Male Addiction in the Digital Age — with Dr. K

0:00:02 >> Support for this show comes from Indeed.
0:00:06 Indeed’s sponsored jobs can help you stand out and hire fast.
0:00:08 Your post even jumps to the top of the page for
0:00:11 relevant candidates to make sure you’re getting seen.
0:00:12 There’s no need to wait any longer.
0:00:15 Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed, and
0:00:18 listeners of this show will get a $100 sponsored job credit.
0:00:23 To get your job’s more visibility, at indeed.com/voxca.
0:00:28 Just go to indeed.com/voxca right now and support this show by
0:00:31 saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast.
0:00:33 Indeed.com/voxca.
0:00:35 Terms and conditions apply.
0:00:38 Hiring Indeed is all you need.
0:00:42 >> Okay, business leaders, are you here to play or are you playing to win?
0:00:46 If you’re in it to win, meet your next MVP, NetSuite by Oracle.
0:00:50 NetSuite is your full business management system in one convenient suite.
0:00:52 With NetSuite, you’re running your accounting, your finance, your HR,
0:00:56 your e-commerce, and more all from your online dashboard.
0:01:01 Upgrade your playbook and make this switch to NetSuite, the number one cloud ERP.
0:01:06 >> Get the CFO’s guide to AI and machine learning at netsuite.com/vox.
0:01:08 NetSuite.com/vox.
0:01:12 >> Attention, Save On Food shoppers, kids are the best, aren’t they?
0:01:13 >> That’s why at Save On Foods,
0:01:16 you’ll find so many things that make kids smile.
0:01:20 Like ice cream, cereal with funny mascots, toothbrushes in the shape of dinosaurs.
0:01:25 And did you know we’ve helped raise almost $50 million for children’s hospitals?
0:01:28 >> Yeah, for new equipment, infrastructure, and programs.
0:01:33 >> We’re extra passionate about helping our communities because a little extra can mean a lot.
0:01:36 Learn more at saveonfoods.com.
0:01:37 >> Save On Foods, giving you extra.
0:01:43 >> Episode 336, 336 is the area covering North Carolina.
0:01:47 In 1936, the first superhero to wear a skin tight Cosman mask,
0:01:51 the Phantom, appeared in newspaper comic strips.
0:01:52 Choose to wear it.
0:01:57 My premature ejaculation problem started with my other half dressed up as a superhero.
0:02:00 Before I knew it, I came in a flash.
0:02:03 Oh, God, it’s all gonna end soon.
0:02:06 Go, go, go!
0:02:15 [MUSIC]
0:02:19 >> Welcome to the 336th episode of The Prodigy Pod, what’s happening?
0:02:23 Back in London, after a short stint, I went to, what did I go?
0:02:26 I went to Disney World for a speaking gig, and then I went to New York.
0:02:29 Had to get three or four nights there, saw a bunch of friends, went out.
0:02:31 Probably drank a little too much.
0:02:33 Well, daddy went deep in the paint one night, I’ve been trying to drink a lot less.
0:02:38 I’m trying to cut my alcohol consumption by 40 to 60%.
0:02:42 And I think I’m hovering somewhere between, I think I’ve reduced it somewhere between 20 and 30,
0:02:44 but I’m on a roll now.
0:02:47 And I have been feeling better, I have been, or less bad, I should say.
0:02:48 I feel less bad.
0:02:52 I was about to take a run in Regent’s Park before I did this pod.
0:02:56 I’m starting to run a little bit, and of course I ran out of time.
0:03:01 There’s one couple lessons I’ve taken away from previous podcasts.
0:03:05 I did a podcast with Mel Robbins when I interviewed her for my pod.
0:03:10 So she said something that struck me, and that is I do away with the stall or
0:03:14 the time or the gap between deciding or thinking you should do something and doing it.
0:03:16 I used to be really good at this.
0:03:19 I used to think, oh, I need to go work out.
0:03:22 And as soon as I thought that, I tried to force myself to get up and
0:03:23 put on my clothes and go work out.
0:03:27 Otherwise, I would start watching TV or eating and delaying.
0:03:29 And I find a lot now I delay.
0:03:33 And I need to get back to this notion of having, being a little less thoughtful.
0:03:39 So I think around things like action, have a tendency to just move to action.
0:03:43 Oh, I need, I want to write something that, we’ll just start writing, right?
0:03:45 And around things that you think are a good intention.
0:03:50 When you think, I think a lot about, I want to express to someone that they’re
0:03:51 an impressive person.
0:03:53 I know someone who has a podcast.
0:03:57 I don’t know them very well, but I saw a clip of them and I thought, that’s so smart.
0:04:00 So what I’m trying to do, I thought I should really tell them the next time I see
0:04:04 them that that was a really interesting segment and how impressed I am by them.
0:04:06 And instead, I thought, no, just text them now.
0:04:07 Move to now, move to now.
0:04:13 Think, mind the gap between your emotions, your positive sentiments, action, and
0:04:15 actually doing something.
0:04:19 We also have been, or I also have been thinking a lot about strategy.
0:04:24 And that is, I’ve had some discussions and I want to use what’s going on in the
0:04:25 government right now.
0:04:31 And what I would describe is a strange, if not illegal seizure or I think it’s
0:04:36 trespassing and a hacking of our government systems to kind of stop payments
0:04:38 and then negotiate where we should cut funding.
0:04:43 I think the notion around cutting funding is a really valuable conversation.
0:04:45 There’s obviously waste in government.
0:04:50 They don’t have to face, put their feet to the flames of the private sector.
0:04:52 They never effectively run out of money.
0:04:55 Companies can borrow money, but at some point they run out of money.
0:04:58 Whereas the government, especially the US government, is blessed and to a certain
0:05:02 extent cursed a little bit, mostly blessed with the ability to keep printing money.
0:05:06 So it likely doesn’t have the same discipline around managing its house
0:05:09 in a kind of prudent fiscal manner as evidenced by the fact that we’re spending
0:05:12 $7 trillion a year on $5 trillion in tax revenues.
0:05:13 So I’m down with that.
0:05:18 I think we should have an open and honest conversation around the department of education.
0:05:20 Like what value does it add?
0:05:21 Should it be reformed?
0:05:23 It sort of enhance it, don’t eliminate it.
0:05:28 I think it’s probably the right approach, but it’s a worthwhile conversation.
0:05:32 The question is, should we be having this conversation with a gun pointed to our heads,
0:05:36 with a bunch of very talented young men who, in my opinion, are trespassing in federal
0:05:39 buildings? So a lot of people would say you’re not trespassing if you’re made
0:05:44 a legitimate employee by the full faith of the White House, and then going in and without any
0:05:49 sort of congressional oversight or approval under the auspices of an individual who has
0:05:53 absolutely not been vetted by the US government to go in and make decisions around.
0:05:54 They’re not even decisions.
0:05:56 They’re like, we’re cutting off payments.
0:05:59 Now let’s start the negotiation, which literally is holding a gun to someone’s head and saying,
0:06:01 okay, let’s have a negotiation.
0:06:08 So the question is, how do you get leverage here and how do you punch back when Republicans
0:06:14 control all three houses of government? You’re now the opposition party, and what do you do?
0:06:17 Because something I’ve struggled with my entire career is the difference between
0:06:18 being right and being effective.
0:06:22 And whether or not you think this is a good idea or a bad idea, and I can understand it,
0:06:26 sort of tickles the sensors of people to think, government’s just gotten so out of control
0:06:29 that them going in and kind of breaking some eggs, if you will.
0:06:32 I think that appeals to a lot of people, and I can understand that.
0:06:36 The question is, one, is it the right way to go about it?
0:06:41 Are we setting a precedent where once the Democrats get in control of all three houses,
0:06:43 they’re going to start just randomly shutting shit off?
0:06:50 I mean, does this just enter into a downward spiral where the standard institutional processes
0:06:55 of democracy just kind of go down the drain from both sides, and both sides ignore each other?
0:06:58 There used to be a certain level of mutual respect, that’s gone.
0:07:02 Now, of the mind, it kind of needs to go to mutual destruction.
0:07:06 How I think you want to think about negotiations is, one, where you have leverage,
0:07:10 and two, where the pressure points on the other party should you ever enter into this type of
0:07:14 hostile negotiation. And the pressure points, I think, are the following.
0:07:21 One, I think this is all about money, and that is, if you want to get leverage against Trump,
0:07:24 you’re going to have to get leverage against Musk right now, because he’s kind of the heat
0:07:29 shield doing all the dirty work here. Musk is about money, and I think if you want leverage
0:07:32 against Musk, you have to go after the purse just the way they’re going after the purse
0:07:37 of these government programs. And it’s already sort of happening in Europe.
0:07:44 It is striking what’s happening to Tesla sales. Get this, the annual year-on-year change of Tesla
0:07:53 vehicles in France is off 63% in Germany, 60%, Sweden 44, Norway 38 in the UK 8.
0:07:58 I believe the EV mark is actually down 6%. But this is essentially a meltdown.
0:08:05 But if you wanted to send a message to Musk, or if they wanted to send a message to Democrats,
0:08:09 because I think Democrats are just as obsessed with money as evidenced by the fact that our
0:08:14 Speaker Emerita continues to engage in insider trading.
0:08:19 Another talk show, another talk show, I think we’d be going after money. And instead of screaming
0:08:24 into TikTok, we’re showing up at federal buildings and waving your cane at people and saying,
0:08:30 we’re members of Congress. What could you do? I would suggest that you go after the purse,
0:08:33 and that is trying to figure out a way to communicate to people that they shouldn’t
0:08:37 sign up for T-Mobile because they’re doing a deal with Starlink, or they shouldn’t be flying
0:08:41 United Airlines, or they shouldn’t be buying, obviously buying Teslas, or if they order an Uber
0:08:48 and a Model Y comes up from Tesla that they cancel and say, “I don’t ride in Teslas.”
0:08:52 I think that is probably at this point the only way to get their attention now. If you were to
0:08:58 really go gangster here, pull or do what the Republicans did, and that is threatening to
0:09:02 shut down the government. Essentially, when they were the opposition party, the Republicans said,
0:09:07 “All right, we’re going to burn the village to save it. We’re not going to raise the debt limit.
0:09:13 We’re going to let the US government default on its debts, which would create, essentially,
0:09:18 the ripple effect would be, the Treasury auction would fail, interest rates would dramatically
0:09:24 spike. You’d probably see a drawdown of anywhere between 10, 30, and 50% in the stock market.
0:09:30 You would have an economic, at least a pretty serious shock here. I think, unfortunately,
0:09:36 what we have is when you are engaged in a battle with an opposition party, and the opposition party
0:09:42 shows willingness to just go much further than you, and you will back down, you create asymmetric
0:09:47 advantage. The example I would use is, if you have an army that’s willing to put its own civilians
0:09:53 in harm’s way, and the opposing army is not willing to do that, what you’re doing, which I think is
0:09:58 the ethical thing to not, in fact, bomb a place with civilians, but what you create is incentive
0:10:04 for other armies to begin putting people in harm’s way and using them as human shields. I think,
0:10:08 right now, one party has essentially shown its willingness to shut down the government, and
0:10:12 the other has said, let’s not do that. I think the only way you’re going to restore any sense of
0:10:17 mutually assured destruction and get any leverage at this point would be to say, okay, we’re willing
0:10:23 to do this too. Where does this go? In the Trump administration, I think that you have effectively
0:10:30 won adults in the room, I would argue, around restoring institutional norms, if you will,
0:10:35 and that is the bond market and the stock market, and I think that Democrats at this point have
0:10:41 to say, all right, our only pressure point, our only leverage here is probably to force the president
0:10:47 on his watch to default on the government’s debt and to give up or basically see a failed
0:10:52 Treasury auction, and this is going to happen on his watch. The Republicans threatened to do that
0:10:57 in the last minute. They blinked, and it did not happen on Biden’s watch, but my sense is the
0:11:04 Republicans have been so aggressive and shown such a lack of respect for any kind of consolation,
0:11:09 consideration, process, institutions, whatever you want to call it. I think the Democrats need to
0:11:13 also show that they’re willing to shut down government. So when you’re negotiating, there’s
0:11:18 really only two things you need to remember. Generally speaking, in your negotiations,
0:11:22 you don’t want to make it emotional. You just want it to be, this is what we’re willing to do,
0:11:27 this is what we’re not willing to do, and two, you have to show a willingness to walk away. And in
0:11:32 this instance, it’s a willingness, quite frankly, to go kind of nuclear and leverage a nuclear option
0:11:38 and shut the government down and have us fail on our debt and have a failed Treasury auction.
0:11:43 And again, I want you to stop, and when you think about things, it might feel good. I oftentimes
0:11:47 point it out in meetings, okay, this is wrong and felt really good about myself, but I thought,
0:11:53 am I doing just antagonizing the other side? And don’t threaten to quit unless you’re actually
0:12:00 going to quit. Otherwise, your threats become a little bit hollow. Already, the President is
0:12:07 developing a reputation for not living up to his threats. I’m going to impose these 25% tariffs
0:12:12 on Mexico and Canada. They turn around and commit to doing what they’re already doing.
0:12:17 I mean, even look at the language in Canada, we will implement the things we have
0:12:25 committed to, and he backs away. So don’t make threats, make promises, and make them
0:12:30 very sparingly, especially in a relationship with someone you care about. I remember, I just think
0:12:34 you want to be very careful when you’re talking to people you care about, especially romantic
0:12:41 partners, and especially your spouse around threats. I just think it one, reduces your
0:12:47 negotiating leverage if their threats not promises, and two, it damages the relationship.
0:12:51 In negotiations, you also have to remember, and we seem to be well beyond that in this instance,
0:12:55 in negotiations, you want to remember that at some point, you’re probably going to have to
0:13:00 work with the other party. You’re going to have to do deals with them, get along with them,
0:13:07 share the same household with them, raise kids with them. And it’s worth, in my opinion, and this
0:13:11 does not apply to this because it feels like the train has left the station on any level of mutual
0:13:15 respect between our two parties. But when you’re negotiating with people, you want to remember,
0:13:20 I think it’s okay to leave a little bit on the table. Also recognize that in that specific
0:13:26 negotiation, you’re not only negotiating around the terms in that moment, but you’re also creating
0:13:32 a context for the relationship moving forward. So showing up and threatening nations with tariffs
0:13:36 when you are the much more powerful economic entity, that is probably going to work in the
0:13:40 short run. You may get something. In this instance, President Trump, as far as I can tell, got nothing,
0:13:45 extracted nothing from Mexico and Canada. But we are the bigger economy. We could literally
0:13:50 tank their economy. So if we want, we could extract our pound of flesh. The question is,
0:13:56 what happens after that with the relationship and the benefits we accrue from what is a very
0:14:02 strong relationship? When these countries show up to help fight our fires, they follow us into wars
0:14:09 in the Gulf, these relationships long-term are an enormous asset. So what are you getting short
0:14:14 term in exchange for something or in exchange for giving up something perhaps more valuable?
0:14:19 And that is a strong relationship. Success is the following. Success, I would argue,
0:14:28 is really just comes down to two things. First, a series of small examples of discipline every day
0:14:32 that add up to something huge. Take advantage of the fall on the species and try and say five or
0:14:40 10 or 20 bucks a day. That is 150, 300, 600 bucks a month when you’re young. Time will go a lot
0:14:44 faster than you think. And that will add up to a great deal of money. And by the time you’re 30
0:14:48 or 35, you’ll have the down payment on a house. And by the time you’re my age, you’re not going
0:14:51 to be worried about money. You’re going to feel some sense of security and be able to spend more
0:14:57 time with your kids and hopefully your grandkids. Don’t think about working out every day, try and
0:15:01 do something. And you’re going to wake up one day, three months, six months, nine months and think,
0:15:06 wow, I feel better. I feel more confident. I’m less depressed. I like the way I look naked.
0:15:11 I feel more confident. I feel less angry. I feel more masculine. I feel more feminine,
0:15:18 whatever it might be. A series of small efforts made every day that is an expression of discipline.
0:15:24 And then the second thing, the second key to success is putting yourself in a room of opportunities
0:15:29 when you’re not in the room, when you’re not physically in the room. And how do you do that?
0:15:34 You create allies along the way. You don’t look at relationships as a transaction. You help people
0:15:40 when they’re less powerful than you. Any opportunity to help someone, any opportunity to make them feel
0:15:46 good about themselves is an opportunity for you at some point in the future to be put in a room
0:15:52 of opportunity, even if you’re not physically in the room. Hey, we’re looking for a new head of
0:15:57 media planning. And the person thinks, I know this really wonderful woman or this really
0:16:04 wonderful man. We should interview him or her. You know what? Matt is a really good guy and really
0:16:08 good at what he does. I’m going to personally vouch for him. And I hope he is hired having an
0:16:14 evangelist internally. And how do you create evangelists? A series of small investments every
0:16:20 day in relationships. A small expression of discipline every day around money, around fitness,
0:16:25 around kindness, such that you put yourself in a room of opportunities, even when you’re not physically
0:16:32 there. Okay, anyways, in today’s episode, we speak with Dr. Alok Kanojia, better known as Dr. K, a
0:16:37 psychiatrist and co-founder of the mental health coaching company, Healthy Gamer. We discussed
0:16:42 with Dr. K how tech addiction affects mental health, the science of relationships, and the
0:16:47 challenges men face today. So with that, we’ll be right back for our conversation with Dr. K.
0:16:59 Support for the show comes from Vanta. Trust isn’t just earned, it’s demanded. Whether you’re a
0:17:03 startup founder navigating your first audit or a seasoned security professional scaling your GRC
0:17:09 program, proving your commitment to security has never been more critical or more complex. That’s
0:17:13 where Vanta comes in. Businesses use Vanta to establish trust by automating compliance needs
0:17:20 across over 35 frameworks, including SOC2 and ISO 2701, centralized security workflows, complete
0:17:25 questionnaires up to five times faster, and proactively manage vendor risk. Vanta not only
0:17:30 saves you time, it can also save you money. A new IDC white paper found that Vanta customers
0:17:37 achieved $535,000 per year in benefits, and the platform pays for itself in just three months.
0:17:42 You can join over 9,000 global companies, including Atlassian, Quora, and Factory,
0:17:47 use Vanta to manage risk and prove security in real time. For a limited time, our audience
0:17:57 gets $1,000 off Vanta at Vanta.com/PropG. That’s VaNTA.com/PropG for $1,000 off.
0:18:07 Support for this show comes from Indeed. You just realized your business needed to hire somebody
0:18:14 yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use Indeed. With Indeed’s sponsor
0:18:17 jobs, your post jumps to the top of the page for relevant candidates, and you’re able to reach the
0:18:23 people you want faster. And it makes a huge difference. According to Indeed data worldwide,
0:18:29 sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed have 45% more applications than non-sponsored jobs.
0:18:34 Plus, with Indeed’s sponsored jobs, there are no monthly subscriptions, no long-term contracts,
0:18:40 and you only pay for results. There’s no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now
0:18:44 with Indeed, and listeners to this show will get a $100 sponsored job credit to get your jobs
0:18:52 more visibility at Indeed.com/VoxCA. Just go to Indeed.com/VoxCA right now and support this show
0:18:59 by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com/VoxCA. Turns and conditions apply.
0:19:06 Hiring Indeed is all you need. What’s behind the Blue Cow Quality Milk logo?
0:19:10 Proud Canadian dairy farmers. Is Canadian milk produced to high standards?
0:19:14 You bet. And what about sustainable farming practices? It’s our commitment.
0:19:18 We’re behind the Blue Cow logo. Dairy Farmers of Canada.
0:19:28 Welcome back. Here’s our conversation with Dr. K, a psychiatrist and a co-founder of
0:19:34 the mental health coaching company Healthy Gamer. Dr. K, where does this podcast find you?
0:19:39 I’m in Houston, Texas. Dr. K, how do you describe what you do?
0:19:43 I support the mental health of the digital generation.
0:19:48 I love that. And tell us about your journey. You went from being a video game addict to
0:19:54 studying to be a monk to later becoming a doctor. Give us a little bit. Give us some color on your
0:20:01 origin story. So my parents are both doctors. They’re first generation immigrants from India.
0:20:10 I was born in Texas and grew up here. And then basically I was genetically pre-med. So I’m one
0:20:18 of these South Asian diaspora kids that was told when I was nine years old, my dad told me and my
0:20:21 brother. He was like, one of y’all is going to be a doctor and one of y’all is going to be a lawyer.
0:20:26 And so grew up genetically pre-med. Really had no interest in it.
0:20:32 And so was like pre-med as a freshman in college. And then just completely started like spiraling.
0:20:36 So like I had freedom for the first time in my life, like was playing video games a lot,
0:20:41 joined a fraternity, failed out of like college, basically was on academic probation, had a bunch
0:20:46 of Fs. And then my parents tried everything. So they tried to like, you know, they tried tough
0:20:50 love. They tried being supportive. They were like really good parents. They just didn’t know what
0:20:55 they were dealing with. So they didn’t understand what was going on. So after two years of second
0:20:59 year in college, I was barely able to like pass my classes. Where were you in school?
0:21:06 The University of Texas at Austin. And then after that, my dad was like, look, we got to do
0:21:09 something like this is not working. So he’s like, I think you need to go to India. And this is one
0:21:13 of the rare times that I chose to listen. So I was like, why do I need to go? And he’s like, I
0:21:20 don’t know. It’s just nothing else is working. So I boarded a flight about one week later and
0:21:26 went to an ashram, which I had never been to before. And then really like the first two weeks
0:21:32 were like some of the worst, probably the lowest point of my life. And then after that discovered
0:21:37 something amazing, which was like, when I was in college, I remember being frustrated with myself
0:21:43 like I knew I needed to like go to class. All I needed to do was show up because I had missed
0:21:49 so many days of class that each subsequent day of class I missed, I dropped a whole letter grade.
0:21:54 So it was like, if I miss one more day of class, the highest grade I can possibly get as a B.
0:21:58 And then one more day was a C in one word. So like over the course of five days, I went from
0:22:03 A to F. And I just couldn’t get myself to go like I couldn’t understand why I would
0:22:09 play games when I know I shouldn’t. I had no control over myself. So what I found in India
0:22:15 was a system that teaches you how human beings work. Where do desires come from?
0:22:21 What really is the nature of willpower? What’s the nature of attachment? And I absolutely fell
0:22:25 in love with it. So I felt like it was kind of like an owner’s manual for myself. So decided to
0:22:31 become a monk. Spent seven years sort of focused on that goal would spend my summers in India. And
0:22:36 then my teachers would give me a set of practices. But they also said, I tried to become a monk at
0:22:40 21. And they said, you need to go back, finish your school, go get a doctoral degree of any kind,
0:22:46 doesn’t matter how, what kind. And then when you’re 30 years old, if you still want to become a monk,
0:22:50 then you can take your vows. So I was like, okay, fine. So they’re like, go participate in the
0:22:56 world for a little while. And then if you want to, you can come back. So I would travel back and
0:23:01 forth, study more advanced meditation, and then ended up meeting my wife, which I’m pretty sure
0:23:07 my teachers understood that I wasn’t ready to give up my life yet. And then ultimately decided to
0:23:13 try to go to medical school. And that was because one of my teachers said, anything you try to do
0:23:17 in the spiritual world is going to be way harder than anything you can accomplish in the material
0:23:22 world. So try to do something very difficult in the material world, and that’ll be training
0:23:30 for a spiritual path. So I had set my target on becoming a doctor. Also because I wanted to
0:23:34 understand like humans from the other side, right? So I’d learned this like owner’s manual of the
0:23:41 self, but then like, what does medicine teach us? So went to medical school at Tufts, and then
0:23:46 realized I loved psychiatry, like towards the end, I loved like sitting with people.
0:23:50 The mind is my favorite organ. And then to the chagrin of my family,
0:23:56 decided to become a psychiatrist, ended up training at Mass General McLean and Harvard,
0:24:00 was faculty there for a couple of years. So I want to go back, there was a point,
0:24:06 to a certain point, you and I have a very similar origin story. I went to UCLA, I think UT Austin,
0:24:11 or they’re kind of similar, big land grand public schools. I also joined fraternity. I was 17 when
0:24:17 I showed up to UCLA. I had a lack of self-discipline. I, like you, was getting a lot of Fs. I was on
0:24:23 academic probation. I didn’t have video games like you did. I wonder if I really, and I didn’t have
0:24:29 porn. If I’d had video games in porn, I’m not sure I would have, I mean, I was, I went on academic
0:24:33 probation and all I needed to get was a C average to get another two semesters before they would
0:24:40 kick me out. So I kept doing that over and over. But I decided I, while it was a kind of, I don’t
0:24:45 know, a fairly superficial life void of meaning, as far as superficial lives void of meaning go,
0:24:52 it was pretty good. And I was enjoying myself. You decided to get on a plane for India. Like what,
0:24:58 what happened or what was your thought process? I’m at UT Austin in a fraternity.
0:25:03 You know, that’s, that to me sounds like a pretty good life, even if you’re not doing well academically.
0:25:08 What inspired you to get on a plane and go to India? Like did you hit, was there a moment where
0:25:12 you hit sort of rock bottom or did your parents force you? Like what happened there?
0:25:17 Yeah. So I remember I had a, I had a conversation with my dad in our living room at like two in
0:25:21 the morning. It was like, like, it was like one of these conversations where he was kind of like
0:25:26 done, like not in a bad way, but he’s like, look, I’ve tried everything. You know, I’ve tried being
0:25:31 supportive. I’ve tried tough love, like nothing is working. So he’s like, and he was like, look,
0:25:35 your life is not moving in a good direction. I knew that. Like, I mean, sure, in some ways,
0:25:41 it was a lot of fun. So I loved my first two years of college from a dopaminergic standpoint,
0:25:47 but from like a meaning, a purpose, I was just sort of existing. So that there’s a really interesting
0:25:53 conception from existential depression, which is that so existential depression is kind of like
0:26:01 when we struggle to like look into the future. And so we can’t move forward in life. So instead,
0:26:07 what we start doing is we start moving laterally. So there’s no point in moving towards something.
0:26:11 So I’m just going to spend all of my energy in the lateral direction. So this is like partying,
0:26:16 like partying never leads to anywhere, video games never lead to anywhere. So I was spending all of
0:26:24 my time engaging in actions that don’t lead to anything. So I knew that something was horribly
0:26:30 wrong. Like I was out of control. Like I didn’t, I mean, I enjoyed, let’s say a four hour brick
0:26:35 of my life, but I did not enjoy a four week period. Like I was, I wasn’t going anywhere.
0:26:41 I understood that he understood that. I now understand this is all karmic too. So, so there
0:26:46 was just like, there were just no other options. And I asked my dad, I was like, what am I going to
0:26:51 learn there? Why? And he’s like, I don’t know. And it was really interesting because I think
0:26:58 oftentimes when we give guidance to lost young men, we never say you should do this. And then
0:27:04 they ask why. And then we, you say, I don’t know, right? We always like give them the answer at the
0:27:10 very beginning. But I think in retrospect, something about that like really appealed to me that look,
0:27:14 you don’t know what’s going on with your life. We don’t know how to fix it, but you got to try
0:27:21 something. How do you discern? I drank a shit ton of alcohol. I smoked a lot of pot, but I never
0:27:27 felt like I was an addict. And at some point they were probably, they were definitely inhibiting my
0:27:33 academic progress. They’re probably, I would argue that it was worth it. It created a lot of
0:27:37 friendships, a lot of figuring out my limits. I’ve, you know, I’ve often said,
0:27:42 I got more out of alcohol than it’s gotten out of me. But it also had it gotten just a touch more
0:27:49 frequent. I could have easily gone down a very dark path. If you’re someone listening to this
0:27:55 right now, and you’re at college or not in college, and you think I’m playing a lot of video games,
0:28:00 I’m drinking a lot. I’m smoking a lot of pot. I’m watching a lot of porn. What are in your mind
0:28:08 the signals that discern between what I’ll call youthful, if a bit reckless behavior or irresponsible
0:28:15 behavior. And when you are an addict and you need to do something. So I’ve got kind of two answers.
0:28:20 So one is like a psychiatric answer, right? So we say that impairment of function is what caused,
0:28:26 where’s the dividing line for addiction? Well, if it impairs your function, you have an addiction.
0:28:29 So if it’s interfering with your academic performance, if it’s interfering with your job,
0:28:33 if it’s interfering with your physical health, your mental health, your relationships,
0:28:39 that’s the threshold of addiction. Now, in your question, I hear two things. I’m not,
0:28:44 I have a psychiatric answer, but then I also have like a life answer, which is that sometimes
0:28:50 addictions, and I do a lot of addiction psychiatry, sometimes addictions are part of our journey.
0:28:54 So there’s this concept of something called post traumatic growth, which is like,
0:28:59 you know, you kind of say that you got more out of alcohol than alcohol did of you.
0:29:03 So I was addicted to video games, but I started a company called Healthy Gamer because it’s a part
0:29:09 of my journey. Just because I had an addiction doesn’t mean that, and you know, people will
0:29:13 ask me if you could go back and change something about your life, what would you change? I say,
0:29:18 honestly, absolutely nothing. Because I’m pretty happy with where I am now. And then even addictions
0:29:25 were without my video game addiction, I would not have walked the journey of self discovery
0:29:31 that I did. See, we talk about addiction as an impairment of function. But I think that mental
0:29:39 illness is oftentimes a sign that who we are does not fit with our circumstances. So one of the
0:29:43 biggest challenges that I see as a psychiatrist is that when we kind of medicate problems away,
0:29:52 we can maintain an unhealthy way of like living life, right? So if I have like back pain,
0:29:58 and I start taking opiates, I may continue to engage in the behaviors that are creating back pain.
0:30:04 So you were kind of asking, how do you know when an addiction is part of your journey? And that’s
0:30:10 kind of the way that I see it is that, yeah, it’s causing a problem now, but it is also a signal
0:30:14 for you to fundamentally make a change in your life so that there’s something within you that
0:30:20 is not gelling with the society around you. And that’s kind of really like the way that I see
0:30:24 some of these issues like addiction. It’s like addiction is a sign that something in your life
0:30:32 is not going well. You require some sort of external crutch to cope with all of the negativity in
0:30:40 your life. And the real solution to addiction is not just sobriety. It’s fixing all of the sources
0:30:46 of those negativities that you need the substance to deal with. Yeah, I like that. And one of the
0:30:53 issues I have with the industrial medical complex is like, okay, you know, Drs. Atya and
0:30:57 Huverman, who I think are fantastic if I’m both on the podcast, have basically declared war on alcohol.
0:31:03 And where they see drunkenness for most people, most young people, I see togetherness. I think
0:31:12 there’s an upside to alcohol. And I find it’s very binary that people, my guess is my son plays,
0:31:19 and I’m going to speak specifically, I have a 14 year old boy, and he plays probably about 30 to
0:31:26 60 minutes of video games a day. That sounds about right. And I hear him upstairs. And he’ll let out
0:31:34 this battle cry of he’ll go, I’ll literally hear from the upstairs. And then I hear all his friends
0:31:41 laughing and him laughing, and them talking, and it’s group dynamics and teams, and learning how to
0:31:50 lose. And I actually think video games are additive to his life. And it’s as a parent, at the same time,
0:31:55 there’s been periods in his life where he’ll he’ll hide his phone and go into the bathroom and pretend
0:32:00 he’s not well. And then the bathroom won’t come out. And I know he’s on TikTok. And it is really
0:32:07 this is a long-winded way of saying with kids or with adults, I’m addicted. I’m addicted to
0:32:12 my phone. I just am. If I’m anywhere bored, sometimes I make excuses to go to the bathroom
0:32:16 at dinner so I can check my phone. And I’m not proud of that. But at least I’m old enough to
0:32:23 recognize and modulate it. I really worry about the young male brain, and screen time, and video
0:32:34 games, and social, and porn. What do you think as a young man or as a parent, what are some practices
0:32:41 or best practices for ensuring you are trying to use these things in a positive way? Is your view
0:32:47 put time limits on it with kids not under a certain age? With your kids, what will be your
0:32:53 approach to screen time? So I think one of the biggest challenges with raising kids with
0:32:58 technology nowadays is that I think most of the advice is geared towards mothers.
0:33:05 And I think we don’t talk enough from a dad’s perspective. So if we look at single-parent
0:33:10 households, more likely to be single-parent moms. And I think, first of all, if you’re a dad out
0:33:16 there, the most important thing, because some of these problems like pornography are problems
0:33:23 that are going to be foreign to moms and foreign to daughters. So age of first exposure to pornography
0:33:30 is usually, on average, nine. So kids are getting exposed to pornography at a very young age. And
0:33:34 a lot of times, we don’t really know what to do about it. So I’d say the first thing to do is talk
0:33:44 to your kids. Try to explain to them that they’re growing up in a world where all of these apps,
0:33:50 like TikTok and pornography and all this kind of stuff, all of these people have a goal to try to
0:33:55 addict you. That’s their goal. That’s their monetization model. So I think sort of sitting
0:34:00 down with your kids and really talking to them about what impact is this having on your brain?
0:34:07 What attracts you to it? Trying to really help your child exercise some meta-awareness about
0:34:12 if you’re sitting in your bathroom and you’re scrolling TikTok. What’s up with that? Why are
0:34:17 you doing that? What’s driving that? And over the course of, let’s say, one or two months,
0:34:22 really sitting down with your kid and asking them, okay, let’s take a look at your screen app usage.
0:34:29 So you’ve spent 32 hours over the last two months on TikTok. How do you feel about that? Is this
0:34:34 the kind of life that you want to live? Two months, last two weeks. Yeah, right? So average
0:34:39 telephone use is four to six hours a day. Average TikTok usage in 14-year-old males in the US is
0:34:44 17 hours a week. Yeah. So this is like, and really sitting down, I think the biggest mistake that
0:34:51 parents make is that we try to regulate the technology used for our kids. So we try to do
0:34:58 things like limit screen time. But instead, what I think is way, way, way more effective is having
0:35:03 your child understand why it’s important from their perspective. Do you want to spend 17 hours a
0:35:08 week on TikTok? Is this really the kind of life that you want to live? And once you start to get
0:35:13 to those kinds of questions and conversations, and I find that dads having these kinds of
0:35:18 conversations with their son, how much pornography do you watch? You shouldn’t ask, do you watch
0:35:23 pornography? I think you start with, how much do you watch? How do you feel about that? Is this the
0:35:27 kind of life that you want to live? And oftentimes, what we’ll find is when you have these kinds of
0:35:34 conversations with your kids, what you’ll discover is that your kids are being drawn to the technology
0:35:38 because something is missing in their life. The reason I watch porn is because I have a crush
0:35:44 on a girl, I’m 15 years old, and I don’t know how to talk to her. And so then what a beautiful thing
0:35:49 happens when you start talking to your kids about why they use technology, what’s going on there,
0:35:54 you’ll start to uncover things that you can actually start to address. And so then, you know,
0:35:58 hopefully if you’re, you know, you’re a good dad and you’ve got a kid, you can be like, okay,
0:36:03 let’s have a conversation about how to talk to girls. And so I think this is something that’s
0:36:09 really missing. We’re all about regulation and taking things away, instead of understanding
0:36:14 what is driving the teenage mind to technology and offering it a healthier alternative.
0:36:18 I think I’m going to follow your dad’s lead and put him on a plane for India.
0:36:27 I like that. I thought that was a gangster move. And not only that, I appreciate that you actually
0:36:32 agreed. I think that’s such an interesting pivotal moment in your life. What have you found, especially
0:36:37 with young men, is the most common demon they’re fighting that they need to address,
0:36:46 where the addiction itself is just their attempt to medicate it. What is the most common
0:36:50 shape and manifestation that that demon is when they get to the real problem?
0:36:57 So men are, young men are being blamed no matter what they do. So the basic problem is that we,
0:37:02 there’s no way for a young man to win in this world. That’s the most common thing. Manifest is
0:37:07 all kinds of things. I’ll give you a simple example. So nowadays, we’re all saying, oh,
0:37:11 like men should be in touch with their emotions, right? Emotional expression is healthy, correct?
0:37:17 And there’s no such thing as good emotion and bad emotion, right? These are all things we hear,
0:37:24 we say to young men. So if I’m a man and I get angry and I raise my tone of voice,
0:37:31 is this considered an acceptable emotional expression? No, it’s abusive. Absolutely.
0:37:37 I don’t feel safe around you. And now, this is the other thing that I see so much in society today,
0:37:43 which I think is very, very unhealthy. Your feelings of safety become my responsibility.
0:37:47 So I saw this all the time when I was doing, you know, working in the emergency room at Mass
0:37:52 General, we would get kids from Harvard and MIT and University Health Services and stuff all the
0:37:58 time. And one day I was talking to one of the chiefs of security at MIT and I was like, you know,
0:38:04 a lot of students feel unsafe. And he said something to me that stuck with me so well.
0:38:11 He said, my job is not to make students feel safe. My job is to keep students safe. And there’s a
0:38:19 very big difference. So now what started to happen is that if someone feels unsafe around a man,
0:38:24 that isn’t their own unprocessed trauma. That’s not their lack of emotional regulation. This now
0:38:33 becomes the man’s fault. So men are now put in basically unwinnable situations. So women, you
0:38:39 can look at global kind of survey data about dating preferences and things like that. More than 50%
0:38:46 of people who graduate from college are now women. But the average woman wants the male that she dates
0:38:52 to make more money than they do. That’s just becoming an untenable situation. So we teach
0:38:58 kids, men, boys, it’s okay to express your emotions, but we punish them anytime they express their
0:39:04 emotions. We don’t teach, we say, oh, men need, like, boys need to do this and they need to do this.
0:39:10 No one is accepting responsibility for teaching men how to express emotions. No one is accepting
0:39:15 responsibility for holding the space for that kind of thing. So we’re setting a lot of fundamentally
0:39:24 unachievable societal standards for men. And then we do one other thing. Young men and men
0:39:33 in general are the only class in society that does not deserve help. So there’s such a systemic
0:39:38 bias that if it’s a man, like, so we say, oh, like, it’s not our job to help you.
0:39:45 So I do think that young men are getting a lot of mixed messages. At the same time,
0:39:50 well, I’ll put forth some, I think about this a lot, and I’ll put forth some other TCs and you
0:39:57 respond to them. I think an even, perhaps an even bigger issue is male involvement or lack of male
0:40:06 involvement. You had your blessed, you had a male role model that tried really hard, showed you
0:40:10 that he loved you, was present in your life, noticed, gave witness to your life, and then
0:40:15 ultimately helped you kind of get back on track. And there’s a lot of young men who don’t have the
0:40:22 blessings you had. And without the presence of a male role model, whether it’s a coach,
0:40:28 whether it’s an uncle to get involved in your life, hopefully your dad, brothers that care about you,
0:40:34 for me, it was my fraternity brothers at UCLA. They took an interest in my life. They would,
0:40:39 I remember my, I don’t know if you had an interest in my big brother, like four weeks into my freshman
0:40:44 year is like, dude, you got to smoke less pot, man. You’re gonna fail out your first semester,
0:40:51 stop smoking, stop getting high every night. And because he noticed my life, and I didn’t have a
0:40:59 present father, but the absence of men being involved in young men’s lives, for a lot of
0:41:03 reasons, whether it’s family court, whether it’s male abandonment, whatever it might be,
0:41:09 a lot of single family homes. And we can go into, go into the reasons or that’s a longer
0:41:16 conversation. And also, a lack of economic opportunity for young men, because so many
0:41:21 jobs now require the skills that women are showing at a greater propensity, and they’ve earned it,
0:41:26 ends up when we leveled the playing field, they blew by us academically, and they’ve earned it,
0:41:30 don’t want to do anything to get in the way of that. But it used to be one third of jobs required
0:41:34 of college degree, now it’s two thirds, women that ends up are better suited for college than
0:41:41 most men. So there’s just a lack of economic opportunity. Do you see, I see those two as
0:41:49 maybe even being bigger causes for men trying to medicate than the mixed messages they might be
0:41:54 getting from society and women, your thoughts. So here’s why I think men medicate. So men are
0:41:58 taught to be something called external problem solvers. So this is the way we’re conditioned.
0:42:05 So if the world is unhappy with us, and we’re a man, we should step up and fix it, right? So if
0:42:09 I’m married to someone who is unhappy with the amount of money that I make, I should earn a
0:42:15 promotion. If I get a bad performance review, I need to do better next time. So what we’re taught
0:42:20 is men, I don’t know if this kind of makes sense, but anytime there’s a negative event in life,
0:42:24 this creates an emotion within me, there’s this external thing that creates an emotional
0:42:28 response within me. And the way that we’re taught to deal with that emotion is not internally,
0:42:34 but we have to correct the external circumstance, right? So if I can get my boss to give me a good
0:42:41 performance review, if I can prove to myself that this person is an idiot, then the negative emotion
0:42:46 goes away. Does that kind of make sense? If someone disapproves of me and I feel shame,
0:42:51 the way to resolve my shame is to earn their approval. And if I can earn their approval,
0:42:56 then the shame goes away. So this is a huge problem. This is why men I think turn to substances,
0:43:04 because we are not taught when you feel shame, we’re actually conditioned to live up to the
0:43:10 expectations of others. We use an external tool from the outside. It can be a promotion,
0:43:18 a drink of alcohol, marijuana, video games, pornography. We use things outside of us to
0:43:23 manage and control our internal emotional state. That’s why I think men are three to four times
0:43:29 more likely to become addicted to anything than women are. Yeah. It’s really back to your point
0:43:34 about a lack of empathy. I mean, to a certain extent, we don’t have an opiate, a homeless crisis.
0:43:38 We have a male opiate, a male homeless crisis. Like as you said, three out of four out of five
0:43:43 suicides. When someone comes in with an addiction issue, what I’d like you to do if you can is
0:43:48 stack rank the addictions. The addictions, when they walk in the door, you think, okay, we can handle
0:43:53 this, or an addiction walks through the door and you think, oh no. Stack rank house, from what you
0:43:58 think are most serious, generally speaking, to least serious or most addressable, I should
0:44:04 say addictions. My first answer is that I think all addictions are addressable because their root
0:44:10 is the same. This cycle of addiction, which is I’m going to use this external thing to manage
0:44:16 my internal emotional state, that’s common for all addictions. Nora Volkow, I don’t know how to
0:44:22 pronounce her last name, who’s the head of NIMH, or maybe the head of addictions in the US.
0:44:28 She talks about, illustrates this beautifully. There are just a lot of common pathways to
0:44:33 addiction. And for anything to be addictive, it needs two requirements. One is to give pleasure,
0:44:39 and the second is to take away pain. So in that sense, there’s a very common root and common
0:44:45 solution to addiction. As long as we can help people manage their pain in other healthier ways,
0:44:51 then we can conquer any addiction. That’s my belief. That being said, I think probably the
0:44:58 hardest addiction to treat is probably body dysmorphia. So when people get addicted to a
0:45:05 version of themselves, this is the hardest addiction to treat. So anytime, I’ll give you
0:45:08 examples of this. So like, what does that mean addiction to a version of yourself?
0:45:13 When someone comes in and says, I love marijuana, not because it makes me high,
0:45:19 but it allows me to be normal. I like the normal me. The hardest addictions I’ve had to treat
0:45:26 are when marijuana allows someone to participate in a normal life the way that all of the other
0:45:32 humans do. I’ve worked with people who have addictions to things like stimulant medication,
0:45:38 like people with ADHD. So they exist in the world. They can’t focus. They have difficulty
0:45:42 regulating their emotions, because that’s a feature of ADHD. They struggle with issues of
0:45:49 confidence. And if they take Adderall, they feel normal. They feel like confident, I love this
0:45:57 version of myself. And I also see that in body dysmorphia, where it’s like, I don’t want to be
0:46:03 grotesque. I don’t want to be ugly. I don’t want to be pathetic. I want to achieve. I want to be
0:46:07 good. I want to be proud of myself. I want to be happy when I see, when I look in the mirror
0:46:13 and I see myself, this is what they strive for. And what we know about genetics is like, when you
0:46:18 have an addictive, let’s say, personality, you may just have a drug of choice. So your opioid
0:46:22 receptors, your mu receptors may just be genetically a little bit different. In some people, GABA
0:46:26 receptors, which are for alcohol, may be a little bit different. So you may have just a genetic
0:46:31 vulnerability to a particular drug of choice. And that’s why human beings have drugs of choice.
0:46:38 But the underlying mechanism of addiction is like pretty shared. And the hardest ones to treat
0:46:45 are when the substance allows you to be a version of yourself that you like. And you don’t like the
0:46:48 sober you. We’ll be right back.
0:46:59 Clear your schedule for you time with a handcrafted espresso beverage from Starbucks.
0:47:05 Savor the new small and mighty Cortado, cozy up with the familiar flavors of pistachio,
0:47:11 or shake up your mood with an iced brown sugar oat shaken espresso. Whatever you choose,
0:47:14 your espresso will be handcrafted with care at Starbucks.
0:47:23 The Republicans have been saying lots of things. Just yesterday, their leader said he wants to own
0:47:30 Gaza. The US will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it too. We’ll own it.
0:47:36 On Monday, the Secretary of State said an entire federal agency was insubordinate. USAID in
0:47:39 particular, they refuse to tell us anything. We won’t tell you what the money’s going to,
0:47:45 where the money’s for, who has it. Over the weekend, Vice President Elon Musk, the richest man on
0:47:51 earth, tweeted about the same agency that, you know, gives money to the poorest people on earth.
0:47:57 “We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper. Could gone to some great parties.
0:48:01 Did that instead.” But what have the Democrats been saying?
0:48:05 “People are aroused. I haven’t seen people so aroused in a very, very long time.”
0:48:10 Huh. That’s a weird way to put it, Senator. We’re going to ask what exactly is the
0:48:15 Democrats’ strategy to push back on Republicans on Today Explained?
0:48:20 Over the last few weeks, America’s health and science agencies have been shaken.
0:48:26 There’s been funding freezes, communications gag orders, censorship of research.
0:48:28 “It’s really a chaotic picture.”
0:48:30 “I am really scared.”
0:48:33 “The United States was the best place in the world to do science,
0:48:37 and that has never felt more threatened in my career than it does right now.”
0:48:44 This week on Unexplainable, what does all this mean for the future of science in America?
0:48:48 Follow Unexplainable for new episodes every Wednesday.
0:48:56 I want to go somewhere a little bit more positive here.
0:49:00 One of the things you talk about that is super interesting
0:49:05 is what science can tell us about the formation of relationships and falling in love.
0:49:11 What does the latest research reveal about how we form de-connections
0:49:16 and how is technology reshaping this process or put more basely?
0:49:21 How can someone today, in this digital age, find love?
0:49:28 First thing to understand is that we have birth rate crises in parts of East Asia.
0:49:31 I don’t know if you’re familiar with the 4B movement in South Korea.
0:49:37 People are engaging in fewer long-term relationships.
0:49:40 We’re seeing a lot of situationships and friends with benefits.
0:49:43 People are, there’s a loneliness crisis.
0:49:45 There’s a mental health crisis.
0:49:46 There’s a dating crisis.
0:49:53 All three of these things are correlated with an increase in technology use across society.
0:49:55 How do these two things actually interface?
0:50:00 This is what a lot of people don’t understand.
0:50:04 Falling in love, if you really think about it, is an addiction.
0:50:09 What we know is that falling in love is governed by our dopaminergic circuitry.
0:50:10 And let’s just think about this.
0:50:14 So if you’re lucky enough to have fallen in love, you are obsessed with this person.
0:50:17 So if we look at dopamine in the mesocortical circuit,
0:50:20 this is the nucleus accumbensis, this is our addictive part of the brain.
0:50:21 Dopamine does three things.
0:50:25 It gives us pleasure, it gives us craving, and reinforces behavior.
0:50:29 So when you’re in love with someone, you crave them.
0:50:30 You think about them all the time.
0:50:34 Literally, what happens in your brain, these can best be described as cravings.
0:50:35 They’re preoccupations with this person.
0:50:42 And then when you’re in this person’s presence, the presence alone creates dopamine in your brain.
0:50:47 So just like sitting there and being with them feels like the most amazing thing in the world.
0:50:51 So, and there’s also other things that we know about addiction.
0:50:57 So addictions also suppress the risk assessment parts of your brain.
0:51:02 So once you fall in love, or your best friend falls in love,
0:51:03 they start to change who they are.
0:51:05 They start making stupid decisions.
0:51:09 And all of your friends get worried about you when you fall in love,
0:51:13 because you don’t realize you’re missing all of these red flags.
0:51:16 That’s not a bug, that’s a feature.
0:51:20 So thousands of years ago, millions of years ago when our brains were evolving,
0:51:22 they realized there were two humans.
0:51:25 One human who was able to accurately assess risk,
0:51:29 and one human whose dopamine-ergic circuitry was suppressing risk,
0:51:32 which one of them ended up mating?
0:51:34 The person who suppresses risk.
0:51:39 So dopamine creates impulsivity, creates craving,
0:51:42 creates pleasure, suppresses our ability to gauge risk.
0:51:45 And this is what falling in love is, falling in love is stupid.
0:51:46 It’s beautiful, it’s idiotic.
0:51:50 I mean, I jokingly say that young people should go out and drink more
0:51:52 and make a series of bad decisions.
0:51:54 Doesn’t that mean we should be a little bit more reckless with our emotions?
0:51:56 Yes and no.
0:52:01 So I think the way that we should correct this is by fixing what causes the root problem.
0:52:05 So the root problem is that when we use social media, when we use technology,
0:52:08 it alters our dopamine-ergic circuitry.
0:52:12 And those alterations, once your brain changes from social media use
0:52:15 or video game use or pornography use,
0:52:20 that same brain becomes more incapable of falling in love.
0:52:24 And so what I’ll tell people who are struggling to fall in love is
0:52:29 before you go on a date, walk for one hour and do not touch a device.
0:52:34 What I find is that people who do that, the quality of their dates improves.
0:52:38 There’s another really fascinating mechanism.
0:52:43 So remember that all social media and the technology and all this kind of stuff
0:52:47 suppresses our negative emotional circuitry and evokes emotional circuitry.
0:52:52 And one of the key factors for falling in love is shared emotional experience.
0:52:57 So there’s a beautiful study that illustrated this.
0:53:02 So they had two groups of couples go on dates where they met on a bridge.
0:53:03 But there are two bridges.
0:53:05 One is a stone bridge that’s stable.
0:53:07 One is a wood bridge that’s rickety.
0:53:11 And what they found is that when you meet in the middle of a wood bridge that’s rickety,
0:53:13 we’re both a little bit scared.
0:53:16 And so since there is a shared emotional experience between these,
0:53:18 I think we’re heteronormative dates,
0:53:22 when you have two human beings that are both shared the same emotion
0:53:26 and we’re both scared on the bridge, we actually bind together a little bit.
0:53:28 The empathic connection becomes strong.
0:53:33 And when we meet in a stable place where there is not a shared emotional state,
0:53:35 then those people feel less connected.
0:53:39 I want to bring it down to kind of a ground level.
0:53:46 And that is, I think they’d probably, I mean, in addition to a good job
0:53:48 in support of parents in a male role model,
0:53:55 if I could wish anything more of on young men right now, it’d be relationships.
0:53:57 Not only friendships for romantic relationships.
0:54:01 Only one in three men under the age of 30 is in a relationship.
0:54:03 Two in three women under the age of 30.
0:54:04 And you think, well, that’s mathematically impossible.
0:54:08 It’s not because women want more economically and emotionally viable men,
0:54:09 so they’re dating older.
0:54:13 And I find without the joy and probably more importantly,
0:54:18 the guardrails of a relationship, men just come off the tracks.
0:54:22 That women reinvest that energy in work and friends
0:54:25 and men reinvested in video games and conspiracy theory.
0:54:31 Your thoughts on limiting the amount of porn, such as a young man,
0:54:36 quite frankly, builds up more desire and is willing to take more risks
0:54:39 in terms of meeting women or putting himself in a context
0:54:43 or another man where he can take that leap of faith
0:54:46 and endure the rejection, take the risks, thoughts.
0:54:48 This is the biggest problem that I see right now.
0:54:53 We are coping with our negative emotions instead of harnessing them.
0:54:55 So this is something that I want you to really think about.
0:54:58 Why do human beings have negative emotions?
0:55:00 Right?
0:55:02 So negative emotions are, first of all,
0:55:07 much more powerful motivators of behavior than positive emotions.
0:55:10 Curiosity will get you interested in something for a little while.
0:55:13 Joy will get you interested in something in a little while.
0:55:17 Shame, sadness, and anger are incredibly powerful motivators.
0:55:21 Now, why are they such powerful motivators?
0:55:24 Because these are the signals that our brain sends us
0:55:27 to tell us we need to make a change.
0:55:32 If I’m ashamed of my body, the solution to that in the way that our brain evolved,
0:55:33 because we couldn’t avoid people.
0:55:35 We were in like tribes of 300.
0:55:37 So I had to see these people every single day.
0:55:42 That shame is a powerful motivator to change the way that I look,
0:55:48 change the way that I act, and even this hunger for companionship,
0:55:53 this sexual drive, which is one of the strongest drives in the human being overall,
0:55:59 is what causes us to reach out and overcome our shame.
0:56:03 And now what’s happening with things like pornography and technology,
0:56:07 social media, video games is we are taking all of these negative emotions,
0:56:13 which normally are the most powerful fuel to allow us to fix our lives.
0:56:18 And we’re wiping them away with things like porn or video games.
0:56:22 And now what we’re doing is we’re disabling our primary motivational fuel,
0:56:23 which is negative emotion.
0:56:24 And you’ll see this all the time.
0:56:29 Like even if you look at movies, right, when the hero becomes a hero,
0:56:31 it’s not curiosity that makes him a hero.
0:56:36 It’s a powerful negative emotion, a sense of betrayal, a sense of anger,
0:56:37 a sense of shame.
0:56:40 I’m never going to be this way again, never again.
0:56:42 I’m never going to be weak again.
0:56:44 And that’s what drives them to change.
0:56:49 And so what we’re actually doing is short-circuiting our most potent motivational drives
0:56:51 through things like pornography.
0:56:58 If you could give, and this is a difficult question to answer, but advice to younger men
0:57:04 in terms of, you know, they’re starting out, maybe their first job or college,
0:57:08 as it relates to addiction, as it relates to establishing a healthy relationship,
0:57:14 any practices you recommend that are more likely to set them on a strong path?
0:57:22 What advice do you have to young men as it relates to recognizing addiction,
0:57:26 screen time activities, behavior modification at a digital age,
0:57:30 where obviously addiction is kind of sort of one click away everywhere?
0:57:36 So I’d probably say that, see, the reason we rely so much on these technological
0:57:42 devices and addictions is because we cannot tolerate life without them.
0:57:43 Right?
0:57:48 So if we think about, if I told you to take your your phone away from a day for a day,
0:57:50 it would be really hard for people to exist.
0:57:53 So one thing that we do in our community is a beautiful meditation practice
0:57:59 that we tell people to do, which is stare at a wall for an hour and just look at what comes up.
0:58:02 So at the beginning, you’ll be bored.
0:58:10 And then like the basic problem is that dudes today are trying to always move away from themselves
0:58:11 and towards something.
0:58:12 I need to be sexier.
0:58:13 I need to be healthier.
0:58:14 I need to be more fit.
0:58:16 I need to have more friends.
0:58:17 I need to join a fraternity.
0:58:18 I need to be like these guys.
0:58:23 One of the weirdest things I’ve always heard is the men that I work with long for rock bottom.
0:58:26 They want nothing more than rock bottom.
0:58:32 I want to hit rock bottom because that’s when I know I’m going to die or I will be reborn.
0:58:34 They long for that more than anything else.
0:58:37 They just want anything except for this numb existence.
0:58:39 They would rather break it or make it.
0:58:40 One of the two.
0:58:42 But just no more this limbo.
0:58:42 They hate limbo.
0:58:48 The way to get out of that limbo is to first of all stop paying attention
0:58:53 and stop caring about the world thinks because you’re getting all of this contrary advice.
0:58:54 Right.
0:58:59 So, you know, be a more masculine man so that you can attract women
0:59:02 or be more emotionally available so that you can attract women.
0:59:03 Make more money.
0:59:06 Assert yourself or be more passive.
0:59:11 There’s just no way that you can make anyone else happy like you’ve tried and it doesn’t work.
0:59:14 So, instead, what you need to do is sit your ass in front of a wall
0:59:16 and look at what comes up for one hour.
0:59:23 And what you really need to do for your compass in life is listen to what comes up
0:59:26 because you’ve tried to make the rest of the world happy.
0:59:27 It ain’t working.
0:59:30 So, stop trying and start trying to make yourself happy.
0:59:34 Listen to the signals on the inside and try to make those signals happy.
0:59:37 Irrespective of how painful it feels.
0:59:41 Because you will get better at managing the pain.
0:59:43 Whatever you do, you will get better at.
0:59:49 The problem is that we end up trying to make everybody else happy, avoiding all of our emotions.
0:59:52 And so then we become puppets to the world around us.
0:59:57 Dr. Alok Kanogia, known as Dr. K, is a psychiatrist and co-founder
1:00:00 of the mental health coaching company Healthy Gamer,
1:00:02 which aims to help with modern stressors,
1:00:05 including social media, video games, and online dating.
1:00:08 He joins us from his home in Houston.
1:00:12 And also we should note that Dr. K is also a popular Twitch streamer
1:00:14 who engages with audiences by discussing mental health,
1:00:18 addressing issues including addiction, motivation, and depression.
1:00:20 The Good Doctor has a book out
1:00:24 How to Raise a Healthy Gamer and Power Struggles Break Bad Screen Habits
1:00:26 and Transfer your Relationships with Your Kids.
1:00:28 It was published last year.
1:00:30 I really enjoyed this conversation, Dr.
1:00:33 If any, I find your story inspiring.
1:00:39 I mean, what I just would want to, I wish what has happened to you for more people.
1:00:42 I think it’s such a neat story and such a nice,
1:00:46 just so nice to hear about a young man who kind of comes off the rails and then ends up,
1:00:49 you know, on the fucking Concorde somehow.
1:00:51 I just think it’s such a nice story.
1:00:54 Congratulations on all your blessings and your success.
1:01:04 [Music]
1:01:06 This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez.
1:01:08 Our intern is Dan Shalon.
1:01:10 Drew Burroughs is our technical director.
1:01:13 Thank you for listening to the PropG pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network.
1:01:18 We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercer No Mouse, as read by George Hahn.
1:01:23 And please follow our PropG Markets pod wherever you get your pods for new episodes
1:01:27 every Monday and Thursday.
1:01:37 [BLANK_AUDIO]