- I read in your book that you were saying the worst stunt
you ever performed was the jet fuel.
- That was the most painful.
- [Doctor Mike] Yeah.
- Yeah, for sure,
and it was a frustrating question for me,
when people would ask,
"What was the most painful stunt?"
Particularly because it was
such a frequently asked question.
- [Doctor Mike] Yeah.
- And, you know, it frustrated me,
because there are really different criteria to the pain.
There's the duration, and then there's the intensity.
- And the type.
- Right.
And I would lean towards
the quicker it's over, the better.
But it's just apples and oranges.
And then when I had suffered the third degree burns
on 15% of my body,
and needed skin graft surgery,
that actually checked both boxes.
- The burning, the length.
- Yeah, the duration and the intensity of the pain
was just in another world.
I went on, effectively, a tour of burn units after that.
- Wow.
- And heard multiple times that people
who have been both shot and stabbed,
as well as suffered burns,
would tell you burns were the worst pain of everything.
- I could see that.
That's really bad.
Did you feel the pain right away when the burn happened?
Or was this-
- I did, it wasn't as bad the next day,
and then each day thereafter,
it just got like more and more unbearable.
And then at day five, I was like,
"Okay, I gotta-
- [Doctor Mike] So it's progressive.
- Showed up in the hospital on day five, and they're like,
"What the fuck were you waiting for?"
- Oh, you didn't go right away?
(both laugh)
- Yeah, there, I thought that it
would just get better, you know?
- Okay.
- And I showed up on day five,
and they they explained that I needed emergency surgery.
And the real pisser
was that their next question was,
"When's the last time you ate?"
And I was like, "I just ate before I came here."
- So they're like, you have to wait eight hours.
- Eight hours and I had just refused the pain killer,
like, "No, I'm a sober guy.
I don't want any pain killer."
And then I heard,
"We cannot operate on you for eight hours
because you just ate."
And I said, "Okay, gimme the pain killer."
(Doctor Mike laughs)
- Do you know what they gave you?
- I believe it was Dilaudid.
- [Doctor Mike] Dilaudid, yeah.
- And my arms were so burnt they put the IV in my neck.
- Wow.
So you had like a central line put in.
- Yeah and it's crazy being a sober guy in recovery,
like how quickly that awakens the beast.
You know, like, "Oh, are you in pain?"
"Yes."
- [Doctor Mike] The receptors right away started-
- Yeah, it's really crazy,
and it was,
it had a real sort of powerful effect on me,
like, yes, I am still in pain, I need more.
And then what snapped me out of it at one point,
when I was asking for yet more, they said,
"We will give you more,
but it's getting to a point where I'd be concerned
about your getting off."
- Yeah.
- And that woke me up, and I was like, "Oh, yeah."
- [Doctor Mike] Got it.
What would your advice be,
either to yourself at that moment
when they initially offered it,
or maybe to someone else who's facing the same dilemma?
- I mean, I could be in that situation a thousand times,
and 100% of the time I would take that painkiller,
the pain was that bad.
- Wow.
- I'm kind of careful about giving out advice
to other people particularly as it relates to addiction.
But I know that for me, in my 14 years of sobriety
I've never even filled out a prescription
for any kind of a pain killer.
It's been all Advil and Tylenol.
- Okay. Congratulations on that.
That's a long time.
- Yeah, I've been in horrific pain
and take an Advil and Tylenol together.
But that's as far as I've gone.
- Got it, okay, and in, in severe cases
we do recommend that in the hospital.
- It's unbelievable how effective both of those are.
Tylenol and Advil.
- Well, cuz they work slightly in different ways.
So you kind of get a stacking effect of the medicine.
And again, I don't recommend that to most patients
because it's largely unnecessary for most people.
But in certain instances
a big example of it's actually dental pain
and I've heard you've had a lot of dental issues.
- Unbelievable amount, yeah.
- And, and your biggest risk that you say people face
is by doing one thing that not everyone likes to do.
What is that?
- Floss , yeah.
It's not a risk that everybody faces.
It's just personally my biggest regret in life,
In the grand scheme of things
my biggest regret is that I was not diligent about flossing.
And I think I was genetically predisposed
to having poor oral health, you know
in the teeth and gums department.
But part of that, and really the, the worst part
of that is that I was one of those people who
I am one of those people who cannot get away
with not flossing, because not flossing led
to the presence of a bacteria with a very
it's a very distinctive odor when someone has this bacteria.
And the crazy thing about it is that the person who
has that bacteria in their mouth doesn't know it.
And I remember like, you know
being like in my very early twenties, maybe late teens
my mom would say, "oh, your your breath,"
mom I just brushed my teeth.
She's like, I don't care, your breath is,
and I didn't get it, you know
I didn't get it.
I didn't understand it.
And it was just years and years later
that a dentist said, "Hey, you know
you've got this odor in your mouth."
Like, you know, and I became a diligent flosser.
One time I got
in a van with all the Jackass guys
and we man says, "oh dude, Steve-O, your breath.
And Knoxville just says "saying Steve-O has bad breath
is like saying we man is short."
(Doctor Mike laughs)
It's just all the time.
And, got so many years of my life
that it was disgusting for people to have a conversation
with me because of this odor coming outta my mouth.
- And did flossing solve that?
- It did.
I had a, I had a round of deep cleaning.
And flossed ever since.
Now I have a whole ritual at night.
Water pick is how I start.
Then I floss, then I brush, then I tongue scrape.
Then I rinse with the fluoride.
- Okay, I love it, so you have like the full cycle
going on.
- Yeah because I've just such horrific gum recession
that really it's just an exercise
in doing everything I can to preserve what little remains.
And if it weren't for my poor oral hygiene with the floss.
Cause it's not just the
you know, the bacteria, the odor
that was emanating from my mouth that like
I blame the hardcore gum recession on that too.
- Yeah of course.
And I'm curious, did you
when you started doing the hardcore dental care, did you
at the same time get the Barrett's esophagus process
started?
- I had it already.
- You had it already, the reason I ask is cuz a lot
of times acid reflux will present with bad breath.
- Wow.
- [Doctor Mike] So I wonder if like, as a child, yeah.
(Steve-O laughs)
Were you like a kid having early symptoms
and that's how you developed Barrett's esophagus
from longstanding reflux?
- I wonder, it sounds like it could have been
it could be a chicken or the egg thing here.
Because the, the acid reflux presenting is bad breath.
So like what came first the Barrett's or the bad breath?
- Yeah, yeah, for sure.
- Yeah, it's crazy.
And you know what's so perplexing
is how it's, like in our culture, like
you'll tell somebodyif they've got like a booger
in their nose.
If someone's got looks
and oh you've got some food on your face.
But like, nobody and myself included
can bear to say to somebody, dude, you're dude-
- Well, cause I think it's not as easily
to be fixed.
Like you can wipe this off, but if someone's breaths
- Right, and, and I want to, like
when I smell that very distinctive bacteria
smell coming outta someone's mouth,
I have this inner dialogue
I want to tell the person like, hey, like, you know,
I don't want to be unkind, but I, you know
I want you to know that I can smell this thing
that I used to have a problem with.
And the answer is to, to go
to the dentist and get a cleaning and then floss.
And a real tell is that if you floss
and smell the floss, you can tell then
- Well yeah.
That, actually happens
to people that are healthy as well
if they haven't flossed in a little while.
- Right, and as I move forward in my life,
I really predict
that I'm gonna have a whole new biggest regret.
And that is gonna be not having a very
disciplined stretching regimen.