This Is How You Use DOPAMINE As A SUPERPOWER In Your Life | Anna Lembke

Anna Lemke, welcome to the show. Thank you for inviting me. I'm really excited to be here. I am very happy to have you. The first time I heard your name was from Andrew Huberman, who is extraordinary, and he had mentioned you and the book Dopamine Nation, and I'm obsessed with dopamine and certainly its role in my life. And I'm going to take a different approach, I think, than most people that have interviewed you, who sort of immediately go to the dark side of dopamine and addiction and all of that stuff. I think it may be my superpower. And so, the question that I get asked all the time is like, "Hey, I want to achieve something in my life, but I'm struggling, can't get out of bed, I'm bored, or whatever." And my answer is always, "You just don't want it badly enough." And as I learn about dopamine and the difference between craving something versus getting something, and you get into dopamine and how dopamine's really about wanting something. And that's when I realized, I might just be really good at tying wanting something to a flood of dopamine, which makes me feel good, and then I'm very careful to make sure that only the pursuit matters. And so, then if you're careful that the pursuit is what I call exciting and honorable, so that you're not chasing things that are self-destructive or detrimental to other people, in fact, they elevate other people, uh you get into this really interesting self-reinforcing loop. So, I'm curious if you've thought about the positive side of dopamine. I love the way you articulated that. I That is actually my life philosophy, as well, that the process is really what matters, not the outcome. But I guess I've never thought about it or framed it in terms of the neuroscience of dopamine. It seems that you're suggesting that your drug is the pursuit, and that you get dopamine from that, and whether or not your efforts lead to the desired outcome is separate from your rewarding experience. Otherwise, you're playing a dangerous game because A, you said in the book that humans are the ultimate seekers, if I remember the phrase correctly. And I was like, "Oh my god, yes, that is exactly true." And if you seek poorly, meaning blindly, that you don't realize that you're a seeking machine, that nature has handcrafted you to seek versus have because you can never eat a meal big enough where you don't need to eat again. So, it's like nature had to find that way to keep you going. Yes. And so so many people think that, you know, wealth is usually the one, right? They're "If I could just get that amount of money, I would feel good." And of course, it won't work. Yeah, I mean, I think what the wisdom that you're offering, which I think is really valuable, is the reward itself, whatever it is, might be rewarding the first time around, but then over time, the way that we're wired will make it less reinforcing, less rewarding. So, then we need a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more. So, ultimately, the reward itself is not the thing to seek because it's the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. You It's It's ever elusive. But I want to ask you something because um you know, you say that for you, the it's the seeking that is the source of the reward itself. And yet, you have been very successful in your life. So, it's been a positive reinforcing loop. It might be that your trajectory is very long, so that you know, you're you're really good at delaying gratification. On the other hand, it seems like you get there, you get your goal. So, I guess I'm wondering what you would say with this kind of frame, um if the goal really is not achieved and if it's repeatedly not achieved, what what how do you how do you then say to somebody, you know, oh, it's just about the pursuit? Yeah, you've gone right to the deep end of the pool. So, here this is really the secret to success is I want being a good person to be enough. Like when I advise people about business, your goal really does need to be honorable. Now, in a hyperconnected social age, you will get raked if you're not after good things. Right. But unfortunately, being a good person isn't enough and so you have to also be business savvy. So, I amended a word to my phrase around pursuit to be sincere pursuit. Mhm. So, I wake up every day sincerely pursuing my goal. So, my goal is to build the next Disney. Now, that's a dizzying endeavor, right? So, they have a 90-year head start, they have billions of dollars in revenue, billions of dollars in IP, like the the odds of me pulling it off are vanishingly slim. Mhm. So, I know better than to hold myself accountable to actually building the next Disney. And by the way, that's so far in the future that even if I do it on an accelerated time frame, what are we talking? 10 years? 20 years? Like that would be astronomically fast. So, to be able to sustain myself for two decades in the case of like just rampant success, I'm murdering it. Just every day is is a victory. Um, that would be such prolonged gratification. I'd never make it, right? So, on the days where even I don't feel like getting out of bed or I'm being kicked in the face by some just unending string of failures, you really have to say, the thing I'm going to value myself for right in this moment is sincerely pursuing this goal. Because it's tempting to just play rhetoric, right? And you can actually get away with that for a while. Where people buy into the rhetoric, it makes them feel good to in in today's social climate, they can watch me pursue my dreams, my huge dreams. Maybe I fail, they can live by proxy, and so for some period of time I could get away with just rhetoric and I can still gain followers and all that. Mhm. But because I hold myself accountable to sincere pursuit, even if people are cheering me on and saying that, "Oh my god, this is amazing and I love that you have this big dream." I'm looking at myself going, "Did I actually measure myself against the progress I would need to make to build the next Disney, to take the real steps towards doing that?" And so being able to assess from a business perspective what's real, am I actually making progress? Mhm. But the tricky part is I'm not valuing myself when the answer is I have failed and I've let's say even moved backwards. It was, "But did I really play to win?" And if I showed up and played to win, but failed, I still emotionally reward myself. Mhm. If I win, but I'm not actually playing to win, then I don't cheer myself on. Mhm. And that is nuanced, perhaps, but it really matters. And so I end up on a long time frame, cuz I fail a lot, but on a long time frame, because I'm learning from those failures, I actually make progress. Mhm. So it sounds like you have some kind of intrinsic reward that you give yourself based on kind of this sort of morality you've created around trying your hardest. Is that is that sort of the That's part of it, but I think a little bit um like so in the book you talk about how you can put a running wheel, like a rat running wheel, if people can imagine that little metal mesh thing, um in the wild, and yet the animals will still go and play on it. Right. And so there is and I'd be curious to know what you think from an evolutionary standpoint, is that the rats or cuz there it was like frogs, rats, snails, like all these different creatures come and play on this thing. Uh is it that nature needed them to be willing to do hard things in order to escape predation? Mhm. Well, I mean, I think we we we are hardwired to approach pleasure and avoid pain, and that's really at the heart of our dopamine reward system. And you're absolutely right, dopamine is not just about the reward, it's also about the wanting and the motivation. And it's relative dopamine, so it's whether our dopamine is above or below tonic baseline that really um is at the heart of this motivational cycle. Um you know, from an evolutionary perspective, the just-so story that we can tell ourselves is that the reason that Mother Nature made a reward pathway that doesn't just give us the reward, but also makes us pay for it afterwards by going into this dopamine deficit state is because it's that's the ideal biological system to drive us to continue to seek, to not never be contented with with what we have. And what I'm finding very interesting in talking to you is that your kind of let's say life hack in the modern ecosystem where we have everything we could ever really want, and where this this type of um you know, physiologic with this drive toward homeo- homeostasis and this pleasure-pain balance and dopamine deficit state, which I'm going to assume because you wrote the book, you understand. We're going to have to go into the pleasure-pain. That That is so interesting, but finish up that, I'll bring us back to it. It's it's like the it's like it's like a nature's cruel trick in the modern ecosystem because it, you know, essentially turns us all into people with addiction because we have everything. So, that that constant pursuit, that never being, you know, satisfied with what with what we have, with always wanting more, um you know, gets us into this trap of compulsive overconsumption or addiction. But, you have decided that the way to sort of manage that reality is to make the pursuit the heart of it, knowing that you may not get it, but that that is not the most important piece, that the most important piece is to pursue and to be honorable about it, right? And to um give it your best shot, so to speak. Is is that a fair It is. And I I do wonder if my brain were biopsied, if do I just have like a screaming amount of dopamine receptors? And so I'm particularly receptive to that pleasure cycle? Or or or it's possible that you actually have, you know, a paucity of dopamine receptors. So that So that your relentless pursuing is because you have some kind of um you know, difficulty feeling reward and so you have to me the chills. And you know, there's some science actually showing that that people who are vulnerable to addiction are people who do have this relative insensitivity to rewarding experiences and so need more sensory experiences, more input in order to kind of just bring them, you know, up to other people's baseline. Um and so you may be, you know, in that category. Um and and I always like to say, you know, that that people that are wired for addiction, because we do know that this is um heritable, that not everybody is equally vulnerable to the problem of addiction. And I I really believe and again, these are sort of evolutionary just-so stories, but I believe that, you know, tens of thousands of of years ago, people who were wired for what we call addiction today, back then were, you know, especially valuable to the tribe, because those were the people They were the seekers, right? They were the ones who weren't satisfied, who were willing to go further and and work harder to get what we need. Of course, today it's tricky cuz you have to kind of make it up. And so you've you've made it up. I mean, you you've made this goal and you know, you're relentlessly pursuing it and it has kind of meaning and purpose and it keeps you busy and it turns out you're really good at it. So you're successful. So that's that's a wonderful. But I just will hold out to you that another response to this modern conundrum is to do almost the exact opposite and and to sort of say, you know, this pursuit of these rewards is really um ultimately empty and so I'm not going to I'm not going to play that game at all. I'm not going to frame my life. rewards? The The Okay, yeah. I mean, the pursuit I mean, rewards, you know, are what are our dopamine it's a it's a signal, right? We do something, it feels good, our brain releases dopamine, it says, "Do that thing again." And then we go into a dopamine deficit state and then that says, "Oh, you know, that's a very power powerful physiologic drive that insists that we pursue that thing again even when we stop liking it. So that that's the vicious cycle. But um I I'm just I'm just throwing it out there like as a philosophical idea that your solution to this modern problem, and it's a modern problem that we all have, is to seek more, to try harder, um to find the the road with the most friction and go there. Um My pursuit is slightly different than that. And so I'll be interested to see if this resonates with you. What I'm really doing is I had a fundamental realization. So in my early 20s and long time listeners of the show be tired of hearing me say this, but in my early 20s heard it, so. Right. In my early 20s, I was sliding towards depression. I would come home from work and just lay on the floor of my apartment and was just like, "What am I going to do with my life?" And I had early realizations that my brain was my problem. And so I started reading about the brain. And the more I could understand the mechanisms of my brain, the more I felt in control. And so I'm obsessed with conveying this idea that you're having a biological experience. And so once I understood, "Okay, wait. I have this organ. It works in a certain way. Nature has spent millions of years of evolution fine-tuning it to make sure that I do the right things to stay alive long enough to have kids that have kids." And I was like, "Okay, well, then if that's really the game, then really life is a game of neurochemistry." And I realized through the pursuit of success, which early in my career I was sort of pseudo successful at, and luckily it was just enough sort of pseudo success that I realized, "Oh, this is never going to bring me pleasure." And so I better divorce myself from outcomes and think only about what would I enjoy struggling at. So struggling well became a focus. But really the the meta focus was this is a game of managing my neurochemistry. And whenever I have a problem in my life, it's because I am in a neurochemical state that does not feel good. And so nature has all this energy pushing me at my back to get away from that. And it's moving me away from certain things and towards others. And then thinking it So I in my family, thankfully not my immediate family, but my extended family, there is much addiction. And so I got to see it up close. I was like, "Yeah, that doesn't look like a lot of fun." And so um I never went down that path, but it became clear to me that people were doing drugs to manage their neurochemistry. So I was like, "Okay, this is then the the game." Like the with a capital T, game with a capital G. Like this is the game. It's neurochemical management. And so all of my rules in life, all of my hard pursuit in business, all of that, even love is recognizing, "Oh, this is a game of neurochemistry." And so, I've been married now for 19 years in change. Been together for 21 years. And part of that was once I understood that relationships are this sort of ever-changing neurochemical cocktail, I wasn't surprised when that initial drug-like love of just being consumed by thoughts of my wife when it went away. Wasn't surprising to me. So, that's sort of the nuances knowing that, wink wink, the meta game is just neurochemistry. What's up, everybody? Tom Bilyeu here. Quick question for you. How many times have you sat down in your life to write out a list of goals and said to yourself, "Real this time, I'm going to make every single one of these happen, and I will not quit." If you're like most people, you set a lot of goals, but you don't achieve all of them. In fact, you may not have achieved any of them. The great news is, I don't care if you are the highest achiever in the world, or if 2021 has beaten you down hard. What I know for a fact is that humans are wired to adapt, and no matter how difficult the previous year or years have been, you can find your path to fulfillment and achieving your goals. Look, my friend, trust me, learning how to stick to your goals and achieve them again and again is a skill, and you can learn it. You can master it, and when you do, it will serve you for life. Great news is, it's a process, like anything else. 2021 has been hard for a lot of people, so I'm going to be going live later this month to host a workshop on exactly how to run that process called how to make any goal stick. Now, you can go to this link, or click the button on your screen, and get free access to this live training. And when you register, I'll send you a bonus class from Impact Theory University to get you started. All right, see you soon over at the live workshop, and until then, my friend, be legendary. Take care. So, it's interesting. So, you have sort of boiled it down to this purely reductionistic Yeah. like chemical soup. I just need to manage the molecules in my brain, and, you know, taking drugs, you know, using addictive substances is maybe one way to manage it in the short term, but in the long term, that's not going to work out, and I know that cuz I've seen it, you know, in people in my family, and maybe you just intuited it also. So, so you kind of immediately went to the pain side of the balance and said, I'm going to do these things which I think are more likely in the in the long run to be a good way to manage my neurochemistry. It was a bit stumbling than that in terms of I wasn't clever like that in my early 20s. It took me a long time to piece all this together. But, um, pleasure-pain balance is probably something we cuz it's going to keep coming up. We should take the time to define that because this is just revelatory in your work. I didn't understand that until I read your book, and yeah, so if you can walk people through that, I think it'd be really helpful. Sure. So, one of the most I think one of the most important findings in neuroscience in the last 100 years is that pleasure and pain are co-located, by which I mean that the same parts of the brain that process pleasure also process pain. That's so crazy. I know. And they work like opposite sides of the balance of a balance, like a balance a teeter-totter in a kids' playground, except when the balance is at rest and level, it's actually parallel with the earth. It's not tipped one way or another. So, when we do something that's pleasurable or reinforcing or rewarding, that balance tips to the side of pleasure. When we experience something painful, like cutting our finger, it tips to the side of pain. But, one of the overarching rules governing this balance is that it wants to remain level. It doesn't want to be tipped for very long either to pleasure or pain. And the the brain will work very hard to restore a level balance or what neuroscientists call homeostasis. And one of the things that I find fascinating is that it's really a biological imperative not just in our own physiological symptoms but in the universe to go to homeostasis. And that any deviation from neutrality is actually a form of stress. In fact, biologists define stress as a deviation from neutrality or in either direction. In either direction. Right. And that's really that's the key. Um you know, getting back to sort of the problem with modern life and one of the main problems with modern life is that we have too many pleasurable substances and behaviors and that is actually stressing us out. It's literally stressful because we're causing this huge deviation from from neutrality. But getting back to the pleasure-pain balance. So when we do something just obviously pleasurable like, you know, I don't know, having a beer or playing a video game or eating a piece of chocolate. It depends who you are cuz people are different. But in general, those things are pleasurable to many people. What we do is we get a little tilt to the pleasure side and we get the release of dopamine in our brain's reward pathway which is this evolutionarily phylogenetically conserved, very very old part of the brain that's been unchanged in our brains for just millennia and it's also identical in other species all the way down to the lizard which is why it's sometimes called the lizard brain. You know, our evolution meant that we've piled a whole bunch of other layers on top but that part is exactly the same as it's always been and it's the part that gets us again to approach pleasure and avoid pain. But here's really the key. The way that the brain restores a level balance or homeostasis after this deviation to the pleasure side is to not just bring it level again, but tilt it an equal and opposite amount to the side of pain, and that's called the opponent process reaction. And I sort of think of that as these little gremlins that represent neuroadaptation hopping on the pain side of the balance, but they like it on the balance, so they stay on until it's tipped an equal and opposite amount. That's that moment of wanting just one more video game, you know, another beer, another piece of chocolate. Now, if we wait a little bit because it's a powerful physiologic drive to reach for more. If we wait, the gremlins hop off, that feeling passes, and homeostasis is restored. And we want homeostasis to be restored. It's really important because it's fundamental to the resilience of this system because when the system is at baseline homeostasis, it's sensitive, right? It senses new pleasures. It's aware of um potential dangers and painful things, so we know to avoid them. But let's look at what happens if we, instead of waiting for those gremlins to hop off, instead immediately reach for another beer, another piece of chocolate, another video game. Another major rule of this balance is that with repeated exposure to the same or similar stimuli, that initial response gets weaker and shorter in duration, and the after response gets stronger and longer. So, I think of that as sort of an Arnold Schwarzenegger type gremlin hopping on the pain side to bring it balance again. So, we need stronger gremlins, right? We need more. And essentially what's happening in the brain, by the way, with those with those neuroadaptation gremlins is that we're down regulating our own dopamine transmission. We're taking our dopamine receptors that are on the outside of our neurons, and we're reabsorbing them into the neuron, all of which is a way to accommodate this huge increased bolus in dopamine. But again, what ends up happening is now that opponent process reaction is stronger and longer. So, we go from, you know, shorter and weaker to stronger and longer on the pain side of the balance. And that is the fundamental sort of paradox or vicious cycle that we get into, especially when we're living in a world in which we have nearly universal ubiquitous access to highly potent, highly reinforcing drugs and behaviors, which don't just release a little bit of dopamine, but a whole huge bolus. And we're all surrounded by them all the time every day. And over time, what that means is that we're bombarding our dopamine reward pathway with way more dopamine than our primitive brains can handle. And the result is that we end up with enough gremlins on the pain side of the balance to fill this whole room. And they are now camped out there. And that's called allostasis. So, we've gone from homeostasis to allostasis. Now, allostasis is where our body has to accommodate and work very, very hard to try to restore homeostasis. And if it's unable to do that using the normal mechanisms, it essentially changes our set point. So, now we've got those gremlins camped out there. They're not leaving. Even when we wait a while, they're camped out there. You might also even think of it as sort of the fulcrum of that balance shifting slightly to the side means that our our our balance is tipped to the side of pain. It's actually easier to tip it to the side of pain. It's easier to tip it to the side of pain, and it's really, really hard now to experience pleasure. And we need a lot more a lot more pleasure to do it. And when we're not using, we're in a state of anxiety, universal symptoms of withdrawal from any addictive substance, anxiety, irritability, insomnia, dysphoria, and craving for our drug. And so, this is the fundamental problem. And what I hypothesize in my book, because I actually believe it's true, although somewhat controversial, is I mean, I guess I don't know how controversial it is. I think it's a relatively new idea. If you look at rates of depression and anxiety all over the world today, they are going up. Skyrocketing. Skyrocketing. Suicide rates, too. Also, physical pain. The richest countries in the world are the countries that have the most It's bananas. suicide, anxiety, depression, and physical pain. And this is by many different measures, many different survey measures, many different types of studies. So clearly we have something very strange going on here, where the more we have of the kinds of, you know, ideal things that we think would make a good life, right? Lots of food, lots of fun stuff, um, you know, lots of medicines to protect us from, you know, illness and pain. We've clearly reached some kind of tipping point where we're now essentially more miserable than ever. And the question is, why? Why would that be? And I do think that the pleasure-pain balance explains that. Because our primitive brains were not wired for an easy, hyper-convenient world, we are suffering as a result of all of this access to these feel-good things. This is bananas. So, what I love about science is that it makes predictions, hypotheses. And like you're saying, that's as you were explaining the pleasure-pain pain balance, I was thinking, oh, this makes certain hypotheses about what then would result. So, for instance, that you would start taking a drug and then you would need more and more and more of it to get the same level of pleasure, which of course anybody looking at drug addiction knows that that's exactly what happens and people are chasing insane amounts of the drug to get the same high, which they can never quite recapture. Um, it would also predict that we'd have these elevated levels of things like fibromyalgia, where it's just sort of generalized pain and I don't know why I'm in pain. Right. Uh, which of course we see. And so it's really, I mean, it's a little unnerving, but it's nice to have a potential solve for why all these things are happening. In the book, you talk about somebody who was doing cutting and they just couldn't stop themselves because it was making them feel something. Right. That is really crazy, but certainly lends a lot of credence to this pleasure-pain balance. Yeah, so let's talk about cutting for a second because it gets to, you know, the the sort of what to do about this. And and we started out talking by what what you sort of, you know, intuitively figured out what to do about this problem, which is essentially what Dopamine Nation recommends, which is to say, the first thing that we need to do is to cut out all of these feel-good substances and behaviors. At least for long enough for those neuroadaptation gremlins to hop off and for homeostasis to be restored. Yeah, essentially dopamine fasting, right? Well, and whatever your source of dopamine is, to cut it out for long enough. Now, in my clinical experience, in my practice, because I have patients who come in seeking help for anxiety, depression, insomnia, and the first thing that I will typically do is to have them cut out their feel-good drugs and behaviors. Very counterintuitive, right? Because you're going to feel worse before you feel better cuz as soon as you do take the the weight off the pleasure side, you're going to get this balance slamming to the side of pain because now you've accumulated all these gremlins, right? But if you wait long enough without using, they eventually do hop off. In my clinical practice, it takes a minimum of a month abstaining for that to happen once impressive you got that teenage girl to cut out marijuana for a month. I was like, All right, how's she going to pull this off? Right, right. Yeah, and it's hard to do because um you know, the sensation is that that I'm depressed and anxious and that's why I'm using because it relieves it. And what we're not able to see is the true cause and effect of oh, because I'm using this substance repeatedly and bombarding my you know, dopamine reward pathway, that is why I'm depressed and anxious. And and that's the thing that we're just that cause and effect loop we're not good at seeing. But you know, she was willing to take the that leap of faith to stop smoking cannabis for a month and ultimately what what she discovered, and this is really the beauty of this intervention, is that she herself gathered data and realized, you know, after First of all, she realized the first 2 weeks she felt horrific. Vomiting, you know, she had she realized that was her realization, oh my goodness, I was really addicted. Like I hadn't realized I was, but that physiological response when she stopped was a wake-up call for her. And then when she got to 4 weeks, she just felt so much better. You know, less depression, anxiety, more time to do other things, more enjoyment in other things cuz of course with addiction our our our focus narrows on that one thing. And then she herself was motivated. Now, did she want to, you know, continue to abstain from cannabis? No, she didn't. Most of my patients don't, but she wanted to use really differently than she had before. She wanted to have a different relationship with cannabis. She certainly wanted to use less. She certainly didn't want to use every day cuz there is something important about that 24-hour cycle and if we're sort of pinging our reward pathway every single day, we're more likely to accumulate those gremlins on the pain side of the balance and to develop tolerance. What is it about weed? People be smoking weed like it is crazy. There are people in my own life that be smoking weed. I don't Is it Is it the sort of perceived harmlessness or is there like I whatever people get out of weed, I don't get. I will say the The caveat is sex on weed is crazy. Like in like when you first do it and of course even though I rarely do it, I find that it does diminish over time. Yeah. But why weed? What what what's going on? Well, I mean so as as with all intoxicants, they mimic a chemical that our brain makes and our brain makes a version of cannabis that binds to the anandamide receptor and weed is essentially a super potent form of a chemical that our brain makes anyway. And if you look at the evolution of weed over the past 30 to 50 years, it's slowly been made much more potent. So you know, our grandparents weed is not our kids weed, right? It's gone from really a soft drug to a hard drug which also makes it more addictive. If you look at the sort of things that make something addictive. controversial? Cuz for a long time people are like, come on, you can't get addicted to weed. Mhm. You know, I guess it is probably still controversial. It's not at all controversial for me because I would say about a third of my clinical practice is people coming in wanting help for a cannabis addiction. Woah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm in Northern California. You know, cannabis is is medicine and a lot of people end up addicted. The data show that about 9 to 10% of people who use weed will end up addicted to weed, but that's probably an underestimate especially given the rising rates of daily cannabis use. The other thing about cannabis is not only was it less potent in the 1960s and 70s, but people tended to be weekend recreational users with friends. What the data show now is that many many more people are using daily. They're using all day long and they're using a highly potent form. So it's essentially like smoking a pack of cigarettes. People wake up, they start smoking, they smoke all through the day and then and start again the next day and there are more and more weed users like that than there used to be a generation or two ago. Yeah, it's really like even when I was a kid, it was like I remember seeing weed for the first time and freaking out. I was like, "Yo, like that might as well have been heroin." I was like really sketched out by it and I was like, "Okay, I need to get away from this." Right. Uh and admittedly I grew up with a mother who was just beating us about the head, neck, and chest about staying away from drugs and if somebody like she used to quiz us if somebody offers drugs, what do you do? Where do you go? Sounds like me. Yeah, that's great. Certainly worked. Neither my sister or I use any drugs. Um and now it's like really popular. And I don't have a beef with it if like people have a healthy is a weird word to use when talking about drugs, but if they have a or you know, relationship with it that isn't detracting from the rest of their life, cool. No moral judgments whatsoever. But it is interesting to me from like an anthropological standpoint to watch how it has changed in culture to go from this thing that only potheads, which used to be a super derogatory term, would use to now it's like you almost have to do it to be cool. Right. And the other thing, very important, I mean, you know, cannabis has become medicine, right? And and there there is clearly short-term medical utility. I will say say though that the studies showing medicinal benefit, whether it's for seizure spasticity or for pain or for, you know, other indications are really short-term studies. We do not have good long-term studies showing long-term benefit, especially when used daily. Um but people have this notion that cannabis is very safe and that it's not addictive. And we do know, you know, from studies out of NIDA that the more people associate something as being medicinal, the less likely they are to be concerned about the dangers or the harms. So, is there studies coming out that show dangers and harms? Oh, yeah, of course. I mean, especially again with uh long-term use. First of all, smoking anything is bad for you, right? So, um certainly um lung damage is is huge. And most people who use cannabis, whether recreationally or medicinally, smoke it. They're most people are not, you know, doing edibles. There are people who do edibles, people do it in combination, but most people smoke it. Um and there are a lot of uh potential downsides associated with again, especially with daily long-term cannabis use. Not the least of which is the potential of becoming addicted. Yeah, it's interesting. So, yeah, addiction is uh a whole thing that you go into in the book. It's really fascinating, the lengths to which the human mind will go to get these dopamine fixes. Right. Um the story that you I think it's the first story you tell in the book about the guy using electricity to stimulate himself, which is pretty intense. Uh but the lengths that people will go to when they get in that cycle. Um so, he would he created this machine, not to be too graphic, that he would attach to the more sensitive bits of himself. Yes. Uh and he's I think there was one point where he said he could keep himself like just below orgasm for like 20 hours. And Right. that just that was exhausting to to read, let alone to do. What what's going on for somebody at a a sort of physiological level when they get into that loop? And then, how do we begin to work our way out of it? Well, I mean, he progressed to that, right? Over he started out just um with compulsive masturbation to images, but over many years, he ultimately progressed to that. And again, that speaks to tolerance, needing more of a drug to get the same effect over time, or more potent forms. And so, the machine for him was this very potent form. I will also say that it also it it it it it enlisted his creativity, which was part of the appeal, and which which I often see with people I've read the book, so I know what you mean, but tell people cuz I found this really interesting. Yeah, I mean, well, it it, you know, he built the machine himself, right? And he's a scientist, so that was something that was exciting for him. Um, you know, it and figure out and know what he was like part of Right. Right. Exactly. And then, you know, you can you can imagine the anticipation because what what what we experience when we're either euphorically recalling using our drug of choice or we get reminded of it from something in our environment environment, we actually get a little bit of a dopamine spike just from that, followed by a little dopamine deficit state, which is then, you know, triggers our craving or our drive Really makes you want to do it. So, just thinking about it feels good for a second, then bad, and so you're like, "Oh, I got to go do it." That's right. That's right. What a gnarly trick. Yes, it's very gnarly. But basically, um, and then also he he could program all these different things. I mean, that then was part of the excitement, too. Different settings. He was letting people control it over the internet. I mean, it really got like, from again, from an anthropological standpoint, God bless him for being so vulnerable and like willing to discuss it, which is amazing. Yeah. But what a glimpse into the human mind. And I do not take myself out of that. I am just as mired in being a human animal as anybody else, but wow, it was How much he got caught up in it, right? How he was destroying his marriage, dissing from his kids. I mean, Yeah. Yeah. Really fascinating. But the part like, so A, I've said this many times, I am so glad, like, truly, you want to I have the chills now, gratitude for the fact that internet pornography did not exist when I was a teenager for I can tell, like, I was very joyful when you found that one kid that had like the VHS porno tape. Uh but at least then I had to give it back. Right. Right. The thought of having access to that with my undeveloped prefrontal cortex, Right. oh dear god. Yeah. And that's really one of the reasons I decided to lead with that story, even though I think for for some people it was sort of too much. But I really I really wanted to make the point that like this is a really serious problem, right? You know, I mean pornography addiction is huge and and we're talking about addiction a lot more than we ever did before, but we're not really talking about pornography addiction. And it affects a whole lot of people and when people get caught in that cycle, it's really hard to describe what it's like, but you're really trapped. You're trapped in it. You want to stop. It's not even really working or it's only kind of working. Um you know, when you're not doing it, you feel horrible. Again, it's the the balance of reset to the side. And yet the compulsion drive is so enormous that it's just really, really hard to get out of the loop. And then when you try to abstain, there are just constant reminders. Everything you look at is about sex. Everything has sexual images. They're That's right. Well, that was that was Well, that was part of his really disciplined approach to to abstinence was that he covered his own body because he realized that alone would be a trigger for him. I mean, talk about triggers, right? When you you get to that point. But I mean, I will say that like even I in my Stanford inbox email get solicitations for pornography for middle-aged men with like images, images of naked women. I mean, I I can tell you I've never looked at any of that online, but somehow for some reason those come into my inbox. Imagine if I actually had a problem with that. I mean, you know, it's you just see it and then you're you're you can't not go further. So, I really do think it's a huge problem and I mean as as a parent of teenage boys How do you deal with it? Well, I mean how do you deal with it? I mostly just Well, first of all, we talk about addiction a lot in my family and the kids have heard ad nauseam about the pleasure pain balance. So, I mean I hope that they take that with them and and that they understand what to look for as they're becoming addicted you know, the development of tolerance, needing more and more to get the same effect, more potent forms, doing things in secret, um you know, doing things that are contrary to your values. Like all of that matters. Those are signals for your brain that like, oh, I'm maybe get getting, you know, caught up, lying about what you're doing, covering it up, feeling ashamed about it. shocked about the whole part about radical honesty. Talk about a part I did not expect in a book about dopamine. And that sort of ties into the the 12-step recovery that you praised pretty heavily in the book and I've heard you talk about. So, okay, I think everybody will relate to. There's something that you have, whatever that thing may be. It may be illicit drugs, it may be pornography, it may be sex, it may be in my case the drive to accomplish, right? It It comes in many many forms. How do we, if we have an unhealthy relationship with that? So, we've talked about the fasting, dopamine fasting, but the 12 steps, why do they work? How does radical honesty work into this? Right, yeah. So, the 12 steps are really interesting. At the core of the philosophy of the 12 steps is the idea that a spiritual transformation is necessary in order to overcome your addiction. Um and that's that's an idea that that people have talked about now for at least a hundred years. Um but but really, um the 12 steps is very practical. It gives you specific things to do. And I think this is really important because when I look at sort of mental health treatment and psychotherapy, what I think is lacking in a lot of mental health treatment and is specific things to do. We talk a lot about, you know, knowing what your thoughts are and understanding your emotions and seeing how those are connected. And of course, that's great, but people need to know what to do on a day-to-day basis. And this is where I think the 12 steps is super powerful because it lays out in those 12 steps, you know, cognitive and metacognitive strategies, but also like step four, you need to make a list of your character defects. Then you need to share that with somebody else and your higher power. Dude, that really works cuz I've done it. So I can tell you that it's it's powerful. And I so and I talk about this in the chapter on radical honesty. I think the way that it works is that we're all naturally inclined to want to blame other people for our problems and not see our own our own problems and our own contribution to the messes in our lives. But as long as we continue to do that, we are not actually telling true stories. And telling true stories is really, really important to be able to get all of the data, incorporate the data in that thing we call our brain, you know, punch it through, and then come up with good solutions. If you only have part of the data, you can't come up with a good solution, right? I mean, that's just basic. But as long as we're not telling ourselves or others the truth about what is happening in our lives, we can't come up with good solutions. So the importance of telling true autobiographical narratives, or at least as close as we are able as human beings to get to that, is I think really, really core to well-being and good mental health. So that that's a that's a key part part of it. book you talk about somebody who, honestly reading the book, I was like, "I'm not so sure he should have told the truth in this example." Do you remember the Yes. So, one, if you can quickly recap that story, and then two, did he make the right decision? Oh, yeah, yeah, that was a great story. So, this was a This was a physician that I saw, um who uh told this Oh, I I thought I mean, I saw him like 10 or 15 years ago, and I I never forgot his story because it to me it was just so powerful. He basically was in medical school. He got a DUI. Um you know, he'd been drinking and driving. He went to a party, drank too much. The cop was waiting to catch people cuz he probably had a quota. Uh got this guy, you know, slapped with a DUI. Uh you know, smart guy, got a lawyer. The lawyer said, "No problem. You just need to go to court on this date and plead no not guilty. Just plead not guilty, and I'll take care of the rest." So, he's like, "Okay, I can do that." So, he dresses up, he goes to court. You know, he they call him up. He's sitting in the stand. He said, "Hi The judge has said, "How do you plead?"" And all of a sudden, like he has this experience where he remembers that his dad always told him to tell the truth. He looks around, and he sees sort of like the other, you know, folks, um not as privileged in himself as he as himself sitting in the courtroom with DUIs, who probably weren't going to be able to get a fancy lawyer, who would, you know, help him drop the charges. And he had sort of a sense of like feeling like, you know, he checked his privilege and was like, "That's not really right." So, it was like a convergence of things he had been taught, his values, and he just couldn't bring himself to lie in that moment. And he said, "I plead guilty." And apparently, the judge was sort of like went, you know, the judge was sort of half asleep, just running through the DUIs in the morning, and sort of like did a double take and looked at him and said, "Are you sure?" And he said, "Yeah, I'm sure. I plead guilty." And the point of the story is that for years, I mean, even decades afterwards, this DUI was a nightmare for this guy cuz he was a he was in medical school. So, that means every single time he filled out any kind of paperwork, which was on a regular basis, about, you know, getting hospital privileges or going to work here or getting malpractice insurance. He had to say, "Yeah, I got a DUI. I got a DUI." He had to do classes. He had to do all this stuff. I mean, and he moved to California, you know, he's practicing in California. And so it changed from the first state where he went through all this. Then he moved to California, he has to do it again. Right, he had to do it for his California license. years after, like a decade after this or something, and you're like, "Oh, do you have a problem?" No, this was, you know, a decade ago, but they were worried, and so they sent me to you to make sure he's okay. And I was just like, it's not like this ended up being a good on you. You told the truth, and everybody recognized, like, well done. This has been a never-ending parade of painful things that he has to go through. Except that his take-home from it was, "I'm really glad I told the truth." And I think the fact that I told the truth might have protected me from becoming an alcoholic because there was a way in which those immediate bad consequences from truth-telling shifted my behavior. And although it was painful, it was much better than the consequences that I would have had to suffer had I actually become an alcoholic, which he was on on the road to become, especially given that both of his parents were alcoholics, right? They were good parents, but they had addiction. So that moment in time when he chose to tell the truth about something and incur huge consequences seemed like the wrong decision objectively in the immediate aftermath and for many years afterwards, but for him in terms of what it did to his brain and his subsequent choices, he makes the link that it changed his brain and changed his choices and actually protected him from worse bad consequences. To me, that was a hugely powerful message about the the virtues of telling the truth. And I give other stories in the book that that point to the same thing that there's something that seems overwhelmingly wrong and dangerous about telling the truth in the moment, but that in the long run might actually be hugely protective for us. And one of the ways it might do that is that short-term immediate bad consequences change our behavior. That is what change When I look at my patients and the ones who get into recovery from bad addictions, it's often consequences, serious loss and consequences, that gets them to say, "You know what? I don't want to do this anymore." So, if there if there's a way in which truth-telling can incur those consequences in a smaller form immediately, that is enough to shape our behavior in an iterative fashion over time to get us in a much better place. In fact, maybe the polar opposite might Those are all Those moments of truth-telling are all little forks in the road, right? That make the difference between ending up in a really bad place versus a really good place many years later. That's so intriguing. Um there are addicts that will go through the horrendous things that they go through as their life downward spirals, but then as they In fact, in the This might have been an interview. I can't remember if she said this in the book or in an interview, but you said that some of the most profoundly balanced people that you know are people that are deep into recovery. Yeah. And that there's something about the hardship that makes them find equilibrium in a more profound way than somebody who's never gone through something, and that some addicts actually say, "I'm grateful for my addiction." Yes. Right. Which I'm super surprised to hear. What do you think from a neurochemistry standpoint what's going on? Is it just pleasure-pain principle or something else? I think it's more than just the pleasure-pain principle. I mean, clearly when they're in recovery, they're not using. Um, they've restored homeostasis. They've got more homeostatic resilience, you know, able to perceive small pleasures and enjoy them. Um, but but I think that the fundamental stance that for me makes people in recovery really modern-day prophets for the rest of us is this incredible stance of humility and a recognition that we're all vulnerable and we're all flawed and we're all broken and we need each other and we need these practices. So, again, it's not just enough to think about what I should do or could do or to, you know, have sort of a a deep insight into my psychological makeup. I need to get up every day and I need to do these practices. I need to tell the truth. I can't lie about anything at all because that could compromise my recovery. Now, it turns out that telling the truth about things large and small is probably a good thing for all of us to do for the reasons that we partially just talked about, other reasons as well that I talk about in the book having to do with how it fosters deep intimacy, etc. Creates a plenty mindset as opposed to a scarcity mindset. But but these little wisdoms and enacted in daily life taken one day at a time end up being a powerful philosophical and spiritual underpinning for how to live life. And that is why people many people in recovery from addiction will will just out and out say, "I'm so grateful for my addiction because my addiction oriented me on a way of living my life which gives makes it deeply meaningful in a way that I might never have arrived at had I not had this obstacle." Talk to me about the spiritual element. You There was a really surprising moment in the book where you were telling electro-stimulating guy to get down on his knees and pray. And as somebody who's not religious, I was like, "Whoa." Was taken aback, but as you explained the like sort of physical pattern interruption, Yeah. it was like, "Ah, maybe this really does make sense." Mhm. So, I mean, there are a lot of layers to that. I mean, fir- first of all, I think that in general in medicine, we are doing ourselves and our patients a disservice by not talking about spirituality. There's absolutely an important role for spirituality, you know, in the room with our patients. And and that can take many different forms. It doesn't have to be religious or, you know, participation in a religion. I mean, we we all are, you know, spiritual creatures, right? Would you define that as seeing something bigger than ourselves? Yeah, I mean, very broadly, right? Identifying that we are not running the show. Um right? I mean, I mean, you might even identify it as, you know, neuroscience or, you know, neurochemistry. Since you're Since for you, this the sort of let's say, transformative moment was the moment that you realized, "Oh, it's all about my brain chemistry." So, and you know, and But in a big, beautiful way. In a big, beautiful way. is fascinating to me of like to to contemplate like what has happened, what what drop in the cosmic pond has rippled out to become us. Well, and that's that's exactly right, that that the way that we are wired is a reflection of the cosmic order. And that is totally awe-inspiring, right? And that's a form of you know, to be in awe of that is certainly a form of spirituality. So, you know, I I sort of And but let me just say, in academic circles, in medicine, God is a four-letter word. Like, we're not supposed to talk about that. So, it was really kind of Because it's read as make-believe? Yeah, it's a supernatural, it's uh you know, pseudo science. But it's true, we we don't science Science hasn't been able to capture. Uh-huh. Do you believe though that we have a god-shaped hole in our minds? Not sure what word to fill that in with. Yeah, so yeah, people talk about the god spot, right? Like that that there we have actually evolved, you know, parts of our brain that are intended for for worship or transcendence. I mean, there's science to show that that that's probably true. I believe that that's true. Yeah. That feels really true to me and and from a because I like to anchor things in science and I don't need things to be literally true for them to be useful. If that's a like I doubt I doubt that there I don't know. Admittedly, there is something about this world that I do not understand because I cannot explain to you how we have come to be. Um I doubt it's sort of as described in religious texts, but there's something going on and there's some reason that we have evolved for that and it could be group cohesion. I don't know, but that it becomes sort of an allergic reaction in the scientific community does not strike me as useful. And so figuring out why we have these very strong compulsions towards these things seems like a useful thing to go into with an open mind. Yeah, I I totally agree. And I think again, this sort of harsh division between science and religion or science and spirituality is not the way to go. I think the answer is going to be, you know, where do those two things meet? So so for this patient, also he was raised in in the Catholic church, you know, that was part of his early underpinnings. Um he was not actively involved in the church at that time, but I just had this sense that that would be useful for him. And when I I said to him, you know, if you need a drop to your knees to do that, what I was really getting at is the important importance of the body. We are so disembodied. We are so caught up, you know, in our heads and separated from our bodies. And it's so important to get back into our bodies and and make that connection again. And it's also a very important part of getting out of this kind of compulsive loop where what is happening in our minds seems to take over everything else. But remembering that we have bodies is a really good way to to break that loop. And so whether it's dropping to your knees in prayer, and by the way, I do think that that stance of obeisance does uh enlist those parts of our brains that were intended for worship and transcendence. interesting. Yep, I do think interesting. So, I'm a huge believer that what you're doing with your body will send a signal to your mind. I have never thought about kneeling as sort of like there's a reason that we kiss, right? There's a reason that that's become a universal expression of that affection. Uh I've never thought though about kneeling as uh an act of, what do you call it? Not subservience, but or humility. I mean, if you look across religions, you know, whether it's Muslim or Christians, um I'm not so so sure um um about Judaism, but certainly, you know, in Christianity and in the Muslim faith, I mean, people bow down. It's sort of it and I think it's a stance of humility fundamentally. Uh you know, a kind of an an a way of saying I'm so small. My ship is so small and the ocean is so large. And it kind of it's about shifting your perspective, really. It's also a bit like showing your belly from a dog's perspective because it's the worst fighting stance I can imagine. Uh-huh, yes, like rolling over. Yeah. Yes, that's right. Right, so it's that's that's interesting cuz that's reflexive, isn't it? The dog just immediately says, "Well, you know, uncle." I love it. That's great. I never thought of that. Um I do think so. I do think and I think then once we do do physically or physiologically it it there's a cascade, right? That then involves our, you know, our brains as well, our central nervous system as well. And so so that's why I told him, you know, it was a way to kind of break it and break the loop um to get perspective, to center himself um in these parts of his brain that are wired for transcendence. Um and and by the way, there are interesting studies, you know, actually looking at brain imaging when people are, for example, doing centering prayer or whatever and finding consistent areas of the brain, the parietal lobe, parts of the prefrontal cortex that light up during those activities. Mhm. Do you think there's also an element cuz like I'm imagining this whole honesty thing about connection, about and in fact, he talked about this a lot. I'm fine when I'm with my wife, but when I travel and I'm alone, now I get myself into trouble. Right. And there is an element cuz I was religious as a kid and I remember it made me feel like I was never alone. Yes. What religion? Uh generic sort of Lutheran-ish. Like my parents weren't really hardcore about it. Um and That's a nice feeling. It is a nice feeling and I do wonder if some of it has that ring of like not only am I not alone, but there's somebody here seeing me and so that matters too, but they're also maybe seeing me in a way that makes me feel connected cuz you you catalog somebody who was having Oh, this gets into shame, which was a really interesting part of the book and I think a really powerful part of life. Uh you call it prosocial Which I think is super intriguing. But she was saying that she went to the church and sort of laid out all of the realities, not not lying and they didn't exactly respond well. And so then she was like, this is that sort of shameful, judging God. Right. That's right. there's something interesting about dropping to your knees in prayer of depending on your context, it could be I'm being watched over and somebody sees my shamefulness and so it makes me not want to indulge in it or I'm being watched by somebody who loves me and I feel connected and you know a a desire to be open and honest. But either way, it's a pattern interrupt. It's it sort of has that somebody just knocked on the door effect. Oh [ __ ] you've been caught and like, you know, it knocks you out of that way of thinking which is really interesting. a couple a couple I some thoughts just to what you just said. So yeah, the pattern interrupt um the other thing that I I recommend recommend which also works as a pattern interrupt is just immersing your face or your hands in an ice cold water bath. Just again, a kind of a sensory stimulus that kind of then gets those neural central circuits firing in a different way. But I wanted to talk a little bit about what you were saying how you felt um that you were never alone. Which is a wonderful and important feeling and I think a deep need that we all have. And one of the things I'm just curious what your thoughts on this that I've noticed about social media is the way that we now travel through our entire day connected with other people through the internet. And I think that there are ways that this is really wonderful because so much of our nomadic life is about connection and then dis forced disconnection. Like if you think about, you know, hundreds of years ago and I'm no historian, but um you know, families they they were together all the time. Um work and play were integrated in family life. This is like pre-industrial revolution, right? But one of the things that's happened with the industrial revolution is people started to work outside the home. Um and and so there's this this constant what I think was very new was sort of whatever your tribe was and let's say family is the immediate tribe, you had to break away from them and then there would be this sort of coming together again. And I I'm quite sure that this moment of breaking away from the tribe is hugely anxiety-provoking because nature doesn't really want us to do that because being in tribes is protective, right? We can better protect ourselves from from predators when we're in a tribe. We can shepherd scarce resources. There are all kinds of reasons to be like those penguins, you know, when there's a predator and they they kind of front off and protect the you know, the little penguins in the middle and puff out their chest. I mean, that's what we do. But in modern human life, we're always going away from our tribe and coming back. So what I'm really interested in about social media, of course, there's this totally destructive element to it and addictive element which I I've talked a lot about, but there's also this wonderful piece of it where we we don't need to disconnect in that same kind of way cuz I see this with my teenagers like they'll get up in the morning and they'll like call their friends, right? And they'll be together as they're brushing their teeth and getting ready for school, you know, and then and they'll kind of these small contacts like little accounts coming together all through the day, you know, until they're actually physically together and then they don't need to do that anymore. So I think there's something really good and powerful about the ways in which we can stay connected now. Of course, the downside is that we're all connecting in the matrix and for some of us that means we're not having these in real life connections and we can't make them because we're connecting with strangers in cyberspace. Anyway, I'm curious what your thoughts are about that. It's very interesting. So as somebody that has, you know, built this company on the back of social media, um it's a really interesting dynamic. So I am very thoughtful that social media is sort of um agnostic, right? It's like a knife. You can stab somebody or you can cook something amazing. Um and I wonder a lot what my life would look like if I didn't have my wife. So, she's this incredibly grounding thing, makes me feel connected, that sense of you know, real deep sort of Right. connection with another human being. And so, social media to me is not where I go to seek that touchstone. But, when you talk in a book, and this was the literal thought that I had, funny that it comes up, you talk in the book about um somebody ended up taking a drug to help them wean off opiates, and he said it made me feel like connection worked again. Right. I'm sort of mis-paraphrasing, but that's the rough idea. And I remember thinking, if I were going to take a really hard look at my life, and like, hey, what am I doing right, what am I doing wrong, for whatever reason, my social group is minuscule. So, it's the one what I'll call vulnerability in my life. Where if something happened to my wife, um my sister is the only other person that I see with any regularity outside of my company. And way, thanks for admitting that. That's really cool. Oh, for sure. Um and I wonder how unaware I am of a very dangerous game that I'm playing, that should something happen to my wife, I would suddenly recognize that I've been walking this razor's edge right for the last, you know, 20 years. Cuz I used to be, like, when you were describing that, I was like that in high school. There were people I would talk to on the phone every day. And the thought of not spending hours, like, you know, communicating and emoting and feeling connected, and now it is my wife. And then beyond that, there is nothing. Right. So, it's like, woo, I don't know how dangerous. So, anyway, social media I don't turn to for that. So, I don't I'm very cognizant of be careful the tribe that you build, because when it's a small group of people that truly love and care about you. It's amazing because they'll be there for you when you need it. They're not trying to tear you down. There's There's trust. Right. Mhm. Very well said. When it is a about building a large scalable community, there are times where they're with you and there's times where they're against you. And that can flip like on a dime in the middle of a day, right? So, that like managing communities is sort of its own Right. And so, on that I'm I feel sometimes like I'm playing with a nuclear weapon. It's like incredibly powerful and it can or nuclear power might be a better way to say it. You're playing with nuclear power, you know, it's like incredibly environmentally friendly and does like these this massive amount. But when it goes wrong, Right. holy lord, it reeks just devastation. And so, I'm I have a very sort of careful relationship Yeah. with social media. I do not turn to it for validation or anything like that. I couldn't tell you how many likes I get on a post. I don't check. Okay. Interesting. that's way a dangerous game. Um but it really resonates with me that humans have this need to be like ants. It's such a great where you you come together and you do your little feely bits and then Yeah. So, a couple themes that I think are really important. Number one, you have a person or two in real life that are your core connection, right? And I think that's really important, really healthy. I think there are a lot of people who don't have that. And so, social media is their substitute. And on the one hand, that can be a good thing, especially if there are spaces that can be created where there's deep trust and there won't be this kind of turning on each other. However, I think what people are experiencing cuz I hear about it in my in my patients quite a bit, is that they thought it was a place that they could have that intimacy and trust and then it turned on them. And as you say, because we're talking about very large numbers of people often, when it turns, uh it it's I mean, it's devastating, right? And that you can just being online opens you Right. to the larger group. Right. Like the people that get on a flight, they tweet something what they think is funny, Right. and by the time they land, their career is over. Right. It's like, woof. That is That's a a kind of devastation. You think you're talking to the, you know, 132 people that you follow, and but really, you're talking to all the people that they're also talking to. Right. And that kind of the the the the social media community turning on you is horrific, but tolerable if you have peeps in real life. But if you if social media is the the main place or the only place where you get validation, and you feel connected, that's really dangerous. And there are more and more people, I think, for whom that's true. And I think that's a real real area of concern, especially since it's intoxicating, right? It's a dopamine driver. Like it's very alluring. Whereas the in real life relationships, like people aren't as beautiful or as interesting, or, you know, any of those, and you have to go out and find them. You can't like Twitter, it's like, I can take her or leave her. share my bathroom with this person, right? So, it's more fraught. But if you can make, you know, the real life piece work, it's just so important, and all this time that, you know, we're spending online is also draining, I think, in many instances, those real life relationships, because unlike in your case, and and actually in my case, too, I'm very fortunate to be married to an absolute wonderful man who's definitely my better half. Um you know, I I I feel for people who don't have that, because then, of course, the online spaces, you know, that that's all they have. Um I don't know. It's It's a It's an interesting time. Very interesting, cuz there is a sense when it when social media goes well, it's beautiful. It's really incredible. And when I think about the things it's brought into my life, it's like, "Wow, this is amazing. I've met incredible people, encountered incredible ideas, things that I never would have been able to encounter before." But there's also a sort of rule I have in life, which is don't do the easy thing to get rid of the pain. Far better to suffer and come up with a long-term solution. So, the easy way to explain that is in a business, everybody, when you have something that needs to get done, the hard thing is to hire. The easy thing is to like find a contractor or temp person that can just like come in and do it real fast. But the problem is that that do it real fast buys you the ability to say, "Well, they can just deal with it for now, and then I'll deal with the long-term thing later." And that becomes 6 months, becomes a year, becomes a cultural problem, cuz you didn't The reason hiring is hard is you're looking for like this needle in a haystack of somebody that fits and has the right credentials and you like and they pass a lie detector and all that stuff. And so, you end up cobbling things together with a bunch of people that don't fit all of those requirements. And so, you have a company that's, you know, held together with uh bubble gum and bailing wire. And so, it's And I think that social media opens that same hole of like, instead of going and finding real people, whether it's, you know, joining a charity or, you know, going to uh the dog park and like introducing yourself. Instead of doing that hard thing, people are, you know, doing the social thing and even though there are huge advantages to it, you can't use it as a replacement Right. to doing the hard work of building these long-term relationships. Mhm. Mhm. I absolutely agree. Let me ask you a question. Do you know the difference between someone who crushes big goals in their life year in and year out and someone who can't seem to get ahead? What is up, my friends? Tom Bilyeu here. In my opinion, there are seven strategies that you must use in order to achieve any goal. The more of them that you can take action on, the greater the chance that you'll achieve your goal. I say that the difference between someone who is an overachiever and someone who fails to hit their goals is that the overachiever does everything they can possibly do to be successful. I said a second ago that there are seven strategies you must use to hit any goal. I'll be teaching them later this month on a live workshop called how to make any goal stick. Great news is, it's a process, it can be taught, and you can deploy it in your own life. You can register for this workshop by going to this link. I'll tell you though, right now quickly, what they are. First, extreme clarity and focus. The average person fails to achieve their goals not because they didn't put in effort, but because they don't actually know what it is that they're trying to accomplish. They're not focused on exactly what they want. Second, massive excitement and motivation. There are two things that motivate us, pleasure and pain. Most people don't properly leverage pain and negative emotions, which means that they're only half as motivated as they could be or at least they're only using half of the tools of somebody else that finds their way to success. Third is desire. Fourth is massive pressure, and this goes back to that idea of negative emotions. If you use it the right way, fear of failure can actually be a very useful thing. Fifth, coming up with the right strategy. Sixth, avoiding the trap of overthinking rather than taking fast, aggressive action. And finally, evaluating your progress, building grit, and adjusting your course. That loop is critical. In fact, that last part is what I call the physics of progress. If you fail to do that, you will never make progress. All right, these are the seven steps that I'm going to walk through in much greater detail on my live workshop, how to make any goal stick. So, go to the link on your screen or click the button below to register. All right, my friend. I will see you soon. Take care and be legendary. Peace. I I one thing that strikes me about you is how strong your will is and how your you know, your enacted will is kind of how you live your life. Um which is interesting for me just because I as I've gotten older um I try more and more to get away from that and not to have my will be uh the thing that I exert. Why? Ah. Well, because I don't always think that my will is the best guide. To? Really almost anything. Um so, I guess what I what I'm finding interesting and we started here at the beginning of our conversation, I'm coming back to it is just I I'm noticing that you and I have identified similar problems but taken divergent um approaches to them. Whereas you you have I don't want to say glorified your will cuz that's not really the right word, but let's say um you actually you've exercised it more maybe even than the I would definitely say I glorify it. Okay. Okay. Okay, yeah. Whereas I have decided that that gets me into trouble and I do better when I'm because I'm a willful I'm temperamentally willful and controlling that I do better when I back away from that and sort of open myself to what maybe the universe is willing or what other people are willing, which is hard for me to do. I think you and I may have come to the same conclusion but we use different words. Okay. I think I'll walk you through sort of my philosophy as a somebody running a business. So, I've made too many mistakes in my life. I'm too hyper aware of the limits of my intelligence for me to think that people just need to do what I say. Mhm. So, the environment that I am psychopathic about creating within my company is that you have to be able to speak to power. If you can't tell me when you think I'm being stupid, if you're worried about hurting my feelings or worried about getting fired, there is no home for you here. I am way too fallible to have a bunch of people around me that will just tell me what they think I want to hear. That that is a one-way guaranteed ticket to failure. Now, there are some people maybe that are just smarter than me, I'm perfectly willing to accept that that they can do that. They can lead with an iron fist and they're just right so often that yeah, like maybe you know, people don't like working for them. Maybe they're a little tyrannical but they're also so amazing that people rightly should just get behind them and follow them. I'm not that smart. But I found that there are other paths to outsize success and one of them is to be what I call the soil. So, I'm the soil in which other seeds grow and blossom into something. But I have the will to one I I know now what makes for good soil by making a lot of mistakes first of all but now I really know what works and I am so vigilant against thinking I know what really works. You feel me? So it's like I know enough to be like, "No, no, no, this stuff really works." But part of the soil that really works is constantly challenging everything I think is true. And so through this dynamic, like here's the real question. How can I, as I become more and more successful, how do I make sure that I don't believe my own hype? Right? Like that's the real game. And so when you can realize that the thing I'm good at is not falling prey to the traps. That's the thing I'm good at. It's just like there are a lot of traps here, whether it's dopamine and understanding that that's a double-edged sword, whether it's that success begets arrogance, but you need arrogance but not too much. So it's like this whole weird thing. So that, like if I was really going to say, the thing that I'm good at is these subtle little nuanced shifts of like, "Hey, dopamine is about seeking. Go forth and seek, my friend, but recognizing what you seek now becomes incredibly important." So I could easily go down a destructive path where I seek glory or attainment or something like that, which, yes, would be just devastating on my entire life. But figuring out that, "Oh, I see. Seeking is the thing. I'll never attain enough to ever be satisfied just the way that the human mind works. Oh, and by the way, make sure you only seek things that are exciting and honorable." And so it's like finding that little cocktail of like all those little nuances, that's sort of my superpower. So when I get it, I get it now. So basically you you have a healthy respect for your own animal nature. Oh, yes. And you say, "This is what I was biologically designed to do. So, I'm going to do this thing, but I'm not going to be I'm not going to forget my humanity in it, and I'm not going to I'm going to recognize I'm going to watch my animal self as I do it, and know that that this is what I'm driven to do, but there's not necessarily I'm going to try to give it some meta meaning at the same time. Is that fair? and I I think if I'd been born 100 years ago, I would have self-destructed. For real. So, but for the grace of God, there I go, whatever that phrase is, like I I have that sense in spades because I saw how dark my life was headed in my early 20s, and only reading about the brain saved me. Now, maybe something else would have saved me. It's very possible had I been born 100 years ago. Right. But, the thing that saved me was realizing that being average was okay, Mhm. but that humans, the average human is the ultimate adaptation machine. And that okay, so this I can get better at this. Mhm. And that was super freeing to me. Mhm. But, what I want people to understand is I'm not well put together. So, really, I have all the sort of dark and terrifying thoughts about myself to this day, but like I just cobbled together all these ideas. Like, this too shall pass, Right. So, you're feeling amazing, this too shall pass. Like, 5 minutes from now, you might be in in absolute despair. And then when I'm in despair, it's like 5 minutes from now, you might be elevated. And so, I never over-invest in either direction. And I think because I feel like there's been some big cosmic joke played on me, which I've learned to reframe, but the cosmic joke that I really really struggled with, it's kind of funny to say it now, but like it wasn't funny when I was stuck in it. There's this movie called Amadeus. Again, to my long-time listeners, I apologize for bringing this up all the time. But, in the movie Amadeus, uh a real-life contemporary of Mozart, laments to God, "Why did you make me just good enough to realize I'll never be as good as Mozart?" And I heard that probably when I was 17 years old, and it hit me like a bolt of lightning. And I was like, "That's my life. Why make me just smart enough to realize I'll never be as smart as the people that are able to lead with an iron fist and just tell everybody follow me cuz I'm always right." Like, why do I have to Like, make me dumb so that I can't see it. I'm okay there. Uh the most self-delusional among us are the happiest. And so, I was really traumatized that I had enough self-awareness to like develop crushing anxiety, which by the way really happened to me. And I went through an ungodly period of time where I couldn't even speak to my own family because I was just so [ __ ] in my own head and so anxious and so self-critical. And because I've had to go through all of that, I've had to rely on tricks, on hacks, on beliefs. Right. And it was only through all of that that it's like, "Oh, cool. I can actually get through my day now." Got it. Got it. Got it. Yeah, I mean, it's just it's really interesting for me because you're going you're doing these things and you're also watching yourself. You have this ability to sort of watch yourself do it. Yes. And it's also interesting to me because I've just chosen like something very different for, you know, as my own had to outline your strategy, what would Like, if you had to put words to it? Yeah. So, I mean, I would say my strategy is almost to opt out of of the dopamine race. Yeah. Of what you're doing. Almost to opt out. How have you so rats will die if you breed them to produce no dopamine. You can put food 8 in from their face and they'll starve to death. Yes. Which is crazy. So how are you I mean writing a book is brutally difficult. Right. So it's not that I'm I want to be a rat without any dopamine and I couldn't even if I wanted to. Um but when I notice myself striving I that's that's at the moment where I go nope. Don't don't do that anymore. you finish the book? Oh well that's the writing was pure joy for me not not Would you have done it if it had stopped being fun? Halfway through. It stops being fun it's not hard. Oh there are times when it's not fun. I mean there are times when it's not fun. What I'm trying to say is if if I had if no one had ever read it I would have enjoyed writing it anyway. It was really pure process. Truly. But it's interesting that you you think of it as not striving. my frame or like my sort of you know the way that I think about it is is opposite to the way that you think about it but it sounds like we've gotten to the same place thinking opposite. utterly interesting. And so that's why I think I think that this is really about neurochemical management. So you and I are trying to get to the same state of what I'll call fulfillment. Yeah. So it's often times doing hard things but with meaning and purpose behind it. Right. And so you're doing these hard things which you talk about this very eloquently in the book about that that registers on the pain side right? Right. So you've got all these gremlins which we didn't even talk about this. So if you overindulge on the pleasure you get this rebalancing to the pain. Right. But if you do hard effortful things you rebound on the pleasure side. it's purely physiologic. That's right. And so I think you and I have done the same thing, which is realize, "Oh, if I do this really hard stuff, which kind of registers on the pain side, but there's meaning and purpose behind it, then I will feel amazing." Yes. Or at least not feel awful. And again, that's also where I think I've reset my expectations to if I'm not miserable in this moment, and I have a lot of moments where I'm for no reason at all unhappy, which I just take as part of the human condition. But if I have some moments that are not like that, I'm like, "Party! Like this is great!" Like I had one of these on the plane coming over here. I'm reading a really interesting article by a colleague who's an evolutionary biologist. And I was reading the article, and there was just something about the article that was just gripped me. I thought it was fascinating. I'm looking down, I see the patterns of the mountains, and I'm just like, "This is awesome. I'm having a great moment right now." So, I can recognize that, right? Because there are a lot of other moments where I don't feel that way at all. And then I just I'm like, "This is going to last for what it's going to last, and then it'll be over, and who knows when another one will come." So, what I don't have is I'm not That's not entirely true. I mean, I I I actually probably do a lot of things to try to set up my life so that those moments will come more often, but it's not like I'm going to accomplish this thing. It's not like that. Whereas I feel like you have you have you do. Like I want to Was it Disneyland? I I want to The next Disney so The next Disney Disneyland will be in a virtual world of this, I assure you. So. right. So, like like that terrifies me. Just even to like have a goal like that and say it. I don't know. No, I wouldn't want to do that, you know? Because you've you're making a mistake of valuing yourself for the accomplishment. Or you're worried that people will laugh at you. Because that was the the hard thing was, "Am I going to say this out loud?" Cuz people will drag me on Twitter if I end up failing at this for too long. I guess I don't have the courage in a way. And oh, I don't like that word. So, to me it isn't it isn't courage because I don't think that I'm anything special. I think I understand the game. I think nature set me up in a certain way and that the more you look at the the hypotheses that our current understanding of the brain predicts and you go, "Well, then if that's true, then for instance would we've already talked about, okay, if dopamine is really about seeking, then make sure that you never ever ever invest in getting." Mhm. Because it is never going to satisfy. Like the the science of it predicts that having will never be satisfying. And every story we hear is that having is never going to be satisfying. So, the thing that another prediction on the same page there. Oh, this is why I am obsessed on I cannot tell you how I'm already thinking about you coming back because this has been so fun. It was a fun conversation. Good conversation. One of the things that people have to be incredibly careful about in their life is recognizing, okay, nature has set me up for certain things and if I look at what those things are, they make predictions about how I should govern my life. Right. And I think what they lead you to every time is the neurochemistry is all that matters. So, because people look at my life and I know exactly what they think. They want my wealth. Mhm. And I'm like, "That's not the interesting part here. The interesting part here is it isn't winning a championship. It's becoming capable of a championship performance." Mhm. And that wanting that, wanting to acquire skills so that you can play well, but never worrying about whether you actually win a championship or not, that's really really important because of the fact that we are the greatest seeking animal that nature has ever output. But but here's the danger a little bit in that where so so I can imagine people hearing you say that and then they think to themselves, okay, I just have to strive more. I have to work harder. that. So help me. Help me. What am I doing wrong? that's dangerous cuz I think that's getting out of balance. up for dopamine pursuit? I I think it's inevitable because what you're essentially saying to people is right here right now is not good enough. You must constantly strive for more more more. Yeah. Right. And and I don't that that's not right somehow. That that that that misses it. That misses it. Because it's then it's it's not really about process. I mean, you say you're about process. I say I'm about process. We say we overlap there, but there's a place where we don't overlap because all that striving to get the thing, I mean, that's no longer process. That's that's that's the striving. It is the striving. So help me understand the difference for you between striving and process. If you're in the flow, right, and you're doing something that gives you meaning and is consistent with your values and and is not hurting other people and potentially gives some small thing, a small thing, a small thing to the world, then it's not really about striving. It's about finding your angle of repose. In a way, it's about finding your angle of repose. a Wallace Stegner. That's the title of the Wallace Stegner book, Angle of Repose. I just think it's a wonderful title. I And that's a visual image for me and it's the image of the balance, too. I mean, if you're fitting into the universe in a just-right way. It's not really a striving feeling. Here's where So, I have this whole concept of base assumptions. What I have found is when two bright people disagree on something, they have fundamentally different base assumptions. Okay. So, my base assumption is that nature has hardwired you and will punish you relentlessly if you don't do hard things. That you must to have a fulfilling life, you must And I have a whole chapter on pressing on the pains. I We agree on that. We agree on that. And so, I'm just saying, "Hey, if you are striving doing a hard thing Yeah. in pursuit of something that is honorable and exciting, so it's actually fun. Right. And you know that the attaining of that thing will never give you satisfaction, but because nature has done all of this to make sure that you go out and get food, you have to actually be going after something. It can't be make-believe. You can't fake yourself out. Okay, that that is fine. I I think we're we're I think where the gap is is as it happens the thing that you are trying to get is a materialistic like king of the mountain thing. Like, "I'm going to be the king of this mountain." That's how it manifests for me. Okay, that's how it manifests for But the important part is meaning and purpose. Okay. But But I think that there's a way to be open to your everyday life such that just doing the things that need doing in your immediate environment can take on epic proportions, but never get you so that you're recognized in some way or Yeah. So, Well, I Okay, if you agree to that. I I think the only difference is so we're all drawn to different things. Um scale is one of my things. Yeah. So I get really excited by scale, but I don't need it. So I think the fundamental question people have to ask themselves is what could I do and love every day even if I were failing. Now that answer will be very different for everybody. For me trying to build the next Disney even if I never do Right. that's thrilling to me. Right. And part of the fun for me Right. is going for something huge. Part of the fun for me is my willingness with a little bit of cheekiness of saying I'm going to build the next Disney. Now as of today I'm starting to gain credibility in some people's minds just cuz I've this is my second in a row hyper growth company that's grown by tens of thousands of percent. Um but part of it in the beginning was I was losing credibility to say it. I wasn't gaining credibility. People looked at me and thought this guy's out of his mind. Like he's never going to do I'm so absurd. He's an an idiot. Like that was the response. And what I loved was even though people are thinking that I'll just keep executing day after day after day after day. And the only reason I can do that in the face of people mocking me and making fun is because I don't care if I actually achieve it. You don't care and you and you believe in the process. Right. Right. Yeah, absolutely. Um here's a trend I've seen in my role as a mentor at Stanford Medical School and I've you know been on the faculty since 2000 2000 early 2000s. It used to be that Stanford medical students were really interested in becoming good doctors. Now that's not enough. Now they want to be a doctor and have a startup. Or they want to be a doctor and you know come up with some great Nobel Prize winning scientific discovery or be a doctor and write the great American novel. And I these people they'll come to my office and they'll be like, this is this is what they talk about. To me it's off-putting. I I sort of lament, whatever happened to just being a good doctor, you know, one patient at a time. Um there's something there that I'm trying to get at that I think you and I are kind of missing on or I'm totally with you. I'm not the guy to give that advice, but I think that advice is absolutely critical. And so, if somebody wants to be the best parent of all time, a doctor and see, you know, patients slowly and methodically and just really thoughtfully, I think that is critically important and I think the vast majority of humanity is better off pursuing that path. Um it would be disingenuous of me to say that that's what I'm interested in. And but I think that that is critically important. But but here's what happens now and I think so this is you know, again introducing social media. That person who might have been content with just being a good doctor or whatever, a good business person, then they go online and then they see you, right? And they see all that you have and all that you've accomplished and then they listen to your message and your message is like just work harder, strive longer, you're just a you know, you're a bundle of chemicals, you know, it was meant you're meant to strive. If you're not striving, you know, you're a wimp. I would never say that, but yes, point well taken. And I I just I I worry about that. Like I just think okay, that's that's going to make that person feel if they haven't got what you you have, then they don't have they haven't done it right. quote Anna Lembke to you and I'll tell you, ultimately people have to take responsibility for themselves. So, I tell people be very careful who you take advice from. Mhm. So, pick the person who's living your idealized life, and then that will tell you what you have to do. Now, be very careful. So, for instance, I want to be Walt Disney. I don't want to be Bob Iger. So, I don't want to be the guy going to China and negotiating, you know, these billion, multi-billion-dollar deals and like doing all the governmental handshaking. Nope, I want to tell stories. Mhm. And I have a very personal reason why I want to do that. Um but yes, people have to be very careful. I don't want to be disingenuous. My life is [ __ ] awesome. On balance. There are There are moments where it's brutal. And so, I want people to be very careful who they take advice from, very careful who they model themselves after. Um but at the same time, there if you organize your life in the right way with the right motivations and North Star and all of that, even going for something absolutely massive and big uh can be wonderful. It can be self-destructive, and I'm so sensitive to that, and I'm so sad that I have to say goodbye to you now. But you asked me to wrap in a certain amount of time, and we have gone over a few minutes. I'm so sorry. It's been so fun. Uh I fully take on that criticism, and I understand um what you're trying to be protective of, and I join in that that most people should really listen to you. Um in in terms of being very thoughtful about not getting into a position where being an amazing doctor or parent or whatever, like that should people should be able to create a create a frame of reference where that is incredibly rewarding. So, in fact, I'm so sorry. I'm one I'll just wrap this point up. I'm curious cuz now I'm curious. ran into a woman at a buffet, and the woman asked my wife what she does. No, I'm an entrepreneur and building a company and she was like Oh, that's so amazing. My wife is like, what do you do? And she's like, well, I'm just a mother. And my wife was like, hold the [ __ ] phone. Don't say just a mother. Like what an extraordinary contribution to the lives of your children and quite frankly to the world because my wife has decided not to have kids, but she's so thoughtful about thank God there are people that are out there doing it and I always that that really hit me really hard that you know, my wife did not want someone to make out like somehow that was lesser than being an entrepreneur. It's just different paths. And so whatever you do, this was the advice I got on having kids. Tom, have kids, don't have kids. Doesn't matter. But whatever you do, do it all the way. Now I'll change that cuz I'm sure you don't like the all the way part. Whatever you do, find meaning and purpose and like fall in love with what you've chosen to pursue. Well, what I've loved about this conversation is how much you and I agree and yet there's still this strange kind of friction where we don't agree and I don't really even yet still know quite where it is, but it's interesting. Definitely. Round two, we will explore the depths of that disconnect. But what an amazing time I had reading your book Dopamine Nation which I hope people will check out and this conversation has been an absolute joy. Thank you so much for coming on. Where can people get the book, follow you? I'm not on social media. Um Understandable. And the book is just wherever books are sold. Amazing. Well worth the read boys and girls of this I assure you. Uh definitely read that book. Really phenomenal and it will have huge implications in your life and speaking of things with huge implications in your life. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe and until next time my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace.