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get yours at a forest l a

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dot com. A

0:19

few decades ago when I was in my twenties.

0:22

I lived with a guy in New York City. We

0:24

were roommates. You know, he was

0:26

obviously an alcoholic. And he was -- Mhmm.

0:29

-- on the wagon when I knew him. But he was always

0:31

telling me these amazing stories of these incredible

0:33

things that happened to him and and

0:35

he would laugh about it but was most

0:37

clear was that actually he was a

0:39

wreck during that period. He was miserable.

0:42

He ruined all his relationships. He

0:44

squandered all of his money. He disappointed

0:46

his parents again and again and again

0:48

and So I finally asked him, were

0:51

you happy during that time? And he said, what

0:53

are you kidding me? was completely miserable.

0:55

Mhmm. I said, did you know that? He said, yeah.

0:57

It was totally obvious. to me and everybody

0:59

else that I was a completely miserable

1:02

person. I knew

1:02

I was unbelievably unhappy. And I said,

1:05

so why did you keep doing

1:07

it? I

1:08

thought about it. And

1:09

he said, you know, I guess

1:11

I prefer to be drunk and happy.

1:14

Mhmm.

1:15

Now that kind of blew my mind. But

1:18

then when I thought about it a little bit more,

1:20

I wondered and and I still do wonder

1:22

today how unusual is

1:24

it?

1:25

Maybe a lot of people do that.

1:27

Maybe lots people in all different

1:29

walks of life with different kinds of behaviors

1:32

sacrifice their happiness for their

1:34

Addictions. Maybe

1:36

I do that too.

1:44

Welcome back to how to build a happy life.

1:47

I'm Arthur Brooks, Harvard professor

1:49

and contributing writer at The Atlantic.

1:51

and I'm Rebecca Rashid, a producer

1:54

at the

1:54

Atlantic.

1:57

I know I've talked to you about this before,

1:59

but

1:59

I have this bad habit of using

2:02

work as an excuse for everything.

2:05

It's sort of been

2:07

this

2:08

habit, I guess, you can call sort

2:11

of addictive behavior in the backdrop

2:13

of my life that I didn't

2:15

admit or really recognize because

2:18

It also had so many positive

2:21

impacts in my It gave me

2:23

a sense of

2:24

purpose, a sense

2:26

of

2:27

identity sort of

2:29

answered the why am

2:31

I here and doing what I'm doing?

2:33

Question. So how does something

2:35

like work become

2:37

an addiction.

2:39

You could be talking about anything that's

2:41

addictive quite frankly. It just happens to be

2:43

the strivers drug of choice, which is

2:45

accomplishment, which is achievement. If

2:48

you work all night, people say good for

2:50

you. And so the result is we

2:52

get more and more affirmation. and

2:54

we start seeing our rewards coming through

2:56

these hard struggles. It's

2:58

never quite satisfying because it's never

3:00

quite enough And so

3:03

you keep going back again and again again, hit

3:05

the lever, get the cookie, hit the lever, get

3:07

the cookie, and and that's a work addiction.

3:10

underlying that is something even deeper, which is a

3:12

success addiction.

3:14

What

3:14

I'm curious about is how these things

3:16

that were taught are good habits

3:20

how do those things become as harmful as

3:23

debilitating addiction or or

3:25

threatened to become that harmful?

3:27

And I guess I'm

3:29

curious for someone like you, how

3:32

has workaholism played out in your life?

3:36

I'm

3:36

not.

3:36

immune from anything. And and I guess the irony

3:39

is that I specialize in the science of happiness and

3:41

I fall prey to a lot of these things myself.

3:44

There's a

3:45

lot of vice that we can engage Almost

3:47

everything that we do that's really good when

3:49

we push it to the limit, when we pat ourselves

3:51

in the back, when it becomes a source of pride,

3:53

when it crowds out love relationships, virtues

3:56

can become vices.

4:03

Today,

4:04

we want to understand how our

4:07

expectations of a Happy Life for

4:09

complicated by the disease of

4:11

addiction. The complexities

4:13

of addiction and addiction treatment can't

4:15

be covered in one episode. but

4:18

we do want to identify our tendencies

4:20

towards addictive behaviors and how

4:22

it affects our well-being. The

4:24

realities for those impacted by

4:26

addictive are wide ranging. But

4:28

defining addictions, effects on

4:30

our identities, behaviors and desires

4:33

may help us parse out the hide between

4:35

where we are and where we wanna be.

4:39

Thank you for joining us. Sure.

4:41

I'm happy you too. Thank you for inviting

4:44

me. And Aniston's great. So

4:46

-- Yeah. Good. -- your office is like a studio. I

4:48

don't know what you're doing there. I mean, you've got these what

4:50

you're teddy bears in the background or something.

4:52

I do actually. I do. I can do

4:54

it with you. Yeah.

4:56

I can show you. My

4:58

name is Anna Lenke. I'm a psychiatrist

5:01

and professor sir at Stanford University

5:03

School of Medicine, and

5:06

I'm the chief of our addiction medicine, Juul

5:08

Diagnosis Clinic.

5:10

I don't we're recording. Right? Becca.

5:14

Okay. Okay. You're gonna show me a horse, though.

5:16

This is Shakira. This is Shakira.

5:21

And I think

5:22

she's supposed

5:23

to represent a therapy donkey.

5:26

I got it. Yeah. We're sure

5:28

we're experimenting with therapy donkeys.

5:30

Anna Lemke and I sat down to discuss

5:32

her work treating patients with addiction.

5:35

Dr. Lemke specializes in

5:37

dopamine, a

5:38

chemical in the brain that lies behind

5:40

desire and plays an important

5:42

role in our addictive behaviors. In

5:45

twenty twenty one, doctor Lemke published

5:47

the book, Dopamine Nation, finding

5:49

balance in the age of indulgence.

5:52

Now, we'll save dopamine in its complex

5:55

function in the brain for another time,

5:57

but I do want to discuss the

5:59

fact that many of

5:59

us are at risk.

6:01

Maybe you find yourself building your life

6:04

around certain substances or

6:06

devices or just habits

6:08

that you feel like you can't live without.

6:10

She

6:11

argues that many of our addictions today

6:13

are not from things we would consider

6:15

immediately addictive, like drugs and

6:17

alcohol, but

6:18

from behaviors that are even thought of

6:20

as healthy or beneficial, things

6:22

like exercise and work

6:25

things

6:25

we thought were virtues.

6:29

But

6:29

what you crave and what you

6:31

really want are

6:32

usually not the same things.

6:35

I realized that I was actually

6:37

a bad psychiatrist early on in my

6:39

career because I was not

6:41

asking patients about drug

6:43

and alcohol use. And the reason I wasn't asking

6:45

them is because I would have had no idea

6:48

how to address those problems if they had happened

6:50

to say, yes, have a

6:52

problem with that. So it

6:54

was a kind of a don't ask, don't tell policy,

6:56

which by the way was completely normative for

6:58

psychiatrists at the time and

7:00

is still quite a prevalent

7:02

practice. Why? Because we don't learn

7:04

a

7:04

lot in medical school or even psych residency

7:07

about

7:07

how to screen or intervene for

7:09

substance use disorders or other addictions.

7:12

Our audience should understand that you're not

7:14

confessing to be having some unusual,

7:16

you know, deficit in your training. I mean,

7:18

this is just something that psychiatrists are

7:21

usually trained to treat people with mood

7:23

disorders and behavioral problems.

7:24

Yeah, you know, I had a patient

7:27

who had a bad outcome.

7:29

You know, she was in a rollover car accident.

7:31

Her brother called me to let me know,

7:33

I said, my goodness, how did it happen?

7:35

He said, well, she's been

7:37

using again, and I said, using what?

7:39

And he said, using heroin, isn't

7:41

that what you've been treating her for?

7:44

And that was really the moment that I realized,

7:46

oh my goodness. III

7:48

something's gone terribly wrong here. I

7:51

was harming my patients out of my own

7:53

ignorance and neglect of this very serious

7:55

problem. So that was about twenty more

7:57

than twenty years ago. So then there was a huge

7:59

kind of like,

7:59

okay, I need figure this stuff out. And

8:02

then since then, you know, I've just sort of become

8:04

a person who does this work with

8:06

a lot of joy I might add -- Mhmm. --

8:08

because it's a great population to treat when people

8:10

with addiction get better, the ripple effect

8:12

is enormous. I do the work with

8:14

a lot of joy,

8:15

and I'm very grateful that

8:17

I get to do it.

8:18

So to be a little bit clearer about

8:20

this, I mean, obviously, when people think about addiction,

8:22

they're thinking about, you know, heroin or

8:24

alcohol or gambling or pornography. but there

8:26

are a lot of things that we do, notwithstanding

8:29

the fact that they're not entirely good for us.

8:31

You know, I I have a huge sweet

8:33

tooth. I mean, ever since I was a little

8:35

kid, I mean, it's the, you know, eight table sugar.

8:37

I still eat sugar cubes if I was like a

8:39

horse or something. And I know

8:41

that that's not really good for me. So I do it relatively

8:44

moderately, and I understand that I'm doing

8:46

it because the benefit of the pleasure it

8:48

gives me outweighs the cost to

8:50

you know, hyping up my, you

8:53

know, my insulin response at that particular

8:55

moment. Let me ask you the

8:56

most basic question of all. What's

8:58

an addiction?

9:00

So addiction is broadly defined

9:03

as the continued compulsive use

9:05

of a substance or a behavior

9:07

despite harm to self and

9:09

or others. The key piece is

9:11

really the behaviors and whether

9:13

or not they cross this threshold

9:15

of impairing function. And

9:17

that by the way is really the key piece for diagnosing

9:20

any psychiatric disorder. We

9:22

diagnose it based on what we call

9:24

phenomenology or patterns of

9:26

behavior over time that are very

9:28

similar across different demographic

9:30

groups, points in history,

9:33

And what we see is that despite

9:35

those differences in individuals, there

9:37

are very classic patterns or

9:39

manifestations of patterns that

9:41

ultimately we group in these different

9:43

buckets schizophrenia, major depression,

9:45

OCD addiction. I

9:47

always like to emphasize that there's no

9:49

brain scan or blood test

9:51

to date to diagnose

9:53

any mental illness, including non

9:55

addiction. Tell me

9:56

about the patients who come see Dr.

9:59

Ansellemke,

9:59

What are they suffering from?

10:02

So the types of patients that I have

10:04

are patients struggling with all different forms

10:06

of addiction. not just addiction to drugs and

10:08

alcohol, but also to all kinds of

10:10

behaviors, pornography, gambling,

10:13

shopping, digital products,

10:15

so online pornography, compulsive

10:17

masturbation is a huge and growing

10:19

problem. Deaming disorder

10:21

is something that we're seeing more and more of

10:23

especially among young men.

10:26

And they often also have

10:28

co occurring conditions like

10:30

depression, anxiety, psychotic

10:33

disorders. even previously

10:36

healthy and adaptive behaviors,

10:38

behaviors that I think we broadly as

10:40

culture would think of as healthy

10:42

advantageous behaviors now

10:44

have become drugified such

10:47

that they are made more potent,

10:49

more accessible more novel,

10:51

more ubiquitous, and

10:53

therefore, they have the potential for addiction

10:55

where they didn't have that before. And I

10:57

used myself as an example in reading, I mean, I

10:59

think we all of us grew up with

11:01

this idea that reading is healthy. And

11:03

if your kid's reading a book, you know, that's gotta

11:05

be good. And yet, In

11:07

my early forties, I

11:10

actually got addicted to

11:12

romance novels. And the Twilight

11:14

Saga was my gateway drug, which is in

11:16

and of self embarrassing because it's a, you

11:18

know, a vampire romance series written

11:20

for teenagers and obviously I was a middle aged

11:22

woman. I was not the only middle aged

11:24

woman who's reading Twilight. It was kind of a

11:26

thing then. I read it

11:28

once and then I read it again and I

11:30

was on my third reading and then it

11:32

wasn't quite joint for me what it had done the

11:34

fourth time. So I then explored

11:36

other Vampire Romance novels, and then I

11:38

went to werewolves and necromancers

11:41

and suit actors and, you know,

11:43

you name it. And then the real

11:45

kind of tipping point for me was my

11:47

friend, Susan, who I'm throwing

11:49

under the bus here. So you should get a Kindle. And

11:51

when I got a Kindle, that was really that

11:53

was the beginning of the end because,

11:56

I mean, this was very embarrassing. But, you know, I

11:58

was like, it was impacting

11:59

my ability to function. I was staying

12:02

up later and later at night. I

12:04

was not fully present for my kids and

12:06

my husband the way I really wanted to be

12:08

and that was really the crazy thing about it. Like,

12:10

the things I really care about

12:13

kind of started to be compromised in

12:15

a way that I wasn't fully in control

12:17

of. Essentially, what was

12:19

happening was that I just it was a

12:21

fantasy escape world and

12:23

I just the more I read,

12:24

the more I just wanted to be in that

12:27

world, and the less I wanted to be in the real

12:29

world. The also, the less

12:31

interesting the real world, came to me. So the

12:33

saliance and the positive

12:35

and reinforcing qualities of the real

12:37

world slowly began to diminish. And of

12:39

course, the neuroscience explains

12:41

this beautifully, and it's really important

12:43

for us to understand it,

12:45

because, you know, quantity and frequency matter,

12:47

the more we do our drug, the more we

12:49

want to do our drug, And

12:51

that's really kind of the way we get

12:53

hooked. Howard Bauchner: Tell me a more

12:55

typical story of perhaps one of your

12:57

patients that comes in And my

12:59

guess is they're not coming in when the, you

13:01

know, the elevator is now in, you

13:03

know, the first basement. They're they've

13:05

gone thirty down thirty two floors. at this point,

13:07

and they when they're coming to see you, it's

13:09

pretty bad. So typically, what

13:12

would addiction look like? Or maybe

13:14

even a specific case of a patient when they

13:16

when they get to you?

13:17

So, you know, what we see

13:19

here is patients, for

13:21

example, maybe, you

13:23

know, a middle aged man who

13:26

has used pornography through

13:28

most of his young adult life.

13:30

And then in the early nineties,

13:32

there's the Internet, and then all of a sudden,

13:34

it's more available It's

13:36

more graphic. And then,

13:38

you know, the early two thousands comes

13:40

around and, you know, he gets his

13:42

smartphone. And now we're talking twenty

13:44

four seven access, highly potent

13:46

images, and things start to fall

13:48

apart. Now this person is

13:51

experiencing tolerance finding

13:53

that online pornography alone is not

13:55

sufficient, starting to, for example, engage

13:57

prostitutes, why does

13:59

partners

13:59

spending more and more time and resources

14:03

chasing down this particular feeling,

14:05

threatening, you know, his employment

14:07

by using a work, knowing

14:08

that he's doing that. and

14:10

yet feeling such an enormous compulsion

14:12

that he can't help himself feeling

14:15

horrible

14:15

about himself, enormous stigma

14:17

unable to stop, although he tries repeatedly to

14:19

do that. And eventually, you know, comes to see

14:21

me essentially feeling suicidal, feeling

14:24

like, you know, I don't wanna live

14:26

anymore. I I can't stop this

14:28

behavior. I have so so much shame.

14:30

I'm so depressed. I don't even

14:32

enjoy it. And yet, I cannot stop. You know,

14:34

will you help me? And so,

14:35

and it's the exact same narrative

14:37

that we see with people who are severely addicted

14:39

to drugs,

14:40

severely addicted to

14:41

alcohol, which is a drug, People

14:44

start out using fun or to

14:46

solve a problem.

14:46

The drug works for them initially, so

14:49

they return to using it over time.

14:51

They escalate their use. They build tolerance.

14:53

They need more and more.

14:54

Eventually, it stops working, but

14:56

they can't stop. And then it even potentially

14:58

turns on them. and causes the

15:00

very problem that they're trying to solve, but they

15:02

still can't stop. Exercise too

15:05

has become drugified. Right? So

15:07

the ways in which these machines allow

15:10

us to stretch the

15:12

human physical limits

15:15

beyond what what we really are

15:17

meant to do, the way that social media,

15:19

you know, invites this

15:21

NVIDIA's comparison around

15:23

sports and around exercise, the way

15:25

that we're constantly counting ourselves.

15:27

So these are like healthy, previously

15:29

healthy behaviors that have now become

15:31

vulnerable to

15:31

this problem of addiction. Well,

15:34

it's I just isn't that encouraging, you

15:36

know? Yeah. But you know

15:39

No. We're not really. I mean, I think it's really

15:41

important because this is really where we're going with

15:43

this conversation. session is that there are a whole

15:45

bunch of areas of behavior that we've been told since

15:47

we were little kids that are really

15:49

wonderful, you know. And and, you know,

15:52

that if you work hard, that's

15:53

always in everywhere great. And if you

15:56

get a's in school, that's always in everywhere

15:58

great. And if you get promotions and raises

15:59

and the admiration of others. That's

16:02

just a wonderful thing. Do

16:04

you

16:04

see workaholics

16:05

in your clinic? So

16:08

typically, we will not see patients who come

16:10

in for workaholism as a

16:12

chief complaint because they won't

16:14

identify that as their

16:16

problem. It's

16:17

a little bit like you don't see very

16:19

many narcissists coming in for

16:21

care because it's the people around

16:24

them who are showing up for

16:26

treatment not the narcissist themselves.

16:28

But what we do see is people

16:30

who come in with serious drug and alcohol

16:32

problems or pornography addiction and

16:34

they also are addicted to

16:36

work. And the way that comes out

16:38

is this kind of work hard, play

16:40

hard

16:40

mentality where people push themselves

16:43

so hard at work and

16:45

exhaust themselves beyond the limits

16:47

of what their minds

16:47

and bodies can do. and then reward

16:50

themselves at the end of a very hard

16:52

work day or a very hard work week

16:54

or a hard work month with the kind of

16:56

a binge or overuse

16:58

pattern. So it's this sort of seesaw,

17:00

this work hardwired, which has become so

17:02

normative. And of course, the one drives the

17:04

other, but the overworking because

17:08

we're depleted after that.

17:10

Instead of having that sense of being

17:13

full

17:13

up, know,

17:14

with the joy of

17:16

a job well done or having achieved

17:18

excellence, which are all good things.

17:20

we assumed instead come away from that

17:23

work experience, drained, depleted.

17:25

And now we're looking to reward

17:28

ourselves, right, to make up with what's

17:30

my compensation? And the

17:32

compensation is often drug and alcohol

17:34

use or some kind of addictive behavior,

17:36

which then you get into this terrible

17:38

sea salt phenomenon. Yeah. We're not

17:40

you know, that other thing your

17:42

mother does not brag about is that you're you're

17:44

so good at leachure.

17:46

I

17:46

mean, she can take vacations like

17:49

nobody I've ever seen. I mean, they're they're

17:51

she's so relaxed. It's it's unbelievable. I

17:53

mean, she really she leaves the world behind and

17:56

no. No. it's you know, she's

17:58

carrying five

17:58

cell phones and Again,

17:59

I think work has

18:01

become vulnerable to the same kinds of

18:04

transformations that we see any

18:06

drug. It's more potent, you

18:08

know, in the sense that especially

18:10

when you're talking about jobs

18:12

in the higher

18:13

socioeconomic ladder.

18:15

work made

18:16

more potent by the bonuses

18:19

and stock options, and the

18:21

other ways in which the

18:23

more you work, the more you'll

18:25

potentially make, which is not true

18:27

by the way for for

18:29

low wage earners who are increasingly

18:32

dropping out of the workforce We

18:34

we can work twenty four seven because of

18:36

the technology and the phones and the

18:38

devices and the Internet. And we're often

18:41

expected to work twenty four seven to

18:43

be available And remember,

18:45

quantity and frequency matter when it comes

18:47

to changing

18:48

our brain and entering, you

18:50

know, addicted brain the more of our

18:52

drug we use and the more of

18:54

it and more often the more potent it is,

18:56

the more likely we are to change our brain

18:59

and become addicted to it. And

19:01

this is the other way that

19:03

work has been turned into something

19:05

that's potentially very

19:07

unhealthy is that for

19:09

many of us now, the work that we do

19:11

is really detached from

19:13

the meaning of the work. So

19:15

we're no longer deeply involved with

19:18

the actual end product.

19:20

It's more problematic because, you

19:22

know, it's highly socially acceptable.

19:25

One of the most to me

19:27

fascinating and enduring themes

19:30

in the disease of addiction is

19:33

the role of control

19:36

and this wanting to have

19:38

this illusion

19:38

of control over our

19:41

lives

19:41

drugs become a way to

19:43

do that. And even when we get to

19:45

a point where we know the drug isn't

19:48

working, we're so terrified

19:49

to let go and

19:51

to not be, you know, the person driving

19:53

this really crazy crazy bus

19:56

down this really careening down

19:58

this steep hill, you know, headed for

19:59

No, Brian. Right? The no

20:02

breaks the inevitable crash.

20:04

But at least, you know, I'm still

20:06

sitting

20:06

in the driver's seat. And

20:08

so this becomes really, you know,

20:11

key to

20:12

addiction recovery is

20:15

really,

20:15

really, it's an enormous leap of faith.

20:18

Right? It's asking people to give up this

20:20

thing that they have used their

20:22

entire lives to self sues

20:25

to, you know, get

20:27

that feeling that they they need in

20:29

order to feel kind of

20:31

whole. And even when it stops working? Does the

20:33

the the fear associated

20:35

with having to let that go? And then what,

20:37

you know, the not knowing? Well, what

20:39

will that be like? What

20:41

what will that existence be like for me? I mean, the

20:43

terror of the unknown

20:44

is so strong. So what do they

20:46

do? What no. No. What do they do? What

20:48

do we do? Look,

20:51

I missed a lot of my kid's childhood. Yeah.

20:54

Because I was on the wheel. I

20:56

was on this

20:56

treadmill. I was doing it too. What what

20:59

do we Well, thank

21:00

you for your openness and for sharing,

21:02

you know, some of that. Regretta, that's

21:04

really powerful and, you know, someone like you

21:06

is willing to be open in

21:08

that way. Very, very helpful. So thank you

21:10

for that's a great gift. It's

21:13

amazing to me that we have

21:15

an opportunity to change our

21:17

lives at any point in our

21:19

lives. I have seen people with

21:21

severe lifelong addictions in their

21:23

60s, 70s, and 80s, get

21:25

into recovery, and absolutely transform

21:27

their lives for the better, transform

21:29

their family and friends' lives for

21:31

the

21:31

better. Just really beautiful,

21:34

wonderful things can have in any stage

21:36

of life.

21:37

So I just I just want to say

21:40

that because I think it's

21:42

never too late and we all

21:44

make mistakes we we all make mistakes and we all have

21:46

regrets. But you can

21:48

change your life at any point in your life and you

21:50

can decide to live in a

21:52

different way and to let go

21:54

of that thing that you've been hanging on to,

21:56

which you thought was your life raft but which

21:58

was really, you know,

21:59

your anchor.

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22:21

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22:23

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dot com.

22:46

Would you say

22:49

there are

22:51

probably a lot more people who are

22:53

suffering from addiction than

22:55

those who were diagnosed and those that or or those

22:58

who even know that that's the case?

23:00

I would say that that's true in the

23:02

modern age. There's so much more

23:05

access to highly potent and

23:07

reinforcing drugs and behaviors. But also

23:08

just in general, it's underdiagnosed because

23:11

there's no infrastructure

23:11

inside of medicine or there's a

23:14

limited infrastructure inside of medicine to

23:16

treat addiction. And so

23:17

it's a type of thing that

23:19

people generally don't

23:19

want to see because there aren't a

23:22

lot

23:22

of good pathways for folks. We have

23:24

pretty good treatments that we've

23:26

known about for decades, so it's

23:28

not that we don't know what works

23:31

It's that we've not built the

23:33

infrastructure inside of medicine to deliver

23:35

that care. And that's

23:37

that's not related to the lack

23:40

of evidence for the treatments. It's

23:42

related to other factors having to do

23:44

with payment structures, stigma,

23:47

you know, doctors who treat addiction

23:49

medicine are generally not

23:52

compensated for that work.

23:54

So

23:54

their their ways to

23:56

do this is the bottom line, and this is

23:58

a story of hope.

23:59

Yeah. Now we

24:02

could get into a whole show in and of itself about

24:04

how what recovery looks like.

24:06

But that's traditionally about

24:08

more conventional addictions. But it sounds

24:10

to me given the fact that

24:12

the primary damage that work all with some success

24:15

addiction do is to our

24:17

relationships. And and these are very fear

24:19

based addictions. you know,

24:21

human

24:21

beings are complicated in and of

24:23

themselves. You put two together and you just

24:25

magnified the complexity. And so

24:27

many people have

24:28

the experience of

24:30

trying harder at relationships and

24:33

not having it work out.

24:35

And so, you know, the drug is

24:37

so much more reliable right? And why

24:39

am I gonna give up this thing that at least gives me

24:41

some transitory relief or

24:44

escape for really a

24:46

big gamble or what feels like a

24:48

big gamble? and kind of not

24:50

even having the basic

24:52

tools for knowing how to go

24:54

about

24:54

renewing and strengthening, you know,

24:56

those relationships

24:57

with people in our lives Not

24:59

to mention the fact that now so many people are addicted

25:01

to the Internet and their devices and

25:03

are self soothing, you

25:04

know, with strangers in various ways,

25:07

you know, on the Internet that

25:09

that

25:10

those

25:11

opportunities, you know, to

25:13

build intimate connections in our real lives,

25:15

it it has become more challenging.

25:18

This is what we get when we are

25:20

willing to give up our drug. What we

25:22

get is these wonderful,

25:25

quite intangible things

25:27

that you can't buy and you can work

25:29

for, but not in the same way. And and

25:32

chief among them is certainly

25:33

meaningful and intimate relationships

25:36

with other people. And I guess the last

25:39

point is one that you've been making

25:41

implicitly throughout, which is that none of

25:43

this is gonna be a problem you can solve,

25:45

unless you're honest. Right. You know, this is

25:47

one of the interesting things about, you know, I've known a

25:49

lot of addicts. You've treated a lot of addicts.

25:51

And one thing that fuels addiction

25:54

Always

25:54

is lies, lies

25:56

to

25:56

yourself, lies to others. It's just

25:59

this

25:59

perpetual act of

26:02

lying.

26:02

Right. Right. It's this

26:04

kind of radical honesty, this willingness

26:06

to be open and truthful, not just

26:08

about how we're spending our time, what we're consuming, what drugs

26:10

we're using, what we're doing on the

26:12

Internet, what we're reading, but also

26:15

just about little things, why we

26:17

were five minutes like for the meaning,

26:19

you know,

26:20

why the the keys went missing?

26:22

You

26:22

know, who ate that last piece of chocolate

26:25

pie? You know, thing little those

26:27

little lies that we tell, you know,

26:29

just instinctually to sort

26:31

of hide our selfishness or

26:33

our mistakes. that's

26:35

where we have to really intentionally focus

26:37

and try to tell the truth. Because

26:39

when we do that, you know,

26:42

we're telling a truthful, autobiographical narrative.

26:44

And we must do that in

26:46

order to be able to know where we've been, where we

26:48

are, and where we want to go.

26:50

how do we make more intimate relationships? Well,

26:52

we tell the truth to the

26:54

people that we care about and

26:56

we stop lying to them. That's

26:58

so key. And that becomes a huge

27:01

part of recovery. Right? So

27:03

when people stop using their drugs, they're

27:05

so terrified, to be honest, towards their

27:07

loved one about what they've been doing

27:09

or, you know, especially, let's say, they they

27:11

told their loved one that they stopped and they

27:13

really didn't. And it would be nice to be

27:15

able to skirt around that and not have to tell

27:17

the truth. but if you

27:19

don't go back and and tell the truth and

27:20

apologize and make amends, then

27:23

you you're not gonna be

27:24

able to ultimately get to that

27:26

place where you have those relationships that

27:28

are so incredibly sustaining

27:31

and renewing and powerful

27:34

and Make the need for these drugs so

27:36

much less.

27:38

Now

27:44

that you've spent

27:47

the bulk of your professional career

27:49

studying how some

27:51

of

27:51

your early behaviors and your passion

27:53

for what you did may have been

27:55

a certain type of workaholism. What

27:58

do you think you would have done differently

28:00

if you knew what you know now?

28:02

It's a good

28:03

question, you know, in the first year of my

28:06

marriage. I remember being on

28:08

vacation, we were camping. And I

28:10

just couldn't handle it, and I had to go

28:12

home because I I needed to get

28:14

back to work. And and

28:16

those behaviors followed me. You know,

28:18

when I finally left the music business

28:20

and got my doctorate and became an

28:22

academic and and and I just couldn't

28:24

work enough I couldn't I

28:26

couldn't achieve enough. I had to catch up with

28:28

everybody my age because I went to

28:30

college when I was thirty and I

28:32

finished my doctorate when I was in my mid

28:34

thirties, and I was I was years behind everybody else. And

28:36

so I thought, okay, this is really just a question

28:38

of catching up with everybody else And

28:40

so I was working twice as hard as everybody

28:42

else, probably.

28:44

And the result is, I've, you know, published a

28:46

lot of articles and taught a lot classes, my career

28:48

went really, really well. And

28:50

my family life continued to suffer

28:52

quite frankly. And how

28:54

many nights was I the last

28:56

one to leave the office, and I sacrificed the first

28:59

hour with my kids, so my kids were little. I don't

29:01

remember a lot. Not because I was

29:03

drunk. I don't drink. one

29:05

of the reasons I don't drink is because I have alcohols

29:07

in my family and I know it's too dangerous,

29:10

but

29:11

here's the key thing to ask

29:14

yourself whether it's workaholism or or maybe you're

29:16

just wondering if you're drinking a little bit

29:18

too much is to interrogate

29:21

that. A life that's unexamined is

29:23

one in which you're helpless against

29:25

these these ravagers that

29:27

come from addictive behavior. And

29:30

then When you look in the mirror and you're

29:32

quite honest with yourself, then you

29:34

can actually start to manage these

29:36

things. Here's the most encouraging thing

29:39

of all. When people understand what they're

29:41

doing and are honest with themselves,

29:43

they're willing to own up to the fact that

29:45

they are being managed by

29:47

their desire. that they're being managed by

29:49

their cravings. That

29:51

process is the beginning of of

29:53

getting freedom.

30:02

That's all for this week's episode of How to

30:04

Build A Happy Life. This

30:06

episode was produced by me,

30:07

Rebecca Rashid, and hosted by

30:09

Arthur Brooks, editing by

30:11

AC Valdez and Claudine

30:13

Abbib. Fact check by Anna Alvarado. Our

30:17

engineer

30:17

is Matthew Silencing.

30:23

This

30:29

episode

30:29

is supported by Mastercard.

30:32

Making an impact on forest restoration

30:34

is as easy as buying a ticket.

30:36

Now open, a forest for the trees

30:38

is an immersive experience from

30:41

the Atlantic Super Blue, and artist Glen Kyno

30:43

that will inspire you to reimagine

30:45

your relationship with the natural

30:46

world. For every tickets

30:48

sold, two trees will be planted in

30:50

support of conservation international

30:52

and Mastercard's priceless planet

30:54

coalition, an initiative aiming to

30:56

restore one hundred million trees

30:58

by twenty twenty five. So as

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