The Hidden Mental Health Crisis Destroying Men Over 50 Feat. Les Brown and Chris Doyle

What advice would you give to someone that is struggling with addiction? Because I know in your book, you don't say that, you don't tell people this is the path to do it.

I mean, everyone—

Because what I did, I don't suggest that to anybody. Everybody can't do what I did.

Yeah.

Okay.

I went to something that I was told. How many of you speakers? Raise your hands, please. Speakers? How many of you are coaches? Okay. What we do is when we speak as speakers, as coaches, as entrepreneurs, the people that are with us, they all have stories in their head that they got from life. My favorite book says, "Be ye not conformed to this world, be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind." When Dr. Alfred Goldson came to me and said, "Les Brown?" I said, "Yes." "I've got some bad news." I said, "What is it?" He said, "Man," he said, "you got prostate cancer. Your PSA is 2,400." I said, "What does that mean?" "That means your prostate-specific antigen, 1 to 4 is normal." And I asked, I said, "Is there anything else?" He said, "Yeah." "What?" "It's metastasized to 7 areas of your body." I said, "Wow!" He said, "Why are you smiling?" I said, "Man, 7 is my lucky number." He looked at his nurse. I said, "I was born February the 17th. I'm one of 7 children. Joshua marched around the walls of Jericho 7 times. Naaman dipped himself in the River Jordan 7 times." I said, "7 is my lucky number." And I asked, "Is there anything else?" He said, "Yes." And I said, "What is it?" He said, "You're ugly too." He said, "But you got this." You got this, Brown. Are you listening to me? He said, "I never tell my patients they're terminally ill. What I say is that my knowledge, my abilities, and my skills have terminated. I determine the diagnosis. You and God determine the prognosis. A fact is not a verdict. You got your work cut out for you." And I said, "Thank you." I want you to write this down. Distract, Dispute and Inspire. What he did was— Cancer. Yeah, yeah. Distract. Cancer is the most feared word in 7 different languages. So when someone is told, "You have cancer," the fear alone— there's a book called The Biology of Hope— that it compromises your immune system to protect you by 40%. So what he did was he distracted me from the fear. And when he made me laugh, when you laugh, and I use humor in my presentation because when people laugh, joke, they're not thinking and their hearts open. And then I come up back with something I want them to get in their heart. He said, "You're ugly too." And I started laughing, say, "Come on, that ain't funny." He said, "But you got this." 'You got this.' And I felt it in my heart. He said, 'A diagnosis is not a prognosis. No, this is no verdict. You and God got this.' And that's what we do when we distract them from the current story and speak affirmatively. You can make it through this. You dismantle their current belief system. You're now in their heart. And you inspire them to become, as Mother Teresa would say, a pencil in the hand of God and start writing a new chapter in their lives. And that was 39 years ago. That's why I got the Cancer Center's Award of America. Perseverance, 39 years, fourth stage cancer. Yes.

Yeah.

So when we speak the mindset, your mindset, the whole area of psychoneuroimmunology, the mindset, the biology of hope that Norman Cousins talked about, who was a physicist, and he saw old Groucho Marx movies and I Love Lucy and, and used humor to get through it. And so through your mindset, through changing your eating habits and decreasing the toxic negative people in your life, and things that's not in alignment with you being able to live a life of joy, harmony, and peace. That's very important. You have to begin to assess yourself and look at your life. And you have to say, who is it I can count on and who should I count out? And you're one of those people I call. I said, Joe Polish been through this. This is his passion. And then I went online. I started doing research. I wanted to find out. I told everybody, if you know somebody who died from prostate cancer, don't tell me. I'm not interested. I want to know who live. There's a song called, I Don't Want Nobody Bringing Me Any Bad News. I'm not being insensitive. I just don't need that in my consciousness. And so The— so I went online and saw this kid, Dr. Lee, starving cancer, and Chris beat cancer. And I started talking to people. A guy who is in, in my book that I talk about, who I went to meet him at his house, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and they, they said people die within 6 months, and it's been 8 years now. And I asked him, I said, "Man, why are you here?" He said 3 doctors told him to get his affairs in order. But there was a doctor he developed a relationship with. And I talk about this in the book. And he came in and he said, "This is for you." And he gave him a clock. It was wrapped up. And he unpackaged the gift, the clock. He said, "Man, there's no hands on this clock." He said, "I know." He said, "You have to determine how long you want to be here. That's your call. That's not us. That's you. You now have to take responsibility for what you want to do at this point. You can either surrender to what we have told you, and I'm saying to you that we are not experts. This is a practice because I got a stethoscope, and a white jacket just because I said or my partner said that you have a terminal illness does not mean that it's true. Life is a fight for territory, and once you stop fighting for what you want, what you don't want will automatically take over. You got a fight on your hands.

There is a point in time where, as you know, you've sat through with many people when life ends, it is time to let go, and that— do you have a fear of death?

No.

Here's— I'm not a religious person, I want to say, because I quote a lot of things from Bible everywhere.

The—

I'm not a religious person, but I'm a spiritual person. Religious people are afraid of going to hell. Spiritual people have been there. And hell to me To me, is what you experience when you die and you meet the person that you were supposed to become. That's why one of my mentees, Dr. Miles Monroe out of the Bahamas, who died in a plane crash, that we— and I give my speech, "Live full and die empty." He said the ideal situation for a man or woman to die, Howard Thurman, is to have family members praying with you as you're about to cross over. But he said, imagine, if you will, being on your deathbed. And standing around your bed, the ghost of the dreams, the ideas, the abilities, the talents, the gifts given to you by life, but you, for whatever reason, you never used those talents. You never tapped into those gifts. You never made that contribution. You never made the impact that you were chosen out of 400 million sperm to make. And there they are, standing around your bed, looking at you with large angry eyes saying, "We came to you, and only you could have given us life, and now we must die with you forever." I want all of you to say with me, live full.

Live full.

Say it again, live full.

Live full.

Die empty.

Die empty.

That's what the Genius Network is about. It's about robbing the cemetery of the gifts that you have in you. You are masterpiece because you're a piece of the master. You were born and preserved for such a time as this.

Do you know the origin of when that first started being used? I mean, and I'd like to get your perspective on the use of that term versus addiction because, you know, I work in the world of not just substance— substances, but also behaviors and processes. Addictions, which, you know, consist of workaholism and sex addiction and gambling and gaming and food and codependency and all of the other elements of things that they can manifest themselves into can't stop.

Right. Yeah. Substance use disorder, I believe, first came into effect with the DSM-IV, the Diagnostic Statistics Manual, the fourth version. And they they looked for 11 criteria. And, and what they did was instead of saying it's kind of like an either-or, pass/fail, you're an addict or you're not kind of thing, it became, uh, let's take a look at substance use disorder in a way of mild, moderate, or severe. So if you had 2 or 3 of these criteria, you're mild. 4 or 5, moderate. More than that, severe. Um, I think that it's, it's, you know, kind of like a helpful perspective shift, but at the same time it, it does miss a bit of, you know, it misses the can't stop feature of what's happening when the person is not on substances. And of course, the DSM is, is used for insurance purposes. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's billing codes, right? And so it becomes like doctrine for what our treatment model looks like. What they're, what they're hoping to see is if we don't meet these criteria in a year's time, great. And it's not necessarily, uh, really addressing the, the addictive kind of idea, right? There's— you can make an argument if you felt like it where substance use disorder does not necessarily translate to what most people's, you know, some people's definition of what addiction really looks like. Um, But it's still, it's helpful in the sense of just knowing that, you know, people with it still, the people with it don't believe they have it.

Yeah.

Right. 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 of this video, or you can simply go to joesfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

Uh, so the term dry drunk, I'd love to get your perspective on that because it doesn't just apply to drinking. I know a lot of, uh, you know, to use that term dry drunk, there's a lot of people out there. Um, I, I've always liked, uh, uh, Stage 2 Recovery by Ernie Larson, written years ago, where stage, you know, 1 recovery is get sober, stop the drinking or the drugs. Stage 2 is dealing with underlying issues that cause you to drink or drug in the first place, which is mostly the ability to have relationships with others and relationships with yourself and to be, you know, in the world and feel okay in the world and not littered with shame and guilt and craving and white knuckling and challenges and anger and all of the other things that come with it. So there's a lot of people that are quote unquote sober, but I would not say their lives are working all that well. And there's a lot of people that quit drinking, but they, You know, there's all kinds of other behaviors that show up that weren't there when they were drinking because they replaced the drinking with something else. And there is this idea of, I got to replace my addiction with whatever. And people will try to come up with positive addictions, which I've never really liked associating the word addiction with anything in a positive way. Although I cannot tell you, not a day goes by where I don't have someone going, "Yeah, I'm addicted to my taking care of my children. I'm addicted to exercise in a good way. I'm addicted to, you know, positive thinking." And I'm like, "Okay, I kind of know what you're kind of saying, but, you know, I view addiction to suffering." So, I don't really buy the whole positive suffering aspect is the way my brain looks at it. So, I want to get your views on that, dry drunks, people that are sober, they're not consuming the substances, but they certainly still have a very difficult, you know, life.

Yeah. So I mean, by definition, right, like there's a difference between sobriety and abstinence. And so dry drunk, I've known a lot of them and I've been one of them at various different times. And, you know, I think that if I were, if I were going to personalize the question, From the ages of— from, from 17 to 23, I was mostly sober. I had half a dozen relapses over that period of time. And of course, from my parents' perspective and the people who love and care about me, they would have liked to have not been on that roller coaster, right? They would have liked to— I got sober at 17 and I stayed sober, and that would have been the end of it. And of course, that would have been lovely. But grand total, if you looked at— and so this is like on a long enough time horizon, and this kind of answers the question of, of, you know, well, we tried that and it didn't work, we sent him to rehab and it didn't work, you know, he went to meetings, he tried that, he says it doesn't work for him— on a long enough time horizon, right, from 17 to 23, I was mostly sober. I mean, in combined total, all of the relapses were less than a year's worth of actual substance use. And while my addiction, the active use, it got much worse and much like it was severe. And, you know, like, I don't wish anybody to have to go through that. You know, like, towards the end it was, you know, I had almost, you know, 42 straight days of drinking and, and, you know, drug use like every single day. Um, it certainly didn't start out that way. And so there's your progression of, of how bad it can get. Um, but I needed every bit of the help that I received over that 6-year period. And, and so while I was a dry drunk for, you know, probably half that time, because I was— I never faced the causes and conditions, I never faced the traumatic instances, I never faced the pain and, you know, all of those things that were kind of driving, um, driving the addictive behavior, right? Um, As you say, and as we say a lot, right, like the addiction is not the problem, it's the, it's the indication that there is a problem, right? The substance use is the solution for the problem. The problem needs to get addressed. And if somebody wants to, you know, convey that as, and so now I'm addicted to something else, well, does that, does that address that core problem or not? Does going to the gym address the you know, the core trauma maybe that was fueling your addiction, or is that just something that makes it feel better? You know, what we want to do is really address it so that you're making the need for a solution obsolete. It's now you're just living a sober lifestyle because you appreciate it and you're not insane anymore. I'm not, I'm not crazy enough today to believe the thought that if I have one drink, it's just going to be one drink and it'll take the edge off. If that thought comes to mind, that's as crazy as the thought of, you know, when I, when I look over the edge of a building and, you know, and a little voice in my head says jump. Well, I've never done it. I've never actually jumped anytime I've ever looked down from a height. But even if my brain says it— but there used to be a time I was so insane that if my brain said drink or get high, I would just do that instantaneously because the thought came to mind, right? Now, now I'm sober, and if the thought comes to mind, it's just like any old thought. It just comes and it goes. And, and, and that's what recovery is like for me, because I've actually addressed those core issues, because I actually am, uh, in a deeper way, I've experiencing sobriety on a daily basis, not just abstinent, not just dry, not just white-knuckling it, but sober today.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video, and I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out, and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description, or you can wait till the end of this video, or you can simply go to joesfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

I like it.

Now, there's, there's some really great insight into everything that you just shared, and I One thing I want to highlight is that every step of the way it was important. Let me say it in a way, because I hear this, as do you, all the time. We've tried this and it doesn't work. And they think it's like was all wasted. And, and I could understand how people would feel very frustrated and very hopeless in situations, especially families that have exhausted all their financial means trying to get a family member sober. And they're still in the soup of chaos, right? And that's a very difficult thing to come to grips with. And I will say, speaking from my own experience, it took me years. The drugs and alcohol, although I was so bad that I easily could have died. I mean, I was a wreck. I was an absolute wreck when I was a drug addict. And when I got sober from doing drugs, I still drank for periods of time, you know, and even to this day, I've never considered myself, quote unquote, an alcoholic. And I will say, any time I was acting out sexually, workaholism, any time that alcohol was introduced into the mix, it made it a hell of a lot easier, you know, to, to do all the other stuff. And getting sober from the drugs and the alcohol was one thing, but then the sexual trauma from the abuse as a child was the really core addiction for me. And it was years, and it wasn't really until I had done so many meetings, so much therapy, inpatient treatment, plant medicines where the grip where the periods of time just started getting longer and longer and longer. And the white knuckling that pretty much was most of my early adult life, later all the way up into my mid-40s, because I'm 56 years old now, where it just really had a grip on me. And there would be moments and times and months at a time, but it would just something would come back. And then finally, you know, I, I just started realizing, wow, I, I've gone a really long time. And then a year goes by and then 2 years and 7 years, you know, and now it's a different ballgame. Right. And all that being said, had I not done all this other stuff before, every little thing that I did was a domino, every little bit. And And I'll give an example. So there was a period of time where I was going to meetings and I was going for sex addiction, Sex Addicts Anonymous. And they had a brown paper bag, which was like a 12-step sort of newsletter. And I remember reading something in there that said the line, you're not here in meetings, you're not here for where you've been, you're here for where you want to go. And I didn't get to where I wanted to go for years, you know, after I had read that. But I always kept that in my mind. So every time I was like, it's going to be a waste. I've been there, done that before. I would always remember, I'm not going to the therapist. I'm not doing this thing because of where I've been. I'm doing it for where I want to go. And I always wanted to go to a place that was not mired in addiction. I just wanted to go to a place of being connected. And that one line I held with me for years. And it just, now if I would've said it was a total waste, you know, I've obviously, I've acted out, I have challenges, then, you know, I could have easily given up. And believe me, there's a million times that I wanted to give up. And there are times where I gave up in the moment, just said, okay, I succumbed to it. I can't control it. Can't stop, you know, just like, you know, every addict understands what I'm saying here. For non-addicts or people that don't realize they're an addict or they're trying to help an addict, all the things you're doing is not for where they've been, it's where you want them to go and where they ultimately want to go.

Let me ask you guys something, because this is what's kind of going through my head at the moment, and this may sound a little weird. What I'm noticing already, I like it already. Yeah, like the setup here, a little cliffhanger. Um, so when you think of the, the term Meant for More, if you just think of more, if you look at meant, meaning, what you're trying to do, the people that seem to be engaged are engaged in something, and it's usually right now of service or helping or art or creativity or exercise or some entrepreneurial endeavors, some pursuit of something that they are trying to master, having to handle something that they didn't handle before and now, all of a sudden, either by volunteering of their own choice or being forced into it, people are either pushed into, like to use my buddy Steven Pressfield who wrote the book The War of Art, you know, resistance. Whenever you're hit, you know, it doesn't take an enormous amount of effort to do something that's that's a lower-level activity.

But if you're going to pursue a 12-step program, write a book, start an entrepreneurial enterprise, start a yoga practice, you're going to get hit with resistance. And I think right now—

Pants, right?

What's that?

Wear pants.

Exactly.

Exactly.

You know, these higher consciousness activities like putting on pants every day. And so, I spent about an hour and a half last night talking to Jay Abraham. And I said, you know, the opening of the documentary that one of my clients put together for me, which is my movie Connected, which is the Joe Polish story.

It's not even out yet, but people can watch the trailer at connectedthemovie.com.

And one of the first things I say at the beginning of the movie is this Charles Bukowski, the crazy alcoholic poet who was a brilliant writer, he said, it was along the lines of, "Take the writer away from the typewriter and all you have left is a sickness which started him writing in the first place." And it's kind of an interesting thing because I tend to apply that to entrepreneurs. Take the entrepreneur away from business and all you have left is a sickness which got them them starting a business in the first place. Now, saying it in a way of like, we are all spending our ambitions on something. Personally, I think the reason you're enthusiastic right now, Lisa, is because you have a book. You have something to put your energy towards. And when people don't have anything to put their energy towards, a relationship, a purpose, or even how do I deal with being alone, like utterly alone, right? Like, I don't have family. I don't have a partner. I'm single right now, right? And it's interesting that I'm alone and I'm a guy who's, you know, openly been in recovery for many, many years and I feel pretty good right now. I mean, I don't feel great, but I feel pretty good. And I spend a lot of my day talking to people that struggle with addictions. I mean, several hours a day I'm interacting or engaging with people that are struggling with addiction and seeing people losing their shit and really, you know, which I've talked about, there's a couple friends, you know, that I have, have had partners that have tried to commit suicide in the last, now, 3 weeks now. And what I'm noticing is the people that actually can find a place to— everyone's been uprooted, and if you can put your roots into a pot that feels like there's something there, then there's a semblance of you have some ability to manage or control your life even with the difficulty. But if people are just running around like raw nerve endings and they don't know where to go, they're kind of losing it. And I think there's a lot to be said without overstating it that if you're meant for more and you sat down and say, what am I meant for? Or if I was meant for more, what would that be? And you use like our friend Keith Cunningham's thinking time exercise. And if everyone got like a notepad, not even a computer, a piece of paper, and said, what am I meant for? What do I really feel like I'm put on this planet? And just brainstorm and pick something, especially if you're like, what do I do? I don't know what to do. I don't know where to turn. You know, who are you meant for? You know, to use the Dan Sullivan thing, who do you want to be a hero to? Some people think, oh, I should be in this business or I should be doing this, but going back to like, you know, the 8 profit activators which me and Dean have been, you know, for over a decade now doing I Love Marketing episodes, you know, we have these 8 profit activators that are all based on something that Dean created, the before unit, the during unit, and the after unit of a business. That the first thing is select a single target market. And if you can't figure out what to do, then the question is, well, who do you want to be a hero to? Who's that target market? What do they want? What are they looking for? Because, you know, you've constructed a whole methodology and a system on how to sell that. If people can't bring themselves out of that resistance though, they just are— they're running around like in their head with like, what the hell do I do? And so I think there's a deeper conversation with when you're worried, when you're scared, when you're fearful, when you're confused, how do you actually find confidence or courage or strength in all of it in order to still forge ahead when things seem insurmountable? And I'd almost like to hear your guys's perspective on that, because the people that already have a business, that already know what they're selling, yeah, they're having to pivot. Everyone's hearing everyone talk about pivot. But the people out there that are fucking lost, like, they're really fucking lost. And if we could just give them a lighthouse, you know, to use our Fred Abbey, she was talking about, like, what would that be? I'd love to hear you guys talk about that because that, in, in, if you think of MET for more, that is, that's what it's all about. I think we're all engaged in doing this because we have ambitions. We, we're able to do something and we've, we've been able to reach out, but I think a lot of people are stuck right now. And I'd like to help them through that stuckness to whatever degree we can do that on an I Love Marketing podcast.

Well, you know, there's so many different frameworks people can choose from, and I think sometimes there's just a divine appointment of the one that gets put in your face when you're in the need, right? Right. You know, I'm certainly lit up with, because I have a book to bring out, but I'm more lit up because inside it is like what you're saying. It's a place to start. I think people have the feeling, but they don't know what to do with it. I want to help more. I want to take this thing that maybe I've helped some people in my inner circle and help people beyond. I want to be a hero to not just my kids, but all kids dealing with XYZ, or, you know, women or families or, you know, people in financial distress.

For people that are conditioned with self-talk that is extraordinarily negative or destructive, and I I say this from experience. Being an addict, you usually don't wake up in the morning feeling very serene and very peaceful and very harmonious. You're seeking chaos. Addicts have, as the Guns N' Roses first album, Appetite for Destruction, there are some entrepreneurs that are just very destructive. There's a lot of unwinding and unlearning. I think unlearning is more important than learning. And so recommendations for reconditioning yourself to not be a blamer, a criticizer.

Yeah, stop doing it.

We should maybe just, what's that Bob Newhart, stop it?

Yeah, stop it.

You ever seen that video? Stop it.

Yeah, stop it, it's quite funny.

Yeah.

Well.

No, no, I mean, I, I don't have an office, so at our two headquarters, we have a Toronto headquarters and a Chicago headquarters, and I just have a table. We have a café, and the one in Toronto, we have about 50 seats in the café, and I just sit, I'm there all day, and people are coming in and out, and I'm talking to them, but I have lunch sometimes with clients who are in for a special, So we have special one-day programs that are quite a deep dive, and one of them is unique ability. And there was a woman there from Georgia, and she said, you know, I'm just so hard on myself. And I said, well, stop doing that. And then she'd go on, and then she'd say, yeah, I just can't find really good people. I, you know, I'm always dissatisfied with the people around me. I said, well, stop doing that. And she brought up about 5 things in a row, and I said, well, stop doing that. I said, the reason why you have these thoughts and your behavior is because you continue doing it, and after today, just stop doing it. Just don't do it anymore. And, you know, it seems really funny, but it strikes me from the movie, your documentary. By the way, I can picture a situation in the future where we're all gathered here and everybody in the room has documentary video of themselves by Nick Nanton. You know, we— it's actually a goal of mine to get even 10 more people after you and David Berg and Nick actually threw in. And Devang, by the way, who— first of all, I'd like to give another hand to Devang because I thought that—

where is he?

Yeah, but Devang Devang, since he's come into 10x10 program, has gone at least 25 times. He's gone, you know, in about 6 or 7 years. So Devang is real, he's a real player. But what I got, and Nick really caught it last night, was that you were deep into your drug throws, and you know, you had your all-time, that was like a 6-star day, the things that you did on that one day. And then you stopped it.

You just stopped.

You just stopped. And then you haven't done it again for 30 years. So stopping things is an incredible ability, you know.

Well, and the thing with recovery, I do it with a lot of support and a lot of rituals and a lot of practices. And I believe that, you know, when just— and I'll say this in a way to so it is applicable to everyone's life here, is in recovery, anything you put ahead of your recovery, you're gonna lose. So if someone is an addict and you put your business ahead of your recovery, you're gonna lose your sobriety, you're gonna lose your recovery. If you put your relationship, if you put your kids ahead of it, you will lose your kids, you will, at the worst stages. And that's a really hard concept to take something like that that's so important and make it your number one thing. And so I see people that are very functional addicts. Like there are several people in this room that are incredibly functional addicts that don't see it easily. I mean, they may know it, but there's a real, there's a really hardcore, like industrial band.

Anyone ever remember the band Big Black?

Anyone in the room ever heard of Big Black?

A couple people?

Yeah, like hardcore band.

And there's a song called "Bad Houses," and there's a lyric in the song that says, "I tell myself I will not go even as I drive there." And so if you have that compulsion, "I'm not going to be online past 10 at night," and you're online past 10 at night, or, "I'm not going to, you know, I'm not going to do this thing. I'm not going to." have that second drink, but you have the third drink and the fourth drink. You know, if you have any of that, I tell myself I will not go even as I drive there, and that compulsion, and you can't seem to stop it. Well, create the environment, you know. So let's take your office concept because this applies. So you have a no-office concept for me, for you.

Yeah.

And you've— and, and not saying that everyone should do this, however, I've heard dozens of people throughout the years, they're like You know, I gave up my office and man, I'm just way more functional because as you talk about, offices can often be places where entrepreneurs go to escape real work.

Well, they go to hide from opportunity. Most people's offices, you walk in, they go in there, they're hiding from opportunity. Nothing useful can come when they go into their office. They don't make their money in their office. Yeah, they make their money through creation. Creativity and relationship and network, but they go to their office and I think it's a carryover. They want to see themselves as CEOs because CEOs have offices, but that's not the world that we live in. We live in the world of taking resources from a lower level of productivity to a higher level of productivity. Do you need an office for that? I don't think so.

Right.

Yeah.

So I just haven't had an office for 25 years.

You know.

First of all, it's a messy office if I have an office. And, you know, I've seen some people who are actually really good at office, but I haven't found many of them in the entrepreneurial world.

Yeah, that's great.

The adrenal reset diet, what does that even mean? What does it— what does adrenal mean?

What's—

what is that?

Because I don't think the average person understands that.

Yeah, our body has little glands that control whether we're burning or storing. You know, quite simply. And a lot of our strategies to make us lose weight are strategies that make us more apt to store weight.

Right.

So I talk about how you can go out from storing and towards burning. And so it's a big global catastrophe that we're facing.

Yeah.

Okay, so I've got a whole list of questions here that I'd like—

I mean, we could, we could talk for a week. But so the rates of obesity are growing, like, dramatically. What are some of the latest projections of kind of where we're at?

You know, it's pretty terrifying stuff. One stat that I read recently showed that in the next little over a decade, we're looking at two-thirds, 67%, of people on the globe being overweight, obese, or morbidly obese. So globally, the numbers of deaths we're projecting— so go back to like 1800, all the wars all around the world since 1800, so World War I, World War II, Vietnam, Korea, and not just our wars but all the others. So all those casualties together, we're talking about more than that in the coming decade from complications of obesity. And we're talking about roughly 10 times the cost of all those wars since 1800.

Why?

That's it. So the old model is people are lazy and they eat too much. That's what we're being taught and told. And it's so disconnected from reality. You know, to see the rates go up stratospherically in the course of a decade. So one thing we see is that animals—so chimps, when their food is controlled, they're getting obese, even on controlled diets. So it's not behavior and lifestyle. There's a collective number of factors that push us into the storage state. And our body is getting geared up for famine. You know, we have these mechanisms that allowed us to survive famine in the past. And now a whole lot of things push those buttons and we're storing all of our food as fat.

Yeah, and what— like, and you get right into it immediately in the beginning of your book where you talk about stress, you talk about toxins, you talk about all of these other factors that I never really quite considered had that much of an impact on people's weight.

You know, I have a friend—

I won't name his name— where he— and I've known him for probably 15 years. And without changing his diet, when this guy would go through a breakup of a relationship or go through stressful situations, he would literally just gain weight. And whenever things would— and he's like kind of a roller coaster sort of lifestyle, you know. I mean, he would have lots of ups and downs. And it was amazing. And I'm not talking just like 5 or 10 pounds. I mean, he would literally fluctuate 30, 40 pounds. And then things, you know, he would start meditating and he would like lose 20 pounds. And he would swear that he, you know, he wasn't— he could not figure it out. But then he identified a few years ago that it was totally based on stress level. And so now one of his maintenance things is keeping himself not freaking getting completely stressed out. Or, you know, because if you're not sleeping, all these sort of things.

So, you know, way, way back when, stress meant danger and danger meant predators. And predators would go after us when they had fewer food options. So that meant food scarcity. So stress equals famine to our bodies, and famine means we prepare, we hold on to it. So his body was not under physical danger, but the mental emotional stress, which can be part of that for sure, that triggered the same thing that danger would, and his body went into a storage mode because of it.

And I'm not even sure where I first read this, But it's like people would make the analogy, well, you know, we're so much safer and we got all these luxuries that we never had before. The difference though is it's just nonstop, you know, the interconnectivity. Whereas if you're chased by a lion, you know, hundreds of years ago, you know, when you're done, you know, you survive, you're bored for a while, you're safe, right? Exactly. Whereas in modern society, if you have like anxiety going on, it could just be constant from the moment you wake up to your inability to sleep and all these sort of things. So let me, without going too deep into that, how much do genes control our body weight?

And what is a gene?

I mean, I'm gonna ask you some very basic sort of things because I want people to, you know, you hear about all these things, but like, what does it actually mean?

You know, you know, many who have struggled have been told that it's genetic, that their weight is genetic. Genes to our body are what a blueprint is to a building. So a gene is a set of instructions that tells us how we're going to grow. So you see a set of identical twins, and they share the same genes, they've got the same eye color and a lot of the same health habits. They've been studied. So if twins are raised separately, their body weight has no relationship whatsoever. There's like no correlation. And they've shown that the difference in weight from one twin to another is predictable based upon the adrenal hormones. So the more one twin has adrenal hormone stress, the more that twin will gain weight. So we're often told that weight gain is genetic, and it is true that there is susceptibility among certain family members we see, but now we know it's not because of the genes. And the positive side of that is that means it's not inevitable, that it can change and it can improve.

Okay, so if I see some people— like, let's have— I have a lot of female friends, and some, like, just don't eat very— and I know skinny fat. I mean, so there's some people that are not healthy, but they look good, and there's others that just exercise and work out and they still have trouble losing weight. And so the best of my layman's understanding is, oh, it's genetics, you know, this person just has sort of this thing and this person does not. To what degree are some people just born a certain way where they can eat whatever they want and they maintain a certain level of thinness and other people do not? What is that all about?

Well, there, there are vanishingly small species. Current stats tell us that— you brought up skinny fat, which is a good concept. There are those to where their scale weight may be good, but they do not have enough muscle tissue. So they're okay weight, but just not lean enough, not enough lean mass. So if you take them out and you take out those who are overweight or obese, the remaining percent of the population is about 11%. So about 11% of the people right now have good body composition. So there's not many, and they are dwindling very rapidly. Wow.

Okay, so now one of the things you talk about is how do you— why do you argue that calories do not explain weight gain? Because there's been this for years, you know, calories in, calories out. Yeah. Explain what is a calorie, and then how does that, you know, relate to weight gain or weight loss or whatever?

You know, it makes me nuts, and that is one of the biggest public policy statements is that it's just, you know, eat this, not that, move more, you know, change the calorie equation. So a calorie is a unit of fuel. So you've got like a gallon of gas as a unit of fuel. So a calorie is how much metabolic energy food would release if you burned it in a test tube. Now, they've argued at the level of public health that weight gain is from people consuming more calories. And then the solution based on that is eat fewer calories. And I think about that, well, let's go to football. So I'm not a big sports expert, I'll put that out there.

And same, same with me. Okay, good.

So I won't have to be embarrassed. So let's say that we're doing a post-game analysis and the Cowboys just crushed it, they won the Super Bowl, and someone wants to know from the big commentator, well, why did the Cowboys win? Oh, here we go. The Cowboys won the game because they scored 30 more points than their opponent. Well, duh, you know, that's— so there's a description, but that's not an explanation. And that wouldn't be a strategy. You couldn't say, "Hey guys, next year let's score more points. We could win that way." So at best, that's all the calorie model is. It's just describing events, but with— It doesn't explain it. It doesn't explain it at all. And not only that, but it doesn't work.

So can you explain it?

Sure. It's this storage response. The body goes into a storage mode. And you mentioned about the very real powerful mental emotional stress, and that's big. But a lot of the other factors that are invisible do the same thing. So we could breathe in, we could breathe in plastic residues. And the same thing, like, like your friend when he would go through a breakup or a crisis and how his health would change from that, the same stuff can happen to you from breathing in byproducts from plastic. The same things that would happen under a crisis. Or you can spend more time around electromagnetic fields. You know, we're carrying our devices all the time. Right. That's just like the breakup and the crisis. Or we can have the fact that a third more people than ever before do shift work. You know, they're not sleeping at regular times. That's just like the stress. That's just like the crisis.

Did you say a third more actually do that?

Starting in 1980, it went up by about a third. Really?

In the U.S. or is this worldwide?

Globally. Wow. You know, the global economy, we're working on each other's schedules.

Yeah, interesting. Yeah, because I mean, sleep—

well, let's talk about something like sleep.

I mean, you know, I'll throw that in here. I guess you could— I can zig and zag here a little bit, but like, you know, how much does sleep affect things?

That's a factor. And somewhere around 1980, 1990, things shifted that causes radical— that caused radical weight gain. And we've seen that sleep can be a stronger predictor of weight than diet or exercise can. So the old model of it being behavior, habit, calories, sleep doesn't make sense on that. You know, if you sleep more, you're actually burning fewer calories. But the data is strong that good deep sleep rhythms are helpful, and they help because they reset the adrenal response and move us out of that storage state.

Yeah, yeah, okay. So, you know, the— one of the questions I have here is that experts say that weight gain is a result of poor habits. How does habits relate to this? Because I'm of the mindset that much of any sort of indulgence is addiction, and there the brain gets hijacked. And there's— and I know a lot about behavioral addiction, sex addiction, gambling addiction, food addiction. And when I say a lot, I mean I've done quite a a few interviews with people on behavioral addictions versus chemical and drug addictions. And I used to be a drug addict. I won't go into my whole story here, but I've talked about that. When I was 18 years old, I used to freebase cocaine. I was, you know, a drug addict. And I'm a big admirer of 12-step groups and recovery and all that. That being said, you know, there's a difference between habits and just flat-out addiction. You know, habits, I think everyone has develop good habits even if the consequences of their habits are very poor. If someone wakes up every day and eats an Egg McMuffin and doesn't exercise and smokes a cigarette, they've developed really good habits of waking up and eating poorly and doing that. But that's used to shame people and guilt people.

What's your take on it? Well, yeah, it shames, it guilts, it raises the stress load, and it's not a rational solution. So habits imply imply willpower and they imply intent. You know, they imply that we've got a choice to eat this or that or move or not move. There's some conscious intent behind that. This model, this idea totally breaks down when we look at the fact that infants and toddlers are getting obese and morbidly obese at unprecedented rates.

And you even talk about animals.

And animals. So from 1990 to 2000, about 20,000 1,000 separate animals were tracked, representing dozens of different species and many different habitats. Every single animal tracked was found to have unprecedented weight gain over that time frame. Now, some people say, "Oh, well, people feed their pets too much." Well, okay, we'll dismiss that. And some could say, "Well, wild animals eat scraps from humans." We could dismiss that too. But many examples were animals on controlled diets. So their food was measured, their food was unchanged. Their activity was monitored. Their activity was controlled. Chimps, between that time frame, our second closest genetic relative, they gained roughly 30% body weight per decade. Two decades back to back on controlled environments. So once you see that, the whole idea about willpower, habit indulgence, no, it just doesn't fit anymore.

Right. So what is causing that?

There's a collective higher number of factors that push our bodies to the storage state and make us hold on to things. There's actually a clock. So this is, this is crazy, but belly fat, the stuff around our organs, is very different than the subcutaneous fat below our skin. And every part of your body has a clock. There's rhythms, there's timing to it. Like you're asleep versus awake, it's obviously very different. So you can pull out someone's belly fat and you can You can keep it alive in a dish, provided you've got the right ingredients, it'll survive for a little while. That's exciting. And you can watch its clock. You can measure the activity of its biological rhythm. The more visceral fat someone's carrying, the greater degree that their clock is out of rhythm with their body's central clock, which the adrenal glands control. So when this regulation is off, the body is storing and holding onto things. And it's not a matter of starving it, it's a matter of resetting it and recalibrating its timing.

What do you think defines a great life and what are some of the action steps that someone listening to this today can do to start creating that? Although you've talked about some, anything else you can?

Well, you know, I think the great thing about being human is you get to define life on your own terms. One thing I found is, you know, the world sells us this, illusion that if we have all these external toys and things, we're gonna find happiness. And I've never found that to be the case. Sure, it does create— there's a difference between enduring happiness and fleeting pleasure. Right. Okay, so driving a great car and the hotel room and the nice house, it makes— well, come on, it makes you feel better. Yeah. Would you rather eat beautifully prepared food or fast food? Yeah, exactly. Would you rather be at the back of the plane or at the front of the plane where you We can sleep better, et cetera, et cetera. Of course. So enjoy the journey, but let's not make those things our gods. Let's make those things— allow those things to serve us. And so to answer the question, I would say define life according to your measures of success. But it really is things, I believe, like expressing your power, doing work you find meaningful regardless of what the world thinks, finding people around you who love you, Enjoying nature, serving people, being a good human being. Yeah.

Well, so along those lines, I mean, I love nice things. I think money allows me to buy freedoms that lack of money does not allow. And if you have enough money to solve the problem, you don't have a problem, as Dan Sullivan says. So there are things where I'd love the ability to build a business and do things that allow me to do that. Or the things that, like you said, to have things that serve you versus own you. 'Cause with a lot of stuff, one of the things I realized in this long home remodel that you're aware of that I've been going through is that a lot of the possessions, you don't own them, they own you. And so part, having things set up in my life to where I actually can benefit from it. And there's so much, I think, pain that comes from the pursuit of external stuff. But I've sometimes been the happiest in my life just sitting down meditating, not even thinking about anything, just keeping things really simple. I can't even remember the leader's name in Vietnam. I went to Vietnam in 2009, had a vacation there, fascinating. And they had the big— for lack of— this will show my lack of extensive world knowledge but the equivalent of the White House in Vietnam, whatever the building was called, the leader, he actually, during the Vietnam War, one of the leaders, he actually didn't stay in the house that was for him, stayed in this little guest house that had one bedroom and a table where he ate, and it allowed him to try to do the best job he could to lead his country out of war during that time because it was so, he just didn't want the distractions. Of all that stuff.

You know, I just love what you're saying because one of my friends is a venture capitalist and this might sound obvious but he said the thing about homes, they break. Things break. Now that's really actually very profound because all these people, "Oh, I wish I had 5 homes." You know the stress involved in having multiple homes? Right. The stress involved in having airplanes, the stress involved with even having different cars, they break, take And so you're right, you add on these layers of complexity and they make your life less free than more free. Mahatma Gandhi, one of the greatest human beings to walk the planet. You know what he died with? A stopwatch, a holy book, his loincloth, his spinning wheel, and I think— Yeah, yeah, 10 possessions. Oh, and sandals and a few other things. Mother Teresa, I was at her— where she died, or the room she died. In, um, or where she lived in South— in Calcutta, all there was was a bed and a desk, which is the difference between external power and internal power.

Yeah, totally. And there's, there's so much to be said with just looking at that. Yeah, that's amazing.

People that want to grow but they're not willing to put any— you know, the whole metaphor, you know, you want heat but you're not willing to put any logs into the fire, uh, those are the people that I know if, if they're really cheap You know, if they want to invest in themselves, it's not worth investing any time or energy with them. So I— if someone's broke and but I see the passion there and I see that they're trying to do something, they're— and they're— they have the entrepreneurial attitude that Dan talks about, you know, no entitlement. And, uh, you know, they're— they're not— nothing comes to them without creating value for someone first. If they exhibit those and they're young and they're just starting out, I'm just motivated to, you know, to spend time with those people because that to me is encouraging. So let me give you a couple rapid-fire things and then we'll wrap up here. A couple of, um, so since you sort of mentioned it earlier, Dan, with mindset, uh, how can someone best prepare to be an entrepreneur and build the right business? I mean, meaning, uh, you know, you're either an entrepreneur or you're not, but as they're starting in this venture anything that you've not said on how to best prepare them in going into the right thing?

What could you say to that? Yeah, it's an interesting thing. And I've, you know, talking about mindsets, I find that when you have time on your own, what you daydream about is really the key to, you know, there's some part of your brain that you're just going back over and over again. And it usually has several qualities. One is that it's unique in the sense that it doesn't exist yet. You know, it doesn't exist. You're thinking about a solution, you're thinking about an innovation, and your daydreams are really, really key here. And I've always dreamed about, you know, from a kid, you know, childhood, teenage years, early 20s, I always dreamed that the best source of education should be your own experience. Okay? And that was always with me as a kid. I, you know, I went to school. I went to school because, you know, I— everybody went to school. But I had another track that I was working on all the time. And Your other track that you're always working on is what makes you kind of antisocial because when you're not doing what you have to do, you're doing what you want. Okay? You're doing what you want. And so I will always ask people, what do you daydream about? You know, what are your fantasies about? You know, that where you're performing bigger, where you're performing better, that you have the right circumstances. And that really— and some people said, well, I don't have those kind of daydreams. And I said, well, that tells me something. Most people have status daydreams, that they're in the right status, their thing. But some people have transformation daydreams. And I think it's 4%. I have zero status daydreams. I've never had any status daydreams. And it disappoints me badly. When I have an entrepreneur who's very ambitious that all of a sudden reaches their status symbols and they stop growing. And I can spot them early now. You know, I used to, you know, really encourage people and then they just stopped and they wanted a certain kind of house. They wanted to belong to the right club. They wanted their kids to go to the right schools, you know, and it's a deficiency type of goal. You're making up for some sort of deficiency in your life. So, I always look for people who have some magical process in their head and they work on for years and years and years. And, you know, I never really got a handle on who I was going to be probably until I was about 40. You know, I was probably 40 before I got, you know, all the steps. And I needed partner. The one thing is I have to have a partner and Babs was my partner. But it's an interesting thing. And I will tell you this, I have role models, but for the most part, my mentors and role models don't know about me. And some of them are dead. They're, you know, from the past. And then there are other people, I see them from a distance. And I say, you know, I really like the way they're doing it. I'll tell you one. And I think why it's all the trouble right now, it's the president, you know, the president right now. And think about it, never played the game, first time he plays the game, he wins the gold medal. Okay. And, and I think there's about 10 different kinds of envy buttons that other Americans can have. And I think every day he figures out which envy button he's going to because he enjoys seeing other people's heads explode. You know, Hollywood celebrities, Silicon Valley masters of the universe, deep state, you know, deep state intelligence services, college professors and everything else. And he just knows how to get people's heads to explode. But the thing is, he's devoid of shame. I think Donald Trump was absolutely born without shame. Nothing shames him. You can say anything you want about him, as long as you're talking about him, he's fine. And the other thing is, I think that he's a pure innovator in the political world. I think he brought skills from another world, the reality show world, the building a casino world, owning Worldwide Wrestling World. And he puts all those skills together in a new mix, plus he understands social media. He came along when social media came along. And I just sit there day after day and I just admire him. And it isn't— it's not about the issues so much. He's got all the right issues right as far as I'm concerned, because that's the side that he chose. But he could have chosen the other side. I don't think he's a Republican or a Democrat. I think that he's an entrepreneur. And to tell you the truth, he's the first— I think if you read the Constitution of the United States, great game plan. I mean, it's almost intact from 1787, 1788 when it was written. And I said, you know, if you had this kind of game plan for creating a country, seems to me you're creating an entrepreneurial country. Sooner or later, maybe along the way, you ought to actually elect somebody who's an entrepreneur as president. I don't see anything strange about him at all. I said, this is how— he's an outlier. He's an outlier. He's kind of antisocial when he chooses to be antisocial. He's kind of a misfit. And I think it just drives people crazy who believed— like Hillary. Hillary said, if you just take the right courses for 60 years and you keep getting credentials, one day they're going to make you Valedictorian of the United States. And I think people who think that you have to work and get educated and get your credentials or you won't get the prize, I think he just violates every cell of their body. But he's an entrepreneur. Entrepreneur, I mean, I don't see anything strange about him at all. I've seen stranger entrepreneurs than him.

Let me say this then to you, Dan.

No, I just want to say this, that the anger and the negativity towards capitalism right now, it's towards entrepreneurism. That without education and without credentials, you can go from here to here in a magic leap just because you know how to be the right person in the right place at the right time with the right offer. Yeah. So I think that's what scandalized— we got an incredible number of people who are overeducated underachievers. Yeah. Yeah.

You talk about the anti-evolution mindset that you currently believe is, you know, infecting our culture. And, uh, could you talk about, first off, what is that?

And yeah, yeah, at first I thought it was just a function of the fundamentalist religious view. It goes much deeper than that. Forget the religion for a moment. There is something in some humans that is viscerally opposed to being related to any other species of animal. They'll talk about humans and animals. They don't want to say that we're animals. We are, you know. We may be a unique animal in intellect and some other ways, and I think a very significant animal in the the universe. For the first time, the reins of evolution are in our hands now. We have control over every other species on this planet is here by our sufferance now and can be extinguished if we allow that to happen. And we are not only— the universe, to me, it's as though the universe has not only gone into the idea of finding out about itself, but manipulating itself, because we can manipulate the environment. This is an awesome responsibility, but we are still animals. And I think there are people who are so upset at the idea of being related to any of the great apes that this, that they've got to reject Darwin because this would just be an awful thought to them. And the religious right has tended to adopt that view. They think it's not biblical and whatnot. But it's a very potent force that you have to deal with. It's part of an anti-science, anti-intellectual movement that is a reality. I think it can be done in, but there's a lot of movement against the use of the human mind. It's a kind of a know-nothing, neo-Luddite approach to life that they think will make humans more comfortable, but it really will keep us in the dark if we do that. We've got to respect science and follow a scientific method which doesn't preclude religious faith at all. That's apples and oranges, you know. But I think that to me, the anti-evolution movement is the spear point of that awful idea that is a fear of being related to other animals.

Interesting. Do you believe in karma?

Not in the strict sense. I think there's a lot to a lot of those things that have Hindu roots and everything, but I don't subscribe to karma. In the sense that if you, that in some afterlife you're going to have built up your credit things or debit. I don't think that, but I think there's a lot to be said for some of the philosophy that's come out of the East that way.

Well, and the reason I ask is not even really necessarily on a very deep spiritual level, more so it's just you've You always strike me as someone that just is a friendly, nice, caring person. And one of my favorite sayings I heard years ago is, "Be nice to the people you meet on the way up because they're going to be the same people you meet on the way down." Isn't that true? And I think it's just a good way to conduct your life because, you know, frankly, we don't always make good decisions. We make mistakes as human beings. We screw up at times. And to go out and try to make your way through life by stepping on people, being rude You know, people that don't say, you know, thank you to waiters and they look down at people, you know, I just think people like that are jerks and there's no reason for it. And you've just conducted yourself, it seems, and again, this is the Joe Polish perspective of Hugh Downs, but I think it's a lot, I think the public perceives you this way and I'm really kind of wanting to find out as we wrap up here, you know, maybe what are some some philosophies on how you've lived life and how you do that so that people— I think a lot of people would like to lead their life with people liking them, meeting them, growing, evolving.

One of the things I learned, Joe, was, and it has worked for me, I don't— I never— I can't say never, but in the last decades of my career, I never competed with anybody. I'll compete with my own past record or something, but And I found when I didn't compete, if I was helpful to some— somebody was going to do a feature on— I'm a scuba diver and I used to teach scuba diving in the '50s and everything, and they were going to do something. And I've done some diving things on 20/20 and so forth. And I can't remember who it was now wanted to do a diving thing, and they said, well, that kind of compete with what you're— I said, no, it won't if I help And so my inclination was to help this person and having him make a good showing. And I found a long time ago that if I'm helpful to people, they're going to be helpful to me. And that's the only way I'm going to rise, you know, and not trying to climb on them and get someplace. So that has worked for me. And maybe it would work for just about everybody. Abandon the idea of competition except against your own record.

You know, I think, first off, I think that First of all, that's great advice. And secondly, you know, what I take out of that, what I instantly thought of when you said that is comparing yourself to others. You know, that's the surefire way to be miserable. Isn't that true? Because there's always going to be someone who has it better and there's always going to be someone who has it worse.

It's like the yacht owners. You know, a guy finally gets a 100-foot yacht and now he's moored behind a guy that has a 125-foot yacht and he's miserable.

Is that hysterical? It's so funny. Well, first off, there's so many more things I could ask you, I'd love to ask you, but I wanna wrap up here. To the listeners, most of them being entrepreneurs and business owners, a lot of them dealing with enormous struggle, but they're big risk takers and they're out there trying to just do stuff. And anyone that would even take the time to educate themselves, watch our interview, things like that, are genuinely interested in learning. And I wanted to see if any, there's been a school of communication that's been named after you, and you're out there doing a lot of stuff. What, like, words of advice would you give to business owners and to just people of America just to go out and have a better life and do good things? I mean, parting words, I would say.

I'd say one thing would be that they should pay attention to what you have set up in the way of making sure that if they're an honestly run business, that the public knows that they're an honestly run business. And through what you've set up, that has now become possible. They should support that kind of a view. That's kind of topmost in my mind as to what the— the other thing would just be to not lose patience. Some things take time. And you can drive ahead, but don't get into such high gear that you're you're going to flail yourself to pieces. I don't know, I don't have any concise advice on that except that one point, which I think is important to be sure the public knows that they have a way of knowing whether you're worth it or not. Right, right.

What's your perspective on physical disease and illness and the link between emotions? Because one of the things we had spent a good chunk of time talking about, Richard, when Sam first introduced us, was about physical pain and about how and about disease and about how so much, you know, disease and conditions manifest as a result of repressed emotions and trauma and stress, right? So, could you describe what the link is?

Yeah, absolutely. It goes back to what I said a little bit earlier and as much as anything that we suppress, any let's call them typically negative feelings that we don't find an outlet for— when we bury them alive, then we create the propensity internally for things to get blocked energetically. So some of you may well, very well know that word emotion comes from the phrase energy in motion. You know, we're designed to emote. We're created— part of the blueprint is to feel all of the emotions that we ever feel. We're supposed to feel them. So when we deny ourselves the opportunity to feel them, effectively what we're doing is we're stopping the flow of energy. And we can only do that for so long. It's a bit like a traffic pileup on the motorway, you know. As soon as a car crashes, that's it, everything stacks up behind it until the crash is cleared. So what then happens to the internal systems of the body is they're compromised. They are overburdened as a result of us trying to do all of this with the stuff that we're refusing to feel. And I've done the— I've done a lot of research, or as I call it, me-search. And people who do research, for a lot of the time, it's to serve their own agenda and serve their own purpose, which, which isn't to criticize the research, it's just to put it in some sort of context because I've done a lot of my own research in this field in private practice and with peers and colleagues and there's absolutely no doubt whatsoever. You could Google it and find out there's over 200 million articles on the subject of how emotions Affect our physical health. And so I've spent the last 25 years researching exactly and validating what's out there. And whether you like the idea of it being 60% of the cause of illness or 99% of the cause of illness, it's somewhere in that band. Even 60% of the cause is astronomical, which explains why when you can take care of your nutrition or lifestyle, your environment, but still you haven't resolved the physical symptoms that you're experiencing, well, what's left then as an explanation? Okay, there might be some genetics, but genetics is less than 2% depending on which research you are happy to accept. So that list still leaves a big chunk of an unanswered question. Well, how has this come about? And my answer would be It's actually a buildup of— and I agree with this term— emotional distress, which I'd like to separate out because there's stress and for me there's emotional distress. So whether that's trauma, drama, conflict, negativity— can't avoid it. Over time it has built up. We've become emotionally constipated, if you like, because we haven't been taught, we haven't been encouraged to actually find an outlet for all of these emotions. So they've become buried alive, and that's what the body is doing when it manifests and creates physical symptoms. In my opinion, it is saying, look, this is not sustainable. I cannot carry on keeping this under wraps as well as do everything else. So something's going to have to break down, something's going to have to fall over, something's going to have to be compromised. So there's absolutely no doubt in my mind about the connection, and this is the way that medicine's going. I predict that now without a shadow of a doubt, more into how emotions affect our health, and therefore it's emotional healing that can contribute as a minimum to the improvement in symptoms.

Absolutely. You know, you said, you said The Body Keeps the Score, you know, great book by Bessel van der Kolk, who I've met before and, you know, my friend Gabor Mate, very similar in terms of how much conditions and then, Dr. John Sarno with physical pain because as we talked, you know, me and you, Richard, have spoken about that and I've spent hours talking with Sam about the link between, you know, physical pain and, you know, repressed emotions and how people, you know, manifest stress. Like, I, for the first time, I spent an hour and 20 minutes after the meeting yesterday on the phone with James Nestor.

Joe Polish, the guy that wrote this book Breath, totally hit it off.

He said happy to do a talk for Genius Network interview. He's like a great journalist and he wrote this book Breath and he said that— we were talking about last night about physical ailments and how so many things like sleep apnea and all these things simply that can be cured by mouth, instead of mouth breathing, nose breathing. And one of the things that he said with, because he's a journalist, and so, he said that right now, he, from the top doctors that he's met, he said, in the world there's like a handful that are really amazing and many that are just have no clue what the hell they're talking about. And he said, about 60% of what we're treating right now medically on, if you take everything, is What we'll find in the near future, it's the completely wrong way to treat it. And I want to actually introduce him to you guys because I think it'd be for a pretty delightful conversation, but everyone will meet James. But I just— what you just said reminded me of that conversation with him last night. And, you know, my friend Giselle over here, who's been my yoga instructor, you know, we've had many conversations about the issues are in the tissues, right? And so when Sam was talking about muscle, uh, it made me really think of, you know, think a lot about, uh, just how much of the, the work that talk therapy never did for me until I brought in a physical element into like a somatic way, which is so much about what, you know, The Body Keeps the Score really means.

My question is, uh, and then I'm going to come to ADD because I definitely— we cannot have this interview without talking about that, because there's so many people here that identify with distractibility. So how does one change the atmospheric conditions of their life in a positive way?

Because we, you know, there's a lot of people running the world right now that are creating the worst shitstorms on the planet.

And so I just wanted to get your perspective on that.

Yeah, so the first thing is to recognize that That is a problem. Now, a lot of people don't recognize it. They keep trying to run away from it. And one way to run away from recognizing that there's a problem is that you become addicted. So, for example, we did this the first time we spoke, but let me do it with this audience, okay? I'll give you a definition of addiction that I don't think is controversial. So an addiction is manifested in any any behavior in which a person finds temporary relief or pleasure and therefore craves, but then suffers negative consequences and they have difficulty giving it up despite the harm. So it's pleasure, relief, therefore craving, short-term, long-term harm, inability to give it up. That's what addiction is. I said any behavior, I didn't say drugs. It could include drugs. Of course it does. Cocaine, heroin, crystal meth, nicotine, caffeine, alcohol. But it could also be gambling, the internet, pornography, sex, relationship, work. And in this culture, workaholism is rewarded, like my workaholism was rewarded. Shopping. Any range of human behaviors. The issue is not the activity, it's the internal relationship: pleasure craving, relief, harm, inability to give it up. So I'm gonna ask you guys a question here. If according to that definition you recognize that sometime or another you had some kind of an addictive pattern in your life, just raise your hand. Okay, again, it's virtually everybody here. Now, the next question I ask is not what's wrong with the addiction, which we know, but what's right about it. What does it give you in the short term? In the short term, what does it give you that you like? Okay, I wonder if a couple of people just raise their hand and then shout out their answer, okay? What does it give you in the short term, or what did it give you? I'm not gonna ask you what you're addicted to or how long or when, just what did you— when you were in it temporarily, what does it give you? Anybody? Serenity. Serenity, okay, thank you. Feels good. Feels good. So a good feeling, pleasure, yeah. Dopamine hit, of course. Which means excitement, yeah. Stimulants. Stimulant? Escape. Escape. Escape, thank you. No, escape from what? Escape from distress. Escape from emotional pain. Serenity, a sense of aliveness, escape from pain. Are these good things or are they bad things in themselves? They're good things. They're the things we all want. They're the things we all deserve, actually. There are all the things we should have had as children, which means that the addiction wasn't your primary problem. Your addiction was an attempt to solve the problem. Therefore, to talk about addiction either as an inherited disease or some kind of a choice that people make— and by the way, there are millions of people in jail in this country because of this social belief that addiction is some kind of a choice for which people should be punished. No, it ain't. It's an attempt to deal with life problems such as emotional pain. And so if you want to understand addiction, you have to look at the atmosphere again, as Don Woods says, that people grew up under and what they're trying to escape from. So, first we have to recognize that there's a problem and not run away from it. Secondly, we have to accept compassionately all parts of ourselves. All aspects of ourselves, whether we like them or not, because all aspects of ourselves, whether we like them or not, they came along for a reason. And if we ask the question compassionately, you might do something that you're not proud of. Yeah. Excuse me. If you ask yourself the question compassionately, Why did I do that? What need was it serving? What was my organism trying to deal with? You'll find the answer if you ask the question. So you can ask the question two ways: Why did I do that? Or, Why did you do that? Do you think there's gonna be an answer? No, 'cause that's not a question, that's an accusation. Against somebody else or against the self. And as one of my spiritual teachers says, "Only when compassion is present will people allow themselves to see the truth." Now, if you ask somebody else, not, "Why did you do that?" but, "Hmm, I know you're a good person trying to do your best. Any idea why you did that?" Now, that's a question. And the same with yourself. If you put to yourself, not, "Why did I do this?" but, "Hmm, I wonder why I did this." That's what a compassionate inquiry is. Yeah. And my belief is, is that the answers are within all of ourselves. They actually are. And if we are compassionate with each other, which is so much of what you talk about, and if we're compassionate with ourselves, then the answers will emerge. So that's the beginning, is to recognize there's a problem and to be compassionate about examining the sources of that problem.

Essentially, what we find is that those first 10 to 14 days are really, really bad. Your gremlins are not off the pain side of the balance. And we warn people that that will be the case. And this is the most important thing that we say to people, because if we don't say it, people feel like The pain that they experience in early withdrawal is the pain that they're going to be left with the rest of their lives. And since that is so intolerable, they go back to using their drug of choice. People, when they— people with a severe addiction, when they come in, they see only two possibilities: I use drugs and I'm miserable, I don't use drugs and I'm miserable. What we have to teach them is there is a third way in which you don't use drugs, or you use in extreme moderation, and you're not miserable, the way to get there is to abstain for long enough to reset reward pathways, return to homeostasis, and then decide what your next steps are. So we recommend 4 weeks, and we warn people they're going to feel worse before they feel better. We recommend self-binding strategies. So what is self-binding strategies? That's an acknowledgment that willpower is a limited resource, and that if we're relying alone on willpower, we will not be successful. Therefore, we have to create literal and metacognitive barriers between ourselves and our drug of choice so that we can leverage our willpower and meet our goal of abstention for 4 weeks. A general category— these are just some general categories, you can make any up, any categories— but space is a category. So this is both literal barriers between ourselves and our drug of choice. Get the sugar out of the house, get the alcohol out of the house, throw your bong away, Run water over your cigarettes and put them in a garbage can far away so you can't go fishing them out again. Delete the app. Unsubscribe yourself from that sports betting website. These are the literal kinds of— you just create that little pause, right? That little pause that allows us to kind of take a breath and say, "Okay, I don't want to do this." And if there's a little bit of a break, maybe I'll be more successful. Time is a really interesting kind of self-binding strategy. So the dopamine fast itself is really a form of using time as a self-binding strategy. But also later, after the dopamine fast, we talk about, well, what do you want to do now? Do you want to continue to abstain, or do you want to go back to using in moderation? The vast majority of our patients want to go back to using in moderation. And even if I think they're not a good candidate for that, they often have to learn that for themselves. This is like a PhD, their own little PhD a PhD in neuroscience. So what we say is, okay, that's your goal. What is moderation going to look like? And here we really drill down on details. When are you going to use? How much? How often? Who are you going to use with? What are going to be your red flags for when you're using more than you said you were going to use or in a way you didn't want to? So part of that could be scheduling specific times for scrolling. Meaning. So this is really, I think, very helpful, looking at sort of what are— what's the larger meaning behind my wanting to abstain? When people report feeling better, which most of them do after the dopamine fast, we have them do a pros and cons list. What was better about not using, and what was bad about not using? When people talk about what was better, they'll talk about things like, "I was more present in my life, less anxious, less depressed, better able to sleep, able to pay attention." The top of the list of what was bad about not using Couldn't hang out with my friends, because all my friends use, whatever that drug may be, right? Number 2 was bored, really bored. Had a whole bunch of time that I didn't know what to do with. Boredom is a really powerful and scary emotion. And we really, in the modern world, don't have to deal with it very much, and we don't really know what to do with it. Because boredom brings up all kinds of existential issues, like, "Wow, if I don't know what I'm doing with myself right now, what am I supposed to be doing?" I'm betting that many people in this room don't deal with a lot of boredom because you guys are way too busy, but I bet also that boredom would be pretty scary to deal with. And people is a great way to engage in self-binding. So, you know, having— doing the dopamine fast with somebody else, doing it together as a family, engaging in a 12-step community or other mutual help community. When we co-regulate our behaviors with other people, we are much more likely to be successful. Whereas if we live alone and we have to manage these consumptive behaviors alone, super hard. And then finally, there are a lot of interesting medications— not a lot, but I would say there are more coming down the pike. So for example, we have a medication called naltrexone, which is an opioid receptor blocker that we use to help people quit using opioids. The mechanism there is obvious. If you're blocking the opioid receptor, the opioid that you're ingesting cannot bind and stimulate that receptor. But we also use naltrexone to treat alcohol use disorder, and not just for people who want to stop drinking, also for people who want to reduce their use. Because it turns out that the chemical cascade for alcohol, it works on the GABA, or inhibitory neurotransmitter system, but it also works on our endogenous opioid system. So when we're blocking the opioid receptor, with naltrexone. Basically what my patients tell me is, "When I'm on naltrexone and I drink a beer, I really don't want another one. I'm kind of good with one, whereas normally I would want to drink the whole six-pack." Also interestingly, remember that reminder mechanism, how when we're reminded of our drug of choice, we get a little boost in dopamine? Naltrexone actually helps decrease craving because probably when people are reminded or triggered, they don't get that that same dopamine boost because the chemical cascade is blocked by the naltrexone, so they don't get triggered in the same way too. We have other medicines. Wegovy, or Ozempic, is being used now to treat binge eating and obesity, and we're also finding that it's helpful for alcohol use disorder. Alcohol, because it's caloric, works on the same appetitive mechanisms as food. This is a really old but very powerful study. This was a cohort of adult males who met criteria for major depressive episode and also alcohol use disorder or alcohol addiction. They were put into a psych unit where they received no treatment for their depression, but they also did not have any access to alcohol for 4 weeks. At the end of those 4 weeks, 80% of those individuals no longer met criteria for major depression. So what's very powerful there is, again, just by intervening around the consumptive addictive behaviors, symptoms of depression and anxiety get better. Finally, this pleasure-pain balance works both ways. Those gremlins are agnostic to whatever the initial stimulus is. If we press on the pleasure side of the balance, they hop on the pain side of the balance. If we press on the pain side of the balance, they will actually hop over onto the pleasure side of the balance, and we will get dopamine indirectly by paying for it upfront. The classic and evidence-based examples of this are exercise, ice-cold water baths, fasting, meditation and prayer. I put on here— you wouldn't necessarily think of meditation and prayer as doing what's painful, but for most people it's effortful, and anything that requires a kind of sustained and effortful engagement tends to be difficult. And when we do that— and we know that all of these things increase dopamine— but the way that they do it is different from the way that intoxicants do it. So remember, intoxicants, you get that burst of dopamine followed by dopamine freefall. Here you get something very different. You get the initiation of the activity with a slow increase in dopamine over the latter half of that activity, and then that dotted line represents when the activity stops, and you see here dopamine levels remain elevated for hours afterwards before going back down to the baseline position. You never go into that dopamine deficit state that drives the craving. So this is a wonderful way to get your dopamine. However, it's not without its own pitfalls. So anything that gives us dopamine has the potential to be addictive. Most personality types will not be drawn to the kinds of addiction to pain, but I'm guessing that a disproportionate number of people in this room probably have the personality type that could get addicted to pain. And you see that, you know, with workaholism, exercise addiction, and the intervention really is the same, where we ask for people to take a break from that activity or the exercise or whatever it might be for a period of time to reset reward pathways, and then a plan for re-engagement. I also forgot to say that when When we think about addictions that it's not possible to completely eliminate, like a food addiction—you can't just stop eating for 4 weeks—or a workaholism addiction—you know, you can't just stop running your business for 4 weeks—what we ask people to do is think of a bullseye and to really drill down what is the specific activity that's problematic, what is the specific food that's problematic, and put that in the center of their bullseye and have that represent their drug of choice, the thing that they're going to abstain from. So for work, it might be a certain way of engaging with digital media after hours. Or I don't know, you guys could probably tell me better. For food, it's something like sugar, right? Giving up sugar. Then that second ring of the bullseye represents the trigger behaviors. So these are things that are not the drug itself, but the thing that trigger us to use our drugs. So it might be something like going by a bakery where there's a lot of sweets. And then that outer circle is the things that are healthy sources of dopamine, things we want to do more of, kind of approach behaviors. These are— oh, sorry. Hormesis is a branch of science that is interested in looking at the ways that exposing ourselves to mild to moderate doses of toxic stimuli actually makes us more resilient. Hormesis is Greek for "to set in motion," and basically what's happening is when we expose our bodies to mild to moderate doses of noxious stimuli, our body senses injury and then essentially upregulates feel-good neurotransmitters like serotonin, norepinephrine. These are examples of activities that my patients have told me are hormetic for them. You'll see many of them are quite ordinary activities, but they're doing them unplugged. We are living in a time when we're constantly stimulated, so simply sitting quietly and not being stimulated for a period of time gives our brains time to rest and recover. I've talked a little bit about dealing with boredom and other painful emotions, and also slightly mentioned getting addicted to pain. Believe it or not, we used to think that rats on a running wheel just simply measured locomotion or physical activity, But then it became apparent that certain strains of rats will actually get addicted to running wheels. And they will run on ever smaller running wheels until their little rats, their little tails are curved up in the shape of a running wheel. Some of those rats will, in fact, run to death. And then I love this experiment that was done in the Netherlands. They took running wheels and they put them in nature. And they said, "Surely in, you know, God's great, wonderful nature, Nothing's gonna go into a running wheel. Not true. Rats, slugs, squirrels, all kinds of animals were intrigued by moving through 3-dimensional space against gravity in a novel way, which maybe explains roller coasters and Ferris wheels and things like that. Finally, this is my last slide. I've really emphasized sort of what we can do at an individual level to cope with our drugified, addictogenic ecosystem. But it's obviously not just an individual problem. This is also a problem that needs to be solved at both the community level, the level of governments. This is a meme somebody sent me, "Are you 18?" Because otherwise you can't go into this porn site, and as you can see, it's pretty easy to access. So— and we're now seeing legislation that's happening in certain states that makes it, for example, harder for people under the age of 21 or under the age of 18 to access certain sites. I think this is really important. We need to have these guardrails. When I think about community, I really think about schools. You know, we were really led to believe that one child, one laptop would solve all of our education problems. Now what we have is one child, one inattentive child who's not learning. So I think that smartphones should essentially be banned from the top down during school hours. There are schools that are doing this now, and there are different ways to accomplish it. For example, there are these pouches that you— kids put their phone in the pouch, they lock the pouch, it can't transmit or receive, and then they unlock it at the end of the day. That way the school doesn't have to deal with holding on to the phones. Whatever it takes, let's get the smartphones out of the schools so teachers can teach and kids can learn. Yeah, especially like K through 12. I mean, it's just so obvious that we need to do that. And then in terms of governance, I mean, so we're seeing, you know, the Facebook/Meta lawsuit. We'll see if that goes anywhere. There's legislation all over the country. In China, the government actually said that kids can't play video games except for 2 days a week, 2 hours a day, and that the corporations that make the video games are responsible for creating the facial recognition software to police it. And I know that that could never happen important in the United States, but boy, parents in China were jumping for joy when they, when they came up with that. And I really do think that we need some kind of government legislation and guardrails to protect our kids.

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