Daniel Weinberg welcomes Yassine Darkaoui, founder of YouMind, for a candid conversation about overcoming self-destruction and escaping addiction. After surviving six near-fatal overdoses on the streets, Yassine made the radical decision to dismantle his mental despair and rebuild his life from scratch. He pushed his mind and body to extreme limits as a world record-holding endurance sailor before turning his focus to human performance. Today, he develops patented neuroacoustic technologies that help people regulate their nervous systems and break destructive behavioral loops. This raw talk shows why intelligent men sabotage their happiness and proves that you can always rewire your reality.
—
Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
Why We Keep Choosing What Hurts Us With Yassine Darkaoui
On this show, we have a fascinating episode with Yassine Darkaoui. The title of the show is Why We Keep Choosing What Hurts Us. It is a very unexpected, fascinating episode. Look forward to tuning in to this episode. Before I go, a reminder. The book Men’s Anonymous is out. It has hit the USA Today bestseller list. I highly recommend you get a copy on the usual platforms such as Amazon.
Yassine, so good to have you on the show.
Thank you for having me.
Are you ready?
Yes.
I’m quite excited for this discussion because it’s this big journey you’ve had in your life thus far. There’s a lot to talk about and a lot to share. I’m going to start off by asking you. There’s a sentence in the note that you sent me that I haven’t been able to get my head around, which says, “My journey into this work began after surviving six overdoses.” Before we talk about neuroscience, AI, consciousness, and all that story, talk me through how you got to six overdoses. What was going on in your life?
Let me go back to many years ago. The first time I tried something, I got high. That summer was many years ago. I was twenty years old. I was into sports. I was on the national sailing team. I was skating, cycling, and doing a lot of things. I was looking for something different, trying. I was curious about what weed could do. It started with weed. That image of the Rasta, freedom, whatever. Especially coming from Morocco, it is easier to find wheat than bread. It started with that. I got introduced to something much heavier maybe one year and half after that. Weed was the very first thing I tried.
This is when you were living in Morocco?
Yes, the North of Morocco, Tangier. I’m originally from Tangier. That’s where I grew up and where I spent 25 years of my life. I am almost 50 years old now. It started with weed. It was a lot of fun. I was a lot into psychology, so every time I was high, it allowed me to go into that introspective state that allowed me to understand more about who I was and about life. It started like that, having fun with friends. One day, I got introduced to heroin.
You went from weed to heroin. That’s a big jump.
I had a massive jump. It was like a jump without a parachute. I didn’t know what I was doing at the time. I thought it was just a substance. I was checking the waters. I loved it, but that’s a kind of poison that when we try it once, that’s it. It’s like we open the door. Maybe 99% of the guys I met couldn’t close that door.
It’s very interesting because you started with, and weed is not deemed to be an addictive substance, although there are people who do get addicted to weed. I’ve never ever tried heroin, but I remember a story with someone I grew up with who ended up incarcerated in jail. He allowed one of his best mates to try it by smoking, not by injection. When he gave it to his mate, he said, “This is the first and last time you’re ever going to have this. If I ever catch you having it again, I’ll kill you. It’s hard to understand, but this is so addictive. You do it once, and you are hooked for life.” That’s how enjoyable it is. You’re chasing the original experience you had, and you never ever get there.
The Illusion Of Self-Medication
It creates a parallel universe, a place where we feel in control. I told you that maybe when I was ten years old, I knew about loads of psychology books and studies. I was always into books. Somehow, when I started smoking heroin, it allowed me to disconnect from society because I was against what I was witnessing.
It was not because Moroccan society is especially bad or whatever, but because I didn’t agree with so many things. Every time I was high, I could switch off my perception of the world and switch to something inside of myself where I was in control. It started like that. My very first addiction after weed became heroin mixed with cocaine. We call it speedboat.
River Phoenix died from that.
We turn to destructive habits when we feel helpless, but real peace only comes when we face reality head on. Share on XI almost died six times from that. When I started smoking it, after one month, I was hooked. At the time, I still had money and a job. In the Moroccan language, we say something is eating you alive. I was still doing fine. You couldn’t see that on my face, my body, and my social life. After three years, the damage started.
When you say that, tell me what that means from a physical health perspective and from a mental state perspective. What I’m most interested in is how that affected all your relationships, including relationships with family, friends, and/or romantic partners. You’re an athlete, so you’re doing a lot of different exercises. How does that affect that situation?
When we do exercise, it boosts our self-esteem. There is another way, a lazy one, that comes through drugs. If I’m high, it will boost my self-esteem. I will feel good. I will feel great about myself. I started replacing sports more and more with being alone in a room or with 1 or 2 people and smoking that poison.
The body started to get hit by the 3rd or 4th year, something like that. Smoking all of this poison, I wasn’t eating properly. I’m already a skinny person, so imagine that. I was a heavy smoker. In terms of numbers, the average junkie smokes four stones a day. I was smoking 25. I don’t know how I could afford all of that.
Is that crack heroin? Is that what you were smoking?
It’s something like that. It’s purified cocaine. You buy stones, mix them, and smoke. I was mixing that. The average addict will smoke 4 to 6 stones per day. I was smoking from 25 to 30 stones every single day. Massive amounts of money.
Were you sleeping at all?
I wasn’t sleeping. Sleeping was sitting and closing my eyes for I don’t know how many hours until I was up again. Three hours already, I’m in this position. I’d be like, “Let’s go look for some cash or buy something else.” That was my life for many years. The body got the heat starting from the fourth year. For mental health, I developed psychosis.
What does that mean? You always read about it. I’ve seen some small examples of it. What does that mean when you have permanent psychosis from your perspective, not from the outside? What’s going on?
I started to hear voices. I was in a parallel universe, completely out of reality. I’m someone who studied a lot about society. They call it conspiracy, but it’s social engineering. All of that started to fire back and became negative knowledge. I started to look at the world outside of my head as a very dangerous place. I started to feel helpless about it.
That’s the point I would like to talk about after. The helplessness. I started to feel helpless. I started to close all the doors. I spent years by myself, avoiding people, family, and friends. I wasn’t interested in any social interaction. My best friend was that mix. I used to call it my girlfriend. I used to swear that I was going to, one day, die with her. It was a love story. Let me tell you something.
It’s so interesting the way you frame it.
She was my girlfriend because she gave me peace. She allowed me to disconnect from the world that I didn’t agree with at the time, the world I didn’t like. I could see hypocrisy. I’m good at system networks. I can see links everywhere. That’s how my brain operates. I can tell you what’s in common between this situation and that thing in a very fast way. Some people will call it ADHD or whatever. I don’t name it like that.
What will happen is that this girlfriend allowed me to feel at peace. When I was high, I was with her, feeling good in my body. I didn’t need anything. When the effect was fading away, that’s when I was switching back to awake and a nightmare. The negative emotions, it’s difficult to explain about that. It’s like you want to die and not experience that. Emotions can be so strong.
You want to die when you’re in that state?
Stop caring what people think, reject false negativity, and trust that you can make things happen. Share on XYes. These overdoses were a suicide attempt. I wanted to die with her, in her arms. That was the mindset I had. I kept reading books, thinking, and doing things, but especially the last 3 years of these 10 years of addiction, I was looking for cash or ways that were okay for me. I didn’t care about how to get cash. The main thing for me was to find money, get a little stone, and meet my girlfriend again.
What happened with your friends and your family? What happened in that process?
I was calling them if I was in need of money, but I avoided seeing them. Many times, it happened. I lost a lot of jobs, and good ones. I lost a lot of opportunities. When I didn’t have money, I was going to steal. There was a point where I became aware of the fact that every time I was with someone close to me, I was going to hurt them, so I started avoiding meeting anyone from my family and friends.
At the end of these years, I became aware that I was in a very bad situation, and I didn’t know how to close that door. I didn’t find any form of support, like therapy or medication, that could help me. I switched to something else. The big switch and shift would happen after the last overdose.
Why don’t you talk me through the overdoses themselves?
When you overdose, you don’t feel anything.
What ends up happening? How do you recover from them? When you overdose, are you flatlining like you’re dead?
With heroin, you stop breathing. For the last three years, I started smoking heroin. I couldn’t find good cocaine. When you overdose, you stop breathing. You forget about it. Five times, I had people around me who were like, “Wake up.” They were slapping me on the face and throwing water in my face. They were like, “Wake up. Stand up.”
The last time was the worst one because the last time was a suicide attempt. I got 40 sleeping tablets. I smoked heroin, and then I don’t remember anything. Someone found me on the street. When I came back to life, they told me that someone who knew my dad found me in the street, put me in a taxi, and sent me to emergencies.
Surviving The Sixth Overdose
The next thing after swallowing all those tablets was me opening my eyes in the emergency room. That’s one of the worst places on Earth we can visit. I opened my eyes, and a guy was screaming from my right side because of a broken back. There were police officers in front of me, to my right-hand side, waiting for me to come back because of an overdose. They were like, “What happened? Where did you get all of that from?” To my left side, I saw a massive spot of blood.
That place was dirty, noisy, and chaotic. The very first thought I had was, “I ended up in hell.” I saw a very close friend of mine, someone I hadn’t seen for one year. He was a childhood friend. He came and gave some money to those police officers, asking them to leave. He was like, “Look at the guy. You are not going to start asking him questions or take him to a police station. He’s not okay.”
I got that shift first. I opened my eyes there, and I had some flashes. If you get compressed, a lot of stuff comes into your mind in very few seconds. All of these scenarios were created in my mind. I truly realized that everything was mental building, the good and the bad. The next thought before giving up on that for a week because I was exhausted was, “If I created all of this negativity, it might be possible to create the opposite of it.” I stayed with that thought.
Before we go to this transition, I want to dig a little bit further. If you were to reflect on those ten years, what was the pain underneath the behavior? What do you think drove you with this negative energy that you created for yourself?
It was understanding too much and feeling helpless. That’s very important. I know how things are running. Now, I can talk about it without feeling bad and feeling helpless. At the time, I could understand politics. I could understand finances. I was asking myself, “Why do we have walls? Why do we have this? Why do we have people in the streets? Why are these politicians all corrupt and people still vote for them? Why is society managed in such a chaotic way? Why all of this nonsense?”
The darkness that you saw that exists within society, you took it in. It was very difficult for you to process. You were almost running away from that.
The darkness became the only thing I could see. I didn’t see the other side of things. You wake up in the morning, and you have a blue sky, life, and beautiful people. Society can be crazy, but beauty is sitting there.
What was your childhood like in Morocco? You seem to be a super smart guy. You were very motivated in terms of your thirst for knowledge. You did a lot of sports, you’re a good athlete, etc. What was your childhood like?
My mother was an alcoholic, and she had a borderline disorder. That’s also something that will affect me a lot. I was a kid. There was no way to run away from her. Usually, we run away from people with borderline disorders, narcissism, or alcohol problems. When you grow up with someone, you get that negativity. That negativity combined with seeing and understanding too much led to me looking for ways to feel better. Heroin was the best way I could find.
I had friends asking me, “You should leave that behind. Don’t do it.” If we talk about addiction, a drug is a friend. What is the alternative? We don’t give people a good alternative. Imagine that someone is into alcohol, for example. We ask this guy to stop drinking. The very first question the subconscious mind, which has a big responsibility to keep you alive and floating, is going to ask is, “Why? The guy drinks and feels good. He feels stable, and he can keep going with life.”
“What is the alternative? Do we have something better than alcohol?” First is building self-esteem. I didn’t have good self-esteem. I didn’t trust myself enough to say, “Let’s do something with my life.” Anytime I wanted to start a project, I was living with doubt. Feeling helpless and having bad self-esteem were two of those ingredients that kept me on that path.
I want to ask you another question. When you look back at the man who overdosed six times, do you see someone who wanted to die or somebody who didn’t know how to live?
Somebody who didn’t know how to live. In the last overdose, I was crying. I was sad when I said to myself, “I’m killing myself today.” I remember kissing my hand. I had some affection for myself, but it was too much for me. I didn’t know what to do with my life. That’s how that big chapter ended.
Coming back to this transition, are you saying you had this experience where your friend came into the hospital, paid the police, went away, and you had a light bulb moment in a way where a small door opened, the light came in, and you decided, “I’m going down this path now.” It was a self-realization situation. That’s pretty unusual. Why didn’t you do the seventh overdose? What was the difference between the 5th overdose and the 6th overdose?
It was a survival thing. It wasn’t like a big crack. It was a tiny one where I saw that everything I was experiencing was a mental building, a mental creation. The next week, I kept living in the street. At the time, I was sleeping in the street and trying to steal something from a car or whatever to get some cash and get my drugs. I kept in mind that maybe there was a possibility to explore this path.
At that time, the chances were still very low for me to move forward in life. I said to myself, “I have to find a way to kill myself again. It didn’t work this time, so I have to find money. I have to find a doctor’s prescription.” I got a prescription. That’s how I got these pills. I needed to find another way to get that prescription.
At that time, during the week following the last overdose, I met a cousin who asked me to go see my aunt. I went to see her. In French, we say you smell like a tiger. You’re not showering for many months. You have no shoes. I went to see her, and she said, “We would like to help you. We would like you to get to a clinic and stay there for some time. Give it a chance. Try. Do you want us to help you?”
I started thinking about it. I said, “Dying is a guarantee. I will die sooner or later, so let’s explore this little path.” That’s where that crack became relevant in this new situation. I wasn’t moving by myself. I stayed with another aunt. I have a big family, like 80 cousins and 24 uncles and aunts. For six months, I didn’t get any money. Whenever I was moving, someone was moving with me. It was a very boring stage, but an important one because that’s when I rebuilt myself in those six months.
There was always a family member accompanying you wherever you are.
I didn’t expect it.
That’s amazing.
I believe that without their presence, I wouldn’t have made it. It’s impossible. I was already thinking about how to try to kill myself again. I was taking 21 pills a day. My treatment was crazy heavy. I got all the side effects you can imagine. I had a blocked shoulder. I couldn’t open my eyes in daylight, always with sunglasses day and night. I couldn’t shower properly. I became like a jellyfish.
Twenty-one pills for two months and a half month, and then they lowered that to ten, plus I don’t know what kind of drop that could knock out a horse. I was drinking some liquid every day. All of that to keep my mind without those voices or that negativity coming in. After six months, I started to feel better, but I did something. There is a trick. The first and second month, I lied to myself. I said, “I know that death is something that awaits all of us. For now, there is no tech that will keep us alive forever. Let’s lie to myself. A beautiful lie.”
The Three Mindset Shifts For Survival
Suppose I will believe blindly that life is good, that life is beautiful, and that I can make things happen. For one minute, I will not question this thought again, one. Two, any negative thought that comes to me, I will also believe blindly that it’s not true. It’s from education, society, and anything else. It’s not from me, and it’s not a reflection of what life is. Three, I will stop giving a crap about what people might believe or think about what I do in my life. Three beautiful lies. They created the momentum. I started feeling good after one.
Say the three again. One is you’re not going to believe what people’s judgments of you are or what people think of you. You’re blocking out that noise. Any negative thought that comes your way, you’re going to say, “This is not the truth. This is something that is being concocted by somebody else. Life is not like that. I reject that.” The third one?
The third one was about life. I can make things happen if I’m consistent. I don’t give up on my idea. If something doesn’t happen, it’s because I didn’t find the right way to make it happen.
True growth requires asking why. Question old rules and build a life that actually serves your growth. Share on XWhat’s crazy to me is you’re rewiring your mindset after destroying your mind for ten years. It was destruction. Somehow, with that little bit of light shining through the crack, you were able to grab that and had the intuition to rewire your mind. This is fascinating. I want to ask you. You’ve spent years trying to understand a fascinating contradiction, which is why do intelligent people like you knowingly do things that make their lives worse?
I’ll give you the example of taking drugs. For me, drugs were not making my life worse. It allowed me to float and feel good, but they have a side effect. That’s the thing. If drugs didn’t have a side effect, the whole planet would be high. That’s the thing. The way of living life without getting high requires a lot of work. It takes meditation, the mindset, and life intelligence. It takes a lot of time and energy to be able to live with oxygen and to feel happy and content without taking anything. Drugs are something that brings you all of that in one second, but there is a trade-off. For me, it wasn’t my enemy. She was my girlfriend. A big love story.
It’s an immediate relief.
Why Smart People Sabotage Themselves
It’s a girl who loved me, and I loved her, but she had a dark side. We can see it like that. To answer your question, a lot of intelligent people destroy themselves because they don’t see it as destruction at the beginning, but a way to stay afloat in a world that seems chaotic for them. They don’t understand why it’s chaotic. When it feels like that, and we feel helpless about our situation combined with poor self-esteem, we get smashed.
If I believe in myself and I don’t feel helpless, the world is going crazy. I’m more aware than ever about what’s going on. I can talk about any aspect of our society with high accuracy, and it doesn’t affect me because I’m detached. I know that inside of this chaos, there is still beauty. I choose consciously to focus on the beautiful things.
Another thing that you say is that awareness and thinking aren’t the same thing. Explain to me as though I know nothing about neuroscience or how the brain works. Awareness versus thinking.
I can think without being aware of it. I can wake up every morning, do my job, get married, and have kids, a career, or whatever. I live my life without being aware of anything.
You’re saying this is unconscious versus being conscious. This is what you’re saying.
We can resume it in this way. How do I know if I’m conscious about what I’m doing? As myself, why of why? Two whys. You can do this with anyone.
Give some practical examples of how you can validate the reader who’s tuning in to the show that they can know themselves when they are being conscious or unconscious. Let’s give them some examples that they can think, “I’m much more aware than I realize or I’ve been doing this completely unaware.”
The why of the why. It is one question that doesn’t matter in which culture we are. Most of the time, when we ask someone, “Why do you work?” It is, “I work to feed my family.” It sounds logical. It’s a good answer. The second question is, “Why do you want to feed your family?” We switch to, “It’s because it’s my duty.” “Why is it your duty?” Already, starting from the second why, people start blocking. They don’t know why they do it. Here, we can say that they choose this path without much thinking because they were wired, programmed, or whatever.
That’s what they understood. When I was having the discussion earlier on with you about how we are in that first stage of our life, we end up becoming what we’ve learnt, what we saw at home, what we saw at school, what we saw in society, and how things work. We adopt these, thinking, “This is the way because this is the way of everyone.” We’re not even asking the why of the why.
The nature of consciousness or self-awareness is, like in nature, spreading and growing. We can see that most of the time, we find ourselves in careers and doing things that don’t allow us to grow. That’s one of those things that can tell me something about that situation. It wasn’t chosen, being self-aware. If I choose something with awareness, it will lead me to growth.
This is the question I want to ask. When you come out of college, let’s say, and you’re going to push play on the path you’re going to take in life and your career, what advice would you give to young men who are starting out in their life about how they should be thinking compared to how they are thinking? Meaning, how do you advise people to become more conscious and to make more conscious decisions? How do they know that they’re doing that or not doing that?
Questioning The Highest Authorities
Questioning, including the highest authorities we have in life. I even questioned my own existence. I questioned God, leaders, and parents. I am questioning every single person or force we have in our life. Questioning is, do I do it for myself as a human being because it allows me to grow, which is rational selfishness? I’m someone who always talks about selfishness. My advice is to be selfish but in a rational way. Whatever makes you grow and happy, do it.
Question every single decision. Does it come from you or from something else? Is there a pressure that comes from someone or some ideology, or is it something that you choose because it’s truly something you want to do? It’s about questioning and being honest with ourselves. The key point is honesty. If I’m honest with myself, I will always get to those answers. When we start to question things, the very first emotion we have is fear and guilt. With myself, I am going, “Who am I to question my parents?”
Fear and shame. Guilt and shame.
We live only one life. The opposite of growth is sacrifice. Am I going to sacrifice my life in the name of some external guidance? It depends on everyone. Some people will prefer one path. It’s like the red and blue pill. Do I close my eyes and follow the flow, which is much easier, or do I start questioning things and get lost for some time?
Maybe someday, I will find myself. If I find myself or start to find myself, life becomes truly wonderful. That’s the motivation. That’s the point that we want to reach. Life becomes wonderful behind the fear and guilt. I can have a normal life, boring, by following the flow. No fear, no guilt of a different kind. Free thinking is the key.
If I were to ask you, could the Yassine of today, next to the Yassine before his sixth overdose, recognize what was happening in his nervous system before he picked up the drugs? You can see all that now.
I can see that mental building I had and the fears. We talked about honesty. Also, we’ll talk about dishonesty. I was also dishonest with myself, meaning that I didn’t want to accept certain things. I was holding on to certain fears and biases. I can see all of that. What’s funny about life is that when we switch from darkness to the other side, we realize how it was all an illusion. It’s sad that we can waste a life by holding onto something that doesn’t exist. Fear is a tiny circuit, a group of little cells firing in the brain. It doesn’t have an external component in the universe. It’s sad to see so many wasted lives.
It’s something that we construct in our heads ourselves. It doesn’t exist for anybody else.
The mind doesn’t make a difference between imagination and reality. We have this power of believing in our own lives.
Let’s talk about men again. Why do you think men are so terrified of vulnerability?
Of being with the self and others, or what? With the self and others?
Yes.
I will say that as part of the human experience, a man should understand that crying, feeling weak, and feeling scared is as normal as breathing. This comes from different cultures. In my culture, a man doesn’t cry. A man doesn’t complain. A man cannot say, “I’m depressed.” That’s for the weak. We even say depression is for the rich.
When you say your culture, which culture are you talking about?
Morocco.
Also, you’re not living in Morocco now. You’re living in Bali. Do you have the same experience there, or do you see other things there?
No. Even here, they don’t express themselves.
In most cultures, including Western cultures, what you’re saying is very much what these societies expect of the man.
Redefining True Masculine Strength
We are expected to be strong, but strength is also being aware of my weaknesses. There is a breaking point for everyone. If I’m not aware of it and do something about it, I will keep moving with that weakness my whole life. Strength means that I have to acknowledge. I have to express myself, “I have this fear. I cannot face that kind of guy. I cannot face these sorts of situations.” I then ask myself, “Why?”
Targeted sound frequencies can reset the nervous system, helping men regain focus, sleep, and peace. Share on XHere again, be honest with myself. I’m like, “It’s because I believe that that person has more value than me,” or whatever. The bottom line is honesty with myself, and on top of it, accepting the fact that I have biases, I have fears, and I can be jealous. I can do a lot of things that sound bad. I’m a human being in permanent growth. It’s part of the human experience.
Guys, be sensitive and cry, but don’t feel like a victim. There is a difference between feeling like a victim and being sensitive and aware of your weaknesses. A victim has a different mindset. That’s poison. If you want to cry or you are in a situation where you feel small, acknowledge that, understand why it’s happening, and then find your path through it.
Instead of shoving it down, trying to ignore it and pretending it doesn’t exist, you’re saying to acknowledge that it exists. Instead of ignoring it, try to understand why.
If I ignore it, it will affect my capacity to feel happy in life.
Most men, in particular, do try to ignore it. They don’t want to deal with it at all.
It reminds me. It’s like if you were living in primitive times and you couldn’t show your fear to the monster standing in front of you. The monster is people, society, work, and my wife. Don’t show them. To yourself and to myself, I have to do that work. The outcome is more joy in my life. In the end, we experience life alone. Being with others is a form of illusion. If I live in misery, even if everyone is like, “This guy is great,” what’s the point? If I want to be happy with myself and feel good, I need to do this work. It’s important.
It’s spiritual and psychological work. It stands on two things, which are removing fears and developing rational thinking. This is what I found in my more than 25 years of introspection. There are two components. Work on my fears. Fear is poison number one. Then, developing rational thinking. Rational thinking is I get data, analyze it objectively, and act based on it. If we don’t have a rational mind, we struggle in life. Also, man has to develop. Rational thinking will take you to integrity, will make you stronger, will make you smarter, and it will lead to more happiness.
The journey you’ve had is, honestly, radical. If you think about the polarity between where you are and where you were, it’s a wide spectrum. Most people don’t get to experience such an extreme spectrum. Everything you’ve lived through eventually led you to YouMind. What exactly are you trying to build with YouMind? I would like you to explain to the audience the path that you went on and how you came to doing what you’re doing.
After the overdose and the six months with family members, I met a lady. We fell in love with each other, and I ended up in Thailand. On the 12th of September 2011, I landed in Bangkok, where I’m going to spend more than 10 years. It was fourteen. When I landed in Thailand, I was already with the mindset of, “I’m not going to give up on my dreams. What can I do now that’s something that I always wanted to do, but I wasn’t brave enough to do?” I said, “I’m going to establish a world record.”
My very first job in Thailand was as a sea guide. I was taking people by speedboat to visit different small, beautiful islands. It was a nice job. I was well-paid. At the same time, in 2012, I started training for a world record. I said, “I want to sail the longest distance ever with a tiny boat, like a windsurf thing.” Do you know the SAS, the commando guys?
Yes. The Special Forces.
I didn’t train to hurt others, but trained to protect and save myself in any situation at sea. Six months spent with this coach. I got some sponsors. I couldn’t speak English at the time. This was 2012. I couldn’t say anything but a few words from movies, bad ones. That’s it. After that, I established a world record. I got $150,000 from someone.
What was the world record? Where did you go? From where to where?
From Thailand to Indonesia on a windsurf. I have to show you the pictures. I didn’t sleep for three and a half days. I had hallucinations. I lost my skin. I almost got killed by lightning the second night. It was crazy. The hallucinations lasted for three days. I saw my father working on water. At the time, he had died seventeen years before that. I saw monsters coming to me and melodies. It was crazy. For three days, I got lost at sea. Can you imagine a windsurf thing getting lost in the middle of the ocean? I was looking for shade in the middle of nowhere. That was crazy.
I came back, and one of my sponsors had a chat with me. At the time, I had designed, on paper, a flying boat. He said, “I would like to participate and give you some cash so we can develop this flying boat.” My very first real business was a flying boat designed for racing with hydrofoils, carbon fiber, and titanium. It took two years to make it fly. When I got close to making the first sales, they stole my business from me.
Who did? The sponsor?
Yeah. He was a very powerful man in Thailand. I was threatened with death and prison. They were like, “You give us everything, or you will end up dead or spend a lot of time in prison.” I lost $2.5 million. Two weeks after that, after losing the company, my ex-wife left with another guy. I had to fly to the end of Indonesia and stay there for a month, trying to understand what happened. That’s how YouMind started.
I was broke. Nothing. No money. I was left in Indonesia with one surfboard and a few hundred dollars. I stayed for three months, surfing big waves, crying, and trying to understand what was going on. Then, I saw an opportunity. I said, “From my life experience with drugs, the bigger the crap, the bigger the opportunity. Let’s see what I can make with all of this.” I got some sounds. I bought sounds online. It’s brain entrainment, binaural beats. It’s a field of neuroscience. At that time, there was a company selling sounds for sleep, stress, and anxiety. I got a few tracks and started listening. I felt good, and then bingo.
I have one of those apps that I tried. I’d have to find it.
It’s a beep with music on top of it. It can take you to any state you want. It started like that. I saw that there was a massive gap in the industry that I could improve all of this stuff. I have a background in psychology, applied math and programming, and also a bit of boat racing and designing. I decided, and that was a bold move, to create something with sound and help people with all sorts of conditions.
I did a quick study. The first study was about the US market. I saw that for every 10,000 people, you have only one therapist, or 20,000. People cannot afford therapy, so I thought, “Let’s see what improvement I can bring to this industry and create something from it.” I spent the next ten years by myself studying, organizing events, selling sounds, and helping people with weird conditions, including PTSD, and all sorts of traumas. The very first challenge was for me to study and listen. Three thousand five hundred scientific reports. It was of biblical proportions. I don’t know how I did that. Some years ago, I decided to never give up on my dreams.
Using GPT?
I didn’t have GPT at the time. I couldn’t take a report and say, “GPT, give me the resume of this report.” I had to read all of that stuff. There is a technique. You use mental filters. I was getting the numbers, the frequency, the modulation, a few more things, like how many people used it, and the outcome. There were 3,500 reports. That was crazy.
I spent ten years by myself. I didn’t have any investors. I had that big trauma. A few years ago, I was visiting Morocco, and I met someone from the US. It was a guy from the medtech industry who was cruising the planet. This guy would become my business partner. Cash support came in, and that’s how YouMind became YouMind.
Explain the platform.
The platform has two main things. The first one is an AI that we created, and that can profile people. If I communicate with this AI via chat, answering five simple questions about sleep and emotions.
Is it an app I can download? How do I access it?
Hacking Brain States Through Sound
We don’t want to have an app. In the way we have it, it’s easy for us to deploy our tech everywhere. I will tell you why. People answer five different questions, and they get a snapshot of their brain patterns and nervous system. They get the file by email telling them how things are going on at the brain level and the nervous system level. The AI will tell them, “Here are the sounds that you can use if you want to improve whatever needs to be improved.” That’s the AI. On the other hand, if I talk about sound, brain entrainment is very easy to understand. It’s an oversimplification. Every single mental state has its own frequency.
You isolate each of the states into a frequency.
That’s it. Anyone listening to that frequency will get to that state. If I know the frequency of sleep, anyone listening to a sleep frequency will sleep. It goes the same for anti-anxiety, anti-stress, brain performance, focus, creativity, and fast healing.
The one I have is called Endel. It has deep focus, relax, sleep, move, uplifting, wind down, or when you want to meditate.
That’s about the sound. We create something pretty unique. We create what we call protocols. If someone talks with AI and AI identifies anxiety, stress, issues, lack of focus, and so forth and so on, we create a protocol, which is a playlist with different tracks. These tracks are a mix of beeps and music. It’s very pleasant. By using these tracks, they will be able to target that issue from different angles. It’s a brain hack.
The tracks work together. It’s not like, “If you want to sleep, I give you one sound.” I’m going to give you 3 or 4 because sleep is a complex thing. I need different parts of your brain to fire in the right way. That’s a protocol. We work with defense. We work with clinics, luxury hospitality, and sports teams. We work with a lot of clinics. We launched a protocol for Alzheimer’s with MIT.
Is it a B2C where I can use it, or do you sell it to companies?
Both. B2B, B2C, B2B2C.
Explain to the audience how they can access YouMind to try it out. How will they do it?
There are two links. You can go to YouMind.org/bespoke and talk with our AI. They can put your name in the affiliation link so that we know that they come from you.
For this episode, when you’re going to give your information for your bio, I want the audience to see in the summary the way they can access your app. Something like this can be so profound and can have such a prolific effect on people. I’ve tried this stuff. It’s a pleasant experience. You’re not popping a pill. You’re using very advanced science of tapping into the frequency that you require by playing a sound which talks to that frequency. It’s pretty crazy. There are no pills. There’s no operation. You use your ears.
That’s it. Something impressive is a sound for anxiety that will make people feel relaxed. We worked with a Chinese guy, a Moroccan guy, and a Japanese guy. In the end, we are all the same. That’s something I love to witness every time.
We’re all people.
That’s it. Same brain. All the other stuff is makeup.
Fascinating. Isn’t that interesting? You are able to talk to all people, no matter which culture, society, or whatever you come from, by using sounds that speak to one’s brain.
Also, there were some weird situations. I got a few people coming in who were like, “My husband wants to commit suicide. What can we do? Please, nothing is working.” I will give you an example of a very sophisticated brain hack. It’s a track of 20 minutes. You use stereo headphones. We use isochronic tones, not any kind of sound.
Explain.
Isochronic tone is a special kind of sound that you turn on and off in a very fast way. I’m not going to zoom in. It becomes very technical. This sound can target each side of the brain in a very different way. If someone comes to me who is like, “I want to kill myself. I want to kill someone,” or whatever, something where emotions are taken over, what I’m going to do is we will give him or her a set of headphones or ask that person, “Listen to this track.” It’s done online.
One sound will shut down emotions. We send it to the side. We send to the right hemisphere a frequency that will shut down all of that, and we will activate some centers in the thinking hemisphere. In the end, you create stability. It’s always funny that by the end of the session, when I ask, “How do you feel now? Do you want to kill yourself?” the guys are like, “I’m okay.” No pill, no fight, nothing.
I’m 100% going to try this. What should I try and experience to feel the impact?
I will tell you something about our creations. Some tracks can take up to six months to be designed. Twenty minutes of sound or one hour takes up to six months. A lot of trials. It’s pure science. Whatever you try, you will get something from day one. If you keep doing it for 10 days or 2 weeks, your brain will start creating new connections. The effect will be lasting. I’m not asking people to be headphone addicts for the rest of their lives.
Is it all 10-minute to 20-minute sessions? Is that what they are?
It depends. It is 20 to 30 minutes most of the time, but for sleep-related issues, sometimes it’s a little bit more. The frequency is very low. It takes some time to synchronize the brain.
Have you looked at yourself in the mirror?
Yeah, when I get my stitches.
Have you seen what an amazing person you are?
Merci. Thank you. There is something I want to say. As men, do things with love. There is something called love. Love is not being super emotional. This is one piece of advice I would like to add here before I forget. If someone or something does bad to you, don’t take it personally. Everyone is going through something difficult in life.
Always think about how you can live life in a better state. That’s my philosophy. I saw that I was talented in understanding the human experience, combining that with sound. This is my Ikigai. Every one of us has a lot of gifts. Maybe our life mission at the end is to find this gift and create something out of it. When you do that, you stop thinking about money. Money will come to you.
Money comes to us when we do what we love. We don’t even think about it. There is a divine power. We call it God, atheist, Buddha, or whatever. This energy that is flowing in me and you, when you start getting closer to it, things become easy. If something is difficult, it’s not from me. It’s from our society. Leave it behind and focus on what makes you happy. Create value from it, grow through it, fight with it, and share it with others.
This would resume my life philosophy. Growing through value creation. Not only introspection and sitting, “Why did I do that?” but creating something and embracing failure. Failure was one of the best friends I ever had. I love failure. I want to fail because failure is amazing. It comes with negative connotations. Failure is just.
Failure is a blessing.
There is a different way. The one I tried is not the right one, but I’m closer. Every single failure is a blessing because I’m getting closer to what I want. YouMind is my Ikigai. It’s tough. Sometimes, I’m tired. Sometimes, I want to be on the beach with a bit of rice, my surfboard, and nothing else. It comes from love, so I keep doing it. That’s my advice for any young man, old man, or whatever. There is no maximum age where it’s like, “I’m too old for this.” If I had to live one day of happiness and go through all of what I went through, I would do it again, even if it is one single day. I resumed the thing about YouMind.
One more thing. We created another AI that can do the same job for companies. You can give me any company of any size. We can run an audit in two hours. We can analyze their people and the company itself in two hours. I’m working as a B2B, B2B2C, and B2C. For people following your beautiful work, send them. If they put your name in there, we’ll know they come from you. Let’s make things more beautiful.
It’s been my pleasure. Before we finish up the story, I ask all my guests five questions. I’m looking for what you’re feeling at the moment. I want you to pay attention. Who would you like to say sorry to given the chance?
A dog I had in Thailand. I’m not kidding. One day, I kicked him in the butt. I thought he did something, but it wasn’t him. His name was Sente. Sorry to nobody, not even to myself in the past, because I made mistakes based on that state. One of the mistakes I avoid in life is judging my past with the knowledge of the present moment. Otherwise, I will feel guilty. In the past, I was ignorant and was dealing with something I didn’t know about. Judging that with what I have in mind now would be devastating. It’s not good.
What are you proud of being or doing in your life?
They are mixed together. I am through what I do. There is no separation. When I wake up, surf, meditate, cook, or talk to you, all of that is part of an extension of my being. I don’t have that separation. They are all mixed together.
Are you proud of any one particular thing that you’ve achieved, or are you saying it’s all-encompassing for you?
I misunderstood the question. I’m proud of what I did with YouMind. Honestly, I don’t know how to answer this question.
You can answer it like this.
I’m happy that this project got to this point because it’s helping a lot of people. That was my initial mission.
I’ve got an interesting one. When did you receive kindness while needing it most and expecting it least? You mentioned two episodes in your life that I picked up in the conversation. The first one was with your friend in the hospital. The other one is with the family members for the six-month period where they all got together. No matter what you did in the past, they decided, “We’re going to give you kindness.” You most probably did not expect it in your life at that stage. Maybe you have something else you want to mention.
I would like to mention the kindness from life. There is a potential running in me and others. The potential is always an open door. Whenever we decide to follow that path, it’s there. The path of change. The path of looking at things from a different perspective. Having that potential is amazing. Nothing is stuck. Everything can be fixed.
What did your mother or father teach you that you frequently remind yourself of?
Kindness and integrity.
The final one. What is your superpower?
I whistle super well. That’s a crazy power I have. I can write very complex melodies. I came through this app, Suno, where I can record my whistling and transform it into something that others can enjoy. That’s one of my superpowers, as well as cooking. I cook very well.
Unbelievable. The conversation was very different from what I expected. I have a big smile on my face.
You look like a happy person.
I feel better than I was an hour before we had this conversation. You’ve added value.
It was super. You also added value to my day. Thank you. I am wishing the best to everyone who’s tuning in. We have a lot of free stuff and sound you can try for sleep and creativity. I will give you these links so people can enjoy those creations. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
See you.
Important Links
About Yassine Darkaoui
Yassine Darkaoui is the Founder and CEO of YouMind®, a neuroacoustic technology company focused on helping people better understand and regulate their internal states.
His journey into this work came through extreme personal hardship. After years of drug addiction and a period in which his life was deeply affected by it, Yassine made a radical decision to transform his life. He rebuilt himself through discipline, exploration, and an intense pursuit of human performance.
Sailing became a defining part of that transformation. He went on to become a three time world record holder, pushing himself through extreme physical and psychological conditions and developing a deep understanding of resilience, focus, and the human capacity to change.
Today, through YouMind®, he combines that lived experience with more than 20 years of research into sound, neuroscience, and human performance, developing AI driven and patented neuroacoustic technologies designed to support people in changing their state and ultimately changing their lives.
