S4 E3: "Escaping Addiction" with Psychotherapist & Author (Free Fall), Bradley Thomas Smith

Wow.

Yeah.

I mean, the musical part is so interesting.

And even you talking about being in New Orleans and, you know, at Tulane and all of that, it was just so interesting to read.

But the beginning of the book, too, you describe addiction in such a unique way that I've never heard before.

Even with my, you know, minimal experience with I minored in psychology and neuroscience in college, but it just wasn't explained in this way.

And I love you explain it with such compassion and I guess also empathy because you've experienced it yourself.

But it's so also intelligent the way that you describe it.

So for, because people just really aren't educated in it, you know, you just, you, you see it or you experience it with either yourself or somebody in your family or your friends or whatever.

And it, you really have a grasp of it.

And it's probably because you've experienced it firsthand.

So one of the things that I found so interesting was it was five different things that you said that, people turn to alcohol or have an addiction in general for it was to soothe, to connect, to compensate, to detach, and to punish, or I guess and or.

So what was your experience personally? What what do you think you were after?

Well, as the little boy, he wanted to be soothed.

There was just extraordinary dissonance that was crippling, and I had to find a way to deal with that.

You know, to compensate, you know, our culture is built on hurry up.

Don't be left behind.

You know, get something you deserve.

Fear of missing out.

And I had to compensate somehow because I was missing out.

I didn't have a mother.

And remember that that death rippled across the adult dimensions of my world, too.

And a lot of dysregulation occurred.

And

and understandably so now.