JP SEARS on ADDICTION: Why Connection Is the Key to Recovery – MUST WATCH

So my thing is not to bash rehab centers, although many of them deserve bashing. 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, 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.

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

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

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

It's possible.

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

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

I just. A connection disorder. I mean, talk about piercing, symptomatic crap. Connection disorder. So what if addiction. Maybe all addiction, maybe something. What. 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 a 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, you know, addiction is doing something you don't want to do, or maybe you do want to do it, and not being able to stop. And in this thing that you're doing, either the drugs, the chemicals, the behavior is compulsive, it's impulsive, and it has 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 it would be real easy to say, well, that person's an idiot. You could argue, well, you know. But I'll tell you, when I was in those moments, it was way more powerful than my ability to control that. And what I was really trying to do was just numb myself because I was in pain, I was depressed, I felt anxious, I felt fearful. And so if someone is depressed or having anxiety or incredibly lonely or fearful or just wants to jump out of their skin or is hating life, there's nothing wrong with wanting that pain to go away. If you just itch, there's nothing wrong with wanting the itching to stop. The challenge is the mechanisms we choose to scratch the itch. And so what happens with addiction is that people are trying to numb themselves, but the way that they're going about trying to escape it is actually making it worse. So when I say I want to change the global conversation about how people view addicts, the question, well, how are you going to do that? Well, part of it is, quit looking at these individuals as moral degenerates. These are people that are traumatized. And the things that they're doing, totally. I mean, if you look at people in jail like, you cannot punish pain out of people. And we're putting these people in cages. Now, granted, addicts in their worst states lie. They cheat, they steal, they can do harm. They. 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 and 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 who I am, I have an opportunity to use my business contacts and what I do in the world to actually get into places that many people cannot. So I'm really seeking this out. But I'm also a beginner's mind. I try, like, I'm always open to have my paradigm shift and I'm always open to say what don't I know. And unlearning is more important than learning. So as I'm on this journey, I'm looking at addiction as a solution, which sounds crazy to some people, but I start thinking, okay, if the world is flat and you think the world is flat, you're going to interact with the world as a flat world. But once you learn the world is round, that changes everything about how you look at the world. Well, if you think addicts are moral degenerates and they're losers and they should be thrown in prison, then who's going to treat these people? The criminal justice system. Judges, wardens, 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, things like that, the reality is people that, again, you cannot punish the pain out of people and you can't incarcerate them. And Gabor Mate said, if you wanted to create the perfect system that kept people as addicts, you would develop the exact PRISM system that we have in the United States.

States, yeah. 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 that, you know, 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 daresay 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. 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 then 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 it 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, you know, readily available for free, you know, and they operate through the voluntary contributions of their members. But this is not a sort of like, hey, let's endorse 12 step groups. Although I think they're incredibly valuable, there's many other things that I believe will help with addiction. And 12 steps are just one of them. And so Bill W. And Dr. Bob founded AA in the 30s. And there's a quote from Bill W. Where he said, as alcoholics, we're trying to drink God out of a bottle. And I always even say, even if you're an atheist, if you just think of that statement like, okay, as an alcoholic, we're Trying to drink God out of a bottle. I believe however someone wants to define spirituality and I can make fun of it just as much 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, but 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 to this that is like connected with being a human, they have done things that they wish they would have done differently that they regret. They, you know, procrastinate. They, you know, can't make their goals happen. They don't do New Year's resolutions. Maybe they lied, maybe they've cheated, maybe they stole, maybe they've done something that they're, they're horribly ashamed about. Addiction is rooted in isolation. It's rooted in shame, it's rooted in guilt, it's rooted in self loathing, isolation. And so humans have experienced things. Different people respond to different things and have different sensitivity levels. But if you just sit and think about like, did you have loving, wonderful parents that you felt really connected with? 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. Whatever that higher self is, and a lot of times I'm not. I believe most people, even when they're doing crazy shit, are doing the best they know how to do given the circumstances. And so my father, you know, tried to do the best he could do, but he was a really broken person. So therefore he didn't know quite how to instill a lot of confidence, a lot of self esteem, a lot of love. I was molested as a kid. I used to get paid money to not say anything about it. And it wired in my mind that sex is not an intimate act of love and oneness. It's something that you do just to get off. So I was never able to feel comfortable with sexuality. I was never able to feel comfortable with connection. And it's funny because now I'm known as this connector in business because I connect all kinds of 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.

I already 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. 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 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 and it didn't happen once, it was 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 stark 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 community, sharing inspirational videos, talking with addicts, and just putting that stuff out there in the world. Because I want to help connect people. Because I never felt that connection growing up. And so I initially found it through doing drugs and escapism. But the way that I 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 as I drive there. And if you can 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're 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 being, 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.

It 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 respect addiction, by the way.

Sure, 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, 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.

Right.

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, feel, healing 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 me. Last night at the book 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 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 my breakthrough making videos, it was something I was comedy video, something I was so resistant to for so long, 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'll really allow you to just feel alive. So when 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. And I'm not. There's many reasons why people cut, cut. Okay, so I'm not trying to say that's the reason. It's just with connection, it's so critical. 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 Chan is how he looks and John Butcher, who's the chairman of Precious Moments that 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, you know, 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, I mean, 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 and being 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 coming 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 joe'sfreebook.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, the nutritional aspects, the biochemical stuff, you're going to be in a craving state. 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. 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, 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. There'll be a lot of yogis that will say, right here between your chest and this, you know, foot and a half space. Or depending if you're a really tiny person. Like an elf. 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 now 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. You know, 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 know, 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, 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 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. And so there's a lot to be said about mutual suffering, being able to put people together that have been through this shit together, and they're able to talk with each other and realize, yeah, you've been. You're a survivor. I mean, you were molested, you have image issues. You look at yourself in the mirror and you hate yourself. If you're a 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 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. 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, they're not. It's not an attendance program, it's a step program. And 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 Smell smoke, cigarettes. So 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. I love that.

And you know, I. The body one and I know there's so many different systems of the body, but you mentioned neurotransmitter chemicals. There's a great book, the Diet Cure and the Mood Cure by Julia Ross. Have you ever read them?

Not only have I read them, but I actually met Julia Ross over a decade ago and she actually took me through a supplement regimen specifically for addiction because she's one of the top neuronutrient therapists in the world.

This guy is a connector. He knows everybody, so that's not very surprising. But her work is so powerful and a few lessons I pulled away from it is. I mean that's where I learned of neurotransmitters. And you know, some of the things, I guess to set the stage. Our neurotransmitter chemicals in our brain are what make us feel comfortable inside of us. They're literally mood shaping chemicals inside of us. Dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, gamma aminobutyric acid. Probably didn't pronounce that right and I probably don't even care. So when we're eating sugar, alcohol, processed foods, flours, those actually displace our neurotransmitter chemicals. And those food substances can sit in the parts of the brain that should house the neurotransmitter chemicals. And because there's crappy things in there, it tells the brain stop making neurotransmitters because our neurotransmitter receptor sites are full. But they're not full of neurotransmitters, they're full of crap. So we can get into this place where being inside of ourself feels like we're laying on a bed of broken glass. So now we start perpetuating potentially addictive patterns because we're trying to get away from ourself. So we might self medicate with more sugar because we feel like crap, because we're eating sugar, because I just want to escape this sensation right now feeling like I'm laying on a bed of broken glass. But then when you cut out a lot of the crap and start eating real food, like all of our neurotransmitter chemicals are made from proteins. We need like real food, not the crappy food to help balance that out so we can have the biochemical potential to feel good inside of us, which we don't necessarily get. You know, if someone's going to 12 step meeting, great, giving you community. But the donuts you're eating, the coffee you're drinking, too much of, that can actually be making the body component worse while you're making the community component better.

Exactly. And sugar is really the gateway drug. Sugar is the biggest, biggest culprit to the stepping stone for addictive behavior. And we are feeding so much shit to ourselves and to people and to children. And they're setting the stage for these individuals to really be more susceptible to becoming addicts. Like for instance, earlier I was saying, there's a Dr. David Arneson, I never say his name right. The River Source, I believe is his website in Phoenix. And I went and met with him with my friend Paul Mittman, who is the president of the Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine, and then Tom Faris, who is the Arizona Corporation commissioner. Because we're working on doing some stuff in Arizona to find a treatment system that we can have people, instead of them going to jail or priority, we can have them go through this and prove that it has efficacy to try to help people that have not committed a violent crime, first offense. That instead of throwing them in jail or prison, we get them treatment. And so one of the things we're working on is finding the best way that we can actually do this and then see if we can. I'm working with politicians, although my world is not that. I want to just be the catalyst and let the people that know how to make these things happen with laws take it from there, you know, hand over the baton. But I want to see if we can get something tested here in Arizona and then if it works, if we can take it from state to state to state. And we. So when we met with him, he said he's been treating people for 16 years with IV treatments. He's very familiar with Julia Ross's work. He's an expert in neuronutrients and using amino acid therapies and IVs to treat addicts. And he said to me, and I'm not going to say it exactly because he's really brilliant at the way he explained it. He said that when you see like an addict on the street that's homeless or missing teeth, he said in a lot of cases what you're seeing is modern day scurvy and they're just not even getting good vitamin C. And a lot of these addicts are eating donuts, they're drinking sodas, they're eating candy bars, they're eating fast food, they're getting very terrible nutrition and they have a ton of gut problems. And, and he said and talked about serotonin is produced in the gut, dopamine is produced in the brain, and if you basically do not fix the gut, then they're always going to be in a craving state. And he said something that was fascinating to me. He said, if you do not repair the gut and get them producing happy chemicals, what happens is if you send them to jail or prison or you send them to rehab and they can sit down with the best talk therapist, the cravings are still going to be there and they're still going to be an addict. And I said, if that's actually true, millions of people are being thrown in jail and going into treatment without having their body producing. And they can be sitting down with even smart people that are trying to guide and direct them. But the cravings never go away. And what happens, these people then have to get drugs in prison. So we have just as bad of a drug problem and drug addiction happening and people doing drugs in prison, and we're trying to lock these people up and keep them away from it. I mean, if you can get drugs in prison, drugs are everywhere. And see, here's the challenge. The challenge aren't even the drugs. The drugs are just a symptom of a far deeper problem. The addiction is a symptom of the deeper problem, which is disconnection, which is biochemical, which is all of these things. Because if you have biochemistry, the body isn't connected. I don't say connection, just in terms of community connection. I mean, you got to make shit work wiring in your body. And so what he does is he has a lot of success with IV treatments. And I said, well, can you treat these addicts orally? He goes, well, if their gut is so damaged, no, you actually have to bypass it. But with IVs, and we're talking a few hundred dollars of doing IV treatments where over a period of a few weeks, and he can really fix a lot of the gut issues with people and then getting them eating foods that are not damaging to them. And I said, if this is actually true, this would literally save millions of lives if we could figure out how to do that and then make it available. So one of the many things we're working on is trying to bring these brilliant people and seeing how do we scale that? And so what I'm trying to do is just be the curator and share this information with people and I'm going to interview these people, we're going to videotape them, we're going to put documentaries out, we're going to really find. Does this really work with numerous people? So one of the things that we're working on is seeing how do we set it up and take literally the worst addicts, street addicts, people that are homeless, and see if we can actually help them get out of that craving state. But that's just one of many things. But, you know, it's fascinating because if you look at what they feed prisoners, if you look at what most addicts eat, I mean, their diets are so unhealthy and so therefore their body is not creating the things it needs to cope.

Yeah. I would dare say that the foods a lot of them are eating, a lot of the average non addicts are eating as well, are foods that might make the belly full, but they're foods that actually take more nutrition from the body than what the foods deliver. And that is absolutely a recipe for. It's literal self destruction. And Joe, I know you are very, 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 treatment 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, you know, they're.

Oh, 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 medicines, ayahuasca, ibogaine that you mentioned, you know, emdr. I'm sorry?

Emdr.

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 opioids addiction. Very high success rates for being an 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've used ibogaine? Yeah.

I went to Mexico and I took a film crew and we videotaped all of this. And then I had Dr. 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 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 deserve. 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, to have loved 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. 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 going to have a journey. It's like, no, you're just going to get high in a trail 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, 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, 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. Try 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 saw millions of Images and faces is a 12 hour long trip. In the first five hours, I. 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, 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 very healthy, very organic food. I don't like putting medicine into my system because I nearly killed myself with drugs. But it was, There's a lot. I'm being my own human lab rat, though. I'm looking at all of these things that have success and we're looking at the efficacy of these. Because in my journey, you can talk about, oh, I want to make an 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, yeah, I wish I could, you know, say to everyone out there that here's exactly what you do, but it's complicated. Arianna Huffington. I've had Spencer speak at my events before. And in 2012 we went to with my buddy Peter Diamandis, who started the X Prize Foundation. We went to her home after my event that both of them were speaking at. We did a business event and she it was an X Prize for literally like a global learning for children. And there was a guy there that was in charge of the documentaries at hbo, like all the life documentaries. And I was talking to him about the different HBO documentaries that they had done. And I said, which one was the most difficult one you had done? And back in 2007, they did a really well done series called Addiction. They wrote a book about it, it was like, you can literally find it online, you can buy it on Amazon. And this was done 10 years ago. So there's been a lot that has been discovered since 2007. But he said to me, he goes, we spent over a year interviewing over a thousand doctors, family members, addicts. And he's like, and at the end of that documentary, we still didn't have a clear answer on what to do when you're addicted. And I was like, this is a complicated thing. So when people come up to me and say, I know the solution to addiction or I have the cure for addiction, I'll listen to them. But they usually have a piece of the puzzle because it's not just one thing. It's not just as easy as like, I'm thirsty, drink a glass of water. There's community, there's biochemical, there's the body, there's the environment. Like, if someone goes and does ibogaine as an example and then goes back to the same stressful job, same stressful thing, maintains the same rituals, eats the same diet, doesn't have aftercare, they're probably going to relapse, you know, and that's, that's the deal. So you have to, you know, and how do you make someone thirsty? You know, that's the key. I mean, there's definitely people that are watching this right now or will watch this later that are addicts and they're in isolation. They're, you know, addicted to porn. They're watching porn every night for maybe hours a day. They're Internet, you know, gamers and they, you know, they're like, gamequitters.com is a great place for people that are addicted to, to video games, you know, run by a buddy of mine named Cam Adair. And so there's a lot of resources, you know, Tommy Rosen has, you know, Recovery 2.0, which is a recovery coaching program Deann Adamson has being true to you dot com, which is individual one on one coaching. There's a lot of resources and people that are doing things, but you know, the awareness of, for one, admitting that you have an addiction, that you're struggling, you have to be able to see that and be able to look at your own shit. And there's a difference between secrecy and privacy. And so you want to be able to disclose if you're cheating on your spouse, if you're lying, especially if you've ever like people that are predators. As an example, almost all, all of them had a predator do it to them and they're living it out in other ways. You have a lot of things, like the Catholic Church as an example, where a lot of these men that molest boys were actually molested themselves in the same exact environment and people think they're monsters. And you can argue that, yeah, that's a freaking horrendous thing to do. If you look back at people's lives, it actually makes sense when you see people doing crazy shit. Something happened. And I'm not making an excuse for people doing bad things. This is not like let them off the hook sort of thing because I don't know quite what to do with a lot of the people that have like, taken it to the point to where they've really harmed and damaged another person. What I do know, though is if you don't start trying to understand the causation and if you don't bring a level of cause, compassion and its immediate judgment, or like, let's chop off their freaking heads, I mean, is that how you're going to solve this global issue? And I'll tell you this, to take it a step further, there's a lot of data that can be argued that World War II was created by addiction.

You were talking about this the other night. Please, this is fascinating. Please share this.

Well, I'm not even going to say that. Say it. Right, but. So I was having dinner with my buddy Pat Karnes, who is the top sex addiction doctor in the world, and he just got a Fulbright scholarship and he's doing studies on linking the type of mental illness that someone has with the type of way that they do their addiction. Because there's no such thing as just a pure alcoholic. I mean, usually someone that has that is an addict is like a workaholic, a sex addict, you know, a rage aholic, that sort of of thing. And it's a coping mechanism. So it's rare that someone just has one thing and the rest of their life is totally in harmony. Right. So crazy makers have a whole variety of different crazy making tools in their toolbox. And so we were talking and you know, and there's a couple of documentaries. One's called hi Hitler, H I G H Hitler. And another one is called Hitler's Secret Drug Habit. And there's a new book on this that just came out called Blitzed. And basically in 1931, I believe it was. And please, like, if I get the dates, not totally accurate, don't like, if.

It was 1932, please. A lot of negative comments towards Joe. Just, he deserves it. How dare you.

Right, Exactly. As A horrible historian that I am, but it was called something like perpetine. And basically Nazi Germany, they invented crystal meth and they were giving it to most of the German army. And Hitler was being given IV treatments of vitamins, a whole concoction of different drugs. His doctor kept a journal of this. So there's a lot of evidence that when you see Hitler doing these very motivating type speeches and yelling and screaming and like, like a motivational speaker, he was high as a kite.

I'm this crystal method crystal and a.

Whole concoction to different drugs. I mean, he was just on a lot of shit. And what they have found is that when someone takes, you know, when they gave it to the German army, they could, they could fight harder, they could have less sleep. They were just more driven to go out and, you know, do what they did. And when they would, you know, shoot someone in the back of the head or, you know, torture someone or lead them to death in the concentration camp, you know, it's, you know, I mean, how could you not look at that as being incredibly inhumane? But what they have found is when someone takes crystal meth for long periods or even short periods, it actually removes empathy. So people are able to do awful shit with being able to connect. It makes people disconnected. And so most of the German army, so much of this, these people were under the influence. In so much of history, people were under the influence. There's an episode of the podcast, you know, Hardcore History. There's an episode on, you know, history under the Influence worth listening to because you will get a different perspective of how much addiction is involved in everything. But you don't hear that story. You don't hear, you know, it's like these people were fucking high. You know, they were, and they were being fed drugs. And in that sort of situation, especially directed in very evil ways, awful shit happens. And so, you know, 20% of the U.S. i think 20% of women in the U.S. are on antidepressants. I mean, we are a country that is constantly, and I shouldn't say country, so much of the world is under the influence. People are drinking caffeine and all kinds of different things daily. And this is not a moral sort like you should or you should not do it. It's just how it's being done, how it's being done. So much of the foods are incredibly addictive. So filled with sugars and so filled with things. I mean, there are a lot of companies that say and figure out how to create things that will addict You. It's like gaming in Las Vegas. There's a fascinating book called Addiction by Design about gaming in Las Vegas and how they hook you when you're looking. Like, for instance, if someone thinks, well, I'm not an addict. I've heard current stats and I have no idea what the accuracy is of it, but based on the usage of Facebook, that the average American right now, based on how many minutes or hours a day Facebook is used, that they have somehow come. I've heard this calculation that they're spending four years of their life on Facebook.

And I'm guessing the trajectory is for that not to get shorter. No, I find myself. I tend to use social media selfishly. Like, I'll publish stuff, but I don't like to, quote, unquote, consume very much. But with that said, when I jump on Facebook, like, maybe I want to check messenger or something. Oftentimes I'll catch myself. I've been scrolling through Facebook for three minutes, and when I got on, I had zero intention of doing that. But there was just something about my user experience, how it's designed, maybe with significant deliberate attention to addict your attention to it.

Oh, yeah.

And it's just like this. I love it. When I catch myself doing it, it's like, okay, I can get out of it. I can not slide down that slippery slope any further. But also at the same time, there's this, like, weird feeling of like, I just lost control. I did something for three minutes I didn't really consciously know I was doing.

And it hooked you and it pulled you in. And now here's the thing. This is not to bash all of the amazing things with technology. Part of it is just to have you actually look at these things are constantly like little dopamine drips that will pull you in and are very stimulating and the brain craves it. It literally makes you hungry. And if you're not careful, you're going to get sucked in. I mean, there's a documentary made called Screenagers. Not teenagers, but they're Screenagers. And there's so much of human life that is now interacting with screens as virtual reality and augmented reality and AI and machine learning and all of these algorithms. Because I'm in the marketing business, I teach people how to do marketing and stuff. If you really want to understand so much about marketing, I mean, you are part of an algorithm that is literally feeding up to you exactly what your interests are showing, what your friends are doing, you know, what politician you like or you hate. I mean, they're. They're feeding up to you exactly what your brain is saying it wants. And it's more powerful than most people's conscious awareness. And it will suck you in. So I'm not. And so people will do drugs to sort of numb out from this. People will do behaviors to sort of numb out for this. People see, normal, everyday life is quite boring if you don't have all the stimuli. And so now, you know, a lot of people, they cannot sit still without an audiobook playing or without music playing or without a background video or without some sort of screen. And again, this is not like saying, oh, because the fact that we can even do this right now is fantastic. I mean, look how many people were able to actually, depending if anyone likes anything I'm saying here or that you're saying here, which of course they do, because I think you get more likes when you're talking because this is JP's audience. My name is Joe Polish. So, I mean, we're both jp. That's right. But the thing is, though, is we can never have this sort of experience.

Experience.

You know, two years ago we couldn't do this. And so it's absolutely fascinating. It's useful. But the thing is, like, what is it doing for you? I mean, like, I always talk to people about, I've got so many books, there's so many things to read, there's so many things to watch. I have a client who said, you know, great question. What needs solved? You know, what needs solved in your life? And if there's some area that needs solved, that that's what you should read books about, that's people you should hang out with. Those are things that you should study. And you certainly should give yourself some disconnection from the false forms of connection and you should really connect with humans because we're more connected electronically than we ever have been in human history, but we're more disconnected, like in tribes and with real friendships, you know, I mean, if I was face, you know, facetiming with you or we were talking that way, I mean, yeah, I could still talk with you, but it's completely different than us hanging out and doing all the shenanigans we've been doing for the last two days.

It is. Which has been fun.

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 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.