The Megyn Kelly Show - Did Joe Biden Enable Hunter's Addiction? Plus Biden's Shameful Maui Visit, with Dr. Nicholas Kardaras | Ep. 611

Episode Date: August 21, 2023

Megyn Kelly is joined by Dr. Nicholas Kardaras, addiction expert and author of "Digital Madness," to discuss President Biden’s “forced” trip to Maui and "disgusting" response to the horrific wildfires, Biden’s lack of compassion, Biden taking more vacation time while Hawaiians suffer, Biden lying about Beau Biden's death and bringing it up constantly, stories of survival in Hawaii, aid for Hawaii vs. aid for Ukraine, the push to claim climate change led to the wildfires, the depths of Hunter Biden’s addiction, if Joe helped enable his son's addiction by having him do business with foreign countries immediately after rehab, Biden being “grossly irresponsible" politically and as a father, digital devices affecting the younger generation, the massive rise in "mental illness" among younger generations compared to older ones, the challenge of parenting today, how Kardaras ended up becoming addicted to drugs and the cost it had on his life, what led Kardaras to change and get clean after being in a coma, the new “flavor” of addiction called digital escapism, if "harm reduction" initiatives actually help addicts, and more.Kardaras: https://omegarecovery.org/ Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Yes, it's Monday, and it is the first debate week in the GOP primary, but Donald Trump will not be there. We now know he's not going. He truth-socialed uh we now know he's not going he truth show socialed it out saying he's not going uh we believe that covers the first and second presidential debates uh nbc news reporting according to a source with knowledge that it doesn't necessarily cover any debates after that that's my impression from having spoken to trump as well um but he's not going and instead we believe on wednesday during the fox news But he's not going. And instead, we believe on Wednesday

during the Fox News debate, he's going to be giving a one on one interview to Tucker Carlson, which I have to say I kind of love. It's just so fun. I kind of love how just Tucker continues to thumb the middle finger at Fox. And why shouldn't he? Why shouldn't he? All right. Meanwhile, President Biden is finally ready to actually go and survey the damage after the deadly wildfires in Hawaii. Do you know that these are the deadliest wildfires in over a century? In over a century. This is the shit he said no comment to.

He couldn't bring himself to comment on that because he's too busy. What? Yeah, that's what he's too busy doing. He's taking vacation after vacation. It was Rehoboth Beach. Now he's out in Lake Tahoe. And under political pressure, he's got to take a little sojourn over to Maui

so he can look like he has a caring bone in his body. Same way he wouldn't acknowledge his seventh grandchild until he was publicly shamed by the New York Times and then finally came up with a statement late on a Friday night in a fifth paragraph of some paper he released saying, oh, I have seven, not six grandkids. I mean, he's all heart, this guy. He's all heart. By the way, he's going right back to more vacation after his trip to Maui. We're going to talk about the Maui destruction and residents who are furious at the response efforts, among other topics, with someone who knows the area very well. And that's Dr. Nicholas Cardaris, Victor Cardaris, Nicholas Cardaris. He's the founder of Maui Recovery,

among other clinical treatment facilities in America. He's a psychologist and an addiction expert. You may remember we had him on the day the Queen died and we switched his topic to the Queen of England and he went with it. He was so cool, even though he was on to promote his book, which was just out. The book is called Digital Madness, How Social Media is Driving Our Mental Health Crisis and How to Restore Our Sanity. And we absolutely love Nicholas because not few people can go from that kind of a topic to the Queen of England dying, but he did it with panache. Great to see you again, Nick. Thanks for coming back on. Great for having me back on. Yeah, you keep me on my

toes. Thank you. Well, hopefully everybody will remain well throughout today's two hours. Yes. Yes. Yeah, we can stay on point. We just start with Hawaii because I know you have a personal connection to all this. But we never got to the fact that last week when when somebody got a hold of, you know, Biden saying, do you have any comment? He decided to say no comment. And then he was asked, there was a follow-up. He was asked about it again, and he had very little to say on it. He really, he seems to have been forced to go pay a visit there. And I realize we don't have a president go out to California every time, but we have a wildfire out there. But this one's got over 111 people dead, including children. And the president didn't seem to give a damn until what? Until he was forced to politically.

Yeah, he described Maui as he couldn't even remember the name. It was that place that they have on the news. It was disgusting. I mean, yes, I spent six years running Maui Recovery, which is about 15 minutes south of Lahaina. And there's some of the most wonderful, wonderful people in that area. And I've been in touch with our executive director, Amory Mowry. And one of our staff members is one of the people, Juby Bedaya, who was famously filmed being in, he was one of the people that car caught on fire and had to run into the

ocean and saved the family. There was a family of five from California that they had to tread water for several hours, holding onto plywood. Yeah, that's, that's Juby and the people that was helping to rescue. It was their 9-11. And for the president to say no comment and then to not even be able to remember

the name of it, then to go today after FEMA gave almost no aid, it's disgusting. Maui is a very special place and they really honor the tradition of what's called Ohana family. And then talking to my friends who are still there, the one thing that had come really through was they all were there for each other. They've sort of just, they said, forget the government. We can't wait for FEMA. We can't wait for Joe Biden. And they have all kicked into action. um amo has gone to the war memorial people were giving out water and supplies and food and it really showed their true commitment that they have towards one another as a community and not reliant on some um let's face it a president who leaned on his empathic you know lunch bucket joe and back in 1988 i was a joe biden supporter supporter. I was two years out of college, and it was Dukakis and Biden. And I was a Democrat back then, because what's the old saying? If you're not a Democrat or a liberal in your 20s, you have no heart.

And if you're not a conservative by your 40s, you have no brain. And back then, I thought he was the bee's knees. And since then, I'm pretty disgusted at the way he's been as both president and anything else. It's really amazing because he, you know, he does run on, you know, this president who's so, you know, kind and he understands family and he loves, you know, people. That's like why we put him in there and he'll be this empathetic guy. And then, you know, he acted like it was somebody going up to George Clooney asking him about some sex scandal at the Oscars. No comment. No comment. No, you're the president. You're the president. United States were asking you to comment on the suffering and devastation

that's happened in one of America's treasures this inside Maui. And he couldn't be bothered to say two words like he couldn't think of anything to say at the top of his head. Like, my heart goes out to the people who are suffering. I've got the government, FEMA, looking into it. We'll be there soon. We know it's not soon enough. And then he had another chance when he was asked about the upcoming trip to Hawaii.

This is on the 18th. Today he's expected to go. And this is how that went. Top four. What this tells me is he's just it's perfunctory. You know, he's trying to get out of dodge. He can't ad lib. He can't fake, even at this point, empathy in his career. He needs it scripted for him. And unless it's in that teleprompter, you know, we're stuck with the real Joe Biden, who is not caring, who doesn't give a damn about what's happening from the looks of it. Let's face it. The president's role is largely symbolic. And these are one of the symbolic instances that we need to show care and compassion. This is, I mean, no one expects him to go there and help rebuild houses or do anything like that. He's no Jimmy Carter, right?

With Habitats for Humanity. But at least show a care and compassion. That's what the people needed to hear, that to hear. It was just disgusting, the response. And his lack of compassion came out last week when some of the wounded vets from the pullout in Afghanistan were criticizing his lack of compassion. Every time he tries to put on his compassion hat, he starts self-referring to some of his own crisis. I mean, even the death of Beau Biden. He confabulates how Beau Biden has died. I've got my closest family members right now

struggling with cancer, and it's a horrible illness, but it wasn't dying in Iraq, which he's used as a way to kind of play up his compassion bona fides, but he lies about it. And so there's no sincerity there. And it's quite honestly, it's the most disgusting thing I've seen in terms of many issues that have bothered me about this president and the corruption that we're now seeing as well. Well, that's the thing. So like Charles C.W. C.W. Cook, who I love at National Review, always he's a libertarian. He's a conservative. He's got a strong libertarian strain. And he says, I don't want my president to be a converter in chief. I want him to do as little as possible.

I want him to kind of disappear. And I get that. I actually share in that in many ways. But when you've got the president, United States sunning himself on the beach and releasing topless photos while one hundred and eleven people are dead, including children fleeing from the flames into the ocean with no one there to help. It might be appropriate to at least call attention to it when handed the microphone and asked specifically to say something. Just just call attention to it, if nothing else, so that people understand their suffering.

They can do a GoFundMe. They can do whatever it is, you know, send prayers. No comment is not an acceptable answer from the commander in chief under those circumstances. Right. And it goes contrary to the narrative that had always historically been that the democratic ethos was for the little guy, the working guy that they cared. And the Republicans were the big corporate, you know, the the overlords who all cared about corporate greed and money. And and, you know, the overlords who all cared about corporate greed and money. And, you know, over the evolution of the last 20 to 30 or 40 years of my adult life, those roles have been reversed. It seems that the Democratic Party right now, you know, as evidenced by the current

president, just could care less. And, you know, it was just hard talking to people that were there, still there struggling. It's, you know, say what you want about George W. Bush, but when 9-11 happened, he was there with that bullhorn. He was on the ground at 9-11. And that rallying cry of, and pretty soon the world will hear you, that was critical. That was critical for the psychology of our nation, for the emotional well-being of our nation to just symbolically be there and show support. And we're getting the opposite of that now.

Now, once again, according to the AP, Joe Biden was asked to get more specific in advance of this trip about what his messaging was going to be once he hit the ground in Maui. And he did, I think, what you just accused him of doing. He gave a statement that began, I know how profoundly loss can impact a family and a community, and I know nothing can replace the loss of life. Maybe it was generic, but knowing Biden's history, that sounds more like, trust me, I know, back to me, back to my son, Beau, who allegedly died in Iraq, and I was there to see his flag-draped coffin come home. None of that's true other than

the fact that he did die, Beau Biden, of brain cancer. But once again, he thinks empathy is making it about him. So we're going to look at him and feel sorry for him as opposed to the people of Maui and your friend's story. I mean, good God, it's not like there's not enough fodder to point to that's actually happening there. If you really want to get people's attention, his name is Juby. How did you pronounce the last name? Bedoya? Juby Bedoya. Bedoya.

Okay. So we showed some of the video as we were talking. This guy, did he work at your facility out there at Maui Recovery? Yeah. He was the overnight support staff. He was the overnight support staff. He was the overnight staff member. He was in recovery long-term himself and was a long-time resident of Lahaina, multi-generations. So Juby is part of probably the most famous, well-seen video of this entire tragedy, which is that these families were desperate to escape the flames. And the flames, we believe, although it's not officially yet, were caused as a result of the electric company

that wasn't taking care of its lines and sparks, they believe, flew and caught grasses on fire. And before you knew it, the entire town was burning. And so residents had to flee into the ocean. And Juby's in this video, which everybody has seen. There's a family of, I think, five. The father handed his son, his young son, Juby, a two-year-old little boy to Juby, who was holding him for two to three hours as they awaited help.

I mean, were you stunned when you saw your friend and your associate in the waters? Yeah, my coworker sent me that clip originally, and I've reached out to Juby. He was trying to escape in his car, and his car got surrounded by flames. And they had to run into, I mean, it's like a horror movie. And so they had to run into the ocean. And keep in mind, as you could see in that video, this was not the calm Pacific. The hurricane didn't quite hit the island directly, but these were really rough waters, turbulent. And this family of five from California that he didn't know, they formed a kinship and the child of two was wrapped around his neck for the two hours. But this is what I mean about the Hawaiian soul. My memories of Juby, the many times my family were in Hawaii, Juby, my twin sons were about

10 years old. Juby is a ukulele player, long-term Hawaiian, and he showed my sons how to play the ukulele. And they would have these music sessions at night, and just a really great human being. And salt of the earth people, right? Salt of the earth people. And again, this concept of ohana, of like, we're going to help one another. And you're hearing now hundreds of stories of locals who are helping other locals right now and they're not waiting for their 744 fema check to come in because it's it's just too little too late um and and it's just just disgusting when we're again you know we talk about aid to ukraine and aid to all sorts of other places but when we have people um and, and the one thing I could say

about Hawaii, you do definitely feel, even though it's part of the United States, it's not part of the lower 48th. So Hawaii has always been a little bit off the grid. And so they don't have the resources there. One of the reasons I didn't move there permanently was, I was there three or four years ago during a pretty bad wildfire where I got separated from my family. They were in Lahaina and I was on the Kihei side of Maui and the fire tore through the island then. And you do have this trapped feeling when you're in Maui and fires break out. Unlike California, there's nowhere you can drive to. You're kind of stuck. And ultimately it was one of the decisions, but we decided not to permanently relocate there. But you do feel a sense of isolation.

You do feel a sense that it's a little third world, even though you're a very part of the United States, but yet you feel a little bit like the stepchild that you're not getting the full attention of the mainland. Yeah, we heard that directly. I mean, this is a Maui survivor asking those very questions. I think it was over the weekend. It's SOT5.

It's really affected me because where's the president? He decides to come here this week to come here next week. I mean, like, where? Aren't we Americans, too? Like? We're part of the United States, but why are we getting put in the back pocket? Why are we being ignored? reasons that Joe Biden's one of his biggest pushes as president has been the focus on climate change, green energy. The so-called Inflation Reduction Act was all about renewables and so on. And while we still have the leftist governor of Hawaii out there trying to say that climate change caused these wildfires, the truth has been emerging thanks to the Wall Street Journal, which is climate change may have been to blame for the Hawaii wildfires, but it's because

they were obsessively focused on renewables and not taking care of the power lines that were there causing a health hazard. Let me set it up for you this way. Here's Hawaii Governor Josh Green, a Democrat, talking about how it was climate change that was to blame, Saad 8. Just to be clear, when you're talking about global warming, are you saying that climate change amplified the cost of human error? Yes, it did. There's always going to be incredible things that people do to save lives from the firefighters, from citizens. And there's always going to be decisions that are made that I'm sure aren't perfect in the moment. OK, so, Nick, here's what actually happened for the people who haven't been paying attention like me.

I didn't I didn't know this until this this disaster unfolded, But I'm not in charge of the federal government or the Hawaii electric lines. A couple of years ago, as you point out, there were bad wildfires in Hawaii. And in 2019, it became very, very clear that they needed to do something about the risks or devastation would follow. Hawaii Electric, which manages the power lines, knew of the threat and said it would act. Four years later, it's done nothing. It has not acted. In particular, back in 2019, it knew that its power lines were emitting sparks. It knew it needed to take steps, including clearing the highly flammable grasses from around the electric wires.

This is done regularly in other parts of the country. Make sure there's not, you know, tree leaves, make sure there's not flammable grasses, make sure there's not flammable trees right by the power lines just in case. And there they knew that sparks were being emitted and they didn't. And now it comes out, thanks to the journal, that the reason they weren't doing it is because Hawaiian Electric was focused on renewable energy sources. There was a state mandated requirement that they focus on switching over to renewable energy. So Hawaiian Electric wasn't entirely the bad guy. Thanks to the Democrats policies in Hawaii and on up the federal chain,

they had to be focused on renewables and they forgot about the active threat. And now we have 111 people dead. Yeah, they didn't maintain the infrastructure of their poles. And they sent information from that night that there were multiple surges that have led to multiple fires throughout the island. So they didn't maintain their power lines. The power lines went down. You mentioned the highly flammable grasses. There's been a lot of articles written about those highly flammable grasses have also been an evolution of the change in forestry or land management in Hawaii, which used to be a very agricultural island. And since that shifted away from when the indigenous folks and the local folks used to really, there were many, many crops

throughout Hawaii and those acted as a protective, Those crops were not as flammable. They weren't these high grasses. They were almost like kerosene in a certain way. So you switch from essentially a sustainable island that had renewable crops to now a tourist island with big hotels and a lot of grasses that are not the ideal in terms of land management. And then you had a power company not maintaining their grid and their power poles. And there was a perfect storm, no pun intended, with what happened, a great loss of life. And people are now trying to use it for whatever narrative suits them, but the facts are the facts and the people on the island know what happened.

Yeah, that's right. And it's one thing to be sitting as a politician in the state house or in the White House, passing down these policies to make yourself feel good about, oh, I'm saving the earth. I'm saving the earth. And it's quite another to be a Maui resident trying to flee the flames and worry about your children's lives like these folks. We have an insane piece of tape in SOT3. Take a look. For the listening audience, it just shows a car trying to drive through an inferno on all sides. Where to point the vehicle and press gas is unclear.

I don't know where I would turn if I were in the midst of that. The fire's coming for you. You could hear the panic and the breathing and the smoke, of course, affecting it as well. And I'm really glad that these folks pushing renewables feel really good about themselves. It's a different reality on the ground. Yeah. Yeah. And then you have folks like Jason Momoa advising people to not visit Maui now. And that's the last thing that this community needs. It's adding insult to injury to now that you've been through this devastation and the lifeblood of Maui,

because there are now the other parts of Maui, the south part of the island, Wailea, Kihei, are functioning. And they need, that's where most of the people get their employment and their ability to survive and to buy food. So to have, you know, celebrities saying, let the recovery process happen. Now, most Hawaiians are saying, please don't shut down tourism now because, you know, like COVID, right? The last thing you needed was to shut down the industry, the lifeblood of a, of a, of a devastated region. And so people are, the locals are saying, please, if you can support us, help us do whatever you need to. But don't don't forget about us and just ignore us now and think two or three years

from now, we'll all be fine. You know, it's reminding me of one of the debates we're having on the federal level on presidential politics. And that is I mentioned Tucker in the introduction to our show when he had a forum with the candidates out in Iowa, minus Trump, one of the things he was asking, because he's not a supporter of the war in Ukraine, was, should we really be spending all this money to help the Ukrainians when we have a sieve of a southern border? You've got fentanyl streaming in, killing tens of thousands of young people a year. And the response by people like Mike Pence and others, and I understand the response, I understand the response, was we can do both. In the Ronald Reagan vein, we can be strong in our foreign policy and still take care of ourselves domestically. Okay, that sounds great. I believe we can. I believe we are capable. The question is,

are we doing it? Are we actually doing it? And that I'll toss to the soundbite of a Maui resident on President Biden, who seems to be getting to exactly that. Like, it's wonderful that you can say in theory, we'll do it. But what about right now? Why isn't it actually being done? It's not six. So why aren't you taking care of what you claim to be in charge of rather than sending out all these funds and whatever else you guys are sending to ukraine or anywhere take care of here first you know this i don't see why any president wouldn't step up and take care of what's part of their you know

territory i think it's a stupid move on his part. You know, Biden, yeah, he's an idiot. Sorry. No, not sorry. I mean, Hawaii is not exactly a blue state, Nick. You know, this has the power to actually influence some people. Yeah, and it's interesting. Not a red state. Well, yeah, and I've moved back to New York, a very decidedly blue state.

And I was just reading last week, you know, the average, you know, we're housing tens of thousands of migrants at a cost of $10,000 per month. And, you know, Midtown hotels in Manhattan and various other, you know, everywhere from boutique hotels in Long Island City to dorms in Buffalo, New York at a huge cost. And we're giving $700 per Maui resident for this who just survived this. We have no resources to give to our... It just speaks to the priorities and to the politics of it. The Ukraine war, I have my own opinions on that. I don't think we're helping the people of Ukraine by enabling a war, a proxy war to essentially try to do regime change with Russia. It's to the detriment of the Ukrainians that we're maintaining a war that some people... One of the people that I think speaks the most eloquently about it was RFK Jr. RFK Jr. speaks very eloquently about there

was an opportunity for a treaty, for everybody to kind of retreat back to their corners after Putin realized that that war in Ukraine wasn't going to be over in three days. But we didn't incentivize that. There was an agenda for us to keep that war going, and now to the cost of, what, $60, $70 billion. And even Joe Biden saying a few weeks ago that we're low on munitions ourselves now. So we can't walk and chew gum necessarily at the same time because we have finite resources and our resources have been clearly aligned with certain priorities. And so now when you have natural disasters or other situations, I don't think we can do both necessarily because

we're not. We're not able to at this point. Why doesn't he take some of those monies from the Inflation Reduction Act that are now putting signs up all over his bridge and infrastructure projects saying, courtesy of Joe Biden, and divert it to Hawaii? You know, why doesn't he? He's so intent on renewables,

on getting windmills out there, solar power out to the Hawaiians. When it results in disaster because the people responsible for maintaining the power lines are too focused on their solar panels that people die, maybe it's time to divert the money. Maybe it's time to actually swoop in. And by the way, it's $700 per household that they're getting, not per person, per household. How is that going to help?

That's going to, what does that last? a week for your average family of five out there? Forget it. If that they need real help. And, you know, it's true. They don't need a presidential visit. They don't need President Biden to actually swing by. He it's he's not gonna be able to do anything with a magic wand. But the point was, do something, Call attention to it. Use the bully pulpit. Divert funds. Make an effort that shows you get it. But this is so close to his own policies. Like the cause of this thing is dangerous for this president. My belief is he doesn't want to call attention to it. It's dark.

All right. Stand by because the whole thing is upsetting. But there's a lot to get to go over today. And I know your backstory. We never got to it last time. The audience is going to be stunned when they hear how you sort of, well, came to the job you're doing now. It's more with Nicholas straight ahead.

You are a true expert when it comes to addiction. Could be to drugs, could be to alcohol, could be to tech. And you're sort of sounding the alarm on that. And I tell you, I was thinking about it over this weekend because in October, my sister, my older sister, my only sister will have been gone for a year. And she was a recovering addict. She got addicted during the opioid crisis to a drug called Ultram, which she was told by her doctor was not addictive. And it was one of these opioids that, you know, when this was happening in the mid 1990s, a lot of people, even on OxyContin, if you watch Dope Sick, were told it's not addictive. Like, don't worry. And before she knew it, she was addicted and she really spent the rest of her life battling that addiction and then just the massive fallout that follows a good chunk of your life being an active addict. I mean, it's just so much sets you back. It's very hard to get back even to just stasis never mind to then excel and make something out of your life i think about it when i listen to that song by oliver anthony you know where he

talks about how dejected he feels about rich men north of richmond and how the country sort of keeps a man down some of the pushback to it was oh no you know in this country you can do anything well you know what try factoring in an addiction an addiction to your life and see how things go. Because that gets held against you forevermore, forevermore. There's like she was on one of those drugs that you mentioned in some of your writings. Forgive me. I don't remember the name of it. It's not wasn't methadone.

It was like the box. Yes. Suboxone, which was helping her, you know, get off of the actual drug. But that, too, that shows up in blood tests. If you want to be in any sort of a caregiving role, forget about it. It just haunts you. So, you know, about all of this. And anyway, I was thinking about you over the weekend because we had a mass said for her at our church, you know, for my sister.

And I was praying for her and I was thinking about her and I was just thinking, you know, how would her life have gone if that hadn't happened to her? How would her life have gone if that hadn't come in and just taken over her life, her children's, ours, our relationships? Anyone who's had an active addict in the family knows what I am talking about. It's like having a nuclear bomb go off in your family. So this happened to you and you've been devoting your life ever since to trying to help those to whom it's happened and also to help people prevent it from happening to them. Let's talk about your backstory, Nick, and how, I mean, how it happened to you, how you found yourself addicted and how bad it got.

Had a nice guy like me wind up addicted and then what I do now. Yeah. Well, you kind of mentioned the fact that all families are touched. You know, they say one out of 10 people are predisposed towards having an addictive personality and 30% of families have been touched by addiction. So it touches each and every one of us. So this is not just something that happens to a certain group. It's the great equalizer.

That's one thing that I grew to find out. Yeah, it's... And we're so confused as to how to understand this problem and how to treat it. So often I think that we to understand this problem and how to treat it so often. I think that we look at this problem of addiction, we look at it so often as a supply side problem and not a demand side problem. We talk about fentanyl and coming into the border from Mexico, and that's a problem, having too much of it awash in our society. But what we're not looking at closely enough is why do we have the demand?

Why are we so thirsty for losing ourselves in addictive substances, whether it's pharmaceuticals or whether it's alcohol or whether it's digital? What is our emptiness all about that we're seeking escape and numbing in all the wrong places? And so we don't look at that part enough, you know, because we could shut down the border and shut down all the fentanyl, but people have been escaping their pain for a very long period of time. So my backstory, how I landed here, I'm the son of Greek immigrants. Actually, I'm an immigrant myself. I was three years old when we came to New York from Greece. My father was 13, 14 years old when the Nazis invaded northern Greece, and he witnessed most

of the men in his village were murdered and had to hide in the mountains and escaped to Greece penniless. So my father had seen a lot of horrible things in his life as a young man growing up when he escaped to Athens. And my mother had survived a devastating earthquake. Now we're speaking about devastation in Hawaii, but she had a natural disaster on her island of Cephalonia. So my parents had lived a pretty hard life when they emigrated to the US in the mid-1960s. So I was the child of Greek immigrants who had struggled. And in that struggle, there was a lot of dysfunction. My parents had a lot of love

in their hearts, but you don't go through stuff like that and not have some emotional scars. And so I grew up in New York City, good kid, middle class, lower middle class background. But I went to the Bronx High School of Science. I was a smart kid. I tested well. I played sports a lot. I overcame a lot of maybe, let's call it that childhood dysfunction. But my parents always instilled a sense in me of getting an education and have a better life. They came here to have a better life for me. And I did. And I've talked and written about this because when people of my parents' generation or the greatest generation, people have seen some real hard things in their lives, they have a pretty profound sense of meaning and purpose in their lives. And the

children of those folks sometimes have a little bit more of a struggle because by the time I landed in college and I went to Cornell, upstate New York, I know you're a fan of upstate New York and have gone to school there as well. My wife went to Syracuse, I went to Cornell and I got out of school and I had the quintessential existential crisis early on. I didn't know my friends were all going to graduate school. I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. I had a profound sense of imposter syndrome because I was lower middle class and a lot of my peers were from different backgrounds than I was. And so when the opportunity presented itself, I sort of drifted into a career. And I was working a corporate job right out of school in 1986.

And I had the opportunity to work at a nightclub in Midtown Manhattan, the Copacabana, the original Copacabana in New York. And part of my background is I had been a martial artist. I had a black belt in Japanese karate. That was one of the big, I did a lot of sports. I played basketball, football, track, but I did this karate. And karate was sort of my gateway into being the doorman at the Copacabana in 1986 when I was frustrated with my corporate day job. And it was sort of an escape. It was a way to sort of live almost a double life where I could kind of live this alternate world that was exciting and fun. And eventually I quit the day job and kind of got deeper into the night job.

And eventually that led into me opening my own restaurant and nightclubs in 1988 in lower Manhattan. And this was a pretty cool time in New York. New York was very exciting at that point. There was a downtown New York scene with the art worlds were colliding with the music industry. And there was, you know, for a middle-class kid from Astoria, Queens, which is where I was from, this was a very seductive world. And so I was 24 years old. I was in New York Magazine as the New York's youngest nightclub owner. And it was intoxicating, literally and metaphorically. And eventually I fell into very bad habits.

And so within a few short years, I wound up pretty horribly addicted. And I had one of these awakenings where I was realizing that I was in this, you know, the New York nightlife world, you know, which still exists today, the page six sort of glossy. We had a lot of celebrities would come into, you know, again, I'm 24, 25, 26. And we had Tom Cruise and Uma Thurman and John Kennedy Jr. were regulars at my, my, my, my night spot downtown. And for a kid with humble beginnings like I had, it was, it was, as I said, intoxicating, but also confusing. And by the time I was in my early 30s, it was all spiraling out of control. Rudy Giuliani was mayor of New York, and he had an anti-nightlife task force. I fought the law and the law won. I had my liquor licenses revoked because the reality was at that point, I was not a very good steward of these businesses because I was struggling with my own personal addictive demons. And it started with alcohol and cocaine, and eventually it did turn

into heroin, which in my entire life, I never would have believed that that would have happened because I was raised with parents that taught me about character and integrity, and yet somehow I lost myself in this world. And what I discovered, and so my addiction got so bad after my nightclubs were shut down in 1995. At that point, I was totally rudderless. I was now left without an identity, without a career. I had some resources still left, but I was broken spiritually, emotionally, physically, and went through a really terrible two or three year period of trying to go in and out of treatment programs to get better. I'm sure you can relate with your sister because it's a pretty, it's pretty treacherous waters to navigate, you know,

going in and out of detoxes and hospitals and trying to figure it out and trying to, and that's the terrifying part for most addicts when you try to get better. Cause initially a lot of addicts don't want to get better. They want to go, they want to go back to when they were able to moderate their usage. They want to go back to when it was manageable. And I tried to do that for a period of time until I proved to myself that I couldn't, I couldn't control the addiction anymore. And, and then when I really tried to do that for a period of time until I proved to myself that I couldn't control the addiction anymore. And then when I really tried to stop and I couldn't, that was the terrifying period. And I became convinced at one point that I was just going to just die and implode. And I almost did.

Eventually, my bottom was… Then you did. You kind of did. I kind of… As far as the doctors are concerned, I I did I was asystolic without a heartbeat I had a fatal overdose where my heart stopped for over an hour and 15 minutes I was at Cornell Presbyterian and this is before they had Narcan and all sorts of uh medications that can revive you and um and so I wound up being um barely resuscitated after an hour and 15 minutes.

My parents were at my bedside vigil. I was in a coma. I was on life support. And I wasn't expected to survive the first 24 hours. My organs began to shut down. They thought I wouldn't make it to the morning. And I did. I survived.

But then they told my family that I was going to be in a vegetative state because I had too much oxygen lost to my brain. So if I were to survive, I would be a vegetable. And when I came out of it about two weeks later, the only permanent physiological damage, I lost most of the hearing in my left ear. So I did have, and I had really bad tinnitus where there was this really loud ringing. But when I came out of that coma and I didn't have a classic white light experience, which I was pissed off about because I'd always been interested in white light experiences and I didn't have one, but I felt profoundly different. Something had shifted within me and I felt I wasn't put on this earth just to lose myself in this addictive gerbil wheel of just self-destruction. And that was the beginning.

That was the beginning of me sort of saying, I'm going to change my life. And I'm going to try to, first and foremost, I had to put out the fire. I got connected very heavily to a 12-step program. And I started going to seeing a therapist. And I was able to stabilize my addiction. And then I went going to seeing a therapist and I was able to stabilize my addiction. And then I went back to school and going back to school gave me a container to kind of channel my energy into and to start helping other people. And that started giving my life the meaning that I never had as a shallow nightclub owner

living in the most superficial of worlds. And then I began to realize in the societal level, we're an empty society. We're obsessed with materialism. Our values are upside down. And for a lot of people, addiction is about emptiness. It's about your life has no intrinsic meaning or purpose, so why not just self-medicate or escape? And so that was a lot of the insights that I had in my own addictive struggle. I knew that if I didn't create a life of meaning or purpose, I was going to implode. And that's been the last, I celebrated 23 years of sobriety a few months ago, of continuous sobriety. And it's been in that process of getting my life together that I've now been able to create programs and I've been a university professor and I've taught the treatment of addiction and I've begun to understand the societal issue of

there's something wrong with our society. And as part of that work, I started seeing that we were finding a new flavor of addiction to lose ourselves in. And a lot of that was now looking like digital escapism, things like, especially for young people, for like the 16 and the 22 year olds, a lot of people that I was working with as a psychologist were now escaping, but they were escaping through video gaming and social media and all these other sort of digital fantasy worlds that were much more available than something like heroin, which took some effort to get. So I started- Everyone's got an iPhone in their pocket. Everyone's got an iPhone or Android phone. Exactly.

I mean, not everybody has heroin in their pocket, but they've got this other form of addiction. That's a very good point. And the availability and accessibility is a key point. I got clean when Rudy Giuliani was mayor of New York, and a lot of people criticized Rudy for a lot of things. But there was something to be said at the time when he cleaned up street corners and he got rid of the squeegee men, struggling as an addict at that point in the early 90s. When he made it more difficult to maintain your addiction, you either had to get clean or it became harder and harder to become an addict. And that's why sometimes some of the harm reduction programs that we read about in the paper today, I'm a fan of harm reduction, like giving Suboxone or methadone to addicts

who are trying to stabilize their addiction and to get better. But now when I'm reading that they're having vending machines in New York with crack pipes in them, or that they're doing crazy safe injection sites, which was an initiative of Mayor de Blasio, which now Eric Adams is going to continue. You're not helping the addict if you're normalizing this really self-destructive lifestyle. Yes, we want to support people to get better, but some of these harm reduction initiatives at the end of the day aren't helping people walk through the door of recovery. And those drugs, methadone or suboxone, can really help people get off of those hardcore opioids in a way nothing else has. I mean,

Dope Sick called attention to this too. Like they need to be more readily available. You're going to have a vending machine full of anything for drug addicts. Try Suboxone instead of needles. Well, I run a program in Austin right now called Austin Serenity, and it's recovery housing for struggling addicts who are on Suboxone. And it was so critically necessary where it's a joint program with the University of Texas, Austin. It's a granted

program through the state because people who were on Suboxone, to your point about stigmatizing and having challenges, they weren't able to get into recovery housing. So you come out of rehab, you're on Suboxone, doctor prescribes Suboxone to help you get through those first 12 months or 18 months or 24 months. And you can't get into a sober house because most sober houses have policies against being on any medication. So a lot of these young addicts were getting off of their Suboxone to get into housing, and then they were overdosing and dying. And so creating Suboxone-friendly houses, what's called MAT, Medication Assisted Treatment, was a critical ingredient in this recovery policy approach.

Create safe housing for people who are on those medications and don't, you know, how people can, it's against the Fair Housing Act, you know, it's discriminatory to not allow people who are on doctor-described medication to not live in certain housing. But that's what was happening all around the country. People on Suboxone were not allowed to go into recovery homes. So so I'm part of an initiative of creating programs where people who are on those medications can have safe housing because that's a big step towards saving their lives. I didn't know you were only supposed to stay on it for 24 months or so. I mean, I think that my sister was on it for a lot longer than that. And I don't even know what the long-term side

effects are of, because isn't it also an opioid? Like, isn't it, but it's just like a much different kind. I don't, I don't really know much about it to be perfectly honest. Yeah. There's opioid agonist and opioid antagonists where they use the similar pathways in the brain. It's supposed to be an antagonist where it sort of blocks the part of the brain that gets high, but it's supposed to also reduce your cravings. Essentially, the biggest part is reducing the cravings. And when I said 24 months, there's no prescribed amount. Some people need to be on it transitionally for three to six months. Some people need it for multiple years.

There's no one size fits all. It's if it's working and if it's helping you function and get back to work and you're managing, now you're having, there are people on Suboxone or on methadone who are working attorneys, who are working in finance, who you would least suspect, but this is what's helping them stay on the path. Right. It's like, I don't know, the whole thing is so infuriating because it's like, if you require a blood test or a disclosure of anything that you're taking for certain facilities, like

if you want to go into elder care, certainly childcare, it's a tell that you're a recovering addict for sure. And it's like an immediate eh. But there are so many people out there who are amazing, amazing people who would be potentially great in these roles. They're not bad. They're not going to steal from you. They're not going to hurt you.

They had trouble with a drug, like so many millions of other Americans for a long time. But I understand when the patients are most vulnerable, the defenses are most high toward entry into the professions. Right. But they're not supposed to. That's discriminatory because if someone is on doctor prescribed medication like this is, you're not supposed to be denied employment or anything like that. That would be considered discriminatory. But it may on the down low happen or it may happen in a, you know, less obvious ways, but legally it's not supposed to happen that way. And most of these folks are not ready for, they don't want a legal battle. You know, it's like they're dealing with enough. The last thing

you want to know is go sue some employers who wouldn't hire them because of their recovery from addiction. And it's such a sticky wicket and it's like, there's, it's so heavy. It's such a hard, hard topic for anybody who's dealt with it. I want to pick it up on the opposite side of this break because, you know, it's also being used. It's being used politically right now to excuse people like Hunter Biden from his dealings with Ukraine. But the more I learned from Hunter Biden himself about his addiction and when it was most active and what he was doing, the more disgusted I got at the fact that he was permitted to have as much access to the sitting vice president, his dad, to the Ukrainian boards, Burisma, to all these other countries. It seems

insane to me that a father knowing his son was this addicted would allow this amount of access to foreign dignitaries and so on. We'll talk about it right after the break. Nicholas stays with us. And don't forget, folks, you can find The Megyn Kelly Show live on Sirius XM Triumph Channel 111, 111, every weekday at noon east. The full video show and clips by subscribing to our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash Megyn Kelly. And if you prefer an audio podcast, you can get us wherever you get your podcast for free. I will say, if you listen to us on Sirius XM Channel 111, when we're done, Dr. Laura takes over. And I'm telling you, I've been listening to a lot of Dr. Laura lately. She just makes so much sense. My God, I love listening to her. So you could have a double whammy of the MK show and the Dr. Laura show and you're welcome,

courtesy of Sirius XM. Okay, so Nicholas, getting sort of back into the the reading about addiction and led me to hunter biden you won't be surprised given the my day job what i normally do he admitted in his book and reminded the court two weeks ago at his failed plea deal hearing that he went to rehab six times in the last 20 years in addition to being to several outpatient facilities, was addicted, is addicted to alcohol primarily, he says, but also drugs. We know he's addicted to crack. We've seen him on camera admitting to trying to sniff things like Parmesan cheese. So desperate was he for some sort of fix busted for cocaine possession at age 18. Taken off his record, that bust was, by doing a pretrial intervention, and he had six months of probation. Interesting thought there for parents.

Do you let the book get thrown at your 18-year-old in that moment just so it's, you know, there's no intervention. It's the full penalty of the law, just so he feels the weight of it. I don't know. I'd love to say I'd do that. I don't know. I'd love to say I'd do that. I don't know that I would. Right. So it's your own child. Story after story about how he quit drinking, but then returned to it. I'd stop for 30 days. I'd binge for three, started drinking again here, again here, again here. And once his father was elected vice president, there was it was no holds barred from the sound of it starting in 2010. So shortly after Obama was inaugurated and Biden as the vice president.

Now, he did continue trying to try and rehab centers, including one in 2014 in Tijuana, Mexico. But then more booze, more drugs in and out, stumbling, sliding, racing downhill. I could go down. He was presenting all this to the drug to the judge in connection with his attempt to get a plea deal and excuse his behavior on the taxes and the gun um my question in all of this and i realize this is not you know you know you may not be able to answer it with respect to hunter in particular but what kind of a sitting vice president knowing full well as all family members do when an addiction like this is doing to a child would allow said child to do business, calling him up, using his influence as the vice president of the United States, putting him on the phone with Ukrainian business dealers, going to dinner with them at Cafe Milano. This is a severe addict. And not only did he not stop Hunter from using his connections to make all of this rain, you know, in Ukraine, in Russia, in Kazakhstan.

I could go down the list. He helped. He he was facilitating it. Miranda Devine of The New York Post posited on the show that was the goal all along. It was to line Joe Biden's pockets, not Hunter's. It was a Joe Biden operation. But what do you make of it as somebody who sees people this addicted all the time? Yeah, I tend to agree with Miranda Devine just intuitively. You know, the narrative has been on the mainstream media that poor Hunter, Hunter's got these issues, but they're divorced from Joe. Joe's just the poor, loving father who happens to have an addicted son. And yet,

the more you look at this, the more you drill down into it in terms of the timeline and when things were happening and how these conversations were going on. And let's face it, it's come out now that Joe Biden's been dishonest from the start about never having spoken to his son about business to now it feels like rather than Hunter being the albatross around his father's neck, it feels like Joe Biden's been an exploitative father. It feels like, I mean, again, I don't know this factually, but if you look at, if you begin to connect some of the dots, it feels like in spite of the fact that Hunter was severely addicted, his father was sending him out on these missions that high-stress missions, these money

gathering operations that he was getting involved with, with Ukraine and China and Romania and the different Uzbekistans, the different despots that he was working with at the behest of his father. So rather than Joe Biden being the grieving father here, it feels like he's the exploitative father who is manipulating a not very well son. And again, I don't have great sympathy for Hunter because once you've been exposed to recovery, it may not be your fault that you fall down the addiction rabbit hole like your sister did. But once you've been exposed to recovery, you do have that is within your power to continue to walk that path. And so there's some personal responsibility that comes in with how you access recovery and treatment. And now, look, he's had several attempts at rehab over a couple of decades. But is his father, does his father keep putting him back in the firing line?

You know, we talk about addicts in early recovery slowly getting back into the workforce, the normal workforce, much less these black ops that he's doing in China or whatever else he was working with, Devin Archer or Bubulinski or some of his other partners that have told us, laid out their playbook, that this is what's been going on, influence peddling 101 while he was, you know, days and weeks out of rehab. So that's unbelievable, quite honestly. Yes. Having somebody in the family who is who wasn't and was addicted to a drug. I understand that the rest of the family is constantly on edge. You know, you're very worried that the person is going to return to active addiction. You're worried about the person

finding a stable, honest living. And most of us would work to support a stable, honest living of said family member. And the last thing you would do was allow this person to be dealing with the Ukrainians and the Chinese and the Romanians and the Russians while you have such a sensitive position as the sitting vice president, not to mention you're bringing classified documents back to your home where he is in Delaware and elsewhere. Just having him lay out once again, you know, the scope of his addiction and how out of control it was during all the years that we're now being reminded of by James Comer, who's investigating investigating this in the House. It just to me underscored how grossly irresponsible Joe Biden

has been, irrespective of whether they prove a bribe or all the rest of it. Like what responsible parent would do that? Irresponsible as a father and as a sitting vice president. Right. Because he was irresponsible on both fronts. It'd be the equivalent, Megan, as if like if, if you or I owned a restaurant and we had an alcoholic son and the day they come out of rehab, we're going to put them to work behind the bar

and not understanding that they're going to be triggers and that we should try to be more compassionate about helping them have a softer, gentler landing back into the sober world. It seems like Joe was not concerned about that because he had other priorities, it seems like, based on the timelines of when he was doing these overseas missions right out of treatment, right out of treatment. So irresponsible as a father and grossly responsible as the sitting vice president. Oh, my gosh, it's so alarming. I mean, you look back at it, it's just God, could I come up with some good debate questions for Joe Biden? I mean, I wish so much they would let me have an interview with him or or do a debate with him. And they would be fair. They would be fair. It wouldn't all be just a jugular excision.

But these are questions you can you can ask based in fact, it doesn't have to speculate based on the FBI form or anything that Comer and his friends have found. It's it's about the actual decisions we know he made as the sitting vice president. And I'd love to hear some answers to these. Let's pivot to tech, because I do think a lot of our audience and yours truly, we all care about this.

I see it in kids, my kids to some extent, they're not allowed on social media, but like my boys, they love games. My little guy, he loves the games online. And sometimes I see him not obsess on social media, but like my boys, they love games. My little guy, he loves the games online. And I, sometimes I see him not obsessing over it, but like he's so intense when he's playing it. It bothers me. And I'll say, Thatcher, what do you think? What do you think? I'm curious. What do you think is a reasonable limit for you to be playing these games? And he was like, I don't think I should be on this device for more than an hour a day. I'm like, and this is

summer. So we're a little bit looser with it. I'm like, I agree with think I should be on this device for more than an hour a day. I'm like, and this is summer, so we're a little bit looser. I'm like, I agree with you. I agree with you. But if we didn't make a decision to regulate that, I mean, he could be on it for eight hours a day. It absolutely is addictive. Right. And our children just don't have the developed prefrontal cortex to manage their impulsivity,

right? We talk about that part of our brain that manage their impulsivity, right? We talk about that part of our brain that manages our impulsivity fully develops when we're 24, 25 years old. So we're giving eight-year-olds and 10-year-olds and five-year-olds these highly dopaminergic and adrenalergic, you know, they spike dopamine, they spike adrenaline, these experiences that are so powerful that adults can barely control them. And then we're asking children to moderate. And it's a no-win situation. We're exposing them to platforms and games and experiences that are really beyond their

neurophysiological capability to moderate. And so when we get upset when they won't only play for an hour, we have to understand that it's just too powerful of an experience. And it does alter from child to child. There are some children that have a little bit more ability to manage some of these games, and then there are others who fall entirely off the cliff and can't manage them at all. And so there are no universal one hour, two hours, because I get that question asked all the time. What's the ideal time of screen time? Well, it really depends on how dysregulated it makes your child. And that varies from child to child, depending on some of their underlying issues or proclivities or mental health

predispositions. That's so true. And honestly, I feel like the parents who pay the least attention probably have the kids who are on it the most. And then it becomes this cycle where the more they're on it, the more addictive it is. And then, you know, boom, they're off to the races. problems we're seeing right now are linked back to this tech addiction and influence, whether it's the severe depression and anxiety of teenage girls or the explosion in the gender madness. And I wanted to ask you about this. This is this is as good an on ramp to the discussion as any I could think of. Riley Gaines, who's been great speaking out about men posing as women trying to get into women's sports. She posts she found this video on TikTok, I think, and she posted a video of herself eating cereal next to it. She's like, OK, OK, listening, listening. But listen, I'm going to play the soundbite so you can hear what the young woman Riley

was reacting to is saying about herself. To me, there is no other explanation for this than life entirely online. Okay, listen. I'm Cody, pronouns E-M-R-Rs or Z-Z-Z-Zers, or really any neo pronouns that aren't Z-H-R-Rs. I am a white, transmasculine, femme, non-binary, temporarily, mostly able-bodied, neurodivergent, obsessive-compulsive, chronically ill, culturally Jewish, unitarian, universalist, non-monogamous, demi-low romantic, gray demisexual, survivor of acute and complex trauma, millennial, and cat parent in mental health recovery. Oh my God. I'm sorry, Nicholas, but what is that? Explain that. Yeah, it's crazy.

In clinical terms, it's insane. Yeah. We're seeing a lot of that. So it's interesting when you look at the psychiatric metrics of the different generational cohorts, the younger the cohort, as we go down from baby boomer to Gen X to millennial to Gen Z, the more psychiatric unwellness we have. So the most mentally healthy people are in their 50s and 60s. And as you go down the ladder, more depression, anxiety,

suicidality, self-harm, all the psychometric spike as you get younger and younger, which is correlating with their immersion in this sort of digital world. When I wrote my first book, Glow Kids, in 2016, I showed all the clinical research that showed about some of the impacts of technology on children and teens. And it was really pulling back the curtain on the playbook of big tech that they've made these devices and platforms habit-forming by design. So first it was saying we're getting addicted to our devices,

which at the time in 2016, I got a lot of pushback from when I wrote in the New York Post, digital heroin, people thought, what, these can be addicting. Well, now we know ask and answer, these devices are addicting. My most recent book, Digital Madness, we look at what is the price of that addiction? What is it doing to the mental health of an entire generation or entire society? And so what we're seeing is that as we continue to have our love affair with technology and increase our screen immersion, we're getting more and more psychiatrically and well. And a lot of that I ascribe to what some of my colleagues have ascribed to also a social contagion effect. So if you're a little bit lost or not loving your life or feeling a little bit

drifting, and you start going down rabbit holes of different platforms, whether it's 4chan or social media or Instagram, and I've written about this because a lot of our clients in Austin fall into this category, might be going through a little mild depression. But then if you fall into a rabbit hole of, there's whole communities for borderline personality disorder, dissociative identity disorder, gender dysphoria. And we know from social learning theory that we, you know, monkey see, monkey do. We begin to emulate our social groups. Well, now our social groups for most young people are digital. They're online. So, you know, if you run with wolves, you become a wolf. If I start running with a pack of borderline young people in a support group, I will now start to kind of aspirationally emulate some of those characteristics.

There's no other way to explain the 4,000% spike in gender dysphoria, female to male gender dysphoria that we've seen in quote unquote, late onset gender dysphoria, female to male gender dysphoria that we've seen in quote-unquote late-onset gender dysphoria, other than the social contagion explanation. Now, to be clear, as a psychologist for almost 25 years now, I've worked with genuine gender dysphoria, and I've worked with genuine dissociative identity disorder, what we used to call multiple personality disorder. Those things are real, but they're extremely rare. And they don't happen to the degree that we've been seeing them over the last five to 10 years. So I've begun to call these variants pseudo-borderline personality disorder, pseudo-dissociative identity disorder, pseudo-gender dysphoria,

because it ain't the real thing. These are mimicked social contagion phenomenon. And the proof of that is in my treatment program in Austin, where they're off of technology, all our young clients are off technology for eight weeks. There's a percentage of them who came in with these personality disorders or these issues who once they unplug for three or four weeks, they no longer show symptoms of the prior disorder, which shouldn't happen because a lot of these disorders are lifelong or they're much more complex and long. You shouldn't be cured in four weeks of unplugging. You don't lose borderline personality disorder because you turn off the iPhone for a month. Exactly. Because BPD is a multiple year, very entrenched personality disorder that doesn't

get cured in four weeks of unplugging. And so if we're seeing that that's happening, then you didn't really have BPD to begin with. That's the obvious conclusion. This is so interesting to me because one of the first guests we ever had on the show was Abigail Schreier, who wrote the must read book, Irreversible Damage, and one of the first to sound the alarm on this social contagion based on Dr. Lisa Lippman's work at Brown University that was happening in particular to young girls. And we talked all about how this can happen to young girls. They can get immersed on the internet. Next thing you know, they fall into this gender sort of cult and they're not really trans. They're just whatever. But this

is the first I'm realizing that this the internet is it's got several pockets of this. Yes. Gender. Yeah. But also borderline personality disorder. Also, whatever found online in these little groups that affirm. And you think, like you tell me as the addiction expert, I would imagine you think you're feeling better because you're connecting with other people who are like validating you. But the same as a drug, the fall comes after the initial high. Well, right. You're finding community in this tribe and this tribe is not well. And so now you're again are emulating the tribe that you've fallen into. And so because you're so habituated to your device, you can't sort of look away. The really fascinating ones to look at are the dissociative identity disorder communities where you have quote unquote systems. So now, you know, back in the day. Wait, what does that mean? Does that mean like multiple personality disorder? Yeah. So DID, dissociative identity disorder, is what we used to call multiple personality disorder. Remember Sybil and Three Faces of Eve? And historically, somebody who had multiple personality disorder had childhood sexual

trauma and they couldn't, they had to compartmentalize that in an alternate identity. And so they created alters. And so they would have three or four or five identities in order to, it was a coping mechanism to cope with some of the trauma of the sexual abuse that they had as children. A real thing, very rare. So now there are DID influencers. So now we know that the power of the influencer isn't just Kim Kardashian, but these psychiatric influencers are very popular because of the performative nature of what they do. And we know that the coin of the realm in social media is views and followers. And how do you get views and followers but being the most over the top, the most performative? have these influencers who claim to have something like multiple personality disorder or DID,

and they have hundreds of thousands of followers. And the entertaining part or the part that people really lean into or the popcorn moment is when they do what's called switching. So you'll have Bobby will be a system that has, they'll say they have dozens of alters now. So their alter will be the full LGBTQI spectrum. It'll be Bobby now has an alter that's a black lesbian, a 20 year old, or has an alter that's a bisexual 60 year old. And they'll alter, they'll switch on demand and they post these videos. They get hundreds of millions of views. And the phenomenon that we're seeing is now their followers are also beginning to identify as having alters and they do the same behavior and it's monkey see, monkey do. It's not the genuine article. They don't really have multiple personality disorder,

but they're aspirationally gravitating towards these influencers who do, or, well, let me, let me retract that. I think many of these influencers don't have genuine personality sort of either, but it's their shtick to get followers consciously or unconsciously. What are our kids supposed to do when immersed in this? I mean, I don't even know what this is not going to happen to my children because we're too active in our parenting, but they're going to have to grow up around this. They're going to bump into other people's crazy at a rate that's much higher than you or I had when we were growing up. How are they supposed to react to this? We just had the lunchroom in high school, you had to navigate the cafeteria in high school. It was like a bully, a mean girl, a nerd. That's it. Like all the normal stuff.

So I just came back from a month in Greece. I was on an island in Greece for a month with my family, 16 year old twin boys that I have that are going through high school here in New York. And we didn't see any of this. There was none of this. It was like the land that time forgot. We were on this idyllic island where the kids grew up there and they weren't quote unquote normal. There was no DID. There was no BPD. There was no gender dysphoria. It was, and my kids commented on it. They're 16. They're smart, my twin boys. And they're like, wow, all the crazy we see back home isn't happening here. Why is that? Well, there's a variety of cultural reasons that might maybe give evidence to that, but it's all we can do as parents is immunize our kids.

I talk a lot in my books about creating a healthy psychological immune system. And one of the metaphors that I like to use is, and it's a recovery metaphor, by the way, being in recovery doesn't make the ocean less turbulent, but we can become better swimmers. We're not going to stop the tide of social media from the crazy, from bumping up against our kids, but can we make our kids better swimmers? Can we strengthen their psychological immune system where they have a strong core sense of identity? They have some grit and resilience. They have some critical thinking skills. They have some hobbies and interests. So there's a variety of factors that we can do. That's why I'm a big believer in something like ancient Greek philosophy.

I use the philosopher warrior archetype is that that should be the ideal archetype that we try to instill in our children. So the philosopher had the ability to use reason and critical thinking and ethics and compassion. The philosopher, think of the classic idea of what an Athenian philosopher, combine that with the grit and resilience of a Spartan warrior. And the psychologist Angela Duckworth, she wrote her book Grit, and she talked a lot about the importance of grit. Our kids need to lean into being able to be resilient. And a lot of the young people that I work with have absolutely no resilience, no ability to navigate through any

kind of turbulence in their lives. And so they lean into all these other maladaptive ways of dealing with life. So we don't bubble wrap our kids. We encourage them to lean into experiences that they might trip and stumble and fall. And then that's what helps them become stronger. You know, in the mental health field right now, and I need to say this part, the dominant paradigm is this model called ACEs, Adverse Childhood Experiences. And what most mental health folks think now is, because it's a scale that they give, and you give a teenager this ACEs test and the amount

of adversity that they had in their childhood correlates to how likely it is that they might have a mental health issue or an addiction issue. And what I've written and talked about is that the adversity isn't the bad thing. The adversity isn't the boogeyman in this equation. The inability to handle the adversity, to be resilient is the boogeyman here. So we know that that doesn't kill us, it makes us stronger, the old Nietz that they don't have, we've had too much safe spaces and trigger warnings. And we've created this pathology bubble because we've overreacted to things that we should have not have done. Even playing the pronoun game feeds into this because we're feeding into this unhealthy narrative to do this pronoun game.

I'm going back to teaching at a university again this year, back to Stony Brook. I was a professor there 10 years ago. And the world has changed in 10 years. And I'm refusing to play the pronoun game because- How's that going to go over in the university setting? How's that going to, you know, how are you going to handle that in the university setting?

I'll let you know. It starts in two weeks. Right. I worry about two weeks. Right. I worry about this for my kids. I did a whole Talking Points memo a few months ago on how I'm done with the pronouns and how I got to this point and why I really think that the pronouns are dangerous now. I've really done a 180 on it. But I worry about my kids because more and more, you know, school age children are declaring themselves this, that, or the other. And it's not real. And I don't want my kids to have to

play the game. And I don't want them to be cited as bullies if they don't play the game. Or what if there's a teacher? What if they have a teacher who declares themselves a member of the opposite sex and then your kids have to play along? Otherwise what's going to happen to them, right? Like you want to be tolerant, but why does my kid need to participate in your delusion? Exactly. And so often it's misguided. You know, oftentimes, you know, sometimes it's well-intended but misguided. So you have some teacher or some mental health professional who's trying to be supportive

and they're misinterpreting. You know, it's the same thing with addiction. You know, it's enabling. I'm trying to help somebody, but I'm enabling that rather than helping them. So you're making the problem worse rather than really clearly understanding the dynamics of the issue. So the teacher that thinks they're being supportive of a child's gender journey is actually creating more harm than good because they're planting

seeds that are not age appropriate and they're impressionable young kids. Kids are going through different developmental stages. They're thinking they're Superman, Batman, a furry superhero. You don't feed into that transitional identity that they might be temporarily identifying with. And you certainly don't encourage hormone therapy and invasive surgeries, which is- They're like, Nicholas, I'm just realizing, they're like the Mayor de Blasio with the dispenser of the drugs. Instead of putting Suboxone in there that might

get them off the drugs, de Blasio is putting the actual drugs in there. And that's like what these teachers are doing. Rather than leading the children away from this very unhealthy choice which it is a choice um they're fostering it they're encouraging it they're like more of it which we've said before but it bears repeating that's like encouraging the anorexia that's like encouraging the borderline personality disorder none of this is healthy it should not be encouraged right but they think that they're being somehow compassionate and so we've gone from trying to, I think, be compassionate or accepting of certain disorders to then normalizing it, to not making them aspirational. Let's face it, right now in most universities, it's cool to be trans.

It's cool to be, you know, the worst thing to be is a cisgender white male, right? So I had a friend of mine's daughter came back from school and she said three of her white male friends just over the course of the intercession decided that they're going to come back and be trans just because it was too hard to be a white male in the culture that they're in because we're potentially so demonized. It's just very toxic right now. And the adults in the room are not sort of standing up and saying, no, the emperor has no clothes. We're not going to play this game because we're feeding into, we're enabling these really unwell thoughts that are being amplified

through social media. And then now we're having the cancel culture and transphobia. And if you call somebody any one of these third rail words, God forbid you get called homophobic, transphobia. And if you call somebody any one of these, you know, third rail words, God forbid you get called homophobic, transphobic, anything like that, and your career is over. And so those of us who are at a point in our careers where we're a little bit past that, and we don't have to maybe necessarily worry about that, we need to kind of speak up and say, this is not healthy. This is not helping the people that are struggling with underlying mental health issues. And this is not helping on the societal level, creating a very unwell society right now. We're already an empty, sick society, materialism-based, Kardashian-worshipping.

Can we have a dialogue about, you know, this goes back to the ancient Greek model of dialogues about ethics and civics and what it means to be a just society and what that really looks like on a very fundamental level. And we don't have those conversations because it's an emotions economy. And so if I say something that might be logically, factually true, but it triggers your emotional response, that trumps my ability to speak factually or use reason. And it shouldn't be that way. You know, I'm thinking about developing grit.

And I think the short answer is always like I've said it before, but run toward the danger, like take on risks, deal with the downside when it comes and manifests. And that's true for parents raising children, too. I think our instincts oftentimes are to try to solve our children's problems for them. Right. Because we love them and we know what to do. And what I've realized lately, I love cognitive behavioral therapy, you know, where this isn't the clinical definition, but my work workman's understanding of it is, OK, that little voice inside your head says, whatever, I'm an idiot. I guess I'm an idiot. And what if you said, OK, what says, whatever. I'm an idiot. I guess I'm an idiot.

And what if you said, okay, what's your evidence? You're an idiot. Well, I got the answer wrong on that test. Okay. That's out there. You did get the answer wrong on that test. You owe it to yourself to make the second list. What is the evidence that I'm not an idiot there? Oh, wait, actually there's quite a few things over here on this pile and I could go through them. And I not, I'm not trying to unleash that on my children exactly, but I do think it's my default way of parenting. Like if my kid comes home and says, so-and-so insulted me, I'll say that person sounds like an asshole. But also what are all the things that might belie that claim? Like, okay, maybe you did this thing

or maybe you didn't, I don't know. But let's look at all the other evidence about who you actually are. Like look at all the things you actually did accomplish. Look at all the things that you've done and you, you, you know, that you feel good about the evidence before the court is more than this one insult, right? Like that's basically where, and that's the gift of having them live with you. Ideally until they're 18, they bring problems home and you can help them. You're not solving them for them. You're giving them problem solving skills. Right. You're teaching them how to confront the faulty cognition as we call it, right? So there's a faulty cognition or false narrative and we're helping them disabuse that. So they have the sword

in their toolbox or the sword in their sheath to be able to fight off. Because when you look at things like social media, there's so much noise, there's so much toxicity there. If they don't have the ability to critically think and to be able to use this ability that you're talking about to analyze something and to give the counter argument to, they're just going to be lost in the noise or the toxic tide's going to pull them under. And that's what I'm seeing with a lot of the clients that we treat in our Austin program. They've been sucked into, you know, like the video that you showed with that young woman who multiply identified as all this nonsense. And it's,

it's so unhealthy to feed into that. If somebody would have just said, what's your intrinsic identity and stop all these labels. Cause we've, you know, intersectionality and having parsing people down to the more divisive and divisive ways is instead of the old Martin Luther King, what's the content of your character? How about who are you intrinsically? Forget all the exterior labels because that can be very schizophrenic inducing and very confusing. Let's get to the core essence of who you are. And for a lot of the young people that I work with, there's so much confusion right now because of all this noise that's coming at them from a thousand different directions. I really think like if I were a teacher dealing with this and somebody came in and said all that, I'd say, so no, it's a no, I won't be doing that.

You can pick one male, female. I mean, if I can't tell what it is, you can pick one. And if you don't pick one, I'm going to pick it. We're not going to do ZZ, well, I love the low radical load trends. I don't know what she said. Either you pick or I pick, but we're going to do one. And that's how it's going to work here, because you're not going to turn yourself into a distraction to me, to the rest of the class. It's just so tricky and you're going to be living it in the belly of the beast. So, all right, Nicholas, would you, I have a question for you. Sorry to ask you this live on the air, but will you take some calls? Because I'm sure

our audience members have got some of these issues in their lives or with their kids or with themselves and may want to ask you for your expertise. So would you mind taking some calls from callers? All right. Awesome. Nicholas stays with us. Can I just add one thing? One of the things that I think gets underappreciated is how the narcissism that gets embedded into young people by this whole digital landscape that they're in. There's this idea, and if you think about it, Megan, we used to talk about in our generation,

it was like everybody suffered from, not everybody, but a lot of people suffered from low self-esteem and the name of the game was to improve self-esteem. A lot of the younger people that we work with now have an inflated egocentric narcissistic sense of self-esteem. Because if you think about what the digital landscape is with predictive algorithms, an eight, 10, 12-year-old kid, they think of something and they do a search about something. And all of a sudden, their digital world collapses around them and gives them more and more of that that they've thought of. It's a bit of magical thinking because their digital world is created in their image. It's created to suit their needs. And so it's no

wonder that a lot of these young people that have been raised in the womb of the digital world that we're in have a profoundly self-centric view of the world because the world does revolve around their interests and needs in a very magical way. So that doesn't often get appreciated enough, I think. But anyway, I just wanted to add that into the equation. Remember, you are not special. You're not. You need the Linda and Ed Kelly method of parenting. You really don't seem that special, but we're open-minded to specialness if you so choose to prove it. All right, let's get Jeff from Pennsylvania on the phone. Jeff, hi. Thanks for calling in. What's your question for Nicholas? Hey, Megan. I just have a kind of an interesting story and a great, really great topic because it's insanity what's happening in America today.

My niece was a couple of years ago when she was 19, she declared that she was going to be a Zay, gender neutral. Based on her personality traits and growing up, really good kid, but she always wanted to be the center of attention for whatever reason. And color her hair differently. We took it all in stride. But then it got serious, changed her name to a non-gender or gender-neutral name and said, I am now a they. And occasionally she would dress like a female and occasionally she would dress like a male. It seemed disingenuous and very much a cry for attention. At 21, she's matured a little bit.

Her tendency was certainly to act very much like a female. And at 21, she comes out now and says, you know what? I'm a mama woman. And it was just simply my uneducated opinion that it was projected on her that this is a way, if you talk about this, you will generate attention towards yourself.

If you become a they, it's another reason for people to talk about you. That's a great point. I mean, I'm sure you're seeing that, Nicholas, right? Like it's an attention-seeking thing. What do you make of that? Yeah, I think a big part of it, and I think that's a perfect example because we have so many detransitioners today that are evidence to the fact that this was not a permanent, this wasn't genuine gender dysphoria. It was attention seeking, it was underlying other mental health issues, it was underlying maybe just natural transitioning.

Jordan Peterson talks about this as well, where there's always been masculine women and feminine men, and there's a spectrum of what is gender normal, but to all of a sudden have people suggest that if you do this or assume this other gender identity like your niece did, they all of a sudden realize when the dust settles after a couple of years that, oh, maybe this is just a passing fad. In the addiction recovery world, we have a phrase, what we call, where an addict might try to do what's called a geographic. And a geographic is when somebody who's struggling with addiction feels that, well, maybe if I move somewhere, that'll cure my addiction. Because my addiction isn't based within me.

My addiction is based because of where I'm living. And if I move from New York to LA, I won't be an addict anymore. I've become convinced that gender dysphoria or this is pseudo gender dysphoria. That's the social contagion version of it. For some people is a gender geographic. Some young person is feeling some struggles. They're not feeling comfortable with their life at that point. And they get the idea either through social media or through some well-intentioned or not well-intentioned adult that if they go over the fence and go into the other gender that's where happiness lives and then they find out that's not because that gender isn't

this the source of their problem me of something my sister learned when she was in recovery and well i get i think it's a saying quote in the rooms as she used to say uh like 12-step rooms wherever you go that's where you are right wherever go, that's where you are. Right. Wherever you go, that's where you are. You take yourself and your baggage with you just because you move a state or change the way you dress, you haven't addressed any of your problems. And in the field of transgenderism, you've created more, especially if you start engaging in these hormone therapies or the medicalization, the surgeries. Let's get another caller in. How about Cheryl Lynn?

She's up in Toronto, Canada how about um Cheryl Lynn she's up in Toronto Canada hi Cheryl Lynn what's on your mind hi Megan how are you I'm doing great thank you so much everything that you're talking about I feel like now I've missed the boat because I have a son 20 years old dropped out of university in one program then dropped out of university in one program, then dropped out of college in a second program. So I'm reluctant to give him chance number three. But the only thing that he does is game online. And any money that he has, he buys things for the game.

His whole social network is online. And it's really scary. I don't see a way out of this. I need a playbook and I'm really lost in how to help him. What do you make of it, Nick? Well, that's half of our clients in our Omega Recovery Austin program is exactly what you just described. It's failure to launch college age, young men who get lost in gaming. The real world becomes harder and harder, and it's much easier to push a button and live in the fantasy world to gaming. It's a hard, I'm going to be honest with you. It's a

hard addiction to break because it's so readily available. And so it usually takes more than just seeing a therapist once a week, you know, It takes really a kind of a wholesale transformation. He's got to get back into healthy habits and find a genuine sense of meaning in their lives because oftentimes the gamer feels that their own lives, his own life is not meaningful. But when he's leveling up and he's level 112 in this galactic universe that he's feeling empowered in, that's a better reality than the one he's currently living in. And so pretty significant treatment is the solution usually, because usually that doesn't fix itself spontaneously, unfortunately.

Get help. That is a tough one. And for people with younger kids, stay aggressive before it before it spirals. I think Jerry in Long Beach, he's got a political thought. Let's get some politics into into the back half here. Jerry, what's on your mind? Jerry, are you out there? Can you hear me? Oh, Jerry, we'll miss you. Let's try Kevin in South Carolina. Hi, I'm just amazed at our current vegetable in the White House. I'm sorry about that. How he has no decency to come out and be a human being to care about the people that are affected in hawaii yeah we we've been talking about it uh on the show that what i mean i'm not gonna ask you to

diagnose him nicholas but what do you make of it i mean what would make somebody in his position say no comment as opposed to just actually speak from the heart and say, my God, it's terrible. It is terrible. I'm getting briefed on it. My heart goes out to everyone there. And, you know, I'm cynical. So I think he's worried about his own push on the green energy stuff. But what what's your take on it?

Again, not having met or diagnosed him, but, you know, some signs of a narcissist and a little sociopathy there. I was reading the other day that Jill Biden's first husband was reeling a story about how, when they all used to be friends before she married Joe Biden, this is her first husband. And he tells a story that he had told some football story, some anecdote that was really funny. And later that evening, they all went to dinner with a larger group and Joe Biden shared that story as his own. And Jill's husband was sitting right there and he scratched his head and said, wow, this is pretty, there's something kind of off here. This guy is retelling the story that I just told three hours ago as his own. And I'm sitting right here. That's not normal. There's something off about that,

about sort of confabulating or making up stories and doing it in such a sociopathic way that you don't even are aware maybe that you're doing it. And again, it goes back to, it's always about him. Some veterans telling you about their troubles, and it goes back to your issue and your pain in a misguided way to seem compassionate. But it comes out as being self-centered. Oh, that is so interesting and makes a lot of sense. Let's go to Sean in New Hampshire who has a question. Hi, Sean. What's your question?

Hi, Megan. So my question is, obviously, you can't do this for the first debate, but for the second debate, would you consider sitting down with Trump and maybe Trump and Tucker and doing live commentary on the debate? Hell yes. Yes. I would, I would do all of that. I think it's actually a brilliant move to counter program by by by both Trump and Tucker. What a smart kind of middle finger. Right. Trump's not happy with Fox because let's face it, they've been all team DeSantis from the

beginning of this thing. Only now that DeSantis's numbers are cratering, are they like, oh, well, we'd love to have Trump. I'll talk about Trump a little bit more. But they've been on the DeSantis love train. OK, fine. But let's not be surprised now when Trump doesn't want to show up for your Fox and your Fox business debates. And of course, we all know what they did to Tucker. So it's a very it's a great power move by both men in a way, though, I confess I'll miss

seeing Trump at the debate. I mean, that's we all kind of lose because he's fascinating and he'll keep it interesting. I'll be waiting. The most interesting thing to me is what's going to happen in the polls after that debate, because are these guys going to make it a Trump pile on I mean Chris Christie will of course or are they going to just make it about each other and what will that do to the relative numbers you know with Trump 46 points up it just seems immovable no one's ever been up by these amounts and lost the nomination so I have no idea what their plan is. But yes, hell yes, I would counter program that way. Sean, thank you for for calling and asking. Let's see, Barbara in Delaware. Hi, what's your thought? Hi, Megan. First of all, you're an inspiration to women. And I really appreciate you. So my comment is, I don't think

Trump at least should attend the first debate because all I think they're going to do is dump on Trump and take their eye off the ball of this Atlanta thing, you know, the indictments, who are we to second guess it? I don't I don't I think he's he's probably right. He skipped Iowa the first time back in 2015, 16. He lost Iowa, but he still won the nomination and won the presidency. So we'll continue to follow it. Nicholas, it's been fascinating. I hope everybody buys digital madness. So we'll continue to have Jason Whitlock. Love Jason Whitlock. He's going to be here for the full show. So we'll get to all the news headlines, including that business about CNN and how they manipulated a DeSantis clip. You may or may not be offended with the real clip, but at least play the real clip. We'll get into it tomorrow, along with all the other news headlines. Thank you all for joining us. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.