Leslie interviews wellness icon Quentin Vennie about his life growing up in West Baltimore on the front lines of the drug trade, and his journey to wellness. They discuss panic attacks and the nature of anxiolytic drugs, and the role that juicing, yoga, and meditation played in his mental health recovery.
Leslie interviews wellness icon Quentin Vennie about his life growing up in West Baltimore on the front lines of the drug trade, and his journey to wellness. They discuss panic attacks and the nature of anxiolytic drugs, and the role that juicing, yoga, and meditation played in his mental health recovery.
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You are listening to the second episode of the Third Season of The Nature of Nurture, a podcast for your mental health. I'm your host, Dr. Leslie Carr, and I am so excited to share today's guest with you. This conversation is with someone who's very dear to me, my friend, and my colleague in wellness, Quentin.
I met Quentin for the first time back in 2015. At the time, I'd been doing a lot of work with the website, mindbodygreen.com. I was blogging for them and we had released an e-course together called How to Live Mindfully in the Digital Age, which is still available on my website and theirs.
They hosted a retreat in Arizona called Revitalize, where we all did yoga together and attended talks, and Quentin was one of the speaker.
His story absolutely blew me away, and I tracked him down afterwards to let him know how much he had moved me. That story is what you're gonna hear today.
Quentin is many things. He's a motivational speaker, a celebrated expert, and one of the rare black voices in wellness. He's an author of the best-selling memoir, Strong in the Broken Places. And more recently, he's the founder of a tea company called Equity, which is 100% Goop certified. Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, I bring you the incomparable, Mr. Quentin Veni.
I think about what it was like when I first met you and the phone conversation that we had. I don't know if you remember that way back in, like it was like 2015. Long before I had ever read your book or anything like that where you basically told me in a nutshell like your life story. And so I kind of wanna just start at the beginning, if you don't mind. I think it could be really valuable for people to start at the beginning. And, you recently put something on Instagram, and so I wanna read what you wrote back to you and then perhaps we can use that as like a jumping off point.
I love it.
But what you had put on Instagram was in celebration of 10 years of sobriety, and what you wrote a slightly truncated quote here, but what you wrote was, "I grew up in West Baltimore. I survived the heroin epidemic. I survived poverty. I survived moments of homelessness. I survived racism and society's expectations of me. I lived through an accidental overdose and two failed suicide attempts. During that period, I prayed tire tirelessly and worked endlessly to make it out. And I did. My ritual saved me. Yoga, meditation, juicing, and even my evening cup of tea."
So can we start there and will you just tell the listeners a little bit about your early life and where you came from?
Yeah. As as it was read, I grew up in West Baltimore. And, during the height of the heroin epidemic. A lot of places were having like the crack epidemic and all of that, but Baltimore was really a helm for, for heroin. My father was a, a heroin addict. And so, so were other members of my family.
And so the, the impact the city that I knew, it impacted every part of my life. It impacted what I experienced every day leaving the house, it impacted what I believed normal was. And it, it was to be young and to experience things that question your humanity was challenging, right?
But then to be in educational environments where there was a level of privilege, I was, I never went to Baltimore City schools except for in preschool. I went to schools in the, in, in Baltimore County, which is the suburb of, of Baltimore City, where the educational opportunities were greater, but so was the reminder of my different.
And so it was at those schools that I experienced racism at the hands of teachers, administrators, principals, counselors. I experienced colorism for the first time having an assistant principal who was black and treated me sometimes worse than her white counterparts. And so everything a, a about my life at that point became a, a matter of survival. Not just surviving my external environment, but also surviving what I was becoming to believe of myself. And, and so often you're, you're told more about the things you can't do and less of the things that you can.
But then when you look at the traditional educational system, then I'm also taught to praise people like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and Christopher Columbus, and, and, and, and was rarely taught about Marcus Garvey. Or the significance of Booker T Washington or the true story of Malcolm X or how Martin Luther King was looked at as a threat by the federal government. Uh, it wasn't the safe bet. We weren't taught about Nelson Mandela. And so, you know, I, I think that that parallel really put it on top of being molested at seven years old. And then questioning what sexuality was.
And so there was a lot of, a lot of questions, not a lot of answers, and not a lot of people that I felt comfortable going to and talking to about it. And so a lot of it for me came out in bursts of, of anger and violence all ultimately it culminated in my, in my adulthood into addiction.
Yeah. And I. God, there's so much that you just said that I wanna unpack a little bit further, but let's actually just stick with that for a second because it's such an important part of your story.
And obviously here we are talking, just even in the quote I read talking about your sobriety. Drug addiction is a really important part of your story, but it's so important to emphasize that just because you grew up in the middle of the heroin epidemic, it's not heroin that you are addicted to.
So can we maybe just transition into the phase of life that kind of brings us to that, brings us to your, the Addiction part of your journey.
Yeah. I often call myself the accidental addict.
Yeah.
I think that might be the title of my next book. Right? Like The Accidental Addict. Because I had experienced addiction in all facets from alcoholism to, you know, to drug addiction in dealing with my family and my upbringing.
And so I was very conscious of a lot of the things that I put into my. And I was very much aware of me having the propensity to become addicted to whatever it is. And, and so my addiction, it was interesting because in school we were often taught to, that the drug dealers that we should be afraid of looked like me.
Right? They were the ones in the Timberland boots and we looked like a Wutang member, right? They were never told, I was never told that my, uh, drug dealer had a lab coat and a PhD in the ability to write prescriptions.
And, and then actually I will, I'll correct you really quickly cuz this is important. An MD most likely, right?
Yeah.
Because it was your general practitioner. Yeah. So I just wanna clarify that part, that it was actually a medical doctor that is at the heart of this story.
Yeah, a hundred percent. And I remember him distinctly saying like, I want you to get all of your prescriptions from me, regardless of what it is, antibiotic or lorazepam. And he was the one that ended up prescribing me Vicodin.
And I, I found out pretty quickly that he wasn't my doctor, he was my dealer. And even when I went to him and expressed to him that I was having an issue with these pills, his response was, are you experiencing anxiety attacks anymore? Are you having panic attacks anymore?
Yeah. And actually, let me pause you there cuz there's something that I just wanna make sure is clear for the listeners that a lot of what this started with was the fact that you were having panic attack.
Yeah.
And, and really debilitating it sounds like panic attacks. So it's, so it started actually with a Lorazepam prescription, right?
It was started with an, with an anxiolytic, as we call it, in the biz, like an anti-anxiety medication, a benzodiazepine, which is an extremely addictive drug.
Yep. That's, that was that was it. It was, I had been having so su such severe panic attacks that I was sleeping in my car, in the parking lot of the emergency room, felt like a a month straight.
I would leave my house around like seven at night, and I would sleep in my car and the emergency room parking lot just in case I had a panic attack. I could get there quickly. The fear was when I had my first panic attack in the gym. The ambulance actually rolled past me, and I didn't know I was having a panic attack. I didn't know that I was struggling with anxiety. I thought I was dying and was having a heart attack.
And so that fear of help not being close triggered my panic even more. So that was, that's the, the foundation of it all. It was, it was, I was told that this little white pill would, would cure me. I was told that my diagnosis was so severe that I'd need to be on medication for the rest of my life to be normal.
And after having these debilitating experiences to be told that there was something that could help me to never feel that fear again. I was like, yeah, sign me up.
Yeah. So there was, when I was reading your book during this part, I felt. Something akin to rage. I like almost threw the book of the wall a couple of times because, so just to kind of unpack this part for the listener and, and, and help to, um, for them to understand this a little bit better.
So, you start having these panic attacks, like you said the first one happened at the gym. I don't doubt for a second that you thought you were having a heart attack that I think a lot of people know at this point that that's pretty common, but, so that was your first experience of a massive panic attack. You go to the emergency room, I, I can't even imagine however many times before somebody finally said to you like, you need to be talking to your GP.
You need to be talking to your, your general practitioner. So you find this doctor, Dr. Barnes, if you have not sued him yet, I am inclined to do it myself. But so a couple of things I wanna highlight.
One, is that he made this prescription for Lorazepam with no referral to a mental healthcare practitioner of any kind. He didn't help you to understand that psychotherapy could be helpful for you, that anything could be helpful for you other than this drug. And to take things one step further, he told you, to your point that you're making right now, that basically you would have to take that drug forever in order to be quote unquote normal. And that it was a normal part of the experience to eventually need more and more and more of the drug to the point that you, I can't even fathom how many milligrams a day you were taking by the time all of this broke. And we'll get there in a second. But I think something that I just wanna share with you is that you really are the survivor of, but I'll just say the victim of gross medical malpractice.
Now, I don't know if anyone has ever, as someone who is a certified member of the mental health industrial complex, I just wanna apologize to you on behalf of the entire system to say that what happened to you was criminal.
Yeah, I, um, I appreciate that. And a few years ago, it, it did register to me that it was criminal. And that my life didn't matter. I was an, I was an easy check.
And, from what I understand, he's no longer practicing. And I don't know what the, what the premise or the cause behind it was. I don't know if it was racial. I, I don't know if it was economic. I don't know if he was just a psychopath. I, I, I have no idea. I am grateful and blessed and fortunate to be alive.
And I know that if it wasn't for whatever this call on my life is, I probably wouldn't be. But when you, when you think about the full extent of, of my addiction, I was taking upwards of 18 milligrams a day.
I mean, that's, it's, that's, oh God, it's like a mind-bending amount of medication. Like just to sort of put things into context for people that's like, that's a lot of, a lot like could kill a, could kill a horse kind of.
Yeah. And, and just a thing, and I just really wanna emphasize this, the idea that he was encouraging you to continue to do that, like you went to him and said like, I need to get off these pills, and he was just like, if you do, you're gonna face consequences.
A hundred percent. Mm-hmm. He wanted to put me on Xanax as opposed to Ativan.
And it was so much that the day that I said, I'm gonna stop, like I tried to quit cold Turkey. and ended up being admitted to the hospital. I was not really in my conscious mind. I was just out of it and, and when I got to the emergency room and I explained to them the fullness of what I was experiencing, they said like, coming off of that high amount of Lorazepam, and quitting cold Turkey could literally kill.
Yeah, it's actually really interesting to think that other than alcohol, there's like an irony here. A lot of people don't realize this. Benzodiazepines are actually one of the only drugs where you can actually die from withdrawing from it. Like with heroin for example. It's ex I, I have heard, I do not know firsthand, but it is an extremely uncomfortable experience. I think that's putting it lightly. It will not kill you, tnough. But with benzodiazepines, you can die from withdrawal. So it's amazing to think that here you are going to your doctor saying, I need to get off this stuff. And he wasn't giving you any like tapering regimen or anything that would've helped you get off of that in a way that wasn't so violent for you.
No, he didn't. I had to, I had to figure it out on my own and, and exactly what you just said is what I read. And so I was like, now I'm, now I'm in this, this mind melt of the one thing that I was told would cure me, it's actually killing me. And then my desire to stop taking it could also kill me. So it's like I'm, I'm in a space of like, either way, like I could just, this could be it.
And I think that's where my prayer life became so strong. And, and, and that's where I was starting to look for these alternatives and, and went down the, the path of finding a holistic way of doing it while creating a tapering schedule for myself.
Yeah. And would you feel, since there's something kind of between here and there, would you feel comfortable talking about the moment that maybe precipitated that shift?
Yeah, it was, it was actually my second suicide attempt. I had a, a, a, a registered handgun and I had been taking pills and been drinking and had gotten into a really bad argument. And I left the house and had my handgun in my waistband, and I went to the gas station, maybe a to my miles from where I was living at the time. And I was, I was a smoker back then, so I was smoking cigarettes, I think it was cigarette.
And I went and, and I pulled in and, and was crying and smoking and crying and made up in my mind what I was coming there to do. I got out of the car, I went in the, in the gas station. I bought another pack of cigarettes and came back out in the car and continued like smoking. And when I went and reached into my waistband to find the gun, it wasn't there.
And so now I'm afraid. I'm like, I came here to do one thing. And, and I can't even find it. So I'm going through my car, I'm trying to find it. I went back into the store to make sure I didn't like leave it on the counter or whatever, grabbing my wallet, you know, and, and, and during all of this, I became so frantic trying to find the gun that I forgot what I was angry about.
And so I drived back home, like, let me just get out of this area. I go in the house and I go in the kitchen to get like some water, and I see my handgun loaded. Off safety on the counter in the kitchen. And to this day, I, I have no recollection of ever going in the kitchen. I have no recollection ever taking my handgun outta my waistband, but it was that day that I essentially threw my hands up and I said, God, you went.
I heard about like this divine intervention before and never believed it until I experienced it. And I was like, this is my second time trying. The first time I took a handful of pills, mixed it with the alcohol passed out. Woke up the next morning in my own vomit. But you know, it was like in that moment it all clicked for me and I was like left to my own desire.
I couldn't kill myself correctly. Yeah. I'm obviously here for a reason and there was, and I was like, I need to figure out what this reason is.
I lived through survivor's guilt. I still have survivors guilt to this day, right? Because I know more people that are in prison who have been murdered than have graduated from college.
And here, I've never been in prison. I've never been shot, and I didn't graduate from college, and yet I lived the life that I'm living. Right? And so that was the day that I, I'd made up in my mind that the life that I'd lived up to that point wasn't sufficient and that I needed to figure out what was next.
Yeah. So what did happen next?
So after I, um, talked to my doctor and, and he told me, He would just give me something else after I sat in the car for like two hours and cried. I, I, I, I made it my mission to figure it out, and I watched a ton of documentaries. I read up on anxiety and what, you know, GAD was and what panic disorder was, and I wanted to find other people who have healed themselves holistically and naturally.
I watched everything from Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead to Food Incorporated to Crazy Sex of Cancer, to, you know, and, and really just jumped headfirst into the world of wellness and, and wellbeing and, and wanted to learn everything that I could about what I was struggling with, and I've been on that route ever since.
Yeah, and it's, there are a couple of things about this. I wanna highlight cuz I think they're so powerful. So if I have it straight in this order, you started juicing, you started doing yoga, and then you started meditating and those are the things that are, but your trinity of of wellness, your trilogy of wellness, I guess your trinity, right?
Trinity.
And it's really interesting. So it sounds like you had to, or this is just the sense that I have. So you had to kind of put yourself on a tapering regimen because you knew that you couldn't stop the benzo's cold turkey. But by doing things like adding juicing, starting to eat more healthfully it, it smoothed the on-ramp basically to start like tapering the benzos down and then eventually you got off of those altogether.
I think one of the things that I just really wanna emphasize for people, because there's, when you're talking about the sort of effectively, the Googling journey that you went on, it's interesting to think that you started to learn a lot, to say the least about health and wellness and food and nutrition and again, like meditation, yoga, all of that stuff.
I think a lot of people think about that as something that can, that can improve our physical wellbeing, but the role that it plays in our mental wellbeing, I think is sometimes underestimated. So I just can't help but wanna highlight that. Like there's all been all of this interesting research that's come out over the course of the past five or 10 years, and I'm sure you're really familiar with this, like the role that the microbiome plays in our mental health.
So it's interesting to think that, it just feels like there was this certainly a revolution that was happening on the one hand, where all of these things were coming together for you. But also it's, I think something that I'm often impressed by in terms of the things that make us sick or the things that make us well, is we, people are usually either doing a cluster of things that lead towards illness, be it smoking cigarettes, drinking too much. It could be anything.
Or it's like you start to make a step in the right direction and then one good habit leads to another good habit, leads to another good habit. And I just think like that part of this stage of your journey is super interesting.
Yeah, it, it's, I, I love how you put it. What's interesting about it, like I was a personal trainer prior to going into this journey, so I've already known the role that like food had on the body.
Never made the connection to the mind until I was going through it. The juicing people often ask me like, was was your withdrawal horrible? And I don't have any recollection. What I would do is I would wake up, I would make about 32 ounces of green juice. I would drink that. I wouldn't take a pill until I felt like I was gonna pass out, and then I would like take maybe two. Just to give my body just enough to get the edge off.
And then I would stretch it out longer and that became a conscious part of my day-to-day. I would stretch it out and stretch it out. So maybe the first day was an hour, then maybe two weeks later it was four hours, and then maybe another month and a half later I could stretch it 12 hours. And but in the process of those of of, of going through that I'm drinking a ton of juice and then I'm doing like yoga and meditation to just keep myself occupied, active, and busy. So now I'm not even aware of it until it's nine, 10 o'clock at night, and then I might take a pill or two or whatever it is that I needed just to get through the night and I'd wake up and do it again. What I started to learn was, like you mentioned, the importance of the microbiome.
At that time, I wasn't eating meat. I wasn't eat-- I was a hundred percent vegan. Raw vegetables, cooked vegetables, a ton of juice and beans and legumes and like, that was like, that was my life. And I felt so good. And, and I think people like, at least that I've come in contact with, like, they take for granted what it feels like to feel good.
Yeah. Yeah. Right. Like some, if you have a rough day and you come home and you take a shot and you take a couple drinks, you might feel good to solid.
Mm-hmm.
But that's not feeling good. I felt amazing. I woke up in the day and felt alive. I'm taking like the sun's energy and I'm drinking it every day. First thing I put in my body, right?
I felt what it felt like to be alive. That was the first time that I remember feeling that.
And to say what you just said slightly differently, cuz I think that this is also true. I think a lot of people are accustomed to feeling a little crappy pretty much all the time. And if their diets aren't very good and they're drinking a decent amount and or maybe they're just whatever, their diet's kind of crappy. There can be this feeling of like dragging yourself through life and that is what's normal. And I think unfortunately, especially in the United States, that's what's normal for a lot of people. So I really hear you that this feeling of like, wow was, were you not in that state?
And it was like, it's a, there's a line Drake has in a song. He says everybody dies, but not everybody lives.
Mm. Yeah.
And I felt like what had been, what I was accustomed to, Was mine. Was was the norm. Oh, I'm accustomed to struggling. I'm accustomed to migraines. I'm accustomed to atomic stomach discomfort. I'm, I had an ulcer when I was 16. I was diagnosed with chronic migraines. Like this was just my normal, and I had grown accustomed to that being just, this is the human experience.
And so to see something completely different, it was almost like, Living my life with rose colored glasses on. Finally taking those off and being able to see the hues of blue and, and different types of greens and like seeing everything in li live and in color for the first time.
And I was like, I don't ever want to go back and put these freaking glasses back on. I want to continue to experience what this is like. And that that just, that became, that became the new addiction.
Yeah, absolutely.
It was no longer like, I need to take these pills to get through life. It was like, I wanna see what the rest of my life feels like to actually live it. Live and in a color.
Yeah. Very cool.
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And so after that you became a certified in yoga instructor, right?
I went and took my 200-hour yoga in New York City.
Yeah, because eventually you started doing work with like inner city youth and that kind of stuff, and a lot of that was via the yoga and meditation.
Did you sort of take that to kids?
Yeah. When I did my 200 hour. I loved, I loved everything about the practice. I think, uh, I, I think it was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. And then I tried to take that and bring it back to the gym environment, right, for people who were working out and wanted something different. And it didn't work.
So I didn't like being a teacher. I loved the experience of it. I loved what it did. I loved what it taught me and how it made me feel, but I didn't like being in a room with people and I couldn't touch 'em, and I had to explain how to do this. And I'm, I was a personal trainer. I was used to that one-on-one style. And so, then I was like, well, how else can I be an anchor for other people who look like me, who would not ordinarily have access to, to this practice, who it could also be life changing for?
And then it was like, I can connect myself to other teachers and, and go into the school system and really bridge that gap. Right? Because it's one thing to go into a school in an urban community, and talk about yoga when you don't come from the community, the likelihood of them listening and taking it seriously is, is very slim.
Absolutely.
For me to go into a school, whether in New York City, in Newark, New Jersey, or in Baltimore City where I worked in all three of those cities doing this work, when I walked into that room in my blackness, in in, in my, my polo sweater, in my Timberland boots, I'm, you know, There's a level of relatability.
100%. Yeah.
You know, and so, mm-hmm. , I give them permission to be vulnerable because they see that someone that comes from where they come from that has experienced things similar, has found success in vulnerability.
For sure. Yeah. So I wanna go back for a minute before we get more up to modern day and what you're doing right now, because there are a couple of specific things in your story that I wouldn't, I wouldn't wanna miss out on the opportunity to talk to you about.
So one of them is that in your book, one of the things that you write about is, on the one hand, a lot of what you were struggling with CL clearly was issues related to race in terms of society's expectations of you, but also what it's like to be a man in terms of everything that you had learned about what it meant to be strong.
And I'm wondering if you can talk about that a little bit, because that part feels really important to.
Yeah, I think it, it's important to really understand the foundation of it. For me, my mother, her mom died at 16 when she was 16, when my mother was 16. And my grandmother was an alcoholic and my grandfather was an alcoholic.
And so my mother grew up in West Baltimore as well. An older sister, an older brother, both kind of like living their own lives a bit. She had to learn what it was, what it meant to be tough. She had to learn how to survive on her own. And she didn't have that coddle, loving, touching, caring. I love you so much relationship as a child.
And meaning that your mom hadn't gotten it in terms of how she was raised.
Okay.
Correct. And so then when she got with my father and, and they were in a bit of an abusive relationship. She, she understood the dynamics of the city. She knew exactly what the city had to offer. And she knew what it felt like to, to, to be poor and, and wanted to ensure that she instilled a strength in me, permeated my entire existence.
Like, I remember her telling me like, never look like your circumstance. Never let 'em see you cry. Like those types of things. Even when my father was, would promise to come pick me up and wouldn't, and I would cry and she would grab me and say, don't cry. You didn't do anything wrong. This is his loss. But in that, in those moments, I needed comfort.
Yeah. And you are being taught what so many people are taught, which is to push your feelings down. Don't face this. Don't actually look at it. Don't feel it. Make it go away.
Yeah, a hundred percent. Because it was like, where's the, the mindset is like when you step into a a, a world that is a battlefield, where's the value in tears? Where's the value? Yeah.
Like what? What's the adaptive advantage in letting someone see you cry? Doesn't exist in that context, yeah.
Is it gonna get you sympathy? No. Not when you're a black man in America. Crying is not gonna get you sympathy. It it didn't get, it didn't get our ancestors' sympathy when?
When mothers were being snatched from their children, when fathers were being raped and castrated.
Yeah, Jesus Christ.
Yeah. So we grew up from intergenerationally dealing with the trauma that's embedded in our DNA. It's in our bloodline. And then living in a society in America.
Yeah.
That still perpetuates the same thing.
Tears doesn't get me sympathy.
Yeah.
And so like I had to push that stuff down or be a victim.
And so like that was, and I knew these things, right? Like I knew my history. I got in trouble in school for standing up against the fact that Christopher Columbus wasn't a hero. I almost got suspended because I refused to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. Because I knew it was written by a person who didn't believe that black people were equal. Didn't believe that black people were human, even though we sacrificed our lives.
Yeah.
And built this country.
So there was, there was a lot there. And I couldn't be angry because if I was angry then I'd be killed. Or, or, or arrested. I couldn't be emotional because if I was emotional, then I'd be taken advantage of.
So I had to be strong. That was the only option. And as a child being taught that, it was almost like I was, I was being taught how to fight in a war.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
The World War I ended World War ii. Ended Vietnam War ended the war. Being black in America hasn't ended.
Right. Absolutely. Yeah. I really appreciate that because I think that there is an element of this idea that, you know, to express emotions, sadness, those kinds of emotions, you know, is a sign of weakness. Like we exist with that in our culture, period. I think men, generally speaking, get that message even more so than women do. And to your point, I just want you to know that I really hear you. It's not just a matter of being male, it's a matter of being black and male that you just get this like extra hefty dose of all of that stuff.
Yeah. A hundred percent. And toxic masculinity wasn't, we didn't bring that with us from Africa.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
We didn't have it. Right. So when you look at like how our history in America started. . We couldn't have toxic masculinity. We couldn't, we couldn't have that. The only time we could right, is when we were placed in a space fighting one another for survival for our slave master's entertainment.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
But like outside of that, we could, we couldn't stand up to our to, to the slaveholder.
No, I think there's a really strong argument to be made that what we think of as toxic ma masculinity is very much so a byproduct of a sort of barbaric white culture, that the roots of it are, are distinctly white in, uh, in their own way.
Yeah, I mean, and I, I, I, I mean, I, from my lived experience, I would have to say, I don't know the historical context. I just know that the ways in which we, we are, we are forced to exist or have been taught to exist is very barbaric. Mm-hmm. and what's, what's what I love about it is that because I had to go through it and I had to experience it, and I learned that vulnerability was actually strength. My anger and my frustration or the toxicity of what it means to be masculine. Now I can teach my children the opposite.
I was gonna ask about that. Yeah. What it's like to be a dad, having learned that. Yeah. And a dad to boys specifically, perhaps.
It's, it's beautiful. Yeah. Because my kids taught me how to be soft. And I don't look at the softness as a bad thing, right? It's like, thank God I can, I can, I can. I can hold my kids in my arm and, and they can cry, and I can cry and we can do all of it. And that just brings us closer together as human beings, right? It doesn't make you less of a, a man, like who, who's, who's, who defines what that is?
I take care of my, my responsibilities on a day-to-day basis. I'm a husband to my wife. I'm a father to my children. I'm a friend to my friends. I'm a family to my family. Like, I don't, I don't care what is between my legs or what isn't. You, you can, you can separate all of that. Because at the end of the day, that's what makes me human.
The fact that I, I accept those responsibilities. I have the complexity of emotion. I can feel happy and joy and anger, and frustration and sadness, and I can give myself permission to feel all of that.
Mm-hmm.
Right? So like, I don't even want to be held down by the category of masculine or not. That doesn't mean anything to me. My masculinity and femininity very much aligned.
Yeah. You're, you're yin and your yang, so to speak.
Oh, a hundred percent. And so it's like that's the balance of humanity. I think when we, when we go into these extremes, then I, I think we separate ourselves from what it means to be human and we start to identify with these boxes and categories that we've been placed in.
Absolutely. So where my mind is going to right now is I'm thinking about the role that spirituality plays in your life. And one of the things that struck me when I was reading your book is you were talking about having gone to church as a kid. Kind of the faith that you didn't feel back then. And there's, I think I wrote down the quote, where is it? Right here, where you just said, talking about going to church as a kid, and you said, you know, if God was real, why were we still struggling? And then I'm thinking about the moment of divine intervention that you had when your life was saved by whatever happened to that gun. And I'm, I'm wondering if you can just talk a little bit about the role that spirituality plays in your life today. Kind of how you reflect on that difference of being a kid that was not a believer and now believing in something. And if you wanna share what it is you believe in, by all means please do. I think everybody believes in something slightly different, so I don't wanna, I don't wanna come at it from a spirituality as a one size fits all kind of thing, but like, what does, what does that play in your
It's the helm, it's, it's the head for me.
Right. It is my spirituality. The foundation of everything that I am now. I believe in God. I think when I was a kid, you know, we were pushed to believe in religion and I think, I mean, I grew up Catholic and then switched to Catholic, I mean to our Christianity, and then that switched to AME, African Methodist Episcopal. And so I went through all of these iterations. I wasn't baptized until I was 30. You know, I didn't recognize what the significance of it was.
But I am, I, I feel very much aligned with our creator, with our universe. I think there's an alignment there as well. I'm a firm believer in this energy that we are all energy and that the universe exists within this energy and like attracts like, but we can attract things with the things that we say and our words and our deeds ultimately lead us to the things that we have or don't, the, the blessings that we miss or accept.
And, and I'm, I too, I'm never trying to push my beliefs on anybody, but there's not a person on this planet that could convince me that God isn't real. Because I'm alive. I'm, I'm here. I I every day is a mi is a, is a miracle. And, and I see that now.
I also understand that pressure can bust pipes and pressure can also make a diamond, right? And so, What does that process look like for the diamond? Right. I've seen a raw, I've held a raw diamond in my hand and it looks like a dirty rock, but it wants to go through a process
Yeah.
Of being cut, of being buffed, of being scraped, of being
put
under a lot of pressure and all that stuff
under a ton of pressure and then what we get is something that we look at as beautiful.
Yeah.
And so, I get it. I was a, I was a diamond and the challenge was I was allowing my external ex environment and experiences to tell me that I was just a rock.
That's such a beautiful way to put it. So let's get people a little bit caught up to modern day, because you're up to some pretty interesting things in the world, and should we go straight into Equitea.
Should we just tell people about this incredible tea that you've created and where they can find it?
That'd be great.
Why don't we start with just how you had the idea in the first place. Where did, where did this gem of an idea come from?
Well, it's interesting, again, when we talk about the universe and we talk about God and, and we talk about like the things that we say and how it attracts what we, what we ultimately get. I remember when I first started Equitea and I'll, and I'll go back into how it started, but I remember when I first started Equitea Tara Stiles and my friend Michelle Maros both reached out and messaged me and was like, you said you were gonna start a tea company years ago when we were at Strala summer camp. And I was like, yeah, no. I don't remember ever saying that, but I heard it from both of them in like a two week time period. Separat. I still to this day have no recollection ever telling anybody that I was starting a tea company. You know?
How funny. How funny.
I, I just knew that I, Tara used to drink a lot of coffee. Yeah. And I used to be like, no, this is not good.
I'm gonna get.
I also just wanna say for the listener really quickly that you're talking about Tara Styles a yoga instructor and Strala is her, she invented strala yoga, right? That's her yoga, yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Absolutely.
So she used to be a big coffee drinker, huh?
Yes. Huge coffee drinker. And I was like, no, we're not gonna do this anymore.
So, but the tea was, I was always like, not always, but for a long time I was really fascinated in with tea. My mom had bought me this, this tea set because I was really getting into like loose leaf as a part of my own journey. Um, and so I was, for years I was big into drinking tea. But never looked at it as something that could be affiliated or associated with what I believe it is now and, and the fullness of its benefits.
I drank it because it was calming. I used to drink chammomile or you know, I never really drank like green teas or black teas. I was always caffeine sensitive and so everything that I did was really herbal, which isn't really tea technically, but you know,
is it not? Why not?
The technically
tea comes from the Camellia sinensis plant. So if it doesn't,
oh my goodness. Your expertise? Mm-hmm.
it's technically not considered tea. It would be, oh, that's really interesting. Like a tincture or something. But I did a lot of like chammomile, mint, and hibiscus and that whole thing. But my son was diagnosed with ADHD when he was seven and we had done everything. Behavioral therapy. He did talk therapy, we did occupational therapy, pulled him out of traditional schools, put him in private online school. Um, and he was still just, you know, having his fair share of difficulty. And so we went to his neurologist and we were lucky to find a neurologist who medication wasn't the first course of action.
And it was like, listen, what other things can we implement? He was already going to yoga class with me. We were teach, we were doing meditations together. And she was like, have you ever given him green tea? And I was like, no. Never gave him green tea. Gave him green juice, never gave him green tea. It has caffeine in it.
I'm not gonna give my seven year old eight. Well, I think he was closer to nine at the time. Like, I'm not gonna give my nine year old a couple caffeine. He have ADHD. He'll never sit down. So she was like, no. The idea was that the altheine, which is naturally occurring in tea and the small amount of caffeine that exists in green tea, that combination together would actually give him a calm focus.
It was, yeah, almost acts like a natural Adderall or Ritalin, ADHD medication. That's fascinating. Mm-hmm.
Exactly, and that's exactly what she said. It would. It would essentially like mimic that in his body and that's how he. Without the risk of dependency and without the risk of any negative side effects, except if he was allergic to green tea.
And so we're like, okay, it seems easy enough. Give him some green tea. But every green tea combination that we would buy in in the store, I quickly realized that it was a very low quality, had minimal nutritional value because of the quality. It also tasted horrible. And so every time, you know, we'd try to give it to him to, to drink in the morning. He'd be like, dad, like this is disgusting. Like, I don't wanna drink that.
Yeah. Especially if for a kid, right? What kid wants to drink green
tea? No. And so I was like, okay. My mission then became like, and it was my wife and I, we were like, how do we make green tea palatable for a nine year old? Like, that was the mission.
And so that dove me headfirst into learning as much as I could about green tea. Countries of origins, different types, flavor profiles, things that it blended well with all of these things and through a lot of trial and error, my wife and I, we landed on a blend of green tea with lavender, lemon, verbena, and lemongrass.
We'd sweetened it with a little bit of honey. We learned about water temperatures and steep times and astringency levels and all of this. And he, I had given it to him and he loved it. And it became a part of his day-to-day routine and ritual. It became a part of my routine cuz I was like, well if I'm giving him caffeine, I'm gonna drink a little bit of it myself, see what happens. Didn't have a caffeine reaction to it cuz again, I'm very caffeine sensitive and was like, wow, this is okay. Like, let's see what happens. And by the end of that school year, he had gone from like struggling to like being on the honor roll. And I will, I'll never say that like the green tea did it. It was the end all be all.
But it was something he could control. It was something he enjoyed. It was something that I think biologically or physiologically or however you wanna put it, like it actually had value and benefit and, and it was something that gave him confidence, right? And with all of the other exercises and practices and rituals that we put in place.
He's been on the order wall every year since.
Oh, that's amazing.
So at that point we were like, we found something that works. What else can we solve for? And so we were like, I have seasonal allergies. Let's make a tea for that. I struggle with insomnia. Let's make a tea for that. Oh, we have a, a daughter who's starting her period and has menstrual cramping. Let's make a tea for that.
And so like by the end of that year, we had like eight or nine different tea blends and we were just drinking as a family. I was still working in nonprofit. My wife was still working a nonprofit. I ended up walking away from the job for a multitude of reason. And was like, I looked at my wife and said, I did race equity consulting for a year, and that was exhausting.
And I was like, look, we have something here. Why don't we make available for other families what we made available for ours? And so we decided to launch a tea company.
Where can people find it?
Right now, we are a hundred percent online, a hundred percent on our website. We are in talks with Whole Foods. For Maryland, DC and Virginia. And we're in talks with a few other natural retailers nationwide about the potential opportunity to to go nation, to go nationally.
All of these conversations are happening, but primarily people can, like right now, they can find it on your website. So what is that?
Equitea.com? E Q U I T E A .com.
Perfect. Thank you so much. Well, thank you so much again for doing this with me.
Well, thank you. I appreciate it. It's privilege and an honor for us to have this conversation, so thank you for thinking of me for it.
You've been listening to the second episode of Season three of The Nature of Nurture, and I wanna thank you for joining us. You can find Quentin online at Quentin Veni on Instagram and. or at equitea.com. That's E Q U I T E A.com, equitea.com. If you would like to connect with me, I'm at Dr. Leslie Carr on Instagram and Twitter, and my website is lesliecarr.com.
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Next up this season is a conversation about the Psychology of Money with Barbara Stan Houston, and I promise you that if you have ever heard of the concept of money, you don't wanna miss it. Many, many thanks to my producer and sound editor, Amanda Roscoe Mayo, and to Quentin for having this conversation with.
Thank you as well to Donie Odulio for the artwork. And thank you to Steve Van Dyck, Lee and Tyler Sargent, and Joe Potts for their permission to use their music. The band was called Clown Down.