Steve-O: Childhood Trauma, Addiction, Mocking Death & Craving Attention!

Steve-O opens up to Steven Bartlett about a destabilized childhood marked by his mother's alcoholism, an absent traveling father, and a relentless need for attention. He explains how a deep fear of mortality and feeling 'defective' pushed him into increasingly dangerous stunts and, later, a catastrophic addiction to cocaine and nitrous oxide. He recounts his 2007 downward spiral broadcast to 200 influential people via his 'rad email list', the arrest and eviction, and the 2008 intervention that began his sobriety. The conversation closes on grief over his mother, the role of his fiance Lux in teaching him to love, and the difference between being driven and being dragged by fear.

• Steve-O lost his mother in November 2003 after she spent her last five years severely disabled following a 1998 brain aneurysm.
  00:13:39
• He frames his dangerous stunts as 'lashing out at death,' mocking and taunting his own mortality.
  00:25:42
• In 2007 he inundated a 'rad email list' of roughly 200 influential industry people, broadcasting his downward spiral in real time.
  01:00:23
• He was arrested for vandalism after punching a hole through a neighbor's wall, then re-arrested when police found cocaine on him.
  01:08:11
• The email proposing a motorcycle jump and threatening to jump from a window was actually the trigger for his intervention, not a stunt shoot.
  01:11:18
• His sobriety date is March 10th, 2008, following the March 9th intervention, now over 15 years clean.
  01:13:52
• He credits his fiance Lux with increasing his capacity to love and teaching him how to be in a healthy relationship.
  01:30:18

• Steve-O holds three valid passports (British, Canadian, American) because of where he and his parents were born.
  00:05:12
• He moved to Brazil at six months old because his father became president of Pepsi Cola for all of Brazil, and was raised by live-in maids.
  00:06:16
• After a breakup he mailed escalating stunt videos to the ex from the post office once a year because online video sharing didn't exist yet.
  00:18:21
• He cites studies that people with over $10 million net worth feel more financially insecure than those with less.
  00:33:06
• Steve-O's mother had her aneurysm on October 10th, 1998, and the family converged from New Mexico and England.
  00:43:34
• At his worst in 2007 he was renting four apartments in one building, including one converted into an in-apartment skate park.
  01:01:59
• He would inhale around 600 nitrous oxide cartridges in a sitting, deliberately trying to lose consciousness.
  01:04:04
• He decided stand-up comedy was the craziest stunt of all because standing and speaking into a microphone terrified him more than any physical stunt.
  01:18:32
• For his second comedy special he edited in interstitial footage of the real stories unfolding, creating a multimedia format.
  01:23:54

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