Latest / LAUNCH: Parenting Tips for Raising Adult Children & Building Better Relationships / #96: Life-Changing Benefits of Quitting Cannabis: What Parents and Young Adults Need to Know

Transcript

#96: Life-Changing Benefits of Quitting Cannabis: What Parents and Young Adults Need to Know · LAUNCH: Parenting Tips for Raising Adult Children & Building Better Relationships

0:00
SPEAKER_01: I'm Sherry Jonas, and this is Launch, the podcast for parents with older kids in their 20s and 30s who are struggling.
0:09
SPEAKER_01: Each week, my guests and I discuss important issues centered around raising adult children and the challenges that many parents are experiencing.
0:19
SPEAKER_01: Today's episode is on a topic that comes up in every conversation I have with parents.
0:25
SPEAKER_01: When I hear this statement, my adult child is so unmotivated.
0:31
SPEAKER_01: My next question is always do they use cannabis?
0:36
SPEAKER_01: I wanted to have a guest on launch who could talk to us about cannabis, but who has also lived it.
0:42
SPEAKER_01: I found that in Dr.
0:44
SPEAKER_01: Frank.
0:45
SPEAKER_01: He's a chiropractic physician, a certified addiction peer recovery coach, and the founder of Addiction Mindset.
0:53
SPEAKER_01: What I respect most about Dr.
0:55
SPEAKER_01: Frank is that he doesn't hold back, and there's good reason for that.
0:59
SPEAKER_01: For years he struggled with his own substance abuse disorders, including cannabis, nicotine, stimulants, and energy drinks, which he turned to as a way to cope with the stress of rigorous schooling and daily life.
1:14
SPEAKER_01: His recovery began after suffering serious health consequences, which he openly shares with us.
1:20
SPEAKER_01: Today, Dr.
1:22
SPEAKER_01: Frank has helped thousands of people break the habit.
1:25
SPEAKER_01: In his own words, sobriety is not about what you are giving up, but rather everything you stand to gain back.
1:33
SPEAKER_01: This episode is for parents who want to know the truth about cannabis and how it's really impacting their adult child's mind, body, and life.
1:42
SPEAKER_01: Actually, it's for anyone who is willing to take an honest look at themselves because deep down they know how much better their world could be once they are free from this addiction.
1:54
SPEAKER_01: If cannabis is playing a role in your family, this is an episode you'll want to listen in on right to the very end.
2:03
SPEAKER_01: Hi, Dr.
2:04
SPEAKER_01: Frank.
2:05
SPEAKER_01: Hello there.
2:07
SPEAKER_01: You have helped thousands of people break their dependency on cannabis.
2:12
SPEAKER_01: And that brings me so much hope for all the young adults who are sitting in their bedrooms getting high every night.
2:20
SPEAKER_01: Plus, I know this conversation will help parents to understand just how badly cannabis is impacting their adult children's lives.
2:30
SPEAKER_01: So thank you for joining me here today on launch.
2:34
SPEAKER_00: Of course, I really appreciate you having me.
2:37
SPEAKER_01: There's not many episodes that I can wholeheartedly say to the listener, this one is for your adult kid.
2:44
SPEAKER_01: And that's because I know that if they quit using cannabis, their life would drastically improve.
2:52
SPEAKER_01: So for anyone who says they need to smoke every day to manage their anxiety, reduce their stress, and they think it's just a harmless way to relax, this episode will set the record straight.
3:08
SPEAKER_01: Today, Dr.
3:09
SPEAKER_01: Frank is going to tell you what cannabis is doing to your body, your mind, your motivation, and that it is getting in the way of you realizing your true potential and how much better life could be without it.
3:24
SPEAKER_01: Dr.
3:25
SPEAKER_01: Frank, I am looking forward to finally having this conversation on launch, especially with someone such as yourself who's been through it, who truly understands the benefit of quitting, and now helps other people break their addiction.
3:39
SPEAKER_01: So if you don't mind, let's begin with your story.
3:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, of course.
3:46
SPEAKER_00: So I started consuming cannabis probably somewhere around the age of 18 or 19 years old.
3:52
SPEAKER_00: It would have been early college, so I must have been probably around 19.
3:57
SPEAKER_00: And when I first started consuming cannabis, it was honestly um a very enjoyable experience.
4:02
SPEAKER_00: Uh, it was fun.
4:04
SPEAKER_00: I laughed a lot with my friends.
4:06
SPEAKER_00: It was a good time.
4:07
SPEAKER_00: And slowly over time, cannabis became this thing for me to kind of manage.
4:12
SPEAKER_00: You know, my parents were going through divorce, school was fairly rigorous.
4:16
SPEAKER_00: I have a doctorate in chiropractic, and it just became this kind of, I guess I'll use the word coping tool, but we'll back step on that later on.
4:25
SPEAKER_00: And it became something that I became very dependent on, like psychologically to start.
4:30
SPEAKER_00: And then I continued consuming it.
4:32
SPEAKER_00: It started as just like a weekend thing, then it became an every evening thing, then sometimes it became a weekend thing during the days, and then every evening during the week.
4:42
SPEAKER_00: And over the that period of time, I will note I was also in college, so like I was binge drinking a decent amount, and I was fatigued.
4:51
SPEAKER_00: So I was constantly consuming like stimulants, monster energy drinks, Red Bulls, pre-workout powders, all those things.
4:57
SPEAKER_00: And I also carried over a pretty um nasty uh nicotine uh substance use as well, too, in the form of cigarettes, vapes, chewing tobacco, all that stuff.
5:07
SPEAKER_00: So I had a few different things going on.
5:09
SPEAKER_00: But with regards specifically to cannabis, I'd say from the age of 23 to 25, my consumption really started to ramp up quite a bit.
5:18
SPEAKER_00: And by the age of 27, 28, I found myself in a pretty bad spot.
5:24
SPEAKER_00: I now was an entrepreneur and I had built a very successful chiropractic practice in my area, but behind the scenes, things were kind of falling apart.
5:34
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I developed a condition called cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, and I had stage one of CHS.
5:41
SPEAKER_00: So I was experiencing weight loss, widespread body pain, uh, kind of really bad like emotional dysregulation.
5:50
SPEAKER_00: And I just looked sickly.
5:52
SPEAKER_00: Like I had gone from I think 160 pounds down to 137 pounds, and I really didn't feel good.
5:59
SPEAKER_00: And I was seeing all different types of doctors, they were trying to figure out what's going on.
6:03
SPEAKER_00: They thought I had autoimmune diseases.
6:05
SPEAKER_00: A lot of them would just brush off cannabis, especially this is going back, you know, 10 years ago, like, oh, that's probably not it.
6:11
SPEAKER_00: That's not that big of a deal.
6:13
SPEAKER_00: But it turns out like cannabis was quite literally like killing me at that point from CHS.
6:18
SPEAKER_00: And then I also wound up developing an acute state of psychosis from my cannabis consumption.
6:24
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't like a prolonged psychosis, but I I acutely went like psychotic for like 48 hours or something like that.
6:31
SPEAKER_00: And I had like delusions and visions of like grandeur, and then I actually had peripheral hallucinations occurring at the time.
6:39
SPEAKER_00: And it was shortly after that I stopped consuming cannabis.
6:43
SPEAKER_00: Now, when I went to stop, it was very challenging because I I wanted to stop because I knew I was capable of more.
6:52
SPEAKER_00: Like I knew, even though I achieved a decent amount, I got a doctorate in chiropractic, built up a really nice private practice.
6:59
SPEAKER_00: I knew I was capable of so much more, which turned out to be true.
7:02
SPEAKER_00: My bet was right.
7:04
SPEAKER_00: And uh I just really didn't feel good physically anymore.
7:07
SPEAKER_00: And I had tried to change everything else, right?
7:09
SPEAKER_00: I had seen the doctors, I had changed my diet, I'm trying to do all these different things, but there was one elephant in the room that remained, and that was my cannabis consumption.
7:19
SPEAKER_00: And I just eventually made the decision, okay, I'm gonna stop and we're gonna see if my life improves.
7:25
SPEAKER_00: And I was under the faith or the belief that life would improve without cannabis, which it did.
7:30
SPEAKER_00: When I went to stop, I had a relatively hard time because at that point I was a working professional, I had a reputation in my community.
7:39
SPEAKER_00: A lot of physicians didn't really know what to do with cannabis at the time, so I did not have much support in that regard because no one really know what knew what to do with it.
7:50
SPEAKER_00: It'd be like, well, you can go to therapy, you can go to an AA meeting, you can do this, you can do that.
7:56
SPEAKER_00: And I just found none of that to be very effective.
8:01
SPEAKER_00: So after I got through the dependency, I think it was about two years later, I started making YouTube content and TikTok videos about struggling with cannabis and nicotine.
8:11
SPEAKER_00: It started to resonate with a lot of people.
8:14
SPEAKER_00: I started working with high schools, I started working with colleges.
8:18
SPEAKER_00: I actually, my company received grants in New York State for working with high schools on cannabis uh substance use and nicotine uh substance use.
8:27
SPEAKER_00: And then it eventually parlayed into me.
8:29
SPEAKER_00: Now I work predominantly with like adults and working professionals who struggle with dependency because I was getting DMs and emails every day of people saying, Can I work with you?
8:39
SPEAKER_00: No one ever talks about this.
8:40
SPEAKER_00: Um, like you know, I'm kind of doing the same thing and everyone's brushing it off like it's nothing.
8:45
SPEAKER_00: And now here we are today on this podcast at 37 years old, 10 years later.
8:50
SPEAKER_01: If you remember when we first spoke, I explained that our listening audience are parents of older kids in their 20s and 30s, and that one of their biggest complaints to me is that their kids have no motivation.
9:04
SPEAKER_01: And when I ask them if there's cannabis use, many respond with yes or I think so.
9:11
SPEAKER_01: But what they don't know is just how much this is causing that problem.
9:18
SPEAKER_01: And in all fairness, a lot of these parents say to me, When I was their age, I partied, but I still functioned.
9:26
SPEAKER_01: So let's begin by sharing with the listener how this is not the same drug anymore, that it is so much worse and in fact more dangerous than ever before.
9:37
SPEAKER_00: There's there's maybe a number of factors that go into this.
9:40
SPEAKER_00: So one would just be the the increased potency of it.
9:44
SPEAKER_00: It's just it and I shouldn't say that there wasn't potent cannabis back in the day, but most people did not have access to that.
9:51
SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, maybe Snoop Dogg did, because he had the financial means to have access to it.
9:56
SPEAKER_00: Now it's relatively easy, it's cheap to get like high potency cannabis.
10:01
SPEAKER_00: So that's one problem.
10:03
SPEAKER_00: And now you have the uh method of delivery has also radically changed.
10:08
SPEAKER_00: You know, you have the vape cartridges now, and that's really what escalated my dependency to a bad place because now I wasn't like rolling a joint or smoking a one-hitter, smoking a bong that was like a process and it smelled, and I had to hide it.
10:22
SPEAKER_00: Now I got this little dab pen, and this is what most younger people are using.
10:26
SPEAKER_00: I got this little cartridge that I can consume the same way I would consume nicotine, the same way you know someone would change smoke cigarettes.
10:33
SPEAKER_00: There's a smell, but it's not as potent.
10:35
SPEAKER_00: It's discrete, it's easy to use, and it's an it's uh, you know, it's like a concentrate.
10:41
SPEAKER_00: It's like really highly concentrated THC.
10:44
SPEAKER_00: And so that's like probably the one of the biggest issues.
10:48
SPEAKER_00: Like it's it's really easy to get high potency stuff these days and like really rapid methods of delivery into the body.
10:56
SPEAKER_00: Um, so I'd say that's the one thing that's a big difference.
10:59
SPEAKER_00: Now, you also run into other issues today, too, though, that do with like regulatory testing and the pesticides that are popping up on these products, and then you have black market products, and then you have gray market products.
11:14
SPEAKER_00: So they look like they're like from a legitimate dispensary, but they're really not.
11:19
SPEAKER_00: Or you have these products that are passing through loopholes.
11:23
SPEAKER_00: You can have Delta 9 THC banned in a state, but Delta 8 THC, which isn't like a true synthetic of cannabis, but it kind of is, is legal.
11:35
SPEAKER_00: So you have these really high potency concentrates that we've never really had before in the past.
11:40
SPEAKER_00: And that's a problem.
11:42
SPEAKER_00: You have websites that you can readily buy these on.
11:44
SPEAKER_00: Anyone can buy them, kids will buy them right off of Snapchat and stuff like that.
11:49
SPEAKER_00: And they'll go to extremes when it comes to faking looking like a legitimate product, and then you'll see something that says certificate of analysis, which is supposed to be all the third-party testing on their cannabis.
12:03
SPEAKER_00: I have seen brands totally fake their certificate of analysis, or like they'll do a COA on one batch of production back in 2020 and it's 2026, and they have no updated COAs on their product.
12:19
SPEAKER_00: So you don't know what pesticides, fungicides, and things like that are present.
12:24
SPEAKER_00: But the other big issue that's kind of come to people's attention is like, hey, inside your body, you have this system called your endocannabinoid system, and it produces its own versions of, let's say, THC and CBD.
12:38
SPEAKER_00: These are the pleasure molecules that are released when you get a runner's high.
12:42
SPEAKER_00: It's not so much dopamine, it's your body making its own endocannabinoids.
12:47
SPEAKER_00: When someone starts consuming really high potency THC constantly without a break, obviously that system is going to start to have some degree of down regulation, and the person can become quite literally physically dependent upon the substance to function.
13:04
SPEAKER_00: And this endocannabinoid system impacts almost every other system in the body.
13:09
SPEAKER_00: It impacts your cardiac system, it impacts your circadian rhythm, your sleep-wake cycles, it plays a huge role in like hormonal regulation downstream, it plays a role in uh gut function and GI function.
13:21
SPEAKER_00: You have like billions of endocannabinoid receptors in your gut.
13:25
SPEAKER_00: And now this question of like, wait a minute, when is this system even fully developed in a person?
13:30
SPEAKER_00: Is that before the age of 25, after the age of 25?
13:34
SPEAKER_00: And we're just uh I'd say learning more about this system now.
13:39
SPEAKER_00: And we're not there because like it's a very complex system.
13:43
SPEAKER_00: And this ties into the original thing you said about low motivation in people.
13:47
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, you have a younger uh individual who's consuming a lot of cannabis consistently at a high potency.
13:54
SPEAKER_00: When you consume a drug over and over again, eventually that downregulates dopamine production because the brain says, like, wait a minute, you've gone too far on the side of dopamine.
14:04
SPEAKER_00: So now I'm gonna downregulate dopamine production, I'm gonna downregulate the sensitivity to it.
14:09
SPEAKER_00: Dopamine is responsible for motivation.
14:12
SPEAKER_00: But now we've also set the tolerance way up here to experience pleasure and to experience reward.
14:19
SPEAKER_00: I gotta have a bunch of THC to feel something.
14:22
SPEAKER_00: Now you remove that, the person's body has downregulated its own internal production.
14:28
SPEAKER_00: There's not much pleasure, there's not much reward, and dopamine has been flatlined.
14:33
SPEAKER_00: There's no motivation there.
14:35
SPEAKER_00: It's gone.
14:36
SPEAKER_00: There's there's no pleasure or reward in seeking the goal.
14:38
SPEAKER_00: And the very neurochemical that you need to create motivation has been flatlined through substance use.
14:45
SPEAKER_00: Um, a great book that explains the dopamine aspect is the book Dopamine Nation by Dr.
14:50
SPEAKER_00: Anna Lemke.
14:51
SPEAKER_00: I would highly recommend that to your listeners.
14:53
SPEAKER_01: So that's what you're talking about with the dopamine deficit.
14:56
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
14:56
SPEAKER_00: Any substance that's consumed like in high amounts, or I'll say like abused, um, over a prolonged period of time, it's pretty widely accepted that that's eventually going to result in a dopamine deficit, which is also very confusing to people.
15:10
SPEAKER_00: I call people out on this all the time.
15:12
SPEAKER_00: They're like, oh, I think I'm just addicted to the dopamine hit.
15:16
SPEAKER_00: And that sounds wonderful.
15:18
SPEAKER_00: Like, give me a drug, it has dopamine.
15:20
SPEAKER_00: Give me more of that drug.
15:21
SPEAKER_00: Who doesn't want that?
15:22
SPEAKER_00: And I tell people, like, whoa, whoa, whoa, the thing you think you're getting at this point in your dependency, you're getting the opposite.
15:28
SPEAKER_00: You're just further suppressing dopamine production and sensitivity and stuff like that.
15:32
SPEAKER_00: Um, but even the belief that, like, oh, there's dopamine on the other side of this joint is a very powerful belief for someone to go consume a drug.
15:41
SPEAKER_00: Once I learned, like, oh, that's not true.
15:43
SPEAKER_00: I'm not even getting dopamine from this anymore.
15:45
SPEAKER_00: I was like, wait a minute, why am I doing this then?
15:47
SPEAKER_01: Why am I doing this then?
15:50
SPEAKER_01: That is like the big question.
15:52
SPEAKER_01: I've heard you talk about something you call the subconscious rot.
15:57
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
15:58
SPEAKER_01: Can you elaborate on those three issues?
16:00
SPEAKER_01: I believe, and I'll just say them because I want you to break them down, but together it's the I can't mentality, being complacent when the with the things you can change, and indecision with your commitments.
16:15
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, these were big things that I experienced um throughout my cannabis consumption.
16:20
SPEAKER_00: So here I am struggling with this dependency, and I'm fully convinced at convinced at points that I can't stop.
16:29
SPEAKER_00: And eventually that I can't started to spill over into multiple aspects of my life, which was very strange for a young, ambitious guy, entrepreneur, good education.
16:39
SPEAKER_00: And suddenly I'm finding myself, well, I can't get my business successful.
16:43
SPEAKER_00: Well, I don't know, I I can't get my own house one day.
16:47
SPEAKER_00: Well, I can't, I can't, I can't.
16:49
SPEAKER_00: It just became like a normalcy for me to say, I can't.
16:53
SPEAKER_00: And a lot of that, I believe, developed throughout my dependency to cannabis and other substances because I became truly convinced that I couldn't break free of this dependency.
17:05
SPEAKER_00: And I just started saying, like, I can't more often than saying I can.
17:10
SPEAKER_00: And I was always someone who said I can.
17:12
SPEAKER_00: And that was horrible.
17:14
SPEAKER_00: Now I'll tell you, once I broke that dependency, I was like, I can do anything.
17:18
SPEAKER_00: That was really hard for me.
17:19
SPEAKER_00: I didn't think I could do it.
17:21
SPEAKER_00: I can take over YouTube when it comes to a uh whatever social media I plan on doing.
17:25
SPEAKER_00: I can build the business, I can do this.
17:27
SPEAKER_00: That's very much my mindset now.
17:29
SPEAKER_00: And that flip came back when I quit cannabis.
17:32
SPEAKER_00: The complacency I see all the time in many regards.
17:36
SPEAKER_00: A lot of people will become very, I don't even want to say content, but they'll fall for the illusion of being content with things in their life that they're fully capable of changing.
17:46
SPEAKER_00: I deal with this a lot now with adults.
17:48
SPEAKER_00: They're in a relationship they don't like, but they're like, well, whatever.
17:52
SPEAKER_00: As long as I get high, I'll just deal with it.
17:54
SPEAKER_00: Um, someone's working in a career that they're dissatisfied in and they're like, eh, whatever, I'll just stay put here.
18:00
SPEAKER_00: I can go home and get high at night.
18:02
SPEAKER_00: It's not that bad.
18:03
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I'll see it with people who are very successful.
18:06
SPEAKER_00: Uh I run a law firm and I really don't like doing all this paperwork, but I'm the only one who can do it.
18:12
SPEAKER_00: I'll just keep doing it because as long as I'm high, I can do the mundane work.
18:16
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, hire a paralegal, hire more staff.
18:19
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to do that.
18:21
SPEAKER_00: Um your marriage is falling apart, it's been falling apart for 20 years.
18:24
SPEAKER_00: Why are you guys staying together?
18:26
SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, the cannabis kind of keeps me at bay from stirring things up.
18:30
SPEAKER_00: This person treats you horrible.
18:32
SPEAKER_00: Why are you staying in this marriage?
18:33
SPEAKER_00: What are you doing?
18:34
SPEAKER_00: You know, so um that's where I see the complacency.
18:37
SPEAKER_00: People become very comfortable in situations that they're truly not comfortable with.
18:43
SPEAKER_00: And I think cannabis makes that okay.
18:45
SPEAKER_00: It makes people tolerant of things that they don't need to be tolerant of.
18:49
SPEAKER_00: Um, and then lastly, in the indecision, it was just every other day for years.
18:55
SPEAKER_00: I was like, today's the day I'm gonna quit and then I don't.
18:58
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna quit next week and then I don't.
19:00
SPEAKER_00: Oh no, I'm just gonna keep smoking.
19:02
SPEAKER_00: It is what it is.
19:03
SPEAKER_00: I was I became so indecisive in my decisions, and that indecision started to rot, just like the I can't mentality into multiple other aspects of my life.
19:14
SPEAKER_00: Oh, we're gonna do this with our office.
19:16
SPEAKER_00: No, we're not.
19:17
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I'm gonna do this with uh patient fees, no, we're not.
19:20
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I'm gonna date this girl.
19:22
SPEAKER_00: Uh no, I'm not.
19:23
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
19:24
SPEAKER_00: It just I became very indecisive.
19:27
SPEAKER_00: I didn't trust myself anymore.
19:29
SPEAKER_00: I I wake up one day saying I'm gonna stop smoking and then I don't.
19:32
SPEAKER_00: The next but eight hours later, I'm doing it again.
19:35
SPEAKER_00: I I just I lost trust in myself because of like repetitive indecision when it came to substances.
19:42
SPEAKER_00: And those are the three forms of uh subconscious rot that I experience from substance use.
19:48
SPEAKER_01: So when people say that cannabis helps them with their anxiety, how do you respond to that?
19:53
SPEAKER_00: Great.
19:54
SPEAKER_00: So it's gonna be unique for each person.
19:57
SPEAKER_00: And you know, I never discredit people, like it's meaningless for me to say cannabis doesn't help you with your anxiety because it's that's just like me giving my opinion to someone.
20:08
SPEAKER_00: But if I can find ways in their life to prove that that is not true and reflect that back onto that person, now we're actually challenging that belief.
20:19
SPEAKER_00: I'll give you an example.
20:21
SPEAKER_00: Someone says cannabis really helps me with my anxiety, Frank.
20:24
SPEAKER_00: And I say, okay, that sounds good.
20:26
SPEAKER_00: Like, that's a great reason to use cannabis.
20:28
SPEAKER_00: Who doesn't want less anxiety?
20:29
SPEAKER_00: I want less anxiety.
20:30
SPEAKER_00: And then I'm like, all right, why do you want to quit consuming cannabis?
20:34
SPEAKER_00: And they're like, you know, I'm hiding it from my my wife or a kid, I'm hiding it from my parents, and it's really straining our relationship.
20:41
SPEAKER_00: My parents won't let me drive the car.
20:43
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I'm really falling behind in school.
20:45
SPEAKER_00: I used to get A's and now I'm failing out of my classes, and I don't know if I'm gonna get the career that I want.
20:50
SPEAKER_00: And oh man, I used to play football and I can't even run anymore.
20:54
SPEAKER_00: And like, I don't know, it's just I don't even want to go out with my friends because I know we're gonna do something physically active, and I'm so anxious because I know I can't do it.
21:03
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, interesting.
21:04
SPEAKER_00: So, how's cannabis help you with your anxiety?
21:07
SPEAKER_00: Because I'm like, all those things are very anxiety provoking to me.
21:10
SPEAKER_00: Your family's at odds with you, your wife doesn't know.
21:13
SPEAKER_00: Um, you're falling behind in work because you're procrastinating because you're high and the work is piling up.
21:19
SPEAKER_00: Are you sure it's helping you with your anxiety?
21:21
SPEAKER_00: Like, I'm not sold on that.
21:23
SPEAKER_00: Try and sell me on that again.
21:24
SPEAKER_00: If you were selling me that drug, you just did a really bad job of it.
21:28
SPEAKER_00: And then they're like, oh, that sounds kind of stupid, doesn't it?
21:30
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, I don't know.
21:31
SPEAKER_00: I'm just repeating back to you what you said.
21:33
SPEAKER_00: You told me it helped, and then you told me all these things that sound very anxiety provoking to me.
21:38
SPEAKER_00: And then we get through that, and that's challenging the belief.
21:41
SPEAKER_00: Then we got to go through well, what aspects of anxiety probably are addressed?
21:47
SPEAKER_00: You consumed a drug and it changed how you felt physiologically.
21:51
SPEAKER_00: You can associate that change in physiology with whatever thought you want.
21:55
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I was stressed.
21:57
SPEAKER_00: Now I consumed weed, I feel different.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: Must be what anxiety really feels like.
22:02
SPEAKER_00: You can make that interpretation.
22:04
SPEAKER_00: Someone else can say, I consumed weed, now I feel different, and I feel paranoid, and I don't like how this feels.
22:09
SPEAKER_00: I feel more anxious.
22:10
SPEAKER_00: That's open to that person's interpretation.
22:12
SPEAKER_00: So I tell people, likely what you felt is just a physiological change in sensation.
22:17
SPEAKER_00: And you're now associating that change in sensation with something else.
22:21
SPEAKER_00: So we have to address that.
22:22
SPEAKER_00: Then we have to address what anxiety probably is relieved.
22:27
SPEAKER_00: And this is Alan Carr's stuff the anxiety from the craving itself.
22:32
SPEAKER_00: So I'm dependent upon cannabis.
22:34
SPEAKER_00: I have cravings every day for it.
22:36
SPEAKER_00: I consume it and I have less anxiety because now temporarily I alleviated the anxiety of the craving.
22:43
SPEAKER_00: And that can feel very powerful if I'm associating that anxiety relief with some other aspect of my life that was anxiety provoking.
22:52
SPEAKER_00: So we got to kind of challenge people like, how is it relieving your anxiety?
22:57
SPEAKER_00: Like, is that actually true?
22:59
SPEAKER_00: Then we have to address like what probably is happening.
23:02
SPEAKER_00: You have a physiological change in sensation, and you did get some anxiety relief from the craving that the drug itself caused, which is again like Alan Carr's whole thing, um, which is really good.
23:12
SPEAKER_00: Um, then I tell people if you really want to tie that all together, now we challenged the perception, we addressed what you're actually feeling, and now we have to go prove it to be true.
23:24
SPEAKER_00: Now you have to go face anxiety and you have to get through it without the drug, and you have to prove to your brain that it was you solving the anxiety the whole time, not the drug.
23:33
SPEAKER_00: You're giving credit where it's not due.
23:36
SPEAKER_00: And that's how I would challenge anxiety with a person, um, depending on what they tell me and what points I can push back on with them.
23:43
SPEAKER_01: What if they say they're using it because they're bored?
23:45
SPEAKER_00: You know, one of my more famous quotes, I say, cannabis doesn't cure boredom.
23:48
SPEAKER_00: It makes you content with being bored.
23:50
SPEAKER_00: So that goes back to the you're you know, I I had a guy the other day say this to me, he's like, you know, man, I'm just so bored.
23:56
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, dude, here's what I want you to do.
23:58
SPEAKER_00: Film yourself next time you're high and send me the video or call me and let me know what you're up to.
24:03
SPEAKER_00: And he texts me, he's like, Oh, I was way too embarrassed to send you that.
24:06
SPEAKER_00: I was like, why?
24:07
SPEAKER_00: He's like, I was sitting on the couch, like breathing out of my mouth, scrolling my phone for like an hour and a half.
24:12
SPEAKER_00: I was like, that sounds boring.
24:14
SPEAKER_00: And he was like, it is boring.
24:16
SPEAKER_00: I was like, right.
24:18
SPEAKER_00: So, how again did cannabis fix the boredom?
24:21
SPEAKER_00: And unfortunately, I think for a lot of people, you know, they get used to, I got used to consuming cannabis, and I got used to like not doing stuff.
24:30
SPEAKER_00: So, yes, when I quit, I was bored because I lost a lot of my interest.
24:35
SPEAKER_00: I lost a lot of my hobbies.
24:37
SPEAKER_00: I had set my tolerance for excitement way up here.
24:41
SPEAKER_00: I needed cannabis, alcohol, constant stimulation to feel something.
24:45
SPEAKER_00: I had screwed that whole neurochemistry up.
24:48
SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, I was bored, but that doesn't mean that consuming cannabis is somehow going to solve that boredom.
24:55
SPEAKER_00: I think consuming cannabis made me content with being bored, but it certainly wasn't a solution to it.
25:01
SPEAKER_00: And for me, it became very evident that cannabis was the direct result of me being bored.
25:08
SPEAKER_00: I stopped consuming cannabis, I gave my brain the space to heal and process things, I allowed for time uh to be open, and I'm an active guy.
25:18
SPEAKER_00: Eventually, my brain was like, hey, we got to do something.
25:21
SPEAKER_00: And what do you know?
25:22
SPEAKER_00: I decided to pick up a cell phone one day and start yapping into a cell phone, and now I'm on a podcast with you.
25:27
SPEAKER_00: And before this, I was on a phone call with a guy from Dubai, and you know, a couple years ago I was at a high school giving presentations.
25:33
SPEAKER_00: I'm never bored now.
25:34
SPEAKER_00: I'm never bored.
25:36
SPEAKER_00: Um I can be bored, but you know, I don't see cannabis as a solution to that.
25:41
SPEAKER_01: No, it's nothing wrong with being bored.
25:43
SPEAKER_00: Like, if being bored is the biggest problem I'm facing today, that's not a problem.
25:49
SPEAKER_01: And I don't remember the last time I was bored.
25:52
SPEAKER_01: But all I know when we both are parents, all I know is that when your kids are come to you and they say I'm bored, go good.
25:58
SPEAKER_01: Figure something out to do.
25:59
SPEAKER_01: When we were younger, we when we were bored, we went out and played.
26:03
SPEAKER_00: I tell people, like, your brain will come up with something, it's not gonna let you sit there and rot, but if you give it a drug, it might.
26:10
SPEAKER_00: It might it might sedate you to a point where you sit there and rot.
26:13
SPEAKER_00: And that's how some people feel when they're in active dependency.
26:15
SPEAKER_00: They feel like they're rotting away because they kind of are.
26:18
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, give your brain the space to be bored, it will do something.
26:22
SPEAKER_00: I never knew I was gonna be on social media.
26:24
SPEAKER_00: I never would have guessed that.
26:26
SPEAKER_00: Not a million years.
26:26
SPEAKER_00: That's what my brain came up with.
26:28
SPEAKER_00: Cool.
26:29
SPEAKER_01: You say that it's almost impossible to break a dependency if you don't understand why you're struggling to stop.
26:37
SPEAKER_01: Say more about that.
26:39
SPEAKER_00: So there's typically if you don't understand the problem that you're facing, it's impossible to solve the problem if you can't even see what the problem is.
26:47
SPEAKER_00: And for a lot of people in active dependency, it's very hard to see what the problem is because you're under the illusion or delusion of dependency.
26:54
SPEAKER_00: You have a lot of drugs in your system, so you don't have that mental clarity.
26:58
SPEAKER_00: For most people, when it comes to substance consumption, I'll say a majority, it's either they have a physical dependency, a physiological dependency, and we'll use alcohol just because this is a more clearly understood example.
27:09
SPEAKER_00: But like someone's drinking 10, 20, 30 beers a day and they want to stop.
27:15
SPEAKER_00: They've made up their mind, they're done with alcohol, and they go to stop and they have a seizure, and they're like, oh, I have to drink now because I'm gonna die if I don't drink.
27:25
SPEAKER_00: They start getting DTs.
27:26
SPEAKER_00: They can't stop because they're physiologically dependent to it.
27:30
SPEAKER_00: And the solution is a medical detox.
27:32
SPEAKER_00: They need to be medically detoxed from that drug so they can do it safely, and they can then stop.
27:37
SPEAKER_00: That's some people that I deal with.
27:39
SPEAKER_00: A majority of people that I deal with is the psychological dependency.
27:44
SPEAKER_00: They have perceptions and beliefs surrounding the consumption of a drug, and that's what keeps them coming back.
27:50
SPEAKER_00: Someone says, I quit cannabis for a month, like easy.
27:55
SPEAKER_00: You know, I went to Europe, I was traveling, it was no big deal, and now I came home and I'm consuming it again.
28:00
SPEAKER_00: Like the day I came back, what happened?
28:02
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I don't know, you tell me what happened.
28:04
SPEAKER_00: And they're like, oh yeah, I got back and um I had this major business problem that came up.
28:09
SPEAKER_00: And you know, I was so stressed, so I consumed cannabis.
28:12
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, oh, you never addressed the concept that somehow cannabis is a solution to stress for you.
28:18
SPEAKER_00: So here you are traveling, distracting yourself from consuming, but the want to consume cannabis is still very strong because you never address the cannabis, doesn't actually solve your stress.
28:30
SPEAKER_00: And that's like a psychological dependency, which I say is like, I don't know, 90% of people that struggle with substance use, there's a very strong perception of value as to what that drug does for them.
28:43
SPEAKER_00: And until you break that and until you identify what that perception is, it's it's really hard to stop.
28:49
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
28:49
SPEAKER_01: So when you talk about the psychological aspects of quitting, is it how how much does fear play a role?
28:57
SPEAKER_00: Massively.
28:58
SPEAKER_00: And it's on two ends of the spectrum.
29:00
SPEAKER_00: I never like to approach it from a standpoint of fear, and I always like to dismantle fear with people, and there's two two sides of fear.
29:06
SPEAKER_00: One side of fear is the person who says, I can't stop.
29:11
SPEAKER_00: What's my life going to be like if I continue down this road?
29:15
SPEAKER_00: How bad is it gonna get?
29:16
SPEAKER_00: And that's not a good feeling.
29:18
SPEAKER_00: It's like, oh my gosh, things are gonna get so bad, I can't handle this.
29:22
SPEAKER_00: It leads to a lot of overwhelm, and we never address the fact that cannabis doesn't help with overwhelm, and then they just consume more of the drug because they have so much fear surrounding, I can't stop, this is gonna be a lifelong problem, my life is gonna fall apart.
29:36
SPEAKER_01: Okay, you say that breaking the cannabis addiction is a game of elimination, not addition.
29:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, a lot of people will aim to stop the consumption of a substance by adding more to their plate.
29:50
SPEAKER_00: I have to have the perfect routine.
29:52
SPEAKER_00: I I just have to be busy 24-7 and not think about the drug, and then I won't consume it.
29:57
SPEAKER_00: That is unsustainable, and you are running.
30:00
SPEAKER_00: You're running from your own mind, and you you you cannot sustain that.
30:05
SPEAKER_00: I'll see people who are like, yeah, you know what?
30:06
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna quit cannabis.
30:08
SPEAKER_00: They have no prior workout experience or exercise experience.
30:11
SPEAKER_00: They're like, I'm gonna work out six days a week.
30:13
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna go to yoga in the morning, weightlifting in the afternoon, cold plunge in the morning, and sauna at night.
30:19
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, okay, if that enhances your quality of life and you feel better, do it.
30:24
SPEAKER_00: But don't think just by cramming your schedule, you're going to outrun the thoughts that you have as to why you want to consume the drug.
30:34
SPEAKER_00: That won't happen.
30:35
SPEAKER_00: And guess what?
30:36
SPEAKER_00: What happens when you tear your rotator cuff because you haven't been working out and now you overdid it, and now you can't go to the gym at all?
30:42
SPEAKER_00: They're right back to using the drug again because now that habit replacement, quote unquote, is gone.
30:48
SPEAKER_00: This individual doesn't need more added to their routine.
30:52
SPEAKER_00: We just we just have to remove cannabis.
30:55
SPEAKER_00: It's much simpler to do that than to try and replace it.
30:59
SPEAKER_00: And if you're trying to replace it, it means that you're trying to fill a void.
31:04
SPEAKER_00: And if you're trying to fill a void, it means that you still hold that drug in high value and high regard because it shouldn't feel like there's a void when we stop.
31:13
SPEAKER_00: Or if it does, it should be very short-lived.
31:15
SPEAKER_00: So that's what I mean.
31:17
SPEAKER_00: It's much easier to eliminate stuff than it is to add more stuff onto it to solve a problem.
31:23
SPEAKER_01: So let's say from people who habitually smoke the same time of day, maybe it's after work, before they go to bed to help them sleep.
31:32
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
31:32
SPEAKER_01: So now we know it's it's partially physical, right?
31:36
SPEAKER_01: Because now they feel that they can't go to they can't sleep without it.
31:40
SPEAKER_01: Or it's very much a habit.
31:43
SPEAKER_01: It's almost like, well, this is what I do.
31:45
SPEAKER_01: I have my dinner, I turn on my, you know, I turn on Netflix, I s and I smoke, and it relaxes me and I fall asleep.
31:52
SPEAKER_01: It's part of their routine.
31:54
SPEAKER_01: Let's say for me, I would have ice cream every night.
31:59
SPEAKER_01: I I finish dinner, I'm starting to watch my show, I'm in the mood for something sweet, I reach for the ice cream.
32:05
SPEAKER_01: I say to myself, okay, I want to eliminate my need or my the habit of having ice cream.
32:13
SPEAKER_01: So there's nothing else I can do.
32:16
SPEAKER_01: I can am I gonna add in a fruit?
32:18
SPEAKER_01: You say, don't add in anything, just eliminate.
32:21
SPEAKER_01: But I could add in a fruit, I could replace the need for my ice cream with another healthier thing.
32:27
SPEAKER_01: Like, let's help somebody right now who's in the thick of this sort of like habit, and they just want to break the habit, and they know that it's gonna be a bit of a process to change their lifestyle and stop doing what they've been doing, but they're they don't know how to eliminate or change the habit.
32:45
SPEAKER_01: And and I'm leading you to into the next question.
32:48
SPEAKER_01: I want to make ice cream irrelevant in my life.
32:54
SPEAKER_01: I don't even want to think about it.
32:56
SPEAKER_01: I want to sit down after dinner, watch my show, and not even think about ice cream.
33:00
SPEAKER_01: And the same thing goes for these people that are smoking, they want to make it so they don't even think about it.
33:06
SPEAKER_01: How does one do that?
33:09
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so on the the first part, like replacing ice cream with an apple or I eat figs at night, okay?
33:15
SPEAKER_00: Could you replace it with something healthier?
33:17
SPEAKER_00: Yes, there's nothing wrong with that, but I'm not necessarily replacing it with something healthier in hopes of like, oh, this is gonna replace this drug or this food.
33:28
SPEAKER_00: I'm replacing it with something healthier because I'm like, if I eat figs instead of ice cream every night, I'm probably gonna wake up less bloated.
33:36
SPEAKER_00: If I wake up less bloated, I'm probably gonna have more energy throughout the day.
33:39
SPEAKER_00: If I have more energy throughout the day, I'm gonna be able to perform better at work.
33:43
SPEAKER_00: If I perform better at work, I'm probably gonna have less stress.
33:46
SPEAKER_00: And if I have less stress, I'm probably gonna be less inclined to want to eat ice cream at night.
33:50
SPEAKER_00: Whatever.
33:50
SPEAKER_00: So I'm putting the figs in there, not as strictly like a habit replacement, even though to some extent it is.
33:57
SPEAKER_00: It's more of a, I'm doing this because I see that my quality of life could be better with this behavior than it is that behavior.
34:05
SPEAKER_00: And I want to stop eating ice cream at night because I want to be healthier.
34:09
SPEAKER_00: That's one of the reasons I want to stop.
34:11
SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna replace that with an activity that's going to allow me to be be healthier because that should ultimately lead to a happier, better quality of life.
34:20
SPEAKER_00: So it's not that I would discourage someone from trading ice cream for an apple or something like that.
34:28
SPEAKER_00: I would encourage a person to do it.
34:30
SPEAKER_00: But I would say don't fall into the trap of thinking, oh, well, I'm just gonna replace ice cream with an apple, and that's gonna solve the problem.
34:38
SPEAKER_00: You're replacing it with an apple because you want to have a better quality of life.
34:42
SPEAKER_00: And we recognize if we talk, in your scenario, yeah, an apple will give you a better quality of life uh and a happier quality of life because you feel better physically, you have more energy, whatever.
34:53
SPEAKER_00: So that's how I would frame it.
34:54
SPEAKER_00: Like, don't view it as like, oh, this is gonna solve my problem.
34:58
SPEAKER_00: Now the bigger question would be is why is someone having ice cream at the end of the night?
35:04
SPEAKER_00: Why are they smoking at the end of the night?
35:06
SPEAKER_01: I'm playing devil's advocate, but I kind of know that this is a situation that they smoke to help them sleep.
35:11
SPEAKER_01: They eat edibles to help them sleep.
35:14
SPEAKER_01: I know you can find other healthier replacements to help you fall asleep.
35:18
SPEAKER_01: You can.
35:19
SPEAKER_01: There are other things.
35:20
SPEAKER_00: I understand what you're trying to say.
35:22
SPEAKER_00: So it could be a number of things.
35:23
SPEAKER_00: It could be strictly, I'm physically dependent on cannabis to sleep.
35:28
SPEAKER_00: Okay, we can use supplements, we can use lifestyle modifications, we can use medications to break that.
35:34
SPEAKER_00: But most people are gonna say it's because I'm bored, it's because it's my reward, it's because I find it's stress relieving.
35:41
SPEAKER_00: And then I would have to challenge: is it fixing the boredom?
35:44
SPEAKER_00: Is it actually rewarding?
35:45
SPEAKER_00: Is it actually giving you stress relief?
35:47
SPEAKER_00: I'll give you another thing about night.
35:50
SPEAKER_00: So was cannabis really helping me sleep?
35:52
SPEAKER_00: To some extent it was, because I was physically dependent on it, but let's pretend I wasn't.
35:57
SPEAKER_00: Or was cannabis just a cue that when I consume it at night, I go to bed after that.
36:03
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it was just a cue, and maybe I could come up with another cue.
36:06
SPEAKER_00: Maybe I could read a book for 10 minutes and maybe that could become my cue to go to bed.
36:11
SPEAKER_00: Maybe I could drink a hot lemon water and that could become my cue to go to bed.
36:15
SPEAKER_00: I used to abuse pre-workout products, heavy stimulant products to work out.
36:20
SPEAKER_00: And when I stopped consuming them, I had no motivation to work out anymore.
36:24
SPEAKER_00: I was like, well, I can't work out anymore if I'm not taking stimulants.
36:28
SPEAKER_00: But then I thought about it, I was like, well, wait a minute, Frank.
36:31
SPEAKER_00: Yes, stimulants definitely have an effect on the body, but is it the stimulants that are allowing you to work out, or is drinking the stimulants the cue that it's time for you to go work out?
36:43
SPEAKER_00: Like you wake up, you you know, throw water on your face, or you shower, and then you drink this drink, and then you go work out.
36:50
SPEAKER_00: What if that was just a cue?
36:52
SPEAKER_00: And what if I could drink electrolytes and creatine?
36:55
SPEAKER_00: Or I could drink, I don't know, apple juice.
36:57
SPEAKER_00: And what if that could become my new cue?
36:59
SPEAKER_00: Like, okay, Frank, we did this thing, now we're gonna go do that thing.
37:03
SPEAKER_00: So there is a little bit, I'd say, of like the habit cue component too.
37:07
SPEAKER_00: I'll give you one more example of this.
37:08
SPEAKER_00: I had a gentleman, he would tell me, Frank, I don't know what I'm gonna do at night.
37:12
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I only consume cannabis in evenings.
37:15
SPEAKER_00: He's like, I take two or three hits, I can't sleep without it when I don't.
37:18
SPEAKER_00: He had a physiological dependency.
37:20
SPEAKER_00: We had to do a bridge of medication for a week with him to get him away from it.
37:24
SPEAKER_00: But he was like, I don't imagine what I'm gonna do.
37:26
SPEAKER_00: I come home, he had five kids, I wind down the kids, and then I go outside on my ranch and I just sit there and I have like just a few hits of cannabis, and I'm so relaxed, and that's how I wind down at night.
37:37
SPEAKER_00: What am I gonna do?
37:38
SPEAKER_00: I was like, is that how you wind down?
37:41
SPEAKER_00: Or was cannabis just permission for you to take 10 minutes to yourself and get away from your family for just 10 minutes to yourself because you're hiding this from everyone, which is what he was doing.
37:51
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, is the cannabis winding you down?
37:54
SPEAKER_00: Or is it the experience of stepping out of your house, going into your very peaceful backyard and overlooking your ranch?
38:00
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, could you just do that same thing for 10 minutes for yourself at the end of the night and do it with a book, or do it with a hot lemon water, or do it with a decaf coffee, and do everything else the same you were doing when you were consuming cannabis?
38:14
SPEAKER_00: And could you get that same relaxation?
38:16
SPEAKER_00: His answer turned out to be yes.
38:18
SPEAKER_00: He was like, Yeah, I don't know that the cannabis was a thing, or maybe it was the fact that I was just taking 10 minutes to myself and unwinding at night.
38:26
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
38:27
SPEAKER_01: I do want to go back to something that you said earlier because it's like it's sort of like hanging out in my mind.
38:32
SPEAKER_01: Tell me about the psychotic episode that you have, because I or had, because I do know that that's that should be a concern for every parent whose kid is consistently smoking or in and taking it in in whatever way.
38:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you see psychosis off of the really strong like concentrates, and then you'll get it off of like edibles.
38:52
SPEAKER_00: Someone uses a bunch of edibles, they don't understand that it's going to take a long time for that drug to really hit their system.
38:59
SPEAKER_00: They or they take an edible 30 minutes later, they're like, I don't feel anything, then they take another one, then another one, and then you know they kind of lose their mind.
39:06
SPEAKER_00: It's scary because I think now there's been literature out to say like three or more psychotic episodes induced by substances, particularly cannabis.
39:15
SPEAKER_00: I think the chances of that person developing schizophrenia later on in life is like very, very high, like threefold greater.
39:22
SPEAKER_00: So that's scary.
39:24
SPEAKER_00: Psychosis, if a family's dealing with it, and then I'll talk about mine.
39:28
SPEAKER_00: Parents will call me and say, you know, my kid, my son, my daughter has psychosis.
39:32
SPEAKER_00: And those are cases where I'm like, I can't help you.
39:34
SPEAKER_00: Like they need medical management, they need some type of probably medicated intervention, and then we can go from there once they come back down to reality.
39:43
SPEAKER_00: When I had it, it was not to that extent.
39:46
SPEAKER_00: It was in a very strange like presentation.
39:49
SPEAKER_00: So if you had talked to me, I was very put together and I could keep it together for long periods of time.
39:55
SPEAKER_00: But you talk to me and you talk to me about my chiropractic, and I'd reference like that.
40:08
SPEAKER_00: You see, like, you know, 200 patients a week, you're not seeing 2,000 people a week.
40:12
SPEAKER_00: What are you talking about?
40:13
SPEAKER_00: You know, so that was like strange.
40:15
SPEAKER_00: And I had this like grandiose vision of what I was trying to do.
40:20
SPEAKER_00: Like, I'm just gonna be this, and I think some of that was probably driven by the heavy social media consumption too, and like entrepreneurship, like a lot of young men that I see are consuming heavy cannabis.
40:31
SPEAKER_00: I had this like very grandiose vision of what I was doing.
40:36
SPEAKER_00: Um, like, oh, I'm gonna dominate all these chiropractors, and yeah, we're buying that person out next week.
40:42
SPEAKER_00: And it's like, Frank, you got like 100K in your bank account.
40:44
SPEAKER_00: You're not buying a six million dollar practice next week.
40:47
SPEAKER_00: What are you talking about?
40:48
SPEAKER_00: But I was like very convinced I was.
40:50
SPEAKER_00: Then it developed into uh I had hallucinations out of the periphery of my eyes and like extreme paranoia, extreme panic attacks on like a recurring basis every evening.
41:04
SPEAKER_00: Someone's outside my house, someone's coming after me, there's something happening.
41:09
SPEAKER_00: Um, that was my experience with it.
41:12
SPEAKER_00: Oftentimes in younger people, it's very correlated to violence.
41:16
SPEAKER_00: The amount of parents that contact me, my son has attacked my wife or my husband, my daughter is punching holes in her bedroom wall.
41:24
SPEAKER_00: I had a client, uh, they've destroyed my vehicle.
41:26
SPEAKER_00: They they said they want to kill us.
41:28
SPEAKER_00: They said the parents are denominated demonic.
41:31
SPEAKER_00: Like, it's usually like it can get very violent with like cannabis-induced psychosis.
41:36
SPEAKER_00: And there is tons of documented literature on this stuff.
41:40
SPEAKER_00: Even if you look at school shootings, they brush over cannabis and the autopsies of the shooter like it's nothing.
41:46
SPEAKER_00: But like, it pops up in a hell of a lot of school shootings that cannabis was found.
41:51
SPEAKER_00: But it's like no drugs were found except THC.
41:54
SPEAKER_00: It's like, wait a minute, why do we keep brushing over this?
41:57
SPEAKER_00: I had an incident with parents where the daughter called me.
42:00
SPEAKER_00: She told me her mom and dad were satanic.
42:02
SPEAKER_00: And she was like, I have a knife and I'm going to kill them because this is what I'm called to do.
42:06
SPEAKER_00: And I called her parents.
42:08
SPEAKER_00: I was like, hey, just so you know, your daughter's driving you now.
42:10
SPEAKER_00: You got to call the police.
42:11
SPEAKER_00: She does have a weapon and like she is fully convinced you're satanic.
42:14
SPEAKER_00: I had another mother.
42:16
SPEAKER_00: Her daughter seemed fine.
42:17
SPEAKER_00: They were driving in a car, something snapped in her daughter.
42:20
SPEAKER_00: Her daughter took the car up like 100, 120 miles per hour and was like, I'm ending it now.
42:24
SPEAKER_00: I'm ending everything.
42:25
SPEAKER_00: I gotta end our family.
42:26
SPEAKER_00: We gotta start over.
42:27
SPEAKER_00: And she had like acute psychosis from cannabis.
42:30
SPEAKER_00: It's not always this extreme, but like I have seen like horrible horror stories from this stuff.
42:35
SPEAKER_00: Something else on psychosis too.
42:37
SPEAKER_00: And I don't want to brush off medications because a lot of times people are reluctant to use medications or parents are hesitant.
42:43
SPEAKER_00: If your kid is quitting cannabis and they haven't slept in four days, even though they're not consuming cannabis, their risk of psychosis is extraordinarily high.
42:52
SPEAKER_00: And like you need medical intervention at that point.
42:55
SPEAKER_00: Like they have to sleep.
42:57
SPEAKER_00: And that was kind of what a little bit of what was happening to me.
43:00
SPEAKER_00: Like I was quitting, I wasn't sleeping, I was losing my mind, I was detoxing.
43:04
SPEAKER_00: It just wasn't good.
43:05
SPEAKER_01: One more question, and then we'll move on.
43:07
SPEAKER_01: Does do you have is the psychotic episode come from a bad hit or a bad like vape, or is it an accumulation of the cannabis in your system that can just trigger it one day?
43:21
SPEAKER_00: It's both.
43:22
SPEAKER_00: I think more often than not, it's an accumulation, but there's certainly reported documentation of it was just a bad experience that the person had, and they snapped.
43:32
SPEAKER_00: I don't remember her name.
43:34
SPEAKER_00: Um, there is a podcast, I think it's every brain matters, and they have an interview with her.
43:39
SPEAKER_00: There was a young lady in California, and she was studying to be actually, I think, an eye physician doctor, and she had had no prior history of like trauma, none of the indicators that she would develop psychosis.
43:54
SPEAKER_00: And her boyfriend brought over some higher potency cannabis one night, they consumed it, and she She lost her mind.
44:01
SPEAKER_00: She um killed her boyfriend.
44:03
SPEAKER_00: She stabbed him, I think it was over 110 times.
44:06
SPEAKER_00: She uh killed her dog.
44:08
SPEAKER_00: She stabbed, it's usually stabbings.
44:09
SPEAKER_00: She stabbed her dog multiple times.
44:12
SPEAKER_00: And then she uh repeatedly stabbed herself, I think over like 75 times.
44:17
SPEAKER_00: Don't quote me on any of this.
44:18
SPEAKER_00: It's it's on every brain matters, is where you can learn more about this story.
44:22
SPEAKER_00: But this was like a prime example of someone who had no prior indications of mental health issues, no prior indications or risk factors for psychosis.
44:31
SPEAKER_00: And the conclusion was this night, it just happened to be too much cannabis, too high potency, and she had an acute episode of psychosis that ended in like horrific violence.
44:42
SPEAKER_00: Um, so yeah, that was like a really famous case that happened in this regard.
44:47
SPEAKER_00: And there's many cases that are reported like that that you just never hear about, they never make the news or anything.
44:53
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
44:54
SPEAKER_01: I want you to walk us through the stages of quitting.
44:57
SPEAKER_00: The number one thing people need to do when they start is challenge their beliefs about it.
45:02
SPEAKER_00: People love talking about why they want to quit.
45:04
SPEAKER_00: I want to know why you smoke.
45:06
SPEAKER_00: So if you say I smoke for boredom relief, I want you to then identify all the reasons that you want to quit that are actually resulting in your boredom.
45:14
SPEAKER_00: You say I smoke because it's for anxiety relief.
45:17
SPEAKER_00: I want to see all the reasons why you want to quit that are causing anxiety.
45:20
SPEAKER_00: So the first stage to quitting is identifying why do you do the substance?
45:26
SPEAKER_00: What do you like about it?
45:27
SPEAKER_00: And now you got to challenge that.
45:29
SPEAKER_00: Do I really like it?
45:31
SPEAKER_00: Or is that just like an illusion that I've kind of fallen myself into?
45:35
SPEAKER_00: So that's step one, like identifying the underlying beliefs and challenging them.
45:39
SPEAKER_00: Step two is getting someone through detoxin withdrawal.
45:44
SPEAKER_00: And if people have quit before, they may have a good idea of what their symptoms are gonna be.
45:48
SPEAKER_00: Most people don't need cannabis detox medically managed.
45:53
SPEAKER_00: It's some insomnia, it's irritability, it's some anxiety, it's maybe some nausea and lack of appetite, but it usually goes away within like seven to 14 days.
46:03
SPEAKER_00: Like most people are okay.
46:05
SPEAKER_00: They're uncomfortable, but like they're okay.
46:07
SPEAKER_00: Then I tell people, listen, you've all you're already uncomfortable.
46:11
SPEAKER_00: You're quitting because you're uncomfortable.
46:12
SPEAKER_00: You're not comfortable in what you're doing, so this is no big deal.
46:15
SPEAKER_00: You've been uncomfortable for a long time that you've been struggling with this.
46:18
SPEAKER_00: Now, in more serious cases, if someone's like, no, like I really don't sleep, or the anxiety is so bad when I stop, I'm having panic attacks.
46:27
SPEAKER_00: I say, You you gotta talk, you gotta talk to a doctor, you gotta talk to someone who's familiar with cannabis addiction, and you might need to get some medications lined up, some supplements lined up, you might need to make some lifestyle modifications to manage these withdrawal symptoms.
46:40
SPEAKER_00: Like you, you might need a sleep med for the first week, you might need an anti-anxiety med for a little bit to bridge you.
46:46
SPEAKER_00: Um, you can typically do it without heavy psychiatric meds.
46:49
SPEAKER_00: I can't talk about meds, but like a qualified doctor should know how to walk someone through that.
46:53
SPEAKER_00: And then after that, the last stage is really I tell people, you want to start to see some contrast.
47:00
SPEAKER_00: So, like I quit drugs for a reason.
47:03
SPEAKER_00: I wanted a better relationship, I wanted to uh better physical health, I wanted more presence.
47:09
SPEAKER_00: Okay, now just like work on those things.
47:11
SPEAKER_00: What do you need to do to have better physical health to improve your quality of life?
47:15
SPEAKER_00: What do you need to do to be more present and more engaged with your family as a young adult?
47:19
SPEAKER_00: What do you need to do to you know mend that relationship with your girlfriend?
47:23
SPEAKER_00: Go do those things, like make your life better and start to see the contrast between here was life with drugs and here was life without drugs.
47:32
SPEAKER_00: And those are the three stages.
47:34
SPEAKER_00: Now, so it's like, oh, I guess there's one more, but that kind of falls into the last one, which is proving to your brain that you don't need the drug, you need repetition.
47:44
SPEAKER_00: So, like stressful event comes up.
47:46
SPEAKER_00: Go through the stressful event without cannabis and prove to your brain that you're capable of tolerating it without cannabis because you recognize that cannabis doesn't actually help you tolerate it, because that's the first thing we addressed.
47:57
SPEAKER_00: And then it just comes down to reps like practice being sober next time everyone's smoking.
48:03
SPEAKER_00: Like, just don't smoke and prove to yourself that you can have a good time not smoking and practice that over and over again until it that new neural pathway is laid out, that that that association of cannabis and a good time is broken.
48:16
SPEAKER_00: The other thing I tell people too in the stages of quitting would be like, um, did you manage a stressful situation without the drug?
48:24
SPEAKER_00: Did you go through a really celebratory situation without the drug?
48:28
SPEAKER_00: Did you go through a day that was very unstructured and you were bored without feeling like you need to needed to consume the drug?
48:35
SPEAKER_00: Those are like checkpoints that I look for a person to go through.
48:38
SPEAKER_00: Because if someone calls me and they're like, oh my gosh, I'm two weeks into quitting, but this super I just got a massive fight with my parents.
48:46
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, good, this is your first time going through a stressful event without consuming the drug.
48:52
SPEAKER_00: Let's get through it, however, whatever ways we want to manage it, let's manage it.
48:56
SPEAKER_00: But let's prove to your brain and your body that you can do this without the drug.
48:59
SPEAKER_00: That's I care much more about that than someone being 10 days sober, 20 days sober, whatever it is.
49:05
SPEAKER_00: And then the other thing I'd say specific to cannabis is you just gotta recognize like if someone's been consuming a lot of cannabis over a prolonged period of time, your endocannabinoid system has to start to heal.
49:17
SPEAKER_00: It's typically like I think it's two weeks to 30 days for your body to start re-regulating its endocannabinoid system.
49:27
SPEAKER_00: It's generally around 30 days where people start to see that flicker of dopamine again.
49:31
SPEAKER_00: And then it's 90 days usually for like new habits and new routines to come in.
49:36
SPEAKER_00: And then if you look at the work of Dr.
49:38
SPEAKER_00: Eamon from Eamon Clinics, the guy who does the brain scans, he usually says it's about a year for like the brain to fully like recover and lay out new neural pathways.
49:47
SPEAKER_00: So it's more like a timeline.
49:49
SPEAKER_00: But yeah.
49:49
SPEAKER_01: You say that there are things you absolutely wouldn't do when trying to break the cannabis habit.
49:54
SPEAKER_01: What are they?
49:56
SPEAKER_00: Oh, they're controversial.
49:57
SPEAKER_00: Um, I wouldn't count sober days because it means nothing.
50:02
SPEAKER_00: Like, okay, you've been sober for 30 days, but you were on a vacation for the full 30 days.
50:07
SPEAKER_00: You had no relevance to your actual day-to-day life.
50:10
SPEAKER_00: And I have no idea how you're gonna handle your day-to-day life when you get back.
50:14
SPEAKER_00: And then you go 30 days without it, you come home, you smoke, and now you're devastated.
50:19
SPEAKER_00: I lost 30 days.
50:21
SPEAKER_00: What did you accomplish in 30 days?
50:23
SPEAKER_00: You didn't do, did you do anything?
50:25
SPEAKER_00: Did you experience anything?
50:26
SPEAKER_00: Not really.
50:27
SPEAKER_00: You know, so I tell people don't count sober days, uh, especially too, because the more you count sober days, the more, and again, these are I usually piss a lot of people off when I talk about this stuff, but it um you put the drug on a pedestal.
50:40
SPEAKER_00: Here you are trying to eliminate this thing in your life.
50:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's a highlight for you every day.
50:45
SPEAKER_00: I didn't consume the drug.
50:46
SPEAKER_00: Today's another day without the drug.
50:48
SPEAKER_00: Why are we still talking about the drug?
50:49
SPEAKER_00: I thought you quit.
50:50
SPEAKER_00: I want this to be irrelevant to your life.
50:52
SPEAKER_00: It's good to relate to people and to know that other people are going through these experiences.
50:57
SPEAKER_00: I think that's super helpful.
50:59
SPEAKER_00: But it's not good to compare your journey to someone else's.
51:03
SPEAKER_00: Don't adopt someone else's experience as your own.
51:06
SPEAKER_00: Because let's say you have someone who's on a Reddit form who's like, oh, I was sober for a year and I smoked weed once and I've been back to smoking it every day ever since then.
51:15
SPEAKER_00: That doesn't happen for a lot of people.
51:18
SPEAKER_00: Some people might quit for a year, go back to smoking once, and then they're like, oh, yeah, I remember why I quit.
51:24
SPEAKER_00: That experience sucked.
51:25
SPEAKER_00: But if they've read a thousand threads about how people just fall back into addiction spontaneously, it almost becomes like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
51:34
SPEAKER_00: So I say, like, don't overcompare your experience to other people's.
51:38
SPEAKER_00: Same thing with withdrawal.
51:40
SPEAKER_00: Some people will set out to quit cannabis and they'll have no withdrawal symptoms, hardly any.
51:44
SPEAKER_00: But they'll read on these forms or threads, or they'll hear other people's stories about horrific withdrawal, and they'll be like, oh, I'm not even gonna try.
51:51
SPEAKER_00: Like, I can't go through that.
51:53
SPEAKER_00: And then they're like, I'm not even gonna attempt to quit.
51:55
SPEAKER_00: And it's like, we don't even know if you were gonna get withdrawal symptoms.
51:58
SPEAKER_00: At least try.
51:59
SPEAKER_00: So I don't like that.
52:01
SPEAKER_00: Um, I don't encourage telling a lot of people about your decision.
52:06
SPEAKER_00: It puts unnecessary pressure on you, and you're gonna start to get a lot of cooks in the kitchen.
52:11
SPEAKER_00: One person's telling you to count sober days, one person's telling you not to, someone's telling you to switch to edibles, someone's someone's telling you why you're quitting cannabis.
52:19
SPEAKER_00: It's the best thing in the world.
52:20
SPEAKER_00: It's great.
52:21
SPEAKER_00: Why would you even stop?
52:22
SPEAKER_00: Um, so I say, like, kind of keep it to yourself.
52:26
SPEAKER_00: You know, if you have some family you want to tell some people who are just gonna genuinely support you, that's great.
52:30
SPEAKER_00: I think that's helpful.
52:32
SPEAKER_00: But generally speaking, I'm like, keep it to yourself.
52:35
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you're having major medical health problems, when you stop, obviously inform people of what you're going through.
52:42
SPEAKER_00: We don't want someone walking in on someone in the middle of a seizure because they decide just to not tell anyone they were stopping, you know, serious drug consumption.
52:49
SPEAKER_00: But I usually say, like, you don't need to tell the world your story.
52:52
SPEAKER_00: Like, just kind of keep it to yourself and those who are most important that need to know.
52:55
SPEAKER_00: Don't discount medication.
52:58
SPEAKER_00: And I say that as a chiropractor and a very holistic guy.
53:02
SPEAKER_00: Some people really need it.
53:04
SPEAKER_00: But I think those are the big ones that I wouldn't do.
53:07
SPEAKER_01: So, what can they do instead?
53:09
SPEAKER_01: What are the suggestions you have?
53:11
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they have to want to stop.
53:12
SPEAKER_00: That's really important because there's gonna be a lot of parents listening where their child has no desire to stop, and it is very, very hard.
53:19
SPEAKER_00: Like, I won't work with that.
53:21
SPEAKER_00: Like, parents call me all the time and they're like, Johnny is 23 and he doesn't want to stop.
53:25
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, there's very little I can do.
53:28
SPEAKER_00: Um, if they want to stop though, um, it goes back to identify why do you consume the drug?
53:36
SPEAKER_00: What do you think the drug is giving you and challenge that?
53:39
SPEAKER_00: Is it actually giving you what you say it is?
53:41
SPEAKER_00: That's like the most important thing a person can do.
53:44
SPEAKER_00: And then I would tell people honestly start reading some books.
53:47
SPEAKER_00: Like if you don't have access to like certain resources or things like that, read books.
53:52
SPEAKER_00: Dopamine Nation by Dr.
53:54
SPEAKER_00: Alan Alemke is great, Jack Trimpe, uh, Rational Recovery is great, Alan Carr's, The Easy Way to Quit Cannabis is great.
54:02
SPEAKER_00: The people over at the Freedom Model for anyone who had families that are struggling, the freedom model for families, escaping the addiction and recovery trap is probably one of the best books out there for families, in my opinion.
54:13
SPEAKER_00: I think books are one of the best resources, and you can get Cliff Notes now if you go on AI models of these books, but like educate yourself on what is happening in your body and start to gain an understanding of it.
54:25
SPEAKER_00: Because once you understand it, it's a lot easier to undo it.
54:29
SPEAKER_00: Don't be ashamed to reach out for help.
54:31
SPEAKER_00: You know, make sure you're getting help from a good source, but like just get help.
54:35
SPEAKER_00: People need help every day with all different types of things.
54:37
SPEAKER_00: And like, this is no big deal.
54:39
SPEAKER_00: Like it's very we can solve this very easily for people.
54:42
SPEAKER_00: So like don't hesitate to get help if you need it.
54:45
SPEAKER_00: Talk to your doctor, talk to someone about it, and start seeing what your options are.
54:49
SPEAKER_01: Can you share some of those supplements, those natural supplements?
54:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so supplements.
54:53
SPEAKER_00: And I'll do it with a huge disclaimer because again, what people will fall into is this.
54:57
SPEAKER_00: And I sell supplements.
54:58
SPEAKER_00: I have a supplement business that sells supplements and I do supplements for addiction.
55:03
SPEAKER_00: The chances of a supplement solving someone's dependency are slim.
55:07
SPEAKER_00: So supplements are supplemental to everything.
55:10
SPEAKER_00: Supplements are really utilized ideally to help with recovering your body and getting it healthier, or maybe a little bit to mitigate some of the withdrawal, although I can't legally say that because that's treating addiction with supplements.
55:24
SPEAKER_00: So take what you want with that.
55:26
SPEAKER_00: Now, supplements, though, I think some of the best ones for people.
55:30
SPEAKER_00: N-acetylcysteine is great for a lot of people at helping to reduce cravings.
55:35
SPEAKER_00: 600 milligrams three to six times a day.
55:38
SPEAKER_00: Um, creatine monohydrate is wonderful for people who have sleep deprivation and who are struggling from a mental health standpoint.
55:45
SPEAKER_00: Five to ten grams a day early on in quitting is super wonderful.
55:49
SPEAKER_00: Electrolytes in the morning for proper hydration is great.
55:53
SPEAKER_00: I recommend not consuming caffeine when you quit cannabis because we don't want to mess with insomnia.
55:59
SPEAKER_00: But if you need a little boost for focus, you could look at something like perizanthine, which is the metabolite of caffeine, or something like alpha lipoic acid.
56:07
SPEAKER_00: You could look at for sleep, magnesium glycinate, magnesium alpharinate, that may also support a healthy anxiety response.
56:16
SPEAKER_00: You could look at apogeean for sleep, you could look at Lpheanine, although L-pheanine may make vivid dreams worse, which sometimes is bad for people quitting cannabis, but that would be wonderful.
56:27
SPEAKER_00: Um, I'd say those are probably some of the biggest supplements that people could look into.
56:32
SPEAKER_00: And then you can look into like omega fatty acids is a good supplement to help recover your endocannabinoid system.
56:39
SPEAKER_00: Um, that's a good one.
56:41
SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, those would be some of the supplements off the top of my head.
56:45
SPEAKER_01: I always like to leave on a positive note.
56:47
SPEAKER_01: So for the young adult who's listening, hopefully, can you tell them what their life could look like without cannabis in it?
56:56
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, it's awesome.
56:57
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I always thought I'd have everything.
57:01
SPEAKER_00: Then I started using drugs and I didn't think I'd be able to attain anything.
57:05
SPEAKER_00: Then I quit drugs, and now I have everything I want.
57:08
SPEAKER_00: Not saying that's going to happen for everyone.
57:10
SPEAKER_00: I work insanely hard to get all the things I want, but I have the energy, I have the mental clarity, and I have the physical health to do it.
57:18
SPEAKER_00: And I wouldn't have had those traits had I not stopped consuming drugs.
57:23
SPEAKER_00: Stopping drugs did not magically change my life, but it gave me all the attributes that I needed to apply to my life to change my life.
57:32
SPEAKER_00: I mean, for me, when that switch flipped in my head to I can break this dependency, I'm capable of.
57:39
SPEAKER_00: I don't think there's anything that I'm not capable of doing right now.
57:43
SPEAKER_00: I really don't.
57:43
SPEAKER_00: If I want to do it, I'm fully convinced I can.
57:46
SPEAKER_00: And I would tell people who feel very hopeless, even parents, um, where things look really, really bad, uh, the odds are heavily in that individual's favor of this actually resolving.
57:59
SPEAKER_00: I don't know the rate at which it's gonna resolve for the individual, but a majority of people at one point or another resolve their substance use.
58:09
SPEAKER_00: You hear about the horror stories, but more often than not, people go through a rough patch, they survive, and they wake up one day and they say, I'm done with this.
58:20
SPEAKER_01: Dr.
58:21
SPEAKER_01: Frank, I can't thank you enough.
58:23
SPEAKER_01: You have spent so much of your time with us today.
58:26
SPEAKER_01: If anybody wants to follow you on social media, because I find your social media content extremely helpful, I'm gonna leave that contact, your contact, in the show notes.
58:34
SPEAKER_01: And I just want you to know I really, really appreciate the work that you're doing, and I hope for anyone listening today that they learned so much from all your expertise.
58:44
SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
58:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I really appreciate you taking the time to have me.
58:47
SPEAKER_00: It's my pleasure to be here.
58:48
SPEAKER_00: I love talking about this stuff.
58:50
SPEAKER_01: So And it shows.
58:51
SPEAKER_01: But your results speak for themselves.
58:53
SPEAKER_01: So thank you again for being here.
58:56
SPEAKER_01: Anytime.
58:57
SPEAKER_01: If you're ready to help your adult child become more responsible, productive, and independent, I invite you to join my launch masterclass where I share what's actually holding them back and what you can start doing differently to help create change.
59:13
SPEAKER_01: Registration is currently open and space is limited.
59:17
SPEAKER_01: I'll leave the link in the show notes.
59:19
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59:27
SPEAKER_01: This is one of those conversations that I hope you share with your adult child or anyone you know who could benefit from it.
59:34
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59:38
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59:46
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