Ep. 292 - ADDICTION (and a Tobacco Withdrawal Update - Day 13)

Join Rob has he shares his experience with addiction and some of his (apparent) politically incorrect views on addiction and it's application to ALL substances in life - whether it's tobacco via nicotine, alcohol, social media usage, food intake, masturbation...anything! 

The conversation begins with a simple look at my tobacco use.  Tobacco contains nicotine.  We look at what nicotine is, understand that it is a stimulant, look at what a stimulant is, and understand how that factors into addiction.  Rob utilizes some standard definitions of the word "addiction" and then breaks down what it takes to break the cycles of addiction...

...after +20 years of struggles with addiction and over +30 years of drug use. 

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Discussion Links:

Ep. 283 - Tobacco Withdrawal (Day 1)

Nicotine - Alcohol and Drug Foundation
Nicotine is a stimulant drug that speeds up the messages travelling between the brain and body. Nov 10, 2021

Stimulants - Alcohol and Drug Foundation
Stimulants are a class of drugs that speed up messages travelling between the brain and body. They can make a person feel more awake, alert, confident or energetic. Nov 10, 2021

Addiction

Addiction is a brain disorder characterized by compulsive engagement in rewarding stimuli despite adverse consequences. A variety of complex neurobiological and psychosocial factors are implicated in the development of addiction. Wikipedia

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:03

Hello friends! It's been a while, but we're gonna get into a tobacco withdrawal update on today's show. It is Thursday, February 24th, 2022. This is episode number 292 of the All Around Growth Podcast. Thanks for tuning in today. This is a show that provides insight and tools to build the life and homestead of your dreams. And I am certain addiction fits in there somewhere. And hopefully, my experiences with addiction and my current experiences with cutting out tobacco from my life will I uh I don't know, resonate with you in some way, shape, or form as you go through your own struggles in this life. So as I was thinking about how to approach this update today, like I said, this is day maybe I didn't say this, I don't know. This is day 13 of tobacco withdrawal utilizing a nicotine replacement therapy. Okay. So the quitting quitting smoking, which is what I was doing. I was smoking these Cheyenne little cigars, they had become my my little thing. Um after smoking a pipe, it doesn't matter what you smoke. Cigars, cigarettes, even chewing tobacco, uh, if you are a tobacco user and you have no ability whatsoever to control your habitual use, you are addicted. All right? And that's what we're gonna talk about today. We're gonna talk about nicotine as a chemical, what it is, um, and we're gonna talk about addiction and my thoughts, my thoughts on it, and my experiences with it. And I've talked about it a little bit before in past episodes. So let's go. According to the Alcohol and Drug Foundation, which I just did a quick search, pulled a couple quick links, and then as I read the last one on uh addiction, I believe this was I just went with a Wikipedia link. Because I hey I got nothing against the Aussies, right? But um anyways, this is uh I believe that this is an Australian foundation. Links are in the show notes, check it out, but it's uh I I'm the Alcohol and Drug Foundation, nicotine is a stimulant drug that speeds up the messages traveling between the brain and the body. Alright? Nicotine is a stimulant that speeds up the transmission of messages between our brain and our body. Okay, very good. So, what is a stimulant? Let's look at that. Dig deeper. According to the Alcohol and Drug Foundation, a stimulant or stimulants are a class of drugs that speed up messages traveling between the brain and body. They can make a person feel more awake, alert, confident, or energetic. All right. So nicotine helps us feel this way. And and these are good feelings. But we end up using it, oftentimes that is, we end up using it more and more to help us feel more awake, alert, confident, or energetic. And this applies to anything: nicotine, alcohol, food, social media usage, masturbation, uh, anything. Anything that we engage in that delivers a desirable result, i.e., a dopamine release of some kind. That's what we seek. It becomes oftentimes it's easy to allow these things to become out of control. Alright, I'm using my words very carefully here because I may say some things about addiction that you may not like. But again, I can only speak from my experience as a person with based on my life experiences. So let's talk about addiction for this last little leg of the trip. According to Wikipedia, addiction is a brain disorder characterized by compulsive engagement and rewarding stimuli despite adverse consequences. A variety of complex neurobiological and psychosocial factors are implicated in the development of addiction. Okay. While I'm here at the stop sign, I'll read that again. Addiction is a brain disorder characterized by compulsive engagement in rewarding stimuli despite adverse consequences. A variety of complex neurobiological and psychosocial factors are implicated in the development of addiction. All right, and this is where shit gets hairy. All right. But the problem is, I'm saying this as a man in his mid-40s who's been struggling with addiction for 20 years at this point. No. Thirty years, right? Like, I have been taking uh prescription for pharmaceutical grade anti-seizure medications for three decades. And quite frankly, I was in my uh it was late 14, 15 when I began. I was 14 when I first bought a pack of smokes, probably 15 when I first smoked a little pot. And I've done this dance with addiction ever since, because using substances of some kind was about all I could do to make myself feel normal to balance out the complexity of the side effects, including but not limited to real cognitive impairment from one of these, the primary anti-seizure medication that I was on called Depacode. But that's another story for another time. In my late teens, I was first exposed to the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. Because my parents found a little pot. And we took a they took a bunch of action steps in conjunction with the high school and whatever. And uh, you know, we had to address some concerns because those were the days of dare and mad, you know, drug abuse resistance, education, mothers against drunk driving, and the war on drugs. Alright, so boy did I step in it there. And all I was doing was divvying up my bags, so when I went out to a party, it only looked like I had a little bit. I wasn't selling dime bags or anything, it was just that I wasn't stupid when I went out to a party and I held up a bag and was like, hey, this is all I have. I wasn't lying. That's all I had at that moment on me. So they thought I was distributing, the whole thing was a weird thing, and I went to outpatient rehab. Learned about Alcoholics Anonymous, basically went through the things that I needed to do, went to college, continued to, you know, get down all throughout my early 20s, and uh eventually I got a I was uh I got a DUI at the age of 22. 23, I don't know. And just not a not a good experience. It was an expensive lesson learned. And again, went back to Alcoholics Anonymous. It was a court-ordered, uh, court-ordered AA. I had to get my papers signed and bring them back to the judge and all that jazz. Alright, so at this point in time, um I was I I had pretty much reached rock bottom. You know. There's a lot of backstory into all of this, but none of that is really relevant. I had hit rock bottom, and I would just was not in a good space. And I figured, alright, this is where I'm at in life, I've got nothing to lose. So I stuck it out. And throughout the course of my early mid-twenties and late teens for that matter, on two separate occasions I maintained the periods of sobriety for a year, 18 months, or whatever. And it was in North Carolina when I finally just said to hell with it. I don't understand. I found people utilizing the rooms of AA, the dialogue of AA, the big book as a crutch in the same way that they used their drugs or their booze. You know, and everybody clung to this concept and this idea of brain disorder or oh, it's a disease. And I'm not gonna imply or suggest that it's not, but I think a lot of people use this as an excuse because they're not willing to grow a pair of balls and just own the fact that they've let themselves get out of control and let themselves become addicted because all of this stuff is a chemical action that's taking place between our body and our brain, and the end result is something that we experience, generally something good, i.e., that dopamine hit, and we continue to engage and engage and engage. And rather than just acknowledge that this is a pattern of behavior, something that's historically taken place with humans, and it's just a lot easier to reach these dopamine hits because of the technology that we have available to us, not only digitally in the forms of what we consume in terms of social media and such, but the technology that allows such food to be produced in the way that it does, the technology that allows us to eat the way we do, for we truly are what we eat, and we truly are what we eat eats. The technology that allows us to live the lives that we do, the technology that allows us to get to a job outside of the natural cycles in life and work, the technology that allows us to get into a metal box with wheels and drive somewhere to work in the first place. The technology? So it's just a simple acknowledgement of the things that generate these stimuli within the body that generate the desired result that we want, and then the fact that we are humans, and oftentimes we can't we we we can control this shit, but because it feels good, we don't want to. Alright, like if the rooms of AA work for you, great. Roll with it and better your life that way. If the rooms of Weight Watchers work for you, great, roll with it, better your life. It didn't work for me. I realized that addiction for me was quite frankly something I was allowing to happen because I was weak somewhere else in my life. And this was filling a void that I didn't need or wasn't filling in some other aspect of my life. I found balance. And because of that, at this point, day 13, as far as tobacco's concerned, fuck that shit, right? I'm part I pardon my French guys, and I I kind of hesitated because I'm like, oh god, I'm gonna say some things, I didn't want to. But, you know, it's just I'm better than that. And if you've got some kind of habit that you're working on too that you want to break, you know, understand that. You're better than that. You deserve better. Your family deserves better. So stop making excuses and stop fucking around. And think about it. Are you really worth it? You don't have to think about it that hard. Be the leader you were born to be. Come on. Alright, guys, that's it. Show's over. If you like what you hear, please check out All Around Growth on social media. Telegram, Twitter, Float, Facebook, All Around Growth. T.me slash all around growth for a chat group with myself and fellow like-minded people. We would love to see you there. We would love to have you engage with us and love to have your feedback in terms of what you want to hear with episodes moving forward. You're struggling with addiction in some way, some way or shape, or form in your life.