Addiction REDEFINED: What It Is, Why It Happens, and How to HEAL – Insights from Gabor Maté

And so what happens then is that the brain actually then starts to reset itself, recalibrate itself. And then that person gets to a point where it crosses the line. It goes from where it's an impulse to where it becomes compulsive. And then it becomes addictive. And then you have a problem where a person can't stop, and they make promises to themselves they're going to stop. And they can't stop because the brain is now at a place where. Where it can't go backwards by itself.

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 completeness come from something external to you. And until you can practice realizing that you are completely 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 snuffed out in one way or another, one day their motivation to drop it becomes. Reaches a point at which it's easy.

Okay, 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 a. 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? Sometime. 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'Re 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. Gave you relief from pain. Gave 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. 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, 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.

Yeah, well, it was on this stage last year that actually, for the first time, publicly told about not only my drug 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 in, 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 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 to 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 in 1944. Jewish parents, two months before the Nazis occupy 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 wasn't happy. 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 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 give 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. Not 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 system is treating addicts when it needs to be something else.

Well, 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 to 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 911 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's own advisory commission, every three weeks you have a 911 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.

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 U.S. suicides, overdoses, they've been happening in epidemic proportions for decades. We just don't think that's so important. Not 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 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? 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 with 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 a 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. 30% of our clients down there are first nations, our aboriginal people, they make up 4% of the population. Why? Because of the severe trauma that they experienced. And this is the one piece, the trauma fees 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. Oh, she's. 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 from medical school in Michigan and 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 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.

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, or you can wait till the end of this video or you can Simply go to joesfreebook.com and you can get a copy there. Interesting. Well, okay, well first off, I would be fascinated to know why that is the case. But I want to first have you define what is addiction. I mean, what does that mean?

Well, there's many definitions of what an addiction is, but here's what it boils down to. Addiction is a brain disease. The brain has become altered and when a person starts a behavior, like a kid takes some nicotine, what he doesn't know is nicotine stays in his brain for 30 days so he doesn't feel like he's got a problem. I haven't had a cigarette in three weeks. But the fact is the brain is adjusting and so it feels like a choice when he starts and what happens if he uses it to cope with stress and cope with pain. The actual way that the brain is structured shifts, it moves. Even in gaming we are now seeing that kids become so addicted to gaming that some, we are quite certain some kids brains don't actually unfold naturally. So what happens is that the brain is altered and it's self administered. You do this for yourself and has a lot to do with how you perceive things. So for example, you and I were joking before the show about this research out of Stanford where people were given the same bottle of wine. One group is told it's 90 bucks, other group is told it's 10 bucks. The group that got the 90 buck, they got higher than the group that had the 10 buck wine.

So same wine, same wine, thought it was $10.

So it's really what your perception is. And so what happens then is that the brain actually then starts to reset itself, recalibrate itself. And then that person gets to a point where it crosses the line. It goes from where it's an impulse to where it becomes compulsive, and then it becomes addictive. And then you have a problem where a person can't stop and they make promises to themselves they're going to stop. And they can't stop because the brain is now at a place where it can't go backwards by itself. So it's a little bit like other things that, you know, of Alzheimer's or other brain diseases. There's now something wrong with the brain. And we can see it, we can look at it, see pictures of it. We know that it's a problem and that it's treatable.

Okay, so you said it's a brain disease. And I mean, I've, you know, done a lot of reading on a different. I go to conferences. I mean, I'm very much an addictive.

Thinker, one of the biggest conference goers I know.

Well, a lot of things. And I'm fascinated with the whole subject of addiction because I believe mental illness in the worst possible states will manifest itself as an addiction. And from a layman standpoint, meaning to me, I interpret it as something where willpower, choice, all of those things doesn't matter. Okay, and I want to ask you about that. There's behavioral addiction, such as sex, which we're going to talk heavily about today. Gambling, eating, Internet. And then there's chemical addictions, alcohol, drugs, things that are consumed. Is there a difference between a chemical addiction versus a behavioral addiction other than the way that it's acted out?

Well, what's important is that everybody understand it taps into the same parts of.

The brain.

So it's the same reward centers, uses the same chemicals, like dopamine, for example. If you have a good meal, it raises your dopamine 50%. If you have sex, it raises it 100%. If you have drink alcohol, it raises it 100%. Take methamphetamines, raises it 1100%. So sometimes some things are too good. The brain can't. You can't be a recreational user of meth and not have a problem. See, and there are other things like that. So the first thing that you need to understand is it taps into the same parts of the brain, what makes it different. And especially with food and sex, they are different than everything. Which is why many of my patients will say, heroin addicts, cocaine addicts, will say by far sex was Much more difficult than their cocaine or their heroin. And part of the reason is, first of all, the brain will categorize anything sexual. Both men and women, 20% faster than anything else. We are wired to be sexual because it's about survival. Food is about survival. Food and sex are also sensate. In other words, we are the only country in the world that has a dessert cart. Yeah. And the reason we do is because the presentation and the smell is the part of, of how you sell the food. And the food industry has been very effective at marketing and building ways in which it gets people to buy food that's not good for people. So the senses are very important. And so a cocaine addict doesn't care how his cocaine is packaged, just wants the cocaine. But food and sex presentation can mean a lot in terms of what does that mean to the person, how that person looks. Just think of words, Joe, that you can think of right now that would apply to both food and sex. Hunger.

Delicious. Yeah. Beautiful.

Yeah, exactly. In other words, erotic.

Yeah.

So you have see how my brain.

Just works like this.

Yeah.

But the point is, is that they're regarded as two of the toughest addictions because of how they're wired. And then they are intimately connected also with historically issues around trauma, sexual abuse. Many people who are overweight have been sexually abused. It's a way to defend themselves sexually. Sex addicts have been abused sexually. Fear is a big factor in all addictions. Every addiction has what we call a stress factor. You really can't have an addiction without stress because of what it does to the brain.

Interesting. Well, here's one of the reasons that I wanted to interview you, for one. I don't know the exact cliche, but it's that which is most private, is most public.

Yes.

This is a condition which you absolutely know, have more statistics than you could ever shake a hat at. And millions of people suffer from. But if you go out onto the streets, no one wants to admit it. Talk shows, never I've rarely seen unless like you're interviewed or something where there's ever a proper interpretation of it. It's such a shame and guilt based condition. But so many people, including a vast majority of our listeners, many of who are entrepreneurs and CEOs, would never want to admit to it. Most of the depictions of sexual addiction or addictions in general are typically wrong. Whenever they show a 12 step, supposed 12 step meeting on TV, it's usually really not how it works. And you know, we're living in a, in a world where this condition is so prevalent and so many people are suffering from it. But there's not a lot, if any, real major public support for it. And there's millions of people that deny it even exist, including supposed doctors. And so it's changing. It is changing dramatically.

And I think the factors that have made it change, first of all, is we have a lot more science and there are a lot more people like me out there working on it that are. That have studied sex addiction and are prepared for this now in the comprehensive textbook of psychiatry, psychiatrists are starting to draw a bead on it. The Clinton experience helped in a very strange way. I wish the Clintons no ill will in this. I really. I think they've had many struggles and have given much. But the fact that there was a public discussion. I remember the afternoon when the Monica Lewinska thing hit. We had every major network newspaper wanting a diagnosis of Bill Clinton between 1:00 o' clock in the afternoon and 2:40. I remember the place just went up for grabs. And of course, that's something I've never, I've never met Bill Clinton. We. We don't do that over the phone. We don't. That's not how. But what was interesting was to hear the reporters talk because the reporters started using language. Anxiety reduction, compartmentalization, the language of therapy. And if you read what was written afterwards, why a person would take the risks that were taken. I mean, and the stories that are now documented, what that did is it brought us, if we were like 30 years behind, brought us forward maybe 10 or 15 years. And then the thing that people can't seem to duck, There are two major things they can't duck. The Internet is changing, changing everything. It's changing our sexuality, it's changing our culture. No spouse can compete with the Internet.

What do you mean by that? No spouse can compete with the Internet.

Because, you know, I mean, I think of. In my marriage, I've been married to my wife Suzanne since 1995. And just what it takes to deal with her. I mean, it's. I mean, she is. To have a good relationship takes so much, much work and stuff to deal with one really good woman. And it's kind of how we have evolved over time is to be able to deal with a person one at a time. Most cultures find that serial monogamy works best. However, when you go online, you're looking at 50 pictures and you pick one and it takes you to another deal and there's 50 pictures more like the one that you picked. And so it becomes a selection Mechanism and it takes you to a place where it gets you to some of the deepest places sexually that people live. And so you can be instant messaging five people. You can have the amount of stimulation. Remember what I said about you can't be a recreational user of okay. Online. If you really get into gets to a place, especially if it gets to what we call accessing the unresolved in people. There's in Harry Potter. Do you remember the Harry Potter story when Harry found the mirror of erised, which was desire spelled backwards, and he saw his parents and then Ron came and looked at it and saw himself being carried off the Quidditch field and Dumbledore came and said, boys, when you look in the mirror, you see what you desire the most. You have to be very careful. People have been lost in the mirror. And what happens online is people get into things that they can't do.

Right.

They just can't do.

But it's erotic, it's arousing. And so it just wires the brain.

Yeah. And there's a word that we use called the MESA factor, which means machine enhanced sexual arousal takes the brain and elevates it to a level that requires so much stimulation that being with just a woman doesn't do it. I hear that from my patients all the time. And there's the recent New Yorker cartoon where the guy rolls over. Honey, it just doesn't work if it's not on the Internet. No joke. That is where it gets for people. And the problem is you get kids who started when they're in the fifth grade. Like there's a new book out that just a study of 100 universities involved in this study. And they asked when did you start looking? And I think it was like 40% of the men and 36% of our current college age students started looking at the Internet sexually before the age of 10. And parents haven't a clue. Joe, we have a tsunami coming. We have a tsunami coming. A change in sexual behavior. It's going to take us 100 years to see what it does to the species.

Interesting.

What we know is a culture is shaped by how men and women treat each other and how we raise our children. It's shaped by those things. You can forecast how violent a culture is going to be. All the terrorism that's currently on the planet is really that fundamentalist urge to protect an old way of sexuality and family that's shifting. It used to be that a woman would have eight children and 90% of her time were just to give birth in the hope that two of those children would live today, even in the developing world, they're having two children. And it costs so much to get that kid to the point in a knowledge economy. And Drucker and the kinds of stuff that you guys talk about all the time, it's about, we're in an entrepreneurial world. You have to have knowledge and you have to have ability or you can't compete. Well, to prepare a kid for that cost so much for a family to prepare that kid. So what that means is women now only 10 to 15% of their time is into childbirth. That means women are free. You have to negotiate with them. They can't be owned. And so the big struggle that a lot of this is about is really about family life. And the Internet is changing at all.

So first off, totally fascinating.

One of.

Your first books, which was out of the Shadows, this is the first book ever written on sexual addiction. You first wrote it's out of the Understanding Sexual Addiction. You wrote it in 1973. It was not published until 1983. When you first started talking about this, you were attacked, you were ridiculed. People doubted it. You know, it's that whole. I don't know who came up with it. Truth goes through three phases. First it is ridiculed, then it's violently opposed, Then it's accepted as self evident.

And everybody said that, you know, well, I knew it all the time. Is that third phase.

Yeah, right, right, exactly. And you, you've got.

I've seen those phases going, going back.

Yeah, well, we had dinner last night and you, you were saying that you were speaking to. See, you were speaking to a group of entrepreneurs in Africa recently and you had like really well renowned CEOs of major corporations stand up and credentialize you and say, this guy is for real. This stuff absolutely is true. And you never had that in the beginning.

I did not have that in this country for sure. Yeah.

And so anyone that's watching this, I know there's going to. I mean, really, the truth is, I would like to say that everyone knows somebody that has an addiction, has an alcohol problem, a drug problem, a. But the reality is not only does everyone that's watching this know someone, a large portion of people watching this absolutely have addictions.

Many of them are living with somebody with one for sure.

Right. And so part of this is I want this to be a very helpful, useful knowledge product for people to first off, be aware that this actually exists and then give them some what to do and how to do about it, including I'm going to recommend some of your books and whatnot. But for, for the people out there that really don't know the difference between maybe going out when they're younger or currently and having a wild night out, drinking or partying or one night stand or something. How do they know when it's really an addiction or when it's just, I don't know, maybe making choices that aren't the best thing, but you're feeling like wild one night? I mean, how does someone know that?

I get asked by media people all the time, well, how many affairs does it take to make a sex addict? And that's a little bit like asking me, well, how many drinks does it take to make an alcoholic? And it really isn't so much. It's about what goes on in the brain and how you are preoccupying and obsessing.

Can I say this too? Because I want to really make sure I make a point of this. When you say it's a brain disease, you have brain scans and in the brain of an addiction is different than the brain of a non addict. Right?

True. Yes.

And you, I mean, you've. I think you coined the term arousal template.

Yes.

Okay.

Which is when you first get introduced to sex, whatever it is that turns you on, that you found exciting, that gets pretty much cemented in the neural pathways of your brain.

And we call it an arousal template. And we, you know it. We now have it. And so that there are groups of things, like we measure now 240 behaviors and they kind of go together in groups. And so if you were to see me, like, I mean, I don't do therapy anymore, but I work with therapists and their patients, and the first half hour I look like a magician, and I'm not. What it is, is I know the map. And so if I know somebody who touches people inappropriately in crowds, I know that he also will hide in places and voyeur people. I know that he also will insert sexual humor into places that don't fit. That if he's a pastor or a counselor, will touch the grieving widow and his fingers will touch inadvertently, it will appear. Or the computer nerd who goes into the woman's computer and leaves a picture. It's the invasion. So we start looking for maps of things that what all those things have in common is invading in someone's space without somebody knowing it, doing it secretly. So we look for those maps and they're an arousal template. And they start to morph, they start to change into Bigger things. They sometimes are rooted in sexual abuse patterns. Sometimes they're accidental, but they have an inordinate power. Like that wine tasting we were talking about earlier. They take on a meaning that is bigger. So, like for example, your entrepreneurs, your CEOs. I did the study last year of 150 CEOs of major American corporations. And we wanted to see what the behavior of choice was.

Just sexual or any behavior.

Sexual choice, sexual behavior. These are all sex addicts by far. It wasn't even just a little bit or statistically significant. It was huge. They preferred the hiring of an escort over any other kind of thing. And what became very clear, it was about convenience. It was about money and the power of money and about power. And no complications. I'm too busy for complications. So escorts were the ones of choice. And part of it also. It's interesting to me when you were talking about how it's kind of hidden in the culture, you think over this past couple years of people whose public behavior. I mean, I'm not just talking about way back with Clinton. I'm talking even in recent history who have gotten into trouble with things that they knew better. That they knew better. People who had prosecuted others, knew the rules, but not able to stop. So what is that, Joe? Then exactly what is it? So what we learn is that arousal template, once it gets in the rear of the reward center, says a loss of contact with reality. In other words, reality returns after they've done it and say, oh my God, I can't believe I did this. And they hate themselves. But the fact of the matter is, when they're in that reward, this is true, by the way, of gamblers. People do high risk financing kinds of things. They feel they have a system. Their belief about it can distort reality. There was a study at Stanford Business center about the Jerry Kievel people, like the guy in France, the banker got into trouble. Those type of people, we see this in so many different ways that there is this loss of reality that goes with the addiction.

Well, let me ask you, are these people bad people?

No, they're wonderful people. Often very achieve with a real honor code.

Okay, okay. Taking pride. But they have a behavior that is getting them in trouble that is violently goes against it.

Yeah. One of the ways that you know is that there's a great guy who wrote about the money disorders this way by the name of Jacob Needleman. And he says, you always know that addiction is present when the person is living in contradictions. So the sex addict might say, I love my wife. But then he's unfaithful to her parent. I love my children, but spends no time with them. They're contradictions. And the only way that addictions work is when there's contradictions like that.

Interesting.

So your question about how do you know that you're in trouble is when you're doing things that you don't feel good about afterwards and you promise yourself you're never going to do them again. In fact, we have a little scale that physicians now use because physicians are always they're starting to look for the problem. Emergency rooms and urologists and I mean, people get into trouble physically or STDs, what have you. And if they are preoccupied, can't stop thinking about it, if they harmed others, if there is some abuse, if they're ashamed of their behavior, if they're sad, and if they have sought help for it and it's been unsuccessful, these things are indicators that, I mean, sometimes it's finding the right therapist, too, which is a question you and I have talked about.

But and I'll ask you about that because one of the things, you know, that I want to do is identify problem. So let me go through some things that I've actually learned on this journey that I've been on for a couple of years now. We, when I say we, I have several partners that are, you know, Renee area, Akira Chain with Chon is how he likes. And John Butcher, who's the chairman of Precious Moments and makes a figurine. These are partners in Artists for Addicts. And the things that I'm doing with Genius Recovery. And we've been traveling around doing interviews with members of, you know, communities and with doctors and with therapists and with addicts themselves and with family members that have had family members that have died and, you know, interviewing positive and heartbreaking, all these stories and doctors and all these different people that treat addicts. And then I have a lot of dear friends that are real true experts. Their business is helping people with addictions. People like Gabor Mate, people like Tommy Rosen. With Recovery 2.0 and with all of these hours and hours of conversations and people that we've interviewed, there's four areas that really you need to look at if you're going through recovery. The first is community. Hardly anyone recovers in isolation. So seeking out, be it a 12 step community or some sort of community, is critical. You got to get out of just trying to fight this on your own so you'll be able to ask for help. 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 joesfreebook.com and you can get a copy there. Second is addiction is biochemical. So it's serotonin, it's dopamine, it's happy chemicals in the brain, cortisol. I mean, there's hormones, there's all these things. And if you don't address the nutritional aspects, the biochemical stuff, you're going to be in a craving state. And so nutrition, supplementation, the foods that you eat, doing as much as you can to be a clean eater, to get your chemistry as stabilized as humanly possible. And people that are struggling, addicts really don't. And I'll come back to this in a minute and tell you something profound that I heard from a doctor here in Phoenix that I recently met. And so then it's the body. The issues are in the tissues. And so if you are traumatized, you can do talk therapy all day long, you can be with the smartest people, but the trauma is in the body. So doing things like yoga, Kundalini, yoga is really beneficial. Emdr, float pods, where you do the floating in a pot of salt water. Meditation, breathing. There's hundreds of thousands of people in America that die every year because of tobacco. And someone will be like, you know, why are you smoking? What you got to realize is a smoker, sometimes that's the only time that they really breathe. It's meditative, it's ritual. It's like smoking a cigarette. And there'll be a lot of yogis that will say, right here between your chest and this foot and a half space. Or depending if you're a really tiny person. Like an elf. Exactly. You know, it's. It's the breathing. So, you know, addicts don't breathe very deeply and they get that. And so smokers, a lot of times, that is their form of kind of feeling connected and feel, you know, it's. It's also littered with chemicals that are killing them, but it is a form of meditation. So getting into, again, the issues are in the tissues. And then the final thing is the environment. If you're in a stressful environment, work, home, if you don't bring some joy to that sort of environment or get into a place where you just aren't stressed, it's very hard to recover. So A lot of times people are like, I have the solution to addiction. You just need to talk to this doctor or take this pill or take this supplement. But again, it's community, it's biochemistry, it's the body, it's the environment. And if you don't address those different areas, you know, you're not going to have as high of chances of not only getting sober, but staying sober. And that's one of the things where there's not just some simple solution to, oh, you just need to go to this, you know, because you can go to 12 step meetings. And 12 step meetings have saved people's lives, which is good for the first one.

Community.

Oh, absolutely. And for early stage recovery, it's almost critical. I've asked many therapists and doctors and addicts that have you ever met anyone that has fully recovered from addiction? And when I say fully recovered, I mean being in recovery versus recovered. I would look as the suffering and the craving stops. So, however, once the craving stops, you should keep doing the practices. And I tell people all day long, even if you don't resonate with being an addict, go to a 12 step meeting, go to an open 12 step meeting on Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Sex Addicts Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous, Codependency Anonymous, you know, Al Anon, which was created for family members, you know, I mean, and sit through these meetings. It's the mutual suffering. Like there were a lot of things related, related to the Vietnam War where they would have traumatized veterans and soldiers that came back from war and they would have them go to therapists and a lot of them wouldn't get better. But when they would put them in a room with other soldiers that have gone through the trenches and they had a rapport with these individuals that they could never get with other people. So there's a lot to be said about mutual suffering. Being able to put people together that, that have been through the shit together and they're able to talk with each other and realize, yeah, you've been, you're a survivor. I mean, you're molested, you have image issues, you look at yourself in the mirror and you hate yourself. If you're bulimic and you go and sit in a room of other people with bulimia and you talk with them, that in and of itself brings hope. Because what meetings really do is if you feel hopeless, you want to go and find people that believe in you more than you believe in yourself. And if you can do that, that simply makes you feel better and if you feel like your life sucks, go volunteer somewhere, Go to an animal shelter, go to a nursing home, go to a burn unit, go to a children's hospital, go to a homeless shelter and look at people whose lives are more fucked up than yours. And as weird as that sound sounds, you will actually feel better. And what they Learned with like 12 steps is when you can help another addict who's totally struggling, it actually makes you better.

I believe that.

Yeah. And that's why it works. And so a lot of people are like, well, 12 steps don't work. You know, I've gone to meetings and I can't stay sober. I have a family member that's gone to a meeting. And I always say, well, that's like saying gyms don't work. You know, if you go to a health club and you go to a gym and you sit on the bench, but you don't bench press, you don't lift the weights, you don't get on the equipment, you don't use the exercise, you don't pick up the dumbbells, then of course it's not going to work. So the thing with communities, 12 step groups as an example, it's not an attendance program, it's a step program. If you don't do the steps, you're not going to get the results. But there will be people that will go to 12 steps and then they'll eat a lot of donuts, they'll smoke cigarettes, they'll guzzle coffee. So 12 steps are incredibly beneficial from community, but they don't address food, they don't address the body and breathing and exercise. So to give yourself the highest possibilities, you want to do a combination of things, and you have to be willing to destroy anything in your life that's not excellent. And Joe, I know you are very, very interested in, like, treatments that are proven to work. You, to me, seem very uninterested in just airy fairy, abstract, theoretical stuff like, oh, yeah, put, you know, put that.

On your vision board and that should work.

So with the current state of research, do you have an opinion on what seems to be a little bit of a growing movement on treating addiction with psilocybin, ayahuasca, ibogaine? Well, here's my thoughts on that. And I will give this with a caveat, that there's a lot of people that are making claims about how magical and wonderful some of these things are that are dangerous humans. And they're. So you're saying the humans, some of the human, Some of the people that are Offering? Well, there's a lot of dangerous humans, but what, so like the psilocybins, the plant meds medicines, Ayahuasca, ibogaine that you mentioned, you know, emdr, I'm sorry, emda, mdma.

Yeah.

Mixing up a method of neurofeedback and biofeedback with plant medicines, that could be a freak show.

Right.

But let's take ibogaine as an example, which comes from the iboga root. And that has been found to be one of the most effective ways to treat opiate addiction. Very high success rates for being addiction interrupter. It's not a cure, it's an interrupter. How it works, very complex. I'm not going to fully speak to that. You can find a lot of good information. There's a book called Ibogaine Explained that people can buy. It's a short book that is a very good book on ibogaine. But I'm the first person in the world to have a before and after brain scan of doing ibogaine. Oh, you, you've used eyebogaine?

Yeah.

I went to Mexico and I took a film crew and we videotaped all of this. And then I had doctor. It was one of the most horrifying experiences of my life, but also one of the most intense. And I've never been an opiate addict. My addiction to drugs was at my worst state. I weighed 105 pounds from freebasing cocaine for three months straight when I was 18 years old. So if you can imagine a 5 foot 10 male that, you know, weighed 105 pounds, that's very skinny, you know, and so. And of course that was many years ago because I'm 49 years old now at the time we're doing this, because if we did this a year from now, I'd be 50.

Right.

If you kind of do the math.

I don't know that that adds up.

It'll be your opinion.

Right, right. But I wanted to be my own human lab rat. And so I took a film crew with me and that'll be part of the documentary that we put out. And a lot of the stuff. And I had serotonin and dopamine tests before doing it. And then I had Daniel Amen, who is the top brain scan psychiatrist in the world, who scanned my brain six different times. And so we did brain scans before, we did brain scans after. And what I will say is that if in that period of time after doing ibogaine, if you have an opiate addiction, if you literally change the Environment. And you have aftercare. See, there's a lot of rehab centers that suck. I mean, they just exploit people for money. There's, you know, there's a ton of relapse, very low success rate, and there's others that are much better. So my thing is not to bash rehab centers, although many of them deserves. It's really. It's a bubble. And so there are things where they can do a really good job while the person is there. But the real key is what do you do after the treatment? What do you do? What are the rituals? What is the aftercare that you have? Do you have recovery coaching? Are you consistently going to meetings? And most people, left to their own devices, are going to go create trouble. So to have accountability and to have loved ones.

Ones.

If you have loved ones, if you have no family members or any that are functional, then you actually have to create your own community. You have to seek that out. And so there's the drugs that kill people are legal. The drugs that can actually help people are illegal. Not all of them, but that's the damaging thing. And if you really want to know the history of the war on drugs, go read Chasing the Scream by Johann Hari, which is the first and last days of the war on drugs. Read in the Realm of Hungry Ghost by Gabor Mate. If you, you know, read American Pain, you know, there's. There's so many things related to, you know, how these things became illegal, why they're illegal. But there are. There's so much research that is coming out. Psilocybin, lsd, you know, but most people are saying, oh, let me go have a conscious journey. Let me have an experience. You know, some of my friends that will go to Bernie, man, and they're like, yeah, we're gonna have a journey. It's like, no, you're just gonna get high in a trailer. You're in a bender for sure. Yeah.

So.

But again, I mean, you know, everyone has their opinions, and what I just said will piss off some people or whatever. But the thing is, is like. Like, what's your intention behind it? And if you can actually go to people that really have experience guiding people through trauma. I mean, I've seen it change people's lives. I've met people that have met. One guy after I did the ibogaine that had been to five different treatment centers. His family had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to help him stay sober and get off opiates. And he kept relapsing and he did ibogaine, and he's like for the first time in my life, I don't have any cravings. And people can go through ibogaine for far less than most treatment centers and without withdrawals. They can literally go through it without the pain of withdrawals. But it's very intense. And I mean if I would have prepared for. People always ask me what was it like? Describe it. I can talk for the next 10 years trying to describe it. No one would get it. The best description I have was someone told me it was like going through hell on God's shoulders. I mean it was scary, it was terrifying. But man, I mean I saw millions of images and faces and is a 12 hour long trip and the first five hours of it was the most scary, horrifying experiences ever. But then it became beautiful and it was really powerful and it, I mean it's the closest thing I've ever experienced to like, you know, if whatever facing death is like, it felt so mentally like. But man, do I think people would be well served to look into it with caution. Definitely. But worth exploring. And if you've tried a million things and it's not helped you, you know, I mean, in a properly guided plant medicine journey. And by the way, this is things you're gonna have to do outside of the country if you're in the U.S. you know, and I'm a guy that doesn't even like taking an aspirin. I mean, I have not had sugar in over six months. I've not had a drop of caffeine in over six months. I'm a very clean eater. I rarely, you know, eat dairy and grains. I try to eat, you know, very healthy, very organic food. I don't like putting medicine into my system because I nearly killed myself with drugs. But it was, you know, there's a lot. I'm being my own human lab rat. I'm looking at all of these things that, you know, have success in. We're looking at the efficacy of these because, you know, in my journey you can talk about, oh, I want to make it impact, but who the hell cares about an impact unless the impact produces a result? You know, I want to do research. Well, unless the research, you know, produces a result or I want to have awareness. Well, you know, what's the point of awareness if it doesn't lead to a result? So we're really trying to find things that give a result and it's. I wish I could, you know, say to everyone out there that here's exactly what you do, but it's complicated. I'M sure you said with you go to an integrated medicine doctor, assuming that they're a good one, trained by you, they'll ask you about sleep, they'll ask you about lifestyle. And going back to. I want to make this about just pain in particular. Every time I had physical pain and I would go to a doctor or a chiropractor, the vast majority would immediately give me a structural diagnosis. They weren't asking how's your relationship, how's your stress level, how's your sleep, how are you eating? And I think if you're going to go to have any sort of doctor and they're not going to really get to how you're living your life and finding out what are the impediments.

But the problem is that as medicine has been so put in a for profit model, the time allotted for doctor patient interactions has shrunk to the point where now even if a doctor wanted to, they don't have time to ask these.

So it's a systemic problem. Not even just the docs.

It's huge. One piece of practical advice I will give you is never stay in treatment with a doctor who thinks you can't get better. Very important. And over the years, I don't see patients these days, very rarely. But when I was seeing a lot of patients, I had many, many patients come to me, sometimes years after I'd seen them who say that they. The most important thing that I did for them was that I was the only doctor they ever saw who told them they could get better.

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 until the end of this video or you can Simply go to joesfreebook.com and you can get a copy there. 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. 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 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 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.

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 snuffed out in one way or another. One day, their motivation to drop it 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. 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 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.

Yeah, well, you know, 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 know, you have lots of experience with. You wrote a book called the Natural Mind in 1971, 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 mean, 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 ways 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 can 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 in to 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 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. 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, 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. 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 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. 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 lab. And my immediate reaction was sort of this. And then I Thought, this is really silly. 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 around the same time, even more. First of all, I'd love to open Dr. Weil's allergy clinic. You know, maybe 10 sessions space the 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 we used to go down to the Jersey Shore. And this is in the days before sunscreen. 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 ground 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's not.

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

Well, what's going on? Probably your pigmentation is controlled 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 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.

And do you have any experience with ibogaine or. No pain. 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. 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 asked at the beginning what's happening? It is remarkable to me to see this new interest in psychedelics and our culture and a lot of research. In the old days, 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. ARG 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?

Sure, yeah.

I mean, Rick, he is just the guy. 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. When I see characters on mainstream TV series microdosing, something is changing.

Exactly.

Yeah.

You know, Whole Foods is all about food. I gotta ask you some food questions. So what's your philosophy on food and. Or healthy eating? Where do people go wrong when it comes to diet and what is the Whole Foods diet? And then anything you'd like to add about what your favorite foods are and why?

Well, I feel like I'm in a bulletproof diet conference, so I'm a little bit. Got to be.

No, you can slam Dave if you want if you don't like his coffee.

No, it was very.

It was very strategic because I sat next to Dave at lunch and he's such a wonderful man, such a really nice person. I can't possibly slam this guy. I've spent all this time talking about love I can't go, you know, trash Dave Asprey here.

That was really my attempt of having you trash for me just because we're good friends.

He's a great guy. Yeah. I've got a book that tomorrow is being sent to the publisher and should be out in April called the Whole Foods Diet. The philosophy is pretty simple. You should be eating do not eat hyper processed foods. They're the kind of junk that Americans eat. It's, it's going to kill you, it's going to cause cancer and heart attacks and obesity. Don't eat it. Stop eating that stuff. So you eat real foods. Eat real foods. Fruits and vegetables, whole grains, beans, nuts and seeds and a little bit of animal foods. And I think if you look at the longest lived peoples in the world, the Blue Zones people, none of them were vegans, except for a small subset of Seventh Day Adventists. But they were all whole foods eaters and mostly plants. About 90% of their calories came from plant foods. 10% come from animal foods. Human beings basically evolved as plant eating omnivores. That's our digestive system, that's our teeth structure, that's the foods that we really flourish on. So maybe a little bit of wild caught fish, a whole lot of fruits and vegetables. And I would also say that it's so trendy now because of people's terror of gluten and grain brain. And people are trying to avoid all or Paleo, they're trying to avoid beans, they're trying to avoid whole grains. Those foods correlate extremely well with longevity. Whole grains and beans are like those healthy starches are foods that we need. And if you cut those out of your diet and substitute animal foods for.

You, I think you're making a terrible.

Long term mistake for your health. You might lose a little bit of weight on it initially, but if you eat a whole foods diet, you're going to be thin. I weigh the same as I weighed when I was 18 years old, about 145 pounds. My cholesterol is 135. My blood pressure is 105 over 70. I mean this type of diet really does work. You really flourish with it. But that's all. I'll do my preaching on diet today, but my book will be out in April so I hope you'll take a look at it.

I had another food question for you, but I can leave that out.

I like food questions. I am a grocer after all.

I'm going to ask anyway.

Yeah.

What's the most interesting insight or Truth you've discovered about one, food and two, health that people might not know, but would be surprised or shocked if they knew it.

I think I had to just said it because we now live in this low carb mentality. People are concerned about managing their insulin levels and voice eating low on the glycemic index. So as a result, in my opinion, they're eating way too much fat. They're not eating the healthy starches. The Okinawans, which were the longest lived peoples in the world, the elders of okinawa were eating 70% of their calories from 60% from just sweet potatoes alone, and about 80% from starch foods, including beans and rice and sweet potatoes and then vegetables. And that's a diet. A little bit. They eat 4% of their calories from animal foods. A little bit of pork, a little bit of fish, a little bit of eggs, and they flourished. I think that's a. So healthy starch foods, that's my word for you today. Those are the foods that humanity has evolved on. We do very well on whole starch foods. I'm not talking about sugar, I'm not talking about white bread, I'm not talking about croissants, bagels, junk, that kind of junk. I'm talking about whole grain type things like steel cut oats, sweet potatoes, things like that.

Gotcha.

Okay, so I gotta ask you, since you know a little bit about. We've talked about my addiction project. And addiction comes in many forms. You know, drugs, alcohol, process addictions, behavior, and food. And I think so much of the obesity, so much of the health problems are because of addiction and what that leads to in terms of behavior. So you said. I think food addiction is much greater than we realize. We take smoking as an addiction seriously. We see alcoholism, and we tend to think of food as more innocent. And yet you don't really understand your food addictions until you try and change the way you eat. And then the food addictions begin to assert themselves. And so what is your perspective on not only food addictions, but addiction in general?

Well, on addiction in general, I think human beings are very easily addicted. I think we're all addicts in some way or another. We're addicted to something or another. And I would say that you should strive to get rid of the unhealthy addictions and replace them with healthy addictions, such as good exercise and meditation and things that enhance our life force rather than drain it. So we know the unhealthy addictions. Smoking, alcohol, cocaine, heroin, things like that. Those are clearly not going to Be good addictions to have. But food addictions are. People are not. They're much more in denial about that. I say the culture. We have mass cultural denial about food addictions. And yet you don't know you have food addictions until you try to change.

The way you eat.

Try to change it. You know, you'll find it's not very easy to do. You'll find 95%, 96% of diets fail within the first year because people just.

Revert to their old eating patterns.

In America, we're very much addicted to junk food. We're addicted to fast food. We're addicted to sugar. We're addicted to, you know, here's the key. We're addicted to calorie dense foods. That's how we evolve. We're calorie dense foods.

We're very rare.

In evolution, you were foraging for fruits and vegetables and tubers. Occasionally you could bring down an animal, but it was very lean meat that you were eating. So whenever we could get something that had a lot of fat in it, or something that had a lot of protein in it, or just something that had a lot of calories in it, we like it, it tastes good. Yum, yum, yum. And we now can, we can indulge ourselves every single meal. We can eat calorie dense foods every single meal. And the price of that is addiction, obesity, heart attacks, and cancer. So we have to struggle with our own food addictions. But the good news is that you can get over it if you focus on it again. I have a book coming out that will tell you how to do that.

When's your book coming up?

Should be out in April.

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 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 you. 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 Ustream 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, 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. Think it's 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?

No, matter of fact, it's not called Faith. 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 time, same 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. So 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. And Know youw Circle and those videos, like. Cause 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 on to 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. The 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 gonna do it. I don't know what's gonna happen. But I know this is the purpose for my life, because when I was on that stage, I'm not gonna 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, always, like a rap verse. But as 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, with kids, 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 in my life. And at that moment is when I made those calls and called my coach, told them I'm not coming, call my friends, called my parents. And that's when rehab time really started.

Wow.

Wow.

So let me. Let me ask you about.

Because you.

You weave a lot of God into your videos, and 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, you know, my background, I was. 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 happened. 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 I. 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, you're going to have 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 follow me. I've had Muslims, atheists and everything. I think they look at the message and take what they need and leave what they don't. And they respect my beliefs. I'm always a respecter of people's beliefs and only can speak about just in my life. Of course, I was raised around it. My dad's a pastor and 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 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. 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 a 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 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 experience. 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 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.

Right.

And what's interesting too is because of so much time that I have spent in recovery and with people that, 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 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 acceptance. And so I think part of it is just accepting others and accepting yourself without having to be like, oh, I'm going to invalidate that person because of that. Because it's real easy to 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 a 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 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 that 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, with my friends.

I give that, too.

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, whether. 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. 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 war 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 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 we 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 the 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. Right. 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 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.

Last night at dinner when you guys got in from out of town, we were talking about addiction. Because you know that one of my main areas of focus is addiction. So what can vasper do for? Be it the hormone system, the nervous system, for anyone that struggles with addiction, suffering from addiction, that sort of stuff.

That's a great question. So the issue of addiction has been looked at from every angle. And I think one angle that possibly hasn't been examined thoroughly is from the endocrine system point of view, from a hormonal balance. But hormonal balance, and the way we achieve hormonal balance here happens basically naturally in a young child. It's very difficult or impossible to achieve it later because your muscles are longer. You cannot concentrate lactic acid at those levels. So that's why this gives us a completely brand new look into this situation and into this problem, which is completely separate from what other people are doing. I'm not saying that what they're doing is not effective. It could be extremely effective. But in order to actually address the problem at its source, you need to find out how to treat the source. And I believe that hormonal balance, having the whole endocrine system in balance, translates into emotional balance. When you have emotional balance and hormonal balance, then you don't need to reach out for a drug because you are actually happy, you know. So yeah, I saw one of your signs. You know, if you're not happy, do something else. If you're not happy, you're okay with it. Don't do anything. So, so this is what basically to me, that's what the essence of happiness and satisfaction and life comes from. Being balanced from only. And again, we see that very on everyday basis. We see it with our children. And when you see those children, you know, they don't have post traumatic stress age, they don't have depression, they don't have. They're just alive and they love life right from where it comes from. So this is the whole idea was bring it to all of us.

So maybe this could, you know, take every adult that's gotten screwed up along the way and help hopefully unscrew them a little bit.

Yeah. We learn a lot from our kids.

Yes, we do. Yes, we do.

I learned a lot from the two that I have.

Yeah.

Awesome.

Okay.

I hope you found that video awesome and useful. So if you want to get a free copy of my book, I want you to click, click here. And if you want to watch some more videos that will be useful and awesome, click here.

Go ahead. You're over here. Do it now.

Come on.

Thank you.

Watch them.