The Best Explanation of Addiction I've Ever Heard! Feat. Gabor Mate

What is addiction?

Let's define it. So addiction is complex, but it's manifested in any behavior. Any behavior that a person finds temporary pleasure or relief in and therefore craves, but suffers negative consequences in the long term and can't give up. Now, notice any behavior. I didn't say drugs. Most of the time we think about addiction, we think of substances, and that certainly is one important target of addictive behavior. But I said any behavior that could be gambling, could be sex, could be relationships, could be Internet, could be Facebook, could be shopping, as in my case, could be eating, could be work. Any behavior that gives you temporary relief, pleasure, but you suffer negative consequences, you don't get up, that's an addiction. Now let me ask you this question. According to that definition, how many people here have will acknowledge that sometime or another in your lives you've had some kind of an addiction? Sometime. Okay? That's how relevant it is. Okay. And if I'm going with that stream, let me also ask you guys another question for which I'll ask some of you to just put your hand up and shout out your answers. I'm going to ask you not.

What.

You'Re addicted to or when or for how long. I'm just going to ask you, what did you like about it? What did it do for you? What did it give you in the short term? So who would tell me? Relief from pain. Relief from pain. Thank you. Anybody else? Sorry.

Control.

Control. Relief from pain. Gave you control. What else? Love. Somebody said escape from anxiety. Thank you. What else.

Was that?

Loneliness.

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

Anxiety.

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

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

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

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

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

Absolutely, absolutely. So, you know, and I Lived with so much shame. Even though I started making money, I always had that deep shame and that secret life. And I just struggled.

And.

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

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

Right. I mean, you know, you cannot punish pain out of people. And I mean, I have some stats here that I've heard you say that, you know, every month 911 happens actually.

According to the President's commission on addiction, on the opioid crisis. And by the way, even when we talk about the opioid crisis, it's a rather arbitrary determination. Not because it isn't a crisis. I mean, it is according to the President's own advisory commission, every three weeks you have a 911 happening in the United States as a result of Illegal drug overdoses, let alone.

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

We're just talking illegal drugs. I'm not even talking alcohol or cigarettes or everything else. We're just talking overdoses. And now it's hitting the white middle class. It's actually helping to lower the life expectancy of the white middle class male for the first time in a long time. But it's been hitting our Aboriginal population for a long time. It's been happening there for decades. If you go to the native reservations in Canada or the U.S. suicides, overdoses, they've been happening in epidemic proportions for decades. We just don't think that's so important now that it's happening to us or the people that we care about. Now. It's a crisis. And then if you ask the question, well, why is it that the Aboriginal population has got this tremendous rate of. Of addiction? And again, that's a very interesting question. Because this whole idea that addiction is a genetic disease flies out the window when you look at the Aboriginal experience. Because the Aboriginals in North America had actually access to potentially addictive substances long before Caucasians came here. They had access to tobacco, they had access to alcohol. In New Mexico, they had access to psychedelic substances like peyote. And they even knew these substances and they even used them. But how did they use them? They used them ceremonially, not to upturn and diminish their consciousness, but to raise their consciousness. They used it to connect spiritually with creation. They used it to create community and contact and culture. The addictive use is just the opposite. The other use is to escape from pain. And it's alone and it's not communal. If the problem was genetic, why weren't they addicted before? The reason they're addicted now is because the severe trauma that they've suffered over hundreds of years, their near extermination, and I don't have to give you all the details, I'm sure you know it all. Same thing in Canada. So what I'm saying with addiction, in short, is that every case of addiction originates in trauma. And that trauma could be overt. Like in the case of the Aboriginal population, their children in Canada being taken away from them, sent to residential schools for 100 years, where they were sexually abused and beaten up, and their culture and their language was denied. In British Columbia in 1960, I know a woman who was four years old in 1965 in my province of British Columbia, who at four years old was taken to the residential school where she spoke her Tribal language. And the punishment was that they stuck a pin in her tongue for a whole hour. A four year old. And then she sits there for a whole hour and she can't put a tongue in her mouth because it'll cut her lips. And then the sexual abuse began. So then when I look at Vancouver's downtown east side, which is North America's most concentrated area of drug use, we have more drug addicts there in a few swell block radius than anywhere on the continent. It's a shock to people even who come from Detroit and New York to Vancouver. 30% of our clients down there are first nations are aboriginal people. They make up 4% of the population. Why? Because of the severe trauma that they experience. And this is the one piece, the trauma piece that you and I are so aware of, but that addiction. I was talking to a colleague of mine, Jamie, where are you? Jamie?

Hey. I hope you're enjoying this video and I want to let you know that.

I have a new book that's come.

Out and if you'd like to get.

It absolutely free, there's a link below in the description. Or you can wait till the end of this video or you can Simply go to joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

You hear someone in the room? She's a physician from Detroit.

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

Okay.

All right.

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

Yeah, well, let's. I want to touch on ADD because I have been diagnosed with add.

You have?

How many people in the room would admit or think they have add?

Right.

And I've heard you, I mean you talk about in your book Scattered, that ADD is a response to trauma.

Yes, it is.

What does that mean?

Well, first of all, Let me make a point that occurred to me when you were talking about your marijuana use and your cocaine use. Those are typical self medications for add, because the marijuana calms down the hyperactive mind. And if you get treated for add, what do they give you? They give you a stimulant which elevates dopamine levels in the brain. What do you think cocaine is? It's a stimulant. It elevates dopamine levels. So the point I'm making is that a lot of addictions are actually self medications for specific conditions, like in your case. Now, ADD. Again, the medical mantra around ADD, and I was diagnosed in my 50s, and two of my children were diagnosed afterwards, the medical mantra is that it's a genetic brain disease. Well, it isn't genetic and it's not a brain disease. When you look at the tuning out, the absentmindedness of add, why do we have that capacity to tune out? Do you think nature gives us that capacity? We all have that capacity to dissociate, to tune out. Why? Well, it's very simple. If I were to threaten you right now, stress you, abuse you verbally, you would the number of options available to you. One would be to get up and leave, which is called flight. Or you could stand up and assert yourself and tell me to stop, which is called fight. And if you couldn't do either, given that, how many hundreds of people are here?

There's about 400 between both rooms.

Okay, so you have 400 people here. You could ask for help. Those would be the functional options. But what if you couldn't escape because you're too small and powerless? What if you couldn't fight back for the same reason? And what if there's nobody to ask for help? Then what would you do? Well, you wouldn't do anything. Your brain would go into an automatic dissociative mode to protect you from the distress. So what it is, it's actually, it's an adaptation to overwhelming stress. Now, if you put me back into my first year of life, and there are times in the first year of life when every second, like in this space of time, millions of connections are being made in the brain. What's happening in my first year of life? My mother is stressed. The day after the German army marches into Budapest, when I am two months of age, she calls the pediatrician to say, would you please come and see Gabor? Because he's crying all the time. And the pediatrician says, well, of course I'll come and see him, but I should tell you all my Jewish babies are crying. Now, why are Jewish babies crying? Well, not because I know anything about Hitler or genocide, but because I'm picking up on my mother's stress. There's a quote here from one of my teachers that I'd like to read to you if I can find it. And it says that the child is very open and can feel the pain and suffering going on in its immediate environment. The child is aware of its own body and can also feel the tension, rigidity and pain in the body of the mother or of anyone else he's with. If the mother is suffering, the baby suffers too. The pain never gets discharged. So let's say what do I do then? When my mother is depressed and stressed and terrorized? How do I deal with it? Can I fight back, escape and ask for help? From whom? I tune out. But then the tuning out becomes programmed into my brain. And then 55 years later or 50 years later, I'm diagnosed with ADHD, OED. Now what I'm saying is that. And I wasn't abused, nobody abused me. I just had a depressed and fearful mother. And being a very sensitive. The more sensitive you are, the more you pick up on that. So in those add, and if you look at it's an adaptation, it begins an adaptation which later on becomes a problem. So I'm not saying it's great, I'm saying that it begins in adaptation, which then becomes a problem. That's the nature. These early adaptations, which children employ not consciously to protect themselves from stress, actually become problems later on. Now if you look at the question of why between 2002 and 2013, I'm being approximate here, the rate of ADD diagnosis in American kids has gone up threefold. What's going on? What's going on is that the parenting environment has become increasingly stressed for all kinds of reasons. And when the parenting environment is stressed, the kids are stressed. And how do they cope with it? They tune out when the brains are developing, now they're getting diagnosed and medicated and all this mental health crisis. And what we're not looking at is what is it about the environment that actually fosters or foments that that response in children? And I'm only talking about add. We could talk about anxiety because people who are addicted often self neglect anxiety. They self medicate it with work, with sex, with tv, with distractions, and of course with drugs. And the New York Times Magazine two weeks ago wrote an article about the burgeoning rate of anxiety in American teenagers. And apparently a third now of teenagers and adults in the United States suffer from anxiety. And why? Well, if it was genetic, it wouldn't be increasing because genes don't change in a population over 10 years or 20 years or even 100 years. What's happening is that the conditions in which children are growing up is getting more and more stressful. And that has to do with the stress on the parents. And that also has to do, of course, with the workaholism of the parents. Like in my case, you know, the world thought I was great. I was out there delivering babies and helping the dying, palliative care and everything else in between. But what of me did my children receive? Not very much, because I was always trying to validate myself out there in the world. So then I pass on my trauma to them, but I passed it on not genetically, but through the conditions that obtained in my home. And my kids were small.

What is your definition of a, of addiction versus someone that's just say, a heavy drinker and, but they're not really an addict or they, you know, maybe have binging periods of, of life, maybe on a frequent basis, but they have not yet their life is not out of control because there's, this is confusing, especially for many people that often listen to these things that seek it out. They're, they're functional addicts. People that are so down and out there or so struggling are oftentimes not the ones that are hearing this. And most people that would hear this conversation are frankly family members or people that would be trying to figure out how to help one of their kids or one of their loved ones that's struggling with addiction. So how would you define it?

The fastest two word definition is can't stop. And of course, every definition that you're going to find from anybody that you've interviewed, and if you do a Google search and look at all the different organizations in their definition, they're going to have some sentence fragment that relates to continued use despite negative consequences. So the difference between dependence and addiction is that person who might be dependent might be relying on it in troubled times or whatever it may be. They never lose the ability to decide to stop if they want to. So their life may be getting out of control and they might have some issues that they really shouldn't be drinking or they shouldn't be using drugs. But if somebody were to come to them and they were prompted in some way to have a conversation and say, we're worried about you, we're concerned, they'll take that seriously. Someone who doesn't have an Addiction, the addicted person is going to be in denial. That's where the fight's going to come. You know, and I use the term fight kind of loosely. The disagreement. You're going to be faced with the denial and the delusion of, I don't have a problem and I don't need any help. I'm fine. I got this under control. I can handle it. I can stop whenever I want. You know, this is not a big deal and whatever, however that conversation is going to go. But I think that can't stop is the easiest. The easiest definition to use, because it's not just about what's happening when the person is under the influence. It's also what's happening when they're not. So, you know, they. They. They're hungover on Sunday morning, and when they come to, they say to themselves, I'm never going to do this ever again. Like, I can't. I can't live this way. And we're talking about someone now, by definition, let's just say we're talking about someone who's addicted. Okay? And this addicted person is waking up on a regular basis all by themselves, saying, I can't live like this anymore. I don't want to do this anymore. I have to stop. That's it. I'm done. And then by Thursday or Tuesday or sometimes later that day, they are drinking or using drugs again. So the can't stop feature is not only when the person is using the substances, it's also when they're not, despite the fact that they're promising themselves, I'm not going to do this anymore. There they are, doing it again. That feature is why it kind of flies in the face of some of the common misconceptions of they have to want it, they have to be ready, they have to hit bottom. What I'm saying is that Keith Cunningham has a quote in his book where conventional wisdom rarely passes the sniff test on common sense.

Yeah, yeah.

And so most people's experience of the conclusions they arrive at is you can't help someone with an addiction until they want it, until they're ready, until they hit bottom. But they are regularly at the bottom. They are regularly having frequent moments of clarity all on their own, where they're saying, I don't want to live this way anymore. But they can't stop by definition. And so getting that person sober is not going to be something that they're going to initiate on their own because of the very nature of addiction itself.

Yeah, yeah. That's. It's a Very good point. I also want to say things too, because the, the addicts, I think in active addiction, you lie, you cheat, you steal, oftentimes a lot, and sometimes you knowingly do it. Other times it's just a protective mechanism and they're so lost in that, they don't even know. And I think one thing that's very confusing is people are like, well, you must want this. You must want this. And you'll oftentimes be like, in their defending state, well, yeah, I do want it. I want it. And I am yet to meet a true addict that is literally living the consequences of pain and suffering that really wants to be there. Now, they'll often say just in a lost state that, you know, screw you. Yes, I want to do that. And convince even the person trying to help them that they don't give a. But most of them give a. They just don't know what to do. They're just so consumed by the can't stop that you're just going to hear the most crazy things come out of their mouth. And the people that love them the most often are the ones that are dealing with the, you know, the shrapnel because they're so close to them in the. In the proximity. So it's. It's a lot easier for me to help other people with their addiction problems than it was for me to help me with my own.

Right.

Or to help. It goes back to even what, you know, my, my real business of teaching people, you know, how to build and run businesses and marketing and stuff. It's. It's a lot easier to deal with someone else's marketing problem than deal with your own. And, and that applies, I think, to almost anything. Right? That's why you got a lot of unhealthy doctors that could dispense good health advice, but they have a hard time actually taking it. So the reason I bring this up is I want to let a lot of the people that are listening know that if you weren't so close to, say, if it was your son or your daughter that's struggling with addiction, and you're in there saying things to you that you can't even believe are coming out of their mouth, or they're not able to see what you see, and you love them and care about them, and you see someone in front of you just what you perceive as destroying their life as a result of, you know, their addiction. And I believe addiction is just the symptom of a deeper pain. Like my friend Gabor Monte says, the question is not why the addiction, but why the pain? You know, why do they have this pain? Why do they have this loneliness or this emptiness that they're looking for some way to scratch this itch? Why does it exist? And that is why getting outside help when you seek it out is so damn important. Like, because I. Look, I know this from firsthand experience of people struggling with addiction that I've referred that. That you help them. And you have. Because you're not the father. You're not the, you know, the mother. You're. You're. You're not the brother. You're. You know, you're not even someone that may even know this person, but you are a person that can come in with your own experience and your own knowledge and things like that. So for you, how much of your recovery was kicking and screaming and everything in your life in the beginning till you got to the. To the state where you're at? Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video.

And I want to let you know.

That I have a new book that's come out, and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description. Or you can wait till the end of this video, or you can simply go to Joe's free book and you can get a copy there.

Well, that's a great question, Jill. And it flies in the face of. Of what we're talking about here with what parents are dealing with and why I'm so passionate about what I do is my mother. After I had a particularly bad night, I came home on a Sunday morning feeling hungover, feeling embarrassed about whatever it was that happened. I come walking in the door and my mother, Again, Sunday morning, 11:00am, I come walking in. My mother very easily could have said, where the f were you? It could have been an angry conversation. It could have been a frantic, worried conversation. None of those things happened. What my mother said in that moment, very simply, was, would you like to go to a meeting with me? And I said, okay. My mother didn't have any idea what happened the night before. She didn't bother to have a conversation with me, as you just described. So my advice to parents is stop trying to have a reasonable conversation with an irrational person. If you're talking about their substance use, they cannot help but to defend it. They cannot help but to lie about it. They are incapable of connecting the dots between the circumstances of their life and their substance use. I had a guy once tell me that his DWI arrest had nothing to do with the fact that he was drinking. Now when you think about that is so extreme a rationalization that I almost wanted to be like, okay, hold on one second, let me just go get, let me get a coffee, I'll come back and I want to hear this one because this is going to be incredible how you've arrived at this conclusion. But of course, I was counseling and I just said, tell me more about that. And then he started to just reveal all these details as to why he really believed that this dwi, it was the cop's fault. It was entrapment. It was 1:30 in the morning. I wasn't even that bad. I hardly even drank that much. I only blew a 0908 is the limit. Right. I've had far worse nights driving home. He's admitting to driving drunk in other instances where he hasn't been arrested, where it's been worse. But he's trying to convince me, with all the rationalization he possibly has, that he does not have a problem and he does not need help and he doesn't have to go to rehab, he doesn't need to be here, he doesn't have to be sitting across from me. This is all a big overreaction. If that cop didn't have it out for me, all of that is the thinking that is typical of someone who is struggling with addiction. So as a parent or a family member, you might be listening to that and thinking like, oh my God, like, that's so extreme. That's the thinking that's taking root in your child right now. If they have it, if they're 17 years old. I got sober at 17 years old the first time and I was a full blown addict and alcoholic. That doesn't have anything to do with the quantity. It doesn't have anything to do with some kind of, you know, like, that I had dozens and dozens of consequences. It just has to do with the reaction of, of alcohol and the substances that I was addicted to on my body and what happens in my brain. And that's what's going on in the brain. And so once you identify that, you go, okay, my kid has an addiction. So I'm not going to have direct conversations where I'm trying to reason with him and get him to see it, because that's not going to be effective. What you want to focus on is what's the practical, tangible step you can get them to take when you can see that they're in pain, when they might be having a moment of clarity and they might be saying, you know what? I don't want to do this anymore because again, that thought is happening frequently. And if you can learn how to identify that, then it's as simple as presenting an opportunity for recovery. Expecting that someone is going to stop using or stop drinking and be sober, get sober, stay sober forever without them actually getting help and being connected to a helpful resource. That's irrational for us as a society and as families to have that expectation. If we understand that this person is dealing with addiction, which means they're not going to stop, it's continued use despite negative consequences. So waiting for some big major consequence to happen in the hopes that that's going to wake them up and they're going to realize, oh my God, I have a problem, I'm going to stop now. That's kind of happening all the time. But it doesn't lead to them stopping. They drink and they do drugs again. So they have to be connected to the helpful resource. And that's what an intervention is all about.

Yeah, I mean one of the things that you've told me too is oftentimes if I just give someone, someone's number in your, your particular case for an intervention or for someone that is a therapist, sometimes they'll call a therapist, but rarely do they want to call an interventionist unless you put them together. Even when someone is seeking out like a parent or a family member or a husband or a wife, it's like you got to talk to this person. And even then, you know what's funny for a lot of people, you need to realize is that you think the addict is being resistant. Oftentimes the people that are trying to help it, they're, they're resistant as heck too. And on one hand it's, you know, I have a friend that wrote a, a book called Come Here, Go Away Ralph Earl. And then Marilyn Murray, another friend of mine, she's an 87 year old therapist who is wrote Prisoner of Another War and then the Murray Method which is all about trauma. And to go back to the line, come here, go away. You know, now that's really spoken in the context of sex addiction, love addiction, where want someone to come here, but you're also pushing them away. And the come here, go away behavior for help is just notorious for people that struggle with addiction. So how does someone, how would you recommend. Because you explained it. But I want to go a little deeper with this because I think it's really good. How do they need to show up? How could they show up? What are some. And I know there's no perfect way because their, their decision, I mean this is a very complex sort of issue. So to enroll or invite someone into getting help that has all kinds of barriers to resistance and all kinds of rationalizations. And like you mentioned, you know, try to talk rationally to an irrational person is very difficult. And so your mom, your, your, you, you obviously didn't feel threatened or attacked or accosted or, you know, being accused of anything when you walked in. And your mother said, would you like to go to a meeting? So what state did your, was your mother in that allowed her to do that? Because you know that that is a place of demonstrating her own recovery. And I think it's really important for people to hear in piece apart what is going on there.

Yeah, I mean a lot of. So I just, I just spent the last couple of months writing a book and so I have about 130 pages or so that's discussing what, it's an answer to that question. So what were the critical things that were different about my mother? Let's say, well, number one, she's not in denial about the fact that her little boy could maybe have alcoholism. That it's not something that she's going to deny. It's like if the house is on fire, you're able to say that's a fire. No one is going to spend any time denying that that's a fire. And you're going to call for help as soon as you notice it. Even if you just see signs of smoke, you're not going to say, oh, let's see if it gets worse before we call for help. It's only a little bit of fire. It hasn't really extended to the upper floors yet. I mean, let's wait until it's a five alarm blaze before we call someone. So my mother had the advantage of never blaming herself for the possibility of me having alcoholism and addiction. She wasn't going to be guilty about it because she understands it from personal experience and she knows it's a possibility. It's not something that she's afraid of. If the conventional wisdom, back to what we said before, that doesn't really pass the sniff test of common sense. If you are consistently told that there's nothing that you can do to help someone who has an addiction and you're a parent, I cannot arrive at the conclusion that my son or my daughter has an addiction because that would mean saying there's nothing I can do to help. And so if you are of the belief that there's nothing you can do to help, then you just can't. You. You. You can't allow yourself to think that this is addiction, so it must be something else. And that's where all of the. And so we think it's anxiety, it's social anxiety, it's depression, it might be bipolar disorder, it's adh, it's ptsd. Maybe they do have trauma. Maybe they're, you know, all of these various different things are on the list of possibilities of what's wrong. The starting point here is just put addiction on the list as a possibility. You have to be willing to also have addiction be a consideration. Okay. And all. All that means is, is it's. It's like a peanut allergy. Like, some kids just have it. It's not about how they were raised. You would never say, like, oh, no, my kid's too smart to have a peanut allergy. He knows better. He's, you know, we raised him right. You would never say that. It's just a reaction to a substance that, in like, amounts, doesn't affect other people. Right. So other people can have a handful of peanuts, no big deal. Other people can have three beers. No big deal. For someone who's an alcoholic, they have three beers. And the reaction, the physical reaction is, I need more beer.

Now.

What winds up happening after that is irrelevant. It's just about the fact that there's a reaction. And the reaction has nothing to do with your parenting. The reaction has nothing to do with anything that you did or didn't do. And my mother understood that fundamentally, so she wasn't afraid of it. And the other key thing is that my mother had the belief that recovery is possible. It was never hopeless. She knows that there's a place to go. She knows that there's something that people can do if they do have this problem. It worked for her. It's worked for countless people that she knows from her personal experience. And so she knows that there's a solution for this and that there's a place that she can bring me to. And I think that that's probably the reason why I spend probably so much time on this and, well, explaining this piece of it. As an interventionist, one of the key things, one of the key strengths is that as soon as you start telling me some of the details about what's going on with your addicted loved one, I start cycling through the Rolodex in my brain of what potential recovery programs are going to be right for that person. So I think about 30% of it is that I know where to bring them right Right. So as a parent, the first step, then I have to admit that this is addiction. I got to be okay with it, acknowledge it, accept it. That means that they can't stop and that they're not going to get help on their own. Just let go of the idea that they're going to seek help on their own. Only 10% of people with addictions ever get help for it. 90% of people who struggle with addictions never get help. And that's because they don't perceive the need for it. That's backed up by the national home survey on Drug use and health. It's a survey that's been going on for over 50 years. Started in 1971, the last one in 2022. 94.7% of people who meet the criteria for a substance use disorder do not perceive the need for help. That's what you're up against. So if you're thinking, well, let's just sit. Let's sit back and wait for him. We can't take it upon us. Who are we to step in to say something about what this person should be doing? They have something that's going on in their brain that's convincing them that this is not a problem, and this is a problem that can kill them. And that's why we have more people dying today than ever before. And that's why we have the same percentage of people getting help for it. And really, the ones who get help are the ones who were intervened on. Now, sometimes those interventions, we're not talking about family, although that's often the case, but they can be unpleasant. It could be jail systems. It could be, you know, overdoses. You're in the hospital, you're, you know, all sorts of terrible things can happen that wind up being the external factor, without which that person would not have gotten sober the day that they did. But it's not about that person initiating the process on their own. It's not about them being ready. It's almost always like hide and seek. Ready or not, here it comes. Always that that person just winds up in treatment despite the fact that they don't want it. They're not necessarily ready. They haven't necessarily hit bottom because last night might not even been that bad a night. I just happened to get arrested. And the judge says, would you like to go to jail? Would you like to go to treatment? I'll go to treatment, your honor. That's how people get started. And oftentimes that's how people get started from the family perspective as well. When A wife or a mom or a dad, they just had enough. That's it. We can't have the car anymore. We can't do this. We can't. Like I'm not going to be able to live this way. You can't be around the kids, drunk, whatever it might be, that ends up being this precipitating factor that if it wasn't for that, that person doesn't get sober that day. And so really it's about the opportunity for recovery that's being presented while at the same time that person is facing a moment of clarity where they're being kind of confronted with the reality of the situation in a way that they're not able and capable to do on their own.

Some of the world's highest achievers live with great pain and great angst. And it's a strong struggle. And it's. And I'm also glad, like I met you when I joined a group for sex addiction. You know, lots of shame in sexual addiction and you know, much easier to talk about being a drug addict, talking about alcoholism than, you know. Yeah, I used to, you know, look at porn all the time. I used to go to massage parlors, I used to sleep with hookers, you know, and all that stuff. And, and I could never talk about that, let alone ever think I would say what I just said in front of groups of people.

Right, that's true.

And the whole saying is, you're as sick as your secrets and this. And it was really, you know, you and several other people and just a lot of 12 step groups and a lot of therapy and a lot of work that really got me to the point where I just, you know, I shed enough of the shame to where I could maintain levels of sobriety for periods of time. And at this stage in my life, you know, the last time I had any bottom line behaviors in that department, you know, drinking and drugs were easy compared to, you know, the sexual stuff was in 2016 after a breakup, I had another relapse sort of thing. But then after that, and kind of what did it is in this hotel, I stood up in front of a room of everyone. I don't know if any of you remember. Well, of course those of you would remember that I got up and I just shared as much as I could and I was like, this is either going to ruin my career or I'm just so done with this sort of stuff now.

Do I still have shame?

Of course I experience all of these sort of things. But can you define two things? What is Addiction. Want to hear your definition of it? And shame. What is shame? Because I know so many people here that have struggles, deal with it, and they may not even recognize it.

Well, first it's hell addiction. But the real thing I wrestle with would be in defining would be it's a pathological relationship. It's an unhealthy relationship to a mood altering experience that has life damaging consequences. And you can't stop by yourself. You know, I mean, I've done a lot of things that had damaging consequences to me, but I could stop it myself. I too, as Joe talking, I. I've been in recovery from sexual addiction for 32 years. And I'm a workaholic. You know, those two things. More of a workaholic than I'm a sex addict. But the point is, to me is how, you know, is there anything wrong with sex? Of course not. You know, actually on the media, the many, the many relationships that people say, well, porn's awful, only if you use it awful. In my case, I did. It hurt me. It didn't help me. How would you know? Well, you have to know your values. What are your values? And if I do something against my values and it's hurting me and people I care most about and I can't stop it by myself. For me, to you, I believe that's an addiction. So that's how I would define that.

Yeah.

Can I also say too. Cause, you know, and I'd love, I mean you, anything that I'm always wanting to understand and clarify my thinking and understanding to this. I look at all addictions as excess and deprivation. You know, when someone hears the term sex addict, you think, oh, that's a pervert. That's someone that wants to have sex with whoever, whatever, all the time. And there's a lot of sexual addiction manifest as deprivation where you're not able to be sexual, you're not able to feel any real connection sexually. And so there's a lot of sexual anorexia that exists. It's binging and purging. That's what, you know, addiction consists of.

Yes, for sure. So to talk a little bit about deprivation. See, most people like not to identify themselves as addict. I get it. I understand. And I understand why. I mean, I've been over to 3500 SAA meetings and all kinds of meetings you can think about in my days and time. So you, when you walk in, you're basically saying, I'm a sex addict, I'm an alcoholic, I'm whatever I am. Okay, so who wants to do that. Well, it's helpful to be able to take that term and separate it from your personhood. Who. Who am I, really? I am an unrepeatable miracle of the universe. Have been, always will be. I won't get better on that. I'll become a better person in my behavior, and I won't get worse. No matter what I do, if I walk out of here and act out forever until I'm dead, I don't improve on that. A diamond is a diamond. That's what I've always been. So I'm saying that to say this is that it's so helpful to recognize how deprivation in my life fueled the addictive components that I engage. So that goes all the way back. As a kid, I grew up in a hellacious family. I grew up in a family of 12 children. To the best of my knowledge, all 12 of us were sexually abused in some form or another by. Through a church. They called it a church. It was a cult. So I had all kinds of craziness in the background. But the point is, to me is how do I fill up those needs that I have developmentally? Some people say, well, I don't want to go back and look at that stuff. Well, I would entreat you to consider Soren Kierkegaard. He's an existentialist philosopher. He says, well, life's meant to be lived forward, but it could only be understood backwards. So why do I want to look backwards? So I can understand. I don't want to live in that storyline. I want to give that up and to do so. If I can understand and if I can clean out some woundedness, it helps me. But when I don't, I live depression. And so I want to fill that deprivation up in my life. And so I use all kinds, not just one addiction. I'll use a cocktail of experience of life, work, sex. I use sports, gaming. I use bitching and complaining. I use all of these things I can do to fill up and escape that emptiness that's inside. So what I always help people understand is deprivation fuels entitlement. Entitlement to what? To feel good again. And one thing for sure, any addiction really delivers. It delivers what it promises, at least for a brief moment. There's a payoff. I mean, you're gonna pay for it. But when you're in a lot of pain, when you're in a lot of, you know, just discomfort, then quickly, in a shortsighted way, I'll pick my addiction in that regard. Now, I think of it this Way, I love what I heard Ned talking about yesterday. He talked about, I believe it was distractibility, changing into curiosity. He talked about impulsivity being changed into creativity, and then it was hyperactivity into energy. Well, I think that about addiction, See, this whole lifestyle, it's a metaphor. It's a paradox. What do we do? Well, we just take, like, we take opposites and make them different. So, like, for instance, addiction. My goal is to take my curse of addiction and make it a blessing. How do I do that? Well, I don't do it from run. I don't do it by running from it. I embrace it. I listen to it. You know, actually, I make it my understanding of the voice of God. If God's anything, it's that voice talking to me, what's out of balance. It's that voice talk, telling me what I need to address underneath. It's the legitimate need that must be met in a healthy way. And so I take a pause. I get out of the way of the addictive rush. You know, like sitting in the middle of a intersection in New York City, here comes a bus. You don't sit around and think, well, how'd I get here? You best get the hell out of the way. So I try to get out of the way from my addictive rush. And then I sit and think, what's legitimate need that must be. That's called intimacy to self. To people I care about, intimacy is so important. And that's why we talk about addiction. Anyway, Joey, it's an intimacy, disabling experience of life.

Yeah.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video. And I want to let you know.

That I have a new book that's come out.

And if you'd like to get it.

Absolutely free, there's a link below in the description. Or you can wait till the end of this video, or you can Simply go to joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

You know, again, I've said this before. Most people in this audience heard me talk about my favorite definition of intimacy, which was given to me by a guy named Wharton, who basically is now 80 years old, in his 80s, and he spends his. He volunteers his time to help people with sexual addictions. And he said intimacy is a mutual exploration of a shared safe place. Place abuse is anything that takes away the safe place. And addictions are what we do to make ourselves feel good when we don't have a safe place. And I often think of, you know, not just intimacy romantically, but intimacy, the ability to Connect with people. And the reason, you know, my, I always, you know, to use a Dan Sullivan term, front stage and backstage. You know, there's the front stage of what our clients see, who the world sees, and then there's the backstage. You know, in a business it's like, what's going on backstage, you know, and front stage. And it's like, you know, part of. I sit and observe people and I observe my own behavior. And I often think, you know, you're either in communication with someone or you're trying to escape. You're either talking to someone and you.

Know, as you guys meet each other.

And you talk, you know, you're either.

You feel real connection with someone and other people. Like I need to kind of get away.

And sometimes it's the other person, sometimes it's me. You know, if I'm not connected, it's really hard for me to connect with someone else. But then you take that into how much of my life was I trying to escape, you know. And addiction is a solution. My viewpoint of it, it is a solution to pain. Now we treat it like the war on drugs, but the war on drugs is the wrong war. Because the war on drugs is like a war on addicts. You know, the drugs are actually the solution. The problem is the fucking pain. And if you don't deal with the pain, it's an attempt to self soothe. If you're depressed, if you're lonely, if you're suicidal, if you're hyperactive, if you're losing your fricking mind, you're stressed out, you're lonely. There's nothing wrong with wanting that feeling to go away or to change.

It's how you scratch the itch, you.

Know, with what you're saying. And so addiction works. It works really well. The problem is it has consequences. And those consequences could kill you, they could hurt other people, they could damage and destroy your life. So part of it is getting people to feel real connection and real intimacy and to experience it. And that requires the shedding or the processing of the shame and the fear. And so what I want to say, because up to this point in our conversation, a lot of people might be.

Like, what the hell are you talking about?

I don't identify as a sex addict. I'm not staying up until three in the morning every night, you know, looking at porn. I'm not snorting cocaine. There are a lot of people in here that are full blown work addicts because workaholism is a respectable addiction and it's a performance addiction. It's a. You know, there's. There's all kinds of things to it. And so I would really like.

What is workaholism?

How would you like.

How does someone know if they're excessive?

I mean, well, people close to them can remind them how hurtful.

Glad that's funny to Joe.

But then, no, that's okay.

That's good. How do I know I'm a workaholic?

Because it's real easy to make excuses for performance. Look how fucking rich I am. Look at how much money I've given to charity, you know, all that sort of shit.

Yeah. I think it's what takes me away from my soulfulness. Now, that's kind of a nice little statement to make. But, you know, when you really dig into it, I have to be more to keep from being less in order to be good inside. And I can't ever stop. I remember once, about 20 years. It was longer than that. It was 25 years ago. I'm getting older here.

How old are you now?

I'm 70.

70?

Yeah. So I remember deciding I was going to cut back and only work a certain number of hours. And I remember going back in the backyard up next to our fence, and I sat and I went through withdrawals. Literally shakes. It was embarrassing. It was crazy. I don't know of a lot of people who do that about workaholism, but I sure did. But what I did is I found. I tried to find my sense of okayness in what I do, not who I am.

And.

And that's that great problem. Not everybody who struggles with finding meaningfulness in their being. I call it my amnes. But all is out here doing stuff. They're not all workaholics. I get that. But what I want to share is this. There's an interesting thing I've been reading and listening to this woman named Pema Chodron. Many probably know who she is, this Buddhist female monk. And she talks about how she's learned unconditional confidence. And she said, okay. If you've listened to her piece on unconditional confidence, she shares the metaphor. Walking alongside the Oregon coast, and she's lost in her thoughts. The tide's out. It comes in, it knocks her sideways, rolls her into the sand. And she said, for a moment there, I thought I was going to drown. So I stand up, gather myself, and I get hit by another wave. And she said, well, you know, it lasted maybe three or four minutes, but it seemed like an eternity. But I got to the sense of knowing that I could go down and come back up, and I would not die. Well, she says this, here's the deal. I can't control the results of my life totally. I do a lot of things to create success. I'm all about achievement, personally. I want to achieve. I want to be the very best I possibly can be. It certainly has been a part of that goal, has been a part of my workaholism. She says I can't control the results, but my unconditional confidence is that I can control. I'm going to go down and come back up regardless of results. I can make meaningfulness no matter what I face or deal with. That's been a great sense of source for me. So I can. You can't try to compete and compare and say, I'm this. I can compete. I like to compete. I am that. Okay? But that's not who I am. Well, I found great, great peace. And all these guys I work with who have women, who have all this status and stardom and all this stuff, ultimately, all that has not brought peace. See? And so what brings peace is knowing that I can find meaningfulness wherever I am. I can be present right here, just with you, Joe. I'm not worried about what these guys think, or I'm challenged not to. I really just want to have a conversation, be present right here. Why? Because that's where meaningfulness is. You know, I was a minister way back there. Heaven, hell, all that crap. Well, my. My thought was, this is what is heaven and hell. It's my decision on how I engage you right now. And for me, heaven is just hanging out with you. Because I know this. I don't know you in this environment. I know you. We have coffee, we talk. We talk about addiction. We talk about your life, your world, all that stuff.

It's fun.

I love you as a friend. I love your spirit, Joe, your soulfulness. I was telling my wife last night, I said, joe, you know, I have all these marketer guys I work with and stuff. Joe is a different cat. He's a guy who. A real, genuine, authentic person. That's not easy to accomplish, being authentic goodness. The hardest thing I've ever done in my life is to be truly honest. Nobody accuses me, Joe, of being walking around telling a bunch of lies. But look at myself in the mirror and saying honest, real things down deep inside and sharing them with another person who I choose to trust. Now, that's tough. But that brings a lot of peace. So that's the opposite of what workaholism can do. See, a Lot of guys, I'm trying to do more to keep from being less. And what happens in all that deal. Shame makes it so. What does it make it so? It makes it. I can never get enough of what I really don't want. I really don't want to keep doing all this craziness. I do it anyway because it's the only way I know how to escape what? Emptiness, you know? And it's an interesting thing to sit with discomfort. I mean, my God, who does that? And yet to do so, to lean into that, opens a whole avenue of genuine, authentic peace. It's not about religion. It's not about that stuff. I mean, I tried that for more years. You care to know? It did not work for me, but this process we're talking about does. I. I love what Ned said yesterday about the default piece. Because, man, is that great. See, with shame, I get all these messages in my head. You think, well, if you're in recovery, then you got it all together, right? Oh, never. You just realize how much you don't have it together. And so what happens is I have these voices in my head that tell me all the stuff that Ned said so beautifully yesterday, all this craziness that I tell myself. What I've learned is how to bring myself back to center. Shame is that part. See, it's like this. Shame is like. People say, well, shame is bad. It's just what we have. It's there. Call it whatever you want. It's like acid in a battery of a car. If you keep it in the battery, then it starts the car. If you take it out, put it on your skin, it'll burn you. If I put shame on my personhood, my sense of self, it'll hurt me. But if I take it and I put it on and I put it on the behavior that I did, I mean, we've all done shitty behavior. No one's excluded. But if I take that shame, I put it on my behavior, what happens to. Transforms to compassion? When I think about the ways in which I hurt my wife. We've been together for 46 years now. When I think about the way I hurt her, when I was unfaithful, when I acted out sexually, I'll never forget her eyes, the look in her face. What does that do for me? I could turn it on myself, say, you piece of shit, what's wrong with you? Or I say, you know what? I would never want to hurt someone who is that precious, that desirable in my life again. And it transforms that sense of shame. Into compassion. Let me read you something that Pema Children says. She says this compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It's a relationship between equals. Only when I know my own darkness well and can I be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when I recognize our shared humanity. We're all in this together, baby. We really are. And there isn't that much difference in you and me. And I learned how to hang with people in a. In a most paradoxical way is by hanging out with my own brokenness, not wallowing in it, but recognizing how that has been a link to my own brilliance. And I am a brilliant person. I'm happy to tell myself that I answer my shame, shame with positive affirmations. And like I heard Ned say yesterday, it doesn't happen with one and done. Seldom is this kind of transformation a one and done piece. It takes condition. Just like I get up every morning and run at five in the morning and do my thing, I don't want to do it. I usually wake up with a bad attitude every day that I have to address every single day. I know. So that's.

That's.

That's about my me. But I'm saying to you that if I condition myself and I go back, just like, think of it this way, Joe, let me leave you this. It's this idea. Some kid who's playing basketball, okay? So he's playing for a college team. The times run out. His team's behind by one point, and he's at the free throw line and he has a one and one. He has to make the first to tie the game, the second to win. So what happens? What do you know? Well, the guys behind the goal are doing everything they possibly can, legally or illegally, to try to get him to miss that shot. Okay, what does he do? He just programs back to the summer where. What did he do? He practiced a thousand free throws. And then what he would do, he'd run wind sprints until he almost dropped dead. Then he'd go practice, and then he'd run up and down the bleachers and then he'd have his friends beat on him and then yell at him while he's making those practicing. And he draws all that in on that one critical moment. And if he misses, he goes back and does more of it so he can improve. So the goal isn't to be before and after. Like, I'm finally, now I'm all together. I just want to be a little bit better today than I was yesterday. And, man, has that made a big difference in my life? And I tell you, if you practice what I. I haven't read that second chapter of that book you told me. I'm gonna go read it. But the point. If you practice what I'm hearing being said, that'll work. It'll help me anchor myself in what my authentic sense of being an unrepeatable miracle of the universe. I never knew that. I mean, I knew that here. Cause I'm a smart dude. But I never knew that in my guts. And until I practice it every day. I practice it this morning, I practice it tonight. I practice when I walk off this stage, it's just being that. So I really think we have hope in transforming shame. You know, all these energies that are negative for you. Anger, you know, what do we do? Well, what we do, we have to redefine it. It's just an energy source. That's all these feelings are, you know, so. So mine as a responsible adult, is to move that energy from what I don't want to. What I want. So I'll take some time when I'm angry is to throw it up. I just make sure I don't throw it up on people that I care for. If I had the flu, I wouldn't want to throw up in your lap. I'd go to the bathroom. So I don't want to throw up in somebody's lap. But once I throw that up to that person, I move it to the issue of injustice, the issue of oppression. And then I move it to what I want, you know, and what I want is respect, dignity. I want to treat myself that way and treat you that way. And the more I work with it, the better I get. I'm not perfect. I have to circle back and make amends all the time because I'll fuck it up. But still, what I've learned is how to be true to myself. And you know what's more important than never acting out again? It's knowing how to find your way back, isn't it? Isn't that really important? I mean, if you go out for a hike with somebody and the guy says, I've never been lost in all the times I've taken people out for a hike. Or if you say somebody take another guy and he says, well, I have a compass here and I know how to read the sucker, well, who would I want to go with? I'll go with the guy who got the compass. I just need to know how to. How to find myself if I lose myself. And you can learn that that's what recovery is about.

And so the question is to give a couple definitions. I mean, there's a lot of different definitions I've heard of addiction. The way that I think about addiction, it's a connection disorder. So what we're really talking about here is how to connect with others, how to connect with yourself. And there's mechanisms that people use to numb themselves because they're feeling disconnected.

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

Absolutely.

Absolutely. The opposite of addiction is connection. And so the thing. And there's other people that are saying this, like my dear friend Gabor Mate.

Who wrote a book called in the.

Realm of hungry Ghosts. 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 that those three words really greatly describe what an addict is craving. They're 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, if someone's not a smoker and hate smoking. As an example, my father died from lung cancer, and he smoked most of his life.

And people.

And so I hate cigarettes. I can't stand cigarettes. I don't like the smell of them.

But.

But when I was a Drug addict. I used to smoke cigarettes and I used to smoke cocaine. I used to free base cocaine. I used to snort crystal meth. I used to take 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're. 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, 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 at. I mean, 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 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.

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. 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, 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. 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 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. It 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 it actually creates more. But I'll say the connection this way. So like Dr. Bob and Bill W. They're the ones that are that founded a Alcoholic Scene 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 if you think about that, he's like, okay, we're trying to drink God out of a bottle. And addicts are actually the most spiritually.

Potential people, I believe because they're trying.

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

It's just strongly looking for connection where it's not exactly, 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, 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 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 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're, you're, you probably feel more connected as a human. But if you had a parent die, if you were molested, like, you know, I, 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 for my higher, higher self, whatever that higher self is, and a lot of times I'm not. I believe most people, even when they're doing crazy shit, are doing the best they know how to do given the circumstances. And so my father, you know, tried to do the best he could do, but he was a really broken person. So therefore he didn't know quite how to instill a lot of confidence, a lot of self esteem, a lot of love. I was molested as a kid. I used to get paid money to not say anything about it. And it wired in my mind that sex is not an intimate act of love and oneness. It's something that you do just to get off. So I was never able to feel comfortable with sexuality. I was never able to feel comfortable with connection. And it's funny because now I'm known as this connector in business because I connect, you know, all kinds of, you know, great people off the charts.

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

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

I already interrupted you.

He just did that.

Did you see that?

Yeah.

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 they're physically but not there really. So psychologically. So that made an impression on you. You were a little boy who became desperate for connection and life gave you an example, albeit really a crappy example from our standards today. But it gave you an example of what connection was and you ran with it.

Yeah, and what I did is there's not a day that's gone by in my adult life where I've not thought about that. In the rumination, the preoccupation and for years I had so much of my self worth tied into this shameful, violated piece of shit that I felt like after that happened because. And it didn't happen once, it happened multiple times. And I didn't know how to interpret.

It because I was between the ages.

Of 8 and 10 years old. And, 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, 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's a, 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, of treatment that have efficacy, where people can go and find community, sharing inspirational videos, talking with addicts, and just putting that stuff out there in the world. Because I want to help connect people. Because I never felt that connection growing up. And so I initially found it through doing drugs and escapism. But the way that I defined myself, it took me years to really kind of make any sense about it. And what I, 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 could imagine, I don't.

Want to do this.

I don't want to be in this relationship. Relationship. This person hurts me, this person beats me, this person is abusive, this environment is abusive. But you keep Walking through that door. What it did for me is it somehow created this template. So when you take sex addiction, you know, which is there's an interview I did with Pat Karns years ago now, people, if they just type in Joe Polish sex addiction into YouTube, you can watch that, 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 they're introducing, 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 in 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, but 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 respectable addiction 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. 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.

Right.

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 work.

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. Not to make this too much of a me, but I'm gonna make it a little bit more about me. Last night at the book signing, I was giving a talk and I. 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. 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 an 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 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. 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 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 anyway, 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 like if there's a cut or 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 there's many reasons why people cut. Okay, so I'm not trying to say that's the reason. It's just with connection.

You said something just briefly here about battles and then during your tour you were talking about, I wrote it down here. Silent battles are the hardest ones to fight into and to get help. And it made me think about just being an addict because I think people that struggle with addictions and my viewpoint of addictions are, you know, the bigger question is my friend Gabor Mate, who will be at my conference this year with you. He's one of the top addiction doctors in the world. He says, you know, the question is not why the addiction, but why the pain? And so I think addictions are just symptoms and ways to cope with repressed emotions, trauma, deep seated pain, and you use it as a coping mechanism until it ends up becoming an addiction and it becomes a full fledged addiction, which I believe is beyond choice. That's where you tap into a higher power, be it whatever your version of God is, or a community or something that you can derive some sort of hope from. Because hope heals in silence. Though battling things in silence, I think it's just toxic shame. And recently there was a famous rock star who committed suicide that had millions of dollars, that had millions of fans all over the world. And this person, in their silent battle, still was not able to reach out enough to where it could bring hope to this person. And this person killed themselves. Silent battles are insidious. They are terrible. And almost everyone goes through it in some sort of way. And a lot of people, they just cannot ask for help because of either the shame of what was done to them or the shame of what they have done to someone else, or at least perceive what they have had done is so horrible that I can never talk about it. I mean, we have a dear friend of mine who is sitting in the room that, like, was, you know, had a lot of sexual abuse in her life and openly speaks about it. What is a silent battle? And someone watching or listening to this right now, that's like, I can never tell anybody about this. I mean, there's just no way. What is it? And how do you ask for help if you're fighting that silent battle?

The best way I can describe it is like you said, I mean, it's wanting to reach out for help. It's screaming for help. And you think this is just my opinion? You think people can see it? You think people can hear you, right? It's screaming loud inside of you. But whether people are busy, whether people overlook it, people don't see it. And in my life, through my silent battles, that's what was going on. You know, I would always say I would smile for the camera, but die behind the scenes. But I just felt like I just wanted somebody to be like, Trent, I see what you're going through, but nobody ever really asked. And if they did ask, it was this stigma as a man. And I had to be Strong. I can't show my weaknesses. You know, we're taught that growing up so much, and for people out there, and also it's this, too. It's also feeling isolated. You feel like nobody would understand. You feel like you're going to be judged. You feel like nobody goes through what you're going through. And so not to take away somebody's struggle, because struggles are extremely powerful, but don't make your struggle special in the sense of. It's just for me, because I realized that, I mean, doing what we do, I see it every day. There's no story I really haven't heard that. A lot of people go through a lot of things, and I can promise you that somebody is going through what you're going through, or they've overcame what you're going through. And so it's important to find someone, even if it's someone you don't know. You know, that's why a lot of people hit me up and say, trent, I don't really know you, but I don't want to be judged. They know I'm not going to judge them, and they talk. So find somebody that maybe you don't know. Find a mentor. Like, reach out to somebody. Find a stranger, whatever it may be. Watch videos and reach out to somebody, because those things will kill you inside, period. But you have to also realize, too, in overcoming that silent battle, as I said earlier, you turn your pain into power, and then you become the person that helps other people get through it. You know, I get this a lot, Joe. A lot of people will say, it's easy for you to say, Trent. You know, whether it's hiking Camelback Mountain or me speaking about faith, me speaking about overcoming, it's easy for you to say. And I used to kind of get offended by that. I'm like, you don't know my life. You don't know what I go through. Then I say, wait. It is easy for me to say, because I know you can overcome it, because I overcame it. That's why I talk with so much confidence and power and certainty, because I know if I can come out of that, you can, too. And so I always say, you know, there's a bigger purpose than your pain. And I think if you think that if you hold on, as you said, a little bit of hope, a little bit of faith, you can get through that silent battle, period. But give your pain a voice. And not a voice of, you know, sympathy or whatever it may be, but give your pain a voice by speaking out to someone. Even if it's a stranger, somebody you don't know, because the worst thing you can do is hold everything inside, because eventually the lid, the top, pops off as you suppress more and more things.

Yeah, that's really powerful. I was in Seattle earlier in the week, and one of the days I wanted to go to this clothing store where they sold outdoor gear, because I went and spent time on an island where with Peter Diamandis, who's one of my friends and clients. And so it's kind of funny, when I travel, I'll carry, like, avocados and different food and stuff. And so I'm walking to this place, and there's homeless people all over the area where I was at in downtown Seattle. And I walk by this gal who's just kind of got her head down, and it, you know, just put food next to her and just walk off, because she wasn't even, like, looking up, although she had a cardboard sign that says, mental illness, need help. You know, walk by. And I'm not an expert on homelessness, and I see it everywhere, and it always bothers me. But at the same time, there's YouTube videos from people on how to make $300,000 a year being a panhandler. And it's just like, what is real? Having gotten so much into addiction, I know a lot of homelessness is addiction and mental illness. And so I go to the store and literally buy about $1,200 worth of clothes because I can. And so I walk out of there, and this is probably 30 minutes later. And I walk right past this person, and I kind of look down, and she's smoking a cigarette really, like, anxiously. Almost looks like she's on meth. And I cross the street, and then I was like, it just bothered me. And there's, like, homeless people everywhere. But for some reason, I just kind of gravitated towards that. What the hell is going on with this person? And I just couldn't get out. So I walk back across the street, and I go up to her and I say, hello, how are you doing? And she's like, you know.

She'S.

I'm just. Immediately went into this shitty place, and I literally sat down and started talking with her and said, you know, how long have you been homeless? And she. Five years. She's been in Seattle. She's been homeless for five years there. And that she has a massive anxiety disorder and that she cannot hold a job. And she's like, all these people walk by. No one even pays attention. No one comes and talks me you know, I need money. And, you know, her teeth at the bottom of her mouth were so ground down that there were just little, like, stumps. And this was truly a person that was not faking it. I mean, she had dirty fingernails, very weathered, and just having a hard life. And just, you know, I said, well, is there any resources here? And she's telling me about how the homeless shelters are bad and about how they give you a cop. And again, I have to put myself in those sort of situations where I have no idea what her mental illness is. I have no idea her ability to come up with solutions. If someone's dealing with a severe mental illness, you have no idea that people.

That, like, well, why don't they do this?

Why don't do that? Well, maybe their brains don't have that capability of figuring out step by step what to do, or why don't they go be homeless in a place where there's nice weather? Maybe their brain doesn't conjure that sort of stuff up. But I was sitting there thinking that this woman in her mind, I mean, it was very painful. So I said, have you ever been to. Is there any support groups? I got to imagine there's some places to go to. And the only thing that I could think of is all the support. Support groups that are available for addiction, you know, and even if you're not an addict, there's all kinds of open meanings.

And so I started, you know, she.

Was raped repeatedly while she was a little girl. And she literally told me her whole story, and it was just heartbreaking. But it's also, almost everyone out on the street has those sort of stories, and there's millions of people with all of this stuff.

And I always go back to the starfish story.

There's many different ways that I've heard this story, story told. But the quick version is a man sees a little kid down at the ocean, bending over, throwing things in the water, gets close to him, and, you know, sees a little kid and, you know, says, son, what are you doing? The little kid's like, well, I'm throwing starfish that have washed up on the shore into the ocean. He's like, well, you know, son, there's, you know, thousands of starfish on the ocean, and they're all going to die. You can't throw them on the ocean. He's like, what difference do you think you can make? And the little kid reaches down, picks a up a starfish, throws it into the ocean. He's like, well, it made a difference for that one and it's like that one, just one sort of difference. And I sit like I'm sitting there talking to this person saying, what can I possibly do? I can give her some money, which I did. But at the end of the day, it doesn't solve the thing. And I'm like, how do you literally make a really sort of lasting impact to someone? And the fact is you can always, you know, unless. But what you can do is a little bit. And so I, she, I looked up online because I asked her if she had a cell phone. She had an old Motorola cell phone, flip phone. She couldn't even go online and look at things. And she has to pay. She has to get enough money from literally panhandling in order to be able to pay this bill. Someone had given her the phone, she had told me. And I went into a Bank of America, which was like a few doors down, went and wrote on because I didn't have a pen and paper on me. And I looked up on my phone different coda meetings, like Co dependence Anonymous emotions Anonymous open meetings where someone doesn't even need to be an addict, I wanted to try to say. And I wrote the addresses down. I found some. And I gave her three different addresses and I found three different women that are in support groups that would just take four phone calls. And I wrote all this down and gave it to her and I left. And, you know, and I don't know if she'll call those people. I don't know if she'll be able to go to the meetings. But I was just sitting there going, you know, the interesting thing is that I've seen videos online where some like, well, to do person will dress up like a homeless person, lay down on the ground, and then no one, like for hours will film it. And you might have a couple of people that will go up to them and, you know, see if they need anything. But then if you take a guy in a suit that looks clean and lay that same person down in the middle of New York City, all kinds of people walk up. And it's just how we become numb to other people's pain is almost.

They're like invisible.

And it's like, fuck, you know, what do you do about that sort of stuff? And so those are the things that bother me. Those are the things that keep me up at night. And so with things like Joe Volunteer, which has been started by a guy named Chip Franks in Killian, Texas, which is like Uber for volunteers, I'm like, that's how I want to be a catalyst to that sort of stuff. So we can maybe shift. You know, if Joe Volunteer was in play, there's a ton of people that would go out and help those sort of people. You know, recovery centers, animal shelters, assisted living homes where people have to sit alone. And so I want to bring this back to, you know, I look at a guy like you, and I won't go into this whole story, but I had someone call me last night that I shared with you earlier that had started drinking again. That was. And I sent her one of your videos because it was fresh in my mind. And I just saw you last night, and you just drip hope on the people. You give them inspiration, and it's really powerful.

And I think that's why you're blowing up right now.

I think that's why. And I actually think you are a guy that will not only inspire people, help them make decisions in careers, jobs, relationships, family, like you say, you know, love people from a distance, even if you can't be close to them. But I also believe you're a guy that can save lives. I believe your message can get people to do things they typically would not do because you have this great ability to instill hope, and you make it available to people for free.

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