Justin Peck: Transforming Bipolar Challenges into Mental Health Advocacy and Community Support

Welcome to Why Not Me, embracing autism and mental health worldwide. Hosted by Tony Mietour, broadcasting from the heart of Music City, USA, Nashville, Tennessee. Join us as our guest share their raw, howlful stories. Our song was spark laughter, others will move you to tears. These real life journeys inspire, connect and remind you that you're never alone. We're igniting a global movement to empower everyone to make a lasting difference by fostering deep awareness, unwavering acceptance and profound understanding of autism and mental health. Tune in, be inspired, and join us in transforming the world one story at a time. Hi, I'm Tony Mietour. Welcome to Why Not Me, embracing autism and mental health worldwide. I'm taking a short break for the holidays, but I want to share a few standout episodes I think are worth hearing. This episode features Justin Peck, a professional race car driver who has turned his personal challenges with Class 1 by Polar Disorder into a powerful advocacy from mental health. I also want to take this time to wish everyone a happy holiday and joyful new year. So before we dive into our episode, we'll be back with an uninterrupted show right after a word from our sponsors. Justin Peck joins us today to discuss his daily approach to maintaining mental wellness and resilience. Thanks for joining us. Absolutely. Absolutely. I hope you're an advocate for special needs, autism, and mental health. What led you to be an advocate for all these people that ultimately need this help? Oh, boy. I think we're going on 28 years now. I was diagnosed with Class 1 by Polar. So I went through suicide attempts, went through a lot of just crazy emotions, crazy feelings, but I was a professional race car driver. You can't say that you're crazy when you're doing a crazy sport, if that makes any sense. That makes total sense. So it took me quite a few years, brother, like probably 15 years before I kind of just grasp the concept of, this is what I'm living with. This is what God has blessed me with. And so I ended up forming the National Mental Health Alliance. I mean, that's ultimately how I got into it is being a patient, being someone that experiences what mental illness is like. My family struggles with it. My daughters, my sons, so it's personal to me. Yeah, I think we all can relate to that in some form. The irony behind everything is I think that's mostly how people get into the certain trays that they're in. They'll come up with a trauma or a family experience and they're so passionate about that experience. That's the course correction and that's where they end up going in life. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. So at what age, I guess, did you start feeling like you was maybe different than the rest or things weren't falling in line like others? So I was probably nine is my earliest recollection, but where I felt that I was different is I was highly sensitive. My emotions, I still to this day and you'll probably see that as we discuss further on, but I wear my emotions very, very, very close on my shoulders. I don't hold any of them back. At nine, I was an emotional sensitive kid. And then went through that process and I so I kind of started pulling away from there. And then when I turned 13, that was my very first manic episode. And I remember it very vividly actually when that happened, not only did my friends see me different, but my family saw me different because I was different. Yeah, that's a tough thing to go through as a kid. It was a struggle, but if you think about it, I mean, that was 40 something years ago, right? And times have changed. Mental health, the word bipolar wasn't even a word back there. It wasn't even a vernacular word that people would even discuss. All people have the ability to talk about it, which is amazing. Yeah, I get that. I mean, my podcast that you're on now is mainly focused on autism. Right. It covers just like you're saying, the varied ways that people deal with it and find out. And I think the most important thing that we're getting out of this is that mental health is very important, no matter what it happens to be. Just like you were saying earlier, mental health issues, no matter what it is, have not been talked about and has not been brought to the forefront. So with that said, you brought up your friends and family, how did that affect them? How did that affect you? Did you have bullying or do you have issues in school because of it? How did you work your way through that? Oh, yeah, brother. All through my high school, junior high elementary. It was, it was some very cases. I mean, it would be things now that people would probably get arrested for because back then bullying was just bullying, right? It's, they always had someone bigger than you. My family structure was very solid. They didn't understand, by no means, you know, growing up with, you know, a dad that was a truck driver and it's, you know, lean and mean type things, growing up with a grandpa that went through the Great Depression in, you know, 1918 type stopped. And all the dilemmas and all the things that they went through and then they look at us as a new generation coming through and they like suck it up. You know, it's that, it's that whole mentality. And so I had great support, but they didn't understand. I mean, I didn't understand. And it wasn't until I actually dove into it and was willing to talk about it that my family actually grasped onto the concept of what I was going through. My mother still fills that that she was, that she wasn't able to recognize it. And again, I mean, it was 40 years ago and how do you do that? So when you had your first episode, everybody was kind of shocked and didn't know what to do. How do they handle it? If they're not used to it, they don't know what it's about. They're confused. What was their dynamic in the way that they approached to make it better for you? Well, it's so in, in school, nothing, honestly, nothing. Teachers, educators, the people that I would typically look for, or look to for support in the, in a school atmosphere. There was none. There was zero back then. But again, my family, it was more than trying to think how to even explain this. It wasn't that they didn't know what to do. So okay, I guess I'll back up a little bit on the manic phase. I went from being a kid that was pretty quiet. It didn't really say much. I'm kind of kept to myself. I felt like it was more of a depressive state, more of a mental state. But then overnight, I turned into the mania phase and I got into a lot of trouble, skip school all the time. I was a hulgan. And I think my parents probably took that as just teenage years and going through puberty and all those things, which it's ironic that it actually happened in that period of time because I still have a firm belief that the mental components has a lot to do with hormone balances and the changing of body and how hormones actually affect our brain. Oh, yeah. In the autistic world, when a kid hits their teens, it's a huge change with all the hormones going on. So if you stop and think about it, it's tough for the neurotypical world. So just imagine adding autism, bipolar, or any other special needs situation for the scenario. It was an interesting experience. I think I remember most of it. There's trauma, right? I think and I think everybody has trauma through childhood and through growing up, just in different circumstances. Yeah, absolutely. I feel like I was blessed to be able to have this. It's been hard. It's a hard-drowed attack. But at the end of the day, brother, it's made me the man that I am today. And it's given me the platform to be able to talk about it. Yeah. So when you were going through your changes during your teen years, did it affect your ability to relate to the other kids and did it affect your interaction with females? You know, if you wanted to go on a date or anything like that. Oh, man, I was so shy. I was so shy. I had two friends through my high school years that were close and that probably put up with me. I didn't really have very many friends after that. I was fortunate to have a girlfriend in, I think, my senior year, even after I graduated high school. The social side of the disorder is pretty overwhelming at times. Because with a depression or even the mania, when you realize that you're different in that way, you start to overcompensate for things. And you don't actually need to. People just look at you as who you are, but deep down, it's just like they say, we're always our worst critic, right? Yeah, right. And so growing up, I was my worst critic. And so I would always look at the situations or the things that my mind was going through and thinking to myself, how could these people even come close to understanding what I'm thinking? And so through those interactions and through those things, it was not only a healing process, but I think it was a really, really good learning experience. For me and those people to walk beside me on that as well. Yeah. I mean, that makes total sense. Now what I find really interesting is that you had all these things going on in your life. And later in your teens, you got into racing. So with everything that you had going personally, emotionally, and to get into racing, which has a huge adrenaline rush. So how did all those scenarios and dynamics mix? So racing, you know, I actually get this question quite a bit. I answered different ways every single time. But racing for me, I realized it at a young age, that was my medication. I was able to not perfect my craft by no means. I felt like I was fast and I was good at what I was able to do. I realized that in that group of people, there was no judgment. There was no bullying. There was none of that in that atmosphere. I mean, these are of course just personal beliefs. But when you take artists, when you take, like I see the records in behind you, when you have artists, when you have people that are thrill seekers that have that ability to do things that more, it's actually kind of crazy. It's the special ability, right? So I've always looked at autism as people with special abilities, meaning like superpowers. They do things way better than I can do on certain things. Starting for me, I realized that the camaraderie that I had with my fellow racers gave me a place to belong. When you have that sense of belonging, then the self doubt starts to go away. When self doubt starts to go away, now confidence builds and it's just that slow progression of climbing that ladder. With the type of racing that I do, I mean, it's pretty extreme. I mean, when you're doing 120 to 160 miles an hour on the dirt over bumps and jumps, and I mean, death is close. This thing that you feel alive when you're closest to death, that's kind of how it worked for me. Okay. So now there's a point in time and you'll have to clarify this for me because I don't know the timeline. But evidently, you had a time that you was feeling your lowest and you drove to this mountain top with the whole idea of ending your life and then all of a sudden, it didn't happen. Right. Okay. So first, what led you to that? And then second, when it didn't happen, what led you to put the gun down and say, you know, now it's a time I have to make a difference. I haven't had that question posed to me like that in a very, very long time. So thank you for that. That's an amazing question. So I woke up one morning, I was married, so I was 26 years old. So I had, I think two babies at that time, maybe three. And I had been, I had been fighting the, the depressive side of a pretty hard. My wife at the time didn't really understand. I didn't talk about it very often. Okay. I remember waking up one morning and just had the feeling of despair and grabbed my dog. I was a construction guy. So grabbed my dog and threw him the back of the truck and went to go check on my job sites. And I found myself at the top of the canyon. So isolation is a pretty powerful thing. It could be very negative. It could be positive as well. I isolated myself from a lot of people during that moment. And it wasn't even a planned thing. It was I was sitting at the top of the canyon watching my dog run around with all the joy in the world. I was like, the beautiful scenery, the trees, the valley. And it's always kind of intrigued me because I don't necessarily have the answer of why that moment happened. But the moment was as simple like I give up, reached into the center console of my, of my truck, grabbed the pistol, loaded it, put it to my head and pulled the trigger. What that did for me, it did a few things. But I remember that depressive feeling before I pulled the trigger and then when you pulled the trigger, that adrenaline, the massive amount of adrenaline that hit me. And the very first emotion that I had as I was mad, I was, I was generally angry at myself. But how could I screw this one up to, right? Like, there's a bullet in there. I know it. So when I enchambered the bullet and it flew in front of my face and landed in my lap, I picked it up and I looked at it and I saw where the firing pin head had hit the primer. And there's no reason it shouldn't have went off. The two things that it did for me is it helped me understand that there's higher powers it be. There's certain special things in our life that we get to experience that are unexplainable. The second thing that it did for me was the adrenaline that hit me it instantly. And I'm telling you brother, like I'm talking instantly took me out of that depressive state enough to be able to gather my composure, load my dog and drive down the canyon. And I guess the third thing it did was when I got cell phone service at the bottom of the canyon, the very first person I called was my doctor. That led me to again, where I'm at today without even being diagnosed. So I was at diagnosed until that until that incident. I lived till the age of 26 with just not knowing. This gave me the avenue to actually understand what was going on. And I think that was really a huge pivotal moment in my life of actually having a name or a face to the name. And you can research it and slowly progress as we go. Well, that's truly an amazing story. I'm glad it worked out the way that it did. So how long after that was it that you got into racing? So I've always been an entrepreneur. I've been a business guy since I was 18. I was very fortunate to start my own company at 19 and have it worked for another sole sense other than myself. Wow, that's awesome. So construction was always something that I knew and then I got good at it. And then I was able to speak the language, speak the vernacular quite well and became a fairly large builder in my state, knowing that that was a good source of income from me when 2008 came and wiped basically everything off the planet financially for most people, right? Yeah, that was a tough few years. I kind of turned my focus more into helping people get paid in the construction industry. General, I still stick in the construction industry, but racing is probably my priority. I guess maybe my priorities are a little best at, but I love the race car. I really transformed into the, to the full time racer probably 15, 16 years ago. It just slowly evolved into where I'm at. That's great. So of course with racing, everybody thinks what? That's a good source of income. So what kind of racing is it that you are into? So for the people that are listening can look it up and hopefully follow you on what you're doing. The best way for me to describe it is, so I drive trophy trucks and rally cars. So it's the Baja 1000. It's the Vegas, to Reno. It's the, it's the long distance endurance racing in trucks that have huge horsepower. So like for example, the Baja 1000 last year was a 1369 mile race. Took us 38 hours, right? So you're in race car a long time. I was a dirt bike guy for a long time. Had some good sponsorship with like ATM and those guys. But after so many broken bones, you have to get into a cage. I'm glad that you brought that up because actually that was my next question. It says that you have like 84 broken bones in your body. Yeah, but more than that now. Yeah. So how do that affect your mental capacity? I mean, you're dealing with pain, you're dealing just so much discomfort. You're dealing with so many things that will actually throw you out of your normal routine. So how did that affect you? So there's a saying that I've, that I've kept along for most of my life. And I don't, I don't know where I heard this. Um, but have you ever heard the saying embrace the suck? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Right. So I, for some reason, I just, I don't know if it was just beat into me as a, as a young kid or what, but I, I have to take the hard way. I have to do things in the way that is the most difficult that makes it seem like that's the only way I can learn, right? Because I'm not, I'm not an educated man. Um, I barely graduated high school. Um, but I learned very well through experience. And, and so it's just, it's the experiences that, that I've gained over, over that time, that has led me to the path that I'm on right now. I don't think I answered your question. What was your question again? I would have affected you. Oh, well, yeah. Because when you're hurting, it can be depressing. So how did you react to that depressive state because of the pain that you was going through? So this may not make sense, but maybe it does. When your brain hurts, um, mentally, your whole body hurts. It's a miserable process. I found that when I was hurt, when I was broken, I could focus more on the, of the external pain than the internal pain. The broken bone would actually help me and it would keep me motivated to, to be better, knowing that, all right, if I'm going to race, I can't crash. I need to be a little more safe, right? But yes, the pain did affect a lot, but it kept me motivated in a weird sort of way. Okay. So you've created this body of work. It can be your construction. It also can be your racing, the broken bones, everything that you've done is your body of work. And unfortunately, it can be the depression as well. That led you to be an ambassador for mental health of America, correct? Yes, sir. So what do you do to put that out there to help others and coordinate everything all in the package that you do with mental health America? They've kind of shifted a little bit of how their structure worked. I realized a few years ago that I didn't quite fit the mold for their path. And while I'm still an ambassador for those guys, I understood that I needed to, to be more of a more niche in who I was reaching. For me, I work a lot with veterans. I work a lot with young men, a lot of people with substance abuse, those type of things that all correlate to the mental health problems that are plaguing the country right now. I apologize, man. It's one too many concussions. I lose my train of thought every once in a while. Oh, that's no problem at all. So that ultimately led you to starting your own charity. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. So, so two years ago, I kind of pulled away from mental health America and started the National Mental Health Alliance. And so what we try to do there is we try to educate the business in the industry that I've kind of evolved into is more of a toxicology and medication management phase. We've started a few companies that helps with like drug testing and those type of things. In the sense of not necessarily drug testing for a list of a list of substances, but for like mental health medications and those type of things. That's great. So is this a charity that just focuses on your local area or are you trying to branch out and create it to go nationwide? Yeah. So we're definitely trying to reach every corner of the planet that we can. And again, like I said, we're basing everything off of educating being able to educate a spouse if the wife is going through postpartum depression. They don't know where to turn to if they don't, if they don't have the right information, then then what do you mean at the end of the day, you only know what you know. So we try to provide that type of information for people with the with the alliance as well. We're able to help with domestic violence. We're able to help with substance abuse, all the all the different components. I mean, even having the nonprofit was a huge blessing over the last few weeks with me being in North Carolina. You look at the situation that those people are going through right now. And while everybody can see the outside and the physical broken bones and the physical damage, we can't see what's going on up here. It was pretty amazing to be out there and to be able to talk to those people in a way that I felt like they need. One experience that we had out there was there was a line of cars and they were trying to get up a road that was washed out. They had the power company up there and we were waiting to get through to do some some search and rescue. There was a lady that was parked behind our caravan and our team and she got out of the car and she was yelling at us and having a breakdown as I would too as probably anybody would. I remember hearing someone kind of make a comment of saying, man, there's Karen's everywhere and I kind of sat back right and I sat there and it just hit me a little different. And so I got out of my truck and I walked over and I just looked at her and I asked her what her name was and she told me her name and I just opened up my arms brother and that woman grabbed a hold of me and she. She allowed me to take her pain the despair that that woman had and that's all she needed was a hot and someone to tell her that it's okay. Yeah, that's a great story and it's just awesome that you was able to get there to help those people. When I was young, I tried to join the military and when I explained to them a little bit about what my brain was doing. It was an immediate no one will allow you to be in the military and that was always kind of a big thing for me because I felt like that was a way for me to jump into a brotherhood to be denied that was it was kind of devastating. But I realized something about 10 years ago when I had a few of my veteran friends take their own life. I realized that while I was not able to serve my country down range, I'm able to now serve my country and serve those men that have went across by being support for them and be able to talk and fit in with that same group if that sense. Sure, that makes sense. So how do people get in contact with you? So Instagram, Justin pet 49, I'm on Facebook as well, I'm linked in and I'm fairly easy to find. But if anybody ever has any questions reach out via Instagram and I will talk to anybody, anybody at any time by day when I first wake up has to be able to open up my messages and see there may be 51 day, there may be 20 the next and there may be 500 the next day. To just let people know that strangers are still there. I mean, I think the human experience is hard enough to know that you have people that are willing to walk beside you through the valley. It's a huge thing. I never had that growing up. And so it's one of those things that I felt like I felt very compelled to do. Yeah, that's great. Let's talk about your book a little bit. Can you give us a little information on how that came to happen when I wrote my book. It was kind of a weird process at how even wrote the book. My grandmother, I was at my youngest brother's funeral. He had passed away from an overdose of the age of 20 and my grandmother made mention as we're sitting there, she's like, listen, your children need to know how you were as a man, how you were as a child, what was it like for me when I grew up so I could pass that along. She challenged me to keep a journal to be able to write things down. And so the process of the book went down that way. Well, in 2016, I realized that I had 270 pages written down and handed it off to a to an editor and I asked her to kind of clean it up for me. Well, at that time, I was quite fortunate to get a couple phone calls from some publishers. I'm saying that we love the content. You know, your message. We're willing to offer you this. So I had a couple book deals put on my lap. I turned every single one of them down every single one. Main reason why is because they wanted to take over creative right they wanted to take my story and tweak it, which now makes it a fiction book where it's not my story anymore. And so while the big fat check would have been nice at the end of the day, I still needed to stay true to myself and true to my message. You're right there 100% so what's the name of the book? The name is called bulletproof ironically right. Yeah, that's a great title. So how do they find it? So if you go to my site, it's Justin peck.com you can buy it there. I'm on Amazon. I don't think I renewed with Barnes and Nobles. I don't think it's on there anymore. But but either my website or Amazon. Well, that's great. I really appreciate you coming on. This has just been a fascinating conversation. And I'm hoping that everybody that listens to it is going to get as much out of it as I did. Thanks again. No, and I just I just enjoy the conversation. I think at the end of the day, I, I've listened to a few of a few of your podcasts to kind of touch up on on who you are and it means anything to your brother. Like I'm really proud of you, man. Like you job. You you educate you put thoughts and potential actions and people's minds that actually make a difference. So at the end of the day, I don't know where in mind spaces that but at the end of the day, if you ever doubt what you're doing, man, I'm telling you you reach a lot of people and you should be proud of what you do. Yeah, I am and I really appreciate you saying that. I can tell that that your personality and and where your heart is at. The likes and the views are awesome. But at the day, you're not doing it for the likes and the views. You're bringing it to actually help the populace. Absolutely. And I think that's what we have in common is that you're trying to do the same thing as well. So again, I really appreciate you coming on. It's been great. Perfect guy. My friend. I appreciate the time. It's been my pleasure. Thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule to listen to our show today. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you. If you know someone who has a story to share, tell them to contact us at whynotme.world. One last thing, spread the word about whynotme. Our conversations, our inspiring guests, the show you are not alone in this world. Thank you.