EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Balancing Anxiety with Medication | Ep. 57 with Larry Osborne

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Speaker 1

Today we have an exclusive interview with Larry Osborne about anxiety. It was actually a casual conversation that Larry and I were having together after we thought the audio and cameras were turned off. But it ended up becoming a powerful dialog about something that that most humans wrestle with and explore it in our culture and society. Because of the world we live in something called anxiety.

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Speaker 2

Check it out.

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Speaker 2

She's going to do a little bit of soundcheck and we'll just talk. Just curious and maybe I'll bring this up. When you said that about anxiety. Here's the interesting thing. I started struggling with anxiety attacks about ten years ago. Okay. Panic attacks. I spoke on the stage, in fact, that that was probably the my greatest gift. And what I've poured most of my time and energy in my life.

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Speaker 2

For ten years, I battled intense. No one would know. I made it through it. I worked it. But then last year, it's been about a year. The last three times I spoke.

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Speaker 3

Did you take any medication or.

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Speaker 2

I did. In the beginning, I did in the beginning.

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Speaker 3

If you take.

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Speaker 2

I don't even remember. Because I was ten years ago. But I hated it. And the reason I was exhausted, I was tired. All my wife ever heard.

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Speaker 3

Well, I can tell you what the problem was, is they treat anxiety with the same drugs they do for depression, because things are exactly.

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Speaker 2

What they gave.

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Speaker 3

Me. I know that anxiety, like depression, is a weird fixation. Mine came out of the blue. It was only centered when I was on the stage. Me too. But. And I took a drug called Paxil. There are better ones, but where I hear the bad stories as people start out with a pretty full dose and it's got a sexual dysfunction, it's got a sleep thing it can ever start, it has certain side effects.

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Speaker 3

Well, my doctor was wise enough to give me a quarter, did nothing. We got to a half. And Nancy, we call them Paxil days. Like I'm always two places at once, not A.D.D., but just mind working. And I can be like, right now you probably feel I'm focused on you. I'm not somewhere else, so I can do that.

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Speaker 3

But what happened is I, I was in one place, which was really good because then I wasn't in the place of worrying as it was building up. And so it really didn't impact my thinking. And I'd go back on it tomorrow and it began to go away and I went myself. I asked the doctor said, I wean off, let's see what happens.

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Speaker 3

And about a year I was a year from like, I'm done. I'm never going to do this again. And it's not to say Paxil, it's whatever drugs start on a tiny dose. Let's see if it works and then go up. So I had the I had the sleep issue. I didn't really come to end this sexual dysfunction. It's not huge.

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Speaker 3

Yeah, it impacted my sleep a little bit.

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Speaker 2

Because I because that's when I went to a counselor. The first thing they said is, are you sleeping? Well, I'm like, haven't slept well in 20 years. Yeah. That's why I wrote most of my sermons with you in the morning.

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Speaker 3

Yeah. Yeah. So. So sleep. Sleep is important. I did some, you know, a Carrie Newhart podcast I did for him. I talked about how you don't use an alarm and stuff, and it's amazing how.

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Speaker 2

I listen to the.

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Speaker 3

Many people don't use one now I'm big on sleep. Have have gotten bigger so I even I did a sleep thing and it was like you had 55 episodes an hour. So I use a CPAP and then boom, now I'm back up at 5 a.m., 530 like I used to be.

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Speaker 2

Just wake up automatically.

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Speaker 3

I get 7 hours of great sleep, which I had done and then slowly had crept away. But but what happened with the anxiety? Then I'd have ahead of it three or four times a year, and then it was once a year. I probably haven't had it ten years now, but I could feel it coming on like just this sense of I'm anxious and almost a dizziness, like, am I going to pass out or something?

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Speaker 3

Low blood pressure, but it is worse. Yeah. I was in the emergency room thinking we're having a heart attack. And they. Doughboy, here they go. Well, you're one of the lucky ones, fat boy. We just had an angiogram and, like, it's clean as a whistle. So, yeah, I've been very open. I mean, I'm an open person anyway, but it's like, I'm not ashamed of it.

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Speaker 3

It's it's a chemical imbalance. It's not my fault.

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Speaker 2

Yeah, yeah. No, and I, I, I mean, here's the thing. I told my wife, I'm like, I don't know if I'll ever speak again. Like, I'm just exhausted after ten years of it. And then it, it was, it was that I had coping mechanisms that and they're not unhealthy ones I made up. They were ones that I learned I counselors.

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Speaker 3

And I would draw in. My wife was the only one who knew, like, you know, you're talking like this, like if we're talking like this, don't read it. That's yeah, that. But but I would find if if I'm starting to go whoa, I'm afraid the room's going to spin. And again, it was a fear that little blood pressure drop we've all felt in environments she would know like, Oh, he's talking like this for a few minutes, like he's having.

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Speaker 2

So tell it like, your very first one, Like it came out of the blue. You had no you didn't know what it was.

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Speaker 3

A low blood sugar event. I'm talking and it was like, whoa, I almost feel like I have to set down in front of, you know. Yeah. A decent sized crowd and like, Oh, crap. And then I was driving, know, Oceanside Boulevard and college at a stoplight. The same thing happened. I said, I'm going to pass out. It always felt like low blood pressure.

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Speaker 3

So I put my car in park, and by the time the signal change, I was fine. But it triggered, remember, anxiety is like depression fixation. It triggered a fear that I'm going to pass out on stage and I couldn't get rid of. I spoke other places, never had the problem. When I would speak at North Coast, I was like, sometimes I had the elders lay at hands on me before and a great joy in my life became Monday's good, Tuesday's good Wednesday starting to get bad.

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Speaker 3

Thursday I'm in the shower really slow Saturday morning.

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Speaker 2

Driving was.

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Speaker 3

That, you know, Saturday morning I'm going. I'm just going, Oh, crap. And I just the Lord, I go, I can't do this more than you get one year and I need to find something else. I do because I can't stand standing on the stage. It just scares me to death. And then the drugs stop the fixation again. That's why I try to encourage people.

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Speaker 3

You've. You've had them. But don't be afraid of drugs. Be afraid of too much, too fast, where you don't figure your balance. Yeah, because what happened is, like I said, you have to have quarter nothing. The half pill. I just didn't go somewhere else besides where I was. And then I realized, like, it's Saturday afternoon, I have worried all week.

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Speaker 3

So I still had little incident, but it just it just took that mental bill that was subconscious. Yeah. And those who know me, which you don't, but I hear this all the time, like I've never met such a chill gig, a church pastor, and, like, I'm the last person you'd ever have an anxiety attack. I mean, I'm the one who tells people, Do your best, take a nap.

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Speaker 3

Yeah, Like, Yeah, but serotonin levels were off.

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Speaker 2

So how long did it take for you to.

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Speaker 3

It was about a year. And then I started feeling like, man, I'm just not having much, can I? And I went to the doctor and he said, Well let's try this. And we tried a quarter and I'm still okay. And then I stopped. I had one there. The problem with Paxil, some of them newer ones, are better. The the fear with Paxil, it takes like 11 days for it to start working.

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Speaker 3

So I always had this like, like, oh, crap, what if it goes back and, you know, I've got the pills still here, but it's going to take 11 days still. I'm, I'm good, but I. Yeah, I said it worse, huh? Yeah, it was. It was it was a dose every day for that year. Half dose. Cut it in half and at the peak before like I said I woke up one night typical stupid male thinking I'll fight through this with an elephant on my chest.

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Speaker 3

And then I had and I didn't go to the doctor because I didn't have pain on my shoulder. Nance and I got the book and I idiot. So I still this they wonder what that was about. But that's a common thing with it. And then I was with Bob Buford, If you know that from Leadership at Work, a special small group meeting of people with him and Leadership Network and my buddies with me, and we were just like, whoa, I think.

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Speaker 3

And so we went in, thank you. A heart attack. And they do this stuff and it's like, No, you're not. Yeah, no. And I was like, Oh, okay, yeah. That's when I said I, I need a doctor.

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Speaker 2

Well, Larry, that, that right there was for me at least, that was the price of everything here, because I'm the same as I see people that knew me before I'm super laid back. Even I didn't even understand depression or anything. It was like this used to be happy, you know? And I didn't say that to people. That's how I felt in Yeah, but but laid back didn't struggle.

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Speaker 2

But I never my anxiety had nothing doesn't hit me anywhere else in life except for the stage which is that which is pretty frustrating because that.

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Speaker 3

That's that was exactly mine the stage. And so I was just able to slightly wean myself back. And, you know, I miss I mean, I still preach 18 times, you know, a year for North Coast. And probably the last ten years I was doing 23 because we always you know, we started back in 85, but.

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Speaker 2

I've had to teaching since 85.

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Speaker 3

We were the first church in the country to do that. And so the three things we did first, a lot of people, we were the first team church to have a teaching team. I used to write for Leadership Journal.

:: 09:45:07

Speaker 2

Okay, hold on. Let me stop you here because I'm going to write this down. I want to hit this. I want to get this on. Okay? Because this has to do with innovation, too.

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Speaker 3

Yeah. Oh, yeah, That's my thing.

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Speaker 2

Because and I think that's one of the things that you're you've.

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Speaker 3

Yeah, that's one of my books is. Yeah. Yeah.

:: 09:59:06

Speaker 1

Wow. Wasn't that powerful. Our conversation with Larry Osborne. If you don't struggle with anxiety, I can promise you that someone close to you, a family member or a close friend is struggling immensely with this. I hope that you will take some of the principles that Larry and I talked about and implement them in your life, or perhaps help someone else that you know and love walks through this very difficult thing called anxiety.

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Speaker 1

We would love to hear from you if you have some comments you can post below or you can email me at info at no gray areas dot com. Make sure that you like and follow and especially subscribe to no gray areas and remember to live on purpose.

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Speaker 2

For a purpose.