Joe Manganiello On Getting Sober, The Mystery Illness That Almost Killed Him & The Trauma We Inherit

Joe Manganiello (0:00)

I thought, you're not going to make it one more day.

Joe Manganiello (0:03)

Like, look at all this blood, like you don't have more. Like, I knew I was going to die.

Rich Roll (0:07)

For the last 14 years, I've hosted over a thousand conversations of this podcast. Today's stands out. It's very special, perhaps among my all-time favorites, because it's a beautiful, powerful, and emotional illustration of the central themes of this show.

The power and potential of the human spirit to face and overcome obstacles. What happens when you embark upon a mind, body, and spirit journey of personal transformation, and the transcendent healing that transpires when you make peace with your past.

My partner in this exploration is Joe Manganiello, a long-time sober artist, actor, filmmaker, and action star, best known for his roles in Spider-Man, True Blood, Magic Mike, Justice League, and for sporting perhaps the best physique in Hollywood. What you likely don't know is that just as his career was about to go stratospheric, Joe began to secretly suffer from a mysterious, seemingly undiagnosable autoimmune disorder that on more than one occasion, very nearly took his life. What he survived is truly superhuman.

Joe Manganiello (1:21)

I'm bleeding all night long in the bathroom in massive amounts of pain.

They brought me into an emergency surgery. Whatever you thought your life was, it's over.

Rich Roll (1:32)

Even more impressive is how he survived it, how he turned a healing journey I wouldn't wish on anyone into this powerful new why that has birthed a more meaningful relationship with living. All of which he illustrates with tremendous vulnerability in Bloodlines, his rather gripping newly released memoir now available everywhere. This one hits, I can't stop thinking about it, and the life lessons he generously shares, and I have a sneaking suspicion you will feel the same.

So, Joe, typically when I have a sober person on the show, I try to do some version or rendition of what it was like, what happened, and what it's like now. In your case, I want to do that, but there's a ripple to your version of this story that is sort of turbocharged in the what it's like now, like third act part. That is almost something like who came before me, how did that influence me and my life, what did I do with that, and what it's like in the now after the what it's like now. You know what I mean?

Joe Manganiello (2:52)

Yes. Yeah, and sobriety is a huge part of my life, obviously, but the process of getting sober turned me into version 2.0, but it was somewhat a warm up for the fight that I then had heading into version 3.0, which I wasn't sure if I was gonna make it to.

Rich Roll (3:18)

Yeah. It's almost as if like I did all this work, I've arrived in this place, I've rebuilt my life, I've created this amazing abundant life, and now this, like I didn't bank on this, I didn't have this on my whiteboard. Haven't I suffered enough?

And here comes this freight train in your direction, asking you to deepen your surrender and undergo like truly this odyssey of pain and suffering, self-discovery, and ultimately spiritual transformation.

Joe Manganiello (3:59)

Yeah, it was, but looking back, I can see that even into sobriety, there were things that weren't quite lining up. You know, in the book, I start a chapter with this phrase that an old manager of mine used to say to me, and she used to say, you know, Joe, for a lucky guy, you're pretty fucking unlucky. There was something that just wasn't quite lining up all the time. And I think what she was commenting on was the fact, or from her vantage point, that somebody who had been given seemingly endless amounts of advantages in life, things were still out of focus for me.

And then, of course, the symptoms start rearing their heads and that freight train, I can see the lights of the freight train and I understand shit, I'm on the tracks and how do I get off these tracks? Why am I on these tracks? Have I always been on these tracks? And then that spurred, yes, like you said, the Odyssey, which was basically 10 years at sea, trying to find my way back home or trying to understand if I was going to survive this thing at all, or what the hell was happening to me, and where there were no answers. And so, it started this journey through, journey across the globe for answers, that also took me backwards in time. And what I realized was that there was a series of knots that were tied, just a series of knots, and sobriety was a part of it. And thank God I was sober. I think that really was a warm up and a practice, because the act of getting sober and staying sober, the act of healing spiritually, of growing spiritually, then provided for me a framework or a foundation or an openness to other answers.