, of value.

That's it.

To, to the world. I'm leaving the world every day a little bit better than I found it when I woke up in the morning. And, and when I pass, I don't know how many more years I have left on this planet, but I'm going to leave it better than how I found it.

No doubt.

And, and I want to inspire anyone out there that's hurting anyone out there that can't stop looking at porn or taking pills or drinking too much wine or eating too many donuts and pizza, Whatever your thing is, I get it, I understand it. But underneath all of that, if you can get into the, the cause of it, rather than taking a pill for.

It to mask it.

Yeah. If you can stop masking the symptoms and start addressing the core issues, you can find freedom. And the best way to find freedom is to simply say, God, can you please hold my hand and walk me towards that freedom, whatever that freedom is going to look like. Yeah, God, can you please be with me now? It's never failed me now.

It's so awesome, man. I want to get back to the genesis of sun life, because we didn't really start about when was the, what was the aha moment and the action that you took where you said, all right, I'm gonna go press some cold, press some juice. I'm gonna sign a lease. I'm gonna, you know, open a storefront. I'm gonna build a brand. You Know, when did that pivot come?

So I started riviera recovery in 2007, and it was massively successful right out the gate.

Okay, so you had some foundation to.

Launch us with massively successful money. Money was coming in. This is going to sound stupid to people that actually make money, but, like, $40,000 a month profit was coming in, and my father, for the first time in his life, was impressed. Well, that ended badly. But I started to have some success financially. But I was. I was miserable because it felt a little bit like blood money, because I'm taking checks from these people's parents or spouses or whoever's, and I know for sure that their significant other or their. Or their child has zero interest in getting better. So should I just keep housing them and taking this money? Not everybody's like my buddy Rick, who was like, I've been trying to fucking quit smoking crack for 22 years. I heard you help people. I need help. I'm like, yeah, move in with me one year. No gambling, no this, no that, no whatever. We're going hiking every morning. We're jumping in the ocean. You know, anytime you have a craving, we're gonna do our mikvahs or whatever. Not everyone's like that, by the way. He never went back to the.

That's great.

Yeah. He's 17 years clean and sober. Our other buddy Sarah, who I. Who I met back then, she's. She's also 17 years clean and sober. And I don't know, you know, whatever. Freedom from active addiction is the goal. I don't. I'm not, like. I don't represent any 12 step or whatever. I. I represent freedom from active addiction.

Right.

So. So I was miserable. I was making a bunch of money. I did the right thing. I went back to Ohio and I bought my mom a house, and I sent her to Poland because she hadn't been back to Poland in 39 years. So I sent her back there to go see her family. And I. And I say that in quotation marks because it wasn't really her family. Her mom, like, dumped her off on a doorstep, but it was the family that she knew.

Right.

So I corrected the sins of my father, who left her high and dry, and I sent her back to Poland, bought her a house. But then this, like, soul sickness set in because I was, like, making money kind of like housing spoiled, rich and famous people that didn't want to change.

Yeah.

But Sean kept coming over and teaching them yoga and giving them massages and making them the juices, and I'M making them the juices and I'm making them the smoothies. And I started to see miracles happen. And I really. I mean, I mean that literally. I saw some. And this is not medical advice, but I. I started to see people go off their psychiatric medications. I started to see people stop smoking spontaneously. The more good stuff they started to put in because they were curious. They're addicts. They want to feel good. They're watching me and Sean glistening in the sun, doing upward dog and downward dog and sauna and then jumping into an ice tub. And, you know, we were doing that way back then.

Yeah.

And dopamine hits. I mean, dopamine.

Real physiology.

And the more I started making the juices and smoothies for people, the more they asked for it. And it started turning into like around the clock type of deal. Like from the moment I got there in the morning until the moment I went to bed at night, people were asking for smoothies, asking for juices. My sponsees were asking for juices and smoothies. I started to just think to myself, if I could just open up a little juice bar and serve a hundred people a day, then, then how great would that be?

Like.

Like, if I could just like eventually get. If I could eventually get like a little townhouse and I could do yoga and I could paddle board and I could just feed people and help people that actually wanted help.

Yeah.

How great would that be? And eventually maybe I'll even write a book. So that was the dream. Wow. Yeah. The problem is the economy collapsed. 2008, the fucking.

Oh, dude. That was the time.

Yeah. Everybody now. My rehab recovery center, Riviera recovery, was going up because everyone's falling the apart and they want to, you know, get off the dope because they don't want to die.

Right.

And, and, and so that was thriving. The recovery is sort of an evergreen business because there's always going to be people suffering from addiction. And all these businesses started going out. And there was a shopping center called the Point Dune Plaza. And there was like, out of. I think out of 11 businesses there, there were six vacancies. Wow. Yeah. Just sitting there empty. And I. I, in a very naive Pollyannic, similar to how I started Riviera Recovery. On a shoestring and a prayer. I was just like, fuck it. I'm just gonna open up my own juice bar and see what happens. And right when it got going, my best friend that was running my business for me, my best friend in the world, I'm running the juice bar now. I'M going back and forth. My best friend's running the business. I said to my girlfriend, you know what? I don't want to do that anymore. He's cut out for it. I'm not cut out for it. I'm too codependent. If people succeeded, I. I pounded my chest. If people relapsed, I went into a depression. So we're a year in. And I said to my girlfriend at the time, just gonna give him the business. I'll keep 20. He can keep 80. He can run it. I don't want anything to do with it anymore. I want to make all my money back and have a stream of income, but I don't want to do that business anymore. I don't want to be around sick people all the time. I want to be around these cool people. Yeah, some really cool people are coming in.

Yeah.

People that I really looked up.

Conscious, awake, mean.

Yeah, well, I'm a little more shallow, pretentious than you. Famous. And Cindy Crawford's coming. And Owen Wilson.

Right on.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers are coming. I was elated. I, I, I. I felt like, you know, I felt cool. And. And the guy working next door comes over, and he's like, hey, man, I need to talk to you. And I'm like, okay. I don't know this guy that well. I mean, I kind of knew him. And I'm like, okay. So I go over there. Bring a smoothie. And he goes, hey, you know, one of the guys working for you is, you know, trying to steal your business, and he's trying to start a competing business or whatever. And I'm like. I'm like, what are you talking about? And he goes, one of the guys working for you? I'm like, no, no, that. That's not happening. Trust me. And he's like, khalil, one of your guys is trying to take your business from you. I'm like, okay, you're tripping, bro. I'm gonna go back. We got a line out the door. And he goes, khalil, I represent him. I'm renting him a house in the Palisades. He's going to take all your clients. I'm like, who's your client? He told me it was my best friend.

Mm. Wow.

And I drove over there, and I confronted him. And with no regret and no remorse, he looked me dead in the eye, and he said, well, you're fucking rich. You've got money. You've got a girlfriend. You've got a fucking line out the door. Like, I want to have good shit too. So I'm going to do my own fucking thing. He didn't know that I was going to give it to him.

Wow.

So I called our mutual friend Jose and I said, how much money you got? And he's like, yes. A lisp. To this day, I don't know. I think I have like $20,000. And I said, if you meet me tomorrow at noon, I will sell you riviera recovery for $20,000. I want a cashier's check for $20,000. I will give you the IP, I will give you the furniture, I'll give you the, the crystals. I'll give you everything. I'll give you the, you know, everything. The website. And Jose showed up and he gave me the money and I sold it to him. And good for you. I think, I think he's got five locations now. He's a multimillionaire.

Wow.

He's an amazing human being. He's helped a ton of people and he is wired for the business.

Yeah. Yeah.

He's not co dependent like me. And unfortunately other friend relapsed and died. And I don't say that with any pride.

Yeah.

And I, and I wish I could undo that, but that is part of the story. And that's what happened over the last.

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Totally.

And not get banged up at work.

Yep.

That would be awesome. And it just eroded my belief in the human spirit so much because we would just blatantly catch people stealing. I'd have a video of it, and I'd have the aloha register keys because we keep all the keystrokes and create these reports, and I'd have video camera of it, and we would confront the employee, and their reaction was similar to your friend. Yeah. And they would say, dude, what's 500 to you?

Right.

You're doing well, dude. Like, Right. You know, what's 500 to you? I'm like, it's the same as 500 to you.

Yeah.

You know, my dollar buys the same thing that your dollar does. I just took a lot of risk to get this open. I almost went. Went broke in that business open. And. And it was just a. It's strange. And now that I'm a lot more, I would say, spiritually aware, and I've sort of pontificated about. And I've let a lot of people that have taught me about the human emotion, I realized that there. There are victors and victims, and there are people that just have this sense of entitlement. And what's strange is if. If you started for me as a bartender and then work your way up to assistant manager and then a manager, and, you know, eventually I probably would have given you a piece of the business, of course, and really wanted to keep you around. Of course. But they just wanted the fast track and.

Yeah.

Quick money. And. And I became the enemy or being the one that took all the risk.

Yeah.

And it was just. It was really a hard thing for me to get my arms around. Like, the realization you consciously stole from me, I felt fine with it.

The realization that there are two types of people on the planet. There are people that talk and there's people that do most people talk. You're a doer. You've always been a doer. And my. My belief you may appreciate this. God is not going to take the. The Perfect. Seven tall, seven heads tall, high, perfect symmetrical, whatever, quiet, humble. Whatever. God is going to take the fuck ups and the losers.

Oh yeah.

And bless them beyond measure.

Yeah.

And, and give them a voice and give them power and give them strength. And the dissolution of that business was my, my proof that I, I wanted to never go near it again. And Even eventually about 15 years into my, my living essentially in 12 step programs, even that became a little bit toxic for me and I wanted to get away from that. So, so sun life became its own entity. I had a great idea. I had a great idea. It was brilliant and it was 14 years ago. All organic, amazing colostrum things that like everyone's talking about fucking classroom. We would get, we would get yelled at by all the vegans 14 years ago because we were putting colostrum in our smoothies and they were like that's disgusting. That's disgusting. We, we were putting mushrooms in our smoothies. We were bringing, I mean we were bringing in matcha. Like it's interesting and I'm glad, I'm glad it's now becoming a craze. I'm glad now that when you watch certain channels, news channels, you see advertisements for certain powders or you see certain advertisements for certain colostrums or whatever. Even though there's a part of me, it's like you, I, I was there first.

Right. Claustrum was my idea.

There's a, there'.

Tough.

Yeah. I think it was God.

I think it was God.

Yeah. But there's, there's enough for everybody. And I would rather have that than have another Pfizer commercial. Right. I'd rather have that than another medication that's going to cause five different types of things wrong with me. So, or with people. So we're moving in, in the right direction and there is a great awakening that's taking place. And God I believe with a sense of humor chose some of the rejects. Some of the people are polished and perfect and amazing. But, but you have a calling. I have a calling. We're here to wake people up and we're here to get people to retake their power that they were born with. We were born as a particle of God and society and the world and the evil fucking people that control the world have done everything in their power to extinguish that spark, that particle of God. And I'm doing everything I can to awaken my own and to watch other people awaken and, and seeing kids come in whose parents like make them get a job so they come to sun Life. Because it's cool.

Yeah.

And watching them for the first time, touching vegetables, drinking juices, because it's part of the training. Drinking smoothies and watching them slowly come alive and slowly feel the life force of these ingredients and slowly find humility. And then all of a sudden, they're bragging to their parents, like, you need to drink this.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the best it becomes. Yeah.

The siblings come in because the siblings want to be like the older brother and sister. Sister. So then they start coming in and then they want a job, becomes the prophet.

They're like prophets. That's amazing.

In. In a very tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny way, I am changing the world.

Yeah. You're building a community, man. I mean, that's. How many locations do you have now?

19.

19 from that one.

Yeah.

Are they all in New York?

No, there is seven in California. There's two in my Miami. Three more opening in Florida soon. There's two in Nashville, one in Vegas, another one opening in Vegas. We just signed a license or about to sign a license deal. I've said that anyway. We're about to sign a licensing deal. It's all good.

It's fine. But knows where it is.

But we're, we're doing. We're doing a deal in South Africa for 10 stores down there. Yeah. And. And I've met with several people from the Middle east about bringing this over to that region.

A lot in the Middle east too.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They need it.

Where in the Middle East?

Dubai, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, Qatar.

Amazing.

Yeah. So we're, we're growing.

They're on the bandwagon over there.

Yeah, we're growing exponentially. The, the book has helped a lot of people. It wasn't junkies that read it, which, much to my surprise, it's moms, it's women.

Yeah.

It's people that want to change that look at me and go, well, I.

Think the circumstance is less relevant than, than the method, you know? Yeah. I mean, you know, a lot of business philosophy and business knowledge, which I think some of the best knowledge comes from the Bible, but it's the best business book ever written. A lot of business knowledge is, is transferable. You know, it's not just. Doesn't apply to tech or to textile or, you know, to the automotive industry. It applies to the philosophy of how you approach, you know, operating a business. And I think your story is, while it may not be heroin to millionaire or, you know, streets to mansions, it. It's very applicable about, you know, taking self responsibility Becoming aware, wanting to change, raising your hand to get help, doing all the things that embarrass people and are, you know, what. Keep people where. Where they are. I think. I think the way that society is structured, especially corporate America, it's kind of trying to keep you in a. In a box.

Yeah.

You know. Yeah.

And they do a great job.

They do a really great job.

Yeah.

I mean, I was just talking on the last podcast about how my mom, who worked for Delta Airlines for 30 years.

Yeah.

When she retired, got a Seiko watch and a sweatshirt.

Yeah.

That said thank you. And it was a 30 years. And it had a little Mickey Mouse or something on it, but it had a little emblazoned character on it.

Yeah.

There was the large sweatshirt and literally a Seiko watch. And I mean, that was third. More than a third of her lifetime.

Yeah. The best years of her life.

Yeah. And the best years of her life. Now it also afforded me because she worked for the airlines. I don't want to be. I don't want to put her career down. She. She did. She enjoyed it and. And gave me a very good life. And we. We. We were able to travel because at that time, you know, I was born in 1970. Travel was very expensive in the 70s and 80s, and we were nowhere near capable of affording it, but we traveled. And because of it. Because of the benefits. So we were in Rome and Korea, and that's amazing. So growing up, I traveled a lot and experienced a lot of the world because my father was in the military. So we would get, you know, free flights on Pan Am over to Seoul, Korea, and we'd stay at Yongsan Air force base for $12 or $16 a day.

Yeah.

Stay for a week and a half. Seoul, Korea.

Amazing.

So that experience was invaluable.

Yeah.

And. And I also grew up on a farm, and my whole life, I wanted to get as far away from the farm as I could, and now I want to get back as fast as I can. Totally. It's. It's really interesting how those experiences really shape you. Khalil, this has been amazing, man. Thank you. I hope that we can continue, of course, to follow your journey. Will you tell my audience where they can find you, where they can find more about Sun Life?

Sun Life Organics is all over the country. Sun Life Organics.com the book is I Forgot to Die, available on Amazon. The second book is Remembering to Live. The challenge with the first book, although it was a bestseller and did an incredible. The criticism was like, oh, yeah, so you stopped smoking crack and shooting heroin. Now you're a millionaire. What the fuck? Yeah, like how. Second book is how the.

How. Okay.

Yeah. Remembering to live was what I did in those early days. The washing of the dogs and the running errands for Cindy Landon and, you know, being a manny for, for Billy Bob and Pietra Thornton and taking care of their boys and teaching them how to boogie board. And the second book is an A to Z on how to go from being piss poor to being financially independent. I don't do Twitter. I think I have a Twitter, but I don't do Twitter. I don't do tick tock. Although I have one. I'm. I'm mostly Instagram. I stopped going on Facebook because it's just a cesspool of discontent.

Yeah.

Echo chamber political divide is, is beyond insane. As if one side is better than the other. I mean, they're all bad. And, and the revolution that's taking place right now, that in a small way I'm a part of and you're a part of. And I'm so grateful.

I am too.

The system, the system needs to be.

Spiritual awakening.

Yes, there's a spiritual awakening. We need to return to God. If there's anything that I can say to anyone, the, the, the number one thing that we have to do is go back to God. Our generation, Generation X is the first generation to be raised without God. The generation before you went to church or temple or mosque.

Oh, no doubt.

Every week.

My parents.

Yeah, we were raised without God. Generation X. First generation to be raised without God. Nowadays, nobody goes to church, nobody goes to temple, nobody goes to mosque. People are on TikTok, people are on Instagram, people are on.

Too busy.

Yeah. They're, they're, they're, they're so self engrossed and engaging in voyeurism and worrying about what people think. The greatest thing that I'm enjoying right now is being older.

Yeah, me too.

I.

These are the love. It's my life too. The best. Agree with you.

But it's the best because I'm in shape and because I got some dough.

Yeah.

When I go back to Ohio for funerals and I look at my people that I went to school with.

Yeah.

And their faces are that big and their distended bellies are this big and it's crushing their organs and, and they're, and they're miserable and they hate the Democrats or they hate the Republicans and they're. And they're, and they're caught in that. I'm just like Guys, you're gonna blink and you're gonna be dead.

Yeah.

Go for a walk. Stop putting in your body.

Yeah.

You know, so insane.

Yeah.

So, yeah, that. That's where I'm at. Please follow along if it pleases you.

I will make sure to do. I'll link all those things in the show notes. I wind down all my podcasts by asking my guests the same question.

Sure.

No right or wrong answer to this question. And is what does it mean to you to be an ultimate human?

To be and ultimate human is to live fully from the center of myself, for myself and try my best to be the man that God intended me to be. That's it.

Great answer. That's a great answer. Well, we're going to head over into my VIP room now. I have a group of VIPs, my stickiest community that I've built. And every time we end a podcast, I shut the cameras off, I turn them right back on and they. I let them know what guests are coming on the podcast and they have some. They have some questions for you. Cool. If you're interested in becoming a VIP, just head over to theultimatehuman.com forward/vip and for 97 bucks a month, you can become one of my VIPs. It's where I really pour myself into. I'm building the most incredible community of like minded people dedicated to long longevity anti aging bio optimization. But for the rest of you guys, I hope you enjoyed the podcast and until next time, that's just science.