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Dr Rangan ChatterjeeDr Rangan Chatterjee

Gabor Maté & Jay Shetty REVEAL The 4 Steps To FIX YOUR LIFE! | Rangan Chatterjee

Dr Gabor Maté, one of the world’s most revered thinkers on the psychology of addiction, and former monk Jay Shetty give their insights into ways you can improve your life.

Dr. Gabor MatéguestJay ShettyguestDr. Rangan ChatterjeehostDr. Gabor Matécameo
Jul 9, 20212h 0mWatch on YouTube

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Transcript

  1. 0:00 – 2:24

    Addiction as emotional regulation: why the pain matters more than the behavior

    1. GM

      It's the fundamental life that's being lived that needs to change, not, not the external behaviors.

    2. JS

      That doesn't create happiness. It creates more uncertain ground.

    3. GM

      Because we learned how to ignore our feelings as children, now we learn to ignore them for the rest of our lives, and that then creates problems for us.

    4. RC

      In the introduction, you say all drugs and all behaviors of addiction, substance dependent or not, whether gambling, sex, the internet or cocaine, all of them either soothe pain directly or distracts from it. Hence your mantra, "The first question is not why the addiction, but why the pain?" Uh, and I think that beautifully sums it up.

    5. GM

      Mm.

    6. RC

      Um, you know, in, in, in that you, you're liking, you're likening addiction to drugs, potentially to, you know, sex, gambling, alcohol, maybe shopping. Um-

    7. GM

      Well, so I've had my own shopping addiction, and I can tell you that the, what happens in my brain when I'm indulging in my shopping addiction is exactly the same that happens in the brain of the cocaine addict.

    8. RC

      Yeah.

    9. GM

      In other words, there's an excitation of the reward incentive and motivation circuitry, and what the addict is after is that temporary change in brain status. Really what it is, all addictions are an attempt to regulate an unbearable emotional state internally. But you're trying to regulate your internal state through external means, and that's what an addiction is. So temporarily you get a change in the state of your brain and a change of your physiology. You can do that through drugs. You can also do it through gambling or internet or sex or shopping. But essentially you're after that same revitalization of your i- incentive and motivation circuitry of your brain. And so from my perspective, there's only one universal addiction process that dominates all addicted people. The targets of addiction may be different. The internal effects are much the same.

    10. RC

      Yeah.

    11. GM

      And, and I'm sorry, I should add, when you look at the c- the, the, the sources of it, the states that people are trying to escape are states of emotional distress, states of emotional pain, and hence why the addiction. Not why the addiction, but why the pain.

  2. 2:24 – 4:28

    A broad definition of addiction—and why most people fit it

    1. RC

      So some people who are listening to this or, or watching this right now-

    2. GM

      Mm

    3. RC

      ... might be thinking, "Yeah, I get that. That, that all sounds fine, um, for those people who are addicted, but I of course am not addicted to anything." So you've g- you've got a rather beautiful definition, I think, of addiction, which I think will be really helpful to sort of-

    4. GM

      Mm

    5. RC

      ... go through at the start here so that people listening can actually figure out if it does relate to them or not.

    6. GM

      Well, when I speak to a room of people and I ask them how many are addicted, most people will only think of drugs, so some people put their hand up. Then I give them my broader definition of addiction, and now everybody puts their hand up. And that definition is that an addiction is manifested in any behavior that a person finds temporary pleasure or relief in and therefore craves, but suffers negative consequences in the long term and isn't gonna be able to give it up. So any behavior, not just drugs. The key hallmarks are craving pleasure or relief in the short term, negative outcomes in the long term, inability to d- to give it up. That's what an addiction is. And that could be to drugs, uh, nicotine, caffeine, alcohol, the legal, the lethal and legal substances, or it could be to heroin, cocaine, crystal meth, fentanyl, cannabis, any number of other substances. But it could also be to sex, to gambling, to shopping, to eating, to work, to exercise, to the internet, to gaming, to pornography, to political power, to the acquisition of wealth, to the hoarding of objects, anything. And by, and when you give that definition and you ask people how many here would acknowledge some addiction in their life sometimes, the vast majority of people would put their hands up, which means to say that addictions are on a continuum, it's on a spectrum, and they're distributed, dispersed throughout all of our society, and so that the identified drug addicts make up only a small, narrow segment of our addicted population.

  3. 4:28 – 7:47

    Trauma and unmet needs as the roots of addiction

    1. RC

      So really the whole way we, we think about addiction, the way we criminalize various forms of addiction really needs to change to a much more, a more compassionate way of dealing with it, but also really trying to understand what's the root cause. 'Cause if, you know, I s- totally subscribe to your theories and I, and I, and I think that ultimately if the root cause of all addiction or all addictive behavior is the same, then how do we tackle that? And where does that come from? What is that root cause?

    2. GM

      So once you're asking not why the addiction but why the pain, now you have to forget that it's a choice 'cause nobody chooses to be in pain, and you also have to forget the medical idea that it's an inherited brain disease. You actually have to look at people's lives. Now, in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside in Canada, where I worked for 12 years with a highly addicted population, these people had, uh, multiple addictions: cocaine, alcohol, cannabis, uh, opiates of all kinds, cigarettes in every case. They suffered with HIV, with hepatitis C. They would die of overdoses, suicide, um, infections of all kinds. And these people, every single one of them had been heavily traumatized in childhood. All the women I worked with over 12 years had been sexually abused. All the men had been neglected or beaten or emotionally abused. I'm talking about now the severely addicted population, which is also what the large scale study shows that the, the greater the childhood adversity, the greater risk for addiction in adulthood. Now- The more severe the childhood adversity, the greater the risk of substance addiction and injection use. However, if you look at my own case, um, I wasn't beaten, I wasn't abused in my family of origin, um, I wasn't neglected, but I was a Jewish infant born during the war in Hungary, um, and spent my first year under the Nazi re- Nazi regime. You can imagine under what circumstances. So I had a very unhappy, stressed, terrorized mother. And children can be hurt in two ways. Children can get, children can be hurt when bad things happen to them that shouldn't happen. That's the abuse, that's the violence in the family, that's the parental addiction. But children can also be hurt when their needs are not met. Now, I had this need for an attuned, empathetic, emotionally responsive mother. She couldn't be that. Not because she didn't love me, not because she didn't do her best, but simply she was too terrorized, she was too depressed. The lack of that joyful, attuned, loving mother who... I, I shouldn't say loving because she loved me tremendously, but her love couldn't be translated into responsive behavior. That alone was enough to hurt me. So in other words, the source of addiction is always some kind of a childhood hurt, either because bad things happened that shouldn't have, or because the good things that should have happened couldn't happen because of the parents' emotional states. Both of these are enough to hurt the child, uh, in a way to driving them to self-soothe through addictions.

  4. 7:47 – 11:31

    From external success to inner distress: how personal history shaped Maté’s work

    1. RC

      So, so do you think your own experience of trauma really-

    2. GM

      Yeah

    3. RC

      ... a- a- as a, as a young baby-

    4. GM

      Yeah

    5. RC

      ... not even a child, as a young baby-

    6. GM

      Yeah

    7. RC

      ... has impacted your own health, your own behaviors, and therefore ultimately where you are today, which is one of the world's leading voices on trauma and addiction? Do you think that has been instrumental in you getting to where you are today?

    8. GM

      Having to deal with the impacts of that has been instrumental. I mean, I really, uh, as an adult, uh, I was a successful physician, you know, I was much in demand, a family practitioner. I was head of a palliative care department at a major hospital. I was a national medical columnist to a Canadian newspaper in my 50s, and internally I was driven, workaholic, depressed, uh, affected by ADHD, um, anxious and unfulfilled and unsatisfied. And it's when looking at those dynamics and wondering, "Well, what the heck has happened to me here, and what is the gap between my external persona and my internal experience of myself?" That's when I began to deal with trauma. Not to mention, as a family physician, and you and I were talking about this before, we get to see patients before they get sick. The specialists only see them after the illness has been diagnosed. I get to see people before they get ill. I get to see people in the context of their multi-generational family background. So we have a much broader view of who gets sick and why. And so both through my medical work and having to deal with my own stuff, I began to realize the central role of trauma in shaping people health or illness.

    9. RC

      Yeah, since I've, since I've been studying trauma myself, um, both with the work that you do, but just other things that I'm reading around it, it really helps me understand my patients.

    10. GM

      Mm-hmm.

    11. RC

      And their behavior is much better. I really start to... You can start to tap in now as to what they're coming in with more. You think, "Oh, that's what's going on behind that." Not the symptom they're describing, but, but why are they making those choices? And something you may not know, Gabor, I, I, a few years ago I did, um, a series of documentaries on BBC One called Doctor in the House, and what I would do on that is I went to live alongside families who had health problems.

    12. GM

      Mm.

    13. RC

      They were already under GPs, they were already under specialists, they were all taking medication pretty much already, and they still weren't getting better, and they were still struggling. So I went in to... Sometimes I'd stay the night in their houses. I'd live-

    14. GM

      Mm

    15. RC

      ... alongside them, really get to understand, you know, what choices they were making with their lifestyle, sure, but also I'd get to see, you know, various dynamics in the family, the sort of thing that would never come up in the consultation room. Even if you asked that question, they would never even think to bring those things up, but you would just start to spot things and, and little dynamics. And I found that with every single family pretty much now, if I f- if I reflect back on all those families I stayed alongside, I was very fortunate to get really good health outcomes with them all after about six weeks.

    16. GM

      Mm.

    17. RC

      But there was a huge emotional component behind a lot of the illness.

    18. GM

      Yeah.

    19. RC

      Um, now just to be clear, I'm not saying that it was in their head at all. They had proper physical symptoms that were, that they were struggling with, and obviously that in some ways can make people feel down a little bit about themselves because they're not feeling so good. But I really got the strong sense that when you start to look at their lives and their upbringing and how they saw themselves, it, it was just, it was uncanny how many times their emotional health was absolutely tied into their physical health.

  5. 11:31 – 13:19

    Hidden stress and chronic illness: mind-body unity and early emotional patterns

    1. GM

      Well, so one of the books I've written, which will be published and written in a few months, is entitled When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress. And I'm making the case precisely as I heard you articulate just now, is that when it comes to chronic illness, and whether it's colitis or Crohn's disease, multiple sclerosis, ALS, or motor neuron disease in, in England, uh, malignancy, um, chronic psoriasis, eczema, chronic fatigue syndrome- The physiological symptoms which are not in people's heads in the sense that they're imagining them, but it very much originates in people's heads in that it has a lot to do with certain relational and emotional patterns that they adopted in childhood. In other words, what I'm saying is that because of childhood programming, people impose certain unconscious stresses on themselves, and those stresses, because of the unity of mind and body, which unfortunately is not taught or recognized in the medical schools, but which scientifically is not even vaguely controversial because the immune system and the emotional apparatus and the hormonal apparatus and the nervous system are part and parcel of the same system. So when something occurs emotionally, which it does on a chronic basis, that has an impact of undermining people's physiology, turning their immune system against themselves or suppressing the immune system. So I absolutely agree that people's emotional patterns, which reflect not individual choices or mistakes, but multi-generational patterns in the family, those emotional patterns translate into physical illness. And, and, and, and, and if we can address those emotional dynamics, we can actually have an impact on the physiological course of their illness, which is again, not something that anybody in medical school will ever tell you because there's this unfortunate separation of mind and body that you and I are trained in.

  6. 13:19 – 17:08

    No blame, but responsibility: awareness as the gateway to change

    1. RC

      Yeah, absolutely. And I think the key, one of the key things there for me was that you're, you're not putting blame on people.

    2. GM

      There's no blame.

    3. RC

      Yeah, and I think that's really, really a key point to, that maybe we can discuss now because a lot of people may be hearing that feeling, you know, "Maybe I've done this to myself," or, "My mother did this to me," for example. Uh, and that's not what you're saying at all, is it?

    4. GM

      Well, um, this is an interesting conversation. I make the distinction between blame and responsibility.

    5. RC

      Okay.

    6. GM

      Blame says that you did something that you could have done otherwise, and so you're therefore, you're at fault. That's what blame says. Responsibility says, yes, you did this to yourself, but not consciously or deliberately. You did it because you're programmed to do it by your own childhood experience, which in turn was, um, mm, programmed by your parents' childhood experience. So there's nobody at fault. Everybody does their best. But we do pass these unconscious patterns on, and you don't blame people for having unconscious patterns. You try to make them conscious of it so they can take responsibility for it. So there's no con- there's no responsibility without consciousness.

    7. RC

      Yeah.

    8. GM

      And so, and, and there's no blame. So I don't blame anybody for their illness. I don't blame their parents either. But I do say these unconscious patterns have been passed on, and these unconscious emotional dynamics have an impact on your physiology. That's all. And if you want to have an impact on your physiology, you gotta get conscious. You have to realize what have you been doing unconsciously so you can stop doing it or do it differently. So it's a matter of liberating people from these ingrained patterns for which they're not to be blamed. So in my world, there's no room for blame whatsoever, but there is room for helping people to become responsible, for helping people being response able, being able to respond to their circumstances. And without awareness, none of us are response able.

    9. RC

      Yeah, I think i- if I think to my own life and my own health journey over the last few years, and I guess what's really changed for me over the last few years, you know, I've done a lot with my lifestyle.

    10. GM

      Yeah.

    11. RC

      I've done a lot with my nutrition, my sleep, and, and those things have been great, and they've really helped me. But over the last few years, I've really been focused on my emotional health. You know?

    12. GM

      Okay.

    13. RC

      I, I, I see a therapist pretty regularly. Um, and I can always feel when I've got something new, some, some deeper layer that's starting to come out. You know, I, I have a, I have a session, or I, I go through some sort of therapy, and I, I feel good. I feel, "Oh yeah, you know, I've, I've got it now. I get it. I get it why I do this." And, and it changes your behavior certainly, but it's almost as a, a, as if you, as you do that, th- there's multiple layers. It's like peeling back a layer of the, you know, it's peeling back layers of the onion and newer things keep coming out, um, which has been, it's been really rewarding for me because, you know, you talk about addiction, and I, I think back to my, my own life and various things that I've done at certain points. You know, I don't think anyone who knows me well, uh, maybe my close friends, but, [laughs] but-

    14. GM

      Yeah

    15. RC

      ... most people probably wouldn't think that I've ever had an addiction because we have all these connotations about addiction, you know? You know, it's like, you know, being at a, or being on a street corner-

    16. GM

      Yeah

    17. RC

      ... or being a drug addict-

    18. GM

      Yeah

    19. RC

      ... or something.

    20. GM

      Yeah.

    21. RC

      But, but everyone around me would know that I've got an addicted personality.

    22. GM

      Yeah.

    23. RC

      And I used to think that that was my personality. That's the way I was born.

    24. GM

      Yeah.

    25. RC

      What's weird, that as I start to process my own emotional baggage and I start to clear it, I'm no longer as an addictive person as I used to be. A- and that's why really I kind of feel, I feel so strongly about the work that you're doing because I kind of feel that that wasn't my personality. That was the behavior I had chosen to soothe something that I was missing. And-

  7. 17:08 – 27:40

    Personality vs person: childhood adaptations and the “myth of normal”

    1. GM

      Well, so what I, how would I would put it, I, I mean, I agree with your concept. I would use, use a different language around it.

    2. RC

      Sure.

    3. GM

      That was your personality, but it wasn't your person. It wasn't who you were. The personality itself is a defensive structure that we develop as a way of dealing with our pain. So much of what we consider to be our personality is actually, um, an overlay, uh, upon our true selves. And so these are choices in childhood. For example, um, with my ADD, the tuning out, I never chose to tune out. But when I was an infant under the conditions that I've described of being a Jewish infant under the Nazis, I had plenty of stress on me, and how does an infant deal with stress that they can't change? They tune out, and then the tuning out becomes programmed into my brain, and then so many years later, I'm diagnosed with ADD. It wasn't a choice that I made. It was an adaptation. So I would, what I would say about the personality, including what you describe as your addictive personality, it wasn't You, it was an adaptation that you took on as a way of surviving your childhood, as a way of soothing your pain. It's when we get older that we realize that there's something more to us than a personality, that the personality is actually a defensive cover for who we truly are. And as we start, like as you describe your own process, you go through therapy and you go through layers and then you realize, oh, that's not actually me.

    4. RC

      Yeah.

    5. GM

      And, and I'm freer without it. Then you realize that what we thought was the personality was actually just a defensive cover. A- and, and once we strip that defense off and we find it no longer necessary, we become much more truer ourselves, mu- much more true to ourselves, so become much more balanced and happier in our lives. So yes, it was a personality, but you are not your personality.

    6. RC

      Yeah.

    7. GM

      That's, that's how I would formulate it.

    8. RC

      Yeah, no, I lo- I love the way you put that, actually. It really, really [laughs] helps me think about it in a slightly different way. Um, I think something came into my mind there, which is, you know, and we were chatting a little bit about this before we got on air, um, about medicine and how i- how reductionist it has become, the practice of medicine. And I think, like, something like high blood pressure, for example-

    9. GM

      Mm

    10. RC

      ... I think of as an appropriate response from the body to the signals that it's been given.

    11. GM

      Absolutely.

    12. RC

      And I think there's an analogy there with what you're saying, which is if you, if you're surrounded by stress as a young baby, whatever that stress is, your brain is gonna adapt to that. It's an appropriate response to the signals that your brain is getting. Is that fair to say?

    13. GM

      That's right. So, so my next book is gonna be entitled The Myth of Normal: Illness and Health in an Insane Culture. And when I say in culture, insane culture, I mean a culture that doesn't meet human needs. So if you take a, a condition like high blood pressure, for which what's the medical term for high blood pressure?

    14. RC

      Hypertension.

    15. GM

      Hypertension. Okay. And, and, and doctors, of course, say, our colleagues say, "Well, there's a few types of hypertension for which there's a cause, like kidney disease or some kind of hormonal disorder." But for most part, we don't know what causes high blood pressure.

    16. RC

      Essential hypertension.

    17. GM

      Essential. We call it essential, which basically is we don't know what the heck we're talking about. That's what that means. Just take the word hypertension and slow it down a bit. Hyper tension. Hyper tension. Hyper tension. Maybe there's too much tension in people's lives, you know? And if you actually look at the, the rising rates of, of, of hypertension, it's got to do with social pressure and social stresses. And I know that b- usually when I take care of myself, I have the blood pressure of a, of a young person. But there's been times in my life when I've been driven by stress, and I've had, uh, blood pressure ranges in the, in the, in the risky, uh, end of the scale. So, so for me, when my blood pressure goes up, it's a real warning. "Buddy, you've got too much tension in your life. You better do something about it." All we do in medicine is we hand out pills or we tell people to lose weight, but we never address the sources of real tension in their lives. And I'd say that most hypertension... A- and so for example, if you look at a Black, Black American males, they have much higher risk of hypertension than, say, white American males. What we say is genetic. No, it isn't. Their biological relatives in Africa do not have high blood pressure.

    18. RC

      Right.

    19. GM

      So it's an artifact of being a Black male in essentially a racist society. And, uh, James Baldwin, the American writer, once said that being a Black American male is to live in a condition of suppressed rage all the time.

    20. RC

      Yeah.

    21. GM

      Well, that suppressed rage will drive your blood pressure. So hypertension-

    22. RC

      And drive other ill health.

    23. GM

      Yeah.

    24. RC

      Yeah.

    25. GM

      So, so high blood pressure is a great example of a, a, a socially induced physiological, physiological condition which is mediated through our emotions and the impact of our emotions on our autonomic nervous system and on our hormones.

    26. RC

      Yeah. It's, uh, I mean, I've never really thought about the term hypertension like that before.

    27. GM

      No.

    28. RC

      You know, hyper tension. And it, and it makes such sense-

    29. GM

      Yeah

    30. RC

      ... when we think about it like that. You, you mentioned this, this new book you're writing, talking about how we've got a, I think you... Is it an insane society around us?

  8. 27:40 – 32:21

    Parent-child separation, stress, and what “sleep training” teaches infants

    1. RC

      Um, when I... A really good friend of mine, he married an American girl, and she, uh, I can't remember, but maybe after she gave birth to her first child, she might have been back at work, uh, it might have been something like four weeks or something.

    2. GM

      Yeah.

    3. RC

      Something obscene. Like, to me. Well, it sounds obscene to me.

    4. GM

      Absolutely.

    5. RC

      And the child's in daycare.

    6. GM

      Yeah.

    7. RC

      And I wonder, I wonder if you could talk about that a little bit, how society is set up now, and then what that is doing. Because you mentioned your mum's... Clearly that's a huge trauma.

    8. GM

      Yeah.

    9. RC

      I mean, that's hopefully the sort of trauma that most of us aren't experiencing. But are there similarities in terms of what that's doing to the child?

    10. GM

      Oh, absolutely. Um, so the United States, uh, [laughs] which, uh, to hear their politicians, is the best and most glorious country in the world. Which itself, by the way, is interesting. Like, if you met a person, i- if your neighbor was always telling you how great he was and how he's the best and everybody wants to be like him, what would you think of him?

    11. RC

      [laughs] Yeah.

    12. GM

      You'd think he's got a grandiose personality disorder and he's compensating for his real sense of deficiency. Well, that's the United States. And they have a lot to compensate for. And what you say about childcare is absolutely true, is that they have a barbaric childcare system and a barbaric maternity leave system, where women, and often poor women on welfare, have to go back to work after a few weeks of, of, of giving birth. Now, if you look at human evolution or y- or look at an ape culture, the ape mothers hold their babies for months. There's no separation. The child actually develops by, through being held by the mother. And human b- societies, until very recently, were organized around children being around the parents really all their lives, certainly through, uh, childhood and adolescence. There was just no separation. What we do in our culture, more in the States than elsewhere, but increasingly elsewhere as well, we separate children from their parents. In other words, we're depriving them from the natural conditions for healthy development. Now, there was a study last year or two years ago comparing the crying of British, German, Canadian, and Danish children. Lo and behold, Danish kids cried much less than these others. What was the difference? The parents were around much more, and the parents were much more likely to pick up the kids when they were crying. That's what made the difference. Now, that crying child is an anxious child. When a child is crying, it's not just a benign thing. The child is crying because they're stressed. When they're stressed, their brains are suffused by stress hormones, adrenaline and cortisol. Adrenaline and cortisol interfere with your physiology, interfere with healthy brain development. So just the fact of holding a child, which was historically and prehistorically the standard, um, is, is, is an essential aspect of child-rearing, which modern societies have denied. And as a matter of fact, I don't know what it's like in England, but in North America, we actually advise parents not to pick up their kids. When they're crying at night, we tell them not to pick them up. Help, uh, we sleep train the kid by not picking them up, in other words, denying the child's needs for connection.

    13. RC

      And what's that doing to the child, do you think?

    14. GM

      Well, it does a, a number of things. Uh, one is to give the child the message that his emotions don't matter. And, and children take everything personally. It's not true that babies don't have emotions, and it's not true that babies are tabula rasa where you can write anything you want. Babies have certain defined emotional needs, and when they get the message that they're not important, that's the message they're gonna imbibe unconsciously, non-verbally. And you can see that behavior in the adults. You know the person who comes into your office and says, uh, "Doc, I'm sorry to bother you. I'm sure you have many people much more important than me, but I have this little problem." You know what kind of a childhood they had.

    15. RC

      Yeah.

    16. GM

      Um, number one, so it gives the m-

    17. RC

      That would be me going into the doctor.

    18. GM

      Okay.

    19. RC

      Or in, in just various aspects of my life and, you know, the people pleaser.

    20. GM

      Yeah.

    21. RC

      Always doing, you know, always, "Yeah, yeah, no problem." You know, the amount of times I think just on a social thing you'd be like, "Oh, where do you want to go, guys?" "Yeah, yeah, no worries, wherever, wherever." You end up somewhere you just don't want to be in. You're in a restaurant you hate the food in-

    22. GM

      Yeah

    23. RC

      ... but, "Hey, yeah, it's cool, guys. No problem." And it's, sorry, I don't mean to trivialize what you're saying. It's, it's, it's-

    24. GM

      No, you're not trivializing it. What you're actually illustrating, you're telling me exactly what kind of infancy you had.

  9. 32:21 – 41:14

    Identity as a perception of a perception: Jay Shetty’s framework for misaligned lives

    1. RC

      Yeah. [upbeat music] I think one of the first times I came across you was a few years back. I heard you on an interview. So I can't remember what the interview was, but I remember being really impacted by what you said, and I'm thinking, "Who is this guy? I mean, this is pretty incredible what I heard." And it was, it wasn't one of your videos. Uh, you were talking a lot about, I think, identity, and I think it was something about ... It really got me thinking about, what is my identity? I guess I was on a journey then anyway since I lost my father about, what, seven years ago now. I think that was the, one of the significant moments in my life that got me to start questioning everything, thinking about, "Well, who am I?" You know, am I living my life or am I living somebody else's life? I think you expressed it so beautifully, but then when I read your book, I think you start off very early on with identity. So I wonder if you could expand on identity. What is it, and why do you think many of us need to spend a bit of time thinking about it?

    2. JS

      Yeah. So I, I think I know exactly which interview you're talking about and, and what I say in it. The, the monks start with identity and at the root of the issue because a lot of what we experience in the world today, as you know, and, and I know how holistic you are in the way you advise your patients. When you were speaking on my podcast, I was so impressed by you and how you're able to tie in so many psychological and natural practices and relational exercises that can improve people's health and wellbeing overall. I remember you talking about encouraging your clients to see more friends as a way of, uh, changing the way they feel, and I was thinking, "Wow, this person's got so many great ideas." And the reason is because, Rangan, you also have that monk mindset of you go to the root of the issue. It's really easy to just say, "Oh, well, just take two of these a day," or, "Try this," or, you know, "Maybe you need to do this." But when you think about it from the root perspective, where do our challenges arise? And our challenges arise by how we see ourself. And what I believe Rangan's referring to is there's this quote that I begin my book with and that I've shared in interviews for the last few years, and it's from a writer named Charles Horton Cooley, who wrote this in the 1900s. And what he said is that ... Sorry, I think it's in the 1800s, at the end of the 1800s, towards the 1900s. And he said, and, and bear with me, and you've got to really listen closely to this. So what he said that, "The challenge today is I'm not what I think I am. I'm not what you think I am. I am what I think you think I am." Now, just let that blow your mind for a moment. I will explain it, I promise. "I'm not what I think I am. I'm not what you think I am. I am what I think you think I am," which means we live in a perception of a perception of ourselves. So I'll break it down. If I think Rangan thinks I'm smart, I'll say I feel smart. But if I think Rangan thinks I'm not smart, then I'll say I'm not smart. And so the challenge is that we're basing how we feel about ourselves on what we think someone thinks of us. And, and the greatest challenge with that is, how do you have any idea if what you think someone thinks about you is even true and whether that's even the best place to start? So that's where our identity struggles. We start pursuing things in life because we think other people value them. It's almost like, let's think of the most playground version of this. If, I remember wearing Hi-Tec shoes from BHS to the playground, right?

    3. RC

      [laughs]

    4. JS

      I remember my mom, because my parents didn't buy me Nike, uh, trainers, uh, or Adidas trainers, which I always wanted. You know, we didn't come from that background. I d- I couldn't, couldn't afford them, and my parents didn't want t- me to have them. So I'd walk in with my Hi-Tec- Trainers from BHS. They were about 10 quid or whatever they were

    5. RC

      [laughs]

    6. JS

      And, and, and you know, to me, it didn't make a difference. I didn't really know at that time whether Hi-Tec was good or bad. They were just trainers that my parents bought me. Now, everyone, the cool kid at school, had the latest Nike trainers. All of a sudden I start thinking that he's now surrounded by everyone, everyone's talking about his trainers, everyone's giving him adoration, everyone's giving him respect, everyone's talking about his trainers. So now I think that if I want to have that same experience and love from people, that I need to get that. Not realizing that I may be able to get deeper love from people by being kind and compassionate. That I may actually be able to build a real relationship with people if I'm loving and, and considerate and empathetic. And it's so crazy how your life can become about pursuing something, and that's why Jim Carrey puts it best, and I'm paraphrasing. He says, you know, everyone in the world should achieve everything they've ever wanted and accomplish everything they've ever pursued just to realize that it's not the point. Now, that doesn't mean the monk mindset is not about not pursuing your goals. It's actually about pursuing your truest goals, your truest self, and your most authentic, aligned goals. So it's not about not having goals. It's about making sure that your goals are actually yours.

    7. RC

      Yeah. A- and you know, I get shivers when you say that Coolie quote.

    8. JS

      Oh, me too, man.

    9. RC

      And act- and, and I think I've had a, I've had a flashback. I think, I can't say for sure where I was when I heard that interview, but I think I was on a train from Manchester to London, or London back to Manchester, and I think I pressed pause and I think I wrote it in my notes. I think, I'm pretty sure I wrote it, and I, I rewound it, I played it again. I thought, "Hold on, I've got the first part-

    10. JS

      [laughs]

    11. RC

      "... the s- the second part. What, what's that third part?" And I really had to sit with it for a while, and I would urge people, if they need to, press pause right now-

    12. JS

      [laughs]

    13. RC

      ... listen to it, and really think about it. And I think, you know, it's really interesting, you know, hearing that, and I reflect on my children, who I know you had a, a very brief, lovely conversation with just before we started. I might put that in at the end of the podcast maybe.

    14. JS

      Please do. It was beautiful. [laughs]

    15. RC

      [laughs] But I, I think about this as they go through school and, you know, they start to see what other people have got and, you know, um, we, my wife and I, we're very keen to try and not put value on those things because I know I also had experiences like that when I'd see, "Oh, God, man, they're wearing those things. I wanna wear those, 'cause if I wear them I'm gonna be happy." Uh, I saw a, maybe a year ago or so, I saw a Gary Vaynerchuk video online when he was, um, telling someone at one of his conferences, he was, you know, he, he was talking about a BMW, and he basically said to the guy in his, in, in, you know, in, in his-

    16. JS

      [laughs]

    17. RC

      ... inimitable way, which is wonderful, um, that, "I think you own a BMW because of what other people will think of you when you drive that BMW." And the guy literally, you know, in, in that clip, he just sort of sat with it and he, he said, "Yeah, I do." I mean, it's what it symbolized is to, to people around him. And again, I'm not having a go at anyone who, who might be doing that. You know, we all do things at, at, at times to get that, um, that validation, or what we think is the validation from people around them. But I think what you're trying to get at is, how do we find our own identity? How do we live our own lives? So, so Jay, how do we do that? If we've spent a lifetime living someone else's life, how do we in our 30s or our 20s or our 40s or our 50s, how do we just decide, "Oh, I'm gonna start finding out what my life is"?

    18. JS

      Yes, absolutely. And, and, and I love the tone you're sharing this in, Rangan, because my tone's the same. Like, you know, I'm not, I'm not coming at this from a point of view of, you know, we're wasting our lives, or I've got it figured out. Like I, I don't wanna make this about you not getting your goals or not having pursuits or not wanting to become something, because I want to do all those things too. But it's about why you're doing it, and it's also about making sure they're truly motivated by your inner desire, right? Like, that's the point. It's like, if you want to drive a BMW, drive a BMW because that's the car you love. Don't drive it because you think. Uh, if you want to be a doctor, become a doctor because you think that's how you're gonna serve humanity, not because you think people will be impressed. If you want to go to Harvard or Princeton or Oxford or Cambridge, go there because you really want to study how to solve the world's problems, not because you think it looks good on your resume, right? That's the point that we're going after. So thank you, Rangan, for like recentering that, that tonal

  10. 41:14 – 50:02

    The ‘values audit’: time, money, and questioning your pursuits

    1. JS

      piece, and I, I appreciate it. But so where do we start? One of my favorite ways to start is looking at what we value, and values are a very intangible word, and so there's a very easy way to figure out what you value. There's two things you have to look at. You look at how you spend your money. The most painful thing you can possi- possibly do, go through your bank statement and look at where your money is being spent. That is what you value. The other thing that we spend, just like we spend money, is how we spend our time. Those are the two most perfect ways to see what you currently value. Your value isn't what's in your head, isn't what's in your heart, it isn't what's in your mind. It's how you spend your money and how you spend your time. And so just to give you an overview, and I share this in the book, that research was done on how we spend our time, and the research showed that we spend 33 years in bed, right? 33 years of our life in bed, and seven years of that is spent trying to sleep, not even sleeping [laughs] right? We spend one year and four months exercising. Across our whole lives, these are, by the way. We spend more than three years on vacation Uh, and we spend a bunch of days trying to get ready, and we spend a bunch of time, you know, standing in lines and queues, and so much of our time just gets spent. So the question we have to ask ourselves is, where am I currently spending my time, and where do I want to spend it? Now, studies also show that people-- everyone has to go to work, so this isn't about what you do for work. People who had more meaningful, purposeful lives and were healthier, wealthier, and wise invest their time in education over entertainment. And Rangan, your, your audience is lucky because they get education and entertainment in one place. But, but that's the goal, right? Like, that's the goal, that you're creating an opportunity for people to find education. The, the smartest, the wealthiest, the most healthiest, the wisest people in the world were reading books, watching documentaries, taking courses, listening to podcasts, learning to better themselves, and so that's the first place to start. The second place, when we look at that value audit, is I want you to write down three things that you're currently pursuing in life. It might be a promotion, it might be a new home, whatever it is. Whatever it is that you are currently pursuing, and then I want you to ask this question. Is that your desire and your dream, or is it coming from something outside of you? Is it coming from a pressure of a family member? Is it coming from an expectation because your friend just bought something? Where is that desire truly coming from? And the third and final question you want to ask yourself is, do I still want to pursue that, or do I want to change how I pursue it, or do I not want to pursue it at all? And if you go through that three-step questioning process, you'll get to the truth of what you truly want to pursue and stop yourselves from building a sandcastle which the waves of time will eventually wash away.

    2. RC

      Yeah.

    3. JS

      And so that's what we get lost doing. We get lost building castles that we don't even want to live in.

    4. RC

      Yeah. It, it's so profound, and you know, I, I really think that there's something unique about the times in which we live now. There really is this dissatisfaction, this lack of contentment. You know, you put it so beautifully at the start of this conversation. I don't know if you've seen the documentary Minimalism-

    5. JS

      I haven't actually, no

    6. RC

      ... um, or not, which, yeah, I think you'd absolutely love it. I, I really, really enjoy it. I've seen it a couple times. I've watched it with my kids again recently. But again, it's these two guys in their 30s who, you know, they've got success by society's definition. They've got the job. They're earning good money. You know, but there's a hole inside. There's a, a feeling of, is this all there is to life? And so I, I really think you're, you're tapping on something that is, that is really out there at the moment, and really if people can get their heads around this, I think it can transform their own lives but also transform the lives of the people around them, which I think is really, really exciting. Now, you called it a value audit. Now, I thought that word was really interesting because I have been sort of-- I, I had, I had sort of nearly three weeks off social media until two days ago. Like, I, I didn't post. I went off that. I made a thing of it, and I found that I-- I found it a lot easier to go inward in my life. It was just one thing to switch off a bit of noise for me. That I-- and I'm not saying everyone has to do this. It's just something I personally find useful, and I also like to-- I think it's a nice example to set to people that you can do it, uh, if you want to. But what was really interesting is I've been doing a values exercise with myself. I've been trying to write down five core values that I want to live my life by, and it really struck me that a lot of people, and I probably include myself in this, have got an idea of what we think our values are. But unless we actually go and audit the process of what are we spending our time and money doing, we have no idea if we really are living those values. So I really like the term audit because it's not your perception of how you think you're actually spending your money or spending your time. It's the reality of it, and, and I think it's something that I haven't done it, and I think, I think I'm gonna do it. I think I'm gonna actually see. Uh, is it aligned with what you say you stand for? Are you actually spending time like that? So is this a common thing, do you think, for people, that they have a-- there's a, there is a gap between their desired values and their actual values?

    7. JS

      I genuinely believe-- First of all, Rangan, thank you for sharing that too, and I, I genuinely believe that people are well-intentioned and want to do good in the world. I believe that. I believe that people have a good heart. They're smarter than we think they are. They want to do good in the world, and they want to put out good energy. But you're exactly right that that intention needs to be converted and transferred into real behavior, and this is where you'll find, you know, you'll hear a friend or someone you know say, "Oh, you know, I really value loyalty, and, and I really don't like gossip." And then you find out that that person was gossiping about you, and how does that feel? It, it completely feels like someone's broken your trust. And so often the way we see ourselves or want to see ourselves is amplified compared to how we actually behave. So we'll spot something, and there's a, there's a beautiful story that I share in the book, and, and there's lots of these across the book. Uh, but there's these, there's these old ancient Indian and Zen stories, and there's this story of the evil king that goes to meet a good king. So the evil king goes to the, the castle, the quarters of the good king, and the good king, being a good king, invites the evil king inside for some dinner. They sit down. The servers bring out the plates. The plates are placed in front of the evil king and the good king, and they're just about to eat- And as just about as they're about to eat, the evil king switches the plates. And, and the good king goes, "What's going on? Like, is that some ceremony in your time? Like, look, why are we doing this?" And the evil king goes, "Well, I don't know. You might have poisoned my food. You, you might be trying to kill me. You might have poisoned it." And the good king just bursts out laughing. He's just like, "Really?" [laughs] Like, "Come on. This- Like, I've invited you over for dinner. Like, this is my team." Like, you know, whatever it is. Like, "Let, let's start eating right now." And just about as he's about to eat, the evil king swaps it back again, and the good king goes, "Well, now what then?" And he goes, "Well, I don't know. You might be double-bluffing me." And that night, the evil king doesn't eat. The good king happily eats his plate. The point is that so often we think we don't have some of the mistakes that we make, but we see them in everyone else. We see those mistakes in other people, so we'll say, "Oh, this person's not doing this right," or, "I don't like the way he or she talked to that person." But if we really do an audit on ourselves, we'll realize that we have a lot of those same challenges and feelings that we may think others have. And so for me, it's sometimes a really scary and daunting task to do that values audit, but it truly, truly is a, a beautiful process that we all need to go through to really realign our map and get our compass right and start moving in the right direction.

  11. 50:02 – 56:54

    Revisiting values like gardening—and making self-work playful

    1. RC

      I mean, is it the sort of thing that people do once, or is it the sort of thing that people should revisit? And I guess, you know, if I was to ask you, when was the last time you did that exercise on yourself?

    2. JS

      Yeah, great question. So I'd say that you have to revisit like gardening. If you look at your garden outside, and I can see a bit, I can see a light-

    3. RC

      Me okay

    4. JS

      ... little glimpse of Rangan's garden.

    5. RC

      [laughs]

    6. JS

      Uh, but if, if you have a garden, how often do you have to garden? Maybe you mow the lawn, I don't know, once a week, once a month. I don't know-

    7. RC

      Yeah

    8. JS

      ... you know, whatever, whatever you-

    9. RC

      Well, yeah, I'd say once a week probably.

    10. JS

      Once a week.

    11. RC

      I li- I like a-

    12. JS

      Once-

    13. RC

      ... nice, you know, short-ish lawn. I don't like it when it gets too long, so.

    14. JS

      [laughs] There you go. Once a week. And so I'd say that you have to treat this exercise like gardening because when you do a values audit, what you're really doing is gardening your values, and what that means is you're pulling out the weeds and you're planting new seeds. That's really the activity that's happening here. You're planting seeds in your mind, values that are good values, that are gonna grow into fruits and trees and give shade to others and help other people. Or if you don't garden once a month, let's say Rangan leaves his, he doesn't bother for the last six months during COVID, he just lets it be there, what's gonna happen? That garden's gonna be full of weeds. It's gonna be full of-

    15. RC

      Yeah

    16. JS

      ... stuff that he doesn't want there, right? It, it might attract bugs or other things that are there that he doesn't want. And that's what happens with our values, that after a while our values start to attract dust. They start to attract, uh, being covered over by so many other desires. So I would say it's a regular habit. I'd say that I do a refining values and intention exercise on myself about three times a week. I used to do it every day, but probably about three times a week, and I'm not saying anyone has to do it that often. I do it that often because I feel I live a life that is constantly moving, constantly challenging, and I'm presented with a lot of options and opportunities that I never imagined I'd have. And so I have to really train my mind to, to focus on these value audits. But I also know that every year I spend two or three year, uh, two or three weeks and I go back to the monastery in India and I spend time in the ashram with monks. And so I feel this is both an activity that happens weekly or monthly. I'd say once a month. I, I'd say the best way is to treat it like your, um, accounts and your taxes. Look at it every month. Look at your bank statement every month, and then once a year when you have to do your taxes and you're going through that tax return and getting it all right, you kind of do a deep dive on it. So I'd say if everyone-

    17. RC

      Yeah

    18. JS

      ... could spend three days a year, five days a year going really deep, and then one hour a month, a couple of hours a month, that would be a great way to build it into your practice.

    19. RC

      Yeah, no, I just wanna contrast it with taxes and, uh, accounts [laughs] which can often be quite tedious and, um, you know, tear your hair out type-

    20. JS

      [laughs]

    21. RC

      ... exercises for people, full of pressure. I would sort of say that the kind of practices that are f- that your book is f- jam-packed full of practical tools for people, I- once you get into this way of thinking, once you start thinking like a monk, these practices become fun.

    22. JS

      Yeah.

    23. RC

      Right?

    24. JS

      Yes. Yeah, for sure.

    25. RC

      And I think, you know, like a, a lot of... You know, as a doctor, one of the things that frustrates me is that everything around health, w- let's say working out, for example, tends to be around, you know, punishing yourself and-

    26. JS

      Mm

    27. RC

      ... pushing yourself and suffering. And so we start to associate things that are good for us as being difficult-

    28. JS

      [laughs]

    29. RC

      ... and as being punishing. But actually, all the tools in your book are gonna be good for everyone. They're really gonna help people, but I would actually say that they're fun. And, and if I just speak to my own experience over the last seven years of really, again, since my dad died, diving into personal growth, not because it was like, "Oh, Dad's not here. Now I'm gonna do some personal growth." No. It was just in the trauma of Dad's death, in the sort of emptiness I felt afterwards, that's where I went. I-

    30. JS

      Yeah

  12. 56:54 – 1:04:22

    Modern disconnection as a ‘zoo’ for humans: loneliness, shame, and addiction loops

    1. GM

      You might liken modern society to a zoo, where you take an animal from a natural habitat and you put them in a completely artificial restricted situation, and you expect him to stay as normal as he was out there in the wild. Essentially, that's what's happened to human beings, in that in a very short space of time, in the blink of an eye from the perspective of evolution, we've been, we've gone from the hunter-gatherer, small band, communal, attachment-based group to a society which is alienated, disconnected, and that disconnection is, m- uh, is, is, um, accelerating at a tremendous rate throughout the world. Um, urbanization, it's taking people out of their villages into the big cities where they're alone. Uh, here in Britain, uh, there was quite a deliberate assault on community under the Thatcher regime, with the destruction of neighborhoods and communities and so on, and, uh, that trend has continued. So what we're having in is societies that are less and less natural to the actual makeup of human beings from the evolutionary perspective, and which means that children are being brought up under increasingly artificial and disconnected circumstances. And, uh, you know, Johann Hari, who's written a book recently on the d-

    2. JS

      Yeah

    3. GM

      ... uh, uh, on, on depression called Lost Connections, is pointing exactly at what's happening in modern society, so that these lost connections characterize the modern world, and as they do, you're getting the spread of autoimmune disease into countries that never used to have it before.

    4. JS

      Yeah.

    5. GM

      So we think autoimmune disease is one of these, uh, or addictions for that matter. So if you look at the rate of addiction now in, in countries like, uh, China and India, it's going up exponentially precisely because of the, uh... And as, and it's not a question of idealizing the old way of life.

    6. JS

      No.

    7. GM

      We, we can't go back, and, and, and of course, there's all kinds of benefits to, to progress and industrialization. Trouble is that as we progress, we forget the benefits of, uh, we forget what we've lost. So instead of combining progress with trying to hold on to what was best about some of the old ways, we just throw everything out, and, and we think we can reinvent ourselves. And as we do, we're making ourselves sick.

    8. JS

      Yeah. You're right, and I think it's a really great point to, to, to, to sort of bring up. We're not saying we need to go back to hunter-gatherer tribes.

    9. GM

      We can't.

    10. JS

      We, yeah, n- not only should we not, we can't.

    11. GM

      No.

    12. JS

      And there, there are so many great benefits of the modern world-

    13. GM

      Yeah

    14. JS

      ... and as you say, industrialization. I guess it's, it's how do we learn from the past? How do we learn from our evolutionary heritage, and what can we implement from that within the constraints of the modern world? That, certainly that's how I see it. And you mentioned, uh, Johann Hari's new book, and you know, I, I write, a huge quarter of my book on stress is about this. Um, is about relationships-

    15. GM

      Yeah

    16. JS

      ... and our-

    17. GM

      Yeah

    18. JS

      ... our, our lack of connection these days. You know, one, one on one level, we are, we, we're being told anyway that we're more connected than we've ever been before. And-

    19. GM

      Mm

    20. JS

      ... certainly in a digital sense that may be the case, but you know, when we talk about real human meaningful connection, what I see around me with the public, but what I also see in my practice as a doctor, is I don't think we've ever been this disconnected and lonely. And-

    21. GM

      Well, we're more wired, but we're less connected, is, is how I would put it. Uh, because genuine connection happens between people, not between pieces of technology. So as you and I are talking to each other, there's a real interaction.

    22. JS

      Yeah.

    23. GM

      When you speak, I'm looking at you, I'm listening to the modulation of your voice. I may nod in agreement or shake my head in disagreement, vice versa, but the communication is taking place on many different levels. That's a connection

    24. GM

      If you're never having the same conversation online, it'd be a whole different, um, ballgame, and I'd have no idea actually who I'm talking to. They'd just be exchanging words. So we're wired together, but we're not actually connected. We're actually disconnected in this world 'cause people are isolated modules sending out messages via the, uh, ethernet or the internet.

    25. RC

      Yeah.

    26. GM

      Um, when it comes to addictions, it, it, it's, it, it's that disconnection again, um, that, that leaves us so alone. So we're traumatized in the first place. We are then, um, develop, we then develop behaviors that soothe our pain, but which actually keeps us more isolated from other people 'cause we're ashamed of ourselves and we hide it and, and we, uh, furtively seek out our addictive pleasures. And that disconnection then furthers our sense of isolation. That isolation furthers our pain, and that pain further drives our addiction. So we live in a society that actually generates addiction in many of its members.

    27. RC

      Yeah. It really does, doesn't it? I, I, I did a, um, I did a post on my social media channels I think just yesterday actually-

    28. GM

      Yeah

    29. RC

      ... about, uh, friendship.

    30. GM

      Mm.

  13. 1:04:22 – 1:12:42

    ‘Lifestyle change’ vs ‘life change’: language, meaning, and healing the wound

    1. RC

      Because I guess, you know, a lot of people who listen to my podcast are trying to make lifestyle change, and a lot of them feel inspired to do so by what they hear, but some of them, um, I know are, are struggling.

    2. GM

      Well, you know, I'm very interested in language. A- and even the phrase lifestyle change. It's not lifestyle changes people need to make. It's life changes people need to make.

    3. RC

      Yeah.

    4. GM

      You can change the style-

    5. RC

      [laughs]

    6. GM

      ... but style is a rather superficial thing, you know? It's a style of clothing, you know? Uh, it's the life changes that people need. And, and, and we need to p- help people see the life changes that are required, not the lifestyle changes they need to acquire. It, it's, it's the fundamental life that's being lived that needs to change, not, not the external behaviors. And lifestyle largely refers to behaviors, but not necessarily a transformation within. And really to deal with addiction, um, is not a question of dealing with the lifestyle. It's a question of dealing with the life, and it's a question of really owning the life, that this is my life, and I'm the one who needs to be, uh, the agent of my own life, and here are the reasons why the, the, the wound or the ... Trauma is another word for wound, actually. So the wounding that I received as a child has had me behave in certain ways. It's not those behaviors I need to change. I need to heal that wound. I need to change my life. And then the, the, the, the, the life behavior changes will automatically follow.

    7. RC

      Yeah. You b- you really, you, you really got me thinking about language actually because two terms that I use very commonly in my work, whether it's hypertension or lifestyle, you've, you've just, you know, in seconds-

    8. GM

      Yeah

    9. RC

      ... reframed what those words actually mean. Uh, and I wonder where that comes from. You know, you're an immigrant to North America. Where has this fascination with language come from?

    10. GM

      Well, I, I think as an immigrant you get to see the language a bit more clearly than the people-

    11. RC

      Yeah. That's true

    12. GM

      ... who are, who are actually in it, and you get to see the construction of language. And, and by the way, in, in my secret life, I used to be an English teacher, so I, I, I did that be- before I went to medical school, so I've always paid a lot of attention to language. And language very often unconsciously expresses realities and truths that when you pay attention to it are, are revealing.

    13. RC

      Yeah.

    14. GM

      And, uh, so words should never ... Even the word addict. The word addiction actually comes from a Latin phrase for slavery. So, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh

    15. RC

      A slave to the pain

    16. GM

      Well, uh, the-

    17. RC

      What do you mean?

    18. GM

      ... the original meaning was an addictus, i- i- i- it comes from the word to assign. Now, in, in, in, in, in the Roman world when you couldn't pay a debt, you would be assigned as a slave to somebody until you worked off the debt. So you'd be an addictus, somebody who was assigned to somebody. So that's the origin of the word. So, so it implies slavery. So we actually understand that that addict refers or originates in a word for slavery. We realize that it's not a choice, 'cause who would, uh, who would ever choose to be a slave? You know? So I think language is absolutely revelatory if you understand the sources and meanings of words.

    19. RC

      Yeah. Yeah, very much so. Gabor, I wanna go to, um, something you, you did last night in, in your talk, which-

    20. GM

      Yeah

    21. RC

      ... you know, I went out for dinner with my friends afterwards. We all attended it, and we were all talking about it.

    22. GM

      Mm.

    23. RC

      Um, which was you, you, you s- peppered throughout the evening, you said, "I... If there is anyone in here who feels they have some form of addiction-

    24. GM

      Yeah

    25. RC

      ... without childhood trauma-

    26. GM

      Yeah

    27. RC

      ... and you're happy to talk about it, please raise your hand." And, um, you know, at the end, you, you actually found someone who, you know, quite confidently, uh, put their hand up and was, you know, pretty nonchalant, but they had a, you know-

    28. GM

      Happy childhood

    29. RC

      ... happy childhood.

    30. GM

      Yeah.

  14. 1:12:42 – 1:27:48

    A case story of overdose, the myth of choice, and compassion for ‘parts’

    1. RC

      Yeah, absolutely. Gabor, in your, in your book, uh, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, I think, is it the second chapter where you talk about, um, a funeral you go to-

    2. GM

      Yeah

    3. RC

      ... of one of your, uh, someone you were looking after, an, an addict. And-

    4. GM

      A 30, a 35-year-old who overdosed, yeah

    5. RC

      ... and, uh, I will let you tell the story, but, um- One thing it really illustrates to me is how, how, you know, addiction is on a, on a, is on a spectrum of course. But how powerful that addictive, that, that addictive drive is for some people. And, and, and I just wonder if you could expand on that, 'cause I, that was really, really interesting.

    6. GM

      So this woman's real name was Shannon, which I can tell now. And she was 35, and she was a beautiful woman as a young woman. Uh, when I met her she was already fading. She was in her mid-30s or early 30s when I met her. Um, she had, uh, a severe, uh, opiate addiction. And because she injected, she had, um, bloodborne infection in her, one of her knees, so she had osteomyelitis, uh, a joint infection, um, or a bone infection in her knee bones. She needed to be hospitalized for intravenous antibiotic care, but she could never be hospitalized long enough 'cause she had to leave and use. And every time she left and used she was, uh, expelled from the hospital.

    7. RC

      Ah.

    8. GM

      So her osteomyelitis was never treated.

    9. RC

      Expelled from the hospital?

    10. GM

      E- expelled from the hospital because she-

    11. RC

      She wasn't engaging in treatments?

    12. GM

      Well, well she was leaving the hospital to use.

    13. RC

      Right.

    14. GM

      And, uh-

    15. RC

      So therefore they wouldn't treat her.

    16. GM

      So they sh- yeah, so she wouldn't, the, the, the, so they, they didn't want her using her IV lines for shooting h- or heroin.

    17. RC

      Sure.

    18. GM

      Now, now since then we've developed a facility where people can have intravenous antibiotics and use if they need to, but this is before the days of that particular facility.

    19. RC

      Yeah.

    20. GM

      So out of the regular hospitals she'd be regularly kicked out before her six or eight weeks of antibiotics treatment was completed. So by the mid-30s, a- and they were actually talking about amputating the knee 'cause there's nothing more they could do. And so by her mid-30s she was in a wheelchair, and she would quickly wheel her wheelchair down a street looking for her next hit. Now she left the Downtown Eastside for six months, and she actually got clean. And, um, then she came back, and within three days was dead, dead of an overdose. Because what happened of course is that she used the same amount she had left bef- she had used before she left the Downtown Eastside, but now she was detoxed. So she'd lost her tolerance. You would understand-

    21. RC

      Yeah

    22. GM

      ... what I mean by that.

    23. RC

      Yeah.

    24. GM

      So the same dose that she could tolerate prior to leaving the Downtown Eastside, now that she was free of drugs, that same dose killed her.

    25. RC

      Wow.

    26. GM

      And so she, we, so we went to her funeral, and there's all these friends of hers, each of them with their HIV or their Hepatitis C or their chronic infections, and they're, uh, mourning their friend.

    27. RC

      Yeah.

    28. GM

      And I'm thinking how powerful the drive of the addiction is that this young woman would, would, would, would shed her life for the sake of that next hit. And her friends, who are watching her being buried and memorialized, are gonna continue using despite this dire example.

    29. RC

      Yeah, they're gonna continue using despite seeing that, that-

    30. GM

      Yeah

  15. 1:27:48 – 2:00:55

    Hope, healing capacity, and gratitude as a daily practice (with specificity)

    1. RC

      Yeah. Oh, I love it. I love it thinking about it like that. Well, Gabor, for, for many people listening, um, we, we've gone through some quite dark stuff-

    2. GM

      Yeah

    3. RC

      ... hopefully illuminating for people. But, but potentially dark and, and quite demoralizing potentially for some people in terms of them thinking about their own lives, potentially what they might have inadvertently passed on to their own children. I know certainly the first time I saw you speak, you, you automatically start to think about your own, uh, ability as a father and what you could have potentially done better-

    4. GM

      Mm-hmm

    5. RC

      ... all the time remembering that you've done the best that you can-

    6. GM

      Mm-hmm

    7. RC

      ... at that time. Um, I wonder if we can finish off with a few notes of positivity for people that-

    8. GM

      Sure

    9. RC

      ... there is hope and there are things that we can do, um, to help change this.

    10. GM

      Well, first of all, um, I don't see this as a gloomy discussion because I think for people to understand themselves, they need to look at all aspects of their existence. So to me, this is illuminating and, and, and St. Paul says somewhere that, uh, once you shed light into darkness, the darkness itself becomes light. And so that I, I just think we have to look at all these dark places. We have to shed light onto all of them so we can fully understand ourselves. To me, that's a positive. I'm always delighted to find out something about myself that-

    11. RC

      Yeah

    12. GM

      ... that may have, maybe I haven't seen, seen so clearly before. I always find it liberating, and I believe people do as well, number one. Number two, what we haven't said though, and I think prob- bu- probably both you and I would agree, is that the human beings have a tremendous healing capacity.

    13. RC

      Yeah.

    14. GM

      And, and, and one of the failures of modern medical training is that we put all the expertise and the hope for help into the hands of the physician. The physician is the one who's gonna deliver the cure, but we don't teach people about the innate healing capacity of the human being, and we don't learn how do you promote that healing capacity. We may have to administer whatever treatments are appropriate and whatever genius treatments we have developed.

    15. RC

      Sure.

    16. GM

      That's great, but nevertheless, that s- person still has an innate healing capacity. How do we engage it? How do we evoke it? How do we encourage it? That's not a question that, uh, we ask ourselves, and yet there's many examples of people healing or doing much better with illnesses than medical prognosis would've told them. Now look at the recent case of the recent death of Stephen Hawking, the physicist, uh, who I discuss in one of my books. Now, he was given two years to live when he was 20 years old. He outlived his diagnosis by more than five decades. Something in him allowed him to do that, something in him that the medical mind could not have fathomed at the time. So there's much more to people than we realize, and so we have a lot, we have to have a lot more faith and a lot more curiosity. What is, about what is it in people that allows them to overcome the challenge of addiction? What is it that helps them, uh, live much longer than we had predicted? What is healing? What is whole- becoming whole really all about? These are the questions that medicine ought to engage with, but unfortunately it does not. So I, I think your work and, and, and your podcast and your books are, if, if, if as I understand them, and the same thing with me, are designed to help people find within themselves that which can, uh, empower them to support their own healing.

    17. RC

      Yeah.

    18. GM

      And we can't say that strongly enough.

    19. RC

      Yeah, absolutely. Now, thanks for that, Gabor. Um, for people who are listening who- You know, maybe, maybe something you've said has really deeply struck a chord with them about their own life, and they want to go on that journey but don't know how.

    20. GM

      Mm-hmm.

    21. RC

      Have you got any words of advice as to how they can start, you know ... Even, even listening to this and start to be aware, of course, is a very critical first step.

    22. GM

      Mm-hmm.

    23. RC

      But, um, you know, where can they go next?

    24. GM

      Well, so you and I are both authors, and I would highly recommend they check out our books first because I, I think, a- and in my case, I would they check out my books because-

    25. RC

      Of course

    26. GM

      ... there is a lot of what I know and what I've learned that I've poured into my books. And a lot of people find a lot of self-knowledge just by seeing the mirror that's held up in-

    27. RC

      Yeah

    28. GM

      ... in my writings or in my multiple YouTube talks, for example. Now, where to go in their own lives, I actually think that once people start asking these questions, they find the answers in their own lives. In other words, um, there's an old saying that when the student is ready, the teacher appears. And, a- and, and I think there's many modalities of healing that are practiced here in Britain or anywhere else in the world, that once you start seeing the limitations, without rejecting the value, but seeing at the same time the limitations of, of, of mainstream medicine, start looking outside it a little bit, or start finding practitioners within mainstream medicine that have a broader view. In other words, go where the help is, and don't assume that because somebody's got a degree after their name that they know everything that needs to be known. In other words, become the, become the agent in your own healing. Once people take that on, generally they find help.

    29. RC

      Yeah.

    30. GM

      I find. I, I can't give them a specific go-to, except that once you start asking the right questions, the answers will start coming.

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