Alan Watt – Interview @ Wellness Day 2011
Alan Watt is a screenwriter and novelist. He is also the founder and creative director of the LA Writers Lab. After presenting at Wellness Day, 2011 – Alan made some time for a very thoughtful interview that is available below.
Please bookmark our YouTube Channel and keep checking back here often. Many innovative minds in the recovery world were interviewed at this year’s event and footage is being rolled out gradually over the coming weeks to the greater community.
Transcripts and links to the remainder of Alan’s interview are available below:
QUESTION 01 – Please tell us a bit about what you do and why? (link to video)
I’m a writer and a writing teacher. I started writing when I was a little kid. I’ve been writing my whole life. I started teaching writing in 98. I got a job at UCLA for the summer and really loved it and formed LA Writers Lab in 2002 because I really wanted to teach this process of getting the story out of your imagination to the page and its really a right brain process. It’s really about staying out of the result. It’s really about understanding why you write. Why you write is really more important than what you write. And that’s what I do.
QUESTION 02 – How did you come to your field of work? (link to video)
Again I was always a writer and it’s always something I gravitated towards, helping other writers with their writing and I’m really fascinated by story. Its just something I kind of fell into really. I had written a novel and was paid a lot of money for it and then the money started to run out and I couldn’t sell my second novel and suddenly I found myself in this situation, “Well what do I do? I’ll teach writing” so its kind of this thing that I happened in to. It became something I really really love and it’s now become a part of my life’s work
QUESTION 03 – How do you approach addiction directly or indirectly in your field of work? (link to video)
There is a real connection, I think, between addiction and creativity and I think one of the reasons I love teaching this creative process so much is because just like addiction is often viewed as a problem, it’s the same thing with creativity. People approach story as if it’s a problem to be solved. There is a great quote by Einstein where he says ‘ you can’t solve a problem with the same level of consciousness that created the problem.’ So what I began to discover in working with story in working with writers is that at the heart of story there is no problem. What there really is is a dilemma and that’s what Einstein is talking about because what we are struggling with as human beings is dilemma and I began to see that problems are solved while dilemmas are resolved. There’s a shift in perception and story is all about transformation. Its the reason we are drawn to story .T he desire to write is the desire to evolve or resolve something that we are seeking to understand. This is why the 12 steps are so effective for addiction because it’s a spiritual malady. You can’t solve addiction just like you can’t solve story.
QUESTION 04 – How do you think your contribution to healing people intersects with some of the other things that are going on here today? (link to video)
That’s a great question. I feel like any healing that results from writing a story is a byproduct. I don’t mean this in any callous way but I’m not interested in my writing students’ personal lives at all. I’m interested in their story. I’m interested in them finding the most dynamic version of their story and I think that if I were interested in their personal lives that would actually prevent me from doing my work. I’ll have students telling me the most dramatic unbelievable situations and I don’t really ask if it’s true or really happened. What I’m really interested in is the nature of the experience and so I think that the by helping people through writing and the creative process healing can result but healing is a bi product of telling their story but its not the goal.
Dr. Stephen Dansiger – Interview @ Wellness Day 2011
ONE80CENTER Executive Director & Primary Therapist Dr. Stephen Dansiger, PsyD as interviewed at this year’s Wellness Day 2011.
Dr. Stephen Dansiger has provided training, education, leadership, coaching and therapy for a diverse population for many years. Holding a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology, he has created and run groups at several top treatment facilities, as well as serving as a Primary Therapist. In his private practice, he specializes in all substance and behavioral addictions, as well as working with PTSD, Complex PTSD, depression, anxiety and other disorders. Dr. Dansiger is a fully EMDRIA Certified EMDR therapist and uses it extensively in his private practice as well as with clients at ONE80CENTER.
Please bookmark our YouTube Channel and keep checking back here often. Many innovative minds in the recovery world were interviewed at this year’s event and footage is being rolled out gradually over the coming weeks to the greater community.
Transcripts and links to the remainder of Dr. Dansiger’s interview are available below:
QUESTION 01 – Tell us a bit about what you do. (link to video)
My name is Steve Dansiger. I am executive director at one80center. I also have a private practice in Beverly Hills. I am the overseer of the wellness program at One80. I also work director with the clinical director Berni Fried directing the clinical operations here
QUESTION 02 – How did you get in to the recovery world? (link to video)
I got in to the recovery world through the door that many people do, my own recovery. What happened was I was drinking too much and taking too many drugs and when I was 26 years old I had a bottom. I also had many other bottoms. My other bottoms were more devastating and physical. This bottom was more spiritual and emotional, like “I cant do this anymore .I surrender” kind of deal and so that brought me in to the world of recovery as a recovery person and I didn’t get in to it professionally for many years. I was a high school teacher and I was a musician and a writer and then I got in to a form of education that really put me in contact with people’s problems. I was a diversity trainer and managed conflict resolution. All those kind of things and so I always felt like I was a therapist. And then I had an experience where I was working with a small group of young people and I realized they all had substance abuse problems and that moment was kind of life changing and I wondered ‘I wonder what it would be like to help them and if that would help them get out of some of the problems they were getting in to”. So that’s how I got in to it and the way it went. I went back in to school. Ever since I became a therapist I’ve always had one foot in the recovery world
QUESTION 03 – What do you think are the of the more important innovations or new knowledge in the field of treatment? (link to video)
I think the reason it’s exciting to be in the field is because there’s a ton of them. Some it has to do with the neuroscience, which is not my forte – but something that I’m really interested in. We’re literally starting to know enough about the brain to be able to actually say things about it – whereas before it was really all conjecture. We’re starting to know more about the plasticity of the brain, the healing potential of the brain – which opens up a whole world. One of the worlds it really opens up is trauma-focused therapy and all of the theoretical orientation behind that. I specialize in EMDR therapy, which is heavily predicated on the idea of the brain having plasticity, being able to heal itself – and us as therapists being able to give clients the opportunity to have those things engage. So there’s a whole shift in a paradigm towards trauma focus and looking at trauma… it’s taken us a lot of years to get here… to look at trauma not just as a precursor to addiction, but to look at it as it’s own separate thing that allows us to heal the addiction and the trauma. The person is then less prone to relapse. So for me, personally – and professionally as a therapist – that’s the biggest innovation. EMDR, Somatic Experiencing, other therapies that address those issues and see addiction through that prism.
QUESTION 04 – What, if any – wellness activities do you incorporate into the treatment of your clients / patients? (link to video)
I’ll answer that in two ways. One in my private practice: I’ve been meditating in the Zen tradition for over 20-years now. Meditation and Mindfulness and those kind of constructs are brought in all the time. I think as a person and a therapist who has done that practice for as long as I have, it becomes part of the way that I relate to the client. I think it’s almost automatic. Also in my private practice I have a great spirit of curiosity about all of the different aspects of wellness in a person’s life. I am listening for keywords, I’m listening to what kind of resources we can bring in. At ONE80CENTER, it’s our primary focus. A big part of my job is to work with our Wellness Director to find every single resource that’s out there that can potentially help the client. We had a speaker today, I think it was Dr. Timothy Fong – who was talking about medications, but also talked about using all modalities… looking for the thing that will help that particular person. What can be a cure for one, can be poison for another. So it’s really trying to understand what each particular person is bringing to the table and what might represent an increase in wellness for them. Basically, we bring the kitchen sink – but not throw it at them. We, as a staff – listen to the client and try and help to guide them… from spirituality and nutrition to exercise. Mind, body, spirit.
QUESTION 05 – If you are in recovery how do you think that impacts the way you approach your work? (link to video)
I think is that there is a positive side to the fact that I have gone through a lot of the experiences. There could be a negative side to that too because that could lead me to project my own experience on to someone else but because I realized that a long time ago and had many mentors beat that out of me, of course I could slip in to it always have to track myself. But I think that I have become pretty good at utilizing the fact that I have been there on the clients behalf, without it being sponsorship in AA. It’s a clinical relationship where because I have that experience and I have had that exposure to and worked with all these wellness modalities I feel like it definitely feeds my perspective and helps me better understand what a person is going through and heal them .I am very careful not to think “they are going through this and this is what I did when I went through this. “ I think my clinical training helped me to see that this is not clinical. I am also very careful not to think of my clinical work as my recovery. My recovery is my recovery. Before I got my doctorate I got my masters and my first semester the only thing I learned was ‘you are going to need to take care of yourself in this profession.’ That was it. That was the only thing I learned the whole semester. So I am really aware that I need to be very vigilant about my own recovery and recovery and working as a clinician in recovery.
QUESTION 06 – What do you believe are some holistic ways that can beneficially supplement more traditional means of treatment for addiction towards a positive outcome? (link to video)
Just in thinking of the word holistic, our speakers today were a very eclectic mix of perspectives. But the one unifying theme I heard today was that each different perspective is actually part of one holistic approach. I think of the traditional approach as being part of the holistic approach. It’s more about how the different modalities might interlock with each other and provide the best outcomes. The ones that are near and dear to me are trauma focused therapy, somatic experiencing. It’s strange with all this new data to support it, that it’s still looked at as cutting-edge or labeled with an undeserved cache as alternative treatment. It’s actually just really, really good therapy. So EMDR and Yoga are treatments in addition to all the other things that it is. It really changes the brain and the mind, body, spirit connection. Any and all other practices like that, I come from a Zen background – so sitting meditation, focusing on breathing… and then there’s some things that people think of traditionally, but forget to really individualize like exercise. It’s not one size fits all. Finding ways to bring treatment teams together, all talking to each other – to find ways to bring meaningful activities to people in recovery.
QUESTION 07 – What do you think about the role of nutrition in early recovery? (link to video)
I think that it is utterly crucial and a couple of our speaker addressed it today. And I addressed it today wit an anecdote about a friend who remarked that if he were in a bad mood he would think he had to get a new therapist or a new AA group , or break up with his girlfriend or get new friends but what he really needed was a cheeseburger. People just getting hungry or people not eating right can sabotage anything and everything else they try. I have had eating issues around me in the past and I have seen many types of diets. I tried a vegan diet for a couple of years, vegetarian, and a pescatarian, I have gone all over the block and then there was a point where I was just chasing cattle down the street. So I have been through all these phases and I really have noticed the difference. Regardless of which of those diets I was on, there is a way of doing each one of those correctly. Then the other piece of it is nutrition. Like anything else there is a lot that we know that is general knowledge that works for most people but again it is not cookie cutter either. What we talked about today with assessments and seeing MDs and holistic healers and other people who do tests and blood work etc and work together and get a sense of what is going on with one person nutritionally that can be adjusted to provide them with more energy, a better mood, and more ability to deal with their general recovery.
QUESTION 08 – What are your thoughts about incorporating a better understanding of wellness as it relates to the treatment of addiction within the field of treatment professionals? (link to video)
I think that a large part of that is what we are doing here at one80center by inviting the local community to be a part of our community and by that I mean the local community of treatment professions. One of our goals is to create a better understanding of all these modalities and all of these ways of looking at treatment. There are times that we have outside therapists and they will join our treatment team and be part of the person’s treatment. And they may be looking through a different prism and we get to learn from them what’s working for them and they get to learn from us all these pieces of wellness we are so concerned with. There is a reason why we have chosen wellness day to be a theme of our major event every year. The idea is that if we can spread an understanding, I wont call it message, of what seems to be a remarkable truth that has been around a couple thousand years or so. That in addition to the scientific knowledge that we have acquired over time, that the more treatment professionals see this as a pathway to peoples healing the more people will get the healing. So I think it is radically important.
QUESTION 09 – What do you think are the most important wellness related components for a clients recovery and why? (link to video)
Again I think again it’s going to be very individual. I think this was a theme here today. I think that the real wellness or the core of it, is going to come from the feeling of safety. And it’s going to come from a feeling of interconnectedness and community and being heard. I think that there are many pieces to wellness and I think those ones that I just listed are the ones that open the gateway to the others. If a person feels safe and heard then they can then hear themselves or people on the outside saying ‘hey there’s a yoga class’ ‘hey have you thought about eating this.?’ There are the gateway drugs and theses are the gateways to wellness.
Dr. Reef Karim – Full Address to Wellness Day 2011
Dr. Reef Karim:
How you guys doing? Can you hear me okay? Are we good? Yeah, so I’m Reef Karim and I’m very happy to be here and I thank you for inviting me. I’ve had a long history with the One80 folk. Um, from previous rehabs, patients that we’ve shared in common…
Uh, I run a treatment center called The Control Center and we refer patients here and we really believe in the One80 model. And there’s a very similar philosophy of integrating medicine with spiritual healing. Very often in the academic world, if you go to UCLA, if you go to Harvard, if you go to John Hopkins, and you go inside the medical area, cause we all hang out in a little area. If you see the psychiatrist, and the internees, and the people that deal with addiction there, it’s very much about the medications, it’s about the pharmacology. It’s about, “Hey, great job with the Abilify!” it’s about, you know “That Zyprexa was awesome!” You know, and we pat each other on the back, and that’s what we do. It’s about the pharmacology.
And then if you go out into the real world, and you go out into the community and you look at how many people got sober through 12 step philosophy. And how many people got sober through spiritual healing, without meds. You see that there’s a large number of people who have done it with, and a large number of people who have done it without. And really the best way of dealing with this kind of disease is the integration of both. The integration of, uh…Tim, is that you? See, let me explain one thing. When I talk about academic medicine it’s very competitive. So, you may have somebody trying to sabotage your lecture, who works with you, who does it in a not so subtle way. But that’s Tim Fong for ya.
So, the integration of spiritual healing and academic medicine and evidence based medicine is really the way to go and really the way of the future. So, thank you for inviting me here.
I think–am I the only Indian speaker? I dunno, am I? I really love being Indian. First off, because we’re in which is great. Slumdog Millionaire, Kama Sutra, Yoga, I mean, I could go on. And we more or less present with instant spiritual street craft, right? And the coolest thing about being Indian is that no matter what I say, it can come across and be interpreted spiritually. It’s really cool! I’ll be like in a car, passenger seat, green light, and I’ll be like, (pointing) “Uh, the um, the light just turned green.”
“No way! Oh my God! I get it! I get it! The metaphoric symbolism of the light green manifests the representation of me detoxifying through my poor existence and moving on with my life!”
“Yeah, something like that.”
I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve worked with patients and I’ve said something that is just like a throw away, and all of the sudden they were like, “Oh my God I get it! That makes so much sense!”
And I don’t know if it has to do with being a psychiatrist or being Indian.
I was meditating when I was five. In an Indian family spirituality is looked at at a very young age and nurtured. I mean one second I was playing with Legos, cause they’re cool, and the next second it was,
“Okay, today we are going to learn to meditate. Lotus position, ready, steady, go, do it!”
And uh, that’s more or less how I learned to meditate. And I’ve been meditating from then until now. I had a time with a patient where, I don’t ever really discuss my philosophy in regards to spiritual healing, or religion or…I was raised Sufi…Eastern background. And I never discussed it, I just didn’t. And one day I was with a patient and I was doing all my Psycho-Pharmacology talk, and then, we were just like, okay, let’s just talk for real. And he was like, “How do you deal with stressors in your life?” Because anxiety was a huge trigger for him. And, and I was like, “Well, I follow kinda like the journey of how I was raised, what I was raised to do with anxiety, mood states, sleep, all of that kind of stuff. And he was like, “Well, what do you do?” And I said, “Well, I have something called an ‘Ismaasim’ which is a word for, almost like a mantra based, a Buddhist mantra practice. And this is what I do. I meditate this number of times a day, for this kind of time period and this is how I try to stay centered, I don’t always succeed at it, but you know, I do the best that I can.”
And that to him was more fascinating than Zyprexa, Abilify, and Risperdal combined! It was like…that just blew his mind. And from then on I go, “Wow! That was kind of cool” and then I attended some AA groups and I looked at the spiritual element of that, I looked at some Buddhist groups that deal with AA practice, I looked at Molatti which is a Muslim version of that, I looked at some Hindu practices in India and I thought it was fascinating! I was like, “Wow! This is a spiritual disease. It’s got, it fully has neuro-biological correlates to it but this is underlying, this is a spiritual disease!”
So then I started looking up…trying to get as much worldly experience as I could as a physician. So I joined a world health organization program where I lived in central Turkey and I worked with Sufi mystic leaders. Then I worked with the Indian Health Service for 6 months and I lived on the Navajo and Hopi reservations and grew my hair really long and lived in a trailer. And then I went to Peru, to see how they detoxed people in Peru and then I went to India. And did a whole…it was during the tsunami and it was a whole PTSD thing but I got to really learn how especially dual diagnosis was treated in India.
And one of the experiences I had when I was living on the reservations was um, I want to share that with you… I had a, I was working at a hospital and I was just finishing up medical school. And in medical school, you know, you’re super eager. When you’re in med student you have that little white coat, this determines how cool a doctor is: the longer the white coat, the cooler the doctor, and the more experienced the doctor. So when you’re a med student, you get this little short coat, and it’s stuffed with all this—cause you don’t know anything, and you can’t memorize all that stuff and you have to put it in your pockets and you have all these books in your pockets and they’re huge, and all these pens and you write all over your coat accidentally and it’s interesting…
So I’m a med student in this hospital, and it’s a very small hospital in the middle of Kayenta, Arizona and uh, and they don’t have any doctors on staff at night except one guy. So this one guy runs the ER, and he runs the hospital more or less, and they can call in a surgeon here or there. And so I go in and I’m this eager med student with my pockets full and I’m like, “Let’s go, let’s do it, what are we doing? Is there anything going on?” And he’s like, “No it’s pretty…it’s dead today, nothing’s going on.” “Okay.”
And then all of the sudden a cardiac arrest comes in. So, this doctor and the nurses are all over the cardiac arrest—that’s their thing. And so, I’m just kinda sitting around and I’m like, watching, and I’m trying to see what they’re doing. And can I stick a needle in somebody’s heart? What can I do? Somebody tell me what’s going on…
And while that happens, a little kid comes in with his family. And this little kid is like, pushing on his stomach, he’s like, he’s hurting, he’s like, “It hurts, it hurts, it hurts!”
And so, we wanna get some labs, we wanna check him out, do a physical exam.
And it was diffuse abdominal tenderness and it was acute, and acute, so, he had a fever. …So what are you thinking? Appendicitis. And I’m like, “Ooooh, that’s right!” And I look at my book and there’s something called McBurney’s point.
Yeah, good job Alex (aside to Alex). There’s something called…
See—you get supportive friends and you’ve got sabotage friends (motioning towards Alex and Dr. Fong) sitting right next to each other. This is the Yin and the Yang of life right here.
So, when we looked at this patient, it moved over to the right side, McBurney’s point, and I’m like, “Appendicitis. Yes!” Cause when you’re a med student you just wanna see everything so I’m like, “Cool, I get to see this.”
So, they brought in a surgeon, I assisted on the surgery, I talked to the family before hand. And I’m like, “Okay, here’s the deal: Your son has appendicitis. It’s ruptured, we’re gonna take it out. We’re gonna excise it (that’s the word we use) we’re gonna remove it and your son will be all better.” And they were like,
“Okay, thank you.” They had their entire huge family there. So, we go into surgery, we do it, I come out, and I’m like, in hero mode, and I’m like, “Okay, so it was successful, we did it, all is good, and your son’s better, and you’re gonna see him tomorrow we’re just gonna keep him over night, and all is good.”
You know, and I was literally waiting for applause, I don’t know what I was waiting for because as a med student, you don’t see that much. And they just looked at me, the entire family and the grandfather who spoke broken English was like, “Thank you for your part of all of this.” And I was like, “Alright…my part of all of this” And I go, “He’s better, he’s better!” And he’s like, “Thank you. We’ll take over the rest of the healing from here.” And I was like, “Okay, what are you talking about?”
And their belief was, that, what happened was that the son got in a huge fight with the grandfather and during a time of kind of, family prayer, so to speak, he wished the grandfather was dead. And it was a really heated exchange, the son couldn’t control his anger, couldn’t contain his emotions, and they feel that the only way that that son was going to understand what happened and how this was wrong was a somatic representation of the inner disharmony going on in him. And the somatic representation became the appendicitis.
So the way to treat that is, the Western version is, hey, fix that end result problem but we’re gonna deal with the underlying healing process and the underlying disharmony of the spirit.
And, when I look at medicine and I look at healing in regards to addiction I use that similar metaphor. Sure, there’s the outside, there’s the, “Okay, how much coke have you been using and how much alcohol have you been drinking and what has this done to your glutamate receptor site and what’s going on here with GABA and what’s happening with dopamine, yeah. And there is a great interaction between science and spiritual healing. But if you just tackle the end result and you don’t tackle the subtext of what brought about or facilitated the end result, what are you doing? You’re making that patient come back, cause they’re gonna relapse, and they’re gonna keep coming back to you over and over and over. So, I really applaud the Wellness Day because it really mixes this concept of spirituality with addiction treatment.
I wanted to share a little bit of how that science is applied. So an example is, there’s a lot of good research on meditation specifically. There’s some on acupuncture, there’s some on yoga, there’s some on different elements of trauma in regards to somatic experiencing and EMDR. But I want to specifically just kinda stay on the functional neuro-imaging.
And, they did a lot of research on monks. They’ve done some on other people but for what ever reason the theory is monks can reach enlightenment and if they can, cause they’re good at it, then we’ll get more data from that group of people. So, they’ve done research with spec scans, functional MRIs and other things.
With a lot of these studies, what comes about more than anything else, is a left frontal lobe activation. That’s the primary thing, and if you follow positive psychology you know there’s a left frontal application in regards to that. So, also with attentional deficits, and problems with distractibility and attention, you see problems with specifically, frontal lobe activation it’s hyper activated. So, in regards to that, when you’re doing meditation the easy thing is, well, okay, you can practice attentional states, you can increase your ability to pay attention, to not be distracted, we all know that, that’s the obvious one. Right? So you get that moralis for free.
But what we don’t know as much about until this last research let’s say in the last 5-10 years is the concept of empathy. We’re all familiar with empathy, right? Being able to understand what somebody else is going to, being able to relate in regards to human connectedness being able to recognize facial features, even if you look at Autistic patients or Aspergers patients one of their biggest things is face recognition and their inability to…it’s interesting, there’s this area of the brain called the fusiform gyrus which is, when I look at Deborah and I see that bored look on her face, it makes me feel like, “Oh…jeeze…” and I have a response to it. So, there’s this facial recognition that’s processed in my brain when someone has Aspergers or Autism, they look at Deborah, the area of the brain is the inferior temporal gyrus that lights up, I look at her in a way very similar to looking at a chair. They way I would look at a chair is, I would look at this chair and I would be like, “It’s a chair. Okay, cool.” I don’t have a emotional response to a chair, it’s a chair. So, if I look at Deborah and I see her like a chair, I don’t have an emotional response.
In addicts, you see some element of that. That concept of…you know those people that you see and they’re just numbed out? They’re just kind of zoned out. They just don’t have that brightness about them. Some of it is that. And there’s brain correlates that go along with it. So, there’s an area of the brain that lights up called the right anterior insula. And that area of the brain is anterior receptive. It’s that gut feeling about, “Uhhhhh…I don’t think this is a good idea.” or, “I really respond well to that person.” or, “I get that person.” or, “I feel the way that person’s feeling…I feel for that person, or with that person.” It’s the concept of human connectedness. That area of the brian lights up significantly with meditation. So the ability to connect with other people is greatly enhanced if you can be a really strong progressive meditator that does it on a regular basis.
Another area of the brain that lights up is your right hippocampus. And the way we process memories is really through our amygdala, our hippocampus, and a couple other areas within the circuitry. The right hippocampus when it’s activated, it’s easier to process memories. How many addicts do we have that when they’re either high, or they’re withdrawing or they’re even sober, cannot process what we’re saying? From a frontal lobe activation let alone their experiences? Part of that is their inability to activate this part of the brain. And then, probably some of us have heard of the amygdala, the amygdala is an area of the brain, it’s kind of almond shaped, that deals with fear. Primarily, a bunch of other things too, but the big one, in regards to this research, is fear.
So, if you’ve got an over-active amygdala it’s like a car alarm that is continuously that’s going on and on and on and on. There’s this hyper arousal over-stimulated state that you’re constantly in all the time. And meditation will really help to kind of quiet that area of the brain to cause a little more stress reduction and a little more calming.
So, that’s just an example…am I losing you? (baby cooing in the background) I’ve lost out to a baby (laughter), it’s okay she’s cute!
So, um, I just wanted to end with a quote here. But the main thing I want to say is that spirituality does not have to be a non-medical practice. It has medical correlates in the brain. And the more we study it, the more we understand it, and the more evidence we have for it, from a neuro-biological perspective, I think the more acceptable it’ll be.
And hopefully we’ll get to the point, because in animal studies we’ve seen generational transfer. Which means, if you take a rat, that’s super stressed out and rats that are not stressed out and you actually get them…they put them in more self soothing states with music and other things. It’s not exactly like you get a rat to meditate. But you can do things that are more…that’d be cool though, wouldn’t it? But if you can put them in calming states, they actually have done reproductive studies where they look at generational transfer amongst rats. And those that were less anxious, that started out anxious, carried the genes of less anxiety along the way, they didn’t carry the genes that they started with, which were potentially the anxious genes. So we’re not just meditating for us, we’re meditating for our offspring as well.
So, this is kind of a Sufi quote that I just want to end with:
“If you attend to the negative aspects of life, if you choose to focus your attention on the weakness of others, on their faults and shortcomings. You draw to yourself the lower frequency energy currents of disdain, arrogance, anger, and hatred. You put distance between yourself and others, you create obstacle to your loving self and away from your soul. If you direct your energy into criticism of others with the intention to disable them, you create a negative karma. And that negative karma can be passed on and on and on.”
So, uh, I hope none of us do that. Thank you.
Marc Maron – Interview @ Wellness Day 2011
After presenting at this year’s Wellness Day 2011, the WTF with Marc Maron podcast host took some time for a one-on-one interview. Always insightful, candid and very perceptive – Marc answers some very personal and revealing questions.
For over fifteen years, Marc Maron has been writing and performing raw, honest and thought-provoking comedy for print, stage, radio and television. A legend in the stand-up community, he has appeared on HBO, Conan, Letterman, Craig Ferguson, Real Time, The Green Room, two Comedy Central Presents specials and almost every show that allows comics to perform. He has appeared on Conan O’Brien more than any other comedian (a record 46 times and counting).
His podcast WTF with Marc Maron, featuring compelling monologues and in-depth interviews with comedy icons like Conan O’Brien, Louis CK, Robin Williams and Ben Stiller – premiered in September 2009 and is a complete phenomenon. The show hits #1 on the iTunes comedy charts regularly, boasts over 24 million downloads to date and has been called a “must-listen” by Vanity Fair and New York Times, among many others. Select WTF episodes began airing on public radio stations across the US in June.
Please bookmark our YouTube Channel and keep checking back here often. Many innovative minds in the recovery world were interviewed at this year’s event and footage is being rolled out gradually over the coming weeks to the greater community.
Transcripts and links to the remainder of Marc’s interview are available below:
QUESTION 01 – Please tell us a bit about what you do and why? (link to video)
I’m Marc Maron. I host the WTF podcast, which is a monologue, followed by a one on one interview with a comedian for an hour, where we talk about everything. It usually gets pretty dark and deep. Sometimes not, but generally. Everything is talked about: Addiction. Sex, parents, gender issues, race issues, jokes. The good stuff. I started the podcast because I was at the bottom of my life and my career. I was broke and divorced but sober and I didn’t know what else to do. This medium afforded some sort of freedom and control and we just started doing it twice a week and I reached out to my community and really focused on having authentic conversations with people who I think are innate philosophers and psychologists and cultural critics whether they know it or not.
QUESTION 02 – How did you come to your field of work? (link to video)
I always wanted to be comedian since I was a little kid and then at some point I realized that it was possible. I don’t think I had a plan b. Not even sure I had a plan A. I was just compelled and once I started doing it I never stopped doing it. It’s got a lot of different waves and it ended up with me in my garage talking to people.
QUESTION 03 – How do you approach addiction directly or indirectly in your field of work? (link to video)
Well I have 12 years sober. Many of the people I talk to have addiction issues. Some more than others. Some not at all. But the way I approach it is straight up recovery, 12-step program. But when I talk about that with other people who are still active or not I don’t judge. I try to offer my help to them or my experience at least. But its sort of interesting talking to people about anything that has some emotional heft to it or any sort of problem or any sort of trauma. That’s especially talking to people who are used to talking and getting laughs or won’t let anything sit too far deeply in a conversation where it becomes bleak. I think there is a lot of strength in that. So talking to my peers about something heavy whether its addiction or not there’s a certain levity to it. There is a processing of it in the immediate moment that I think provides some people with relief.
QUESTION 04 – What role do you think creativity has in achieving wellness? (link to video)
Well depending on whether or not your creativity comes from your wellness or not is something everyone has to decide for themselves. I think that transcending the struggles of life or at least interpreting them through any individual’s creativity is really what creates proactive movement towards resolution, relief, and overcoming. I think my field, humor can be an incredible tool for keeping darkness at check and for creating a worldview that affords some levity.
QUESTION 05 – How do you think your contribution to healing people intersects with some of the other things that are going on today? (link to video)
Well I think that all I do, is have authentic conversations or I try to, in as open a way as possible. with a certain amount of instinct and trust. I think that because we have become so distant from each other even though we are among each other, whether its technology or fear, there is a lot of obstacles between the simple connections between 2 people having a conversation. And to stay in that and be an active listener is incredibly rewarding. I think its become lost and I think in a therapeutic environment a lot of times we talk about the problem and we’re addressing the problem and we all have the same problem but sometimes being just open enough to have a genuine conversation about anything, is frightening for some people because they think “what if I’m not cool? What if I don’t know what they are talking about,? What if I have a different opinion than them?” So there’s a lot of manufacturing of shields that people go through ,but I think we are all innately equipped and capable and want to have comfortable conversations and its very rewarding. It’s the core and basis of community.
QUESTION 06 – How do you think your own sobriety impacts what you do and the way you see things? (link to video)
It stops me from destroying myself. That struggle alone has fueled a lot of my perception and my stand up. And also allowing things to be what they are without hating what they are, because I think they could be something else. My brain manufactures the worst possible scenarios all the time and I react to it as if it’s real. I don’t think I would have been able to stifle that without sobriety. So I think the self-acceptance possible through being sober has changed everything because it means that at least some of the fear goes away.
Dr. Reef Karim – Interview @ Wellness Day 2011
After speaking at this years Wellness Day 2011, Dr. Reef Karim made himself available for some additional interview questions. Dr. Karim is a board certified psychiatrist, board certified addiction medicine specialist and a certified relationship therapist. He is a senior attending physician and an Assistant Clinical Professor at the UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience as well as being a published research scientist in the field of behavioral and chemical addictions with articles in the International Journal of Neuroscience, Journal of Addiction Medicine and other prestigious journals.
Please bookmark our YouTube Channel and keep checking back here often. Many innovative minds in the recovery world were interviewed at this year’s event and footage is being rolled out gradually over the coming weeks to the greater community.
Transcripts and links to the remainder of Dr. Karim’s interview are available below:
QUESTION 01 – Please tell us your name and a bit about what you do. (link to video)
My name is Reef Karim and I am a board certified psychiatrist, and a board certified addiction medicine specialist. I run a treatment center called The Control Center, which is an intensive outpatient program in Beverly Hills and I speak and I try to help as many people as I can.
QUESTION 02 – How did you get into the recovery world? (link to video)
I used to play in band and everyone was loaded except me. I was the innocent sweet Indian kid in this band. There was an alcoholic, there was a cocaine junkie, there was a heroin junkie, there was a guy that did every club drug on the planet that he could find and then there was me. And then I dated an alcoholic and that was kind of the exclamation point and sealed the deal.
QUESTION 03 – What do you think are some of the more important innovations or new knowledge in the field of treatment? (link to video)
The world of addiction medicine is so new really when you think about it. Yeah there ha been AA and the 12 step philosophy that has been around for quite a while, but just in regards to the field in itself, when it comes to money for research, the National Institute of Drub Abuse, SAMSA, it is really in its infancy so its exciting because there is a lot of cutting edge neuroscience on the horizon. Just a couple of basic things are, the science of spirituality in itself, just the science of wellness, how practical meditation, mindfulness, yoga, Chinese medicine and how that impacts the brain is all new stuff and epigenetics is new. How we can actually transfer different emotional states and get an understanding of what our gene mapping is so we know which medications to target or which therapies to target or who could be vulnerable to different disease states when they get older, based on their current genetics. It is interesting stuff.
QUESTION 04 – What, if any – wellness activities do you incorporate in to the treatment of your clients / patients? (link to video)
So in our treatment center we use acupuncture, we use Chinese medicine, we use spiritual psychotherapy, and we use trauma work with EMDR and somatic experiencing. We use yoga; we use wellness in regards to physical work and physical therapy. We use service. Its really important for people to look beyond themselves and a great way to do that is doing service projects. There are many things we can use. And it is important for us that the spiritual application of a person is just as emphasized as the medical, psychological or social.
QUESTION 05 – What do you believe are some holistic ways that can beneficially supplement more traditional means of treatment for addiction towards a positive outcome? (link to video)
A basic way of utilizing spiritual healing in regards to outcome and its application to traditional therapies. When you look at traditional therapies what do you think about? You think about 12-step philosophy, you think about psychopharmacology medications, you look at cognitive behavioral therapy and individual therapy. So if you have someone with a co-morbidity, meaning a dual diagnosis, lets say they have ADHD and an alcohol problem and they are drinking to deal with unmedicated or untreated ADHD. Utilizing meditation, just specific mantra based meditation on a regular basis, over and over and over again can access the left and right front lobe area where attentional work is enhanced. So am I going to treat ADHD with meditation? Probably not. Am I going to utilize meditation in combination with medications or cognitive behavioral therapies? Yes. And I may be able to lower the meds or maybe even diminish the meds over time by utilizing a meditation practice.
QUESTION 06 – What do you think about the role of nutrition in early recovery? (link to video)
I think nutrition is extremely important and not just in early recovery, in the longevity of recovery. We know about how different neurotransmitter systems, we know about how different emotional states are greatly affected by diet, by our nutrition. It’s a world we are slowly moving towards in regards to research. We know about Omega 3 fatty acids, we know about the sleep aids that are herbal based. We have seen more and more of an indoctrination of Chinese medicine in to our field. The concept of nutrition, and holistic nutrition are more talked about than ever before. I think nutrition is a very valuable part of treatment.
QUESTION 07 – What are your thoughts about incorporating a better understanding of wellness as it relates to the treatment of addiction within the field of treatment professionals? (link to video)
I don’t know that all treatment professionals or a majority of treatment professionals really understand the concept of wellness. Wellness itself, just the term, its about being well but to a lot of people, they are like ‘eh that stuff wellness what is that? That’s a generic term for nothing. What does that mean.” But I think the more evidence based and the more practical applications of whatever you want to call it: holistic treatment, spiritual treatment whatever words you want to use, especially employed in conjunction, not instead of, but in conjunction with traditional methods of healing, I am hoping that everybody starts riding that wave because it really is the way to go and the combination treatment utilizing holistic is far superior to not utilizing holistic and it empowers somebody to get to the core of who they are without the use of numbing out a little bit using medications. I think medications are really valuable but I think you get to the real core of a person thought spiritual healing.
QUESTION 08 – What do you think are the more important wellness related components for a client’s recovery and why? (link to video)
The most important aspect of someone’s recovery is really moving that arrow, shifting hat arrow towards other people instead of having it drive everything towards oneself. The diminishing of an ego is extremely important. For me wellness is just the concept of self-care. Its self care mentally and its self care physically and the integration of that mind body phenomenon. Hopefully people will realize the mind/ body integration is wellness and that by promoting more techniques you are just promoting more self-care and mind/body healing.
Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa – Interview @ Wellness Day 2011
As well as speaking at this year’s Wellness Day 2011, Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa took time to be interviewed on a wide variety of topics surrounding Wellness and the treatment of addiction.
Gurmukh is an internationally recognized expert on Kundalini Yoga and meditation. It was our honor to hear her speak on the topic of Kundalini Yoga and Meditation as they relate to Wellness in the Treatment of Addiction.
Please bookmark our YouTube Channel and keep checking back here often. Many innovative minds in the recovery world were interviewed at this year’s event and footage is being rolled out gradually over the coming weeks to the greater community.
Transcripts and links to the remainder of Gurmukh’s interview are available below:
QUESTION 01 – Tell us a little about you and what you do? (link to video)
My name is Gurmukh in Sanskrit, which is a very ancient language in India. It means one who takes thousands of people across the world’s ocean. So that’s basically my destiny. Everybody has name and their name gives them their destiny so I will be taking people across the world ocean. That’s what I do.
QUESTION 02 – How did you get in to the field of recovery? (link to video)
I was addictive but I didn’t know I was because in the 60’s everyone was. And when we took LSD and we took lots of stuff we just thought we were doing it to find god and we didn’t think anything was wrong with us. I still don’t think anything was wrong with us we just did it and then I found this path when I was 27years old after 6 or 7 years of this. And I look back on it I can see how I had certain patterns and through the grace of God they got broken and then I saw through the technology of Kundalini yoga and mediation how it could take people out of addiction. But just when you are out of addiction your brain still doesn’t work very well. You are still fuzzy wuzzy because it takes 7 years to get the drugs out of your system and Kundalini yoga could align you much faster and give you direction and keep you from falling back on old patterns you have to have a pattern of life and if you don’t have this pattern what is going to replace it and that is where Kundalini yoga and meditation transformed me and now other people
QUESTION 03 – What do you think are some of the more important innovations or new knowledge in the field of treatment? (link to video)
I think bringing yoga meditation and good food in. So much after an AA meeting everyone goes out and puffs away and eats donuts and drinks coffee. Now that’s a first step. They are not using. They had to jump to something but coffee donuts and cigarettes isn’t going to do it either. You can become diabetic. You have to go in steps. Some place like ONE80 gives them the grounds and the means to create a menu that’s tasty and good and helps them to detox their body of the drugs so they don’t even want it. We ran a rehab center back in the 70’ss. And it was an amazing center. I ended up in Tucson. And we used all the yogi technology. We used cold water and hydrotherapy, juices with herbs and lots of yoga and all kinds of things to take them though the withdrawal and then to replace that which brought them to that place. I think giving them good food that is probably one of the biggest new things and one80 does it. You can’t just give them ham and ribs and think they are going to get well because it just poisons them. There are a lot of things that can keep a person not only off but also healthy and happy.
QUESTION 04 – What wellness activities do you incorporate in to your treatment on clients? (link to video)
Once again diet. Also we like to align ourselves with 12 step and make sure they have all those needs met like a support system and a sponsor. And then we talk to them about eating foods that will rebuild them. Things that grow under the ground and low to the ground ie: more vegetables to alkaline the body. That’s really important and then often times I will have them fill out a form and I ask them what is going on with their lives and I come up with a specific 11 minute meditation that can help them get over a heart break, help them with anger or fear. These can help them with any condition. The neat thing is that have to do it for 40 days. There is a victory when you do something for 40 days. You can’t explain it until you have done it. It’s courageous, it creates new habits, self discipline. If you miss on the 35th day, then day 36th is day number one again. And there is something about repitition that can change the mindset. It is a simple 11 minutes like that. I think being with people is very important. People that are on the same page. I think the 12 steps is one of the most honorable things that has happened on the planet in the last 500 years. More and more people are getting the 11th step and they say ‘ok there has to be something more’ and they come and often times they find yoga because that gives them the spiritual aspect and then they want to teach it. Always turning around and helping others that are worse off than you are. That is why being a sponsor is so important. We go in to many rehab centers, prisons, runaway kids shelters, anywhere that people are longing back for themselves and because yoga is the breath that is our comminality.
QUESTION 05 – How does your recovery impact the way you work? (link to video)
I know that my happiness is helping people but not being a martyr. I met a lot of people that are martyrs. Their lives are going to the dogs, they are unhealthy. They are just surviving so they can help the world. That’s not it either. It has to be a full circle of self-love. People ask me “you travel all over the world on and off airplanes how do you do it?” I take care of myself because I like to take care of myself and I know if I take care of myself I have more energy to take care of other people. It’s like a full circle. Its like if you have a car and you got to take kids to school. You are not going to let your car be totally filthy dirty not having get it checked out get in accidents so it’s a big tin of junk. You take care of it so you can drive other people around. You take care of your car so you can take care of other people.
QUESTION 06 What do you believe are some holistic ways that can beneficially supplement more traditional ways of treatment for addiction towards a positive outcome? (link to video)
I think an important part is Sava or what one80 is doing now with helping other people and I think having the program with Gettlove is really really good. I’ve been involved with many different centers in LA for many years now. they can really become self serving and they can really become an occupation for people. They just hop from one rehab to another and somebody pays for it. I’ve always said the people who have the hardest life on this planet are trust babies because they never have to pay the rent. And some of the greatest people were people that were orphaned off the streets, people that had to go through a lot to become a whole person. So I think denying them the opportunity to serve out side of self-serving is so important. I think its one of the biggest keys for healing. My teacher would say, if you are hungry go find someone hungrier than you. If you are depressed than go find someone more depressed than you. I often send people to Gettlove or go down and collect socks for the homeless lets do this project. We have a million projects going on. Raising money for India and the orphanages. And people that are really bummed out about they go do it and they get a job or their relationships get resolved. But these people that are just about themselves and their addiction, I don’t think it works. Live for each other not at each other.
QUESTION 07 – What do you think abut the role of nutrition in early recovery? (link to video)
It is so so important. The poor liver is crying the kidney is. All the organs. That is why we always use a lot of beets. We do beet juice and ginger and lots of ayurvedic herbs to help and try save their body from acidity which is what alcolohism and drugs do back to alkaline which makes you feel whole and here it makes you feel not all shaky and out of sorts. And when we use to detox people in Tucson through hydrotherapy and water, half cold water and through juices and through lots and lots of massage and lots of yoga and lots of breath. Many went through it and did not have the withdrawals that other people would have in regular institutions such as with heroin and we didn’t do methadone or anything. They really went cold turkey. But because we had such a modality of how we were doing it and the love and it wasn’t in a hospital setting. It was in a cozy setting out in the desert. At one point in the 70’s we had the highest rate of getting off and staying off because we offered them another way to live. Another real way to live. But if these people that are so longing to belong such as myself had just continues my narcissistic life. I would be alive be today. I would have gotten back on drugs and overdosed.
QUESTION 08 – What are your thoughts on incorporating a better understanding a better understanding of wellness as it relates to the treatment of addiction within the field of treatment professionals? (link to video)
I think little by little it is happening. I think its happening in the medical world even though they don’t want to because they are so bought out by all their marketing and sponsorship and everything else and all the junk food and everything from McDonalds. It is such a joke. McDonalds serves poison and gives kids cancer and then they have a kid’s cancer hospital. I’m just praying that people starting in the medical world, starting in the rehab world and the therapy world, start taking care of themselves. Its like, if you have a diesel and you put in regular gas. The car just doesn’t work right! How can we think if we are eating McDonalds or hamburgers and it has steroids and hormones and growth hormones that we are going to stay well? People are starting to put 2 and 2 together and even in medicine and I think little by little we are going to advance and I saw it here today at the open house at one80. All these people interested in changed modalities, because of what they have seen in the past. We went from shock treatment to where we are now. How about talking? How about feeding people organic whole and live food grown in your area? Those are the four elements and then, “bang” you are alive and well because you are doing what people used to do before you could fly in blueberries from New Zealand!
QUESTION 09 – What do you think are the most important wellness related components for a clients recovery and why? (link to video)
I think in an environment where people can love that person unconditionally. Where punishment is not part of it or guilt. I think being able to talk, read, learn to meditate, be given really good food and walking. I think learning to practice and praying, finding a bigger course than yourself. All that stuff is so important to become whole again And to know that for some people, they may go in and out for a bunch of times and it may not be until they are 50 years old, maybe 20 or maybe their first time they enter a rehab that it works. And for the people working in the rehab to be not attached to outcome. To know they are there to serve. And if a person leaves and goes back ,your arms are still open for them again. Because sometime, somewhere with prayers, before they take their last breath, and that separation, that gap between their mind and their soul will become one.
QUESTINON 10 – What are some exercises you use in your practice to promote healing from damage due to drug and alcohol abuse? (link to video)
Well I think a really good one that we teach internationally now because it is so easy for people to do, is to just take your hands like this and press your thumb and index finger really strong, five pounds of pressure and then your thumb and your middle finger and your thumb and your ring finger and your thumb and your baby finger and then go back and do the index and so on. First is a sound. You just close your eyes and you say “saaa” second is “taa” third is “naa” fourth is “maa”and then go back to the index finger and you would do that 26 times or 54 times or 108 times. Say you’re in a meeting and you start getting all frustrated and angry and you’re going to lose it and your mind is thinking “I need something” Just do it underneath the table. No one even needs to know you are doing it. Even if you don’t say it out loud. Or when you are home every morning, it sets your day because it balances the four regions of your brain. 26 times can do it. Or lets just say happy hour is coming and you get a little like that (makes an anxious face). You just sit there and do it. At your car, your desk, in other words you have got to nip it in the bud. When the mind starts scrolling you got to nip it in the bud. I’ve taught so many people this and I’ve watched it work every time.
Aileen Getty – Interview @ Wellness Day 2011
GETTLOVE Founder and Wellness Day 2011 presenter, Aileen Getty sat for a series of interview questions at this year’s event. A truly inspiring individual gives some insight into the beginnings of her journey to GETTLOVE and the meaning it carries for her now.
GETTLOVE is dedicated to responding to the homeless as individuals whose humanity should be acknowledged and whose suffering should be relieved. GETTLOVE is committed to bringing loving, personal and individual recognition and communication to each individual encountered in daily distributions. We believe this interaction will reduce the desperation, loneliness and alienation so often fostered by ostracism and neglect and in turn produce greater harmony between the homeless and the rest of the community through an experience of acknowledgement, love and communication.
Please bookmark our YouTube Channel and keep checking back here often. Many innovative minds in the recovery world were interviewed at this year’s event and footage is being rolled out gradually over the coming weeks to the greater community.
Transcripts and links to the remainder of Aileen’s interview are available below:
QUESTION 01 – Please tell us your name and a bit about what you do? (link to video)
My name is Aileen Getty and I founded a non-profit organization called GETTLOVE and we provide service for the homeless in Hollywood, which is my neighborhood, I live there. We also manage services at a social services center so anything from providing housing to opportunities for recovery if the person would like to engage that, food, relationships and friendships as well as advocacy.
QUESTION 02 – How did you get into the recovery world? (link to video)
Well this year February will be six years clean. It’s been only these last few years that I was able to step out of my own immediate experience. I got clean at the same time that I established my non-profit organization. Not from a place of skill or knowhow but a desperate need to recover myself. At that point in time I had tried many things to get clean and I just couldn’t get there. I was acutely aware at that time that being of service was probably the only avenue for me. I stumbled in to what I do today out of sheer desperation and it ended up being a way of engaging in my own life in an activity outside of using and has become what I do. I stay clean because of doing what I do.
QUESTION 03 – If you are in recovery, how do you think that impacts the way you approach your work? (link to video)
My personal recovery provides a platform of joy and gratitude and an ability to live within my kindness and an ability to love others from a place that’s a little less self-interested than I was. Still can move forward, but I think that’s how it impacts it. It impacts it because my own recovery allows me to consistently provide the things I want to provide to those I want to serve.
QUESTION 04 – What do you believe are some holistic ways that can beneficially supplement more traditional means of treatment for addiction towards a positive outcome? (link to video)
The most powerful resource we have and the most powerful tool for any kind of healing is practicing kindness. Though I think there are all sorts of things that stem from kindness, whether that’s kindly feeding yourself or kindly feeding another or honesty as a result of kindness. I think kindness is the greatest possible tool.
QUESTION 05 – What do you think about the role of nutrition in early recovery? (link to video)
I feel that it is really important. I think nutrition is important and it hasn’t been given enough attention yet. Just in my own experience I feel that there are so many great benefits. First of all, we are what we eat, and we are what we drink and I think wellness is a direct result of what we feed ourselves. Sometimes we ignore the nutritional aspect because it requires an additional discipline we think we are not capable of. But I think if there is some way to just incorporate the discipline of eating well, our recovery would be that much more enhanced, our recovery that much greater. My own feeling is that sometimes we end up indulging our own bodies with foods that in my case would get me back out there using.
QUESTION 06 – What are your thoughts about incorporating a better understanding of wellness as it relates to the treatment of addiction within the field of treatment professionals? (link to video)
I think we have to reinvent the idea of recovery. What is recovery? Because historically I think recovery has been a somewhat challenging prospect and I think we need to take a much broader view of the whole being. I personally feel that we need to engage outside of ourselves to a much greater extent even in the process of identifying ones own self as an addict or an alcoholic. I think that we over identify with ourselves and with the disease we are told that we have. I guess I would encourage people to identify less with disease and become more well aquatinted with our self and others. There is a lot of recovery in giving and sharing.
QUESTION 07 – What do you think are the more important wellness related components for a client’s recovery and why? (link to video)
Being of service in your life outside of your disease. What I experienced for myself was that I think that some of the freedom I feel today happened by virtue of engaging in some of my fears, engaging with people outside of my comfort zone. I just created a whole new geography. The geography that I was acting in on the street in creating relationships and getting to know who people are and what their needs are. “How can I acknowledge you today?” While I was doing that footwork I think my own interior geography started to change. So I started to relate less to where I’ve been and whom I have used with. I started to forget who I had been. I’m not a big fan using the word “being of service” I guess that’s a place to start with. It’s not about being of service. It’s about engaging your own kindness and sharing it with others. Being of service sounds like there is a trade off like we are doing something for another that they need from us and only we have for them. That’s not the case.
QUESTION 08 – What are some exercises you use in your practice to promote healing from damage due to drug and alcohol abuse? (link to video)
Thankfulness. Thankfulness creates that abundant feeling of gratitude. And gratitude is an equal opportunity giver. It doesn’t think or decide whether to give or not. Gratitude is this overflow of thankfulness. It creates joy and joy keeps me coming back. I think that is a practice of mine and I think there are many ways to achieve that. There are many simple things one can do when one is not feeling the gratitude too. There are some things we can really do that are practice. When you smile, whether you are faking it or not, you are a little more willing to engage in something other than your own darkness. So sometimes smiling can be a practice for me when I am not there. And just loving. Just loving.
Dr. Stephen Dansiger – Guest on WTF with Marc Maron podcast
ONE80CENTER’s own Dr. Stephen Dansiger is the guest on a very special WTF with Marc Maron Podcast Thanksgiving episode. A preview is available below, where Dr. Dansiger talks about helping the community heal after the Crown Heights Riots… Check it out!
Marc Maron Speaks at Wellness Day 2011
The WTF with Marc Maron podcast host presents an extremely touching and insightful talk titled, “Creating Wellness through Public Dialogue: How my podcast saved my life, and the lives of my guests and my listeners”. We had the pleasure of having Marc speak at Wellness Day 2011.
Here is the complete transcript:
Marc:
Thank you this is a unique gig for me. I’ve dealt with this small an audience but the pressures are different here. It’s an interesting thing that he asked me to do this, because I don’t even have the ‘wellness’ to get me through traffic. I don’t…twelve years sober, I’ve certainly been to a lot of practitioners for a lot of different things. I definitely qualify to be speaking in that, my father’s a manic depressive. Which is very exciting half the time, um, the other half, not so exciting. I don’t know if you know what it’s like to have a manic in your life but, the thrill of the delusional phone call with big plans at three in the morning:
“Marc, it’s Dad. Wake up! Are you up?”
“Yeah, I’m up now Dad. What’s up?”
“I’m gonna open a theme park! Bigger than Disneyland! Just wanted to know if you’d work there if I open a theme park.”
“Sure Pop, can I run the Bipolar Coaster?”
So, my mother has chronic eating disorders and I’m an alcoholic and drug addict. Now, I guess the sort of trajectory of what’s happened with WTF and why I can speak to you about it, is there was a weird mixture of technology and desperation that has led to a fairly amazing community.
I had no idea what was going to happen when I started doing this show. I was a comedian, I was just out of a divorce, my career was in the shits, I was a morning host on a political talk show for ‘Air America’, I use to think I was angry about politics and then I realized that I’m just angry.
But that was really what led me to starting WTF was that, as person that has issues, as a person who’s not unfamiliar with medication or recovery that I was using politics as sort of a template to work my anger through. And what happened when I started WTF was I was in trouble. I was in financial trouble, I was in emotional trouble, mental trouble, the only thing I really had was sobriety, and that seemed in place. It was not, you know, a happy recovery. Um, and to this day I’m not sure it is. But I have peace of mind, it’s troubled mind, but I have it.
So ultimately what happened is I started having–I needed help. And I think asking for help is really the beginning of any sort of recovery process, any sort of wellness process is having humility, or desperation, to ask for help. So I started doing this pod cast and uh, I started asking comedians to be on this pod cast. And many of them showed up. I don’t uh…they’re my community. Now what I didn’t realize was that when I started it I was really in trouble. And it was, uh…not only was it an entertainment idea but I needed people to fucking help me. So I started talking to my peers, I started talking to comedians who many people knew, and know. And what started to happen was, I don’t know what it is about the way I talk to people, I don’t think of them as interviews, I don’t consider myself an interviewer, I’m a very needy ‘too much information’ person. So, my style, if there is any style, is that I will have somebody in my garage who i’m going to interview and I will talk at them about me. And ultimately what happens no matter how big the celebrity is, I think subconsciously what’ll happen is,
“Why is this guy talking about himself? I thought this was about me…Shit, he seems to need some help!”
So, what started to unfold was that I began to realize that comedians…I mean you may think comics are funny and there’s also a lot of lip serviced paid to the fact that comics are fucked up or that they’re troubled or that they’re really sad, but the bottom line is comedians have more time than anybody to sit an think about shit. Alright, a comedian’s job is to tell jokes an hour a night. The other 23 hours, if they’re not consuming substances or doing something horrible, they’re thinking about things. They’re really philosophers. And there’re very few things they haven’t thought about that aren’t proactive. They have to survive their horrible lives.
I mean, if you wanna take a really good pool of people that have…like I’ve talked to drug addicts, I’ve talked to gambling addicts, sex addicts, abusive people, people who’ve been abused, you know people that have race topics to talk about. Very, very kind of…I don’t even know how to explain it, but I didn’t plan to be this way. And all of the sudden I’m talking to Louis CK for two hours and he starts crying–I don’t know how that happened! I mean, it wasn’t, you know, it wasn’t about me which I found disconcerting. But I, but ultimately…the primary interviews that make a change, and the reason why I’m talking about this here is that, I get emails from people-from psychologist, from psychiatrists who are basically prescribing my pod casts to people. I’ve done 215, 230 of these things and there’s been sort of these landmark episodes where like Steve said…
I went to Robin Williams’ house. I don’t know him that well, but we’re comics-there’s an unspoken bond. And a lot of people know about Robin Williams but I primarily went up there because I didn’t feel like my peers respected him. I felt that they condescended him, they called him a hack, they said he was old, and whatever. And I thought to myself, “How can you dismiss a dude that has been in show business for 35 years and has been doing exactly what he wanted to do?”
That’s why I went up there. I didn’t go up there, I didn’t realize it going up there, he had decided to get honest about things. So I had this weird interview that, I did at 11 O’clock in the morning at Robin Williams’ house. It would have been odd if he started improvising because there was no one there. So you know, I didn’t expect to get what I got, but when we started talking, if he woulda started, (mimicking improvisation) “Ooooo—look it…”
I woulda been like, (looking around)
“It’s just the two of us I don’t think that’s necessary, Robin.”
But what ended up happening was, you know, he was able to talk to me as a peer about his drug use, about his relapse, about his open heart surgery, about his divorce, uh, and about his, the darkness that really consumes him as an only child, as somebody who is isolated by celebrity.
So, once that went public, that interview, I started getting these emails, you know, from people about things I never assumed. I did political talk radio for a year and a half so, I got a lot of emails from people in red states that were like,
“Thank God you’re there. I’m in the basement listening…we’re in trouble down here. If you weren’t talking I don’t know what would happen!”
So, I got that kind of email that was politically orientated. But I got an email after, I don’t know if you know who Bob Odenkirk is, but he’s a writing and uh, and a comedian, he’s on Breaking Bad now, but I just did an interview with that guy. And a lot of times I’m peers with these people but I don’t know them, you think you know people. You know that’s a big thing I’ve learned after doing 200 of these. You know, if I think you’re an asshole, you’re probably not. And if you explain to me why you’re not, I’ll say,
“Well, that’s your opinion.”
But I’ve learned that I don’t really know anybody. So, I do this interview with Bob Odenkirk of all people who talked, you know, there was a candid moment where I said, “What’s at the core of you? When you’re sitting alone at home?”
And he just said,
“Rage.”
And he said it with such an intensity that it kind of made me…it was shocking. But I don’t think the interview would be as impactful as getting an email from a woman, I got an email from a woman that said,
‘I was going to kill myself. And I listened to Bob Odenkirk, and I’ve decided not to.’
And I, you know, I’m not a clinical person, I don’t know how to respond to those types of emails. You know,
“…Oooh, good for you!…Another day!”
I try to be as gentle and as diplomatic as possible. Now, I’ve gotten several of these emails where you can’t just leave it hanging, you know. But, the fact was that the conversation with a comedian had made someone feel less alone. So when I decided to get out of political talk, and deal completely with existential issues. I’m a neurotic, angry, recovering person that’s completely obsessed with myself. And, it turns out that most people are that. I had no idea they were, but they are. And I found that by honoring my dialogue in my mind, there was a lot of people out there, and I’m sure you all know it, that all their energy goes into ‘getting by’. And to getting by in their lives, in their relationships, you know, in what ever situation they’re in and to not letting on, to the people they come in contact with, that they’re fucking nuts. So, and I don’t know if that’s “clinical” and I apologize if I’ve offended anybody. But um, but once I started talking this way I started getting emails constantly from people who were feeling less alone. Because it wasn’t just about the celebrities, but I think there’s something about public personalities talking candidly about their issues in a real way, in a genuine way, that first of all, people are like,
“I had no idea that guy was a person!”
And then secondly they’re like,
“If he has got those issues, then I must be okay. Or I must be not alone at the very least.”
And I’ve done these interviews—I interviewed Jonathan Winters, who is really, the prince of darkness. I mean, this guy is 85 years old, I went to his house, he’s hobbled by arthritis, and I couldn’t, I could barely contain myself because his access to the type of darkness that he’s struggled with through his entire life, and the way that he used characters, and self talk, which was basically his act, to make himself feel less alone and to deal with depression, was mind blowing. He did do a very odd improv at the end, about a tough love therapist and I don’t know how you would feel about it but he’s clearly very fed up with the therapy profession.
I think it goes back to him being in a mental hospital at a time that lobotomies were a popular and a practical treatment for the type of depression that he was having. And he had to threaten a doctor with a Mob friend to not get a lobotomy. And I’m not sure what his respect level is of the medical profession around psychiatry. Because he did this weird improv at the end where he was a psychiatrist talking to a patient who was crying, and the guy, the creative assistant was going,
(pretending to cry) “I don’t know what to doooo! I can’t do my job!”
…and Winters just goes,
“Shut up—kill yourself! Put me on the phone while you’re doing it!”
So, I can’t say it ended on a hopeful note, but nonetheless to hear Jonathan Winters talk about that was amazing. And the emails I got from that, were profound.
And I just think that if, if there’s anything to be gleaned from what I’m saying, is that I had no idea what I was doing was going to help people. You know, I help people in a very AA way. I help people because I’m told to, it’s not my first thought. And you know, when I did the pod cast, I was really looking to help me and to try not to fade away. Because I was suicidal—I didn’t have a career. I mean, I was as suicidal as a narcissus can be. Which means, you know, I thought a lot about killing myself, but it was really, I just found it relaxing…you know, to know that I could if I had to. I had no real intention of doing it but the thought that I could, gave me some control over my life. Suicidal lamination is the spiritual reprieve of the faithless, and it’s very effective if you’re in that place. But that’s where I was at and I needed help. And I found that, just talking about anything with these guys that think about everything, like I’ve been completely surprised.
I talked to Garry Shandling who has become this spiritual person. And I mean, I had no idea! I talked to Shandling for an hour about, you know, his version of Buddhism. His, you know, very neurotic and oddly paced Buddhism. And you know, people would email me going,
“I had no idea that he was like that and I feel better and now I’m going to look into that.”
But I think the most impactful interview I did, in the way of wellness was, there’s a guy named Todd Hanson. Now, I don’t know if you’re familiar with The Onion, the newspaper. Todd Hanson was really the original head writer of The Onion. And he’s a brilliant guy and he’s a sweet guy. And I’d been trying to interview him for a while now. So I was in Brooklyn and I called him for an interview and I thought we’d do it in my hotel room. So he came to my hotel, I had my equipment. And he walked in and he said,
“You know, I have to tell you, I’ve been to this hotel before.”
And I said,
“What do you mean?”
And he goes
“I checked in here and I didn’t plan on checking out.”
So before we start the interview he told me he’d attempted suicide in a very real way, in that hotel. And that, you know, he decided to come do my interview primarily because he thought I would be a good person to be with him for his first visit back to this place where this happened a year before. And, so I said,
“Well, are we gonna talk about this?”
And he goes,
“Well, I don’t know. Let’s see if it comes up.”
And I’m like,
“I could make it come up. I have completely control of that.”
He goes,
“Well, why don’t you just leave it on me.”
So, we talk for like an hour, he didn’t bring it up. We talked about comedy, The Onion, the impact of that on culture. And he said,
“I just couldn’t do it.”
And I said,
“Well, what do you want to do? Do you think you’re gonna wanna do it?”
I wasn’t pushing, I’m not exploitive. But I said,
“I can hold on to this episode and if you feel like it’s something you want to share with the world, what you went through, we can do it another time.”
And like three months went by and he said,
“I think we can do it.”
And I went to his apartment and he really went, you know, step by step through his attempt at suicide. And it was real, it was not a cry for help. I mean, he was, he was ready to go. And he was very angry that he woke up. And not only did he wake up but now he had to explain himself. And the whole episode, the second half of it, is about 45 minutes, of him dealing with the feelings of what he put the people he loves through, you know, what he went through, and how he deals with the pressure on a daily basis now. And I got hundreds of emails from people who either attempted suicide, who had family members who had tried suicide, but never heard it put that way. They never were able to understand the emotions and feelings that went behind a real suicide attempt. And for months, you know, Hanson was calling me,
“Was it okay? Did I sound alright?”
And I’m like, “Dude, you’re alive.”
But the weirdest thing about it was when I talked to him, and it was sort of this profound realization for me, he’s not out of the tunnel. And no one’s really out of the tunnel if you have that kind of depression. So I started forwarding these emails to him that people were writing. And I think it really, not only helped him a great deal in that he helped people but that there was a dialogue around this because of this episode.
And, on Mondays episode, coming up, I talked to Norm MacDonald. Who everybody knows as Norm MacDonald. But I think I was completely surprised by the interview because he talked about struggling with faith. And trying Jesus, which you know, is a heavy drug. And uh, and also dealing with a gambling addiction, and how that effected his life.
So, I think the reason Steve asked me to come here was that, all I know is I had no idea where these pod casts would go. Anyone can do a pod cast, you talk into a microphone, you post it on itunes, and you see what happens. And the fact that it’s helping people, because you know, comedians, and celebrities…I force them to talk for an hour, they cannot leave under an hour. So, given who I am, and given the fact that it’s an hour, something will come out. You will find some genuine, you know, conversation in that. And I find just the ability to eavesdrop on a real conversation about real things when someone is sitting alone having that relationship, you know, in their car or on a treadmill, really eases the type of existential loneliness that’s common in the culture we live in.
Everyone is isolated, even when we’re among people because of technology. But I’ve found this weird loop hole to where it’s connected people around these things which make us human which I think are ‘fear’ and ‘anger’ and occasionally ‘happiness’. But uh, all I can do is really, recommend it to you. And to encourage people to do this. To use these technologies to reach out to people, and to find…because you can help people and make you feel really good. But it doesn’t stop me from sitting around wondering when the other shoe’s gonna drop. You know, like there’s been some concern among my audience. I get 640,000 downloads a week and there’s been some concern about my audience that I’m getting too happy because of my success. So, now I’m in that awkward position to where I’m like,
“I’ve got to be unhappy about something.”
I sit there trying to plan a monologue around that.
But like other things that we did, last week I interview Jack Gallagher, he’s a comic he’s appeared on Curb Your Enthusiasm occasionally, he lives in Sacramento and he has an autistic child. And he basically talked for half an hour about the challenges of raising an autistic child. And now, I’m getting these emails of frustrated parents who didn’t have a perspective on it, certainly not a comedic perspective. And you know, his whole angle was that he had to learn to work at his son’s pace and realize his son was not sick but unique and in some ways cooler than the rest of the kids that he was, you know, peers with. And I’m now getting emails from people who are like,
“I never really looked at it that way…”
To make the shift from thinking of it as a sickness to something that is a gift, was a shift that a lot of people weren’t making.
So, that I guess is what I have to say, is that the power of this medium, which is a relatively new medium, to help people in the community find that they’re not alone has changed my life. I mean, I’ve been to a lot of AA, I’ve done yoga, I’ve been on medicine, I’ve been to therapists, uh, it’s good…but having a certain amount of success for talking about your problems to other people. How can that be bad? Now, I just have to hope my problems last long enough to make some money. Uh, but thank you.
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