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Dec. 10, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:36:28
20 Years of PAIN! CALL IN SHOW
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Because I couldn't make the phone call from my usual place just because I didn't want to be overheard.
Ah, okay.
And so I went across to the park, which is just around the corner.
And it's only a, it's kind of, it's like very windy today.
And you don't have a room of your own that you can speak from?
Not right now.
No, I don't.
But I believe this is heaps better now.
Okay.
All right.
So, yeah, if you want to let me know what's going on, I'll do my best to help.
Yeah, thanks, Steph.
And my apologies for that.
Yeah, so in my brief, I mentioned that I'm 43 years old and I've recently completed a kind of a process of self-discovery, I guess.
So Dr. Phil is like a popular American psychologist.
He has a book called Self Matters.
And in that book, he, you know, looks into, he asks the reader to look into their past, right?
And to see patterns in their past.
And Jordan Peterson has a similar, there might be some incoming.
Jordan Peterson has a similar procedure in his book, Self-Authoring.com, his self-authoring thing, which you may or may not be familiar with.
So yeah, you're looking to the past, right?
And so I've gone through that process.
So looking at my past.
And I guess I'm kind of having difficulty with finding a sense of purpose and designing a compelling future for myself.
I've kind of had some serious health issues for 25 years, my entire adult life.
And only recently, about a year and a half ago, have those chronic, have I been like, have my pain levels reduced to a level where there's more career options for me now?
And I'm feeling confused about, I don't know what, like, I'm feeling confused about, I'm having difficulty creating a compelling future for myself, despite reading those books.
And I don't know, I was wondering if you could help with that.
I wonder if philosophy can help with that.
Oh, we can certainly give it a try.
I guess why don't we start off prior to the health issues about what was going on in your childhood as a whole?
Yes, thank you.
That's a great question.
So the good thing is I've gone through this process, so I kind of keep things a little bit more brief.
So my parents were, so I had, from zero to six, I had a good, good childhood.
I lived in a really good house.
My dad was working all the time.
He was a state manager for a growing business.
But at six years old, my parents divorced when I was six years old.
And from six to 12, I enjoyed primary school.
That's the age at which we finished primary school was 12 years old here, the country that I live in.
So from six to 12, I had a good school time.
But I never saw my dad.
During that time, from six to 12, I developed a fear of mathematics.
And that will come in later.
But there was a fear of mathematics that I had.
I did everything to avoid maths, but I was really good at creative writing.
I was really, really good at sport.
Then, so from 13 to 17, I went to a private boys' school.
I hardly ever saw my dad when I was a kid.
And so, my mum had to look after four children.
I was the youngest of four children.
So, and I had a really bad, I had a really hard time at this private boys' school.
They made fun, they didn't call me by my first name, like a particular group, but the popular kids, they call me by like a, they call me by a sexual name.
And that was a bit, that teasing was really traumatic.
What was the name?
I was never, oh, I don't want to say it.
It's kind of gets me, it triggers me a bit.
Okay.
But it was a sexual name.
And yeah, it was a sexual name made.
And but it kind of triggered me a bit, but it kind of made me a bit more resilient.
But it's kind of like there was probably some PTSD that I had because of that.
That kind of constant teasing by a particular group of people in the school.
I was really, really good at sport in school.
I actually was very good at basketball and high jump.
And all I wanted to kind of be, well, when I was 15, and I had friends at school, so I had some good times as well, but I wasn't with the popular crowd in school.
And I wasn't good at mathematics in high school either at this private boys' school.
I did everything I could to avoid maths, right?
But anyway, I was really good at sport.
And I remember when I was 15, one of my friends asked me, what do you want to be when you grow up?
And at 15, I was like, okay, you know, I said, I want to be in the SAS.
I wanted to be like a soldier.
I wanted to be some James Bond kind of character.
That's where I was at with that.
And so, and you know, if I hadn't been a soldier or anything like that, I probably would have been a tradie, you know, been a tradesperson, theatrician, or something like that.
But unfortunately, so unfortunately, on my 18th birthday, well, two things happened.
One, well, what happened when I was 18 was my older siblings had all left home and it was just mum and I left in a big house.
And on my 18th birthday, she sold the home and we had to leave, leave to another home on my 18th birthday.
On my 17th birthday, I started to get leg pain.
A year later, on my 18th birthday, on the same day we're moving home, I was in so much pain.
I couldn't, I couldn't help mum and the people taking the senator out.
I couldn't help them.
I was in so much pain.
I was like, I had to stay in the living room, right?
And so from my 18th birthday until 42 years of age, I started from severe chronic pain.
It affects my employment.
It affected my relationships.
It affected everything.
I was always in pain.
When I was sitting down, I was in pain, constantly in pain in my legs.
So the idea of me being a tradie or joining the army just wasn't physically possible for me.
So we moved house from a nice old home into what I call a dog box.
Sorry, just before we get that, I mean, but what, sorry if I missed it, what was the issue with your health?
Well, basically, the surgeons reckon I was born.
It's inevitable to have a, it was a structural problem with my legs.
So my fibia, my tibia, and my patella, they weren't aligned, clearly aligned properly, right?
So it was a malalignment.
It's called tibia, fibia, patella malalignment.
And so I went to various GPs and I tried to go to the gym and stuff and try to fix things from 18 to 21.
Somehow I managed to get into university at 18.
So 17, we finished our high school, you know, big high school thing.
I graduated.
I got like, I think I got literally graduated.
I got like 50%, right?
So I wasn't academically talented.
Not at least in terms of school rates.
Somehow at 18, anyway, I still got into university, right?
This is like 27 years ago.
I still went to university.
So I went straight for night sailing.
And then like four months later at 18, I was getting high distinctions for all my, for all my essays, right?
But I was one of the best students in that, it would have been at least 300 students.
I was one of the best students, right?
So I got straight into the uni.
But my legs are so bad.
And my mum moved house so far away from the university that I quit university at 18.
And I think I was suffering from some PTSD, probably because of my legs and also because of like, I guess the way I was treated in high school.
But anyway, I'm over that.
I got over that mental kind of PTSD stuff.
Sorry.
I'm just trying to, sorry, my apologies.
I'm still trying to understand the leg thing.
So your bones are out of alignment.
Is that right?
They were out of alignment, yes.
And sorry, and that meant that what, that they were putting pressure on your nerves or something like that?
Well, it meant that I had a lot of knee pain in both legs.
So when I was sitting down, I was in pain.
When I was walking around, I was in pain.
And I'm sorry, I'm just trying to fathom this, and I know it's a lot of information to get across in a short amount of time.
But if you're sitting, then there's no pressure on your knees.
So is there something that's residual pain or is it something where something's pressing on a nerve ending to give you pain even when there's no pressure on your legs?
That's right.
The latter, yes.
So my patella was kind of drawn one way so that was squeezing against the cartilage and gradually grinding away the cartilage.
Oh gosh.
So by 20, by 21, I had hardly not a lot of cartilage.
But there's more to this that we'll get into briefly as we go on.
Sorry, again, I mean, I'm obviously sure that you guys moved heaven and earth to try and figure out what, if any, solution there was for it.
But I assume, of course, that you had all the experts in the known universe that couldn't figure out any.
Excellent question.
No, Stefan.
I was neglected.
And you'll discover that soon.
So basically, my mum was poor.
Well, she thought she was poor.
And so I got into unit at 18.
I quit because of my legs.
And then I was kind of living further away from university.
I tried to go to the gym.
I had some bad advice, bad health advice.
And the advice was to go to the gym and build up my quadriceps and all this sort of stuff.
It actually made things worse.
I couldn't really work.
I couldn't work.
I shouldn't have been working.
So I didn't have much opportunity myself to see a doctor.
And my dad was never around.
And my parents and my siblings just thought it was a mental, mental, I had mental issues, right?
But actually, I didn't, it was a real physical problem.
At 21, I finally, I don't know how, I think I asked my grandfather or something for some money.
At 21, I saw a surgeon.
And despite having seen maybe a few GPs prior to that, you know, I guess they couldn't see it.
But I saw a surgeon at 21.
He took one look at me and said, you need knee surgery.
They're not even aligned right.
So at 21, I had what's called a patella femoral realignment, which is major surgery on both legs.
And after that surgery, he came in while I was recovering.
The surgeon said, look, you're going to be in chronic pain for the rest of your life.
At the moment, there's nothing that can be done about it.
You're just going to have to get used to it.
And that was at 21.
Sorry, I don't understand.
What was the point of the surgery if you're just going to be in chronic pain anyway?
Well, structurally, it wasn't aligned.
So it's better to align it than not align it.
Okay.
Because at least things, I guess the muscles will be pulling, the muscles will be pulling on the vatella so that it's tracking right.
And the surgeon felt it was necessary.
And I need to do something because I was in.
No, so sorry, was this to prevent the pain from getting worse, but I couldn't fix it.
Is that right?
Yes.
Okay, got it.
That's right.
That's right, right.
Yep, yep.
So I had that at 21.
I'll just go back one year.
At 20, I went back to uni, which was painful to get to uni.
I did a year and a half of an arts degree.
I got good marks.
At 21, I had that surgery.
So a year and a half into my university studies.
At 21, I had the knee surgery.
And I also quit uni again because I foolishly joined, which is a multi-level marketing business.
And I was in for 15 months.
I don't recommend.
But I quit uni, had knee surgery.
Joined at the same time, 15 months later, I quit.
I woke up and I quit, right?
And so I was about 22 years of age, and I still had this chronic pain.
It wasn't as bad as prior to surgery, but it was bad enough for me to, you know, I could never look at joining the army.
I could never be a tradesman or anything like that.
So, but nonetheless, there were years of unemployment, stints of employment in sales and telephone sales.
I was actually a really good telephone salesman, according to the business owner, who was one of these marketing gurus.
Like he was quite a well-known marketing guru in our country.
He said I was the best telemarketer you ever had.
But, you know, that's not something I wanted to be a telemarketer.
But that was a bit of a bit of a thing.
I sold cars with most of my jobs didn't last any more than a year because I was in so much pain.
I didn't tell any of my employers.
I didn't tell any of my employers that I had leg pain because I feared I wouldn't get a job.
So, but these are jobs that had a lot of kind of turnover anyway of employers, but still I didn't tell them.
That's just something to mention there.
And at 25 or 26 years of age, I went back to university again.
And I actually did a business degree.
I completed that business degree.
And I was in a lot of physical pain, but I still managed to finish the business degree.
I've always looked fit and I've always kind of been strong.
So the perception is that, you know, the perception may have been, oh, you know, he looks fit and strong.
What's wrong with him?
You know, people couldn't, people can't, people couldn't see it with their eyes.
Like, if I was walking along the street, you just think I was a real fit, tall guy.
You know, you wouldn't tell I was in pain all the time.
I finished the business degree.
I got offered a job after I finished the degree.
And I didn't take it because I was just in too much pain.
I was like, I'm not going to be able to do this full-time at all.
So then I went and did a master's degree.
And I was one of the best students.
And they offered me a PhD scholarship.
But again, I had this kind of fear of quitting because I don't think anyone could understand how much pain I was in.
But I also got offered a job at a relevant job relevant to my degree.
And instead of doing the PhD at quite a good university, a PhD scholarship at quite a good university, I took this full-time job that was relevant to my degree.
And that was when I was 29.
And so I was working full-time finally at 29.
And I even chose to invest in gold instead of Bitcoin.
This is like, what, 15 years ago, 14 years ago?
But I invested in gold instead of Bitcoin, just as a side thing.
But after, again, I was in so much pain.
And I'm sorry, is the pain level constant, getting worse?
And also, what medication, what medications were you able to take for it?
I should have been taking Panadol and Eurofin, and I was.
And that's really all I could take.
And that's for the pain management?
Because my pain management was very poor, Stefan, until later.
The thing is, Stefan, is when I had this full-time job, every four years or so, I'll go and see surgeons and say, look, has the technology improved to the point where we can fix the cartilage damage?
Right.
And at 29, the technology had improved enough.
So I had what's called Macy, M-A-C-I.
It's cartilage replacement kind of technology.
They take cartilage out, they grow it in a lab, and they grow it, and then they put where the cartilage is missing, and it grows inside.
So I had that, had another major surgery at the 10-month mark of having been employed, right?
Full-time employed in a degree-related degree.
And I did tell that employer, look, I said I might have to have surgery at the interview, the job interview, I said I might have to have surgery on my legs.
They're going to give me a lot of trouble.
And I told him that at the interview.
So that was good.
And so I did have major surgery on my right knee because that was where the car is damaged.
That's where the technology was most suitable to work.
And I had that.
And that reduced the pain level again by a bit.
And I got poached to work in another job.
One of my friend's friends, I became friends with him.
And he poached me out of that career-orientated job into another job in the mining industry in the offices, though.
It paid twice as much, and it was actually easier.
And so I went to work there, but that didn't last long.
They only lasted six months.
There was a mining downturn, and everyone got retrenched.
About 200, 300 engineers got retrenched on the day, and I was one of them.
You mean sort of laid off?
So that didn't last.
Okay, laid off, maybe.
Yeah, yeah.
At 30, so that says 29.
At 30, right, I've just had major knee surgery.
My grandfather died, and I saw him, I kind of almost saw him die because I was working in the city and he was 92 years old.
And he's a hospital he was in was just down the road.
This is relevant.
I'll just say around the same time, a few things happened.
Number one, my partner left me, right?
Number two, I had major knee surgery.
Number three, I got retrenched.
Your partner, is that your boyfriend, your girlfriend?
I had a girlfriend at the time as well.
And a perfect storm kind of happened around that.
No, no, I get that.
I just did.
Six months later.
You hadn't mentioned a girlfriend.
Okay, so you had a girlfriend who left you, and this is around the time of the knee surgery.
And your grandfather died at 92, right?
At 92, yeah.
You were in a situation where we were asked, I was asked, well, it was me and my auntie.
And they came out and said, look, you're going to have to make a decision on whether you want your grandfather to live or not.
Because if you let him live, he's going to be a vegetable.
If you let him die, he'll die gracefully.
So we kind of, the auntie made that decision, really, but I was there.
That happened.
And then what happened, Stefan, was like, well, I lost my job and I went on a road trip with my brother.
And my brother's, my brother's an alcoholic.
My father's an alcoholic.
They've been an alcoholic.
My dad's been an alcoholic ever since he was 18.
Sorry, just let me go back here for a second because you said at the beginning of this tale, you said you had a really good childhood up until about the age of six.
That's right, yeah.
But I didn't know my dad was an alcoholic.
Can it be a good childhood if your father's an alcoholic and your parents are fighting?
Well, they weren't fighting.
I didn't know they were fighting because I was only six, but I had good memories of from zero to six.
So I was in a big house, had a lot of fun, had older siblings, you know?
All right.
But I didn't know about, but it wasn't good from six to 18 because I didn't have a father.
Like, I only saw it.
Why did he leave a nine?
I don't understand.
He's got four kids, right?
Doesn't he has a responsibility, right?
Yeah, and he didn't pay child maintenance.
So he's kind of a piece of crap, right?
I mean, you can't just abandon four kids and not pay any child support.
So what the hell happened?
Yeah, so from about eight years old onwards, he never paid child support.
Okay.
But what happened?
What he did?
Well, in terms of what he did.
Why did he leave and why did he not parent at all?
Yeah, so my mum.
Yeah.
So my mum couldn't, my mum couldn't handle the, you know, coming home drunk.
And she wanted someone that was there.
Well, but she married him.
He was already an alcoholic, right?
Well, she says she didn't quite know the extent of his alcoholism.
And presumably it may have got worse over time.
Well, hang on, hang on.
So he told me he started drinking 18.
So your mother's story is that she didn't know how much of a drunk your dad was for X amount of time, yes.
Okay.
Do you believe her?
Eventually she ended up leaving.
I do because I do because alcohols, the alcoholics that I've known, and I know my brother and my father, and I know they can't get good at deception, you know.
And also, you know, my mum, my mum had four kids, and my dad did work for Tyre.
He was a good worker.
Well, but before you get married and have four kids, shouldn't you find out how much he drinks, his family history?
Absolutely.
But, you know, they didn't.
And that's the way that went down.
So she was born.
She was a baddie bamboo.
They're baby boomers, you know.
And then where, and I agree with you, where I am in the world, there's a bit of a culture of drinking, I would say.
Not that it's his, but that's just the way it is.
And my dad's dad was an alcoholic.
My dad's mum was an alcoholic.
So I knew how bad it was.
But my dad's always been a worker.
Even now, like he's 75, even now, he's complete denial about being an alcoholic.
But he is a complete and I feel like he's an alcoholic, right?
Guaranteed.
But yeah, he's in denial, like all these alcoholics are, right?
The chronic alcoholics.
So how much does he drink now in his 70s?
So I ask him, I'd estimate it's between $150 and $300 a week.
Okay.
That's about $100 to $200 US dollars a week.
He drinks at the pub, most of it at the pub.
He's a sociable guy.
He's got his strengths.
He's got some severe weaknesses.
And those weaknesses are exploded at all about his health.
Well, alcohol is one of his weaknesses.
Sorry about the wind.
I've got to move out of it.
Sorry about that.
Fighting hole.
Yeah, so at 30, right?
I went on this road trip, and what happened was...
This is with your brother, who's the alcoholic.
Okay.
Yeah, yeah, right.
Right.
So apart from being an alcoholic, my brother is a high achiever.
Right.
He's an amazing guy.
He's a.
He's real outdoors person.
Um, he's traveled a lot.
Um so, at 30 I got back from this road trip, those other things were colliding, like my grandfather dying, losing my job.
Um, I was falsely accused of of something that I didn't do obviously, and that kind of got to me sorry, do you mean at work or in a dating relationship, or in a day?
Yeah, in a dating relationship I was falsely accused of something that that it just annoyed me.
Right, it wasn't, I don't it, but these are the things that kind of came at this at this point, my brother and I got back to my dad's home and I should just say Stefan, that I should just pause and say my dad didn't pay child maintenance right from eight years old.
But what he did do was he did, he did give my mum a large amount of money, to the point where she she never had to pay a mortgage because he'd earned a lot of money.
So he paid for a whole house.
So I did have a good house oh, from from from zero to 18.
why would you why would you let me sit hang on why would you let me sit for half an hour thinking that your dad didn't pay anything you said he didn't pay any child support turns out he gave your mother a house well now i've told you so he did give mum a house but he didn't pay any child support from eight years old eight years onwards well okay but but hang on you know that now how much was the house worth Oh, look it was.
It was um, i'll say it's a middle, middle of the road home, not poor, not rich.
Good, middle of the road.
So he's saving your mom 2 000 to 2500 bucks a month in in in mortgage.
Okay yeah, so he did do that.
Yeah, I never saw him and my mum needed more money.
I, when I was in high school, I was teased because I never had a proper uniform.
I was skinny, I never had any food.
Well, had food, but I was always hungry and I was skinny, didn't have the uniforms.
I got teased.
I couldn't get into the top basketball teams because I didn't have a proper uniform.
So that's one of the reasons I got teased as well, being poor, but we did have a home.
I did have a good home though, and I went to a good school, although the although I didn't enjoy my from 13 to 17, my time at school, I didn't really get.
I didn't get any good academic results.
So um yeah, back back to you, feel free obviously no no, so i'm trying to get to you.
Your girlfriend leaves you, you get accused.
Yes, I need to tell you.
Yeah, if you got accused of something, and obviously you don't have to tell me what it was, but was it?
You said it was annoying.
So was it a relatively minor thing that you were accused of, or something more serious?
Oh it was, it was serious, but I mean, it was um, obviously bull crap, you know, and they all knew it was bull crap, so it wasn't.
It was like it just annoyed me that that people can, people can do, that you have a relationship with someone and and but it was my, it was my lack of, oh well, I was surprised, let's say, you know um, in hindsight, maybe I I couldn't really see the signs but uh, I didn't see the signs.
Maybe there weren't any but um, there was this one thing that happened, a most multi-factorial thing.
On the way back from the this trip, my brother and I visited my dad, and my brother and my dad, my brother, started assaulting my dad and And I just had knee surgery, right?
Like six months prior, I just had major knee surgery and I was feeling a lot better.
My chronic pain levels had gone down.
And I was starting to think about maybe joining the police force or doing some sort of trade or something, right?
My chronic pain levels were down.
And my brother started, he drank a lot of alcohol.
So my dad drank the normal amount of alcohol.
But my brother's like a binge drinker, like he won't drink anything for five days.
And then on the weekends, he'll drink, he'll drink like 15 litres.
And sorry, just to sort of, you know, the one to 10 pain scale before your surgery, what was the number?
And then what was it after your surgery after you'd healed?
From 10, so say it was 10 down to 10.
It's like maximum unbearable pain.
So it went from a 10 to a 7.
Is that right?
Okay.
Yes.
I'm really sorry.
So you spent many, many years at a pain level of 10.
Oh, it gets worse.
But yes, I spent from 18 to 30 in incredible pain.
Like I should have been on, obviously, I should have been in what's called the disability support pension, but I didn't get that.
I just didn't have that identity to be someone that was disabled or crippled.
But actually, I was.
I was crippled.
Absolutely crippled.
I should have been on a disability support pension at 18 years of age, right?
But I thought I didn't have that identity.
So I just wanted to work.
I just wanted to work around it.
And so I had stints of unemployment benefits, had long stints of not being unemployment benefits, had stints of working, right?
In pain, laboring away, doing telephone sales as well.
All these things kind of just, I tried to push the pain barrier the whole time.
I got used to, I'm used to being in pain.
I'm used to pushing through pain, but it doesn't mean you can get results.
Results that are of market value or results that are, you know, kind of aligned with ordinary results of someone my age.
But I kept on pushing through the pain barrier.
And I do that until recently.
And now I'm 43.
So at 30, we get back.
My brother starts assaulting my dad.
And I'd never seen this before, right?
And so I was really strong.
Despite having disability, despite being, I was very strong.
I was a regular gym guy.
It kind of I was always a gym kind of person, always physical, always good with my hands.
So even though I had huge pain, I still went to the gym, right?
Very strong, like 99 kilograms.
At 30, I was probably the fittest I've ever was.
I did 150 chill-ups at the gym.
I was at the chin-up king, the gym.
Anyway, this assault starts to happen.
It was just pushing stuff.
But like what I did was I didn't know what to do.
And I started to punch this bloody tree.
There was this tree out in the back.
And all those factors that I mentioned before, I kind of lost my, I got angry.
I hit this tree.
And I hit the tree multiple times to the point where I severely damaged for the rest of my life my both my hands.
Right.
And so that was a traumatic event in terms of my hands.
Of course, it stopped the fighting because I couldn't believe I was hitting this tree, but it stopped me fighting.
And the diagnosis of that was incorrect.
Unfortunately, I did go and get my scans done and everything.
But as is typical where I live, the medical fraternity has mixed results.
And they misdiagnosed the severity of my injury.
And it was too late for them to do surgery to realign my knuckles because the bone had already set.
And so now I have like a bit of a bit of pain in my hands when I type, but it's nothing compared to the pain that I had in my legs.
So that's what happened at 30, right?
I think I got, I think I was, after that, I was just confused.
Like I felt I was free for I wasn't free from pain like I said it went down to seven from 10 down to seven But that's a big that was a big difference enough for me to think of maybe doing a doing I want to be a pilot Like I wanted to be a pilot at that point and I'd done flying lessons in different aircraft.
I didn't even have my eyes tested and But I don't know if I would have passed.
I don't think I would have passed the commercial doctor singing a jig doctor thing because of my legs, maybe my knee surgeries.
I want to be a part.
I was starting to think about, imagine again starting to dream again of doing things that maybe I was naturally inclined to do prior to 18, at 30, but then I stuffed up my hands.
So then I became unemployed for a while, got into fishing and I got a full-time job in a degree related job, again at about 33 and I was on and from 33 to 35 ish.
Unfortunately, the business owner was corrupt, so I had to leave, had to leave that job and my, my leg pain um, sorry there Steph yeah, I got you.
Sorry mate sorry yeah, just checking.
So yeah, so 30 had that, that injury again, that's, that's led to a chronic, a bit of chronic pain, but it's only one out of 10 right, it's only one out of 10, even a half out of 10, but it's there and it'll probably get worse as we get older.
Sorry, where was this chronic pain?
So yeah, I had that sort of oh.
So when I after oh, you're in your knuckles right, I do get some chronic pain in my knees.
Okay, got it, got it, yeah.
So when I injured my knuckles right, yeah.
So I do get some some hand pain when I type now for extended periods.
Um, so I got a full-time job at about 34 to 35.
Um, it was a degree related job.
Ordinarily that would be a good job because it's like a career orientated job, but the business owner was corrupt and also the pain levels in my legs started to go from a seven to an eight right and then it started to get worse.
The leg pain started to get come like, it started to go up again right.
So that plus sorry, was it?
Was it kind of like, was that job braided on, or the?
Uh, the other one or both?
Both okay, so so when?
Yeah, so both pain.
So when I, when I say i'm in leg pain, I mean both legs are in pain.
At a certain point my right knee was worse than my left, but I was still in pain in both legs.
No No, no, I knew that.
I just wasn't sure which was getting worse.
Oh, both.
Okay, got it.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, they're both slightly worse.
They were on fire.
And it was so, it's so bad that it's hard to pinpoint where the exact pain is because it's the entire leg, all down to the feet, right?
So, yeah, pain kind of hides itself.
So when you get rid of one pain, it reveals other pain, right?
I was going to say my pain is all pain, right?
No, no, no, nothing right.
But why not?
No, it wasn't like that.
No.
Well, it's not, it's not about, it's just another, it's just not something I'll never even consider.
I could still walk.
You could walk if it's walking with animation.
I just have to walk at prosthetics.
I have no idea if it's the right thing or not to do.
I'm sure it's not.
I just, you know, if you could get rid of constant pain and, you know, have something above the knees and then get a prosthetic.
I don't know.
It's just something that crossed my mind.
But you know, that's good that it crossed your mind because it shows that you have an open mind about this.
That's a good thing.
No one's ever said that to me, but that's actually a good thing.
That obviously you're a unique kind of guy.
That's a good train of thought.
But no, that was not an option.
But it was good that you cut us out of it.
Yep.
I was funny.
Anyway, I was just, you're at 35 now.
I've only got seven more years.
And so, yep, so at 35, I fit that job because of corruption.
That was a bit of a bummer because that could have led to self-employment, me starting my own business and doing a job, albeit in pain, at least I could be employed and have some control over my financial future.
But the corruption, I had to leave.
And I had to leave.
So I left that because I'm not going to be a part of that stuff.
And so I left that.
And then at 30, at 36, I got offered another job on the other side of the country.
Right?
From zero to 36, I've been hanging around the same city.
And then from 36 to, actually, 35, sorry.
From 35 to 40, I lived for five years in, I'm from the other side of the country.
So that was a good experience.
I was in pain, but at least I was kind of like, felt like I was on an adventure, right?
And the reason that I moved was because I got offered a full-time job.
And so I'd done volunteering with the Lions Club for three years.
And so I had a place to stay in because through the Lions Club, they have like a network.
And they said, oh, yeah, we've got someone that can look after you while you're there in Tazzy and set yourself up.
So it was easy enough for me to go to Tasmania.
So yeah, I lived for five years.
And but the job only lasted four months.
I don't know why, but I didn't, I just didn't gel with the coordinator there.
And so it only lasted four months.
But it was enough time and I'd saved enough that I put a deposit down for a house.
So at about 36 years of age, I bought my first home.
And that was a highlight.
But, and also, I need to mention this.
Yeah, Stefan.
Sorry, mate.
Yeah, I need to mention this.
So about three months prior to moving to, I was looking after, I was caring for my rich granddad.
I have two granddads, a poor granddad, call him poor granddad and rich granddad.
My poor granddad died when I was 30, as I mentioned.
My rich granddad, he was had quite a few bit of brains, but he was an alcoholic as well.
He didn't want to leave his house.
And I wanted to move out of the house with my mum, right?
This is like 35.
So he needed someone to look after him.
So I moved from one house into my rich granddad's house.
I looked after him.
That's a story in and of itself.
But in his, in his, so I'm there looking after my granddad.
And I'm like, you know what?
I'm sick and tired of being poor and having no cash flow.
I'm sick and tired of being poor.
Been poor my whole life.
So I designed and manufactured.
I outsourced the manufacturing an Amazon product that I got made in the USA, despite living in Australia.
I got it made in the USA.
And that was three months prior.
I worked there for four months.
I quit my job.
And this Amazon product that I made, it became one of the best-selling Amazon products in its category for about a year and a half.
And that provided me with cash flow to pay the mortgage for some cash flow to pay the mortgage for my home that I made.
And this business was quite, it was enough to pay my mortgage in terms of cash flow that I got from this Amazon product.
But it only lasted like, it really only lasted a couple of years, right?
Because it wasn't a patentable product, but China got a hold of it and China just undercut me.
And I was in my and Chara just they just sold theirs so much cheaper than mine that my business kind of went from making up to $1,000 a week in profit down to, well, now zero.
So I recently stopped it, you know.
So that was a good thing.
But the cash flow wasn't enough for me to keep my home.
So I sold my home during COVID.
I guess I was, what, 38 then?
37.
During COVID, around the same time.
So I put my, this home up for sale.
And I made like 100 grand profit from it in two years.
But COVID happened and I couldn't leave to go back to Western Australia where I'm from.
And so I was stuck in and the home settled.
But luckily I had made friends.
So I ended up living in a mansion with 20 Indians and a lovely lady that kind of like I helped with her business.
Instead of paying rent, she didn't have much money.
I did have the Amazon business, but it wasn't making that much money then.
It really only had two years of good solid income.
But after two years, it kind of went down to $250 a week, you know, and then it went down gradually, you know, to $50 a month, that kind of thing.
So during COVID, for two years, I lived in a mansion with 20 Indians and an American lady, lovely American lady.
And in May 2020, I started teaching myself mathematics.
Oh, you're overcoming your earlier phobia, yeah.
Yeah, mate, yeah.
So what you need to know is from 30 to 37, my leg pain started to get worse again.
Okay, it just got worse.
I thought it was a Tasmanian weather.
What is it, right?
I was just, it was just worse.
And all I could really do was work one day a week with my friend.
I helped build her business.
She had a catering business and I helped her build that business up.
And so instead of paying rent, I spent eight hours a week working with her, you know, and doing other things with her.
And she loved that, right?
Because I helped around this mansion.
I cleaned the mansion and I peeled potatoes and I peeled carrots and I went cooking with her one day a week and sometimes twice a week and driving around this stuff, right?
But I also taught my, I was like, man, like I'm screwed, right?
This might sound pretty dumb, but I kind of like started to accept my disability at around 35, 36, accepting that I'll never be, I'll never be like in a bricklayer, I'll never be a pilot, I'll never be, I'll never be able to drive.
I tried Uber.
Uber was so painful, but it was at least some flexibility.
But of course, I don't know what it's like in your country, but the immigrants have taken over everybody.
So that's not an opportunity there.
I did Uber for a little while, but yeah, it just ended up being painful.
And I think I worked out it was like $14 an hour or something after you got like depreciation.
And when I say $14 an hour, I'm talking about $8 an hour US.
In my country, that's about $14.
So I lived in this mansion for two years.
That was an interesting experience.
May 2020, I started teaching myself mathematics.
Luckily, I was humble enough to start a kindergarten level.
I started off using the Khan Academy and I started teaching myself real basic stuff like, you know, count how many whales and octopuses there are.
And I put that, that became one of my main focuses.
I taught myself programming, passing programming and mathematics.
And I found that I just, I just couldn't do the programming just didn't click with me.
It was just, I found it really unenjoyable, but I liked the maths.
So that was in May 2020 that I started to do that.
COVID ended.
This mansion was up for sale.
And I could move back to home on the other side of the country.
So I've been back home for three years now.
And I taught myself from grade from kindergarten level to midway through year 10, maths.
That's like a 15 and a half year old equivalent of maths.
And I enjoy the maths.
So now here's where it gets interesting.
So at the tail end of it now.
Thanks for listening.
At 41, I met a new partner and she's a doctor.
And she was able to correctly diagnose my chronic pain.
It turns out that probably until from 20, from at least, well, from at least 25 years old and older, I had three times as much calcium in my blood as is normal.
It's called hyperparathyroidism.
And she put her hand on my knee and said, yeah, you know, you had surgery on your knee, on my tibia and everything.
So you should be getting pain there.
But why are you getting pain everywhere else?
Like all up and down my ITB, down to my feet along the side of my car.
Like, why are you in so much pain?
It doesn't make sense.
You should just have localized pain that was localized with surgery.
You've got pain all on your legs 24 hours a day.
So if I hadn't met her, I'd still be in pain.
So my pain was, say, an eight out of 10.
I've met her two years ago.
She got me surgery to have my hyper, to have my hyper parathyroid taken out, my parathyroid taken out.
That was just day surgery.
And instantly my pain went from an eight down to like a now just and now it's just localized mate.
Yeah, you're right onto it, man.
Yeah, it's just localized now, right?
Yeah, you're smart, dude, man.
That's you really are following this.
That's race.
Hey, look, yeah, so now it's just localized, right?
Now I'm 43.
I'm 43.
I've been free from major pain for a year and a half.
Just under a year and a half, probably uh, for 23 months, but for 22 months.
For 22 months now sorry, not 22 months for um 12, plus three for 15 months Stefan, for 15 months my pain has gone from an eight down to two and it's just localized pain.
So now i'm like well, what can I do in my life?
You know, i'm 43 years of age and poor.
I'm still seeing this doctor.
Everyone says I shouldn't see her because she, she has mental health issues, but she is the best doctor.
I'm obviously biased, but so she has human health lifetime.
She suffers from chronic depression and uh Ocd, she's on medication for it and uh.
But like you know i'm like that and an analogy would be, you know how you?
You see those videos in Aska of like some lion, that some zookeeper is kind of like um rescued and you know the lion hates everything and eat everything.
But this one zookeeper, this one zookeeper, the lion will warm to.
You know, it's kind of like that.
It's kind of like that mate, like it's like she.
She got my pain down and she has serious good strengths.
She's a very decent person.
She never swears, she dresses well.
You know where I live now.
Everyone, all the women wear gym clothes everywhere, she dresses well, she's in, financially independent um she she's, she doesn't have to work.
She's she's 47, she's 47 now and i'm i'm 43 and I met her um, I met her 20 months ago and uh she, she healed my legs um but uh, i've had quite a few.
I've had, i've had quite a few relationships, but nothing as serious as this.
Um, my chronic pain I, I didn't just.
The reason I gotten, the reason I left the relationships i've had over my 43 years is because I didn't really feel like I was well, there's different reasons, but I didn't really feel I was worthy of being someone's partner.
Because I was in so much pain I, I could never see my I, I couldn't have kids like, I didn't have the.
I don't didn't um, I don't have the physical ability to, I didn't to look after kids.
No, that that does that for me, that'll be like running a marathon.
That'll just be a huge physical effort.
Right, just had kids.
So I didn't, I didn't have kids.
I need to tell you that um, my leg pain was so bad when I was like 35 and had my first home.
I was living in my home, by myself, of course, and and I wasn't having any fun.
And I was making this money.
And I wasn't having any fun because I didn't want to get anyone pregnant because um, because my legs were so bad and no one, no one, knew what was wrong with my legs right, you know, I was told.
They just said that this is where you're gonna be the rest of your lives.
You know, that's what I was told by other stupid medical people, these stupid general practitioners.
Right you, it's really important in life to have a good vp, by the way, just for your listeners, because they're not all the bloody same anyway.
Um so, one of my friends, This is going to be erotic.
One of my long-term friends was a doctor back in back over in the Australian country.
He never diagnosed me right.
He wasn't a very good doctor.
He's not a GP.
He just finished uni and he was doing his training and stuff, right?
And so he wasn't a GP.
So he didn't, I couldn't expect him to be able to diagnose me right.
But just so you know, like, I used to talk, he used to ring me up.
I used to bring him up every now and again.
And he was asking me, you know, how you going, you know.
And I told him, you know, one, I said, you know, I'm not having any fun, making this money.
I don't want to get anyone pregnant.
So he suggested I get a vasectomy.
So I had a vasectomy at like 36.
But I keep my, fortunately, I keep my semen at an IVF place.
I pay $400 a week, $400 a month.
Sorry.
I pay $400 a year, $400 a year.
That's about $200 US dollars.
I pay that to keep my semen there.
So if in the future I do find someone I fall in love with, I can have kids, right?
But at the time, I was in so much pain, right?
That just wasn't an option.
But at least I've done that.
So I still have my semen there.
So now my pain levels are from eight down to two.
My sister's recently had a child.
And she's older than me, by the way, which is a remarkable thing because she's older than you get someone that has a baby at four.
Wow.
This is their first child.
Yes.
Yes, mate.
Yeah.
You're a smart guy, dude.
Yes.
You're a smart guy.
Hey, yeah.
So I held this baby in my arms.
And I'm like, and now I'm physically more capable of stuff defined.
Like I'm a bit more capable, physically capable of doing stuff.
And so I held this kid, and I'm like, you know, like, I originally discussed, I'm struggling to find purpose and a compelling future.
And I held this kid.
And I'm like, oh, you know, like, hey, maybe I can have a kid now, you know.
Then I'm, but my girlfriend's 47, she cannot have kids.
And she's a doctor, right?
So the situation I'm in now is a situation I'm in now.
And I'm trying to be brief.
Situation is now I'm living.
Well, I live half the time in my mum's house still.
Then I live half the time at my just safe simplicity, just at my doctor's girlfriend's house, right?
Sorry, your doctor's girlfriend's house.
You mean your girlfriend, who's a doctor?
Sorry, sorry.
Okay, no, I was pretty sure I understood.
I just wanted to double-check.
Yeah, yeah, like you're right.
Yeah, look.
So that's the situation now.
And I've tried different things.
I've tried cybersecurity courses, programming courses.
My maths, I went to, I did, went back to uni and did teaching.
So I might be a math, want to be a maths teacher.
So, but I actually, my partner's chronic health issues, I couldn't really do it.
Do that.
So your partner's chronic health issues.
You mentioned the mental health.
Is there something else?
Yeah, so she has chronic neck pain.
Oh, so you have that in common.
She suffers from loneliness.
She has experience with chronic pain.
Yeah, okay.
Oh, yeah.
But, you know, one of those things she says about me, you have an incredibly strong mind, right?
Probably because of all the pain I've been in.
But so she's had chronic neck pain for two or three years.
She's had chronic depression.
Her whole life?
Sorry, does she know what they're doing?
Not her whole life.
Was she in an accident or something like that?
Arthritis?
I don't know.
By me, what do I know?
She also has arthritis, but the net pain is due to just poor posture.
I've helped her.
Yeah, I've helped her in many ways.
Like I've lived with someone with chronic depression and ACD for 20 months now.
And I know what people mean when they say they're suffering from chronic depression.
This isn't an attitude thing.
This is a chemical thing.
Sorry, what do you mean by that chemical thing?
Living with someone else's depression.
Well, you know, like they just she tries to describe it to me.
You know, she's like, I just can't get out of bed today.
You know, so I just motivated her and she gets that when I'm around, she feels so much better.
When I'm not around, Stefan, she won't go to work or anything.
No, no, I understand.
What depression is?
I just mean by a chemical thing.
Good.
Oh, what I mean is prior to me having this experience, I would have said a lot of us attitude.
I wouldn't have appreciated the fact that it's well, hang on, hang on, hang on.
But, you know, there's no proof of chemical theory, right?
You're pretty much right.
Yeah.
Well, there is a small percentage that they think that they think they're born with.
Well, okay, you don't have to get into details because obviously she's not on the call, but I mean, how was her childhood?
How was her early life?
Okay, yep.
So she went to 10 different schools by the time she was 17.
Okay.
So she grew up in Britain.
She was born in the UK to Asian parents.
She speaks Queen's English.
I'm sorry.
In England, that could mean Pakistani.
It could mean Indian.
It could mean, obviously, Japanese or Chinese or Korean.
Excellent question.
So yeah, she has Singaporean parents.
Okay, but what's the ethnicity country?
Is she Chinese?
Well, Chinese.
Okay, got it.
All right.
And so she moved around a lot, and was she – did she have Asian tiger mom syndrome, or how did that go?
Ah.
Sorry, Asian Tiger Mom is 100%.
You have to be great at the piano.
You have to, everything has to be perfect.
You have to be slim and excelling in everything.
Well, I understand what you mean.
She claims she was self-motivated to do well.
And she did do very well academically.
But she says she was self-motivated.
But I was saying to her, look, I remember something about you having to go to 10 different schools.
By the time she was 15, sorry, 15, she went to 10 different schools.
So she migrated from the UK to Australia.
And she came to Australia when she was 10.
Right?
10.
Oh, no, 12.
12.
Or 11 or 12 or something like that.
And but she stayed at the same school when she was 16 and 17.
So she was at, she finally had school stability when she was 16 or 17.
She got like one of the highest marks that you can get for her year 12.
I don't know what the equivalent is in Canada, but for her final year, high school, she got one of the highest marks in the country.
Very, very good at maths, you know.
And she'd always want to be a doctor.
And yeah, so she became a doctor.
But she has been, She should probably ring you up separately, but in brief, um, she uh her mental health issues are so bad that I think that her parents and siblings have neglected her.
Sorry, sorry, did you say they think they think she's a reject okay?
I'll say that her siblings have neglected her, but her parents have just gotten tired of it.
Well, they mean they can't fix it, right?
I mean, has she ever been to talk therapy?
She's done a lot of things.
Um, sorry, has she ever been to talk therapy?
And do you know why not?
Talk therapy is very effective at helping with depression, particularly uh cognitive behavioral therapy.
Yeah, um, she's done, she's done the CBT, she's done talk therapy.
Um, she tried it.
I didn't know talk therapy, and I've given to you the same thing.
Do you know for how long?
Um, she's seen psychiatrists, and I don't know for exactly how long, but over the years, she has seen people.
However, I think she struggled to maintain the routine of doing it.
One of her OCD problems that she has is, believe it or not, reading.
Sorry, OCD makes reading difficult.
I'm not sure what she's doing.
Like reading, yeah.
So, so she suffers from the chronic depression, but she also has OCD.
And at the moment, every now and again, she gets an OCD with reading.
So, reading becomes on rereading sentences.
So, she can't read a book.
Yeah, so she can't at the moment, she can't read a relevant book that would kind of summon talk therapy.
Do you sorry?
Do you know if you wanted to have children at any time?
She says to me she never felt like she was a little bit more.
And how long have you been suffered from this level of depression for?
Yeah, well, before I said a whole life, that's wrong.
It was not a whole life.
She thinks she said around six when she was six years old, she said, she said to herself, I'll never be happy.
Okay, but she went through medical school.
She did well.
And she became a she worked.
She's worked full-time up until COVID.
So she's financially independent, man.
She's completely financially independent.
She's not rich or anything, but she's only 47.
But she could stop work now and live off dividends from shares and also her income that she gets.
Yeah, but I mean, that's not going to be good for her, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, this is where she's at now, that's all.
But yeah, we've had like a, yeah.
The thing is, Stephan, like a yeah, so like in, so try different things.
And uh, I've got into law school at a one of the best universities here.
That starts in February.
My um, my sister's husband's a lawyer, and uh, he's done very well.
And he suggested um that I do law.
He has like a 10-year plan for me because I'd like to be self-employed for 10 years and making good hourly rate.
And I can't, even though my pain levels are down to two, I'm still, I still suffer from localized pain, right?
And so I can't be a full-time painter or a full-time bricklayer or anything like that, you know.
I might be able to.
Hang on, so when you're off your knee, does it still hurt?
Like when you're sitting?
Okay, so you need a sitting job.
Yeah.
Which is white, yeah, yeah, and also I can stand up a little bit too, and also, um, I could do, I could probably do maybe teaching, right?
Teaching, but um, sorry, sorry, got into law school, right?
So, it's sorry, sorry, just interrupt.
Is that what you want to do?
I'm just trying, I don't have any judgment, I'm just curious.
It's like, is that what you want to do?
Oh, no, that's that's the question.
Um, that's the question, Stefan.
Like, okay, it does take to become a lawyer, like all the way, passing the bar, and yeah, yep, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, all the way from um, so all the way from today, I will pass the bar and you're four years to have a degree and then I pass it back 43.
I mean, you're staring down 50 by the time you become a lawyer, right?
Yeah, yeah, that's right, yeah, I'm a proper lawyer, and my um, my, um, my kind of role model.
Now, it's not, I wouldn't say a role model at this point, but I do potentially have a good role model, and that is my sister's husband.
And he suggested that this is a 10-year plan, Oscar.
You know, you got to do if you do this, this, and that, in 10 years' time, you should be self-employed and you can be making you know $350, $400 an hour, you know, if you do it this way, you know, provided things go well.
So, there's a little bit of complaints.
Hang on, hang on.
Um, is it about the money or is it about being a lawyer?
Well, but you didn't mention anything about being a lawyer other than the money.
You didn't say, like, I have a thirst for justice and to right the wrongs in the world and put the bad guys in jail and/whatever, or defend the innocent people.
Or there's no, and it's not a criticism.
I'm just pointing it out that if you're motivated by hang on, hang on, listen.
Yeah, have I talked?
Have I let you talk a lot?
Okay, so when I'm talking, could you do me a solid and not talk in my ear?
Thank you.
So, if you're motivated by the money, the motivation won't last because there isn't going to be any meaning in the money in the long run, and it's not enough to sustain human ambition to simply aim at the money.
So, if you have some because you're asking me for meaning, right?
So, meaning is morality, meaning is doing good in the world.
There's nothing else that gives meaning other than doing good in the world.
So, if you want to become a lawyer because there is some self-righteous or righteous moral mission that you want to accomplish in the world, great.
And, you know, the money will come and there's nothing wrong with the money.
But if you're just like, well, $350 an hour, if I follow my brother-in-law's 10-year plan, that's not going to be enough to give you meaning, right?
Yeah, it'll have to go beyond beyond money.
So, that's what I'm asking.
Do you care about being a lawyer?
Oh, I do.
I mean, I've always had a strong sense of justice.
It comes from, I know where it comes from too.
And particularly my experience in high school, where I was teased all the time.
Well, I'll tell you, sorry to interrupt.
And that's how I've done it.
I mean, if you really want to get meaning out of a lawyer, you become a lawyer who does malpractice.
You become a lawyer who holds asshole doctors' feet to the fire.
That's right.
That's why, that's why I'll try eyeing personal injury law.
Okay.
Yep.
All right.
So we've got a little bit more time.
And how can I best help you in the time that we have?
Well, that's where I'm at now.
In the last week or so, I've kind of got a little bit more clarity on this.
I went for a job interview for a job that was related to my previous degrees that I earned when I was in pain.
And it was a good job interview.
I think I did well, but I didn't get a job.
And so that kind of made me feel good, actually, because it meant that I have to go down a law path.
So I feel a bit more compelled to do law now than I did a week and a half ago.
Okay, so how are you going to pay for the law degree?
They have a system here where essentially the Commonwealth pays for it.
And then when I start working full-time, I pay back.
Okay, you can pay that.
With a bit of interest.
And is your girlfriend getting better or worse or staying about the same with her mental health issues?
She's gotten slightly better, but she's gotten slightly better with her mental health issues.
Yeah.
She kind of argued with me a bit.
I said, just get a full-time job or just get a job, any job.
I'm sorry, isn't she working as a doctor?
She has an interest.
Yes, but her parents hover around.
And if I'm not a lawyer or a doctor or engineer, she's worried that they'll criticize her decision to.
I'm sorry, she's 47 years old and she's still worrying about what her parents will say about who she dates.
Okay.
That's what I say.
But I think she's kind of.
No, I get it.
That's a big cultural difference.
Okay.
It's a bit crazy.
All right.
So help me understand the pluses of having this woman as your girlfriend, because obviously the minuses are pretty obvious.
And look, I don't know whether you should be with her or not.
And it doesn't matter what my opinion is.
I'm just kind of curious, what are the pluses?
Well, she's a very decent person.
She's financially independent.
Those aren't really pluses.
She, she.
Yeah, I know.
It's like she knew me before.
Let's try it this way.
What are her virtues?
What do you admire about her morally?
She's a very, very good person, morally, she's very decent.
She's very decent.
She treats everyone with respect.
She's a very good doctor.
She goes to extra mile all the time.
She's a clean person.
You know, clean and tensive around the house.
Those aren't really virtues, but it's nice.
I get that.
That's not really a virtue.
And it also could be related to the OCD, right?
It's like the pain went from your fucking legs to your girlfriend.
Like now you've just got another burden to carry.
How about that?
You don't have any burdens for a while.
That's what my friends say, but you summed it up even more succinctly.
You summed up more succinctly that the pain's gone from hers.
Well, it's her.
40 plus minus this.
You said at the age of six, I'm never going to be happy, right?
So she's this, this, this is who she is.
Yeah.
It fluctuates to some degree, but she's had 40 years to deal with this issue.
And I assume, obviously, like you're both very intelligent people.
So I assume, you know, dancing is one of the best cures for depression from what I've read, right?
So I assume that you all have looked up all of the possible treatments and approaches and protocols, and she's tried everything with great dedication and nothing has fixed it.
So this is who she is, right?
I mean, if she's been wrestling with this for, let's say, a little under 30 years as an adult, right?
So 30 years ago, she would have been 17, right?
So a little under 30 years, she's been working with this as an adult.
And she understands all the biology and she's looked for all the medical.
Sorry, I'm getting a whole ton of background noise here.
That's all right.
I'm sorry, Stefan.
It's right.
Yeah, so she's looked at all the physical causes.
I assume, as you say, she's tried CBT.
I assume she's tried medication.
I assume she's tried exercise and sunlight and dancing and all the other things.
So this is.
I'm sorry?
She hasn't tried the dancing stuff.
She hasn't tried the dancing stuff because she's been very lonely.
So I've come along and we're going to do the dancing stuff together.
But the physical stuff, not so much.
She could do dancing, and we've been looking at getting us for her a dog.
Okay, has she tried?
Has she tried?
She hasn't tried much.
No, come on.
What do you mean?
She hasn't tried harpies with side.
But she needs hard is not the solution.
Again, I'm not a doctor, right?
So please don't take this as any kind of medical advice.
But from what I've read, right, hard exercise, sunlight, and socializing, and dancing, and CB and talk therapy and so on are can be helpful from what I've read.
Of course, you know, do your own research and so on.
And I'm just wondering how many of these she's tried.
Yep.
I mean, she still sounds scared of her parents, which means that there's probably a maturity element that's missing.
Yes, that's true.
So how does she make your life fantastically better?
Well, she gave me some power.
No, no, she didn't.
Otherwise, you wouldn't be calling me.
Yeah, well, you know, she'll call me up at 10 o'clock at night and go, I need you here.
I'm not feeling well.
And I would drive 43 minutes to see her.
And it gave me a sense of purpose.
Taking care of her pain.
And I was like, well, at least taking care of her gave me a sense of purpose.
Okay, but you can't fix her.
No.
I can't fix her, but I can mitigate some of the pain.
Well, okay, but you've been mitigating pain your entire life.
Why would you want to take on more?
Well, I think there's some virtue in caring for someone.
I think there's virtue in caring for someone.
Okay, come on, man.
Let's not talk at this level.
I mean, caring for someone doesn't mean propping up someone with catastrophic mental illness.
Caring for someone is, oh, are you a little tense, honey?
I'll give you a neck rub.
Oh, are you feeling unwell?
Let me bring you some soup.
Or, oh, you seem a little down.
Tell me about your day.
Or like, that's caring for someone, not trying to be a sort of psych ward for somebody with some pretty catastrophic mental illness, right?
There's truth to what you're saying.
Yes.
And you're right.
I have heard that kind of angle before.
But the answer to your question is, I've been doing it this far, thus far because loyalty, I feel Don't even try.
Don't even try that bullshit with me, man.
Don't even try.
Don't even try.
Listen, what you're saying is, if a doctor cures a woman, what?
She has to fuck him for years?
Are you kidding me?
Yeah, and there's not a lot of sex, Death on either.
Oh, no doubt.
But what I'm saying is, if a doctor cures a woman, does that mean she has to be his girlfriend for the next couple of years and take care of him if he gets sick?
I mean, doctors get paid.
You know what I mean?
Okay, so I'll give you this.
Like, she cured my legs.
That's nice that she cured your legs.
But that does not mean that you then have to take care of her as she can't get out of bed for the next 20 years.
True.
Okay, let me ask you, let me ask you this.
And again, she's welcome to call in and set me straight on anything I get wrong.
Let me ask you this.
Has she talked about how her suffering spills over to you?
Are we still with us?
You've got to be kidding me.
All right.
Maybe he ran out of power.
It's hard to say.
All right.
Well, I'll chat a little bit here.
And I don't know if this guy's coming back.
It's been a bit of a chaotic call.
He called up on a speakerphone in a wind tunnel and so on.
So we can get used to these chronic pain conditions.
We can get used to managing disasters and difficulties.
And this is a Simon the Boxer thing.
All we do is manage pain.
All we do is manage pain.
And listen, this poor caller, I mean, what a terrible situation to be in for decades because of to some degree, to a large degree, like going from a 10 to an eight to now a two with localized pain rather than chronic dual leg pain because of a misdiagnosis or an underdiagnosis is beyond wretched.
And, you know, obviously nothing but sympathy for all of that.
But we can get so used to managing people's pain, managing our own pain, managing other people's pain, taking care of people.
Like he said, caring is, you know, trying to deal with this catastrophic level of depression to the point where it seems like on a fairly regular basis, if I understood what he was saying correctly, on a fairly regular basis, she can't even get out of bed.
I mean, that's pretty terrible, right?
She can't even get out of bed.
So you don't want to spend your life managing that.
You don't want to go from managing your father's alcoholism to managing your mother's issues to managing poverty to managing chronic pain to all of that sort of stuff to now managing this woman's depression.
And of course, you know, nothing but sympathy for his girlfriend.
The fact that she has these, that this issue is very difficult, and it's a big challenge.
I've never dealt.
I mean, my mother, I guess, for some time when she was turning 40, didn't know how to get out of bed for, I don't know, a week or two, something like that.
Now, I didn't really understand it at the time.
Now the math kind of checks out.
But I've never been around somebody who's that depressed.
And that level of severe depression is really tough even for professionals to treat.
My understanding is, and again, this is not any kind of medical advice.
My understanding is that if it's really catastrophic, they can put her on some meds, which take, you know, some weeks to work.
But Sometimes for me, you just kind of have to will yourself to do stuff and find ways to distract yourself from feeling down.
But my general belief is that there's usually childhood stuff at the root of this kind of stuff.
You know, maybe there's some big biochemical thing, but that's never been proven.
It doesn't mean it's impossible, of course, but it's never been proven.
And this idea that she healed me, therefore I owe her my life, is not reasonable.
It's not reasonable.
I mean, doctors have cured me of certainly one fell disease, and that didn't mean that I owed that doctor my life going forward.
I don't have to track her, and then when she gets old, take care of her for year after year because she cured me of a fell disease.
That's not particularly rational.
But also, and the other thing, too, of course, once you get entangled with someone who has severe cognitive challenges such as this, or severe mental health challenges, such as this, it sounds like some pretty severe depression.
Once you get entangled in that, it's very hard to get disentangled because they have become to rely upon you.
You're the only shining light in their life.
And without you, you fear.
And I'm not saying that this is what the woman has said.
Of course, I doubt it, but you fear that if you leave them, then they're not going to get out of bed at all or maybe become self-destructive in some manner.
So it usually is a good idea to not get involved with people who have these kind of catastrophic issues.
You can care, of course, and you can suggest ways to approach it.
But if this has been, you know, 40, 40 years of never being happy, then, you know, you can't solve it.
And also, you know, it's a tough call, right?
But when you're in a romantic relationship, if there's no sexual activity, and of course there's going to be times naturally where that's the case, you know, if you're ill or whatever it is, right?
Or, you know, somebody's mother's just died or there's a kid been born, there's going to be some time with no sexual activity, of course, right?
But it should not be the norm.
And if you get trapped into these sort of propped up, I wouldn't say trapped, but if you end up kind of stuck in one of these prop the person up relationships, then that is a very tough thing to hang on to.
That is a very tough thing to sustain.
That is a very tough thing to have play out.
And it generally is a very, very bad idea.
Don't try to fix what the experts cannot fix.
Now, of course, I understand that she fixed what his experts for decades were unable to fix, which is really terrible.
But, yeah, she's got chronic neck pain.
She's got issues of severe depression, it sounds like.
She has, I assume, some mobility issues with regards to her neck.
And she has obviously severe happiness issues, to put it mildly.
And it doesn't sound to me, again, what do I know, right?
But it doesn't sound like to me.
I mean, if I was suffering from some significant depression, I would say, okay, what are the most common ways that you can solve or fix depression?
And from what I've read, again, no expert, no medical advice, no psychologist, blah, blah, blah, no psychiatrist.
I ain't no doctor with degree, but I would list through all of those things and I would just apply myself as much as I humanly could to achieving whatever I could by pursuing the most common methodologies that have been relatively proven.
And again, just off the top of my head from memory, there are some significant positives that can be achieved through Things like making sure you get good exercise, making sure you have a good social life, making sure you get good sleep as best as possible.
And again, from what I've read, dancing is a significant plus when dealing with these kinds of issues.
So I would just work through those things as a whole.
And hopefully, one would take.
But of course, one of the challenges is that if you really feel like you can't get out of bed, it can be pretty tough to find, feel the motivation to pursue and achieve those kinds of goals.
So that is a big challenge.
But yeah, with regards to meaning, carrying his own burden of still pain, right?
And the fact that it's gone down is obviously beyond wonderful, right?
The fact that it's gone down is fantastic.
But it's still there, right?
He still has his pain.
And that is a big issue to deal with, and taking on somebody else's mental health issues, which sound pretty severe.
They sound pretty severe.
So trying to take on those kinds of mental health issues is probably a bad idea as a whole.
Certainly amateurs can't fix what professionals have a great deal of difficulty trying to fix.
So I would be very careful about that kind of stuff.
So I'm going to just see here if I can figure this out and see if I can't, you know, I don't want to sort of hover around the edge of the things that I know.
And again, I don't want to leave anybody with any ridiculous amateur impressions of what is a good approach or potentially a good approach when dealing with the significant levels of depression.
So let me just bring up here, if I'm going to X, I'm going to go to our good old friend, Grok, and say, list the five best solutions for deep depression in order of efficacy of.
Again, this is not medical advice.
Grock is not a doctor.
I'm not a doctor.
You know, you get all of that kind of stuff, right?
So let's see.
Let's see what there is.
And again, I'm always, I just, if you know my prejudice or not, I'm always a big fan of looking towards looking towards talk therapy is usually that's sort of my first go-to go-to position, right?
Okay, so electro-convulsive therapy, the most effective acute treatment with odds ratios up to 12.86 for response versus placebo, superior to medication and other therapies for severe life-threatening depression or when rapid remission is needed.
Brief electrical stimulation under anesthesia side effects include temporary memory issues.
We talked about this on Friday night.
Non-invasive brain stimulation with that's 3.35 for response, ranks just below electroconvulsive therapy in meta-analysis, highly effective for treatment-resistant cases with 60 to 80% response rates in studies uses magnetic pulse to target mood-regulating brain areas, session size 20 to 40 minutes, 4 to 6 weeks.
Ketamine, IV infusion, or esketamine.
Nasal spray, rapid acting effects in hours or days with an odds ratio of 2.94 for response.
Severe suicidal depression, it's good for that.
50 to 70% response in trials.
Let's see.
Combination therapy.
Antidepressant medication plus psychotherapy.
More effective than either alone, relative list 2.15 versus usual care.
Small to moderate effect sizes.
Moderate to severe MDD.
Addresses symptoms and underlying patterns.
Meds like Venlafexine slash SNRIs pair well with 12 to 16 therapy sessions.
Personally, I would opt for longer, but that's obviously just me.
And antidepressant medications alone.
Okay.
What about exercise?
Sunlight.
Good sleep and dancing.
Yeah, let's just see what.
Again, this is just AI, so it's not official, right?
Bomb, bum, bum.
What do we got?
You can do it.
Lifestyle interventions for deep depression, exercise, sunlight, sleep, and dancing.
These are excellent, accessible additions to the clinical treatments mentioned earlier.
While they're often most effective in adjuncts, enhancing recovery or preventing relapses in severe depression, they have strong evidence as standalone or supportive options, especially for milder cases of maintenance.
Okay, so one, exercise.
Aerobic or strength training.
Tops the list with moderate to large effects.
Reducing symptoms by 20 to 50% in severe cases, often comparable to meds, but with added physical benefits.
Aim for 150 minutes per week, walking, jogging.
A 2024 BMJ meta-analysis of 218 trials confirmed benefits across depression severities, including treatment-resistant.
High-intensity intervals show even faster mood lifts in 2025 studies.
Dancing, structured dance or dance movement therapy, a joyful subset of exercise with potentially superior mental health gains via endorphins, social connections, and rhythm.
Meta-analysis shows significant depression reductions up to 30 to 40%, especially in adults or older populations.
And it's more engaging than solar workouts.
Try one to two sessions a week, e.g. ballroom or freestyle classes.
20 to 24 to 20 to 25, sorry, 2024 to 2025 reviews rank it highly for anxiety too.
Sunlight exposure.
Effective for non-seasonal severe depression.
Response rates 40 to 50%.
Remission up to 41% by regulating circadian rhythms and serotonin.
30 to 60 minutes daily outdoors or 10,000 lux light box for 30 minutes morning.
Recent metas confirm benefits beyond seasonal affected disorder with low side effects.
Great for those with limited mobility.
Good sleep hygiene.
Foundational with small to moderate effects on symptom severity.
Poor sleep worsens depression by directionally focused on seven to nine hours a night via routines, no screens, pre-bed, consistent schedule, and so on.
Non-drug fixes like CBT slash I reduce depression to by 20 to 30% in clinical trials.
Even brief sleep restriction can acutely help severe cases.
Prioritize if insomnia is a factor.
Consult a doctor before starting, especially if suicidal, says Skrock, please amplify professional care.
All right, that's very, very interesting.
Okay.
What are the effects of long-term therapy?
talk therapy on severe depression.
Okay, talk therapy, psychotherapies such as cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, interpersonal therapy, IPT, or psychodynamic approaches, that's the internal family systems therapy of sort of Richard Schwartz, among others, is a cornerstone for treating severe major depressive disorder, MDD.
Long-term typically refers to treatment lasting six or more months of follow-ups beyond the acute phase, 12 to 24 plus months.
Evidence from meta-analysis shows it's effective for symptom reduction, remission, and relapse prevention, often outperforming medications alone over time, though combined with meds yields the best results for severe cases.
Benefits accrue gradually with lower risk of worsening symptoms compared to controls.
However, 50% of people, about 50%, may not fully respond, and relapse remains a risk.
For severe depression, data is sparser but supportive, especially in combination.
So, of course, the challenge is that if your mental health issues have to do with bad relationships, then remission will be much more likely if those bad relationships are not dealt with.
So that's pretty important.
So these are things that are important to sort of figure out and understand.
So yeah, with regards to meaning, though, find something that's going to add to the virtue of this world, is going to add to the morality of this world.
Do your part to promote virtue and fight evil.
And I think that you will have the best chance for meaning.
All right.
Well, I'm afraid that our good friend was not able to finish the call, but I hope that the information that I have provided is helpful for people as a whole.
I wish him the very best.
His girlfriend is certainly welcome to call in.
And perhaps we can have an interesting conversation about her relationships and what's going on in her life.
So thank you everyone so much.
As usual, freedomane.com slash donate to help out the show.
You can, of course, set up your own calls at freedomand.com slash call.
And lazala from up here.
Best luck out there.
I'll talk to you soon.
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