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Addiction: The Beginning · Why We Do What We Do

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You're listening to Why we Do what we do. Welcome to Why We Do
0:16
what we Do. I am your dependent host, Abraham, and I'm your
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complex host Shane. We are a psychology podcast. We talk about all the
0:25
things that people and animals do and sometimes when they do them so much,
0:29
they do it to their own detriment, and so that means that we are
0:32
tackling We're doing something a little bit different for a few weeks moving forward,
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possibly many, depending which is that we are going to embark on a journey,
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a multi episode commitment of a journey on the topic of addiction. This
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is something that we've talked about for some years because we felt like it is
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something that is so I guess impactful for the human experience and it impacts so
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many people throughout society and communities and stuff like that, and as we started
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to kind of brainstorm some topics, we just have always kind of come up
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with this issue that it was too big for a single topic or a single
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episode, and then even kind of talking about it this way, we were
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like, it's too big for three episodes, so we want to kind of
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really spend some time talking about what it looks like, what it means in
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a lot of different kind of topics inside of it, and you'll see kind
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of how complex it gets as we go when we go forward here. Yeah,
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And I think trying to unpack it from the position that we come from,
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which is a little bit different from where I think most people think about
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the idea of dependency and addiction and all of those things is I think there's
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been a very popularized and common notion that people have approached addiction. I think
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there is a very stigmatized position that many people have about it, and we're
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going to try and come at it from the scientific behavioral I think both empathetic
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but also very pragmatic approach of trying to understand how addiction works, various aspects
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and elements of addiction as it relates to things like treatment, some controversies I
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think, and misunderstandings that people have about it, and I think it's going
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to be just a different take than most people will have probably encountered most of
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the time. Because and I don't want to spoil too much as we're getting
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into this, but I think the most common way that people think about addiction
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and dependency is a way that I think we find mostly counterproductive. Right,
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we'll get into all that, but I think even inside of that, having
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conversations around language around addiction, having conversations around perspectives and myth busting around this
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stuff too, I think is super important. And you know, we talk
2:42
about depictions of addiction in the media and data and all of these things.
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As we start to unpack all of it, you're going to find that it
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is far more complicated than people give it credit for, and also not quite
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as scary I should maybe it's not. It's probably not the right word,
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but it's not quite I guess. You know, when we get into something
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like the opioid crisis, it's not what it seems in a lot of different
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spaces, and I think that's kind of an important piece to unpack there too.
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So but we'll get to all of that in some episode at some point.
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Yes, today we're primarily going to be tackling just the beginning idea of
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unpacking addiction. We're going to talk about definitions. We're going to try and
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work through the commonly held beliefs about what sort of the model of addiction is
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and has been. And so this is our introduction episode. The Primmer or
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Primer depending on where you're coming from in terms of how you articulate that word,
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on what addiction is, and we're going to do our best to bring
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our interpretation to it. And then we'll get into the more nuanced stuff down
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the road, and also the very specific applications of this. We'll talk about
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treatments, we'll talk about controversies, we'll talk about different types of addiction.
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But today is the sort of the zoomed out view, if you will,
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of that, right absolutely. But before we do all that, we've got
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to celebrate some stuff, right Yeah. I mean if you are joining us
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on the Wednesday that this releases, and this comes out every Wednesday, not
4:11
this episode, but an episode that we have recorded comes out every Wednesday,
4:15
then we would like to issue a Happy American Red Cross Giving Day. So
4:19
God give to the Red Cross blood bunny or you know, maybe high fives,
4:24
high fives. I mean, that's fine too. It's Holy Wednesdays,
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so make sure you have enough Swiss cheese available. It's Little Red Wagon Day.
4:30
Is this in reference to Prince at all? I think so? A
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Little Red Wagon? Yeah, that's a song, I think. Yeah,
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one of my favorite days ever. It's Manatee Appreciation Day. Manatees are so
4:44
cool. Yay, love that I appreciate manates. They're so great. It's
4:47
National scribble Day. Hey, it's just that's just every day for me in
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my handwriting. It's National Spanish piea Day. Oh delicious, delicious. Yeah,
4:57
it's Viagra Day. Maybe less delicious, maybe more for some. It
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depends on your preference. I guess It's World Theater Day, which I think
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is a super important part of the arts that we should spend more time with.
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It is National Cleaning Week. I can very much appreciate this personally.
5:15
I like that. I also appreciate that it's National Green Week. Ooh me
5:18
too. And National Physicians Week. So assuming you have a good doctor,
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celebrate that doctor. Yes, yes, yeses. It's also National Secondhand Shopping
5:28
Week, which I think is really great if we go subscribe to what we
5:30
learned in the nineties, which was reduced reuse and recycle. I think it
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applies to the reuse part, Yeah, which could it be the reason that
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we're seeing a comeback in Jinco jeans or reusing those. Yeah, that's fair.
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For like, you have parachutes and stuff, because they're large enough they
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are we are also still in Ramadan. So to those of you celebrating,
5:49
we see you, yes, and then it is week of solidarity with the
5:53
people struggle against racism and racial discrimination. Oo, so support those folks,
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be a good ally, be a good call league, and support those folks
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and standing up against racism. Indeed, and so as I said, as
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we talked about already, we're talking about addiction today and the sort of overview
6:08
of what that is. If you do like what you heard today and you
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would like to support us, you can join us on Patreon, pick up
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some merch leave us a rating and review. You can tell a friend.
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You can sponsor someone and call them why we do what we maybe why we
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don't do what we do because you want the sponsorship is to not do that
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thing. And we'll talk more about the ways that you can support us and
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kind of about sponsorship at the end of this episode, or or sponsorship at
6:31
least in probably another episode. But let's let's get into our topic at hand
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here, at which is understanding what addiction is and a very important part to
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start in most conversations, certainly in this one, yeah, is definitions.
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Yes, So the first definition you find when you start kind of diving into
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the world of addiction is the fact or condition of being addicted to a particular
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substance, thing, or activity. And I want to emphasize that it says
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specifically substance or activity. Okay, we're gonna unpack that quite a bit as
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we go. What I don't like about that is that it says addiction is
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being addicted, like yeah, yeah, but thinkably, there are other definitions.
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There are several definitions because there's not really a great agreed upon definition of
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what addiction is. There's also a treatable chronic medical disease involving complex interactions among
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brain circuits, genetics, the environment, and an individual's life experience, so
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that's closer. There's also a compulsive chronic physiological or psychological need for a habit
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forming substance, behavior, or activity having harmful physical, psychological, or social
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effects and typically causing well defined symptoms such as anxiety, irritability, tremors,
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or nausea upon withdrawal or abstinence. I think that's the closest we've gotten so
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far. Yeah, that one, I think helps rule out some non examples,
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which I think we'll need to get to here in a moment. Yeah,
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another one is a strong inclination to do use or indulge in something repeatedly.
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I have some umbradge with that. But we can get to our last
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definition, and then I'll take aim at some of these. Yeah, and
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then a chronic relapsing disorder characterized by compulsive drug seeking in use despite adverse consequences.
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It is considered a brain disorder because it involves functional changes to the brain
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circuits involved in reward, stress and self control. Okay, So I think
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one of the defining features that we need to always have in place when we're
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working through describing something in such a way that we have a clear understanding of
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what we're talking about is understanding what kinds of things get lumped in with the
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definition. So think of a non example of something that would technically meet that
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definition, and then you have a way of testing the goodness of that definition
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sure how well it's able to describe or define its topic. If we look
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at the first one, a treatable chronicle medical disease involving complex interactions among brain
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circuits, genetics, the environment, and individual's life experience, cancer, that
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very much, I think meets that definition, and I don't think that we
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right call cancer an addiction. So I think many things that are medical issues
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would unfortunately meet that definition. And that's why I think that one is not
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very good is it's too inclusive and it includes things that we would not call
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addiction. And I also don't think it necessarily does a good job capturing the
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important pieces of addiction, which include this fact that it is a repeated behavior,
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that there's a sort of frequent seeking out, there's a frequent manufacturing of
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specific or of trying to obtain very specific outcomes that is not sort of caught
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in this definition, right, And I think you know, when you kind
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of unpack it, there's the other one in the words, has a strong
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inclination to do, use or indulge in something repeatedly. You can make the
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argument that like getting dressed when you go outside could fit inside of that because
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I'm inclination to stay dressed and not have my neighbors see me naked, or
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like food, right, just like regular exactly, it could be considered an
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inside of that. And so just eating as a general rule, like do
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you eat breakfast every day? Well, by that definition, when you wake
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up and you're hunger, which gives you a strong inclination to do it,
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you're going to indulge in breakfasts, so that becomes a problem. As you
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see here, there are some that are not quite there. There are some
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that are there but like have some elements of it. And that's the thing.
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I think this is part of why we wanted to spend so much time
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on it, is because it is so difficult to define something that is this
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complex. Yeah, and so we don't need to necessarily go point by point
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tearing these apart. But I think you exactly pointed out the issues that I
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think is that some of these definitions I think do not sufficiently exclude the kinds
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of things that are normal behavior. And they also don't necessarily sufficiently include the
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things that are the kinds of behaviors that we do see when we're trying to
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talk about this thing that is addiction. And why I think that's useful is
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because we start then talking about things like treatment. How do we know if
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someone even warrants a thing like treatment because there's that strong inclination to do something
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repeatedly. There's exercise, and I think people can be addicted to exercise,
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But that definition doesn't tell us whether what they're doing is at the point where
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it is problematic, right, And therein lies I think one of the core
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features of this is that it has to be in some way causing harm to
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the individual. Right. So, based on those definitions we just talked about,
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it would stand the reason that addiction includes a few different things, which
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is, first, there is a repeated behavior or action where the organism seeks
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out whatever that that substance or activity is like. So there is that repeated
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action over and over and over again. But the second part of this that
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we have to have is that it's harmful adverse to the organism, Like that
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repeated action is resulting in either long sustained harm or short term harm, but
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harm regardless and harm or some kind of adverse effect, and that could be
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psychological, social, physiological, neurological, some type of harm as a result
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of this repeated behavior or repeated exposure to the substance as part of that that
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kind of habit forming practice. And there is an element here that again I
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think we want to rule out things that shouldn't count, and so due to
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neurological effects that's either categorized as a brain distort order or as an addictive disorder,
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because if there was a brain disorder that best accounts for that type of
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behavior, then we would treat that very differently than we would the things that
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we are also calling addiction, right, And so that's what we have to
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say, Like, we have to identify all the relevant and important components of
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the definition to best understand what kind of things count and what kind of things
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don't. Because and for one reason, as I said, it does inform
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treatment, and for another, I think it also informs well in related to
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treatment, it also is things like intervention, whether insurance covers that sort of
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thing. Right, So yeah, as I said, just it's important to
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include those sort of critical aspects of the what gets included, what gets excluded,
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not like the un the things that are so uncritical and unimportant, like
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ads. All right, let's return from the break to the advertisers and talk
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about these sort of features, as we said, the neurological conditions as they
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relate to addiction. So when we start talking about how addiction is classified according
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to modern psychology or modern diagnoses medical models, we often categorize addiction as either
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a brain disorder or an addictive disorder. Now here's the thing is sometimes an
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addictive disorder can result in brain damage that turns it also into a brain disorder.
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So calling it one or the other is not sufficient in describing what is
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happening, but just to kind of clarify, a brain disorder is any condition
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marked by disruptions of normal functioning of the brain that usually include some type of
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damage to the structures of brain. That includes Alzheimer's dementia, brain cancer,
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epilepsy, seizure disorders, Parkinson's stroke, et cetera, et cetera. So
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those types of medical conditions are considered brain disorders because something is happening that disrupts
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kind of the ideal general typical functioning of the brain in the way that our
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brain kind of works on a day to day basis. I imagine other like
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traumatic brain injury in some capacity would also relate to this, So yeah,
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important to consider those, all right, So then we have addictive disorders.
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And I actually sorry before I jump into this, I think it's probably worth
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saying for those of you who are hearing this and maybe on the sort of
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cutting edge of what's considered PC, or those of you who aren't and really
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don't care. Either way, we're going to have the conversation, which there's
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been some move away from calling things addiction instead calling them dependency. I think
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there's not a lot of consensus just yet on whether one of those is considered
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more appropriate, at least that I was able to see in preparing for this.
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But the other thing I've heard is there is there's a move toward the
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first and perse language versus identity first language in this realm, calling someone an
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addict or a person with dependency or a dependent person like that sort of thing.
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And so there's some discussion around the sort of pc ness of this and
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where people are. And I think that a lot of advocates find themselves on
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the person first language right now to try and draw stigma away from the people
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who are suffering with addiction. So I understand that that is a conversation that
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is being had, and we'll try and be mindful of that. And so
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right now we're really not talking about any people. We're just trying to unpack
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this definition as it relates to these behaviors, right, that's fair. So
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when we are talking about the types of disorders, they are still classified.
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That we are talking about this idea of an addictive disorder and addictive disorders are
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chronic relapsing disorders characterized by compulsive drug seeking and used to spite adverse consequences.
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So that kind of goes back to what we were saying before. It's a
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repeated behavior or repeated use that has some adverse consequence to the organism. So
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this includes uncontrolled use of a substance despite the harmful consequences, which may include
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things such as alcohol, tobacco, or other illicit drugs, or behavioral addiction
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disorders, which can include things such as gambling, overreading television, internet addiction,
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et cetera. We actually did a social media addiction episode a while ago.
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But yeah, I think the important thing there is, like there is
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often what you might call uncontrolled use of substances and that do not have a
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harmful consequence. And that's again why we had to include that part of it
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is because I think you have let's just say, a high use of body
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lotion, like probably unless you're like using this way too much, like if
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you were using it in an uncontrolled way, like no one's specifically telling you
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how much you can use, and you're more or less applying it whenever you
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want to. That doesn't even necessarily mean that happens that often. But if
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it's not causing you harm, then it really wouldn't be a good thing to
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include in talking about addiction. And so we you know, we want to
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rule that out right. Plus your skin would be so soft. And I
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want to say too, I think everybody, if you're listening to this,
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whether you've had experience a with addiction or not, or around addiction, we
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are really going to work hard not to overgeneralize the discussions around this because I
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think that every situation, every circumstance is unique, and we are really trying
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to approach us from a space of every single person has a unique condition or
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circumstance or set of circumstances that has led them towards these types of behaviors,
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that has led them away from these types of behaviors. Sometimes they are really
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intense and really traumatic. Sometimes they are as simple as somebody waking up one
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day going I'm done with this. So there's no judgment on that front.
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I think that it is a very complex thing, and as we start to
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unpack that, I just want everybody to know that we are going to try
17:32
to not overgeneralize the stuff as much as we can because of those unique circumstances
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for everybody that experiences it either directly or tangentially. Yeah, completely agree,
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and that is absolutely correct. And I don't know if this is worth stating
17:45
here exactly, but we because we didn't say why we wanted to take on
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this issue earlier when we were introducing today's episode and this whole series of episodes
17:53
that we're planning. Yeah, but I think there's a sort of twofold reason
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in my mind I want you to weigh on as well, because this is
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where in unscripted territory right now, which is that one of the reasons was
18:07
that both of us have had addiction in our lives around us. Mostly.
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I've had a lot of people with addiction issues in my life for as long
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as I can remember, and so it's something that has sort of felt very
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present. And I would imagine that most people hearing that could say the same,
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Like, I think this is so prevalent in so many aspects of our
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lives that I think most people have a connection that's one or at most two
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nodes away from them in terms of like someone they know or someone they know
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who knows someone who has dealt with this or someone who is dealing with us
18:45
currently or has dealt with us in the past. The other reason is that
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it is interesting from a psychological perspective, but also specifically from a behavioral perspective,
18:56
and unpacking how we would interpret what's going on with this in a way
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that I think is unique to how most other people have encountered it. And
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that is I sort of talked about that initially, but those are, in
19:07
my mind, the two reasons that were why we wanted to embark on this
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journey and talking about addictions so much. Yeah, yeah, so I think
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you know, I'm not getting ge into that now. We'll set aside some
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time to share a personal experiences at some point on this journey, right absolutely.
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I think, you know, there are a lot of different ways to
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look at it. I think this is a very personal and a very personal
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topic for both of us, and I think that that's I think that's where
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this is going to come from. And I know that we will we'll kind
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of unpack that a little bit with some tact and some you know, respect
19:36
for the people that are involved in that and all that. But yeah,
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let's uh, I think just a quick shift. I think we should talk
19:41
about how the DSM likes to look at addictions and different types of addictions,
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because we've just described this, you know, this set of behaviors that are
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repetitive towards either substances or activities or whatnot. But I think it's really fascinating
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how this gets classified. And the DSM five actually classifies substances BUDE types into
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nine general categories, and that's going to be alcohol, caffeine, cannabis,
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hallucinogens, inhalents, opioids, there's a whole category for sedatives, hypnotics and
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angiolytics. There are stimulants, and then there's tobacco. I drink so much
20:17
coffee that this made me worry for a second. I was like, yeah,
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you know, I'm not like emptying my bank account for coffee, though
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given the chance I might, you know, same, Yeah, I say,
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one of those definitely stands out to me, and that is that is
20:32
caffeine. Yes. And then for those people who maybe are not necessarily in
20:37
the sort of psychological orbit who are listening to this, or maybe not from
20:41
this country, who for whatever reason you haven't encountered this, which it's it's
20:45
fine, It's just just the thing The DSM stands for the Diagnostic and Statistical
20:48
Manual, which is our sort of guide book in the United States. This
20:53
is sort of run by the American Psychological Association that it goes about class find
21:00
diagnosable mental health conditions. Right, So a lot of people use the ICD
21:04
in other parts of the world, many parts of the world, but in
21:07
the United States we rely on our DSM as it pertains to mental health disorders
21:11
specifically. Yes, So inside of our manual that we like to reference so
21:18
much, there are other types of addiction and they do mention food addiction,
21:22
sex addiction, gambling, internet addiction, video games, and shopping. So
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these are all mentioned as part of different types of behaviors that can have adverse
21:30
effects on folks. Food addiction overeating can result in significant weight gain. Sexual
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addiction can actually have a detriment to people's social relationships and personal relationships. Gambling
21:41
has a lot of adverse effects that include financial and social loss and stuff like
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that. And so you'll see kind of, you know, on the surface,
21:52
it's like, Okay, well, maybe I could go play a couple
21:55
of games at the casino or something like that, but it becomes insidious when
21:59
people start putting up their houses, and they start losing their cars, and
22:02
they start getting into tens of thousands of dollars into debt because the house always
22:06
wins. And so you start kind of seeing that, like it starts with
22:08
something simple and innocuous and can turn into something pretty great and detrimental pretty quickly.
22:15
Absolutely, And I think that that raises the point that oftentimes what becomes
22:19
addiction often starts as totally normal, totally harmless behavior. Yeah, because even
22:26
even using drugs one time, while it might have deleterious effects in some way
22:32
or otherwise be problematic very well, may not turn into a full blown addiction.
22:37
Right. Even using drugs occasionally will probably not meet the definition of addiction
22:41
sufficiently that it would warrant some kind of specific intervention, right. And plenty
22:45
of things like food, sex, shopping, like those are things that everybody
22:52
is doing, and so it's it's not everybody, you know, almost everybody.
22:56
A lot of people are doing we'll just say that, right, But
23:00
it doesn't meet the definition of addiction until it sort of crosses a threshold.
23:03
I think that that is probably applicable to most, if not all, of
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these is the frequency is the important part in a way, right, And
23:12
another side of this too is that there are other behaviors that are starting to
23:17
emerge that they don't have a formal classification underneath this disorder type of thing,
23:22
but they could at some point in time if it starts getting evaluated more.
23:25
Things like body modification, cosmetic surgery, pornography, exercise work, cutting,
23:30
stealing, fire use. Spiritual addiction was even mentioned in some of the comments.
23:34
You know, like you got folks that are like really really fundamentalist and
23:38
maybe engage in like pretty dangerous types of religious fervor. So you kind of
23:44
start seeing that, you know, there are a lot of ways this can
23:48
manifest, and which makes it even more complicated because I think for the most
23:52
part, when people talk about addiction, they're talking about substance addictions. They're
23:56
not talking about these other things where I mean, you see reality tell vision
24:00
shows where people have had so much plastic surgery that they are thousands of dollars
24:03
in debt in loans and they are hurting themselves, and there are doctors that
24:07
are refusing to do more because they're just saying it's too much. You know,
24:11
there's a lot of different things that could happen here. And I think
24:14
that you know, at the end of the day, when we go back
24:17
to that description of what addiction is, it's a set of behaviors that are
24:22
repeated that are causing harm or some disadvantage or some type of poor outcome for
24:29
that person on a pretty significant level, absolutely, all right, So we
24:33
do have to, I think, and start to try and impact this something.
24:37
And I think this is where we start to really bring in our own
24:40
unique backgrounds and orientation to the topic of addiction that distinguishes us or maybe not
24:47
us, but like the philosophy that we are bringing with us relative to what's
24:51
most popular. So first of all, I think where we would come from
24:55
is that this is not a solely biological event for a lot of reasons,
24:59
right. But this is nature and nurture always working together because they are inseparable
25:03
aspects of one's development, right right. And so I think in unpacking this,
25:10
there's much to discuss in the issue of addiction being something that you are
25:12
born with. For those of us who with addiction in our family, it
25:17
is easy to believe that we are more likely to have addictive personalities or be
25:22
at risk of some type of addiction because someone in our family was. But
25:26
it is worth unpacking, like, what is the validity of that hypothesis?
25:32
Yeah, I mean I know that you and I have both heard that a
25:36
lot that like if there's somewhere down the line, you know, like somebody
25:40
had this, it's like, well you're more likely to and maybe statistically that
25:42
might be true. And we'll kind of unpack a little bit of that.
25:45
But I think the first thing we have to kind of dive into is this
25:48
idea that addiction is genetic. And there are some studies that's shown about half
25:52
of a person's risk factors, and I think that's really important, about half
25:56
of their risk factors are related to their genetic makeup. All this means is
26:00
that they have some genes that are related to addiction that are passed down,
26:03
and families have said genes that they have those genes, they have an increased
26:07
risk. So that does not guarantee that you are going to be an addict
26:12
or that you're going to have dependency like that does not guarantee that you are
26:17
going to end up in these in a space where you're going to require treatment.
26:19
That does not guarantee anything. It just means that on a genetic level,
26:25
you might have a predisposition to have a greater risk of starting to fall
26:30
down that pathway or like starting to gain behaviors that lead to harmful outcomes.
26:34
Well, and then you always have to, I think factor in because you're
26:38
talking about like you see someone who is genetically related to someone who engages in
26:45
some kind of addictive behaviors, and then we see that this other person who
26:48
has similar genes to them also engages in some addictive behaviors, and then we
26:55
say, well, it must be the genes. Like two things with that.
26:59
One is like, if they're around each other, why is this not
27:03
maybe why don't we look at the social aspect of this first? Right?
27:06
And the other is like, how there are two people who were unrelated who
27:11
also engage in addictive behaviors, right, So it can't be their genes that
27:15
are contributing to that. And granted some you know, people can have similar
27:18
genes to one another that without being related obviously, but considering that, like,
27:25
even if you don't encounter addiction from someone in your family, you're probably
27:29
gonna encounter these types of substances elsewhere and from other people. And so it's
27:33
like until you've ruled out the social factors that we know one percent are contributing
27:40
factors, Right, how much stock is worth putting into the genes? And
27:44
we know that genes don't code for specific behaviors. Our genes don't know what
27:48
pornography is. Our genes don't know what cocaine is. Our genes don't know
27:52
what video games are, and so like our genes can't push us to seek
27:56
those things out. Now, whether there is something to the how susceptible we
28:02
are to the kinds of reinforcement that comes from those I guess that we certainly
28:07
have to have some susceptibility. And the fact that somebody does something addictive means
28:12
that they had the capacity for it in some case, which means that genes
28:15
were at least made that possible at the very least. And so it's not
28:19
unreasonable to say that there are some genes that maybe make that more or less
28:23
likely. But there are also genes that reduce the risk of addiction. Genes
28:27
are weird. Yeah, drop this on us, Shane, what's the truth
28:32
bomb about genes reducing addiction? So check this out. This is one of
28:34
my favorite parts of doing this, these notes. So First, there is
28:37
a variation of the alcohol dehydrogenase two gene which is shorthand is ALDH two asterisk
28:45
two, and that actually makes you allergic to alcohol. So there are folks
28:48
in this variation that will experience nausea, flushing, headaches, and increased heart
28:53
rates from drinking. So my wife has this. Oh yeah, she does
28:59
not drink anymore because her face turns bright red. She feels like she can't
29:02
breathe anytime she has alcohol. Wow, okay, yeah, yeah, I
29:06
don't think I've ever met anybody that I've known who had this, but I'm
29:10
sure I know obviously it is a thing that exists out there. Yeah.
29:12
Do you hear about the one that, like there's a tick can bite you
29:15
and make you allergic to red meat? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, I've
29:18
heard of that too, which is wild. I wonder if there's a gene
29:21
that makes you allergic to ads. I'm still blowing my nose from the AD
29:32
break and we are back from my allergic reaction to the ads. Yeah,
29:36
that was so fun. So continuing with genes and how these work with and
29:41
with out addictions and how they kind of prime you or don't. The A
29:45
one form allele of the dopamine receptor gene d r D two, which sounds
29:49
like the really fun Star Wars character as well, are two D two.
29:52
Yeah, it's all there, right, Like it's all there's three arranged.
29:55
It's like it's like his weird cousin or like maybe like is like Bizarro.
30:00
So, d r D two is more common in people with addictions to alcohol,
30:03
cocaine, and opioid. Specifically, this this a one form this gene.
30:07
What it does is alter the reward pathways in the brain. So it
30:11
just makes it so that we are more susceptible to higher reward payouts. I
30:15
guess when we do access these types of substances so that that gene receptor changes
30:21
the way that we process this stuff. I'm skeptical and curious to understand how
30:25
that would work. But that's it's fine. It is what it is.
30:27
They've they've found, they found the correlation, they published it. Then we
30:30
are reporting on it now. Mice that make more protein from the mpd z
30:36
gene experience less withdrawal symptoms from alcohol and barbituates less withdrawal symptoms. And this
30:42
is the mpd Z expansion pack DC for fornite yeah, it's so great,
30:51
So get your v bucks to make that happen. I thought that was really
30:53
fascinating because if there is a I guess an analog for humans in that space,
30:59
where there is a gene that does that, then it would make sense
31:02
that somebody would continue to use some kind of substance because they don't experience the
31:06
adverse effects of not being on it right, so like or they're less likely
31:08
to experience that right, so like they can be on it, they can
31:11
get off of whatever that substance is, so they it's not as painful or
31:17
as difficult to keep, like they would keep using because there's not like or
31:22
they maybe they wouldn't keep using as much because there's no adverse withdraw symptoms.
31:26
That's what I was wondering. They're not trying to use to escape, you
31:30
know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because there's so much of people who
31:33
part of their motivation to seek out whatever the substance is when we're talking about
31:37
substance use disorders specifically, is that you quickly move from an addiction. Councilors
31:45
love to talk about it this way all the time, so it's worth bringing
31:48
in here. It's like, there's your baseline of normal everyday functioning, and
31:52
as you start using a substance, the baseline starts to slowly tight rate downward
31:56
into like pain, right, so that like you're baseline everyday experience is just
32:01
discomfort, pain, confusion, hangover like all of that. And so then
32:08
initially what happens is your baseline of normal everyday functioning you take some ever drug
32:14
and that moves you into space of like euphoria elevated. Everything is more intense
32:20
and more stimulating and more interesting, et cetera. And eventually it happens as
32:22
your baseline moves down into sort of pain and discomfort, and so bringing the
32:28
drug just brings you back up to normal functioning baseline rather than bringing you all
32:32
the way to euphoria. It's just like now I just need this to get
32:36
through the day. Is the where that can go. And at least that's
32:38
how people talk about it. But I mean, that's I think a very
32:44
very loose colloquial way of describing that experience and not necessarily as closely titrated to
32:51
what I would think of as being sort of a behavioral interpretation, if you
32:53
will. But that's okay. I think it's a useful heuristic to categorize it
32:59
that way, to just sort of have one way of framing the experience.
33:01
Yeah, I think that's a super helpful way to look at it, because
33:05
you know, for some folks it starts that it feels good, and then
33:07
it moves into this helps me not hurt, and then that just kind of
33:12
gets worse and worse as things go too. So, now, there were
33:15
some studies that showed that people with two copies of a specific form of the
33:20
gene chrn A five are two times as likely to become nicotine addicted. Again,
33:24
this is corel it, but just to kind of get into this idea,
33:28
the gene specifically codes for a protein that helps cells sense nicotine. So
33:34
cells tend to be more sensitive to nicotine in your system, and so folks
33:38
that have that specific form those two copies are more likely to be hyper sensitive
33:44
to nicotine in general. I always have a question on studies like this of
33:47
the of the chicken and the egg problem here of like, it's unlikely that
33:52
what they're doing is taking someone who does not have this expression of this gene
33:55
and then get them addicted to cigarettes and then test them for the express right,
34:00
So I think what I don't know, is like, is it possible
34:04
that using tobacco or nicotine products expresses this gene in this way or at least
34:10
for some people it like sort of turns it on, if you will,
34:14
because I imagine you could look at people who use nicotine and don't see this
34:17
specific form of the gene. But like for the people for whom it does,
34:22
are we sure that it was being expressed that way first or is it
34:25
something that happened when they started using nicotine. Yeah, I'd be interested in
34:30
that. I mean, I would be interested to see if I have it,
34:32
only because I've never smoked in my life. Like I've never smoked cigarettes
34:37
or anything like that in my life, and I have no interest in it,
34:38
right, But my mom, I mean I grew up with it.
34:42
My mom was like, like she smoked like a chimney. Like, I
34:45
mean the walls in our house were yellow because of all the smoking that was
34:49
done inside the house, you know. I mean, she's quit cold turkey
34:51
eighteen years ago, so she's good now. But it was one of those
34:53
things where you know, she was smoking so much that I wonder I would
34:58
I'd be interested to see if that shows up in any our testing. Sure
35:01
on the other side of this contact with the reinforcing properties of a substance to
35:07
like good parts, the stuff that makes us feel good can alter our behavior.
35:09
And I mean that is just how reinforcers work. When we're able to
35:15
make simple Yeah, we experience something good that we really enjoy in some capacity,
35:20
it's something that we tend to continue to seek out however we got there
35:24
in other circumstances. That activity may produce both primary and secondary reinforcers, and
35:30
that creates this unique context where behavior is more likely to occur. And so
35:35
when we talk about primary we're talking about good feeling and things that we don't
35:38
have to learn, like escaping from pain, access to pleasure, things in
35:44
particular that feel really good, and anything that sort of falls in those two
35:47
categories. Really, it's like escape from things that suck and getting things that
35:51
feel good. Those are the primary. The secondary ones can be other things,
35:54
like social reinforcers that we have people around us who push us to do
36:00
this and that we receive acceptance from them and inclusion with them when we sort
36:05
of feed off of each other in that way, or in the case of
36:09
gambling, you get money, which is that secondary reinforcer that is very,
36:14
very very powerful at motivating and maintaining behavior. Yeah, so, like,
36:19
let's let's actually consider gambling for a second, because I think that a lot
36:22
of people say that gambling is you're addicted to trying to get that payout,
36:28
or you're addicted to the risk or something like that. Right, So,
36:30
but let's let's unpack this for a second, because I think it's important to
36:32
understand that the context of which gambling occurs is so much more complex than people
36:37
give it. Right, So, we already know through research that gambling is
36:42
rewarded on kind of like this what feels to be a random schedule, Like
36:45
yeah, unpredictable, Yeah, very unpredictable. You don't know what's going to
36:50
happen, and that payout is just random enough or just unpredictable enough that you
36:55
continue to engage in the behavior, right, Like that's kind of how gambling
36:59
is set up. Like you win just enough to keep you hooked, even
37:02
though by the time you win, you've already lost one hundred bucks, right,
37:05
so you're not really winning a whole lot to make up for what's going
37:07
on. You're kind of in the hole, but in a lot of spaces
37:10
where gambling is happening. There's drinking, there's smoking, there's music that's pleasant
37:16
to our ears, there's social diaction, there's food sometimes you know, there's
37:20
lights and sounds and all this stuff, and that's all happening inside of the
37:23
same context. And all of those are producing rewards tangentially, so that's all
37:30
getting like mixed in, and it's like those are all multiple ingredients that are
37:34
getting mixed in into this gambling context, so that when we talk about gambling
37:37
addictions, it's not just the payout. It's now not only is it the
37:42
payout, but it's the ritual, it's the context, it's the food,
37:45
it's the social resources, all those things. And then what can happen is
37:49
whenever somebody sees like some type of flashing strobe light from some type of machine,
37:53
or the neon lights, or smelling cigars or cigarettes, or maybe even
37:58
like a certain shade of green that's maybe on the poker table or the roulette
38:00
table or something like that, all of those, because of that history of
38:05
reward around it, can produce these really unique and really powerful motivations to go
38:09
right back into that gambling behavior. All of that has learned. All of
38:13
that is powerful, all of that is linked in together, and that is
38:15
why something as simple as gambling addiction can be so complicated because of all of
38:21
that mixed in that you can't pull out the individual ingredients anymore. Yeah,
38:24
I don't know if anybody has ever like found a slot machine with like a
38:30
sticky handle in the back of an unassuming gas station, and like that's how
38:36
they got addicted to gambling. Because just as you said, like casinos really
38:40
work hard to engineer an environment to maximize participation in that environment. Right,
38:45
it is fun, it is comfortable, it is it is never ending,
38:50
it is seamless, it is easy. There's all kinds of entertainment and primary
38:55
and secondary reinforcers built in to try and and continue to maintain a high level
39:01
of engagement for as long as possible. And like, honestly, like why
39:06
wouldn't they do that? That is essentially what their business is. Like They're
39:08
not really trying to get people in and out the door as quickly as they
39:12
can. That's not what they do. And so like it very perfectly set
39:15
up to motivate the people who design those spaces to do that, and for
39:19
the people who then come in to reap the benefits. Is like the way
39:22
I want to say to essentially, like they then participate in the space that
39:27
was engineered just for them to enjoy it, right, And they do take
39:30
a more or less one size fits all model because like, certainly people are
39:32
going to walk into a casino and be like, this is not my scene,
39:36
this is not for me. But for the most part, I think
39:38
they've they've been able to capture and lean on the things that people enjoy to
39:43
make it work. This is one of those things where you might be going,
39:45
I don't get it, and you're right, and that's fair. You
39:47
might not get it, like this may not be your bag, right,
39:51
Like you know, for me, I don't like gambling, Like I don't
39:54
like losing money if it's not fun to me, like to just like lose
39:59
money, to lose money, and like the environment is just not like fun.
40:01
It's like loud and overstimulating and there's a lot going on. It's just
40:05
something that is not for me, right, Like I know that about myself.
40:07
It's not true for everybody, though, you know, I very much
40:10
enjoy gambling. I don't go really very often, but you like games like
40:15
it's kind of like a game, and you also understand the mechanisms of it,
40:17
so like you can kind of go, Okay, I'm good. That's
40:20
a good point. Yeah, it all sort of. I'm still throwing dice.
40:22
I'm still playing cards. It's just sometimes I win a lot of money
40:25
and most times I lose a lot of money. Right, how that system
40:30
works? Right, Well, we could probably stand to make a little money
40:34
and and transition to some ads. All right, we're back to talk about
40:45
statistics of all of your favorite things. Yeah, they're like you know what
40:51
I signed up for when I got into podcast numbers. Just read me those
40:53
numbers, baby, Yeah, yeah, because you know what, like like
40:58
if it wasn't already that the radio or Matt, what's boring enough, Like
41:00
let's go ahead and like add like numbers to it. But I do think
41:04
when we start talking about this idea of addiction, and like, you know,
41:07
this is not like a an unsubtle thing, right, Like this is
41:12
absolutely something that is impactful, and like we wanted to spend a little bit
41:15
of time showing like the level of impact that this has, at least in
41:19
the United States. So just to kind of go into this fifty percent of
41:23
people who are twelve and older have used an illicit drug at least one time,
41:28
right, and so most people have tried cannabis. That makes sense,
41:31
like it's probably the easiest access and you know, kind of around. Yeah,
41:35
but cocaine is the next most commonly used illicit drug. Man twelve is
41:38
young, Man twelve is young, So twelve and older, fifty percent of
41:44
folks who are twelve year older have used. Wow. Drug overdose deaths in
41:47
the United States are nearing one million since the year two thousand, so over
41:52
the last two and a half decades, about that is an unfortunately large number
41:55
of lost lives, right, and then another unfortunately large number. The federal
42:00
budget for drug control in the US in twenty twenty was thirty five billion dollars.
42:07
Wow. Yeah, bagine what else we could be doing with that money.
42:09
Absolutely, like just to decriminalize stuff, and I would save a whole
42:13
lot of money. Yeah. One hundred and thirty eight point five two to
42:15
two million Americans twelve and older drink alcohol. It's a lot. I'm hoping
42:22
that the vast majority of those are much older than twelve. I would hazard
42:25
a guess that there's probably a large contingent that are underage. Oh sad,
42:30
I know, twenty five point four percent of illegal drug users have a drug
42:35
or addiction disorder, So folks that are using illegal drugs don't necessarily have an
42:39
addictive disorder, and I think that's important to remember. Yeah, absolutely,
42:44
twenty four point seven percent of users. So okay, so let's round these
42:47
numbers out a little bit. So we talked about like one hundred and thirty
42:51
eight million Americans. Was the point five to two. Let's just say almost
42:54
one hundred and forty million people a twelve and older drink. About a quarter
42:58
of illicit drug users having a disorder, About a quarter of illicit drug users
43:01
with addiction disorders have an opioid related use disorder specifically, right, which is
43:08
you know, that's a pretty decent chunk of addiction disorders. Yeah, About
43:12
five percent of people in non metropolitan counties or rural areas use illegal drugs.
43:15
So five percent of people that live in rural spaces use drugs, but twenty
43:21
percent of people who live in larger cities are more likely to use drugs.
43:24
So if you live in a bigger city, you're more likely to see some
43:28
drug use in that space. Quite a bit more apparently. Yeah, drug
43:30
use is highest among people between eighteen to twenty five, with the next demographic
43:35
being right after that of twenty six to twenty nine, which does make sense
43:38
to me, Like that does seem like those are kind of the years.
43:42
Yeah, I can see that now. About seventy percent of users who try
43:44
illegal drugs before thirteen develop a substance of use disorder within the next seven years.
43:47
And so they've kind of found that there is again that's that's correlational,
43:52
but that is they're starting to see there's a pattern there at least. Yeah,
43:55
Yeah, starn Young seems to be particularly troubling here, I think,
44:00
right, I mean for multiple reasons really, but that is a discomforting statistic
44:07
there, right, Okay, Roughly seventy thousand people die as a result of
44:12
drug overdoses in the United States every year. So the number I gave before
44:15
was a million deaths since the year two thousand, so we have roughly seventy
44:20
thousand dying annually basically, Yeah, and that number is increasing by about four
44:24
percent every year. So that is a stat that is getting worse. Now,
44:29
however, we are going to talk about kind of the data reporting on
44:31
that and whether or not that's quite accurate, but that's kind of what that's
44:36
the kind of the common information that's coming out for folks right now. That
44:38
is a very important piece of it. And it is important to note that
44:42
people might be hearing this and wondering, I don't know, I'm hearing this
44:46
and having the thought and so I'm guessing someone else is too that like,
44:51
that number seems low if you consider alcohol. These numbers do not consider alcohol.
44:55
Alcohol way outpaces these by any normal margin. And we'll get to that
45:00
later when we're talking about alcohol specifically, because that one kind of is its
45:05
own thing. These numbers are just the illicit drugs that we've been talking about,
45:09
right And you know the number of people who have died from cannabis overdose
45:15
using specifically like natural cannabis, not the synthesized stuff zero zero, yep,
45:21
yep. Something thing about now. In twenty seventeen, about sixty eight percent
45:25
of overdose related deaths that were attributed to overdose we're opioid related. Now.
45:30
To break that down, about twenty nine thousand people died from fentanyl, seventeen
45:36
thousand people had a prescription opioid issue, and in fifteen, about fifteen thousand
45:39
were heroin related. Wow. Now I want to unpack this for a second,
45:44
and this is something that we are going to spend a lot of time
45:45
talking about with data reporting. A lot of times overdose related deaths are caused
45:50
by a lot of factors, not just over use. It's not just that
45:53
they took too much of something. And so we are going to spend a
45:57
lot of time on that because I think it's important to make sure that we
45:59
can dissect and like clearly delineate what's considered an overdose death and what's not,
46:05
like what's considered an overdose in particular, that in itself is really important to
46:08
discuss. Yeah, but just keep that in mind that you're seeing a high
46:12
rate of opioid users passing away as a result of overuse in some way.
46:16
Yes, Yeah, that's exactly right. Is that there's I think a maybe
46:21
lesser known aspect of overdose that is not just the quantity that is taken.
46:28
Nevertheless, it is an overdose because there are definitely a lot of other complications
46:32
that come from use of drugs that have detrimental health outcomes. I mean,
46:36
operating heavy machinery like driving a car certainly comes to mind as one, right,
46:39
and it's very possible. Like when I was talking about cannabis, I
46:43
was talking about overdosing specifically. Nobody has died from an overdose, but plenty
46:46
of people have died doing dumb things when they were on drugs. When they
46:50
walked into traffic, they tried to operate heavy machinery, They maybe drank something
46:54
they weren't supposed to do, They fell asleep in a position that meant that
46:57
they ended up choking on their own vomit or something like that. Like a
47:00
lot of horrible, horrible, tragic ways that people have passed that are not
47:05
directly related to overdosing on a drug specifically YEA. And as we said,
47:09
that is an also very complex thing to unpack because what it means to be
47:15
an overdose and how these statistics are aggregated leaves room for a little bit of
47:22
inquiry, I guess about how we really understand these topics, right if you
47:25
will, and we'll be getting to those and for the discussions. But I
47:29
think it's worth than just considering. I think we're sort of getting to the
47:32
end of what today's discussion is meant to be. So where is this all
47:36
going right, So I think for the next few episodes we are going to
47:39
start unpacking these topics in a lot more detail. And that's because addiction and
47:45
dependency is incredibly complex. We could have tried to cover in a single episode.
47:50
There's no way we're going to do that. Or we could have even
47:52
looked at a two part episode. There was no way we're going to do
47:53
that. I mean, we haven't even begun to scratch the surface of any
47:57
of this stuff. I mean, but I think at the end of the
48:00
day, its impact is pretty clear, and this type of situation impacts the
48:07
lives of millions of people. I mean, you just mentioned you know how
48:08
many deaths or accidents are related to not even drug related, but like something
48:13
dumb that happens while somebody is under the influence. I mean, my best
48:15
friend right now, like my like best friend from like high school, he
48:20
is in the hospital right now because he had too much to drink and walked
48:22
out in the traffic and got hit by a car and so he's you know,
48:25
he's ribs, neck, both of his legs, his pelvis shattered.
48:30
I mean, he is going to be in the hospital for some time.
48:32
Wow. And it was because not because of alcohol, but because he was
48:37
too drunk to pay attention to what he was doing. Right, So,
48:38
like, but those like knowing that situation and he's going to be okay,
48:43
just so everybody is aware, Like he's going to be okay, He's going
48:45
to recover, you know from that situation. He's alive and no brain damage.
48:49
But the point is is that that's something that impacts me and I'm not
48:52
I don't have a dependency like in that situation. So as we start talking
48:57
about this, everybody's got a story like that. Some are more harrowing than
49:00
others. And like I said, we both have all kinds of stories that
49:04
we could share, but we wanted to make sure that we gave all of
49:07
these topics enough time to talk about them, Like we wanted to really make
49:10
sure that we gave them the breadth that they needed. And I also think
49:14
like we are enormously sympathetic to the people who struggle with addiction. Yes,
49:21
I also like I've been in the position of being enormously frustrated by people who
49:25
were dealing with addiction, saying, because it is really hard to be in
49:30
that person's orbit and watch their self destruction to have their problems affect you very
49:38
directly when you can't rely on them or you need to like drop everything you're
49:43
doing and go help them, or all of a sudden, they're like in
49:45
an emergency situation that is like how would you keep getting yourself into this mess?
49:51
And like, so I think there's people who have been around this who
49:53
have experienced an enormous amount of frustration and anger, and your experience is valid
49:59
too, right. Also, like, as we dig into understanding the behavioral
50:02
mechanisms of how addiction works and all of the complex factors that maintain dependency in
50:10
these things neurologically, behaviorally, psychologically, et cetera, you really can't help
50:17
but feel just I feel like for myself at least just so much I think
50:23
empathy, but also just like a desire to try and help these people who
50:29
most of the time want help. They mostly don't want to be in the
50:32
situation that they're in, but they don't necessarily know how to get out of
50:36
it, and a lot of them don't think that they need help, but
50:38
they also know that like they would be better off if they were not engaging
50:45
to the point that they are at the very least so you know, we're
50:47
going to spend the next few episodes covering various aspects of addiction that include treatment,
50:52
and we're going to tackle that from a couple of different angles, so
50:54
that might span more than an episode. As a matter of fact, I'm
50:58
already planning on that space more than an episode types of addiction, because we're
51:01
going to dig into both substances as well as behavioral addictions, and will probably
51:07
take on even the War of drugs spoiler alert, the drugs won, right,
51:12
and also talk about the terribly racist policy that has been incredibly harmful for
51:16
decades, right, absolutely, And so I think it's important to kind of
51:21
look at what our goal is, right, and I think that you said
51:23
it perfectly. Our goal is to shed some light on this, to provide
51:27
information, to look at this from our philosophical viewpoint, but hopefully give folks
51:31
that are listening to this some tools to be more compassionate for those folks while
51:36
this is going on, because I think that it is again incredibly complex,
51:40
and there are a lot of emotions. The motions run high, and it's
51:45
very easy to feel a certain way, but I think it is really important
51:49
to reflect and to think deeply about what's happening, and to try to cope
51:57
with it the best you can, because it is not an easy road for
52:00
anybody involved. Yeah, So personally, I think you would be hard pressed
52:04
to find someone in your life who hasn't been impacted by addiction if you haven't
52:07
yourself. And I also think though there are many myths about addiction that I
52:10
think are worth the spelling because here we like the myth bust, but I
52:15
think there are far more myths. And part of that is because of the
52:17
War on drugs. Part of that is because of dare. Part of that
52:21
is because of a lot of marketing from people who don't understand it. And
52:27
I think that because of that, I think it's created a lot of problems
52:30
for compassion towards folks with addiction, for understanding how programs work, and just
52:37
I think it's I think it's caused a lot more problems than people realize too.
52:40
And there's just so much misinformation and like people leverage this for politics.
52:45
They'll have all these talking points about it and that that are just they're either
52:50
sideways like it's like I mean, in a way, that's kind of true,
52:53
but they're really just exploiting this for political expediency, right, And so
52:59
I think trying to combat the misinformation, trying to bust those myths, trying
53:02
to like get a more I think skeptical, scientific, thoughtful consideration out there
53:10
is the purpose of these discussions. And as you were mentioning that, I
53:15
was just reflecting on the fact that, man, we have we have covered
53:19
drugs in some capacity so much on this show. We've talked about dare We've
53:24
talked about alcohol, We've talked about cannabis, we talked about just the use
53:29
of drugs and like psychedelics for therapy, and like a two or three part
53:31
series that we did with the guest, right, we have really really talked
53:37
about drugs a lot. We talked about ketamine, like we've talked about like
53:40
yeah, like we yeah, I mean, we've talked about a lot of
53:44
stuff, but we've never never gotten into this part of it. You Know.
53:47
What I think we have not done is ergot and like uh an LSD
53:52
and that sort of thing, And that probably is going to have to happen
53:55
at some point as well, but not the purpose of this suite of episodes
54:00
at the very least. Right, My summary in all this is that we
54:04
want to keep in mind as we're going forward, we're talking about addiction,
54:06
we're talking about people, and even if we are considering the behavior and not
54:09
people are the problem, then we have a better understanding of their behavior and
54:14
it will give folks struggling with addiction a little more grace and a little bit
54:16
more compassion to help them find their way to recovery or whatever that means for
54:21
them and the folks around them. Oh that's so beautiful. Well, I
54:24
really don't want to undermine your ending on a beautiful point, but I do.
54:28
I just like to sort of give our sort of take home. I
54:30
think is really landing on what that definition was and feeling like we're all like
54:35
everyone's really clearly on the same page here. And I think the important thing
54:38
that we identify that is useful for trying to categorize something as being an addiction
54:44
is that repeated behavior action. So and it happens relatively frequently, not just
54:47
repeated like two or three times over the course of a lifetime, but it
54:52
happens pretty regularly in a high frequency where the organism in this case we're mostly
54:57
talking about people, they do some behavior, some action to obtain a substance
55:01
or it's some activity that they're doing, and that there are some harmful or
55:07
adverse effects to the organism as they as they do this seeking. And I
55:10
think there's more to unpack in this, and I think understanding how this arranges
55:15
and modulates what our outcomes are that we're looking for, how it creates different
55:21
habits and patterns of behavior that then have their own set of like specific cues
55:25
in the environment and associated reinforcers, et cetera. And we'll, I think
55:30
we'll talk more about that as we get into other ways of just classifying and
55:34
thinking about addiction. And the one thing that we didn't say that we are
55:38
going to talk about later is the disease model of addiction and right we fall
55:42
on that which is inconsistent with that view of right to put it lightly right,
55:47
So what we will get to that. But I think that as you
55:51
said, you did such a nice job of summarizing this, I sort of
55:52
undermined it. But we want to give a thought for those folks who are
55:55
struggling with this and bring some level of compassion and understanding to them while also
56:00
taking a very scientific and objective view of this, which I think I think
56:06
the scientific objective view enables compassion. I think that it fosters a solution oriented
56:12
approach to what we're going to do in this space when we're talking about and
56:15
trying to help folks of this nature. So that's part of why this is
56:20
something that we feel strongly about, is that the science view is the humanist
56:22
view right one percent. Couldn't said it better myself. We need to think
56:28
a bunch of people and give credit where credit is due. We would like
56:30
to recommend some things, which if you're joining us for the first time,
56:32
at the end of our discussions, we give some recommendations, usually wholly unrelated
56:37
to the topic that we were just discussing, which is definitely the case here.
56:39
We'll get to all of that right after a quick break for some advertisements.
56:51
Before we get to our recommendations, I would like to just tell you
56:53
if you'd like to support this podcast. If you like to support what we
56:55
do, you can join us over on Patreon. There you'll get access to
56:59
all kinds of extra stuff like early episodes, notes, behind the scenes content,
57:02
all that. Then you get to join this group of people of like
57:05
minded, generous, awesome folks who helped make the Show Possible, which includes
57:08
Mike m Megan, Layla, Mike T, Justin, Kim, Joshua,
57:14
Brad, Stephanie, Olivia, Brian, Ashley, Kiara, Christy, and
57:17
Michelle. Thank you all so much for being here with us for all that
57:22
you do. We really really appreciate you just MUCHO. Yes, thank you,
57:27
we appreciate you. Also writing and fact checking from Shane and myself.
57:30
Shane, thank you so much for putting together your wonderful notes on today's episode.
57:34
I'm on our discussion. Also, our audio editing and production comes from
57:37
Justin Greenhouse, and our social media coordinator is Emma Wilson. Is there anything
57:43
that I Am missing here or that you would like to add before we get
57:45
to recommendations? No, I think that covers it. Okay, then let's
57:50
recommend some things recommendations. I'm recommending a movie. This movie just came out,
58:02
I believe in twenty twenty three. This is a horror movie that is
58:07
based off of a video game, but kind of a video game. It's
58:09
based off of an app and kind of an app. This is a pretty
58:14
low fi thing that they did here, but it is nevertheless very fun and
58:17
in supportive. So this is a movie called Five Nights at Freddy's. It's
58:22
available on all kinds of platforms. Now I know that it was. I
58:24
watched it recently on Amazon Prime Video, so I know that it's there.
58:29
But I'm given to understand it's across many different streaming platforms if you were interested
58:32
in watching this. The overall theme of this is, like, imagine that
58:38
Chuck E Cheese animatronics came to life and started killing people. That's the way
58:43
that's it. That's the very short summary of this. So Five Nights at
58:47
Freddy's. It didn't get super great ratings, but honestly, I thought a
58:51
lot of it worked really well. I thought they made some really smart choices.
58:54
I thought that they did a good job setting up parts premises and parts
58:59
of the plot that would then pay off later and made a lot of sense
59:02
without like overly tipping their hands. So I think they did a good job
59:07
of like giving just enough exposition that you could figure it out a lot of
59:09
the time without necessarily deliberately explaining things. Some things they over explained, some
59:15
things didn't make as much sense, but you know, it's about animatronics coming
59:17
to life and killing people, so like, right, at some point you
59:21
are suspending your disbelief to like allow the movie to happen, right, And
59:24
I thought it was really fun. So I think if you're into a I
59:28
feel like sort of easy access horror movie, that most people that are into
59:34
that sort of thing will enjoy five nights at Freddy's. Yeah, it seems
59:37
like a lot of fun. My uh, my son was like obsessed with
59:39
that, but he like for a long time and so like you got to
59:43
go see that in theaters. He was really excited about it and said it
59:45
was a lot of fun. So yeah, yeah, all right. So
59:47
my recommendation is a place that I think might be having on earth. There
59:52
is a place called in Jacksonville, Florida called the Chamblain or Shamblain book Mine,
59:58
and it is exactly what you think it is. It is a book
1:00:00
mine. It is not a bookstore. It is a book mine. So
1:00:05
I went to this place yesterday and to give you a little bit of insight
1:00:08
this one building I went to. It's in the Avondale neighborhood of Jacksonville.
1:00:13
So it's in Jacksonville, Florida. It is the largest bookstore in the Southeast,
1:00:17
which it absolutely is. And it continues to get bigger. The store
1:00:21
I went into is fifty five thousand square feet. Wow, and there are
1:00:27
over three million books inside this place. So that's where all the books in
1:00:31
Florida went. That's yeah, oh yeah, this place is. This place
1:00:36
is It's an unstoppable juggernaut of like banned books. They're all there. This
1:00:39
is Ronda Santis' Everest, like his primary adversary or his like very personal hell.
1:00:46
Like he's like there are too many words there, too many words I
1:00:51
don't like. So this place was a labyrinth. Like that's the best way
1:00:54
I can describe it. It was it was Florida ceiling books. I mean
1:01:00
hundreds hundreds of rows and aisles. It was incredible and they had everything you
1:01:06
could think of, Like you you could not walk into that place and leave
1:01:09
without like leave empty handed. Like I ended up finding a bunch of like
1:01:15
Charles Bakowski books that I had never seen. I found a book from Kogi
1:01:20
Suzuki, who did who wrote the Ring Oka wrote a book about how scientists
1:01:24
calculate pie out. But then they start finding patterns, like repeating patterns,
1:01:29
and they're like that shouldn't happen. But there it's basically because the fabric of
1:01:31
the universe is changed and they don't know why, which is curty cool.
1:01:35
I don't know, man, I I'm gonna dream about this place because it
1:01:38
was just so incredible, and it was like they also had like a local
1:01:43
section, which was really cool. They had like features of the month,
1:01:45
There's a lot of activism related books up there. Like it was a really
1:01:50
it was a really great experience. So wow, could not recommend this place
1:01:52
harder. Yeah, I'm surprised that this exists in Florida, but I also
1:01:57
like those books had to go somewhere, so it makes sense that they ended
1:01:59
up in a mine and that sounds really interesting. You know. I feel
1:02:04
like we recently completed an episode on the Apocalypse, and were were there to
1:02:09
be in Apocalypse, getting hold up in a place like that would be pretty
1:02:13
sweet, because man, you could just you could really keep yourself busy with
1:02:17
a lot of a lot of book learning. Oh yeah, I just sent
1:02:21
you a picture just so you can see kind of the scope of one single
1:02:24
aisle, and I'm telling you there were like several several wings. Oh wow,
1:02:34
in real time listeners. Yeah, I just received a text from Shane
1:02:37
that looks it looks like sort of the library from Ghostbusters, except so so
1:02:44
much bigger. Uh huh. Just the ceilings are taller, the ros are
1:02:47
longer. Now imagine that times like three hundred Oh my goodness. Wow.
1:02:51
Okay, well that is very cool. So Chamberlain Book Mine in Jacksonville,
1:02:55
Florida. For those wanting to check it out, yep, love it.
1:03:00
If you would like to tell us something about addiction that we got wrong,
1:03:01
that we got right, that you that you would like to contribute to,
1:03:05
just to expand on something that we said, or share your own personal stories,
1:03:07
we would love to hear from you. You can reach out to us
1:03:10
directly by emailing us at info at WWDWWD podcast dot com. You can also
1:03:15
reach out to us on the social media platforms and we will talk to you
1:03:17
there. And as I said, sharing this with the friends leave us reading
1:03:21
view all this sort of thing. Thank you so much for listening with us.
1:03:22
Thank you for recording with me today. Shane time. Yeah, I
1:03:25
think there's probably some more to say about this. You know what we have
1:03:29
not We have not typically given away what the next topic is going to be
1:03:32
week to week. Most of the time. That's because we don't know,
1:03:36
but this time, the plan at least is that our next episode will tackle
1:03:40
alcoholics anonymous, So if you're interested, stop back by for that. As
1:03:45
we continue to work through the suite and maybe, you know, maybe we'll
1:03:47
continue to sort of give a little teasers of what's coming up next or just
1:03:51
straight up tell you. You can let us know. If you don't want
1:03:52
to know and keep keep the Weekly Surprised spoiler free, then we'll stop telling
1:03:57
you. And that's okay too. Yeah, but as I said, you
1:03:59
have to reach out to us, I'll let that be the case, and
1:04:01
we hope that you do absolutely anything you'd like to add or anything that I
1:04:04
forgot before we say or goodbye. It is Shane, just thank you for
1:04:08
joining on this ride. It's gonna be a wild one. This will be
1:04:10
a wild one. Perfect all right. Then this is Abraham and it's Shane.
1:04:13
We're out. See yea. You've been listening to Why We Do what
1:04:16
We Do. You can learn more about this and other episodes by going to
1:04:20
WWDWWD podcast dot com. Thanks for listening, and we hope you have an
1:04:27
awesome day.