The Power of Faith in Recovery | Dr. Jordan Peterson & Dr. Andrew Huberman

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00:00:02.160 | One of the most remarkable real-life examples

00:00:07.840 | I've ever witnessed of the power of belief in God,

00:00:11.800 | I'm just gonna say it as it occurred,

00:00:14.480 | I have a good friend who for many years struggled

00:00:17.640 | with alcohol and drug addiction of multiple kinds.

00:00:21.560 | Incredibly kind person, incredibly successful in his career,

00:00:26.360 | married, two beautiful children,

00:00:29.800 | multiple relapses, crashed his truck at seven in the morning

00:00:34.640 | after getting intoxicated at 6.30 in the morning,

00:00:37.200 | got out of that one, happened again and again,

00:00:40.520 | multiple rehab centers of the sort of standard treatment,

00:00:43.600 | et cetera, and then ultimately enough happened

00:00:46.020 | within that whole set of circumstances

00:00:48.680 | that his wife said, you know, this is it.

00:00:50.280 | You've got to solve this or we just can't be with you.

00:00:54.000 | A very scary situation for everybody involved,

00:00:57.200 | including him, who absolutely adored his family.

00:00:59.980 | He told us, his friends, that he was going to go

00:01:05.080 | to a center here in Los Angeles that treats addiction

00:01:09.920 | with essentially religion, a belief in God.

00:01:13.360 | He was already fairly religious.

00:01:14.960 | Most Sundays he attended church and things of that sort.

00:01:18.920 | And you can imagine we all thought, including myself,

00:01:22.000 | like, okay, dude, like, good luck.

00:01:26.600 | I hope this works.

00:01:27.480 | But like, I would say zero minus one confidence

00:01:31.600 | in his ability to get and stay sober.

00:01:33.360 | He just had not succeeded prior to this.

00:01:36.120 | He's been sober more than four years now.

00:01:39.960 | He got out of there and never looked back.

00:01:42.640 | And I wonder now whether something,

00:01:47.560 | something must've changed in his brain

00:01:50.120 | by adopting what was essentially a-

00:01:52.720 | - Different incentive structure.

00:01:54.200 | - Right, different incentive structure,

00:01:55.700 | but fear wasn't doing it before,

00:01:57.360 | fear of extreme consequences,

00:01:59.560 | which were on the table at that time,

00:02:02.240 | when he went in, weren't enough.

00:02:04.520 | Something about going there

00:02:06.440 | and the work that he did there allowed him to then,

00:02:09.520 | it's almost like he got another prefrontal cortex,

00:02:12.640 | a more powerful prefrontal cortex.

00:02:14.820 | So maybe we could talk about that.

00:02:16.160 | - Well, that's not a bad way of thinking about what it is

00:02:19.520 | that people are trying to do when they, say, pray.

00:02:24.640 | So you can invite in spirits to possess you.

00:02:29.640 | That's a good way of thinking about it.

00:02:33.100 | I know that's odd terminology,

00:02:34.740 | but that's what you do when you dwell on your rage.

00:02:37.980 | Right, right.

00:02:39.420 | Now imagine that you're doing that

00:02:40.780 | in the most positive possible direction.

00:02:43.100 | So what you're doing is you're generating a hypothesis

00:02:47.020 | about the mode of conduct and perception

00:02:49.580 | that would best typify you if you were ideal,

00:02:53.420 | and then establishing a relationship with that

00:02:55.980 | and inviting it in.

00:02:57.060 | That's what the evangelical Protestants are doing

00:03:00.220 | when they formulate a personal relationship

00:03:03.160 | with Jesus Christ.

00:03:04.420 | That's exactly what they're doing.

00:03:05.820 | Now on the addiction side,

00:03:07.060 | so I studied alcoholism for years.

00:03:09.980 | That was the target of my dissertation

00:03:12.940 | in the first 20 papers that I published.

00:03:15.420 | I knew the alcoholism literature very well,

00:03:17.540 | and the neurological end of it as well.

00:03:19.640 | And it was known, among alcohol researchers,

00:03:22.060 | it's been known for 60 years, more even,

00:03:24.620 | that the most reliable treatment for alcoholism

00:03:26.740 | was religious transformation.

00:03:28.700 | And this is well accepted among researchers in the field

00:03:31.660 | who have no religious affiliation whatsoever.

00:03:34.260 | And I do believe that a huge part of that

00:03:37.380 | is a consequence of incentive restructuring.

00:03:39.820 | So you said, for example, with your friend,

00:03:41.420 | that fear wouldn't work.

00:03:43.140 | Well, alcohol's a pretty good anxiolytic drug,

00:03:46.820 | but it's also, for people who are prone to alcoholism,

00:03:49.500 | it's a good incentive reward source, like cocaine.

00:03:53.340 | If you're going to, you can't get rats addicted to cocaine

00:03:57.060 | if they live in a natural environment.

00:03:59.620 | They have to be isolated in a cage

00:04:01.260 | before they'll bar press to their own death for cocaine.

00:04:05.020 | So one of the things you wanna do when you treat addiction

00:04:07.620 | is you wanna substitute a new incentive structure, right?

00:04:10.660 | Because part of the addictive process

00:04:13.260 | is you fall into a false incentive pattern, right?

00:04:17.900 | 'Cause cocaine makes you feel

00:04:20.140 | like you're doing something useful

00:04:22.020 | in respect to an important goal, even though you're not.

00:04:25.580 | It mimics that.

00:04:26.860 | - Even if you know you're not.

00:04:28.020 | - Even if you know it's irrelevant.

00:04:28.860 | - And I'll just say, I've never done cocaine.

00:04:30.220 | I would be open about it if I had.

00:04:32.460 | I think I like dopaminergic states enough

00:04:34.900 | that I've been very scared of doing it, frankly.

00:04:38.060 | Also, it wasn't around much

00:04:39.100 | just because of when I went to college.

00:04:40.460 | It just wasn't a drug that was around much.

00:04:41.940 | But it's a remarkable drug in the sense

00:04:44.200 | that people who take cocaine

00:04:45.860 | seem to be excited about everything.

00:04:47.960 | They're in this high dopaminergic state.

00:04:49.880 | And their brain becomes exceptionally good

00:04:51.840 | at finding cocaine, even in the absence of resources,

00:04:54.960 | which is pretty remarkable if you think about it.

00:04:57.740 | I mean, most people can't find the thing

00:04:59.460 | or get the thing they want

00:05:00.460 | in the absence of the resources to get it.

00:05:02.600 | But people who take hard drugs

00:05:04.860 | that really spike dopamine somehow manage.

00:05:07.160 | Yeah, sure, sometimes they lie,

00:05:09.020 | sometimes lie, cheat, and steal.

00:05:11.380 | Lie, cheat, and steal,

00:05:12.220 | but they'll do other things too, right?

00:05:13.500 | They'll socialize with people that have it

00:05:15.100 | so they don't have to lie, cheat, and steal.

00:05:16.620 | It's incredible to see that drug

00:05:19.740 | and things like methamphetamine take over people's minds.

00:05:22.900 | And now I'm thinking-

00:05:24.220 | The pathway appears when the aim is firmly in mind, right?

00:05:28.380 | See, this is another insistence

00:05:31.100 | that's derived from the religious literature.

00:05:33.380 | So, because the idea there is that if your aim is upward,

00:05:37.820 | the pathway forward to that will make itself manifest.

00:05:40.940 | And that's true.

00:05:42.060 | You just pointed out that it was true

00:05:44.140 | in relationship to addiction, right?

00:05:46.060 | Is that if once you're in that realm

00:05:49.780 | of possessed personality,

00:05:52.340 | the pathway forward will show itself to you

00:05:54.500 | even under straitened circumstances, right?

00:05:56.840 | And it's partly because you can think

00:05:58.620 | of our perceptual systems and our emotional systems,

00:06:01.120 | for that matter, as navigating tools, right?

00:06:04.300 | So now the addiction, the addicted brain,

00:06:07.420 | what they say, the aim is possessed

00:06:09.340 | by the substance of addiction, right?

00:06:11.300 | So now the highest god is cocaine.

00:06:14.020 | Let's say.

00:06:14.860 | And so now all pathways in the world

00:06:16.860 | are pathways to cocaine.

00:06:18.340 | All objects in the world are markers

00:06:20.860 | on the pathway to cocaine.

00:06:22.580 | 'Cause it just dominates, but it's not just an impulse.

00:06:26.040 | It dominates the perceptual landscape as well.

00:06:28.900 | That's makes it, and the emotional landscape.

00:06:30.820 | And it comes with all these rationalizations.

00:06:33.340 | That's all those lies, right?

00:06:35.500 | The whole thing, it's a whole personality.

00:06:37.820 | Yeah, brutal, brutal.

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The Power of Faith in Recovery | Dr. Jordan Peterson & Dr. Andrew Huberman

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