Joe Quattrone 00:34
Welcome back to the fuzzy ish podcast. I’m your host, Joe McHugh with me as always is my boy JMG, we just had a really cool conversation with your boy, David Hegarty, longtime cohort and your industry. Tell the audience here at the FUZZEE-’ish Podcast that kind of silver show what they can expect out of this conversation.

JM Guthrie 00:56
Yeah, I mean, I think it hits on so many of the topics that we cover on this show, right? The stigma of cannabis, the ability to find a different relationship with alcohol, the ability to look at ways in which you can create these different relationships. And most importantly, all of our stories are different. It’s not a zero or one situation, there are ways in which each of us has to sort of find our path. And at the end of the day, one of the central themes of the interview with David, and something that I just feel so strongly about, generally and even more today, due to some personal stuff this weekend, you have to make these decisions for yourself, Joe, right. Like these decisions that we make these changes, if you’re not feeling good about them, in your heart for yourself. And if you’re not here to subscribe to where you’re going, as an individual, you’re just not going to get there. That’s not what MeTotal is, all about it is finding your pursuit, finding your motivation, and finding the avenues and sometimes including cannabis to get to just a better life and a way of showing up for all the people in our lives. So I really appreciate the time. And yeah, you know, hey brother?

Joe Quattrone 02:06
Yeah, you know, I didn’t, we didn’t hear these exact words come out of David’s mouth. But one thing that I really appreciated about him is, as you could tell that he has a perspective on things that’s very proactive, right, instead of letting life come to you and always reacting to it, taking control, seizing the moment and being proactive with yourself with your thoughts with those things that you choose to consume. And actually attacking life in a much more thoughtful way versus being just so responsive all the time. And I think if people take anything out of this messaging it is that I think David does an exceptional job of really coming to grips with who he is and how he needs to live his life, which I think is really really cool.

JM Guthrie 02:54
Yeah, I mean, one thing I would just do is humility, right. So I think there’s something that we don’t talk about that often on this show. And I think he’s really just so present with him. He knows he’s not perfect, and he’s okay talking about it. Right. So our ability to have to show some humility and some compassion with ourselves as part of trying to be vulnerable and ultimately making it into this path of mine. Such a huge aspect that we probably don’t talk about often enough. And it’s just, it’s so resonant with him. And it resonates in pretty much everything that he talked about. All

Joe Quattrone 03:29
right. Stay tuned for the show, folks.

JM Guthrie 03:33
All right, everybody. Welcome back to the FUZZEE-’ish Podcast, the kind of sober show. So fortunate to be the guy that gets to introduce our show today. Here, joined by my boy, Joey Q, and also good friend, David Hegarty, David and I go back more than a decade now, which is crazy. Actually, a lot of the success that we’ve seen, and in my, in my professional life, and in particular, at the consulting company that I was one of the founders had a lot to do with this guy. He and I worked at a company before that. And then he introduced us to a software company that we had no business working for, in 2014. And before we knew it, we had a 50 person company. And it ultimately was the foundation of the company that we sold earlier this year. So I’m forever indebted to Mr. Haggerty for a lot of his professional success. But he’s also a good friend, somebody that I personally hold in high esteem has been someone that I could talk to about just about any topic going back lots of years now. And it’s always been a person who I felt comfortable talking about topics like this, even before it was necessarily the cool thing to do or something that we had to talk about. So anyways, without a doubt he also has an unbelievable New England accent. Being from Boston it’s so nice to get a little bit different tone of voice here on the fuzzy-ish podcast, but anyway David, welcome to the show, man.

David Hegarty 05:02
Great to see you guys. Thank you very much. It’s great to see you, my friend and Joey pleasure looking forward to it.

JM Guthrie 05:09
Yeah, man, we’re so happy to have you, we’ve been having all kinds of different conversations about different people’s stories as it pertains to me totally. And this idea of, you know, at least trying to examine our relationships with alcohol. We’ve had people that have never drank before, we’ve had people who had guns in their mouth, and fortunately had just this moment of clarity that, that it was time to, to figure their lives out and kind of everywhere in between. We talked, we like to talk about ways and sort of products and practices that obviously help us to move the ball forward specific to those relationships. And we’re just super excited to hear your story today. So without further ado, man, we would love to hear a little bit more about you. We’d also just love to hear kind of your origin story. Why? And why me totally has really resonated with you as you’ve been clicking into our show over the last few weeks.

David Hegarty 06:01
Well, it’s interesting, JM, you and I go back. And you know, not that you saw the worst of me or the best of me, but that there was a time in my life being raised the way I was here in the Boston area. And my mom and dad are from an Irish family, my mother’s from Dublin. And alcohol in my household was also always a very temperate social thing. There was never a parent who was drunk or there was never beer in the fridge. But at a young age, I think a lot of the social pressure, I bought into it, and I wasn’t a five or six day and I drank or I was a Friday or Saturday night binge drinker and never came home and sort of had beer in the fridge. The problem was, I would get anxiety, severe anxiety, both before drinking and after drinking and feelings of shame and remorse. And although there have been nights where I could go out and I’ll just use you and I jam we were in Amsterdam, and we have dinner and a beer the next day, I would wake up and just feel like otter garbage. And it might only be one beer, but that anxiety of waking up and not feeling very good about myself got to a breaking point about 10 years ago, I was a good 1012 years into a marriage, I knew the marriage was collapsing. And I made a fundamental change to try to win this woman back. And when the first thing that came to mind was getting in shape, getting back to my athletic self. And that meant for me abstaining. 100% just driving alcohol in my life. The problem was in the first 60 or 90 days, I just again, I felt sort of like a dread. I just felt sort of uneasy, I felt uncomfortable. And I was lucky enough that I had a few friends at the time cannabis had just become legal in Massachusetts and I got a medical card here in the state of Massachusetts to help deal with that sort of anxiety, if you will. And oddly enough, no one usually tells it from this point of view. But I began to use cannabis as an athletic enhancer. It allowed me to rest, it allowed me to recover. More importantly, it allowed me to turn my head off at night. I’m one of those guys as jam knows who my mind is. I’m a squirrel that my head’s going 24 hours a day. And it’s not always the most healthy environment. Now it can be very good in a variety of ways. If I take you fishing or hunting or if I take you out, you know, we do something where you have to get to be on a swivel. I’m the guy you want to be with. But if you sit next to me on a plane from Boston, Amsterdam jam will tell you that it can get a little bit annoying after hours. So I actually started to participate in both edibles. And you know, smoking was something that was always sort of in the back. I played lacrosse, so you know full disclosure, I was smoking weed before it was cool because I played lacrosse bros. Yeah, you know, yeah, it was Relax, bro. I played football in high school, but lacrosse was my jam and lox bros always had a dip and that joint and they were, you know, listening to the Grateful Dead. And that was like a stereotype that was very true. And I never grew up here in Boston, I never really got into any of the hard drugs. I was a beer drinker and I would smoke some weed but fast forwarding to my mid 30s I began to really get into running. And cannabis really helped me I could run I went from not being able to run a mile to running the Cambridge half marathon at a pretty serious pace I run to this day, and I tell people that diet and exercise is the key but rest if you listen to any athlete, they’ll tell you rest is more important than mostly like if a Dragon or David Goggins, all these phenomenal athletes, they will always say the same thing which is rest and recovery is just as important as anything else. So I’ll close it with that which was I was using cannabis to reduce my anxiety to really quite honestly change my headspace. I went from being on edge to being very relaxed and very present in the moment, which is excellent for my kids and excellent for myself. But when you run long distance, 510 12 miles, not really long distance for hardcore people, but for me long distance, I became very zen like I would just get in the moment, I would enjoy the visuals. I wouldn’t feel the sort of arthritis, arthritic pain and my ankles and my knees. And then that night, I’d go home and maybe I would have, you know, I would smoke a little or have a gummy and I’d sleep like a little baby, wake up the next day, I’d have no anxiety, I’d have no remorse of feeling like I did something wrong. And like more often than not, I’d be super motivated to do it again. And now, you know, the marriage thing didn’t work out as well. But I abstain from alcohol because I don’t want to. It just not doesn’t work for me. And I actively use cannabis in my workout routine. If it’s part of my recovery, or if it’s part of my pre you know, if I’m doing a long run, I might enjoy a sativa. Sativa will bring me up, indica tends to bring you down. Hybrids, we can get into the science of later hybrids. You have to be careful if I’ve gone on five mile runs. And as a story, I’ll tell you guys later about Seattle where I meant to go for a five mile run. I ended up running 15 miles.

JM Guthrie 11:20
I was pretty young, we haven’t talked, we haven’t talked too much about science. You know, I think even just the idea that there’s different strands that give you different levels is something that we haven’t necessarily gotten into too deep. But that’s definitely an interesting point. The other thing that you mentioned is that you don’t feel any sort of anxiety. With cannabis. Interestingly enough, I did write so I came off of meat, I came off of alcohol and really started moving towards this meat total Montra couldn’t have done it without gummies. And without cannabis, I don’t like to smoke anything. So it was all you know, gummies and that format, but I found myself after, you know, a few months of at least a few days a week consuming gummies feeling that same level of pressure. And what’s interesting is more people are you that don’t necessarily have that. And that’s what we’re so excited about on this show is that you have things like cannabis that allow us to have this clear mind, but also this clear heart as it pertains to stress and anxiety. Well, quick question. There’s a couple of products out there that are actually marketing towards people like you, there’s a drink called off field. Now their entire idea is to basically market to athletes like you and they will help with runs. Have you tried anything that’s explicitly so

David Hegarty 12:34
I have a drink. And I think it’s Olivia, there’s one up here and they have one called elevate. I don’t want to screw up the products, but they have one that I use pretty exclusively, which is called elevate. And that I believe is a sativa leaning product. It’s high energy. I’m a squirrel, so I don’t really. I’m not on the couch, the bag of Doritos watching, you know, Netflix kind of guy. So for me, if I’m gonna get outside, I love to feel just that energy rush. And I think this is part of the science where if people aren’t using cannabis correctly with regards to what strain they are ingesting, that can cause a pretty negative effect. If you’re someone who’s very relaxed by nature, and you’re looking to relax and watch, you know, a documentary, I wouldn’t advise you know, green crack or Kilimanjaro or any of the sativa strains, because now you’re just going to be wound up on the couch. Going back to the story in Seattle, there was a great store in Seattle and I had an elevator. I wasn’t expecting and I had a shot of espresso. And I had I think a five milligram elevation. I had no intention to run more than five miles. At some point I looked back and Seattle was like seven and a half miles down the hill. I just got so sucked into it. I was so jazzed. And then I had to turn around and jog downhill all the way back into Seattle town but that was like a 1450 mile run. And I just was all because I was just in the moment versus in my head thinking about work, thinking about family or thinking about things that would get me fired up that sativa energy burned off, right. So when I got to work that day, at nine o’clock, everyone was complaining about their morning commute. I had already run 515 miles and had a coffee. So I burned through that. But if I had taken that same drink and sat on the couch, I probably would have lost my mind. Right? The energies can be too high for people for me. I tend not to do any of the chill products, things that are more on the indica side. Because I find it, I just fall asleep. Now that might be good at night as a recovery product. Right? You work out hard, you go for a hike, you ski, you run. You want to get a good night’s rest, you might want something that’s on the indica side of the strain versus the sativa side. But for me, what I found with cannabis is I don’t really need anything at night. I don’t need to participate in anything at night. If I have a workout in the mid afternoon or if I go skiing, if I do something active. Have the burning of all that physical energy and the burning of that or the use of my muscles right to run or ski or hike. I slept like a baby that night because I burnt the energy off properly without having to use say a cannabis or even a CBD gummy to fall asleep at night.

Joe Quattrone 15:17
I think so. So interesting. I mean, I, I had always known that you could use cannabis to help in aiding in muscle recovery and stuff like that, particularly on the hemp side with CBN and stuff like that. But I wasn’t too familiar with using cannabis as an upper to kind of fuel your lifestyle in a positive wellness type way. Where do you find information? Like I know a lot of people that spend a lot of time in dispensaries become familiar and friendly with bud tenders and stuff like that. But do you have a local budtender that you talked to all this stuff about? or is there an online resource? Are there influencers that you follow? They’re really knowledgeable about this type of stuff? So

David Hegarty 15:57
I don’t know if we can plug products but so plug we’re gonna be the answer is yes. There was a group called very revolutionary clinics. In Boston. There’s one in Somerville, maybe two in Somerville, the vining family was connected to that. And the Vikings were good family and friends of the family. Going back to my father’s generation, I hung out with a guy who was a grower. I actually grew cannabis in a closet at one point in my life. And I was trained by guys who are really heavy consumers of the flower back in the day. Sure, when my friend started the revolutionary clinics business when he got involved with that, that’s really where I started to learn the scientific side versus sort of the street theory side. And he was really, that that dispensary was very much part of the forefront of this idea of using cannabinoids in particular the CBD products to recover. Sweet dirt up in Portland, Maine has become my single resource. There’s some phenomenal places in Maine, I find Maine and Washington State we get I could tell you a little the tour of the world I’ve had from Amsterdam to Seattle, but my favorite is actually Maine there’s a product up there called where there’s a company up there called Sweet dirt and the bud tenders are tremendous. And when I walk in, they know that there’s a sativa guy when they run 15 miles and they take good care of me.

Joe Quattrone 17:26
But it’s kind of wild that you know, for people that are needing to replace or at least consider an alternative lifestyle to alcohol like we’re not having the same conversations about alcohol like there is no different strains that you can use to go get a better workout and stuff like there is not as much of a wellness conversation whereas you know in cannabis yet yeah, you can go get that that psychoactive effect that leisure effect but you can also use it for much more of a positive impact on your life as well. Absolutely

David Hegarty 17:55
I mean when I used to bartend I used to get a kick out and people would come in and ask for a gin martini and I turn around say oh this person wants asshole juice you know to gin martinis deep their argument their wife, they’re fighting and they’re just, you don’t you know, you don’t really have that the alcohol sends that have the same effect with everyone. The more you drink, the more depressed you become, it’s depressing. Now everything can bring you down or bring you up to some extent depending on what you’re leveraging. But I found it again, and I’ll go back to I’m a sativa guy, because I like the energy. I like the clarity, right, I like being able to think clearer. Sometimes if I smoke or consume an indica brand, or indica strain, I can find myself a little foggy headed and you know, it’s a little sort of dazed and confused, to make a sort of a social reference. That’s why for me when I started to talk to a lot of the bud tenders, especially the people up in Maine who were big on it, if you’re gonna go hike five miles or if you’re gonna go hike Mount Washington, you’re gonna want to be able to get back down, you’re not going to want to eat a bag of Doritos at the top and fall asleep, right? So that’s where I was really introduced to some phenomenal strains, silver haze, kilimanjaro’s Probably when my favorite Gorilla Glue, I’ll drop some product names, but some of these strains on the sativa side, have really helped me maintain energy, power through, like if it’s a bad day hiking or scan, I’m just so jazzed psychologically that I just power through the rain or the snow. And then the idea of having no social and not feeling bad about myself like I would with alcohol, I just eat again, I could have one drink and the next day I feel like a bag of trash. I just, it didn’t make me feel good about myself physically, I’d wake up and I’d feel the Guinness around my belly. You know, I’d go to the Dubliner with jam and DC and I’d have my you know six Guinness the next day I’d wake up and have to roll myself to the office because I just put weight on me. I can smoke and go run five miles and you know I can eat all the croissants I want now.

JM Guthrie 19:54
It’s interesting. Two things. I love the idea of not needing it At night, because I do think people will say they are sort of dazed and confused, and will have a gummy. And I’ll wake up in the morning and I’ll feel almost as hungover as alcohol without the headache. And I feel like I don’t want to do anything. And I think the reality is when you use it in the format that you’re talking about, and your body is, is working through and able to, you know, obviously, grind through the cannabis, the same you would with anything else in your body, you come out of it feeling as healthy as you did, you know, maybe even better, psychologically, which is really, really cool. The second thing that I wanted to ask you about is a lot of people come on the show that talks about the just the addictive nature of booze, right that like by the it’s so satiable right? When he drank the day before he just wanted to drink the next day, especially people that had a problem with it. With cannabis, do you feel that same level of sociableness? Are you able to go days without it and then kind of use it predictably the way you want to kind of talk?

David Hegarty 21:01
So I think for me, I was interested. It’s interesting, bring that up to me. I don’t know what I’ve seen. There’s all these social statements. I don’t know if I was addicted to alcohol. I didn’t I didn’t wake up the next day and need a drink but I was very consistent on a Friday or Saturday night. I’d almost get sweaty palms, people would invite you out and I would feel uncomfortable. And you’d have your drink and I didn’t like that. What’s interesting with cannabis is I can go days or weeks without it. And then but there also could be days or weeks that I go every day I enjoy it every day I participate every day. So let’s take a step back the idea of waking up the next day with a hangover from cannabis. That’s a fact right? Anything, it could be caffeine. I know, I live on cannabis and caffeine and people kind of teased me about that caffeine the next day. Sometimes it will make me feel like absolute garbage. Because I’ve had too much caffeine My body’s going too fast. And I just am not resting properly. So I think the same applies for anything. It could be nicotine, caffeine, alcohol, cannabis, if you’re consuming say a 20 milligram gummy of indica or a hybrid something that’s going to put you to sleep that cannabis has to burn through because again cannabis attaches to the body fat. And this is where runners get the high right so I’ll have cannabis, the cannabis the cannabinoids attaching to my body fat I run I’m burning the body fat as fuel. Guess what I get a second elevated high because the THC is now being released in my system, as I’m burning that body fat. If you take that gummy and you fall asleep and you wake up the next day, guess what’s still in your system? Right? So I think it’s the idea of how you are using it? How do you moderate moderation? I’m going to sound cliche, moderation is the key here. Using it appropriately will allow you to sort of have that level headedness versus the foggy head. But I mean, I haven’t. In my case right now I’m a solid seven or eight days without having cannabis because I’ve just been focused on other things on a professional side. At some point in the next week, I’m going to start getting into pre ski season where I’m going to get heavy back into running long distance five to 10 mile runs, or I’ll be doing 2550 mile bike rides. I’m going to be gummy. Because sitting on a chair for two and a half hours you know, you know, a seat that looks like this is my seat, you know and that’s the most comfortable thing I’ll have for two hours. I’ll throw that gummy in and guess what, I can just zone into my legs and the rhythm and being present. But I don’t think it’s. I don’t think anything healthy except for going to the gym and eating right every day is the right thing. So for me, I definitely don’t feel the same addictive personality or the addictive response. I will say though, especially smoking versus consuming. I think there’s a ritualistic side to it, if that makes sense. JM Logis like people get addicted to going to the bar to hang out with friends and social I think there is something very addictive about hitting the bar or smoking a joint or what

JM Guthrie 24:04
Absolutely yeah, and that’s why cigarette smokers Can’t you know, yeah, I mean even with nicotine has ritual

David Hegarty 24:09
can be very addictive, especially if it’s done in a social setting. But that’s just my personal opinion. I don’t think the science says that marijuana cannabis can’t make you physically addicted to it. I have a hard time believing anything that makes you feel that good doesn’t make you want to do it.

Joe Quattrone 24:28
People are addicted to food. You know, it’s like I mentioned the rituals is everything you know, like if somebody eats in you know silence because they don’t want their significant other to see them or whatever. Like it’s still a habit. It’s still an addiction. Yeah, that’s a

David Hegarty 24:43
great point. I don’t know if it’s chemically addictive, but I think the ritual can be addictive for me, because of the way I use it. I don’t feel obligated to jam. I don’t feel obligated to use it every morning or every night. I use it when it’s appropriate. I use it when I need it. And I enjoy not wanting to use it. Yeah,

JM Guthrie 25:01
I mean, it’s interesting. And not to go on a tangent on this. But like I felt, I felt truly helpless with booze like I couldn’t. And one of the, you know, one of the things I tried to remember was the last day I didn’t have a drink. So I had lots of beer in the fridge. I didn’t ever take it to any reIation, or very seldomly these days with three young kids. But I always wanted a beer at the end of the day. And that was just part of the ritual. But it’s also obviously part of my chemistry and sort of chemical makeup at that point, it was so hard to stop. And I used cannabis, a really small, low dose of sativa, just to sort of take the edge off at the end of the day, similar to a beer. And I realized after some amount of time, man, I’m starting to kind of rely on it similarly to the beers I should. And I’m feeling a little bit of that anxiety in my chest, like maybe it’s from this and I stepped back and realized really quickly like it is that and I just felt so much less of a direct sort of connection chemically to cannabis as alcohol. So as a single user test, you know, the addictiveness for me was so significantly different, but I couldn’t have kicked alcohol without it, which is a part of my story, right? Like, there’s no way good that

David Hegarty 26:17
That’s a crucial point right there. Because, as I mentioned earlier, I wasn’t a guy that drank seven nights a week, but I was a guy that once I started drinking, I probably couldn’t stop. I enjoyed, I enjoyed the socials, I loved hanging out with you in Amsterdam, or DC, or you’d go we go to, uh, you know, the Adobe Summit, and you go to an event, and I would say to myself, I have a beer to eight or nine beers deep, I’m having a laugh. The next day I wake up, I can’t run, I can’t work out. I feel like crap. I don’t feel good about myself. So like yourself, I started to use a tea, I started to replace the Teva and running bluntly speaking, those two things I started to use as like gifts to myself, if you don’t drink tonight, tomorrow, you’re gonna wake up and you’re gonna run three miles, you’re gonna have a gummy for breakfast. And everyone the next day, you know, Adobe summit to be like, This is the happiest guy in the building, you know? And I was because I didn’t feel crappy. But I think the anxiety going back to your situation, I think that there’s some truth to that. If the levels are too high in the milligrams, or if the strain is too high energy, you can get paranoia, you can get anxiety. But if it’s allowing you in the short term to stop doing something, which is deadly alcoholism, I think there’s a benefit there. It’s just a matter of how you keep yourself and I hate to use the word sober, but I like to use the word sort of, like clean or clear headed, right? Because what does sober mean, I think alcohol once in a while, I might throw in a nicotine pouch, right? Like, I’m sorry, I like caffeine in the sense of coffee. But if I’m replacing caffeine, because I get rid of alcohol and my sober like so this goes back to that social stigma like well, what does sober mean? I’d rather say I’m trying to live a clean life. And I use things that are beneficial to me versus negative and alcohol was just a negative influence in my life that I just don’t need. Yep. You know,

Joe Quattrone 28:09
Do you think we have a cultural problem with taking too much stuff? So one of the things that I have constantly been weighing in my mind is this idea that Hollywood and corporate America and all these different factions have tended to brainwash society over the course of 50 to 100 years. And what they say is what we do, and because they glorify, we wind up doing those things, too. But we’d never as Americans, and maybe it’s that way in other countries as well, I don’t want to generalize, but it seems like we have a problem with overconsumption in general, when we like something we do it to a massive extent, including, you know, like, like I mentioned before food, you know, you can over consume food, you can over consume shopping, you can over consume cannabis, you can over consume alcohol. Do you think we have a cultural issue with consumption?

David Hegarty 29:01
And I think this is what I’m glad we want to do. I think this is one of the biggest problems in our society. The Dutch have a culture the Irish have a culture, you know that the Japanese have a culture of what is American culture? Well, David, Joey, and Jan are all three different ethnic groups, probably three different religious backgrounds. So what do we all share in common as Americans, commercialism? So let’s go back 50 or 60 years and watch a black and white movie, it could be about anything. It could be about Christmas, it could be about a war. It could be about cowboys, and I guarantee there’s gonna be Bourbon A gin, there’s gonna be a hard alcohol cocktail. And there’s definitely going to be cigarettes. And if you look at our grandparents’ generation, what did they do? They had the cocktail card at four o’clock every day, they made themselves a Manhattan. Why? Because that’s what Humphrey Bogart did. Some pre BullGuard a good influence. Absolutely not. The guy who was based on what I’ve read was a full blown alcoholic, right could barely function. But again, he was put in a situation where he wasn’t really Acting, he was promoting booze, who just movies, right? So I think consumerism, and I’m a capitalist full disclosure, I think consumerism is a real problem. Because if I were to take you to one of my favorite restaurants, Amsterdam, will have these lovely plates of food, and the servings are meant for humans, there’s just like a small piece of chicken and might be some rice. And then you have the small plates, we go to a Cheesecake Factory, and there’s 14 pounds of lettuce in a bowl that’s meant for and for a horse. It’s absurd. And you go to any Boston bar, not anymore, which is interesting, because of the cannabis the drinking, I think is and I think we could prove this with data. Alcohol consumption has come down considerably in Boston, but 20 years ago, my friends would go, you’d have guys would have 1820 beers, because it was, you know, in the Soda and Coors Light commercial girls with bikinis Come on, and you play volleyball If you drink this beer, right? Like it’s a good time. So I think you’re onto something that’s like, let’s just even use shopping. Have you ever seen the videos, and he’s Black Friday, people are fist fighting over a TV like it’s the last TV ever to be made? Why are they doing that? Because I think there’s a lot of social pressure, right? They’re being told that these things and these brands are and what makes you happy. And when I was going through, when I’ve gone through my divorce, what I’ve come to realize recently is the only thing that can really make you truly happy is not the stuff. It’s the quality moments. And it’s the love of self. And what I mean by Love of self, not in a egotistical way, but loving yourself where you don’t have to eat the 14 pound you know, steak at the Cheesecake Factory, you can have something small because that’s all you really need. Love of self meaning you don’t drink alcohol, because it’s not actually positively affecting your relationships with yourself or your family. Or love of self means you have a gummy and you go for a walk in the park and you turn your cell phone off. And you just, you know, enjoy being with your friends and family. So I think it’s a real problem surely, because if you go to Spain or Greece and you watch the way people engage in happiness, there’s booze all around them, and they drink out of the small glass. I used to get a kick out of it in Amsterdam, I’d order four pints of beer, and the Dutch would lose their mind. They’d like to know, well what do we want, a big giant glass of beer for Tuesday. And you know, Gemini would smash it

JM Guthrie 32:15
more which one’s got it says which one’s got the highest percentage ABV would be our question and they’re drinking you know, 3.5% they’re drinking 3% Heineken glass. Yeah, exactly.

David Hegarty 32:26
You go to Greece, and everyone’s like, Oh, they’re doing shots. ouzo. No, they’re not. There’s a shot of blues. Oh, that’s this big. And they take about three hours to sip on it. Or go visit my family in Ireland. Yeah, they have a whiskey, a whiskey one, one. And they sit at the bar, and they talk about football and rugby, they ask what jam I was in the family with and maybe my uncle finishes that whiskey an hour later. But this idea that they fall down in the streets, and they, you know, get sick in the bathroom, that’s an American thing.

JM Guthrie 32:55
Totally. And there’s two things that you said that I think we’ve been talking a lot about. One is, you can’t make a change, without wanting it for yourself. Right. So I lost a family member this weekend, unfortunately, to alcohol. And he, you know, tried a number of times to stop drinking, and to be a healthier human. And the reality was, he just never got there. I think in his heart, we spent a lot of time together. And he was just, he was a lonely person and had a hard time finding that direction. And that, for me, is such a clear example of what can happen when you don’t have that personal identification with what you want. And so whether it’s being able to run, whether it’s being able to show up for your job in the way that you want or achieve and professionally the way whether it’s wanting to show up for your kids in a way that they’re expecting you to do. There’s all these different paths. And we always talked about there’s not a one in zero answer here for how you get to that spot. Haggerty, but at the end of the day, you can’t make those changes, if you’re not in it for yourself, and you’re not feeling good about the change and what that ultimately means for you. And that’s that’s a big part of where our whole idea of MI total comes from. It’s not selfish. In fact, it’s selfless. The way that you’re able to show up for the people around you, whether it’s your family, or your friends or your colleagues or just the community is by having your own shit your own house in order, right. And that’s why

David Hegarty 34:29
I bring that up because initially, and I mentioned it right initially, I was trying to become sober. I was trying to become better to save a marriage and to have someone fall in love with me again. Right. What I learned in that process was you are who you are. You’ve always been Dave Haggerty, you’re not going to change there are some things that are good about you some things that are bad about you, but you’re willing to at least learn. So I learned from my mistakes. I try to better myself, and instead of getting hung up on why did this thing fail. I beGan, thankfully, through the stages of grief to see what you’re giving your children going back to your point, Jan with the relationship I have with you, which goes back 10 years. You know, when I introduced you and your partner to hippo back in the day, I was at a point in my life where alcohol was fading away, cannabis was increasing. And I was trying to do things for other people, because I recognize like life isn’t about just collecting a bunch of stuff. How do you help people because Karma comes around, right? 10 years later, here we are on this podcast. And a lot of that’s because you and I were like, We were bros, we took care of each other. And that’s something that really that’s who I that That for me is that self love, if I can give and people can benefit your wife and kids are doing well, because you were successful in that venture. And maybe I had a little piece of it. But you made it happen. Right. All I did was sort of put some people together and then you went out and made it happen that makes me feel good. Because there’s no stigma associated with there’s there’s no negativity of like, Hey, you owe me something day, or you owe me jam. And I think that’s often the case, when you’re in that drinking culture, it becomes very self this self transactional, self absorbed. And this goes back to Joey’s point of like, you know, just removing alcohol now and bringing it to this idea of consumption ism. Like, oh, well, James got this thing. And I don’t, he must be better than me. And it’s like, No man, slow down. You don’t have to go buy something to compete with jam, listen to him talk, go spend some quality time with them. And I think that’s something that’s missing, Joey that hopefully comes back is that people let go of a lot of the consumption ism, and realize that there’s a lot of positivity in just quality moments with people, right, we don’t fancy house or watch or whatever. People need things because they need to exist. But what I’m trying to say is like, at some point, you have to realize like I’M saying that your happiness is going to come from the inside my happiness bluntly, it comes from running and skiing and spending time with my kids. I love to go to art museums. And there’s some things that I do that are kind of cliche, but they’re not for me, because when I walk into a quiet space with my kids, and I see my kids excited about a movie or a piece of art, or a ski mountain, it brings me joy, and it didn’t cost you know, it doesn’t cost much to just go for a walk in the woods and see all the golden mane and have everyone be like that was awesome, right? People can go on TikTok and watch me on the internet. It’s not the same as being in the woods, though, right? Well, I

Joe Quattrone 37:23
I think there’s also like, there’s something to the neural pathways of memory, and you know, us in society or not some interest, like the way that culture has kind of manifested this, we’ve, we’ve always been trying to convince you that it’s a positive thing to be drinking. So therefore I go out and drink and therefore I have these positive memories that I associate with those moments when I’m drunk. So that later on in life, when I want to unwind for something, or I want to experience a positive memory, I connect it back to a memory that I had, right? We don’t have that as much with cannabis because it’s been demonized for the past 50 years, right through the war on drugs and all various different kinds of things. Some of us like me and JM I recently kind of came back to cannabis within the past five years after having probably consumed way more in my youth like my teenage years. And but I just don’t have as many positive associations with it that kind of connect me to positive moments in time because I, you know, when I decided to, to leave cannabis when I was 20, or something like that, I decided it wasn’t something that was going to make me more mature. I felt like I couldn’t live and function in a mature society with cannabis as part of my diet. And for some reason I thought I could drink alcohol, you know? Yeah. And that’s just the way that culture convinced me Hey, cannabis, bad alcohol good. And you got to kind of reprogram your brain to say no, wait, you know, there weren’t, there are some positive things about this other thing in this thing over here that you were convinced was so good for you is actually poisonous trash.

David Hegarty 38:58
You know, we could pick a different product every day of the week. But ultimately, it comes down to how we live in society. I mean, look at pharmaceuticals as an example. I think there’s like two countries in the world where pharmaceuticals can be marketed directly to the consumer, the United States and New Zealand. So we all run out and we’re buying, you know, whatever thing it does, you know, this is going to fix your hip, this is gonna fix your knee, this is going to fix your stomach now go to the gym, eat properly, go to church, find, you know, find some center. And if you use those things accordingly, then you can fix yourself, but there’s no magic pill and that includes cannabis, right? Like, there’s no magic pill that a marketer can sell you But going back to your point on alcohol and I’ll go back to Humphrey Bogart and the 50s those memories that we created, you can’t watch a Christmas movie from the 50s and 60s, but there’s not just barrels of booze in every table. Somehow. Hanukkah and Christmas and all these holidays are associated with a family sitting around drinking. What they don’t show you is that you know the uncle fighting with your father or the grandmother falling down the steps are like, right, the chicken and the turkey being burned because they’re too drunk to remember. And I think that to me is just we bought into the marketing of the alcohol distributors versus the reality of alcohol, right? Like I use, you know, my own personal experiences, I have some friends that really struggled with it. The ones that found self love gave up alcohol, and now live very successful lives. However they do it. The ones that still drink, honestly, it’s really fascinating. You made a comment about maturity, their 50 year old men who act like they’re still 18 years old, and the way they dress, the way they behave, the way they think, you know, they’re talking about stuff. And I think it’s because that they’re stuck in this mindset of what they think alcohol consumption means like, well, I’m young, and I’m fun. And I go to the bar like a 50 year old man, like, you know, like, have a drink if it works for you. But I will make progress somehow. And if cannabis helps you with that, so be it if nothing, right? If just being alone with yourself meditating helps then do it. But I think consuming things thinking they’re going to bring you happiness, joy, Joey, whatever it might be including food, like you said, it doesn’t work for people, it brings them just more sadness, because they can never hit that high. Right? They can, they can have this moment, and then they think that was good, then they have self doubt and self hatred. They go and eat more food the next day, and then they find themselves in obese biometric moment. And it’s self loathing, right, because they thought, well, this Big Mac’s gonna make me successful, you know. And it doesn’t work that way.

JM Guthrie 41:35
We showed this last show that we did last week, the Dai Manuel, great cat, all about vulnerability as humans and being willing to be vulnerable about the gaps that we have, as well as obviously, the positive things. And for whatever reason, big drinkers just have a hard time being honest with themselves or anyone around them about those gaps, and being vulnerable. But the bigger thing is, the relationships aren’t real. Right? So we’ve been talking about a book on this show where it’s the seven things that you can do to try to be happy well at 80. And it’s all the things you would think about, you know, drinking, smoking, exercising, being at a healthy weight. But number seven is having healthy relationships. And as men, that’s hard. And that’s something that we’re really trying to put out there that you have to be vulnerable. You have to have connections, you have to have these relationships. And what he says is that the guys with the best relationships at 50 are the happiest at 80. And I subscribe to that. And I think a lot of what you just said really lines up to that too. All

David Hegarty 42:37
right, amen to that I’m really, I’ve really struggled with that over the last few years, because 1020 years ago, my friends, the guys that I would hang out at a bar and drink with. They might buy you a beer in Medford or Malden, Massachusetts, and tell stories about your high school exploits. But if you needed to actually go do something, they were useless, right? And they’re not bad people. They were just drinking buddies. This afternoon, I’m gonna go out with a guy who’s been my mentor around bow hunting. And this is a real honest to god true friend. someone like yourself jam I think you know him, you know, you’re gonna move on the first guy show up up, you move a couch. Why? Because our friendship is honest and true. There’s no alcohol, there’s no selfishness being associated. And I think that alcohol in particular is very different from what I’ve learned and other things that we’ve consumed. Alcohol makes you very self centered and very self absorbed. And if that was the case, for me, it was probably the case now I am right. I think it’s for anybody. Yeah, just out of you know, yeah, exactly. And what happens is to your point, you start to create these false realities and false friendships and they’re not, it’s not real. There’s no follow through the guys that I know, I’ll have some gummies and ski with, these are legit. These are my, these are my friends. You know, they’re at the mountain, eight o’clock in the morning, we skied or five we hang out with the kids. There’s very little if any alcohol consumed in that group, because everyone’s sort of squared away. And, you know, we make the best of it. But I don’t think alcohol creates healthy relationships. If anything, I think it creates very disruptive relations.

Joe Quattrone 44:18
The funny thing is, is it feels like we’re at a toxic cocktail nexus point where you’ve got these fake friendships through alcohol, like you’re used, like you said, drinking buddies, but now there’s also this like, emergence of friendships through the internet, which is, you know, like, especially young people. So your choices are I can go get drunk at a bar with a bunch of people that aren’t really don’t really have my best interests in mind. Or I could go pretend that I know these people that I’ve never even met before in real life and hang out with them in this virtual environment. Back in the one thing that I think they did well back into the day maybe, you know, I struggled to pinpoint what exact decade but there were all kinds of like fellowship groups, some religious, some non religious, but they were reasons to gather and talk to other human beings around a common purpose or common cause that had nothing to do with alcohol or the internet. Like, do you think we’re going to know that well, this is like a multi trillion dollar industry? Do you think we’re going to move towards bringing back some of these third party type groups where people can have fellowship with one another without booze?

David Hegarty 45:25
Yeah, I think everything. So there’s a few things if you notice in the news, some of the big things in Boston, New York, even in DC is this idea LA has it, these non alcoholic bars. So you go, you go to these bars, and there’s no alcohol served. They’re serving mocktails and sparkling water, they get the DJ. So I think there’s some elements of that already in play, Joe, I think what’s more important, everything that’s old is new again, it happens, right? We live in this cyclical life on this round planet. And I think we’re coming back to a point where I believe there’s a pandemic in the male world. We don’t know what it means to be men, we don’t really know what it means to be fathers or friends to one another. I think in my case, as an example, I’ve recognized this as being a 40 to 56 year old male, if you don’t have the right friends, it becomes a very lonely place. Totally. And I’ve noticed that that idea of getting back to fellowship and brotherhood, you look at the success of Steven Rinella with his meat eater podcast and his videos, the guy is an absolute Rockstar. I don’t know about you guys, but I just want to go and I don’t even like the likes, I watched the new combs with him the other night. And Luke Combs was on call, I think it was Colorado, or maybe it was Wyoming. And Luke said, I didn’t even have to shoot an animal. I just wanted to be in the woods with you guys. Yeah. Now Luke Combs is an absolute rock star, right? And hit the Record point he was making by sitting around a fire with five other guys talking about hunting and just being in the woods, for me it really resonated with me, because Luke theoretically has all the money in the things he needs in life. But he was being very honest. And I think about how just sitting in the woods with those men was actually the goal for him. Now, granted, he shot a pronghorn, and that was great fun. But I think what was really successful from what I heard out of Luke’s mouth, was sitting with someone like Steve and Nala, and Sita sitting with all these different guys around the fire. So I think, to their credit, Steve Anolon, Rogen have created this new movement for guys like us who want to get together and go hike, go fish, you know, maybe just sit around a fire and tell stories and like, do what men did 100 1000 5000 years ago, right?

JM Guthrie 47:38
I mean, they’re, and they’re also taking a stand against bonds. Right? Yeah,

David Hegarty 47:42
You know, I think men only get better when they’re challenged by other men, my ex wife, or my children can challenge me and I’m going to do that which I think is right by them. But if I’m going to fellowship with Joey and G, Judge JM and they’re my real friends and say, Dude, you gotta take it up a notch. You know, like, we’re here to support you, but you’re, you’re a rock star, go make it happen, then guess what? I’m going to feel that, that love of the brothers to make it happen. And I think right now that’s missing Joe and I think society, not to get into politics. But we’ve got to fix that. Because the leaders we have on both sides. These aren’t men that I think any one of us would want to hang out with. And, you know, learn from these true politicians, they say things that have no meaning. I want to get back to a world where men say things and they mean it, and then we go make it happen.

JM Guthrie 48:29
I hear that dude, me too, man. Hashtag me too. No, I think that it’s interesting. Just sort of in closing, especially as you’re talking about society, and leadership and politics, one thing that we can all get pretty excited about in politics. And we’ll close with this is some current events around the news specific to the regulation of cannabis. Right. So last week was Election Day, there’s lots of different votes and on the ballots particular to cannabis. And Ohio was a big state, they ended up passing I think 57%. And with that, I think we can all give a little bit of a round of applause for Ohio. But with that, more than 50% of the country’s population is now living within legal states for recreation. And I think that that obviously aligns really closely to a lot, David, that you were talking about today. Yeah. You know, with that news, that we’re now 50% More than 50% legal from a population perspective, and also the fact that on the floor this week, they’re talking about being, you know, federally insuring cannabis. Where do you think that puts this industry over the next 612 18 months, which,

David Hegarty 49:50
you know, Joe had already set the tone earlier. We’re a consumption based society now that the banks realize that there’s a lot of money behind it, you’re gonna see FDIC insurance rules change in my humble opinion In, there’s a lot of cash being stored in warehouses and you know, Fitchburg Massachusetts because they couldn’t bring the cash to the bank. Well, bankers want to make money. And now that they have 50% of American society living in cannabis, legal areas, the money is going to follow the money. You can see it already with the dispensaries in Massachusetts, the banks have come in and they brought up the small mom and pop shops, right? They run them like a real pharmacy, they run them very well. And that’s because there’s money behind it. So I think you’re gonna see, I think we’re gonna see banking laws change. So that marijuana and FTC, FDIC insurance rules are now applicable to people who want to take in money from the cannabis industry. That’s my humble opinion. I also think it’s just smart politics. There’s, you know, a lot of young people who grew up in places where cannabis has been legal for five to 10 years, and those people don’t want to go to jail for having a joint. So I think if you follow the money, and people are going to consume this product, and I think you’re gonna see an expansion, you’re already seeing states like Maine and Massachusetts, and I think a few others, they’re talking about, you know, legalizing psilocybin, or we’ll call medical merit magic mushrooms. Well, that I think is because if you look at the use of cannabis and psilocybin for veterans, you know, the pharmacy pharmacies have been pushing these drugs on these veterans with PTSD. And there’s, you know, a little call out to 22 a days, 22 veterans a day commit suicide. And there’s now a lot of documentation that when they treat them with non pharmaceuticals, non pills, and they provide ketamine or psilocybin, specifically, cannabis, they’re getting different results, because they’re not, you know, giving them lithium and numbing their brains. They’re allowing them to essentially work through their trauma. So I think there’s a fascinating future for the cannabis industry. And it ultimately comes down to Joey’s point, which is that consumerism equals the dollars and in this country, that’s really what it’s about. Hopefully, there’s more of a scientific, intellectual approach to it. Right? But I feel like the reality is and we start here in Massachusetts, once the bank saw the dollar bills, the whole market changed.

JM Guthrie 52:13
Well, if we can get you as the cannabis general to start talking about all of the scientific stuff you did up front now

David Hegarty 52:20
you can sponsor a nice Gregory there’s no we’ll get it. We’ll get a running and cycling triathlon team sponsored by the brand to make it happen. No doubt. We’re just sponsored by deer hunting.

JM Guthrie 52:29
Yeah, exactly. So one thing, one thing about this all is that there’s still a stigma with cannabis like whether you like it or not, you know, my mom was with me this weekend, and she still holds the stigma specific to cannabis. And that still definitely exists. I think it also really exists in the professional world. So as a guy in the professional world, that’s talking about going for runs with cannabis in the morning before a big event. You know, 10 years ago, that was something you probably couldn’t even really talk about openly with the people that you’re with talking about just the transition of that?

David Hegarty 53:01
Well, I think it’s fascinating how 10 years ago, you know, I would literally be with you somewhere at a trade show. I’d wake up and I’d have some cannabis gummies. And I’d go run three to five miles with a cup of coffee. And I’d have to kind of keep that to myself. People would always ask me through the course of the day, why are you so positive? Why are you so easy going, you know, what, what is it about you and I would have to kind of keep that in check. And then usually it’s seven or eight o’clock as we’re walking on the street and Amsterdam, they would kind of figure it out as I’m like, well, you’re interested and I’d walk in I’d be like normal cheers if they call with our American friend Dave Alexa t vet who runs. So I think what happened to me over the last five years is that a lot of people in the professional world. I’ve seen this physically where they’ve taken alcohol sort of out of the social norm, and they’ve added cannabis, because nobody’s fist fighting at a bar on a gummy, you know, where you can go to a trade show. And if someone over drinks, someone’s gonna flirt with some it’s just that things happen. But I think for the first few perfumes quite honestly jam for a good five or 10 years and my usage, I had to keep cannabis consumption to myself, I would often you know, just not even mention it. We’re now pretty open. And what’s really interesting is how a lot of organizations have removed blood, you know, marijuana in the drug testing. I think drug testing should still exist because of some of the hard drugs that are terrible that will kill you. But the fact that a lot of organizations have loosened that up, I think says a lot about where this industry and where that stigma is going. But again, let’s go back to our grandparents and our parents’ generation. They think Humphrey Bogart smoking 14 camels and having bourbon for breakfast was normal. So that was just the way that they were programmed by the advertisers. We’re now being programmed by new advertisers. But I think it’s really important for us to think critically and for ourselves. And I think there are a lot of people out there no matter what the internet says that do think critically about what is good for me, what is bad for me, and what makes me a better person. Listen, and I think cannabis is losing the stigma of just sort of Dave, the lacrosse player who listens to the Grateful Dead and is becoming something that’s like no, it helps my grandmother. She doesn’t have cannabis, you might have a CBD cannabinoid gummy, but her arthritis isn’t bothering her, or my uncle who has anxiety and depression is not as sad. He goes outside for walks now because he’s had a gummy and his headspace is different. So I think that as the digital and the recreational worlds come together, the stigma will change. But it all comes down to the consumption industry and the advertisers and how they make us think of it.

Joe Quattrone 55:33
Well think about it this way, when you had when everything was illegal, you know, everybody’s perception of cannabis or marijuana or weed, if you want to call it that, was just used a perfect terminology earlier, dazed and confused. The idea was psychedelics, and you got, you know, the brand of marijuana or the brand of cannabis was very, like you’re at a Grateful Dead show. And everything is totally trippy and stuff like that. Nowadays with capitalism and the free markets and competition and the fact that it’s becoming legal in all these states, brands will come in, or people come in and create brands that identify with you no matter what life stage you’re in. So you can have a much more professional looking consumption or, or model your behavior in a much more professional way than you would have been able to 10 or 20 years ago.

JM Guthrie 56:20
Yeah, totally. And I mean, I think that just to add on to that is, it used to be I think that certain cannabis products and even the strands of cannabis that Haggerty was talking about, it looks like we lost him. We had to be towards a certain group, right? But now, and even some of the stuff we’re talking about outside of this show, there are cannabis products that are being marketed to everyone from my mom, to my sister’s, to my colleagues, to the guys that play golf with all the way to the sort of the Gen Z, you know, college, you’re looking to swap drinking for something else. And so I think that even just the trend of consumption is starting to take hold specific to this world as well. And what the beauty is, is that just that the wellness and health improvements that we see consuming cannabis versus alcohol so you know, I think is a really exciting time for the industry and really for the community at all. Well,

Joe Quattrone 57:16
folks, you’ve been tuned in to the fuzzy ish podcast, the kind of sober show I’m Joe McHugh, obviously, as always, JM has been here for the CO hosting details. And for those of you listening, I want to make sure you have the ability to connect with David after the show. So David, how can people reach out to you? Is there an email? There’s an Instagram account? Like how would you like people from the fuzziest podcast interacting with you?

David Hegarty 57:38
Yeah, so David underscores Haggerty at Yahoo. It’s H E, G, AR T UI yahoo.com. You can find me on LinkedIn. Again, it’s David Haggerty, H e g, AR t y and any feedback or any you know if anyone has any questions asked on how to leverage cannabis in their running or their mental health, let me know and I’d love to be a resource. And it’s been a pleasure talking to you both today. Thank you very much for your time,

Joe Quattrone 58:03
right. So if you want to go big game hunting, David is your guy and you might be on a gummy while you do it. Yeah,

David Hegarty 58:09
You’re absolutely going to be on a go.

JM Guthrie 58:12
Dude, appreciate you, man. Thanks for joining us. This was awesome. Have a great day. And thanks. Alright, everybody. Thanks so much for the time this was the fuzziest podcast that kind of sober show. Great conversation today with my boy Joe Q and good friend David Haggerty, lots to think about coming out of this show. If you want to find us, find us on any of the podcast channels or our site fuzzeeishpodcast.com. And until next time, we’ll be in touch. See ya!