Dopamine Expert: Short Form Videos Are Frying Your Brain! This Is A Dopamine Disaster!

0:00 There's a great experiment where rats were given a lever to press for cocaine, and after learning that it releases a lot of dopamine, the rats will press that lever till exhaustion or death. Which is essentially the model of addiction that we see in humans. But if the cocaine is then removed, eventually they won't press the lever anymore. Now if that same rat, after a period of time, is then exposed to a very painful foot shock, the first thing the rat will do is run over and start pressing that lever again. And that's really powerful because it shows that when individuals are under extreme stress, they are more vulnerable to going back to compulsive overconsumption of our drug choice because their brain has already encoded using these high dopamine rewards as a way to get out of that pain. Okay, so what do I need to do to make sure that I can knock the bad habits and out? Here's what we do. Doctor Anna Lemke is chief of the Stanford Addiction Clinic and a world leading expert on the subject of dopamine. And now she's returned to warn us that addiction is the modern plague and how we can rewire our brains to take back control. On average, it takes Four weeks for people to get out of constant state of craving. But here's the problem. Our survival depends on figuring out how to live in a world of abundance. For example, we're now seeing the drugification of human connection through social media, dating apps, and now artificial intelligence designed to flatter.

1:18 to validate there's no friction there. And so it's pulling us away from the hard things that we need to be doing in real life to cultivate real life relationships. Just we cannot go in that direction because in a world of abundance, we are entertaining ourselves to death. Sounds like a good way to go. It's really not. Because the relentless pursuit of pleasure leads to anhedonia. What's that mean? At all. Teach me everything. Just give me thirty seconds of your time.

1:48 Two things I wanted to say. The first thing is a huge thank you for listening and tuning into the show week after week. It means the world to all of us, and this really is a dream that we absolutely never had and couldn't have imagined getting to this place. But secondly, it's a dream where we feel like we're only just getting started. If you enjoy what we do here. Please join the twenty four percent of people that listen to this podcast regularly and follow us on this app. Here's a promise I'm gonna make to you. I'm gonna do everything in my power to make this show as good as I can now and into the future. We're gonna deliver the guests that you want me to speak to, and we're gonna continue to keep doing all of the things you love about this show.

2:25 Thank you. Doctor. Oh no.

2:31 Mk. For anyone that might not know you. And they didn't watch our conversation last time, which was a fantastic conversation. One of my favourites of all time. And also, I know Jack has said to me as well that it was one of his favourites of all time. Who are you and what have you spent your career doing if you had to summarise it? What are the reference points that your wisdom draws upon and the experiences you've had and the people you've worked with.

2:53 I'm a psychiatrist. I did a r residency in psychiatry at Stanford University, and then I stayed on, joined the faculty. I see patients, I do research and I teach. You wrote this um Iconic book about This word dopamine.

3:09 Why does it matter so much? Why does this this idea of dopamine matter so much? Dopamine is a chemical we make in our brain, but I use it in the book. As really a an extended metaphor for the ways in which Overabundance itself.

3:25 is a human stressor. We are living in a time and place where we have more access to luxury goods, more disposable income, more leisure time, even for the poorest of the poor. ever before in recorded history. And It turns out

3:42 That is stressful. for our brains. And it's stressful in a brand new way that we really haven't confronted before, making us all more vulnerable to the problem of compulsive over consumption. and addiction. And I do think that addiction is the modern plague.

3:59 I think we're going to be struggling with the problem of compulsive overconsumption in a world of abundance. For the foreseeable future, as in centuries. And our survival will depend on figuring out. how to live in a world of abundance. Even though we have brains that evolved for a world of scarcity.

4:21 At this time of the year people are thinking a lot about making changes in their life. They wanna get in shape, they wanna lose a couple of pounds, they wanna save their money, they wanna knock the addiction, they wanna stop Yeah. Smoking. B Drugs.

4:36 And the Alcohol. So as it relates to The subject of dopamine. How do these two things link?

4:44 Our habits and dopamine. What is the the the link or the connection there? Because I think most people listening right now have probably made a New Year's resolution, even if it's just in their mind. And I'm wondering how everything you write about in dopamine nation Is related to and critical to understand if I am going to shake some of these bad habits that I have or pick up some new ones. The place to start is to have self compassion. Because we are living in a world of abundance where we have

5:10 Easy access to all kinds of reinforcing substances and behaviors. And access itself is one of the biggest risk factors for addiction. So if you grow up in a neighborhood where drugs are easily and readily accessible, you're more likely to try them. and more likely to get addicted to them. And what do addictive substances and behaviors do to our brains? They release a lot of dopamine all at once in a dedicated part of the brain called the reward pathway.

5:39 And the fact that they release so much dopamine at once means that they're highly salient and memorable experiences, right? So our brain really encodes that experience deeply, that experience of intense pleasure, that was self administered that I could potentially do again. Why?

6:02 Okay, in a world of scarcity and ever present danger, which is the world that we evolve for. We will naturally reflexively approach pleasure. And avoid pain, and we must do so. For our survival. Why. So if I have a cigarette now.

6:20 It's gonna be a really memorable Experience from a Why Does my brain make it memorable? And why would I want to then go do that again from a survival perspective? Okay.

6:31 Great question. So let's first distinguish what we call na natural rewards. So natural rewards are food, clothing, shelter, finding a mate. Yeah. These are things we must obtain. In order to survive. What addictive drugs and behaviors do is they mimic those natural rewards by exploiting our internal brain chemistry

6:58 To release a lot of dopamine all at once, much more than we would get from natural rewards existing in nature. Amplifying that experience, making it even more memorable, even more salient, and also making our brain think, Ah, this is important for my survival. Uh okay, so There's Certain natural rewards like

7:19 Eating, which of course my body wants to reward me for, so I eat again. And these chemicals in front of me, like the cigarettes, the whiskey, the Drugs. Those have been designed to Hijack that particular part of the brain.

7:31 And really amplify the feeling. So that my brain kind of is tricked into thinking that it was Potentially a Natural reward. But it's actually a synthetic.

7:40 Sort of man made. Chemical. Exactly. And what we see in the evolution of drugs over You know, human lifetimes, but especially in the last 200 years, is the application of science and technology

7:57 To take Like the coca leaf, for example, right? That's been around Forever. And essentially make it

8:05 even more potent, even more uh available to make it a faster delivery mechanism. So we have this history of increasing potency and availability over time. said more simply, drugs are getting even more potent over time. So this vulnerability to the hijacked brain is even more common. Including Taking things that we didn't even really think of.

8:31 as drugs. And turning them into drugs. So remember the natural rewards, one of them is finding a mate. Mm-hmm. And one of the ways our brains gets us to do that is by making falling in love and making intimacy and human connection rewarding on a neurobiological level, including releasing dopamine in our reward pathway when we make

8:55 My colleague at Stanford, Rob Balanka. And uh and his colleagues did an interesting experiment. Where they were able to show that oxytocin, our love hormone, binds to dopamine releasing neurons in the reward pathway and releases dopamine, which is just one more link in the chain showing us that Falling love, human connection. Is

9:20 rewarding. It feels good. It it releases dopamine. What we see now is the drugation of human connection, for example, through social media. Dating apps. Online pornography and now

9:36 Artificial intelligence and other large language models which create this frictionless experience. With technology that feels like talking to a human being. And it's incredibly validating, right? So the algorithms for large language models are to make us feel really good, to make us feel like our point of view is the right point of view, to bolster our self esteem, to validate our point of view. That's how those algorithms are designed. And now even more explicitly we have AI models that are explicitly pornographic, explicitly erotic, right? So now you have this interactive component that learns what we like and then is able to regurgitate it back to us. So you get this really very powerful.

10:19 action perception loop. Which is part of what makes a drug potent. It's that I have control over it, right? I can decide. When I'm going to change the way I feel by using this drug.

10:32 Are you concerned about AI and chat GPT and all those large language models that have emerged that are now Simulating human connection. Yes, I'm very concerned. I see the not so good outcomes, meaning people who get addicted to social media, to dating apps, to online pornography. Um and to AI.

10:53 And who end up Using those Forms of media Two Stimulate human connection.

11:02 While they actually become more and more disconnected. Have you started to see anybody in your practice or heard of anybody that's developing an addiction to AI. Or relationships with AI. So we are starting to see that.

11:16 um, you know, individuals who are spending more and more time on AI Looking for Companionship. Often this is individuals who are experiencing marital or interpersonal conflict

11:31 Who turned to AI for advice on how to handle interpersonal conflict. and often for emotional validation because they're not getting it from their partners. And what they experience with AI is an enormous amount of emotional validation, validating view. But also А с компаніші. Um, you know, a a repeated process of feeling like they're understood, they're they're they're validated, such that then they're spending more and more time.

12:00 on AI And of course that is The essence Of the addiction to digital media. It's

12:10 the time spent Right, which then leads to opportunity costs, other things that we're not doing because we're spending so much time online. Furthermore, it In my experience often leads to a rift. Between

12:26 those individuals and their real life partners. Because instead of going to their real life partners And talking and we know that the most important thing that you know, two individuals in a relationship can do is one four letter word that ends with K. Which is talk.

12:43 those individuals stop talking. Right, and instead they're getting their needs met. Through AI. And that leads then to a further and further rift between those individuals. Do do you actually think that it It is

12:56 uh these chat bots that we're increasingly speaking to about our problems. Are actually Taking the place of humans in our life. I do. You know, in my book I my first chapter in the book is about a patient of mine, a scientist and an engineer who

13:13 H got addicted to pornography and eventually made his own masturbation machine. And He did that with a record player and a metal device attached to his organs that he could then uh fine-tuned control. And then ultimately that got more and more sophisticated over time. And he had electrical wires

13:33 from his body to the to a s through a stereo system in the internet. And when I first heard um from Jacob about His trajectory and the severity of his sex addiction, which ultimately led to the dissolution of his relationship, the near loss of his employment, and ultimately severe depression and suicidal ideation. Thankfully he did not end his life.

14:00 When I first heard about that, I had this distinct sense of like otherness, like oh my gosh, I I can't even imagine Doing that. And That's just

14:11 Kind of horrific. But that That response really lasted all of Five seconds before I realized Oh wait a minute. I do that.

14:21 You know, I do that with romance novels and in a way we're all doing that with our devices, right? We're turning to these devices to meet our emotional Sexual intellectual, you name it needs. And these devices are so good at meeting those needs that we are

14:43 Getting further and further away. from investing in our relationships with the people who are in our lives. And you can see this especially with younger generations like the the epidemic of loneliness now, you know, Gen Z weaned on this technology, many of whom endorse significant loneliness, isolation Depression, spending more and more time online. um report preferring to interact socially online and then to do it in person. So this is definitely a a dark undercurrent.

15:15 um that we're seeing in the world today. I was reading about a story which was published in a people magazine of a twenty eight year old woman who admitted that she's fallen in love with a her AI boyfriend that she created using chat GPT. She's got a husband, a real life husband. Yeah, she found more comfort in her chat GPT.

15:34 Boyfriend. Um and she said that it started as a fun experiment. Um but eventually they ended up getting attached and now she's paying a two hundred dollar a month subscription. So she can interact with her AI boyfriend without restrictions. The AI has helped her throughout her life.

15:50 and has given her incredible emotional support. And now there's actually AI companion apps like Replica where which have millions of users. And the whole sort of premise of those apps is that they will be your companion. The other really interesting thing that I um I don't think people realise about That AIs that they're using is that they are personalizing their answers and their responses to you.

16:12 And I didn't I didn't believe this fully until one of my friends in our Manchester United chat recently. We were debating who's the best football player of all time, Ronaldo or Messi. And I went on my chat GBT and I asked the question and it said messy. So I was like Here you go. And then he went on his and asked the exact same question word for word and it said Ronaldo. And I thought oh it's telling me what I wanted to hear based on what it knows about me. Right. And then I think Ronaldo's the but m Messi's the best. So it's telling me that. And then I thought, okay, so what else is

16:39 Is it telling me that's personalized to me to make me feel a certain way or to think a certain way? Um but you don't realise when you're speaking to it that it's giving everybody different answers based on the memory that it stores on you. And that's you know, if you play this forward, actually the AI that is most personalized, that caters to your needs the most, that is most retentive. is probably the one that you're gonna end up using the most. So that company's gonna be the most successful. So we're in a probably a bit of an arms race with these models to Create one that

17:07 meets your needs the most. Yes, exactly. And it is that comfort loop that is so incredibly dangerous and also so insidious because we can't observe it in the moment, right? We're engaging with AI. It's telling us exactly what we want to hear, but it does it in such a seamless way with that silky syntax that we don't even notice that, you know, it's basically an algorithm that's seducing us because that's really what it's doing. We feel vindicated and validated. And it w releases dopamine in the reward pathway. That feels good.

17:41 But Over time. Essentially what's happening is we are ingesting a drug. Our brain will adapt to that over time such that we'll need more and more potent forms to get the same effect. We'll need more validation, we'll be need no more sexually explicit responses, you name it, there will be tolerance, but also there will be this pulling away from the things, the hard things that we need to be doing in real life to cultivate

18:08 In real life relationships. Give me some more colour on what you mean that. Okay. If you think about what it takes to make I to create a healthy relationship with another human being in in real life. Well, first of all, you gotta get up off the couch and you gotta go find them. Right. And they're not all beautiful and interesting, and neither are we, right? So there's gotta be, you know, some compromise on maybe some idealized version that we have for ourselves or other people.

18:36 And then you're in conversation and it's not always interesting. And sometimes you have to listen to your partner even when it's dull. And then there are conflicts and you disagree and you know, my way or the highway. You have to give in, you know, give and take. All relationships are about compromise. All successful relationships are about Acknowledging you know, the other person's point of view and incorporating that. And yet we're not doing any of that when we're interacting with digital media, right? It's all

19:06 It's all validation of our worldview, what we want to hear. And of course that feels great. It it's it's reinforcing, it's rewarding, but over the long haul, when we get really sick and need somebody to come and, you know Bring us some chicken soup or take us to the doctor or you know, take us to the hospital. AI is not gonna

19:26 not gonna be able to do that. Yeah. I mean this kind of dovetails to another point, which is you talked about the word abundance earlier. One of the really striking things that A lot of the big AI entrepreneurs and founders and COs are talking about is the age of abundance that's around the corner. Elon Musk tweeted saying

19:44 This really will be a world of abundance. Specifically advances in AI and robotics, um Well create the age of abundance. And he said, humanity is not constrained in any real fashion. I thought your first book, when he was talking to a guy called Peter Diamonds, was pretty accurate. It was called abundance.

20:03 And There will be universal high income and not universal basic income. There'll be no shortage of goods or services. And really what he's speaking to here is in the world of robotics and AI, where I think his shareholder remuneration package that he's going to be paid in twenty thirty or whatever um is linked to creating a million humanoid robots that can work in these physical spaces that could theoretically

20:28 Bring me chicken soup. Um, that won't get sick, won't complain, will reinforce me, will live in the physical environment with me here at home, will be in my office. et cetera, et cetera will be in factories. And there was a headline I think last week saying that A um Amazon We're cutting back about half a million jobs that they were intending to hire previously. because they now believe that humanoid robots and robots generally will be able to do those jobs.

20:52 People think okay, well I'm gonna be out of work, but what Elon is saying is The price of everything comes down. When we're not paying humans to do it. And when we're paying a robot to do it. Which means that we're gonna live in this world of abundance where everything is much cheaper.

21:05 The world of abundance that many of us are already experiencing and more will experience in the future, I agree with that. We are we already have more leisure time than we had a generation ago. By twenty fifty, we're projected to have seven hours of leisure time per day compared with three hours of work per day. So we're definitely moving toward that. That is going to be our number one. social problem. That we have time.

21:33 We have access to these highly entertaining media And Hypothetically, we would all be going around and helping each other and cleaning up the planet and reading philosophy, but that is not what is happening so far. What is happening so far is we're spending

21:52 An enormous amount of our time. Online. masturbating, watching pornography, playing video games, and talking to AI chatbots. That is essentially the problem. And you know, Elon Musk is he's very interesting to me because

22:09 He has talked before about his tremendous fear that the machines will take over, that there will be a hostile takeover. It's not going to be a hostile takeover. We will seed our agency. to these machines and we're already doing it. We will give them our power. Yeah, well w yeah, we will we will we will entertain ourselves to death, right? I mean and and this is what Neil Postman warned about in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death.

22:35 A theme that was picked up by David Foster Wallace in Infinite Jest. you know, beginning with television and now the internet and digital media and all its various forms. We are entertaining ourselves to death. Entertaining ourselves to death. Sounds like a good way to go.

22:58 You know, it's really not. It's really not. And I'll tell you why. Because the relentless pursuit of pleasure for its own sake leads to anhedonia. which is the inability to take joy in anything at all.

23:14 Because of this process of neuroadaptation and the way that our brain recalibrates pleasure and pain, such that with the more pleasure we pursue, the more pleasure we need, and the more we feel pain. No matter what we have, eventually it won't be enjoyable anymore. And that is the problem. So explain that to me using a Okay, so imagine that you're not going to be able to In our brain's reward pathway, there's a balance like this that represents how we process pleasure and pain.

23:47 When we experience pleasure, it tips one way. Pain it tips the other. And what you mean by pain? Pain, I mean all forms of pain. Physical pain, emotional pain. A hangover. That's a great example, right. Not just me being pinched. It could be that too. So all different forms of pain. Now, granted, this is a vast oversimplification. You know, pleasure and pain can be experienced simultaneously, like when we're eating spicy food or during sex. So this is very simplified. But this gets at the core concept of homeostasis.

24:19 and neuroadaptation, which I will define. Yeah. So when the when the balance when the pleasure and pain balance is level, that's what neuroscientists call homeostasis. That is the baseline level. that we kind of live in. That's our sort of the heartbeat of our pleasure system, right?

24:38 When we do something that's reinforcing or pleasurable, right, or rewarding in some way. Right here. Right. Or Digital media, this little

24:48 Ro AI robot. So you're putting a cigarette into the one side of the scale at the moment, and then a little AI. Yeah, let's combine'em,'cause we're let's say we're we're we're watching a video and smoking at the same time on our phone. Which by the way, you see more and more of, right? People used to go out for smoke breaks. Now it's the smoke and scroll break, right? Why do they have to combine them? Because of tolerance, which we're gonna get to in a second. So when when we ingest substances that are potentially addictive,

25:14 Um and highly reinforcing, or we engage in activities that are highly reinforcing that releases dopamine. In the nucleus accumbens. That's typically associated with pleasure and then our pleasure pain balance tilts to the side of pleasure. Yeah.

25:29 But no sooner has that happened than our brain responds by neuroadaptation, okay? And that's where We then down regulate dopamine transmission. When you say down regulate, do you mean reduce? Yes. So in in the brain's reward pathway we then reduce dopamine transmission. And I like to represent that as Rocks in this case, or I talk about in my book gremlins, going on the pain side of the balance to bring it level again. So this is the process, these are neuroadaptation.

25:59 uh rocks. Okay. They're going here because One of the overarching rules. Governing this balance is that it must return to homeostasis. It must return to Balanced. It must return to the level position, yeah. So okay. So then we we put in so this is our brain working to return to the level position by reducing dopamine levels. Again, an oversimplification, but just a way to get at this concept. Has it released something in order to counteract the balance there?

26:24 In this simplified metaphor, you know, at the simplest level, what's happening here is that it's, for example, taking away Dopamine receptors so that there's fewer places for dopamine to land. Thereby decreasing dopamine transmission. Because it has been flooded. Because it has been flooded. That's right. It's trying to compensate for the

26:46 Too much dopamine. Okay. And is this what I experience when I have like a hangover or a come down? Right, so that's coming. So what happens is once once we've gone with this ner process of neuroadaptation, it would be nice if that pleasure pain balance just went back to the level position. And then there would be no hangover, but it doesn't. It continues to go down an equal and opposite amount to the side of pain. This is this opponent process mechanism. Oh now my brain is dopamine It's That's it. Okay. Yes, and that doesn't feel good. And you have

27:18 Basically two options here. More dopamine. You can Get more dopamine. Right.

27:24 To get bring yourself back. So I'm now putting the cigarettes back into the pleasure thing. And and some whiskey.'Cause that's what you gotta do,'cause this is tolerance, right? You need more and more of your drug over time to get the same effect, or you need to combine drugs to overcome tolerance. And by the way, this is of course the fastest way to to to get back to the level position is to use more of your drug, right?'Cause that then you're right there, you're back again. The the problem with this method is that the the the brain will respond by more neuro adaptation. So now we're putting more rocks in on the in the pain and now you're now you're now you're doing this, right?

28:00 Now I need even more to Now you need even more, right? So and eventually over time. You know. You're putting You're doing this. And this is simply

28:13 A metaphorical representation of The addicted brain. Right. Now now our brain has down regulated dopamine transmission in the reward pathway. Two

28:26 A kind of chronic Dopamine deficit state. So to feel good. when I've really abused my drugs of choice. I'm gonna have to do s so much, probably so frequently to feel good again. That's exactly right. You're gonna need more of your drug in more potent forms more often.

28:44 J not even to feel like high and go to the pleasure side, but just to level the balance and feel normal. So in the context of people with bad habits, if I I'm having a cookie every day. The more and more cookies that I eat, the more and more cookies I'm gonna want tomorrow and need tomorrow just to feel good again. Essentially, yes. And the same applies for things like pornography and uh maybe, you know.

29:08 interacting with an an AI and social media and whiskey and alcohol, so The more of it I consume. Th this is why y you know, I think everybody listening can probably relate to having moments in their life where they feel like they're they're kind of losing control of a particular habit. And they're doing it every day. They know they don't really want to, but they're doing it

29:26 They they're getting cravings to do it. I I reflect to my own life and I go there there will be periods Every year where I just like f I call it like falling off the horse and I just can't seem to get control of like not eating that bad thing again the next day. And then something happens

29:41 Maybe there's less stress in my life for a week and I'm and maybe there's more routine and I'm back home in Los Angeles or the UK. And I'm not travelling around and then suddenly I can get back on the horse. What's going on there? Yeah, great question. So Um first of all, let me just say that

29:56 Many people also report that In periods of high stress. they are more vulnerable to going back to falling off the wagon or going back to some problem with related to the Compulsive overconsumption.

30:11 Uh or addiction. But the opposite is also true. So some people say that they actually do better when there's stress in their lives and it's when that stress is removed and they feel like, oh, I can relax my boundaries or my guardrails. And those individuals are more more vulnerable to compulsive overconsumption in times when things are going well. So so things going badly can be a trigger and things going well can be a trigger depending upon your unique like life history and unique wiring. There's a wonderful animal experiment.

30:43 Aware if you put a rat in a cage with a lever to press for cocaine that rat will press that lever till exhaustion or death, which is essentially the animal model of addiction. But if before the rat becomes addicted If the cocaine is then removed such that pressing that lever no longer yields the reward, the That rat.

31:05 Well eventually. Extinguish that. lever pressing behavior. So they'll they'll stop pressing the lever, right? They'll stop doing the work. It can take a while, but eventually they won't press the lever anymore. Now if that same rat After a period of time is then exposed to a very painful foot shock.

31:23 the first thing the rat will do in response to that painful foot shock is run over and start pressing that lever again. And to me that's just a wonderful model of what we see in humans that when individuals are under extreme stress. They are

31:40 typically more vulnerable to relapse because their brain has already encoded Using these high dopamine rewards. um in response to any kind of pain as a way to get out of that state. So we talked about the pleasure pain balance here. So but if in my life I experience some form of pain, I'm likely to go and seek out Pleasure and stress could theoretically be considered a form of pain. Yeah, which is why people um with severe childhood trauma are at higher risk for addiction.

32:10 Um, there are probably epigenetic changes uh that are happening at the level of DNA expression in their brains, making them more vulnerable to addiction. Um we know that People who are living in poverty are more vulnerable to addiction. Uh people who are struggling with uh multi-generational trauma, uh unemployment, major social and geographic dislocation, those individuals are more vulnerable to addiction. So environmental stresses uh definitely play a role. We also know that co occurring psychiatric disorders um make people more vulnerable to addiction, probably That means that people who struggle with bipolar disorder, depression, um, anxiety, schizophrenia.

32:51 Are At higher risk of becoming addicted. And probably it's because they're trying to self medicate. What about ADHD? So kids with ADHD are at higher risk to develop an addiction in adulthood than kids without ADHD.

33:08 And The mechanism of action for that is not Well understood, but there are some really interesting theories. One of the theories is that kids with ADHD have uh reward deficit at baseline. And that has been shown in experiments that people with ADHD

33:25 When you show them rewarding stimuli. Their reward pathway isn't as activated as healthy control subjects. When you say rewarding stimuli, what's what's that mean? Images of cupcakes or alcohol or anything that they will endor endorse is something that that's pleasurable for them. So their brain doesn't release as much dopamine when they' when they see something rewarding. So brain imaging studies showing that not only do people with A D H D not release as much dopamine in response to rewards but also have at baseline fewer

33:59 Dopamine receptors. And remember we talked about The decrease in dopamine receptors. being what happens as people become addicted.

34:10 So in some ways people with ADHD you could conceptualize them as already having craving at baseline. Even before they've been exposed to the kinds of Intoxicants that lead to

34:28 Podcast a few times and Gabor talks to me about how A D H D could be perceived as learning at a young age to Kind of Distract yourself from the stress in your life?

34:40 So he was talking a a lot about you know his own experience growing up in Nazi Germany times and His mother giving him to someone else because the n he was at risk of the Nazis. And the stress of that moment and how he had kind of learnt to tune out of the environment because of that. And I I've always wondered

34:57 I thought about that theoretically is like You know, if you grow up in a household where there's loads and loads of screaming and loads of violence, for example, you kinda learn to to tune out. But you you can also develop a hyper vigilance and um So it kinda does make sense to me that so many of those people If this theoretically holds. Would

35:16 start with a a bit of a Pain baseline. We we definitely know that kids who are raised in traumatic environments where there is complex attachment with caregivers. those kids are at higher developing addiction.

35:35 And this kind of dissociative response to trauma, just trying to escape the situation, either in your own mind Um with your own mental you know, dissociation or distractions or actually finding a behaviour and that gives you comfort.

35:52 Is well, you know, well observed and well well documented. just getting back to our early conversation about digital media and the dangers they're in. So a Pew survey report just came out asking parents Um how they navigate.

36:08 Exposing their kids to Smartphones. And in the cohort of parents who said that yes they do Um let their children under the age of five play with a smartphone. Uh, when they were asked why did they do that or in what circumstances, one of the top reasons was

36:26 uh to soothe their child. When their child was unhappy. or distressed in some way. Now I I found that

36:35 very concerning. Because that is basically setting up the child for The perception action loop of using internal distress. As a Q

36:49 uh for reaching for a smartphone. Which is works. It definitely works in the short term. But the problem again is that through this iterative process of neuroadaptation, ultimately that smartphone will not be sufficient. And now the kid will need a smartphone and I don't know. Um

37:08 you know, an AI tailored pet who will do whatever they want whenever they they want it. And then by the time the kid is eight. you know, that won't be sufficient and the kid will need, I don't know, a slot machine. Um, or or whatever it is, you know, it's this escalating phenomenon. There's um a couple of startups at the moment, AI startups, who are putting

37:29 AI and Cuddly Toys. Oh yes, right. AI and Cuddly Toys. Mm-hmm. And so you can just like you can speak to ChatGPT using your devices, you can come home, you can pick up your cuddly toy, your cuddly toy will talk to you, it'll ask you how your day's been. It will it it can teach you things. What do you think of of that from a

37:49 neuroscience or you know, a dopamine or connection perspective. I think that This is very, very dangerous because we're essentially offloading the work of parenting And creating

38:03 Those relationships. You know, and not again, I I hate judging parents because parenting is hard. And I've made many mistakes in my parenting, you know But what's hap and I'm sure these p the parents have the best of intentions, but instead of You know navigating

38:20 finding a way to communicate with their child Two. figure out how to know what's going on in that child's life, which can be hard to do,'cause, you know, even young children aren't necessarily willing to disclose. But once they get to be teenagers, forget it. Then you gotta like wait until they're ready to tell you, which is almost always like at ten PM at night when you're exhausted after working all day, right? So so so there's that piece of it, right? They're they're not putting in the work, spending the time with the child, finding a common language.

38:48 But you also then then the second piece of it is now you've got this child who is essentially self soothing with a machine. Right. And again. This the the the machines are designed to flatter, to validate, to comfort. There's no friction there. Right. This is incredibly Um potent

39:11 social validation uh and s soothing self soothing it's essentially a masturbation machine. And then you've got this really weird additional loop where now the parents are are finding about out about their child's life. Through

39:29 reading and observing her interactions with the AI. So it's like a game of telephone. Now they've like filtered this thing where they they think they know what's going on in their child's life, but of course they don't. And none of that has gone toward fostering relationship between those parents, you know, and their child. And this is just s you know really, really scary because it's gonna lead to this incredible fragmentation of families of social bonds I mean it's it's it's I I

40:00 Just we cannot go in that direction. We really have to fight against that. So With all this said, and with the knowledge that these algorithms are gonna get more addictive because AI is gonna know me more and more and more. And actually the commercial model behind any of these big technology companies is to keep my attention on their product more so they can deliver more ads or they can charge me a higher subscription fee. Are you at all hopeful? Because I can't see

40:25 from an incentive perspective when we're talking about, you know, the commercial models behind these companies, why Things aren't are gonna t stop and go back. I mean, I agree with you, the genie's out of the bottle. We're we're not going to Go back? But I am hopeful.

40:40 Because Um I think I'm just a realistic optimist. I I do believe in the human capacity to adapt and solve problems. And the simple fact that we're talking about these problems now, which we weren't doing, you know, 10, 15 years ago, I think is a good thing. There's much more awareness in the population about the potential dangers of digital media. And and at the forefront of raising the alarm.

41:06 um has been parents. Because parents are seeing the sort of disintegration of the nuclear family in real time and and they don't like it. So I am hopeful because I just I just think that we're gonna come together and we're gonna try different solutions and some of those solutions will involve technology, um, you know, and and like trying to come up with guardrails or or better technology. I think the way that we're going now, um, you know, with like the erotic

41:35 Chat bot is is not the right direction. But then again, we live in a You know free democracy and Consenting adults. m you know, can do what they're gonna do until we decide as a society that the harms outweigh the potential benefits. But I I really think in the short term we need to focus on kids.

41:53 Because kids are vulnerable. They're vulnerable on so many levels. On a neurobiological level, they're vulnerable because their brains are still rapidly evolving, incredibly neuroplastic. They're cutting back on the neurons they're not using. They're myelinating and making more efficient the neurons they use most often. That whole process ends at about age twenty five. Plus you've got the buckets of hormones that are going into kids, the the the fact that teenagers are natural risk taker risk takers that they they Should based on their evolutionary milestone, be going out and meeting people and be curious and making connections at that time. And yet.

42:32 More and more teenagers are staying at home and getting their needs met, you know, digitally. So we've got we've got to look at kids. That's gotta be like the first priority. And we've got to help parents because we can't leave it up to to parents alone. So I I'm optimistic that we are going to You know. Come up with solutions and I think we just have to try a lot of different things and see what works, but it's can't just be an individual.

42:58 you know, solution. We can't just leave it to individuals or parents or families alone. The schools have to join the solution. Governments, legislators, and also the companies that make and profit. from digital media. They they really are responsible for making a product. That Um

43:17 doesn't harm kids. And right now Yeah. You know, we have a product that harms harms kids. You've recently been an expert witness. In certain

43:27 Trials in court, right? Yes. In ongoing litigation litigation, yes. What can you tell me about? About that. And

43:35 And about the parties in play and why you're being called to be an expert witness. I can't actually tell you too much. I can't talk about it. Um, but I can tell you that the the the basic premise is that Kids are a vulnerable group. that uh social media is not safe for kids.

43:53 that it causes harm At many different levels. but primarily through uh the Uh medium. Uh itself

44:03 Being addictive. and engaging their brains and exploiting their motivational reward system with design features that keep them clicking and swiping. And in that case, someone's suing the social media companies. That's right. So you've got school districts, counties, states, uh the federal government entities representing the federal government.

44:25 Uh Social media companies, yeah. what outcome are they looking for? They're looking for a safer product for kids. They're looking to um help parents and kids and schools.

44:38 Um, protect kids from the harms of social media. Which again are are not just the harms of addiction. You know, that's sort of the the process by which the engagement becomes pathological and then the harms multiply because of the sheer amount of time spent. But the harms r include things like uh cyberbullying, sex exploitation, Sexual abuse material The outcomes of depression, anxiety.

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46:02 per month trial period. That's Shopify.com slash Bartlett. So if I'm c if I'm coming out of December. Right. And I've been eating a little bit too much in December, maybe I've been smoking a bit, whatever bad habit I might have been doing. Drinking too much because it was New Year's New Year's parties, etc. My brain is currently gonna be slightly out of balance in terms of

46:23 It's dopamine. Balance. Yes. So hypothetically your brain will be in a Dopamine deficit state. What you'll want to do is you'll want to

46:35 Abstain from your drug of choice long enough to In order to reset reward pathways. Okay, so if I've got a sugar problem, then I need to just lay off the sugar for a little while. You need to lay off the sugar. For At least

46:50 Four weeks. Four weeks. Yeah, and why four weeks? Cause on average, four weeks is about the amount of time it takes for people to get out of the state of acute withdrawal. and begin to be able to take joy in other more modest rewards and not be in a constant state of craving. Okay.

47:08 The worst part is those first ten to fourteen days, that's when we're in acute withdrawal. And the reason for that is When we first take our reward off the pleasure side of the balance, right? Which I'm gonna do now. So when we first stop the sugar or the AI or the cigarettes. That's right. The first thing that happens is our pleasure pain balance crashes down to the side of pain.

47:29 because of this process of neuroadaptation. Right. Now we're in the state of acute withdrawal. And I won't c of c cravings. Cravings. And yet what are the characteristics of withdrawal? Anxiety, irritability, insomnia. Dysphoria or depressed mood and cravings. And it's crazy'cause when I'm in that state when I've not had my drug of choice for, say, a day or two. I look at the drug differently.

47:54 Like my it just looks different to me. It's so crazy. I'll I'll walk past Let's say was something I really like, maybe carrot cake. If I've you know if I've been having a lot of sugar, which is quite rare for me, but just how have

48:05 When I look at the carrot cake. The day after. I had carrot cake. It looks amazing. And it looks so delicious. But

48:13 When I'm in the ketogenic state where I've not had carbohydrates for, say, four or eight weeks, I look at carrot cake. And I have no emotional connection to it. Exactly. So that summarizes it perfectly, right? I had a patient with a severe food addiction Who When she walked into the break break room at work and saw the donuts.

48:34 She broke out into a cold sweat and actually had stomach pains. It was a physiologic state of craving and hyper arousal just by looking at the donuts. And that's what happens essentially, right? Because we're we're in this state of constant craving. Our brain has overvalued this reward.

48:55 We have euphoric recall of our earlier use of the drug when we first tasted it, how delicious it was. And even now. If we we even now when we eat it because of tolerance it's not as good as earlier use. Ar brain still remembers earlier use and and we have this overweighted of oh how delicious it's going to be. And so this is really important to remember because when we're in that acute state of craving, it feels like it will never end.

49:26 It really does and and I'm I've I'm still amazed in in my clinical work How in early withdrawal people just say the craving is is horrible. Like I I just I can't live like this. And I think that's really important to point out that

49:40 Many people try to stop using their drug of choice, but they don't try They don't stop for long enough to be able to get out of that vortex of craving to get come get to the other side. And it feels like the craving will never end. So I I always have to reassure them that if they can just wait long enough without using, they will eventually get to that place. where they're not in that constant state of craving. Now that's assuming they have enough neuroplasticity to do that, and not not everybody does. And so what what what what is the purpose then of abstinence? It's again

50:14 When our brain is no longer getting this exogenous source of stimulation or dopamine, eventually the brain gets the message, Oh, okay, I need to start upregating my own dopamine transmission. Right. I I need to

50:29 reemploy or re I need to redeploy my postsynaptic dopamine receptors. Right, I need to get it from inside of my brain. And so eventually I don't I'm just gonna take the rocks now off the pain side of the balance. You know that Yeah, we didn't.

50:53 There we go. Eventually if we abstain for long enough Those That process of neuro adaptation reverses itself. And when you say neuro adaptation, you mean the brain changing. Right, the brain changes. So the the kind of neuroplasticity that we see

51:10 With addiction. And B Reversed in most cases. And neuroplastisity is just the brain again changing. Right. Now interestingly you know, the work of Edie Sullivan and others looking at what happens in the brain during recovery suggests that Those

51:29 addiction neural circuits probably never go away, but But like the dying embers of a fire, they quiet down. And then recovery is characterized by the development of new neural networks that route around those injured areas. But the bottom line is that because of neuroplasticity, we can eventually return to kind of baseline levels of pleasure and pain, we can restore our hedonic or joy set point. And when we do that, we're in a much healthier place. Because now

52:01 We can take pleasure in other rewards that are not our drug, right? Like Watching a sunset, talking to a friend, going for a walk, things that we lost the capacity to enjoy Because our reward pathway was hijacked by our drug of choice. I think this is a really important point as well when you say drug of choice, because one thing I learned from our conversation last time is that me and you will both be susceptible To becoming more or less addicted.

52:28 Drugs of choice. So for me it might be whiskey. For you it might I think you said it was like erotic novels were one of your things. I I I don't drink whiskey, just for the But it might be I don't know, it might be opioids or AI. I might be more susceptible. So if me and you spend one hour on TikTok The way my brain has wired, the things I've been through in my life, whatever, might mean that I get really addicted to TikTok, whereas You

52:50 Don't feel that. Exactly. And what distinguishes um, you know, addictive drugs or intoxicants from other substances is that they do release a lot of dopamine all at once in the reward pathway. So many, if not most, people will find intoxicants reinforcing, but that's not universally true. Like there are some people who take opioids and find them that they feel very uncomfortable and it's not doesn't make them feel euphoric, right? And other people will drink caffeine and not feel the stimulating effects. And other people will have alcohol and you know get a headache and not not feel relief. So and and so this differences in our brains is a really important concept.

53:32 What about this idea of having an addictive personality? Is that a real thing? It is a real thing. We don't use that terminology anymore. We talk about the inherited or genetic risk of addiction. We do know that if you have a biological parent or grandparent, Uh with an addictive disorder, you are at increased risk of developing addiction compared to the general population, even if you're raised outside of that substance using home. Am I right in thinking you don't use that term because it suggests one can't change and that they're stuck.

54:01 Or is there another reason? I think in general when we talk about yeah, when we talk about personality it does seem like a kind of a fixed feature. Of somebody's um character and so we're probably trying to

54:19 Avoid that. One of the really liberating things about what you've just said is maybe we don't need to make new year's resolutions. Maybe we need to make just a January resolution. Because that's four weeks long. And if I can get to the end of the four weeks, then the cravings are likely to have gone. And you know, when you think about a new year's resolution Then you get like a week in and you're like, God, am I gonna be able to do this for the whole three hundred and sixty five days? Or you've just said actually illuminates the fact that maybe you should just set yourself a full week resolution.

54:44 Exactly. And that's what we often do in clinical care. If we were to ask people to abstain for their whole lives, it seems impossible. But if we ask them to abstain for thirty days, it's kind of a an amount of time that they can wrap their heads around. And also Not in all, but in most folks who are willing and able to do it. And also importantly for whom it's safe to do because it's not safe for everybody, right? We wouldn't recommend that. For someone who is at risk for life threatening withdrawal from alcohol or benzadazepines or something like that. But for people who are willing and able to do it. they usually feel better at the end of th those those uh thirty days. And then they can make a decision about whether they want to continue to abstain or or they want to go back to using. And if they do decide to go back to using, they've typically

55:31 you know, have lowered their tolerance for their drug of choice, which means that when they do use again, they can get reward from it again, which again because of neuroadaptation, we lose the ability to do that. with chronic heavy use So so that you know, th th there is this whole

55:49 Moderating our use. Which Didn't used to be something that We even Talked about in the field of addiction.

55:58 when it was thought that abstinence was the only way. But more and more um, you know, we are thinking about healthy ways to moderate after a period of abstinence. And the reason we recommend a period of abstinence, even if the long term goal is moderation is because we find that people are more successful moderating if they first um abstain for a period of time. What about if I'm trying to pick up a new habit? Mm-hmm.

56:27 What what w how do I need to be thinking about this? Pain. Pleasure scale. And what are what's a good strategy with this in mind? So I wanna start let's say

56:37 I want to start going to the gym. Right. So you've chosen a habit going to the gym that is hard to do and involves effort. So that means that habit won't happen easily the way that habits that are related to the sudden release of dopamine in the reward pathway. Cause th those are habits that are frictionless. We we pick them up instantaneously. But a habit that Involves Effort.

57:03 And for which the rewards are not immediate, you can you can again think about this pleasure pain balance. And now instead of pressing on the pleasure side, we're intentionally pressing on the pain side by making ourselves get out of bed in the morning, go to the gym, engage in effortful exercise. And what's interesting is that when we do that. The neuroadaptation gremlins that I talk about are these rocks that we've used here today. we'll actually go on the other side of our balance. So on the pleasure side and we will get our dopamine indirectly. by paying for it up front.

57:37 And the way that that's probably happening is that our body in sensing Injury. Is upregating feel good hormones and neurotransmitters like dopamine, but also endogenous opioids, endogenous cannabinoids. And from an evolutionary perspective, that's really how our pleasure pain balance evolved. So just to simplify this for me. Yeah.

58:00 I go to the gym, I get up, I travel to the gym, I lift up those weights, I do my run. I'm gonna feel good. But it's gonna be delayed. Right. And importantly, you're not gonna feel good when you first start exercising. Right. At least most people don't. It's it's painful. And you're thinking, How how many minutes am I am I? You know, how many minutes do I have left? And we do know, in fact, that exercise is immediately toxic to cells, which is Really kind of strange, because we know exercise is good for us. But again, what's probably happening at a molecular level is that the body is sensing cellular injury and in response, upregulating all those feel-good hormones and neurotransmitters, but it takes time. It takes time, and so we're going to have a delayed sense of reward, and that's the runner's high.

58:46 Right, that kind of comes after uh the exercise over. Or maybe for some people it comes in the middle of exercise when you're a little bit into it or halfway through. But at some point, you know, you get the endorphins and and that feels good. How would one go about Gaming this so that I'm more likely to do it.

59:07 Because you know, the reward comes after, which is not not incredibly useful. You almost almost have to have like a religious belief in exercise because you go, No, I'm not gonna want to do this, but it's gonna I'm gonna be glad I did afterwards. Right. So is there anything I can do? Like do I have a mas bar when I get to the gym or something? I don't know. You know, I there are so many ways and so many tricks that people use to kind of create new healthy habits. Um, one of the ways that we can do it is to prepare In advance. for that moment

59:38 when we want to do something that's hard. Because if we wait till that moment to decide whether or not to do something that's hard, we almost always choose not to do it. But if we make a plan in advance, let's say the day before That tomorrow I'm gonna get up at this time.

59:55 I'm gonna, you know, get my stuff together and I'm gonna go to the gym, we're much more likely to engage in that activity. And that can also include then rituals around that activity that we prepare in advance. So for example, packing our bag. Right? The schedule itself, setting up a time. Um, maybe planning to meet a friend, right? So we connect friendship or socialization. with a thing that's hard to do. It's much easier to do these difficult things with other people.

1:00:24 Um then than to have to do it alone. How does that link to the the pain side of the balance, or does it at all link to the pain side of the balance, this idea that if I put my clothes out the night before and I I schedule it and I really plan for it. Is it it's reducing the pain involved? And that's going to increase the probability of the behavior occurring? Is that what you're saying, or is there something else, or is it not like it's I don't think so. I think instead You know

1:00:48 The prefrontal cortex is the large gray matter area right behind our foreheads that's so important for future planning and delayed gratification, also for auto autobiographical narrative. And I think by putting these You know. pieces in place That allows our prefrontal cortex to plan

1:01:07 for this future event that we know we're not gonna want to do, but that We want to do it. It allows us to kind of put the brakes on our short term desires.

1:01:21 And Project ourselves into the future to achieve our long term desires. So Sam McClure, a neuroscientist, has shown that in response to immediate rewards. The emotion brain gets activated. In response to long term rewards. The prefrontal cortex gets activated.

1:01:41 So by planning in advance all of these little pieces, sometimes called habit stacking, У есенціар префронта cortex, projecting ourselves. Into the future. Um and anticipating a long term reward, which then allows us to Do hard things.

1:02:00 And avoid short term rewards. in the service of our future selves. So many people might have an experience where they kick the habit for a little while. And then they relapse.

1:02:12 You know, it might take uh might be a month, might be two months, might be three months. Is there a Is there any art to avoiding the relapse? So it's very common to relapse, especially living in the world that we do today where we're constantly being invited to consume

1:02:28 Рилиді стимули. You know, getting us to to drink or to smoke or to do various forms of entertainment real chase us down. We we can't avoid them, where it's very difficult to So I talk a lot about self binding strategies with my patients.

1:02:44 And self binding strategies are a way of putting both a literal and a metacognitive barrier between ourselves and our drug of choice. What's a metacognitive barrier? So it's like a it's a thought. Right, or uh a narrative. So instead of it being a physical barrier, like a physical barrier would be For example, getting the smartphone out of the bedroom or deleting an app, right? Or getting alcohol out of the house, or whatever it is, creating both a f a physical barrier between myself and my drug of choice.

1:03:15 a metacognitive barrier is something like more like a thought process For example, we were talking about thinking about long term goals or Um, you know, what are my what are my values, right? And how do my values trump my immediate desires? Or how can I

1:03:34 um co-regulate with other people. These are all self-binding strategies that we can use so that we're not relying on willpower alone. Because if we Wait to rely on our willpower alone. We will not make it, especially in this world of overwhelming overabundance. There are just too many temptations.

1:03:56 Willpow is an exhaustible resource, meaning that it doesn't last forever, it eventually runs out. So we've gotta actually create barriers between ourselves and our drug of choice so that we can have a little bit more time. And that little bit more time, that slowing things down. Is sometimes just enough.

1:04:15 To allow ourselves to surf The cravings. And get through them without actually using. Is it possible to become addicted to

1:04:25 Good things too. So when I use the term addiction, I'm really talking about a disease process, a form of mental illness. It's a very common term that's used in everyday life. And people don't always use it in that way. But when I'm using it I I'm really talking about uh the problem of compulsive overconsumption despite harm to self and/or others. And it's important to distinguish addiction from something like

1:04:50 A habit. Which I don't consider to be, you know, an addiction or even a bad habit, right? Doesn't meet threshold criteria for addiction. And also it's important just to distinguish all of that from a passion. Something that we really invest in and that we love to do. But that's helpful for ourselves and or other people is not consistently causing harm. Are there any daily practices?

1:05:13 Like a morning ritual. that you would advise someone to consider if they were trying to set themselves up to kick a habit or to kick an addiction. So I recommend doing the hard things first. Um a shorthand way of saying that is to start your day with pain. Meaning

1:05:31 For example Do the hard things when you first get up as part of your morning routine, like exercise, make your bed. Um, eat breakfast, brush your teeth, plan your day, plan what you're gonna do if you haven't done it already, and do all of those things before, for example, you Have your morning cup of Joe or before you touch a single screen or digital device. Why? Because those are reinforcers that are so powerful that we're all vulnerable to having our Goals and desires be hijacked by them. So really important to take the time in the morning to set up a good morning routine.

1:06:12 before you expose your brain to these incredibly reinforcing substances. I wasn't clear on why. Wasn't clear on that why I would do why I'd go to the gym early or why I'd do hard things first before I get into TikTok or social media. If you do Intoxicants first, right? If you expose your brain first thing in the morning to things that are incredibly pleasurable. You have nowhere to go from there.

1:06:37 And in fact, if any if anywhere, you're going to have a come down from that. And then you're gonna be starting from a place of compromise, where then doing the hard things is is even harder. Whereas if you start with the hard things І вотенли ге реворд. From having done those hard things, right? And also feel a sense of competence. Right, and and accomplishment.

1:07:01 That Then allows for you to move through your day in a way that's better if you just start with something that's incredibly pleasurable. If I am getting ready to kick a habit, a big one, a big you know, one that's really hung around for a long time.

1:07:15 Is there something I should do in preparation? to plan for my dopamine fast or for kicking that habit. Because you I know you said, you know, from day one it will take about four weeks to start to to feel the cravings diminish. But is there something I should be doing before I even start those four weeks? Yeah, so I strongly recommend preparing for the dopamine fast in advance, and the things to do are first figure out what is your drug of choice, that is to say What is the thing that you're consuming too much and too often such that you regret it later? Or the thing that's leading to obvious negative consequences?

1:07:51 Or the thing that just has opportunity costs associated with it. That is to say, you're spending so much time consuming this drug that you're not doing other things, other hobbies, investing in other things that are meaningful to you, like your primary relationships. So that's very important to just figure that out first. And I usually recommend something called the timeline followback method. That's where you start today and you count backwards. For every day of the week. What did you consume in terms of your drug of choice? Um how much and how often.

1:08:25 So really looking at quantity and frequency and then Adding that up. over those seven days. And the reason that's important is because We can really lose track of how we're consuming our drug of choice.

1:08:40 when we're chasing dopamine, we're very bad self-observers. So just to give a a personal example, Um, I had gotten into this habit of Watching YouTube. after work as a way to relax, especially on my long clinic days when I was more tired. And I thought it was just that I was watching for maybe half an hour, a couple of times a week. And then my daughter

1:09:03 a teenager came up to me and she said, Mom, you're always watching YouTube now and I said No I'm not. And I was really kind of insulted because in my mind it was Not very much. I thought, Jeez, can I relax every once in a while and watch some YouTube? But then after she left me, I thought to myself, well, okay, how much have I been watching right now? And it turned out, oh, I've been watching for an hour and a half. And then I thought about the day before that, oh, it was probably

1:09:29 Two hours and the day before that it was probably about the same and over the course of a whole week it was probably about Fourteen hours of YouTube, which is a whole Day. A whole day. Right?

1:09:40 And so What were you watching? Gosh. So embarrassing. I I g I got into this jag of watching

1:09:50 Doctor Pimple Popper. Which I know is really weird. You don't even know what that is, right? Yeah, so it's people Popping other people's pimples. Ha ha ha ha.

1:10:01 So bad. So that's not what I expected you to say. Right? I thought it was gonna be AI some psychology things, some science. No, no people popping other people's pimples. Yeah, yeah.

1:10:15 Yeah, you don't spend a whole day watching that. Yeah. When I added it up over a week It was a whole day of watching Doctor Bimblebopper. I don't know any founder who started their business because they like doing admin. But whether you like it or not, it's a huge part of running a business successfully. And it's something that can quickly become all-consuming, confusing, and honestly a real tax because you know it's taking your attention away from the most important work. And that's why our sponsor, Intuit QuickBooks, helps my team streamline a lot of their admin. I asked my team about it, and they said it saves them around 12 hours.

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1:11:45 It's really, really good item. Shines red light on your face, which helps increase and boost collagen production. Actually found it out'cause of the misses, seeing her wearing it, she terrified me a couple of nights in a row. Um, I thought it was to scare people with, but actually it's really, really good for your skin. So they are a sponsor of the podcast and uh I've been using it every Day for about a year and a half now.

1:12:04 Well Steve you're great. Yes. And uh Boncharge ships worldwide with easy returns and a year long warranty on all of their products. So visit boncharge.com slash diary for twenty five percent off on any product site wide. But you have to order through that link. That's boncharge.com slash diary with code diary. And on on um page sixty four of your workbook of Definitely Nation, There's this really interesting um Image here.

1:12:32 Which I uh I'll throw up on the screen. It shows a brain. And that's as far as I'm gonna go with Mike me explaining it. Over to you. Okay, so this is uh these are Human brain imaging studies

1:12:48 This is adapted from the work of Nora Volkov and her colleagues. She's the head of the National Institute of Drug Abuse, an amazing researcher and scientist. And she looked at Dopamine transmission levels. In the reward pathways of healthy control subjects on the left. versus people addicted to a variety of substances on the right.

1:13:09 Cocaine, meth. Alcohol. Et cetera. Basically what she found was in the in the brains of healthy control subjects

1:13:18 There was plenty of dopamine transmission. as represented here by red or the darker color. In the brains of people who had been using these substances in an addictive way, meaning heavily and chronically There was almost no dopamine transmission in the nucleus accumbens. In other words, these individuals are in a chronic

1:13:41 dopamine deficit state. They have below normal levels of dopamine transmission. Isn't this just kind of the story of how the human body works. Where if you give it too much of something

1:13:55 Through an external source, uh an exogenous source. So if you're taking Lots of dopamine via TikTok or from porn or from alcohol. Your brain goes, Well, if you've got enough of that, then I won't make any.

1:14:11 You know what? You just summed it up. That that's exactly right. That essentially Too much of anything. Is bad.

1:14:19 And that our brain Which is designed to return to Homestasis. Homostasis being a finite number

1:14:30 of physiologic states. That the organism must maintain in order to survive. Is this the case with things like melatonin as well? Because there's people are struggling a lot with sleep, so they're taking a lot of these melatonin pills. But I don't know, someone offered me one one time and I remember thinking Well, if I start taking this, then isn't my body gonna stop making it and then I'm gonna become dependent on these fucking pills.

1:14:54 So that is the potential with I think Any Exogenous source. that we That we use, right?

1:15:04 Anything that we In just our brains and our bodies will want to adapt to bring us back to whatever our baseline is. But The the difference between

1:15:18 Addictive substances and behaviours. Um and non addictive ones is that The The release of dopamine in the reward pathway is So fast and so strong that this process of neuroadaptation is equally strong to bring us back down to baseline.

1:15:37 Because we we do know that There are medications that people can take. for very long periods of time and actually not develop tolerance to them. Right, that can continue to work for for them over the long period of time. We don't actually know exactly why it is. That s some some people develop tolerance and and not others. And again, it probably has to do with the amount

1:16:01 you know, the dose, exactly how it's working on the brain. But in general, things that are highly reinforcing. our brain tends to adapt to them over time. And testosterone is another one people often talk about where If you take external testosterone consistently, your brain will decrease the natural production of it. And as a result.

1:16:20 natural testosterone shuts down and testicular size can shrink. But then if you stop the T R T, the external testosterone abruptly, your natural system might take a long time to recover and in some cases it may never fully recover back to baseline. I think this is just like a really important principle for Drugs. Chemicals or messing with the natural balance of one's body. Yes, yes, exactly. And by the way, Nora Volkov and her team did a follow-up study.

1:16:47 in individuals who abstained from methamphetamine for 14 months and then rescanned their brain and showed that they had restored healthy levels of dopamine transmission. It took fourteen months in in those individuals who had been very addicted to methamphetamine, which I think is also an important message here. you know, for individuals struggling with severe addiction, it's not like four weeks of abstinence is suddenly going to you know, make your brain better. But what I have found in clinical care is that that's typically enough time to begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel and that indeed

1:17:23 There's enough restoration of sort of baseline levels of joy your capacity to experience reward that that people can begin to have hope to get out of that state of craving. What is the most interesting'cause yeah, you've been exposed to so much research on the subject of dopamine and human behavior.

1:17:45 Is there a particular study that always stands in your mind as being the most Informative or interesting or surprising. That you've encountered. A study that Um that keeps coming back to me.

1:18:00 There are a couple. I mean there are so many, but If you put a rat in a cage with a rat trapped in a plastic bottle That rap will. That rat will work very hard. to free the trapped rat.

1:18:16 But if you then Allow that rat. Two administer self administer heroin. It will not work to free the trapped rat.

1:18:28 To me that's really powerful because It suggests how Addictive substances Like opioids. Which heroine is.

1:18:41 Can usurp Our desire for human connection. and essentially become the object of attachment. And we often talk about Loneliness and isolation.

1:18:55 as a risk factor. for addiction, which it absolutely is, but the reverse is also true. That getting addicted Will causa to isolate and be lonely. We will stop.

1:19:09 caring about other people. So for me th that's that's a really A really powerful you know, kind of experiment that I think does map on to human behavior.

1:19:22 Something really interesting this on just a day to day level, which me which in in your head I was trying to relate that to my my own life and thinking, you know, if I get really addicted to my screens and my devices when my partner needs me. Right. I might B.

1:19:37 so distracted and so connected to the thing that's giving me dopamine upstairs in my bedroom, like my laptop or whatever on my work. Then I might completely miss her call for help. And I kind of, you know, I hate to say it but sometimes I do feel like Maybe that is. I've been guilty of that. Yeah.

1:19:53 Yeah. Dare I say the word addicted to my work or devices or whatever that, you know, sometimes I'm not present with meeting other people's needs. Absolutely. And you know that certainly happened to me with my addiction to romance novels, right?

1:20:12 We I stopped paying as much attention to my kids and to my husband. We um went on a vacation with another family at the beach, and instead of joining folks on the beach, I stayed in the room and read romance novels. We went to a neighbor's party and I actually found a room in the house.

1:20:30 and read romance novels instead of socializing and didn't even think that was weird. Even though that's obviously really strange. So it is this kind of coming to overvalue. our drug of choice And undervalue

1:20:44 Other More meaningful. Um good things in our lives. Could you theoretically say it's making the world less empathetic? or less sympathetic or less

1:20:58 What's the adjective of like of actually being there for other people. I guess connection and relationships. It's it's It's higher our ability to connect to others and be have empathy for them and be there for them because we're Possessed by the

1:21:13 The thing giving us the most dopamine. Yeah, I would go even further and say not only is Is it making us less Yeah. But it's actually making us sociopathic.

1:21:27 In other words. When people are in their addiction, they can deviate from their moral compass. Um because they so overvalue this drug of choice that they lose sight of their their own values. And we see this

1:21:41 Um with Kids who become addicted to video games or or social media, they stopped participating in family life, they stopped treating their parents with respect, they stopped participating in Household chores Um they they become essentially anti social.

1:22:02 And when they get off of digital media And they go through that terrible withdrawal period. it g all that gets worse and and even they will endorse things like wanting to hurt their parents or wanting to hurt themselves. But If they can just go long enough and abstain

1:22:19 uh you know, from digital media they will they will come out the the other side and parents will talk about getting their child back. You know, and getting back, you know, this person that that they recognize as their child. So I think this is this is really important. When people are in their addiction, they can look very personality disordered, very narcissistic Very borderline.

1:22:41 very society. And when they get into recovery That's not who they are at all. and they can they can really become themselves again. I read about a really extreme

1:22:54 I believe it's called Pram Yeah. Poxel. I mean

1:23:02 Agonist? Yes. Which essentially means I guess the molecule is the same shape as dopamine. So it kind of the brain treats it like dopamine. Yes. And these people were given it for twitchy leg or something. And then they

1:23:15 Like l so many of them lost their minds. They became obsessed with like compulsive impulsive behaviors. And I was reading about one particular lady. She would leave the house in the early hours of the morning when she was taking this drug, which kind of is the same as dopamine. And she would Where see through tops. This is like a normal woman who otherwise had a normal life and go to very dangerous places to try and have sex with strangers.

1:23:40 And it was because she was her brain was um com full of this this drug which simulated dopamine. But there's so many examples. There was one from Australia where a woman was taking this drug which sim which is like dopamine in terms of its mile molecular structure. And she would sit on these Slot machines. until she soiled herself and urinated on herself. She ended up losing her house, losing her car, losing her marriage, just because they'd given her this drug, which is the same as dopamine. And it made me realise that

1:24:06 That dopamine isn't necessarily the the drug of um reward, but more of like W wanting an impulse and Desire. Is that an accurate s assessment of it? Like d it makes you desire things. And there were other examples in when I was reading about it where people would

1:24:22 A guy Would take this drug. And started engaging in Homosexual.

1:24:29 Sex acts. Whereas otherwise he'd been in a heterosexual relationship. It was all very confusing, but It says something to me about what dopamine is actually doing.

1:24:41 Yeah, I mean I think you know when we're talking about Addictive substances and behaviours. the initial response of the brain is to release a lot of dopamine all at once in the reward pathway. But with repeated use. Dopamine dopamine release gets weaker and shorter in duration.

1:25:04 And Eventually it leads to this dopamine deficit state. And that's often what we call wanting but not liking. So and George Coop has called this dysphoria driven relapse where Now they're using, you know, not to feel good, but just to stop feeling bad and feel normal.

1:25:23 So in that sense, um dopamine is I mean, is part of pleasure. I mean that that's it's that's not, you know I it's not its soul function. But when it comes to addictive substances and behaviors, the initial encounter

1:25:40 has to feel good or be reinforcing or get someone out of pain, right? It has to solve But again, the the issue is that with repeated use it stops doing that, but there's still that motivation to reuse again and again. And when we're thinking about like exogenous or external sources of just giving someone dopamine That's not going to work to treat

1:26:05 That dopamine deficit state. Because it's gonna bind indiscriminately to Doping receptors throughout the brain. And the brain will respond with that same process of neuroadaptation where it's Down regulating.

1:26:19 Which is again what is setting us up for this Repeated addictive pattern. Is there any other studies that

1:26:29 were shocking to you and that have always stayed with you. Another really interesting study is if you um expose a rat to a single injection of cocaine. And then slice open its brain, you'll see this arborization of dopamine releasing neurons in the reward pathway. So that means a proliferation. of uh neurons that release dopamine, a kind of growth. Of the dopamine forest, so to speak.

1:26:54 But by the way, you'll see that same arboration or growth of dopamine. releasing neurons if you put a rat in a complex maze. Right, which is to say a maze where they can explore and find different things, um, and have challenges. If you then cut that rat's brain open, you'll see that same arborization of dopamine. So in other words, learning

1:27:14 is highly rewarding and dopamine is released in response to novelty and new things and new challenges. But if you then take that rat and pre-treat it. with methamphetamine and put it in the maze. and then look at its brain, you don't see any additional

1:27:32 arborization beyond what you got with methamphetamine. And The interpretation there is that Drugs. actually may usurp.

1:27:43 Or still our ability to learn. Right. Because they've, again, this idea of sort of they've taken over. It's such a powerful dominant stimulus that there's no additional Growth or neuroplasticity.

1:27:59 In response to something like learning a maze. And does that mean that When that rat was in the maze the first time and it's Brain was full of dopamine. Dopamine was therefore playing a role in helping it to learn.

1:28:12 No, so the learning itself. actually cause proliferation. So so dopamine is is responsive not just to rewards, not just to pleasurable things, but it's actually responsive to pain, it's responsive to novelty, so it's responsive to any emotionally powerful experience. So when you put a rat in a maze and it explores that maze. That's an enriching

1:28:39 exciting experience for the rat because we are creatures who are evolved to seek and explore And learn new territory and then move on and do the same thing.

1:28:52 Ah, so you could say then that if I'm taking an addictive Substance like cocaine. I'm gonna be much less likely Two Go out and explore the world.

1:29:01 Yes, exactly. Or if you do explore the world you'll There you go Your capacity to be rewarded by that experience. We'll we'll

1:29:11 decrease or will not be there. So I'm less likely to do it then. Right. Yes. Yeah. I mean, this highlights a bit more of a fundamental link around like motivation. Like if you're addicted to something, if you're addicted to pornography, your ability to like get up and Go out and get a job might be diminished.

1:29:27 Absolutely. I mean what what happens with addiction is that we have a narrowing of our focus on our drug of choice. Such that that's the only thing that's reinforcing for us, and other things lose their rewarding potential. and eventually they fall away all together and we're spending all of our time getting our drug, using our drug. Trying to get more as we come down. Can I talk about another experiment which I think is interesting? Another really interesting experiment is the Rat Park experiment. And this is the work of Bruce Alexander. And he essentially said, Well if you put a rat in a cage with nothing else to do but press her love.

1:30:01 Press a lever for cocaine, of course that's what they're going to do, because there's nothing else happening. But what if you put a rat in a very enriched environment? with a lever depressed cocaine, but also lots of other things to do. Other rats uh shoots in mazes, uh little, you know, sawdust balls. What he discovered was that the rat is much less likely to press that lever as often because it has other reinforcing to do. And I think that That

1:30:33 was really groundbreaking. In the sense that It is true that addictive substances and behaviors work on the brain in this very predictable way that's so reinforcing that even if you have a great life, you can get addicted. But it's also true That Our environment really matters.

1:30:54 And if we're living in an impoverished environment like that. single rat in a cage with nothing else to do, we're much more likely to get addicted than if we live in this really enriched environment. Where We have lots of other sources of reward, lots of other uh sources of dopamine. And based on that work, there was something then called the Icelandic experiment. And this is quite some years ago now, but Iceland had a significant youth drug problem. And the way that they decided to intervene Was to build a lot of gymnasiums and emphasized sports.

1:31:32 Exercise and sports are Mm. healthy way in general if you don't overdo it to get dopamine because you're paying for it up front, right? You're working for it. And um Iceland saw a

1:31:48 significant reduction in their use. drug use problem after the implementation of this youth sports system. So I think that's a nice way So that's a it's a nice example of how an animal m animal model can actually provide some kind of fundamental brain to understand what's happening in the brain that can be then translated to a real world implementation. Radical honesty.

1:32:16 Radical honesty is something that I learned about from my patients. And it was the observation that My patients who were able to get into sustained recovery. From severe addictions. had learned

1:32:31 That They couldn't lie. And it wasn't just that they couldn't lie. About They're

1:32:39 Drug use. they couldn't lie about anything. So they couldn't lie about why they were five minutes late for a meeting. They couldn't lie about why they couldn't go to a party. They had to tell the truth. In all things large and small.

1:32:53 And To me that was fascinating. And it was an idea that I started to play with and experiment with in my own life. And I realised that telling the truth is actually really hard.

1:33:04 Because we're all prone to little lies to kind of cover up. Ar shortcomings um these are things that we hardly even notice. There are also like lies of exaggeration to make ourselves more interesting. Lies of flattery, where we tell other people how great they are, even though we don't necessarily believe that. So all these little lies that we tell. Um, I think even

1:33:29 If you're not struggling with addiction These lies can erode our lives make our lives more impoverished Um, and I think you know, it's working through many different mechanisms. We don't so so the question then becomes why is

1:33:44 truth telling or radical honesty protective. And it I think it's working across many different levels. But One of the important levels that it's working across is simple

1:33:56 Awareness. Because when we're lying to other people. We're also actually lying to ourselves. Um and when we're lying to ourselves

1:34:08 We actually don't know what we're doing. Right. And when it comes to our consumptive behaviors On the one hand, you know, I may know that I'm watching too many videos on on the same at the same time really not know that I'm doing that. Right. So But when

1:34:25 I Tell another human being. Exactly what I'm consuming. Then it becomes

1:34:32 real to me in a way that it's not, when it's sort of pinging around in the dark recesses of my my own mind. So that awareness is really important because we can't change our behaviors unless We're aware. Um of what we're doing. The other aspect of that that's really important that I've learned over many years of being a psychiatrist is that

1:34:54 The way that people tell their autobiographical narrative is really important. And that there are healthy ways we can tell our stories and also not so healthy ways. And What I've observed is that when

1:35:09 When people are telling stories in which they're always the victim of other people or circumstance. I know pretty well that they're not going to get into recovery. But if they start telling a story that acknowledges Their own contribution

1:35:26 to their problem, whatever it is, including the problem of addiction. then I'm pretty confident that we're headed in a good direction. And that's really interesting because what it means is that Our Autobiographical narratives.

1:35:41 Provide a template. for our lives. They're not just a way to organize past experience. They actually provide a roadmap. For the future. And if we're telling self stories that are a more accurate representation of what's actually happening in our lives.

1:35:59 We will have more information. So victimhood keeps you stuck. It keeps you stuck. because it decreases your awareness of what is actually happening.

1:36:14 And it is our awareness of what is actually happening. That allows us to have the data we need to make better informed decisions. Does it also in s to some level rob you of Responsibility. Absolutely because Although addiction is characterized by a loss of agency around our consumptive behaviors.

1:36:34 We still have some degree of agency always, even if it's only enough to reach out and ask for help. And as people Get into sustained recovery, they have a lot more agency, right? As they get out of that vortex of addiction. And it is that agency that that we must employ to make The next best decision.

1:36:57 So that our lives will be this accumulation of small good decisions that then lead to good weeks. And we good months and good years. I think that point is so important, this this idea of agency, which essentially means like having control in my in my life.

1:37:12 Feeling like I have a sense of control in my life. Is that like a definition of agency? How would you define it? I I wouldn't define it so much as control because there are so many things that happen in our lives that are out of our control. But When we reduce our decision down to

1:37:30 Today. You know, and what I can do Today the things that I actually can control today. Then yes, recapturing our agency around the things that we actually have control over is really really is really important for recovery. The definition I've pulled up here is agency means the capacity to act intentionally and make choices that influence outcomes.

1:37:52 And um it does tend to be the case from my observations that people that have a high degree of agency, i.e., they believe they have uh capacity to act intentionally and make choices that influence their outcomes seem to be the most successful. And on average seem to be a little bit more happy. I think that sense of competence and and agency is definitely one that makes us feel good. The danger a little bit when we're dealing with severe addiction is that

1:38:20 In our addictions, we often tell ourselves that we have agency and control when we really don't. Mm-hmm. And so that can be part and parcel of denial. Which means that getting into recovery is often about Admitting That

1:38:35 We may have agency in many aspects of our lives, but when it comes to our addictive behavior We've lost some degree of agency. And that's part of the twelve step program, right? Yeah, that is a really important part of the twelve step program, is that admitting that our lives have become unmanageable. Uh when it comes to our drug of choice.

1:38:55 Alcoholics Anonymous. very famous programme to to help you through an addiction. Is there anything else we should have talked about that we haven't You know, when it comes to New Year's resolutions. And wanting to change habits.

1:39:10 Sometimes these sort of all or nothing thinking Can be something that's not helpful for people. Right, this idea that okay, I'm gonna abstain from this and I'm gonna go a month and you know, I'm gonna do it, and then they find that they're not able to do it, and there's then there are a lot of shame and self self recrimination. So you know that that approach is is not for everybody.

1:39:35 And for some A better approach is sort of self compassion. and a goal of moderation. Yeah, moderation's an interesting one'cause yeah, most of us will just be like, I'm gonna go to the gym every day or I'm gonna I'm gonna have no sugar ever again or no I'm Can abstain from alcohol completely, but

1:39:51 maybe moderation for some of these things is more realistic and therefore more effective and Important. Yeah, and we find that moderation typically is more successful if peri if people have abstained for long enough to kind of reset reward pathways. But you know, even just reducing use can be a laudable goal. We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest.

1:40:15 Not knowing who they're leaving it for. The question is, what's the one thing the universe keeps putting in front of you? And what is the thing? Three. Keeps you

1:40:24 Learning. Um, so right now in my life, the thing that the universe keeps putting in front of me is the importance of Letting my kids Go.

1:40:37 And have their own life experience. Um rather than Trying to cling to The relationships. That we had

1:40:47 before as they were growing up, uh which for me was a really joyful time but I'm recognizing that they need to

1:40:59 And I need to figure out What I'm gonna do. Um, as an empty nester. So that's not that deep, but that is what I'm struggling with right now. And how's that struggle?

1:41:11 Manifesting. Well I mean if I'm being totally honest. Um social media and digital media and those commu modes of communication.

1:41:25 Have probably made this worse for me. Because for example I'll find my iPhone. I I keep checking where my kids are. And thinking that in a way. Um

1:41:37 We're connected because I know where they are, but Or not and also they don't particularly like it. that I'm checking where they are. So there's this kind of Weird phenomenon of wanting connection

1:41:50 And through text and other technology trying to recreate that connection, and yet in some ways I think I might be better off and they might be better off. If we didn't actually text.

1:42:03 And I didn't actually track where they are. Does that make sense? It does, and I I I was I think I was laughing'cause I just had this picture of you sat there with like One screen is tracking them and the other one is like watching the pimples being popped.

1:42:24 But ultimately not. Not good for me and You know, not good. For other people. Do you think much about how other behaviors that we take part in like sleep

1:42:34 Um And meditation. um and our nutrition have a big impact on our ability to kick the bad habit to start a new one. Oh, absolutely. Um, there's a great acronym from Alcoholics Anonymous called HALT, hungry, angry, lonely, tired. You know, when we're feeling those things, uh, we're more likely to crave

1:42:55 our drug of choice. Um, so importantly, we've really gotta make sure we take care of ourselves physically and emotionally, so that we're as well as we can be, so that we don't um get into that state of wanting to escape or self-soothe or numb ourselves. And by the way, that's true in the work that we do as mental health care providers, right? We have to really come to patients or clients with our needs met, our cup full, so that we can be fully present.

1:43:22 for for our patients. Doctor Anna Lemke. Thank you so much for coming back on the show. It was incredible the conversation we had last time and it was so unbelievably well received. Um It's done probably closer to ten million views across all platforms now. Um

1:43:37 five just over five million views on YouTube alone. And I can't begin to imagine all the the people that you've had a profound impact on by making these complicated things accessible. And I know we we simplify this to a point that it might be quite Difficult.

1:43:52 f f because I I know the science is much more complicated, but just having a simple mental model for me has has helped me so much since we last spoke. Understand what's going on inside my body and inside my brain. in a simplified way, and that's exactly what was reflected by the millions of people that watched last time. Your book is the uh the book to read and your work book as well is a critical critical to read alongside it. um on this subject if people want to learn more and get a r an even deeper understanding of everything we've talked about today. And also if they're struggling with addictions, because These books. Books provide a really

1:44:23 I'd say nuanced. um empathetic and Shame. Avoiding set of ideas and solutions to some of the things that

1:44:33 hold us hostage in our lives, whether it's opioids or technology or other behaviors that we know at some level are getting in the way of what we'd rather be doing and who we'd rather become. So thank you so much for your work. It's such an important work. And I know you're working on another book, which we didn't talk about this time, but When that book does come out, I'd love to have you back on to talk about all the things in that'cause I um little Birdie told me the subject matter and it's absolutely fascinating. So I'm so excited. Thank you so much. Uh

1:44:59 This is something that I've made for you. I realized that the Director C audience are strivers, whether it's in business or health. We all have big goals that we want to accomplish. And one of the things I've learned is that when you aim at the big, big, big goal, it can feel incredibly incredibly psychologically uncomfortable because it's kinda like being stood at the foot of Mount Everest and looking upwards. The way to accomplish your goals is by breaking them down into tiny small steps. And we call this in our team the one percent. And actually, this philosophy is highly responsible for much of our success here. So what we've done so that you at home can accomplish any big goal that you have is we've made these One percent diaries. And we released these last year and they all sold out. So I asked my team over and over again to bring the diaries back, but also to introduce some new colours and to make some minor tweaks to the diary. So now we have a better range for you. So if you have a big goal in mind. And you need a framework and a process and some motivation, then I highly recommend you get one of these diaries before they all sell out once again. And you can get yours now at thediary.com where you can get twenty percent off our Black Friday bundle.

1:46:07 And if you want the link, the link is in the description.

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