Mayim Bialik's Breakdown - John Ross Bowie: Angry Young Man Finds Sobriety

Episode Date: February 9, 2021

Mayim Breaks down the chemical and environmental aspects of addiction and The Big Bang Theory actor John Ross Bowie shares his story of being an angry young man who turned to alcohol to numb his pain. This touching exploration of John's journey allows him to share aspects of his sobriety and his struggles as a father and actor which he had not previously explored.  BialikBreakdown.com YouTube.com/mayimbialik Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So really upset me, really got me depressed, and I decided to drown that with cranberries and bodkas. Oh, yes, I was a girl drink drunk. I should make that abundantly clear. I tried all that stuff. I was like, you know, nothing brown, only clear. Okay, brown, but only on the weekends. Hang on, we'll figure this out. Only in groups.

Nope, that isn't a thing. I'm Iambiolic, and welcome to my breakdown. This is the place where we break down all of the things that make us break down. Today we're breaking down addiction. We have my and biolics breakdown. She's going to break it down for you. Because you know she knows a thing or two. So now she's going to break down.

We have an amazing interview with John Ross Bowie, an actor, and a human. The gentleman to my right is my second favorite Cohen from Canada. That's right. He's not Leonard Cohen. He's Jonathan Cohen. Hello, Jonathan Cohen. Hello, everybody.

and technically we are distantly related. You and me? Us Cohen's two Leonard Cohen. Oh, say more. Although we don't talk about it. It's a distant connection. Jonathan is my co-pilot, my co-creator. He's my partner in crime,

and he is going to do some housekeeping before we get started, breaking down addiction. Take it away, Jonathan Cohen. Firstly, if you haven't subscribed to the podcast already, consider doing so. And if you're... Don't consider doing so. Subscribe.

I mean, I was doing a soft sell, but yeah, they should subscribe to the podcast. If you're listening in AudioLand and you want to watch the podcast, check out Maim Bialik on YouTube, which will host all of the episodes. Our website is Biolicbreakdown.com. That's B-I-A-L-I-K breakdown, just like it sounds, dot com. There's a section where you can ask Maim anything. Ask me anything. Anything on mental health or wellness, and she'll answer. I'll try an answer. You'll do a pretty good job.

I have faith in you. Let's get started. Let's break down addiction. So maybe you're saying, why are we talking about addiction on a mental health podcast? Because you might see addiction or addictive behavior as a lifestyle choice. Maybe you see it as a moral failing. I don't, but you might. And you might think the same for really any addiction.

Think about gambling addiction. Think about marijuana addiction. which is a thing. Happy to explain that later. There's also narcotic addiction to other narcotics. But what about sex addiction? That's also an addiction. And you might think, what's up with sex addiction? Maybe that's just people who really like sex. What's wrong with that? But what I do want to do is talk about some of the neuroscience behind what we know about addiction and also talk a bit about how both the environment that we come from can impact our mental health to the point that we may be predisposed to addictive behaviors, and also what happens in addiction that then contributes to our mental health in general. I want to start by saying it's not for me to say

someone's an addict. I don't choose to call people addicts. It's very possible that people are just very happy, frequent users of something, and it's not the purpose of this podcast to shame people or to say, you have a problem if you meet these criteria. But as I said, I want to talk about addiction as it relates to the brain and to behavior because that's kind of how I'm trained to think. It's how we're trained to think as neuroscientists. I want to talk about, as I said, some of the predispositions to addiction and a little bit about the mechanisms of addiction. Like what's the actual science behind addiction? And when you say mechanisms, you mean the physiology? Correct. In our brain and the body. The neurophysiology, right, the physiology of specifically of the brain. And also, I want to talk about

what addiction does to a sober brain, meaning how it impacts our mental state. For many addictions, we do them because it feels good in the first place. And the factors that determine whether you become an addict or not vary significantly. And I'm going to talk about that too. I'd like to remind everyone, it is not my purpose here to diagnose people. I happen to believe that addiction is a mental health concern. I think it's a national and a global mental health concern. One of the main factors that encouraged me to pursue this podcast was I have many friends who are sober alcoholics and sober addicts, and I've gone to meetings with them and sat in the rooms, as we call them. I've sat in the rooms for many years. I do not believe that addiction is a choice.

I believe that it is a complex allergy to living life sober. And the addictions that we all take on, whether it be alcohol or drugs or gambling or sex, and for many people, sugar and, and and other addictive eating behaviors, those are the things we do so that we feel better about existing sober. I'd like to put aside the question of, is addiction a mental illness? Does it deserve our attention as a mental illness? And really get into some of the definitions

as the neuropsychology community sees them and we'll go from there. I do want to start with, as Jonathan mentioned, and break down some of the core motivations that drive human behavior, not just human behavior, but animal behavior, because we are animals. We are animals living in essentially a state of nature. Addiction makes our, makes its way into our lives in the first place because we are programmed to seek pleasure, and we are programmed to seek things that help us survive. And you would say, well, if we're

supposed to seek things that help us survive, why would we pursue things like drugs that are bad for us? Well, that's because we are very complicated primates, and we live in a very complicated world. the main wiring of our brain is that we are wired and motivated to seek pleasure. This is a Freudian concept, the pleasure principle, and to seek behaviors and actions that are favorable to us. But again, in a complicated world and as complicated primates, it can get a little bit messy. I'd like us to think of ourselves as, you know, if not cave people, then true primates, chimpanzees, very, very closely related to them. When we say drugs are bad, when we do them,

if we're supposed to do things that are good for us. Not all drugs are bad. No, not all drugs are bad. And some drugs could be very helpful or mind expanding? Yes. Jonathan brings up a very good point that we also don't want to enter this conversation about addiction with the notion that drugs are bad and that any mind-altering chemicals,

which sugar is one, nicotine is another, I'm not saying that all those things are bad. And of course, in moderation, many things can be good. Drugs that save lives and drugs that kill bacteria and drugs that hopefully make us get better if we are struggling with COVID. Drugs are very important and significant, but there are many, many types of drugs that can be abused, both because of the actual chemical properties of the structure of the drug and what it does to your brain.

In addition, your predisposition to becoming addicted. It is something we don't know about when we experiment with a drug. And ultimately, if we're dealing with more of a mental health issue of, I have trouble existing sober. And by sober, I mean without ingesting drugs, without having drinks when I go out. Once those chemicals are in your system, they introduce a loop in your experience that you don't have to feel that bad way again. And that's where we get that addictive loop is when we realize, oh, I never felt right until I took that drink.

The issue is not that you needed the drink. It's that there's a feeling that led to wanting to not feel the way that you did. And that's the loop that we talk about. So lest you get overwhelmed with my lack of use of scientific terms, I do want to talk a little bit just so we can kind of touch on, like what are these words and concepts and is she making this up? I don't expect you to take notes. But my due diligence as a scientist does make me want to at least.

at least roughly sketch out some of the pathways that are responsible for addictive behaviors. How do we know about these things? Decades and decades of horrible research on adorable animals. That's just what it is. You can get animals addicted to things. You can do it with sugar water. You can do it with methamphetamine. It's not pretty.

I don't really want to talk about it. I'm a neuroscientist who only worked with humans. Don't look at me. But what we do know is there's a region of the brain called the ventral tegmental area. the cool kids call it the VTA. And that region of the brain produces a tremendous amount of dopamine. Now, you've probably heard about dopamine. Dopamine feels really good.

It's different than serotonin. Serotonin also feels good. Dopamine is the good that we feel when we achieve something. And it is part of a reward circuit. So it's the kind of good that feels like a reward that you get. And when that pathway is triggered, this is literally what my notes say, dopamine goes cray-cra. Cray-cray. A good way to remember what dopamine does is it makes you feel dope.

No, that's not what the cool kids say anymore. So the dopamine reward circuit is literally a loop. And there are pathways in your brain. It's not just like a ball of mush. There are pathways in your brain that create literal loops between different structures and different little superlop. highways. And when you get that feeling of reward, you want to get more of it. That's what that loop is. It's like a self-stimulating and other influence stimulating loop. So you have dopamine in the VTA area.

Then there's this pathway called the mesolimbic pathway. And what it does, the mesolimbic pathway takes all of the emotional parts of your region and it connects them to the most highly cognitive parts of your brain. So what you've got is reward, dopamine, cray-cray, and you then are adding emotional content and you're adding cognitive content. So what you now have is the perfect storm. You have the most cognitive part of your brain being emotionally driven to get a reward. And what happens is you will use the best parts of your cognitive brain to find ways to keep that going. And if anyone has ever loved an addict or known an addict, they can be very, very cunning, very clever, very seductive in their need to keep this loop going. That's essentially

the neuroanatomy of addiction. You can get this feeling, yes, with alcohol. For those of us who do not have an allergy to alcohol, as it is said in the rooms, we don't necessarily get it. But maybe you get it when you've pursued sex in a way that feels extremely satisfying so that you need to get more. That's an example of the kind of reward that dopamine is giving you. It's not just like, oh, I'm very happy or, oh, that feels good. It's like more. That's dopamine. Dopamine is that voice in your head. Many people have this for sugar, for chocolate. It can be that powerful of a drive to kind of pursue that loop. And the brain sees this as necessary. So this is where the emotional part doesn't override the cognitive part. The brain sees this as necessary. So we're essentially acting out

what our brains are telling us we should do. This feels so good. Let's get more. Let's get more any way that we can. That's essentially addiction. One of the definitions of addiction is continuing a behavior with a substance in particular, where when you try not to have that substance, it is so painful that the only solution seems to be to go back to using that substance, that's addiction. And if you've known anyone who's ever been in withdrawal, tried to quit smoking, that's what that is. Addiction is the thing that lets you say, this is so painful to try and kick this and to let my body be free of it, that I'm going to go back to it because it's easier. That's addiction.

Regardless of the consequences. Regardless of the consequences. And I think you made a really good point that I was going to ask about, which is that it's not just the drugs. It's a behavior that can drive dopamine. You can be addicted to all sorts of shopping, gambling. And, you know, I think also a lot of people are like, oh, I'm addicted to shopping. Like, there actually is a thing where you have a reward circuit activation because of that. My Ambialx breakdown is supported by superpower.

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your membership. And after you sign up, they'll ask how you heard about them. Make sure to mention my ambiobiotic's breakdown to help support the show. That's a great, great segue, segue, into what makes some people an addict and some people not? How does that happen? So everyone's brain gets stimulated. This loop can get activated. Dopamine gets released, just about roughly baseline, same for everybody. But what makes someone an addict? There's like a brainy answer and then there's a mental health answer. The brainy answer is that everybody's brain has slight variations. We're all different.

We all have different DNA. Everybody's genetic code allows for different enough but potentially significant enough variation. And this could be differences in the amount of dopamine that's produced. It could be differences in how we process dopamine. It could be the receptors. There are actual receptors that are shaped to receive dopamine. something could be a little different about those. We could have a brain that's more susceptible to other interference,

meaning if there's a lot of emotional stuff going on otherwise, if there's abuse, if there's trauma, it could mean that that brain isn't compensating the same way. Why do we have variation? Because evolution. So the only way that we can evolve is to have slight variations in our existence. But they're not always perfect. There's going to be a little bit of error,

and that's what keeps life interesting. No? I think so. A lot of it is luck of the draw. And then we have this notion, which is also luck of the draw, of what environmental situation are you raised in? And does it further affect this system? Which, again, we all have, but what degree it gets activated at is really what is going

to be dependent on, as I said, DNA and the environment. So the short answer, you're like, where's the short answer? Short answer is it's a combination of nurture and nature. That's been true for as long as I think that phrase has been available to us in our culture. vernacular. We could take two people with the exact same production of a certain protein or a certain chemical. And if one grows up in an environment with abuse, we might see a higher activation or a deregulation of that protein. That could be a protein that plays into essentially determining if this person becomes an addict or not. If two people were to bake, for example, the exact same cake,

they have the same ingredients, they have the same equipment, except one oven, doesn't work quite as good as the other? Are the cakes going to come out exactly the same? Of course not. Are they going to come out like similar enough? Sure, they'll both be like cakes, but there's going to be differences. And in the human brain, even though slight differences can have very significant consequences. Another note about environmental stressors, when the brain is subject to environmental stressors, abuse, neglect, trauma, especially in, you know, that first year, super important, first year of life, very, very important. But all years are important, your circumstances will shift how your brain works. It can be very hard to

separate out nurture versus nature. And in many cases, it's not necessarily important. Keep in mind that the environmental stressors are not just changing the way that your brain kind of may receive dopamine or processed dopamine or upregulate dopamine. But when we come from a stressful situation, we come from a difficult situation when we've experienced abuse or neglect or trauma, we may have a higher need to pursue comfort to make sense of life. So sometimes I meet people who are like, my childhood was fine, like nothing interesting happened. Like my parents were always there. They love me. It was great. And then I graduated high school. And it's like, that sounds fantastic. Sounds amazing. That's not a lot of people's experience. And the fact is, for those of us who don't

have that experience, there may be ways that we are seeking comfort. And that does leave us also open to, again, not necessarily addiction, but to pursuing and enjoying things that help us, you know, forget who we are, feel a little more comfortable, a little more relaxed. I don't see that as poor character or weakness, and I don't really even necessarily see it as bad choices. We want to come from a place of understanding and compassion as we approach addiction and really all these topics of mental health. I'd like to touch on 12-step programs briefly because there's There's a very specific anonymous code for the 12-step programs. And while Alcoholics Anonymous is widely known and accepted as one of the most successful paths to sobriety,

it is not the only path to sobriety. And I don't advocate for any particular form of getting sober if people are seeking sobriety. Alcoholics Anonymous is a spiritual program of recovery. It's not a religious program. It involves working with a sponsor who's like a mentor. And they walk you through these 12 steps. it's been around for, yeah, almost 100 years. And there are many other ways, as I said, to get sober.

I'm going to list a lot of resources on the website. But again, I don't advocate for any particular method of really anything, analysis or way to get sober. One thing that I do love that I have heard in the rooms, as it were, is that alcoholics often refer to what they're trying to fill with alcohol as the God-shaped whole. And I think it's an important concept, whether you, you know, subscribe to 12-step programs or not.

But the notion is that the problem is not drinking, the problem is being sober. And there is a hole that is for the spiritual program of Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12-step programs, it is a God-shaped hole. And this is a God of your understanding. It can be nature. It can be the group. It doesn't have to be a deity. But the notion is that you can fill that hole with alcohol.

You can fill it with food. You can fill it with sex. Yes, you can fill it with gambling. You can fill it with shopping. you can fill it with managing and controlling other people. While I may be biased as a scientist, I will say that the way that I described addiction for alcohol really holds for all of those other addictions.

You're filling kind of that God-shaped whole. It's the same circuitry, it's the same chemicals, and really the same mental health challenges. Before we bring on our guest, I do want to say that I've taught about addiction in our homeschool community. I've taught two teenagers, my children being two of them, about addiction and the brain, because kids today are growing up in a very different world than I grew up in, than you grew up in. And, you know, my children know more about pot than I think I did by the time I was 30 because it's obviously legal and it's not a concern of mine per se with my children knowing about it.

But marijuana in particular, it's talked about all the time. It's talked about in music. It's talked about in television. There's ads for it. There's dispensaries everywhere. So I get a lot of questions when I teach to teenagers about addiction, in particular about marijuana. One of the questions that teenagers almost always ask me is like, well, how do you know that

someone's an addict? Maybe they're just like they like to party. Like, why are you ruining our good time? And this is a great question. I also sometimes get asked like, what if someone only blacks out a few times a year? I'd like to know why my child is asking that question. One of the great things about quarantine is I know my child is not drinking because he's in my house every night or he's at his dad's house and there's not alcohol for them to drink. My son asked why Snoop Dog smokes so much weed.

This is a great question. I'm happy to have Snoop Dog on to talk about it. I think he smokes a lot of weed because it feels good to him. I'll speak to your son. We could have your son on. That would be fun. He could submit a question for ask mine anything. He really should. I ask my kids to submit a question.

But what I like to emphasize, especially to teenagers, but to grownups as well, is that I don't get to decide, you know, if someone's an addict or not. It's not always important for us to be able to diagnose and say, you're an addict. What's important is to know that alcoholism is generally a progressive disease, meaning it will tend to get worse. It may shift, but it does tend to get worse. And other addictions also, they will tend to get worse. Often they're replaced by other addictions, but someone who seemingly just likes to party, indeed, may just like grow out of that phase and then just become a social drink or whatever. Or they may become a full-fledged alcoholic.

There's no way to know. It's one of the mysteries that as a parent I like to tell my children to be conservative about. I don't know what your brain is wired for. I know what our family history is. I know, you know, what my experience was, what your dad's experience was. we don't know. So I like to try and delay young people from experimenting because their brains are also still developing, and especially the prefrontal cortex, which is judgment and decision making, which many people joke isn't fully developed in some adults. Some women say, it's not developed in men.

I'm not making that joke. No, we would never make a joke like that. But what's important is not necessarily do you meet a diagnostic criteria. What's important is if you are having problems in your life, in your work life, in your personal life, in your romantic life, because of your use of a substance, that's something to look at. And also, you know, shout out to the sister program of A.A., Alonon and other support groups that help people who are with people who's drinking bothers them. If someone's drinking bothers you, if it's one drink a year, you're allowed to be bothered. If you don't like the way you're being treated in a relationship and you feel it's because of a substance, you are also completely allowed to say this doesn't work

for me. So those are just general caveats, like I said, that are good for teenagers, but also for grownups. Word of the day. The word of the day today is labile. Labile. Labile. L-A-B-I-L-E. Labile. So laybile is a clinical term. That means, you know, kind of rapidly fluctuating in regards to mood. We talk about labile mood. Here's a definition. Emotional libelity refers to rapid, often exaggerated changes in mood where strong emotions or feelings occur.

These can be things like uncontrollable laughing, crying. We will sometimes see this. You'll see it sometimes in psychosis when someone's in an acute psychotic episode. It's a general psychiatric feature that we often look for. And it can come with agitated depression or also with agitated mania. I mean, mania is not always agitated, but when it is, you'll often see this kind of rapid fluctuating. It's distinguished from rapid cycling that we see in things like rapid cycling bipolar, but it's a general term, emotional lability or a labile mood.

And that is the word of the day. So not a positive thing, just to clarify. I mean, why you got to put judgment on it, bro? But if I said you are extremely labile today. Oh, that's fighting words. Why is it so hard to break the loop? So the short answer is because that's addiction. That is, you know, cunning and powerful.

That is how strong that chemical loop is in your brain with the emotional and the cognitive components driving you towards serving that loop. And the reason is once that loop gets activated, once that dopamine goes cray- cray, when you stop that, and especially when you stop cold turkey, when you stop that, it is extremely painful. It's painful emotionally because you're now dealing with all the things that you were medicating against. And also, there's a physiological reaction to not having that substance in your body. Anyone who's tried to kick caffeine. We haven't even mentioned caffeine. Anyone who's tried to kick caffeine, not anyone. Most people, I don't have a percentage here. We'll pull it and leave it on

the website. You usually get a headache and you're in a terrible mood. No one wants to to be around you. It's because you're in caffeine withdrawal. I'm a person who sometimes does a sugar, like a flush, a raw flush where I don't eat processed food or don't eat sugar. I essentially get a headache for three days. That's a detox. Take that kind of structure of withdrawal and multiply it many, many, many times. And depending on what we're talking, like nicotine, very, very difficult. I have friends who have kicked alcohol and methamphetamines and cannot give up nicotine. It's very, very, very powerful. Heroin also. Don't mess around with heroin. I heard it's very best. You heard right, Jonathan Cohen. Every single cell in your body essentially needs to die and forget how much it

loves that feeling so that you can be sober. I mean, you're opening up a whole conversation about the cell forgetting and cellular memory, but let's table that for a future conversation. Let's table that and let's welcome our guest. It is my extreme pleasure. Extreme pleasure. to welcome to the podcast. One of what you might first identify him as is one of my co-stars from The Big Bang Theory. John Ross Bowie actually started on Big Bank Theory before I did. He also starred in his own series in the middle of us filming the last years of the Big Bang Theory, but he was with us until the bitter end with one of the most memorable parts of the series

finale of the Big Bang Theory. John Ross Bowie is known as Sheldon's nemesis, Barry Kripke. He's the one with a lisp. His character pronounces his own name, Bowie Quipke. And he also started in Speechless, which ran, correct me if I'm wrong, from 2016 to 2019. That is correct. About a family with special needs child. That was the mini driver series. And we were so sad to see you go from our immediate availability. But we loved having you back also. So, so well deserved for you to get that kind of vehicle and also for us to be the ones that were like, please come back to an episode. So welcome, John Ross Bowie. Yay. So good to be here. I am Monashma, doctor. How are you? Everything is okay. And I've decided

to embarrass you by introducing you also, continuing to introduce you about you. When we started working together, we had an instant rapport. We both had kids. We have kids around the same age. We do, yeah. I always, always enjoyed talking with you. It is very... Yeah, nobody else had kids yet. Correct. We were the ones who had kids. And also, I know that people get annoyed when we say things like this. It's rare to find people in our industry who are very, very real people. And I instantly felt like, oh, this is a real person. Like, I can literally talk to you about anything. And we ended up really talking about really everything while working together. I remember that first week. We don't even think we had any scenes together, but I remember going pretty deep. Very deep. We went deep. Quick. I think our characters spoke to each other maybe three times over 11 years. Correct. Correct. But it was always kind of fun because they often put me in the dressing room right off of yours, and we would just hang. And it was...

We were the lolliest of the low. Oh, no, no, stop it. That's rous. But there was a sense of camaraderie, and I always had heaps of downtime. Sure. And I did too many weeks. No, it's true. It's true. Here's something I want to ask you, as a neuroscientist, which I realize is not the same thing as a speech pathologist, would we call it? call it a lisp or would we call it a rhodocism? Call it a, what are my choices? Eroticism. Oh my goodness.

That's the word of the day. Write that down. Here's the thing. You didn't, you're, uh, I had like actual speech pathologists arguing with each other in my Twitter feed about just this issue. But apparently the, the inability to pronounce ours and ls is referred to as a roticism. I love that. I love that.

It could also be an affectation. Maybe Barry Cripke's back. story is that he just does that because, which is its own mental health challenge. But what I would like to also bring up is that I found out something about you while we were working together that was one of those things that's like, I'm sorry, he does what? You wrote a play. Yeah. You wrote a play called Four Cords and a gun. I did. And it was a play about the Ramones surrounding the 1979 recording session with Phil Specter, who carried a gun often, and which led to the Ramones' album End of the Century.

For those of you in listening or watching Land who don't know who the Ramones are, they're ones who always wore the skinny jeans and the black high top converse. If you don't know who they are, please Google them after this episode. But four chords in a gun was this amazing play that you wrote, and I went and saw it, and it was so good. Oh, thank you. I thought that you, you know, you're an actor, you're a father, you're an improv person, obviously, with a huge history in improv. You're a writer.

But this kind of writing a play is no small feat. And also it's essentially historical fiction. I love this about you. And I just love that play. I actually have the Four Cords and a Gun sticker on my script book still. So anyway. Oh, nice. Nice.

Yeah, that was a labor of love that had been kind of cooking in me for several years. I've been a massive Ramones fan since I was about 14. I just love the simplicity of a lot of Ramon's music, how it is mostly just four chords, just blaring at you. And I also loved, I think one of the things that drew me to acting via punk rock was the idea of doing something for a living before you're entirely sure what you're doing, which is kind of how I approached acting as well when I decided. Because I didn't, I didn't, you know, we're not all child actors here.

I didn't really commit to acting until I was like 27. I was watching blossom in my dorm room with every intention of becoming a high school teacher. I had no real concrete. That doesn't sound creepy at all. Yeah, right? Yeah, sounds pretty bad. You can cut that if you want. I wouldn't blame you.

So somewhere in the middle of us being on Big Bang Theory together, this is literally not only my favorite story about you, this is one of the funniest things that I have heard someone say, which I so badly want to take credit for, I say this thing that you said to me so many times. Because you were a recurring character, sometimes months would go by between us seeing each other. And one time you came back and I noticed you had lost weight and you didn't need to lose weight. I mean, I hadn't seen what was under your clothes,

but I never thought of you as like, boy, that's a person who needs to lose weight. But you... Now who's creepy. Always me. You had lost weight and you were looking... I was like trying to be nice. I was like, hey, like, I'm an annoying person.

And I'm like, what'd you do? And then I'm thinking, should I have even asked that? You said, well, you said, well, I stopped drinking. And the second thing I did is I stopped eating like every day was my fucking 12th birthday. Yeah, yeah. It was like, that's exactly how I've spent most of my life eating. That's not true at all. How many kosher vegan 12-year-olds do you know, please?

Two, my own children. Yeah, all right, fine. You can stand to eat like a 12-year-old a little more often, frankly. is one of the funniest things that anyone's ever said. So I just wanted to give a shout out because you are very, very funny. You're naturally very funny and very self-reflective as well. I'm really, really grateful for you being here. And as this is a podcast about mental health, I kind of want to warm up.

And maybe you can talk a little bit about kind of how you grew up. You were born in Manhattan, right? I was born in Queens, but I grew up in Manhattan from the age of three. Yeah. So it's New York City in the 70s and 80s. Right. Different borough. What were you like?

a kid or, you know, obviously no one talked to us about our mental health or mental wellness when we were kids. But looking back, you know, with kind of like the knowledge that you have about yourself now, who were you as a kid? And how did that kind of play into, you know, your later interest in acting or did it? Well, there was a couple things that led to it. The thing I remember most, and I've been doing a lot of pretty reflective work on myself over the past, over the past pandemic. And what is dawned on me is what an angry kid I was. You know, whether I had a legitimate beef or not, I was mad at the world.

I felt threatened by New York City, which is a wonderful place and it is my home and I do miss it. But it was a weird, scary place to grow up. To grow up there in like the 70s and 80s, there was a ton of crime. There was the son of Sam killings. There was the 78 blackout. There was just a lot of weird stuff going on. And it was sort of like living inside a panic attack for a big chunk of. my childhood. The other thing that was interesting about growing up specifically in Midtown Manhattan

is that it's the theater district. And I was surrounded by, I mean, our neighbors were actors of varying degrees of success. But what freaked me out were the people who weren't making it. You know, we had a couple people who were like, oh, that guy's been in a couple of movies. And, you know, and she's been on a TV show. And I recognize these people. But there are so many people who I knew were trying to be actors and weren't, weren't making the living at it, that even though I was drawn to the idea of a life in the arts, the idea of actually pursuing one scared the hell out of me. I think when you grow up in a small town and all you see are successful actors on the Tonys or the Oscars, you get a real skewed vision of what the industry is like.

It was sort of this push-pull, like the arts are right there, and it is something that people do for a living, but it's also very, very hard to make a living at it. So I think there was a sense of wanting to escape, wanting to kind of get away from myself to a certain extent, coupled with that sort of ambivalence about actually pursuing a life as an actor, it all got me here. It all got me onto a podcast with Miami, so at the end of the day. So what did you like to do? I mean, was this anger, were you like an angry musician? Were you an angry poet? Were you an angry break dancer? Like, tell us what that anger looked like. Or Vandal.

Were you an angry vandal? It was the 80s in New York. We went out 3 o'clock in the morning and went graffiti tagging a little bit. I don't know what I was trying to prove. I was, you know, it's this sort of weird, like I will make my mark. I will, you know, I will make my mark. It will be anonymous, but I will make my mark. I got really into punk rock at 14 and it didn't make me angrier.

It just sort of gave a direction or it validated my anger or it made my outside sound like my insides maybe. Does that make any sense? Yeah. You know, I just, that, that sense of, like, really simple, mono rage just kind of, it spoke to me somehow. And yes, I'm afraid I was a poet, but all that stuff was lost several moves ago. And you're welcome, America. No one will ever see the poetry I wrote when I was 16, and you're all better off for it. I honestly think it's like, it would be like an airborne toxic event, if my poetry from ages 15 or 16, so. the light of day. I think it would be a contagion, the likes of which we haven't seen even now. But yeah, so it's kind of an angry kid. And I...

What were you angry about? I don't know. What do you got? I was mad at... I was mad at my parents for getting divorced. I was mad at the city for what struck me for constricting my movement. You know, there were blocks that I was simply not allowed to visit. I grew up three blocks from the deuce from 40 seconds, between seventh and eighth and was not, I didn't set foot on that block until I was like 20, because it just been drilled into me like, you do not go on that block. And my parents were, you know, legitimately concerned, but there was still just a sense of constriction on so many levels that I just was, I felt very kind of trapped in, you know, the biggest, most vibrant city in the

United States, which, and I think that paradox, I couldn't put a word to it, but it still freaked me out a little bit that I was so boxed in. Around fourth grade, I started to get these really horrible dizzy spells that sent me to, they sent me to a neurologist. They sent me to an eye, your nose throat guy, or an ear nose and throat guy, rather, to see if it was something wrong with like an inner ear problem. And finally, they sent me to a psychologist who was like, yeah, this kid's incredibly anxious. How old were you when your parents got divorced? I was seven. The dizzy spells kicked in when I was around nine. And they kicked into overdrive. And what I really should have done, they really should have sent me to a therapist. What they did instead was send me to self-defense classes, which wasn't bad.

No, it helped. Exercise is good. Exercise is definitely good. But I definitely should have talked to a professional. Wow. We've already alluded to the fact that I quit drinking. It was a lot of very textbook adult children of alcoholic behavior. My dad was a drinker. And, um, I've been pretty candid about that. But there's a sense of sort of anger and resentment and ego, but also self-loathing and all this wonderful little cocktail that comes from a lot of us who grew up in houses like that. Because, you know, dad wasn't, he wasn't a blackout or anything. And he wasn't, he didn't vanish for days at a time.

He was just a pretty garden variety white collar drunk. But he, it still created a sense of instability. What did your dad do? He was, he was a customer service manager for a, national paper company, and if it sounds a little bit like what Michael Scott on the office does, it should. He was also like Michael Scott, but presumed he was the funniest guy in his office. I think he deep down wanted to have a life in the arts, but didn't think it was a stable thing to do and kind of suppressed that stuff. And I think was pretty ambivalent about me pursuing

it as a living. I mean, I think he was proud of me, but I think he struggled with it too. And your mom? My mom was a housewife until a divorce, and then she had various jobs in publishing. A lot of secretarial stuff, but then she ran a company for a few years. And then when she passed, she was still working as a sort of a personal organizer for hire. She was in her 70s, but she was helping people who were even older who were like, I don't know how to set up my email. And my mom was like basically tech support, which is really like is the blind leading the deaf.

And a number of, I don't know how she got. and do herself into a position where she was like, I will fix your computer problems. But there she was because she was dealing with people who were even more baffled than she was. She was mostly in publishing for most of my adolescence. Were you aware that you grew up with alcoholism? Or was that kind of upon later reflection?

I was aware that I grew up with alcoholism. I wasn't fully aware of the complete spectrum of alcoholic behavior. Alcoholism to me until pretty recently, actually, just met drinking too much. Right. And once you take that out of the equation, well, you've stopped drinking. So what's the problem? You know this about me.

I'm pretty square, you know, pretty square over here, did not drink until I was 21. Me neither. Yeah. Oh, so tell us a little bit about sort of like what was your history, what was your experience with alcohol? And specifically, I'm curious about what it felt like, meaning what did it make you feel like? Do you know what somebody means when they say they were straight edge? Mm-hmm. Okay, so I was straight-edge in high school.

And there was a massive straight-edge hardcore scene in New York. Explain straight-edge for the people who don't know. I won't go into the broader minor threat history of the term, but it just means you don't drink, you don't smoke, and you don't do drugs. And there is adherence who also take it to include veganism. There's people who take it to include abstinence, which I didn't. and either of those, veganism or abstinence. But I did not smoke, I did not drink, and I did not do drugs.

And there was a sense of pride around Straight Edge, meaning... There was a sense of arrogance about Straight Edge. Pride is a gentle way to put it. What Straight Edge was, was you can still be cool and have street cred and not drink smoke or do drugs. It wasn't, they weren't square. No, that was the key thing. There was a Straight Edge Skinheads faction where I grew up.

I grew up here in Los Angeles. but straight edge was like they were almost cooler for being straight edge. Well, they certainly tried to be, yeah. There was a real sense of, I mean, I used it for a couple of things. One, I used it to distinguish myself from my father. It struck me as like, for my vision of teenage rebellion, I would listen to punk rock, which my father didn't enjoy, and I would abstain from alcohol, which my father really enjoyed. And that would be my two-pronged approach to teenage rebellion.

And it was also a bargaining chip because I'd be like, yes, I will be out late. I'm going to go see a show at CV's tonight. But you know I will come home sober. I will take a cab and I will come home sober. And that was a valuable bargaining chip growing up in a crazy city. When I was 22, actually, not 21, 22. I wasn't Mormon. I had to sip here and there.

But you're going to get letters from Mormons. At 22, I was. You know this about me that I went to college to be a high school teacher, and I went back to my old high school to teach for one year right after college. Armed with just a bachelor's in my New York State certification, and I went in and on the first round of parent teacher conferences I had that October, this is October 93. I did something crazy that morning. I gave a pint of blood in the school's blood drive. I just thought it was a good thing for a young, healthy teacher to do. I went into the parent teacher conferences.

I had 60 students about five or six sets of parents set up showed up. That got me super depressed. I went out with all of my old teachers that night to a bar in the West Village and decided I am going to get drunk. Tonight I am going to get drunk and I got hammered and I loved it because I was to, you know, I give everything a larger significance than it really needs. And I was just like, okay, so five sets of parents set up, 60 kids, that's less than 10 percent. the world is ending and nobody cares about their kids anymore. You know, I just, I didn't, I just gave it this way, I give it way too big a context, I think.

So it really upset me, really got me depressed, and I decided to drown that with cranberries and vodka. Oh, yes, I was a girl drink drunk. I should make that abundantly clear. And yeah, what I found was I am relaxed. I am for the moment uninhibited, but not too uninhibited. And I didn't get sloppy, but I was down a pint of blood. And I was definitely over-served. And I just found it rather buoyant and stayed at that level for, you know, never getting like really, no blackouts.

But like, I would occasionally, like, I would drink a little bit every day and then get really shattered at least once a month. And stayed that way till for like 17 years. 17 years. Uh-huh. Yeah. What were those 17 years like in terms of progression? Did you see progression? I mean, you just said a little bit, but was there a point where you're like,

I can't stop? Did you try and stop? Like, I'm wondering when. I tried to taper a lot and tapering wasn't working. Yeah, so tell us what kind of taper because, you know, some of the kind of hallmarks are like changing the kind of drink, changing who you drink, only drinking on week. Like, all of the above? All of the above.

I tried all that stuff. I was like, you know, nothing brown. Right. Only, you know, nothing brown, only clear. Uh, okay, brown, but only on the weekends. Okay, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on. Only in groups. Nope, that isn't, nope, that isn't a thing. Um, and my father-in-law brought me this really nice bottle of scotch one time and put it in the house and they went, he was, they were visiting California and they went out, he and my wife and they went out for something. And I stayed at home to watch, oh boy, to watch the little one who was sleeping through

the night at this point. He came back and a lot of that scotch was gone. And I had just been playing wee tennis. Drinking and playing wee tennis, which is like, you know, the most 2009 reference I can possibly give you, I think. But yeah, it's not a great look. And I just got to this point where I have no devastating rock bottom story. There's a comedian who I won't name.

It's his story to tell. But he has a story about taking a friend's car and driving it into the Department of Water and Power building. I have nothing like that. But what I had was just a sense of like, this is not a great look. By this point I was a father of two, and I was like, this is not a great look.

This is not who I want to be. What else did you do, you know, besides the tapering? Were there other things you did? Because, you know, a lot of people will, you know, change diet, start meditating, like become a Buddhist. you know, were there other things that you tried to say, like, what if I do this? Well, let's take up smoking. Like, was anything like that, you know?

No, I, it was never a smoking. Smoking, I've never smoked. That, I mean, that literally killed both my parents. It wasn't the booze for my dad. It was the cigarettes that took him out. So I was never a smoker. And I didn't get into meditation and all, and Buddhism and all of the other necessities of Los Angeles sobriety.

until I actually quit. And I quit and did years of, quit booze and did years of marijuana maintenance, which I've heard called California Sober, which is hilarious and doesn't actually count as, if you're listening, that does not actually count as sobriety. True. That does not count a sobriety.

It's cute and it's funny, but it does not actually count as sobriety. So yeah, it wasn't until I had a booze-sized hole in my life that I started going to stuff like hot yoga, which I was doing at a fairly decent clip before the pandemic wrapped it all up. Do you do any hot yoga? Yes, I had just started before the pandemic.

And actually, it is a mental health-related issue. I have a very hard time being in my body and sitting in my body. And regular yoga, which before I had kids, I was a great practitioner. You know, life did its number on me. And I had two kids and I got divorce and all this stuff. And I could not sit in yoga.

and I'm not talking about like the good kind of crying. Like it's like deep shame and horrible inability to stop comparing and despairing. And also like for anyone who's not from Los Angeles, doing yoga in Los Angeles. It's a different beast. John, you are far better with words than I. What's it like doing yoga in Los Angeles? And pretend you're a woman for a second. Well, I would never dream of it.

But what it feels like is you could be. a relatively spry and slender man in his high 40s, and you go into an LA yoga class and you instantly feel like Fat King Lear. It is remarkable how out of shape you feel when you're surrounded by all of these actors who are in peak physical condition. And I was often at the upper end

of these hot yoga classes age-wise. Yes. Oh, I'm the oldest person in my hot yoga classes. And you've still, I mean, you're still, you're still a brunette, this silver fox over here, I looked ancient in that thing. Well, the bad news is you're just surrounded by incredible physical specimens. The good news is some of them have hilariously ill-advised tattoos. Just like every like, oh, dude, what are you doing?

Back to what you said. And this is not, I'm really not looking for dirt, but I am looking for a little bit more specificity in terms of your relationship with yourself. What did that bad look like to you? Meaning I'm not asking you to tell me which wall you peed against or anything like that. But what did it feel like? Did it feel like you were disconnected from your wife? Did it feel like you were not present?

Did it feel like you were running from something? How do we know that it's a problem? What it came to was the last night I got my drunk on, I was at a bar in Hollywood with a couple friends who did not have kids, and I was not driving that night. So I really threw caution to the wind. But I just got to a point where I just felt awful. I was sitting there pounding vodka's and I went to the bathroom and was sick and slashed some water on my face,

looked myself in the mirror and was just like, oh, oh, this looks tear. And I was pushing 40 and just did not look good. And I was like, you're a dad. You have two kids. What if they saw you like this right now? And granted, they were like three and not yet one. Or, yeah, there were three and not yet one. But I was still like, this is ugly.

This would actually be, you look so sick that it would be traumatic were they to see you like this? And there was no chance. They were out of town with their mom. And then I bellied up to the bar. Everything costs money in Los Angeles. The guy just put a massive water down in front of me. And when I went to pay, he was just like, no, no, no, you're good. Don't worry about it.

And I was like, wow, I just got a free drink. Granted, it was a water. But I look such a mess that the bartender at the King King just gave me a free bottle of water as like a loss leader or something because I'm just a shell of a man. So that's as bad as it got, which was too bad for me. You know, the phrase you hear is, your bottom is whenever you stop digging. And that was mine. It was just a real sense of like, like there's something in me that's always going to have a certain degree of self-loathing.

But if I can do anything in my behavior to ameliorate that, then why don't we? Why don't I not give myself the flu a couple times a month and make myself an embarrassing loudmouth every 15 days or so. It's not super dramatic, but it was dramatic for me. I've not really looked back with much regret. Yeah, I don't really get cravings or not cravings of any major significance. Like every once in a while I'll see somebody on TV with like a big frosty glass of something and it's like the glass is sweating on the outside. I'm like, oh, I bet that's nice. But I also realize that it will go beyond that and at no point will I look like George Clooney at all and it'll just be it.

Actually, that's a beautiful, beautiful point that I'd love for you to, you know, touch more on because I think they say, you know, it's like one is too many and all the drinks in the world are never enough, you know? Yeah. Yeah. I've heard a lot of people say, like, well, I can get sober. And then once I've, like, gotten that in control, then I'll just drink like a normal person, right? That's not your experience.

That has not been my experience. Again, when I quit, I stopped once in my early 30 just because I was on a run of medication that was going to take a while, and I just wanted to let the medication do its thing. Oh, screw it. It's you. Zoloft. And I... Yeah, you're not supposed to drink on Zoloft. Yeah, you're not supposed to drink on SSRIs. You're really not supposed to drink on M-A-O-I's, like, what is the class there. I think lithium is one of them. Yeah, but also Sudafed. I mean, things like that. Oh, that's right, yeah. Yeah, do not drink on Sudafed.

The other phrase that I heard when I quit that has been so valuable is, is, and they all like rhyme, you know, they all rhyme or they have a certain kind of like poetry to them. Well, it's a little folksy. A lot of the A lot of the ASEGs are a little foxy, yeah. The phrase, think through the drink is beyond valuable because you stop for a moment, you go, oh, that looks like a nice tall. It's sort of a warm lunchtime. I've got a little plate of cheese and crackers here. A glass of chardonnay would go down really well right now, but it wouldn't just be one, wouldn't it? It would be several. And it would no longer be cute and dignified. It would get sloppy and you'd spill some on yourself if you were lucky.

The rest of it would just go inside you. Next thing you know, you've basically poured yourself a glass of instant asshole and it will go into effect swiftly. So yeah, I think it was one of those things where I can't taper off on this. I'm not good at like cutting myself off at two. I think what would do much easier would be just completely eliminating this from my life. and finding something else to do. What is that something else? Because, you know, in the old days when they would try and get people sober in the sanatoriums and stuff, you would have to eat like, it was like pickled onions and all these things to

literally help metabolize the alcohol out of you so that you would, you know, you'd get the delirious tract, like you would get the shakes and, I mean, you'd be psychotic. They used to commit people, but they came up with this like concoction that was literally a chemical explanation for addiction, essentially. And this was, this was in the 30s, this was in the 40s. That's like lost weekend kind of stuff, yeah. Especially because you kind of talked about that there was a feeling that went away, right, when you were drinking or using, when you take away that drink, you know, you take away that whatever, what's left? Like, what did sobriety feel like?

It was a lot of things. Again, because of the fact that I gravitated to things like, like cranberry and vodka's and the sweeter ends of your white wines and rum drinks. I lost 10 fucking pounds in like 45 days when I quit. And it wasn't one of those like put down the cup, pick up the spoon kind of thing. I just, for whatever reason I didn't compensate it is the weight came flying off and everybody noticed and it was wild. My weight gain hadn't been unhealthy. It just, it was striking when I lost it.

what has taken me a very long time to come to terms with is that, you know, the booze is a symptom. The booze is not the problem. You know, if the booze was a problem, then people would just stop and that would be it. What you're left with, you know, they would speak about a pink cloud of sobriety that follows you for a couple of months. And that's all well and good. And I had a certain degree of that. You know, I felt a little more focused. My energy was up.

But eventually you've got to do something with that energy. It's only 10 years later that I'm starting to be. realize that I need a really regular exercise regimen, like really regular, like need to break a sweat for an hour once a day kind of thing. Things like that have been extremely helpful for my mood and my, the way I am with my kids, because what I was left with was this weird anger. And I remember when I quit 10 years ago, that's when I started my awful habit that I'm just starting to curb now, my awful habit of getting into political arguments. online, which is disastrous and does no one any good.

That's the adult child of the alcoholic and you also. That is turning the focus on other people and engaging that way instead of having to, yeah. And it's the adult child of a particular conservative alcoholic as well, too. There's a little sense of like, my father was no longer with us and would never have joined Twitter anyway, but hear this. Well, and it's funny you said that because what I hear from a lot of people in the rooms of Al-Anon is that they don't can, you know, people who grew up in alcoholism, for example, they don't connect the fact that they scream at people routinely in their car, or if someone

gets their order wrong, that they are rageful, or if someone annoys them at work, they cannot let it go. And that kind of rage, you know, often, I'm not saying everyone who's a road rager was raised in alcoholism or, you know, could benefit. This guy was. Correct. Right. No, but I think that's so interesting because I think especially the climate that we're living in, we have so many opportunities of where to put that. Also, you're very funny on Twitter, which I enjoy a lot of your rants. I've left, actually. I've left them off Twitter. I'm saying in my past experience with you, I enjoyed very much, your musings. Oh, well, thank you. It was, there came a point where I realized I was probably not going to shift the temperature of the nation with my 50,000 Twitter followers,

so decided it would be best to abstain. still on Instagram. My policy now is I don't start fights, but I do tend to get kind of nasty if someone starts with me. Or me. You've defended me. That's terrible, though. What am I doing commenting on your feed? Solidifying our friendship. Well, all right, lovely. But I always watch, like, I watch you, I watch, you and Jim never engage. Galecki engages, and Melissa stays out of it. Simon's off social media. I haven't seen it forever. Simon, I have no idea of Simon's alive. He is.

Fight your tongue. He's not on social media, so he might as well be passed away. And then Kunal is, Kunal is amazing right now. He's spreading wisdom. He's just spreading his wisdom. He's just the Buddha in blue jeans. And God love him. I would love to have him on his own time.

I want what he has. But I watch you guys, and I need to emulate that. I need to emulate like, oh, here is a graphic that I think explains a misunderstanding about a particular issue. And then don't read the comments, John. go play with your kids. Okay, so let me just get back to, and I don't want to speak about anonymous fellowships

because it's not for me to ask you and it's not for you to talk about if you want. But what I am curious about is, is there some process of, you know, soul-searching and rigorous honesty that you undertake as part of trying to live life this way now, sober? You know, that second A is there for a reason.

There's a quality to life during this pandemic that if there's any good thing about what's going on right now is that sense of reaching out for community and not even having to put pants on, you know, and making a decision to hang out with a certain group of people at 1 o'clock and making that decision at 1258, not having to worry about parking or anything and just, you know, off you and you're there. I've gotten in touch with a lot of old friends, some of whom I knew hung out and stuff like, I mean, I'm doing a piss poor job of maintaining that second day right now. But, but yeah, there's a, there's been a sense of community and sort of collective unconscious that I found very soothing right now.

And then, you know, I play guitar with my son and I play video games with my son. And I'm teaching my daughter a little bit of bass. We are trying to support the restaurants in our neighborhood. So we will go out and eat alfresco in a few places. which has been really nice. I'm just trying to make sure that the time I do spend with my family is really quality time. Are you a person of faith? Do you have a spiritual practice?

Like, what's your notion of, you know, the universe? Or does it play into, you know, your life in any way? It does. It does. I'm very private about it, not because I'm very private about it, but because I don't quite, I'm not quite able to put it into words. And I'm comfortable living in that mystery. but I wouldn't be able to point to it as it is very much this Judeo-Christian idea.

But I, you know, yeah, there's definitely something, especially as I get older and I've lost my parents and you get a keener sense of your mortality and you want to kind of get a sense of something holding us all together that we're not all just worm food. Yes, I have a growing spiritual practice that is in development. And like anything in development, a script, a pilot idea, we're not going to talk about it just now. And you'll read about it in the trades. You're one of my favorite honorary Jews. You know, it's like a very Hamish equality, a very familiar quality about you.

I believe it's because you have Irish in you? It's Scott's Irish, but I mean, but there's an old Lenny Bruce quote that if you're from New York, you're Jewish. And if you're from Montana and you're Jewish, you're goyish. And it doesn't matter. So I mean, like, my daughter said something because my wife is Jewish, which of course makes my kids Jewish. And I used something, some smattering of Yiddish the other day. And my daughter, my older one, Nola, there's Nola and then there's my son, Walter. She said, did you get all this Yiddish from mom?

And I was like, no, no, no, no, no. I got your mom because I have all this Yiddish. Let me make something perfectly clear. I arrived. I arrived knowing more than the, I had read Joys of Yiddish when I was a teenager. There's a lot of, it's just such a wonderful language, you know. But what I do love, aside from like the surface stuff about like, I like being picked up in a chair at my wedding, you know.

I liked, we took my family's tartan and made the chuppah out of it, you know. And there's a lot of things. And I love what the chippa symbolizes a house open on all four sides. There's a lot about Judaism. And it's ceremonial qualities that I really love. But I also love the inquisitiveness and the constant. questioning that is built into the faith in a way that I never really found in in Episcopalianism, which is the faith I was raised in, which I'm not knocking, you know, it's, there's a lot of

beauty in that. I'll add it to the list of letters we're getting. At no point is the greater Episcopal Diocese of anywhere going to get together with pitchforks and torches and come after us. That's not how they roll. I first of all want to, we just have a couple more minutes. And I want to thank you for for mentioning two things that really tie in so beautifully with really the purpose of this podcast, which is to introduce people to the concept of mind-body connection. And you mentioned exercise and you mentioned social media. And those are two things that have a tremendous impact on mental health. They are diametrically opposed.

No, but I was really thinking... Twitter is the anti-exercise. No, but I actually, I wasn't thinking of them in opposition like that. I was thinking of them as things that many people do not even think that before turning to medication, before turning to even, you know, to therapy. Like, what are the things that my body is doing or not doing that might be contributing to an increase in stress, anxiety, rage, tension? So I really want to thank you for bringing those up.

Well, that's always been really interesting to me because the, you know, the first time I was diagnosed, with depression, I was like 27, 26, 27, and was struck by how physical the symptoms were. And like, I lost my appetite. My stomach was a mess constantly. And I almost got feverish a little bit. Like it was affecting my actual body temperature, these anxiety attacks I was having. That whole idea of there's mental health and there's physical health and the never the train shall meet is, is, and I'm going to sound like the most annoying college freshman in the world right now.

But it's a very Western idea, man, you know? It's very, it's very, very heteronormative in Western. And the truth is far more complicated than that. And I think we do ourselves a disservice when we distinguish what we're putting into our bodies from what we're putting into our heads. The last thing I'd want to say is actually not something that's in my notes, which I have so meticulously prepared for you. You're a naturalist, by the way. You take this fish to water. Thank you.

to water. Thank you, John Ross Bowie. Well, what I want to say is something that honestly may not even make the, may not even make the edit, but I want to say it because I never anticipated feeling this until I spoke to you. And I'm, I got very emotional when you were discussing what it ended up looking like. And I thought, meaning for you, your experience. And I've known and loved many an addicts and many an alcoholic. That's a different story. But what struck me so much is that that, you know, I'm a person who came into your life, you know, didn't know a lot of these things that were happening for you and with you. But when I hear you talking and you are someone that I respect and you're someone that I really care about, we've shared a very specific spiritual

experience where I witnessed my higher power and we were in the same room. Hearing you being in a state of discomfort and pain is so painful because I care about you. And the no. notion that there was a time when you did not feel, you know, that you could handle life without those things is very, very, it's very moving to me to hear you reflect on that because I know how much you are committed to your family and to your kids. And you've had a tremendous impact, you know, on an aspect of pop culture history. You're a talented and accomplished person. but what I'm so grateful to you about is for being so courageous to share those other parts of you because that's literally how that stigma gets released.

I was really, not to make it about me, because you know I like to make things about me, but just the notion also that like I would never want you to suffer or anyone to suffer the way that you did. And especially as a parent, I, you know, anytime my kid's like, I'm feeling really sad. I'm not taking interest in hanging out with my friends. I'm like, is this it? Is this my red flag? You know? So I'm very grateful for you sharing, you know, not only what it looks like now, but the journey that it took to get you here because I'm so grateful that I get to love you sober. I'm so grateful that I get to see the parts of you that feel realized

and seen. It's very, it's very powerful. I really appreciate you coming and playing today. I'm all. You're all for clement. Yeah, I'm very forclaimed. That's lovely. I, uh, Feel the same way about you. I've always found you very easy to talk to right from the get-go. And I am doing okay. Good. And I'm doing better having had this conversation with you.

Oh, John, that's so awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for helping us break down addiction. Eh, it's one version. I hope you all enjoyed that conversation that I just had with John Ross Bowie and I'm very, very grateful that he came on and shared so intimately about his experience. So that was awesome.

I was in college and grad school for a long time. I did five years undergrad and seven years in grad school. And those were really the first years that I saw a lot of drinking, meaning I saw other people doing a lot of drinking. I was not, never have been a big drinker myself. So I was often the sober one and the lucid one for many, uncomfortable and sometimes dangerous situations that I was in. And it's true. A lot of people are partiers in college or even in high school. And they eventually curtail it or stop their drinking and go on to have a beer or a glass of wine here or there. And it's not an issue. I'd like to repeat,

it's not for me to diagnose anyone either with this episode of this podcast or with what I'm about to say. But I do want to do a you might need help if regarding addiction and particular drinking. And I am not listing these things to make you feel bad, to shame you or to tell you how to live your life. I'm simply going to list some of the general diagnostic criteria that are used to start a conversation with yourself about if you might want to look into your relationship to alcohol in particular. So you might need help if. You might need help if you drink to get drunk, meaning it's the feeling of drunkenness, that the disappearing, that numbing out, that lack of worry or anxiety, or the joy of not feeling like yourself, meaning wanting to just escape who you are,

if that's what's driving you to drink, you might need help. If you are pursuing the feeling of getting drunk or that experience, you might need help if you drink so much that you throw up and continue drinking. You might need help if you drink and pass out or blackout, meaning that there are periods of time that you do not remember what happened. And something I actually didn't know until I was, I think, well into my 30s, blackouts can include long stretches of time. Like you can drive in a blackout, you can talk, you can interact with people, you can have sex. And your brain does not hold that information. And that will likely come up in other episodes when we talk about memory and things like that.

If you are drinking and having blackouts, that is a very strong sign that you likely need help. If you drink alone, alone is a little bit hard. I'll be honest. I've had wine out of a sippy cup more times in my life I would like to admit, and I was alone. But if you are drinking alone again to pursue that numbing out, if you're drinking like first thing in the morning, and again, culturally, there are some cultures where having a shot of vodka before your day is standard. but if you are drinking, especially in the morning, so that you can get through the day, if you're drinking because you need to get through an exam, if you're drinking because you need to drink to be able to go to work, if you're drinking or using because you need to see your family,

if you're drinking so you can get through something, that's a sign that it's serving a purpose other than being a recreational drug. If you've tried anything like switching the kind of drinks you drink in hopes that you'll drink less, tried drinking like, oh, I'll just drink on weekends or I'll just drink in the week or I'll just drink with these friends, but not with those friends. Those attempts to control your drinking are often markers that you might need help. As I said before, there are many ways to treat addiction. Alcoholics Anonymous is one way. I'm going to list resources on the website, some general ones and some specific ones regarding 12-step programs. And I'm also going to list resources on the website, biolicbreakdown.com. For the other

major addictions, there's often a lot of overlap. So you'll often have people who are addicted. to alcohol and also have problems with drugs or with sex or with relationships and things like that. And in the mental health world, there's a lot of time spent, you know, deciding what's self-medicating and what's a symptom of a larger problem. It's often unclear, as I got into with John, it's often unclear if it is mental health challenges that are leading us to need to have that thing that makes us go away, that makes us escape, that allows us to numb. Or if the predisposition to those addictions then leads to further mental health problems. And it's likely a combination of both. I think if we've learned anything from this episode, it's that it's not necessarily important that we

understand all of the intricacies of how and why. It's more important to say, if you are an addict, if you are an alcoholic, if you are struggling with your dependence on something, you're not alone. There is hope. And the time to reach out is, Now there are those among us who have been through what you've been through, and there are those among us who can help. Please go to biolicbreakdown.com and let us know how else we can help. And from my breakdown to the one that I hope you never have, we will see you next time. It's my and Bealik's Breakdown.

She's going to break it down for you. She's got a neuroscience Ph.D. or two. One fix you. And now she's going to break down. So break it down.