Mental Health, Addiction & Anxiety w/ Dr. Drew Pinsky

24:28And the whole thing has a predictable response to treatment. That's the disease of addiction. That's actually a definition of disease generally. And addiction fits it perfectly. The question is, is addiction a disease or a syndrome? That's the only legitimate question you can ask about it. Because it has a common genetic basis and common pathophysiology, I call that a disease. Do you believe that there's a, on drugs or alcohol, do you believe there's a chemical predisposition to be genetic? Genetic. My dad did too. So you don't - See, I see I've treated thousands and thousands of addicts. I can only think of like five where I couldn't see a clear cut family history.

25:02Okay. So then based on that definition, I would say I have more friends that are dependent upon other people than they are addicted to them. But that's the challenging thing about talking about relationship as addiction. I bristle a little bit at the overuse of the addiction construct, though it's very useful when it comes to sex and love. It's very useful. Now, it's not a formal diagnosis. It's not the DSM-5. It is a construct that people use to help people manage these behaviors and these experiences we call sex and love addiction. Now, if you are a sex and love addict and you have a chemical addiction, it's all the same thing.

25:42And you have to get it all treated. It's all a disease state because you can go from sex to cannabis to opiates to alcohol. You just switch around all you want. You're still doing the same thing without your brain. And it's hard to activate throwing the switch, as I was saying. You have that genetic switch that finally gets thrown in the shell of the nucleus accumbens. Hard to do that with behaviors. It's hard. Usually a chemical throws it first. Then you go to gambling. Then you go to sex. It's just you know you can't go over here because that'll kill you. So your brain goes, yeah, but this horse races, that's no big deal.

26:18It's just a pastime. No, I'm laughing, but you're right. You're right. It's the crazy thing about addiction is your brain starts thinking that's effed up in addiction, that your brain convinces you certain things are good, when it's just that motivational system that's the problem. So sex and love addiction is a challenging construct. you know I worry about the overutilization if you're interested in it Pia Melody has some great books on it I think it's called Overcoming Love Addiction or Facing Love Addiction and she talks about the love addiction love avoidance cycle and the cycles of abuse lots of great constructs in there that you will see yourself in if there's any sense that you have one of these things and again they're very common built off trauma again and there's various ways to manage it.

27:11If you are somebody that keeps getting yourself in situations that are really problematic, the relationships are not working or you're getting hurt physically or emotionally, you want to look at this. You want to look at it. And it's useful to think of it as a sex and love addiction sometimes. And the one thing that I mentioned earlier, how you'll be attracted to circumstances and people that always end up being the same. Your body's a perfect instrument if you've had that trauma, and you'll be attracted to these things, and you'll just do it over and over and over again. So when you feel lightning bolts, if you're that person that has this pattern, beware the lightning bolts, the lightning bolts of attraction.

27:54They call it the coup de foot en français, and it's going to be the same thing all over again. What do you do beyond looking at it? What's something else you can do? So you can look at it, but then there's something you've got to physically change, right? Yeah. I always tell people, look, you can, it depends, you know, it's always hard for me. A lot of this I get when I'm just talking to people on telephone and things. It's hard for me to tell how serious it is, but I say, well, you can give yourself, try. Try to start dating people you're not having lightning bolts with, you're just having butterflies.

28:24And see if you can hang with it, or do you sabotage those relationships? Because the nature of the trauma makes it really difficult to have real intimacy. And so intimacy becomes uncomfortable and boring and weird and all these kinds of feelings. And so they either leave or sabotage or something. And so if you can't stay with a relationship that is not a lightning bolt relationship, you have to get treatment. Now you can do various things. You can go to a 12-step program. I think this kind of thing is best professionally managed. And trauma therapy does tremendous EMDR, things like that. Tremendous and quick.

29:01You start being attracted to and by different kinds of people. Do you, wow. Now, when someone's going to get therapy, by the way, people advertise on the show for it as well, but is there any advice you would give to have the right type of therapist? Meaning, is there something about them? Yeah, these are hard things. Referrals are helpful. You shouldn't, it's certainly not at the beginning, you shouldn't love your therapist or feel better necessarily after therapy. The idea is not to feel better. The idea is to heal. And that often feels not so good for a while. It should be challenging. Now, a good therapist should give you tolerable doses of that.

29:42So you're not miserable and you're not depressed. You should be challenged. You should be challenging and should be gratifying. Should they have initials next to their name of some type? Well, that's where I was going to go. And so the best thing is if you have a PsyD, Ph.D., or M.D. after the names. I think LCSWs make excellent therapists also. Does their training? It's something about the kind of person that becomes a licensed clinical social worker and their training. I've hired a million of them. They have excellent therapists. And this just seems to be a consistent thing. I always worry that it's just in Southern California or something because that's where I work with all these people.

30:19But it's been my own therapist as an LCSW, and I just was outstanding. So the level of expertise is generally better. The MDs rarely do therapy, so it's really hard to find an MD that does this stuff. They refer it out, but they often know who to send to that are good. So one of the ways, ideal ways to do this, if you have the resources and insurance and stuff, first get a psychiatric evaluation. You know, what is my diagnosis? What's going on here? And given that construct, what kinds of treatment are going to be most likely to help me? Now, most people don't do that. And it's always, you know, I always worry that, you know, I both worry that the MDs kind of overprescribe the meds.

31:04And I also worry that people that need meds never get to the MD and, you know, wonder why they don't get better and might really need it. Hopefully somebody enlightened will be judicious and careful and not throw meds on everybody. It's not the way to go. So they're useful and sometimes very important, not all the time. And then if you have trauma, you need to be with somebody with really ideally LCSW, PsyD, PhD after their name, who has explicit trauma therapy. And look for things like EMDR and various kinds of, you know, there's all kinds of ways now to hook the brain and the body up. It's all about getting the brain and the body reintegrated.

31:39Well, that's where I want to go. So I want to talk about heart, brain, what I call coherence or whatever. And you said you wanted to talk about that a little bit today. So I said earlier that I've done a lot of work. Some of that work has been therapy, reading, having friends like you in my life. Literally, I've just become more self-aware. And a lot of times, just my awareness of some of my behavioral patterns, it's lost some of its power over me. Oh, 100%. That's why there's a whole category in treatment, frankly, called psychoeducation. Okay. And interestingly, early in my therapy, I had to understand what was happening before I felt comfortable going in.

32:13Going in. I read a ton of stuff before. The therapist was like, why do you, I just need to understand. I just need to. Well, for me, it wasn't just that. It was like I've produced an externally really pretty good life. And I was afraid, if I'm being candid, that if I change some of these patterns that I had in my life, that although maybe I had a little bit more zen and peace, but I'd lose my edge. I'd lose my success. By the way, I think my audience listening resonates with what I just said deeply. But here's the thing about treatment and healing. You have to be one of the, your brain hates change.

32:47Our brain fight changes just the way we hate. We don't want our arm cut off. We don't want to change fundamentally who our brain thinks we are. But you have to be prepared to become whoever you're supposed to be. Wow. And that is a really hard thing for people to do. I went through it myself. It's you have to kind of let go and let things happen. And your brain fights you. And that's kind of why when I recommend professionals get involved, that's their skill set is working around and through those resistances. That's one of the most important things someone said because what I ended up finding out, because this is like an achiever audience overall, right?

33:25I ended up finding out that in fact I externally produced way more abundance in my life when I had patterns that served me in my life and I gave myself the gift of a little bit more equanimity and peace in my life. One of the things I did also work on, though, was what I'd like you to elaborate on because you'd be better at it than me. But I've worked on small things all the way to like my breathing. Oh, sure. To, you know, alter my HRV rate so that I've got a little bit more heart and brain coherence, which most people don't know about. So just riffed on that. Well, I just, there's a guy named Stephen Porges.

33:59Okay, if you want to read about the neurobiology of attachment and regulation, Alan Shore is your guy. And Peter Fonagy, who really has worked out this socio-emotional exchange system, which is something that's evolutionarily built into not just our bodies, but actually into our development. And so there is—I'm going to have trouble explaining this in a way that's cohesive, but I'm going to try. Anyway, the brain, the base of the brain, the brainstem, the cranial nerves, and the autonomic and parasympathetic nervous systems all develop together and are embedded in the face, the ear, the vocal cords through something called the brachial pouches, which is these things that develop into our face and neck and whatever, and the sympathetic outflow to our heart and gut.

34:53And it turns out it's obviously the face and our voice and our ear is how we exchange emotionality. We are exquisitely sensitive to what's going on other people's faces. And what goes on in our faces can have micro, micro changes that the other person, maybe even not on a conscious level, is able to read and receive as information about the other person's emotional states. So we ultimately learn to regulate our emotions through being in and around other people. Our identity comes from being in and around other people. You know, like we said, the brain is embedded in the body, but the brain body is embedded in a social system.

35:31And how it manifests, you mentioned earlier about, you know, trends and things and how they affect people. They do. I'm interested in that. I'm not an expert in that, but I read a lot about that stuff these days. History is one of my weak spots, so I've read a ton about it trying to make sense of it all. But the socio-emotional exchange system is also connected through various nuclei in the brainstem to the vagus nerve, the gut, and then the sympathetic outflow. Something like 70 % or 80 % of the vagus is an inflow to the brain. When I went to medical school, we were taught, well, the vagus is a system that decreases your, maybe changes your acid secretion in your stomach and slows your heart down.

36:14Right. No. 70 % of it is getting information from your body and taking it back to the brain goes that way it's crazy and it's deeply embedded in this socio-emotional exchange system and he has all this doubt about how heart rate change and breathing change with our emotional states it's from infancy

36:34from infancy what have you done in that world for yourself I like the breathing stuff I try to do that I'm not a religious just my thing has been the psychotherapeutic process. I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this, but as it pertains to breathing and heart rate and facial expressions and stuff, I know when I'm around great therapists that are highly attuned to their patients because when I see them work or I interact with them, I notice I start breathing with them too. Literally my heart rate and breathing starts syncing up with that other person. And when I become aware of, I've actually been, this one woman who I've become close with who treats sex addiction, actually, I saw her in a video working with a patient and I noticed it was happening to me and I went, oh, this woman has got powers.

37:23And so I got to know her and lo and behold, she really is an exquisite therapist. And they can just be fully present and attuned to that person on not just an attentive, attentional level, but the whole body is an instrument. And if you've ever been in a therapeutic process where your body is present like that, it's weird. I've been the subject of it as a patient, and I've helped other people by being the antenna. And you experience things and smell things and hear things that are not yours. And you know it because you've never experienced these things before. And really the – I'll tell you a story in a second about my favorite story with this.

38:05I tell it all the time. But the real art in the therapeutic process is not just receiving, listening with your whole body, I call that, but knowing when to bring it in the room. In other words, when to go, you know, I'm having an experience. And I'll tell you a story about that. I had this guy that was severely traumatized. And usually it's traumatized parts of the self that are needing attention that aren't, the patient isn't even aware, isn't there in the room with that patient at the time. It's sort of a walled-off part of themselves that's screaming for some kind of attention. And this guy was coming in, and as he would sit down every day, I started hearing the opening riff on Mad Men.

38:47I was like, where is that coming from? I'm like, I don't hear that normally. And I was like, well, isn't that interesting? And damn it, every time he would start, he walked in the room. Well, then it got weirder. Then, as we were working together, it wasn't that long. there's a few visits um i started feeling like i was that shadowy character falling through the buildings right like yes so i had that feeling and i was like whoa this is interesting but i didn't bring it up with the patient because he was talking about horrible trauma and all these horrible things that happened to him and then um about halfway through uh one of these visits later uh music kicked in i'm falling and all of a sudden i experienced myself as a baby falling through these buildings.

39:33As I talk about it now, it constricts my chest. It was an overwhelming experience. I couldn't stay with it. It was like, it just took my breath away. It's like this incredibly traumatic feeling. And I thought, I have to bring it in there. I have to bring it up. And I said, listen, I actually interrupted him. He was telling another traumatic story. I said, look, I'm having an experience and I'm wondering if this is meaningful to you. And I told him what I'd been experiencing. He became furious, stormed out of the room. You and your psychobabble. How dare you? You think you know what you're talking about?

40:06And just ran out of the room. Whoa. And I thought, hmm, maybe that wasn't the right time to bring that in. Comes back in the next day and he sits down calmly and says, how did you know? He goes, how did you know? All I hear is the baby, the baby, the baby screaming in my head. It's going all the time. And because of the depth of that attunement, he trusted me. And by the way, if you've been traumatized, trust is a big deal. We were able to kind of work together for a while. And I always see that. Yeah. And so I would get people in working with people with trauma and addiction and stuff. I'm always getting them at the front end at the beginning of their treatment.

40:42And I really always conceived of my role, other than get them through the medical stuff, to teach them that you could be fully appreciated, I can fully experience you, and you can trust that. You can stay close to another person, and they don't abuse, they don't, nothing. You just be, they'll be there for you. Wow. Makes me emotional just thinking about it. Yeah, makes me emotional. Yeah, and. The part of it that makes me emotional is to understand how connected humans can actually be together. It's unbelievable. Right. It's unbelievable, right? Right, right. And so when you ask, can, and that's, And, you know, it's weird.

41:18It's almost psychic-y kind of stuff. And every therapist who does this kind of work has had these experiences where you feel a pain somewhere that's not yours or you hear music or you see something. But, of course, then we affect each other on a macro scale too, right? I don't understand why there are these huge mood trends, you know, why it happens. I'm trying to understand that. Yeah. And it feels to me like it's sort of French Revolution type trend, you know, like where people are bringing out guillotines and things. Same here. We're going to get into that before our time runs up today. But I wanted on the topic of having these experiences.

41:55I'm emotional. Good. We do that here. I'm glad that you're doing that. You just, to be honest with you, I'm a little guarded because you flagged something in me right there. Yeah, maybe I'll tell you privately. That's you. I'm going to tell you privately. The goal is not to out people. Yeah, right. The goal is to be present while you have your experience. Well, I'll ask you this question. I have friends that have had these very unique experiences. It wasn't been with another human being, but it's been with adding a chemical to their body. So I'm curious. Oh, like ayahuasca or something. I'm curious of what you think about psychedelic treatment and or ayahuasca stuff too.

42:28So I'm actually trying to work on a television show right now where we explore some of this stuff because I'm fascinated by it. And I've met some, I mean, excellent psychiatrists that swear this is the—and it's not goofy, fringy. These are mainstream psychiatrists who really feel like it helps them get through things that they couldn't get through any other way, which I have no doubt that's true. The problem is, as with everything today, the excesses. Yes. Yeah, the excesses. Like, how are we going to use this? How are we going to know where it is? What's the right patient, the right circumstance, the right dosing, the right duration?

43:04We don't have that yet. Yeah. And the potential to do harm is profound. And I've seen bad things. Probably. Yeah. People using Ibogaine and Iowasca to try to deal with drug addiction. Yep. And in all except for one case, and I've seen dozens, maybe hundreds of these people that do this, and they all stop using for six months and they all go back. Okay. I did not know that. Okay. Except one who left permanently. And I'm thinking that guy was not an addict but was dependent. But he was dependent. That's what I'm thinking. And many of them had really significant personality changes. And that drives me crazy that people go, well, were they happier?

43:44Were they nicer? Were they less obnoxious? Like you can't make a judgment about a chemical changing somebody's personality or brain. People's personality and brain change in therapy, but that person is in control of those changes at all times. That's a great point. And at least, you know, with the properly done, it certainly should be. I think no therapist would intrude on that. But you give a chemical and now you're a different person, the ethics of that are completely untenable to me. Completely. And so you're not there yet. Well, no, no, I am there. I just want to get the good data. I want to, you know, which patient, how much, how long, and what are the risk reward for that.

44:24But it will be good. I have no doubt about it. Yeah, I've had friends that have had great experiences and I've had friends that have said, listen, it was a really dark experience and it's altered me for the negative. So I really don't know that. I've been, you and I were talking about some mutual friends of ours before we started. And one of them has sort of gone on this journey recently. And so, and they thought theirs was pretty good, but I'm curious. Most people do, by the way, you'll mostly hear good things. But again, I, you know, I went, when people want to argue that, you know, look, they used to give morphine to alcoholics to treat their alcoholism.

44:52Why? Because they were less noxious when they were on morphine. They were less of a pain in the ass. It's like, you can't do that. You can't do that. What about people that, you said something in something I was watching the other day about like that a lot of these addictions are just ways to self-soothe oneself. Self-regulate. Okay, self-regulate. What about someone, you talk about different drugs and excess. I have friends now that used to take cannabis, would use weed socially, and then it increased a little bit more. And I've not really ever done that. I don't have anything against it. I feel like 93 % of my friends now pop gummies or do something, right?

45:30But then I've got dudes that are all the way up to the dabbing state on a regular basis, right? Dabbing, you've got to look at it. My daughter's a recovering cannabis addict, and that's what she taught me, actually. She goes, listen, if your patients are dabbing, it's a problem. That's the problem. And what's the problem with it? What can happen? You can have actually gut issues from it, too, can't you? Vomiting, very common. Super common. Unexplained vomiting and multiple workups. The doctor tells you it's reflux, it's gallbladder, blah, blah, blah. It's the weed. It's the weed. If you're dabbing especially, it's the weed.

45:55So what's your overall Dr. Drew stance on weed? I'm agnostic on the legalities I've always been. I don't create the laws. I just deal with whatever people want. When things are illegal, it helps me help people who have a problem. Leverage, you mean? What's that? It's a kind of leverage. Leverage, exactly. But even in this state, we can't leverage even with cannabis, even with opiates. Nobody can do it. So it's legal, fine. I know it helps a lot of people. Excellent. I'd rather treat a cannabis addict than an opiate addict. That's for sure. And if somebody is chronic pain that's controlled with cannabis, good for you.

46:35And if you can recreate, and I have tons of friends that use it regularly and they're fine. It doesn't seem to affect them. But there are people, young people particularly, that it seems to make them rigid in their thinking. It can make them a little kind of psychotic in their process. the sign is they'll always say, you're not listening to me. For some reason, that's the sign. You're not listening. It's like, no, I was listening. You were being aggressive. And that's kind of a psychotic process. That might be too strong a word. I would never think aggression came from weed, but okay. When they're irritable.

47:07It's irritability more than aggression, I suspect. But they have to use a lot over long periods of time. And if you can't stop, and if you have found the history of alcoholism and you can't stop, now we call that addiction. and it can, you know, Alex Berenson's book, you know, Tell Your Children, turned out to be all true that it can induce psychotic, real psychotic illness in some people. Rare, not common. Again, it's, look, any chemical, I was, you mentioned I was raised by a family practitioner. He hammered into me, medicines are dangerous. Only, you only expose yourself to them when the risk reward is worth it.

47:41Cannabis as a medicine works, has certain risks. Be realistic about the risk. That's all. I just don't want to have my, maybe it's because I was raised by an alcoholic, I don't want to have like exogenous chemicals be my crutch to which I want to experience life and feel. Yeah. That's just for me. Yeah, me too. Yeah, me too. Other people, it enhances their life. And by the way, the fact that you say there is an addiction, like I've got a lot of friends so you can't get addicted to weed. Talk to my daughter. Okay. She's not missed a meeting in 16 months. God bless her. That's beautiful. Yeah. That's wonderful.

48:11And a new person too. And she was told she had depression. She was told she had bipolar disorder. She was told she had esophagitis, and that's why she was vomiting every day. All went away. All went away. So it was the weed.

48:26All right. The thing I've always wanted to ask you, and anybody who I consider to be an addiction specialist, I want to learn how to leverage this stuff for the good. So, like, I think the majority of my life, this is going to be a tough question. I don't know if anyone's ever asked you this before. I have been addicted to progress. I've been addicted to, I often say, I'm addicted to the expansion of my being, meaning I'm fascinated and curious about this. You already look like you want to comment on it. Well, because I have the same problem. I have the same thing. Is it a problem, though? Well, and I don't think it's quite an addiction.

48:59Okay. I think it's more our mood disturbance. Okay, maybe it is. But I think there are a lot of people that listen to my show that go, hey, I wasn't abused as a kid. I had a pretty good life. And my stuff's the reverse, man. I'm sitting here. I'm relatively emotionally stable, but I'm not producing or experiencing life the way I'd like to. It seems like you people with all these addictive, compulsive type personalities do better. And so what can we learn? That's the hard question. No, it's not a hard question. It's an unfortunate reality that people with psychopathologies tend to go towards excess in all things.

49:32And we know whether it's our mood disturbance or my trauma or an addiction, yes. Listen, the first thing I learned when I got to start working in a psychiatric hospital is that the very, very wealthy and the very, very poor had much more in common with each other than with the rest of us. That's 100 % true. Because that's where all the psychopathologies are sort of located. The excesses that get you to these two places are similar. So it's about getting the balance right again. And all the things you talk about, you use the word bliss a lot, which I never use, and I like that. I should be using it more.

50:06I talk more about being nourished or being fulfilled or having this word called eudaimonia, I'm sure you've heard. Yes. And that kind of life, fulfillment and things. But I think you're right. You can ask for a little more. You can ask for sort of bliss at times anyway. I have a talk on I give called blissful dissatisfaction, and I want to live in that state. And what I mean by that is I think people conflate satisfaction and happiness. Bliss and satisfaction are two different things. I want to live in a state of bliss as much as I can, but I want to remain to some extent dissatisfied, meaning I still want to grow.

50:42I still want to experience. I still want to challenge myself. Is it the growth? Because that's what I'm addicted to. Yes, I'm addicted to the growth. I think I've become addicted. Estatic is not interesting. I think I'm addicted to the growth, and I think I get a lot of significance out of contributing. Well, here's the thing about addiction. It's got to have consequences. Somewhere. There's got to be consequence. And if you're not having consequence, it's not an addiction. Or at least it's not a full-blown addiction. I know what the consequences have been for me if I'm being candid. Well, true addiction has to have progressive consequence.

51:13Progressive use in the face of progressing consequence. Then I'm super hyper-dependent on growth, to use your terminology. That's right. I think I am too. I think that's right. And that's why I think it's more on mood stuff. It may be. And some of the trauma strinkled in and stuff and the personality stuff. But you can choose to lean into these things just because they have names and are psychopaths. See, that's what I hate about it. So do I. Yeah. But when you label things too much, people think you're being pejorative. These are just ways of understanding the human experience. Look, if you want a fighter pilot, the best fighter pilot that I can think of in terms of how their internal world is constructed would be an alcoholic narcissist.

51:48That would be a great fighter pilot. Really, true. And could be difficult if you're the wife. Yep. Not necessarily. Yep. But, man, a good fighter pilot. I think the main, I think, negatives, by the way, that's 100 % true. And I think the main, like, there's no doubt in my mind, a guy like Tom Brady, who I've been around a little bit, but I don't know him super well. He's got to have all kinds of stuff. He's got to have all kinds of just crazy hyper-dependent slash addictive type personality traits. Something's driving that. Our motivational systems are hooked into our emotional systems. And by the way, maybe that's what life's about.

52:19There's some trade-offs for everything. Yes. You said there's a consequence to every behavior. and you've said this and you have to decide in advance that maybe somebody, like I think in my case, if I'm being candid, I have a beautiful and incredible family. I love my children. I love my wife. I love my mom, my dad's past. I love my sisters. But if there's been a consequence, it's been to my family. Me too. There's been, by the way, massively beautiful consequences for my family as well. Exactly right. But from time, presence, things like that, those are the consequences. Gad's sad. You know who he is?

52:49Gad's sad. You should have read him sometime. There's a book on happiness coming out, and he had me read it. And one of his big points— Is that Sad Guru? Gad Sad. Okay. He's an evolutionary biologist. Okay, a different guy. It's a Sad Guru on my show. Okay. And he asked, you know, what are your regrets? Yeah. And he said regrets fall into two categories, not having done stuff or because of something you did. And I have zero regrets on the not side. I'm just grateful for all of it. On the having done side, it's exactly what you're saying, is that my kids remind me occasionally I wasn't around. Yeah, me too.

53:21And that cuts deep. But thankfully, as they've gotten older, they're able to integrate that and try to understand that, you know, you've got giant triplets. I've been working my ass off. I was scared. I do think as they get older, if that, by the way, beautifully said, at the end of my life, I'm willing to have some regrets of things I did. I don't want to have a life of regret of things I didn't attempt to do. Exactly. 100%. As long as those things, now there's a caveat. I'm, you know, I always try to live my life, you know, sort of the Kantian imperative. Like there's a camera going all the time and behave that way at all times.

53:53And so, you know, the things I did can never violate that principle. And then I would, then it's kind of like, it's also an ethical problem as well as a regret. I can't say that I've never done that, but that's also my ambition. When you're 17, you're excused. Right, right, right. Maybe 17 hours ago. But having said that, you're 100 % right. Now, what I, I think my kids as they've gotten older have an appreciation for the other things that that's afforded them. And I think it's important for the younger people listening that are raising young families to hear they will eventually – doesn't mean you shouldn't work on being more present and all that.

54:25Correct. Because they too, then they have to struggle the same way you did. And they're looking at it going, oh, now I get it. Yeah. That's what I found. We don't have that much more time. I want to ask you a couple things. Why are we in culture beginning to treat each other so horribly? And I've watched even some things with you. You took some positions that you felt strongly about and you like people wanted to cancel you. They wanted to ruin you. They we are harsh. It seems to me we are more mean than we've ever been. It seems to me that maybe technologies influence this. Maybe technology is contributed to a form of narcissism or we're self-centered with likes and views and someone pay attention to me.

55:06And it seems to me that it's gotten worse. Maybe it's actually turned a little bit lately where people are just fatigued on all this stuff. But I look at comments. I look at young people. I look at these videos you see on Twitter and Instagram of people beating each other up in schools immersively and all of it. What is happening to us that we treat each other so horribly? I think about this all the time, and I don't have a definitive, cohesive answer to that. I just look at history. And what I see is when there's a large amount of childhood trauma, particularly at the hands of the caretakers, you see populations grow into mobs when they're in their adulthood and young adulthood that start scapegoating.

55:52That this scapegoating mechanism seems to be a function of narcissism. And so we've talked a lot about the narcissistic turn. It's certainly a function of trauma and victimhood and all that stuff that is part of narcissism. But the feeling of freedom, you're free to harm other people as a mob is the most, one of the more disgusting features that humans have. And narcissism, the two big liabilities, it can have lots of positives associated with it, but the two big liabilities is envy, which is different than jealousy. Jealousy is, you know, Ed's going to talk about it. No, I needed to ask you the difference between envy and jealousy.

56:33I cannot believe you just went there. That's awesome. So I'm jealous of what you have. It makes me uncomfortable, but damn, I'm going to work hard to get what you have. And good for you. You know, I'm glad for you. Envy is you're an asshole. I got to bring you down to my size. So envy is about not bringing anybody up, but bringing people down to whatever level of shame and you're feeling yourself because of what that person having more exposes you to. So it's envy, envy, and then lack of empathy. So if you don't empathize with the person you're scapegoating and you have envy towards them, it's on.

57:08That's a very powerful, problematic. And then you have the gratification of the mob where you gratify each other for what you're doing. You cosign each other's BS. We're taking out the bad person. That's the fundamental attribution error, right, that we call that in psychology, where you attribute someone's behavior to the contents of who they are rather than God knows what went into the choices of a particular behavior. Their opinion isn't good or bad. It's not right or wrong. It's they're bad. That is a coward's approach to managing an argument, a disagreement. That is, and I've never thought I'd use words like courage and coward so much as I do these days.

57:49This is a time for courage. You got it. You have to stand up and take the punches because this is bad for everybody when the mobs are allowed to act out like this. I agree 100%. It worries me deeply. It worries me that those wounds you're talking about that happened to us in our childhood. And by the way, you said the worst is when it comes from caretakers. But I'm worried that this generation that's coming up is just being so wounded repeatedly by one another that what's going to happen in 15, 20 years in our culture. I don't know. They are. But I think, see, I think they're being raised by the parents that had been part of the trauma trend.

58:23And so it's sort of an intergenerational thing rather than a direct trauma. And I think as a result, I mean, so the problem with the families not being stable, I would say, is their biggest problem. So they're very distrustful of society generally because their unit didn't work for them and hurt them and made them feel bad. So that to me is kind of the challenge. But that I think as they get older, they're not going to be as prone to the mob stuff so much. God, that is my prayer. Please hear my prayer to God. That is the case. Well, me too. I just worry that technology allows us to create. It makes it worse.

58:57For sure. It's easier to gather the mob. Well, that's where the mob's doing its thing. I predict in my book on narcissism 15 years ago, I wanted to write a whole chapter on the French Revolution because I kept saying that's the only period of history I can find this kind of thing going on. And I worry there are going to be guillotines. I didn't foresee social media and the cancel culture. As becoming the actual guillotine. Okay, last question. By the way, I've loved today. Oh, me too. I knew I would. I talked to you for two seconds and I knew I would. I knew that I would. And I want to have you back on.

59:25Hopefully, I get you to come back on maybe every single year. Before I ask you this last question, you've got like a million podcasts you're involved with. Yes, yes. But I want to make sure we've at least promoted. Where do you want people to go find you? My wife will kill me if I don't send you to this one particular podcast because she produces it, and it's been very interesting. I think your group would like it. She and I, she produced a streaming show at drdrew.tv. You can see some of the back episodes there and at drdrew.com. 3 o 'clock Pacific time, typically Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, although we move it around a little bit, but it's Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.

59:54Wednesday in particular, a doctor named Kelly Victory joins me, and she has very different ideas than I do. And that's, again, my wife's genius in sort of mixing it up. And then we have been interviewing people that have been silenced during the pandemic. I kind of naturally, I'm naturally curious when people have been silent, people, particularly very high-level professionals with exquisitely decorated careers. Suddenly those are, you don't want to listen to those guys? I want to listen to them. And I have learned a ton by talking to these people. Some of them are over their skis in certain areas and stuff.

1:00:26I don't agree with everything, of course. But I think it helps with some of the paranoia out there that people are, you know, when you have people being silenced and marginalized and people that are already paranoid can't get the information. They get more paranoid. So I want to bring it all into the sunlight and just talk to things. And I'm trying to get alternative opinions in there, too. And Tuesday and Thursday is when I tend to talk to people that are more mainstreamy. because I'm more mainstreaming. That's the reality. It's just - I'm going to listen to the Wednesdays then. Wednesdays are the one that people tend to like because it's a lot of interesting stuff, a lot of back shows.

1:00:58I mean, I discovered so many things by talking to these people. For instance, did you know that the six feet social distancing was invented out of whole cloth in an office in the White House one day? It had no science, no basis. They were trying to decide between three feet and 60 feet and finally thought, oh, we can get them to do this. Let's make it six feet. And the world adopted that? No, I didn't. And there's, to this day, zero evidence that that does anything. And it's just that kind of stuff. Just one little aha moment after another, you kind of put these things together and go, wow, what a mess.

1:01:26My favorite thing about that was when I was standing in an airport line and you had to be six feet from each other in the airport line. And then we'd just walk onto the plane and stand right next to each other. Exactly. It's so crazy. That's the same thing about masks. Put your mask down during bites. It's already down. That's it. The virus is in your nose. That's it. There's no point in using it. And the people don't understand this virus was transmitted not on droplets, on aerosol. Aerosol, you don't see aerosol. It's not dry. The masks stop the droplets. You're going to get canceled again, Drew.

1:01:54It's coming right now. It's just the way it is. It's just the way it is. Listen, if these things worked, I'd be all for them. I know you would be. I know you would be. All right, last question is sort of about happiness and your own. Yeah. So in general, the final question is, how does one become happier? But I'm going to give you a little lead in to give you a little bridge. You did this show. I don't know what it was called. You can tell us what it was called, The Pump It. but it was this thing where you did basically the challenge of your lifetime, all these military things. I think I saw you like...

1:02:21Were you like... Falling out of a helicopter. Bungie dumping out of a helicopter. Not bungee, falling out of a helicopter. Falling out of a helicopter. Into the Red Sea. And I'm like, what the heck is he doing? So you're in your 60s when you're doing this. And then I went, you know what? At least for me, one of the pathways to my own bliss or happiness is curiosity, is a challenge, is doing something new. If I want to shift my life, I've got to do something different. And so what do you think... What would you say? Someone said, Dr. Drew, I want to be happier. What do I do? And loop in that show and what you did is maybe part of it.

1:02:51So that was a specific challenge to my happiness, a special forces show on Fox. And they called me. I'm like, come on. What are you doing? Will you take me to Utah or something? No, the Middle East. I'm like, oh, God, how am I going to do that? Crazy. But I, at the time, was feeling, one of the things that challenges your happiness is aging. And even if you're prepared for it, it's challenging. And I was feeling old. I had recurrent ups of diverticulitis. I have prostate cancer. I have all these things. It's all good. If you've got to get a cancer, trust me, that's the one to get. And that's all I – I had my prostatectomy 11, 12 years ago, so I'm all fine.

1:03:26But the diverticulitis was kicking up, and I was feeling weak, and I had some long COVID symptoms. And I was kind of whiny. And when they called me, I thought, I'm going to give this a try. So I started training very hard, like with packs and hills and sprinting. And I started feeling great, feeling better. I thought, well, maybe this is what I needed. So that was sort of what caused me to fight for the job, and I went and got heat stroke. I didn't know I was going to get a heat stroke. It was a whole other problem. But physically, I was totally ready for it and had a great time. So path one is change your physiology, change your physical body.

1:03:58Yeah, change. Also, but I work out regularly, but I change what I was thinking even about my workout and what my goals were and things. So change your goals, really. Okay. Change your goals. Secondly, distinguish between eudaimonia, and we mentioned earlier, and hedonic happiness. When I first started hearing all the talk about happiness, which was years ago, because there was a lot of happiness stuff happening maybe 15 years ago. And I thought, they better define what they're talking about. Because no one happier than my heroin addicts after they get their hit in the morning. They are happy. That is not a good life.

1:04:33And they don't stay happy. So hedonic happiness, euphoria, you just go from one to the next. You're never fulfilled by that. It's just one. Not the euphoria is bad. I'm not saying that having occasional blissful euphoria is a bad thing. I'm saying to need that, that's not happiness. Happiness is a much more nourishing, fulfilling interpersonal process. It's other people that give us our sorts of happiness. There's no doubt in my mind. But it's leading a good life, which is a certain kind of life. Again, I've lived by a Kantian first principle.

1:05:10And a good life isn't always happy necessarily. Like, did Jesus, was he always happy? But I would say that was a good life. He was not happy at the end. Good point, no. Clearly not. But be prepared for some unhappiness because good lives done well, that's the challenge again. That can be challenging. But focus on eudaimonia, which is nourishment, which is other people, which is some faith, whatever that is to you. Gratitude, very important. Service, again, not saving the world, one human being at a time, just being available to that person. Closeness, sleep right, work out, do all those good things, exercise properly, balance.

1:05:50And these things tend to kind of—and then make sure you're connected to yourself and you're true to yourself. If you don't feel your feelings, get some treatment because having that spontaneous self that emerges from our bodies, those feelings that come out of us, being connected to those, they're greatly important in terms of knowing who you are and what you want to do, but also in terms of being available for others for that thing we call intimacy, that closeness. And that's where a lot of fulfillment is. What an unbelievable conversation. I got news for you. This is going to go ballistic. Oh, good.

1:06:23It's good. I hope so. It's going to go ballistic. I want to also just tell you again, thank you for helping my family. Oh. You helped my family. Look, your dad just saw me talking truths about his condition, and nobody was doing that at the time. It's why we did the show because it's so – I know so much about it. That's why I want to give it back because for a non-addict, non-sober person, I know way more than I should, and it's all so clear to me. And so that's what he was responding to. I just think God's amazing. I think the fact that you helped my dad gave me the change in my—no, you did, Drew.

1:06:59No, I understand, but I'm going to say the same thing that I know his sponsor would say to you. It's like, it's my happiness today. Yeah. It gives me my happiness. It's ironic, and then we're sitting here together, and I don't think I'd be sitting here with you had you not done that for my dad, and that's the ripple effect of helping one human being. Yes. Oh, trust me, guys. When you see all the shittiness going on out there—I don't know if you're allowed to say this stuff on this show— But to see the garbage going on out there, people attacking each other, it can go the other way, everybody. We're not helping each other by doing that.

1:07:26Well, we helped a lot of people today, or you did. So thank you. It's your show, man. Yeah, thank you very much. Anything I can never do for you, I'm here. I'm going to wave from the beach, and you're going to let me in. I'll pretend I'm not there a lot, but one day I will walk out and wave you in. Fair enough. All right, everybody. Hey, share the show, and go check out Dr. Drew's show as well. Make sure you go get my book, The Power of One More. and just, you know, take the things we said today and share it with somebody that you love. God bless you, everybody. Max out. This is The Ed Milad Show.