Past Substance Use w/ Train

i have a lot of those i have some crazy [ __ ] stories the craziest thing about that story train is that when you said you saw a pair of ass cheeks clapping i was like what how you doing bro good good good you know just uh you know had a late night playing rust and uh you know get some gambling on there and you know hey let's just say you know uh luck wasn't on my side last night wait so i heard something about this there was some kind of like rust server or something that came out or something yeah what's the deal there can you fill me in pretty much um offline tv they created this um server for streamers on rust so everyone can collaborate you know get together and stream the game and that's kind of what it is so we just get on and it's just all streamers and we just kind of and rust is like where you guys like like people like it's people like attack each other and stuff right yeah it's like a yeah it's like a survival game i guess survival some [ __ ] yeah it's not survival i don't know and where does the gambling come in well you can so the current well i don't know if it's a currency but there's this stuff called scrap i guess that's the equivalent to the currency in the game and um there's this wheel and you can gamble it make a wish oh for the eyelash i like that it's a middle eastern stuff right i think so yeah yeah so you know hey yeah i pretty much go with the risky bets you know the one is pretty much like a 52 chance of landing you double up everyone does that but you know i'm only going 20 10 and five which is like the rarest ones but hey you know big risk big reward go baker go home right go big or go home you know absolutely man yeah so train a couple things i was hoping today i know we we've sort of been we've mentioned addiction a couple of times i i think you had alluded to a few stories or experiences that you had that we never really got into um yeah so i was really hoping to hear about that today and just what your experiences have been i think uh that could be really helpful for other people to kind of hear about and the second thing is just from a time limit standpoint um i have to teach uh in one hour and 45 minutes um so i i really have to stop because there's going to be a you know classroom full of people waiting for me um okay i should i shouldn't be late for that so um apologies if i if i have to stay a little bit more focused today so how long do we have an hour and 45 minutes perfect if we're gonna meditate and stuff then then we have to save time for that you know if ends up it ends up being juicy we could do media you know i'll do meditation on my own sure absolutely but let's dive in baby yeah let's do it so tell me yeah i think uh where where i where we had left off is i think maybe you were going to college like we talked a lot about kind of your upbringing and stuff like that and then um you had sort of alluded to substance use at certain times but i don't think we ever talked about that yeah i think um so my entire life um i've kind of just been like a dreamer you know i've never really been grounded you know feeling the ground i've always been you know flying high um you know no pun intended um and i've always been a dreamer i've always you know i've always you know um it's what i'm looking for i've always i'll choose a different word but it's not a good enough word but i've always kind of grasped on to the 0.01 hope that something could possibly exist that is you know outside of what we understand to be like you know possible or probably whatever the case might be right and like that's just kind of me right i'm living in my head and um you know in high school a lot of my friends they they knew how to live in the moment and you know they could be failing all their courses they could be broke getting kicked out and somehow you know when they'd come over and do a sleepover you know i would turn around and they'd be sleeping with a smile on their face you know and i'm sitting here busting my ass you know getting good grades doing this preparing for college and i'm stressed i mean you know i'm anxious and i guess i've kind of always been bored with the way things are with the way things what the way people tell you that things are right i've always wanted to kind of just venture outside of that i've i've wanted to find the economy on the status quo yeah i've wanted to find the yeah the adventure and the magic in the world right sure so to speak you know like uncharted lands uncharted territory that isn't on a map that can't be you know seen on radar some crazy [ __ ] right and which is which is kind of interesting for a second because it seems like you know in high school you were kind of walking the the narrow path of a good iranian boy you know getting the grades studying hard no no no no no definitely not no no in high school no in high school definitely uh no no no in high school i was i've been i've been pretty insecure probably up until like my 26 27th birthday issue i'd say i've been very very insecure i've always i've never been like i've always wanted to like naturally like how i am it was it what i was trying to be by fitting with others i had naturally but i didn't recognize that right because i didn't have that self-love i i you know i hadn't gone through like a self-reflection or a journey you know to really discover myself and love myself and accept myself and through that i was just like a chameleon just fitting in trying to fit in different groups find my place uh find out who i was anyways so back to the adventure stuff um a piece of me has always crept chaos i've always craved chaos you know i just what is there something uh craving chaos is like just craving a disorder craving some sort of storyline almost like creating problems for yourself that perpetuates some sort of like it creates like a purpose like some sort of you know like because like we kind of go about life we just kind of go like robots right you go to school you come home you do your homework you dinner you go to bed right you grow up you get to go to college you get a job you're married you have kids right it's just this like stale timeline the stale schedule kind of adrenaline survival a reason exactly there is something a little more you know like there's a storyline there that there's there's something you know so i've always kind of craved a little bit of care or i've craved a lot of chaos in my life and i think i think that was kind of the entryway into some of the hard drugs i've done which occurred through college i i think i first dabbled in the hardest of drugs probably well i'd say i started freshman year with like a little bit of like soft medium drugs and then i went into like sophomore junior i went some hard drugs can you help me understand how you classify soft drugs medium drugs and hard drugs uh a medium drug to me is like xanax hard drugs like percocet oxycontin heroin meth medium drugs xanax you know vicodin i'd say i don't know and then soft drug i don't know weed i don't know okay and you know train if i ask you anything that you don't feel comfortable answering you just i'm comfortable and the drug topic uncomfortable um because i think it is just important to understand like your terminology so you were saying like soft drugs is marijuana um medium drugs yes is like benzos like xanax did you say vicodin was a medium drug uh i'd say vicodin is actually low-key weaker than xanax xanax is actually [ __ ] dangerous low-key so that's that that's right a little bit harder it's just like that's like one of those things that's like it's everywhere it's like it's become so normalized that you don't see it as this hard drug but xanax is definitely bad i'd say it's i think it's worse than vicodin to be honest but then again i guess watching dr house that's not the case so yeah so so it occurs to me that maybe um you know maybe we need to just do a little bit of public education i may try to put something together just a little bit about what 100 please do different drugs so one thing just so everyone knows this is super dangerous so first of all you know i don't i really don't recommend any kind of substance use at all really ever um the the couple of things that really get people into trouble are just as an addiction psychiatrist i've seen this time and again where sometimes we'll people will use a particular dosage and then if they get sober for a while they'll go back to their old dosage and that can actually be lethal and then i've had patients uh die or overdose because of that and the second thing is that drug classes should really never be mixed that exponentially increases the danger so if you use benzodiazepines and opiates together your chances of death are way higher because they sort of synergistically act to suppress your breathing and things like that um so so really i mean first of all don't do drugs and be super careful because a lot of times people feel like they can handle it and and they can't which is why it's such a problem but um just a couple of quick points but i i hear what you're saying so just to kind of recap marijuana is a soft drug um medium drugs it sounds like xanax and then then the opiates and you you classify meth as a hard drug i'd say so do you know do you have a sense of like when you started using anything sheesh i smoked my first blunt cell from your high school and do you have a sense of like what got you into it friends and like just kind of like peer pressure or i don't know i'm going to be honest it smelled really good you know it's kind of it's kind of cigarettes right cigarettes smell really good but like they just taste like [ __ ] right there's terrible weed it has that smell where you just want to eat it you literally just want to eat it right but it's like it's it's it doesn't actually taste like that when you write some [ __ ] like that's what i'm assuming right yeah yeah so you don't hear pressure probably yeah well no it's it's actually interesting so that may not be peer pressure um so this is something that a lot of people don't know is that you know so i remember the first time i had a beer i thought it was disgusting even now when i have a beer i think it's disgusting i had one sip of alcohol yesterday and i found it to be absolutely foul and abysmal and then some of the the people i've worked with will say that when they had their first sip of alcohol it tastes delicious it's like like so so oddly enough there's some evidence that based on how your brain is wired i've never really thought about smell but the taste of things like alcohol can be super super appealing like your taste buds are wired like if you have that biological predisposition to being vulnerable to like alcohol addiction alcoholism yeah it will taste amazing the first time you try it yeah i've heard of that and and i'm not quite i've never really thought about this with marijuana but i i wonder if there's something similar where like something in your brain is like oh that scent is like that has some of the chemical compounds that like i really really want never really thought about it that way before but it's interesting i've never heard someone you know say that the first time i smelled marijuana i like really wanted to eat it it's kind of it's kind of an interesting yeah yeah yeah that's it maybe yeah and so it sounds like you started using pot in high school anything else in high school well i i wasn't really using pot like i wasn't like i wasn't one of those pod head kids so i played dude don't lose it this time bro no i think it's in my eye low key but anyways i wasn't one of those because i played varsity soccer from freshman year all the way to senior year so like i was constantly doing conditioning constantly you know training just just blink because when you're watching no no yeah yeah but i have contacts oh i don't know that's what's going to change anything so when i blink and there's eyelash in there and it gets mixed with eye contact or just slip underneath and it's even worse okay sorry yeah i didn't realize no don't be sorry it's okay um because a lot of times the way your eyelid is is designed is it pushes the hair towards the middle when it closes yeah it's not mean or so available it sounds like in college you started experimenting with like soft to medium yeah well i kind of fell out of the weed thing you know i don't know when like junior of high school you know i started kind of that that was the point where i you know i think everyone hits a point where you hit a stage in your life if you're lucky i think right because some people just kind of stay you know whatever but i think it hits a stage in the life where they start overthinking right they start overthinking they trip themselves out and i hit that i hit that phase so anyhow i'd smoke i just overthink i just you know freak myself out for no [ __ ] reason you know what i mean and i just stopped that all around right but i just yeah so marijuana stopped and then i think my freshman year i started [ __ ] around some xanax you know i do the mixing stuff you talked about was bad which is like drinking that terrible and then the sense of what pulled you towards that train i would just say just the college i mean i don't know it was kind of the party life you know everyone was kind of just i don't know you know it was something you'd see at a blue mountain state you know some chick you know you know down getting crazy in the bathroom i'm saying pop one of those take a shot start [ __ ] you know kind of like one of those crazy things right kind of happens and then from there you're like damn this feels good and you want to feel that again right but you can never feel that again because the whole trick joe was chasing that but anyways yeah i don't really like it too much to be honest i mean it feels good at the moment but hey that xanax hangover that is terrible that oh man that feeling can we rewind a little bit i i didn't understand some of what you said and and maybe that's because i just can't relate to some of the experience there but um what is that what do you mean by the trick oh the trick so it's like you know i mean it's especially in like especially in opiates right but this i think applies to any drug right like when you take it for your first time what you're gonna feel is just absolute euphoria greatness amazingness unstoppableness right and then from there on right after a couple more times you might feel that way and then from there on you start building a tolerance right and then you're kind of chasing that original high you're chasing the dragon right so you take more you take more you mix this mix that but you never really hit it until you [ __ ] your life up right so that's what i meant by chasing the high got it yeah and and so i'm just curious i mean you mentioned early on that you were kind of insecure that you craved chaos [Music] you would kind of frame the discussion with those at the beginning yeah go ahead yeah those aren't connected i just want to make it clear because i still crave chaos but yeah okay i mean are either of those connected with kind of like you know the freshman party lifestyle maybe how you felt about yourself the insecurity yeah 100 i'm not really a partier because i'm not really a party like what i am is because you sound like one hell of a party or dude yeah i'm listen i can have a good time right you know i think to this day still i've thrown you know the best party at a convention so like i don't have a good time i'm persian you know persians we love to party we let's have a good time but i'm more of like a you know hang out with you know the three kids in science class in grandma's basement do some science experiments eat some chips watch some tv play a board game that's me it doesn't look like me but that's what i enjoy partying it's not me it's just it's so tiring it's just it's just tiring like any like it's the crazy part we talked about last time you know i'm a very outgoing person you know i i excel in any social situation you throw me into a bin of strangers and i'll come out you know friends with all of them but man it is is it tiring because like when i go into these i don't see it like i don't see it for like so for example at a party if you go to a party right i don't see a party as just people having a good time i'm looking and it's just like everyone's like everyone's trying to forget everyone's trying to uh push something that they need to do away they're miserable they're sad they're depressed no one's actually everyone's fronting do you understand like maybe there's a few people have their [ __ ] together and they're actually having a good time one time they're gonna go back and study tomorrow but it's like it's just it's just a cesspool of [ __ ] it's the same with bars right like for me you know i worked in the bars for a bit and when i look at a bar or a club it just looked so gloomy to me everyone else saw this fun escape let's have you know let's go you know this that adventure to me it was just this it was a trick it was literally a trick and no one could see it right it was this crazy thing that's at least the way my brain saw it so yeah it's never been that's never been me but i think in the search for myself i guess that's just one of the paths took me down and so when you were partying like let's say early in college i mean would you say it was an escape for you no what was it for you it was a search for adventure that's what it was yeah it was a search for something i was hoping that you know something crazy should happen i'll be real [ __ ] some crazy [ __ ] happen in those days i have some stories for you oh we can go for hours we don't have that today though but wow but yeah do you feel adventure one just to give us a sense well it's not oh if it's not street stream friendly then that's totally well it i mean it's stream friendly but i don't know how relevant it is just yeah what's all right well it's just you know there are certain things you know you can talk about because people don't i i'll just tell you so i was this guy named kyle okay it's funny cause me and kyle started as enemies he was the best fighter in our school he didn't like me and he actually went to my high school and he was one of the kids that kind of [ __ ] with me and bullied me but we ended up connecting after we kind of like fought always seems to be the case um anyways he's the one that had issues with you because you walked in with your head held high yeah yeah yeah but yeah and but he had his own issues he his his dad was you know military and you know it was some crazy [ __ ] you know his friends would tell me stories you know they'd go to his house after school think this is in high school thing that there's a kid that's 16 years old he brings his friends over and his dad literally drunk as hell just beats the [ __ ] out of him in front of his friends some [ __ ] up [ __ ] so i felt for the guy he was he was a little twisted but anyway so fast forward to college and when i go to a party there's this place called the view at the time it was good i don't know if it's trash now or not but i remember i walk in with him and we're kind of just getting [ __ ] up right and just drinking and i'm standing outside i have like like the last two beers in the whole party right that's how culture works right god knows where the hell the liquor's coming from half the time it's hidden in the owner's you know room um anyways and i'm staying outside you know i'm double fisting the beer right some trash piss american beer right some keystone light or some trash like that terrible by the way um i'm sitting there and this this big [ __ ] six nine six nine two fifty huge [ __ ] like just steroid geeked up walks up to me it's like you're holding one of my beers i go no i'm not right at that point i'm drunk right i'm feeling that good buzz right i'm at a point where superman could have walked up to me and i would have thought i was his kryptonite you know i would have [ __ ] i would have take i would have stolen lois lane from him you know that's where i was mentally this dude's 69 250 just steroid it out he's with his friend and his friend was a mutual of mine he tries to grab my beer i turn away i knock his hat off it falls over the balcony he pushes me and then a group of kids form this like alleyway out into the hallway and they want us to fight but we end up like scuffling and fighting in the kitchen and he throws a punch at me and i dodge it and his his hand goes through the door and the door like the doors in these college areas are paper thin it's not like these nice wooden doors paper thin his hand goes to this door and i remember everyone's like oh we both freeze i look i turn behind me i look and all i see is my friend kyle's bare ass cheeks just clapping cheeks just just he's going to town on this other chick in the bathroom on the sink and i'm like hey kyle right and then he runs out right puts his pants on we go into the hallway and to this day i don't know sometimes i feel like i dreamt this because i was in this superman god complex mode where this dude's throwing his haymakers right he's this big guy he's slow and you know his his his tr his uh his lats are huge so he can't throw a straight punch he has to throw these haymakers and i remember when i was looking at him it was as if there was just slow motion i was dodging and i was laughing because it was so slow to me and each when i dodged i jabbed him i jabbed him and i ended up winning that i mean if he was smart he would stick him in the ground and [ __ ] me up but he wasn't so i guess that's the stereotype of the meat head but yeah so that happened and then the next day we end up going to a party and he ends up being there and his face is just messed up and he's like six of his boys i'm by myself very [ __ ] awkward but fortunately he was a good guy and he apologized i apologized we're cool now wow that's the story yeah i have a lot of those i have some crazy [ __ ] stories the craziest thing about that story train is that when you said you saw a pair of ass cheeks clapping i was like what right because you're in the middle of a fight and that's that's the thought that's all thing it's like a movie yeah well yeah why are there but like and then there's like no there's no like segway into there the door was open no it wasn't the guy punched through the door oh i pulled his hand out there's a huge hole and i look into the hole and it's literally just a pair of ass cheeks here right he's just going to town it was it was some hot [ __ ] yeah it was hot as hell but i was in my adrenaline mode so i couldn't really get into that when i was yeah crazy [ __ ] yeah that that's wild man yeah yeah it was yeah anyways so around i'd say i'd say around sophomore year i met these two kids and um they were actually pre-med they had like 4.2 gpas crazy gpas you know always studying in uh you know the office hours i think we called it lab or some [ __ ] like that and they were like smart ass [ __ ] like they were they were on track you know to you know a top 10 med school and at that time in my eyes that's like the most credible thing around me right you got someone that you know has a good family is a good guy has good values has a high gpa on track to a top 10 med school you know doing shadowing and you know uh internships things like that right to me that's incredible now these guys they were secretly [ __ ] up right they were on some crazy [ __ ] right percocets oxycontin they were smoking them doing heroin so you know i kind of got involved with them and in my head i'm thinking okay well can't be that bad these guys are smart they're doing well [ __ ] like right right [ __ ] it why not yeah people who have their [ __ ] together are doing it so yeah i can some [ __ ] like that yeah so it started out with you know perks from perks you know smoking perks from smoking perks to ocs from ocs smoking ocs then ocs got banned and you had these things called opanas which had a coating over it so you couldn't smoke it and then from there you know obviously those are 20 to 50 to 80 dollars a pill you can get that amount times 100 for that same price if you do heroin instead of that and realistically what people don't know is percocet is literally synthetic heroin it's a clean heroine right it's a pharmaceutical heroin right no one knows that everyone thinks they take a perk you know you know because like there's a stigma behind heroin and there should be but yet percocet's like this accepted thing if you get it prescribed but it's the same [ __ ] [ __ ] so right and i guess at the time that that's a very dangerous you know thing to kind of say because but it sounds like i'm justifying it it sounds like i'm saying oh well percocets are prescribed this is the same thing it's just dirty right so it should be okay but it's not okay so i want to make that very clear that's very dangerous what what is not okay i'm confused like is it saying to yourself a percocet is prescribed so that's okay or you know i'm saying that like cheaper i'm saying like if you know if you go to your boy's house and on the counter you see his mom's percocet prescription you don't think oh what a [ __ ] drug addict discussing i got to get out of here bad vibes right but if you you know see a needle in heroin you're gonna [ __ ] need if you just see heroin on the count you're like [ __ ] like i gotta get the [ __ ] out of here and call the cops never come back here again right but it's like they're one and the same realistically right like sure that's what i'm talking about right so yeah anyways so you know that happened you know some heroin for like let's say three years tried meth once the meth experience was nuts crazy story for you there [ __ ] that was nuts i remember i came home i i told my mom i spilled you know some some chemical shampoo on my face and she's like are those meth mites what the [ __ ] oh she was tripping balls crazy i was it was terrible i thought i was gonna die i was up for seven and a half days she was tripping she was pissed yeah like tripping hasn't pissed she was real angry i don't know what else used meth i mean listen if you would have saw my face because i sat there i was picking the whole like because listen so the mets the meth thing was like the at the very end of this binge or binder whatever the [ __ ] you call it so when i did math okay i was with this like pro baseball player's kid and we were at this like nice apartment and it was just him and i and i remember like before we did it the same two kids that i did like started heroin with they're like yo if you're gonna do this with him you need to make sure to tell him to eat and drink water you need to [ __ ] didn't so i remember like i took this [ __ ] like i smoked this on wednesday smoke some meth on wednesday okay i remember i walk out to the door thinking it's thursday afternoon about to go home i check my phone i have like 300 missed calls right it's [ __ ] tuesday of the following week somehow like a whole week had passed by and i was sitting there awake playing i remember ml some mlb mlb like 2k9 on the playstation i played mlb2k9 on the playstation for like six days and i walked out of the house thinking it was only one day it was it was like six days i was gone and my parents thought i was dead there was some crazy [ __ ] [ __ ] and i had no [ __ ] clue my face was swollen picking my face and [ __ ] like i had no idea how much time had passed imagine that it was some crazy [ __ ] [ __ ] it was it was nuts combat [ __ ] terrible yeah so uh that that sounds crazy dude um yeah it's pretty bad i'm just trying to think so like like you said that you you were using so what like first of all your mom knows what meth mites are she googled it but what did she google like so you come home and then i come home i have like scabs and just red all over my face she types in red scabs all over her face and it says methmites and she's like i thought it was mathemates i'm like the [ __ ] are those yeah i look i look that [ __ ] up it says like you know when you're high in meth or whatever like you have this like weird thing where you perceive there to be you think there is like tiny mites underneath your skins you have to pick them out that wasn't the case for me but some crazy [ __ ] [ __ ] like that yeah it was a crazy [ __ ] thing she was [ __ ] mad and she was crying and that was terrible i let her down at that point but yeah so uh train i mean what what were you what was going through your head let's say like you know like a year before that point so it sounds like you're using heroin for a couple or opiates of some kind for a couple of years off and on like what did you think about your life and what did you think about yourself and what did you think about use well nothing because i somehow found this balance that gave me this perfect like denial of slash delusion that like there was something wrong here i found the balance i was you know double majored up i had good grades you know i had you know i had good grades great grades i had two very difficult majors i was getting by and doing very well right i was on track to you know a top 20 law school everything was fine like it wasn't this thing where i just tossed everything aside i started selling my parents jewelry and getting high like i was i found this thing where i could cold turkey and it all goes back to like what i told you earlier like that's that story line that that hope that adventure like deep down i prefer that over any high right any escape any shortcut i preferred that real thing that search for that real thing that connection overall and that's what allowed me to actually get out of it myself right there has to be something you love more than the high so like i see but that's how you got it well yeah i wasn't yeah i wasn't so like when i said i was using three years what i mean is like i wasn't using for three years straight what i would do is for one week i would use then i had cold turkey and i was off for three months then i'd be on for two weeks then i'd be off for four months right then i'd be on for a week then i'd be offered two months like i could do that somehow i could do i'm sure it was [ __ ] my body up but somehow i found a method where i could hold turkey off and on and just use it like recreationally almost while also going to school and having a job right so it's not so i didn't toss my job out i didn't toss school out i was still doing all of these things and then like you know if i had nothing to do one weekend right if everything was done with i had a week off that's when i'd use it right does that make sense yeah it makes a lot of sense so it's interesting train i really appreciate the conversation because i'm learning a lot so as a clinician i think the people who are like you never really enter my office like i've never worked with someone who's had an addiction let me think about this before i actually say it no one comes to mind right now i mean usually the people that wind up in my office are the ones that can't cold turkey after a week of use it's like one week turns into two weeks turns into three months turns into six months turns into eight months it does start to affect things in in my time of using here's the [ __ ] up part you know and not many people know this but anyone who's in the heroin game right your friends or at that you know i guess from an outside perspective that none of them are your friends they're your acquaintances or people you're smoking with but when you're in that you know world that they're your friends they're dropping like flies right like four or five friends odin a week dead right i i've had people die in front of me like some crazy [ __ ] like that like some [ __ ] you'd set up a [ __ ] movie and like i've seen it like like people don't understand it's some [ __ ] up [ __ ] right it's not like the dude's eyes are closed and he's just passed out you touch him oh he's cold right it's like right dudes shivering shaking right he's scared right it's some [ __ ] up [ __ ] right like i i've seen some [ __ ] up [ __ ] especially because like everyone shot up that's one thing i promised also i'd never do i never went past smoking it i never shot up ever so many people died and if anyone like is ever in that game they know that it is it's it's people just die it's just [ __ ] up when people are dying what goes through your head the same thing goes through everyone's head for every other thing in the world not gonna happen to me i'm careful right that's the story of everyone's life i think for every situation right look at kobit right koben corbin norma's mask not gonna happen to me right and then suddenly their family member gets it and now they want to be you know they want to start taking precautions right did and did anyone around you think you had a problem or tried to talk to you about like did your parents know i think they i don't know i had it from them for a while i finally told them and they helped me and yeah no they didn't know cause i wasn't home much yeah did anyone kind of express concern about what you were oh every day oh my my parents are expressed concern every day but they didn't know what was going on but they knew there was something up persian parents typically [ __ ] what and what did what would they say typical persian parent kid stuff like what what what is that i don't know for me it's all just melded into typical i'm sure you can imagine yeah i'm sure you can well i mean so i mean my story is like quite different because i wasn't using any drugs in college yeah well i was referring to like like if if you didn't do your homework if you or if you had homework like whatever they bicker at you there take that exact line and throw it at this well yeah so i mean the thing with me is that i was failing out of college though right so it sounds like you were your drugs but absolutely bro dude after after two years of college i had less than a 2.0 gpa well you gotta get into those uh groups i this little secret society in college right there's like look there's this group [ __ ] charged like 25 bucks per class they'd give you these guys had the [ __ ] intel right they knew all the five credit courses where the teacher didn't give a [ __ ] right and if you get an a plus that's a 4.3 in a five credit course that's a huge gpa boost right that's a huge pad so you take a couple of those you know boost you know the 2.0 2.5 to a 3.2 3.3 you know take a couple more of them you know you end up graduating you know whatever the [ __ ] cumulates what the [ __ ] those are yeah i mean first of all i didn't i didn't know about that but secondly i mean my gpa was pretty wrecked man like when you've got you know a string of 0.00 like when you got a string of f's on your transcript it's it's hard to i mean i i sort of i ended up graduating with like a 2.5 like and that was busting my ass for three years didn't your school have the thing where like like up to 12 credits they forgive i mean it still shows in the transcript but it shows that it counts the second grade great second grade if they did train i was so disorganized that i didn't apply for it i think it's yeah i think it's automatic that well i mean it may be it may have been something that they instituted later but like i went to college back in like 2000 like i started college in like 2001. oh wow how did you get their horses uh we would walk through the snow my dude horses were too high-tech yeah figured you know back when it snowed in austin all the time unlike this past week it just snowed two days ago yeah insane i've been hearing about it from everyone under the sun yeah you know what's crazy though uh before you go off on those tangent um or whatever anyways what's crazy is uh in all of that right now everything we talked about there actually was a moment right where i was off the rails i remember it was senior year right it was all done i was graduating i was working in a bar right it was the hottest bar in in the entire state of arizona right in scottsdale town and i was doing some crazy [ __ ] like i was mixing we're talking heroin xanax drinking steroids like we're talking four different things hardcore and at this time just to jump in train like seriously if anyone there is watching that [ __ ] will kill you oh 100 i will and i'll tell you yeah i'll tell you in a second what happened at the time i wasn't very i wasn't too serious about my bipolar right and there's a huge thing that happens with steroids and bipolar i guess any of those drugs realistically all of that all that mixing and [ __ ] around i ended up having a psychotic break it was called acute psychosis it was a temporary psychosis for two and a half months i remember my parents found me in the living room banging and controller in my head the remote control for the tv and i was jibbering some [ __ ] i was whatever saying some whispering some [ __ ] like a [ __ ] cult cult leader man that psychotic break you want to talk about hell [ __ ] my entire like the best way i can explain this like in in short there's a moment when you're kind of like lucid dreaming asleep but like you don't actually know that you're asleep yet right you think you're actually awake and this is your real world right there's a moment where you're in a nightmare and in like at the precipice of the nightmare there is this just pure feeling of terror and evil in the pit of your stomach right you just want to escape you want to run you're praying that this is a dream you want to wake up that moment or literally when you finally do wake up and it kind of just like you know kind of whatever the you know i'm trying to word it it slowly kind of dissipates right that feeling was my it was my state of mind it was my constant state of mind for two and a half months and all i was hoping for was one day would i wake up did i [ __ ] up is this permanent you know like it was it was hell it was sounds terrifying i get goosebumps talking about it to this day i was in this two and a half month nightmare where no matter what i did who i talked to where i was it was like i'm about to cry it was scary it was some [ __ ] up [ __ ] and the thoughts i had man some [ __ ] out of one of those [ __ ] uh tarantino movies and all of it to myself to others like just some [ __ ] up [ __ ] twisted [ __ ] like i was just that was an insane two and a half months of my life i i don't think there was any hallucinogen psychedelic any any none of that stuff that has ever gotten me as close to myself as those two and a half months the amount i learned because those like those those those those locked chests lock deep deep into the abyss of your mind are rarely rarely even like gotten close to you know in like self-reflection and self-discovery and like looking inward right and in that state of mind all of them were like at my disposal i was so deep and so and i was in the darkest crevices and all of them were unlocking like just it was just some crazy [ __ ] [ __ ] i can't even explain to you it was some insane [ __ ] like it was just [ __ ] that was some crazy crazy [ __ ] i came back so hey yeah you know train i i think it's certainly you know what you're describing i think sometimes people don't realize that hallucinogens and psychosis and even meditation share some amount of like common aspects like if you look at the neuroscience of it and how it affects your brain um but psychosis and hallucin and hallucinogens are quite different there is like yeah yeah i know i was i was making a reference to it yeah um and and so i'm really sorry you went through that man that sounds you know i can't imagine i've had some scary experiences in meditation but they they tend to last at most 24 hours i don't think i've ever had a negative experience that's lasted longer than 24 hours but for two and a half months to kind of be trapped in that place i can imagine it feels like quite hopeless and traumatic have you ever had your ear plugged like your ears plugged like in a plane your ears get plugged yeah yeah have you ever tried a yawn and sometimes it doesn't unclog right that feeling where you yawn and it doesn't pop that was the feeling i had every morning waking up every morning when i woke up i was hoping i'd open my eyes like that moment where i kind of gained consciousness but i'm not awake i was going to open my eyes and i'd look around and i was back to me yep and that was that feeling that feeling where you open your mouth and it doesn't pop like that that feeling you have that like you can't get it to pop and there's no other way to get it to pop and you're stuck in this way until finally what somehow it pops by itself that's the feeling i had every day trying to get back to me and hoping i'd come back to me and that was two and a half months it was [ __ ] crazy it was insane yeah i mean it sounds like you know you know that it's not your normal existence yeah i was aware i was conscious you can't get back there yeah and you're wondering am i ever gonna be normal again that's the scary part about it right like if i was like ignorant to it and i just kind of pride myself and i went brain you know whatever the hell right like i'm sure that'd be shitty and [ __ ] up probably more so for those around me but i myself wouldn't know but being hyper aware of the situation and being trapped within myself knowing that it's not me but being stuck in this thing where i know how i should feel but what i do feel is this terror and there's nothing i can do to make it go away it's just this it's this terrible terrible thing and so um it sounds like you got treatment at some point the psychotic break i did i went to the hospital and stuff and yeah and then i ended up seeing a psychiatrist psychiat i'mma give it a buck 50 with you you're the best psychiatrist i've ever see you know obviously we're doing this this isn't an actual session but you're the best psychiatrist i've ever seen in my entire life i've been to hundreds okay of psychiatrists and psychologists every no joke no exagger i know i exaggerate a [ __ ] ton this one thing i'm not exaggerating every psychiatrist i have seen i walk into the office okay because they're all from referral the ones i saw i couldn't just see i had to go through you know and i get a referral to them i'd walk in no eye contact you know sitting there already writing a prescription right no [ __ ] given of the context of what's going on just kind of assuming the worst right you know ask me a question i try to give him context just the typical condescending patronizing all right tyler you're going to take this and this and this and then leave it to me right it's like no shot none of them listened none of them gave a [ __ ] right like there's a big difference between you know an in you know an induced psychotic break versus you know some hereditary natural occurrence of one right like there's a difference but they didn't give a [ __ ] about that right they didn't care that mine was induced through steroid usage and drug usage right so like it was just this all of them to all of them and these are like top-rated psychiatrists they just didn't give a [ __ ] psychologist on their hand i loved right i mean it took me it took me a long time you know and i hear this this is common between a lot of people and i think this will actually help people you know if you feel like your psychologist doesn't you know connect with you listen keep moving around keep keep keep testing out new ones you know eventually you'll find one that's on your wavelength right that understands you you know there's some that are very uh like what's what i'm trying like like mathematical they're very like precise rational right like there is no feeling and you know they don't understand the irrationalness right and and i can't vibe with that kind of person right i can't do it so i have to find someone that's on my wavelength understands my feelings my impulses no matter how irrational they are understands them on that level and it took me [ __ ] i probably it took me about six seven months to find one person that ended up really really uh connecting with me and i remember i'm gonna cry the moment i found that person i remember i tried to say i try to say one word and i just bro i cried the entire session for the first like two weeks every session for the first two weeks i had three sessions a week i cried all of them just like six sessions i only cried like there's nothing else said he said okay see you next week i i just cried for six weeks it was for succession it was just insane yeah it was crazy but yeah you'll find one if you hop around there's someone out there for you that will understand you so definitely uh keep trying you know don't be unmotivated if if if you don't find the right psychologist in the first go yeah train i'm really glad you're kind of sharing that message with everyone because i'd echo at 100 um you know i think that fit is so important and there are so many different styles of of therapy and styles of therapists and even styles of psychiatrists and and i think that like you know what we meant the mental health you know clinical training is is not precise right you have all these different theories and all these different perspectives and like you've got freudian people and jungian people and cognitive behavioral therapists and psychodynamic therapists and people who are a little bit mindfulness oriented and there's just so many different flavors and i think really therapy because we don't have the instruments that the rest of medicine does you know when you've got ct scans and and blood tests and and you know covet nasal swabs and things like that there's a lot of precision about how to handle things right and how to do things you know what's right and what isn't yeah whereas my experience in in therapy has been that it's it's really more or just as much art as it is science there's a lot of science to it but you know we don't there it's interesting there have been studies done where people will try to classify like characteristics of patients and classify characteristics of of therapists and they'll try to match them based on using data and it turns out that that doesn't work you know you can try to do as much data analysis as you want to you can say oh like train has a history of addictions and this therap this therapist has a lot of experience with addictions maybe they'll be a good match turns out that you can't really it just doesn't work can't match people um yep there's no uh there's no formula well people haven't figured it out yet i think that there's still a formula out there but you know we just haven't we don't have the precision we haven't been able to capture that that secret sauce that allows you to see therapists for six months and and see this next person and then like really open up to them for two weeks and also for that therapist to know how to respond to you opening up for them to understand that you know these tears have been built up and the dam is opening up and that like we got to just let them out thank you so much for sharing your perspective i think um thank you no problem i actually uh after i stopped using uh drugs or hard drugs like that like heroin and stuff like that like meth after i stopped like entirely i actually went back and helped some of my old friends that were addicted and you know obviously i tried to get them to a psychologist you know after i finally got them out of denial heroin denial is one of those it's like i don't i don't give a [ __ ] like i don't i've seen gambling denial i've seen every drug denial heroin denial is so frustrating it just if they don't want it it's not going to happen you could put them you could force them i've seen parents do it you could force them two years of rehab the moment they come out they might be good for a week you better bet your ass the first difficult thing that they face they can't handle and they go right back to it you have to you have to want it what's up how did you come out of your denial well i wanted to right like that's the difference like so there's one thing that i had that helped me a lot in that and it's what i talked about earlier i kind of have this so my anchor it's a dream it's an idea it's highly improbable but not impossible and that's my anchor in life and i've taken that and i've buried it deep deep deep within me where i can never be taken away you know unless i'm killed and that is what got me out of it it's to achieve that to get that like the wanting of that the feeling that that gave me you know it but was that always there yeah it was it's been there since i can remember so i'm going to express a little bit of skepticism just because i want to kind of push you on this and because i i'm sure that you'll have the answer but i think it's important to find because like here's here's what i'm thinking okay so the dream was always deep within you and then there's this period of time in college where despite the dream and then when i asked you how did you get out of it you said well i started wanting my dream but then at the same time like i don't see how that's different from when you were in college and you were using and finding that balance and you the dream was always there so still like how did you move from like where you were in college to like wanting to quit i understand that you say that you have to want to so then the question kind of i i ask sort of as a clinician and i ask like theoretically and also like educationally is how does what was your journey to change your wants to value that over the heroin or other things like like how did you come out of the denial i get that that's the anchor that was your north star but like why did you start caring about moving towards the north star to begin with um i think it's i i you know i've never really thought about that but if i were to try to think about it right now on the spot and kind of give you a quick thing i'd have to reflect on it a lot more to give you an actual accurate answer but if i were to guess right now i would say it's how i was raised i would say it's my parents it's the love they kind of instilled within me um you know they kind of taught me like they gave me a self-worth that they gave me you know like i think that that's what it is because i remember all the times that i stopped it wasn't this thing where i planned it okay i'm gonna do this for four days because i have four days right that's not how i went down i did it day one i didn't think of the next day right and then each of these times every time it never failed i'd wake up randomly after day six or day five or day seven or day four i'm like what the [ __ ] am i doing right like it's like it was never me to begin with i'd be like what the [ __ ] am i doing and that one realization where the other me kind of wakes up right i don't know if we want to go as deep as saying maybe it's the bipolar split personality i don't know but the other way like what the [ __ ] going on here right and that me would always come out after the aftermath of me [ __ ] my body and my body was weak and i think like that weakness allowed the other me to come out i don't know i don't know it sounds like it's some crazy talk i know it does but like that was that was how it was done every time okay cool yeah so that's what happened every time so so then but let me ask you another question then i'm gonna keep pushing you okay and and it's because i like i think you're you're getting there or i think this is like valuable because i think this is this is the question that everyone asks right train is like how how did you quit and what i'm gonna press you on now is that like okay so you'd wake up you'd be weak in your body like you'd say like what the [ __ ] am i doing and then like the this like sort of this train that was built up through the love of your parents and like this self-respect and things like that basically like shown through right it's almost like you have cloudy skies and the sun's always there and sometimes the clouds part and you get this like ray of sunshine so like after six days of a bender you get that ray of sunshine where you're kind of like but then what happens is the clouds always come back right because then a month later two months later three months later you start using again so what changed what what changed so that the awareness the awareness of it so i'll tell you what i mean by that what changed is i've always so be you know forgot what the [ __ ] it's called i think it's called like hyper like it's having bipolar and split personality you can have a version of it where you're not aware and there's a version or you're hyper aware but you can't do anything about it still right that's kind of been me in every aspect of my life so because of my hyper awareness of the situation right like i understood what the it's like i think i got lucky and my overthinking or i don't know what it was i'm not sure what it was but here's the point everyone says not even once everyone says this is addicting right and because of my you know ability to go on and off my because i you know i never really got like that the urge was never to do the heroin the only urge i ever had was maybe the withdrawals were [ __ ] [ __ ] i wanted i didn't want to deal with them today right but it was never the actual heroine but i realized a little bit later on what did not even once meant i realized what the addiction is the addiction is what you just said where the clouds come back now what i've done is i've normalized the new baseline for my sorrows and for my escape right for a lot of people that baseline is alcohol it's weed and that's it that's where they go everything else is scary it's a no-no but once you open up the realm and you realize holy [ __ ] i've popped this pill before this feels the same this isn't that scary thing on the commercial which it is by the way right once you do that that is your new baseline so the next time that i feel sad depressed and [ __ ] up with nothing going for me i'm not gonna think i'm gonna have a drink i'm gonna think hey where can i buy some heroin right and i realized that is the lifelong addiction of the drug because it is now the normalized new baseline for me and once i realized that i understood like that's kind of like that was like half the part with it i realized like it just needs to stop it needs to be done otherwise how did you realize it i mean i this is gonna sound crazy but this is a different i guess this is a different talk i guess that this would go into the bipolar split personality ocd part of it all but so every three to four months i'll wake up and i'll literally like a whole new style whole new taste of food different body composition everything different everything you can think of favorite color different what i'm into right am i you know my poor girlfriend you know i i feel so that she's such a good girl she's such an amazing person but she has to kind of deal with it but i just get uninterested and you know i i change completely like i'm talking full body composition change right like i'm talking like from you know just normal body to like everything tight athletic like it's it's weird it's weird i don't understand it i've been explaining to it 100 times just wake up some days and you're ripped no no no it's no it's like every four months five months that's like the cycle no i'm not ripped but it's just like things are tighter okay and my body composition is different like tension what the way i taste the way i smell everything's different okay i think like i don't know how to answer how did i know i think that i i i i just kind of woke up i'm like what am i doing this is not this is disgusting i just there was there was a side of me i did not [ __ ] with it it was it was it was a shame right like and and that's that's that's been the lifelong [ __ ] it's been the curse of my [ __ ] mental disease i sit there for so long working progressing building on myself and then one day i wake up and i black out for like three months and that three month me ruins everything toss my money out don't give a [ __ ] go party [ __ ] my body up stop the gym gamble everything away i don't care and then i wake up again right three months after that not remembering a [ __ ] thing everything gone and i'm disgusted right because that like there's does that make any sense it's some crazy [ __ ] [ __ ] that i can relate to oddly enough i mean i i think for me it was it was more with gaming but you know in my first couple years of college and even high school it was like you know i disappear so start of the semester this semester is going to be different right i'm going to study hard for the first week i do fantastic first weekend rolls around start playing games you know sunday night saturday night i stay up super late wake up late on sunday sunday night i stay up super late miss my class on monday ah [ __ ] it i missed one class i can afford to miss a class skip the rest of my classes on monday game tuesday rolls around yep i did that too classic excuses i like that and then you know it's like now that i've missed one class like i'll start off it'll be better tomorrow it'll be better tomorrow and then like that's that doubt starts creeping up at least for me i knew i was making mistakes i was like it's happening again it's happening again and i'd be like well well that shows itself through like anxiety depression like that that's what it comes out as from your subconscious right yeah so so so it would start to come out from my subconscious and i would say i'm doing it again and i'd snap the door closed on it i want i definitely wanted that a lot myself too yeah that's happened to me quite a bit and and then like anything to keep it from coming out of the subconscious so then i got to play more and more and more and more and more and then i found myself spiraling and i knew i was [ __ ] up my life i think the really interesting thing is you know train i i know it sounds like you're not making sense but this is the story that i hear over and over and over again this is why addictions is so hard because i i think at the end of the day like there are a couple of questions that have been bouncing around in my mind there are going to be people watching right now who may be where you were in the middle of college where you thought you were different you thought you could handle it and what i'm trying to figure out is like what can we explore in today's like discussion that will help that person i got it i got it yeah i got it cool i got it now i got i i i know what you're asking now okay so here is the moment here's how i realize it needs to stop here's how i realized it needs to be done somewhere so i actually wrote this thesis um and it was it was a very informal one um it was kind of i was [ __ ] around i shouldn't even call it a thesis i just call it a paper um delusions of grandeur and [ __ ] like that call it what a nice train called thesis and i i feel like that there's this you know obviously you know i don't have the stats to back it but you know just just from you know it's anecdotal just say it train i thought i feel like there's this this age category from like 18 to like 24 where we are as men at least suffering from the most just like the deepest denial delusions of grandeur like we are different and every justification like that we can like just everything that can like some crazy [ __ ] like that the point that allowed me to understand and stop is somewhere in the psychotic break which i guess isn't something you want to hear but like someone on the scottish break i realized i wasn't different i realized that i was the the same as everyone and that's it like i literally i just realized i was not different i was not special there wasn't this mystical force guarding me and watching over me that you know when i would survive a car crash and i said someone's watch there's a purpose right that's all [ __ ] right like i mean knock on wood you know god forbid maybe there was someone but like it doesn't tie into that right like or how i passed this exam or how i did this or how i guessed on this and that got it right right i just realized i was the same as others when i realized that i realized that this rationalization i guess you shouldn't call it that but this justification i was making it this excuse i was giving myself that i can control this is wrong because this can't be controlled and then that's kind of what led me down that path i think was the discovery and understanding that i am not different right like you know your parents are going to tell you that every day like and maybe in different different fields you are maybe in soccer you're better than you know the one percent right and you're great right but i'm talking like you know foundationally as a human being right like i think the the most common thing i've seen from my friends is i can read people that's the most common like delusion and delusions of grandeur like the denial i've seen from people who think they're different i can read people i know when you're lying right but if you actually look deeper into that like the only reason you know someone's lying and you can read into them is because you've seen traits from either things that you've done you know uh personality traits you have and experiences you've lived through uh lived through right and from that if you're smart enough you'll realize holy [ __ ] i i'm not able to read him because i'm different i'm another read them because i am the same right and then from there you kind of humble you get humble and you realize you need to get your [ __ ] together that's kind of what happened does that make sense makes perfect sense yeah so good news is that i don't think you have to have a psychotic break to realize that although i'm surprised that's why i want to bring that up and i think there's a lot of cool stuff here train a lot that i think needs to be talked about can i kind of take the reins for a second take the reins or like can i grab ah yeah grab whatever i'm taking yeah let's do it okay so i'm just going to kind of like feel free to jump in i'm just going to sort of like think through this because i think train you've said so much man first of all thank you so much for sharing all this i think um you know i know a lot of it's pretty heavy stuff i know a lot of it um may seem embarrassing but i i think it's not for me it's been really enlightening the first thing to understand is that like okay so people are in denial right that's the biggest problem it doesn't really matter if you're talking about addictions or other things but people are in denial like you said we we start off by sort of telling ourselves it's okay for us like we're different we can handle it it's in balance you know and then what happens is your mind points to the things that are in balance it's setting up kind of like this kind of fake news sort of like situation where you're gonna point to your gpa and you're gonna point to this you're gonna point to that and your mind is gonna tell you see because of these things we're actually fine you see those guys have their [ __ ] together and they're using it's going to selectively ignore on a saturday you wake up bruised and battered because you got into a fight last night it's gonna gloss over that part it's gonna gloss over the parts where like oh my my parents are like you know think i have a problem or these people it's gonna gloss over all kinds of stuff and that's what really denial is it's sort of like this very selective interpretation of your events and then you kind of went on to sort of say like yeah i'm i'm not sure exactly you use these terms like i realized right i woke up one day and it just dot dot and this is what makes addictions really confusing is because when you ask people about their journey what they tell you is like a change in their mind as opposed to actions and as human beings we know how to duplicate actions but we don't know how to duplicate realizations and and this is something that in sanskrit we talk about a lot which is that there are two words for knowledge one is vidya which is information and is transmissible and the second is nyan which is understanding and is subjective so vidya is objective and nyan is subjective and as a society generally speaking in western society or just globally now we value video over neon we say that unless you can explain it to me unless you can prove it to me unless it is objective it does not have value so our our our society has evolved to like appreciate science over opinion right objectivity over subjectivity and in doing that we've lost the subjective we've lost because what happened in you was not an object of change it was a subject of change it was in realizing right so realizing is not on a book information is on a book and we value things like there was that guy on youtube who was like i read 300 books a day or whatever right he talked about like reading all these books and how like because he's smart because he reads a ton but the question is what do you understand what do you absorb how does change happen inside you and this is what's really challenging about addictions if you talk to people about their journey what they say is i woke up one day and it was just different and then everyone who's struggling with the addiction is like well what the [ __ ] am i supposed to do with that how do i wake up one day and be different and so this is where there are two important pieces okay the first is that i want you guys to understand that that subconscious change even though it it reaches a tipping point like for train at a particular point that subconscious change is being built over time so what we hear from train is that there's like this addictive force which let's say like has a strength of 58 and then there's like the insightful like loving train that's deep down within him that's got a strength of like 10. and every time you have a bender you wake up and then like that that that strength of 10 sort of like looks at your life and is like what's going on here and every moment you have that awareness you level up to 12 and then you go on another bender and then like because 58 is bigger than 12 right and then like you level up again i have to re-clarify something yeah now now i understand why you gave me that example um of you felt that so what i was explaining to you of when i like black out for three months and i'm different everything that wasn't i wasn't using drugs that was me normal sober right that was just my bipolar right like that's what that was right so four or five months does that make sense i wasn't referring to my drug use like this is uh past the drug use this is what happens to this day like right now what happened sure sure i think i teased that apart that you still struggle with this because you mentioned your girlfriend has to deal with it and things like that so i i think i was aware of that yeah yeah um but i still think that this sort of as you go through the substance use like you're going to have these moments where the sun shines through and every time that happens you level up and eventually what happens is it one day you wake up and then like the true self is it like a 59 or 60 and that's when you start to win against the addiction and what i see from people that i work with with addictions is they'll kind of say like oh i was sober for nine months and then i relapsed and they're filled with shame and they're like oh i [ __ ] it up i threw it all away right because we're a society that values quantifiable results it's all about tesla's stock price and you know where i am on the on the latter for a particular video game and how much money is in my bank account it's all about numbers and we say i threw away nine months of sobriety but what i see with people that i work with is that you know you threw away nine months of writing no big deal you threw away nine months you don't have to you you relapsed fine you elapsed for like a day it doesn't have to be like a nine-month bender right you can still change that and over time the duration of relapses and the frequency of relapses decreases as long as you keep on becoming more aware yes yeah and this is the key thing is that this is this is an issue of nyan not vidyas you can't learn it from a book and so what people need to understand is that they can listen to a thousand conversations with train but trains answer is never gonna work for for them because what they need to do is not learn they need to realize yeah experience but the other interesting thing about realization is that learning implies that knowledge is on the outside realize implies that knowledge is actually already within you right so it's interesting when people use the word i realize that means you already knew on some level you've always known on some level so instead of looking outside people need to like look within right i know it's kind of scenario yes that's that's that's it that's and then if we listen to your psychotic break so this is kind of interesting that there's a shared realm between psychosis meditation and hallucinogen use which is the way that it affects this part of your brain called the default mode network and the default mode network is the part of your brain that lets you look at you so when we kind of say that like human beings are different from animals because we're self-aware and there's a particular cognitive test you can do on some animals where they can like recognize themselves in a mirror that implies that they have the capacity to be how can i say this they can look at themselves so they can be the object of your own observation and the default mode network is the thing that allows you to look at yourself now this is kind of interesting because in depression the default mode network actually gets really really overblown and someone in depression is always thinking about themselves they're thinking oh i'm a piece of [ __ ] these people don't like me they'd be better off without me all that kind of stuff um and so hold on there's a lot of what is going on sorry i'm confused why there's a bunch of stuff being banned from chat well i'm actually looking at uh the usernames and your mods are doing a very good job because i recognize that assad nine guy he's you know he's a fan of mine he's a good dude but he's toxic so that seems like a good band good job moderator i'm gonna keep going so um what what i was kind of saying is that with the default mode network it's like you get to way too preoccupied with yourself and in depression it gets way worse so people are always thinking about like if you're having a bad day my default mode network is hyperactive so i think that you having a bad day is my fault if my default mode network is active so i can't shake my own ego and what i'm really hearing for you in that psychotic break is what you got past was your own ego right like when you say i am different that's your ego and when you shatter that ego and you begin to say i am no longer different i'm i'm the same as everyone else and so it seemed like for you that happened through psychosis but this is where you know psychedelics can do it meditation can do it self-reflection can do it journaling can do it community service can do it developing humility and sort of performing an ego egodectomy the removal of your ego is actually like the most important thing to gain insight you need to stop doing that thing where your your mind your ego goes to your intellect and bullies and says hey i need to come up with a really really selective way for me to feel good about me using the substance and so you ignore a bunch of stuff and when your ego gets removed from the equation then you stop ignoring that stuff you start to see yourself as you are with all of your flaws and all of your strengths and that's how you gain security that's how you get self-acceptance that's how you gain self-love because we heard you kind of talk about those concepts but i think these two things are are really really tied together and the most bizarre thing train i think is that like when i listen to your story i think about your karma and just what your addiction has done for you in terms of your personal journey and how you've grown so much through walking this journey how you've come to learn so much about yourself how you've come to learn and understand other people you know and like have a have like a back pocket full of wild ass awesome stories which you know on the one hand we kind of don't want to glorify because that doesn't you know i'm not advocating that people do it but like let's at least acknowledge that that's a wild story to listen to right i got some crazy [ __ ] for you dr k believe me oh man dude like i i hope you so like this is kind of weird it's it's a strange value judgment to place but i really hope that you or someone in your family like your immediate siblings have kids and then they have kids because you would make one hell of a grandad i'm an only child unfortunately but yeah i think like i could absolutely see you at like 70 and like bent over and like telling stories to your grandkids they're like what oh like 16 and they're like telling stories about you know how grandpa used to do this and that'd be nuts i think one to kind of touch up on what you're saying i think i actually want to add something because i you know i think it's one of the biggest biggest issues with today's society and the way you know i'm not sure if this is the way the world is or just the way america is um because because of america's social structure and [ __ ] like that but one of the biggest issues that i see is the lack of communication and honesty between people now what i mean by that is everybody has their issues everybody has issues that if they communicate with others and if they were honest about right and i'm not talking to people that aren't ready to express them i'm talking about people who are uh uh um intentionally hiding them in order to front that their life is better than the other right a good example of this is let's say um back in school there was always group of kids that they were miserable you knew that like i knew at least they were miserable studying for this exam they hated it but when the kid that had you know a harder time paying attention would go ask them for help or say hey is this really easy for you they'd say yeah this is cake i knew this [ __ ] like five years ago right but in reality so now that person is gonna think that they're dumb that person is going to think that there's an issue the person is going to think the issues within themselves right everyone's fronting to each other everyone's making their life seem absolutely amazing like they're absolutely perfect like they absolutely understand everything they have no stress they have no sadness they have no happiness they have no this they have no that just to look good for others and what this does is sure in the short term you look good you look like everything's great but you're the most sad and that sadness would be cured if you just can't get hey listen right comfort in others is so powerful if you can just be honest be like hey yeah [ __ ] terrible i had to study for eight hours my parents made me i would be honest right the dude will feel much better like oh [ __ ] then i gotta go do the same right but like that ripple effect of that single lie just to look good it causes so much [ __ ] i'm telling you like and this applies to every field in every social situation for everything so i don't know how the [ __ ] we solve that but that's a big issue i've noticed throughout my life does that make any sense yeah i think it makes a lot of sense so you know we have an interesting thing that we tell our coaches which is kind of like so we try not to be judgmental right like as a society we say that judgments are bad like you shouldn't judge me like who are you to judge me you know what i mean yeah like like so and like if we think about it lying and fronting is about did i use that term right yeah fronting is about avoiding a particular judgment or creating a particular judgment right if i if i walk in before the test and i say oh yeah i didn't really study for it but i'm going to crush it and secretly i was like laboring away for 80 hours yeah last week yeah and i want to make it look easy and i want everyone to know you know how smart i am oh [ __ ] jobs you all have to study for this [ __ ] yep i do quantum mechanics on the toilet you know scrubs and it's so so we we say something that's kind of interesting which has been tricky for coaches to learn is that i actually don't advocate for them to be non-judgmental what i advocate for is for them to be authentic and compassionate and if your client is doing something bad you absolutely judge them for it but you do it with compassion you should be authentic like authentic and and authenticity and compassion i think are like our biggest antidotes to a world full of like lies and fronting right we have to like we have to hold people accountable for what they say and they do but we should do it in a compassionate way because i think non-judgmentalness is kind of tricky because like if someone [ __ ] up what we're not gonna judge them for it like how does that help anyone any you know it's kind of weird but i think it's part of the you know cancel culture and this kind of stuff is that like on the one hand we judge really really harshly if it's sort of like righteous and then on the other hand it's like you can't you know if i give a talk on the internet about the you know mortality risk of obesity with covid19 which there's an over overwhelming amount of data for suddenly i'm fat shaming and it's like i'm not allowed to say that because someone's feelings are hurt and they feel judged and that's sort of where like you know as a as a psychiatrist i realized a long time ago you know part of my job is to judge people but to do so like they deserve honesty for me like they deserve authenticity from me you know they deserve for me to not lie to them and then you have to be careful because that's how you can turn into one of these blunt [ __ ] where like i'm i'm a truth speaker i'm gonna go tell everyone how ugly they are because it is my ideal to be true but then you have to temper that with compassion i hate that yeah that's the biggest problem i notice right that there's this there are these uh differing definitions of you know real and fake you know authentic and you know uh disingenuous whatever the [ __ ] right and one of them is very childish and immature and that's the one that i see use the most right and it's if you're real you know you never you never lie you see how it is right but it's like when you grow older you realize it's not black and white right it's very subjective there's a lot of gray area right if i meet my girlfriend's parents and i hate them right i can't be like hey what's up [ __ ] i don't [ __ ] like you but i'm [ __ ] your daughter right that's that's not right it's not right it might be how i feel but not actually please don't kill me you know but right that's not right that says more about me in a negative way than it does a positive in a sense of realness right like i like if if anything if i'm someone that is real right or someone that was authentic i would have the maturity i'd have the respect to understand that it doesn't matter how i feel about this individual right i'm dating his daughter i need to have respect for him and i need to treat him kindly right and it's it's that simple right it's like so like these are the players in today's society yeah go ahead so like i see this a lot trained with with um with people that i work with that i would call pseudo spiritual so like a lot of people that you know come across my world or like spiritual people who are like interested in spirituality sometimes it'll be like you know if we do consulting for like a company or something like someone who's spiritual will show up like people in our community you know there's kind of spiritual and sometimes people are pseudo spiritual and what i mean by that is they're like they like they have a big ego about being spiritual but they're not actually like they may work hard and they may like talk the talk but they're not really walking the walk in the most important ways and a good example of that is like so so like you know people who sort of say that you know i'm gonna live in the present and and i want to be present focused and i want to be like unattached you know like they say these kinds of like spiritual things so what that means is that like even though i have a girlfriend if like in the in the present moment if i want to [ __ ] someone else i'm going to [ __ ] him you know because that's like me being like authentic to myself train i want to be like my authentic self i don't want to be like you know pinned down by like worldly conceptions and i'm going to be like in the present moment and authentic to myself and so this is like a classic example of like a pseudo-spiritual person and it's really interesting because if you look at um you know the system of yoga and and like their they kind of have this hierarchy and what they say is that you know truthfulness is really important but the most important thing is ahimsa or non-violence so truthfulness should always be subject to non-violence and so not hurting another human being trumps truthfulness and all truthfulness should only be shared if it is non-violent truthfulness and so there's kind of this hierarchy where like you're you're even if you're trying to be an authentic person so we kind of say authenticity with compassion with our coaches and i think that's a big part of like what they do and like i think that's a big part of what our community needs and craves is like you know this is something that i sort of dislike a little bit about therapy i sometimes feel like therapy is way too non-judgmental personally so i tend to be like a judgmental therapist where people will you know i'll be like what the [ __ ] man you kind of [ __ ] up there and and so you know some of my colleagues will never say that to a client or therapist or patient and they'll be like how could you ever you know and it's like i kind of feel like you know they know they're [ __ ] up i know they [ __ ] up we all know we [ __ ] up let's call it what it is so that we can do something about it and especially in our community people need to be called out for what they're doing yes you have to do that they're already getting the babying treatment from their parents and friends right like they need something like what you're doing i agree with that completely at least yeah i mean so i think it's important to be compassionate like it's not calling them out for the sake of like justice it's calling them out because it's like hey man if you made a mistake like let's work on it so that you don't have to make that mistake anymore yes but pretending it's okay is not how you fix a problem you know agreed um so i'm with you i know we're kind of off topic but i i think from a you know an addiction standpoint uh trained i thought it was like wonderful what you shared in kind of your journey and stuff um you know i think i'm i'm lucky that that you did make it through right because it sounds like a lot of the stuff that you were doing was really dangerous i'm lucky yeah and i cannot emphasize this enough like that is not an rng game that you guys want to be playing it is not it's not at all it's terrible it's absolutely disgusting terrible 100 um and it it well i'm gonna say this one thing as well it takes listen it takes a piece of you away right i'm not gonna be as dramatic you know and and and reference it to like one of those movie things where you know when you kill someone it takes a soul piece of your soul away but like it definitely takes a piece of something away from you when you touch these drugs i'd say any drugs realistically like i'd say any drugs i'd say even the softest of drugs you don't even classify as drugs like i'm telling you like if i could go back there's one thing i'd change it would be like even though it taught me a lot gave me a lot of experience i still would try to stay sober the sober me it was different right like it i'm telling you it takes a piece it takes a piece away that you never get back so don't ever do it ever [ __ ] trash it's not worth yeah yeah i'll just say yeah cool man well caffeine doesn't count i'm do caffeine happen no matter what you know what i'm saying caffeine standing being off caffeine is really nice yeah it is because because then in two weeks when you drink it again it [ __ ] juices you i like that yeah man so any um i'm kind of thinking like i may like you want to talk about meditation for a minute or any like last thoughts questions what are you how you feeling [Music] um hmm [Music] i like you dr k i like you too i like you doc i like doc so there's it's fine dk hey dk doctor that's that's i don't know is there anything else is there anything else for you uh i mean i think so a lot of people i think are going to be wondering how do i get rid of my ego so i thought i would just share some like a different a slightly different kind of meditative technique um for those also there's i'm so sorry to interrupt there's also a tr so in between getting rid of ego there's a trap door okay it's the last hurrah for the ego and that trap door it is damn near same as losing your ego you understand it is gaining an ego through the loss of your ego when you lose your ego that's differentiating you from most people therefore you find a new justification of why you're different without actually knowing you're different and thinking you've lost your ego and that's the last trapdoor you need to [ __ ] pass before you actually lose it does that make sense makes it's brilliant so this is something that one of my teachers in india monk told me like 17 years ago and it's it's awesome it feels really full circle to hear it from you today so he said there are two kinds of ego there's the regular ego and then there's the ego of having no ego i've learned that one the hard way look at how spiritual i am look at how egoless i am what's up [ __ ] get on my level get on my egoness level you scrubs get rekt shitties you all with your big egos not like me that's right well said well said thank you um and and so it's it's interesting because the process of sublimating your ego it gets subtler and subtler and subtler um but i'll just share with you guys just like uh i mean we can hop off the call if you want to or you can stay on but i was just going to share a quick technique about um ego dissolution i can watch on stream just see more channels we can do your thing i'll watch on stream so you can just kind of connect with everybody okay cool let's connect again for part six we'll think of something for part six i want to keep doing this part six has got to be something good we can do story time we can talk about some crazy [ __ ] we'll talk about something okay we gotta do part six soon and also uh uh also i'm to send you a code where you can get my merch for free you got to get this it would look great on you i'm telling you uh okay thank you very much train i got you no problem love you bye bye so who are we rating chat okay are we rating i candice is that is that are you guys trolling me or like

Channel: HealthyGamerGG

Views: 252,007

Rating: 4.9602132 out of 5

Keywords: mental health, drk, dr kanojia, healthygamergg, healthy gamer gg, twitch, psychiatrist, trainwreck, trainwrecks, trainwreckstv, dr k trainwreck, scuffed podcast

Id: Sva0aSeGu6Q

Length: 92min 58sec (5578 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 14 2021

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