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

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one story at a time. Time. Hi, I'm Tony Mantur.
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 that I think
are worth hearing. This episode features Justin Peck, a professional
race car driver who has turned his personal challenges with
Class one bipolar 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 see 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 twenty eight years now. I was
diagnosed with class one bipolar.
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 fifteen years before I kind of just grasped 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 and 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 trades 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 he was maybe different than the rest or things
weren't falling in line like others.
So I was.
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 it back.
At nine, I was an emotional sensitive kid, kind of
went through that process and so I kind of started
pulling away from there. And then when I turned thirteen,
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
forty 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.
How 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. 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 it 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
do you did you work your way through that?
Oh?
Yeah?
Brother, Like all all through my high school, junior high, elementary,
it was.
It was severe cases.
I mean, it would be things now that people would
probably get arrested for, because back then bullying was just
bullying right there. You 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 and you know, the
nineteen eighteen type stuff. Then 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 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 feels bad that
she that she wasn't able to recognize it, but again,
I mean, it was forty 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 did
they handle it if they're not used to it, they
don't know what it's about, the confused. What was their
dynamic in the way that they approached to make it
better for you?
Well, so in school, nothing, honestly nothing.
Teachers, educators, the people that I would typically look for
or look.
To for support in a school atmosphere. There was nomb
There was zero back then.
But again my family it was more 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 Manning phase. I went
from being a kid that was pretty quiet and it
didn't really say much, kind of kept to myself, felt
like it was more of a depressive state, more of
a metal 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 hooligan, and
you know, my I think my parents kind of probably
took that as just teenage yeers and you know, going
through purity and all those things, which it's ironic that
it actually happened in that 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 and how hormones actually
affect our brain.
Oh yeah, 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 need 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 drama through childhood and through going growing up,
just in different circumstances.
Yeah.
Absolutely, I feel like I was blessed and to be
able to have this. It's been it's a hard road
to tackle, but at the end of the day, rather
like 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. Man, I was so shy. I
was so shy.
I had two friends through my high school years that
were close and that could 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 the depression or even the mania, when you realize
that you're different in that way, you start to overcompensate
for things when 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
a 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?
Ah, you know, I actually get this question quite a bit.
I answered different ways every single time. I'm but racing
for me, I realized that 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 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 racing. 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. And with the type of racing that
I do, I mean it's it's pretty extreme. I mean
when you're doing one hundred and twenty to one hundred
and sixty miles an hour on the dirt over bumps
and jumps, and I mean death is close. The 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 you lowest and you drove to this mountaintop
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 at the 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's that's an amazing question. So I woke up one morning.
I was married, so I was twenty six years old,
so I had I think two babies at that time,
maybe three, and I had been I had been fighting
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
through 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, looking at the beautiful, the scenery, the trees,
the valley, And it's always kind of intrigued to 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 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 pull the trigger, that adrenaline, the
massive amount of adrenaline that hit me. And the very
first emotion that I had is I was mad. I
was generally angry at myself. How could I screw this
one up?
Too? Right? Like there's a bullet in there, I knew it.
So when I unchambered 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. Two
things that it did for me is it helped me
understand that there's higher powers that be There are 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 wasn't diagnosed until that. Until
that incident, I had lived to the age of twenty
six 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,
then you can research it and slowly progress as we go.
Wow, that's true, 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 eighteen. I was very fortunate to
start my own company at nineteen and have it worked
for another soul 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 for me. When two thousand and eight
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. So I still stick
in the construction industry, but racing is probably my priority.
I guess maybe my priorities are a little best up.
I love the race car.
I really transformed into the to the full time racer
probably fifteen sixteen years ago. It just slowly evolved into
where I'm at.
That's great.
So of course with racing, everybody thinks what MASCAR, 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 one thousand, it's the Vegas to Reno, the it's
the long distance endurance racing in trucks that have huge horsepower.
So like, for example, the Baha one thousand last year
was a thirteen hundred and sixty nine mile race, took
us thirty eight hours. Right, so you're in the race
car a long time. I was a dirt by a
guy for a long time, had some good sponsorship with
like KTM 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
eighty four broken bones in your body. Yeah more than
that now, Yeah, So how did 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 that I've kept along for
most of my life, and I don't I don't know
where I heard this.
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 young.
Kid or what. But 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 an
educated man.
I barely graduated high school.
But I learned very well through experience, and so it's
just it's the experiences that I've gained over over that
time that has led me to the path that I'm
in on right now.
I don't think I answered your question. What was your
question again? How it 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, 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 be better, knowing that, all right, if I'm
going to raise 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 you're 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 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 subtance abuse, those type of things
that all correlate to the mental health the problems that
are plaguing the country right now. I apologize, man, it's
one too many concussions. I lose my train and thought
every once in a lot.
Oh, that's no problem at all. So that ultimately led
you to starting your own charity.
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
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 started a few companies that helps with like drug
testing and those type of things in the sense of
not necessarily drug testing for illicit 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.
So we're definitely trying to reach every corner of the
planet that we can. And again, like I said, we're
we're basing everything off 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.
I mean, at the end of the day, you only
know what you know.
So we try to provide that 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 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 there were trying to get up a road that
was washed out and may have the power company up there,
and we were waiting to get through to do 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.
It 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, to despair that
that woman had, and that's all she needed was a
hut 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 note,
we're not going to 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 ten years ago when I
had a few of my veteran friends take your own mind,
I realized that while I was not able to serve
my country downrange, 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 makes sense, Sure that makes sense. So how
do people get in contact with you?
So Instagram, I'm justin pet forty nine. I'm on Facebook
as well, I'm LinkedIn. 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.
My day when I first wake up is to be
able to open up my messages and see there may
be fifty one day, there may be twenty the next,
and there maybe five hundred 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 of how I even wrote the book.
My grandmother.
I was at my youngest brother's funeral. He had passed
away from an overdose at the age of twenty, 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 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 twenty sixteen, I realized
that I had two hundred and seventy pages written down
and handed it off to an editor and I asked.
Her to kind of clean it up for me.
Well, that time, I was quite fortunate to get a
couple of phone calls from some publishers saying that we
love the content, you know your message, We're willing to
off you this.
So I had a couple of 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 one hundred percent.
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 justinpeck dot 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 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, man, I just enjoy the conversation.
I think at the end of the day, I've listened
to a few a few of your podcasts to kind
of touch up on who you are and if it
means anything to you.
Brother, Like, I'm really proud of you, man.
Like you job, you educate, You put thoughts and potential
actions in people's minds that actually make a difference. So
the end of the day, I don't know where mind
space is at, 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 your personality and where your heart
is at. The likes and the views are awesome, but
at the end of the day, you're not doing it
for the likes and the views.
You're doing 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 Gully, 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
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