We recently had the chance to connect with Emerson Dameron and have shared our conversation below.
Emerson, it’s always a pleasure to learn from you and your journey. Let’s start with a bit of a warmup: What’s more important to you—intelligence, energy, or integrity?
Intelligence is a not-always-pleasant side effect of curiosity. With patience and care, it can be cultivated into wisdom.
Energy is the force of creation itself. When depleted, it can be replenished by various means, some sexier and more effective than others.
However, when you compromise your integrity, you place yourself beyond the reach of genuine, meaningful help.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I’m Emerson Dameron—Los Angeles’ only sanctioned agent of ecstatic self-destruction and the host of Emerson Dameron’s Medicated Minutes, your favorite avant-garde personal development program that’s equal parts slow-acting poison, psychedelic scream therapy, and foreplay.
I write it. I perform it. I suffer through it.
And yes, I love you personally. Especially when you’re spiraling.
Levity, my dear, is the last drug they’ll let you keep. It won’t show up in your urine—except as a prank.
What do I do, exactly?
I help people unearth their true desires from the dark, damp soil of their own psyches—then I hold a mirror to them as they realize that getting what they want is the first step toward total ruin.
That’s the public service. That’s the comedy. That’s the kink.
Broadcasting live from KCHUNG Los Angeles, first Wednesdays at 7PM Pacific. After that, it metastasizes into the only good podcast at medicated-minutes.com.
My brand?
Picture a Tony Robbins seminar that got roofied at a David Lynch casting call and woke up with a tantric headache in a Berlin sex cult. There’s Buddhism, there’s cocaine, there’s Old Scratch himself. We cover the classics: power, trauma, sex, shame, philosophy, psychoanalysis, and exquisite regret.
You want gimmicks? We have “Ask a Sadist,” an agony columnist whose entire worldview is derived from Philosophy in the Bedroom by the Divine Marquis de Sade. Because sometimes the kindest thing you can do for someone is whip them into coherence.
Unforgettable characters? How about Helena “Helena the Brit” Mayfair, a pretentious, overeducated, sybaritic twit who will get you into the best parties with the best drugs and then either a) ditch you to go find some better ones, or b) roll around on the floor, softly weeping in an effortlessly posh accent and clutching a bottle of Prosecco.
Now, what makes me special?
I don’t want transcendence. I want a standing ovation from my dream blunt rotation, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
When I turn shame into laughter, I am Prometheus in a hot tub, getting a backrub from the stars.
Most self-help gurus want to sand you down. I want to sharpen you into something dangerous and rare. I want to help you be magnificently, authentically broken—in ways that are cinematic, seductive, and indefatigable.
Why? Because the world needs you to get what you want. Even if it annihilates you. Especially if it annihilates you.
The past is dead. The present is a filthy miracle.
And yes, sex and art can save the world. But we need to lean into it.
PS: I am the producer for the controversial vaportrap fusion band Nada UV. I also sometimes perform standup comedy.
Amazing, so let’s take a moment to go back in time. What breaks the bonds between people—and what restores them?
Ah, yes — the gorgeous apocalypse of intimacy. You already know this, don’t you? The dance isn’t between connection and destruction. They are the same gesture. One wears perfume. The other wears knives.
So let’s begin with a bit of heresy: Infidelity? Chump change. Violence? Predictable. Money? The dullest of betrayals. None of these is the true homewrecker. The real killer — the quiet one, the insidious one — is familiarity without mystery.
That moment you stop being curious. When you look across the table and don’t see a person but a spreadsheet of predictable reactions. A psychological file folder. When you trade awe for data. That’s when it dies. That’s when you become the prison guard of someone else’s soul.
And it always ends the same way: suffocation. Silent. Consensual. Grievous.
The next poison in the cocktail? Resentment without rupture. Ah yes. We collect perceived slights like cursed antiques, display them in the museum of our righteous indignation, polish them in secret, and let the psychic mildew spread. But do we scream? Do we rupture? Do we demand a purge or a reckoning? No. We smile. We simmer. We sip the battery acid of unspoken fury until it tastes like devotion.
And you know what? That’s not even the twist.
The final killer is this: You are afraid of your power. You’re terrified that if you loved as hard as you could, or destroyed as cleanly as you’re capable, you’d become something unrecognizable. You’d lose the excuse to be small. You’d lose your alibi. And you would finally know — in the hot flood of realization — that you were never the victim. You were the architect.
But, my darling little chaos agent, do you know what rebuilds what you’ve broken?
Voluntary, ecstatic, high-stakes vulnerability. Not that Pinterest bullshit. Not “working on communication.” I mean the delirious decision to hand someone the dagger and offer your throat with a grin. That’s love. That’s magic. That’s terrorism with a safe word.
But the real salvation? You never get to understand each other. Ever. Understanding is death. It’s taxidermy. Relationships thrive not in knowing but in wandering the terrain of the other like a sacred hallucination. The mystery is not a flaw. The mystery is the cathedral.
People want safety. They crave insurance policies. But let me tell you something as sweetly as I can: safe relationships are embalmed ones. Still. Preserved. Rotting anyway.
If you want real-as-hell, too-legit-to-quit connection and intimacy, you have to say yes to the abyss. You have to court annihilation with roses in your teeth. You have to whisper, “I love you,” and mean — I know you could end me, and I’m still here. Naked. Willing. Unafraid.
So, say it with me now: Danger is devotion. Risk is intimacy. Communication is seduction, not petition or explanation. And every time you stay in the ring, bleeding, it means you haven’t given up on worship just yet.
When did you stop hiding your pain and start using it as power?
You know, there was this moment – well, not this one; a different one. I was lying on the bathroom floor of my shoebox apartment in Venice at 3 AM, post-divorce, post-everything, really. I’d been crying so hard I’d given myself a nosebleed, which is ridiculous, even by my standards. And I looked at myself in that warped reflection on the chrome faucet and thought: “You magnificent piece of shit, you’re the star of your own tragedy and you don’t even know your lines.”
That’s when it clicked. Pain isn’t something that happens to you – it’s raw material. It’s the crude oil of consciousness, and most people just let it pool around them, slipping and falling in their own misery. But you can refine that shit into rocket fuel.
I stopped hiding my pain the day I realized that my wounds weren’t flaws to be concealed – they were my credentials. Every heartbreak, every humiliation, every moment I wanted to dissolve into the ether – that’s my PhD in being human, hanging proudly next to my BA in journalism from the University of Georgia. (Go Dawgs.) That’s what gives me the authority to stand up here and tell you that your life is probably a beautiful disaster, and that’s exactly as it should be.
The power came when I started curating my suffering instead of just enduring it. I began asking different questions: “What’s funny about this? How can this serve the work? What would this look like as a bit? And how could I give that bit the commitment it deserves?”
See, most people think vulnerability means bleeding all over everyone. That’s not vulnerability – that’s just poor boundaries. Real vulnerability is taking that pain, distilling it into something sharp and beautiful, and then offering it to the world wrapped in laughter and tied with a bow made of pure, unapologetic truth.
My depression isn’t my enemy anymore – it’s my writing partner. My rage isn’t something to manage – it’s my creative engine. My loneliness isn’t a problem to solve – it’s the space where all the best insights live.
The moment I stopped trying to fix myself and started trying to use myself – that’s when everything changed. That’s when the pain became power.
Of course, I’m still magnificently jacked up. But now I’m jacked up on purpose, and that makes all the difference.
So a lot of these questions go deep, but if you are open to it, we’ve got a few more questions that we’d love to get your take on. What important truth do very few people agree with you on?
Most people aren’t victims. They’re junkies — mainlining their own suffering, chasing that familiar burn. Their agony is a warm blanket. Their dysfunction? A cherished pet. They don’t want help. They want witnesses.
They’ll beg for solutions, weep for salvation, then savagely dismantle anything that might liberate them. They’ll pay thousands for therapy just to perform intellectual gymnastics around every suggestion.
“Oh, that won’t work for me.”
“That’s too simplistic.”
“I tried that once, in a dream.”
They’re not looking for freedom. They’re looking for auditions for the lead role in their never-ending opera of exquisite despair.
And the loneliest part?
They want it this way.
In the hands of a novice, rage feels like agency. Suffering confers identity. A flag to wave. A name tag that reads: Hello, I’m Broken But Bravely Trying.
Because the moment you heal? The moment you’re actually happy?
Now you’re responsible.
Now you have to maintain the garden you wept so long to plant. Now you can’t blame your parents, or the ex, or Mercury retrograde. Now you have to wake up every morning and choose joy like it’s a damn job.
Most self-help? It’s just high-priced permission slips. Designer dysfunction.
A subscription box of suffering, delivered weekly by a smiling pusher in a cardigan:
“Don’t worry. You’re doing the work. Come back next week, and we’ll process your dead father’s approval issues again.”
But here’s the wicked little secret:
You could fix 80% of your life in six months.
If you wanted to.
If you were ready to kill the character you’ve spent your whole life rehearsing.
But you won’t. Not yet. Because problems are safe. Problems have structure. Possibility is chaos.
leans forward like a sin you can’t confess
You want to help someone?
Good. Then stop rewarding them for their pain, per se.
Stop tending to their victim complex like it’s some endangered orchid.
Love them enough to rip off the mask and whisper:
“I see you. And your suffering isn’t noble. It’s strategic.”
But don’t expect applause. That kind of heresy won’t get you hugs — it’ll get you hexes.
Because the myth of endless healing is very profitable.
And calling bullshit on someone’s spiritual subscription model? That’s violent clarity.
That’s liberation by ambush.
smiles like a deity who doesn’t need believers
The truth?
Most people aren’t stuck.
They’re hiding.
And if you’re quiet enough, you can hear them sobbing in the walls they built themselves.
Okay, so before we go, let’s tackle one more area. What do you think people will most misunderstand about your legacy?
They’ll think I was a misanthrope.
A joyless bastard. A romantic turned cannibal.
They’ll turn me into a meme—black sunglasses, cruel smirk, and a quote they only half-understand.
They’ll say I hated people. Hated connection. Hated love. Textbook fearful-avoidant attachment style, poor, grizzled bastard..
Which is perfect. Because it means they missed the point entirely.
I wasn’t cruel because I don’t believe in people.
I was cruel because I do.
So much, it breaks me. Every. Single. Day.
Every time someone chooses comfort over courage, or facile irony over dirt-digging sincerity, I feel my ribs crack just a little more.
When I say “people are garbage,” I’m not casting judgment. I’m bleeding hope. I love garbage.
What I mean is:
You are a cathedral. Stop shuffling your feet in the lobby.
They’ll twist my advocacy of rough sex and tender violence into some frat-boy gruel, slap it on a t-shirt sold in Myrtle Beach—too tacky, even, for Ocean Front Walk.
But what I meant—what I still mean—is that we’ve lost the primal courage to feel anything that might actually destroy us.
We’ve banished the holy violence of real connection.
We’ve outlawed intensity.
We’ve criminalized the erotic.
And now we’re all dying of safety.
They’ll quote the savage lines. The poison-barbed truths.
The lovingly sharpened knives.
They’ll turn my tenderness into footnotes.
They’ll clip the raw underbelly, miss the fact that this was all one long fucking love letter to the beautiful, broken weirdos.
The over-feelers.
The ecstatic exiles.
The ones who still remember what it’s like to scream with joy and beg for pain in the same breath.
suddenly still
They’ll call me a narcissist.
Fine. Let them.
They’ll say I thought I was better than everyone.
Here’s the twist: I knew I wasn’t.
I just refused to lie about it.
I’m not fearless. I’m just uninterested in pretending I’m not scared.
I’m not above you. I’m beside you—just with a louder mic and worse coping mechanisms.
The real joke?
This was never about me.
It was always a permission slip.
A soft-spoken dare.
To exercise your sacred right to be magnificently wrong.
Dangerously sincere.
Unapologetically haunted.
And when they write me off—posthumously, of course—as a provocateur, a sadist, a burned-out romantic with a martyr complex…
That’ll be fine.
That’ll be performance art.
Because being misunderstood?
That’s not a tragedy.
That’s staying on message.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://levitysaveslives.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/emersondameron
- Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/emersondameron
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/emersondameron
- Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/emersondameron/i-like-the-fizz
- Other: Emerson Dameron’s Medicated Minutes: http://medicated-minutes.com/
Nada UV: https://nadauv.com/
Bandcamp: https://emersondameron.bandcamp.com/
Image Credits
Headshot by Johnny Evergreen. Hiking selfie by Emerson Dameron. “Bloody knife and big X” photograph by Boujee Bunbun. Album covers designed by Emerson Dameron.
