080 Abandoned at Birth: Pain to Addiction

Abandoned at birth and adopted at 5 days old, Dan Berger spent his life battling deep-rooted abandonment trauma and identity struggles. That pain eventually led him into drug and sex addiction—but his story didn’t end there.

In this emotional and honest interview, Dan opens up about:
- Growing up feeling unwanted and misplaced
- How unresolved trauma fueled his addiction
- The moment he hit rock bottom
- Finding healing and hope through the 12-step recovery program
- What life looks like now in recovery

His book, "The Quest: The Definitive Guide to Finding Belonging" is available on now

This is a powerful episode for anyone struggling with abandonment issues, addiction, trauma, recovery, or healing. If you've ever felt like you don't belong — this one’s for you.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I'm recently diagnosed bipolar, bipolar 2, and I'm in recovery for sex addiction. So just to be clear, I was two days old when I was given up. I was five days old when I was adopted. You're essentially told you don't belong in that family that's supposed to have you. Our biological mom gave us away. And then the resentment we have towards that mom, we take on on the adoptive family. But really for me, at the root of resentment is anger, like you said. And at the root of anger is sadness. And at the root of sadness is fear. 50% of your happiness is your genetic set point. 40% is activities that are intentional. 10% is circumstances.

SPEAKER_00 0:57

Hi, Dan. Welcome to Multispective. I'm so excited to have you here. Thanks for having me, Jenica. Dan, you've done a lot of episodes, so you've shared your story on various different platforms. It's going to

SPEAKER_01 1:08

be the best one. This is going to be the best

SPEAKER_00 1:10

one. You must be a pro at this, though. Do you find that when you share your story, it gets easier?

SPEAKER_01 1:15

100%. I think that, you know, it's like I once heard that every... The best tests you take are the ones you learn from. It's the same way for public speaking. If I'm not having a good time and I'm not learning, then I'm bored. I enjoy speaking about the same thing a lot of times because then I just become more effective in communicating that message. I've heard it referred to as data density. I'm able to say more with less. So yeah, I love doing it. And if I get my message in front of people, then that's wonderful.

SPEAKER_00 1:49

All right, Dan, why don't we begin with your story Tell us a little bit about where it begins for you.

SPEAKER_01 1:55

So my story begins in my biological mom's womb, and that's because I'm adopted. So I was adopted when I was two days old. And with adoptees, shout out adoptees, for any adoptees who may know, it's like you're essentially told you don't belong in that family that's supposed to have you. So these kinds of cortisol and the stress hormones are essentially moving through the woman's body into the fetus, and you're essentially born and given away even before that event. So the author, Nancy Verrier calls this a primal wound. So that's my first kind of like the first, I would say headline. And then soon thereafter, when I was two years old, you know, there's like this, my mom, I don't know how true this is. It's probably glorified, but my mom tells this story about how she was on the waiting list for like almost 10 years waiting for the call that there's a baby ready. So she drive around, we were in Tel Aviv at the time. She drive around Tel Aviv, Israel with like diapers in her car and the waiting for that call and then when she got the call she like ran up and down the building she was living in like knocking on doors asking for baby supplies because you don't know when the baby's going to arrive it's not like you're it's not like a butcher shop where you get like a number or like the DMV you know so anyway and then They had waited so long to have me that by the time I arrived into that family, my dad was ready to quit. So they divorced when I was two, and he basically abandoned me. I haven't spent too much time with him ever since. I'm 43, so that's been almost four decades, or more than four decades. And then I would say the third kind of pillar in my traumatic childhood was immigration. You know, coming to this country, not speaking a word of English, having to negotiate cultures, negotiate identities was really tough for me. nine-year-old. So those are kind of the three, I think... Biggest, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:19

so you know you know you're also wanted you're just wanted by the right the right kinds of people right um first can we just talk a little bit about your biological mother what was the reason for why she decided she didn't want you from the beginning

SPEAKER_01 4:32

uh yeah so the story goat i actually met her eight years ago and um i did i was able to track her down met her uh flew to israel to meet her in person um and then learned that only my aunt her sister one of eight knew of me um and the reason she gave me up was because the man she was with it was like she was in a traditional family she wasn't supposed to have kids out of wedlock she kind of fooled around with a guy and then she was pregnant with me so she lived with that sister until I was born so that's the reason I mean listen I am not I can't think of anything I'm more grateful for than her decision to give me up. And I say that because my mother is very mentally ill. The four other siblings I have are, each one is in a worse position than the other. One is in jail, one's on disability, one's all broken. I'd be in prison right now if I was with her

SPEAKER_02 5:30

and

SPEAKER_01 5:31

that family. I mean, yeah, like child protective services, took the kids, put them in foster, like crazy stuff. So yeah, I mean, and then you talk, you mentioned like this idea of like, well, you weren't wanted by these people, but you were wanted by that people. That makes a lot of sense, Jenica. But the reality is that as young as children, we can't rationalize that. And even when we, I've heard that so many times where people are like, well, you're special, you know, you know, like my mom wasn't religious at all, but she's like, you were meant for me. Kind of that kind of language is just completely comes off inauthentic to adoptees. It's like, It just, it's not good enough because our biological mom gave us away.

SPEAKER_02 6:17

And

SPEAKER_01 6:18

then the resentment we have towards that mom, we take on the adoptive family. This transference that you touched on, it happens towards the wrong person.

SPEAKER_00 6:31

That's interesting. And it totally makes sense with someone who's young and maybe not able to sort of understand, rationalize and have that maturity to be able to put a bigger picture, to step away from it, from that personal sense and remove that anger from the situation and just sort of see like, hey, look, given the circumstances, given everything that I can see and know, I actually am better off. You're able to say this today that I'm so much better off and I'm so glad I And maybe that helped to have the opportunity to meet your mom, to be able to say, like, why did you leave me? And then hear her side and be like, okay, it's not necessarily that she didn't want me. It was, she genuinely couldn't handle it. Technically, she really saved me from something that could have been very, very disastrous life of mine. But do you feel like if you had met your biological mom younger, you would be able to understand this? And you heard about her story, you knew about her story, you knew that she was mentally unwell and everything. Do you feel like you would have been able to sort of let it go quite in the way you have now?

SPEAKER_01 7:28

I, no matter what, like how successful I've been, no matter how many gifts I've had, no matter how the cookie crumbled in the right way for me, I'm never going to be, I don't think I'll ever forgive for that. You know, it's like, I mean, I can have empathy. I can have gratitude. I can also have resentment. And I can hold all those things at the same time. And the idea that the only way for me to have a biological family is to have a daughter. That's the first time I ever hung out with a biological thing. So, yeah, I can hold all those feelings at the same time.

SPEAKER_00 8:11

That's interesting. What is the specific area or element that makes you feel like, I just can't forgive it? It's

SPEAKER_01 9:01

like an experience that I was robbed of. When I met my bio mom, I instantly loved her. The way I think about it is... There's biological love and then there's synthetic love. And biological love is like a school shooter's parents are still going to love that kid. You know what I'm saying? Because that's the bio love. Synthetic love is I meet somebody and then I fall in love with them and then it can disappear. It can be over.

SPEAKER_00 9:32

That's a really, really interesting way to look at this. Thanks. Do you feel like not being able to forgive your mom has affected you. And in what ways do you feel like it's

SPEAKER_01 9:47

affected you? Oh my God, innumerable. I'll give you an example. Let me start like, I'm pre-diabetic, okay? So basically a couple more cookies, I'm going to be type two. And that's because of my adoptive mom, because she would pack, I mean, my mom, I call her my mom, but just for the audience, my adoptive mom, because I was adopted when I was five days old. So that's because of my adoptive mom. Now, why is it because of my adoptive mom? It's because she would pack my lunch with fruit roll-ups and gushers and Ritz crackers and like crap because I wouldn't eat anything else now there's probably a part of her that did that because she wanted to please me because she saw me as special and waited so long So that's an example. Am I pulling things out of thin air? Maybe. But here's another example. I didn't have the American college experience. I went to a city college. I ended up going to grad school in a somewhat traditional American campus, but my undergrad was in New York City. And I blame my mom for that because she didn't really do much to help me find a college. She didn't really push me to look at different colleges because she didn't want me to leave the house. Because she developed this like we were codependent. We were enmeshed as a result because I'm an only child. And then my adoptive dad and my mom, both my parents are only children. So they have no siblings. So I got no cousins. So it's just me and my mom. So we were just enmeshed and codependent. The list goes on. like how the impact it's had on me. Yeah. I mean, also like, for example, I'm recently diagnosed bipolar, bipolar two, and, um, I'm in recovery for sex addiction. And, um, That compulsion is related to that feeling of brokenness addiction is. And then bipolar is something that's been undiagnosed. I can go on and on with all these mental illness that I have. But I resent my mom for not putting me in... My mom's a fucking social worker, okay? She's a therapist who teaches post-doc doctorate you know, people in family therapy and post-traumatic growth. And yet, she never thought about putting me in fucking therapy. Like, after everything I've described. She was like, oh, he's acting out. He got arrested. Oh, he's acting out. I got suspended. Oh, he's acting out. Everything will be okay. You know? Oh, the cops are home. The FBI's here. It's fine. It's going to be okay. I was crying for help. So I had to get all this help when I'm an adult.

SPEAKER_00 12:25

Now, we will touch on all of the stuff that happened later on in your life and the way that it did affect you. But I do still want to go a little bit back to the childhood. So you then meet your mother at age two. She's really excited to have you in. You move into this new place. At what point are you made aware that you're now living in an adopted home, not with your biological mom? How did you respond when you were kind of informed this? Did you know this at the time? Do you remember? When you were moved in? Yeah, all of that.

SPEAKER_01 12:57

So just to be clear, I was two days old when I was given up. I was five days old when I was adopted. Five days? Yeah, it was hot off the press. I'm still warm. I still got liquid on me. I'm kidding. But yeah, so I'm like baby. And my mom from day one told me I'm adopted. That's one thing of many she got right. My mom actually wrote a book about adopting me. It's a children's book. It's an illustrated book to explain to children what adoption means.

SPEAKER_02 13:30

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 13:30

I'll give you an example. I was so resentful of this whole thing that I refused. She wanted to name the book My Damn. And I refused. So she had to rename it something else. Yeah, it wasn't like a

SPEAKER_00 13:50

ceremony. Yeah, yeah. were adopted.

SPEAKER_01 14:14

So I think obviously there are two schools of thought. First school of thought is to not say a thing. and then you end up getting a ton of resentment later. The second school of thought is say it right away, and then you get resentment over time.

SPEAKER_00 14:29

Right.

SPEAKER_01 14:30

There's no right or wrong. I think that it worked out. It worked out for me, and I think it's what feels right for the parents. I mean, I always think that the kid's going to ask, where am I from, what happened, whatever. I'll give you an example. When I'm with my dad's family, Um, who I rarely see, but like he's Austrian, uh, and my, and, and, uh, And his wife is Polish. So between the two of them, their children are like Aryan, you know? So they're like blonde, blue eyes. Like my brother, my, my half, my, he's my half adopted brother. He's like literally a model. And then like the other one, they're just all tall and fucking beautiful. And I'm like this black sheep, you know? Cause I'm, I'm like North African and Middle Eastern and Italian. And I, there's a picture of me and them and I look like, I look like I'm going to rob them. It's so bad. So the jig would have been up. You know what I'm saying? If you wouldn't have told me, then I'd be like, this does not make sense. So I don't know. I mean, I think honesty is the best policy in these kinds of things. And I think it's better to tell. Okay, I'll tell you the answer. It's better to tell, but put in therapy right away. But don't just tell and think you know what you're doing.

SPEAKER_00 15:53

You can try to use the right, you know, by the book kind of terms, but you just never know how that individual is going to react, especially when they're young and they're raging hormones and they're, you know, growing and coming into themselves at this point. So walk me through, you know, you've kind of are being raised by parents you knew that you were adopted all along, right? At what point did you start your kind of like curiosity search for like your biological mother, this kind of urge to find out your

SPEAKER_01 16:22

home birth place? So my mom has always kind of like downplayed the importance of finding that. So she kind of like said, well, I'm your mom. That's what matters, you know. But I always had this like question mark thing. I wanted to see where the hell did my awful bunions come from? Like, where is this? Who's responsible for these feet that I have? No, I'm kidding. But yeah, so my mom has always kind of pushed me away from finding out. And then as a result, I kind of started thinking, like, I don't want to offend her. Like I really thought I'd be like hurtful to my mom if she knew that I was looking. And I remember to this day when I told her and I called her and let her know I found them and I'll explain how I did in a second. She was like, well, what are you going to do? And then she said to me, she's like, most adoptees who meet their folks, they have expectations and they're usually shattered and they learn things they didn't want to know. And then the relationship is not what they wanted. In recovery, we say expectations are future resentments. So she was like, whatever. And I was like, okay, thanks. So I had bought a 23andMe kit. uh, the DNA test and it sat in my closet. I'm not kidding for three years. And then one day I was like, fuck it. Take the thing, spit in the test. You mail it out, get an email. You know, we got some relatives for you. I check it out. I got a 13.5% connection. I'm like, that's a cousin.

SPEAKER_02 17:59

Yeah,

SPEAKER_01 17:59

that's a cousin. So, um, And then I had to figure out if it was mom's side or dad's side. At the same time, I was parallel pathing opening up my adoption file in Israel, which I imagine they have to go to subseller C to get the file from 1981. But they sent me the document, and then I was able to triangulate her last name and this dude's last name and found out it was the mother's side. So then... I was like, listen, chill. Don't tell anyone. Let me figure out what I want to do. Within 24 hours, there's like a five-way FaceTime. Like, hey, what's up? It's your mom and your brother. I'm like, Jesus. Yeah, it's wild. That's what happened.

SPEAKER_00 18:46

Did you find in your life a running theme of slowly just discovering and finding out parts of yourself that a person who's just raised by their own biological mother wouldn't have to figure out along the way? So you mentioned things like, you know, diabetic or having any kind of like tendencies, being prone genetically to certain things, or just even things about your personality that you kind of discovered along the way.

SPEAKER_01 19:13

Yeah, fucking awesome question. So basically, for my book, I did a lot of research on how, this will make sense in a second. I did research on how do people, what determines happiness? And like, it's kind of people find us now, 50% of your happiness is your genetic set point basically means it's what you're born with and the other stuff is 40 percent of is is uh activities that are intentional uh and so voluntary activities the other 10 is circumstances so basically it's 50 50 you control 50 you can't control 50 yeah and i was just like wondering like why you know why i am the way i am in terms of like Why am I loud? Why don't I have a filter? Why am I inappropriate? You know, like, why do I have a dark sense of humor? I mean, why am I knock-kneed? Why do my feet look the way they do? I mean, why do I have this, like, hairline? It's like all this stuff. And then you just realize, like, look, I gotta know where I'm from. Because, like, everybody's experience. You go to the doctor, they say, hey, any medical history in your family for XYZ? I can't ever answer that. So, I just needed, like... On one hand, it's closure. On the other hand, it's an opener. It's closure in the sense of what happened. Tell me the stuff. An opener. Maybe there's an opportunity for relationships here. For expanding my family, which was very small. Nowadays, being adopted actually is a really great opportunity to blame your biological parents for the shit you don't like about yourself. For example, one of the stories I've made up, my narrative, is that my addiction is because of my dad, my biological dad. I'll never know that. But what I've learned in recovery is that a lot of people have those kinds of addictions passed on over generations. So maybe my dad was, my biology guy was a womanizer and he had an addiction and never really treated it. And I know for a fact that my mom is very sick. She's bipolar. She's got OCD. She's manic. I can go on. And I was like, wow, I'm also mentally ill. And as a result, I'm on a medication to help me. I'm in recovery. But all this stuff is new. It's been part of my healing journey for the past five years.

SPEAKER_00 21:45

Yeah, absolutely. It does us benefit to be able to sort of have that feeling of anger because it allows us to kind of go through the processing, go through the motions of like really spending some time with that thought of like, okay, what really happened? Why did this happen? But it's also very, very important. I think a lot of people find comfort in that blaming of someone else. And so they hold onto it and they drag it and drag it. And the longer you drag it, the more it becomes a part of you. It starts to kind of be like who you are. I'm Dan and I'm an angry person and I'm angry because of these these people. But then it's also something that is really important to let go at some point in your life, because at the end of the day, it's going to benefit nobody. And you're the only one that's going to go through all this, your whole lifetime of anger and pain. And like you mentioned, it manifested very, very physically for you. I

SPEAKER_01 23:03

do the miracle morning, like affirmations. It's different than like, I'm good enough, I'm strong enough. It's like, it's pretty like deep affirmations. And I have one around around resentment. And what I write is, I'm not going to read everything, but I'm committed to becoming less judgmental because I don't want to create more resentments. So I think it's interesting what you raise. Obviously, incredibly easy to say, don't hold resentments, let them go. And I think it's really important to understand what the root of the resentment is. And for me, it's judgmentalness. If I judge somebody, then I end up Assuming the narrative, assuming what they were up to, making assumptions, and then not really being curious as a result, and then kind of holding on to my narrative. But really, for me, at the root of resentment is anger, like you said. And at the root of anger is sadness. And at the root of sadness is fear. And it starts with like, I don't want to be alone. I'm scared of being alone. I'm scared of being abandoned like I was as a kid. And then it's like, oh my God, that's like really sad. Like I'm actually a sad boy. And then it's like, well, I'm not going to go walk around crying. So I'll walk around angry because that's like the masculine, you know, ideals. I'm going to be angry. And then anybody who kind of like threatens me, I'll resent them. So that's kind of like how I've built it. And it's only taken me like, I just, you know, I've done a lot of work and it's not me showing off. It's just my commitment. I've done everything from the Hoffman process, which is a week-long spiritual thing, to psychological counseling services, which is essentially inpatient, Western psychology. And I did PCS a year ago, less than a year ago, and I just realized how sad I was. Not sad like depressed. I was just sad inside. And it started with, I'm just angry. And then I'm like, I'm actually sad.

SPEAKER_02 25:00

No.

SPEAKER_00 25:02

it's a huge step that you've even gotten to this place of like awareness of being able to break it down from anger to sad to fear and where that root fear root of the fear is because it's from that very very root base that you can start to kind of work backwards like hey if that fear of loneliness let me maybe try to experience loneliness for a little while and see how actually maybe it's not all that bad and it's it's actually i'm really happy in my own company and i can really enjoy some self-time and i can be self-sufficient and and then you kind of work backwards some people they do they do a lot of like inner healing work they write letters to their inner child they have conversations with their inner child they actually go into those moments where they felt like ultimate fear and anger and kind of work backwards from there changing that narrative but yeah you never really know it's one of those things you just trial and error you try this you try that until something really clicks

SPEAKER_01 25:50

one of the things we did at PCS was something called psychodrama and it's basically like reenacting these like seminal points in your life and we did the scene that we did for me was like me sitting there And you're not in it. You watch it. So other people in the group play characters in the story. So somebody else played me as a child. Then somebody else played me as a teenager. And then I had to go talk. It was wild. So yes, resentments are basically unresolved anger. That's the connection for me, which is why I went resentment, anger, sadness, and fear. And for me, the turning point... was when i did psilocybin journey with this incredible woman named juliet of berkeley and during my that journey um i basically uh found myself looking into like this big black well this hole and it was like this basket at the bottom and it was like a wicker basket so there was like light beams coming out of it and then i found this like courage to open up um this basket, which I realized was holding all my traumas, and I opened them, and my traumas were actually full of light. And then that's when I realized that I'm no longer broken. And that's why I got this tattoo, which is the Japanese art form of Dunigi. And basically, it's the idea that even broken things are part of the story. They can always be put together.

SPEAKER_02 28:00

And

SPEAKER_01 28:03

for me, it's really always been a question of belonging. I didn't belong in my mom's womb. I didn't belong in this new family. I didn't belong in this new country. How do I find belonging? And that's what led me to this five-year kind of path of creating my own sense of belonging and taking ownership of that. But you have to understand your biochemical set point before you can do any of that shit.

SPEAKER_00 28:26

Would you say that happiness then is knowing yourself?

SPEAKER_01 28:33

Well, the Stoics said famously, know thyself. And I always think that's always part of tapping into is like, you know, your inner spirit and like your gut and in your tuition and the storehouse knowledge that exists all around us in this consciousness. Like, I do think that knowing yourself and being aligned is really important. And I think about it like a board meeting. You know, the chairman of my board is my spiritual self. And then we got like the heads of different units, business units. We got the intellect, the thing that doesn't shut off. We got the emotional self, which is like, you got to tap into that inner child or whatever sometimes. And then you got your body, like, and our pain, as you mentioned, like sits somewhere in the body. So it's about getting everybody around the table under the leadership of the spiritual chair to like agree. You know how I think about it? And so yeah, but you gotta fucking know yourself if you want to be happy, you want to find belonging, you know anything.

SPEAKER_00 29:29

What if you open that can of worms, you know yourself, you know exactly where you're from, all of the things that make you and you find out like my gosh, like I don't like myself.

SPEAKER_01 29:42

Hoffman will call that the dark side. I mean, for me, that's part of the 12-step program. And in the 12-step program, you know, step number four is made an inventory of our defects. And I'm currently on step four, and that's literally sitting down in a spreadsheet and writing down every single one of your defects. I think I'm at like 32 for me right now. And then you got to write down all your resentments and you write down all your, like, so that's, and then step five is about admitting to like one person the nature of our wrongs and then step six is about turning those defects over to the care of God and basically that's the surrender it's just basically the 12 step program is basically a program for people who are spiritually anorexic and that's Turning that over to God, the care of God, carrying those defects over, is surrendering the shit you don't like. And I've always felt, to this day probably, I've felt worthless from the moment I was given up. And that's always going to be my challenge. I used to fucking hate myself.

SPEAKER_00 30:47

So walk me through it. Let's go through that from that very, very first moment when you start to spiral. What's happening in your life?

SPEAKER_01 30:55

You know, a bit of sadness kind of came over me when you asked that question because I kind of realized, wow, shit's spiraling. I started spiraling out when I was like... you know, 13. But certainly in my 20s, I became a love addict. And basically in order to address my worthlessness, I turned to women to fall in love with and feel better about myself and manipulate to kind of get to that point. And then, you know, move on once I got that. So that was in my 20s. And then into my 30s, it became a sex addiction. Because like any addiction, it just gets, you kind of have to drink another shot, another drink, and you have to shoot up another time or whatever, take another hit. So then it became a sex addiction where that was the way I felt good about myself. And then, you know, that's not enough. So then he started doing drugs. And then you get married and you're like, well, shit, I can't do this stuff. So then he turned to pornography. And it just gets worse. It just gets worse. And until you realize you have a problem and that your life's unmanageable and it's controlling you, that's kind of like what I went through. And this addiction lasted for like... 30 years. I mean, this goes back all the way to high school when I was like trying to make out with the most amount of girls at summer camp. So when you say that, it sounds innocuous, but it's just the beginning of it. So that's kind of how I self-soothed and tried to address my worthlessness that I felt.

SPEAKER_00 32:34

How much of this would you say was like the mania, potentially the mania or the bipolar that was acting up? And how much of this would you say is a result of feeling sadness?

SPEAKER_01 32:45

Well, you know, being bipolar doesn't help because you have these swings between hypo and hyper arousal states. So when you're in a hyper arousal state, you're trying to like do more and you're trying to like, certainly fuels kind of like this like manic compulsion. And when you're in a hypo arousal state, you're trying to like do more. You need to pick me up. You're like, oh, let me turn to like, you know, love and feeling good. So like something pulls me out of it. So I never thought about that connection, but it certainly is a part of it. That's a great point.

SPEAKER_00 33:17

What made you choose your wife to be the one to marry versus why was she not just another person that you were, for example, sleeping with?

SPEAKER_01 33:26

Wow, that's a great question. So she's fine with me talking about all this stuff. I don't know if she's fine with me talking about this. I'll take a chance. So the story I was telling myself is that I was dating with the intention of meeting someone. And if they weren't the one, then I'll just have fun. But as I was getting older, when I moved to Boise, Idaho, where I live now, Five years ago, I kind of decided that this was the point in my life where I'm going to normalize things. I was still acting out. I was still in my addiction. But it became more and more clear to me that I needed to... really get married or start a family or settle down. So it was kind of like a process. And I always joke that my life was on tape delay, but I bought a house. It was the first house I ever lived in. I got a car. I never drove a car before. I get all this adult shit as like a 40 year old man or whatever. Um, but I met my wife at a nightclub in New York city at like two in the morning. And we were, we acted out and, uh, I literally said, I'm going to marry this woman. And she came to Boise. I tried to impress her. I was still trying to juggle other things going on, like closing the loop here, keeping this one open, you know, just like risk mitigation. But yeah, so, but I just... I was attracted first to her, obviously, but then to her independence, to her intelligence. But she didn't know the nature of my wrongs and my addiction until a year ago. We call that D-Day in recovery, or it's not really D-Day for me because I told her. So it wasn't Discovery Day, but it was divulging day where I divulged my issues. Two years ago, she asked me, she's like, I think you're a sex addict. I was like, what the fuck

SPEAKER_00 35:07

is that? I mean, so you would say that you were quite a functional addict in the sense that it was not real. taking over your life you were able to

SPEAKER_01 35:14

totally wrong this this addiction is definitely takes over your life it takes over your life because it's like my friends who go on trips with me and like it'll preoccupy my mind to like meet someone like I'd be sitting down and like on an app you know I'd be on the phone with my boys like war storing I would Think about when to take my dog out in case I run into somebody. It does take your life over.

SPEAKER_02 35:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:50

It controls your life. You have to, like, you know, manage where you go out on a date in order, like, where you go, where you'll be seen with, like... Your schedule. It runs your life.

SPEAKER_00 36:03

And you said then at some point you moved from love addiction to sex addiction to drug addiction. Walk me through that part. When did the drugs... Well,

SPEAKER_01 36:14

I mean, it's just kind of like... You keep wanting to get higher and higher. I mean, I always did drugs. I haven't done drugs in several years. But I've always done drugs. And it's just part of it. It's part of the partying. It's part of like... part of the scene. It's just got, you know, like any kind of addiction just gets riskier and riskier, chase that high.

SPEAKER_00 36:34

So, you know, it seems like you were kind of really moving from one, one to another because you needed to have that sort of validation. It stopped even becoming about love and filling that void with love. It was like, just whatever I can get my hands on. What point did that word addiction kind of come to you? Like,

SPEAKER_01 36:50

yeah, I mean, so, so at that point you made a really good point that I haven't really considered. Um, But what you're basically saying is, dude, if you feel worthless and like, you know, you're in security validation, you should find somebody and then you'll get that because you'll be in a securely attached relationship. So a key piece of, I think, recovery for me or healing is having a secure attachment, developing secure attachment. And that means that you have a healthy functioning relationship that's interdependent with somebody and your life doesn't revolve around theirs and vice versa. You can differentiate. You know, You know they'll be there for you. You know it's not a quid pro quo. So I was just now ready to have a secure, attached relationship. And that was the difference, I think, part of it. And that's part of the healing a lot of people need to go through because your attachment style relates to how you find belonging. And if you have an insecure attachment style, it's harder to find belonging and you need more things that fill up your belonging tank because you're insecure in how you attach to other people.

SPEAKER_00 37:57

I find that to be really fascinating as well because you mentioned that there was such a dependency between you and your adopted mother. Maybe your adopted mother too had a very insecure attachment style. And that was something that you were also mirroring. So it was, you know, you went from being separated from your biological mother to being with a mother who had a really insecure attachment style. And so that's really what you're learning just throughout your entire pathway, your entire life.

SPEAKER_01 38:22

That's a great point. I mean, I would imagine she did because, you know, my mom basically had one man her whole life, my dad. They were together for like 20 or so years. He most likely... had affairs. His dad had affairs. And my mom was just very devoted. I probably saw that. Your question was around addiction. Before I learned about that, I want to make sure I answer. You know, it took me a while. Look, I think, first of all, I think everybody's an addict. I think there are very few people who are not addicted to something. The gym, working out, collecting comic books. I don't know what it... Everybody's a fucking addict. Everybody's got a compulsion. Yeah. you know, eating. So I guess I always thought about it conceptually and I knew that there was an addiction thing, but I just didn't know that it was applied to my experience as well. So I didn't only learn about that term until I was a PCS 10 months ago.

SPEAKER_00 39:20

Once it kind of really, really came to your understanding that like, this is a problem and it's got all the control over me, I've lost control over this, what'd you start doing? I

SPEAKER_01 39:30

went to a 12-step meeting. You work with nine different therapists. through 62 hours in one week. But yeah, I went to a meeting and I was like, went around and said, hi, my name is Don. I'm a sex addict.

SPEAKER_00 39:41

Walk me through any concept of shame that might've existed regarding any of the addictions.

SPEAKER_01 39:47

Shame. So at PCS, they taught us that we need to reframe shame as healthy guilt. And that, I really liked that reframe. because shame is like disgust with ourselves, where guilt is like acknowledgement of ourselves. So healthy guilt is a little more curious. But yeah, shame and addiction are very well connected because it's what we do in the shadows. And our addiction is in the shadows and it's not in daylight. And that means that we do it with the hope that nobody finds out. But light's the best disinfectant. Yeah, I like that. So yeah, I carried a lot of shame around. And I don't know, like, I mean, for me, it was just like, it's not, to me, it's not that complicated of a formula. It's like, you know, neglected as a child, I mean, faced abandonment, neglect, whatever. Okay? So... Didn't have a sense of belonging biologically, culturally, familially. And okay, so I need to find belonging because I thought it was broken. So I found it through interpersonal relationships and kind of started a downward spiral.

SPEAKER_00 41:00

Yeah. It sounds really straightforward when you put it that way. How did your relationship with your adopted mother evolve over the years as you started to come into adulthood? What is your relationship with her right now?

SPEAKER_01 41:13

Yeah. We talk. She She helps me. I have some marital challenges at times. She helps me. She's always got my back. And we see her. I live in Idaho, so she lives in New York City. It's a little hard to... spend time but you know having a granddaughter has really given her a new purpose and that's beautiful to see and it makes me see such a soft side of my mom

SPEAKER_00 41:33

I can kind of really see like that you know it sounds like your relationship with your mom is a little bit complicated there's bits and pieces yeah exactly exactly but there is so much love there and again this goes back to what you said originally at the very beginning about you know biological love versus synthetic love do you truly believe that your love with your mom is synthetic or A love that's going to be there forever. There's a sense of security I can hear when you're talking about the love from your mom, right? That you know she's always going to be there.

SPEAKER_01 42:05

I do think this synthetic love idea crosses over to biological love eventually. I love my adoptive mom unconditionally. I love my biological mom unconditionally. It took me a really long time to get there, I think, with my adoptive mom. And I'm working on having unconditional love for my wife.

SPEAKER_00 42:24

It's like, you know, there's a difference between between like a chosen love and a love that's just, you know, innately in us, right? Which is the biological one. The chosen love is something that we choose with experience and with time spent with a person to love that person.

SPEAKER_02 42:39

But

SPEAKER_00 42:41

they kind of need to prove that they're worthy of that love, I guess, in a sense. And that's why we choose it. But those ones that we choose personally, this is my opinion, is if I'm choosing to love a person because that person has time and time again been there for me and proven themselves maybe kind of worthy of my love in a sense, then I'm going to choose to love you wholeheartedly. I'm going to give all of my love that I can possibly give to you. And the only circumstance that might make me stop loving you is if you completely back away and you cheat me and you hurt me again and again and again. When you kind of reverse that and you start taking away that value of that love there, then that's kind of when I have to start to protect and preserve of myself but you know it's a painful journey because you know choosing to love someone is is a very intentional kind of act as opposed to it being biological but the love that we biologically like we're born into innately it's like with we're tethered to that person right something that is beyond us so it's not really a choice so it's sometimes it's a little harder but if that person has again been bad to you over and over and over and over again it's it's it's weird Because it's like you harder to unlove a person that you are tethered to by birth versus, you know. So it's an interesting kind of paradox. It's a

SPEAKER_01 44:06

great word, tethered. The wonderful marriage counselor Stan Tatkin talks about how couples should be tethered. And it's this idea, I imagine almost kind of like this... this rubber band, bungee cord, where we're tethered. You can go as far as you want, but like, you know... We're still connected. The way I think about that is through this framework of a bunch of, and this is PCS work, it's a bunch of concentric circles where the number one circle in the middle is you and God. And you have to love yourself and God. And only if you have that, you can go to the next circle, which is your partner. And that's your 2A. And then your 2B is your children. And then three is your parents, four is whatever, and it can go on. But that is so important to get one, two, A and two, B, right? And so many people have that flipped over. I love my children. Well, guess what? If you don't have a healthy relationship with your spouse and you are like not putting them first, you're not going to be able, it has to be that sequence. So God and you, partner and children, one, two, A, two, B.

SPEAKER_00 45:17

Right. And now we're starting to see a lot less of individuals choosing to be in relationships. A lot less of that happening maybe because of technology and whatever. Right. So people are becoming lonelier and lonelier and that circle is getting smaller and smaller. And, you know, the more we detach from, you know, relationships, partners, kids, all of that, like the more we push that kind of lifestyle away from us and we go through our lives being very lonely. I wonder whether that would change over time, whether that form of therapy even would change.

SPEAKER_01 45:47

Okay. So this, I mean, okay. So first of all, like there was now, there was an article in the Atlantic the other day about how men are going to start preferring pornography over sex because that is going to be so high-tech. And we see that already. I don't know if anybody's watched the show about adolescence. And adolescence is all about a boy who's essentially part of the 80, not the 20. And the 80% are the kids who don't match with pretty girls. And the 20 is the ones that do. It's the same thing on Tinder and stuff. 10% get 90% of the swipes. So it's all these problems. The age of marriage is getting later in life. People are having kids later than back in the 70s. used to be like mid-20s. Now it's like early 30s. And all this stuff is getting pushed out. And men are isolated. There's an incel movement. I really worry about men and their future as all these things happen around them. Nothing wrong with all these other people having rights and all these identities getting recognized. But in my opinion, it should not happen to replace their rights. I mean, the whole thing with like charlottesville people the jews will not replace us like that would tell those terrible pieces of shit white supremacists are worried about that and like as much as i hate them as a jew and just like as a normal person they have something to say and they're scared and being scared leads people to dumb shit school shootings violence, drugs, incarceration, suicide, and it's happening more and more. These deaths of despair are everywhere. We have to do something about it. And my opinion is that we solve it through helping each person find their sense of belonging. And that's where my work comes in because I don't think it's going to be some leader, some president who's going to have like a JFK moment of like, you know, not like an ask, don't ask what your country could do for you. Ask what you could do for your country. It's not one of those speeches. It's not going to be Jake Paul solving your fucking loneliness, dude. It's not going to be Andrew fucking Tate. It's not going to be Joe Rogan. It's going to be you digging in and and finding it. That's my...

SPEAKER_00 48:19

Talk to me about your work.

SPEAKER_01 48:20

That's

SPEAKER_00 48:21

my soapbox. I want to hear about your book. I want to hear about the work that you're doing.

SPEAKER_01 48:23

Yeah, yeah. I mean, so basically, I mean, I do a lot of the things I just did. I summarized my book. I think my book is a little different than most self-help books because it is, it's cited by 100, it has 120 works cited. So it's very academic. It's very rigorous. And it's basically a process, a framework that I developed to help people find their sense of belonging. And it's a very simple process. For the listeners by now, they know I like a good process so you know step one is understanding where you currently get your belonging imagining a fuel tank seeing what different fuels get in there and how you you know maybe it's um your partner maybe it's your your best friend maybe it's your favorite anime show but different people find their belonging differently so let's see what's in your belonging tank then it's okay well now that we know what's in your belonging tank let's know what's your belonging persona there are four belonging personas a chimpanzee which is the eager belonger a meerkat, which is the anxious belonger, a snow leopard, which is the reluctant belonger, and the wolf, which is the independent belonger. And that decides based off of your need to belong scale score and your attachment style. And different animals, different personas need find belonging differently. So now that you know that, you can go ahead and back to our fuel tank and figure out, well, does this work for me? Does this align with me? Does this align with me? And I ask a That's really cool. that are marked by secure attachment. So that's your close family, your immediate family, your kids, your spouse, maybe your best friend. Then you have what I refer to as casual encounters or the literature refers to them as Excuse me, micro-interactions. This is your acquaintances. This is your barista. This is your neighbor that you wave to. These are the people you give a friendly honk to. These are the people you chat with at the water cooler at work. Those are micro-interactions, three. The second. Third is group membership. Group membership can be as wide as going to an event and experiencing this kind of collective effervescence that we have, that higher energy field amongst other people. Concert, festival, church, singing in a choir going to a meetup. whatever, anything group-related. Those are traditional fuels. Then the non-traditional fuels are symbolic bonds. Those are connections that we have with people that we don't know. Our relationship with an influencer, like your listeners, for example.

SPEAKER_02 51:14

Maybe a connection to a television character, or maybe your favorite character in a fictional movie or fictional book.

SPEAKER_01 51:22

Those are symbolic bonds. The next is self-esteem. Those are things that boost our confidence it's getting recognized it's being an influencer having a following um flying a flag wearing a luxury brand wearing a driving a sports car um all those things are self-esteem related doing a podcast for me um and then finally um is contemplative practices that's stargazing and realize we're part of a bigger thing it's um uh seeing the wonder around the world. It's praying. It's meditating. It's going deep inside of you. And I keep looking at that sign you have behind you is we must take adventures in order to know where we truly belong. That's step six. It's that contemplative practice. And for me, where I think a lot of the literature has gone wrong, where Elizabeth Gilbert comes to mind and she's like, go to Italy, go to India, and go to wherever, and you'll figure it out. No, dude, you won't. That's only a A lot of leaders will try to say, well, you should get belonging at work. You know, diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging. No, work is work. And work is a platform for finding belonging. You can meet friends, you can meet romantic partners, but work is a platform for belonging. It's not the end-all be-all for belonging. And like Brene Brown is like, oh, you know, go run around in the wilderness and you'll figure it out. That's not the answer. That's part of the answer. So those are the six paths, again, for the listeners, interpersonal relationships, casual encounters, group membership, symbolic bonds, self-esteem, and contemplative practices.

SPEAKER_00 53:01

So you said that you kind of need to have a bit of a balance of all. We find that one is not enough. Maybe you don't have enough of that self-esteem or you don't have enough of that. Do you think it's necessary to kind of go out and seek that or sort of just process what you are already in?

SPEAKER_01 53:15

It depends. It depends on your belonging persona. So if your belonging persona is a chimpanzee, you're an eager belonger, which means you need a lot of friends You need to be in a lot of groups. So that's if you're a chimp. If you're a meerkat, which is insecure, anxious belonging, then you need a lot of self-esteem stuff. If you're a snow leopard and you're alone, you're a reluctant belonger, you need a lot of contemplative practices. And if you're a wolf, you can do whatever you want because you're securely attached and you don't have a high need to belong. So you can kind of like, you can go, do you be part of the wolf pack or you can go be a lone wolf? Doesn't matter. So the answer is, it depends. A lot of people, Jenica, do things that have nothing to do with who they are. They think they get belonging from shit. Like I call one, one, one, I call this hand me down belonging. They do it because their parents did it as, um, misconceived belonging. We think we have belonging and we don't. Um, for example, like that group of friends that just sends around memes, like this is dumb. Why am I doing this? Like, so we just have to think about it critically. And that's why I like a belonging mindset comes in. And I run people through a five step like framework of how to analyze each fuel. And I don't remember all of it, but it's basically in your gut do you get belonging does it give you energy another one is like do you do you uh publicize you're a part of it like them where you're proud of it so there's five things and if you guys say yes to all them keep it if you say no to one of them get it out of there your belonging tank has got a capacity just any anytime it's not full to 100 you have opportunity

SPEAKER_00 54:47

right is it possible that that can change in different phases of your life

SPEAKER_01 54:51

absolutely absolutely like i got married i have a kid i'm like you know not as interested in stuff

SPEAKER_00 54:56

last uh final final points that you want to make final insights you want to give before we end this uh

SPEAKER_01 55:03

well um i think this was the best interview i've done of the last uh three dozen um You're a really wonderful interviewer. I will plug that my next venture, after I stole my last business, I took some time to write the book. My next venture is going to be a new lodging concept for retreat venues. So basically, venues all across the United States for hosting retreats and off-sites. And it's called Assemble Hospitality. The first one is opening October 1st. Six months.

SPEAKER_00 55:33

Wow. be keeping you pretty busy.

SPEAKER_01 55:37

Oh, I'm not there building it, but yeah.

SPEAKER_00 55:39

Yeah, yeah, no. Planning it and stuff, right?

SPEAKER_01 55:42

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we just, we broke ground. Thank you

SPEAKER_00 55:45

so much for the opportunity. Thank you so much for being on this podcast and sharing your story. I mean, yeah, really, really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 55:51

Appreciate

SPEAKER_00 55:56

you. If you enjoyed the episode and would like to help support the show, please follow and subscribe. You can rate and review your feedback on any of our platforms listed in the description I'd like to recognize our guests who are vulnerable and open to share their life experiences with us. Thank you for showing us we're human. Also, a thank you to our team who worked so hard behind the scenes to make it happen.

SPEAKER_01 56:17

The

SPEAKER_00 56:20

show would be nothing without you. I'm Jenica, host and writer of the show, and you're listening to Multispective.