Well with Arielle Lorre - 275: Overcoming Addiction, Healing Through Nutrition and How to Become Your Body’s Best Caretaker with Adam Sud

Episode Date: October 4, 2023

Adam Sud is a behavioral wellness & nutrition expert, international speaker, and the founder and CEO of Plant Based for Positive Change, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing research and understanding of how nutrition impacts mental health and addiction. He joins the show to discuss his harrowing journey of addiction, various mental health disorders, overeating, and ultimately his attempt to take his own life, and how he recovered. We explore the true root of addiction, misconceptions around addiction, anxiety and depression, addiction vs. dependency, what happens in our brains when we use substances, the biological mechanism of compulsion and how to recalibrate our dopaminergic systems. We also talk about our shared experiences in recovery, how to become your body’s caretaker, how to find your why, tips for adopting healthier eating habits, how a plant based diet saved him from a lifetime of illnesses, the importance of gut health for overall wellbeing and so much more. This episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services. Individuals on the show may have a direct, or indirect financial interest in products, or services referred to in this episode.Visit OuraRing.com/blonde to learn about how to take control of your health with Oura x Natural Cycles. Get 20% off your first order of Sakara at www.Sakara.com/Blonde or use the code BLONDE at checkout. Visit ritual.com/BLONDE to get 30% off your first month of subscription today.Article is offering our listeners $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more. To claim, visit ARTICLE.COM/BLONDE and the discount will be automatically applied at checkout.  Visit JustThriveHealth.com and use the code BLONDEFILES for 30% off your first month of subscription, lock in member pricing and free shipping for life and score some amazing freebies along the way.LMNT is offering my listeners a free sample pack with any order, That’s 8 single serving packets FREE with any LMNT order. Get yours at DrinkLMNT.com/BLONDEFILES.  Produced by Dear MediaSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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about how you take control of your health with aura and natural cycles. Again, that's aurora.com slash blonde, o-u-r-a-r-r-r-ing-com slash blonde. Welcome to the blonde files podcast. I'm your host, Arial Lori, and I'm here to talk all things wellness. From how to achieve optimal health and well-being to the best beauty tips and everything in between, no topic is off limits. I know there's so much information out there, so I'm bringing on expert guests. and sharing my own experiences to help you sift through all the wellness stuff without the BS. Enjoy the show. Hi, everybody. Welcome to the show. I have an incredible episode for you today. Whether you've

personally struggled with addiction or mental health disorders, or you know somebody who has, or you just want to hear a really amazing story of recovery and resilience. This is the episode for you. I've gotten such incredible feedback when I talk a little bit about recovery and I am not making that my platform, but I thought it would be really valuable to do a full episode on it. So I'm putting a trigger warning at the top of this show because we do discuss suicide and self-harm. But despite the heavy subject matter, I think the message is overall really hopeful, really uplifting and probably a little bit different from maybe other recovery messages that you've heard in the past. And of course, there are moments of humor and levity throughout as well. So my guest today is Adam said. Adam is a behavioral

wellness and nutrition expert. He's an international speaker and the founder and CEO of Plant Based for positive change, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing research and understanding of how nutrition impacts mental health and addiction. In 2020, he ran the first controlled research trial to investigate the effects of plant-based nutrition intervention on early addiction recovery outcomes. He currently coaches individuals using nutrition, the science of behavior change, and evolutionary psychology to understand and achieve their personal mental health and wellness goals. So you'll hear about his story in the episode, but in 2012, he was personally struggling with multiple addictions, serious chronic diseases, and mental health disorders. His life nearly came to an end when he attempted suicide

by drug overdose. And with the help of treatment and the implementation of a plant-based diet, he began a journey that led to the reversal of his chronic disease conditions, the cancellation of all medications, and the lowering of his weight from class three obesity levels. from 350 pounds to a healthy 175 pounds. He's currently 10 or I believe maybe 11 years sober. He served as lead insulin resistance and food addiction coach for mastering diabetes from 2017 to 2022, a program that focuses on reversing insulin resistance to master type 1, type 1.5 pre-diabetes and type 2 diabetes using plant-based nutrition.

He also served as a clinical health coach for Whole Foods Markets Global Wellness Center at the company's headquarters. He served as a holistic lifestyle coach at Whole Recovery. He has worked in mental health and behavioral health treatment centers as a group facilitator. Using plant-based nutrition to strengthen recovery and relapse prevention, he's also an international speaker for the health and wellness movement and addiction recovery movement. And he's presented at some of the world's largest. health and wellness events. He's so passionate, clearly, about his recovery. And I really love talking to other sober people because we just kind of speak the same language. It's like the language of the heart. And there's definitely a camaraderie of having been through this shared,

terrible experience that actually in many cases turns out to be the greatest experience. You know, it's my greatest asset, as I always talk about. And most people I know in recovery feel that way as well. So in this episode, we are talking about his journey. We kind of explore like why we become addicted. He said addiction is misguided self-care. And I was like, I have never thought of it that way. But yes, it really is like my addiction. And even in sobriety, things I struggled with early on, like exercise addiction, binge eating. These were all attempts at self-regulation in some form. So I thought that was really interesting. We talk about what to do when a loved one has addiction issues, which so many people DM me about. We kind of talk about the reframe of alcoholism or alcohol being the problem to alcohol being the solution. We talk about misconceptions around addiction. We talk about dopamine and addiction, addiction versus dependency. We talk about the biological mechanism of compulsion, which I found really interesting, how to kind of recalibrate our brains and our dopaminergic systems. We talk about how he overcame really unhealthy eating habits, which you hear about in the episode, adopting a plant-based diet.

We talk how to find your why. He said something really interesting in relation to when he tried to take his own life and he failed at that. And he realized that his body was trying to keep him alive. Like this body that he hated and was abusing was doing everything it could to keep him alive. And he had this massive perspective shift where he desired to become his body's caretaker, like trying to take care of a body that's trying to take care of him. And I think we can all apply this. Like that's kind of a nice definition of wellness.

like taking care of your body that's trying every day to take care of you. We also have advice for people who are sober curious, people who are not alcoholics, who may just be using substances and want to explore stopping. We talk about nutrition, gut health, gut health's role in anxiety and depression and substance use and so much more. So this was the longest intro ever. I'm going to get to the episode. So please enjoy Adam said. Welcome, Adam.

Hi. I'm really excited to be here. I'm really excited to have this conversation with you. I'm so excited. I have to admit, I love talking about all kinds of topics on the show, but there is something really special for me about talking to somebody who's been through addiction. And we were just talking before we started recording about this camaraderie that people have who have been through addiction and come out on the other side. Yeah, it's quite a special thing. When you sit with someone who knows it and you know, that they know it. There's a bonding that happens really quickly where I don't have to, I don't have to validate my experience for you because it's already been validated by your own life. Yes. And so there's this immediacy of we can already jump to like a vulnerable place of acceptance. And so I kind of really appreciate that. Yeah. I feel like we almost speak the same language. It's kind of the language of the heart. Like there's automatic intimacy, I feel like with people who have been through this. And I think for anybody listening before we even get into the episode, find somebody that you can talk to like this.

If you're struggling, find somebody who's either going through it or been through it as well, because I think it alleviates so much of the shame around what you're experiencing as well. Oh, you know, I always tell people, you know, if you're someone who's loving someone who's struggling, if you're the witness to someone who you love, maybe they're a friend and you love them, maybe they're a family member and you love them, one of the most important, things you can do is to remind them that they matter to you. And usually simply listening is a way to do. There's a great quote that says, listening is an act very close to loving. In fact, listening looks so much like loving that most people can't tell the difference. And so if you can give someone permission

to talk to you and just listen to what they have to say, you remind them that they've not been forgotten by what is most meaningful to them in the world, which is the people in their life that matter the world to them. If you're a friend or if you're a family member and you love someone who's struggling, don't be their therapist, be their family member or a friend. What is scary for them is the threat that they're no longer valuable to you. Yes. And I think at least in my experience, if somebody close to me, really anybody for that matter, but especially somebody close to me came to me and was trying to intervene on what I was doing, they became enemy number one. Oh yeah. Because nobody was going to come between me and my coping mechanism for life.

and for the painful things that I was feeling, which were drugs and alcohol. So anybody who tried to come between that, they were persona non grata in my life. And you know, that's the thing. It's that my kind of mantra is we need to stop asking people, why won't you stop using? We should start asking them, why does your use make sense? Yes. Right? Essentially what we're saying is why, if I were you and life felt the way it feels to you, why is it reasonable that I would likely be doing the exact same thing. Why are we the same? Instead of, why won't you stop? I don't ever use. Why can't you do that? In my opinion, it's not a very valuable. And in fact, it's likely a very offensive question. Yeah. Yeah, I talk about this a lot and we're kind of jumping ahead here.

So we will rewind from everybody listening. If you're wondering what we're talking about, you know, I think that there's a misconception that alcohol and drugs are the problem. right when really for me at least they were the solution no percent so yeah so so we need to get down to what is it solving yes yeah 100 percent i mean you know i look at my story you fall along in the timeline you'll see the introduction of substance use and you'll see it become substance abuse quote unquote substance abuse but you'll see it become substance use disorder for a very very obvious reason so i grew up in texas in the 1980s and you know i had i had an amazing childhood. I really did. I have a twin brother, an identical twin brother and a younger sister.

And so I grew up with a best friend and then got another best friend a few years later. We lived in a neighborhood where I played sports with all my friends. My dad played football with us. He was the coach of our little league baseball team and basketball team. My mom inspired our imagination. He used to ride my bike to him from school. But for whatever reason, and look, my parents are my heroes. By the time I was about age 10, I started to experience very hypercritical comments about my weight and the way I was eating. And they kind of seemed to come out of nowhere. And I kind of got this message that, hey, guess what? You know how you used to run around life, fully accepting of yourself, both physically and emotionally? You don't have the

right to do that anymore unless you meet these standards. It was a pretty fearful experience for me because I became kind of concerned that, oh, my goodness, if there's conditions that you have to meet in order to love yourself. If this is one of them, what are the others? Why do I not know where they are? I started to experience a feeling that my body was no longer a safe, secure, or hopeful place to wake up and be present. And we moved to Austin right before I started high school,

so I didn't know anyone. And I was kind of an awkward kid. And so I experienced pretty intense bullying my freshman year of high school. This is the late 90s. this was before the advocacy around bullying and kind of really speaking up for what the harm that it actually does. And so I would go to school and I would get verbally, physically, and emotionally bullied every single day. So by this point, I would wake up into a life where my body didn't feel like a safe, secure, or hopeful place to be. I would be in the presence

of my parents that didn't always feel like a safe, secure, or hopeful place to be. I would go to school, it would physically and emotionally and verbally not feel like a safe, secure, a hopeful place to me. And so my life, there wasn't a lot of things that I felt excited about being present for. In fact, being present in my life was a pretty painful and scary experience. And about this time, I got prescribed a medication called Adderall. And I remember taking my medication in the middle of class. And as I walked out of the classroom, one of the bullies grabs a hold of me. And, you know, I was kind of prepared for it every single day. I knew likely something was going to happen. But this was a little bit different. It wasn't in a kind of

harmful fashion. It was more of a, hey, buddy, let's talk to you. What they informed me was like, hey, listen, you know, you're new here. We needed to haze you. It's over. We've told everyone to stop. We want you to come to this party this weekend. And we saw you taking some out of all in class. Why don't you just bring that to? And look, I may have been awkward. I may have been, you know, the nerd that year, but I certainly wasn't, I wasn't stupid. I knew exactly what was taking place. and I felt incredibly relieved by this feeling. It was an immense experience of relief because what had just occurred was, I think I may have figured out a way to feel safe for the first time.

So I went to this party and I brought Adderall for everybody. And that's actually the first night I used Adderall as a recreational drug. I'd never done it before. I didn't even know it was possible. In the minute that I did, in the minute that that medication started to take effect, boom. I mean, I was just like, I can't. can't even explain to you the feeling of relief. I might be able. Actually, you would know. Oh, yes. The feeling of relief that flooded me was, it was a sense that I may have figured out how to

solve the majority, if not all of the things that were making my life feel like a place I didn't want to be a part of anymore. I had unbelievable confidence for the first time in my life. I felt safe in front of in the presence of these kids because they were not going to, they were not going to hurt me anymore. And in fact, they started to treat me with what looked like friendship. I was overweight as a freshman. And Adderall is an amphetamine. That's what the stuff is. And I'm not saying that because I'm saying

Adderall is good or bad. I'm just saying it to be accurate. And so my metabolism goes through the roof. I don't feel like I ever have to eat. I can go 120% at a party. I can stay up for days at a time. All of these things in my life that were overwhelming problems

had just been solved with ease and repeatability. That's incredibly attractive. That's a very, very attractive experience. In fact, it was so attractive that I grabbed the hold of it and I bonded with it. I created what I would call a loving and meaningful bond with this behavior. Because if you were to be in my body, if you were to be in my life and you were to feel what my life felt like and you were to use, what you would notice is that that use looked and felt exactly like self-care. And that's what addiction is.

Yeah. Addiction is misguided self-care. That's what's really taking place. someone whose life is overwhelmingly difficult. They introduce a stimulus like Adderall, like alcohol, like heroin, like opiates. And that stimulus eases the burden of their life. It relieves them of their pain in ways that they've never experienced before. And every instinct in them thinks and feels like this must be the right thing to do.

So we're going to keep doing it. We're going to hold on to it. And because we're not able to see the consequences of 10, 15 years, years because we can create a story. Oh, well, this is just a short-term deal. It feels so right. I'm just going to hold on to it for a little bit, even though we know we can't properly predict 10 years from now, and 10 years from now is exactly what happened to me. The problem became so overwhelming that I ended dropping out of college. I moved back to Austin. I started doctor shopping, having multiple doctors prescribing the same medications without knowing about it. It's a felony. I was forging

prescriptions. That's a felony. I was buying and selling drugs on the street. I was treating my family like absolute garbage. I ended up, you know, feeling incredibly depressed, incredibly isolated. And I was going through so much drugs. I mean, my use was out of control that there would now be weeks at a time when I couldn't get a hold of any kind of stimulant. And so I found fast food. Fast food was something that could fill the gap. And so by the time I was 30, I was doing on a daily basis a minimum of 450 milligrams of Adderall per day, upwards of 1,000. To put that into perspective, the average dose of a prescription is about 10 to 20 milligrams every 24 hours. I was consuming somewhere in the neighborhood of 3,000 to 5,000 calories of fast food a day when I didn't have my

drug. So now I weighed nearly 350 pounds. I had all these, you know, debt. I was two weeks away from being homeless. I had severed every meaningful and loving bond in my life that gave me the experience that life was a meaningful and wonderful place to be. I wish I could let people know the degree to which I mistreated my dad because so much of the time when I tell my story, people think that my dad was mistreating me. And I was a terrible son. And he came to me with an opportunity. He gave me the opportunity to attend this kind of seven-day retreat hosted by a man named Rip Esselston. You know, I didn't want to go. I didn't want to know what a plant-based diet was. I didn't know who Rip Esselston was. I sure shit didn't want to know who he was. I just knew that

if I could convince my dad that this was something I was interested in, I could probably convince him to give me money. I went and I listened. I learned. And it all made sense. Every single bit of it made sense. It seemed like this is a really good idea. This plant-based diet thing, I might be able, my life might be a really amazing place if I was to do this thing. Here's the deal, though. I was not about to give up what was allowing me to escape a life that was too painful a place to be on the gamble that this plant-based diet might work out in a year. That was just too extraordinary of an effort for me.

Nothing about my life felt safe enough for me to take on this effort. And so my life just got worse. People would say, oh, well, you know, it's a shame people didn't want to be there for it. He's like, oh, trust me, they did. I made it very difficult. Even being in my presence was not a comfortable thing to do. If you ever feel tightness in your stomach sitting in rush hour traffic or you get sick to your stomach before a big presentation or you've just had so much stress that you wished you could hit the pause button on life and just breathe for a second, Just Calm from Just Thrive is here to help. Just Calm's all natural proprietary blend of mood uplifting psychobiotics and brain nerve.

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Calm and Just Thrive Probiotic, you basically have the ultimate stress fighting duo to help you feel cool, collected, and in control. Definitely go check out my recent episode with Tina Anderson. It was this past spring. I think it was her third time on the podcast, but we really got into the nitty gritty about how and why these products work. So definitely go check that out to learn more. And right now, you guys can save a whopping 30% on the first month of a subscription. You can lock in member pricing and free shipping for life and score some amazing freebies along the way. So take control of your best health today with Just Thrive. Visit justthrivehealth.com and use the promo code Blonde Files. Again, that's just thrivehealth.com, and the code is blonde files. Welcome to barely

filtered, hosted by us. I'm Aurora Culpo, star of the HBO Max show, The Culpo Sisters. Don't tell my sisters, I said so. I'm a recently divorced mom of two living in Los Angeles with my ex-husband. I'm part granola mom, part glamorous jet setter. I'm Chris and Gaffney, also a mom, a startup nerd who modeled for Sports Illustrated SwimSuit and the founder and CEO of Super True. I also like to microdose my coffee before I hit up Carpool. Welcome to barely filtered. Our safe space. Here we discuss health and wellness, becoming a grown-ass woman,

and what's going on in this crazy world. And while we don't agree on everything, we do agree on this. We want you to live your best fucking life. I am in my sauna era. You've probably seen on Instagram. I have been doing the sauna daily. working hard to detox my body. And whether you are doing a sauna or just working out, keeping an active lifestyle, maybe you drink a few glasses of wine, maybe you just eat a whole food based diet

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D-R-I-N-K-L-M-N-T dot com slash blonde files. Again, drinkelement.com slash blonde files. I think something that people don't understand, and I think this is another misconception around addiction, alcoholism, whatever it is, is that the person wants to be doing what they're doing. Yeah. And I'm sure that you did not want to be, living that way. Like I think back to myself, because I got to a similar place, and, you know, I was having seizures and I was living in squalor, basically, and I could not stop drinking and using. Not because I wanted to. At that point, it was a survival thing. And it's like a primal, it was more important than sleeping, eating, you know, it activated some primal thing in me.

Well, you're absolutely right, actually. There's an evolutionary psychologist. His name is Doug Lyle. And he talks about something that we call the pleasure trap. And the pleasure trap is essentially a state that you get into as a result of a biological mechanism that compels behavior. So in fact, we have, you know, and I know dopamine is a buzzword these days, but we have this phenomenal neurotransmitter called dopamine. And its purpose is essentially to be a guidance system.

It allows us to figure out in environments that look like the environments that we have spent the majority of our evolutionary story. and it's a guidance system that helps us figure out what's the right move to make to survive to tomorrow really well. If we look at our evolutionary story, we spent the majority of that in an environment of scarcity, competition, and danger. So dopamine was a way of figuring out what is the best move to make in order to get the most for the least. Anything that gives you more dopamine, dopamine is a neurotransmitter that gives us the experience of what's called reward pleasure. What it's doing is we're getting a euphoric experience that gives us the sense that we have

just statistically rewarded our likelihood of making it to tomorrow really well. That's what it's doing. Because your survival instinct doesn't care about how long you live. Your survival instincts just make it to tomorrow. That's the entire goal. And so he tells a story. He says, well, if you go outside at night and you were to leave your porch light on, what you're going to notice is that there are moths that are fluttering to the light. And they're acting kind of strangely. They just keep hitting the light over and over again. And the reason why they do that is because they're actually designed by nature to use celestial objects or the brightest lights in the sky as navigation. But now when the brightest light in the sky is your porch light, what happens is their guidance

system gets fooled and they fluttered to the light, they hit it, they hit it again, they hit it again, they hit it again, and eventually they're going to die. And from the outside perspective, looking at it, you go, well, that doesn't make any sense. Why would they do that? But if we were to pause and consider from a subjective point of view, what's taking place inside that animal's mind is that that animal is thinking and feeling like it's doing the exact right thing when in fact it's self-destructive. That's useful. So for a person who is in a life that doesn't feel like a safe, secure, or hopeful place to be, not only does their current life feel like that, but their future feels like an even more hopeless place to be. It's not a really place they even really care to get to.

They would rather not get there. And you introduce a stimulus into that environment like drugs. it's going to look like the most beautiful light you've ever seen. It's going to elicit a dopamine response that gives you a sense that somehow, you're not even going to really understand how, but somehow you seem to care for your life for tomorrow. It feels like your tomorrow is going to be a better place than today. And so what's taking place is once you've introduced that stimulus, once you discover it,

your body's going to respond as if it's trying to care for your life, but it's completely misguided. It's thinking and feeling like it's doing the exact right thing when in fact it's self-destructive. Yes. The reason why some people are going to grab a hold of that bright light, like it's the most beautiful thing they've ever seen, is when their life doesn't feel like a safe place to be.

For everyone else, that light will look beautiful. It's supposed to. But it's just going to be a pretty thing that they might want to look at every now and then. They've got something else that is important to them that they want to be back to. Their life is a place that they have the right, they feel like they have the right to show up and be excited and present for. And they feel like they have a future that makes sense, that they want to care for and get there. That's the difference. The difference between an

addict and a person who's not an addict is not in their genetics. It's not in the fact that some people are different than others. It's in the experience of their lived life. It's how safe do they feel? How much sense does their life make? How much sense does their future feel? And how much sense does it make? Those are the differentiating factors. That's what happened with me. I think, oh, sorry, to interrupt you. I'm just thinking about my own experience and kind of back to what you were saying about the first time that you used at that party, I was kind of laughing and nodding my head because the experience is so similar. I think if I asked any of my non-alcoholic friends the first time they drank, they probably wouldn't remember. For me, the first time I drank

similar situation. And I didn't really have that I can recall a lot of pain or unsafe feelings at the time. I just remember that the first time I took a drink, it was a total spiritual experience because for the first time in my life, I felt comfort and ease. There you go. And I didn't know. So it was caring for something. That I didn't even know that I was lacking. I didn't know how uncomfortable I was until I felt that comfort for the first time or my shoulders relaxed. And it was like a full body exhale. And in that moment, I too felt like, oh, this is my solution. Yeah, you bonded with it. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It's much more a, uh, it's, it's much more a, uh, an emotional and psychological response.

Yes. I always tell people, you know, dependency is not addiction. I know we like to classify addiction as dependency. Or if you take it away and they go through withdrawals, then they're an addict. No, I'm sorry. But dependency can happen for anybody. You don't have to be addicted. Because dependency is a biological adaptation to the prolonged use of a substance.

But addiction is an emotional and psychological adaptation to a behavior that seems to care for something in your life that's never been cared for before. That's important. My life by the time I was 30 years old was the most painful experience I've ever had ever. In fact, every day in my life felt like the worst day I'd ever had. Not only did every day feel like the worst day I'd ever had, I was confident that tomorrow was going to be worse. And if that's your reality, if you live there long enough, eventually tomorrow is not something you want to be a part of. And that was my experience on August 21st or 2012. In fact, yesterday was 11 years. I didn't have a plan. I didn't write a note. I didn't call anyone. It wasn't something. You know, I had been battling the idea of not wanting to be alive for a long time, but I hadn't, I didn't think I was suicidal. And that night, you know, I was 30 years old. I already had erectile dysfunction for reasons I didn't understand. I had infected wounds on my legs from scratching mosquito bites that wouldn't heal for reasons I didn't understand. I was 350 pounds. I was broke. I had no job. I had friends that, that, not that

they weren't, didn't want me in their life. They couldn't be. And I was about two weeks from being evicted. And so I just grabbed a handful of pills and I threw him down my throat. Now, I'd been abusing substances for 10 years. So overdoses wasn't something I was, I was new to, but this felt distinctly different. I can remember I tried to stand up off of my couch because I was feeling a little funny. I kind of felt like I was going to throw up. When I did that, my entire right side of my body cramped and it felt like I got stabbed in the right side with a hot knife. And I buckled over and all of a sudden my vision is going black from the outside in. I mean, it is closing fast. And I can tell you that the feeling that I had, and I'm not talking about the physical description

that I just laid out. I mean, the feeling that I had. I was confident I was witnessing the last second of my life and I regretted it. And I woke up on the floor of my apartment. I was hours later in a puddle of vomit in a pile of fast food garbage and I was surrounded by empty pill bottles and I didn't I wasn't really sure what had taken place took me a little bit to figure it out and then I mean I've never been so relieved to say it was relief is is an insult to that word and I think about it now God what would my family not have done for 10 more years with me I was successful try to think of what would they not give up for 10 more days with me.

You know, the things that we choose to believe have consequences, but they're not, the consequences aren't just on us, they're on the people that we care about. And that's when I called my family and I asked for help and I checked into rehab about two weeks later. I was diagnosed with type two diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, rectile dysfunction, a whole list psychological conditions. And I was put on a cabinet's worth of medication for life. And I look back on it now.

I'm incredibly grateful that that happened because I was a walking cliche. I walked in, I was going to do 28 days of vacation from my use, kind of get a handle on things. In Arizona, right? In Arizona, yeah. No, I went to Sierra Tucson. Oh, okay. Yeah. I mean, I really thought, like, I'll just use better in 28 days.

I was that person. Yeah. I'm so glad I was so sick because being presented with the reality that, gosh, if all you do is stop using, you may not have five years. you might have to really consider reorganizing the way that you move through the world entirely. And I remember, all they kept saying to me was, you know, Adam, here's a reality, all these diagnosis, you're likely always going to be overweight. There's a good chance you can have a heart attack in the near future. Your diabetes is so advanced. There's a real risk for amputation and blindness in your future, just so you know. But if you want your life to be better, you better stop

using. And I'm sitting here and like, wait a minute. I know what my life feels like when I don't use. That's why I use. And now you're painting a picture about a future that is so terrifying. I don't even want to be a part of it. I thought to myself, man, if I'm really going to do this, I'm going to do this well. What I need to do, I need to figure out how to reverse engineer the experience of feeling meaningfully alive. I wanted to be the architect of a life that felt like such a secure, such a safe, secure and hopeful place to be that use was no longer necessary. I didn't know how he's going to do that. But I was like, that's what I need to do. And then I thought about, well, hang on a second.

I remember at that retreat that I went to with Rip Esselston, that he mentioned that a plant-based diet can solve things like diabetes and heart disease and erectile dysfunction and weight, you know, you can lose weight. Well, that's A plus B equals C. One thing I was really good at was putting food on my plate. I'm just going to change the food that I put on my plate. So when I moved out of rehab, I moved into a sober living facility in Santa Monica. And I walked up to the house manager who's actually,

his last name is actually hamburger. And I told him, I said, look, I want to do a plant-based diet. And he said, I have no idea what that is, but I really want to help you. Why don't you just tell me what you need? And so I did. I wrote out a list of food. And I started my plant-based journey about a week after moving in. Fall is the time to make your home, your space. The absolute coziest it can be. I love transitioning my home to fall. And if you're a little bit, looking to do this without spending an arm and a leg, Article has got you covered. So whether you are looking for furniture or decor, article has everything. Their curated assortment of mid-century modern, coastal, industrial, Scandy, and Boho designs makes shopping simple for whatever

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You have to give it a listen. It is so enlightening. And I learned so much about supplements and the supplement industry and what we are really putting in our bodies. And something that I really appreciate about Kat and Ritual's approach is the emphasis on women. Women belong in scientific research. They are essential.

Ritual knows this. They've conducted a university-led clinical trial for their essential for women 18 plus multivitamin to assess its efficacy because women have been excluded from clinical research policy by federal law up until 1993. It is crazy. So when they tested this, they found that they're essential for women 18 plus multivitamin, increased vitamin D levels by 43% and omega-3 DHA levels by 41% in just. 12 weeks. This multivitamin is made with high quality and traceable key nutrients in clean bioavailable forms. If you listen to the episode, you know why this is so important. I was shocked to find out where most ingredients and supplements come from like sheep's wool and ground tilapia and just things that you do not want to be consuming. A lot of heavy metals. Again, go listen to the episode to learn more. Rituals Essential for Women 18 Plus has nine key nutrients and two capsules per day. They have an amazing, unique beadlet and oil capsule that's patented. Everything is so meticulously designed down to the capsule. That's another thing I learned, the ingredients that are in most supplement capsules. So when it

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bodies and having them put on weight because so many people end up there malnourished. But there is not an emphasis on quality of nutrition. And, you know, the places that I went were kind of bougie and most of them. Some of them were not when I ended up in detox. But, you know, they had chefs and stuff. But it's like meat and fish with gravy and the fruity pebbles and just, just anything. Well, yeah. So, you know, you actually, you said something that's very accurate. Most people who check into treatment are either overfed and undernourished or most, most of them are underfed and undernourished. And so really what they're trying to do is they're just trying to help people reorganize their life around anything other than using. Yes.

I mean, even if it's junk food. Yeah, and go smoke all the cigarettes you need. Smoke all the cigarettes. Wear a black hoodie. Yeah. You know, eat lots of junk food. Yeah. So much candy.

That's when I remembered Doug Lyle's talk, the pleasure trap because he had presented at the Plant Strong retreat that I went to. And he talked about this. If we knew what to do to be happy and healthy, why is it so damn difficult to do it? And he talked about the biological mechanism. of compulsion that when you introduce foods that give you far more calories per bite than have ever existed in human history, you're misguiding your system, your guidance system, and you're being fooled into thinking and feeling like you're doing a very successful thing when in fact you're destructive. And so I said to myself, oh, so basically what he's saying

is I've just had to have some willingness to be comfortable, being uncomfortable. And I've got to be willing to say, I know I want the fruity pebbles, but what I need is the oatmeal. And if I do that long enough, my dopamine receptors would regain sensitivity. kind of recalibrate my guidance system, and oats would no longer be such a difficult thing to choose. The fruity pebbles are always going to look attractive. They're supposed to, but I could get to a point to where the oats, I mean, the fruity pebbles look attractive, and so do the oats.

That's where I wanted to get. And so people would say, well, why in the world would you be willing to do that? Like, why would you want to be comfortable being uncomfortable? I know you probably have had many people on your show talk about the power of why. And from the outside perspective, looking in, most people would say, oh, I know his why. He's 350 pounds. He has diabetes and heart disease.

He nearly died from substance use. That's got to be why he wants to change. And it's true. All those things were occurring, and not one of them was my reason why. Because I don't think a single person is motivated by negative consequences for long-term change.

I think negative consequences are amazing because they let us know that there's something meaningful and important in your life that is being threatened. And your why is rooted in whatever those things are. So for me, I just wanted to feel what it would be like to wake up and have my life feel like a safe place.

And I was willing to make this journey to see if that was possible. I had a talk with my house manager, Phil, when we were talking about the day that I survived, suicide, just talking about it. And I kind of came to this realization. It was really interesting. My body didn't let me die. Now, that was a pretty profound moment because I spent my entire life believing, I had been convinced that my body was my adversary, that I was born into a body that was just always gonna be,

it's just always gonna suck, it's gonna be overweight, it was gonna have diseases, it was not gonna make my parents proud, it was not gonna make me proud. And so every day was an attempt to out-compete this adversary with restriction, with physical harm, or with exertion. But what was actually taking place was that my body

has been my greatest ally I've ever had. My body has been fighting for me since the day I was born. And even though I abused the hell out of it for over 10 years, my body's response to all that abuse was, we're never going to let you go. So if my body is the greatest ally that I've ever had, I don't ever want to focus on restriction or abstinence. My good friend Tara Kemp, she's a researcher. She has a term for this. It's being your caretaker. Be a caretaker for a body that is trying it every second to care for you. In that regard, I'm not focused on not eating meat, eggs, dairy, or using drugs.

I'm very much focused on exactly what I'm choosing to do. What is the active replacement that creates the life that I want to live? And so from that day forward, I made my meal an act of self-love and self-care. I made choosing movement instead of using an act of self-care and self-love. And as a result of doing that, by five months since my diagnosis, I completely reversed my diabetes, my heart disease, my erectile dysfunction. In 10 months, I lost about 150 pounds. In one year, I was off of every single medication I was put on in rehab. Every single minute.

The antidepressants, the mood stabilizers, the sleeping medications, the anxiety medications, everything. So all of the diagnoses that they gave you upon entering rehab and you were medicated for. those diagnoses were not correct. Those were a result of your lifestyle? Or do you struggle with certain mental health things, but you just don't medicate? I'm very much an ADHD. Just ask my wife. She has a mantra that she's given me and it goes like this, don't put it down, put it away. But no, I think what's important is when I checked into treatment, I was incredibly depressed. I had overwhelming anxiety. I had obsessive-compulsive disorder like behavior. But more than those being pathology, those were reasonable signals. They were reasonable response to my life. They made

complete sense. And so what happened was I got diagnosed with these what I would call behavior disorders. And as a result of completely reorganizing my priorities, my values, my environment, both calorically and socially and physically. I had a very reasonable response to that change. And the response to that chain was the removal of the signal of depression, the removal of the signal of anxiety, and the removal of the signals of disease that were occurring inside of my body. And it allowed me to reconnect to experience a feeling meaningfully alive for the first time

since maybe I was like 10, where life is something I want to actively show up and be present for. I'm excited about it. not only am I excited to show up and be present for today, I have a future that is unbelievably exciting to me. It makes a lot of sense I can see myself getting there and I want to get there. So my ability to be resilient in whatever occurs today is heightened because I have something that no matter what goes on today, I still want to keep doing the things that I need to do because tomorrow one year from now, five years from now, in my opinion, is such a beautiful place to be.

I'm going to go through this. I'm going to deal with it. I'm going to let it. I'm going to let you. it take place, let it be a reasonable thing that I feel, move on to the next experience and get to that five years because, oh my gosh, five years from now, there's so much beautiful opportunity for me there. That's a new thing for me relatively. I've been sober for 11 years, but, you know, I spent probably 11 years as an addict. Yeah. And so this is a relatively new experience for me.

And so I tell people all the time, if you're depressed, if you're depressed, if you're you're you're anxious, if you're dealing with substance use disorder, you are not a broken person. It's very similar to what Johan Hari says. We're not machines with broken parts. We're human beings with unmet needs. What I like to tell people is your pain makes sense. You make sense. You're not broken. You have a life that doesn't feel like a safe place to be. And you need someone who will listen to why it makes sense that your life doesn't feel like a safe place to be so that someone can help you reorganize your life so that it starts to feel like a safe place to be. And you starts to feel like a secure and hopeful place to be. If we can do that, that's a solution.

Yeah, I totally agree. And I love that you are talking about how your recovery was more about what you wanted to do versus not doing something. And I think that that's another thing that people maybe don't understand about recovery is that you're white knuckling, not drinking and not using every day. And maybe for some people, that's an experience. And certainly initially it can be. It kind of requires you to do that. Right. Yeah. I mean, I feel like I was really lucky in that people know my story for the most part.

You know, I was intervened on one last time. I dropped and had a grand mal seizure. I was taken to the hospital and was kind of out of it for a few days. I mean, I really don't remember much of my first month. The obsession was lifted in that moment. So I never had cravings or anything luckily because I was just so beaten down. You know, in recovery, they talk about being beaten. into a place of submission.

Yeah. And I was just like, I'll do anything. But I also had that perspective that you had where it wasn't about what was being taken away from me. It was, what do I want my life to be? There were so many things that I wanted, little things. I wanted to have valid registration on my car. Yeah.

That was the dream for me. I could not figure out how to do that when I was drinking and using. You know, I wanted to go to the grocery store. without drinking a bottle of wine first because I was so afraid of human interaction by that point. Just really like being a functional member of society, that was like those were the basic things. You know, not to mention relationships and a social life and a career, things like that. But in the beginning, those were the things that I wanted. Yeah.

You know, people asked me, you know, did when I started recovery was my goal, was this my goal? And I said, God, you're kidding? No, I never thought this would be possible. What I wanted was my life to just not hurt anymore. I would have taken tolerable. Tolerable would have been fine. And that's the point I like to make to people is don't create a perspective. Don't create a sense of where you're supposed to go.

Yeah. Because you've never done this before. Recovery requires a certain amount of closed-mindedness. And I mean that in a positive way. In the beginning stages of recovery, you have to be. to be pretty open-minded. You have to consider where your options, which direction are you going to go. But once you've chosen that direction, you kind of have to put blinders on and just do the work. You've got to be willing to say, I have no idea if this is going to work out, and that's okay.

I need to have faith in myself, faith in the universe, faith in my abilities to say that today I can just take the next necessary step. Yes. And just have faith again that the path is going to reveal itself as I continue to go. don't let one day that feels less successful than the day before be an indication that you've gone the wrong way. But rather just keep putting in the effort until you figure out, hey, I think that there's someone else who's calling me this direction. Let me go see if that makes a little bit more sense to me. There's a, okay, great analogy. The 1969 Apollo Mission to the Moon, okay?

Probably one of the most extraordinary feats in human history. Okay, to take people from Earth, train them, put them in a rocket, shoot them, the space, land safely on the moon, and then get out and walk around. That's a very dangerous thing to do. They must have had it all figured out, right? Well, do you know what percentage of the flight time they were actually on course to the moon? It's 2%. Wow. So 2% of the time they were actually on course to the moon, 98% of the time they spent course correcting. Now, if you were to look at that data just on a sheet of paper without context, you go, wow, they spent 98% of the time going in the wrong direction. What a failure. But if you were to put that in the context of the human

story, they spent 98% of the time figuring out how they were going to get to where they wanted to go safely. That is the recovery journey. That what you're going to have to do is be willing to say every single day I either win or I learn. You either figure out I'm on course or you figure out that you're off course and then you course correct. Both of those situations are positive. It's going to require you to do that about 98% of the time for a good amount of time. Then you're finally going to start to get your groove. But be okay with it. Be okay with this, not always feeling like you know how to do this.

If you knew how to do it, you'd have done it already. Yeah. So give yourself some grace. Give yourself some credit that right now you're on course, a little bit, most of the time you're course correcting, but you're figuring it out. You're going to get there. fall can be a hectic time for a lot of people. We are throwing ourselves back into work after hopefully a little bit of a summer break, throwing ourselves back into school, family life, schedules, whatever are circumstances. It can be overwhelming. But taking care of yourself does not have to fall to the bottom of your list. In fact, it should be number one so that you can handle all of your other responsibilities. And one of the foundational things of help is, giving yourself nutritious food. So you can eat to help beat all of this burnout with Sakara's plant-rich organic nutrition programs. Their seasonal meals are delivered to your door ready to eat

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Sakara, S-A-K-A-R-A-com slash blonde for 20% off your first order. Sikara.com slash blonde. I think back to like when I first got sober and I think in rehab they had us do some exercise. Like what do you want your life to look like? Yeah. Again, I would have written those really basic things. Like, I would want to have a little job where I make money. And I mean, I just, I could not have conceptualized the life that I have today. And if you had shown me my life 10 years ago today as it is and told me to go out and do that, I wouldn't know what the fuck did. Like, I would never, never, never. And I think that's, you know, such an important message for people to hear. Like, it really is cliche, but it is like a daily thing. It is. It is a,

a one day at a time thing. And I love the concept of just what is the next right thing for me to do. That's exactly it. Yeah. Not how do I get to the end? But today, what is the next right thing? Recovery is in the intentional and appropriate reconnection to a life that feels so safe, secure and hopeful that use becomes no longer necessary to the individual. That's the human story. We're all trying to feel just a little bit safe, a little bit secure, and have our future feel like something that's hopeful. When those feelings are severed from our lives, we're going to find anything that can care for the pain of being present in life. That means addiction makes sense. Addiction is a reasonable response. It is a misguided self-care. It's completely misguided.

But that individual whose life feels like pain, that use feels like self-care and self-love. You know, obviously there's a spectrum here with addiction. We were on one end of the spectrum. I consider myself, you know, I was very late stage alcoholism and addiction when I was in the hospital that last time they said I wouldn't have made it through the weekend had things not happened the way they did at the age of 28, you know, and they do say that women progress more quickly than men. Wow, I haven't heard that. That's interesting. I don't know if there's data to back that up, but there are certainly people that I know who are sober, who have long-term sobriety or who are sober, curious, who are on the other end of the spectrum. It wasn't a continual daily use, you know, blotting out consciousness as they know it, which is what we were doing. Right. Because consciousness, sober consciousness is intolerable. But there are people who, you know, used to numb out certain feelings at certain times and who haven't gone to the other end of the spectrum.

So do you have advice for those people? Because I'm sure there are some listening. That's a great question. So substance use isn't always a bad thing. Some people are substance users. You just use occasionally. It's convivial. It's explorative maybe.

Maybe it's just purely for escapism. But it's not harming them. Right? But then there's a point where substance use becomes a disorder. Where substance use becomes a disorder is when it starts to inhibit your ability to care for your life in a meaningful way. Or it starts to displace and disorder things in your life that are important and meaningful. Like maybe your finances. maybe your profession, maybe your family, and maybe your health.

If you're noticing that you're losing grasp of these things as a result of the use becoming just a little bit more present than it used to be, that's when I'd start to consider, hey, what's going on here? What's taking place? This isn't, you know, this makes sense. You're not, you're not sick. You're not broken. You're not a problem for the world. The behavior is started to displace your life in a way that in the future is likely going to be a problem. So if you're noticing that whatever it is, the substance that you do or the behavior that you engage in,

is starting to displace meaningful things in your life, even just a little bit. Take notice of it. That's important. That's an important thing to think about. One of the things I always tell people, and I ran the first study to investigate the effects of nutrition on early addiction recovery outcomes

and mental health outcomes and treatment centers. We published it last year. It was featured in Forbes and Psychology today this year. For individuals who are feeling like, you know, maybe their life doesn't feel as safe as it used to, it doesn't feel as hopeful as it used to. Nutrition is a phenomenal tool to kind of recapture the sense that at least in five years your body is a safe, exciting place to be. That should ease and relieve some depression and anxiety because for a lot of us, especially in Western cultures, you take the average person walking on the street and ask them what's their future look like from a

health perspective, they're not going to give you a very hopeful picture. They're going to and probably mention medications or higher doses of medications that are on, they might talk about procedures. What if you could remove that from their future? What if you could give them a sense that their future feels like when they wake up, their body is an exciting place to be? That's going to relieve some of that burden of depression and anxiety. And so I really believe nutrition plays a phenomenal role in creating a resilience to be okay

with today because tomorrow is safe. And for people who are asking, they say, well, what nutrition you? I'm an ethical vegan. I eat a plant exclusive diet for reasons that have nothing to do with health. What I tell people to do is fiber first. Are you getting enough? Forget carbs, forget protein, forget, you know, fat. Just are you getting fiber?

In the study that we ran, what we determined was that the presence of fiber-rich plant foods by 10 weeks showed a statistically significant increase in self-esteem and resilience. Wow. I'm curious if you could eat. even make this correlation. But do you think that, you know, we, we know that diversity is so important for gut health. And we know that gut health can influence mental health and vice versa. So do you think the introduction of fiber and presumably a lot of diversity affects the microbiome, which in turn affects, you know, production, serotonin, things like that. We know that it, that it affects the microbiome. We know that, so your, the beneficial gut microbes are fed by plant fiber, right? So we know that the

more fiber you eat and the more diverse, the sources of fiber, the more diverse the population of beneficial microbes in your gut. Now, there's a lot of clickbait stuff out there saying, did you know that 90% of your serotonin and over 50% of your dopamine is produced in your gut? That's a factual statement, but those neurotransmitters don't cross the blood brain barrier. They're produced for the purposes of digestion and mainly for digestion. However, your gut microbiome is responsible for the production of short chain fatty acids that do cross the blood brain barrier that your brain uses in this production of its own neurotransmitters. Do we know what impact?

There hasn't been any significant studies to actually just target that one mechanism and show that diet alone can solve depression and anxiety. But what I believe to be really true, and I think what we saw take place was that over the course of those 10 weeks, we saw the diet take effect for people. We saw them start to feel like their body was a safer place to be. They also noticed a self-efficacy that they were able to care for themselves in ways they hadn't cared before. That changes your self-esteem. Yeah.

That changes your resilience. And it was measured in the study. I think the best gut health individual, best mind in gut health is a guy named Dr. Will Bolshewitz. He wrote a book on the show twice. Oh, fantastic. Yeah. So it's funny. I was just texting with him earlier.

His book fiber-fueled. That's the book to go to for gut health. But I think what's really taking place here is that people are getting a sense that they may have figured something out that's really valuable to them. They may have figured out for the first time how to organize calories that makes their body feel like a safe place today and their future feel like a safe place to be. I think that's what's actually taking place when we saw these effects in the study. You had a friend of mine Simon Hill on and I think he does a phenomenal job describing it. Then instead of looking at what is the right best diet, what are the themes that we see play out in diets that do the best for people? And those themes happen to be fiber-rich, low-insaturated fat,

prioritizing instead of saturated fat, polyunsaturated, mono-insaturated fats, prioritizing plant protein more so than animal protein, so you don't have to be plant-exclusive and antioxidant-rich, that these are the themes that we see play out in diets that do really well. So if you're just doing that, stop siloing yourself into a specific dietary dogma, unless something important about it means something to you, like for me, from an ethical standpoint. I just don't want to harm an animal.

And I happen to do really well on a plant exclusive diet. So I continue to do it for that reason. And my plant exclusive diet fits into the story that Simon Hill described in the themes that play out. And so I really like to promote that ideology around nutrition that you're allowed to have options here. Could not agree with that more. Well, I could keep going with you for hours. But I just think you have such a powerful message and an incredible perspective. and framing of all of this. And I think that, you know, there are so many misconceptions

around what depression and anxiety and addiction and recovery all look like. And I think that you're doing an incredible job of kind of smashing those misconceptions and showing people what, you know, a profound, meaningful life really is. So tell everybody where they can find you. So I have an Instagram account plant-based addict. I have a website, Adam'sud.com. Those are really the main places you can find me. I have a TikTok, but I really don't have much on there. I speak on everything from nutrition to addiction and mental health. So you can book me as a speaker on my website.

You can book me as a concierge coach. I do one-on-one coaching for a very small number of clients. If you're interested, you can do that. And then I speak at a retreat. Actually, the Plant Strong retreat. I'm now part of the Clant Strong team. So I speak there. We have a retreat coming up in October.

I don't know if this is going to be out before then. No, it's not in Bali. It's in Bali. It's in Sedona. I was thinking of Simons. Got it. Oh, no. Simons looks amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty great. So yeah, you can find me there. And thank you so much for letting me have this conversation with you. Of course. I think it was a wonderful conversation. Yeah. It's very special.

As we mentioned when we first started this conversation, there was like an immediacy. Yeah. We knew what each other had been through. And so the conversation is just so valuable. Yes, I agree. There's another thing in recovery. I can't remember exactly how they phrase it, but that there is a camaraderie of like having been through, I don't know if it's a plane craft. or something and coming out on the other side. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

I'll just end by saying there's a few things I like to end every talk with. Number one, I want people to know addiction is far less a disease than it is misguided self-care. You're not broken. To those people who are watching someone's struggle, their use doesn't make any sense to them. But for that person who's using their use makes complete sense. And so we need to figure out why. That's the start of the solution. The second is to honor a friend of mine. His name was David Clark. Very good friend of mine.

Former alcoholic, 300-pound alcoholic turned vegan ultra-runner. It was one of the best ultra-runners in the world. He didn't die from a relapse. He ended up having surgery, and there was complications in the surgery from his back surgery. He ended up having a reaction to anesthesia, and he died unfortunately. And David was an amazing person. He had a quote. I think it's one of the best things I've ever heard in my life. So we've all heard this quote. If you want to be happy, well, you should just live like it's the last day of your life. David would say, well, that doesn't actually work. If you were to live every day as if it were the last day of your life, you wouldn't do all the things you need to care for your life. You wouldn't go grocery shopping. You wouldn't go to work.

You likely wouldn't go to the gym to care for your health. You do a lot of things that don't make a lot a sense for living a happy life. Instead, if you'd like to have a happy life, instead of living like it's the last day of your life, just treat everyone you meet as if they were living the last day of theirs. And so I, as an honoring to him, because he taught me so much, I try to end every podcast with that little bit of David. That's amazing. Thank you so much for sharing that. And thank you so much for coming on. Thank you so much. I hope you enjoyed that episode. And if you liked it. And if you like the show in general, please take a second to rate, review, and subscribe. It goes a long way, and it's actually the best way to support the show. Also, if you want to see more about

each episode, you can head over to the Blonde Files podcast on Instagram. You can go to Arialore.com. And I'm always posting about each episode over on my personal page at Arial Lori. Please note that this episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services. on the show may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to in this episode.