Zak Williams: The Gift of Alcoholism

Joining me today on the podcast is a dear friend, Zach Williams. He's an advocate for mental health, and you have a term that I want us to talk about, this mental hygiene, which I think is brilliant. First, welcome to the show, Zach. I'm thrilled you're here.

Jorge, thank you so much. So thrilled that we can be talking today because not only is there a ton to go over, but we just, we want to share some things with the world. I know you do. I certainly do. And just, there's so much need. There's so much need out there to get the right education to folks in need of mental health support.

I feel like this could be for me. I've been doing this podcast, Zach, now for our fourth season. And I feel like today's conversation for me is probably going to be the most meaningful. I think for me has been something that I've really, not that I've shied away from it, sometimes taboo if there's trauma in someone's life. Out there to talk about how to fix it. And I think a lot of us just numb out. Maybe you could share with us a little bit of your background, because for those of you, those of us watching or listening to the podcast, you have an incredible legacy. You come from a family of probably one of the most iconic people on earth, your father, Robin Williams. And we're all fans of his work. But obviously he passed. That was a tragedy, obviously traumatic for all of us, including obviously you. But can you take us back a little bit, Zach? Tell everyone where you were back in the day because you grew up in a, in a, in a, in a, is that what they call it in Hollywood?

A fishbowl?

You're definitely, your dad was somewhat popular when you were born already, right?

Yeah, I guess you could call it a fishbowl. I haven't heard that term and I like it.

Yeah.

When I was born, he wasn't necessarily famous, but he might have been developing a reputation. But yeah, this was before him. Doing film, his first films, World According to Garp, Popeye, and so forth. He— I was a baby then. Wow. And prior to that, his big breakout was before I was born, or big breakout at least in terms of TV and standup related very much to Mork and Mindy and doing the circuit in Los Angeles primarily, but also San Francisco.

Sure.

Around standup comedy. For me growing up, I was born and raised in San Francisco. I wasn't necessarily in or near the limelight. So my upbringing was reasonably normal. That said, I had anxiety ever since I was a child and had trouble sleeping. Actually, insomnia for me was something that I had since my earliest memories. And so for me, going through early childhood and then adolescence, I was uncomfortable. I was uncomfortable in my skin. I would overeat as a kid. And my entry into adolescence involved a traumatic event. My cousin, who was someone I was very close with, died by suicide. He was 13, I was 12. I was in California, he was in Connecticut, but we spoke a lot and I was really looking forward to him coming to visit for a time. And when I received the news around him dying by suicide, I didn't know how to handle it. I didn't have coping mechanisms. I didn't have a process per se. And for me, it catalyzed what I would consider a beginning of a specific type of mental health in which I was coping with trauma and the experience of feeling dysregulated and feeling frustrated and more and more progressively unhealthy. Me and—

Yeah.

I found coping mechanisms through things like alcohol and the like pretty early on.

So we're talking in your early teens, right?

Pretty much.

Yeah.

Yeah. Ultimately.

Yeah.

Yeah. Really discovering how it was, and I put this in quotes, helpful for me from 10 years old onward.

Yeah.

But I just thought it was just part of managing. And I don't know if this is a thing or not, but I didn't have really an environment where I saw or witnessed people have a healthy relationship with alcohol. I'm not sure any, necessarily any relationship with alcohol could be considered optimally healthy. I found a solution to manage my anxiety and rest and sleep. Me, that was a major discovery. It was, it was a eureka moment. There were other elements over the course of the period in between.

For sure.

Specifically for me, first week of living on my own in New York City was September 2001.

Whoa.

And before 9/11, just before 9/11, just before I moved to New York City.

And that was shit. That was my entry point into, I guess you could call it adulthood. So you're in New York City. Now this, yeah. They say technically, legally, adulthood starts at 18 years old. The science is now showing that your brain isn't necessarily fully developed until you're about 25. And yeah.

Yeah.

For me, from a learning and coping perspective, I was traumatized by that experience, but because I didn't, directly know people who say were killed in that attack. I thought that I couldn't, I thought in my case, hey, you didn't experience this directly, therefore it's not something that you can really validate as being traumatic for you. I think I assumed that position for a long period of time saying, unless it's something that directly impacts you, a close family member, or if someone harms you. You can't call that traumatic. I was less worried about my personal safety and more so concerned for the wellbeing of my family and the state of things. I, when you have such a disruption of your mental model of how things should be, it's scary, right? You're thinking to yourself, what is, what do things look like moving forward? Everything that I thought was stable. Is no longer stable. There's a period of instability. And for me, I took with me the whole premise of, hey, shake it off, drink it off, you can get through it, you can manage it, but you have alcohol to manage a lot of this. And the other thing is there's— I was of the impression there's no amount of trauma or experience that could ultimately take me down.

I think what's great, what we're gonna talk about is this gift that comes from sometimes having an ego or being alcoholic. I feel like, because we don't know this can be a gift, but before we get to your— I think because something incredible did happen after your father's passing, and that's obviously why you're on the show to talk about this incredible advocacy work that you're doing. Take us to the point where then I would say, and I don't know if it's the point, a climax in your mental health where it finally just, and I don't want to use dramatic words, but where it really was a lot too much to handle almost with your father's passing. Take us to that because that was years later. Then that was only how many years ago? Maybe 8 or 9 years ago.

Is that right? 8 years. 8 years. 8 years ago. My father passed away just over 8 years ago. So there was, there's a term for it. It's not climax. It's a nadir.

Say that again.

Nadir. N-A-D-I-R. A low point. Yeah. So for me, there was a collection of things that happened subsequent to my father dying by suicide. My father's widow, she decided to take my siblings and I into a legal proceeding, which was traumatic. Calling it space was traumatic. And my relationship was falling apart. Long-term relationship, had been married for over 9 years and I was drinking alcoholically to manage the trauma and just was not having a great time of things. And I discovered a couple things that ultimately led me to a turnaround experience. One was commitment to advocacy. I started actually teaching, volunteering teaching at San Quentin Prison, teaching financial literacy.

Wow.

Yeah. I'm very passionate about the financial markets and specifically education, teaching people around the different elements that make up the markets, but also as it relates to personal accountability, personal leadership, and understanding one's own assets and liabilities as a means of growing value, self-worth, and so forth through understanding and knowledge. But that was, for me, a catalyst into ultimately getting super into mental health advocacy. From teaching financial literacy, I started sharing my story, started opening up somewhat, and then I started working with mental health organizations, starting with a company, a not-for-profit specifically, Bring Change to Mind, which I've been involved with for just under 7 years at this point. And, and I started learning more about myself, learning more about the trauma that I was diagnosed with post-traumatic Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and also my personal relationship with self-medicating and coping and started learning more about the anxiety I was experiencing and the depression and why I was self-medicating using alcohol. And the advocacy was really healing for the trauma, didn't necessarily help the anxiety and depression. And yep. I started learning a couple of things. One was I learned about what I now call mental hygiene, right? Prioritizing mental health on a daily basis.

Love that.

Stopped drinking alcohol, was still super stressed and anxious. Yes. My now wife, who I was dating at the time, and this was started, this process for me started about 5 years ago. She had experienced her sister dying by suicide when she was 10 years old.

Wow.

And she had post-traumatic stress disorder and all this mental health dysregulation from her personal experience through that trauma and had spent two decades at that point learning more about what she could do to manage her well-being and mental health. And she found specifically nutritional solutions and other things like fitness and mindfulness.

I love this.

Yeah. Some respect therapy. Yeah. To support her wellbeing. And she started teaching me about these different elements. And turns out for me, a really transformative point for me was discovering how nutrition can support mental well-being. So I learned about—

I love that. Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. It was eye-opening. I learned about neurotransmitter deficiencies. I learned about how amino acids can support the synthesis of neurotransmitters. And I was learning about my diet ultimately leading me to feeling super dysregulated, high sugar, high fat.

Yes. Lowered the sugar, didn't you, Zach? Yeah.

Yeah. I, but, but I was under the impression providing I was exercising regularly, I could eat what I want and providing I wasn't drinking, I would be fine. And it turns out that there's a bunch of toxic elements of intaking a bunch of sugar, high fat, processed foods, things like that, being in a, an environment with toxic inputs that can ultimately lead to pretty severe mental health dysregulation.

I showed this to you when we were off camera. My favorite little prayer out there. You know, this—

yep.

Love it. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom. This is where it's hard sometimes to know the difference, but using this, and is that something you would recommend to people too, possibly?

Absolutely. Yeah. Prayer for me is a form of meditation.

Yeah.

With, tell us, with an element of, with an element of mindfulness. Associated with it. So prayer can be transformative for your body's chemistry specific. And there's now more evidence-backed approaches towards gathering the science and research to support that, that form of meditation.

Yeah.

So I discovered nutrition specifically, and also mindfulness meditation. Therapy to some respect, community support. I'm active in 12-step. I'm active in recovery, that conjunction of experiences that I ultimately sought to integrate into my daily life as mental hygiene. And let's get into that.

Yeah. Because that's solution, this mental hygiene. Describe the term from your perspective. What is this?

I can't say I coined the term. There are other people who certainly use it, whether they're neuroscientists or people in the business world, but Yep. We, in creating my company, PIM, which stands for Prepare Your Mind. It's also—

Prepare Your Mind. Love it.

Yep. It's also my middle name, Pim, not Prepare Your Mind. We turned it into an acronym.

I love it.

My fa— my father gave me that middle name. He said it sounded vaguely Welsh. Why not? But I created a company a— around it along with my co-founder and wife, Olivia June Williams, and we wanted to create a brand that stood for mental health advocacy. Patagonia stands for sustainability, right?

I love that.

The lens that we took in establishing this company was, it's not just about our products, whether they're the chew or the mental hygiene kit that we're launching. It's primarily about getting people into a mindset of prioritizing their mental health every day. And so now We're framing our company as the mental hygiene company because we wanna get people into that daily mindset of taking care of their mental wellbeing because that's really what it takes in this day and age when the stressors are out. Stressors are cruel and unusual and extend.

So I think what you're saying is so important. And I think anyone listening to us right now that obviously has been through trauma, whatever the trauma is, obviously it doesn't matter. You have to realize, and I think from the 12 steps is I'm also a huge believer in that. I feel like it's a daily reprieve we get. And it's just each day, it's every morning for me. I have practice that I start my day off to really get myself to have a good day mentally, to have my hygiene. Can you take us through what you suggest? What's your day like when you start off, when you have a good day? If you were to follow a recipe, maybe, Zach, how do you start your morning? How do you start your day? And this product that you have, it's incredible. I've tried it when we first met.

You had—

you gave me some samples. Do you happen to have something there to show them? This chew product? Check this out, guys.

Our first product is The original Mood Chew, it's a GABA, L-theanine, and rhodiola product. And I love it. It's meant to support the body's GABA system, which is gamma-aminobutyric acid system, supports inflammation regulation. When you're GABA deficient, things feel overwhelming. It's hard to focus in some ways. You can have that manifest as anxiety and high stress. And, and so our product supports the body's GABA system, and then also through L-theanine, which is a compound that supports the brain's default mode network, which is responsible for things like rumination and focus and so forth. In conjunction with rhodiola, which supports— it has a neuroprotective quality as an adaptogenic compound. These 3 products that we formulated are in a chew. You take the chew, you chew on it for 20 seconds ideally, so it's absorbed through the mouth. And that ultimately has helped many people with feelings of overwhelm and stress and worry. And, and the products that we're now launching moving forward are very much focused on mental hygiene. The mental hygiene kit is 4 products. It's a psychobiotic, which are probiotics to support the gut-brain connection. It's a magnesium stack with amino fortification that is meant to promote calm while providing some amino supplementation. In addition to methylated B vitamins and methylated folate, which people, all people benefit from, but there's a portion of the populace, which is not an insignificant portion. It's not the majority, it's under the majority, but it's, it's— it's millions upon millions of people with an MTHFR mutation. And if you have MTHFR mutation, you can't synthesize B vitamins properly. And so you require methylated B vitamins to better synthesize neurotransmitters, specifically serotonin and the like. And so we've got a methylated B vitamin and folate product that, that we're now distributing and also in conjunction with that, a sustainable omega fatty acid product that—

The healthy fats. Yeah. That's great.

Yes. That we want to get to people so that they can in turn support their brain health and ultimate better mood through getting what they need. Because I recently learned that the proportion of the people who are getting the appropriate fatty acids through omegas The general population is about 3%.

No, we're getting all the bad fats.

This is— we're getting all the bad fats, canola oils.

Oh, and they make us hungry. They make us fat. They break us down, inflammation. And yet the very thing that you guys are doing, this is brilliant. Show everyone again that, that container. Do you have one of those little chews in there? They're super small. They're delicious. Can you show us one? So basically you start your morning with one of these. Zach, tell us how you use this little guy. Very, yeah.

So to, to go into the, mental health ritual that I engage in on a daily basis. Yeah, I get up in the morning, generally pretty early. I have a 3-year-old boy named Mickey and I have a 1-year-old girl named Zola. And yeah, they get up bright and early, 6:30 generally, and we make them breakfast. I do fast. There's a metabolic component to that. I've become very passionate around supporting—

when I come on your show, we'll talk about that if you want.

Yeah, I would love that, with supporting the body's metabolism through mindfulness and Specifically around what we don't eat. I tend to not overload on sugar, so forth. Prior to doing all that, I engage in a gratitude exercise where I list the things that I care most about and just ground myself in seeking you the day with those things I'm appreciative of top of mind. That's the first things I do throughout the day. And then after the kids eat and are my son's off to school, so forth, I make sure to limit my caffeine intake. Caffeine is a GABA antagonist. So if you're drinking caffeine and you take the chews, it's gonna make the chews less effective because caffeine is, is bonding to the GABA neurotransmitter. And so it's making it more challenging for, say, taking GABA for GABA that you'd be taking to be effective.

Do you have to compensate by taking more GABA? Lower, lower it down or what?

Yeah, lower coffee. And then when the, when, you know, a couple hours after drinking coffee, then you take the product and that's when it's most effective for me personally.

Do you do it, Zach, do you do the product, the chew when you're feeling anxiety come on? Or is it just something you take on a schedule?

How do you do it?

Yeah, you can, it can have a, it's called a prophylactic effect. A preventative effect. I think some people equate, they hear prophylactic, they're thinking condoms and so forth. But really what prophylactic means is prevention, right?

Prophylactic. Yes.

Yes. So you can take it prior to going into a stressful scenario and it will be supportive, but you can also be feeling stressed and overwhelmed and take it and it will be supportive as well. We don't want to elicit euphoria, a feeling of being high or so forth. We're just seeking to remove those unpleasant feelings And that's that. Then let your body just do what it does to support itself.

I like that. And that's a paradigm shift because I think most people that struggle with any kind of addiction to sugar, alcohol, or drugs, I think the high is the intention. Describe what you just said, Zach, because I think what you said is more profound. It's not about getting high, but it's about just removing— say it again— removing the anxiety, right? Without being high.

Yeah. It's about removing those feelings that you get that might feel unpleasant or dysregulating.

When I get a little anxious, I know if I'm really at that point where it's getting to be difficult for me, and I've used your product, I've known about GABA for a long time. My sister years ago was a big advocate of it, and she always say, take your GABA. And for people that aren't familiar with it, this has been around for a while. These, they're amino acids. Is that the core part of the chew?

Yeah.

Tell us some more.

Sure. There's a bioavailability consideration in terms of taking a chew and chewing it, letting it absorb through the mouth. That's important. The other consideration around it is it's just part of this mosaic that would make up a mental hygiene ritual. The chews are helpful for me. They've been helpful for thousands upon thousands of other folks. But extending into the day, I make sure to always try to get a walk in, try to get my steps, as you'd say.

Good.

100%.

Let's move it up.

Shake it up. Walk.

Walk. But also it's important to have aerobic activity, ideally kind of short bursts of intensive exercise.

For sure. Look at training. I love that.

I found meditation extremely helpful for me, but short meditation. You only need 15, 20 minutes.

Totally.

You could even do a 5-minute meditation. It can be helpful. It's shown to be effective for neurogenesis, or pardon me. There's a specific term for it. It, it's shown to be effective in terms of supporting and catalyzing a neuroplastic state. Wow. In which your brain then is able to, when your brain is in a neuroplastic state, can make and facilitate connections in new and unique ways versus not being in a neuroplastic state. There are two things that support neuroplastic states in adults.

Tell us.

Meditation.

Yeah.

And psychedelics.

Whoa.

Yeah. And so meditation has shown to be very effective for helping catalyze a neuroplastic state in which you can change and establish even deeply ingrained behaviors, form new pathways, which can ultimately help you have better outcomes relating to your mental health and so forth. So that's actually, I've heard, I've, I've heard how powerful meditation is.

Would you honor us by giving us a sample, something you and I can do with, with people right now for a minute or two, a simple a demo? Can you do a little meditation? And for me, it's the Serenity Prayer. It's a form of prayer, meditation. It could be that. Do you have a little something you could walk us through and we'll do it together?

Certainly. Yeah.

What would be something you suggest?

Sure. An easy way to do it is to just take 2 minutes of stillness.

Oh.

And just taking the opportunity.

Let's do it together.

Focus on your breath. A nice way to think about it is there's a count, there's a way to support on this. And stillness in your mind and it's racing, you breathe in for 4 seconds.

Okay.

Count to 5 and exhale for 7 seconds. And then we can do this for 2 minutes.

Let's do it. Let's set a timer.

You got a timer there?

Yep. Perfect. I'll set it too.

And we can—

okay, everyone follow along with us. Zach, do you mind leading it for us? You take us through it.

Sure. I'm going to just set a timer.

You got it.

And just breathe in and out. This is a breathing meditation, but helpful in terms of establishing a sense of stillness and calmness, especially if you're feeling dysregulated. So let's give it a go starting now. And time. Wow.

I feel— how would you describe it? Because there is a massive shift, right, Zach?

The way in which the breath exercise supports calming you is, yeah, a, doing these exercises helps manage things like parasympathetic arousal. When you're experiencing a parasympathetic state, you can feel agitated and so forth. And if you're managing to soothe your system through different means, what ends up happening is your body feels more grounded, your mind feels more grounded. And the reason why the counting with breath is so effective is because it helps keep you from racing around other things. It's grounding. Of course, you don't need to— ultimately it can become more automatic and you're not thinking about your breath. You're not thinking about those other things. You're just ultimately just feeling the air come in and out and your body starts attuning itself to just a natural rhythm, pardon me, a natural rhythm of— I'm trying to think of the best word for it. A natural rhythm of soothing.

Soothing. Yeah. 100%. I feel like so many people, like, for example, I know in 12 steps, I see a lot of people that smoke, and yet you can't smoke, but you can do this without the smoke. It's even healthier because all you're doing is oxygenating your body and it's creating that incredible natural rhythm, Zach, that causes our heart and soul, I think even our spirit to feel a sense of safety. Is that, I think that's the feeling.

Yeah. Sure. You know, as you think about longer meditations and your body, pardon me, your mind can race, still think things and be meditating effectively. I think people forget that in terms of, yeah, you can do a 20-minute, 30-minute, 45-minute meditation. You can be stressed and anxious and your mind can be racing. It will still have a beneficial effect. 100%. Even if you're not practicing it. And so the thing for me is that's an important element of the mental hygiene ritual for me personally. And then extending beyond that, 12-step community support, finding meaningful connection and an opportunity to be loving and find that grounding and daily appreciation and respect and love for people is really helpful as well.

Oh, I love that. I think it's such a great community to have that accountability to that encourages us to stay in a place where we have a sense of faith and where there's that connection to the truth and the reality that we're all interconnected and this higher power in our lives can give us this energy through simple practices. And I think what you're doing with your wife is so incredible, Zach. I'm just so grateful for what you've shared. If people watching and listening want to reach out, want to try your chew, will you please give them all the information, how to get ahold of you and how to get ahold of the product, please?

Sure. Yeah. Our website's very simple. It's pimm.com. You can learn all about what we're doing and what we're seeking to do in terms of our mental health advocacy mission.

Yep.

Our approach to mental hygiene and all the products that we're going to be launching coming up and the products that we're now, we now have in market too.

Totally.

Whether it's the mental hygiene—

and spell the website for everyone. Make sure that you spell it for us so we have it and tell us the social as well on Instagram, I'm assuming Facebook and all that. Go ahead.

Yeah, sure. You can follow us on Instagram at @youcanpym, youcanpym.com is our website. You can also do youcanpym.com, but right, plain and simple. Twitter, @youcanpym. Follow us, learn more about what we're up to. And we look forward to hearing from you because we are constantly seeking to tune and iterate and provide better, more supportive experiences as we learn more about the research and the evidence-backed approach to our product development.

So I love it. I'm so honored to have you on the show here, Zach. I hope you can join us again, and I feel like your work is incredible. Once the kit is available, I want to showcase that, all the different pieces. But thank you for showing us the chews, guys. Get these chews. They are not just even delicious, but they're so effective. And I remember when you gave them to me, I had them that weekend, and I just absolutely loved them. And they're so simple and effective. Again, the website, guys, we're going to have it in the show notes. Zach, Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for what you're doing. And thank you for sharing with us how you've turned this— our lives, because I'm in the same boat. It's been an interesting life for me, and I know for you, but there's a gift in this, right? And it really is this gift that comes from knowledge, that comes from learning. And I'm just so grateful that you're so passionate about making this not just a job or a career for what you're doing, but this is your mission. And we're excited to see the next level and next year more, I'm sure. Please give my best to your family.

Thanks, Jorge. Looking forward to speaking more very soon. And the mental hygiene kit's now available.

Oh, it is available.

Perfect. All right. Yeah, you can check it out.

All right, guys, pick it up, guys. Pick up everything. Get the Cruise. Zach, thank you so much.

All right.

Peace and purpose, my friend.

Thank you, Jorge. Same to you.

Thank you. Thank you so much, Zach. All right.

Today's episode is complete, guys. Thank you so much for listening. And I wanna ask you to please subscribe to the show. On Apple Podcast. And please leave a review on Apple as well. Give it 5 stars if you think the show has helped you in some way to transform your thinking. I hope it has. And more importantly, share your comments, your review of what today's episode did for your thinking and what you got out of it, because I think that is how we spread this. And for me, this is a revolution. This is not a podcast, this is a way of life. And I hope to transform over a million lives in the next couple years, and I need your help. So please become part of the Zero Hunger Revolution by leaving that review on Apple Podcasts and subscribing today. Thanks so much. Have a great one. Peace and purpose, and I'll see you on the next episode.