Latest / Age Defiantly with Mark Young / [Ep 35] Why Addiction ‘Works’—Until It Wrecks Your Life | Joe Polish

Transcript

[Ep 35] Why Addiction ‘Works’—Until It Wrecks Your Life | Joe Polish · Age Defiantly with Mark Young

• 0:00
  Welcome to Performance Driven Living, the podcast where we question everything.
• 0:05
  We don't tip to around tough topics, we walk right into them, not to provoke, but to
• 0:11
  get closer to what's real.
• 0:13
  You might not agree with everything you hear, and that's okay.
• 0:17
  The show isn't about being right, it's about being real.
• 0:20
  These conversations are meant to stretch your thinking, challenge assumptions, and spark
• 0:25
  something deeper.
• 0:26
  The views shared are those of our guests and may not reflect those of the host or team.
• 0:32
  And while we dive deep into health, performance, and transformation, this is not medical advice.
• 0:38
  Talk to your doctor before making changes to your health or lifestyle.
• 0:42
  Take what lands, leave what doesn't, but whatever you do, don't stop questioning.
• 0:55
  We are back on the Performance Driven Living podcast, and we are actually broadcasting
• 0:59
  live here from the Metabolic Health Day down in Tucson, Arizona, and a serendipitous moment
• 1:06
  just came up where I was able to grab my friend Joe Polly's here to jump in like at the
• 1:12
  last minute.
• 1:13
  I had no idea you were going to be here, no, I just got off stage, and so here we are.
• 1:16
  Right, right.
• 1:17
  So I got to read this joke, because one of the things, like my team puts together these
• 1:20
  beautiful intros for everybody that comes on here, and I can't do anybody justice the
• 1:23
  way they do.
• 1:24
  You're good.
• 1:25
  It's kind of like my thing.
• 1:27
  So today we're joined by Joe Polly's entrepreneur, connector founder of Genius Network, a community
• 1:32
  for top entrepreneurs.
• 1:34
  He's known for connecting with just about anyone and for founding Genius Recovery and nonprofit,
• 1:40
  working to change other world views and treats addiction with compassion and effective
• 1:44
  care.
• 1:45
  He's the author of What's in It for Them, a playbook for building real relationships by
• 1:49
  reducing others' suffering.
• 1:51
  You might know him from the long-running I Love Marketing podcast with co-host Dean
• 1:55
  Jackson, where the focus is usable strategies not hype.
• 2:00
  He's built a career on one idea, create value, reduce suffering, and relationships take
• 2:06
  care of themselves.
• 2:07
  This is interesting because I'm going to say it's built on one idea, and then they listed
• 2:11
  three ideas.
• 2:12
  Right.
• 2:13
  It's kind of funny.
• 2:14
  I don't know who wrote that.
• 2:15
  It's pretty good though, right?
• 2:16
  Yeah, it sounds good.
• 2:17
  Sounds good.
• 2:18
  I'm sure.
• 2:19
  But yeah, I mean, this is fantastic.
• 2:20
  But Joe, like thank you so much for taking the time to sit here.
• 2:21
  We've been meeting today, so.
• 2:22
  Yeah, well, I've been in lunch.
• 2:25
  That's a whole longer story.
• 2:26
  We still get you to dinner here.
• 2:27
  It's all right.
• 2:28
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 2:29
  But this is good.
• 2:30
  So, what is the thing that you think most of the people that listen to this struggle
• 2:36
  with?
• 2:37
  That's a good question.
• 2:38
  So, most of what we do here with performance driven living is defying convention.
• 2:42
  Like, I always use the phrase unlearning.
• 2:44
  It's like, what is the thing that people think they have to say?
• 2:46
  I go ahead and say that because I think unlearning is more important than learning.
• 2:49
  I spend my entire life unlearning at this point.
• 2:52
  That's my belief.
• 2:53
  And that is, that we're, I'm questioning convention.
• 2:55
  I'm questioning things that people think they already understand.
• 2:59
  And then kind of reverse engineering back into it, oh wow, that wasn't the way I thought
• 3:02
  it was.
• 3:03
  Right.
• 3:04
  And here's my philosophy on all this, Joe, and I get accused of always wanting to be
• 3:06
  right.
• 3:07
  And, you know, my, you might think that's hereditary.
• 3:09
  No, you know, I know your father very well.
• 3:13
  So, yeah.
• 3:14
  And most humans think they're right.
• 3:16
  And it takes a lot of awareness to realize when you're, you could be totally wrong while
• 3:19
  thinking you're right.
• 3:20
  Well, and I've got, I've got two answers to that.
• 3:22
  My first answer is, well, of course, I think I'm right, because if I thought I was wrong,
• 3:25
  wouldn't I change my opinion already?
• 3:27
  Yeah.
• 3:28
  Because why would I hold the wrong opinion if I thought it was wrong?
• 3:30
  Correct.
• 3:31
  The second thing is, is I want everything I know to be challenged.
• 3:34
  Because there's only one of two results out of being challenged, either A, I become more
• 3:38
  resolute in my belief because it was proven right, or you fixed my bad thinking by proving
• 3:43
  me wrong.
• 3:44
  Right.
• 3:45
  And I'm willing to be wrong on something if someone shows me the error of my ways, right?
• 3:50
  Yeah.
• 3:51
  And I think, so what do we do on this podcast?
• 3:53
  I question everything.
• 3:54
  And a lot of it's very health and wellness focused as a lot of what you do is.
• 3:58
  Right.
• 3:59
  Obviously we talk about marketing, which a lot of stuff that you do is, and there's a lot
• 4:02
  of overlap there.
• 4:04
  But that's really what we're doing.
• 4:05
  But I got to tell you, I mean, I really want to hear about what's on, what's on your
• 4:10
  heart right now.
• 4:11
  Like what is most passion projects that you're working on?
• 4:13
  Because I know you're super involved with Maha stuff.
• 4:15
  We've been at multiple Maha events at the same time with, you know, all this other kind
• 4:18
  of stuff, lots of overlaps.
• 4:22
  What is it that you're most passionate about right now?
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  Because I think you and I could probably talk for hours about any number of subjects and
• 4:27
  not run out of words.
• 4:28
  Yeah.
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  I mean, personally is determining the, I'm pretty outspoken about opinions clearly, but
• 4:39
  there's a lot of things I don't talk about because I often wondered is it even going
• 4:42
  to make a difference, right?
• 4:44
  And what I mean make a difference is sometimes you can speak openly about what you're frustrated
• 4:51
  about.
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  And if you, if you don't really know your shit, you can say something totally stupid.
• 5:00
  And I certainly am not afraid of making mistakes or saying things that are done.
• 5:04
  But I am most concerned about from a public standpoint is, is being effective and, you
• 5:10
  know, sharing what I believe to be useful and valuable to other people.
• 5:17
  And there's the, you know, I always sort of try to determine what causes someone to pursue
• 5:26
  status versus growth.
• 5:29
  So status is seductive, but people that get seduced, or oftentimes looking to be seduced.
• 5:38
  And so what type of communication causes people to love you or hate you?
• 5:47
  Because if you've got something to share with someone, you're going to catch more bees
• 5:50
  with honey than vinegar sometimes.
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  But if you, if you're vanilla, you get no one's attention.
• 5:58
  So you have to speak openly about stuff and be willing to not have, in many cases, the
• 6:05
  majority agree with you.
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  But so to answer your question, what's kind of going through my head?
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  I often think about that with, let's take addiction recovery.
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  I was just on stage talking a little bit about marketing and addiction recovery and things
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  like that.
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  You know, I believe addiction is a solution.
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  And I think the war on drugs and all those sort of, I don't think you can punish pain
• 6:23
  out of people.
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  I think addiction works.
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  It's a terrible solution.
• 6:30
  But in the moment, if you're lonely, if you're in pain, if you are depressed, it can
• 6:37
  oftentimes be a substitute.
• 6:38
  The problem is there's this thing called consequences.
• 6:42
  So for me, it's like when there's so many forces that make money in prisoning people,
• 6:51
  when 18% of the GDP is health care, which I said on stage, it's really health carelessness,
• 6:58
  what do you do with that?
• 7:00
  Because you got all these people that are sick and there's so many solutions presented
• 7:09
  to them that are not solutions, they're traps.
• 7:12
  And addiction, because that's one field that I work a lot in, there's a lot of things
• 7:17
  that are exploitive and I don't like exploitation.
• 7:21
  Of the 600 topics we could talk about, that's probably the one that I wanted to talk about
• 7:25
  with you most, to be honest with you.
• 7:26
  So good.
• 7:27
  I love that that's where you went with that conversation because we kind of left the canvas open.
• 7:32
  I've got a family that's been riddled by addiction.
• 7:34
  Yeah.
• 7:35
  Multiple levels.
• 7:36
  You know my family.
• 7:37
  That's not new information to you.
• 7:38
  My own mother died of alcohol overdose.
• 7:42
  That one's a weird one to me still.
• 7:46
  I don't talk about it that often, but it's like getting a phone call that my mother's dead
• 7:50
  because she drank herself into oblivion and watching her yellow body sit on display.
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  It was just a couple of years ago.
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  She was only 64, which to me, I'm 50 now, it's like 64 to me seems like a kid.
• 8:08
  Like which sounds ridiculous, but it's like, but the reality is is that there is a, we're
• 8:13
  here at the metabolic health conference and the entire conversation in metabolic health
• 8:18
  is treat the system not the symptom and how do we get to the root cause of what's going
• 8:23
  on.
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  And I think we share a belief on addiction, that is addiction is a symptom, addiction is
• 8:28
  not what I'm trying to cure.
• 8:30
  Exactly.
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  We spend too much time trying to deal with abstinence from a drug or abstinence from alcohol
• 8:34
  or any of these, you know, abstinence from sex addiction or whatever.
• 8:37
  And rather than unpacking and finding out what is doing this, because this is a bandage
• 8:43
  on a much deeper wound and getting a person to willpower their way out of touching alcohol
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  as one thing, fixing the brokenness that leads there is a very different conversation.
• 8:56
  Exactly.
• 8:58
  No, for one, I'm sorry about your mom, that's terrible for anyone to have to witness a parent.
• 9:05
  You know, what's interesting in addiction, when one of the biggest causes of relapse for
• 9:11
  many addicts is when one of their parents died, I cannot tell you how many, I mean, even
• 9:16
  happened with me, you know, I had a relapse when after my father died in a big way.
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  I mean, there's a lot of pain associated with it because you're actually losing a significant
• 9:29
  part of yourself, even if you had a terrible relationship with your parents.
• 9:35
  Even if one of them was physically, mentally, sexually abusive, when they die and when
• 9:42
  they die from addiction, you're also witnessing, you know, the person who your future, you
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  know, that's a difficult one.
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  In that, there's no matter what anyone says or how strongly they try to pretend themselves
• 9:55
  to be, there's definitely some type of trauma associated with it.
• 9:58
  Well, and my belief on that is actually that when we lose a parent, parents are often
• 10:03
  the source of our trauma in many cases and as long as the parent is still alive, there
• 10:09
  is the potential hope of resolution somewhere in that trauma and at the point that the parent
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  dies, the resoluteness is now firm.
• 10:16
  Yeah.
• 10:17
  There is no resolution at this point, like you can't go back and fix that problem.
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  Like the minute a person dies, there's always this catalog of what ifs, there's a catalogs
• 10:25
  of it should have been this and it could have been that.
• 10:28
  But I think that's part of the relapse is that perhaps the parent's involvement was the
• 10:33
  leading cause of the root trauma that led to the addiction to begin with.
• 10:37
  Yes.
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  And now we've triggered that root cause again because we never fared it out the original
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  problem.
• 10:43
  Yeah, exactly.
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  And I think that makes complete sense.
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  Yeah.
• 10:47
  Yeah, like with, there's this is a great book written by Ernie Larson years ago called Second
• 10:55
  Stage Recovery.
• 10:57
  And first stage recovery is getting sober, you know, stopping either the substance, the
• 11:02
  alcohol, the behavior, whatever the way the addict acts out, their addiction is sobriety.
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  But there's, that's abstinence.
• 11:14
  Yes.
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  You know, second stage sobriety is basically dealing with the underlying issues that cause
• 11:21
  you to use in the first place, right, which is typically around relationships, do while
• 11:26
  using.
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  Correct.
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  Yeah, not very well.
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  And so it's relationships with others and relationships with yourself.
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  So I do believe all forms of addiction are a connection disorder, not always a connection
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  with other people, even though that's a huge part of it.
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  It's a connection with a higher power, nicknamed God or whatever, even if someone's an atheist,
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  there's some sort of connection that you have with something beyond yourself and then your
• 11:52
  own connection with who you are as a human.
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  And if you don't, you know, addiction thrives in shame.
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  You know, guilt is, I feel bad.
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  Shame is, I am bad.
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  And if you fundamentally feel you are bad, you're not going to take care of something that
• 12:09
  you feel bad about.
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  And so if I feel like I'm worthless or myself talk as I'm an idiot or I'm a failure,
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  which is really easy to do when you're using because you're like, you're doing something
• 12:21
  you don't want to do and you can't stop.
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  Because what is the definition of addiction?
• 12:25
  There's many, my friend Chris Doyle, who's an interventionist, I mean, two words, can't
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  stop.
• 12:30
  Can't stop doing something.
• 12:33
  You tell yourself you will not go even as you drive there, which is a song lyric from
• 12:37
  a crazy song called Bad Houses from a hardcore industrial band back in the 80s called Big
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  Black.
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  But it's like, you know, I find myself frequently, you know, bad houses, places that no
• 12:49
  respectable person would ever be.
• 12:51
  And there you are.
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  And so when you're in that place in your life, be it a jot, and I'm using this metaphorically,
• 12:57
  you know, you're with someone.
• 12:59
  Why are you with this person?
• 13:00
  You know, you're, you're, you're, you're, you have this appetite for destruction.
• 13:06
  You know, the Guns of Roses first album from years ago, that was, whenever the hell that
• 13:10
  was, it shows you how old I am.
• 13:12
  But it needs to.
• 13:13
  It needs to.
• 13:14
  Yeah, yeah.
• 13:15
  It's an appetite for destruction.
• 13:16
  And so when, when you are wanting to destroy the vessel that is carrying you around
• 13:22
  and is your life, you know, and you can't stop doing that, you know, there's definitely
• 13:26
  shame there.
• 13:27
  There's definitely disconnection there.
• 13:30
  And no matter how intellectually capable you become, this is not an intellectual issue.
• 13:36
  So some of the most difficult people that I've ever worked with are the really smart ones
• 13:42
  because they think they can think their way out of a, a condition that is really, the
• 13:47
  issues are in the tissues.
• 13:48
  It's not in, you're usually the best actors too.
• 13:51
  Totally.
• 13:52
  Oh, and that's why you see so many actors and musicians that actually have addictions
• 13:57
  too because for one, there's a certain sensitivity to artists because every, everything humans
• 14:02
  do is expression.
• 14:04
  Us doing a podcast right now is expressing ourselves, me writing about playing music, dancing,
• 14:09
  moving, working out, it's all expression, addiction is a form of a way to express yourself.
• 14:14
  So what, you know, what are you trying to express?
• 14:17
  So you know, it's, it is really getting to a place where you can appreciate and be connected
• 14:28
  to something other than the ego because the ego is, is a motherfucker if it's not used
• 14:35
  in the right way.
• 14:36
  And I'm not one of these people that ever say, no ego, no ego, dissolve your ego.
• 14:40
  It's like you couldn't have a job, you couldn't defend, you know, like the ego, yeah, it's
• 14:46
  like a, it's like a horse, you have to figure out how to write it.
• 14:50
  If it's wild and out of control, it's going to be reckless.
• 14:53
  But if you, you know, if you've, if you've developed yourself as a human and you've, you
• 14:58
  know, put a lot of time into learning a skill, developing a skill, you really walk through
• 15:02
  the world, you know, creating, producing more than you consume, you're not parasitical
• 15:08
  any way, you have, you know, ethics and integrity.
• 15:11
  I mean, there's nothing wrong with feeling really good about yourself and honoring, you
• 15:16
  know, that, it's hard to do though when you're in active addiction.
• 15:19
  Well, it's a difference between confidence and arrogance, right?
• 15:22
  Yes.
• 15:23
  Like, yeah, arrogance, you know, stays up here even when they don't belong.
• 15:28
  Right.
• 15:29
  Confidence stays here, even when they could be here because there, there is that, there's
• 15:33
  a security in who you are.
• 15:35
  Joe, I, I want to ask you because you, you deal a lot in the natural health space in
• 15:39
  longevity.
• 15:40
  And I, I know that I know you won't even eat normal ketchup.
• 15:44
  The, you know, I, first off, I'm very big on don't eat seed oils.
• 15:48
  Agreed.
• 15:49
  Agreed.
• 15:50
  You know, and, and, and the hateful eight, not all seed oils are bad, peanut oil unless
• 15:53
  you have peanut allergies, sesame oils good, you know, there's, it's, it's, it's out
• 15:57
  it's processed.
• 15:58
  Yeah.
• 15:59
  They, they keep making, and I love farmers too.
• 16:00
  I mean, how me and my partner Sheree who's an integrative doc, we spent four days with,
• 16:05
  you know, farmers last year, you know, getting tours of, you know, labs of how they make
• 16:12
  canola oil at the University of Saskatchewan and, you know, having them try to convince
• 16:17
  us that these particular types of oils are safe and these, you know, but the end of the
• 16:21
  day, I'm heard.
• 16:22
  Yeah.
• 16:23
  No, I agree with you.
• 16:24
  I, I, I avoid the seed oils when possible as well, but the, I tease about the ketchup.
• 16:28
  But the, um, the question I have, so I'm curious of your perception, I know we're going to
• 16:32
  agree on this.
• 16:33
  So I'll kind of load the question of a little bit here.
• 16:35
  So I sit on the board for a recovery center, actually down in South Florida, um, and the
• 16:39
  entire mantra behind that center is, is trauma and addiction recovery.
• 16:44
  And the entire mantra behind it is that mind body soul, right?
• 16:49
  And, and the, the mind component, obviously, is we want to make sure that people have a
• 16:54
  clear head, but that only happens through a clear body, right?
• 16:58
  Like you, you made the comment about, I can't deal with the trauma if I'm still using.
• 17:02
  Well, sure, abstinence helps you do that, but my issue is, is again, having a background
• 17:07
  dealing with addiction recovery and, and you know this that I actually used to work as
• 17:10
  a psychologist and used to talk to people with addiction and whatnot as well.
• 17:15
  Yeah.
• 17:16
  Um, and in that addiction recovery world, I say that like these halfway houses, three
• 17:19
  quarter houses, like, sure, there's no heroin.
• 17:22
  Instead, it's, you know, cigarettes, Doritos, and Mountain Dew, right.
• 17:26
  And you walk into these, these, these places or, or even, you know, AA groups or something
• 17:31
  like that.
• 17:32
  It's like, it's all smoke breaks outside.
• 17:34
  It's, it's, it's a different addiction, right?
• 17:36
  And, yes.
• 17:37
  And the question is, is, well, sure, you, you want people to go process that trauma because
• 17:40
  if, if I can actually get you off of the addiction, I first need to also, I'm going to use the
• 17:46
  word detox out of this terrible health because people in the, in general population haven't
• 17:53
  been taught how to actually be healthy.
• 17:55
  Correct.
• 17:56
  Yeah, there's, the average person doesn't even know how to be healthy, much less a person
• 18:00
  who's spent the last 20 years in an addictive lifestyle.
• 18:04
  Right.
• 18:05
  Like, they know less.
• 18:06
  I mean, sometimes, I mean, I remember my cousin lived with me for years after coming
• 18:10
  off of heroin and so on and so forth.
• 18:12
  And it was like, it was a joke about I was a single father because she's 30 some years
• 18:16
  old and didn't know how to do her laundry.
• 18:18
  Yes.
• 18:19
  Well, it almost traps people at the age when they started their addiction.
• 18:23
  They can become, you know, like frozen in time, or it almost seems.
• 18:26
  Oh, yeah, I was raising a teenager.
• 18:28
  Like, and it would be dumb stuff.
• 18:29
  Like, I came home one day and kicked my shoes off at the door and my house had hardwood
• 18:33
  floors.
• 18:34
  And I, I damn near broke my neck because she had used pledge on the hardwood floor.
• 18:39
  Oh, wow.
• 18:40
  And like, yeah, exactly.
• 18:41
  It was like a skating rink when I walked into the house.
• 18:43
  She had no better.
• 18:44
  She thought, that's what you did when you get, it's wood and you clean wood with pledge,
• 18:48
  right?
• 18:49
  And like, maybe the table.
• 18:50
  Yeah.
• 18:51
  But it really was.
• 18:52
  It was like a person trapped in there.
• 18:53
  But then we lay around all these health issues on top of the addiction.
• 18:58
  And how do we ever get a person to a clear mind?
• 19:02
  Because the redos, the mountain dew, the, the seed oils, the, all of the other stuff that's
• 19:06
  causing all this oxidative stress on the body is killing their brains.
• 19:12
  So, but then we're trying to get them to have a spiritual experience.
• 19:15
  And then the question is, is what is, what is the genuine nature of the spiritual experience
• 19:18
  when you don't even have a clear head?
• 19:20
  Like, how do you process the trauma if we're still living an unhealthy body?
• 19:25
  Yeah, you know, there's, I wish I, I wish there was one plan and path that worked for
• 19:32
  every, every one all the time.
• 19:34
  But almost every attic doesn't have just one addiction, they have multiple addictions.
• 19:37
  Fair.
• 19:38
  And what I mean by that, you know, it just means the way that they scratch the itch.
• 19:42
  If you don't feel good in your own skin, you're going to look for ways to scratch the itch.
• 19:46
  So, Bill W. the founder of AA, he said, as alcoholics were trying to drink God out of a bottle.
• 19:52
  And I think the interesting thing with, with that is that you're trying to either, you
• 20:00
  know, drink your way to source or to a connection, you're trying to snort your way to a connection,
• 20:07
  gamble your way, eat your way, you know, screw your way, you know, whatever the, whatever
• 20:14
  the behavior or the substance is.
• 20:16
  And so, what I've learned, I've written two books on addiction recovery.
• 20:20
  One is understanding addiction recovery, which are just compilations of my interviews with
• 20:24
  people smarter than me.
• 20:25
  And then the miracle morning for addiction recovery that I did with Hal Elrod and Anna
• 20:30
  David.
• 20:31
  And then I have, you know, geniusrecovery.org, which is, you know, an educational platform.
• 20:36
  And there's four things you need in order to get sober and stay sober.
• 20:39
  And sometimes it depends on where you start and how the depth of your addiction, like if
• 20:44
  someone is a full-blown, street addict, homeless, shooting heroin, you know, free-basin
• 20:53
  cocaine, snort and crystal meth, you know, hooked on fentanyl, that's a complicated
• 21:01
  thing.
• 21:02
  You know, you need to, you know, you need to deal with the nervous system, they need to,
• 21:07
  you know, be under, you know, medical care, sitting with the best talk therapists in the
• 21:11
  world ain't going to do jack shit for that person, right?
• 21:14
  But other people that have not, you know, completely wrecked themselves physically, you
• 21:20
  know, there's different levels of what they can do.
• 21:22
  So the first thing, I've never seen a true addict recover in isolation.
• 21:27
  So you need some sort of community.
• 21:29
  So I'm a huge fan of 12 steps because, frankly, it's free.
• 21:35
  You only have to pay if you, you know, it's held together by the voluntary contributions
• 21:39
  of its members so you can go to meetings, they're available, you know, all over the world
• 21:43
  in many places and, you know, if someone's not addicted to the internet, which is another
• 21:48
  addiction or porn or gambling or, you know, crypto or there's many, you know, there's
• 21:52
  many forms of social media addiction, you can attend meetings online, although in person
• 21:58
  I do believe to be the best.
• 22:00
  So they do the best job with community, but back in the 1930s when AA was, you know, first
• 22:04
  created by, you know, Bill W. and Dr. Bob, they didn't know anything about trauma, they
• 22:09
  didn't know anything about the biochemical aspects of it because, you know, the second part
• 22:13
  of recovery versus community because your sick is your secret.
• 22:16
  So there's truth to that in silent battles, the hardest battles to fight.
• 22:19
  The second is it's biochemical, it's serotonin, it's dopamine and my friend, Dr. Anna Lemke,
• 22:26
  who wrote dopamine nation, fantastic book that explains, you know, the biochemical aspects
• 22:31
  of addiction.
• 22:34
  The third is trauma, it's, you know, I used to believe that addiction was a response
• 22:41
  to trauma and that's still the majority, I believe, of addiction stems from trauma.
• 22:46
  Even my friend Phil Randazzo, I don't know if he know Phil, he was on the bus when we
• 22:50
  went to the big memorial.
• 22:52
  Oh, no.
• 22:53
  Okay.
• 22:54
  And he has American dream, you know, and so he's helped and worked with veterans and
• 22:59
  soldiers.
• 23:00
  I know who you're talking about.
• 23:01
  Yeah.
• 23:02
  He was sitting near us actually on the bus.
• 23:03
  I heard him talking about that.
• 23:04
  Yeah.
• 23:05
  Great, great guy.
• 23:06
  And we were walking and he was telling me that like every addict that is a soldier that
• 23:13
  had trauma from war, he goes that would become an addict.
• 23:17
  They would often think it's because they went through, you know, the Iraq war, Afghanistan,
• 23:22
  Vietnam, whatever.
• 23:24
  And he said every one of them that were addicts that could not stop on their own, he said
• 23:35
  there's always something when they were six, seven, eight years old.
• 23:38
  Right.
• 23:39
  Like all of them.
• 23:40
  He also begs the question, is that the reason that they went into the military to begin
• 23:42
  with?
• 23:43
  Exactly.
• 23:44
  He ended up with the result afterwards.
• 23:45
  Right.
• 23:46
  Yeah.
• 23:47
  Exactly.
• 23:48
  You know, it's a good point because there's many layers to this that often get missed
• 23:49
  when you just say, oh, it's the drugs, you know, it's like, just say no or
• 23:54
  a war on, you know, a war on drugs is like the wrong war.
• 23:58
  You know, it's like a war on addicts and it shouldn't be a war because you can't punish
• 24:03
  a pain out of people.
• 24:04
  You know, you can't, you cannot take a punitive approach and solve addiction.
• 24:10
  You can take a punitive approach to take violent people because we take our members to prisons
• 24:15
  in genius network, my entrepreneur group, we literally take them to the prisons.
• 24:19
  We have content for genius recovery on 650,000 tablets in the United States for recovery
• 24:26
  content and we also have entrepreneurial content.
• 24:29
  So we try to help people in all places that we can reach.
• 24:35
  But the thing is, you know, there's a central line trauma.
• 24:40
  So I used to think that that was all, but there's people that just, they're diet sucks.
• 24:43
  They're not getting sunshine, they're not drinking water, they're not sleeping enough,
• 24:47
  they're biochemical.
• 24:48
  You know, and there's doctors way more qualified than me that can actually explain exactly
• 24:52
  what's going on in the body.
• 24:54
  But you know, there's been great success with amino acid therapies and B vitamins and different
• 25:01
  supplements used in an effective way for the biochemical aspects and just simply improving
• 25:07
  the diet, you know, refined flowers and, you know, eliminating sugars and processed foods
• 25:14
  and, you know, not eating seed oils, improving the gut.
• 25:19
  You know, you're going to produce, you know, the majority of serotonin is made in the gut.
• 25:23
  And so, so the underlying trauma is that's where therapy, the right types of therapy because
• 25:31
  some therapy could, as you know, could really mess people up and keep them mired in their
• 25:35
  past.
• 25:36
  I mean, if you, you know, what was his name, William Glasner, the, you know, who's now,
• 25:41
  I believe passed away.
• 25:43
  I met him when he was 84 years old, like in the late 90s.
• 25:47
  He wrote a book called Reality Therapy in 1968.
• 25:51
  He wrote many books, but he was like high profile years ago in this as a psychiatrist that
• 25:57
  never prescribed drugs.
• 25:59
  And he said, you know, if you give someone a, if someone goes to therapy without a goal,
• 26:05
  like you don't define the goal, they will get mired in their past.
• 26:09
  Yes.
• 26:10
  It's like the beauty is if you, if you're someone that just wants to improve in some way,
• 26:16
  where do you want to go?
• 26:17
  How do you define a win?
• 26:18
  So, so there's, there's somatic therapy, there's meditation, there's breathing, breathwork
• 26:23
  is really important, cold plunges, you know, but the proper, and I emphasize, proper use
• 26:29
  of plant medicines is psychedelics.
• 26:31
  It can do incredible things.
• 26:33
  I mean, I think there's, there's, there's a nuance in there that I want to point out
• 26:37
  that is there's this, define the goal, but I think there's also a, and I'll say this
• 26:40
  from my own experience, and that is, you know, you overcome your, your fair share of trauma,
• 26:44
  you've gone through your fair share of trauma as well, right, like it, but it doesn't mean
• 26:48
  you get there.
• 26:49
  Right.
• 26:50
  This, this is a non-stop journey towards self improvement, with non-stop symptom reduction.
• 26:56
  Yes.
• 26:57
  Yes.
• 26:58
  We're never, and no one's normal, like, and that's kind of like we're all a little crazy
• 27:02
  in our own way.
• 27:03
  Question is, is how much do we let our crazy affect the world around us?
• 27:06
  Exactly.
• 27:07
  And how much do you hide it from, you know, because a lot of people believe me, I've sat
• 27:11
  in recovery rooms, and there's been times in my life, I'm batshit off the rails, crazy,
• 27:16
  I'm just like my life is not working, I'm not, I'm not a, I'm a dysfunctional human being,
• 27:23
  you know, and, and so you get better by doing things that get you better, and by having,
• 27:32
  you know, by, by developing life skills and, and things in order to function and taking
• 27:39
  care of yourself.
• 27:40
  But there's, with, I've seen, I've been in rooms with billionaires, Academy Award-winning
• 27:47
  actors and actresses, clergy, politicians, MBA players, NFL players, famous musicians
• 27:57
  that the world admires, that are just off, off the rails, you know, so, oftentimes the,
• 28:04
  you know, I've also learned that's why I don't get all star struck around people, because
• 28:09
  I've, I've seen two stars, you know, I mean, it doesn't, you know, oftentimes even the
• 28:14
  pursuit of fame is a lot of sighted approach to deal with the pain of the childhood, yeah,
• 28:19
  it's like your thing with the military.
• 28:21
  You know, when you talked about, you know, why they go in the military, I mean, a lot
• 28:24
  of people that rise really high in the world, I mean, they're just, they dealt with some
• 28:30
  sort of adversity.
• 28:31
  It's a, it's a, taking a terrible scenario and trying to turn it into something positive.
• 28:36
  The problem is it's, it's the bucket that never gets filled, and then turns into something
• 28:42
  else afterwards, because all the cheers don't fill the void.
• 28:45
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, like, I don't know if you know who Shep Gordon is, he was, he's a manager
• 28:49
  for many musicians over the years, so I've, you know, I've interviewed him before in Alice
• 28:55
  Cooper's a friend of mine, he's been Alice Cooper, Alice Cooper's a musician, and he, he's
• 28:59
  been Alice's manager for 50 years, over 50 years, and I've a great interview with Alice,
• 29:06
  and Alice has been sober for many years now, he plays golf instead, that's his like addiction,
• 29:12
  he's addicted to golf.
• 29:13
  Probably better.
• 29:14
  And when we did our podcast years ago, he said, we're talking about Janice Joplin, and
• 29:22
  she had this line where she said, you know, and she died of an overdose, and she said, I,
• 29:28
  you know, I would go and make love to 20,000 people, meaning singing and performing, and
• 29:34
  then I'd go back to my hotel room alone.
• 29:36
  And so, you know, you could have the world admire you and be completely disconnected and
• 29:43
  you're utterly alone and not able to digest it.
• 29:46
  So I think as we go through recovery, we, we hopefully develop the ability to connect
• 29:52
  with others so we can actually feel, meaning, and, you know, I think as humans, we either,
• 29:59
  in communication or we're trying to escape, we're either connected to something or someone
• 30:04
  or we're trying to run away from it.
• 30:06
  And if you're trying to escape life and nowhere you go, if you're trying to escape yourself,
• 30:11
  you're going to numb, you're going to drink, you're going to, you know, watch porn,
• 30:14
  you're going to have affairs, you're going to gamble, you're going to eat, you know.
• 30:18
  And so, yeah, you know, the funny thing though is like, I think addiction is crazy as this
• 30:24
  is going to sound as a spiritual pursuit.
• 30:27
  I really think we're trying to find a way to just feel better and connect with something.
• 30:33
  It's just connecting with the wrong things.
• 30:35
  Well, I think that there's definitely, I mean, there is that component.
• 30:38
  I always use the goal of man is to know and be known, that, you know, people want to
• 30:44
  know.
• 30:45
  They want to have that community and know others and be in that community, but they also
• 30:49
  have a desire to be known.
• 30:51
  And that to be known, I think, is probably the biggest break point for most people in
• 30:55
  addiction because most people keep their addiction as secretly as possible, the sick is your
• 30:59
  secrets, the type of mentality, right, that, like, how can you ever be known if no one's
• 31:04
  ever allowed to know everything about you?
• 31:06
  There's the vulnerability in actually being known, and yet there's that black box that
• 31:10
  always stays locked away to that extent that people actually know that.
• 31:14
  And again, everybody's got their secrets, like everybody keeps a certain amount of themselves
• 31:18
  to themselves, which is probably best.
• 31:20
  Yeah, and look, that's one of the beauties of life too.
• 31:23
  And if we strip away, I swear to God, I think why there's so much depression and so much
• 31:29
  anxiety and suicide with young people is I think there's too many parents monitoring them.
• 31:35
  Every where they go, they know where their kids are at.
• 31:37
  They have no autonomy.
• 31:38
  They have no freedom.
• 31:39
  And when you're always being watched or followed or tagged, I think you lose something there.
• 31:43
  I could be totally wrong.
• 31:44
  I don't think so.
• 31:45
  I'm going to ask you to comment on something, because one of the things that I've had
• 31:49
  this conversation on multiple podcasts in the past, particularly surrounded, you weren't
• 31:53
  there actually when Nick Zoldostani, you know, Nick, the lifelong well-being foundation
• 31:59
  inaugural dinner back in May in Austin.
• 32:01
  I was not there.
• 32:02
  Yeah, inviting me though.
• 32:04
  He invited me, but yeah, he bugs me.
• 32:06
  So I'm kidding.
• 32:07
  It's hilarious.
• 32:08
  He bugs everybody.
• 32:09
  Yeah, of course.
• 32:10
  Nick watches this.
• 32:11
  I love you, Nick.
• 32:12
  Yeah.
• 32:13
  I'm just totally mad.
• 32:14
  He's very nice guy.
• 32:15
  But it was one of the topics that kept coming up, you know, when I was talking with multiple
• 32:19
  different people.
• 32:20
  But it was like the idea that this generation statistically has, it's like this anomaly
• 32:27
  and everybody's confused by it.
• 32:29
  Like recently, I read a statistic this.
• 32:31
  It's 72% less alcohol addiction or alcohol consumption rather than generation's prior.
• 32:38
  That this generation is eating healthy.
• 32:41
  They're not going out and partying.
• 32:43
  The college crew is going out and playing pickleball.
• 32:45
  They're not going and hanging at the bar.
• 32:47
  They're going to the gym together.
• 32:49
  They're finding active ways and active lifestyles that this generation they're saying is
• 32:53
  just different than everything else.
• 32:56
  Yeah.
• 32:57
  Like the alcohol consumption.
• 32:58
  I also think one part of it that I think needs a little bit more attention to though is
• 33:02
  you got a lot of people taking those, and you have a lot of people, GLPs and that lowers
• 33:06
  cravings.
• 33:07
  And I actually think it's going to, that causes some people to, do you think that's mostly
• 33:12
  true in the college age, demographic?
• 33:14
  No, no, no, not necessarily.
• 33:15
  But that also, that attributes to the lowering of alcohol consumption, that's one part of
• 33:20
  it.
• 33:21
  But no, there's generation that they're not drinking as much alcohol.
• 33:25
  Yeah.
• 33:26
  Not drinking as much.
• 33:27
  And perhaps there's other addictions that are out there.
• 33:28
  I mean, maybe now it's video games, but definitely internet, definitely sex, definitely,
• 33:33
  yeah.
• 33:34
  But even sex is actually, they're staying statistically, there is less promiscuous sex.
• 33:39
  No, I mean porn.
• 33:40
  Oh, porn, yeah.
• 33:41
  Yeah.
• 33:42
  It's porn's available everywhere.
• 33:43
  And another form of sex addiction is sexual anorexia, where they are not being sexual.
• 33:47
  So you, you literally, because every form of addiction has binging and purging.
• 33:52
  It's either excess or deprivation.
• 33:54
  So there's a lot of connection deprivation.
• 33:56
  We're more connected electronically, but we're more disconnected as humans than ever before
• 34:00
  in human history.
• 34:01
  Yeah.
• 34:02
  But no, I don't mean to take you off though, because it's insane.
• 34:03
  No, none of all.
• 34:04
  I'm just, so that's exactly what I was looking for is what are you reading your comments
• 34:07
  on that?
• 34:08
  Because statistically, we're just saying that this generation is different than what we're
• 34:11
  seeing in the past.
• 34:12
  And having spent a good portion of my career in higher education, like I'm used to seeing
• 34:16
  this sort of stuff in the classroom and seeing what's going on.
• 34:19
  But this generation is different than when I used to do that a decade or two ago.
• 34:24
  Like, I'm like, really?
• 34:25
  College students are not that way.
• 34:26
  Like, I'm used to seeing students show up with hangovers on a morning class, whatever
• 34:31
  day of the week it is.
• 34:33
  But that doesn't seem to be the thing.
• 34:34
  And we've created, I would almost say like Hollywood specifically creates this beautiful
• 34:41
  story of that's what college is supposed to be.
• 34:44
  But like, nowadays, that's not actually what's happening and that topic keeps coming
• 34:49
  up.
• 34:50
  And I'm like, do we, do we see, do you have numbers that are saying that addiction is
• 34:53
  down?
• 34:54
  Or is it just different?
• 34:55
  No.
• 34:56
  I think it's just different.
• 34:57
  I think there's definitely less, like for instance, one of my goals with your father
• 35:03
  is to save 20,000 lives a year, the 100,000 plus people that are dying from opiate addictions.
• 35:08
  But opiate overdoses are down, right?
• 35:10
  Drinking is down.
• 35:11
  So what is up?
• 35:12
  I mean, a lot of these things, you can't measure and you can't survey because you can,
• 35:18
  you can look at alcohol consumption by, I mean, the alcohol industry is freaking out right
• 35:22
  now because there's a lot of people drinking it.
• 35:24
  And I think it's like 50% of alcohol is consumed by something like 10% of problem drinkers.
• 35:30
  So it's still the problem, drinkers that are keeping the industry live.
• 35:34
  Yeah.
• 35:35
  But you see all these new tropic beverages and all this other kind of stuff starting to
• 35:37
  come out and play their way.
• 35:39
  But the mocktail crowd has become an entire movement totally.
• 35:43
  Yeah.
• 35:44
  And I mean, look, and almost 90% of the global population consumes caffeine every day.
• 35:49
  So, you know, but it's like a lesser evil to go back to what you're saying about 12
• 35:54
  step groups.
• 35:55
  You see people eating donuts, McDonalds, sugar, smoking, but it's better than shooting
• 36:00
  heroin.
• 36:01
  It's a better, bad choice, but it's still addictive, compulsive behavior, right?
• 36:05
  Because you're dealing with, like, to get an echo, echo toly here, you know, the pain
• 36:09
  body.
• 36:10
  And when you're in the pain body, you're going to look for a way to get out of the pain
• 36:13
  and smoke.
• 36:14
  And to cigarette, when you used to, you know, drink a 12 pack every day is considered
• 36:20
  a lesser evil, but it's still addictive.
• 36:23
  What I am starting to witness, but I have no idea how to even articulate any of this
• 36:32
  with any level of anything other than my opinion, is like AI.
• 36:36
  So I think AI is going to create a whole nother level of addiction.
• 36:40
  And it goes back to that quote from the 1800s.
• 36:42
  If you build a ship, you build a shipwreck, you know, and today you build an airplane, you
• 36:47
  create plane crashes.
• 36:49
  You create AI.
• 36:50
  There's a time like, it's great that there's ships.
• 36:52
  It's great that there's planes, but a plane crash never existed until the plane was invented.
• 36:59
  And so every time there's a new thing, a new way for people to express themselves and
• 37:04
  interact with something, you know.
• 37:07
  Let's go back to the early days of the internet in the 90s.
• 37:12
  Dr. Pat Carnes, who was the first, you know, outspoken doctor on sex addiction.
• 37:18
  He wrote the first book out of the shadows on sexual addiction.
• 37:21
  Originally it was titled, I think it was the sexual addiction and he was on an airplane
• 37:27
  and happened to be sitting next to a guy that was one of the biggest publishers in the
• 37:32
  US.
• 37:33
  He didn't know that.
• 37:34
  So what do you do?
• 37:35
  I'm a doctor and I, you know, just wrote a book and he's like, oh, what's your book?
• 37:39
  And he shows him this and the guy looks at the book, he's like, it's never going to
• 37:42
  sell.
• 37:43
  And he's like, what do you mean?
• 37:44
  He's like, because no one's going to want to go to the counter of a book store.
• 37:48
  And they need the book.
• 37:49
  And basically, yeah, so he changed the title to out of the shadows.
• 37:55
  And, you know, so he's writing a bunch of books on sexual addiction.
• 37:57
  I have this great interview that's on my YouTube channel that, you know, I did probably
• 38:02
  13, 14 years ago with him.
• 38:04
  And one of the things that was happening in the 90s is people that were in their 60s,
• 38:09
  70s and 80s that never showed signs of compulsive behavior.
• 38:14
  All of a sudden we're seeking out treatment for compulsive sexual behavior because the
• 38:20
  internet, because the internet, because all of a sudden, you know, the father, you know,
• 38:23
  hiding the playboy and the mattress and, you know, there's this imagery, all of a sudden,
• 38:29
  there's porn, but hide the, you know, the father's porn collection or, you know, using
• 38:34
  men, right?
• 38:35
  But it's, although there's a lot of women's sex addicts and sexual addiction can express
• 38:41
  itself, it's an intimacy disorder.
• 38:43
  And so like I said on stage, you know, the definition of my favorite definition of intimacy,
• 38:49
  which I did not come up with, it was an 80 year old gay man that I never met in person
• 38:55
  talked him over the phone because the guy that I had met in recovery had said, I know
• 38:59
  this really smart guy that he just devotes his life to helping people with sexual addiction,
• 39:03
  he said, and I wrote to the sound, he's, and I memorized it, intimacy is a mutual exploration
• 39:09
  of a shared, safe place, abuse is anything that takes away the safe place and addictions
• 39:15
  or what we do to make ourselves feel good when we don't have a safe place.
• 39:19
  So if you don't feel safe in the world, there's a many things you could consume or behaviors
• 39:25
  to just feel numb, you know, because if you don't feel connected, there's a lot of artificial
• 39:33
  connection.
• 39:34
  So the internet and AI and someone speaking to you as a real, you know, it will replicate
• 39:43
  things and there's tremendous things that can be done with it.
• 39:46
  You know, when you, like we're not too far off where sex with robots will probably become
• 39:53
  a normal thing.
• 39:54
  I hate you saying that.
• 39:57
  What's that?
• 39:58
  I said I would love to unpack AI with you, probably on a different conversation, but I'm
• 40:03
  so deep down the rabbit trail with AI right now and so my belief, you talked about AI and
• 40:08
  how it affects all this else with addiction.
• 40:10
  My prediction has been within 12 to 18 months is the time frame, although I've been saying
• 40:15
  it for a couple months, so I should probably change my numbers.
• 40:18
  But that 12 to 18 month window, we're going to see such an economic divide in our country
• 40:26
  and it's not going to be racially driven, it's not going to be, you know, haves and
• 40:30
  have nods, it's going to be smart people and not smart people because smart people have
• 40:35
  now tapped into the limitless pill if they've been able to understand how to harness the
• 40:39
  power of AI to their advantage and people who have not or don't have the capacity to are
• 40:45
  going to find themselves left out of every opportunity.
• 40:50
  And it will be built in everything.
• 40:51
  We'll get to a point where they're not going to refer to it as AI anymore, it's just
• 40:54
  kind of what you do.
• 40:55
  It's just going to exist.
• 40:56
  Like, you know, remember people in the world wide web, how many people say that anymore?
• 41:00
  But when the internet first came out, everyone was talking about the world wide web, as
• 41:04
  if it's like, oh, there's this web, you know, now it's just, you know, it's, you know,
• 41:07
  we're just going to give it a name.
• 41:09
  Yeah.
• 41:10
  But yeah, I agree with you that there's an absolute lean into what can, I mean, my conversation
• 41:14
  with my staff, what can only the humans do?
• 41:17
  I only need you focused on what only the humans can do.
• 41:20
  Right.
• 41:21
  Because there's no reason for us to do the things that can be done by, by a bot.
• 41:25
  And there's no reason for us to, to not do the things and try to get the bot to do things
• 41:30
  that only humans can do.
• 41:31
  Like, at the phrase that I use with my own business is where relationship forward and
• 41:35
  AI fuel.
• 41:36
  Right.
• 41:37
  Right.
• 41:38
  Well, you see, that's, I'd love that line because it's all about relationships.
• 41:41
  I mean, you know, so technology is important, but psychology is infinitely more important.
• 41:48
  You have to be able to connect to people.
• 41:49
  So like, you know, shameless plug from my book, you know, what's in it for them?
• 41:54
  Ray Kurzweil, who's a friend of mine, he read it, he endorsed it.
• 41:59
  There's a blurb in there for them.
• 42:01
  Thank you.
• 42:02
  And like, you know, he refers to like a phone as a brain extender.
• 42:05
  And he, you know, is an engineer, what is this title at Google, you know, they're futurist
• 42:12
  or something.
• 42:13
  Yeah.
• 42:14
  Well, I mean, he's like, he's ahead of engineering at Google.
• 42:17
  And his, his team is the ones that, that originally created the AI that the majority of
• 42:24
  emails now are written by AI, they're self, you know, and before, you know, open AI came
• 42:30
  out and Chad G. P. T. and everything.
• 42:32
  You know, this team created that, he, his team created talk to books, you know, several
• 42:36
  years ago, before, you know, AI was unleashed in the world.
• 42:42
  And the, you know, so he would call phones a brain extender, because if you're, if you
• 42:47
  don't know where to drive, but you have GPS, if you don't, you know, you can do a search
• 42:51
  and find a restaurant or if you're doing your financing or your, whatever you can do,
• 42:56
  you know, it's extending your brain.
• 42:58
  AI is a whole nother level of brain extension.
• 43:01
  Well, and, and I would say it, it is.
• 43:03
  And for people, like I said, for, for someone like me, like, I feel like I've swallowed a
• 43:07
  limitless pill at this point because I can do the work of 10 people in an afternoon.
• 43:11
  Yeah.
• 43:12
  And, and my only stress is I could have gotten more done, had I just paid more attention.
• 43:15
  Right.
• 43:16
  Like, it's like, it, it feels unstoppable.
• 43:19
  But they were just doing studies recently showing FMRI scans of people who use AI too
• 43:25
  much.
• 43:26
  Oh, they're probably all messed up.
• 43:27
  And, well, the people who are using AI, the way that I believe I'm using AI, it's
• 43:31
  like, they're lighting up in incredible ways.
• 43:34
  They're tapping into pieces of the brain that has never been used before, because they're
• 43:38
  able to park all of this other nonsense and actually thrive in a higher level.
• 43:44
  People who are using it.
• 43:45
  I would love to see that.
• 43:46
  Like, I feel that speaking up to you.
• 43:47
  Because there, there was, but the other side of it, the scary part is that for the people
• 43:51
  that are using it like Google, like everything I need to know in the world, just ask
• 43:55
  you at GPT, and I never have to problem solve on my own, are actually already seen degradation
• 44:01
  on FMRIs.
• 44:02
  And AI has not been around that long.
• 44:04
  Yeah.
• 44:05
  Like, so this is not a longitudinal thing.
• 44:07
  We're not even there yet.
• 44:08
  No, it can happen very quickly.
• 44:09
  We're already showing grayed out areas where brain activity has already parked because they're
• 44:13
  not even using higher processing anymore.
• 44:16
  And that's, if you've seen the studies on the taxi cab drivers in London, right?
• 44:20
  Yes.
• 44:21
  They literally, you know, they have to learn all of the roads and their brains are so much
• 44:26
  more developed simply because of that.
• 44:29
  And now with AI, they don't need to do any of that anymore.
• 44:32
  And when you get self-driving cars, people aren't even looking where they're driving.
• 44:36
  And if something happened, they wouldn't even know where the hell they're at or how they
• 44:39
  even got there.
• 44:40
  Because they're completely, you know, and that, I don't think that's good for the brain
• 44:44
  if you.
• 44:45
  Not at all.
• 44:46
  They're literally just showing atrophy in regions of the brain that are central processing.
• 44:50
  But I believe that that's where we're going.
• 44:52
  And I'm going to, I'm saying it early, it's going to be like civil war, like, like differences
• 44:58
  because the haves and the have-nots are going to be like, they have nots don't chance
• 45:02
  to stand a chance.
• 45:03
  This isn't about who has the money, like, this is just who controls the world.
• 45:06
  Like, because, and everybody's on an equal playing field because it doesn't matter what
• 45:10
  you were born into.
• 45:12
  It doesn't matter what college degree you were able to go earn.
• 45:15
  Like at this point, I, again, I've got six, seven graduate degrees.
• 45:19
  Like, it's irrelevant because there's nothing I learned that I couldn't go pick up my
• 45:23
  phone right now and find out what it's done is taught me how to learn and taught me
• 45:29
  how to think, which is more important than the information overload.
• 45:33
  Well, I think, I think if I had to boil this down into like a way to think about it, it's
• 45:40
  I was doing an I love marketing, which is one of my podcasts, a meetup group in my
• 45:45
  office.
• 45:46
  I don't know.
• 45:47
  This must have been, what year was this 2000, maybe 14 or something, and, you know, Facebook
• 45:57
  was kind of like the thing back then for social media was really new and there was advertising
• 46:03
  and stuff and I remember asking the room, how many of you are on Facebook and majority
• 46:13
  people were?
• 46:14
  How many of you advertise on Facebook and there's like two people in this big room of people?
• 46:20
  And so it's like, okay, so the people that were, we talked to the people that were advertising
• 46:26
  on Facebook and they're talking about the results and how they were making money.
• 46:29
  It's like, okay, so you're using this, you're using Facebook to make money and to build
• 46:36
  your business.
• 46:37
  And then I was like, how many of you spent at least an hour or more a day on Facebook?
• 46:44
  A whole bunch of hands on them, the majority of people.
• 46:48
  And I said, okay, how many of you feel your life has improved as a result of it, a couple,
• 46:56
  but not the bit.
• 46:57
  It's like, okay, was it fair to say then that you're not using Facebook, Facebook's using
• 47:03
  you.
• 47:04
  So are you using technology or technology using you?
• 47:07
  So I always make the distinction, I don't want to use anyone, I don't want to be used
• 47:11
  by anyone.
• 47:12
  I want to utilize people and I want people to utilize me.
• 47:16
  So I want to be valuable and useful and it's often really hard to do when you're sucked
• 47:22
  into something and you don't even know you've been captured.
• 47:26
  People don't even see it.
• 47:27
  Well, yeah, well, if you can't identify the experiment, you are the experiment.
• 47:30
  Yes, exactly.
• 47:31
  Yeah, exactly.
• 47:32
  That's pretty much what a boy was down to and I think social media has taught us all
• 47:35
  of that.
• 47:36
  I want to be respectful of your time because we could probably sit here and talk on dozens
• 47:40
  of topics all day long.
• 47:41
  But the topic of addiction, I want you to get a closing word in here, like when you're
• 47:46
  in it.
• 47:47
  Well, what I would say is that if our five of Wednesday three genius recovery dot org
• 47:53
  could be of help, go there, you know, currently we're not selling anything, ultimately we'll
• 47:57
  have recovery kits that people can buy which are like first aid kits for recovery because
• 48:02
  I also own recovery kit dot com and that's one of the things I'm actually putting to
• 48:06
  go with a big help from your father, absolutely.
• 48:10
  And so we have a real therapist, not AI, Ken Wells, who's brilliant, has been doing it
• 48:18
  for decades that writes a brand new amazing blog twice a week and we publish that on a
• 48:25
  genius recovery.
• 48:26
  There's lots of interviews with you know, addicts experts, you know, people like my friend
• 48:30
  Gabb or Mate and Tommy Rosen in a, you know, a bunch of very smart people, Dr. Anna Lemke,
• 48:36
  who wrote dopamine nation.
• 48:38
  So we've got great interviews there.
• 48:39
  And if you're struggling with any behavior or substance that you can't stop, I cannot
• 48:47
  encourage you enough to seek out help.
• 48:51
  I wish, and easier said than done, I get all that.
• 48:55
  I spent a couple of decades in my life and mostly misery because I just had not done a deep
• 49:03
  enough work because it's hard work and it's scary, but we are learning so many things
• 49:08
  and oftentimes there are lots of solutions out there.
• 49:11
  And it's one of the things we take our members to prisons for my entrepreneurial group and
• 49:19
  the reason is that one of the best ways to feel better in your life is help other people.
• 49:24
  So if you think your life sucks, go do something of service, go to a homeless shelter, go to
• 49:29
  an animal shelter, go to a burn unit, do anything to help other humans, feed the homeless,
• 49:35
  you know, if you think your life sucks, go hang out with someone who's having difficulty
• 49:40
  in suffering, just be a giver.
• 49:42
  And it doesn't need to be, you know, people that are in the most horrible situations.
• 49:46
  It's just, you know, being an array of sunshine, I mean, you know, being nice to the people
• 49:52
  you meet on the way up, they're going to be the same people you meet on the way down.
• 49:55
  So don't ever, you know, give people a reason to think you're an asshole.
• 49:59
  And if you're moody and you're feeling like an asshole, you probably need to go hang
• 50:03
  out with someone that's encouraging and inspiring, you need to go help someone because it's
• 50:08
  really easy to get caught up in our own worlds of misery and suffering.
• 50:12
  And if you're in pain, ask for help because, you know, life rewards those that take action
• 50:20
  and if you're scared, you know, my partner, Dr. Sheree, you know, throw me one of, I got
• 50:29
  to end with this.
• 50:30
  This would be the best thing, if there's a book somewhere, might be a book.
• 50:33
  Yeah, yeah.
• 50:34
  Exactly.
• 50:35
  Yeah.
• 50:36
  Come on.
• 50:37
  We're live on camera here.
• 50:39
  So, it's a great book.
• 50:42
  Life is hard.
• 50:43
  The writing is amazing.
• 50:44
  Yeah.
• 50:45
  Yeah.
• 50:46
  I'll talk about it in a moment.
• 50:47
  It's hard.
• 50:48
  And you got to have fun.
• 50:49
  You know, I had a friend who spent half of his life in a wheelchair, Dave Kekitsch.
• 50:53
  He died a few years ago and never, never walked, but spent his whole life after he had his
• 50:59
  injury.
• 51:00
  He never walked.
• 51:01
  And he wrote these credos after he became paralyzed.
• 51:04
  In his mid-30s, he had, you know, all the external trappings of success, house and
• 51:10
  Huntington Beach, beautiful wife, multi-millionaire in the 70s when that was a shit ton of money,
• 51:17
  great physical shape, and it had a, you know, had a weird freak accident while he was exercising
• 51:23
  and got a slow bleed in his spinal cord and went into excruciating pain and by the time
• 51:28
  he got to the hospital, you know, he was, you know, completely like in misery.
• 51:34
  And they, you know, they didn't have a cure for it.
• 51:37
  And he became paralyzed.
• 51:38
  So, he never walked again, never had sex again, paralyzed from the chest down.
• 51:44
  He took him an hour to two hours a day just to get his body to be able to use, you know,
• 51:49
  the restroom.
• 51:51
  And, but he still developed himself into this incredible human, worked out with this, you
• 51:56
  know, sort of like a rower cardio thing and like, both legs type machines.
• 52:02
  And he always took care of his health, even though people that can walk will come up with
• 52:08
  excuses to eat like shit and not exercise, right?
• 52:11
  You know who Nick Voyager is?
• 52:13
  Yes, I met him.
• 52:14
  Yeah, yeah.
• 52:15
  Nick is the person that I always look to from that, right?
• 52:17
  Exactly.
• 52:18
  Life without limbs.
• 52:19
  Exactly.
• 52:20
  And no legs, no arms.
• 52:21
  I mean, you know, little, what he calls his chicken wing, right?
• 52:24
  And he's, yeah, incredible speaker.
• 52:26
  And my buddy Sean Stevenson never walked today in his life.
• 52:29
  So, you know, he, what, one of his creatives was life has seldom as bleak as it seems when
• 52:34
  it's going well, or, or, or, or, or, I'm sorry.
• 52:39
  Life has seldom as great as it seems when it's going well and seldom as bleak as it
• 52:43
  seems when it's going wrong, lighten up your live longer.
• 52:46
  So the whole point is just let, you know, when life sucks, find any excuse to laugh and
• 52:52
  go get out of your own misery because, you know, there's other people in misery.
• 52:57
  That's, I mean, the greatest way when I feel, believe me, I, I, I complain, I win a lot.
• 53:01
  I come up with all kinds of, you know, reasons to think like some sucks and then I need a
• 53:06
  perspective shift.
• 53:07
  So this is what went with.
• 53:08
  So Dr. Shareon is the top vaginal plastic surgeon in Arizona and she has a new book called
• 53:15
  Everything Men Know About Vaginas, Everything Men Know About Vaginas.com, it's a long
• 53:20
  URL, it's a long institute is her, her company, but she's a vaginal plastic surgeon.
• 53:25
  So she knows a lot and so she wrote this book, but men don't know a lot.
• 53:29
  So she wanted to actually help women and men out and so this is the book.
• 53:34
  It's soon to be translated into a couple of other languages and even put on audio when
• 53:40
  you, yeah, the whole book is blank.
• 53:44
  So, but the best thing is we leave this, you know, on coffee tables and stuff and every
• 53:48
  guy's like, just so damn curious and they pick, it ever just laughs or asks, so funny.
• 53:53
  We've got so many famous people that are, you know, holding this book in open, it's, it's
• 53:57
  just hysterical.
• 53:58
  The point is, yeah, when it comes to recovery, have fun, hang out with, look for things that
• 54:06
  expand you and don't contract you and when you find life contracting you, pain is a messenger.
• 54:13
  All of the pain in life is life's way of a neon sign saying pay attention, pay attention and so
• 54:18
  be a pain detective, don't try to numb your pain. So many people just try to, you know, numb it
• 54:25
  and it's like sometimes you gotta sit with it and you transcend suffering. I mean, I think
• 54:29
  that's what part of this life is because a big portion of life is suffering and, you know,
• 54:35
  not, not necessarily suffering but just suffering and when you are suffering help other people
• 54:41
  with their suffering and have as much fun along the way because life is the only thing worth
• 54:46
  living for.
• 54:47
  Well Joe, I appreciate your transparency in that and even sharing the decades of your life you
• 54:50
  spent in the suck and fortunately you're a person who worked through that to get to where you
• 54:57
  are today and I still do every day. I think everybody does at their own level but I'm glad you
• 55:01
  are who you are and where you are today because the rest of us benefit from that so I appreciate that.
• 55:05
  Thank you. Thank you for the time. Yeah, man, great, great challenge.
• 55:07
  Thank you, sir. Thank you, man, here. Guys, all of the notes and everything to get to genius
• 55:13
  recovery, to get to genius network, to get to Joe polished, to get to Shereeong, we'll put all of
• 55:18
  that down in the show notes so that you can go take a look at it. My encouragement to anybody
• 55:22
  who is dealing, we've talked predominantly about addiction here on today's episode and
• 55:26
  anyone who's dealing with addiction, please understand you're not there alone and as Joe mentioned
• 55:30
  that it's often the shame of the addiction that keeps the person in isolation,
• 55:35
  find community, find an A-group, find a support group, find a friend, I promise you there are people
• 55:40
  in your life who care enough to come alongside you and be part of that. I'd always encourage you
• 55:44
  to do that. If you go to genius recovery, look for the information that's there and anyone who's
• 55:49
  watching who just has a loved one who is struggling with that, do the same thing. Go to genius recovery,
• 55:55
  find the things that are there, there's resources, there's blogs, there's videos, there's
• 55:58
  any number of resources that you can have that actually makes that journey easier.
• 56:02
  But we're living it out and use the phrase one day at a time not to steal that from AA but
• 56:07
  literally all of us are just dealing with one day at a time with our own unique struggles.
• 56:11
  Don't live in yours alone. Thank you for watching us today on performance driven living and we'll
• 56:15
  see you next time.