Chuck Shute Podcast
In depth interviews with musicians, comedians, authors, actors, and more! Guests on the show include David Duchovny, Billy Bob Thornton, Mark Normand, Dee Snider, Ann Wilson, Tony Horton, Don Dokken, Jack Carr and many more.
Chuck Shute Podcast
Dr. Adi Jaffe, Addiction Specialist & Author of "Unhooked: Free Yourself From Addiction Forever"
Dr. Adi Jaffe is an author and addiction specialist. We discuss addiction, highlighting how the pandemic and social media contribute to compulsive behaviors. We explore the concept of finding purpose and the potential benefits of psychedelics in addiction treatment. Dr. Jaffe emphasizes the importance of understanding the root causes of addiction and replacing harmful behaviors with healthier coping strategies.
0:00:00 - Intro
0:00:20 - Wildfires in California: Causes & Impact
0:04:35 - Personal Impact & Community Resilience
0:08:12 - Addiction & the Pandemic
0:09:55 - The Role of Discomfort & Resilience
0:24:49 - Addiction in Everyday Life
0:40:00 - Moderation of Things & Doing the Work
0:43:00 - Addiction, Musicians & Replacement Behaviors
0:49:58 - The Role of Purpose & Connection
0:53:44 - The Impact of Technology on Connection
0:57:33 - The Potential of Psychedelics in Treatment
1:00:46 - Supporting Friends & Family with Addiction
1:04:08 - Outro
Dr. Adi Jaffe website:
https://www.adijaffe.com/
Chuck Shute LInktree:
https://linktr.ee/chuck_shute
Thanks for Listening & Shute for the Moon!
Rock and rolling through the cool guitars. Chucks got the questions, digging so sharp, peeling back layers, hitting the heart.
Chuck Shute:Hey, how's it going good? How you doing good? Thank you for doing this. I appreciate it. Yeah,
Adi Jaffe:yeah, absolutely. Also good, good way to focus on something other than all the crap that's
Chuck Shute:going on. Oh, are you down there? Are you in
Adi Jaffe:southern Yeah, I'm in Los Angeles. I'm in Los Angeles
Chuck Shute:here. Oh, why is your house? I mean, obviously your house is okay,
Adi Jaffe:yeah, yeah, my house is okay, about six miles from the closest fire. But, you know, people have said that, and then all of a sudden, the fires popped up by them. But I don't know if, how well, you know, la
Chuck Shute:not super well. I mean, I've been there many times, and I've been to, like, the Comedy Store and the whiskey, yeah,
Adi Jaffe:so, I mean, that area is suffering right now, but I am by Culver City, so I'm kind of, like, in the middle of the city. And this is not a joke. It would be very sad, but for us to be affected like all of La would have to be burning like it would if it got to us. Then the biggest problem is not my house, it's the fact that LA has disappeared off the map. So, you know, I mean, they've, they've talked about 9000 to 10,000 structures already being burned.
Chuck Shute:Yeah, I It's insane. I didn't understand. How does a wildfire start in the winter? And then, I don't know if this is true, but I saw some video of a guy like being arrested. So was it all just like one guy that started this whole thing? No,
Adi Jaffe:no, no, no, no. Um, what happens in the winter here sometimes? So there's, there's these things called Santa Ana winds that come in from the desert, and they're really, really hot. And so I mean really hot, like in the 8085, degrees, and it's the middle of the winter. And so if it hasn't rained, if you think about it's the driest conditions that have been right? Because summer just ended. We don't get rain in the summer period. It just never rains here in the summer. So it hasn't rained since May or April, so it's been like, just insanely dry. So any brush that is hanging out like it could literally be a cigarette that sometimes lights it up, but it could also just be the winds and the sun, but then once that first spark hits in relatively remote areas, the wind just picks it up. So if there are strong, warm winds, there's nothing to put out the fire. And it's just kind of like, you know, it's like, imagine, imagine your fireplace, right? If you just opened it up to the house, and then the embers flew everywhere all of a sudden, like, the couch lights on fire, like, you know, all this other stuff starts catching
Chuck Shute:so maybe you so is this okay? We're recording this is okay, because this stuff's fascinating to me too. I mean this, if it's okay to be part of the episode,
Adi Jaffe:yeah, yeah, sure. I'll more officially kind of look at Yeah,
Chuck Shute:get to the book too. But this stuff, I mean this, it's hard to just ignore this and not talk about it. But I want to ask you this, like, you might know more about this than I, than I do, because I just see things on, on the news and stuff, and I just see snippets like I don't understand this part. Maybe you can explain because I heard that California stopped doing the prescribed burning, which is this process that really the Native Americans, I think, figured it out, like 1000s of years ago, hundreds of years ago, whatever, like, a long time ago, and they, they burned some of the underbrush or whatever, so that, you know, if the official kindling, yeah, so they're they've kind of, like prevented some of these huge things for, like, the fires from starting. Why did they stop doing is there a strategy behind not doing the prescribed Well,
Adi Jaffe:I mean, look, I'll be honest, actually, one of my one of my clients, made some of these comments yesterday. I'll be really frank, I don't know enough about that they talk. They're talking about budget cuts, and that some of the budget cuts affected how often they did it. So it's not that they stopped doing it. It's more like, were they doing it frequently enough? Look, some heads are gonna roll if anything was actually missed, right? If anything was actually skimped on, or if budget cuts were made so that standard procedures weren't followed. I mean, thankfully, not a ton of lives have been lost. I mean, thank God for that, right? I think they're talking about, it's less than 10 At the last count that I've seen, which is incredible to think about. But you know, we've had multiple friends who had to evacuate one home, lost that house, went to a friend's or family member's house, let's say relatively nearby, like within 20 to 50 miles, and then had to evacuate again because that second home was now. All threatened. So somebody was asking me yesterday at work, I would say, 2530 families that we know personally have literally like house decimated. Sometimes they would leave, knowing the need to evacuate and kind of hoping that everything would be back, and it was just gone. Sometimes it was, you know, you got 30 minutes to go get out before you die. That's
Chuck Shute:so scary. I'm so sorry to hear I mean, yeah. I mean, personally, as much as people like it yourself, yeah, yeah.
Adi Jaffe:I mean, we're fortunate that we're not impacted. I mean, you know, our house is, I think, going to be fine, but this, this community will, it'll take, it'll take years to recover from this. Yeah,
Chuck Shute:I mean, you talk about the mismanagement. I don't know enough about that either. I'm curious, but it's interesting. I saw this clip on Joe Rogan, and he was talking a, it was a, I think he was telling a story about a firefighter. I
Adi Jaffe:saw that same clip. Yeah,
Chuck Shute:that told him that basically, they've gotten lucky, and then if the wind blows a certain way, usually the wind blows and it knocks it out. But if the wind blows the right way, then it could just keep going. And it sounds like that's a majority of of the cause of this one is just they're gotten really unlucky with the wins. Really
Adi Jaffe:unlucky with the wins. Again, if there was any exacerbating factors in terms of those, those brushes not being cleared. And then, you know, one thing that I one point that actually to tie it to the work that I do with a lot of people, is like, there are things we don't control in the world always has been true, always will be true. We have to focus on what we control. So again, for instance, right in this case, like maintaining water pressure and hydrants and maintaining water and reservoirs and making sure that the brush is cleared, are things that humans can control in this what direction the goddamn winds go, as far as I know right now, we don't have control over and you know, this is one instance, but we could point to probably 1000s of instances historically where we learned how our belief that we are the masters of our own destiny, especially when it comes to nature, has been thrown in our face and in the world at large. Talk about weather, talk about animals, talk about whatever you want to said, Yeah, you're a guest just, you know, take care of the house. You know. I mean, like, it's like people, like, idiots who go to the wilderness and, like, pose with a bear and then get mold. Like, it's just dumb shit. Sometimes it's just so this is an instance where in LA Malibu and Topanga fires, which is kind of like, near the beach, near the wilderness, are not that uncommon. I mean, like, I don't know, every four years, every three to four years, you hear about a whole bunch of houses in Malibu burning down, and it's different patches, because what happens is, like you said before, the the brush in that area disappears after that big fire. And so there's many, many more years that people can build and not have fires, but that we're used to this was, I mean, Palisades, Santa Monica. It's like the center of of residential areas that we haven't had, I don't think ever,
Chuck Shute:wow. Yeah, it's great. And it's just, I mean, it reminds me, too, of the the pandemic. You talk about things that you can't control and and, you know, I mean, you can prepare somewhat for those kinds of things, but a lot of it, there wasn't a lot that that we could do at the time, especially, first big one that that I had been a part of. And so I know a lot of Spanish flu, right? Well, yeah, I think that was before my time a little bit, a little bit So, but, I mean, but so to tie that kind of into this, your field of addiction, because I heard that a lot of people that struggled with addiction just fell off during the pandemic, and because, uh, addiction support groups and things like that were canceled, their treatment was canceled. So they're just like, What do I and then there's also a lot of people that were maybe just a regular guy that would have a few beers on the weekend, that were like, I don't have anything to do, so they just started drinking every day.
Adi Jaffe:Noon o'clock sounded good. Um, yeah, by the way, just to be fair, it also went the other way, and I don't have data yet on the prevalence of how many people actually slowed down their drinking and got healthier during COVID.
Chuck Shute:But yeah, you couldn't even go to the gym. The gyms were closed.
Adi Jaffe:I literally had to buy equipment to set up a gym in my home gym, which is still how I work out almost exclusively to this day, because that's what I got used to during COVID. But you know, no matter how you feel about the vaccine, no matter how you feel about the mass and all the mandates and all that kind of stuff, hundreds of 1000s of people died. And you know, people were compromised, people were old, like whatever, again, we can, we can talk about specifics. I don't care about that as much. But. Yeah, it was like this thing that swept through our our communities, and, and almost no matter what decision you made, you were kind of flying by the seat of your pants. You just were doing your best. And, and, yeah, I mean, one of the points I make in my book, and to a lot of my clients, to be honest, even beyond the book, it's, um, we have to get comfortable being uncomfortable this notion that you're going to be able to set yourself up with this life where anxiety, stress and discomfort will not hit you is is a fool's errand, and it'll actually set you up for failure, because not only are you never going to reach it, but what you're going to keep doing is hiding from the opportunities to con confront anxiety and stress, and that builds resiliency number one. So I was actually talking, I was talking to this reporter yesterday in an interview, and I said, Look, I've talked to a bunch of friends, right? I mean, over 30 families that we know that have lost everything, and when we talk to them, their focus is very specific and very concise. We're safe, we're healthy. Oh my god, does it suck that we literally lost everything. Most of these people, maybe they got documents out, but they didn't get any of the memorabilia and any of the stuff that really matters to them, because it was too fast. So, but their main focus is like, Hey, we're safe and we're healthy. We're going to take care of that number one. We'll worry about the rest later. Why? Because they're being smart. They're going, I mean, they're they really were threatened. So they're sitting there going through the basics, what do I control and what can I do right now, it's all of us that are Doom scrolling. They're like, how big is the fire now? Has it hit this street? Has it hit that? Because it's like, we're observers. We're watching it from afar and and in reality, if I may just some people may hate me for saying this, but that's escapism. Yeah, you're looking at other people's pain and misery. And there's probably some stuff you can do right now, instead of doom scrolling about fires that are not impacting you in this moment and like, go do something. And that could be volunteer and help other people who are actually affected. It could be packing up your own stuff. It could be having a tough conversation with your kids about like, whatever it is there is actionable behavior you can perform in your own life. And I think what I try to do with a lot of people that I talk to is it's literally, there's a there's an exercise in the book, and there's an exercise that I teach all my clients. It's called the sphere of influence. I think most of us in Doom scrolling and TV watching, and that is one of these versions. Most of us concern ourselves, or most of our energy goes to the things we don't control. We'll talk about Trump in politics. We'll talk about the weather. We'll talk about geopolitics. We'll talk about, you know, the governor, or we'll talk about, I don't know, our neighbors across the street, and how weird they are. Well, we'll sit around and we'll put so much energy or or just social media and influencers for hours a day. We play no role in any of those things. And then we leave a little bit of time for all the stuff that we control, and then we influence. And I tell my clients, just, let's just flip that. Save a little bit of time for the things outside of you that you don't control and have no influence over. Save a little bit. Save 10 to 15% you know, you want to go read about the Kardashians. Go read about the goddamn Kardashian. Leave, like, leave like, 30 minutes for that a day. Yeah.
Chuck Shute:Ben, do that, though, because it's, it's so hard I find myself distract like, I try to work because a lot of my work is on my for example, like, reading your book, I'm listening to your book on Audible. It's great book, by the way. Um, and I'm listening to your book on Audible, but I've got, I'm on my phone, so now I've got, like, you know, my social media is coming up, my text messages are coming up, but I'm like, do I need to put an airplane mode, like, how do I stay focused? It's hard.
Adi Jaffe:Great point. So first of all, I love, I love getting to specific, tactical things that are relevant. Because you're right, it is hard, but most of the good stuff in life is hard, so just because it's hard doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. So quick tip to everybody that's listening right now, go right now and turn off all your notifications. Period, point blank, your phone is programmed to get you to pay attention to it. No offense, but other than the work, which, by the way, Chuck, do you? Do? You agree with me that even without any notifications, you would go to your phone to do work.
Chuck Shute:Yeah, oh yeah, no, I don't need the notification. I turn my I think most of my notifications are off, like, I but you know what I mean, like, like, in terms of the beep and stuff, but I think it's still, like, I just, I see it. You know what I mean? Like, I know notifications,
Adi Jaffe:no, no, totally. So that's what I mean. So, like, I have, I'll just give you, I'll give you, really, really, so definitely no beeps and no buzzing, right? Like, get rid of that. And me, yeah?
Chuck Shute:No, I did. That is enough. I had a co worker who was like, her phone would go off, like, every time she get a text message, which was like, every minute. You know, now you
Adi Jaffe:can't and you can't focus, even if you're in the room with her, you're like, oh my god, turn your freaking phone off. What's going on? Yeah. But then the next piece is even the visual alerts. So I keep alerts, like, right now I have alerts from this. Fire app, because I do want to know if the fire is getting closer to my house. But other than my wife and my kids, I think, and maybe one of my biggest clients, nobody's text or email alerts come through to me either. I will get to my text and my email. When I get to my text and my email, if I'm not looking at it, it's because there's something else important. So I'm just saying even the notifications to look at number one. So that's and that's just the starting point, because those are external forces that are making you pay attention. The next piece is hard, but I'll, I'll give you a tip that is in my book for compulsive habits. But again, I would argue technology is becoming a compulsive habit, and addiction for many of us, replace, don't eliminate. This is a huge finding in terms of psychology and behavior. A lot of people try to stop themselves from doing things that they want to do. We are very, very bad at stopping ourselves from doing things we don't want to do. I'll tell you a tiny little story. That is how I got to learning this about I'll tell you about 12 years ago. Let's say I used to wake up every morning and I would pick up my phone first thing, right? My alarm was on my phone. I would pick it up and what do you go to right afterwards, your text or your emails or social media like, right away, right? You pick it up and you go to them. What I was finding was I was at the mercy of that first or second message that I would see in terms of how the entire rest of my day would go, if there was a text from somebody in New York or somebody who's been up for it, because I woke up pretty early, like 536 o'clock, so if somebody on the East Coast or somebody in Israel, where I had family, would send me a message during the day, or if some news alert showed up during the evening. Now that's what I'm focusing on. Nine times out of 10, those were not positive, like, Hey, I hope you have a great morning, and that everything is good in your life. I love you. Messages. They were things that people needed for me, or people telling me about something that's wrong, or, you know, something that needed to be fixed. So immediately upon waking up, like, 15 seconds after I opened my eyes, I'm now anxious, worried and stressed out, and I knew it was a problem, but I couldn't stop it. Chuck, I just couldn't stop I couldn't figure out how to stop it. I tried, I would argue. I probably tried for about a year or two to do some to, like, not do that, to turn my alarm off and not look at my phone, and I'm an expert on this, like I just I was blocked, and then one and one day I went, Okay, look, I know I'm supposed to replace it. What can I replace this thing with first thing in the morning? And my wife, I'll actually pull it up for you right now. My wife gave me, had given me this journal. I'm not affiliated with this thing. I make no money off of it, but it was, it was called The Five Minute Journal. She had given it to me for Valentine, kind of honestly, almost as a joke, because I don't really journal. But she was like, hey, this would be good for you. Try it out, thinking I would never use it. I'd gotten it maybe two weeks before this decision, and then one day I said, You know what I think I can do this journal in between turning my alarm off and looking at my email. So maybe I don't not look at my email, but I'll do something else for a little bit in the middle. And that started What about 12 years ago, was me creating an entire morning ritual where I do not look at my phone, or at least don't look at like messages and things of that nature, that ritual now Chuck is 90 minutes long, and it includes Wow. It includes daily gratitude. It includes planning for my day. So I do look at my phone on my laptop for a calendar, but I'm literally planning. What are my meetings? What do I have to do further? And then I work out, and then I go back to my phone. So now I've given myself over an hour of space from it, and I'm telling you, Chuck replacing, putting another habit instead of the habit that you're trying to do over time will move you down in the habit you're replacing and up on the new habit.
Chuck Shute:Yeah, I love that part of the book that you talk about. This a little bit in the book too. Not that specific example is that, was that partly inspired by that? What is that book where the 30 The Miracle Morning, or something like that? Everyone always talks about, no. Have you heard of that book? Though? I have it. No. Okay, well, one thing that I really liked about your book, hopefully this isn't spoiling anything. But towards the end, you talk about, there's some line that you said in there that, and this is kind of goes in cooperation with what you're saying about the discomfort and the like you say, like, if you be when you have these behaviors, because people think of addiction as, like, meth or like, you know, usually really heavy addictions, but it could be something as simple as our phone, and it's usually because we're feeling anxiety or like discomfort, and you say to just stop and just sit with the discomfort. And that remind and it's such a novel idea in some ways, but it reminded me a little bit of that stand up. It, I think was Louis CK that talks about, like, when you're at a stoplight and like, you just there's anxiety. You can't even go through just a sit at a stoplight for 30 seconds and just be in the moment. People pick up their phone at a stoplight, and that totally reminded that it's like, you're right, like, we can't sit with discomfort.
Adi Jaffe:Yeah, yeah. So I'm a big, big believer in training ourselves to be okay with discomfort. There's this analogy, I don't know if you got to it yet, about a thermometer. And so I finished the book.
Chuck Shute:I mean, I was a little rushed. I'm listening to double speed, and I think that it was hard to go through. I need to go back and go look at all the appendixes. But, yeah, the thermometer thing you do talk about that there's this range or whatever. Yeah.
Adi Jaffe:So the idea is just simple. I'll just tell everybody. It's not look my goal is always to help people. So if, if this passage is what helps somebody, and they don't have to buy the book, then all the more power to you. I appreciate if you do buy the book. But like, I'm trying to just help people out. So my idea is this, we all have a level of activation, a level of stress in our life, beyond which we're just dysfunctional. We just can't We can't do anything right. We want to go to sleep. We want to down a six pack. We want to take shots. We want to, like, you know, do a line or something. We want to disappear because it's too much we go into this white noise world. So let's just take a thermometer like zero to 100 as the temperature, right? And 100 we all lose it. And the point that I make in the book is, most of us can't even make it to 100 though, right? The joke is, like 100 is like firefighters walking into a fire. A hundreds like a marine parachuting from a helicopter or from a plane with a with their guns while they're being shot from the ground, and having to, like, organize a mission. We get pissed off when we miss a parking spot in the freaking mall like we can't 100 is far from us. So let's say most of us have an activation level threshold of 70. Anything beyond 70, we just lose our ish. Zero is full zen like Buddha. Nothing is bothering you. You're it's not ecstasy, but it's just like zero stress, right? None of us also experience zero stress. I wake up in the morning, I may be at like a 30 or a 40, almost immediately upon waking up, between that 40 and 70 is what I call your safe zone. Now, if you know that, and if that makes sense to you, if you think about it, that means you only have 30 points of stress all day before you lose it. This is why a lot of people can make it until 5pm or 6pm and then they start drinking, because stress at work, stress with family, stress with husbands, stressed with friends, stress from the news builds up, and at five they're like, Screw it. Give me that drink, or give me that whatever, right? And all the little Doom scrolling and all that stuff in the middle is like other little release, right? It's like you disappear for a little bit. So you don't have to pay attention to the stress. Well, if you understand this example, you only have two things you can do. You can do work to remove your floor, to get less stress, generally, and I'll talk about that. Or you can push your top, your threshold and train yourself to be able to be more uncomfortable. That is what Marines and special forces do. Right? Most of their training is to push their level of discomfort to a point where when a bullet whizzes by their head on the battlefield, they don't lose it and run away, because we need them to stay there and defend we would hunker down, pray and just hope that everything is okay. We, each of us, can train ourselves to be uncomfortable, and I give some examples in the book, but let's say we've all heard about cold plungers, right? Everybody's now, yeah, connected whatever. Yeah, it's a big fad. That is a great example. You don't even have to go that far. I'll give you a really fast example of that one. But what are people doing when they go into a cold punch Chuck? They are training themselves to be super uncomfortable for two three minutes. I mean, it's two three minutes, right? It's not that long, but for two three minutes, you have to stop your natural proclivity to run. And when you get out of that, in your brain, literally, the wiring goes, Oh my gosh. If I can do that, I can deal with a lot of other discomfort. Note to everybody on this listening right now, take a big bucket, fill that with ice, dunk your arm in it. That's a good starting point for the same thing, trust me, within about 30 seconds, maybe one minute, your arm is really, really cold, and you have to sit there and figure out how to deal with being uncomfortable. We can all train ourselves to be comfortable, being uncomfortable
Chuck Shute:or taking cold showers, right? I mean, because then everyone has a cold taking tub or
Adi Jaffe:whatever, taking cold showers is great. I mean, going to an incredibly hard workout is an example, right? But you pointed out something I talk about in the book, even a recommendation I give a lot of my clients again, like right before you reach for that bottle, pause, sit there and go. So what's making me want to drink right now? And I promise you there will be answers. And the reason I think you should pay attention to it is that's essentially an alarm in your brain saying, Hey, we're uncomfortable. So you can ignore it. But that's a little bit like, let's say maybe bad example, given where we are right now. But it's a little bit like, there's a fire engine. There's a fire aging outside. So your fire, your smoke detectors are going off, and you take the battery out, right? Yeah, the alarms there for a reason. You want to pay attention to it. Well, I think
Chuck Shute:that's what's so interesting about your book, is that you don't like I said. You don't just talk about addiction in terms of people think, like, oh, meth and alcoholics and things and, you know, like, I'm doing really good because I don't, I don't take any drugs and I don't drink. But I think there's so many other things that you mentioned the book, like phones, how many of us are not addict? Or phones to some level, porn, gambling? I think the biggest one too, right now. I mean, if you look at the obesity epidemic, is like, is junk food? I think junk food. There are so many people that I think it's the same thing. For for some people, it's grabbing a drink or a beer, but for other people, it's grabbing a donut or a pastry or fast food, or 100%
Adi Jaffe:I completely agree. Look, sugar, purified sugar is one of our first drugs, Chuck, right? We never, I think
Chuck Shute:it's I, my dad was asking me, you know, like, we have a family member that's addicted alcohol, and he was asking me about it, and I was like, I don't know, because I've never, I've never been like, Oh, I really need a drink. I've been more like, I think sugar is way. I think that's way harder to quit. And you think about it, and you might not even know that you're addicted, sure, because you don't realize how it's in everything.
Adi Jaffe:Oh my gosh. I mean, I so I have a 14 to 12 and a six year old, and I had to train them before, like, just look at the can, or look at the thing you're picking up. Some of these things have, you know, 30 grams of sugar per cup. And so I've once poured, like, 30 grams of sugar to show them. I go, this is what you're doing to yourself. And now kids don't understand why that's a problem that as adults, we do. And I think, I think you're totally right. Sugar is one of the biggest ones look at. I mean, if we added obesity and type two diabetes related deaths to to the addiction count, we'd have, I think we'd cross the half a million mark at this point every year, and and so, yeah, you hit it right on the nose. The behavior is not just there because you want to eat a donut or you want to stuff your face with a whole pizza. The behavior is there because you are reacting to emotions, reacting to physical and and psychological feelings that are occurring in your in your body, and you've learned at whatever point earlier on in your life that if you eat a bunch, it feels better, that if you go watch porn, it feels better. You know, something like 30 to 40% of of men hide their porn use. There's there's much people don't talk about this a lot. You know, there's a reason why the porn industry is one of the most profitable industries in the world. It's crazy to think about, like it's nobody really talks about porn, but everybody watches it. And I mean, what, literally, one of the most profitable industries that we have is pornography with the digital, online world.
Chuck Shute:I have a friend who is a Christian. He said a lot of Christian men are addicted to foreign which is really interesting to me because, again, it goes back to that, like, Hey, I'm not, I don't drink and I don't take drugs. I'm doing great. It's like, but they're, they have this porn thing, and then, like, and so that's why I'm just saying, like, what I love about your book is, like, you really apply this to basically everyone. I'm trying to think of anybody who's not overdoing something that is not you know, they're using something to take away that discomfort, basically that you talk about.
Adi Jaffe:So I'm glad you said that, because I do want to define something. I consider something an addiction, if it's a behavior or substance that you consume, and like I said, in a compulsive way, what does that mean? You often consume it more than you want to, or more frequently than you want to, even after you've you've wanted to break or stop, and you've tried to slow down or stop completely before, and it hasn't worked. So all those things have to be true, and importantly, it's negatively affecting your life. So not everything that you do, a lot of qualifies, right? But there could be many, many things. So one example I give in the book, by the way, that has nothing to do with food, nothing to do with drugs, is actually work, addiction and success. And I deal with a lot of executives, a lot of really high performing people, and when they have a fight with their spouse, when they when they don't know what to do with their kids, when life is too much, when the stress and anxiety build up, they run to work. They know how to do that. Well, they can control that part of their life. Well, what happens for them is that that's actually really celebrated outside, right, right?
Chuck Shute:Yeah. I mean, I. I don't wish I had a little bit more of a work addiction. I think I'm too lazy, maybe,
Adi Jaffe:although, you know, oftentimes those people suffer massive consequences in terms of personal life, ruined divorce, ruined marriages, kids that won't talk to them, horrible relationships outside because they become so singularly that becomes their escape, right? Their escape becomes performance. And there's a belief, this false belief. It's kind of like in addiction with alcohol and drugs. People talk about chasing the high. For people who are addicted to work, the belief is, if I just, if I just hit this next mark, yeah, then everything will be okay. And then they hit it, and nothing changes. So they go for the next and the next. I know people who literally make hundreds of millions of dollars and are completely dissatisfied.
Chuck Shute:I've heard that for many people too. I think Tony Robbins talks about that he works with similar kind of people. Do you think the name that jumps out at me right now is Tom Brady? Do you think that? I mean, this guy is the greatest football player of all time. I mean, I don't think there's much of a question, but, I mean, he got his marriage fell apart, and I don't know what his relationship is like with his kids, but I mean, you got to wonder if that, because I thought that was kind of the thing is that he was supposed to retire, and then he goes no one more year, and then it was, like a terrible year. So it's like, why did he even do that? Do you think he was addicted to work?
Adi Jaffe:I just a disclaimer. I've never worked with Tom everything I'm about to say is complete conjecture based on what I've seen of him. But I think that was a great that's a great example of my guess is, what happened is, when he left, there was this massive void. Here's this thing he's done since high school. It wasn't considered an addiction up until that moment, or a compulsion until that moment, because it was his career. Tom Brady's my age like I'm 48 years old. This dude was playing in the NFL three years ago. I mean, it's so crazy. I don't know if people understand, anybody who's not terribly into sports and football, cannot fathom, yeah, what that actually means in terms of the work you have to put in, right? These guys, like, I've worked with football coaches, I've worked with NHL NFL stars, like, the amount of effort they have to put into this is monumental. Most humans would not be able to take two days of what these guys have to do, and they do it, like nine months out of the year. And so I think he left, and it left this massive void. And, yeah, I think he got really uncomfortable, because there was no, you know, somebody like a Tom Brady always needs to have a goal. They always need to have the next thing they're chasing, ironically and maybe sadly. Look, I don't know how good the relationship with Gisele was before all this happened, but it was they were like the poster couple, I mean, for crying out loud, like you either hated them because you literally said to yourself, This is insane. It's like the best looking people on the face of the planet who are more better performing than anybody else. They have more money that look at their kids. So I don't, but that's fake, right? We don't really know what was actually happening in the home. I think, yes, I think his wife said something along the lines of, look, I'm done. I can't be a football wife anymore. You said you were gonna quit. Nobody plays till they're in the late 40s. Like this is insane. I didn't sign up for you, being a football player at 50 years old, you have to quit. He quit, and then you didn't know what to do with it. Ironically, if he would have gotten this fox job right after he quit, he might have not gone back to football. He just didn't have another thing lined up.
Chuck Shute:Yeah, that's so fascinating. Yeah, because you knew that he can't play football forever. I mean, what is he going to do? Like, is he going to start just going into the minor league football is he going to be, like, an arena football player, like, early, you know, was he going to be a coach or, I mean, yeah, and as, I think the same with, I'm curious what happened to, I don't know, Peyton Manning is. I mean, it's another similar football player who, you know, worked really hard and had that work ethic and stuff. But he it seems like he was able to just retire. And maybe he does an occasional commercial. I haven't really seen him around too much, so I don't know what he's doing. Well, you
Adi Jaffe:know, now he's paint Peyton Manning, right. He has that commercial where he's, like, painting instead of being paid. So some people
Chuck Shute:are able to kind of turn it off, I guess, in a way, or tone it down and and maybe, I don't know, maybe Peyton is like, I'm going all in on family. I'm going to be a family addict. Now, I don't know.
Adi Jaffe:Yeah, so, so again, go back, and I appreciate the term, and what I talk about in the book is I argue somewhere around half, or just under half of people are the people who are compulsively coping. The other half are the people that have to deal with us, right? So I have my own addiction. It's only
Chuck Shute:half. I thought it was going to be like 90% I feel like everyone's addicted to something, and some No, everybody
Adi Jaffe:has, everybody has potentially bad habits. But I think when you put. To the level of like this is negatively impacting your life on a regular basis. You try to stop, and you can't stop. Look, I'm just talking about the data that I see. Once we add the behavioral addiction, we are talking about upwards of 100 million, you know. And so, you know, there's three 50 million people in this country. Think to yourself, like 300 million adults, maybe two 70 million. So it's almost half of the adults are probably dealing with this right now and and I think it's time that we stop to the point that you made earlier, Chuck, I think it's time that we stop pretending that it's those homeless alcoholics out in the street that are the ones dealing with this, like the cat's out the bag, right? It's kids in elementary in middle schools in the middle of the country. It's entire swaths of communities that have been ravaged by addiction. You know, Oxycontin is the thing that we focus on now, but it was meth in the 80s, and, I mean, in the 90s, and it was crack in the 80s. Like we can keep pretending that it's only happening to those other people, but it's happening around all of us.
Chuck Shute:Well, yeah, I was a school counselor for 17 years, and I, when I first started, it was like, 2003 right? So I don't think a lot of kids even had cell phones. Then it was very few. But I remember like, I'll never get like, this teacher came to me and like, this kid doesn't do anything. And I was like, What do you mean? He doesn't do any like, he just doesn't do work. He refuses. And I didn't, I didn't know you could do that, like, because I was always like, if I didn't do my homework, I'd get in trouble. Like, I guess some kids don't care, and we just had, like, one kid like this at a school. But as I progressed throughout my career, the number of kids like that that just don't do anything increased significantly. And then it was like the cell phones coming in at just more kids just on their phones in class, and the number of kids not doing any work. I mean, I feel like it was like almost half of the kids at schools. It was. And now, when you look at the mental health numbers in teenagers, I mean, it makes sense, like they're miserable and they're just addicted to their phones or video games or whatever.
Adi Jaffe:Yeah, and I was on this podcast with a friend. His name is Max lugar. And, yeah,
Chuck Shute:big, big guy. That's a big name. He follows you. And, yeah, that's great. Yeah,
Adi Jaffe:he's a great, a good, really good, a good friend. And you use this term, I always might want to make sure that I give attribution to the people who gave me things, I don't make them up myself always. And you talked about earned versus unearned dopamine. And the problem with a phone is it gives you all these little mini dopamine hits. You don't have to do anything for like. It'll just ping you and buzz you and tell you, Hey, look at this thing. And look at this. And, oh, did you know about this? And oh, your friends scored this on your this stupid Tetris game. Do you want to go like play now and everyday life is about effort. I mean, you know, you joke about being lazy, but Chuck, I don't know how many episodes. Sorry, I should have researched this. I don't know how many episodes into this show you are close to 500 Yeah, it's right, it's, it's hundreds. So I've had a podcast with, you know, 300 400 episodes. That's work. Recording it is work, planning for it is work, getting it out is work. So my guess this is, I've known you now for 38 minutes in my life. But my guess is that, like most of us, it's the things you put a lot of work into, the field the most rewarding. And what we're doing to ourselves right now in society is we're robbing ourselves of the Great, the the contentment, the satisfaction that comes from earned dopamine, from the work that we actually have to work for and and it laws our brains and our in our psychology into thinking. I'm feeling pretty good. So it's fine, because we don't actually know what really good feels like. And you know, life is a life is a journey. I believe we get one of it. And it's not just that we don't get our time back. It's that, as you pointed out with these kids in the schools. If you don't learn that, it's effort that gets you joy and satisfaction, you're kind of okay being in this weird middle ground plateau. And I hate to say it, but we're gradually moving to this like, wall E, like, yeah, the movie. Wall E, yeah,
Chuck Shute:you're so right. That movie is kind of like a horror movie in a way, and it's kind of scary for
Adi Jaffe:people. Oh, like you wake up. I mean, think about our life right now, right? You can wake up. Get on your phone, watch a bunch of stuff when you're hungry, go to your Instacart or Uber Eats account. Make sure some food shows up. Eat it, pick a nap, watch a movie. You're still on your phone. You literally haven't left your phone yet. If you're, like, one of my guys watching football right now, yeah, and then, like, you know, if you want to go to porn, if not, go to shopping. By the way, we didn't talk about shopping. I've talked on some shows, and people mentioned to me that shopping is one of the things that they run. Two for coping. Now, again, if you're shopping a little bit, and it's not too much money, not an addiction, but some people shop to the point where it hurts their bank account right and now they have to either return things or they're behind another payment. So, long story short, you can live on this thing in your bed all day. Never have to do work. You may be able to survive that way, but I'm going to argue you're not going to be able to thrive, and you're not going to be able to feel happy and content that way, and then all the mental health issues come in. So
Chuck Shute:I think, is there ways to enjoy some of these things? Because I know some people like I have a buddy. I mean, he works really hard, but he does play. I think he plays a what is that like? Call of Duty, but he only limits it to, like, 30 minutes or an hour a day. And I know you talk about in your book how I think, wasn't it you that you're running these groups, and then you started drinking bourbon or something every night? I was
Adi Jaffe:when I when I ran my first treatment center. Yeah, yeah. So,
Chuck Shute:I mean, is there a way to enjoy some of these things, even maybe shopping, and maybe even porn and, and, you know, having a drink, or some people even, it's like weed. Can you enjoy these things in moderation? Or is that is that? I think
Adi Jaffe:the answer is yes. I think the issue is you have to deal with all those underlying activations and and discomfort, so you have to do the hard work of lifting those up. But once you do that work, or as you do that work, I think the answer is a resounding yes. I'm not sober, but, you know, I drink like three times a month, maybe four times a month, and I'm not great with cannabis, so I don't do that a lot, but I think here's, here's the the short answer to a longer answer that's in the book. You can't do that while relying on one of these behaviors, but you can have like, seven or four or 12, right? So every once in a while, yeah, you run to the video game, and then you are, you maybe eat a donut a week, and you know, you Yeah, if you watch porn, it just, it's the consistency and running to the same behavior over and over and over. What it does is it literally wires. Are just saying in neuroscience, neurons of fire to get a wire together. And so if you rely on only one thing, it becomes a really, really strong habit that's hard to break. So what's important is to just have a balanced set of coping strategies. We all need coping Chuck. It's not like I'm not saying this is not in the book, I hope doesn't come across as being a puritanical book that says you shouldn't you shouldn't indulge, you shouldn't have fun with behaviors that make you feel good. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is, if you developed a habit that makes them compulsive, where you're unable to control them, it's time to pay attention.
Chuck Shute:Yeah. Well, that's and that's, it's so interesting because on my podcast, I don't know if you've checked it out at all, but I've interviewed a lot of musicians, rock stars, basically, a lot of from the early 70s, 80s and 90s eras. And it just seems like there's this pattern where they get into the band, and then they just start doing drugs and drinking and stuff, and they just go crazy. And then it's like they just have to do a complete 180 and they have to go basically cold turkey, and they have to go 100% sober, I mean, and so is there some people that maybe just shouldn't ever they can. It's either it's like a switch. They can either go on or off. They can't put it. It's not a dimmer for them. They can't put it in the middle.
Adi Jaffe:Yeah. So look, there are a couple of things that you just pointed out. Number one, it's really, really hard to separate when your job so I've worked with musicians, your job is to be on the road. Your job is to keep ridiculous hours. Your job is to always like, I mean, man, I never thought I would say this name in an interview, but right there's like, what's what's the new it's like a Taylor Swift talk about, essentially, like, how you have to pretend, as a musician, you have to pretend that you're happy even when you're having the worst day of your life ever. Right? A musician could be riddled with anxiety, suffering greatly, and it's show time, and you got to turn on the smile and do the moves and put the act on right, and then get on the bus or get on the plane and get to the next game. So they need to cope. And so it's this heavily stressful life that is full of indulgence, full of of stressors and irregular schedules. And you just have to figure it out. I remember Drake got like, uh, he caught some flack for a line in one of his songs. It says, uh, you know that he took Xanax on a plane and slept through the flight. And I'm like, Y'all have no idea what it's like to finish a show at 1am and then know that you have a show the next day in another city. So by 230 you're on a plane, and then you land at like, four. Five have to go to a hotel, sleep, wake up, do rehearsal and sound check, go again, like the guy needed some sleep. Chill the hell out, right? But my point is, it is, when I've worked with musicians, the drugs are almost a part of the package. For a lot of them, just to function at the level, they have to function and and and then there's all these, you know, the women and all the partying and all that other stuff that goes along with it. So it's actually really, really hard to break apart the drugs from the stress from the job for somebody like that. And I've worked with a lot of musicians where their fear is, if I stop the drugs, I can't do the job. There's a big fear on that for a lot of musicians.
Chuck Shute:So what did they typically, because you talk about we, I mean, we talked about a little bit too, is that those replacement behaviors, that is a big part of it's you can't just be like, okay, stop drugs now, just live life. It's like you got to replace that with something. So do they replace that with work? Or, I know a lot of them, like, what's the guy from Def Leppard? I mean, he's like, ripped. He's like, he's older, he's like, 50s, and he's like, he's got, like, a six pack. Like, do they replace it with fitness? A lot of the times,
Adi Jaffe:fitness, meditation and spirituality are really, really big, right? Things like yoga and kind of like this. I mean, I mean, look at what the Beatles did in the 60 Right? Like, there's a reason for that. It's, it's this truth seeking, etc, so fitness that I think a lot of people get into advocacy and and causes, so that they fill their time with that. But, you know, I talked about was just part of a debate about AA in the 12 steps. I think 12 steps are a replacement habit for a lot of people, yeah, like they go to meetings instead of drinks. And actually, that's, that's technically in the big book. And I'm not a 12 step proponent, although a lot of people think I'm against AA. I'm not against AA, I just don't follow it. And I don't think it's the only solution. Have you ever been to an AA meeting, by the way? Oh, I was in a for three years.
Chuck Shute:Oh, okay, I know you were in treatment. I didn't know it was aa, because, yeah, I'm all
Adi Jaffe:treatment, all treatment. Back then was aa, there was nothing but a Yeah, because I went to,
Chuck Shute:I went to a meeting one time, and it was just the most dark, depressing, like, I was, like, I don't know, like, this helps anybody? It's,
Adi Jaffe:yeah, I mean, so, I mean, you hit a lot of, there's a lot of there's a lot of people that you go to an AA meeting, and everybody's talking about the crazy days out there and and how bad things got for them. In my work, you know, I'm wearing a hat for my company called ignited. We actually now help people who are getting out of jails and prisons and need help with addiction, and we have the exact opposite approach. I want to focus on the solution and how you move forward. I don't want to sit around and talk about everything that's gone wrong in your life that's just going to get you more depressed and more anxious, so I'm fully with you on there. But if you think about it, one of the replacement behaviors in 12 step is, instead of having a drink, go to a meeting, right? That's that's the solution. So it's literally a replacement, yeah?
Chuck Shute:Well, and I find it interesting too, they always have cigarettes, coffee and pastries and donuts. That's always a huge isn't that a huge part? Yeah,
Adi Jaffe:yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah. I mean, and again, look, to be fair, you're probably not going to get a DUI drinking too much coffee, but,
Chuck Shute:but you, like, you say in the book, you're not getting to that root of the problem.
Adi Jaffe:You're not getting to the root and to, you know, look, so I know a lot of people. I have really, really good friends who recovered through the 12 steps again. I have nothing against it. I think it needs to be modernized. I think it's dated. It's 100 years old, almost right, like it's time to maybe spruce it up a little bit, but, but I'm glad, I'm glad it exists. I think it's, it works for a very small percentage of the people who try it, my point is a small percentage. Oh, it's a tiny percentage. If you look at long term recovery, it's under 10% or somewhere between five and 10% of all the people who go into aa that can get a year or a couple of years in a sober Yeah, absolutely. And that's even the people who really support AA. Will tell you a very small percentage of people do it. Really successful for those people, by the way. So that's great. We just need more options that support other 90% of people. But one of the things that can happen in in those replacements oftentimes, is it becomes overprotective, right? So you mentioned it doesn't necessarily treat the underlying causes. Sure, if you surround yourself with people who don't drink, and you marry people and date people and only have friends who don't drink, and you go to meetings every time you potentially want to drink, and you're in meetings all the time, and you speak in meetings your whole life is around abstinence. Your identity is around abstinence. There's a much better chance that you won't drink. 100% most people are not willing to commit to that level number one and number two, it doesn't solve the underlying issues. So I mentioned this before. I have a lot of friends who are sober in a and 12 step programs, but they also do therapy, they also do meditation, they also went into trauma related work, right? They've done other things other than AA to actually solve those underlying problems, because a didn't solve the problem. Them, but it kind of put a plug in the in the issue, in the behavior, and gave them some space, which is good. That's that's useful,
Chuck Shute:yeah, and I think a really important part of your book, I think I've talked about on this podcast many times, and I have the same kind of theory as you talk about purpose. Like people finding a purpose. You don't have to, you know, you could think that you have a purpose. You can adjust it and change it, but you got to start with why, what resonates with you. And then you talk about finding something that you're good at, what you love to do, and what can help the world. And I feel like that is something that's really lost, especially going back to my work with kids and just the statistics on mental health and kids right now, I think young people especially, are very lost at that. But also, I would say there's people that are in their 40s, 50s or older, that have never found a purpose. And yeah, they've had jobs and they've, you know, paid the bills and stuff, but they don't really feel like they're serving the world, and that's why they're they're so unhappy and so stressed and using these other coping mechanisms. Yeah, I
Adi Jaffe:don't, I don't think that's wrong at all. I'm a big, big proponent of purpose. I feel like, again, you don't have to have it, but I think to achieve the higher levels of joy and contentment and satisfaction with your life you sort of do so you can get by without it, but if you really want to feel great about what you do every day. Now, the thing that I point out in the book, so I give an exercise called ikigai, and it's a Japanese concept on on how to find your purpose. And so if you don't know what your purpose is, that's fine, but just make it your purpose. To find your purpose. Say, Hey, I'm going to look around until I land on something that feels authentic. You already pointed this out. Chuck, change it in two years if it doesn't feel right again. But there are things you're good at, things you like doing, and things that serve the world at large. You start doing more of that in your life and and there, it's not a huge subset. It's not like there's 50 of those things in all of our lives. There's a handful of them, and they're different for all of us, right? You're a counselor. I love, obviously, helping people and talking. I love teaching. That's something I really, really like doing. So that's, that's what my life has become, right? I'm sort of teaching and helping people, and you don't have to make it your job. And ikigai kind of like, the fourth factor is, will you get money for it? And that's great. If you can find something that fits all four beautiful. You can make your money and have your purpose at the same time, but you have to have the purpose so you can have a job and then go volunteer after and importantly, I point out this to everybody. Your purpose doesn't have to change the world. It doesn't like we think of purpose like ending world hunger, or, you know, turning climate change around, or changing the the election system in the country, or, you know, freeing sex workers. All those things, by the way, are incredibly powerful purposes, if that is yours, but it could be being involved in your neighborhood and keeping it as safe, clean and and connected as possible, right? Just something bigger than yourself. We get very egocentric, which makes sense. I talk about this in the book. When I wake up in the world and I open my eyes, the world revolves around me, right? If I turn this way, I see that wall. I don't see you anymore. It's like my world seems to revolve around me. But I'm smart enough, and I've been around I'm wise enough, maybe I should say, after almost 50 years on this planet to know Chuck your world doesn't revolve around me. My wife's world doesn't revolve around me. Maybe my kids does more now than it will in like, 510, years, but their world doesn't. So finding something greater than yourself connects you to other people in a way that being self obsessed all the time just doesn't. Yeah,
Chuck Shute:do you think that is a big issue in America today, too, that we are not I mean, we're so connected in some ways, like you and I can do this podcast in different cities via technology, but also the technology makes us less connected, and we spend so much time with the technology and phones that we're not seeing each other in real life like I have So many friends that I I'll text daily, but, I mean, I only see them a few times a year. In real life, it's hard to get people to come out and, like, do something, like go to a sporting event or a concert, or like, even out to dinner.
Adi Jaffe:Yeah, look, it's a double edged technology is a double edged sword, but we're going to keep moving forward in this way. So I do hope technology continues finding or companies continue finding ways to help us feel more connected remotely. There's no doubt we've gone we've gained some freedom because of it. We've also lost some connectivity. Seeing people in person is always more connected than connecting to them digitally, at least for now, I'll tell you know, again I mentioned my company ignited helps people with addiction issues that have struggled with the criminal justice system, we help people in the middle of really rural areas where they can't get help. So technology helps us when we're isolated, bring people closer. But I do agree, if you have the potential and the ability to do it, connecting in person is much, much fuller. It's a much fuller experience. I do think many of us need to be aware of I'll call it the privilege, or just the magic. I actually just wrote an article about this for Psychology Today recently, like, it's insane that we get to do this right now. Chuck, I mean, if you just think about it for a second, right? I'm not an IT person. I understand enough about technology and satellites and in Wi Fi, etc, to know that it is crazy that you and I get to do this right now. You're sitting in Philly. Am I right? I'm in Phoenix or Scott Phoenix? Sorry, got it. Got it. So you're in Scotts, at least you're only one state over and on the other side of the country, but you know, you're sitting a state over, you're in a room in your house. I'm in a room in my house. We have digital mobile devices that are connecting. I've got a camera and a microphone. Like, each one of the things that makes our our system, our technological system, function, you can't, you can't go tomorrow and create that microphone on your own, like each one of these pieces is magical on its own. And then I'm a behavioral neuroscientist that psychology, that was my my area of focus, and then just the fact that our brains are healthy and functional enough to be able to talk and think at the same time, to remember the points and connect that different points that we make. I think part of that thing, of identifying a greater purpose and a connecting to something bigger. It can be spiritual or not, I don't really care, is locking into and recognizing the pure magic that is every day in life, almost every moment in life, and I think that gives us, I have a gratitude practice that I do every morning. I recommend that in the book, I'm sure you read, that there's always stuff to fix in our lives and in the world, but also so much of it is great, so much of it is amazing. And if we don't connect to that enough, I think we can live a great life but be miserable in it. Yeah,
Chuck Shute:I know that is great. Is it okay to keep going? Or do you need to? You have another one at 10 or 9am for you? I guess.
Adi Jaffe:Let me actually look at my calendar. I do have a meeting. I could be a couple minutes late to it, but
Chuck Shute:we'll wrap this up. And yeah, there's other things that, you know, I want to talk
Adi Jaffe:about, but I'm almost always down to come back. This was great. Yeah, you'll
Chuck Shute:have to come back. I'm really like, when I first saw, I think before I even read the book, I just saw who you were, like, you're followed by Joe Rogan and Nikki six. And that Max guy on Instagram was like, wow, this guy must know his stuff. And then, and then I read the book, and I was like, Oh my god. I love this book. I love how you took a different approach. And like, you know, we talked about getting to the root of the problem. I think that's really important. One thing I did want to ask you real quick before you go is you talk briefly about the use of psychedelics in the book. And I had a guy on here. Now I'm spaced on his name, but I mean, that's is a whole thing, is he does psychedelics to treat addiction and stuff. Do you think that is going to be a big thing in the future? Do you think they're going to legalize that, and do you think that is something that could be beneficial for people who are kind of exhausted? All the other possibilities?
Adi Jaffe:Yeah, I can. I can say definitely yes. The way you ask the question, I can say yes, absolutely. I don't believe in magic pills, so it's not going to be the thing that fixes it. But the way I write in the book, and I think the shortest way to get to the answer to your question is this, most of us change very incrementally, small changes over long periods of time. And then you look back a year, two years, five years later, you're like, Oh my God, I've changed so much, right? And that can be exercise, it can be daily habits, it can be meditation, it can be a skill, like learning a new sport or something. All those things. Rarely do we see a big, massive shift in behavior quickly. And what I say in the book is I've only seen two things create that first is a back against the wall. Do or die, come to Jesus moment, right? Mine came with my arrest. You read about some of the other ones from my clients in the book. I won't spoil all of them. Your wife says to you, hey, I'm leaving. I can't live like this anymore. A DUI, right? Somebody beats the crap out of you because you did something stupid, like, oh, come to Jesus, back against the wall. If I don't change this, my life is going to get ruined. Moment that can change you doesn't have to, but it can. The problem is, we can't manufacture those. They happen. So they happen sporadically, and they unfortunately, are not wonderful experiences to live through, right? I mean, they're normally very, very painful. The right psychedelic experience with the right guidance and the right integration are the only other thing that I've seen create that. And by the way, if you look at the research, like, let's say psilocybin, for instance, if you look at the research, it seems to be tied to spiritual God connection, like moments. So there's some. Thing, and still, it essentially is still a come to Jesus moment. It's just we can control it and manufacture it. Ketamine is already legal. Psilocybin will probably become legal, at least for veterans and people who suffer with severe trauma as quickly. MDMA almost became rescheduled recently, but because of I'll just say it, I was really, really, really pissed when some of this stuff came out because of some practitioners that took advantage of the situation, which is just terrible with psychedelics, to even think about doing that, and just acted really, really inappropriately, that can got kicked down the road probably a number of years, which is really sad, but the research is out Chuck. It's not a question of whether, yes again, not a magic pill. It's not like, once these things are legal or more people can use them, 100% of people will recover, but a portion of people will absolutely benefit from these things and already have,
Chuck Shute:yeah. Okay, last question, I'll let you go just real quick though. I mean, if I have friends or relatives that are really struggling with addiction. Like, I mean, there's no question. I mean, like, I have one of my friends, I feel like they may die soon be if they can't stop their alcohol addiction, what can I do as just a friend? I mean, you can't make you can lead a horse to water. You can't make them drink whatever. You know, all these sayings and cliches. But is there some one thing that I could say or do that would encourage them to start down this path, besides giving them your book, I guess I don't know. Yeah.
Adi Jaffe:I mean, look, reading books, podcasts are a great, simple, easy way to start. Look like you said, we can't control anybody. And so I'll go back to that thing of do what you can. First of all, maybe you read the book, because then you understand your friend's problem is not alcohol. There's something going on in his head, something going on his life, past traumas, past experiences that make life so unbearable that drinking himself to death is a better solution. Now, in the book, there's that there's a graph. I don't know if you're able to see it because you did the audible, but what I say is, everybody's behavior, if you just look at it right now, can make no sense and seem crazy. But if you follow their whole story from when childhood and when do they first start drinking in this way, when do they first identify alcohol is actually a cure for them, a fix for their problems? You sit there and you listen to their whole story and their drinking will make 100% sense. So if you there is something you can do, it's to go to your friends, say, hey, you know what? I just read this book, and maybe totally rethink this. Like, drinking thing. You must be really suffering, man, this, this must be really, really hard for you. And I'm sorry, and I want to, I want to listen like, if I'm down, if you want to sit, I want to talk like, when did this start? What happened? What what dots got connected? Number one, that reduces their shame and allows them to feel a little bit more open. He might not be ready. He might say, Screw you. I don't want to talk about it. Oh no, no. Everything is fine. Don't worry about it, right? He might. And then you just say, I get it. I'm here if, if you ever want to. And then you can follow up periodically if you want to, or just be there when he's ready. I will give another piece of advice, though, for family members, because you're you're affected by because you're a friend, but there could be family members, people really close to them, that are affected much, much more deeply. Right? Kind of life functioning, you know, existential, sort of impact. I recommend, unless, if the person is literally unsafe, like the behavior they engage in could kill them tomorrow, then scratch what I'm saying. They need to go somewhere residential, somewhere inpatient, where they can be medically managed to be safe again, and then we can have the conversation I'm about to have start at the lowest level of intervention that may help them, that may just be a book or maybe a therapist or something along those lines. If that doesn't work, you slowly bring up the dose of the the impact that you have. So a lot of people want to start with residential treatment, but it's really expensive. It's really hard to commit to. Most people won't agree to go to 3060, or 90 days of treatment. So start at a lower intensity, but don't let your foot off the gas. Right? I'll go back to something we talked about. Maybe there's a good way to wrap up. It is really uncomfortable to go talk to somebody about behavior that they engage in that makes their life and everybody else's life miserable. That's uncomfortable, so most of us avoid it, but in the spirit of what we talked about earlier, some discomfort has to be tolerated to move up in the world, to grow, to engage and to develop. If you really care about somebody, don't shy away from the uncomfortable conversations. Go have them. Now. I
Chuck Shute:love it. That's great. And I love too that you talk like again, what we talked about, how just the shame that I wanted to bring that up again, because I think that there's not a lot of shame to be had, because we are all dealing with something. We're all even if we're not addicted, we all have anxiety and discomfort. So there's nothing wrong with that, and I think we're all in this world to help each other, so I love it. Thank you so much for doing this podcast and writing this great. Look, thank you for having me and yeah, come back anytime.
Adi Jaffe:I appreciate it, Chuck, thank you so much. Have a great rest of your day. Yeah, you
Chuck Shute:too. Bye, bye, bye, one of a
THEME SONG:kind, from the rockers to the wise men, you
