Full transcript: IRONMIND, Episode 8
0:00 This week on Ironmind. What are you still carrying inside that’s making you behave that way? You don’t feel fulfilled so you’re always like where am I going to get happiness? We offer opportunities around finding a way to get meaning back into your life. I’m gonna be watching you.
0:25 I’m in your head, man. My name is Brian Rose and I host a show called London Real. A few months ago John Joseph, the front man of the hardcore punk rock band the Cro-Mags, walked into my studio. He’s the complete opposite of me. But something happened.
0:48 He challenged me to race the Ironman triathlon in Chattanooga Tennessee on May 20th on 100% plant based diet. Previously, Ironman Trainer Samantha Murphy pushed me to the limit. And I got to see some old demons. John Joseph showed me the spirit world and I spoke openly about my heroin addiction for the first time. I returned to London and was told by Charlies Poliquin that competing on my plant based diet was impossible.
1:22 We learned about John Joseph’s dark past. And I pushed my body to the breaking point. I’m 47 years old and have never run an endurance race in my life. But they say what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger. This is my journey to the Ironman.
1:51 My guest today is Dr. Gabor Mate who specialises in neurology, psychology, and psychiatry as well as the study and treatment of addiction. He spent 12 years in downtown Vancouver in clinics treating patients challenged by hardcore drug use and you’ve used the plant medicine ayahuasca for addiction treatment. Dr. Mate, welcome to London Real.
2:09 Pleasure to be here. You were really in the trenches in downtown Vancouver and you saw what I think most people don’t see. I think we see the Hollywood version of what addiction looks like or we see what we’d like to think it is but you saw what it really is. I’ll define addiction for you, okay? So addiction is manifested in any behaviour that a person craves, finds temporarily pleasure or relief in but then experiences negative consequences in the long term and doesn’t give up.
2:38 I said any behaviour, I didn’t say drugs. Could be drugs. So I’m gonna ask you now, by that definition Brian, have you ever had an addictive behaviour in your life? Yes, many. What did you like about it, what did it do for you?
2:51 It gave me temporarily relief. From? From… The pain I was feeling usually related to interacting with my fellow humans or how I felt doing that. Okay, so you had the emotional pain that was triggered for you by interaction with people.
3:08 Maybe even with being myself as well. You weren’t comfortable in your own skin. I think so, yeah. Okay, fair enough. In other words, the addiction provided pain relief for you temporarily.
3:19 Yes. Keith Richards, who as you know had a ferocious heroin habit for awhile, he says, “The contortions we go through “just not to be ourselves for a few hours.” In other words, the addiction wasn’t your problem. Your problem is that you had a lot of emotional pain, you didn’t know what to do with. So really what it was is that the addiction came along to help you solve a problem you had no other solutions for at the time. And that’s the case for all addictions.
3:45 So why do people use, why do people engage in addictions? Because they have deep emotional problems they don’t have the means to resolve on their own. That’s why they use.
4:19 Hi Karen, how are you? Hi, I’m good thank you. Tell us more about Addaction and what you do here in London. The reality is nobody wakes up one morning and goes I know, I’m gonna become a heroin addict. What happens is a series of things happen in people’s lives that lead them down a road that they then can’t get out of on their own.
4:38 Because people have lost their family, they’ve lost their money. By the time people got to that place, there’s an awful lot of work and unpacking that needs to happen. What we would like to see happen is for people feel able to talk about things at earlier juncture so that it never gets that far down that road and that’s the problem with stigma because people don’t feel like they can ask for help. You know, I was a banker back then and I thought I wasn’t the typical heroin addict.
5:06 You know, because the movies show me that these people are on the streets in sleeping bags and honestly, I didn’t know where to go. Services like ours are deliberately designed to cater for basically the whole population of people. Everybody can find that they have something that they thought was just a habit or something they were doing on the weekend, which can slowly spiral outside of their control. It’s often related to stuff that’s happened maybe when they were younger or some traumatic things have happened to them.
5:34 Our job is to try and make sure that people are aware of what to look out for, are aware of how to start a conversation with somebody if you are worried and if you are worried to know when to go to get help, which is what you didn’t know. What would you do with someone like me if I came to you back in the day? So the first thing that we do is we get people in to sit down and chat to us and we basically have a cup of tea. And from that we then come with a plan together that involves a mix of therapeutic interventions.
6:06 So we might offer pharmacological support, so prescribing support to help you get to a place where you’re stable enough to start doing the psychological stuff, which is where actually all the work happens as I’m sure you know from your own experiences. And then along side all of that, we offer opportunities around finding a way to get meaning back into your life. I wish I had you guys around 16 years, I didn’t, I was searching for meaning and I didn’t have it.
6:32 Yeah. I’m running this Ironman in a few weeks and I have a funny feeling I’m gonna be surrounded by a lot of addictive personalities. You might well be. I’m wondering if you see that in your work. That people come in with a substance addiction and they move on away from that but to other strangely addictive behaviours and is that still a better result?
6:53 So sometimes people stop one compulsive behaviour and start up another compulsive behaviour. The overarching aim for us is to help people get to a place where they recognise that in themselves. Karen, you’re doing some amazing work here. I wanted to raise money for charity and it was so obvious to choose Addaction because you know, you’re probably helping the Brian Rose now that I was and so that guy was really messed up so thank you. That’s right, thank you very much.
7:28 Where does behaviour come from and what are you still carrying inside that’s making you behave that way? So let me go a little deeper on what I was thinking about when it came to my addictions. I think I was getting away from me, who I think was driving me to be the ultimate best. I know that this was a stupid behaviour. It was a temporary fix that I usually paid for dearly the next day and repeatedly paid for.
7:57 And the more I did it, the more I think my self-esteem dropped a little bit because I couldn’t control this about myself. And so it wasn’t until I started doing this show and I had a first ayahuasca ceremony and I was crying so much, then the tears were going down my eyes and dripping down off my ears and I still remember the tears dripping off my ears and I was going back. I was visualising the seven year old boy and this was me when my parents divorced and this was this little boy that was building up all these walls around him because he had been hurt so much.
8:33 And so for me it was like no one’s getting in the rest of my life and maybe was it my… attempting to excel in the world was to show the world that they needed me. So maybe that’s why I went to MIT and got the job in banking, these kinds of things. Well it’s an archetypical story. So first of all, your hurt as a child and then you have to compensate for it.
8:57 Because children interpret toward the world in those narcissistic ways, that whatever happens is because of me. So you failed to make your parents happy. And of course you are uncomfortable with yourself. That’s a lot to deal with. Then you just develop this idea that I gotta do it all myself, I’m on my own.
9:16 And this drives a lot of people, a lot of successful people in our society. That’s what they’re driven by.
9:28 But the very kind of nadir of my drinking and using, it was incredibly isolating and I was tremendously ashamed. My journey through recovery has been about owning that past and growing enough so that I can share it from a place of gratitude. Do you think there’s a little bit of a kinship between us ex-addicts? I think you know Ironman endurance sports have their pull for us ex-addicts, you know? It’s this incredible template for self exploration.
10:02 There’s sort of spiritual journeys I think in many ways. And sort of trying to attempt to do something outside of your comfort zone I think triggers something in our reptilian addict brains that we find very attractive. Do you think I’m crazy for doing this like with the plant-based diet and the kind of the three months to go? I thought it was awesome. I think for you to just jump with both feet all-in.
10:29 You know, this complete unknown. I think it’s super cool. It’s like you learn in in sobriety, it’s like there’s a surrender to it. Like you’re surrendering to the elements, you’re surrendering to what comes your way, you have to be in acceptance of that. There’s only so many things you can control.
10:49 How do you maintain balance in your life? I hate that word balance because pack into that is this idea that we should feel guilty if everything in our life isn’t like adequately apportioned every single day. I would say that I don’t live a very balanced life on a day to day basis. Like I’m somebody who likes to go all-in on something. That’s when I do my best work.
11:10 That’s when I feel truly alive and I refuse to feel guilty about that. But the important thing is that pendulum has to always swing back to centre. So my focus is always on making sure that the most important things in my life are taken care of, which is my relationship with my wife and my kids, that comes first and foremost. My sobriety actually comes before that. You know, you mentioned sobriety there as being something it’s really important and I was really ashamed of the heroin days.
11:41 I literally hadn’t told anyone, even my wife. I always say like shame can’t survive the light. When you expose these things to the light and you’re on the other side of them, they don’t own you and they don’t control you. For you to own it publicly as you have I think is very powerful and I would imagine that that’s done a lot of good in terms of reshaping your relationship with your past. Thank you man.
12:05 It’s literally made me a better person. This is what happens when you meet John Joseph. Crazy things happen to you. Now, I’m doing this thing and so what advice do you have for me on the day? This is very much a mental game as much as it is physical.
12:19 You put in the training, now your performance is gonna be dictated on how you kind of manage your mental well-being throughout the course of the day. Yeah, my trainer Samantha, I asked her what time should I be going for and she said no, we’re not gonna talk about that. Don’t worry about that, who cares! It doesn’t matter what your time is. Be gentle on yourself, you don’t have to be perfect and that’s why I think it’s important for you at this race there really just stay within your limits and have the bigger goal in mind the whole time, which is just crossing the finish line with a smile on your face.
12:54 I just want you to keep doing what you’re doing man. It’s an amazing service to humanity and super cool. Thanks Rich, really appreciate, lots of love. I’m gonna be watching you. I’m in your head man.
13:10 By the standards of a materialistic world, success looks a certain way. The more positive feedback you get, the more you get sucked into it. But… as for your success quote unquote and my success quote unquote, there’s a subtext. Do they really want me or is it what I’m doing for them that they want?
13:37 So this is where the hunger comes from. You can never get enough. Because by doing, you’re never satisfied when your hunger is about being and not having been accepted just for being. Accepted for just being. I’d never thought of that before.
14:01 I’ve spent all of my life doing the opposite. Chasing success. And look at me now. Competing in one of the toughest endurance races in the world.
14:15 Is this part of my healing or will it make things worse? It’s not even about finishing. It’s about giving your all at every moment, right? Like the race actually doesn’t really truly matter. It’s getting up every day and doing it whether you want to or not.
14:31 The race is the fun part. The race is the part where everyone is watching. Doesn’t matter when everyone is watching. It’s what you do when no one is watching. I’m stuck in this never-ending cycle of proving I am the best.
14:47 All of our athletes have mantras like you need to train with that mantra. Start to think about some words that are really, really meaningful for you. Now, things are starting to make sense. Happiness is not a destination. You don’t feel fulfilled so you’re always like where am I gonna get happiness?
15:09 And that’s what everybody’s chasing, it’s like a mirage that we’re running in the desert and we think we see water. There’s water, there’s happiness, and we get there and poof. Do I think about finishing the swim or do I just think about– Swimming. Think about swimming. Yeah.
15:26 Just think about swimming correctly– Maybe not even correctly, just how about, you can swim. The beauty that you have a body and a life that allows you to do this. There’s lots of people that don’t get that opportunity. So the focus shouldn’t be on the finish. The focus should be on the present and the process.
15:46 You focus on the finish, you lose the entire journey. It’s about gratitude. It’s about acceptance. My mantra was in front of me the whole time but I just couldn’t see it. It’s ironic that I needed to challenge myself to finish a race in order to realise that it’s about the journey.
16:12 So easy to say, so difficult to apply. The way the world is and even the way you are, it’s not your fault. It’s not a fault. Just accept yourself. And you don’t have to work so hard to be liked and loved, you’re okay.
16:34 Just relax kid, you know? And allow life to come to you. You don’t have to force it.
16:46 Next week on Ironmind. Don’t quit. People always ask me what should I concentrate on, what’s your advice for me going to Buds? Don’t quit.
17:11 In 2001, I nearly died from a heroin overdose that’s why I’m dedicating my very first Ironman race to help those similarly addicted by raising money for Addaction. One of the UK’s leading mental health, drug, and alcohol charities. Thank you.
