Tim Medvetz

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173 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Apr 2025 last heard Apr 2025

Tim Medvetz’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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We're Out of Time · How Tim Medvetz Turned Pain Into Purpose | The Heroes Project · 22 Apr 2025 podcast

Like life was good. So let me ask you a question.

How the hell do you start scaling Mount Everest five times after this accident? Yeah, I mean, probably drugs, alcohol.

Essentially, I got to get back on that. What kind of drug? You mean pain medication? Yeah. So I get out of the hospital. So now I'm like, you know, this big, tough guy in an accident. I'm being pushed around in a wheelchair, but he's feeling sorry for me. And then I, you know, graduate to the walker, you know, that thing with the little tennis balls and shit, right? Nothing cool about that.

It's cooler than the crutches. It doesn't look cooler. But it's better because you fall on your ass a couple of times with the crutches. How many times you fall with the crutches? Oh man, so many times. Yeah, I just hate that.

So then I never fell with the walker. No, but I graduated from the walker to the crutches. Right. Then I graduated from the crutches to the cane and that was cool. Right. Now I'm riding my motorcycle again. I got a turtle shell surrounding as my back was completely shattered. I broke almost every bone in my body. What do you mean a turtle shell?

It was a, when you have a, I basically shattered everything from my L1 to L5. My complete back has been shattered. Put back together and bolted, mesh cage, titanium bolts. But I had to wear this to keep my back straight. It was this, like it was a shell, like a Ninja Turtle shell. How long ago was this? Well, this was, you know, 25 years ago. This was done, you know, right after 9-11, right?

And so I had to wear that. I had a knee brace. Did they call you Turtle? My girlfriend did sign it. Um, but so I went through this whole, you know, six months and then I started walking again and then it was like, okay, you got to start going to rehab.

And I walk into this rehab center and I just remember like all these old people and you know, they give you the little ball thing and you gotta squeeze the ball. Right. And I was just looking around going, what the am I doing in here, man? Cause you're used to lifting big weights. Yeah. I'm like, this ain't for me. And I walked out and now, but I had some serious injuries.

So I had to numb the pain. To pretend that I wasn't hurt. I never got hurt. No way. I'm still going to be the tough guy I was before the accident. So five Vicodins a day, 10 Vicodins a day. The tolerance starts going 15 a day, 20 a day. Whiskey to go to sleep. You know, it was just this self-destructive phase for a year. Got on the bike. I went to, you know, all over America on my motorcycle.

And just anything to numb the pain. And then finally, I'm like back in Hollywood. My chick dumped me. The club had enough of me. I was completely out of control. That's when you know you're in a bad place. When the Hells Angels had enough of you, you know you're in a bad place. Why did they have enough of you? Had enough of me because I was out of control. I was drugged up. I was...

I just wasn't in the right mind. There you go. I was in the right mind. I wasn't, you know, life was just took a turn. It's because drugs affect your decision making and they make you out of control. I mean, I'm swinging fists at guys in a bar with this turtle shell on and a knee brace on. Like, what are you doing? Slow the fuck down. Right. Now it brings me back to when I was 15, right?

And now the judge said, okay, son, pump the brakes here. Boom, sends me away. But now all these years later, I didn't have a judge telling me, you know, you're going to rehab. So I'm sitting in my apartment and I'm doped up on the pills, bottle of booze.

And all of a sudden I like this, the sun comes through the blinds and my little one bedroom apartment in Hollywood, right off of Melrose and the lights hit the bookcase. And there's only one book in that case, one book. I wasn't, I wasn't a big reader, you know? And it was into thin air by John Krakauer. And my girlfriend got it for me like a couple of years prior to that. And I just, Oh, thanks.

This is great. I think he would like, cause I always climbed it. Boom. I grabbed it, stumbled over the bookcase, grabbed it, started reading as I'm down in the booze. And I just was obsessed with this book. I couldn't put it down. What was the book about? It's about the 96 commercial disaster on Everest where nine people lost their lives. And I was just completely enthralled with this book.

I mean, I just thought it was about death and mayhem. And I would go through the book and they would talk about, oh, we just arrived at camp two. And I would go back to the front of the book where it had the map of the route and where the camps were. And I just couldn't put this book down all night till three, four in the morning. I finally finished it.

close the book i pass out right i wake up i'm all sweaty and doped up and just like and and all of a sudden it was just like i look down i see the book i'm like that's it this is it no more squeezing the ball thing at the rehab i'm done i'm gonna go climb everest That's a bitch end, Dylan.

And I grabbed my Costco-sized jug of fucking Vicodins, grabbed every single bottle in the house, went into the bathroom, dumped everything down the toilet, flushed the toilet, walked out, knocked on my neighbor's door, said, hey, I'm subletting my apartment. I'm leaving for Nepal. He goes, what are you going to do there? I said, I'm going to go climb Everest.

And that's a really funny reaction when you tell a friend that, right? Uh-huh. And sure enough, 30 days later, I put all my in the garage, still blood in my apartment, bought a one-way ticket to Nepal, flew up there, got all my climbing gear in Kathmandu, flew up to the Everest region.

shackled up, shacked up with this Sherpa family and went on this journey to learn how to climb 8,000 meter peaks. And so climbed all the peaks around Everest in this whole one year, no cell phone, no wifi, completely off the grid. And then, uh, three years of training and, you know, selling all the motorcycles, maxing out the car, all the money. And took off to Mount Everest.

And how long did it take you in those practice runs to finally make it to climb Everest?

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