Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 He didn't even say anything to me. He walked up to me, he grabbed a handful of my genitalia and he said, welcome to the neighborhood. And he just took off running <laugh> <laugh>. And he, and he was so stunned. Thank you for tuning in to today's episode of the Discover Birmingham podcast. Today's guest is a dear friend of mine. We've traveled the world together, we ride motorcycles, and he even officiated my wedding as a mild disclaimer here. I'd rate this episode as pg, possibly PG 13. There's no explicit language, but we will share some unbelievable and possibly disturbing stories from his training in the emergency room. He's now an owner of the Southern Ketamine Clinic in Vesta, and an all around great dude. Please welcome my friend, Dr. Harrison Irons.
Speaker 1 00:01:23
Speaker 0 00:01:31 Hello Harrison. Hey, chase. Thanks for doing this, man. I appreciate you coming on. Of course. Yeah. Brand new podcast, discover Birmingham. Purpose of the podcast is to talk about businesses in the community, events that are coming up and people who are doing things in the city. And you fallen both of those categories. So I definitely wanted to get you on asap, so we got a little, a little thank you gift for coming on. Ooh, what's this? A gift card to my favorite bar in town. Audios. Mr. Chewy himself. Yes. Huge fan. Audios. When's the last time you went? Uh, I went to audios probably a couple weeks ago. The owner is a good friend of ours. Full disclosure there. Shout out to Chewy. Shout out to Chewy. But he's awesome slash Jesus. But it's a great bar. It's got a great vibe. One of my friends and I went there and he said it's his favorite mingling bar in town because it has a lot of open space.
Speaker 0 00:02:22 And you know, you can sit down at the bar, you can sit in the booth, but there's also just <unk> places people stand up and like talk. And you're not in a bar with all college kids. It's, you know, grown adults looking to have a more sophisticated time. Yeah, it is, it is good for mingling. Yeah. I was there the night that you were, and Chewy was supposed to meet us there that night, I believe. But, uh, stood us up. He bailed on us. Yeah. How rude. The one issue that I do have with audios is that I don't believe they serve irons one. Yeah, I know. It's really unfortunate they came to be a more of a tequila bar, but I do not appreciate the fact they don't represent, you know,
Speaker 2 00:02:58 Alabama's number one bourbon. It
Speaker 0 00:03:00 Absolutely is. And full disclosure, this is Harrison Irons of of irons one. So
Speaker 2 00:03:06 <laugh>, protege of the distiller himself. My father.
Speaker 0 00:03:09 That's right. That's right. This is actually unbiased here. This is my favorite bourbon whiskey. Bourbon. What is it? I'm not, I'm not a connoisseur, but this is, this is my favorite for sure.
Speaker 2 00:03:19 And my dad's gonna kill me for, um, so I believe that it's called bourbon When, so to walk through the whole process, you have your mixture of corn, barley, uh, some other kind of, you can probably read the bottle and learn more about it than me. Um, and then, you know, so that's your mash. And then you have your mash hang out for a while. You separate your mash, take the liquid from it, separate like the liquid from all the corn and oak and barley particles. And then you distill that, and then that comes out clear, like white lightning. And then you only get the color of the bourbon. Cheers, my friend. Cheers
Speaker 0 00:03:54 Buddy.
Speaker 2 00:03:55 Um, when you put it in a charred, um, white oak, American white oak barrel. And so the first time that the dis distillate touches the barrel, it's bourbon. That's good. That's good. But the second time it goes through it's whiskey. And so this is, uh, this is bourbon. So this is the first time that the, the goodness has touched the barrel. It usually brings out all of the initial flavors. Not to say that the whiskey is, you know, not as good, but just has, uh, different hints, different noses, different flavors to it.
Speaker 0 00:04:25 It's so good. It tastes like what ri vanwinkle drank to sleep all those years. So good. I could see, I could see me drinking this some honey and Katie feeding me grapes.
Speaker 2 00:04:36 Hmm. Who's gonna fan you? Is that where Chewy comes in? Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:04:39 <laugh>. That's so good, man. Well, um, I was listening to another podcast the other day, and it was a guy who, he owns a business where he helps Americans relocate and move to other countries. Hmm. And he was talking about the huge expat population in Belize. And that got me thinking about our trip. Oh yeah. What was your favorite part about that trip?
Speaker 2 00:05:03 I think the thing that stood out to me the most, lots of great parts. Of course. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:05:09 But, um, we'll get into
Speaker 2 00:05:10 Those Going through the old ruins where the Mayans, Aztecs, Mayans, Mayans, the Mayans would do like their human sacrifices to
Speaker 0 00:05:21 You love
Speaker 2 00:05:22 That. I mean, we were walking in a cave stepping over skeletons preserved, like for thousands of years. I mean, I felt like Indiana Jones a
Speaker 0 00:05:30 Little bit. Yeah. It was, that cave was eight called atm. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, no idea what that stands for. Can't remember at all. It was cool because you had to swim into it. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you swim in probably a hundred yards in chest deep water and you're wearing a hard hat with, uh, one of those lights on top. Yeah. And you're crawling through spaces that if I, if I weighed 10 more pounds, I I wouldn't have made it through. It was so tight. And you go in, what is it? It's, I think it's like a mile in and uh, then eventually you get to the part where, like you said, they were doing human sacrifices because towards the end of the Aztec era, there was a huge drought. Right. That's right. Right. They had, they had no water and their idea was to sacrifice to the gods to try to get it to rain. You know? They were sacrificing kids. They were sacrificing. I mean, some of the skeletons we saw were, were small, they were very small. It was, it was eerie. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. But it was striking to see that it was so important that they get the water. They were willing to do anything. So you go in and I loved it because it didn't feel touristy at all.
Speaker 2 00:06:37 No,
Speaker 0 00:06:37 It did not. I mean, there were the skeletons, nothing was, there were no ropes around it. I mean, you could walk up and touch it if you want to. And we went at a time during Covid when there were no other tourists there. All the cruise ships weren't going there. So we felt like we had the whole country to ourselves. We were pretty much the only ones in the cave with our guide. He was cool. He was cool. Yeah. Yeah. He was really cool.
Speaker 2 00:06:56 Yeah. There was, it was very not American because there was no red tape, like you said. There was really barely any markings. You had to kind of be very aware and respectful of the cave to not step on any of the artifacts.
Speaker 0 00:07:08 Do you remember that fruit, Stan? We stopped out on the way called dickhead, dicks <laugh> Dick. No, was called Dickhead. Dickhead.
Speaker 2 00:07:13 That's right.
Speaker 0 00:07:14 Dickheads. Coconuts. <laugh>. And
Speaker 2 00:07:16 We got papaya and it was, or mango, and it was gross,
Speaker 0 00:07:20 So it was completely raw. And they put salt on it. They put
Speaker 2 00:07:23 Salt on it and dick on it, and it was
Speaker 0 00:07:25 Gross. That's marketing 1 0 1 right there. Dickhead. Dickheads. Yeah. Coconuts. And it was written, it was painted like a, like a
Speaker 2 00:07:32 Painted,
Speaker 0 00:07:32 A hand painted <laugh>. And then, uh, on that same drive there, we had to bribe some police. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2 00:07:40 <affirmative> remember. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 0 00:07:41 <affirmative>, we had to pass on this road. And there were two officers standing in the middle of the road and they just stopped our car. Hello, we need some water. And he held it his hand like this, and kind of gave it <laugh> kind of point. Pointed in his hand. It was like their toll road. Yeah, exactly. It was like, it's an official toll road. And I was like, ah, shoot. Yeah, I think we have $4 <laugh>. Is that fine? And they were like, yes, that is fine. <laugh>, you, you may pass,
Speaker 2 00:08:06 You shall pass. Yeah. <laugh>. Yeah. It's a different country down there. But overall I felt really, uh, safe. I didn't really feel unsafe at any point in time. No,
Speaker 0 00:08:15 I didn't feel unsafe personally, but I saw blues and signs that I should have if, if you'll recall the taxi that pulled up with bullet holes in it.
Speaker 2 00:08:23 Yeah, I do recall that the most unsafe I felt is when I was brazen enough to try and drive a stick shift, which <laugh> I was not very good at. I could have gotten taken out in any of one of those roundabouts.
Speaker 0 00:08:33 It felt so lawless because you could just pretty much no speeding limits. You can just rip all around the country. And I'm glad that we didn't go the touristy route because we could have, if we had stayed on one of the outer lighting islands. But instead we stayed in the downtown area in Blue City in Airbnb and rented our own car and just kind of made our own way.
Speaker 2 00:08:53 And the, uh, the gentleman that stayed in the floor below us Oh yeah. He had that show on like Discovery Channel about Repoing and, uh, flipping planes for drug cartels.
Speaker 0 00:09:02 Yeah. Operation Repo Aircraft edition or something like that. And we met him in the pool. Yeah. <laugh> and, uh, <laugh>, what's his name? He goes by like, uh, like aircraft Bob or something like that. <laugh>, that's not, that's not it, but it's something like that. And since then I've been places that had TV on and I, I saw his show on and we're like, we know that
Speaker 2 00:09:20 Guy. We know that guy. We met that guy in
Speaker 0 00:09:22 Police. He had so many good stories. He was talking about how the way that he finds the planes that have been abandoned in the brush by the cartel or whoever is, has abandoned them. Um, he'll get a call from like a general from Belize or, uh, some politician in Costa Rica and he is like, Hey, we got a plane, you can come down here and get it. And he just goes down, flies the plane out and then resells it. And he said sometimes he just sells it right back to the cartel. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:09:48 <laugh>, it's, uh, it seemed to be a pretty brilliant business idea. He would take cartel planes and sell 'em back to the cartel or take cartel planes and sell 'em to the government. I think he had to put a little bit of money into some of 'em if they would have rough landings. But it was a very interesting business model.
Speaker 0 00:10:03 Only thing is one wrong move and you're not in the good graces of the cartel. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:10:09 So, and he was an American guy?
Speaker 0 00:10:10 Yeah,
Speaker 2 00:10:11 It was bald, it was
Speaker 0 00:10:12 Baller. We saw the ruins from, um, an Aztec temple or something. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> where my buddy Brian Cartmell and his wife got married. What else did
Speaker 2 00:10:20 We see there? And little Pyramids. It was really interesting. Like they had some really advanced technology, you know, think of the, the Aztecs of the mines as like little jungle people, but they were really advanced
Speaker 0 00:10:29 And we were the only ones there.
Speaker 2 00:10:31 We climbed up to the very, very top and probably an area we shouldn't
Speaker 0 00:10:35 Have. Well, remember the guy who, uh, floated us across the river on that? Mm-hmm. <affirmative> Mini Barge. I don't think he even worked at the ruins, but, um, there was a rope that was blocking off the top floor, but that's where we all really wanted to go. And he is like, 20 bucks, I'll let you go up there. Okay. Gave him 20 bucks and he just moved the rope. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>
Speaker 2 00:10:57 And weren't there bats up there. And then my uh, something else that stands out to me from Belize was when we went to like the Shark Island and we played with like a million baby sharks and rays.
Speaker 0 00:11:09 That's when I found out that your iPhones can work underwater <laugh>. Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 00:11:13 Take a lot of underwater
Speaker 0 00:11:14 Videos. Yeah. It was taking great videos, but there were probably a hundred Sharks women right around us. And they were friendly. They just wanted to be fed. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:11:21 They're like little cocker spaniels, like about the same size and friendliness and then just come up and you could just pet 'em. And same with Man Rays stingrays. I always get this too mixed up. Uh, little tiny rays.
Speaker 0 00:11:31 If I was gonna move to a different country, Belize would be high on it for several reasons. The number one being is that they speak English mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So there's no language barrier. And their covid restrictions weren't that bad. And that would be another selling point for me because if, if God forbid we do go through another pandy, I'd like to get outta here.
Speaker 2 00:11:50 Hmm. Not Guatemala, cuz we're there Guatemala. We could see, see. But they would not let us in at all.
Speaker 0 00:11:54 Yeah. They were really strict about it. If you were gonna move outta country, where would you wanna go?
Speaker 2 00:12:00 Hmm. I've just heard that the happiest people on earth are Costa Ricans. Yeah. And I've been to Costa Rica a couple times and pans out. They're very happy people. They, they don't wanna leave. They're not like, um, you know, we have a lot of Mexican immigrants and we have a lot of, you know, other South American immigrants, but Costa Ricans, they stay down there <laugh>. They, they're super happy.
Speaker 0 00:12:20 That's a good point. They don't
Speaker 2 00:12:21 Come here. They don't come here. They, they like what they got going on.
Speaker 0 00:12:24 Why would they? Yeah. That's where, uh, Katie and I did our honeymoon and that's where Charlotte was made. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>.
Speaker 2 00:12:31 Yeah. Man, you guys always joked about coming back with a honeymoon baby, but it wasn't a joke.
Speaker 0 00:12:36 Yeah. It really happened. But Costa Rica was cool. Um, we, that one we did a little bit more touristy. We stayed in a resort, but we still rented a vehicle so we could go and explore the country. Found some hot springs. We did like a mud bath. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> and hot springs. The only thing was I had the day before or two days before, got in a major league sunburn. Mm. And some of the pools were 1 0 8. Ooh,
Speaker 2 00:13:04 That's gotta hurt.
Speaker 0 00:13:04 Oh my
Speaker 2 00:13:05 God. Ooh. That's gotta
Speaker 0 00:13:06 Hurt. I was, I was so rev. I was as red as my shoes man. It was cra
Speaker 2 00:13:09 <laugh>. I did a trip with some buddies to Egypt and Jordan, and we did the Dead Sea and they have like the mud baths there. And so we would like, cover ourselves and mud the best we could and get each other's backs. And my friends, uh, thought they were being real funny and they drew a giant penis on my back, <laugh>. And there was this German family on the beach, and they thought it was the funniest thing they had ever seen. They just kept pointing and laughing at my back. I'm like, we're all covered in mud. Why are they just pointing and laughing at me? And then we took some pictures and I, I figured out why very quickly after
But that reminds me. I have, um, I have an idea for a prank. I'm gonna pull on my parents. I'm going to get a car seat, like a child's car seat and strap it to the back of a motorcycle <laugh> on the back fender and just put like a doll in there and call 'em and say, Hey, I'm coming over. I'm bringing Charlotte. I'm gonna show up on the motorcycle. I can't wait. Yeah. What I was thinking about is the looks that I might get in traffic on the way over <laugh>, think
Speaker 2 00:15:24 It'd be worse or not as bad as the time that you run on the back of my motorcycle or in the cat mask clawing in everybody.
Speaker 0 00:15:31 Well, we gotta explain that one because I wasn't just riding <laugh>. The back of your motorcycle ride on the back of your,
Speaker 2 00:15:37 Just a joy
Speaker 0 00:15:37 Ride. <laugh>.
Speaker 2 00:15:39 Uh, yeah. So Chase used to live downtown. I lived downtown at the time, and his motorcycle was, uh, at his farm in Monte Vallow. So rather than driving his truck all the way down there and then riding his bike, he thought, you know, I could just take my bike back to downtown, but how do I get down there other than the back of my bike?
Speaker 0 00:15:57 <laugh>. So
Speaker 2 00:15:57 How on
Speaker 0 00:15:58 Michelle <laugh>? Yeah. Yeah. You, it's not often you see two large men riding on a motorcycle. No. And it, it's a whole vibe. So it's a whole vibe because I couldn't let my face be seen doing that <laugh>. I had, um, it was during Covid, so I had a mask. It was a full face mask with a lion's face on it. So I just pulled that down with a helmet on and we'd pull up next to someone and I'd look over at 'em and go, <laugh> people were dying. Gay
Speaker 2 00:16:26 Wizard of Eyes, the oz vibes for sure.
Speaker 0 00:16:28 Absolutely. The the Embarrassed Lion. That was me.
Speaker 2 00:16:33 The embarrassed Lion.
Speaker 0 00:16:34 Yeah. Another whole vibe is you downtown on the motorcycle with a sidecar mm-hmm. <affirmative> when you put your dog Saban in the sidecar with Doggles mm-hmm. <affirmative> and a little dog helmet. I've met so many people who have just in casual conversation, they've been like, yeah, I saw this guy driving around downtown on a motorcycle with a sidecar and his dog and the sidecar. <laugh>, yes. My buddy. Yeah. Yes, Harrison.
Speaker 2 00:16:59 Yeah. Man, he loves that. So I mean, we both love our dogs a lot. Yeah. Um, and we take our dogs everywhere. We've done, you know, trips and camping trips and all kinds of things hikes. But the one thing that I couldn't do with my dog was ride a motorcycle. And, uh, I decided to get a motorcycle. It's like a really old and Harley with a sidecar and it needed like a year in the shop to even get it running. And it's, it's classic. It's like my downtown, you know, golf cart quote unquote. Yeah, man, he loves that thing. I, I strap him in, he puts a harness on, I cinch him down to the bike. So he's not going anywhere. And we just cruise around town the breeze, inness in our faces. And, uh, we definitely turned some heads. You know, a lot of it's just kind of going out there and making people smile.
Speaker 2 00:17:39 Saban is, uh, he's done some therapy training and, um, he's my therapy dog. I take him to work and also as a, a benefit, you know, I guess kind of before the crackdown I would take 'em on flights. And so we've had several fun trips together. And last summer, Anne-Marie, my girlfriend and I, we flew Saban out to Denver and we rented an RV and we drove up to Estes Park, which I'd never been to before, but it's kind of like the Gatlinburg of Colorado. It's got the same, you know, shops like candy and, you know, lots of
Speaker 0 00:18:14 Taffy,
Speaker 2 00:18:15 Taffy taffy everywhere. Yeah. But we had a great time. We went right next to Rocky Mountain National Park. We took Saban hiking, we took him fly fishing and we, we went to this, uh, lake and we were in waiters, but the, we found this sandbar in the middle. There was like a little bit of a sand bridge to get there. So we never really had a swim we were in, but we just stood on the sandbar and we were casting out, we'd pulling fish and he got
Speaker 0 00:18:38 So excited.
Speaker 2 00:18:38 Yeah, I bet. Every time there was a fish on the line. And so I'd pulled in and I'd put it in the net and he would like stick his nose in the net and be like, what is this what we're having for dinner? Dad? <laugh>
Speaker 0 00:18:45 <laugh>. We, um, hit those primal instincts. We
Speaker 2 00:18:49 Rented a Jeep. And um, he likes to just sit right on the, in the center, like on top of the little dash in the middle. This was more like rock crawling than off-roading. We went over some big, big boulders that I wasn't really sure how to get over, but thankfully it was really nice people on the trail being like, all right, you know, turn this way and then turn this way and then go over that and our like tires just going, skirt,
Speaker 0 00:19:10 Skirt,
Speaker 2 00:19:11 Skirt. Yeah. And Saab was the middle just like rocking around back and forth. Big smile on
Speaker 0 00:19:14 His face. Just living his best life.
Speaker 2 00:19:15 Just living his
Speaker 0 00:19:16 Best life. That dog has traveled more than a lot of people I know.
Speaker 2 00:19:19 Yeah. We, uh, a lot of my coworkers say that at work. It's like, were you in Saban going this weekend? There was one time when I was single and I was like, Saban, you wanna go on a bro trip? <laugh>. And so I just packed him up in the car and we went down to the beach cuz Pensacola has dog beaches. It was awesome. We just rented like an Airbnb. We were literally staying in an Airstream, like silver bullet camper and you know,
Speaker 0 00:19:43 As
Speaker 2 00:19:43 An Airbnb. As an Airbnb. That's awesome. And we, um, just went to the dog beach and there's a lot of military bros down there and so met all these like cool marines and they had their dogs we're like running around on the beach. Just, he loved it and having a great time,
Speaker 0 00:19:56 Man. When we took Henry to that dog beach, Henry loves to swim more than anything in the world. He would, he would choose swimming over bacon. He would choose swimming over life. He loves swim. And this was his first time in the ocean <laugh>. Anytime he'd swim in water before he could drink it. So he assumed that he could drink ocean water? No, no, no. It was a crowded beach. <laugh>. There were children everywhere. Katie and I were laying out, Henry comes back up from the water and he had just probably drank a gallon of seawater.
Speaker 2 00:20:31 It's not good for you.
Speaker 0 00:20:32 Right? Well it goes straight through ya <laugh> it goes straight through ya. And he just dropped down and it was like straight hoo <laugh>. And he's just doing his business right there in the sand. And I looked behind him and these kids are like, <laugh>, it's free.
Speaker 2 00:20:50 It's the best kind of sand for a sandcastle kids. Yeah. He's just trying to
Speaker 0 00:20:54 Help out. We, we buried it so deep. Yeah, but you can't pick it up with a bag.
Speaker 2 00:20:58 No. You just have to shovel it down.
Speaker 0 00:21:00 Yeah. It was brutal.
Speaker 2 00:21:01 The crabs did not like that. No
Speaker 0 00:21:02 <laugh> no
Speaker 2 00:21:04 Tell um, tell them the story about the time that Henry jumped into the stream that was moving so fast that you had to jump in after him. Like, uh, Brad Pitt and like river runs through it style.
Speaker 0 00:21:16 Well, had to go straight David Hasselhoff Baywatch style on Henry. One time we were taking him over to the trail off of Grants Mill Road where people putting canoes and kayaks and they have a rope swing over there.
Speaker 2 00:21:28 Is that the area where a lot of closeted men like to hang out?
Speaker 0 00:21:31 No, that's off two 80. Okay. Don't ask me how I know. But <laugh>,
Speaker 2 00:21:35 I have a funny story about
Speaker 0 00:21:36 That. I do too. Actually put a pin in that one. But this one's all Grant's mill it, this one, the grant's mill's too close to Church of the Highlands for that to happen. Fair. It had flooded. So we weren't getting in that day. We were just going for a hike. Well, Henry had other plans, so he absolutely just dives in the river and the current's going fast. I mean, if if I hadn't gone in after him, he would be long gone. So I, it's cold, it's wintertime. Oh man. And Katie, my phone wallet and just diving after him and it's like Rapids and, um, he thinks he's just having a great time. He's just like flopping around in there like this just is totally blissfully ignorant. <laugh>. So I'm swimming to him as fast as I can because I don't know what's coming up. Is there a waterfall? Is it rocks? Like I
Speaker 2 00:22:22 Don't gonna be rocks the entire way down.
Speaker 0 00:22:24 Yeah. And I don't know if there's anywhere else to get out. So I finally get to him and he's just got the biggest smile on his face and he's, uh, dad. He
Speaker 2 00:22:31 Made it.
Speaker 0 00:22:32 Yeah. Yeah. He's like, but he's pawing at me and he's scratching my face and I'm tr it's the water's way too deep to touch. So he is scratching my face. And so I had to <laugh>, I had to put him in like a man's choke hold <laugh> like stop. So I had to choke him out and swim over back.
Speaker 2 00:22:48 Didn't have to bite his neck too to like, get his attention. Like a model would bite her
Speaker 0 00:22:51 Puppy to He wouldn't stop scratching. So I, uh, got in the name of his neck and I bitted and that he just went limp.
Speaker 2 00:22:58 Those instincts
Speaker 0 00:22:58 Kicked in. It was an instinct. Yeah. And he was like, oh yeah, you're, you're the alphas. I bit his neck <laugh> and he was totally cool. Just letting me get it back over to the shore
Speaker 2 00:23:06 Man. And Henry's looking good now.
Speaker 0 00:23:09 He's a beefy boy. He's
Speaker 2 00:23:11 A beefy boy.
Speaker 0 00:23:12 He eat looks really good. Look when you eat almost four pounds of food a day. Raw meat and broccoli and flaxseed oil and vitamins, <laugh> and minerals. And you're gonna be a beefy boy. He's
Speaker 2 00:23:25 The healthiest dog I've ever seen.
Speaker 0 00:23:27 Saban has traveled more than most people that I know. Henry, Henry eats better than most people that
Speaker 2 00:23:33 He does <laugh>. So to unpin my, my story of the, the Cahaba River at two
Speaker 0 00:23:40 80 by Yeah. Close to Target.
Speaker 2 00:23:41 Exactly. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So when I was in college my junior year, I went to Sanford here in town. My junior year I was a an ra resident advisor. And so all the guys in my hall were freshmen and they were all like, pretty, pretty cool. I had a lot of football players, they were just kind of doing their thing. And then I had this, uh, one guy's name was Alex and he was from Atlanta. And so like, he had literally just got to Birmingham. It was his first week. And so he was going to check out like Birmingham and stuff like that. And I think, you know, Sanford places get passed down, like, oh yeah, go check out this river on two 80. Like it's a cool spot to <laugh> to swim.
Speaker 0 00:24:18 And well there are legitimate hiking trails out there. Yeah, there are. There's lots of, and there's a waterfall and it's, it's a nice spot.
Speaker 2 00:24:25 And so he, he went to that spot. Uh, he came back and he was white in the face. I saw him in the hallway. He was white in the face. I was like, Hey man, like, are you okay?
Speaker 0 00:24:37 What's up?
Speaker 2 00:24:38 He is like, so I was told that there was this swimming hole on this river down two 80. So I went there and I was walking around and this gentleman approached me, <laugh> and he didn't even say anything to me. He walked up to me, he grabbed a handful of my genitalia and he said, welcome to the neighborhood. And he just took off running <laugh>. And he was, and he was so stunned. This guy was like the nicest guy in the world. He wouldn't hurt to fly, he didn't know what to think. So just, he just stood there and then walked back to his car and came back and cried to me about it.
Speaker 0 00:25:18 Welcome to the neighborhood.
Speaker 2 00:25:19 Welcome to the neighborhood.
Speaker 0 00:25:20 That's southern hospitalities right there. Yeah. That's amazing. Look, people are gonna be so pissed at us for outing this secret spot, but hey, you hear it here first. Did you guys have And so in Hunts, Huntsville is a, a much larger city than Monte Vallow, Alabama where I grew up. Great. Great city. Great city, but there's not a ton for the youth to do. But what there was to do was the McDonald's parking lot. Oh yeah. And that's where we hung out. Yeah. Uh, especially once we could drive, cuz then we didn't have to ride our bikes there anymore. We could just go and park our cars.
Speaker 2 00:25:53 Just like envisioning Stranger things, you guys on your bicycles,
Speaker 0 00:25:56 Especially after or before a football game or something like that. Very much Friday night Lights. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. I specifically remember one time we were, they were probably 30 people, 40 people in the McDonald's parking lot we're all just hanging out. I had a buddy who I'm gonna give a fake name to Bobby. And um, someone dared him to drink his own urine.
Speaker 2 00:26:21 Was Bobby's Devo
Speaker 0 00:26:23 <laugh>. Right. But on this one day, he was like, of course, sure I'll do it. So he, he gave in a little too easily. So my buddy was like, no, no, no. Drink mine. <laugh>
Speaker 2 00:26:35 <laugh>.
Speaker 0 00:26:37 And Bobby wasn't the type to back down. So he was like, oh God, okay, if y'all pay me, I will. And everyone's like, how much takes his hat off, passes it around, he goes, give me what you got. So everyone puts in, you know, some people are putting in 50 cents, people are putting in 10 bucks hat gets back around, it's like $33 <laugh>. And he goes, all right, I'll do it. Meanwhile, the other guy has been filling up a 20 ounce bottle
Speaker 2 00:27:07 Full. Oh, this is not like a shot.
Speaker 0 00:27:09 No <laugh>. No, this is a chug <laugh>. So for $33, my friend Bobby drank a 20 ounce bottle of our friend's urine. And he did it. He wiped his face like this and he didn't pucker his
Speaker 2 00:27:25 Face. Tic texer
Speaker 0 00:27:27 <laugh> like, bro, you want some gum? No, I'm good. <laugh>.
Speaker 2 00:27:32 Oh man. So I could see Bobby now either being, you know, the president of a bank or in jail. Where did he land?
Speaker 0 00:27:42 Landscaping.
Speaker 2 00:27:43 Landscaping? Mm-hmm.
Speaker 0 00:27:44 <affirmative>
Speaker 2 00:27:45 In the middle. Yeah,
Speaker 0 00:27:46 In the middle. He's got a happy family. Couple of kids. That's why I didn't out his name. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. He's doing well. I'm proud of him.
Speaker 2 00:27:52 Good for Bobby. I don't think I ever had friends quite that daring. We did some stupid stuff, but so when we were in high school, jackass was like first coming out. Same. And um, so of course, you know, we're like dumb teenage kids. Thought it was like the best thing ever. Actually now I st still think it's the best thing ever.
Speaker 0 00:28:13 So it's amazing. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:28:14 So we had guys in my high school and they made their own jackass and they called it Poo art and so <laugh> and so they had the video cameras, like the ones with the actual VHS tapes. You'd have to like hold on your shoulder. Yeah. And they would do, I remember we would, we somehow, it's kind of crazy thinking about like what we actually did in high school. Because remember we watched these videos on a classroom TV in high school. Like we would just say, Hey, it's time for a Poo art video. <laugh>. But I never participated. I just watched. But they would do most of the stuff where like you get in a shopping cart and they'd like push you down. Yeah. A grassy doll or like through a parking lot until you hit a curb and like fly off. Pretty standard, pretty standard stuff. I think one guy did the thing where he like went into a Home Depot and like took a number two on like a display toilet. No way. Wear store.
Speaker 0 00:29:01 They were way more ballsy than we were. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:29:03 Well, I don't know. Drinking urines, uh, kind of up there.
Speaker 0 00:29:06 <laugh>. It's sterile. I like the taste. <laugh>. Well yeah, like you said, jackass was just coming out and it was, uh, we had never seen anything like it. It was like, okay, this, this is the funniest thing I've ever seen in my life. Like outside of like, uh, watching Three Stooges on Nick at night, you know, there was no slapstick type humor. Yeah. Especially at this level. My buddy Michael, Justin and Brandon and me had a video camera and we were doing, you know, very light jackass type stuff. We were getting like, uh, old power wheels, jeeps and uh, making it so they would roll fast and going down steep hills and ramping our bikes off into the college lake and stuff like that. That's fun. Yeah. At this point I was probably, I was definitely under 16 because if I could drive at this point, we would, we would not have been doing this probably 14, 15 freshman in, in high school. And we were in mass communications class. So we would, every week we would make the school news. Oh. And we would as, as part of the intro, we would slide in the videos we had been making, <laugh> became legendary around the school. People were like, oh, I saw you in the Jeep this morning. Oh my, I saw you on the bike trick. It was amazing. <laugh>, do they still
Speaker 2 00:30:17 Do that at school? I wonder. Like we had like our announcements and um, like, we'd like make videos for like news and stuff like that. I just, I don't know what kids do these days. Like every, I don't know everything. We were so analog and now they're all so digital.
Speaker 0 00:30:30 Yeah. I don't know, man. Um, do you remember in middle school watching, um, channel one News?
Speaker 2 00:30:37 I don't think so. Do y'all
Speaker 0 00:30:38 Have that? It was like Channel one news was, uh, it was made for students and it was like headline after headline, but it was in really plain language. So it wasn't anything crazy about politics, but it was just news stories geared towards kids. It was channel one new. Uh, yeah, I remember that.
Speaker 2 00:30:55 Remember we watched a lot of Crocodile Hunter, the middle school and high school
Speaker 0 00:30:59 Our go-to. So whenever a teacher didn't feel like teaching, it was trauma life in the er,
Speaker 2 00:31:05 <laugh>, <laugh>.
Speaker 0 00:31:08 And now you live that and you're like, why, why would anyone wanna watch this <laugh>? People
Speaker 2 00:31:12 Love that stuff
Speaker 0 00:31:13 Though. Yeah, it is. It's intense. You've seen some crazy stuff in there, huh?
Speaker 2 00:31:17 I have. Yeah. We've seen. Oh man. So when I was, um, training, I did anesthesia and so part of our call was taking trauma call. And so like if someone had any kind traumatic event, you know, part of the stabilization included, you know, anesthesia securing their airway. And I'll give you a few stories. Probably the one that like really stands out was there's multiple. So for a while Birmingham was really dangerous. Like really, really dangerous. Yeah. And part of gang initiation was you had to tie someone to the railroad and then the, the train had to roll over their
Speaker 0 00:32:00 Legs. No
Speaker 2 00:32:01 Way. And so for a while there we kept getting all these amputees because this stupid gang initiation, they would tie people to the railroads, the trains would come in, they would roll over them and cut their legs off and then they would like a lot of them were kind of doa. Yeah. Cause they just lost so much blood. Yeah. Uh, but there's a lot of 'em that, you know, weren't dead and we would, you know, just kind of cauterized their bleed and formalize their amputation. No
Speaker 0 00:32:25 Way. So wait, the guy that was being strapped down was the initiate?
Speaker 2 00:32:28 No, it was just a ran. I think, I can't remember if it was a random person or someone from an opposing gang because they seem that they were like, you know, kind of like, you know, you know young and
Speaker 0 00:32:39 You gotta pass this test to get in.
Speaker 2 00:32:40 Exactly. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 0 00:32:41 Bro, you know, my dad drove a train for his whole career.
Speaker 2 00:32:46 I did not know
Speaker 0 00:32:46 That. Yeah. I, he never, I mean, he hit people. You know, any, you know, anyone that drives a train is eventually gonna, you know,
Speaker 2 00:32:54 Because the brakes on a train, you're like, you have to stop in two miles. Exactly. You can't stop on a dime.
Speaker 0 00:32:58 Yeah. Yeah. And it would, it would always really affect him because people wanna,
Speaker 2 00:33:01 People committed suicide by like Exactly. Train.
Speaker 0 00:33:04 Exactly. Especially if they were under the influence of something. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, uh, I don't, it wasn't common, but it happened. But he, he never mentioned anyone being strapped to the track. That was always like Looney Tunes and
Speaker 2 00:33:15 It was always downtown Birmingham. Like right there. Yeah. Between first and uh, I guess first and first North and South.
Speaker 0 00:33:21 I, I wanna get back to your story, but just while this is fresh on my brain, speaking of my dad driving to train my buddy Chris Meyers got married a couple of year, a few years ago at SL Furnace, outdoor wedding. Beautiful ceremony. It was so much fun. You know, it's right there by the train track. And during his vowels, a train goes by really slow, just creeping by. Cuz you have to go really slow through there. There's, there's speed limit everywhere for a train. And it's right there by crossing. So whenever you're approaching a crossing, you have to blow the horn <laugh> during their vowels. <laugh>. I mean, someone's just wailing on the horn. I mean, just like really laying into it. <laugh> and people are kind of looking each other in the audience kind of giggling a little bit because, and they're, they're good sports about it.
Speaker 0 00:34:08 You know, Chris and his wife Alexis were, uh, they were kind of giggling too cuz they knew it was just like one of those things totally outta their control. So they're married. Ceremony was fun. The reception was fun. I was talking to my dad later and I was like, yeah, I went to Chris's wedding. And uh, I was like, but this train drove by. And he, you know, you couldn't hear a word they said during the vows. And he goes, what time was it? And I was like, I don't, it was, you know, six o'clock. And he was like, it's lost furnace. And I was like, yeah. And he goes, oh man, <laugh>, that was me. <laugh>.
Speaker 2 00:34:42 He's just sending them those best
Speaker 0 00:34:44 Wishes, you know, <laugh>.
Speaker 2 00:34:46 Oh my God, that's awesome.
Speaker 0 00:34:48 One of the odds. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:34:49 Um, speaking of, you know, unfortunate suicides, I think
Speaker 0 00:34:53 Speaking of one
Speaker 2 00:34:55 Of the, one of the most, um, gruesome things I remember from the, the trauma bay was, you know, this guy attempted suicide with, um, a shotgun. And so he did the thing that you've seen on movies where he puts the gun barrel Yeah. Under his chin. And so, and then I don't know how he maybe pushes it with his finger, hits it with his toe. And so before the shot comes out a blast of, you know, gas comes out that's, you know, pretty powerful. So his blows your head back before the shot comes out. Oh no. Yeah. Yeah. And so it cocked his head back and so when the shot came out, it blew off this whole part of his face,
Speaker 0 00:35:32 Like his nose mouth,
Speaker 2 00:35:33 Like his nose, mouth, jaw, chin. He looked a little, little bit like predator.
Speaker 0 00:35:38 Oh yeah. Yeah. Like v
Speaker 2 00:35:39 Mort. And when he, uh, and when the gun went off, it was hot and so it cauterized the entire wood. So when he came in, there was no blood. He was just missing like the middle part of his face.
Speaker 0 00:35:51 He was, was he And
Speaker 2 00:35:52 He was conscious awake and he was conscious and he could, he could phon eight because he still had his vocal chords so he could make sounds.
Speaker 0 00:35:59 So he was talk. Oh, okay.
Speaker 2 00:36:00 Okay. He could, you know, say like, like Uhhuh and Uhuh and so we were like asking him questions and he would say, you know, Uhhuh uh, Uhhuh. And then he was writing things cuz his, his, he had one eye, so he lost a lot of like, bony architecture for like, one of his eyes was kind of out. So I'm sure he had to double vision, but he was like writing things. And we were asking him like, what happened? He's like, I tripped and fell on a two by four. And we're like, bro,
Speaker 0 00:36:21 What was his mental state? Was he just like losing it or was he
Speaker 2 00:36:24 No, he was calm, calm, cool and collected missing half of his face. Oh my God. And he was communicating and it was the most bizarre thing ever. And so in anesthesia, we intubate these patients and like, it literally, I mean I, I could just put a endotracheal tube like, you know, I didn't have to use any instruments. It was easiest
Speaker 0 00:36:43 Intubation
Speaker 2 00:36:44 Ever. Easiest intubation ever. And they took him up and he had um, you know, a horrible, horrible, horrible reconstructive multi-step process. It's like, you know, put plates in his face and do skin grass. And it's so sad because these guys, you know, they unsuccessfully commit suicide due to depression and then now they're disfigured and that's not gonna make the depression better, worse.
Speaker 0 00:37:05 Yeah. And, and white males are the most common. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> suicide,
Speaker 2 00:37:09 Right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative> and that's who
Speaker 0 00:37:10 This was highest, highest percentage of suicides or white males right now.
Speaker 2 00:37:13 And um, then, you know, eventually when they get this massive, you know, reconstruction, it's not perfect. Yeah. Um, then they go home and successfully complete the task they tried the first
Speaker 0 00:37:23 Time. Really? Is that, is that what
Speaker 2 00:37:25 Normally happens? That's, that's the normal path of events. Oh God, dude. Yeah. That, that's rough. It was wild. Um, yeah, that was, we've seen all kinds of things.
Speaker 0 00:37:34 So there are a lot of medical nightmare, you know, uh, I guess nightmares that you would see in the medical profession, but there are also some that are more bloopers. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Right. One of my old patients told me this one, she was a dental hygienist and, um, a patient came in and she was in her thirties and she had her deceased grandmother's dentures and she was asking to get 'em retrofit to her mouth. Um, only thing was it was missing <laugh>. Only thing <laugh>. It's true. It's true. Story roll 10. Yeah, roll tight <laugh>. Only thing is it was missing one of the front, I think kine teeth or incisors or something. So she had the tooth, so she just needed to get the tooth fit back in, needed to get the teeth retrofit to her mouth. The hygienist was, you know, trying to get this tooth back in and she just couldn't, it was almost there.
Speaker 0 00:38:32 It was so close. So you just couldn't quite get it in. So she handed it off to one of her other hygienists and she was trying to just finagle this tooth so neither one of them could quite get it to stay. So they go back to the dentist and he's trying to get it and same thing, it's just almost there. Just not quite. So they take it to the, the most senior, like an old old man, like a 70 year old Dennis has been there forever. And he takes the tooth and he goes, this is a peanut
Speaker 3 00:39:02 <laugh>.
Speaker 0 00:39:08 I did not see that coming. Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:39:10 <laugh>,
Speaker 0 00:39:10 True story.
Speaker 2 00:39:12 I got a couple fun, like light medical stories, uh, for you. I'll start out with one that's pretty light. My friend told me this story. She did her training in West Virginia and so she had this patient come in and I think she complained of like a rash, like itching and foul odor. And this patient was like
Speaker 0 00:39:32 Super
Speaker 2 00:39:33 Morbidly obese, like, you know, 700 ish pounds. And so they were like trying to do an exam on this woman. And um, you know, they, she was like, so where, like, where do you feel itching? And she's like, you know, pointing to this area, but there's multiple layers of like skin folds and things like that tissue, adipose tissue. And so they were trying to like really dig in there and pull things back and under her breast, they lifted it up and outfalls a dead puppy. And she was like, that's where that went. She had gotten a puppy and it suffocated and died and was decomposing causing an odor and a rash.
Speaker 0 00:40:13 I don't know what to say. <laugh>.
Speaker 0 00:40:16 Okay. One of my friends who was a nurse told me, this one patient presents to the ER complaining of excruciating pelvic pain. So she has no idea what what's going on. Um, they do, you know, a bit of an exam, nothing's coming out, it's not, um, you know, it's not a, it's not a gallbladder issue, it's not an appendix is not an appendix issue. So they do a full on pelvic exam and um, they found a packet of jelly that had worked its way up into her parts canal. And uh, she claims she had no idea how it got there. And look, this wasn't like a soft packet of jelly, like from McDonald's. This was the kind from Chick-fil-A where you pull off, where you pull the hard classic bottom. Yeah. And she had no idea how it could have gotten in there. So I, um, I was told about this guy on TikTok who does prophecies and predictions.
Speaker 2 00:41:19 Interesting.
Speaker 0 00:41:19 And he has a prediction for April 9th. So coming up. Oh, we're soon. Yeah. Yeah. And the prediction is that there's going to be a celebrity who comes out or it, it becomes known that a celebrity faked their death. So if you had to guess, who would you think the celebrity might be?
Speaker 2 00:41:41 Who's going to fake their own death?
Speaker 0 00:41:42 No. From the past, who comes back
Speaker 2 00:41:44 Basically. Oh, gotcha. Yeah, man, if I could be a wisher, I'd wish it was Michael Jackson
Speaker 0 00:41:50 <laugh>. That's what Katie said. I
Speaker 2 00:41:52 Would love for him to have faked his death. Just like, took 10 years off just to kinda like chill and like, you know, dodge all the lawsuit.
Speaker 0 00:41:59 <laugh>. Give us one more album.
Speaker 2 00:42:01 I'm trying to think. I mean, some of your celebrities have died. Uh, remember like everyone remembers when Michael Jackson died and then they made this a trend, like to announce everything.
Speaker 0 00:42:09 Yeah. Princess Diana would be a popular one. Oh yeah. I mean that would be, I mean, America could really come together behind that one.
Speaker 2 00:42:17 <laugh>. Oh my gosh. The obsession with the royal family. Yeah. Uh, I'm gonna stick with Michael Jackson. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:42:21 Okay.
Speaker 2 00:42:22 Um,
Speaker 0 00:42:24 Fergie
Speaker 2 00:42:26 Is Fergie dead?
Speaker 0 00:42:27 She not, she's alive. Okay, well lemme change that then. I would go. Okay. So out of all the celebrities that have died, if I could find out that one had actually faked their death and was now gonna come back into society. Bob Ross.
Speaker 2 00:42:44 Oh man. Just some pretty
Speaker 0 00:42:45 Clouds. He left too soon.
Speaker 2 00:42:47 He left too soon. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:42:48 He's just straight good vibes, man. No controversy around him. Just, just good dude. Amazing talent. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:42:56 His story's so cool too because wasn't he like a drill sergeant in the military and he got so tired of like yelling at people. He just wanted to have like this peaceful transition to a different career.
Speaker 0 00:43:05 I've heard that. Man, that's amazing. And I, I did watch a documentary about him cuz you know how I love a documentary, you do
Speaker 2 00:43:11 Love a good documentary.
Speaker 0 00:43:12 There are lawsuits surrounding his estate after he passed away between the company that published the videos that he was making and his son, because the company pretty much made him, had him sign a contract that all the material, all the rights to his name, including any, uh, products that were sold, whether it be canvases or paints or paint brushes, all the, the swag, all the t-shirts, anything, all those proceeds went to him. Hmm. Um, so the son is trying to come back and, and get those rights back because they pretty much just exploited him. He was just so marketable. They took all that and, and his, his heirs were left with nothing pretty much. That
Speaker 2 00:43:54 Is sad. Yeah. When, you know, the, the rightful property follows in the hands of someone else. So my prediction, it's not really, but my prediction is that it's gonna be Jeffrey Epstein.
Speaker 0 00:44:06 Oh, that would actually cross my mind as soon as I said it. That's funny that
Speaker 2 00:44:09 He's gonna like come back like arm in arm with the Clintons <laugh>.
Speaker 0 00:44:14 Honestly, you know, rabbit hole here. I'm gonna, I'll I'll just say it. I don't think he actually died. Um, I think that he, um, had too much information on powerful people. So I don't think that he actually died. I think that he was able to fake his death and go to some island somewhere and live out his days doing whatever
Speaker 2 00:44:33 He likes to do all whatever his
Speaker 0 00:44:35 Islands stuff people wanted to do. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:44:36 Yeah. That's a bizarre man,
Speaker 0 00:44:39 Man. Yeah. There's a lot of, a lot of weird stuff there. But
Speaker 2 00:44:42 He was just the ultimate con man. He was, that's how he got his start. He lied about his education to get his first what teaching job and then well
Speaker 0 00:44:52 At a very elite school, school at a school, that's how he kind of worked his way up to, to meeting all these powerful, rich people.
Speaker 2 00:44:57 Mm-hmm. <affirmative> the ultimate con
Speaker 0 00:44:59 Man. Yeah. And then he started to run, you know, a classic honey pot. You know, he was using, you know, young women as bait and bringing in figures from all around the world, from other countries, from our country, heads of state, the people that are like highest in their field. People,
Speaker 2 00:45:14 Princes,
Speaker 0 00:45:15 Princes, people that, you know, and he was recording all of it on, he had video cameras in every single room of his mansions mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So when you have that information on someone, I guess you could make him do whatever you wanted. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:45:27 The blackmail is pretty powerful with that one. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:45:30 I have a feeling we haven't heard the end of that story. You know, the whole Ghislaine Maxwell thing came out and I don't know what happened with that. I I think that she probably got some jail time, but I, I just think there's a lot more to the story than we've been told. Maybe he was like an intelligence asset for our country or another country. Oh yeah. It's interesting, man. I don't know,
Speaker 2 00:45:51 It's crazy to think about like how many spies that we have are infiltrated in other governments and also vice versa. And who was it recently? Someone came out about having like this multiple year affair with a Chinese spy, like somewhere in our government. Really?
Speaker 0 00:46:07 Nancy Pelosi <laugh>.
Speaker 2 00:46:11 But she's another interesting person to talk about because have you ever followed like her, uh, stock trades <laugh>? Yeah. How she beats the market. Like every single time you, she's
Speaker 0 00:46:21 A really, really gifted trader man think that, um, we could all learn a thing or two from her with her trading,
Speaker 2 00:46:26 But all of her trading is public. So you can just mirror what she does and stay ahead of the curve with all of your insider trading.
Speaker 0 00:46:32 Sure. But the thing with that is that I'm, I'm sure that they either have friends or they either have other accounts that they can trade under, that they can make any, yeah. So even if they pass that legislation to make it illegal for members of Congress and send it to not legally be able to trade, I'm sure they would have LLCs they could trade under and they would have friends and neighbors and family members they could trade under who they've probably been doing the same thing. So there's, it's not a coincidence that, you know, they make, what, 400,000 a year now she's worth tens of millions, you know, that it doesn't just happen.
Speaker 2 00:47:08 Doesn't just happen.
Speaker 0 00:47:10 But what what I found really fascinating that, uh, there's just too many questions about to know. The, the reality is the whole hammer attack with her husband. I know that, look, this is old news by now, but I I I'm still curious about it because there are so many unanswered questions. Did you see the video that came out?
Speaker 2 00:47:28 I don't know anything, anything about this. I'm, I live under a rock.
Speaker 0 00:47:31 Okay, well, full disclosure. You, you don't have, you're not on Instagram or Facebook anymore. You're not on social media anymore. So I feel like I have a lot that I could share with you <laugh>. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:47:38 You just tell me all these new things. I'd have no idea.
Speaker 0 00:47:41 Yeah. I guess it was end of last year, Paul Pelosi, who's Nancy Pelosi's husband, was viciously attacked with a hammer inside of his house. I know that the police show up at his house, I don't remember if it was 9 1 1 or not, but the police show up at his house saying they were doing a wellness check. Paul Pelosi comes to the door in his underwear and there's also a guy next to him with a hammer. Hmm. And, um, the police are saying, drop the hammer. Drop the hammer. Paul Pelosi said something along the lines of, yeah, I'm with my friend here. My friend needs to drop his hammer. Next thing you know, the police go to go in and the guy hits him with the hammer, but they only hit him with a hammer off screen, so you never actually see him being hit. So I think that's fishy, but, um, apparently it, it, he had, he had to go to the hospital and everything. So it's, I don't, I don't,
Speaker 2 00:48:34 All kinds of suspicious,
Speaker 0 00:48:35 Uh, it's all kinds of suspicious, man. I don't know what it, I don't know what to believe anymore. I
Speaker 2 00:48:38 Don't either. Is that, I just don't pay attention. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:48:41 <laugh>. Okay. So since you, since you've been off of Instagram and other social media, have you felt any different?
Speaker 2 00:48:50 Yeah, absolutely. Um, I feel a lot more mental clarity, um, just because I by nature am one who's prone to a d d and so my brain just craves some kind of constant activity. And so it's just mindless scrolling that I surrendered. And so now I don't really have that. It was really, um, I mean I guess you could just call it an addiction. I'd be at a, a traffic light. I'd be scrolling. I'd be It's like a compulsion. It's a compulsion. Exactly. Yeah. I'd be at a urinal, I'd be scrolling. I'm like, this is silly. I had someone once describe social media to me as, um, like compulsive voyeurism. And once I heard that, I was like, oh man, that kind of hits home with me.
Speaker 0 00:49:31 Compulsive. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:49:33 Compulsive warrior. You have this compulsion to like look into people's lives mm-hmm. <affirmative>.
Speaker 0 00:49:37 Um, and they're only sharing the best parts.
Speaker 2 00:49:39 Yeah. And so I feel, um, I mean, I feel great about not being on social media and to, to segue a little bit into like the, the crippled mental state of this country. Like, we've never been more anxious. We've never been more depressed in the world. And I feel like the common denominator is social media because people only portray the best versions, maybe albeit fake versions of themself online. And that's what people see and that's what people strive to be. And you
Speaker 0 00:50:09 Know, and they're comparing their life to others. And they say that comparison is the thief of all joy,
Speaker 2 00:50:14 Thief of all joy. Yeah. And, you know, say you're on a, a wonderful vacation with your family at the beach, but then you see someone skiing and you wanna be skiing, like you can't do everything at once. And I feel like getting off social media has made me be present in the moment. And that's been really, really important to me, just because I'm already kind of prone to a d d and that was just feeding it and making it worse. But, but I'm sure everyone, I'm sure you've seen that, um, documentary, the social dilemma. Yeah. And once you realize that, you know, all these companies, they monetize your attention and they feed you down these pathways with, you know, that you're more prone to these, you know, certain schools of thought, they kind of push you further and further into that. So you have this confirmation bias over and over and, um,
Speaker 0 00:50:59 They put you in an echo chamber of Exactly. So things that you already think they're only gonna show you the comments that agree with your thoughts.
Speaker 2 00:51:06 Exactly. And that's why the country has never been more divided on, you know, political issues before. And so I've loved being <laugh>, living under a rock. It's been really refreshing for me. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:51:17 There are some times where, you know, I want to send you a video or something that I see on Instagram and it's usually just funny stuff. But I'm guessing that by you missing out on all the negativity propagated on social media, that's gotta be good for your psyche. Oh,
Speaker 2 00:51:31 Absolutely.
Speaker 0 00:51:32 Because there was that, uh, that year period that I, uh, I just used the flip phone. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, I didn't delete all my social media. I still had an iPad, but I didn't have my phone in my pocket at all the time. You know, it's where I could just pull it out and, and scroll. So I was driving down, um, 4 59 on my motorcycle and I had a, a mount for my iPhone and might've been going a little too fast, and the wind caught my phone and blew it off. And, um, it shattered into over a million pieces. And I took that as a sign that I needed to take a little break from technology. So I went to get a new phone and the guy was like, yeah, well you have insurance so you can just get a new iPhone. And I said, no, you know, actually I think I want to get an, uh, flip phone. And he goes, what? <laugh>? I was like, yeah, I want to get one of these flip phones. He goes, are you serious? And I was like, yeah, yeah, I just want to get one of these. And he goes, okay. Can't
Speaker 2 00:52:25 Beat that battery
Speaker 0 00:52:26 Life. Yeah. So I got that Motorola flip phone.
Speaker 2 00:52:29 So satisfying when you hang up on someone.
Speaker 0 00:52:31 Oh man. Yeah, you could just really do it with Ooph. I did it for a year, and a couple things that I noticed were sending a text message on a flip phone is extremely inconvenient. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you can't do it with two hands. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And, uh, it takes forever. So Katie ended up sending a lot of text messages for me.
Speaker 2 00:52:49 I'd always reach out to Katie to get ahold
Speaker 0 00:52:50 Of you. Yeah. And a lot of people still do that. <laugh>, <laugh>. Um, also the camera sucks. Camera's not great on a flip phone. There's no Spotify, there's no gps. Um, the
Speaker 2 00:53:03 GPS would be a kicker
Speaker 0 00:53:04 For me. GPS was huge. If I had lived in a city that I didn't grow up in mm-hmm. <affirmative>, it would've, it, I couldn't have done it. You know, the camera's not usable on a clip. <laugh> No. Very pixelated. Yeah. So after a year of that, I felt like I had disconnected enough and I went back to the dark side, got a, got the newest iPhone, and I'd never been so happy to have it. It was like my life just was, was better with it, honestly. And as much as I want to feel like, oh no, you know, I wanna live off grid and all that, I do, but I also still want to have a nice balance between the technology that we have available to us and not abusing it and not getting sucked into it.
Speaker 2 00:53:41 There's a lot of people I meet and they're like, all right, you know, what's your Instagram name so I can tag you in this picture? And I'm like, I don't have, you know, social media and no one, everyone says the exact same thing. They all say, wow, good for you. I should do the same thing. Yeah. Everyone agrees. Everyone knows that it's just really toxic. Uh, and it's terrible. And, you know, being off social media has made me be more intentional with my friendships. Like, if I want to know what you're up to, I'll give you a call and be like, Hey man, like let's, uh, let's get together and hang out. As opposed to like, oh, let me go to his profile and scroll and see what kind of fake stuff he's been posting on his architects, Katie. And she can send me all the pictures of your daughter and Yeah. Yeah. Be caught up that way. Exactly.
Speaker 0 00:54:19 Yeah. I appreciate that you are intentional with a friendship, intentional enough that you, uh, that you performed our wedding ceremony.
Speaker 2 00:54:25 Oh, yes, I did. <laugh>. That was, uh, you know, there's a lot of honors you have in your life that's at the top of my list for sure. Someone asking you to officiate their wedding, you know, that's a, that's a very high honor a rarity too.
Speaker 0 00:54:36 One of the biggest reasons is that, you know, I knew you separately, Katie knew you separately <laugh>. So you were someone that knew both of us before and your articulate and we're so close that I felt like, uh, you were, you'd be a good choice and you'd keep it light, which I appreciated. So, uh, you did a great job. And have you already done the other one?
Speaker 2 00:54:56 No, I have not. My friend Josh asked me to officiate his wedding. It's actually later this month. So I'm doing that for him. And there's really no pressure on this one because he's already been married by Elvis in Nashville. So it's just a, a formality. It's
Speaker 0 00:55:11 A hard act to follow.
Speaker 2 00:55:12 It's a hard act to follow.
Speaker 0 00:55:13 How are you gonna do
Speaker 2 00:55:14 It? I'm just gonna probably say that <laugh> and um, just really keep it light and just have some fun with it. But he's a good dude and you know, I don't think people really, you know, everyone doesn't have to fall into the traditional, like getting married in a church and have a sermon. You know, it's your wedding, it's your day. If you wanna have a friend just say some things about your life together, then that's awesome. It's honorable.
Speaker 0 00:55:34 Yeah. At the end of the day, it's still binding.
Speaker 2 00:55:37 It's still binding. It's a binding covenant between you and the Universal Life. Church <laugh> that or is that what it is? That's what it is. <laugh>. So
Speaker 0 00:55:46 Don't mess it up. That's Yeah. That feels legit. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2 00:55:48 <affirmative>. But yeah, for those who are interested, it's very simple. You go to the universal life church.com, you type your name in and you click submit and you're ordained. That's all there is to it.
Speaker 0 00:56:01 Wait, so are Katie and I actually married.
Speaker 2 00:56:02 Yeah, you're, I'm, so you can, you have the option of paying like $5 and getting a card sent to you in the mail. Uhhuh <affirmative>. So I opted for that cuz it felt more legit. Otherwise no one would really know other than like my word. Like, yeah, I went to this website and type my name in.
Speaker 0 00:56:15 Do you keep that card in your wallet?
Speaker 2 00:56:17 I did for a period. That's actually how Josh knew about it and asked me to.
Speaker 0 00:56:20 He just saw it in your wallet. Yeah,
Speaker 2 00:56:22 <laugh>. I pulled my like, wallet out. I think I was telling him about your wedding. I'm like, yeah man, look, I've got like this whole card that says I'm ordained. He like, okay, cool. And then he got engaged. He's like, all right, now you're doing it for me.
Speaker 0 00:56:31 Look, I think that needs to be a, a public service that you offer. I think more people should know. And I guess now thousands of people will know that. Are you ready to take on that kind of responsibility?
Speaker 2 00:56:39 I'm more than happy to. Okay. I'm more than happy to. Okay.
Speaker 0 00:56:42 You guys hear it here first. Dr. Harrison Irons can perform your wedding ceremony and he can do a great job. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2 00:56:48 <affirmative>. Yeah. Just, you know, gimme some cliff notes about your life and we'll put something together.
Speaker 0 00:56:54 So as far as what you're doing at Southern Ketamine, let's get into that.
Speaker 2 00:56:58 So Ketamine clinic, Southern Ketamine Wellness is, I think we've been up and running for just about two years now. We're in Vests, Avia, right off Highway 31. And it's been fun, you know, we just kind of branched out and just kind of jumped into the abyss, didn't really know what we were doing, figured it out along the way. And it's been a lot better than we ever expected. It's been well received. The success that we have with it, you know, speaks to the success of the business. It's been really awesome. Uh, for those of you who don't know, you know, ketamine's been around for a long time, since the sixties. It was first synthesized and FDA approved in the seventies for human anesthesia and also has great properties that make it a good drug. Um, for veterinary purposes. It preserves the respiratory drive when administered in a intramuscular setting. But when we do it, we give it in, um, a low-dose IV infusion over a period of time. And it really helps with people who have treatment resistant depression, particularly also anxiety, P T S D, OOC D and then administered in a a different way, a larger dose over a longer period of time. Certain chronic pain conditions as well, particularly neuropathic pain.
Speaker 0 00:58:09 Okay. So it started out as an ingredient in anesthesia. So when you're going under for a surgery, ketamine's, one of the things that you inject so that they can not feel, but now it's been found that it has benefit for treating things like anxiety, depression, and are they hard to treat mental illness?
Speaker 2 00:58:28 Yeah, that's correct. Um, ketamine is, it can be a solo induction agent. And so when you, what
Speaker 0 00:58:34 Does that mean?
Speaker 2 00:58:35 So when you, um, put someone to sleep, you induce anesthesia and the components of anesthesia or you know, amnesia, you don't wanna remember anything analgesia. You don't want to feel anything. And so ketamine itself is actually a pretty good agent to accomplish both those things. But it's not very popular for when you go have surgery. Everyone sees propofol being administered the white substance and that's a really good induction agent to induce anesthesia, put someone to sleep. Ketamine can be used to put someone to sleep, but we typically reserve it for situations. Young healthy patients who've been coming, you know, for a gunshot wound, they've sustained some kind of trauma just because it preserves their hemodynamics, meaning it, uh, doesn't affect their heart rate and blood pressure in a negative way. So if you've been shot and you've lost a lot of blood, we wanna make sure that your blood pressure and heart rate stay up in, um, ketamine's a great drug for that.
Speaker 2 00:59:24 But it can be used, um, kind of an adjuvant all the time in the operating room. So, you know, you'll go to sleep with propofol. We keep you to sleep with the anesthetic gases, you know, that you inhale through the breathing tube and then we administer certain things, um, like IV opioids to help with your pain, but also ketamine, ketamine's great in the operating room. But yeah, so to kind of talk a little bit less about the operating room, more about what we do, we administer sub anesthetic doses of ketamine. So we don't put you to sleep with the ketamine. You stay awake. Um, a lot of people do, you know, choose to close their eyes and listen to music and we provide eye masks. Some people want to, some people are chatty. It wanna have like their counselor in there or a close friend. Of course we come in and check on them very, very frequently and talk to them as well. But it's kind of, um, you know, people have different personalities when they're under the influence of alcohol. Same thing with ketamine. Some people want to relax and chill, some people wanna are chatting, wanna talk.
Speaker 0 01:00:18 So the ketamine, it affects everyone differently. But from what I've heard, one of the ideas of it is that throughout different types of traumatic experiences in people's lives, some people can tend to suppress memories or they can tend to bury things so deeply that they don't even want to think about 'em. Kind of like, I guess to, to kind of protect their emotional state. So I've heard that ketamine can help you be, like you said, in a more relaxed state so that you can talk about some things that might have been really hard for you to talk about in the past and you can talk about it with your therapist or however you wanna do that. And then it helps you acknowledge that, talk about it and deal with it. Is that kind of what you've seen? Yeah,
Speaker 2 01:00:57 That's exactly right. You know, there's a lot of schools of thought on mental illness. Let's say take P T S D for example, the ego can only sustain, uh, so much trauma if you experience like really severe trauma, uh, particularly at a young age, the ego, it can't, uh, handle that. And so it splits. And so that's where you see dissociative identity disorder, formally known as multiple personality disorder cuz the ego can't handle the trauma from one event. And so to uh, kind of shoulder the burden of that, the ego will split up into multiple personalities. And that's when people have these, you know, you've seen probably the portrayal on certain movies and things like that, but it's a, it's a real mental illness and a lot of people, you know, go as far to say that depression and anxiety, um, is a manifestation of unresolved trauma in the past.
Speaker 2 01:01:43 And so how ketamine works, it's um, it's a dissociative analgesic kind of getting back into the science of things. Um, so it's great for, we use it a lot in combat vets. So say you and I are out there fighting together and you know, you step on a landmine and you've blown your leg off, I'll come over there and I will administer, uh, ketamine two. You can be given intramuscularly for, you know, ease of injection and the, there's a dissociate of analgesic meaning that, you know, you see the fact that your leg is now missing, but you don't interpret that pain signal. The the pain stimuli has been dissociated from your brain. And when we administer it in the way way that we do, it's a dissociative agent. And so people who've had trauma in the past, they can dissociate their ego from that past trauma and they can analyze it and they can logically process it and they can heal from it.
Speaker 2 01:02:32 And so now they're no longer plagued by unresolved trauma. It's now resolved trauma. And so people say that, you know, when they have had resolved trauma, it manifests as anxiety P T S D and then PTs and anxiety, depression, PTs, and then triggering events where they have flashbacks and nightmares and things like that. But once it's been resolved, it's no longer haunting you and the depths of your mind, cuz your mind will, the brains is crazy self-preservation organ and it never wants to relive those things cause it's too painful too. Yeah. And so if you can have the assistance of ketamine on board and, and process that, but it's also crazy cuz the brain also knows what it needs to do to be its best and to function its best. And so under the influence of ketamine, you know, people will relive these traumatic events. You know, they're not, they're not trying to take their mind there, their mind forces them there, but it's not as traumatizing just because the ketamine dissociates the ego, the ego processes all this stuff. And then they, they're great. You know, they no longer have, I can go on and on about anecdotal stories of patients. Um,
Speaker 0 01:03:33 Yeah, I wanted to get into that with you because, so once the unresolved trauma becomes resolved, trauma, you've accepted it, you've dealt with it in a way, it's always there and it's always something that you've had to deal with, but you feel differently afterwards. So what are some things patients have said?
Speaker 2 01:03:48 Yeah, we, so we see a lot of patients who, um, you know, they, they open up to us. Um, you know, we're not in any way counselors, you know, we're, we're here, we're medical providers to administer ketamine, ketamine. But if they wanna talk through things, we're more than happy to. And one gentleman, he came to us and he's in his, um, I'd say mid to late fifties. And when he was three years old, he saw his parents get murdered. You know, this
Speaker 0 01:04:11 Horrible Wow.
Speaker 2 01:04:12 Horrible, horrible, traumatic event. But you know, he, he's just this really sweet, kind of quiet, you know, good old boy. You know, I think he's adapted pretty well considering that horrific trauma he sustained. But you know, he was adopted thankfully by really good people from what it sounds like. But he's always had issues. He's always had, you know, flashbacks and nightmares and he gets triggered and I think he has difficulty in, um, you know, large social settings, has some magor phobia as well. And,
Speaker 0 01:04:38 And what's, what's that,
Speaker 2 01:04:39 Uh, ago phobia is just kind of fear of like large public places. Mm. Like getting out a
Speaker 0 01:04:43 Lot of people. So social
Speaker 2 01:04:44 Anxiety. Yeah. Social anxiety. Yeah. A lot of people that we find, you know, they have a, they have a really, really hard time, one picking up the phone to call us and two, getting out in public to come see us. But he did wonderful with ketamine. You know, he reports, you know, he has no nightmares anymore. He hasn't got no flashbacks. He's, um, you know, a lot more social with his family and his community and you know, he just wishes that this was available to him, you know, years and years and years ago
Speaker 0 01:05:07 When he was in there, did he open up to you guys about it?
Speaker 2 01:05:09 He really didn't. Um, we see all kinds of different reactions during ketamine. He, he told us this kind of, at the end of his infusion, he's like, Hey, well this is my story and you know, this is why I'm doing this. Um, cuz we, you know, talked to them up front. We don't, a lot of people don't want to really get into that just because it, it can be hard and painful to discuss.
Speaker 0 01:05:29 So he opened up to you guys about that after he had already received. Well that might be why he was willing to open up about it.
Speaker 2 01:05:34 Yeah, exactly. It's no longer as painful to discuss, you know, I can't imagine reliving that, you know, that event. But people have, they've come a long way. We had another girl, she's about our age actually, and she was raped by her biological brother at a very young age. Oh. Um, so multiple layers of really, really tough things and family dynamics and you know, I, I don't think that, uh, everyone was really aware of the situation. She just kind of had to hold this in and try to live a normal life Yeah. Within their household. Um, but you know, she didn't, she came to us kind of a bit of a wreck and she's doing great. She's off all of her anxiety medications, all off really Russian medications.
Speaker 0 01:06:16 Is that something you see often is that this is able to help people get off of anxiety medications?
Speaker 2 01:06:21 Yeah, it is. You know, a lot of people come to us on medications but they're not satisfied with how they're feeling. I mean, so we never wanna speak on behalf of their prescribing physician, but it's like, Hey, I'm on, you know, these two drugs, but you know, I'm not, I'm not happy. I'm still depressed. And so they undergo ketamine therapy and at the end they're like, well I'm, I'm great now. And those medications weren't working initially, mostly just causing side effects. And so I was like, we'll go back to your psychiatrist or whoever's prescribed these medications and taper off cuz you never wanna stop some medications. Cold Turkey can feel kind of crappy, like even have the flu, um, for certain drugs.
Speaker 0 01:06:55 Yeah. I talk to people all the time who would like to be able to stop taking medication that they're on because that's kind of the, um, the idea of it to begin with. It's, it was meant to be more of a temporary fix mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And then along the way it got where people started taking them forever mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And I think that wasn't the original intention. So if this is something that can help them achieve that, then that's huge. Yeah.
Speaker 2 01:07:16 And there's a, there's a large, uh, paper published probably about eight months ago now, nature about serotonin and drugs that modulate serotonin. The role of serotonin in depression cuz you know, for 60 years that's how we treated depression was with SSRIs, you know, drugs that modulate serotonin. The idea was you don't have enough serotonin in your brain, so let's, you know, push more serotonin the neuros synaps and make you happier. But this paper kind of over concluded a little bit and said that, you know, serotonin didn't play a role in depression, which I, I don't think is fair because a lot of people do well on SSRIs, SNRIs and such. But it's really changed our school of thought on depression. And now it's more of a serotonin hypothesis and everyone has different brain chemistry and everyone's minds differently. And while some people react to some drugs, other people don't. So we, you know, people that we treat are the hardest to treat. You know, they've tried all the drugs for many, many years, SSRIs, SNRIs, TCAs, MOIs, and they've even tried more invasive things like E C t electric convulsive therapy and tms, which is like, you know, transmit, uh, magnetic stimulation, you know, those didn't work for 'em. And ketamine, it's not perfect. I don't wanna oversell it. Ketamine's effective about 80% of the time, which is, you know, really promising for a lot of people. Pretty good. Yeah. People been suffering for a long, long time.
Speaker 0 01:08:33 So a lot of the people that come see you are coming as a last resort. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> because, you know, ketamine is kind of new on the scene as far as these types of treatments. But with everything coming out about it, it seems like it might be something coming a little bit more mainstream. It might be something that people are trying sooner as opposed to just going and, and trying the same old thing. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>
Speaker 2 01:08:52 And the, I don't know if it's, uh, the beauty of ketamine or the unfortunate thing about ketamine is that it's not FDA approved for mood disorders at this point. It's
Speaker 0 01:09:00 An off label.
Speaker 2 01:09:01 Right. It's exactly. It's an off label use of ke ketamine's, so there's no insurance coverage at this time. And so rather than, you know, insurance companies really do dictate, uh, healthcare. I'm sure everyone's kind of getting their mind around that now. Yeah. But if you go to your psychiatrist and you say, Hey, you know, I'm kinda depressed and they give you a questionnaire and you score that, you know you're depressed, they start you on ssri. Um, you know, you can't, can't ask to like say, Hey, I wanna go all the way to, you know, tms. It's like, well no, for insurance to cover it, you have to try and fail these drugs for so long and then we can maybe make a reference to TMS and if that doesn't work, you know, that's where we are, you know, but it's, it's not covered by insurance, so it's a fee for service. So if you know you are tired of getting pushed to the system and you're tired of not feeling well, you know, we can assist, you know, sooner than insurance companies typically allow patients to jump into these things.
Speaker 0 01:09:47 Well, how can people find your clinic?
Speaker 2 01:09:50 Um, you can just go to our clinic, southern ketamine.com and it, there's a, you know, pretty good amount of information on there. I try to get too nitty gritty into all the science of everything, but there's a area where you can, you know, submit your name and email and phone number and we'll reach out to you with some information and, you know, we can schedule a time for a consultation so we can learn, you know, about what's going on in your life and your journey and what led you to reach out to us and things that you've tried along the way. And not everyone is a candidate for ketamine therapy. Um, you know, there are some medical contraindications, there are some psychiatric contraindications and we, there are, you know, ketamine is, it's classified as a schedule three drug with a dea, uh, which means it has a low addictive p potential. But, you know, some people are addicted to ketamine. They reach out to us to assist, you know, tapering off ketamine, but Mm. Um, it doesn't seem like that's a anywhere for us to jump into. Yeah,
Speaker 0 01:10:44 Yeah. So you mentioned that some people like to talk to their counselor mm-hmm. <affirmative> or therapist while they're under treatment. So is that something where they can bring in their own therapists to your clinic?
Speaker 2 01:10:54 Absolutely. Absolutely. We have people who, you know, wanna bring their therapist into clinic or, uh, zoom in with them during the infusion, but we tell a lot of people to come in and, you know, do an infusion first. Um, because a lot of people will realize that they're really not in a head space to talk while they're undergoing ketamine. Like I said before, some people are chatty, but other people are, you know, all in their fields and their brain is kind of taking them places. And it's a bit of a roller coaster ride. You don't wanna reach over and talk to someone next to you on a roller coaster
Speaker 0 01:11:27 Ride. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2 01:11:28 But, you know, if they feel like they would get benefit from it, then by all means we have, we're more than happy for you to bring in. And we don't offer inpatient counseling just because ketamine itself is fairly costly and adding an additional cost burden onto that. Um, but if people have counselors, which a lot of people do, and we highly recommend them, you know, being engaged in some kind of talk therapy, um, leading up to ketamine and then, you know, say they have an infusion on a Monday, go see their counselor on a Tuesday, and I would say nine times outta 10 the patient comes back and they're like, oh my God, my counselor like couldn't believe the things that we were all these great discoveries that we're, you know, getting with counseling just because you're, your mind is now unlocked. You're, you've had a breakthrough, had a breakthrough big time, you're not locked down, you're not putting walls up, you're not pushing things to the back of your mind that they're not as scary now. So they can come up and, you know, it's great to talk about these things with someone who knows everything up to that point and deal with those.
Speaker 0 01:12:22 Okay. So say I come into the office and this my first appointment, what does it look like? Am I, uh, am I in a chair? Am I laying on a table? Like what does it, like we
Speaker 2 01:12:31 Put you in stirrups, but for everyone
Speaker 0 01:12:33 Else, <laugh>, well sign me up <laugh>
Speaker 2 01:12:37 For everyone else. We have, uh, you know, they're just fairly basic lazyboy chairs. Hmm. Um, and so yeah, you'd have your own infusion room and we'd have you sit in the recliner and there's a vital sign monitor. And so we hook you up. We're always watching your blood pressure and your heart rate, your oxygen saturation. And then we would start an IV and then the ketamine would flow through the IV over a 40 minute period, monitor you the en entire time. And people always ask, you know, what, what am I gonna feel like or what are side effects? The most common side effect is just some mild nausea. Ketamine definitely has a propensity to induce nausea in people. So we recommend, you know, don't come in with a full belly, you know, hold food for six hours and drink for two hours, which is somewhat similar to, you know, having surgery. But it's really just to minimize the chance of nausea. And ketamine, like I said before, a little bit, can make your blood pressure and heart rate elevate, you know, just a little bit during the infusion. And that's why we monitor you. And we have medications to treat nausea, we have medications to treat, fluctuations of blood pressure and heart rate if, if necessary as well.
Speaker 0 01:13:37 Um, so ketamines your bread and butter at the clinic. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. But don't you also do other infusions like n a D and Yeah, we do. What else do you do? We
Speaker 2 01:13:45 Do n a d infusions, um, and we also do vitamin infusions. And um, recently we have been helping people cause we do weight loss vitamin infusions and they're, they're not anything profound. You know, someone wants to feel jumpstarted to get into the gym, you know, they can come in and get a, a vitamin infusion. They'll get their, their B vitamin levels up and they'll have some energy to maybe jump into the gym, but it's not gonna be anything sustaining. But there is a drug, it's a subcu injection called Semaglutide, the brand name, um, WOGO. It's been really, really hot. I'm sure you've heard about
Speaker 0 01:14:18 It. Yeah. It's been really popular lately.
Speaker 2 01:14:20 Been really popular. And so we've been prescribing that to people who want to lose weight. So it's an on-label drug for diabetes. But has,
Speaker 0 01:14:28 Is that how you got so ripped <laugh>?
Speaker 2 01:14:30 I give myself a shot every week,
Speaker 0 01:14:31 <laugh>,
Speaker 2 01:14:32 But psych, it causes significant weight loss in people. And so the same thing, you know, we don't get you, we don't use your insurance because most of our patients don't have diabetes thankfully. But they do want to lose weight. There's one UAB study where the average participant lost 37 pounds in 12 weeks. Wow.
Speaker 0 01:14:49 It's
Speaker 2 01:14:49 Huge. So it works well. Yeah. Works really, really well.
Speaker 0 01:14:51 Well, good deal. Sounds like you offer a lot at Southern Ketamine. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So people can also follow you on Instagram. They can also go to your website. Yeah,
Speaker 2 01:14:58 We have Instagram, we have Facebook.
Speaker 0 01:15:00 I'll link to your website in the show notes and, uh, so people can go check you out there. Harrison, thanks again for coming on man. I had a, had a great time as I knew we would and, uh, we'll have to do it again soon. Absolutely,
Speaker 2 01:15:11 Man. It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me. All right,
Speaker 0 01:15:12 Bud.
Speaker 4 01:15:33 Feel the city made me cry.
