Transcript

[Intro] (0:00)

Jeremy Jackson went from Hollywood fame to becoming one of the nation's top [...] teachers. Knowing from TV as a kid, that was like a huge thing. Getting Baywatch was different. I'm a kid, star of a show. I'm on the cover of every magazine. I'm in there. Nothing can stop this train. There's so many forms of breathwork out there right now. Wim Hof is huge. Overcoming human biology, which is a beautiful part. I try to glitch the nervous system. I'm not trying to help you be better naturally, I'm helping you access supernatural. I am the experiment. You can write your own story. Stop trying and don't give into the fear.

Jeremy Jackson (0:18)

There's so many forms of breathwork out there right now. Wim Hof, huge, because, you know, there's just clickbait and, and, you know, ice and overcoming human biology, which is a beautiful part. Sure, overcoming what you think you're physically capable of. And then there's a lot of different breathing that's been around for years, box breathing and different breath practices that are supposed to regulate the nervous system. And so if I had to come up with what I do, I try to glitch the nervous system. I'm not trying to help you be better naturally, I'm helping you access supernatural. Not in the natural, but supernatural. Something above our pay grade. Something beyond our comfort zone and outside of our present level of awareness.

Justin McMillen (1:28)

Wow.

Jeremy Jackson (1:30)

And so, regulation of the nervous system. Vagus nerve relaxes, oxygen levels up, regulate hydrogen, starts to enter the cell. Carbon dioxide regulates. And then you take somebody to this place and it's like all of a sudden [...]. You're like, where am I? Holy shit. You see your deceased grandma. Your puppy from when you were six is licking you in the ear. You feel it real. Repressed memories coming through. Weeping, sobbing, tearing. All this kind of amazing stuff. And people come out and they're like, I have no idea what happened, what was that? I'm like, that's, that's what we're here for. To go beyond what we think is possible so that we can continue to do that. And every day, I say that breathwork is a microcosm of the macrocosm. You're not going to experience anything while laying down for an hour that you're not going to experience for the rest of your life. You're going to move, you're going to feel, you're going to smell, you're going to see, you're going to face discomfort. You're going to hear all of your own, you know, your inner cheerleader and your inner critic. They're all going to come through. And if you can do it there and go to this place that you just go right under the other side of, I feel so fucking good, what was that? I feel incredible, I feel calm, there's warmth in my hands, and all this stuff comes. I was like, yeah, that's how everything is in life. That's how job interviews get to be. That's how that new business you're thinking about starts. It's going to be the same shit. You're going to be super insecure. Try to talk yourself out of it. Think there's no way you can continue to do it. And if you do, you're going to be like, whoa. And people get kind of weirded out when I start talking like this. But you enter a new dimension, you go beyond what you thought was capable, and embrace the mystery that ensues to life lived. To me, people are transcending almost to a different state of being. And then the goal is to stay there, to experience that you didn't die and you're safe. You know, your own breath didn't kill you. That feeling that you didn't want to feel, those tears that you didn't want, that laughter that you were too embarrassed to do in front of a group of people, and then you did it. You're like, oh, that feels so good. It's contempt prior to investigation, that's what happens a lot with breathwork. Oh, I know it's not for me.

Justin McMillen (3:59)

Well, have you ever had a transcendent experience just from your own breath? Right, you have this beautiful medicine right on your grill and you have access to it all the time.

Jeremy Jackson (3:59)

And you get me fired up. So obviously, early days of Wim Hof, I was super interested in him because of the key. So, you know, there's, you sit around and talk, when you're younger or even now, about, you know, maybe there's more senses, maybe there's stuff we forgot that our ancestors knew, that we forgot. And then Wim Hof appeared to unlock something that maybe we lost, that we'd just forgotten. And maybe that's how we made it through the ice age. Maybe we learned we could totally overtake things that were otherwise believed to be a [...], and then control things in our body. So I was just like, this motherfucker figured out something that maybe we always knew, and then he just [...], and he accidentally stumbled onto it. And it's going to be a new thing. So that was my interest early on, and then I started playing with it. And then, Brian Mackenzie, I've heard the name, I'll get you guys connected. He's a, he wrote a, he's a New York Times bestselling author and stuff.

Justin McMillen (5:07)

He's proof of that, that's another guy. Okay, so he trains, like, do you follow CrossFit?

Jeremy Jackson (5:09)

I did, I used to. Check me out, [...] was her coach, John Jones worked with him. But he's got all this, he's real, him and Andrew Huberman are buddies, and they do all this different stuff, and he has an app on breathing. So there's another section which is like breath for performance and exercise. He's got his gear system, he's a brilliant guy.

Justin McMillen (5:31)

Cool.

Jeremy Jackson (5:31)

So I've been playing around with his stuff, and I've hired him to work for me in different areas. And then I've sort of read about holotropic breathing.

Justin McMillen (5:49)

Yeah, that's my origins. I think that's what it sounds like. And then, you know about the guy that was studying LSD, do you know about Stanislav Grof?

Jeremy Jackson (5:49)

Yeah. And he had to pivot, can you talk about that? So in the early days, you had Timothy Leary, is that right? Yeah, and Ram Dass, and Stanislav Grof and Ram Dass went this way, and Leary went that way. And Stanislav Grof started calling it holotropic breathing, holotropic, like emerging into. And in his methodology he was working with people who were having what seemed like psychotic breaks, and that these psychotic breaks weren't actually bad, that we needed to stop medicating these people and stop running from what they were going through, and take them through it. Right, the only way out is through. And a lot of times we stop right in the middle because it's just too scary. And you've heard, what we resist persists. And one thing I love saying in breathwork is the only way to heal it is to feel it. When the student's ready, the master appears. And so to go deeper into these things in a safe setting and in a safe environment, knowing you're not going to- in ten years I've never had somebody have a heart attack, pass out, and have a panic attack. I've had hundreds, if not thousands, of people stop breathing because they thought they were gonna- so what happens is the human mind starts placing circumstances from the past on your present experience, and it doesn't allow you to go any further than that.

Justin McMillen (7:47)

That's another microcosm of the macrocosm, right? Applying past scenarios to present situations makes the future turn out the same.

Jeremy Jackson (7:47)

Sure, because I'm living in the past in the present, even though I don't know it. I've collected this data, useful information, to go, oh, I had a panic attack one time, I just felt just like that. So I need to stop. Oh, I used to play that game with my friends and we would all pass out, and it feels similar to that, and so I can't do this. But time after time, every single time anybody is willing to experience that, to go into that, they come out with something profound, and it's their own. That's one of the things that I think is so priceless and precious, is that it's their own awareness, they have their own realization. It wasn't told to them. There's a difference between kind of pure thinking, feeling, and knowing. It's just more personally empowering. And the word emergence, too, so it's like almost like the thing that you needed to know, when you do it, it's just like it's coming out and you don't [fake it].

Justin McMillen (9:00)

Holy shit, I just all of a sudden had this vision of something that you weren't thinking about at all, is that what happens?

Jeremy Jackson (9:00)

Well, it usually shows up the easiest way, without getting into, like, psychologically evaluating and stuff like that, because diagnosis and all that kind of stuff, we stay out of there. The easiest way to address it is schematically, so whether it was sexual abuse or, some people really believe or think they have a demonic attachment, or another personality, or things like that. So we will give that a color, a texture, a shape, a size, and we'll breathe through it, and they'll breathe in and it starts to change and it starts to move. And when did this come into your body? And people are letting go of traumas, of repressed memories, of demonic attachments. So what we see is sometimes called an entity release, an energetic entity, right, because the body keeps the score in that way for sure. And, you know, do you know what "holotropic" means? Holos is wholeness in Latin [Greek], and tropic is moving toward, so attracted to. So it's moving toward wholeness, that's holotropic.

Justin McMillen (10:25)

Wow, that's really cool.

Jeremy Jackson (10:25)

Yeah, it's beautiful, but I have no experience with it. I did a retreat, I sent my staff on a retreat, and I was dealing with something when we had somebody run a holotropic breathing session, so I never participated. It was weird, just, it wasn't because I didn't want to, I was in the middle of something in the community kitchen, and I remember coming in there and it was like, people were crying, and it was like, what the hell is happening here? And then I started reading about it, and I'm not sure if this is right. So I don't know if I read this so I could be wrong, and I don't want to say a wrong thing, but I heard that the guy who developed it was studying LSD before that, and then because LSD was made illegal, he figured out how to use this to produce the same [effect].

Justin McMillen (11:15)

Create it. Well, he didn't like that people called it an altered state.

Jeremy Jackson (11:15)

Altered state is a generally accepted term. But he believed that this was, like- is it a psychedelic experience? It could absolutely be, sometimes it's not, and it doesn't need to be in order to be really effective. But even with psychedelics, many people will go and not see anything or hear anything, but they'll get some type of message. They'll get some type of clarity, they'll get a breakthrough. And even if they think they get no breakthrough, somehow over time it's like, oh my gosh, that's what that meant. Just depends on the person, what they're really ready for, what they're prepared for, how their God needs to talk to them in that moment. It's really kind of a sacred deal. But you can take people into this altered experience, which is maybe just considered an enhanced experience or an activation experience. And so, in breathwork, it's kind of like improv, right? So in improv, it's always yes, and, it's never like, hey, good to see you. I haven't seen you for a long time. And it's never like, what, I don't know you. Because then that room is in a problem, and now we're just in an argument. Yeah, and I picked your kid up from work, you got to be like, what?

Justin McMillen (12:30)

Oh, how's she doing?

Jeremy Jackson (12:30)

Right, thank you for picking my kid up. I didn't want you to pick my kid up. As long as you're accepting, we can get this rolling back and forth. It's further into the story, right. And so much of the traditional model is, no, let's table that, that's psychosis. Breathwork, versus the traditional model, traditional model is like therapy would be, okay, that's- you're seeing people right now, I'm seeing- oh, that's psychosis. Or that's ideation, or whatever. There's none of that. It's like, yes, and, what are they telling you, and what does that mean to you. And, you know, the truth shall set us free. And when people's nervous systems are calibrated, when they're oxygen rich and the muscles are relaxing and all that kind of stuff is happening, they feel safe. The story that we thought we knew becomes so much lighter, that's been my experience, so much lighter, not heavy afterwards. It's like that trauma, which is almost silly, what the hell do you think is happening, from a spiritual sense or a neurochemical sense, or- is there any information about this that people can [access]?

Justin McMillen (13:59)

There's some really interesting- if you just look up, there's starting to be far more research on heavy, high ventilation breathing, that's what they're calling it, for the studies. And brain mapping is showing almost identical brain waves to psychedelic experiences, with mushrooms or DMT or things of that nature. It is very possible, although not clinically proven, that people do release their own endogenous DMT.

Jeremy Jackson (14:32)

So I'll just speak from my perspective. What I believe is happening is, I believe we are releasing our own endogenous DMT. We release it when we're born, we release it when we die. People have pre-death euphoria and memory recall, all of a sudden they get healthier, right before they're going to pass, commonly. You know, understood in the medical industry, probably responsible for near-death experiences where people have this radical white light experience and have these deep, profound realizations and breakthroughs and change their whole lives when they come back, have a message. So I believe when we hyper-oxygenate the bloodstream and go into different breath holds, corresponding with root locks- Clenching, the sutures of your skull open up just a tiny bit when you inhale and close when you exhale. Cerebrospinal fluid coming up the spine, oxygen's coming into the cell. A lot of people now in the medical industry are saying, can we breathe through our blood more than our lungs? We get more oxygen from our bloodstream than we do our lungs. So the lungs are bringing in this oxygen, it's going into the bloodstream, the bloodstream is holding the oxygen, we hold the breath in the breath hold, it's sending the oxygen into the cells. And when oxygen hits cells, it creates hydrogen. Super explosive, super powerful gas, this is antibacterial, antiviral, anti-cancer. So in essence, that's healing. That's natural healing, just at face value, that's what that is. So, out of the woo-woo, scientifically, that's natural healing. In root locks, or butthole clenching- and a lot of the [audience] on the shorts, you know, butthole clenching, we get a lot of people [reacting] to that. My name is Jeremy Jackson, and today we're going to talk about butthole clenching. I do these chest bangs, and so our lungs have little bubbles of carbon dioxide that kind of cling to them, and when we bang on our chest, those carbon dioxide bubbles come up and more oxygen comes in. So we're just getting every trick we can to get somebody highly oxygenated. And I believe when this is really achieved, and we hit that glitch in the nervous system, you forget that you're you. I don't know if you forget you're a human being, but I think you remember that you're both spiritual and human, you're flesh and energy. And so there's this liminal space right down the middle where you don't have to attach completely to the physical. You have permission to feel the etheric, feel the energetic. And it's kind of hard not to, when your hands are buzzing, when you feel like you're floating and you can't pick your hands up off the ground, even if you wanted to, or in many cases, astral projecting, where people are looking at their bodies from outside of their bodies, walking around the room, having a full realization that they're not in their body, wondering if it's a dream, and then coming back into their body, sometimes coming in and out, that's kind of hard to deny that something different is going on. And in that environment of gas exchange, the research I've done is saying that the lungs are more responsible than the pituitary gland. We previously thought it was the endocrine system, and the pineal gland was releasing DMT, but I think it's an interaction between the two, and the lungs, and we release our own endogenous DMT, which is known as the spirit molecule. And people are having big spiritual awakenings and realizing that there's so much more to life than we fell into through the Newtonian model, of, you know, it's got to be one rung on the ladder at a time. And you know what, I can jump over the wall, I don't need this ladder. Wait a minute. The wall is not there. The wall was a preconceived opinion of a limited mind, and the mind starts to open up.

Justin McMillen (18:42)

You're- there's other people talking about this sort of thing, but I've never heard anyone talk about it in the way you are.

Jeremy Jackson (18:42)

I want to make it as palatable for people as possible. I want to bring the nervous system information it wants. It's actually something I learned from Rich, do you know him? Oh man, I got to link you guys up. Seal Team Six commander for 13 years, wrote a book, Masters of Uncertainty and Attributes, you would love the attributes, it's all about how to build the most effective teams in business.

Justin McMillen (19:03)

Okay, check it out.

Jeremy Jackson (19:21)

Employing Navy SEAL practices to make incredibly high functioning teams. He's a sweetheart, he has a huge heart for addiction. In his book Masters of Uncertainty, he breaks down some of the protocols about going into the unknown, and how the more you can know that you know, the further you can go into the unknown- The more you can remind yourself of that, you do know, the more you can go off into the unknown. He breaks it down into duration, pathway, and objective. He says if one or two are gone, you go into what's called autonomic arousal, so when you know how long it's going to take, and you know your route and where you're going, you're okay. Understanding sort of takes the fear quotient and brings it down.

Justin McMillen (20:12)

So that's kind of- I could see why that would come from him too.

Jeremy Jackson (20:12)

Yeah, that's kind of been my play with helping people. Here's what's going on, here's how long it's going to take, here's how many breaths we're going to take. Here's how long we're going to hold our breath for, here's what we're going to do, here's why we do it, this is why we bang on our chest. And so the nervous system is going, okay, I know, this isn't it, we might get somewhere very unfamiliar, but at least I know the duration and the pathway and the objective, so I can't short circuit myself trying to get there.

Justin McMillen (20:53)

Have you considered naming it something different than breathwork?

Jeremy Jackson (20:53)

Well, the Energy Method is the company. What does it stand for? It stands for anything you want it to. Goddess, god, growth, genius, guru, galaxy, it's about tapping into your inner potential, that capital G that everybody has in them.

Justin McMillen (20:53)

I like it, yeah, that's cool. And then, with breathwork, is the Energy Method- is that the totality of Jeremy Jackson and all that you do, or is that specifically the term you use to describe this practice, that you'll be developing till the day you die?

Jeremy Jackson (21:15)

Yeah, definitely.

Justin McMillen (21:35)

Was it about the physical practice of breathing, is that the Energy Method?

Jeremy Jackson (21:35)

Yeah, I think the Energy Method is- breath is the doorway, remembering who you truly are is the outcome.

Justin McMillen (21:35)

Wow. Okay, and, you know, five years ago I wouldn't have said this, but- you go into treatment centers and say, I do psychedelic breathwork, but we don't use psychedelics.

Jeremy Jackson (22:03)

People would probably be all about it, because everybody's on this path right now, that psychedelics are the panacea, and if you can produce the same experience-

Justin McMillen (22:03)

But I don't want you to get away from- Energy Method, and not just try to give your business a "psychedelic breathwork" label.

Jeremy Jackson (22:03)

Well, I mean, it's interesting, I'm sure people have said something like that.

Justin McMillen (22:23)

But if you're creating psychedelic experiences through breathwork- there's already a ton of people saying that that's healing everybody, probably more than it should.

Jeremy Jackson (22:23)

I'm not saying it's not good, it's just nothing's the cure, there is no one pill for sure. I got plenty of people that hate it, that refuse.

Justin McMillen (22:43)

So I wonder if people listening get the whole picture here. So you do this as a job, and you have people who work for you, and they go to different treatment centers and health facilities, and you work privately with clients. Is it always for mental health and healing, or is it coaching?

Jeremy Jackson (22:43)

Yes. We have high achievers, successful people, we have the Balanced Man retreat in Costa Rica every three months, we do a lot of breathwork on that retreat. We have some one-on-one clients. We just launched an online certification program, we went through level one, so we're at level one, level two, level three, and then we're going to have a master level where we do business coaching and teach people how to get the right accreditations. They need to basically mirror in their hometown what we've done in Orange County, go out and do half a million dollars worth of business a year, and have fun and help people, have income, manage a team, and marketing and all that kind of stuff.

Justin McMillen (23:30)

When you say "we," who is we?

Jeremy Jackson (23:48)

So I have a partner, Eliana, she's kind of the brains of scheduling and invoices and the bills and all that, she's like an operating officer.

Justin McMillen (23:48)

Okay, so the two of you, and then you have people teaching the Energy Method to a team of ten?

Jeremy Jackson (24:10)

Yeah, really.

Justin McMillen (24:10)

Okay, and 62 groups a week in Orange County, holy cow.

Jeremy Jackson (24:10)

I want to get to 75. Yeah, the guys loved you.

Justin McMillen (24:30)

When did you do it here, about a month ago maybe.

Jeremy Jackson (24:30)

So there's still guys around who remember. You've been in my world much longer, well, obviously, from knowing you from TV as a kid, that was like a huge thing. But only for us old guys, I get these youngsters telling my son about you, and I was like, oh, you got to watch Baywatch, he's probably going to love it because he's 14. And I remember being 14 and watching it.

Justin McMillen (24:51)

Oh, slow motion, right, I do- but I was describing, you know, David Hasselhoff and the whole thing, and I was like, it was really iconic. Yeah, it was such a cool thing. But later, when I first moved here in '99, I got a job at what used to be Rock and Java, that became a cafe, and I ran into you there a couple times, I never spoke to you, but people were like, oh, that's Hobie from Baywatch, or Jeremy Jackson. And you were like, very cool, very edgy, and you're like you're still in the middle of an audition, that's an amazing face to say the least, but you had that same energy, kind of, that you carry now, it's much more peaceful now.

Jeremy Jackson (25:33)

For sure, yeah.

Justin McMillen (25:50)

So I've known about you in this area we live in, in Orange County, for 25 years now, and I think a lot has happened from when I first saw you until now.

Jeremy Jackson (25:50)

Yeah, oh yeah.

Justin McMillen (25:50)

So at that time, '99, 2000, were you sober at that time?

Jeremy Jackson (25:50)

I first got sober in 2000. So, right about 2000, I was newly sober, but that was in the era of, you know, I was staying up all night shooting pool, surfing in the morning, womanizing, and just, whatever, insecure.

Justin McMillen (26:11)

How long before that was the end of your time on Baywatch?

Jeremy Jackson (26:38)

So I quit Baywatch when I was 18, in '98. But I came back and did something in '99, and then I came back and did something in 2000, so literally 11 years, from 1990 to 2001. So you started in '90, how old were you? Ten.

Justin McMillen (26:38)

That's crazy. Formative years, if you think about it, where your brain is expanding and learning, and being in that high intensity type of situation, million dollar days, multi-million dollar days, and having stuff [thrown at you], it's an interesting way to hone a mind. This, the child star thing, I don't know a lot about it, Jeremy. But I can try to imagine, and I know you've told this story so many times, so my goal always is to find some different angle when we sit down, so I won't get into "give me your whole bio" type questions. But were you doing acting before that, and then you just got a break, or was it kind of one of those random, someone runs into you in a coffee shop, and-

Jeremy Jackson (27:50)

Well, so the deal was, I had this single mom, and I just loved Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley and Knight Rider, and I would see these iconic characters, these figures that seemed to wield real influence and power, that seemed so swaggy, so confident, so exuberant, so skilled, so talented. And I just started obsessing, practicing dance moves, practicing accents and dance routines. I split my head open on a sippy cup, the sippy cups that spin around, I didn't have the lid on it, and I was already practicing Michael Jackson moves when I was a year old. 00;28;56;20 - 00;29;16;10 Jeremy Jackson So I got 126 stitches in my forehead because I fell trying to spin.

Justin McMillen (28:56)

Oh, God.

Jeremy Jackson (28:56)

Yeah, very, very young. I didn't know entertainment industry was an industry, I didn't know it was a job, I didn't know you could get rich, I just knew that whatever that was, I wanted to do it, and I did it nonstop. I got kicked out of school for doing it all the time. I won every talent show, I would make my mom and all her girlfriends sit down on the couch and give me my five minutes to come out and give them the performance I'd been working on for eight hours in my room. And my mom just kind of randomly was like, I'm going to call an agent in LA who's a good agent. Never had any family in the entertainment industry or anything like that. So we went and met an agent, and that agent turned out to be a pretty big-time child agent specialist at the time, and I started going on auditions at six years old.

Justin McMillen (29:39)

Yeah, that's crazy. I wonder what it was at such a young age that made you recognize these performers and be so drawn to them?

Jeremy Jackson (30:04)

It's interesting, I feel like the older I get, the more I'm trying to recapture that type of draw, that type of pull. I don't have all the facts figured out, I don't know the how, but I know the why, there's an intuitive pull there, and I just loved it. I was curious about it, I wanted to do it, I didn't care how bad it hurt, I didn't care if I fell and hit my head and needed stitches, that didn't hold me back from doing Michael Jackson spins the next day. There was just an unconscious desire there.

Justin McMillen (30:54)

Yeah, I think about certain stars and famous, talented people that everyone's watching, these icons of our society, it's easy to go, oh, that person got lucky, or that person got a break. But there's also- I don't know what it is, I was talking to somebody about this the other day, there's a thing that people can have that makes them impossible to ignore. That sort of quality, I wonder if that's the one or two thing you instantly honed in on.

Jeremy Jackson (31:13)

I saw it, and it clicked, I said, I can do that, I can be that. But then, so you ended up auditioning- did you know what Baywatch was when you auditioned?

Justin McMillen (31:13)

I didn't really, I think maybe once or twice trailers, because Baywatch had been on, I think a year or two previous to that, they did one season. But I watched Knight Rider religiously, it was rad, with the cars, you could buy the toys, I had the Big Wheel, the Big Wheel with those.

Jeremy Jackson (31:44)

Yeah, I remember it well, I was still in a car seat, and my mom would bring the car seat in because in the neighborhood we lived in, people would steal your car seat, it's worth money. Given the sense of the neighborhood, and the financial situation I grew up in, I would put that in front of the TV, the dial knob with the antenna, and park it like a tot and watch Knight Rider.

Justin McMillen (32:07)

That's so cool. So then you get called about this audition for Baywatch, do you remember that well?

Jeremy Jackson (32:30)

Yeah, how old was I- I was nine when I auditioned for it, I was down here in Orange County, I was swimming in the pool with my friends, and I was having fun and I didn't want to go, and my mom insisted that we go, and she tried to- She was like, it's Knight Rider, you might play the son of Knight Rider, and I was like, okay, I'll go. And I totally remember it, never would have guessed in a million years where it would end up. But I do know that any time I walked into an audition, it was always like, this is mine. I'm going to get this one, no one can do it the way I can.

Justin McMillen (33:16)

Yeah, I think I could sense that performer trait in you. There's a lot of talented actors that aren't even really performers. They're even maybe more reclusive, don't want to be in front of people. And then there's people who just love to entertain, sounds like you're that way.

Jeremy Jackson (33:34)

Yeah, that was me. I didn't know about manifestation, I didn't know about visualization, I didn't know about that stuff, how it works. But I just did it.

Justin McMillen (33:51)

So then once you started doing it, obviously this changes your life because you're making money. What's the lifestyle like, are you shooting every day and not in school?

Jeremy Jackson (33:51)

Yeah, well it kind of started before that, at six I started getting a lot of commercials, between six and nine. I did like 60 TV commercials, a couple movies, some TV shows, I was in the Wonder Years, I did the Frosted Mini-Wheats commercial, and Mattel, so I was getting real gigs, M&Ms, a special Halloween edition commercial for M&Ms with special effects and all that kind of stuff. So I'd already been kicking it on the Universal Studios lot, sneaking into the Psycho house, when I was like eight years old, having fun like that, I really felt a part of the industry. But getting Baywatch was different, that was series regular, star of a show that could go all the time. And it was summer, so every summer we'd drive from Orange County up to LA, five days a week, to Malibu, and it'd be like three months of gangbusters.

Justin McMillen (35:02)

And being a kid in that environment with all the adults, how was that?

Jeremy Jackson (35:02)

It was torment, I guess you could say, would probably be the word.

Justin McMillen (35:25)

How do you say it, torment?

Jeremy Jackson (35:25)

Torment, yeah. Not boring, because- I'm a kid, they're all in their 20s. David Hasselhoff might have been in his 30s, but most of them, Pamela Anderson, David Charvet, all these young, beautiful people, they're in their 20s, they're making the best mistakes of their lives. And they do not want a kid snooping around asking them questions.

Justin McMillen (35:45)

Trying to be part of it, were you just enamored with them, with everything?

Jeremy Jackson (35:45)

I was hyper, I wanted to know everything, I wanted to be a part of everything, I wanted to understand everything, I wanted to go out to the club with them after.

Justin McMillen (36:07)

No, I didn't, yeah.

Jeremy Jackson (36:07)

Eventually I made up for all the loss in my mind, I had lost a lot of years and I was going to make up for it. I would, probably to the point of pestering, and some people would handle it really well. Pamela Anderson was always very sweet, very much a big sister. Energy, kind. She seems amazing now, I love what she's doing, no makeup. And I was like, that's, that's her. Yeah, I ended up getting- I kept getting stuck behind her, walking behind her and then standing next to her at the gym. And I wasn't intentionally trying to do it, but her whole energy, I was just like this, she just seemed like a very soulful, down to earth person.

Justin McMillen (36:46)

I'm surprised you didn't talk to her.

Jeremy Jackson (36:46)

I didn't want to bother her, but yeah, she seemed cool, nothing like the picture painted in Baywatch.

Justin McMillen (36:46)

Well, next time, if you run into her again, you can be like, hey, Jeremy Jackson's my buddy.

Jeremy Jackson (37:05)

Have something to talk about, there you go. And she was always very kind, demure, sweet, but a lot of people weren't, imagine in your 20s, the hyperactive ten year old kid wanting to know everything, be a part of everything, it's like, gosh, probably so fed up with it. So there was that part, and, you know, I'm dyslexic, and learning was a nightmare for me, so doing standard textbook stuff, which was just like- I'd rather walk on hot coals basically. So I needed that experiential stuff, which was great in part, because normal school I stopped going to in third grade, because I was working enough that I missed too much to keep going in and out of school. And I was doing nothing but getting in trouble in regular school. Anyway, thank God for the entertainment industry, because if it didn't scoop me out of school, I would have been like a gang member, I would have gotten into something not good, I would have found a different way for myself. So I had some coaches and teachers on set, and one in particular who was incredible, that I carry with me to this day. But most teachers didn't know how to get me to sit down and do anything. So I got away with a lot. My education there was, was like marketing, dude, all this prop department, they got all this free stuff, so I was calling Oakley, calling Adidas, calling Quiksilver, calling Billabong, calling everybody, watch companies. If I liked something, I would call for information, get the number for the company. And I'd say, hi, my name is- and dude, no joke, 11 years old, my name is Jeremy Jackson and I'm on Baywatch, and the wardrobe stylist, I played it with the producers and they said I can wear whatever I want on the show. Will you send me a box of stuff? I had a garage full of stuff, so I took major advantage of that.

Justin McMillen (39:08)

That was amazing, that's so- I think, my son's 14, I could totally see him doing that kind of thing if he saw that opportunity. What was it like, you idolizing David Hasselhoff through Knight Rider, what was it like the first time you met him?

Jeremy Jackson (39:26)

It was- he's bigger than life, he's one of those people, he has that presence, that energy, I was like, of course you're famous, you got that- Just an air of exuberance about you. And so it was educational in that way, to be in the presence of somebody who has created a career for themselves and done a lot. But from a ten year old boy's perspective, I'm that same mind that begins with the end in mind, like you were talking about with, hey, you got to pay this forward. Like, hey, I'm not starting this without- this is where I see it going. But I digress. Anyway, I'm thinking David Hasselhoff is going to be my dad, for sure he's going to fall in love with my mom, my whole life is going to change, rather than being this kid with a single parent, on housing and low income housing, and living in Newport Beach, making three grand a week is incredible. But when you come from nothing, that's gone every month, it's gone, so there was never any "look at our bank account blowing up," it's like, we need a car, for the first time in our lives, all that money goes to the new car. So I had big plans, that he was going to fall in love with my mom. He was going to be my best friend, he was going to be my surrogate dad. And he was in his 30s, the biggest star in the world, worrying about which extra he was going to hook up with.

Justin McMillen (41:00)

Did you think he knew that you felt that way about him?

Jeremy Jackson (41:19)

Oh, for sure, and we've had beautiful, deep conversations, he's shed many tears wishing he could have been there for me, we've had a chance to really hash that out. But he was struggling with his own addictions and alcoholism, and that's been pretty public. And it's interesting, I had an alcoholic dad I never got to know. And now I got this alcoholic superstar TV dad I want to know so bad, but he's too busy.

Justin McMillen (41:42)

That's so extraordinary, I mean, you think about your reverence for him, and the way you held him in your mind would have bled into your interactions with him when you were on camera.

Jeremy Jackson (42:04)

Of course, do you think that played a big part?

Justin McMillen (42:04)

Oh yeah, and why that connection seems so real, totally. I mean, where you cast- did they know that about you, were you cast with that in mind?

Jeremy Jackson (42:04)

Well, this is kind of how the story goes, and you can pull some content from Hulu. There's a moment about it after Baywatch, it's on Hulu right now, he goes into tears and tells the story, and the story goes that I came in for the audition, and he really liked me right out the gate, and it was between me and Leonardo DiCaprio. It was between us two, and he's trying to pick between the two of us, and one of the deciding factors was, the kid who was Hobie before me went through a growth spurt and wasn't as easy to pick up. David wanted a kid he could pick up and throw on his shoulder, swing around on the beach, and look masculine and strong, and I was very small for my age, and so was Leonardo. 00;43;13;02 - 00;43;30;05 Jeremy Jackson Leonardo, so the two skinniest kids. But he said the thing that got me was, he asked me if I had a dad, and I said no, and he asked me about it, and I said, no, I don't need a dad, I got a great mom or something like that. And I kind of shrugged it off a little bit, and I guess I just kind of burrowed into his heart a little bit, that's kind of the part, it's like he always really wanted to slide in and be somebody for me, and he just couldn't, or he could only in the ways that he did. But there was always that draw, and I felt that draw, and I wanted that draw.

Justin McMillen (43:54)

Like, let's get to that tipping point where he's creating his own universe, his mom and David, right, screw being famous, Knight Rider, screw the movie, you're worth it, you know what I mean? Holy shit, what a crazy world you've had. So you're young and you're doing Baywatch, and that went on till you were how old?

Jeremy Jackson (44:10)

21 was the last time I was on set filming.

Justin McMillen (44:10)

And what was it like moving into adulthood within the Hollywood world?

Jeremy Jackson (44:38)

This interesting kind of- hindsight's 2020, but it was so blurry, and there was so much going on, it's kind of still hard to put the pieces together. But I do believe- when I was a little kid I so badly wanted to be an adult. I wanted to be grown, I didn't want to be cute, I wanted to be cool, I didn't want to be snuggly, I wanted to be dangerous. And I also had that real desire to go deep with the work, I wanted to sweat, crack my head up. I was dancing ballet, like I wanted to get hit with a ruler, I wanted to be driven to excellence, I wanted to weep. I spent time running lines and doing scenes for movies with, like, an Oscar award winner, Sally Kirkland, and she would sit with me and bring stuff out of me. And it's painful, but it's also powerful and beautiful. So I wanted to go places, and I was getting to 16, 17, and I wanted the red shorts, I wanted to be getting badass, breaking rules, getting in fights or whatever, I wanted my character to be grown up. And I was getting a lot of movie offers, and I can't help but consider that maybe this desire to be pulled into sort of a bad boy life, hang out with criminals, hang out with prostitutes and drug dealers, go to sordid places and find that edge, push that edge, be ugly and gritty and raw and not sleep and not be pretty and not be groomed, and not be the beach boy- Let me see if I can just, unpolish the beach boy. That could have been a really different shift in my acting career, that I could have gone the way of the people you see do it successfully. However, they usually die, like Heath Ledger, there's a few people out there that were child actors, and they took this dark turn, but it really developed their- they got their depth.

Justin McMillen (47:06)

Yeah, and that's the challenge, I think, and it's a challenge with everybody in the modern world, is- I'm a woodworker too, and I have a shop over there, and when I'm in front of my computer, I'm talking all the time, everything's about feelings, and there's a softness that gets developed from being in these environments. And then you get dirty and beat up, your hands are bleeding, it changes you, it's so clear how there's another part of us that's meant to emerge. And I think a lot of Hollywood folks, they get to the point where they're so soft and squishy, whatever character they put on, you're still just like, that's not real. But then you get a guy like Heath Ledger and you're like, that motherfucker has seen some shit.

Jeremy Jackson (47:46)

Yeah, he has. But then, you earn that through self-destruction and-

Justin McMillen (47:46)

Behavior?

Jeremy Jackson (47:46)

Yeah, it's another way, I don't know, I see the draw.

Justin McMillen (48:09)

So you're at this point in your life too, you're on this path, and I imagine you're 17, 18 years old, you're thinking this is the whole future, right?

Jeremy Jackson (48:09)

Oh, in a big way, I have- this is it, how could it not be, right, I'm flying to Europe, I did two albums and five singles, I had top ten hits, debuted at number three on the Billboard charts, and in Holland my song is their theme song. The Dutch soccer team, it's their anthem, they're running out to it, I'm on the cover of every magazine, I'm in there, nothing can stop this train, right, and that freedom, you have this freedom, so, women, all these things.

Justin McMillen (48:31)

And how's your relationship with your mom at this time?

Jeremy Jackson (48:31)

17, 18, I'm just trying to continue styling for mom, trying to contain the wild stallion. Super protective, overprotective, sly. My mom is the ultimate cock block, and good for her, because my pants were on fire, everything was on fire, and she probably saved me from many a demise. But nobody can stop us from where we want to go. I had lawyers, managers, publicists, agents, stylists, choreographers, security guards, teams around me, and it just made it more fun to sneak away. I would pay the security guard to sneak the girl in. Can you imagine, like, 14 years old, let me look at this chessboard and figure out how I can manipulate this, I got to wait till mom goes to sleep, and then he's going to bring her, we'll sneak out. I just made it a gamified frame for myself.

Justin McMillen (49:41)

It's incredible, I mean, it's incredible to me that you're sitting here at- how old are you?

Jeremy Jackson (50:02)

46.

Justin McMillen (50:02)

So 46, and you made it through, how many people have that level of freedom without a lot of values to really attach it to, plus the hero's journey of the young man wanting to go out and test their mettle, and just fucking kill themselves, like, they don't make it. Yeah, it is the minority.

Jeremy Jackson (50:20)

I mean, little to none, right, you could think of far less success stories, or people who are alive, than we could name ten or 20 of those guys that have died.

Justin McMillen (50:20)

Why are you- why are you here?

Jeremy Jackson (50:20)

Good question, man, I'm here to find out.

Justin McMillen (50:43)

Yeah, there's something about you, and we'll get into what you're doing now, which is more of- I love talking about your passion, because I think anyone who isn't a Hollywood person is always fascinated with these stories, you'll see it from this distance, but just like you and David Hasselhoff, there's this screen between you and this altered world. A mystique that you're living in. But I'm really interested in what you're doing now, but I still want to hear a little bit more, so you have all this freedom, you're a good looking guy, but never enough. Tremendous amount of power, a lot of freedom, but never enough. You know, important point there, that's like the theme of, you know, most of my life is never enough.

Jeremy Jackson (51:19)

Explain.

Justin McMillen (51:19)

Enough money, enough girls, enough fame, enough hugs, enough freedom, it was huge, but not enough. How did you come to understand that as a 40 year old man?

Jeremy Jackson (51:45)

It's kind of everything, really, life isn't about getting what you want, it's about wanting what you have. And from being on the cover of bodybuilding magazines, yoked out, jacked, shredded, and being like, yeah, but my glutes are lagging, that kills everything, focusing on what's missing cost me everything I have, every single time, it always has. Having that visualization as a kid of being a pop star and having seas of people chant my name and women passing out at my mere existence- If I have that, I'd be happy. And then somebody else's picture is bigger on the front of the magazine than mine, what am I doing wrong, I couldn't ever really appreciate, nurture, be grateful for, cherish what I had, because I was always looking at something that wasn't good enough. It will never be enough.

Justin McMillen (52:49)

You know what's amazing, Jeremy, is I just discovered this intersection, between- I mean it's between you and everybody that struggles with addiction, I think, but what you're talking about is my obsession, so I'm going to go down a little bit of a rabbit hole into some of the things we do now, maybe another way for you to understand that. So I have a theory, and it was a supposition, meaning what we supposed was true when Tree House started, that the same traits, being genetic drivers, that produce addictive behavior, are the same traits that produce high performance. So a coin with two sides, one is self-destruction and one is complete flourishing. And so what do I mean by that- well, in the beginning it was a theory, other people talk about it, people have frames for it, but I was just playing with this. To me, there's a reason that these things exist in the population, in the human species, so what's the reason? If you do a thought experiment, you imagine that we're all on a desert island, and there's no drugs or alcohol- And they say one in ten people has got a predisposition to addiction worldwide, this is the static number, for decades. So how does that tenth person act compared to the other nine?

Jeremy Jackson (54:05)

Okay.

Justin McMillen (54:05)

And the way they would act is how you've described yourself since the beginning of this conversation. Never satisfied, novelty seeking, adventure seeking, rumination, it's just never enough. What's cool is we now know exactly what genes code for that, we know the polymorphisms that exist in the gene pool that make that happen. So there's a bunch of spiritual ways we could talk about this too, but I was going to go to this place-

Jeremy Jackson (54:43)

Genetics.

Justin McMillen (54:43)

Yeah, and a lot of ways to skin a cat. So what's so beautiful about this, is I think the numbers, 20%, and the gene studies say 20%, so two out of ten, and if you think of the 80/20 rule, 20% of the energy of a system will produce 80% of the results. I don't know if you've ever heard this, but it appears everywhere in nature, so in a tribe, two out of ten people are going to produce the most energy, doesn't matter if it's good or bad, they're going to be the energetic epicenter, tribe destroying or creating. We go back to the dawn of man to now, that 20% is what made the whole world move forward. So here you are, a man that was probably better built for another time.

Jeremy Jackson (55:23)

You're speaking my language.

Justin McMillen (55:23)

But you're born in modern society, and your genes are mismatched with the environment you live in, so you have this desire to express your genetic potential.

Jeremy Jackson (55:23)

Exactly.

Justin McMillen (55:23)

And then, what's cool is, you started to translate it into the modern world, because you found a place where you could run, this sort of ability to achieve, and you did a certain amount of that. And now I think you're realizing at your age that you never get to get away from this desire for more, but it sounds like you're starting to look at it through a spiritual lens.

Jeremy Jackson (55:55)

100%, yeah, 100%, I realized I have this thing that I'm always going to fight, something I don't know how to not fight. And my genetic makeup, my biological predisposition, is going to pick for me unconsciously if I don't pick consciously. And for some reason- I need high stakes, I need life or death, and my brain is hard-wired, it'll pick depression, it'll pick anxiety, it'll pick a girl. It'll pick a money problem, it'll pick anything, and say, that's my dragon to slay, I need to fight against this. And it'll be myself, or it'll be something outside of me. But I think what's equally powerful is the fight for, the fight toward, our pain of discipline, or pain of regret. I don't know how to not fight, I need a bone in my teeth, I need something to bite down on and go for it. Martin Luther King says darkness cannot cast out darkness, only light can do that. Mother Teresa was asked to march against the war, and she said, call me when you have a march for peace. I'll be there, it's not that I'm not down to be on the front lines, it's just that I know being on the front line of a self-defeating quest is a toilet bowl that will flush me against forces, I need an upward vortex. So instead of fighting against addiction, I just decided to start fighting for recovery. Instead of fighting against anxiety, I started fighting for peace and acceptance, instead of fighting against my anger issues, I started fighting for forgiveness, instead of fighting against fear, I started fighting for courage. And they both are freaking hard, they both take a lot of work, sacrifice, time, and a lot of mistakes. 00;58;26;29 - 00;58;49;12 Jeremy Jackson Just one of them ends me up in court, dead, or wishing I was dead, and the other one has me beating myself up because I haven't done my morning meditation, I just like a fight.

Justin McMillen (58:26)

Yeah, I think I'm working on this project we should talk more about.

Jeremy Jackson (58:49)

Oh yeah, it's a Netflix series, and it's about the subject matter, and I can't talk a lot about it.

Justin McMillen (59:01)

If you have the genes of your ancestors- the genes, I'm a full, firm, staunch believer in exactly what you're saying, so what's amazing is, the MAOA gene, that's part of it, DRD4, DRD2, there's nine different warrior genes code for- warrior gene, but then there's also how we form attachments. So whether we bond with people or substances, there's an attachment, has to do with the oxytocin system.

Jeremy Jackson (59:25)

Yeah.

Justin McMillen (59:25)

And then dopamine, right, dopamine, re-uptake issues.

Jeremy Jackson (59:25)

Yeah, but that's the nerdy stuff we don't need to talk about, which I love to know is that-

Justin McMillen (59:43)

You are part of a lineage that got our whole species here.

Jeremy Jackson (59:43)

Yes.

Justin McMillen (59:43)

So you have the genes that brought our species to abundance and created innovation, so here you are, the world's- and you guys did it.

Jeremy Jackson (59:43)

We did it, okay, yeah, there's no drawbridges to break down, what's next, the new territory. And I think we haven't- I personally believe people like you and I have an obligation to take this energy-

Justin McMillen (1:00:04)

Oh, I'm getting chills, brother.

Jeremy Jackson (1:00:04)

We have to move this species forward in a new way, versus dying out and being unnecessary. So I have a lot of thoughts about that, I think a bunch of people came to America and bred, the most adventure seeking and novelty seeking, and came here on ships, not everyone even made it. But think about the character that wanted to come here in the first place, then they all started having babies, and you ended up with this gene pool of people very similar to you. And then we created a system, a frame, which is a government from the expression of human existence possible, which is the American system. And yes, there are lots of flaws with it, but that system produced innovation like no one's ever seen before, it bled out into the whole world. But then we were still on the front lines, so if you want to know what's going to happen, look at America, now we're fat and sick and tired and purposeless, and even the- not even the 80%, the 80% are all little dopamine monsters.

Justin McMillen (1:01:19)

And I think you have a responsibility to tell us- I guess I consider myself part of this too, because I'm also similar background. You have a responsibility to share with the world, they want to know what's next, and we have this spiritual- I believe we have a spiritual duty to chart that course, even though we're the minority.

Jeremy Jackson (1:01:44)

Yeah, even though we might never succeed.

Justin McMillen (1:01:44)

Yeah, because it's tough, majority rule, you got 80% of the people out there, or maybe even more, you can hire an army, and you can pay an assassin, but a real warrior is a real warrior. He fights for what he believes in, and doesn't care if his head gets taken off.

Jeremy Jackson (1:02:06)

Like, literally, like you were saying, we are here because only two out of ten people will run out at the bear instead of away, and they don't think about it, they just do it, it's an automatic thing that happens in the amygdala, it's like, I might lose an arm, but if I can poke out both of its eyes, it can't see who to kill. Like in the movie The Revenant, it just clicks in. Have you heard of Anna Lembke, have you read Dopamine Nation?

Justin McMillen (1:02:25)

No.

Jeremy Jackson (1:02:25)

So she's a Stanford addiction medicine doctor, she runs the addiction medicine department at Stanford, she wrote a book called Dopamine Nation, and she says, I believe that the addicts of today are the former hunters and seekers and warriors of another time, and they're just mismatched.

Justin McMillen (1:02:52)

So this is not like- the system you were talking about took our pilgrimages away, but we built the damn thing, if it wasn't for us, "it's never enough," we wouldn't keep building taller, this cycle we did ourselves.

Jeremy Jackson (1:02:52)

We did it ourselves, yeah, but in this way, if 10% are addicts and 10% are not, there's 20%. So that 10% that aren't are the people who have figured it out, they're still- skydiving out of planes every other day, rock climbing, running large companies, arguably, maybe not even healthy people, but I think what's interesting, if it's 20%, this is a hypothesis, but the research on this is pretty solid. Yeah, 10% self-destruct and 10% high performing. Well, how do you define high performing- this is like your wealthiest, most powerful, most successful people in all domains, military, could be sports, whatever. But this other 10%, what I'm most interested in, is these numbers can flip, oftentimes these people become the self-destruct.

Justin McMillen (1:03:57)

Oftentimes the self-destruct flip over- that's why you see it with veterans so much, and superstars, because when crowds are not cheering for you, when you don't have that thing you're fighting for, it's gone, you fail, you settle for a fight against, because at least it's a huge surge of dopamine, and that's all we're really looking for.

Jeremy Jackson (1:04:15)

Yes.

Justin McMillen (1:04:15)

So what's so fascinating is, when a guy like yourself goes from this- so you were high performer, you flipped over to self-destruct, played over here for a while, a whole bunch of things, and then you flip back over to a high performer in a different way, and now I'm wondering where you, what you're going to do.

Jeremy Jackson (1:04:38)

Which, to Rich, by the way- I want to get you on, is he local?

Justin McMillen (1:04:38)

I think he might be in Vermont or something.

Jeremy Jackson (1:04:38)

He's in the nation, he speaks to Fortune 500 companies on the implementation of this, but he reached out to me, my buddy Rich wants to talk to you. And this guy calls me on WhatsApp and we have a call, and he's like, I was looking at your Instagram, he's like, you think a lot like me, I want to talk to you. I was like, what the- he says, no, I'm a drug addict. He's a 13-year Seal Team Six commander of the Navy Seals. I'm like, you have something in common with me? No way. And he's like, I feel like this practice could be really beneficial for addicts, and I want to help you understand this and go out and share this with guys. And it has been so incredible.

Justin McMillen (1:05:35)

That's amazing, so are you working with him in some capacity?

Jeremy Jackson (1:05:35)

Just he's kind of just gifted me his time and experience and books, so I've studied them, and yeah, he's going to take part in a veteran funded free program, if you have anybody that really needs it. It's a free program, 18 month program, we're doing in Costa Rica, three months in person and continuation aftercare for 18 months, and it's fully scholarship, it's privately funded.

Justin McMillen (1:05:58)

What's the prerequisite, PTSD and co-occurring substance use?

Jeremy Jackson (1:05:58)

Yeah, we definitely have- do you have slots available?

Justin McMillen (1:06:22)

I mean, I think so.

Jeremy Jackson (1:06:22)

Okay, well, we'll talk tangent, but you were about to say something-

Justin McMillen (1:06:22)

No, I mean, I think that would be great, we work with U.S. Special Operations Command, we're part of Warrior Care Coalition, we treat active duty and transitioning and their family. So that's all SOF, special operations forces, so the Seals and the Green Berets, Rangers, and we're constantly getting calls, and not everyone is best suited for this, and some may want to go do that. So we should talk, and if there's any way I can support-

Jeremy Jackson (1:07:01)

Thank you, we're down to help, I have- we have two foundations, nonprofits, and we do a lot of stuff.

Justin McMillen (1:07:01)

Amazing.

Jeremy Jackson (1:07:01)

I'm going to get you in touch with Scott, he owned Costa Rica Recovery, have you ever heard of it? He recently bought Cornerstone and got pushed out somehow, like a few hundred thousand dollars- And they went with- I don't know, it's a weird story, I don't know the whole story, but he's working with some great people, and it's his heart, he just wants to help veterans.

Justin McMillen (1:07:23)

Okay, I'll put you in touch with them.

Jeremy Jackson (1:07:23)

Yeah, I mean, anybody, we should definitely-

Justin McMillen (1:07:46)

You know how it is, when it's like, everybody's got their stuff, sometimes we come together, and it's like we're cruising alongside and waving at each other. So we talked about the beginning of your life, and you're sort of at this point where you're a young man who's got the world by the balls. But you're also- you have a desire to go out and prove yourself and get dirty and gritty, you were raised by a single mother, so you didn't have that stern-

Jeremy Jackson (1:08:10)

Rock solid- I had, I mean, Grandma sure is, I called her Gram-Bo because she was part Rambo. That's part Grandma.

Justin McMillen (1:08:30)

But yeah, so then you went out in the world and you got the shit kicked out of you, by your own hand, you did it to yourself, which shaped you, and then you came through that and developed all of what makes you who you are now, which is way oversimplifying the hell out of all of it. But what are the highlights of what happened to you from the end of Baywatch to your reemergence into the person you are now, which has been quite a few years, what's that middle section, how do you define that middle section?

Jeremy Jackson (1:08:51)

Yeah, it's a very interesting question, and the first thing that pops up for me is, the lowlights were the greatest teachers, man. The greatest teachers are great love and great suffering, and I definitely learned from my suffering, luckily, chasing chicks, trying to be a cool guy, nightclub, whatever, and the misery and the despair of that not being enough, and how can I be chasing that after I already knew that fame was like- Why am I still doing that? I'm definitely getting sober, 25 years, I have partied, you know, 10% as much as I've been sober or whatever, if you take all my drinking and using together, I've been sober so much longer. And even being in recovery half-assed for ten years, that was a huge lesson. That was ten years from when I met you, when you're 19 or 20, to like, 30, I was staunch in 12 step recovery and sponsoring guys, and the whole shebang, and it was just a very surface level type, okay, everything will be great if I just don't drink, don't use, don't beat anybody up-

Justin McMillen (1:10:32)

Were you booking and doing any kind of gigs during that time, are you still acting and about?

Jeremy Jackson (1:10:32)

No, I had quit acting completely, Baywatch was the end of it all. I did some reality shows that really beat me in the ass, that were terrible choices, terrible experiences, cost me more money than they made. So I tried a couple of layups just for quick money, Celebrity Rehab, stuff like that. But this most recent- most recent relapse, almost six years ago, something kind of really happened, I built an empire, at 22 I started doing those fashion shows for Ed Hardy and Von Dutch, and I was all over the world modeling, hundreds- I was producing, I was the guy behind the curtain, getting paid from the club, getting sponsors, and hooking up celebrities, doing this whole thing, that was crazy.

Justin McMillen (1:11:22)

But you were still in this sobriety world through your 20s, that was 20 to 30 something, and at that point- What sort of- are you running around in the Hollywood AA community, or are you local, or-

Jeremy Jackson (1:11:42)

I was down here. Did you know Sean Brosnan, Pierce Brosnan's son, maybe you've heard of him?

Justin McMillen (1:11:42)

I don't think I have.

Jeremy Jackson (1:11:42)

He works for me, remotely, but he's crazy story, is- Make it quick, he's going to come on here too. I just came into town, I told him, I said, what's up-

Justin McMillen (1:11:58)

Do you know him, or you haven't?

Jeremy Jackson (1:11:58)

Oh, I've heard of him, but yeah, so he had to start an acting career, didn't get as far as you did, but comes from this family of- and that's just a whole different beast. And then just sort of denounces all of it after he gets sober, and he's like, I'm going to go to school, and he becomes a therapist. And then he moves his family to Idaho, this cool little house, deeply religious, and he's an amazing clinician. But what's cool about him is he has a really deep understanding of a similar path that you've had, or anybody who's had tremendous success in one domain and then fell. Yeah, because he's sort of comes from this world of, this is what I was supposed to be, and then it pivoted. Anyways, I totally digress. So you're doing this, running around half-cocked through your 20s, self-will run riot, not- I was just unaware, ignorant to certain things. And I got married, I moved to LA, I thought I was going to move to LA, with a few hundred grand and a Lamborghini and a penthouse, and I thought I was jacked, I was winning jiu jitsu tournaments, I was squatting 500 pounds, 210 pounds, just ripped, and I was like, I'm going to be the next- 01;13;32;01 - 01;14;00;29 Jeremy Jackson I thought I was going to make a comeback. So I went out there, and I ended up getting so immersed into strength training, bodybuilding, supplements and diets, Gold's Gym and Equinox, and all these celebrities coming up to me, and before I knew it, I was a celebrity trainer, private chef, celebrity trainer for celebs and models, coming over to my house, and I'm doing all their cycles and diet stuff. And it was kind of great, I kind of loved it. Ended up getting married, and that went horribly. I started drinking a little bit and smoked a little weed, and I wasn't really partying because I had that life, and I really lost myself in that, and it got real bad all over again. The marriage fell apart, the rug got pulled out from underneath me, and everything I thought was my safety net was gone. And so I was just chaotic and super hurting, and it took me a long time to limp back from that one, this long, today, like, this is the day that- Yeah, and in that- I had 60 days, 90 days, six months, one year, two years, one year, it was a very strange, wobbly deal. And I think it's a lot because I was just trying to do better or smarter at what I'd done before, and it wasn't working. And six years ago, I discovered that thing I told you about, the Golden Key. And that changed everything, I literally rewired my mind, to constructively be able to look at everything, to not be my own spell caster, cursing myself. I didn't realize I was casting spells on myself.

Justin McMillen (1:15:17)

I feel like you started to give echoes of it even in the way you were describing Mother Teresa's view, is that similar?

Jeremy Jackson (1:15:45)

Yeah, these patterns.

Justin McMillen (1:15:45)

Can you tell us, because for people who are listening, I definitely couldn't repeat what you said, and I think this is really important, can you give us an overview?

Jeremy Jackson (1:15:45)

Absolutely, I would love to, and this is going to be a great clip. What I'm about to tell you is so simple and so easy that 99% of people will not do it, because it just seems too simple to be true. If you can change the way you look at things, the things you look at will change. If you're riding a mountain bike, or a dirt bike, or driving a car, and you have a lane you want to stay in, if to the left there's a cliff and to the right there's trees, if you stare at the trees, you veer towards the trees. If you stare at the cliff, you will veer towards the cliff. The mind works the same way. Where my thoughts go, I go. What I focus on grows. Thoughts become things, because thoughts create belief systems. Belief systems are fed by feelings. So in actuality, thoughts create feelings, feelings create belief systems, and belief systems dictate behavior, and behavior shapes the entirety of our life. Energy is everything, because a thought is energetic, because it's intangible, it can't be seen but it can be felt. My thought creates a feeling, feelings- thought will create feelings consistently, feelings will create belief systems consistently, belief systems, tended to and nurtured, will shape behavior. So in order to change my outside world, I must change my inside world. I cannot expect anything from out here that I cannot expect from in here. The outside world is a mirror of my inside world, my relationships, how much money I make, what I believe I'm capable of, where I can go, where I can't go, who I think is good, who I think is bad, all of this stuff, I am- A victim of my own thoughts. And to be victorious rather than a victim, I've got to stop blaming people, places, and things, I've got to take radical accountability, I've got to start authoring a new story so I don't suffer from the same story, I've got to rewrite the song in my head, and it sounds too easy to be true. But this is how I started, I picked a set of personal phrases that appealed to me, and I just started repeating them all through the day. The first one I ever used, I have tattooed right here, "embrace the mystery." This practice is called the Golden Key, I have a G right here with a little skeleton key that looks like a K, the golden key to harmony and happiness, the golden key to overcoming any and all problems. On the face of this earth is to stop thinking about my problems and start thinking about what I want. If I want peace, I stop thinking about anxiety, if I want forgiveness, I stop thinking about my resentments, if I want happiness, I stop thinking about how sad I am, and it's far different than ignoring my sadness. It's far different than pretending it's not there, it's choosing a constructive force that can come in and neutralize that sadness, and I've got to believe it, or it's got to feel good in my body, so embrace the mystery- I'll give you my little list. Embrace the mystery, nothing is happening to me- Everything is happening through me, I'm right where I'm supposed to be, what's meant for me will be, nothing is falling apart, everything's falling together, I am filled and surrounded by perfect peace, I am growing and gaining in spiritual awareness. And so these keys are created for me, by me, to open a certain door that I believe is locked in me. So I made a decision that I was sick and tired of growing and gaining in problematic awareness, I'm always looking at the problem, we talked about it, I'm always looking at what's missing, I'm always looking at what's not good enough. I'm a human sponge, we all are, we're all uploading all this data all the time. And I'm sick of paying attention to the negative stuff, I want to grow in gain and spiritual awareness, because- for me, it might be different for somebody else, I believe that growing and gaining spiritual awareness will have the ability to make the material awareness what it's supposed to be, not what I think it should be, but what it really is. I believe I will have present moment truth and awareness if I am in touch spiritually, I'll stop blaming, labeling and all that, I'll be at peace with what's going on. So I just started, I am going- that is who I am, I'm a person who grows and gains in spiritual awareness. I'm looking for it, I'm looking for little messages, looking for a little breakthrough, so I'm going to read a book, I'm going to talk to somebody about it, I'm going to watch a YouTube on it, spiritual development, whatever, because that's what I've committed to. Nothing is falling apart, everything's falling together, comes right back to that. I'm always looking at what's falling apart, because my little nervous system, from millions of years of evolution- there's no saber tooth tiger, there's no dragon to slay, there's no drawbridge on fire, what do I do if there's nothing to fix, nothing to prove, nothing to fight, it's not falling apart, it's falling together. It's falling together, lose a job- a good thing, I've been reminding myself all day long before it happened out there, in here I was reminding myself that whatever happens out there isn't against me, it's for me, I've just got to hang on long enough with a good attitude to see it come together. And so because I rewired my mind like this, and I'm talking obsessive compulsive- I must have sounded like I had Tourette's, I was singing it, I was saying it, I had it on sticky notes on the odometer of my car, I had it on my home screen, I was bringing it up in every conversation, any opportunity I could, it was my most frequent thought, and because it was my most frequent thought, it was my religion, and because it was my religion, I received those messages.

Justin McMillen (1:22:39)

Wow, how did you come up with the- could you walk through that process, is that something you could teach to somebody?

Jeremy Jackson (1:22:39)

Yeah, absolutely, so it comes from Emmet Fox, no, no, no, your specific statements-

Justin McMillen (1:22:39)

Yeah.

Jeremy Jackson (1:22:39)

Oh yeah, I have them all, I got a whole how-to list.

Justin McMillen (1:22:56)

How did you do it though, did you spend time, did you work with somebody to come up with them, or-

Jeremy Jackson (1:22:56)

I actually just started paying attention. When you stop- not paying attention, when you open- the desire, the need, right, when- what is that quote, when the pain of doing what you're doing is too great, you'll stop. Start doing something else, something like that. So, at 40 years old, living in a sober living, on an ankle monitor, on high profile felony probation, realizing I've been on probation for 11 years of my life, and I'm already sneaking, doing dumb stuff, that like, I'm going to end up in prison for the rest of my life because I don't know how to not do dumb stuff. I always end up messing up, it scared the shit out of me. And I just needed to open that awareness up. So one of them I use is, everything that I have is all that I need, everything that I need I already have, everything that I have is all that I need, everything that I need I already have. And I got that from a rap song, I just heard it in a rap song, I was like, I need that. Nothing's falling apart, everything's falling together, I think that's just kind of something people say sometimes.

Justin McMillen (1:23:55)

Well, but you had to come up with it at a moment, did you sit down, was there an actual day where you sat down- You were like, here's going to be all my-

Jeremy Jackson (1:24:12)

I'll tell you that, this is great, you brought this memory on with that question. I'm in a sober living, I'm scrolling through expensive Nikes, something I've always done, I get loaded, 60 Nikes that I've collected get stolen, from a girlfriend or a drug dealer. I lose everything, have to get sober again, and I got to build my Nike collection because my cool Nikes, that's who I am. And I'm putting them in cart, I'm putting them in wishlists, this is $1,500 worth of shoes that I don't have, and I need to figure out how to get it, and I'm going to pine after- I'm going to hope for the day that will come where I'll get to be happy because of the shoes, I already know once it has a scuff on it, they won't be that cool anymore, I already know if someone doesn't notice how cool my shoes are when I walk into the meeting, I'll question my coolness, I know the problems that come with it. But I also am stuck in the habit of continuing to do the same old thing, because I think that's a sign that I'm successful. And I was listening, and that song came on, and I started doing it, I said, everything that I have is all that I need, everything that I need I already have, I don't need 16 more Nikes, I don't need that. Everything that I need I already have, I already have everything that I need, I don't need more. And the craziest thing happened, dude. Instead of my expensive pair of Nikes, I got a cheap pair of barefoot shoes, and I realized that I hate Nikes, that they hurt my feet, my feet don't even fit in them, and I have flat feet and need barefoot shoes. Now all I wear is barefoot shoes, I will never rock a tight pair of shoe coffins ever again. I was stuck in a prison of my own mind, thinking that I needed something, because the human nervous system will always choose a familiar hell over an unfamiliar heaven, every time, medically proven. And I replaced the thought and my whole experience changed. I had a realization that all of these Nikes, all this time, all this theft, all this not-enough accolades, not enough ego boost, somebody else's are more expensive- Here's a new model, and I got to think my way out of a model that is unconsciously formed.

Justin McMillen (1:26:54)

Did you consciously- because maybe you knew about the Golden Key, and did you consciously say, oh, I'm doing this thing right now, and I'm going to do this?

Jeremy Jackson (1:26:54)

I don't like this feeling, it came- I came through.

Justin McMillen (1:27:12)

And so you said, I'm going to make a mantra right now, or I'm going to create a phrase, a frame, a way to see the world that's going to change. So you made a choice in that moment.

Jeremy Jackson (1:27:12)

Yeah, so this process of developing these sort of sayings or axioms is a conscious process.

Justin McMillen (1:27:32)

So does a person wait until they experience something like that, or how do you identify-

Jeremy Jackson (1:27:32)

In my experience, if I have a room full of people and I say about 20 of them, there's a little thing that happens right here, we do a little bit of breathing, come down, we talk about it. And then I give about- I got about 30 of them at least, maybe more, I call them energy keys now. But you feel this little stir, like, that would be nice, that would feel good, or to know that your intuition says I want that, especially if you don't have it. It's nice if you kind of have it, or is it- we're not, it's not about- It's not about believing it right away, it's what I want to say, but something comes up, it'd be nice if I believed like that. So people delay their gratification, people postpone their healing because they think, one day I'll have that. But I don't think they realize that day has to be right now, and if you would like to feel like that in a week, we got to start thinking and acting in alignment with that version of yourself that has that. Which means I need to remind my brain, I am filled and surrounded by perfect peace, minefields and surrounded by perfect peace. And then the week goes by, you're like, dude, I haven't thought about anxiety, and it's like, yeah, because you were thinking about this.

Justin McMillen (1:28:54)

That's incredible, the way you describe the path and the cliff and the trees, and the thoughts becoming feelings and then behaviors, and it starts to open up to the world around you and makes complete sense. 01;29;27;29 - 01;29;46;01 Justin McMillen And then developing these, this set- so is that the Golden Key, is the development of these-

Jeremy Jackson (1:29:27)

No, the Golden Key is this frame that we have for seeing the world, don't think about your problem and think about God instead, which is what Emmet Fox says. So his golden keys are, God is with me, I'm a child of God- I am filled and surrounded by the perfect peace of God. And like that, so he's a- that's the spiritual teacher.

Justin McMillen (1:29:46)

So then, and then you have like 30 energy method [keys].

Jeremy Jackson (1:29:46)

Yeah, and you help people find which one stirs you, and let's practice that for a week, and let's talk in a week. And I would say 90% of people or more don't do it, because it's hard to break habits, man, it's very hard to break habits, it's not that hard to create a new one, but it's hard to break an old one.

Justin McMillen (1:30:07)

What I like about what you're doing for people like us, though, is that that obsessive thinking and the ability to attach heavily, if you can get somebody to adopt this, the chance of them really internalizing it is really high.

Jeremy Jackson (1:30:35)

Yeah, they'll just get obsessive about it, this is my thing. My buddy Matthew Higgins, I met him in a treatment center, his girlfriend had already stabbed him twice, he was going in and out of IOPs, and it was either IOPs and skid row. He was a Navy Seal, did two tours. And he was paying for a kid from this girl who had stabbed him twice, that he later found out wasn't even his, and this girl was cheating with other people at the rehab. So homeless and chubby and pale, and I came in and I presented this, and he liked it, and it's been, I don't know, over three years now. And it's like, dude, he's the handsomest guy, just killing it, absolutely killing it, like you already know the stories, everyone's living- he's a beaming light of hope and a powerful friend to so many. It's incredible, it's amazing. And he practiced it, he was on a bus- He got kicked out of treatment or whatever, he was on a bus back to Oklahoma, which was going to be bad, and he started going, Golden Key, and things started to emerge, fairy tale ever since.

Justin McMillen (1:32:11)

Yeah, I am- so this idea that our thoughts shape reality is such an important one, we teach this here, we teach it two ways. We have the internal and external application of positive potential lens, which is what we teach the staff. And I remember when I first got into this field, I was really disturbed by the idea that, a treatment team meeting, where people get together and talk about a client- Treatment team meetings in treatment centers are focused on- typically because there's such an administrative burden to running this kind of business, you get a group of people together, and the goal is, how do we fight for this guy to stay here and get insurance to pay for it, so we have to create an argument for insurance companies. So what you have is a committee of people, this is traditional treatment, not what we do here, doing everything in their power to find the thing about the guy that's still screwed up, and then they write a story about how messed up this person is. So they have this document they're pretty convicted about, so they can defend it in a peer-to-peer review, and they send it to the insurance company, that's called a utilization review, and it allows them to get more days authorized. Well, I see this as a fundamental problem, because if you get the group of people who are meant to see the person at their greatest potential in order to heal them, if they're looking at them through this negative lens, they're going to organize themselves in that direction.

Jeremy Jackson (1:33:39)

You're genetically siphoning.

Justin McMillen (1:33:39)

And yes, so I tell guys here all the time, if I hear anyone talk about a client like, oh, that's just what he does, in a negative way, that's a way to get fired here, basically, because I tell them all the time, if you can't see this person being successful, they will not become successful. So this is the idea that how other people feel about us actually can affect us as well, which is a really disturbing thought. And then there's science on this too, there's something called the Rosenthal experiment, do you know about this? So there's a guy named David Rosenthal, he was a doctor, he was at MIT. He did a study on rats, he took a hundred rats, put them in a cage, same rat species as the Rat Park thing, no different. And then he had two cages, one labeled dumb rats, one labeled smart rats, and he grabs one out of the middle at random, throws it in the dumb pile and in the smart pile. So he's got 50 and 50 arbitrarily chosen as smart and dumb. Then he has students come and measure how fast the smart or dumb rats will get through a maze, doesn't tell the students he just arbitrarily flipped them. The students come in blind to what's going to happen, they run the rats through the maze. And he had a hypothesis that the ones labeled smart would go through faster, and the ones labeled dumb would go through slower. And this is well documented, it's called the Pygmalion effect, or the Rosenthal effect, or the foundation of strength-based- mainly Pygmalion. And so basically he did it in rats. He published it, his peers were like, you got to replicate it, he replicated it, he was like, this is amazing. And his peers are like, yeah, it's probably not applicable to people, and he says, yes it is, let's try. He did a second grade classroom, told the teacher that all these students were going to become geniuses. They tested them, and there were seven, totally arbitrarily chosen, they came in, put cameras in, watched those seven students flourish. They realized that the way the teachers felt about the students changed the little micro-nuances of their behavior, they were teaching to the student a little bit more, or tapping them on the back, or giving them that look of, I knew you were going to win today. And that became the birth of this whole idea that how we feel about others, we will basically look for evidence to support our beliefs in the world.

Jeremy Jackson (1:35:58)

Yeah, yeah, so what you're describing is exactly that, we will look for evidence to support our beliefs, and then we will- our behavior will move in that direction.

Justin McMillen (1:36:23)

So it's brilliant, because there's a huge body of research behind this idea. And then it gets even crazier, because whenever I tell people that story, I say, why did the rats do better on one side versus the other, and the more woo-woo folks are like, because the students transferred the positive energy, and the scientific folks are like- There's no way that could be different. What's interesting now, with quantum physics and some of the other ideas around our beliefs and how they can literally physically affect the world, there's actually like another layer above the woo-woo and then science, where they could converge, and there could be more. And then it's biblical too- It's like when I say mountains move, the mountains move.

Jeremy Jackson (1:37:06)

Yes, can you take this to a line where you get a supernatural level of ability, and you're literally painting the picture of the universe in front of you as you go, so as a man thinketh, so shall he become, be not conformed by the things of this world. Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. The renewing of your mind, if you think about new, right, I'm thinking about cracking open a pair of Vans that have never been worn, there's a smell, a very specific- when you said that, I know exactly, we know what new is. And when it's not new we know it's not. And so a new mind is like, yeah, the world is my oyster, radically inquisitive, curious, I don't know hot, I don't know cold, I don't know anything, I'm coming at it. And that's the whole point of the Bible, to return to being like the child. To being as innocent as a dove, sharp as a serpent, sure, the past has taught us some stuff, but it doesn't have to dictate how we are.

Justin McMillen (1:38:01)

That's true, I always say, might, I say assume the best and act as if.

Jeremy Jackson (1:38:01)

I might be the best and act as if, true, sure, I might get hit by a bus tomorrow. Do I want to be happy, joyous, and free between today and tomorrow, or do I want to be like, I don't know, man, something's off, something weird, I feel bad about it, like I'm still getting hit by a bus. I want to enjoy this time, that's what leads to the idea about death too, like, you only ever think about tomorrow until you're in a moment where you realize this moment today is all you actually have, and it could slip away at any moment.

Justin McMillen (1:38:45)

Yeah, how do we get there, to where on a daily basis we're thinking that way, maybe it's through something like the Energy Method, where you can stay in that place of a certain style of thinking.

Jeremy Jackson (1:38:45)

I don't know, there's the Set Aside Prayer, God help me set aside everything I think I know about myself, everything I know about recovery, everything I think I know about you, about others, so that I may have an open mind and a new experience. I think the mind's like a parachute, it works better when it's open.

Justin McMillen (1:39:12)

Yeah.

Jeremy Jackson (1:39:12)

But in that way, if I'm going to have an open mind, I do need to die to old ideas, in order to have a new experience, and I'm going to need to surrender what I think I need and what I think I know, and that's why "embrace the mystery" is so big for me. I do believe that I'm a creator, created in the image of the creator, I didn't create that world, and I can't create your world, but I can create mine. And I think my thoughts, as we talked about some of those Bible passages, when the Bible's talking about the seed in the ground in the harvest, I think they're talking about a thought. I think a thought is a seed, because if I showed you a handful of seeds and told you, we're going to eat forever off this, you're going to laugh at me, I can't even get full off what's in your hand. But I swear I see it in my mind, until that seed is put into some good ground and tended to. And then six months later you call, I got this wild field of blueberries, and you're like, holy smoke, how did all this happen? The seed is the thought, the ground is the heart, or your soul, the feeling we talked about, the thought, the feeling, and then the outward world is like the harvest. And I'm a firm believer that- and the only thing cutting me off from that is what I think I know, what I think I need, who I think I am, who I think God is, what I think is possible. And so, Buddhists talk about if you can die a thousand times in a lifetime, you'll take nothing away. But on your deathbed, you'll be happy, joyous, and free. And, actually, on the Balanced Man retreat, I told you a little bit about the death ceremony we do. We take a good 20 minutes, some real sappy classical music playing, and it's after a really long hike, we do a four hour hike, so when guys come back from this hike, an hour down, an hour and a half up, 90 degrees outside- We lay down, mask on, put a recorder right here on their chest, and I walk them through a meditation where their breaths get shallower, their mouth gets dry, they feel heaviness, and then they start to picture themselves in a hospital room, and in that hospital room- it's more drawn out than this. But in that hospital room, they realize this is their last 20 minutes on the face of this planet, and nobody's with them, and all they have is their phone to record some messages they want to get out to people, some realizations, their last words, and I ask a series of questions, and they kind of move around a bit, but it's usually something to the effect of, what did you get the most joy out of in life? What brought you the most joy? Who do you want to forgive before it's too late? What baggage do you not want to take with you? What human being do you not want to suffer while still alive, even though you're gone? If there's some wisdom you want to leave with, maybe this is going to be read on the news, maybe this is going to be read at your eulogy, I don't know, but what do you wish you wouldn't have spent so much time on? Where was your time wasted? And just a series of questions like that. And it's crazy when you really get still and look inside, the type of clarity that can come up, the answers are so clear, so obvious. And in the busy world with the stuffing, because we're in a rush, we'll get to it later- They get it, they understand, they'll forgive me, I'll make it up another time, I don't have enough time, it's not that important, whatever, we just make all these excuses, and it's so easy to rationalize until there's no do-overs, until there's no second chance, until this is the last 20 minutes. Holy shit, everything I did, I did, I can't pretend anymore, I can't undo it, I can't pull that person in front of me and say it now. And so we get a lot of that stuff out, and that can start to play into sort of the roadmap of how we help them create their manifestos.

Justin McMillen (1:43:33)

Have you personally done this?

Jeremy Jackson (1:43:56)

Yes, I've done it a lot of times, and actually, on the fourth one, I was always like, holy shit, kind of much like the writing assignment I did. You write and you write, say all the stuff, and it's sappy at first, and it's super light, and it starts like, wow, you know, I get all the questions, all this uncertainty- Like, I wish I could have, should have, why didn't I, blah blah blah, and eventually you're like, whoa, I'm clear, I could go and be totally fine right now, that's pretty precious.

Justin McMillen (1:44:15)

That is precious, yeah, that's amazing, that's pondering death, I think, is one of the most amazing ways to- Or it's the most powerful way to experience life, right, to truly be here. And that's why people who are so close to death are so incredible to be around, the wisdom to glean there. And it's like almost enlightenment that comes from people when they're right at that edge, all it is, is acceptance.

Jeremy Jackson (1:44:57)

Yeah, right, I know that's right, yeah, acceptance and surrender.

Justin McMillen (1:44:57)

Yeah, this is it. Do you have peace with your life, if you were to go tomorrow?

Jeremy Jackson (1:44:57)

I think so, yeah.

Justin McMillen (1:44:57)

Yeah, that's good, you've got a glimmer in your eye, to where I believe you.

Jeremy Jackson (1:45:20)

Yeah, I mean, I'm out here kicking ass and taking names, as best I can, the more time I have, the more I think I can improve and do better, I'm not perfect, I don't really think I'll ever be, but I know that I at least have been giving my best effort for quite some time.

Justin McMillen (1:45:20)

Yeah, that's all I can do. Are you, would you consider yourself like a spiritual teacher, a guru, a business person?

Jeremy Jackson (1:45:45)

I mean, not a business person, although you are a business person, a coach- you see your question, how the hell are you, Jeremy, in this day and age, you're supposed to have a niche, right, you're supposed to be able- some labels sort of suck, so you can say, I don't want to even put a word on it, but what do you hear?

Justin McMillen (1:46:05)

But you sound like a guru.

Jeremy Jackson (1:46:05)

I don't- that sounds super weird to say. Well, you know what guru means, taker of darkness, which I like, you could call me a taker of darkness. I've been called a lot of things, I've been called a shaman, I've been called a guru. But I think if there is a state I could achieve to the best of its ability, it would be just to be a good friend, to be the ultimate friend.

Justin McMillen (1:46:39)

I like that, and it actually makes more sense to me, because I see you, you seem to me like a man who is- you seem way more like a monk to me, or somebody who's on a deep spiritual quest that just continues to peel things back, like there's no way you could have had the youth you had, the experience you've had, without wrestling ego. There's no way you couldn't be- meaning, it's like, I'm supposed to be special, important, different, but you carry most people- all humans have this, man, you in your position, there's no way you can't have a huge amount of that, you just can't. It's like you have to. But then you have a light in you that is impossible to ignore. 01;47;23;17 - 01;47;43;03 Justin McMillen So you're overcoming a lot of it. That's why I don't think- I mean, a good friend is the perfect way, because as you continue to develop this, the Energy Method, what if it made sense means that you become famous again, and also- I'm this guy, that's what's going on, I'm secretly trying to take the back door to getting famous again by tricking everybody into loving me.

Jeremy Jackson (1:47:43)

I don't know that that's the case, but I don't think- once you have that in your life, this is the thing about ego, I think when we're chasing that, it almost never comes.

Justin McMillen (1:48:01)

But you were there.

Jeremy Jackson (1:48:01)

Yeah, but then what happens is, people who truly transcend it, it seems like they stop caring about that, and it doesn't matter anymore.

Justin McMillen (1:48:01)

I see, it feels like you're in that space, I don't- I'm feeling like it's really audacious to say this, I don't know you that well, but these are feelings, man.

Jeremy Jackson (1:48:19)

So I deeply appreciate it, and I receive it. There was a long time where I couldn't receive that type of kindness and that type of compliment, but at the same time as I receive it, I'm so grateful, and it's a tip of the hat that I'm doing God's work. I don't believe that anybody who doesn't have it can also see it. If someone can see it, that means it's God in them recognizing God in me. It's the divine spark in you that recognizes the divine spark in me, we're two droplets of the ocean that contain the whole ocean, and we come together and it's just a little bit bigger of a drop. It's the tuning fork that's 442 that buzzes the tuning fork- That's 442, but if the tuning fork is 442, and this one's 440, you buzz this one, and this one doesn't vibrate at all. So my vibration is vibrating you, so, like attracts like, kind of, you spot it because you got it.

Justin McMillen (1:49:02)

Yeah, so congratulations on that, and it also means a lot to me, because I've always looked up to the program you've created and the work you do. And I know how critical and cautious and specific you guys are, and I've always only known the undercurrent of it, but I could feel it, I could feel there was a lot of intentionality and research and development and specificity that went into what you were doing, that means a lot to me.

Jeremy Jackson (1:49:42)

Yeah, because it's true, I'm a steward of it, I'm at the helm, but there's a lot of us, so it's not just me, and it's meant to be very easily engaged with, but if we sat down and really got into it and you knew the nuance, and how much we're looking at every piece, it always blows- Everyone's mind, and it's not- that's just the depth is insane.

Justin McMillen (1:50:04)

It's there. And with that piece, with the rats, and how your treatment team thinks of people, that's come to me many, many times in 12 step rooms. How many times in a 12 step room has somebody said, that guy's never going to make it?

Jeremy Jackson (1:50:24)

Yeah, and I'm like, dude, what you specifically say in the book, we don't shoot our wounded.

Justin McMillen (1:50:24)

Right, and then you're just saying this guy's- everything you're doing is wrong and you're never going to make it. I'm like, you're- it's unbelievable. So that's the internal and external application, I literally tell the staff, you have to have it in your head that this person can be successful. That's why they can all be superstars, they can all be needle movers. External application is when you actually say to somebody, you notice that thing, and you shine a light on it, and you just pointed it out, you didn't do anything about it, it's just like, I just saw you do this, and it was extraordinary. And then we teach the guys at three months something called Brother's Keeper. Our little way of working on it is, you want to have a relationship with somebody where, like, you for you, for you, and it would look like this, you have to tell me your vision for your life, and I'll tell you the same. It could be anything, could just be a vision that I want to be sober, or I want to be happy, or I want to have this thing, or do this thing, but you have to share your vision, and the goal is that you want the other person in your life to be able to truly see that as possible. So much so that anything you do that doesn't align with that is confusing, so this isn't an accountability [partner], it's like, if you and I spent more time together, and you told me, this is kind of where I see it all going, and I loved you enough to give a shit- Enough to allow myself to dream that with you, then we share this dream, and then, if you get five people like that in your life, and they're around you, they sort of act as this- everything you do that doesn't align with that, they're tapping you back towards that, and it's incredible. And you have that, all my staff, we're all in this with each other, I know what everybody's- not everybody, because Luke still has to tell me his vision for the podcast. But I kind of know where people want to go, and what they're aiming for, and we're all clear about that, and we're supporting each other by just believing. It's like a knowing, in the same way the teachers were told about the science, they had to be told to get to a state of knowing versus, okay, I'm going to try really hard to- Luke is going to make the podcast so successful, got to be authentic, he's smiling, there he is. I have to know he is, and if I know he is, I'm going to look at him, and anything he does that doesn't align with that, it's just going to be like, that's weird, where the cream makes sense, heal people, heal people. So what you're doing is not only really good for the client, it's super good for the staff too.

Jeremy Jackson (1:53:11)

Yeah, and it's- it's a win-win, it's good for the whole of humanity, it's definitely pleasing in the eyes of God, needle movers create needle movers. And there's- I don't know if you've seen that study with the hermetically sealed plants, a healthy plant on the inside, in a hermetically sealed jar, and plants surrounding it that have cancer. And they're sealed, literally airtight, sealed in the dark, the healthy plant stays healthy, the cancerous plants have cancer. But as soon as you play light- specifically red light, but any normal light will have red light in it- the one in the middle gets cancer, why is that? Because light- because frequency carries information. So what we're talking about is, the knowing is a frequency, and not knowing carries the frequency of that information, it's imprinting that person with negativity. And they do the same with a cancerous plant and healthy plants, and the cancerous plant gets healed.

Justin McMillen (1:53:57)

I want to learn about that more.

Jeremy Jackson (1:53:57)

Yeah, they did it also with a human stem cell, etched into a hologram or something, into a flashlight, like a special crystal lens that had a human stem cell, and they worked on people, but they did a salamander stem cell shown through a light, a flashlight, into a tadpole frog's egg sac, and it hatched as a salamander. And they did it with ducks and chickens as well, so you can get a chicken egg to hatch as a duck, and a duck egg to hatch as a chicken, because you're carrying the information of a stem cell of a duck into a chicken egg, and it comes out-

Justin McMillen (1:54:56)

You gotta promise me you'll- it sounds like [I should] Google it, but I will. I'm going to suspend disbelief until then. That sounds awesome. Speaking of stem cells, I've seen a few times, you go down to South America and Central America, doing all kinds of different stuff, are you still into all that, or is it less?

Jeremy Jackson (1:55:11)

Much less, I used to be like Mr. Peptide, stem cell, biohacking. That was a way I was kind of ahead of everyone. In 2008, I went on Celebrity Rehab for steroid addiction, meanwhile I was injecting IGF, I was injecting HGH, I was injecting B12, I was injecting glutathione, I was injecting procaine solution, which, if you research procaine, is like this fountain of youth. So I was doing like 11 injections a day. Granted, I was doing my testosterone injections as well, but when they came to my house and saw all these vials, I had $100,000 worth of IGF in my freezer, insulin growth factor, and it looked like I was out of my mind, because who does- Who does that in 2008? Now if you open up Instagram, everybody's doing it. So, to say the least, 15 years ago I was doing the peptide thing, I was definitely into it. And these days I've just lost interest in that, that 45 minute routine, self-focused on trying to achieve a result. I've tried to bring myself to get back into it, and it just doesn't align with me.

Justin McMillen (1:56:41)

When was it that you did the myostatin inhibitor?

Jeremy Jackson (1:56:41)

I think it was a little over two years ago now.

Justin McMillen (1:56:41)

Can you tell the audience about that?

Jeremy Jackson (1:56:56)

Yes, and it was highly effective. So myostatin, or follistatin, and it's a peptide that, when taken over the course of some days, every day in a row, the introduction of follistatin slowly brings down your body's myostatin. As you age, your body's myostatin levels go up. Especially if you've been on testosterone replacement therapy, your myostatin really goes up. And myostatin is a specific peptide in your body that limits your ability to grow muscle.

Justin McMillen (1:57:19)

Myostatin limits your ability to grow muscle, yeah, okay, when it's heightened.

Jeremy Jackson (1:57:19)

Right, so when you take testosterone, it limits your ability to grow muscle over the course of time, that myostatin slowly goes up.

Justin McMillen (1:57:43)

So that's your- gotcha, gotcha.

Jeremy Jackson (1:57:43)

And so, Belgian Blue cattle are born with no myostatin, there's been some anomalies, genetics in the bulls, the veins and all that. That world's-strongest toddler kid, he was born with no myostatin. There's some dogs, and Ronnie Coleman, I believe, they think had some myostatin difference, probably. Yeah, and the reason it's potentially a problem is, your heart is a muscle, so if you don't have myostatin, your heart will gain in size and be too big for your body, and you'll die pretty early. Also, ligaments and tendons can only hold so much, so if you're born with no myostatin- You'll be so strong and have so much muscle that you'll probably rupture ligaments and tendons all the time, because they can't keep up. So myostatin puts the brakes on muscle growth.

Justin McMillen (1:58:27)

Got it. Okay, so taking follistatin can inhibit myostatin, and is that naturally occurring in the body, or is it some man-made thing?

Jeremy Jackson (1:58:27)

I probably- I haven't looked into it that much, but I'm going to say absolutely it is, because when you're injecting follistatin, it's not actually a statin, it's a secretagogue, it's an activator. Anyway, I had a doctor who works with a lot of celebrities, Kim Kardashian, Zac Efron, and- Who's the girl who played Pepper Potts in Iron Man, I don't know, blonde hair, beautiful actress, anyway, he treats everybody, and he came up with a gene mutation, and it's a long-acting version that in one injection lasts two years, potentially longer. And it works with something called the vector, so the vector is an inert bacteria, or an inert virus, either one. And that bacterium, paired with follistatin, gets into your genes and it edits your genes. And so now the introduction of this into your genes slowly pushes down your myostatin, and it's slow, it's not like crushing it, you're less likely to have like no myostatin, so you get heart hypertrophy or injure yourself. However, I did injure myself quite a bit, my strength gain was very fast, I was doing jiu jitsu every day, and my partners didn't even know I had gotten it, and my buddy was like, dude, what's up with your grip, it's always been really good, but I can't get your grips off me like that. And within three months, every finger was sprained, I was stronger than my ligaments could keep up with. So all my fingers got injured, I tore something in my lat deadlifting, and-

Justin McMillen (2:00:38)

So you don't recommend it, incremental strength gain is actually kind of important?

Jeremy Jackson (2:00:38)

No, I do, I would recommend it, it's fantastic if you have $25,000 to drop, what I'd recommend, and actually doing deeper research, is that if you're really looking for muscle growth, working out with lightweight will produce more muscle growth than heavyweight, because your myostatin will go down more. You actually don't want to damage it, you just want to activate it, so you want to be cautious with weighted pull-ups and dips, even though you can, it's kind of dangerous because you might tear something.

Justin McMillen (2:01:06)

That's interesting, yeah, this is like- it's so vast in terms of opinions and ideas, but you've been at it for so long and trained people, so it's interesting to hear your thoughts on it.

Jeremy Jackson (2:01:26)

Yeah, and the other cool thing about it is, when you open up something called myosin cycling, muscle protein synthesis, your muscles aren't limited, that actually activates a lot of fat loss potential, because what you're eating is going to muscles. You have this switch that gets flipped back on, so the potential of more fat loss, or utilizing fat for energy, especially as we age it's less likely to utilize that fat, so you actually get leaner. And when you have more cycling on and the muscle protein synthesis is up, that actually activates a whole bunch of inflammatory proteins. So you also get reduced inflammation from the shot, so it has some beneficial things, some life extension things.

Justin McMillen (2:02:05)

Where do people go to get it?

Jeremy Jackson (2:02:05)

Doctor Adeel Khan, he's in Dubai, and he's in Cancun, he's super famous.

Justin McMillen (2:02:05)

I think I've seen him before, I feel like I know that name.

Jeremy Jackson (2:02:05)

Okay, he's working with Nobel Peace Prize winners on stem cells, creating stem cell scaffolding, where he usually uses your own fat. Mesenchymal stem cells and stuff.

Justin McMillen (2:02:34)

Yeah, okay, the longevity stuff's interesting for sure. How much of this plays into this phase of your life, let me rewind and frame that a little bit. So we've got this body, the flesh, the beast part of who we are that's interacting with nature for however long we're here on earth. 02;02;59;02 - 02;03;18;16 Justin McMillen And the soul that's in there driving that body, you and I both spent time really messing with the physical stuff, where are you at now with that, do you care so much about that, are you trying to grow and nurture this spiritual part of who you are and sort of denounce the flesh more, or-

Jeremy Jackson (2:02:59)

That's a great question. And I actually went through a funky phase, I didn't go to the gym for six months, and it was like, you know, the bro box, just sweaty, pimply, guys posing in the mirror doing all this stuff, and I was like, oh, this, I can't believe I loved this for so long. And I was about to be on that "denounce" tip, maybe I'm just not meant for it. And then I actually did a very interesting healing called a cura, with a lady from a Patzcuaro nation, which is now Michoacan, Mexico. Very interesting, Patzcuaro was the only city that never let the Spanish take over. They preserved their lineage and their principles and their teachings and their textbooks, all that, they didn't let themselves get colonized. And she swaddled me up in this tight thing, which is supposed to represent death, and rubbed me down with all these flowers, and did all this wild stuff, but it was very nurturing and kind, and there was no [plant] medicine involved. She was singing, and we did some breathing together, and different stuff like that, that was the medicine. So there was medicine involved, but she did a Mayan astrology reading for me based on the Mayan calendar, and she told me my sign is death, and she read all this stuff, and told me it's very important for my sign to be physically fit, because this healer energy, this personality type, we can ail very easily, succumb to weakness, if we're not staying active. And so I was like, I found my purpose to work out again, I was like, awesome, you got to be spirit, I was on the path of like, the fastest, skinny, totally trying to get, 20 pounds- I lost 20 pounds of muscle in six months, so I was trying to yoke up and get into it. And I did notice, the longer I didn't work out, there was a lot of scar tissue and I was really sore, taking time off didn't help. I was having low back stuff, so I probably spend more time stretching now, which is totally new for me, I never did that, I was very much blinders on, grit and bear it.

Justin McMillen (2:06:02)

Do you do yoga?

Jeremy Jackson (2:06:02)

No, I don't like yoga for some reason, but I like stretching- Not so much for, like, elongating a muscle, but for functional movement, turns and holds, and this is new to me, but I kind of realized that I've got to be able to have a conversation and relationship with my body, I've always kind of did this to my body, like, fuck you, you're going to grin and bear it. And so I put the headphones in, put some nervous system calming music on, and just sit there, and, oh wow, I didn't even know that existed, what is that? So, developing a relationship with my body, and with what's going on, and giving it permission to let go, and to work out, and to love it a little bit. I never did that before, that's been new for me, that's been fun. And yeah, so I still get after it with kettlebells and some bodyweight stuff, but I haven't thrown any weight on my back in a while, you won't find me on a flat bench.

Justin McMillen (2:07:14)

That's good. It's good to have seasons and different things, I'm always trying to reinvent what I'm trying to do.

Jeremy Jackson (2:07:31)

I've done competitive stuff, and that's like, okay, I'm going to gain weight, and then I just got off a six month kettlebell kick, but I've been gone for five weeks, I feel like I literally lost eight pounds. I feel small, come on, guys, t-shirts fit different, I'm not naturally bigger, I'm a lean guy. So everything disappears fast, but there's got to be a reason for me, looking good is only going to go so far, it's not enough, it's like, performance, it's like, okay, what about just learning- It's a constant thing for me. But I don't know, I do think a lot about the body, so sometimes I talk about the limbic system and frontal cortex in the brain, and there's a battle going on between the two sides, and other times it's more of a spiritual conversation. And it's like, what am I supposed to do here, and the good old anterior cingulate cortex, got to go in there and do the stuff. I wanted to do a study, I actually had a contract with Newport Radiology, right on PCH, super good price per brain scan, all based on a Huberman thing. The problem was, when I was trying to find the principal investigator, to- we're gonna test people's AMCC, because that's just a theory right now, when you look it up, it's not proof-

Justin McMillen (2:08:49)

Well, no, there's a paper called The Tenacious Brain, but that's from Andrew Huberman, here's this- That would be- I'm kind of pissed, and I called his buddy, and I was like, okay, so anyways, he made this claim about the anterior cingulate cortex, that when you do hard things, it gets bigger, and if you're not doing hard things, it gets smaller.

Jeremy Jackson (2:09:09)

And I'm like, this is fucking amazing, because I believe that resilience is a very important part of recovery. I got proof, I'm living proof, it works. And then Tree House is very heavily focused on building resilience, so I thought, let's do this, maybe we have a biomarker for grit, or a marker for grit. Let's measure the ACC at the beginning of treatment, let's measure it at the end, and then let's correlate post-treatment relapse with how much change in the ACC we saw.

Justin McMillen (2:09:52)

Anterior mid cingulate cortex.

Jeremy Jackson (2:09:52)

Yeah, sorry, thank you. And then I started talking to all these scientists, and they're like, the change in size- do you know that the brain, if you're just dehydrated, it's [known] to change in size, not double, but it can change dramatically in size. And pretty much everybody was saying they couldn't find the data to support his claim. And I was so bummed, I was like, what the- why would he say this, I was so annoyed, I asked his buddy, I was like, why would he do that, because that went viral.

Justin McMillen (2:10:19)

Yeah, I mean, so many people, what about- Amen Clinics, are they interested, they do that SPECT scan- It might be better than what traditional [MRI] was.

Jeremy Jackson (2:10:37)

It was more- I mean, I could do this study, but the question is, you could measure their size, but really, I learned that it's not necessarily the size, I was like to think, with a pair of- you want to get big [muscles] in your head, and what's interesting about it is it intersects, it's actually part of the limbic system, and it ties into the frontal cortex. And this relationship between- the limbic system is trying to avoid pain and chase pleasure, this is kind of the life force of the human, and then you have the frontal cortex, which is like the sail and how you direct that force. And what's interesting is this thing wants to avoid pain. And this thing has to override, like, hey, Jeremy, I know this is cold, but you should keep going, because you want to for some future gain, which is discipline. So the ACC appears to be this amazing modulator between these things, and if it can grow and shrink in size based on how strong we are, this would be one of the most important advancements, because you could measure that in people going to college- And you could be like, oh, this person is more likely to be successful, or even selection for special operations. So, anyways, I'm not- it's not dead.

Justin McMillen (2:11:45)

Yeah, but I couldn't find any kind of radiologist or imaging person, I wonder if they have about the same scan they use for SPECT.

Jeremy Jackson (2:12:02)

Yes, cat scan, SPECT, PET, or there's different ones. Maybe they show more.

Justin McMillen (2:12:02)

Yeah, we were going to use MRI, and then maybe you'd have to control, like, the people you chose, their diet and their fluids had to be really regimented, we could test the water, the hydration level in the body before. And you could imagine sodium is that might be the limiting factor, you could regiment [that] before they get scanned, so it's always spot on.

Jeremy Jackson (2:12:23)

Yeah, if we discovered that was true, and we discovered that the people who had the largest anterior mid cingulate cortex stayed sober for the longest duration- Then it would be an if-then, well, if we know that's true, we know it grows bigger from doing hard things, therefore all treatment should be focused on doing hard shit, and then it just becomes like, wow, we just change the treatment space and improve outcomes.

Justin McMillen (2:12:46)

I mean, it's such an important study to do.

Jeremy Jackson (2:13:04)

Yeah, but I was told I can't find the research on it, there is a paper, The Tenacious Brain, but it's not really- anyways, I talk about this a lot, I do groups on this, and it doesn't matter, like dancing in front of people-

Justin McMillen (2:13:04)

Yeah, yeah, exactly, anything, just go do it.

Jeremy Jackson (2:13:23)

You don't even have to do it that long, you just got to do it, and it's kind of like a physical iteration of the Golden Key, change, change. So I teach on that actually a lot, because people need to know- do you know about Kundalini a little bit?

Justin McMillen (2:13:43)

Not really, my sister's a big Kundalini person, and a lot of what you're describing around breathwork, most of Kundalini yoga, they talk about buzzing in the hand, and the root chakra, people having these Kundalini experiences with their bodies, freak out.

Jeremy Jackson (2:13:43)

Yeah, yeah, I can see, maybe- what's beautiful is Kundalini was created, it sort of emerged, almost like it was a spiritual gift that came from some other place to the people, maybe you're having something similar happen.

Justin McMillen (2:14:15)

Yeah, I mean, if you did Kundalini, you'd realize that you just imploded, you wonder if- do you hate yoga? My guy who originally taught me breathwork, my first guy, he did Kundalini yoga.

Jeremy Jackson (2:14:15)

Okay, he was certified, whatever they call it, he had a little beanie, and it started as a little- he was doing all that kind of stuff. And I went to one class with him, by Wind Turbine, but then I was freaked out, back then I was freaked out, just because, I don't know, I was basically chanting some other name for God, and I was like, maybe this is weird, so it was a little weird for me, but my outlook has changed a lot since then, so I wouldn't be opposed to it. I want to go, there's a place called Ram Dass's, it's in Costa Rica, and it's a Stanislav Grof retreat center, and it's this huge, beautiful retreat center with geodesic domes and workshops and classes, and I called them up and I was like, when's your next holotropic breathwork, they don't do any. And like, do you know of anybody that's going on, is there anybody who learned from him that teaches, and they're like, yeah, well I don't know, it's really hard to find. I would love to actually go and participate in a holotropic Stanislav Grof method workshop, retreat, weekend, whatever, that would be-

Justin McMillen (2:15:48)

It is weird, it sounds like there's something mysterious about that.

Jeremy Jackson (2:15:48)

Yeah, well, maybe I'll- I'll see if I can learn about it, I have to learn more about this subject in general.

Justin McMillen (2:15:48)

We all do. Everything- I'm super grateful that you came on here, and I feel like I know you more now, so that's good.

Jeremy Jackson (2:16:09)

Likewise, and we'll be working together more.

Justin McMillen (2:16:09)

Jeremy Jackson, thank you.

Jeremy Jackson (2:16:09)

God bless, Justin.

Justin McMillen (2:16:09)

Bless you.