Psychedelic Therapy Frontiers

The hedonic treadmill: Why happiness can feel so elusive

• Numinus Network • Episode 215

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Why does happiness feel so elusive for so many of us? Maybe you’ve had the experience where you long for a change, believing that once this change occurs then you’ll finally be happy. Then that change happens, but it didn’t deliver lasting happiness. You buy the new thing, take the vacation, achieve the goal, get the promotion and you feel happy for a while but eventually it feels like you’re back where you started.   
In today’s episode of the Psychedelic Therapy Frontiers podcast, we explore the phenomenon knows as the “hedonic treadmill”--the tendency for people to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness despite major positive or negative events or life changes. We discuss examples of this in action, possible evolutionary explanations for this tendency, the role of dopamine, how it relates to habit formation and addiction, exceptions to this tendency, ways to get off the treadmill, and much more.
For those of you who are new to the show, welcome! Psychedelic Therapy Frontiers is brought to you by Numinus Network and is hosted by Dr. Steve Thayer and Dr. Reid Robison.

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SPEAKER_03:

Why does happiness feel so elusive for so many of us? Maybe you've had the experience where you long for a change, believing that once this change occurs, then you'll finally be happy. Then that change happens, but it didn't deliver lasting happiness. You buy the new thing, you take the vacation, achieve the goal, get the promotion, and you feel happy for a while, but eventually it feels like you're back where you started. In today's episode of the Psychedelic Therapy Frontiers podcast, we explore the phenomenon known as the hedonic treadmill or hedonic adaptation. This tendency for people to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness despite major positive or even negative events or life changes. We discuss examples of this in action, possible evolutionary explanations for this tendency, the role of dopamine, how it relates to habit formation and addiction, exceptions to this tendency, ways to get off the treadmill, and much more. For those of you who are new the show notes or go directly to numinousnetwork.com forward slash training. And you can use the code PTF10 for that 10% discount. If you've listened to the show for a while, you've likely heard Reed and me talk about the psychedelic clinical trial work that Numinous Network does here in Utah. If you live in Utah and you're interested in being a participant in psychedelic clinical trials, you can click on the link in the show notes or go directly to numinousnetwork.com forward slash research, where you can learn about the trials we're currently running. If you'd like to support our show, here's how you do it. You can leave a rating or review in places like Apple Podcasts and Spotify. If you're watching on YouTube, you can like the video, subscribe to the channel, maybe leave a comment, and please share the episode with someone you think might enjoy it. Without further delay, here's today's episode on the hedonic treadmill.

SPEAKER_00:

Hello. Hello,

SPEAKER_03:

Reid.

SPEAKER_00:

How's it going, Steve? Good.

SPEAKER_03:

Good.

SPEAKER_00:

Very

SPEAKER_03:

good. Sure. Medium. Medium good. Good. You know, maybe I'm at my happiness set point. We're going to talk today a little bit about something called hedonic adaptation or sometimes referred to as the hedonic treadmill. And it'll be a tangential, wide-ranging conversation, as is our... tendency

SPEAKER_00:

but why the treadmill part of it well let's define it first but i i think it's an interesting visual

SPEAKER_03:

yeah yeah this this notion that uh regardless of whether or not something really good happens in our lives or really tragic or bad happens in our lives that most of us and these are all you know averages here but we have a tendency to return to a kind of happiness set point um so it's a the metaphor of the treadmill i think was popularized back in the 70s by brickman and campbell is what i dredged up from the internet but um using the metaphor of the treadmill because the treadmill is like you're in motion but you're not really going anywhere you're staying in the same place not getting happier or more miserable yeah

SPEAKER_00:

yeah because if we adapt to pleasure there's a risk of seeking that hit over and over uh and we are wired that way i think You and I were talking a bit earlier and you mentioned the old adage, we're wired for survival, not happiness. And so there's a risk of seeking that hit over and over and getting less out of it and seeking it more. And you hear that from people when they describe substances of like they might be. just doing it to do it where they don't feel the same high as they got. And that happens. I think you can apply that to behaviors and substances.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes referred to as chasing the dragon, right? Like you have that, that, that really intense high and you're not able to recreate it. And maybe in the case of substances, you're using substances at increasing frequency or higher doses, trying to get that experience.

SPEAKER_00:

And like you mentioned, we adapt to pleasure and, just as we adapt to pain. And so we might be seeking more and more of that pleasure, we return to a baseline level of satisfaction. So the treadmill is this endless pursuit of more. And it has its underpinnings in the reward cycle and dopamine, which is commonly called the molecule of more.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. So we'll probably talk a bit about dopamine. There's a study that many of you might have heard of. It's kind of popular when people talk about this phenomenon. Back in the 70s, I think 1978, Brickman, Coates, and Buhlman. The lottery study? The lottery study, yeah. Lottery winners and paraplegics. So people who sustained an injury. From a serious accident. So a change in their life because of an accident. And they found that for the most part, lottery winners after, what did you say, it was like a year? year or some period of time, they're not really that much happier than the control group. But that the paraplegic folks also weren't much more miserable after a certain amount of time had passed than the control group. And certainly there were outliers, exceptions to those rules, but those were on average this interesting phenomenon.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, both groups returned to their baseline within like less than a year, it seems.

SPEAKER_03:

Which begs the question, what's going on here?

SPEAKER_00:

Why didn't lottery winning make you happy forever? Yeah,

SPEAKER_03:

I mean, I have this sort of intuitive sense that if I won the lottery, I think I'd be a bit happier on a consistent We'll talk about money specifically too here in a minute.

SPEAKER_00:

Is your intuition sometimes wrong?

SPEAKER_03:

It is often wrong, yeah. So there's some theories about this. There's this idea of perhaps we each have a genetic set point for happiness and that maybe that accounts for like 50% of how happy or miserable we get and where that set point is. And that life circumstances, your income, your health, your relationship status might account for something like 10% of your happiness. And then intentional activities like... gratitude, kindness, purpose, focusing on goals, might account for more, more like 40%. And so again, these are just statistics, somewhat theoretical from one particular study, but

SPEAKER_00:

food for thought. Yeah, and you... Combine it and further complicate it by this phenomenon of in the cycle of maladaptive behavior, habit loops, addictive cycles, if you will, you not only start to get less pleasure from the things you might normally enjoy, but you might even be hypersensitive to certain pain or more annoyed by things that don't as readily annoy you, which impacts your set point. Like you could be more disgruntled at baseline or, you know, you know, discontent perhaps. And on top of that, genetic cards that maybe dealt us where we have a set point to begin with.

SPEAKER_03:

Right. Yeah. I think there's a lot of nuance, a lot of factors to consider. And you mentioned dopamine. Do you want to do a little bit of a deep dive on dopamine, how it might affect this?

SPEAKER_00:

yeah yeah maybe a

SPEAKER_03:

shallow dive

SPEAKER_00:

but well how about a couple interesting studies to start uh one i've found um kind of funny is it's like a harvard 2012 study that showed that talking about yourself activated um the nucleus accumbens the part of the brain that is like key in this dopamine reward circuitry activated it more than receiving money and so um And then there was this UCLA study combined with this one of adolescents that showed that more likes in social media led to more nucleus accumbens activation. And I find it intriguing. You combine it with social media depression studies. and a linear correlation between time scrolling and actually feeling worse. And you start to see maybe some of this cycle at play in seeking that spike of dopamine more and more and getting less and less out of it and really might be taken away from other areas of life.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, it's bizarre when I think about it. Like we talked about this being wired for survival, not happiness. And it's an oversimplification to attribute it all to dopamine, but dopamine is this sort of molecule of more, of pursuit. So it makes sense why that tendency would help us survive, not be too satisfied, because we got to make sure that we're out there collecting food and protecting ourselves and obtaining partners and propagating our genes, that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and that's why dopamine exists for the propagation of species like to expand on that survival idea it's not the molecule of lasting happiness right it's it exists to it was evolutionarily kind of there for our survival in the sense of seeking food so you don't die, so you have fuel, and seeking sex so you reproduce and your genes don't die.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. Maybe the molecule of malcontent helps us feel not satisfied with what we have and where we're at. More. Your point earlier about how when we really sort of press that dopamine button over and over and over again through like a drug that really spikes dopamine or an activity that spikes dopamine, we land ourselves in a trough afterward, which is part of why it doesn't lead to the sort of this lasting bliss that maybe we hope it will.

SPEAKER_00:

What I find uncanny is that we're talking about all this neuroscience and these 2016 UCLA studies and things, but it's stuff that the Buddhists have described so well for a couple thousand years, right? Like there's this idea in Buddhism called dependent origination and there's a term for a patika samupada where it talks about the trigger or the cue brings up a feeling maybe a craving and attached to cravings can be clinging you don't want to let go of something that you're craving that feels good and then the clinging leads to kind of becoming or like experiencing but then there's this suffering as it's gone because of impermanence and the cycle just repeats and can in a treadmill phenomenon you're on it and running through it but um and then they've had this idea that's also supported by the mindfulness therapies we use every day of awareness is the greatest um tool for interrupting the cycle yeah

SPEAKER_03:

awareness paired with acceptance right i mean part of that buddhist wisdom is our attachment to, in our aversions to things, what we want and don't want lead to suffering. So there's this dukkha attachment and these cycles of, what do they call them, samsara cycles or something like that. It also makes me think of other ancient wisdom traditions like, well, Aristotle. Aristotle talking about the difference between hedonia and eudaimonia. Eudaimonia meaning this more values-centric thing if you can call it that, of things that contribute to maybe more lasting life satisfaction than the temporary hedonic spikes. And this would be, you know, focus on purpose, focus on sort of altruism and connect your life's work to being connected to something that really matters to you that's bigger than you.

SPEAKER_00:

It's, uh, Socrates said something like happiness is not about getting more. It's about wanting less.

SPEAKER_03:

You know what that makes me think of? So the world happiness reports where they survey all these different countries. Um, and Finland is just, you know, consistently freaking Finland. I heard, uh, I was listening to Mark Manson's recent podcast. He was talking about, he's the guy that wrote subtle art of not giving a fuck. And he's got this cool new podcast where he does deep dives on these things and he He was saying he talked to some of his Finnish friends about how they feel about that report. And they're like, we're not any happier than anybody else. Our expectations are lower. There's a culture.

SPEAKER_00:

It's cold outside. It's

SPEAKER_03:

that. I mean, he said, and I don't know any Finns, but he said like there's a culture in Finland of just not setting yourself up too much for disappointment. Like not striving too much. Don't expect too much out of life.

SPEAKER_00:

There's also this Finnish saying, I think, because it's on the wall at the Cold Plunge studio down the road called Plunge P. Where there's this term that I forget the term, I forget the definition, but it's about seeking discomfort. And it's found in a lot of like Wim Hof circles. But I think that that is a really interesting reminder of that. the more we shy away from discomfort and avoid it might be perpetuating suffering.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. It could be one of our takeaways from today of like how to step off the hedonic treadmill. We've certainly talked a lot about the connection between experiential avoidance and mental health conditions and suffering and talked about seeking discomfort. And so perhaps it's a way, like it's fairly anti-hedonic if hedonism is just maximizing pleasure and avoiding pain. You're seeking discomfort, putting yourself in a temporary state of discomfort, but in service of more adaptive happiness, perhaps.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I agree with the key takeaway there because it makes sense. You cannot be in this blissful part of the cycle all the time. It just doesn't work that way. And we are at risk of seeking that or just wanting the comfortable, cozy, pleasant, happy life. feelings all the time. Right.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. And seeking discomfort can look like a lot of different things. You know, it could be one of those things for privileged people where they don't have a lot of distress in their life and they get bored. Um, maybe they gotta go to try something hard or seek discomfort, or it could be somebody who's heavily traumatized, has experienced a lot of suffering in their life and the discomfort, um, their avoidance of a particular kind of discomfort is keeping them in their suffering. Meaning if I were to go in and do MDMA-assisted therapy and with the help of the MDMA really face some of these intrinsic stories that keep me suffering, it's going to be really hard. It's going to involve some discomfort, but there might be healing on the other side

SPEAKER_00:

of it. Yeah, the only way out is through. And you've got to feel it to heal it and all that other good stuff. Cliche, but it plays out in real life. We've seen it over and over. And what I love about Like what we do as a profession is that we get to examine it in our own lives and everything around us all the time. You know, it, uh, it's, it's interesting to watch these things play out in life and, uh, it kind of brings up this other idea I wanted to throw into the mix of, of, uh, addiction and habit loops like the hedonistic treadmill has some parallels to addiction if not the other side of the coin of addiction or how addiction uh is born but what matters a lot that we don't always remember is what's going on in your life not just your own genetic makeup and your um you know it may not matter uh... last year you might have been in a different place where a substance or behavior wasn't a sticky but in the absence of certain supports and kind of And if your mental state is different, not as kind of resilient or more prone and wired to suffering, you might be way more likely to get sucked in or stuck in a cycle. And we've seen that play out like in the famous Vietnam study, for example. What was that one? It was Vietnam... kind of people who went to combat in Vietnam who got addicted to heroin. It was studied in kind of a careful way of... how they weren't able to break that addiction until they were back home, uh, surrounded by some of their supports and they just could not do it in the, when they were in that, uh, chaos. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, and for the people who came home without that kind of social support, it was more difficult for them to kick the addiction. It also makes me think, is it Johan Hari who wrote, um, lost connections?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. And this might just be sort of a memified popularized take on this study. I haven't looked at it super carefully, but he's, he cites the rat park studies. Yeah. Yeah, 1980s. So you have these rats that they put in isolation, a stressful environment, got them addicted to a substance. Morphine-laced water. There you go. And they kept going back to that water and over and over again. Until overdose, like death sometimes. Yeah, morphing themselves to death. And then you had the rats that were put in a so-called rat park where they had things to do. Other rats to play with. Partners to have sex with and play with and all that great stuff. And they weren't as likely to go back to the morphine-laced water.

SPEAKER_00:

Other sources of dopamine and perhaps more lasting ones. ones. I think one other takeaway is, you know, you've talked about the different types of fuel we burn here and, um, the different spikes of dopamine. Um, like there are plenty of studies to show how experiences can have more of a lasting benefit on your wellbeing than kind of material acquisitions and things like that. But, uh, you know, they did have these other sources of dopamine than the morphine, like friends and play. And it made all the difference. Like environment and social connection strongly influence whether or not an addiction turns into some lasting compulsive behavior or like an addictive behavior or substance.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I think this is worth hovering on for a while because sometimes in this sort of addiction treatment space, we have a saying, don't ask why the addiction, ask why the pain.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

What are they trying to address by this addiction? So to our point about what we talked about just now, if you have a life that you don't feel like you need to escape from too much... then you aren't as likely, you still could, but you aren't as likely to fall into these really self-destructive dopaminergic habits,

SPEAKER_00:

right? I think it was in that Lost Connections book, actually, that a really interesting section where Johan writes about some country in Europe, maybe it was Finland, I don't think it was, like Denmark or something like that, where they set up these controversial... outposts for letting people do heroin in a safe way with a nurse there before work and where you were in the presence of a supportive other and there were some ground rules you're not going to die from overdose or whatever but what was fascinating is just the different rates of addiction or the ability of people ability people had for that to like fall off and not become as compulsive with certain supports in place was really striking. And so there was another one. Oh, just a fun fact, perhaps, is you know how we talk about self-medicating? It's a popular term in mental health and pop culture, I guess. But it comes from this researcher. What's his name? Kantzian. In the late 90s, he published this theory, this self-medication hypothesis, saying that people with unresolved emotional pain, trauma, or mental illness are more likely to use certain substances and behaviors as coping tools, like you were talking about with why the pain. And the addictive behavior isn't just pleasurable, it's serving another function of... like it could be a lot of different things like numbing, shame, escaping loneliness, calming anxiety. Like it's not, you're not seeking it necessarily just for a little bit of pleasure. You're escaping. It's

SPEAKER_03:

an escape. Yeah. You're treating something. You're trying to numb or get away from something.

SPEAKER_00:

And in the ketamine world, we've ketamine is an interesting one because it's maybe not the most highly addictive substance, but you see these gnarly cases of addiction. And, um, Like, we've seen some individuals, whether they're kind of patients or professionals or whatever, who have slipped down this slope into a scary rabbit hole of ketamine misuse, abuse, and even dependence. And I think that's an example of escapism, like, Because it's hard for many people to grasp if they've experienced ketamine once or twice in a clinic and maybe threw up, or it was a weird experience. Why would you seek that out? But there's a lot more at play for many people.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I've wondered at what's at play for people who do develop an unhealthy relationship to ketamine. Because like you point out, it's not like cocaine. I mean, if we line up 10 people and give them cocaine... Dopamine. Nine out of 10 are going to have a great time, right? Depending on the dose. It's pretty reliably euphoric, right? But ketamine isn't like that. It's more dissociative, right? Like you said, it can make people nauseated, confused.

SPEAKER_00:

It's an altered state than your here and now. Yeah,

SPEAKER_03:

yeah. But if you can just think about it for a minute, I mean, somebody for whom their here and now really sucks and there's a lot of pain, if they can dissociate, disconnect, go into the so-called K-hole, disconnect from their body, you can imagine why that might be tempting

SPEAKER_00:

to go back to. And I think you could look at certain behaviors like self-harm cutting, for example, in a similar way. And I've had many... Many individuals describe this to me when they have awareness of it, is that I have these urges to self-harm and I'm pretty convinced now that it is to distract from the pain, to feel something other than the emotional pain, trauma, shame, by something that is more predictable, concrete, that I can control. And it's not an adaptive behavior, right? It can be a scary behavior. It is. But I think it's another example of this stuff at play.

SPEAKER_03:

Mm hmm. So this makes me wonder, you know, if you're ready to move to this topic, what are some things, other things to help us get off the hedonic treadmill and what might be ways we can focus on this more durable sense of wellbeing rather than chasing these spikes of happiness? So one of the first things that comes to my mind, I mentioned earlier, I wanted to talk about money a little bit. So you talked a bit about the sort of material pursuits. So, and most people, this is conventional wisdom at this point that we'll understand that it's, if the pursuit of money as an engine of itself, or certainly as a way to sort of signal status or whatever it is, places you squarely on the hedonic treadmill. And most people have had the experience of really, really looking forward to and buying a thing, buying that thing, having fun with it for a while, and then returning to their own baseline. But that is not to imply that the accumulation of money is fruitless and doesn't contribute to lasting happiness. If you're in poverty and you have some serious money concerns And the social science research bears this out. Making more money does make you happier. To a point. To a point. So the Kahneman study said this was decades ago. So this number is different now. But like around after about 70 grand a year for the average person, you get these diminishing returns. Yeah. Certainly it's a lot higher than that these days. And some more updated research suggests that you actually do experience little sort of upticks in happiness the more money you make. But it, especially if what you do with that money is solving the terrible money problems, like getting good healthcare and getting good housing and all those things. But if you're using money to purchase experiences, you know, going on trips with friends, being able to connect with others, or if you're using money for philanthropic purposes, or maybe investing in a business that you really care about, as opposed to just buying material things.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. I think it's like we were talking about with suffering side of the coin of finding meaning in it. You could seek discomfort by this meaningful pursuit and know you're going to go through it. I've seen it play out both ways. People who end up with a lot of money, there's a fork in the road of adding to their well-being or detracting from it even. And I think what matters is The things you mentioned, the meaning around it and what it is energetically, if you will, in your life. Is it something you're seeking on a hedonistic treadmill for more and more and burning on things more and more, chasing those spikes? Or is it something in that category of more lasting things? you know, meaningful pursuits in accordance with your true values if you go deep and find them.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, yeah. It makes me think of a book. I forget the title, but I think it was written by a guy named Andrew Wilkinson. where he eventually achieved the status of billionaire to discover that he was miserable.

SPEAKER_01:

And

SPEAKER_03:

he gives insight in that book that I think, again, is probably also almost common knowledge now. But for some people, the pursuit of wealth is driven by a deeply rooted insecurity, like not feeling enough. And so it's a proxy for their worth if they can make a lot of money. But however high you climb on that ladder, there's usually people above you, right? The guy that makes$1 billion, what about the guy that's selling$3 billion? I've got a yacht, but he's got a super yacht. And I get it, especially today's day and age, it's hard to have compassion for billionaires. I'll admit. But they are people too. But I bring it up just to sort of elaborate on your point that sometimes what drives, particularly, we're using the example of money, but sometimes what drives that is a wound. And it's a wound that we're using a medicine, in this case money, that isn't well suited to treat.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I think it was Tim Ferriss on Vulnerable podcast called it a trauma response in him and in many of the entrepreneurs he's worked with, like the pursuit of startups more and more grinding. And yeah, it's really fascinating. That could be a substance or a behavior for sure.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, show me an exhausted, unfulfilled entrepreneur and I'll show you somebody whose dad didn't love him. Like it's almost a cliche at this point.

SPEAKER_00:

What I've found interesting too, because I've been kind of re-immersed in the golf world a little bit this summer and the number one golfer in the world right now, Scotty Scheffler, made some waves in the news headlines when he had a vulnerable open interview to talking about how winning is not fulfilling. Or he's like, sometimes he wonders, what is the point of this? Like, so I win another major championship, then what? And then he went on to talk about how, like, what his values are is he wants to be a good father more than a good golfer. And he said, like, the minute... one kind of eats into the next, like he's gonna ditch golf. And it's interesting, Tom Brady, I think just this week in his newsletter, responded to that and said, dude, they don't need to be mutually exclusive. Like you could see how these are debatable points, but I, I quite liked what, um, Scotty Scheffler was saying about, about when I found it refreshing and kind of raw and, uh, they're coming out in imperfect words as, as a dude, who's not pretending to have the answers here. Yeah. But, uh, I thought it, I, it was heartwarming.

SPEAKER_03:

I think you see it, um, that people arriving at that insight who have tirelessly and with extreme focus pursued one particular path of excellence. Same might be said of Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, like other athletes, right? And where they suddenly realize that they have been on a treadmill and another championship isn't going to grant them the lasting happiness and adoration that part of them really wanted. And so they often slow down and look around and see these other things that a lot of us feel more lasting happiness connecting to like relationships, parenthood,

SPEAKER_00:

things that give us purpose. We've seen it a lot in mental health clubs clinic work where people have had their identity so attached and rooted in something like their life as an athlete, an accomplished athlete, for example, and then an injury comes along and their mental health takes a massive hit. Like it's almost a dark night of the soul crisis of like, what am I? Who am I now? And it's something to keep in mind as we're going about our pursuits in life and thinking about the sustainability of our well-being. I

SPEAKER_03:

mean, you mentioned how important awareness is in this process. And so perhaps what can sometimes keep us on the hedonic treadmill is a less than ideal concept of who we are, like you said, what we are. What brings us and gives us value? Is it extrinsic or intrinsic? And maybe going way back to this idea of a genetic set point, there's a temperamental aspect to this too. For some people, it's just easier because of their particular temperament they came into the world with to be more intrinsically motivated, to not need external validation as much as others. But those are all factors in this equation.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. And so on that note, like to get back to your question of what do we do about it? And practically speaking, how do you use awareness in interrupting these loops, for example? And, um, and one thing that I like to remember is yes, awareness interrupts automaticity, if you will. But, um, how do you do that? Sometimes it's by just allowing curiosity, like as I like to think curiosity instead of craving and like slowing it down, I think is, um, akin to awareness in this. Like I'm thinking about clients I work with, with say binge eating disorder, for example, of there is a, it's, it's, uh, there's a, a trigger out there in the world that brings up this, uh, desire to engage in that. And often it's happening on autopilot. But if you can kind of have that awareness on board, and especially as it's going, sit in that for even just five minutes, or find some way to be with that, then you may have just diverted not just that cycle, but you do that enough times and you've interrupted the the loop, the habit. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. I think curiosity is an important component of equanimity of just sort of being able to sit in the eye of the storm and not run one way or the other. Yeah. I like, I like your distinction, um, with whether, with sort of chasing something and craving, it makes me think of, um, savoring right that there are components to stepping off the hedonic treadmill that are very much tied to mindfulness like you're saying and i think savoring is one of them savoring different from maybe necessarily gratitude just like really fully being present with what's there and allowing yourself to feel the full lingering joy of that thing

SPEAKER_00:

i have a curiosity that is just distracting thought that's making me chuckle of, you know, the, uh, the, um, there's some studies showing how mindful awareness can reduce cigarette smoking five X or whatever. Like, um, but, uh, Have there been any studies savoring cigarette use, like savoring a cigarette? If you're a user of cigarettes, because it is an automatic thing, like smoke breaks and all that, or if they look at chain smokers, just one to the next. And I also find it interesting... to look at in terms of, like, we have these addiction scales. Like, say we're doing a smoking cessation study or measuring it in some study. One of the questions might be, how many minutes or hours from when you first wake up until you engage in the first thing, cigarette or behavior or whatever, as one of the many markers of, like, worsening addiction or taking an inventory on it? And those are the kind of things you can... you can channel your awareness around of just watching with curiosity yourself as you go through the world. I love doing this and just seeing like, if I can have my higher self on board and watch my parts, play internally or watch my behavior externally. Um, it's fascinating. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

This idea of savoring a cigarette made me think of, um, when I was in graduate school and being introduced to the concepts of mindfulness, the therapeutic application of mindfulness, um, they had us do a mindful eating exercise where they gave us, I think it was like a peanut M and M or something and hold it in your mouth and notice the desire to immediately chew it. and swallow it and just get curious about that, but, but don't do it. And then, you know, notice it dissolve in your mouth. The candy shell turned from smooth to rough. And then you get to the chocolate and notice the differences. They're just like slowing it down and savoring. Um, and it, you know, might help you binge eat less, for example, and ask yourself those curious questions of like, why am I actually doing this? Why am I at the bottom of this Triscuit box? Is it because I really wanted Triscuits or am I just trying to chase away a feeling?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. It reminds me of- No shade to Triscuits. Triscuits. I was at this eating disorder conference years ago where I participated in a workshop by folks, I think from Harvard who were, um, they were presenting about, uh, a mindfulness based eating program, like MB dash eat, something like that. And, but it was experiential too. Um, and I still remember it because it was, um, just kind of applying these ideas to a structured way you might go through eating of like, before you eat checking in, like, okay, what is driving this? How hungry am I? How full do I feel? You might look at hunger and satiety as a couple categories that are relevant. And okay, I'm going to eat. What am I going to eat? And where am I aiming to be after this? And then while you're eating, you're doing those things of savoring and slowing the roll that way and maximizing kind of the here and now. But then, and midway through, you might check in again. Okay, Pause. Am I, how full am I? How hungry am I now? Because if you notice the way most of us eat is not that mindful, right? But there's a, there's a big difference, a big, big difference in like, I think what you can gain from being mindful through that and any other experience we want to look at in life.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, it helps you be more intentional. So if there really are pursuits, if you're going to pursue something that can lead to more lasting happiness, it would be nice to slow down. And it might be counterintuitive to a certain part of you that just really doesn't want to suffer and wants to experience joy, this hedonic part, or pleasure, rather. But yeah, slow it down. Slow it down. I've got in my notes... Something from Viktor Frankl. Happiness cannot be pursued. It must ensue. Yeah. Perhaps this is connected to that Aristotelian concept of eudaimonia, that well-being connected to meaning happiness. Virtue, contribution, this is a kind of well-being or happiness that ensues from the involvement in those kinds of things, the connection to those kinds of things. It's not because you were chasing a certain affective state.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. And those are, I guess, poignant reminders. And sometimes they leave me wanting a little bit more of an explanation. Like sometimes I'll expand on it of, okay... Then what? What do you do if you can't chase it, force it? And sometimes I'll think of it as like baking a cake. You can't force it to bake. There is a baking period, but you also need the right conditions and ingredients. And I think that kind of idea for me makes sense in the search for contentment and peace and well-being.

SPEAKER_03:

I like that.

SPEAKER_00:

Creating the conditions for it and not chasing forcing.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, and the creation of the conditions might not be super pleasurable in and of itself. So you have to have that sort of broader perspective on why you're doing this.

SPEAKER_00:

The delayed gratification goes a long way, or the sitting with discomfort, allowing it. slowing down the reflexes to avoid it.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. Yeah. And I, and we should say we're not necessarily, um, evangelizing asceticism here. Like you don't have to be a monk that, uh, completely, you know, removes from their lives, all things that would constitute that would cause pleasure. Um, just, you know, advocating for a more mindful approach and, and knowledge of this tendency of our nervous systems to get on that hedonic treadmill.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. And it's even like, there's a famous paper called, a wandering mind is an unhappy mind. Gilbert and Kingsworth is like 15 years old now. And that one, they had used a smartphone to sample thousands of people's thoughts and things, but people were less happy when their minds wandered, even when daydreaming about pleasant things, interestingly. And one reason I bring it up is because there's also this interesting tie to the default mode network that we talk about in psychedelic medicine of mind wandering is more default mode network activity on board and is equivalent with less of a feeling of well-being like the human mind is a wandering mind at times and that feels less happy and there's it's just another another case for, you know, embracing the here and now, um, and you know, why mindfulness is kind of crucial to this, this cycle.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. And I think there might be some default tracks in the default mode. And so, for example, if you struggle with self-worth issues, or you've got some conditioned beliefs that lead to feeling pretty depressed and unmotivated, and you allow your mind to wander in default mode, then it might be more likely to fall into those default tracks. So disrupting the default mode network, either by flow activities or meditation or psychedelics, is a great way to throw yourself into a more mindful state where it's more flexible. And hopefully you can lay down new tracks that aren't necessarily in those negatively defaulted

SPEAKER_00:

states. Like a fresh blanket of powder. Or if you want a summer analogy, indentations in the mountain bike trail from the tires that you're wiping clean so you don't fall into those same ruts over and over.

SPEAKER_03:

I'm a skier, so I like the snow analogy. But when I was younger, I had a lot of friends who were into mountain biking. And I went mountain biking with my friends. And it was like a week after a big rainstorm. And so there were these deep ruts in the trail. And I could not help but fall into those ruts. And every time I did, I freaking wrecked my bike. taco the tires i still have scars from that trip when i was 15 years old so it's a powerful metaphor for me the consequences of allowing yourself to fall back into those tracks

SPEAKER_00:

yeah well it's been a pleasant meandering steve anything else you want to throw into the mix

SPEAKER_03:

as always uh really pleasant i think maybe just um letting people know that We don't have to be perfect at this, right? We're not trying to give you a list of like a Huberman style protocol where you have to do this in order to actually be truly happy and fulfilled. If you want to indulge and pursue some pleasure, have at it. I think, again, just by way of review, generally zooming out, be more mindful, more deliberate with an understanding of what leads to lasting happiness and not just keeping you stuck on the treadmill.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, well said. Amen. Amen. Until next time. Thanks, Reed.