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228. Demystifying Addiction: Understanding Your Habitual Patterns to Live Better (Addicted or Not) with Ariella Morrow

• Dr. Adrienne Youdim

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What if your greatest strength as a high achiever is actually your most dangerous weakness – and the voice in your head isn't really "you" at all?

It sounds counterintuitive, but the same drive that propels us to success can quietly lead us down a path of self-destruction. 

In this powerful episode of Health Bite, Dr. Adrienne Youdim welcomes Dr. Ariella Morrow, addiction medicine specialist, for a raw and transformative conversation about addiction, recovery, and the universal patterns that drive human behavior – whether you identify as "addicted" or not.

Who is Dr. Ariella Morrow?

  • Board-certified internist and addiction medicine specialist
  • Director of programs at Milestones Ranch in Malibu and treatment centers nationwide
  • A physician in recovery with over 3 years of sobriety
  • Specialist in integrative and Chinese medicine, including auriculotherapy
  • Former hospitalist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center with extensive private practice experience

What You'll Discover in This Episode:

  • The "Magic, Medicine, Misery" framework: The 3 universal stages every addiction follows
  • The difference between the "busy mind" and the "punitive mind" – and how to quiet both
  • "Yellow Light Vision": How to recognize early warning signs before you hit rock bottom

Why This Episode Matters: 

Whether you're battling substance use, workaholism, perfectionism, or simply that relentless voice of self-criticism, this conversation will change how you see your patterns and your potential for healing.

This episode will help you:

  • Recognize the insidious progression from coping mechanism to dependency (in any area of life)
  • Understand why "sanctioned" substances like alcohol and behaviors like overworking are especially dangerous
  • Discover how to quiet the self-talking mind that tells you you're "not enough"
  • Find hope and practical steps toward healing, regardless of where you are in your journey

"The mind that I have is self-talking. It speaks to me in my own voice with great authority, and I believe it. That's the mind that tells me I'm a piece of garbage." – Dr. Ariella Morrow

Resources and Links Mentioned:

Connect with Dr. Ariella Morrow:

Ways that Dr. Adrienne Youdim Can Support You

  • Join the Monthly Free Mind-Body Workshops: Participate in engaging mind-body practices designed to help manage your stress response. Register here.
  • Sign Up for the Newsletter: Stay updated with valuable insights and resources by subscribing to the newsletter. Sign up here.
  • Freebie alert. Register for our monthly free MindBody Workshop and receive a downloadable guide on emotional labeling to help you manage your emotions effectively.


Connect with Dr. Adrienne Youdim

Adrienne Youdim

Welcome back to Health Bite, the podcast where I offer essential nutrients for physical, mental, emotional, and professional health and well-being. I'm your host, Dr. Adrienne Youdim. I'm a triple board certified internist, obesity medicine, and physician nutrition specialist. And I've learned in working with patients and clients for nearly 20 years, that good nutrition is not just about the food that you eat, but all the ways in which we can nourish ourselves, mind and body. And as you all know, I absolutely revel in this stuff and love to bring on thought leaders to help clarify our understanding of all things nutrition. And so I'm so excited to have with us today, Dr. Ariella Morrow. She is a board certified internist. She's a addiction medicine specialist and does many things, including direct programs around the country, including right here at Milestones Ranch in Malibu. Ariella, I'm so glad to have you here.



Ariella Morrow

Thank you so much for having me, Dr. Youdim. It's great to see you.



Adrienne Youdim

You know, it's really important, I think, to have these conversations around addiction, because I think the word carries a lot of weight and a lot of shame, and I would love to demystify the term, the diagnosis, and also, and probably most importantly, help people find a way to understand their own habitual patterns, addicted or not, just as a way, as a conversation to allow us to explore how we can live better.



Ariella Morrow

I have to start by saying that I was an intern when you were teaching at Cedar Sinai Medical Center, a hundred million years ago. You look fantastic for being a hundred million years old. And you've always had an interest in the person and not the disease, who that person is, how they ended up there and all of their story. that we don't see when they're just in the hospital bed. And it is no wonder to me that you ended up in a field where you really think about a whole person nourishing mind, body and spirit. So it's wonderful to see you at this stage in your professional life. And it's quite a coincidence, right, that we ended up both thinking about the spirit of the person, their body, of course, because mind, body and spirit are all connected. So The field of quote unquote addiction, right? Talks about a person's use of a substance or an addictive process, right? We include in there, not just substances like alcohol, opiates, benzodiazepines, cannabis, et cetera, but also gambling, sex and love addiction, food addiction, et cetera. Our, I think your book, Hungry for More really nails it in the title. There's something inside of us that is unsettled, uncomfortable, nervous, and we turn to anything, right, whatever that substance of choice or process is to keep going, to just cope, to keep breathing, to keep doing the things that are on our plate, you know. We don't end up in some sort of recovery from whatever it is because we're weak. I think we end up here because we are so incredibly strong that we just keep going. And we blow past the yellow light, like I call it, and we blow past the red light. And then sometimes we end up at the bottom of the cliff before we realize that there's a problem.



Adrienne Youdim

You know, Ariella, Your opening is so sincere and I think so helpful because it takes that edge off. Just in your description, just in your voice, it takes away that angst around the word and around the process. offers it as a universal human condition, which it is. Whether we identify as addicted or not, we all have hungers that evolve over the course of our lifetime. And these hungers actually can be viewed as opportunities. That's how I view it. Instead of judging and shaming and suppressing and squashing If we can be open to that hunger, that drive to soothe and recognize what unmet need is seeking to be noticed, what a beautiful opportunity to meet that need and to truly fulfill ourselves. And that's basically what I'm hearing from you. I also know that there's a very personal story for you behind all of this, how you came to this work. And I'd love if you were open to share that with us.



Ariella Morrow

Of course, thank you. Before I do, I couldn't agree more that that sensitivity toward what's underneath is it whatever emotion or driver is important to pay attention to what's under and to actually feed that. right, to hear and listen within ourselves, to have that attunement. And that isn't something that I had to begin with. And you're right, I ended up in the field of recovery, working in the field of addiction, because I myself am in recovery. I'm an alcoholic. Bourbon and scotch are my drugs of choice. I have three years one month and 28 days of sobriety. Congratulations. Thank you. So my story, I grew up, I shouldn't have been an alcoholic. I'm a nice Jewish girl. I grew up in the, you know, want for nothing, parents loved me, one of four children, married, two children, et cetera, of my own. Professional, I'm a physician. And I drank like a normie, as we call it, until I was about 35. At 35, it ended up that every domain of my life was on fire. There was trauma in my family, in my birth family with my parents, and I can tell you a little bit more about that. My marriage was in trouble. My finances were in disarray. And I found myself turning increasingly to alcohol. It was, you know, a glass of wine at night or two, et cetera, and then more liquor, et cetera. And that was in 2019, where I started drinking every night. And then really during the pandemic, I actually had stopped working as a hospitalist. I had been a hospitalist at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles for many years. I had had an outpatient private practice, you know, successful, et cetera. And I wound that down because I was increasingly depressed and very anxious. A little bit about that. So my father was a physician, a very well respected cosmetic plastic surgeon who got in trouble with the law. My father got in trouble with health care fraud indicted by the federal government. My mother was indicted as well. She did all the marketing for his practice. She was an award-winning marketer, et cetera. And these heroes, my parents were my heroes. My father taught me how to be a wonderful physician. He told me that if you really listen to a patient, If you really listen, they will tell you the diagnosis, right? And if you don't have the right diagnosis, the treatment can't be right. He told me to touch my patients, to really listen, to appreciate them, right? To ask them the whole story and to shut up, right? To take all that in. So my father and mother got in trouble with the law. And it was quite dramatic. It sounds like a miniseries. My parents, right before my father was to pay his restitution, they fled the country. They went on the run. They ultimately ended up in Israel and they were captured two years later. They left all of a sudden, one day they were here, one day they were not, and they left behind their six grandchildren, four children, and everything landed in my lap to take care of. Every knock at the door, I thought it was the federal government trying to come and accuse me of aiding and abetting or whatever it was. All of the legal issues landed on my lap and this was all escalating. And in the setting of, also my marriage was, not in a good place. My husband and I were at odds. His business was in disarray, et cetera. He ultimately declared bankruptcy, and so our finances were in a difficult position as well. And also came the pandemic. And as we know, so many people were under so much stress. And many people started drinking. Literature shows that drinking escalated remarkably. And so in that context, I started drinking more and more. And first it was a couple of glasses of wine at night. And then it was, well, I'm not going to drink before 5. And then I'm not going to drink before noon. And then I'm not going to drink. And then I was drinking at any time of the day and hiding it, et cetera. And I know, right, I actually was so depressed and anxious that I thought that anyone who went through what I went through would drink like I drank, honestly. I actually saw it as a treating of my own depression, right? Just trying to cope, just trying to wake up, just trying to keep breathing. At that point in my life, my depression was so severe that I didn't want to have to keep breathing. It was so oppressive how how depressed I was. And actually that's what brought me to treatment was my severe depression. I still at that point didn't realize that I was an alcoholic. It was really about the emotional distress. I went to treatment in 2021, leaving there as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. And it took me about a year to stay sober. I got about three months and six months and three months. And then really my sobriety date is April 2nd of 2022. I do want to share something that might resonate. That when I got to the rooms of AA, I didn't necessarily relate to everyone. Their story wasn't my story. I didn't lose everything. I wasn't homeless. I didn't turn tricks on the street. You know, I still had my profession. I had my license. Nothing had ever happened with any patient, no complications, no nothing, right? And so, so many domains in my life were still intact as much as I had my troubles. And I didn't really feel like I belonged in a room called, right, about addiction per se. But I heard something a few days after I came home from treatment that changed my life, that actually saved my life. And this is what I heard. I heard that, you know, the mind that I have, the alcoholic mind or the mind that keeps wanting, right, That mind is, and I have it on a sticky note on my monitor, that mind is self-talking. It speaks to me in my own voice with great authority, and I believe it. That's the mind that tells me I'm a piece of garbage. I can't do it. It's never gonna be okay. I can never fix it. How could I ever move forward, right? There's too much. Right? That mind is unsatisfiable, fault-finding, opinionated, always in a hurry, easily frustrated, and cannot stand the word no. And when I heard that, I was like, that is what I have. And I had that well before I took any drink alcoholically. That's the mind that I had. I was addicted to validation. I was addicted to sex and love, attention, healing people. I was a workaholic. All of these other hunger satisfy me. I need to feel okay. I'm restless, irritable, and discontent well before it had to do anything with alcohol. That's the mind that I had before I was drinking. And that's the mind that I have to take care of now, right? Because my addiction really didn't have anything to do with alcohol itself, right? It had to do with what was inside, inside of me and how I coped with the world and handled the world. I had to have healing from within. And that's how I have stayed sober for these three years, one month and 28 days.



Adrienne Youdim

There are a few threads that I want to pull out. One is the insidiousness of all of this. How many people out there can't say that they drink one or two glasses of wine? Many, many do. And to just hear how it can very quietly progress The second point is the universality of this. You are a physician, a mother, good daughter. And I think it's important for people to recognize whether we're talking about alcohol or we're talking about obesity or whatever it is that we are battling, thinking in our own minds that we are alone or so-and-so doesn't have to deal with it or so-and-so doesn't have it. How many times a day in the office do I hear a patient say, you know, I've been struggling with my weight all of my life, why me? Meanwhile, you know, we both know that this is such a common struggle. But I think, you know, one of the things I always tell my patients is that You know, we are all the same. We all have the same challenges, struggles, hurdles, whether it's me or you, a physician, a psychotherapist, the meditation guru that you see on Instagram, the pop star artist, the president. This condition is universal. This hunger is universal. and you speak to it exactly in your last comments. And that is the voice in our heads, that constant stream of narration that is dismissing or devaluing or devalidating ourselves. And by the way, that voice tends to escalate as we ascend and tends to plague the high achiever. Because on some level, it requires that tunnel vision, that dismissing our own needs. I want to rephrase that. It doesn't require, right? But that's what happens. We dismiss our personal needs are spiritual and emotional and sometimes basic human needs like adequate food and nourishing food, sleep. We dismiss our personal needs in the service of this achievement, in the service of this success. And that is why the high achieving professional and also the very dutiful mother or caregiver Right? That very dedicated human is at risk to fall prey because a level of striving by listening to that negative voice is what gets people ultimately to a place where it is suffocating. It is too much to handle. And if you have a substance that is sanctioned, like food, like alcohol, despite its addictive potential, it's a sanctioned substance. Why wouldn't you? It's not like, it's a much lower threshold than going out and buying narcotics off the streets. Although that has an entry way to, we know that as physicians, but it's so important to just recognize. The, the insidiousness, the universality, and to have that as a soft touch point, because I think whether someone identifies as having an addiction or not. What you describe, which is this desire to soothe that noise, is 100% universal.



Ariella Morrow

I sometimes tell my patients that our strength can be our greatest threat. So, you know, our, as you said, we, so many of us in any, right, whatever someone is doing, so many of us have this, the mental fortitude, right? The spiritual conviction and, you know, the drive, as you say, and we forego, comforts and delayed gratification etc to keep going and keep pushing and our pattern is so often that if we just try hard enough if we keep trying if we keep pushing we can accomplish it it doesn't even think it doesn't even appear to us as a pattern or as a um as something amiss. That's absolutely our way of life. For you, just try and keep pushing. The more effort that you put in, the success will come. The problem-solving will come. Anything that you put your mind to, you can accomplish. And so as we veer from just a comfort one evening or occasionally, may become we are using whatever we're turning to, whether it's food, a substance, sex, whatever it is, to actually enable us to accomplish something that we can't. At a certain point, it crosses the line that we can't accomplish something without it, that we can't keep going without it. In AA, we talk about magic, medicine, misery. For example, I'll use alcohol, right? We drink, we feel euphoric, we feel better, we relax, you know, and then we come back to our baseline, however we're feeling, you know what I mean? That's in the beginning, the magic. Oh, I love this drink, et cetera. And then medicine comes. That's the next phase in sort of the decompensation is medicine. I need this to feel okay. I can't feel okay unless I have it. I can't give this lecture unless I have a drink. You know, I can't open my mail unless I'm, you know, have you know, have had a couple of drinks, et cetera, whatever it is, you know, and then, right, that's, I can't, I can't function without it. And then the last phase is the misery that even when I'm drinking or using, even when I'm eating whatever, I'm still miserable. I can't ever get back to feeling okay anymore. You know, and that I think is, a cascade that I think some people can relate to, especially if you're using something quote unquote sanctioned, right? Where it's this devolution that even I'm using it in the beginning to feel better, I'm using it just to feel okay. And then even when I'm using it, I'm still not okay because I'm not okay inside. I'm feeding, right? I'm putting water into a well that has a hole in it and it will never be filled. The other point is that we draw so much upon our well, so people who are highly productive and are used to being so productive, doctors, attorneys, politicians, et cetera, we keep pulling on our well, and we're not aware necessarily that we are drawing on our backup bucket and our backup bucket and our backup bucket, and especially in our culture. We value productivity. I'll give you a perfect example. A woman after giving birth, right? In another country, Mexico, China, right? That mom goes and gets taken care of for 40 days. They are waited on hand and foot, right? They are embalmed and fed nourishing food and herbs and you know what I mean, restored. What do we do in our culture? You going out? You lost your weight? Let me see the baby. Can I come over? Like, you know, all these things, right? And it's just very prized to keep going and keep pushing. And again, we don't realize how much we're emptying our bucket. It's not necessarily our culture, our way to be so nourishing from within so that we don't keep getting so hungry. If we don't deplete our buckets so much, we're actually going to feel much more level and balanced. That's been a really important part of how I try to counsel my patients and how I try to operate myself. For example, I told someone the other day, I'm like, my goal is not to make a million dollars. My goal is to have a happy, balanced life and put food on the table. Give my kids what they need. Yes, I would love for them to have chess lessons and go to camp and things like that. But balance is more important to me than accomplishing everything in the world.



Adrienne Youdim

I almost feel like that's a wisdom, though, that one, it sounds, it sounds like, of course, I want to say, of course, balance, right? Like, that's not a novel concept. But in actuality, that's not how we operate. And one of the ways in which we use an external substance is overworking. And that is also sanctioned. And we are condoned for that or celebrated for that productivity and that output. My question to you is, if someone doesn't have like an addiction or identifies with the addiction label, maybe they are just an overworker and actually are very comfortable there. I mean, for years, people would say to me, oh my God, how do you do it all? And I remember feeling gleeful. when people would recognize that I was a medical director and a good mother and, you know, a great wife. Now when I hear, you know, how do you do everything, it actually really infuriates me. You know, it makes me mad because I think People don't recognize the degree of self-regulation that it took for me to get away, move away from the power that validation and recognition and accomplishments had over me. So my question is, and now I'm actually thinking about my own daughter who is pre-med, who is highly intelligent and accomplished already, and is reveling in that. And look, there is a time for that. There's a time for hard work and building the foundation to your future. But I can also see, you know, I can see the perfectionism. I can see the striving. I can see the accolades. How does one bring awareness to that just before time, when it is just a glass of wine at night, or it is you're kind of the top of your game professionally, and you're reveling in that. How does one bring awareness to what you described, the overextension of the bucket



Ariella Morrow

One exercise I try with my patients is to think about how much quiet time do you have in a day? What is your time where you're not listening to a podcast? Of course, right? Listening to a podcast, working, checking your emails, cooking, cleaning, whatever it is on your plate. How much time do you spend in quiet? right, not outputting and not necessarily inputting all the stimulus both ways, right? If the answer to that is almost zero, you're on a collision course. If you break it up as a percentage, right, we think, gosh, if I even spent 10% on quiet and silence and recharging a battery, not by exercising or things like that, but actually just being. Can you say, I can say now that I spend 10% of my day doing that or more. It's taken me a long time to have that practice, to sit, to be mindful, to think, to plan, to whatever is in my head, just let it come and let it go. That's one thing that I ask very highly productive people. or people who end up already in my lap, right? In trying to get sober and recovery. I asked them, when was the last time you had that much time quiet, intensive, not productive, God forbid, right? We would have little time. And they often told me that it was years or they cannot remember.



Adrienne Youdim

How does one implement that when there's so much, there's such a sense of time scarcity? You know, I'm thinking about our working mothers or, you know, because time is the central point at which things break down. You know, when I talk to my patients about cooking, nourishing meals, about getting enough sleep, about moving their bodies, you know, they're like, how am I supposed to do all these things when I already have no time, when I'm already depleted of time? How do I now incorporate all of this?



Ariella Morrow

Certainly we have to understand that life is a pendulum always. Can I tell you that every day I'm taking a practice of quiet time, as I call it? Absolutely not, I'm not gonna lie to you. I am not gonna lie, right? And so the grace to not have to be perfect, And every mom knows how that is. I'm going to snap at my kid. I'm going to, you know, after I've had a snap at my kid, then I remember, oh, I haven't done my mindfulness stuff for a day or so or two, right? The results show when I am less regulated in my life that I need to do that more often. It's so often, why does someone start a practice like that? It's often some sort of impetus, whether internal, ouch, I had a fight with my husband, I'm agitated at work, whatever it is, right? An external stimulus or an internal stimulus, depression, anxiety, et cetera, some dysregulation within. So there's often some sort of stimulus. It's not human nature to come to discipline naturally, come on. It's not, it doesn't come to us just by nothing. It's often some sort of stimulus. And then we, I think the proof is also in the pudding that as we have more disciplined, quiet for our brain, our day goes better. We are more centered. Life is easier and not so agitating. You know what I mean? And so as we feel that comfort, I've gotten used to that. I'm much more sensitized to minor sort of dysregulations. And then I try to course correct. I call that yellow light vision. So I talk about a couple of things with my patients that I try to help them take. with them. So first is not to spend your recovery alcoholically and that for someone who's not in who's not an addict. The translation for that is once I start to feel better, don't just spend it like all of a sudden it's like, oh, I start to feel better a little bit. You know, like don't burn through all of your restoration so quickly, right? The idea is that once you've had some restoration and you're feeling much more centered and balanced, right, the idea is to cultivate that moderation. The best way to feel settled at the end of the day is to have a moderated expansion of your energy during the day. It's much easier to calm down and sleep if I haven't been like a maniac all day, up, down, up, down. Okay, so don't spend your recovery alcoholically. The other is to cultivate, like I said, yellow light vision. So, I am like so many of us who are high accomplishers are just busy and used to being so productive. It's not that I necessarily ignore the signs to slow down that normal people perceive of like, I'm tired, I'm hungry, I have to pee, all these other things, right? It's not that I ignore them, it's actually that I'm like super blind to them. I don't see what other people see. I don't feel what other people feel. That reflex on the hot stove, I lack that sensitization. And before I know it, I'm blowing past that yellow light, the signs that tell me to slow down or to rest or to attend. I'm in the red zone and then I'm already hot. I'm already more at risk. I already need more and more drinking, food, whatever my addiction is, right? Or for me, or for somebody in recovery, that's, oh my God, I need to call my sponsor, like I need a drink or something, right? That's already the red zone, right? And then after the red light, it's off the cliff, down, I'm in distress, I'm in bad shape. So it really starts, preventing getting at the bottom of the cliff really starts with that, oh, I've been snappy. Oh, I forgot to take my medication or vitamins for a couple of days. Like what's going on, right? Oftentimes people in my life can tell me that, oh, what's going on? Like you seem not yourself lately, not going out with friends, et cetera. These subtle indicators that I call yellow light vision. That's what people need to cultivate. And that really helps keep us in line and keep us in what I call the green zone. I don't know if that makes sense, that analogy.



Adrienne Youdim

I love that idea of yellow light vision. It really makes a lot of sense. And to your point, I think many of us don't have that sensitivity and it is something that we can cultivate. So if one doesn't have that sensitivity and this resonates and says, yes, I can do, do, do, and it doesn't bother me the way it bothers other people. I have this conversation actually with my mom because I always watched her growing up cooking Shabbat dinner. My mom was a working mom. She would come home. 4 or 5 p.m. on a Friday with like bags and bags of groceries, you know, locked on her arms and within hours, exactly, within hours she would make this beautiful dinner for 30. And so I got into that habit of, you know, hosting on Friday nights, wanting to have the family here and You know, I would tell my mom because I have, you know, family members for whom it's like really difficult. You know, they worry about like the cooking and do they have enough dishes? And I never think about these things. I never, it's not, I always say it's not hard for us, mom. But I think- Yeah, which is a gift. It is a gift. A gift. And if I were to be honest, as I get older, I recognize, no, actually, I am tired. It's not as easy. When I do all the cooking, shopping, and hosting in one day, the next morning, my feet actually do ache. And it's not that that's new. It's that I just wasn't blind. I was blind to that. I didn't have that yellow light sensitivity. So that is really, I think, a very practical way of thinking about it. And I think it's very valuable. Other Well, you know, I wanted to go back to I want to go back to the the noise in the head yes, because that is the driver so often of the distress and The desire to quiet that down and I think drives a lot of unhealthy habitual behaviors, whether it's distraction through food and substance or distraction through shopping and gambling or just scrolling on your phone. That's a distraction too. But I can see how it may feel at odds. On one hand, we have this babbling noise in the head that is distressing. On the other hand, you're telling me to pause, quiet down, be meditative, where it feels like we may be giving free reign to that noise in the head. And so I'm sure you hear this from your patients. I certainly hear it from my patients. I just can't. I can't meditate. My brain is too busy. So how does one reconcile those two very true things.



Ariella Morrow

So I want to make a distinction. One type of noise is just the buzzing of my head of thoughts about taking care of my day and busy, busy, busy, right? Planning, problem solving, what do I have to do with the kids? What am I making for dinner? That other noise in my head is a punitive mind. And so they are different. I do want to talk about the one that is, actually, you probably asked more about the busy, noisy one.



Adrienne Youdim

Well, no, both actually.



Ariella Morrow

So, yeah. The program of Alcoholics Anonymous has ideas that are very translatable to anyone who has a self-talking mind. And those are the first three steps that we do in AA. And like I said, they translate to anything. they translate to anything. And I can read them and I can share with you how they translate to the self-talking mind and treating. Oh, I hope you're gonna have to like cut that out of the podcast. I'm so sorry. We're totally fine. Okay. So this is how I have quieted my own mind. And I practice this all day, every day, all day, every day. This is how I stay sane, not just sober, but like sane and free of that tortured mind. It really is hell. Like when you have that self-talking mind, It is torture. If you have to be in that brain, of course you're going to want to drink, use, or somehow escape because it feels like I'm drowning in an ocean of my own right-making. So these are the steps one, two, and three. And like I said, I'll translate them to how I treat my mind in the day that I'm in. So number one, it says, we admitted we're powerless over alcohol, which means I'm powerless over my brain, not just over my drinking, but my thinking really, and that my life has become unmanageable. That's step one. Two, came to believe that something, a power greater than me could restore me to sanity. And then step three, made a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of that thing. I struggle with the word God. I think of it as the universe. So let me describe how, how that works in the day that I'm in. Step one says, I'm powerless over this self-talking mind, and my mind is driving me insane. I am powerless to stop my thinking that tortures me and tells me lies. I am not a piece of crap, and I am able to do things. I never thought that I would work again. After I quit my job as a hospitalist and closed my practice and was so depressed, I never believed that I would be able to get up and be a reliable human being that wouldn't be consumed by my depression and that I could conceive of getting a job. I was so afraid that just at any moment, my depression would suck me back down. That's when my mind told me that I'm never going to be well. So my mind is powerless over that type of thinking. And in that moment, my life is completely unmanageable. I can't cope, I'm overwhelmed. That's an acknowledgement. I get to that by surfing the waves of my brain and trying to listen to what's actually there. Instead of running away from my thoughts, I actually turn toward the problem. If I can't do that by myself, I sit with someone else. I sit with my husband. I sit with my therapist. I sit in a room of AA. I call a friend, someone. Sometimes it's too scary to do by myself. That's not weakness. that's asking for help. I don't know about you, Adrienne, but I never knew how to say I need help. I just didn't, it wasn't part of my vocabulary, not because I didn't want to, but like, I wasn't aware of when I needed it. I'm just so forceful. So the first thing is that awareness, reaching toward the problem, not away, getting help. Step two, came to believe that I can actually be sane. Believing that I can have a new idea. Maybe I am not a piece of shit, right? The problem is the whole time that my self-talking mind is working, I have, all I hear in my own head are all of my own negative thoughts. And it is like a tornado hurricane storm in my head. Step two is a pinhole of light into my mind. It's a very active step to consciously push those thoughts aside and say, that is not true, or that is not true today, or it doesn't have to be true anymore. And I can have a new idea. I can believe something that someone else tells me that I'm not a piece of shit. I'm just going to go ahead and believe that right now. I believe that I can open that scary email. I don't have to be so afraid of it because whatever is on the other side of that scary email, I can open it. I can do this. Does that make sense? It's a very active putting aside of my self-talking mind and to allow something else in.



Adrienne Youdim

I was just going to say, just just allowing an alternate view.



Ariella Morrow

Anything else? You know, I'm not going to listen to that today. And it's and I close my eyes and I actually like see a ray of light that comes in into my black blackness of my of my thoughts. I don't believe that we want to have those thoughts. I believe that they are reflexic. They can be related to trauma, to adversity, right, that we feel is too overwhelming. You know, I think Brene Brown talks about the difference between stress and challenge. And so, right, the courage to think that I can have a new idea. And then step three, and this follows directly, is take that and go with it. All right, I can have a new idea. My sponsor friend, da da da, tells me to sit down and, you know, then take the next indicated step. If the next indicated step is to apologize to someone, because I feel like, oh my God, I messed up so badly, I can never fix it. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, right? That's something that my self-talking mind tells me all the time, is that, oh, I made such a bad mistake, how can I ever make it right? I just sit down and apologize. You know, whatever the scariest thing is, it's scarier than running away from it. It's scarier than avoiding it. My self-talking mind will be more quiet when I walk toward the problem and I walk through it. So that's how I've helped to treat my self-talking mind. My self-talking mind is full of fear and guilt and shame and remorse, but primarily a million forms of fear. So those three steps are how I have been able to stay sane and sober. I think that answered one part of the self-talking mind.



Adrienne Youdim

Yeah, that's really lovely. What comes to mind is I was speaking to a patient yesterday, very successful executive in the entertainment industry. And we were kind of talking about this. And his approach was to fight it. You know, like I've been to therapy for so many years. particularly the voice in his head, what came from a authoritative figure in his childhood. And he was like, like angry with it, fighting it. So that's one thing I commonly see is that aggressive stance towards the voice in the head. The other is trying to think your way through it. If I keep thinking about this and turning it over in my head over and over again, I'll come up with a solution or an answer, both of which are futile. And so what I think you describe here is a process of bringing a little bit of softness, a little bit of space into the thinking that is not aggressive, that is not overthinking the problem, neither of which work, but actually gives a path forward.



Ariella Morrow

So it's very interesting by the way. So how did you answer this executive?



Adrienne Youdim

Well, we talked about the approach I took or what stood out for me was was this force with which he wanted to free himself of these thoughts. And so the conversation was around, this is not yet another thing to strive for, right? Ridding yourself of this part of you. And perhaps it would be helpful to ratchet down that aggressiveness around it. Accept it, understand it. try and figure out what it is, what's underneath the guideposts, right? What is it directing me to? And then the second part was to drop into your body because this overthinking about the overthinking is not a solution to overthinking. Drop into your body, right? How does that make you feel? Focus on the fact that your heart rate has gone up right now. Breathe to settle the heart rate. And when we regulate the physiology behind those thoughts, then that becomes this like feedback loop, right? The softer physiology softens the grip in the mind. The softer grip in the mind then softens the physiology, whereas the overthinking just makes us more in that sympathetic drive. Heart rate is up. Respiration goes up. You're clenching your jaw. Your shoulders are up to your ears. And that physiology actually drives more of the angst that perpetuates the thoughts in the mind.



Ariella Morrow

I don't know that I mentioned I'm really into integrative and Chinese medicine, very much so. My dream, my plan, I should say, is to get certified to practice, to a certain extent, Chinese medicine. I will be, in short order, certified to practice auriculotherapy or ear acupuncture treatments and ear massage.



Adrienne Youdim

Amazing.



Ariella Morrow

And it's remarkable. So that's, I'm not sure how familiar you are with it, but the ear is a microsystem of the body. This school of thought came from China thousands of years ago and was sort of like lost or overshadowed by body acupuncture. And it was sort of really like, like I said, in the shadows. And then in the last, less than 200 years really was brought to light actually in France by a Dr. Nogier and it also came up in China at the same time and so there's there was this crossover of practice in using the ear. So the ear has all the body parts, right? So different parts of the leg, the arm, the head, et cetera. And then there's also microsystems like depression, autonomic activation, like the nervous system, fight or flight activation, hunger. The ear can be used for anesthetic purposes, sleep, all kinds of things. And I have tried to help patients tone down their own nervous systems by using their own ear massage on themselves. And there are great YouTube videos about this, but the vagus nerve, the nerve that counterbalances that overactive fight or flight, right? The vagus nerve is this calming nerve that sends out relaxing neurochemicals throughout the whole body, neurohormones. And funny enough, Adrian, I have helped patients start to use this technique. This is not a podcast about that, but there is so much relaxation that we can bring just in our own self using this ear relaxation technique. So when patients are overactivated, that's the first thing that I help them do, say, hey, great job, you're being a little bit mindful, you're feeling stressed about a problem. You know, like you said, notice where you feel it go into your body, right? Notice how you're over activated, do this massage. And then notice how calm we are. It is biology. It's the mind. It's the biology, right? It's the spirit. It's all of it.



Adrienne Youdim

I think I need to have you back on the podcast, too. No, it's up. It's fascinating to speak just to that and to say that there are many different ways. I had no idea about the ear and so it just shows there's so many ways that we can achieve the same thing. I have been dabbling in and certifying in mind-body medicine And it's just another way to achieve the same thing, using the breath, using guided visualization, using movement practices. So I think this is also a great place to just share that some things may resonate and land, some things may feel hokey or just not right, but there's so many ways to get to the heart of what we're talking about. And if you're motivated, you will find the tool that can help regulate and to bring a lot of this into practice.



Ariella Morrow

I'm going to add. and come from the place of pain and say if you're broken enough also, right, that's where we find so much grace and recovery and hope. If anyone out there is struggling from all walks of life, you know, I'm here to tell you Recovery is possible. It's possible. I'm here as a testament to say we can be happy, joyous, and free, whatever it is that you're tuning to try to find comfort. The healing truly is from within. There is hope. Reach out. Find someone who can help, a trusted friend, a physician, a therapist. Never give up, healing is always possible.



Adrienne Youdim

What a perfect place to end such a beautiful conversation.



Ariella Morrow

Thank you so much for having me today.



Adrienne Youdim

I really am grateful to you for sharing your story, your kind demeanor, and your very practical tools and strategies. This has really been a pleasure.



Ariella Morrow

 The pleasure is mine, thank you.



Adrienne Youdim

And to our listeners, if you enjoyed this as much as I did, I'm sure that this is valuable information. Addiction or not, this is the message that we need to hear right now. So please share this podcast with your friends, your family. And yeah, I'm just... I'm in love with this conversation. So thank you again. And we will see you all again here next week on Health Bite.



Ariella Morrow

Thank you.





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Adrienne Youdim MD

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