From Addiction to Achievement: How Mental Health Fuels Business Growth
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I do think that people are sort of innately wired differently and that kind of restlessness, if channeled, can lead to intense productivity. In some ways, those folks are the lucky ones, right? Because there's a lot of discontent and restlessness that people never learn to channel or never learn to harness. And so they just are left with that and don't found companies and have this kind of success.

But I think the illusion for people who are able to channel their restlessness and discontent is that through achievement and validation, they will someday get to the place where they're no longer restless and no longer discontent. And that's actually the part that's not true. That's the myth. Because...

Really, it's just part of human nature and part of life that we're always a little bit dissatisfied and that really there's no external achievement that's going to get rid of that, as my one patient called it, pilot light of anxiety. It's just part of

being human. Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello.

Before we get started, I wanted to share two important things with you. First, I want you to implement what you learned today. To do that, you'll have to take a lot of notes, but I also want you to fully concentrate on the interview. So I asked the team to take notes for you. Just text NOTES to 888-526-1299. That's 888-526-1299.

1-299 and you'll receive a link to download the notes from today's episode. Also, if you haven't got your copy of my newest book, Elevate, please go check it out. I'll share with you how I attracted and developed a winning team that helped me build a $200 million company in 22 states. Just go to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast to get your copy. Now let's go back into the interview.

Okay, here we go. Welcome back to the Home Service Expert. I've got a really special treat for us today. Dr. Anna Lemke is a clinical psychiatry, addiction psychology, and mental illness. She's based in Stanford, California. Professional education, medical education, Stanford University. She's been practicing in this university, School of Medicine at Stanford since 1995. She did her residency and her internship there.

She's a professor of psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine and chief of Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic. As a clinician scholar, she has published more than 100 peer-reviewed papers and commentaries. She sits on a board of several state and national addiction-focused organizations, keeping an active speaking calendar, and maintains a thriving clinical practice.

Dr. Lemke appeared in the Netflix documentary, The Social Dilemma, an unvarnished look at the impact of social media on our lives. She is also the author of Dopamine Nation, Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence, an instant New York bestseller, New York Times bestseller.

Listen, it's an honor to have you on here. The reason I really wanted to take a deep dive into this is we're all addicts. Some of us are into physical fitness. Some of us love food. Some of us love to read. Some of us love social media. Some of us love the news. Some of us like smoking marijuana. Some of us might like hard drugs. A lot of us enjoy alcohol and it's become a problem. So especially, you know, my heart belongs to the blue collar industry.

And some of us didn't get raised with a mom or dad. And some of us never were taught to manage our checkbook. Some of us never were taught about discipline and delayed gratification. And, you know, that's what this podcast is for, is to just help out everybody. A lot of us here, and I say us because, you know, I fit into some of those buckets. I've definitely drank way too much.

I've definitely eaten the worst foods possible and made excuses for it. I've definitely been not very good with my financials and my credit in the past. And here we are. But I think it's going to be really good because it's not only home service. It has a lot to do with just how to better our lives and how to become the best we could be for ourselves. Because if we're not good for ourselves, we're not good for anybody. So do you want to just start out?

Do you want me to just call you Dr. Lemke? Sure, whatever that works. That's my professional title, but you feel free to call me Anna too. That's also fine. Listen, you are the doctor. You've got the history here of nobody that's ever been on the podcast. But I'd love to just tell the listeners a little bit about you and why you got into the School of Medicine with

psychiatry and addiction psychology and just what you're doing today and where you're looking forward to headed in the future. Yeah, thank you. Well, first of all, let me just say that I agree with you that we're all in this day and age a little bit addicted to something. You know, we used to think of addiction as something that only happens to those people over there or was something that had to do with somebody's sort of

weakness of character or what used to be called moral turpitude. But now we have a much better understanding of addiction as an actual brain disease.

that really is in many ways a mismatch between our ancient wiring for processing pleasure and pain and the world that we find ourselves in now, which is really a world in which almost every human activity has become drugified. So as you really nicely pointed out, sure, there are traditional drugs like alcohol and cannabis,

There are also behaviors that can be addictive like masturbation, pornography, gambling, video games, social media, the internet in general.

So, you know, even healthy behaviors nowadays, things like reading and other forms of games and even, you know, human connection because of social media has the potential now for addiction. So we're kind of living in a time and place where it really is possible to get addicted to just about anything. And in our clinic here, we see a very wide range of things that people get addicted to.

So I think it's really dispelling this idea that addiction is something that is unique or something that is sort of in somebody's brain.

It is true that we see brain changes when people become addicted, but really we all have a motivational reward system. And if exposed sufficiently to our particular drug of choice, we're really all vulnerable to the problem of addiction. So it's really kind of a new way to think about addiction as sort of, let's say, endemic in human nature.

When I think about humans living in, you know, millions of years ago, right, when there was, it was very difficult to survive and you had to sort of work all day long just to find a little bit of food and water. I imagine that people,

with sort of this innate, what we sometimes call the addictive personality or an addictive temperament, they were probably the most valuable people in the human tribe because they were willing to work harder and walk further and do more to get scarce resources. So it is true that there's a spectrum of vulnerability to the problem of addiction.

But it's just interesting to think about how it's really the interaction between our wiring and the environment. And now that we have this environment of drugification and kind of overwhelming overabundance, everybody's more vulnerable to the problem. Anyway, you asked who I am. I'm a professor of psychiatry and addiction medicine here at Stanford University School of Medicine. I see patients, I do research, and I do a lot of teaching of medical students and residents.

And how much of what you do is clinical psychiatry versus addiction? Are they just intertwined? So my practice is almost entirely addiction now. It wasn't originally. Originally, I was sort of trained across the board to treat all different types of mental health disorders. But I kind of got into addiction because the need was so great. There were so many people around.

that I was seeing who were struggling with addiction, who really weren't getting better because I wasn't addressing the addiction piece. And then when I pivoted in my clinical care and started to really pay attention to the addiction problems, lo and behold, their anxiety got better, their depression got better, their psychotic disorders got better. And it really made me see the power of addiction treatment, how it could transform

not just the lives of my patients, but also the lives of the people around them. So that amazing thing about addiction is it really has this powerful ripple effect that when we ourselves change our consumptive behaviors for the better, the people around us are also more likely to change those behaviors.

- You know, I recently had Gino Wickman, he wrote the book, he wrote all about EOS and how to run a business. And it's in every continent, it's in every country. And he said, "I've literally worked so hard for so long, "I sold 87 and a half percent of my business

I had a pile of gold, so much money, and I still felt incomplete. People are always running towards this goal. When you hit it, it doesn't satisfy. And a lot of us are workaholics where we'll work just nonstop. Like 5% of the world is entrepreneurial hunters. And he said, until I realized and I became content.

And it's just a really weird thing to think about. Like, man, you work your life off all these years, this hard work, and then the payoff comes and you're still. And he goes, I was always worried that this fight or flight, this discontent was my edge. But I didn't really understand that when I became, I actually became fulfilled. And that took a lot, a lot of, he went to a lot of counseling.

And he says there's ways, there's a lot of different ways to get there. Some people actually could explore their brain at a different dimension by being on shrooms or YOSCA or whatever it's called. And some people have this awakening. And some people just, they need to learn what that thing is that's causing that behavior that they kind of sealed up and they shut down. And who is it? You might know her name, Marilyn, the Marilyn Method, right?

Does that ring a bell for you? No. Anyway, I just want to first talk about, because a lot of the people own a company that are listening. And a lot of us, we don't stop our brains. We're ADHD. I say every entrepreneur has got a touch of ADHD. And we've got so much going on. And we never really feel content. We never really live in the moment. Why is that?

Well, I mean, I do think that people are sort of innately wired differently and that kind of restlessness, if channeled, can lead to intense productivity. In some ways, those folks are the lucky ones, right? Because there's a lot of discontent and restlessness that people never learn to channel or never learn to harness. And so they just are left with that and don't

found companies and have this kind of success. But I think the illusion for people who are able to channel their restlessness and discontent is that through achievement and validation, they will someday get to the place where they're no longer restless and no longer discontent. And that's actually the part that's not true. That's the myth. Because

Really, it's just part of human nature and part of life that we're always a little bit dissatisfied and that really there's no external achievement that's going to get rid of that, as my one patient called it, pilot light of anxiety. It's just part of being human.

And then when we realize that, that's when we, I think, begin to cross over into the possibility of some kind of serenity when we stop trying to outrun that feeling. Okay, here's a personal question that I always confuse the two, and I know they're very similar. And we're going to jump into dopamine nation questions.

But can you just tell me a little bit about the difference between, this is going to sound really probably an ignorant question, but dopamine and serotonin? Sure. So both dopamine and serotonin are neurotransmitters. Neurotransmitters are chemicals that we make in our brain.

that allow for fine tuning of the electrical circuits that make up our brain. So our brain is composed of a number of different types of cells. One of those cells is the long spindly cells that we call neurons that have these axons and they conduct electrical impulses from one neuron to another to make up electrical circuits that makes up our brain activity.

but the neurons don't actually touch end to end. There's a little gap between them. That gap is called the synapse. And neurotransmitters are the molecules that bridge that gap, allowing for fine-tuned control of the electrical circuits. Dopamine and serotonin are just two of many brain neurotransmitters. They have different but related functions. Dopamine is especially important for pleasure, reward, motivation, and also movement.

Serotonin tends to be important for mood, sleep, appetite, and social connection. So they just, they're both kind of in the broader category of sort of quote unquote feel good neurotransmitters generally, at least initially when we have more of them, we feel better, but they qualitatively have different roles or different functions in the brain.

And I've heard you speak on stage a little bit about dopamine. And I think you've mentioned that you could rewire your brain at any age, that just because you have, and I might be off here, but I think you've done a lot. Have you done a lot of study with like, was it rats or mice?

So I haven't done those studies, but I often talk about those studies done by my neuroscience colleagues. You're remembering correctly, I did talk about a variety of different studies in rats and mice, but I myself don't do those studies. What was the most profound couple studies that you discussed most often that you've seen with behavioral studies about addiction and dopamine?

Well, one really important series of studies, it wasn't just one study, it's a series of multiple studies done over many decades now, where a probe was stuck into a rat's brain right in the nucleus accumbens. The nucleus accumbens is an area of the brain that's rich in dopamine-releasing neurons, and it's part of the reward circuitry.

And the experiment is to measure dopamine release in response to different substances. So we're always releasing dopamine at a kind of tonic baseline level in the brain. When we do something that's reinforcing, that our brain recognizes as important for survival, we temporarily increase dopamine above baseline, and that's what feels good. And because it feels good, we want to do it again. So then we're willing to invest more.

energy and work into finding more of whatever that is. So this series of experiments looked at how much dopamine is released in response to different types of rewards and found that chocolate increases dopamine firing about 50% above baseline. Sex is 100% above baseline. Nicotine is 150% above baseline. Nicotine is 200% and amphetamine is 1000%.

So what that tells us is that at least in rats and mice, all of those things are reinforcing, but sex is more than chocolate. Nicotine is more than sex.

Cocaine and amphetamine are more than nicotine. And indeed, it's true that behaviorally, you know, one of the ways to measure addiction in a rat is to see how hard is that animal willing to work to get their drug of choice, which is a nice animal model for human behavior, because one of the things that we see in addiction is that people will work very, very hard to get their drug.

And indeed, if you give a rat or a mouse access to intravenous cocaine, for example, and a lever they can press to deliver that cocaine, what you find is that the animal will press the lever till exhaustion or even death. So it's not very hard to get a rat addicted to cocaine. And they will get addicted to cocaine more easily than they will get addicted to something like chocolate or other reinforcers.

And indeed, it's very difficult to get a rat addicted to alcohol for whatever reason, unless you genetically engineer a particular strain of rats to get addicted to alcohol. Rats generally don't like alcohol, but they love stimulants, which is different from humans. Humans generally love alcohol and stimulants and chocolate and sex and nicotine. So we kind of like everything.

But it does raise an important concept of drug of choice, which is that we're all wired a little bit differently. And what releases a lot of dopamine in my brain, for example, may not release a lot of dopamine in your brain and vice versa. And although clinically what we see today is polypharmacy, meaning that generally people who

are vulnerable to addiction. And again, I said it's all of us, but certainly some are more vulnerable than others. They might have one drug of choice like alcohol or cocaine or cannabis, but they're often also using other drugs. So kind of multiple drugs in consecutive days or even simultaneously.

So, but even when they're using multiple drugs, most people have what they would call their drug of choice. That is their one go-to drug or their preferred drug or the drug that is sort of the one that really does it for them. And that's really different across different humans, which from an evolutionary perspective makes a lot of sense, right? Like when you're thinking about the sort of

primordial tribe, you wouldn't want everybody going for the same berry bush. You would want some people really like berries. Some people want to hunt meat. Some people want to look for partners. And that way as a group, everybody gets what they need. So I think that's also part of like the innate built-in mechanism to get people

to go for different rewards, right? That inter-individual variability is something that Mother Nature probably intentionally programmed for. That's really interesting. Now, you mentioned earlier anything could be an addiction, something as simple as reading sex novels. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. So, yeah. So that's, you know, that's what I talk about in my book, Dopamine Nation, how I got addicted to romance novels and... Romance novels. I'm sorry. You know what? I went, I graduated from romance novels to sex novels. So for sure, you know, I thought that was, that progression was there for me. And, um,

It started out with Twilight, which is a vampire romance novel written for teenagers. Have you read it? I doubt you have. I've watched all the movies, but I don't read novels, unfortunately. I'm trying to get into fiction. Anyway, reading has always been my drug of choice. And I read the romance novels, and that was very reinforcing. And I read the series multiple times. And then I graduated from that to werewolf romance novels and...

magician romance novels and all kinds of romance novels. And after a while, that wasn't really potent enough for me. So then I graduated or progressed to novels that had more graphic sex scenes and eventually found myself reading Frank Erotica over the course of about a year, year and a half. What was so interesting about that process was that even though I'm an addiction psychiatrist, I really didn't see the progression as it was happening.

I would occasionally joke, "Aha, I'm addicted to romance novels." But really, I did get a little bit addicted to romance novels. How do we define addiction? It's the continued compulsive use of a substance or a behavior despite harm to self and/or others. Sometimes we look for the three Cs: control, compulsion, consequences, out of control use, compulsive use, or continued use despite consequences.

As well as tolerance and withdrawal, tolerance is needing more of the drug or more potent forms over time to get the same effect. Withdrawal is finding that when you cut back or stop, you have a physiologic reaction to that. And I really met all of those criteria. So I'd be reading a romance novel as I went to bed on a weeknight telling myself I was just going to read one chapter and go to sleep. And four hours later, two in the morning, I was still reading

which was impairing my ability to sleep, which was impairing my ability to function at work or be present for my family. So it was a subtle impact, but it definitely was a real impact. I repeatedly said I wasn't going to cut back and wasn't going to read romance novels tonight, but the nighttime came, my willpower was diminished. I read romance novels.

And I also developed tolerance, the tolerance being needing more potent forms. As I said, I eventually kind of progressed to something really quite a bit beyond your average tolerance.

sort of Twilight Saga type of romance novel. So the point being that I had sort of thought that I was immune to addiction, even though it runs in my family, because traditional drugs just never were reinforcing. But the truth is, I just hadn't met my drug of choice. And when I did, which turned out to be not just romance novels, but online romance novels, which meant that I could get them very easily and quickly, I essentially became a chain reader of romance novels.

Didn't see the progression happening, which is very common in addiction that we don't see our behaviors when we're in them. And then discovered when I tried to stop that I actually had a physical withdrawal characterized by insomnia and irritability. And that lasted about a couple of weeks. So that's a very typical kind of progression for any addiction disorder.

And the point being is really anybody can get addicted. Even if you think you're immune, there's probably a drug out there for you. And again, in this day and age, almost everything has been made to be addictive or reinforcing. Yeah. One of the things I always say on this podcast is I think the FDA is bought and paid for. And a lot of the foods we eat cause us to do things that we normally wouldn't do. And I

I've kind of had this debate this week, kind of with myself, because I always say the most important thing is sleep, because without sleep, you made bad decisions. Without the food, whether you're drinking your carbs and your whatever substance in the food, or you're eating it, that'll cause you not to sleep too. If you drink a lot, you're probably not going to get great sleep. And so they kind of go hand in hand. And I don't know which one's more important. I don't think... If you had to pick...

The food and nutrients we eat, the sleep, the water intake, or the movement. So that could be working out or cardio or whatever. Do you have like a rank? Well, I think it's important to acknowledge that our food supply has become drugified with the addition of salt, fat, sugar, and flavorings.

And what I mean by that is that now when we eat food, in particular ultra-processed food, of which there is an abundance in our world today, two things are happening. We are getting calories and nutrients, which we need to live, but we're also getting a hit of dopamine in our brain's reward pathway. And that is problematic in the sense that

Because we are getting that hit of dopamine, we won't want to or even be able to stop eating even once we've reached satiety or the point at which our body is telling us, okay, that's enough food. Instead, what will happen is we will repeatedly eat past that point because we're

The food is also a drug that's causing this release of dopamine that leads us into this sort of addiction vortex where we're getting in sort of the dopamine spike, followed by dopamine freefall, which is a state of craving, which then drives the compulsive reuse. So there is a movement now within the field of mental health, and I'm peripherally a part of that movement now.

which is to actually get ultra-processed food addiction into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, meaning to get it recognized as a mental illness. There are a number of eating disorders that are already considered mental illnesses. Bulimia, binge eating characterized by purging, often vomiting, or the use of laxatives, or compulsive exercise. Anorexia, which is excessive restriction eating.

various body dysmorphias. But there is, again, a movement to have a whole new category that is simply food addiction or food use disorder. Because what we're seeing now is more and more people who are not, in fact, meeting criteria

for the classic eating disorders because they don't, for example, have a distorted view of their own bodies. Like they see their bodies as they are and they're not necessarily dealing even with obesity, right? Which is often how we approach sort of the binge eating folks who gain a lot of weight because they're not doing the compensatory compulsive exercise or purging or things.

But instead, we think that there should be a category that just acknowledges that food has become a drug and that even your average person, you know, eating these ultra processed foods is going to struggle to moderate their consumption because the food is addictive. And that's, I think, a really important acknowledgement. And again, we're seeing more and more people who are actually not obese,

who have severe food addictions, who will, for example, order DoorDash all night long and eat DoorDash processed food and gallons of ice cream and really use food as a kind of narcotic to the point where they literally pass out the way some people will use alcohol. And of course, alcohol and food are both working on our carbohydrate system. So there's a lot of analogy between those two. Interestingly, we're also finding that

The medications that are often effective for alcohol use disorder are also often medications that help with repetitive control around food. So, for example, the Ozempic and Wagovi that are coming out now really were originally used to help people with type 2 diabetes.

manage their blood sugars and manage a pedative control. Now we're seeing that there can be helpful to some people with alcohol use disorder. So it's the same kind of carbohydrate mediated, mediated, a pedative control mechanisms. Anyway, the bottom line in answer to your question, it was a, my, my answer was long winded, but I do think that acknowledging that food in the modern world has become drugified is really important to

to alerting people that it's not about their lack of willpower. It's about the fact that the food is engineered to keep us consuming it. And that the intervention then is

not exactly the same thing as traditional dieting, but it's a way of acknowledging that, wow, you know, if I eat healthy food, then I'm much more likely to be able to stop eating when my body has had enough. Whereas if I eat sugar, if I eat, you know, highly salted fatty carbohydrates plus sugar, it means that I will be really hard to stop even when I've had enough. So I think that message is super important.

Yeah, I wanted to ask you one more thing that you brought up because I happen to know a lot of people that are on Ozempic. And I don't think there's enough clinical trials or research that are done to the side effects as far as like people are using it if they're 20 pounds overweight. And from there was just a Wall Street Journal article that I read that said the minute you stop taking it, the cravings come back. It's like you're right back. Now you've lost all the weight.

But is this something that you can wean off of? What are the side effects? It's just I just know too many people that are leaning towards it. And it might be great. It might be fine. I don't know enough to even make a comment on it. I mean, I think you're absolutely right. We need more data and we're probably over prescribing it and it's being over consumed. Every medication has risks.

And we know that Ozempic and others in that class are causing bowel obstructions, decreased peristalsis or gut motility can lead to, in some cases, depression. Not to mention, as you point out, that as soon as people stop taking it, they can have a kind of a rebound phenomenon. Having said that, I have a really healthy respect for

for the power of the human brain once it's in this addiction cycle to be very difficult to break out of. So I am in favor of non-addictive medications that can help people get a handle on that and get some kind of sense of a petitive control, even if it's just short term. I guess what I would hope is that if people are using Ozempic,

to manage unhealthy eating habits, that they would use the time in which Ozempic and other similar drugs decrease their cravings as a golden window of opportunity to introduce healthier eating habits.

and other important lifestyle changes like movement, right? It's really important for our bodies to move so that when they get off of the Ozempic, they have some really good habits in place that will allow them to perpetuate, you know, the benefits. Yeah, it's interesting. One of my good buddies is like, it's weird. I started taking Ozempic just a few weeks ago and he's not what I would consider by any means an alcoholic, but he drinks.

And he drinks, when he drinks, he'll have four or five drinks. He's like, I just, I don't feel like drinking at all. And I'm like, I don't know necessarily if I've ever felt like, man, I need a vodka tonic or I need a beer right now.

Because we're not to that, but when we're like Friday comes and we're just on top of the world, we're like, man, let's go have a drink. Let's have a glass of wine. And he's like, I just don't even want it. And I didn't even think that Ozempic was built. I thought it was like, like from what we see now, I thought it was like a weight loss.

But really what it does prevent alcohol as well, I'm hearing. Well, I mean, again, there are some early trials looking at it. Anecdotally in our clinic, we have some patients with treatment refractory alcohol use disorder who have tried everything and haven't responded, who have then tried these agents like Ozempic and Wagovi and found it very helpful. Not everybody, but I think it's just, it's important for us to

yeah, explore options, especially in cases where people have tried everything else. You know, they've been to Alcoholics Anonymous, they've taken naltrexone, you know, you name it, and they haven't really been able to stop the behavior. I mean, what a relief that must be for them to be able to be free of that state of craving. I want to dive into Dopamine Nation here and then the business side.

the business world. From a business perspective, what are the ethical considerations companies should prioritize when designing products or services that tap into our dopamine systems? And the key word here is ethical because I happen to know Robert Ciarini. He wrote the book Influence Pre-suasion. And one of his statements in the book is use these things for good because I'm sure there's a lot of ways to use these for bad.

Yeah, I mean, you know, the classic example of this is the social media companies, you know, who may not have intended to harm young people. But it's very clear now that, you know, although social media can be a powerful, positive tool, it's also potentially harmful. And therefore, I do think that those corporations that make and profit are

from those digital media have a responsibility to especially protect kids and also to make sure that the inherent addictive design elements are curbed or eliminated

So that people are using it as a helpful tool and aren't using it in a compulsive, over-consumptive way. So, yeah, I mean, bottom line, I do think that it can't just be up to the individual. These are basically product liability issues. You know, we have lots and lots of rules around how to use opioids medicinally in a safe way.

They're an important tool, but we also need lots of restrictions so that people don't get addicted. And I think, you know, we're going to need those same kinds of guardrails with digital media as well. Figuring out how to do it is hard, but I think we need to, we have a responsibility to do that, especially to children. So selfishly, I own a garage door company. We service 20,000 jobs a month. So 20,000 new customers. Is there a way to ethically support

use marketing and use when we're there to create a great experience, to create dopamine in a ethical way? Yeah. You know what? I don't know the answer to that. Obviously, as a business owner, you want to do that because you want to sell more of your product and your product is hopefully one that you feel is doing good in the world and making people's lives better.

I don't think that people are going to get so caught up in buying garage doors that they're going to get addicted to buying garage doors. So maybe you tell me otherwise, but I don't see that happening, but you never know.

So, you know, we'll promote slight addiction for the next, for this, the next few years. Right. So, you know, if, I mean, in some ways, if you do your job well, that, that person isn't going to come back to you for a long time because now they have a really good garage door that's going to last a long time. Right. So that, that's, I think an ethical thing to do. You know, if you, if you, on the other hand, you know, sort of like, uh,

you know, the claims that are made about these dating apps, they don't actually want people to find other people because then they don't have, you know, their business model, they kind of go broke. So

you know, and people do get really addicted to dating apps and they, they're not on there for, you know, relationship formation. They're on there to get the match and get the confetti and, and feel good about themselves and then move on to the next, you know, potential match. So I think that's, that's how I think about it. Yeah. That's interesting. And,

As far as businesses creating a workplace, the culture that promotes a healthy dopamine balance and reduces the risk of burnout or addictive behaviors.

Is there something as a leader or an owner or a founder or a CEO that we should be thinking about to make sure? Obviously not stack in the fridge full of Red Bulls and monsters. I'm just trying to think of things we could do in the workplace to make sure we're taking care of our, you know, what I can say, you know, my coworkers.

Yeah, so I mean, I think we can really look to the ancient wisdom of theology and ancient philosophy here for guidance. There's a reason that we have a Sabbath, and that's because for many, many generations, people were wise enough to realize that, you know, you don't want to work every single day of the week. It's important to take a break.

to let your brain reset, to process what's happened, to spend time doing other things and prepare for the week to come. So what's happened in the modern world is that work itself has become drugified. What does that mean? It means it's more potent and reinforcing with all the kind of stock options and bonuses and

you know, rankings, it's become more accessible, right? Work never ends. It's infinite where there's no place we can go now where we can't access work. So there's no natural stopping point for work, which again, if you think about work as a potential drug, now you've got sort of like an infinite amount of cocaine that never runs out. That can't possibly be good for our cocaine habit.

So I think what places of work can and should do is to really try hard to make sure that workers get a break, you know, that there are sort of sacred days of the week or times of the day when people really should disengage from work, focus on other things. You asked me earlier about animal experiments that I think are really powerful.

There's a set of experiments that George Koob did with his co-researchers where they exposed rats to pressing a lever for cocaine for two hours a day. And they compared that to rats in which they were allowed to press the lever essentially all day long.

And what they found was that in the rats who only had access to cocaine for two hours a day, that their rate of lever press was constant. So over the course of seven days, they pressed that lever for cocaine the same amount of time every day. But in the rats where they exposed them to unlimited cocaine, those rats increased their lever pressing rate every day. So the first day, maybe they pressed it 50 times. The next day, maybe it was, you know,

100 times. The day after that, it was 200 times. So that by the end of that week, those rats were constantly pressing that lever for cocaine. So that gives us some really important information. It tells us that when we're thinking about developing tolerance, which is the need for more and more of our drug to get the same effect, that if we leave enough time in between drug use, we can reset the range reward pathways and we're less likely to develop tolerance

and therefore less likely to get into that addiction vortex. Whereas if we have constant unlimited access and are pinging our brains all day long with these highly reinforcing substances and behaviors, we're going to progress to that kind of harmful, addictive paradigm.

And this is not to say that people should be like, oh, yeah, I can use cocaine if I'm only using two hours a day. Not at all. But it is to emphasize that it is important to take a break from anything that we do compulsively or a lot of or that's very reinforcing for us.

So cocaine, two hours a day, lunchroom, no more. No, I'm kidding. You know, I was, uh, I was at the masters and one of the things about Augusta is you're not allowed to carry a cell phone out there at all. They sell phones that are like the old, the old, um, where you press the button and disposable, whatever. I haven't even said the word in like 20 years. And, uh,

The first hour I was like, man, this kind of sucks. I can't get updates. And then the next hour I was like, it would be sure nice to have my camera, my phone to take a picture. And then after that, it was like bliss.

Hey guys, I hope you're really enjoying this podcast. I wanted to let you know if you're thinking about joining us in September at the Freedom Event, I've got some good news and some bad news for you. First, I'll start with the bad news. The super early bird tickets are gone. This means that the $800 off the Elite and VIB tickets are not available anymore, and the general admission price has gone up a little bit too. The

The good news is you can still get $400 off the Alita VIP tickets or a 10% discount on your general admission ticket. Plus, we're still giving away a few special bonuses. But this is only going to be available until August 5th. So listen, if Freedom 23 was amazing, this year we're going to be taking this event, and I mean taking it to the next level. Jocko Willick, the Navy SEAL who wrote the book Extreme Ownership, is already confirmed as one of our keynote speakers.

And there's still a lot more to come. So go to freedom event.com and get your tickets today. We will not disappoint. This is going to be an event of the lifetime. That's freedom event.com. Take a pen or put it in your phone. Freedom event.com. Just make sure you do it before prices go up on August 5th. Now let's get back to today's episode. It was like, I remember leaving Augusta going, man,

I want my life without a cell phone sometimes. Whether that's going out on the lake fishing or reading a book and just getting away from it. And also there's this feeling of letting people down or not being, but just saying, listen, I'm off today. You need to get ahold of me, get ahold of the EA or whatever that looks like. But I got to tell you, at first it was difficult. Then it became just heavenly.

Yeah, right. It's so true. You know, our digital devices really are like a drug. And we don't even realize, you know, how compulsively we overuse them to the point where we're really slaves to them. And by even just taking one day a week, a kind of digital Sabbath, where we don't touch our phone and don't look at a screen and

What we'll notice is that initially we're uncomfortable, we're restless, we're preoccupied with wanting to check things to look who texted us to see what notifications we got or whatever. Check our stock portfolio, who knows what, how many likes we got on Instagram. But if we can just ride out that discomfort, what we find is that the brain

slowly adjusts. And then we not only feel less craving to look at our devices, but actually start to feel really, really good. And I think this is just so important for people to experiment with, for families to experiment with together, couples. Yeah, taking a break from these devices is super important. I want to jump in and just a few more questions here.

You know, I'm sure there's a lot of ways to prevent addiction. But what do we do when we already have something? And I think most people, if we look in the mirror, we could admit we might have a problem. You said porn, masturbation, sex, all the way to a drug of choice. It could be alcohol. It could be tobacco. It could be nicotine. When we do have something... And you know what's so funny is I talked to my mom one time. She used to smoke a pre-month salt. She switched to a vape. And she goes...

You know, she had a lump in her throat. It was non-cancerous, thank God. And you would think after it was a close call. And I said, mom, why do you even want to do it? And the answer I got was less than satisfactory. She goes, this is, this is my time. This is what I want to do. It was like this, like, this is like the only time I get to be with my own thoughts and like, it's my getaway. And I look at things like, if I know it's not good for me, I just

And I've seen doctors do cocaine before. Like you've heard about them like dying of an overdose, like that know better. But there's a lot of people that I think they just kind of lie to themselves and they say it's not a problem or it's my time or this is what I get to do by myself. And this is the only time I get to release or whatever it is. I don't know what the answer is. That's why I wanted to ask you, what's the best for people that are listening that might have some type of addiction that they know is not good for them?

What's the best way to address that, move on from it or try to get it under control? Well, first of all, just to speak to your mother's response. I mean, part of why people use drugs is because they work and they wouldn't go back if they didn't have some positive quality for them.

So your mom saying this is me time or this is how I kind of take care of myself, that is very common when people get addicted. They often tend to be avoidant copers. So they don't, it's very hard for them to get their needs met in other ways or by asking for help or asking for things. They don't like to do that. And so they then sort of take care of themselves over here with their drug of choice.

The other thing is that although drugs initially might work to solve a problem and take care of us, over time, they don't take care of us, right? They're harmful. But we still have the experience that they're working because they get us out of that place of craving. So what initially starts out as maybe self-medicating or self-care becomes self-harm and becomes just medicating the withdrawal from the last dose. So one of the...

important interventions, you know, when we're trying to help people stop their addictive behaviors is to help them find ways to escape or take care of themselves in other ways without using that drug. So I just want to say that for folks out there, you know, who are struggling with an addiction or think they might be, it's a very serious addiction. I recommend that they go see a mental health care provider who has expertise in treating addiction and

If they're not sure or not able to do that, they might consider exploring 12-step groups like Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Cannabis Anonymous, Sex Addicts Anonymous, Sexaholics Anonymous, Internet and Social Media Addicts Anonymous. I mean, there's really a group for almost every addiction you can imagine. These are people who come together and help each other when they're struggling with the same or similar problem.

And they can be very, very effective and they're also evidence-based. So we have evidence showing that Alcoholics Anonymous is as good as professionally mediated treatment and probably works better for certain populations.

What if they don't want help? I mean, a lot of people, they're like, I know. Yeah, I drink, but it's not a problem. But they know in the deep down pits. Yeah. Yeah. I know. I eat. I binge eat. And I love Twinkies and I eat 10 of them in a row and I can't live without ice cream and chocolate chip cookies or whatever it might be. Or don't take me away from my phone. This is my happy spot. But you look at your day yesterday and you go, is there anything good that came out of that? Is

Is there anything that you're like, man, that yesterday when I got to scroll through TikTok for four hours, you know, once the dopamine's gone and you've used it, it's not like, wow, that was really, that paid off. But I just don't think that, I just don't think a lot of people are to the point where it's gotten to the point where they feel like they need help. They feel like it's under control. Yeah, I agree. Most of us, we feel like it's under control and we feel like it's not doing any real harm.

And that's the situation where I invite people to try something called a dopamine fast or an abstinence trial, where they give up their drug of choice for four weeks as an experiment.

And typically I'll warn them that they're going to feel worse before they feel better. But if they can make it to weeks three or four, they will often feel very, very good, better than they have in a really long time. And that can be a moment of insight where people realize, oh, wow, this thing that I thought was harmless actually was causing harm.

Or this thing that I thought I wasn't addicted to, I really was addicted to it. Or this thing that I thought was helping me with my depression, anxiety, insomnia, and attention was actually making those things worse. So I really like that as an early intervention, as a way to give people their own data on which they can then make better informed choices. One of the things that I've been talking a lot about lately is doing something hard.

And for me, it would be getting into a 32 degrees Fahrenheit, a nice plunge. But there are times after three months where your body's like, you're just used to it. You go right in there. It's not hard anymore. It still might be great for you. But flexing those do something hard muscles like abstinence of dessert for a month or turning off your cell phone for two days in a row. I mean, some of us,

You know, maybe even getting a flip phone and transferring to that so you don't scroll. Like, I've always been in the position to where I kind of like accountability and I like to give myself no other way. Because if it's right there, it's easy to do it. Like you said, if they just if the rat could just hit it whenever they want, they just. But if you build like conditions like if I miss my trainer today, he's going to call me up.

And he's going to be very disappointed because I wasted his time and my time. I've created that accountability. Now, I know he's going to work me out harder than I'd work out myself. Like, I know he's going to push an extra level, but I know he's not going to push me too hard that I'm going to quit the next day. And that's a skill. But I think just doing something hard that's hard for you may be easy for other people. But I think that that's something that very few people in this day and age have done in a long time.

Yeah, I mean, the message that we get from the culture today is that if you're not comfortable or if you're in pain or if you're anxious, make yourself more comfortable, you know, make your life easier. But really, we were wired over millions of years of evolution for pain. We are strivers. We need friction in order to feel in balance. And it turns out that when we intentionally do things that are

hard or even painful, our body senses injury and then upregulates production of our feel-good neurotransmitters like dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, you name it. So that it's actually a really nice way to get dopamine indirectly by paying for it up front. And that's really how we were meant to get our dopamine. We weren't meant to have easy access to these intoxicants that release a lot of dopamine all at once with no work.

We were meant to have to do something hard to get a little bit of dopamine to kind of reset us and put us back into balance. So I think that's an important message, especially in this culture of sort of quick fix. And it's a really important message for children.

you know, that it's actually good for you to do something challenging, something that you don't want to do, but you feel better afterwards. And really drawing our attention to be able to observe that, that reluctance to enter into a difficult task, the kind of psychological and or physical pain we have during the task. And then, you know, the sort of release of those

chemicals that give us that post-task high. That's really important to watch that cycle, to not overuse that cycle. Like we do have people who get addicted to things like exercise. I've talked about that.

Actually, addicted to work. So you can overdo that. The other thing that we see more and more of is this kind of work hard, play hard mentality where I worked hard all day and now I get to reward myself. Right. So that's not good either, because then there's no kind of restful in between. It's all my will exerted on the world to change the way I feel, whether it's feel bad or feel good.

Instead of being at a place of rest and letting the world unfold, which is something that modern humans are not good at at all, but which I think is really important to finding that kind of angle of repose where we're able to experience joy and beauty, but not necessarily of our own making, but that occurs spontaneously as life unfolds. Love that.

If you were to tell a business owner or a manager how to create an environment, obviously making sure that people have time, I've always kind of mandated PTO. But other than like the seventh day of rest and as leaders, is there anything else that we should be looking to do to lead in the right way and to really show up for the people? Well, I mean, practice what you preach is important.

And don't expect, you know, from your, from the folks who work with you, something that you wouldn't do. FOMO is really real now. You know, I mean, it's always been to some extent a source of human suffering, but that fear of missing out, if you can create systems where people can take time off and away from their work without feeling like they're going to be missing something important, don't quite know how to do that. Probably it's different for every kind of work.

So this might be also communal time off that's synchronized with other people off. So again, you don't have that sense, well, I'm taking off today, but I'm missing a lot of really important things. And when I go in tomorrow, I'm going to have 200 emails and my boss is going to be mad and I'm going to be behind and everybody's going to know what was going on. And I don't, you know, creating a system where people are together taking time off or, you know, somehow, you

It's more of a communal experience. What is your take? I'm curious. What's your take on Jordan Peterson as far as, you know, he talks a lot of men and women are two different things. And they had a lot of debates. And this is an interesting one. You know, there's a lot of different takes for him. But he says, you know, men are the most incarcerated. Men are the most likely to get a job outside. Men are the first one to go to war. Men's life expectancy is less. I do think men and women are different.

by a long shot. You know, I can't have babies. I don't have any reproductive organs. And I don't really know what kind of question I'm asking here. I just think it's, I was sitting down with a private equity, like all the limited partners that invested in this company. And they did a women's panel. And the women were up there saying, you know, I think it's very important that we have a family. You know, we want to have kids. And I heard some kind of whispers in the audience of like, you know, if you're going to take three or four months off,

in the middle of the business. That's very tough for bankers and financial bankers. But the women said it's a lot easier when the founder has daughters because they understand because those are the grandbabies they're having. You know what I mean? And they have a grandchild is what they said. And I don't necessarily know. I think it's very... This day and age, everybody wants this equal rights of everything. And

I wouldn't say necessarily in old fashioned. I think women should have great jobs and I'm not trying to be a misogynist. I don't really know where I'm going with this question, but I'm just curious your point of view when it comes to this day and age where you could be a cat in second grade and not answer any questions and lick on milk. I'm just, I don't know where it stops. It's like,

No, there's a society. You got to do your part and you don't need to fit in necessarily, but you're not that special. I don't know. What is your take? It's not very direct question. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot there. I mean, I guess, you know, a lot comes to mind. What I'd say is that I do think, you know, for all the chatter about, you

how vulnerable young girls are today. We're not talking enough about how vulnerable boys and men are today. I actually think this is a really incredibly difficult time to be a man in terms of addiction to pornography and sex, addiction to video games,

we're seeing a huge dropout in the workforce among young men. I mean, this is not an opinion. There are numbers to show that, along with some data to suggest that they're dropping out because they're at home playing video games and viewing pornography. So we're seeing, I think,

a very dangerous trend of this sort of withdrawal from society and a disengagement among young men and boys. And it's super concerning. And then just in terms of women taking time for family and to raise their kids, I mean, there are certain biological imperatives. Like if you don't

take the time to be there when your child is young, you can't ever get that time back. You will miss it. And I feel badly for anybody who misses that time, man or woman. And I think it would be really good and very, very wise for our societies to do more to accommodate thriving families and to allow both mothers and fathers to have

extended periods of time when their children are young, because that's when they really need us. And you can't get that back. There's no, there's not really a way to make it up later. It's a myth that, you know, you can just have quality and quantity doesn't matter. I don't think that's true. I think quantity does matter because children operate according to child time. You know, they're, they, they need large swaths of time with consistent caregivers and,

You can't just kind of show up and do a song and dance and hope that, you know, you'll have a strong attachment. So let me, well, this is kind of, if you were, you know, I went to Australia and I spent a lot of time there. And what I noticed is there's like an extra 55 holidays. Yep. They give, they give like eight months if you have a baby to the men and the women. And I was just thinking like, wait a minute.

If I owned a business and I already have like a million holidays, look, this is the dilemma is you also have bills to pay, right? I mean, realistically, you got to keep the rent. You got to keep the lights on and the air conditioning going in the summer there. And you've also got to pay for insurance and trucks. I think we're getting to the point where business owners are attacked for not doing a lot of things. And I'm going, well, if the business goes out of business, then everybody loses. All the jobs are lost.

So what's a fair way of saying, you know, there's a 26 year old woman and a 26 year old man. They plan on having five or six kids. And I agree with you wholeheartedly. I do. But I'm trying to think on a society basis. How does this work? How is there not some type of free judged that this person, if you're taking eight months off and you want five kids over the next six years, that means you're working a minimum of a third of the time.

And that means that. Yeah, I agree with you. It's very disruptive to running any kind of business operation and have people stop out for maternity leave or child leave. I mean, I manage my clinic. We have lots of trainees. And when I have a trainee who gets pregnant and then it's gone for three months, it's incredibly disruptive. I can't just make a trainee, you know, materialize out of thin air to start seeing their patients. It is disruptive. There's no doubt about it.

I don't know exactly what the answer is. I think that one possibility might be to make workplaces more kid friendly. So, you know, and you see this sometimes when you when you go to Utah, you know, where where, as you know, many people have very large families.

they'll often bring their kids to work if it's a job that allows, that makes that possible. They're not all jobs. You can't bring your kid to work. But little babies, you know, or maybe a kid who could go on a little playpen. I mean, there are some jobs where that would actually be possible if it were culturally acceptable to do that. Really good idea. And, you know, that's what gyms are starting to do is bring your kid to the gym. Right. Yeah.

So what would you say, Dopamine Nation, if the whole crowd of people listening right now go by that? What's some of the largest takeaways? Well, I just think it's a way to understand how we process pleasure and pain and how the relentless pursuit of these high dopamine rewards actually makes us anhedonic or unable to experience any pleasure at all.

how doing things that are hard upregulates dopamine and makes us feel better. And also, you know, just how we're living in a world of abundance, which itself is a human stressor. You know, as soon as I talk about it as the plenty paradox, that actually this is a very difficult time to be human because we have everything, because our lives are so convenient, because our lives are so fast and so full of these things.

sources of dopamine and other fast chemicals. So kind of trying to think about how can we make, how can we be in balance in physiologic and neurologic and moral and spiritual balance in a world that's really not encouraging that. I'm going to say a statement real quick, and I want you to react if this, what your feelings are. And when I say men, it could be men or women. Hard times make strong men.

Easy times make weak men. I mean, I would say that generally I would agree with that. Again, I think we evolved for striving and that when we don't have something to strive for or against, we're kind of a little bit lost, especially if we're also then surrounded by this very overwhelming supply of sort of drugified forms of escapism.

You know, I don't know necessarily if I, you're very familiar, I'm sure, with Darwinism, survival of the fittest. And I think that that was kind of an ancestral thing that took place that just the humans have the evolution of like the camouflage of certain things. Like they do that to survive, but now it's like you can survive. And I'm not talking, sounds like inhumane, but bring the inhumane out of it is like,

you know, if you could not run faster and do things in your village, there's a good chance. Like if you still look at like safaris in Africa and like the animal kingdom, like the weak ones just don't survive. And now it seems like the population has a lot of weak people surviving that are breeding and making more weak people. And I'm not just talking about physical strength. I'm not talking about everything. IQ. I'm talking about like everything. What is your thought on that?

Well, I mean, I think that, you know, a marker of a civilized society is that we take care of our weak. So I do think that that is an important quality that, you know, we can't and shouldn't want to get away from. On the other hand, I do think that we have reached some kind of tipping point in the sense that we are no longer really having to do anything in order to survive. All our survival needs are basically met.

And we have more leisure time than ever before in human history, more disposable income, more access to leisure goods. And, you know, we probably thought that when we reached this point at human civilization, we would all be sort of in a kind of state of nirvana and doing good and maybe reading books.

philosophy and helping each other and learning. And instead what we're doing is we're watching a whole lot of pornography, shopping and playing video games. So I do think that we are very challenged in unprecedented ways and we're trying to figure out how to handle it. How to unscrew ourselves. I'm just going to ask you, Dr. Lemke, if someone wants to reach out and they've got some questions and I know you're a busy, busy woman.

What's the best way to get ahold of you? Boy, that's a loaded question because I get a ton of emails and it's really hard for me to respond to all of them. So I'm very reluctant to say reach out. I would say to folks, if you're really struggling, look in your area for an addiction psychiatrist and go ask them, even if you're not sure if that's what you need, go ask them to do an assessment and see what they say.

And finally, here's how I close out. I do this, I bounce around and just make it interesting. It must be working because there's a lot of listeners.

But I'll let you close us out. Any topic, maybe something that the audience needs to hear, maybe something we didn't talk about, whatever you want to take us to close us out. Oh, gosh, I don't know. You've asked a lot of good questions. I'll leave that to you. You know, maybe real quick, to close us out. Yeah, I told you, and we didn't really talk about this, but the last three, four weeks, I said, okay, I'm cutting out the booze. And Bree's doing it with me, which was a big piece.

And I got baptized. And, you know, I've always been a man of faith. I went to a private Christian school growing up. But my parents didn't remember me getting baptized. And I started taking it very seriously and started getting crazy amounts of steps a day, working out harder, eating healthier, organic foods. And literally, like the way I feel, as I told you before we started this podcast, I wish I could have done this 10 years, 20 years ago.

I didn't realize it. Like, I didn't realize that the FDA was just bought and paid for. I didn't realize that the water was so bad and the contaminants, the water we shower with without water purification. I didn't realize that, you know, the air quality. And I put myself in the right position to feel the greatest I can. Because I do believe, I believe I'm a Ferrari. I believe I'm a Bugatti. And I want to put the right fuel in to make sure it's running at the top. And when I'm running good, my thoughts are good.

And I sleep really good. And my dreams are good. And I wake up with energy without an alarm clock. And I'm happy. And I'm kind of euphoric. Like I walk around here, my decision making, the fogginess is gone, everything. And I'm not just saying that either. I'm not just saying that because of the podcast. I don't know if people would even try this. Because I always say, is it one day? One day I'm going to do that. Or is today day one?

And I, you know, there's nothing that really sparked this at me, but he just said, let's go for this. And I made it known to everybody that by September 25th, I will be 10% body fat and healthier than I've ever been. And I love to hold myself accountable and put deadlines on. And, you know, I told you, I stopped watching so much news at night and I stopped the blue light and I stopped, you know, everything's just, isn't that crazy though? How, how,

You get on the right path and all of a sudden I'm brushing my teeth twice a day. I'm flossing twice a day. Like everything, like I'm waking up and doing pushups. I'm making the bed. It's like all these things kind of have this domino effect in the best direction possible for me to take care of myself. I've never put on lotion twice a day. I've never put on sunscreen on my face. I'm doing it every single day.

That's great. I don't understand. And I'm not bragging about it. I'm just saying, like, I wish more people would have this experience. I'm not, you know, I don't even crave fast food. Like I used to drive by Taco Bell and be like, I mean, my will started to turn towards it. And now I'm like, yeah, disgusting. It's weird. Yeah. It sounds like you've done a kind of a global dopamine fast where you've eliminated all the kinds of escapist behaviors, high dopamine substances. Yeah.

And you're feeling great. And that's honestly what we see when people eliminate these types of substances and behaviors that feel very good in the moment, but the cumulative effect of which is really to make us unhealthy. I mean, you, you know, if you're a, what do you call yourself for Ferrari or Bugatti or something? I'm probably a Toyota Sienna, but yeah,

But no matter what you are, you still got to put in the right gas, right? You still got to change your oil. You got to really sort of have a healthy respect for how the body was meant to, what fuel it was meant to run on. And yeah, I mean, the modern life really conspires against us. It's effortful and hard to be healthy now, but it's worth it because when we do that,

we do feel so much better and then that increased energy and mood contributes to other people feeling better and then to more healthy habits so good for you i mean i'm really glad you're feeling so good and also you also mentioned spirituality i think people are really hungry for spirituality and kind of don't respect that part and not that part of their lives and their selves enough so good for you that you're kind of bringing it all together

Well, thank you. And I really, really enjoyed this. It's a different look. I think we're all addicts. And like I said, either you're an addict and you got the routine of good things or opposite. And I think if people just are more of a... If anything, this is an awareness podcast. Just be aware.

And some of you guys, this might not appeal to you. It's like, I don't need any help. I don't need this shit. Some of you guys might say, this is exactly what I needed today. This is time for me to at least acknowledge this. And whether it's get help or get your significant other or get your kid help or whatever it is,

Thank you for listening and thank you, Dr. Lemke, for doing this today. I really, really appreciate it. You're welcome. Can I add one more thing? I'd love for you to add one more thing. Yeah. So, you know, when people think about the dopamine fast and giving something up for four weeks, knowing they'll feel worse before they feel better, we really encourage people to start small. Just choose one thing, give up alcohol or just give up sugar or just give up video games and

You, Tommy, kind of went whole hog and gave up a bunch of stuff all at once. And that's usually hard for most people. So just want to encourage folks to experiment. Choose one thing. Give up that one thing. Maybe you're a smoker and a drinker and maybe just give up the smoking or just give up the drinking. Try not to increase one as you give up the other. That's a dangerous whack-a-mole situation sometimes.

But it's okay to just choose one small thing and just give that up because we find that even just giving up one thing can really help. Yeah, I mean, I'll tell you, and with that, we're going to end, but real quick, I stopped drinking for 100 days. I started being super healthy, but I didn't have Brie alongside of me. And when I went back in, went to the bar, had a few shots, whatever it was, I kind of just unwound all that forward progress. And it wasn't in one day.

But it was like, then all the habits started coming back. And then it wasn't like I was drinking all day at work or anything. It's not like I got a bottle. Just that one binge drink caught this like domino effect of like, okay, it's okay. Then of course we're having first class for drinking on the plane. And then, and then of course, Hey, I can go for a drink. And it's like, I don't know. I think I gotta be very careful because I do have an addictive personality and I know,

I was just going to say, thanks for sharing that because I think many people will be able to relate to that, giving up something for a period of time, trying to go back to using in moderation and then finding that they very quickly slip back. And then your point about Bre doing it with you, it is so much easier to do these things if we do them with the people we live with, people we love.

Other people are enormous for our ability to co-regulate our consumption, which is why AA works, right? Because we're basically joining a group of other people who have the same goal, which is to abstain. But yeah, doing it with your spouse, partner, just that's so much better. Building those healthy habits together, that's huge, right? In terms of our ability to sustain those positive changes.

Well, listen, I am super jacked. I'm excited. I'm going to go work out. Yeah, don't just call your trainer. You told your trainer you'd be there. I'm going to go. And I look forward to meeting you in person again. I saw you at Joe Polish's event and I was like, Joe, dude, I really would love to have her on the podcast. So I'm glad we made this happen. And I hope you have a wonderful week. And I truly do appreciate it. Yeah, me too. Thanks so much. And say hi to Joe for me.

I will. Thank you. I'll see you soon. Hey there. Thanks for tuning into the podcast today. Before I let you go, I want to let everybody know that Elevate is out and ready to buy. I can share with you how I attracted a winning team of over 700 employees in over 20 states. The insights in this book are powerful and can be applied to any business or organization. It's a real game changer for anyone looking to build and develop a high-performing team like over here at A1 Garage Door Service. So if you want to learn the secrets that helped me transfer my team from stealing the toilet paper

to a group of 700 plus employees rowing in the same direction, head over to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast and grab a copy of the book. Thanks again for listening and we'll catch up with you next time on the podcast.