Speaker 1: If locking people up were such a great treatment for
Speaker 1: addiction and such a great way to like solve people's problems,
Speaker 1: why aren't rich people going Why aren't white people being
Speaker 1: locked up all the time? Welcome to the One You Feed.
Speaker 1: Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the
Speaker 1: thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or
Speaker 1: you are what you think ring true. And yet for
Speaker 1: many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
Speaker 1: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
Speaker 1: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 1: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
Speaker 1: takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life
Speaker 1: worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
Speaker 1: themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
Speaker 1: good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this
Speaker 1: episode is Maya Solovets, an American reporter and author who
Speaker 1: has focused much of her work on the topic of addiction.
Speaker 1: She's been a guest on The One You Feed podcast before,
Speaker 1: and we even had re released her original interview once
Speaker 1: just because we love what she has to offer. So
Speaker 1: this is a brand new interview with Maya and Eric
Speaker 1: discussing her new book, Undoing Drugs, The Untold Story of
Speaker 1: Harm Reduction and the Future of Addiction. Hi, Maya, Welcome
Speaker 1: to the show. Thanks so much for having me. I
Speaker 1: am really happy to have you back on. We've had
Speaker 1: you on before and I found the previous conversation fascinating.
Speaker 1: And we're going to be talking about your latest book
Speaker 1: called Undoing Drugs, The Untold Story of Harm Reduction and
Speaker 1: the Future of Addiction. But before we get into that,
Speaker 1: will start like we always do, with the parable. In
Speaker 1: the Parable, there is a grandparent talking with a grandchild,
Speaker 1: and the grandparents says, there are two wolves inside of
Speaker 1: us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and
Speaker 1: the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like
Speaker 1: greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild looks up
Speaker 1: at the grandparents says, well, which wolf wins, and the
Speaker 1: grandparents says, the one you feed. So I'd like to
Speaker 1: start off by asking you what that parable means to
Speaker 1: you in your life and in the work that you do. Sure, so,
Speaker 1: it's very apt in relationship to this book, because the
Speaker 1: one you feed can either be kindness or the opposite.
Speaker 1: And with addiction and in relation to people with addiction,
Speaker 1: we tend to feed the bad wolf. And within ourselves
Speaker 1: if we have addiction, we can see that as feeding
Speaker 1: the bad will, or we can see that as having
Speaker 1: sort of an attempt to self medicate and not feed
Speaker 1: the bad wolf. But it is certainly very very true
Speaker 1: and true of learning in general, that the thing you
Speaker 1: focus on and the thing you practice the most will
Speaker 1: be the thing you're best at, whether it's shooting up
Speaker 1: or you know, dancing. Yeah. Yeah. And I was really
Speaker 1: struck by in your book how generally, as you said,
Speaker 1: unkind our response to drug users is. And I even
Speaker 1: had to do a lot of your last books, you know,
Speaker 1: was part of my learning on this journey. In this
Speaker 1: book is just even more of it. Where I realized
Speaker 1: that so much of the way that I got sober
Speaker 1: and you did too as well, and what was done
Speaker 1: and the things that were said and how that was done,
Speaker 1: that there was a lot of unkindness even in that
Speaker 1: it worked in my case, which made me think that's
Speaker 1: what you needed to have. But it turns out I
Speaker 1: don't think that's really what worked, right. I don't think
Speaker 1: it was the unkindness that made it work. So before
Speaker 1: we go too far down into all that, let's start
Speaker 1: and talk about what does harm reduction mean? Broadly? What
Speaker 1: is harm reduction in the case of addiction. Sure, so
Speaker 1: it is basically the idea that what we should focus
Speaker 1: on is stopping people from getting hurt, not stopping them
Speaker 1: from getting high, and stop people from hurting others, not
Speaker 1: stopping them from taking drugs. And that is just an
Speaker 1: amazing shift of framing, because if we focus on hurt,
Speaker 1: we can't be hurting people more in order to fix them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you say that the goal of a war on drugs
Speaker 1: is simply stopping substance use, whereas the goal of harm
Speaker 1: reduction is making people's lives healthier and better, regardless of
Speaker 1: their choice to take or not take substances. And this
Speaker 1: is really a fundamental shift in the way most of us,
Speaker 1: even those of us that are in the recovery community,
Speaker 1: look at this. You know, we think that we've got
Speaker 1: to end the use. That's the primary goal. I mean,
Speaker 1: that makes sense, right, Okay, Well, if you know, let's
Speaker 1: just say somebody, a heroin addict, is doing harm to
Speaker 1: themselves in the community around them, why not focus on
Speaker 1: stopping the use? Why is that not the best primary focus?
Speaker 1: Because the use is solving a problem for that person,
Speaker 1: and if you just stop the use, you don't solve
Speaker 1: that problem. And if you don't solve that problem, you're
Speaker 1: not going to successfully stop the use in the long run.
Speaker 1: And so the the use is just a symptom of
Speaker 1: something that is going on for that person, whether they
Speaker 1: feel isolated or despairing, or have some kind of mental illness,
Speaker 1: or any of a million different things that it could be.
Speaker 1: But if you don't stop that, because people who are
Speaker 1: using drugs, drugs of the solution, not the problem. And
Speaker 1: so if you're taking away someone's solution, you are not
Speaker 1: really going to help them. And really, if you look
Speaker 1: at it, what we care about is is a person productive, happy,
Speaker 1: loving kind. I don't care what's in your bloodstream that
Speaker 1: doesn't have anything to do with me. What I care
Speaker 1: about is are you able to be present in your
Speaker 1: own life and for other people? And that is what
Speaker 1: we want to achieve, and that may actually be achieved
Speaker 1: by just giving you a pure supply of Heroin right,
Speaker 1: which sounds on the surface crazy. I'm reflecting the mainstream view.
Speaker 1: I'm not necessarily reflecting my view. But if I'm approaching
Speaker 1: this from a mainstream view, I'm like, well, hang on
Speaker 1: that that sounds nuts. So why is abstinence not either
Speaker 1: the best or the only approach to solving someone's problems
Speaker 1: or reducing their harm. For some people, this will be
Speaker 1: the best way to reduce harm in relation to a
Speaker 1: specific drug, There is absolutely no doubt about that. But
Speaker 1: we care about people living regardless of if they're abstinent.
Speaker 1: We value people who use drugs just like any other
Speaker 1: human being, and so caring this much about whether they
Speaker 1: have a substance in their system or not does not
Speaker 1: make sense when you think about what we care about
Speaker 1: generally as human beings. And so if that substance is
Speaker 1: causing problems, that person should be able to figure that
Speaker 1: out over time. But in the meanwhile, we need to
Speaker 1: keep them alive because otherwise they could never recover. So
Speaker 1: what are some common harm reduction approaches that many of
Speaker 1: us would have heard of and would probably agree with
Speaker 1: the term originated with needle exchange to prevent the spread
Speaker 1: of HIV and other blood borne diseases, and people thought that, oh,
Speaker 1: people who drugs, they won't protect themselves, they just won't bother.
Speaker 1: They like sharing needles, although we're supposed to be evil,
Speaker 1: selfish people. Otherwise, there was all this mythology about what
Speaker 1: would happen if you provided clean needles to people. Well,
Speaker 1: in reality, if you provide clean needles to people, they
Speaker 1: will use clean needles because it works better for one um,
Speaker 1: And secondly, people care about not getting HIV and other
Speaker 1: diseases if they can possibly avoid it. The reason people
Speaker 1: share needles is because they're scarce, not because it's fun
Speaker 1: to put somebody else's blood into your body. In fact,
Speaker 1: you can have horrible reactions and it's just gross even
Speaker 1: to say it out loud. Totally, And I think it's
Speaker 1: worth personalizing this right because you and I were both
Speaker 1: intervenous drug users in a similar time frame. I think
Speaker 1: you were a few years earlier than me and got
Speaker 1: sober a little sooner than me. But I was an
Speaker 1: intervenous drug user in the early nineties through mid nineties
Speaker 1: and I got hepatitis C. I thank god did not
Speaker 1: have HIV, But like you and you describe in the book,
Speaker 1: getting a test like that for HIV, for an intervenous
Speaker 1: drug user around that time, is a horrifying It's scary.
Speaker 1: It's very scary because that was a reality of those times,
Speaker 1: and you were in New York where you were taught
Speaker 1: how to sort of bleach your needles. I was in Columbus, Ohio,
Speaker 1: where I don't even know that that knowledge made it here,
Speaker 1: but there certainly was no way of getting syringes consistently
Speaker 1: that didn't involve outsmarting the people at the drug store.
Speaker 1: I personalize this to say that, you know, it really
Speaker 1: is important because I think I've got a lot of
Speaker 1: years of sobriety. You've got a lot of years of sobriety.
Speaker 1: But neither of us might have had those and had
Speaker 1: the chance to contribute to the world in any of
Speaker 1: the ways we did if we had caught HIV and
Speaker 1: died right, And this is the thing. We don't value
Speaker 1: people who use drugs. We just see them as trash
Speaker 1: to be thrown away, that have nothing to give, and
Speaker 1: that are selfish and evil and and wrong. And it
Speaker 1: always makes you really sad because I know so many
Speaker 1: wonderful people who use drugs, who used to use drugs,
Speaker 1: who sometimes use drugs and all of us, you know,
Speaker 1: in the society, there's very few people that don't use caffeine.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of people who use alcohol, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of people who use nicotine. And yet some of
Speaker 1: those drugs we call drugs and some of them we don't.
Speaker 1: And that's in fact why the book is called Undoing Drugs,
Speaker 1: because that concept is based on racism and cultural issues,
Speaker 1: not sign So, yeah, let's spend a minute there without
Speaker 1: going down what we could spend four hours on, which
Speaker 1: is why here in the US we have the policies
Speaker 1: that we have. Let's unpack a little bit the idea
Speaker 1: of what you just said, which is that we have
Speaker 1: three substances that are absolutely very much drugs that are legal,
Speaker 1: and then we have a bunch of other substances that
Speaker 1: are illegal and that are sort of in between. At
Speaker 1: this point, right that the country is going through a
Speaker 1: marijuana renaissance of sorts, where we're making it more legal
Speaker 1: in a lot of different places. But say a little
Speaker 1: bit more, in you know, a minute or two about
Speaker 1: why do we have the policies that we have because
Speaker 1: they are unquestioned by a lot of people. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: alcohol and caffeine and nicotine are legal. They're fine. Drugs
Speaker 1: are bad, right, And I mean, we've had an entire
Speaker 1: billion dollar propaganda campaign to to teach us that people
Speaker 1: believe that things are the way they are because they
Speaker 1: should be that way, and that is a fallacy. And
Speaker 1: people have this idea that oh, you know, some wise
Speaker 1: body of people scientists and researchers sat down, you know,
Speaker 1: at the FDA or somewhere and said, you know, scientifically, alcohol, tobacco,
Speaker 1: and caffeine are the safest drugs, so everything else should
Speaker 1: be illegal. Now, there is absolutely no way you could
Speaker 1: come to that conclusion based on science. Marrion know, for example,
Speaker 1: is a lot less harmful than alcohol or tobacco. So
Speaker 1: when you realize that, you're like, okay, well why are
Speaker 1: some legal? And it's basically like white colonial lists could
Speaker 1: make money from some of them, or thought they quote
Speaker 1: or were able to do in some contingent fashion, and
Speaker 1: the others they just decided to demonize because they associated
Speaker 1: them with certain groups of people. And when you look
Speaker 1: at the drug war and how long it's persisted and
Speaker 1: the results of it, I mean, if locking people up
Speaker 1: were such a great treatment for addiction, and such a
Speaker 1: great way to like solve people's problems. Why aren't rich
Speaker 1: people going why aren't white people being locked up all
Speaker 1: the time? You know, it doesn't work. It is not
Speaker 1: about what it seems to be about on the surface.
Speaker 1: And I'm not saying there's some great racist conspiracy here,
Speaker 1: but it is clearly the case that this policy is
Speaker 1: not fit for its purpose. It does not work right.
Speaker 1: And you know, the most obvious the example for me
Speaker 1: of that is that we tried it with prohibition. You know,
Speaker 1: we actually tried it. We said, okay, we've got alcohol
Speaker 1: here enough people said, you know what, it's not a
Speaker 1: good idea, it's harmful. Okay, great, let's get rid of
Speaker 1: and we tried it and it just failed so utterly
Speaker 1: that we gave up and we said, all right, well,
Speaker 1: you know what, that one will will be legal. And
Speaker 1: so I think we are as a country that the
Speaker 1: general belief is changing quickly, and you know, we're seeing
Speaker 1: it happen before our eyes to some degree way overdue,
Speaker 1: at least with marijuana, although I think there's a long
Speaker 1: way to go with other substances. I think one of
Speaker 1: the most telling things that we can say to sort
Speaker 1: of make the very short sound bite of why so
Speaker 1: much of the war on drugs is to say, you know,
Speaker 1: to say it's a racist thing. What would he mean
Speaker 1: by that? There's a quote from Nixon aid John Erlickman
Speaker 1: in your book that's been making the rounds of different
Speaker 1: places recently. This is former Nixon aid John Erlickman telling
Speaker 1: a journalist in an interview in for He said, we
Speaker 1: knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against
Speaker 1: the war or black, in this case the war being Vietnam.
Speaker 1: But by getting the public to associate the hippies with
Speaker 1: marijuana and the blacks with heroin and then criminalizing both heavily,
Speaker 1: we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders.
Speaker 1: Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of
Speaker 1: course we did, right, And that is a very rare
Speaker 1: summation of what is really going on with the war
Speaker 1: on drugs. Now, this is not to say that there
Speaker 1: aren't a lot of people who truly believe in the
Speaker 1: drug war and that who are not racist deliberately, but
Speaker 1: the full sort of mechanism of it and the way
Speaker 1: that we enforce it. I mean, when you just look
Speaker 1: at what happened, we had an opioid crisis. We still
Speaker 1: have this overdose crisis right now, and what are we
Speaker 1: saying we should do about it. We're not saying we
Speaker 1: should lock up everybody who uses prescription opioids or heroin
Speaker 1: or illegally manufactured fentanel. We're not saying that. We did
Speaker 1: say that about crack. What's different about the perception of
Speaker 1: who's using it? I mean, it's just so in your
Speaker 1: face that it's almost impossible to ignore. And I think
Speaker 1: you know, when a policy that's this destructive and this
Speaker 1: ineffective persist for so long, you have to look at
Speaker 1: other things going on culturally and see what they are. Yeah,
Speaker 1: although it's true that the way we are talking about
Speaker 1: the users of prescription opioids and heroin these days, about
Speaker 1: what we do with those people calling it an epidemic,
Speaker 1: that we want to treat the end users, we are
Speaker 1: treating differently because largely they're they're the argument would be
Speaker 1: made their white and with crack we did very differently.
Speaker 1: We locked them all up. That part of the drug
Speaker 1: war is different. But on another front, we've done exactly
Speaker 1: the same thing with this drug war. Right. That's a
Speaker 1: really good point because it's not like we actually aren't
Speaker 1: locking people up for heroin infensive all on. All these
Speaker 1: things were still predominantly locking up people of color, But
Speaker 1: we're locking up plenty of white people for that too.
Speaker 1: The rhetoric is what has changed. The policy itself has
Speaker 1: not really shifted, and this has caused your tremendous crisis
Speaker 1: because what we did during this overdose crisis is we said,
Speaker 1: oh my god, like people are taking too many prescription opioids,
Speaker 1: let's just cut the medical supply. And so we did that,
Speaker 1: and we thought, oh, that will solve the problem. Well,
Speaker 1: you kind of supply of something that people are addicted to,
Speaker 1: somebody's going to supply that market and lo and behold,
Speaker 1: that's what happened, and of course that made overdose deaths worse.
Speaker 1: The thing that always kills me about this situation is that,
Speaker 1: you know, when you're closing a pill mill, you have
Speaker 1: a list of every person who's a customer there because
Speaker 1: they have to have the real name in order to
Speaker 1: pick up the prescription. So why didn't we immediately offer
Speaker 1: care to all those people? Why did we spend billions
Speaker 1: of dollars like identifying these people by like looking at
Speaker 1: prescription monitoring databases and all of this kind of thing,
Speaker 1: but absolutely nothing other than throw them out of the
Speaker 1: medical system when we identified them. Right, Yeah, I read
Speaker 1: that piece you wrote about that, and I was really
Speaker 1: struck by that very question. Why didn't we We did
Speaker 1: know exactly who these people were, we knew that they
Speaker 1: had most likely we could say a problem to your point,
Speaker 1: I don't think it's necessarily done out of malice. It's
Speaker 1: done out of to me complete ignorance, a complete ignorance
Speaker 1: of what actually works. Well, there's that, and there's also
Speaker 1: the fact that we've made doctors terrified to prescribe opioids,
Speaker 1: and that we're killing people with chronic pain, and even
Speaker 1: we're just torturing dying people now because I just did
Speaker 1: this piece for Wired about this algorithm that ends up
Speaker 1: harming people that's in prescription drug monitoring databases. Um, my
Speaker 1: email box and my Twitter feed is filled with these
Speaker 1: horrific stories of people with intractable pain who are now
Speaker 1: disabled and they used to be able to play with
Speaker 1: their grandkids and now they can't get out of bed,
Speaker 1: or people who are dying and they won't give them opioids.
Speaker 1: They're like, oh, your dose is too hot. I mean,
Speaker 1: who is saved by that? Like, what is the point
Speaker 1: of that? So it's really distressing. But I think like
Speaker 1: we have this false idea and that has unfortunately been
Speaker 1: um sort of carried through with the lawsuits against the
Speaker 1: opioid manufacturers, that these are evil substances. They're like cigarettes,
Speaker 1: we must stomp them out. They don't have any use,
Speaker 1: and if anybody says they have a use, they are
Speaker 1: addicted or they are paid by pharma, and that is
Speaker 1: just not true. Opioids, You're different, Like they do have
Speaker 1: a medical use. And I would like some of these
Speaker 1: people to spend just one minute in the body of
Speaker 1: one of these chronic pain patients that I speak to
Speaker 1: and continue to have their opinion that even the modest
Speaker 1: reliefs that they're getting from opioid should be taken away.
Speaker 1: It makes no sense because is what we have done
Speaker 1: in this whole situation is we've said, oh, the innocent
Speaker 1: white people got addicted by doctors and they are victims
Speaker 1: bad black people to crack and they are criminals. And
Speaker 1: so we created this like line about how the opioid
Speaker 1: crisis was sort of accidental addiction, when in fact, eighty
Speaker 1: percent of the people who misuse prescription opioids do not
Speaker 1: have a prescription for them. They are taking drugs from
Speaker 1: somebody else's medicine cabinet or their friends, of their family,
Speaker 1: or buying them on the street. And so this idea
Speaker 1: that we just turned all these innocent pain patients into
Speaker 1: people with addiction. Now, certainly there have been some pain
Speaker 1: patients that got addicted, but for the most part, the
Speaker 1: people that got addicted were not paying patients, and the
Speaker 1: people who were paying patients didn't get addicted. Right, You've
Speaker 1: got several articles out on the web that people can
Speaker 1: look for that I think are really worth reading if
Speaker 1: you don't want to read the whole book, although I
Speaker 1: highly recommend the entire book, But there are these, you know,
Speaker 1: where we talk about the standard narrative of this opioid crisis,
Speaker 1: which is first to blame was Big Pharma because they
Speaker 1: went out and told us this stuff was safe. Second
Speaker 1: to blame was the doctors who's just started dispensing this
Speaker 1: stuff like crazy, you know. And then the last to
Speaker 1: blame are the evil drug dealers for putting fentyl in there.
Speaker 1: And there is blame to be ascribed in all three
Speaker 1: of those cases. To varying in lesser degrees. It's there,
Speaker 1: but as you say, there's a there's a fourth of
Speaker 1: a person to blame or a party to blame, and
Speaker 1: it's our policy, which you know. I watched what was happening.
Speaker 1: As I saw like all of a sudden, we're cracking
Speaker 1: down on opioids, prescription opioids, I went, well, I I
Speaker 1: know exactly what's about to come happen. We are creating
Speaker 1: a ton of street drug users. Yeah. What was amazing
Speaker 1: to me about this that you know, a lot of
Speaker 1: people don't understand. If you think about your average chronic
Speaker 1: pain patient who's like a middle aged woman, how she
Speaker 1: could to go buy heroin, you know, unless she has
Speaker 1: a long history of previously using other drugs. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not so easy to just go. What do you do?
Speaker 1: Go to the worst neighborhood you could find and say,
Speaker 1: can I have some heroin? Please? Are you selling it? Sir?
Speaker 1: You know you're gonna get ripped off. The way people
Speaker 1: were able to go from the prescription opiods to the
Speaker 1: street was that they started on the street and they
Speaker 1: already knew how to buy drugs in that situation. Now, again,
Speaker 1: this is not universal, and there's certainly some people who,
Speaker 1: you know, after they went to their doctor there was
Speaker 1: some deal drug dealer hanging out in the parking a
Speaker 1: lot or something. For the most part, it is different
Speaker 1: populations of people, right right. I think there definitely is
Speaker 1: an extent like that you said where you know, I
Speaker 1: think that savvy drug dealers were like, Okay, these pill
Speaker 1: mills are getting shut down. Here's our customer base. But
Speaker 1: your point is by and large taken, And I think
Speaker 1: it's important to make a distinction at this point between
Speaker 1: opioid dependency and addiction, because these are very different phenomenon.
Speaker 1: And so someone who has chronic pain, and I've been
Speaker 1: living this a little bit over the last three years
Speaker 1: because my mother has in the last three years twice
Speaker 1: fallen and broken her hip or her back and was
Speaker 1: in a car wreck I don't know three weeks ago
Speaker 1: where she broke three ribs and has a punctured long
Speaker 1: So I've been familiar with how difficult we make it
Speaker 1: for people who are in real pain to get opioid medication.
Speaker 1: I think luckily for my mom, I have been here
Speaker 1: to help advocate for her in a sane and reasonable way.
Speaker 1: Or I think she would have lived in a lot
Speaker 1: more pain than she did. And we've navigated you know, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: we don't want her on these things a long term.
Speaker 1: We got to watch out for addiction risk. Right, addiction
Speaker 1: runs in my family, So these things are all very
Speaker 1: close to my heart, and so I do recognize that, like,
Speaker 1: you've got to be careful with this, and as we
Speaker 1: typically tend to do, I think we've overreacted to the
Speaker 1: problem and we've gone so far that we've made it
Speaker 1: very hard for decent doctors and people who are in
Speaker 1: pain to get the medicine they need. Right, It's just
Speaker 1: so ridiculous, because who benefits from your mom not getting
Speaker 1: her pain treated. You could say, well, maybe you benefit
Speaker 1: because then you can't steal her drugs, But I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: that is not the way I want to make policy.
Speaker 1: I want to make policy based on let's treat the
Speaker 1: actual patient in front of us, your mom, not some
Speaker 1: elder person who might steal their medication. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: just not okay, that's right. So explain to us the
Speaker 1: difference between dependence, which my mother, if she takes an
Speaker 1: opioid pain medication for a long enough time, she will
Speaker 1: develop a physical dependence on that. But that is not
Speaker 1: the same thing as addiction, So what is the difference. Sure, So,
Speaker 1: addiction is compulsive drug use or other kinds of compulsive
Speaker 1: behavior that continues in the face of negative consequences. So
Speaker 1: it has to be harmful, it has to harm you
Speaker 1: or others. But it can tinues despite all kinds of
Speaker 1: punishment going on you, or let me just say, continues
Speaker 1: despite you facing and suffering through all kinds of punishment.
Speaker 1: In fact, if punishment work to cure addiction, it wouldn't
Speaker 1: by definition exist, So that's addiction. Dependence is physically needing
Speaker 1: something to function. And you could be dependent on prozac,
Speaker 1: you could be dependent on insulin, you could be dependent
Speaker 1: on certain blood pressure medications. But you're not out there
Speaker 1: craving these things, thinking about how wonderful they are, spending
Speaker 1: your whole life seeking them. Do you produce relief, but
Speaker 1: not in the way that something like an opioid can do.
Speaker 1: And so dependence, when you need something to function, it's
Speaker 1: not necessarily a problem so long as you can get
Speaker 1: a safe and legal supply of that thing. If they
Speaker 1: made prozac illegal, I would probably be in trouble, but
Speaker 1: I don't think I would be robbing drug stores, so
Speaker 1: you know, it's just not the same thing. And I
Speaker 1: think a good example here is cocaine, because cocaine causes
Speaker 1: absolutely crazy levels of craving and compulsion and repetition, and
Speaker 1: you find yourself doing it even when you don't want
Speaker 1: to do it, but you don't get sick when you
Speaker 1: stop doing it, you don't get physically ill. And so
Speaker 1: people used to believe the cocaine was not addictive because
Speaker 1: it didn't cause physical dependence the way something like opioid
Speaker 1: and alcohol do, where you're puking and shaking and you
Speaker 1: have this reliably predictable set of symptoms. So distinguishing between
Speaker 1: the two is essential because if you consider dependence and
Speaker 1: addiction the same thing, anybody taking certain medications for addiction
Speaker 1: treatment is considered as substituting one addiction for another, and
Speaker 1: so they are seen as just as addicted as somebody
Speaker 1: who's like shooting up forty times a day on the street,
Speaker 1: even though the person on medication maybe getting their children back,
Speaker 1: getting their life back, getting their job back, having a
Speaker 1: really productive life, and being completely indistinguishable from somebody on
Speaker 1: any other medications. So that is essential to making that distinction,
Speaker 1: and it's also obviously essential for pain patients because if
Speaker 1: the benefit of the opioid outweighs the risks, then that
Speaker 1: person should have the access to those medications. If they,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, are compulsively taking the drugs in
Speaker 1: higher and higher doses and risking more and more, then
Speaker 1: they have an addiction and we need to do something
Speaker 1: about it. The irony here is what we tend to
Speaker 1: do about it, and the best treatment for it is
Speaker 1: an opioid. So we just need to give them a
Speaker 1: safe dose of pupermorphine or methodone, which are the only
Speaker 1: ones we're allowed to give. So when you understand that
Speaker 1: the problem in addiction is not physically needing something, the
Speaker 1: problem in addiction is compulsive behavior that's ruining your life,
Speaker 1: and so you might still physically need something. I physically
Speaker 1: need prozac. It could have just well been method um,
Speaker 1: but I'm not going to judge because like prozac happens
Speaker 1: to work for me, and I didn't find method and
Speaker 1: useful because I was still shooting. Okay, I think this
Speaker 1: is an interesting point and one that I've had to
Speaker 1: really sort of search myself on and I know you
Speaker 1: have too, which is that I was able to get
Speaker 1: off of heroin completely and was not on something like
Speaker 1: methadone or SEBoK zone, something that you would take sort
Speaker 1: of in an ongoing way. And for a long time
Speaker 1: I really thought that the way I did it was
Speaker 1: the only way or the best way to do it.
Speaker 1: And while I'm grateful it went that way for me,
Speaker 1: is it better to get all the way off? Is
Speaker 1: it okay to be sort of in between? Does it
Speaker 1: matter or is it really up to the person. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think you know, all of our brains
Speaker 1: are wired differently, and there are people in this world
Speaker 1: whose brains are wired for whatever reason to need an
Speaker 1: external opioid to function. And if they have that, they
Speaker 1: are just like anybody else and can get on with
Speaker 1: their lives. If they don't, they will be compulsively seeking
Speaker 1: it on the street. And it is not any better
Speaker 1: or worse for me as a human being that I
Speaker 1: happen to need prozacta function. And you know, I just
Speaker 1: don't see it as a moral issue. If we're going
Speaker 1: to actually claim that addiction is a medical problem and
Speaker 1: that it can result in or can be led to
Speaker 1: by certain brain issues, then treating it with a medication
Speaker 1: makes sense, just like depression or anxiety or whatever else.
Speaker 1: And so I don't believe it's morally superior to be
Speaker 1: on prozac compared to methodone, or to be completely abstinent
Speaker 1: of all substances compared to having to have the substances
Speaker 1: to function. I mean, that is simply able, is you know?
Speaker 1: It is? Really? You know, for me, I have a
Speaker 1: lot of sensory issues and a lot of difficulty with
Speaker 1: emotional regulation if I don't have my prozac or my
Speaker 1: world putrin. And so I have found in my life
Speaker 1: that I am happier everybody else around me is happier
Speaker 1: if I take these medications and I can function socially
Speaker 1: and I don't get overwhelmed as easily, and I can
Speaker 1: do a better I really don't think this makes me
Speaker 1: a bad person or a lesser person than someone who
Speaker 1: achieves that through therapy or exercise or whatever. It just like,
Speaker 1: why would that be like that just seems wrong to me.
Speaker 1: It seems like it would be the same thing as
Speaker 1: saying I'm about a person because I don't need a wheelchair.
Speaker 1: That makes a lot of sense when you put it
Speaker 1: in that context, Because it's interesting because what I think
Speaker 1: about is a yes, I am the same way in
Speaker 1: that antidepressant medications appear to be what my brain needs right,
Speaker 1: and there are people that will will make you feel
Speaker 1: bad for that. I get more natural remedies for depression
Speaker 1: across my desk of people that want to be on
Speaker 1: the podcast who insist like you do not need those things,
Speaker 1: it is wrong to take them. And my experience has
Speaker 1: been that even when I do everything that is recommended
Speaker 1: to treat depression, when I exercise, I eat the right
Speaker 1: sort of diet, I talk to people, I have connections
Speaker 1: in my life. I do all the things that I
Speaker 1: know treat my depression, and I think I'm pretty good
Speaker 1: at those things. I still find that I need the
Speaker 1: medicine right, or that the quality of my life is
Speaker 1: different if I take the medicine. So for me, where
Speaker 1: I get sort of hung up right or get a
Speaker 1: little bit stuck, and this is able? Is um I
Speaker 1: think what you're saying is because for me, I'm glad
Speaker 1: in some ways that how do I want to say this?
Speaker 1: I find that my recovery from depression is best done
Speaker 1: with medicine and with all these other things. If I
Speaker 1: only have one of those or the other. I find
Speaker 1: for me it's less richness and quality of life, which
Speaker 1: sometimes leads me with substance addiction, like being on something
Speaker 1: like subox. Oum to think, well, because I got so
Speaker 1: much out of Recovery one in that for other people.
Speaker 1: But I think, like we're saying here, one isn't better
Speaker 1: than the other, and everybody is very different, and I'll
Speaker 1: let you respond to that, and then I'm going to
Speaker 1: take us in a slightly different direction. Sure, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think the problem is that we get hung up
Speaker 1: on the idea that these are opioids and there for
Speaker 1: having that thing in your system is numbing you and
Speaker 1: making you emotionally unavailable, and all of these things we
Speaker 1: say about people with an active addiction that aren't even
Speaker 1: necessarily true about people who are chaotically using. But we
Speaker 1: sort of have this, you know, suspicion that like the
Speaker 1: people on methodone are just like not living their best
Speaker 1: life and if they completely came off, they would be happy,
Speaker 1: joyous and free and everything would be great. Now the
Speaker 1: problem there, First of all, our methodon system is terrible,
Speaker 1: and people would probably be more happy, joyous, and free
Speaker 1: without having to show up at a clinic every day.
Speaker 1: But that is a problem of our system, not a
Speaker 1: problem of the medication. Secondly, it's simply isn't the case
Speaker 1: that some people can function without certain chemicals and that
Speaker 1: doesn't make them lesser or greater or you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: I kind of look at it like for me, I'm
Speaker 1: sort of highly tuned up and over sensitive and you know,
Speaker 1: just reactive all over the place, and so I need
Speaker 1: to turn the volume down. And this is good for me. Now,
Speaker 1: if you're already with the volume turned down and you
Speaker 1: take something like an opioid or an antidepressant, it might
Speaker 1: make you suicidal. It might make you feel numb and
Speaker 1: disconnected and all of these things, because like I'm trying
Speaker 1: to go from up here to here, and the medication
Speaker 1: for these other people is taking them from here to here.
Speaker 1: And so I am demonstrating this on video, which of
Speaker 1: course is not going to be seen. But the point
Speaker 1: is that people are starting at different starting points, and
Speaker 1: that the drug that makes me feel safe and comfortable
Speaker 1: and okay may make someone else horribly numb and despairing.
Speaker 1: And because of these huge individual differences, whatever works for
Speaker 1: you is what I want for you. If you feel
Speaker 1: that like, Okay, you're functioning on the box phone well,
Speaker 1: but like it's still kind of numbing and you kind
Speaker 1: of think you could do better off. We'll try it
Speaker 1: and if it doesn't work, you could take it again.
Speaker 1: We have to get the moralism out of this, I mean,
Speaker 1: drive me crazy. Those natural people around antidepressive because they
Speaker 1: have not lived in my nervous system. They do not know.
Speaker 1: You think you can empathize with other people, but you're
Speaker 1: only projecting yourself into them. And we can realize that, Okay,
Speaker 1: like that guy's really into cars and I think cars
Speaker 1: are boring, um, and so therefore we can see these
Speaker 1: you know, individual differences here, but when it comes to
Speaker 1: our emotional reactions and the way we are in the world,
Speaker 1: you know, we don't seem to recognize that people are
Speaker 1: not all the same on this and that like if
Speaker 1: for me, weightlifting is fabulous and I'm like really into
Speaker 1: getting my dead lift up, which I have been lately,
Speaker 1: I could do to probably Holy mackerel U, but I
Speaker 1: don't have the equipment at home, so I can't prove
Speaker 1: I can do two fifty anyway. The point is that
Speaker 1: somebody else might find that totally tedious and I might
Speaker 1: find whatever they're into totally tedious as well. It's just
Speaker 1: we're different. And this is great, because you know, we
Speaker 1: need scientists to be interested in viruses and interested in
Speaker 1: like lizards and all kinds of weird stuff that everybody
Speaker 1: else finds a little strange. But if we didn't have
Speaker 1: those people, how are we deal with the pandemic? Right?
Speaker 1: People doing all kinds of obscure things that you never
Speaker 1: think would matter actually do matter. And also just in
Speaker 1: terms of being kind to others, everybody matters in terms
Speaker 1: of that. It breaks my heart that people cannot see
Speaker 1: this because it just creates this horrible prejudice, and it
Speaker 1: also creates this division within the recovery community that is
Speaker 1: not necessary. I feel like over the years we have
Speaker 1: gotten much closer to recognizing that my path is my path,
Speaker 1: your path is your I'm not going to judge, blah
Speaker 1: blah blah, but it's still I think part of the
Speaker 1: thing is that, like people don't understand that with opioids
Speaker 1: in particular, tolerance to the intoxicating effects is pretty near complete,
Speaker 1: which means that I can drive, I can whatever if
Speaker 1: I can drive, but I don't drive. But anyway, that's
Speaker 1: another story. But I think the point is just that
Speaker 1: somebody who's on doses of opioids that might kill me
Speaker 1: could be completely safe on the road, and that's not
Speaker 1: true with alcohol. And so since everybody is kind of
Speaker 1: familiar with tolerance with alcohol, we think that, well, I
Speaker 1: know that the guy who's had five whiskeys always does
Speaker 1: that is probably safer on the road than the guy
Speaker 1: who had five whiskies and doesn't always do that. I
Speaker 1: don't want to run the experiment, but the thing is that,
Speaker 1: like tolerance to alcohol is not you are still impaired. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think, you know, kind of boiling this all
Speaker 1: down is sort of whatever works for people. When I
Speaker 1: got sober the first time, I think, you know, I
Speaker 1: looked at everybody who had any problem, and I thought, well,
Speaker 1: you probably it's probably drugs or alcohol is your problem, right,
Speaker 1: you know, and abstinence is the way to go. I
Speaker 1: have come, you know, so far from that. In the
Speaker 1: coaching work I do with people, oftentimes, you know, if
Speaker 1: people are if people are asking these sort of questions,
Speaker 1: you know, what can really be helpful is just to
Speaker 1: have someone to explore these questions within a nod judgmental way,
Speaker 1: because for some people it may be abstinence, for other
Speaker 1: people it may be moderation. It just really really depends
Speaker 1: on the person. It depends on what they want from life.
Speaker 1: I mean, there are so many variables. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: mean it also depends on on the substance. Because like
Speaker 1: I have no illusions about Siefely being able to use cocaine.
Speaker 1: This is interesting because for me, at any time I
Speaker 1: wade into these water and I hear about responsible drug use,
Speaker 1: a part of me inside goes ah ha, Yes, Eric,
Speaker 1: I think that might work. And I'm curious, as a
Speaker 1: recovering person, how does that work within you? Have you
Speaker 1: chosen to remain sort of a feel free to demur
Speaker 1: on this question if you want to, But have you
Speaker 1: chosen to remain sort of what we would classically consider
Speaker 1: in recovery in abstinence? And do you ever feel called
Speaker 1: by the sort of arguments towards moderation? Sure, I mean
Speaker 1: I have now I'm done a more moderation style. But
Speaker 1: I do not take ever opioids or cocaine, and I
Speaker 1: would take if I needed them for pain, but thankfully,
Speaker 1: knock on wood here, I do not, And um, I
Speaker 1: hope to stay that way. I have taken other things
Speaker 1: and it has not been a disaster for me. But
Speaker 1: I am very careful about my use of things, whether
Speaker 1: it's alcohol or marijuana. I'm very very careful, and I
Speaker 1: think that for my own recovery, the first five years
Speaker 1: I wouldn't even do entinepressants, and that was a mistake,
Speaker 1: Like I lost time in my life where I could
Speaker 1: have been much more socially happy by thinking that abstinence
Speaker 1: from all these things was the only way. And then
Speaker 1: I spent at least another two years just antidepressants nothing else.
Speaker 1: And then after that I did begin, you know, sort
Speaker 1: of experimenting, and it didn't become a disaster, so I
Speaker 1: feel okay with it. I have to be careful, and
Speaker 1: like I said, I'm not entertaining any causual use of
Speaker 1: my drugs of choice, which were opioids and cocaine, and
Speaker 1: I never played around with metho fetemine and I have
Speaker 1: no desire to do that. So, you know, would I
Speaker 1: possibly take psychedelics maybe, But it's funny because I just
Speaker 1: don't want to, and I have one experience kind of
Speaker 1: I don't know, four or five years into recovery, I
Speaker 1: had to take I don't know, vict in or something
Speaker 1: for a dental thing that was really painful, and I
Speaker 1: called my sponsor. I did the whole thing I was
Speaker 1: supposed to do, and when I took it, I was like,
Speaker 1: this is what I was chasing this, you know. I
Speaker 1: mean it was really like, you know, it was disappointing,
Speaker 1: you know, And so it didn't create any craving. I
Speaker 1: think I never would have been able to make myself
Speaker 1: have the dental work that was very much needed if
Speaker 1: I hadn't known and I had. My dentist is actually
Speaker 1: in recovery, and so I trust him to say, you
Speaker 1: will totally not need opioids for this. You might need
Speaker 1: a few for this, but I feel safe. And that's
Speaker 1: the thing that also drives me crazy about the way
Speaker 1: we have control over the situation because one of the
Speaker 1: things that opioids are part of our stress system. They're
Speaker 1: part of the way our brains. Opioids are part of
Speaker 1: the way social contact relieves stress and anxiety and fear
Speaker 1: and being out of control increases stress. So if you
Speaker 1: actually want to not have people lose control over substances,
Speaker 1: you want to give them a sense of safety and
Speaker 1: non anxiety about whether they will have the pain releaves
Speaker 1: that they need. And I think that, you know, it
Speaker 1: is absolutely the case that untreated pain and agony is
Speaker 1: every bit as much a trigger as euphoria. And so
Speaker 1: if you're worried about euphoria, the best thing to do
Speaker 1: is have your sponsor there or whatever your recovery support
Speaker 1: person is. Make the doctor give you a prescription for
Speaker 1: only two bills, like get a lock box. There's there's
Speaker 1: all kinds of ways that you can prevent yourself from
Speaker 1: doing something impulsive that will get you into trouble, but
Speaker 1: you can also take care of pain as needed. It's
Speaker 1: just so depressing to me because I just hear from
Speaker 1: all these people who like, you know, oh, they just
Speaker 1: told me I was a drug seeker and turned me
Speaker 1: away and it turned out like I had a perforated
Speaker 1: colon and I needed emergency surgery later, and all of
Speaker 1: this kind of stuff to prevent something that wouldn't actually
Speaker 1: even if that person had been a drug seeker. Who cares.
Speaker 1: It's like they got extra safe drugs, Like they're in
Speaker 1: a hospital. There there's an arcan. It's just I don't know,
Speaker 1: like the moralism there and the idea that like we
Speaker 1: must suffer because it is good for our soul, you know,
Speaker 1: even for people who are dying, like really like why,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's interesting. I think that, you know, the
Speaker 1: pendulum has swung so far anti opioids and anti you
Speaker 1: know pain really for people, that it's bound to come
Speaker 1: swinging back. The problem is it went too far the
Speaker 1: first time. We need to be in the middle. We've
Speaker 1: got to keep not having stream swings where it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you opioids for all, or like no opiods for none.
Speaker 1: You know, the answer is in the middle. It's complicated.
Speaker 1: It's annoying that it's complicated, but that's life totally. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think it is complicated, and it is annoying that
Speaker 1: has to be that way, but it is. It's interesting
Speaker 1: because where I've landed is I stayed sober about eight
Speaker 1: years off of opioids, off of heroin, and then I went,
Speaker 1: as we would say in the program, I went back
Speaker 1: out and uh, you know, I drank and I did marijuana,
Speaker 1: and I never went back to the opioids, never really
Speaker 1: went back to cocaine, and I spiraled completely out of
Speaker 1: control on alcohol and marijuana. So so my general sense
Speaker 1: for me is like, well, they all seem to work
Speaker 1: about the same in my system, in that I seem
Speaker 1: to have an equal propensity to abuse all of them.
Speaker 1: So for me, I haven't found the mood altering chemical
Speaker 1: that is safe for me right, and I can like,
Speaker 1: I never ever ever encourage people who are abstinent to
Speaker 1: try moderation or to you know, decide differently about what
Speaker 1: is their best path to recovery. If you are abstinent
Speaker 1: and it is working for you, that's fabulous. I applaud
Speaker 1: that that is great. You don't have to prove you
Speaker 1: can do it moderately or any of these other things
Speaker 1: like no, you are doing harm reduction for you, that
Speaker 1: is fine. I understand how people can be threatened by
Speaker 1: the idea that some people can moderate and they can't.
Speaker 1: Like it feels unfair totally. You know, people can sort
Speaker 1: of get in their head. Well maybe I could, But
Speaker 1: that is where you have to talk to somebody who's
Speaker 1: in abstinent recovery or who supports your own abstinent recovery
Speaker 1: about why for you personally, that's a bad idea because
Speaker 1: we saw you do this two times ago, and no,
Speaker 1: you did not see an um you know, I mean
Speaker 1: So it's funny because you know, in the Big Book
Speaker 1: it says like, you know, if you're not convinced, try
Speaker 1: some control drinking, and you know you'll come back to
Speaker 1: us because won't be able to do it. And if
Speaker 1: you don't come back to us because you can do it,
Speaker 1: that's fine too, that's right, wonderful, great news. Yes, And so, like,
Speaker 1: I don't understand why there is such a sort of
Speaker 1: moralistic fight by absence treatment providers to like never let
Speaker 1: anybody experiment with control, even when that means you're just
Speaker 1: going to throw them out of treatment and they're not
Speaker 1: going to have any support for moderation. You talk about
Speaker 1: how our entire drug treatment model, well there's three main models,
Speaker 1: but two of the three, uh sort of twelve step
Speaker 1: programs and the other sort of you know, the therapeutic
Speaker 1: treatment communities, abstinence from all mood altering substance is the
Speaker 1: goal and the only success, and anything short of that
Speaker 1: is seen as failure. Why is that the wrong gauge
Speaker 1: of success or why is it wrong to only have
Speaker 1: that as a gauge of success. I know oftentimes people
Speaker 1: in meetings are joking when they say this, but you know,
Speaker 1: if they go into a meeting and say I killed
Speaker 1: ten people, but I didn't drink. I had a good day,
Speaker 1: you know, Or like I lost my job, I lost
Speaker 1: my house, and I didn't drink, so I had a
Speaker 1: good day. Like that is not a good day. It's
Speaker 1: great that you can drink, but what actually matters is
Speaker 1: your quality of life. And this is what everybody, you know, like,
Speaker 1: regardless of addiction status. We just all want to like
Speaker 1: connect with people, be happy, be productive, be you know,
Speaker 1: safe and okay, and that's what matters. It's very hard
Speaker 1: to see that because we do become so fixated on
Speaker 1: the substances and on this idea. Well, you know, because
Speaker 1: abstinence versus not abstinence isn't a nice binary and harm
Speaker 1: reduction is like a continuum. And as we can see
Speaker 1: with gender debates, people are freaked out by non binary.
Speaker 1: That is not correct. And we should be allowing a
Speaker 1: spectrum of things because life is on a spectrum. But
Speaker 1: people really like the black and white, good and bad,
Speaker 1: like light and dark, all of that kind of thing
Speaker 1: because it's simple, and so we need to recognize, you know,
Speaker 1: complexity exists, and yes, sometimes complexity is going to freak
Speaker 1: us out. But I think if you have to be
Speaker 1: so rigid that everything has to be black and white,
Speaker 1: you're not going to have a happy and comfortable life
Speaker 1: and productive, you know. I mean, because that rigidity is
Speaker 1: itself a compuls in and I recognize that early in recovery,
Speaker 1: a lot of people who are absent are very rigid.
Speaker 1: And maybe that's protective for the first two years or something.
Speaker 1: But if you can't after that point go to a
Speaker 1: concert and hear music or see an old friend and
Speaker 1: not lose it, you know, you're not living your full
Speaker 1: life that way. You know, Recovery should be an expansion
Speaker 1: and growth and being able to do more things, not
Speaker 1: like contracting into a little ball and focusing only on
Speaker 1: the fact that you are absent. I mean, there are
Speaker 1: some people that have died by suicide rather than relapse,
Speaker 1: and I think they should have relapsed board. But it's
Speaker 1: it's just like, you know, that's like to think that
Speaker 1: that is a success. It's like crazy, as though, we
Speaker 1: need to really keep our eyes on the ball and
Speaker 1: just be like, Okay, what do we care about people
Speaker 1: doing well? People doing well by whatever measure, you know,
Speaker 1: And this is why, like um in the harm reduction community.
Speaker 1: There's this idea that recoveries any positive change, and some
Speaker 1: people feel that's too loosey goosey or whatever. But the
Speaker 1: kernel there is that if you are getting better and
Speaker 1: your life is getting bigger, and you are able to
Speaker 1: do more and more things and connect with people and
Speaker 1: all of this kind of stuff, that is recovery. It's
Speaker 1: not recovery if you are suicidal and you really feel
Speaker 1: that the only thing that is valuable is the fact
Speaker 1: that you haven't taken a particular illegal substance. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think this speaks to the idea that like, if somebody
Speaker 1: was smoking crack, you know, every day for years and
Speaker 1: robbing places to get the money, and they stop doing
Speaker 1: that and they go to smoking weed three times a week,
Speaker 1: by the abstinence only model, that person has completely failed.
Speaker 1: And by any sort of objective standpoint, we would say, well,
Speaker 1: that person is in way better shape than they were before.
Speaker 1: Now if that smoking pot three times a week is
Speaker 1: not causing them problems in their life and is even
Speaker 1: helping them in the same way that we go we
Speaker 1: go out after work and have a couple of beers.
Speaker 1: It helps people relax, Like, Okay, we have no problem
Speaker 1: with that. So I think it is recognizing that we're different.
Speaker 1: We just need different things and we want different things,
Speaker 1: and that's okay. Yeah, I mean, I think like one
Speaker 1: of the things that is sort of really problematic with
Speaker 1: the abstinence model is this idea that the first drink
Speaker 1: gets you drunk, and that like, if you slip at all,
Speaker 1: you have lost all your time and none of your
Speaker 1: previous recovery counts. Because what that does is it means
Speaker 1: that if you have a sip, you're just gonna go
Speaker 1: guzzle it because it's like you've already blow it. And
Speaker 1: that is known as the abstinence violation effect, and it
Speaker 1: can cause real problems. I mean, there's a really fascinating
Speaker 1: study that they talk about in the book where they
Speaker 1: gave people who were heavy drinkers who had no interest
Speaker 1: in recovery. They were doing this experiment. They had this
Speaker 1: bar set up and they basically gave them either placebo
Speaker 1: alcohol or actual alcohol, and sometimes they told them that
Speaker 1: the placebo was real alcohol, and sometimes they told them
Speaker 1: that the alcohol was placebo. And it turned out that
Speaker 1: people's drinking escalated when they thought they had alcohol, not
Speaker 1: they actually had alcohol. So what that shows is that
Speaker 1: it's the belief that's driving that behavior, and that the
Speaker 1: belief is causing problematic things to happen. Now, I'm not
Speaker 1: saying again that somebody in recovery should be like, yes,
Speaker 1: I can have one. That's that is not the point
Speaker 1: of this here. The point of this is that if
Speaker 1: you do have one, you don't have to have twenty.
Speaker 1: You are not a zombie. And while you may have
Speaker 1: less and less control over time, you still don't ever
Speaker 1: become a zombie. You can always begin a process of
Speaker 1: change and that may not be visible to anybody else
Speaker 1: At first. You may be going from ten drinks a
Speaker 1: day to five drinks a day, but for your body,
Speaker 1: that's like amazingly better, right, And then you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's all about learning better ways of functioning, and no
Speaker 1: learning happens instantly. If you try to learn things and
Speaker 1: you don't make mistakes, you're not going to get any better.
Speaker 1: And its being your beginner at things. But the only
Speaker 1: way to get better is to practice and to make
Speaker 1: mistakes and to then learn how to correct those particular mistakes.
Speaker 1: And so you know, that's really what harm reduction is about,
Speaker 1: because what you're doing while you're still using some people
Speaker 1: may not ever be able to get into a significant
Speaker 1: form of recovery for them if they don't first while
Speaker 1: they're still really chaos, to begin to get the skills
Speaker 1: to be able to maintain that. You know, you may
Speaker 1: be so traumatized and so you know, just overcome that.
Speaker 1: If you try to give up the substances first, you're
Speaker 1: just going to get worse instead, if you learn while
Speaker 1: you are still using that. Okay, I don't necessarily have
Speaker 1: to respond this way when this happens. This is kind
Speaker 1: of driven by that, and I can try other methods
Speaker 1: of coping, and I can over time begin to build
Speaker 1: on that, and so you know, it's it's just we
Speaker 1: have everything so backwards basically, yep, I look at the
Speaker 1: process of getting even to abstinence recovery, if that's what
Speaker 1: the goal is is. Yeah, it is a constant learning process,
Speaker 1: you know. I often think about an analogy that's useful
Speaker 1: is like learning to speak a language. You know, when
Speaker 1: you start, you you can't speak it at all, you know,
Speaker 1: and then you slowly learn to speak it in more
Speaker 1: and more circumstances, but you might still run in a
Speaker 1: certain cases You're like, well, I'm learning French and I
Speaker 1: go to France and I'm like, oh my god, I
Speaker 1: can't speak it here, right, But if you keep doing it,
Speaker 1: sooner or later you'll be able to. And that was
Speaker 1: my experience and what I've seen so many people do,
Speaker 1: and I agree with you. I think for those of
Speaker 1: us who appear to need abstinence, I think there's benefit
Speaker 1: in consecutive days of sobriety. I think there is a
Speaker 1: benefit in it. And the fact that that's the only
Speaker 1: thing we measure is wrong. We don't measure anything else
Speaker 1: that way. If you exercised fifty days out of fifty five,
Speaker 1: we would be like that is a success one. Okay,
Speaker 1: you're doing great, right, it's a rounding error. I have
Speaker 1: a proposal for fixing this, not that it will ever
Speaker 1: be taken up, but I do believe that Let's say
Speaker 1: you have ten years and you use for like a
Speaker 1: couple of days, and then you go back and are
Speaker 1: you know, going to meetings for ninety days and our
Speaker 1: abstinence for ninety days and doing what you're supposed to do.
Speaker 1: I think you get your ten years back. It doesn't
Speaker 1: make any sense that you would lose it. You've learned
Speaker 1: all those things during that time. You were not the
Speaker 1: same as somebody who just comes in has three days
Speaker 1: after ten years of drinking. That is absolutely true, And
Speaker 1: the same is true if you have three months or
Speaker 1: nine months or six months or three years. Like if
Speaker 1: you're doing it, if you're in recovery, you're learning all
Speaker 1: along the way there. And for people who would like
Speaker 1: to think about addiction as a learning disorder, check out
Speaker 1: our previous conversation with Maya where she has an entire
Speaker 1: book on this, which is a wonderful called Unbroken Brain.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna need to wrap us up because we
Speaker 1: are over time. You and I are going to continue
Speaker 1: in the post show conversation for a little bit, and
Speaker 1: I want to talk about tough love. I'm want to
Speaker 1: turn our attention to the families of people who have
Speaker 1: substance issues and listeners. If you'd like access to this
Speaker 1: post show conversation and lots of other ones, as well
Speaker 1: as ad free episodes and the joy of supporting something
Speaker 1: that matters, do you go to one you feed dot
Speaker 1: net slash joint. Maya, thank you so much for coming
Speaker 1: back on I love talking to the first time and
Speaker 1: I've enjoyed it so much. This time, thank you as well.
Speaker 1: This is really fun. If what you just heard was
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