Addiction Isn’t About the Habit: Gabor Maté’s Revolutionary Take on Pain and Healing

What is addiction? Let's define it.

So addiction is complex, but it's manifested in any behavior. Any behavior that a person finds temporary pleasure or relief in and therefore craves, but suffers negative consequences in the long term and can't give up. Now, notice any behavior. I didn't say drugs. Most of the time we think about addiction, we think of substances. And that certainly is one important target of addictive behavior. But I said any behavior that could be gambling, could be sex, could be relationships, could be Internet, could be Facebook, could be shopping, as in my case, could be eating, could be work. Any behavior that gives you temporary relief, pleasure, but you suffer negative consequences, you don't get up, that's an addiction. Now let me ask you this question. According to that definition, how many people here will acknowledge that sometime or another in your lives you've had some kind of an addiction? Sometimes.

Okay.

That's how relevant it is. Okay. And if I'm going with that stream, let me also ask you guys another question for which I'll ask some of you to just put your hand up and shout out your answers. I'm going to ask you not.

What.

You addicted to or when or for how long. I'm just going to ask you, what.

Did you like about it? What did it do for you?

What did it give you in the short term? So who would tell me? Relief from relief from pain.

Thank you.

Anybody else? Sorry.

Control.

Control. Relief from pain. Give you control. What else?

Love.

Somebody said escape from anxiety. Thank you. What else.

Was that?

Loneliness.

It dealt with loneliness. Okay, let's look at these things now. Escape from pain. Pain relief. Sense of control. Relief from loneliness. What else did people say?

Anxiety.

Relief from anxiety. In other words, inner peace. So right away, when you understand that, you get that the addiction wasn't your problem. Your addiction was your attempt to solve the problem. And the real question is, how did that problem develop? How come at 7 billion human beings in the world, you felt lonely? How come you lacked a sense of agency, control, authority in your life? Why were you in so much emotional pain? And everything you said, the loneliness, the lack of power, the lack of control, the anxiety, these are forms of emotional pain. So my mantra around addiction is not why the addiction, but why the pain? And this is where we can talk more about it. But as you and I both know, the current model of addiction is either the legal one, which says it's a choice that people make and therefore we have to punish them for it, or it's a medical one, in which case it's an inherited Brain disease. But it isn't either of those things. What it actually is is an attempt to solve a human life problem, that of emotional pain, loneliness, distress, anxiety, whatever it is. And the real question then is, what happened in my life or your life, Joe, or everybody else's lives here, but.

That we.

Incurred pain, and then how do we deal with our pain? Because the addiction itself magnifies the pain. It multiplies, increases it exponentially. So it begins in pain. As Eckhart Tolle, the spiritual teacher, says, addictions begin in pain and they end in pain.

Well, it was on this stage last year that actually, for the first time, publicly told about not only my addiction, which I, you know, for several years ago, is the first time I started talking about being a drug addict.

And what was that in your case? Cocaine? Was it?

It was cocaine, yeah. Well, I mean, heck, when I was between the ages of 16, 18, it started with I would get high every day and smoke pot. I would take pills, speed. I would snort crystal meth, I would snort cocaine. And there was one day, I remember where I. And one day I was free, basing. I was on lsd, I was smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, taking mushrooms, and snorting crystal meth all in one day. And I mean, like, I was in bad shape. And you've now, Gabor. When I was in Vancouver, you toured me around. Were you actually Vancouver's east side? Because you treated some of the worst addicts on Vancouver's east side for many years. And during that time, you know, I did a lot of drugs. And then I got. I moved away from the environment, started exercising, ended up getting a job in a mental hospital as a mental health tech. And I would take the patients that were there for addiction to aa. I would drive them to AA meetings and NA meetings, and I would sit in on those meetings, never realizing later in life how much relevance it had. But the core addiction was a sexual addiction because I was molested as a kid. My mother died when I was 4. I was molested as a kid. I was paid money not to say anything between the ages of 8 to 10. And it wired in my head that sex is not an intimate act of love and oneness. It's something you do. Get off.

If I may interrupt, there was something else here, too. So I'll talk about myself and I'll talk about you. So one of my addictions has been to work. In fact, that's a continued challenge for.

Me if you look at my travel schedule.

So I got a certain message from the world. I was Born in Budapest, Hungary, 1944. Jewish parents, two months before the Nazis occupied Hungary. So I spent the first year of my life with my mother under Nazi rule and she was in terror the whole year, as you can imagine. Parents killed in Auschwitz and so on. My father was away in forced labor. The message I got from the world is that the world didn't want me. Not because Hitler didn't want me, because I didn't know Hitler. But my mother was unhappy. And children are narcissists in the developmental sense. They take everything personally. So when the bad things are happening, it must be about me. And if she's not happy around me, Thich Nhat Hanh, the spiritual teacher, says that the greatest gift parents can give their children and is their own happiness, because the children take that personally. It's about us. We must be great creatures. So when my mother is unhappy and depressed and in terror, I get the message the world doesn't want me. And then at one year of age, she gives me to a stranger to save my life. So I don't see her for a month. I get the message the world doesn't want me. Now then in Canada, 30 years later, 30 odd years later, I become a physician. Well, one way to deal with not being wanted is to become a doctor. Now they're going to want you all the time. They're going to want you when they're being born, they want you when they're dying, and they're going to want you at every moment in between. And the beeper is always going. This is before cell phones, of course, and the beeper is always going. And you're getting validation every moment. And what it is is a compensation for the sense of not being wanted that I've never dealt with. Now, in your case, you got a message as well, that you're wanted through your body, you're wanted through your body, you're wanted when you're sexually available. That's the message you get. What are you going to do? So especially if you look at men who are sex addicts and women who are sex addicts, there's no such thing as, what's the word? An infomaniac. That's just a slander. What it really is is women or sometimes men who've learned that only through their bodies and only through the sexual act are they actually wanted. Well, that's really addictive because we all need to be wanted. And I think that's also what's behind it.

Absolutely, absolutely. So, you know, and I lived with so much shame, even Though I started making money, I always had that deep shame and that secret life. And I just struggled. And the, you know, the thing that became more apparent to me was I was in a, you know, I became financially capable of joining like a high profile group. And I joined a high profile group for people that were struggling with sexual addictions. And in that room were billionaires, famous athletes, politicians, Academy award winning actors and actresses, you know, men and women. And I saw people that the world admired in their most broken states. And I realized, wow, you know, that whole saying that which is most private is most public, that so many people struggle with this. And that's why I've now wanted to use the platform that I have in business to go out and try to change the global conversation about how people view and treat addicts with compassion instead of judgment. And right now the criminal justice justice system is treating addicts when it needs to be something else.

Well, if you, if you look at the criminal justice system, it's really based on this idea that, as I said earlier, that addiction is a choice that somebody makes. If somebody's not making a conscious choice, what are they doing punishing them? You don't punish people because they're suffering and they're trying to escape from their pain. You help them instead of making them criminals. And number one, number two, it's very arbitrary as to what we decide should be legal or illegal. Because give me a thousand heroin addicts who inject four times a day in a quantity that does not lead to an overdose, and give me a thousand people who smoke a pack a day and another thousand who drink heavily. Guess which thousand is going to be the healthiest and the longest living at the end of 30 years. By far the heroin group. So by far, I'm talking medical facts here. So by some, I'm not saying that heroin should be legalized and sold in corner stores like cigarettes, but I am saying that the decision to criminalize it is utterly arbitrary and has nothing to do with either science or logic or humanity.

Right. I mean, you know, you cannot punish pain out of people. And I mean, I have some stats here that I've heard you say that, you know, every month, 9, 11 happens.

Actually according to the President's commission on addiction on the opioid crisis. And by the way, even when we talk about the opioid crisis, it's a rather arbitrary determination. Not because it isn't a crisis. I mean, it is according to the president. So advisory commission, every three weeks you have a 9, 11 happening in the United States. As a result of illegal drug overdoses, let alone.

We're just talking drugs. We're not talking all the other.

We're just talking illegal drugs. I'm not even talking alcohol or cigarettes or everything else. We're just talking overdoses. And now it's hitting the white middle class. It's actually helping to lower the life expectancy of the white middle class male for the first time in a long time. But it's been hitting our Aboriginal population for a long time. It's been happening there for decades. If you go to the native reservations in Canada or the us, suicides, overdoses, they've been happening in epidemic proportions for decades. We just don't think that's so important now that it's happening to us or.

The people that we care about.

Now it's a crisis. And then if you ask the question, well, why is it that the Aboriginal population has got this tremendous rate of addiction? And again, that's a very interesting question. Because this whole idea that addiction is a genetic disease flies out the window when you look at the aboriginal experience. Because the aboriginals in North America had actually access to potentially addictive substances long before Caucasians came here. They had access to tobacco, they had access to alcohol. In New Mexico, they had access to psychedelic substances like peyote. And they even knew these substances and they even used them. But how did they use them? They used them ceremonially, not to upturn and diminish their consciousness, but to raise their consciousness. They used it to connect spiritually with creation. They used it to create community and. And contact and culture. The addictive use is just the opposite. The other use is to escape from pain. And it's alone and it's not communal. If the problem was genetic, why weren't they addicted before?

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 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's free book and you.

Can get a copy there.

The reason they're addicted now is because the severe trauma that they've suffered over hundreds of years, they're near extermination. And I don't have to give you all the details. I'm sure you know it all. Same thing in Canada. So what I'm saying about addiction, in short, is that every case of addiction originates in trauma. And that trauma could be overt. Like in the case of the aboriginal population, their children in Canada being taken away from them, sent to residential schools for 100 years where they were sexually abused and beaten up and their culture and their language was denied. In British Columbia in 1960, I know a woman who was four years old in 1965 in my province of British Columbia, who at four years old was taken to the residential school where she spoke her tribal language. And the punishment was that they stuck a pin in her tongue for a whole hour. A four year old and then she sits there for a whole hour and she can't put a tongue in her mouth because it'll cut her lips. And then the sexual abuse began. So then when I look at Vancouver's downtown east side, which is North America's most concentrated area of drug use, we have more drug addicts there in a few swell block radius than anywhere on the continent. It's a shock to people even who come from Detroit and New York to Vancouver. 3, 30% of our clients down there are first nations are aboriginal people. They make up 4% of the population.

Why?

Because of the severe trauma that they've experienced. And this is the one piece, the trauma piece that you and I are so aware of, but that addiction. I was talking to a colleague of mine, Jamie.

Where are you? Jamie, you're here.

Somewhere in the room. She's a physician from Detroit.

Oh, Dr. Jamie, hope you in the room. I think she's in the genius lounge.

Okay.

All right.

Yeah, yeah. So she works in the emergency ward at Detroit Hospital and she graduated in 05 from medical school in Michigan. And I asked her, how many lectures on emotional trauma did you receive? Not a single one. How many lectures on how the human brain develops in interaction with the environment did you find receive? Not one. Which is the same with me when I went to medical school, I don't know, 40 odd years ago. And so what I'm saying is that the medical world utterly misunderstands the problem and don't get any training in understanding human psychology. And the same thing is true of many of the programs where people go for addiction. So they never deal with the core issue. They only deal with the behavior of addiction. But the behavior is only a symptom.

I'd like to have you first off define trauma and then the difference between using it as a badge or as a living in woundology, which a lot of people do, versus what is really trauma and addressing it and not just sweeping it under the rug.

Sure. Well, first of all, it is possible to identify with your Trauma and make that into your personality, make that into your identification, which means that you're stuck in something that happened in the past and you can't move beyond it. So that's not. But on the one hand, on the other hand. So trauma can get a bad rep that way. On the other hand, we're not looking at trauma nearly enough. So what is trauma? This is to the point where, even though there is, while humanist scientific research does not even vaguely controversial, that shows the relationship between trauma and physical and mental illness. To the point that a British psychologist, a member of the British Academy, Richard Benthall, said that the evidence, for example, linking childhood adversity trauma to adult mental health conditions is as clear as the evidence linking cigarettes smoking to lung cancer. But despite that scientific fact, the average medical student never hears a single lecture on trauma, which is almost unbelievable. But they don't. So that means they don't know what they're looking at. So what is trauma? So trauma literally comes from a Greek word for wound or wounding. So trauma is a psychological wound. Trauma is not what happens to you, it's what happens inside you. It's not the hit that you get, it's the concussion. So trauma is the wound that happens inside you. So trauma. For example, in the very first chapter of the book, I talk about how when I was 11 months of age, I was given to a complete stranger in the streets of Budapest by my mother and I didn't see her for six weeks. The trauma is not that I was given to a stranger. She did that to save my life. As a Jew living under the Nazis, that's the only way she could keep me alive. So I didn't see her for five or six weeks. The trauma is not that she gave me to a stranger and I didn't see her. The trauma is the wound, which is what I made it mean in myself. What did I make it mean? The only thing that an infant can make it mean, which is that I'm not lovable and that I'm being abandoned and rejected. So that wound can show up 70 years later when something touches it. So a trauma is a wound. It's not what happens to you, it's what happens inside you. And the characteristics of the wound basically are twofold. One, if you touch it, it's very sensitive. That's when you're triggered. And by the way, this word about being triggered, I'm being triggered. Good thing you're being triggered because it means you get to examine yourself, because the trigger is only a very small part of the mechanism for the trigger to do its work, there has to be explosive material inside you. Every time you get triggered, you get an opportunity to examine what explosive charge, what ammunition am I still carrying from childhood that has just been triggered? So trauma, first of all is, you know, if you touch the wound, it's very sensitive. The other aspect of a wound is that it scars over. And scar tissue, while it's protective, is not live. It doesn't have growth capacity. So people who are traumatized get stuck at certain levels of emotional development. Scar tissue has no nerve endings in it, so you don't feel. So people who are traumatized to the extent that they're traumatized, they disconnect from their bodies and they disconnect from their feelings, which is not a bad thing. You see, because if you take an extreme example, a child being abused, you can't run away. The healthy response is to fight back or to run away. But I mean, I know your experience, Joe, and could you have fought or escaped at that time? You couldn't have. So that the protective response is to disconnect from yourself. So that's then trauma in a sense represents the organism's automatic defense mechanisms. But then that disconnection from feeling, it creates all kinds of problems later on in life. Mental and physical illness, or when the pain gets too much and you can't bear it, you have no way of dealing with it because you couldn't deal with it as a child. And now you get into addictions to soothe the pain. So trauma disconnects you from yourself. And that's the biggest impact of trauma. Which means that now you're no longer leading an authentic life. And everybody in this room is committed to being authentic. And isn't it just a challenge? But why is it just a challenge? Let me ask you a question here. I'm just going to ask for a show of hands. How many of you had the experience of having a strong gut feeling about something, ignoring it, and then being sorry afterwards that you ignore your gut feeling, Just raise your hand. It's always the vast majority. You know what you just told me the story of your childhood. Because you've never met a one day old baby who's disconnected from the gut feelings. So something happens that something that disconnects us from our gut feelings is the traumatic experience. Now, I define, or at least I describe trauma as having two major categories. There's the big T, trauma. Excuse me, this is the last gig on a seven week speaking tour. Now, so my voice is rather challenged at the moment. But the big T trauma is when terrible things happen to a child. Such as the sexual abuse that Joe endured, such as the separation from a mother that I endured at age 11 months. Such as poverty or racism, such as being emotionally abused or neglected, or a parent dying, or a parent being addicted, or a parent being mentally ill, or a rancorous divorce. That a child has to live through violence in a family, a parent being mentally ill. These are the big T traumas. At least these are the big T traumatic events. But there's another way you can hurt people. Don't forget, trauma means a wound. You can wound people in two ways. One is by doing bad things to them. Or you can wound children not by doing bad things to them, but by not needing their needs. Human children have evolved with specific needs. They're not just a blank slate on which you can write anything you want. They have certain emotional needs. As adults, we have certain emotional needs. For the healthy development of the human child, certain conditions have to be met. For example, an attachment relationship with the parents where the child feels absolutely secure, absolutely safe and secure. Rest which means that the child shouldn't have to work to make their relationship work. He, she, they shouldn't have to be pretty, compliant, smart, any of that stuff. They just have to exist. That's the need of the child. Children have to be given the freedom to experience all their emotions. And our brains are wired for emotions. You see, our emotional brain developed long before our intellectual brain. And in the individual development of the human infant, the emotional brain develops before the intellectual brain. The emotional brain is the scaffolding for the intellectual brain. When the scaffolding is good, the intellect will serve the proper purposes. When that scaffolding is not good, the intellect can go rogue and be very brilliant and create a lot of evil. So that one of the essential needs of children is to be able to experience all their emotions, which we share with all other mammals, by the way, which include caring or love, fear, panic, grief, playfulness, curiosity, rage, anger. In any parenting, and this is a lot of the parenting advice that parenting experts, so called give moms and dads in this society, is that some emotions under child part of the child are acceptable, some are not, and they have to be discouraged and even punished. When you do that, you're forcing the child to make a terrible decision. If I myself, I won't be accepted, I won't have the attachment relationship. On the other hand, to have the attachment relationship, I have to suppress aspects of myself. That's why you all put your hands up. Because at Some point, you learned that in your family or virgin, it was safer to belong than to be yourself. And then it becomes a lifelong struggle to get back to who we actually are. So trauma, then, is this wound that you sustained either because terrible things happened that shouldn't have, which happens to a lot of kids, or because the good things that should have happened did not. Not because their parents didn't love you, not because they didn't do their best, but because they live in a culture that makes it so difficult to be a good parent.

Yeah, very good. So that's a good sign there, at least resonating with what you're saying. What is the difference between. Because I wrote this down, I want to make sure I say it right. What is the difference between childhood trauma and adulthood trauma? Would the body respond differently to each of them, and would you handle them differently? And if so, how? Because there are things that happen in childhood, but then there's betrayals and things that happen in adulthood.

Well, let me tell you something. I don't quite see it that way. There is a very famous, and rightly so, child psychiatrist and neuroscientist and trauma expert called Bruce Perry, Dr. Bruce Perry, whose book with Oprah, what Happened to you? Is a recent bestseller. And Bruce points out that if you take kids and you get the first few months or years right, and all kinds of terrible things happen later, they'll be okay. But if you take kids and you get the first period wrong and they suffer a lot, all kinds of good things can happen later and they'll still be in trouble. And when you look at the studies on ptsd, the people who developed PTSD in adulthood were people who were traumatized in childhood. And those adult experiences actually trigger the childhood trauma. So in a particular company of soldiers, maybe hundred, they go into battle, they all experience the same killing, the same cruelty, the same loss of their comrades, the same fear, the same rage, perhaps. And 20, 30 will come out with PTSD, the others will not. It's because those 20 and 30 were already carrying a trauma of childhood. So I'm saying that adult trauma is, in virtually every case I know, manifestation of unresolved childhood trauma.

Okay, well, so Dr. Don Wood, you know, he has the line, if you understood the atmospheric conditions of somebody's life, it would make sense why they do.

What it is that they do.

What have you discovered? Because you've. I mean, I wish I would have found the video of me and you driving around when you were pointing out in Vancouver's state. Yeah, yeah, you were because he wrote a book in, I think, 2000. You wrote in the Realm of Hungry Ghosts.

That's right, yeah.

Which is an amazing book. So if you want to go deep into on addiction, Gabor's written when the body says no, Scattered. And then I think it's called Scattered Minds in Canada.

Yeah. This is my book on adhd, which is my first book after I was diagnosed with it, and it was published in Canada with the title Scattered Minds in the US with the title Scattered. I think the thought was the American publisher think the US Public would understand the word minds. I don't know. I don't know what the problem was, but lo and behold, my publisher is going to bring out Scattered Mines in the US Again with the actual title, Scattered Mines.

You know what I admire about you too, though? You have never been, like, a marketer, like, let me figure out how to build my YouTube channel. And you now have millions of people that follow you because you say things that change people's lives, lives, and you help guide people. And you are a significant figure in the world. I mean, one of the most important figures. I constantly say to people that you're probably the most in tune, intelligent, articulate person describing addiction and disconnection of anyone I know. You helped Johann Hari, who has the, you know, the great line, you know, the opposite of addiction is connection. And then when you did your first TED Talk, you had a line where the question is not why the addiction, but why the pain? And so you've really helped me understand that addiction is a response to pain. It is a solution to pain. And so even in my book, what's in it for them? You know, the first chapter is which. Thank you. You gave me a nice endorsement for.

This, deservedly, by the way.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And I say, be a pain detective, because what I've realized is that pain is a great messenger. And so to go back to Dr. Don Wood, if you understood the atmospheric conditions of somebody's life, it would make sense why they do what they do. So I look through the lens of, where are they suffering? How can I help? Where am I suffering? What is pain trying to tell me? And right before I came to this conference this morning for day two here, one of the. One of the members in the audience said, do you know any good doctor for plantar fasciitis? I have this pain. I've not been able to get help. And one of the things I said was, I got someone I can recommend, Steve Ozanich, who wrote the Great Pain Deception, which I know, you know, Steve, but I said, listen to my talk with Gabor, because I think there, you know, I think there might be not might be there. I know there's a link between disease and addiction and pain because of unresolved trauma. And in your book, like chapters 27, 28 and 29, you go really deep into compassionate inquiry, which is your process. And I guarantee you, those who have not read Gabor's book, that alone is worth this book. Just those three chapters of giving you a process on how to even just look at your own life. And so my question is, and then I'm going to come to add, because I definitely. We cannot have this interview without talking about that because there's so many people here that identify with distractibility. So how does one change the atmospheric conditions of their life in a positive way? Because, you know, there's a lot of people running the world right now that are creating the worst shit storms on the planet. And so I just wanted to get your perspective on that.

Yeah, so the first thing is to recognize that that is a problem. Now, a lot of people don't recognize it. They keep trying to run away from it. And one way to run away from recognizing that there's a problem is that you become addicted. So, for example, we did this the first time you spoke, but let me do it with this audience. Okay. I'll give you a definition of addiction that I don't think is controversial. So an addiction is manifested in any behavior in which a person finds temporary relief or pleasure and therefore craves, but then suffers negative consequences and they have difficulty giving it up despite the harm. So it's pleasure, relief, therefore, craving, short term, long term harm, inability to get up. That's what addiction is. I said innate behavior. I didn't say drugs. It could include drugs. Of course it does. Cocaine, heroin, crystal meth, nicotine, caffeine, alcohol. But it could also be gambling, the Internet, pornography, sex, relationship, work. And in this culture, workaholism is rewarded like my workaholism was rewarded, shopping, any range of human behaviors. The issue is not the activity, it's the internal relationship. Pleasure, craving, relief, harm, inability to give it up. So I'm going to ask you guys a question here. If, according to that definition, you recognize that sometime or another you had some kind of an addictive pattern in your life, just raise your hand. Okay, again, it's virtually everybody here. Now, the next question I ask is not what's wrong with the addiction, which we know, but what's right about it? What does it give You. In the short term. In the short term, what does it give you that you like? Okay, I wonder if a couple of people just raised their hand and then shout out their answer. Okay, what does it give you in the short term? Or what did it give you? I'm not going to ask you what you're addicted to or how long or when. Just what did you. When you were in it temporarily? What does it give you? Anybody?

Serenity.

Serenity. Okay. Thank you.

Feels good.

Feels a good feeling. Pleasure. Yeah.

Dopamine.

Hit. Of course.

Which means excitement. Yeah.

Stimulant.

Stimulant. Escape.

Escape. Thank you. Escape? No. Escape from what? Escape from distress. Escape from emotional pain. Serenity. A sense of aliveness. Escape from pain. Are these good things or are they bad things in themselves? The good things, they're the things we all want. They're the things we all deserve. Actually, they're all the things we should have had as children. Which means that the addiction wasn't your primary problem. Your addiction was an attempt to solve the problem. Therefore, to talk about addiction either as an inherited disease or some kind of a choice that people make. And by the way, there are millions of people in jail in this country because of this social belief that addiction is some kind of a choice for which people should be punished. No, it ain't. It's an attempt to deal with life problems such as emotional pain. And so if you want to understand addiction, you have to look at the atmosphere again, as Don woods says, that people grew up under and what they're trying to escape from. So first, we have to recognize that there's a problem and not run away from it. Secondly, we have to accept compassionately all parts of ourselves, all aspects of ourselves, whether we like them or not. Because all aspects of ourselves, we. Whether we like them or not, they came along for a reason. And if we ask the question compassionately, you might do something that you're not proud of. If you ask yourself the question compassionately, why did I do that? What need was it serving? What was my organism trying to deal with? You'll find the answer if you ask the question. So you can ask the question two ways. Why did I do that? Or why did you do that? Do you think there's going to be an answer? No, because that's not a question. That's an accusation against somebody else or against the self. And as one of my spiritual teachers says, only when compassion is present will people allow themselves to see the truth. Now, if you ask somebody else, not why did you do that? But Hmm. I know you're a good person trying to do your best. Any idea why you did that? Now, that's the question. And the same with yourself. If you put to yourself, no, why did I do this? But, hmm, I wonder why I did this. That's what a compassionate inquiry is. And my belief is that the answers are within all of ourselves. They actually are. And if we are compassionate with each other, which is so much of what you talk about, and if we're compassionate with ourselves, then the answers will emerge. So that's the beginning is to recognize as a problem and to be compassionate about examining the sources of that problem.

One of the things that impresses me like, you're. You are incredibly well accomplished in the business world. Like, if you don't know Joe Polish, just like, Google him, you'll see amazing things. But what fascinates me way more than what you accomplish is what drives you, your passion. And would you be willing to share, like, the big time. Cause the passion that's driving you.

Present day well, my big passion project, if you want to call it that, is I have a business that teaches entrepreneurs how to build and grow their companies. I have millions of people that have downloaded my podcasts on business. And what I am doing in my life right now, what I think is my calling, is to help change the global conversation about how people view addicts and addiction and to treat addicts with compassion, not with judgment. And the reason that I resonate so much with that is I am an addict in my drugs and behavior. You can ask me about anything. I will be as open as I can be as long as it's hopefully helpful to people. And look, I love goofing around. I love joking. As a matter of fact, humor brings a level of relief to some of the pain and anxiety that humans experience. And certainly, if it wasn't for humor, some of the darkest, hardest times in my life. And since so much of my work is now being focused on people with addictions, I want to bring as much humor and joy to them as possible, which is why it's great to talk to you, because you do a combination of both, you know, and so I, I really want to change the global conversation about how people view addicts. And the reason being is, you know, we're in America right now and there's almost 1% of the US population which is incarcerated, and you cannot punish pain out of people. And now a couple things I want to do as we get into this subject, is I'm interested in addiction. I'm interested in recovery, I'm interested in finding the best forms of treatment that have efficacy and delivering those to people as much of it as possible for free. Because a lot of addicts don't have any money. They're struggling, and family members and all the pain, I mean, it's across the board. Hundreds of thousands of people die every year from tobacco, alcohol. Lots of deaths, lots of chaos. Opiate addictions. The current stats are something like 78 people a day are dying of opiate addictions in the US and every year it is increasing substantially. I mean, in 2014, deaths by drugs exceeded car accident deaths, which was like 37,000 car accident deaths. And then addiction was like 49,000. And now it's even far greater every year, and it's just getting worse and worse. So we're dealing with the largest addiction crisis in human history.

Yeah, you know, I know you have a, you know, you alluded to it, a background of experientially being an addict. And I know you've shared with me some of these stats. I'd like to talk more about those in a second. And you know, personally, the, you know, I haven't been an addict that I'm aware of. Maybe I'm just addicted to not being an addict.

It's possible.

It is possible.

I hopefully that doesn't get cured, but, you know, I was very touched. Must have been three, four months ago at this point. One of my absolute best friends, we've been friends since we were 11 years old. His brother died from addiction, from prescription painkillers, and that definitely hit home. And then, you know, you came into my life and started sharing, sharing with me your passion and, and I like how you say you're out to change, amongst other things, change the global conversation about addiction. Because it seems to me like we, as in society, kind of write addicts off, like, you know, whatever, they're less than human. But like, you do the math and like, those are humans on very powerful, chemically, you know, biological, chemically altering substances that might make them act inhuman. But those are humans.

Right.

And it's part of it, separating bad behavior from badness. I mean, like, and by the way, if you think you may not resonate with this, like, the recent Surgeon General report that came out at the end of last year has it listed that one out of seven people in America struggle with addiction. And I would venture to say that this is worldwide. This is a global, not just a global problem, it's a global epidemic. I think the vast majority of wars, diseases, lifestyle diseases, and Things are caused by this thing we call addiction. And so the question is to give a couple definitions. I mean, there's a lot of different definitions I've heard of addiction. The way that I think about addiction, it's a connection disorder. So what we're really talking about here is how to connect with others, how to connect with yourself. And there's mechanisms that people use to numb themselves because they're feeling disconnected.

A connection disorder. I mean, talk about piercing, symptomatic crap. Connection disorder. So what if addiction. Maybe all addiction, maybe some. What if addiction is a symptom of us not being connected the way we need? Is that essentially what I'm hearing you say?

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

The opposite of addiction is connection. And so the thing. And there's other people that are saying this, you know, like my dear friend Gabor Mate, who wrote a book called in the Realm of Hungry Ghost, is. You know, I mean, he believes that addiction is a response to trauma. And I used to believe that addiction is a. Was a brain disruption and needed to be cured. And I'd rather people refer to it as a brain disease than looking at people as moral degenerates that are just making bad choices because, you know, addiction is doing something you don't want to do, or maybe you do want to do it and not being able to stop. And in this thing that you're doing, either the drugs, the chemicals, the behavior is compulsive, it's impulsive, and it has kind of consequences that are bad. And so, you know, to have a craving that is far greater than your ability to stop it in people that don't have addictions, and they see the crazy making of addicts, like, why are you drinking and drugging and watching Internet porn and gambling the money away or the workaholism or the exercise addiction or the bulimic, you know, I mean, all addictions have elements of binging and purging, excess and deprivation.

And there's a.

You know, the rock band Guns N Roses from back in the day. Their first, most popular album was called Appetite for Destruction. And that those three words really greatly describe what an addict is craving. They are craving destruction. Addicts crave the addict mind craves chaos, not harmony. And for some reason, it's very difficult for people to comprehend that. For instance, you know, someone's not a smoker and hate smoking. As an example, my father died from lung cancer, and he smoked most of his life. And people. And so I hate cigarettes. I can't stand cigarettes. I don't like the smell of them.

But.

But when I was a drug addict, I used to smoke cigarettes and I used to smoke cocaine. I used to free base cocaine, I used to snort crystal meth, I used to take cigarettes, I would take lsd, I would get high and smoke pot. I mean, like, you know, I drink constantly. I mean, when it was just like, constant consumption and, you know, it would be real easy to say, well, that person's an idiot. And you could argue, well, you know. But I'll tell you, when I was in those moments, it was way more powerful than my ability to control that. And what I was really trying to do was just numb myself because I was in pain, I was depressed, I felt anxious, I felt fearful. And so if someone is depressed or having anxiety or incredibly lonely or fearful or just wants to jump out of their skin or is hating life, there's nothing wrong with wanting that pain to go away. If you just itch, there's nothing wrong with wanting the itching to stop. The challenge is the mechanisms we choose to scratch the itch. And so what happens with addiction is that people are trying to numb themselves, but the way that they're going about trying to escape it is actually making it worse. So when I say I want to change the global conversation about how people view addicts, the question, well, how are you going to do that? Well, part of it is, quit looking at these individuals as moral degenerates. These are people that are traumatized and the things that they're doing, totally. I mean, if you look at people in jail like, you cannot punish pain out of people. And we're putting these people in cages. Now, granted, addicts in their worst states lie. They cheat, they steal, they can do harm. They can drink and drive and kill people. They can rob stores. I mean, they can do awful things. However, most addicts aren't doing those things. Most addicts are. Are like, just hurt individuals, and they're trying to escape this mental pain and anguish. And so the way that I am thinking about addiction right now, and by the way, everything that I'm saying, I am a student just as much as, you know, I'm an addict that's out searching for solutions, talking to some of the best people in the world. Because of who I am, I have an opportunity to use my business contacts and what I do in the world to actually get into places that many people cannot. So I'm really seeking this out. But I'm also a beginner's mind. I try, like, I'm always open to have my paradigm shift and I'm always open to say what don't I know. And unlearning is more important than learning. So as I'm on this journey, I'm looking at addiction as a solution, which sounds crazy to some people, but I start thinking, okay, if the world is flat and you think the world is flat, you're going to interact with the world as a flat world. But once you learn the world is round, that changes everything about how you look at the world. Well, if you think addicts are moral degenerates and they're losers and they should be thrown in prison, then who's going to treat these people? The criminal justice system. Judges, wardens, police officers. And these people are not equipped, nor are they trained to treat people that are addicts, like, in a compassionate way. They need to get them off the street. They need to throw them in jail. They need to process them, lock them up. And most people that are in like 80 to 90% of crimes that are committed, people were under the influence, for one. And most of those crimes are not violent crimes. A lot of these people that are in jail, possession, you know, things like that. And the reality is people that, again, you cannot punish the pain out of people and you can't incarcerate them. And Gabor Mate said, if you wanted to create the perfect system that kept people as addicts, you would develop the exact PRISM system that we have in the United States.

And the idea of the connection, the lack of connection, in my opinion, one of the most fundamental human needs, maybe the most fundamental human need that we all have. I don't care who you are, we all have it, is the need for connection. What does it feel like to be disconnected? Living hell, in a sense. And so if people are acting out with addictive behaviors, with addictive chemicals because it's a symptom of them being disconnected, then when you look at, well, our system, the way it's set up, the prison system, none of that is offering connection.

Oh, no.

Connections. A matter of the heart. Not like, okay, there's a cement cage to connect to. Like, no. So I'm curious when. Because I love where you're going with this. I think insanity doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. I think we as a society, we have so many systems set up to treat the symptoms of addiction, and I think we've proven about 12,000 times in a row it doesn't work. Might temporarily patch things. It might keep people out of harm's way temporarily. But to get to the heart of the matter, I dare say we have to go to the heart. So when we look at the disconnection that is maybe the deepest form of human suffering with addicts, where does the disconnection come from?

Well, there's a lot of things. So let me give some commentary on that too. I want to say one more thing about the solution aspect of it is when I say addiction is a solution, it actually numbs you. If you, you're in pain, if you're feeling disconnected, you can artificially get high. You can, you know, you can act out sexually, you can gamble and get an adrenaline surge. You can look at Internet screens and you can get dopamine hits. I mean, there's all kinds of stimulation that will make you feel artificially connected and then that will numb the pain. And that is a solution. The problem is this is a solution that will kill you. You in some cases. So if you can survive addiction, it might get you through some sort of painful moments. The challenge is it actually creates more. But I'll say the connection this way. So like Dr. Bob and Bill W. They're the ones that founded AA, Alcoholics Anonymous in the 1930s. And to this day, there are millions of people that rely on 12 step grooves. Now, if you, if you have never been to a 12 step group, or you like or dislike 12 step groups, or whatever perspective you have about it, I want you to know that if 12 step groups just stopped like tomorrow, and these are worldwide, the world would be a much different place.

It would be screwed.

Yes.

We would literally probably go into war. I mean, there are so many people that go to 12 step groups now. Why do they go to 12 step groups? They're trying to connect with other addicts.

Right?

And hope heals.

And so when you are able to walk into a room where you're so broken and so desperate that you have to really say, I need help. These groups are readily available for free and they operate through the voluntary contributions of their members. But this is not a sort of like, hey, let's endorse 12 step groups. Although I think they're incredibly valuable, there's many other things that I believe will help with addiction. And 12 steps are just one of them. And so Bill W. And Dr. Bob founded AA in the 30s. And there's a quote from Bill W. Where he said, as alcoholics, we're trying to drink God out of a bottle. And I always even say, even if you're an atheist, if you just think of that statement like, okay, as an alcoholic, we're trying to Drink God out of a bottle. I believe however someone wants to define spirituality and I can make fun of it just as much, much as like.

I don't make fun of spirituality.

He was just doing it before.

I'd be offended if that ever happened.

And so, you know, if you think about that, he's like, okay, you know, we're trying to drink God out of a bottle. And addicts are actually the most spiritually.

Potential people, I believe, because they're trying.

To connect with something. You know, let's get high, let's, you know, I'm trying to drink my way to this, this void I'm feeling. I'm trying to, you know, if you're a sex addict, you're trying to, you know, have sex or look at porn, if you're gambling, you're just trying to connect with that, that feeling something so you can feel exhilarated, so you can feel better.

It's just strongly looking for connection where it's not exactly, but it is the desire for connection at some level that drives the reaching to the addiction.

I, I think most forms of self destruction are looking for love in all the wrong places. But it's seducing, it's tempting, it's exhilarating, believe me. I mean a lot of my, you know, because my addictions have been drugs, alcohol, sex, work, exercise performance, addiction, image management. I mean all of the shit that goes into, you know, living a double life is exhausting. And you know, if you start looking at self destructive behavior and I'm sure everyone that is watching this or listening to this, that, that is like connected with being a human. They have done things that they wish they would have done differently that they regret. They, you know, procrastinate. They, you know, can't make their goals happen. They don't do New Year's resolutions. Maybe they lied, maybe they've cheated, maybe they stole, maybe they, they've done something that they're horribly ashamed about. Addiction is rooted in isolation. It's rooted in shame, it's rooted in guilt, it's rooted in self loathing isolation. And so humans have experienced things. Different people respond to different things and have different sensitivity levels. But if you just sit and think about like, did you have loving, wonderful parents that you felt really connected with it? If you did, then you probably feel more connected as a human. But if you had a parent die, if you were molested. My mother died when I was 4 years old. My father never remarried. He was a totally broken person. He didn't know how to cope with it. I don't remember many aspects of my childhood that were very happy now, given the circumstances, even when people do awful shit, I believe most, most human beings when I'm thinking from my higher, higher self, whatever that higher self is. And a lot of times I'm not. I believe most people, even when they're doing crazy shit, are doing the best they know how to do given the circumstances. And so my father, you know, tried to do the best he could do, but he was a really broken person. So therefore he didn't know quite how to instill a lot of confidence, a lot of self esteem, a lot of love. I was molested as a kid. I used to get paid money to not say anything about it. And it wired in my mind that sex is not an intimate act of love and oneness. It's something that you do just to get off. So I was never able to feel comfortable with sexuality. I was never able to feel comfortable with connection. And it's funny because now I'm known as this connector in business because I connect, you know, all kinds of, you know, great people, people off the charts.

And if I. You, you said so much and I want you to keep going.

No, no, please interrupt me at any point in time if there's, you know.

I already interrupted you.

He just did that. Did you see that?

Yeah.

But so. And I love your vulnerability. So your mother died when you were four. If that's not disconnection with the capital D, I don't know what would be. Your father couldn't cope with the loss of his wife. He became psychologically unavailable. That's disconnection with a capital D. And then you got a form of connection. Now, granted, none of us would say this was a great form of connection. It was shitty connection, but it was connection. You were molested.

Yeah, I was molested.

That was a sexual experience that you learned to escape. Associate. Ah, sexual stimulation equals connection. It especially equals way more connection that I'm getting with mom who's passed away. Way more connection that I'm getting with dad who's maybe there physically but not there really psychologically. So that made an impression on you. You were a little boy who became desperate for connection and life gave you an example, albeit really a crappy example from our standards today. But it gave you an example of what connection was and you ran with it.

Yeah, and what I did is there's not a day that's gone by in my adult life where I've not thought about that. In the rumination, the preoccupation and for years I had so much of my self worth tied into this shameful, violated piece of shit that I felt like after that happened because. And it didn't happen once, it happened multiple times. And I didn't know how to interpret it because I was between the ages of 8 and 10 years old. And so part of it is like it didn't make any sense. And I used to minimize it. I never told anyone about it. I mean, now I publicly am talking about this shit right now. But it took years before I could realize that you're as sick as your secrets. And if you have sickness and you feel shameful and you feel like you can't get ahead, I mean, there's probably something that is interfering with it. Meaning the sun is always there. There just may be clouds. And so my form of clouds were addiction. My form of cloud clouds were hiding it in denial and trying to, you know, escape it in any way that I could escape it. And I used to say, oh, but you know, I don't live in a third world country. I wasn't starving to death, I wasn't thrown in a concentration camp. And I've got people like Gabor Mate that said, you know, how does a four year old, you know, do you know any four year olds? He's like, how does a four year old respond to their mother dying? I mean, you're for. How would you. And I'd be like, you know, he's like, abandonment, you know, you know, how would. And so you were right though. Like, it is a form of connection. And what I've learned, part of the goal is to find the best forms of treatment that have efficacy, where people can go and find community, sharing inspirational videos, talking with addicts, and just putting that stuff out there in the world. Because I want to help connect people. Because I never felt that connection growing up. And so I initially found it through doing drugs and escapism. But the way that I defined myself, it took me years to really kind of make any sense about it. And what I would want people to actually think about. Who do you know is your life that is struggling with addiction if you yourself are struggling with addiction or behavior that it's kind of like there's a song lyric, I tell myself, I will not go even as I drive there. And if you could imagine, I don't want to do this. I don't want to be in this relationship. This person hurts me, this person beats me. This person is abusive, this environment is abusive. But you keep walking through that door. What it did for me is it somehow created this template. So when you take sex addiction, you know, which is. There's an interview I did with Pat Karns years ago now, people, if they just type in Joe, Polish sex addiction into YouTube, you can watch the video and I'd watch the full length video, if you're interested in this. About an hour and 45 minutes long. And we talk about arousal templates. And whenever someone, someone is introduced to sexuality, they have an arousal template. So like you were saying earlier with connection, if you're introduced into sex by being raped or being molested or in some sort of dangerous way, what's weird is that in many cases you can create a trauma bond where you actually bond with the trauma and then you live your life out pursuing things that, that kind of reenact some of the shit that was done to you. So when you see a woman that will be attracted to guys that beat her or are mean, that are abusive, and you look back at, well, what happened in the life, it wasn't always being molested or assaulted. It could have been an alcoholic parent, it could have been some sort of abandonment, it could have been some sort of exposure to a disease. It could have been a horrible car accident, but there was some sort of trouble. And people bond with traumas and then they seek out these sort of things and they're just trying to connect. I mean, it doesn't make sense to a lot of people.

It's not a logical issue, it's an emotional issue.

It's subconscious that don't work logically.

Exactly. It is really interesting how many people's businesses and what they end up doing for a career has absolutely nothing to do with what they ever thought they would land into. It's. It's like these strategic byproducts and a.

Lot of it comes out of total adversity.

And for areas of life that not.

Only don't work, that are totally broken.

And you're forced to take a path.

That you would never typically want to go down, and there you are, and.

Then your ability to parlay it into something. So, like, when did you first record.

A video and put it up and.

Get feedback either from your friends or it just dawned on you and now, you know, you've got literally millions of people that watch you on probably a daily basis.

Right? My first serious video, because I was still, you know, I was kind of a social media YouTube guy at the time, back in like 2006. And so you stream back then. And so I would just stream regular stuff while I was playing football. I would go on there, but it was very rehabbish, as I would say, you know, Like, I was very inconsistent with my lifestyles. And the first. First, I feel like, rehab time video, that I was, like, committed to it. I remember I was still living in my mom's house. I was living in her guest room. And it was called. I'm trying to think of the name. It wasn't called Faith. I think it was called Faith It Out. I don't remember the title, but I think it was called Faith It Out.

Is it still up or did you take it down?

No, matter of fact, it's not called Faith It Out. It's called Free Yourself. That's what it was. Free Yourself. And I believe it's still up. If you dive back into the YouTube files, it's still there.

Okay.

And I was recording on my imac that I had in there. And back then I would, like. I mean, I was just trying to be so perfect, like, you know, just trying to make sure everything was right. And so when I look back at those videos, I kind of cringe. But at the same time, like, man, that's where I started at, you know? So that was my first time doing that. And then got to a point where I just started picking up my iPhone and just started speaking from my heart. And I didn't have, like, you know, some. Cause I used to think I have to have this production. I have to have this and that, and those things are awesome and incredible. But I realized I just needed to have my truth, my reality, and just. Just my soul to pick up a phone and inspire people. And so the videos that started to go viral were, you're perfect for the heart that's meant to love you and know your circle. And those videos, like, because at first I was getting, like, you know, maybe, I don't know, 100 views. And that was a lot for me and for people out there. If you're impacting 100 people with those views, that is a lot. But to see it now is just incredible. And those videos went viral. And those videos went viral after I officially quit football, literally, like, two months, I was still trying to play arena football. I was still trying to hang on. I let go of that. And I kid you not, Joe, like, two, three months later, those videos took off.

Why do you think that is?

I just think that, you know, just with my faith, I just feel like it was just God speaking to me, saying, you know what? You're trying to hold onto this thing out of fear. And I was. I was fear of financial security. That's how I was getting paid. Fear of my identity. Like, who would I be without football? Even though I didn't love it no more? And I think a lot of people, we hold on to things that we. That we don't love anymore. We aren't in love with those things anymore out of the fear. And so when I let go, it was like, okay, you're taking a step. And now the rope bridge was cut off, too. So I had no. I couldn't go back. You know, I couldn't go back. That rope bridge was cut off. And literally, people thought I was crazy. I mean, my friends thought I was crazy. My mom and my dad kind of thought. They didn't say it, but I know they were like, are you sure? Because I had a family to provide for. And I was like, I don't know how I'm going to do it. I don't know what's going to happen. But I know this is the purpose for my life, because when I was on that stage, I'm not going to go through that whole story. But when I was on the stage speaking to 3,000 kids, my very first big speaking engagement, I didn't want to do it. I was nervous. And on that stage is where I found myself, because I prepared the whole night before. I prepared this long layout. I knew it, like I always say, like a rap verse. But soon as I stepped on stage, I went blank. And at that point, I was like, I can either sink or I can swim. And I said, God, use me. So a lot of people ask, like, where do you get your speaking from the heart style and just your passion? It was in that moment because I had nothing to lean on except my story and myself. And you know what camera, you can't fool kids. They'll let you know, like, quick, you know, a youth. And at that moment is when I realized, like, man, I still had confidence in the midst of fear. I still had power in the midst of my weakness at that moment. So I said, this has to be what I was created to do with my life. And at that moment is when I made those calls and called my coach, told them I'm not coming, called my friends, called my parents, and that's when rehab time really started. Wow. Wow.

So let me ask you about. Because you weave a lot of God into your videos, I always tend to try to bring it up because I sit and think of who are the listeners here that are atheists, that don't resonate at all with God and my background.

My mother was a former nun. She actually left the convent because she had gotten ill and met my father.

In church and ended up getting married. And I was raised Catholic. And my experience with it was very negative.

And even to the point where this.

Whole notion of God with all of the being molested as a kid, my mother dying, lots of abuse, lots of things that happen, you know, it wasn't until later in adult life where I.

Realized I have a real issue with.

This whole God thing. And even though I spent thousands of.

Hours of my life praying and going.

To church every day when I went to Catholic school, you know, I just could not feel this connection with this source. And so to this day, you know, I always am a little suspect when someone is so hardcore about what they think God is, because, you know, there's many different perceptions of that. The real question is to not go into trying to describe God because, you know, a million different versions. It's more about faith. And so what does God mean to you and where does this faith come from? Because I think a lot of times people have a real, you know, your messages. I don't care what anyone, you know, if they're religious, spiritual, atheists.

There's so much good in what it is that you share.

And what I don't want to do is have someone either cut themselves off because they're like, oh, they hear this charged word, which is very positive for.

Some people and extremely negative for others.

So I'd love to get your perspective.

On that for sure. And I always tell people, like you said, I mean, people who follow me, I've had, you know, Muslims, atheists and everything. And I think they look at the message and take what they need and leave what they don't. And they respect my beliefs. You know, that's what I'm always a respecter of people's beliefs and only can speak about just in my life, according to. Of course, I was raised around it. My dad's a pastor, my grandmother, all those things. But it wasn't until two situations happened in my life that really made me draw me closer to God. One was When I was 6, 7 years old, I had a real bad asthma condition. Of course, it's a lot better now with more knowledge I have. But living in New Orleans with that humidity, I mean, I'd take breathing treatments every night. It was bad. It got to a point where I was coughing so bad that my blood vessels turned white. I mean, my white around my eyes, my blood vessels popped. So all the White was red, right? And so I would go to school, and that's the first time I get bullied. Second grade, they're calling me, like, devil boy, all these things. And I was sick, and my mom, you know, my mother didn't know. The doctor gave us a suppressing cough medicine, which made it worse. And my mother said, you know, something. Told her God, you know, for her. Told her, you know, through friend, like, hey, take that baby to the hospital. Like, literally on the way to the hospital, I get there, I get in the er, and I still remember, like, it was yesterday. They put me down, and my mom leaves the room. And this is one guy across the table. His son had just got shot. And I stopped breathing, you know, stopped breathing. Gone pretty much. And the only thing I remember is them bringing me back. But the guy was watching me, went and told my mom, and they brought me back, whatever. Like, that at that moment is when I felt, like, just my connection with God. Honestly, just in that moment, I felt him. It's kind of hard to explain. I couldn't put it into words, but I felt him in that moment. And another moment was, of course, just me hitting my rock bottom and just me giving me this purpose. Like, you know, it's so hard for me to explain, like, rehab time and how everything is going on and things like that. But only that I can say is I just know it's the call that God has for my life. When I speak, I feel like he's flowing through me and I. All of these things. I mean, I think I'm an intelligent person, but I don't think I'm as incredible as people may put it on me. I think it's just the incredible God that I serve, you know, so that's what God is for me, like, just my experiences through life. And when I look back, my faith isn't built upon, like, what could happen in the future. My faith is built upon what has happened in my life. And so every time I look back and forth, people can call it coincidence that they believe that or whatever it may be, but every time I look back in my life, everything added up to this moment. I had to go through the NFL. I learned so many things to put me in this moment. Friendships that it's just so hard to explain. Even how we met, you know, everything had to happen to get to this moment. Every time I look back, you know, my faith just gets stronger and stronger from that. And so that's what faith means to me, honestly.

Yeah, well, and I think to be void of faith in any particular area. Not that you can't get through it, just it's a heck of a lot more painful. And what's interesting too is because of.

So much time that I have spent.

In recovery and with people that there are, I see some people that just.

Not only don't believe in God, they hate the notion of it, and they hate people that even have that belief and so part of it, and there's.

So many people that are quote, unquote.

Religious, religious that, you know, let's take Jesus.

Even though you can look at God.

As many, many different sources, where they.

Seem to be the antithesis of what.

His message appears to be, you know, which is totally non accepting.

And so I think part of it.

Is just accepting others and accepting yourself.

Without having to be like, oh, you.

Know, I'm going to invalidate that person because of that. Because it's real easy to kind of point fingers at any part of a person or what they do that you don't like. And if you want the world to change, good luck with trying to change the world.

You got to change the way you.

Look at the world, the way you experience the world.

And so I even think too, I mean, just to like, I mean, love. I mean, I think love is of course, the universal language. And that's something I try to get people. And it's funny you said that because. And it's true, you know, even when it comes to Christians, and I say this all the time, is that, you know, we could be some of the most judgmental people ever. Like, even with myself, like, you go to my page, it's like, Trent, you know, you have. I have one lady tell me I don't dress Christian enough. You know, I'm like, what is that? You know, I wear sandals, you know, so I see so much judgmental stuff and I think it, it keeps people away. But I always say this to, just to, you know, believers that I talk to, I say, you know, don't let the imperfections of man keep you from the perfection of God, you know, And I think you have to understand. And then we blame even me, I blame God for my situation so much. I blame God for this. I blame God for that. But I was never taking the responsibility. I mean, we live in an evil world with people who do certain things, you know, and we have to take the responsibility also.

So I remember when we were doing yoga at my house a few months ago, and someone, someone out of the blue just starts saying, yoga is like some. And it's like, we're doing a yoga class.

You know, my friend gives it to.

Yeah.

I'm just like, honestly, that's my best connection with God. Everything is what you make it. I feel like personally, you know, whatever opinion, whatever, everybody has opinion. People tell you that some water is bad for you. I'm just like, what? So, you know, everything is bad, you know, so you just have to take your experiences for yourself. And I think as long as you operate in love, man, I think it works out awesome.

What's the mission currently behind rehab?

Time. Just to renew every heart and body. You know, I want to give people worth. That's my thing. I mean, know your worth tour. But I want people to understand that they have worth. I mean, that's my message. Regardless of what's going on outside of you, I want you to know that you're an incredible person. Don't let what's going on outside of you define what's inside of you. So that's my mission, man, Just to get people to understand their worth. Yeah.

Great.

What are some of the most valuable.

Life lessons that you've learned?

Oh, man, I think one is facing your reality. I can share this. The three R's. You know, facing your reality is one. And I always say, you know, you'll never win your award by running from your battles. I talked about it at the tour, I think so many times we run away because of fear, whatever it may be. But when you step and face whatever it is, that battle or that whatever that fear, you overcome it. You realize you gain a strength that you never knew you had, you know, So I think a lot of people, a lot of times need to face our reality, whatever that is. You don't have to become your reality in that sense, but you have to face it, you know, and you can grow from that. I think another lesson was release. You know, whether it's friendships, and I don't always promote that, but release the toxic things from your life. You know, people say don't burn bridges. I definitely agree, but I feel like there are certain bridges you need to burn, you know, that you can't afford to go back to. So releasing things from your life. It taught me that I had to change my environment. As I always say, you know, you don't blame a flower when it doesn't blossom or bloom. What do you do? You fix the environment. So sometimes it's not always you, you know, sometimes it is what's around you. And so I have to change that. And last is just repairing your life, whatever that means to you. Whether it's, you know, seminars, whether it's mentorship, Whether it's digging up the bad seeds that's been in your life since you were born that was given unto you, and digging up those things and replacing those things with seeds of faith and seeds of power.

So.

So I go through that pretty much every single day. I think that's what my struggle has taught me, and that's what I try to teach other people.

You've done a lot of work in drug and addiction research. And what is your perspective on addiction and recovery. And how can we best help families heal and recover? Since, you know, that's one of my main areas of focus.

I think addiction's a really tough problem. Very first of all, I think it's universal. I think all of us are addicted in one way or another to one thing or another. The only reason we don't see that is that some addictions are socially acceptable. Workaholism, workaholism, addiction to shopping, addiction to power, addiction to thinking, which is very prominent in intellectual circles. I mean, there's all sorts of things. How to deal with addictions, I think, is really tough. I mean, one strategy is to shift addictive behavior to things that are less. Less harmful rather than more harmful. You know, it's better to be addicted to running than to cigarette smoking, for example. But it's still an addiction to try to get to the root of addictive behavior. I think that's really tough. I think that's, you know, I think the people that have it right are Buddhist psychologists who say that the root of addictive behavior is attachment. It's the illusion that satisfaction and complete completeness come from something external to you. And until you can practice realizing that you are complete as is, it's hard for you to be free. I think the most encouraging thing that I see about addiction is that. And this is true of everything I looked at, whether it's cigarettes or heroin. If people progress, I mean, just go through life enough and don't get some snuffed out in one way or another, One day their motivation to drop it becomes. Reaches a point at which it's easy. You see people that have tried to quit smoking again and again. And they talk about what a struggle it is and how hard, and they go back to it. And one day a person wakes up and maybe looking at stained fingers or looking at a dirty ashtray. And suddenly they don't want to do it anymore. And that time it's easy. The problem is you can't. You can't put motivation into another person. And that's the frustration of addiction treatment. All you can do is arrange circumstances and encourage people to try and keep trying. And one day the reservoir of motivation is full enough that it becomes easy.

Well, now, this will always sound kind of weird when I bring up addiction stuff, but you are very knowledgeable in the area of shifting consciousness. And so, you know, I believe that.

Addiction is a solution.

It's not a very good solution. It could kill you.

And I also believe that I'd like.

To see policy change because you can't punish the pain out of people. Right now we have, you know, the criminal justice system treating addiction, and we need a more compassionate approach. And there's ways to really shift consciousness. And so I want to ask you.

About plant medicines and psychedelics because I.

See MDMA coming down the pike. Psilocybin, you have lots of experience with. You wrote a book called the Natural Mind in 1970, my first book, A Revolutionary Approach to the Drug Problem. And you thought this would totally shift. But what happened is this war on drugs happened, and I'd love to have you. I know this is not an easy.

Question, but what is consciousness?

I mean, looking at altering it and shifting it in way so you live in the world in a better, happier, more connected space. Because I think the opposite of addiction is connection. And so anything you could speak to that.

Well, that's a big subject.

Yeah, it is.

I know, I know.

I would say, you know, the argument that I get into with scientific materialists is over the nature of consciousness. They think that consciousness is a product of brain biochemistry or electrical activity in the brain. I think that consciousness is primary and that I think consciousness organizes matter into more and more complex forms. There's no way of proving one or the other. It's just a different worldview. But I find that my worldview makes things much more interesting. And, you know, my experiences also are that by changing consciousness, by changing what's in your head, you can change the external world. And I have seen that again and again. You know, just as a mundane example, I've for a long time lived with dogs. And I've always had Rhodesian Ridgebacks. And I had a male I lived out in. I had a property that bordered on Saguaro national park east of southeast of Tucson. And I had one big male who all he wanted to do was crawl in your lap and snuggle. And I came home one day and found he had backed a worker, someone who was working on the landscape against a wall. The Guy was brandishing a rake and the dog hackles were up, snarling. There was no way to convince this guy that it was his emotions that were producing this behavior in the dog. There was no way to convince him that this was not a vicious attack pack dog that I had there. And I see this kind of thing all the time in interactions with people, interactions with all sorts of things I've also seen. I'll just tell you a few. I've told these stories before, but some of the potentials that I see in psychedelics I had. This goes way back in my early exploratory days. I must have been about 28, I suppose. I had a lifelong allergy to cats. If a cat licked me, if a cat came near me, my eyes would itch. If it licked me, I'd get hives. So I never let cats near me. And one day I took LSD with a group of friends outdoors. It was a beautiful day. It was just. Everything was wonderful. In the midst of this, a cat jumped into my lap. And my immediate reaction was sort of this. And then I thought, this is really silly, you know, And I relaxed and I petted. The cat, had no allergic reaction. I've never had one since. So instant disappearance of a lifelong allergy. Tell you what, around the same time, even more. First of all, I'd love to open Dr. Weil's allergy clinic. You know, maybe 10 sessions spaced a week apart. And the first one, you get a full dose of whatever and then a kaleidoscope on your face, and then the dose reduces and at some point you're taking a placebo and you don't know when that happens. Allergies are learned responses. You can unlearn them. So this one's a little trickier to explain. I also had grew up being told that I could never get tan. I had fair skin. And my experience was when I was out in the sun, I would burn. I spent. We used to go down to the Jersey shore. And this is in the days before sunscreen. The probably the things we put on us magnified the effect of the sun. But anyway, sheets of skin peeling off, bright red, horrible pain. And then I'd be as fair as ever. So I just took this.

That.

No, I couldn't get tan. So also around this time, also with LSD on a beautiful day, I was living in rural Virginia. I was running around with no clothes on and I was lying in the grass and looking up at the sun. And I thought, this is also really silly. And I just sort of Relaxed and exposed myself to the sun and the next day I got tan and I have ever since. Now that's a little trickier to explain. I mean, that has something to do with.

Because the question is, what the hell's going on?

Well, what's going on? Probably your pigmentation is told by cells called melanocytes, which are close to neurons and they are involved with the immune system. So again, this has to be a mind mediated effect that it changes the way that those cells behave. But I think that just hints at the kind of potential that's there. And same with the back pain stuff, that there are ways that you can change external reality and physical reality by changing things in your head.

My belief, because of all the pain I used to have in having spent a lot of time in the addiction.

Recovery world with my own recovery, is I see addicts have a tremendous amount.

Of back pain, knee pain, neck pain.

Shoulder pain, migraine headaches, skin problems, digestive issues.

And I think the same things that manifest themselves as addictions in destructive ways are the same mechanism that manifests in pain. And I don't hear very many people, if anyone talking about it and linking the two together, but I think there's a huge thing, sleep problems, all kinds of stuff. Because I've been, you know, and have you.

Do you have any experience with ibogaine or know people that have.

Oh, I'm the first person in the world to have before and after brain scans and serotonin and dopamine tests of doing ibogaine, I scanned my brain before, went and did it, came back and scanned it again. And I have hours of interviews with one of the top psychiatrists who specializes in using psychedelics and plant medicines for addiction treatment and ptsd. So, yeah, I've.

So this is the African psychedelic and little known here and has a reputation now for treating addictive behavior sometimes very fast. It's not available here. There are clinics in Mexico.

That's where I went.

Right. But you know, you asked at the beginning what's happening? It is remarkable to me to see this, you know, new interest in psychedelics and our culture and a lot of research. In the old days, you know, it was a lot of research looking for bad effects. And now there's a lot of researchers trying to document positive effects of psychedelics or has an initiative coming to legalize psilocybin. I think the potential for MDMA to treat ptsd, psilocybin for obsessive compulsive disorder and depression, I think will eventually have these drugs be available. For therapeutic use.

Are you friends with Rick Doblin and Michelle?

Yeah.

Rick, he is just the guy has. I mean, you got to really give him credit for the sheer amount of doors slammed in his face and the amount of resistance, but just wanting to go out there and find ways to help reduce human suffering.

So it's changing now. I mean, when I see characters on mainstream TV series microdosing, something is changing.

Exactly.

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