THE ED MYLETT SHOW - Mental Health, Addiction & Anxiety w/ Dr. Drew Pinsky

Episode Date: April 4, 2023

Are you ready for an epic MENTAL WELLNESS check?I hope so because DR. DREW PINSKY is making a HOUSE CALL this week, and he’s going to dispense some powerful prescriptions on dealing with ailments such as narcissism, addiction, and a lot more.You’re also hear a lot of strategies you can use to help heal yourself so you can lead a more BLISSFUL AND FULFILLING LIFE.Chances are you already know Dr. Drew through his work as an addiction specialist who hosted LOVELINE for more than 30 years. He has also been a regular fixture on television with shows such as DR. DREW ON CALL, LIFECHANGERS, CELEBRITY REHAB WITH DR. DREW, and many others.During this interview, we spend a lot of time talking about NARCISSISM and how to better RECOGNIZE, MANAGE, and LIMIT its IMPACT on your life plus we dive deep into ADDICTION including:👉🏽 Spotting addictive behaviors👉🏽 understanding your addiction to certain types of people (including celebrities)👉🏽 the dangers of LIGHTNING BOLT ATTRACTION👉🏽 how to HEAL from addiction👉🏽 and the GENETICS of addictionWe’re also going to spend time on the HEART AND BRAIN connection and physical things you can do to HEAL EVERY PART OF YOU.This week’s show is all about AWARENESS, which is the first and perhaps most critical part of achieving a higher degree of mental health.Dr. Drew gives you the ANSWERS you need so that you can begin or continue your own HEALING JOURNEY in earnest.

This is the Edmila Show. Alright, welcome back everybody. I am so grateful to this man sitting across from me is here today for a lot of reasons. Number one, he's changed so many lives in my lifetime. And I grew up listening to him on Love Light. I'm 51 years old, so if you're anywhere near my age, you grew up with this man. But more importantly, he had a pretty big impact on my own family. I was sharing this with him on the phone the other day that many of you know that my dad got sober.

And in my dad's sobriety, he would constantly share this man's messages and ideas and thoughts with me on a really regular basis. And he's just one of the smartest dudes on the planet. And so I'm really grateful to have Dr. Drew sitting in the seat finally across from me today. Finally indeed, it's such a privilege. We have mutual friends. We kind of live near each other in weird ways. It's all odd, but I'm so glad I'm here. It is odd.

We can walk down the beach to each other's places. Indeed, I stood out in front of it three days ago with one of the few in the, my favorite house in this entire, probably all of that town. That's, I don't know if you've flowed tell people where it is But yeah, but it's my favorite home I remember when it was built 45 years ago. I was guarding that beach actually. Yeah, so yeah I've been there 50 years. Oh glad you like my house. No need to come over to it

I I told you I stood out in front of it There again, trust me. All right. Well, I have a cocktail ready for you or something. So the reason I wanted you on is I'm fascinated by the human condition. Me too. And also human conditioning. Okay. And the conditioning that goes on in culture

and society that can change the way human beings behave and treat one another. And you're an expert on so many different things, but one of them's addiction. You said something to me the other day on the phone. I just want to start with this, because I think there's a lesson in it for everybody. I said, you know, my dad, when he was sober,

went to five or six meetings a week, and he also helped a bunch of other people in their sobriety. And I was telling you how special this person was that really changed my dad's life. They helped him get sober. And you said something back to me that I think is a lesson for everybody in sobriety or not just about life in general. So what I said was, you need to understand that what that

gentleman, I know it's a man because males are only able to sponsor males, would tell you is the service he provided for your dad kept him sober, that his sobriety dependent on being available and of service to other people. And the more effective that service, the more sort of filling it is, and the more likely he is to stay sober another day. And you think there's a lesson for that in life that is?

Oh my God. It's sobriety, it's so funny. It's taking all the basic fundamental principles of living well, living a certain kind of life that's meaningful and regulated and helps the human feel fulfilled and just putting it in a little program. It's all it is. But it at its core, being with and around other people and being of service, having some faith, getting out of your own head, having gratitude.

These are all, I'm sure, principles that you come across all the time. But there's this element. See, I think all these things are sort of interconnected. And this is why everybody, today's, I guess overall, today is like being happier, being more functional, having more bliss, being more productive. But I've watched a lot of your content and you talk a lot about narcissism. Oh, boy. And I think these two things are sort of

correlated to some extent that the more narcissistic we become to some extent, the more self-centered we become in our life, the less we are in service of other people because we are so focused on, unless that makes us feel good, the less we are focused on other people, it leads to a lack of happiness in someone's life. So I want to start, cause your version of narcissism is a little bit different than I've heard it from other people before. So what is the definition of a narcissist? So people think about narcissism, and sort of common lexicon as being somebody

that's self preoccupied or thinks a lot of themselves, which is really not typical narcissism. It can be a way it manifests, and the malignant narcissist certainly present that way. But narcissism really at its core is a feeling of being small and empty. It's an injury and childhood that leaves somebody disconnected from their core self such that the only way they can feel okay is to get from the environment what they need to fill that emptiness and that smallness. And oftentimes one of those strategies is to make myself feel big. You know, get everyone around me to think I'm great or

have lots of power or money or something. So I'm feeling buttressed against this inner core that is very fragile and empty. Emptiness is a very common feeling in narcissism. And so really at its core, it's a it's a smallness and an injury and a wound. It's not a bigness and a preoccupation and vanity because that's just what's on top to protect the core. Okay. So when you said this the time that I heard it, it makes me emotional to say, I thought I think I'm a narcissist. Well, pretty much everybody is today. That's the why I was working at a psychiatric. I started working in a psychiatric hospital in 1985. And we had these admitting sheets

where the various diagnoses would be put down and always the personality assessment would be there too. And when I got there, there's different personality A, B, and C clusters. And they were all over the place. They're all kinds of different personalities, obstacipal pulso, and C clusters. And they were all over the place. They're all kinds of different personalities, obstacipal cell personalities and dependent personalities. Around 1988, I noticed it all started shifting to sort of cluster B and by the mid 90s, it was only cluster B, which is the

narcissistic cluster. And there's a lot of literature out there and Christopher Lash predicted this that shows that we've had this narcissistic turn, where narcissism is a very, very common sort of feature of how we manage our lives these days. It's a personality style, and it might be, I think I suspect it is, the result of a whole wave of childhood trauma we went through in the 50s, 60s and 70s. And do you think there's something like social media contributes to this form of narcissism? Like in what sense? You've written about this, but I just want them to hear your version of it because I just feel like the two things you just opened up with. One is the service of others and how that helped my dad stay sober

and other stay sober. And brings a level of just bliss to your life and value. Yes. The other side of that coin to some extent is so self-focused, so try to fill that hole that you've described. That's a never-ending treadmill. That goes nowhere. That just keeps going, going, going. And it can feel good. It can get you high, but it's an addiction at that point.

And it never fills anything. It never really regs. So I think there's a lot of ways to think about these conditions of the human being. But one of the things that I focus on or like thinking about is how humans regulate. Yeah. How they can connect with spontaneous affect, experience it, regulate it, share it with others. That's actually a taller. I had that 11 years of therapy before I really got that.

Mm-hmm. And you had therapy. Oh, prolonged therapy before I really got that and you had therapy. Oh, prolonged therapy. I was, well, it's a couple things. My wife sent me in. She was like, she was, I was one of those phone conversations with her where she's like, you need to see a therapist. I'm like, oh, yeah, I know I need to. I'm going to. I made me a better, you know, better work with patients. I've just, and she just goes, listen to me. You need to see the hair is still on the back of my neck and I was like, oh, got it. With the phone down, they called

somebody, got a referral and started going right then and greatest experience I ever had and healed a lot of my own narcissistic injuries because I had narcissistic parents and that's how you get narcissistic injuries, it tends to feed on itself. I wanted to ask you about that. So I'm prepping for this. You've always seemed to me, obviously you're intellect levels through the roof, but over the years, I'm like, this dude just has it together.

Oh, I don't know. But you know that that's the impression, right? You know, let me be the first to tell you, I have generalized anxiety disorder, I had panic, I'm prone to depression, I'm, it's rearing its head again lately a little bit. Me too. Yeah, and, yeah, we all are human beings

and we have brains and those brains have these proclivities and having it all together is almost anathema to me. I almost don't even understand what that is. I am grateful for a ton and I've had a really productive, really good life. I've had the, and one of the greatest things I've had is the opportunity to see the human experience through a lens that very few people do. My days for 20 years, or certainly 15 years, was getting up at 5.30 in the morning, doing intensive care

rounds, then hospital rounds, then outpatient medical patients, and then I would go to the psychiatric hospital and do a full day there and end up running their addiction services. And I saw everything. You have seen it. And it was just such a, I'm so grateful to have had that. Now I just want to give it back. I just want to give it

because I had this crazy experience. Well, I think you've done that. I mean, I, but I want to stay on something there. If you went to therapy and, the reason I think it's so important that both you and I say, hey, look, we don't have it together.

Because I think the impression probably for both of us is that we do. And people come to us for advice and counsel, right? So, being available for service and counsel is, you don't have to have it together really to do that. But it's, just think about the brain like our heart, although the tour deeply connected,

and I have a lot to say about that. But I mean, we're in shape and our heart is, you know, we have a maptome, hopefully cardiac output and cardiac workloads and things. And don't think about the brain any differently. Even though I may have certain proclivities in my heart, I don't have heart disease in my family. And who knows what's going to happen to my heart? Because I have a heart.

Hearts have get sick, things happen. Same thing happens with brains, same things. Now because my heart has it all together, my brain has it all together. And you think that I wanna talk about brain and heart coherence in a minute, however, because stay on the brain thing for a second. So you talked about there being this injury when we're young of some type that can create this.

Or most people are aware of what they are. And like in your case, so I, you know, I think your dad was a GP, right? Your dad was generally a family practitioner. And then your uncle was actually a psychiatrist. Correct. So yeah, this really diverse medical background and family.

Yet you, I've heard you talk about your dad a little bit lately and mom and you just said a minute ago that they both had narcissistic tendencies. I wanna know how you think that impacted you. Oh, well. And by the way, when someone's listening to this, how do they know whether or not they had an impact like that as a child?

Is there emotions they'd be experiencing now that are indicative of you've probably got an injury? Yeah. There's many, many ways. I think the first and foremost way is, I should have a piece of paper in a pen because I have so many things I want to say. Sasha, let's get a piece of paper in a pen.

So how you function in relationships is numero uno. So if you are having problem empathizing or having problem compromising and all the things that make for good relationships or being intimate, that's a sign. And that's really where I was used to like say this when we did love line. Our craziness enters the room through a relationship. That's where you see it. That's where you I was used to like say this when we did love line. Our craziness enters the room through a relationship. That's where you see it. That's where you see it. But in my case, I guess just so people have a little model for how I experience it.

I had sort of a, as a relationship with my dad, it was a very kind of, this is going to sound pejorative, but don't mean it. He was like a closeted narcissist. Everyone loved him. He was a nice guy. He was an excellent doctor. A great judgment. I thank God I inherited some of that. But I was there to serve his needs. That is narcissism. When you're, it's apparent you were there to be present for the child and that's it. To be present, keep them safe and to be present.

And while they go out and struggle with the world, you're home based that they come back to. If when that child comes back to home base, I as a parent have a bunch of needs that that child has to attend to, that's a narcissist, you know, right away. That's parenting the parent. So I lost that. And it made me highly attuned

and highly effective with other narcissists. Yes. Because you're responsible for his feelings all the time. And his feelings were protected. He would get wounded, you know, all this kind of stuff. And so I've had many narcissistic bosses that I was extremely, but I subjugated my own needs to the boss.

And when you realize after a while, you're like, hey, wait a minute. This isn't working for me. And yet the boss is always like, yes, you're the best. You're the only one. You're the perfect. Thank you for being that guy for me. And it's so seductive when you're, right?

When you've been in that relationship with a parent like that It's very challenging to get out one interject one thing. I just hope everybody listening to this is Hearing this through the filter of prisms of other relationships that you're currently. Yes for sure Because that that addictive I'm gonna help you and and serve your needs thing or fix you Whatever it is when our job is to be present and close. That's that's it That's what a good relationship is. Fully present, the totality of our being and body, right? Yeah.

The brain is embedded in the body and the body is a major part of what the brain is doing and being fully present and with the other person, unavailable. And then my mom was flat out, emotionally abusive. It was just like really emotionally abusive, like severely. And so that was critical in harsh, yelling and harsh. I mean, yelling, I only heard yelling like her is once in the whole time I spent those 30 years

in the psychiatric hospital, only one time they go, oh, that's familiar. Really? Yeah, it's like really crazy yelling. And how did that manifest itself in your life in a good way and a bad way? My dad's part had some good stuff to it because it, you know, again, strategically, but it also, well, I'll tell you, here's the good way.

When you have somebody like my mom in your life, you as a child learn that your survival depends on that person not freaking out or getting any reviews. So you would get, you get highly attuned to another person and their emotions and regulating them. Yes That's where codependency comes from. Okay. I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm over the top codependent. That's my proclivity all right and Therapy thank God has reestablished boundaries and I can I can tell the difference between another person's feelings in my own I had trouble early on in my career, other people's pain, I would experience so profoundly, there's really my pain being activated, but I thought it was the other,

you know, so I'd have to save them from their pain, which is not what they need. They need you present while they build and struggle the pain against the injury that they've had, not a rescuer because then they're permanently in need of rescuing. Right. So that sense of taking care of other people, once I got that regulated, oh, the side effect of that is you stop listening to your own emotions because you're busy looking out there and you start experiencing yourself through other people and your own primary affects are way off in the distance. If you can hear the field of them at all. And so my work in therapy was really getting reconnected again, regulating the feelings and being fully present.

And it's great. I want you to know something I've done. 600 shows. This is already one of my favorite conversations. Oh, good. And the reason is, this sounds really familiar to me. Well, it's a lot of people. This is the thing.

So as I said, you know, by mid 90s, it was all cluster B personality disorders, which is an artistic disorders. And we've, you know, and I say, and all these years on the love line, all I heard about was childhood injury. It's all every call because of course it would manifest in the relationships. The other thing about these injuries is we recreate them in our present lives. And so there's something about the human we recreate them in our present lives. And so there's something about the human, Freud called it repetition compulsion, people psychologist call it need for mastery over trauma.

We don't know what it is, it's a wiring thing. It's some, I guarantee you, it's biological because it's so reproducible and so profound, which is when, and people don't think about how they get into these recreations, and I've thought a lot about it. When we've had trauma in our relationships in childhood, we are attracted to people and places that are just like the circumstances of the trauma of our past. People will say it's an attempt to master it or make it right. I don't

know. We're just attracted. It's familiar for sure. Sometimes profoundly attractive. We always tell people if you're feeling lightning bolts, attraction to something, and you've had that kind of trauma. And by the way, you've been here before, this is a repetition, it will happen again. You're a perfect instrument. And so you get into it and you get re-traumatized and the whole thing gets re-created because it's the same kind of person, it's the same person that traumatized you in the first place. And you're the perfect victim for that person. So you go together and away, way it happens all over again. You have any theory as we talk about this on percentage of people that have a high degree of happiness in their life. I think about this a lot.

You did this study on the narcissistic tendencies of celebrities. That was pretty fascinating. You can talk a little bit about that, but you and I both have worked or are around. Let's just be real. Lots of very rich, successful and famous people. And I have found the vast majority of them are in lack of some sort of bliss in their life and peace of course. Sure. That's why I did that study. I was well, it was during the, you know, they'd come on love line and they would unload their stuff on me during the commercial breaks. And I'd go, oh, Jesus, I learned quickly that people that are celebrities, and we were able to prove with our study that celebrity itself is a bid to

manage narcissistic injuries to try to repair it. Remember that I said you got to get for the environment. Yes, yes, never works. Never works. Do you what? In addition to that, because by the way, I've not found that just with celebrities, I found that with just people that have produced high levels of success that potentially the external results, they're filling this whole, by the way, I'm describing me to some extent.

But not all, but many are trying to fill this whole with external achievement. And it can be incredibly depressing because then they get there and they're like, and even this isn't enough, and even this isn't enough. And I'm wondering, even with you, with what you've achieved in your life, you've had a lot of notoriety, you've had a lot of fame, you've helped a lot of people. I wonder even with you, did it fill up what you were looking for it to fill up, or unconsciously looking for it to fill up? I think who knows why I was I was attracted very early to using media to make a difference. I was sort of by thinking on it.

It's interesting in recent years that same interest isn't there the same way. I'm just not as motivated. I'm not interested. Even though I think it's a great outlet and a it can do great good, it's not as interesting. It's also become more painful, you're always under attack and stuff. It's great.

You've had a lot of that. Crazy stuff, okay. But I look back on the things I've done and I am extremely grateful. So that gratitude feels like it did do what I wanted it to do. That was able to, you have these interesting creative experiences where I made a difference. It doesn't get better than that.

Yeah. And so it's the extent that it was feeling something. By the time, let's see, when was I, I was a lot better by around 1996. You already were. Yeah. But there's a difference drew between, and I look at this for me too, I look back at my life. Hope this is as deep for everybody else as it is for me. I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do that. I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do that. I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do that. I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do that.

I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do that. I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do that. I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do that. I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do that. I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do that. I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do that. I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do that. I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do that.

I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do that. I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do that. I'm not sure if I'm going to's a butt behind that. But I didn't enjoy them as I was doing. In other words, it's only in retrospect and I'm wondering this with you too. No, I enjoyed them all. I was doing that. You enjoyed the journey. I loved everything. I was so, I was enjoying and grateful all the way along. You know, there's parts in my,

I was severe workaholic. That was one of the other manifestations of my thing. And when it was really bad, there was a certain amount of dread then. And I do not know how my wife put up with it for many years. I God bless her. I don't get it, but she did. And once I got through that dread, by frankly, bringing other things in and doing different things, that's where I learned to really appreciate, I don't like doing the same thing all the time. I need to be challenged. Yeah. So, so I, so let's hope you do your thing for a second. So, yeah. So not feeling fulfilled along the way.

But being grateful afterwards. Yeah. It's got to be the you're just better now. I think I think I've had a lot of healing. And I think also perspective changes over time. Yeah. I've done more of the work later in my life than I I think like many people I was just in a hurry to get somewhere I wasn't. Yeah. I get it. And I wanted to get somewhere I wasn't as quickly as I could. Hey, man, the other thing I had a top of me, well, you know, my dad and his family escaped the whole of Domo, and you crane, right?

And then got here just in time for the depression. And so I had all of that intergenerational trauma put down, put upon me. And that's, I think, where some of the work all of them and had to get somewhere fast kind of feeling came from. Yeah, it did for me. Now, I also have looked at myself in terms of habits I've developed that are either addictions or dependencies.

And so a lot of people listening to this, I'm so excited to ask you these questions. Is there a difference between dependency and addiction? Oh, yes, 100%. Okay. And there even ways of parsing those things out. Okay. Let's talk about that. Let's open that up a little bit. Yeah. so dependency, let's just talk about opiates

because opiates can make any human dependent. In other words, if you take an opiate in high enough dose long enough, you will need more to get the effect over time and you will have withdrawal when you stop. Okay. And addict, when that happens to them and they stop, become permanently preoccupied and the motivations the motivational system in the brain

Becomes focused on getting that drug back. So it's a motivational disturbance a person who's dependent while they're dependent Can look like a drug addict. They're trying to avoid withdrawal. They're trying to get drugs They start manipulating line to get the drugs, But when they stop, they stop and they stay stopped. Well, adic always goes back or switch it to something else. Because that motivational thing, once the switch is thrown, it's on. What if you're addicted to like a person? Okay. So more complicated.

Okay, so a lot of that out there. But there's a lot, right? So I think a lot of people, I don't have a drug addiction. I don't have an alcohol addiction. But you might have one with something else. there's a lot, right? So I think a lot of people, I don't have a drug addiction. I don't have an alcohol addiction. But you might have one with something else. And for me, I think my addiction was somewhat healthy to the extent that I do think work became my drug, became my addiction.

By the way, now that I'm, for me, interestingly, I personally will share with you, I have another overlay on the addictive quality of my work and I've talked to you about, I have another overlay on the addictive quality of my work. And I've talked about it. I was traumatized by my dad and stuff. But I think it was also fighting away depression. Because now when I'm working less, I like that high of working a lot.

And as it goes down, I start feeling the moods sink. Gosh, you know, yeah. And so I kind of think I, there's probably a sweet spot in there somewhere. But it needs to be a little more than I'm doing right now. I tell my wife this the other day and she's like, what? I'm like, I just, just what I need.

It's just my thing. It's same here. Yeah. I wish you could fix this for me. Well, my perhaps a medicine help both of us, but I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna do that. In the meantime, we work out and we exercise,

we sleep, we eat, right? And all the things that do help mood to the people that are prone this way. But I think, I don't know, we may have to make peace with this. And be okay with having to work. And just make sure it's work that's good and fulfilling. What if your addiction though is a person or a relationship or by the way, just people in general.

It happens a lot. This is now where this thing gets shared all over the planet right now, right? Because I really do feel like there's at least in my own life, I have some friends that I know have chemical addictions. I do. They're in my life, I love them.

Well, they're dependent trending towards addiction. I think I have a couple that are addicted based on your definition. Yeah, well, let me define it. Okay. Addiction, so that was that are addicted based on your definition. Yeah. Well, let me define it. Addiction. So that was dependency. Addiction is a disease. Addiction has a genetic basis. You see a family history. There is some sort of inciting influence, typically trauma. It has a characteristic pathophysiology in the brain that the pathophysiology is reflected in signs and symptoms, using and pursuing and whatever. And those signs and symptoms progress in a very predictable way.

We call that a natural history. And the whole thing that has a predictable response to treatment. That's the disease of addiction. That's actually a definition of disease generally. And addiction fits it perfectly. The question is, is disease, is addiction a disease or a syndrome? That's the only legitimate question you can ask about it. Because it has a common genetic basis

and common pathophysiology, I call that a disease. Do you believe that there's a, on drugs or alcohol, do you believe there's a chemical predisposition to be genetic? Genetic. My dad did too. So you don't, I see, I've treated thousands, a thousand addicts.

I can only think of like five or I couldn't see a clear cut family history. Okay, so then based on that definition, I would say, I have more friends that are dependent upon other people than they would think of them. But that's the challenging thing about talking about relationship as addiction. I whistle a little bit at the overuse of the addiction

construct, though it's very useful when it comes to sex and love. It's very useful. Now it's not a formal diagnosis, It's not the DSM-5. It is a construct that people use to help people manage these behaviors and these experiences we call drug, excuse me, sex and love addiction. Now, if you're a sex and love addict

and you have a chemical addiction, it's all the same thing. And you have to get it all treated. It's all the same thing. And you have to get it all treated. It's all a disease state. Because you can go from sex to cannabis to opiates to alcohol. You just switch around. All you want, you're still doing the same thing with that. You're right.

And it's hard to activate throwing the switch, as I was saying, like you have that genetic switch that finally gets thrown in the shell, the nucleus accumbens. Hard to do that with behaviors. It's hard. Usually a chemical throws it first, then you go to gambling, then you go to sex. It's just, you know you can't go over here because that'll kill you. So your brain goes, yeah, but this horse race is that's not a big deal. It's just a past. No, I'm laughing, but you're right. You're right. It's how the crazy thing about the addiction is your brain starts, it's thinking how the crazy thing about the addiction is your brain starts. It's thinking that's effed up in addiction that your brain convinces user and things are

good when it's just that motivational system that's the problem. So second love addiction is a challenging construct. You know, I worry about the overutilization. If you're interested in it, P.Aiemelody has some great books on it. I think it's called Overcoming Lovediction or Facing Lovediction, the Serving One. And she talks about the Lovediction level void and cycle and the cycles of abuse.

She has lots of great constructs in there that you will see yourself in. If there's any sense that you have one of these things, and again, they're very common, built off trauma again. any sense that you have one of these things. And again, they're very common. It's built-off trauma again. And there's various ways to manage it. If you are somebody that keeps getting yourself in situations that are really problematic, either the relationships are not working or you're getting hurt physically or emotionally, you want to at this, you wanna look at it.

And it's useful to think of it as a sex and love addiction sometimes. And the one thing that I mentioned it earlier, how you'll be attracted to circumstances and people that always end up being the same, your body's a perfect instrument if you've had that trauma and you'll be attracted to these things and you'll just do it over and over and over and over again.

So when you feel lightning bolts, if you're that person that has this pattern, be where the lightning bolts, the lightning bolts of attraction, they call it the kuda food, go on from I'll say it. And it's it's going to be the same thing all over again. What do you do beyond looking at it, what's something else you can do? So you can look at it, but then there's something you got to physically change, right? Yeah. I always tell people, look, you can, it depends, you know, it's

always hard for me. Even a lot of this I get when I'm just talking to people on telephone and things. It's hard for me to tell how serious it is, but I say, well, you can give yourself, try, try to start dating people you're not having lightning bolts with, you're just having butterflies. And see if you can hang with it, or do you sabotage those relationships? Because the nature of the trauma makes it really difficult to have real intimacy.

And so intimacy becomes uncomfortable and boring and weird and all these kinds of feelings. And so they either leave or sabotage or something. And so if you can't stay with a relationship that is not a lightning bolt relationship you have to get treatment. Okay, now you want you can do various things You can go to a 12 step program. I think this kind of thing is best professionally managed and trauma therapy It does tremendous EMDR things like that Tremendous and quick you start being attracted to and buy different kinds of people. Do you? Wow.

Now, when someone's going to get therapy, by the way, people advertise on the show for it as well. But is there any advice you would give to have the right type of therapist? Meaning is there something about them? Yeah. These are hard things. Profirals are helpful. You shouldn't, it's certainly not the beginning.

You shouldn't love your therapist or feel better necessarily after therapy. The idea is not to feel better. The idea is to heal. And that often feels not so good for a while. It should be challenging. Now, a good therapist should give you tolerable doses of that.

You're not miserable and you're not depressed. You just, you're not, you should be challenged. You should be challenging. And should they have an extra name of some type? Well, that's where I was going to go. And so, you know, the, the sort of, the best thing is if you have a side PhD or MD after the names, I think LCSWs make excellent therapist also. Does their training? It's something about the kind of person that becomes a licensed clinical social worker and their training. Just they make X, I've hired a million of the excellent therapist.

And this just seems to be a consistent thing. I always worry that it's just inside the California or something. That's why I work with all these people. But it's been my own therapist as an LCSW. And I was just outstanding. Right, but it's been my own therapist as an LCSW and I was just was outstanding. Okay. So, you, you know, the level of expertise is generally better. The MDs rarely do therapy, so it's really hard to find an MD that does first. They, they, they fur it out, but they often know who to send to that are good.

Okay. So you can, so one of the ways, the ways, ideal way to do this, if you have the resources and insurance and stuff, first get a psychiatric evaluation, you know, so one of the ways, I deal with ways to do this, if you have the resources and insurance and stuff, first get a psychiatric evaluation. What is my diagnosis? What's going on here? And given that construct, what kinds of treatment are gonna be most likely to help me?

Now, most people don't do that. Right. And it's always, I was worried that, I both worried that the MDs are kind of overprescribed the meds, and I also worried that people that need meds never get to the M.D. and, you know, wonder why they don't get better might really need it. Hopefully somebody in lighten will be judicious and careful and not throw meds on everybody. It's not the way to go.

They're useful and sometimes very important, not all the time. And then if you have trauma, you need to be with somebody with really ideally, LCSW side, D, PhD, after their name, who has explicit trauma therapy and look for things like EMDR and various kinds of, you know, there's all kinds of ways now to hook the brain on the body up. It's all about getting the brain on the body reintegrated. Well, that's where I want to go. So I want to talk about heart, brain, what I call coherence or whatever. And you said you want to talk about that a little bit today. So one of the, I said earlier that I've done a lot of work.

Some of that work has been therapy, reading, having friends like you in my life that I taught, literally I've just become more self-aware. And a lot of times just my awareness of some of my behavior patterns, it's lost some of its power over me. Well, 100%. That's why there's a whole category

in treatment, frankly, called psycho education. Okay. And interesting in my early, my therapy, I had to understand what was happening before I felt comfortable going in. So I read a ton of stuff before the therapist was like, why do you, why do I just, I need to understand, I just need to. Well, for me, it wasn't just that. It was like, I've produced an externally really pretty good life.

And I was afraid, if I'm being candid, that if I change some of these patterns that I had in my life, that although maybe I have a little bit more of that in peace, but I lose my edge, I lose my success. By the way, I think my audience listening resonates with what I just said deeply. Well, but here's the thing about treatment and healing. You have to be one of your brain hates change. Our brain fight changes. Just the way we hate. We don't want our arm cut off. We don't want our, we don't want to change fundamentally.

Who are brain thinks we are? But you have to be prepared to become whoever you're supposed to be. And that is a really hard thing for people to do. I went through it myself. It's, you have to kind of let go and let things happen. And your brain fights you. And that's kind of why when I recommend professionals get involved, that's their skill set.

It's working around and through those resistances. That's one of the most important things someone said because what I ended up finding out, because this is like an achiever audience overall, right? I ended up finding out, because this is like an achiever audience overall, right? I ended up finding out that in fact, I externally produced way more abundance in my life when I had patterns that served me in my life and I gave myself the gift of a little bit more equanimity

and peace in my life. One of the things I did also work on though was what I would, I'd like you to elaborate on because you'd be better at it than me, but I've worked on small things all the way to like my breathing. Oh, sure. To you know alter my HRV rate so that I've got a little bit more heart and brain coherence which most people don't know about. So just rift on. Well, I just there's a guy named Stephen Porges. Okay, if you want to read about the neurobiology of attachment and regulation, Alan Shore is your guy and Peter

Fonigy, who really has worked out this socio-emotional exchange system, which is something that's evolutionarily built into not just our bodies, but actually into our development. And so there's, I'm going to have trouble explaining this in a way that's cohesive, but I into our development. And so there's, I'm gonna have trouble explaining this in a way that's cohesive and I'm gonna try. The brain, the base of the brain, the brainstem, the cranial nerves, and the autonomic and parasimphatic nervous systems all developed together and are embedded in the face, the ear, the vocal cords,

through something called the branchial pouches, which is these things that develop into our face and neck and whatever. And the sympathetic outflow to our heart and gut, okay? And it turns out, it's obviously the face and our voice and our ear is how we exchange emotionality. We are exquisitely sensitive to what's going on other people's faces. And what goes on in our faces can have micro-changes that the other person, maybe even not on a conscious level, is able to read and receive as information about the other person's emotional states.

So we ultimately learn to regulate our emotions through being in and out other people. Our identity comes from being in and around other people. Our identity comes from being in and around other people. You know, we have, I said, the brain is embedded in the body, but the brain body is embedded in a social system. And how it manifests, you mentioned earlier about, you know, trends and things and how they affect people, they do. I'm interested in that. I'm not an expert in that,

but I've read a lot about that stuff these days. History is one of my weak spots. So I've read a ton about it, trying to make sense of it all. The socio-emotional exchange system is also connected through various nuclei in the brainstem to the vagus nerve, the gut, and then the sympathetic outflow. Some like 70% or 80% of the the Vegas is an inflow to the brain. When I went to medical school, we were taught, well, the Vegas is a system that decreases

your, you know, maybe changes your acid screen, your stomach and slows your heart down. Right. No. 70% of it is getting information from your body and taking it back to the brain. It goes that way. It's crazy. And it's deeply embedded in this socio-emotional exchange system. And he has all this doubt about how heart rate change and breathing change and with our emotional stays. It's from infancy. From infancy.

Infancy. What have you done in that world for yourself? Do you do that? I like the breathing stuff. I try to do that. I'm not a religious, my thing has been the psychotherapeutic process. I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this, but as it pertains to breathing and heart rate and facial expressions and stuff, I know

when I'm around great therapists that are highly attuned to their patients because when I see them work or I interact with them, I notice I start breathing with them too. Interesting. My heart rate and breathing starts syncing up with that other person. Yeah. And when I become aware of, I've actually been this one woman who I've become close with who treats its treat sex addiction actually. I saw her in a video working with a patient and I noticed it was happening to me

and I went, oh, this woman has got no, this woman's got powers. And so I got to know her lower and behold, she really is an exquisite therapist. And they can just be fully present and attuned to that person on not just a attentive, attentional level, but your whole body is an instrument. And if you've ever been in a therapeutic process where your body is present like that, it's weird.

I've been the subject of it as a patient and I've helped other people by being the antenna and you experience things and smell things and hear things that are not yours. And you know it because you've never experienced these things before. And they're really the, I'll tell you a story in a second about what my favorite story with this, I tell it all the time. But the real art in the therapeutic process is not just receiving, listening with your whole body, I call that, but knowing when to bring it in the room. In other words, when to go, you know I'm having an experience.

And I'll tell you a story about that. I had this guy that was severely traumatized. And usually it's traumatized parts of the self that are needing attention that aren't, the patient isn't even aware, isn't there in the room with that patient at the time. It's sort of a wall-off part of themselves that's screaming for some kind of attention. And this guy was coming in,

and as he would sit down every day, I started hearing the opening riff and madman. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no Then as we were working together, it wasn't that long either, a few visits. I started feeling like I was that shadowy character falling through the buildings, right? Like, yes, I had that feeling and I was like, whoa, this is interesting, but I didn't bring it up with the patient because he was talking about horrible trauma and all these horrible things that happened to him. And then about halfway through one of these visits later, music kicked in, I'm falling in all of a sudden, I experienced myself as a baby falling through these buildings. As I talk about it now, it constricts my chest.

It was an overwhelming experience. I couldn't, I couldn't stay with it. It was like, it just took my breath away. It's like this incredibly traumatic feeling. And I thought I have to bring it in there. I have to bring it up Yeah, and I said listen I actually interrupted him. He was telling another traumatic story I said look I'm having an experience and I'm wondering if this is meaningful to you And I told him when I've been experiencing

He became furious Stormed out of the room you and your psycho Babel how dare you you think you know what you're talking about and stormed out of the room. You and your psychopath, oh, how dare you. You think you know what you're talking about and just ran out of the room. Whoa. And I thought, hmm, maybe that wasn't the right time to bring that in. Comes back in the next day and he sits down calmly and says, how did you know?

He goes, how did you know? All I hear is the baby, the baby, the baby screaming on my head. It's going all the time. And it was, and because of the depth of that attunement, he trusted me. And by the way, if you've been traumatized, trust is a big deal.

We were able to kind of work together for a while. And I always see that, yeah. And so I would get people, in working with people with trauma and addiction stuff, I'm always getting them at the front end, at the beginning of their treatment. And I really always conceived of my role, one other than get them through the front ends, the beginning of their treatment. And I really always conceived of my role, my one mother didn't get them through the medical stuff, to teach them that you could be fully appreciated. I can fully experience you and you can trust that. You can stay close to another

person and they don't abuse. They don't know this. And nothing. They'll be there for you. Wow. Makes me emotional just thinking about it. Yeah, makes me emotional. Yeah, and the part of it that makes me emotional is that the understand how connected humans can actually be together. It's unbelievable, right? It's unbelievable, right? And so when you ask, and that's, and you know, it's weird, it's almost psychicy kind of stuff.

And every therapist who does this kind of work has had these experiences where you feel a pain somewhere that's not yours or you hear music or you see something. But of course, then we affect each other on a macro scale too, right? I don't understand why they're these huge mood trends, you know, why it happens? I've tried to understand that. And it feels to me like it's sort of French revolution type trend, you know,

like where the people are bringing out guillotine and things. Same here. We, I want to, I'm, we're going to get into that before our time runs up today. But I want it on the topic of having these experiences. Man, I know we, good. We do that here. I'm glad you're doing that. Um, you just, I've been honest with you.

I'm a little guarded because you've flagged something in me right there. Yeah, that, uh, maybe I'll tell you privately. So I'm gonna tell you. I know there's the goal is not to out people. Yeah, right. The goal is to be present. Yeah. Well, you have your experience. Well, I'll ask you this question.

I have friends that have had these very unique experiences. It wasn't been with another human being, but it's been with adding a chemical to their body. So curious, curious of what you think about psychedelic treatment and or Iowaska stuff too. I'm actually trying to work on a television show right now where we explore some of this stuff because I'm fascinated by it.

And I met some, I mean, excellent psychiatrist that's where this is the, and it's not goofy, fringy. These are mainstream psychiatrist who really feel like they'd help some get through things that they couldn't get through any other way. Which I have no doubt that's true. The problem is, is with everything today, the excesses.

Yes. Yeah, the excesses. Like how are we going to use this? How are we going to know where it is? What's the right patient, the right circumstance, the right dosing, the right duration. We don't have that yet. And the potential to do harm is profound. And I've seen bad things.

For a lie. Yeah, people using ibogaine, I want us to try to deal with drug addiction. And in all except for one case, and I've seen dozens, maybe hundreds of these people to do this, and they all stop using for six months, and they all go back. Okay. Except one who left permanently. And I'm thinking that guy was not an addict, but it was dependent. It was dependent. That's what I'm thinking.

And many of them had really significant personality changes. And that drives me crazy that people go, well, were they happier? Were they nicer? Were they less obnoxious? Like, you can't make a judgment about a chemical changing somebody's personality or brain. People's personality and brain change in therapy, but that person is in control of those changes at all times, a great point.

And at least, you know, with the properly done, certainly should be, I think, no therapist would intrude on that. But you give a chemical, and now you're a different person, the ethics of that are completely untenable to me, completely. And so you're not there yet.

Oh, well, no, no, I am there. I just, I just want to get the good data. I want to, you know, which patient, how much, how long? Right. And what are the risks reward for that? But it will be, it will be good. I have no doubt about it. Yeah, I've had friends that have had great experiences, and what are the risks for that? But it will be good. I have no doubt about it. Yeah, I've had friends that have had great experiences,

and I've had friends that have said, listen, it was a really dark experience, and it's altered me for the negative. So I really don't know there. I've been talking about some mutual friends of ours before we started, and one of them has sort of gone on this journey recently, and so, and they thought theirs was pretty good,

but I'm curious. You're saying, by the way, you mostly hear good things. But again, I, you know, I went when people want to argue that, you know, look, they used to give morphine to alcoholics to treat their alcoholism. Why? Because they were less noxious when they were on morphine. They were less of a pain in the ass. Like, that's to get to that. Do that. What about people that you said something and something I was watching the other day about like that a lot of these addictions are just ways to self Sooth oneself

regularly, okay, so really what about someone you talk about different drugs and excess? I have friends now that used to take cannabis would use weed socially and then it increased a little bit more and I've not really ever done that. I don't have anything against it. I feel like 93% of my friends now pop gummies or do something, right? But then I've got dudes who are all up to like, to the dabbing state on a regular basis, right?

Dabbing, you gotta look at it. Now my daughter's recovering cannabis addict. And that's what she taught me actually. She goes, listen, if your patients are dabbing, it's a problem. That's the problem. And what's the problem with it? What can happen?

You can have actually gut issues from it too, can't you? It's vomiting, very That's the problem. And what's the problem with it? What can happen? You can have actually gut issues from it too. Can't you? Vomiting very common, super common, unexplained vomiting, and multiple workups. Dr. tells you it's reflux, it's gallbladder, blah, blah, blah. It's the weed. So you're dabbing, especially, it's the weed. So what's your overall Dr. Drew stance on weed?

I'm agnostic on the legalities I've always been. I don't create the laws. I just deal with whatever the people want. When things are illegal, it helps me help people who have a problem. But it's leverage. It's a kind of leverage. It's leverage. Exactly. But even in this day, we can't leverage even with cannabis. I was even with opiates. I mean, nobody can do it. So, it it's legal fine. I know it helps a lot of people. Excellent. I'd rather treat a cannabis addict than an opiate addict. That's for sure. And if somebody is chronic pain, it's controlled with cannabis. Good for you.

Right. And if you want to, and if you can recreate and you, I have tons of friends that use it regularly and they're fine, it doesn't seem to affect them. But there are people, young people, particularly that it seems to mix them rigid in their thinking. You can make them a little kind of psychotic in their process. The sign is they'll always say, you're not listening to me. That's for some reason that's the sign. You're not listening. It's like, no, I was listening.

You were being aggressive. That's kind of a psychotic process. That might be just normal. Which comes from a question came from weed. But okay. When it's, when they're irritable, it might be because you never think aggression came from weed. But okay. When it's, when it's, when they're irritable, it's irritability more than aggression and suspect. But they have to use a lot in every long periods of time.

And if you can't stop, and if you have found the history of alcoholism and you can't stop, that's now we call that addiction. And it can, you know, Alex Berencens book, you know, tell your children, turned out to be all true, that it can induce psychotic, real psychotic illness in some people. Rare, not common.

Again, it's, look, any chemical, I was, you mentioned I was raised by a family practitioner. He hammered into me. Medicines are dangerous. Only, only expose yourself to them when the risk reward is worth it. Cannabis as a medicine works, has certain risk. Be realistic about the risk, is worth it. Cannabis as a medicine works has certain risk. Be realistic about the risk, that's all.

I just don't wanna have my, I mean it's cause I was raised by an alcoholic. I don't wanna have like exogenous chemicals be my crutch to which I wanna experience life and feel. That's just for me. Give me two. Give me two. Other people enhance this our life.

Right, and by the way, the fact that you say there is an addiction like I've got a lot of friends so you can't get addicted to weed. Talk to my daughter. Okay. She's not Mr. Meeting in the 16 months. God bless her. That's beautiful.

Yeah. That's wonderful. That's wonderful. And a new person too. And she was told she had depression. She was told she had bipolar disorder. She was told she had suffigitis and that's why she was vomiting every day. All went away. All went away.

So it was the weed. All right, the thing I've always wanted to ask you, and anybody who I consider to be an addiction specialist, I want to learn how to leverage the stuff for the good. So like I think the majority of my life, this can be a tough question, I don't know if anyone's ever asked you before. I've been addicted to progress. I've been addicted to, I often say, I'm addicted to the expansion of my being, meaning I'm fascinated and curious about this.

You already look like you want to comment on it. Well, because I have the same problem. I have the same thing. Is it a problem though? Well, and I don't think it's quite an addiction. Okay, so I think it's more our mood disturbance. Okay, maybe it is. So, but I think there are a lot of people

that listen to my show that go, hey, I wasn't abused as a kid. I had a pretty good life. And my stuff's the reverse, man. I'm sitting here. I'm relatively emotionally stable, but I'm not producing or experiencing life the way I'd like to. And it seems like you people with all these addictive,

compulsive type personalities do better. And so what can we learn? That's the hard question. No, it's not a hard question. It's an unfortunate reality that people with psychopathologies tend to go towards success in all things. And we know whether it's our mood disturbance or my trauma or an addiction. Yes, listen, the first thing I learned when I got to start working psychiatric hospital

is that the very, very wealthy and the very, very poor had much more in common with each other than with the rest of us. Because that's where all the psychopathologies are sort of located. The excesses that get you to these two places are similar. So it's about getting the balance right again. And the only things you talk about,

you're using word bliss a lot, which I never use. And I like that. I should you use it more. I talk about, I'm more about being nourished or being fulfilled or having a, you know, this word called you dimonia, I'm sure you heard it.

Yes. And that kind of life, fulfillment and things. But I think you're right, you can ask for a little more, you can ask for sort of bliss at times anyway. I have a talk on, I give called blissful dissatisfaction. And I want to live in that state.

And what I mean by that is, I think people can flate satisfaction and happiness. Bliss and satisfaction are two different things. I am, I want to live in a state of bliss as much as I can, but I want to remain to some extent dissatisfied, meaning I still want to grow. I still want to experience. I still want to challenge myself. Is it the growth? Because that's what I'm addicted to. Yes, I'm still want to grow. I still want to experience. I still want to challenge myself.

Is it the growth? Because that's what I'm addicted to. Yeah. So I'm addicted to the growth. I think I've become a static is not me too. I think I'm addicted to the growth. And I think I get a lot of significance out of contributing. Here's the thing about addiction. It's got to have consequences. Somewhere there's got to be consequence. And if you're not having consequences, not addiction. Or at least it's not a full-blown addiction. I know what the consequences have been for me. But if they're not, well, true addiction has to have progressive consequences.

Progressive use in the face of progressing consequence. Then I'm super hyper dependent on growth. To use your terminology. I think that's right. I think I am too. I think that's right. And I think that's why I think it's more of a mood stuff. Maybe some of the trauma'sstripled in and stuff

and the personality stuff, but you can choose to glean into these things. Just because they have names in our psychopaths. See, that's what I hate about it. So do I. Yeah. But when you label things too much, people think you're being pejorative.

These are just ways of understanding human experience. Look, if you want a fighter pilot, the best fighter pilot that I can think of in terms of how their internal world is constructed, would be an alcoholic narcissist. That would make our brain fighter pilot. And could be difficult if you're the wife, not necessarily. But man, a good fighter pilot. I think the main, I think negatives, by the way,

that's 100% true. And I think the main, like, there's no doubt in my mind, a guy like Tom Brady, who who have been around a little bit But I don't know him super well, but he's got a whole kinds of stuff All kinds of just crazy hyper dependence-lash addictive type personality Tracing that and our motivational systems are hooked into our emotional systems Yeah, and by the way, maybe that's what life's about. There's some trade-offs for everything Yeah, so there's a consequence to every behavior and you've said this and and you have to decide in advance that maybe some of the like I think in my case, if I'm being

candid, I have a beautiful and incredible family. I love my children. I love my wife. I love my mom, my dad's past. I love my sisters. But if there's been a consequence, it's been to my family. There's been, by the way, massively beautiful consequences for my family as well. But from time, presence, things like that, those are the consequences. Yeah, sad. You know, he is. Get sad. You should never come. Some of you have a book on happiness coming out. And you have me read it.

And one of his big points, that's sad guru. Get sad. He's a evolution biology. Okay. A different guy. It's sad guru on my show. Okay. And he, um, he asked, you know, what are your regrets? Yeah.

And he said people who are regrets fall into two categories. Not having done stuff or because of something you did. And I have zero regrets on the not side. I'm just grateful for all of it. On the having done side, it's exactly what you're saying. Is it my kids remind me occasionally, I wasn't around. Yeah, me too.

And that cuts deep. But thankfully as I've gotten older, they're able to integrate that and try to understand that, you know, you got giant triplets on it. I work in my ass off. I was like, I was scared. I do think as they get older, if that, by the way, beautifully said, at the end of my life, I'm willing to have some regrets of things I did. I don't want to have a life of regret of things I didn't attempt to do exactly 100%.

As long as those things, now there's a caveat. I'm, you know, I always try to live my life, you know, sort of the Kantian imperative. Like there's a camera going all the time and behave that way at all times. And so, you know, the things I did can never violate that principle. Then I would, then it's kind of like,

it's also an ethical problem as well as a regret. I can't say that I've never done that, but that's also my answer. When you're 17, you're excuse. Right, right, right. I can, I can, maybe 17 hours ago, but I'm as well as a graph. I can't say that I've never done that, but that's also my impression. When you're 17, you're excuse. Right, right, right. Here is, right. Maybe 17 hours ago, but that's not exciting. No, but having said that, you're 100% right.

Now, what I, I think my kids, as they've got an older, have an appreciation for the other things that that's afforded. And it's important for the younger people, listening to raising young families to hear, they will eventually, doesn't mean you shouldn't work on being more present. Conor that. Correct. Correct.

It's because they too, then they have to struggle the same way you did. That's what they're looking at. They're going, oh, now I get it. Yeah. That's what I've found. We don't know that much more time. I want to ask you a couple of things. Why are we in culture beginning to treat each other so horribly?

And I've watched, I've watched even some things with you. You took some positions that you felt strongly about I've watched even some things with you. You took some positions that you felt strongly about and you like people wanted to cancel you. They wanted to ruin you. They, um, we are harsh. It seems to me. We are more mean than we've ever been. It seems to me that maybe technologies influence this. Maybe technology is contributed to a form of narcissism or we're self-centered with likes and views and someone pay attention to me. And it seems to me that it's gotten worse. Maybe it's actually turned a little bit lately where people are just fatigued on all this stuff. But I look at comments, I look at young people, I look at these videos you see on Twitter and Instagram of people beating each other

up in schools, mercifully, and all of it. What is happening to us that we treat each other so horribly? I think about this all the time, and I don't have a definitive cohesive answer to that. I just look at history. And what I see is when there's a large amount of childhood trauma, particularly at the hands of the caretakers, you see populations grow into mobs when they're in their adulthood and young adulthood that start scapegoating.

That this scapegoating mechanism seems to be a function of narcissism. And so we've talked about the narcissistic turn. It's certainly a function of trauma and victimhood and all that stuff that is part of narcissism. But the feeling of freedom, you're free to harm other people as a mob is the most, one of the more disgusting features that humans have. And narcissism, the two big liabilities, it can have lots of positives associated with it. But the two big liabilities is envy,, it can have lots of positives associated, but the two big liabilities is envy, which is different than jealousy. Jealousy is, you know, it's, oh, you're going to talk about it. I know I needed to ask you the difference between envy and jealousy.

Okay. So I cannot believe you just went there. Yeah. So I'm jealous of what you have. It makes me uncomfortable, but damn, I'm going to work hard to get what you have. Yeah. Good for you, you know, I'm glad for you. Envy is, you're an asshole, I gotta bring you down to my size. So Envy is about not bringing anybody up but bringing people down to whatever level of shame and you're feeling yourself because of what that person having more exposes you to.

So it's Envy, Envy, and then lack of empathy. So if you don't empathize with the person you're scapegoating and you have envy towards them, it's on. That's a very powerful problematic. And then you have the gratification of the mob where you you gratify each other for what you're doing. You coastline each other's BS. And we're in this to, you know, we're we're taking out the bad person. So that's the fundamental attribution error, right? That we call that in psychology where you attribute some of his behavior to the contents of who they are. Yes.

Rather than God knows what went into the choices of their opinion isn't good or bad. It's you are not right or wrong. It's their bad. That's that is a Howard's approach to managing an argument, a disagreement. That is and I've never thought I'd use words like courage and coward so much as I do these days. This is a time for courage. You have to stand up and take the punches because this is bad for everybody

when the mobs are allowed to act out like this. I agree. 100% worries me deeply. It worries me that those wounds you're talking about that happen to us in our childhood. And by the way, you said the worst is when it comes from caretakers, but I'm worried that this generation that's coming up is just being so wounded repeatedly by one another that what's going to happen in 15, 20 years. I don't know. They are, but I think,

see, I think they're, I think they're being raised by the parents that had been part of the trauma trend. And so it's sort of an intergenerational thing rather than a direct trauma. And I think as a result, I mean, the problem with the family's not being stable, I would say is their biggest problem. So they're very distrustful of society, generally because their unit didn't work for them

and hurt them and made them feel bad. So that to me is kind of the challenge, but that I think as they get older, they're not going to be as prone to the mob stuff so much. God, that is my prayer. That is, please hear my prayer to God. That is the case. Well, me too.

I just worry that technology allows us to work. It makes it worse for sure. It's easier to either to gather the mob. Well, that's where the mob's doing its thing. I predict in my book on narcissism 15 years ago, I know. The mirror factor. The mirror factor? Yeah. I want to write a whole chapter on the French Revolution because I kept saying, that's where the mob's doing its thing. I predict it in my book on narcissism 15 years ago. I know. The rear of chapter. What was it?

Yeah. I want to write a whole chapter on the French Revolution, because I kept saying, that's the only period of history I can find, this kind of thing going on. And I worry they're going to be guillotines. I didn't foresee social media and the cancel culture. As becoming the actual guillotine. Okay, last question. By the way, I've loved today.

Oh, me too. Wait, I knew I would. I talked to for two seconds, and I knew I would. I knew that I would. And I want to have you back on. Hopefully I can actually come back on maybe every single year. Before I ask you this last question, you got like a million podcasts you're involved with. I want to make sure we've at least promoted. Where do you want people to go find you? You my wife will

kill me if I don't send you to this one. Particularly because she produces it. And it's been very interesting. I think your group would like it. She and I, she produced a streaming show at drd Drew.TV. You can see some of the backup so it's there and at Dr. Drew.com, three o'clock Pacific time, typically Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday, although we move it around a little bit, but it's Tuesday and Wednesday, Wednesday in particular, a doctor named Kelly Victory joins me. And she has very different ideas than I do. And that's, again, my wife's genius and

sort of mixing it up. And then we have been interviewing people that have been silenced during the pandemic. I kind of a naturally curious, when people have been silent, people particularly very high level professionals with exquisitely decorated careers. Suddenly, those are, you know,

you don't want to listen to those guys. I want to listen to them. And I've learned a ton by talking to these people. Some of them are over their skis and certain areas and stuff. I don't agree with everything, of course. But I think it helps with some of the paranoia out there that people are, you know, when you have people being silenced and marginalized and people

that are already paranoid can't get the information, they get more paranoid. So I want to bring it all into the sunlight and just talk to things. And I'm trying to get alternative opinions in there too. The Tuesday and Thursday is when I tend to talk to people that are more mainstream because I'm more mainstream. That's the reality. It's just I'm going to listen to the Wednesdays. Then you know, it is the one that people tend to like because it's a lot of interesting stuff, a lot of back shows. I mean, I discovered

so many things by talking to these people. For instance, did you know that the six feet social distancing was invented out of whole cloth in an office in the White House one day? It had no science, no basis. They were trying to decide between three feet and 60 feet. And finally thought, how we can get them to do this? Let's make it six feet. And the world adopted that. And it has, there's to this day zero evidence that that does anything. And it's just that kind of stuff. I was just one little aha moment after another. You kind of put these things together and go, wow, what a mess. My favorite thing about that was when I would stand

in an airport line and you had to be six feet from each other in the airport line. And then we just walk onto the plane and stand right next to each other. Exactly. It's so crazy. So that's the same thing about masks. Gonna put your mask down during bites.

It's already down. That's it. That's viruses in your nose. That's it. There's no point of using it. And the people don't understand this virus was transmitted not on droplets on aerosol aerosol you don't see aerosol. It's not dry the mask stop the droplets You're gonna get canceled again Drew. It's coming right just the way it is

Listen if these things worked I'd be all for them. I know you know you I know you I had last questions sort of about happiness and your own yeah so All right, last question is sort of about happiness and your own. Yeah. So, in general, the final question is, how does one become happier? But I'm going to give you a little lead in to give you a little bridge. You did this show. I don't know what it was called. You can tell us what it was called to pump it. But it was this thing where you did basically the challenge of your lifetime, where all these military things.

I think I saw you like it. Were you falling out of a helicopter? Bungie dumping out of a helicopter. Bungie falling out of a helicopter. Bungie falling out of a helicopter. I'm like, what the heck is he doing? You're in your 60s when you're doing this. And then I went, you know what? At least for me, one of the pathways

to my own bliss or happiness is curiosity. It's a challenge. It's doing something new. If I want to shift my life, I've got to do something different. And so what do you think? What would you say? Someone's a doctor drew. I want to be happier life. I've got to do something different. And so what do you think, what would you say? Someone said, Dr. Drew, I want to be happier. What do I do?

And loop in that show and what you did is maybe part of it. So that was a specific challenge to my happiness, a special force of show on Fox. And they called me, I'm like, come on. Is that what you're doing? And we can take me to Utah or something. No, the Middle East.

I'm like, oh, God, how about I get to do that? Crazy. But at the time was feeling, one of the things that challenges your happiness is aging. And even if you're prepared for it, it's challenging. And I was feeling old. I hadn't recurred up to a darparticularitis. I had prostate cancer. I have all these things.

It's all good. If you've got to get a cancer, trust me, that's the one to get. And that's all, you know, I had my prostate to me 11, 12 years ago, so I'm all fine. Okay. And, but the Diabetic Litis was kicking up and I was feeling weak and I had some long COVID symptoms and I was kind of whiny. And when they call me, I thought,

I'm gonna give this a try. So I started training very hard, like with packs and hills and sprinting and I started feeling great, feeling better. I thought, well, maybe this is what I needed. So that was sort of what caused me to fight for the job and Iing and I started feeling great, feeling better, I thought, well, maybe this is what I needed. So that was sort of what caused me to fight for the job and I went, so he's strong, I didn't know it's gonna get him strong with a whole other problem.

But physically, I was totally ready for it and had a great time. So Path wanted to change your physiology, change your physical body. Yeah, change, also, but I work out regularly, but I changed what I was thinking even about my work out and what my goals were and things, so change your goals, really.

Change your goals. Secondly, distinguish between you, Dimonia, and we mentioned earlier, and hedonic happiness. When I first started hearing all the talk about happiness, which was years ago, because there was a lot of happiness stuff happening, maybe 15 years ago. And I thought, better to find what they're talking about because no one happier than my heroin addicts after they get their hit in the morning. They are happy. That is not a good life. And they don't stay happy. And so, you know, he done a happiness euphoria. You just go from one to the next. You're never

fulfilled by that. It's just one. Not the euphoria is bad. I'm not saying that having occasional, blissfully euphoria is a bad thing. I'm saying to need that, that's not happiness. Happiness is a much more nourishing, fulfilling, interpersonal process. It's other people that give us our sorts of happiness. There's no doubt in my mind. It's leading a good life, which is a certain kind of life.

Again, I've lived by a Kantian first principle. And that a good life isn't always happy, necessarily. Like, did Jesus, was he always happy? But I would say that was a good life. He was not happy at the end. Good point, no. So, but be prepared for some unhappiness

because good lives done well, that's the challenge again. They can be challenging But focus on you dimonia, which is nourishment which is other people which is some faith whatever that is to you gratitude very important Service what again have not not saving the world one human being at a time just being available to that person closeness Sleep right workout to do all those good things, you know, exercise properly, balance, and these things tend to kind of, and then make sure you're connected to yourself,

and they're true to yourself. If you don't feel your feelings, get some treatment, because having that spontaneous self that emerges from our bodies, those feelings that come out of us, being connected to those are, they're greatly important in terms of knowing who you are and what you want to do, but also in terms of being available for others for the thing we call intimacy, that closeness. And that's where a lot of fulfillment is.

What an unbelievable conversation. I got news for you. This is going to go ballistic. Oh, good. It's going to go ballistic. I want to also just tell you again, thank you for helping my family. Oh, you helped my he look. Your dad just saw me talking truths about his condition. Yeah. And nobody was doing that at the time. It's why we did the show. Yeah. Because it's so I know so much about it. I said, that's why I'm going to it back. It's because I, for a non-addict, non-sover person,

I know way more than I should. And it's also clear to me. And so that's what he was responding to. I just think God's amazing. I think the fact that you helped my dad gave me the change in my, no, you did drew. I know, I understand, but I'm gonna say the same thing

that I know his sponsor would say to you. It's like, it's my happiness today. It gives me my happiness. It's ironic and then we're sitting here together. And I don't think I'll be sitting here with you had you not done that for my dad. And that's the ripple effect of helping one human being. Yes. It's what it is. Oh, trust me, guys, when you see all the shittiness going on out there,

I don't know if you're allowed to say this. Some of them just chose, but it's either garbage going on out there. People attacking each other. You can go the other way, everybody. We're not, we're not helping each other by doing that. Well, we helped a lot of people today. Go to you did. So thank you. It's your show, man.

Yeah. Thank you very much. And they can never do for you. I'm here. And I'm going to wave from the beach and you're going to live. Let me in. I'll pretend I'm not there a lot, but one day I will walk out and wave you. All right, everybody. Hey, share the show and go check out Dr. Drew's show as well.

Make sure you go get my book, The Power of One More. And just take the things we said today and share it with somebody that you love. God bless you, everybody. Max out. This is the end my let's show. you