The Resilient Mind - “Just One More Time” - The Lie That Almost Killed Me - Dr. Jason Giles

Episode Date: January 21, 2026

Watch the full video interview on the new Resilient Mind YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xDlXYe9mIcDr. Jason Giles shares his powerful journey from addiction to recovery, exploring the neuroscience of habits, addiction, and behavior change. Learn how neuroplasticity plays a role in both addiction and recovery, the impact of addiction on loved ones, and how to build healthy habits that lead to lasting change. Discover the surprising truth: What if you're already okay?Connect With Dr. Jason GilesLinkedIn: https://drjasongiles.com/ Youtube: @drjasongiles Substack: https://substack.com/@drjasongiles----------Take action and strengthen your mind with The Resilient Mind Journal. Get your free digital copy today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/Download_Journal Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Resilient Mind Podcast. In this episode, you'll be listening to, just one more time, The Lie That Almost Killed Me, with Dr. Giles. This episode is also available in video. Watch it on YouTube by clicking the link in the show notes. Enjoy. I should have died. What I was doing, I should have died.

That is not just about the substance or the behavior, but everything around it. That's the emotional washing machine. If there are X number of people suffering with a drug addiction, then there are 2x or 3x as many people affected by it. The brain doesn't throw away these learning loops. Once that habit is developed, I think, it stays there forever. About five years ago, I decided to do a dry month. It's so out of place.

And in my head, I was like, oh, it's so easy. Just 30 days. I just, I really need to cut back, or I really shouldn't be drinking at all. And then you drink anyway. And I thought I could control it. And then pretty soon the drug was telling me what to do. Pretty soon it had control, not me. What I felt like was like chewed up garbage.

I had lost so much weight. I looked kind of like a skeleton. I don't have to stress as much and try to control as much as I think I need to control right now. Had one more time said, all I need to do is stop. That I think is so powerful. And for some listeners, it's like, ha. Today I'm excited to be joined by Dr. Giles, who began his business. medical career with an internship in general surgery, followed by a residency in anesthesiology and pain

medicine. He holds both certifications in both anesthesiology and addiction medicine. After working as a cardiac anesthesiologist and pain specialist, he transitioned fully into addiction medicine in 2005, where he since dedicated his practice. Welcome, Dr. Giles. Thank you very much. Nice to see you, Simba. I'm Dr. Giles. Thanks for having me on your show. I've been looking forward to chatting with you. Likewise. Yeah. So let's start from how you got into particularly focusing on addictions, a little bit about your background in medicine and your current views that you hold in general around addiction. Sure. Sure. Of course. Well, listen, the name of your show is the resilient mind. And when you and I were talking the other day about this topic,

addiction. There's an aspect of addiction that is troublesome. It's a pain in the butt, which is that the mind is resilient. And if anyone has tried to stop a bad habit and found himself going back to it, then you know exactly what I mean. The mind resiliently sticks to the habitual course or to the addiction, whatever that is. My specialty is substance use disorders. We talk about drugs and alcohol, and that's very serious stuff. But people can have addictions to all kinds of things. What got me interested in this field was, so my experience was working as a doctor. I was training as an anesthesiologist, very interesting, complex,

really scratched the itch of wanting to know and learn things. But then I went through my own experience with substances and, that the doctor had become the patient. I needed help. And that got me, we can talk a little more about that later if you like, but that got me on the road of trying to answer your question. I suppose I've been trying to answer your question for the last 25 years, which is, what is the nature of this? Why do people find themselves wrapped up around things that they know are bad for them? And I definitely, things that I knew were bad for me, but I had this complex explanation for why he was going to work out and I still had control and I was kidding myself, but I didn't know that.

So my training in anesthesia led me to my own substance use problem. And then that led me to wonder, well, what's really going on here? What's actually happening? Is it the substances? Is it the circumstances? Is it the stress? Is it the genes? Is it family history?

There are a lot of things. There's a lot of components. And there are a lot of different ways to look at this elephant, if you will. And I'm still looking at it, still learning and still talking with smart people. And yeah, that's how I came to do this. What my practice looks like now is trying to help as many people as we can free themselves from those habits, free themselves from those problems. And so I have a company that helps people in detox and in residential treatment centers

get through their own dependence on substances and help them transition to a life that's not shackled, that's not trapped under the heavy weight of having to use. things to manage your feelings. And will you be open to sharing about your own personal story about addiction? Yeah, sure, of course. Of course. Well, the beginning of this journey for me happened about 25 years ago, a little more than 25 years ago. I was a baby doctor. I was in residency. I was training to be an anesthesiologist. And there are some things going on in the world of of medicine. There were some, there were some big changes that resulted in tremendous short staffing in the department. We were working, uh, about twice as busy as, as residency, which is a lot by

itself. So the stress, the pressure were enormous. The amount of, uh, amount of time at the hospital was, it's now illegal. The amount of time we were spending has this, they since have changed the law is that's how much time we were spending. That's how much time I was spent. That's how much time I was spending. And I was under a lot of pressure and the pressure was, it was external, but it was also internal because I was driven to be the best that I could. It was literally life and death, you know, taking care of patients in the hospital. And I could not afford to make any mistakes. And so the stress was getting higher and higher. And I was, I was on the verge of falling apart all the time. I was barely holding it together psychologically and emotionally. And then one day I got curious.

I got curious about a drug called fentanyl. Now, fentanyl is a very powerful narcotic. It's become a worldwide hazard, worldwide disaster. But back then, it was just something we used in the OR. It hadn't taken on this larger than life proportion outside the hospital. And I thought I could control it. I thought I could use this to get some relief. I was going to use it one time just to get a break,

just so I would have this life raft or emergency exit just in case. And so one day I did. I used it one time. But I didn't stick with one time. So not long after that, I thought, well, this is another one of those one time situations. So I used it one more time. And then it helped not as much, but it helped. And then I used it again.

And then pretty soon the drug was telling me what to do. pretty soon it had control, not me, until one day had one more time said, all I need to do is stop. Now, if anyone's not gone through this, that sounds simple. You see me here. I'm, you know, I look okay. It's been a very long time, but back then, what I felt like was like a chewed, chewed up garbage. That's how I felt. I was on the verge of throwing up all the time. I felt sick to my stomach. My bowels were churning from the withdrawal from alcohol. I was sweating all the time. I had lost so much weight. I looked kind of like a skeleton. I wore this long green gown, which the surgeons would wear the right way, which is with your arms through the holes and the gown

like this, but I wore it the other way like a cape. And I did that to cover my arms because they look bad. They look bad from being bruised. They look bad from being beaten up. And I just had to get through that one day not using. People don't know this, I think, but fentanyl is a short acting drug. And so if I could get to 48 hours of not using, then I would be okay. Now, all day long, I'm in withdrawal. I'm not using the fentanyl because I had this very clear boundary of not being intoxicated while I'm taking care of the patients. And I didn't violate that boundary, but let's be honest, I was feeling terrible. I was in rough shape going through the day and getting by. So I get through the day. I've made this promise that I'm not going to use, but I break the promise to

myself. And I rush out of the hospital at the end of the workday. I anxiously and sweaty drive my car to the place where I go. I use the drug. It doesn't even work anymore. It's not even taking away all of the discomfort, but it takes away some. And then I get, I feel a buzzing at my, at my side. And it's a pager. And some of your audience doesn't, know what a pager, pageer kind of looks. It's about the size of your, like your, you know, ear pods case. It's about that big. Clipped to my hip in the car, it's buzzing away. Someone's trying to get a hold of me. But my work is done. I don't know who it can be. So I look at the number and I don't recognize it. We used to send the number to call back and then the four

digits for your own phone number. That's how you knew who it was. So I've got my ID badge on and I'm fumbling through the card trying to figure out who's paging me. And I think, figure it out. It's the department chair. My boss's boss. It's the head of the whole division of anesthesia in the hospital. It's Dr. Moore. So I call and he says, ah, how you doing? Heart is pounding in my chest, right? Because I know what's coming next. I said, uh, doing okay. Hi, Dr. Moore. He says, well, I just called you because we ran a check on all of the drugs in the hospital pharmacy, the OR pharmacy. And there's a lot of fentanyl that's been signed out in your name.

And no one is saying that you took it, but it needs to all be back in the pharmacy tonight. And if that's the case, then, you know, we won't have to worry about it. And I had a choice. In that moment, I had a choice, whether to try to keep going on like I was, basically to lie or to let go and wave the white flag. and ask for help. And so I did. And that's when everything changed when I said help. And when you think about your journey in terms of recovering and getting that help, was it difficult for you or did you find that recovery process pretty straightforward? It was the most difficult thing I had ever done. It was the most difficult thing by far,

including, including, you know, biochemistry in college and medical school and surgery internship. And there's nothing, there's nothing as, nothing in the same universe of difficulty. But when I came in, I was certain that I had to have some kind of substance. I had to have something in order to deal with the world, whether that was, I don't know, fentanyl, maybe that was a swing and a miss. Maybe that wasn't the right one, but there was something. There must have been some chemical that I could manage my feelings with in order to survive in order to make it. And of all the things I knew, you know, we learned facts in school.

You learn how the heart works and you learn how the kidneys work. And I was pretty good on those things. But the thing that I was most sure of was so long as I have a substance, I'm going to be okay. Well, guess what? It's the thing I was most wrong about. Most wrong. And the big void, the big empty black space after, okay, well, what if there is nothing? What if?

What if you're wrong? What if you're mistaken about there being something to help you get through? What if there isn't anything to help you get through? And that was terrifying. That was so scared. I was so afraid. This gets into areas of spirituality. of like what's behind the scenes or what runs the world.

I didn't think much of that. I didn't believe that there was a governing principle or a higher power or I didn't think there was something like that. And worse, I thought if there was, it didn't have much use for me. So I was terrified when they said, you have to stay sober. You can't drink anything. You've got to be off all substances. And just feel your feelings.

That was more than this doctor could contemplate. But I had no other choice because what I was doing was killing me and going to kill me. And I didn't want to die. I wanted to live. I just didn't know how. Wow, that's very powerful. And so from your experience, how do you define addiction beyond traditional substances? And if you think of behaviors like excessive phone use, are they comparable?

to drug addiction in the brain. Very interesting. So, well, look, I think, yeah, that's a great question, actually. So it's funny, if I go to a party and people find out what my job is, what my specialty is, especially if it's a party where there's a glass of wine being served or something like that, people will usually say, well, do you think I have a problem? You know, it's kind of uncomfortable social setting. Okay, so the question is, what are my thoughts on addiction?

What do I think it is, the definition? So there's some great definitions. There's a, the origin of the word, just to be a bit of a professor for just a moment. The origin of the word is, that comes from the Latin word, adiserie. And adesere comes from a time before banks. So nowadays, I just had lunch. I took my wife to lunch, and I paid with a credit card. And what that says is I promise to pay this later when the bill comes.

We have easy ways to borrow money for a sandwich. It's very simple nowadays. But back then, if you wanted something that you couldn't pay for with your own gold coins, you could borrow money from a very wealthy person. So let's say you wanted some tools to make, I don't know, chariots so that you could sell them to the chariot racers at the Coliseum and you were good at these things, but you wanted your own tools to set up your own shop. you could go to a wealthy person and say, here's my plan, here's my business plan.

I want these tools. I'm going to make chariots. And he would say, okay, here's the money for that. And of course, if you don't pay the money back, then he would get the chariot tools. But they're not very valuable at that point. But you are. And so what came along with the promise to pay was if you didn't pay, you yourself were taken and sold into bondage.

So you're valuable as a human being. You can be sent to fight in a war. you can be sold as a slave. You can be, I don't know, work for the guy who you borrowed the money from, I suppose. So you are the bond. And when you sign that paper that said, I'll pay for this set of tools with my earnings from making chariots, if that all falls through, then you've sold yourself into bondage. It's all voluntary.

And so the root of addiction is that that's what we do. So that's what I was doing back then. I wanted relief from stress. I wanted the benefits of the future, which is getting through training, getting through the stressful period, talking to a friend, being honest, asking for help, all of the things that would have helped me. I wanted those feelings without having to go through the discomfort of being uncomfortable. So I sold myself into bondage by getting the relief from the drug. So I think it's interesting that we came up with that word addiction to describe basically enjoy now.

pay later. That's another way of thinking of it, right? Selling yourself into bondage. Does that make sense? It's kind of cool. A lot of sense. Yeah. I love that. Sorry. So you can eat ice cream and feel great right now, but then you pay the price later. Or you can spend the extra hour on Instagram scrolling mindlessly through there, which feels great. Remember that program and all those things like that are engineered to produce the feeling of curiosity and novelty and familiarity, which is another way to describe addiction all at once. So you're scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, this feels really good. But you've wasted the time.

You've got nothing to show for it. Probably feel bad about doing it. It becomes more of a habit later. It's something you want to do more later. So, yes, I do think, now here's why. It's because addiction is not a disease, not in the way we think. It's not a disease like heart disease or like or like asthma or like cancer. It's a habit problem that is based in how we learn and how lazy the brain is.

Our brains are lazy. They want to do the most efficient thing. If you look at lions, right, they eat and they lie down and they sleep. They'll sleep until they have to eat again. And that's how our brains work too. we want to get safety, opportunity, and free from pain as efficiently and quickly as we can. And when we're learning, we're creating these routines in the brain that get the brain gets very good.

The brain's the best thing we know of at figuring something out and then doing it over and over again to produce a specific result. When you scroll on your phone or drink whiskey or use fentanyl, you very quickly get to the feelings you're after. And so the brain's like, hey, I've got a shortcut. Let's just do this. It's learning. It's a learned system. That's why it's very difficult to let go of it because the brain's like, why are we wasting time feeling anxious? Why are we nervous on stage or at work or talking to a girl or whatever it is? Why not just have this shortcut, get some relief, and then get to feeling good as quick as possible. So that's another way, another way of looking at

and why it's so difficult to let go. And when you think about neuroplasticity, how does that play in the role of not only the development of addiction, but recover from it as well? Wonderful question. That's a great question from the neuroplasticity expert. So the, well, look, it takes a while to learn that that relief or sense of satisfaction or scratching the itch

takes a minute to get it down as a habit. most people is a shocking statistic. Most people who try opiates, even including fentanyl, most people who try it, don't develop the problem. Most people who have passing experience with either pain medication or with fentanyl, they do not become permanently hooked or even hooked for a substantial period of time. So it takes a while to figure out the bumps, to figure out the system of whatever it is to get the substance. It's not that easy to build that habit, which is good. That's good.

Some of it has to do with how that substance is regarded in society, how available it is. There's some barriers that deter the development of a habit. Same with alcohol. Most people who drink alcohol do not go on to develop an alcohol problem. Most people who use marijuana don't go on to develop a cannabis use disorder. But some do. So in terms of neuroplasticity, the mind or the brain is resilient to the development of this because you at some level,

no, it's not good for you, I think. At some level, you're like, I probably should not be drinking this much or I probably should not be scrolling on the phone this much, whatever, whatever the thing is. And so we have these built-in safeguards against it. We're not completely susceptible to, well, you just had one thing. Some people, some people are. Some people once they get it once, they're off to the races. Why that's that way? I don't know. No, you know, we don't, we don't know. We don't have a good test yet to go, oh, Simba, you're fine. No problem.

Jason, you're not. We don't know, we don't know what that is yet. But that's why it's so hard when you talk to kids, right? You tell kids, don't, don't, you should not do this because, and they look around at their friends and most of them use and then they don't and then they let it go. And it's of a time when they're growing up and they let it go, mostly. Some people don't. So what I think about addiction in terms of neuroplasticity is the brain, once it builds these tight learning loops of if I drink a beer, I feel good.

Or if I use fentanyl, I feel good. Or I, you know, take a benzodiazepine. I feel good. Once that habit is developed, I think it stays there forever. It's never broken down. The brain doesn't throw away these learning loops. That's pretty heavy. Yes.

Do you know how to ride a bicycle? Simba, do you know how to ride a bicycle? I do. Most people do. 96 or 97 percent. North Americans know how to ride a bicycle. Do you, when's the last time you wrote a bicycle? Oh, I think it's been maybe a year and a half now.

What if we had one here? What if I brought a bicycle in the studio? Do you have to learn all over again? Or do you know how to ride a bike? I think my brain remembers how to do it. That's what I'm saying. What I'm saying. So we, right?

You can not drive for a long time and then drive again. You can not play tennis for a long time and then you can play if you could play before, right? Or an instrument or sing a song you haven't sung in a long time. The brain doesn't let go of things it fought and spent energy and resources to wire and create these habit loops. These efficiency loops, it doesn't discard them. They're filed in some filing cabinets. somewhere. And that's why you hear stories of people who spent a long time not doing the thing, let's say drinking, and they go back to drinking and it's off to the races. They don't start

back before. They start kind of not even where they left. This is the weirdest thing. Not even where they left off, but they start as if they kept going. They fall apart very quickly if they had a serious problem. And that I think is because the brain, in terms of neuroplasticity, has built this structure and it just goes, oh, we know how to handle this. We go right to this. It's super efficient at messing up your life. So what you need to do, if you want to get better, is you need to build a competing loop, a competing wired system in the brain, neuroplasticity, make the neurons do different stuff by using them so that when you feel blue, let's say, or when you feel like celebrating or when you feel scared or when you want to ask a girl, you know, or a guy out

for a date, you've got this other structure that's like, hey, Simba, I got this thing. I'm nervous about this. What are I? I just want to talk about it. You know, like, oh, yeah, well, what's going on? And we have a conversation, let's say, that's my coping strategy, is talking with another human being. And I hear myself and you say, well, don't worry about this and what about that.

And I feel better. Now that, that, if you're, and I did this, if you're willing to. to put in the time and effort to cultivate a new response, that response becomes more automatic. It doesn't mean I don't think, shall I have a drink here? Maybe this is Beth, you know, it's still in there. But what's way more automatic is sometimes your thumbs are just texting Simba. And I didn't even, I don't know, I just sent you a text because I was feeling anxious. And when you can't even explain how you just have healthy behaviors, that's when the neuroplasticity has built this bigger, taller, more robust, more automatic, more habit-forming, healthy thing.

Does that make sense? That makes a lot of sense. And I love the way I explaining it because the idea is that part of it is almost accepting that those things that we have learned, right, the brain is resilient. It will not forget. So they're going to be there. But when you create a new neural network and make it that the default one, then we can use that a little bit more.

And it actually reminds me of, I think it was Howard Shultz, the CEO of Starbucks. We said something along the lines of make good habits and make them your masters. Because everything in life is a result of the habits that you have. So that kind of code just kind of kicked in when you're saying that. Yeah, exactly. And this is really important what you just said. I just thought about it and thought about this before. you're spurring my thoughts here too, which is it's accepting that this part of you is still there.

I think where people get into trouble is wishing they didn't have this neuroplastic automated addiction loop that they built. And I sure did. I wish that I, you know, didn't still have that tendency. You asked me a great question the other day, which was, did you ever. want to go back and sure. I mean, as ghastly and horrific as that time was, I wasn't thinking about that. I wasn't thinking, well, this is catastrophic. This is awful. I was thinking, well, same thoughts as before. I just want a little relief. I just want to just a short time out here. And of course,

that's still in there. Those thoughts are still in there. They're not cut out. What's cool is I don't have to act on them. And not feeding them causes them, right? It's the, it's, so if you neurons, what do they say that, that fire together, wire together. But if you don't fire them, they don't get any stronger. They don't get any, they don't get, they don't get, they don't get more robust. If you don't practice the guitar, your skills will atrophy. Maybe not to the point where they're gone, but, but they'll get crumbier. And so you'll get you, the pull for people who are, who are trying to stop something that they know is bad for them. The longer you go without doing it, the easier it gets to not do it.

So that's part of the problem. In the beginning, your competing structure is this big, and the addiction structure is this big. It's way more complex. It's way more robust and automatic. And so it takes enormous conscious energy to not do the thing that's easy and automatic. That's why it's so hard to get sober or to,

let go with the phone or to, right, to make these change, go to the gym. The first few times in the gym suck. This just, it's just, and when I say a few times, I mean probably 100 times. It's just, it's awful, right? But once you, once you keep going, you start to feel better and then the habit takes over. And then it's just something that you do. You're not that person anymore because you're not doing those things anymore. So, yeah, I think the neuroplasticity explanation perfectly encapsulates.

what's going on. It's just the brain doesn't like to be uncomfortable. And I think it's just saying that we can all resonate. I do want to talk more about habits because one of the things you mentioned that it's not just about the substance or the behavior, but everything around it. So if it's, let's say, drinking, right, it's the walking to the buys, the people that you see there is the environment. And so can you talk about how those environmental cues can reinforce addition and make relapse more like. Yes, yes. There's an old expression in recovery, which is if you hang around the barbershop long enough, you're going to get a haircut. And so, yeah.

So look, the stories we tell ourselves, stories we tell ourselves, we think are really important. We think that we, that, okay, I am not going to drink and I'm just going to let it go. But there's a whole bunch of other stories that are going on that we aren't really aware of. And I don't know if you want to call that the subconscious or if you want to call that attention, limited attention. No. Your retinas, so the sensory part at the back of your eye is processing about 100 megabits per second of information, which is an enormous amount of information, right? Each one, each one, 100 megabits per second.

It's more information than your brain can process in the occipital lobe, in the visual cortex. It just can't handle it. It's too much. And so your mind, if you will, the part of your brain that makes sense of the world, ignores about 99% of the information coming in. It's just not relevant. So the room you're sitting in, there's furniture and there's walls and there's ceilings and there's, right, maybe somebody else from the crew. And your eyes have ignored that

until maybe I mentioned it. They just don't, don't pay any attention because who cares? Who cares that that chair is still sitting there from 10 minutes ago? It doesn't matter. Your eyes saying, there's the chair. It's still there. There's the chair where your brain is like, whatever. I don't care. It's a chair. So we ignore most of what's coming in, mostly, but it's coming in. And so when you go to the bar, as your usual routine, there's a lot of things that you're not paying attention to that are reaching your mind for processing, but you're not noticing them. So the way the bar sounds, it's not that the conversation's the same, it sounds different. People are affected by the noise, there's music playing, there's tinking of glasses, there's shuffling of chairs, there's laughter

breaking out, there's arguments maybe, depends on what bar you're in, the crack of the pool balls, right? There's all these sounds that you don't think, wow, when I hear the crack of pool balls, I need to have a beer. But your brain associates that setting in the terms of sound. Now, go for the rest of it. Taste, yep, smells. The cranial nerve one, right? The olfactory nerve goes right to the brain. It's a mainline direct connection right to the brain. And smell memories are some of the most potent. So all this stuff is coming in. And back in the days,

I'm picking on you, but back in the days when you're drinking days, all that information is coming in and it's all connected. It's all associated with it. And so we say, okay, go to the bar and just have a ginger ale

and don't drink what you used to drink, but you still have all of these reminders. You still have all this sensory information coming in. And so what I say to the patients, my patience, legitimate business in that bar, then you know if you do or not. Be honest with yourself. Don't go to the bar, right?

Don't, don't go. Why hang around to prove that you can hang out there? Now, don't be afraid to go because it's not the bar that's getting you drunk. It's not the bar that's making you drink. But it does feel like a familiar place. And all these neurons that created that system of, I got to have a drink. they're getting fed. They're getting activated by all the stuff that's around you.

So we said bar, but it could be, you know, whatever your routines are, popping down at night after the thing, grabbing your phone, scrolling through Instagram for an hour or two, that the association of end of the day wind down or kids are playing or if you start to dissect what you've been ignoring, you may find that there's a lot of what they call Q associations or place associations and you may not even be aware of it. These can be these can be mind fields for sure. And as you think that I'm reminded of like I think about five years ago, I decided to do a dry month. So every single year, I'll do a month of not drinking. And one of the things that I realized, especially the first year, is how much of my life I'd like structured around

drinking on weekends. The activity that we did with my friends was drinking on weekends. So when I said I wasn't drinking, it's almost like I was sitting, I remember in my apartment saying, so what do I do? Do I vote for a while? My friends are like, we're going there. It's a funeral. Then you go there, like you meet your friend and then you're not drinking and it just feels like it's so out of place. And in my head, I was like, oh, this will be easy, just 30 days.

But just as you're talking about those cues, how much are in the routine, you might not even be aware of it because that was very enlightening for me. And I was like, I need to do this every year to try to a very same. I reset my body during on a number basis. Yes. Yes. Well, listen, that, that by the way is the best way. So if you're, if anyone in your audience is wondering, do I have a drinking problem or am I? Just stop. Just stop and see how you feel. See what you notice. See what, see what. Now, listen. If you're, I'm not, I'm not your doctor, a listener. but I am a doctor. And if you have become dependent on alcohol or sedative pills like Valium or Ativan or Xanax,

those sorts of things, don't just stop because you may be putting yourself in danger. But if this is a weekend thing where you're not drinking around the clock and you're not drinking to manage your shakes, but this is taking on a larger piece of your life, run an experiment. Don't drink for 30 days. Put up the calendar. Pick a month.

Dry January is very common because of the, I think because of the New Year's stuff and all that. And see how far you get in the month. And notice how you feel in the month. Like you were saying, what do I do if I, right? And you make your own diagnosis. If you find that it's the third of January and you're pounding on the bar, you may have enough information to decide to make some changes.

I don't know. But if you make it through the month breezily and you notice, oh, this is really no big deal, you know, it's probably lower concern, probably lower concern. I will say this, this is sort of the bad news, is if you're doing that, you probably have already decided this is taking up a larger part of my life than I wanted to.

So the people who stopped drinking for a month, they're already in the group of, I'll say people who are paying attention, right? They're paying attention to this may be costing me more than I'm getting out of it. That's really the balance. It's a quality of life issue. I'm not a scholar.

about it. I think if you're drinking and it's helping you and you're and you're enjoying it. And even if the, even if there's some bad elements to it, but on balance for your own life and for the lives of the people that you care about, it's fine. It's not, there's no absolutes. You're the audience that matters, right? It's your assessment of yourself. If you, if you think, yeah, I just, I really need to cut back or I really shouldn't be drinking at all. And then you you drink anyway like I was in my, my story. Then then you need to take a better look. and maybe get some help. If you can take it or leave it,

or if taking it makes you happy and more happy than not, no. There's three stages, by the way, of an alcohol problem. So you're talking about the three stages. Yes, three stages, of,

well, any of these problems, but three stages of a addiction is fun, fun with problems, and then just problem. So in the beginning, it's all great and scratches, an itch and it's and you have it under control in the middle few scrapes some problems and but still pretty

much good still still still mostly you're getting more out of it than it's costing you in terms of however you want to measure but then by the end once the once the substance is taken over and by that I mean your world gets smaller and you're trying to milk more out of the drug or the experience or the phone or the Sarah Lee pound cake or whatever, whatever it is, binge watching Netflix. So people like to do things over and over again. It's very satisfying. It's very satisfying. That's part of what music is, right? It's repetitive rhythms and the melodies, they cycle. And part of our daily rituals, getting up and the morning routine. That was a big thing a little while ago on social media, right? Your morning routine. And, and we're built that way. We're built

with the seasons and the tides and the, right, the cycles. So human beings and my dog love doing things the way they're used to doing them. But that can become a problem too, right? You can, you can work too hard and you can party too hard and you can read too much. You can, right? You can try and get more than is available out of whatever you're doing, whatever it is. So I'm a drug addiction expert, but I see it in a more broad context, which is what is your life, does your life look like you wanted to, right? Have the things that you do taken on, are they driving rather than riding along in your car? Are they in charge? When that's the case, you got to, well, you don't have to, but I suggest you take a look like you did.

That was very smart, taking a look, right, with your friends? Just be curious. Just being curious. So I want to switch gears and talk a little bit more about how addiction can impact family members emotionally and psychologically, even if they're not directly involved with the substance or the behavior. That is the bigger problem, actually. It's not just the...

So we were talking about the people dealing firsthand with, let's say, substances. Let's say drug addiction. But the loved ones, the people who care about them, the people they care about getting dragged into the drama and into the terror and into the hope and expectations that the things will change and then they don't. Or they do and then they go back. That's the emotional washing machine that if there are X number of people suffering with a drug addiction, then there are 2x or 3x, as many people are.

affected by it. It's a people, you know, your parent and your spouse or your partner or your children or your brothers and sisters or society at large. So, yeah, sometimes that's a, as tough a problem. You know, if you, if you're married to somebody and your partners in, in your life together and your partner has an addiction, well, what do you do? What do you do as, as the spouse? You obviously don't want your partner to keep heading down the road of pain and misery and further dependence. But there's not much you can do in terms of getting people to change their behavior,

to try and change someone's behavior. But then I had a question. So if you want an exercise in frustration, try to change someone else's behavior, even when you both know it's good for them. Right? So your spouse is overweight and not exercising, and you both know that your partnership

be taking better care of themselves and they don't. It's really difficult to inspire someone to be uncomfortable, be embarrassed, be the out of shape person at the gym and get over their discomfort. All that stuff is very, very difficult. So what I, and I've been through it. So my, when I was growing up, my own father was an alcoholic, dependent on alcohol. So all of my childhood growing up, my family and I had this unpleasant reality, which was there wasn't really anything we could do. There was no appeal to love. There was no appeal to doing the right thing. There was no way to convince my dad to put the plug in the jug, as they say, to leave it behind.

Until one day he did. Sort of like my experience later reached an epiphany and decided that. that he didn't want to live his life that way. And he stopped drinking and his life got much better, much, much better. So I know the feeling, listen, I'm professionally helpless. I try to help my patients, but they don't always take the suggestions. They don't always make the changes. We do our best, but they have to work it out on their own. So I think the best we can do, the best I would recommend, is that people educate themselves.

it's not that you don't love the person enough. It isn't that they would be sober if only they loved you enough or if only they listened to you. It's not like that. Remember, you're dealing with neuroplasticity. You're dealing with these habit loops that are built. And it's almost like it's almost like it's another person. And sometimes how it feels, right, as the family member or the loved one of a brother or sister who's going through this. It feels like, where's my sister?

Where did you go? And what you can do is take care of yourself. So what you can do is make sure that your own habits, that your own health, that your own sleep hygiene, that's your own diet, your own nutritional status, that your own emotional and spiritual connections are maintained. And being supported by other people who've gone through this. So you realize you're not the only one with an alcoholic dad, right? You're not the only one with a family member who you can't seem to fix. that it's unfortunately pretty common. It's unfortunately, but fortunately,

because someone can talk to you about it. You can hear their experience and recognize that this is part of, it's part of life. And the reason for doing all that is most people going through some kind of addiction, most people get through it. Most people have an awakening. Most people have this epiphany and they change. And you want to be there when they do.

You want to be in the best shape. emotionally that you can be so that when you the ups and downs and the roller coaster of early recovery doesn't take you out of your stride. It doesn't knock you off your perch. That's the best thing you can do. Educate yourself about this. Take care of yourself. And by the way, it'll drive the alcoholic. I say alcoholic. It'll drive the person with addiction crazy when you don't seem to be as bothered by whatever they're going through because you understand the bigger implications. You understand the bigger picture. This is part of part of the journey of getting well. It's not so scary. And it's a paradox. It's kind of a confidence game where if you say, well,

okay, God's taking care of, you know, or the higher power or the witch in the, in the Wiccan universe, whatever you believe in, the great ocean, whatever it is, whatever your sense of not you, who has to fix the person with the problem, whatever that is is taking care of the person I care about. I'm going to take care of myself and I'm going to let it take care of me. That's the best thing you can do. It will change the dynamic when you quit trying to be enough for the person to get well. That mountain has no top. You can never be, you can never love someone enough to fix them. That's, uh, that's its own kind of problem. That I think is so powerful. And for some listeners, it's like, I don't have to stress as much and try to control as much as I think I need to control right now.

So what do you think is the most surprising or misunderstood part of recovery that people don't talk enough about? These are good. You've got great questions, Simba, excellent questions. The thing that people don't talk about enough is, back to medicine. I keep using medicine as examples. If you, most of medicine, most of the reasons that people go see a doctor are to, are to get back to how they were before whatever happened happened. So if you break your arm, heaven forbid, you go to see the orthopedist. Maybe she sets it into cast or maybe she needs to operate on it.

But if everything goes perfect, what you get is your arm working like it did before you broke it. That's the best, that's the highest outcome you can possibly get. Cancer, obviously, if we chop the cancer off and, you know, or if it's a cancer, they need to use chemotherapy or radiation or something else on, if we put you back like you were before you had cancer, that's a absolute 100% win. But with this problem, with the problem of addiction, the problem is not the substances. Maybe that's come through in our conversation. It's not that the fentanyl was my problem. My problem was I thought I needed fentanyl. My problem was I thought I wasn't enough, that I wasn't good enough without using that, that drug. And so what happens when people go through the recovery process is they get not just back to where they were before, not just the arm is fixed and it works like an arm again. But what you get is a whole new life. You get, you get way better than what you came in with, not just not hooked on whiskey or not.

just not smoking pot. It's a different sense of yourself. It's a, it's a freedom and happiness that you couldn't have dreamt of. You didn't even know existed before going through this hell to get to, to get to the promised land. And so people think, well, and I think this is, I think this is a big part of the problem. We talk about stigma in, in addiction, stigma in recovery. And the stigma, much of it. Now, some of it is society and some of it's genuine. And we should get rid of all that and shouldn't be, shouldn't be afraid to get help. But people, people have to deal with it. The real problem is people think, well, how am I, what I said a minute ago, how am I going to make it if I don't have some way to manage my feelings? And so people are intimidated to raise their

hands and ask for help, wave the white flag, because they are afraid of what it's going to be like after they're afraid I have nothing to deal with. I can't, okay, I took dry January, but I can't ever drink again. That's what they think. They're just like, I can't. They don't realize that not only are you not going to never drink again, whatever that means, but life afterwards gets fantastic, not all the time, but way better, way better, not waking up with a pounding heart and not being afraid all the time, not having, you know, sweaty palms and a dry mouth because whenever you walk into a room because you're afraid what they think of me. Not wondering why I'm even here on planet Earth, having a sense of purpose, having a sense of mission, feeling like you belong. That's way better

than just getting your broken arm fixed. So one of the biggest problems, I think we're not very good salesmen for what can come from going through this scary, overwhelming, terrifying adventure. On the other side of it is a beautiful life. You don't even know exists. So that's the biggest problem. We need better marketing. We need better people saying, hey, you know, it is funny, though. People like to talk about how they used to drink.

Not many people talk about how they currently have a problem. But I wish more people would stand up. I just talked to a friend today. And I've known her for years in a business context. we've become friendly. She lives in another town, but we work in the same industry. And I just found out today that she is in recovery. She's sober more than a decade. And yeah, that's how I looked. Same expression. I was like, I wish I knew that. Now, maybe it's why we're friends because we see eye to eye on so many things. And she has her reasons for keeping private in her, in her industry, in her

particular job. But I think, I think that's something that I wish people knew more is what what life looks like on the other side, how good it can be. And I'm just wondering, so based on your experience, everything you've learned, working with individuals that have recovered, how has that changed your worldview? Oh, wow. I mean, in every way possible, Simpa, in every way possible. I used to think, why me? But if I learn enough and I, this is why I became a doctor, I wanted to be accepted.

I wanted to feel like I was useful in the world. I felt for so long like I had nothing to offer that it wasn't very smart, that any scrap of success that came my way was luck and that would soon be taken away. I had this deep anxiety that I didn't fit and I didn't belong and there was something wrong with me. All that's fine. All that turns out to be pretty normal. Probably a lot of your listeners have that feeling. Most people at one point or another have that kind of.

of feeling. But the deadly part of it is what I had next, which is I thought, I can fix this. I can fix this feeling. And that's where everything got messed up is believing that I could fix it. Because the truth is, there wasn't anything actually wrong. I was just, I just had a wrong idea. I was just thinking about myself the wrong way. That's what was actually wrong. But I was so internally focused. I was so certain that I could overcome this. That's how I wound up using fentanyl. It was the next step on the progression of, oh, I know how to do this. I know how to solve this problem. Terrified and arrogant at the same time and supremely confident in my, in my self-reliance rather than letting go and asking for help. So I think the journey has absolutely

changed the way I see the world. I realize that we're the same. And by that I don't mean we're both men trying to help people, although that too. But we're literally, literally the same that chances are the way you think about the world and yourself in it is very, very, very similar. I mean, distinguishable from me. And going through the world thinking that, thinking, you know, there's my cousin, there's my fellow brother on this journey, is a wonderful way to go through the world. it's wonderful because when

listen, when you treat people that way when you think, oh, hey, there's my cousin instead of who's that guy? What does he want from me? What is he trying to take from me? How can I get what I want from him? Going through the world, I hope he doesn't find out my secret

that I'm a drug addict and I'm afraid and right. When you live that way, it's a horrible, horrible life and looking for what I can just eke out and maybe get a crust of bread in a pair of shoes and stay out of the rain. You know, if I could just, just survive. I don't look at the world that way anymore. I look at the world, listen, this is extra time.

I should have died. With what I was doing, I should have died for some reason that didn't happen. There's some grace involved here that saved me that gave me that page from the chairman. That gave me that off ramp from my road to oblivion. to death. And so I regard this stage, the after, the before and the after, this stage of my life as service. The only way, I can't fully repay the debt. I cannot get square on that. I'm way, way in debt and overpaid for the life I have. But the best I can do is try to, is try to help others, is try to free them from their misconceptions about themselves, is to help them, is to help them

currently that looks like have a soft landing in detox, which is scary and uncomfortable and miserable. And maybe if we can soften the blow there and help people feel better about that choice initially, maybe they can get some momentum on getting well and say, well, geez, maybe I should have come in earlier. That's my whole mission in that sector is glad you're here. Don't worry about what happened. Let's get you feeling better. and on with the next stage. So I know exactly why I'm here.

I have an absolute clear vision and mission for my life. I had none of that before, except this very small vision of, well, I just want to maybe feel a little less uncomfortable sometimes. Now I pursue being uncomfortable. Simba says, hey, do you want to be in this show? There's a lot of people listen to it. And I'm like, oh, that sounds scary. But yeah, let's go, right?

Let's go. Let's talk. Let's let's talk. Let's kick it around. Let's get it. Let's get it all out, right? Let's get it all out. Simba, I realized that the thing that I was most embarrassed about and that I was, that, you know, the secret I would take to the grave with is what you and I are now talking about. So I had it wrong. I misunderstood. And by the way, that's still true. I may, I may, I may be getting it wrong still, right? There's still things I'm learning. I don't,

I certainly haven't learned everything. And the freedom of being able to say, well, what am I missing here? What am I not seeing? What is there? Is there more to this? Maybe I should get a second opinion on what I think about myself. Let somebody else, right, way in, not to do what they say or find a guru. I'm not talking about that. I'm just saying, hey, here's how this looks to me.

How does it look to you? And just opening up to the possibility that I may not be seeing everything. So I have a, yes, I've never been asked that question before. But yes, I absolutely have a different view before and after. That's beautifully said. For those individuals that would like to connect with you, contact you or learn more about your center, what you do, where can they find you? If you want to know what I'm thinking, I'm very interested in the field of addiction

medicine, and so I spent time writing about that and this cool thing called substacks. You can find me at Dr. Jason Giles on Substack. If you're a facility owner, if you're in the addiction treatment business and you're interested in our services for helping your patients, medical telemedicine services, you can find us at addiction doctors.com. That's the name of the company. And I wrote a book. The book is called Outsmart Your Addiction. It has to do with neuroplasticity. It has to do with using the healthy part of your brain to fix the part that's not working so great because people are not completely ruined.

by the time they come in, there's parts that work. And so you can find that book at Amazon and Barnes & Noble and all the other booksellers. It's a bit more of the story. It goes into more detail about some of those dramatic moments in the operating room. But it's also kind of a how-to manual if you're trying to get started on this pathway at home on your own. And we are going to have all those links in the show notes. So my last question is, what is the one takeaway? You'd like listeners to leave with from today's conversation.

Well, they already know how lucky they are to have you as the host. You're an excellent interviewer. So they don't need to know that. I'll leave you with the most important lesson that I learned about myself, which is that the only thing wrong with me was that I thought there was something wrong with me. That's the fulcrum of the whole change. Just saying, well, maybe I'm okay. Maybe I'm okay.

I would kick that around. If you're hearing this podcast and you're thinking, I don't know how to relate to this Latin words and neuroscience and stuff. Just ask yourself, what if you're actually okay? What if you're actually okay? And just think about that for a minute. I was challenged with that way back. And it was just, it's like in the matrix.

When he figures out he's in the matrix, that this is all plugged into a computer and it's all not real. And when I started thinking, thinking, what if you're okay? What if you're actually okay? That changed, that changed everything. So I think that's what I would like to leave the audience with. What if you're okay? Dr. Giles, it has been an absolute pleasure, getting your insights, your perspectives, hearing your story. Thank you for spending the afternoon with us. My absolute joy. Thank you very much, Simba.

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