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Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Ethan Nadelman, and this is Psychoactive, a production

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Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. Psychoactive is the

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Speaker 1: show where we talk about all things drugs. But any

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Speaker 1: views expressed here do not represent those of I Heart Media,

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Speaker 1: Protozoa Pictures, or their executives and employees. Indeed, heed, as

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Speaker 1: an inveterate contrarian, I can tell you they may not

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Speaker 1: even represent my own and nothing contained in this show

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Speaker 1: should be used his medical advice or encouragement to use

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Speaker 1: any type of drugs. Hello, Psychoactive listeners, Well, my guest

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Speaker 1: today is somebody I'm sure many of you have heard

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Speaker 1: about because of his best selling books and his insightful

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Speaker 1: views about dealing with addiction and is being really traveling

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Speaker 1: all around the world talking about this. His name is

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Speaker 1: gobb Or Matele'tha Hungarian Canadian physician and therapist. He was

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Speaker 1: born in Nazi occupied Budapest in nineteen forty four, emigrated

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Speaker 1: to Canada in nineteen fifty six and grew up and

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Speaker 1: it's been much of his life in Vancouver and he's

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Speaker 1: been a practicing physician. He worked for like a dozen

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Speaker 1: years with Really Down and Our Drug Users in the

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Speaker 1: downtown East side of Vancouver. But Gabbar and I first

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Speaker 1: crossed pass about fourteen years or so ago when his

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Speaker 1: book came out called In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts,

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Speaker 1: Close Encounters with Addiction, and that book really put gabb

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Speaker 1: Or on the map in my world, not just drug policy,

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Speaker 1: but the broader world of how we deal with psychoactive

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Speaker 1: drugs and addiction. And out of that grew he's really

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Speaker 1: becoming a kind of globe trotting speaker and therapist. Uh

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Speaker 1: and then at some point getting involved also in ayahuasca.

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Speaker 1: I mean, it's just had his fascinating life and most cerently,

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Speaker 1: a few months ago he came out with a new

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Speaker 1: book called The Myth of Normal Trauma, Illness and Healing

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Speaker 1: in a Toxic Culture. So Gabar, you know, it's good

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Speaker 1: to see you again. Thanks so much for joining me

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Speaker 1: and my listeners on Psychoactive. It's great to re connect

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Speaker 1: with you with anything. That's been a lot of years.

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Speaker 1: I know. I mean, I was thinking back to Uh,

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Speaker 1: I guess it was you must have come to New

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Speaker 1: York in two thousand eight or nine, called me up

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Speaker 1: when we had lunch together, and I have to tell you,

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Speaker 1: over the years, I've heard so many people who have

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Speaker 1: been so shaped and influenced and even you know, in

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Speaker 1: some respects saved by by your teaching. So I really

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Speaker 1: want to get into that, and I want to give

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Speaker 1: you a chance to talk about the new book. But

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Speaker 1: of course for me and the listeners, you know, the

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Speaker 1: focus is very much on drugs and addictions. So part

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Speaker 1: of what we'll be talking about is really the overlap

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Speaker 1: in the connection between those two. So let me just

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Speaker 1: start off by asking you. I mean, you had that

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Speaker 1: book Hungry Ghosts, and now you have the myth of Normal,

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Speaker 1: which is not just about a action, but really about

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Speaker 1: a whole range of physiological you know, maladies and such.

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Speaker 1: And the common link appears to be your focus on trauma.

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Speaker 1: So just explain that link and also the evolution from

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Speaker 1: the Hungry Ghost book to the current one. Sure, So,

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Speaker 1: what I'm actually arguing is, and and it's not just

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Speaker 1: a matter of my personal insight, but really a lot

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Speaker 1: of science that demonstrates this is that the common denominator

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Speaker 1: in most chronic conditions of mind and body is actually trauma.

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Speaker 1: And this is what through whether or not we're talking

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Speaker 1: about addictions. The so named mental illnesses from a d

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Speaker 1: H data depression to psychosystem bipolar conditions, borderline personality. All

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Speaker 1: these diagnoses they have a common threat of trauma, as

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Speaker 1: do rumatotritis, multiple scrossism, automan diseases, in general, many malignancies

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Speaker 1: as well as do addictions. Of course, I've always argued

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Speaker 1: that addictions are rooted in trauma, and so that's the

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Speaker 1: common thread is trauma. And the reason the book is

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Speaker 1: subtitled Traumulence and Healing in the Toxic Culture is because

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Speaker 1: I argue that the very conditions of life in modern

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Speaker 1: day globalized, corporate capitalist society actually traumatized people, They hurt people,

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Speaker 1: they wound people, and that diseases of mind and body

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Speaker 1: in this environment are not abnormal their normal responses to

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Speaker 1: what is an abnormal culture. M hm m hm. So

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Speaker 1: you know, at one point, there's a quote that you

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Speaker 1: have starting with the chapters by Eric Framm. I mean

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Speaker 1: you say, the fact that millions of people share the

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Speaker 1: same vices does not make these vices virtues. The fact

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Speaker 1: that they share so many errors does not make the

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Speaker 1: errors to be truth. And the fact that millions of

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Speaker 1: people share the same forms of mental pathology does not

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Speaker 1: make these people saying so expand on that. Sure, So

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Speaker 1: we have this idea that normal equates too healthy and

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Speaker 1: natural and within a narrow range of of understanding that

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Speaker 1: is correct. So in medical parlance, we're talking about the

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Speaker 1: range of circumstances or parameters within machuman life thrives and

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Speaker 1: is sustainable. So there's a normal range of temperature. If

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Speaker 1: you fall below or go above that, your life is

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Speaker 1: at risk. There's a normal range of blood picture that

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Speaker 1: equates to what is healthy and natural. Below that or

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Speaker 1: above that, life is threatened. So normal there means healthy

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Speaker 1: and natural. We make any assumption that that would be

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Speaker 1: used to in society in general is also healthy and natural.

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Speaker 1: And what froms citation from a book he wrote in

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Speaker 1: the nineteen forties called the Same Society and I have

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Speaker 1: to say it in common, is that what is considered

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Speaker 1: the norm in this culture is actually pathological. So that

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Speaker 1: for example, the idea, sort of the motivating idea, the

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Speaker 1: assumption about human nature that we are aggressive, competitive, individualistic creatures,

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Speaker 1: that's the norm, that's what sold to us as reality.

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Speaker 1: In fact, it's a pathology. It creates a whole lot

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Speaker 1: of illness. Very specifically, it is normal in this culture

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Speaker 1: um for parents to be told not to pick up

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Speaker 1: their kids when they're crying. That's the norm. But it's

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Speaker 1: completely healthy and unnatural and totally foreign to human evolution,

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Speaker 1: to indigenous cultures, or for that matter, to any of

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Speaker 1: the mammalian relatives. You know, you tell a mother gorilla

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Speaker 1: not to pick up their baby when they're distressed. You know.

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Speaker 1: So a lot of the things that are actually pathological,

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Speaker 1: and they're shared across the culture, are actually unhealthy and

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Speaker 1: and and and and unnatural, and they create the disease. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, you know, there's one part of me that

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Speaker 1: listens to this and say, well, I mean, yes, you

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Speaker 1: look around what's going on, you know, especially with technology now,

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Speaker 1: and you know, the screen dominating more and more people's lives,

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Speaker 1: especially young people. Beyond that, and and a whole range

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Speaker 1: of other things that does in faccine pathological consumerism, materialism,

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Speaker 1: you know, the crasser elements of dynamic capitalism around the world,

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Speaker 1: you know, And the other part of me goes, doesn't

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Speaker 1: that in a way sort of romanticize a past. I mean,

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Speaker 1: we think about the fact that people's average lifespan has

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Speaker 1: gotten so much longer. We think about the frequency with

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Speaker 1: whish people oftentype die all times people died violently, you know,

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Speaker 1: as oftentimes a much larger numbers in you know, centuries

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Speaker 1: past and decades past. We think about the pervasive racism

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Speaker 1: and sexism and and stuff that happened in the past.

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Speaker 1: So is I mean, didn't those prior societies also have

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Speaker 1: their own traumatic traumas, even if mothers were better at

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Speaker 1: nurturing their apies, are not deluded by these directives about

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Speaker 1: what's the proper way to bring up a kid? Well,

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Speaker 1: even that's a good question, but it's a question of

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Speaker 1: what what baseline are we looking at if we're looking

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Speaker 1: at our revolutionary origins, what you're saying is not the case,

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Speaker 1: so that human beings have lived in what we cause

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Speaker 1: civilization only for about twelve thousand years, twelve to fifteen

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Speaker 1: years at the most. Now our own species, Homo sapiens

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Speaker 1: we've been on earth for about hundred fifty two hundred

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Speaker 1: thousand years, and other hominin species, you know, pre modern humans,

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Speaker 1: but fellow human beings have lived on the earth for

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Speaker 1: at least half a million year or longer, and evolutionarily speaking,

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Speaker 1: hominids have been here for millions of years and so

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Speaker 1: all that time until twelve thousand and fifteen thoud years ago,

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Speaker 1: we lived in small band hunter gatherer roots. That's how

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Speaker 1: we evolved. That is what a wonderful researcher, our CNRS

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Speaker 1: from Not to Day University calls our revolution there in niche. Now,

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Speaker 1: in that evolutionary's niche, it's not true that we had

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Speaker 1: more disease. Um, it's not true that we are more violence.

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Speaker 1: So in those small groups, people basically lived collaboratively, coaterly.

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Speaker 1: They had to. It's not a question of moral superiority,

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Speaker 1: it's a question of that sort of took to survive.

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Speaker 1: And so in those environments, children were picked up, they

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Speaker 1: weren't put down. Um. Children spent their whole their on

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Speaker 1: the adults. And this has been studied in terms of

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Speaker 1: those indigenous cultures that have not been totally destroyed by colonialism.

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Speaker 1: They tend to be much healthier than we are. Actually, well,

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Speaker 1: I don't. I mean, I also think about you know,

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Speaker 1: even pre colonialism, right, I mean, you have a hundred

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Speaker 1: graduate groups. But they had to fear about animals coming

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Speaker 1: in and eating their parents in the middle of the

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Speaker 1: ninth they had to worry about marauding groups. And that's

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Speaker 1: that I have to say that that's a modern assumption,

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Speaker 1: that's not what the research shows. Well, but it does

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Speaker 1: vary from I mean, even if one looks, for example,

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Speaker 1: some of the history of Native Americans, you know, before

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Speaker 1: even colonization, or you look at you know what I mean,

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Speaker 1: you had you know, warring tribes, and you had that

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Speaker 1: were some others that were sedentary and landed. That the

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Speaker 1: same was true elsewhere. Well, what you're saying is true.

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Speaker 1: So it depends on what level of civilization we're at. See,

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Speaker 1: what I'm saying is that once you get larger groupings

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Speaker 1: and more civilized quote unquote societies, you're going to get

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Speaker 1: more and more what you're talking about. It's not a

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Speaker 1: matter of romanticizing anything, and it's soon not a matter

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Speaker 1: of returning to ways of life that are no longer

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Speaker 1: accessible to us. But it is a matter of learning

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Speaker 1: what we've lost in the process. So that when the

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Speaker 1: Christians came to North America, they were appalled by the

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Speaker 1: parenting practices of the natives. You know why, because the

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Speaker 1: natives didn't beat their kids into the into the Christians,

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Speaker 1: this was a sin. And yet we know that we

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Speaker 1: know that beating kids is actually traumatic for kids. And

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Speaker 1: these people did not hit their children. And so again

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Speaker 1: it's not a matter of romanticizing a way of life

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Speaker 1: or or saying that they were perfect. They were not.

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Speaker 1: But we've lost a lot so in in terms of

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Speaker 1: our civilization, for all our achievements, we've lost certainty, the

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Speaker 1: attachment relationships that the Indigenous people would have with their

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Speaker 1: children and with each other. We've lost a sense of

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Speaker 1: common communality. Um in. In for this book, I spoke

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Speaker 1: with an American psychiatrist and physician called Lewis mel Madrona.

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Speaker 1: And Lewis has written books on book called Coyote Medicine,

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Speaker 1: and he's a book called Narrative Medicine and the part

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Speaker 1: of storytelling and healing, And he's from Lakota background partly.

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Speaker 1: And he says that in a a court edition and somebody

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Speaker 1: gets ill, they say to the person, in effect, thank you,

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Speaker 1: your illness is manifesting some dysfunction in our whole culture,

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Speaker 1: in the whole society, in the whole community. So you're

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Speaker 1: he is our healing. Now, scientifically that is actually the case,

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Speaker 1: but Western medicine forgets that we separate the mind from

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Speaker 1: the body. And we separate individual from the environment, and

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Speaker 1: yet that localtota edition scientifically is much more accurate. So so,

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Speaker 1: for example, UM, an American black woman, the more experiences

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Speaker 1: of racism they experience, the higher their risk for asthma.

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Speaker 1: So there's something about social stress and racist stress that

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Speaker 1: actually inflames the lungs the airways of the individual. Which

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Speaker 1: means is that asthma a disease of an isolated organ

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Speaker 1: in a body, or is it representing a social malaise not?

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Speaker 1: The only scientific way of understanding is that the two

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Speaker 1: can't be separated. So so I'm saying that there's things

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Speaker 1: of an indigenous wisdom that for a long time, UM,

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Speaker 1: we're dismissed, but which modern science has actually proven we

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Speaker 1: have a lot to learn by not being certainly by

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Speaker 1: not being arrogant about our achievements while ignoring all that

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Speaker 1: we have lost in terms of human connection. Yeah, I'll

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Speaker 1: tell you, in reading the Myth of Normal these last

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Speaker 1: few days, was struck by the amount of evidence that

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Speaker 1: you marshaled in terms of the impact of what happens

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Speaker 1: to us while we're in our mother's wombs and in

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Speaker 1: early childhood, in terms of affecting you know everything from

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Speaker 1: various forms of mental and emotional health to even physical health.

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Speaker 1: I mean you, but you mentioned, for example at one

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Speaker 1: point a sort of semi famous study called the ACE study,

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Speaker 1: the Adverse Childhood Experienced the study, and then you dropped

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Speaker 1: references to hundreds of others, including the one you were

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Speaker 1: mentioning about the impact of racism. But just tell our

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Speaker 1: listeners something about that a study and why it was significant,

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Speaker 1: and what sort of research out there. It's emblematic of well,

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Speaker 1: let me tell you about these studies, and then I

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Speaker 1: also let me tell you a bit of our horror story.

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Speaker 1: So they studies. They studies stands for adverse Childhood Experiences,

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Speaker 1: and these studies have been done originally done in California

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Speaker 1: and the Kaiser Permanent They Health system. They looked at about,

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Speaker 1: I think but seventeen thousand adults and they did a

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Speaker 1: question on their childhoods and they identified what they called

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Speaker 1: address childhood experiences or a C s. Anybody listening, they

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Speaker 1: can go to the web and just download their a

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Speaker 1: C questionnaire. And an a C or an adage childhood

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Speaker 1: experience is say physical sexual promotional abuse. That's three the

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Speaker 1: depth of a parent, the parent being addicted, apparently mentally

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Speaker 1: all a parent being jailed, a rancors divorce valnce in

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Speaker 1: a family, one parent hitting another. So for each of

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Speaker 1: these adverage Charldter experiences, the risk of addiction goes up.

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Speaker 1: And used to work with addictions very much, and so

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Speaker 1: the risk of addiction goes up exponentially. They don't add up,

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Speaker 1: they multiply. By the time a male child has had

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Speaker 1: six of these, his risk of being him an injection

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Speaker 1: using substance dependent adult is forty greater forty six fold

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Speaker 1: increase than that of a child. But no such experiences.

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Speaker 1: So there's a clear link between these traumatic incidents in

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Speaker 1: childhood and adult addiction, but not just addiction, also mental

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Speaker 1: health issues, autommune disease and so on. So those are

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Speaker 1: the a C studies, and they have been published all

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Speaker 1: over the world. They've been repeated always with the same

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Speaker 1: results internationally, and they've been published in major medical journals,

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Speaker 1: psychological journals. That's the a C studies, crucial studies in

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Speaker 1: showing the relationship between early trauma adversity and adult illness

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Speaker 1: of mind and body. That's the nutshell version of it. Now,

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Speaker 1: the horror story is this five years ago, so by

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Speaker 1: the way, not just the A C studies, but you

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Speaker 1: mentioned all those studies that I collated literally for writing

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Speaker 1: this book I've over ten years, are brought together twenty

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Speaker 1: five different articles, many of them many of them research papers,

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Speaker 1: scientific publications, medical journal articles about all this stuff. So

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Speaker 1: there's all this research now that a woman's stresses during pregnancy,

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Speaker 1: which is transmitted to the fetus through the umbilical cord

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Speaker 1: and the stress hormones of the mother and the nervous

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Speaker 1: system reactions to the mother, they have an impact on

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Speaker 1: the infant, but is measurable even in utero by various techniques,

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Speaker 1: and which show up in higher propensity to disease and

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Speaker 1: mental health problems in the child. Later on, and giving

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Speaker 1: this talk to an Indigenous group here in Canada some

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Speaker 1: years ago, I had a young man come up to

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Speaker 1: me and says, hey, Doc, you know what you just said.

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Speaker 1: In our community, when a woman was pregnant and then

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Speaker 1: if you were stressed or angry, you were not permitted

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Speaker 1: to go near them because we didn't want you passing

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Speaker 1: on your stress or anger to the infant. So they

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Speaker 1: knew this intuitively, nobody have the signs to show it.

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Speaker 1: The horror story you know I'm putting in quotation marks

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Speaker 1: is that was in Norway five years ago you speaking

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Speaker 1: at an addiction conference. There were two very famous American

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Speaker 1: speakers there. I will not embarrass them by giving their names,

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Speaker 1: but one of them is very high up in the

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Speaker 1: world of CBT cognitive behavioral therapy, as high up as

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Speaker 1: you can get. The other is a very well known

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Speaker 1: American psychiatrist. He edited one of the versions of the

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Speaker 1: d s M and is published extensively um and quoted

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Speaker 1: extensive in the national media. Very well known people. Both

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Speaker 1: of them. We had dinner before the conference and I

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Speaker 1: said to the one of them, where do you live?

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Speaker 1: And they mentioned a certain city. I said, oh, you

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Speaker 1: must know Dr Vincent Felippi. He said, who's that? I said, well,

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Speaker 1: I said, Feliti happens to be the lead investigator for

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Speaker 1: the famous adverse Childer Experiences studies. This leading American psychologist

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Speaker 1: and this leading American psychiatrists both said, what are those

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Speaker 1: They've never heard of them, despite the fact that they're

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Speaker 1: being published all of the world in all manner of

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Speaker 1: leading scientific and medical publications. That's the horror story, is

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Speaker 1: that on the one hand, we have all this research

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Speaker 1: all this evidence. On the other hand, the leading institutions

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Speaker 1: and the leading representatives of the so called healing institutions

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Speaker 1: and our culture don't even have acquaintance with all that information.

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Speaker 1: It's incredible. Okay, well, let me ask you this because

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Speaker 1: you know, it seems to me in sort of psychotherapy

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Speaker 1: and trying to heal, right, that that one of the

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Speaker 1: kind of overlapping elements, even with the cognitive behavioral therapy folks, right,

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Speaker 1: is that part of what's so crucial is changing one's story,

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Speaker 1: one's narrative. And I noticed in reading your stuff it's

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Speaker 1: also about changing the story. If you change the narrative,

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Speaker 1: now you're changing the narrative is much more dear, you know,

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Speaker 1: grounded in trying to process and get out underlying elements

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Speaker 1: of the trauma, the prenatal trauma, the the childhood trauma. Um.

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Speaker 1: But the is it and it is what I'm saying,

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Speaker 1: right that this change in changing one's story one's narrative

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Speaker 1: about one's life is a common element in much of

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Speaker 1: what proves to be effective in in psychotherapy and in healing. Imprinciple,

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Speaker 1: that's true. In practice, it depends on precisely I did

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Speaker 1: that goes and with what kind of insights. So yeah,

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Speaker 1: so I talked about myself and my own particular infancy

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Speaker 1: where you mentioned I was born, or at least I

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Speaker 1: spent most of my first year under Nazi occupation and

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Speaker 1: Hungary and under threat of annihilation. My mother and I

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Speaker 1: and for five weeks were separated. I couldn't wouldn't even

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Speaker 1: see her as a as a one year eleven month old.

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Speaker 1: Now what I made that mean? What I mean it

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Speaker 1: means is that I wasn't lovable, and I wasn't loved,

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Speaker 1: and I was being abandoned. I couldn't interpret that no

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Speaker 1: other way. No. In fact, of course it really happened.

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Speaker 1: Was that her giving me to the stranger in the

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Speaker 1: streets of Budapest, a place that where I stood right

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Speaker 1: on the spot just a few weeks ago, actually was

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Speaker 1: an act of incredible love and courage and self sacrifice.

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Speaker 1: You know, imagine the twenty four old woman giving a

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Speaker 1: baby to a stranger in the street to save his life,

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Speaker 1: but as an infant, had no other way of understanding

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Speaker 1: it but that this is an abandonment, and who gets

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Speaker 1: abandoned somebody who deserves to be abandoned. So I grew

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Speaker 1: up with that kind of self concept. Healing does involved,

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Speaker 1: in the end, come to terms with the stories that

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Speaker 1: the trauma imprinted in your brain and in your body.

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Speaker 1: I just don't think it's as simple as some people

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Speaker 1: make it out to be. So I've read by and

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Speaker 1: Cage's book with great appreciation and her our questions doing

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Speaker 1: the work. The four questions that she asked are really

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Speaker 1: helpful very often in relationships because what they do is

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Speaker 1: they they actually invite the person to take responsibility for

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Speaker 1: their beliefs and their reactions, not to make the other

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Speaker 1: person wrong for them. That's really good, But they don't

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Speaker 1: really deal with the trauma element very much, which is

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Speaker 1: how people develop these beliefs in the first place and

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Speaker 1: and the traumatic imprints that keep them going. So as

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Speaker 1: useful as that work is, I find I do find

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Speaker 1: it lacking in that area. And and so that's and

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Speaker 1: that's the problem with most of these therapies like CBT

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Speaker 1: will change your stories, but mostly the conscious stories that

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Speaker 1: you already know or that can be listited through conscious questioning.

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Speaker 1: But a lot of the stories that people carry about themselves,

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Speaker 1: for example, that I'm not worthy, that I have to

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Speaker 1: prove the value of my existence by being a work

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Speaker 1: call it doctor. Those are not conscious. I'm not aware

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Speaker 1: of them. They're automatic because they're imprinted in my unconscious

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Speaker 1: and so so do A deep therapy has to go

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Speaker 1: to what are you carrying that you're not aware of? Which, nevertheless,

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Speaker 1: um controls your life in certain In a certain sense,

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Speaker 1: these dynamics are like uh strings in the hands of

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Speaker 1: a puppet. Here you know, and and report like puppets

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Speaker 1: by these unconscious strings until you'll come aware. We'll be

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Speaker 1: talking more after we hear this. Add is there an

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Speaker 1: element to what you're saying it's also Freudian because I

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Speaker 1: know it's like in the myth of normal Freud barely

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Speaker 1: gets to mention um. But is there a commonality with

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Speaker 1: Freudian psychoanalysis in terms of wanting to go back to

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Speaker 1: those early stages? And if so, yes, and to what

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Speaker 1: extent no? Yeah? So so. Freud was a very flawed

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Speaker 1: genius and both genius and very flawed. And the reason

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Speaker 1: I don't talk about him much is because fundamentally he

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Speaker 1: betrayed himself. So his original understanding of mental illness or

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Speaker 1: what he called neurosis in those days, and this isn't

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Speaker 1: a paper that he printed in did say that a

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Speaker 1: lot of the patients have come to him were sexually abused.

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Speaker 1: And this, however, didn't fly very well in polite Viennese

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Speaker 1: middle class society. And if you wanted to be a

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Speaker 1: successful doctor and celebrated, he'd had to walk that one back. Furthermore,

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Speaker 1: he hadn't dealt with his own trauma, so it comes

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Speaker 1: up with all these co com ami theories like the

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Speaker 1: Oedipus complex and electroc complex, and basically that these these

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Speaker 1: young women who had reported sexual abuse were in fact

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Speaker 1: fantasizing about sleeping with their fathers. So he fundamentally made

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Speaker 1: a good step, and then he raised his own footprints

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Speaker 1: and developed all these co com ami theories. But what

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Speaker 1: was significant contribution on his part were, I would say,

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Speaker 1: to number of basic concepts, but the two fundamental ones

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Speaker 1: was that so much of what makes us act resides

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Speaker 1: in the unconscious, and that that unconscious is shaped early

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Speaker 1: childhood experiences. That's absolutely true what he made of that

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Speaker 1: because he couldn't deal with the trauma, he just couldn't. Really,

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Speaker 1: he couldn't face the trauma. He basically got scared of

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Speaker 1: his own shadow. And so the psychoanalysis was thrown away off,

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Speaker 1: of course, and hence you have this phenomenon of people

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Speaker 1: being therapy and analysis for years and years and years,

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Speaker 1: you know, and they're like kind of a Woody Allen

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Speaker 1: character of one of his movies who is in the

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Speaker 1: therapy forever and doesn't change at all, which, by the way,

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Speaker 1: it probably reflects on the author of those movies as well.

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Speaker 1: So I don't talk about Freud very much because he

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Speaker 1: didn't understand trauma. In fact, he he ignored it. And

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Speaker 1: and and no understanding of human development or mental illness

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Speaker 1: can possibly strike home unless people understand the traumatic source

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Speaker 1: as it affects the development of the personality, but also

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Speaker 1: as it defects the physiological development of the nervous system itself.

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Speaker 1: You quote at one point Bethel Vandercock write another kind

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Speaker 1: of colleague who's written about trauma his book The Body

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Speaker 1: Knows the Score, and you quote him is saying all

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Speaker 1: trauma is preverble, and trauma is not what happens to you,

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Speaker 1: but what happens inside you. I guess that is how

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Speaker 1: you say you put it. And then you quote Besselvenorcock

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Speaker 1: again the saying trauma is when we are not seen

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Speaker 1: and knowing exactly. So that can show up in vite

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Speaker 1: dire ways, because when somebody sexually abuses a child, they're

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Speaker 1: not seeing the child. They're seeing an object that they

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Speaker 1: want to use for their own purposes. But that dynamic

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Speaker 1: of not being seen can happen without any abuse whatsoever,

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Speaker 1: just in the home where the parents are too stress depressed, distracted,

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Speaker 1: caught up in our own relationship issues, their own addiction perhaps,

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Speaker 1: or just the stresses of modern life, the lack of time,

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Speaker 1: the child will not be seen, and being seen I

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Speaker 1: mean as a as a full human being is an

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Speaker 1: essential developmental need of the child, just as much as

428
00:26:00,359 --> 00:26:03,760
Speaker 1: food is. So people can be wounded in in the

429
00:26:03,840 --> 00:26:06,920
Speaker 1: in the dramatic ways that the a C studies indicate,

430
00:26:07,280 --> 00:26:10,480
Speaker 1: but children can also be wounded just because their needs

431
00:26:10,520 --> 00:26:13,480
Speaker 1: in this stress culture are not being met. Hence the

432
00:26:13,800 --> 00:26:18,119
Speaker 1: epidemic of childhood health problems. M H. Now, you're pretty

433
00:26:18,200 --> 00:26:22,399
Speaker 1: damning about both the whole notion of the disease theory.

434
00:26:22,520 --> 00:26:24,879
Speaker 1: Calling addiction a disease, I mean saying that on the

435
00:26:24,880 --> 00:26:27,000
Speaker 1: one hand, there are sort of commonalities there, but that

436
00:26:27,359 --> 00:26:29,720
Speaker 1: thinking about his disease is fundamentally a problem and you're

437
00:26:29,760 --> 00:26:32,840
Speaker 1: also damning about all the genetic determinism, you know, in

438
00:26:32,920 --> 00:26:35,199
Speaker 1: all the way people reference say that the twins who

439
00:26:35,200 --> 00:26:37,520
Speaker 1: are separated at birth grow up in different environments. But

440
00:26:37,520 --> 00:26:40,600
Speaker 1: then unless have higher incidences a certain types of you know,

441
00:26:40,760 --> 00:26:44,520
Speaker 1: behaviors or whether they're negative behaviors, positive behaviors. But I mean,

442
00:26:44,520 --> 00:26:46,680
Speaker 1: and the genetic thing. I think you at one point

443
00:26:46,720 --> 00:26:49,640
Speaker 1: you quote Robert Zapolski saying we're freer from genetics than

444
00:26:49,720 --> 00:26:52,879
Speaker 1: any other species on Earth, and then you quote two

445
00:26:52,920 --> 00:26:54,879
Speaker 1: friend scientists saying, when all is said and done, the

446
00:26:54,880 --> 00:26:59,720
Speaker 1: individual is genetically determined, not to be genetically determined. So

447
00:27:00,119 --> 00:27:02,800
Speaker 1: just explain to our listeners more about why this genetic

448
00:27:02,880 --> 00:27:06,200
Speaker 1: you know, emphasis on genetic terminism is so fundamentally flawed.

449
00:27:06,600 --> 00:27:09,000
Speaker 1: And then we'll get into disease theory a bit. So

450
00:27:09,240 --> 00:27:13,359
Speaker 1: here's the deal. Nobody has ever found a single gene

451
00:27:13,560 --> 00:27:15,320
Speaker 1: that if you have it, you're gonna have a certain

452
00:27:15,359 --> 00:27:21,760
Speaker 1: mental health condition. No, but well, with the exception of um,

453
00:27:21,880 --> 00:27:24,640
Speaker 1: there are some rare cases where somebody has a genetic

454
00:27:24,800 --> 00:27:29,560
Speaker 1: disposition to Alzheimer's. Okay, that's true. Most case of Alzheimer's

455
00:27:29,640 --> 00:27:33,040
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with genes. There is Huntington's Korea

456
00:27:33,160 --> 00:27:36,560
Speaker 1: that would have got three you know, suffered with UM.

457
00:27:36,640 --> 00:27:39,320
Speaker 1: That's genetic. If you have the gene, you're gonna have

458
00:27:39,400 --> 00:27:43,600
Speaker 1: the disease, or taste X disease among the cues, or

459
00:27:43,640 --> 00:27:46,880
Speaker 1: maybe sickle cell adine. You're exactly like these exists. There's

460
00:27:46,920 --> 00:27:50,399
Speaker 1: there's a disease called muscular dystrophy that runs in my family.

461
00:27:50,480 --> 00:27:52,240
Speaker 1: My mother had it, my aunt had it. If you

462
00:27:52,280 --> 00:27:55,560
Speaker 1: have the gene, you're gonna have the disease. Those diseases

463
00:27:55,560 --> 00:27:59,840
Speaker 1: are very rare, like one in ten thousands something like that,

464
00:28:00,680 --> 00:28:05,159
Speaker 1: and most conditions, lest speak of mental health conditions just

465
00:28:05,560 --> 00:28:08,159
Speaker 1: for the moment, there's no single gene that if you

466
00:28:08,200 --> 00:28:10,960
Speaker 1: have it you're can have depression and or anxiety or addiction.

467
00:28:11,240 --> 00:28:13,560
Speaker 1: There's no group of genes that if you have it,

468
00:28:13,800 --> 00:28:16,359
Speaker 1: you're can have depression, anxiety, or addiction or a d

469
00:28:16,480 --> 00:28:18,560
Speaker 1: h D. And there's no google genes that if you

470
00:28:18,600 --> 00:28:21,920
Speaker 1: don't have them, you can't have these diseases, so that

471
00:28:22,560 --> 00:28:25,280
Speaker 1: it's not genetic. Now, there is something genetic going on here.

472
00:28:25,640 --> 00:28:29,880
Speaker 1: It's true that there's a large amorphous group of genes

473
00:28:30,480 --> 00:28:32,840
Speaker 1: that the more of them you have, the more you're

474
00:28:32,880 --> 00:28:36,680
Speaker 1: likely to have almost any mental health condition, but nothing specific.

475
00:28:37,160 --> 00:28:39,800
Speaker 1: So nothing is generally determined, and you can be born

476
00:28:39,920 --> 00:28:42,720
Speaker 1: with the same genes and not have any disease whatsoever.

477
00:28:43,440 --> 00:28:46,720
Speaker 1: All depends on the environment. So what is genes do

478
00:28:46,960 --> 00:28:50,720
Speaker 1: confer is degrease of sensitivity. And the more sensitive you

479
00:28:50,720 --> 00:28:53,479
Speaker 1: are temperamentally, the more you're going to be affected by

480
00:28:53,520 --> 00:28:56,840
Speaker 1: whatever happens in the environment. That means if the amownment

481
00:28:57,000 --> 00:28:59,680
Speaker 1: is harmful or doesn't meant you need, you're gonna be

482
00:28:59,680 --> 00:29:02,480
Speaker 1: more acted than somebody else. It also means that a

483
00:29:02,640 --> 00:29:05,000
Speaker 1: term moment is supportive and nurturing, you can be that

484
00:29:05,160 --> 00:29:08,320
Speaker 1: much better off than somebody else. But the ges themselves

485
00:29:08,320 --> 00:29:12,920
Speaker 1: don't determine. Okay. Now this is contrary to most but

486
00:29:13,040 --> 00:29:15,920
Speaker 1: most doctors believe in the face of all the science.

487
00:29:16,520 --> 00:29:22,200
Speaker 1: Why is that. First of all, genetics offer three benefits

488
00:29:22,280 --> 00:29:25,680
Speaker 1: quote unquote. One is they're simple. Oh it's genetic, okay,

489
00:29:25,680 --> 00:29:28,880
Speaker 1: and now we understand it, and the mind like simple explanations.

490
00:29:29,720 --> 00:29:34,840
Speaker 1: Number one. Number two, if it's genetic in a family,

491
00:29:34,880 --> 00:29:38,360
Speaker 1: For example, if a parent comes to me with the

492
00:29:38,440 --> 00:29:42,000
Speaker 1: childhood h D and if I tell them, well, it's

493
00:29:42,000 --> 00:29:45,960
Speaker 1: a genetic condition, the parent feels off the hook, because

494
00:29:46,000 --> 00:29:48,120
Speaker 1: what can they do about the genes that they passed on.

495
00:29:49,360 --> 00:29:52,280
Speaker 1: As opposed if I say to them, you know, this

496
00:29:52,400 --> 00:29:56,280
Speaker 1: is a temperamentally genetic, very sensitive child, and he's responding

497
00:29:56,320 --> 00:30:02,120
Speaker 1: to family stress. For me in euro onwards, that's more

498
00:30:02,160 --> 00:30:04,200
Speaker 1: difficult for parents to deal with because now they feel

499
00:30:04,240 --> 00:30:08,520
Speaker 1: a lot of inappropriate but almost natural guilt for having

500
00:30:08,560 --> 00:30:11,040
Speaker 1: screwed up their kids. So the genetics takes them off

501
00:30:11,040 --> 00:30:15,640
Speaker 1: the hook. On a social level, genetics says, you know,

502
00:30:15,640 --> 00:30:18,400
Speaker 1: when I quote Louis Menon writing a New Yorker about

503
00:30:18,400 --> 00:30:20,880
Speaker 1: this one day, he says, you know, why should somebody

504
00:30:20,920 --> 00:30:23,640
Speaker 1: be upset or use drugs or you know, in the

505
00:30:23,760 --> 00:30:26,200
Speaker 1: in the healthiest and the most free society in the world,

506
00:30:26,520 --> 00:30:29,000
Speaker 1: it can't be the environment. It must be the genes.

507
00:30:29,280 --> 00:30:32,200
Speaker 1: So society is taken up to hook of looking at

508
00:30:32,400 --> 00:30:36,239
Speaker 1: hobby traumatize large numbers of people. So in Canada, an

509
00:30:36,280 --> 00:30:39,160
Speaker 1: Indigenous woman as six times the rate of rumor to

510
00:30:39,200 --> 00:30:42,480
Speaker 1: the advitis than that of anybody else. In the United States,

511
00:30:42,920 --> 00:30:46,920
Speaker 1: people of color have much more on us high blood pressure,

512
00:30:47,720 --> 00:30:51,840
Speaker 1: autoimmune disease, and so on and so forth. If it's

513
00:30:51,840 --> 00:30:54,840
Speaker 1: all genetic, we don't have to look at racism as

514
00:30:54,880 --> 00:30:59,560
Speaker 1: a social construct and all. But you are saying that

515
00:31:00,040 --> 00:31:03,760
Speaker 1: genetics can lead to a greater probability of somebody being

516
00:31:03,800 --> 00:31:07,320
Speaker 1: afflicted with a particular condition. It's just it's obviously not

517
00:31:07,400 --> 00:31:11,480
Speaker 1: deterministic because the environmental factors, they're both interpersonal and broader.

518
00:31:11,840 --> 00:31:14,920
Speaker 1: Are we play the much more important role? Is that right? Well,

519
00:31:14,960 --> 00:31:17,000
Speaker 1: the genets only play the role in the sense of

520
00:31:17,040 --> 00:31:19,920
Speaker 1: creating a high degree of sensitivity, so people are more

521
00:31:19,960 --> 00:31:23,200
Speaker 1: more reactive to the environment. Um to go back to

522
00:31:23,240 --> 00:31:27,280
Speaker 1: the twin study question. You know they separate twins at birth,

523
00:31:27,320 --> 00:31:31,280
Speaker 1: has sometimes happened. Then it turns out that it doesn't

524
00:31:31,320 --> 00:31:33,480
Speaker 1: matter if they brought up in different homes. They have

525
00:31:33,480 --> 00:31:37,400
Speaker 1: a great propensity to have some of the similar conditions,

526
00:31:37,440 --> 00:31:40,160
Speaker 1: so that if one has a d h D, the

527
00:31:40,280 --> 00:31:43,480
Speaker 1: other was also, it's got a seventy chance of having

528
00:31:43,520 --> 00:31:46,200
Speaker 1: a d h D. This proves that is genetic. It

529
00:31:46,320 --> 00:31:49,400
Speaker 1: proves the opposite its genetic. Why isn't it a d

530
00:31:50,920 --> 00:31:53,720
Speaker 1: that's the first point. The second point is it's not

531
00:31:53,920 --> 00:31:57,920
Speaker 1: true that twins didn't have the same environment. They spend

532
00:31:58,000 --> 00:32:01,320
Speaker 1: nine months in the same uterus. Not any woman that's

533
00:32:01,320 --> 00:32:03,600
Speaker 1: going to give up a baby for adoption is by

534
00:32:03,600 --> 00:32:07,240
Speaker 1: definition of stress woman, she's a single mom and addicted mom,

535
00:32:07,760 --> 00:32:12,320
Speaker 1: poor mom, an abused mom, and unsupported teenage mom and others.

536
00:32:12,360 --> 00:32:15,400
Speaker 1: For nine months. The homers of stress are going through

537
00:32:15,440 --> 00:32:18,360
Speaker 1: to the baby, to the placenta. We've already talked about that.

538
00:32:18,920 --> 00:32:21,720
Speaker 1: And then there is the separation from a birth mother,

539
00:32:22,560 --> 00:32:25,800
Speaker 1: which is an incredible trauma to an infant, to any

540
00:32:25,800 --> 00:32:30,480
Speaker 1: infant of any mammal. And the human being is really

541
00:32:30,520 --> 00:32:33,040
Speaker 1: meant to be with the mother for a long time. No,

542
00:32:33,720 --> 00:32:37,600
Speaker 1: that doesn't happen in his separation. Twin studies, any wonder

543
00:32:37,720 --> 00:32:40,000
Speaker 1: that if one to and there's a condition the other

544
00:32:40,040 --> 00:32:43,480
Speaker 1: one as an ingredient also increased change of evgant. It's

545
00:32:43,480 --> 00:32:46,680
Speaker 1: got nothing a little genetics, except for the fact that

546
00:32:46,720 --> 00:32:50,520
Speaker 1: if they're genetically similar, they're bound to have the same sensitivities.

547
00:32:50,920 --> 00:32:53,560
Speaker 1: M hm. Now, much the same can be said about

548
00:32:53,600 --> 00:32:56,480
Speaker 1: the whole emphasis on calling addiction is a disease, because

549
00:32:56,520 --> 00:32:59,600
Speaker 1: when you do that, you obviously take the responsibility to

550
00:32:59,720 --> 00:33:02,400
Speaker 1: some level off the individual or off the people who

551
00:33:02,440 --> 00:33:05,800
Speaker 1: have been you know, pivot in their life like their parents. Um,

552
00:33:05,880 --> 00:33:07,960
Speaker 1: you know, but you also you're interested you take issue

553
00:33:08,000 --> 00:33:09,719
Speaker 1: at one point you know, you're the great you know,

554
00:33:09,920 --> 00:33:12,680
Speaker 1: critic of the late twentieth century in America, Susan Sontag,

555
00:33:13,160 --> 00:33:17,400
Speaker 1: whose famous essay was called Illness as Metaphor, And you say, God,

556
00:33:17,480 --> 00:33:19,560
Speaker 1: I really admire her, but I wish she hadn't been

557
00:33:19,600 --> 00:33:22,520
Speaker 1: so wrong, and the way she laid this out, well,

558
00:33:22,640 --> 00:33:27,760
Speaker 1: Susan Santagg, as you know, died of cancer um and

559
00:33:27,920 --> 00:33:33,120
Speaker 1: she wrote this illness is a metaphor, as a stern

560
00:33:33,360 --> 00:33:41,440
Speaker 1: and almost contemptuous dismissal of the idea that emotions that

561
00:33:41,480 --> 00:33:45,360
Speaker 1: anything to do with physical illness. And mostly because she

562
00:33:45,400 --> 00:33:48,720
Speaker 1: didn't want to be coupitalized, as she said, culpitalized. I

563
00:33:48,760 --> 00:33:51,000
Speaker 1: didn't want to make to feel guilty for my own illness.

564
00:33:51,440 --> 00:33:53,760
Speaker 1: But what's her actual story? You know, actual story was

565
00:33:53,920 --> 00:33:57,520
Speaker 1: she was a severely traumatized child who his mother left

566
00:33:57,560 --> 00:33:59,760
Speaker 1: her when she was a couple of months old, came

567
00:33:59,760 --> 00:34:01,520
Speaker 1: back into her life when she was three or four

568
00:34:01,560 --> 00:34:05,040
Speaker 1: years old, left again. Susan actually writes in her diary

569
00:34:05,320 --> 00:34:07,360
Speaker 1: that she was very angry with her mother, and she

570
00:34:07,440 --> 00:34:11,120
Speaker 1: turned that anger against herself. She repressed her own emotions

571
00:34:11,239 --> 00:34:13,920
Speaker 1: in know to be accepted by other people. Precisely the

572
00:34:14,000 --> 00:34:17,239
Speaker 1: dynamics that lead to illness. So on the one hand,

573
00:34:17,280 --> 00:34:19,880
Speaker 1: she had this incredible insight into her own mind. On

574
00:34:19,920 --> 00:34:23,640
Speaker 1: the other hand, she denied the connection between those dynamics

575
00:34:23,640 --> 00:34:27,680
Speaker 1: and illness, which scientifically is completely incorrect. So it's very

576
00:34:27,680 --> 00:34:30,000
Speaker 1: sad to read her because on the one that she

577
00:34:30,040 --> 00:34:34,480
Speaker 1: even knew that she disconnected from her true self in

578
00:34:34,600 --> 00:34:38,840
Speaker 1: order to adapt her childhood environment, she turned her anger

579
00:34:38,920 --> 00:34:43,000
Speaker 1: at her mother against herself in terms of self loathing.

580
00:34:43,400 --> 00:34:45,959
Speaker 1: I'm I'm recording her own words, and at the same

581
00:34:46,000 --> 00:34:48,960
Speaker 1: time denied that I had anything to do with the illnesses.

582
00:34:49,239 --> 00:34:53,359
Speaker 1: And I'm telling you they do for physiological reasons, because

583
00:34:53,360 --> 00:34:57,520
Speaker 1: when you suppress your emotions, you're actually messing with your physiology. Why,

584
00:34:57,800 --> 00:35:01,040
Speaker 1: because you can't separate the mind from the body. Now

585
00:35:01,120 --> 00:35:03,840
Speaker 1: you say, I only want to suggest that quote disease

586
00:35:04,200 --> 00:35:07,680
Speaker 1: is more therapeutically useful as a metaphor rather than as

587
00:35:07,719 --> 00:35:11,879
Speaker 1: a literal fact. Yeah. Well, so here's the thing. So

588
00:35:12,840 --> 00:35:15,600
Speaker 1: let's say that I say to you, Ethan, I have

589
00:35:15,640 --> 00:35:19,759
Speaker 1: an addiction, I have rheumatildritis, or I have depression. There's

590
00:35:19,800 --> 00:35:23,560
Speaker 1: an assumption in that statement. What is the assumption? The

591
00:35:23,600 --> 00:35:27,719
Speaker 1: assumption is is that there are two entities. There's this disease,

592
00:35:28,680 --> 00:35:32,160
Speaker 1: this thing. Then there's an eye, and I have this thing.

593
00:35:32,600 --> 00:35:34,719
Speaker 1: Now you aren't aren't on video, but I love to

594
00:35:34,760 --> 00:35:36,759
Speaker 1: take my word for it. I have a teacup in

595
00:35:36,760 --> 00:35:41,080
Speaker 1: my hand. It's a thing. It's not a part of me.

596
00:35:41,400 --> 00:35:43,840
Speaker 1: It's not a manifestation of me. I can put it on,

597
00:35:44,000 --> 00:35:45,560
Speaker 1: I can pick it up, I can drink from it,

598
00:35:46,080 --> 00:35:49,319
Speaker 1: I can smash it if I want to, But it's

599
00:35:49,360 --> 00:35:52,080
Speaker 1: got nothing to do with me. To say that I

600
00:35:52,120 --> 00:35:54,960
Speaker 1: have a disease is to assume that there's this entity

601
00:35:55,040 --> 00:36:00,960
Speaker 1: called multiple scrosses or addiction or rumatilithritis that are separate

602
00:36:01,040 --> 00:36:05,040
Speaker 1: from me and I. The entity that's I has that thing,

603
00:36:05,560 --> 00:36:07,480
Speaker 1: and that thing has got a nature of its own.

604
00:36:08,560 --> 00:36:12,520
Speaker 1: I'm saying that all illnesses, whatever mind, own body, they're

605
00:36:12,560 --> 00:36:17,960
Speaker 1: not things with their own self determined trajectory. There are

606
00:36:18,080 --> 00:36:21,720
Speaker 1: processes that happen in a person, and there are personses

607
00:36:21,800 --> 00:36:25,839
Speaker 1: that happen both on the physiological psychological level and her

608
00:36:25,960 --> 00:36:32,120
Speaker 1: processes that reflect a person's life experience from conception onwards.

609
00:36:32,160 --> 00:36:34,439
Speaker 1: So to look on disease is the process in which

610
00:36:34,520 --> 00:36:37,960
Speaker 1: I can take some active agency. It's very different from

611
00:36:38,000 --> 00:36:41,520
Speaker 1: saying I got this disease, and here's the prognosis. That

612
00:36:41,680 --> 00:36:44,200
Speaker 1: prognosis has got nothing to do with you as a person.

613
00:36:44,520 --> 00:36:49,360
Speaker 1: That's based on statistics, based on statistics collated by physicians

614
00:36:49,480 --> 00:36:54,160
Speaker 1: who understand nothing about the mind body unity. Right, But

615
00:36:54,280 --> 00:36:56,200
Speaker 1: it goes to the whole way, whether as a culture

616
00:36:56,440 --> 00:36:58,880
Speaker 1: or as an individual or a relationship with doctor, we

617
00:36:58,920 --> 00:37:04,360
Speaker 1: talk about conquering this pain, conquering the disease, beating the addiction,

618
00:37:04,520 --> 00:37:07,520
Speaker 1: war on cancer, and which you're basically saying, what we

619
00:37:07,560 --> 00:37:10,959
Speaker 1: really needed the dialogue with any one of those things. Um,

620
00:37:12,480 --> 00:37:17,160
Speaker 1: you spent so much of your useful working life trying

621
00:37:17,160 --> 00:37:21,000
Speaker 1: to under undo the myths perpetrated by the so called

622
00:37:21,000 --> 00:37:24,480
Speaker 1: war on drugs. And we know how successful the war

623
00:37:24,520 --> 00:37:27,600
Speaker 1: on drugs have been. It's been so successful that last

624
00:37:27,680 --> 00:37:32,160
Speaker 1: year over Americans died over overdoses. You know that's a

625
00:37:32,280 --> 00:37:35,440
Speaker 1: successful it's been. Now it's the same with the war

626
00:37:35,480 --> 00:37:39,080
Speaker 1: on cancer. We're not a minute closer to solving the

627
00:37:39,120 --> 00:37:42,600
Speaker 1: problem of cancer then we were fifty years ago. Except

628
00:37:42,640 --> 00:37:46,120
Speaker 1: in some conditions there's been some progress, but overall no,

629
00:37:47,040 --> 00:37:50,080
Speaker 1: the war on illness, aut immune diseases are rising rather

630
00:37:50,120 --> 00:37:55,120
Speaker 1: than subsiding, and so this whole battling and warring against

631
00:37:55,120 --> 00:37:59,880
Speaker 1: some enemy misses the point that illnesses of mind and body,

632
00:38:00,400 --> 00:38:04,960
Speaker 1: addictions and so on, our processes got a normal responses,

633
00:38:05,200 --> 00:38:08,879
Speaker 1: to have normal circumstances, and that we can actually deal

634
00:38:08,960 --> 00:38:12,320
Speaker 1: with them by understanding their true nature, not by seeing

635
00:38:12,320 --> 00:38:16,080
Speaker 1: them as some kind of a mysterious enemy, you know, Gabra.

636
00:38:16,120 --> 00:38:19,279
Speaker 1: I'll tell you I had my own experience decades ago

637
00:38:19,320 --> 00:38:21,719
Speaker 1: when I was It began in my twenties and really

638
00:38:21,800 --> 00:38:26,200
Speaker 1: culminated in my early thirties of just absolutely intense sciatica

639
00:38:26,480 --> 00:38:29,760
Speaker 1: and lower back pain. And I went to a doctor

640
00:38:29,760 --> 00:38:32,520
Speaker 1: and I got diagnosed, and I had to herniated discs,

641
00:38:32,600 --> 00:38:35,120
Speaker 1: you know L four, L five and L five S one,

642
00:38:35,320 --> 00:38:38,120
Speaker 1: and the pain, I mean the third time it was just,

643
00:38:38,480 --> 00:38:41,279
Speaker 1: you know, just incredible. And I was being prescribed, you know,

644
00:38:41,480 --> 00:38:44,480
Speaker 1: benzos and being prescribed I think oxy code owns, and

645
00:38:44,760 --> 00:38:46,320
Speaker 1: none of it was really helping it all. On the

646
00:38:46,400 --> 00:38:49,359
Speaker 1: occasion if I got drunk, you know, that that would

647
00:38:49,360 --> 00:38:53,360
Speaker 1: actually take away the paint briefly. And then I was

648
00:38:53,440 --> 00:38:56,120
Speaker 1: talking with Andrew Wild who was a good friend at

649
00:38:56,120 --> 00:38:58,920
Speaker 1: the time, and he said, read this book by John

650
00:38:59,080 --> 00:39:03,440
Speaker 1: sarnol St Heeling back Pain, right. But I read this

651
00:39:03,480 --> 00:39:07,960
Speaker 1: book and Sardo's basic view was there's nothing physically wrong

652
00:39:08,080 --> 00:39:09,680
Speaker 1: with your body. I mean, less you've been in by

653
00:39:09,680 --> 00:39:11,680
Speaker 1: a truck or something like that, and all the stuff

654
00:39:11,680 --> 00:39:15,000
Speaker 1: about herniated disk it's basically bullshit. And if you randomly

655
00:39:15,040 --> 00:39:17,319
Speaker 1: take a hundred or two hundred X rays, it turns

656
00:39:17,360 --> 00:39:19,520
Speaker 1: out tons of people with hernadd disk and no pain

657
00:39:19,560 --> 00:39:22,400
Speaker 1: and vice versa. And what his argument was was that

658
00:39:22,480 --> 00:39:26,040
Speaker 1: I was basically that there was an underlying angst anger

659
00:39:26,120 --> 00:39:28,840
Speaker 1: anxiety that I was not processing, and my brain was

660
00:39:28,880 --> 00:39:32,640
Speaker 1: playing a trick, you know whereby it basically transformed an

661
00:39:32,640 --> 00:39:35,520
Speaker 1: emotional pain into a physical pain. And then what he

662
00:39:35,560 --> 00:39:40,200
Speaker 1: said is it's simply accepting his diagnosis, not just in

663
00:39:40,239 --> 00:39:43,400
Speaker 1: my conscious mind, but in my subconscious mind, accepting that

664
00:39:43,440 --> 00:39:47,160
Speaker 1: there was zero wrong with my back and these hernya

665
00:39:47,280 --> 00:39:50,919
Speaker 1: disrrelevant that that itself would be the cure. I didn't

666
00:39:50,920 --> 00:39:53,000
Speaker 1: even have to figure out why I had to pain,

667
00:39:53,360 --> 00:39:55,360
Speaker 1: He goes, But if you want to reduce the likelihood

668
00:39:55,360 --> 00:39:58,279
Speaker 1: of recurrence, it's probably a good idea to try to

669
00:39:58,320 --> 00:40:00,440
Speaker 1: do some work with a therapist or here to try

670
00:40:00,440 --> 00:40:04,240
Speaker 1: to figure out what was that underlying pain about. Anyway,

671
00:40:04,320 --> 00:40:05,920
Speaker 1: and I have to tell you from me, it was

672
00:40:06,000 --> 00:40:09,160
Speaker 1: basically a miracle cure. I mean, I've came out of that,

673
00:40:09,280 --> 00:40:11,759
Speaker 1: and I've become a sort of proselytizer for that, and

674
00:40:11,800 --> 00:40:13,839
Speaker 1: I say, I've know many people who's helped. I know

675
00:40:14,000 --> 00:40:16,719
Speaker 1: of huge numbers. Now, from my case, it didn't have

676
00:40:16,800 --> 00:40:20,520
Speaker 1: to do with processing a kind of infantile you know,

677
00:40:20,880 --> 00:40:22,920
Speaker 1: trauma things that happened then. It had to deal with

678
00:40:23,000 --> 00:40:26,600
Speaker 1: processing things that were happening in my current life, some

679
00:40:26,680 --> 00:40:28,760
Speaker 1: of which might have been mats shaped by what happened

680
00:40:28,800 --> 00:40:30,640
Speaker 1: to me when I was much younger. But it was

681
00:40:30,680 --> 00:40:32,600
Speaker 1: about dealing with that piece in my own life. But

682
00:40:32,680 --> 00:40:35,280
Speaker 1: so the notion of your focus on don't ask about

683
00:40:35,280 --> 00:40:38,600
Speaker 1: the addiction or the substance, focus on the pain underlying

684
00:40:38,640 --> 00:40:42,920
Speaker 1: it resonates with resonates in me totally. Well, first of all,

685
00:40:43,520 --> 00:40:46,600
Speaker 1: I very much know about Sarno's work, and and Sarno

686
00:40:46,680 --> 00:40:50,680
Speaker 1: pointed out they actually called the t MS tension site

687
00:40:50,680 --> 00:40:54,240
Speaker 1: the syndrome eventually, which means that the emotional the anger

688
00:40:54,360 --> 00:40:57,040
Speaker 1: and and and the stress that you're carrying would cause

689
00:40:57,120 --> 00:40:59,680
Speaker 1: your muscles to go into spasm, and that that would

690
00:41:00,160 --> 00:41:03,440
Speaker 1: um create a toxic environment in which pain would arise

691
00:41:03,520 --> 00:41:06,359
Speaker 1: and so on, and by understanding all that, you could

692
00:41:06,440 --> 00:41:08,920
Speaker 1: let go of it. And it's certainly true. I mean,

693
00:41:08,960 --> 00:41:13,400
Speaker 1: I've had back surgery and I was grateful for it.

694
00:41:13,440 --> 00:41:15,919
Speaker 1: But out of a hundred people with back surgery, maybe

695
00:41:15,920 --> 00:41:17,560
Speaker 1: three or four should have it. The other night of

696
00:41:17,600 --> 00:41:20,759
Speaker 1: four should do what you did, you know, and and

697
00:41:20,840 --> 00:41:23,799
Speaker 1: I make the same case. So when people started reading

698
00:41:23,840 --> 00:41:25,960
Speaker 1: my book when the body says no, which makes the

699
00:41:26,000 --> 00:41:29,800
Speaker 1: same case about the illness in general Sarno makes about

700
00:41:29,800 --> 00:41:32,280
Speaker 1: back pain, they keep asking me if I knew about

701
00:41:32,280 --> 00:41:35,880
Speaker 1: Sarno's work. And I hadn't known about it because of

702
00:41:35,920 --> 00:41:40,120
Speaker 1: course Sarno, like me, was a medical doctor, but his

703
00:41:40,239 --> 00:41:44,440
Speaker 1: work was never publicized in the medical realm, so like you,

704
00:41:44,520 --> 00:41:46,880
Speaker 1: I had to find out about it through other sources.

705
00:41:47,239 --> 00:41:50,080
Speaker 1: But his work is very much related to my work,

706
00:41:50,440 --> 00:41:53,960
Speaker 1: except he was a back specialist. I was a general physician.

707
00:41:54,200 --> 00:41:57,040
Speaker 1: So I applied the same principles in a much broader

708
00:41:57,120 --> 00:41:59,200
Speaker 1: realm as I do in this book. The myth of

709
00:41:59,200 --> 00:42:01,239
Speaker 1: a normal as well. What I would say about your

710
00:42:01,280 --> 00:42:05,120
Speaker 1: adult stresses is that they very much had to do

711
00:42:05,200 --> 00:42:08,960
Speaker 1: with childhood dynamics. And the issue is not to go

712
00:42:09,040 --> 00:42:11,799
Speaker 1: back and keep delving on what happened in childhood. That's

713
00:42:11,800 --> 00:42:14,480
Speaker 1: not what the problem is. The problem is the imprints

714
00:42:14,480 --> 00:42:17,560
Speaker 1: that we're caring today of what happened in childhood. So

715
00:42:18,040 --> 00:42:19,840
Speaker 1: when you quoted me as saying that trauma is not

716
00:42:20,000 --> 00:42:23,120
Speaker 1: what happened to you, but what happened inside you as

717
00:42:23,160 --> 00:42:26,200
Speaker 1: a result of what happened to you. What happened inside

718
00:42:26,239 --> 00:42:30,680
Speaker 1: you is the wounding that then creates certain behaviors. The

719
00:42:30,719 --> 00:42:32,880
Speaker 1: issue is not to go back and keep analyzing what

720
00:42:32,960 --> 00:42:36,320
Speaker 1: happened you know, in your case six decades ago, in

721
00:42:36,400 --> 00:42:40,799
Speaker 1: my case over seven decades ago, but to understand how

722
00:42:40,880 --> 00:42:43,239
Speaker 1: is that showing up today in my life? How is

723
00:42:43,280 --> 00:42:45,960
Speaker 1: that pulling my strings to go back to my puppet analogy,

724
00:42:46,280 --> 00:42:48,359
Speaker 1: and how can I cut the strings? And how can

725
00:42:48,360 --> 00:42:50,400
Speaker 1: I be free in the present moment? How can I

726
00:42:50,400 --> 00:42:52,839
Speaker 1: be aware of what's happening within me right now and

727
00:42:52,880 --> 00:42:55,800
Speaker 1: not be under the tyranny of the past. To quote

728
00:42:55,800 --> 00:43:00,200
Speaker 1: Peter Libin. So I'm totally with sorry, no, except I

729
00:43:00,200 --> 00:43:04,200
Speaker 1: think I understand trauma more broadly than he ever did,

730
00:43:04,239 --> 00:43:07,000
Speaker 1: because that, you know, he was focusing very much on

731
00:43:07,000 --> 00:43:10,040
Speaker 1: the back. He helped thousands of people avoid surgery and

732
00:43:10,160 --> 00:43:13,080
Speaker 1: lead paying free lives so I mean, he's a very

733
00:43:13,080 --> 00:43:18,120
Speaker 1: remarkable and important figure. Let's take a break here and

734
00:43:18,160 --> 00:43:35,120
Speaker 1: go to an ad. What is happening at least in

735
00:43:35,280 --> 00:43:38,120
Speaker 1: some universities now, and you're seeing it manifest. This is

736
00:43:38,160 --> 00:43:41,160
Speaker 1: the psychedelic renaissance writing. You talk about this in the

737
00:43:41,280 --> 00:43:43,800
Speaker 1: latest book, and you've talked about it obviously more broadly,

738
00:43:44,280 --> 00:43:47,719
Speaker 1: you see major universities from Harvard, Yale and Columbia, and

739
00:43:47,840 --> 00:43:51,400
Speaker 1: you know University California, University College London, and Baylor, etcetera, etcetera,

740
00:43:51,640 --> 00:43:56,160
Speaker 1: all setting up research institutes. So clearly there's something about

741
00:43:56,200 --> 00:43:59,840
Speaker 1: psychedelics that both you in your own interaction with people,

742
00:44:00,280 --> 00:44:03,799
Speaker 1: as well as the broader scientific evidence is showing that

743
00:44:03,880 --> 00:44:07,719
Speaker 1: there's really something special here that, and not least to

744
00:44:07,800 --> 00:44:12,120
Speaker 1: the extent that you place this emphasis on very early

745
00:44:12,239 --> 00:44:16,200
Speaker 1: trauma in people's lives, the psychedelics appear to have some

746
00:44:16,320 --> 00:44:20,080
Speaker 1: unique properties at accessing that. So I have to say

747
00:44:20,239 --> 00:44:23,080
Speaker 1: I was surprised that when you wrote Hungry Ghosts you

748
00:44:23,120 --> 00:44:26,200
Speaker 1: didn't know about any of the early evidence about using

749
00:44:26,239 --> 00:44:28,560
Speaker 1: psycholics for this, But once you become aware of it,

750
00:44:28,880 --> 00:44:32,239
Speaker 1: you really seem to embrace it wholeheartedly. Well, how would

751
00:44:32,239 --> 00:44:34,320
Speaker 1: I know about it? Not nobody in my medical training

752
00:44:34,600 --> 00:44:37,840
Speaker 1: ever mentioned that, you know, like many other things, so

753
00:44:38,280 --> 00:44:40,239
Speaker 1: you might recall on this book. I give a case

754
00:44:40,320 --> 00:44:43,000
Speaker 1: of a woman I know very well. She was given

755
00:44:43,000 --> 00:44:47,040
Speaker 1: a terminal diagnosis of an autimmune disease eight or nine

756
00:44:47,120 --> 00:44:52,200
Speaker 1: years ago in her early late twenties. Um Nothing that

757
00:44:52,280 --> 00:44:56,520
Speaker 1: Western medicine, whether it's steroid hormones or anti immune or

758
00:44:56,640 --> 00:45:00,920
Speaker 1: immune suppressants or paint colors, she do anything for her.

759
00:45:01,239 --> 00:45:03,600
Speaker 1: She was paralyzed in the sense that she couldn't get

760
00:45:03,600 --> 00:45:06,279
Speaker 1: out of bed by herself. She couldn't barely move her

761
00:45:06,400 --> 00:45:09,279
Speaker 1: arms and legs anymore. Her face was a rigid mask

762
00:45:09,400 --> 00:45:13,560
Speaker 1: of pain. She just wanted to die. And now she's

763
00:45:13,600 --> 00:45:20,440
Speaker 1: walking around writing autobiography, writing poetry, hiking mobile living, active

764
00:45:20,680 --> 00:45:28,440
Speaker 1: and thriving. And this came to Ayahuasca. And from the

765
00:45:28,440 --> 00:45:30,840
Speaker 1: point of view of western medicine, that makes no sense.

766
00:45:32,040 --> 00:45:34,160
Speaker 1: From the point of view of narrow western medicine, that

767
00:45:34,239 --> 00:45:37,600
Speaker 1: makes no sense. But if you understand the mind body unity,

768
00:45:37,760 --> 00:45:40,960
Speaker 1: and what nobody asked this person is what was your

769
00:45:40,960 --> 00:45:44,080
Speaker 1: life like? Well, she was a traumatized child, adopted from

770
00:45:44,080 --> 00:45:47,759
Speaker 1: a foreign country, sexually abused in childhood, all kinds of

771
00:45:47,800 --> 00:45:53,239
Speaker 1: stuff she developed certain rigid personality patterns which then stressed her,

772
00:45:53,520 --> 00:45:56,560
Speaker 1: which then made her sick. And with the psychedelic plant,

773
00:45:56,760 --> 00:45:59,320
Speaker 1: she was able to see all that, not not overnight,

774
00:46:00,040 --> 00:46:04,799
Speaker 1: but it was dramatic nevertheless, and she was able to

775
00:46:04,840 --> 00:46:08,760
Speaker 1: deal with these traumas. See how she developed these emotional

776
00:46:08,840 --> 00:46:12,839
Speaker 1: dynamics that we're not serving her anymore, and she has

777
00:46:14,120 --> 00:46:19,200
Speaker 1: fundamentally turned it right around. And that story is not unique,

778
00:46:19,320 --> 00:46:22,399
Speaker 1: nor is it scientifically any kind of a miracle. It's

779
00:46:22,440 --> 00:46:26,560
Speaker 1: simply what you expect when people are able to, as

780
00:46:26,560 --> 00:46:30,160
Speaker 1: you said earlier, not just consciously, for on the unconscious level,

781
00:46:30,280 --> 00:46:33,520
Speaker 1: deal with their beliefs about themselves. M Now, you know,

782
00:46:33,600 --> 00:46:36,959
Speaker 1: you have this charming little story in your book where

783
00:46:37,000 --> 00:46:40,719
Speaker 1: you talk about your experience going down to Peru to

784
00:46:40,800 --> 00:46:43,120
Speaker 1: work with some Shamans, and you developed this thing where

785
00:46:43,160 --> 00:46:45,120
Speaker 1: you would work with the Shamans and you would help

786
00:46:45,160 --> 00:46:47,800
Speaker 1: prepare people to you know, but what were the questions

787
00:46:47,800 --> 00:46:50,080
Speaker 1: they wanted to be considering before they took you know,

788
00:46:50,120 --> 00:46:52,399
Speaker 1: did the ceremony and then help them process the next

789
00:46:52,480 --> 00:46:54,359
Speaker 1: day and do all this sort of thing. And you've

790
00:46:54,400 --> 00:46:56,880
Speaker 1: done it many times, and you tell the story of

791
00:46:56,880 --> 00:46:59,600
Speaker 1: showing up there after the first time. At the very beginning,

792
00:47:00,000 --> 00:47:02,840
Speaker 1: Polison and shawmust take you aside and saying we're sorry,

793
00:47:03,000 --> 00:47:06,799
Speaker 1: we need you to withdraw entirely from this and just

794
00:47:06,880 --> 00:47:09,719
Speaker 1: stay by yourself in the next ten days because your

795
00:47:09,840 --> 00:47:13,439
Speaker 1: energy is dark. And you say that you're thinking, my god,

796
00:47:13,440 --> 00:47:16,080
Speaker 1: I've had such success helping people through this, and all

797
00:47:16,120 --> 00:47:17,759
Speaker 1: these people have come because they want to be at

798
00:47:17,760 --> 00:47:20,200
Speaker 1: a at a shamanic ceremony where I'm playing a role.

799
00:47:20,680 --> 00:47:23,080
Speaker 1: But at the same time, you know, you're also acknowledging

800
00:47:23,120 --> 00:47:25,440
Speaker 1: that you yourself have never had a kind of deep

801
00:47:25,640 --> 00:47:29,680
Speaker 1: spiritual experience with iohuasca. So just say a little more

802
00:47:29,719 --> 00:47:32,839
Speaker 1: about what you learned from that whole experience in his outcomes. Well,

803
00:47:32,880 --> 00:47:35,640
Speaker 1: so these this happened just before I started writing them,

804
00:47:35,640 --> 00:47:39,720
Speaker 1: at a normal in June of two dozen and nineteen.

805
00:47:40,200 --> 00:47:43,719
Speaker 1: And yes, I did go to Peru where a couple

806
00:47:43,760 --> 00:47:48,279
Speaker 1: of dozen health workers, you know, doctor psychiatrists, contors, psychologists

807
00:47:48,280 --> 00:47:51,520
Speaker 1: came to work with me and at this retreat, and

808
00:47:51,560 --> 00:47:54,560
Speaker 1: they I had come from a very long, stressful of

809
00:47:54,560 --> 00:47:57,520
Speaker 1: speaking trip. I was completely backed out, and of course

810
00:47:57,520 --> 00:47:59,400
Speaker 1: I was just gonna go do my usual thing and

811
00:47:59,440 --> 00:48:03,080
Speaker 1: do my work, you know, regardless of my own state

812
00:48:03,719 --> 00:48:08,720
Speaker 1: typical work called behavior, and these shamans took me aside.

813
00:48:08,719 --> 00:48:11,239
Speaker 1: After one ceremony they said, buddy, you're fired. So they

814
00:48:11,280 --> 00:48:14,239
Speaker 1: fired me from my own retreat, and they said, you're

815
00:48:14,280 --> 00:48:17,399
Speaker 1: carrying too much darkness and you have to understand. Even

816
00:48:17,600 --> 00:48:19,400
Speaker 1: they knew nothing about me as a person. I mean,

817
00:48:19,400 --> 00:48:21,959
Speaker 1: they were not impressed but my credentials because they didn't

818
00:48:21,960 --> 00:48:24,680
Speaker 1: know my credentials, you know, and all these books and

819
00:48:25,440 --> 00:48:29,279
Speaker 1: work that I've done. They just said, we think, number one,

820
00:48:29,960 --> 00:48:32,080
Speaker 1: you've worked with a lot of traumatized people and you've

821
00:48:32,080 --> 00:48:34,120
Speaker 1: absorbed their traumas and you don't know how to clear

822
00:48:34,160 --> 00:48:37,600
Speaker 1: it out of yourself. Number one. And number two, we

823
00:48:37,680 --> 00:48:39,640
Speaker 1: think you're a bit very big scare when you were

824
00:48:39,719 --> 00:48:41,480
Speaker 1: very small early in your life and you haven't got

825
00:48:41,520 --> 00:48:44,040
Speaker 1: over it yet. And they were pointing right to my

826
00:48:44,040 --> 00:48:47,480
Speaker 1: infancy without knowing my history. And so they assigned one

827
00:48:47,520 --> 00:48:50,719
Speaker 1: of them to work with me alone in five ceremonies

828
00:48:50,719 --> 00:48:54,600
Speaker 1: over ten days, during which I was in isolation basically,

829
00:48:55,200 --> 00:49:00,279
Speaker 1: and the other five shamans worked with the participants, came

830
00:49:00,320 --> 00:49:04,280
Speaker 1: to work with me, and I did a profound spiritual

831
00:49:04,320 --> 00:49:08,319
Speaker 1: experience not easily took the guy five ceremonies. At the

832
00:49:08,400 --> 00:49:10,480
Speaker 1: very end of the fifth when I thought it was

833
00:49:10,520 --> 00:49:14,160
Speaker 1: all over all of a sudden, the spirit hit me.

834
00:49:14,200 --> 00:49:16,280
Speaker 1: If you want entered me, if you're or I opened

835
00:49:16,280 --> 00:49:17,800
Speaker 1: to it, if you want to put it that way.

836
00:49:18,120 --> 00:49:21,640
Speaker 1: It was very deep, very powerful and life changing. And

837
00:49:21,680 --> 00:49:26,160
Speaker 1: they took these native Shamans to be able to read

838
00:49:26,200 --> 00:49:29,000
Speaker 1: me energetically and to see inside me with the help

839
00:49:29,040 --> 00:49:33,239
Speaker 1: of the plant two to do the work and to

840
00:49:33,320 --> 00:49:38,200
Speaker 1: have the presence to say this Western doctor, listen, buddy,

841
00:49:38,440 --> 00:49:40,400
Speaker 1: you need to help. You're not here to help others.

842
00:49:40,640 --> 00:49:43,360
Speaker 1: You're gonna have to accept help yourself for a change.

843
00:49:43,880 --> 00:49:47,400
Speaker 1: That was life changing mm hm. And how was it

844
00:49:47,480 --> 00:49:49,719
Speaker 1: life changing? I mean it was Was it your first

845
00:49:49,760 --> 00:49:52,680
Speaker 1: sense of a feeling of the divine? Was it? Had

846
00:49:52,719 --> 00:49:55,560
Speaker 1: it changed the way you're interacting when you were doing

847
00:49:55,600 --> 00:49:59,080
Speaker 1: your sessions with patients. I wish I could tell you

848
00:49:59,120 --> 00:50:02,120
Speaker 1: that I came back enlightened and transformed person, but my

849
00:50:02,160 --> 00:50:06,440
Speaker 1: wife would tell you that ain't that ain't necessarily so um.

850
00:50:06,880 --> 00:50:10,640
Speaker 1: But it did further and in significant way, initiate a

851
00:50:10,680 --> 00:50:14,239
Speaker 1: process in which number one, I dropped this belief that

852
00:50:14,280 --> 00:50:17,840
Speaker 1: I've always had, which I consciously I knew couldn't have

853
00:50:17,880 --> 00:50:19,880
Speaker 1: been right, but it was on the emotional level an

854
00:50:19,920 --> 00:50:23,200
Speaker 1: absolute fixation of mine that I could help other people here,

855
00:50:23,280 --> 00:50:27,600
Speaker 1: but I can't be healed myself. You know. That experience

856
00:50:27,680 --> 00:50:30,359
Speaker 1: knocked that one out of the water and the other

857
00:50:31,520 --> 00:50:35,080
Speaker 1: so that the possibly of healing became not just to believe,

858
00:50:35,200 --> 00:50:39,040
Speaker 1: but an actual experience on my part. That's the first.

859
00:50:39,440 --> 00:50:45,640
Speaker 1: The second was that I realized that my childhood will

860
00:50:45,640 --> 00:50:48,959
Speaker 1: never not have happened. So the fact that I spent

861
00:50:49,040 --> 00:50:54,040
Speaker 1: my first year the way I did, separate from my

862
00:50:54,120 --> 00:50:56,680
Speaker 1: mother for a while, the fact that my grandparents would

863
00:50:56,680 --> 00:50:58,400
Speaker 1: died in our shirts when I was five months of

864
00:50:58,440 --> 00:51:00,719
Speaker 1: age and my mother spend the rest of the year

865
00:51:00,800 --> 00:51:04,760
Speaker 1: grieving for them. All that stuff could never be changed.

866
00:51:06,040 --> 00:51:08,880
Speaker 1: But that doesn't have to define my future. It doesn't

867
00:51:08,880 --> 00:51:14,800
Speaker 1: have to define my presence, so that my happiness and

868
00:51:15,400 --> 00:51:20,440
Speaker 1: connection to life I didn't have to be painted or

869
00:51:20,560 --> 00:51:24,360
Speaker 1: controlled by what happened early in life. That does actually

870
00:51:24,440 --> 00:51:27,799
Speaker 1: feed him in the present moment, Gab, I hope to

871
00:51:27,800 --> 00:51:30,000
Speaker 1: tell you. I mean, your book is inspiring in terms

872
00:51:30,040 --> 00:51:33,440
Speaker 1: of writing insights about ways to deal with not just

873
00:51:33,560 --> 00:51:38,280
Speaker 1: emotional but physical maladies through a more holistic healing. Approach

874
00:51:39,040 --> 00:51:42,879
Speaker 1: in which people understand the process. You know that it's

875
00:51:42,920 --> 00:51:45,480
Speaker 1: not just about treating disease. On the other hand, there's

876
00:51:45,520 --> 00:51:48,000
Speaker 1: another takeaway feeling, which is, my god, we're all fucked.

877
00:51:48,400 --> 00:51:51,759
Speaker 1: I mean, because capitalism isn't getting anywhere, if anything, that's

878
00:51:51,760 --> 00:51:57,480
Speaker 1: going to get more extreme materialism, you know, is pervasive consumptionism,

879
00:51:57,560 --> 00:52:00,080
Speaker 1: not just in America, but in most societies are on

880
00:52:00,160 --> 00:52:03,440
Speaker 1: the world. The medical system being short on funds and

881
00:52:03,480 --> 00:52:07,360
Speaker 1: doctors being pressed for time, pharmaceutical companies being empowered to

882
00:52:07,400 --> 00:52:10,080
Speaker 1: promote the certain things that they do, you know, the

883
00:52:10,239 --> 00:52:13,800
Speaker 1: sort of rapid evolution in the digital sophistication, you know

884
00:52:13,840 --> 00:52:17,000
Speaker 1: what's called constant connectivity, or what you talk about in

885
00:52:17,000 --> 00:52:19,759
Speaker 1: the book as a new way of persuasive design, where

886
00:52:19,760 --> 00:52:23,279
Speaker 1: you design things to appeal specifically to people's addictive behaviors.

887
00:52:23,600 --> 00:52:26,040
Speaker 1: I mean, I come away going, my god, You've identified

888
00:52:26,080 --> 00:52:28,640
Speaker 1: all all everything that's wrong going on in the medical system,

889
00:52:28,640 --> 00:52:33,200
Speaker 1: the pharmaceutical system, the broader capitalist cultural political system. But

890
00:52:33,480 --> 00:52:38,120
Speaker 1: how the hell you dig ourselves out of this? Yeah? Well, um,

891
00:52:39,760 --> 00:52:41,279
Speaker 1: you know, so this is where I go back to

892
00:52:41,520 --> 00:52:44,120
Speaker 1: two things here that I talked about in the last chapter.

893
00:52:44,560 --> 00:52:49,120
Speaker 1: One is the importance of becoming disillusioned. So we live

894
00:52:49,160 --> 00:52:51,879
Speaker 1: with a lot of illusions, you know. And and there's

895
00:52:52,080 --> 00:52:54,640
Speaker 1: e called James Baldwin who says that in this country

896
00:52:54,880 --> 00:52:57,239
Speaker 1: words are used to cover the sleeper, whether than to

897
00:52:57,280 --> 00:53:00,400
Speaker 1: wake them up, And so much of the culture designed

898
00:53:00,400 --> 00:53:02,320
Speaker 1: to put people to sleep and to keep them asleep.

899
00:53:02,719 --> 00:53:05,000
Speaker 1: Now we have to become disillusion not in the sense

900
00:53:05,040 --> 00:53:07,480
Speaker 1: of becoming discouraged, but in a sense of losing our

901
00:53:07,520 --> 00:53:10,839
Speaker 1: illusions about And then part of the intended the book

902
00:53:10,840 --> 00:53:13,360
Speaker 1: is to wake people up about folks, this is the

903
00:53:13,440 --> 00:53:16,279
Speaker 1: nature of the society, and these are the impacts. So

904
00:53:16,320 --> 00:53:19,359
Speaker 1: that's the first point, the need to become disillusion Then

905
00:53:19,360 --> 00:53:23,200
Speaker 1: I say to people, would you rather be illusioned or disillusioned?

906
00:53:23,239 --> 00:53:27,160
Speaker 1: Would you rather be? The second response goes back to

907
00:53:27,760 --> 00:53:30,799
Speaker 1: my discussion with no Chomsky, you know, who said that

908
00:53:31,760 --> 00:53:36,439
Speaker 1: he's a strategic optimist and a tactical pessimist, which means

909
00:53:36,440 --> 00:53:39,320
Speaker 1: that yes, in the short term things are getting worse.

910
00:53:39,520 --> 00:53:43,880
Speaker 1: You'd have to be blind to deny that. So that

911
00:53:43,920 --> 00:53:46,800
Speaker 1: doesn't mean we're fucked. It means that we're getting fucked,

912
00:53:47,080 --> 00:53:50,239
Speaker 1: you know. And but but, but, but the long term

913
00:53:50,280 --> 00:53:54,680
Speaker 1: optimism is in my faith, you might say, or my

914
00:53:54,760 --> 00:53:57,840
Speaker 1: conviction that people have it in them to turn this around.

915
00:53:58,360 --> 00:54:01,239
Speaker 1: If you only be engaged in our conversations, if you

916
00:54:01,320 --> 00:54:03,879
Speaker 1: only realize what our reality is, if you only get

917
00:54:03,880 --> 00:54:07,000
Speaker 1: in touch with their own healing capacities, which is an

918
00:54:07,000 --> 00:54:12,400
Speaker 1: intrinsic quality of all life. If we can become more

919
00:54:12,400 --> 00:54:17,239
Speaker 1: collaborative and coordinated and cooperative in our responses, if you

920
00:54:17,320 --> 00:54:20,560
Speaker 1: don't see each other as isolated optimized individuals, if you

921
00:54:20,640 --> 00:54:23,360
Speaker 1: don't buy into the vice of this culture, change is

922
00:54:23,400 --> 00:54:26,759
Speaker 1: actually possible. I'm not gonna happen eight times soon, but

923
00:54:26,840 --> 00:54:29,680
Speaker 1: I do think it's entirely possible. And you know, I

924
00:54:29,719 --> 00:54:33,040
Speaker 1: wrote the book now with the desire to spread the

925
00:54:33,040 --> 00:54:35,200
Speaker 1: bad news, but to say to people, Look, if you

926
00:54:35,239 --> 00:54:37,319
Speaker 1: want to change, we have to see what's in the

927
00:54:37,360 --> 00:54:39,279
Speaker 1: way of that change. You have to deal with it,

928
00:54:39,600 --> 00:54:43,080
Speaker 1: both on the personal and on the social level. Yeah. Well,

929
00:54:43,120 --> 00:54:44,759
Speaker 1: I mean, Gabbor, I mean, that's a lot of ifs

930
00:54:44,800 --> 00:54:47,520
Speaker 1: in there. But since you are ending on a positive note,

931
00:54:47,520 --> 00:54:50,640
Speaker 1: I think that's a nice place to this conversation. All

932
00:54:50,680 --> 00:54:52,480
Speaker 1: I can say is, look, more power to you. I

933
00:54:52,520 --> 00:54:54,799
Speaker 1: hope that you're able to keep getting the word out

934
00:54:54,800 --> 00:54:57,240
Speaker 1: in your message out for many years to come because

935
00:54:57,280 --> 00:55:00,680
Speaker 1: I think you're obviously playing incredibly important and valuable and

936
00:55:00,719 --> 00:55:03,600
Speaker 1: healing role in our society. So thank you, thank you

937
00:55:03,640 --> 00:55:06,400
Speaker 1: for joining me and my listeners on Psychoactive. Thank you

938
00:55:06,440 --> 00:55:14,280
Speaker 1: so much for having me. If you're enjoying Psychoactive, please

939
00:55:14,360 --> 00:55:16,560
Speaker 1: tell your friends about it, or you can write us

940
00:55:16,600 --> 00:55:19,799
Speaker 1: a review at Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

941
00:55:20,160 --> 00:55:22,600
Speaker 1: We love to hear from our listeners. If you'd like

942
00:55:22,719 --> 00:55:25,600
Speaker 1: to share your own stories, comments and ideas, then leave

943
00:55:25,680 --> 00:55:29,560
Speaker 1: us a message at one eight three three seven seven

944
00:55:29,680 --> 00:55:35,600
Speaker 1: nine sixty that's eight three three psycho zero, or you

945
00:55:35,640 --> 00:55:39,160
Speaker 1: can email us at Psychoactive at protozoa dot com, or

946
00:55:39,320 --> 00:55:42,239
Speaker 1: find me on Twitter at Ethan natal Man. You can

947
00:55:42,280 --> 00:55:46,480
Speaker 1: also find contact information in our show notes. Psychoactive is

948
00:55:46,480 --> 00:55:50,000
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. It's

949
00:55:50,040 --> 00:55:53,520
Speaker 1: hosted by me Ethan Naedelman. It's produced by no h'm

950
00:55:53,560 --> 00:55:57,560
Speaker 1: osband and Josh Stain. The executive producers are Dylan Golden,

951
00:55:57,760 --> 00:56:01,960
Speaker 1: Ari Handel, Elizabeth Geesus and d In Aronofsky from Protozolla Pictures,

952
00:56:02,080 --> 00:56:04,920
Speaker 1: Alex Williams and Matt Frederick from my Heart Radio and

953
00:56:05,000 --> 00:56:09,400
Speaker 1: me Ethan Nadelman. Our music is by Ari Blusien and

954
00:56:09,440 --> 00:56:13,160
Speaker 1: a special thanks to a bio s F. Bianca Grimshaw

955
00:56:13,440 --> 00:56:26,520
Speaker 1: and Robert BB. Next week I'll be talking about the

956
00:56:26,600 --> 00:56:31,480
Speaker 1: significance of alcohol prohibition in American history with Professor Lisa mcgurr,

957
00:56:31,760 --> 00:56:35,319
Speaker 1: professor at Harvard, an author of The War on Alcohol.

958
00:56:35,760 --> 00:56:39,200
Speaker 1: It just struck me that historians had not taken a

959
00:56:39,320 --> 00:56:44,680
Speaker 1: serious enough look at the repercussions of prohibition. What happened

960
00:56:44,800 --> 00:56:47,880
Speaker 1: once the Eighteenth Amendment, which was of course the amendment

961
00:56:47,920 --> 00:56:52,319
Speaker 1: to the Constitution enacting national prohibition, what happened once it

962
00:56:52,400 --> 00:56:57,200
Speaker 1: had passed. Historians kind of had felt that, you know,

963
00:56:57,280 --> 00:56:59,640
Speaker 1: this was a huge policy failure, and there wasn't much

964
00:56:59,680 --> 00:57:03,480
Speaker 1: to say it was a great disaster, but there were

965
00:57:03,640 --> 00:57:08,000
Speaker 1: huge implications that historians had not done enough to tease out.

966
00:57:08,520 --> 00:57:10,920
Speaker 1: Subscribe to Cycoactive now see it, don't miss it.