Drew Petersen Still Wants You To Care About Mental Health

With Feel It All's in-person world premiere rapidly approaching on May 29th in Summit County, Colorado, we figured now was a better time than ever to chat with Petersen about the film, which he believes will bolster his continued efforts to keep the mental health conversation in skiing—and the broader outdoor sports world—going.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

To start off, in your words, what is Feel It All?

"Feel It All is a skiing and running film—it's about a hell of a lot more than that. It's a film that uses my personal story in a way that's relatable to other people to pursue a mission of meaningful, lasting cultural change on mental health and suicide."

How does the film compare to your previous work, Ups & Downs?

"It continues on in the same mission. My goal is to grow and extrapolate that impact with Feel It All. Ups & Downs was an esoteric, abstract exposé of feelings and emotions. Whereas Feel It All is a tangible pursuit and meaning of pursuing a big goal. And the resilience and the parallels built between pursuing a really big goal and living life with mental illness, mental health challenges, suicidal thoughts—anything along that entire spectrum."

"Ups & Downs was, in its core, a ski movie, and it did reach beyond, it did end up reaching beyond the ski community. I don't know if I want to use the word 'just,' but it was just a ski film. And Feel It All takes that, brings in running, brings in a whole parallel community, broadens it to the outdoor community, and then ultimately having that tangible goal can take this impact, this mission of cultural change on mental health, to the mainstream."

How did you get into ultra running?

"In 2014, I had probably the worst injury I've ever had from skiing: I dislocated my hip and my shoulder, partially tore my ACL, broke a few ribs, and broke my sacrum all in one crash. And that took the better part of two years to rehab from, and I just remember sitting on my deck here in Summit County, looking at the peaks around me and having a real epiphany that I needed more in my life than skiing."

Can you convey how difficult it is to accomplish something like the Leadville 100?

"As far as what that's actually like, man, it's hard to distill that down into an answer. It's hard to distill that down into what's a 32-minute film. It is an exploration of the most vibrant version of the human experience. That's what I would call running 100 miles. That's what I intend for it to be when I go do it. And that's what it has always been every time I've done it."

"Like most people, when they ask about running 100, they're like, 'Jeez, it sounds so hard, I don't even like to drive that far.' *Laughs* 'I could never.' But it's like once you've actually been there, and when you explore that true depth of human experiences, it's a very rich, life-altering, life-affirming transformation."

How do you ensure intense outdoor pursuits aren't just band-aids for whatever you're struggling with internally?

"We do directly address this in Feel It All. In Ups & Downs, a lot of messages were pretty implicit. This message was implicit in Ups & Downs. It's explicit in Feel It All—is that while skiing and running outdoor pursuits can be therapeutic, they can certainly be therapeutic; in no way, shape, or form are they a substitute for real therapy. And we can get a lot of growth and we can gain a lot from these outdoor pursuits, but if it's the only thing, we're setting ourselves up for a lot of shortcomings."

"It always starts with awareness and intention and a mindful, conscious approach. Like I said, skiing and running are still a part of my toolkit for how to take care of myself. But the way that they don't become a band-aid is that I don't use them as an escape. I use them as one element of how I take care of myself in concert with a million other things, including sleep, mindfulness, meditation, journaling, continued talk therapy, and psychiatric medication. The list goes on."

"Skiing and running used to be an escape for me, an escape from my problems, a way of numbing and not feeling the mental and emotional struggle that I was going through. And now they've evolved into a much healthier relationship and only one small part of the toolkit of how I take care of myself."

Why did you decide to pursue a Kickstarter for Feel It All?

"The biggest shift for why I changed my tune and gave in and am crowdfunding this is that I had a conversation with a new friend. He told me that I'm not asking people for help. Rather, I am offering people an opportunity to support the impact, mission, and cultural change that this film can and will have. And it was pretty amazing how one simple conversation changed so much of my outlook on this."

"And then the second piece that really changed things for me, and this was another friend who said this to me a long time ago, maybe a year or last summer. I'm pretty sure the way he actually said it was, 'Put your pride aside because this film's not helping anyone sitting on a hard drive.' And that is really true."

You've noted on social media that this wasn't an easy decision for you. How come?

"I thought a lot and meditated and ruminated on why I've been struggling to ask for help with this because we seriously considered starting crowdfunding a year ago. Ultimately, it is rooted in that reluctance to ask for help as a human. And then my whole life, I've struggled with asking for financial help. And especially from individuals, I think a lot of that's built in pride, masculinity this kind of belief that I can do it on my own"

So, how far along is the film production-wise?

"We have picture lock. The film's done. It's at color, sound—we're finalizing motion graphics right now. Have you worked in film production before?"

No.

It takes so f**king long. *Laughs*

I'm sure.

"And every time you're like, 'all right, we're done,' there's always one more thing. But I think we'll have the final export in the next week."

Maybe this is contingent on crowdfunding, but when do you think people will be able to see it?

"It is a little bit dependent on funding. If this crowdfunding works, I'm going to be able to release it online for free on YouTube so that as many people as possible can see it in June."

Do you have plans to tour it like you did with Ups & Downs?

"I really believe in the power of in-person experiences. Especially, you know, certainly with film. But really, when we're talking about topics like mental health and suicide, in-person experiences can really shift someone's life. So, I wanted to make the in-person events as impactful as possible. We're combining the cool factor and stoke of ski movie premieres with the impacts of my public speaking and community health initiatives."

"So we're kicking things off with what I call the world premiere because I've never had a world premiere. And I'm the one playing it, so I can just call it a world premiere. *Laughs* Here in Summit County, in my hometown, May 29th, in two weeks, and that's gonna kick things off. And that event epitomizes what I'm trying to do with events all across the West, where we combine all those factors to create what I envisioned as a community celebration on mental health."

To learn more about Feel It All's release schedule—and donate to the film—see the Kickstarter page.