"When somebody sits you down and says, 'Hey, you could be a vegetable in five years and not really remember the names of your children,' that tends to focus you on gosh, what am I doing? What is important to me?" Glenn Beck told Vice's Grace Wyler.
The interview comes on the heels of Beck's announcement that he has suffered from a debilitating health condition for years.
"While I was at Fox, the pain would get so bad that my camera crew, our executive producer Tiffany and I, had worked out hand signals so they would know when to take the camera off of me," Beck said on his show this week. "We didn’t know at the time what was causing me to feel as though, out of nowhere, my hands and feet, or arms and legs would feel like someone had just crushed them, set them on fire or pushed broken glass into them."
"Why am I telling you all of this? Because you and I are family, and for us to survive, we need to trust each other," Beck told his audience. "When I first spoke of my alcoholic pivot point on the air in the 90s, I was actually trying to end my career."
"But It had the opposite effect," Beck said. "I got to know my audience for the first time, and I realized we are all hiding something, whether it is physical, mental or spiritual pain. We need to know that we are all in this together."
Beck said he has experienced a full recovery.
"Doctors at a brain rehab center in Texas finally diagnosed him with adrenal fatigue and an autoimmune disorder, among other things, and after some lifestyle changes and a few months of hormone therapy—plus some help from God, naturally," Wyler said. "Beck says his 'brain is back online in a big way.'"
However, his struggle with the illness has changed the way he does almost everything.
"I am still the same guy who believes that the country is in trouble, but it has nothing to do with one party over the other," Beck said. "It has everything to do with all of us. We're choosing this course, and I think we're doing it blindly at times."
"And what we need to do is step back, look at that, and really choose what it is that we believe to be true, and does that tear down or lift up? I really want to get out of the tear-down business and into the lift-up business."
"Now that we have gotten this clean bill of health, I want to make sure I'm spending all the time that I have been given to do things that are empowering and uniting and good."
Beck is now focused on projects like the upcoming #IChooseHope event.
"Instead of telling dystopian stories, we also need to look at the good side, look at what we can do: Man can be healthier, more well-connected, and we can end so much pain and suffering in a very good way and turn everything around."