American Thought Leaders - The Secret to Addiction Recovery: Former Addict-Turned-Entrepreneur Joe Polish

Episode Date: March 11, 2024

“I was drinking alcohol, I was smoking cigarettes, I was snorting cocaine, I was snorting crystal meth, and I was freebasing—all in the same day. And I was a complete wreck,” says Joe Polish.A former addict turned successful entrepreneur, Mr. Polish is the founder of Genius Recovery, a nonprofit that’s trying to change how society approaches addiction, and Genius Network, a network of high-achieving entrepreneurs.In this episode, we explore what’s broken in our society, what’s fueling the opioid crisis that is killing 100,000 Americans a year, and how to rebuild connection, community, and purpose.“Don’t ask the question ‘why the addiction?’” he says. Instead ask: why the pain?All addiction is a response to trauma, Mr. Polish says, and that’s where the focus of recovery should be.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

By the time I was 18 years old, I was smoking cigarettes, I was snorting cocaine, I was snorting crystal meth, and I was freebasing. All in the same day. A former addict turned successful entrepreneur, Joe Polish is the founder of Genius Recovery and Genius Network, a network of high-achieving entrepreneurs. What we really do our best to cultivate is to make sure that when you want something and you show up, that your give is equal to or greater than your want. In this episode we explore what's broken in our society, what's fueling the opioid crisis that is killing a hundred thousand Americans a year, and how to rebuild connection, community, and purpose. Don't ask the question why the addiction but why the pain. All addiction is a response to trauma, Joe says, and that's where the focus of recovery should be.

I believe life gives to the giver and takes from the taker. This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jan Jekielek. Joe Polish, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. Yeah, it's great to be here, Jan, really. Thank you. You, of course, run something called Genius Network, you know very guys ambitiously named and I was honestly a little bit suspicious because I've seen a lot of entrepreneurship groups you know and they all purport to be all benevolent and everything and then I think I would check them out a little bit and then

seem as benevolent as as it was sold, okay? But you did invite me to come for a day to Genius Network, and it was honestly very surprising because, you know, basically 100% of the people that I talked to, if they did, you know, sort of if they wanted to have some sort of further interaction, they came offering something to me. Yeah. And it was very stark. Not a single person asked me for anything yeah rare yes so tell me about this this network that you've created well so this is many

years in the making I mean I started my I was I had a carpet cleaning business back in 1990 and for two years I lived off credit cards and I was broke and I also prior to that and we can get into it I was a drug addict I mean I was struggling with addiction so my entrepreneurial endeavors were very difficult I got into a business that you know nobody wants to buy and I had to figure out how to successfully connect with people and how to sell something nobody wants to buy so fast forward to today you know years later, over 30 years I've been in business and I have a connection network. And so what I was starving for as a kid, as growing up, was connection. And when it comes to business, it's really about bonding.

It's really about connecting, but connecting with who? Who are you aligned with? And so the Genius Network is really a connection network of high level entrepreneurs that want to meet each other and want to share we've cultivated a group of givers i mean my goal and objective is to have the most non-narcissistic group of achievement focused high-level entrepreneurs that are givers well that and that's very interesting because it did strike me like you have to everybody that's there is obviously like very type a highly motivated already doing you know good stuff but somehow you know you puts this idea of giving of themselves in the fur in the first position which is definitely counterintuitive to a lot of

people and I suppose so so how does you know I'm sure you get a ton of people who are looking to gain the system that come in oh all the time yeah we have to oftentimes kick people out we'll have conversations with people I mean these are everyone's got something to sell everybody wants something that's one thing I realize I mean I want something you want something we all want something humans want something there's nothing wrong with wanting something however what we really do our best to cultivate, and I think we've done a really good job, and it's taken a lot of work, is to make sure

that when you want something and you show up, that your give is equal to or greater than your want. Because the people that we like in life that are our friends, if you think about all the personal relationships that you have, anyone that's watching this, think about the people that you like the most when they call you like the most when they call you on the phone or they text you or however however they communicate with you and you get this feeling of whoo you know i'm so happy that i'm getting a you know communicated to by this person versus a ah you know the whole feeling is because they usually are takers they they're not showing up with a with a give they're up with a take. And so what we do

in Genius Network is we really emphasize that there's nothing wrong with pursuing opportunities. You're all people that are here to reach your opportunities, deal with your challenges, deal with your problems, you know, get better as an entrepreneur, build, you know, bigger businesses. There's nothing wrong with that. You all have an opportunity, but there's a difference between pursuing an opportunity versus being an opportunist. And so that whole energy of like, oh, someone's trying to take something from you,

I hate that. And marketing is important, selling is important. Think of selling as influence and think of marketing as storytelling. So how do you tell a better story? How do you do it in a way to where you're connecting with people? Because I make the distinction there's connectors and then there's connectors, people that connect by conning people.

And they're very manipulative, and that doesn't feel good. It's fascinating. And, you know, like I'll mention, you know, people pay a lot to participate in having to give. Yes. But I guess it's for the benefit of being among these like-minded people. It's a surprising model, I suppose. Well, yeah, and it's interesting for some people because certainly if I gave Genius Network away for free, and here's the secret, I love what I do. I would still do Genius Network even if I didn't charge for it.

Because what is a Genius Network? It's a group of people that have skills and capabilities in a particular area that they share with each other. Everyone can have a Genius Network. And in a lot of ways, that's just what I call it. I just happen to have a business and a group called Genius Network. And it's $35,000 a year now for the lower level group, and it's $100,000 a year now for the lower level group and it's $100,000 a year for the higher level group. It's like I think for most people right I mean for me it's just like wow that's a sizable investment. I'll explain it though because I can also tell people you know the formula for how much you should charge for something I always use this as a bit of a trick people like how much you charge for something because

again I used to be a carpet cleaner how many she charged for carpet cleaning how much what is price what does that even mean and so the formula for how much you charge for something is based on your ability to sell it that's the formula you know when someone buys a $200 Timex watch or I don't even know if Timex watches maybe they're 50 bucks I have no idea or an Apple watch or they buy a Rolex for 10 grand, are they buying a watch or are they buying jewelry? If you're buying a purse or a handbag at Louis Vuitton versus, what do you actually buy? Are you buying status? So there's all kinds of things with price. Now, as it relates to groups and what people invest in, most people that come to Genius Network,

they have to be at a high enough level. I mean, from just revenue standpoint, they've got to make at least $1 million a year in their business even to come to my group. People that are not, I have books, I have courses, I give most of the stuff away for free. I have podcasts I've done for years, videos online. So I have this whole thing where I have high-level, higher-priced services, products, groups, and then I give a lot of stuff away for free just to expose people to it. But here's the key. Most people that come to the group, they're not paying for who's in the room. They're paying for who's not in the room.

And because we don't have that annoying factor of people that are trying to constantly sell them something, there's a safety. There's a sense of they can kind of relax because they're not going to get hit up. Because we have some very high level people in the group and they can't go to some events without constantly getting mobbed. And so that's what Genius Network provides is a space where you can come and deal with your not only business issues but their life issues. Because I tend to think about sell people what they want, give them what they

need. Now the ego part of us, the part that wants to pursue financial success, wants more money, best-selling books, meet high-level people, status. But what they often need is better sleep, get rid of all of what i call half relationships hard annoying lame and frustrating relationships and replace them with people that are easy lucrative and fun replace activities with elf versus half easy lucrative fun versus hard annoying lame and frustrating yeah i remember learning about your these acronyms at the at the event and i mean to to its credit you know i i was there, you know, I didn't know most, actually, it was actually very interesting. I met a number of people that are fans of the show,

which was fantastic to see, right? But a lot of people I didn't know. And I think at least three people that I can think of offered something that, you know, while it hasn't manifested yet, is kind of on the road to being something, I think, quite constructive for Epoch Times, for myself. So, no, it was, and frankly, it changed my mind that something like this could even exist. Yes. Well, that's what I hear all the time. People are like, I've never been into a group like this. I'm usually going somewhere and everyone's just trying to sell something. And so if we can remove that sort of pressure or that icky feeling, you can create an environment where even people that I would say behave in a certain way,

if they come into a particular environment, they're going to behave differently. And why I know this so well is I've sat in hundreds of 12-step meetings for my own recovery. And you can see people go into those types of environments and they are a different person than when they're not in there. And I see them get better. You can create an environment that gets people to become more aware, to become better. And that's what we do our very best to do in Genius Network. And I encourage other people to do it. And I think we help people become better givers.

Hard to do with sociopaths, hard to do with psychopaths, hard to do with really traumatized narcissists. So I look at the people I associate with, the groups that I do. Does it expand me or does it contract me? I don't want to contract people. I want to expand people. And that's why you have to, if you're running a group and you care about everyone having as

powerful and as useful of an experience, you have to be useful for yourself. You have to put useful people in the room. And I believe life gives to the giver and takes from the taker. I believe that as well. And so you've just touched on two things I want to really kind of develop in our talk today, you know, in our chat. One of them is just, you know, going back to the beginnings. You know, you experienced a lot of childhood trauma. You've, you know, dealt with it in initially, you know, not so good ways. I want to kind of just get you to give us your story. But the other part is you've kind of turned that into another piece of genius is this recovery network.

And this, I think, pretty unique approach you have to dealing with addiction and these various vices that people get caught up in. But let's start with your story. I know you've told it probably a thousand times or you know, or more than that, but it's a good one. Yeah, and what I'll say, Jan, is when I tell my story, too, I had a lot of crazy stuff happen. I didn't have a happy childhood. It was pretty miserable, and I was scared, and I was afraid, and it was not fun. And I also tell myself, don't get caught up in woundology, because we live in this world where people often use their stories and their pain, and they'll use it to gain empathy or sympathy, and they use it to manipulate people. And I always caution people, share your story,

but don't become your story. I mean, maybe everyone is their story at a certain point, but my goal is to just increase my level of awareness and consciousness and never use bad things that have happened to me as a way to just get people to be like, oh, poor Joe, you know, he went through some difficult stuff. Because everyone watching this, everyone has had pain and challenges and angst and exposure and probably betrayals and abandonment. And oftentimes it's mental, physical, sexual, you know, there's abuse. So I just want to say that in the very beginning. So my story,

some of the key points that were, as my friend, Dr. Don Wood, he's one of my Genius Network members, he has this great line. If you understood the atmospheric conditions of somebody's life, it would make sense why they do what it is they do. And I think about that like everyone. Think of all the people in the world, I won't name names right now, that are doing pretty bad stuff, that are lying, that are in high positions of power. If you went and looked at the, you know, if you went to the atmospheric conditions of their life, it would, oh, that's what influenced this person. That's what's caused them to become who they become. And I believe as an adult, we can not only reframe our atmospheric conditions, we can

change them. And if we do that, then it changes the atmosphere of our families, our business, our community. So for me, like some of the main things, my mother was a former nun. My father met my mother in church. She had left the convent. The story I had been told is because she'd gotten ill. And so they met. They ended up getting married. My father had found the love of his life. They were very poor early on.

My father was a locksmith. And my mother died when I was four years old. So this was in 1972. And she was 41 years old from ovarian cancer and it just broke my father's heart. He was just devastated and he never recovered from it. So every year to two years, my entire childhood, we would move to different parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Texas and as soon as he would establish a little bit of a clientele in an emergency service business, being a locksmith,

he'd get calls in the middle of the night, couples kicking someone out, drunk drivers lock their keys in their car, I mean, all kinds of crazy stuff, robberies, break-ins. So it wasn't an easy business. But he would establish a certain level of clientele, then he would uproot us, we move to another town. And so I never had long-term friendships. And I was very scared. I smiled all the time. And everyone thought I was a happy kid, but I was a scared kid. I was frightened. I was small. I was skinny. I got bullied, picked on all the time. And then between the ages of eight to 10 years old, I started getting sexually molested by someone that was a male. And I was paid money not to say anything, so I was raped and molested as a kid. And that, any sense of worth that I had, which

was very little, was at that point, I just didn't even know how to identify with. I didn't have language for it. I was just a scared kid. And so what ended up happening is I became a teenager. I was in constant stages of anxiety all the time, you know, fearful. A lot of bad things happened in church. I would pray to a God that I never felt I was connected with. You know, it was just awful. And so I became a drug addict, and I started smoking pot early on in school.

And by the time I was 18 years old, I was freebasing cocaine. And there was one period of time when I was 18 years old, right out of high school, every single day for three and a half months, I was smoking coke. That's what freebasing is. And there was one day, crazy story there, I remember, where I had done LSD. I was drinking alcohol. I was smoking cigarettes. I was snorting cocaine. I was snorting crystal meth

and I was freebasing at the same, all in the same day. And I was a complete wreck. And so I, at that time I weighed about 120 pounds was my average weight. And I'm, you know, when you're five, 10 and you're male, anyway, it it's pretty skinny and there was one week where I barely ate anything I was just doing speed and doing coke the whole week and I weighed myself and I weighed 105 pounds and so I was my eyes were sunken and I looked terrible and people would tell me you know that would be at the house and all of us are doing drugs together because when you're in that type of life, all your relationships, you know, are circled around that sort of behavior. And so I was dealing drugs in order to get drugs. And that's kind of how I

lived. And people would tell me, man, you really need help. It would just piss me off. I mean, I was like, don't tell me what to do. And so everything was a reaction, everything was fear. And so what I ended up doing, there was this major blow up. A guy came, a roommate, and I was living with my brother and this other person. And there was constant drugs being done in the house. People coming over, we'd go to other places. And this guy came into, I was watching TV with a friend, and he bust into the, like literally, it was almost like the cops were breaking into the house,

and just screaming, and he had a can of lighter fluid, and just starts spraying it everywhere. He's like, I don't know if I can cuss on this show, but he's like, I'm gonna burn this effing place, you know, just screaming. And I had long hair at the time. And this guy's spraying lighter fluid all over the place. And some of it gets on my head.

And he pulls out a lighter. He's like, I'm going to torch this freaking place. And it's like a scene out of a crazy movie. And I put the lighter down, turned it off, and I talked him, you know, out of like tort, but he was ready to like just burn the whole place. And at that point, I was like, if I don't get out of here, I'm going to die. I mean, I'm going to kill myself with drugs. And so I packed up the belongings I had, moved to New Mexico where my father was living by himself in a trailer. And I went to New Mexico and I went to New Mexico State University

is, you know, the story I was telling back then, but I was really just escaping doing drugs. And I ended up getting sober. And while one of the, one of the jobs I got there was selling gym memberships. And it was so funny because I'm this skinny guy that really wasn't working out, but I ended up getting a job selling gym memberships and I started exercising and I became the top salesperson at this this gym in Las Cruces New Mexico and then I met a person there that was running a mental hospital and they offered me a job as a mental health tech and so when I when I started working there I one of the things they would have me do is drive patients to a meetings, Alcoholics

Anonymous, CA meetings, Cocaine Anonymous, and NA meetings, Narcotics Anonymous. And I would sit in those meetings as an employee of this mental health institute, and I started to listen. And I didn't realize how important that would become later to me in life, the community aspects of 12 Steps, because 12 Steps are great for community for community there's a lot of things they're not the end-all be-all a lot of people don't like 12 step groups but most people that don't like them they haven't done the steps and they haven't got a sponsor because most people that do those things even if they don't love it they get improvement and it's free and it's available to most people so that's where

that was my first exposure but yeah and I was in there for a couple years and then I came back to Arizona and been here ever since and so you've had but you always had this natural sort of sales kind of convincing personality I guess well here's the thing I have a friend named Dean Jackson who is we've been doing a podcast called I love marketing for years and he invented in 1997 what's called like the squeeze page where you put your name in email or your name and then your email. And then it opens up the next page, which has now become the modern day opt-in page that people use for lead generation. And he has a great line where he says, a compelling offer is 10 times more powerful than a convincing argument. So I always try to help business owners and entrepreneurs think of, don't try to convince somebody into anything.

Try to compel them. Because when you're trying to convince, then it feels like someone's trying to pressure you. You know, it goes back to what I said earlier. People love to be sold. They hate to be pressured. And so part of it, I wasn't very good at sales. I was actually terrible at it. I was scared to talk to people.

I didn't, you know, I didn't really know what to do. It wasn't until I started reading really good, old school marketing books that I started to understand writing sales copy, creating compelling offers, using headlines, using emotional language, and setting things up to attract people. Because everything that I say, you say, anyone says is either going to attract someone or repel them. I was just thinking that selling gym memberships would kind of be like my worst nightmare.

Yeah. But somehow you succeeded. Well, let me, let me talk about that as it relates to, to, to, I got to mention this too. I hardly ever talk about this. If you look, if you look up the old manuscript of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, Bill W. and Dr. Bob, famous, this is like the Bible of addiction recovery in the 12-step community. The original manuscript says sell all throughout. Bill W. was a stockbroker. And he wrote the big book, and they had him change it because they thought the term sell would make people think

we're trying to convince you to do something. It's fascinating. So that book was written by a salesperson. And so in a lot of ways, we're all selling in our heads. You know, if you've ever gone to a movie or you've gone to a restaurant and you read a book and, you know, there's this funny video. If anyone goes online and types in, is selling evil? I think that alone will pull it up or is selling evil? Joe Polish, my name, like nail polish. There's a three minute and 52 second clip of a video that was B-roll for a documentary I was being filmed for. And this footage never

showed up in the documentary. But one of the guys that works for me named JR thought, wow, that's a really good riff. And I talk about, you know, is selling evil. Well, it depends. You know, there's Hitler was effective at selling. He was effective at convincing people, but what he did was not helpful. So I have this definition that I love from my friend, Dan Sullivan, who you've met before. He's a founder of a company called Strategic Coach. And I asked him years ago, what's your, you know, definition of selling? And he said, selling is getting someone intellectually engaged in a future result that's good for them and getting them to emotionally commit to take action to achieve that result and I memorized that line because I was like

okay getting people intellectually engaged in a future result that's good for them and getting them to emotionally commit to take action to achieve that result and I'll ask people what do you think is the most important words in that sentence? And people say, engage or commit. And I'm like, well, if you're talking about ethics, it's good for them. Right. Because you can get people intellectually engaged in a future result that's not good for them, that kills people. And that's the propaganda and so many things you cover to expose all these people that are bad actors, these people that are... Except, you know, I have to jump in here because what I've kind of come to the conclusion of is

that unfortunately a lot of the people, there's this famous C.S. Lewis quote, right? I don't remember the exact, but to paraphrase, you know, the people that torment us for our own good are the worst. It's a little, it's better than, it's better told than that. But there's a lot of people out there that seem to be in positions of authority and power that seem to truly believe they know better. Oh yeah. What's good for us and are very happy to insist on affecting that on the population. Absolutely. Right. So that, that, they'll say, no, this is for your own good, Joe. Yeah. Yeah. Right? Yes, and that's complicated.

It's because it's like, no, you're right. But I love that definition, by the way, but I can't help but think about those people who really believe they have not just the good idea, but the right to impose it on you. Totally. And so here's how I try to come to grips with that for myself, because I believe almost everyone thinks they're right. People constantly think they're right, even when they're dead wrong, including there's many times in my life in the past and probably in the future,

well, I will be convinced that I'm right. And what being in recovery has really helped me with over the years is helping me at least when I'm thinking from my higher self, that to have some awareness that I could be completely full of crap. I could be telling, I could think. So you know that line, Stephen Covey has said it, I've heard other people say it, is people judge themselves by their intentions, They judge others by their actions. And I was in a room with a friend of mine, and there's a small group of people, and he said, how many of you in this room have ever been screwed by other people?

So a good portion of the people raised their hand. He's like, okay, how many of you have ever screwed somebody else? A couple people raised their hand. He's like, isn't that interesting? So most of you think someone screwed you, but you don't see how you screwed other people. He goes, and the reason is, is because we judge ourselves by our intentions, we judge others by their actions. So if you, look, Anthony Fauci, okay.

So he probably thinks in his mind what he's doing is the right thing. I can name a bunch of who I consider tyrants and people that clearly I think are not doing humanity any good, and in many cases people that I consider mass murders. And in their minds, they think they're right. They have a justification for it. And so one person's freedom fighters, another person's terrorists, right? That's that line. And it's difficult.

It's complex because we have to look at what is the byproduct of our actions. Are our actions helping ourselves? Are they helping other people? Are they hurting them? Where do you think, I mean, unlearning is actually more important than learning. Well, and the other thing that's very, I guess, important to also your group, if if I think about it right is that we're when I this is probably an obvious phenomenon okay but if we're let's say financially motivated to hold a belief it's a lot harder for us to shake that belief even if it's false absolutely and I And I like I'm I this is something I realized about myself I'm unusually not financially motivated for

if you take the across the average of people some people are incredibly other people here I'm just this has never been something that's been a focus for me so it just didn't really occur to me right much, but I see that prominently. I see people taking strong—an example might be TikTok. There's this app that's in effect controlled by the Chinese regime, which seeks to destroy free society, not to put it too glibly. But a lot of Western, very kind of prominent Western people, I think, that are kind of on its side believe that they should be because they'll imagine maybe it's a free speech issue primarily or something. But then you look a little closer, you can see, well,

but I can also see why you might want to hold that position, even if I believe you, that this isn't purely self-interest. You see what I mean? Oh, totally. Yeah. So this factors in, too. I mean, very well-meaning, right? I'm not even talking about the person who imagines themselves a tyrant or even is one, really, in their disposition. Well, yeah, it's complicated. I heard Jordan Peterson, oh, no, one of his talks where he was saying some questions can't be answered right away. Some take hours. Some take days.

Some take weeks. Some take lifetimes. And some of these, there's a lot of things that's really hard to soundbite. And you get to someone's motives. And you get to, you know, I look at my latest book. I've written five books. My latest book is called What's In It For Them? And the question, what's in it for them, is if someone never reads the book, just the line.

That's sort of how I have lived my life. I think no one really cares about me. They care about themselves. Now, certainly people do care about me. and thank God there are humans that care about others. I would look at you, you know. For as long as I've known you, you do things that, because you actually care about other humans.

You know, talking about being of service to other people. There's something that comes, like one of the things I learned early on is if I feel my life sucks, because I have been suicidal. I've had guns in my mouth. I've done things that by all, I'm lucky I did not die. I put myself in extremely dangerous situations. I have done some really stupid stuff. And, you know, when I feel my life sucks, I've been in the middle of what many people would consider paradise and could not see the beauty in it, could not feel the joy, have been so depleted. And when I put myself in a situation where go and help someone who's doing as bad or worse than me, it's bizarre how good it is at lifting you out of a difficult situation. May not solve it, but it certainly makes it better. So I believe that we really become our better versions of ourselves when we become of service.

And if people are constantly taking, taking, taking, taking, one of the things that's hard for people is they'll see people in very high levels of position in pharmacy, government, central banking, tech, that are rich, that are wealthy, that are making a lot of money, that have enormous power and enormous status, enormous respect, and they're doing awful stuff. And it's hard for people that are givers to be like, life is so not fair. Like, how is this happening? Do I have to become like that? And that is something I think we all grapple with. The big question, I mean, this isn't an easy question, right? Because how do you help someone see something that they, I mean, I can think of probably 15 things that even two years ago I was pretty sure about were one way and today you know

right like for example you know what it what is what is a good route for cancer treatment this is something that I've been thinking about a lot with you know dr. Paul Merrick's recent monograph on cancer and and so forth I mean I just I couldn't grasp that there's a whole plethora of you know deeply researched work that you could apply yourself without you know even you know a doctor's help to help prevent and treat cancers. It's astonishing. Right. Right. I just couldn't even imagine it a couple of years ago until I you know I was forced to face it, I guess, by seeing the evidence in front of me. But to facilitate that for people that might not necessarily want to is a tough thing, right?

And you can't be the course of tyrant, right? You don't want to. Right, yeah. It's like, do you force people to pay attention? Doing things right versus doing the right things are two completely different stuff. want to. Right. Yeah. It's like, do you force people to pay attention? Do you, you know, doing things right versus doing the right things are two completely different stuff. So I often think of there, you can, there's a right way to screw people over, but is it the right thing to screw people over? Right. And so there's, there is a book, I'm not going to say the quote, right, but my brain remembers dirty jokes and quotes. It really weird there's it was called the book of survival and is written in the 90s and the quote goes along the lines of in order to get to an impossible

situation you don't need the reflexes of a Grand Prix driver the muscles of a Hercules the mind of an Einstein you simply need to know what to do and let's take cancer as an example there's another quote years ago is like they'll never find a cure for cancer because four times as many people make a living off of it than die from it every year. And as you know, if you just follow the money, that explains so much. That's that issue, right? Because you can be blinded to very good solutions if you're financially motivated. It goes back to that same issue. Right, right.

Or you could just, you know, want the money. There's certainly a lot of that, yeah. Yeah, and is that bad? Is pursuing money bad or is the way you go about pursuing money bad? Is it greed? Is it just I'm willing to do whatever it takes, including hurting other people. And, you know, what is someone's motivation? I mean, the ego, the, you know, the reactive, the pain body, to use an Eckhart Tolle term, is quite prevalent. I mean, I can view the whole pandemic through the lens of addiction, a lot of power addiction. You know, because what is addiction? You know, addiction is doing something you want to do or that you don't want to do that you cannot stop and control that has negative consequences.

So I think the world is being run by people that are highly addicted, you know, at very high levels. I mean, even Nazi Germany invented crystal meth. I mean, the majority of the Nazi army was being given, I believe they called it perpeteen, including Hitler, and it's documented. There's movies about this, High Hitler's video someone can watch on YouTube, Hitler's Secret Drug Habits, the book Buzzed, Drugs in the Third Reich. And when you give crystal meth to people for long periods of time,

research has now shown that it removes empathy. So their ability to have concentration camps and to do awful things to people is because they zap their empathy. This is astonishing. I had not heard of any of this. This is, I'm definitely going to be doing some fact checks on that. No, no please. I'm just, I'm teasing. I believe you, right? Just, just wow. Everything I just said, watch those movies, read the book. They even made a movie about that. And this is documented, and no one tells that story.

You know, Hardcore History had an episode where I think the night before the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon was pretty much whacked out on opiates. Winston Churchill was constantly intoxicated. There's a lot of things in history of inebriation. And pre-pandemic, I think it was, and don't quote me exact on this, I think it was like 20% of American women were estimated to be on antidepressants pre-pandemic. So we are living in a inebriated world. Well, and just, and the other thing I wanted to add is I just actually had Dr. Michael Nels on the show the show and talking one of the things we discussed is how this what you would glibly called fear porn right the sort of constant

incessant pushing on pure actually has a profoundly negative impact on our cognition and specifically on the hippocampus which is very important to our you know decision-making our autobiographical memory, and so forth. Never mind, you know, all these different environmental agents that are neuropathogenic, including things like even the spike protein and so forth, right? So it's very, this is very interesting. I just, thinking about these methed out, you know, Germans, it's crazy. I bet you if you look at every,

Ukraine and Russia right now, I bet you the amount of amphetamines, because when they would give the Nazi, Germany army methamphetamines, they would fight more aggressively, they would sleep less, they would eat less. Feeding soldiers is a big deal. And if you can suppress that appetite and have them become more violent and more aggressive,

and you don't really care the consequences, you just want to, you know, conquer, seek and destroy, you know. But in the process, you basically destroy your population. Yes. Again, I mean, you know, definitely going to be looking into this further. I want to, you know, I don't want us to run out of time. I want to make sure that we talk about your, you know, how you understand addiction, actually, because it's not a typical way. You've come to this, I guess, through understanding the hard way.

Right. Right, so to speak. And you are actually, you know, you've developed a structure, this, you know, genius recovery network that's actually helping people yeah I hope so quite a number of people yeah right so so I tell me about that yeah so genius recovery I created it started back in 2015 I was doing a genius Network annual event and I decided to get up on stage I was nervous as hell because I was like, I am, this line

I heard a million times, you're as sick as your secrets. And I've heard that, but it's like any, you know, silent battles are the hardest battles to fight. And I had been in recovery for many years, but I was still, the drugs was easier than sexual addiction. Sex addiction, and so people are like, what's sex addiction? So I was paid money to not say anything when I was a kid, and it wired in my head that sex is shameful and dirty unless you pay for it. I didn't view, my father never remarried, I didn't see relationships or sexual as being an intimate act of love and oneness. I looked at it as as something you do to get off. I was introduced to sexuality in a very humiliating, degrading, filthy way. And so when I finally shared my story publicly, I was like, this is either going to ruin my career or, but screw it.

I'm sick of it. Like, I think this is important. For whatever reason, I felt it was important. So I started, this was the seed of what became GeniusRecovery.org, which is my, you know, 501c3 that we have now. And so I shared the story and i had men and women very successful ones come up to me you know i've sold my body a couple women have told me uh you know men i've you know i'm an addict i'm a porn addict i'm a you know i'm doing drugs all this sort of stuff and i was like wow you know talking about this publicly uh i i now realize

that which we think is most private is most public. You think you're the only one that's dealing with it. A lot of other people. So I created Genius Recovery with the goal of changing. So my goal is to change the global conversation about how people view and treat addicts with compassion instead of judgment and find the best forms of treatment that have efficacy and share it with the world. So currently in its current state, it's an educational platform. We don't have a treatment facility. We educate people. So videos, links to where to go get help and support.

We have a really cool recovery bot that we have been testing. We haven't made it primetime yet where people can obviously text and talk to it, and it's really helpful to guide and direct. And we are getting ready to start putting out physical recovery kits. So what I have learned by lots of interviews, lots of conversations, even talking about this. So I even appreciate you bringing this up. This just hopefully gets this message out to more people to don't look at yourself if you're struggling with addiction or a family member as a moral degenerate look at them as a person that's in pain I have a friend Gabor Mate who I've done a couple

interviews with and Gabor has this great line where he says don't ask the question why the addiction but why the pain so addiction is a response to pain it is a connection disorder you know the opposite of addiction is connection. So if you feel disconnected as a person, you're going to look for other ways to connect. One of my favorite lines from Bill W., the founder of AA, one of the founders, he said, as alcoholics we're trying to drink God out of a bottle. So even if you're an atheist, you understand what that means. We're trying to find meaning. We're trying to connect with source. So you're an atheist you understand what that means. We're trying to find meaning. We're trying to connect with source. So you're either trying to drink your way to God metaphorically, snort your way to God, gamble your way to God, game your way to God, porn your way to

God, you know, screw your way to God. I mean, eat your way if it's food addiction. So there's all these ways that we try to scratch the itch and they work. Addiction is a solution. I view addiction as a solution. It's a solution to pain. They work kind of. Yeah, that's the caveat. They work in the moment, but they have consequences. So if they, you know, it's like going back to doing something that you want to do or don't want to do that has negative consequences and you can't stop. So it's this compulsivity attached to it. So there's nothing wrong with wanting to be out of pain if you're depressed, if you're lonely, if you're sad, if you're anxious.

There's nothing wrong with wanting that to go away. But if the way you're scratching the itch is ruining your life, destroying your life, hurting other people, because in an active state, addicts lie, cheat, and steal. You cannot not do that. Because it's this compulsion that you can't never really satiate. It just keeps coming back, right? Exactly, yeah. There's an addictive cycle. A way to think about it is people often think it's the drugs or the porn

or the violence or the gambling or whatever the thing is. And that's how you act out. That's how you do the thing. But what really consumes the mind of addiction, the addict mind, and addiction is cultural in many ways, is it starts with preoccupation where you're thinking about it. You're thinking about the stuff, the thing that makes you feel good, that dopamine hit that high. Then there's ritualization where your life is built around the ritual. Then there's the compulsive act, the drinking, the drugging, the porn, the gambling. And then once you do that, you go into a state of despair. And when you're in despair, you feel shame and you feel guilt.

Guilt is I feel I regret what I did. I wish I didn't do that. Like I feel bad. Shame is I am bad. It's this identification that I am bad. And when you're in despair, in feeling shame, guilt, horrible, one of the best ways that the Attic mind addresses it is to start the whole damn cycle all over again. Start thinking about it, ritualization, and that's why they can't get out of that addiction loop unless you put yourself into a different environment. So what I've learned is that in order to get sober and stay sober, if you want to use the word sober, because there's a lot of dry drunks in the world. Dry drunks are people that they quit drinking but they haven't dealt with the underlying relationship issues which caused

them to drink in the first place. So the drinking is this one part of recovery. It's the dealing with the relationship with yourself and with others. So the first thing that people need is they need community. No one, like I said earlier, your sick is your secrets. Silent battles is the hardest battles to fight. So you need some form of community. 12 Steps has done the best job worldwide because it's free. It's only, you know, it's run by the voluntary contributions of its members so people can donate, and that's how it keeps going. And it's pretty accessible in most places.

And now if anyone has access online, if you can't get to a physical meeting, there's tons of that. And there's many non 12-step communities to for addiction recovery there is a lot of help out there most people just don't know it exists so the first thing is community the second it's biochemical it's serotonin it's dopamine my friend dr. Anna Lemke wrote an amazing book called dopamine nation if anyone wants to really understand the biochemical aspects of addiction that's a great book. You know, what you eat, what you put in your body, sunshine, water intake.

I mean, all these things affect you. The third is the underlying trauma work. That's where breathing, meditation, EMDR, the proper use, and I emphasize this, of plant medicines and psychedelics, very valuable if done, you know, to use the old Timothy Leary line in the 50s, set and setting, with the right mindset and the right setting. Somatic therapy, anything that gets you into a physical engage, you know, the issues are in the tissues. So exercise, doing things with your body yoga you know

trauma release exercise you know free you can learn how to do trauma release exercises you know the written book a couple books written it but you can find videos online David Bursell he's a seven-year-old man right now who invented this process just to help people cost nothing trauma release exercises and then the fourth is the environment based on the rat Park studies that were done by dr. Bruce Alexander and that was if you put a rat in a cage given the choice of regular water and drug water most rats will drink the consume the drugs over food over sex over sleep but if you put them into a more healthy environment that's enjoyable with other rats and

companionship, given the choice of regular water and drug water, they won't drink the drug water. Even if you give drugs to them, most of them will not drink the drug water unless those rats are traumatized. So I go back and forth. I believe a lot of addiction is a response to trauma. You know, I'm definitely from that school of thought. And I also know that there's a lot of people that have not been severely traumatized, but they've been exposed to,

you know, it's biochemical. A lot of people like opiates. You know, I recently interviewed Robert Kennedy Jr. You know, you were there actually. And he made the analogy that in America, every year, we had 50,000 soldiers die in Vietnam and we have two Vietnams every year that are happening in America. That's right. 190 people a day approximately, and it's rising, are dying from opiate addictions alone. It's the equivalent of a plane crash every single day.

And if there was a plane crash every single day in America, it would be on the news nonstop. And it's probably a combination of both, but also the fact that it's kind of, I would argue, being enabled again by the Chinese regime where all these precursors come from. Fentanyl. They say, sure, we'll work on stopping it, and nothing changes. That's how it's been. See, that conversation, in you even bringing that up is so important for people not to brush to the side. There are, this is by design. They want people and they is the key word here. Who are the they, right? You know, groups. It is insidious.

It is evil. It is awful. It's horrible. and there's lots of people in pain. So what I hope is that we can, for one, change the global conversation out of people. Because one of my lines that I do my best to emphasize is you cannot punish pain out of people. Throwing someone with addiction into prison or into jail or looking at them as a moral degenerate, even though you could be very pissed at them, I understand addicts are difficult. They're a pain in the butt. They lie, they cheat, they steal. And to bring love and compassion with someone who's stealing from you, lying to you, misleading you, the symptoms of addiction are they do bad stuff. Not always, but some of the most creative, loving, caring people, you know, addiction is just, it's a reverse way.

Let me say this, it's an intimacy disorder for sexual addiction. And my favorite definition of intimacy was given to me by an 80-year-old gay man who spends his life for free helping people that struggle with sexual addiction. And he said to me years ago, never met this guy in person, just over the phone, because a friend I had been sponsoring in a 12-step group had introduced me to this guy. I said, you've got to talk to him. And he said, intimacy is a mutual exploration of a shared safe place. Abuse is anything that takes away the safe place, and addictions are what we do to make ourselves feel good when we don't have a safe place.

So if you don't feel safe in the world, you're going to look for a way to scratch the itch. And we don't feel safe in the world most of the time if you're watching media or if you're living in any sort of environment. You know, war, tyranny, communism, where people are wanting to oppress you, you don't feel safe. And if you keep people in a state of using the term fear porn, it's actually a great term. I mean, you constantly hit people with fear porn, they become addicted to it. We're culturally addicted to war.

And therefore you manufacture addiction. Then you provide fentanyl and you provide all these opiates and you can kill populations, you can control them. It is another form of slavery. I think we will look back at this, hopefully, if we make it out. If we make it out. Right? Yeah.

We've got a big road. And that's why I think anyone that comes from this place of compassion and empathy, and they do their best to live their life that way and be of service to other people, and speak to it. I mean, you're doing very important work here. I'm not just saying that to edify you and be like, you know, Jan, you're doing good. You know, I'm not saying, like, this is important stuff. This is important conversation. Most people are scared to address topics and you will, you know, they try to cancel, they try to oppress, they try to stop these sort of messages. And those people are addicts. those people that are do they are true they get

their hit is controlling and hurting other people because hurt people hurt others and uh not always there are many hurt people that don't hurt other people there are there are people that are hurt that are the most caring kindest Compassion individuals and those are the ones that I admire people that have been through hell because people say man Joe you know you've you've done a lot of stuff and you're you're helping and I'm like I meet people every people that have been through hell, because people say, man, Joe, you know, you've done a lot of stuff, and you're helping. And I'm like, I meet people every day that have gone through stuff that are still loving, caring, compassionate people that I can't even imagine how they overcame some of the stuff they do. Awful stuff. You know, I meet men and women that were, you know, sold into sexual slavery, that were abused continuously, that just lived such pain

lives. And these angels come out of these individuals. They're not perfect. Most of them have a lot of scar tissue mentally and physically, but they just, you know, they have somehow just, they're still pure. Well, I was very lucky to have a person like this, you know, and I'll say as we finish up here, but I was very lucky to have my wife's father who passed a couple of years ago, but he survived Buchenwald and was able to move on. Of course, there was a lot of pain. It wasn't the only concentration camp. It wasn't the only hell. We actually made a film about it finding manny here on epoch tv i'll recommend to people to watch that film but he was able to move on and create you know great lives for a great many

people right through his you know generosity hard work and frankly entrepreneurship he was a genius entrepreneur yeah so anyway i guess we've come full circle here yeah it all ties together yeah yeah there are at you know a lot of the entrepreneurs in the world are struggling with addiction and so but you know what it boils down to connection when my life works I'm responding to life which is responding with ability that's what responsibility is when my life is not working I'm reacting so I created genius network as a connection network I created genius recovery as a way to help people with connection and to help again you know look at their own addictions and we wanted put as much useful

information out to the groups I want to be a hero to is I want to be a hero to the legitimate ethical awesome entrepreneurs and I want to be a hero to the legitimate, ethical, awesome entrepreneurs, and I want to be a hero to people that struggle with addiction because I have both of those things, and I think that's really important. I mean, for my skill set, it makes me feel good. It helps me do a lot of good work in the world, because it's about connection, and so that's my word. Well, Joe Polish, it's such a pleasure to have had you on. Thank you. So great to be here. Thank you.

Thank you all for joining Joe Polish and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Jan Jekielek.