How to Truly Help an Addict: Gabor Maté’s Powerful Advice on Healing and Compassion

Because addicts, or in active addiction, people lie, they cheat, they steal, they could, they have symptoms that are much different than say like, like an actual disease, like cancer. And so they cause trouble, they cause a ruckus. They're, that's, they're self destructive. How does one, how do you, how do you interact with someone that's caused so much grief in your life? I mean, in my worst stages of addiction, I was a pain in the ass. And so how does one hold compassion.

When there's a family member, a husband.

A wife, a child, you know, friends that are just causing so much trouble? How do we take that framing? Because I'd love to have people leave here and have a whole different perspective on how to interact with addicts, how to think about it. Because through this room we can make an incredible impact in the field of helping people struggling with these, with trauma.

Well, and just as you, in my case, when I was in my addictive phase and my addiction was besides to work, it was for shopping and I shopped compulsively for classical music. And how can that be addiction? You just love music. No, I didn't. I love the music, yes, I'm passionate about it. But it's the shopping I was addicted to. I had to get more and more and more. And it doesn't matter how many CDs I bought, next day I had to get a whole bunch more. And of course in the process I was spending a lot of money. And of course the one addiction justified the other because I was saying, I work so hard, I deserve to give myself some pleasure. That's how clever the addicted brain is. It justifies everything. And I lied to my wife about where I was going to the store again. But it was like I was like having an affair. I lied and I cheated and so on. So what do I say to families? So there's two major things I say to families. One is you have a decision to make. There's two rational choices and one irrational one. The rational choice is number one, what you're doing causes me so much pain, so much stress, I can't be with it. I love you very much, but this is too hard on me. And I'm not willing to expend my energies trying to self care for all the stress that's being caused for me by your behavior. So I can't be with you. That's a perfectly rational choice. Or you can say I love you very much and I understand that what you're doing, whatever it is, comes out of your pain. And this is the only way so far you've found to deal with your pain. So I'm not going to judge you, I'm not going to cajole you, I'm not going to try and change you. I just hope you come to your senses at some point. But I'll be with you and I'll be supporting you emotionally and so on. That's another rational choice. What is completely irrational and dysfunctional is, is to stay with somebody and try and change them, to cajole them, to convince them, to bribe them, to beg them, to coerce them to change. That's what's crazy making. Don't ever do that. It's one or the other. That's the first thing. The second thing is, given my understanding of addiction, that it isn't an individual brain disease, but actually is a function of a child's experience, a person's experience in a family environment, and particularly in a multi generational family environment where trauma is passed on from one generation to the next unwittingly. But it is. I did not mean to traumatize my kids, but I did, and parents do. Then we recognize that the addiction that's manifested in you didn't begin with you. It's actually an expression of multi generational family dynamics. And so what it actually is is that recognition allows for an opportunity. Now let's all heal together. So you say to the addict, thank you for being the sensitive one who's manifested for all of us what's been hidden in the family. And then we haven't known how to deal with or haven't even realized it was there. And so now it's time to heal the whole family system. And we invite you to join us if you're ready. And if you're not ready, we're still going to carry on that path of healing for the family because it's so important. But we're not going to judge you whether you join us, whether you don't. So that's what I would say to families. And you know, I should mention my book on addiction is entitled in the Realm of Hungry Ghosts and there's a chapter on families in there saying just.

What I said here.

Yeah, and Gavor's books are amazing. I'll ask you at the end to get out websites and stuff. Eben Pegan, since you're up with the mic, if you could please. Yeah, Joe, thanks for being vulnerable. You know, you said when you were kind of under the influence of the addiction, you were a pain in the ass, but it wasn't about the addiction. Thank you. It's trying to be funny right now. No, one observation is this word addiction and the term addict. It feels like there could be a word. I'm very interested in words and symbols and what we call things that could make it easier to relate to.

Well, look, the problem with words is that they become used originally they're quite accurate, but then they become pejoratives. So, you know, in psychological terms, say the word like neurotic, just refer to a certain state of mind. But then it becomes the pejorative. Don't be so neurotic. An addict actually originates from a perfectly good Latin word, an addictus. And an addictus was a person who was assigned to somebody else as a slave because they were in debt and they couldn't pay the debt back. So the origin of the word addiction itself originates in slavery. It's a really good word because the addict is a slave to the habit. And in itself there's nothing wrong with it except that it becomes a pejorative and a stigma and there's so little understanding of it. So I quite agree with you. I've said this before, that if I could pass a law, I would. But every time a politician or anybody, physician, anybody talks about an addict, they would have to say not the word addict, but they'd have to say a human being who suffered so much pain that didn't know how else to escape from it, but through this particular behavior.

Outlaw the word addict.

And every time you want to say addict, you have to say what I just said. That would change the conversation. It would also be very accurate.

Yeah, it feels like what's coming to me is maybe like compulsive soother or compulsive self soother or something in.

Yeah, that's okay.

Again, you know, the problem is that it's not in the words that we use, but in how we view people. Because pretty soon, unless the view of the addict changes, then any phrase I come up with, you come up with, would also become pejoratives. So it's the fundamental attitude that needs to shift. Yeah, okay.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks.

How do you treat it, Gabor? What's the best? I mean, we're currently, I think we're so much as a society in the infancy stages of even beginning to really understand this as a whole. I mean, if you controlled everything, how would you treat this?

Well, take a very, well, tragically well known case right now, Harvey Weinstein.

Who.

Clearly had an addiction to sexual predation. And of course, there's all kinds of justified outrage at the system that allowed him, that enabled him to carry on for so many decades. And people are angry with him, which is totally understandable. But if he came to me for treatment, I would not begin with any kind of a judgment that what you did was bad. He already knows it. I would ask him, like I asked you guys, what did it do for you? What did you get from it that was missing from your life? And what was missing from your life? How did you lose it? What happened to you? In other words, whatever else you do, first of all, you have to accept these people as they are and not judge them and understand that they were slaves to something inside them and they didn't willingly make themselves slaves, number one. Number two, something happened to create that compulsion, and that something happened, that something that happened that created the compulsion was rooted in pain. And so, in other words, you have to treat them with compassion and you have to actually get to the core trauma rather than just dealing with the behavior and the problem. With all the many programs, Betty Ford and elsewhere, people go for all these high end, expensive treatments. Rarely do they deal with the trauma. And Even in the 12 step programs, they rarely deal with the trauma. David Smith, who's a physician in San Francisco who founded the Haight Ashbury Clinic back in the 60s, he said to me once that the medical profession is traumaphobic. So is the whole of society. We're surrounded by trauma and the manifestations of trauma which show up in the culture, from politics to every other field, and yet we don't talk about trauma.

Right, right.

So treating the trauma, dealing with the trauma.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Gabor, you were referring to trauma that's.

Passed from generation to generation.

Yeah, and if I inferred correctly from.

Your saying, it was based on the behavior. So the behavior, the trauma gets passed through by the behavior of the parents to the children, Then that results in addiction.

But I keep reading about this field.

Of epigenetics where there may be an actual biological change. So how sure are you that there's not a biological mechanism?

Well, it's not. It's not. There's no contradiction. So you're quite right. So epigenetics, for those of you that may not know, the word EPI means on top of. So genetics. On top of genetics. So it turns out that genes are turned on and off by the environment, and that happens early in life. So that even two people with the same genes, if they have different experiences, they'll have different outcomes, because in one case, the gene was Turned off, the other one was turned on. So the trauma is passed on both behaviorally and in the pain that it induces in the child. That's clear, because I can tell you that what I haven't said much about, I referred to it was that if I look at the circuits in the brain that are affected by anxiety or ADHD or addiction or any other mental health problem, these circuits develop an interaction with the environment. You see, the human brain is the least mature of any mammal. The horse can run on the first day of life. We can't do that for a year and a half. And that's because we're born with large heads, comparatively speaking, already at birth, the head is the largest part of the body. And the female, a human female, has a relatively narrow pelvis compared to a horse because we have to walk on two legs. So narrow pelvis, large head, we have to get out of there prematurely. And that means that most of our brain development, 80 to 90% of it occurs after birth and not before. Very much affected by the emotional environment. So that these are not just behavioral problems, they become physiological problems in the brain based on what happens in the environment. And on top of that, then what you say is also true, that our gene functioning is also affected by trauma multi generationally and so that you traumatize grandparents and that still affects the genetic functioning of their grandchildren. So that's true as well. So it's all these things coming together. Having said that, though, the brain can develop new circuits even later on in life. And that's called neuroplasticity, for which I always say, thank God for neuroplasticity, because I'm 73 now and I would not wish to be as stupid as I was when I was 71, you know, so thank God that the brain can change. And I. And that's why the word recovery is so interesting, because when we talk about recovery, what does it mean to recover something? What do you do when you recover something? You're fine, you get it back. And when you ask people when you recovered, what did you get back? I got back myself. So in trauma there's a loss of self, and in recovery, there's a reconnection with the self.

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. I wanted, I have this question that I had written that I wanted to ask you because I know at least six people that are in this room, myself included. If someone was raped or molested as a child, as I was, how do you interact with your perpetrator if you still know them?

Well, first of all, let me say something else. People often think that the trauma was the rape. It wasn't. How old were you when. I'm not saying it wasn't traumatic, but how old were you when it happened to you?

That I can Remember started around 8.

Okay, and how long did it go on for?

A couple years.

Who did you speak to about it?

No one.

That was the trauma. I mean, if you had an 8 year old child and somebody even looked at him the wrong way just once, who would you want him to talk to? If you were the father.

You?

Yeah.

If your 8 year old child had such a horrific experience and he didn't talk to you, how would you explain that to yourself?

I don't know.

Well, you weren't available for them and they already knew that you weren't available for them. So that original trauma was the loss of the parenting contact. Because I have to guess that your parents were traumatized and they just weren't emotionally there for you.

Oh yeah, absolutely.

I mean, this is where you sustain the trauma. So the rape then comes along as a secondary trauma. The first trauma was the loss of protection and connection and safety in the world. Now in terms of how you interact with them in the present, that depends precisely on where you're at. If you haven't dealt with it yet, if you haven't healed, if you haven't recovered, if you haven't reconnected with yourself, then whatever comes up is legitimate. If you're angry with them, if you hate them, that's legitimate. Why wouldn't you, if you don't want to see them and stay away from them, that's legitimate. And in fact, at any time, whatever you decide is legitimate. However, what you'll find is that the more you heal, the more comfortable you get with yourself. A the less of a psychological threat that becomes to you because you're whole and okay in yourself. They're not going to dysregulate you, they're going to make you feel bad about yourself just because they show up and you might even, and I'm not making this, I'm not saying that you should, but you might even find yourself getting to a point of compassion for them. And I've seen that happen as well when the recovery is so complete that the person actually have compassion because the perpetrator, I assure you, was another traumatized.

Person in my case. Absolutely.

Yeah.

I've worked through a lot with this individual and I do have a lot of compassion because I know what happened to them, same thing happened to them. And it's sad in a lot of ways. I'm asking the question. I'm doing thankfully better in my life with my recovery than I ever have. It still is hard at times. It's still very hard. Yes, I know. There's people in this room though that are just fucking livid and just outraged.

Well, and that's perfectly legitimate, isn't it? That's the anger of the helpless child and that's the anger that they turned against themselves out of their lives. And one of the ways you do that is through the addiction, you know, so. And the depression. I mean, what is depression? If you look at this is interesting again, Swami talked about words. What does it mean to depress something? It means to push it down. When a kid experiences anger but they can't express it because to express it is too dangerous, then they push it down, then they become depressed. So that anger then turns against the self. So if the anger is coming out of them, that's great, but I hope they get some help with it so they can channel it in a healthy way rather than could just keep exploding in rage. Actually puts you at risk of a heart attack and a stroke. So you might as well take that healthy anger or that rage even and find some channels for it and deal with it. But there's no reason not to be angry at the perpetrator if that's there. That's nothing more than natural.

Got you. Let me also mention. So we got Dr. Jamie Hope. Who Gabor. I met her a few months ago. Verne Harnish, who I believe is in the room, was doing a scale up summit and it was a business conference and me and Dean Graziosi spoke for about an hour and 15 minutes or so, I think it was. And there was 1,000 people in the room. The average business owner was I think worth like 20. Had 20 million dollar business. And Vern's like an amazing guy. And we spent, you know, most of the time talking about business. I think I spent two minutes talking about addiction. And it was early in the two day session. John was there. And over the next two days after I, I just mentioned for a couple minutes about addiction. Nine out of 10 people that came up and talked to me. Their questions were not about business. They were about addiction.

And.

And I was like, wow, it really dawned on me just how prevalent this subject matter is. And that's what really kind of put me on this, like, you know, bringing you here today.

And by the way, if I haven't said it yet, I'm just so grateful that you did. Thank you very much.

Yeah, thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you. And I met Jamie, and she told me she works in the ninth busiest hospital in the US Emergency room in Detroit. And she has this incredible compassion for addicts. And we totally hit it off and have become dear friends since. And so this is Dr. Jamie Hope.

So the first thing I actually wanted to say was thank you for doing this. You wouldn't necessarily expect this at a business conference, but to see successful, influential, strong people talking about truth, talking about what it's like to be human because we're all human in this room, and bringing it out in a way that is socially acceptable, that is such a huge thing. There are probably people in this room who have suffered trauma and haven't really faced it or spoken about it. So the first thing I wanted to do was thank you guys. What you do matters. This is so huge.

Thank you.

And then, Gabor, after lunch, when you were doing your interview with Akira, we had talked about respectable addictions versus drugs in which we stigmatize. And you had some really interesting insights, and I think a lot of people in the room could relate to that. When you were talking about that.

Yeah, so. Well, again, I mentioned that. So that both my addictions, the work, was very respectable. It got me nothing but praise and income, and it created deep problems in my family, you know, and then my shopping addiction. Well, he's a lover of classical music. Isn't that wonderful? You know, But. But some of the respectable addictions, and I say this somewhat hesitatingly, but I'll say it anyway, in front of a business audience, have to do with profit and power, where for some people, nothing is ever enough. And it's not because they're bad people, but because they're trying to stuff a hole inside themselves. And then that can cause serious damage in the world, such as we're seeing with the environment and climate change and pollution and other issues, you know, so these. Or an addiction to power. Like, I'm just reading a biography of Napoleon, and Napoleon was a genius. Talk about genius. That was a genius for you in so many ways. But he was also totally addicted to power. And even in exile, he Said, I love power. And he called power as his mistress. Well, a lot of people died because of addiction to power. And yet, you know, he's a hero, he's respected. Whereas the substance addict who shoots up heroin in the back alley is ostracized and discarded from society. So, yeah, there's the respectable addictions, and then there is these arbitrarily chosen addicts on whom we project all our disdain and all our self judgment. Basically, the stuff we don't like about themselves, we project it onto these other people.

When I started talking about addiction in the Genius Network meetings, some people loved it. Other people like, what the hell is all this? I didn't come join Genius Network so I could hear you talk about addictions. And this one guy literally dropped out of the group because he didn't like me talking about addiction. And then he came, he contacted me a few months later, and he's like, I'm going to be in Phoenix. Can we have lunch? And we get together for lunch. And then he's like, I am so sorry.

I.

My daughter is a heroin addict. I'm a workaholic. It just was too close to home. And he's like, I gave him some suggestions, and it got her into treatment, and now she's doing much better. I just want to plant a seed today. That's why I brought Gab bore here. I want to plant a seed. Some of you totally are in this conversation. Others are like, it's getting worse.

The world is.

I mean, you just look at the opiate addiction. We need voices. We need people of influence that could share something that is helpful, because you cannot punish pain out of people in the criminal justice system. And you said in one of your talks that if you wanted to create the perfect system that would keep people addicted, you would create the exact prison system that we have in the United States. And it's true.

It's very simple. I mean, if you look at your own addictions, those of you and most of you raised your hand, and when you gave it up for a while and then you relapsed, what usually happened that caused the relapse? Usually something stressful happened. So it was your way of dealing with stress. So it follows that the more you stress people, the more you entrench them in their addictions. So create a system that ostracizes and punishes and torments people and exiles them from society. You're just making sure that they're gonna stay addicted.

That's all.

My question is, and then I'm gonna 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 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. 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 workholism 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, but 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.

So a good feeling. Pleasure. Yeah.

Dopamine.

Hit, of course.

Which means excitement. Yeah.

Stimulant.

Escape.

Escape. Thank you. 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 are 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, 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 love themselves to see the truth. Now, if you ask somebody else, not why did you do that? But I know you're a good person trying to do your best. Any idea why you did that? Now, that's a question. And the same with yourself. If you put to yourself, no, why did I do this? But 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 it's a problem and to be compassionate about examining the sources of that problem.

In your book, you. I can't remember If I think it's chapter 28 or 29, you have a.

Better memory for my chapters than I do.

That's a big book. Here's the thing. I've read a good portion of the book, but I listened to the entire thing on audio and I listened to it at a little bit higher speed because I'm not one of these people that can do one and a half. It's like 1.1 or 1.2 sped up. And Daniel, who I've met, your son reads the book.

Yeah, my son, who helped me write the book, also narrates the audio version. And it's been number two audiobook in the US Now. No, it's number nine, I think, on the New York Times list. Yeah.

No, and it's been like six weeks now, right?

Six weeks in the New York Times, which is amazing.

And you actually have questions for compassion, inquiry, ones that would be so beneficial to so many of the workaholics that are in this room, including myself. Is where you go through the process of like, what do you say yes to? And you really don't wanna say yes to it or why you say no when you really do wanna say. Cause, you know, part of, I mean, we have to talk about workaholism because I took a one year sabbatical last year, just.

Yes, I know.

Yeah.

I was so proud of you.

Yeah.

Thank you. And I'll tell you, I don't think I ever would have done any of this stuff had, I mean, me and Gabor in 2015, I think it was in the jungle. We went and I spent a week in the jungle with you doing an ayahuasca. Three different ayahuasca journeys. And at one point you were like yelling at me. Remember that? During the process.

Was I yelling?

Yeah, yeah. I'm so sort of, you know. But it was not very compassionate. No.

But I still knew you were coming from a really loving place, so. Yeah, but that really was the beginning point of me starting to look at just God, the compulsivity and the, you know, to unravel so much of this stuff. And the other thing that helped is you helped with me and Akara Chan started Artists for Addicts. And I was asking you about, like, how do we utilize artists to be the ones that carry the message to the world? You know, the singers and the actual painters and the sculptors and the writers and the people that are in the arts. Because the world admires all of these people and they don't realize how many of these people that are viewed as struggle and suffer the most with these, with addictions and with depression and with anxiety. And so all that was really helpful. But it's expression. I look at work, and I look at sex addiction and gambling addiction. It's expression, but it's expression gone in a wrong way.

And so work.

Like you said, there's a subtitle to.

A book on workaholism, which is the respectable addiction.

So this room is filled with people that compulsively work and have add. And I know that so much of that, it's trauma that they haven't dealt with. And that's why I bring you here, because I want to build a better entrepreneur. Because if you don't have a better entrepreneur, you have destructive people that do awful shit to make money. And if you have a caring, giving person, these people change the world. And they do amazing things. So let's talk about, I guess, compulsive work. How does one address it?

Sure. Well, again, if you address everything from the point of view of what can it teach me and how can I be compassionate about looking at it? The answers will emerge. So, you know, like you, I was a workaholic doctor. Now, the more I was a workaholic doctor, the more the world rewarded me, the more money I made, the more respect I had. So, like you say, it's a respectable addiction. What was the downside? I was disconnected from myself. I wasn't available for my children as they were growing up emotionally, because the work was. I was identified with the work. And of course, my marriage suffered. And it was hard to recognize that because the work is so rewarding and it turns you on. You get this dopamine hit from working. What was it all about? Well, when your mother gives you to a Stranger when you're 11 months old, what conclusion are you going to come to that you're not wanted? You can't come to any other conclusion. That's the wound. Not that they gave me to a stranger, but that I conclude that I'm not wanted. Now, if you're not wanted, if you don't think you're important just for existing, as I said many times before, you know what you do? You go to medical school. Now, they're going to want you all the time. When they're being born, when they're dying, and every minute in between when they're.

In trouble, they're going to call you.

And every time they call you, it feels so great. You're so important. But it never fulfills or it never fills the inner emptiness. Does It. It's a temporary hit, like with any other addiction, because something says, whether you're aware of it or not, would they still want me if I was giving all the time? So you have to keep proving to yourself so that hole never gets filled. You have to keep doing it. And so it's completely addictive. Now, the work that you guys do, there's probably two levels to it, if I can make a broad generalization. One is you're really turned on by some project, by some idea that you have that you want to realize in the world, that you want to give to the world through which you want to express some aspects of your genuine being. Like, for medicine, I really was interested in helping and healing people. That's perfectly good and legitimate. But then there's another underside to it, which is where I have to prove my importance. I have to validate my existence. I have to justify the very fact that I'm here on Earth. And I have to keep proving to myself just how good I can be, because I don't believe that I'm good. That's the part that creates the workaholism. Not the first part. You can do the work without identifying with it. Now, identification means this. It comes from the Latin word idem, which means the same, and facera, to make. So when you make yourself the same as your work, when your identity is bound up with your work, now you're lost in your work. On the other hand, if you know who you are or find out who you are, and then you choose to do the work because that's your calling, and it's what turns you on. It's what allows you to express your creativity, then that's great. And now you're no longer a workaholic. You're just somebody who does great work. So the distinction, again, is the inner relationship to it and whether or not you identify with it. And if you identify with it, it's always some attempt to solve without healing, some childhood trauma.

That's great.

What advice would you give to someone.

That is struggling with addiction?

Because I know in your book, you don't say that.

You don't tell people this is the.

Path to do it. I mean, everyone.

Because what I did, I don't suggest that to anybody. Everybody can't do what I did. I went to something that I was told. How many of you speakers, raise your hands, please. Speakers, how many of you are coaches? Okay. What we do is when we speak, as speakers, as coaches, as entrepreneurs, the people that are with us, they all have stories in their head that they got from life. My favorite book says, be ye not conformed to this world, Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind. When Dr. Alfred Goldson came to me and said, les Brown. Yes? I've got some bad news. I said, what is it? He said, man, he said, you got prostate cancer. Your PSA is 2,400. I said, what does that mean? That means your prostate specific antigen 1 to 4 is normal. And I asked, I said, is there anything else? He said, yeah, what? It's metastasized to seven areas of your body. I said, wow. He said, why are you smiling? I said, man, seven is my lucky number. He looked at his nurse. I said, I was born February 17th. I'm one of seven children. Joshua marched around the walls of Jericho seven times. Naaman dipped himself in the River Jordan seven times. I said, Seven is lucky number. And I asked, is there anything else? He said, yes. And I said, what is it? He said, you're ugly, too. He said, but you got this. You got this. Brown, are you listening to me? He said, I never tell my patients they're terminally ill. What I say is that my knowledge, my abilities and my skills have terminated. I determine the diagnosis. You and God determine the prognosis. A fact is not a verdict. You got your work cut out for you. I said, thank you. I want you to write this down. Distract, dispute and inspire. What he did was cancer. Yeah. Yeah. Distract. Cancer is the most feared word in seven different languages. So when someone is told you have cancer, the fear alone. There's a book called the Biology of Hope that it compromises your immune system to protect you by 40%. So what he did was he distracted me from the fear. And when he made me laugh. When you laugh, and I use humor in my presentation because when people laugh, Joe, they're not thinking and their hearts open. And then I come up back with something I want them to get in their heart. He said, you're ugly, too. And I started laughing. Say, go on. That ain't funny. He said, but you got this. You got this. And I felt it in my heart. He said, a diagnosis is not a prognosis. No, this is no verdict. You and God got this. And that's what we do. When we distract them from the current story and speak affirmatively, you can make it through this. You dismantle their current belief system. You're now in their heart, and you inspire them to become, as Mother Teresa would say, a pencil in the hand of God and start writing a new chapter. In their lives. And that was 39 years ago. That's why I got the cancer center's. Center. Cancer center's award of America perseverance, 39 years, fourth stage cancer. Yes. Yeah. So when we speak, the mindset, your mindset, the whole area of psychoneuroimmunology, the mindset, the biology of hope that Norman Cousins talked about, who was a physicist and he saw old Groucho Marx movies and I Love Lucy and use humor to get through it. And so through your mindset, through changing your eating habits and decreasing the toxic negative people in your life and things that's not in alignment with you, being able to live a life of joy, harmony, and peace, that's very important. You have to begin to assess yourself and look at your life, and you have to say, who is it I can count on and who should I count out? And you're one of those people I call. I said, joe, been through this. This is his passion. And then I went online, I started doing research. I wanted to find out. I told everybody, if you know somebody who d from prostate cancer, don't tell me. I'm not interested. I want to know who lived. There's a song called I don't want nobody bringing me any bad news. I'm not being insensitive. I just don't need that in my consciousness. And so I went online and saw this kid, Dr. Lee, starving cancer and Chris beat cancer. And I started talking to people. A guy who, in my book that I talk about, who I went to meet him at his house. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. And they said, people die within six months. And it's been eight years now. And I asked him, I said, man, why are you here? He said, three doctors told him to get his affairs in order. But there was a doctor he developed a relationship with, and I talk about this in the book. And he came in and he said, this is for you. And he gave him a clock. It was wrapped up, and he unpackaged the gift, the clock. He said, man, there's no hands on this clock. He said, I know. He said, you have to determine how long you want to be here. That's your call. That's not us, that's you. You now have to take responsibility for what you want to do. At this point, you can either surrender to what we have told you. And I'm saying to you that we are not experts. This is a practice. Because I got a stethoscope and a white jacket just because I said. Or my partner said that you have a terminal illness does not mean that it's true. Life is a fight for territory. And once you stop fighting for what you want, what you don't want will automatically take over. You gotta fight on your hands.

There's a point in time where, as you know, you've sat through with many people. When life ends, it is time to let go. And that. Do you have a fear of death?

No. Here's. I'm not a religious person. I want to say, because I quote a lot of things from Bible everywhere. I'm not a religious person, but I'm a spiritual person. Religious people afraid of going to hell. Spiritual people have been there. And held to me is what you experience when you die and you meet the person that you were supposed to become. That's why one of my mentees, Dr. Miles Monroe out of the Bahamas, who died in a plane crash, we. And I give my speech, live full and die empty. He said, the ideal situation for a man or woman to die, Howard Thurman, is to have family members praying with you as you're about to cross over. But he said, imagine, if you will, being on your deathbed and standing around your bed. The ghost of the dreams, the ideas, the abilities, the talents, the gifts given to you by life. But you, for whatever reason, you never used those talents. You never tapped into those gifts. You never made that contribution. You never made the impact. Impact that you were chosen out of 400 million sperm to make. And there they are, standing around your bed, looking at you with large, angry eyes, saying, we came to you and only you could have given us life. And now we must die with you forever. I want all of you to say with me, live full.

Live full.

Say it again. Live full.

Live full.

Die empty. That's what the Genius Network is about. It's about robbing the cemetery of the gifts that you have in you. You are masterpiece because you're a piece of the master. You were born and preserved for such a time as this. Don't come for me. I didn't call an Uber.

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.

I just. 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, like my dear friend Gabor Mate, who wrote a book called in the Realm of Hungry Ghost. He believes that addiction is rooted response to trauma. And I used to believe that addiction was a brain disease 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 addiction is doing something you don't want to do, or maybe you do want to do it and not being able to stop in this thing that you're doing, either the drugs, the chemicals, the behavior is compulsive, it's impulsive, and it has 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 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 hates 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 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 speed, 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 mechanism 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 totally.

Yeah.

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. They can do awful things. However, most addicts aren't doing those things. Most addicts are, like, just hurt individuals, and they're trying to escape this mental pain in anguish. And so what 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 shifted. 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 started 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, you know, police officers. And these people are not equipped, nor are they trained to treat people like 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 prison 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'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 that will numb the pain. And that is a solution. The problem is this is a solution that will kill you in some cases. So if you can survive addiction, it might get you through some sort of painful moments. The challenge is actually creates more. But I'll say the connection this way. 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 groups. Now, 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, and I always even say, you know, 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 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 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 feeling something so you can feel exhilarated, so you can feel better.

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

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 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've lied, maybe they've cheated, maybe they stole, maybe they've done something that they're, they're, they're horribly shamed 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, if you did, then you probably feel more connected as a human. But if you had a parent die, if you were molested, like, you know, 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. And so 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 human beings when I'm thinking from my 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 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.

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 off the charts.

And if 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 interviewed.

Interrupted you.

He just did that.

Did you see that?

Yeah. And I love your vulnerability. So your mother died when you were four. If that's not disconnection with a 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 associate. Ah, sexual stimulation equals connection. It especially equals way more connection that I'm getting with mom who's passed away. Way, 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 it.

Is it.

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, like 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 clouds were hiding it in denial and trying to escape it in any way that I could escape it. And I used to say, oh, but 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 four, 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 communities 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 define 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 in 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 if 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 Carnes 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 is introduced to sexuality, they have an arousal template. So if you, 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 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 trauma, you know, 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.

Don't work logically.

Exactly. Exactly.

Personally, my 15 years of doing emotional healing, client coaching, you know, I'll certainly raise my hand and say I didn't specialize in working with addicts. Yes, I think we're all addicted to something. And at the beginning of this, I said, well, you know, I haven't had addiction in my life. And then you mentioned workaholism. It's like, oh, yeah, I've been addicted to not seeing my addiction.

So, yeah, workaholism is the rest the of respectable addiction, by the way.

Sure.

And yeah, maybe more functional than others, but nonetheless realizing to some degree all people are addicted to something. If it's not a clinical problem. What I found with the folks I've worked with over the course of my 15 years of doing emotional healing work is what would heal the shame, what would heal the guilt, what would heal the anger and the fear is connection with thyself. And I don't mean to just placate this and like, oh, yeah, heal it. Connect to yourself. Yeah. Great words that are very useless to say because it's very much a journey, but I personally really found value in encouraging people and working with myself in my life. Looking at the emotions that the traumas, the wounding, and the pain that we still carry, whether we know it's there or it's there, but we don't know it. But making connection with those emotions is a big connection, because what we connect to when we're connecting to the emotions that are so painful and so intimidating is the part of us that holds that emotion. I do a lot of inner child work. So it's like when you know, when I went through a wounding experience when I was seven, very shaming, disconnected from it for a couple decades because like when I was seven, I didn't know how to deal with intense shame. I didn't even know what it was. What I would realize is, wow, my whole 7 year old inner child is not a part of my life. I'm very disconnected from him because I don't want to feel what he feels. And the late John Bradshaw, you've probably gotten into some John Bradshaw.

He was brilliant.

Yeah. So he has a quote that says this might oversimplify it, but maybe not all addiction is a symptom of not feeling what you're feeling. So I found when we can make connection to our feelings, especially those past pains and traumas and feel the feelings, feeling is the evidence of healing. It is a huge, huge, huge step of recovery. It's connecting to ourself and it's recovering thyself. And in my opinion, one of the biggest forms of hell on earth is living beside yourself. You not being connected to you. To me it's a form of self betrayal. And not to make this too much about me, but I'm going to make it a little bit more about meme. Last night at the Buck signing I was giving a talk and someone asked me a question about my comedy. And the moral of the story was about two and a half years ago, years ago, when I started making comedy videos, it was a very important rite of passage of reconnecting with a part of me. When I was seven, when I was four, those young ages, I developed a sense of humor in order to disconnect from pain. And the more I would use humor, the funnier I got. I was getting more practice with it, but the more disconnected I was getting with myself. Let me cover up the pain with the dirt of humor. The flowers of humor. Cover up the dirt with the flowers of humor. Change the analogy. So I found when I reclaimed my inner comedian in a big way a couple years ago, it was really reconnecting with like the wounded 7 year old inner child that was covering himself up with a camouflage of comedy. And, and that's why when I, I'm not sure if y' all have heard me talk about like you know, my breakthrough making videos. It was something I was comedy video, something I was so resistant to so long. It was so scary to me, like, ah, it'll discredit me professionally, but it was me connecting to me, another part of me in a big way. So maybe connection is a huge, huge, huge Force of healing that we all need in our lives. And P.S. like addicts too. So I just, I, I talk, you know, kind of haphazardly there because again, haven't worked directly with addicts. That hasn't been my specialty. But just curious your thoughts on any of that ramble, my friend.

Well, I think a lot of people probably watch your comedy videos and can connect with it because they can see all of these things that they have pursued and that many people pursue trying to find joy and enlightenment and connection. And you know, that there's just a lot of crazy shit out there. And it's humor brings a lightness to it. And I believe humor is critical, especially when you're going through difficult, challenging times, like if you're stressed or you're having a shitty day. I mean, the more you can inject laughter. You know, I made that comment earlier, we were shooting videos earlier where, you know, that whole saying, you know, an apple a day will keep the doctor away, unless you realize the sugar in.

The apple could perhaps make you have to go there anyway.

And there's, there's that. But, you know, laughter every day will probably keep the doctor away and it really allow you to just feel alive. So like if there's a cutter, someone's cutting themselves, you know, in some ways that's they don't feel and they just need to feel. Even if the feeling is pain, that is something other than feeling neglected or did. And I'm not. There's many reasons why people cut. Okay, so I'm not trying to say that's the reason. It's just with connection, it's so critical. 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, 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, group thought.

It was $10, the other was 90.

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, 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 it. 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 addictions 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 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, 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 card.

Yeah.

And the reason we do is because the presentation and the smell is part 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 watch the. 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 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, 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.

Okay.

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