My Addiction Story

If you're a founder that thinks that as soon as you get this next project done, you will be at peace and able to rest, then this video is for you. And it's a story about my addiction, how I discovered it, and then how it continues to show up, and then what I decided to do about it. If you don't know who I am, my name's Luke Murray. I'm a former physician. I've been an entrepreneur for about 20 years. I've done a little over $100 million in revenue during that time. Currently, I have a portfolio that does about $3 million a year. And I make these videos because I'd like to have ambition without the bullshit, and I'm guessing you would too. So the first time I realized that I was an addict was during a psychedelic experience that I had that I'd signed up for because I'd heard, oh, psychedelics can help you do 3 years of therapy in 3 hours. And at that point, I'd done about 3 years of therapy, so I was like, oh, this sounds Way more efficient than what I was doing. So I went down there just hellbent on fixing, I don't know, whatever I had going on. And to be honest, I didn't really have a specific problem. I just thought there's got to be something wrong. So show me what it is and help me transform it in an afternoon. And I went down there. I've got my eye mask on. You're supposed to listen to music. I've got a voice recorder. I've got my shaman kind of sitting in the room. Holding space, as they call it. When I first dropped in, I was like, oh, this is amazing. This is so beautiful. It was a cool experience, but— and I was quite a bit out of my body. But as soon as I could kind of feel like I was on Earth, I mean, within maybe 20 minutes, I was like, okay, all right, now what's the thing that's wrong? What do I need to fix? And I was like getting legitimately frustrated. After the experience, I was like, Telling my shaman, sitting with him saying, this is bullshit. It did not work. And I don't think that this is helpful. This is not helpful. This is stupid. Well, when I sat down and listened to the whole experience days later, what's wrong? What do I need to fix? What's broken? Give me the task I need to go after. As I think back to that right now, I I even get emotional right now because you know what that sounds like? You know what I recognized that as? Addiction. Just like any heroin addict who hasn't had a hit in a day or a few hours or whatever their level of cadence is, I had been through the most profound experience of my life. It was, and to this day is. And as soon as I had any shred of ego, I was pissed that there was nothing to fix. And I was like, oh God, I'm addicted. I'm addicted to the feeling of fixing stuff and the idea that there's something I've got to do to be okay. And when I listened to that for the first time, I cried out loud. And again, I still feel it. A few years later, it's like October of 2022, I realized, oh, I'm exhausted. And so I went to what I feel to this day is my favorite place on the planet. It's the Columbia River Gorge in Oregon. It separates Oregon and Washington. And every summer my family had driven along that river, and I remember just looking out the window heading to our family reunion that summer, Thinking, gosh, this is so peaceful. These mountains are so gorgeous. And so at 38, 39 years old, I said, you know what? I'm just going to go sit at— a friend had recommended a place called Skamania Lodge. It's on the Washington side. I'm just going to sit. I'm going to watch the river go by and I'm going to relax. And at this point, I was not involved at all in the day-to-day of my company in a meaningful way, at least. So I thought, man, this is going to be perfect. So I went there, I locked up my phone for 3 days straight, and I just went on walks and I sat by that river and I could feel myself shaking. I mean, my brain could see that this is beautiful, this is peaceful. There was weddings going on on the lawn and I was like, my shoulders were tense. Yeah. And it just was not comfortable. And the reason it wasn't comfortable was probably because it was so unfamiliar. I mean, I'd been grinding, pushing since I was in high school, and here I was 20 years later trying to feel okay with an emotion or a sensation in my body that just I couldn't handle, or at least I couldn't handle and accept without judgment, and discomfort. I had scheduled a meeting with this lady who did something called the Akashic Records. And so I got on the phone with her while I was out there. And the Akashic Records is kind of like fortune telling, but apparently there's some other world where they get the answers for you. So I'm talking to this lady and she says, Luke, as you're present with me right now, what's a word that you want me to kind of ask or send into the ether? And I said, excruciating, as in this amount of peace, this amount of calmness is excruciating. And I was obviously surprised. I'd never heard someone express peace being excruciating. I mean, excruciating is only used when something is painful, like at a 10 out of 10, but this was uncomfortable in my body in that same way. And right now it's 2026, I still feel the excruciating discomfort of peace, like it's not fixed. And that makes sense because I'd laid down a pattern over years of my life of looking for problems. If you're in fight or flight mode, you're searching for threats at all times. And if you're starting a business, you're going to find them. I mean, right now, right now I have 2 lawsuits, a cease and desist, and we've lost, I think, more money than we've ever lost in a month. I mean, I'm looking at my retirement account deciding how much of it I'm going to have to spend. So there are real problems going on. I don't have to look that far. I don't have to try that hard. But the thing that's different right now is that I'm in a place within the company where all those things are being taken care of by someone else. And they've specifically told me, hey Luke, do us a favor and please don't help. We don't want your help with any of this stuff. Just stay out of the way. And so now the most valuable thing I can do for my companies is just sit here, or at least sit here and not go actively try to solve a bunch of problems. And the upside of this addiction is that, yeah, it's been the results or it has resulted in so much good. If you're constantly looking to fix things in your life, then you end up fixing them usually. But it also is something that is behavior that I don't control, but that threatens to control me. And that's how you describe addiction. And it honestly is something that It's a state that you want to feel consistently. You've probably heard the phrase, like an alcoholic will eventually say, I just drink to feel normal. And I would say, I find problems to fix in my life or in my business just to feel normal. And the difference is this is what people would call pro-social behavior, especially in the circles that I run in. It's rewarded. No one's going to say, hey, Stop messing with your supplement stack and don't put out those fires and quit going to the gym so much and quit growing your businesses. But it has become a trap for me, or it has become— what's the right way to say it? It's become maladaptive because sometimes I can't. I am so tired cognitively that the smartest thing for me to do is not try to do more. It's to sit still and feel the excruciating discomfort of that peace. And it hasn't gone away. Again, it's May of 2026. I had my first experience in April of 2020. And then again, October of 2022, when I realized all this peace was excruciating. And now here I am talking to you about trying to sit still, not for my whole entire life, but just for an afternoon or a few hours, or Once I realize I'm tired, I should probably quit working. And then I make up fake work. I have a coach, he calls it gray work. Black and white is on or off, but I check email or make phone calls to employees that don't need to be made. And it's because I'm judging and because, and this is probably the more powerful version, my body doesn't want to go into withdrawals. I just want you to know that if you are feeling addicted to fixing things all the time, if you're in fight or flight and you've tried to maybe step away and that felt uncomfortable, so you thought you might be doing something wrong, you're just addicted to the feeling, or at least I am. And in an ideal world, maybe someday I won't be an addict and I'll be able to work with intensity when that's what's called for. And completely relax when it's not called for. What do you think? Does this sound familiar to you? If so, let me know in the comments below. I'd like to know how you manage this or if you think you've, you've solved it. Geez, if you solved it, please let me know.