EP21: The Survivalist Brain | Why Addiction is an Ancient Power in a Modern World — with Casey Hyatt

Is addiction a genetic defect, or a survival superpower trapped in the wrong century?

In this episode, I sit down with Casey Hyatt, a Master’s level clinician with over 15 years of experience, to look beyond the clinical labels of addiction. We explore a perspective that is both intellectually stimulating and deeply humanizing: the idea that the traits often branded as "disorders" are actually ancient survival mechanisms—evolutionary strengths that have been short-circuited by the modern world.

Key Insights from our Conversation:

• The Biology of the "Hunt": How the natural dopamine drive that once helped our ancestors survive gets hijacked by modern substances, turning a tribal strength into a cycle of addiction
• The Landscape of Healing: Moving from simply recovering from trauma to recovering to a life of purpose, while navigating generational weight and learning to love with healthy boundaries
• From Shame to Sovereignty: Replacing the shame of "uncontrollable" cravings with self-acceptance. By realizing we aren't broken, but rather high-capacity people in a mismatched world, we can shift from isolation to abundance

This conversation is for anyone who has struggled to reconcile their past with their worth. It is an invitation to put down the weight of shame and understand the profound resilience of the human spirit.

Full show notes at https://www.netanyaallyson.com/episodes/21

Transcript

Understanding Addiction as a Disease

SPEAKER_04 0:00

There are moments in life that put us open by unraveling that frame or truth. We didn't know we need it. And so we have no. This podcast is about those moments. It's about the turning points that change us. The things I wish someone had told me that I only understand and looking back. Come on in. You belong here. And we're gonna talk about all of it. I'm your host, Natanya, and this is what I didn't know. Before we begin, a quick note. This podcast explores themes such as mental health, addiction, trauma, and recovery. While the stories here are honest and heartfelt, they're not a substitute for professional advice, therapy, or medical treatment. Please listen with care and pause anytime you need to. Take whatever resonates for you and leave the rest. Today's guest is Casey Hyatt, and we take a deep dive into anthropology. We talk about how the ancient drive for survival shaped our recovery today. We get into cravings and why that's a biological response and not a moral failure. And we discuss grieving the relationships that we thought we should have had in order to make room for a life of abundance. Here we go. All right, Casey, thank you for being here.

SPEAKER_00 1:20

Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_04 1:21

I'm so happy to talk to you. You and I have great conversations on the side already, just a myriad of topics, but I'm happy to have you on here today and to record some of the some of the juiciness that we get to do off air. I would love to start with something that we talked about the other day and you and I have talked about in the past, which is the concept of how we look at addiction through the lens of a disease.

SPEAKER_01 1:43

Yeah. So this particular topic came up because I was working uh specifically with opioid use disorder and I was tasked with kind of presenting so historically, most of the work that I've done in treatment, I've been working in treatment for the last 15 years and uh have been a student off and on throughout that time. So what happens is, you know, I'm working with patients on a very regular basis, people who are in long-term recovery on a very regular basis. And I get to see the contrast between kind of what gets presented to people maybe in their first experience of treatment versus their experience after they leave. And so I started to tie some of these things together in a way through the lens of academia that allowed me to just really start to complicate things. And so by the time it it became my job to present this, I was kind of forced to simplify it, and it really made me think about it through a different lens. And there's, like I was saying before, there's there's there's some academic literature that we can attach to this podcast that really kind of spells it out, at least where we're at. And for me, it works best to kind of like tell the story through through a story, you know what I mean, instead of just kind of laying it out as kind of a you know, a curriculum, so to speak.

SPEAKER_04 3:16

So So are you gonna tell me a story?

SPEAKER_01 3:18

Sure, sure. Well, so it kind of starts it it kind of starts with anthropology, right? So the the entire the entire idea right now as it exists is that addiction, you know, substance abuse substance use disorder specifically is one of the most complicated mental health dilemmas that exists in our universe. Um because of the bio so psychosocial nature of what we experience and for a lot of people also the spiritual dilemma that it comes that kind of accompanies that. It's it's one of those things where practitioners have tried so many different things to wrap their to wrap their hands around it. Not that there's not a ton of other mental illness that has been very hard to treat. This one, this one specifically has more of a catalyst and and and more collateral damage. And so I think there's probably not not a single listener who hasn't been impacted either directly or passively by addiction in some way. And so the idea really comes down to the fundamental nature of humanness. And the drawback is over the last 80 years, we've started to look at maladaptive behaviors through the lens of mental disease. And so, you know, this person has this particular neurosis, let's say, you know what I mean? Well, it's very hard to say if that neuroses is more of a reaction to stimulus internally, right? Like, okay, there's something wrong with my brain chemistry, and so I react to the world around me in this way. Or is this brain chemistry just kind of like this m-this status quo that not only I have, but my grandfather's had and my grandmother's had and so on and so forth. And it's more of just reacting to the the fundamental nature of the world shifting at an incredibly progressive rate. You know, I think like right now, specifically, I I want to say uh it was the other night in New Year's Eve when we were talking about different things and we were looking at the younger kids and kind of how they were doing, and and it was a you know, a back in my day kind of conversation.

SPEAKER_02 5:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

And and it's it's that easy to see the fundamental shifts not only in behavior, but expectations between generations. And so if you extrapolate that across uh our entire existence, it's pretty easy to see that who we are changes incredibly progressively, especially over the last, you know, since since let's say the the uh the advent of the 40-hour work week.

unknown 5:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:51

Let's use that, you know, the industrial revolution as an example. And so um so I typically start this story by but with with the story of humans and the 300,000 years that we've been around. And when I say humans, I mean Homo sapiens. Most people don't know that there were several humanoids over the last million years or so, you know, in in different degrees, and and several of those have been studied like really, really conclusively about about eight different humanoids, right? One one that most people can remember really easily is Neanderthal because it's the most recent one. And so for whatever reason, Neanderthal did not stick around, and we did. And uh that's cool. And then there's a there's a big story to tell within that kind of you know 300,000 year change because there were several weather events that changed, you know, the landscape and changed the population and so on and so forth. And there's there's a lot of science to say that at a certain point there were only about 10,000 of us left and we almost went extinct.

The Evolution of Humanity and Trauma

SPEAKER_01 6:49

But I I use that as as kind of a picture, right? Because if you're talking about generations and you're talking and you use the 200 to 300,000 years, which is the general scientific consensus, um, you're talking about a lot of development. You're talking about a lot of structural change in the body. And it's easy a lot of times when I'm working with people who are in early recovery to use uh trauma as an example of the way our bodies adapt over time. And the way we describe and the way we um we we talk about trauma now is through this lens of like, oh, this terrible thing happened to me, it affected me fundamentally, and now I'm this way. Well, if you look at that through the lens of survival, most of most of the trauma that we were experiencing was, oh, I'm out hunting a a deer and a saber-toothed tiger came out from the left, and I almost got I almost died, but I just barely lived, right? I almost I just barely made it. And so the trauma that I experienced from that is fundamentally a survival mechanism because now I have this really core memory, this really deep-seated fear, if you will, and and and anxiety around what happens when I'm out hunting. And so in the future, not only me, but my children are gonna be a little more hyper-vigilant in those same scenarios. When they say trauma lives in the body, they're talking about every part of the body my scent glands, the way I feel, the way I think, and the way, and the way that I behave fundamentally, not just not just the you know, hey, I feel this way, so I'm gonna do this, but literally the the behaviors that I that I kind of gravitate toward. And so trauma changes everything. And so for millions of years, every single animal has had this instinctual reaction to trauma, um, if we're if we're looking at it through that lens, right? And so uh when we talk about generational trauma, I have some of the same anxieties, curiosities, uh, fears, um, insatiabilities that my mother has, right? Not because I experienced what she experienced, but because she experienced it, passed it on to me and her DNA because it happened to her before she had me. And so and that happens with every generation. And so I don't want to get too bogged down in that. First of all, do you have any questions so far?

SPEAKER_04 9:09

Yeah, I do. Um, I think it's fascinating. And I have thought about that, like like what you just said with the passing things down through DNA, right?

SPEAKER_03 9:19

Sure.

SPEAKER_04 9:19

Versus, and this is not a new conversation, but versus the environment that you're in.

SPEAKER_03 9:24

Right.

SPEAKER_04 9:24

Whether you grew up in a family with addiction problems or substance use or whatever. Um, do you have any thoughts on the nuance there between that? Or are they both valid? Or is it just is it more DNA? Do you think? Do you know?

SPEAKER_01 9:38

So I think there's two things going on there. There's these, there's, there's core traits, right? There's there's core definitive physical examples of the person that I'm going to become when I'm born. But it's just like that age-old like nature versus nurture,

Nature vs. Nurture in Addiction

SPEAKER_01 9:53

like which of these two things became what they became and why. And so um I can say that we'll get more into that through the story, but I can also say that there's no way to say that anyone's right or wrong about either of those two assumptions, right?

SPEAKER_03 10:10

Both. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 10:11

It's more about what you identify with the most and what you use, right? I think that's where a lot of people fall short is they make assumptions like I can remember being in treatment in 2008 and them talking about uh the genotypes and the things that kind of us the the assumptions that they were making at that time about which parts of our DNA make us addicts or alcoholics. And this whole this whole notion that it was genetic. Well, they were speaking to me through a lens of genetic defect. They were speaking to me through a lens of mutation. And it wasn't like, oh, okay, well, this is a normal characteristic of a lot of human beings, and you just so happen to have, you know, assumed this trait from your genetic pool. It was you're broken because something in your genetics didn't come out right. And whether that was the assumption that I made about me or the assumption that they made about the material they read, that was the that was the message I got. And so I've been unlearning that for a really long time. And a lot of what I'm talking about has to do with that.

SPEAKER_02 11:12

Got it.

SPEAKER_01 11:13

And so if we look at if we look at the timeline, right, if we look at the even just the last 200,000 years, it's really easy to kind of see where things shifted. It's really easy to see the agricultural revolution and how that changed who we are and how we are. It's really to see really easy to see the industrial revolution and how that changed who we are and and what we do. And this happened in different countries at different times over different, you know, and that we're still learning more about that all the time, the civilizations that that were born of things like this, and the advancement of humanness that has gone on and gone off and gone on and gone off throughout that paradigm. But the truth is we have only been living in this space for a very, very short time compared to what what kind of spaces we've been living in as hunter-gatherers and agrarian type people, survivalists, if you will. And what I tend to do is ask people to step into that space of an agrarian person, someone who is nomadic and has to, you know, sort themselves out in a way in order to survive on a on a daily basis, you know. Uh nobody wakes up worried about, you know, if if you back up 10,000 years, unless you're in um a very highly civilized society, uh, and you're and you're and you're high up in that society, uh, you're you're waking up hungry and going to sleep that way most of the time. Um illness is almost a death sentence, and you can expect about unfortunately somewhere between a 70 and 90 percent infant mortality rate in your family. And so just for today wasn't something people tried to attach to. It was it was a it was the nature of life.

SPEAKER_04 12:50

Um like literally.

SPEAKER_01 12:51

Literally. Living in the moment, day to day, doing the best they can to not only survive, but try to enjoy what they get each day. And and that's been the truth for our kind forever. And I like I guess like I said, I could go down a wormhole with that, you know, and all the native tribes and all the indigenous people from every country around the world. And a lot of those are really beautiful. And and it's funny, the more advanced we get, the more we try to tap back into that. You know, I'm I'm the camping type, I'm the outdoorsy type, and there is something very special that happens when I go outside and sleep on the ground and you know, have to have to ration my food and things like that. There's there's a reason the outdoor boys had, you know, whatever it was, a hundred million followers or some crazy stuff like that, because people are really attached to that idea of survival, and it and it's I think it's a natural thing. I think it's something that's ingrained in us in a deep and meaningful way. But I say all that to say that we just got air conditioning the other day. Like in in on this timeline, we just started driving around in cars, we just started being able to use electric, electric light, we just got indoor plumbing, we just got, you know, this kind of industrialized food system that we have now, which which are all like reactions to being uncomfortable for a very long time. You know, so many of the things that we've invented over the last especially hundred years are things that have really moved us toward a lot of comfort, at least in the civilized world that we live in in the United States. And um, and so when you think about the body, we're not really these people who live in air-conditioned houses and have flat walls and and drive cars and that kind of thing. We're we're we're still cave or still cavemen and women, right? We're still we're still very survivalist in in in in terms of the way that our bodies have developed over a long period of time. So I use that construct to help people understand that the way that we're living right now in this moment uh as a society, um is more of a reaction of being a survivalist society in a world where there's really only one way to do it, you know? And then and then I stop there. And I and what I want to say, what I want to say now is that the brain science piece, I'm not I'm not a neurobiologist, I'm not, I'm not a doctor of any kind, I am a I am a master's level clinician, which is nice to be able to say who's who's had a lot of experience personally and in the field of of mental health.

SPEAKER_03 15:26

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 15:26

And I'm gonna talk about two chemicals. I'm gonna talk about one, cortisol.

SPEAKER_03 15:33

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 15:34

Most people can identify cortisol as the stress hormone, the thing that kind of puts us on edge, the thing that makes us hypervigilant, the thing that keeps us kind of tuned in, the thing that keeps us up at night. Um

Cortisol and Dopamine: The Survival Mechanism

SPEAKER_01 15:45

and and dopamine, which a lot of people are really familiar with. They understand at least fundamentally what dopamine is and what it's for. Um but the relationship between those two things are are survival. You know, cortisol exists to keep us safe. It's very heightened when we when we're when we're stressed, but it's especially heightened when we're hungry, angry, lonely, and tired. And dopamine is actually not the reward chemical that we've been taught that it is. It's it's really just a survival mechanism. Dopamine exists to tell us, good job, you did it, do it just like that next time. That last part, that do it just like that next time, is the thing that professionalizes us. When we when we feel like we did a good job, we're getting that reward, that that reward section of our brain kind of highlighted in a way that triggers a lot of memory. And so when I when I say memory, I'm not talking about it through the lens of, oh, I'm gonna remember that in phone number. I'm talking about it through the lens of somatic memory. Our ancestors hunted most mostly. They sp they spent a lot of time looking for protein and then looking looking for for things off the ground that they could eat, things that were in in reach. And so the the idea that I'm hungry, I need, I'm hungry, my family needs, I'm going to go out and seek is cortisol. The hey, I found this there, and it looks this way and it feels this way and it smells this way is dopamine. And those two connections, repeated over time, create a hunter. They create someone who's very, very good at being able to acquire meat and acquire, acquire um, you know, carbohydrates and things like that, sugars and so on. Uh the the hunt is a very good example. You know, someone who has spent all morning sharpening their spear and they're geared up and they're ready to go and they and they really want to they really want to be able to do this thing and they're very they're very motivated. You know, the the the kind of the world that that rides on the acquisition of meat in that particular scenario is kind of our world now. But the difference is all this person's needs are going to be met through this acquisition, right? So if I go out, if I'm a Native American, let's say, and I go out and I kill a deer, I like to I like to frame it as Lil Wing, you know what I mean? This is my first deer, right? This is my first opportunity on the hunt by myself. And so it means one thing. If I'm able to come back into camp with this big old fat deer that I killed by myself, then not only am I getting the reward from myself, the the food, but um I'm also securing my my place in the community as a provider. I'm also securing the opportunity probably to procreate. Um and I'm also securing shelter in in a number of ways by by by assimilating the the resources that I'm creating into the general society that I live in, which is usually a tribe of 20 to 50. And so in that moment, as soon as that deer hits the ground, you know, so sorry for the image

The Role of Addiction in Human Development

SPEAKER_01 18:46

for anyone who's vegetarian, I haven't only secured um this this food. It it's the equivalent today of, you know, getting all A's, graduating, meeting the love of my life, buying the first house, you know what I mean, paying it off. It's all those things, all in one moment. We've taken success and and spread it out over a lifetime, whereas before, dopamine, dopamine came in very strong doses on a very regular basis. And the reason for that is because as soon as that dopamine floods my brain, all those places where cortisol lived in my brain before, dopamine floods those receptors and it locks those things in. So it's not just, hey, you did a good job, it's hey, when it smells this way and it feels this way, and you hear that, and you have this going on, and you sit just this way and you use this tool, then it works out for the best. And it then it locks in that repetitive nature of what I always do. Like anybody who's ever gone fishing and had a good day, there's smells, there's smells and and weather associated with that for the rest of your life where you're like, man, I I talk to people all the time. It's like, man, today be good, a good one for fishing. You know what I mean? And and and it's like, yeah, because you've got that locked in mechanism. Right? It attaches to our ancient self. Um I hope you're following me. I realize that I'm talking a lot.

SPEAKER_04 20:10

Um That's what you're here for.

SPEAKER_01 20:11

Any questions yet?

SPEAKER_04 20:13

Um I guess my first thought and question is where did we go wrong? Right? Like if that's if that's if it's meant to be good, it's you know, all of that sounds beautiful. And somehow any of us that are in the the sphere of substance use or substance use disorder, take that same system and fuck it up, so to speak. How does that translate, or where do we mess it up and then get attached over here on a different loop that's not actually good for us?

SPEAKER_01 20:43

Right. Well, I think it's complex, but I think simply it's the it's the nature of humanity is to become bored, right? Like even within that, you know, short window that I'm talking about, there was still complexity. You know, there were there were still incredibly complex social systems that were developing over time. There were incredibly complex religious, you know, systems that were that were organ organizing themselves naturally over time that that helped boost trade and so on and so forth. There's some really good books around how like religion was actually a a tool for trade as opposed to the other way around. And it's interesting, it's interesting to look at it through that lens, especially in in Greece. But um, I don't want to get too carried away with that. What I'll say is it it's it's easy to get kind of oversaturated with with with the storylines that we have. And I think that the the ultimate the ultimate lesson here is is that when I react now, I'm not reacting as this modernized human that I like to pretend I am. I react, I react based on the same systems that were in place for a really long time. And I don't mean to I don't mean to squash it or anything like that, but attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or just attention deficit hyperactivity is one of those things that if you look at it through the lens that I'm talking about, let's say 20,000 years ago, or let's just change that, let's change that language to a hundred generations ago, that was an incredibly useful trait. Right? That was an incredibly useful quality in someone who could completely divert their attention when needed based on predatory behavior, based on the opportunity for food, based on the opportunity for um protection um from other humans and so on. And so, you know, that that that framing that as a disorder is kind of kind of crazy to think about when the reality of it is that's probably a developmental trait that's been working itself into our DNA for millennia. And so it's not it's not the person that's broken, it's the system they live in.

SPEAKER_03 22:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:58

And so shirking and jiving with that is is is is really hard to do. And that's true of a lot of mental health diagnoses. Um I think I think, you know, a lot of the neurodivergence that we have that we see across our population that's more outspoken. You know, I don't think there's more neurodivergence. I think there's just as much neurodivergence as there's always been. Just families are more open about it now. And so I think I think that's ultimately a developmental quality that we've experienced uh saturating our DNA over a long period of time because it was useful within the tribe. It was useful within the community. Um addiction is really interesting to talk about it through that lens. So when we talk about addiction through that lens, it becomes really obvious that okay, if this is a developmental trait that actually helped provide, then it makes a lot of sense that some people would become obsessed with it. You know, if that's how we if that's how we connected with dopamine, if more actually lent itself to the the growth of our species, then addiction was not a bad quality at all. You know, if someone, if someone fell in love with hunting, that was probably the most communally responsible thing that you could

The Dichotomy of Addiction: Problem Drinkers vs. Alcoholics

SPEAKER_01 24:12

do is to just wait, you know. So so so when I think about addicts of the past, they were the ones that were waking up early, they were the ones that were staying out late, they were the ones that were innovating new tools. You know, when we talk about addicts in recovery, we we talk about how creative they are, how inspired they are, how motivated they are, how intelligent they are, and and and all those things line up perfectly if you think about those traits in a world where that that is actually a useful quality in someone.

SPEAKER_03 24:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:42

The problem is, is when I use, you know, heroin or fentanyl or methamphetamine or cocaine, alcohol, marijuana, any of it, I'm short circuiting that ancient process. And I'm connecting dopamine and the and the reserve of dopamine I have in my brain, I'm connecting that with survival, but I'm doing it with a chemical. So I'm I'm I'm maladjusting to that chemical in a way that looks like survival to my brain. So the same qualities that existed for the for like let's use Lilfoot or Lil Lil' Wing as an example.

SPEAKER_00 25:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:19

I've been thinking about little feet a lot lately. Um if I if I think about little little wing, well the the truth of the truth of that is is when I'm on the hunt, I'm willing to overlook consequences. I'm willing to there's a lot of cognitive dissonance when I'm trying to survive. Because I need to do this one thing no matter what, right? But if if I have linked fentanyl with survival, then I'll do anything it takes to get fentanyl because I have linked it with survival. Not only for myself, but my the the people that you know may benefit from that acquisition. And so I'm willing to walk along cliff edges, put myself in front of guns, I'm willing to go out in the woods where other predators are, aka drug dealers and and the like. And and slowly over time, that becomes a manifestation of the same existence I had 10,000 years ago, only I've replaced it with this drug. And when people come into treatment, one of the first things they experience is an incredibly deep amount of shame for the behavior that they've exemplified in their addiction. And the reality of it is, is most people can't tell them why they behaved beyond their means, right? 99% of the people that I've worked with did not want to be the way they were. Right? If they could, if they could go back, they would still want to get drugs, but they would have never done what they did to get them. They would have never sacrificed the relationships they sacrificed, they would have never put themselves in in danger that they put themselves in. And so through that lens, once you, once you kind of quantify it as like, oh no, this is just you short circuiting survival, it makes sense. Because the truth is your brain works that way. You know, your brain, your brain says it's okay to lose a toe if you can save the body.

unknown 27:09

Right.

SPEAKER_01 27:10

And so, and so that's a really clear picture of it. Now, there's one big caveat to that, and all the recovery literature talks about it. You know, it taught you know, the ancient recovery literature from Alcoholics Anonymous talks about it. The almost 100-year-old text now talks about the problem drinker versus the alcoholic. Okay. So you have you have addiction in in in this one way where it's like a physical tangibility. It's like, okay, this person has chronic use, there's there's misuse associated with that chronic use, and but maybe there's some maybe there's something happens. They get embarrassed at a wedding or their mom has a hard conversation with them or they lose a job and they realize, you know what, I gotta turn this around. And and they do. You know, and there's not a whole lot of intervention, and you know, they see the consequences for what they are and they move on with their lives. And then there's me. And there's not a single consequence that slowed me down beyond an absolute intervention, a long period of time where abstinence was forced, where direct consequences to my freedom were imposed, and I had to look at myself. I needed a window to be able to see myself through a different lens and the and the potential for change to start to take take place and manifest, right? And that I think is a very important genetic quality that we have acquired from our ancestors that we can no longer look at through the mindset of disease. It's not it's not a malformation of my character. It's not something that it's not something that because of some, you know, strange thing that happened with my mom or my mom's dad, or on and on, that that, you know, I'm broken. Um I am the I am the version of me that science wanted. The problem is the society that I grow I grew up in gave me a lot more opportunity to access drugs and alcohol than it gave me an opportunity to be the best whatever. Right. You know, I my assumption is that Elon Musk, all the Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates of the world, they're all addicts. They just found something different before they found drugs. And so, and so, you know, that the the soil, the soil is rich, right, for that reason. And so I grew up in a society that allowed it, that put me in a position to, like I said, have a lot more access to that than anything else. And, you know, I think the proof is in the pudding there. I think, I think if what we were talking about was such a maladaptive trait, then it would have worked itself out of our genetics a long time ago. There wouldn't be millions of us all over the world.

SPEAKER_04 29:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:53

So so I think I think ultimately what we're talking about is is the you know the difference of scarcity and abundance. And you know, the truth is, especially over the last 10 years, I've been able to work with people for a very long period of time uh throughout their recovery. And what I see is once once we shut that part down and we give that same element of our nature an opportunity to thrive elsewhere, we become super we become superheroes. We become absolute apex predators, right?

SPEAKER_04 30:24

Right. Well, because some of I mean at some point you diverge, right? You were on this, at least in my story, and I'll I'll use myself for an example. I can remember thinking at at some point in the middle of my addiction, like, how did I get here? Right. Because I don't remember being this like lost, this off trail, so to speak. I had a really good different parts of my life. I was happy. I found joy in a lot of other activities that had nothing to do with substances, and then found myself, you know, in my mid-30s sitting on a floor, being like, How did I get here? And I was angry. And the thing that I was the most upset about is that I I felt like I came from a quote, good family, a decent upbringing, I'm a good human, um, I have good education, like schooling, and I put that in air quotes, but just all of that, I checked off all those boxes. Where did I go wrong? How did I not know any of this other stuff? And how did I get hijacked and allow it and then chase that rabbit hole for many years? Like what happened? Right. And that's that's so useful to what you were just saying to that of an explanation of where that happened, why that happened, and on a larger scale, how that happens in society. And instead of the the thing I agree with you on and I don't love in certain contexts is that you're like a flawed individual and you're different from others, and this is your problem, and other people don't have, and it's like I think a lot of people have different variants on this problem. They may not have substance abuse, but other things, right?

SPEAKER_03 31:53

Right.

SPEAKER_04 31:54

And then the my question from there is like in in your thoughts and what you've seen, what are we or what can we do better, either individually, communally, family, or as a society?

SPEAKER_01 32:07

Yeah, you know, it's I think ultimately it's a mindset of like as opposed to recovering from, recovering to, like most people, and it's I mean, it's the tagline for your podcast, right? Like the thriving versus surviving piece. The problem is we have to survive first. And there's there's an incredibly large, you know, there's a billion-dollar industry, at least in the United States, that's dedicated to that. There is very little resource associated. It's mostly in the nonprofit set nonprofit sector, it's mostly small cell, you know, it's it's closed in, it's hard to find, it's it's not easy to attach to. And where people are given not a second chance, a first chance at thriving. You know, I work with a lot of people who who who were the opposite, you know, they they had a beautiful family, career, heavily motivated, tons of stuff going on, and it was the same thing. They had an incredibly like advantageous experience of life. And then at some point there was a there was a washout, you know, there was a death in the family or some sort of other cataclysmic event that took place, and suddenly the drinking became the thing. Or the cocaine that they had only tried a few times in college became the only thing they wanted. I can remember I can remember having the experience of meeting a 73-year-old gentleman who was celebrating two years clean and narcotics anonymous. And what had happened was he lost his wife at 69 and immediately spent every single penny he had, lost his home, lost a couple of his kids', you know, savings, things like that, chasing the dragon, more or less. And until he finally kind of came up for air and realized what had happened. And, you know, things like that aren't it's not that he was a piece of crap waiting to come out, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_04 34:02

No, no, no. Right.

SPEAKER_01 34:03

It it was it was the fact that that that something triggered in him that was beyond his control. And I I want to say a lot of success is the same way. I know a lot of really successful people who have come into recovery and access something in them that they didn't know existed, and it doesn't look like addiction because it's more altruistic, but it just explodes and they realize holy crap, I'm ultra talented here, I'm ultra motivated here, I'm ultra competent in these ways. And it just it's it's like watching, it's you know, you you know how like a mushroom works where there's this just incredible network, all that's waiting to happen, and then you see the mushroom, and that's really just a fruiting body that just pops out randomly. Like there's you know, like tons of like there's like eight square meters attached to that one mushroom.

SPEAKER_04 34:50

It's so far. Uh-huh. Right. Underground.

SPEAKER_01 34:52

Yeah. It's like that, you know, and it's just waiting, it's just waiting to be birthed. And and so that is almost it's it's not an exception, it's the rule to people like to people like us.

SPEAKER_04 35:05

Well, and I have, I love that you brought that up about that gentleman, because I am nothing if not analytical. And the thing that I have studied the most is me. And especially when I was in that seat of addiction, I chose to stand up, do some work, and look backwards. I got really curious. And I got really sort of like, you know, with a microscope of when did this happen? What was going on in my life at this time? Because it it felt for me like I was in college and I I, you know, alcohol is my drug of choice. I used alcohol like I would sort of generalize most college kids do, right? You do it on the weekends very and it was not a thing I did all the time, nor did I need to or want to. And then when it really became a problem for me was after I graduated college, I went home. I sort of self-isolated more. I was with my ex-husband. We were dating at the time. He also self-isolated. And I was really bored. And in the boredom, just post-college, like nothing was driving me. And I now know I'm a human that needs passion, purpose, something to pull me forward, or I like derail. And so I've built my life in a healthy way of that now. But at the time, I didn't know that about myself. And I was sort of floundering, even though I had this like college degree and, you know, I had stuff checked off. Um, but it it began at that point. And after that, spending a decade with us with the other person in my life who I married, who also had the same problem, and not being able to understand functionally where I didn't want to be married anymore, and a bunch of other things that went wrong in that. And then when I came out of it later, I first ended ended the marriage. And then later it took me a couple of years to like address the addiction part. So I couldn't do them both at the same time. But something that I have been fascinated by, and even my journey since then, is how much of that I have felt like was circumstantial, even over a decade of the same circumstances. And I have, I really just have thought about it and studied it. And I really think that person that I was with and the life that we had created and then burrowed into just made it worse and worse over time. And then once I exited the circumstances, like the light came up, right? And I'm able to move forward in new directions until I I balanced out, figured out sort of my landscape, and then was like, oh, cool. Now what? How can I go create and build a life that I love? But then I'll get, it's fascinating because I'll get people that will say, they'll ask me the question I love, which is if it's circumstantial and you're not in that circumstance anymore, why can't you go back to drinking like normally? And I will always say, it doesn't work that way. And like I have now, and I am not scientifically, you know, versed

The Role of Circumstances in Addiction

SPEAKER_04 37:52

in any of this. It's just my human studying of what I know. There's no scientific backing in anything that I'm saying. But when you like the neurons that have a created and attached to my addiction of what I associate, like you said, the smells, the touch, the this, after years and years and years of implementing that. I like to think of it when they when they use the term that addiction's like an allergy. What I like about that concept is an allergy, like everyone's different. We all have different amounts of how you, you know, if you have a uh, you know, a glass and it's full of you were born and yours has like 85% of peanuts already in it, you only need, you know, 15% of peanuts left. And you hit that thing and you're you have an allergy. Other people are born with an empty jar of peanuts and they can have peanuts forever and ever and ever, and they don't have a problem. And like for me, whatever that jar was for me, I hit my alcoholic limit. And like once you have an allergy, you can't go back. You can't unbe allergic to peanuts.

SPEAKER_01 38:48

It's not like poison.

SPEAKER_04 38:49

No.

SPEAKER_01 38:50

You can't you can't develop tolerance to it.

SPEAKER_04 38:53

Yeah, but I'm curious about your thoughts of what I just said. And if you Yeah, just what you said.

SPEAKER_01 38:58

No, yeah, that's that's definitely I mean, that's the neurobiological kind of baseline for what we're talking about. You know, I think what it I love the person that you're talking to in that scenario who is looking for an opportunity for you to drink. You know what I mean? It's it it still blows my mind how many people don't want to believe addiction is real.

SPEAKER_03 39:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:22

You know, they they just they want everything to be okay. They don't they they want everything really to be something that you can get over easily, and that's just not how things work, unfortunately. Um, I think about this past week I was on vacation and I really wanted to enjoy it.

SPEAKER_02 39:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:42

And I had an incredible, like, I don't know what it was about where I was at, but I couldn't I could hardly see. I had my allergies were so bad, and the pressure and the sneezy and the just I hate it.

SPEAKER_02 39:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:55

And I didn't want to, but I took Sudafed um just to get just to get. Over the hump. Well, Pseudafed has some base chemicals that I was very addicted to for a long period of time. And I know what happens. And it's insane. You know, I'm 17 years clean. I um I know everything, you know, about myself at this point. I've done plenty of inventory. I'm pretty I'm pretty close to the truth about who I am and and all the results. And still, you know, my body reacted to that Pseudafed and said, hey, you should you could take another one and it would feel twice this good. And not only that, it connected itself to my brain and said, Hey, let's think up a good story for why that's you know, why that's a good idea.

SPEAKER_04 40:44

Oh yeah, I love that.

SPEAKER_01 40:45

And and it and and it literally started what we call, you know, the the phenomenon of craving, you know, that allergic reaction that you're talking about. And so uh I think it's really amazing on one hand, you know, it's great when I get to see it and not not not experience it, you know, because I get to be reminded like this is this is still who I am. Because time will do that. Time will make you forget everything, you know, that you don't like about yourself.

unknown 41:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:11

We tend to focus on the positive. That's how we work. And so and most of the people that I know who have had dramatic relapse kind of out of nowhere had it that way, right? They were at a party, it was very socially acceptable to behave in the way that everyone was behaving. You know, now like drugs are drugs are more accessible than they've ever been. Um, you know, you can carry a pen around in your pocket and just get absolutely destroyed off of it. And one thing leads to another. And it and for us, it is it is a once too many kind of situation because there's there's literally a threshold. And I think that's the biggest difference between, you know, someone who might might have developed a problem drinking, and maybe it became pretty consequential for them versus someone like me who literally, once I once I put in, I I lose the privilege of of choice.

SPEAKER_03 41:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:58

And uh so that's really what recovery looks like for a lot of people, right? It's like learning how to still have that first choice every day, still have that that ability to to say no when it feels right to say yes. And um so I I think I think there's some there's some there's some interesting uh science around that for sure. Um, you know, kind of the nature of obsession and how that works too. Um the unfortunate part is um, you know, we are holistic, and so there's things about my body that can trigger those responses. There's things about my mind, there's things about my spiritual condition, and so on and so forth that that can ultimately affect how how I think about changing the way I feel. I'll put it that way. Because that's the danger, right? You know, something as simple as buying a car, you know, or in the process of buying a new car, and watching my wife and I car shop on our phones probably looks really similar to a lot of other people's addictive traits, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_04 43:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:06

We're not going out and trying to steal them or anything like that.

SPEAKER_04 43:10

So we're getting better.

SPEAKER_01 43:12

The obsession piece is there though.

SPEAKER_04 43:14

It is. I and I've I've seen it in myself and other things too, right? Similar, not car shopping necessarily, but where you get hyper focused on something and you can't, and I'm like, how much time has passed? Right. I love what you said about Sudafed though. I had a similar experience with um Nyquil.

SPEAKER_03 43:31

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 43:32

And I didn't know, yeah, didn't know. And I just was sick and I took it and it really fucked me up in a couple of different ways. And I went and read the bottle afterwards, and I was like, oh, there's alcohol in this.

SPEAKER_03 43:43

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 43:44

Oh, got it. Like, didn't know. And I was just like, I've taken other stuff. Why is this so like getting me so bad? And I was like, I didn't know. Um I'm curious about something. I want to go backwards a little bit. When we were talking about nature versus nurture, and just when you've had either DNA stuff, someone in your family is an alcoholic, or you've grown up in the environment of not maybe not just an alcoholic, a, you know, substance abuse, um, having substance abuse around you, whether it's a DNA thing or environment, when you when it comes into doing the healing work, how do we get better at or try not to blame

Grief, Forgiveness, and Acceptance

SPEAKER_04 44:22

the people that came before us?

SPEAKER_01 44:25

You know, I think grief has a lot more to do with that than we realize. You know, relationship is paramount. And humans are one of the few mammals that can't survive in isolation for very long. I mean, there's whole like shows about it. You know, what happens when you put somebody out by themselves, like how crazy they get, how quickly. The the resource that presents itself in relationship, especially familial relationship, is so ingrained in us. It's so ingrained in us to try to try to stake that as a resource that we typically overlook a lot of negative factors, right? Abuse being one of the big ones, but neglect, you know, the theory around, you know, enmeshment is is really kind of kind of spectacular if you've never really spent much time looking at that. And for anybody who's like just now starting that part of the journey, like I'd recommend the big red book of uh Adult Children of Alcoholics, but like in a in a huge way, it's because it's a lot of personal experience, it feels less academic and more like approachable. It's so good. I mean, it's so, so good. It helps it helps shed away so many of those lies that we tell ourselves. But there are a lot of there are a lot of assumptions we allow people to make, and there are a lot of assumptions we make ourselves that put us in a position to either have to blame or have to accept blame. And neither of those things is hardly ever true. It's never it's almost never important whose fault it is. And so I think that's the milestone. I think, I think just getting a better fundamental under fundamental understanding of what grief and forgiveness look like can go a long way. You know, there is there's someone in my life who's passed who probably played a really big role in my substance abuse, and they probably played a really big role in me becoming the the man that I am today, right? And and I can't take those two things and parse them out away from each other. And so there is this very complex thing that happens where it's like, well, if I accept who I am, I have to accept who they are. And if I've been blaming them and it's their fault, then I'll never get to that place. I'll never get to that place of self-acceptance if I can't get to that place of you acceptance. And so it's been a long road to get there, and it's been a lot of pain, and there's been a lot of moments in time where I had to feel broken at my own hand because I just wasn't willing to move beyond that. And and the reason I say grief as opposed, you know, what the reason I say grief first and then forgiveness later is because I have to first grieve whatever relationship I thought I needed. I was one of those kids that grew up watching sitcoms and thought that that's how families were or were supposed to be. And so those assumptions, that those assumptions were then placed on to others who had never, not even one time, promised me that they'd be that way. And so I think I think that's a big part of it.

SPEAKER_04 47:26

That's fascinating.

SPEAKER_01 47:27

It's the starting line anyway.

SPEAKER_04 47:29

Yeah. What are your thoughts on the concept of forgiveness in general in terms of um sometimes I get I think it gets touted in spaces where people may not be ready to forgive, or we'll say extreme situations of abuse or trauma, or you know, we'll go we'll go large scale situations of things that are very difficult. Um thoughts on that? Just forgiving and when that when you're ready versus like leaning into it even if you're not ready because it's good for you? Just in general.

SPEAKER_01 48:02

Um I don't know why, but I just thought about a song. And it's not like a sad song or anything like that. It's a it's it's actually so there's a band called the Steel Drivers. It's a bluegrass band, and and one of the one of the many lead singers they had after Chris Stapleton left the band wrote wrote a tune called uh Forgive. And then there's a there's a part in the I think it was it's in the chorus, and it and it talks about like how to forgive as if you can't remember, not as not forgive as if it didn't happen. And I think the remember part is my responsibility. Resentment, resentment is uh so it's re-sentiment, right? So it's not about it's not about remembering what happened, it's more about remembering the feeling and getting so attached to what you know how you felt about what happened. But the truth is five, ten, fifteen years down the line, I don't feel the way about how a lot of things happen, like I did 10, 15 years ago. There's things that I let go now that I would have probably let go all along the all along the way. And so what I've what I've learned to do, and this has happened through a lot of therapy, specifically the kind where you sit in a room with someone who's got bright lights and and uh little little handheld vibrating things and and helps helps take you back to your childhood, you know, EMDR and brain spotting. And I'm given an opportunity to look at the things that happened to me and the things that took place in my life through the lens of the adult that I am now. And as I heal, I started with my youngest parts, right? I started doing the I started doing the the little Casey stuff first. And through that process, the maturation that takes place naturally through connecting those dots and starting to respond to the things that happened to me before through the lens of who I am now takes away a lot of the pain ultimately. Because first of all, I wouldn't be who I am today if those things hadn't happened. That's cool. But the attachment to what should have happened has to has to start to break.

SPEAKER_04 50:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:19

Um because I mean it just rips us apart.

SPEAKER_04 50:24

Yeah, well, that's where all the pain is in that in that distance. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:29

You know, and so many of the relationships that I was so attached to and the people that I love so deeply, whether they're still alive or not, the things that I'm that still drop my heart are the things that should have happened and didn't. And and so getting away, getting away from that kind of to be quite honest, childish mindset around the way the world works is I think is is ultimately I don't know if that answers your question to be honest.

SPEAKER_04 50:56

It answers my question. I do want to ask one other thing about you brought up enmeshment, and I have not talked about that on this show. I would love to know just if you could give an overview definition of what that means for someone that may not know, um, and just jam on it a little bit about what that looks like.

Exploring Enmeshment and Boundaries

SPEAKER_01 51:12

Sure. What I'll say is for any for any listener who this is the first time they've heard that word, I feel free to Google it yourself first where you use my definition as as your uh baseline. So enmeshment uh is is a term that gets kind of thrown around a lot more, probably, than it used to. It's it's uh it's one of those things that usually gets brought up when people are talking about trauma bonds and things like that, uh codependency. It's an it's an attachment term, right? We all attach differently, we all attach for different reasons. I would I would go ahead and kind of loosely define enmeshment as tangible codependency. So in a in a in a world where uh addiction exists, it's it's the addiction of attachment where where there's no where there's no uh there's no line, there's no barrier between what you are and how you feel, and who I am and how I feel. It happens a lot with mothers and sons, fathers and daughters, early attachment partners, so um, you know, high school lovers, that kind of thing. And especially, especially people who experience similar trauma at a s at a similar time. And so, you know, trauma bonding is is is another one of those terms that gets turned around probably way too much. It's a very specific thing that happens in a very specific context. But what I can say is, is if you ever, if you have somebody that you can think about that if you were having a bad day, let's say you were having just a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, and they called, would you hide first? And if you if you were hiding, if you were you know hiding your feelings, you didn't want them to know you were doing bad, whatever the case may be is, and the why is because they would feel bad, there is some degree of enmeshment with them. If there's somebody who can't parse out the way they feel from the way I feel, then ultimately it's not necessarily defined as an unhealthy thing, but it is a definite unhealthy baseline for a relationship. Um and so I think I think that's kind of where my mind goes with it. I definitely went through periods of enmeshment with my mother. I've definitely gone through periods of enmeshment with sponsees who I've had collateral trauma with, you know, who've gone through some really heavy stuff that I've also gone through with them. Patients, unfortunately, people that I've worked with in a professional capacity who just were so hurt and so broken and so torn apart by their experience of life that I couldn't help but go there with them and stay there with them for an unfortunate period of time.

SPEAKER_04 53:49

Yeah. How do you how do you get through that to a point where you have like, I would assume, better boundaries, right? How you have to learn and practice that in order to, you know, where I'm going is how do you continue the work that you're doing and care about people, right? A personal, professional and still keep up that offense, right?

SPEAKER_00 54:10

Yeah. I think personally it starts with how should I put it? I'll start professionally.

SPEAKER_01 54:21

Professionally, you know, there's a lot of literature on boundaries and you know, learning how to kind of create not necessarily a wall, but but a a a permeated boundary between or a perforated boundary between me and the people who need my help from the beginning, right?

SPEAKER_03 54:41

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 54:42

Problem is, the problem is early Casey, early professional Casey would lean in immediately and say, Let me help you, because of the fear that they wouldn't get the help they needed.

SPEAKER_03 54:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 54:54

Professional Casey leans back and says, Hey, I want to create a relationship that allows you to grow and change at your own pace with your own resources, your own drive, and your own, in your own capacities. I want to meet you literally where you're at and help guide you through this process on your own because professional Casey ain't gonna be around forever. Professional Casey isn't always gonna be, you know, here to help guide you and and and show you how to live. And so I was just too big. I was just too big in my own skin. But just because you want to help somebody desperately doesn't mean you can through that lens. And the same holds true with my family. Personally, um, you know, I can think of one particular relationship, uh, kind of that I alluded to earlier, and and he has passed. And, you know, there's there's a world where I think so many of us aren't willing to wait for them to ask for help. And it comes from that same place of fear, right? It can it comes from a place of fear that says, well, if if I don't do it now, then they won't get the help. Well, the inevitable outcome of that is typically I either push them away or I drive them to something they don't want, and it starts a cycle where where they're they're not getting the full they're not getting the full um outcome of of of the actual help that they're seeking. Approaching with love has to look different for someone who loves someone who's hurting themselves. And so the shift from fear to love in that context goes from just like I was talking about earlier, this mindset of scarcity versus this mindset of abundance, where one, I have to believe that whatever their next step may be will work. Because otherwise, there's no there's they I am going to be way too big in that equation. I'm gonna try to be the person or the element in that in that particular thing that that makes the difference for them. And there just can't be. There's it's it's not it's not outside of us. So so so so approaching with love for for someone who's you know walking into a relationship like that and trying to be a trying to be a bigger part of the change think I think looks looks a lot different than than than loving on them. I think it it's it's loving with them, it's it's allowing them to have their own consequences and being present with those consequences and standing in the back and saying, I'll be here when you're ready. Um man, it's so hard to be in the back.

SPEAKER_03 57:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 57:34

Yeah. And that's that's our work. You know, it's hard for them. It's hard to be it's hard for them to be out front.

SPEAKER_04 57:39

Yeah. It's all the work. Um I do have one last question, but is there anything else you want to talk about before before I sign us off?

SPEAKER_01 57:48

No opinion.

SPEAKER_04 57:50

All right. What is for those people listening, what is something that you hope that someone listening gives themselves permission to do after listening to this conversation?

SPEAKER_01 58:01

Oh, I think you should make a call. You know? There's probably somebody you thought about or um, you know, somebody that that you've been thinking about. And, you know, like I said, you know, the thing I said about relationships and that base need and desire that we have, there's probably somebody who has looked at you at some point as a resource and someone who cares for them and loves them unconditionally, and maybe hasn't heard from you in a while because you're either standing back or waiting for them, or you haven't forgiven them for something, or you're and I think we so rarely get a call that's just, hey, I love you and I want you to know that. And it it it it can change more than your day. It can it can change your life. There there's there's definitely been calls that I've gotten that that have really shifted the way I've thought about myself and and the and the people that love me too, for that matter.

SPEAKER_04 58:56

That was really beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 58:58

Thanks.

SPEAKER_04 58:59

Thank you for spending time with me.

SPEAKER_00 59:01

Yeah, it's been good.

SPEAKER_04 59:02

Yeah, and I just appreciate it so much. You know, it's not lost at me. What we all get busy and and have so many things that call your attention for you to sit down and be of service to give to people that will listen to this and hopefully get a lot of good things out from it. So I appreciate that so much. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 59:18

Absolutely, thank you.

SPEAKER_04 59:20

All right, we'll talk soon.

SPEAKER_00 59:21

Bye.

SPEAKER_04 59:24

Thank you so much for being here. It means more than you know. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend or leave a quick rating or review wherever you listen to podcasts. It helps more people find the show. If you want more of me, head on over to NataniaAllison.com and enter your name and email for behind the scenes updates in between shows. New episodes air every Tuesday. We'll see you next week.