July 30, 2024 • 30 mins
This episode of How to Be an Adult, the second of two parts, features a very special guest: Marc Lewis, Ph.D., psychologist, academic and bestselling author of Memoirs of an Addicted Brain and The Biology of Desire. Marc joins Luke in our studio to discuss how popular models of addiction are flawed, and how we...
The post More About Addiction, with Marc Lewis (Ep. 17, pt. 2 of 2) appeared first on The Morpheus Clinic for Hypnosis.
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(00:00):
And it is hard to give up but
not impossible
because
when
he goes for a few days without it
for various.
Yes.
Especially since shame is an undercurrent,
it's only gonna exacerbate the profit. You may
improve your your state your functioning for an
hour or 2 and mess it up for
the next week. That would be an unfortunate
(00:21):
Welcome to How to be an Adult.
Today's episode continues part 1, which was released
2 weeks ago.
It's an interview with the psychologist and bestselling
author, Mark Lewis,
about addiction. If you haven't yet heard it,
please go to how to be adult.com,
or look us up on Spotify, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
(00:46):
So we're talking about how there's some kind
of positive intent
even to the critical inner dialogue that you
want to suppress through alcohol or drugs
And
the behavior
of using alcohol, drugs, gambling, porn, etcetera,
therefore, it has some kind of positive intent,
(01:09):
right?
Yes,
that's what I think is under recognized
in the way that many people see addiction.
Many people see addiction as all bad. There's
no positive side. You know, it's enabling to
look at the positive side. I totally agree.
Yeah. So,
(01:30):
again, we're kind of
arriving somewhat independently at the same conclusions. Yeah.
I think so too. And the conclusions are
in
contradiction
to
so
much
of
what's being said about addiction in the public
sphere.
I
agree. So
(01:51):
how do we make the world a better
place? That was not well articulated. And it
comes back. But the question I'm trying to
get to, like, so we have a podcast,
not a huge podcast
yet, but let's
say that our
listeners are struggling with some form of addiction
by the, you know, time they're tuning into
this episode and by the time they've gotten
(02:11):
this far. Mhmm. So,
one, we're kind of like a voice of
of hope in a way for these listeners
because, you know, we're not gonna demonize you.
I mean not just us individually
but you know people who think along these
lines
are not going to say you're bad for
drinking too much.
It's a really important starting place right there.
(02:35):
Yes. Especially since shame is an undercurrent,
it's only gonna exacerbate the problem
to imply that you're bad. Yeah. So, like,
AA is kind of interesting because there are
really different,
cultures in different AA groups. Some of them
actually do use shaming.
Maybe it's not quite intentional deliberate, but it
(02:56):
kinda comes across as it can be pretty
nasty.
And, you know, well, John, what did you
think was gonna happen? You know, kind of
thing. So some groups are like that. Some
groups really try to avoid it. Yep. But
but indeed, shame makes everything worse. Shame is
an incredibly painful, painful emotion
and it and and it's it's kinda contagious
(03:16):
in the inner world as you suggested.
It's like when you look inside, everything is
sort of coated with shame.
So that's pretty awful. Right? And what do
you do when you are habitually using a
substance, like whether it's coke or opioids or
even alcohol?
And everybody's looking at you like you're an
asshole. Yeah. You know? And, like, what do
(03:38):
you do about that? Because how do you
pull yourself apart from that perception
enough to be able to say, no, I'm
not trying to be that way. I'm not
trying to be
I'm really just trying to feel comfortable in
my own skin, which is really hard to
do because
of my PTSD,
because of my, you know, my post traumatic
stress, because of I've lived through whatever,
(04:01):
divorce, separation, abuse,
neglect,
just been fired from my job and left
by my boyfriend or girlfriend. It's like there
are so many things that I feel really
crappy about. Yeah. Well, sorry. You know, that
doesn't really help at all. A counterintuitive Well,
sorry, you know, that doesn't really help at
all.
Counter intuitively,
(04:22):
because of the element of fraternity
and camaraderie and,
you know, human connection being such a, I
don't want to say curative factor,
but
because that's a It's a It's a
sportive factor. Yeah. Sure. You know, shame just
like topples that whole house of cards. Yeah.
It really does. Yeah. It's it's really toxic.
(04:44):
Yep. And they call it there's a word
toxic shame in in psychodynamic
Yes. Terminology. Yeah. Counterintuitively,
it's going to be love and accept I
mean, go back to Carl Rogers.
Unconditional positive regard that someone who's undergoing all
the stress that leads to addiction is going
to need.
And I guess that that that's you know,
(05:06):
I sound like a broken record on this
podcast,
coming back to
self love and self acceptance and self respect
as almost panaceas
for whatever ails you.
But when, you know, when it comes
to something we need like oxygen,
self love and self respect and self compassion,
(05:27):
we need like oxygen. So oxygen's not just
a, you know, a panacea for, like, what,
hypoxia.
You know, if we breathe deeply enough,
we're going to be a little bit more
relaxed and happy. And even if we feel
loved by others, having, you know, consistent enough
self love and self acceptance and self compassion
and every other form
(05:51):
self love
in my view, be preventative against developing
a cocaine habit or an alcohol habit or
a smoking habit or a gambling habit or
a gambling habit. Generally, yes. Generally, I think
that's true. Yeah.
What would the exceptions be?
It's not so much that there are exceptions
to that principle, but
what what you say sounds redundant because you
(06:13):
keep emphasizing it self love. Well, it's not
that's redundant. It's just it's really it can
be very complex.
Like how does that actually work? How does
that manifest? Right? So what does that mean?
What let's say you,
let's say you have a very powerful temper
and you hurt people without meaning to, but
you do it often enough. Yep.
(06:34):
Then how do you love yourself? How do
you
how do you love the the the rescue
dog that just bit someone at the shelter?
Okay. Yeah. Like that. Same way. And so
there's all kinds of things that we see
about ourselves,
that are hard to love. Aspects that are
hard to love features
and there's reasons why they're hard to love.
They're hard to love partly because obviously, we
(06:56):
were,
we we were raised. We were
trained, I guess, essentially
to not hurt our little brothers and sisters,
to not grab all the food, to not
be messy and dirty and smelly and whatever
else it is and aggressive. We were we
were trained. We were,
(07:16):
socialized
to be all those things because that's the
way society functions best or that's the way
the family functions best or the community or
the group or the church or whatever it
is. So okay. Give up all of those
or shall I say subjugate all those human
characteristics
for the purpose of the whole, for the
purpose of the group, or the village or
(07:38):
that whatever society.
Good idea. Yeah. Maybe except that there's so
much wreckage and the wreckage is that we
are human and we are greedy and selfish
and dirty and aggressive,
you know, and all of that stuff. We
really are. And also kind and loving and
accepting and so on. And with that too.
So I kind of,
I've got a good friend who's kind of
(07:59):
a religious scholar or I should say a
scholar of religion. That's a pretty important difference.
Well, he isn't religious particularly, but he is
a scholar who really and his PhD thesis
was about Methodism. The Methodist,
I don't know what they call it, sector
grouping of Christianity,
in which the idea is to get all
(08:21):
of your sins and confess to all your
sins.
I am indeed greedy
and lazy
and fornicator
and what else? All those things.
I do all those things and I'm selfish
and possessive and cruel, I mean, and
whatever.
And you put them all on the table
and you get them right out there in
front of you and in methodist the methodist
(08:44):
practice the,
what's the word for it? When you sort
of blessed or forgiven. There's a there's a
word for which I always forget, but but
anyway,
and then you
are taught that God loves you anyway. Mhmm.
God or Christ loves you anyway with all
of those
problems, with all of those deviations,
(09:05):
he still loves you entirely. Well, that's a
really special kind of message. Mhmm. And I
think although the Judeo Christian
doctrine has
screwed up in a lot of ways Mhmm.
That was at least a pretty reasonable attempt
to try to get across the idea that
we can be human and still be feel
accepted and feel loved and feel like we
(09:26):
belong.
One of the interesting things about, addiction, what
we're talking about is that AA tries to
sort of do the same thing. In AA,
you admit that you're an alcoholic. You admit
that you have no control. You admit that
you're a loser and a bum and you've
been you've been deceiving yourself and everybody else.
And, you know, one of the 12 steps
is to apologize
(09:47):
to everyone you've harmed.
So it's very similar, I think, to the
Methodist idea
of, redemption. That was word of redemption.
Put all the sins on the table. Mhmm.
Admit it. Right. Admit it. Yeah. If you
don't admit it, then you're full of pride
and that's another sin. Okay. So we're gonna
put that one on the table too. And
then
and I think the higher power idea Mhmm.
(10:09):
Which you and I both kind of, you
know, are not
completely pleased about, but that idea is the
idea that there is some thing like God
or some kind of spirit or essence or
universal quality or God Yeah. Or Christ or
what have you that accepts you anyway. Mhmm.
And that is in its own that's fairly
similar to what you're talking about is the
(10:30):
healing power of love and
belonging
and and self care. And I I can't
help but make
Paral Health with Rogerian therapy Sure. Where the
therapist rather than Christ accepts you anyway. Like,
you just confessed all of your wrongdoing and
sins Yeah. In the therapy room. Yeah. But
there is But you're right. It is parallel.
(10:50):
Yeah. When there are multiple practices that independently
converge upon the same ideas, there's gotta be
something to those ideas. Yeah.
So we've kind of
glanced upon
the subject of systemic factors, like poverty
Mhmm. When it comes to addiction because it's
not just pull yourself up by the bootstraps,
(11:11):
by yourself, in your own log cabin that's
cut off from the grid. Right. Like, that
that that will not be a path to
happiness.
That there are gonna be systemic factors, like,
you know, for better or for worse, people
who are better off
are likely to have better outcomes. That's right.
And
people with a good support network, of course,
(11:31):
are gonna have better outcomes.
People who are in better health to begin
with are going to have better outcomes. People
who are of a higher socioeconomic
status independently of like their net
worth. Just having the prestige
of some help, because for sure others look
up to that boosts their self esteem and
makes it easy to get out of a
shame spiral. Yes. Exactly. So I know you
(11:54):
work as a psychotherapist, so you don't work
with, like, the whole family and their entire
team at work.
You work with an individual, yet that individual
exists
within a family, within a team at work,
with a certain boss who hopefully isn't an
but often is. Yeah. So let's say that
you're taking care
(12:15):
of
aging parents
who were abusive to you when you were
a child. Mhmm.
And
they now have dementia. Mhmm. So their abuse
has gotten worse.
And yet you're taking care of them. So
in your very own home, you're being abused
by the people you have verbally abused, emotionally
abused by the people
(12:35):
who you're trying to take care of.
So let's say that your client is this
well meaning person,
and the only way that he has to
cope is by downing a bottle of wine
at the end of every night to get
to sleep. Yeah. After his parents with dementia,
you know, finally stopped talking and fell asleep
in front of the television set. So he's
(12:57):
come to you and he wants you to
help him to stop downing that bottle of
wine Yeah. At the end of every night
because that's not making anything any better.
Maybe it is.
Okay.
Maybe it's getting him through the night. I
mean, I'm serious. I'm not just being glib.
Yeah. And so what I would do, I
I never asked my clients to stop. Mhmm.
That's just completely goes against my approach. Even
(13:18):
if they ask you to help them to
stop?
I don't do it like that. Okay. For
example, a guy just actually got in touch
with me very recently who smokes cannabis
addictively daily and is very concerned about the
health effects
on his,
lungs and and stuff and throat. And so
it's like
and he's having a real hard time stopping,
(13:39):
and it's not through lack of resources. He's
got a lot of the cognitive and social
resources he would need.
So
it kinda stretches
my approach, but my approach is to say,
what exactly
let's try to really focus in on what
you're getting
from that first
that first puff. Mhmm. Let's really try to
try to feel what you're getting, what you
(14:00):
what you need, why it feels so good
that it's hard to give up. Mhmm. And
it is hard to give up, but not
impossible because
when he goes for a few days without
it for various circumstantial reasons, he doesn't suffer
a whole lot. He doesn't sit there craving,
and there's nothing like that. Obviously, there's no
withdrawal for camp. There's no physical withdrawal. At
least not very little.
(14:21):
So
try to figure that out and try to
see if
using IFS therapy, try to talk with that
part and and really
contend with
what's missing. Mhmm. What's missing? Is it is
it if it's a feeling of freedom, then
what why don't you feel free? Mhmm. What
is it that is seem seems to be
(14:43):
locking
or diminishing your freedom
at the end of the day or at
the beginning of the day, whenever it is,
that that makes this so important, so special,
so valuable. Mhmm.
So,
you know, back to the guy who's drinking
a bottle of wine every night, and I've
certainly had clients like that, I would I
would say, well, I'm not an idiot. Like,
(15:03):
I would probably say, let's just keep it
down to a bottle a night. Mhmm. But
I would say that. Okay. Let's try not
to make it 2 bottles a night. Let's
try to keep it to wine and not
vodka. Okay. Got it. Drinking a bottle of
wine per night is probably gonna be a
lot easier, better for your body and for
those around you than drinking
a 750 milliliter bottle of vodka
(15:24):
Okay. So kind of like a harm reduction
Pretty much. Sort of a bunch. Okay. Pretty
much harm reduction. Yes. Got it. One issue
I take with harm reduction
is there's almost like this implication
that people are necessarily
gonna just use any way. Right?
Which
well, okay. So let me define first what
(15:44):
my view of a healthy relationship to a
substance is because you know, like, again, I'm
not a prohibitionist.
I do believe there is such a thing
as a healthy versus an unhealthy relationship to
alcohol or to a drug or something. Yeah.
So to to me, my con perception of
of a healthy relationship to any kind of
substance or any kind of behavior is that
(16:04):
you're doing it because it's somehow
adds
to your day or to your night. And
it's not something that's taking
from your your day. Like, it's not gonna
take your health or your well-being or your
self respect or your peace of mind. Mhmm.
Like for example, if I have a glass
of champagne on New Year's Eve, my New
(16:26):
Year's Eve is is better,
not worse Yeah. Because I have a glass
of champagne. Yeah. If I go to an
Italian restaurant, I have, like, a nice pasta
and then I have like a glass of
red wine that pairs well with the pasta.
You know, there's like really no downside to
the glass of wine. Yeah. And the glass
of wine is a good pairing
with my entree.
(16:47):
But then if
I'm in some kind of toxic environment
and I'm drinking
too much to the point where I'm just
further toxifying myself,
that to me is not an it's not
a drink that adds to my day or
my evening. That that to me is a
drink that kind of takes from me
(17:09):
even more so than what that toxic environment
is taking from me.
Right. You know, I know we're talking about
very complex situation where For sure. Life is
complex. Yeah. Yeah. Where, you know, it's not
always easy to just extricate yourself from a
toxic environment.
And at least, you know, the the bottle
of wine helps you get a sleep. So
(17:30):
at least you're not dealing with insomnia at
the same time.
Yeah. But the point I want to make
is I
I think it's worthwhile
to try
to find
a way
for the abusive parents words to just go
in one ear and out the other
(17:50):
or to develop
a such a strong sense of knowing your
values
or such a strong sense of self respect
that
you're only drinking
because it's new year's Eve or it's an
Italian restaurant
and you're not drinking because your parents just
called you a piece of for the 5th
time that night.
(18:11):
So, you know, we're dealing with like, even
in this hypothetical
simplified model of a bad household,
we're dealing with a very complex situation. Yeah.
But the
original question is,
can we really just treat the individual
when
an individual
(18:31):
is never an Island and is always part
of a family system or a community or
a workplace
or a relationship at the same time. Okay.
It's it's folly to try to treat addiction
as an individual problem.
Okay.
We have to
somehow instigate
a societal change
where, for example, parents are not automatically right.
(18:54):
Older people are not automatically right
if we normalize
Younger people abdicating their filial duty. Yeah
then maybe parents are gonna treat their adult
children better.
Yeah. Well, I think you should be able
to say to someone who's mistreating you, I
want you to stop.
And if you don't stop, I'm gonna walk
(19:14):
out of this door, and I'll see you
in an hour or next day or whatever
it is or in 15 minutes or whatever
it is. Yeah. And if they,
wet their pants, then
it's not your fault. To me, it seems
like the like the long way around to
put up with abuse and then
(19:41):
Yeah
Yeah. However,
social structural changes like that as you are
saying are complicated and difficult and take time
to to execute. Right? Yeah. Whereas,
if you need a mood changer, a mood
enhance
like substances, what we take as substances that
can become addictive,
(20:03):
we understand their purpose is to change our
mood. That is precisely
why we take them. Whether it's alcohol or
any of these other substances. Mhmm. Is that
Is there something wrong with that? You're saying
it interferes with some other way of dealing
with the problem that might get really at
the root causes. Yes, you're right. However,
you don't always have the time,
(20:23):
opportunity,
power or resources to get at the root
causes.
So what do you do?
What do you do? I mean, for how
long do you live in a state of
stress or whatever it is or oppression
without trying to regulate your mood one way
or another? And is there anything wrong with
regulating your mood with substances?
It's been a part of human civilization
for
(20:44):
well, at least 10000 years. So I I
think what I'm hearing you say is like,
what you're saying is compatible
with my view that
if the substance will add to your day
or your evening,
Go ahead and use it.
Yeah. It's really
just unnecessary
if taking it somehow just takes away from
it.
(21:05):
For for for your day or for Well,
yeah. But there's also a timing issue. It
it may improve your your state your functioning
for an hour or 2 and mess it
up for the next week. That would be
an unfortunate,
you know, payback, an unfortunate cost. Yeah. So
you wanna be sensitive to those things as
well, which is probably why crack cocaine
(21:25):
would not be the best choice if you're
trying to feel,
stay awake, you know, at night so you
can finish your homework or whatever it is.
Right. Right? I mean, yeah, you might finish
your homework Yeah. Or not. But it probably
would, you
know, kick you in the ass a little
bit down the line Right. In a serious
way. So all those computations are part of
our human
(21:46):
enterprise. They're part of what we have to
do. Yeah. And by the way, if you're
stressed out or depressed and you go to
the doctor, you're gonna get antidepressants
and anti anxiety drugs and we don't seem
to have any problem with that. Mhmm. We
don't seem to have any problem with taking
SSRIs or SNRIs. Well, this growing movement where
people do kind of have a problem with,
(22:07):
like, you know, the medicating of,
of human suffering as kind of a masking
of,
you know,
problems with with the world as it is.
Yeah. But you don't want it to be
the blanket, the only approach, but there are
many circumstances in which it makes sense.
For example, with, I don't know,
(22:28):
postnatal depression.
Mhmm. Some people will have a really hard
time for a few months with depression.
The only like, the the main
thing I'm I'm kind of pushing back against
is just like it's the
wrong order priorities
to tolerate an abusive relationship and take an
SSRI
I would argue it's the wrong order of
(22:49):
priorities
to tolerate an abusive home environment
and then drink a bottle of wine every
night. Whether it's self medication or prescribed medication,
I would argue that to kind of stay
in the toxic environment
and then to either medicate or self medicate,
you know, that's the long way around
to to extricate yourself from the environment and
(23:10):
then to neither need medication nor self medication.
That just strikes me where where it's possible
to to be just the preferable alternative.
Extrication
is often a good way to do things.
If you're the parent
of a child who has an extremely
strong energetic or aggressive impulse system
(23:30):
or, you know, learning problems or whatever the
hell it is or beats up on his
brother or sister, then
extricating may not be possible.
So, like, there's all kinds of subtleties here.
I think you are kinda trying to override
by saying there is a good hierarchy. There
is a best hierarchy of approaches. Right. It's
in some circumstances, yes. And others, no. And
others, it's just it's not worth the cost.
(23:52):
Right.
Okay.
And the cost could be ineffectiveness,
simply ineffectiveness
that you can't you can't get what you
need to get from,
you know, mindfulness meditation is terrific. It might
take 2 or 3 years to hit though.
You know? Mhmm.
Yep. Like that. Yeah.
I
I I get it. As much as I
(24:13):
wish for there to be a solution for
literally every social problem
that exists. There is no solution to every
social problem. And I enjoy your idealism. I
think I can call it idealism. That's not
an insulting thing to say.
It is idealism, but it's great, and it's
it's something to strive for. Mhmm. Right? It's
something to to go after.
(24:34):
It points in a direction.
But with respect to addiction, we can, you
know, use this kind of thinking to
talk as we were about, you know, is
it ever
okay to deal with the problem by dousing
it with a mood enhancing or mood correcting
substance? I mean, I think that's the question.
I I I think the answer is yes.
I actually think the answer is yes. Like
I said, I'm not a prohibitionist. I I
(24:56):
I think the answer is yes. I just
worry when people do it instead of standing
up to their toxic
parents' partner So do I. Etcetera. I think
we can agree on that. I think there
are disadvantages
and those disadvantages
are worrisome. They can be, you know, serious
consequences that we need to think about. And
when you're using substances, there's all kinds of
(25:17):
disadvantages that can, you know, creep in or
plunge in,
and that's part of the equation. That's part
of the cost benefit, you know, analysis. When
you talk about, you know, whether it's an
ideal
formula for that person, even that starts to
break down because it might be an ideal
formula for Tuesday but not for Thursday.
And that's a real thing. That's not just
wordplay
(25:37):
because
we are always developing and changing and so
is the context around us.
So
I don't think the I'd notion of an
ideals
ideally suitable solution
actually works over time, which means that it
doesn't work because time is always there. So
we've kind of talked about how because addiction
(26:00):
so often follows
from shame
and from trauma,
love and acceptance
and forgiveness
are more apt
for the so called addict
than shaming and criticism and nitpicking and so
on.
In your experience clinically or in your research,
(26:21):
have you encountered any views on the uselessness
of willpower?
You know, as a means to quit.
Yeah. A lot actually.
The whole area of behavioral economics,
which is the idea that
willpower
works differently,
in different,
(26:42):
again,
context, in terms of time frames, and in
terms of the values of the rewards.
So for example, if you put meth addicts
in
the study, this is called contingency management studies.
They'll they'll take mathematics,
put them in a place that where they,
of course, have to agree to the research
and say, okay. We're gonna give you're gonna
(27:02):
play a computer game every day for an
hour or 2 and you're gonna be
offered financial rewards, monetary rewards versus meth rewards.
You will get the drug at the end
of the 3 weeks or you will get
the monetary rewards at the end of the
3 weeks. Which would you choose for each
trial?
And the way
and
even meth addicts
will choose the monetary rewards if they are
(27:24):
big enough compared to the meth rewards. Mhmm.
So they can make that choice, which means
that they are actually
inhibiting their their desire, their wish for this
craving,
I suppose, for a certain amount of drug,
in favor of certain amount of financial payoff.
Mhmm. So there you're using willpower.
Okay. Okay. So that's one thing.
The Uber driver on the way over, I
(27:45):
told you that we were trying to get
into an argument
and it just wasn't going anywhere and he
kept repeating himself and it was like ridiculous.
And as you said to me, you picked
your battles.
So I gave up. I I said, let's
just drop it. Yeah. You're picking your battles
is also willpower.
Okay. Willpower is complex.
Willpower, you know, you you can
(28:06):
you can manifest a certain amount of willpower
because it's necessary,
you know,
to withhold what you wanna say about someone
who really bugs your ass whether it's, you
know, an ex wife or husband or something
like that because it's best for the kids.
I mean, there's so many conflicts with it.
Willpower comes into the equation. It's not all
(28:27):
or nothing.
It just isn't. And I think with addiction,
that's a really meaningful
complexity.
Right.
So, Mark, thank you for coming on the
show. It's been a great conversation. Mhmm. It
has. And I'm sure there's more that you
can share with our listeners, that they know
where to find you.
So if they wanna learn more about your
thoughts, your ideas, your clinical work, or your
(28:47):
research, where should they go?
So I've got 2 published books on addiction.
One is called Memoirs of an Addicted Brain,
which is a story of my own addiction,
during my twenties especially. But throwing in a
fair bit of neuroscience,
very friendly, not challenging. You don't have to
be a scientist to get it Yep. Into
the story. That's one book. The other book
(29:07):
is called The Biology of Desire, which I
think you have a copy of here,
which also builds on narratives. The
5 people that I've gotten to know who
had really serious addiction problems and how they
dealt with them, how they got through with
them, and
how different psychological factors including willpower that we
talked about, but also many others as well,
could be helpful or not helpful
(29:29):
in in in their experience.
So that's one way in my books. I
do have a website. I still do about
3, 4, 5, 6 podcasts a year. Probably
be doing more soon because I will have
a new book coming out as soon as
I write it, and I don't even know
what the title is yet, so I'm not
gonna go there.
But my website is if you Google my
(29:50):
name, Mark Lewis, Mark with a c l
e w I s, and put in addiction
or understanding
addiction, you'll get to my website.
And there are talks, articles, books,
interviews, podcasts, and
many things, including a video of my interaction
with a I was privileged to connect with
the Dalai Lama a few years ago
(30:12):
with a bunch of other scientists who talked
about addiction for a week. So that was
pretty interesting. There's a lot of cool stuff
on that website.
So that's sort of the place you can
go.
And I do work as a clinical psychologist
in Toronto.
I guess you'll find me on the web.
We'll include links in the show notes, and,
if you have any updates, we'll just update
our show notes once you have a new
(30:33):
website. Thank you. You're welcome. Again, thanks for
coming on board and, this has been how
to be an adult, a production at the
Morphis Clinic for hypnosis. If you wanna reach
out to us for hypnotherapy, you can go
to morphusclinic.com.
Thank you.
And it is hard to give up but
not impossible
because
when
he goes for a few days without it
for various.
Yes.
Especially since shame is an undercurrent,
it's only gonna exacerbate the profit. You may
improve your your state your functioning for an
hour or 2 and mess it up for
the next week. That would be an unfortunate
(00:21):
Welcome to How to be an Adult.
Today's episode continues part 1, which was released
2 weeks ago.
It's an interview with the psychologist and bestselling
author, Mark Lewis,
about addiction. If you haven't yet heard it,
please go to how to be adult.com,
or look us up on Spotify, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
(00:46):
So we're talking about how there's some kind
of positive intent
even to the critical inner dialogue that you
want to suppress through alcohol or drugs
And
the behavior
of using alcohol, drugs, gambling, porn, etcetera,
therefore, it has some kind of positive intent,
(01:09):
right?
Yes,
that's what I think is under recognized
in the way that many people see addiction.
Many people see addiction as all bad. There's
no positive side. You know, it's enabling to
look at the positive side. I totally agree.
Yeah. So,
(01:30):
again, we're kind of
arriving somewhat independently at the same conclusions. Yeah.
I think so too. And the conclusions are
in
contradiction
to
so
much
of
what's being said about addiction in the public
sphere.
I
agree. So
(01:51):
how do we make the world a better
place? That was not well articulated. And it
comes back. But the question I'm trying to
get to, like, so we have a podcast,
not a huge podcast
yet, but let's
say that our
listeners are struggling with some form of addiction
by the, you know, time they're tuning into
this episode and by the time they've gotten
(02:11):
this far. Mhmm. So,
one, we're kind of like a voice of
of hope in a way for these listeners
because, you know, we're not gonna demonize you.
I mean not just us individually
but you know people who think along these
lines
are not going to say you're bad for
drinking too much.
It's a really important starting place right there.
(02:35):
Yes. Especially since shame is an undercurrent,
it's only gonna exacerbate the problem
to imply that you're bad. Yeah. So, like,
AA is kind of interesting because there are
really different,
cultures in different AA groups. Some of them
actually do use shaming.
Maybe it's not quite intentional deliberate, but it
(02:56):
kinda comes across as it can be pretty
nasty.
And, you know, well, John, what did you
think was gonna happen? You know, kind of
thing. So some groups are like that. Some
groups really try to avoid it. Yep. But
but indeed, shame makes everything worse. Shame is
an incredibly painful, painful emotion
and it and and it's it's kinda contagious
(03:16):
in the inner world as you suggested.
It's like when you look inside, everything is
sort of coated with shame.
So that's pretty awful. Right? And what do
you do when you are habitually using a
substance, like whether it's coke or opioids or
even alcohol?
And everybody's looking at you like you're an
asshole. Yeah. You know? And, like, what do
(03:38):
you do about that? Because how do you
pull yourself apart from that perception
enough to be able to say, no, I'm
not trying to be that way. I'm not
trying to be
I'm really just trying to feel comfortable in
my own skin, which is really hard to
do because
of my PTSD,
because of my, you know, my post traumatic
stress, because of I've lived through whatever,
(04:01):
divorce, separation, abuse,
neglect,
just been fired from my job and left
by my boyfriend or girlfriend. It's like there
are so many things that I feel really
crappy about. Yeah. Well, sorry. You know, that
doesn't really help at all. A counterintuitive Well,
sorry, you know, that doesn't really help at
all.
Counter intuitively,
(04:22):
because of the element of fraternity
and camaraderie and,
you know, human connection being such a, I
don't want to say curative factor,
but
because that's a It's a It's a
sportive factor. Yeah. Sure. You know, shame just
like topples that whole house of cards. Yeah.
It really does. Yeah. It's it's really toxic.
(04:44):
Yep. And they call it there's a word
toxic shame in in psychodynamic
Yes. Terminology. Yeah. Counterintuitively,
it's going to be love and accept I
mean, go back to Carl Rogers.
Unconditional positive regard that someone who's undergoing all
the stress that leads to addiction is going
to need.
And I guess that that that's you know,
(05:06):
I sound like a broken record on this
podcast,
coming back to
self love and self acceptance and self respect
as almost panaceas
for whatever ails you.
But when, you know, when it comes
to something we need like oxygen,
self love and self respect and self compassion,
(05:27):
we need like oxygen. So oxygen's not just
a, you know, a panacea for, like, what,
hypoxia.
You know, if we breathe deeply enough,
we're going to be a little bit more
relaxed and happy. And even if we feel
loved by others, having, you know, consistent enough
self love and self acceptance and self compassion
and every other form
(05:51):
self love
in my view, be preventative against developing
a cocaine habit or an alcohol habit or
a smoking habit or a gambling habit or
a gambling habit. Generally, yes. Generally, I think
that's true. Yeah.
What would the exceptions be?
It's not so much that there are exceptions
to that principle, but
what what you say sounds redundant because you
(06:13):
keep emphasizing it self love. Well, it's not
that's redundant. It's just it's really it can
be very complex.
Like how does that actually work? How does
that manifest? Right? So what does that mean?
What let's say you,
let's say you have a very powerful temper
and you hurt people without meaning to, but
you do it often enough. Yep.
(06:34):
Then how do you love yourself? How do
you
how do you love the the the rescue
dog that just bit someone at the shelter?
Okay. Yeah. Like that. Same way. And so
there's all kinds of things that we see
about ourselves,
that are hard to love. Aspects that are
hard to love features
and there's reasons why they're hard to love.
They're hard to love partly because obviously, we
(06:56):
were,
we we were raised. We were
trained, I guess, essentially
to not hurt our little brothers and sisters,
to not grab all the food, to not
be messy and dirty and smelly and whatever
else it is and aggressive. We were we
were trained. We were,
(07:16):
socialized
to be all those things because that's the
way society functions best or that's the way
the family functions best or the community or
the group or the church or whatever it
is. So okay. Give up all of those
or shall I say subjugate all those human
characteristics
for the purpose of the whole, for the
purpose of the group, or the village or
(07:38):
that whatever society.
Good idea. Yeah. Maybe except that there's so
much wreckage and the wreckage is that we
are human and we are greedy and selfish
and dirty and aggressive,
you know, and all of that stuff. We
really are. And also kind and loving and
accepting and so on. And with that too.
So I kind of,
I've got a good friend who's kind of
(07:59):
a religious scholar or I should say a
scholar of religion. That's a pretty important difference.
Well, he isn't religious particularly, but he is
a scholar who really and his PhD thesis
was about Methodism. The Methodist,
I don't know what they call it, sector
grouping of Christianity,
in which the idea is to get all
(08:21):
of your sins and confess to all your
sins.
I am indeed greedy
and lazy
and fornicator
and what else? All those things.
I do all those things and I'm selfish
and possessive and cruel, I mean, and
whatever.
And you put them all on the table
and you get them right out there in
front of you and in methodist the methodist
(08:44):
practice the,
what's the word for it? When you sort
of blessed or forgiven. There's a there's a
word for which I always forget, but but
anyway,
and then you
are taught that God loves you anyway. Mhmm.
God or Christ loves you anyway with all
of those
problems, with all of those deviations,
(09:05):
he still loves you entirely. Well, that's a
really special kind of message. Mhmm. And I
think although the Judeo Christian
doctrine has
screwed up in a lot of ways Mhmm.
That was at least a pretty reasonable attempt
to try to get across the idea that
we can be human and still be feel
accepted and feel loved and feel like we
(09:26):
belong.
One of the interesting things about, addiction, what
we're talking about is that AA tries to
sort of do the same thing. In AA,
you admit that you're an alcoholic. You admit
that you have no control. You admit that
you're a loser and a bum and you've
been you've been deceiving yourself and everybody else.
And, you know, one of the 12 steps
is to apologize
(09:47):
to everyone you've harmed.
So it's very similar, I think, to the
Methodist idea
of, redemption. That was word of redemption.
Put all the sins on the table. Mhmm.
Admit it. Right. Admit it. Yeah. If you
don't admit it, then you're full of pride
and that's another sin. Okay. So we're gonna
put that one on the table too. And
then
and I think the higher power idea Mhmm.
(10:09):
Which you and I both kind of, you
know, are not
completely pleased about, but that idea is the
idea that there is some thing like God
or some kind of spirit or essence or
universal quality or God Yeah. Or Christ or
what have you that accepts you anyway. Mhmm.
And that is in its own that's fairly
similar to what you're talking about is the
(10:30):
healing power of love and
belonging
and and self care. And I I can't
help but make
Paral Health with Rogerian therapy Sure. Where the
therapist rather than Christ accepts you anyway. Like,
you just confessed all of your wrongdoing and
sins Yeah. In the therapy room. Yeah. But
there is But you're right. It is parallel.
(10:50):
Yeah. When there are multiple practices that independently
converge upon the same ideas, there's gotta be
something to those ideas. Yeah.
So we've kind of
glanced upon
the subject of systemic factors, like poverty
Mhmm. When it comes to addiction because it's
not just pull yourself up by the bootstraps,
(11:11):
by yourself, in your own log cabin that's
cut off from the grid. Right. Like, that
that that will not be a path to
happiness.
That there are gonna be systemic factors, like,
you know, for better or for worse, people
who are better off
are likely to have better outcomes. That's right.
And
people with a good support network, of course,
(11:31):
are gonna have better outcomes.
People who are in better health to begin
with are going to have better outcomes. People
who are of a higher socioeconomic
status independently of like their net
worth. Just having the prestige
of some help, because for sure others look
up to that boosts their self esteem and
makes it easy to get out of a
shame spiral. Yes. Exactly. So I know you
(11:54):
work as a psychotherapist, so you don't work
with, like, the whole family and their entire
team at work.
You work with an individual, yet that individual
exists
within a family, within a team at work,
with a certain boss who hopefully isn't an
but often is. Yeah. So let's say that
you're taking care
(12:15):
of
aging parents
who were abusive to you when you were
a child. Mhmm.
And
they now have dementia. Mhmm. So their abuse
has gotten worse.
And yet you're taking care of them. So
in your very own home, you're being abused
by the people you have verbally abused, emotionally
abused by the people
(12:35):
who you're trying to take care of.
So let's say that your client is this
well meaning person,
and the only way that he has to
cope is by downing a bottle of wine
at the end of every night to get
to sleep. Yeah. After his parents with dementia,
you know, finally stopped talking and fell asleep
in front of the television set. So he's
(12:57):
come to you and he wants you to
help him to stop downing that bottle of
wine Yeah. At the end of every night
because that's not making anything any better.
Maybe it is.
Okay.
Maybe it's getting him through the night. I
mean, I'm serious. I'm not just being glib.
Yeah. And so what I would do, I
I never asked my clients to stop. Mhmm.
That's just completely goes against my approach. Even
(13:18):
if they ask you to help them to
stop?
I don't do it like that. Okay. For
example, a guy just actually got in touch
with me very recently who smokes cannabis
addictively daily and is very concerned about the
health effects
on his,
lungs and and stuff and throat. And so
it's like
and he's having a real hard time stopping,
(13:39):
and it's not through lack of resources. He's
got a lot of the cognitive and social
resources he would need.
So
it kinda stretches
my approach, but my approach is to say,
what exactly
let's try to really focus in on what
you're getting
from that first
that first puff. Mhmm. Let's really try to
try to feel what you're getting, what you
(14:00):
what you need, why it feels so good
that it's hard to give up. Mhmm. And
it is hard to give up, but not
impossible because
when he goes for a few days without
it for various circumstantial reasons, he doesn't suffer
a whole lot. He doesn't sit there craving,
and there's nothing like that. Obviously, there's no
withdrawal for camp. There's no physical withdrawal. At
least not very little.
(14:21):
So
try to figure that out and try to
see if
using IFS therapy, try to talk with that
part and and really
contend with
what's missing. Mhmm. What's missing? Is it is
it if it's a feeling of freedom, then
what why don't you feel free? Mhmm. What
is it that is seem seems to be
(14:43):
locking
or diminishing your freedom
at the end of the day or at
the beginning of the day, whenever it is,
that that makes this so important, so special,
so valuable. Mhmm.
So,
you know, back to the guy who's drinking
a bottle of wine every night, and I've
certainly had clients like that, I would I
would say, well, I'm not an idiot. Like,
(15:03):
I would probably say, let's just keep it
down to a bottle a night. Mhmm. But
I would say that. Okay. Let's try not
to make it 2 bottles a night. Let's
try to keep it to wine and not
vodka. Okay. Got it. Drinking a bottle of
wine per night is probably gonna be a
lot easier, better for your body and for
those around you than drinking
a 750 milliliter bottle of vodka
(15:24):
Okay. So kind of like a harm reduction
Pretty much. Sort of a bunch. Okay. Pretty
much harm reduction. Yes. Got it. One issue
I take with harm reduction
is there's almost like this implication
that people are necessarily
gonna just use any way. Right?
Which
well, okay. So let me define first what
(15:44):
my view of a healthy relationship to a
substance is because you know, like, again, I'm
not a prohibitionist.
I do believe there is such a thing
as a healthy versus an unhealthy relationship to
alcohol or to a drug or something. Yeah.
So to to me, my con perception of
of a healthy relationship to any kind of
substance or any kind of behavior is that
(16:04):
you're doing it because it's somehow
adds
to your day or to your night. And
it's not something that's taking
from your your day. Like, it's not gonna
take your health or your well-being or your
self respect or your peace of mind. Mhmm.
Like for example, if I have a glass
of champagne on New Year's Eve, my New
(16:26):
Year's Eve is is better,
not worse Yeah. Because I have a glass
of champagne. Yeah. If I go to an
Italian restaurant, I have, like, a nice pasta
and then I have like a glass of
red wine that pairs well with the pasta.
You know, there's like really no downside to
the glass of wine. Yeah. And the glass
of wine is a good pairing
with my entree.
(16:47):
But then if
I'm in some kind of toxic environment
and I'm drinking
too much to the point where I'm just
further toxifying myself,
that to me is not an it's not
a drink that adds to my day or
my evening. That that to me is a
drink that kind of takes from me
(17:09):
even more so than what that toxic environment
is taking from me.
Right. You know, I know we're talking about
very complex situation where For sure. Life is
complex. Yeah. Yeah. Where, you know, it's not
always easy to just extricate yourself from a
toxic environment.
And at least, you know, the the bottle
of wine helps you get a sleep. So
(17:30):
at least you're not dealing with insomnia at
the same time.
Yeah. But the point I want to make
is I
I think it's worthwhile
to try
to find
a way
for the abusive parents words to just go
in one ear and out the other
(17:50):
or to develop
a such a strong sense of knowing your
values
or such a strong sense of self respect
that
you're only drinking
because it's new year's Eve or it's an
Italian restaurant
and you're not drinking because your parents just
called you a piece of for the 5th
time that night.
(18:11):
So, you know, we're dealing with like, even
in this hypothetical
simplified model of a bad household,
we're dealing with a very complex situation. Yeah.
But the
original question is,
can we really just treat the individual
when
an individual
(18:31):
is never an Island and is always part
of a family system or a community or
a workplace
or a relationship at the same time. Okay.
It's it's folly to try to treat addiction
as an individual problem.
Okay.
We have to
somehow instigate
a societal change
where, for example, parents are not automatically right.
(18:54):
Older people are not automatically right
if we normalize
Younger people abdicating their filial duty. Yeah
then maybe parents are gonna treat their adult
children better.
Yeah. Well, I think you should be able
to say to someone who's mistreating you, I
want you to stop.
And if you don't stop, I'm gonna walk
(19:14):
out of this door, and I'll see you
in an hour or next day or whatever
it is or in 15 minutes or whatever
it is. Yeah. And if they,
wet their pants, then
it's not your fault. To me, it seems
like the like the long way around to
put up with abuse and then
(19:41):
Yeah
Yeah. However,
social structural changes like that as you are
saying are complicated and difficult and take time
to to execute. Right? Yeah. Whereas,
if you need a mood changer, a mood
enhance
like substances, what we take as substances that
can become addictive,
(20:03):
we understand their purpose is to change our
mood. That is precisely
why we take them. Whether it's alcohol or
any of these other substances. Mhmm. Is that
Is there something wrong with that? You're saying
it interferes with some other way of dealing
with the problem that might get really at
the root causes. Yes, you're right. However,
you don't always have the time,
(20:23):
opportunity,
power or resources to get at the root
causes.
So what do you do?
What do you do? I mean, for how
long do you live in a state of
stress or whatever it is or oppression
without trying to regulate your mood one way
or another? And is there anything wrong with
regulating your mood with substances?
It's been a part of human civilization
for
(20:44):
well, at least 10000 years. So I I
think what I'm hearing you say is like,
what you're saying is compatible
with my view that
if the substance will add to your day
or your evening,
Go ahead and use it.
Yeah. It's really
just unnecessary
if taking it somehow just takes away from
it.
(21:05):
For for for your day or for Well,
yeah. But there's also a timing issue. It
it may improve your your state your functioning
for an hour or 2 and mess it
up for the next week. That would be
an unfortunate,
you know, payback, an unfortunate cost. Yeah. So
you wanna be sensitive to those things as
well, which is probably why crack cocaine
(21:25):
would not be the best choice if you're
trying to feel,
stay awake, you know, at night so you
can finish your homework or whatever it is.
Right. Right? I mean, yeah, you might finish
your homework Yeah. Or not. But it probably
would, you
know, kick you in the ass a little
bit down the line Right. In a serious
way. So all those computations are part of
our human
(21:46):
enterprise. They're part of what we have to
do. Yeah. And by the way, if you're
stressed out or depressed and you go to
the doctor, you're gonna get antidepressants
and anti anxiety drugs and we don't seem
to have any problem with that. Mhmm. We
don't seem to have any problem with taking
SSRIs or SNRIs. Well, this growing movement where
people do kind of have a problem with,
(22:07):
like, you know, the medicating of,
of human suffering as kind of a masking
of,
you know,
problems with with the world as it is.
Yeah. But you don't want it to be
the blanket, the only approach, but there are
many circumstances in which it makes sense.
For example, with, I don't know,
(22:28):
postnatal depression.
Mhmm. Some people will have a really hard
time for a few months with depression.
The only like, the the main
thing I'm I'm kind of pushing back against
is just like it's the
wrong order priorities
to tolerate an abusive relationship and take an
SSRI
I would argue it's the wrong order of
(22:49):
priorities
to tolerate an abusive home environment
and then drink a bottle of wine every
night. Whether it's self medication or prescribed medication,
I would argue that to kind of stay
in the toxic environment
and then to either medicate or self medicate,
you know, that's the long way around
to to extricate yourself from the environment and
(23:10):
then to neither need medication nor self medication.
That just strikes me where where it's possible
to to be just the preferable alternative.
Extrication
is often a good way to do things.
If you're the parent
of a child who has an extremely
strong energetic or aggressive impulse system
(23:30):
or, you know, learning problems or whatever the
hell it is or beats up on his
brother or sister, then
extricating may not be possible.
So, like, there's all kinds of subtleties here.
I think you are kinda trying to override
by saying there is a good hierarchy. There
is a best hierarchy of approaches. Right. It's
in some circumstances, yes. And others, no. And
others, it's just it's not worth the cost.
(23:52):
Right.
Okay.
And the cost could be ineffectiveness,
simply ineffectiveness
that you can't you can't get what you
need to get from,
you know, mindfulness meditation is terrific. It might
take 2 or 3 years to hit though.
You know? Mhmm.
Yep. Like that. Yeah.
I
I I get it. As much as I
(24:13):
wish for there to be a solution for
literally every social problem
that exists. There is no solution to every
social problem. And I enjoy your idealism. I
think I can call it idealism. That's not
an insulting thing to say.
It is idealism, but it's great, and it's
it's something to strive for. Mhmm. Right? It's
something to to go after.
(24:34):
It points in a direction.
But with respect to addiction, we can, you
know, use this kind of thinking to
talk as we were about, you know, is
it ever
okay to deal with the problem by dousing
it with a mood enhancing or mood correcting
substance? I mean, I think that's the question.
I I I think the answer is yes.
I actually think the answer is yes. Like
I said, I'm not a prohibitionist. I I
(24:56):
I think the answer is yes. I just
worry when people do it instead of standing
up to their toxic
parents' partner So do I. Etcetera. I think
we can agree on that. I think there
are disadvantages
and those disadvantages
are worrisome. They can be, you know, serious
consequences that we need to think about. And
when you're using substances, there's all kinds of
(25:17):
disadvantages that can, you know, creep in or
plunge in,
and that's part of the equation. That's part
of the cost benefit, you know, analysis. When
you talk about, you know, whether it's an
ideal
formula for that person, even that starts to
break down because it might be an ideal
formula for Tuesday but not for Thursday.
And that's a real thing. That's not just
wordplay
(25:37):
because
we are always developing and changing and so
is the context around us.
So
I don't think the I'd notion of an
ideals
ideally suitable solution
actually works over time, which means that it
doesn't work because time is always there. So
we've kind of talked about how because addiction
(26:00):
so often follows
from shame
and from trauma,
love and acceptance
and forgiveness
are more apt
for the so called addict
than shaming and criticism and nitpicking and so
on.
In your experience clinically or in your research,
(26:21):
have you encountered any views on the uselessness
of willpower?
You know, as a means to quit.
Yeah. A lot actually.
The whole area of behavioral economics,
which is the idea that
willpower
works differently,
in different,
(26:42):
again,
context, in terms of time frames, and in
terms of the values of the rewards.
So for example, if you put meth addicts
in
the study, this is called contingency management studies.
They'll they'll take mathematics,
put them in a place that where they,
of course, have to agree to the research
and say, okay. We're gonna give you're gonna
(27:02):
play a computer game every day for an
hour or 2 and you're gonna be
offered financial rewards, monetary rewards versus meth rewards.
You will get the drug at the end
of the 3 weeks or you will get
the monetary rewards at the end of the
3 weeks. Which would you choose for each
trial?
And the way
and
even meth addicts
will choose the monetary rewards if they are
(27:24):
big enough compared to the meth rewards. Mhmm.
So they can make that choice, which means
that they are actually
inhibiting their their desire, their wish for this
craving,
I suppose, for a certain amount of drug,
in favor of certain amount of financial payoff.
Mhmm. So there you're using willpower.
Okay. Okay. So that's one thing.
The Uber driver on the way over, I
(27:45):
told you that we were trying to get
into an argument
and it just wasn't going anywhere and he
kept repeating himself and it was like ridiculous.
And as you said to me, you picked
your battles.
So I gave up. I I said, let's
just drop it. Yeah. You're picking your battles
is also willpower.
Okay. Willpower is complex.
Willpower, you know, you you can
(28:06):
you can manifest a certain amount of willpower
because it's necessary,
you know,
to withhold what you wanna say about someone
who really bugs your ass whether it's, you
know, an ex wife or husband or something
like that because it's best for the kids.
I mean, there's so many conflicts with it.
Willpower comes into the equation. It's not all
(28:27):
or nothing.
It just isn't. And I think with addiction,
that's a really meaningful
complexity.
Right.
So, Mark, thank you for coming on the
show. It's been a great conversation. Mhmm. It
has. And I'm sure there's more that you
can share with our listeners, that they know
where to find you.
So if they wanna learn more about your
thoughts, your ideas, your clinical work, or your
(28:47):
research, where should they go?
So I've got 2 published books on addiction.
One is called Memoirs of an Addicted Brain,
which is a story of my own addiction,
during my twenties especially. But throwing in a
fair bit of neuroscience,
very friendly, not challenging. You don't have to
be a scientist to get it Yep. Into
the story. That's one book. The other book
(29:07):
is called The Biology of Desire, which I
think you have a copy of here,
which also builds on narratives. The
5 people that I've gotten to know who
had really serious addiction problems and how they
dealt with them, how they got through with
them, and
how different psychological factors including willpower that we
talked about, but also many others as well,
could be helpful or not helpful
(29:29):
in in in their experience.
So that's one way in my books. I
do have a website. I still do about
3, 4, 5, 6 podcasts a year. Probably
be doing more soon because I will have
a new book coming out as soon as
I write it, and I don't even know
what the title is yet, so I'm not
gonna go there.
But my website is if you Google my
(29:50):
name, Mark Lewis, Mark with a c l
e w I s, and put in addiction
or understanding
addiction, you'll get to my website.
And there are talks, articles, books,
interviews, podcasts, and
many things, including a video of my interaction
with a I was privileged to connect with
the Dalai Lama a few years ago
(30:12):
with a bunch of other scientists who talked
about addiction for a week. So that was
pretty interesting. There's a lot of cool stuff
on that website.
So that's sort of the place you can
go.
And I do work as a clinical psychologist
in Toronto.
I guess you'll find me on the web.
We'll include links in the show notes, and,
if you have any updates, we'll just update
our show notes once you have a new
(30:33):
website. Thank you. You're welcome. Again, thanks for
coming on board and, this has been how
to be an adult, a production at the
Morphis Clinic for hypnosis. If you wanna reach
out to us for hypnotherapy, you can go
to morphusclinic.com.
Thank you.
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