Stay Free - Russel Brand - Gabor Maté on Trauma & Addiction. Plus, Jordan Peterson & Depression - Stay Free #183

00:00:00.000 I'm a black man and I could never be a better one.

00:00:29.000 Brought to you by Pfizer.

00:00:31.000 In this video, you're going to see the future.

00:00:33.000 I'm a black man and I could never be a better one.

00:00:40.000 In this video, you're going to see the future.

00:00:51.000 Hello there, you Awakening Wonders!

00:00:53.000 Thanks for joining me on this voyage to truth and freedom.

00:00:56.000 We've got a beautiful conversation for you today.

00:00:58.000 I spoke at length with Gabor Maté.

00:01:00.000 Are you going crazy? 1.00

00:01:02.000 Are you an addict? 1.00

00:01:02.000 Did you suffer a mental breakdown during the pandemic period? 1.00

00:01:05.000 Are you having issues with substances?

00:01:07.000 Self-harm?

00:01:08.000 Are you falling apart?

00:01:09.000 Or is someone you love suffering?

00:01:11.000 Gabor Maté, I believe, is the most important voice in addiction and mental health Stay free with Russell Brand.

00:01:18.000 He spoke about his book, The Myth of Normal, and we also talked about mental illness and

00:01:21.000 how it's treated with pills rather than exploring the psyche of trauma that is the root of pain,

00:01:26.000 how systems are designed to punish individuals who have trauma through addiction and generational

00:01:30.000 oppression.

00:01:31.000 Excitingly, we talked about Gabor's disagreements with Jordan Peterson and his psychological

00:01:36.000 methodologies and his relationship with hallucinogens.

00:01:39.000 You're going to love this conversation.

00:01:40.000 Have a look.

00:01:41.000 Stay free with Russell Brand.

00:01:42.000 See you first on Rumble.

00:01:44.000 Gabor, your new book, The Myth of Normal.

00:01:47.000 I've read some of it because you were kind enough to have someone send me an advanced copy.

00:01:51.000 And like all books I enjoy most, I'm in it.

00:01:55.000 I wrote it for you.

00:02:00.000 It's a continuation of your important and beautiful work analyzing the complexity of the human psyche.

00:02:08.000 And I've already told people that you're not a psychiatrist and you don't like people saying that you are and that you're a normal family doctor.

00:02:12.000 I've already made that clear.

00:02:14.000 Well, whether I'm normal, that's another question, but I am a family physician, yeah.

00:02:18.000 I'm not a psychiatrist, which is a good thing.

00:02:19.000 Why?

00:02:22.000 Because psychiatrists are trained in a very narrow way.

00:02:25.000 Mostly these days they're trained in this biological model of mental illness so that all human distress is medicalized and explained in terms of some inherent dysfunction of the brain, genetic and so on, for which there's no proof whatsoever.

00:02:41.000 But it reduces treatment of mental health concerns to pills and medications.

00:02:49.000 And they just are not trained, I'm talking for the most part, to look at how life experience actually shapes the brain itself and how life experience is what underlines people's mental distress.

00:03:01.000 And furthermore, there's an assumption in mental health diagnoses, like And the assumption is that they explain why people suffer, but they don't.

00:03:16.000 It's totally circular.

00:03:18.000 So I've been diagnosed with ADHD.

00:03:21.000 So they say, Gabor has ADHD.

00:03:24.000 How do we know that Gabor has ADHD?

00:03:26.000 Because he tends to tune out and he's got trouble sitting still.

00:03:31.000 Why does Gabor tune out and have trouble sitting still?

00:03:34.000 Because he's got ADHD.

00:03:36.000 How do we know he's got ADHD?

00:03:38.000 Because he tunes out and he's got trouble sitting still.

00:03:41.000 Or Gabor is depressed.

00:03:43.000 Because he's got a low mood and is isolating.

00:03:43.000 How do we know?

00:03:47.000 Why is he isolating and has a low mood?

00:03:49.000 Because he's got depression.

00:03:51.000 How do we know he's got depression?

00:03:52.000 Because it's totally circular.

00:03:55.000 So, these diagnoses, they may describe things that don't explain anything, and they certainly cannot be reduced to biological events in the brain.

00:04:03.000 It's fascinating that you say that because I suppose these diagnostics become more complex when dealing with neurology and when dealing with behavior.

00:04:13.000 When diagnosing, I suppose, a broken arm you can observe, oh the arm is broken, but when you're dealing with complexity within the mind it seems like what you're saying

00:04:22.000 is there's a tendency to problematize it and extract the reasons why

00:04:25.000 these behaviors might be exhibited or this phenomenon might be exhibited and also I've

00:04:30.000 noticed a tendency to extract social conditions and make the

00:04:35.000 individual culpable through the process of diagnosis.

00:04:40.000 Absolutely.

00:04:40.000 And this is true not only of what they call mental illness, but also physical health.

00:04:44.000 For example, in Canada where I live, an indigenous woman has six times the rate of rheumatoid arthritis.

00:04:52.000 Six times the risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis.

00:04:55.000 Now, than anybody else.

00:04:58.000 Now this is in a population that never used to have any autoimmune disease, let alone rheumatoid arthritis.

00:05:03.000 Now their rate is six times.

00:05:05.000 Now, The average physician is trained to understand rheumatoid arthritis as a physical event of the immune system turning against the body and damaging the joints and the connective tissues and so on.

00:05:19.000 Why that happens, when you actually study people's lives and the scientific evidence, has to do with people's lives.

00:05:25.000 And their social existence.

00:05:27.000 Why indigenous people in Canada?

00:05:29.000 Because they're the most oppressed and the most stressed and the most traumatized segment of the population.

00:05:34.000 And that has everything to do with the physiology of rheumatoid arthritis.

00:05:37.000 Or, women and multiple sclerosis. 0.62

00:05:42.000 In the 1930s, the gender ratio of multiple sclerosis was 1 to 1.

00:05:47.000 No, it's three and a half women for every man, which immediately tells us it can't be genetic, because genes don't change in a population in 80 years.

00:05:56.000 It can't be the environment or the climate, or it can't be the climate or the food, because that didn't change more for one gender than the other. 1.00

00:06:04.000 What is it?

00:06:05.000 When you look at who develops multiple sclerosis, it's people who suppress their own needs, who serve the needs of others ahead of their own, who don't know how to express or even experience healthy anger, who tend to be very, very nice people, who have trouble saying no.

00:06:20.000 In other words, precisely the characteristics that this society encourages in women, and who absorb the stresses of other people. 0.96

00:06:29.000 And what's happened in the last 80 years is that women are still playing that role of emotional caregivers to their families and their spouses and their children, of course, and their parents. 1.00

00:06:42.000 But they also have to make a living out there in the work world.

00:06:46.000 And they're under more stress because there's more isolation.

00:06:49.000 The more isolated people are, the more stressed they are.

00:06:53.000 There's no big mystery, but from the point of view of biological causation, there's no explanation.

00:06:58.000 So only if, as you suggest, we look at the social conditions and cultural environment in which people live their lives, can we understand why people are ill.

00:07:10.000 And this is, despite all the science that buttresses what I'm telling you, it's completely ignored in medical practice.

00:07:18.000 My assumption would be, Gabor, because that immediately politicizes these matters of health, and then it becomes an indicator that there are social power dynamics at play, even when it comes to something as observable and rudimentary as physical health, let alone the complexity that we started on with matters regarding mental health.

00:07:40.000 Now it seems like you're willing and able to underwrite the more complex aspects of mental health diagnosis with these physical examples.

00:07:50.000 What else are you demonstrating in your book The Myth of Normal?

00:07:54.000 I know because I've read bits of it, well the bits with my names in it.

00:07:58.000 I've read loads of it.

00:08:00.000 What else are you talking about when it comes to addiction and mental health and the social and political aspect of these conditions?

00:08:08.000 Yes.

00:08:09.000 So, again, the addiction assumption in society in general is that it's a choice that people are making.

00:08:20.000 In fact, the whole legal system is based on the assumption that people are choosing to behave in certain ways, consciously choosing.

00:08:27.000 So they're consciously choosing to become addicted to illegal substances.

00:08:32.000 That's the assumption in the legal system.

00:08:35.000 Therefore, I argue that when we call it a criminal justice system, it's a really good name for it.

00:08:41.000 It's a criminal justice system. 1.00

00:08:43.000 Because it's criminally stupid in its assumptions. 0.99

00:08:48.000 I've never met anybody, and I've worked with really hardcore substance users, who actually woke up one morning and said, my ambition is to become a drug addict. 0.99

00:08:56.000 That's the first point.

00:08:57.000 Second point is that the medical assumption that we're dealing with an inherited brain disease is equally false, so that there's very little evidence despite what they say for any genetic causation of addiction.

00:09:11.000 What we're really looking at, and let's just do a little experiment here, I'll give you a definition of addiction and get you to participate.

00:09:18.000 I'm speaking to the audience here and also to my interviewer.

00:09:21.000 I'll define addiction as manifested in any behavior in which a person finds temporary pleasure or relief but suffers negative consequences in the long term and doesn't give up despite the negative consequences.

00:09:36.000 So pleasure, relief and craving in the short term, harm and inability to give up in the long term.

00:09:44.000 Now notice I said nothing about drugs.

00:09:46.000 I said any behavior.

00:09:47.000 So it could be substances, cocaine, crystal meth, caffeine, nicotine, whatever, alcohol.

00:09:52.000 Heroin, yes.

00:09:54.000 Also gambling, shopping, sex, pornography, eating, self-cutting, anorexia, bulimia, work, internet, gaming, extreme sports.

00:10:11.000 The issue is not the behavior as such, it's the internal relationship to it.

00:10:16.000 If there's craving, pleasure and relief in the short term, harm in the long term, and you're not giving it up, you've got an addiction.

00:10:24.000 I don't care what to.

00:10:25.000 So, here's what I want to ask here from the audience, is if by that definition you recognize that at one time or another you've had any kind of an addiction, just raise your hand.

00:10:36.000 Okay?

00:10:37.000 So what we've got here is the vast majority, if not everybody.

00:10:39.000 Now here's what I'm going to ask you now, I don't know if this works for the podcast purposes, I want to ask some of you to tell me, not what was wrong with your addiction, which you already know, but what was right about it?

00:10:39.000 Okay?

00:10:52.000 What did it give you in the short term that you craved, that you wanted?

00:10:55.000 We'll cover that later, right?

00:10:57.000 Just for the structuring and production of our podcast.

00:11:00.000 Because that is one of your great edicts and one of the, what I would call, mates maxims.

00:11:05.000 I've coined that.

00:11:08.000 When analyzing addiction, I talk when I'm in a program of recovery, I talk to other addicts all of the time.

00:11:16.000 And it's a very helpful tool to invite someone that is dealing with chemical dependency or any form of addiction.

00:11:22.000 Don't ask, don't assess the many negative consequences of addiction.

00:11:27.000 Look at what it does for the addict, the positive purpose that it serves.

00:11:30.000 Yeah, it's yours and I like it.

00:11:33.000 I use it all the time and I usually credit you for it depending on if I'm trying to impress the person or not.

00:11:40.000 When I'm with my own behaviors, I'm looking sometimes for connection, distraction, sense of self-worth, validation, escape.

00:11:48.000 These are all motivations.

00:11:50.000 Escape from what?

00:11:52.000 Pain.

00:11:52.000 Right.

00:11:53.000 So hence my mantra, not why the addiction, but why the pain?

00:11:56.000 And so what I'm saying is, just as you've articulately illustrated, Addictions, these qualities, connection, self-worth, pain relief, are they good things or bad things?

00:12:09.000 They're good things.

00:12:09.000 Yeah.

00:12:10.000 In other words, addiction, the addicted person just wants to feel like a normal human being.

00:12:14.000 So addiction is neither a choice nor is it a disease.

00:12:18.000 It's an attempt to solve the problem.

00:12:20.000 And that problem is rooted in trauma.

00:12:22.000 So, once we recognize that, why are we judging people for desperately seeking to escape states of extreme emotional distress, isolation, disconnection, pain?

00:12:34.000 So the addiction is not the primary issue.

00:12:35.000 The primary issue is the trauma that induces the mind state from which the person needs to escape.

00:12:42.000 And if you look at it from the population and the political point of view, like for example under COVID, just to give a recent instance, Alcoholism went up.

00:12:52.000 Addiction, drug use went up.

00:12:54.000 All kinds of addictive behaviors went up.

00:12:56.000 Why?

00:12:57.000 Because when people are stressed, and they have not the means to resolve their stress, they'll resort, amongst other things, to addictive behaviors.

00:13:05.000 Now that has all kinds of political implications, because if you look at, at least in the United States, and I bet if you did a class analysis here in Britain, of who's in jail because of addictions, addicted-related behaviors, in the States it's largely minority people by a huge disproportionate percentage.

00:13:25.000 In Canada, 30% of the people in our jails are indigenous people.

00:13:31.000 30% of my clients in the addicted area of Vancouver where I work were indigenous people.

00:13:37.000 They make up 4% of the Canadian population, 30% of the jail population, and indigenous women make up 50% of the Canadian jail female population, 4% of the general population.

00:13:50.000 What are we looking at?

00:13:51.000 We're looking at historical oppression and trauma and ongoing racism.

00:13:56.000 And that's what manifests in that need to escape.

00:14:00.000 Now, does the medical profession take that into account?

00:14:02.000 Does the legal profession even know about it?

00:14:05.000 We just keep punishing people for how we make them hurt.

00:14:09.000 We're punishing people for how we made them suffer.

00:14:13.000 And I bet in Britain here, if you did a class analysis of who's in jail, it's not going to be the upper crust.

00:14:19.000 Yes.

00:14:20.000 And of course the reason to answer, I imagine, a rhetorical question that was laced within your answer, the reason that you cannot desist from identifying the individual as the primary culprit in criminal activity when it comes to addiction is because the minute you challenge that paradigm, you are confronted with These issues are socially and politically created and it becomes a challenge to power to resolve the problem.

00:14:51.000 As long as it's individual nodes that are culpable rather than an underlying social issue, you don't have to alter society.

00:14:59.000 And so a difficult question is never asked.

00:15:03.000 One of the broader questions, Gabor, when I was preparing for this conversation, using my mind prior to being here, I used my mind, I went inside it and I thought, what do I want to ask Gabor Mate?

00:15:13.000 Because there'll be a moment when I'm looking into his eyes and now that moment is happening.

00:15:17.000 And this was the question.

00:15:19.000 How long do you think we can continue to extract compassion and spiritual solutions that recognize the ulterior oneness from our ongoing ideas around change?

00:15:30.000 How long can we continue to extract the idea that there needs to be a spiritual and compassionate component to the way that we organize society?

00:15:38.000 How long can we continue to have economics as the heart of our political and ideological systems?

00:15:44.000 And what Let's just answer that question, I suppose, first, because Fallout is quite an intense question.

00:15:49.000 And how do we, I suppose, move these ideas to the center, and is that part of the objective of your book?

00:15:55.000 Well, so, if I may just step around the question for a moment and then come back to it.

00:16:00.000 This phenomenon that you described, this extraction of the social, political, the spiritual, the experiential, from particular problems, goes way beyond the question of addiction.

00:16:11.000 Yes.

00:16:12.000 Your blessed former Prime Minister Tony Blair once talked about the problem of obesity.

00:16:17.000 Obesity is a rising problem in the Western world.

00:16:19.000 In Britain it's a huge problem.

00:16:21.000 It's a huge health problem.

00:16:23.000 And he said, this is not a public health issue.

00:16:26.000 It's a decision.

00:16:27.000 It's a result of millions of individual decisions.

00:16:31.000 What Tony Blair and his Neoliberal wisdom utterly ignored was that since the instigation of neoliberal policies, which increase inequality, which put more stress on the lower classes, obesity has become epidemic.

00:16:51.000 It's a stress response.

00:16:52.000 Yes.

00:16:53.000 It's not an individual.

00:16:55.000 Those individual decisions that he talks about are actually formed by social forces of which he is a prime representative.

00:17:02.000 Yes.

00:17:04.000 How long that can continue?

00:17:09.000 Well, you know, I was just reading a bit of a book, The Social Distance Between Us, by Darren McGarvey, a book that you endorsed.

00:17:19.000 And he says on the third page, a line that could have been taken from my book, The Myth of Normal.

00:17:25.000 And he says that he's talking about pre-COVID days.

00:17:27.000 And he says that the normal to which we would all like to return in a heartbeat was anything but.

00:17:36.000 And that line could have come out of my book, The Myth of Normal.

00:17:39.000 And how long?

00:17:42.000 Well, I can only tell you as long as we're willing to let them get away with it.

00:17:47.000 And it's not a question of willingness to let them get away with it, as long as people have wool over their eyes and they don't see reality.

00:17:56.000 And my intention in writing this book, and you know this, View that I have of you Russell as well as that what you ultimately committed to is you're committed to truth You know and and that's all I'm trying to say is just what is true about life.

00:18:11.000 What is true about human beings?

00:18:13.000 What is true about what we call human nature?

00:18:15.000 What is true about relationships?

00:18:16.000 What is true about health illness and so on?

00:18:20.000 People can be kept from the truth for a long long time, and I don't know at what point A society will get to the point of suffering where the majority will say, enough.

00:18:32.000 Because for the minority that actually is reaping the benefits, there's no problem whatsoever.

00:18:39.000 So when we talk about the system being broken, no it's not.

00:18:44.000 Yes, this is a challenge that we continually face, is that situations that we would diagnose or recognize as problematic are for the most powerful interests in the world advantageous.

00:18:55.000 This also, Gabor, already this conversation demonstrates the Impossibility of remaining politically neutral when talking about something that previously and actually is still contemporarily presented as a mental health and individual issue.

00:19:14.000 There is anything but that.

00:19:16.000 and requires radical and immediate political action to be addressed.

00:19:20.000 Immediate mobilization, radical transformation of consciousness,

00:19:23.000 reorganization of the world of finance, reorganization of our political systems.

00:19:28.000 This obviously helps us to understand why these questions are presented in the way they are

00:19:33.000 and answered in the manner that they consistently are.

00:19:36.000 Because before too long, you have to radicalize an entire population

00:19:39.000 and invite them to not participate in systems that are primarily about inducing compliance and subjugation

00:19:45.000 and present themselves as solutions.

00:19:48.000 As the radical hallucinogenic pioneer Terence McKenna was fond of saying, the culture is not your friend.

00:19:55.000 The culture is not your friend.

00:19:57.000 It presents itself as your friend.

00:19:58.000 Here are some products for you.

00:19:59.000 Here are some projects for you.

00:20:00.000 Here are some entertainments and distractions. 1.00

00:20:02.000 But the system requires you dumb and numb and distracted and complacent. 0.96

00:20:08.000 I suppose to sort of follow up a little on my question, I suppose that we have to become, you know, I know that Jordan Peterson, for example, would be a person that you would be at odds with a lot. 0.97

00:20:17.000 I sense this in some ways.

00:20:20.000 Jordan Peterson, he's been on this podcast a bunch of times, and in some ways I consider you similar figures.

00:20:28.000 Can I ask you about that?

00:20:30.000 There's nothing I agree with him about anything.

00:20:33.000 But you're not the first one to say that you notice some similarities.

00:20:36.000 So what is it that you notice?

00:20:37.000 He's infusing political discourse with psychiatric, in his case, understanding with information that's coming from like Jungian archetypes.

00:20:49.000 I think that he is in some ways fundamentally conservative and in some fundamental ways quite traditional.

00:20:56.000 And you are socially progressive in ways that are more obvious.

00:21:02.000 However, I am beginning to believe that one of the most important fissures that must be healed in our culture is this tension that exists between traditionalism and progressivism.

00:21:12.000 And I think the only way this tension can be eased politically and culturally is with a commitment to the decentralization of power wherever possible.

00:21:22.000 People must be able to run their own communities.

00:21:24.000 People say, like, remember the last time me and you chatted, Gabor?

00:21:27.000 I was going on like Ben Shapiro.

00:21:29.000 I was going on Ben Shapiro, right?

00:21:31.000 Who's a very traditional, conservative, orthodox Jew, right-wing commentator.

00:21:36.000 And of course, for those of you who don't know, Gabor is himself Jewish and a Holocaust survivor.

00:21:40.000 And we were talking about the issue of Palestine and I knew that I was going on Ben Shapiro or something like that.

00:21:45.000 And then I would like to talk to you and you gave me such a sort of like a powerful personal perspective on Palestine.

00:21:52.000 And I just, I feel like I've just been on maybe Ben Shapiro. 0.89

00:21:54.000 Oh, shit, man, I didn't confront him on any of these issues. 0.94

00:21:57.000 Anyway, like what I ultimately feel is Ben Shapiro has got every right to believe whatever he wants to believe as a Orthodox, you know, or near Orthodox Jew. 0.99

00:22:06.000 traditional practice and we have got the right to believe whatever we want to

00:22:11.000 believe. There are some global power issues that really need addressing but

00:22:16.000 at the level of a culture if we're continually killing each other over

00:22:20.000 cultural and social issues, refusing to bind with people have a different 0.99

00:22:25.000 perspective on family, gender, sexuality, if we can't see that what's required

00:22:30.000 is a degree of individual freedom, collective autonomy, the ability to form

00:22:33.000 our own societies, the willingness to just let people be traditional or 0.99

00:22:36.000 progressive and that our individual duty becomes about I disagree with you, but I recognize that when it comes to the crunch, it's none of my fucking business, and I'm gonna just leave you the fuck alone. 0.76

00:22:46.000 Unless we're willing to do that, I don't see how we're gonna actually confront, and I don't want to be dismissive of people that have given their lives for civil rights issues, but what I consider to be the most meaningful power base, which is economic and financial and global. 0.96

00:22:59.000 Well, you've been very, as I watched you over the last year or so, you've been very concerned with maintaining an independent point of view while being civil to those that didn't agree with you, you know, and to promote that civility in the discourse.

00:23:16.000 I think that's great, on the one hand.

00:23:19.000 On the other hand, I don't mind telling you, In my book, The Myth of Normal, I was going to write a chapter called The Other Side of Jordan, about Jordan Peterson.

00:23:31.000 Because I think what he represents is repressive, both in the political sense and in the personal sense.

00:23:39.000 And, no, to say that about him is to immediately invite all kinds of

00:23:46.000 contumely from his followers, but I can't help what I believe.

00:23:51.000 And I do quote him briefly in this book, and I'll just give you one example.

00:23:57.000 And the reason I'm saying it, there's no meaning of minds here.

00:24:00.000 There's no possible meaning of minds here.

00:24:02.000 What we have is two very distinct point of views about what it means to be a human being.

00:24:06.000 So he says that an angry young child should be made to sit by themselves until they come back to normal.

00:24:14.000 i.e.

00:24:15.000 anger in a young child is not normal and b. the child should be withdrawn from adult contact until he learns to comply with our expectations.

00:24:23.000 That's an invitation for self-repression.

00:24:26.000 That invitation to self... What does it mean to... So we have this disease called depression, with which he's been diagnosed, by the way, as have I. Actually, peas in a pod, the two of you.

00:24:42.000 But what does it mean to depress something?

00:24:45.000 It means to push it down.

00:24:46.000 What gets pushed down in depression?

00:24:49.000 Our emotions.

00:24:50.000 He's inviting people to promote depression in their children.

00:24:54.000 He's also inviting them to repress their natural anger, one of the essential requirements for human development.

00:25:01.000 And for the child, one of the irreducible needs, and I talk about this in the book, is the ability and the freedom of the child to experience all their emotions, grief, sadness, anger, joy, whatever, and still be fully accepted and celebrated by the parents.

00:25:17.000 Now, he would wish to deny children that, which, to my mind, promotes not only mental illness, but also autoimmune disease.

00:25:25.000 Because one of the commonest features of people with immune illness is their incapacity to experience healthy anger.

00:25:32.000 So from my point of view, and then he talks about intimidating kids, even by hitting them necessarily.

00:25:38.000 He actually makes the case in his book, 12 Rules for Life.

00:25:46.000 Well that's pernicious and all the studies show that children who are spent, even occasionally, they suffer as many symptoms of trauma as kids who are abused more severely.

00:25:58.000 So this is what he promotes.

00:26:00.000 There's no possible meaning of mine here.

00:26:02.000 Either I'm right or he is.

00:26:04.000 Well this is what I would say.

00:26:07.000 It's possible for us to disagree.

00:26:10.000 It's possible for... Well, we do disagree.

00:26:12.000 It's not just possible, we disagree.

00:26:13.000 So that's that.

00:26:14.000 We don't agree.

00:26:15.000 I don't agree with my own wife.

00:26:17.000 So the idea that I might agree with a set of Canadian academics... So what I would say, with regard to that, is that I'm really interested in hearing Jordan Peterson's opinion.

00:26:31.000 I know Jordan pretty well.

00:26:33.000 I respect him.

00:26:34.000 I respect him.

00:26:35.000 And I think he's like, I've got a powerful mind.

00:26:36.000 And I think he's an important cultural influence.

00:26:40.000 And this is what I feel is what I feel it like say without I'm thinking while you're saying that I'm a parent, I've got young children.

00:26:46.000 And I'm thinking about my children.

00:26:48.000 I'm thinking now and I'm remembering my own childhood, of course, I'm doing trying to do to do all these things simultaneously. I'm thinking, no, I

00:26:54.000 don't want to be, you can't leave Peggy or Mabel on their own when they're raging. You've

00:26:58.000 got to sit with them and feel that stuff with them. But then I also think, you know, and

00:27:02.000 that is what I would do. I wouldn't do what Jordan Peterson is suggesting with that matter. I

00:27:07.000 wouldn't do that. So I would agree with you because I've, but I also recognize it's

00:27:12.000 really bloody difficult.

00:27:13.000 It's really so hard to look after children.

00:27:16.000 It's really difficult to deal with them when they're raging like that.

00:27:19.000 And I can respect and understand someone having an authoritarian stance.

00:27:24.000 I can see how someone would arrive at that opinion.

00:27:26.000 And I also recognize, I also think more important is for, even with something as important as development,

00:27:33.000 and which you were saying is not only potentially causing psychological problems,

00:27:35.000 but health problems and both of them, you know what I mean?

00:27:38.000 You could commit suicide, you could end your own life, you know, from psychological problems.

00:27:42.000 So, you know, why do we need recourse to stuff that you can measure with a microscope or with a,

00:27:46.000 you know, with a, in a lab?

00:27:48.000 But I still think it's yet more important to go, Jordan Peterson believes this, Gabo Mate believes this.

00:27:55.000 When it comes to our own children, here is a range of information and a raft of data.

00:28:00.000 You choose what's right, you know, like the, you know, there doesn't need to be a meeting of minds.

00:28:04.000 I think there needs to be a symposium of communication and discussion.

00:28:08.000 And for like, and even and I think more, you know, God, if I may say even more importantly, when it comes to something like democracy, that we have to get to a position where you say, I advocate for this, I, I believe in immigration, for these reasons, I think that immigration should be handled in these ways.

00:28:21.000 But if you don't want If you want immigration in your community, then you are entitled to vote against it. 0.99

00:28:26.000 And if you do want immigration in your community, you are entitled to vote for it. 0.96

00:28:29.000 Phew! 1.00

00:28:30.000 Now the people of Britain don't have to... The working class in this country doesn't have to be at war with each other over the issue of immigration anymore.

00:28:36.000 Unified working class.

00:28:38.000 Populism.

00:28:39.000 Come together.

00:28:40.000 Fight the real power.

00:28:41.000 Nullify these phony arguments.

00:28:43.000 I'm not making any case that anybody should be silenced.

00:28:47.000 Okay?

00:28:47.000 Yeah.

00:28:47.000 None whatsoever.

00:28:51.000 The reason I didn't write the chapter on the other side of Jordan is because I thought it's just not that important what I think of Jordan Peterson.

00:28:59.000 And why waste the whole chapter on disagreeing with somebody?

00:29:02.000 Let them speak their reality and I'll speak mine and we'll see what happens.

00:29:10.000 Insofar, for example, as he stood up for the right to use whatever language he wanted, I totally support him.

00:29:18.000 But you know what?

00:29:19.000 At the end, when I evaluate any movement institution, like my own profession of medical practice, I see this playing not only a much more limited role in healing that it could possibly play, but actually playing an ideological role in buttressing a system that atomizes individuals, atomizes people.

00:29:42.000 And insofar as I speak of what I think about that, In that same sense, if anybody asks me about Peterson, I'll tell them what I think of Peterson and his ideology.

00:29:51.000 Do I deprive him, or do I even have the power or the desire to deprive him of the right to speak?

00:29:56.000 Of course not!

00:29:58.000 But should I be asked, I'll tell you exactly what I think of his philosophy.

00:30:03.000 Or that of Tony Blair's, or that of anybody else's.

00:30:09.000 But I'm much more concerned, actually, about speaking my own truth.

00:30:16.000 And one of the concerns in my book is really about authenticity, about people being ourselves.

00:30:26.000 I'm much more concerned about that you should be yourself.

00:30:29.000 Peter should be himself.

00:30:32.000 I should be myself as I truly am, not as somebody would have me be.

00:30:37.000 Not as I would want somebody to be, but as they need to be for themselves.

00:30:41.000 And my argument, one of the arguments about the health The deleterious impacts on health of this particular social structure and cultural arrangement is that it just denies people their authenticity.

00:30:57.000 And that has huge implications for their mental and physical health.

00:31:00.000 And so I'm all in favor of authenticity, whether or not I agree with the outcome or not.

00:31:05.000 One thing I feel, Gabor, is that many successful polemicists that occupy our cultural space, when I watch them, what I do not feel is love.

00:31:18.000 And this is what I do feel when I'm communicating with you, that love has to be at the center of our discourse.

00:31:24.000 Now, one of our challenges is that love can feel a little bit woo-woo, a little bit like it's something that's difficult to...

00:31:31.000 What do I want to say?

00:31:32.000 Introducing to patriarchal systems of financial dominance the idea that we have to love one another and also a post-enlightenment system of rationalism.

00:31:41.000 I feel that the rational argument for love is I feel that love is the felt experience of oneness.

00:31:46.000 Love is some experience beyond our psyche that we are connected to all things and our body understands this and tells us this.

00:31:55.000 Absolutely, and that is just the truth about human beings.

00:31:58.000 And I don't know how this will sound to your audience, but you know about this because I wrote you about it.

00:32:04.000 Three months ago or so, I was in the middle of a psilocybin ceremony with some indigenous leaders in Canada.

00:32:13.000 Now these people, for reasons that I've touched upon briefly, amongst the most traumatized people on earth.

00:32:20.000 Their children were abducted from their homes for over a hundred years by the state into institutions run by the Catholic Church where as one woman I know who was in her 60s now when she was four years old and taking this residential school where the intention was to educate the Indian out of the Indian as they put it.

00:32:41.000 And she was four years old.

00:32:42.000 She spoke her tribal language.

00:32:44.000 They stuck a pin in her tongue. 1.00

00:32:47.000 And for a whole hour she sat there.

00:32:48.000 She couldn't put her tongue back in her mouth because she would cut her lips. 0.90

00:32:52.000 That's the indigenous experience in Canada.

00:32:56.000 And in these church-run residential schools, one of the people at this retreat that I was at where we were doing this, which I'll tell you more about in a moment, was an indigenous leader who was next week going to travel to the Vatican where the Pope was going to issue an apology for the appalling suffering that the church had imposed and the church and he traveled to the Vatican and the Pope Francis did issue an apology.

00:33:21.000 You know what he said?

00:33:23.000 He said, I'm sorry for what some Catholics did to your people. 0.99

00:33:27.000 That's kind of like saying, a German saying, I'm so sorry to you Jewish people. 1.00

00:33:33.000 I'm so sorry for what some Germans did to you.

00:33:36.000 It was the most paltry apology I've heard in history.

00:33:41.000 But to go back to the event, these are leaders of indigenous people in Canada who want to work through the trauma and heal the trauma of their people.

00:33:52.000 And the trauma is incredible.

00:33:53.000 It's beyond words.

00:33:56.000 And they found that working with psychedelic substances is a powerful support for their healing.

00:34:06.000 So they invited me to participate, knowing my work with that modality.

00:34:13.000 So I did the work with these people.

00:34:17.000 The sorrow that I experienced was unlike anywhere else in the world, as was the love and the beauty and the connection to nature and spirituality and welcome.

00:34:28.000 It was also incredible, but In the middle of the ceremony, you came up for me.

00:34:34.000 And I actually wrote you that night, you know?

00:34:37.000 And what came up for me was just the love that you are in the world, you know?

00:34:41.000 Behind the... I wouldn't say behind, but along with the outrageous humor and just cutting wit and rationality.

00:34:50.000 I just felt your love.

00:34:51.000 That's what I felt.

00:34:52.000 And so I wrote to you from there, you know?

00:34:55.000 So I get what you're talking about.

00:34:59.000 So, thanks for that mirroring of whatever love you perceive in me, but it's mutual.

00:35:05.000 Thank you.

00:35:05.000 Thank you for saying that.

00:35:07.000 When people are nice to me... Don't be nice to me, Gabor! 1.00

00:35:10.000 I can't take kindness!

00:35:14.000 The furnace of adversity built me. 0.97

00:35:18.000 If you're kind to me, you'll kill me.

00:35:20.000 Thank you.

00:35:21.000 That's a very beautiful thing for you to say.

00:35:21.000 No, I accept that.

00:35:23.000 Thank you.

00:35:23.000 It's just what happened, actually.

00:35:25.000 It wasn't like I was thinking.

00:35:28.000 Your image just came up like that.

00:35:31.000 Thank you.

00:35:31.000 That's the state I was in.

00:35:33.000 That's what happens when you get stoned, people, is that you have hallucinations.

00:35:37.000 Just to clarify, you were on drugs, so it's possible your perception was warped by this.

00:35:44.000 Also, during that time, and as is covered in your book, you talk about these hallucinogenic and psychedelic experiences of potentially revelatory.

00:35:52.000 Around these I have a raft of questions about the potential for the psychedelic experience to allow us to access aspects of our consciousness that may be concealed, as William James said, by veils, but that are ever-present and within us.

00:36:03.000 Also, Gabor, as a recovering drug addict, I'm just chomping at the bit to take some drugs.

00:36:08.000 So, is there a way that people in recovery, such as myself, could, under certain circumstances, use hallucinogens for part of an ongoing... First of all, I would say, let's watch your language, OK?

00:36:20.000 Yes, sir.

00:36:21.000 They're not hallucinogens.

00:36:22.000 OK.

00:36:23.000 You don't hallucinate.

00:36:25.000 Number one.

00:36:25.000 And number two, they're not drugs.

00:36:27.000 OK?

00:36:28.000 They are medicines.

00:36:29.000 Do you remember you were saying you love me a minute ago?

00:36:31.000 Sir?

00:36:32.000 If so, why are you trying to hurt me?

00:36:34.000 Yeah, so they're medicines, okay?

00:36:37.000 There's an important distinction.

00:36:40.000 A drug is taken, whether it's heroin or whether it's Prozac, a drug is taken to temporarily change the chemical functioning of your brain, so as to induce a different internal mental psychological experience.

00:37:00.000 The medicine is taken to promote healing.

00:37:03.000 Narcan doesn't promote healing.

00:37:05.000 Prozac doesn't promote healing.

00:37:07.000 I've taken Prozac.

00:37:09.000 It helped me temporarily.

00:37:10.000 I no longer need it.

00:37:13.000 Thank God.

00:37:13.000 I'm way past beyond that.

00:37:15.000 But at the time, I'm grateful.

00:37:19.000 That's a drug.

00:37:20.000 So I don't use drug in a negative sense.

00:37:22.000 I just use it in the sense of a substance that you take to temporarily change the biology of your brain so as to induce a different mind state than the distrusting one that you're in.

00:37:32.000 That's a drug.

00:37:33.000 A medicine is used to promote healing.

00:37:35.000 You don't keep taking it.

00:37:37.000 The Prozac works as long as you take it.

00:37:40.000 Heroin works as long as you take it.

00:37:42.000 As soon as you stop taking it, you might even go through withdrawal, but it certainly stops working.

00:37:48.000 The healing medicines promote a process inside you that actually leads to your healing.

00:37:55.000 Now, by the way, I'm no psychedelic evangelist.

00:38:01.000 Recently I refused to endorse a book.

00:38:04.000 I said, even if this is the best book in the world ever written, I'm not going to endorse it.

00:38:07.000 Because the title was, How Psychedelics Will Save the World.

00:38:11.000 And I said, for God's sakes, nothing is going to save the world, least of all psychedelics.

00:38:15.000 But that doesn't mean they can't be helpful in certain situations.

00:38:19.000 So, Freud once said that dreams are the royal road to the unconscious.

00:38:24.000 Well, today he might well say that psychedelics are another royal road to the unconscious, because As you said, quoting William James, they remove the veil of the conscious and programmed, defensive, egoic mind, and you get to experience what's underneath it.

00:38:42.000 And you get to experience the terror, And the pain that you've been running away from all your life with not you personally but any of us with our addictions.

00:38:53.000 You experience the rage that you've been suppressing because somebody told you not to be angry as a kid and you wouldn't be accepted if you're angry.

00:39:02.000 So you repress your rage and now you've got multiple sclerosis.

00:39:07.000 Or you got depression.

00:39:09.000 You get to experience it.

00:39:11.000 Underneath of that is also this tremendous love that I experienced a few months ago.

00:39:15.000 There's also the truth, there's also clarity, there's also connection to everything that is.

00:39:21.000 All of this is veiled by the conscious and repressed egotistical mind.

00:39:27.000 In the right context, and I have to really emphasize the right context, under the right guidance, with proper pre-experience support and with proper integration afterwards, these substances can be really healing.

00:39:43.000 And I've seen people recover from addictions, from autoimmune diseases, from mental health conditions.

00:39:49.000 Some people, of course, Shouldn't take them.

00:39:53.000 Those with psychosis, mania, heart disease, whatever, you know, there's exclusions.

00:39:57.000 But we're talking about people who have no contraindications, given the right environment, the right substance, and the right leadership.

00:40:05.000 This can be profoundly helpful.

00:40:07.000 And I was talking to Michael Pollan, I don't know if you have him on your podcast?

00:40:11.000 Yeah.

00:40:11.000 So Michael wrote this book, How to Change Your Mind, about psychedelics, which is a really unlikely bestseller.

00:40:17.000 But it became a bestseller.

00:40:18.000 And I said, I asked Michael, and I quote him in my book, were you surprised?

00:40:24.000 And he says what he was most surprised by is that he expected all kinds of pushback and negative response from within the psychiatric profession.

00:40:34.000 But he actually said he got a lot of appreciation and interest, because they know how thin their toolkit really is.

00:40:41.000 They know how essentially ineffective their understandings and methodologies are.

00:40:48.000 So therefore, they're open, many of them, to looking at psychedelics as a new adjunct to their work.

00:40:55.000 Now, I would say that would be a minority of psychiatrists at this point, but what I'm saying to you is, don't think of them as drugs.

00:41:01.000 When you took drugs, you took them to escape from reality, not to experience reality.

00:41:06.000 When you take ayahuasca, you take it to experience reality.

00:41:10.000 Even if it's a reality that you don't like, but it's a reality that's healing.

00:41:14.000 So it's just the opposite.

00:41:16.000 So we talk about set and setting.

00:41:19.000 The set is the mindset with which you do it.

00:41:22.000 Now, if you do it with the mindset to escape, to have a good time with your buddies and so on, well, certain things you shouldn't even try, because they're not going to give you that.

00:41:34.000 But then you're doing it for the wrong reason, the wrong mindset.

00:41:38.000 If you're doing it in the wrong setting, it's not going to work.

00:41:43.000 But with the right set, the right mindset and the right setting, the right guidance, I've seen them, I've experienced them.

00:41:51.000 They can be very powerful.

00:41:52.000 So yeah, I spend, out of 33 chapters, I spend one on this question of my own experience with psychedelics and my own clinical observations.

00:42:03.000 I don't see it as a huge deal, but in terms of what I've experienced, their value is just self-evident.

00:42:10.000 That's what I would say about it.

00:42:12.000 Thank you.

00:42:15.000 The reason I suppose there is a particularity when someone has a history of addiction that is distinct from using these substances, these medicines, to use your preferred vernacular, is that if you're using the medicine in order to transition from active chemical dependency to freedom from chemical dependency, I can understand that.

00:42:35.000 And also, I guess you cover with your use of the term set and set in what the conditions are and perhaps could be.

00:42:44.000 In particular, there is a sort of an understanding among people in recovery that to meddle with the kind of this, the thing is, is with the 12 step methodology, there is necessarily in an abstinence based model, some Puritanism, also because of the time of its advent and creation.

00:43:04.000 1930s America is a kind of a sort of, whilst there is the influence of William James and of Carl Jung, there's a good deal of good old fashioned American Protestantism in there as well.

00:43:14.000 And what I suppose interests me is that, you know, Bill Wilson, the founder of the Alcoholics Anonymous group, was borderline shamanic profit material, like flashes of white light.

00:43:27.000 And he used LSD, as you know.

00:43:28.000 He used LSD, of course, you know, subsequent to his sobriety date.

00:43:32.000 However, there's a sort of an understanding that for people that are in, e.g., long-term recovery, long-term sobriety, that the use of, you know, even medicines of this nature could could create a kind of a disruption,

00:43:44.000 and that we're sort of uniquely unable to make rational choices when it comes to mood or in

00:43:50.000 substances.

00:43:51.000 So this is just like, you know, that was the, I guess one of the, that was the particular condition

00:43:56.000 that I was trying to address, and also my inability to even correctly discern

00:44:01.000 what my own motivations might be.

00:44:03.000 Yeah.

00:44:04.000 Because the addict in me remains virile.

00:44:08.000 That guy's gone nowhere.

00:44:09.000 And unless he's directed towards, sort of, purpose, you know, like... The things about the 12 steps that, in my opinion, are irrefutable, and we've discussed before the lack of particular address around trauma, although they caveat their information with, more will be revealed, we know only a little, more will be discovered, we're at the beginning of this journey.

00:44:28.000 You know, the things that are beautiful about this piece of folk technology, this folk ideology, the 12 steps, is the idea that you must overcome precisely this nexus of internal data that we regard as the self this set of patterns and beliefs and memories this conglomeration of trauma that if you that you do not give up the substance you give up this set of beliefs and you will transcend it

00:44:54.000 And integral to these ideas is the notion of surrender of self-will, which I have found almost word for word in like, you know, sort of some what you might term New Age thinkers, but also in pretty devout and esoterically underwritten Buddhist studies, trying to transcend self, transcend self.

00:45:11.000 And, you know, I'm sometimes unable, Gabor, to identify which, who's, as they say in Twelve Steps, who's driving the bus.

00:45:19.000 If I may say, what I hear in your The narration is a certain degree of lack of self-trust.

00:45:27.000 Like you don't trust yourself to make the right decision.

00:45:30.000 And I can understand why anybody with a serious history of substance addiction might have that suspicion of, you know, which part of me wants to do this?

00:45:41.000 The part that really is committed to healing or just the part that wants to space out and have a better, beautiful experience?

00:45:47.000 I get that.

00:45:47.000 Yeah.

00:45:48.000 This is why I talked about the importance of preparation beforehand.

00:45:52.000 Because it would take some conversation with somebody like you to discern where your interest in a psychic experience might even come from.

00:46:00.000 We might very well come to the conversation and, you know, Russell, let me issue the public invitation.

00:46:07.000 Every time you want to have that conversation, just give me a call and we'll have a Zoom talk about it.

00:46:11.000 Not for public consumption, but just for you and I.

00:46:15.000 If we find...

00:46:16.000 I want to know God. I want to know God absolutely.

00:46:19.000 I want to know nothing but God. I want only God.

00:46:21.000 I want annihilation of all illusion.

00:46:23.000 I want absolute authenticity and truth so that I can return with edicts

00:46:27.000 that I am capable then of spreading and displaying socially, broadly,

00:46:30.000 so that we can invigorate the population to a radical global revolution,

00:46:33.000 so that I can infuse politics with true spirituality, so that people can transcend the veil,

00:46:38.000 so that I can come back with a tablet in my hand, so that I can be the burning bush and somehow not leave it

00:46:43.000 all to the ego.

00:46:44.000 Does that seem like a good reason?

00:46:46.000 Not very ambitious, are you?

00:46:48.000 No.

00:46:50.000 That's Thursday!

00:46:53.000 But actually, sir, may I ask, are there some other things about the... Let me tell you something.

00:46:57.000 Let me just tell you something.

00:46:57.000 OK.

00:47:00.000 The first time I did Ayahuasca... Again, I'm not a traveling Ayahuasca salesman, OK?

00:47:05.000 And if somebody... Roll up!

00:47:08.000 And if somebody...

00:47:09.000 doesn't want it, and they have strict principles that would forbid them.

00:47:13.000 I would never talk anybody into doing this stuff, okay?

00:47:16.000 I'm only answering questions.

00:47:17.000 You know, I'm only saying, what was it that I know?

00:47:19.000 Now, how did I find out about this stuff?

00:47:22.000 After my book on addiction in the Realm of Hunger Ghosts was published, I would travel talking about the book, and people would say, what do you know about the healing of addiction in Ayahuasca?

00:47:32.000 And I'd say, nothing.

00:47:34.000 And then the next talk, What do you know about the healing?

00:47:38.000 And I say, nothing.

00:47:39.000 But the third, fourth, fifth time I start getting annoyed.

00:47:42.000 Do you remember the scene from The Life of Brian, where they keep saying he's the Messiah, and he's really annoyed by it?

00:47:49.000 My favorite scene! 1.00

00:47:50.000 Yeah, and finally he says, Okay, I'm the Messiah, now fuck off! 1.00

00:47:56.000 And the people say, how shall we fuck off, my Lord? 1.00

00:48:00.000 I kind of felt that way about it. 1.00

00:48:02.000 I said, I know nothing about it, now fuck off! 1.00

00:48:06.000 But then somebody said to me, did you realize you could experience it here in Vancouver? 1.00

00:48:10.000 You didn't have to travel to Peru, because there's a shaman coming up to lead a ceremony.

00:48:14.000 So I signed up for it, and I finally realized, Russell, that the universe was knocking on my door.

00:48:20.000 That this question was coming to me because I needed to hear it.

00:48:25.000 Then I heard it.

00:48:26.000 I heard the call and I participated in the ceremony and I took the medicine, listened to the chanting.

00:48:37.000 There was a little baby in the room cooing away.

00:48:40.000 Within half an hour, 40 minutes, tears of love started pouring down my face.

00:48:46.000 Not love for anybody I knew.

00:48:48.000 Not love for my loved ones.

00:48:50.000 That was there.

00:48:51.000 But just love.

00:48:53.000 And tears.

00:48:54.000 And I realized In a moment.

00:49:00.000 Why people have been asking me this.

00:49:01.000 Because I realized how I'd shut down my heart against love all my life.

00:49:07.000 Because my heart had been so hurt early in life.

00:49:09.000 There's an amazing story I could tell you about that, by the way.

00:49:12.000 Trying to be a runner podcast.

00:49:15.000 Well, how I'd shut down my heart against love, but how I don't need to.

00:49:20.000 You know, and so I realized both the pain that I've been running from and the awareness that I don't need to keep running.

00:49:29.000 That happened within half an hour.

00:49:31.000 Now, I wish I could tell you that, hey, no, I was a transformed person.

00:49:36.000 No, I wasn't.

00:49:37.000 But two days later, I was back to the same.

00:49:41.000 Because it takes work to integrate this information.

00:49:44.000 You can have these experiences and be left with a memory.

00:49:49.000 So it's not like this is a magic wand that somebody points at you.

00:49:54.000 But I sure saw the possibility.

00:49:56.000 And that's when I decided to start working with this stuff.

00:49:58.000 So that was my experience.

00:50:01.000 And I've seen it over and over again in so many others.

00:50:03.000 Jung's correspondence with the founder of the 12-step program, Bill Wilson, included the interesting observation that the requirement for recovery from substance dependency, in this instance alcoholism, was a spiritual experience And then the ongoing support of a like-minded community.

00:50:23.000 And I can imagine that that would be helpful in integrating the kind of epiphanies that you're describing.

00:50:29.000 We will go to questions for the audience for like sort of 20 minutes.

00:50:31.000 I just want to say this thing because it came out, it's very personal, I suppose.

00:50:35.000 When you've had this relationship that I have had with appetite, how do you, Gabor, how do I, Gabor, discern between The appetites that are being guided by what we might call higher purpose, higher case self versus lower case self, and the just sort of the ongoing will and wants.

00:50:57.000 Have you any experience or understanding?

00:51:00.000 Because I still feel powerful will and I'm sometimes unable to identify when this is the kind of shack the rising service of a higher entity type energy,

00:51:12.000 and when it's just, well, I would like that, and I'm gonna do whatever it takes to get it.

00:51:15.000 I can be very stubborn, obstinate, willful, self-centered.

00:51:18.000 How do you make those distinctions?

00:51:21.000 Well, I have in me the same drives.

00:51:23.000 I have in me the same urgency to escape, and bless her soul, my wife is often a little bit,

00:51:31.000 more than a little bit skeptical about my desire sometimes to participate in psychedelic experiences

00:51:40.000 because she knows that escape is part of me all too well.

00:51:44.000 So I totally get it.

00:51:47.000 But I also learned to trust the process and the people I work with and the people whose hands I entrust myself in.

00:51:53.000 And I also trust myself that when I go into that experience, it's not going to be for the purpose of pleasure or escape or temporary joy at the expense of my own true Self, that I'm actually going there to help remove that veil and to see an aspect of reality that otherwise I may have more trouble contacting.

00:52:23.000 And again that would take some conversation and that would actually take some conversation because I sense at least two parts of you here or maybe even three.

00:52:32.000 One of them that urgent If you have a child desperate to escape suffering, showing up in the adult body of an addicted individual, you also have this deep desire for truth and transcendence and depth and divinity.

00:52:57.000 And then you have at least a third persona who's trying to evaluate who's in charge here.

00:53:00.000 So it would take a conversation to really get at who's really Whose call really do you want to follow?

00:53:13.000 I can't tell you.

00:53:16.000 But that's a conversation that can be had, and I believe it is within you to arrive at the truth of it.

00:53:21.000 At the end of each conversation, with yourself, maybe a guided one, but you'll arrive at, yeah, this is just the addict part of me wanting one more escape experience.

00:53:29.000 Or no, this is the part of me that wants to go deeper.

00:53:33.000 And you would know.

00:53:35.000 One way that we might make such a diagnosis is with some eternal verification and validation, particularly this is built into the sort of 12 step cultural experience that is coming only from inside you, then you are not really able to determine which of this inner familial system is in that particular instance, you know, providing the governing principle.

00:53:56.000 And for clarity, I was inquiring not only with regard to the matter that we're discussing, but with all matters of appetite where Sometimes, when I'm not careful, my life just becomes the expression of want.

00:54:09.000 Particularly, almost within the domain, Gabor, of your first book, Hungry Ghosts.

00:54:16.000 Like, all I want is this thing that wants filling up and it will stop at nothing.

00:54:23.000 Well, let me jump in and say something.

00:54:25.000 You did this little routine a while ago, which was very entertaining, I'm going to God and transcend and transform and burning bush.

00:54:39.000 But you know what?

00:54:40.000 You are parroting a real, true aspect of yourself.

00:54:44.000 There is that in you.

00:54:46.000 Very much.

00:54:47.000 And I come back to something you said to me when I was writing this book and I was really suffering over it.

00:54:54.000 And I really had doubts as to whether I could do it, whether I'm big enough.

00:54:57.000 Maybe I'll finally expose my utter incompetence to the whole world. 0.94

00:55:01.000 You know, all these people expecting the book, publishers paying me for it and I'll deliver a piece of junk. 0.93

00:55:08.000 I went through panic.

00:55:09.000 At one point my blood pressure started going up.

00:55:12.000 You know, I usually have the blood pressure of a baby.

00:55:15.000 Just because I was stressing myself over it.

00:55:17.000 And I was talking to you.

00:55:18.000 And you said something extraordinarily helpful.

00:55:21.000 You said, Remember, you're not writing this for yourself, you're writing this for the world.

00:55:27.000 So I would say the same to you.

00:55:29.000 I'm not telling you to do psychedelics, but the question that you're asking about which part of you is driving the boat here, that answer you owe to yourself, because there's a part of you that Wants to serve the world.

00:55:45.000 And part of your fascination, but sort of an anxious fascination with psychedelics, is there's a part of you that really wants to know, maybe this would enhance my capacity to fulfill my mission on earth.

00:55:59.000 I'm not saying therefore you should do it, but I'm saying you've got that same tension.

00:56:04.000 So what I'm saying to you is, like you said to me, that you're not writing this book for you, you're not asking this question just for yourself.

00:56:14.000 Yes, fear not for I have redeemed you, I have called you by your name, you are mine, Isaiah.

00:56:19.000 We can be free of fear when we surrender to the purpose, when we don't exist anymore, when we belong to God, then there is no self and then we're cool.

00:56:27.000 Gabor, I'm very grateful to you for joining us.

00:56:29.000 I feel you are Bodhisattva.

00:56:30.000 I feel that you help to ferry people across.

00:56:32.000 I recognize in you great suffering and great beauty and great love and I feel it when I'm around you and I think everybody feels it.

00:56:40.000 I feel that you are a great teacher and you bring wisdom in an accessible way and you are never As far as I can tell, pious or condescending, and it seems to me that, you know, what I know wounded people need, speaking as one, is of course we need instruction, and of course we need guidance, but above all, we need love.

00:56:58.000 Thank you.

00:56:59.000 Well, thank you.

00:57:00.000 Cheers, you lot.

00:57:01.000 Thanks very much.

00:57:03.000 Stay free.

00:57:04.000 See it first on Rumble.

00:57:06.000 Hello there, you awakening wonders.

00:57:08.000 Thanks for joining me for Stay Free with Russell Brand.

00:57:11.000 Thanks for watching.

00:57:17.000 Sir Jordan Peterson.

00:57:18.000 Dr. Jordan Peterson.

00:57:19.000 You know, I was pilloried as a right-wing demon.

00:57:23.000 You want a goal that you can never attain, so you can always move closer to the goal.

00:57:30.000 Welcome to a new episode of System Update.

00:57:32.000 Since the last time you heard any of them in any earnest way engage in self-reflection, what is it that we did to lose the trust and faith of the public?

00:57:42.000 What does it mean to be an American?

00:57:45.000 It means we believe in a radical dream that our founding fathers had.

00:57:48.000 that the people who we elect to run the government ought to be the ones

00:57:54.000 who actually run the government.

00:57:57.000 I had a great time in Talish, Pakistan.

00:58:17.000 Switch off.

Stay Free - Russel Brand - August 04, 2023

Gabor Maté on Trauma & Addiction. Plus, Jordan Peterson & Depression - Stay Free #183

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