#2312 - Jeremy Renner

Joe Rogan (0:03)

The Joe Rogan Experience.

Jeremy Renner (0:06)

Trained by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.

Joe Rogan (0:13)

What's happening, man?

Jeremy Renner (0:14)

What's going on?

Joe Rogan (0:15)

It's great to see you.

Jeremy Renner (0:16)

Yeah, good to be seen.

Joe Rogan (0:19)

Boy, what a journey you've been on.

Jeremy Renner (0:20)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan (0:22)

I just started listening to your audio book. It was giving me anxiety.

Jeremy Renner (0:27)

It gets better, right? It takes a minute, but there's a relief for the reader.

Joe Rogan (0:32)

Well, the relief is seeing you healthy, walking around.

Jeremy Renner (0:35)

The relief is also, we kind of know the end of the story, before you go into it. So then you can really kind of dive into the actual detailed narrative that I put out. There's no other way to do it.

But yeah, it's tough for a minute. It's like, I was like, wow, my sister took her a while to read. And anybody that was kind of involved in the incident takes a minute. You know, it took me a long time to kind of get through it. Right? It's anxious for me too.

Joe Rogan (1:03)

So how long was the actual recovery? Because you don't even walk with a limp.

Jeremy Renner (1:07)

Yeah, yeah, it's quite, there's a lot. Some things are pretty miraculous. Some things can be explained and I tried to figure it out as I was writing the book. You know, a lot of people ask questions. I asked myself questions.

Some things were on my own will. Some things were of otherworldly of some sort. But yeah, I was given, you know, I was supposed to walk with a limp because pretty much a lot of titanium. And then it was certainly not running. And I'm doing far beyond all those things. Don't know exactly why. I can pontificate on why, you know.

Joe Rogan (1:42)

What do you think of this?

Jeremy Renner (1:44)

I think it's, will is a really special thing. And the love and fuel to fuel your will, I had in spades.

I feel like I could pretty much do anything if I set my mind to it. When it was my essential part of my life, my recovery was a 24-hour day job. When typically I do many, many other things, right, as we all do in our lives. But when all my focus, like even parenting, was out the window, until I can get better. So I had to do that first. So that being the essential part of every thought, every fiber, every cell in my body was geared towards a one-way street of recovery. Oh, I'm getting fucking better. So I just got better. And there's no, what's the alternative? You know, I was brought back somehow, someway. And it would be a disservice to not do all the things I'm supposed to be doing and want to be doing. So it just took a lot of effort. And it looked a lot of support. Heck, dude, I mean, there's hundreds of people involved in helping me not die again.

But then it was, but at the end of the day, the recovery, as you know, everybody's been injured in some sort of way. It's a lonely road. It's only you. No matter how much help you have or PT you have, if your tendons go, whatever the heck happens, you still have to put in the work every day and endure the pain and manage the pain and mitigate it. It could be quite lonely. But I always found that my daughter and my family, I see their faces when I get better. I could stand up, let's say, or not pee in a jar. I could get in the wheelchair and go. Any sort of milestone, I'd see their faces get a little bit less horrified, even relieved, even quite joyful even. So as much damage as I did to my family and their hearts, me getting better can relieve them of that burden. So it was an easy one-way road to recover. And that's why I recovered fast. And I attribute it to my love for my family. Wow.

Joe Rogan (3:56)

So let's bring back to the day of the accident. What, when exactly was it?

Jeremy Renner (4:02)

It was New Year's Day. New Year's Day, 2023 Yeah. And I host my family at my house up there, like 25 people every post-Christmas to New Year's all the time. Family, friends, whoever, just kind of come up, and we can celebrate the holidays together. Go skiing, all these types of things. But we had a big kind of snowmageddon-type snow event that shut down the mountain that I live on at the top of Lake Tahoe at about 8,000 feet elevation, and we got tons and tons of snow. But it happens often, maybe not that intense of a storm. But so much so where we were cut off from anywhere else, we were snowed in fine. I'm prepared for that stuff. Three days without power, prepared for it. It's fine. We can have fun. It's actually a relief. All the cell phones go off. All the iPads go away, computers, and everybody's just playing card games with headlamps on. I mean, it's a riot. So we had a good time. The food supply was still good. But it's New Year's Day, and we're getting a break in the weather. So I decided I needed to clear the roads and see come out for air, essentially. And in doing so, that's when the accident sort of transpired. And it's more of a routine type of thing to have a half-mile-long driveway up there. And I have to maintain it myself, so I have a snowcat and a bunch of other snow removal-type equipment.