John Ross Bowie: Angry Young Man Finds Sobriety

so it really upset me really got me depressed and i decided to drown that with um cranberries and vodkas um uh oh yes that i was a girl drink drunk i should make that abundantly clear i tried all that stuff i was like you know nothing brown only clear okay brown but only on the weekends hang on we'll figure this out only in groups nope that isn't nope that isn't a thing i'm mayam bialik and welcome to my breakdown this is the place where we break down all of the things that make us break down today we're breaking down addiction it's mine be alex's breakdown she's gonna break it down for you because you know she knows a thing or two so now she's gonna break down she's a breakdown she's gonna break it down we have an amazing interview with john ross bowie an actor and a human before we bring in john a couple housekeeping things uh would like to remind everyone that there is still a quarantine going on and the gentleman to my right and i share a pod which is why we are not wearing masks this is a great time to introduce the man to my right the gentleman to my right is my second favorite cohen from canada that's right he's not leonard cohen he's jonathan cohen hello jonathan cohen hello everybody and technically we are distantly related you and me us cohen's two leonard cohen oh say more although we don't talk about it it's a distant connection jonathan is my co-pilot my co-creator he's my partner in crime and he is going to do some housekeeping before we get started breaking down addiction take it away jonathan cohen firstly if you haven't subscribed to the podcast already consider doing so and if you're don't consider doing so subscribe i mean i was doing a soft sell um but yeah they should subscribe to the podcast if you're listening in audio land and you want to watch the podcast check out mymbialik on youtube which all the uh which will host all of the episodes our website is bialikbreakdown.com that's bialik breakdown just like it sounds dot-com there's a section where you can ask miam anything ask me anything anything on mental health or wellness and she'll answer i'll try and answer you'll do a pretty good job oh well i have faith in you let's get started let's break down addiction so maybe you're saying why are we talking about addiction on a mental health podcast because you might see addiction or addictive behavior as a lifestyle choice maybe you see it as a moral failing i don't but you might and you might think the same for really any addiction think about gambling addiction um think about marijuana addiction which is a thing happy to explain that later uh there's also narcotic addiction to to other narcotics uh but what about uh sex addiction that's also an addiction and you might think what's up with sex addiction maybe that's just people who really like sex what's wrong with that but what i do want to do is talk about some of the the neuroscience behind what we know about addiction and also talk a bit about how both the environment that we come from can impact our mental health to the point that we may be predisposed to addictive behaviors and also what happens in addiction that then contributes to our mental health in general i want to start by saying it's not for me to say someone's an addict i don't choose to call people addicts it's very possible that people are just very happy frequent users of something and it's not the purpose of this podcast to to shame people or to say you have a problem if you meet these criteria but as i said i i want to talk about addiction as it relates to to the brain and to behavior because that's kind of how i'm uh trained to think it's how we're we're trained to think as neuroscientists i i want to talk about as i said some of the predispositions to addiction and a little bit about the mechanisms of addiction like what's the actual science behind addiction and when you say mechanisms you mean the physiology correct in our brain the neurophysiology right the the physiology of specifically of the brain and also i want to talk about what addiction does to a sober brain meaning how it impacts our mental state so for for many addictions we do them because it feels good in the first place and the the factors that that determine whether you become an addict or not very significantly and i'm going to talk about that too uh i'd like to to remind everyone is not my my purpose here to to diagnose people i happen to believe that addiction is a mental health concern i think it's a a national and a global mental health concern one of the main factors that that encouraged me to to pursue this podcast was i have many friends who are sober alcoholics and sober addicts and i've i've gone to meetings with them and sat in the rooms as we call them i've sat in the rooms for many years and i do not believe that addiction is a choice i believe that it is a complex allergy uh to to living life sober and the addictions that we all take on whether it be alcohol or drugs or gambling or sex and for many people sugar and other addictive eating behaviors those are the things we do so that we feel better about existing sober so um i'd like to put aside the question of is addiction a mental illness does it deserve our attention as a mental illness and really get into some of the definitions definitions as the neuropsychology community sees them and we'll we'll go from there uh i do want to start with as as jonathan mentioned and break down some of the core motivations that that drive human behavior and not just human behavior but animal behavior because we are animals we are animals living in essentially a state of nature and addiction makes our makes its way into our lives in the first place because we are programmed to seek pleasure and we are programmed to seek things that that help us survive and you would say well if we're supposed to seek things that help us survive why would we pursue things like drugs that are bad for us well that's because we are very complicated primates and we live in a very complicated world but our main the main wiring of our brain is that we are wired and motivated to to seek pleasure this is a freudian concept the pleasure principle and to seek behaviors and actions that that are favorable to us but again in a complicated world and as complicated primates it can get a little bit messy but mostly i'd like to think of our i'd like us to think of ourselves as you know if not cave people then then true primates chimpanzees very very closely related to them when we say drugs are bad when we do them and if we're supposed to do things that are good for us not all drugs are bad no not all drugs are bad and some drugs could be very helpful or mind expanding yes jonathan brings up a very good point that we also don't want to enter this conversation about addiction with the notion that drugs are bad and that any um mind-altering chemicals uh which sugar is one nicotine is another uh that that i'm not saying that all those things are bad and of course in moderation many things can be good and drugs in terms of um drugs that save lives and drugs that kill bacteria and drugs that hopefully make us get better you know if we are struggling with with covid like drugs are very important and significant but there are many many types of drugs that can be abused both because of the the actual chemical properties of the structure of the drug and what it does to your brain in addition your predisposition to becoming addicted is something we don't know about when we experiment with a drug and ultimately if we're dealing with more of a mental health issue of i have trouble existing sober and by sober i mean without ingesting drugs without having drinks when i go out then once you ingest those chem once those chemicals are in your system they introduce a loop in your experience that you don't have to feel that bad way again and that's where we get that addictive loop is when we realize oh i never felt right until i took that drink the issue is not that you needed the drink it's that there's a feeling that led to wanting to not feel the way that you did and that's the loop that we talk about so lest you get overwhelmed with my lack of use of scientific terms i do want to talk a little bit just so we can kind of touch on like what are these words and concepts and is she making this up i don't expect you to take notes but my due diligence as a scientist does make me want to at least roughly sketch out some of the pathways that are responsible for addictive behaviors how do we know about these things decades and decades of horrible research on adorable animals that's just that's just what it is you can get animals addicted to things you can do it with sugar water you can do it with methamphetamine it's not pretty i don't really want to talk about it i'm a neuroscientist who only worked with humans so don't look at me but what we do know is there's a region of the brain called the ventral tegmental area the cool kids call it the vta and that region of the brain produces a tremendous amount of dopamine now you've probably heard about dopamine dopamine feels really good it's different than serotonin serotonin also feels good dopamine is the good that we feel when we we achieve something and it is part of a reward circuit so it's the kind of good that feels like a reward that you get and when that pathway is triggered this is literally what my notes say dopamine goes cray-cray cray-cray a good way to remember what dopamine does is it makes you feel dope no that's not what the cool kids say anymore so the dopamine reward circuit is literally a loop and there are pathways in your brain it's not just like a ball of mush there are pathways in your brain that create literal loops between different structures and different little super highways and when you get that feeling of reward you want to get more of it that's what that loop is it's like a self-stimulating and and other influence stimulating loop so you have dopamine in the vta area then there's this pathway called the mesolimbic pathway and what it does the mesolimbic pathway takes all of the emotional parts of your region and it connects them to the most highly cognitive parts of your brain so what you've got is reward dopamine cray-cray and you then are adding emotional content and you're adding cognitive content so what you now have is the perfect storm you have the most cognitive part of your brain being emotionally driven to get a reward and what happens is you will use the best parts of your cognitive brain to find ways to keep that going and if anyone has ever loved an addict or known an addict they can be very very cunning very clever very seductive in their need to keep this loop going that's the essentially the neuroanatomy of addiction you can get this feeling yes with alcohol for those of us who are not who do not have an allergy to alcohol as as it is said in in the rooms um we don't necessarily get it but maybe you get it when you've um pursued sex um in a way that feels extremely satisfying so that you need to get more um that's an example of the kind of reward that dopamine is giving you it's not just like oh i'm very happy or oh that feels good it's like more that's dopamine dopamine is that voice in your head many people have this for sugar for chocolate it can be that powerful of a drive to to kind of pursue that that loop and the the brain sees this as necessary so this is where the emotional part doesn't override the cognitive part the brain sees this as necessary so we're essentially acting out what our brains are telling us we should do this feels so good let's get more let's get more any way that we can that's essentially addiction and the the one of the definitions of addiction is continuing a behavior with a substance in particular where when you try not to have that substance it is so painful that the only solution seems to be to go back to using that substance that's addiction and if you've known anyone who's ever been in withdrawal tried to quit smoking that's what that is addiction is the thing that lets you say this is so painful to try and kick this and to let my body be free of it that i'm gonna go back to it because it's easier that's addiction regardless of the consequences regardless of the consequences correct i think you made a really good point that i was going to ask about which is that it's not just the drugs it's a behavior that can drive dopamine you can be addicted to all sorts of correct shopping gambling and you know i think also a lot of people are like oh i'm addicted to shopping like there actually is a thing where you're you have a reward circuit activation because of that and that's a great great segue segway into what makes some people an addict and some people not like what's the how does that happen so everyone's brain gets stimulated this loop can get activated dopamine gets released just about roughly baseline same for everybody but what makes someone an addict uh there's like a brainy answer and then there's a mental health answer the the brainy answer is that everybody's brain has slight variations we're all different we all have different dna everybody's genetic code allows for for different enough uh but but potentially significant enough variation and this could be differences in the amount of dopamine that's produced it could be differences in how we process dopamine uh it could be the receptors there are actual receptors that are shaped to receive dopamine something could be a little different about those um we could have a brain that's more susceptible to other interference meaning if there's a lot of emotional stuff going on otherwise if there is abuse if there's trauma it could mean that that brain isn't compensating the same way why do we have variation because evolution so the only way that we can evolve is to have slight variations in our existence but they're not always perfect uh there's there's gonna be um a little bit of error and that's what keeps life interesting no i think so a lot of it is luck of the draw and and then we have this this notion which is also luck of the draw of what environmental situation are you raised in and does it further affect this system which again we all have but what degree it gets activated at is really what is going to be dependent on as i said dna and and the environment so the short answer you're like where's the short answer short answer is it's a combination of nurture in nature that's been true for as long as i think that phrase has been um available to us in our cultural vernacular we could take two people with the exact same production of a certain protein or a certain chemical and if one grows up in an environment with abuse we might see a higher activation or a deregulation of that protein that could be a protein that plays into essentially determining if this person becomes an addict or not so um if two people were to bake for example the exact same cake they have the same ingredients they have the same equipment except one oven doesn't work quite as good as the other are the cakes going to come out exactly the same of course not are they going to come out like similar enough sure they'll both be like cakes but there's going to be differences and in the human brain even though slight differences can have very significant consequences another note about environmental stressors when when the brain is is subject to environmental stressors abuse neglect trauma especially in you know that first year super important first year of life very very important but all years are important your circumstances will shift how your brain works it can be very hard to separate out nurture versus nature and in many cases it's not necessarily important but keep in mind that the environmental stressors are not just changing the way that your brain kind of may receive dopamine or processed dopamine or upregulate dopamine but when we come from a stressful situation we come from a difficult situation when we've experienced abuse or neglect or trauma we may have a higher need to pursue comfort to make sense of life so sometimes i meet people who are like my childhood was fine like nothing interesting happened like my parents were always there they loved me it was great and then i graduated high school and i was like that sounds fantastic sounds amazing that's not a lot of people's experience and the fact is for those of us who don't have that experience there may be ways that we are seeking comfort and that does leave us also open um to again not necessarily addiction but to pursuing and enjoying things that help us you know forget who we are feel a little more comfortable a little more relaxed i don't see that as poor character or or weakness and i don't really even necessarily see it as as bad choices we want to come from a place of of understanding and compassion as we approach addiction and really all these topics of of mental health i'd like to touch on 12-step programs briefly because there's a a very specific um anonymous code for um the 12-step programs and while alcoholics anonymous is widely known and accepted as one of the most successful paths to sobriety um it is not the only path to sobriety and i don't advocate for any particular uh form of getting sober if people um are seeking sobriety uh alcoholics anonymous this is just uh stuff you can learn if you look it up alcoholics anonymous is a spiritual program of recovery it's not a religious program it involves working with a sponsor who's like a mentor and they walk you through these 12 steps it's been around for yeah almost 100 years and there are many other ways as i said to get sober i'm going to list a lot of resources on the website but again i don't advocate for any particular method of really anything analysis or way to get sober one thing that i do love that i have heard um in the rooms as it were is that um alcoholics often refer to what they're trying to fill with alcohol as the god-shaped whole and i think it's an important concept whether you you know subscribe to 12-step programs or not the notion is that the problem is not drinking the problem is being sober and there is a hole that is for for the spiritual program of of alcoholics anonymous and other 12-step programs it is it is a god-shaped hole and this is a god of your understanding it can be nature it could be the group it doesn't have to be a deity but the notion is that you can fill that hole with alcohol you can fill it with food you can fill it with sex yes you can fill it with gambling you can fill it with shopping you can fill it with managing and controlling other people and while i may be biased as a scientist i will say that the way that i described addiction for alcohol really holds for all of those other addictions you're filling kind of that that god shaped hole it's the same circuitry it's the same chemicals and really the same mental health challenges before we bring on our guests i do want to say that i've taught about addiction in our homeschool community i've taught two teenagers my children being two of them uh about addiction and the brain because kids today are growing up in a very different world than than i grew up in than you grew up in and you know my children know more about pot than i think i did by the time i was 30. um because it's it is obviously legal and that's not a concern of mine per se with my children knowing about it but marijuana in particular it's talked about all times talked about in music it's talked about in television there's ads for it there's dispensaries everywhere so i get a lot of questions when i teach to teenagers about addiction in particular about marijuana and one of the questions that teenagers almost always ask me is like well how do you know that someone's an addict maybe they're just like they like to party like why are you ruining our good time and this is a great great question um i also sometimes get asked like what if someone only blacks out a few times a year i'd like to know why my child is asking that question one of the great things about quarantine is i know my child is not drinking because he's in my house every night or he's at his dad's house and there's not alcohol for them to drink my son asked why snoop dogg smokes so much weed this is a great question i'm happy to have snoop dogg on to talk about it i think he smokes a lot of weed because it feels good to him i'll speak to your son we could have your son on that'd be fun he could submit a question for ask my man he really should i asked my kids to submit a question but what i what i like to emphasize especially to teenagers but to to grown-ups as well is that i don't get to decide you know if someone's an addict or not um it's not always important for us to be able to diagnose and say you're an addict what's what's important is to know that alcoholism is generally a progressive disease meaning it will tend to get worse it may shift um but it does tend to get worse and other addictions also they will tend to get worse often they're replaced by other addictions but someone who seemingly just likes to party indeed may just like grow out of that phase and then just become a social drinker or whatever or they may become a full-fledged alcoholic there's no way to know and you know it's it's one of the the mysteries that as a parent i like to tell my children to be conservative about i don't know what your brain is wired for i know what our family history is i know you know what my experience was what your dad's experience was um we don't know so i like to try and delay young people from uh experimenting because their brains are also still developing and especially the the prefrontal cortex which is judgment and decision making which many people joke isn't fully developed in some adults some women say it's not developed in men i'm not making that joke no we would never we would never make a joke like that but what's important is not necessarily do you meet a diagnostic criteria what's important is if you are having problems in your life in your work life in your personal life in your romantic life because of your use of a substance that's something to look at and also you know shout out to the sister program of a.a al-anon and other support groups that help people who are with people whose drinking bothers them if someone's drinking bothers you if it's one drink a year you're allowed to be bothered if you don't like the way you're being treated in a relationship and you feel it's because of a substance you are also completely allowed to say this doesn't work for me so those are just general caveats like i said that are good for teenagers but also for grown-ups the word of the day today is labile labile l-a-b-i-l-e labile so labile is a is a clinical term that means um you know kind of rapidly fluctuating in in regards to mood we talk about labile mood so um here's a definition emotional ability refers to rapid often exaggerated changes in mood where strong emotions or feelings occur these can be things like uncontrollable laughing crying we will sometimes see this you'll see it sometimes in in psychosis um when when someone's in an acute psychotic episode um it's it's a general psychiatric feature that we often look for and um it can come with with agitated depression or also with agitated mania i mean mania is not always agitated but when it is you'll you'll often see this kind of rapid fluctuating it's distinguished from from rapid cycling that we see in in things like rapid cycling bipolar but um it's it's a general term and um yeah emotional lability or a labile mood and that is the word of the day so not a positive thing just just to clarify i mean why you got to put judgment on it bro but if i said you were extremely lay by oh that's fighting words why is it so hard to break the loop so the the short answer is because that's addiction that is you know cunning and powerful that is how strong that chemical loop is in your brain with the emotional and the cognitive components driving you towards serving that loop and the reason is once that loop gets activated once that dopamine goes cray-cray when you stop that and especially when you stop cold turkey when you stop that it is extremely painful it's painful emotionally because you're now dealing with all the things that you were medicating against and also there's a physiological reaction to not having that substance in your body anyone who's tried to kick caffeine we haven't mentioned caffeine anyone who's tried to kick caffeine not anyone most people i don't have a percentage here we'll pull it and leave it on the website you usually get a headache and you're in a terrible mood no one wants to be around you it's because you're in caffeine withdrawal i'm a person who sometimes does a sugar like a flush a raw flush where i don't eat processed food or don't eat sugar i essentially get a headache for three days that's a detox so take that take that kind of structure of withdrawal and multiply it many many many times and depending on what we're talking like nicotine very very difficult i have friends who have kicked alcohol and methamphetamines and cannot give up nicotine it's very very powerful um heroin also don't mess around with heroin i heard it's very bad it's very you heard right jonathan cohen every single cell in your body essentially needs to die and forget how much it loves that feeling so that you can be sober i mean you're opening up a whole conversation about the self-forgetting and cellular memory but let's table that for a future conversation let's table that and let's welcome our guest break it down you know what miami what jonathan i really wish i could get counseling at home online jonathan betterhelp is sponsoring this episode and that's exactly what they help you do really really it's online licensed professional therapist trained to listen and to help you with the things that we talk about that trouble us well like what like anxiety stress depression lgbt matters trauma family conflict grief finding a therapist can be so intimidating and time-consuming and your your prayers have been answered jonathan can they help me with my self-esteem we can help you with everything you fill out a questionnaire to assess your specific needs self-esteem and then you're matched with a counselor in under 48 hours you schedule video or phone sessions you can exchange texts with your therapist what happens if i match with someone and i'm like i need to make a change at no additional charge we can match you with someone else that's how it works amazing join the 1 million plus people jonathan who have taken charge of their mental health with better help it's a convenient and affordable option you get ten percent off your first month use the discount code break get started 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most memorable parts of the season finale series finale of the big bang theory uh john ross bowie is known as sheldon's nemesis barry kripke he's the one with a lisp his character pronounces his own name bowie quippy and he also starred in speechless which ran correct me if i'm wrong from 2016 to 2019 that is correct about a family with a special needs child that was the mini driver series and we were so sad to see you go from our immediate availability but we um we loved having you back also so so well deserved for you to get that kind of vehicle and also for us to be the ones that were like please come back to an episode so welcome john ross bowie yay hey good to be here my i am doctor how are you everything is okay and um i've decided to embarrass you by introducing you also continuing to introduce you about you when we started working together we had an instant rapport um we both had kids we have kids around the same age we do i always always enjoyed talking with you it is yeah nobody else had kids yet correct we were the ones who had kids and also i know that people get annoyed when we say things like this it's rare to find people in our industry who are very very real people and i instantly felt like oh this is a real person like i can literally talk to you about anything and we ended up really talking about really everything um while working together i remember that first week we don't even think we had any scenes together but i remember going pretty deep very i think we went honestly quick i think our characters spoke to each other maybe three times over 11 years correct um correct but i i was always kind of fun because they often put me in the dressing room right off of yours and we would just hang and it was we were the lowliest of the lows oh no no stop it that's roush but the um but there was a there was a sense of of camaraderie and iowa's had heaps of downtime sure and i did too many weeks no it's true it's true um here's something i want to ask you as a neuroscientist which i realize it's not the same thing as a speech pathologist would we call it a lisp or would we call it a rhodesism uh call it what are my choices eroticism i've also heard it that's the word of the day no it's right here's the thing you didn't you're you're uh i i had like actual speech pathologists i did not know with each other in my twitter feed about just this issue but apparently the the inability to pronounce ours and l's is referred to as a as a rotator i love that i love that it could also be an affectation maybe barry kripke's backstory is that he just does that because which is its own mental health challenge but what i would like to also bring up is that i found out something about you while we were working together that was one of those things that's like he i'm sorry he does what you wrote a play yeah you wrote a play called four chords and a gun i did and it was a play about the ramones surrounding the the 1979 recording session with phil spector who carried a gun often and which led to the ramone's album end of the century uh for those of you in listening or watching land who don't know who the ramones are they are the ones who always wore the skinny jeans in the black high top converse if you're if you don't know who they are please google them after this episode but four chords and a gun was this amazing play that you wrote and i went and saw it and it was so good and oh thank you i thought that you you know you're an actor you're a father you're an improv person obviously with a huge um history and improv you're a writer but this kind of right writing a play is no small feat and also it's essentially historical fiction um yeah i love i love this about you and i just love that play i actually have the four chords in a gun sticker on my script uh book still so anyway oh nice nice um yeah that was a labor of love um that had been kind of cooking in me for several years and uh i've been a massive ramones fan since i was about 14 i just loved the simplicity of um a lot of ramone's music how it is mostly just four chords just blaring at you and i also loved i think one of the things that drew me to acting via punk rock was the idea of doing something for a living before you're entirely sure what you're doing which is kind of how i approached acting as well when i decided because i didn't i didn't you know we're not all child actors here i didn't really commit to acting until i was like 27. um i was you know i was watching blossom in my dorm room with every intention of becoming a high school teacher i had no i had no real concrete that doesn't sound creepy at all yeah right um yeah it sounds pretty bad you can cut that if you want i wouldn't blame it um so somewhere in the middle of us being on big bang theory together this is literally not only my favorite story about you this is one of the funniest things that i have heard someone say which i so badly want to take credit for i say this thing that you said to me so many times you because you were a recurring character sometimes months would go by between us seeing each other and one time you came back and i noticed you had lost weight and you didn't need to lose weight i mean i i hadn't seen what was under your clothes but i never thought of you as like boy that's a person who needs to lose weight but you know who's creepy always me you had lost weight and you were looking i was like trying to be nice i was like hey like i'm an annoying person i'm like what what'd you do and then i'm thinking should i have even asked that you said well he said well i stopped drinking and the second thing i did is i stopped eating like every day was my [ __ ] 12th birthday yeah it was like that's exactly how i've spent most of my life eating that's not true at all what how many how many kosher vegan 12 year olds do you know please two my own children yeah all right fine uh you can stand to eat like a 12 year old a little more often frankly is one of the funniest things that anyone's ever said so i just wanted to give a shout out because you are very very funny you're naturally very funny and um very self-reflective as well i'm really really grateful for you being here and um as this is a podcast about mental health i kind of want to warm up and maybe you can talk a little bit about kind of how you grew up you were born in manhattan right i was born in queens but i grew up in manhattan from from the age of three yeah so it's it's new york city in the 70s and 80s right different borough um what were you like as a kid or you know obviously no one talked to us about our mental health or mental wellness when we were kids but looking back you know with kind of like the knowledge that you have about yourself now who were you as a kid and how did that kind of play into you know your later interest in acting or did it well there was a couple things that that led to it the the thing i remember most and i've been doing a lot of pretty reflective uh work on myself over the past um over the past pandemic and what it is uh what has dawned on me is what an angry kid i was you know whether i had a legitimate beef or not i i was just um i was mad at the world i felt threatened by new york city which is a wonderful place and it is my home and i i do miss it but it was a weird scary place to grow up to grow up there in like the 70s and 80s um there was a ton of crime there was the son of sam killings there was the 78 blackout there was just a lot of weird stuff going on and it was sort of like living inside a panic attack for a big chunk of my my childhood uh the other thing that was interesting about growing up specifically in midtown manhattan is that it's the theater district and i was surrounded by i mean our neighbors were actors of varying degrees of success but what freaked me out were the people who weren't making it you know we had a couple people who were like oh that guy's been in a couple of movies and and you know then she's been on a tv show and i recognize these people but there are so many people who i knew were trying to be actors and weren't weren't making a living at it that even though i was drawn to the idea of a life in the arts the idea of actually pursuing one scared the hell out of me i think when you grow up in a small town and all you see are successful actors on the tonys or the oscars you get a real skewed vision of what the industry is like um so it's been it was sort of this push pull like the arts are right there and it is something that people do for a living but it's also very very hard to make a living at it um so i think there was a sense of wanting to escape uh wanting to kind of get away from myself to a certain extent coupled with that sort of ambivalence about actually pursuing a life as an actor but i mean it's all it all got me here it all got me onto a podcast with miam so at the end of the day so what did you like to do i mean what was this anger were you like an angry musician were you an angry poet were you an angry uh break dancer like tell us what that anger looked like or vandal were you an angry vandal it was the 80s in new york we we went out three o'clock in the morning and and went graffiti tagging a little bit i don't know what i was trying to prove i was you know is this sort of weird like i will make my mark i will you know i will make my mark it will be anonymous but i will make my mark i got really into punk rock at 14 and it didn't make me angrier it just sort of gave a direction or it validated my anger or it made my outside sound like my insides maybe does that make any sense you know i just that that sense of like really simple mono rage just kind of it spoke to me somehow and yes i'm afraid i was a poet but all that stuff was lost several moves ago and uh you're welcome america no one will ever see the poetry i wrote when i was 16 and uh you're all better off for it i honestly think it's like it would be like a airborne toxic event if my poetry from ages 15 or 16 saw the light of day i think it would be a contagion the likes of which we haven't seen even now um but yeah so i was kind of an angry kid and i what were you angry about what do you got i was um i was mad at um um i was mad at my parents for getting divorced i was mad at um um the city for what struck me for constricting my movement you know there were blocks that i was simply not allowed to visit i i grew up three blocks from the deuce from 40 seconds between seventh and eighth and was novel i didn't set foot on that block until i was like 20 because i had just been it just been drilled into me like you do not go on that block and my parents were you know legitimately concerned but there was still just a sense of constriction on so many levels that i just was i felt very kind of trapped in you know the biggest most vibrant city in the united states which and i think that paradox i couldn't put a word to it but it still freaked me out a little bit that i was so um um boxed in around fourth grade i started to get these really horrible dizzy spells that sent me to uh they sent me to a neurologist they sent me to an ir nose throat guy or an ear nose and throat guy rather um to see if it was something wrong with like um an inner ear problem and finally they sent me to a psychologist who was like yeah this kid's incredibly anxious oh how old were you when your parents got divorced i was seven the dizzy spells kicked in when i was around nine and they kicked into overdrive and what i really should have done they really should have sent me to a therapist what they did instead was send me the self-defense classes which wasn't bad no it helped exercise is good exercise is definitely good but i definitely definitely should have talked to a professional wow we've already alluded to the fact that i quit drinking um the the it was a lot of very textbook adult children of alcoholic behavior my dad was a drinker and um i've been pretty candid about that um uh but there is a there's a sense of um of sort of anger and resentment and and ego but also self-loathing and there's all this wonderful little cocktail that comes from a lot of us who who grew up in houses like that because you know dad wasn't a um he wasn't a blackout or anything and he wasn't he didn't vanish for days at a time he was just a pretty garden-variety white-collar drunk but he it still created a sense of instability what did your dad do he was um he was a customer service manager for a national paper company and if it sounds a little bit like what michael scott on the office does it should he was also like michael scott but presumed he was the funniest guy in his office i think he deep down wanted to have a life in the arts but didn't think it was a stable thing to do and kind of suppressed that stuff and i think was pretty ambivalent about me pursuing it as a living i mean i think he was proud of me but i think he struggled with it too and your mom my mom was a housewife until a divorce and then she had various jobs in uh publishing a lot of secretarial stuff but then she ran a company for a few years and then when she passed she was still working as a sort of a personal organizer for higher wow she was sort of like helping um she was in her 70s but she was helping people who were even older who were like i don't know how to set up my email and my mom was like basically tech support which is really like is the the blind leading the deaf uh and a number i don't know how she got herself into a position where she was like i will fix your computer problems but there she was because she was dealing with people who were even more baffled than she was she was mostly in in publishing for for most of my adolescence were you aware that that you grew up with alcoholism or was that kind of upon later reflection i was aware that i grew up with alcoholism i wasn't fully aware of the complete spectrum of alcoholic behavior alcoholism to me until pretty recently actually just met drinking too much right and once you take that out of the equation well you've stopped drinking so what's the problem you know this about me i'm pretty square you know pretty square over here did not drink until i was 21. um me neither yeah oh so so tell us a little bit about sort of like what was your history what was your experience with alcohol um you know and specifically i'm curious about what it felt like meaning what did it make you feel like do you know what somebody uh means when they say they were straight edge okay so i was straight edge in high school and there's a massive straight edge hardcore scene in new york explain straight edge for the people who don't know i won't go into the the broader minor threat history of the term but it's um just means you don't drink you don't smoke and you don't do drugs and there is adherents who also uh take it to include veganism there's uh people who uh take it to include abstinence which i didn't and um either of those veganism or abstinence um but i did not smoke i did not drink and i did not do drugs and there was a sense of pride around straight edge meaning there was a sense of arrogance about straight edge pride is a gentle way to put it what straight edge was was you you can still be cool and have street cred and not drink smoke or do drugs it wasn't they weren't square uh there was a there was a straight edge skinheads faction where i grew up i grew up here in los angeles uh but straight edge was like they were almost cooler for being straight edge well they certainly tried to be yeah there was a real sense of i mean i used it for a couple of things one i used to distinguish myself from my father um it struck me as like for my vision of of teenage rebellion i would listen to punk rock which my father didn't enjoy and i would abstain from alcohol which might which my father really enjoyed and that would be like my two-pronged uh approach to teenage rebellion um and it was also a bargaining chip because i'd be like yes i will be out late i'm going to go see a show at seabees tonight but you know i will come home sober i will take a cab and i will come home sober and and that was a valuable bargaining trip growing up in a crazy city um but when i was 22 actually not 21 22. i you know i wasn't mormon i had a sip here and there but um uh you're gonna get letters from mormons um at 22 i i was uh you know this about me that i i went to uh college to be a high school teacher and i went back to my old high school to teach for one year right after college armed with just a bachelor's in my new york state certification and i went in and on the the first round of parent teacher conferences i had that october this is october 93 um i did i did something crazy that morning i gave a pint of blood in the school's blood drive i just thought it was a good thing for a young healthy teacher to do i went into the parent teacher conferences i had 60 students about five or six sets of parents set up showed up that got me super depressed i went out with all of my old teachers that night to a bar in the west village and decided i am going to get drunk tonight i am going to get drunk and i got hammered and i loved it because i was telling you i i give everything a larger significance than it really needs and i was just like okay so five sets of parents set up 60 kids that's less than 10 um the world is ending and nobody cares about their kids anymore you know i just i didn't i i just gave it this way i give it way too big a context i think so it really upset me really got me depressed and i decided to drown that with um cranberries and vodkas um uh oh yes that i was a girl drink drunk i should make that abundantly clear and yeah what i what i found was um i am relaxed i am for the moment uninhibited but not too uninhibited um and i didn't get sloppy but i was down a pint of blood and uh i i i was definitely over served and um i just found it rather buoyant and and stayed at that level for you know never getting like really no blackouts but like i would occasionally like i would drink a little bit every day and then get really shattered at least once a month and stayed that way till for like 17 years 17 years yeah what were those 17 years like in terms of progression did you see progression i mean you just said a little bit but what i guess was there a point where you're like i can't stop did you try and stuff like i'm wondering when i tried to taper a lot and tape wasn't working tell it yeah so tell us what what kind of tape because you know some of the kind of hallmarks are like changing the kind of drink changing who you drink only drinking on week like all of the above all the above i tried all that stuff i was like you know nothing brown right only you know nothing brown um only clear uh okay brown but only on the weekends okay hang on hang on go figure this out hang on hang on hang on only in groups nope that isn't nope that isn't a thing um and like my my father-in-law brought me this really nice bottle of scotch one time and um put it in the house and they went he was they were visiting california and they went out he and my my wife and they went out for something and i stayed at home to watch um oh boy to watch the little one who was sleeping through the night at this point but um he came back and a lot of that scotch was gone and i had just been playing wii tennis [Music] drinking and playing wii tennis which is like you know the most uh uh the most 2009 reference i can possibly give you i think um but yeah it's not a great look and i just got to this point where i have no devastating rock bottom story there's a comedian who i won't name it's his story to tell but he has a story about taking a friend's car and driving it into the department of water and power building i have nothing like that but what i had was just a sense of like this is not a great look but by this point i was a father of two and i was like this is not a great look this is not who i want to be what else did you do you know besides the tapering were there other things you did because you know a lot of people will you know change diet start meditating like become a buddhist you know were there other things that you tried to say like what if i do this let's take up smoking like was anything like that you know no i um uh it was never smoking uh smoking i i i've never smoked that i mean that literally killed both my parents um it wasn't the booze for my dad it was the cigarettes that that that took him out um so i was never a smoker and i didn't get into meditation and all and buddhism and all the other necessities of los angeles sobriety until i i actually quit um and i quit and did years of quit losing did years of marijuana maintenance which i've heard called um california sober which is hilarious um and doesn't actually count as if you're listening that does not actually count as sobriety true that does not count as sobriety it's cute and it's funny but it does not actually count as sobriety so yeah it was until i um had a booze sized hole in my life that i started going to stuff like hot yoga which i was doing at a fairly decent clip before the pandemic wrapped it all up hot yoga yes i had just i had just started before the pandemic and actually one of my it is a mental health related issue um i i have a very hard time being in my body and sitting in my body and yog regular yoga which before i had kids i was a great practitioner and just the you know life did its number on me and i had two kids and i got divorced and all this stuff and i could not sit in yoga and i'm not talking about like the good kind of crying like it's like deep shame and horrible inability to stop comparing and despairing and and and also like for anyone who's not from los angeles doing yoga in los angeles it's a different beast okay john you are far better with words than i what's it like doing yoga in los angeles and pretend you're a woman for a second well i would never dream of it but what it feels like is you could be a relatively spry and slender man in his high 40s and you go into an la yoga class and you instantly feel like fat king lear it is remarkable how out of shape you feel when you're surrounded by all of these actors who are in peak physical condition and i was i was often at the upper end of of these hot yoga classes age-wise yes oh i'm the oldest person in my hot yoga classes and you've still you i mean you're still uh you're still a brunette this silver fox over here i i looked ancient in that thing and um and the the the good news is you um uh well the bad news is you're just surrounded by incredible physical specimens the good news is some of them have hilariously ill-advised tattoos um just like every like oh dude what are you doing back to what you said and this is not i'm really not looking for dirt but i am looking for a little bit more specificity in terms of your relationship with yourself what did that bad look look like to you meaning i'm not asking you to tell me like which wall you peed against or anything like that but what did what did it feel like did it feel like you were disconnected from from your wife did it feel like you were not present did it feel like you were running from something how do we know that it's a problem what it it came to was um the last night i got my drunk on um i was at a bar in hollywood with a couple friends who did not have kids and i was not driving that night um so i really threw caution to the wind but i got to a point where i just felt awful i was sitting there pounding vodkas and i went to the bathroom and was sick and slashed some water on my face looked myself in the mirror and was just like oh oh this looks terrible i was pushing 40 and just did not look good i was like you're a dad you have two kids what if they saw you like this right now and granted they were like three and not yet one or yeah there were three and not yet one but i was still like this is ugly this would actually be you look so sick that it would be traumatic were they to see you like this and there was no chance they were they were out of town with their mom but um and then i bellied up to the bar and you know it everything costs money in los angeles the guy just put a massive water down in front of me when i went to pay he was just like no no no you're good don't worry about it and i was like wow i just got a free drink granted it was a water but i i look such a mess that the bartender at the king king just gave me a free uh bottle of water um as like a loss leader or something because i'm i i'm just a shell of a man so that's as bad as it got which was too bad for me you know the the phrase you hear is uh your bottom is whenever you stop digging and uh that was that was mine it was just a real sense of like like there's something in me that's always gonna have a certain degree of self-loathing but if i can do anything to in my behavior to ameliorate that then uh why don't we why don't i not give myself the flu a couple times a month and make myself an embarrassing uh loudmouth every 15 days or so it's not super dramatic but it was dramatic for me i i i have not really i've not really looked back with with much regret yeah i don't really get cravings um or not cravings of any major significance like every once in a while i see somebody on tv with like a big frosty glass or something and it's like the glass is sweating on the outside i'm like oh i bet that's nice but i also realized that it will it will go beyond that and at no point will i look like george clooney at all and it'll just be actually that that's a that's a beautiful beautiful point that i'd love for you to you know touch more on because i think they say you know it's like one is too many and all the drinks in the world are never enough you know yeah yeah i've heard a lot of people say like well i can get sober and then once i've like gotten that in control then i'll just drink like a normal person right that's not your experience that has not been my experience so again i when i quit i i stopped once in my early 30s just because i was on a run of medication that was going to take a while and i just wanted to let the medication do its thing um i will screw it it's you zoloft and um i oh yeah you're not supposed to drink on enzo yeah you're not supposed to drink on you're not supposed to drink on ssris you're really not supposed to drink on maois um like uh uh what is the class there i think lithium is one of them yeah but also sudafed i mean things like that oh that's right yeah yeah do not drink on sudafed the other phrase that i heard when i quit that has been so valuable is and they all like rhyme you know they all rhyme or they have a certain kind of like poet uh poetry to them well it's a little folksy a lot of the a lot of the a.s eggs are a little folksy yeah um the phrase think through the drink um is beyond valuable because you you stop for a moment you go oh that looks like a nice tall it's a it's sort of a warm lunch time um i've got a little plated cheese and crackers here a glass of chardonnay would go down really well right now um but it wouldn't just be one would it no it would be several and it would no longer be cute and dignified it would get sloppy and you'd spill some on yourself if you were lucky the rest of it would just go inside you and uh next thing you know you're you've basically poured yourself a glass of instant [ __ ] and uh it it will uh it will go into effect swiftly so yeah i i think it was one of those things where i can't taper off on this i'm not good at like cutting myself off at two i think what would you much easier would be just completely eliminating this from my life and and finding something else to do what what is that something else because you know in the old days when when they would try and get people sober in the in the sanatoriums and stuff they would give them like you would have to eat like it was like pickled onions and all these things to literally help metabolize the alcohol out of you so that you would you know you'd get the delirious trap like you would get the the shakes and i mean you'd be psychotic they used to commit people but they they came up with this like concoction that was literally a a chemical explanation for addiction essentially and this was this was in the 30s this was in the 40s that's like lost weekend kind of stuff yeah especially because you kind of talked about that there was a feeling that went away right when you were drinking or using when you take away that drink you know you take away that whatever what's left like what did sobriety feel like it was a lot of things um again because of the fact that i gravitated to things like cranberry and vodkas and the sweeter ends of your white wines and rum drinks i lost 10 [ __ ] pounds in like 45 days when i quit and it wasn't one of those like put down the cup pick up the spoon kind of thing i just for whatever reason i didn't compensate it is the weight came flying off and everybody noticed and it was wild my weight gain hadn't been unhealthy it just it was striking when i lost it um what has taken me a very long time to um to come to terms with um is that you know the booze is a symptom the booze is is not the problem you know if the booze was a problem then people would just stop and that would be it what you're left with um you know they always speak about a pink cloud of sobriety that follows you for a couple of months and that's all well and good and i had a certain degree of that you know i felt a little more focused my energy was up um but eventually you got to do something with that energy and um it's only 10 years later that i'm i'm starting to realize that i need a really regular exercise regimen like really regular like need to break a sweat for an hour once a day kind of thing and things like that have been extremely helpful for my mood and my the way i am with my kids um because what i was left with was this weird anger and i remember when i quit 10 years ago that's when i started my awful habit that i'm just starting to curb now my awful habit of getting into political arguments online which is disastrous and does no one any good that's the adult child of the alcoholic in you also that is turning the focus on other people and engaging that way instead of having to yeah and it's the adult child of a particular conservative alcoholic uh as well too there's a little sense of like my father is no longer with us and would never have joined twitter anyway but hear this well and it's it's funny you said that because what i hear from a lot of people in in the rooms of al-anon is that they don't can you know people who grew up in alcoholism for example they don't connect the fact that they scream at people routinely in their car or if someone gets their order wrong that they are rageful or if someone annoys them at work they cannot let it go and that kind of rage you know often i'm not saying everyone who's a road rager was raised in alcoholism or you know could could be this guy was correct right no but i think that's so interesting because i think especially the climate that we're living in we have so many opportunities of where to put that um you're very also you're very funny on twitter which i i enjoy a lot of your rants i've laughed yeah i've left no but i'm saying in my past experience with you i enjoyed very much your musings oh well thank you um it was there came a point where i realized i was probably not going to shift the temperature of the nation with my 50 000 twitter followers so decided it would be best to abstain i'm still on instagram my policy now is i don't start fights but i do tend to get kind of nasty if someone starts with me um or me you've defended me i see that's that's terrible though what am i doing commenting on your feed solidifying our friendship well all right lovely um but i always watch like i watch you i watch you and jim never engage galecki engages and um uh oh melissa stays out of it yeah simon's off social media i haven't seen him forever um simon i'm not i have no idea if simon's alive um he is fight your thing um he's not on social media so he might as well be passed away and um and then canal is kunal is amazing right now he's on this spreading wisdom he's just spreading his wisdom he's just the the buddha in blue jeans and and god love him i would love i would love to have him i want what he has um but i i watch you guys and i need to emulate that i need to emulate like oh here is a graphic that i think explains a uh a misunderstanding about a particular issue and then don't read the comments john go play with your kids okay so so let me just get back to and i i i don't want to speak about anonymous fellowships because it's not for me to ask you and it's not for you to talk about if you want but what i what i am curious about is is there some process of you know soul-searching and rigorous honesty that you undertake as part of trying to live life um you know this way now sober you know uh that second a is there for a reason um but um it has um oscar you can there's there's a quality um to life during this pandemic that if there's any good thing [Music] about what's going on right now is that sense of um reaching out for community and not even having to put pants on you know and making making a decision to to hang out with a certain group of people um uh at one o'clock and making that decision at 12 58 and and um not having to worry about uh parking or anything and just you know off the end you're there um and my um i've gotten in touch with a lot of old friends um some of whom i knew um uh hung out and stuff like i mean i'm doing a piss poor job of uh maintaining that second day right now but um but yeah there's a there's been a sense of um of community and sort of collective unconscious that i found very soothing right now and then you know i play guitar with my son and i play video games with my son and i'm teaching my daughter a little bit of bass um and um we are trying to support the restaurants in our neighborhood so we we will go out and eat alfresco um in a few places which has been really nice um i'm just trying to like make sure that the time i do spend with my family is really uh is is really quality time are you a person of faith do you have a spiritual practice um like what's your what's your notion of you know the universe or does it play into you know your life in any way it does it does i'm very private about it not because i'm very private about it but because i don't quite i'm not quite able to put it into words and i'm comfortable living in that mystery um but i i wouldn't be able to point to it is that what is very much this judeo-christian uh idea um uh but i i you know yeah there's there's definitely something especially as i get older and i've lost my parents and you get a keener sense of your mortality and you you want to kind of get a sense of of um something holding us all together that we're not all just worm food um uh i think there's um yes i have a growing spiritual practice that is in development and it's unlike anything in development a script a pilot idea we're not going to talk about it just now and yeah you'll read about it in the traits uh no but i think um i think it's you're you're one of my favorite honorary jews uh because there is a very there's a very um you know it's like a very hamish equality a very familiar quality about you i i believe it's because you have irish in you it's scott's irish but but i mean but there's there's an old lenny bruce quote that if you're from new york you're jewish and if you're from montana and you're jewish you're goish [Laughter] and it doesn't matter so i mean like my daughter said something because my wife is jewish which of course makes my kids jewish and i i used something some smattering of yiddish the other day and my daughter my older one nola um there's nola and then there's my son walter she said did you get all this yiddish from mom and i was like um no no no no i got your mom because i have all this yiddish let me make something perfectly clear i arrived i arrived knowing more than the i i had read joyce of yiddish when i was a teenager there's a lot of um it's just such a wonderful language you know but what i what i do love aside from like the the surface stuff about like i liked being picked up uh in a uh in a chair at my wedding you know i i i liked we took my family's tartan and made the huppa out of it you know and and i there's a lot of things and i love what the hookah symbolizes a house open on all four sides there's a lot about judaism in its um in its ceremonial qualities that i really love but i also love the inquisitiveness and the constant questioning that is built into the faith in a way that i never really found in in episcopalianism which is the faith i was raised in which i'm not knocking you know it's there's a lot of beauty in that i'll add it to the list of letters we're getting at no point is the greater episcopal diocese of anywhere going to get together with pitchforks and torches and come after us that's not how they roll um i first of all wanna uh we just have a couple more minutes and i want to thank you for for mentioning two things uh that really tie in so beautifully with really the purpose of this podcast which is to introduce people to the concept of mind body connection and you mentioned exercise and you mentioned social media and those are two things that have a tremendous impact on mental health diametrically opposed no but i i was really thinking twitter is the anti-exercise no but i i actually i wasn't thinking of them in opposition like that i was thinking of them as things that many people do not even think that before turning to medication before turning to even you know to therapy like what are the things that my body is doing or not doing that might be contributing to an increase in stress anxiety rage tension so i really want to thank you for bringing those up and well that's always been really interesting to me because the um you know the first time i i was diagnosed with depression i was like 27 26 27 and was struck by how physical the symptoms were and like i lost my appetite my stomach was a mess constantly and i almost got feverish a little bit like it was affecting my actual body temperature these anxiety attacks i was having and that throws the whole that whole idea of there's mental health and there's physical health and whenever the twin shall meet is is and i'm going to sound like the most annoying college freshman in the world right now but it's a very western idea man you know it's a very it's very very uh heteronormative and western and and the truth is far more complicated than that and i think we do ourselves a disservice when we when we distinguish what we're putting into our bodies from what we're putting into our heads the last thing i'd want to say is actually not something that's in my notes which i have so meticulously prepared for you but thank you john rust bowie um well what i want to say is something that honestly may not even make the may not even make the edit but i want to say it because i never anticipated feeling this until i spoke to you and i'm i got very emotional when you were discussing kind of what it what it ended up looking like and i thought meaning for you your experience and i've known and loved many an addict and many an alcoholic and that's a different story but what struck me so much is that you know i'm a person who came into your life you know didn't know a lot of these things that were happening for you and and with you but when i hear you talking and you are someone that i respect and you're someone that i really care about we've shared a very specific spiritual experience where i witnessed my higher power and we were in the same room um hearing you being in a state of discomfort and pain is so painful because i care about you and the notion that there was a time when you did not feel you know that that you could handle life without those things is very very it's very moving to me to hear you reflect on that because i know how much you are committed to your family and to your kids and you've had a tremendous impact you know on an aspect of pop culture history you are a you know you're a you're a talented and accomplished person but what i'm so grateful to you about is for being so courageous to share those other parts of you because that's literally how that stigma gets you know released but i was i was really not to make it about me because you know i like to make things about me but just the notion also that like i would never want you to suffer or anyone to suffer the way that you did and especially as a parent i you know anytime my kid's like i'm feeling really sad i'm not taking interest in hanging out with my friends i'm like is this it is this my red flag you know so i'm very grateful for you sharing you know not only what it looks like now but the journey that it took to get you here because i'm so grateful that i get to love you sober i'm so grateful that i get to see the parts of you that feel realized and seen it's very it's very powerful i really appreciate you coming and playing today uh you're all for clamped yeah i'm very verklempt that's lovely i feel the same way about you i've always found you very easy to talk to uh right from the uh the get-go and um i am doing okay good um and i'm doing better having had this conversation with you oh john that's so awesome thank you thank you thank you for helping us break down addiction yeah it's one version i hope you all enjoyed that conversation that i just had with john russ bowie and i'm very very grateful that he came on and shared so intimately about um his experience so that was awesome i was in college and grad school um for a long time i did five years undergrad and and seven years in grad school and those were really the first years uh that i saw a lot of drinking meaning i saw other people doing a lot of drinking um i i was not never have been a big drinker myself so i was often the sober one um and the lucid one for for many uncomfortable and and sometimes dangerous situations that i was in and it's true a lot of people are are partiers in in college or even in high school and they eventually curtail it or or stop their drinking and go on to have a a beer or a glass of wine here or there and it's it's not an issue and i'd like to repeat it's not for me to diagnose anyone either with this episode of this podcast or with what i'm about to say but i i do want to um i do want to do a you might need help if regarding addiction and particular drinking and i am not listing these things to make you feel bad to to shame you or to tell you how to live your life i'm simply going to list some of the general diagnostic criteria that are used to to start a conversation with yourself about if you might want to look into your relationship to alcohol in particular so you might need help if you might need help if you drink to get drunk meaning it's the feeling of of drunkenness that uh the disappearing that that numbing out that lack of of worry or anxiety or or the the joy of not feeling like yourself meaning wanting to just escape who you are if that's what's driving you to drink you might need help if you are pursuing the feeling of getting drunk or that experience you might need help if you drink so much that you throw up and continue drinking you might need help if you drink and pass out or black out meaning that there are periods of time that you do not remember what happened and something i actually didn't know until i was i think well into my 30s blackouts can include long stretches of time like you can um you can drive in a blackout you can talk you can interact with people you can have sex and your brain does not hold that information and that will likely come up in other episodes when we talk about memory and things like that um if you are drinking and having blackouts that is a very strong sign that that you likely need help if you drink alone alone is a little bit hard i'll be honest i've had wine out of a sippy cup more times in my life than i would like to admit and i was alone um but if you are drinking alone again to pursue that numbing out if you're drinking like first thing in the morning um and again culturally there are some cultures where having a shot of vodka before your day is standard but if you are drinking especially in the morning so that you can get through the day if you're drinking because you need to get through an exam if you're drinking because you need to drink to be able to go to work if you're drinking or using because you need to see your family if you're drinking so you can get through something that's a sign that it's serving a purpose other than being a recreational uh drug if you've tried anything like switching the kind of drinks you drink in hopes that you'll drink less tried drinking like oh i'll just drink on weekends or i'll just drink in the week or i'll just drink with these friends but not with those friends those attempts to control your drinking are often markers that you might need help as i said before there are many ways to treat addiction alcoholics anonymous is one way and um i'm gonna i'm gonna list resources um on the website some general ones and some specific ones uh regarding 12-step programs and i'm also going to list resources on the website bialikbreakdown.com for the other major addictions there's often a lot of overlap so you'll often um have people who are addicted to alcohol and also have problems with with drugs or with sex or with relationships and things like that and in the mental health world there's a lot of time spent you know deciding what's self-medicating and what's a symptom of a larger problem it's often unclear as as i got into with john it's often unclear if it is mental health challenges that are leading us to need to have that thing that makes us go away that makes us escape that allows us to numb or if the predisposition to those addictions then leads to further mental health problems and it's likely a combination of both and i think if if we've learned anything from this episode it's that it's not necessarily important that we understand all of the intricacies of how and why it's more important to say if you are an addict if you are an alcoholic if you are struggling with your dependence on something you're not alone there is hope and the time to reach out is now there are those among us who have been what been through what you've been through and there are those among us who can help so um please go to beyondbreakdown.com and let us know how else we can help and from my breakdown to the one that i hope you never have we will see you next time it's my ambiance breakdown she's gonna break it down for you she's got a neuroscience phd or two non-fiction and now she's gonna break down it's a breakdown she's gonna break it down [Music]

Channel: Mayim Bialik

Views: 165,472

Keywords: mayim bialik, big bang theory, amy farrah fowler, mayim, celebrity news

Id: 0jlH7Q73XJY

Length: 81min 45sec (4905 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 09 2021