#940 - Sam Harris & Dan Harris

Joe Rogan (0:06)

And we're live, what's up? How are you, man? What's going on? Sam Harris, ladies and gentlemen.

Sam Harris (0:10)

We've got Harris and Harris.

Joe Rogan (0:11)

Dan and Sam, no relation, obviously.

Sam Harris (0:13)

No relation.

Dan Harris (0:14)

Brother from another mother kind of thing?

Joe Rogan (0:16)

Aw, sweet.

Sam Harris (0:17)

Actually, no, we work this out. We are deeply unrelated, because your Harris is the Jewish side of your family, right?

Dan Harris (0:24)

No, no, no, no, no, my Harris is the, yes, actually, no, you're right. My Harris is the Jewish side of the family. It was changed at Ellis Island from, allegedly from Addis, which doesn't sound Jewish either, but yes, and your Harris is from the New Jersey.

Sam Harris (0:38)

My Harris is the Goyam side of the family.

Joe Rogan (0:41)

Isn't it funny how many people's names were changed at Ellis Island? Like, were they like, nah, not American enough.

Meanwhile, Schwarzenegger made it.

Sam Harris (0:49)

Right, proudly.

Joe Rogan (0:51)

Yeah, odd. So anyway, thanks for coming, you guys.

Dan Harris (0:55)

Thanks for having us.

Joe Rogan (0:56)

This is a weird time. I've been extra weirded out over the last couple months, and I just got back from Mexico, I was on vacation and I didn't do shit for a week, and in not doing anything for a week, I really got a chance to sit down and think about stuff. And I'm more weirded out by life today than I think I ever have been before. So I'm excited to have you on, because I want to hear your story, because Sam has been telling me about it, and I looked into it, and it's...

Please explain, like, what happened to you, like, where you were and what happened to you.

Dan Harris (1:27)

Okay, so it was, you're talking about the panic attack. So it was 2004, I was on a little show that we do at ABC News called Good Morning America.

Joe Rogan (1:36)

That's a big show.

Dan Harris (1:37)

That's a big show.

Joe Rogan (1:38)

That's not a little show.

Dan Harris (1:39)

No, it's not a little show.

And I was doing the job that I was filling in as the news reader, that's the person who comes on at the top of each hour and reads the headlines. And I just freaked out, I just lost it.

Joe Rogan (1:53)

Like how?

Dan Harris (1:55)

So I was a couple seconds into it, and I started to get really scared, and it just, have you ever had a panic attack?

Joe Rogan (2:02)

No.

Dan Harris (2:02)

So it's like anxiety on steroids. So you start to worry, but then your fight or flight instincts kick in.

So your lungs seize up, your palms start sweating, your mouth dries up, your heart is racing, your mind is racing. I couldn't breathe and therefore couldn't speak.

So a couple seconds into reading what was supposed to be six stories right off of the teleprompter, I just lost the capacity to speak and I had to kind of squeak out something about back to you, back to the main anchors.

Joe Rogan (2:35)

Wow.

Dan Harris (2:36)

Yeah, it sucked uncontrollably.

Joe Rogan (2:38)

Now what caused it?

Dan Harris (2:41)

I do, yeah, I definitely know.

It's some dumb behavior in my personal life is what caused it. I had spent a lot of time as a war reporter at ABC News.

I was in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, six trips to Iraq. And I had come home from a long run. I covered kind of the pre-invasion, invasion, and then insurgency in one kind of six month run. And I came home after that and I got depressed. And I didn't actually know I was depressed, but I was having some obvious symptoms in hindsight. I was having trouble getting out of bed. Felt like I had a low grade fever all the time. And then I did something really smart, which is I started to self-medicate with cocaine and ecstasy.

And even though I wasn't doing it all the time, I like to say it wasn't like that, you ever see the Wolf of Wall Street, where they're popping ludes, that wasn't me. And I wasn't getting high on the air or anything like that, but I was partying in my spare time because it made me feel better.

So after I had the panic attack, I went to a doctor who's an expert in panic and he started asking me a bunch of questions, trying to figure out what had caused the panic attack. And one of the questions was, do you do drugs? And I was like, yeah, I do drugs. And he leaned back in his chair and gave me a look that communicated the following sentiment, okay, asshole, mystery solved. And he just pointed out that, you know, you raise the level of adrenaline in your brain artificially, you make it much more likely to have a panic attack. And I, at baseline, I'm a jittery little dude. So it doesn't take much to put me in that zone. I mean, you just offered me a coffee and I said no, because even that will freak me out.