0:10

The rich roll podcast.

0:14

More and more people are getting sick, more

0:16

addicted, people are dying of overdoses.

0:19

My

0:19

guest today returning for his second appearance

0:22

on the show is doctor Gabor Mate.

0:24

The album in our society is There's

0:27

very little that actually promotes healing,

0:29

and there's very much that undermines it.

0:31

He's an expert in a wide range

0:34

of topics, but is most lauded for

0:36

his work on the relationship between addiction

0:38

and childhood development. This society

0:40

loves you to be addicted, feeling

0:43

inadequate This path towards wholeness

0:45

is not supported by the culture, in fact,

0:47

is undermined by it. Doctor Mate's latest

0:50

and most ambitious booked to date.

0:52

The myth of normal investigates the

0:54

true causes of illness and the pathway

0:56

to health and well-being. This

0:58

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1:09

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Alright. Let's do the show.

3:56

Round two with doctor gabor

3:58

Marte.

4:02

It's good to see you. It's been I

4:04

thought it was like three or four years, but I think

4:06

it must have been We've been doing more like seven.

4:09

We've doubled that. That's

4:11

that's showing my age where everything kind of

4:14

seems to run together. But I'm

4:16

delighted to be able to continue the

4:18

conversation that we started many years ago.

4:20

Your work has been instrumental in

4:23

my own life personally and how

4:25

I think about addiction, trauma.

4:27

You know, I just I can't overstate

4:30

how important I think your your

4:32

your work is to the culture at

4:34

large, and so it's an honor to talk to you

4:36

today. Oh, it's so good to hear. Thank you.

4:39

You've written and spoken extensively over

4:41

the course of your your story career

4:43

on many things like ADHD and cancer

4:46

and autoimmune disease, but you're, of course, best

4:48

known for your work on this relationship

4:50

between childhood development and

4:52

action. And what's interesting and

4:54

we were chatting a little bit before the podcast

4:56

is that this latest book, the myth of

4:58

normal, really expands

5:01

the aperture of your focus to

5:03

kind of extrapolate on

5:05

that basic notion that early childhood

5:07

trauma underlies the expression of

5:09

addictive behaviors. And you're now kind

5:11

of applying it more broadly to

5:14

posit that this rise in

5:16

a vast litany of ailments that

5:19

we're experiencing cannot properly

5:21

be understood, let alone properly

5:23

treated or addressed without fully

5:25

contemplating understanding, embracing

5:28

and addressing the total

5:30

and unique lived experience

5:32

of of the individual in the context

5:35

of these broader social external

5:38

environments and our

5:40

adaptive response to

5:42

our environments. Is that a fair

5:44

assessment? Yes. Essentially, what

5:46

I'm saying is that all of

5:48

our afflictions, whether

5:50

it's addiction, chronic

5:52

physical illness, what we

5:54

call mental illness, dysfunctions,

5:57

they all have a template of

5:59

childhood wounding, and

6:02

they they are not separate

6:05

biological events happening in

6:07

discrete individuals, but

6:09

they are representative of

6:11

a process inside

6:13

each of us that manifest a relationship

6:16

to our environment. Most

6:18

importantly, our early rearing

6:20

environment, but also the culture that we live

6:22

in. So to give it one example,

6:25

it's an obvious example. If you look at

6:27

the number of kids diagnosed

6:30

with say ADHD. The

6:32

numbers are going up all the time. That can't be

6:34

an individual thing. That has to say something

6:36

about the culture, the context. If

6:38

you look at the rising incidence of autoimmune

6:41

disease, the rising incidence of

6:43

addictions of mental health conditions. If

6:45

you look at the fact that say

6:47

black American women, the more experience

6:50

of racism, they have to endure, the

6:52

greater the risk of asthma. It

6:54

just tells us that it's not just about

6:56

individual biology. It's about life

6:59

in a culture. Mhmm. Yeah. And

7:01

on that idea of culture, you use

7:03

this petri dish example

7:06

to illustrate that point, which I thought was really

7:08

powerful because I'd never really thought of it in

7:10

that way. Can you explain that? Sure.

7:12

So when we are

7:14

studying microorganisms in a laboratory.

7:17

We grow them in a broth. We give them

7:19

a broth to nourish them. You call that a

7:21

culture, a culture medium.

7:24

And if the organisms in

7:26

this culture and medium, this culture broth

7:28

were dying off in great

7:30

numbers or not thriving or or

7:32

or or ill. we would call

7:34

that a toxic culture. Mhmm.

7:37

I'm saying that when in a

7:39

society like ours, more and more people are getting

7:41

sick, more addicted, more mentally

7:43

ill, more people are cutting themselves, more

7:47

people are dying of overdoses. That's

7:49

also representative of

7:52

a toxic culture. I'm saying that

7:54

that's what we live in. Hence, the subtitle

7:56

of the book, trauma, illness, and

7:58

healing, and a toxic culture. this

8:00

culture is not a not

8:02

one that supports healthy human growth.

8:05

And when you say toxic culture, we

8:07

should probably define that because it's a little

8:09

bit different than what people might suspect.

8:11

They're thinking of environmental pollutants and

8:13

the like, and that's certainly a contributor

8:15

to a lot of this. But you're really

8:17

talking about what's going on societally

8:20

and and and culturally? Yes.

8:22

So that is all

8:24

true. That it it had to do with the physical stuff.

8:26

There was an article reported

8:29

just the other day that half of Americans

8:31

were exposed to unhealthy levels of lead when

8:33

they were kids. You know, that's

8:36

toxic.

8:36

Right. But you're right.

8:38

That's not the toxic. But I'm talking

8:40

about. And I'm talking about the nature of the culture

8:43

itself, the very values of the

8:45

culture, the way we bring up

8:47

children. the expectations

8:49

we put on human beings,

8:51

they're toxic to people's healthy

8:53

development. Mhmm. It seems

8:55

so obvious.

8:57

And in reading the book, it's like, of

8:59

course, this is an issue. And

9:01

yet, it's so highly unaddressed

9:04

or or ignored and in reading

9:06

the book, I couldn't help but

9:08

draw an analogy to

9:10

what Yuval know Harari is doing in

9:12

terms of how we think about his Like, telescoping out

9:14

and looking at everything from ten

9:16

thousand feet -- Yeah. -- which is not something

9:18

we do when we think about and

9:20

talk about health. we

9:22

narrow down to the cellular level, to

9:24

the microbe level. Yeah. And

9:26

the scientific method dictates

9:28

that we control for variables

9:30

and look at things in isolation. And

9:33

of course, we've made tremendous progress

9:35

as a society by

9:37

by dint of, you know, the technological advances

9:40

that we can make by utilizing

9:43

the scientific method, but

9:45

it's a method that's myopic

9:47

to the deep interconnectedness of

9:50

everything. It doesn't allow us to look at

9:52

things as holistic systems and the

9:54

interplay that is leading

9:56

to so many of these problems. Like,

9:58

we can't address these diseases and

10:00

these conditions on their own

10:02

without looking at what's contributing

10:04

to them by virtue

10:06

of external forces. Well,

10:08

you know, yes, I agree

10:10

with your formulation, but I

10:12

would also argue that

10:14

there's all kinds of science that shows

10:16

the interconnections of things so

10:19

that to talk about human

10:21

beings in that context and that

10:23

health represents life in

10:25

a context rather than just a logical

10:27

event. That's

10:29

science. Mhmm. And we have literally tens

10:31

of thousands of scientific

10:34

studies to indicate how

10:37

emotional environments affect

10:39

people's biology. our immune system and

10:41

our hormonal apparatus and our

10:43

nervous systems and our guts and our

10:45

hearts and so on and our

10:47

social conditions, our inequality, how

10:49

stress, how genderism

10:52

or racism actually has

10:54

physiological impacts. They're gonna

10:56

need to scan, they affect their

10:58

biology. This is not

11:00

speculation. My knock

11:02

on the medical profession is we

11:04

keep talking about evidence based practice.

11:07

but we don't look at a lot of the evidence that's already

11:09

been published, including in major

11:11

medical journals. So I'm not talking about

11:14

insight and idiology

11:18

or or spiritual at the end of one

11:20

hand and science on the other. I'm talking

11:22

about science. That is actually showing

11:24

the interconnections. but there's such

11:26

a wide gap between that

11:29

understanding and the practice of

11:31

medicine or how we treat people.

11:33

Oh, yeah. It's a huge

11:35

what we can call the science

11:38

and practice gap. Right?

11:40

the problem is not with the science. The problem is

11:42

that we don't put the science into practice.

11:44

The average medical student does not

11:46

get it. For example, I talk about trauma in

11:48

this book. and trauma has many implications.

11:50

Trauma has been implicated in

11:53

autoimmune disease, in cancer,

11:55

in addictions, in every mental health

11:57

conditions in in the book. But the

11:59

average medical student does not receive a

12:01

single lecture on trauma, which is unbelievable.

12:03

Mhmm. But it's true. For the most

12:05

part, there might be a few exceptions here and there,

12:07

but generally not. Secondly,

12:09

doctors are very traumatized people

12:11

themselves. Medical training is highly

12:13

traumatic. I've talked to many physicians who've talked

12:15

about the assault on their sensibilities.

12:18

by medical school. Biologically,

12:21

medical students age faster

12:23

than other people their age because of the

12:25

stress they're under. So you got this

12:27

traumatized population treating

12:29

the larger traumatized population

12:32

without any awareness of trauma. Mhmm.

12:34

So that's a huge gap. Right.

12:36

Let's let's define

12:38

trauma. You have this idea

12:40

of the capital t

12:42

trauma and the lower case

12:44

t trauma. And

12:47

perhaps your definition differs from

12:49

what people might conventionally

12:51

think about when they think about trauma?

12:52

It's true. The

12:55

average person when they think about

12:57

trauma, they think of horrible events.

12:59

Like, a war like

13:01

extreme abuse, physical, sexual,

13:03

emotional abuse, catastrophes,

13:07

people dying and so on. And, you know, those are

13:09

traumatic. But trauma

13:12

is not the events. trauma

13:14

comes from a Greek word for wounding.

13:16

So trauma is a wound that you sustain,

13:18

and you can be wounded without

13:20

catastrophic events. So those

13:22

traumas, the the big noticeable,

13:26

terrible events that happened to you,

13:28

they're called we we can call big

13:30

t trauma. Mhmm. but you

13:32

can also own people not only

13:34

by hurting them badly, but simply

13:36

by not meeting their needs. And

13:38

in this society, a lot of children grow up with

13:41

their their essential human needs being

13:43

met. So that's what I call small

13:45

d trauma. where people aren't doing

13:47

bad things to you necessarily,

13:49

but the good things that should

13:51

be happening are not happening. Mhmm. So you

13:53

can hurt people by he

13:55

didn't hitting them You can also hurt people

13:57

by not giving them water, so not

13:59

needing their needs. Mhmm. In that

14:01

sense, we have certain emotional

14:03

needs. as human beings, as

14:05

evolved human beings that

14:07

this society not only

14:09

fails to meet, but actually

14:11

tramples on very deliberately

14:14

and very chronically. So a

14:16

lot of children get traumatized, not just

14:18

by what happens to them, but

14:20

why doesn't Bye bye. What doesn't

14:22

happen to them that should have happened?

14:24

Right. And in that early developmental

14:26

stage, we develop our attachment

14:28

strategies and

14:30

we create these sort of patterns

14:33

that recur over the course of our

14:35

lifetime. I mean, you tell the story in the book about

14:37

you know, landing at the airport after coming back

14:39

from a speaking engagement and acting like

14:41

a petulant child because your wife blew

14:43

you off to pick you up at the airport like

14:45

your Despite everything that you

14:47

know, there's some level of powerlessness that

14:49

we have in terms of trying

14:51

to course correct what has been so

14:53

cemented. Well, Trump has a wound

14:56

that if it doesn't heal, it just

14:58

keeps acting up. So that airport

15:00

example is is me arriving back

15:02

from a speaking trip at age.

15:04

seventy two or seventy three. Uh-huh. And

15:06

my wife is not there to pick me up.

15:09

And I go into a rage and I

15:11

emotionally have become very withdrawn.

15:13

which is a mirroring

15:15

of exactly what happened to me when I was a year

15:17

old when my mother gave me to a stranger

15:19

to save my life and I didn't see

15:21

her. so my mother wasn't available to me.

15:23

And when I saw her again after four

15:26

or five weeks, this is a wartime

15:28

hungry, I didn't even look

15:30

at her for several days.

15:32

which is what an infant does

15:34

to protect themselves from the brain

15:36

of being abandoned again.

15:38

So that

15:39

wound on us is healed, will show

15:42

up again even seventy odd years

15:44

later when the woman I'm relying

15:46

on doesn't show up for me. Mhmm. So

15:48

that's a traumatic imprint. And

15:50

what happens is that when trauma

15:52

acts up, the mid frontal cortex,

15:54

the part that's rational and

15:56

can bond in the present moment goes

15:58

offline, and

15:59

these traumatic imprints show up, and they govern

16:02

your behavior. So all of a sudden, just as

16:04

you say, I start acting like a

16:06

hurt little child. Healing

16:08

of trauma is in

16:10

is in learning to recognize

16:12

and cope with these imprints.

16:15

But the

16:16

lack of that healing shows up

16:18

in a society in every realm, in

16:21

medicine, in health, in mental

16:23

health, in the in in the

16:25

pop culture, in

16:27

in politics, in economics

16:29

everywhere. Right. And in your

16:31

previous work, you've you've drawn

16:33

this connective tissue between

16:36

trauma and how it can show up as

16:39

as addiction later in

16:41

life with certain individuals,

16:43

but create that connectivity between

16:46

trauma and for

16:48

example, you know, chronic ailments

16:50

that we're seeing on the rise across the world

16:52

-- Yeah. -- or at least in the developed world.

16:54

Well, so there's there's a rise

16:56

in autoimmune disease. Automune

16:59

disease are conditions where the immune system

17:01

turns against the self. So

17:05

and starts destroying the immune system, which

17:07

is meant to protect us, turns against

17:09

us, and starts destroying our

17:11

bodies. Now examples

17:14

are rheumatoid arthritis,

17:17

scleroderma, lupus, chronic

17:19

fatigue, multiple sclerosis,

17:21

chronic disease, ulcerative

17:24

colitis, chronic psoriasis,

17:27

autoimmune eczema, one could

17:29

go on. This

17:31

is rising in this society.

17:33

And not only is it rising in this

17:35

society as the globalized economic

17:37

system takes over more of the world,

17:39

It's rising internationally, and

17:42

it's rising particularly amongst

17:44

women. Now,

17:46

When I looked at the people

17:48

who develop autoimmune disease, it's

17:51

always related to stress

17:55

and particularly people's

17:58

coping styles. So

17:59

so people

18:01

with autoimmune disease typically repress

18:03

their emotions. They don't know how to be contacted

18:05

in contact with their healthy anger.

18:07

they tend to suppress their real selves

18:10

to fit in with society and with their

18:12

families.

18:13

And essentially,

18:16

when people don't

18:18

experience their

18:18

healthy anger, the

18:21

anger doesn't go away. It gets

18:24

suppressed. turns against themselves.

18:26

Now our emotional apparatus

18:29

is very much connected to our immune system. In

18:31

fact, they're part and parcel of the same system.

18:34

when your emotions turns against us, our immune

18:36

system can turn against us as well.

18:38

Mhmm. In this society, because so

18:40

many people are not allowed to be themselves, they

18:42

have to kinda press who they are

18:44

in order to survive and fit in. We're getting a

18:47

more and more autoimmune disease. Mhmm.

18:49

Is my view. Lots of evidence

18:52

for that. talk a little bit

18:54

about this this idea of of

18:56

disease as teacher. Yeah.

18:58

So I've worked

19:00

in all areas of medicine from delivering

19:02

babies to palliative care looking

19:04

after terminally ill people.

19:06

I've seen a lot of disease as a

19:09

physician. What's surprising to me is

19:11

that some people who

19:13

should resend their illness be

19:15

all wood naturally. Nobody wants to get

19:18

sick. They found that the teacher

19:20

actually be sorry, that the disease is

19:22

actually a teacher to them. because

19:24

the disease pointed out to them how they were

19:26

not living a life that was authentic, how

19:28

they were living a life of self suppression.

19:32

An example is a very unknown one. I need them or Johnny

19:34

who wrote a book called dying

19:37

to be me. She was literally

19:39

on the verge of death. to

19:42

and she's terminally ill, she wasn't

19:44

gonna live. Mhmm. And then she had

19:46

this near death experience. and

19:48

she finds out that all her life, she had not

19:50

been herself. That's why the title

19:52

dying to be me. Mhmm. At

19:54

the dad's door, she

19:57

realizes that she needs to be authentically

19:59

herself, and she actually

20:02

recovers. And so

20:03

that the disease taught her

20:05

to be herself I give the example of the

20:07

the great dramatist invited, V

20:10

formerly known as Eve Ensler, who

20:12

has stage four uterine

20:15

cancer. she found her

20:17

disease taught her essentially to be

20:19

herself. I meant I've

20:21

met people even in

20:23

terminal illness who are not recover,

20:25

who did not recover, who said,

20:27

what I

20:28

learned was so precious, I'm grateful for my

20:30

disease. I met people with addictions,

20:34

who said, I wouldn't wish this on

20:36

anybody, but my god, did it teach

20:38

me? Yeah. That idea, you know,

20:40

the grateful alcoholic --

20:42

Yeah. -- notion. it's tricky though. I mean,

20:44

this is a sensitive thing

20:46

because to

20:48

tell somebody or to announce that

20:50

your disease is your teacher when someone is in grave

20:53

suffering. It's it's sort of why I don't

20:55

do that. How dare you? You know? I don't

20:57

tell anybody. Yeah. I don't tell

20:59

anybody that. I just give

21:01

examples of people who have found it that way.

21:03

Mhmm. But it's not for me to

21:05

tell somebody else with their illness.

21:07

You should be happy. This is a teacher

21:09

for you. I wouldn't want anybody to tell

21:11

me that for God's sake, because I'd be very angry if

21:13

they did. So it's

21:15

not that we should tell people they should fight,

21:17

they should feel. but it's the point

21:20

that the possibilities inherent

21:23

in terms of what any analysts can offer

21:25

people. If people choose to go

21:27

that way, That's their call.

21:29

If they don't choose to go that way, I

21:31

totally understand it. Mhmm.

21:33

Yeah. Baked into this is this idea that

21:35

that, you know, we we sort of think these

21:37

things happen by chance

21:40

randomly. It happens to

21:42

ants. Yeah. But when you like I said

21:44

earlier, telescope out and you

21:46

really closely analyze the

21:48

environment, the stress, the

21:50

anxiety, the gestalt

21:52

of what our kind of modern

21:54

existent existence looks like on a day to day

21:56

basis, there's all these contributing lifestyle

21:58

factors, the food that we're eating, the lack

22:00

of sleep, the the whatever light

22:02

is coming out of this device that I'm staring

22:05

into -- Yeah. -- all of these things are

22:07

contributing to moving us out of

22:09

balance with the natural

22:11

rhythms of how we've evolved

22:13

to live in the world. And so all

22:15

that is all the others too.

22:18

And then there's the larger issues of I mean, you

22:20

look at the the scientific literature

22:22

on stress. And by

22:24

stress, I mean, emotional

22:27

factors that affect your physiology,

22:30

your immune system, and your hormones,

22:32

and and everything. What

22:34

are they? The major factors

22:36

for stress are

22:40

uncertainty lots of

22:42

control, lack of information, and

22:46

conflict. Mhmm. Now in this

22:48

society, how many people are

22:50

living with lots of

22:52

control, uncertainty, lack of

22:54

information, insecurity,

22:56

and conflict. This system is

22:58

almost designed to make people feel insecure. And

23:02

for example, the time of the

23:04

economic crisis they looked

23:06

at young people in Greece as

23:08

compared with Sweden, which wasn't having an

23:11

economic crisis. the

23:13

stress hormone levels of the young Greeks were

23:16

really affected by what's going on economically,

23:18

and that promotes inflammation.

23:22

And the researchers found that

23:24

actually said that this is gonna affect the

23:26

future health of these young women. Mhmm.

23:29

this is a social issue. It was

23:31

an individual biological

23:36

problem restricted to a single

23:38

human being. It was a social issue

23:40

inflicted by social,

23:42

political, and economic conditions.

23:44

And that happens on a massive scale

23:46

under globalized capitalism. to a lot of people.

23:49

Right. And on top of that, there's

23:51

this idea of of the

23:53

loss of connection interconnectivity,

23:55

but between human beings and you and

23:57

I both know Johan Hari and he has written

23:59

books about this and speaks about this, but

24:01

we're in this era in which we feel

24:03

hyper connected by by virtue of our

24:06

devices. And yet, most of us are

24:08

suffering from some level

24:10

of loneliness that

24:12

that, you know, is endemic

24:14

to this period of

24:16

time. Well, I could speak a whole hour

24:18

about the impact of the devices, about

24:20

how the device themselves are

24:22

designed to keep people addicted, including

24:24

very young kids. That's a

24:26

separate issue. The issue of

24:28

loneliness. So if you look at the number

24:30

of people who describe themselves being

24:32

in the United States that's doubled within

24:34

twenty years. And loneliness

24:38

is a major factor for

24:40

physical illness, a smoking

24:42

fifteen cigarettes a day or as

24:44

high blood pressure or obesity.

24:47

And loaniness has been

24:49

spreading in the Western world again under

24:51

the impact of a globalized economic

24:53

system that pits people against one another

24:55

that says that competition and

24:57

aggression and mistrust of others is the

24:59

way to survive and which

25:01

has in many many ways

25:03

documented ways, evoted communities

25:06

and extended families and is cut done on people's

25:08

sensor community. Lowness

25:10

is going up and that's posing

25:12

a major risk factor. People who are lonely

25:15

gets sicker faster and they die sooner

25:17

of their diseases. So that's a

25:19

major

25:19

problem in Western societies. What

25:23

catalyzed your interest in in in writing this

25:25

book? I mean, obviously, it

25:27

does feel to me to to be

25:29

a natural progression of the work that you've

25:31

already done. But

25:33

why, you know, sort of shift your

25:35

focus away from what

25:37

was kind of keenly honed on addiction and and

25:39

broadened it. Well, you know, it was

25:41

a natural progression. For

25:45

example, I'm a Canadian living in Canada. So

25:47

when I worked with a and it was a highly

25:49

addictive population and Vancouver was done on

25:51

Eastside, but you visited the first time that remapped.

25:55

Thirty this is North America's the

25:57

most concentrated area of drug use. We

25:59

have more people using, injecting,

26:01

and inhaling. substances than

26:03

anywhere else in North America. And

26:05

thirty percent of my clients

26:07

done there were indigenous Canadians.

26:10

Nangina's Canadian make up five percent of the Canadian

26:13

population, thirty percent of the addicted

26:15

population, thirty percent of the

26:17

GEO population. Indigenous women make

26:19

up fifty percent of the Canadian jail

26:21

population, amongst women.

26:24

Now, clearly, there's a

26:26

link between social economic and racial

26:28

status and illness. So that you can't

26:30

help but notice that. So

26:32

then you have to start asking, what are

26:34

the factors in a social

26:36

level? that promote addiction,

26:38

that promote mental illness, that promotes

26:41

suicide, that promote physical illness.

26:43

Now First Nations Canadian, an

26:45

indigenous Canadian woman, has six

26:47

times six times the rate of

26:50

rheumatoid arthritis. than in that much

26:52

higher. Then anybody else, six

26:54

times women

26:55

of color in the US, as much higher

26:57

rates of autoimmune disease than

27:00

non people have

27:03

considered not

27:03

people of color. Now, these aren't

27:06

these problems are not genetic. The

27:08

Indigenous publication in Canada had no autoimmune

27:11

disease before colonization at

27:13

all. It's social

27:15

economic, racial, and

27:17

historical. so that you cannot

27:19

help but notice these things. And by

27:21

the way, I'm far from

27:22

the first one in the

27:25

nineteenth century. There was a

27:27

German physician renowned in the

27:29

history of medicine, Rudolf

27:31

Vircha, his name was. And

27:35

he he said that politics

27:37

is just the extension of medicine.

27:39

That if we're gonna deal with people's

27:41

health, we have to deal with them politics.

27:43

So this awareness is not new, but it's

27:45

like that science in the mind body unity

27:47

that I was referring to where we

27:49

have the science. but

27:52

the profession doesn't take

27:53

it into account. Right. And it's the

27:56

same with this link between the

27:58

individual and

28:00

society. again, the medical profession does

28:02

not take it into account -- Mhmm. -- despite

28:04

the abundant evidence. There

28:06

does seem to be a growing awareness

28:09

around generational trauma and,

28:11

you know, the kind of tangential

28:13

implications of that, as well

28:15

as the epigenetic which

28:17

is sort of related, epigenetic nature of this,

28:20

which is to say that we have

28:22

the genetic code and the

28:24

epigenetics are what kind

28:26

of toggle on and off these

28:28

adaptive strategies and behaviors.

28:30

SAPIEN means on top of

28:32

-- SAPIENANEX means on top of genetics really.

28:35

And what you're referring to is

28:37

the fact that genes

28:39

are turned on

28:40

and off by the environment. They're

28:42

not independent actors. So

28:45

you

28:45

can have people at the same genes,

28:48

but

28:48

different environments that

28:50

have very different outcomes. And so that's

28:53

epigenetics. And to some extent, those

28:55

epigenetics can be passed on to future generations.

28:57

Mhmm. We know that from animal

28:59

studies. so that when

29:01

you look at one generation,

29:03

you can't understand it without looking at the

29:05

previous generation as well. So that the

29:07

connection I'm talking about both

29:10

lateral

29:10

in the sense that it spreads throughout the

29:12

whole culture, but it's also vertical in that

29:14

it spreads across the generations. Right.

29:17

So if you were to take a

29:19

native American population in

29:21

North America and just

29:23

track the incidence of alcoholism, which

29:26

is known to be higher in

29:28

those communities. There's a generational

29:30

trauma piece to that and an epigenetic

29:32

piece to that. Well, the generational trauma

29:34

is the genocide and

29:36

oppression and loss of lands and livelihood and

29:38

the deprivation of culture that

29:41

delivered destruction of

29:43

spiritual ways All this

29:45

happened in Canada and in the U.

29:47

S. In Canada, native

29:49

children were abducted from their homes

29:51

for a hundred years. and forced to go

29:53

into these residential schools

29:55

where they couldn't see their parents, where

29:57

they were forbidden to see their parents,

30:00

and where they were sexually physically abused, where their

30:02

culture was denigrated, where

30:05

they just found thousands of bodies of

30:07

these children in Canada. who

30:10

died in his residential schools.

30:12

Now, those that

30:14

survived the residential schools and

30:17

went home their whole childhood had been robbed from

30:19

them. Their parenting was

30:21

taken away. The nurturing connections

30:24

were destroyed. They didn't know where

30:25

to grant the next generation, and this

30:27

went on for hundred years. So in the

30:30

native communities in Canada, We

30:32

have much more cause than much more child abuse. Mhmm.

30:35

This is contrary how they used

30:37

to raise children. These indigenous

30:39

people raised children in much

30:41

more healthier ways than we do. Right. Right.

30:44

I mean, we need to learn for how they

30:46

raise children. Mhmm. And

30:48

I could talk about that. But

30:51

because hard every his children was

30:53

hard evolved as human beings were

30:55

mentally

30:55

his children

30:57

by evolution. So we destroyed

31:00

that for them. And now we wonder why did

31:02

they have moralism? Why did they have more

31:04

addiction? Why did they have more

31:06

illness? Why did they have more violence? because

31:09

we've robbed and

31:10

moved their nature. And so

31:12

when I talk about a toxic

31:14

society, I'm talking about society

31:17

in which what is normal

31:19

is completely unnatural and

31:21

unhealthy. Yeah.

31:23

But this, of course, is

31:26

is is rampant across

31:28

all sectors of the developed world.

31:30

I wrote down some of the statistics that

31:32

you you cite in the book. I mean, sixty

31:35

percent of US

31:37

adults have a chronic disorder, forty

31:39

percent have more than more

31:41

than one such disorder percent of U.

31:43

S. adults are on at least one

31:46

prescription drug -- Yeah. -- fifty percent take

31:48

two. Twenty percent of Canadians

31:50

have high blood pressure, thirty

31:52

percent of Europeans have hypertension. I mean,

31:54

it just goes on and on and on.

31:56

Right? So nobody's immune from

31:58

this. No. No. It's Something is

32:00

terribly awry. Like, we are

32:02

completely out of balance. We're out of

32:04

balance. Here's

32:07

the thing. what a balance,

32:10

now that imbalance affects some people

32:12

more than others, but it does affect

32:14

everybody. There's no strata arms. There's

32:16

no strata member society. that

32:18

expect that escapes the

32:20

stresses. Mhmm. And

32:22

where a lot of balance is that

32:25

we have certain needs as

32:27

human beings. See children have four basic needs.

32:29

They even need

32:29

to be strongly attached

32:32

to that, also take care of them.

32:34

with them all the time, by the way.

32:36

because as we evolve, this human beings

32:38

over millions of years. And for most

32:40

of our species, existence as

32:42

homo sapiens. We lived in small

32:45

communities where the parents were

32:47

always around the kids. So secure

32:48

attachments. Mhmm. an

32:51

extended family. Extended family or

32:53

community. Right. You know, and

32:55

then children have a need not to

32:57

have to work, to make the relationship with

32:59

the parents work. they have to be able to

33:01

rest in a security that

33:04

there's nothing they can do to destroy their

33:06

relationship and there's nothing they need to do

33:08

to make it work. Then

33:09

in our society, we make our kids work, mhmm, to

33:12

be accepted. You have to be good. You have to be

33:14

smart. You have to be

33:16

good looking or you have to be you have to

33:19

be be behaved acceptively. Otherwise,

33:21

you're gonna get a time out and we're

33:23

gonna say to you, no, you can't

33:25

be with us. They're gonna deprive you over contact for

33:27

a little while. Jordan

33:30

Peterson, Canadian psychologist, says

33:32

that an angry child

33:34

should need to sit by themselves until they come back

33:37

to normal. In other words, it's not

33:39

normal for kids to be angry. Well, let me tell

33:41

you, it's very normal for two year old to be angry

33:43

because they get frustrated. Now if you

33:45

give the message to a two year old, you're not

33:47

acceptable to me when you're angry. Basically,

33:49

you're saying to them, don't be yourself,

33:51

suppress who you in order to be accepted. You

33:53

love it's conditional. Love it's

33:55

conditional. That's the message again. Yeah. A lot of kids in

33:57

this society are getting the message that

33:59

love it's conditional. We tell

34:01

parents. not to pick

34:02

up their sleeping, not to pick up their crying

34:04

babies. But you

34:05

tell them whether you tell them they need to learn

34:07

how to be

34:10

being without that

34:10

nurturing. That's so crucial on that. No. You tell another

34:12

gorilla not to pick up their baby

34:14

when it's crying. We tell a mother

34:16

cat to ignore the little kids meowing.

34:20

You know? So

34:22

so that children have the

34:24

need to be able to experience all

34:27

their emotions fully. and that be accepted by

34:29

the parents. Well, without

34:32

parents, no.

34:32

Your children's anger is

34:36

not acceptable. So it shouldn't get the message that then are

34:38

acceptable. You have to work to be acceptable. You have

34:40

to suppress yourself to

34:42

be acceptable. and

34:44

children need freeplay out there

34:47

in nature. Freeplay, not with

34:49

gadgets, not with cell phones, not with

34:51

games on the Internet.

34:54

but feet play in nature. This is our essential needs of human Mhmm.

34:56

That goes into the

34:58

the four that are really six

35:01

this, like, six a's that you talk about in the book. Right?

35:04

The the agency

35:06

would be, like, the ability to, like, roam

35:08

and be outdoors and attachment.

35:11

being important as well? Well,

35:14

attachment is well, it's Authenticity,

35:18

agency, going to anger.

35:20

Anger acceptance. Obtonomy.

35:22

You

35:22

know, these are the healing

35:24

pathways.

35:24

What I'm saying

35:25

is for people

35:28

to heal. They have to find their own agency. They have to

35:30

whatever happens to them, they need to

35:32

participate in the decisions that affect their

35:34

lives, particularly the health decisions. So

35:38

for that, and so the it's very interesting. There's a

35:41

couple of people that I know who

35:43

have looked at what's called

35:46

spontaneous remission. spunt in

35:48

information is supposedly when

35:50

somebody spontaneously gets better after

35:52

having been given a terminal diagnosis.

35:55

And there's a Saskatchewan's at Harvard,

35:57

doctor Jeff Rediger, who, by the way, you might wanna talk

35:59

to sometime --

36:00

Mhmm. -- is written a book called Keyword.

36:03

The the the the

36:07

science of spontaneous healing. He studied people just as

36:09

I have who got better despite

36:12

giving terminal

36:14

diagnosis after the failure

36:16

of medical treatment or even if they

36:18

if they refused medical treatment.

36:20

Kelly Turner, doctor Kelly Turner,

36:23

is an oncological psychologist

36:25

who worked with cancer patients.

36:27

And she also did a study of people

36:29

who have spontaneously better.

36:32

spontaneously. But when I talk to

36:34

these people and Kelly Turner or Jeff

36:36

Redeker talks to these people, there's

36:38

nothing spontaneous about

36:40

the healing. they all did something. And the biggest thing did

36:42

is they developed a different

36:44

relationship to themselves. They became

36:48

authentically themselves. start pleasing

36:50

people. They actually consulted what they

36:52

needed and wanted in within themselves. Now

36:54

I'm not saying that this is a

36:57

magic cure but I'm saying that the people that do

36:59

get better on their own with

37:01

or without medical treatment in the

37:03

face of terminal diagnosis They're the

37:05

ones who took agency over their lives.

37:07

Mhmm. And in our

37:09

medical system, people are made to

37:11

be very passive recipients. you're the experts

37:13

doing really what you need to do. So agency is very, very important.

37:15

Healthily anger is very important.

37:18

Healthily anger

37:20

is Well, I

37:22

I begin chapter two, I

37:24

think, with the case of a woman,

37:26

who's given a diagnosis of

37:29

two years to

37:30

live with metastatic

37:32

breast cancer. And the

37:35

doctor's telling her that statistics means

37:37

that she's got two years to live. Now she's got two young kids. Mhmm. And

37:39

she says to the doctor,

37:41

fuck your statistics. She

37:44

says that was very rude. I said, what do you mean rude? She says, I

37:46

said to him, fuck your statistics. I said

37:49

to her, thanks. That's great. That probably

37:51

helped you so that she

37:53

lived another twenty years. because she got a partly

37:56

because she stopped being a people

37:58

pleaser, and she got in touch with the healthy

38:00

anger. She did die of

38:02

her cancer. but only after she raised her kids to be young

38:04

successfully young. Yeah. She said, like, I have to I

38:06

I need to raise these boys. Like, I can't die

38:08

yet. I have work to do. Exactly.

38:12

And and one of them ended. No. And she did. She twenty years

38:14

and one goes on to Princeton or something like

38:16

that. So she fulfilled that. And in the book,

38:18

I give examples. I never mind doing

38:20

my landline. People with

38:22

multiple sclerosis who've been told they have to be

38:24

in medication for their

38:26

sterilized. They're okay without medication now and they

38:28

have no symptoms. People with

38:30

rheumatoid arthritis. the same

38:32

thing. Why? Because they

38:34

got in touch with their real selves.

38:36

They stopped suppressing themselves. They

38:38

stopped and replaced everybody else. They said, who

38:41

am I? What do I need? What am I interested? What am what do

38:43

I need to say no to? What do I need

38:45

to say yes to? I'm telling you, a

38:47

lot of these conditions

38:50

who are which are considered to be chronic

38:53

and incurable, they're

38:56

not necessarily. you

38:59

know, and the case that given the book

39:01

of a woman with

39:03

scleroderma. scleroderma is

39:07

autoimmune disease isclerosis means

39:10

hardening, dermis scans, sclerodermis

39:12

harden skin,

39:14

iscleroderma. the connective tissues of your body gets stiff. And

39:16

this woman aged twenty nine, she

39:18

said I was being mummified alive.

39:22

she became like a rigid mom, she could barely move. She could not

39:24

get out of bed her by herself. The

39:26

medications failed. They didn't work for her.

39:28

All she wanted to do was die.

39:32

Now, she's walking

39:33

around, hiking, writing her

39:36

autobiography, winning

39:38

poetry contests, because

39:40

she turned her relationship and because she dealt with

39:43

her childhood trauma, which none of the

39:45

doctors asked her about, of course. and

39:48

she become authentically herself.

39:50

And

39:50

and these are not

39:52

fairy tales. I talked to the dog.

39:54

I talked to a physician. who verified

39:57

the story. Mhmm. Yeah. Me Oke. This is Me

39:59

Oke. Yeah.

39:59

And she happened to

40:02

do

40:02

it through

40:04

her healing happened through an

40:06

experience with the psychedelic, which

40:09

allowed her to recognize

40:11

her two self. and

40:14

a lot of other work besides.

40:16

But what's the message

40:18

here? The message here is that illness

40:22

is a manifestation of a person's

40:24

trauma and a person's life. And

40:26

if you turn that life around, you

40:28

can very often have a positive impact on the illness as

40:31

well. Right.

40:34

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40:35

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to

45:20

the

45:21

show.

45:22

So the first

45:24

step is

45:25

recognizing that

45:28

although we think of trauma in a certain way that on

45:30

some level we all have experienced a

45:33

version of trauma, that

45:36

has cemented certain behavior patterns, adaptive strategies,

45:39

defense mechanisms that dictate

45:41

how we perceive the world and

45:43

behave in the world. Yeah. And many of

45:45

us, if not, the majority of us, live out, you

45:47

know, the rest of our lives without

45:49

really ever addressing that or

45:52

looking inward to

45:54

unpack why that is and

45:56

try to find a healthier adapted strategy.

45:59

Right?

45:59

And short of a life

46:01

threatening crisis that compels

46:04

us to do that kind of interior

46:06

work. Of course, that choice is

46:08

available to us. Right?

46:10

But it's much more difficult when you're not in pain, you know, it's the

46:12

same thing in addiction, of course. So

46:14

how how does one like, if somebody's listening

46:16

to this and

46:18

they're like, wow, I never thought I could

46:20

take the reins of control over

46:22

these sorts of things. How would I

46:24

begin to

46:26

do that? Well, first of all, thank you. You summarized the

46:28

thesis of my book very

46:30

succinctly. We don't have to wait for your

46:32

honest to

46:34

for us to dealing with our stuff there. I quote this Greek playwright, Escalas,

46:36

who said that the way that God's created

46:38

us, we human

46:39

beings, we have to

46:42

suffer suffering to the truth. And that's often the way it works. I mean, I

46:44

tell you, I went through my own stuff,

46:46

I had my mental health conditions, my

46:49

ADHD, my depression, my

46:52

relationship problems, my stressed marriage,

46:54

the way that I

46:56

transmitted my own trauma to my

46:58

kids. And unfortunately,

46:59

most of us, until things go

47:02

sideways, we don't we're not much impaled to

47:04

do anything about it. We're just gonna take

47:06

life as it goes, and

47:08

I'm okay. Mhmm. Well, but we don't have to

47:10

wait for

47:10

serious illness like multiple

47:13

sclerosis or rheumatoid arthritis. or

47:16

a serious mental health crisis or a severe addiction to

47:19

wake us up. So we can

47:21

wake up and

47:21

recognize that, yeah,

47:24

you know, stuff

47:25

happened to me, and that's affecting how I conduct

47:27

my relationship. I am

47:28

with my in my marriage. I'm

47:32

with my friends, how I show up for my work, whether I'm addicted to

47:34

work, whether I'm not, whether I

47:36

pursue some addiction or not, whether it's

47:39

sex pornography or gambling or

47:42

substances or shopping or eating, these all represent some

47:44

kind of traumatic imprint. And I can

47:46

deal with it, I can learn to deal with it

47:48

now. So it doesn't have to get

47:52

more severe. Yeah. So we don't have to wait for that disease

47:54

as a teacher to show up. Yeah.

47:56

I think an honest and thorough

47:58

inventory, as

47:59

they say, is more

48:02

than revealing if you wanna kind

48:04

of do a little self analysis on

48:06

on what makes you tick and you

48:08

know, I just know that it's common to witness people who say, I need

48:10

to lose weight. I'm gonna try this diet or I'm

48:13

gonna, you know, I'm gonna adopt a meditation

48:15

practice or I'm gonna start

48:17

an exercise routine or I'm gonna go on a thirty

48:19

day digital detox. And

48:22

more often than not, you can be

48:24

successful in those temporary pursuits. But

48:27

rubber band and default to your

48:29

core setting. And that's

48:32

discouraging for most people, but I think

48:34

it's also elustrative

48:36

of just how deeply embedded, how

48:38

ingrained these patterns are that

48:40

you reflexively go back to the way you

48:42

always did it after this little experiment.

48:45

and should give you a sense of

48:47

how powerful this patterning is and what

48:49

you're up against because it's a beast.

48:51

Right? And somebody has been, you know,

48:53

who embarked upon this in nineteen ninety eight

48:55

and has, you know, been in recovery for

48:57

a long time, it's you're

48:59

continually peeling these layers and just

49:01

when you you have a handle on something, the degree of

49:03

difficulty continues to increase, and this will be

49:06

the case till I'm in a coffin.

49:08

Like, the more I think I have a handle

49:10

on it, the more

49:12

baffled and amazed I am at

49:14

how much work remains and how

49:16

much I still you know, my wife is

49:18

a great mirror as I'm sure of,

49:20

like, behaving like your mother again.

49:22

Like, you're you're literally developing these

49:25

everything that you dislike about

49:27

how she behaves. Like, I'm seeing it right now. And

49:29

I was like, you gotta be kidding me. Like, I've

49:31

worked so hard -- Wow. -- to transcend

49:34

this and yet it continues to show

49:36

up. Well, Yeah.

49:37

So a number of things the Buddha

49:39

talked about are habit energies,

49:42

and they're deeply ingrained.

49:44

So

49:44

it's a question of, do you just wanna

49:46

change behaviors? or they

49:47

deal with do you wanna deal with the underlying

49:50

imprint that drives those

49:52

behaviors? So

49:52

in the first case, we can change the behaviors for

49:54

a while. Mhmm. But if we don't deal with

49:56

the underlying imprint, those behaviors are gonna reassert

49:58

themselves. Right. Number

49:59

one. Number two, it's not as

50:02

discouraging as all that.

50:04

I mean, It's true. These parents can still show up in

50:06

my life. I'm seventy eight now. They can

50:08

still show up. But believe me, they don't

50:10

show up at the same force and

50:12

the same tutorial

50:14

authority as they showed up even three or

50:16

four years ago. So there's such a thing

50:19

as progress. And As far as the work, you're right. It's lifelong

50:21

work. I don't know if I told you, but I've written

50:23

my epitaph. Alright. No. I don't know.

50:26

No. No. No. I'm like gravestone. It's gonna

50:28

be engraved. It was a lot more

50:30

work than I had

50:32

anticipated. So

50:34

you know what? What's the alternative?

50:37

the alternative is to vegetate

50:39

and and rot and to

50:42

keep stuck in old banners. The problem in our

50:44

society is There's very

50:46

little that actually promotes healing,

50:48

and there's very much that undermines

50:50

it, so that this

50:52

society loves you to be addicted It

50:54

loves

50:55

you to be feeling inadequate so

50:57

that you're trying to meet

50:59

other people's expectations. It

51:02

loves you to try to fit in instead of

51:05

being

51:05

authentically yourself.

51:07

Jamie Lee Lee Curtis said to me

51:10

once that in this

51:12

society,

51:12

this agenda side of authenticity.

51:14

Mhmm. This

51:15

culture kills authenticity so

51:17

that this path

51:20

towards wholeness in the last chapter, the book is called Pathways to

51:22

Honus. This Pathways to

51:24

Honus is not supported by the culture, in

51:26

fact, is undermined

51:28

by it. So we have to kind of

51:30

take it on for ourselves, not just as

51:32

necessary as individuals, but in the

51:34

face of cultural programming

51:36

and propaganda. Mhmm. Yeah.

51:38

In in that final chapter about

51:40

wholeness, there's a extended

51:42

discussion about

51:45

building in into our institutions, a

51:47

better understanding of trauma, like trauma based

51:49

medicine -- Yeah. -- and how

51:51

we understand trauma even in

51:54

the legal system because,

51:56

yes, culture loves to addict us, but then

51:58

they also love to tell us that we

52:00

are afflicted

52:02

and broken and we must be, you know, put incarcerated

52:04

and and punished as opposed to a

52:06

holistic understanding of the trauma that

52:08

led to

52:10

the behavior and figuring out a way to rehabilitate that

52:12

person by confronting the

52:14

underlying condition that's driving

52:16

the behavior. Yeah. So in that

52:18

last chapter, I do talk about the need for a

52:20

trauma and front medical system, which you

52:22

don't have, the need for a trauma and front

52:24

legal system, which we don't have the

52:26

legal system. If a patient

52:28

of mine in the downtown east

52:30

side was caught selling

52:32

an ounce of cocaine, he'd

52:34

go

52:34

go to do to jail. But if

52:36

you're a corporation that deliberately

52:38

sells toxic substances that kill hundreds

52:40

of thousands, you're a successful executive.

52:44

if you're a pharmaceutical

52:46

company executive whose products knowingly

52:50

were addictive, and have

52:52

killed hundreds of thousands of

52:54

people. You

52:55

get rewarded with high

52:58

profits and dividends. if

53:00

you

53:00

sell an ounce of heroin

53:02

-- Mhmm. -- you're in jail for maybe

53:04

for the rest of your life in

53:07

this country, you know, Now if if

53:09

the legal system understood that most of the people in jails

53:11

are actually traumatized people, that the

53:14

violence and the drug use and so on

53:16

came out

53:18

of trauma, then we would recreate a a

53:19

ecosystem that rehabilitates

53:22

people that deals with the

53:24

trauma that helps them

53:26

redeem themselves and

53:28

helps them overcome their

53:30

patterns. That could be done. We know

53:32

how to do it. Is there a country that

53:34

is effectively

53:36

doing that? Is that Norway? Or are there Oh, well,

53:38

so there are countries that do it a lot better

53:40

than North America does or or

53:42

most of the road

53:44

actually. So in Portugal, as you and I know. Yeah.

53:46

There's no punishment anymore for

53:48

possessing drugs for

53:50

personal use. as a result,

53:52

there's less use and more people getting

53:54

treatment in some of the Scandinavian

53:56

countries. They have jails that are

53:58

really designed to rehabilitate

53:59

people that feed people humanely. It's not a question of

54:02

excusing what they did, but it's a

54:04

question of how to move

54:06

forward so that they don't do

54:08

it again. and that's called

54:10

rehabilitation. So their jails are much less

54:12

punitive, much more humane

54:14

-- Right. -- and therefore much

54:16

more success. on this idea of

54:18

trauma based medicine, ideally,

54:20

this would look like, like, if somebody

54:22

comes into a clinicians

54:24

office and says, I have like this gut

54:26

problem where I have, you know, some kind of

54:28

skin condition or autoimmune

54:30

disorder -- Yeah. --

54:32

the the practitioner would say, tell me about

54:34

your life. Like, what are you

54:36

going through? What is your day like? What are you

54:38

eating? How are you sleeping? Well, they're not What

54:40

is your childhood? Yeah. Well, they're

54:42

not fountains. furnace, I would not begin with that. I would say tell me about your problem, and

54:44

let's see how we can help you in the short term so that you

54:46

don't suffer. And when I've stabilized

54:48

when we've stabilized your condition,

54:51

Can we talk about

54:52

the conditions in your life that may have contributed

54:54

to the onset of your illness? Now can we

54:56

talk about your childhood? Can we talk about your

54:58

relationship? Can we talk about your stress levels?

55:01

Can we talk about how you feel about yourself? Can

55:03

we talk about what your

55:05

marriage is like? We know, for

55:08

example, the

55:10

stressful marriages, affect people's immune systems. So these

55:12

questions are very pertinent. I wouldn't

55:14

tell me the first thing that I would if you come in

55:16

to me with an inflamed skin. Right.

55:18

If it's if it right. If

55:20

it's in a heightened situation Yeah. You are

55:22

you if if you've got over there, the skin

55:24

inflammation, you wouldn't thank me if I start asking

55:26

for your childhood. But Deal with the acute nature. But but if I said, let's

55:28

deal with the acute problem. Mhmm. And

55:30

then let's talk about some of the

55:32

conditions that we have

55:34

stressed you. so that you

55:36

you skin got inflamed, or that your

55:38

guts got inflamed, or your joints got

55:40

inflamed, that would be a

55:42

healthy conversation. most physicians don't even know how to ask those Mhmm.

55:44

Are you Sanguine about

55:48

this changing?

55:49

I mean,

55:50

you you close the book with,

55:53

you know, you strike an optimistic tone, but

55:55

almost as if you're backed

55:57

into a corner to declare optimism

56:00

because

56:00

we have to.

56:02

No. I believe

56:03

in human beings and I and

56:05

I and I believe that people

56:08

capable

56:08

of transformation both on the personal

56:10

and on the social level. I genuinely believe

56:12

that I don't have a short term optimism.

56:14

I think it's gonna take a long time.

56:17

It's gonna take a lot of work. You know,

56:20

yesterday, I was speaking at a conference

56:22

in San Diego and

56:24

psychedelics and healing. and there was physician

56:26

there, an internal medicine

56:28

specialist from California.

56:30

And then she said, I

56:32

agree with you. Our profession is so backward. It's so I you

56:34

know, the it's we're so traumatized as physicians. Our

56:37

knowledge is so limited, and

56:39

we so separate things

56:41

that are connected in real life. How

56:44

do we move forward? Well, there's more and more

56:46

physicians asking those questions. Mhmm.

56:48

There's more and more physicians

56:50

being aware. the institutions of medicine have a long way

56:52

to go.

56:52

Yeah. And that's gonna

56:54

take a long time.

56:56

When we talk about trauma one

57:00

thing that concerns me and I'm

57:02

interested in your take on

57:04

this

57:05

is is

57:07

the idea that it can

57:09

be fueling this sense of

57:12

victimhood that leads to

57:14

helplessness. Because right now, we're kind of

57:16

celebrating victimhood. Like, it's almost as if there's a

57:18

contest, who's the biggest victim, and people

57:20

are crafting identities around that.

57:23

And I think the healthy aspect of that is

57:25

that people are talking about their trauma

57:27

and confronting it, so it's become part of the

57:29

parlance of our mainstream conversation.

57:32

Yes. But the unhealthy part

57:34

of that is the self

57:36

identification with the victim aspect of

57:38

it that

57:40

breeds helplessness but is also

57:42

something that gets validated,

57:44

like, in social media, for example. So

57:46

how do you parse that? Well, as

57:48

you say, it's a fine line because a

57:50

lot of people are traumatizing in society. And the

57:53

more we recognize that, the better.

57:55

And I'm very glad when

57:58

a celebrity comes out and says I was

58:00

hurt, and that really affected my

58:02

life. Mhmm. And it fueled my addiction

58:04

or fueled my fueled my illness. So

58:08

it fueled my depression. That's

58:11

important. But also, as

58:13

you say, and in a book, we

58:15

talk about this, is that That

58:17

doesn't mean we should identify as

58:19

victim.

58:19

So recognizing what

58:22

happened doesn't necessarily create a

58:24

victim identity. the victim identity says, this happened to

58:26

me and help us in the

58:28

face of it. Mhmm. But that goes against

58:30

my concept

58:32

of agency. So in

58:33

order to be able to exercise the agency, you gotta let go of

58:35

the victimhood. Yes. I was a

58:37

traumatized Jewish infant under

58:40

the Nazis. That's

58:41

my reality. There's nothing I can

58:43

do. That that's what happened. But I don't

58:45

have to live the rest

58:47

of my life. by what I made that mean at

58:49

the time. And so that's the whole thing of

58:52

healing is that you recognize what

58:54

happened, you

58:56

you fearlessly look at it. You don't deny it anymore. same

58:58

time, you work not to

59:00

let that define who you are, how you

59:02

move forward, how you see the

59:06

world. Yeah.

59:07

Because trauma gain is not what

59:09

happened to you. It's what happened inside

59:11

you as a result of what happened to you.

59:13

And that's the good news. because

59:16

if trauma was what happened to you that somebody

59:19

sexually abused you or that your

59:21

parents died in a war

59:22

-- Mhmm.

59:25

if

59:25

that was the trauma, there's nothing you can do to change

59:27

that. That happened. It was never not gonna

59:29

have happened. But if the trauma is the wound

59:31

that you incurred in or inwardly,

59:33

you can heal wound at any time. Right? So

59:36

actually, they recognizing

59:38

what trauma is is an

59:40

internal psychological

59:42

wound, with manifestations

59:44

in your body actually allows

59:46

you to heal it. First, you have

59:48

to recognize that that there is a wound. I mean, one

59:50

of the things that you did with me that was

59:52

so powerful when we first sat down was to kind of walk

59:55

me through my history because -- Yeah.

59:57

-- I like I think

59:59

a lot of people and

1:00:01

very, you know, resistant to,

1:00:04

you know, point a finger at either of my

1:00:06

parents. And you talk a lot about this

1:00:08

distinction between responsibility

1:00:10

and blame. Right? And and so

1:00:12

I think, you know, my reluctance

1:00:16

to, you know, think

1:00:18

about culpability in my child

1:00:20

rearing has helped me in a

1:00:22

place where I I wasn't able

1:00:24

to really

1:00:26

honestly inventory what occurred

1:00:28

and link it to how I, you

1:00:30

know, began to behave as I as

1:00:32

I as I grew older. So

1:00:34

unpacking that and and creating a, you know, a sort

1:00:36

of a safe environment to speak

1:00:39

about that, I think, is really

1:00:41

instructive in helping people

1:00:44

understand the relationship between their development and

1:00:48

where they are now in life and how those

1:00:50

things are inextricably connected. Yes.

1:00:53

So in this book, we

1:00:56

take a fair bit of trouble to point out that

1:00:58

blaming anybody is here is

1:01:00

is inappropriate unscientific and

1:01:02

cruel, actually. and not

1:01:04

helpful.

1:01:04

At the same time,

1:01:06

we

1:01:06

showed people that the assumptions they

1:01:09

made about their lives were very

1:01:11

often based on suppressing the real

1:01:13

emotions. So if it's only conversation with

1:01:15

people that I could perfectly

1:01:17

happy childhood, then

1:01:20

then I issue what I call the happy childhood challenge,

1:01:22

which takes takes me over three

1:01:24

minutes. Yeah. It's you're very you could

1:01:28

get right to it pretty quickly. Yeah. Well, it's not that difficult.

1:01:30

Mhmm. Because, for example,

1:01:32

if I was talking to you, knowing you've

1:01:34

had four children, if I just

1:01:38

ask, what would be like for one of your children to experience what you've

1:01:40

experienced? What would you

1:01:42

say right away? Yeah. I mean, it's

1:01:45

it would be very painful. Yeah. And and I think

1:01:47

sorry to interrupt, but just to interject one

1:01:50

one point on that, I think

1:01:52

that I

1:01:54

find myself parenting in opposition to the way I

1:01:56

was raised -- Yeah. -- and perhaps

1:01:58

to a fault. Right? This pendulum swings

1:02:00

too far in the

1:02:02

other direction. And even

1:02:04

despite that, under moments of

1:02:06

duress or stress, I

1:02:08

will repeat a pattern that mimics exactly.

1:02:10

We got my parents there. Yeah. Yeah.

1:02:13

Those are

1:02:13

those imprints that you haven't

1:02:16

quite worked through

1:02:18

yet. Right. Believe me if I could

1:02:20

do my printing over again? When

1:02:21

we all? We will. We will.

1:02:23

You know? But that's

1:02:25

the whole point. On the other

1:02:27

hand, I can tell you that I used to be so worried about my children

1:02:29

about because of the environment

1:02:32

that they grew up in.

1:02:35

as a result of my wife's and I

1:02:37

on resolve Thomas. But

1:02:38

you know what? They're

1:02:39

doing great. Mhmm. And

1:02:42

and they've dealt with it. So we

1:02:44

also mustn't humans are also

1:02:46

very resilient. Yeah. Yeah. And

1:02:48

and and you know, and and we mustn't project

1:02:50

their anxieties and our guilt on to our kids

1:02:52

either. You know, that doesn't help them any way

1:02:54

at all. So That's one thing. In in moments of weakness,

1:02:56

I've been known to do that.

1:02:58

Yeah. Yeah. And and it's again, it's

1:03:00

my wife who's like, you're doing

1:03:02

that thing. Yeah.

1:03:04

Well, thank God for our partners. And as I

1:03:06

I think I think I say some under

1:03:09

the book that I'm married my

1:03:11

own lie detector. Right? Right.

1:03:14

Yeah. I say that in the book down? Yeah. I think it it was it was you

1:03:16

know, you were grumpy and, you know,

1:03:18

storming around the house for a couple

1:03:20

days after your wife didn't pick

1:03:22

you up and One day. day. Right? She told you to

1:03:25

just get over it and snap out of

1:03:27

it. Yeah. Yeah. Which

1:03:31

Years ago would've taken me much many years ago

1:03:33

would've taken me much longer to snap out of it. The fact

1:03:35

that I could snap out of it after one day, that's

1:03:37

a sign of progress. You know

1:03:39

what? now she wouldn't put up

1:03:41

with it for five minutes because

1:03:44

she knows I can do better.

1:03:46

Yeah. And you know, we'd be remiss in

1:03:48

not mentioning that you wrote this book with your

1:03:50

son. Yeah. What an incredible,

1:03:52

beautiful experience to have? or maybe

1:03:55

it was terrible. I don't know. What was that what was collaboration like?

1:03:58

Well, it it had its terrible moments.

1:04:02

my son, Daniel, and I I he's my child. We had

1:04:05

a kind of fraught relationship.

1:04:07

But you know what? This book

1:04:09

has been a beautiful process. And

1:04:12

mostly the

1:04:14

problem came from my anxiety. Look, I was really

1:04:16

anxious writing this book at times because I

1:04:18

thought this time,

1:04:20

I bit nothing more than that. Yeah.

1:04:22

You're really going out there. Yeah. This

1:04:24

time, I wanna expose my incompetence

1:04:26

and ignorance to the for the whole world to see.

1:04:28

And so in that in in that

1:04:30

state of anxiety, because this book

1:04:32

was so important to me. because

1:04:35

it's everything I want I also wanted to say.

1:04:37

Mhmm. So because of that anxiety, I

1:04:39

laid sort of

1:04:41

lisa my anxiety

1:04:43

onto my son, which is the last thing he needs is to get his father's

1:04:45

anxiety. He lived without all his childhood. So

1:04:47

you can see we got

1:04:49

triggered at times. but we worked

1:04:51

it out beautifully. And at the end, it was such a

1:04:54

friendly and fruitful

1:04:56

productive collaboration. And I'm just

1:04:58

so grateful that it went that way. Yeah.

1:05:00

Well, it's a it's a remarkable achievement. I

1:05:03

I really do think that this

1:05:05

is a, you know, a quantum leap

1:05:07

in your in your thinking and in your

1:05:09

writing, and I have no doubt gonna impact a

1:05:11

lot of people because it really is it speaks directly

1:05:13

to the heart of what else is

1:05:15

in the broadest sense. you

1:05:17

know, and cast, you know, a

1:05:20

road map for a better

1:05:22

future. We're not we're not unaware

1:05:24

of all of these problems. We all know

1:05:26

what's going on and to better

1:05:28

understand it and figure out how to

1:05:30

redress it for ourselves in

1:05:32

future generations

1:05:34

is is I can think of no, you know, greater

1:05:36

expenditure of your time and

1:05:38

energy. Well, thank you so much for

1:05:40

saying so. if

1:05:42

I may come back to analogy that we introduced in a

1:05:44

very introduction to the book,

1:05:46

the late great writer David

1:05:48

Foster Wallace told the senator

1:05:52

about at a commencement, the director gave at a

1:05:54

university. And of course, he

1:05:55

stuck home didn't he, yeah,

1:05:57

committed suicide in the

1:05:59

end. But he he

1:06:01

gave us an analogy of two young fish swimming

1:06:04

along and they meet an older fish

1:06:06

and the older fish says to them.

1:06:08

Her boy saw

1:06:10

the water. in

1:06:10

a two fish so long for a while and one of them says to you there,

1:06:13

what the heck is water? And

1:06:15

point being is

1:06:18

foster

1:06:18

Wallace points out that when something

1:06:20

is so close to us, we

1:06:23

don't even recognize it. and

1:06:26

not recognizing and not dealing

1:06:28

with what's going on is

1:06:30

kind of fatal consequences. This

1:06:33

is what he said. And so in

1:06:35

our society, this is the water that we swim in, so we take it

1:06:37

to be normal. And we

1:06:39

don't recognize unhealthily on. Naturally,

1:06:41

it actually is

1:06:44

and that has failed a consequence -- Yeah. -- for

1:06:46

millions of people and and and

1:06:49

for people's well-being

1:06:51

and their emotional balance. So

1:06:54

I I just think it's essential to

1:06:56

recognize, not just,

1:06:58

as we said right in the beginning, not just

1:07:02

individual problems, but to recognize that these unusual problems

1:07:04

or manifestations of a

1:07:06

vast cultural edifice

1:07:08

that we're all a part of

1:07:11

and need to address. Mhmm. Yeah. Later in

1:07:13

the book, you you called the willingness to

1:07:15

be disillusioned. Yeah.

1:07:18

Yeah. When people talk about

1:07:21

Well, I'll give

1:07:21

three examples. III

1:07:24

grew up in communist Hungary, and

1:07:26

I

1:07:26

was a good little believer snapping

1:07:28

to attention when they mentioned party

1:07:30

and leader and plotting, you know, and

1:07:33

and union sinned with my classmates.

1:07:36

and then came to the Hungarian Revolution of nineteen fifty six,

1:07:38

which was broadly

1:07:39

put down by the Russians, by the

1:07:42

Soviet Army. the same server, I

1:07:44

mean, that saved my life as an

1:07:46

infant. It's like a dissolution. I lost my

1:07:48

illusions. Then I came to the west,

1:07:50

to Canada, and breathing

1:07:52

in the capitalist system

1:07:54

and what they call democracy, which I

1:07:56

don't think is that much of democracy, by

1:07:59

the way. somewhere like a corporateocracy. But believing

1:08:01

that this is the

1:08:04

answer, then the Vietnam

1:08:06

war happens. and I

1:08:08

see the televised slaughter of millions

1:08:10

of Vietnamese presence.

1:08:12

So I get this illusion to that.

1:08:15

the man And then is the

1:08:17

Jew and whose family suffered so much in the

1:08:19

Holocaust. I get all excited by the

1:08:22

idea of the Jewish

1:08:24

state. and

1:08:26

but this is the

1:08:28

answer. And then I realized, yeah,

1:08:30

we

1:08:31

established a Jewish

1:08:32

state, whether it was

1:08:34

expensed. at the expense of the local population, who

1:08:36

on whom was imposed, a great

1:08:38

killing, a great suffering, a

1:08:41

great disposition, which is still going

1:08:43

on. I get dissolution more

1:08:44

time. And people use

1:08:46

the word dissolution, and they

1:08:48

always talk about it as

1:08:50

a sense of loss or or

1:08:53

betrayal or disappointment. But what I say to people

1:08:55

is, would you rather be illusioned or

1:09:00

disillusioned? Mhmm. would you rather believe

1:09:02

what is not true or would you rather see reality? So I think it's essential that we'd be

1:09:04

disillusioned. that

1:09:07

we lose our illusions about nature of the world that we live in. Because

1:09:10

with if we don't do that, we can't

1:09:12

address the

1:09:14

problems. Yeah. So

1:09:15

in the context of this book, it's shattering

1:09:17

the illusion that the

1:09:20

conveniences of modern life

1:09:22

are making our lives better more

1:09:24

fulfilled when in truth, they are putting

1:09:26

distance between ourselves and our true nature and making

1:09:30

us progressively more sick.

1:09:34

Exactly. There's there's a losing

1:09:36

conflict. illusions. I mean, we keep being told

1:09:38

that this is the richest and the best

1:09:40

society ever. Look

1:09:41

what happened under COVID, the richest, most

1:09:43

powerful society in the world, the

1:09:48

United States, had by far the

1:09:50

highest incidents of quoted of anywhere in the world.

1:09:51

Now, in the world what

1:09:54

does

1:09:54

that tell us? that maybe there's a gap between what

1:09:56

we believe about ourselves and

1:09:58

the reality --

1:09:59

Mhmm. -- that

1:10:01

this most functional and best

1:10:03

of all societies makes most more

1:10:06

people sick than anywhere else in the world. I mean, that ought to give us some pause,

1:10:11

shouldn't it? Yeah. switching gears a little bit because

1:10:13

I can't, you know, III can't have you

1:10:15

sitting across from me without talking

1:10:18

about addiction a little bit. I'm

1:10:20

interested in

1:10:24

how your perspective has evolved or

1:10:26

hasn't evolved since the last

1:10:28

time we talked, has any

1:10:31

of your thoughts on this changed, matured, evolved on

1:10:33

the nature of addiction, how

1:10:35

to treat it. What

1:10:38

did you learned in

1:10:40

the intervening years between, you know,

1:10:42

in the realm of hungry ghosts and the myth of normal. Well,

1:10:44

it's virtually

1:10:45

impossible to say this

1:10:47

without being arrogant, but I'll

1:10:50

take that risk. Everything I wrote

1:10:53

in the in the realm of Fungicides has

1:10:55

only been proven more and more by

1:10:57

the science and by experience. Once it

1:10:59

become even more apparent, when I

1:11:01

wrote that book, there wasn't this

1:11:03

overdose crisis yet, at least

1:11:05

not in the general population. there was,

1:11:07

for example, in the indigenous population in Canada or the

1:11:09

US. But of course, it only happens as

1:11:11

indigenous people who

1:11:13

cares about it, you know. Mhmm. That's that's -- Yeah. -- noticed.

1:11:15

Yeah. mean, dude, we don't notice it. This is an

1:11:18

old world. That's just those people. Now it's happening

1:11:22

in the German society. which only means that

1:11:24

there's even more of a need to look at

1:11:26

the general conditions in the society that foster

1:11:29

addictions. I

1:11:32

would The one thing that's changed for

1:11:34

me is that when people say, in

1:11:35

general, by disease,

1:11:37

but also by

1:11:39

addiction, I have a disease have multiple

1:11:40

sclerosis or I have rheumatoid

1:11:42

arthritis or I have ADHD

1:11:46

or I have depression. or I have addiction. I don't talk

1:11:48

about it that way anymore because

1:11:50

there's an implicit assumption in that

1:11:53

way of languishing things.

1:11:55

As I sit here, I

1:11:57

have this

1:11:57

cup here. I have a cup. I can put it down. I can shatter

1:11:59

it. I can throw it away. I can give it away. I can

1:12:01

put it in my pocket. It's a

1:12:03

thing. It's not me. to

1:12:07

say

1:12:07

that I have an addiction or

1:12:09

even to say that I am an

1:12:12

addict -- Mhmm. --

1:12:14

is that assumes that there's this thing called an addiction, then

1:12:16

there's me. And I have this

1:12:18

thing. This thing is not

1:12:21

about me somehow, just

1:12:23

something that I distinct for me or

1:12:25

I have ADHD. This is a thing called ADHD with the life

1:12:27

of its own, with characteristics of

1:12:30

its own, with the trajectory of its own, and then there's me

1:12:32

over here. And I have

1:12:34

this thing. But actually, the

1:12:36

ADHD is

1:12:37

a manifestation of my life.

1:12:39

It's a pro sits that's happening inside me.

1:12:42

The multiple sclerosis is not a separate thing with a life of its own. It's a process

1:12:45

that's happening

1:12:48

inside me. The addiction is not a separate

1:12:50

thing that I am. It's a process that's happening inside me, which means

1:12:52

that if I

1:12:55

change the I have a way of

1:12:58

affecting this thing that we call disease or addiction -- Mhmm.

1:13:01

-- or anything

1:13:04

else. So it's

1:13:04

more or less of a

1:13:06

separation between myself and what's happening inside me. And even

1:13:11

the language am It identifies the person with

1:13:13

a particular habit or with a

1:13:15

particular dysfunction. Well,

1:13:19

there's some honesty to that and there's value to it because it means

1:13:21

I'm no longer in denial. So that's a

1:13:23

good thing. So

1:13:26

in some at the twelve step meeting, steps up and says so I'm

1:13:28

so and I'm an alcoholic. Oh, that's

1:13:30

honest and that's taking ownership and that's

1:13:33

good. But there's also a risk in it.

1:13:35

is that people identify with a particular set of

1:13:37

behaviors and a particular set of imprints

1:13:40

and patterns. Nobody

1:13:43

is their dysfunction. That's not who anybody

1:13:45

is. Nobody is a victim.

1:13:47

Nobody is an addict. That's not

1:13:49

who anybody is. Right. So to

1:13:51

follow that logic, in the context

1:13:54

of of twelve step identifying as an alcoholic. Hi. My name is Rich. I'm an alcoholic.

1:13:59

There is a baked

1:14:01

in notion in that paradigm that once in alcoholic,

1:14:03

always in alcoholic, that you are in recovery,

1:14:05

but you will

1:14:08

never be recovered. And I

1:14:10

think that drives that level of of self identification -- Yeah. -- with the

1:14:12

disease using the disease paradigm --

1:14:14

Yeah. -- but your logic would depart

1:14:18

from that or your thesis departs from that in the sense

1:14:21

that if the underlying trauma

1:14:23

is resolved, if you

1:14:25

heal that inner child and whatever

1:14:27

is driving that those behaviors that you

1:14:29

can indeed be recovered. Well, and along

1:14:32

the way, Avoiding

1:14:35

self identification with this

1:14:37

can be a tool to

1:14:39

aid in that healing

1:14:41

process. So that's your kind of departure line from

1:14:43

traditional twelve step. It's more radical than that, actually. Yeah. Yes. It's

1:14:45

true what you say, but it's also more

1:14:47

radical than that. First

1:14:51

of all, let's look at this recovery. What does it mean?

1:14:54

It means to find something.

1:14:56

When you

1:14:58

recover something, you find it. if I talk to anybody who's recovered

1:15:00

from addiction or even illness very often,

1:15:02

asked them, what did you recover?

1:15:04

What did you

1:15:05

find? They said I

1:15:08

found myself. Mhmm. Which

1:15:08

is the whole theme of the book, is

1:15:10

that the loss of self in his culture is the source of pathology. So

1:15:14

that that's self is always always available to recover. That's

1:15:16

the whole point. That's that's that's about

1:15:19

I just wanna finish.

1:15:23

Yeah. Because Even somebody who's heavily drinking right now,

1:15:25

if they say I'm

1:15:27

an alcoholic,

1:15:28

I say, no, you're

1:15:30

not. That's not who you

1:15:32

are. your person who's in so

1:15:34

much pain right now that you're using the alcohol to numb your pain. But you're not

1:15:37

that's not all

1:15:39

who you are. all who you are so

1:15:42

that it's not

1:15:43

just a recovered person who's no longer

1:15:46

an alcoholic. Even the alcoholic is not

1:15:48

an alcoholic. In the sense that I'm

1:15:50

talking about right now, yes, they're drinking Yes.

1:15:52

They're hurting themselves. Yes. They're destroying their

1:15:54

lives. That's all true. Can't be denied. Needs to be

1:15:57

acknowledged. But what

1:15:59

if

1:15:59

we said what

1:16:02

if

1:16:03

we outlawed the word addict

1:16:05

and you couldn't say about

1:16:07

anybody. That's so and so is an addict.

1:16:09

What if you had to say about them?

1:16:11

So and so is a

1:16:12

human being who suffered a lot in life.

1:16:14

And then right now, they're trying to escape

1:16:15

from their suffering to

1:16:18

this particular behavior. that acknowledges the truth

1:16:21

without identifying the person with the

1:16:23

behavior. Yeah. I get that.

1:16:26

I get that. I think the way that I've that I've thought

1:16:28

about it in that rubric

1:16:30

of like in recovery versus

1:16:32

recovered -- Yeah. -- is

1:16:35

similar to the idea like,

1:16:37

to to extrapolate or analogize to the idea of pursuing enlightenment. Like --

1:16:39

Mhmm. -- I am in pursuit of something --

1:16:41

Mhmm. -- I I will

1:16:44

unlike become an

1:16:46

enlightened being in this lifetime, but I will I'm committed to pursuing

1:16:51

higher planes of awareness,

1:16:54

consciousness, self understanding, self integration, self actualization, all of those things. So

1:17:00

similarly, recovery is

1:17:02

something that happens along a spectrum. You're always like pursuing greater and greater

1:17:04

recovery, which is self

1:17:07

actualization on some level. but

1:17:11

I don't know that I will ever be recovered because that denotes

1:17:13

a destination that's really kind

1:17:15

of an illusion because there's

1:17:17

always more growth and healing

1:17:19

that can be experienced? Well, I

1:17:21

agree with that. And and and partly, it's a question of how we use language, you know,

1:17:23

and what do we

1:17:27

make words mean? interesting. You should mention self

1:17:30

actualization because that comes up on a realized page of the book. And the it

1:17:35

was the psychologist I think Abraham Maslow

1:17:37

-- Right. -- who studied the self actualization and what he found in a

1:17:40

in a

1:17:44

famous study. self

1:17:44

agiarize people or authentically themselves and

1:17:46

find the satisfaction in that. And and what

1:17:50

he found that the

1:17:52

people that self actualized actually

1:17:54

are not normal by society standards. Mhmm. In fact, they tend

1:17:56

to either

1:17:59

implicitly or explicitly resist societies'

1:18:01

rise and expectations. So

1:18:03

that what does that tell us

1:18:05

about a culture? That the people who

1:18:07

are self actualized? have to

1:18:09

actually express some independence from a culture that they live in. Right. And a culture that is driving

1:18:12

them towards

1:18:16

adherence to a certain set of norms. I mean, you

1:18:18

talk about in this book how people who are on that path are often

1:18:20

at odds with their peers or

1:18:22

their friends or whatever what have you.

1:18:25

It's interesting that you bring that up because

1:18:27

I just had this psychologist in here, Scott Barry Kaufman.

1:18:30

Have you ever met him? He wrote this wonderful book

1:18:32

home. transcend.

1:18:34

Okay. And he's obsessed with Maslow and -- Mhmm. -- just did a deep dive into Maslow's

1:18:40

life. Okay. and extrapolates on

1:18:42

his work, which was not complete when he died in nineteen seventy. That's right. And gets into,

1:18:45

you know, the

1:18:48

the higher aspects of

1:18:50

that hierarchy when it comes to self actualization and ultimately transcendence, which is

1:18:55

drawing unison, which between this self actualization

1:18:58

process and then in turn finding a way to channel it in service to

1:19:00

others for the betterment of humanity,

1:19:02

which is like the pinnacle. Right?

1:19:06

And is that not similar

1:19:09

to this idea of

1:19:11

recovery being on that

1:19:13

same kind of trajectory?

1:19:15

you can formulate it that Sure. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting

1:19:18

though because and we

1:19:20

talked about this last time,

1:19:22

like, I'm a I'm a product

1:19:24

of of twelve step and

1:19:26

a a. And that comes with a certain set of, you know,

1:19:31

ideas and ideology there's an indoctrination, you know,

1:19:33

to that process. And because I've been in it so long, I find

1:19:36

myself resistant or like

1:19:38

my back gets up when

1:19:41

that paradigm gets challenged because it did save my life and I've seen it -- Yeah. -- save

1:19:43

the lives of so many other people. Yeah. And that's not

1:19:46

to say that it's

1:19:48

that it should be thought of in calcified terms

1:19:50

and we can't iterate it on it or or improve it. But I still have

1:19:55

yet to see anything that would convince me

1:19:57

that there's a better way and that we

1:19:59

should abandon

1:20:01

this thing that

1:20:03

is highly imperfect but also

1:20:05

miraculous. Well, so first of all, both in my book on

1:20:08

addiction and on my

1:20:10

books, and in this book,

1:20:13

acknowledge the value of the twelve steps -- Mhmm.

1:20:15

-- the twelve steps -- Mhmm. -- the twelve steps --

1:20:17

Mhmm. -- before I try to get you to rank hold here.

1:20:19

I just work here. better.

1:20:22

I'm happy to rank on I

1:20:24

see limitations that I think that if they

1:20:26

move past it, they could even do

1:20:27

better work. because

1:20:31

the I don't know what the statistics are,

1:20:34

but the

1:20:34

best statistics I've seen about the twelve

1:20:36

steps is they help about twenty

1:20:38

percent of the people. Mhmm. Now

1:20:41

I think that's great and it's

1:20:43

as good as it gets, but I think it will get better. What if they actually, for

1:20:48

example, formally incorporated

1:20:51

trauma awareness. Now I know

1:20:53

that the

1:20:53

trauma awareness can come up for

1:20:55

some people in the twelve step program,

1:20:57

but it's rather haphazard. and, you know,

1:21:00

Bill W himself as a traumatized child abandoned

1:21:02

by his parents. Why don't we talk about

1:21:04

that more? It

1:21:06

would really help people I've

1:21:08

had a lot of people telling me who've been

1:21:10

to twelve steps, who who've read my book, who heard my podcast and addiction, and

1:21:14

I say thank you. it finally makes sense to me. So it

1:21:16

would take nothing away from the trusses

1:21:18

to be more trauma and

1:21:19

informed. Yeah.

1:21:21

It would also take it it would also take nothing

1:21:23

away from the twelve steps to use the

1:21:25

language. So I'm I'm ready to,

1:21:27

I'm gonna call it, I'm gabbro, and I'm

1:21:29

gonna add, so on. But at the same

1:21:32

time, recognizing That no. And that's

1:21:34

not that's not exactly who I am either. That's that's just an aspect of who I am.

1:21:36

Right. I don't think it would take it

1:21:38

away from the twelve steps to recognize those

1:21:40

things. I'm

1:21:42

not rankled. Okay. Good. I I can hear that. I

1:21:45

didn't I'm interested in how that would be, like, if

1:21:47

you were gonna if you were

1:21:49

to update the big book or rewrite the steps,

1:21:51

like how how that could

1:21:54

be

1:21:55

practiced. Oh, summer.

1:21:57

summer

1:21:59

understand that this addiction that I

1:22:02

have is

1:22:03

not a disease that

1:22:05

I inherited it. but it's my

1:22:07

attempt to escape from pain that that I endured

1:22:10

when I was too small to do

1:22:12

anything about it. Mhmm. And

1:22:14

the more I learned about that

1:22:16

pain, the less

1:22:18

I'll reflect those imprints on myself

1:22:20

and on the people around me.

1:22:22

How about that? That's actually beautiful. How about

1:22:24

that? Yeah.

1:22:26

III

1:22:28

have, you know, I'm of

1:22:30

of two minds on on one

1:22:32

aspect of it, which is I

1:22:35

think it's really important and beautiful and

1:22:37

powerful for people to get

1:22:39

up and and vulnerability and

1:22:41

honestly to the best of

1:22:44

their ability share their story. Right?

1:22:46

And I get a lot of nourishment out of hearing that and I get a lot of nourishment out of sharing it,

1:22:48

but I can't help

1:22:51

but also think by continuing

1:22:54

to do that year after year

1:22:56

after year after year is

1:22:59

that not cementing something

1:23:02

that that need not be cemented in

1:23:04

a sense that, like, I'm I'm overidentifying

1:23:06

with this thing that happened and saying,

1:23:09

this is the most important thing,

1:23:11

and I can't forget this. and I

1:23:13

need to understand that this is who I

1:23:15

am, like crafting an identity around that that perhaps is at odds

1:23:19

with the transcendent state that I seek? Well,

1:23:21

first of all, I didn't say

1:23:23

you had to keep

1:23:25

doing it for you after you

1:23:27

here. I just have to incorporate it somewhere in the process. Yeah.

1:23:29

Number one. Number two. Let me ask you a

1:23:31

question if I may turn it

1:23:33

over. Mhmm. I've

1:23:34

been waiting for you to turn it around. Okay.

1:23:36

You said in the very

1:23:38

beginning. You've been at a tall

1:23:40

stepper for twenty years now. Is that

1:23:42

the case? Yeah. Over over twenty years since ninety eight. Okay.

1:23:44

Great. Twenty

1:23:45

four years. That's good.

1:23:47

relapse.

1:23:47

Yeah. Okay. Okay.

1:23:50

That's good. So all those years, you've been pursuing a path.

1:23:53

That's good. Right. So let you

1:23:55

for it. And you said that my

1:23:57

work made a huge difference to you. Mhmm.

1:23:59

In the

1:23:59

beginning, I heard you

1:24:01

say that. What difference did my

1:24:03

work make do? The

1:24:05

difference that it

1:24:08

it it allowed me to think

1:24:10

about and confront and begin to deconstruct

1:24:13

deconstruct the

1:24:15

childhood from a peace -- And how did that help in a compassionate way? -- and how did that

1:24:17

help? has allowed well, how how it's

1:24:19

helped me is it's given me peace

1:24:21

and solace. Like, I've been able

1:24:23

to make peace. Okay.

1:24:26

With my upbringing, and that in turn has dramatically impacted my relationship with my parents

1:24:28

in a very healing way.

1:24:30

In hub of his children,

1:24:32

a healing my and hub of his children

1:24:34

And

1:24:34

yes. And then I wanted to

1:24:37

ask you about parenting because that in

1:24:39

turn has been very informative in in

1:24:41

thinking about how I how I

1:24:43

parent my and trying not to make

1:24:45

the mistakes that could unduly or

1:24:48

unnecessarily. Okay. So great. Here's my

1:24:50

question here's my question to you

1:24:52

and then was the

1:24:54

problem. What do you mean? Well, did it make you stuck

1:24:56

in some victim role

1:24:59

dealing with that trauma? now.

1:25:01

So it doesn't need to. That's the whole point. Yeah. It it actually what I

1:25:03

hear you saying is that you did the twelve steps that were wonderful for

1:25:05

you, that continue to be wonderful

1:25:08

for you. but

1:25:11

there's trauma awareness that in the dimension. Yeah. And I'm not

1:25:13

I'm not resisting that. I told you, I think that

1:25:15

that would You don't wanna I

1:25:17

know you're not resisting, but you're asking me. question if I

1:25:19

understand you was asking me, will it make people

1:25:21

stuck in the victim role? I'm saying

1:25:23

no. Right. I think I

1:25:25

was asking more about the self identification piece,

1:25:27

like in the construct of twelve step

1:25:29

where, you know, the meetings have a

1:25:32

very particular kind

1:25:34

of structure to them. Right? And

1:25:36

it it's it's that one thing that

1:25:38

you do. And doing that year after year

1:25:40

after year after year, does that

1:25:42

unduly craft kind of a solidified

1:25:44

identity around an aspect

1:25:46

of your life that

1:25:49

remains kind of an

1:25:51

Oh, I see. You know what I mean? So it's just about pushing

1:25:53

back on you and trying to better

1:25:55

understand the therapeutic dynamic of

1:25:57

of of of of of of of of of

1:25:59

twelve stuff. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And I understand. Look, I think that's

1:26:01

for people in the tour stuff to

1:26:03

answer it, but it's a

1:26:05

good question to raise. is is how we're doing

1:26:08

things helping to at the

1:26:10

same time, is it helping us

1:26:12

gain agency over

1:26:15

our addictive patterns? is it also entrenching us in that

1:26:17

kind of self identity? Yeah. That's it it it it's not for

1:26:19

me to tell you that -- Yeah. -- because

1:26:22

I've not been in the movement and I'm,

1:26:24

you know, but

1:26:26

I think it's a really good question to raise

1:26:28

within that. So that's another question to raise within the twelve

1:26:30

stop movement. In other words, it's a movement like any other

1:26:34

it can be dynamic. It can

1:26:36

both honor its founding principles

1:26:38

and at the same time

1:26:40

evolve, you know. And I think

1:26:42

term awareness in this question

1:26:44

of self identification would be good

1:26:46

questions to raise within the torso moment.

1:26:48

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. yeah, it's I

1:26:51

think it's tricky. I mean, when

1:26:53

I mentioned a few moments ago

1:26:55

that I'd relapsed at at over

1:26:56

ten years in, I had a very brief relapse,

1:26:58

and I was back in the meetings right away. Yeah. But it was

1:27:00

quite the wake up call. And I can tell

1:27:03

you that when I picked up, it's,

1:27:06

you know, that adage of, like, your your addiction

1:27:08

is doing push ups in the dark just

1:27:10

waiting for that moment. It was very

1:27:13

much the case -- Mhmm. --

1:27:15

and it was frightening because all the work

1:27:17

that I'd done and the thousands of meetings

1:27:19

and treatment and the like, it was shocking how I

1:27:21

could just forget that

1:27:23

in a moment. and

1:27:26

be immediately back right where I

1:27:28

was when I stopped. Think of you as well.

1:27:31

In that sense of, like, like,

1:27:33

in recovery versus recovered,

1:27:35

clearly not I had come a long

1:27:37

way, but it was also a kind of an ego check and a dose

1:27:39

of humility to remind

1:27:42

me that although I

1:27:44

had I

1:27:47

have grown in many ways that

1:27:49

there was still so much growth there that I

1:27:51

was in denial over, you know,

1:27:53

confronting and dealing with. Look, so

1:27:55

Yeah. I get it. And it's like people say

1:27:58

to me, thank you for

1:28:00

writing your books.

1:28:02

They say it my life.

1:28:04

And some years ago, my answer would have

1:28:06

been gee, that's good. Maybe I should read them myself, you know, so that, yeah,

1:28:09

we stumble and we

1:28:11

fall and we don't live

1:28:13

up to our own best intuitions and understandings. But

1:28:15

I would dispute with you. You said you

1:28:17

were back when you started?

1:28:19

No, you weren't. You

1:28:22

were

1:28:22

not back when you started. You stumbled. But back

1:28:25

when you started, they

1:28:26

were taking you much longer to stand

1:28:29

up again. Fair enough. And this time, it didn't. So

1:28:31

it's not like all that work you did, all of a sudden just disappeared, and you had to start

1:28:33

from the beginning. You did not have to

1:28:35

start from the beginning. use

1:28:39

it to stand up again. Mhmm. So even

1:28:41

at relapse, I know you

1:28:43

don't have it, showed

1:28:46

how much transformation is possible. And it

1:28:48

did not in any way invalidate the

1:28:50

fact that you're still on the

1:28:53

path to recover

1:28:55

it. Yeah.

1:28:56

Yeah. It

1:28:57

was definitely upsetting when it happened. Well, of course,

1:28:59

it was upsetting. Yeah. Yeah. Believe

1:29:02

me, I've been there.

1:29:04

Yeah. I

1:29:07

think it would be helpful to share a little

1:29:09

bit, you know, back to the parenting thing

1:29:11

for, you know, people who

1:29:13

have young children, who are trying to

1:29:15

consciously, you know, guide their kids and

1:29:18

sidestep some of these pitfalls that

1:29:20

are unduly causing kids problems that,

1:29:22

you know, so I think well when

1:29:24

everybody says, oh, you should let that

1:29:26

kid cry. It's because that's what

1:29:30

doctors and professionals and experts are telling us I used

1:29:32

to mention. Right. So so what

1:29:34

are some, you know, touchdowns that

1:29:37

you could share with

1:29:39

people about that? Well, So

1:29:41

there is

1:29:42

a planting instinct that we share with other mammals, even birds.

1:29:44

Instincts

1:29:47

too. But instance, have

1:29:51

to be evoked by the environment. So the

1:29:53

first thing to realize is that

1:29:55

our environment doesn't evolve our

1:29:57

permanent instance if any

1:29:59

person to sleep. Like if you if

1:30:01

you take, for example, the case of children not

1:30:03

being picked up when they're crying, what

1:30:05

do the parents actually feel when they're

1:30:08

doing that? distress.

1:30:10

Their heart is breaking. But to

1:30:13

fit in with the culture and

1:30:15

to go along with the so

1:30:17

called experts, and maybe

1:30:18

for their own convenience, they ignore more we

1:30:22

ignore our parenting instincts,

1:30:26

the more they shut down.

1:30:28

So the first point is, for

1:30:30

God's sake, listen to your parenting instincts.

1:30:32

Don't listen

1:30:33

to the experts. They don't know what

1:30:35

the heck they're talking about. Listen to

1:30:37

your imperatives first. Number

1:30:39

two, human beings and

1:30:41

mammals actually are evolved in a way

1:30:43

that the most important dynamic in

1:30:45

our lives is actually

1:30:47

love and connection. and

1:30:51

love and connection is the the

1:30:54

very ocean

1:30:57

image human

1:31:00

life evolve. That's much more important than

1:31:02

which parent technique he used or or what.

1:31:07

Mhmm. Now this society breaks that connection very early because

1:31:09

in the United States,

1:31:12

twenty five percent

1:31:14

of women go back to workers in two weeks are giving birth.

1:31:17

That is traumatic to

1:31:19

the child. If you

1:31:21

look at how

1:31:23

human beings evolved, Children were with their

1:31:25

parents all the time. They were held all the time, physically held all the

1:31:27

time. They were held all the time not

1:31:31

hit. And the

1:31:31

average age of weaning was

1:31:34

between three and five

1:31:36

years.

1:31:37

So that now I'm

1:31:39

not saying we can go back to being hunter gatherers. But I

1:31:42

am saying

1:31:42

that recognize that

1:31:45

our basic needs

1:31:48

have been in this society

1:31:50

really denied. So some people can't help going back to work.

1:31:52

That's their economic situation. That's part

1:31:54

of the toxicity of our culture.

1:31:58

but

1:31:58

as much as

1:31:59

possible, at least let's see

1:32:02

what those children are losing

1:32:04

and give them as much

1:32:06

as love and and connection as

1:32:08

possible. Don't make

1:32:09

it even worse by planting

1:32:11

practices that undermine the relationship.

1:32:14

In this society,

1:32:16

children get far too hooked on their peers,

1:32:18

far too early. I don't know if you read my book. Hold on to your

1:32:20

kids.

1:32:20

No. I didn't read that one.

1:32:23

Well, yeah. If, you know, your

1:32:26

youngest one is fourteen, so might be

1:32:28

too late. Maybe maybe I don't

1:32:30

know, you know, but but our

1:32:34

children by default end up developing important relationship

1:32:36

with one another at the expenses relationship with

1:32:38

the parents. That's why they spend all the

1:32:41

time on Facebook trying to connect with each

1:32:43

other. because they're looking for contact and connection that they should

1:32:45

have got from the adults, but

1:32:47

they're not.

1:32:48

now And so now

1:32:49

they turn to each other, and each other is

1:32:51

a very inadequate replacement for wise

1:32:54

nurturing adult contact. Mhmm.

1:32:56

So beware of we

1:32:58

just need to be aware of

1:33:01

all that's lost in this culture and do as much as we can

1:33:03

to restore it within the limitations of our existence. Yeah.

1:33:08

beautifully put. And furthermore, so much

1:33:10

of the printing advice to kids is about

1:33:12

how do we get

1:33:14

this behavior or that behavior.

1:33:18

So in the book,