419 The Psychology of Healing Addiction and Trauma with Dr. Drew

"Nothing matters but the important relationships in your life." - Dr. Drew If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes, video, and more at http://lewishowes.com/419 Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 419 with Dr. Drew.

• 0:07Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:33Lewis Howes?

  Welcome everyone to episode 419. We have Dr. Drew in the house. I'm very excited about this interview. We dove in deep about a lot of different topics that are interesting to me, and I hope you find them interesting as well. For those that don't know who Dr. Drew is, he's an American celebrity doctor who is board certified internist, addiction medicine specialist, and media personality. He hosted the nationally syndicated radio talk show Love Line since the show's inception in 1984 until its end in 2016. And on TV, he's hosted many shows, including Dr. Drew on Call, the daytime series Life Changers on the CW, and he's produced and starred in the VH1 show Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew,

• 1:15Lewis Howes?

  and its spinoffs Sex Rehab with Dr. Drew, Celebrity Rehab Presents Sober House. And he hosts and is a part of many different radio and podcasts as well, which we'll talk about on this show. We talked about a lot today. I asked him about why he wanted to get into medicine in the first place and become a doctor, and what his mission was growing up in that space, and how it almost didn't happen. We talked about when becoming a media personality came to him, and why he decided to jump into TV and radio during a booming part of his career. We talked about addictive substances and how to end addiction, and if addiction is part of a gene, or if it's something that is caused because of

• 1:58Lewis Howes?

  a trauma, either emotionally or physically in your life, and how to end it. We talked about how to heal the mind and the body along any process of your journey. I asked Dr. Drew about his mission moving forward now that he's created so much in the world. And we talked about the things that he loves to talk about the most, which is his philosophy on everything. Make sure to let me know what you guys think of this episode while you're listening to it over on Twitter and on Instagram. Tweet me or tag me on Instagram at Lewis Howes and let me know. Share this with your friends. LewisHowes.com/419 and let Dr. Drew know as well. All the ways you can connect with him are back on my show notes and you can watch the full video interview as well there. So without further ado,

• 2:43Lewis Howes?

  let me introduce to you the one, the only Dr. Drew.

• 2:51Lewis Howes?

  Welcome everyone to the School of Greatness Podcast. We've got a living legend, Dr. Drew in the house. Good to see you, man.

• 2:56Speaker 01

  It's not the right word for me.

• 2:59Lewis Howes?

  Well, I'm grateful you're here and you know, I've known about you for many years, probably a decade of just watching different shows on TV which you've been on and that you've hosted and had.

• 3:08Speaker 01

  I'm just thinking, speaking of legends, you had a legend, your wall here is a legend. You gotta show people that wall.

• 3:12Lewis Howes?

  You're a medical legend.

• 3:13Speaker 01

  That's a legend.

• 3:14Lewis Howes?

  You're a medical legend. There you go. But you help a lot of people. You heal a lot of people.

• 3:17Speaker 01

  I try.

• 3:18Lewis Howes?

  You help educate people with a lot of their, their trauma, getting over trauma.

• 3:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true.

• 3:23Lewis Howes?

  And that's the type of stuff that people need the most is how to let go of things that hold them back from their greatness in my mind.

• 3:29Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 3:29Lewis Howes?

  And if there's something in their mind that is consuming them, some type of addiction, some type of pain, aggression, resentment, lack of not forgiving people, then it's really holding them back from connecting, from opening up, from being their true authentic self, which is holding them back from being the most creative, loving, risk-taking, joyful beings in the world. So you provide an incredible platform for decades to help people, whether it be from radio show to podcast, TV shows that you do to serve humanity. So I want to acknowledge you for

• 4:00Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 4:01Lewis Howes?

  your incredible service.

• 4:02Speaker 01

  Thanks.

• 4:03Lewis Howes?

  And we connected through Ryan Halliday, trying to connect me about a year ago to you.

• 4:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:07Lewis Howes?

  And we've just never been able to make it.

• 4:08Speaker 01

  Ryan's a great guy. Ryan, you asked me off here.

• 4:10Lewis Howes?

  How'd you meet Ryan?

• 4:11Speaker 01

  Ryan, I was giving, I was going around, I can't even remember what it was. It was something for

• 4:21Speaker 01

  Something about, oh my god, it was for college kids. Like, they took editors and writers from school newspapers and they had them meet with me and, ah, I can't remember who was in the group. But it was just sort of, and I can't remember the conceit. It was sort of about what's going on in campuses and condoms and I think the condom company was sponsoring it. And sort of what's going on in the male-female relationships. And it was, it was sort of during the whole hookup era. And it must have been 15 years ago, maybe 20? 15 years ago, probably. And Ryan just came up to me afterwards and said, you know, what are you doing now? And I said, well, I'm reading the Stoic philosophy. I'm just, just getting into.

• 4:57Lewis Howes?

  You said this to him?

• 4:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:58Lewis Howes?

  And that's like his biggest thing.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  Well, he says it in the book. He says, "Thank you for turning him on to this." And I said, you know, Epictetus just kind of fascinates me right now. And I am trying to sort of figure out, I'm always trying to fit things together, anthropology and philosophy and human experience and stuff. And I talked to him a few minutes about what I understood about Stoicism. And he just ran with it. He wrote a book called.

• 5:19Lewis Howes?

  Daily Stoic that just came out. But he also wrote Ego is the Enemy.

• 5:22Speaker 01

  The Ego is the Enemy.

• 5:23Lewis Howes?

  And Obstacle is the Way.

• 5:24Speaker 01

  Obstacle is the Way is the one that was written off the Stoic.

• 5:27Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha. Yeah, like, all of his books are based on this philosophy.

• 5:30Speaker 01

  Kind of, and they just say, just an article in New York Times. And I called him, he was on the front page of the Style section, and they pissed me off. Because if you didn't know Ryan, you would not see Ryan in that article. And as always, this is what makes me furious, is that finding the truth out of press today, particularly print medium, is almost impossible. It's impossible. They will not publish an article without first assuming that somebody who they're reporting on is a lying sack of shit.

• 5:55Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 5:55Speaker 01

  That's the position the editor takes in all circumstances.

• 5:58Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 5:59Speaker 01

  And so it's always seen through this sort of prism of, well, we can't trust this guy. And they pitted Ryan against academic philosophers. And it's like, that's not what Ryan's trying to, he's not trying to be, argue with academics. He's trying to improve sort of a platform for equality of, you know, an old, an old philosophy might inform living today. It's all he was doing.

• 6:17Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 6:18Speaker 01

  Ah, so.

• 6:19Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah, but you guys stayed in touch for 15 years, I guess.

• 6:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, we stayed in touch a lot. My kids, my son went and visited him in Austin the other day. It was crazy, yeah. My kids idolize him and think he's great.

• 6:27Lewis Howes?

  You have triplets, right?

• 6:27Speaker 01

  I do.

• 6:28Lewis Howes?

  And how old are they?

• 6:29Speaker 01

  24.

• 6:30Lewis Howes?

  24? That's crazy. What is that like?

• 6:32Speaker 01

  What is that like?

• 6:34Lewis Howes?

  Well, now that they're gone, it's probably much different, right?

• 6:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, the first five years, my hair was darker than yours when they were born. I kid you not.

• 6:41Lewis Howes?

  I'm surprised you still have it.

• 6:42Speaker 01

  Right, and that was on full survival mode.

• 6:46Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 6:47Speaker 01

  And it was interesting, my wife and I sort of revivify those moments again, looking back. And it's literally like, one day, we just decided, you know, we're just, it was like playing poker and going, "Well, here are my chips," and we were all in on parenting. We were just, that's our job now, is we're parents. I really felt like I was sitting at the table, taking my bet, going, "Okay, I'm putting it over here on child rearing."

• 7:06Lewis Howes?

  But 24 years ago, you were also building your career and getting in the media and doing all this.

• 7:11Speaker 01

  I was not really thinking about media then at all. Love Line, I think, was one day a week back then. It was just, I thought I was doing community service on the radio.

• 7:18Lewis Howes?

  Oh, that's funny.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  And I was practicing full-time. I would get up at 5:00 in the morning, I would struggle to get home by 10:00 at night. And I did that for years. And I had sort of three or four different jobs. I did, I had an inpatient medical practice, which included intensive care medicine, which I was pretty good at, and outpatient medical practice. And then at that point, I think I was running the medical services in a psychiatric hospital that eventually morphed into running their addiction services. So I had those three things going all the time for many, many, many years.

• 7:46Lewis Howes?

  And I was here in LA?

• 7:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, Pasadena.

• 7:49Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 7:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, and so I sort of had kind of three careers crammed into one for a couple decades. And that sort of, to me, looking back, that was, it was so much work. And it was like, almost like, in retrospect, almost like a little dream state, you know, living, you know, seeing upwards of 60 patients a day, and all, everyone's really sick. And it was pretty interesting, yeah.

• 8:12Lewis Howes?

  Why did you get into the medical profession in the first place?

• 8:18Speaker 01

  It's an interesting story. My dad was a doctor, it was always assumed I'd be a doctor. And then I went to college, and I was always good at science and math and stuff. And I went to college, and I was like, "Well, screw this." This is, I am not, this, I did like a semester of pre-med, I'm like, "These people are smart, I am not up for this." And I messed around for about a year and a half. I left college for a while, I just was like, lost, really lost. And after about 18 months, I was like, "Maybe that medical thing was something I should really think about again." Because I was absolutely rejecting it for a long time. And I thought, "Ah, I wonder." And I started feeling, the more I thought about it, the more I felt good. And I thought, "All right, I'll give it a try." And as I got back into it... Something about the male brain, the male brain does not fully myelinate, the frontal lobe doesn't come online until you're about 26.

• 9:03Speaker 01

  And certainly at 17, when I went away to college in Massachusetts, I was not ready.

• 9:07Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 9:08Speaker 01

  And at 19, all of a sudden, I was ready. I could do this stuff. And it was like, and not only was I ready to do it, I had to like double down because I was running out of time. And so I did it. And it was, and it was every step, although it was a high wire act getting it all done. Every step, I felt more and more and more and more sort of euphoric about the decision. And then when I, I'll never forget, I, you know, I can almost see the hospital where I trained. Just on the other side of these, those buildings. No, no, no, no, no.

• 9:37Lewis Howes?

  Other side of downtown.

• 9:38Speaker 01

  Other side of downtown. The, I think you can kind of see the old county hospital up there on the hill.

• 9:43Lewis Howes?

  If it wasn't hazy right now, yeah, you'd be able to see it.

• 9:45Speaker 01

  No, I think I see it. And when I, the first four years of, you know, medical school that I see were there. And I remember walking out of the parking lot every day, my first year, going, oh my God, I love, this is, I'm so lucky. I really, this is it, man. I have found what I want to do. And then later in residency.

• 10:03Lewis Howes?

  Like, why did I do this?

• 10:04Speaker 01

  No, no, no, I really, I found my, I really dug it. I really, I liked my training. I dug, it was intense. But I, the dread, some dread set in later when I was over, my workaholism really was kicking in.

• 10:15Lewis Howes?

  Right. When you had no life.

• 10:17Speaker 01

  Had zero life.

• 10:17Lewis Howes?

  You had kids.

• 10:18Speaker 01

  And no, nothing. And, but I was, it was because I was so into what I was doing, I started gorging on it, I think.

• 10:25Lewis Howes?

  Wow. When was like the first experience of you in your practice where you felt like, wow, this is, I'm so glad I did this because of the impact I had or because of the transformation someone had or the healing or. A person or a moment where you're like, wow, I'm so glad.

• 10:39Speaker 01

  No, because you're inundated in that all the time. And what I do remember, that had started happening in medical school. I remember even just being able to alleviate pain was a big deal, you know, things like that.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  But later on, sort of much later on, actually, I was, I'm always studying philosophy and anthropology, trying to figure out the human experience, and Aristotle had a thing about the good life.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  And he was saying, you know, service is really important. Wherever you get to it, you find giving back, being the other is how you find meaning in life, always, always, always.

• 11:19Speaker 01

  And Aristotle was taking a position that you had to have techni, which is skill. And this is the part that people miss, that they always go, I want to be of service. I'm ready, let's go. And that's great, and you can go, everyone can do something. But if you have a skill, if you spend time developing skill where you can really make a difference, that is a profound experience. And he always said it was wisdom, techni. He had a bunch of criteria you needed to really lead a good life. And we leave that skill development part off sometimes, because you think of it as, you don't think of it that way. You don't think you have to develop that skill to be of service. And it takes a lot of time and a lot of energy to develop a skill that's really impactful these days.

• 12:01Lewis Howes?

  Even to be of service to like a company or an entrepreneur, I get a lot of people that email me and say, I will move to LA and work for you for free. But I'm like, what can you provide? Like, what skills do you have? And they're like, well, I'll do whatever you need. And I'm like, to be honest, it's going to take more time for me to train you and like, figure things out.

• 12:17Speaker 01

  People miss that part, they don't understand that.

• 12:19Lewis Howes?

  It's not worth you working for free if it's going to take up all my time and energy to think about what I can put you in.

• 12:23Speaker 01

  I mean, if you really think about it, it's probably why apprenticeships developed, and why schools developed, because somebody said, you gotta pay me to do this teaching stuff. And that's where a profession developed.

• 12:32Lewis Howes?

  Exactly. Wow. So when did the whole media type of thing get involved? When did you start doing like TV and all this?

• 12:37Speaker 01

  Complete accident. Yeah. Radio was, again, I was very, I really got involved in radio in 1983, because it was just happening in my neighborhood, and somebody asked me to help out on this thing. And I was like, Jesus, no one's talking to young people about HIV and AIDS. It was grids then, Gay Related Tessele Disease Syndrome. And I thought, somebody's got to talk. It was just an instinct I had. Somebody needs to tell. Sort of, you know, rock and roll radio had been such a, had such a negative impact on people's behavior from a standpoint of their sexual behavior and their drug use and stuff. I said, somebody needs to infiltrate this and turn this ship around.

• 13:09Lewis Howes?

  Impossible.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. And especially with this thing coming. I could see what was happening because we were putting people in the ground every day with, with.

• 13:15Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 13:16Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. We didn't know what it was. I would sit down, by, by my third year of medical school, I was sitting down with patients every day and saying, you have six months to live.

• 13:24Lewis Howes?

  No way.

• 13:24Speaker 01

  Every day. And.

• 13:25Lewis Howes?

  That's scary.

• 13:26Speaker 01

  It was never wrong. And that's just what it was. We didn't even name for it yet. We were, it was just starting to be called AIDS. We did not have a causative age. It started to be called HTLV3, remember that? And then HIV-1, and then HI-0. We didn't know what we were dealing with. It, but it quickly, quickly evolved into, into, you know, something we.

• 13:44Lewis Howes?

  And then LA was, it was.

• 13:46Speaker 01

  Oh, ground zero. Ground zero. It was, is very, people forget how dark that was. And so that motivated me to get on and talk about it and help try to change people's understanding of the biology of their sexual behaviors, which was not being discussed anywhere at the time, especially not to young people.

• 14:01Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 14:02Speaker 01

  And I did that one night a week for years and years. And then all of a sudden, somebody wanted to do it five nights, nights a week. I was like, oh crap. And I was like, well, am I gonna do that?

• 14:10Lewis Howes?

  So you're working all day in your practice, then you go do the radio?

• 14:12Speaker 01

  Then I'd go do radio. And I sort of found a way to do that. And the, literally the week that they decided to put it on five nights a week was the week my wife got pregnant with triplets.

• 14:20Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 14:20Speaker 01

  I'm like, oh, my gosh, that's right.

• 14:21Lewis Howes?

  What do I do now?

• 14:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, yeah. And, and then these guys turned up and wanted to do a TV show. I was like, that sounds interesting. What's that? How do you do that?

• 14:31Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 14:31Speaker 01

  It was just an exploration. That was Love Line on MTV. That was 1996.

• 14:35Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 14:36Speaker 01

  So I'd been doing radio for 13 years at that point. And, and it just turned to this thing. And it's, and I, TV too. I was just like, well, I've got Friday afternoon and Saturday afternoon. If you can do it then, we'll do it. Otherwise, I can't do it. I'm not gonna do it.

• 14:49Lewis Howes?

  You don't want to sacrifice your practice and your.

• 14:51Speaker 01

  No, leave me alone. My whole thing was leave me alone and practice medicine. I, I can't, this media thing is interesting and I hope, and it's fun. It has a huge impact. And I, I think it's right. But it, it was just sort of an exploration for me. It wasn't something that I was committed to until about 2010. When I, when I was doing a lot of television, I thought, oh, man, you gotta like, look in the mirror and admit to yourself you're on to your second career. And that's when I stopped doing the psychiatric stuff and let go of the inpatient medical practice and I just do outpatient medicine now.

• 15:20Lewis Howes?

  Wow, so you do, how often are you working with outpatient?

• 15:23Speaker 01

  Every day.

• 15:23Lewis Howes?

  Every day?

• 15:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, in some fashion, every day, whether it's emails or phone calls or something.

• 15:27Lewis Howes?

  Right, but then how many, but you're doing a lot more media now.

• 15:30Speaker 01

  Well, so now, so now, since 2011, really, I just said, okay, that's it, you're doing, you're doing television radio.

• 15:35Lewis Howes?

  This is your life?

• 15:36Speaker 01

  Go do it, go do it, yeah.

• 15:37Lewis Howes?

  Wow, and how's it been since the transition?

• 15:39Speaker 01

  It's been interesting, it's fun, it's different, it's, it's, it's challenging.

• 15:44Lewis Howes?

  What's the biggest challenge for you?

• 15:46Speaker 01

  Um, keeping the plate spinning and, you know, finding things people want to watch that also do good. I think that's the hardest thing, is doing things that are really still, you know, mission critical, which is making a difference, which is all I really care about. And getting it watched, which is-

• 16:03Lewis Howes?

  It's gotta be interesting.

• 16:04Speaker 01

  It's gotta be media, and it's really hard, because people aren't watching really anything anymore, except nonsense. They're watching the Kardashians, you know, so how do you make a reality show that people will watch? It's hard.

• 16:16Lewis Howes?

  So you gotta have a lot of drama, but also you gotta have some teaching and some solutions and transformation.

• 16:21Speaker 01

  And it's all gotta be covert, because you, being in a white coat, no good.

• 16:25Lewis Howes?

  Man.

• 16:26Speaker 01

  It's interesting, but I like it, I like the creative process, I like, I've got about, you know, nine or 10 different things I'm trying to work on and see if they'll-

• 16:32Lewis Howes?

  New shows right now?

• 16:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:34Lewis Howes?

  Nine or 10 different shows?

• 16:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, because I know, you have to do that, because only, if you're, it's a miracle that anything gets on television, it's a miracle.

• 16:42Lewis Howes?

  For one season and then two seasons is like-

• 16:44Speaker 01

  That's like infinitely, infinitely unlikely.

• 16:48Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's like Rob Dyrdek, he's hit, he's hit the, the mark on ridiculous news, he just gets on season after season, he's kind of founded his niche.

• 16:55Speaker 01

  Well, but to be fair, I mean, he was sort of doing, you know, more, he had multiple different businesses and things, and he had different ways of doing it, and he had a good vision, and he executed it well.

• 17:04Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 17:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:05Lewis Howes?

  Wow, so you're constantly looking, you're constantly thinking of new ideas around medicine and practice and therapy or addiction and things like that, right?

• 17:13Speaker 01

  No.

• 17:13Lewis Howes?

  No.

• 17:14Speaker 01

  No. What's the biggest? No ideas on television?

• 17:15Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 17:16Speaker 01

  Not necessarily. I, I, I'm more interested in, like, I'm doing some, writing some scripted things.

• 17:23Lewis Howes?

  Whoa.

• 17:24Speaker 01

  I'm interested in just showing people about the human experience generally. And if they learn about mental health, if they get really what I want them to learn, I'll feel very grateful. But I just am interested in showing them about the human experience.

• 17:36Lewis Howes?

  What's the biggest thing you learned about the human experience in all your work?

• 17:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, to me, it's, to me, it's, um, hmm. I, I, I, because it's becoming background for me now, you know, I'm so steeped in all this. But I, I would say that the thing that's, that I'm thinking about all the time that might be interesting to other people is how bodily-based a lot of our experiences are. That, that the idea of, you know, looking in the brain for all the answers is a huge mistake. The brain is a processing unit, certainly a lot of stuff's going on there. But we, we've got these other systems that are very complex, that are distributed through our body, that have a lot to do with the, particularly the interactive, intersubjective experience of, of being in and around other people and our, the self.

• 18:23Speaker 01

  And that really is the foundation of intuition and all these other things that, that really are sort of magical, in my opinion. And then the other thing is how, how much, so much of the human experience is about the, the embedded context, which is other people.

• 18:37Lewis Howes?

  Hmm. Wow. Yeah. Okay.

• 18:40Speaker 01

  And, and so I've, I've worked on that biology all the time, all the time. It's very complicated. It's, it's a complex biology and the, and the psychodynamic aspects of it, you know, how it's experienced. And then how I can be useful as an instrument. It takes a lot of time, a lot of training. Again, that's that technique part that Aristotle pointed out.

• 18:57Lewis Howes?

  Wow. So what should we be focusing on if we're feeling like we're held back in any way?

• 19:02Speaker 01

  We as an individual?

• 19:03Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, like, whether it be emotionally, physically, mentally, health. Should we be focusing on the body? Should we focus on the mind?

• 19:10Speaker 01

  Your health is, you know, you, you, your physical health first, right? I mean, you don't have that, you don't got much.

• 19:15Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 19:16Speaker 01

  Um, and certainly, you know, your nutrition and your exercise and your, your routines in the day. And, and I, I would say paramount above all that is your important relationships. Make sure they're healthy and good. And if they're not, get help with that. Because there are armies of people that know how to do that. And it really is about then... You know, sitting with another human being with a skillset who knows how to help you craft a new relationship and sort of developing that with you so then you can take it out in the world. And I went to therapy for 11 years.

• 19:48Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 19:49Speaker 01

  And I'm pretty healthy emotionally.

• 19:51Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 19:51Speaker 01

  But I was very, I wanted to really dig into it. And it was very important for me. I mean, that was, again, as part of my, much a part of my training as my sort of formal training was.

• 20:03Lewis Howes?

  Hmm. Would you say our closest relationships and most intimate relationships affect our body and our mind the most? Or is it more based on our relationship with ourselves?

• 20:13Speaker 01

  No, it's other people, way more impactful than anything going on as an autonomous.

• 20:18Lewis Howes?

  Can affect our emotional health and our mental health, physical health.

• 20:21Speaker 01

  Everything's about the other, everything.

• 20:22Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 20:23Speaker 01

  But the problem is, the problem is, we get stuck in these characteristic patterns. And so whatever's going on in our relationship with other people is built on some much earlier structures. And really, sort of fundamentally, our biggest, sort of, these days at least, our biggest job is to regulate ourselves emotionally, have a, you know, to be able to integrate holistically all aspects of who this being is, from, you know, within the brain, within the skull, and throughout the body, and how that is experienced with the other person. See, I get to have all these crazy experiences with other people because, because I'm way

• 21:05Speaker 01

  open to it. And I've been in very intense experiences with very sick people with very heavy traumas. And so, you know, I've become kind of a weird, sort of a mind reader, because I get to, you know, how my body responds to sitting around with a person informs me a ton, a ton.

• 21:22Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 21:22Speaker 01

  And especially working with addicts and alcoholics, what they're saying is normally BS. It's normally just a lot of, I just, I almost don't listen to what they're saying.

• 21:30Lewis Howes?

  Like, what do they usually say? What's the example?

• 21:32Speaker 01

  They're just, they're complaining, complaining, complaining, complaining, complaining.

• 21:35Lewis Howes?

  About?

• 21:35Speaker 01

  About their life, their loved one, their care, their whatever. That's the state, you know, I deal with the very, very sick and the very early parts of their treatment. That's sort of my specialty. And I'll just sit and I'll listen. I'll listen not just with my ears, I'll listen with my whole body. And so how I'll start feeling funny things and I'll go, well, I don't normally feel that. Or I'll hear music or I'll, well, you know what, I'll have all kinds of strange experiences. And I'll stop them. I go, I'm having an experience. I wonder if that's meaningful to you. And inevitably, inevitably, it'll be deep. It's substantive. And they'll be able to go, how did you know? And, you know, that's, it forms a connection now where the person starts to trust that they're really being heard and understood. And, you know, a big part of treatment is just hearing that other person and letting them

• 22:20Speaker 01

  know that they're heard.

• 22:21Lewis Howes?

  That's half the battle, huh?

• 22:23Speaker 01

  Ah, that's the beginning. No, that is not half the battle. That is the, that is the opening volley that allows the battle to play on.

• 22:31Lewis Howes?

  Then they feel like they can express all the things that are hurting them.

• 22:33Speaker 01

  Then they feel like they're in a safe environment and they're contained, you know, what's called, you know, the context, the frame where they can be held safely, where they can start to have interesting experiences.

• 22:43Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 22:44Speaker 01

  And they don't do that in normal life. In normal life, we just sort of, we sort of interact. You said this, you mentioned the self earlier and that self is sort of a highly structured phenomenon that, you know, relates in very predictable ways with other people and we tend to seek out certain kinds of people and so that fit with that. And that's not good. That's limiting. That's limiting. It's very, it's very, very, these days, it's the very rare person that is as open as you described in your opening volley where you're, where you're truly open to every, you know, everything and have that creative experience happening all the time.

• 23:14Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's rare, right? Yeah. What would you say is the, the root of addiction then?

• 23:19Speaker 01

  Well, root of addiction, fundamentally addiction is a genetic problem, right? And so you either have that gene or you don't. And the, it's not aging. It's, you know, it's a genetic burden and it may be a mild burden, maybe a heavy burden genetically. And then that typically has to get activated by some kind of environmental hit. And that environmental hit, you know, can be just simply, I'm a truck driver and I need to stay up all night, so I'm taking meth. But typically, if you get bad enough addiction that you need to see me, that environmental hit is trauma, childhood trauma, interpersonal trauma.

• 23:50Lewis Howes?

  Emotional, sexual abuse.

• 23:53Speaker 01

  Whatever, and that ruptures the frame of where people develop that capacity for emotional regulation, so they never re-enter the frame in an open way again, and they start trying to regulate any way they can. Well, they find drugs and alcohol, that works, and off they go. So they end up, by the time I see them, there's two problems. There's severe addiction and whatever comes with that, the neurobiological consequences, and all the, everything comes with addiction, and then there's the trauma. So, you know, you cannot-

• 24:23Lewis Howes?

  They're still holding on to.

• 24:24Speaker 01

  Oh, sure, it's in their body. It's embedded in them. It's not, it doesn't, it's fixed, it's a fixed phenomenon, once somebody's been traumatized. And, but that trauma can't really be treated until the addiction is well in hand. You can't start treating the trauma straight off the top. First of all, they can't access it, and secondly, it just fuels the addiction.

• 24:42Lewis Howes?

  You've got to stop the addiction first.

• 24:44Speaker 01

  You've got to treat the addiction first.

• 24:45Lewis Howes?

  Treat the addiction, and then you can address the trauma.

• 24:47Speaker 01

  Maybe, at some point, hopefully.

• 24:49Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 24:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that may be six weeks, six months, six years down the line, depends on the case. So, it takes a long time to treat, you know, real addiction.

• 25:00Lewis Howes?

  What's the most effective experience or process that you take people through to, to kind of let go of that trauma and acknowledge it, and then allow it to be not holding them back their whole life?

• 25:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it takes, ugh, long periods of time to treat that. I mean, again, these are, you're talking about changing the wiring of the brain.

• 25:19Lewis Howes?

  The whole system, yeah.

• 25:20Speaker 01

  And the brain wires very slowly, and then it has to be, as we always say, that, you know, when you repeat the behavior or the experience, the wiring becomes more fixed. So you have to sort of create the wiring, and then re-experience, and re-experience, and re-experience, and the wire becomes fixed, so the regulation becomes more fixed. And that takes, you know, the brain grows slowly, super slowly.

• 25:42Lewis Howes?

  Oh.

• 25:43Speaker 01

  And unfortunately, there isn't any resources for that these days. Most people can't afford it, a lot of practitioners don't practice that kind of treatment, because there's nobody that can do it.

• 25:52Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  So it's very sad. Thankfully, 12-step itself is configured in such a way that if done properly, some of that treatment happens automatically.

• 26:02Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 26:02Speaker 01

  People in 12-step-

• 26:03Lewis Howes?

  Through the process, yeah.

• 26:04Speaker 01

  In their relationship with their sponsor-

• 26:05Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 26:06Speaker 01

  Will create a frame, will have intense experiences with that person. That person, hopefully, having gone through it themselves, will be sort of open to that. And that creates a version of trauma therapy, in my opinion.

• 26:16Lewis Howes?

  How many, how many people would you say in America or the world have addictive genes or-

• 26:21Speaker 01

  About 10%.

• 26:22Lewis Howes?

  10% are addictive?

• 26:23Speaker 01

  The potential, yeah, have that genetic potential. And, you know, the really interesting question is, you know, well, this is such a bad disease. Why does this, why didn't this gene evolve out of the gene pool a long time ago, right? It's been fixed, seemingly, for a long time.

• 26:36Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 26:37Speaker 01

  So how would you answer that question? Hey, why does this gene persist in the human population? Well, it must have some adaptive advantage, right? It must be something about it that's useful, that create, also has a liability. And what I've found, and this is sort of a simplistic way of looking at this, but, but there's clear adaptive advantage in extreme circumstances. So addicts, before they develop their disease, before they develop addiction, make great extreme athletes, fighter pilots, you know, all these extreme situations-

• 27:08Lewis Howes?

  Musicians are, yeah, on stage, yeah.

• 27:10Speaker 01

  Musicians, yeah, extra, again, military, you know, short stops. They're, they're, they're fantastic at that. So when you look at populations that are repeatedly assaulted, like even genocidal military assaults, you see the gene for addiction just come up, up like crazy.

• 27:26Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 27:27Speaker 01

  So, you know, you look at isolated populations, particularly Scotland, Ireland, where there was multiple generations of extreme, you know, brutality. Alcoholism emerges. These, these are the survivors. They survive better in extreme adversity. Now, when you're, you know, out in a normal civilization with peace, this other thing emerges, this thing we call alcoholism or addiction.

• 27:49Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 27:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:50Lewis Howes?

  This is fascinating. How long you been studying this addiction in general?

• 27:54Speaker 01

  This particular thing? Uh, really got into it in the late eighties, early nineties. And, you know, I was running medical services in a psychiatric hospital and all the medical problems were down on the drug unit. I became an expert in drug withdrawal. And then, lo and behold, I got interested. I watched some people have these amazing recoveries. And I just thought, I want to, I want to, what was that? How does that work? I didn't learn about that in medical school. What the hell happened? And, uh, you learned a lot about it in the next ten years.

• 28:25Lewis Howes?

  How many, I guess, of peak performers or extreme athletes or, you know, creatives or artists or musicians at a top level? How many of those individuals would you say have addictive personalities? Ones who are obsessed with peak performance and achieving.

• 28:37Speaker 01

  I don't know. That, you know, obsessed with perfection is different than, uh, I make a good fighter pilot. It's a little different. Because, you know, sort of the system calls down to people that just matter-of-factly, with or without the genetics. I mean, there are many other factors that, you know, go into these personality characteristics that, that result in, um, people craving performance, I would say. So I would bet it's a relatively low number.

• 29:04Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha, gotcha. And what would you say is more traumatic in general? The emotional abuse or the sexual abuse that people go through?

• 29:12Speaker 01

  Well, sexual abuse is pretty shattering. I mean, especially if it's at the hand of somebody they trust because the body is violated in addition to the emotional system. And unfortunately, I think we just went through an epidemic. I remember back in the nineties, I was having to convince people that it, that it happened. It was so weird. They're like, oh, well, you're just talking about it more. No, no, it is happening at an extraordinary rate. And then unfortunately, there was a big period, um, later nineties where there was child-on-child sexual abuse, which was also very common.

• 29:40Lewis Howes?

  Child on child?

• 29:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, a child that has been sexually abused by an adult will act out on other children. And this just happens. It's just how, God, she doesn't know. And, uh, and that is traumatizing for the objects of that abuse. And so we had this huge wave of that. And people didn't really know that that was so traumatizing. They, because the trauma survivor always sort of thinks the trauma as something they have, quote, "dealt with." "I dealt with this, no problem, it's back." And what that is, is a walling off neurologically of the experiences and the pieces of self that are so hurt and injured. And then the body is also sort of unregulated and often cut off. I mean, there's different wiring as a result of this.

• 30:16Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 30:17Speaker 01

  And so people end up with chronic pain syndromes and all kinds of stuff.

• 30:19Lewis Howes?

  Sure. Or addiction, or?

• 30:21Speaker 01

  Well, addiction is the other thing.

• 30:23Lewis Howes?

  Right, right, right.

• 30:24Speaker 01

  That's if they have that gene and the trauma. But, yeah, the sort of experience of the self and the body is all disconnected, dissociated, we call that.

• 30:34Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 30:35Speaker 01

  And there can be bodily-based dissociation, there can be self dissociations, emotional dissociations, and their main means of regulation is by disconnecting. And then what comes out of the body is sort of an unregulated and scary bit of material, neurological material that can't be processed.

• 30:51Lewis Howes?

  It's interesting, you know, I was sexually abused when I was five by a man that I didn't know when I was at the babysitters. And I remember for 25 years, I didn't open up about it, I didn't talk about it because I was so guilty, shameful.

• 31:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, you felt responsible for it.

• 31:03Lewis Howes?

  Everything. I was just like, I don't want people to feel bad, I don't want people to look at me differently. And I remember being always so aggressive whenever I felt like, in sports specifically, I took all my aggression out in sports. I was driven to be a great athlete. And anytime I felt like anyone was trying to attack me in any way, whether it be verbally or like a physical, like little, you know, sidearm or something, or just whatever, I would react in such a, you know, just aggressive manner.

• 31:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:31Lewis Howes?

  Like, I couldn't control it. It was like, I always felt like I had to defend myself, my manhood, my whatever.

• 31:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:36Lewis Howes?

  Until I-

• 31:37Speaker 01

  Everybody, so, so what happens is, is that, you know, every threat becomes potentially that again.

• 31:46Lewis Howes?

  It's crazy.

• 31:47Speaker 01

  So you go from zero to 100 with-

• 31:48Lewis Howes?

  So quick. And I, you know, people always be like, "Why are you so reacting so much?"

• 31:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that's why I hate the idea of anger management. Like, what, you're gonna manage that anger?

• 31:57Lewis Howes?

  No, couldn't even control it.

• 31:58Speaker 01

  No. You're gonna deal with the trauma and then the anger goes away.

• 32:02Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 32:03Speaker 01

  Or reduces.

• 32:04Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 32:05Speaker 01

  Or it can be focused, or you can use it, that kind of thing.

• 32:06Lewis Howes?

  Right. And so a few years ago, I finally went through an experience where I- Started talking about it. I started sharing with all my family members, my friends. I started opening up about it all the time.

• 32:17Speaker 01

  Good.

• 32:18Lewis Howes?

  And went through an experience, like a physical experience where I really just released it all, you know, just emotionally.

• 32:22Speaker 01

  Doesn't really work like that, but you had a big experience.

• 32:24Lewis Howes?

  A huge experience where I felt like it didn't own me anymore.

• 32:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:28Lewis Howes?

  And I can talk in front of you.

• 32:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:30Lewis Howes?

  Calmly without freaking out. Like if I thought of this three years ago, there's no chance I would have opened up to you or thought about it.

• 32:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 32:37Lewis Howes?

  And by no means in my perfect, I still react and get aggressive and things like that, but it's like, I'm so aware.

• 32:41Speaker 01

  Well, you know what would be really good is something called EMDR.

• 32:44Lewis Howes?

  I've heard of that.

• 32:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, where, where, because the idea is that there's still a piece of you that is sort of left behind.

• 32:51Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 32:51Speaker 01

  Uh, and it, it, your, your body can't reacquaint itself with it without specialized kinds of care.

• 32:58Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 32:59Speaker 01

  Uh, it literally has to be in another person metabolizing, handed back in a weird way.

• 33:04Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 33:05Speaker 01

  Uh, and, and you can't do it by yourself. You just can't. You can improve it like you've done. You've done, you've done great things. It's awesome.

• 33:11Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 33:11Speaker 01

  But to really get that little piece brought back into the whole, so you can be a whole thing again, requires a little specialized treatment. It may not be that much even after you've sent too much work on your own.

• 33:21Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 33:21Speaker 01

  But it is something that, that, that I just have never seen it spontaneously.

• 33:25Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't, it's been three years and I've been working on it consistently.

• 33:29Speaker 01

  Good.

• 33:29Lewis Howes?

  But I think, uh, I still have a lot more work to do every, obviously, but, um, you know, what you were talking about, we kind of contain it. For 25 years I contained it and I didn't talk about it. And I was like, ah, it's in the past.

• 33:38Speaker 01

  Oh, I did. I'm done with it. I'm fine with that. No big deal.

• 33:41Lewis Howes?

  I don't need to talk about it. Yeah, it's all, it's all good. But then I realized when I opened up, like, I was.

• 33:45Speaker 01

  Whoops.

• 33:46Lewis Howes?

  I was like trembling and crying. It was just like everything. It was just like a release of like this fear and pain and, you know, healing all, everything all at once.

• 33:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:55Lewis Howes?

  I couldn't like control my body, you know? It was unbelievable.

• 33:58Speaker 01

  I know.

• 33:58Lewis Howes?

  The process. And I think that's, uh, you know, if anyone, I've talked about this many times in the podcast now and I've had the people talk about their experiences of, of any type of sexual emotional abuse. But I feel like that's one of the things that holds us back the most of being.

• 34:11Speaker 01

  Well, I, I was emotionally abused growing up.

• 34:13Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 34:13Speaker 01

  Uh, and I was left with, uh, a lot of feelings of emptiness.

• 34:17Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 34:18Speaker 01

  Uh, and then disconnect and anxiety. I had anxiety, anxiety, anxiety, anxiety. And I still have anxiety disorder. I'm sort of wired that way. And, uh, which is fine. I can use that as an, you can use all these things as assets later.

• 34:28Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 34:28Speaker 01

  You know, all that anger and stuff. Like for sports, you use it as an asset. You did it.

• 34:32Lewis Howes?

  I channeled it, yeah.

• 34:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. Uh, but, um.

• 34:36Speaker 01

  The emptiness was a real challenge for me. And I found that in a really well managed, what's called mentalizing therapy, or transference therapy. You can be safe in a frame to fall into that emptiness and then learn to come in and out of it, and then it goes away. Imagine that. Because it feels like it's just there.

• 34:58Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 34:59Speaker 01

  And I don't know how that really, I can tell you experientially how it happens, but no one really knows how it happens. It's probably different for different people. But what I found is I would, I would actually just go into these, what, a guy named Alan Shor, who really writes a lot of the neurobiological material on this, he wrote a book called Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self, which is my, sort of my bible.

• 35:19Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 35:20Speaker 01

  And he calls them, uh, trauma-associated dead spots. I just call it emptiness. And you'll fall into them, and the therapist has to be very skilled at keeping you there and getting you out.

• 35:31Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 35:32Speaker 01

  And then you start going in and out, and then it goes away. And that's that, that's that specialized, that's, for me, that was my version of the specialized care I needed.

• 35:40Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 35:41Speaker 01

  In order to really close this wound.

• 35:42Lewis Howes?

  Sure. Yeah, it's funny, because I was, I channeled all my aggression and anger into sports to being the best that I could.

• 35:48Speaker 01

  It's good.

• 35:49Lewis Howes?

  And I was skilled, and I trained like a maniac. And all my sports dreams and goals, I achieved them, but it's funny, after I achieved every one of them, I always felt empty and lonely.

• 35:58Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 35:59Lewis Howes?

  I always felt like, oh, it's not enough, I'm still not good enough.

• 36:01Speaker 01

  Well, that's that.

• 36:02Lewis Howes?

  I still need to create more.

• 36:03Speaker 01

  But isn't that what people talk about, is filling the void, it's never enough. It's like, people make lots of money, it's never enough.

• 36:08Lewis Howes?

  Never enough.

• 36:09Speaker 01

  People have lots of women, never enough. And that's, that's the nature of how we're configured as human beings. Once we get one of these injuries, we do what we can as individuals to fill it.

• 36:18Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 36:19Speaker 01

  It will not fill without the other.

• 36:23Speaker 01

  Bottom line. And the way you're connected to the other has to be a very...

• 36:31Speaker 01

  It has to be different than what you're accustomed to.

• 36:34Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 36:34Speaker 01

  Because what you're accustomed to will be based on the wiring of the trauma.

• 36:38Lewis Howes?

  Right, right, yeah.

• 36:40Speaker 01

  And trauma does the other crazy, and this is the craziest thing of all. And I see a lot in culture and in a lot of people's behaviors and stuff, is it makes us reenact the trauma. We will create relationships and circumstances, we'll be attracted, this is the part that people miss, we'll be attracted to people and circumstances that are much like the perpetrators in the environment which our original trauma occurred. No one knows. And people, it's just how we work as humans. The real question is, what is the evolutionary, you know, in the environment of evolution adapted to us, why do we develop this thing? Why do we do that?

• 37:18Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 37:19Speaker 01

  And I think it has something to do, my suspicion is, I spend a lot of time thinking about covers like this, but my suspicion is, it allows us then to transmit information about major traumas that affected populations in the remote past. In other words, if you're going to try to transmit information about what happened in Egypt during the Passover, if you try to tell that story generation and generation, it's going to get lost. But if we engage in a ritual every year where we reenact the trauma, we're never going to forget this. And we still do Passover today, many thousands of years later. But that story would have never lasted, but the ritual does.

• 38:01Speaker 01

  And so in a weird way, it's sort of a ritual reenactment of the trauma. So it must have had an adaptiveness for the population, but for the individual, it's maladaptive.

• 38:10Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 38:11Speaker 01

  Does that make sense?

• 38:11Lewis Howes?

  Of course, yeah, yeah. Interesting. Speaking of rituals, what's a ritual that you think, or that you do or you think everyone should do on a daily basis to live a rich, full, healthy life?

• 38:21Speaker 01

  Do some kind of physical exertion, something. And for me, I'm an auditory learner, it's why maybe I'm liking podcasting. And by the way, I have two very important podcasts I want to promote, I forgot.

• 38:30Lewis Howes?

  Go for it.

• 38:31Speaker 01

  One's called This, you've got to go to DrDrew.com to get all my podcasts. I do one with Adam Corolla still, it's Adam and Dr. Drew Podcast.

• 38:36Lewis Howes?

  That's great.

• 38:37Speaker 01

  I do another one on the Corolla.

• 38:39Lewis Howes?

  Network.

• 38:40Speaker 01

  Network called the Dr. Drew Podcast was sort of celebrity and medical related. Then I do something called Weekly Infusion with another doctor. If you are a Corolla fan, it's Dr. Spaz, Dr. Bruce Heishofer, which is strictly medically related, but it's sort of medical incredible stuff. And then I do another one with Bob Forrest, the guy with the hat and glasses that I did the celebrity rehab with. And that's called This Life. So please, This Life and Weekly Infusion needs your help. So please, everybody, go to Dr. Drew's, listen to those. Thank you.

• 39:08Lewis Howes?

  DrDrew.com, iTunes.

• 39:10Speaker 01

  Listen to Lewis. But anyway, what should you do every day? My thing is you must physically exert yourself every day.

• 39:14Lewis Howes?

  Every day.

• 39:15Speaker 01

  In at least five days a week. It is, you're not doing, you're underserving your body. And what that, you know, as they always say, what exercise should you do? The one you'll do.

• 39:26Lewis Howes?

  The one you sweat, whatever it is.

• 39:28Speaker 01

  The one you will do. I don't care if it's playing handball. I don't care if it's lifting weights. The one you will do, the one you should do. Because you'll, you know, we all have our own sort of zone for what we like and will do. And I like lifting weights, so I will lift weights every day. My garage is filled with stuff.

• 39:42Lewis Howes?

  Are you still in Pasadena?

• 39:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And I will literally go down there. Like I'm, as soon as we finish here, I think I have like a half hour somewhere and I'm going to cram it. I'll go downstairs in my garage, do it. And but the other piece, this is the other thing that I think is important, is some sort, oh, my wife is texting me. Some sort of meditative something, something for your brain. And for me, it's listening to lectures. I listen to lectures about, you hear me already, anthropology and philosophy and psychology and stuff. But I go, I'm a very astute auditory learner, so I can lift weights and listen and really take in the information. I know, I understand everyone's brain's not configured that way.

• 40:21Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 40:21Speaker 01

  But it's, for me, it's almost, it's elevating whatever brain state I'm in. So whatever that means to you, that's what you should do while you're working.

• 40:30Lewis Howes?

  Wow. What's the one audio book or lecture or book that people should read to?

• 40:36Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh. You're going, you're taking me down the nerd path because stuff I love.

• 40:40Lewis Howes?

  Hey, it's cool. I want to know what you love.

• 40:42Speaker 01

  People, I, stuff I love.

• 40:45Lewis Howes?

  To optimize their health or their stuff.

• 40:47Speaker 01

  There isn't, there isn't such a thing.

• 40:49Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 40:50Speaker 01

  Listen to what you.

• 40:54Speaker 01

  Here's what I like. I like iTunes U. You ever been to iTunes U? Oh, my God. Every university in the world essentially submits. It's an app and they'll submit their great courses. And you can listen to-

• 41:05Lewis Howes?

  Free.

• 41:06Speaker 01

  Free. You can listen to the great courses. And I'm telling you, Yale and Berkeley and Yale, Berkeley and Emory are my favorite. They have the best stuff up online. All right, I'll tell you what. Here's my, Emory has, I'm gonna see what my thing is. Well, here's my, here's my page.

• 41:23Lewis Howes?

  I'm on your Instagram story this while we're doing this.

• 41:25Speaker 01

  Emory has something called the Center for Mind, Brain and Culture.

• 41:28Lewis Howes?

  Let's see it. Let me see. This is your page?

• 41:30Speaker 01

  Well, this is one of my pages, yeah.

• 41:31Lewis Howes?

  Dr. Drew's page on iTunes, right? Your courses. Wow. Look at this. Super nerd.

• 41:36Speaker 01

  But I have, but I have like pages and pages of this.

• 41:38Lewis Howes?

  This is crazy.

• 41:39Speaker 01

  And it's just, it's this app.

• 41:43Speaker 01

  That's the app right there, right?

• 41:44Lewis Howes?

  iTunes, oh, I've seen that. Yes, yes, yes.

• 41:46Speaker 01

  And, and I listen to an hour of lecture every day. And now it's, I'm having trouble finding the one that I want. Here's, there's some good ones. There's this, the UCTV has some great stuff, CARTA.

• 41:59Speaker 01

  Geez, Chicago's great stuff, Yale's great stuff. But I, but I started with the basics, you know? I just started with great ideas. That's really what I started with. I just really making myself familiar with the great ideas. And, you know, going from there.

• 42:13Lewis Howes?

  What are you, you've done so much in your career. You've helped so many people. I don't know, you have like 40 hours in a day. You do seven shows a day, it seems like. Like all these different podcasts. I don't know how you do it all. You're healing at 60 clients a day. You're doing-

• 42:27Speaker 01

  I'm manic.

• 42:29Lewis Howes?

  Manic, yeah. You've got three triplets, you know?

• 42:31Speaker 01

  I'm hypomanic, I think a little bit.

• 42:32Lewis Howes?

  You're driving all over the place. You have to drive from Pasadena to West Hollywood, you know, which takes four hours of traffic.

• 42:37Speaker 01

  But, but, but I found a way to use that time. I listen to iTunes U.

• 42:40Lewis Howes?

  You learn.

• 42:41Speaker 01

  Or I make phone calls. I do business. I take phone calls. I talk to patients, whatever it needs. You can always use your time. You can use your time. When I was a kid, this, I've never talked about this. This is an interesting idea. When I was a kid, I always, I always wanted to take my home with me if I had to go away. I had this dream that I could shrink my house into a, something about my home was very, I don't know, reassuring to me or, I don't know. It wasn't the happiest place on earth for me, but it felt like I wanted to take it with me. And my dad would always say, just think about it. Figure it out. He goes, I think people figure more difficult things out. Figure that out. Figure out a shrink your home and then land it wherever you want it. And, and as I- Early on, I bought into that. And later, I was like, come on, stop it.

• 43:29Speaker 01

  At least give me motivation to do something that's possible. Stop it, Dan. But then, I started realizing that what I was interested in was sort of internally taking my home with me. Right? So being an inside thing. And the travel part was somehow something that I didn't like. And so I found ways to use travel as something other than travel. Whether it's on a plane, or in a car, that's time to do work, or listen to things, to learn things. And so I don't think of it as travel anymore. I just think of it as study hall.

• 44:04Lewis Howes?

  Going to school.

• 44:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. It just happens to be the time. So I don't regret my travel time anymore. I used to hate it.

• 44:09Lewis Howes?

  Right. But now we have smartphones.

• 44:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I can do a lot of stuff. So I'm gonna get in a car accident, of course. But it's somehow, somehow that early idea that he planted became this.

• 44:22Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. That's cool. You know, when I moved here four and a half years ago.

• 44:26Speaker 01

  Where'd you move from?

• 44:26Lewis Howes?

  I was in, I'm from Ohio.

• 44:28Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 44:28Lewis Howes?

  Moved to New York City for a year and a half, and then moved here for a girl.

• 44:32Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 44:32Lewis Howes?

  Didn't work out quickly.

• 44:33Speaker 01

  Good times.

• 44:34Lewis Howes?

  And great lessons, though. And it all works out in the end. But I remember driving on the 10 in traffic one day, trying to get like two miles.

• 44:42Speaker 01

  We're gonna devolve into an episode of the SNL Californian. We took the 10 to the 405. Where did you get off the 91?

• 44:50Lewis Howes?

  That's hilarious. And I remember sitting, I was like, just going through this breakup. I was frustrated. I was like, why did I leave New York? It was amazing. I was on top of the world. And I was like, there's gotta be a better way to like be in this traffic and inspire people who are frustrated like me in this moment.

• 45:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:06Lewis Howes?

  And that's where School of Greatness came from.

• 45:07Speaker 01

  Oh, good for you. See?

• 45:08Lewis Howes?

  I was like, I wanna create some where people are traveling. They have some inspiration. They can learn something from the most inspiring people in the world, like yourself.

• 45:14Speaker 01

  Wonderful.

• 45:14Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 45:16Lewis Howes?

  We have about 10 minutes left, because I wanna make sure I'm on time for you.

• 45:19Speaker 01

  Okay, thank you.

• 45:21Lewis Howes?

  What you've done so much in your career, what's your vision and mission moving forward?

• 45:26Speaker 01

  Everything I've done has always been without a blueprint. I don't know quite it, and to me, that's sort of part of the creative process.

• 45:35Lewis Howes?

  That's cool, yeah.

• 45:36Speaker 01

  I, it's for me, it's been all about being willing to take risk and open a door and walk through it and see what's there. Because I've done some pretty scary stuff for a physician.

• 45:46Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 45:46Speaker 01

  You know.

• 45:47Lewis Howes?

  Put yourself on the line a lot.

• 45:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I've always just been willing to do that if I, my instinct was that it would be good for people in the long run. That I do, it would do something good. Because I know that, as we talked about earlier in the hour, I gotta trust people that know how to attract eyes. If I'm gonna make a difference, those eyes have to be there.

• 46:08Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 46:08Speaker 01

  And so that means creating environments that I may not be familiar with or feel comfortable with, but okay, let me see if I can make it into something worthwhile and deliver some good information.

• 46:18Speaker 01

  And that started back in 1983, when I showed up on that radio show and I was like, oh my god, what is this? And I was, I went through some very tough times with that on every front. I've always, I've always been taking heat for stuff I've wanted to do to help. Because I know, I know you can't just do it the way doctors would traditionally do it. The way we would do it as didactic teachers, it just doesn't work, not on a, not on a mass scale.

• 46:42Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 46:42Speaker 01

  And media has a huge impact and it needs physicians, it needs our point of view.

• 46:46Lewis Howes?

  It's not enough you guys doing it.

• 46:47Speaker 01

  And we have to be willing to be creative and different in how we approach it. And we've gotta lay off our peers that decide to do it.

• 46:53Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, support them, yeah.

• 46:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, yeah, did I answer that question?

• 46:58Lewis Howes?

  I think so, your vision and mission moving forward.

• 47:00Speaker 01

  No, no, the mission moving forward is just keep one foot in front of the other for as long as my blood pressure can. Yeah, as long, yeah, as long as I can handle it.

• 47:10Speaker 01

  I wish I had more of a mission, really, because it'd be probably more comfortable. You know what I mean? At least I had a track to roll down, I sort of could gauge myself better.

• 47:19Lewis Howes?

  Well, with no mission, you're still doing great, so.

• 47:20Speaker 01

  But so much of my stuff that, so much of my stuff is, does not have a precedent.

• 47:24Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 47:25Speaker 01

  So I'm sort of always in kind of a frontier sort of mode.

• 47:28Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 47:29Speaker 01

  You're scaring me talking about it.

• 47:31Lewis Howes?

  I'm all about having a vision and just being like, you know, for, as an athlete, every season at the beginning of the season, our coach would have on the chalkboard, okay, what's our vision for the next three months?

• 47:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I get that.

• 47:41Lewis Howes?

  What do we want to achieve?

• 47:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, but.

• 47:43Lewis Howes?

  So it's a period of time, not like your whole life.

• 47:45Speaker 01

  I, I get that, and, and with things, with athletic performance, I think that's necessary, because you're, you're always having to, you know, eke out little improvements which make a big difference.

• 47:54Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 47:54Speaker 01

  Relative to the next guy. I, in my world, it's more like a philosophy. And, and so that's sort of what I have is, and you've, I've been talking about my philosophy.

• 48:03Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 48:04Speaker 01

  Uh, and, and I think that's, and that's something I work on every day, is what is that philosophy, and how can I improve that? How can I make a difference, more of a difference, and how can I bring that understanding to bear?

• 48:16Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 48:16Speaker 01

  And use it in a way that helps people. It's very simple, you know, have fun, do good, make a difference.

• 48:22Lewis Howes?

  So, yeah, simple life. Who's been the most influential person in your life?

• 48:30Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 48:31Lewis Howes?

  And what's the biggest lesson they taught you?

• 48:34Speaker 01

  My dad was a pretty big influence. He was sort of a pain in the ass, but he was a pretty big influence.

• 48:39Speaker 01

  His thing was always put patients first, and that was pretty good. In fact, I bought onto that even more than he did, it turned out.

• 48:49Speaker 01

  The work thing from him, he was a workaholic too, and I think that was, that was an important thing. I had a professor in college that was very influential, and he's sort of out of vogue now, but I just liked the way he made me think, and.

• 49:05Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 49:06Speaker 01

  A guy named Hadley Arce that is now being attacked, because he's, he takes very rigid sort of points of view, but he made me think about philosophy and things that I'd not thought about. And I was busy out in the sciences and stuff too, and so to have a political science professor make me think in a new way, whether I agreed with his point of view or not, was important to me.

• 49:28Speaker 01

  I'm sure if I thought about it, I'd put thirty people on that list. Yeah. I mean, it depends. I had a psychiatrist colleague that was deeply impactful on me. I want to, I want to write about him a little bit. This guy that studied, it was a psychoanalyst who was in psychiatry for fifty years and she could have sort of saw the whole arc of all what was happening in psychiatry. And I sort of listened to him and spent a lot of time talking to him and adopting his philosophies and things. I had medical trainers, trainees. I had a professor in intensive care medicine that I took away. It's, it's little pieces from everybody. This one guy chanted at me always, diagnosis prognosis treatment book, diagnosis prognosis treatment book. He just chanted that at me.

• 50:11Speaker 01

  And his point was, if you don't come up with a diagnosis, you don't have a treatment. And a lot of doctors don't get this. They, they start trying treatments before they ever make a diagnosis. And so is you, you, treatments are studied in the context of a particular diagnosis. And if you're not treating that diagnosis, your treatment's BS. Right. Yeah, you're just, that's just a guess. But so, so make sure your diagnosis is as accurate as possible. Apply the treatment. Diagnosis prognosis, you know, offer a prognosis to everyone based on that, on that. Diagnosis prognosis treatment. Wait, wait. Diagnosis prognosis, so you can prognosticate first, then offer your treatment, and then go back to the, and study, and study, and do research and study. Wow.

• 50:54Speaker 01

  And so diagnosis prognosis treatment book. And, and that's always been with me. And I had a cardiologist that was deeply impactful on me. I had an infectious disease doctor that. I've come back around and asked, took a dinner a couple of times to show my appreciation for how it went impacting out on me. And these, there are people that, the way they think, uh, they just don't get things wrong. And I try to be one of those guys, even though I'm not. That's cool. I, I, uh, these guys that, like, let's give you a quick story. I mean, a guy, I remember I called for an infectious disease consult. I was looking at this kid in the emergency room. It looked like measles to me. I was a nineteen year old kid with. More biliform rash and fevers and tongue was red, blah, blah, blah, the usual measles stuff. And this friend of mine, in fact, he's got, looks, looks, one, takes one look in the room and he goes,

• 51:39Speaker 01

  "Have you ever heard of septic scarlet fever?" Of course, him knowing that I'd never even heard of that. And he goes, "This is septic scarlet fever." And goddammit, he was right. So it gives you something to live up to.

• 51:50Lewis Howes?

  Wow, interesting. Okay, this is one of the final questions that I ask all my guests at the end. It's called the three truths.

• 51:55Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 51:56Lewis Howes?

  Now, you've got a lot of messages you put out that you've been on the radio for

• 51:59Speaker 01

  Ever.

• 51:59Lewis Howes?

  Thirty something years, eight, nineteen eighty-four, I was, eighty-four, as you said?

• 52:03Speaker 01

  Eighty-three.

• 52:03Lewis Howes?

  That's one month.

• 52:04Speaker 01

  Uh, August, I would say.

• 52:07Lewis Howes?

  Okay, March is when I was born, so, eighty-three. You've been on, you've been, you've been

• 52:11Speaker 01

  As long as you've been alive.

• 52:12Lewis Howes?

  Sharing content

• 52:13Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 52:13Lewis Howes?

  In the media and the radio and TV and all your writing and everything for a long time. And imagine that it's the last day for you many, many years from now.

• 52:22Speaker 01

  I'm dying, I'm on my deathbed?

• 52:24Lewis Howes?

  It's your last day.

• 52:24Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 52:25Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 52:25Speaker 01

  Last day on earth.

• 52:26Lewis Howes?

  Last day on earth.

• 52:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:27Lewis Howes?

  You've created everything you want to create.

• 52:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:29Lewis Howes?

  Taken all the risks and they've all worked out one way or another. But for whatever reason, everything you've created is now erased. It's gone. No one has access to it for whatever reason.

• 52:37Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 52:38Lewis Howes?

  Hypothetically, obviously.

• 52:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 52:39Lewis Howes?

  But someone by your bed gives you a piece of paper and a pen and says, "Will you write down the three things you know to be true about everything you've experienced in your life? Three lessons, three simple truths that you could pass on that, that you, this would be the thing that people remember you by, these three truths."

• 52:56Speaker 01

  Jesus.

• 52:56Lewis Howes?

  What would you?

• 52:57Speaker 01

  The, the, this, it's not fair, is it?

• 53:01Lewis Howes?

  Everyone gets the same question.

• 53:02Speaker 01

  Does everyone freak out? Oh, good, okay. So, I, I'm gonna distill it down. Oh. I'm gonna distill it down to what I've seen works with people who are in, who are dying, frankly. Who, who are, you know, in extreme circumstances. And, and these three things tend to, everything seems to, you know how things kind of, kind of go down to do a single dot when you're really in, in the moment? And these, these three things I've seen to be true. Have faith, whatever that means to you. Develop some concept of faith.

• 53:42Speaker 01

  And that's, can be God, it can be just a faith in the physical properties of the universe, I don't care what it is, you need faith. Have hope. And again, that's kind of a big concept, too, that, that it may be based in reality, it may not be. Have hope. And nothing matters but the important relationships in your life.

• 54:05Speaker 01

  That's it.

• 54:05Lewis Howes?

  Those are powerful.

• 54:06Speaker 01

  That's what, that's what people usually, that's what, those things, if they can hang out of those things, when, when it really, the, the rubber hits the road and shit hits the fan, those three things tend to keep people moving forward.

• 54:18Lewis Howes?

  That's great, those are great. Before I ask the final question, I want to acknowledge you for a moment, Dr. Drew, for your incredible contribution to humanity. Again, all the work you've done, all the

• 54:29Speaker 01

  Here's the thing, humility is very important too, so don't, don't.

• 54:32Lewis Howes?

  Well, I want to take a moment, though.

• 54:34Speaker 01

  It's very kind, it's very kind to say that.

• 54:35Lewis Howes?

  I want to take a moment because

• 54:36Speaker 01

  It's hard for me to take that kind of thing in, so I appreciate you doing that, but I will try, because it'd be good for me to do so.

• 54:40Lewis Howes?

  So I'm going to let you, uh, practice patience for a moment, and not speaking.

• 54:44Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 54:45Lewis Howes?

  And let me, for a moment, acknowledge you for, you know, sparking so much inspiration in me, as a, someone who watched on TV many, many years ago, before I got into any of this, you really inspired me as a human being to, even if it was crazy, or whatever the, the context was, it really showed me how to be a better human being, and how to heal myself. And I think the work that you do, uh, on a day in, day out basis, for almost 35-plus years now, just on radio and TV alone, is so profound in making an impact globally. Not just one-on-one, which is also extremely important, which you constantly do, but trying to use all of your energy to make the maximum impact on the maximum number of people. For me, I want to acknowledge you for that.

• 55:27Speaker 01

  Yes, I, I thank you. I, I will say that it's somehow more real and meaningful for me to hear that I impacted you. What I do for, on a big scale, feels, I'm, I'm, I hope it does.

• 55:41Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 55:42Speaker 01

  But that's harder for me to take in.

• 55:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah, I appreciate it. Before I ask the final question, where can we connect with you? DrDrew.com?

• 55:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, go there.

• 55:49Lewis Howes?

  Where else do you like to hang out? Social media?

• 55:50Speaker 01

  Um, in Los Angeles, I'm doing a radio show every day, noon to 3, KBC, 790 AM, which we're having fun with.

• 55:56Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 55:57Speaker 01

  I'm probably going to go back on CNN soon.

• 55:59Lewis Howes?

  Nice.

• 55:59Speaker 01

  Uh, I, I'm going to be producing some interesting projects, I think, coming up that, keep an eye out for. I can't really talk about them yet, but I think they're going to make a difference too.

• 56:08Lewis Howes?

  Which social media do you hang out the most?

• 56:09Speaker 01

  DrDrew.com, oh, oh. You can, I, I, I monitor Twitter the most, but I hate it the most.

• 56:15Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 56:16Speaker 01

  Cause it's so abusive.

• 56:17Lewis Howes?

  You check it out every day, though.

• 56:18Speaker 01

  I check it a couple times a day, but it's so abusive.

• 56:20Lewis Howes?

  You probably get so much backlash on it.

• 56:21Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 56:23Lewis Howes?

  So send him something positive about this interview.

• 56:26Speaker 01

  It's bad for my soul to have the negative stuff.

• 56:27Lewis Howes?

  At Dr. Drew on Twitter.

• 56:29Speaker 01

  At Dr. Drew, at D R D R W on Twitter. And I have, Facebook I don't watch too much, Instagram I watch a little bit. If you would watch out there, when I do put stuff up, it's, I mean it, it's important to me.

• 56:38Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 56:39Speaker 01

  Um, uh, otherwise the website, Dr. com is mostly where I hang out.

• 56:43Lewis Howes?

  So on Twitter, let Dr. Drew know exactly the thing that you're inspired by the most.

• 56:47Speaker 01

  Get in our contact list at Dr. com. It's slash contact and we'll send you emails and you can send me emails. My wife monitors all of that. So it does get to me.

• 56:55Lewis Howes?

  Okay, perfect, cool. Uh, the final question is, what's your definition of greatness? The last question, what's your definition of greatness?

• 57:02Speaker 01

  My instinct is greatness is what you say it is, and that is what you define as greatness and you want to be. It, it, it may not look that great to somebody else, but I, I think the individual has to determine what greatness is. And, uh, yeah, I think I can say that greatness is an individual, and from my opinion, it's an individual measure. And it's something that, um, you should establish for yourself.

• 57:27Lewis Howes?

  Dr. Drew, thank you so much, man. Appreciate it. This is great.

• 57:29Speaker 01

  Thank you for your kind words.

• 57:30Lewis Howes?

  Of course, of course.

• 57:33Lewis Howes?

  And there you have it, guys. I hope you enjoyed this powerful interview and episode with Dr. Drew. And after the interview was done, I remember I wanted to ask him a few more questions about masculinity because of my new book. And I was like, oh, man, I'm so bummed that I didn't get to ask you. And he said, yes, that's actually a topic that I want to talk about and dive in deeper. And he said, I'll have to come back on, cause that's a whole nother hour interview. So if you enjoyed this one, we're gonna have Dr. Drew back on at some point in the future. So make sure to tweet me or tweet Dr. Drew and let him know what you're most inspired by from this interview and other questions you may have for him in the future. Again, share this with your friends, LewisHowes.com/419. Guys, if you've been here for a while.

• 58:17Lewis Howes?

  And you have not subscribed yet on Stitcher, or iTunes, or SoundCloud. Make sure to click the subscribe button right now. And also, if you have yet to leave a review, it would mean the world to me. The more reviews we get, the more people find out about it on iTunes. So, go ahead over there right now and leave a review if you felt like this has added any value in your life, because that will only spread the message of greatness to more people. And it's my mission to impact the maximum number of people with the content that we're developing here at the School of Greatness. We're bringing on some incredible guests. I hope you would agree, because you keep coming back to listen, and you keep saying they're incredible. So, just make sure to do your part and share this out with other friends of yours. Email them, post it on Facebook, Twitter, tag people on Instagram, let them know about

• 59:02Lewis Howes?

  the podcast episodes you like the most. And leaving a review will be extremely helpful for the show as well. And I'll leave you with this. We get one life. Make sure you're taking care of the different areas of your life to help you live with the most joy, passion, and love in your heart. You owe it to yourself to take care of your mind, your body, and your soul. Make sure to take care of yourselves today. I love you, and you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.