What's Up With Numbing Out?

Maybe most of us use something to numb ourselves out. And maybe we can find some kindness around that. One doctor, professor, and recovering addict believes addiction is part of life! Life is tricky, especially in this frantic world. I'd need a therapist to explain what happens to me with a bag of chips. And I'm lucky my "addictive personality" hasn't led me to rougher roads. Carl Erik Fisher recounts a history of addiction in his book The Urge. Thanks for listening!

Transcript

This is Shine On,

The health and happiness show with new episodes every week on how to live well.

Shine On is heard all over the world as a podcast,

But it's heard first on the radio in New York's Hudson Valley.

Hi,

It's Casey.

Thank you so much for tuning in to Shine On.

So today we're going to talk about addiction.

What are you addicted to?

Anything?

If we're honest,

We might find that there are things in our lives that we use to numb ourselves and the numbing helps to prevent thinking about the issues.

Even sometimes when I sit down to binge on Cobra Kai or whatever on Netflix and watch like seven episodes at a time,

I know I'm numbing out and it's great.

I mean,

It's all good as long as our numbing doesn't hurt anyone.

Sometimes we need just to chill and shut everything off.

So this week we're checking in,

Checking in on serious addiction and checking in to see the ways we could be numbing ourselves.

Do you get the daily OM or is it the daily OM?

I think it used to be called the daily one mind.

You can visit dailyom.

Com.

They offer a lot of courses there,

Inspired living they call it.

Well,

I've been getting my daily email from the daily OM for years and this one I came across recently.

It talks about the ways we numb ourselves.

It says we are born equipped to experience a complex array of emotions,

Diverse emotions,

But many of us are uncomfortable confronting our most powerful emotions.

We may shy away from delight and despair and deny life's colors by retreating into a world of gray.

We may numb ourselves to what we are truly feeling.

It's easier to suppress our emotions than to deal with them.

We may momentarily turn to pleasures such as alcohol,

Food,

Sugar,

Shopping,

Too much television.

We may even numb our hearts.

While it's normal to temporarily seek distractions as a means of coping with intense emotions,

Numbing yourself prevents you from confronting your issues and keeps you from ever finding resolution or peace.

When we're numb,

There is no pain or powerlessness,

But there can also be no joy or healing.

I wonder what's going through my mind when I stand in front of the lasagna pan as I did the other night,

Gluten free noodles,

By the way,

And my husband says,

Oh,

You're going to have some lasagna?

I said,

No,

I'm just going to have a little this little piece here.

And I start with my fork in the pan of cold lasagna and then I eat half the pan.

What is going on in my mind at that moment?

I tend to numb myself when I'm tired.

Other people just go to bed.

But the point is numbing ourselves as the daily OM says diminishes the quality of our life.

So this week,

Look at the places where you may be numbing yourself and see if you're ever in the danger zone.

And now we're going to dive deep into the danger zone with Carl Eric Fisher.

Carl Eric Fisher is an amazing young man.

I want to tell you about him.

He is an addiction physician,

A bioethicist,

Assistant professor of clinical psychology at Columbia,

Also maintains a private psychiatry practice,

And he focuses on complementary approaches to treating addiction.

So Carl Eric Fisher has been so darn generous in this book.

It's called The Urge,

Our history of addiction.

Not only does he trace addiction back,

You know,

To the beginning of time,

Nearly,

But he also shares his own journey.

Page 106.

Toward the end of medical school,

My drinking was starting to have serious consequences.

I was living with my first serious girlfriend,

And every time I drank,

I picked bitter,

Vicious,

Screaming fights with her.

One drunken night,

I watched myself cross a series of fine lines from argument to mistreatment,

From mistreatment to outright verbal abuse.

I can't remember the details.

Frankly,

They were always hazy,

And I often woke up the next morning not remembering why we fought in the first place.

Carl Eric Fisher goes on to explain that was the end of that relationship,

Of course,

And he left to start rotation at a hospital in Paris,

Where he decided to indulge in the culture,

And that was a lot more drinking and cocaine use.

Fisher eventually got help,

And he says,

You know,

He's a privileged white man in the medical community and there was help available to him.

But this book,

The Urge,

Our History of Addiction,

Is sure to be enlightening to absolutely anyone on the planet today,

Because think about it,

Addiction is everywhere.

Some of it created by big pharma,

And of course,

Purdue Pharma and OxyContin gets more than a passing mention here.

Fisher writes,

Purdue didn't create the epidemic on its own,

But it did contribute significantly to it.

And even though they were masters of the craft,

There was nothing really new in what Purdue leaders did.

They were simply playing a role in a larger system that has existed and evolved for generations.

Drug epidemics throughout history have commonly featured not just a novel drug,

But also a powerful industry promoting that drug.

Carl Eric Fisher is here to talk more about The Urge.

And I have to say,

Sir,

This book touched me so.

You definitely in one paragraph changed the way I will forever look at addiction.

And I'm going to share that soon,

But first I just had to say thank you.

First off,

I can't tell you how touching it is to hear you say that.

So I really appreciate the kind words about the book.

What I set out to accomplish was to change my own life.

It was a book that I wanted for myself when I was in early recovery and I was trying to make sense of addiction.

I wanted to understand what is this thing that happened to me.

And I'm a physician and I've gotten a tremendous amount from medicine and neuroscience and psychotherapy.

And I also had the sense that there was more out there.

There's a lot to learn from the history and even the arts and literature and the philosophy of addiction,

But all in the service of trying to make sense of what happened to me and happened to my family.

Right.

And you know,

It just,

This book just makes so much sense now because so much of the research and what we've grown up with,

They're old ideas.

We know so much more now and thank you for putting it all together for us.

What would the world look like if everyone knew what you now know from this book?

I would like to think that people would be compassionate toward people with addiction.

And that might sound like a kind of basic step,

But it is so overlooked and so crucial.

There's so much stigma right now.

And stigma is a big word.

You know,

We have individual stigma where we kind of look down on people who use drugs or people who have problems with alcohol and other drugs.

There's also deep,

Deep institutional and cultural stigma in the way we set up our medical system and the way we set up our social policies.

And you know,

If I tried to do anything in the book,

It was to try to respect and honor the stories of people who have struggled with addiction over the centuries,

Centuries and centuries.

And for me,

Just to see stories of people from say ancient India who struggled with gambling addiction or like a 10th century Chinese poet who struggled to stop drinking just humanizes the experience and validates the experience and points to the fact that this is real,

This is serious.

And even though different cultures might understand addiction in different ways,

There's some real human universal core there that's worth exploring.

And here's how you summed it up.

This is what the history has been trying to say all along.

Addiction is profoundly ordinary,

A way of being with the pleasures and pains of life.

And just one manifestation of the central human task of working with suffering like that.

I have chills and it brings tears to my eyes.

It makes so much sense.

Addiction is just part of life,

Right?

Absolutely.

That was one of the big turning points for me was coming to realize,

Coming to appreciate because I think it's a truth that's there to be revealed.

Is that addiction exists in all of us.

And that can be true at the same time that is a really severe and life threatening problem,

That it is something really mystifying and dangerous in the cases of people with really severe alcohol and drug addiction.

That's true.

And addiction is also pointing us toward the deepest mysteries of self-control that the thinkers like the Buddha and Aristotle and others have been wrestling with for really all of human civilization.

Right.

I think this is going to help so many people.

In what ways are we getting it right in America today?

Oh man,

That's such a great question,

You know,

Because there's a lot of ways we could be doing better.

But I think there is a lot of positivity and beauty in our current responses to addiction.

I really think that we're turning the corner on certain aspects of stigma where people are coming forward with their own stories.

It's not just me.

I mean,

There's so many people who are liberated to share the way their lives have been touched.

And going along with that,

I think there's a broader cultural trend that people are talking about mental health more generally and really opening up the doors of a problem that's been and people have attempted to shut away for hundreds and hundreds of years.

And going along with that,

We just see more common sense human compassion.

We see more support for people with addiction,

More support.

Medicine isn't the only answer,

But there's a lot we could do in medicine to save lives.

And we see a lot more support for modernizing addiction treatment and supporting it in the ways that it's needed.

The bottom line,

I think,

Is the change in consciousness,

That people really need to change their consciousness around how we think of addiction.

And I think there are a lot of ways that that is going well.

And God bless the young celebrities today who are talking about mental health all the time.

God bless them.

Now,

You said modern.

You didn't say pharmaceutical.

Modern medical ways to treat addiction.

What are they?

Yes.

So pharmaceuticals are an important part.

We have a complicated relationship with medicine in this country.

And there are ways that certain drugs have been overprescribed,

And especially in the case of the opioid epidemic.

There are ways that they were really,

In a manipulative way,

Marketed and caused untold amounts of harm.

And there's also tremendous stigma against life-saving medications like methadone and buprenorphine and plenty of other medications that are in development that addiction psychiatrists are studying nowadays that can perhaps help with alcohol.

Or another big wave that's coming to us is methamphetamine,

We're already seeing in certain parts of the country.

And kind of implicit in that answer,

We don't have great pharmaceutical treatments for a lot of addiction problems.

So at the same time that we have to improve access to those life-saving treatments,

We also have to think across all the other levels,

Like good group therapy,

Good psychotherapies,

And giving people ultimately access to the full diversity of ways that people recover.

Because in the end,

There isn't just one pathway to recovery,

There are multiple pathways to recovery and they're all great because different people are helped in different ways.

And I think that sometimes there's a failure to recognize that.

Recovery.

So if addiction is part of normal life,

What is recovery?

Part of normal life as well?

Yeah,

That's another one of those questions people have debated for centuries.

But I think that addiction recovery is important because it's an identity that people have long held onto to find some solace and community support with the phenomenon of really dangerous and life-threatening addictions.

And I see examples of this stretching back well before today's 12-step groups.

There was this group called the Washingtonians in the 1840s.

There was a huge movement of people to help each other with alcohol problems.

Going back to Native American societies around the time of American colonization,

There were these groups,

A lot in New York State actually,

That banded together to find a common solution and common support for the problems with alcohol around that time.

And some of those still live on today.

And so what we find is that people banding together in community and coming together and healing their society and finding ways of respecting that interconnectedness and holding each other up is a real constant and it's a beautiful phenomenon.

So I think that's one of the key components to recovery.

And in the end,

A lot of people make sense of recovery in a lot of different ways.

The key thing is to keep on going and keep on trying and finding ways of coming together to work on our problems together.

The Urge Our History of Addiction,

Carl Eric Fisher,

What are you most grateful for in your journey?

I'm grateful for other people.

I'm grateful for the ways that people came together to help and support me.

And I write about this a little in the book that I was extraordinarily privileged.

I was extraordinarily privileged in that I was white,

That I was in training to become a doctor,

That I had access to compassionate care.

Just by virtue of being a doctor,

I was able to enroll in this thing,

This funny thing that a lot of people don't know about called the Physician Health Program,

Which is sort of like this organization that helps physicians and monitors physicians to help them return to work safely and get the care and support they need.

There are some problems with some physician health programs that I had a really good experience with the one in New York State.

And in a way,

It was sort of like a model for the way we could be doing right by a lot of other people that I was very privileged in that respect.

And all of those people coming together in my personal life and also just professionally that supported my recovery.

It just reinforces the notion that I couldn't have done it myself.

It's not an individual problem.

The book is called The Urge and that is Dr.

Carl Eric Fisher,

The author.

He's right in New York City.

His website is carlericfisher.

Com,

Carl with a C,

Bioethicist,

Addiction psychiatrist,

Assistant professor at Columbia.

So he just tweeted out my new book,

The Urge is out.

It's a history of addiction interwoven with my own experiences as an addiction psychiatrist at Columbia and as someone in recovery.

Aside from my own recovery,

He writes,

It's the hardest thing I've ever done.

I hope it's helpful.

I think it will be helpful to many.

The Urge by Carl Eric Fisher.

And it definitely spun my head around,

As I mentioned earlier,

How in the final paragraph of the book that addiction is profoundly ordinary,

A way of being with the pleasures and pains of life and just one manifestation of the central human task of working with suffering.

Now if you have no addiction in your life,

Hooray for you.

That's great.

Great parenting,

Great gene pool,

Great sense of your own.

And just the other day I was talking to my girlfriend.

We are both big fans of ACOA,

Adult children of alcoholics.

I am not outing my parents in any way,

But I come from bootleggers,

Seriously.

So I have known my share of relatives who enjoy the beverages.

And I find that the wisdom in adult children of alcoholics is just fabulous.

Anyway that might be just something you want to explore ACOA.

You can go to the website adultchildren.

Org.

So my girlfriend was just saying how she's recently become aware of addiction to the positive,

Like the people who can't stop doing good,

Right?

The people that knock themselves out,

Baking the cookies for the PTA thing or running the charity event or whatever.

We can numb ourselves and avoid our feelings by being super busy or super helpful.

And I know some of you are thinking right now,

What about you Casey?

You're always out doing those things,

But the pantry,

The market,

The thrift store.

Rest assured,

Although do gooding may have been an addiction of mine in the past.

I was the girl that had to send all the birthday cards.

You know if you met me once,

I knew your birthday,

I'd be sending you a card.

And I,

It's just my calendar,

It's keeping everybody happy.

Those days are long gone.

I was able to make the shift and put self-care first.

So yes,

I am out doing,

But I bet I take more bubble baths than anybody listening right now.

Naps,

Bubble baths,

Time with the chickens.

And if you know anybody that has chickens,

That can quickly become an addiction.

My girlfriend's up to like 13 chickens now.

She's hatching chickens.

She's got the fancy kind with the long hair.

Thankfully,

I don't have space for that.

So here's a topic I just want to throw out there.

Did you ever have like an epiphany?

Like something crosses your eye and all of a sudden you're like,

Oh my goodness,

This is what I must do now.

So I had a little epiphany.

I don't know.

What is this February?

I had a little epiphany like maybe a month ago.

And by the time you hear this,

I will have begun my journey towards being certified in restorative yoga.

It's not the whole 200 or 500 hour yoga teacher training.

This is just 65 hours.

This is just restorative yoga.

Restorative yoga is the one with pillows and the bolsters and the blankets and the eye pillows.

And the funny thing is about me and yoga is I love yoga.

I've taken yoga classes for I'm going to say like 23 years.

And I always said I will never teach yoga.

Never,

Never,

Never,

Never,

Never.

I have been asked to lead a meditation or something at the end of the yoga class.

I'm like,

Nope,

I'm only here to receive Jillian Pransky,

Who has been on the show a couple of times,

A fairly famous yogi.

I think she's been on the cover of Yoga Journal.

I follow her and get her newsletters and whatever.

I get her newsletter and it says she's doing a restorative yoga teacher training.

And all of a sudden it was like a big Shazam.

And I knew,

You know,

You get that feeling.

It's like,

Oh my gosh,

I'm going to do that.

The little voice in my head said,

This is what you need to do now.

I love this little epiphanies.

And I guess it's okay for me to say I was given a partial scholarship.

I applied for a partial scholarship because they were giving partial scholarships for nonprofits.

And when I had my epiphany,

Aha,

Like,

Oh my goodness,

I need to do this teacher training because I can make free videos available to the population that I serve at the pantry.

Shazam,

It all came together.

So I applied and I got the partial grant.

And now I'm starting towards my restorative yoga certification.

And then I'm going to make free videos and put it out there for the community served at the pantry,

The pantry part of the Let It Shine Foundation,

Because there's been this other thing that's just been bugging me about charity work.

And I didn't know it had a name,

But I had my session with,

Um,

Who was the guest on the show last week?

Tara Greenway.

I had my session with Tara Greenway of Beyond Your Belief.

And we did the Theta healing to crush some of my limiting beliefs in my subconscious.

It was a lot of fun.

And I was telling her about a part of my charity work that bugs me.

It bugs me when my volunteers treat our shoppers,

The people who come into the pantry,

We call them our shoppers because they're there to shop for their groceries.

They treat them in this really hard to,

It's like,

I can feel it more than I can see it,

But it feels like an us and them,

Just a tinge of that.

Tara Greenway said,

Oh yeah,

Toxic charity.

It's like,

Um,

Giving and disempowering at the same time.

What I'm going to do is find a specialist in toxic charity to come explain it better than that.

But I realized that if I can give the shoppers at the pantry,

The gift of relaxation,

The gift of knowing how to chill,

The gift of knowing how to go deep inside their body,

Find that peaceful place,

Nurture that peaceful place.

From that place,

People may go on to make changes in their lives.

You know,

It's that old,

Give a man a fish thing and he eats for a day.

In toxic charity,

The way Robert Lupton explains it,

Give once and you elicit appreciation.

Give twice and you create anticipation.

Give three times,

You create expectation.

Give four times and it becomes entitlement.

Give five times and you establish dependency.

Lupton says the system of charity is broken.

Affirming the superiority of the giver,

It subordinates the receiver.

He goes on to say,

Let's not create dependency.

Let's encourage people to use their God given talents and skills.

Let's uphold and affirm human dignity.

So anyway,

Today's tangent is over and I'm on my way to becoming a restorative yoga teacher,

Which means I'm going to be spending a lot of time on the living room floor learning my restorative yoga.

You are so patient with me to allow me to go down that windy road.

Okay.

Thought for the day.

But first,

Remember we have a date.

Our second Sunday date on Zoom is coming up February 13th.

We're going to talk about the happiness recipe and celebrate Valentine's Day.

That is also a Super Bowl Sunday.

So Super Bowl Sunday,

We're going to get together and we may go live on Insight Timer too.

And then in the final weekend in February,

It looks like with the COVID numbers coming down,

We're going to be able to gather in person at the Marianne Dell Retreat Center.

That's in Ossining,

New York.

Beautiful views of the Hudson River.

Join us there,

Please.

So we talked about today,

Addiction on the things that numb us out.

And we had a sidebar too on being addicted to things that are good for us,

Like doing good or super fitness and a brief mention of toxic giving,

Which creates dependency.

And we'll talk more about that in the future.

But our thought for the day today,

After the Groundhog made his rude prediction,

Our thought for the day is from Pablo Neruda,

Who said,

You can cut all the flowers,

But you cannot keep spring from coming.

Shine on.

You've been listening to Shine On,

The health and happiness show with new episodes every week.

It's your time to shine on.

Reviews

Definitely going to listen to The Urge! And I love what you said about "Toxic Charity", so enlightening! Can't wait for your restorative yoga!!