168 - Dr. Shane Talks ADHD and Addiction (Nicotine, Alcohol, Porn, Drugs)

Dr. Shane Calhoun is back! This was a phenomenal conversation on why ADHD is so common with adults with ADHD. If you are an adult with ADHD who is struggle with addictions, this is a must listen episode! As a former nicotine addict, and a person with all kinds of addictive behaviors, I found this talk with Dr. Shane invaluable! He's the best.

Dr. Shane's Info:
Dr. Shane Calhoun is a Clinical Health Psychologist who specializes in Adult ADHD. He has several masters degrees and graduated with his doctorate from Loma Linda University in 2012. He has been licensed for over a decade and in the last year he left his position as the Training Director at Cal Poly Humboldt to invest in the neuro diverse community through his private practice. He has been guest host on both radio and podcasts helping people the Neurodiverse community advance on their own personal wellness journeys. You can find more information about him on his profile on Psychology Today.

Dr. Shane Links
Dr. Shane's Psychology today Link - use this to reach out to Dr. Shane if you would like to follow up with him, or look into his services.

Our conversation on YouTube. If you want to SEE the conversation as well! :) 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

He's back! The amazing and wise Dr. Shane is back to help all of us ADHDers understand why so many of us seem to have addictions to stuff. What is up with that? Why is that? It's not cool. Dr. Shane is here to help, so let's go. You are listening to ADHD Big Brother, the podcast for adults struggling with their ADHD and comorbid depression symptoms. I'm your host, Russ Jones, author of Destin at the Top, believer that you can actually have a smile in your life despite this diagnosis. So let's make some sense out of this struggle. Let's learn some stuff, let's laugh at some stuff. Ladies and gentlemen, here's some stuff. Welcome to the podcast, guys. So we're having another conversation today. So let's just get into this one uh immediately, right out of the gate. I haven't had a good long discussion about addiction on this podcast yet. And if there's anybody that can clear up the why, the what the hell's going on here, it's Dr. Shane Calhoun. If you're not familiar with Dr. Shane yet, this is his stuff. Check this out, Dr. Shane Calhoun. He is a clinical health psychologist who specializes in adult ADHD. He has several master's degrees and graduated with his doctorate from Loma Linda University in 2012. Guess what? Guy knows some things. He has been licensed for over a decade, and in the last year, he left his position as the training director at Cal Poly Humboldt to invest in the neurodiverse community through his private practice. And God bless him for it. He's amazing. He has been a guest host on both radio and podcasts, helping people in the neurodiverse community advance on their own personal wellness journeys. You can find more information about him on his profile on Psychology Today. The link is in the show notes. Should we just get into this? This is okay. Let's talk about addiction. This is my conversation with Dr. Shane Calhoun already in progress. But there's a lot of people inside the community that are uh that have been talking about addiction. And I come from addiction big time. Um, the uh I was addicted to nicotine for over 20 years. I think like I was I chewed tobacco for so many years. It was awful, and it was very difficult to quit. But I've I had stints where I was smoking weed nonstop for a year. Um, I would go into these alcohol binges. And I know in our community we also have people, and everybody they talk about um addictions to alcohol, addictions to drugs, addictions to porn, which we should cover because that's one of those secret, shameful, quiet ones, right? That nobody wants to people are kind of like they don't really put out to the surface, but it's like it's a big one.

SPEAKER_02 2:55

Yeah, absolutely. And unfortunately, it's accessible to us all the time.

SPEAKER_00 3:00

I yeah, right. It's the the fact that a lot of these things are legal, like nicotine, it's legal. There's not you know, and I even had I had a buddy of mine who uh was addicted to heroin and he he never quit smoking. He was like, it's it I can quit heroin, and that's such a hard like physically it's hard to quit, right? Like you could die. Yeah, but the the nicotine is such a motherfucker.

SPEAKER_02 3:28

Well, absolutely. Nicotine is particularly insidious because um most stimulants, most drugs um have uh some short-term repercussions that protect you against overuse. Like with heroin, you could uh you could overdose. And so it has like very obvious short-term impacts. With nicotine, um you get a lot of the positives up front, and a lot of the negative impacts don't come for much later. And here's one of the biggest problems is like most, like if like coffee, for instance, um, is a stimulant that if you drink, you're gonna get also anxious. So it you are limited in the amount of coffee you can drink. Uh nicotine is a stimulant, but it also decreases stress and anxiety. So it that's why it is one of the most dangerous and addictive uh substances for individuals with ADHD, because it's like the stimulant over here with uh without the the anxiety and the nervousness that that goes up with that. Uh so yeah, nicotine is so dangerous for our community.

SPEAKER_00 4:44

Yeah, the it just saying that I I remember I would if I was low, oh I would be like, I need to have a chew to figure things out and to think about things. If I was high, or like uh high meaning like I was excited, right? If I was in a joyful place, I would need nicotine to celebrate and to have a there was never a wrong time to have a chew, but it's uh it also comes with the shame too, because I remember uh I didn't quit until my kids were a little bit older. When they were younger, I would uh you know I was shameful. I can't everyone thinks I'm not chewing right now. So I would go to the bathroom for 30 minutes and people are like, what's going on with your stomach, dude? Are you taking these 30-minute shits five times a day? What's going on with you? And I'm like, it's such a horrible feeling to be like hiding and be like, I don't get to experience life with my family because I have to go do this thing I don't even want to be doing in the first place.

SPEAKER_02 5:40

Yeah, and that's the the nature of addiction. We use it in a way that detracts from our quality of life, other really meaningful things that we could be doing. Uh and and uh it robs us of really good, meaningful things in our life. You know, it doesn't just make us unhappy, it robs us of our meaning to life. And that's that's really the scary thing about easy dopamine, about those addictive things, is uh is it's not just oh, then there's some short-term repercussions. It's robbing us of the things that makes life worth living for us.

SPEAKER_00 6:18

Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about that specifically with ADHD and why we're all addicted to stuff? Like why it's so easy. It just seems like we're all addicted to stuff. Can you talk a little bit about that?

SPEAKER_02 6:31

Uh so so uh Russell Barkley is one of my you know favorite uh speakers and researchers on the topic of ADHD. And uh I mean, in some of his um work, he'll say things like, it's not if you're addicted, it's what you're addicted to. And and to kind of break that down a little bit, not all of us have diagnosable substance abuse disorder, okay? But that doesn't mean that all of us don't have some way of reaching for easy dopamine, okay? Because what if you were to look at one of the components, one of the things that happens in the brain of somebody with ADHD is we have dopamine dysregulation. Whether the receptors of dopamine are not working or the release of dopamine is too little or too much at times in the wrong places. We have dopamine dysregulation. And our brain knows when it's not getting its dopamine. We walk around in a state of yearning, of itchiness when our dopamine levels aren't functioning the way they need to be functioning. And this is this is a thing that I wish the neurotypical community understood is you know what it's like to walk around in the world. Even before you've ever tried heroin, there is a place for heroin in your brain. Like there is a yearning for something because our brain knows that it is missing something. And uh, and so when people come across something that gives them that easy dopamine, like anything addictive, there's healthy dopamine, we've talked about that, and unhealthy dopamine. Um, healthy dopamine is things like productivity and adventure and and uh having fun with friends and connecting to people. And unhealthy dopamine is anything that has potential for addiction. Your phone, uh gambling, like you said, pornography, uh, substance abuse, anything that is easy dopamine is addictive. Video games, so dangerous for us. Uh and when we find those things, our brain goes, Oh, thank God. I found something to get me back level. And uh, and some sometimes like it has such a profound impact on our nervous system that people say, okay, I have found the meaning of life. It is to maintain this uh this substance, this this feeling. And for a neurotypical person, that would mean, oh, you go up and then you you come back down and you think, okay, well, that was fun, but I won't do that again. For us, it is fixing a problem that our brain knows it has.

SPEAKER_00 9:34

Oh my gosh. So it's like, well, there's two things I want to ask about that. So in one, it's I found meaning in the in the meaningless. It like there's like going around and just going like everything is mundane and nothing is exciting, and then we find this thing that gives us a spark and go, oh, it can be this. And this is what everybody else seems to be doing. So I found my my ride. Yeah. There's that. There's also, is there anything to be said about um escapism or or like I can't handle life? I need something to shut it up for a while. Yeah, that's how I related drinking a lot for myself.

SPEAKER_02 10:17

So uh our brain is constantly looking for balance. Uh, and so when we find something to increase our dopamine levels so that we can feel normal, our brains go, Whoa, you have a lot of dopamine. We gotta balance that out. And so it balances that increase in dopamine with increased stress, increased cortisol, and all other sorts of other stress chemicals. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 10:46

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 10:47

And this is really important to understand because our options are to find a to build into our lifestyle perpetual ways of reducing stress and calming our nervous system, or perpetually increasing dopamine. And there is a limit to the amount of dopamine that is healthy for us, to the point where it gets addictive, where just going to work and doing a good job stops being sufficient to balance out the cortisol that is building up in our system to create balance around that, because we kind of need higher dopamine in order to do the same things as a neurotypical person.

SPEAKER_00 11:26

That is so interesting.

SPEAKER_02 11:28

So we need our breaks. We need, like, so that that what we might call fantastic escapism, reading books and going and having adventures, playing video games. There are things that that uh both decrease our stress levels and increase our dopamine. Although it's dangerous if you are reaching for the things that help you escape, but only increase dopamine. Phones are a really dangerous source of this of dopamine because they're novelty. You know, the last time we we had a discussion about be nice, uh, the be nice skills, body doubling, novelty, intensity, interest, um, all of those. Uh, the phone is absolutely it's shiny, it's fun. It's going to be something where we can always get easy dopamine. But that does not decrease our cortisol. That does not decrease our stress chemicals. We're just increasing our dopamine. So when we have more stress than dopamine, we get an itchy brain, we get a yearning. Then we go to our phones and we escape and we find rebalance. Okay. And then we put down our phone, and immediately or within a very short period of time, our dopamine drops right back down. And now our our stress is even higher. So now we go through and we feel itchy, and what all of that dopamine that we could have used to be productive, to engage with our family, to do all these really good, meaningful things has now just been wasted trying to manage stress.

SPEAKER_00 13:08

Oh my God. This is a lot to take in, and you're kind of choking me up a little bit thinking about some of this stuff. So the the um uh just you choke me up every time we talk, dude. I think it's because you you strike, you hit me, you hit me really close to home. The the the question I I wanted to ask you a question before I forget, but it's it's the I'm I'm imagining I go to work and it's shitty and there's a lot of stress. So, in order for me to balance my stress, I go out back and have a cigarette. I'm balanced. But what I'm not realizing is that when the cigarette is done and the nicotine leaves, the very act of not having another cigarette boosts my stress, and now I have the stress of a withdrawal on top of the stress of work, and now I'm really fucked.

SPEAKER_02 13:59

Yeah.

unknown 14:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 14:00

So just like adding to that, you know, going to work is a us going into a neurotypical environment in most cases.

SPEAKER_00 14:11

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:12

And anytime we have to conform our nervous system to a neurotypical environment and do things like neurotypical people are expected to do, it taxes us more. We have to spend more dopamine uh uh just trying to like engage in the appropriate masking and appear as if we're able to do all the things that a neurotypical person does. Um, and and also as a result of that, we uh are given more cortisol, more stress. And so again, like we are dealing with higher levels of stress chemicals, and our brain feels that, particularly when there's high stress. Um, our brain feels that yearning, feels that itch, and then we want to go and and smoke that cigarette, do that thing to like rebalance.

SPEAKER_00 15:03

Um man, I'm I'm gonna like so that was me, like so um I'm gonna have to edit out the pause. The uh so not too long ago, I was in a depression. And my I so I don't know how that's gonna relate to this, but drinking was one of the things I used, and it just makes everything else worse. But so that to me is like I'm just trying to find some way to have fun, yeah, and and boost that.

SPEAKER_02 15:39

So, so this speaks to a lot of things, right? Uh, because like 90 to 98 percent of us have what's you know, that that rejection sensitivity dysphoria.

SPEAKER_01 15:50

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 15:51

And we've accumulated, uh, you know, we've talked about this in previous podcasts, but like from the age of two to 10, you get 2,000 more criticisms than a neurotypical kid just by nature of trying to fit into neurotypical environments. Um, and and that might be part of why we have this rejection sensitivity dysphoria and and walking around with this constant yearning. And and so uh we go into these social settings and like it's important for us. Like we know that people are a part of what we need for us to function well because people are dopamine. Yeah, remember body doubling and be nice. Being around people is good for us, but it carries a high risk for us because uh we we have that need, a little bit more need and a little bit more sensitivity to what if somebody doesn't like me?

SPEAKER_00 16:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:47

Okay. So we have to like, in order for us to be able to participate and benefit from a social gathering, particularly one that's like novel or new, we don't know the people. Uh, a lot of times we fall onto something to like manage that anxiety and stress so that we can benefit from the good. And alcohol tends to be a lubricant in those situations uh to help us get that um to get that uh the benefits of having fun and connecting with people. Um, but I mean, I don't need to tell you the research shows that you don't really connect with people particularly well when you're intoxicated.

SPEAKER_00 17:28

Right. I'm a lot funner. Yeah. No, just kidding. Well, we think we are.

SPEAKER_01 17:34

We're funner.

SPEAKER_02 17:36

But not that doesn't necessarily really be like a lot of people.

SPEAKER_00 17:38

I'm willing to try to play the banjo. I'm willing to try to play any kind of instrument when I've been drinking. That's what I will say.

SPEAKER_02 17:46

You know, and I want to reflect on something else you said earlier when you paused and you said I get choked up and you do this every time. Yeah. Because when when when our stories are uncovered, unveiled, and they are put to light, and people really understand what it's like for us to have ADHD, it's not just that we are hyperactive, it's not that we are have impulsivity problems, um, that we have a hard time motivating ourselves or finishing projects. It is that we are suffering. And in our attempt to manage this suffering, this imbalance of chemicals, this dopamine dysregulation, the very thing we need to feel that happiness is dysregulated. And in an effort to fix that, it makes us look like crappy people sometimes. We reach for unhealthy coping strategies, and neurotypical people go, Well, see, uh, you know, it serves you right for doing something addictive.

SPEAKER_00 18:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:55

Like it's your fault. Yeah. And so I have a lot of compassion for for people who are suffering, who find something that uh that feels like it could like rebalance their brain, at least in the short run, because sometimes that is so deeply relieving. And uh, but the nature of ADHD is that here's what it boils down to is we have to embrace some degree of suffering in our lives. We have to because we have no choice. But here is here's the light, the silver lining. We get to choose what that suffering is. We get to choose where what to do with that yearning. And let me explain this. Yeah. So you know how we have this teeter-totter, this balance of uh dopamine and stress that's always looking for homeostasis. And we've talked so far about an ever-increasing dopamine that will ever increase the stress. Okay. But what if for short periods we did the opposite of reach for dopamine? What if we did the opposite of novelty and we put ourselves into a state of sensory deprivation or of meditation and we went the other direction? So that is going to create a state of itchiness for us.

SPEAKER_00 20:29

That's why when I tell you, I can feel it when you're saying it. I that itchy that tension, I'm like, I can already feel what that feels like. Awful. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:38

Absolutely. And and I have such a hard time convincing my my clients who are who are struggling with ADHD that meditation could possibly be a good thing because they're like, oh no, I close my eyes and my brain goes nuts. It just, it's fighting tooth and nail to get some sort of stimulation. It'll solve all the world's problems, it'll go to dysphoria, create all sorts of universes to and it'll go to bad memories, good memories. It'll do whatever it can to avoid sensory deprivation because what that is, is high stress, low dopamine. When we stop putting sensory things into us, we are just sitting with just the cortisol, just the dopamine. But here's the cool thing about that when we drop that dopamine, our brain wants to create homeostasis. So it starts washing that cortisol out, it starts putting it away. And yeah, and this is why it's so valuable to create a lifestyle where we choose the kind of suffering. Because if we can sit for three minutes, five minutes, oh my God, in a state of meditation, in what we call weaponized boredom.

SPEAKER_00 22:03

The silent scream of a meditation.

unknown 22:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:07

Can I ask you something about this? Because I remember when uh when I was uh taking Adderall, I had to stop because I was getting anxiety or whatever uh at when I during the come down at the end. But one of the things that I would do uh and just in general, whenever I get high anxiety, is I would go for a walk. And one time I was I timed it as because inevitably at it was around 40 minutes for me or something. At 40 minutes of walking, I chill the fuck out. And I was like, so it maybe it would be shorter if I was running, but I'm not gonna run. But it was like, is that doing what you're saying? That walking was the homeostasis journey? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 22:55

So so uh exercise is another way to decrease your cortisol, to decrease your stress. It also hyper drives your dopamine. So it, you know, when 300 years ago, when uh in Germany, when they were like, hey, I think there's this thing where kids have this difficult time paying attention and they're really hyper, but we found the solution. It's exercise and horses. I don't know why horses, I don't have a horse, I can't speak to that, but but but exercise that is still the thing today that is one of the most valuable parts of our uh of our lifestyle. So we literally, if you're not exercising and you have ADHD, if you're particularly cardiovascular exercise, yeah, um you are setting yourself up for more suffering in the future. And this is again a choice where we get to choose the kind of suffering that we have for ourselves.

SPEAKER_00 23:57

Is this this is the hard goddamn point about ADHD? Is that on paper, I get that, right? I exercise helps. I get that, and it's that we don't have that future reward bullshit. So, like, I don't give a crap about what I do to my body now. I whatever I want, whatever is gonna be good for me, I want to feel the goodness now, and that is why the drugs and the nicotine and all that stuff is brilliant for us, is because it helps now, because none of us give a shit about 10 minutes from now. I can't hold that in my head. Yeah, that is such a pain in the ass for us.

SPEAKER_02 24:37

Yeah. We have to learn to trust our future happiness. We have to learn to trust, and this is hard because the nature of ADHD is time blindness. We are, you know, right here. We're kind of a paradox because we like to create imaginary futures. You know, we we ruminate all day long because when you have that stress and low dopamine, it's like, well, I wonder if this bad thing is gonna happen. I wonder if that bad thing. How would I handle that? And that's what we do. We are just exercising the stress, the stress pathways in our brain all the time. And that's what our brain likes to do when we're high stress and low dopamine. We we it actually feels somewhat validating to ruminate on a dystopic future because that's the chemicals available to us. If if it was reversed and we had high dopamine and low stress, our brain goes, Oh, the future is going to be fantastic. Everything's gonna be okay. And so this is this is another frustrating thing because there are days we wake up and we have that for no apparent reason. We will wake up, we have rhythmic symptomology, which is not something you see a lot of in the research because they want to determine consistency over time, but they don't understand, it's not really built in to know that from day to day our symptoms do vary. And we might wake up and just have plenty of dopamine. And uh and we look around and we say, absolutely, I can take on the world. And we collect all of these, you know, tasks. I'm gonna do this today, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do this, and we create a schedule for ourselves. That's a moment where we can look into the future and we create a future as if every day we're gonna have plenty of dopamine. Okay. And then the next couple of days go by and maybe we wake up and now it's reversed, and we are in task paralysis and brain fog with a bunch of stress chemicals and low dopamine. And we look at our schedule and go, what the hell was I thinking?

SPEAKER_00 26:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:48

And we and and there's no way for us to follow through with our own intentions. And so this hits us in our identity because we tend to have identities built up around failed intentions, and this is so detrimental to us. So we begin to pair productivity and identity, and we begin to see how good we produce with how valuable and lovable we are. And so every time we have a plan B day, one of those days where we wake up and we're high stress and low dopamine, we feel inadequate. We feel I'm less lovable today. How scary would it be? I want to just speak to the neurotypicals out there. How scary would it be if you were to wake up and some days you knew you were valuable, and some days you woke up and you were just like, oh, today I am not valuable. I feel it. Logically, you might know that you're valuable, but the feel is is that you are not.

SPEAKER_00 27:54

Oh my gosh. That that hits hard. It's can I'm stuck on depression because I'm like the we talk about stress and cortisol. What is the one where you wake up and you don't want to get out of bed? Yeah, that's like is that cortisol as well? I don't understand those.

SPEAKER_02 28:10

Yeah, cortisol, stress chemicals, lack of dopamine. So we've got those five antidepressants in our brain that I like to refer to. There's there's it the brain is very complicated, but to kind of simplify it, you know, we've got our dopamine, norepinephrine, endorphin, serotonin, and oxytocin is like the big ones. You can get SSRIs, um, which is um, you know, the serotonin uh agonists and uh uh serotonin reuptake inhibitors keeps more serotonin in your brain. Um, or you have uh norepinephrine agonists, and that uh that's well butrin and and uh antidepressants that way. Um, but yeah, essentially, because you know, uh when when we reach for unhealthy dopamine, when we feel that that dopamine lacking, we start sacrificing these other ways of naturally getting these chemicals, right? So serotonin is connection with people, good food, good sleep. So feeling love, surrounding yourself with people who demonstrate that they love you. And it's kind of hard because we sometimes are surrounded in by people who are might be neurotypical. So we have to mask extra hard to get that, right? And that costs us a lot of dopamine. But for low dopamine, um we will sacrifice those slow-acting chemicals. We will not go out with friends, we will not uh get good sleep, we'll do sleep procrastination. Um, we might not even remember to eat sometimes. And uh, and that's like to watch television and to whatever addiction uh that is keeping you your brain feeling normal for that short period of time, then we start sacrificing all the rest of these. And then a month down the road we find ourselves just unable to get out of bed, depressed.

SPEAKER_01 29:59

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 30:00

And here's the scary thing is that when we're low dopamine, we feel like we deserve addictive behavior. We know addictive behavior is bad, we know staring at our phones isn't good, we know that whatever addiction it is, gambling, uh uh pornography, there's shame in that for us. But we actually, everybody likes to treat themselves the way they feel about themselves. So if you wake up and you're on a plan B day and you feel crappy about yourself, oh my God, why wouldn't you deserve to get this nasty thing happening to you? Why wouldn't you go smoke a cigarette? Why wouldn't you uh look at pornography? Why wouldn't you go gambling? Oh my god, because you deserve that lifestyle.

SPEAKER_00 30:54

Yeah, that's interesting. I I mean I I have to dumb it down and throw curse words in it, but it's like if I wake up and I feel like I'm a piece of shit, I'm gonna do piece of shit things that I think are like pieces to myself. Yeah. Oh, you're a loser, so why don't you just drink it away then?

SPEAKER_02 31:09

You dumb so it actually feels now logically, we know that's not true, but it feels our emotional mind says this is the right thing to do for you.

SPEAKER_00 31:20

Jeez. I have a question now I have to add on top of this.

SPEAKER_02 31:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:25

This is you're you always rattle my cage, dude. The here's an issue that comes up, and and a member of our community actually brought it up as um as uh one of the issues with addiction. Uh, I'm I'm addicted to cigarettes, alcohol, and porn, let's say. And I so I'm gonna quit smoking. Well, then the porn use goes up. I'm gonna quit drinking, well, then I smoke more. So I'm reading that now based on what you're saying, as well, you you have these three things that were giving you dopamine. If you lowered one, you have to raise some other one. Yeah, what's the fix then on such a deep, loaded bunch of like addictive behaviors?

SPEAKER_02 32:08

So, so let me ask this question in response. Okay, why does going cold turkey work for some people? Why is just stopping all things immediately, how do they do that? Because some people can kind of wean off, but others are like, nope, it is all or nothing. I have to why why the all or nothing?

SPEAKER_00 32:31

Yeah, I I mean I can speak to that from nicotine only because I I can't really moderate. I'm either binging and hardcore or I have to stop. And I know there's a a gentleman in our community that weaned off of chewing tobacco. He felt he he trailed off. I never was successful at that. Um, because I I don't know, maybe if my head wasn't in the right way, but when I quit nicotine, I had to be like boom and suffer. But I also leaned into that, like so.

SPEAKER_02 33:03

Yeah, you're kind of speaking to this.

SPEAKER_00 33:05

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 33:07

It is it is essentially embracing that you are going to suffer. Yeah. Cold turkey is this is gonna be terrible, and I'm in it. And you know what? Uh, that intensity helps us. We thrive off of intensity. It's after things level out for that person later on, and things are stable and monotonous, that they start getting itchy again. That they're like, and that's when that person uh goes back to their to their bad habits. We thrive off of intensity. If if but the cool thing about going to a cold turkey is that you know it's temporary. Yeah, you have some control over, yeah, for two weeks, for one week, for a month, for a few days, I am going to be miserable, and that's okay. And you gear yourself up, you prepare yourself for that, you open yourself to that misery. So, so if we were to look at weaning off, it is, yeah, I'll be a little uncomfortable, but not too uncomfortable. And and so you're still allowing yourself to say, okay, maybe I can have a little bit. What degree of tolerance do I have today? And some days you might not have the tolerance for a little discomfort, right? There isn't the intensity to balance that out, and so you're not able to scale back quite as easily as if you went cold turkey. So, so the solution here again is look, if you're gonna go off of something, embracing that discomfort. So if you have three things and you stop doing one, your brain is gonna still know that you need dopamine. You still need dopamine. Sure, you're gonna go to the other, you're gonna find it somewhere. But if you say to yourself, okay, if I start doing sensory deprivation, if I actually for a few days really limit the amount of uh of dopamine that my brain is getting, we call this dopamine fasting. Uh, if I dopamine fast for a short period of time, then uh when I'm walking around in my daily life, what used to feel like monotony is gonna be kind of nice. The air, I'm gonna notice the feel of the wind on my face a little bit more. I'm gonna notice that warm sunshine, I'm gonna smell the petricore of the rain a little bit. You're gonna be more attuned and grateful for the things that are just maybe a little nice. And that's gonna have a greater impact on your nervous system, and you're gonna be able to find joy in those things again.

unknown 35:57

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 35:58

Okay. So they did, they they started some of this research with um with billionaires, with real with millionaires and billionaires, where they would be out on their yachts and and they'd be eating like the best food and having all these great adventures. And eventually their their stress chemicals balance out and they find homeostasis around all this great stuff going on. And for them, it's like meh, beautiful models, meh, uh uh caviar, but you know, like my yacht, it's boring. I need a bigger yacht.

SPEAKER_00 36:31

And then does this end with one of them getting eaten by a shark? Is there a habit?

SPEAKER_02 36:36

No, no, okay. So, what happens is uh if they find that if they go and they just lock themselves, this is this is kind of like you know, with us, we just go to work and and we're like, wow, you know, we we have a miserable day, you know. But but they would do something like lock themselves into a dark room or go to a yoga retreat or something like that, where they would meditate or do sensory deprivation for um a few days, and then they would come out and they'll be like, Oh my yacht! Oh, beautiful, and and they'd just be all everything is great again. They they found their gratitude. Wow, yeah, that's great. So, what they're doing is they're dropping their dopamine, dropping their homeostasis back down here, and then they can enjoy their things again and they can be grateful for the things they have. Now, uh that's a tough one, though. Having addictions is like kind of like that that high dopamine. Yeah. Like that, and that's why, you know, after a vacation, you know, we tend to have like arguments with our family or stress, you know, trying to get back into the swing of things takes us a while to recover because all that fun novelty and dopamine, it's good for us. We need that in our lives. Um, but also we have to expect that, you know, when we come home from that, that we're gonna have this period of like, oh gosh, that recovery, you know.

SPEAKER_00 38:03

That's so interesting too, because then I I would remember uh on I would go on a vacation and I wouldn't really miss nicotine if I didn't have nicotine with me because everything was new and fun and novel and exciting. And I feel like maybe I my stress was low and my dopamine was high. Yeah. Um, it's really fascinating to think of it in terms I I'm always a fan of simplicity. And I, you know, I we talked about previously my my my aversion to talking about chemicals, you know, because I couldn't really grasp them. But I'm attaching a kind of a concept to them now, which makes it easier. A cortisol stress, dopamine joy, level them out equals homeostasis. It's very it's like a simple math problem.

SPEAKER_02 38:49

Yes, but it is still very complicated because we wake up from day to day, it's it's a moving target, right? Yeah, because our symptoms are rhythmic, and like you might do everything right. And the nature of ADHD is we'll wake up and go plan B day today. Yeah, like I I I've been exercising. I even did what that that guy on the podcast said, and I did dopamine fasting, and I did, and it didn't work. And and and he's a liar, yeah. That's a bunch of BS. And and so you have to stop and recognize that it's it's one of those days. We're gonna have those days, and they're unpredictable sometimes. Sometimes we can predict them and we can exercise and do things to have fewer of those plan B days, but we're gonna have them. That is the nature of our suffering. Is one, we have to be aware that it is kind of random in nature, and we can do everything right and wake up with that sense of yearning, that sense of itch.

SPEAKER_00 39:59

Man, I'm I I'm remembering a lot of things in my past, and even now, where if I do something, and I used to think, oh, maybe do I have OCD tendencies or something. I I I you try to find this the why, the why of these things. But like I one time I was at work, uh I mean, we're talking in my 20s, and uh I went to lunch at this place called Quickies, and I got a Philly cheesesteak with fries, and I had a soda with those crushed ice, and it was the greatest thing I've ever had in my life. And that became my lunch every single day. Screw my budget, but it was I I found the joy, and that I never attributed it to anything like that. It was just like, this is now what I do for lunch. Is that there's so many things in life that are like that for me where I go, I found it, and now that's all that I am.

SPEAKER_02 40:54

So, so we we we don't have to look at every addiction as being maladaptive or problematic, right? Okay. Look, we need novelty in our life. Like, absolutely we need novelty. We need people, we need exercise. There are a lot of people out there that are addicted to exercise, and maybe that's that we get to choose what we're addicted to, right? And we can make what we're addicted to healthy dopamine, or we can make it unhealthy dopamine. I I relate to your experience. I got lost in uh in the woods once, and I was really scared that I was going to dehydrate or or starve. I was just terrified. And I can remember finally finding my way out and uh and making my way to a restaurant that that uh was on this road that I that I ended up on and ordering this sandwich. And and that sandwich was the best sandwich I ever had in my entire life. No sandwich will ever compare to that sandwich. And I tell you, Russ, I went back to that place as as often as I could because that sandwich held a uh just this incredible place in my mind and heart. And so we can ascribe value to things, like we can make something like there was nothing inherently addictive about that particular sandwich, but because of that suffering and that stress that I went through, and then I got done with that, and the relief that I found over something like a sandwich.

SPEAKER_00 42:40

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:41

Was that better than any drug you could possibly give me at that moment? That sandwich was, and absolutely let me get addicted to that sandwich.

SPEAKER_00 42:53

Yeah, okay. So these are things that happened to us, right? So you didn't say to yourself, I'm going to be addicted to this sandwich, or I didn't say to myself, I'm going to be I I didn't choose to fall in love with that cheesesteak. Is there a methodology or something? Because we can't in my in my experience, I can't force myself to like exercise. It sucks. Start to finish, I don't enjoy it. There are times when over time it becomes routine and I'm I'm cool with it, but I don't know that it would ever have survival sandwich level of, you know?

SPEAKER_02 43:34

Well, you can fall in love with having had exercised. But that's anger. That's the so this is part of it is we have to build into our nervous system the love of suffering.

SPEAKER_00 43:53

Oh man. We are now Buddhists. We suffer. The love truly. Truly Buddhist.

SPEAKER_02 44:01

So here's the cool thing is they uh have this amazing ability to encounter suffering and be non-reactive to that and be open to it. And because they have practiced through the art of meditation, they have practiced being open to discomfort and embracing that as a way to balance. That's the whole like focus of Zen Buddhism is to create that that balance, right? And if you can embrace the suffering that allows you for potential of joy, so that something like a sandwich is better than the heroine, better than the pornography. So if we can do that, if we can create a life where we choose the suffering and don't just let the suffering happen to us, because suffering is gonna happen. It is, but if we can choose the suffering, then we can cut out unnecessary suffering.

SPEAKER_00 45:09

Man, you know, I'm gonna swing this back to the power of community right now because I I feel like we should do these. Uh in the community, we should be doing these um group meditations because a lot I I've been meditating for like 20 years. I get it, I love it. It's um when I can consistently do it. I remember who I was at the start of it. It was like, really, this for 20 minutes, and you want to peel your face off, and I but it's so getting doing things in a group is so much easier or doing things with other people, right? The body doubling, right?

SPEAKER_02 45:47

That yes, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 45:49

I feel like we could do this, we could get on the other end of some things by in a group. Um I don't know, I'm just spitballing now, I'm thinking out loud. The um I I'm I'm all in on that.

SPEAKER_02 46:01

So so what you're saying is really important, actually, because it addresses two things. One, yes, body doubling improves our likelihood to continue with uh a dedication towards a goal. Okay. Absolutely. That's great. Keeps us motivated, keeps us stimulated. And and people have the great uh addition of being anxiety reducers in addition to stimulants. So it's kind of like nicotine, except not addictive, you know, it's uh it increases your focus, that dopamine in your body, and decreases the cortisol. So that's actually a really good thing, okay? But the second thing that community does for us, and maybe is arguably the more important of the two, is that we can hear each other's stories, see each other's suffering, relate to them, and destigmatize those. When we can say, look, we get it, we get it. We understand that perpetual yearning, that confusion, the feeling of helplessness when we wake up and our brain is is feeling that that need and we feel hopeless, and uh we end up doing something that's self-destructive. Um, and other people can go, yeah, we get that, we get that. It takes the stigma away, it takes the shame away, and shame prevents us from being able to honor our true selves. Oh my god. And knowing our true selves and being able to live according to our values and see us for our values and not our bad behaviors is the key to shifting our identity to see ourselves as people who deserve healthy dopamine.

unknown 47:39

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 47:39

That deserves good things. And that identity shift in the context of our community by destigmatizing is absolutely vital to being able to elevate ourselves to that next level.

SPEAKER_00 47:55

Wow, that is a profound way to view that. That's awesome. I think I I'm I'm looking back at um when I built the ADHD Brother community, it was initially modeled after the quit group when I was quitting nicotine. And that feeling of I'm quitting at the same time you're quitting, we're both in hell together. I can share my misery, and another person is having that similar misery, and it feels less, it feels more. Um, I don't know, the there's a camaraderie in the in the pain. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Made it so much easier to be that than to be like, I'm quitting on my own, I uh I can't do it on my own. That kind of a vibe.

SPEAKER_02 48:43

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's why counseling is so like important. Like if you took a list of questions that a counselor might ask and put them on a computer and have the person just answer them on paper, it's not it's helpful, but it's not going to allow them to face their pain the same way as if a person was in the room with them. Because having another person, uh having what we call mirror neurons with you, you their brain is recreating the suffering in your brain. That's what mirror neurons do. They look at you and they recreate a version of that in their own brain, and they are imparting their own calmness so that we are less reactive to our stress when we're talking about stressful things and we don't feel alone in our pain. And not feeling alone in our pain and suffering allows us the ability to move through our suffering, to move past it, to recognize that it is not all-encompassing, that we can be, we can rise above it. Oh, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 49:51

Can I can I ask you something as like I do want to touch on porn because like everybody can talk about nicotine. We all know nicotine, we all know drugs, alcohol, and stuff. Porn is this quiet, shameful addiction. So say uh, I'm coming to you, uh, you're my counselor, and I'm addicted to porn. I masturbate, I don't know, seven times a day. I don't know what what it would be for to be considered an addiction. Uh, I would imagine it's just the quality of life is diminished or something. I'm coming to you. What are the things that I need to be thinking about or that or or what what might I do?

SPEAKER_02 50:27

So, first off, education about why it's so bad is really important because our society uh in in an effort to create you know uh social justice and and to destigmatize you know the the human body and to be able to uh to to make the human body not something shameful, uh in there we've slipped this subtle message that maybe porn isn't that big of a deal. Um, but it is absolutely a big deal. Okay. Because, first off, it's extremely unrealistic to the um the actual sexual act. There true good sexual behavior is toying with vulnerability. Vulnerability and power is in the act of being naked with another person. There is vulnerability in that, and with that vulnerability comes intimacy. Pornography, there is no vulnerability. It is it is taking away all vulnerability, and so it feels safe. Um, and if uh you're doing it, if you're using it regularly, uh something called what we call edging is occurring. Edging is uh next time that same image has left less of an impact, less novelty on your nervous system. So you have to get something a little bit more precise in order to get the same sexual gratification. And so if you're having uh if you're masturbating every single day and you're subjecting yourself to pornography every single day, uh you are moving and moving and moving and moving your marker of what uh an arousing sexual experience is going to be to the point where you are no longer uh able to have a normal sexual experience without imagining something very precise and specific to, and so you're not really making love with that person anymore.

SPEAKER_01 52:31

Right.

SPEAKER_02 52:32

And it strips again the the vulnerability and it creates all sorts of sexual dysfunction. So uh edging is so dangerous for us. Uh, and so it it really does, and and of course, a lot of times if the there is an expectation of monogamy, um, a lot of times our our partners uh feel like um you know uh uh betrayed if the other person is using pornography. So there's a lot of things, there are a lot of levels that make this feeling shameful and that impacts our dignity. When we act discordantly with what we know is good for us, we we say, I am that person, I am that bad person. And that impacts the way we see ourselves. And when you feel bad about yourself, you're not less likely to engage in bad behavior, you're more likely to engage in bad behavior. So you just go into a bin.

SPEAKER_00 53:33

Yeah, that's like what you said earlier to be like, you're gonna feed the behavior that you feel you are.

SPEAKER_02 53:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 53:38

Oh my God.

SPEAKER_02 53:39

So, so what do we do about pornography is the question. So, uh, first off, you gotta be careful about uh subjecting yourself to more and more extreme material. I mean, this is an area where if you can just get rid of your phone, or sometimes body doubling is really important. So having an accountability partner or uh, you know, deleting any apps or limiting your access to that material, all of that is really uh helpful in the process. Um so uh, you know, we can we can, you know, with the balance of you know dopamine versus stress chemicals, we can move backwards to some degree from the uh from the edging and the damage that we do with pornography. Um, not entirely, but we can do that some. And so being willing to experience that discomfort and maybe like using more at first, if you have a really bad uh uh addiction, a lot of times you um the goal is to not masturbate every day, not subject yourself to uh any material um uh on a daily basis. So uh two or three days, uh they say that the best sexual experience occurs once every four days, three or four days. That's not with everybody, but uh but the the most gratifying uh and the most pleasure happens uh you know if you can hold off for four days.

SPEAKER_00 55:20

Oh, with being absent for four days and then on her.

SPEAKER_02 55:24

So then if you subject yourself to more vanilla, what we would consider vanilla uh imagery in your mind, and not using uh a pornography or using something like just a single image that is not uh particularly explicit, what you're doing is you're still getting that strong gratification, but your mind goes, oh, the less extreme stuff actually is just as good. So your nervous system doesn't know that it's just a sandwich, right? Like, oh, because you know, when I was starving in in the in the in the wilderness and I the woods of the northwest, my brain was like, This is the best food in the entire world. There's no sandwich that could possibly better be better than this sandwich. So that's what you're doing. You're you're creating the the desire for healthy sex acts, not the more extreme sex acts that pornography uh uh will inevitably lead you to.

SPEAKER_00 56:30

Okay. I'm gonna ask some dumb questions maybe. No, there's no dumb questions here. The um what if I'm gonna just say, okay, I'm gonna uh I'm gonna masturbate every day because I get horny every day. Um and but I do it without pornography. Anything to that or no?

SPEAKER_02 56:47

So uh that's absolutely like that's so so you're scaling back.

SPEAKER_00 56:55

You're you're nothing wrong with the masturbation. It's what I'm using, uh it's what I'm using. That's basically the gist of it, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 57:04

So I I want to acknowledge that there are a lot of different views on masturbation that uh like even like different religions have different perspectives, sometimes even uh just having uh uh impure thoughts uh is wrong, you know? And some people are like, well, masturbation's okay, or just looking at a picture is okay, but video, so that everybody's got this idea of what is healthy, unhealthy, right or wrong. And that has actually really impacted a lot of the research that's been done on the use of pornography and masturbation. Um, so to be honest, I can't speak to what is right for you, what falls within your value system.

SPEAKER_00 57:48

I get you. You could say it's not medicinally or you nothing bad is gonna happen to your body physically from the act. It's you just can't speak to the um, is it a behavior that's going to be um beneficial or beneficial or not beneficial?

SPEAKER_02 58:04

Yeah, so okay, everything can be harmful or helpful in in some way. Yeah, I mean, even let's even take heroin. Let's say if you're everybody'd be like, oh, heroin's wrong. Absolutely. What if you were dying of cancer and you had 10 days to live? You know, like what if heroin was like a that maybe that's an appropriate use of hero? I don't know. I don't know everybody's experience. Every single coping strategy that I have ever said has a good version and a misused version, where it is used to the detriment of the person. And it is up to us all to know what is going to be helpful and what is in line with our values or not.

SPEAKER_00 58:43

God, so that seems really like the work to be done here. Is uh I I take the all this information and I'm like, okay, so now all of us in the ADHD community, what are we gonna get from this? And I'm I'm like, it really I'm gonna summarize for myself what I've learned here is to take a look at the the activities of my life and the behaviors of my life and maybe reflect on the times when I've uh I chose to drink or when I chose to do uh drugs or when I chose to um um you know binge eat or just like uh get away from my moment and look at what what was going on in that time and to start thinking about ways to lower stress. So really dig into some stress management that would work for me. I know meditation works for me, I just have to do it, so I need to use my ADHD tools to set my time and be like, okay, I'm gonna schedule meditation for this time, and then what are my dopamine, healthy dopamine uh boosters? Yeah, which is gonna be exercise, yeah, which sucks, Dr. Shane.

SPEAKER_02 59:59

Consider this also. Okay, when we reach for the healthy dopamine, we have the ability to invest in our long-term antidepressants and our long-term antidepressants make it so we have less need for the unhealthy dopamine. So if we have good serotonin, oxytocin, endorphins, and norepinephrine, which are all slower-acting um antidepressants and stimulants in our brain, uh then we have this like little things have a greater impact on us. Stress doesn't uh it is it's canceled out easier. We don't react as intensely to the same kinds of stressors. So by investing in healthy dopamine, we are investing in these other things and we can attend to these better. So, yes, if we do the good thing now, it's yes, it's suffering and we embrace that suffering, but later on it becomes easier and easier and easier, even months down the road.

unknown 1:01:06

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:07

I'm I can't use the word embrace. I can I say accept because I don't embrace this misery. I we've lived so long with misery. I don't want to hug it. I don't want to hug my suffering, but uh but I'll take the Buddhist approach and I'll accept that it's there and that there is a way out of it.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:26

So here's the thing is you know, if you talk to the marathon runners out there, yeah, uh they don't see the running as suffering. They it's just part of their routine, that's just something that they do. If you said, wow, a lot of suffering today to run that long, and they'd be like, Well, I just you know what I do, you know. It's like it doesn't register as suffering. When we embrace suffering and we learn to accept it as a platform for the good things to come on, now it stops being registered as suffering.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:06

I'm putting this to the test. This is gonna be put to the test, sir.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:12

And of course, there again, the plan A days and the plan B days, there's gonna be days we wake up and we are just deeply reactive to the things that are stressful to us and suffering. Uh, and there are days not so much. So we are gonna, and that's the big thing with us is we are moving targets. We're not like we don't have stable nervous systems like like those neurotypicals out there, normies out there.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:38

Must be nice. Oh my god. Well, thank you for doing this. I I really appreciate every time you come out and you always enlighten like big time. Um, I'm gonna, I think it would be cool to put the the webinar that you did for those be nice skills. So I'll put those in the public space uh for the week that this gets released. So whenever people are hearing this, that will be also there because you mentioned the be nice skills, and that was such a profound workshop that you did for us, and I appreciate that. And then I'll have the all the links to how people can connect with you and if they have questions for you directly.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:17

Okay, okay, and as long as those individuals who are vulnerable in that workshop are comfortable with that because they were so vulnerable and there's so many amazing, you know, stories and and questions, and we want to honor that. Um, as long as they feel like you know that can be a gift to the larger public. Um, I would be in support of that.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:38

Okay, awesome. I can't thank you enough, man. It's just talking to you every time. Uh it boosts me up, makes me feel like hey, there's hope for all this stuff. So I really appreciate you. Big time.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:50

Yeah. And I appreciate you and everything you're doing here. Um our community is better because of you. Oh, thanks, man. I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:03

See, oh my gosh, how lucky are we that we get to talk to Dr. Shane? And we actually have it on video as well. So if you want to watch the video of our conversation, the link to that YouTube video will be in the show notes as well. Man, this guy is phenomenal. So helpful. And if you're interested in reaching out to Dr. Shane, click on that psychology today link in the show notes and you'll be able to reach out to him. And with that, let us all choose our own suffering. Oh my God. You know what? That'd be a great challenge for this week. I'll run that in the community. So, you're like, okay, you guys want to do a suffering challenge? Like, let's say for this coming week, um, oh, it's Thanksgiving week. Okay. Um, I'm gonna make a go of it for 10 minutes of meditating every day. That's gonna be the suffering that I choose. I'm gonna make a go of 10 minutes of meditating uh while the kids and I are in Arizona visiting the grandparents. Uh, what kind of suffering are you gonna order for yourself? Oh my god, what are we gonna do? What kind of suffering are we gonna serve up for ourselves? If you guys want to take on that challenge, uh let me know. Send me an email, let me know what you do. And for you community members, uh, post it in the early release comment section or just throw it in the daily accountability section. How are you going to suffer today? What is the suffering that you're choosing? We're gonna put the fun back in suffering. Let's do it together. Um, alrighty, and with that, I hope you guys have a fantastic week. And I will talk to you later.