Right.

right.

Which is insane.

And, um, and so when I, when I went through treatment and, you know, kind of really had my first experiences with a lot of therapy and other healing modalities, I just, I don't, I, as people go to treatment and they hate it, I, I, I loved it.

You know, I, I mean, there was a lot of it I didn't love, but I, I love the idea of being able to look inside and reinvent yourself and and and understand yourself in in different ways and you know i um after a couple years of being sober i i went back to school and got a master's in counseling and um You know, I'm not someone, when you look at my life, looks like I had these big traumatic events that happened.

Of course, I've had loss and been in accidents and things like that, but it wasn't something that you would look at and say, wow, he lived this very traumatic life.

Right.

What are your thoughts on that?

You got a bad text from someone.

Yeah.

I mean, Michael Easter, you brought up earlier, at least, uh, he just had a great writing in his sub stack about, uh, being on an airplane and, uh, the wifi was out.

And then he started thinking about his great, great, great, great aunt Nellie, who like, it took her like five months to cross the country.

Both legs were amputated.

And then she still had five kids after that, like, you know, in the 1800s or whatever, going from the East coast to Utah.

Like, I think it's, Why am I saying that? I'm not saying that to say like this generation or the generations that are here are like weaker or something, but we don't have to struggle in the same way.

Do you want to sort of describe what addiction is?

Right.

And so, you know, or they're, they're walking around in, in, in fear all the time that they're gonna be exposed or they're gonna be hurt.

And if you're in a situation where you might be hurt, that fear is good, but if you're walking around with that all the time, now you're reacting, you know, you're seeing, you're seeing the situations through that lens and then, then reacting in that way.

And that goes to kind of what's the level deeper than that, which is their beliefs about themselves, the world, and their place in it.

And these are generally these kind of fixed beliefs.

And, you know, w- when I do work with people, we look back at history, not to blame family or, you know, where they came from or their ancestors, but to understand how they were shaped.

Totally.

And I'm not, I'm not suggesting that's what we need to have happen or want to happen to, but it, it was, we, we had, like, this common ground, and, and, uh, the common ground feels safe.

100,000 people died?

A- at least.

You know, it's more than doubled.

Um, you know, now it's in a lot of different things.

There's a lot of kids that are taking something that they think is, uh, a, a, a less harmful pill, like a Valium or a Xanax, and it's got fentanyl in it and they, they die.

You know, it's, it's doubled since we started calling it an epidemic.

And of course, that 100,000 doesn't include all of the other drugs and alcohol.

But a kid with a porn addiction, somebody who's abusing alcohol or addicted to food, shopping, gambling, they can find a meeting.