[00:00:02] Speaker A: Welcome to the Alcohol Tipping Point podcast. I'm your host, Deb Maisner. I'm a registered nurse, health coach, and alcohol free badass. I have found that there's more than one way to address drinking. If you've ever asked yourself if drinking is taking more than it's giving, or if you found that you're drinking more than usual, you may have reached your own alcohol Tipping point. The Alcohol Tipping Point is a podcast for you to find tips, tools and thoughts to change your drinking. Whether you're ready to quit forever or a week, the this is the place for you. You are not stuck and you can change. Let's get started.
Welcome back to the podcast. Thank you so much for listening. I really appreciate you. I want to take a sec to invite you to the next Alcohol a Day. It's a monthly dry group where I help people practice not drinking. This is for you if you feel like you're struggling, if you feel like you're stuck, if you feel like you're broken, you're never going to get it. I want to just support you and arm you with lots of different tools to battle cravings.
Work on your thinking about drinking. Be more kind and compassionate to yourself as you're doing this. You know drinking is a habit and it's probably something you've done for years or decades. Even so it takes a while to unwind it. And that's why I'm so, so passionate about focusing on practicing not drinking. Working on progress, not perfection. I love the saying focus on the direction, not perfection. And I think it's important just to have these types of groups programs that just give you a safe place that has no shame, no judgment. A safe place where you can just learn new tools and just start unwinding the habit so that it gets easier and easier for you to drink less or not at all. I would, I would love to have you join the next Alcohol a Day. It starts the first of every month. As a podcast listener, you always get 20% off by using the code LOVE L O V E and it is hosted on a private platform. It's really important to me as a nurse just to have privacy in a safe place for you. And what you get is daily emails, lessons, accountability. You get lots and lots of tools to battle cravings. We also do weekly group chats, weekly group support calls led by me and another sober coach, twice a week. And then there's also a private chat where you can just share with others, support others, and it's just a great place to practice. Not Drinking. I would love to see you in the next group. You can Sign
[email protected] Alcoholiday and join there. I also also will link it in my show notes. Wherever you are with your drinking journey, just know that I am rooting for you, that you are not broken and you can change. Thanks so much.
[00:03:17] Speaker B: Welcome to the Alcohol Tipping Point podcast today. Today on the show I have Ben Wa Kim, a US army veteran, Penn educated, former policymaker turned psychotherapist and host of Discover More, an Apple Podcast Top 100 podcast. Benoit has personal experience healing his trauma through psychedelic assisted therapy and he quit alcohol four years ago. So that is awesome. Welcome to the show, Benoit.
[00:03:46] Speaker C: Thank you. Thank you for having me on. Very excited and happy Friday to you and everyone.
[00:03:51] Speaker B: Yes, yes. Well, where are we finding you now? Where in the world is Ben Joachim?
[00:03:58] Speaker C: I am in the notorious city of palm trees and traffic, aka Los Angeles, where we pay 30% more cost of living for the sun tax, even though it's been pretty groomy lately. But I am reporting from Los Angeles.
[00:04:13] Speaker B: Okay. Awesome. Yeah. Well, I would just love to kind of. Well, first I want to ask because you've, for someone who looks so young, I'm just assuming you're younger, like you have done a lot in your life and, and have had like this big pivot change. So can you just kind of share a little bit more about who you are and what you do, what you're doing.
[00:04:36] Speaker C: Now I am teetering towards my mid-30s, but I do look young, shout out to my parents for their genetics and I, I hear that often a lot of my guests and people I interact with are in their 40s and 50s. That's the chapters of life I'm in, frankly, as a business owner, as a full time psychotherapist. And I kind of want to start with one of my favorite quote in business, I think a lot of us, we underestimate what we could achieve in a year and we overestimate what we could deliver in one week.
And because of my policy background, I've always had this, I guess preference or enjoyment with systems thinking. And I think I've always been good at looking ahead of the normative culture or whatever the system or status quo might be. And if you're really being intentional and I'm sure you resonate with this stuff, you can achieve a lot of things in years. So I've been on this journey of personal growth, personal development. I picked up my first self help book when I was 13 and I'm a pretty Ferocious reader Like the back. The books on my back are just for my guests. In the last three months alone, so I read about two, three, four books every month for guests, plus my personal enjoyment. So I think I'm very intentional because of my numerous near death experiences, my military backgrounds, a lot of my trauma with car accidents. And when you get away with such profound and truly near death experience, it's hard to live your life very reactively. It's hard to live my life through this passive lens that most people do. It's not to anyone's fault since all of us have different timelines and limitations with self awareness due to the privileges or the circumstances of our lives. And for me, I'm very privileged to be alive after those near death experiences and I wanted to take away and implement the insights since I think a lot of us are good at collecting information, podcasting like yours, very helpful. But so many of us are stuck in this knowledge, you know, obtainment, this knowledge bank stage and we don't really get to the implementations of the knowledge we learned and we don't really live with the insights we gain. And for me, I was able to do that. So I've lived quite a few lifetimes.
[00:06:49] Speaker B: I like to say, yeah, yeah, and I'm sure there'll be even more. Okay, so since this is a podcast about people and their drinking and their relationship with alcohol, can you share what your experience has been and start wherever you want? I just like to hear how people grew up, what their culture was like with their family, their community and then your own tipping point.
[00:07:17] Speaker C: I think it's interesting for me and that's why I wanted to start today's conversation with a macro perspective of where I came from, my multicultural backgrounds. Because substances like cannabis is not legal anywhere else outside of the United States, Canada and a few collective countries. And it's very taboo in Korea, in Singapore, in China, if you get a call with cannabis, the severity goes up to death penalties is very, very serious because of the stigma or unaddressed stigma from the past. So alcohol is the only normative substance that most people have access to. And I like to say with alcohol, and this is the reason why I wanted to be on your show, because being sober is one of the greatest gifts I was able to give to myself.
And when we normalize the abnormal phenomena of drinking, it becomes a problem. And I think for a lot of men, we don't really see drinking as a problem.
Think about the celebrations or the implications of drinking. You can drink when you're sad. So Funeral people drink. You drink when you got a promotion. So you drink when you're happy. When you're upset or angry, you drink.
So we've somehow permeated every facets and fabric of our society with drinking. And no one that's an eye. And in fact, I'm sure you might have experiences yourself. When I first got sober, people ostracized me and made me feel crazy. Oh, Ben, while you're anti fun now, you don't drink anymore. Oh, man, you've changed. Why are you like this? You used to be such a fun person that what are they implying is, oh, you can't have fun and live a full the living, intentional, vibrant life with alcohol. So I think it's very interesting because I think quitting or drinking is a cultural issue. And sobriety is hard. Quitting drinking is hard because you're not just quitting the substance, you're quitting the rituals and the social implications around the substance.
And that's the reason why sobriety work is hard, whether it's alcohol or substances or cigarettes or anything in between. So, yeah, I grew up in my multicultural container where alcohol is everywhere and no one really thought twice about it. So we don't know what we don't know. But then you realize, oh, when we drink, we think it's to pursue happiness because we feel happy when we drink. But of course, alcohol is a depressant. And I like to tell my clients and also myself, does drinking or using any substance to numb yourself, do you really feel happy or are you just feeling the pleasure by numbing or forgetting where you're trying to run away from? And if you really think twice, you're like, hold up, you're right. It doesn't make you happy. It is pleasurable. And it does make you forget the pain. With the pain pleasure principle, we run faster away from pain than running towards pleasure. So I think it really speaks to for me, on a macro level, as a former policymaker, I think the abnormalizations or the normalizations of abnormal drinking, it's a symptom of a bigger problem, which is the issues, the pain, the suffering, the inequities, and whatever pain we're all trying to run away from.
[00:10:32] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Thank you for the big picture. And then how about you personally, like, did you grow up in California? Was drinking around when you were growing up? Can you just share more about your personal experience with drinking?
[00:10:47] Speaker C: So for me, it's an interesting story because my family didn't really drink. I grew up with a single mother in households and of course, very, very stressful. But she never really drank because she had to be a businesswoman for me and my younger sister. So she didn't really have the capacity to drink because she needed all of herself to survive, you know, as a woman in the workforce, especially in a more paternalistic societies like Asia, way more sexist, way more paternalistic than the United States is because of the old school or, you know, Asian mindset. So I don't really.
[00:11:20] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, sorry, Benoit. I just wanted. So did you grow up in the United States or this was in Asia?
[00:11:27] Speaker C: It was both, because I didn't come to the United States until I was 15.
[00:11:31] Speaker B: Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. And where were you at with your mom and sister growing up?
[00:11:38] Speaker C: It was both Korea, China and then the United States.
[00:11:41] Speaker B: Okay, got it.
[00:11:42] Speaker C: But it's relevant because the drinking age is 19 in Korea, for example. But then most people drink, if you go to 7 11, they don't really card you because again, it's very normalized and people don't really think twice about it. So I didn't have any personal exposure to drinking, but that was a problem for me. This is why I'm building the stage. Because I didn't have any healthy role models or primed exposure to drinking when I was young. So when I came to the United States and I got exposed to this binge drinking culture, because in Korea, in China, the cultures I'm familiar with, we drink with food. Drinking is not the main intentions or the avenue. Drinking is an add on. When we're having food, when we're catching up with friends, we happen to drink. Whereas in America we cater and we design everything around drinking. You go, you're going to see Beyonce or Taylor Swift, cool. But drinking is the main center. They think it's for Taylor Swift, but you're going there to drink. And Taylor Swift happens to be the performer for that weekend. I suppose. So. I drink heavily in the college setting. But again, it's normalized. Everybody drinks, so why would you think twice about it? But that became a problem. I became a very, very high functioning alcoholic. I would drink all the time because I was afraid of being by myself. And drinking was a perfect avenue. I'm very extroverted. All my friends drank. I was in different social groups, so every avenues and vehicles I was with, I was able to be permissed to drink and no one thought twice about it. And then it wasn't a problem until it became a problem. And I'm sure we'll go into the catalyst of why I started Drinking four years ago and how life changing that was. And it truly has been life changing for me.
[00:13:28] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. Well, keep going with your story.
[00:13:32] Speaker C: So I think a lot of us, we sort of need this forced speed bumps. I'm a very metaphorical thinker. What I mean by that is we have these events happen. Sometimes it's big, sometimes it's small, sometimes it's catastrophic. Hopefully not. But I think life has a way of slowing us down through speed bumps because not all of us have the self awareness or cultivated practices or social support to slow us down, to check us. So for me, I had a lot of these speed bumps, but I want to share a very, very, I guess, close story to my heart. It's very endearing to me. It was very traumatic at the time, but now it has really helped me with a lot of insights. And I am who I am today because of this situation.
So I've had a lot of commitment issues growing up. You know, single child, single mother, family, household. I never saw any references or success stories with love. So I never really believed in love because I never saw it simple as that. Because all of the adults, we are children who grow older. That's what adults are.
So I met my current wife and we've been together for five years. And if you look at my timeline of drinking and quitting drinking, it's coincided with my relationship with her because she was a huge inspiration to that. So I'm never physically violent, never been, never will be. But I was verbally and emotionally violent. I'm very articulate. I can flush out my thoughts in a very organized manner. And that's a strength. That's why. That's one of the reasons why my wife Becky fell in love with me. But as you might know, our strength can turn very ugly and turn into weakness during conflict or during arguments. So I would say very hurtful things to Katrina, hurt her, because, you know, that's what anger does. But when you're sober, it's fine. Because if you're self aware, you have these cultivated practices, you can kind of slow down metaphorically. You see the train leaving the train station and you know the house is about to burn down. So you're like, whoa, this is not good. Let's deescalate if you're sober. So you create. Let's time out for five minutes, let's leave the space. And we'll come back when we're less emotionally charged because you don't want to say things that hurt each other, especially your loved ones, like your intimate partner. But when you're under the influence, there is no coming back, there's no reeling back. Your willpower, your self regulation, your self control goes down. Of course that's what alcohol does. And I've made one too many mistakes. When I was drunk, I said very hurtful things to her. My wife and I want to bring this back to before we came to the city of Palm Trees, Los Angeles. We were in Philadelphia.
She's a physician and as you might know, medicine matching process, very, very inflexible. After med school he goes to wherever the residency program you get into hyper competitive process, you just go. There is no negotiation, you just do what they're told. It's just a national process. And I was going through my career pivot, from policymaking to clinical psychology and therapy, which is what I'm doing now. So I was a lot more flexible versus her. So I was leaving my career and leaving the city that I loved, Philadelphia for her.
A week after we signed our lease in LA from Los Angeles or in LA from Philadelphia, a month before we were going to move across the country, me for her and with her, she actually broke up with me. We had a send off party hosted by my friends to send us off. The party was amazing. Of course that's. This is the story of alcohol. Everything always starts off great until it doesn't. So just like micro. The party started amazing, but then triggers happen, emotionality things happen. And we got into an argument and this was the one time that she said, benoit, you don't deserve me.
I have self respect for myself, which I, you know, shout out to her for having self respect. I think a lot of us need a little bit more of that, right? And she's like, you don't deserve me. I've had enough. We've been dating for two and a half years at the time and marriage was in the picture. That's a long distance was a non negotiable for us. That's why I was willing to move across the country for her. And she's like, this is it, I can't do this anymore. And she broke up with me again a week after we signed our lease across the country. In a month before we're going to ship across the country, I already quit my job, I already decided my career pivot. And she's like, no more. This is it.
And I've always heard the stories of heartache, being heartbroken, these hard, gut wrenching feelings. And I knew what that meant intellectually. I never felt it because I've had commitment issues until my wife, she's the first woman I said I love you to. She's the first woman I brought home to. She's the first woman I spent a lot of time with until this moment. I'm. I'm a six foot male, I'm a veteran. I was on my knees, I begged her, I went to the bathroom and I puked for about five minutes. I had this involuntary uncontrollable feeling. My heart, my heart felt like someone squeezing my heart from inside out. My heart dropped and I. It was such an visceral pain, I can even think back to now. So I puked. I was crying, I was on my knees begging for her to take me back.
And the only reason she took me back is because she said, well, Benoit, for the first time, you are vulnerable. I already had a podcast back then and you might know this. Being vulnerable in the moment and telling vulnerable stories are very different.
I talk about my sexual trauma on the podcast. I talk about my healing, I talk about my near death experiences, I talk about my sobriety journey, I talk about all that. And these are my visceral experiences that became memories that I feel called to share as stories. But when you've iterated and repeated stories so many times, these are real stories, they're true to me, but after a while they become stories, they no longer become visceral. And I got so fluent with storytelling that Becky's heard my vulnerable stories many times, but she's never seen me being vulnerable until this heartbreak. And that's why she took me back. And as a pledge of that, I told her, becky, I will give up the most important thing in my life, which is alcohol. I'll quit that free as a pledge to my commitment. She didn't ask me to quit and. But I wanted to really demonstrate my willingness to do whatever it takes to get her back. Because sometimes you don't really know how important something is until we lose it. And that was a very textbook perfect example for me. And that was about four years ago. So I sought help. I started seeing therapy for the first time. I read a lot of self help books. I've pivoted my self help focus from personal developments, all these incessants, endless intellectualization to actually do something about it. And this is what I mean. I went from just from pursuit of truth and knowledge to actually pursuit of practical action steps. And that was a catalyzing event that forced me to quit drinking because I don't think anything would have crept me from drinking. And I could share this too. I had another near death experience aside from car accidents where I almost got stabbed because of my drinking. And I went back and drinking the next weekend. I have a scar in my head. I had a short term memory loss and never recover my memories from that weekend because of my head trauma, because the person knocked me out. I was getting robbed when I was blocked out drunk in downtown Philadelphia. And here's a crazy thing about alcohol. After almost getting stabbed because of partying, after, you know, some reflections and fear and scared, six days later, I went out and drinking just to a different place. And that's the power of alcohol. It had gripped on my life until my wife Becky forced me for shouldn't force me, but I was forced to be the change I wanted to see.
[00:21:29] Speaker B: Yeah, well, congratulations on four years. And sharing that story kind of made me think of, you know, the whole vulnerability piece. And to your point where we're sharing stories, I've heard someone say, like, it's easier to talk about our scars versus our wounds. And that whole vulnerability piece, just making that distinction, I thought was really interesting.
So I want to go back to.
I'm debating, like picking your brain or not. Well, I did want to ask you something. This kind of made me think of something. So first of all, can you talk a little bit about what you did or what a policymaker does? And you know, because you burnt out on that and then you did like a huge. I mean, going from a policymaker, army veteran to a psychotherapist, that's a pretty big pivot. And it sounds like a lot of it coincided with quitting drinking or your alcohol problems. Can you just share some of the.
[00:22:34] Speaker C: Context around that right before answering your question?
You're spot on. It is 180°, very hard career pivot. And a lot of that was because of me taking away the mask of alcohol. A lot. Because I work with, well, diagnosis. So I work with severe mental illness and severe addiction. Alcohol to meth to heroin, anything in between. And a lot of my patients and clients who get sober, they have this illusion that the moment you quit substances, life gets peaches and rainbows and everything's perfect. But that's not true because alcohol has been masking your problems. So you took away the false layer, but all the problems are still there. Now you have to confront them. The difference is your capacity to respond to these issues increase. And that's why life doesn't get better magically without alcohol. You have to still do that work. So I don't want to kind of bring that in because without my sobriety, I don't think I would have had the capacity to work on myself. But I've had the insights because I'm a thinker. I've been introspective since I was young because of my genetic shot to my parents again. But going back to your question, when I joined policy making, it was under the missions of maximizing impact. It's not to get too philosophical, but I believe in the philosophical applications of utilitarianism. It just means maximum impact. We think the ants justify the meat. That's utilitarianism. And so I thought, what's the single most effective vehicle to maximize quantifiable impact? Being a doctor, being a nurse, being a therapist, being lawyers, being helpers. We get to help a hundred, maybe 80 people every year, which is amazing. But as a policymaker, you can impact a hundred thousand people easily. So for me at the time, in my naivete and my idealism, in my early 20s, no brainer, of course I want to be a policymaker. I want to be the change. I want to maximize change, whatever it cost. But it gets really dark because being the most effective impact maker and policymaker, from my experience and from the people I've seen, it comes with this insidious, invisible, hidden cost.
And. But before that, let me explain to you. Like you said, what do we do?
People get policymakers and politicians confused.
As I just said, this is a joke. Politicians are bad actors who didn't make that cut in Hollywood, so they became actors in the political offices. So politicians are about charisma, it's about marketing, it's about connections, it's about rhetorical skills, it's about galvanizing or gathering support of your constituents. That's all politicians. This is relevant because we're recording this couple of days after the election, right? So that's politicians. Policymakers are people who work behind the scenes. We work with grants, we submit grants, we identify areas of shortcomings based on municipal or state or federal level. I work with on municipal level in Philadelphia, with some state grants with Pennsylvania. So we work with different nonprofits, NGOs, impact makers, small or big, and we try to advocate and pass a bill or policy that's helpful for the city or the state. And. But even that, there's a lot of corruptions because based on fluid now, based on precedence or the patterns of the past, certain grants get approved a lot easier than the other grants. And a lot of that has nothing to do with urgencies or dire needs. Unfortunately not. So just because something is not as urgent doesn't necessarily mean that it's not going to get a massive grant. That may be another more urgent issues requires because of the efficacy, because of the optics, rhetorics and all that. And that's what I learned. I was in policy for about four or five years and let me share a very powerful story of why I decided to leave. You know, I think idealism is very important. I think passion and idealism comes with youth. When you're young, you should have that passion. You should cause makes noises and cause change. Not in a, I guess counterproductive way, but more in a diplomatic way. Because anarchy or this extreme, you know, warriors attacking everyone's approach doesn't really cause any sustainable changes. It makes you feel good. It's more self gratifying than actually doing what's right for the cost that you're working towards.
So for me I thought with my naivete I could resist the corruption. We all hear the stories of politics are corrupted, policymaking is corrupted, even though again politicians and policymakers are very different. But you know, wherever there's money and power and influence, it's corrupted. Reminds me of one of my favorite quotes. Power corrupts, but absolute power corrupts absolutely. It really is true. Humans with our evolutions of, you know, a hundred thousand years, we're not meant to equip with so much power and attention. We were never designed this way. We never were wired to have so much attention on us.
So I saw a lot of people changing their personalities and becoming a different people through the pursuit of policy making impact. For example, I pivoted during COVID time when the COVID first hit. And in Philadelphia there's a lot of elders, especially with the nonprofit I worked at, a lot of refugees, a lot of immigrants and a lot of elders who couldn't leave because of the safety risk. This was pre vaccinations. So our CEO and that's the first red flag. If you're the director of a nonprofit, you should never call yourself a CEO.
Looking back at him retroactively now, he was narcissistic. I don't mean TikTok narcissistic, I mean clinically he had a narcissistic person on disorder. I'm giving a retroactive diagnosis inclination.
And he, because he's so jaded by politics and the policy realm, he bypassed bunch of our internal protocols to spearhead to create the food bank delivery for the elders. And I want to really focus on the thesis of what I'm saying. This is about intention versus impact.
His attention was, well, most of our intentions are what?
And he wanted to again bypass the due process, bypass all these hassle to create the first food bank in Philadelphia for the elders. He did that. But what's the cost? He bypassed the due process. We had three floors in our agencies. He transformed the third floor on the bottom into a food bank and food storage without consulting with any of the leaderships. I was a manager at the time. He didn't tell anyone. Overnight, on his own accord, he transformed one of our main floors into food storage.
And he put up arbitrary block. And that's what I saw. Oh, being a utilitarian policymaker comes with soul treat. We have to sacrifice a little bit of our souls and cross our moral boundaries for the sake of impact. Just going back to alcohol, we don't start with the bottle of Jack Daniel. We start with the first shot. You don't start with the first pack of cigarettes. You start with the first cigarette. And I saw myself, I asked myself, benoit, you're so driven about making maximum impact before you. To say, he might not become. His name was toy. Toy 2.0.
You know, if I say, hey, Dub, if you can sign a bill tonight, you're not hurting anyone. There's no murder, but you might lose a couple hours of sleep because you're crossing some moral boundaries for yourself. But you're not hurting anyone. But by doing that, you get to help 2,000 people. Would you do it? Probably. 2,000 is a lot of people. But what about next month? Hey, this time you get to help 20,000 people, but you might have to lose a whole night of sleep.
It's kind of. It's tougher this time, but you probably still do it, as long as you're not hurting anymore. But what about next year? What about 10 years? What about 20 years? And I saw that projection, I was like, oh, Toy, the CEO, I'm sure he was just like me. Passionate, driven, idealistic. He wanted to galvanize changes. But after 30 years in the policymaking room, he got. He got so jaded and he didn't even know he was advisor to Philadelphia mayor for 16 years. Very high level, very respected in the community. And I asked myself, benue, how confident are you to resist the cultural implications of politics and this soul trading? And I wasn't confident. So I pivoted. At the height of my career, I was offered promotion as the youngest policymaker in my agency's hundred year history. And I left. I was like, I can't do this. I don't want to become the version of myself that My past version would despise and I couldn't do that to myself. And I chose to, I guess, save my soul and by leaving the policymaking to a more micro. Because a lot of societal issues are because of mental health and trauma.
[00:31:56] Speaker B: Yeah, thank you for sharing that story. And it's so complicated morally too. Like because he was doing a good thing with the food bank. You know, I can just see like just all the kind of ethical, moral, just all the thoughts that go into that. So big picture, if we're talking policymaking and government, I'm just curious your thoughts on this. Like do you see alcohol changing? Big picture. You know, I think we're going to have the FDA come out with new recommendations for what amount of alcohol is safe for our health, quote unquote. Like do you know anything about that? Any thoughts about that? With your background and making change on a big level.
[00:32:46] Speaker C: That's a hats of das question. And again it's. I've, I've left the policy sector years ago now, so I don't really watch the news. I'm not as attuned to it. But per my $0.02, I think alcohol is tough. If you go back to the history of tobacco in terms of public health initiatives and American history, the most successful case study we use is cigarettes.
In 1940s and 50s, you can smoke cigarettes in the plane, on Formula One, F1 racing and every billboard, every fabric, cigarettes were the shining example. People were saying nonsense, cool, like pseudoscience, like cigarettes helps you sleep, increase your heart functions, it makes you healthier. Right? All these crazy science, if we look back now, but that was because of the power of lobbies. We're not even talking about lobbyists. That's another six hour conversation that's way too, way too convoluted. But why am I bringing up cigarettes? Because we as a country, through the backing of science, since science has to be the underlying, I guess, backbone of everything we do. Science isn't everything, but in terms of health, of course, you're a nurse. We do need science and empirical evidence that they do matter.
Our country came together and we collectively recognize that tobacco and cigarettes are awful for your health. It's called 99/ Plus. Chemicals get ignited with the smoking papers and the inventing of filters is the single driving reason why tobacco got so much more potent and so much more unhealthy. Since tobacco has been with us for eons, and I don't know if we will get to talk about this today, but I think the evolution of humans with substances is also Very interesting. Because humans have gravitated towards mind altering substances for thousands of years. This is not needed. But the potency is new.
So I bring that in because to create such a powerful and impactful policy help public health initiative like tobacco that took years and decades and took less divisiveness in the Congress, everything came together. These collective impacts requires collective contribution.
So while I'm more cynical about alcohol compared to tobacco, because tobacco is not as normative and not as normalized like alcohol, tobacco smells. Some people cannot handle the smell of tobacco, the sticky fingers or all these cross contamination to other people. So when you smoke a cigarette, it impacts other people. So it's not just about you and the substance. But with alcohol, sure there is strong driving, there's all these tragedies, but day to day drinking is a very individual thing. So I think it kind of goes back to this individual freedom, individuality that America was founded upon. And that's why I think it's a very sensitive topic. And I don't think we'll be able to make any traumatic measurements against alcohol. We'll see about the new admin. We'll see what they do since I know they're already looking into ways to kind of make FDA and all these agencies big pharma less corrupted. So we'll see what happens with that for the next four years. But personally I think it'd be very, it's very hard to make alcohol another public health initiative because it's been around for so long. Especially we have a history of prohibition. So I think in our American mindset we're very allergic to doing any regulatory measurements against alcohol because we have history of prohibition. Even though the studies and literature shows that prohibition was successful. We've had the lowest amount of drinking as a nation during prohibition. So it was effective. But it's not about alcohol. It comes down to your personal autonomy. And that's one topic that Americans probably will never touch.
[00:36:33] Speaker B: Yeah, interesting. Thank you for giving your two cents on that.
[00:36:37] Speaker A: So one of the things that was.
[00:36:39] Speaker B: Helpful for you as far as healing your trauma and then something you've, all you are also doing, maybe you're doing, I'm not sure, is the psychedelic assisted therapy. Can you explain what that is?
[00:36:55] Speaker C: So psychedelics are interesting. I don't really talk about it as much because there's a lot of other more prolific folks talking about psychedelics and I don't want to cheapen my experience of healing by being talking here, but this is very relevant to my healing. So I want to start off by Saying that I am not in a business of convincing the science and the evidence and the efficacy of psychedelics are widely established. Published the by John Hopkins. The final stage, the third clinical trial which was FDA sponsored for MDMA for treatment resistant and complex PTSD is the data is already out there and it is very effective. So let me start by changing some numbers and statistics, even though stats and effects don't always work. But I just want to start with some big picture in the beginning to kind of set this age to answer a question.
So for example, to be qualified to have a major depressive disorder or MDD or depression, clinically speaking, you have to have a lot of impairments in life. It's hard for you to get out of bed. You only shower once every three, four days. You lose interest in hobbies, things like that. You start getting more isolated. It's a clusters of things. Depression is not a single state. It's not just sadness, it's not just apathy, it's clusters of multiple things. Just like happiness is not a singular state, it's a bunch of different things.
So to qualify for a major depressive disorder, you have to have at least a year of depression. All these qualifiers and so what does it mean to have a treatment resistant depression? That means for someone to qualify as that you have to have 10 years of depression. You have to have proof of receiving treatments for therapists and medication support. But your depression is not getting better. That's generally speaking what we mean by treatments resistant depression. It's like the boss. It's like level 99 versus regular level 30 depression. So the qualifiers for participants to qualify for this MDMA assisted therapy, which is FDA sponsored, was you had to have treatment resistance depression, you had to have complex PTSD.
What that means is multiple ACEs adverse child experience multiple PTSD, not just one multiple like sexual assault, losing your battle buddy in the military and losing your mother at the same time. For a very basic example, I want to, I want to. Right. This is where I really want to zoom in for a little bit. What that means is these 113 participants who got eligible for this study, they've been seeking help for decades, decades. But their symptoms are not getting better, they're not feeling better, they still struggle.
Until this study. And this is what happened within four sessions done, 86% of 113 participants, 10 people dropped out. So it was about 103, give or take. Towards the end, 86% of these participants no longer even exhibit or display any symptoms. To qualify for the lowest level of depression Remember, treatment resistant depression is like the behemoth. Regular depression is lower, entry level, 86%. They don't even qualify for regular depression. After decades of being on medications, receiving therapy support in four sessions, this is the effectiveness of psychedelics.
It's so powerful that people say it's like a 10 years of therapy packed into one. But there are some caveats. I've shared this metaphor on the podcast before. Imagine you're launching a GPS navigation system on a rocket ship. Because I like to tell my clients that therapy is not doing the work. Therapy is part of the work. It's a navigation system. You work with a accredited professional. They provide helpful insights and directions. Hey, why don't you try going on this path? What about this path? Have you thought about this?
And that's what navigation is. We have to. The driving, the driving has to be done by yourself. We can't drive your life for you, but we can point to the helpful directions based on your circumstances and information.
So that's what regular therapy is, generally speaking. So imagine strapping that GPS onto a rockish.
It's accelerating at such an exponential speed. Of course it's more powerful.
But what does that mean though? You have to put in 10x more effort. You don't get to derive this amazing transformative impact without putting in the work. Imagine driving a regular car. You have to put in the work. Imagine driving or navigating a rocket ship. It's so much more powerful. So that's why it the it is one of the most effective trauma modalities now, along with emdr, I sensitized. Right? Trauma therapy, CBT is pretty widely accepted, but. But psychedelic therapy right now for trauma is considered by many scientists and scientific and therapeutic communities as single handedly one of the most efficacious modalities. Period. And this is the reason why I was able to benefit with my own sexual trauma. And I'll keep this a little bit shorter too. About one in seven men get sexually assaulted. Of course for women it's a lot more obvious, as it should. But one in seven men get sexually assaulted, that's a staggeringly high number. And I was sexually assaulted my freshman year in college. So this was 2017. So seven years ago. Seven, eight years ago.
I spent six years trying to heal through my trouble. And I don't. I hate the term overcome. You will never hear me say overcome your trauma on the podcast or offline. In real life, there is nothing to be overcome. You may not like what happened to you because life is larger than we are the circumstances. Life is so much more powerful than what we give you. We don't get to bend life per our will. We just get to respond and live or a meaningful life with this current civilian. So we are all the victims of larger circumstances, but we can do something about it. So I sought out different help. And nothing was working. Nothing. Until I came across this underground. Since it's still not federally legal and it is a Class 1 substance, so it is a felony. Except organ who decriminalized everything a while ago.
And within eight hours. Eight hours I was able to forgive the perpetrator.
Think about this. I spent six years trying to heal through my sexual trauma. And I wanted to forgive not for the sake of her or for the sake of me. I think forgiveness is about giving our permission to move on with us. It's not about the other person. It's about us. Because we have to keep living. We can not just get stuck. Uh, being stuck in a while is a fine, but if it's too long, it's unhealthy for you based on the goals that you have. But within eight hours of psilocybin, which is the substance I know the most. Or magic mushrooms as people like to say. Within eight hours. Step I. I had this thought. It was so crazy not thinking back. I. I wanted to look her up on Instagram and message her saying that hey, I don't even remember her name anymore. I was like, hey, I forgive you. I wanted to tell her that I forgive her. Not for her, but for me. As this final closure. I couldn't find her. So I gave up after like 30 seconds. So I never really reached out. But think about that power. I spent six years struggling being stuck.
But then with eight hours of therapy, with psychedelic assisted therapy. And granted I've been putting a lot of work. I didn't just from doing nothing to psychedelic. And bam. Rainbow healed. Sure that's not the case. I put. I kept putting in work. So it might be the combinations of all that. But within eight hours I forgave myself to move on. I forgave her for the trauma she inflicted into me. And because of that, and this is what mental health means to me. Because I was able to heal through my sexual trauma. I was able to meet my fiance who became my wife. Because that's what trauma is. Trauma to me is interruptions of pattern. You thought the world was safe. You thought everything was familiar. You thought you knew how the world operated. And then this large than life event happens. It interrupts that. And now you feel like the world is no longer safe. Sure, there's big T and small T trauma. So all traumas are also. It's not continuing, but that's what trauma is. I no longer felt safe relationships.
And a lot of my commitment issues, aside from the lack of reference with love, was because of my sexual trauma. I didn't trust woman anymore. I was feeling vindictive. I was angry at the world. Why me? Right? Because I was religious. So I wanted to save my special with my. Not necessarily for marriage, but I wanted to save it for some special someone, not just a random hookup, which is what happened with her because, you know, she liked me for a long time and she invited me to a birthday and she took advantage of me. That's what happened. But yeah, so because I was able to stay open minded towards this modality of psychedelic therapy, I was healed, which I struggled for six years, which empowered me to reconnect with myself in turn connect with a woman at the time who now is my wife. And that's what healing is. It allows you to reconnect with the parts of yourself that you got distance away from due to trauma.
[00:46:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:46:38] Speaker B: Thank you for sharing your experience.
So when we're talking about psychedelic assisted therapy, we may be talking about different psychedelics. The mdma you said the mushrooms. And then are you just. Logistically speaking, you're using that psychedelic and then there's a therapist with you talking you through things. Is that kind of how it works? I have no idea.
[00:47:07] Speaker C: Honestly not. That's a great question. So remember I said accredited professional earlier.
Those are very intentional. It has to be accredited. Please do not look for a shaman on Craigslist. Third page down. Right. Just don't trust what people are saying. These are optics they're trying to sell you. And you're in a very vulnerable state under psychedelic state. So the clinical term is called ontological shock. Not to get too nerdy, but ontology, generally speaking is a study of reality. That's what ontology is. And one of the mechanisms that causes someone to have a post traumatic stress disorder. Because not everyone who has a traumatic experience develop ptsd. Not everyone. When that trauma or the shock or the interruptions of reality, or collectively speaking we call the reality breaking moment, is so powerful for a lot of folks like veterans, you develop this ontological shock. The reality as you know it is no longer it, it's changed. The reality has changed for you based on what experience. That's ontological shock. Psychedelics uses the reverse of that. It also goes through ontological shock. But it's breaking the broken reality and repairing back to a new reality that's serving. That's why psychedelics so powerful. That's why people have bad trips. Even though I think all trips reveal helpful data if you know what you deal with. And I'm working with a professional, so. And that is why you need a professional to stay with you.
So I know you alluded this earlier, I do provide psychedelic therapy on a private side because it's not publicly known, of course, because of FDA's and so legalities around it. But I do provide to a selective, very small clientele who I know very well, who I think it's beneficial and I think they have the preparations. I would never recommend someone start with psychedelics, start with meditation, start with mindfulness, start learning to being left alone with your thoughts and feelings. Because when you ingest that substance, you're stuck with yourself.
Your thoughts, your feelings, all the skeletons in your closet. Because psychedelics goes deep into your consciousness and psyche for six to eight hours.
So if you don't know how to sit with yourself for 20 minutes through meditation, you will have a horrible experience being stuck with yourself for a few hours. So it's a very tapering approach. So I like to. It's not like full cascade. You, you don't. You have to taper into it. But this is a reason why you can work with a shaman killer, whatever language you want to use. If they're trusted, if they have formal, respectable training, a lot of experience and wisdom, then you invite them to your space, or you go to their space and they guide you through. You have to work with someone else. Because when you're under this tidal waves of tsunami of emotions and tsunami of your consciousness, you're not navigating yourself. You're literally surviving the tsunami. You need someone as an anchor, like, literally an anchor to ground you, to pull you out from these intensive experience by being there, by guiding you through it. And they're not telling you anything. I want to add this very important note. A lot of clinicians and therapists and facilitators lose their licensure and lose their practice because of sexual scandal.
When you're under the psychedelic state, it's using your neuroplastic. It's neuroplasticity, it's expanding your mind. That's why it's so powerful. But because your mind is opening up, it's very vulnerable to influence and manipulation.
So if you work with a unethical, horrible healer, for example, maybe they have the accreditation, the respected, you know, we're not surprised by respectable people doing awful things, right? So that, that's pretty common human nature. They can influence you in such a subtle way. They can brainwash you. I mean, truly brainwash you. If you think about it, you're surviving the tsunami of experience. It's very powerful, but it's also very intensive.
If your healer they were with is unethical and they're trying to take advantage of you because you're a woman, you're in this vulnerable state with your eyes closed in the privacy of a home because of psychedelic experience, they can influence your psyche and you will not even know they could touch you. For me, I never put my hands on the client when they're in a psychedelic state. I just don't because they're so hypersensitive. When you're surviving in this tsunami of experience, you cling onto anything you can latch on, including the physicality, including whatever to tell you. Instead, all we're doing is Socratic questioning. So imagine we're dealing with psychedelic experience and you're trying to heal through some of your difficult trauma. And with your eyes closed, you're seeing all these patterns, colors, these symbolism. It's very symbolic of an experience. I will never say, hey, dad, do this, do that. Instead I would say, hey, what do you see? Oh, you see a door. What do you think that door means to you? You see a path. What do you think that path means?
Have you seen that path before? Do you recognize the patterns before? Are these new to you? No. What do you think that means? It's very Socratic. So I'm only using what's within them to help them guide their experience because I don't want to interfere with their such a powerful posing experience.
So to summarize, work with a credit professional.
Word of mouth is the best way since websites lie, internal lies, a lot of misinformation. So work with someone you know, preferably through word of mouth referral. Second, make sure you understand these guidelines. No physical touch. Make sure you know how they facilitate, have a conversation with them. How do you do your normal therapy? What is your typical approach? Can you show me a demonstration without the substance? How would you talk to me about this or that? But the bottom line is don't do this by yourself. It's very powerful, but it could be a tsunami of an experience, like I said.
[00:53:19] Speaker B: So how would psychedelics I've been hearing though help with addiction?
[00:53:24] Speaker C: So there is a. This is a very exciting era to be at with healing seekers or seekers of help. So there's a lot of new emerging research in neuropsychology that indicates the potential helpfulness of psychedelics with addiction. Like you said. So as you know, addiction is a brain disease. There are still counselors out there that think addiction is a moral or willpower issue. They're wrong. They're just false. It's a. It's a scientific fact. And addiction is a brain disease. It changes the structures of our brain over time. That's why it's a brain disease. So what psychedelic does, like I said earlier, it helps uncouple your attachment and connection and the link between the substance and you derived the experience. Because remember, neuroplasticity, it just means how your brain is able to form neural pathways.
Any habit formation is based on neural pathways. That's what that means. And as you get older, your brain generally gets less neuroplastic than versus younger. That's why we say children's are like empty canvases. They just sponge up all the knowledge. That's neuroplasticity. What psychedelic does is it puts you under a neuroplastic state. Your mind is reopening up. So all the couplings and whatever your brain is stuck with, in this case addictions, it could actually help uncouple that and decouple that through this neuroplastic psychedelic states. So that's why there's a lot of research going on now in clinical trials working with specifically severe addiction like alcoholism, heroin, cocaine, even tobacco, cigarettes and so on. And it's very, very promising.
And we don't have to go into this. But another exciting area of applications for psychedelic, for anyone that want to discover more after the show is even with like autism and a lot of these, my autistic spectrum, because it is a spectrum, it uses the term, it's called critical windows. So from age 0 to 2, it's a very critical stage. That's where a lot of your tendencies, your propensities develop a lot of like your extroversions, introversion. Sure, there's genetics, but a lot of that gets developed in the critical window stage. And the hypothesis or the I guess compelling research as of right now that talks about autism, of course there's different types. Is there social critical window, they got prematurely closed. A little bit too prematurely. That's how a lot of their social operativeness there aren't as good at sociality, social cues, social signaling, because they didn't have an adequate amount of social critical window developing based on genetics or different circumstances. But what did I say about psychedelics? It Reopens your critical window and makes your brain more neuroplastic. So there's a lot of exciting research, even with autisms and adhd, a lot of these other traits. You can use psychedelics to reopen your brain and almost rewire some of these inadequate tendencies that we might have. So it's the same mechanism for PTSD depression, but also for addictions, also for ADHDs and certain autism spectrums. It's very, very exciting because even if you're 60 years old, because I think the study now is your brain generally stops developing or opening your neuropathways around age 60, even though you can't counter that through reading, talking, you know, engaging in whatever practices, like meditation, for example, it gets to reopen your brain. It's almost like giving your brain a second way of life.
And that's very exciting. And you get to truly be creative with it. And you can really uncouple, not just addictions, any connection that's unhealthy for you. You can be coupled out with psychedelics and you can regroup and reformat and reconnect helpful ones through therapists, through facilitations, through other avenues. But it's a very exciting time with psychedelics, but you should proceed with caution.
[00:57:30] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you. Thank you for sharing that.
I just admittedly don't know anything about it and this is not appealing to me at all. But I know that has come up again and again and that it's been really helpful for people. So I always like to have different, different, you know, tools and ideas for people to try on. What might work for you in New York, might not work for me in Boise, Idaho. So just being open minded about that. So thank you and thank you for all that you've shared today. This has just been really interesting. I could tell we could talk a lot more and keep picking your brain, but I will let you go for now. Can you let people know how they can find you?
[00:58:19] Speaker C: Well, if you resonate with anything I share today, if you discover more, pun intended, I have a podcast. I've had it for five years. I know nowadays everyone and their mothers and their cousins have a podcast, but of course, Dev has been doing this for a while too. So I really love my podcast because for me, it's an extension of education.
I do think that the biggest privilege is access to information. I think that is what privilege is for me. And I really think that education is liberation. So either in my clinical practice or on the podcast, I just hopefully I can share helpful informations experientially or based on scientific backings or my clinical knowledge or just mod esoteric way of thinking. Hopefully you derive something helpful for you. But yeah, discover more on Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you check it out. And yeah, I appreciate what you do that. I really think that education is liberation even though there's a lot of misinformation nowadays. But hopefully we get to do this for a long time for the sake of value and helping others expand their horizon of understanding.
[00:59:24] Speaker B: Well, thank you, thank you for sharing and congratulations again on giving up alcohol and just being another voice out there about the benefits of being sober. What a great life choice. Love it. Thank you.
[00:59:39] Speaker C: Thank you so much.
[00:59:41] Speaker A: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Alcohol Tipping Point podcast. Please share and review the show so you can help other people too. I want you to know I'm always here for you. So please reach out and talk to me on Instagram at Alcohol Tipping Point. And check out my website, alcoholtippingpoint.com for.
[01:00:00] Speaker B: Free resources and help.
[01:00:02] Speaker A: No matter where you are on your drinking journey, I want to encourage you to just keep practicing. Keep going. I promise you are not alone and.
[01:00:10] Speaker B: You are worth it.
[01:00:12] Speaker A: Every day you practice not drinking is a day you can learn from. I hope you can use these tips we talked about for the rest of your week and until then, talk to you next time.
