On Addiction - The Result

Transcript of a Sage Hill Live Fully Podcast conversation with Dr. Chip Dodd. Lightly edited for readability; speaker labels omitted.

You're listening to the Sage Hill podcast on addiction Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Sage Hill podcast recording today, as always, on the Addiction Series at, CPE Center for Professional Excellence here at JourneyPure in our, our studio. I've actually had people ask about our studio, and I have to tell them it's just your office. Yeah. It was like the other studio where we record. It's another office in Nashville. Yeah. So welcome back. Hey, Chip. We could do it from almost anywhere, honestly, but hey, Phil. I said, hey, Chip. Hey, Phil. Okay. Hey there. So glad y'all are here with us today. As you know, we're, podcasting or recording several podcasts about addiction. And I know, we've stated before many times we state many times a day here at CPE, you know, the the number one malady of humanity, this thing called addiction. So, boy, that is well said. It really is true. So we were talking earlier today, actually talking to one of the guys here in treatment. And, you you said a sentence that I want to talk about Okay. On the today's subject. It's a it's I don't know. It's a great sentence that captures, you know, physiology, feeling

I just not at work. I love affirmation. I really appreciate that behind. And and of course And and you don't just dispense it as if it's just an open counter. You know? No. And in future podcast, I will attribute this to to me. So so here's here's the thing. Really, really, truly, I thought it was just man, that that says so much about all many of the realms of addiction. You said alcohol sues the neurons but destroys the child. Yeah. So take it away. How that was Well, let's talk about that. You know, I was I was meeting with one of our wonderful guys, and we've said it many times, really and truly, our wonderful guys, we have the privilege to walk with. It's called treatment in the science world. It's called treatment in the recovery world, but it's really to take a long walk with As a fact. Across the territory to freedom. And so, anyway, I was meeting with one of the guys who is extremely anxious about a TL. Mhmm. And, TL means therapeutically for you guys who haven't had the privilege of being in treatment. And there's a bunch of guys out there with CPE grinning when you hear the the letters TL. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And, he was describing anxiety, and he said, you know, that alcohol works. Alcohol soothes the neurons. And by neurons, I'm talking about the the physical, neurochemical aspects of, symptoms that we call depression, we call anxiety. And and depression and anxiety are real things. Mhmm. But the way we talk about depression and anxiety is those are not feelings. They're physical, mental reactions to feelings we don't know what to do with. Mhmm. And when a person uses alcohol, we use alcohol for any of the addictive processes, you know, is that it really does do its job. Alcohol, drugs, sex, go down the list, over compulsive exercise, and so on, It soothes the neurons, or it it handles the physical symptoms of neurochemical, processes of that threaten us, and so it does calm us down. It soothes. It bathes. It calms down all those neurological aspects that are really, expressions of something that can be amazingly handled, managed, and even, allow it frees us to live more fully called emotion, and so when I said that it soothes the neurons but destroys the child, I'm referring to the child being the heart of who someone is. I'm referring to the child in the neuroscientific language of the limbic system, which is the keeper. It's amazing how the limbic system is the science and the philosophy all wrapped it up in one place Sure. Because the limbic system has all the, organic names, medical terms, but it's the house or the storehouse of emotion and the storehouse of, long term, memories. So it's the place of childhood. It's the place we if we come from a great place, it's a place we continue to remember, to express, and it's a continuity of processes that allow us to grow up, or it's a place we want to get away from and not go back to. It's actually a place you can't escape, and escapes, trying to get away from the limbic world, which is the seed of emotion, is the consequences of that escape are high levels of anxiety, tendencies towards depression, reactivity, hypervigilance, constriction, and, you know, we we've got all the the list, denial, dissociation, which which throws us into having to have physical solutions to emotional problems, and so it does soothe the neurons but destroys the child, which which means that it rejects how we're made to connect with ourselves, others, and God. It, addiction takes us away from feeling our feelings, telling the truth, and giving it over to the process. When I say the process, you know I'm talking about, you know, we're all works in progress. We we our our job is works in progress. It's very difficult, but to live life on life's terms, learn how to do it, and it takes a lifetime to do it. Uh-huh. Those three things describe vulnerability, and vulnerability describes the need for healthy shame. Healthy shame describes the need of neediness, dependency, that we never escape, and those are all the territories of the need to keep growing and the need to grow up. In a child, it's the need to grow up, and the grown up is the need to keep growing. And so to do that, we have to be able to express the inner self of the need to connect, And what happens is that, every addict that we've had the privilege of working with, some some it wasn't a privilege. Well, let's admit that. I mean, I'll admit that. Some it was, I I forgot your name because you never did show up. That's right. I'll be honest about that. Yeah. But sure. But most of the guys who are actually taking time to listen to the podcast, Phil and I often talk about, the gratitude. In fact, even last night, you and I were meeting with a couple of other people and and talking about just some of the guys, honestly, and Mhmm. The the gratitude. But, in all the people we've treated over the years, not one single person that we've treated came from a place that they didn't want to get away from limbically. No doubt. So every single person we've treated were overwhelmingly symptomatic with anxiety, depression, or denial and dissociation from those two things, and as soon as they got close to the limbic world, they became anxious and or depressed. So we've treated people with trauma, and whether they call it little t or big t trauma, it's people who were experienced things that they that they weren't allowed to have the vulnerability or the healthy shame to ask the questions, to be works in progress so they could learn how to live life on life's terms and weren't allowed to know, like the big people as children, that it takes a lifetime to learn how to do it. Mhmm. There weren't big people around saying it was okay to be the child. Yeah. And I'm telling you, the need to belong and the need to matter are so powerful and so significant that reality is that once trauma occurs, the child will begin to sacrifice the questions, the feelings, the need for belonging and mattering to performance, and that performance is always living on the edge of rejection. Did I do enough? Have I accomplished enough? I'm watching your face to see how I am doing, to see how safe I am, to see if I maybe cared about. So it's the child, the limbic system or the heart living with giant question marks of am I okay versus how do I do this? Mhmm. Very different questions. Very different. And

getting back to the first half of that sentence, with all the deficits of that and the demand to perform, neuron soothing is pretty attractive. Absolutely. Because that hypervigilance is living in fight, flight, or freeze, which means which means that the the cortisol, the catacolamine, the the adrenaline, everything's triggered by just the experience of a human being I'm made to be connected to. The human being I'm made to be connected to, myself and others, is actually the threat. I'm a threat to myself because feelings may get a hold of me and render me vulnerable. Vulnerable means rejected and toxic shame. And then every human being, even our loved ones, the spouse we sleep six inches away from can be the enemy. Uh-huh. Isn't that Oh, yeah. So that's what I mean. So, yes, alcohol soothes the neurons

and destroys the child. Yeah. Let me go right there for just for a second. So we talked about soothing the neurons. It's you know, we use the phrase counterfeit fulfillment, but, you know, when we're in disease, knee deep in disease, I'm not thinking about counterfeit. I'm thinking about fulfillment. Now this is fulfilling, closest thing I get to life. Yeah. Right? Like soothing. So how about the destroying? It's an awful word. Yeah. It destroys the child. Yeah. That the deeper we go into disease well, think of think of it this way. The disease takes or, like, pretend pretend like we're we're we're new parents, and, the child's growing and and being introduced to life. If we raise a child well, we don't take children to places they don't need to go and they don't need to be. Mhmm. And if they wind up in those places through the accidents of life, they they have a safe place or room or a relationship to go to to process what it was like. Scary, hurt, sad, lonely, fearful, shameful, angering, guilty, or glad. And so so if that that that connection isn't made and the parent's not raising the child, addiction becomes the the second best answer, and at a point, we forget the child. It literally helps us dissociate and deny that there is an emotional world, and so what happens is that we start taking the child to places a a parent wouldn't take a child. Yes. And that continues the numbness and the dumbness and the rejections of that person we're made to be. And so the deeper we go into addiction, the the the farther away we go from reawakening to how we're made as emotional and spiritual creatures created to do one thing in life, it's live fully. Mhmm. And, man, neuroscience is just just research after research, article after article, just showing that connection to how we're made in relationship with each other is the solution to addiction. Uh-huh. So and and, I I just I just see it over and over again that the the the more we move to the feeding world, the more awakened a person is and the more the child within comes back to life. The purpose of that isn't so you can run around being a child. The purpose is so that the nurturing parent of the frontal lobe Mhmm. Starts to do relationship with the interior of the limbic system. Mhmm. The two converse long enough until they've merged into a creature called a grown up. Yeah. Now adults and grown ups are different, you know, you and I know. Yeah. Adult is a person pretending to be a grown up. They use their faces to hide, and they don't know how to do life. A grown up is a person who is actually in the midst of the struggle of of asking the questions and expressing the vulnerability and the competence that follows to know how to live. You know? And so it's it's the feelings allow us to reawaken to who we're made to be and get on with doing what we're made to do. So the child isn't destroyed. The child is reawakened, reconnected, grown, ushered into life, and then it's almost as if there's no child within, and there's no parent. There's a person. Mhmm. You know? Mhmm. The, and but the child can be, gotten rid of. Yeah. I mean, there are people walking around all over the place giving us the rules who are stuck in their own addictions even though they're not florid with the classic alcohol and drugs, but the addiction of control and power, continuing to scare children away from ever showing up. Right. But I'm telling you, what does a reawakened child look like, especially in the early days? There was a guy you and I were talking to earlier this morning, and, he he talked about he said, you know something I noticed? He said, I had LASIK surgery a long time ago, but I stepped out on the porch at the house this morning, and, yesterday morning, he said, and I I looked, and it was almost like high definition Surroundings. Like, colors were brighter, and the the the depths were stark more starkly clear to me. Mhmm. Just, like, things were clearer. And he said he he started he's noticed sounds. He said this morning, he he asked the guy, does this look clear to you? And the guy said, well, you're you're off drugs. Right? You're you're you're no longer taking any of the even the psychiatric medications, and you now you've been in recovery of Mhmm. Your heart for a while Yes. And feel he can hear Mhmm. Things he wasn't hearing. He can listen to things he had blocked out. He can see things he hadn't noticed. Yes. Even though Lasix corrected his vision, it didn't give him sight. No doubt about it. Isn't that amazing? And his smell is better. His considering the possibility is more, and it reminds me and and I'm not talking about the Bible. I'm talking about wisdom. There's this passage in Ephesians four seventeen through 19. It it says, do not be like the Gentiles who are caught up in the futility of their thinking due to the ignorance the ignoring due to the ignorance that is in them because of the, darkness of their understanding denial Mhmm. And the hardness of their hearts dissociation and being caught up in that, they've lost their senses, which is touch, taste, smell, sight, and connected to feeling alive, feeling. They've lost their senses in sensuality, addiction, soothing neurons, has taken over for living, and no matter how much they eat, they continue to have a lust for more. Yes. Good god, Phil.

Easy. Remember, in a guy, he he may be listening to this. Many years ago, he was from a really beautiful state. You may remember this. He's from a really beautiful state, born and raised in the state in the East, Beautiful Falls. And we he went on TL, we mentioned earlier, and he came back from TL. He said he named his home state. He goes, you know, that's really a beautiful place in the fall. Yeah. He's had it in years. And this guy's a genius. Oh, oh, yeah. I mean, we've treated some smart guys Yeah. That I mean, he was so smart. He's stupid. Yeah. He's smart as me. Oh Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But it was amazing back to what you're talking about. Like, the guy was asleep in all ways. Yeah. Had not seen fall in the And performing in his profession Was he ever? With the highest marks while while destroying the child Uh-huh. And soothing the neurons. He was. All set. And he was you know, just stands out to me. He in but but you remember this too. Later in group, that same day, he said, you know, I do remember knowing this about this state when when I was a kid. Yes. I remember I remember thinking how beautiful fall is here when I was a kid. Yep. Do you remember,

last night, just so you you you and I and a couple other guys were meeting last night, talking about the future, and we were sitting out in my harbor Mhmm. Which is surrounded by summertime. Yeah. And I said something about, you know, there's not much better than the sounds of summer. Uh-huh. And we got quiet for a second, and and you you you kinda, said, gee, I said that to my son Luke only two hours ago, and we all playing golf. Yes. We had the great fortune of playing golf together. And, he said there's just nothing better than the sounds of summer, and we were quiet in listening to, and that is a, child experience. For sure. And doesn't sounds of summer take us to growing up Uh-huh. Remembering see? Growing up, feeling Yeah. Wistfulness, sadness, joy, appreciation, remembering long term memories and feelings Mhmm. Which is the experience of being fully alive. And at the same time, do you know what? When you and I and and the other guys were talking about that, being that fully alive, also, like, we're surrounded by the sounds of summer. We're also surrounded by what we can't control. Mhmm. I mean, we have a past we can't go back to. Yeah. We can resolve it. Uh-huh. Our feelings process. We've got a future we don't know what's gonna happen, but we were sitting there last night hoping and planning around it. Mhmm. You know? And, so it's like when you go to the limbic world, I see how come people don't want to do it. When you go to the heart, it literally does take us to the place of powerlessness because we have the place of hope and longing within us. It's the child world. Uh-huh. And at the same time, it takes us to trauma, the the danger of not having control of what happens when you don't. So the very thing that gives us life is a conflict with what took our lives away. Yes. And so, I mean, I get that it's hard, and, I get that it's difficult, but those of us who are awake, we see more, and therefore we hurt more, but we live more. And and I think there are a lot of guys, and and gals guys and gals. There are a lot of men and women who says that. I I I apologize. Nobody. But how do how do you how do you do to the to the guy guys or gals? There are a lot of people out there who are listening. They say it's worth it. Yeah. It's worth it. It's it's worth walking through my neurons to get to that child. Right on. And it's worth letting that child and and and doing the hard work of growing that child up into being grown up. Mhmm. And it's worth the struggle of living life on life's terms. You and I, I mean and we were talking about you last night a lot, which off mic, we do a lot more than you guys know. Not even close. Go ahead. Yeah. But we were talking about all the things that you've done and yellow freight, the passionate church, being a punk. I didn't get paid for that one. Being a Golden Gloves boxer, being an All American baseball player, and, and and and being a surgeon, you know, that some of the things we kid around about. But all these things that you've done in your life that don't seem to be connected, the older you get, the more surrendered you are, the more life you seek, the more you see that that that disconnection was threads being woven together, and we're even talking about preparing. What's the next thing? You know, not settling in, but pressing on, because we can't help it, knowing we're getting older. So what are we doing to continue to dream like that? Because children can't stop and grown ups don't either. So, yeah, I said to the guy who's just doing his beginnings, how much it's worth it, and actually how glad I am that he's not bathing the neurons, but he's actually attending to the child so the child isn't destroyed

and doesn't have to live in a little metal cage with old straw on the bottom of it. No kidding. You know? So this thing is so much, and I know it's been the you have, I have, the whole idea around that sentence about soothing the neurons, destroying the child. It's teasing and shaming or a yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Child this, child that. But the well is incredibly deep. Yeah. It's around being able to smell and see. It's around counterfeit fulfillment. I mean, this is big. So let me ask you not to introduce a new subject, but to kinda round out today. I've heard you say a thousand times, you know, our our brains were made to give expression to the heart. Oh, yeah. In this disease process, addiction, process, the brain is used to block the heart. It seems to me that that sentence goes with the one we started with. Boy, that is so so well said.

Our frontal lobes, the nurturing parent The neurons in there. The safety mechanisms, but our brains, our thinking brains, are are in our heads, which sounds so weird, to to help us articulate the, you know, the the the wanderings, the stutterings of the human heart Mhmm. To listen to the dreams, the longings, the imagination, the desire, the hope, the needs, and the feelings of the child. When we say that the senses are awakened, the smell, the sight, the hearing, the touch are awakened, that is all coming through the the feelings being awakened, because if I don't know what I feel, I don't even know where I am. Yeah. If I can't see what's around me, I can't experience the life that's in me or the life that's outside of me. It's amazing how much we're created for connection, don't you think? Oh, no doubt.

So and a lot of people out there listening to this, if they've been to CPE or, say, chill training or something along those lines, will instantly go, oh, yeah. There's an oh, yeah inside of us when we hear we experienced it. Hear someone talk about the difference between, counterfeit fulfillment, all the things that we've talked about versus really being in it. Yeah. Not a mistake. And think about that guy. He said, hey. Come out here. I need you to see something. Am I seeing this? He said, am I seeing does it look clear? Does it look greener? Does it look more starkly drawn with depths? And he he he was willing to say, am I crazy, or am I changing? Am have I gone insane truly, or now am I coming into sanity? Do you know? Kids. Really cool. Cool. Yeah. This is

great. I mean, like, real. That sentence we started with and since we ended with that both both having to do with how we're made to live fully in relationship and be things imagination and all the things we're talking about. Once again, this conversation and others speaks once again to the inexhaustible well of addiction and recovery. Recovery. Yes. Recovery. Recovery of who we're made to be and then what we're made to do. Well, thanks again everybody for listening. We will be back soon. Hope you're enjoying the series. And, Chip, I guess we'll record another one at some point. I look forward to it. And, hello to everybody who we do know, and hello to everybody we may someday get to know. I mean, so, hey, thanks Phil. Thanks for listening. Alright, talk to you later.