Stuff You Should Know - Addiction: Why you can't kick SYSK

Episode Date: November 4, 2010

Modern scientists have extensively researched addicts and the things they abuse, but we still don't understand everything about the nature of addiction. So how does it work? Tune in to learn more about addiction (and why you can't kick your SYSK habit). Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Flooring contractors agree. When looking for the best to care for hardwood floors, use Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner. The residue-free, fast drying solution is specially designed for hardwood floors, delivering the safe and effective clean you trust. Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner is available at most retailers where floor cleaning products are sold and on Amazon. Also available for your other hard surface floors like Stone, Tile, Laminate, Vinyl, and LVT. For cleaning tips and exclusive offers, visit Bona.com slash Bona Clean. The War on Drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call,

like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to The War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HouseStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Tran Bryant, Chuckie, Chuckles, Chucks, or whatever. Chuck Tran's new. I had something that I was working on in my head, but it got pushed out by the 8 million other things that I have to keep in my working

memory. Another nickname or? Yeah. This is a good one too. I think it was really going to knock everyone's socks off. Chucklet? No. Chair like that. That's an LOL. She's getting a lot freer with the laughs these days, huh? Either that or she's moving her chair closer and closer. Or she's on LOL cats right now. She's not even listening. Chuck, we're talking about addiction today. That's right. Do you remember in the Is Science Phasing Out Sleep podcast? Which, strangely enough, comes out today on the day we're recording it, but this will be released like five weeks later. You talked about recording this. Yeah, we talked about doing addiction, and lo and behold, here it is. So really, if you think about it, we are on track in real time,

but in podcast release publishing time, it seems like there's a big lag. True. But we're giving people what they want, right? That's right. Addiction. Or what we want. Did you like this article? Yeah. Did you know that there are many stories about addiction in our society today? This is like the most rigid article of mine you've ever read. Oh, you wrote this? Yes. I'm just kidding. Dude, it was, I went back when I read it. I was like, it was very scientific sounding like you could have been on the National Institutes of Health website, and it was very bland. And there was one thing I remember going back reading. I didn't pull the trigger on. We're talking about addiction and researching it compared to our views of

addiction like even 20, 30 years ago, like in the 80s. Right. I can't believe that was like 30 years ago, 1980. Crazy. That whole Nancy Reagan, just say no campaign, scare the bejesus out of a lot of people. But it also had a very negative impact as well, in that it's so grossly over exaggerated the effects and the addictiveness of drugs that for kids who were, I guess, gutsy enough to go ahead and try the drugs that they've been warned against, once they tried them and found out that they weren't, you know, they didn't turn into like a donkey. Right. As Nancy Reagan told them, they wouldn't. Sure. Then they were like, well, I wonder what other drugs are going to do. You know, they get a little more bold and courageous. So are you saying that the just say no to drugs

campaign may have had the reverse effect on people who actually tried drugs? And it's not just me saying that there's a lot of there's a lot of consensus in the addiction field, which is, you know, multi-disciplinary that this just say no campaign or any campaign that over exaggerates the effects of drugs and deviates from a straight science based reporting of what addictive substances can do to you can have a negative impact or effect. Well, you think we would have learned our lesson from reefer madness back in the day. You would definitely think so. You know, that whole dope fiend thing. Chuck, it's funny that you bring up a reefer madness and dope fiend thing because that was the way for a period that people looked at addicts. It was a major character flaw.

Right. Right. But before that, it was just no big deal. Well, there was no such thing. Right. As addiction up until like the late 18th century. It was called how things are. Exactly. Did you see that little thing I sent you about the funeral of a Boston minister's wife in 1678? Yeah, I didn't get a chance to read it, was it? So there's this really cool paper. If you ever have some time to kill, which I know you never, ever, ever do. But it's a 32 pager by a guy named Harry G. Levine called the discovery of addiction colon changing conceptions of habitual drunkenness in America. What year? Sounds really boring. I think it's like 1978. But this guy's tracing the history of addiction. And he's saying like prior to the 18th century, the end of the 18th century,

there was no such thing like people drink because they wanted to get drunk. Sure. Right. So in 1678, people in America drank their faces off Chuck, e.g. at the funeral of a Boston minister's wife, mourners consumed 51 and a half gallons of wine. Wow. And think about any mourners. How many could there be? It's 1678 in Boston. It's like 50 people who aren't like Native American in the continental United States or what would become. Well, maybe there were 51 and a half people and they drank it. And then at the ordination, not a funeral, an ordination of Reverend Edwin Jackson of Woburn, Massachusetts, guest drank six and a half barrels of cider, 25 gallons of wine, two gallons of brandy and four gallons of rum. Wow. Yeah. And that was just for the guy becoming

a minister. You know, our Boston listeners right now are like, that's right. They're like, whoa, that's wicked. Awesome. The wicked. Historical facts. So and then in the 18th century, there was everybody's just drinking, drinking, drinking for fun. Then the 18th century, some people are like, you know what, I kind of have to have four gallons of brandy. Right. Help me. And then we started to get this idea that there was such thing as addiction, but it wasn't the person. It was on the substance, right? Yeah. It's the absence or the opium. You know, those were like the drugs of choice back in the day. Right. That's the problem. Those things are evil and they're bad. Right. And actually opium addiction was so widespread. Did you see that little sidebar? I did not.

Opium addiction. Opium was everywhere. Right. Like you could get it in any kind of tincture, tonic for any kind of malady whatsoever. And so many middle-aged women became hooked on morphine and opium that it was seen in the late 19th century as a woman's problem. Oh, really? PMS or menopause. Interesting. That's how people viewed addiction for a while. But it went from the substance to the person, the character flaw, the dope fiend, right? I thought it went from the person to the substance. No, it went from this. I'm sorry, the substance to the person. Right. So it went from it's the problem of the substance to the problem of the person's a character flaw, their dope fiend. And then finally we arrive at the idea that addiction is

a disease, a chronic disease. And a person who is addicted is a sufferer, not a fiend. That's where we are now for the most part. Right. But we still don't fully understand addiction. We have a pretty good view of it, right? I feel like a lot of things with the human body we explain, we always lead in with like, they sort of know, but they sort of don't. Well, it's that point where all the pieces are on the table. We just haven't put them all together. Remember? Do you know why, Josh? Why? Because the human body is a miracle. It's a big mysterious miracle. Nice. I mean, when you think about it, really, about all the things going on in the brain and the body and the fact that, you know,

it's wrapped up in bones and skin. Yeah, it sounds like intelligent design to me. There you have it. Do you remember your theory of what happened to the Neanderthals? Didn't I say they froze? No, they got thirsty. Yeah, they got hot and thirsty. All right, Chuck, I stand by that. So the whole point of addiction is it hijacks the brain's reward system, right? Yeah, the limbic system. And that's exactly what it does, Josh. When you are, you know, born and you're a human being, you learn very quickly that, you know, you have to survive by eating and sleeping and taking care of yourself. And that's because it triggers the limbic system into shooting a little dopamine out and your body says,

hey, I like that. I need to do that again. Right. And that's what drugs do, except they do it two to 10 times as much. And it's, it's false. It's fake. Dopamine's like the doggy treat of anything with the brain. Yeah. So if you can get 10 doggy treats, yeah, immediately, you know, instead of the one, then you take it and then your brain says, boy, this is great. I could get used to this. Right. And it does. Right. And since we learn we're pretty much hardwired to learn from that release of dopamine to repeat that behavior, like reproduce or exercise or eat. Yeah. We, if we're getting 10 times that amount, we pick it up even quicker. Oh yeah. Like, oh, okay. Well, this crack cocaine makes me feel

really good. So I'm going to try that. You need it more. Right. And when it goes away, it makes things a lot worse than just sleeping because I didn't get enough sleep. Well, we should say also that the current view of addiction, the brain disease model, right, states that that just because you try something doesn't mean you're going to become addicted. The process or addiction is a process. Right. And a person goes from a user crosses a threshold at some point and becomes an addict. So a user and an addict are not synonymous. No, no, no. They exist on two different parts of the spectrum of addiction or spectrum of substance use and abuse, right? Use and abuse. That's like those are the two different words. Right. So, well, you summed up

the, um, I guess the way that addiction works pretty succinctly. Well, it becomes physically addictive. Basically, you develop a dependency on this shot of dopamine, this huge shot of dopamine, and your body needs it all of a sudden. Suddenly, you know, you lose control. Right. And we should say that, um, drugs generally, like all drugs of addiction, um, hijack the reward system. Yeah. We've talked about other drugs. I can't remember in some other podcasts that don't necessarily work the dopamine. Therefore they don't necessarily produce addictive properties. Right. Right. Um, but those that do hijack dopamine transmitters, they either stimulate dopamine's release and or they bind to dopamine receptors and prevent

its reuptake. Yeah. Right. So you got a bunch of dopamine release and you got a bunch of it staying in between your synapses longer. Right. And then like you said, you become dependent on it. You want that feeling. Well, your brain does without, even if you don't even know this is going on, your brain is saying to your body, you need to go out and get more of that because that was really awesome. Right. Because your reward system is, uh, it's, it's there to motivate us to do stuff or to do stuff since it's the reward system. So yeah, like you said, um, your, your, uh, priorities become reprioritized and drugs get to the four or whatever that substance or behavior is. Right. Well, yeah, you always hear, um, like the hardcore abusers of heroin or cocaine. It literally,

they say it overtakes your life to where your job is to every day get the money that you can find the draw and find the drugs so you can use the drugs. Right. It's full time deal. And so you've got, uh, you've got the hangover withdrawal. That's where your dopamine, um, basically your brain's like, okay, uh, right. I sense that something artificial is going on. So I'm going to stop producing as much and you're going to have to go through a horrible little period. That's the withdrawal or hangover. Right. Then you've got physical dependency and at a point at about this point you've crossed over into addictive being an addict. Yeah. You're not a user anymore. Once you have physical dependency, um, and that's where because your brain's not producing that dopamine

naturally any longer and you get the withdrawal or the hangover so bad that you can't stand it, you will do more. And at that point you're like crusty the clown with moon rocks. Right. You're just getting back to normal. Yeah. You know, now you're physically dependent. That's like, that's the key. I'm not sure if that's getting through to all the cause I can picture people out there looking concerned and bewildered right now. Your brain actually stops producing dopamine. If it's getting it, you know, the, an unnatural way, it goes, you know, I don't even make it anymore. Well, there's enough of it out there floating around already. It's just so messed up. You're literally tricking your brain into doing something that it should be doing naturally.

Right. And that's why, uh, with a lot of drugs, getting high, getting that high, uh, is harder and harder and harder and harder. Sure. Well, or easier. There's that flip side too, which I thought was interesting. It is. And I don't fully understand it. I don't, I don't feel bad because I don't think science fully understands it either, but that's two symptoms of physical addiction. Um, either you need more to get high or you need far less than you ever did before. I would think if you're an addict, you'd want to choose the second one. You'd be like, man, I can get high off of two dollars worth of heroin rather than 10, like I used to need. Unfortunately, you don't get that choice though. No. Um, no, because of this, because your brain has been basically hijacked by this

drug. Uh, and I hate, I guess we probably shouldn't anthropomorphize drugs, not actually hijacking anything, but because your brain's reward system has been reprioritized to serve this drug. Thank you. Yes. Um, the, the whole point of treating addiction, and I actually wrote a companion article on this, how rehab works. That's pretty interesting. Um, was that based on your experience in rehab? Yeah. Uh, no, no, no. Not true. Um, the, uh, the point of treating addiction is, in most cases, to just completely discontinue use, which is called abstinence, right? Yeah. For most, all addiction, abstinence is the way to go, except for, of course, like eating addictions and stuff like that. Right. And, uh, sex addiction. Yeah. They don't want

you to never have sex again. No. We'll get to that. I have a problem with sex addiction. Okay. Not, I have a problem. I have a problem with everyone saying all these athletes are sex addicts, because they cheat on their wives. Oh yeah. I would think that it's probably the most exploited addiction. Yeah. For sure. So Josh, we're talking about addiction. What are some of these symptoms of addiction? How do you know if you're an addict? Oh, well, there's two types. Yes. There's physical and behavioral. And I should say those two types are specific to substances of abuse, right? Yeah. You can have and or physical or behavioral if you're doing like coke or heroin or drinking. Right. With behavioral, behavioral addictions, compulsive

behaviors. It's just behavioral. That doesn't mean it's any less addictive. No. That person's any less addicted. Or harmful to, you know, your life. Right. But we said, uh, one of the, one of the physical symptoms is that you either need more or less of the drug, right? That's right. Um, those, that's a physical symptom. Then there's a lot of stuff that you could easily guess. Um, trouble sleeping, sweating, uh, hand tremors, nausea, physical agitation. Yeah. That's if you don't have the substance in your body. Right. Those are the withdrawal symptoms. Basically your body's telling you like, go do more. Yeah. Cause we don't feel good right now. And you get that from everything from alcohol to, uh, cigarettes to caffeine.

Mm hmm. Caffeine headaches are supposed to be pretty bad. Right. I've heard, like, I've heard people that try to kick diet coke. It can be pretty awful. I've, um, I've had caffeine headaches before. They're not that bad, but I have heard of people who really suffer from them. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so the physical, the physical stuff, really it's using more or less or just using to get back to normal. Right. That's physical addiction. And then, you know, anything that, that happens to your body as a result of using or abusing a drug. Yeah. That's physical. Yeah. Behavioral, which is also called psychological symptoms, um, is the stuff that happens to your life. Basically. Right. So what are they? Well, it's, um, you may have tried to quit doing whatever

this behavior is, whether it's gambling or overeating or sex and, uh, you're not able to. So that's one of the traits. Yeah. So you're not going to have much success there. Uh, or maybe you spend more time doing it where to the point where it's like, you know, you might lose your job or go broke or something like that. Those are all behavioral traits. Yeah. What else? Uh, well, you, um, basically you're still using this stuff, even though, you know, it's having a harmful impact on you or your life or others, or you might stop doing stuff that's good for you. Like, uh, it used to be a jogger, but then, uh, my sex addiction became so great. I don't even jog anymore. Right. Now just have sex. Right. All the time and play professional football. Um, and Chuck,

because of this, this brain disease model that we talked about, uh, because of these, of these symptoms, um, the view of addiction as it stands today, the most widely held model is the brain disease model. Yeah. And the basis of that is that addiction is a chronic disease, right? Right. So as such, just like, say asthma or tuberculosis or whatever, you're going to have flare ups. Yeah. Relapse. Right. Well, yeah, it's relapse with addiction. And so if you go into treatment, you need to have like booster sessions as well after you're cured or clean or whatever. Well, yeah, that's sort of the basis of AA, right? You still got to go to those meetings. Right. Which is why I think it's so radically successful. Yeah. And the LSD in the

coffee. Right. That should be out by now, I think. Yeah. Otherwise people can go, what? I need to get to AA. I had an AA joke, but I'm not going to tell it. That's good, Chuck. We've both grown up so much, haven't we? Yes. In the past 30 minutes, the war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff.

Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty, exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, y'all. This is Dr. Joy Harden, Bradford, host of the award-winning weekly podcast Therapy for Black Girls. Our incredible community of sisters has been building the Therapy for Black Girls podcast for five years running. And over that time, we've published over 250 episodes and gained over 18 million podcast downloads. During this time,

we've tackled the stigma surrounding mental health and shared conversations to help us all understand ourselves and others a little better. Hundreds of incredible licensed mental health care professionals and other experts have joined us to share tips on taking better care of ourselves. We flipped through the pages of your favorite romance novels with author Tia Williams, checked in with Grammy award-winning artist Michelle Williams, and discussed the hurdles of balancing competitive sports, motherhood, and mental health with Olympic athlete Natasha Hastings. Five years down and many more years of work to be done. Join us now by checking out the Therapy for Black Girls podcast on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your

podcast. What else we got here, Josh? Behavioral psychologists, they used to think that I thought this was really interesting. They sort of understand addiction a little bit, but they used to think that if you just tried drugs in the first place, drugs or alcohol or any kind of addictive substance, then there was just something wrong with you. But there's actually genetic basis for even that. Not even whether or not you get addicted, but whether you try it to begin with. Well, yeah, it's not just that. Genetics is one of a number of risk factors. There's also your susceptibility to peer pressure, your feelings of self-worth at that moment, or at that period in your life. If you have anxiety or depression, that's been shown to increase the likelihood

that you're going to try drugs. So it's not just like a kid's like, I'll try this. Let's see what happens. That's how they used to see it. Now they see it as like, no, there's some other comorbid factors going on. It's both nature and nurture. So a good example would be if you start having sex to increase your sense of self-worth that could lead to a sex addiction, that low self-esteem would be a risk factor that led you into your sex addiction, right? Or if you're depressed and you just self-medicate. Right. Or if you try drugs and you're like, wow, I really, really like this. That's another one for sure. Right. So we were talking about physical and behavioral symptoms, right? Again, under the current brain disease model of addiction, basically the double whammy

is psychological dependence. Yeah. Which could be just as bad. Right. Because it has not only an effect on the person, it has effect on the society as well. Yeah. So the person's life can be ruined by addiction. Sure. But they may also commit crime to feed their addiction. Right. Or their break up their family on a personal level. Or both. Or commit violence. Right. Right. So the worst one is psychological or behavioral. Yeah, for sure. Which makes both substances of abuse and compulsive behaviors, addictive behaviors, equally bad. Well, yeah. And what that means is you can't say, you can't be one of these hardliners that just says, you know, if someone wants to go out and kill themselves on dope, then that's their business.

Right. Well, yeah. Because there's a lot of other things going on. It's a great argument against it. But other impacts. Right. But is prohibition the answer? Well, it certainly wasn't with alcohol, was it? No, it did not work. You know why? Because no one stopped drinking. Yeah. Prohibition didn't really go over too well. So Chuck, you want to talk about some specific drugs and behaviors that people get addicted to? Yeah. We've talked about meth a little bit and what a stupid thing that is to try. Right. What was that in? Our big anti-meth rant? I think it was when we did the meth labs, crime scene cleanup. Yeah, yeah. Methanphetamines, the good news is the use is going down, it looks like. Yeah, which surprises me. I never thought it would

be steady or still going up. Well, maybe people are starting to realize it. It's not very smart. But they actually study brain patterns, Josh, of long-term meth users. And they found that 50%, up to 50% of their dopamine producing cells were damaged or just shot. Yeah. Yeah. So you literally, I mean, I don't know if they can regenerate you. That remains to be seen. Remember, there's that whole study on MDMA that got it out on the first place about serotonin levels being able to regenerate. Right, right. I don't know. I don't think anybody knows yet if we're capable of doing that. We've not been studying it long enough, I think. Let's get some stats going too while we're doing these.

But yeah, I was going to say, what's encouraging about meth prevalence is that it's cut in half. People who have used it in the past month has gone down from 731,000 in 2006. And this is in the US to 314,000 in 2008. That's half of what it was. Yeah. That's great. That's significant in two years. That kind of dropped. So yeah, I would say that the anti-meth campaigns are working. Oh, they're all dying. Yeah. Which is possible. Yeah. What's next? Prescription drugs. Now, those are on the rise. Yeah, they're probably the most abused drug in the United States because everybody's on them. There's a huge problem with the elderly population. Right. Basically getting hooked on meds. Sure. There's a huge problem with the adolescent

population, basically getting hooked on their grandparents' meds. And there's been a fourfold increase in people checking into rehab who are on prescription medications within the 21st century, within the first decade. Four times as many as there were before. And in 1998, 2.2% of people seeking treatment for any kind of drugs were on prescription drugs. Josh, also with the the scripts, as I like to call them, prescription drugs. In 1998, 2.2% of people seeking treatment reported abusing the pain relievers. And in 2008, 10 years later, 10% reported abuse. Right. And that's just among people who are seeking treatment. I mean, I can supposedly need it. Yeah. I think one of the reasons why prescription drugs are so abused is because,

well, they're legal, technically, and they're socially accepted in a lot of ways. Oh, yeah, totally. You know, people don't look at them as like a blanket drug. They look at them as all these different little drugs, you know? Yeah. I mean, Robert Downey Jr. used heroin. So he was, you know, this lawless scoundrel. But Chandler Bing gets hooked on back pills because he had a bad back and it's, yeah, it's sort of dismissed. Yeah. You know, Jody Foster said she would never work with Robert Downey Jr. again after home for the holidays. Yeah. Was he messed up during that? Yeah. That was right in the middle of it. Yeah. That's a good movie. That's a shame. Is it? I never saw it. Yeah. It's good. It's a Thanksgiving movie. You should rent it for

Thanksgiving. Speaking of heroin, right? Yes. It apparently is a lot more socially acceptable than it was before, but it's still pretty much like a junkie is a junkie in the U.S. Nobody's like, oh, it's just a junkie. It's like he's a junkie. That's kind of a huge deal. Well, they say that 23% of people who try heroin become dependent on it. So that's pretty substantial. Yeah. That's about a quarter. But at the same time, it's surprising, though, if you were raised in the 80s, because you would think that 108% of people who try heroin become hooked on it. Yeah. I remember the one big one that they used to say is if you try heroin just once, you're physically addicted to it. Yeah. That was one of the big campaigns. Same

with crack. They said the same thing about crack. You try it one time and you're addicted. Right. In the U.S., there's actually been something of an increase from 2007 to 2008, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health. From 153,000 people age 12 and older in the U.S. who said that they used heroin in the past month to 213,000 in 2008. So there has been, I guess that is substantial, especially if you look at the population of heroin users, that tiny amount, that's kind of, yeah, that's a big increase, actually, now that I think about it. You got cocaine and crack, sister drugs. Josh, from 2002 to 2008, rates of past month cocaine use among kids declined from 0.6 to 0.4%, which is good. Sure. And it also dropped among young

adults 18 to 25. So it seems like those drugs are sort of on the way in a little bit. Yeah. And again, if you look at meth prescription drugs, well, painkillers especially, heroin, coke, crack, all of these have an effect of targeting your reward center, producing that high, and you're learning to repeat this behavior, right? Yeah. Again, this can also happen very strongly among compulsive behaviors like sex addiction. And Chuck, before you go off on sex addiction, let's say that according to the National Association of Sexual Addiction and Compulsivity, the NASAC, obviously, there's about 3 to 6% of the American population that suffers from sex addiction, right? Yeah, which is the real compulsive behavior that's diagnosed. So Chuck,

sex addiction, go? Well, clearly, there is such a thing, but it's just so overused. Like you said, Jesse James is a sex addict. These are men of privilege, is what it is. Tiger Woods, Jesse James, Brett Favre. They're guys that are in the position that they can have sex with whoever they want, whenever they want, and a lot of guys will take the opportunity to do it. It doesn't mean they're sex addicts. No. And like you said earlier, or we may have even cut it out, I think the bad thing that it does is that it gives them sort of a free pass because they're just helpless to it. Yeah, it is really. I mean, basically, it seems like a defense for poor character. Yeah, exactly. Unless all these guys are in that 3 to 6%. Right. And again, I think,

I'm sure that there is like an actual sexual addiction. Yeah. Right. Viggo Mortensen had it in 28 days. Yeah. For 3 to 6% of the people. Right. So, but, and that's sad that there's probably a lot of people out there who need help or who actually are sex addicts and people just don't believe them because it's like you're full of it. I don't believe Brett Favre either. Right. And that's unfounded as Brett Favre is, but. And the other thing with sex addiction, too, that we should point out is that like many addictions, it's not even about the sex anymore. And apparently once you are a sex addict, you're not even getting the enjoyment out of it anymore. Yeah, which sucks. Yeah, I would say so. So, I think, like we said, the point of sex

treatment, sex addiction treatment is to restore the person back to a point where they can enjoy sex. Yeah. Without being addicted to it. So, it's not abstinence. It's having a healthy sex life. Right. And the same goes with binge eating disorders, which is about 1-3% of people have a binge eating disorder. In the general population, if you're obese or you seek weight loss treatment or help with eating, the population is far higher. About a quarter of people who are obese and seek professional help for it have binge eating disorder. And it's pretty much what it sounds like. It's like binging and purging, which is bulimia, but without the purging part. Right. Right. Binging and binging. Yes. And gambling, Josh, is another compulsive

behavior that I think has risen since internet gambling has become more accessible. And another name for gambling compulsion is ludomania. Oh, really? Ludomania. Interesting. 15 million people, they say, display some sign of gambling addiction. Is that in the U.S., I guess? Yeah. I think in this article originally, it had like 18 million or something like that. No, 2 million. So, I guess it's gone up because it was a recent stat that I looked up today that you just read. Yeah. It actually looked up one day that said 2.5 million people are gambling addicts. So, there may be a variation between a gambling addict and people who display some sign of gambling addiction. I guess so. Alcohol, Josh, we haven't even talked about that yet. Uh, no, we haven't. I got some stats for

you. And these are staggering because alcohol is the one, I mean, most of these other things we talked about aside from the prescription drugs or illicit drugs that you have to, you know, get illegally. But alcohol is the one that you can buy at the corner store. And not surprisingly, it's the biggest problem. Yeah, I'm glad you found this, too, because I had trouble finding some stats. So, lay them on me, Stringby. Oh, 43% of U.S. adults have had someone related to them who was presently or was an alcoholic. Isn't that crazy? It sounds a lot like the kid who says that you wouldn't know his girlfriend because he met her at camp and she lives in Canada. That sounds like that kind of stat. Does it? 3 million U.S. citizens older than 60 abuse alcohol are required

to function normally. And that's going up. You mentioned that your grandparents' prescription drugs, grandparents are like the baby boomers now. So, as the baby boomers have aged into, quote, unquote, the elderly range, a lot of them are still alcoholics and pill addicts and, you know, more so than their parents' generation was or were. Yeah. What else? You got any more on alcohol? Yeah, I have a couple of, I mean, I've got a bunch of good ones. I'm seeing which ones are good. Men are three times more likely to be alcoholics than women. Wow. Did you know that? No. It's kind of surprising. And if you are happily married, you only have an 8.9% chance, whereas if you are single or have a bad marriage, you are 30% more likely to become an alcoholic. I can see that,

especially if men are three times more likely to be an alcoholic. I could see somebody's wife saying, like, you need to stop drinking as much. Yeah, exactly. And I've got one more really sad one. 500,000 children aged 9 to 12 are alcoholics in this country. They call them the party kids. Oh, really? So sad. I always forget about Drew Barrymore. Remember her little- She was an outlier. You think so? Yes. She was the, again, Nancy Reagan, 80s. She was the poster child for Nancy Reagan's Just Say No campaign. Yeah, but she was drinking and doing cocaine when she was like 12. Yeah. And she was like the only kid who was in America who was doing those things. Okay. I thought you meant that she was like eight, actually. I think that

she was doing cocaine. I got you. I thought you meant that her story was exaggerated. No. I'm just saying like, on a graph, she's like way out here. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, you always forget about that now, though, with her, because that was so- Yeah, she's definitely cleaned up. Well, she's cleaned up. And I think she can go out and have a good time now. I think she had her demons when she was a little kid, which I can't imagine being a kid and being an alcoholic. Yeah. You know, that's the second podcast in, I'd say this month that she's come up. Yeah. Yeah. Roller Derby and then this one. Yeah. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind

the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast.

Hey, y'all. This is Dr. Joy Horton Bradford, host of the award-winning weekly podcast therapy for black girls. Our incredible community of sisters has been building the therapy for black girls podcast for five years running. And over that time, we've published over 250 episodes and gained over 18 million podcast downloads. During this time, we've tackled the stigma surrounding mental health and shared conversations to help us all understand ourselves and others a little better. Hundreds of incredible licensed mental health care professionals and other experts have joined us to share tips on taking better care of ourselves. We flipped through the pages of your favorite romance novels with author Tia Williams, checked in with Grammy award-winning artist Michelle Williams

and discussed the hurdles of balancing competitive sports, motherhood and mental health with Olympic athlete Natasha Hastings. Five years down and many more years of work to be done. Join us now by checking out the therapy for black girls podcast on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. So Chuck, you have a pill addiction. We should also say that physicians tend to see alcohol withdrawal as far more dangerous physically than even heroin withdrawal because of the symptoms it produces. Yeah, they have pills kill you. We'll talk about, well, should we talk about this now, the pills? Yeah, I was going to say if you have a pill addiction, what's the best way to treat that with more pills? That's the human answer to things.

Let's throw a pill at it and there we actually have come up with some pills to treat addictive behavior. Yeah, right? Well, I know they have one called disulfiram and it's sold under the name Antibuse and that's the one they give you for alcohol that basically you take this pill and you drink even a little bit and it makes you feel awful. Yeah, like you basically it does the opposite of your reward circuit punishes you and you learn the hard way not to drink anymore. And apparently you don't get used to that. So it's not like you can be on this pill and just kind of fight through it. It doesn't work that way. There's another one called the Naltrexone. Yeah, I found that one too. And that one's used to treat alcoholism as well, but basically it's an opioid antagonist, which

means that it doesn't allow alcohol to give you that inflated sense of self-worth like a gun does, you know? Yeah, I think most of those. I think most of those affect the opiate receptors, right? Yeah, but strangely, so then there's also Nalmophene. That's an opioid antagonist, just like Naltrexone. So they should both be able to treat alcoholism. Right. But strangely, Naltrexone has shown most promise in treating alcoholism. Nalmophene has been shown, has shown the most promise in treating gambling addictions, even though they're the same type of drug. You know what else they use that for? What? Shopaholics. Yeah. And I don't know. I mean, I guess that's...

I think it just cuts down on the thrill, right? Yeah, I guess so. Any sort of compulsive behavior like that, it looks like it might target. Yeah, interesting. It is interesting. And then, of course, you can just go after the genes, right? Yeah, they're coming a long way in targeting genes. And what they don't think at this point is that there's like a single gene that they can find. They think it's probably a combination of genes. And it's probably also largely epigenetic as well, too. Yeah. Well, you should explain what that means again, just in case people didn't listen to that one. How could they not have? If you didn't go listen to, can your grandfather's diet shorten your life? Basically, we've found through epigenetics that what makes us us isn't just

our parents' genetic contribution. We can actually affect the way our genes work, turning them on and off and amplifying them and lowering their frequency by the stuff we do, including drugs, drinking, the way we eat. Pretty much everything has an effect. Yeah. And the other thing, too, you pointed out, which I thought was really interesting, is not only are there gene combinations that make you more susceptible to this. If you're not susceptible to it, it's not like you just are lacking those genes. They're actually genes that make you less susceptible to addiction. Right. So like the ALDH2 gene, people who have two copies of this gene don't become alcoholics as easily as people who have just one or don't have it at all. Isn't that weird? That is very weird.

And if you have low neuropeptide Y, which is a hormone, well, if you're a mouse, I should say, you're probably not going to want the booze as much as your fellow mice. Right. I did find another interesting one, too, about relapse rates. They've even kind of pegged it down to that level. They found that a variant of the opioid receptor gene, ASP40, you have a lower rate of relapse with alcoholism if you have the ASN40 by 26 to 47 percent. So even if you try to quit, certain genes will say you're more likely to relapse than others. So just give up. Yeah, exactly. Speaking of relapse, there was some interesting Tibet, Tibet, Tibet. Interesting Tibet that we left out about heroin relapse.

What did we say? In 2004, get this, the entrance rate for heroin treatment, right in the U.S.? Yes. For the fifth time was higher than the entrance for heroin treatment for the first time. I believe that. Isn't that crazy? Yeah. It's really hard to kick, I guess. I would think so. But try again. Or go watch train spotting and never try it in the first place. Yes. Or watch Sister Act II while you're high on heroin, and I'll bet that does the same thing. That has a similar effect as train spotting. Oh, but it's horrific. Back in the habit. Yeah. If you want to know more about drugs and addiction in general, we strongly recommend you read this strangely prim article. Was this early on in your career?

It was pretty early. Yeah, it was a little stiffer back then, too. It's called How Addiction Works. You can find it by typing that into the handysearchbar at HowStuffWorks.com. And while you're doing that, try rehab, too. Interesting one. Yeah. Well, we should tackle that at some point, too. Maybe we will. Something happened to me throughout this podcast. Since I said handy search bar, that means, of course, it's time for listener mail. That was the brakes being applied because we have a small bit of administrative detail here, Josh, at the onset to plug our new app for the iPhone that is coming soon.

I'm very, very excited about this. I'm playing with it right now because I was looking enough to get a beta version because I work here. And you can access all of our podcasts, video and audio. When you click on our big, dumb faces, you can access every single episode we've ever done. Listen to it right there. The new episodes pop up automatically. You can go to our blog through there. You can go to Facebook and Twitter through there. You can watch our video podcast from our stuff they don't want you to know and cool stuff on the planet. Or you can just go back and stare at our faces all day, too. You can do that if you want. It's also got a huge, huge repository of articles from the website, HouseToForks.com.

And they're broken down into their chapters as well. It's really easy to navigate. We created a new way to access the site and all of the related content for the iPhone, like for a mobile system. Yeah, they did an awesome job with the design. I wouldn't sure at first, but it looks really, really awesome. And it's like you said, it's easy to work and free. Yes, I'm very excited. I can finally go to sleep when this thing finally comes out. So looking forward to it. And no more excuses about not being able to listen to our show. Because if you get the app, you will always be able to listen to the show. Exactly. So you can just enter the app store on your iPhone or go into it via iTunes and download the HouseToForks iPhone app, free of

charge, goddess. Now, back to our regularly scheduled program. And I'm going to call this an update from Sarah, the amazing 13 year old fan. Awesome. Yeah, I saw that yesterday. You know, my goal is to eventually do this podcast through graduation for Sarah. And we just have updates from her from the age of 11 to 18. That's my goal. I wrote her back. You did? Jerry, did you? She did not. All right, this is from Sarah. Hey guys, Chuckers, Josh, Jerry and Frank, the chair. I haven't chatted with you in a while. So I'm going to tell y'all what's been going on in my world. School started about two months ago. And believe it or not, I actually like it. Since I'm in the eighth grade now, I feel like no one looks down to me. They didn't really anyway,

since I'm five foot eight. She's crazy. She's five foot eight. She's like almost as tall as I am. Yeah. This school year will be full of fine arts, which are my favorite and choir drama. We have been working on Susical Junior, which is a musical based work, musical based on the works of Dr. Seuss. I'm having a ball in that class. I get to act, sing and dance, three of my favorite things. By the way, y'all are my favorites. Y'all are on my favorites list too. In honor of this unique musical, I was wondering if you guys and Gal would consider doing a podcast on theater guys or AKA Dr. Seuss. So I, when I wrote her back, I was like, I'll have to run this by Chuck. See what he thinks about it. But I'm totally down

with that. Well, we covered him on the webcast. I know. And he was just, I mean, I love them anyway. But once you really got into his history, he was pretty awesome. So you want to? Yeah, let's do it for sure. In school, we have a cooking class. In our first class, we made a meal. We have about 10 students in this class. So we split off into three groups. One group, not mine, was assigned to make cookies. They made the batter, but messed up and put a quarter cups of salt in the cookies instead of a teaspoon of salt. That's so crazy. The girls bake the cookies. And when the teacher tried them, she came up with a brilliant idea. We should give them to the eighth grade boys. Let's just say the look on their faces was really hard to describe. It was hilarious

watching the boys run to the water fountain. I can't think of anything else to say. Thanks for reading from Sarah, the now amazing 13-year-old fan who started out as the amazing 11-year-old fan. Yeah, that means I'm almost the amazing 40-year-old podcaster. So I'm reading this book called The Consumer Republic. And I just found out, did you know that home ec classes are the earnest result of the consumer empowerment movement of the depression? Really? Yeah. Did you take home ec? Yeah. Yeah, me too. It was one of my favorite classes. It was awesome. It was like, wow, this classroom looks like a house. And I like that. And we kind of just get to cut up and make cookies and eat them. Exactly.

Did you take shop? I took that one too. I was much more intimidated in that class. Like wood shop? Yeah. Yeah. We didn't have that. Some schools have car shop. We never had that. Did y'all have that? We had one. I never took it. Auto shop? Yeah, those kids could take a car part and put it back together. I wish I would have. I wonder how much more I would have liked shop had I been as comfortable then as I am now around people missing a finger. I could have been a changed person. I got nothing else. Well, if you have a story about losing a finger, we want to hear it. It better be for real though. None of this Lou Begas stuff. Wrap it up in an email and ship it. Post haste to StuffPodcast at HowStuffWorks.com.

For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. Want more HowStuffWorks? Check out our blogs on the HowStuffWorks.com homepage. Brought to you by the re-invented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil answer for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Langston Kermit. Sometimes I'm on TV. I'm David Boreen. I'm probably on TV right now. David and I are going to take a deep dive every week into the most exciting groundbreaking and sometimes problematic black conspiracy theories. We've had amazing past notable guests like Brandon Kyle Goodman, Sam J. Quinta Brunson and so many more. New episodes around every Tuesday, many episodes out on Thursdays where we answer you, the listeners conspiracy theories. Listen to my mama told me on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.