THIS Is How Change The Conversation Around Addiction Feat. Dr. Don Wood

How do we best help people that struggle with addiction?

We've got to change the way we speak to these people. It's not about their character or morals, but they make it feel like it is. You couldn't possibly do it any differently than you're doing it based on what you've experienced. The key to it is to get to the trauma. And what I do in the program I'm doing is. And I think this is what makes it work. The brain has to get into optimal condition to heal, and as long as they're in a fight or flight state, it doesn't get into optimal condition. So it keeps running the programs that it ran because it doesn't feel safe. And if all of a sudden I'm saying to you, just stop that, Joe. Just give me that drink, you know, you don't need it. The mind's like, I'll die without it. And so are you going to just give up that drink? The conscious part of your mind would say, yes.

Right.

It doesn't make sense. I'm ruining my life. I'm ruining my family. But the subconscious says, until you give me a better solution, I'm in survival mode.

All right, here I am getting ready to take off in the helicopter with our headsets with Dr. Don Wood and Tim Westbrook. We're over at Tim's place today doing a podcast in your sort of studio, which is normally you on Zoom. And so what we're going to do is we're going to talk about addiction recovery and about life and about trauma and whatever else. We're also going to have a friend who is a pharmacist who's going to be coming in right now. So come on in and grab a seat over here, if that's okay. And she is. She's a cool person named Kristen who helps distribute Narcan and kits. She's a pharmacist and helps people.

Prevent people from overdosing from addiction. So, basically. So let's start with the definition of addiction. I'd like to hear both of your guys's definition of perspective on it, and then we'll talk about what leads to it.

Okay. The. The definition of addiction is something that you do repeatedly despite negative consequences.

Yep.

I talk about addiction as a code. So it's a code to trauma. So trauma has created pain, and then the pain gets resolved by the code.

Okay. And when me and you first met, it was a 2019 at the Spartan World Championships in Lake Tahoe. And when I showed up, I was in the green room Green room, which was an outside area, but, you know, called a green room. And you were on stage being interviewed with three other athletes for something that was, I think, a podcast and also being broadcast on espn. And. And you were talking about addiction, and you were talking about trauma, which I thought was quite interesting. And so when you got off stage during the break, because you were continued to be interviewed and stuff, I'd introduced myself, we got to know each other. And I said, well, my views on addiction is addiction is a solution. It's not a problem. It's actually the solution. The drugs are the solution. The behavior is the solution. It's not a very good solution. It's a solution that has a lot of problems attached to it, but it's a solution to pain. And. And we had a pretty good conversation about that perspective. And then, of course, I liked Don because he went up next and he said while he was being interviewed, met this guy, Joe Polish, and he's the only one that I've ever heard that actually understands what addiction is. And of course, because it made me.

Feel good.

He got a little dopamine hit from that.

Yeah, exactly. No, we totally hit it off. And so now both of you guys come to Genius Network, and we've, I think, all collectively help a lot of people that. That struggle with addiction. So I've heard many definitions of what is addiction. And I have a friend, Chris Doyle, with Y Intervention. He's an interventionist that lives in Pennsylvania. And I asked him, you know, what's the definition of addiction? He's like, two words, can't stop. And, you know, it's pretty good way of summing it up. You can't stop. Now, the cause of addiction in my current understanding. And I always say that I record my research. I've been in recovery for over. So I mean, I openly talk about my struggles with addiction with the pursuit of trying to figure it out. I record my research, and with my foundation, Genius Recovery, which I happen to be wearing one of the shirts, the goal is to change the global conversation about how people view and treat addicts with compassion instead of judgment, and find the best forms of treatment that have efficacy and share with the world. And so let's talk about what the causes are. My understanding of it is it's a response to trauma. You know, I've learned a lot about that from my friend Gabor Mate and other really great, you know, trauma experts. That's your specialty is trauma. And I look at it from what I've learned from Dr. Anna Lemke. The, you know, biochemical aspects of it. Serotonin, dopamine. Some people may not have trauma in their life, but they are addicts because of the, call it the embodiment imbalance or the constant exposure to dopamine, where you can create a craving. But there's a lot of.

There's a big soup of chemicals in biochemistry and neurotransmitters in the brain and body that I'm too dumb to try to explain. I'm not a complete expert in this. So just off what I do in my life and what I've been exposed to, I think I know more than the average bear. We certainly all do. But I'm always constantly searching for, what is this? So you referred to, refer to it as a code. I would love to have you break that down and explain what, what that means.

Yeah, because when I talk about addiction, what I say is it's basically a symptom of a problem. It's not the problem, but everybody focuses on the symptom. And so if you only work on the symptom, you never fix the problem. So I believe that trauma creates pain, right? Emotional pain. It can be physical too, but most times it's emotional. And so the subconscious mind, which is survival based, wants a solution. Now because it operates in the present. So if you take the drug or take the alcohol, you just solve the problem and so you get instant relief. So that's what the subconscious wants. It sees no consequences. Because your subconscious operates in the present, it has no connection to time. It solved the problem. When? Now, if it had a conscious ability to do this, we wouldn't have addiction. So as long as you've solved the problem, the subconscious is fine. It can't see a consequence because it would have to relate to time to see a consequence. Oh, this is the conscious part of your mind goes, this is bad. But who's in charge of survival? Subconscious. And so then what I say is, every time you repeat something I say think of repetition as research for the brain. Every time you repeat it, you're telling your brain, here's the research to solve the problem. And then that becomes a code. Your brain is just a computer. And so if you start typing into your computer, have you ever had your computer say, oh, don't type that, that's not a good thing to type. It accepts the code, so it's literal. So that's why I say if you don't get to the root problem, which is the trauma, the codes will keep running. And I know AA and NA really try to work on changing the way you deal with things. They're trying to change the code, but if you don't fix the problem that started the code, you're painting over rust.

Interesting. Okay, how, how do you translate that?

How do I translate what Don just said?

Yeah.

Or, I mean, you can just tell him I don't agree with anything he just said.

Yeah, I mean, I, I, I, I definitely think that what he's saying is valid, and I think that an addiction is the solution. As we know we've talked about it, the addiction is the solution to the pain. If someone's feeling restless, irritable, discontent, a drink, a drug, Facebook, TikTok, exercise.

Gambling, having sex, all of those things are the solution to the pain. And I agree with you that, dawn, that when someone repeats a behavior and it makes them feel good, their subconscious mind is like, immediately, it's like, what do we have, 60 to 70,000 thoughts every single day, and 90% of them are subconscious. So your subconscious mind is constantly telling you what to do. And if you're feeling like you're in pain, you're not feeling good, your dopamine is low, then any of these activities, the drugs, the alcohol, that there's, there's good things you can do too. Exercising is not bad for you, but a lot of times it's just easier for someone to go out and drink, drug, have sex, cheat on their wife. All those things create the dopamine. They make a person feel better. And now you have the subconscious mind that is wired to do those things, because that's just, that's the easy out. That's the easy solution. That's the easy way. That's the easy way to feel good in the moment.

So one of the things that I always say is that when you, like, runners get the high.

Yeah, the runner's high.

It's because of anandamide, which is your own neurotransmitter in your own body that produces the high. So what I explain is if, if I'm shaking your hand right now, so just shake my hand, but I start squeezing so hard. You're in so much pain, Right? And I say, tim, if you just take a drink of this, I'll let go. So what happens when I let go? You get a dopamine hit because you feel better.

Right.

But is that why you took the drink? Right? You took it to stop the pain, but you, the byproduct of stopping the pain is to get the hit of dopamine. So now you feel better? Right? That's not why you started to drink. You wanted to get out of that pain, right?

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video and I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out and it's. If you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description. Or you can wait till the end of this video or you can Simply go to joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

You know, so I was talking to Kristen earlier today and telling the story that when I first met you, told the story about the heroin addict that you said. She said, I'm self destructive. I'd like you to tell that story because I think it's a very.

It'S very instructive.

Yeah. She came in and she said, I told my therapist I was coming in to see you and he told me to be honest and upfront and let you know I have self destructive behavior. And so I smiled at her and I said, really? What would make you think you're self destructive? And she looks at me, she goes, well, I'm sticking a needle in my arm with heroin. You don't think that's self destructive? I said, no, I don't. I think you're trying to feel better. And I bet you when you stuck the needle in your arm, you felt better, right? She goes, yeah. And I said, the substance is destructive, you're not destructive. And you saw her and just what you talked about love with, that's what you first started talking about, is we got to stop shaming these people. Right? I've never had a drink in my life. Never touched a drug ever once in my life. I never had your pain. Never had your pain. If I had, I'd be doing the same thing. It's not about my character, morals, willpower, ethics. It's all about pain. And the brain is designed to protect us. And so people will say to me, oh, I self sabotage. And I go, it's impossible. The brain's a survival brain. It's never going to sabotage you. It's going to protect you. It'll move you in a direction that looks like sabotage. Right. But it's to try to avoid pain and it'll move you in that direction. And pain is so powerful. I found an article which I thought was fascinating, I don't know if I've ever shared this with you, about a German sniper during World War II. He said, when we fought against the Russians, the Russians had no weapons, but a lot of people so they would run at the German lines. And my job as a sniper was to shoot and kill them. And he says, but another wave would come and another. They just kept coming. He said, we kept shooting them. He says, and then I figured out how to stop them. He said, I didn't kill them. I shot them in the stomach. Now all these Russians are lying on the ground screaming in pain. The next guy didn't want to come out and pick up the weapon. That was a bigger deterrent than dying. That tells you how powerful pain is.

And it's freaking horrible to imagine being in that sort of situation. It's like.

You know, there's a lot of awful shit that humans get themselves into due to each other. Circumstances, wars, things like that. There's a lot of trauma. I mean, I. Even when the pandemic was starting and I kind of was witnessing what was going on, and so from my perspective, it was very orchestrated.

There's a lot of trauma in the world right now, and that's why we have just a giant addiction crisis. And so.

What is. If you.

Had your way and could make. And you're already doing a lot. So none of this is. Take away all the good work that I think we're all trying to do here and that we are doing. If you had your way, what. How would you approach. If you had the ear of the people that could influence and make decisions, world leaders, people that are running countries.

What would you tell them or what would you share with them that you think would help the most with all of this? Because. Let me. Let me add a little more color to this.

I was driving in Vancouver with Gabor Mate a few years ago, and he had written in his book in the Realm of Hungry Ghost, about Vancouver's east side, where there's the, you know, the worst addiction problems. And that's where he spent many years treating, you know, people with addiction and people on the streets. And he told the story about how there was a juvenile detention center, and then a few blocks away was the adult jail, prison. I'm not sure what exactly they called it, but he. He said, you know, right now, a lot of the kids, foster kids, people that are in trouble that are going there.

If you fast forward five years from now, they're going to be locked up in this place because of all the trauma that they've had. And he told the story in the book, but then he drove. We drove through together, and he was pointing out everything that he. And I was like, you know, if you could solve addiction, if you could Quote, unquote, cure it. You would have to get to the trauma and help them process it. You know, and it's not necessarily the thing that happens to, like, you know, I was. I had a lot of sexual abuse as a kid. And that led to what I believe that was the trauma, you know, the abandonment from my mother dying, and a lot of stuff that happened in childhood. And it wasn't just the fact that that happened. I just had no one to talk to. You know, there was. There was no way to process it. So when you sit with that, people often think, oh, it's. You were beaten or you were raped or you were abused. Well, yeah, that's. That's the. Maybe the instigation of it, all, right? That's the start of much of it, but it's the not being able to do anything with that. And then it becomes this sort of infection, mentally, psychologically, that sits inside you. So I think we could do a lot with.

Addiction if we could get to the young people before it becomes an addiction later in life. It became. The. Addiction became the solution to the pain that stemmed from something I was never able to process. So saying all of that, what do we do with. How do we best help people that struggle with addiction, People that are listening or watching this right now? Some are addicts, some are in recovery. Others are just trying to make sense of it all. You know, they're family members. They have a loved one. It could be a, you know, brother, sister, mother, father, you know, son, daughter, you know, whatever, employees, employers, that sort of thing. What if you. If you ran the world, what would you do?

I think the best thing is I had a lady come in who'd been in alcohol addiction for many, many years. Multiple rehab. Her brother brought her in, and the first thing, I sat down with her and I said, there's nothing wrong with you, and there's nothing wrong with your mind. And she cried. She goes, no one's ever said that to me. She says, I refuse to go to rehab. My brother wanted to take me to another rehab. I refused to go because. And this is what she said was so powerful. She says, I refuse to unpack my shame, my suitcase of shame again, because that's how we're treating them and we don't need to. And I loved what you had said the very first time when you said, we've got to change the way we speak to these people. It's not about their character or morals, but they make it feel like it is. What I'm saying is you couldn't possibly do it any differently than you're doing it based on what you've experienced. And what I'm saying is the key to it is to get to the trauma. And what I do in the program I'm doing is. And I think this is what makes it work. The brain has to get into optimal condition to heal. And as long as they're in a fight or flight state, it doesn't get into optimal condition. So it keeps running the programs that it ran because it doesn't feel safe. And if all of a sudden I'm saying to you, just stop that, Joe. Just give me that drink. You don't need it. The mind's like, I'll die without it. And so are you going to just give up that drink? The conscious part of your mind would say, yes. Right. It doesn't make sense. I'm ruining my life, I'm ruining my family. But the subconscious says until you give me a better solution, I'm in survival mode. Right. It will never go to that.

Yeah, that's why the war on drugs and just say no.

Is, you know, first off, the war on drugs is the wrong war. It's a war on addicts. Right? It's not the drugs. The drugs is solution. Let's have a war against the one thing that's making them feel good. And, you know, like, so, for instance, I don't like cigarettes. When I was a drug addict, I would smoke pretty much everything. Pot, hash, cigarettes. I would free base cocaine. You know, there's a lot of inhalation of substances. But, you know, having been like, I don't like cigarettes.

My father died of lung cancer, predominantly in a lot of ways caused by smoking most of his life. And I also understand when someone puts a cigarette in their mouth, there's a ritualization to it. Sometimes it's, you know, if you watch addicts, they oftentimes don't take even a deep breath. There's a tension, right? And there's. There's a ritualization to it. And if you're like, you just need to quit, just quit. Because you hear the word quit.

You'Re. You're asking them to quit. The one thing that makes them feel good makes them feel safe. Right? And like, earlier today, I did a podcast, I was being interviewed for podcasts, and I was talking about sex addiction, which was one of my core addictions. And I said, it's an addiction filled with a tremendous amount of shame. You say the word sex addiction, it immediately conjures up, oh, someone insatiable Appetite for sex, porn addict, you know, having affairs, pervert, whatever. And a lot of addicts that have sexual addictions, it's sexual anorexia. It's, they're not, it's their inability to be sexual and feel okay with it. You know some, you know one thing that I learned early on in recovery work and I was having this Pat Carnes, who's one of the top sex addiction doctors in the world, he was one of the author, he wrote the original first book out of the Shadows on sex addiction. So I've got this interview with him on YouTube that's you know, we did years ago and I was talking with him about the difficulty with being in certain relationships and he says it's hard for you to be sexual with someone that matters. And you know, based on a lot of dialogue. And I was like, well what does that actually mean? Well, if you really love someone but your association is as sex is shameful and dirty, why would you be, why would you do that with someone that you care about? And when I was raped and molested as a kid, I was paid money not to say anything because my association was as sex is shameful and dirty. How you know it's not okay, you know how. And you get that wired into the mind when you're a child and then you're supposed to grow up and there's, you know, you look at movies and music and all the ways that everything is portrayed. And so what I was saying earlier today was, you know.

Sex addiction is an intimacy disorder. It's a connection disorder. I think all forms of addiction, there's an element of, it's a connection disorder. Just you know, the Johann Hari line, the opposite of addiction is connection. And so my favorite definition of intimacy, intimacy. And I'm, you know, I've said this quite a bit because I, I find it to be, you know, quite valuable to, as a way to look at it. But it's what you said about safety. It was this 80 year old gay man that I never met in person but a guy that I was, I had sponsored in 12 step group said, you know, talk to this guy lived in another state. But he's like, this guy's very, very wise. And so I was having a conversation with him and this guy devotes his life to just helping people with sexual addictions. That's what he does now at this stage in his life. And he said, you know, definition of intimacy is. Intimacy is a mutual exploration of a shared safe place. Abuse is anything that takes away the safe place. And Addictions are what we do to make ourselves feel good when we don't have a safe place. And I've thought about that a lot. Because if you don't feel safe in the world, you're going to look for a way to scratch the itch. You're going to look for a way to do that. And so even some of the most powerful, physically strong, high status leaders, a lot of them have addictions. And sex addiction is like in many cases. I remember Pat Carnes saying it's the drug of choice for high level CEOs. You know, his estimates were about 60% of high level CEOs have sexual addictions because there's so much tied in with power and control. But you know, these people could have all the money, they could have a lot of power, but they don't feel safe in the world. And if you don't feel safe in the world, what do you do? And so if you take away the blanket or whatever metaphor we want to use, you're left with, shit, I'm not going to give that up unless I find an alternative. So as we live in a society that is telling people, quit doing that, quit misbehaving, you need to stop that.

What they're hearing, the part of them is like, no, no, no, don't take away my sword, don't take away my shield. Don't take away my comfort.

Yep.

You know, are you out of your mind? And then you get this, you know, struggle and resistance, which is difficult.

And then they feel like they'll die. So it's so powerful that the number one fear for the human mind is uncertainty. So all of a sudden you take away there. I know that drug creates certainty. I know that alcohol creates certainty. And that's what I want. And that creates safety. And even though it's a, it's a mismessage, right, it's all they have. And then you try to say you shouldn't do it, take it away from you.

Well, you know, and the other thing when it's like the just say no doesn't work, is the identity piece. There's an identity piece. It's like, I am a drug addict, I am an alcoholic, I do smoke. And so until a person is able to change their identity, their it's gonna be impossible to quit. And I remember when I first got, when I first got clean and sober, I got sober in March of 2011 and I had a nicotine habit. I had a nicotine habit from when I was like 19 all the way up until I got sober. And then when I got sober in about April, within a month after, I was like, you know what? I need to not smoke. And I ended up quitting. And it wasn't really hard for me to quit smoking cigarettes because I just changed my ident. And I don't know how I was able to do it so easily, but that was kind of what I did, was I changed my identity. I don't smoke. And if it's. If it's. If it's. I'm trying to quit smoking, it doesn't work. And I see that with people that are trying to quit drugs and alcohol and smoking and anything for that matter, if someone's. If they're. If I hear them say, I'm trying to quit, it typically doesn't work, and I'm trying, that means that they smoke, that means that they drink, that means that they smoke crack, that means that they. That they're a sex addict. And if they say, I don't smoke, I'm not a drug addict, I don't drink. And. And I. I was able to get clean and sober right away. I never relapsed, which most people relapse. And I believe that that was probably one of the things that helped me was just because I. I completely changed my identity. And I went straight from. I'm trying. I didn't. I never said, I'm trying to quit. It was. It was. I don't drink.

Yeah. You know. Okay, let me. Let me speak to that, because I'm sitting there. If I had to argue both ways of, do I agree or do I disagree with that? Because what I definitely agree with is that you're. You live into your identity, right? If you think you are like. Like I was talking earlier with. With, you know, Christine about the. Kristen, why did I keep saying Christine? I was with a Christine earlier. Christian. Like, it's confusing. Anyway, sorry. So about the addiction cycle, where it starts with preoccupation, where you're. That's where so much of the addict's time gets consumed with, is just the rumination, the thinking about it, the fantasizing, the craving. Right. The preoccupation, and then the ritualization where, you know, so let's go this way. So there's preoccupation, then there's ritualization, where you've set up your life, the rituals, the way you drive, you know, whatever your substance or behavior is. There's rituals that we build in. Then there's the compulsive doing of it, right? The drinking, the drugs, the sex the gambling, the work, the, you know, eating what, whatever the, you know, whatever the addiction is. And then in. In that. So you, you do it, which may not even require a lot of time. It could happen very quickly, you know, shooting a needle in the arm. But it's the buildup. It's the before, the during and the after, right? And then when you're after, you', say, you know, you drink all night and you wake up with a hangover or whatever that hangover, there's always a hangover. You know, that's what consequences are. And so the consequences usually lead to despair. And in a state of despair, the addict often feels shame and guilt. And guilt is, I regret what I did. I feel bad. Shame is, I am bad. I'm fundamentally bad. And if you feel that you are bad, if you feel, you know, that deep shame.

That'S your. Your identity is, I'm a loser, I'm a drug addict. And then when you're in a state of despair, one of the best ways to get out of it is to start the whole damn cycle over again. You start fat. Like, I need another line. I need another drink. I gotta watch more porn. I gotta gamble some more. You just keep pursuing that. And that's a biochemical soup inside your body, your brain, your being. So if your identity is like, I'm not a pot smoker, I'm not a porn addict, I am not an alcoholic or whatever, or, you know, whatever it is, you know, I don't say, I'm trying to quit smoking versus I don't smoke. But you say that, and then you smoke. You have this contradiction of like, well, yeah, I'm saying the words, but I can't stop. And so therefore I'm a liar. And maybe my identity is, I don't smoke, but I'm lying because I said I don't smoke, but here I am smoking. So how do you. I think every addict, every human for that matter, lives in moments of contradiction. And how do you make sense of that? Where you. There's this crazy industrial band I used to listen to, you know, many years ago called Big Black. And they had this one song called Bad Houses. And there's these lyrics that perfectly sum up addiction, cravings. And it was, I tell myself I will not go even as I drive there. So I'm not going to go. I'm not going to go as you're driving to that relationship that you shouldn't be in, that toxic person that you swear you wouldn't go back to that person, right? And you're on the way there. Not gonna. I. I'm not gonna do this. I'm not gonna do this. Hello? Are you there? You know what the. Is that? Like, what do you do with all that?

Well, that's the conscious mind saying, I'm not gonna go. Right? Yeah, but the conscious mind doesn't control survival. It's the subconscious. And this is what I learned from the trauma. Trauma is a memory problem. So if you had a traumatic event when you were a child, all your senses are heightened. Sight, smell, hearing. So how's it recording that memory? High def.

Yeah.

And so if I asked you what you ate for dinner last night, what did you have for dinner last night?

Well, we had dinner together last night, so. I know, right? It was a steak. Right.

So when I asked you that, you saw pictures, probably where we were and where we ate. Right.

We. We ate at Tarbells. My buddy Mark. And we had a.

And we had a truffle deviled egg. That was 75.

It was bizarre. Well, it didn't cost us anything because he gave it to us.

But that's what the. The.

Yeah, but the idea is when I.

Actually, that's expensive.

You looked into memory.

Yeah.

Now, last night was a great meal, but it wasn't high definition. Right. Trauma is high definition. So can you see why the system gets turned on constantly? Because it's looking at high def memory, constantly being reminded about it. And no matter how much your logical brain says don't do it, you've got this play running in high def.

High.

Which turns on your nervous system. It has to, because your subconscious sees everything as now, 10 years ago, is now in a memory. So if you were getting hurt 10 years ago, you're getting hurt now. What is your mind going to do? Try to stop it. It can't stop it. So how does it stop the pain of being hurt? It numbs it. So what you're doing is blocking the access to the memory, and that's what drugs are doing. So the key is not to try to stop the drugs, is to try to stop the memory from turning on the nervous system, which leads to the need for the drug. Right. We've got a pharmacist here who can tell you that. That's what you do, Right. You block right pain. Right. By getting to the brain to block the pain receptors. Right. Trauma is the same thing.

Yeah.

It's trying to block the memory, and then that solves the problem. But it doesn't fix the problem, it solves it. Now the key is to get in and reset that traumatic high definition memory. So now it goes into the same format as to what you ate for dinner last night. You don't forget it, but it's not going to turn on your. I call activate. I never liked the word trigger. I always said trigger sounds negative and violent to me. I don't believe our brains and minds are negative and violent. So it's activating your nervous system. It has to.

It's a, it's a prompt. It is. So you know my buddy BJ Fogg who wrote the book Tiny Habits? He's an expert in habits. He's a Stanford professor, very bright guy. Amazing book. I mean, so many of the top influential things that have teachers and things. I mean, one of his students created Instagram, you know, James Clear habit stacking. Really. He learned that whole method through BJ Fogg and Near Il, who wrote, you know, a lot of books Hooked and other books on indistractable. You know, we have learned a lot from BJ Fogg and he had. What I like about BJ is that he's never.

If anyone could say I know a lot about addiction, it could be. Certainly someone is, Is, you know, runs the Stanford Behavior Lab, right. I mean he's a smart dude, but he, he's been very clear about like there's some big difference between habits and addiction. His thing for behavior is he explains all behavior, good or bad, through behavior equals map motivation, ability and prompts. He used to call it mat, motivation, ability and triggered, but he changed it to prompts. And it's kind of funny because he's been teaching this for years. And then you have all this stuff with AI now. Prompting, right? Prompting. Like what is a prompt? It's something that starts something. And you know, a lot of people are motivated. They don't want to drink, they don't want to do drugs, they don't want to be an addict, but they don't have the ability yet. They don't know what that is. I think in a lot of ways when the ways that we've helped ourselves and the way we help other people that struggle with addictions, we're trying to share capabilities and abilities to have someone become more capable. But then there's prompts. What are you being reminded? So I will often say, like, if you are an alcoholic and your job as a bartender, it's going to be really hard to get sober. If your job is serving drinks to people and that happens to be your drug of choice, you may want to get a different job. Because every moment you're prompting yourself, right? But oftentimes people don't, you know, so for prompts, you know, tiny habits is like, if you want to work out, but you're forgetting or whatever, you put your shoes in the doorway of your bathroom, so when you wake up, you're going to the running shoes, you know, that sort thing of stuff. So, so and so, going back to triggers, what I wanted to like, me and Tim having been in recovery, openly talking about it. I mean, if you were to go back in the lives where we were immersed in active addiction, we are constantly being prompted, triggered, reminded, whatever, and it's very seductive, right? It's so seductive that you're, you know, you're taken over by it. So what have you learned are the ways that you.

Unlearn, you know, dissemble, disassemble that wiring. Like what? Because you take people through a whole process. You have, you know, your whole clinic in Orlando, and you also have online stuff, and we've referred a lot of people to you, and I've heard countless amounts of people that have transformed their lives when people are struggling. Tim at Camelback Recovery here has a treatment facility. He has an inpatient and outpatient for, depending on the severity of what someone's dealing with, not just addiction, but in a lot of ways. Just right before we popped on these headsets, I was doing transcranial magnetic stimulation in one of the rooms over here. So you guys do a bunch of stuff, but I wanted to hear, you know.

What is the treatment?

What is the way that you address this so that people can hear some of the solutions to this if this is all making sense to them?

You know, I wanted to just. I just. I was thinking about something real quick that I wanted to mention. So I'm thinking about, you know, someone. Habits versus, you know, if someone has trauma and their subconscious mind and they're programmed to live life a certain way. And, Don, I'm hearing you, and you're saying we've got to get rid of that trauma. But then I'm also just thinking about habits. And it's like, if I identify as someone that drinks, then I'm gonna go back to drinking. So it's almost like we've got two separate things here. And, you know, it's whatever I believe, whether I think I can or I think I can't, it's true. And so it's. It's me believing that I can quit. It's me believing that I can. It's me believing that I'm healthy and fit. If I believe that I'm fat. Guess what? I'm probably gonna be out of shape and fat. And me believing that I'm fit is like, that's. I believe I'm fit, I believe I'm healthy, I believe I'm fit. And that's how I live my life. And that's my lifestyle and those are my beliefs. So it's almost like, I think there's, and then you've got BJ Fogg's motivation ability and prompt. So we have all these prompts. So there's, I think that the two kind of the, the behavior change is one aspect of, of stopping addiction or learning how to live life a different way. And it's like all the, all the things that people have to do. It's not just the stopping drinking or the stopping the drugs or the stopping the sex addiction or stopping the gambling. It's learning how to live life differently. So it's almost like simultaneously or maybe they happen at different times. Someone has to create a whole new life. That's new eating habits, new sleeping habits, new exercise habits. They pray and meditate, they, they exercise. They, they create new friends, new people, a new environment. Because the environment always wins. So it's like how do we, you know, how do we create the perfect, the perfect program for somebody? I don't know if the perfect program is there.

Well, that's why I talk about. There's two problems you have to deal with. First is the explicit memory. The way we store details in explicit detail. Only humans do that. No animal does that. Animals learn through association and repetition. That's the coding part of the memory.

Okay.

So if you work just on the coding part of the memory and try to retrain the brain not to go towards that drug or alcohol or whatever it is, but you never got to the explicit memory. It'll keep turning it on. And so you're fighting it, you're white knuckling it constantly. So what I do is first get to the explicit memory. That's the four hour program. I do education and science helping you to understand it. Then we work on three different traumatic events. But the key to that four hours is to get the brain into optimal condition that it will make the changes to that high definition memory. I'll give you an example. I had a guy US army sniper who had to shoot and kill a 12 year old boy for eight years. He's at the VA being medicated and he said, I can't talk about this anymore. He says, I got arrested at the VA last week because I started picking up tables and chairs and throwing them. I don't want to talk about it. I said, good, I don't need you to talk about it. Well, what are we going to do? I said, we're going to fix it.

By the way, before you get to this, because it just begs. Why did he have to kill a 12 year old boy?

He was ordered. So There was a 12 year old on a road and he was advanced patrol. So he radioed back, there's a 12 year old with a rifle on the road. Well, he said, approximately 12 years of age. And so they said, fire a warning shot, he'll take off. So he fired a warning shot and the kid just was looking around because he doesn't know where it's coming from. He says he's not moving. He says, well, fire three shots at his feet. That'll get him running. So he fired three shots around him and the kid just started returning fire. So he said, he's returning fire. They said, take him out. And he said, I can still see the bullet going in between his eyes. I can't get that out of my head over and over and over. And so what I did. So that's a high definition memory. So once I got him into optimal condition, I could then reset that into sort of a low definition. We're not changing it, but we're taking the activation out. And so by the time I was finished, he gave me a complete description and he goes, how the bleep did you do that? How am I able to talk about it now without shaking and crying? And I said, because for eight years your mind's been trying to get you not to pull the trigger. It's been calling for an action, but you can't answer the call because it's not happening. Anytime you have an emotion, a feeling or a sensation, your mind is calling for an action. What's the purpose of fear? Escape a threat? What's the purpose of anger? Attack a threat. So he was going through years and years of anger about what he did and his mind kept saying, don't shoot. Well, he can't not shoot, so he goes into depression. Depression's a function of the brain. It's shutting down the emotion because the emotion hasn't got the action. You're not answering the call. So to protect you, it stops calling for the action. So now you go into a depressed state. Depression is the absence of emotions. And so once I explained that, it totally changed his life. And I worked with Boston Marathon bombing survivors, the lady who ran the Whole MGM Vegas shooting. Right. I stopped in actually before I came to meet you in Lake Tahoe. Not meet you, but where I met you in Lake Tahoe at the Spartan. I stopped in and talked to her and did the same thing. All she could see is all these bodies and blood and everything all over the place in high defense. Once I take and her testimonials on our site, once she got through the program, she's not forgetting it. We're not going for happy about it. We're just stopping the activation of her nervous system. So now she can talk about it without expressing emotion because it's no longer happening.

No. It's fascinating. So.

Do you believe all addiction comes from trauma or just parts of it? Versus like let's take someone who gets addicted to opiates or different pain meds. They break their neck. In a, you know, high school kid, you've many stories like this sports injury, playing football, has a severe injury, gets put on opiates, you know, pain meds, becomes addicted, life is ruined. Doesn't seem like the kid had a bad childhood or anything like that. But the drugs, you know, override the nervous system, whatever the heck they're doing, and they, they become addicted. Now I believe that if there's trauma present in someone's life that has not been processed, they're going to definitely have more of a propensity to become addicted than someone that does not. But how do you explain that sort of stuff?

So you've got the two memory systems. You've got the explicit memory of the accident, right. And then you've got the coding memory, the associative memory that animals have. They learn through repetition. So when they have the accident now they're in pain. So then they start taking a solution to the pain and they start building a code. So you've got to work on both. If you don't fix the code, they don't fix what started the code. The code will keep repeating. And so then they get stuck. And then we call them an addict. And all it really is is the brain saying, well, I know how to stop the pain. What's the problem? And it sees no consequence to it because it has no connection to time. The conscious mind has a connection to time and goes, this is terrible idea, let's stop this right away. Who's going to win? The survival brain.

Yeah. And then you, to your point earlier, it's like your brain just wants to survive. So you'll do anything, anything, anything. And that's, that's what when it leads to the lion cheating and the stealing.

Everything'S all about survival and safety.

And so nothing else matters.

Nothing else. Because it's in the moment and it sees everything as now. And so if you have to solve the problem now and you have a resource, just like you said, and then somebody comes along and says, joe, that's really bad. Stop it.

Right.

Just don't say no to drugs. You're gonna say, I'll say no when you give me a resource, Another resource. Yeah, but until you do, I'm not. I'm gonna keep going with what I know. So it's that literal?

Yeah. And.

It is a complicated thing. And so to go to my point of change, the global conversation about how people view and treat addicts with compassion instead of judgment, and find the best forms of treatment to have efficacy. You know, one of the things that I'm trying to do with genius recovery is distribute insight, perspective. You know, in 12 steps, they share experience, strength, and hope. I mean, those are three good words to share. You share your experience, you share strength, you share hope. Hope used effectively gives people aspirations, it gives people possibilities. I also think hope is false hope. Selling hopium, making promises that are never going to come true. Painting a picture of this future that you know is not even a possibility for many people actually creates hopelessness. I think a lot of hope is used to manipulate people. So it's all. It all depends on how it's shared, how it's distributed. And so I think of, you know, find the best forms of treatment that have efficacy and share them with the world. And so from what have you guys discovered, let's say in the last year, if anything new that advances your abilities of what you're already doing, or something completely new that you're like, wow, this holds some real merit, this has some possibilities or anything. Like, for instance, I'm a huge believer in 12 steps because of the community aspect to it. I don't give a shit how much someone bashes 12 step groups. I know people whose lives are saved in every single day. Millions of people are helped by 12 steps that do the steps and do the work and share experience, strength, and hope. And they show up and they help other people. Right? There's a lot of people that attend 12 step groups and never do the steps. And then they say, you know, meetings don't work. And I always say, well, that's like saying gyms don't work. No one would ever say a gym doesn't work unless they're an idiot. You, like, people don't Say gyms don't work. Well, if you go to the gym and you sit on a bench and you don't do the yoga class or hop on the bike or whatever, then you know, you didn't exercise. Can't blame the gym. But for some reason, people do it with 12 step groups all the time. And people that have ever done complete steps and had a sponsor, not that they won't have relapses, not that they, Their life is magical and perfect. Because to your point, I don't think there is a perfect thing. It's nice to aspire to. But, you know, I don't think, you know, there's always going to be, I believe, you know, constant room for improvement. But it's, you know, if you do the steps, your life is going to get better. But there's a lot of areas that 12 steps don't do. Back when it was first created, they knew nothing about trauma. They knew nothing about exercise, nutrition, you know, the plant medicines and psychedelics, which could be good or bad. I mean, I've had some transformative experiences with plant medicine psychedelics, but I was incredibly resistant to it because the branding of drugs, like the drugs that kill people are legal. The drugs that can save people's lives are illegal. We don't need a war against drugs. We need a drug against war. And I'm talking about the internal war that exists in most people's psyche if they're severely traumatized or just traumatized in general. So what have you discovered or seen? And it could be packaged in a particular way. It could be a new modality, it could be something that you think is worth talking about, if anything. It might not. It might basically. No, no, it's all the same. You just got to do the work.

Well, the one thing that we're doing right now and I've talked to you about, is we're doing studies on DNA. And what I have, we're just going to be publishing this study now, is that when trauma is active, it actually changes the gene regulation. So the genes that regulate inflammation upregulate, the genes that regulate the immune system downregulate because the focus is on survival. So the mind that's operating in the present says we're in danger. We need to increase inflammation to protect ourselves. So that means we don't need to do maintenance because we're in survival mode. We got to get away from the lion. We don't have to. Afterwards, we'll start doing repairs. So the immune system is weakened. So now you've Got people in addiction who are stuck in that position, and they keep getting. So not only do they have the addiction, they keep getting sicker because now they're susceptible to all kinds of disease because their immune system is weakened. And so now you got that combination. But what we're showing in the study is that when I get the trauma resolved, the inflammation comes down, the immune system comes up, it goes back into balance. Our minds and bodies are designed to heal. What's interfering with it is the constant threat that it loops and loops and loops and keeps it in an active state of fight or flight. And if you resolve that every. It'll start taking care of itself.

And the Lord said, yeah, that was.

That was a signal from Jesus. That was confirmation of what you're saying.

Exactly.

There's many ways that I could try to make something up to try to, like, you know. But the building is closing to the audio. The lights change. So if you're listening to just the audio and you're like, what the hell is going on here? It's just the. The lights kind of turned off for a minute.

But that's the science. And what I love about it is we're proving that trauma is at the root cause of it all. And what I love about AA and NA and what they do really well is just like you talked about, they create community. Right. Which creates what? Safety.

Right.

They create connection.

Right.

So all. And they're working on the codes. The only thing add to that is the trauma. If you could add a way in to do that and fix the trauma, boy, that would just. Just push that to a whole new level. That's what I think we can do. That's why I'm excited to, you know, work with you.

Right, right.

And work with Tim and say, let's get that added to it. And you'll change everything.

Yeah.

A whole new way to treat addiction.

Okay. No, that's great. That's great. If you could only choose one person to work with because you think one's better than the other, who do you have to do that? I just love putting these people of those sort of situations. What's your favorite child, though? What about you? Anything you've learned?

Yeah, so. So for me, my. My first 10 years of sobriety, I mean, I. AA was. That was what worked for me. And I was in it. And I went to meeting, you know, and I. And I actually worked the steps. You know, I had a sponsor, I worked the steps. I. I went to one or two meetings every single day. I did service work. I was connected to that community. I learned how to do a gratitude list every single day, all the things that they say.