The Science of Addiction: What Happens In Your Brain and How It Works? Feat. Tucker Carlson

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

When I started talking about addiction in the Genius Network meetings, some people loved it, other people were like, what the hell is all this? I didn't come join Genius Network so I could hear you talk about addictions. And this one guy literally dropped out of the group because he didn't like me talking about addiction. And then he came. He contacted me a few months later and he's like, I'm gonna be in Phoenix, can we have lunch? And we get together for lunch and then he's like, I am so sorry, my daughter is a heroin addict. I'm a workaholic. It just was too close to home. And he's like, I gave him some suggestions and got her into treatment and now she's doing much better. But I just want to plant a seed today, that's why I brought Gabor here. I want to plant a seed, some of you told me are in this conversation, others are like, it's getting worse. The world is, I mean, you just look at the opiate addiction. We need voices, we need people of influence that could share something that is helpful because you cannot punish pain out of people in the criminal justice system. And you said in one of your talks that if you wanted to create the perfect system that would keep people addicted, you would create the exact prison system that we have in the United States. And it's true.

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

So what didn't I ask you that I should have?

If anything. 'Cause I could go on for a long time, but we're on the clock, but there's so many different areas.

Hmm.

Well, I don't know that there's much that you didn't ask me that you should have. What I was really hoping to do here in conversation with you is just to get across just how human this phenomenon of addiction is. And if we approach it with understanding and curiosity, about the person who's experiencing it, or in our own case, real compassionate curiosity for ourselves, then we can actually deal with the problem. Yeah. One thing I'll mention is— oh yeah, I'll say one thing. Yeah, I want to distinguish two kinds of trauma. So there's overt trauma, then there's what we call developmental trauma. And we have two very great examples of it in the United States. So what does trauma do? It separates us from ourselves. We lose ourselves, like we said. It also gives us a very negative view of the world. So if we have a negative view of the world, then we act accordingly. We are defensive and we're grandiose and we're aggressive. So there's a man who said that the world is a horrible place. Now I'm not commenting on anybody's politics here. I'm talking pure psychology, okay? I'm not talking about policy, foreign or domestic. I'm talking about mind states. Please understand that. So however you voted in this last election, don't take offense, please. But the man who said that the world is a horrible place is the President of the United States. That's the world he lives in. Why does he live in that world? Because he grew up in a family that taught him that. His father was a domineering, rageaholic tyrant who demeaned his children. His brother drank himself to death. And this man develops all these issues like attention problems, and grandiosity, and psychiatrists have diagnosed him with narcissism and all this kind of stuff, which are not faults, they're the outcomes of trauma. So there's that overt trauma, and we live in such a traumatized society that these people actually rise to the top. But his opponent was even more interesting. I don't know if you saw the Democratic National Convention. And when Hillary won the nomination, there was a video narrated about her life by God himself, Morgan Freeman. How many of you saw that video about her life? Now, there was something very interesting in that video that I saw no comments on whatsoever. This anecdote comes from Hillary, and what happens is that And it's presented as an example of wonderful, character-building, strength-building parenting. What happens is that the 4-year-old Hillary runs into her home to her mother, afraid because neighborhood kids are bullying her, threatening her. And the mother says, "There is no room for cowards in this house. Now you get out there and you deal with it." And this is presented as, "This made me tough and this made me a fighter," and this is character-building. Now, the actual message to the child is not that there's no room for cards in this house, because the 4-year-old or 5-year-old who runs to mom is only doing what any mammal will do, any young mammal will do when they're threatened, is they'll go to their protective figures. It's not cowardice, it's just natural attachment. The message is, there's no room for your vulnerability in this house. You have to be tough. You have to suck it up. Now jump 65 years ahead and the presidential campaign, and there's a famous scene where Trump is looming all over, hovering all over Hillary, and she doesn't say a thing. She's just sucking it up. And then she develops pneumonia. Remember during the campaign she had pneumonia? How did the world find out that she had pneumonia? Because she collapsed and her security people had to pick her up. But she didn't tell anybody about it. She didn't talk about it because she learned at an early age to suck it up and that she mustn't be vulnerable. So what I'm saying— and that's what's called developmental trauma, where not when something bad happens to you, but when the good things that should happen don't happen. And the good thing that didn't happen is the mother should have scooped her up and said, "Oh boy, you're really scared, aren't you?" That's what didn't happen. And so what I'm saying is that there's that overt trauma, and there's lots of studies on how overt trauma— if those of you are not familiar with the Adverse Childhood Experiences studies, the ACE studies, where they looked at 17,000 Californians, most half of them university graduates, and the more adversity there was in their childhood, meaning physical, sexual, or emotional abuse, death of a parent, a divorce, parent being addicted, a parent being mentally ill, violence in the family, neglect, a parent being jailed. For each of these adverse experiences, the risk of addiction goes up exponentially. And you can download your ACE score just by going to the internet. It'll give you a lot of insight about yourself. But there's that other kind of trauma, which is the developmental trauma, which doesn't happen because bad things happen to you, but just because you weren't held. In the way you need it to be held. So that's the final thing I wanted to tell you.

Great, thank you. And for people to read your books, watch your videos, I mean, I'm gonna put a lot of Gabor's work on GeniusRecovery.com, which is the educational platform we're creating, and we'll have him featured in the documentary, the stuff we're doing with Artists for Addicts. Your books, you know, When the Body Says No, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, Scattered, I know you have a new book coming out.

In my head, yes.

In your head?

Yeah.

Okay.

What is your definition of addiction versus someone that's just, say, a heavy drinker, but they're not really an addict, or they, you know, maybe have bingeing periods 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 functional addicts. People that are so down and out 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. So, 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 and 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 and might be relying on it in, you know, 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, you know, like 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 like, you know, like we're worried about you, we're concerned, they'll take that seriously, you know, like 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. "this is not a big deal," and whatever, however that conversation is gonna go. But I think that can't stop is 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're hungover on Sunday morning and when they come to, they say to themselves, "I'm never gonna do this ever again." 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. And 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, is that, you know, Keith Cunningham has a quote in his book where, you know, the conventional wisdom rarely passes the sniff test on common sense.

Yeah, yeah.

And so most people's experience of the, 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, I think in active addiction you lie, you cheat, you steal, oftentimes a lot, and sometimes you knowingly they do it, other times it's just a protective mechanism and they're so lost in it 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, you know, 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 shit. But most of them give a shit. 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. 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 proximity. So, 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 real business of teaching people, you know, how to build and run businesses and marketing and stuff. It's a lot easier to deal with someone else's marketing problem than deal with your own. 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 their, 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 Mate 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, 'cause I, look, I know this from firsthand experience of people struggling with addiction that I've referred that you help them and you have because you're not the father, you're not the mother, you're not the brother, 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 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.com and you can get a copy there.

Well, that's a great question, Joe, 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, um, 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, 11:00 AM— I come walking in. My mother very easily could have said, "Where the fuck were you?" You know, 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 to stop trying to ration— like, stop trying to have a reasonable conversation with an irrational person, right? 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, it's so extreme a rationalization that I almost wanted to be like, okay, hold on one second, let me just go get my— 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, you know, conclusion, you know. But of course, I was counseling, and I just said, tell me more about that, you know. And then he started to, you know, 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 0.09, 0.08 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, 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, 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 the, with, with, you know, 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, 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, you know, 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 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 to, even when someone is seeking out like a parent or a family member or a husband or a wife, it's like, you gotta 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, their resistance is that too. And, on one hand, it's— I have a friend that wrote 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 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," now that's really spoken in the context of sex addiction, love addiction where You 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, uh, how would you recommend— because you, 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 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 you're, you're, 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, and I think it's really important for people to hear and 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, right? Um, the— so what were the critical things that were different about my mother, let's say? Um, 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, it's like, you know, 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. You know, it's only a little bit of fire. It's not— it hasn't really extended to the upper floors yet. I mean, you know, let's wait until it's a 5-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, might be bipolar disorder, it's ADHD-related, it's, it's PTSD, maybe they do have trauma, and maybe they're, you know, all of these various different things are on the list of possibilities of what's wrong. The, 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 3 beers, no big deal. For someone who's an alcoholic, they have 3 beers and the reaction, the physical reaction is I need more beer. Now, what winds up happening after that is, 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, 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, there's, 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, um, you know, 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'm start— 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. And 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, 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, 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, you know, hide-and-seek, you know, ready or not, here it comes. Always, you know, 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. Um, 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.

Yeah, no, that's very good.

Your alcoholism— you called yourself functional alcoholism when you were drinking and partying and whatnot. So what did you, what did you change? What was the, what was the light switch that—

Well, what I did was I stopped drinking, which I found super helpful.

What caused you to stop?

I mean, in my case, I was sitting at my desk in my office smoking a Camel. I'll never forget it, which I also quit, unfortunately. Little short ones flavored with chocolate, delicious, delicious cigarettes. I know no one's allowed to admit that, but they were amazing.

And—

but I was sitting at my desk feeling hungover Sunday morning, having a cigarette, and I just had this voice, which I think was from God, saying, "You better quit." My wife was pregnant with our fourth child, and she was 10 days from giving birth, and I was— and I just had this voice tell me, "You're gonna lose everything if you don't stop drinking." And And I believed it. You know, who knows why? I mean, I'm just an ordinary person with a slightly above average IQ, not super insightful. Like, I have no idea what that was, but that happened to me, and I followed it, and I did it, and it completely changed my life. And it's hard to talk about sobriety without sounding judgy, or like one of those boorish rehab guys who's always lecturing you on all the steps or whatever. But the truth is, one of the main problems in this country is that everyone's loaded. Everyone's on some kind of drug. or drunk. I mean, everyone's on pills. Like, I just— I'm sorry, I don't want to judge anybody else, but like, everybody is on drugs. It's crazy. Everyone's on SSRIs, or that weird— the meth they give you, but they call it Adderall, benzodiazepines. You know, I'm on a flight, I think I'll take some Xanax. What? It's insane. And I just am totally opposed to that. Weed The number of fights I've gotten into. I used to smoke weed every day. I mean, I was like, I know a lot about weed. It makes you passive and stupid. I'm sorry. People get so mad if you say that. Oh, shut up. No, I've smoked more weed than you have. It makes you into a loser. Are you joking? Why don't you just face your life? It's so awesome. And I never say this out loud because people really hate you when you do and feel judged. I'm in no position to judge anybody. I could I could blow your mind actually if I wanted to. I'm not going to, but I'm saying like, I know a lot about this subject. So I think I have the authority to say this. It's like, it's such a thrill to be sober. It's not that hard actually. And if you're not sober, you're never going to achieve the purpose for which you were created. That's just a fact. You're not. And it makes you weak. It's the last thing I'll say. It makes you weak. The more you party, the more you run away, The weaker you get, the more fearful you become, and the more you just face up to stuff. And I'm not even talking about drugs and alcohol. For men, I'm talking about like a grumpy wife. Like there's nothing scarier than a pissed-off wife, like in the world. And if you run away from that and just go golfing and like, oh, she's crazy, you know, it doesn't get better. Like man up and just like tell me what's wrong. Just like sit through the first 3 minutes. And then you find out what's wrong, and it gets better. And you get stronger, she respects you for not golfing. And for looking right into her eyes and listening to her complaints for a minute. It makes you stronger. When you run away, and when you golf, or you get high, or— it makes you weak. And it's like a process. It's like the more you tell the truth, the more sober you are, the more you face things that have— make you afraid, the stronger you get. It's like Life 101, but nobody feels free to say it. And the last thing I'll say, we should just go full Saudi on the drug thing. I mean it, like full freaking Saudi. One of the benefits of traveling a lot is you go to countries that just don't put up with it. We're like, oh, you're so uncool, like you don't allow me to bring a joint to your country? No, we'll just cut your hands off if you do that, because we're not— Try to do that in Japan. Actually, try to do that in Japan. You go to Singapore, Singapore, they drug test you at the airport if you're a Singaporean citizen. And if you fail the drug test, like if you smoke weed, you go to rehab for 6 months. They don't tell anyone where you are. You just disappear. You go to rehab. That's a true fact. I just had dinner with, 2 nights ago, with someone whose friend showed up at the airport in Singapore flying home, got drug tested, got sent to rehab for 6 months. He was engaged. His fiancée left him and married somebody else.

Wow.

Hilarious. You know, it's a pretty big deterrent to getting wasted, actually, it turns out. Yeah, that's harsh.

Okay.

But compared to what? Watching people die of fentanyl ODs on the sidewalk? Have you been to our cities recently? It's totally cruel and inhumane and disgusting and beneath us as a nation to allow people to OD on drugs on the sidewalk. There's no kindness in that at all. It's cruel. You hate people if you allow that. Would you allow your Children to do that? No, you'd chain them to the freaking radiator till they sobered up because you love them. When you hate people, you let them OD on drugs. And we're letting the whole country do that. And encouraging them to do drugs. Sending crack pipes to crack addicts. Giving weed to kids. Are you joking? I'd just lock them up, man. I mean, I mean, and I'll just, I'll be totally blunt. As a former drug user, I'm saying that. And I really mean it from the bottom of my heart. I hope we just get full Saudi on those people, including the policymakers who allowed it, because they've killed so many people. They deserve to be punished in a very severe way.

Hmm.

So yeah, it's interesting.

How's that for unpopular? No, no, no, it's like, it's, it's, it's a bring back the war on drugs, but this time we're not joking.

Yeah, well, see, I think, I think the war on drugs was—

I believe addiction is a solution to pain. So the drugs, the alcohol, the sex, the gambling, the workaholism, all the pursuits of the dopamine pursuit is because of either one, you're just pursuing this feeling you want, or trauma and things like that. And I have mixed feelings about, like for instance, there's 25% of the world's prisoners are in the United States. We're the highest incarcerating country in the world. And there's 2.2 million people incarcerated in the U.S. And the majority of people that commit crimes are under the influence of drugs and alcohol. And 40% of people incarcerated committed a violent crime. The other 60% have not. So a lot of these people are addicts. And so it's, you know, it's one of these things where I take a compassionate approach and at the same time Portugal, I'm curious where they're at now because like all I can go off of is really from several years ago. I don't know how well it, you know, they've weathered through the pandemic and I haven't stayed up to date on it. But what they did is they legalized drugs, but they, the money they were spending on enforcement went into treatment. And it cut the addiction rate in half. Almost all violent crimes went down, but when you just make—

I don't know. I've spent a lot of time in Portugal. I don't think that's an accurate representation, and I would say, you know, I know a number of people, more than 2, who got off heroin in jail, and who look back on their incarceration as a blessing. I mean, addiction, I mean, I think you have experience with it, I certainly do. They're crazy. You're not in your right mind when you're addicted to something. You're totally crazy. You're like a trapped animal. He'll do anything.

Oh yeah, absolutely.

And people like that, you know, our record on drug treatment in the United States is like a joke. It's abysmal. It's just abysmal. It's made a lot of money for the drug treatment centers. Everyone's like, treatment? Well, show me a treatment center with like an over 50% success rate over 5 years. I've never heard of one. Maybe there is one. I'd love to know. We should replicate it everywhere. The only thing I've ever seen that works is AA, and that's because it's is based in the core truth of life, which is you have to admit that you have no power to solve your problems. And if you don't, then you're just lying to yourself. So I think that works, but whatever, opinions differ, but let's just apply science to it. Where's the treatment center with an 80% success rate? Where's one with an 18% success rate? I just don't know of any.

[Speaker:JOE_POLISH] Yeah, the only ones that really have really great success rates are long-term, you know, 6 months, a year, 2 years, like Vulcan Academy. This individual, they, they literally have people, mostly, you know, young adults that check in for like 2 years, and they have an incredible thing.

But they—

it's a long time, right? And then I can't remember the name of it, but in Italy, this is one of Bobby Kennedy's favorite models of recovery where they have these very long-term Put them in nature, put them around different environments, you know, and connect them.

That definitely is good. Yeah, but I guess I would also just say I left something out. I'm so mad about the drug thing that I— I'm sorry I endorsed the Saudi drug program, though I meant it. But I do think we should spend a lot more time on the other side of the question, which is endorsing sobriety. It is so awesome to be clear-eyed and sober. As much as it doesn't solve all your problems, you're still the the lumpy loser you were when you were drunk, but it begins the process of healing your soul. And there's so much joy in sobriety. No one ever endorses it. Everyone's like, "Oh, life is better when you're loaded." But that's just a lie. It's a full-blown lie, and no one ever calls them on that. And I hope, I mean, Trump is sober, Bobby's sober. I've been to meetings with Bobby, and I hope that people now in positions of authority who are on television all the time will just tell their own stories more often and just say, you know, I'm so glad to be sober, it's so great, because it is.

Yeah, yeah.

And I'll tell you, the drugs that, that kill people are legal, and the drugs that save people's lives, like the ibogains and certain plant medicines, are illegal. And so the whole thing is just lopsided. And, and part of the challenge is, you know, one of the initiatives we have with Genius Recovery is we want to save 20,000 lives a year of the 100,000+ people that are dying from opiate addictions. And so we're—

Well, how many people die of Xanax ODs? I don't know. That's what I'd like to know. That's a legal product that like every woman in America has in her medicine cabinet. Every kid has it too, college campuses. I mean, how many— if you've got kids in college, how many of your kids' friends have to go to treatment to get off benzos? How many people die every year from benzos and alcohol? Many thousands. How many people die from withdrawal from benzos?

A lot.

And those are legal. And psychiatrists prescribe them without thinking through the consequences. And there's no sanction. And those psychiatrists should be criminally charged, in my opinion. That's crazy. The Sacklers paid a billion-dollar fine for sending, you know, opioids throughout Appalachia. But psychiatrists who hand out benzos, which are deadly and physically addictive, We're just like, "Oh no, that's medicine." It's not medicine. It's totally wrong. And at some point, like, we need to call out people on the individual level. If you are a psychiatrist who's handing Adderall to children and benzos to their moms without any thought to the addiction and suffering and brain damage that results from those drugs, then you should lose your medical license at very— at least.

Yeah, absolutely.

You know, I think there is a lot to be said about distractibility.

And there are times where grief or situations, betrayal, whatever, are so difficult that they're— I guess the way I think about it, does it expand you or does it contract you? I mean, it's—

Yes, very good point. And I'm sorry to interrupt you. No, no, but it's just like something that I thought a lot about, and I've seen that in myself and others, right? In any crisis, like, you know, one of the two outcomes usually happens as we kind of go into this suffering. One of two things can happen. We either contract more and we become more defensive, and we're like, this will not happen, you know, I know what happened and this will never happen again. And we just like, you know, contract around our pain and we become more rigid, more defensive. Or we fall apart, you know. And we fall apart, it's a very fucking difficult process, right? And, uh, happened to me recently as this breakup that I went through, it really triggered deep abandonment trauma that was still sitting deep in me. And I was just like doing so much crying and screaming and waiting. And, uh, thanks to medicines, I was able to do that with abandon, right? Um, and you falling apart was so beautiful because at the bottom of this there is so much peace happens, right? Because you experience what you're scared of. End of the day, every difficult situation— why is it difficult? Because it triggers an emotion that for some reason human being, this particular human being, is having a hard time with, whatever that emotion is, right? Let's say grief and sadness and loneliness, whatever it is. And Once we experience that, magic happens. The brain kind of looks at that like, yeah, that's sad, but you know what? You know what? Not a big fucking deal. We're okay. We're here, right? And it's no longer that scared of that emotion. It stops being this thing. It's like that we're constantly protecting, like, you know, no, no, no, don't do that. They should not say that. The government should blah, blah, blah. Like all of those should and should not, right? They really us trying to manage the emotions, trying to protect that, right? And once we experience that emotion deeply, when that happens, something magical can happen, right? So that's exactly what you said. It's about like we either expand and there is freedom or relaxation, or there is more determination and contraction, you know, which is very powerful in itself, right? Sometimes that's what we do. Like sometimes we use that mechanism, we persevere through some very difficult stuff, you know, in war and it's extreme, right? But building businesses and dealing with kids and dealing with loss, with all kinds of stuff, but powerful mechanism and they have their place and they have different consequences.

Well, I wanna emphasize this, what you're talking about, because the way I interpret that is if someone's spending time listening to us right now or they're watching us, all humans are going through pain. I think a magic moment is when someone talks about going into a place that everyone deals with. Like, to go back to trauma, let me say this. I like that there's so much conversation about trauma. The downside to it though, is you have a lot of people now that are, and I have to be careful of this myself, is that live in woundology, where they use their story, their pain to manipulate or to, make themselves feel like I can tell horrendous shit about my childhood and I can get people to empathize with me. And if I identify with that too deeply, it becomes like, well, everyone's had shit. Every human being has pain. And so when you just talked about like you were wailing and you were crying and you were unraveled and how peaceful it became, That is like, there's that Joseph Campbell line I love, which is that the cave you fear to enter holds the treasure that you seek. And there are a lot of caves that are just scary as fuck to go into. And admitting that you have an addiction problem, you know, trying to hold yourself together when you have your heart broken and you've been betrayed. I mean, that is really difficult. I can't even fathom, you know, I will often think about some of the shit I went through. And one of the things that comes out of the addiction recovery work is as weird as this sounds, I will talk to people on a weekly basis that I hear stories where I'm like, I cannot even imagine this person went through this. And a lot of these people have, they're grappling with it. Some of their lives are out of control, but other people have transcended it. I mean, they have done the work, whatever the work is, right? And I'm long past like there's a right or wrong way to do stuff. People have to, to go through, you know, I mean, I have ideas of things that are helpful for others, and that's why I like hearing other people's stories. I like hearing, how did you, how did you go through this?

What did you learn?

What did you discover? And, and so for me, it's really encouraging when people have gone through enormous pain and they have come out, you know, on the other side, and they have become better humans. It's fascinating. So with, um, it's almost like for anyone that's listening that is going through something that they think, I, I don't even know how to deal with this, and I'm hiding it from everyone. I have this shame, I have this pain, I have some loss, and I can't seem to get my life into a place that even feels good. Because, but you kind of went there. So did you actively seek out this or how, like, how do you, when you're in a situation like that, how did you get to that medicine journey? What needed to happen for you?

We do what we can. We do what we, you know, what we have learned and we keep trying different things. We're also creative and we keep trying new things. And it's interesting, like, you know, and you talk to humans, right? That's a very powerful way of dealing with different things. And yeah, it reminded me I'm blessed that I have a lot of amazing humans around me with very deep authentic connections, right? Where we can share stuff and, and it's not about advice, it's not about telling people what to do, but it's about just sharing. It's like, I know what this fucking sucks. Oh yeah, I've been there, right? It's just like being human, trying to get all of this right. And I had some friends who are like, End of the day, as we talk to another human being and they express something difficult, right? Some difficult emotion. Sometimes it's hard for us to feel that emotion and we start giving them advice. Well, you should not feel that way. And a few people in my, you know, I talk to them, they're, you should, oh, you have so much to live for. Look at the bright stuff. Like, you know, there's, I'm like, thank you. I know that, right? But that's, Who cares?

Yeah, it's not what I want right now.

Yeah, like, you know, right now I'm in pain. This is the reality. That's it, right? That's very simple. And it reminded me, like, some of the people I talk to, sometimes some of my friends and connections, people who are suicidal, right? And again, when you talk to a person who is suicidal, I see the reaction in many people, oh, you should not be talking about this. You should not be thinking this way. Like, you know, Why? Because they are scared themselves. Like, what if they do die? Like, you know, what does it mean for them, for me? And well, you know what? When I talk to somebody who is suicidal, I just appreciate that they're sharing this with me, right? And I can like, I felt somewhat suicidal. I felt deep pain in my life. And I just like, I can empathize with them. I can be just with them without trying to invalidate what they feel, without telling them that this is wrong. And you know what? We humans, end of the day, we're just complex monkeys, right?

Yeah.

And when another human can see they're in deep pain and their brain is like, I'm in deep pain and like, am I dying? Like, is this normal? This is bad. When they can sense from another human, this is normal. They can sense the peaceful presence, right? It's normal. It's absolutely fucking normal to sometimes want to kill yourself. Yes. Is it absolutely normal to sometimes feel deep pain? Yes, right? And when they can sense that, not in like intellectual level, but they can sense, oh yeah, this human being is not freaking out. They are with us. They're sensing our pain. They're still here. They seem to be okay. Hmm, maybe I'm okay too. You know, we kind of like learning that, right? So that deep empathy that we get from a peaceful presence of another human being, that's so powerful, right? So, I mean, the question you asked is about how do you go there, and there's no answer to that, right? Because sometimes you will go there, sometimes you will not be able to go there, right? Like, in my life, in the last 10 years, I discovered the very powerful tool of psychedelic medicines, and they've been awesome. They've been sometimes extremely fucking difficult and challenging, but they also been very powerful. Like, either they help this organism to fully experience some of the emotions that it was not able to experience, from extremely deep sadness and despair and helplessness, or even anger. Like, most of my life, anger was a very difficult emotion for me. It was very hard for me to sense it in people around me, and also pretty much impossible for me to experience myself. I could not raise voice at people, right? I could not scream. I remember I was at some conference and They're like, hey, we're doing this. So that was maybe, I don't know, 10 years ago or more. Let's do this fun exercise. We will scream and people are screaming. I'm like, oh, I cannot scream. Well, right. Just, just for fun. Right. And then eventually I did some medicines, 5-MeO-DMT, if you're familiar with 5-MeO. I've, I've did a lot of screaming and that was, that was fun.

How many times have you done that?

You did that 5-MeO?

Um, I did it with a particular guide, a really awesome human being. So I did it maybe 7, 8 times over the course of 6 years.

Wow.

And, and now, like, they're not illegal in Toronto. You can buy 5-MeO vape pens in mushroom shops all over Toronto.

I didn't even know that.

So you can get that, and I have a vape pen, and sometimes now I kind of use a light dose on my own.

So Wow.

So yeah, wow. All in all, maybe, I don't know, 12, 15 times, however you count the small doses.

Well, I, I, uh, this is an aside, uh, in, in 2015 I went to, um, Mexico, and I, I'm the first person in the world to have before and after brain scans of doing ibogaine and 5-MeO-DMT.

Nice.

Yeah, and it was, uh, we took a film crew there, we filmed. I've never put that footage out publicly. At some point it might end up in a documentary or something. But it's, uh, yeah, so you do. So the point is though, is you have been willing to travel into places to open up this very fucking scary places, right?

Oh yeah, God, yeah, it's so—

yeah, it's so—

it's like, this is where your illusion of control, you kind of like, at some point it's overwhelming that it just like disappears, right?

It's—

yeah, yeah, this is it. Maybe I'm dying, maybe whatever it is, but this is it, right? And And that's the magic of this, right? When that happens and then your brain, your organism is like, oh wow, something new can be born in this. And like in this total pain, total despair, total helplessness.

Yeah.

Joe, I know you are very, very interested in like treatments that are proven to work. You, to me, seem very uninterested in just airy-fairy abstract theoretical stuff. Like, oh yeah, put, you know, put that on your vision board and that should work. So with the current state of research, do you have an opinion on what seems to be a little bit of a growing movement on treating addiction with psilocybin, ayahuasca, ibogaine?

Well, here's my thoughts on that, and I will give this with a caveat caveat that there's a lot of people that are making claims about how magical and wonderful some of these things are that are dangerous humans. And they're making— you know, they're not—

Oh, so you're saying that humans, some of the human therapists—

Some of the people that are offering— well, there's a lot of dangerous humans, right? So, like, the psilocybins, the plant medicines, ayahuasca, ibogaine that you mentioned, you know, EMDR— I'm sorry. MDMA. Yeah, mixing up a method of neurofeedback and biofeedback with plant medicines. That could be a freak show, right? But let's take ibogaine as an example, which comes from the iboga root, and that has been found to be one of the most effective ways to treat opiate addiction. Very high success rates for being an addiction interrupter. It's not a cure, it's a, it's an interrupter. How it works, very complex. I'm I'm not going to fully speak to that. There's, you know, you can find a lot of good information. There's a book called Ibogaine Explained that people can buy. It's a short book that is a very good book on Ibogaine. But I'm the first person in the world to have a before and after brain scan of doing Ibogaine.

Oh, you've used Ibogaine?

Yeah, I went to Mexico and I took a film crew and we videotaped all of this. It was one of the most horrifying experiences of my life, but also one of the most intense. And I've never been an opiate addict. My addiction to drugs was at my worst state, I weighed 105 pounds from freebasing cocaine for 3 months straight when I was 18 years old. So if you can imagine a 5-foot-10 male that weighed 105 pounds, that's very skinny, you know. And so, and of course that was many years ago because I'm 49 years old now at the time we're doing this because if we did this a year from now I'd be 50, right? If you kind of do the math.

I don't know that that adds up. It'll be your opinion.

Right, right. But I wanted to be my own human lab rat and so I took a film crew with me and that'll be part of the documentary that we put out in and a lot of the stuff. And I had serotonin and dopamine tests before doing it, and then I had Daniel Amen, who is the top brain scan psychiatrist in the world, who scanned my brain 6 different times. And so we did brain scans before, we did brain scans after. And what I will say is that if in that period of time after doing ibogaine, if you have an opiate addiction, you, if you you literally change the environment and you have aftercare. See, there's a lot of rehab centers that suck. I mean, they just exploit people for money. There's, you know, there's a ton of relapse, very low success rate, and there's others that are much better. So my thing is not to bash rehab centers, although many of them deserve bashing. It's really, it's a bubble. And so there are things where they can do a really good job while the person is there, but the real key is what do you do after the treatment? What do you do? What are the rituals? What is the aftercare that you have? Do you have recovery coaching? Are you consistently going to meetings? And most people left to their own devices are going to go create trouble. So to have accountability and to have loved ones, if you have loved ones, if you have no family members or any that are functional, then you actually You really have to create your own community. You have to seek that out. And so, there's the drugs that kill people are legal. The drugs that can actually help people are illegal. Not all of them, but that's the damaging thing. And there's, you know, if you really want to know the history of the war on drugs, go read Chasing the Scream by Johann Hartmann. Which is the first and last days of the war on drugs. Read In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts by Gabor Maté. If you, you know, read American Pain, you know, there's, there's so many things related to, you know, how these things became illegal, why they're illegal. But there are, there's so much research that is coming out. Psilocybin, LSD, You know, but most people are saying, oh, let me go have a conscious journey, let me have an experience. You know, some of my friends that will go to Burning Man and they're like, yeah, we're gonna have a journey. It's like, no, you're just gonna get high in a trailer.

You're gonna get bender for sure.

Yeah, so, but again, I mean, you know, everyone has their opinions and what I just said will piss off some people or whatever, but the thing is, is like, what's your intention behind it? And if you can actually go to people that that really have experience guiding people through trauma.

I mean, I've seen it change people's lives.

I've met people that have— I met one guy after I did the Ibogaine that had been to 5 different treatment centers. His family had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to help him stay sober and get off opiates, and he kept relapsing. And he did Ibogaine, and he's like, for the first time in my life, I don't have any cravings. And people can go through ibogaine for far less than most treatment centers and without withdrawals. They can literally go through without the pain of withdrawals. But it's very intense. And I mean, if I would have prepared for— people always ask me, what was it like? Describe it. I can talk for the next 10 years trying to describe it. No one would get it. And, you know, the best description I have was someone told me it was like going through hell on God's shoulders. I mean, it was scary. It was terrifying. But man, I mean, you— I saw millions of images and faces. And the one— where is— is a 12-hour-long trip, and the first 5 hours of it was the most scary, horrifying experiences ever. But then it became beautiful, and It was really powerful and it's the closest thing I've ever experienced to like, you know, whatever facing death is like. It felt so mentally like, whoosh. But man, do I think people would be well served to look into it? With caution, definitely, but worth exploring. And if you've tried a million things and it's not helped to you, you know, I mean, in a properly guided plant medicine journey. And by the way, this is things you're going to have to do outside of the country if you're in the US. You know, and I'm a guy that doesn't even like taking an aspirin. I mean, I have not had sugar in over 6 months. I've not had a drop of caffeine in over 6 months. I'm a very clean eater. I rarely, you know, eat dairy and grains. I try to eat, you know, very healthy, very organic food. I don't like putting medicine sent into my system because I nearly killed myself with drugs. But it was, you know, there's a lot. I'm being my own human lab rat. I'm looking at all of these things that, you know, have success and we're looking at the efficacy of these because, you know, in my journey you can talk about, oh, I want to make an impact, but who the hell cares about an impact unless the impact produces a result. I want to do research. Well, unless the research produces a result. Or I want to have awareness. Well, what's the point of awareness if it doesn't lead to a result? So we're really trying to find things that give a result. I wish I could say to everyone out there that here's exactly what you do, but it's complicated. Arianna Huffington, I've had speak at my events before, and in 2012 we went to with my buddy Peter Diamandis, who started the X Prize Foundation. We went to her home after my event that both of them were speaking at. We did a business event, and she— it was an X Prize for literally like a global learning for children. And there was a guy there that was in charge of the documentaries at HBO, like all the life documentaries. And I was talking to him about the different HBO documentaries that they had done. And I said, which one was the most difficult one you had done? And back in 2007, they did a really well-done series called Addiction. They wrote a book about it. It was like, you can literally find it online, you can buy it on Amazon. And this was done, you know, 10 years ago. So there's been a lot that has been discovered since 2007. But he said to me, he goes, we spent over a year interviewing over 1,000 doctors, family members, addicts, and he's like, and at the end of that documentary, we still didn't have a clear answer on what to do when you're addicted. And I was like, this is a complicated thing. So when people come up to me and say, I know the solution to addiction, or I have the cure for addiction, I'll listen to them, but they usually have a piece of the puzzle because it's not just one. One thing. It's not just as easy as like, I'm thirsty, drink a glass of water. Yeah, I mean, there's community, there's biochemical, there's the body, there's the environment. Like, if someone goes and does ibogaine, in his example, and then goes back to the same stressful job, same stressful thing, maintains the same rituals, eats the same diet, doesn't have aftercare, they're probably going to relapse. Yeah, you know, and that's, that's the deal. So you have to, you know, and how do you make someone thirsty? You know, that's the key. I mean, there's definitely people that are watching this right now or will watch this later that are addicts.

Sure.

And they're in isolation, they're addicted to porn, they're watching porn every night for maybe hours a day. They're internet gamers and they're like gamequitters.com is a great place for people that are addicted to video games, you know, run by by a buddy of mine named Cam Adair. And so there's a lot of resources. Tommy Rosen has Recovery 2.0, which is a recovery coaching program. Deanne Adamson has beingtrue2you.com, which is individual one-on-one coaching. There's a lot of resources and people that are doing things, but the awareness of, for one, admitting that you have an addiction, that you're struggling, you have to be able to see that and be able to look at your own shit. And there's a difference between secrecy and privacy. And so you want to be able to disclose if you're cheating on your spouse, if you're lying, especially if you've ever— like, people that are predators, as an example, almost all of them were had a predator do it to them. And they're living it out in other ways. You know, you have a lot of things like the Catholic Church, as an example, where a lot of these men that molest boys were actually molested themselves in the same exact environment. You know, and people think they're monsters, and you can argue that, yeah, that's a freaking horrendous thing to do. If you look back at people's lives, it actually makes makes sense. When you see people doing crazy shit, something happened. And I'm not making an excuse for people doing bad things. This is not like let them off the hook sort of thing because there are— I don't know quite what to do with a lot of the people that have like taken it to the point to where they've really harmed and damaged another person. What I do know though is if you don't start trying to understand the causation and if you don't bring a level of compassion and immediate judgment, or like, let's chop off their freaking heads. I mean, is that how you're gonna solve this, this global issue? And I'll tell you this, you know, to take it a step further, there's a lot of data that can be argued that World War II was created by addiction.

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

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

If it was 1932? Please lot of negative comments towards Joe because he deserves that!

How dare you?!

Right exactly as a horrible historian that I am but anyway it was called something like "Purpentine" basically Nazi Germany they were looking for ways to make money off their war efforts so what did they do?

They started making perfume out of this stuff or at least trying to figure how to use these spices correctly.

And then when World War II came around there wasn't anything else left over from them other than just tons of purpitine oil which we're going to talk about later today here too. So yeah okay let's go back one more time now. Basically in 1931 I believe it was—and please if I get the date wrong, tell me right They invented crystal meth, and they were giving it to most of the German army. And Hitler was being given IV treatments of vitamins and a whole concoction of different drugs. His doctor kept a journal of this, and so there's a lot of evidence of that, that when you see Hitler doing these very motivating type speeches and yelling and screaming and like a motivational speaker, he was high as a kite. On this crystal meth? On crystal meth and a whole concoction of different drugs. He was just on a lot of shit. And what they have found is that when someone takes, you know, when they gave it to the German army, they could fight harder, they could have less sleep, they were just more driven to go out and, you know, do what they did. And when they would, you know, shoot someone in the back of the head or, you know, torture someone or lead them to death in the concentration camp, you know, it's, it's, you know, I mean, how could you not look at that as being incredibly inhumane? But what they have found is when someone takes crystal meth for long periods or even short periods, it actually removes empathy. So people are able to do awful shit without being able to connect. It makes people disconnected. And so most of the German army, so much of this, these people were under the influence. And so much of history, people were under the influence. There's an episode of the podcast, you know, Hardcore History, there's an episode on, you know, history under the influence, worth listening to because you will get a different perspective of how how much addiction is involved in everything, but you don't hear that story. You don't hear, you know, it's like these people were fucking high, you know, they were, and they were being fed drugs. And in that sort of situation, especially directed in very evil ways, awful shit happens. And so, you know, 20% of the US, I think 20% of women in the US are on antidepressants. I mean, we are a country that is constantly, and I shouldn't say country, so much of the world is under the influence. People are drinking caffeine and all kinds of different things daily. And this is not a moral sort of like you should or you should not do it. It's just how it's being done. So much of the foods are incredibly addictive, so filled with sugars and so filled with things. I mean, there are a lot of companies companies that sit and figure out how to create things that will addict you. It's like gaming in Las Vegas. I mean, there's a fascinating book called Addiction by Design about gaming in Las Vegas and how they hook you. And when you're looking, like for instance, if someone thinks, well, I'm not an addict. I've heard current stats and I have no idea what the accuracy is of it, but based on the usage of Facebook, that the average American right now, based on how many minutes or hours a day Facebook is used, that they have somehow come— I've heard this calculation that they're spending 4 years of their life on Facebook.

And I'm guessing the trajectory is for that not to get shorter. No. I find myself, I tend to use social media self- officially, like I'll publish stuff, but I don't like to quote unquote consume very much. But with that said, when I jump on Facebook, like maybe I want to check Messenger or something, oftentimes I'll find— I'll catch myself, I've been scrolling through Facebook for 3 minutes. And when I got on, I had zero intention of doing that, but there was just something about my user experience, how it's designed, maybe with significant deliberate attempt to addict your attention to it. Oh yeah. And it's just like this, I love it when I catch myself doing it. It's like, okay, I can get out of it. I can not slide down that slippery slope any further. But also at the same time, there's this like weird feeling of like, I just lost control. I did something for 3 minutes I didn't really consciously know I was doing.

And it hooked you and it pulled you in. Yeah. And now here's the thing. This is not to bash all of the amazing things with technology. Sure. Part of it is just to have you actually look at these things are constantly like little dopamine drips that will pull you in and are very stimulating and the brain craves it. It literally makes you hungry. And if you're not careful, you're going to get sucked in. I mean, there's a documentary made called Screenagers. You know, we're not teenagers, but they're screenagers. And there's so much of human life that is now interacting with screens and as virtual reality and augmented reality and AI and machine learning and all of these algorithms, you know, because I'm in the marketing business, I teach people people how to do marketing and stuff. If you really want to understand so much of marketing, I mean, you are part of an algorithm that is literally feeding up to you exactly what your interests are showing, what your friends are doing, what politician you like or you hate. I mean, they're feeding up to you exactly what your brain is saying it wants, and it's more powerful than most people's conscious awareness. Awareness and it will suck you in. So people will do drugs to sort of numb out from this. People will do behaviors to sort of numb out from this. People see normal everyday life is quite boring if you don't have all the stimuli. And so now, you know, a lot of people, they cannot sit still without an audiobook playing or without music playing or without a background video or without some sort of screen. And again, this is not like saying, oh, because the fact that we can even do this right now is fantastic. I mean, look how many people were able to actually, you know, depending if anyone likes anything I'm saying here or that you're saying here, which of course they do because I think you get more likes when you're talking because this is JP's audience, you know. Well, but my name is Joe Polish, so I mean, we're both JP. That's right. You know, but anyway. No, but the thing is though, is like, we can never have this sort of experience, you know, 2 years ago. We couldn't do this. And so it's absolutely fascinating, it's useful, but the thing is, is like, what is it doing for you? I mean, like I always talk to people about, I've got so many books, there's so many things to read, there's so many things to watch. I have a client who said, you know, great question, what needs solved? You know, what needs solved in your life? And if there's some area that needs solved, that's what you should read books about. That's people you should hang out with. Those are things that you should study. And you certainly should give yourself some disconnection from the false forms of connection. And you should really connect with humans because we're more connected electronically than we ever have been in human history, but we're more disconnected like in tribes and with real friendships. You know, I mean, if I was Face— you know, FaceTiming with you or we were talking that way, I mean, yeah, I could still talk with you, but it's completely different than us hanging out and doing all the shenanigans we've been doing for the last 2 days.

It is, which have been fun.

The vast majority of people addicted to those drugs and other drugs can actually stop cold turkey if they are able to. Not everybody is able to. That's why we have rehabs. I'm very grateful for rehabs. They get a bad rap. I'm really glad they exist. Some people need to go into a rehab in order to be at enough distance from their drug of choice to be successful. But 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 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 acknowledgement 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 choice so that we can leverage our willpower and meet our goal of abstention for 4 weeks. For general categories, 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 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 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'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, 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 get the 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 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 you 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 personality type that could get addicted to pain. And you see that, you know, with workaholism or 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 we 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 It could 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— 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, or 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 God's great, wonderful nature, nothing's going to 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 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. 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 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. 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 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 in the United States, but boy, parents in China were jumping for joy 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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