Duncan Trussell Family Hour - Dr. Drew!

Episode Date: November 25, 2014

The world famous Dr. Drew joins the DTFH and we talk about psychedelics, addiction, anxiety, and flourishing.

You've been making better decisions for your busy family for years and now little by little you're making decisions for yourself. Like snacking a little better, going a little further, sleeping a little deeper. We're here to make that journey easier and even more rewarding with Acme's new Sincerely Health Platform featuring nutrition plans, prescription reminders and more. Sign up in the Acme Mobile app to earn up to $25 in grocery rewards. Visit AcmeMarkets.com slash help for more details. Hello my dear sweet friends, it is I, Duncan Tressel and you are listening to the Duncan

Tressel Family Hour Podcast. You know what I've been doing? I've been recording the intro for this podcast over and over and over again for the last several hours and the reason I keep re-recording it is because I just every single time no matter what my intention is, I find that I keep getting sucked into a rant about how awful Turkey is and see it's starting again. It's starting again. I want to, I've been listening to Michael Beckwith a lot who is this just an amazing

articulator of a kind of universal principle that we exist in an abundant universe where everything is here for us to grow and to learn and everything that we need is here and that it is our resistance to that fact. It is our subconscious habitual resistance to the idea that we are being embraced or loved or held up by a universe that has as its core love that is creating all the turbulence in our lives and that we have to become conscious of what kind of words that we're putting out into the universe because the words that we're putting out into the universe are the universe which we are creating itself.

Every time you say something awful, you are inadvertently affirming the idea that you exist in an unsafe, dangerous, sad, brutal, angry universe where at any second you can get destroyed by unforeseeable catastrophe and so you've got to be careful. That really gets to me when I listen to that stuff because I do think that there's some truth to it but simultaneously I recognize that I'm a comedian and that the way that I like to express myself is often by using words to illuminate certain foul, festering, dripping, dark holes that exist in the fabric of society and I'm not a feel-good comic. I want people to feel good, I really do.

I'm not a comic maybe. I don't know what I am. I'm a person. I hate labeling anyone as anything. It's a waste of goddamn time but I want the world to be a beautiful place so I do affirm that we exist in an abundant universe. I think we really do. I think it's an abundant universe that eats all of us eventually.

That's an inevitability no matter how positive you are in your outlook or how good you are in articulating that we are in this kind of juicy nexus of sense gratification that has as its focal point our physical body that is filled with so many nerves and neurochemicals that allow us to sort of float on this ocean of sound vibration and sensory input that if we just let go of fear we can experience in the present moment a kind of orgasmic bliss that again and again and again gets overshadowed by our own personal terror habituations but those moments where you're very still you can't experience that kind of expansive orgasmic non-being-ness that I think the Buddhists call nirvana.

I know that's true but even if you sit in a state of pure nirvanic bliss from this point into however many years you're going to live the meat body that you're existing in collapses and so they're suffering which is a kind of inescapable aspect of being on this rollercoaster ride that we're currently incarnated into with the big meaty bar called our human body which is sticking us to time that's just an inevitability so I think you're allowed to like save the way you feel as long as the intention behind it is not an intention of causing suffering or pain to other people so all that being said turkey sucks I hate turkey it's so bad it's the worst tasting meat out there it's and I'm I'm not a vegetarian though I the older I get the more

I think that I should be and obviously therefore I'm not a vegan but man I feel bad for those birds have you ever seen a wild turkey have you ever been out in the woods and been lucky enough to see one of these ridiculous alien things come wandering out of the shadows and start making it strange noise and peering at you with its multicolored rainbow head sure their brains are apparently the size of chickpeas and they say that they can drown by putting their heads up if it's raining because the water gets into their mouth and I guess they drown I think that's something a turkey farmer said but regardless maybe all living beings their ability to experience is not based on their neurology but is based on the fact that the universe is sentient and

there's a kind of wave of intelligence flowing through everything and any organic living being is an antenna that this consciousness temporarily is transmitted through which means that every single thing in its own way has a right to existence and the illusion that animals are kind of meaty robots that don't really feel is something that came from some site psychotic people like to cart who like to apparently stick their fingers into the pulsing hearts of dogs that they'd eviscerated but the truth is oh god oh god I should stop eating meat the truth is you know all beings that have brains and a nervous system probably suffer you know when and therefore okay all that being said I'm not still not a vegetarian but turkeys turkeys are an

exception because as far as I know there is not a day dedicated to eating any animal there's no fish day there's no national steak day there's no national chicken day there's no national I don't know what are the other meats there's no national eat a pig day but turkeys for whatever awful reason this is the time of I think it's because people recognize that no one's going to eat to eat them unless an entire centuries of brainwashing have to happen for people to make a turkey the focal point of their meal and it's just a a papery it's like a papery sponge for butter but more than that quite often what a turkey really is is a vehicle through which the turkey chef can extract a kind of pseudo gratitude from the people surrounding them as the turkey

is unveiled you know when the turkey chef pulls the goddamn turkey out of the oven as though they're bringing the glowing head of the baby Jesus out of the dilated vagina of the virgin Mary and everyone's supposed to ooh and awe like a hibernation pod just opened up on an alien spaceship and some reptilian messiah is finally emerging under the planet earth that thing it's like no it's not good I don't I didn't want you to spend all day making the turkey mom dad uncle friend I wanted to hang out with you have a couple of beers maybe watch tv play video games talk go for a walk I didn't want to watch you in the kitchen with your with your veins in your neck pulsating as though you're trying to hold open a door in an ancient temple before the whole thing collapses as the children

can run out and and I don't want you to feel like a firefighter as you're making the turkey I don't want you spend the day before as though you're some kind of firefighter in the midst of a horrible forest blaze I just wanted to enjoy thanksgiving with you so don't don't use the don't crucify yourself on a turkey for me please don't do that I don't want to have to stand at the foot of your turkey cross while you hang there weeping and bleeding muttering to yourself father forgive them they know not how delicious turkey really is and how hard I've worked to make this turkey it's a 12 pound bird don't crucify yourself on a turkey this thanksgiving don't allow yourself to get sucked in by a turkey martyr because they're out there man thanksgiving comes and the turkey martyrs

just come climbing out of the woodwork and the next thing you know you're sitting around the table after eating this mildly flavorable shit meat it could have been steak it could have been anything and then the turkey martyr after everybody finishes is inevitably going to make you say what you feel thankful for and you know what you do when it comes your turn look them right in the eye and say I'm thankful for this turkey it was the best thing I ever tasted in my entire life and thank you just lie just lie about it don't be the liberal arts student who talks about how the whole goddamn holiday is actually American shopping day number one and is a holiday that originates from the people who actually lived on this continent before we got here giving

nutrients to the invading army which eventually completely wiped them out don't be that guy don't be that guy don't be what I am right now yapping about how shitty turkey is don't do I can't stop it and I'm just going to put this up I don't mean to spread negativity in the universe but turkey sucks and and and and the people who use it to to inflict guilt on other people it's like a turkey's like a guilt ball that they just throw into your mouth uh and and the whole like I ate six plates of your turkey that's the other weird thing the gorging attitude of thanksgiving where people are just for whatever reason expected to just just fill their fat stomach there's distended stomachs on thanksgiving where you're just

and you're supposed to get drunk it's just this weird mix of chewed up crap meat and booze and your stomach's all distended and then you get in a fight well this thanksgiving based on the teachings of michael beckwith and some other illuminated beings who exist on this earth based on what they say which is that if you articulate uh if you articulate positivity in the universe then it will come having just uh sprayed out the wrench level thanksgiving gloom I would like to say that this thanksgiving uh it is my hope that the the the life intelligence of the universe the source from which all things uh originated the god had the present moment state the crest of the wave of creation of which every single one of us

is uh one tiny pixel the hand inside the puppet of society that great eternal consciousness the great spirit is the indians that were wiped out by the people who are celebrating their gift to them called the great spirit the life energy the beautiful truth the sweet ineffable ephemeral love field from which we all originate I I pray that that source comes flowing out of you in the presence of whatever thanksgiving not see you happen to be around even if you're around uh a a true thanksgiving tyrant who has the audacity to do a 17 minute prayer uh before the meal even if you end up around uh abusive drunk father mother sister uncle who tortured you for years and years it is my prayer that you recognize that this entire incarnation is a university through which

you are being taught to be uh a loving being where you're being taught to transform whatever circumstance arises into its most beautiful perfect form you are a filtration device that transforms any circumstance into its platonic ideal that you are in fact the alchemical beaker turning lead into gold and it is my hope that this thanksgiving instead of succumbing to the lifetime of neurosis or oppression or whatever you happen to go through because you got shot out of a vagina into a group of people who are terrified because they come from generations of horror it is my hope that in this moment you are fully present open loving not phony holy not pretending to be a good person but actually attentively listening with the intention of transforming

everything around you and do pure novelty that's the idea because we've got to believe that people can change and we've got to believe that we can change and we've got to believe that this thanksgiving instead of it being the usual rigamarole of having to get into a car and drive really far and being miserable and hoping to go home or whatever the thing is that you might be dreading that this thanksgiving it is my hope that that great spirit that illuminates all things inhabits your heart flows through your body and transforms your experience into the greatest thanksgiving that has ever happened to any human on planet earth it is my hope that you actually transform into a portal that the healing energy of the universe comes pouring through

and that you end up saying exactly the right thing and doing the exact right thing to facilitate the experience of familial love or the love between brothers and the love between sisters that all families have the potential to manifest i'm not recording this shit again turkey still fucking sucks i hate it we've got a great podcast today i'm so excited about this one and a big thank you to derrick waters for facilitating this dr drew as it turns out as a fan of drunk history and was at a live drunk history show i had a chance to talk with him we ended up emailing and he agreed to do my podcast which is a really sweet thing to do because he's a very very busy human being so i went to his amazing office at the sea in in building in

los angeles and we spent an hour talking about addiction and a great many other things he's a brilliant focused super sweet guy and i can't wait for you guys to hear this interview we're going to dive right into it but first some very quick business first of all a tremendous thank you to all of you have been buying shirts lately i don't know what's going on but you guys have been buying a ton of shirts thank you for every single person out there who's ordered a shirt or a sticker or a poster from the dunkin trustle dot com website go check it out man we've got everything in stock if you're somebody who's visited the shop before and everything was sold out go visit it again we have got everything is there including the mystical ron rigi t shirts

which are guaranteed to to create a field of love energy around you that is so powerful that there is at least a three percent chance that it's going to make the turkey that you eat on this thanksgiving taste good and that's an very powerful just a three percent chance indicates that these shirts are incredibly powerful they are metaphysical if you look at the shirts by going to dunkin trustle dot com you will see that they are inscribed with the great many ancient symbols uh the the the hamza is there the enneagram is there uh these it's a ward it's a sigil it's designed not only to draw uh the positive synchronicities into your life but also to allow you to put out uh sweetness and love and hopefully it will attract to you the most

beautiful being that you've ever witnessed maybe some kind of wild super sexual woodsmen or woods woman who will come to you in a dream and spend the entire night riding you like a banshee through the uh fields of orgasm sounds like a sting song that's what it's designed to do it's designed to make you feel like you are the lead actor in a sting music video that's how you'll feel when you wear these shirts go to dunkin trustle dot com and check them out there's also posters and even though i don't know when you're listening to this uh you might be far down the uh time space continuum uh from where i am right now and if so we might we we will eventually have mugs there probably within the next couple of weeks so that you can imbue whatever liquid you happen to

be drinking with the super powerful dunkin trustle family hour logo which is the uh chaos flower which represents the uh idea that through chaos novelty and perfection and the amplification of evolution is occurring can occur and will occur so that's a fun thing to think about while you're drinking your coffee in the morning and you can get those mugs by going to dunkin trustle dot com we're also sponsored by amazon dot com now this brings me to something that i would have talked about in the beginning of the podcast if i hadn't gone into whatever that thing was that you just suffered through which is that uh sure you can listen to michael beckwith study buddhism take massive amounts of lsd go to peru and drink ayahuasca you can inject yourself with ibogaine or go or

or fly into heaven and dance with the angels but if you really want to change your life get a bidet order a bidet you can go to amazon dot com they have bidets they're just google search bidet you install it yourself you're gonna have to deal with the fact that your friends come over and and see that you have a bidet installed into your toilet and you if you have gross friends with smelly assholes they're gonna be like you look at you who are you oh it's mr duke dandy with a bidet but as soon as they turn that dial and feel that cold refreshing water spray into their asshole they will change their tune guaranteed i installed a bidet about a week ago uh and nothing nothing has had such a powerful impact you don't realize you know we're so used to being in a culture where

it makes sense to use thin strips of white paper do cleanse our assholes of fecal particulates that it just feels normal it just feels normal to rub Kleenex on your asshole when you're when you're wiping that's white with wiping wipe wipe up or wipe i don't know that you're supposed to wipe wipe away from your genitals that's something that you're taught as a kid but when i was in india a very long time ago when i was in college i was talking to this indian guy in a graveyard and i you know i'd heard this story about how in india they use their left they use their hand there's like water next to the toilet and and they they actually use water to wash their asshole with after they poop and i remember asking him about that and probably a mildly condescending way as

though i was julius fucking Caesar riding into the land of the savages and uh in a really quick brilliant way he said what would you do if i put shit on your cheek right now would you feel okay just using paper to wipe that off and uh that was a great point that he made which is that if shit lands on any other part of your body your shit someone else's shit if you end up with shit on your shoulder if you end up with shit on your stomach if you ended up with shit on your feet if you ended up with shit on your knees if you ended up with shit in any other sector of your body you would not be okay if somebody just handed you a Kleenex you wouldn't be okay with that you wouldn't just take the Kleenex and just wipe the shit off and then and then throw it away

and be like everything's fine now no you would go to the nearest sink and you would spend a lot of time with soap and water cleansing yourself of that stuff that's what you would do so but for whatever reason here in the west when we spray shit out of the out of the hole in our body we're okay just using a Kleenex to wipe it away everything's fine everything's fine it's not fine if you don't believe me get a bidet go to uh that go through our amazon portal located at junkintrustle.com google search bidets there's a great many there's a variety of them on amazon that you can you can pick really expensive ones like over there's bidets over a thousand dollars that carbonate the water spraying into your ass which i i'm telling you i'm thinking about

getting one of those eventually but for now i've got a working man's bidet it was like 40 bucks it's easy to install if you've got the mildest bit of plumbing ability if i can install it you can install it anything that i can install anyone on planet earth can install because i have the construction skills of somebody who with no calluses on their hand just to there's no reason that i should be able to construct anything my brain doesn't work that way and i just resisted shop class so but this i was able to install the water pressure is a little too too much it feels like a aquatic hummingbird is kind of pecking at my asshole when the water spraying in there but still the feeling of cleanliness that you get from a bidet compared to

the feeling that you have after you wipe like some disgusting western savage it's the difference between night and day order a bidet friends go through the portal located at dunkintrustle.com the amazon portal and get a bidet and just go through that portal no matter what even if you're completely satisfied with the fact that you've got a a a bacterially encrusted viral hole that you sit on all day long go through the portal at dunkintrustle.com the next time you're going to amazon.com forget get don't fall prey to this black friday bullshit don't get pulled into that materialistic cyclone of doom where you're surrounded by people who have no idea that they're being puppeteered by some megalomaniacal superpower that's managed to convince them that

the day after thanksgiving is the day that you're supposed to spend surrounded by anxiety ridden people trying to save $15 on an overpriced baby doll go to go through the portal go to amazon that's where you should do all your christmas shopping spend the day after thanksgiving allowing your poor distended stomach to rest relaxing with a book making love to your your your wife or sister or pets but don't spend it lost in a malmase spend it going through the amazon portal buying a bidet preparing yourself for the feeling of superiority that it's going to grant you as you walk among an entire nation of people who have who have disgusting asses just prepare yourself for that feeling it's the feeling of being a prince and spend that day enjoying your life not

shopping just go through our portal located at dunkintrustle.com it's on the comment section of any of the podcasts they will give you they give us a very small percentage of whatever you buy and it doesn't cost you anything extra and it's a great way to support the podcast finally and then we're going to get on with this awesome interview i have been reading and listening to an incredible audiobook called zealot by reza aslan and if you're somebody who like me was raised in christianity or you're somebody who has a certain idea of what christianity is or what who jesus christ was this book will throw an iron sledgehammer of historic fact into your idea of who jesus was now i was telling my friend about the book and he's like

there probably wasn't a jesus well this might be true i don't know but even if he's a mythological figure it's still important to understand what the political climate was like that he was existing within uh in that political climate uh was way different than what i realized i didn't a lot of the uh a lot of the i had no i had no idea what was going on then i'm kind of embarrassed because i sure have spent a lot of time on this podcast yapping about this peace-loving version of jesus like one of my favorite things that i like to talk about is how jesus was crucified between two thieves and actually i heard michael beckwith say that the thieves represent past and future and it's a symbol that represents the uh way that we're all kind of stuck on the time space continuum and

it's a metaphysical symbol it's a sacred geometry thing but really thief uh the word thief uh in the greek translates it is more likely it means uh bandit or it means revolutionary and that jesus was a revolutionary he was crucified among revolutionaries because anytime anyone started talking about how the occupation of roam uh in palestine was a terrible thing or anytime anyone threatened that power structure the romans would crucify them the romans were vicious brutal people and the so far in the book i haven't finished listening to i have two hours left uh right now jesus is not such a peace-loving guy he's a kind of uh he's not into non-violence either he's a somebody who wanted to overthrow the power structure of the time so it's a controversial book some of

you might not give two shits about it because you don't care about christianity because you avoided that religion all together but uh even if you avoided christianity it's cool to understand about one of the great world religions and it's really interesting to hear how the interpretation that so many people have of those stories is not so much based on history but is based on something that was hung on those stories way later on down the line which i think is pretty cool too and you know the more i listen to resa aslan talk about the story the more i recognize that the story is just a kind of uh mirror that reflects wherever your mind happens to be and that's what all great scriptures do so anyway if you go to audibletrial.com forward slash

family hour and sign up for a trial membership you can download a copy of this book for free and have your mind blown over the holidays also i've heard the new steven king book is incredible though i haven't listened to it or started i'm waiting i'm going to finish the zealot before i move on to that but i love audible i've subscribed to it for years anytime i get a new credit it's really exciting to know that i can get 25 hours of depending on how long the book is of a book to listen to if you go to audibletrial.com forward slash family hour sign up for a trial membership they give us 15 bucks you'll get a free book and if for whatever crazy reason you don't want to keep using audible you can cancel the membership and you get to keep the

book they're basically giving books away but i wouldn't recommend cancelling the membership because it's nice to be able to read while driving or walking the dogs or cleaning which is a definite way to get me to clean the house uh which is i listen to an audio book get stoned not in that order and then spend the next few hours cleaning while listening to the book so audible trial dot com forward slash family hour sign up for a trial membership you don't have to do any of these things friends i'm just happy and blown away that you guys even listen to this podcast at all okay let's get this thing going oh wait i almost forgot also my sweet friends for those of you who are interested in coming to see a live dunk and trussell family hour podcast

i'm going to be in texas at the end of january you can come and see a live show in houston austin or in dallas all of those dates are going to be up in my website i'm going to be at the parish in austin i'm going to be at the come and take it comedy takeover festival in houston i'm also going to be in dallas these are all going to be on the 22nd 23rd 24th and 25th of january please come out and see these shows and get these tickets in advance because the last tour i did every show sold out and the tour before that every show sold out except for one so just get the tickets in advance i know it's weird i'm the sort of person who puts everything off to the last second two but in this case do me a favor get the tickets in advance and come see a live taping

of the dunk and trussell family hour podcast and at the comedy festival i think i'm going to be doing stand-up on one of those nights too come on out okay here we go this time for real no doubt you already know who dr drew is because he is probably the most famous doctor on planet earth he is the host of the famous radio show love line he is the host of the doctor drew podcast and he's got a show on headline news called doctor drew on call he's also an incredibly nice guy and when i was sitting with him for this hour i realized that if i was a hardcore drug addict if anybody was going to yank me out of that addiction this would be the guy who would do it because he's got this aura of non-judgment that only comes from somebody who's been working in

the trenches with people who are experiencing some really brutal things in their life and he's just a cool guy man i i really was sort of expecting when i went to talk with him just having watched celebrity rehab and i was expecting our views on drugs to be completely different to the point where i brought a notebook filled with like studies on psychedelics that i could you know throw out in case he was completely anti all drugs but as it turns out he's just an open minded scientifically minded cool guy who really loves helping people and that's a badass thing that that kind of person has achieved the level of celebrity that he has and i'm so grateful that he spent an hour yapping with me so everybody please oh you can check him out by going to

drdrew.com listen to his podcast watch his show if you're somebody who is currently struggling with addiction i i really think this is a guy who could help you out so go to his go to his website drdrew.com and now everybody please send out as much love energy sweetness and joy to the wonderful world famous super handsome badass celebrity slash celebrity doctor slash everyone's doctor slash addictionologist slash philosopher drdrew Dr. Drew welcome to the family our podcast thank you so much for taking time out of what must be the busiest schedule on earth it is my privilege yesterday was pretty bad but today's not so bad so uh that's first of all

i gotta say this i didn't realize you're ripped no i i feel really bad i'm supposed to wear a shirt and they might do people know that you're ripped i don't know i don't think people know that you're ripped you are ripped you have massive biceps i was born with arms like i think i came out of the womb with you know you pump on you must know i do i love i it's my meditation absolutely i can't i listen to i go on itunes you every freaking day and download lectures and listen to at least two hours of lectures a day and so it's been weird as i've sort of done less clinical work i've gone deeper into kind of academic uh thinking and it's been weird so but you mean you're listening to these while you're working yeah yeah i run a little bit and i work out a bit and i just listen to these

amazing lectures i mean you've been at itunes you i have not every every university on earth basically fundamentally puts their stuff in there and some of the greatest lectures of all time the greatest professors in the world they just throw their courses up and you listen to them that's incredible yeah i think that is is one of the most amazing aspects of being alive today is that we have access to every single bit of information that has ever existed at a click of a button and we can start transforming our lives with that stuff and and what's the other thing is it really shoves your face in how lazy you are not you i like it i like it it's always telling you you're you're you're insignificant you don't really know what's going on there's always more always more yeah um

well this is um i'm real excited to talk with you because you are considered in the world probably one of the you're the most renowned expert on addiction in the world i mean i'm sure that there's like doctors and scientists who are in those circles more famous but everyone when they think about addiction or especially a celebrity or someone you're the one they go to that's what it's become yeah can you tell me the the scientific definition of addiction i i use a very uh blanketed definition that uh grew out of a consensus conference in the early 90s that was actually published in one of these journals i'm pointing at um and it's it's and a lot of addiction medicine people that really work in this field will use this addicts will use this because it fits

and and and i i think fundamentally you have to understand addiction is a spectrum disorder from incipient to mild to severe to advanced to fatal okay so and and people believe that most people move forward on that spectrum but you can be along that spectrum and be an addict the dsm4 and the dsm5 kind of takes issue with this so i don't use those criteria here's my criteria a definition rather it's a biological disorder with a genetic basis the hallmark is progressive use in the face of consequence and by consequence it's got to affect important spheres of the life work or school finance health relationships or legal status and then denial that's to be some degree of denial right then i was always in there right uh and that's it and that and you could be

you know a high school kid just uh chipping away at something but still have all the qualities there and i would say that's a drug addict now they may not need treatment yet they may be able to moderate it throughout their life they you know it may not be clinically significant but that's still addiction in my mind what a perfect shit storm that is what a terrible mix of things genetic some sort of deep yeah core genetic yeah malfunction well if you put it as malfunction see i think oh you're triggering me right away great uh i think it's not a malfunction uh you know i'm a biologist by training that was my original field and uh you know i came came to adulthood in an era when you know evolutionary biology and genetics was that was it that's always studied

and so you always have to ask the question now wait a minute if this genetic mechanism and by the way it's not a single gene it's a grouping and a series of genes but this it's a basic genetic phenomena thank you yeah i'm feeling naked without a shirt i'm bringing a shirt dr jew's gotta hide his guns thank you he had to put a shirt you can't for some reason it's like people don't know i because i i don't i'm not comfortable that's one of the i it's i feel like i've exposed something here people don't know you're ripped all right so so you have to ask the question if if if this thing is a dysfunctional as you describe it a shit storm yeah why the hell is it still in the human genome yes it should have been it's been throughout history very stable

and uh i was thinking about this years ago years and years ago and it was just in the days when these sorts of early 90s and these ideas were taking form and um i was watching the movie brave heart okay and in that movie they portrayed very clearly that 10 000 scotsmans go into battle these primitive peoples uh and 10 survive clearly the alcoholics clearly the alcoholics and i thought that's right i thought that's right my patients are amazing survivors wow and so i went back to my little laboratory i gave lectures to groups of drug addicts every couple times a week and i said you know if you guys if a bunch of huns came over the hill right now carrying spears what would you guys do and about 90 to 95 percent of them said

oh i fucking picked something up i run right at him and i was like what it's so that's not that's not a normal human thing right and then i started thinking oh my god all my patients are extreme athletes race car drivers fighter pilots all these extreme activities yes they they love it they in fact and i've learned since you know in the middle of like like a shortstop in the middle of a play it's one of the only times an alcoholic loses their anxiety time slows down and they're they're euphoric in that moment and so they love the and evidently from an evolutionary perspective in a circumstance of repetitive military assaults they're more likely to survive in their heedlessness going forward in these battles wow and it kind of makes sense right yeah and if you take a population

so i then i started thinking well now we're in the globe we really see this gene isolated populations that have a history of really genocidal military assaults so it's ireland scotland certain parts of africa you know in central europe yes there it is it emerges in these pipe not i'm not saying that they were drinking and using when they were in the face of this adversity i'm saying in the face of adversity they are more likely to survive and then reproduce and then during peaceful times then the alcoholism the addiction that is such a smart isn't that that is makes sense right that's brilliant so almost as a form of dealing with ptsd the anxiety that came from being in a tumultuous conflict they hide from it they like it but you and i go the

other way and we'd get a spear in the back see yes they go towards it and they're just slightly more likely to survive well when you said yeah i immediately thought run away oh yeah that's why when they all said well i'm what do you got here let's go and like and then i said i followed up with this i go how would it felt like a bomb went off they're like i'm i'm going right in that i'm going right into where that bomb was like crazy what are you kidding me that's crazy well i'm more of a podhead than an alcoholic so i guess we run away and pod is a mixed group it's a mixed bag yeah it really is it's an interesting group what do you mean a mixed bag well because within it pots an interesting drug because not every alcoholic addict becomes a pod addict you know every every

alcoholic addict if you give them heroin they're going to become a heroin right you know i mean pot has some sort of differing effect and and it has a and it has a very very predictable syndrome associated with it people think that the average pot addict is somebody that slowly escalates their pot use and pretty soon is sort of using it all the time yeah that's not a pot addict in my book that somebody uses a lot of pot right a pot addict is somebody who after priming the brain usually the third exposure because you again it's my little lab i'll ask hundreds of addicts these questions yes over years and years and i said you know what what do you think a pot first time you smoked it and they'll go and the people i knew pot was their primary drug and they

they'll say well i had giggle like like this one and i go how about the first time you got high i go oh that was the third time well what did you think of it then oh i loved it right they all say the same thing i loved it i thought loved it that's not that's um i don't know if i love but that's really a different thing right and then i started thinking well that's that gene that's that that mechanism that some people really have an extraordinary experience with this drug and um and then every person says then from they from that day on they preoccupied or pursued it or used it from that day on it's a boom now right and uh and then within that group there are people that can stop and people that can't stop right you know i mean and the people that can kind of

moderate it and stuff yeah and uh and eventually if you smoke too a lot every day it stops working yeah and that's what causes people to really escalate it and that's when they get themselves in trouble and that's when you start getting paranoid and freaked out paranoid and panic attacks and guess what you do you go to a doctor and say i can't sleep and then they give you pills and then you come to me as a pill addict wow so yeah so i this is um this is something that my listeners know that i am a psychedelic advocate i think psychedelics have done so much for me in my life i don't take them all the time i take them um you know on occasion of maybe a few times a year i will take this you and i are the perfect people to sit down and have this

conversation because i'm fascinated by that too because there there clearly are benefits but the question is at what cost and for whom and we have no fucking idea well and so in the meantime for me like if my kids were to come to me and be dunking it would scare the shit out of me i don't blame you because i've seen horrible consequences i've seen terrible stuff can i tell you one i will tell you something that just happened to someone that i know because i thought oh i'll bring the most extreme version of the worst thing that can happen from irresponsible use of psychedelics this is somebody in los angeles yeah they had a quote shaman come to their house happens all the time he gave them ibegan all the time is this somebody trying to

get off harrowing no no just somebody because the you know it's not only does it help you theoretically help you battle harrowing yeah and by the way it will it does for about six months everybody stops for six months and then everybody goes back yeah it's back what is the name of that that's called in scientific they call that recidivism recidivism yes that's it so yes and i've heard that and that makes sense to me but it creates at least a temporary six month window here except except every one of those people that went that i've treated now this is just me i actually i've talked to one guy that i didn't see this but of course i didn't know him pretreatment i had a lot of patients i treated went did this and i ended up treating them again

because they they went back um they were different people they they they it must be a pretty big dose of the stuff because their personalities were totally different now i talked to a guy at a who was in a production company i was over at cbs and he came up to me i said you know i did the civil game and he seemed like it seemed like you always seem totally put together i thought okay well maybe some people but how do we find those people right how do we figure out who that is in the meantime i've got a whole stable of patients who aren't the same person anymore right and that's weird aren't the same person in a bad way aren't the same well you're you're passing judgment you're gonna say oh if they're more open to the world they're they're more peaceable

you can say that that's a better person but it's a different person you're looking at it from a scientific i'm just saying i'm not i don't like the idea of that to me that's human engineering it's like we're gonna make you a better person like well well it's not it's i mean it gets deep i've had there's a great uh there's some someone i have on the podcast once in a while named aubrey marcus who takes ayahuasca and is like a very very put together focused person who goes deep into what is that thing that makes you a different person and yeah it's an inevitably invariably contact with some kind is it or is it just a change a brain change well from a scientific perspective it's gonna be a probably both right well i mean i think most scientists or people

just there's no proof there's no higher and they're higher intelligence why what do you mean they're gonna no it's gonna say that you're having an experience and change your brain and change your experience yes the brain and brain and consciousness are one let me i'm gonna turn the air gonna show you hot yeah please thanks so um so this change whatever it is and they and we don't know what it is and it could be good or bad it's something we don't know what it is and i don't know and by the way i don't think everybody gets it some people don't change well some people they'll always say i think it things a little differently but some people you like look at them it's like hey you're not the

same guy some people have terrible ayahuasca trips that's another aspect of it i think i think people have anxiety disorders like me would would doubt you have an anxiety disorder hell yeah oh god i d and anxiety i cannot wait to talk with you about that but this awful uh thing happened when i i haven't talked about i don't think i've talked about it on the podcast yet but because i'm always trumpeting the the benefits the benefits of psychedelics um i i want to measure that with this story just so people understand these are potent drugs sorry guys i had to delete this story because i spoke with the person it happened to and we have to remain confidential the gist of it is be careful when you're taking psychedelics

so that being said i recognize these are dangerous so let me let me you said spiritual quest i it it feels um like cheating ah there it is this comes up all the time man and that idea that this is cheating it comes from the the notion and i think it comes from the industrial revolution that to have some kind of opened mind to earn you have to earn it well you you you you it feels and i know nothing about this i'm just bringing what i thought i thought a lot of people think that yeah it feels like jeez if i were a zen buddhist and i work for it for years and i got to satori it feels like i'm not just cheating but i'm creating an artificial experience now if we could prove that they are one and the same biologically who the hell cares right but

i'm not sure they are because of because the zen buddhist although they're a different person don't have consequences the way let me let me tell you some of the consequences that worry me yes not not just the personality change but i would see people and this part is the is the pernicious part of this whole thing years later years later after particular lsd years later with just unbelievable mood disturbances like profound right uh so i you know whatever process is triggered might progress well you see that i absolutely and and i i know so many people who tell stories of their friend who just you know it triggered schizophrenia maybe i've seen that too that sort of thing uh but i think that this is not or this is a result of the prohibition on lsd and the fact

too much or the right wrong stuff they're not doing it in the it's not prescribed this should be something that's prescribed it's done in a therapeutic setting or in a shamanic setting but in a private expert you're singing to the choir because i i believe that the clinicians should be able to use whatever that helps the patient you know the fact that we have good drugs and bad drugs i am so against that like what alcohol and tobacco are good drugs and pots of bad drug right what what is that is the craziest shit ever right that's crazy alcohol causes cancer in almost every tissue in your body if you know but it's the only drug from which the withdrawal is commonly fatal i mean and that's a good drug that's a good one and nicotine good

drug it's good uh pot oh that stuff's bad evil and oxycontin what is that if you have cancer pain it's a good drug and if you don't it's a bad drug this the logic is all pathetic i we are exactly in the same on the same page with that but it the the problem with that which is a result of i don't know if you've heard that there's a great recording of nixon talking about marijuana oh yeah i've heard it oh it's incredible have you ever read the harrison narcotic act that's what the whole thing's based on it's ridiculous and it all really was a response to the opium wars and the history of china with you and oh my god it's racist and it's it's classist and it's insane that all of our drug laws are based on the harrison narcotic act you just look

out of a wikipedia you'll be shocked it's it's wild and then you know i wrote down some of you know just because i thought you could help me understand this but now it we're exactly on the same page anyway but you know the lsd theoretically they did a meta study recently where they gathered data on the lsd test that we had before they made it a schedule one drug and they couldn't do studies with it anymore right there is where the rubber hits the road for me where you can't study it anymore it makes me insane now now i understand that it's risky stuff but we do lots of risky stuff in research you know and and there's ways to mitigate those risks if you just open open everybody just forget open your mind on lsd just open the research process

don't have draconian stupid laws it's a tragedy and all of these studies you know they they they show that it can treat alcoholism the meta studies show that it seems to help alcoholism the founder of a you know was a lsd advocate i'm sure oh i didn't know he was an advocate i know he kind of was sort of circling in there he wanted to give it out before meetings because he recognized that it dissolved your he did not he did not yeah they but they they stopped where is that is that which i will find that history i've got a i tweeted it it's a great there's so many interesting pieces of the history of him and a and his wife too very interesting stuff i think i wrote a quote down from him where he said that uh i consider lsd to be of some value to some people and practically

no damage to anyone well first part of that's certainly true right yeah last part maybe maybe of no damage to some if we could select those people well i think whatever we're worth the risk for some i'm sure the sample he was using was not was just based on a circle of friends who taken that wonderful fresh brand new lsd straight from sando's laboratories that was completely uncut and manufactured by a veritable saint as far as what it's done for popular culture what lsd has done for history it's created a kind of renaissance it really did it was one of the most we're talking about the 60s well yeah up in even still what what you're talking about about the satori state and earning the satori state so many different people who i respect and love like ramdas or jack cornfield

the buddhist teacher actually i don't know if cornfield was influenced by psychedelics but a lot of spiritual teachers and great you know uh inventors uh steve jobs you know attributes lsd to he did say something like that didn't he yeah and uh theory now this is hearsay but it keeps coming up again and again that uh crick the one of the discovers of the heat dna helix was hanging out with huxley and uh they they say that the helix itself was sort of a revelation that happened during the psychedelic experience these stories come up again and again tesla dropped something before he saw the light no tesla i don't think was on anything except just the finger of god touched him i so prefer that i you and i you and i diverge on your enthusiasm it's it that's

where i get anxious i get uh concerned you have un unbounded enthusiasm and i understand that i as you know i'm too much doctor to go oh fuck it but it's i've seen such i've seen not good stuff and and we could easily quickly start talking about ecstasy too because it's the same maybe maybe you don't have the same enthusiasm for it but it's the same logic going on there which is there are clearly some clinical uses for that yes that we're having trouble figuring out and have trouble studying properly yeah that that the study that just came out was uh in the journal of psychopharmacology i took notes for this sometimes here i'm with dr drew so i've got like notes here a journal of psychopharmacology 83 percent of vets treated

with mdma no longer qualified for a ptsd diagnosis so that study had made the rounds people were impressed by that study but there's not been a lot of reproduction there's not been a lot of movement i don't really i imagine because there's all kinds of barriers to doing that research and and and think about it these guys that are in terms of selecting the right population these guys are crippled by ptsd they're high risk for suicide i don't care what the long-term effects are necessarily because you're right because you may be you may be you're you're in it's desperate times that's a population you're going to go hey let's try this right yeah they can't come into treatment i don't trust anybody they're oh my god have you dealt with vet people with ptsd

oh it's horrible it's horrible they just can't get it out of their head huh they can't get out of their head they there's clearly you know again they're they've exceeded the upper limits of their brain's ability to regulate and they've shattered and that that shattering now is in a constant sort of cycle they can't sleep they can't eat and and they they are they have an attachment to the trauma and to the circumstance and people that they were with so literally they feel like they're not real they don't exist unless they go that's why they go back they have to go back into it and retraumatize themselves and it just gets worse yeah yeah that is the most fucked up thing i've ever heard and so we try to get them to do we try to get psychopharmacology involved it helps

them but most importantly is to get them in a group with other guys that feel the same way so they can reattach in a healthier way to you know sort of grow and regulate out here it's can you imagine i can't i just i mean i they get violent they get you drugs they they get aggressive towards their spouses they and they don't mean to they can't they can't contain it i think i you know ruminate over mild fights i had with my friends a couple of years ago great i don't know what i would be doing if i if i'd been actually you know engaged in combat or combat situation it's like getting it's like when a flash bulb goes off and that light gets stuck in your eyes it's a great that's a great model that may in fact be some of the neurobiology that kind of thing

oh i this you know the this brings me to what you were mentioning before about anxiety because i'm sure ptsd anxiety is one of the just it's just the paint that must color your day well anyway ptsd different than ptsd is different than it's different yeah yeah but you have an anxiety disorder and i think i have one too man i've been meditating and i've been watching myself and practicing mindfulness and i've noticed great 80 percent of the time i'm anxious over nothing well some of that is genetics we're just sort of set up that way and there's a lot of crossover on these anxiety syndromes with phobias and and obsessive compulsive disorder and we'll bleed into body dysmorphia disorder and eat disorder you're talking about my exercising that's kind

of an exercise bulimia a little bit in there you know little body dysmorphia in there i've got a little bit of all kinds so i can i can really relate to people have problems with that i understand but for me the anxiety i'm having to kind of look away into my own head here to see if i can figure this out in a way that's understandable for me anxiety is sort of fundamentally a for me a sort of a developmental slash dysregulation thing i didn't get the right nourishment the right attunement as a child and so i had not only a good a solid connection to my body and my emotional states so if i had heavy emotions i would just experience anxiety that would be the predominant feeling rather than the more complete whole experience of emotion

and i had some trauma and childhood and so in therapy for me the two things i needed was to form a very secure attachment which i didn't have being nourished regularly with you know somebody who because our brains change interpersonally you know with lst they change it as a single skull right but i'm a big advocate of and and with mindfulness i'm all for that too but i really think big changes happens between people like that's to me that's the magic of everything i think consciousness is an interpersonal experience i don't think a feral child would have consciousness the way you think about it i think it develops here i think this is what's between you and me is just yeah you know buber martin buber talked he's the only philosopher ever he talked a lot about

that but i thought he was kind of on to something buber yeah martin buber uh the i thou he called it and then he had sort of an us there's definitely an us and sometimes i think that's how psychics do their thing that that you're gonna leave a remnant in my brain and a really intuitive person could then pick that up yeah if you're no longer here yeah but anyway so i diverged yeah i diverged but i need a lot of nourishment but the other thing is uh because my anxiety doesn't bother me anymore now it's just sort of my genetic predilection it's not a thing anymore but i panic in college i had depression and i had all of that everything um and the other thing i need was the ability to tolerate something that a guy named alan shore calls traumatic trauma associated

dead spots so literally in treatment occasionally i would fall into these dead spots where i was like going to like a weird little fugue state i would just like i just remember all that would happen would i be talking i'd be feeling something i'd be and things would sort of shut down and uh and instantly i might my therapist would go i'm sorry it's time is up and i go like i didn't time would just like contract and explain it was weird it was weird time would just trauma associated dead spots yeah and so what i found was those are sort of dissociative holes that i learned to tolerate and fill and be able to because there was somebody there i could kind of tolerate going into it and they no longer were a source of panic or anxiety or dysregulation they just were sort of

gone frankly wow that's um that is amazing i love that what you're talking about the idea of this that this sense of connection with another person and what the healing that happens when you're around somebody who's giving you it's it's the essence of life i think i humbly humbly humbly i completely agree this is the guru-disciple relationship this is why in every world religion they say you have to have a teacher you need a teacher because and even when they have a concept of a higher being it's their attachment to that you know it's a connection with that i don't have much of a life in that space i i i i experienced spirituality here right between people are you a buddhist no i'm a i don't know what the hell i am but but i i you don't remember

i'm a scientist fundamentally i really am well you know i don't i'm a philosopher i think i could see that yeah yeah i could see that and you know buddhism and science seem to go hand in hand yeah the point where the dalai lama said that if science shows something in buddhism that's off then they will change that they'll just yeah they seem very pragmatic well then to be fair catholic system does that too it just takes them 200 years and a lot of yeah and a lot of incinerated witches and a lot of hand wringing yeah yeah but that and you seem to have not only if you've worked on yourself man yeah you did the work and you can see that because you radiate the exact same thing that anyone else i run into who's worked on themselves radiates a kind of confidence

and what i consider an eerie focus because my brain is scattered everywhere but you're very focused too but you're when you're in here us together you're very focused i haven't done the work man i want i'm more i i'm trying but i haven't done what you've done and you can always tell when you can't fake it that's something really cool about it when someone's done a pull-up they've done a pull-up there's no way to fake it so it's super cool that's sort of and i value it and that's sort of why i i get with the but with the you know the pharmacological interventions right you know because this has been very important to me and it's not only has it well you would argue the same thing with with psychedelics that not only has it helped me with my symptoms it's opened me

to all kinds of ideas and feelings and interpersonal experiences well it is what people what ramda says about psychedelics is they showed him a place yeah and these guys they weren't going nuts man he was hanging out with timothy leary and they were drinking lsd like you know the potency of the stuff their tolerance has developed so much that they were sipping out of little flasks of the stuff they said that you've said something there that a lot of people don't know there is a tolerance to lsd huge but i don't believe there's addiction to it i don't think you can get addicted to it it's a different biology it's a different biology but they said that it takes you to this place an expansive non-dual place but then you're right back in traffic screaming at people in a

certain amount of time is non-dual me not so it's the idea that uh what we really are is not something separated we're all one consciousness or we literally if you were to zoom we're in the soup we're in the soup yeah we're part of the organic soup or whatever a description the way people have explained it scientifically i just saw a netflix documentary on this is that uh so neurologist a neurologist was talking about how every bit of input that comes into the brain gets filtered through the what is it the hypothalamus or the god jesus it was some i can't remember the name what does it do so it's apparently the sorting mechanism that is the thalamus it's the filtration mechanism that you know right now there's just the switching station it's the thing that autistic

autistic people might not have they can't cut out the sign of cars driving when they're talking or they're always distracted so it's this thing that filters all that out yeah and the psychedelic stops that filtration so you the holistic that's it yeah so you merge into the whole dr drew i wanted to ask you a question this is a completely off topic from where we're going here but this is a question that my brother's wife who is a huge fan of yours i wanted to ask which is can you tell when a child is going to be a sociopath well you you if you can actually there are behaviors early that sort of and i really what you can tell is a psychopath sociopaths are a little harder um psychopaths hurt animals it's really easy and psychopaths

are always hurting other kids and always in the office and are never responsible for anything always other people's fault you know what one of the issues again the important thing for the child is to be able to trust closeness with adults if they leave that frame they start relying on themselves and not trusting anybody and they they oftentimes particularly they've been traumatized will not the develop the capacity for empathy and that lack of empathy is the risk factor for all these narcissistic problems that's that's a shorthand for a very complicated thing but if your child is you know and again they're particularly there's criminal behaviors early you can intervene and maybe change the direction of all that but man you got to work

hard and it's and some people would argue you can only change so much because there is a genetic biological component to severe sociopathy like psychopathy wow that is that is nuts to think so how much the guy named you see Irvine right here and name you should interview him name Fallon think of think of Jimmy Fallon I don't think he spells it that way maybe that got it and he he's doing research here's that he's doing research on psychopaths and functional MRIs and stuff and looking at the patterns that they all seem to have and he had a bunch of controls and he had a bunch of psychopaths you know documented psychopaths and he was looking through his controls one day and he goes oh Jesus a psychopath amongst the controls well he and his family went

in and were and done been controls in quotes turns out he himself had a psychopathic brain he himself and he was like oh shit and he had to look at himself and it turns out he had this crazy course where he was hyper religious and he thinks he was sort of compensating for this proclivity and he says that in a relationship in his family everyone complains he's empty he's uncaring holy shit yeah right you gotta go interview this guy so he was like looking for himself right why he was doing the research yeah maybe that's what motivated the research yeah he didn't know that he didn't think he was a control he went into the scanner as a control that's incredible man this is the classic detective story or the detective finds out he's the murderer that's

incredible man that's so why i'm scared by this talk about the genetic predispositions i'm scared of that stuff man it makes me feel out of control genes are not destiny genes of your friends genes are the endowment you start with it's what you do with them that counts because well yeah i that's beautiful but man it just seems like you can really excuse a lot of bullshit by saying i just have a genetic predisposition no see i disagree with that i i i i think that's a cop out thinking that way that i call that stinking thinking that's shitty thinking yeah it's like if you have what if you had a bad leg or something you fucking work harder you don't say hey i can't sorry you can't do that now there may be there may be limits but

you do that you do better with what you've got always always always always do you would you consider this is a strange question but do you think that fame could be considered a kind of mental illness i've i've i've been asked that question before i've never had a good answer i would probably say no because i try to be really you know we overuse the term addiction and illness and things like that it's a syndrome for sure wow and it's associated with real consequences and it's uh you know it's in the kind of compulsive addictive narcissistic range and i think what you'd find is for people that um have consequences from fame you're probably going to find other actual illnesses in there for which fame is sort of a symptom or a syndrome

associated with it wow yeah it seems like that it seems like a dangerous thing to happen to people and that's part of your job is people are always coming to you asking your opinion on the most recent celebrity who's spiraling out of control i know and i did not intend to in fact i didn't back when i ran a unit i ran a drug in for 20 plus years and and i didn't like treating celebrities they were you know they wanted to be treated special and you don't do that you don't treat them special and and they would fight treat you like shit i watch celebrity rehab i know exactly the yeah that's the kind of thing i dealt with and so it was it was somebody approached me about doing celebrity rehab and i was like that's an interesting idea but impossible no way right and

i was literally uh we were pitching it and i thought it's not going to go anywhere and then vh1 expressed interest i was like oh no shit what do i do now and um bob forest he got the hat and the glasses yeah another guy you should talk to he he loved this i'd love to yeah um he sat down across from my office one day and he goes you know i'm so goddamn sick and tired of our patients meaning people we've treated that are celebrities being spoken of as though they're being they're on a publicity campaign or they're at a spa treatment when they get treatment treatment is hard work these people are sick they're dangerously ill we need to do a tv show we show that and i was like oh my god bobby well okay uh if you really if it's your instinct this is the good really we

ought to do this i i can kind of forge on somebody to approach me we can actually forge on these like god we gotta do it we gotta do it i was like okay wow now our goal was to do that to show that this is hard work how the work goes these people that are you think are celebrities having a good time are dangerously ill yes life-threatening illnesses and i think we achieved that i think yeah i i i think i think you achieved it i think that there's the problem is that with those cameras floating around you're activating a kind of you're causing these flare these ego flare ups that's right well it's a couple things that one is we treated them we offered them treatment not all not all them took it we offered them treatment for long after the

camera that's cool long after i always told vh1 they should take a bow on some of the investments they made like half million dollars of treatment you know for somebody that you know wanted it and they just quietly did it that was the right thing to do i did it for free with them i participated wow it was just the right thing to do we did it um but not all of them wanted it that's fine and and or some of them went back to their pain prescribing doctors and stuff and we knew that was oh my god i i get pain prescribing doctors you mean pill mills all the ones we lost were that died died because of that or they had a medical problem one or the other oh man now that is fucked up when you consider that all my patients when they die they die at the hands of my peers

holy they don't dive heroin addiction anymore yeah that it now that is you don't know that no oh it's it's a mess well yeah it's scary you know i took i i my friend gave me xanax a few days ago i've taken it a few times and every time i take it i think this is the greatest feeling on planet earth man this is incredible careful oh i know i mean that's the next thing that follows it is like oh shit that's you can't keep taking xanax i only did it and it stops working and then you take more and then you're addicted i only did it a few times but i i could just and you know i have taken like and i do enjoy narcotics i have taken Vicodin uh and maybe the maybe the hallucinants are preventing the triggering of addiction for you you know what it is man i just feel too like too much of an

asshole and if i have narcotics floating around and i find myself like you know i went to a doctor who prescribed uh what do you prescribe uh vivants some kind of like a stimulant and i was taking and i was like i want to write a book so i'm gonna get on speed and write a book so i took vivants wow and i the first day i'm like this is it i'm gonna write a book holy shit first i'm gonna play video games for nine hours straight and then the next day oh this is the day we start writing my friend no writing and then i read like day four i'm like you've been on speed for four days straight you've written nothing so i just dumped the pills into this into the magic you are an addict or you were a meth addict and now you're having this experience going this is the solution

i have adult add that doctor's a fucking genius i'm i can't wait to go back and get my refill and then you're the best patient on earth and doctors go our patients are doing great they're so fantastic they're their their personalities have improved they they believe the patients and they oh my god they believe the distortion they don't understand addiction they just don't understand it and it makes me sad and that's that's do you get blowback from pharmaceutical companies no i think people think we that's not the evil empire they're participating it's us it's doctors they they're not being properly trained on addiction they think they don't they're not ill meaning they think they're helping when my heroin addict goes in and says doc i have

back pain man i really oh i can't function i gotta do it i gotta do i was concert coming up i'm a lead guitarist but i i gotta get through can you give me i mean i have to have something i can't sleep either i mean i'm born on the road and they're like oh and then and even the patient will say look i'm a i'm a heroin addict i'm a year into sobriety uh and the doctor will say oh thank you for telling me so here i'm just gonna give you 30 viket in and 30 ambient don't don't worry debt in a week that patient's dead in a week what do those doctors do to deal with the guilt from poisoning from giving they just don't understand it they blame the patient do they hear about it did the doctors get a phone call if they do they blame the patient but did they get a phone call

from the police saying hey you know you prescribe pills that were found in the bloodstream of a dead yeah they'll know what happened they were they it's finally changing right now california medical association put out an and sort of a circular that is to me was good for the first time in the past they've always went uh geez these opiates they've none shown to have no effect in the benefit long-term benefit for chronic pain patients so so so hey watch out how much you're prescribing it's like no benefit stop prescribing these people are lives are being ruined by this stuff shit yeah no one when they get when you get whenever i get prescribed if i get in you you know i remember when i um i had testicular cancer had one of my balls cut off and i remember

my time grab prostate cancer so it's good times wow you had it i had my prostate taken about a year and a half ago wow good times good times man it is all good times radiation therapy oh boy so fun that's when you're reaching for the lsd yeah well i mean i remember the vikin and it was like uh just you know like grit your teeth get through the pain and then take the vikin in when you're not in pain to really enjoy it you are a drug addict well no i'm not i don't i would be you i would be absolutely i would be if i didn't have a toilet in my house that had a flusher on it i would be and i do and i do i i do know that i have to be very very careful about that because the things you mentioned up front you know that it's in my family and you know i do have to watch out

but uh i don't i don't do it all the time i mean i only take vikin in like once every couple of days once every couple of days don't do it long no i know of course i i get you have if you have surgery you're going to take viking that's where it goes but you got to make sure after a week you stop yeah you're not going to want to the glow the some you'll be surprised the pain will get a lot worse at the end of the week when it comes time to all of a sudden the pain will start to kick up yeah you will not stop until you stop i don't know what it is but i got lucky enough to be able to like just stop doing it even though i do thoroughly enjoy the experience of being on a narcotic it might be it might be the hallucinogens i mean it might have been you know perhaps it's reduced

the triggering yeah right i mean you you quoted line and verse of some data that suggested it can affect addiction and alcoholism i i buy that yeah i i think that could i think it's a combination of that and just not wanting to like turn into a yeah you know you know it will go where it'll go you know it clearly and and before you throw the switch on addiction you do have some control over your use it's once the switch is throwing you lose control that's terrifying that switch man that turns you into there's a real switch huh you there well we think of it that way yeah yeah so once it once the switch i i think i think it's an intracellular mechanism and a part of the brain called the nuclear incumbents it's ventral tegmental firing at an extra extra physiological rate from pharmacology

that triggers a second messenger in the cells in the shell the nucleus incumbents that once that gene is sort of properly methylated or whatever it's doing that's it oh god it's like a singularity it's like a black hole once you step beyond and then and then what's yes and then what's fascinating is so now this part of your brain that is supposed to say do that again good for survival good do that again good for survival becomes do that again to use do that again use do that again use and so all the other mechanisms that sit on top of motivation like your thinking your feeling your interpersonal experiences all now serve a fucked up motivation not survival not love your family use you and it's not conscious it's not no it's not that you're not thinking use

it's just a motivational color to all the other mechanisms in your brain you just described demonic possession it is a demonic possession so i never thought about it that way but it has that quality it's demonic possession it's it's what you do you're an exorcist you're a modern exorcist that's what you are i'm gonna hang that out now as my shingle you are think about it modern exercise it's true you are that because you you're using a modern language to describe a very ancient problem which is from time to time people who go down the wrong path get it in the old days you go into the wrong part of the forest and a demon jumps into you and tries to use your own body to kill yourself and the people around you yeah and i would say everybody let's stop talking about demons

when it comes to the brain let's talk about the brain you know i mean we no longer talk about demons when it comes to our pancreas or our heart we used to do that there too yeah time to stop time to talk about the brain and the psychology of the i love that because that's such a cleansing that's such a that that throws well you know what i gotta say that i think there is some use in spiritual symbolism oh for sure as a way of sort of processing and getting your head around things but but to think of it too literally or i'm more worried about the public lexicon like let's let's let's talk about it more sophisticated yeah no kidding you don't want some of Williams had demons no fuck that he was a priest he's like right that man that man suffered from medical

illness that poor man had a couple of medical illnesses and he he died from those illnesses and somebody blinked they should have been on it dr drew i'm not going to keep you much longer because i know you're the busiest man on blenders i got a good 10 more minutes oh you do beautiful great yeah let me check my things here and i think i'm good yeah yeah oh yeah fantastic yeah um the uh i love asking experts on the show too because a lot of people listening you know i've gotten emails from people who are addicted to pharmaceutical a lot of emails from people who are addicted to pills and have are desperate to to solve the problem they've they want to know if they should take ayahuasca because they hear me talk about it they want to know what advice can you

give somebody listening out there who right now is let me just say um it's it's a within the remaining 10 minutes it's a big topic um please this you and i may differ on this so let me give my opinion don't do not look for shortcuts please don't it just doesn't go well it just doesn't uh it takes time if you're a paying at your opiate addict with pain you you have to get off the opiates do not get on a replacement therapy like methadone or shaboxone unless they're used solely for withdrawal like for a week only and then off and you're gonna have to be somewhere for about six months at least focusing on your recovery your brain has to change it changes slowly you have to work on right building the biology of a regulating of the brain that regulates which is a whole other

podcast for us yes how we build regulatory systems yeah i hinted at it a little bit when i talked about my therapy but there's there's it's all worked out how that builds how we're building regulatory systems in your brain are you talking to this morphogenesis people are talking about no i'm not i'm talking about the ability to to feel okay in your skin you know people one of the main very common reasons people go to drugs and alcohols they were traumatized and they're dysregulated all the time they're in pain they're miserable they're anxious to pay when you've been traumatized or you've had inadequate attachment and childhood the feelings are too prolonged too intense and too negative and so you start looking for solutions to that and that's how

people find drugs and if you're genetically wired it's game on you know now you do it and and if you're an opiate addict you are you're in a that is such a tall order it's so hard you have and it's life-threatening you've got to dedicate your life for a while you listen if you had cancer and by the way your prognosis way worse than yours with testicular cancer the opiate addicts prognosis of dying is very high now if i if i you know most cancers are curable or at least highly treatable yes my my prognosis is much better with prostate cancer than all my opiate addict patients you if i said you had cancer you'd have me airlift here fucking that's right right but because it's addiction no no no i can handle this or i can do it i can go back to work don't worry

about it yeah it feels like it should be that way it isn't it's a serious illness oh that is a true demon i remember when i had testicular cancer i i told my doctor when i got the diagnosis i was about to go on tour and i'm like uh why don't i just go on tour and i'll come back and he's like what are you talking about you have cancer you're not going on tour man you have cancer you can't put this off we have to get that out of your body right now yeah oh and the evil of these drugs the the opiates is that they really will make you think like you're gonna be all right remember all the thinking is serving the broken broken motivation the patient isn't aware of the motivation is broken they're just aware of their thinking which is all serving the as you call the demon

the demon and that's you must feel great man it must be feel good to wake up in the morning and know that you managed to pull some people out of that quicksand it is that's when people ask me why i do it that's the when you see the miracles of recovery it's it's thrilling i mean you can't imagine people who are dying become better than they ever knew they could be they become amazing they become they flourish they i call that full recovery which you don't see that often these days because a lot of people are put on meds and blah blah blah and okay you know that's life saving we're talking about saving someone's life and that may be priority one but i'm interested in this field to return people to flourishing that that's the part of it i like doing you're awesome dr

drew thank you so much i really appreciate your time we gotta do this again sometime i'd love to yeah thank you me and bob oh yeah that yeah that was my forest oh yeah that'd be awesome yeah let's do it let's schedule i like hanging with bob so it'd be just a great day i'd love to do it okay great thank you doctor thanks for listening everybody please go check out dr drew's website buy a bidet hug your mommy and daddy don't be a turkey tyrant love yourself more than you love turkey and love the world more than you love that 12 pound bird and you're gonna be fine if you like the podcast give us a nice rating on itunes harry christina windy's three dollar breakfast deal is a bacon or sausage egg croissant plus small season potatoes for three bucks it's the breakfast that

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