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Mormon Stories Podcast

1182: Wayne and Alex Sermon - Our Journey with Imagine Dragons and Mormonism Pt. 2

Mormon Stories Podcast

Dr. John Dehlin

Religion & Spirituality

4.55.7K Ratings

🗓️ 7 October 2019

⏱️ 56 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Mormon Stories had the real privilege of interviewing Daniel “Wayne” Sermon of Imagine Dragons, along with his wise and talented wife Alex Sermon, an accomplished professional ballerina, in their home in Las Vegas. In this interview the Sermons open up about their lives as Mormons, their life with Imagine Dragons, and their journey out of Mormonism.

Their interview is so inspiring....especially regarding their devoted partnership. 

Transcript

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0:00.0

Music

0:07.0

Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories Foundation and relies solely upon the support of people like you, its listeners.

0:14.0

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0:26.0

All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible in the United States and go towards producing the podcast and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you.

0:37.0

Thanks for your support.

0:40.0

Music

0:46.0

So, coming back to your spiritual stuff, that's not the righteous be-o-you-path, right? So, tell us about how you were thinking about spirituality when you made that decision and then just go from there on your spiritual journey.

0:58.0

Yeah, so, you know, high school was great and, you know, obviously, when that comes to an end, you have to figure out what you're doing with your life and as all Mormon boys know, there's a right of passage that has to be crossed.

1:14.0

So, and that pretty much every boy is, especially when you toss very much pressure into going on a mission. It's required, expected, and I wasn't, I wasn't, I wasn't no different than that.

1:26.0

So, I don't know how interesting this will be, but basically another part of my journey has been that I'm a chronic insomniac, like just a clinical insomniac, like real deal, not like, you know, I had a rough night sleep more like, you know,

1:43.0

I would go to labs and have diodes strapped to my head and like, studying my brain from like age 12.

1:49.0

Yeah, and like, it's like average how many hours has this been?

1:52.0

Yeah, very. Sometimes I'd be like, eight hours, other times I wouldn't sleep at all. I'd go for four or five days without sleeping and just it was a nightmare.

1:59.0

I was on every kind of medication you can possibly imagine, like, clonipin, trasodone, clasapam, you know, some of the stuff.

2:09.0

Or those benzos. It was benzos. Yeah, benzos.

2:12.0

Okay. Which in hindsight, it's kind of interesting.

2:16.0

Pretty intense. It was kind of highly addictive.

2:18.0

And I, you know, I struggled with that a little bit, but I always changed medications when it happened.

2:23.0

It was a defining characteristic of my life for sure.

2:27.0

I think it's just biological. Is it anxiety?

2:30.0

I'm sure that someone's, you know, in the future could study my brain and they'd see the part that's like, oh yeah, that's something's wrong there.

2:35.0

Okay. Yeah. And he has a family member that, my mom is a very bad sleeper too. So I think I just kind of got that plus an extra dose.

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