The Science of Healing Addiction

Hey guys, it's me. Amber is on vacation, so you get me. And today we are going to talk about one of my favorite topics in the whole wide world, which is the pleasure chemicals in the brain and how those impact addiction negatively, and sort of then what the science is behind those chemicals to help addiction. not be cured, but be resolved and held at bay. So basically there are 4 pleasure chemicals that we're gonna talk about today. And let's pretend there's a line in the air. Above the line is dopamine. We talk about that all the time. That's associated with desire and endorphins, which are associated with pain. Normally we get dopamine from, for me, Bree just brought me a really great Mexican dinner, lunch. Dopamine desire, new shoes, having one of my children say, do you want to come visit for the weekend? Things I want to do bring me dopamine. And normally we get endorphins from exercise and laughing. They're associated with pain. They are above the line, which is because they're short-term pleasure chemicals. They don't last very long and we have to go get them over and over and over. Unfortunately, if that one new dress would just hit that dopamine thing, I'd be— have more closet space. And below this line in the air are serotonin and oxytocin. And you know how much I talk about serotonin, but serotonin is associated with pride and oxytocin is primarily associated with connection. So serotonin and oxytocin are the long-term pleasure chemicals. And if they, if we were boats, large ships, they would be the hull. They're the thing that keeps the boat floating. Okay. That's the big space underneath the water that provides balance and Floating forward, but from a non-engineering perspective. So those are the things that we have to have to stay in our lane, to sort of function well, do what's right in the world, to be healthy. If we don't have enough of them, every single human being in the world will go back above that line to dopamine and endorphins because those are gettable. Okay. Those are also associated with every addiction there is. Anorexia and self-harm are associated with endorphins. Dopamine is associated with gambling, shopping, alcohol, sex, drugs, basically video gaming, all those other addictions. So dopamine and endorphins are associated with every addiction and therefore sort of make sure that the addiction can be fed is because we can go get those chemicals. What happens is as the addiction gets going and begins to be problematic for the person, then we are going to naturally see an erosion, an eroding process of serotonin and oxytocin. That means that we are going to stop, we're going to have problems in relationships. We are maybe going to change our friend groups. We are going to lose interest in things that we heretofore have liked to do. We will have problems in our school or job. We are lying. We may be stealing. We are definitely sneaking, and you can hear that those those things that happen in addiction are robbing our brain of the good chemicals, and that's how addiction sort of guarantees that it's fed. Is that as I as I rob these, as I shrink these and erode these, then I'm guaranteed that this person's brain is going to go back above that line to. To get the dopamine or the endorphins. So we're going to keep it on dopamine today because that's primarily what we deal with is alcohol and drug abuse. So, but it's the same process. So you can hear in that very nature how addiction feeds itself. So therefore the cure, which I know there's not a cure, I'm using the term very metaphorically loosely, is time for that brain to put all those extra neuroreceptors to sleep. But also for serotonin and oxytocin to be re-put in there, rebuilt, re-fed, and regrown. And this is sort of why I'm always a big advocate for long-term, good quality sober living, is that in the nature of the phases and the nature of working and in the nature of the connection and fun that these places provide, we are reforming serotonin in that I I'm staying, I'm doing well in my recovery program, I'm working, I'm taking on some of my financial expenses in that process, and I'm also connecting. I have new friends, whether they live in the sober house with me or I'm meeting them through whatever program I'm working on, my sponsor, my coworkers. I'm rebuilding that connection as well as now my family relationships are starting to get better as well. And those 2 long-term pleasure chemicals, Then we refill that hole of the ship, the brain of our addicted loved ones. So those are the brain's natural cures. And today I want to talk about how we as the family members get in the way of those things happening, why we get in the way, and what to do about that. So today we get in the way, and again, we get in the way by fixing their problems by listening to the lies they continue to tell, maybe at the beginning of treatment, that this is no good. People aren't being nice to me. They're not helping me. And we buy those lies and we pull them out of treatment. We let them come back out of treatment. We let them live with us long-term with no financial responsibility. We don't actually impart any need for responsibility on them at all. And they just sort of live with us. And for short term, I guess that feels good. And I guess that feels good to us and it feels good to them. But long term, it is very, very bad for serotonin development because no grown adult should live rent-free. That's just not how the world works. Sometimes we get in the way of serotonin by giving them too much money. Sometimes we continue to Not feed the serotonin by solving their problems, not allowing any problems to develop, and sort of providing that boomerang. You can go back out and use, but you can come back home. You can go back out and use and come back home. But we're also damaging the oxytocin development because we're mad, we're resentful, we're getting stepped all over. They know it, so they're sort of up in their room using, sneaking in and out of the house. We hear this all the time on our the membership live call is people like, "Yeah, my kid lives with me, but we never see them. They're always up in their room or." walking in and out while we're asleep or in the shower. Like they deliberately set it up so that they don't have that connection with you. Part of this is because addiction believes it needs to be fed for the person to live. Remember, addiction lives in the survival part of the brain. And so it actually does believe they need to fill those neuroreceptors that were created by the addiction to live. And so it comes up with all kinds of reasons to not allow the rebuilding of serotonin and oxytocin because they even Addiction knows that that's the death knell to itself, and it's going to do anything to prevent that. So one of the reasons— well, lots of the reasons that we do this, why we get in the way, is fear. We're terrified that our person will relapse or they'll be homeless or they'll overdose. And so we sort of set up the scenario for the serotonin to not be developed. Anxiety, you know, that codependence that we got, we have, which is that anxiety based upon fear that really gets in the way. Emotional blackmail. A lot of times they will, they'll make comments like, well, if you make me pay rent, I'll go live in my car. If I have to contribute here financially, I'll just be homeless. And that doesn't feel good to us because again, that pushes on those fear buttons of what will happen if we do that. Lots of times we see this and it's just flat out parental disagreement. One parent is like, yeah, they can't come home. And the other parent is like, "Yeah, they can." And I can't tolerate the fact that you won't let them come home. And so then the parents are fighting. Meanwhile, the kids coming home because the parents are fighting, and we see that a lot as well as with maybe with a spouse not doing what they need to be doing. Is there'll be disagreement in the extended family? Like we get some pushback from grandparents, from in-laws, sometimes kids grown grown kids. I'm working with a family right now, and. There's division in the siblings that are all adults, and then there's division within the parents. And so, you know, one child and the mom are more like, no, we gotta do what Campbell says. But one brother and the dad are like, we can't handle that. And so we're sort of just in this standstill. But meanwhile, we are completely not allowing serotonin and oxytocin to develop. So the way we do this is Natural. You can hear in all these stories, we've been there. We've we've lived through them. Every client we ever see here has fallen into it at some point because these are uncharted waters for us. We don't really know what we're doing. We get lots of bad advice from family members, from friends, from neighbors, from lots of people who tell us to do the opposite of what we would tell you to do because we're going to be focusing on or Kim and I would be focusing on rebuilding that pride and and that serotonin that we know is really important for our loved ones to ultimately get well. What this takes is often the hard part, which is we have to get sick and tired of being sick and tired enough to sort of hold those boundaries, to not fix their problems, to charge them rent, to not allow them to live there if they can't do those things, whatever's involved in that. We have to get sick and tired of being sick and tired. And that goes back to, we have to be sick and tired and sick and tired Equally at the same time as our spouse or our extended family, and that that just never happens. I've never ever ever met a family where they came together right away and said, "Yeah, that's it." There's usually a soft, a soft parent. A lot of times it's the dad. Certainly wasn't in our family for my first son. It was totally Frank. Weirdly though, for our second son, it was me, which is interesting because I don't really get it except. Maybe I didn't have the bandwidth to do it twice. I was like, it's not that bad. Let's just let it go. So what we want to do instead of all the things I've just gone through that we do do is we want to focus on feeding those things. We want to focus on feeding connection. Even if you are mad at your child, your child is homeless, your child is away from you, you've dropped them off at treatment and you just don't even want to speak to them. We have to find some way to foster some level of connection, whether that's just you send a blue heart, whether that's you just send a A funny meme or, hey, I just watched this show on Netflix. Think you might like it. It doesn't mean we have to go spend hours and hours and hours with them. It doesn't mean we need to have these really connective conversations. It doesn't mean we have to let them live with us. It doesn't mean we have to go do anything. It just means find some level that you can handle. And a lot of times it is just a quick touchpoint, but that counts. They get— we get oxytocin with a quick touchpoint. And the other way then obviously would be for us to figure out how to help them regain their own serotonin. And the only way that can be done is by allowing them to be responsible for themselves and to fix their own problems. That doesn't mean we have to say, we don't care, don't call us with your problems. You're an adult, that's up to you, but we don't solve them. we go to that empowerment triangle. We can empathize and we can align and we can empower them to resolve their problems. We can certainly stay connected and build the oxytocin while we do this by saying things like, you know, that sounds really rough. I'm sure that that's not a great situation, but I bet there's someone on the staff there that can help you resolve this. Or, yeah, it is going to be tough to stay the whole 6 months. And I know that you'd like to get back out and live a more normal life, But unfortunately, coming home's not an option. So you could look at staying longer, saving some money from the job and being able to launch independently when you leave long-term sober living. There's a lot of ways we can do that that are kind and are gentle and are connective. It just don't solve the problem. And I think that's sort of the secret that is really difficult for people to do. But serotonin And oxytocin are the necessary chemicals to allow or to force addiction to take a nap, to go to sleep, and to eventually go into the coma that the ultimate 2-year mark of sobriety brings. Remember, it takes 30 to 45 days of not using anything for your brain to start to put those extra neuroreceptors to sleep. And at first they're sleeping a little bit like toddlers on Christmas Eve, one eye toward the roof, listening for Santa, not really sleeping very well. But about three months, lots of them are starting to sleep. They're in hearty nap. At a year, the research—I don't know who makes up these numbers—ninety to ninety-four percent. I don't know where ninety-four came, but let's go with it. At a year, ninety to ninety-four percent of all the extra neuroreceptors are sleeping soundly, hard. Two years of sobriety from all substances, a hundred percent. of all those extraneuroreceptors are in a coma. They're never gonna die and they're never gonna go away. But when we hit that 2-year mark of somebody, we have an amazingly solid chance of keeping that person sober for the rest of their lives, as long as serotonin and oxytocin continue to be the dominant pleasure chemicals in the brain. That is important. At 2 years, but starting at 3, leading up to 2, as long as serotonin and oxytocin are becoming the dominant chemicals in the brain, as far as pleasure chemicals, we are just increasing, increasing, increasing our chance of getting our loved one to be sober, to stay sober, and to own sobriety. I can't say that enough. That is the secret. And it's right there in the brain. It's right there. We just have to allow it to happen. I say this a lot. Sometimes we have to love our children or our spouses or partners so much that we have to tolerate our own discomfort while they fix their problems, while they manage their lives. You know, Amber does this with us, you guys. I can't tell you, Kim and I are so resistant to filming videos, to doing these kinds of things. Now starting the AI, we're like, we don't want to do that. And you know, she just keeps on going. So we figured out to keep our serotonin and oxytocin going, we have to get on board and we have to resolve our own problems and we have to learn these skills. We have to do these things and we have to implement them. So right here outside of addiction, you can see how important serotonin and oxytocin are to every human being. If we don't have them, If we didn't ever do it and she blew us off, A, we'd probably be fired. We wouldn't work here. But B, we probably would have some other addiction going because we would need those pleasure chemicals that we're not getting from being loved and beloved and empowered and cherished in this practice that's so important to us. So if it's important to us, think, think about that for someone who doesn't have any pleasure chemicals. Okay. I'm beating this horse to death. I know I talk about serotonin all the time, but I, I can't emphasize its importance enough. All right, Bree, do we have any questions? Does the time include relapses though? Great question, Nicole. So let's talk about that for a nanosecond. A lapse, which is a very, very brief relapse that is generally very, very quick. And generally reported, self-reported by the person who's had the lapse. Those lapses can have great meaning. And I would say yes, that time would count. If it's a full-on relapse, which goes on for a prolonged period of time and is generally caught or discovered, not self-reported, then no. Then we're looking at probably a reboot to some degree. It depends on how long the lapse is, how severe the lapse is, and what the ramifications of the lapse. Are, but a full-blown relapse would probably mean we're sort of starting over. But again, I think that's sort of how people handle it. We don't say you have to, like, if you had 91 days of sobriety and you have a relapse, we don't say you have to go back to day 1. We're like, okay, well, we're still at 91. Let's press on. So I think if the person who's dealing with the relapse can sort of minimize the degradation of all that's come prior to it, then you would be in better space than someone who's like completely like, you're a loser, you completely messed up, and now you have to start all over. Good question though. How do we put our own feelings aside to push for their feel-good serotonin feels without harboring additional resentments? Well, I think what I'm hearing there is if our feelings are anxiety and fear, I think we have to deal with those. I don't know that those would feed— and correct me if I'm getting the question wrong, and Bree will slap it up there if you need to give me more scoop. But if those are the feelings that we're tolerating, which are the ones I think we're tolerating, then we just have to deal with those. And we deal with those by talking to other family members who are going through it, maybe a counselor. Going toward ourselves, those things we talk about, chasing our own peace. And again, feeding that thought, which is, I love my child or loved one enough that I can tolerate not fixing their problems while they learn, practice, and get good at fixing their own problems. The only way anyone learns is by fixing their own problems. So look back at it as the same as you would look at your child who Maybe was bad at school and had to pull a card in kindergarten. I mean, your feeling might be embarrassment. Your feeling might be frustration because you've taught this child better, but you still allow the teacher to pull the card and you allow the kid to figure out how to fix the situation with the teacher. It's the same thing. We just have to recognize our feelings aren't embedded to not fixing their problem. I hope I answered that well. So excited about this. My ex started sobriety and immediately moved in with his parents a year and a half ago. First, I believe this is the right call, but now I'm noticing the enabling has kept him from facing consequences. I think he's stuck in the loop. Yeah. Again, short-term, it can be a fine solution. I'm not opposed to saying you can come live with us for 6 weeks. But at that point, you would have plenty of time for feasibly getting a job, having some paycheck or two under your belt, and starting to pay rent. I think we can allow a little bit of problem fixing if they have financial responsibility tied to it. The minute we're like, yes, you can come here, the addiction is going to find 400 million reasons to not get a job, to not pay, to not do. And then where we mess up is we say, you can stay here until you find a job. And you know what? All of a sudden, it is dangum impossible to find a job in the United States of America, according to all of our clients. There's no jobs to be had. I have applied and applied, applied. But when you say, "Hey, your rent is due in six weeks," they figure out how to find a job. So we have to create that need. If his parents aren't creating a need for him to develop serotonin, then he might be stuck in that loop, and that addiction has has the power. I can say it is. But it has the power to creep back in. Addiction is finding— it just looks for like a hair crack, a hair crack to get back in, and then it stretches the crack with its rationalization, justification, and shame that it loves to feed. I used to think that the drinker has to completely stop drinking in order for the other 2 chemicals to work, but you're saying it's actually possible To build the other two chemicals while they're still drinking presented. It depends. Now, I can socially drink, and I have plenty of oxytocin and serotonin, but I don't have a shame-based thing. I'm not hiding. I'm not sneaking. I'm not stealing. I'm not lying. It's not impacting my job. It's not impacting my relationships. It's not impacting my health. So if we're talking about addiction. Those things are— some or all of those things are not going to be in place, which are going to have that erosion of those chemicals that I talked about. So I'm not going to answer that question definitively. It depends on, is the drinking problematic at all? And again, hiding, lying, sneaking, those are problems because right there you can just feel how those good chemicals are going away. So that's a That's a question that can't be answered without lots and lots and lots of details. All right. How do I, how do I as the spouse get out of the bad guy role? I fought with my husband for 21 years. Is it possible to reverse at this point? How long would it take after fighting this long? It's possible for sure. If his addiction will allow it. Remember, they're always They're always thinking and acting like the victim. So it's possible if his brain will allow it. Could take longer than an average thing, but you can absolutely change by what you talk about. And we talk a lot about the bad guy role. Amber has a lot of that in Invisible Intervention. Then the way to get out of the bad guy role is to not point out their problems, to not yell at them, to not shame them, to not overly question them. You can make You can make comments, you can make informational updates, you can say how you feel and not be in the bad guy role. But there's a massive distinction. We talk about this all the time in our membership calls. They will say, they will take something you say kindly and innocently or completely not connected to anything that has the price of eggs in Alabama and make you the bad guy. Okay, because they were always trying to do that. So your job is to don't walk into the bad guy role. But there's a big difference between walking in and being pulled in. And most of us know exactly what it's like to be pulled in. Like I had a kid once who threw his mother under the bus, went out and used a ton of drugs the night before because his mother had the audacity to make spaghetti for dinner because he hates spaghetti. And how could she possibly do that? She was a terrible mother. When 5 days before that it was his birthday and that was the meal he picked because it was his favorite meal. So you can hear how addiction will pull people into the bad guy role. To not walk into it is to use a kind tone, to use gentle words, to not make shameful statements, to decide, is this something that needs to be said at all? Does it need to be said by me? Does it need to be said now? And if so, is my tone My body language, is the timing, is everything good? Then then do it, and then you won't be in the bad guy role. But you could get dragged in. How does anxiety impact serotonin? Hmm. It was a very good question and very tied into, in my opinion, the advantage of the SSRI. So the SSRI is like a Lexapro or serotonin. Celexa, Prozac, those are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, and they are really great when we don't have enough serotonin in our own brains. And then our brain doesn't— serotonin is kind of like the grease in the car engine that lets us shift gears. If we don't have enough serotonin, we get stuck in circular thinking loops, which is anxiety. So that question is really interesting, and I've never actually thought about it in that way, but they are connected and do impact each other. I mean, I remember I had to get on an SSRI when this whole nightmare was going on in our house because I couldn't— I would wake up at night and be like, where is he? What's he doing? Is he alive? I mean, I just couldn't get out of the loop. And finally my doctor was like, could you please just take the dink on SSRI? Which I did. And it really helped my anxiety be managed and held in check. So that's a really good question, Dale. I hope I answered that. My young adult daughter has always had dopamine need as long as I can remember. Could this be a physical problem that she wasn't getting enough serotonin and oxytocin? Could be, but it also could be maybe she has ADHD or her brain just doesn't have enough dopamine in it. ADHD is a dopamine deficiency disease. So those people that have that tend to seek more dopamine, whether it's in sweet things, food in general, Activities, drugs or alcohol, they tend to seek dopamine to sort of mitigate the problem. And that's why a lot of the clients that we have that have undiagnosed or mistreated ADHD will say, well, I've just, I just felt better when I use. I just, my brain felt better. I felt more normal. I felt like other people. So lots of times what we see is that that's what that is, is I'm trying to fix and mitigate my problem. Question, are there enough good resource responses to situations like that one you just mentioned where the kid really likes spaghetti that night was trying to create a fight? You're not going to win, to be honest. If they're— if the addiction is hell-bent on being the victim, they're going to be the victim. But don't walk into the fight. I have a video out there somewhere on the YouTube channel about what I call fish hooking. When you can see that that's a fish hook, like, Mom, I can't believe you picked spaghetti. Like, that's just totally And utter crap, like you know I hate it. You know he's fishhooking you. You know he's trying to start a fight. You say, "You know what? I totally forgot. You're completely right. It won't happen again." You don't defend, and you don't argue against. And I think that's a really difficult skill to develop because they're coming at us so illogically that it just makes sense to logically defend what we're saying or doing. I tell the story all the time in that fishhook video. I'm sitting on our sofa. Years ago, wearing a pair of red corduroys with a white turtleneck. Now it does just so happen that our sofa at the time was bright red with big white swirls on it. But my son, whose friend is out there in the, on the street in a car to pick him up, is already good. He knows he's going to use, he knows he's going to smoke weed or whatever they were doing at the time. This is way before I knew there was a problem. He comes down the stairs through the front hall, looks in at me and says, oh my God, you look absolutely ridiculous. Like, how can you possibly think that's cool to wear that outfit on that sofa? Fish hook, but I don't know it. And like a stupid fish, I swim right to it and grab it. And I'm like, oh my God! Like I'm literally sitting here reading. Why did you have to be ugly? Like there's no need for you to make a comment on what I'm doing, where I'm wearing, where I'm sitting. Like get a grip. So what did I do there? I met the fight, and then he flips it around like all addicts do, which was a lie. But as he's leaving the house, he's his brain is like, well, I wasn't going to use. But she was picking a fight with me. That's not true. He was going to use anyway. He picked the fight to mitigate his shame. So recognize this is a fishhook. If it's an illogical comment, an illogical fight, just don't engage. Just don't engage. Is that why my addicted son so craves a love relationship when he's trying to get sober? Yes, probably. You get dopamine also from a romantic relationship. Remember, we get a lot of dopamine at the beginning. We get— I can't remember, Kim always talks about it— some infatuation chemical that's different than a love chemical, but the same thing, which is a short-term pleasure chemical. But yeah, probably is also the oxytocin that would come from having a relationship like that. And there's nothing wrong with that as long as it's healthy and The right timing. Meaning serotonin as he gets a thousand percent of dopamine from his meth use. Yeah, it's it's that that's my answer stands. All right, that's it for the questions. Perfect, perfect timing and jump into my next session. All right, thanks you guys. For those of you who know who I am and and have heard me talk about serotonin four hundred million times. Sorry, but I really stand by my belief that it is vital for beating addiction. And I now have brought oxytocin into the club as well. So hope you guys have a great week. Amber will be here next week, and I hope everything goes well for you. All right, bye guys.