Integrative Approach To Drug Addiction​

Luke Storey

Yeah, thank you Matt. It’s great to see you. I’m glad we got to have this opportunity to catch up. We text sometimes or, hey, we should take a call and you know, both of us get busy. So, it’s good that we have this on the calendar, so we have an absolutely dedicated space to drop in and catch up on some stuff.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

Yeah, and then it makes me think, oh, it actually warms my heart because it makes me think– I’m actually starting to dedicate more and more time to this. Doing the Peptide Summit required me to do 40 interviews. And as a result of it, I had to cut into my schedule of working too much all the time, and it basically led me to the realization that I’m going to sort of change my life and start to do this more.

Luke Storey

Great, great.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

Yeah, I’m looking forward to it.

Luke Storey

Good for you, man. Yeah, I mean, as someone who’s done about 500 interviews now for my podcast, I gotta say, it’s probably– I mean, you don’t wanna quantify things in a limiting, linear way, I guess, but it’s been a huge benefit to my life. I mean, I’ve interviewed you a couple times, just so many brilliant people. And not only have I learned and just expanded my knowledge base and my awareness and just applied as best I can the things that I’m learning from guests, but it’s also just relationships that I’ve built over the past almost eight years that I’ve been doing the podcast are incredible. I don’t know if I ever would’ve actually become friends with someone like you, right? I might’ve found your clinic and come in and gotten treated and I’m sure you would’ve been friendly and I would’ve been a patient, but the relationship would’ve been probably limited to that dynamic to some degree. And now I have just incredible, mutually beneficial relationships with so many brilliant, lively, awake, kind, intelligent people. I mean, just if you could create like a social network of your dreams, that’s kind of what’s happened for me as a result of just sitting down and having conversations and sharing those with the world. So I’m really glad to hear that you’re catching the bug. 

It’s a really special– It’s not only special subjectively for the person conducting the interviews, but all of the thousands to sometimes millions of people that are going to benefit from those conversations as well. It’s an incredible time we live in, in terms of independent media and the fact that we can have these long form conversations that aren’t relegated to sound bites or anyone’s agenda, right? It’s just two human beings connecting and sharing their knowledge and experience and expertise. And hopefully, some humor and people get to sit in. I mean, I listen to podcasts literally every day. I probably listen to at least one, if not two complete podcasts every single day and I’ve been doing that for years. So it’s like you get a PhD in life for free. Just like when in history could you ever have access to such information? And of course there are always libraries of books, but something that you can do passively like listen to a podcast, or I guess to watch a summit, you technically have to sit down. But as far as like the audio format, it’s just something that’s so great to do when you’re passing time, and otherwise not taking any inputs or inspiration, driving around, being on a plane, et cetera.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

And I noticed basically every single time I do this and then I go to clinic, and then somebody says, Hey, blah, blah, blah, what do you think about this? And I go, oh, guess what? Somebody just told me. I’m sure I’ll be like, oh yeah, Luke Storey just told me the answer to that 10 minutes ago.

Luke Storey

Right, right. Yeah, absolutely.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

It’s kinda fun. I think just out of respect, I have to say that I’m deeply impressed by the sweater that you’ve got going on today.

Luke Storey

Yes, sir. It’s by a brand called Stoned Immaculate, it’s my friend Elliot back in Los Angeles. Really great, great friend of mine, beautiful soul. And he’s got this brand and they primarily make women’s clothing. But one thing that he does is he gets licensing deals with estates for artists like David Bowie, Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, et cetera. And he finally, after working on it for a long time, managed to get the rights to The Grateful Dead. And so, he’s only ever made women’s clothing, but he made two pieces. This sweater, the dancing bear sweater, and a really cool kind of vintage looking denim jacket with an embroidered dancing bear on the back. And I don’t know why he picked the Dead out of all of those artists to make men’s clothing, but it’s probably the only brand that I would wear. You know what I mean? I don’t know, there’s something that’s cool about, I mean, you know, we’re both Dead fans, but I probably wouldn’t walk around in a Led Zeppelin T-shirt or something. I’m 51, I don’t know, it just doesn’t speak to me in that way. But anything The Grateful Dead related, especially if it’s just the artwork, right? It’s not like even the name. Because then you pass by someone and you go, oh, you get it. They’re like, “Hey, nice sweater.” You’re like, yeah? Yeah, Sugar Magnolia baby, you know it’s like there’s a an unspoken bond between us, I would say.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

What’s your favorite Dead song?

Luke Storey

Oh man, probably Ripple.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

Yeah.

Luke Storey

I tend to lean more toward the Jerry songs, although over time I have appreciated, but when I used to go see them a lot in the early nineties, I would often go take a beer break during the Bobby songs, and I felt guilty. I’m like, everyone loves Bobby, but I never related to his singing as Jerry just had this sort of anguish, and this, I don’t know, there was a joy to his music and songwriting and singing, but there was also this depth of, I guess, pain under it. And now we can see as a result of him succumbing to addiction, that there was a lot going on there. And the same way with the Beatles. Like, I was always a Lennon guy. Paul McCartney songs, I like a few here and there. But the John Lennon songs, I mean, there’s a certain depth there. And so, I think, Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty are probably my favorite, even more so than some of the more psychedelic experimental songs. But in seeing them live, I mean, Wharf Rat, and some of the more epic non-traditional songs, I think I actually liked a lot more live. I don’t know if they were able to capture the essence of some of that more expansive work in the studio, because it wasn’t their thing. But those two records are like desert island, like non-negotiable gotta have it, that I could listen to over and over and over and over and over again and never tire of them.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

That’s how I would feel the same way. I would feel the same way. I’m working, I love that song, Cumberland blues.

Luke Storey

Oh, yeah.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

And I remember when I was a young person and I said that I loved all the Jerry songs, and then I met this woman who was like a real Deadhead. I was like really young. And she goes, what songs do you like? And I named like eight songs. And she goes, oh, those are all Bob songs.

Luke Storey

Oh, wow.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

So I actually love them probably equally. It’s kind of interesting.

Luke Storey

That’s funny. Well, I’ve grown that way too and I’ve also really enjoyed some of the solo stuff that Bob Weir’s done in recent years as well. He put out one album, I think it’s something river, something I believe. I wish I had the title of it on hand, but it was probably about eight years ago or so seven, eight years ago, he put this on. I mean, it’s just classic. It’s mostly acoustic. It’s more traditional songwriting, right. Again, it’s kind of like more in the vein of Workingman’s Dead, but it’s just Bobby and it’s incredible. So I think as I’ve aged and gotten a little more open minded, I’ve come to love his stuff too.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

And right now, I just have to say the Dead Head company is playing so great together, that I organized my summer around making sure that I see them.

Luke Storey

That’s great, that’s great. Yeah, I should probably do that too. I’ve not seen them. I saw a couple Bobby shows, I think with RatDog, like shortly after Jerry died, but I have not seen the ensemble, whatever version or iteration of the Dead since Jerry was alive.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

Oh, okay, so they’re as good as any band in the world right now. It’s outta control how good they are and then Bob Weir and Wolfe Brothers is also outta control.

Luke Storey

Right, right. Yeah, yeah.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

But so then, speaking of Jerry and speaking of addiction.

Luke Storey

Yeah.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

And this is a Peptide Summit, and so I thought maybe we could start talking there. We should be kind of an interesting one ’cause it’s a topic that has been near and dear to our heart. And then there’s a host of things that I think are quite helpful for people to think about from an addiction perspective, be that NAD, be that supplements that help mitochondria, be that peptides. But I thought may maybe, if you wanted to share a little bit of some of your thoughts about it and then we kind of get into it ’cause I went with it.

Luke Storey

Yeah, yeah.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

We had some good conversations about it.

Luke Storey

Yeah, it’s an incredibly important topic and I’m glad that you want to cover it because it’s one that I think– I’ve just sort of gotten so used to being free of addiction. Sometimes I sort of forget how bad it was. It’s been 25 years that I’ve been sober, which is interesting in a whole other wormhole because in the past three years, some of the things that have helped me just really strengthen my commitment to sobriety and spirituality and ushered in a deeper level of trauma healing and connection to God, have been plant medicines in psychedelics. So that’s like a whole other thing that could take a whole summit to kind of explore, because it’s a very counterintuitive approach. But going back to the relevance and the importance of this, I think sometimes I forget, because I was graced with freedom from addiction that so many millions of people are still suffering and still trapped in that bondage. And I don’t think I take it for granted because I’m daily so aware of the fact that something miraculous has happened in my life to free me from that. But because I don’t interact with people who are struggling with addiction much anymore, I’m not really in any recovery programs that I’m a member of at this point, although I was for many, many years in a very dedicated fashion. I just kind of forget that it’s out there, and then I’ll speak about it. 

And some of the things that I went through and the solutions that I found to be viable and effective, and I realized I get messages from people that are like, “Oh man, I got six days off the booze “and I’m scared and it’s difficult “and I’ve relapsed this many times,” and all of these stories, and I go, oh my God, it’s still alive and well out there. So it is something I think it’s important to talk to. And from the point of view of peptides and bio-hacking and nutrition, I can’t help but think sometimes, if I hadn’t discovered this stuff earlier in my journey, I mean, oh God, just the sort of mental illness and emotional dysfunction and just irregularity and just the unmanagebility of my life in the first few years of sobriety, I think was largely due to a buildup of toxins, just living such a destructive lifestyle for so long, but also just being so dysregulated in terms of brain health and neurotransmitters, and all of the things that you mentioned, NAD and of course, peptides, and all the things that we have available now in the realm of addiction recovery, that weren’t really widely known when I first got sober in 1997. And when I say got sober, just for a little background on that, I was a kid that was in an environment where there were lot of illicit drugs in Northern California in the 1970s and eighties. I experienced a lot of trauma as a kid. And so, I started using when I was really young, you know, 8, 9, 10 years old. I was experimenting with cannabis, alcohol, a little later, probably I don’t know, in the range of 12, 13 crystal meth, cocaine. When I was 19, I started doing heroin, smoking crack. 

Was an alcoholic from the get go. So by the time I was 26, I mean, I had multiple addictions that were completely raging out of control. And there was no chance of me stopping any of it ever. It just was impossible for me on my own volition and willpower. And so, for people that might be watching this, that are trapped in some sort of addiction, whether it’s that severe or not, I think it’s important to note that what really worked for me was checking into a treatment center and sequestering myself away from my environment for 28 days, and really surrendering to that process and letting go of the egoic resistance to 12-step meetings and all of the things that you’re taught in a treatment center, hopefully in a good one, which is something that someone can have a desire to do to enter into it with that level of willingness. But it’s also very reliant on grace and the depth of one’s surrender, which is inherently based on one’s level of suffering. So it’s an interesting dichotomy. And oftentimes when people are kind of caught in addiction and it’s problematic, but not acute and they can’t get out of it, and this is gonna sound crazy, but I mean, this is people that I know and people I’ve mentored. Sometimes I’ll tell them you’re not doing enough drugs, meaning that you gotta hit a bottom. And I mean, hopefully you live to tell the tale if you do, and I’m halfway joking, but not really. Because what happened for me was, I just took it until the wheels fell off. 

I mean, I just rode that thing until I was so desperate, in so much pain, it was suffering so deeply, emotionally, spiritually, mentally, physically. That once I made that fateful decision to check myself into treatment, that was it. I had aligned myself with the consciousness of surrender, and hopelessness and helplessness within myself to wear that shell of grandiosity and denial and self righteousness and all those things that keep someone who’s in addiction trapped. All of that was just dismantled because I was just such a basket case to be honest. So the beginning of that journey for me, was completely dependent on my adherence to 12-step groups and just absolutely letting go of everything that I thought I knew, and just really humbling myself. Which again was made easier by the fact that I was so humbled by my circumstances and the depth of addiction that I was trapped in. But my journey was very slow, because I mean, it took me years to have any sort of emotional balance. And I was very committed to the 12-step program, which completely revolutionized my life. And to this day, even though I’m not actively involved in any of those groups, is really the foundation and framework of everything that I am and that I do. I mean, I’m literally the person that you see that you mentioned earlier, you appreciate some qualities about me. Those qualities have been illuminated and animated by living by the spiritual laws of the 12-steps, period. That’s just what I’m built of. It’s like not something I could even get away from if I tried to–

Matthew Cook, M.D.

How would you define those laws in kind of broad terms?

Luke Storey

Yeah, well, these are universal laws that are not unique to the teachings of the 12 steps from my research and exploration into all realms of spirituality from the most secular to the most dogmatic and esoteric and everything in between. These are just fundamental spiritual laws. Like you have a physical law, like the law of gravity, right? There’s no getting away from it. It’s just there, right? So some of the spiritual principles they exist kind of in the realm of the psyche, in the realm of the heart and they would be honesty, especially self honesty, the willingness to really look at one self and not be delusional about who and what you are and the way you feel and the way you think and the way you treat people. Another one that’s huge is willingness, right? These are especially in the beginning, and all of these principles really correspond to each of the 12 steps incidentally. Each of the 12 steps is sort of an amalgam of various principles with an emphasis on certain ones that are relevant to where you are in that stage of development. So they sort of take your character and develop your character to attain more integrity, and finally with the ability to build a working relationship with a higher power. But willingness is really important in the beginning, because once you’re honest with yourself about your circumstances and who and what you’ve become, which someone in the throws of addiction, if they have the ability to be honest with themselves, have a real chance, because you can see like, wow, the person I’ve become is not the person that I desire to be, right? So the willingness is there. Okay, I’m willing to read a spiritual book. I’m willing to try a meditation. I’m willing to go to a meeting. I’m willing to start repairing my relationships with my significant loved ones, et cetera. 

Another one is humility. Humility is probably the most foundational, to not only recovery, but specifically to the 12 steps. And I always chuckle when I talk about humility, ’cause it’s like, if you really had attained humility, you wouldn’t be able to talk about it. Kind of like enlightenment, right? It’s like if you’re sitting there wondering if you’re enlightened yet, you’re not. Because if you were, you wouldn’t care if you were enlightened. But humility to me is– My relationship with that principle is grown so much over the years. And I think in the beginning I looked at it like not playing too big, right? Like not being too full of oneself, egotistical, grandiose, et cetera. But the other side of humility is also an ownership of your most pristine and benevolent qualities, right? Your strengths. It’s a like acknowledging– I think having an honest appraisal of who and what you are, where you are in your life and your development, and then having a willingness to expand and grow and evolve into something even more whole and complete, right? And then taking a personal inventory, which is in one of the 12 steps. The inventory is to really look at ways in which I’ve harmed myself and harmed other people. And specifically what some of those character defects are, those things that are flaws in my personality, the way that I think feel and behave, that creates a destructive unmanageable life that ultimately will lead me back into addiction. And then there’s retribution, right? Making amends, like being willing to admit when I’m wrong, admit when I’ve harmed someone, admit when I’ve made a mistake, admit when my thinking is in error. You know, not just when I’m wrong morally, but just when I’ve been mistaken about something, to be able to readily admit that. And then prayer and meditation is huge. 

That’s in the 11th step. Prayer and meditation eventually in recovery becomes not something set aside. Well, hopefully it becomes. This is what it’s continuing to evolve into. For me, it’s not like meditation and prayer or something, oh, I do that for 10 minutes in the morning and then I go about my day and forget about it. It becomes a way of life, right? Where one can develop a contemplative, meditative state of being I’m practicing right now, being present with you and really retaining my faculties to be in the moment, to be aware of every word that I’m speaking, the place from which that’s coming, to stay in integrity during that moment. It’s like a meditation that I’m actually embodying while I’m doing something. And the same can be said of prayer as one develops. For me in the beginning, it was first day waking up in rehab and I’m just crying, I’m 135 pounds, I’m 6’2, just for reference. I’m yellow, I’m going through all kinds of withdrawals from all sorts of different stuff. I mean, I’m borderline suicidal. And the only thing I could master was like, God, please help me. Please I want to be sober. Just remove this obsession for drugs and alcohol. And it was literally like my hands together, like you’d see someone pray in the movies, right? And then over 25 years, a prayer has evolved into more of a experience of my life being a prayer. It’s like being in just full of gratitude for being able to of be here with you today, to just appreciate everything in my life as much as possible and keep in contact with the source of creation, with consciousness, with God, with the divine, to keep one foot in that realm, right? As I go about being a person and doing the earthly things that have elected or I’m required to do. 

And then finally, the kind of reward of applying those principles to one’s life is the opportunity to be of service. And when I say this, it’s not– There’s different levels of service, right? There’s patting yourself on the back because the first Sunday of every month you go feed the homeless people at the shelter, right? And that’s wonderful. Or you do activism or whatever it is. But service again, for me, can be expanded into developing a mindset in a way of interfacing with the world that is based on what I can give, more so than what I can receive. And that’s only possible if you actually have something to give and all of those other principles, if they’re applied to one’s life. With some degree of commitment and consistency, you start to gain integrity and become more full so that all you wanna do is help other people. And then you start to clue in, wow, I’m really happy all the time and I used to want to kill myself literally, on a regular basis for years and years. I wonder what’s changed. Well, what’s changed is the relationship with the divine has enabled me to become full and whole, so that I still have this abundance of energy that wants to produce something. What does it want to produce? And if I’m in my right mind and heart, and I’m not living in a sense of scarcity or self-centeredness, then the thing that brings me the most joy is contributing love and positivity to other people’s lives, not for the reward or the accolades that come from that, but solely for the fulfillment that I feel inside when I’m operating from a sense of, I just have too much joy and too much wisdom and too much love to contain in this body, I have to share it with people. I mean, I could go on and on literally for hours about the nuances of those principles. But I think, in the context of the 12 steps and why that was so useful for me, and so transformative. Really useful is really selling it short. Useful in the beginning, right? ‘Cause you’re like I got three days sober. I’m kind of starting to understand how this thing works, right? Going to meetings and you’re hearing these terms and phrases and kind of getting a grasp on how you’re supposed to be living your life. You wanna stay sober. 

But ultimately as those energies within oneself, those spiritual laws and principles are enlivened and activated through your willingness and through your conscious awareness. Then the things that one used to feel the need to drink and use over, are suddenly not as big and not as meaningful and not as painful, right? People like me use drugs and alcohol to change our perception of reality by altering our consciousness. Because my reality is dictated by a mind that’s infected with negativity, and hostility and fear and all of these negative. I guess you could say, in a dualistic framework, negative emotions and negative thoughts, even though I don’t really believe in that from a more broad perspective. But let’s say the thoughts and feelings that bring one pain and discomfort and suffering. As one begins to apply these principles, there’s much less suffering. And so the suffering going down also tends to have the impact of one’s desire to drink and use to numb the pain of their experience also go down, right? It’s just like add more truth to your life, and then you start to perceive the world in which you find yourself, in a manner that is not only not painful, but is also really exciting and interesting. So, it’s all about the root cause, right? Because Matt, you might have known someone and even someone listening that’s not an addict has probably met someone who’s sober, who’s what we call white-knuckling it, another term for that’s a dry drunk. And they still have all of the character traits and the mindset of an addict, even though they’ve been sober for 2, 5, 10 years, right? And that’s because of a lack of really dealing with the root cause, which is a mental and emotional illness. 

To your point earlier about some of the useful tools and the ones that I thought, God, I wish I would’ve had this when I was two years sober. I mean, if I could have gotten NAD infusions, oh my God. I think a lot of the ability to actually change the way you see things and change the way you act and the way you feel, and to have the vitality and the energy to apply these principles and actually change your life is much dependent on your metabolic health. Is so much dependent on your mitochondria. It’s so dependent on the level of toxicity in your body. I mean, the kind of sleep you’re getting, your EMF exposure, mold, co-infections, all of these things that are just endemic in our culture. All of those things make it much more difficult to work on yourself spiritually and emotionally when your physical vessel is under such duress. And so, if I could make a dream rehab center, it would be– I mean, first day you’d probably take an ayahuasca, you know, for one thing, maybe not first day, but at some point and Bufo and other things that have helped me so much all these years later. I’m kind of joking, not really. It would be case dependent. But man, what helped me in the beginning was like infrared saunas. I was doing that in the nineties. Colonics, doing herbal cleanses, Chinese herbs, medicinal mushrooms, making my own kombucha. I know you’re a kombucha fan. This was like the late nineties. So it was kinda, , there it is. You should have stock and synergy. This was the late nineties. So the alternative health scene was kind– It was like hippy dippy, health, food store, granola kind of stuff, right? But that did help me get to a certain level. But I mean, it’s like, how much is sitting in a sauna really gonna do for you when you’re so full of? I mean, think about like, I used to do something called chasing the dragon, which is when you take Mexican tar heroin and you put a little piece of it on a piece of aluminum foil and you light it with a lighter from underneath and you chase the smoke. 

That’s how you smoke heroin. I mean, to think about how much aluminum I put into my body for years. So, you get sober and, oh, I’m gonna take a sauna every couple days and drink kombucha, it’s not enough. I mean, if I could go back now, like I said, I mean, I would be doing some of the protocols that you do and getting down the inflammation with peptides and dealing with the physical pain that comes with falling down drunk for 20 years and all of this. So I think we’ve come a long way, but the foundation for me is pursuing a spiritual life for whatever that looks like. And developing a relationship with God. And the physical part is not about longevity or living forever or having abs or any of that. It’s about how can I get my mitochondria working so that I have the physical energy to go take that Kundalini yoga class, or do the breath work or go do some movement practice or even just going to meetings or being of service, however that manifests in my daily experience. It’s really important to have the physical vitality, but just the physical vitality alone doesn’t give one the fulfillment and solve their mental and emotional problems and heal the trauma that they’ve likely experienced that led them into addiction in the first place. 

So it’s kind of a multifaceted approach. And I don’t know that there’s a blueprint correct sequence for how one does that. But I would say starting with G-O-D is the number one job. Because the problem with most addicts is that we think we are God, because we become so consumed by our lower nature, our animal nature, the egoic armor that we build in order to protect ourselves and to operate in a world that is not sympathetic to doing copious amounts of drugs, you have to learn to navigate in a way that’s so far out of integrity that is extremely spiritually degrading and demoralizing. And the depths to which addicts like me go to sustain that lifestyle are extremely damaging emotionally and disconnecting spiritually. So, you kind of start with the mindset and the relationship with your heart and yourself and finding some semblance of self love and compassion. And then you start working on the body to get the body ready to do the real work.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

It’s interesting when– Yeah, we talked about this a little bit, from a life’s design perspective. Imagine that you’re a kid. And so in a way, I’m almost speaking to kids, I’m speaking to young people, I’m speaking people who might be before addiction, but in the back of your mind, you might think, oh man, I might be addicted and I might be kind of susceptible to this stuff. A lot of times there’s this underlying anxiety or feeling that I’m not okay, or I’m an outcast, whatever that feeling might be. And I was talking to Barb about this over the weekend, there are drugs that are symptom managing drugs, any drug that is a symptom managing drug is the catastrophe, ’cause it takes the symptoms away, but you have to keep taking more of that drug, and then eventually it just stops working and then you take that drug to feel the same.

Luke Storey

Yeah, totally.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

And anything that is a pain symptom manager is like an opioid. Anything that is a anxiety symptom manager is a benzodiazepine. Anything that is an energy symptom manager, which is like methamphetamines and cocaine. And then alcohol also is some sort of, as something that will all kind of do the same thing a little bit, it could just because it’s a little bit of an anesthetic. It kind of numbs you out a little bit. So then, if you took those classes of drugs, and now alcohol, there are some people who are able to do minimal amounts of it, which is amazing. But then a lot of people can’t. But if you took those first categories and then said, those are so dysfunctional that they just don’t work. Along the lines of, if said, oh, if you eat Cheetos that doesn’t work for nutrition, it’s a catastrophe. They’re a catastrophe. Now, interestingly, there are substances that will affect consciousness that don’t really create this catastrophic effect on the body. And so then, 1.0 of my conversation on addiction is just like those five sort of categories, if you can figure out a way to sort of not do those, that would be super helpful for tens of millions of people, because basically you realize– When I was a young person, people said, don’t do drugs, drugs are bad. But then you knew people did drugs, and so then that was not a very useful statement as a young person to hear. But if somebody said, oh, don’t do these drugs because they’re a catastrophe. And by the way, people overdose on them and all kinds of other stuff too. So, I don’t know. I’d like to sort of get that symptom managing ideas I found kind of interesting.

Luke Storey

That’s amazing. Yeah, and that’s 100% accurate to my view on the whole cycle of addiction. What’s crazy about it, , and pertinent to that point of view is, alcoholics are very often suffering from depression. And how we treat depression is by becoming addicted to a depressant. Drug addicts are often overcome by chronic anxiety. And how drug addicts treat anxiety, some of them, is with crystal meth and cocaine. It’s like the symptom management is so ass-backwards. That’s like the insanity of it, right? I mean, I had crippling anxiety and depression for many years. And so, that’s what I was doing. You know, it’s like, oh, I’m depressed, I’ll drink a classic depressant alcohol. It’s just like the worst idea ever. But going back to that root cause versus symptom management, I mean, I think the root cause is different for many of us, but you mentioned, not feeling like one fits in and perhaps low self-esteem and just undervaluing yourself and not knowing how to relate to people or having social anxiety, that kind of stuff. I think that some people, if they’re sort of genetically inclined and predisposed to going into addiction, could be triggered into it by those kind of less dramatic experiences, but most people that I’ve known that are hardcore addicts have had considerable amount of trauma in their childhood. I mean, I can’t think of any person I’ve ever mentored or friends in recovery communities and things like that. I mean, everyone’s had some trauma and I think this is why I’ve become so curious about, and to some degree, although I have some trepidation about it, an advocate for some people in sometimes some circumstances, the exploration of plant medicines and psychedelics. Because when it comes to trauma, you can get traumatized very quickly, but it’s often very slow to heal it, outside of the plant medicine space. 

I experienced sexual, physical abuse as a kid, verbal abuse, abandonment, neglect. I guess everyone’s experience is subjectively the worst, right? But I don’t know anyone in my inner circle that had the shit happen to them when they were a kid that I did. I’ve met people in my life that have had kind of much more dramatic trauma, physical trauma and things like that. But I was sober for 22 years and I mean, I’m going to India to study meditation. I’m reading every spiritual book. I’m going to personal development workshops. I’m going to every kind of therapy you’ve ever heard of. And I could not get to that trauma. I could talk about it, I could write about it, I could cry about it. I could scream and punch pillows about it, but I couldn’t get rid of it. It was still motivating my behavior in ways that developed as patterns of dysfunction in relationships with money, with work, just in adulting, right? That trauma was so embedded and so sort of cloaked in my subconscious, that even many, many years into my maturation and my personal and spiritual development, I was still having a lot of problems in my life until I was eventually called to explore plant medicines in a very safe and intentional way. And I mean, my whole life has been transformed. And now kind of looking back at the past three plus years that I’ve been with some regularity exploring these other modalities, I mean, all of those patterns have been broken. I still have my inherent personality, right? Sometimes I bite my fingernails. I’m currently pretty much addict– Let me be honest. I’m addicted to these little nicotine pouches. I’m still neurotic. I take a million supplements. I’m kind of obsessive. There’s things about my personality, they’re just kind of the way I am that I don’t think will ever necessarily change, but I’m not in dysfunctional relationships. I’m not in debt. I don’t have conflict with people. I don’t hurt people. I rarely have to apologize and make amends because I’m not a Tasmanian devil of drama in people’s lives like I used to be. So, apart from–

Matthew Cook, M.D.

How did the psychedelics change that? What happened, do you think internally, that helped you change the narrative.

Luke Storey

Man, to be honest, Matt, it’s almost ineffable. I think because when I went into ceremony at 22 years, I had a very strong framework, and a pretty deep and thorough psychological understanding of myself and what made me tick. So it’s not like I walked into ceremony. I’ve never explored what it was like to be sexually abused when I was five years old. Never cried about it, never told anyone. I mean, I know a lot of people come into those experiences and they have deep dark secrets, or even experiences that have been completely locked away and they’re subconscious that they have no awareness even happened, right? I was very aware of what had happened to me, but I had done a lot of work and could see these patterns as they were continuing to manifest in my life. And I could even thread them back to certain traumatic experiences as a kid and relationships with my caregivers and my family lineage and ancestry. And I mean, I had a pretty, I would say comprehensive understanding of what made me tick, but I couldn’t get deep enough to the root of it to really, really see it. I mean, see it like it was happening. And I remember in the first four ayahuasca ceremonies I went to– I mean, the depth of pain that I was able to access and just the– It’s hard to even put words to it, but it’s like really being willing to face some of the painful experiences in my life, more than I’d ever been able to, at a greater depth, just with more thoroughness. I mean, just laying there and going, oh my God, my innocence was stolen from me. My life was completely devastated by the abuse that I endured. 

I mean, it destroyed me as a kid And I could never see it in that, like what a profound impact some of those experiences had upon my life. And in so seeing them, because I’m in this inter-dimensional high consciousness field, that medicine allows one to co-facilitate with the divine. It’s not only that I’m seeing this trauma unfold, but it’s actually being removed somatically from my nervous system. I’m actually going in, and this is gonna sound insane to someone who’s perhaps not had these types of experiences, but I remember going literally– There’s no way to say it, I’m just gonna say it like it is. I became so small in the quantum realm that my higher self or soul or consciousness actually was going into my physical brain and rearranging neural pathways and disconnecting things and reconnecting things. And I’m literally going in and with the medicine and the sort of entities that, I don’t mean entities like a little green man, but just the energetic beings that are there present in that realm. We’re going in together and we’re literally like healing and rewiring my brain. Healing my heart, not my physical heart, perhaps that too, but my energetic heart, the heart of who I am as a man, as a soul in a body. Just the depth of the healing has been profound for me. And while it’s going on, I think why these experiences have been so productive for me is because I’m not taking a substance and then just laying there and kind of going, wow, cool light show. I mean, I’m going in there and I’m like pulling threads out of a sweater. Oh, I have an inclination to go and look at something that happened with my dad or with my mom or my grandmother or my mom’s grandmother. 

To her, and just this inter-connective web of consciousness in my experience, and being able to go in and almost surgically start picking things apart and unraveling things and gaining a deeper understanding. And then when the understanding avails itself to me to have this almost supernatural ability to go in and actually just rewire myself. And then emerge from those experience as a totally different person. I mean, the fact that I’m happily married and completely ecstatic to be monogamous with a woman and to have the degree of intimacy and healthy bond that I have with my wife. The fact that we’re in the process of getting pregnant, and I’m not terrified, that I’m not fighting that, that I actually desire that in my life. I mean, to a normal person, this might just be your life. You get married, you fall in love, you have kids. I was so damaged psychologically as a child, that things like that in my experience were completely unattainable. There’s no way I was ever going to have that experience in my life before I started doing that deep work with the plant teachers. And I wanna preface this by saying, I thoroughly believe that as beneficial as these explorations have been for me personally, and I have to be honest about that. I don’t wanna downplay the reality that they’ve transformed my life in the most meaningful and exponentially powerful ways, I truly believe they’re not appropriate for all people at all times. And there’s so much variation in terms of the facilitators, the circumstances, the set and setting. I also know from past experiences, speaking of the Grateful Dead. 

I mean, I used to take acid and mushrooms all the time without even thinking about what I was gonna do. Just like, Hey, let’s take a bunch of acid. Just get arrested. I mean, just the worst trips ever. So I know that psychedelics can really turn on you. And if you’re not in a extremely safe and integrous and sacred place with sacred people who are highly trained and competent in opening those portals, that it could be devastating to someone’s mental health and one could be vulnerable to all sorts of other abuses and be permeable in terms of dark forces and different energetics that I wouldn’t wish upon anyone. So, as excited as I get and as enthusiastic as I am about what has happened for me, I just urge people to be very cautious because you’re playing in realms that are not of this world, especially when you get into doing things like Bufo, the the 5-MeO-DMT toad. I mean, this is intergalactic, completely ineffable experience. Like words would never begin to describe the level of consciousness that one could experience. But if one isn’t ready for that, or doesn’t have the framework, or doesn’t engage in that type of experience with the right people, with safe people, it could also really, really hurt you. And I’ve seen this happen to a couple people that are just kind of, willynilly, like, oh yeah, psych and Alex, that sounds cool. Like, that’s not the approach. It requires a lot of reverence, respect, prudence, discernment. But again, I have to be honest when I speak about my own experience, there’s nothing that has enriched my life as much as the healing and the just expansion of who and what I am as a spirit, as a soul here on earth than having those experiences. 

And perhaps, the risk for someone like me, because I have good discernment, I’m very prudent. I don’t take every opportunity that comes my way and a lot of them do, especially here in Austin, it’s quite popular in this location. I want to be mindful of not becoming attached to those peak experiences, right? I mean, you do something like the 5-MeO-DMT. I mean, there’s nothing in this world that compares to how beautiful and intense that is, right? And like you said, there’s kind of classifications of things. Something like that is never something that I believe anyone could get addicted to, but there could be an attachment to just experiencing God in such a clear and profound way, that you kind of come back to earth after an experience like that. And it’s sort of, it can feel kind of dull. You’re like, oh, I’m back in this body, I’m sitting in this room, I’m talking to these people. I was just experiencing Christ consciousness four hours ago, , you know? And so, you wanna go back there. If you’re someone like me that’s really drawn towards self realization, enlightenment, and the conscious contact and presence of God, there is, I don’t wanna call it a risk, but something to be aware of, I think on that side of it is– I think we’re meant to have these experiences to awaken and invigorate something that is present within ourselves. So it’s not about the exogenous substance. 

It’s about activating things within myself that I can then integrate and become whole and complete with in my day to day householder, boots on the ground, life, talking to Matt Cook on a Peptide Summit. It’s like, how do I take that experience that I had in medicine and be with that right now and not have to take anything to get there. And then that becomes fun, because then I can see when my consciousness is becoming dense again, and I’m starting to believe too much in this 3D linear reality, it becomes confining and uncomfortable. And that’s an indication to me that I need to step up my meditation, my breath work, my human connection, my journaling, my reading, listening to the Ramm Dass podcast. Whatever it is that takes me there. It’s kind of sets the standard and sets a barometer for when I’m getting off track and starting to get caught too much in the intellect and in the ego. And I’m starting to live in a state of constriction rather than expansion.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

Okay, I have a number of good comments for you.

Luke Storey

Great.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

Number one, so because I’m an anesthesiologist and I know quite a bit about the physiology of all of these things.

Luke Storey

Yeah.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

In the near future, we’re gonna do a talk where we do a podcast, and we’re gonna talk about all of those substances, what they do, and physiologically what they’re doing so people can think about them.

Luke Storey

I love that. Please explain what happens when you take Bufo ’cause, , there is just nothing like that. It’s so far out.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

Now, one thing that I’ll say is just that– In the conversation around addiction, which is interesting, a very substantial part of that is of response to trauma. And so, then reframing and creating a different narrative around trauma, I think is one of the most important things you can do. We like to use ketamine. And the only thing that I personally do in terms of working with people, is ketamine, just because that’s the only thing that I can legally do. Although I would look forward to a time in the future where we could use other plant-based medicines, ’cause I think there’s a lot of them being studied and they’re gonna be profound and powerful at helping with that narrative. I wanna mention the Bufo, because you know, one thing that I do is take care of a lot of people with addiction. Another thing that I do is take care of a lot of people with PTSD and trauma. And I think I’m getting a call once a week from somebody that took Bufo and didn’t recover from it.

Luke Storey

Oh wow, wow.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

Yeah, and maybe more commonly than that. And so then interestingly, there’s gonna be a percentage of people that will go into– It is DMT. And so, it’s a disassociate experience that is like the DMT experience of ayahuasca, but just more intense. And there’s gonna be a percentage of people that will go into a psychedelic state that they don’t come out of for years. It’s a small percentage, but it’s a real percentage. And so then, when you think about a certain setting, you can imagine that if you were in trauma and then you had an idea that you were gonna go do something that was gonna be helpful, and then you got stuck in a state that you couldn’t come out of. So you couldn’t come back into that state. That would be a sketchy experience to be in.

Luke Storey

Yeah, I’m so glad you mentioned that. And you remind me. I actually know two people that have had a similar experience with 5-MeO-DMT specifically, wherein for weeks they were not right. So I mean, that’s terrifying to me because like I said, in those experiences, it’s intense, especially that one. And I think for that reason, it’s interesting, it’s so beautiful the way nature kind of has made these molecules available to us and made certain human beings aware of them through millennia. Ayahuasca how to brew it, mix this thing in that thing. It’s like, who even thought of that. But one of the saving graces is I think that, they can be so intense and overpowering that I’m afraid of them still. You know what I mean? I mean, speaking to like, could you get addicted to taking mushrooms or LSD or 2CB or MDMA or whatever it is? I don’t think I could, because when I think about it, I kind of get butterflies. I mean, when I think of Bufo, I get butterflies and I’ve had people come into town like, Hey, we’re serving Bufo and I’m like, , it’s not like I’m craving it. Like, oh man, I gotta get over there. It’s like the only time I do it is if I feel that nervousness and that apprehension and those butterflies, yet there’s something deeper within me that’s calling me to that place with those people at that time. 

In fact, next week I’m going to sit with Ayahuasca for the first time in about three years, because I got the invite. I took a few days to kind of feel into it and I never gotta know. Everything inside me was like, yep, this is the time, these are the people, you’re doing it. And there’s really like no way I can’t go do it because I feel that call. And over the course of the past few years, I’ve gotten I think more refined with that discernment, and where the discernment is based in is that healthy respect and also the fear that something like what you just described could happen to me. I like being here. I don’t wanna walk around and be seeing things that aren’t there, and fractals in this guy when I’m trying to drive on the freeway, right? I think there’s a reason why we’re not in those states of consciousness on a day to day basis. They’re reserved for very sacred moments in some people, not all people’s lives. So thank you for adding that and I think it’s really important for people to understand that.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

Yeah, that’s a good one. And then what I’m kind of liking to pepper, some of these ideas into the psychedelic conversation, ’cause it’s kind of interesting. So, if part of addiction I think is trauma related, the other part of addiction is just people feeling bad. Now, why do you feel? And then if you feel bad, then I go, oh, maybe I needed an antidote for feeling bad so that I could feel better, which was in my little five categories of things that are not that helpful for you. And so, then part of feeling bad is mitochondrial dysfunction. Your biology is just a little suboptimal. And so then the side effect is you don’t feel that good. Another thing could be that, I think that a huge percentage of people with addiction are somewhere on the spectrum of mild chronic illness could be things like Lyme disease or could be chronic viral things. These days could be long COVID. And so your immune system, your mitochondria are operating at 80% or 70% or 50%. And so you don’t feel good, that that may be a very clear biochemical thing or an average of a handful of biochemical things. And so then, my 1.0, and I love it, is kind of a 50/50 mix of the spiritual 12 step type of ideas that you’re talking about. And then simple biohacking. And basically what I encourage people is, is that if you can start with the simple biohacking, the side effects are really low. And generally the side effect is you’re gonna feel better, but then you may not be doing it right or there may be a better way to do it. And when you were younger, and I even think when I was in college, in medical school, nothing that we have available to us now existed. But like NAD, a friend of mine who was a famous addiction person, Matt Glendale, shout out to Matt Glendale, I love you. I told him about NAD and he had also been sober for 15 years. And he was like, NAD is not gonna do anything. And then I gave it to him. He was like, I’m changing my life. I’m gonna start a clinic that does NAD.

Luke Storey

Wow, wow.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

It was actually amazing and he’s doing it. So NAD helps with detox. Now, why does everybody with addiction have detox issues? Because we use up all of our NAD detoxing alcohol or other things, but NAD is also crucial for our mitochondria to make energy. So if you use up all of your NAD driving metabolic detox processes, and you don’t have enough energy, you feel bad. Then you go, oh, okay, I feel bad. I wonder what I should do. The only antidote that you have for feeling bad is alcohol, which actually uses up more NAD and as a depressant, it makes you feel bad, but it temporarily gives it a little euphoria. So then, it’s an expensive proposition to go get NAD IVs, particularly if you don’t have any money, because of addition. However, there’s a bunch of supplements that people can take that basically restore NAD, nicotine and , NMN, I like NMN a little bit better. But then you can do subcutaneous injections with an insulin needle. And then this has been profoundly helpful for a lot of people that we work with with addiction, because then we have them doing little injections every day, that top up them from an energy perspective. And if you feel a little bit better, you’re often less susceptible to make that bad decision.

Luke Storey

100%, yeah, yep.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

And then, the interesting thing is, is that peptides, I think are profoundly helpful as little biohacking tools because you can use them. Some of the anti-inflammatory peptides like BPC-157 and some of the fragments of Thymosin beta-4, the 17 to 23 fragment is TB-500. The one fragment is very anti-inflammatory. And so then a lot of times– And then those can be helpful for people with immune problems. Thymosin alpha can be very helpful for an immune problem. And so then suddenly can make somebody who’s feeling addicted, less edgy, because it just calms down immune stress. And so, if your immune stress goes from a nine to a five, you may not need to go get that drink to get through the rest of the day. And then the bioregulator peptides, the most famous one that people know about is Epitalon. There’s another one called peniolon. And then there’s one called Cortigen, VistaGen and CardioGen, together I call those the fab five.

Luke Storey

I’ve got them sitting on my desk per year recommendation when I came and was treated by you. By the way, I’m feeling way, way, better, much less pain. That’s a whole other conversation. So thank you if I forget to thank you. But yeah, these peptides, those are the ones I’ve been doing and I mean, it’s been incredibly helpful. I think that’s a super valid point. Just if you think about systemic inflammation, like going back to the BPC-157 or TB-500 or the fragment one that you mentioned, thyamine, whatever, I can’t even remember the name of that fragment one. , that one. Like those ones, the GHK. If you think about the brain inflammation that an addict is experiencing, I mean, oh my God, your brain is on fire. So I think just kind of putting a simplistic two and two formula together, if you’re gonna lower inflammation, systemically boost the immune system, give it a little bit of a rest to not feel so aggravated and kind of under fire. I mean, like I said, I’m just like, oh God, why didn’t they have this in 1997? I could have been saved a lot of years of going, like, what is wrong with me? I’m sober, I’m physically sober, I’m committed, I’m doing all the stuff that they’re telling me to do at these meetings, why am I still just totally behaving so erratically and still suffering from ways of crippling depression and anxiety and outbursts of anger and all these other symptoms of unmanageability and emotional dysregulation. It’s like, God, a lot of it probably really was just physical and brain inflammation.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

Yeah, and at that time, there was nothing there. And I think I was addicted to working a hundred hours a week because that was also an antidote to accepting internal pain or working on that narrative. And I think that I would’ve fallen into that if I hadn’t been working so hard. And then interestingly, what I’ve noticed is my addictive potential is probably 10% of what it was at that time. And that’s partly why I’m kind of starting to work less and have more fun and do stuff like this because I feel basically sort of like, it shocks me how good I feel that I can’t even honestly believe that it’s possible. Because in a way I didn’t think that it was possible to feel this good. Like what you said about…

Luke Storey

Yeah.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

Being in a relationship and having like a good life and just loving to go home every night and going to bed at 11 o’clock, like I do that all the time now. But that would’ve seemed crazy, you know?

Luke Storey

Yeah, yeah, it’s incredible. Funny thing is, one is susceptible to creating new baselines, positive baselines. This is something that I notice a lot we’re in. Because I feel great today. I don’t sometimes appreciate it, acknowledge, celebrate it, because I forget that five years ago, even though like, I had a really good life I still felt pretty crappy. You know what I mean? It’s like, you kind of forget. It’s the same way with spiritual work. It’s like we have this huge mound of rocks that we need to sort of move out of our way, right? These blocks to fulfillment and happiness and purpose. And so we start moving these rocks out of the way and forming a pile behind us. But those of us that are really committed to that life often forget to turn around and look at that massive pile of rocks that we’ve already moved, right? We’re just kind of looking at the next thing. Oh, I need to work on. Maybe it’s not like, oh, I need to not be so rageful and abusive toward other people, which is kind of a low hanging fruit, maybe in the beginning of that journey. Now it’s like, God, I wish I procrastinated a little less and I was a little more focused, right? It’s like something that’s not as obtuse. It’s kind of more ambiguous is what I’m trying to say. I don’t think obtuse is the right word in that context, but you know, those things that you don’t really notice because you’re just living your best life and you don’t necessarily take the time to really stop and appreciate like how far you’ve come and how good you feel on a daily basis, because you start fine tuning any little irregularity in your energy or sleep or anything like that. So thank you for that reminder. I’m like, God, I feel better at 51 years old literally, than I’ve ever felt my whole life in all categories of my experience.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

Yeah, me too. And so then, like on the addiction conversation then, if you think about it, what I love is that when people just naturally, basically navigate towards almost the same thing, because it’s the best truth that exists on the planet. And so then you think, what are those things? A lot of it is diet and lifestyle, and in a way you’re a lifestyle guru. And so then you figure it out all of those pieces. And then the reality is, is we probably live almost exactly a very similar get up healthy yoga, sauna, hot, cold. The hot cold plunge as a 1, 2, to start your day, I think is just shockingly helpful. And then that detox is super helpful for people. A lot of times throwing in a push catch, like you like to do and I like to do, is kind of a helpful detox. It just kind of gets you oriented. When I was 20, I felt like I was a victim to my thoughts of how I felt, or if I felt bad. I had no idea why I felt that way. And now I think if I don’t feel good, I think, oh, I wonder what’s going on. I wonder if, did I eat something a little–? Did my diet get a little bit off today? Did I do something? I wonder if I should take a little bit of NAD. I wonder if I should take a peptide, and the bio regulator peptides are so helpful at making people feel good and we typically micro dose those, but you can also macro dose those. So then suddenly you have Epitalon, is it one that people will macro dose for like a week, twice a year? But so then suddenly you begin to have– And then we do the IV therapy with glutathione and vitamin C and antioxidants and everything from quercetin to Resveratrol to peptides. 

And so then you realize– And this is just for people to hear if I feel bad and then I have that whole armamentarium of things to do, then basically I have that as my antidote towards feeling bad. And so then that’s what I think about now. And then that’s a super helpful anti addiction strategy. And then suddenly now you have something that is such a good antidote, that basically you’re managing how you feel with biohacking, wellness, integrative medicine strategies. And so then trauma, then you could use psychedelics, or you could use talking. My theory still is, that if I do a good enough job in a conversation, I would be better talking than psychedelic. This is still my idea. And in a way I’m just cultivating myself to get better and better at that. And then a lot of times I’ll talk to people after they’ve done psychedelics. And so then a lot of times that’s helpful from an integration perspective, but then I create a little bit of a dichotomy between those, as kind of a strategy. And then I find it quite helpful. And then the other thing that I’ll tell you is, is that people tell me when they do anything on the integrative biohacking wellness side, whether that be peptides, antioxidants, NAD, they tend to have less side effects from psychedelics, and so then they tend to be able to have a smoother reintegration period.

Luke Storey

Yeah, totally makes sense. Yeah, I’m big on that. Yeah, I like to take the MitoZen suppositories, different ones.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

Oh, yeah, that’s our buddy, John.

Luke Storey

Yeah, before, during and after John’s, I feel great. Everyone’s like, I’m kind of smoked. I’m like, I feel awesome, ’cause I’ll do NAD suppository or some of the different phytonutrients and things like that. If I’m up all night, I’ll do a high dose melatonin in the next night and just crush all that inflammation and get a great night’s sleep and all that. You know, Matt, I’ve been watching the clock here. I’ve got a call in four minutes.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

Oh, perfect.

Luke Storey

That I already pushed off by 15 minutes ’cause I was having such a good time talking to you. And I think it would be airing on the side of rude if I push them again. So, if there’s anything you wanna kind of cover in closing, now it’d be a good time to do it.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

Okay, so then this is the teaser for– We’re gonna actually talk about the biochemistry of medication and medicine that affects consciousness. So we’re gonna come back and talk about that.

Luke Storey

Awesome.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

And then I think that this is a great introduction to the idea of thinking about addiction and realizing that there’s a part of it, there’s trauma, there’s part of it that’s mental, emotional, spiritual. There’s a part of it that’s biohacking. And it’s an evolving journey, but as you can hear, the journey just keeps getting better and better and we’re passionate about it. And so, I look forward to continuing to talk to you. And then when we do our follow up, then we’re gonna talk about pain because I think the other thing that is a big trigger for addiction is pain. And then probably peptides are probably the best strategy that I’ve found other than regenerative medicine.

Luke Storey

Very good point. Yeah, think about all the people that get addicted to opiates who don’t even have any emotional trauma or other problems, but they literally just have pain in their body from an injury or something. So they start doing Oxycontin or fentanyl, and then they run outta their prescription. So they start hitting the street to get heroin. I mean, I know a lot of people go down from that. They’re kind of another classification of addicts that didn’t fall into it by the traditional routes that many of us like myself did, but they’re just, healthy, successful people who are in a lot of pain and found opiates through their doctor and now they’re stuck in it. It’s brutal. There’s nothing worse than opiate addiction, man. It’s horrendous. It’s so, so toxic. And I remember that feeling. So that’s a really good point, the pain piece and how they relate to peptides. I look forward exploring that. That’s beautiful.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

Okay, well, I love you and I appreciate you and thank you for being a beacon of light for the universe.

Luke Storey

Thank you so much, Matt. Thank you for inviting me on. And I’d also like to, before we close, let people know if they enjoyed anything that I talked about, have a podcast called the Life Stylist, upon which as I mentioned, you’ve been a guest, I think two, if not three times. So you can find me there. And like I said earlier, it’s just the joy of my life to be able to do that and talk to people like you, and I’m gonna keep doing it until somebody tells me to stop. It’s going really well. We’re at 9 million downloads now, I think so. It’s been something that’s really fun for me to share with people.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

Awesome.

Luke Storey

So thank you. Yeah, thanks, Matt.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

Welcome. Yeah, go check it out ’cause you’re the best.

Luke Storey

Thanks brother.

Matthew Cook, M.D.

Okay, have a good day.

Luke Storey

You too.