Integrative Approach To Drug Addiction​

Welcome and catching up 0:00

Hey, everybody, welcome to the Peptide Summit. It's Doctor Matt Cook with my good friend Luke. Story. I think that Luke is one of the most thoughtful human beings that I've met in, my journey of meeting amazing and interesting people. And, it's been a highlight for me to get to know him and, and, even bigger highlight for me to be able to talk to him today. So welcome. To the Peptide summit. Thanks for spending some time with us. Yeah. Thank you. Matt, it's great to see you. I'm glad we got to have this opportunity to catch up with tech 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. Yeah. And then it makes me think, oh, it actually, it actually warms my heart because it makes me think, you know, I'm actually starting to dedicate more and more time to this. Doing this peptide summit required me to do like 40 interviews. And as a result of it, it I had to cut into my schedule. I'm working too much all the time.

And that basically led me to the realization that I'm going to start to change my life and start to do this more so. Right? Yeah. And prior to it. Good for you, man. Yeah. I mean, as someone who's done at about 500 interviews now for my podcast, I gotta say, it's it's probably I mean, you don't want to 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 to just expanded my knowledge base and my awareness and just, you know, applied as best I can the things that I'm learning for 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. Like, I don't know if I ever would have actually become friends with someone like you, right? I might have found your clinic and come in and gotten treated, and I'm sure you would have been friendly and I would have been a patient, but the relationship would have been probably limited to that dynamic to some degree. And now I have just incredible, mutually beneficial relationships with so many brilliant, lively, awake and kind, intelligent people, you know?

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 the person conducting the interviews, but, you know, all of the thousands to sometimes millions of people that are going to benefit from those conversations as well. It's just it's 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 soundbites or anyone's agenda.

Right? Are just two human beings connecting and sharing their, their knowledge and experience and expertise and hopefully some humor and people get to sit in. I mean, I listen to podcast 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, you know, just like when when in history could you ever have access to such information? And of course, there are always libraries of other 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, etc.. And I noticed, I noticed basically every single time I do this and then I go to clinic and then

The value of podcasting and long-form conversation 4:12

I, somebody says, hey, blah, blah, blah, why do you really think about this? And I go, oh, guess what? Somebody just told me. So I'm sure I'll be like, oh yeah, Luke story just told me the answer to that ten minutes ago, right? Right. Yeah, absolutely. I like, before I think just out of respect, I have to say that I'm deeply impressed by the the sweater that you've got going on today. Yes, sir. I've got my, it's a buy a brand called Stoned Immaculate. That's my friend Elliot back in Los Angeles.

Really great. Great friend of mine. Beautiful soul. And, he's got this, 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, etc. and he finally, after, after working on it for a long time, managed to get the rights to the Grateful Dead. And so he made he's he's only ever made women's clothing, but he made two pieces. This sweater, the dancing bear sweater and, 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? Like, I don't know, I just there's something that's cool about, I mean, you know, we're both dead fans, but I probably wouldn't walk around, like 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 it's not like even the name, because then you pass by someone and you go, oh, you get it.

You know, they're like, hey, nice sweater. Like, yeah, yeah, Sugar Magnolia baby. You know, it's like there's an unspoken bond between us. I would say it's. What's your favorite dead song? Man, probably ripple. Yeah. I tend to lean more toward the Jerry songs, although. Although over time I have appreciated. But when I used to go see them a lot in the early 90s, I would often go take a beer break during the Bobby songs, you know, and I felt guilty. I'm like, everyone loves Bobby, but I just I never related to his singing as Jerry just had this.

He had this sort of anguish, you know, and this, I don't know, there was a there was a joy to his, his music and songwriting and singing, but there was also this, this depth of, I guess, pain under it. And now we can see as a result of, you know, him succumbing to addiction, that there was a lot going on there in the same way with, 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, he just has there's a certain, yeah, a certain depth there.

And so I think, you know, like 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 you know, some of the more epic, like nontraditional songs, I think I actually liked a lot more live, you know, they were, I don't know if they were able to capture the essence of some of that more expansive work in the studio because it's just it wasn't their thing. But those two records are like Desert Island, like non-negotiable.

Got to have it that I could just I could listen to over and over and over and over and over again and never tire of them. That's how I would feel the same way I would feel the same way. I love on Workingman's that. I love that song Cumberland Blues. Oh yeah. And you know, and I remember when I was, I was a young person and I, I said that I loved all the Gerry songs. And then I met this woman who was like a real Deadhead. I was like, really young. And she goes, what song is you like that? I named like eight songs she has.

Oh, those are all Bob songs. The wow. So I, I actually love them equally. It's kind of interesting. That's funny. Well, I've, I've grown that way too. And I've also really enjoyed some of the solo stuff that Bob Weir has done in recent years as well. He put out one album, I think it's, something River or something, I believe, and it's like, I wish I had the title of it on hand, but it's probably about eight years ago or so, 7 or 8 years ago. He put this on. It's just I mean, it's just classic. It's mostly acoustic.

It's very, it's it's more traditional songwriting. Right. Again, it's it's kind of like more in the vein of Workingman's Dead, but it's just Bobby and it's it's incredible. So I think as I've, as I've aged and gotten a little more open minded, I've come to love his stuff too. And right now I just have to say, the dead company is playing so great together that I'm. I organize my summer around making sure that I see them. That's great. That's great. Yeah, I should I should probably do that too. I, I've not seen them.

I saw a couple Bobby shows, I think with, rat dog like shortly after Jerry died. But I have not seen like, the ensemble, whatever version or iteration of the dead since since Jerry was alive. Oh, okay. So the. They're as good as any band in the world right now. It's it's out of control how good they are and then how. And then Bob Weir and Wolf Brothers is also out of control. Right, right. So yeah. Yeah. But but so then, you know, speaking of Jerry and speaking of addiction. Yeah. You know, and this is the Peptide Summit.

And so I thought maybe we could, we could start talking there, which would be kind of an interesting one because, you know, we it's a topic that has been near and dear to our heart. And then the, the there's a host of things that I think are quite helpful for people to think about from an addiction perspective.

Grateful Dead, music, and shared tastes 10:06

That would be that need to, be that supplements that help mitochondria be the peptides. But I thought maybe if you wanted to share a little bit of some of your thoughts about it, and then we kind of get into it because I, I yeah, we, we had some good conversations about it. Yeah. It's, it's an incredibly important topic and I'm glad that you want to cover it because it's, it's one that I think. I've just sort of gotten so used to being free of addiction, that sometimes I sort of forget how bad it was, you know, it's been 25 years, that I've been sober, which is interesting in a 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 and psychedelics so that it's like a whole other, you know, thing, that's could take a whole summit to kind of explore because it's, it's, a very sort of 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 kind of just 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, to free me from that. But because I don't, you know, interact with people who are struggling with addiction much anymore, I'm not really any, 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, you know, and then I'll 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 realize I get messages from people that are like, oh, man, you know, 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, there's still it's still alive and well out there. So it is something that I think it's important to talk to. And from the point of view of peptides and biohacking 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 the, the sort of mental illness and emotional dysfunction and just irregularity and, just the unmanageable ability of my life.

And the first few years of sobriety. I think that was largely due to, you know, 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 a lot of illicit drugs in Northern California in the 1970s and 80s.

I experienced, a lot of trauma as a kid. And so I started using when I was really young, you know, eight, nine, ten years old. I was experimenting with cannabis, alcohol a little later, probably at an on 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 I there was no chance of me stopping any of it ever. You know, it just was impossible for me on my own volition.

And, and willpower. And so just 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 the egoic resistance to 12 step meetings and all of the things that you're taught in, in a treatment center, hopefully. And a good one, which is something that, you know, 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 going to sound crazy. But I mean, this is people that I, that I know and people I've mentored. Sometimes I'll tell them, you're not doing enough drugs, you know, meaning that you got to hit a bottom, you know, and it's something 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. 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 and was suffering so deeply, emotionally, spiritually, mentally, physically that once I made that fateful decision to check myself into treatment, that was it. You know, I was just I was in a had aligned myself with the consciousness of surrender and hopelessness and helplessness within myself to where that shell of.

Grandiosity and denial and self-righteousness and all of 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 might 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 that I could even get away from if I tried to. What would be those? What and what? How would you define those laws and kind of broad terms? Yeah. Well, these are universal laws that are, you know, 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, you know, 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 oneself and, and not be delusional about who and what you are

Addiction recovery and the 12-step foundation 18:30

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 the 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 throes of addiction, if they're 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? And so the willingness is there. Okay. I'm, you know, I'm willing to read a spiritual book. I'm willing to try a meditation. I'm willing to go to a meeting.

You know, I'm willing to start repairing my relationships with my significant, loved ones, etc.. 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 because 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, you know, my relationship with that principle has 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. You know, egotistical, grandiose, etc. but the other side of humility is also an ownership of, of your most pristine and, benevolent qualities. Right? Your strengths. It's like acknowledging, I think, having an honest appraisal of 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, you know, which is in, 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 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 and when I've harmed someone.

Admit when I've made a mistake. Admit, admit when my thinking is an 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, you know, is huge. That's in the 11th step and that's, you know, prayer and meditation eventually in recovery becomes not something set aside. Well, hopefully it becomes this this is what it's continuing to evolve into for me is it's not like meditation and prayer or something.

Oh, I do that for ten 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 come in, 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.

You know, for me, in the beginning, it was, first day waking up in rehab, and I'm just crying. I'm 135 pounds. I'm 62, you know, just for reference, I'm yellow. I'm going through all kinds of withdrawals from all sorts of different stuff. I mean, borderline suicidal. And the only thing I could muster was like, God, please help me, please. I want to be sober. Just remove this obsession for drugs and alcohol, you know? And it was like, literally like my hands together. Like you'd see someone pray in the movies, right?

And then over 25 years of prayer has evolved into more of, experience of my life being a prayer. You know, it's like being and just full of gratitude for being able to 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 to keep one foot in that realm. Right as I go about being a person and doing the earthly things that I'm, you know, have elected or am required to do, and then and then finally the 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, you know, there's different levels of service, right? There's like 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 that's wonderful. Or you do activism or whatever it is, but service, again, for me can be expanded into developing a mindset and 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 want to 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 is, that wants to produce something.

What does it want to produce? And if it's, 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.

So those are I mean, I could go on and on literally for hours about the the nuances of those principles, but I think, you know, in the, in sort of the context of the 12 steps and why that was so useful for me and so transformative, really useful is a it's really selling at short, useful in the beginning. Right. Because 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 on how you're supposed to be living your life.

You want to stay sober, but ultimately as, as those energies within oneself, those 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, you know, in a, in a dualistic framework, negative emotions and negative thoughts, even though I don't really believe in that from a, 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 like 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 like, 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 two, five, ten 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 have 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 so 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, you know, co-infections, all of these things that you know, 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, you know, if I could make a dream rehab center, it would be, I mean, first day you'd probably be taking ayahuasca. You know, for one thing, maybe that first day, but at some point, and very buffo 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, you know, what helped me in the beginning was like infrared sauna as I was doing that in the 90s, you know? Colonics doing, you know, herbal cleanses, Chinese herbs, medicinal mushrooms, making my own kombucha. I know you're a kombucha fan. This was, like, the late 90s, so it was. Go. There it is. You should have stock in synergy. This is the late 90s. So the alternative health scene was kind of, you know, it's like hippie dippy, health food store granola kind of stuff.

Right. But that that did help me get to a certain level. But, I mean, it's like, you know, how much is sitting in a sauna really going to 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, just think about how much aluminum I put into my body for years.

So, you know, you get sober and I'm going to 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, you know, getting down the inflammation with peptides and dealing with the physical pain that comes with falling down drunk for 20 years and, you know, all of this. So I think we've we've come a long way. But the foundation for me is, is pursuing a spiritual life. What for whatever that looks like, you know, and developing a relationship with God.

And the physical part is, is not about, you know, 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 breathwork, or go do some movement practice, or even just going to meetings or being of service, however that, you know, manifest 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 like 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're God because we become so consumed by our lower nature or 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 it 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 know, you kind of start with with the mindset and the relationship with your 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. It's interesting when, Yeah, we talked about this a little bit, you know, from a design from a life design perspective. Imagine that you're a kid and so on. And where I'm almost speaking to kids, I'm speaking to young people. I'm speaking to 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, you know, whatever that feel, I'm I'm an outcast, whatever that feeling might be. And I was talking to Barbara about this over the weekend. There are drugs that are symptom managing drugs. Any drug that is the symptom managing drug is the catastrophe because 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. So like, yeah, totally. And anything that is a pain, the symptom manager is like an opioid. Anything that is anxiety symptom manager is a benzodiazepine. Any anything that is an energy symptom manager, which is like methamphetamines and cocaine. And then if you took and then, a and then alcohol also is some sort of as something that will also kind of do the same thing a little bit. It could just because it's a little bit of an anesthetic, it's a, it kind of numbs you out a little bit.

So then if you took those classes of drugs and 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. And so but if you took those that those first categories and then said those are so dysfunctional that they're there, they just don't work as the, along the lines, if I said, oh, you know, if you eat Cheetos, that doesn't work for nutrition. It's a catastrophe. You know, they're a catastrophe. Now, interestingly, there are there are substances that will affect consciousness that that don't really create this catastrophic effect on the body.

And so then 1.0 of my conversation on addiction is just like that, 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, yeah, I don't think when I, 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

Trauma, psychedelics, and deep healing 35:48

like statement as a young person to hear. But if you 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 I'd like to sort of get that, that symptom managing ideas I found kind of interesting. 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. You know, it's like the symptom management is so as backwards. That's the that's like the insanity of it, right? Is like 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, I'll drink a, like a, a classic depressant alcohol.

You know, it's just like the worst idea ever. But, you know, going back to that root cause, you know, versus symptom management. And I think the root cause is different for many of us. But you mentioned, you know, 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 that I've known that are hardcore addicts have had, considerable amount of trauma in their childhood. I mean, it's I can't think of any person I've ever mentored or friends that, you know, 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 and advocate for, for some people in some times and in 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.

You know, I experience sexual physical abuse as a kid. Verbal abuse, abandonment, neglect. I mean, had a 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 that I did. I've met people in my life that have had, you know, kind of much more dramatic, trauma, physical trauma and things like that. But, you know, 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 that trauma was so embedded and so sort of cloaked in my subconscious that even many, many years into my my maturation and my personal and spiritual development, I was still having a lot of problems in my life, you know, until I was eventually called to explore plant medicines in a in a very safe and intentional way.

And, I mean, I've just 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, these other modalities, I mean, all of those patterns have been broken. You know, I still have my inherent personality, right? I sometimes I bite my fingernails like, I'm, I'm currently, pretty much a dick. 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.

Like, there's there's things about my personality. They're just kind of the way I am that I don't think we'll 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 like a Tasmanian devil of drama in people's lives like I used to be. So apart from how did the psychedelics change that? What do you think? What happened? Do you think internally that changed, that helped you change the narrative?

Man, it's to be honest, Matt. It's almost ineffable. You know, it's like 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 never I've never explored what it was like to be sexually abused when I was five years old, or never cried about it, never told anyone, you know? I mean, I know a lot of people come into those experiences and they have deep, dark secrets or even even experiences that have been completely locked away in their 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 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, you know?

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. Just, it's hard to even put words to, but it's like really being willing to face some of the painful experiences in my life more than I had ever been able to, you know, just at a at a greater depth at a just with more thoroughness, you know, I mean, just laying there and going, oh my God, you know, my, 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 interdimensional high consciousness field that 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 schematically from my nervous system. I'm actually going in this, and this is gonna sound insane to someone who has perhaps not had these types of experiences, but I remember going literally, it's it's there's no way to say it.

I was going to 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 and disconnecting things and reconnecting things. And I'm literally going in and with, 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, my not my physical heart.

Perhaps that too, but my energetic heart. You know, the heart of who I am as a as a man, as a as a soul in a body. Just the the depth of the the healing is just has been profound for me. And 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 like, wow, cool light show. I mean, I'm going in there and I'm like, pulling threads out of a sweater, you know? Ooh, 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 interconnected 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 is 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 with the plant teachers, you know? And, you know, I want to 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 want to downplay the reality that they've transformed my life and 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 take acid and mushrooms all the time without even thinking about what I was going to do. I just say, hey, let's take a bunch of acid, you know, just get arrested. You know? I mean, just the most the worst trips ever. So I know that psychedelics can, can really turn on you.

And if, if you're not in, extremely safe and integris 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, you know, as excited as I get and as Susie has, because I am about what has happened for me, I just urge people to be very cautious because you're talking and you're playing in realms that are kind of not of this world, especially when you get into doing things like BFO, the five mo DMT toad.

I mean, this is this is intergalactic, you know, completely ineffable experience that you 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 willy nilly like, oh yeah, psychedelics. That sounds cool. Like that's not the approach.

It requires a lot of reverence, respect, prudence, discernment, you know, but again, I, I, I have to be honest when I speak about my own experience, there's just there's nothing that has enriched my life as as much as the healing and the just expansion of who and what I am. As a as a spirit, as a soul here on earth. Then having those experiences and perhaps, you know, 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. Because when you do something like five anime or DMT, I mean, there's nothing in this world that compares to how beautiful and intense that is, right? And, you know, 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 want to go back there. If you're someone like me, that's really drawn toward self-realization and enlightenment and the conscious contact and presence of God. There is I don't want to call it a risk, but something to be aware of. I think on on that side of it is, you know, 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. You know, it's like, how do I take that experience that I had in medicine and and be with that right now and not have to take anything to get there and then that become that becomes fun because then I can then I can see when my 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 breathwork, my human connection, my journaling, my reading, listening to the ROM podcast, you know, 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 a state of constriction rather than expansion. Okay, I have a number of good comments for you. Great. Number one, we're so because I'm an anesthesiologist and I know quite a bit about the physiology of all of these things.

Yeah, we're going to in the in the near future, we're going to do a talk where we do a podcast and we're going to talk about all of those substances, what they do and physiologically what they're doing. So people can think about that. I love that. Please explain what happens when you take focus. I mean, there is just nothing like that. It's so far out now. One thing that I'll say is just that, you know, in the 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 the most important things you can do. We like to use ketamine. And the only thing that I personally do in terms of working 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, you know, other plant based medicines because I think, you know, there's a lot of them being studied, and they're going to be profound and powerful at helping with that narrative.

I want to mention the buffalo because, you know, we 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 before and didn't recover from it. Oh, wow. Yeah. And maybe more commonly than that. And so then, interestingly, there's going to be a percentage of people that will go in to it's a it's a it's it is DMT. And so it's a disassociated experience.

That is like the DMT experience of ayahuasca but just more intense. And there would there is going to 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 set and set and you can imagine that if you were in, trauma and then you had an idea that you were going to go do something that was going to 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, sketchy experience to be. Yeah. I'm so glad you mentioned that. And you remind me, I actually know, two people that have had a similar experience with five mo DMT specifically where in for weeks they were not right. You know, so, I mean, that's terrifying to me because like I said, in those experiences, it's just it's intense, especially that one. And I think for that reason, you know, it's interesting. It's it's so beautiful the way nature kind of is 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 and 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 two CB 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 before, I get butterflies and I've had people come into town like, hey, we're serving buffet.

And I'm like, dude, you know, it's not like I'm like, craving it. Like, oh, man, I got to get over there. It's like the only time I do it is if I feel that nervousness and that apprehension in 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 got to know.

Everything inside me was like, yep, this is the time. These are the people. You're doing it. And there's this. There's really like, no way I can't go do it because I've 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. And is that healthy respect and also the fear that something like what you just described could have happened to me. I like being here. I don't want to walk around and be seeing things that aren't there.

And, you know, fractals in the sky when I'm trying to drive on the freeway right. Like, I think there's a reason why we don't. 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. Yeah, that's a good one. And then where I would then that what I'm like kind of liking to pepper some of these ideas into the psychedelic conversation because it's kind of interesting. So if, if part of addiction I think is trauma related, the other part of addiction is just people feeling that, now, why do you feel?

And then if you feel bad, then I go, oh, maybe I need 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 like a another thing could be that. But I think that a huge percentage of people with addiction are somewhere on the spectrum of mild chronic illness can be things like Lyme disease or,

Biohacking, NAD, and peptides for recovery 58:48

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 5050 mix of kind 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 going to feel better, but then you may not be doing it right or you're there may be a better way to do it. And so then you're and so then and you know, when you were younger and I even think when I was in, you know, college and medical school, nothing, nothing that we have available to us now existed. But like any a friend of mine, who was famous, a famous, addiction person, Matt Blundell, shout out to Matt Blundell, I love you. I told him about Ned and he had also been sober for 15 years, and he was like, Ned, it's not going to do anything.

He and and then I gave it to him. He's like, I'm changing my life. I'm going to start a clinic that does any. Wow. It was it was actually amazing. And he's doing it. But, so any ideas? Helps with detox. Now, where 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 energy. And as a depressant it makes you feel bad, but it temporarily gives a little euphoria. So then you know there it's an expensive, proposition to go get nad IVs, particularly if you don't have any money because of addiction. However, there's a bunch of supplements that people can take that basically restore nad nicotinamide riverside. And man, I like that amount 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 for addiction, because then we have them doing little injections every day that pop up them from an energy perspective. And if you feel a little bit better, you're often less susceptible to make that bad decision 100%. Yeah. And then, you know, 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 one, five, seven and some of the fragments of thymus and beta for T, the 17 to 23 fragment of CB 500, the 1 to 4 fragment is very anti-inflammatory. And so then a lot of times and then those can be helpful for people with immune problems. Davison Alpha one 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, the bio regulator peptides. The most famous one that people know about is that Patel. There's another one called pineal on. And then this one called cardiogenic message. And in cardiogenic shock together I call those the Fab Five because this that right I got them I've got them sitting on my desk. Per your recommendation, when I came in and was treated, by you, by the way, I'm feeling like 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. And 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, the the fragment one that you mentioned, thiamin, whatever. I can never remember the name of that freaking one. Piney by Nealon. That one, like those ones that GCC 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 going to 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? You know, I could have been saved a lot of years of going like, what is wrong with me? I'm, you know, I'm sober, I'm physically sober, I'm committed. I'm doing all this stuff that they're telling me to do with these meetings.

Why am I still, you know, just totally behaving so erratically and still suffering from ways of crippling depression and anxiety and outbursts of anger and all these other, you know, symptoms of unmanageable and emotional dysregulation. So, like, I got a lot of it probably really was just physical and brain inflammation. Yeah. And, you know, at that time there was nothing there. And I think I was addicted to working 100 hours a week, because that was an also an antidote to accepting internal pain or dealing with or working on that narrative.

And if I, I think that I would have 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, you know, do stuff like this because I feel basically sort of like you, I it's shocks me how good I feel that I can even honestly believe that it was. It's possible because I didn't think that it was possible to feel this good.

You know, I like what you said about. Yeah, you know, being in a relationship and having, like, a good life and just loving to go home every night and, you know, going to bed at 11:00, like, didn't seem like I do that all the time now. But that was about seemed that would have seemed crazy. You know. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's incredible. Funny thing is, is you, one is, susceptible to creating new baselines. Positive baselines. This is something that I notice a lot where in I. 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 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, these rocks out of the way and forming a pile behind us. But those of us that are, you know, 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 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 the 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, you know? Or it's kind of more ambiguous is what I'm trying to say, I think. I, I don't think obtuse is the right word in that context.

But, you know, those things that are sort of like 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 it's, thank you for that reminder. I'm like, God, I feel better at 51 years old than I literally than I've ever felt my whole life in all categories of my experience.

Yeah. Me too. And so then like for like on the addiction conversation, then if you if you think about it, what I love is, 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 like, and in a way you're a lifestyle guru. And so then you basically 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, you know, hot, cold, you know, the the hot cold plunge as a 1 to 2 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 know, like you like to do and I like to do is kind of a helpful detox. It just kind of gets you oriented. And then it as you know, when I was 20, I felt like I was a victim. And 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, I wonder what's going on. I wonder that I wonder if that I eat something a little.

Did my diet get a little bit off? Did I? Did I do something? I wonder if I should take a little bit of net. I wonder if I should take a peptide, you know, and the bio regulator peptides are so helpful at making people feel good. And we typically microdose those, but you can also macro dose those. So then suddenly you have like Apatow. And is that one that people will microdose for like a week, twice a year. But so then suddenly you begin to have, and then we do the I.V. therapy with glutathione on a vitamin C and antioxidants and, everything from quercetin to resveratrol to peptides.

And so then you realize that and, and, and this is just a 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 antidote 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 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 I no 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 it makes it it's 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.

Closing thoughts and future follow-up 1:12:18

Yeah, totally totally makes sense. Yeah I'm I'm big on that. Yeah. I, I like to take the miters and suppositories, different ones. Oh, yeah. That's, our buddy John Lara. Before, during and after journeys like, I feel great. Everyone's like, I'm kind of smoked and like, I feel awesome because I'll do nad suppository or, you know, some of the different, phytonutrients and things like that. If I'm up all night, I'll do a at a high dose melatonin the next night and just crash all that, you know, 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. Yeah, that I already pushed off by 15 minutes because I was having such a good time talking to you. And I think it would be, erring on the side of rude if I push them again. So if there's anything you want to kind of cover in closing, now would be a good time to do it. Okay. So then what? Then this is the teaser for we're going to actually talk about the biochemistry of medication and medicine that affects consciousness.

So we're going to come back and talk about that. Awesome. And then I think the this is a great introduction to the idea of thinking about addiction and realizing that there's a part of it, this trauma, there's part of it is mental, emotional, spiritual. There's a part of it that's biohacking. And it's 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 going to 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. Very good point. Yeah, I 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 out of their prescription. So they start hitting the street to get heroin.

I mean, I don't know, a lot of people go down, from that, that they're kind of another classification of addicts, you know, that that didn't fall into it by the traditional routes that many of us, like myself, did. But they're just, you know, healthy, successful people who are in a lot of pain and found opiates through their doctor. And now they're they're stuck in it. It's brutal. There's nothing worse than opiate addiction, man. It's it's horrendous. It's so, so toxic. And, I just I remember that feeling.

So that's a really good point. The pain piece and how they relate to peptides. I look forward to exploring that. That's beautiful. Okay. Well, I love you and I appreciate you. And thank you for, being a, beacon of light for, the universe. Thank you so much, mat. 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. I 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 you can find me there and, it's 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 going to keep doing it until somebody tells me to stop. That's good. It's going really well. We're at 9 million downloads now, I think. So it's like, it's been something that's really fun for me to share with people. It's awesome. Yeah, yeah. Thanks, Malcolm. Yeah. Go check it out, because you're the best. Thanks, brother. Okay. Have a great day.

You too.