The One You Feed - Why Connection Is the Medicine We've Been Missing | Julie Holland
Episode Date: June 26, 2026In this episode, Julie Holland explains why connection may be the medicine we’ve been missing. She explores how genuine human connection helps regulate the nervous system, why disconnection can keep... us stuck in fight-or-flight, and how our phones often give us a synthetic version of connection that never fully satisfies. Julie also discuss oxytocin, stress, loneliness, addiction, psychedelics, and the simple ways we can return to the real relationships and embodied experiences that help us heal. Good Wolf Reminders… A little wisdom, right when you need it. Start receiving free text reminders designed to help you pause, reflect, and take meaningful action. Sign up at oneyoufeed.net/sms. Key Takeaways: Discussion of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems and their impact on mental health. Exploration of the science of human connection and the biological need for social interaction. Personal anecdotes from working in a psychiatric emergency room and the challenges faced in that environment. The effects of social disconnection on physical and mental health, including stress responses. The importance of physical, face-to-face interactions for emotional well-being. Examination of the role of digital communication versus in-person connection. Insights into addiction, including the distinction between classical psychedelics and other substances. Discussion of process addictions and their underlying causes related to existential distress. The therapeutic potential and risks of psychedelics in treating addiction and mental health issues. Emphasis on local action and personal agency in addressing mental health and community well-being. For full show notes, click here! If you enjoyed this conversation with Dr. Julie Holland, check out these other episodes: Neuroscience Behind Our Reality with James Kingsland 232: Michael Pollan This episode is sponsored by: Shopify – The commerce platform that helps you build, grow, and manage your business all in one place. Start your $1/month trial at shopify.com/feed. David Protein bars deliver up to 28g of protein for just 150 calories—without sacrificing taste! For a limited time, our listeners can receive this special deal: buy 4 cartons and get the 5th free when you go to www.davidprotein.com/FEED Alma has a directory of 20,000 therapists with different specialities, life experiences, and identities, and 99% of them take insurance. Visit helloalma.com to learn more! Talkiatry connects you with licensed psychiatrists for personalized, evidence-based mental health care, all online and covered by most major insurance plans. To get matched with an in-network psychiatrist in just a few minutes, visit Talkiatry.com/FEED. Tiny Health‘s at-home gut health test provides science-backed insights into your microbiome, along with personalized recommendations to help you improve your digestion, energy, and overall well-being. Get $50 off your first test kit at tinyhealth.com/FEED Aura Frames: Named #1 by Wirecutter, you can save on the gifts moms love by visiting AuraFrames.com. For a limited time, listeners can get 25 dollars off their best-selling Carver Mat frame with code FEED. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout! Brodo Broth: Shop the best broth on the planet with Brodo. Head to Brodo.com/TOYF for 20% off your first subscription order and use code TOYF for an additional $10 off. Rocket Money Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. Join at rocketmoney.com/feed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcript
Discussion (0)
How can we get into parasympathetic?
What can you do to get out of fight or flight and get into parasympathetic?
And, you know, for some people, it's put your phone down.
Your phone is making you sick.
Welcome to the one you feed.
Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have.
Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true.
And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
We tend toward negativity, self-pity,
jealousy or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back
and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious,
consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people
keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. There's a saying in
addiction medicine that Julie Holland and I both love. You can never get enough of something that
almost works. We moved on and started talking about phones and she put it in a way that stuck with me.
A text is like a vitamin. A conversation face-to-face is the food. You can live on supplements for
a while, but it's never the nutrition of the real meal, which is why it never quite fills you
and you keep reaching for more. Julie wrote good chemistry about the science of connection.
Her case is simple. Stop trying to live on vitamins. I'm Eric Zimmer, and this is the one you feed.
Hi, Julie. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to have you on. We're going to be
primarily discussing your book called Good Chemistry, The Science of Connection, from soul to psychedelics.
But before we get into that, we'll start like we always do with the parable. In the parable, there's a
grandparent who's talking with their grandchild, and they say in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are
always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love.
And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the
grandchild stops, think about it for a second. They look up at their grandparent and they say,
well, which one wins? And the grandparent says the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking
you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Well, I guess the first thing
it means to me is just where you place your attention, where you place your energy, and what you're
trying to accomplish. You know, one of the metaphors I use is like, first you have to decide what a
garden is to coordinate off and get rid of the rocks and change the dirt around and add the plants.
Like the first thing you have to do is say, this is going to be a garden. So some of the energy
that I think I put toward things is figuring out what to build, where to build it, what it's going
to look like so that you can kind of defend your space with other people. But from a personal
perspective, my two wolves are sort of like the yin and yang energies that I am constantly trying to balance.
I am very naturally sort of yang testosterone heavy. I have things to do. I've got a vector or places
to go, get out of my way. Whereas the yin energy is more receptive and hanging back and seeing what
people say and taking it all in before you make a decision. So it's very easy for me to be sort of
all in and aggressive and barreling forward and where I really need to put my energy is to having more of a balance of yin,
receptivity, openness. That's my own sort of personal battle. I think I have issues with like impulse control,
for instance, which I feel like is a very yang thing to just kind of shoot first, ask questions later, you know?
Yeah. Shoot from the hip. So luckily, I'm married to someone who's very introspective and receptive and takes a lot of time before making a decision and is like sort of what I call a slow metabolizer.
I'm a very fast metabolizer.
I'm like, if this has changed, then we have to accommodate the new thing and pivot.
You know, whereas the person that I am emotionally yoked with is like, well, let's think about this and see where it's all going.
So that's my real battle is to put the brakes on, not be all gas, to have some impulse control, to stop and listen and take things in, which is why I should stop talking now, right, Eric?
Well, I'm not going to touch that.
It's interesting, though, as you were talking about your partner that you're using, that you're using.
yoked to it, made me think about a section in the book where you are talking about when we fall in
love, there's this limerence period. There's sort of a high or not sort of. There actually is a high
that comes from that. And then we settle into the harder work of building a relationship. And you have a
line there where you say the optimal outcome, the way out of the dead end, the dead end being the tendency
to just kind of like keep looking for something else. You accept and embrace all the
disowned traits in your partner and that helps you accept them in yourself and I was thinking about how
it sounds like you found the way to do that you found the way to appreciate the way in which your partner
is different than you and how that is helpful I'm not saying all the time you feel that way
but that in general you do and how did you get to a place where you were able to see that as
different but a positive compliment to you versus this person is wrong about the way
see things or do things. Yeah, I would say it's constantly in flux those things. Like Jeremy,
through basically sheer will and brute strength, has, you know, consistently reminded me that my way
is not always the best way and that he is not the enemy, you know? So, and the truth is, you know,
it's funny because like if we play opposite each other, like a game of Scrabble, it would be a very
close game and he would drive me crazy because he took forever. But if we're on the same Scrabble team
and we're playing against our friends, we are unstoppable.
You know, and so I just, I kind of remember that, like, we work better as a team,
and it's sort of like buckshot, you know, if I'm all white and he's all black and you put
us together, we're covering a lot more ground.
But because of the way I was raised to be self-reliant and trust no one and take care of myself
and also, you know, those sort of very yank, and I would say even maybe kind of misogynist
sort of traits, like I think I had internalized misogyny girls.
up. I was the youngest of three girls. My parents both wanted boys. They told us they wanted boys. I heard so
many times growing up, Julie, you were our last chance for a boy. So there was some way where I was
operating of like how tomboyish can I be? Can I be a bully? Can I be a brute and a bruiser? And
those traits, honestly, served me really like being a pre-med, being a med student, being a psych
residence. You know, I kicked ass because I did it all myself and I didn't trust anybody to do it.
But when you're a wife and a mother and, you know, like a parent and a spouse, like, you can't act like a surgeon, you know?
Right.
Like, it just, it doesn't work.
So when I was at Bellevue, you know, I spent nine years running the psychiatric emergency room at Bellevue Hospital.
And I was a cowboy, you know, I was a tough guy.
And that's how I survived in like a very challenging environment.
I lasted longer than any psychiatrist at that psychiatric at that psychiatric had.
I had the same job for nine years and I didn't get burnt out.
because I worked weekends and I had all week off to recover. But over those nine years, I got pregnant
twice. I nursed babies twice. By the end of it, there was so much oxytocin like drowning out the
testosterone. I couldn't really work there anymore. I, you know, I got too soft. I became a softie.
And maybe you can be a soft either, but I couldn't. You know, I had to really be a tough guy to
make it through. And I got punched in the face, you know, because I was kind of being a bitch,
pardon me, to a patient. And when I look back at my notes from Bellevue, you know, I wrote a memoir about
my nine years in the psychier, but when I looked back at my notes, all my notes stopped after I got
punched in the face. Like, it really did something to me and how I went about my job there.
But I ended up writing about this sort of transformation from, you know, a butch, tomboy,
manly woman to somebody who had gone through having two kids and I couldn't be a cowboy in there
anymore. What does being a tough guy mean in that sort of circumstance or that sort of situation?
At Bellevue? Yeah. Yeah. Now looking back, I would say tough guy at Bellevue means that I was like kind of an
asshole. Like nothing got to me. I didn't care how sad the story was. I'd heard it all before. It didn't
matter. You know, I would say things like all of it is sad, so none of it is sad. Like I had a threshold
that I got very hardened. And I wrote about this. And my book,
weekends of Bellevue. I really wrote a lot about how hard I was when I came in and how softened up
I was by the end. And that because I was soft, I couldn't really do the job because there's a lot of
sad stories and, you know, there's terrible things that happen to people. And the people who end up
with significant psychiatric issues and addiction issues, almost inevitably, they have had horrible
childhoods. They've been sexually abused. They've been physically and emotionally abused.
They've had childhoods where they've had to be in fight or flight the whole time. And they end up
as psychiatric patients and addicted to all sorts of drugs. So, you know, in a perfect world,
you would have people coming in and you would do intense psychotherapy. God, what happened to you
in your childhood? Let's process it. But like, the reality is you don't have time for intensive
psychotherapy in a psych ER. And every single patient would require that or a childhood transplant.
So we end up using humor a lot as a defense and as a shield, you know, in the ER to sort of deal
with the atrocities that we're seeing and sort of laughing it off. Maybe.
It's not what the patients want, but it was a way for the staff to stay connected, to enjoy being at work, and to get the job done.
So, you know, a little bit of a callousness and a humor and a sort of gallows humor maybe there where it's not appropriate, but that's what it took to, you know, show up every week and work, you know, these 16 hours shifts.
Yeah.
Do you find that you're able, as you've become softer to use your words or less hardened, I might say more compassionate?
Maybe you won't agree with that phrase, but I'll use it.
Yeah. You know, I feel like even when I was a hard ass, I was compassionate with the people who really deserved it.
The thing about Bellevue is there's a certain percentage of people who are gaming the system who are pretending to be mentally ill to get off the streets.
They're hiding out of somebody or they just don't have any money.
They've run out of money.
They come in.
They say they're hearing voices to kill themselves and others.
And they think that that will be enough to get them admitted to the hospital so that they can have, you know, three warm beds and a place to sleep for a week or two.
and, you know, I appreciate that they're looking for respite, but one of my main jobs was to
basically keep the sharks out. You know, people who are chronically, persistently, mentally ill
are really vulnerable. And if you've got any social people who aren't really sick but they're
pretending to be sick, the real patients are at risk and are vulnerable. So it's my job to keep
the sharks out. On the other hand, as I grew more compassionate. And I was always giving lectures
at the psychier about psychosis or about malingering, people faking, and what to
look out for. But the way I would start my malingering lecture after a while was like, look,
even if they're faking symptoms, they are coming to the hospital for help and we're here to
help them. And we've got to figure out, look, you don't really look like you're hallucinating
to me, but you do look like you're having a hard time and you run out of money and you're homeless
and let's figure out why that's happening. And, you know, might it be because of this, that,
and the other thing and not that you're actually psychotic. But at least you're still saying,
I know you're coming to us for help. Let's figure out how we can really
help you instead of just give you this band-aid of a week off the streets. Right. And it speaks to the fact that
somebody's in some degree of dire straits that they think a psych ward is an improvement over. Right. So let's,
you know, start with the reality and sort of present them with the reality. Like, why is your life so
chaotic that a week at Bellevue Hospital is a vacation? Right. Like, what's going on to get you to this point?
But, you know, it was a bit of a revolving door, Bellevue, people coming in and out. And sometimes the staff gets very
frustrated that, you know, the same people aren't getting better and the same things that we're
trying aren't working. It's because, you know, they need a new childhood. They need a childhood
transplant. We need to be focusing on early education and head start programs and things like
that to prevent addiction and violence and things like that from taking root in childhood.
You're very interested in involved in psychedelics as mental health treatments.
True. Was that driven by a frustration with the fact that the
system that you were embedded into you didn't seem to be working? No, because it came before Bellevue.
I got frustrated with the system by the time I get to Bellevue. But my interest in MDMA as an adjunct to
psychotherapy, for instance, I mean, some people may know MDMA better as Molly or Ecstasy. But this idea
that there was a substance that could help psychotherapy go deeper and act as a catalyst to therapy
where you're really getting to the stuff that matters quicker. I mean, I guess that's a very
Yang way of talking about it, right? But like more efficacious, you know, more effective, faster,
deeper, better. So that appealed to me even before I went to medical school. I got very interested
in MDMA in the context of psychotherapy when I was an undergrad. You know, this is like the mid-80s.
I'm a pre-med at Penn. The summer of 85, I was actually living in a castle. There's a castle on
campus that was like a fraternity house. So I was living in a castle. All of a sudden I started hearing
about this drug that they were calling Adam that they were using in therapy, that, you know,
therapists were giving to their patients. And I got very interested. First of all, it was a new
drug. And I was an undergrad studying psycho farm. So the fact that there was a new drug,
I didn't even care if it was in therapy. Just the fact that was a new drug, like I knew all about
all the other ones so far. And I tried most of them. And this was a new one. So that was exciting.
But the fact that it was actually being used as a catalyst during therapy is one of the reasons
that I ended up really committing to psychiatry and not neurosurgery when I went to medical
school. I knew I was going to do something with the brain. I was always very interested in the brain and
drugs. But the reality of what neurosurgery is and what neurology is versus the reality of what life
as a psychiatrist was, it was really no contest for me. I got very interested in psychosis,
you know, schizophrenia and bipolar. And I mean, it's also fascinating, you know, the things that go wrong
and right with the brain. So I got interested in psychedelics as a treatment modality before I even
went to med school. And honestly, it was one of the things that kind of fed me and kept me going
when med school was impossible and ridiculous was, you know, this sort of carrot. But I wrote a little
haiku or something once and it was like, it takes a mighty lure to nurse the hardships we endure.
Like, med school is hard and you're not treated very nicely. And residency is sometimes more of the
same. And it's a real slog, you know, and you got to have a reason to go through all of this. And for
some people, it's like my dad's a doctor, I'm going to be a doctor, it's very familial. I didn't have that.
But I did have this idea of MDMA-assisted therapy sort of pushing me to go to med school,
get my residency, be a psychiatrist. You know, it's an exciting time to be a psychiatrist
because we've got a few more tools at our disposal and we need every tool you can imagine.
I would assume then that the recent, and I don't know the exact time frame, but I believe in the
last six months, ruling by advisors to the FDA that MDMA treatment posed more risks than benefits
was a bitter pill? So I would love to break this down. And I was really tempted to do the
wolf thing and talk about this, but I decided it wasn't appropriate. So the way to get FDA
approved is that you do phase one, phase two, phase three clinical trials. And there were
multiple centers that did this kind of work. It wasn't just one place. There were a lot of different
groups that were running people through an MDMA-assisted therapy protocol. During phase two,
which is not the data that FDA needs to approve, they really look at phase three data. But during
the phase two multi-center trials, there was one cell, one center, that ran four subjects. One of those
subjects, there were egregious boundary violations and grossly inappropriate things that happened between
a researcher and a research subject at this one cell that ran four subjects during phase two. There were no
other improprieties phase three. There's no problem with the data phase three, but people got
very fixated on this terrible egregious boundary violation. But I would argue that one terrible thing
that happened from one cell of a site that ran four people should not discount the hundreds of other
people who were run through the studies who had a benefit and who did well and who didn't have
egregious boundary violations. And this is really a situation of like one bad apple should not
spoil the whole bunch. And particularly, the data should not be impugned by one boundary violation.
The data is powerful and strong. And the bottom line is that a lot of people who had PTSD,
once they made it through the MDMA assisted therapy protocol, they did not meet criteria for
PTSD anymore. They did not have their symptoms. So, you know, we don't say cured in psychiatry,
but you could at least say that at the end of the study, those people wouldn't have made it into the beginning of the study because they weren't appropriate because they didn't have the symptoms needed for the study.
As many as two-thirds of people responded robustly, and you don't see those numbers in any other treatment.
So we've got more and more people with PTSD, we have more and more veterans committing suicide, and we have a medicine that if used appropriately in the context of ongoing therapy, will markedly decrease PTSD symptoms and the desire to be dead.
So I'm still very committed to FDA approval.
You know, I listened to the talks that whole day, June 4th, from 830 to 6 p.m.
And FDA spoke first.
And I was very heartened by everything that FDA had to say.
They seemed to really understand the situation and the fact that it is nearly impossible
or purely impossible to have a blinded study because everybody knows pretty much who took MDMA and who didn't, you know.
Right.
So that's called functional unblinding.
But still, the study was blinded and the data is powerful.
And, you know, we're going to have to see what FDA decides because the advisory committee
does not know as much as FDA about this.
And there's a handful of about five or six people who are really committed to supporting
the victim from the phase three trial.
And well, they should be supporting this victim.
But to stop MDMA from getting approved means that you're enabling the PTSD to continue
in millions and millions of people because you are protecting one person.
person who had a terrible experience. And I don't agree with that calculus at all.
Right, right. It seems that the committee was extrapolating from there to the fact that MDMA
itself was the reason that people acted inappropriately, which I think is an extrapolation.
Yeah, it's really easy to sort of name names and call names and I'm tempted to, you know,
out the boundary violator and say how terrible he is. I don't fully understand the situation.
I mean, this was a married couple who was doing this work.
As far as I know, they stayed married after this boundary violation and everything that happened with this third person.
I don't pretend to understand, you know, what happens with couples and taking in somebody to live with them or another lover or, you know, how that works.
I understand it's very fraught.
I will also say that, you know, in the underground scene, we had situations where married couples, one or both members of the party ended up, you know, being involved in boundary violations also.
So, you know, we all sort of had this idea that like a male, female therapist couple would keep everybody safe.
And it turns out not always.
Right.
Whether in research or underground or in regular psychotherapy or with a dentist, there are often boundary violations.
And weird shit happens, you know, in regular therapy without the meds.
But yes, MDMA is going to make you more vulnerable, more trusting, more open.
And that's why what's been proposed to FDA is that it's in the context.
of ongoing therapy, that it is not just a one-off with somebody that you don't know and don't have
any therapeutic alliance with.
Right, right.
Let's move on from psychedelics, at least for now.
We may find our way back there.
But I'd like to focus on the heart of your book Good Chemistry, which is about the science of connection.
You say our species is categorized, and I love this, is obligatorily gregarious.
What does that mean?
Yeah, I like saying obligatorily gregarious.
It feels good in my mouth.
I was afraid I was going to stumble over it, but it came out okay.
You did greater.
Yeah.
So the idea is that we are obligated.
It is part of our biological imperative that we are gregarious, which means friendly.
So homo sapiens sapiens, if we are not social, we do not survive.
And if you think back to our time on the savannah, we lived in multigenerational homes.
We were a part of a clan.
There would be several families that would be part of a clan together.
And within the clan, there was cooperation in building a shelter, hunting, sharing food, sharing resources, making sure everybody got a mate and was mating.
And so within that clan, if you were ostracized, if the clan decided that, you know, you're not on our team and you're not with us and they ostracized you, you would die.
Ostracism back on the Savannah meant very likely death because no one would help you build a shelter.
no one would feed you, wouldn't share the kill with you, you would not mate. If you didn't die,
at least your genetics aren't getting spread, which is part of our imperative, is to clone ourselves,
basically reproduce. So we still process ostracism and not being in the group and being in the
in-crowd as an existential threat that puts us into fight or flight. So when we are disconnected from our
community, from our friends, from our family, and then I would also argue disconnected from ourselves
in our own bodies, which happens every time we open up our phone, or disconnected from the planet
and the earth, which happens every time we open up our phone, all of this severance and disconnection
puts us in fight or flight. It puts us in the sympathetic nervous system, which is not where
your body wants to be. Your body wants to be in the other side, which is called parasympathetic.
That's where we can rest, digest, and repair, and not just repair our bodily functions.
You know, the only time the body does any major repairs is when you are not in fighter flight.
when you are in parasympathetic.
Rest, I just repair.
Not just bodily repair, social repair, right?
You get into a fight with somebody, you say something stupid because you're in fight or flight,
then you feel calm and you're in parasympathetic, and then you can repair the social disconnect
that happened.
Your social skills suck when you're in fighter flight.
Right.
You know, you're more likely to break and, you know, disconnect than you are to connect.
So when you are in fighter flight, the main sort of juice that runs your sympathetic nervous system
are things like cortisol and adrenaline.
And adrenaline in the brain is known as epinephrine.
But cortisol and adrenaline are sort of the main chemicals that enable you to be in fight or flight.
And the longer you're in fighter flight and the more you're exposed to cortisol, the worse your body is.
You get fat, you can't sleep.
Your immune system is a mess.
Your blood sugar is a mess.
And your body can't repair itself.
When you are in parasympathetic, which is rest, digest repair, that is primarily not adrenaline,
and cortisol, but rather oxytocin, and something called acetylcholine, which is involved in memory.
But the oxytocin is the hormone and neurotransmitter that allows you to open up, trust, connect.
Oxytocin is very much involved in parent-infant bonding with a nursing baby or just any baby
who's dependent on you.
It's also involved in like a post-orgasmic bonding state, which is why I said in moody
bitches that you should be careful. You think you're having casual sex with somebody, but if you
have an orgasm, you're going to be in this post-orgasmic state, which is a high oxytocin state,
and you may find yourself emotionally bonding even though you didn't mean to. So oxytocin is involved
in wound healing, body repair, social repair, and it's involved in all the sort of trusting and bonding
that happens between parents, between lovers, between teammates, even, you know, that little like
pat on the butt, the football, or the...
pat on the shoulder or the hug, all those things, eye contact, hand holding, spooning,
they all enable the release of oxytocin. And oxytocin feels good.
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Let me ask a question.
I've never thought of this question before.
even though we've had plenty of guests who talk about the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous
systems, that makes it sound like you just switch into one or the other. Is there a clean
line between them? Is there a way that like you could say, Eric, you are in parasympathetic or
Eric, you are in sympathetic? Or is it more like many things, there's a gradiation in there?
I think it's okay to say it's a spectrum. And the truth is there's one specific situation where
There's actually a couple situations where they both come into play, where you're in both.
But if you think of it on a spectrum, I'll get on my phone and I'll scroll and I'll scroll and I'll start to notice that my heart rate's going up a little bit and my hands are getting a little sweaty and they're getting a little clenchy and oh, maybe I'm flinching my jaw.
And like, sure enough, you know, whatever I'm reading and responding to or not responding to is putting me in fight or flight.
I can feel it in my body.
So I would argue that even if it is a spectrum, you reach a point.
where you say I'm over the line. You know, I've gone from ash gray to charcoal gray. And it's not good for
your body. You know, and the longer you're in fight or flight, the worse it is for your body. So one of the
things that I talk about in good chemistry is how can we get into parasympathetic? What can you do to
get out of fight or flight and get into parismpathetic? And, you know, for some people, it's put your
phone down. Your phone is making you sick. Your phone is making you miserable. I mean, I have a private
practice in psychiatry. I talk to my patients and it comes up quite a bit. That, you know,
they feel like their phones are making them depressed.
Their phone is making them anxious.
They feel like they're addicted to their phones.
And we talk about sort of having a media diet or a social media diet or a media fast.
You know, sometimes you have to stop.
You know, you're soaking in all this terrible news.
And it's terrible news about things that are happening all over the world that you can't do anything about.
You know, the way we make a laboratory animal depressed or anxious so we can study it
is we put them in a situation where they feel bad and they can't do anything to
stop it. You know, you shock them and you shock them and they don't know where the shock is coming
from and they can't stop it and they get depressed and they get anxious. And it's like, I feel like
this is what's happening with people on their phones is that they're getting into this learned
helplessness situation where, oh my God, so terrible what's happening in Ukraine. It's so terrible
what's happening in Gaza. You know, the world is a mess. America is a mess. Even the psychedelic
community now we're fighting and it's a mess. And like, you know, where do you turn for peace?
And so soaking in all that unrest and unease is going to put you in a sympathetic place.
It's not good for your body.
So sometimes just like you have to watch what you eat and maybe flour and sugar is not that great for you.
And so you learn to limit or cut out flour and sugar.
And I would argue that TikTok and Instagram and all these things and Twitter, Facebook, whatever you're doing,
pay attention to how your body feels.
You know, they don't call it doom scrolling for nothing.
And it's not just that you start thinking bad thoughts, but your body on some very basic level does not know the difference between reading about a woman whose kid has just died in an earthquake and being the woman whose kid has just died in earthquake.
You see that picture of a woman holding a dead baby in front of a pile of rubble.
I don't know about you, Eric, but like I feel it in my chest, in my torso.
I see something like that and I'm like, as if this terrible sad thing is also happening to me.
And that's like, I have a lot of empathy.
I have a lot of compassion.
And that's good.
Unless I'm scrolling past image and image and, you know, there's famine, there's genocide,
there's war.
And what can you do about any of it?
So it's really not good for your physical and mental health.
Sorry to be a downer.
Well, I agree with you.
And I think that any thinking person in today's world is wrestling with these questions of,
to what extent do I remain informed as if informed is a version?
on its own, which I'm not entirely sure it is, but to what extent do I remain informed versus do I go too
far into it? Yeah. I think everybody wrestles with these things. I have a few ideas. Malcolm McLuhan,
I think, is the one who said that when you act as if your nervous system is on the outside of your
body, you're going to be in a very unnatural situation. And the media is making us have eyes and
ears all over the world, right? So we're experiencing trauma. Like, okay, a thousand years ago,
you might experience trauma once or twice.
Maybe there's an earthquake in your town.
Maybe there's a fire in your town.
But not every single day whenever you want can you see that there are earthquakes and fires
happening.
And you're experiencing them to some degree, obviously not as if you're burning, but your
brain is still having that panic response.
What I would argue is that what's better for you and your community is that you focus
on what is actually around you, that you can't fix.
the Middle East, right? But you could volunteer at your community resource center in your town
and drive somebody to their doctor's appointment. You're going to feel good giving back to your
community and you are actually doing something that makes a difference instead of scrolling
and not being able to make a difference with all these terrible things that are happening somewhere.
So the other thing I want to say is, you know, the hunter-gatherer brain that we've inherited,
we don't need to hunt for food anymore because God knows the food is everywhere and there's
calories available everywhere as soon as you open your hand. And there's cheap, plentiful calories
everywhere. So now that we don't forage for food, we forage for information. We think that the more
information we have, the safer we're going to be. And that may be true, but mostly what's
happening is that we're getting terribly depressed and feeling hopeless and demoralized and
helpless. We can't do anything to change it. So good chemistry was all about like close your laptops
and go outside. Go be in nature. You know, sit next to a tree. The tree,
will help to calm you. You know, you can go on Earth time instead of social media time and, you know, have a very
different experience of what's really going on around you, what's really going on in the environment that
actually will have an impact on you and get involved locally. Greek philosophers were talking about
this doctrine of control, what you can control versus what you can't. And I think Stephen Covey in his book
Seven Habits of Highly Effective People gave to me the best example of this. And he talked about
imagine two circles, right? There's a big circle, and within it there's a small circle. And the big
circle is your circle of concern. Everything that you possibly are concerned about or care about,
the small circle is your circle of influence. And the idea is you would want to spend more time
in your circle of influence, obvious, right? But the thing that he said that really opened this for me
was he said, the more time you spend in your circle of concern but not your circle of influence,
your circle of influence shrinks. Right. And the more time that you spend in your circle of influence,
the more it grows. And that to me really put all this into really clear state that like this
concerning myself with all the problems of the world wears me out and I don't do anything.
Right. Whereas if I'm taking clear targeted positive actions. It feeds you. And I'm going to be more
effective if my true concern is less suffering in the world. You will have an impact locally.
And it will give you the energy to continue to have an impact. And maybe a
scales up. Who knows? But you can't, you can't start with fixing the world. So I think what happens
is people get kind of paralyzed by how terrible everything is and they do nothing. And the other thing I'll
tell you, my patients do this all time. They'll talk like, I know I should exercise. I know I should do
this, but I'm not motivated. And as soon as I figure out how to get motivated, I'll do it. And I'm always
like, just doesn't work that way. If you start a thing, anything, just start it, then you'll get
motivated to continue it. And that's about the best you're going to get. But waiting around to feel
motivated to go exercise, that may never happen. Put your sneakers on, go out the door and start
walking, you'll be motivated to continue. Yeah, it's such common sense, but not common practice.
You know, when I was in recovery, we used a phrase and listeners of the show are probably tired
of it by this point, but it illustrates exactly what you said, which is sometimes you can't
think your way into right action. You have to act your way into right thinking. Yeah, and also that
sort of act as if, and your body will follow. You know, if your body starts, your mind will follow.
But yeah, I agree that right action can proceed right thinking, absolutely.
You know, it's funny because chemistry was written before COVID, right?
So a lot of the suggestions in there are a little timed out.
Unfortunately, like, you know, there was this whole idea of like, not only do you like put your phone down, put your laptops down, but go be with people face to face, skin to skin, hug, kiss, have sex, you know, like just, just connect, go connect.
And then like COVID came and it was really, pardon me for saying, but it was just like a huge kind of cock blocker.
you know, that people couldn't do these things that would really help them feel better.
Right.
I mean, I literally had a patient who was trying to get pregnant during COVID.
And she's like, what am I going to have like sperm mailed to me?
Like, you know, COVID really was a cock blocker for her.
A lot of the advice in good chemistry temporarily could not be acted upon.
And now it can be.
Yep.
Yeah, you talk about this idea of staying glued to our phones and it feeling good and us maybe getting a little bit of connection from it.
It's synthetic.
Right.
And you say there's a great saying.
an addiction medicine, which is you can never get enough of something that almost works. And I mean,
I think that's so true. I love that quote. Maybe that it was Gabor Mante that said it, but I'm not
sure. But that is one of my favorite quotes that I use a lot. And it is really true. You know, if you're
scratching around the itch, you're never really going to get any relief. Yeah. You know, we see this
sometimes with like even like a food situation, right? We're like, I really have a craving for pasta,
but I shouldn't have pasta, so I will go eat this instead. And that didn't really work. So then I'll
also eat this other thing. And like by the time I'm done eating around the craving, if I had just
had a couple forkfuls of the pasta I wanted, I would have been done with it. I've actually ingested,
you know, 600 more calories than if I had just eaten the thing. So I think that that's true with our
sort of hunger for connection also is that we do other things to sort of plug the whole. And, you know,
social media friendships are not going to give you what a real friend is going to give you.
And texting is great, but it's not going to give you the same thing that like eye contact and hugging or handholding is going to give you.
Like, you know, we are designed for physical connection and we are trying to fill that hole with technological, synthetic, virtual connection.
And it's not ever going to really scratch the edge.
Yeah.
I was thinking about texting recently because my general sense was like, well, you know, texting is not as good as a phone call, which is not as good as seeing a person.
in person.
It's better than nothing.
And I believe that to be true.
What I realize, though, is with certain people, I'm actually like in far more regular
contact with them than I would be if it was a phone call or having to see them.
And so I don't think it's that it doesn't have a place, but it's not, shouldn't be a
replacement for.
I think it can be a nice addition to.
Yeah.
To me, it's almost like vitamins versus food.
You're always going to have better nutrition if you eat colorful foods than if you take a
supplement. Look, I get a lot of pleasure. We all do. I mean, I get a lot of pleasure from texting
my kids. My kids don't want to talk on the phone. They want to text. So we text. And it's great.
You know, I end up because I'm like Gen X. I'm like dictating long texts, you know, and then I get
back like, KK. But I still enjoy feeling in touch with them. There's no question. I mean,
my daughter's in London, you know, I'm actually, I'm going to go see her next week. And it's,
this is the longest we've been separated. I feel it in my body that I've been like physically
separated from this person who came out of my body. Like the longest ever.
And like, yeah, we text and it's great, but I can't wait to, like, have a real hug.
Yeah.
You know?
It's long overdue.
So, yeah, it's better than nothing, but it's definitely not as good as a real thing.
But I would also argue, again, the brain doesn't completely fully differentiate, like, synthetic texting from talking or whatever.
Like, I don't know.
I just know it's like good, better, best.
And the best is rolling around naked with somebody that you really love.
That's a high oxytocin state, and that's what's best for your body.
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All right, back to the show.
As a member of Gen X, you not only are dictating a long text message to your daughter,
you're making sure it's grammatically correct and it has all.
the right punctuation. I am. Me too. I'm all about the comma. Yeah, totally. Maybe not an
Oxford comma, but plenty of comma. Yeah, I do. I'm guilty. I keep asking myself, I'm like,
I know this doesn't matter, and yet I can't stop doing it. Yeah, because for me, it's such a sign
of intelligence that I know how to spell your and your. Apropos of nothing, Gen X, but I just saw a
picture of Vice President Kamala Harris from back in the late 80s, early 90s, when all of us
or wearing our hair a particular way and makeup a certain way. And I was just like, oh, my God,
she is like absolutely my demographic. 100%. Like, that's how my hair looked that year.
Yeah. You know, it was just kind of really funny to see. Like, you know, we all had this kind of like
short on the sides and curly on the top thing for a while. And so did she. We've talked about
oxytocin. And I think many people have probably heard of oxytocin as sort of the bonding chemical.
you brought up a chemical that I haven't heard about in years.
I remember hearing about it and being fascinated by it.
It's a brain chemical.
Vasopressin.
Yeah.
So the first thing I will say about vasopressin is it's really complicated and my publishers
didn't want it included because it muddies up everything.
As straightforward as oxytocin is, I feel like vasopressin is much less straightforward.
It's more complicated.
One thing for sure is that it's more active in men than in women.
And women, oxytocin is more active than men.
Like oxytocin works very well in an estrogen-rich environment.
Oxytocin is a little bit embattled in a testosterone-rich environment.
Vasopressin does not have those same sort of constraints on it.
But it does a lot of the same things.
But there was one thing we didn't mention, which is like if you're in or out of the in-group,
you know, everybody thinks like oxytocin and vasopressin is all this kind of touchy-feely granola,
kumbaya, you're, you know, bonding and trusting and openness.
and it sounds lovely and, like, you know, flowery.
But the truth is that oxytocin and vasopressin are also involved in discerning who is on your team and who's not on your team.
Who is friend or foe, basically?
Are they in your clan or are they in the opposing clan?
And so both oxytocin and vasopressin are involved in that sort of discernment.
You know, nothing makes a group more cohesive, I think, than if they have an enemy.
You know, I don't want to talk too much about politics, but it's one of the things that really drives politics is that you kind of.
come together in your distaste for the other group. And that is a heavily, I would argue,
vasopressin and oxytocin-fueled state to be in. But it feels good, right? Because you're all on
one team and you feel the cohesion of being on a team. And, you know, everybody wants to be on
the winning team. And the more cohesion the team has, the better they are at winning.
So xenophobia, for example, right, is sort of about, are you on my team or are you on the other
team, you know, looking at immigrants as other and as them. There's a great TED talk called
them as a four-letter word. You know, this idea that you don't have compassion, that you've
othered them into something different from yourself. And this actually gets back, Eric, to what you
were talking about with partners and being yoked and them having sort of disowned things about
you that you project onto them. And people do this in groups, too, in a diet or a partnership
of marriage or something. Let's say, for example,
that, I mean, these are real examples, but I feel like in my childhood, if I was sad or if I was
scared, I was sort of rejected. You know, I had to be tough and happy and so don't be sad and
scared or bad things. I go out in the world and I fall in love with and marry somebody who,
on some level, at least to me, presented as a sad, scared person. And because I embraced
him and sort of, you know, engulfed him and we became one entity, I was able to get those
things that were rejected out of me and I had put away and I was able to sort of accept them
and accept the sad and scared parts of myself, blah, blah, blah. Same thing in groups. You know,
there's a group cohesion and we're good and they're bad and, you know, you project all the
things that you don't want to own. For instance, as an example, let's say that a Republican
actually really likes having sex with men, but they feel like that's not part of the Republican
image. And so they're going to say that they're all about family values and that being gay is
wrong and they're going to kind of double down. And so they're rejecting this part of themselves.
They put it on the other. And they say, those people that have those feelings about wanting to have
sex with men, they're bad. And I'm against them. When really, it's self-hatred. It's projected
self-hatred. Taking that part of themselves, they can't accept. They're putting it on the other
people. And they're saying, they have that thing. And now I'm allowed to hate them. Because I was told
that those things were bad and I shouldn't be those things. So, you know, the basic things that
vasopressin does, has nothing to do with what we're talking about. I mean, primarily it is an
anti-dioretic hormone that helps to control the balance of water and electrolytes so that you don't
get too over hydrated. That's primarily what it does. It's also like a vasoconstrictor, which means it
increases blood pressure. If you lose blood volume, it comes around so that it keeps your blood pressure
up. Those are sort of the main things it does. But then also, in males, it reinforces pair bonding,
keeping you mated, but also reinforces aggression of like sort of territorial aggression, like what I
sometimes refer to as territorial pissings. This is my territory. You can't cross over into this
line. If you do, I'm going to attack you. That's very much a vasopressant thing.
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So let's talk a little bit about psychedelics and addiction. And I think it is a nuanced and
complicated area. I am a recovering alcoholic, heroin addict. I usually don't state this,
but in addition to those two, I was a prodigious marijuana user. So I have watched this
psychedelic unfurling over the last decade where it's really started to get traction in both mental
health and spiritual circles very interestedly and also very cautiously given my history and given
I've had some really tremendously bad trips in my past and so let's talk about first just
that link between psychedelics and addiction
whether psychedelics are actually addictive, and then furthermore, what do we see that are some of the
possibilities that psychedelics might give for healing addiction?
Yeah.
So, I mean, you could tell by the length of your question how complicated it is, right?
Like, psychedelics can potentially help people who are addicted, and psychedelics can potentially
make things worse if you're addicted.
And some of it depends on which medicine we're talking about.
So there is one way of talking about psychedelics, which is a very broad umbrella, you know,
anything that helps you see the way your mind works could be considered a psychedelic. And if you
use that broad term, then things like ketamine and cannabis fall under the psychedelic umbrella and
MDMA. If you're using a more narrow term where you're like, okay, let's just say the classical
psychedelics are like LSD and mushrooms and mescaline. Those three, the classical psychedelics,
there really isn't any addiction in terms of tolerance, dependence, withdrawal, sort of the
classic things physiologically that you would see in addiction. So I'm going to start with sort of the
broad statement that in general, what has not been reported is tolerance, dependence, withdrawal with
the classical psychedelics, LSD, mushrooms, mescaline. So put those aside because I do think they may be
helpful in treating addiction, so we'll come back to them. Where we get into trouble with, quote,
psychedelics and addiction, ketamine, which is really not officially a psychedelic, it's definitely not
a classical psychedelic. Ketamine is actually a dissociative anesthetic. And ketamine is the most
addictive of the psychedelics. Full stop. If you are the kind of person who has addictive tendencies,
you tend to get addicted to things. I do not recommend that you do any sort of self-administration
of ketamine. You very well may end up in trouble. MDMA rarely causes problems with addiction.
It's not something that you can really take chronically. It feels worse and worse every time you take it,
basically, if it turns out that really you've got sort of something you think is MDMA, but it's not,
and it's methamphetamine. Obviously, you're going to get into trouble, methamphetamine, is much
more addictive than MDMA, which is methylene-dioxy methamphetamine. I've never seen a case of
MDMA addiction, but I have heard about people who, you know, go clubbing and take ecstasy or Molly,
as the kids call it today, and, you know, maybe they're taking it multiple nights in a row or
multiple weekends in a row. We know that's not good for you. No one is saying that's good for you.
Cannabis has an addictive potential, 100%. We all know people who've gotten addicted to cannabis.
The percentage is, you know, they put it at roughly 9%. It might be higher now with a higher THC
percentages. It's still not nearly as addictive as, I mean, I don't know that it matters to like
put things in order, but I would argue that cigarettes, heroin, cocaine, alcohol, cannabis,
kind of in that order from top down of how addictive things are, how hard it is to quit.
It's harder to quit smoking cigarettes than it is to quit heroin.
It may be harder to quit heroin than it is to quit cocaine.
It's harder to quit cocaine than it is to quit cannabis.
Then the other thing, I'll just have to say, it's sort of a cop-out sounding,
but you can get addicted to anything.
Obviously, we know people who get addicted to masturbation, to shopping, to gambling, blah, blah, blah, blah.
So we have to cop to the fact that there's also something called a process addiction
where you can get addicted to any behavior, right?
Right.
And some of these things that we might think of is less addictive,
like cannabis is going to, I think it ends up co-opting a little from both, right?
Yeah.
I agree.
And the same with food, right?
Like you can have a process addiction around eating.
You know, what's a drag about food addictions is that you have to eat or you'll die.
You don't have to drink or have to smoke pot.
So it's, you know, it's really, really tough when food is your drug of choice.
as a psychiatrist who works with addiction quite a bit, as a friend and colleague of Gabor Mate,
and also Elias Dachwar just wrote an amazing book about addiction.
You may want to talk to him.
I will say that a lot of people who work in this field feel like part of addiction is sort of like a spiritual illness
where there is a lack of meaning and a demoralization and a sort of just trying to numb an existential angst.
And so in those situations, cannabis or other psychedelics,
psychedelics that may give you sort of a meaning-making experience or fill you with some sort of
hope or plans for the future, that can be helpful in treating an addiction. More directly, I really want
to let people know that there's a plant called Ibogane that is from a shrub of the Iboga Tabernathy
plant. I'm probably saying Tabernanthi wrong. Anyway, Ibogame, which you will be hearing more about,
seems to specifically really help with opiate addiction,
seems to sort of reset the receptors so that you get rid of the whole tolerance, withdrawal, issue,
and also gives people a very intense psychedelic experience where they do a bit of a life review
and sort of come to the conclusion that the opioids have not been helpful.
And it becomes easier to quit physiologically and psychologically after Ibogaine experiences.
So I think you're going to be hearing more about Ibogaine for drug addiction.
addiction, and I really, I think there's a lot there. The problem is that Ibegain is potentially
toxic to the heart, cardiotoxic, and there are a few ways to get around this. You can do an EKG
and an echo to make sure your heart's okay before Ibegain, or you can potentially take magnesium
during the Ibegain to lessen the cardiac effects. But that is one clear example of a psychedelic
treating addiction with really impressive results. I would also argue, I have patients who have
quit being addicted to pain meds by using mushrooms. I have had patients quit being addicted to pain meds
by using ayahuasca. I do think that there is value in a guided psychedelic experience in tackling
childhood trauma and just maybe kind of unraveling where things went wrong, where things went south.
You know, you weren't an addict when you were eight. You weren't an addict when you were 10.
What happened when you were 12? Because from 13 onward, there was an issue. You know, it's like you can
kind of look back and see the narrative, figure out where things went wrong. I think in the context
of like supportive psychotherapy, the classical psychedelics, ayahuasca, Ibegaine, could be very helpful
in treating addiction. And then there's cannabis, which is complicated because, you know, it's
sort of like the people's psychedelic. Cannabis is a psychedelic if you use that big umbrella term
where it's mind manifesting and it shows you how you think. And there are people who are using cannabis
in high doses as a psychedelic, the same way that you would use.
like,
a psychedelic-assisted therapy.
Whether they're treating addiction or not, I could not say.
Yeah.
And obviously,
I feel like I always hear other podcasters do this,
so I suppose I should do it.
None of this is medical advice.
No, I'm not your psychiatrist.
I'm not your doctor.
I'm speaking in generalities.
Yeah,
we're not encouraging or condoning.
We're just discussing.
Yeah,
and there are a lot of risks,
and it's important to talk about the risks.
You know,
unfortunately,
with our nation's drug policy,
the number one risk is that you don't get the drug you thought you were
buying,
and it's more dangerous.
than what you were hoping to get.
And, you know, I often tell the story when I was a teenager.
I'd heard a lot about mescaline.
I was very interested in mescal and I wanted to try it.
I inadvertently ended up trying PCP.
It wasn't what I wanted.
And I got a very intense psychotic experience, which was not, you know, the unifying,
you know, peak mystical experience I was hoping for.
But it got me very interested in psychosis and psychiatry.
And it got me really interested in harm reduction.
And counterfeit drugs and drug substitution is one of the ones.
of the things that makes drug taking so dangerous. And as long as we have the drug policy in America,
we do, that's the number one risk. The number two risk is just not getting good information.
You know, it's hard to get reliable drug information. Our government isn't great at giving us all
the information. And then it's hard to figure out, you know, whether you should trust whoever's
giving you this information. So that's also a real casualty of the drug war is, you know, the truth.
Right. I think that's a really good point is it is really difficult to get good information.
on what are considered illegal substances, right?
Because you're right, the governing bodies are just interested in demonizing them by and
large.
Yeah.
And then you get the people who are unabashed advocates of it, right?
Right.
And that's not what you want either.
No.
And I'm not saying it's perfect, but you want something a little bit closer to what we get
with FDA approved drugs where you have some sense of the truth being.
disseminated to some degree about the pros and the cons, the side effects, the benefits.
The other risk besides drug substitution or misinformation is that when you are altered on a
psychedelic, you are in an exquisitely vulnerable, plastic, impressionable state.
It is a non-specific amplifier.
Everything comes in more.
And so it's really important that you are in a safe space, that you are around people who
make you feel safe, that you're in a good head space when you start.
the experience. I mean, that's all set and setting.
And that you are not around bad actors. And it's, you know, it's hard to tell.
You know, I jokingly refer to something as like shamans behaving badly. You know, there are,
there are people out there who say there are shamans. Chalmans gone wild.
Shamans, yeah, but like, you know, it's not funny. I mean, it's, you know, sadly, you know,
the phrase is funny, but the reality is really sad and terrifying that there's always going to be
people who are going to take advantage of other people. You know, there's, there are bad actors in
world, there are people who are going to take advantage of somebody who's trusting and in an open
state. And so you really have to do sort of the homework ahead of time that you are at a good
retreat, that you're with a good guide, that you are actually taking the medicine you think
you want and not, you know, like there are so many variables that need to be accounted for.
And there's no question that in a medical model, it's safer.
Yeah. Because there's no counterfeit drug substitution. You're not over hydrating or overheating
or doing any of the crazy things that can get you into trouble with MDMA,
where you're like dancing for hours on end, you're not taking breaks.
If you're sitting in your therapist office talking about childhood trauma,
you're not overhydrating or overheating and you haven't taken a counterfeit drug.
So already, like three major risks are mitigated in the medical model.
The reality is that most people don't take psychedelics under a medical model.
They use a recreational model.
And sadly, the recreational model in our country is going to be less safe.
Unfortunately, you know, you have to do more work to make sure you're going to be safe.
The government, unfortunately, in this situation is not going to, at least for now, is not going to be guaranteeing your safety.
Yep.
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Well, that is a wonderful place for, well, it's actually not a great place to wrap up because there's about a hundred other things we could discuss about it.
However, what it is is time to wrap up.
I segue it into my usual habitual.
That's a great place for us to stop.
It's not a great place.
But that's where we are.
You and I are going to continue to discuss these issues and a little bit more in the post-show conversation.
Great.
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Thank you so much, Julie, for coming on.
Absolutely.
My pleasure.
Thank you so much for listening to the show.
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