Hey, friends, it's me Megan Divine, host of Hereafter with Megan Divine. Season two is coming up soon. It'll be here before you know it. But in the meantime, while you're waiting, I wanted to introduce you to a couple of shows I think you're going to like. You might even get some new favorite podcasts out of it. So give these episodes a listen and stay tuned for the announcement of the launch of season two coming soon. See you soon, friends. Again, we look at these people like they're these bad people that are living in this perfect world and how could they be doing this? And I'm like, wait a second, these people are responding to the world that they're living in. Hey, y'all, and welcome back to You Need Therapy Podcast. I'm Cat, I'm your post. And that felt so weird saying I'm Cat and i'm your host. My name is Kat, and I'm the host of this podcast. And today you are getting an episode of Just Me, Just all me. Um. I'm super excited about this episode actually, and I didn't intend to do this by myself, but some things kind of fell out of place that honestly, let some things fall into place and I'm pretty excited actually how this is all turning out. But before we get to that, I have an announcement. So we launched a merch line today. Well we launched merch. I don't know if you I would call it a line, but well, to be honest, we launched it last week to our newsletter subscribers. They got a special discount and a week to pre order some stuff that we're only getting a limited amount of. So if you head over to the website you need Therapy dot Com, you can click on the store tap and see all the super cute things we have. My favorite is the hat I will say, um, and I also love the buttons. I put the all Bodies Are Good Bodies button. It's so cute on my jean jacket and I love it. And we have some stickers and a cute T shirt that you guys voted on on Instagram, so I would expect you guys to want it. Basically, everything that's on there is cute and adorable. Um, and you need it, so good good son. Also, because I love you guys so much, my podcast listeners are going to get a special discount too, So this week I'm going to send you guys a code. The code is y MT and you can use that code to get tempers on off anything in our online store. Now, remember these are pre orders, so expect a longer shipping time and uh, happy shopping. If you don't want to shop, just go look at our website. It's cute. Also, don't forget to follow me on social media. So at cat dot de fodda remember I changed my Instagram handle to separate that kind of from the practice. And then also at You Need Therapy podcast asked um is just the Instagram for the podcast. Also another disclaimer, I feel like I need to say this more often now, but this is not therapy. So this is a podcast called You Need Therapy, which you probably do because like really all of us do. We could all benefit from it. But this isn't therapy. This is more like I would call this like psycho education, Like I'm educating you guys, giving you information, but we're not doing therapy. I suggest that we all do it. But this right here is not it. Anyway, I say, yeah, we get into the episode. We don't have to do any fancy intro or anything that because it's just me. You guys want to know. I guess you know what we're talking about because it's the title of the episode, But it's all about addiction. We're diving into the world of addiction, and I've been wanting to do this for a long time. UM. I find this to be an extremely, extremely important topic to talk about and bring into a conversation because, whether we realize it or not, we live in the know addicted cohort that has ever existed in the world, and I believe that our general view of addiction is super small minded and just confused. So today we're going to talk about all of the things, but not all of the things at the same time. I get or I got a lot of questions from you guys on Instagram about addiction and I'm gonna weave them and we've the answers throughout here. But basically, today I'm going to talk about what I think the why is behind a lot of what makes somebody an addict or how it gets triggered. Let me give you a little backstory on my journey as a therapist UM before I get into all of the juicy details. Because I got my start when I first started UM as an intern in a residential treatment center. So that's the foundation of me as a therapist. The foundation of me as a therapist is in addiction. So that was like what I learned first and foremost. However, and I will say I would feel like I'm an expert in that world. I'm not the expert, but I'm pretty well versed in it. And so however, when I started as an intern, I thought addiction just looked like drinking too much, doing a bunch of drugs and stuff like that. And I can laugh at myself now, but ten years ago, I was almost, well not almost, I was. I was scared of people that I labeled as addicts while really unknowingly like I was one. And we'll get into that. But the first time I walked into my internship site, I looked at the clients there as like different than me, like almost like they were I hate that I'm saying this, but it's true, and I feel like it's important. Is I felt like almost like they're like less than me or something. And they had this like I don't know this either bad, this missing good piece or this added bad piece to them, And yeah, I do. I mean I think I said this already. I feel shame about saying that, but a lot of people listening to this might feel that way too, And I'm all about breaking some stigmas here, and and I get why you might think that. I think the world shapes addiction like that the world labels individuals who struggle with addiction is as bad people, world ruiners, life ruiners, or problems. And this couldn't actually be further for from the truth. Sometimes I think the addicts are the ones who actually have it right. They are actually responding to a broken world instead of going along with it and acting like the world is normal, because it's not. And all that to say, I think when people are in their addiction, they can do bad things and they can cause problems. But what I want to say before we talk about this is they aren't bad people and they are not problems. Honestly, Sometimes I sit around and I'm like, is everybody crazy? Like truly, Like if we are the most addicted cohort of the world ever, shouldn't we be taken a beat from the fact that that's going on. Shouldn't that be a red flag, like a giant red flag, Like something has to be going on now that hasn't been going on before, Like how all of a sudden is everybody in addict and today I believe that alcoholism and drug abuse is just a corner of what addiction is. Humans have created the skill of a coming addicted to anything really, and they have we have this way of masking it as things that a lot of times look normal or they look like good. And I can say a lot of my history and my story and my eating disorders, like my addiction looked good and I was really praised for it, which is really screwed up because somebody who's doing heroin or or drinking all them they're not praised for that. But we're both doing the same thing. So let's start with what addiction is, like what really is addiction? And depending on who you talk to, you're going to get different answers to this question in different kind of answers. So this is how I explain addiction. Addiction is what happens when we find solutions to problems in our lives and then the solutions stuff working, but our brain doesn't catch up with the fact that they're not working anymore. Our brain keeps living and how it did work and how it did help, rather than how it's not helping now. And today, when I talk about addiction, I just want to put a disclaimer as I'm not just talking about drugs and alcohol. You'll hear me say specifically those things, but I'm talking about all behaviors we become addicted to. And that is because it's not about the thing you're using. Addiction isn't about drugs, and it's not about alcohol. Addiction isn't about shopping, it's not about sex. It's about what you're trying to fix. And remember, all these vices are solutions to problems that end up not working anymore. So at one point they worked. At one point for an alcoholic, the alcohol fis the problem. Let me give you a couple of exam So some of us get addicted to running. I say, at one one point in my life, I was addicted to running um and I don't need to give you an exact picture where that looked for, but I mean I had to run every single day, and it was at least six miles, never less, because then it was a waste of time and I felt like I had to do that to survive. It was a coping mechanism and it was the only one I had. Now what I was really doing was I was running away from feelings. I was running away from scary relationships. I was running away from anything less than desirable. I was running to escape a bigger issue within myself that I didn't realize I had. However, after a while, running an exercise in my obsession with it stopped helping because it was making it less possible for me to have what I wanted. Because all I was doing was running and exercising, and it was the thing that I had to do all the time, and it was becoming a problem. So I was creating more problems, and then I wasn't able to get the things I really wanted because what I really wanted were relationships. I was saving myself from us one end of pain, but started stealing on opportunities for joy, so it stopped working. I mean, some of us get addicted to taking care of other people. And what happens then is like you, you've done this thing for so long, Eventually how you get from meeting other people's needs will stop masking the whole you have for not caring for yourself. It will only work for so long, believe it or not. Some of us get addicted to our negative body image. We create these hurtful narratives around what our bodies look like, and that becomes a way to your needs met. And because this addiction is rooted in your thoughts and your belief system, it's really tough to break. So what I want you to hear is that addiction is a way to meet a legitimate need in illegitimate ways. So the need that the addiction is like fulfilling, that's legitimate, But how we're going about it isn't. Running doesn't really help the pain I have and who I am and who I think I am am based on my experiences in my life. Taking care of other people doesn't actually fix the pain and the fact that you feel like you're not worth anything, And that's a lot of times what's really going on underneath addiction. The thing that I want to highlight right now is that people who struggle with addiction aren't just shitty people who suffer from extreme moral failings. That's going to be further from the truth. They are trying to survive in a world that some way, somehow has failed them. So the question that I'm going to bring up over and over again today isn't why the addiction it's why do we have the pain of unmet needs? The question isn't why are you drinking? It's not why are you smoking weed? Isn't why are you doing this drug? Why are you gambling? It's why are you hurting? And I really wonder what would happen if we ask people what what hurts? Or tell me about your pain, rather than if we just say why do you keep drinking? Why do you keep letting me down? Why do you keep using drugs? Why do you keep spending all your money? The thing that we've become addicted to offer something that helps us overcome something else. If it didn't, you would never need to do it again, and you never would do it again. You wouldn't do it more than once if it didn't help. But then what happens is when the old solution stops working, we somehow decide that it's our fault. And this is where it gets a little haywire, Like we create stories like we're bad or we're wrong, we're not good enough. We find meaning and why that solution stopped working, and that meaning usually sucks, like big time sucks. And so when that happens, we start to live in those belief systems like we're not good enough when we're bad. Oh I'll show you how bad I am. Um, I'm not good enough. Oh show you how not good enough I am. My belief is that the addiction of berating ourselves come from comes from a place of not knowing if our insides are truly good um. And this is where the work comes in the work that a lot of times is less desirable than hurting ourselves because we know that this might surprise a lot of people. But when I work with clients who are struggling with addiction, specifically whether it is part of their eating disorder, or is drugs or alcohol or sex, we rarely talk about the actual thing that they're using. So we rarely sit in my office and talk about alcohol for an hour. We're not talking about that. What we might do is we might talk about the last time they drank, or um when they had urges, what was going on, or the feelings they had before and after they used, or something like that. But we're not sitting around and talking about alcohol all day. We're talking about what leads them to the alcohol. We're not talking about their straight up eating habit. Sometimes we have sessions and we do a check in. We might do a check in around like urges and stuff like that. But I will have sessions with somebody and let's let's just make it easy. And let's say they came there an alcoholic and they came in to stop drinking. We might be a check in and to see how much they drink that week or what where their urges were, and then we spend the whole session talking about other things. If you think about this idea, and I bring this up all the time, but I think that we have these two core desires when we're born. One is to be loved and to belong, and one is to be ourselves. And at some point in our lives a lot of times things will happen and we will feel like we are not worthy of love because we are not getting the love we want. And that go so far into attachment. And we've talked about that before. And so if I grow up in this world where like I don't feel like I love, i'm loved, or I don't belong, I will up who I am so that second desire to be who I am that becomes not so important. I will pick things up and will drop things in order to get that love and belonging need. And I want you to remember that part because we're going to come back to that at the end when the solution stops working. This is where we have to get really close to our pain in order to entire yourselves from it, dig into why it feels so good when you're essentially hitting your head with a hammer over and over and over again. Many of us don't want to stop doing that because when we stop abusing ourselves, we start to feel again. Well, ignoring the pain doesn't make it go away. So ignoring the pain and abusing ourselves doesn't make anything go away. It just turns that pain into suffering. So again, the question here isn't why the addiction. It's why the fear of being honest and sitting with yourself, Why the fear of actually feeling what's going on. If that can't be tackled, then the pattern most likely won't be broken. And I got a lot of questions from people asking about, um, can you replace one addiction for better addiction? And what about going like hopping around? And you know you can, but that's not actually fixing anything. You can't fix an addiction through an addiction. You heal an addiction through healing what really is going on underneath of the addiction, which is the pain. And I've had to sit with so many clients and tell them that I can't make their addiction go away. And it's one of the more painful conversations I have because that's often what people expect me to do, Like they expect to come into a therapist office and they want to be fixed, and they expect to be fixed. And I can't let help somebody let go of something that is hurting them if the pain of hurting themselves is masking something they think is more painful. I'm gonna say that again. I can't help somebody let go of something that's hurt hurting them if the pain of hurting themselves is masking something they think is more painful. And a lot of times that's knowing themselves and knowing truth and sitting with that, and that requires them to put that hammer down and stop hitting themselves. The other part I want to say right there is it's also not my job to fix anyone because I don't really think that these people are broken. I don't think addicts are broken. I think that they need to see that they're not broken. And you know, honestly, being an addict means something's kind of right with you, because again, what if it we looked at this as a way of like, people are responding to a world that's really screwed up. And when we use our addictions and we act out, it's because we want to feel better, and there's nothing wrong with that. That's a very normal human thing to want to feel better. So it's almost like your addiction is saying something's right with you. You know that something is off, So you don't need to be fixed, You're just you're behaviors just need to be looked at a little bit differently. So when someone decides they want to quit or they want to stop doing something, and we can get more into the idea, like let's just like we can talk about the basics of drug and alcohol, but like I want you guys to know this as a broader thing. So this is going way way deeper than that. But for the sake of it being me not having to label every single addiction every time, we're gonna talk about rugs and alcohol. So when somebody wants to quit, there comes this thing called withdraw, and withdraw is what happens when your body is trying to find a new balance after you stop giving it certain drugs or experiences that create a chemical response within your body. Now, this is super painful and oh most of the time, and the physical side effects can include anxiety, fatigue, sweating, vomiting, depression, Caesar Caesar's seizures, that's a hard word, and hallucinations like it's not easy and it's not fun to do this work, Like to really do this work, you have to be willing to hang in during the withdraw period. And as uncomfortable as it can be physically, it can be worse emotionally. This is a period when you feel so exposed because you can't cover up your old pain with new pain. So I want you guys to see that it is not as easy as like why don't you just stop, Why don't you just put that down? Why don't you stop drinking, Why don't you not go to the bar? Why don't you? I mean, you have to you have to actually resist these physical, terrible, terrible side effects. And then also you are actually forced to sit with this stuff that you've been trying to run away from for god who knows how long. Now, when the general public has looked at addiction, there have been two main models. Um and a lot of you guys have also asked questions about these of like, is addiction it's just a choice? Is it is it is a disease? Is it genetic? Like? And so the general public would say, there's two main main models here, choice model. And the choice model just basically says that this is a choice that people are making, like addiction is just a bad choice that people are choosing to do, which really is so crazy, but we'll come back to that. And then the disease model basically says that this is a genetic brain disease. Right, so this is something that people are born with. They can't help it, they're just genetically predisposed to this. Okay, Well, two things, If it's a choice, why would you talk about it being a brain disease, Like, if it's a choice, then it wouldn't be a brain disease. If it's a brain disease, why would you punish people for making a bad choice because it's in their brains. So there's these two like so opposing models out there, and and the problem is, I don't think either of these models actually encompass what really causes addiction. You're gonna hear me mention this person's name over and over because he was such a important part of shaping and changing the way I looked at addiction. So goodbor, mate. You know how I said in the beginning of this that when I started my work as an intern, I thought of addicts as these like bad or wrong, just like different than me. I probably looked at it more from the choice theory, the choice model, and we'll I was introduced to Kaboor Monte and his work, and I watched a lecture that he did years ago. It's probably like fifteen years old. At this point. I think people had been talking about this stuff, but I had never heard it in these words, And in that lecture was the first time I heard someone in these kinds of words say what these two models failed to look at. Both of these models ignore the most important layer of addiction that I've known, and I've seen it. I've worked with hundreds of addicts. I mean, I'm not again, I'm not the expertist expert, but I'm seeing that there's one common denominator that neither of these things address at all. It ignores society, and it ignores our culture. If we just make this about bad people or brain disease, we don't have to look at history, we don't have to look at society, and we don't to look at culture. And because of that, a lot of really disturbing social aspects get off of the hook. Okay, and if you're confused, let's look at this. Like the natives of our country, they used to use all kinds of substances without addiction in their history, all kinds, and they were used for ceremonial uses. It wasn't about escaping ourselves. It wasn't about blocking out our problems. Serial ceremonial use is about finding a higher level of consciousness and connecting rather than disconnecting. Well, if people were just genetically programmed to be addicted, why was nobody addicted back before things got really well, really shitty for them? Right? So, the natives of our country weren't addicted to these things until something happened when they lost the right to live their lives the way they knew how to live them. That's when addictions started to take off for them. Now here's another thing. Just using these models makes the assumption and that the substances are in themselves addictive. And we've all heard this, right of like oh that drug is so addictive, or oh that's so addictive, or that whatever. Just the alcohol is an addictive alone, because most people that drink alcohol never become addicted. Right. Therefore, we can't explain addiction by the power of the drug or the power of the behavior itself. This is why you can't stop addiction just by taking away the substance. You can't stop addiction just by making it impossible for somebody to drink. That's where you do this, this whack a mole. Stuff comes in. We take away the alcohol, and work will come in. We'll take away work, shopping will come in, We'll take away you're eating disorder, something else will come in. There is always something else like this can go on forever, and we just call that the whack a mole. And you can only explain addiction by what makes someone addicted to the drug, not the actual drug itself. Okay, And I'm going to explain this through myself just to give you guys a little bit of context. And I use the example of the hydro monster a lot of times with clients and in sessions and groups to create a picture of what this looks like with the whack a mole. So the hydro monster is in like Greek mythology, this monster that had these I'm pretty sure it was nine heads. The monster with like nine heads and one was immortal. The problem with that monster is that if you just cut off one of the heads, not the immortal one, but one of the other heads, two more heads would grow from it. And so that's what I'm talking about, was whack a mole thing. It's like we cut one thing off and then something else grows. And to kill that monster the only way and I think, like the story is I'm probably getting this wrong. Um. Also, this is not Medusa. That's a different situation. But um, I think Hercules killed I don't. I shouldn't say that because I really don't know. But to kill the hydronster, you have to cut off the immortal head. And so when I look at addiction, it's like, we can't just cut off all of these vices that we're using. We have to actually cut off the immortal head, which is the core, the inside, which is where all the shame lives, which is where the environment aspects and the belief system is rooted, and so I'm gonna use myself. And I look at eating disorders as an addiction, so I'm going from an addiction perspective. So I'm going to talk about my development of my eating disorder and my I developed my eating disorder. It really started in college, the middle end of college. And the thing is, I don't think that's really when my stuff started. That's just when it became like more problematic and obvious. And I was always super, super high performing. I was known as the smart kid in my family, which is not a bad thing, had high energy. It seemed like I always had a lot of friends. I don't know that anybody on the out, so I would really think anything was going on. But I had all these vices that I was using to make myself feel better. At one point, it was school. At one point it was friends or um having certain positions in clubs or sororities or whatever, and UM. Then it became what my body looked like and when I couldn't when I couldn't be as diligent with um losing weight and if things when things stuck kind of started plateauing. Then it became working out, and and when it stopped being about me being able to maintain this perfect body. Then it was like, well, how fast can I run? And how long can I run? And how good can I be at this workout? And so on and so forth. So what I'm saying there is just by going to all those different things, it only temporarily solved my problem, right, So their solutions that work temporarily. What I was saying in the beginning of this whole thing, what I really needed to do is go cut off that immortal head, which was like the core, uh, the inside of everything that all of these things kind of fluttered around and tried to fix. And that was me not feeling good enough and me not feeling wanted enough. And if I kept going on that train, then I'd never be done and essentiallyzed running myself into the ground. Because let's say I want a race and I felt like, oh my gosh, this I won this race. People think I'm important, people think I'm good. Now I gotta keep that up or I have this body and now people finally want to be my friend and date me and hang out with me. But what happens if I don't have this body, then they won't think that anymore. So I have to keep that up. And so when I couldn't keep something up, I would go to something else. When I couldn't keep that up, I would go to something else, essentially again running myself into the ground, because every time I stopped one of those behaviors, that wasn't the actual problem. So remember that episode we did on trauma and the body and how they're connected. That was like I think two or three episodes ago. Well, in that episode, we talked about how the brain is connected to the body, therefore it's inseparable. But those two things and the individual slash. The body is connected to the environment, so that means that our brains and our bodies are inseparable from our environment. That means they communicate and affect each other. But addiction in the general public does not take this into account, which drives me kuckoo bananas because again we look at these people like they're these bad people that are living in this perfect world and how could they be doing this and blah blah blah blah, And I'm like, wait a second, these people are responding to the world that they're living in. What I'm doing is I'm asking you guys to take a look at addiction through what is called a biopsychosocial perspective. This says that the environment is key in our development. It means that our biology is shaped by our physiological and social experience, is and relationships. Basically, if we take all the big words out of that, it means that like we are shaped by how we experience life. So if we become addicts, it's because something is going on in the environment. Because I would not be an addict if I grew up in a vacuum by myself, with nothing else in the world. What happened? I find this fascinating and it's very super helpful to me. And I will say one of the best explanations of the biopsychosocial model of addiction is through um Dr Gabor Monte's book In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, I actually learn what I'm about to tell you um from him. He's a genius and I have been sucked in to so many like YouTube deep dives with him. He's so smart, so very smart, and some of the stuff that you'll hear it might end up being like born. You feel like you can't pay atten take it in small doses because that guy is so smart. Dr Gabor Mate just google him. So so this comes from him. Um, I learned this from him. So he explains that kids whose parents are stressed are more likely to have asthma. Okay, what do you think asthma is treated with I'm pausing so you guys can think, but it's treated with freaking stress hormones. And you know what doctors don't do when they diagnosed with someone with asthma, They do not ask what's going on? We never asked what's going on? But here is a perfect example of how our environment shapes our biology. The emotional stress of the parent is having an impact on the physiology of the child. And I know we can argue the disease model all day here. And yes, the parents give genes to the kids, but all the genes say is you are more prone to it. It doesn't mean it happens. The environment is what triggers it and makes it happen. So let's dive even deeper here. And I'm gonna get a little science, so bear with me, but I'm not trying to make this as easy to digest as possible. So what if, like, for a second, I want you to look at like this perspective. What if we looked at addiction as a way to like self medicate. Right, So when I say, when I was saying that addiction is a way to find a solution to a problem, but then it stops helping eventually, right, So let's look at addiction as a way to self medicate that problem. So essentially, what a self medication. It's any human behavior in which the human uses a substance or any influence outside of ourselves. It could be a behavior to self that keyword self administer treatment for physical or um psychological problems. So it's just when we take something outside of us and we decide to do it to to treat something that's not working. Okay, addiction self medication, that's the definition really. So you know Dr god born mate and one of his studies he asked people is crazy. So he asked people, what does the addictive substance do for you? And people gave him answers like this, It gives me peace, it helps me relax, They allow me to connect with people. It took my pain away, and y'all these are normal human desires. So what this is telling us is the addicted person just wants to be and feel like a normal human. That's it. So enter the need for self medication. We want to feel like normal humans when we are experiencing a world that does not feel normal because our world is not freaking normal. Okay, so more science stuff here. Bear with me. If most of us have heard of stimulan, it's like, and I don't know most people know what it is, but I'm gonna tell you so. So it's stimulant includes something um and this is not all of the stimulants, but a stimulant would include caffeine, nicotine, cocaine, crystal meth. Those are all stimulant drugs. What stimulants do is they elevate dopamine. And dopamine is an essential neurotransmitter that is known as the feel good transmitter. Right, So I just want you to think dopamine feel good, feel good juice. So the brain actually naturally releases it when we do things like eat food or have sex, and it creates feelings of pleasure and satisfaction. It's part of the reward system in our brain. Um And so when we use drugs that are stimulants, it elevates dopamine. So what I want you to hear me say that stimulants elevate feel good juice that we normally already have in us, or we should have in us, but it gives us more. Okay. So also, drugs like cocaine or adderall don't just elevate dopamine levels, they also block the uptake of serotonin. Okay. So serotonin is a chemical that helps mood regulation. So what that would mean is that these drugs are giving us excess dopamine, so excess feel good juice, and then it's blocking the ability for our our brains to regulate. Right. So it's like almost like mom, dad aren't home, We're having a party, we can do whatever we want kind of thing. So we look at drugs of self medication. This makes so much sense because people might not know it, but they would be using drugs like cocaine to help with their depression. Right, gives me more feel good juice and lets me have as much as I want. So if I'm depressed, cocaine is really going to help with that, okay. Also a d h D, So a d h D is a disease that creates hyperactivity in somebody's brain. It is unknowingly self medicated with alcohol and weed. So when I say unknowingly, I mean that a lot of people with a d h D probably just you know, are addicted to ol all an addicted to weed because what alcohol and weed? Marijuana professional named marijuana, but they are essential nervous system de pressense, so they soothe and calm us down. So those things are going to calm down a hyperactive brain. So if somebody is like, oh, up in the world and I feel crazy, they're going to use those things and they're gonna get stuck on those things because they work the same thing we do with like social anxiety and social phobious. We use the same kind of stuff. And so okay, people self medicate PTSD with opiates. Opiates are pain relievers. Okay, So remember at the beginning when I said, like why the pain, think about it. Opiates are pain relievers, and we are addicted to taking drugs that are pain relievers. Why would we have pain? And and I'm not just talking about physical pain. So we can get addicted to something that that starts with like when people get addicted to prescription drugs. You can get addicted to something that starts with like oh, this is relieving my back pain. But this is crazy. Opiates don't just soothe soothe physical pain from like a broken leg or a surgery or something like that. They soothe emotional pain. And we know this because when brain scans, the same part of the brain lights up from emotional pain as physical pain, so it's working for both things. So one more time for the people, like way way, way back, the question is not why the addiction, It is why are the pain? Why are we soothing the pain? If we understand why we have pain, we can't look at just a genetic disorder. We have to actually look at people's lives. And that's what we don't do when it comes to addiction. Okay, and so this's just I gets so dressed up on the stuff, But so people A lot of times we're like, well, why why do our bodies respond so well to like an opiate, like something like why is that? Like why do we have receptors in our brain for opiates? And we really don't. We have receptors for things that are nag for our body's natural pain relievers, and those are called endorphins. And everybody in their mom has heard about endorphins, right, Like a difference made people happy and how people don't kill people. But opiates are like the like not natural form of endorphins. And this is I'm giving you science in a very nonscience. Um way, okay, And so why do we have endorphins. What do endorphins do? Well? They relieve pain obviously to and then they help with the stimulation of joy and like happiness and elation. And then most importantly, they make the like loving interaction specifically between like a baby and a and a mom or or a caregiver possible because of how they work. Full circle, we're talking about the ability for attachment and belonging. So without attachment and that relationship, there is like there's no life like we live, like think about the main desire we have is love and belonging. So without attachment, we don't have that. So we're gonna be depressed. We're going to think something's wrong with us, especially with babies. So endorphins make that attunement interaction possible. So I want to go back because Okay, you know I said in the beginning, we're gonna come so full circle with that thing that I said, like where I said people have two main desires love, and belonging to be ourselves. Well, right here, right here is what I'm talking about. This is where things go hair wire. Okay, So if I'm not getting that attunement in in that that relationship, like I'm not getting that endorphin response in that whatever, I'm having the lack of something, So then what's happening is I'm going to drop something or pick something up to make that possible. So I am going to drop who I am pick up something I'm not. That is where this addiction comes in because I'm gonna start using their behavior that it's getting. The need meant that already should have been met. So heroin is an opiate um. And one of my favorite stories also was this episode I should just be titled Goob or Monte. This comes from him, and I tell the story all of the time, and I shared it once on the podcast, but I have to share it again because it fits so well here. And so he was working in a clinic and he asked some people what heroin does for you, and one girl said it feels like a warm, soft hug. And then he asked this other guy and and he says, big man tattoos. He describes I'm like bald guy, like big guy, and and he's like, what does heroin do for you? And the guy said, you know, have you ever been really sick? And your mom she she wraps you up in a warm, warm, soft blanket and she picks you up, she sits you on her lap, and she starts feeding you chicken noodle soup. That is what heroin feels like. And ladies and gentlemen that right, there is a experience of love, feeling of love. So what heroin does for them is it makes them feel loved and makes them feel connected. They're trying to create a primal feeling of love and belonging, a primal feeling of good enough. We should be born. We are born so egocentric, thinking that the world revolves around us and we are the best people ever. The only reason we stopped thinking is that that is because we start living in a screwed up world, the world that we're living in, and life hits us, that world hits us. So we stopped thinking that we deserve love, them belong and we stopped thinking that we're good enough. And so here comes this behavior or this drug or the substance that makes us feel that why wouldn't we want that. You cannot blame anybody who just wants to feel love, because when you are lacking love and good enough and belonging, all bets are off for everything else. As you ask yourself, well, how can addict do that when they're hurting so many people, It's like not there, that thought is not there. It's not that they don't care that they're hurting people, but they are trying to get this primal first need. Meant so, if I don't think I deserve love, then I don't care if I'm a shitty person. But the thing is, they are not shitty people. An addict isn't trying to ruin their lives. An addict is self soothing, self medicating. An addict might be looking for a way to find love more than they're looking for a way to screw ship up and screw people's lives up and hurt people. Addicts are not bad people, and addiction isn't something that happens because we were born this way. Addiction isn't just an addict problem. Addiction is everyone's problem, because everyone is living in this world, and we're not living in a world feeling like it's broken. We're looking at people and making them broken or making up the story that they're broken. That's why the chances of relapse increase when like you're really stressed out well, because obviously when we're stressed out, we want release relief. So we're gonna go look for something that's going to give us that relief. And it's going to take more than sobriety for that. It's going to take asking people hard questions. It's going to take asking why the pain and sitting with someone long enough to hear their answer, even if it's not what they want to say and it's not what you want to hear. It's going to take healing the inner part of us that made up the reason for why we got hurt or why we didn't get what we needed in the beginning, and that takes more strength than people think that they have. So we have to stop telling each other that we're weak. We just stopped telling addicts that they're weak. We just start building people up and not bringing hurt people down. Because to do the hard work, you have to feel like you're strong enough. You have to feel like you have what it takes to get through that withdraw period. But if addict thinks that they're a weak, bad person, they're also going to think that they can't survive that. So I asked you guys on Instagram to send me some questions you have about a addiction, and I think I answered a lot of them in that there was one specific question that I didn't answer, and I do want to touch on that, and it's how do you support somebody who is an addict or somebody who's in recovery? And um, there are two different questions but also kind of the same so with love. Right, So if all of this is because we have this pain of these unmet needs, right, or or maybe it's not an unmet need. Maybe something hit us in life that then told us something about ourselves. So maybe it was a later trauma that led to this addiction that told us something about ourselves. That's still a lack of love, a lack of love for ourselves, because we're we're telling ourselves a story about that, right, So, how do you support somebody as you love them even when it's really hard? You also have to love yourself. So I would really recommend anybody who has um partners or family members or friends who were really struggling in their recovery process or struggling in their own addiction. Go to alan On. So Alanon are their meetings for people who are friends and family of addicts, and it's super helpful and it helps you create boundaries. It's all about boundaries and all that, and also like, how do we support somebody through our boundaries. It's not doing the work for them because we don't have to do the work for them, because we have to show them that they're strong enough to do the work. It's stepping back from that codependency of let me fix or let me do, and let them fix or do, but also love them in that process. And I could talk about this for another forty five minutes, but that's in a nutshell how I really want to end this and what I really want to say to close this discussion out about addiction. And again, like I could sit here and talk about this forever because I touched scratch the surface of one part of it is the next time you want to ship talk someone who's struggling, especially if that person is you, I'm going to ask you to think twice. I'm going to ask you to ask the question, is that person broken or is that person trying to survive the best way they know how in a very very broken world. Okay, guys, I know that was a kind of a heavier episode. UM I was talking to my friend about like, oh, like, how do I like make this entertaining and and and add the me humor? And it's like, well, Cat, this might not be the episode to add that humor too, because it actually really isn't funny, and none of a lot of this stuff we talked about isn't funny. So I hope that you that wasn't you guys enjoyed that and you got something out of that. Again, feel free to send me um an email question Catherine at you Need Therapy podcast dot com. But again remember that I'm not your I can't be your therapist. Well I can, I might be some of y'all's therapists, But the questions, if they're general, I can answer them, but if I'm giving you therapeutic advice, it really crosses like an ethical boundary that um I can't I can't help with. But if you have some general questions, send them, shoot them that way I can maybe address them on an episode one day. So I hope you like this episode. It's a little shorter than normal, and I think that's okay because honestly that the information might be a little bit heavier, so it lets you digest it a little better. But again, I don't know everything there's about addiction, but I do know a lot, and I'm really passionate about it, and I'm passionate about changing the stigma that comes with addiction. And so that's why I really wanted to get on here and talk about it. And um, some of the best people I know have been addicts, and some of them have found recovery and and some of them haven't, and there's still some of the best people I know. Um, so I just wanted to say that, And um, thank you guys for tuning in again. I really really appreciate again some announcements. The website is up. You need Therapy dot com. It is up. Go see it. It's beautiful. I love it. And then also the store is up, so go shop the store. You can use the code y n T to get your discount, and yeah, tell us what things you like and like if there's things that you want, like we me and my team designed this stuff ourselves. So if there's stuff that you want let us know. We can take that into consideration as well. But um, yeah, make sure you check that stuff out. Thank you so much for supporting me again. Also, review rate, subscribe. That stuff means a lot and it really helps. So if you could go, if you're listening to this on especially like Apple podcast, if you could scroll to the bottom and just click five stars. And if you really feel like you want to show me some love, like write a little comment and it doesn't have to be all positive. You can do constructive feedback. You also can send me constructive feedback in my email Catherine at you Need Therapy podcast dot com. So I'm totally open to that, open to being better all that stuff. Thank you guys for tuning in. And I know I said I was going to do a Q and A, but this episode ended up being yeah long and in more like in depth, and I thought, so we're just gonna keep it at this and we might do a whole Q and A episode for an entire episode. So um, I'll keep those questions that you guys sent in and I'll use those in the future. But until next five guys, have a happy week, Happy Monday, Happy Labor Day, and i'll talk to you SA