In the second part of this debate with Daniel Gasser, they start by the looking at an early study that went against the concept that alcoholism is a disease. They also discussed early research that seemed to match alcoholism in rats is a similar percentage to that of humans. This led to a very interesting conversation between the two men and led to talking about some of the deep-seated reasons why someone would relapse or go back to their addiction.
Tune in to see the Debate on Addiction Recovery Through a Therapist’s Eyes.
To listen to Part 1: https://www.throughatherapistseyes.com/2022/07/20/a-debate-on-drug-addiction-recovery-issues-with-mr-daniel-gasser-part-1-ep195/
If you want to contact Mr. Daniel Gasser
- Write an email: daniel@quitthebottle.com
- Visit quitthebottle.com
- Head over to LinkedIn: Daniel Gasser or TikTok: daniel.g.gasser
Listen for the following takeaways from the show:
- They start by looking at 2 studies about Alcoholism.
- Pub Med had a study from 1992 that went against the concept that alcoholism is a disease.
- Scientific American had a 2018 study that saw a similarity of the percentage of rats that experiences alcoholism is similar to that of humans.
- When looking at overcoming the addiction, Daniel asks the question “What is that pivotal moment you went through during your addiction that caused the change?”
- Addiction totally defies logic.
- Covering is a major reason that people go back to their addictions.
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Episode #196 Transcription
Chris Gazdik: [00:00:00] Hello, everybody out there. Welcome to Through a Therapist’s Eyes. I am Chris Gazdik and I have the distinct pleasure of speaking this this week. Again, for a follow up in the part two with Daniel Gasser, if you didn’t hear him last week, you really gotta check it out. We started a, an amazingly cool conversation disagreeing, Daniel, as much as we’re disagreeing or we agreeing more than we’re disagreeing.
What do you think so far?
Daniel Gasser: I think we did quite well on, on agreeing and a little bit of disagreeing, but I thought that would be more of disagreeing
Chris Gazdik: actually than it was. I suggest that we might agree more than you might think that we do, but. In any case, this is through therapist eyes, like I said, where you get personal insights directly from a therapist.
And in this [00:01:00] episode of coach in your own home and personal time in your car thank you for listening to our show. We’re worldwide. We are in international podcast and we need those five star reviews, man. They make big deal in the algorithms and the apple iTunes stuff, writing awesome words. And you know, that all is very, very helpful.
Contact@throughatherapistseyes.com the way you interact with us? Daniel, I really appreciate you working with something that is as dramatic and difficult as the issue of addictions can be drug and alcohol addictions. And by the way, we might throw into this conversation what we call the process, addictions, eating addictions, gambling, addictions, sex addictions, and online video.
Gaming addictions. I like to say when I’m trying to educate people about what we know about addictions and what we don’t know, but what we do know is you don’t get addicted to picking your nails. You don’t get addicted to haircuts. I love the Pittsburgh Steelers football baby, but you don’t get addicted to football or dance.
You know, there’s, there’s, that’s a different reality. You get addicted to drugs, alcohol, weed, pot pills, you know, all of that substances and then [00:02:00] eating gambling, sex addictions, and online video gaming addictions. So we’ll talk about that. But before we get to that, Daniel, these guys need to know where to find you because you do coaching with people all around the world.
Is that right? Yeah. It’s online.
Daniel Gasser: So it’s all around the world.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. The amazing world we live in the internet age. Isn’t it? It
Daniel Gasser: is. It is. It is
Chris Gazdik: fantastic. I love it. , it’s awesome to be able to talk to this, this man, guys he’s from, from Switzerland all the way across the world in Europe. So I love we yesterday.
Or last week we talked a little bit about some cultural things with the police shooting. That was fascinating. Kind of as well, but how do they find you? What do you do? I mean, you got phone numbers, you had a, a internet address, like how what’s the best way to get up with you.
Daniel Gasser: So the best way to get up with me is to visit quit the bottle.com.
Don’t get afraid. If you see some package prices there, just write an email. You can read there what I have to say. But write an email first to Daniel, quit the bottle.com and we have a conversation because I, I’m not I’m not making really a [00:03:00] living out of this coaching thing. I it’s really to help.
I’m a business man in real life quote. gotcha. Right. It’s a hard thing. It’s I have to do this. I have to help other peoples because this method I found helped me. So I figured it could help us. So that’s it. That’s how you can find me Daniel@quitthebottle.com.
Chris Gazdik: I love that. And, and, you know, I, I can’t vouch for you personally, cuz I just met you today, by the way we’re re re recording this on July.
The seventh is when we’re recording. Forgot to say that from last week’s episode, that’s why you’ve heard this a few weeks after we, we we’ve let our shows go a little bit later. So the, the current event we talked about last week was a little delayed and that’s, that’s kind of why, but I can tell you the audience in, in kind of meeting you and talking to you, Daniel, that, you know, you’re, you’re passionate.
You’re you’re you value just what you just said to helping people. It it’s about getting your message out. I, I, [00:04:00] I, I wanna quote you by saying, you know, if, if, if you’re coaching people or working with people and sharing this method to get sober and it only helps one individual. That that’s what it’s all about.
And, and I, I can feel that from you talking to you, and again, I just appreciate what you’re doing and I think it’s really valuable work. So definitely have a conversation with this guy. You know what sometimes the biggest step that you can take with your relationship with addiction is just that first simple step.
It’s just a conversation. Have it true.
Daniel Gasser: True. It’s 90%
Chris Gazdik: of the work really is actually, it really is. The same thing goes for, you know, what, just go to an AA meeting, right? Just, yeah. Take a step, make the phone call to a therapist. Like don’t stay stuck in your own world, repetitively doing the same thing. You know, they say in the 12 step program, you know, insanity is doing the same thing and [00:05:00] expecting different results.
Yeah. Right. Just make the call. Make the step, just the small conversation, right?
Daniel Gasser: Yeah. And it’s just, it’s really just an email. I mean, there you go. Even even more. Yeah. You don’t have to talk to me in person. You don’t have to jump on a zoom call, just write an email. It’s it’s just, Hey Daniel, that’s enough. And I’m gonna get back to you and yeah. I think it’s really important to, to know that you’re not alone out there. Oh, way, way, way important. I
was a drunk for over 30 years and I managed to get out of it. So if I average guy managed to get out of it, you can get out of it too.
Chris Gazdik: I love that. I love that a lot.
So I think what I wanna do, cuz I, I, I, I read these things. I don’t like doing reading on the show and I wanna get away from the disease model that we talked a lot about last episode and towards the end there. But I wanna, I think what I wanna do just because I got it prepared and I think it’s a cool.
Way of looking at some of [00:06:00] the, some of the, the crazy science to all of this, like what we’ve learned about addiction and what we kind of know. And as with most things with science, when you, when you learn about something, you realize there’s holes in what we know and, you know, and it becomes more holes than what you learn.
The more you learn, the more you realize you don’t know. And I think that when it comes to addiction, when we’re looking at the brain and neurology and all of these things, like, dude, we don’t know Jack crap about neurology and the brain. Like, I, I, I would submit to you that I’ve talked to neurologists on this thing.
And dude, they, we just, we don’t know how minerals and neuro neuro processing goes and I could speak intelligently about the limbic system and the amygdala and, you know, GABA is another neurotransmitter. We don’t even talk about like, you know, there’s, we don’t. We haven’t touched the surface on what we’re learning about this stuff I would maintain, but we are learning some, and I wanna read through some of these things and I think what I [00:07:00] wanna do, because it gives an idea of disease concept and what we understand about the brain.
And I wanna spend a whole lot of time with it, but I wanna read it and see what you think about it and what I think about it for just a couple quick comments. And then we have way more cool things to get to in, in recovery topics. Does that, does that sound agreeable? Go ahead. Okay. So this was actually in 1992, it was pub MD.
Now this one, I thought Daniel’s gonna like right, because they say you can’t use a disease model. It didn’t make any sense to these guys when they were writing this. So this is their, and these are actually studies. Like these are journaly studies. Bear with this, but there’s the, the point is just think of the big picture and the what the, what the point is that they’re trying to make.
So pub MD says no, not a disease model, excessive drinking can cause physical disease and involve physical dependence without therefore being a disease itself. The disease concept in quotes of alcoholism is not needed to justify medical intervention [00:08:00] or a caring approach to those who are dependent on alcohol.
There is specific and general version of the disease concept of alcoholism. The specific disease concept associated mainly with the fellowship of alcoholics anonymous is contradicted by empirical evidence and unhelpful for prevent and treatment responses to problem drinking, especially for the effort to detect and modify problem drinking at an early stage.
The more general disease concept shares these disadvantages. Is also ineffective in engendering sympathetic attitudes towards problem drinkers among the general public. It is more useful to view problem drinking as the result of the interaction between the individual’s personality and the social context in which he, or she has learned how to drink.
Okay. That’s what their sort of summary of their article and, and research come to. You wanna make any quick comments and now make some quick [00:09:00] comments and move to the next. What do you, what do you think about that? I, I figured you might like that one, man. yeah, I kind
Daniel Gasser: of like it. Because again, I, I think it’s not a disease as such.
It can become a disease because of the dependency, because of the harm you’re doing to your body by poisoning yourself. But as such to start with, I agree. I tend to agree after our last conversation. I tend to agree that actually it’s not a disease, but from another point of view, as you, you, you taught me last week to diagnose or to, to get an idea of what’s going wrong.
And to, to have a list of symptoms, you could call it a disease because there is only stuff symptoms.
Right. But then again,
yeah. As I said before, one could use it as a, as an excuse.
Chris Gazdik: I think what worries me about this and what they’re writing, you know, particularly the last part of [00:10:00] what they’re saying here, right?
The more general disease concept shares disadvantages, and is also ineffective in endangering sympathetic attitudes towards problem drinkers among the general public. I don’t care whether it’s people, you know, shame you for having diabetes or not, you know? Yeah. We, we need to change the cultural view of this.
Like alcoholics are some of the smartest people I’ve met. I mean, that. They really are amazing people and the resiliency that they develop going through hell and back, they’re the living example of essentially dying a lot of ways and then re vigorating their life. Like, dude, I, I feel like you’re amazing Daniel having used heroin.
If you listen to the last episode and more of your story and alcohol out to ass, like an incredible amount that sh there, people have used substances to the point that they shouldn’t be walking yet, the body’s resiliency and now recovery and sober for four years. Like, [00:11:00] that’s just the words of my son that that’s badass.
There’s nothing degenerative about that. There’s nothing shameful about that. There’s not like it’s amazing. And yet these guys are worried about calling a disease because it’s gonna make the public think they’re stupid. Like that’s.
Daniel Gasser: Yeah. But, but, you know, yeah. I think I know what they’re, what they’re with that.
And I. If you call it the disease, a lot of people will panic. Yeah. And will say, oh, because I have two glasses of wine every evening. I’m ill incurably ill. I’m screwed. I gotta agree more. Just doesn’t mean that. Yeah. But yeah, it could be, but I, I don’t, I don’t agree with that statement either. I don’t give a damn if, if what the public thinks, right.
We have a problem with alcohol in our society.
Chris Gazdik: And another thing is that they talk about the social context and learning to drink. Like this is not a learned behavior, I believe. And these next [00:12:00] things will, we’ll demonstrate that a little bit. Okay. The next one real quick is neuroscience studies with rats.
I thought this was pretty cool. I don’t like to read studies. I like the people do the studies learn about it. And then tell me about it at conferences, but bear with me because this is, this, this stuff gets us a little bit sciencey. So this is actually from 2018. The new research confirms earlier work showing this is true for rats, but it takes things a step further and supports a study design that could help scientists better understand addiction biology, and possibly develop more effective therapies for human addictive behaviors led by a team at Lin, sorry for the pronunciation university in Sweden.
Not to be confused Daniel with Switzerland, by the way. Right? those SWES right. Anyway, the researchers found that when given a choice between alcohol and a tastier, more biological desirable, sugar substitute a subgroup of rats consistently preferred the alcohol. The authors further identified a specific [00:13:00] brain region and molecular dis dysfunction, most likely responsible for these addictive tendencies.
They believe their findings and study design could be steps towards developing an effective pharmaceutical therapy for alcohol addiction. We love those pills, right. But anyway, a, a kind of treatment that has alluded researchers. A taste for sweetness is evolutionary and embedded in the mial brain. In the wild sugar translates into fast calories and improved survival odds for the new study, 32 rats were trained to sip a 20 ounce alcohol solution for 10 weeks until it became habit.
They were then presented with a daily choice between more alcohol or a solution of the non caloric sweetener saccharin. It’s the artificial sweetener, providing sugary tasting enticing without the potential confounding variable of actual calories. The majority of the rats vastly preferred the Fox sugar over the alcohol option, but the fact that four [00:14:00] rats or 12.5% of the total stuck with the alcohol was telling the senior authors Marcus heli director of center for social and effective neuroscience.
Atlin ping. Given the rate of alcohol misuse in humans is around 15. So highly expanded the study. There were four rats who went for the alcohol, despite the more natural reward of sweetness. He says, we built on that in 600 animals later, we found that a very stable proportion of the population shows alcohol.
What’s more the quote unquote addicted rats still chose alcohol, even when it meant receiving an unpleasant foot shock. And then they started in the article talking about genes later on in collaboration with co-author and university of Texas at Austin research science Dan Mayfield. He league’s team found that in brain samples from deceased humans who had suffered from [00:15:00] the alcohol addiction, G a T dash three levels were markedly lower in the amygdala, generally considered the brain’s emotion center.
And later on the new article, they suggested that research. Intervention of GABA, which is a different neurotransmitter is something that they see linked kind of as well. So I know that was a lot bear, thank you for bearing with me. I don’t like reading on the show, but what, let me just open up. What do you take from that?
Does that do anything in your brain?
Daniel Gasser: I think it’s stupid. It’s stupid. It’s completely stupid. How so? It has been proven a lot of time that animal experimentation is not reliable at all. So you compare a rat to a divine and creative and powerful human being. That’s crap. okay. I mean, you, you, can you I dunno, I can catch my cat.
My wife would kill me and
Chris Gazdik: yeah, don’t do that.
Daniel Gasser: Daniel. Don’t give [00:16:00] him, give him alcohol for 10 days and he’s be addicted to alcohol because of the alcohol is an addictive substance period. Because of some rats do that. And some rat, we were talking about rats. They have brains small like that. Are you fucking kidding me?
okay. Sorry. But no, but no, sorry. I can’t. Well, I dunno about no, sorry, but I don’t know about you. Are you
spiritual? I am. Yes, I am. Do you believe in the higher consciousness? I do.
Okay. So do we really have to talk about rats?
Chris Gazdik: Well, the reason why I pulled that out Daniel is because it it’s fascinating the way that we’ve researched different aspects of the brain and the influence of Gabapentin, which the neurotransmitter and what we’re learning about the, the brain scans.
The next one I was gonna read is a little bit about, you know scans that we’re looking at with, with, with people and human brains and the functions that we’re learning [00:17:00] about. Because as we talked about last time, There does seem to be genetic numbers. And what was really interesting about the last one with the rats to me is that since we began understanding addiction, you know, in the, in about the sixties, the fifties and the sixties is when we started to really realize, holy crap, there’s a problem with addiction.
It’s alcohol thing, right before that it was just the town drunk and it wasn’t a big deal. We didn’t really understand it, you know, but then we began to study and follow this stuff right in the sixties and then in the seventies and all the way through, for the last 50 years, this number of about 10 to 15% has totally held, held stable with what we see in being able to diagnose this or not.
And that just. No, not on rats. Sorry. We’re done with the rats. It was
Those are the research people. They’re, they’re smarter people than me. Yeah. Let, let me
Daniel Gasser: come. Let me [00:18:00] come back to you with, with Dr. Dispenser bit fan of it. I told you last time already, you did he has shown by studies by measurements of the neuro and brain stuff and all that. I have no clue that through meditation, you change your brain, you change your pH physiology. You could agree more change genetics. You change your genetics. Yeah. So if the next thing you’re gonna read is again about rats. I’m gonna cut that call, man. you’re gonna hang because show me, show me a rat meditating, and then we can talk.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. You know, I couldn’t, I couldn’t agree more. And, and I think that, you know, what’s. What’s interesting about that. And, and, and what I do in the therapy realm, you know, we’re learning about brain plasticity and we’re learning about, you know, behavior and, and motivation.
And, and the domain that we have [00:19:00] are over our own bodies. And they have done studies with brain functioning, MRI, scales, and studies and whatever that’s way above, above me as well. But that just with cognitive practices, the cognitive behavioral therapy models, and modalities that we work with, that you literally change the brain functioning of your frontal cortex.
Like, and they can map it, they can track it, they can see it. It’s awesome. It’s amazing. Right. This stuff really does work and meditation. I’ll give you another one. My ex cohost, or I guess you still around Craig talks very much about just breathing. Yeah, learning how to breathe and the power behind what you do in decreasing your sympathetic nervous system.
When you learn how to breathe through your diaphragm and through your nose, even neurologically it’s different in, or not neurologically, but in your sinuses, there’s a lot that happens with breathing through your nose as we’re supposed to be, not mouth [00:20:00] breathers. Like yeah. You’re you can influence the way you literally feel in the moment right now.
Yeah. Did you ever hear,
Daniel Gasser: hear about the Kini breathing
Chris Gazdik: about what Kini breathing? Literally. I didn’t Kini. That sounds interest
Daniel Gasser: Kini. That sounds awesome is that comes from India, but it’s, it’s actually your your contract, your,
How, how it’s called in English. The spot between your, your genitals and your asshole.
Chris Gazdik: Crap. What did we just do? that we got knee off the mic on that one. Is that, is that the peroneum or the KES perm. Okay. The peroneum peroneum okay. Okay.
Daniel Gasser: So you contract this muscle and you contract your lower abdomine and you higher abdomine and you start breathing very slowly in, and you imagine actually that you pulling your spinal cord liquid up to the [00:21:00] brain.
Chris Gazdik: Ah, that’s super cool. I’m trying it a little bit right now. Like that’s not. Yeah, no, no, no, no.
Daniel Gasser: Don’t, don’t try light. You have to practice. It’s very, because clearly, because it, it is it’s against our natural breathing because if you contract all your per lower abdomin, your, your upper abdomin and you’re still breathing.
That’s not working. Normally you have to train it. It’s it’s quite difficult.
Chris Gazdik: It feels weird to try to do it. Yeah. It feels very weird.
Daniel Gasser: Yeah. So, but what happens actually, if you practice it, I had to practice it for weeks, but once it’s working, what happens is that you have, you feel the energy in your brain, you actually feel the tickling on your skull just by breathing differently.
You changed your energy field. Did you know that we have a magnetic field around us?
I’ve heard there’s a little bit of that. Absolutely. Yeah. Yes. Electrical and matter [00:22:00] and yeah. Yeah. And it’s measurable. Okay. And that magnetic field can go as far as three meters. That’s about 10 feet, I think. Correct me if I’m wrong. Okay. Around you. Okay. So we have an energy field. That’s big. That’s huge. That is we can. We can, and I come back to addiction and we can influence that. So if we are living in stress mode, flight, or fight mode, we are living in this three lower energy centers also called check class. Ah, yes, I no more about that. 10, what happens then is we drain energy from that field and that’s Dr. Dispenser. That’s not from me. And what happens with, if we abuse, substances, poison poisoning substances, we drain, we go in that stress mode. We always in that stress mode at the, I say, isn’t that stressful? Like I said, [00:23:00] that last time with the fire alarm,
right?
Having a drink to cope with stress is like putting off the fire alarm and call the firefighters and tell them, Hey, fire is off, but you just shut down the alarm. So what happens there is we drain energy, but. We can build up that energy again by meditating, by breathing, as you say. So come again with rats.
Chris Gazdik: well, Hey, I was just thinking, do I wanna go with this next one or not? I think we spend enough time on it, but these guys are talking about, you know let me see scanning of the brain and the 1.5, we’re able
Daniel Gasser: to change our body. We are able to change our physiology, right. By thinking differently, by having different emotions and having different thoughts, because we are able to change the way we think and the way we feel.
Right. Right. So we are very, very [00:24:00] powerful
Chris Gazdik: beings. But, but there’s a limit to that. And that’s, and that’s where I think I’m looking at some of these weird science things that we’re trying to understand what’s going on in the brain, because what I don’t want to have happen here is to have people, listen, I’m gonna go back to this and, and hear the show and say, Hey, I’ve had this problem with alcohol.
I’ve been sober for five years now, six years, and I can change my life and do controlled use and have domain over my, my physical body. I there’s no reason why I can’t have just like three beers. Look, I’ve been able to have three beers never more than four beers over the next, you know, over, over the last four and a half weeks.
I see. I don’t really, I don’t really have this crap. These people were talking about this addiction stuff. That’s, that’s what really gets me, me concerned. And it’s, it’s neat. For a lack of a better word that we are beginning to learn a little bit about, you know, brain slicing and whatever these smart [00:25:00] people are doing with MRIs and, you know, and yeah, maybe Daniel, what we’re learning about, well from rats and substances, I mean, they can extrapolate what they want to scientifically and teach us about that.
That’s that’s I have no problem with that because there is a biological difference and part of the reconciliation is being sober is the only thing that we know of as an effective recommendation, once we’ve identified the idea of addiction and that’s, there’s something different, even though we don’t know it, we know it by anecdotal experience for the last 50, 60, 70 years of working with people that have been trying to do controlled drinking that have addiction.
It doesn’t seem possible. That’s the concern. Does that make sense? Absolutely.
Daniel Gasser: And I’m totally with you on that. Even if we disagree on it, but I’m totally with you that you can’t just say, okay, I’m the master of the universe. I’m the master of my body and over my brain. [00:26:00] So I can go back and poison myself again. Yeah.
But again, what’s the point, what’s the point of going back to something that almost destroyed your life, right? It does. It, it defies logic. I think it’s a society thing. Let’s take the example of cigarettes. A former smoker would never, ever talk about going back to controlled
Chris Gazdik: smoking. Right? You probably true.
Yeah. Right.
Daniel Gasser: But in world war II, they gave cigarettes to the GIS telling them that makes them brave and courageous and fearless and whatnot. well, yeah. And that actually smoking cigarettes is healthy.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. There was a lot of. They’re paying the Piper now with the liabilities that they’ve accumulated.
And
Daniel Gasser: I say, it’s just, I state them, correct me if I’m wrong. Or if you disagree, I say, if back [00:27:00] then
you would have stopped smoking. Some people would also have spoken about going back to control smoking. But as of now, smoking is totally, as you said before, your, your kids is like, what’s smoking what P how’s stupid more in imaginable.
Yeah. And with alcohol, it’s still here. It’s still in society. It’s still widely accepted. It’s still considered something cool and easy to do. And I think one of the reason why to use your term recovering addicts, want to return to control drinking is because everybody else is drinking.
Chris Gazdik: That’s a big part of it.
Yeah.
Daniel Gasser: If nobody else were drinking, why would I return to it? And the people I worked with, if I talked to them after month, they say what? I had this French guy, he was binge drinking on red wine, like bottles [00:28:00] and bottles of red wine in a day. Yeah. Wow. And he is done with that. He goes to the supermarket, he’s standing in front of the wine LA and he’s like, what the hell?
Why is there so, so much poison in here? You know, because he, he changed the way he looked at it. And I really, I can’t stress it enough. If you changed the way you look at something, you change your brain and therefore you change your body too, because it’s interrelated. Right. And if you change these two things,
I say, then you got rid of that addiction part and you got rid of. I can do controlled drinking.
I love to say to call it controlled poisoning. How does that sound? Right. Why would one go back to controlled poisoning?
Chris Gazdik: You know, there’s a thing that has [00:29:00] been and it kind of confusing to me, but I’ve seen it over the years and people talk about this. Like when you start talking about addiction, everyone kind of talks about that person who just, you know, clearly had a drinking problem.
Their life was a, a mess and legal troubles, whatever relationship troubles, the, you know, they had enough signs and the symptoms that we were looking at and up, and just decided one day, boom, I’m done, you know? Yeah. And they just put it away and they’re done with it as opposed to people that have, you know, you mentioned last episode, you know, you have maybe a 50, 50 recidivism rate for so far as relapse as it goes.
And you know, why is that? How, how can some people just be bam done with it and then other people, you know, it’s a struggle. I mean, this is a real, real struggle to get off of this stuff. And my, my theory about that, my take on that is that, you know, like you just kind of described and, and that’s part of what I think you described as, [00:30:00] as your method that you you’ve subs you, you work with people on people can reach a crystal clear clarity about what alcohol represents for me in my life.
And because of that, crystal clear reality, no more. It’s just over. And I work with people in therapy, you know, my realm to accomplish that as a matter of. We talk about you know, you may remember from your days in rehab, when you went to rehab, some of these buzzwords, right? We talk about relapse prevention and we talk about triggers.
You talked about it a little bit last time, you know, hearing the, you know, the snap of the bottle and there’s, there’s, there’s so many things that brainwaves, we just get triggered into like boom I’m using. Anyway, one of the coolest relapse prevention tools to help manage maintaining sobriety is identifying that one moment, right?
[00:31:00] That one moment, or that one day, that one event that just represents, like, I don’t want this anymore. Like this, and you, and I’ll have people draw a picture. Sometimes we’re writing a paragraph. Sometimes we’re, you know, going a collage, anything, and, and you carry that around with you. And anytime you have one of these triggers, which happens all the time, You pull that outta your pocket and you look at it like, that is why I, that is what I don’t want any more.
Excellent. It’s a powerful tool.
Daniel Gasser: Yeah. And I think, I think why some people succeed and others not is one reason could be that for those who don’t succeed yet, the pivotal moment was not yet there. That moment that changed your life.
Chris Gazdik: Well, they talk about rock bottom too. Is another concept. I don’t particularly like that one, but I totally [00:32:00] like that.
Yeah.
Daniel Gasser: Because, but rock bottom can mean different things. Absolutely. Yeah. If I may, i, I can tell you some of these moments in my drinking career, I like please drinking career. Yeah. They say that right. I could have cars in the ditch. Fighting police spending because in Switzerland, you don’t go to jail. You just pay fines, spending thousands and thousands of Swiss
Frans on fines on, they took away my license several times for years. And I was before I was a business when I was a craftsman. So imagine a craftsman without a car.
Chris Gazdik: a Crossman. Oh, craft. You’re saying craft craftsman. Ah, gotcha.
Daniel Gasser: Stone Mason, without a car.
It’s impossible. Yeah. It won’t work. Only things could be pivotal moments. And the story you told last time with me laying in the street, that’s not [00:33:00] made up. That really happened several times. I even woke. I even woke up in my vomit.
Right. That’s not to write down because people don’t want to hear that shit, but that’s could also be a pivotal moment.
It wasn’t. Right. I even had, when I wrote my book, I had the story in mind and I asked my wife, do you remember that moment? Such and such moment? Me coming home completely wasted. Yeah. And she came up with another moment that I didn’t recall me sitting in my car in front of the house being so fucking wasted that I had to text my wife, that she comes out to help me get out of the freaking car to get into the house. Right. But I was driving still. Well, of course. And that wasn’t the pivitol moment in my life.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. That could have been, I mean, could’ve been, that’s a moment, [00:34:00] right. That you’ve described a few.
Daniel Gasser: My moment was another car accident. I hit a wall frontally and I walked away. Totally sad. The car was warped. It wasn’t the car.
You couldn’t tell the brand of the car anymore. And I had no scratch. I wear glasses, not even the glasses were still straight, but what was the pivotal moment for me was that next day we went to the scrapyard to get the belongs out of what used to be a car. Right. And usually my wife would say in these moments, how much longer are you gonna do that?
You have to kill somebody on the road.
Chris Gazdik: Trying to infuse logic. Yeah. Yes. And
Daniel Gasser: what happened? I looked at her and she didn’t look at me. She looked at [00:35:00] the rest of the car and she didn’t say one single word. And that for me was the pivotal moment. Right. That was like a punch in my belly, really. Like, and when I tell you this, I, I can feel that punch again.
Chris Gazdik: Right. Keep that feeling because that’s a sober, that’s a sober creator. I know. I
Daniel Gasser: don’t need that anymore. Yeah. Because I know, but in the beginning, what you described with collages and, and stuff like that, that helped right. To remind myself of that punch,
Chris Gazdik: right? Yeah. That’s, that’s a powerful story. Yeah.
Daniel Gasser: But then still it took me one and a half year. Yeah. From that pivotal moment to actually find that method that I’m using now for others that finally freed me from that substance.
Chris Gazdik: Well, you know, I’m glad that you added that. I didn’t expect that. And I’m glad to hear that because you know, that is what [00:36:00] we do in, in the, in the substance abuse and therapy world as well.
You, you may go to a rehab facility and then go back and relapse, and then you go to just a therapy person like me and you begin to build your building recovery, your, your, your, you know, relapse sometimes is even a part of that, you know, continued use after your moment. It’s kind of why I don’t like Daniel, the, the rock bottom moment that that is described.
Yeah. I like, I like to think of it as a spiral down and they say in AA, particularly, or in, you know, recovering fields, it ends in jails institutions or death. And I’ve generally seen that to be generally the truth. If you continue, you know, using, but at any given point on this spiral down, you can get off of that ride.
You don’t have to go all the way down to the bottom of a rock bottom. Yeah. Like it, it can be right now. And, and I had a, I had a client describe to me, you know, what his, his rock bottom was, or his moment, the ride, the time that he got off of his ride, he was just in his living room drinking like any other [00:37:00] day, Not particularly trash, not particularly eventful, but he knew that his relationship with alcohol was destructive in his life.
And he reached down to the table to get his beer. And at that exact moment, his son or daughter, I forget, reached up to be grasped by him. And in that split second, he decided to reach up and pick up his daughter instead of the beer. And he never picked up another beer in his life. Amazing. At least at the time that he met me.
Amazing. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It’s like, you know, that’s that’s, but that’s, that’s recovery from something that we identify as addiction and, and, and you, if you’re listening to this, you can do that. But I think that there’s also an identification of identifying that this alcohol relationship is, is not okay for me.
Yeah. And allergic whatever you want to think. It needs to stop. Yeah. For me, And [00:38:00] I
Daniel Gasser: I’d like to add for, for the people listening to this, you don’t need to wait for a pivotal moment, actually. Exactly. You, you, you don’t need to trash your car or to hit your wife or your children or whatever, horrible things.
It takes actually is a decision. And I experienced that with the people you asked me in the last episode, how many people are succeeding and how many are not those who took a firm decision, they succeed doesn’t matter if they work with me or they work with you or they do any program. It needs a firm, a hundred percent decision.
This has to stop now, right?
For idiots like me, it needs a car accident and all wife walking away and almost, I, I destroy two business. Right. And,
Chris Gazdik: but that’s Daniel, that’s what people [00:39:00] don’t understand about addiction. And, and again like that doesn’t happen typically with people’s relationship with alcohol or other drugs.
Like that’s not typical, but how can somebody continue to go through, like, somebody might be listening to the story and you’d be like, Daniel, how did you not get that at the first police interaction or the first DUI? Or, you know, how did you not get that? You know, the first time that you got into white
Daniel Gasser: because I’m, I’m a stubborn, stupid idiot.
Chris Gazdik: It’s, it’s something that defies logic that’s like addiction that definition. Can we make, maybe we make that the definition, right. Addiction. Yeah, totally defies logic. There’s no logic to this. That’s part of the compulsion. That’s part of what people just that don’t have addiction cannot wrap their arms around what you have just described.
Now. I don’t have addiction myself by the grace of God. And it took me so long to really work with. Making sense of these symptoms that we look for and this progression and these ideas, like I totally [00:40:00] get why that’s the case because of the, the trap that people get into. It’s amazing. So
Daniel Gasser: I really, I really think it’s covering the covering part is, is a huge thing. You want to cover something, you don’t wanna look at something that’s why you use substances to cover things.
That might be food that might be sugar. That might be online gambling. That might be alcohol. That might be whatever. But the thing is you want to cover something and as long as you don’t find out what it is, You don’t go to succeed.
Chris Gazdik: So that is one of the symptoms that we look down and list on. And you know what, just for gr grins and giggles, I wanna go down through that again, cuz we did that last episode, but it’s good for this conversation. So the as well, so the things that we look at sort of symptoms of addiction, if you will, loss of [00:41:00] control emotional relief, that’s what we’re talking about there covering emotional relief, a concept of progression, a concept of tolerance gulping.
I’m not gonna spend any time describing that blackout or blackouts problem in life area associated to use increased frequency. A concept that we talked about last episode, preoccupation guilt associated to use avoidance in talking about the use hiding beverages, which quick pause there I do. I didn’t, I, I didn’t pause long enough last episode, but.
I, I, I get fascinated when alcoholics or drug addicts, like describe to me the different hiding experiences they’ve had. And, and honestly that one to me is a, is a pretty big red flag. It, it, it, people just don’t typically hide their alcohol, but I, dude, I’m talking about people putting bottles in the, in the toilet so that when they go to the toilet, they can pull the toilet lids off and get their liquor, you know, it’s like, who does this kind of stuff with these crazy behaviors, like hiding your supply, [00:42:00] begins to be commonplace in an alcoholics life.
If that makes sense. Yeah. I don’t understand that, but yeah. Okay. Lying about the use loss of other interests what’s that I can explain to you. Why? Okay. Gimme one more second and then legal and other social issues, physical withdrawal symptoms occur, and then periods of forced abstinence are some of the signs.
That’s what we’re kind of looking for. Go ahead. What, what do you, what do you have there?
Daniel Gasser: So the hiding thing is because, oh yeah. You are aware of having a problem. Right. Right. And you wanna hide it right from yourself. It’s as easy as that. It’s as simple as that. Yeah. As soon as I admit it to my wife, I think I have a problem. Mm-hmm I didn’t have, I didn’t have to hide anymore because it was, it was in the open.
Chris Gazdik: It’s a good transition. I still, I still,
Daniel Gasser: I still was a, a [00:43:00] fucking drunk. Right. But
I didn’t have to hide in front of my wife, so I didn’t have to hide a bottle anywhere. That’s the thing. That’s why we hide because we, we, we discovered we have a problem, but we can’t admit.
So
Chris Gazdik: we hide. Right. I’m holding up on the video, a big book and it’s alcoholics anonymous. It’s a good transition for us, but you made me think of it because of the very first step of their 12 step stuff. Right. We admitted, we are powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable. Like the reality of being able to admit whether it’s to your wife, whether it’s to yourself, whether it’s the first time that you go to an alcoholics anonymous meeting, whether it’s the first time that you say to your therapist, in my therapy relationship, I’ve had people in therapy with me for, you know, 8, 9, 10 months, a year or year and a half.
And then we, we, they identify it and they can admit it or speak it the truth out loud. [00:44:00] Yeah. And that is a huge step in identifying it’s. It’s really arguably the first step that you admit to yourself and or others that my relationship with alcohol is not working is not okay. It’s huge.
Daniel Gasser: I agree with that.
But. I don’t agree with the wording they’re
Chris Gazdik: using that there are powerless. I didn’t figure you would, this is gonna be an audience. This is gonna be a transition to a battle area. I suspect. Yeah, because let’s go buddy,
Daniel Gasser: because simply of the world of the word powerless.
Chris Gazdik: Okay. Right.
Daniel Gasser: If I admit having a problem, I cannot admit of seeking help.
I can admit that I’m not able to solve this on my own, but if I say I’m powerless, that’s failure, pure mm-hmm that’s failure from the beginning. I’m powerless. I give that to the hands of some higher spirit or whatever. [00:45:00] That’s bolicks sorry. But, well, there’s a
Chris Gazdik: lot my book here. Let me, oh, I love it. I love it.
Get a good, get a good look at that. I love that.
Daniel Gasser: Win the battle. Control the alcohol in 30
Chris Gazdik: days or less. That’s awesome. They can find that on amazon.com and where can they get all that? Yeah.
Daniel Gasser: So here’s another thing that the AA state, basically the unhappiness person in the world is a chronic alcoholic who has an insistent yearning to enjoy life as he wants new, but cannot picture life without alcohol.
He has a heartbreaking obsession that by some miracle of control, he will be able to do so there
by getting this book and, you know, let’s find what, what does that mean being in control?
Chris Gazdik: These are, these are good questions, right? Let me, so being in control and the issue of powerlessness that people struggle with in, in, in early in the recovery [00:46:00] process are good questions.
And the way that I’ve made sense of it is actually we talked about this last episode. So the powerlessness reality is the unfortunate reality. That seems to be about the biological aspects that we were talking about. For whatever reason that we cannot understand biologically an alcoholic or drug addicted body cannot return you.
You’ve heard this theme right. Cannot return to controlled use. That’s the powerlessness, that’s the reality of compulsion. That’s the reality of progression and there’s definitions to each one of these symptoms. But, but yeah,
Daniel Gasser: that’s, that’s the reality of a society thinking that alcohol is something normal.
If you put that away from the equation, we talked about smoking before then why [00:47:00] would anybody being sensed? Go back to something that poisons and go back to something that destroys his life. That’s only. Because the society still thinks that drinking alcohol, drinking poison is something completely normal.
Did you know that you, if you have one zip of pure alcohol, it kills you
Chris Gazdik: probably.
Daniel Gasser: So we talking, we talking poison
Chris Gazdik: here. Yeah. It’s big stuff, right?
Daniel Gasser: Yeah. Okay. And that’s going back of control poisoning. It’s only because the society states still their drinking alcohol is something completely normal, which in my opinion,
Chris Gazdik: it’s not well here’s, here’s the trouble.
It’s weird. Here’s here’s the trouble. Why humans? No, go ahead. Go ahead. Why human
Daniel Gasser: beings are poisoning [00:48:00] themselves and I don’t think that’s biological or genetical or whatever. I think that’s. Purely a society problem. If we human being would live together in a better way, in a more kind and loving way, caring for each other, actually.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. That’s, that’d be refreshing.
Daniel Gasser: That would be the solution. I just say that there would be no addiction problems at all. It’s a society problem. That whole fucking addiction thing is a society problem because we don’t care if someone would’ve cared. I told you the last episode that I sensed, that’s a nine year old already that something’s wrong with the planet.
And that everybody told me that I was wrong and that tore my soul apart.
If we, [00:49:00] if we lived in another society in a more caring and kind society that would never have happened. I never have been an alcoholic or a drunk or whatever you want to call it. And that stupid idea of going back to something that is completely destroying your
life in a controlled way. I mean, that’s completely stupid. Yeah. If I hit you in the face, you don’t come back to get more
Chris Gazdik: might come back to hit you back. No, yeah, here. Here’s the thing that let’s extend this a little bit, right? So we’re talking about alcohol, but you know, before the mics came on, we, we were gonna be able to add it.
Now we were talking about a concept of cross addiction, which is where you’re not just addicted to one substance. You have the euphoric reaction to the other ones, though. You have a drug of choice, which is another concept in the addictions field, but we also talked about what, what are called the process addictions.
So, [00:50:00] you know, people think of addiction weird in, in the way. Culture now has been talking about it, but you do not get addicted to picking your nails. You don’t get addicted to football. You don’t get addicted to cars. You’re really into cars, but you don’t get addicted to cars or trees. Yeah. Come on, man.
You get addicted to drugs and alcohol pot, weed pills, all the substances and whatnot, sugar as well, like we talked about, but you get addicted to substances and then four specific things, gambling and debting, by the way, debting is another component of gambling, eating addictions, sex addictions. And we are little, not sure around the world, but you guys over in the world health organization that are ahead of us in the states, you’ve identified formally online video gaming addictions.
And we, we suspect that that’s because of some of the biological things. Yes, Daniel, that we learned about in rats, by the way, and other ways. We, we believe that the, the, the systems in the brain, that was a joke. I’m just poking you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. but, but we’ve [00:51:00] learned the euphoric systems in the brain might operate differently.
So yeah, you, you ask a really legitimate question that challenged me to think about, like I said, I’m not in recovery. I like video games. Okay. I, I enjoy playing StarCraft, especially, and right now I’m playing destiny and I got star wars heroes on my phone, and I love to spend five minutes just debriefing my brain and playing that on my phone.
But here’s the difference. Here’s the difference. People that have addiction and play video games literally get progressively engaged in the endorphin based system. We suspect in their brain, Daniel they’re playing 17 hours in a 24 hour period of time. More days through the week than not. Okay. It’s like exorbitant.
Daniel Gasser: So according to that theory and I call it a [00:52:00] theory to provoke you a little bit.
Chris Gazdik: Fair enough.
Daniel Gasser: I, as a addictive personality, three addictions. Right. So obviously I have that genetic preposition to be addicted to things. Okay.
Chris Gazdik: Okay. I play video games too, but I’m
Daniel Gasser: freaking not addicted to them. I play poker too.
I’m not addicted to that. Yeah. How do you explain that?
Chris Gazdik: It’s a tough one. It’s a tough one. I, I submit to you, I submit to you that theory. It, it is, it is a whole, no doubt about it. I, I wouldn’t, I couldn’t agree with you more. I also will throw you another one that sort of in the opposite direction, right?
Like. You know, there are a lot of people that are sober in 12 step programs or around the world that if we were to take a sexual history, we would very possibly find a whole crap load [00:53:00] of a porn that’s being consumed compulsively. I’m talking about pretty extensively, not your 15, 20, 30 minute pop every couple times a month, like compulsively, but yet they’re sober from alcohol drugs and whatnot.
Is that called recovery? Well, you know, you gotta question that because you’re, you’re compulsively doing something else you’ve, you’ve gravitated over and replaced it with something else. Yeah. So, so the main point here is that, like, this is dangerous. I don’t think that you would have to Daniel be careful about stopping video games, but.
You really need to be careful if you’re gonna get a job in Las Vegas and think that you’re going to be compulsively engaged in gambling most days, because we know that the endorphin centers might get triggered, the fact that they haven’t for you. Great. You know, but the risks are there in how that goes.
Same thing with cigarettes drives me nuts. You go back to cigarettes, [00:54:00] you know, back when I even started this stuff in 1985, started learning about it in school and whatever. Well, maybe 1990, but right. They, they never, and for my non-addicted brain, I was able to let question, why are you guys going to addiction, recovery groups and drinking coffee, like crazy caffeine and smoking like a pack an hour at AA meetings and talking about recovery.
Yeah. And it’s great. You got off of alcohol and people are so much better than they were when they were actively in their active addiction with alcohol. But my question was like, what’s going on there? Like, how do we, you know, how do we differentiate these things? And, and, and I don’t think annual to answer your question.
I don’t think we haven’t answered yet. I don’t think it’s biological.
Daniel Gasser: Really not. Yeah. You’re really, my wife still smokes.
Chris Gazdik: Right? What’s that your wife? Doesn’t my wife still
smokes
Daniel Gasser: cigarettes. Yeah. Mm-hmm and I still love her deeply. [00:55:00] Mm-hmm even if, even if, sometimes it’s Ugh.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. Right.
Daniel Gasser: Sticky love is strong.
Love is stronger than that. But as I said before, you can, you can drown me in beer. You can pour that stuff over me. I would never touch it again. So how do you explain that? If I would be an addictive personality as that theory and I call it a theory states, if you pour beer over me, I would relapse.
If you put me into Las Vegas, I would be gambling addicted. I played a lot of online poker and I
Chris Gazdik: lost a lot of money. Ouch. That’s why I stopped it. Okay.
Daniel Gasser: But I never considered myself being addicted to online poker for that. So, because I know I’m kind of an expert in addiction. I had three of them and we can sit down and play your online games or your video games or whatever. [00:56:00] Doesn’t bother me.
I can eat sugar. I won’t be addicted to sugar either. So something’s wrong with that theory? Mm-hmm I don’t think it’s biological. I think it’s here. I think if you go to the, the point of finding the reason why you’re taking substances in an excessive way,
and you got rid of it and I’m sure your clients if they go down to the point, you, you never see them again because they solve the problem.
Chris Gazdik: Right? If they go down to the point, what did you say? What did you say?
Daniel Gasser: Well, they go down to the point to the reason why. Oh, gotcha. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You, you never see
them again. So what has this biological aspect to do with it? My father drinks a [00:57:00] beer every once in a while. He never got addicted to, on the other hand, he smoked cigarettes and cigars and pipe
and he had to stop them deliberately said, okay, now that yeah, and much Dr.
MD, he had to stop, but would that mean if I have this biological addictive personality, my father would have it too.
Chris Gazdik: Maybe, maybe not that’s the thing. Yeah. We it’s it’s, it’s not a hundred percent by any measure. Something’s
Daniel Gasser: wrong with that? I don’t know what, but something something’s not right with that theory.
Yeah,
Chris Gazdik: I don’t, yeah. I, I truly believe that at some point we’re going to understand the neurology better and the, you know, the brain scans and the, you know, the, the, the gremlins, if you will, that rattle around in our biological bodies, honestly, for, for lots of genetic diseases that we get lupus and, you know you know, the different, why our bodies turn against [00:58:00] our bodies and have the autoimmune systems fight each other, such as you get with fibromyalgia.
Like we don’t understand a lot of these sort of really dynamic, autoimmune diseases and addictions, like we’re talking about today, biologically neurologically biochemically, like dude, there’s some 30 complicated things. According to
Daniel Gasser: dispense sites all due to low frequency. Say again, like
low frequency, again, you’re drawing energy from your energy field and that makes your body sick and turn onto itself.
Chris Gazdik: I don’t even know what you just said. that’s above my, that’s above my pay grade. Go
Daniel Gasser: take read some books from Dr. Dispenser. It will open a whole new world to you.
Chris Gazdik: Well, there’s a lot of things like that and I I’ve, I’ve been exposed to some of those things, you know, you mentioned chakras and there’s different forms of, of the mental health field.
That kind of goes with that. You know, there’s what’s the stuff my brain’s just tired now. It’s late in the night day. [00:59:00] The shoot I’m, I’m blanking. There’s, there’s some modalities that people work in therapy where you’re working with energy centers and Meridian, Meridian tapping, and you know, some of those types of stuff, I’m just kind of brain tired to go more intelligently into those things.
And so I’ve studied some of those things and I think they’re, they’re fantastically. Cool. What’s interesting is there’s no immediate answer though. Like I have the answer in the mental health, the best method, the best procedure, you know, it doesn’t, it’s not out there. No,
Daniel Gasser: it’s not, it’s not. I think if, if someone yeah, goes to an AA meeting and it helps fine.
Perfect, cool. Awesome. If someone says, oh, I wanna talk to Daniel. Cool. Awesome. If it helps. Awesome. Right. If someone take, oh no, no. Chris is the man to go. Fine. I think what we are, what we are doing here, we too is a luxury debate about possibilities, about theories, about things and stuff. But,
Chris Gazdik: Bottom line, get help.
[01:00:00] What I hear you saying is bottom line, get help. Yeah.
Daniel Gasser: There is help out there. You’re not alone with that shit. Yeah. There are people out there helping you and different approaches, like always in life. Different points of view might be good for you. Might be good for others. Might be not same for you. I had, I had coaching clients after one call.
They said, you know what, Daniel? I think you’re an idiot. Okay. Fine. You know, but
Chris Gazdik: that’s okay. I could see why they would say that. I’m just, I’m kidding.
Daniel Gasser: Yeah. I’m the, I’m the first one admitting that I’m an idiot. Otherwise I wouldn’t have been drunk for 30 years, but you know, that, that’s the thing. There is help and there are different possibilities.
It’s not impossible to get rid of that shit. Really not take a decision. And 90% of the work is done.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. I, I, [01:01:00] I, I think we can really join on that. And, and, and the thing that, that maybe to highlight as we start taxing in for landing here is like, there, there is life after this. I mean, people that are in the middle of their active addiction drinking or using career kind of really get so consumed that they don’t really understand what in the hell are you talking about?
How do I live without this in my life? And, and I’m here to tell you, I’ve seen people, you know, be able to kind of traverse the identification. I need help. I need this out of my life. And when you’re sober, you Daniel, you speak to it. Like you’re really living. It really, you know, I, I get this, let me, let me, let me go a little further.
And then I let let you get in there because you know, there was, there was a radio personality locally, and it really struck me where he, he read some of his formal treatment chart. Literally. He kept it from when he went into rehab. [01:02:00] And I didn’t know that at the time he was like 23 years sober. And every year on his sober birth date, he celebrates that for him and he read it on air and he dramatically talked about how he literally came back from the living dead, the walking dead and, and talked about the appreciation that he had, you know, marking it just with that, through this process of, of like being so grateful, so alive.
So like people that are in recovery are the most humble people I’ve ever met because they’ve been to hell and back and they understand what living really is. I’m almost. It’s just amazing to me. It is. It
Daniel Gasser: is. And I, I can tell to your audience that it’s, it’s not only getting back to life. It’s getting real life back.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. What do you mean by that? Every
Daniel Gasser: everything is better. As I said, many times before, it’s a poison. So physically, [01:03:00] even two weeks after stopping your body is getting better. The, the, the walk to the bathroom is better. Libido is better. Your appetite is better. You actually smell and taste things. Again.
This are the first step and it’s get better and better. You remember phone numbers without writing them down, you can calculate things in your head again. And I, I can go on for hours and hours and hours. And just to get a little bit into spirituality, maybe you you’re getting stronger, you’re getting more confident.
You’re getting more loving, more kind. You’re having new friends. Don’t worry about losing your all friends. Life will handle that on itself. Business career relationship, just everything is getting better. There is actually no disadvantage [01:04:00] disadvantage in getting sober. There are only advantages. Why?
Because it’s a freaking poison, right? right.
Chris Gazdik: I do wanna add something. That’s interesting here though, because I love everything you said. And I tried to set that up in, in saying what is living and all, but there is something that is important. And in particularly for alcohol, That I find people struggle with, which might have been a part of your year and a half after your, your moment where your wife sort of, you know, nonverbally gut punched you, right?
There’s something called Paul’s post-acute withdrawal syndrome. Do you ever hear of this? No. Okay. This is a powerful reality that people really struggle with in the earlier stages and what, what what’s referred to really as early recovery. And I think that’s really the, the first two years of, of recovery, if you will, of sobriety, I meant to say, and, and the reality of it is, you know, you, you, you, you get through the IME, the immediate detox, you know, the shakes and the danger procedures and all of [01:05:00] that.
That’s the simple, easy, first part. And then alcohol’s all outta your system, but we know that there’s something called postacute withdrawal syndrome that I don’t know that we really physically fully understand either, but we can markedly see periods of time where your sleep is still affected. And this is several months after sobriety.
And you go through an episode with this where your body’s like, holy shit, I’m still pissed off with you. Right. And then it gets better and it goes away, but then it comes back and, and your body gets pissed off again, even though you’re sober for eight months. And, and I, we have a show, I think on postacute withdrawal syndrome itself, some point, I think we did it, but the episodes of that decrease in length and they decrease in frequency as you continue to stay sober.
So I wanna be encouraging because when you’re immediately in early recover, you get frustrated. You’re like, dude, I still feel like shit. I heard that guy, Daniel, you said it’s, all’s great. I can’t remember shit still have been six months. [01:06:00] Okay. Well, there’s a period of time that your body’s really recovering, you know, just physiologically.
And I find people just get super discouraged by that, along the journey and path of, of recovery.
Daniel Gasser: Ah, I have to disagree. Oh, wow. Okay.
Chris Gazdik: how you gonna do that? We’re taxi in for landing soon. Now we just added a half hour. how, what do you disagree with that?
Daniel Gasser: Sorry, but I have to disagree. tHat’s okay. That’s okay. I drank up to 10 liters of beer a day. All right. I’m 60 kilograms. I’ll let you do the math for American measurements.
Chris Gazdik: Not a chance
Daniel Gasser: it must be something about 110 pounds or something like that. And I had no withdrawal pains whatsoever. The guy I told you, before that drunk liters and liters of red wine, he had [01:07:00] no withdrawal pains whatsoever.
The guy emptying two bottles of gin a day, no withdrawal pain whatsoever. And I have a theory about that. Okay.
Chris Gazdik: What’s that?
Daniel Gasser: Even after month, that thing you’re describing, we didn’t have that. Why? Because we solved the problem.
And I state that this post thing trauma happens only because you don’t solve the problem in your head.
So it reflects on your body again and back, you know, body, mind, relationship. If something’s wrong with your body, there will be something wrong with your brain and vice versa. So if you solve your problem, why you got addicted, then you won’t have any withdrawal pain.
Chris Gazdik: Okay. Don, no, it’s interesting. I [01:08:00] I’ll have to really think about that. I, I’m learning as well as we’re talking about this and, and, and interacting, which is why I love these conversations and talking to people Some of what might happen with people’s process is that they’re just, their bodies are adjusting, but you’re feeling really good.
And you’re encouraged because you’ve got your life back, your wife, back your job, back your business, acumen back and all of that. And that excitement can be just building momentum. But there are people that fall out of what we call the pink cloud, you know, because life hits, it’s gonna hit and it’s gonna be hard.
Life is not easy. And people struggle with that. The other thing, but it feels great while, while things are going well, see, you know, you learn how to live, right? They say in 12 steps, you live life on life’s terms. You know, because life has crazy stuff that hits you all the time, you know, but some of the pauses, the post-acute withdrawal syndrome stuff might have been missed.
I pulled it outta my. Little cabinet just to remind myself, cause my brain’s tired, but the things they talk [01:09:00] about are mood swings, anxiety, irritability, tiredness, variable, energy, low enthusiasm, variable concentration, and disturbed sleep. So some of those, none of those or all of those may be part of the process.
Daniel Gasser: Wait, wait. Yeah, the only physics thing, physical thing you’d stated here is disturbed sleep. Everything else is in your mind, it’s in your brain. Oh no. Come on. Mood swings are, are, are a component of, of mood swings. Oh yeah. I mean you’re in
the mood. You’re not in the
Chris Gazdik: mood. That’s emotional. Yes and no.
We, we understand mood and irritability and anxiety. These are all things that have a part in our brain systems. Right. What I would, what I would say to is like bipolar disorder, for instance, that’s not just a spiritual thing or. You know, social learning thing, what they go through is their body [01:10:00] exploding with chemical reactions that aren’t typical.
That’s why they go manic so much so that you can become psychotic. And then they’ll also go into depression episodes. So there are some real, you know, I mean, there’s science behind some of my field. We understand some of this stuff, but, but there’s, there’s also a lot of the social things that you’re, that you’re talking about.
So it, it really is, you know what, I’ll go back to the tale of two tapes, the biological over here and the social emotional, they dynamically interact. Right. Okay. And both can influence the other. Okay. But
Daniel Gasser: right. Just you, you are, you’re separating kind of the body from the spirit or from the mind. And that’s, I mean, it’s, it’s one unity mind.
Spirit and body physics is you
Chris Gazdik: cannot separate that. I agree. Yeah. I, I think I agree with that. So, so
Daniel Gasser: it’s all in your mind, it’s all in your head. You’re [01:11:00] getting ill. It’s because of low frequency, you’re getting cancer. It’s because of low frequency, you’re getting fucking addicted. It’s because it took stupid idiot decisions.
And I don’t take decisions with my body. I don’t know about your body. I take decisions up here. So all the things you stated that is happening to these people after getting sober it’s here mm-hmm and that has effect on their bodies. If I tell myself over and over again, that I will have withdrawal pain that I can’t sleep for month,
and everybody is telling me that over and over again.
Guess what happens? I will have withdrawal pain and I can’t sleep for month. You know what I tell my clients, if you can’t sleep, stand up. Go watch a Netflix series. Once you’re tired, you’re gonna
Chris Gazdik: sleep so far. You guys had Netflix and Switzerland.
Daniel Gasser: What do you think where we live on the
Chris Gazdik: moon? Fantastic. I [01:12:00] was kidding.
I was kidding. Yeah, there there’s a lot of that. I, I, I, I, I agree. I see that Daniel. I know we need to taxi in for a landing here. But there’s, there’s so many cool things that are out there about this, that we’re learning. And and again, I wanna say I’m, I’m super glad and appreciative of the work that you’re doing with people, you know, you know, there’s a lot that we know there’s a lot that we think we know, and there’s a lot that we don’t know.
Right? Yeah. I think that’s, that’s something that, that, that, that’s why I love to say this show, you know, the human, emotional experience, we are working to figure this out together. That’s what we endeavor. It’s figuring these things out together. And I don’t think anybody can disagree with that. The worst thing we’ve said multiple times is.
To stay trapped and alone, you know, with what you’re struggling with and what you’re fearful about and, and feeling shameful about like, you know, get outta your dang head. If you call it a higher power to get outta your head. Great. If you call it Daniel, my coach. Great. If you call it [01:13:00] therapy, great. If you go to just church and call it Christianity or Buddhism.
Great. Also, you know, do do something. Yeah. And
Daniel Gasser: it’s funny you say that with the, with the trap, because I, I was thinking about my last word and I
think the blame is not your fault. You have taken some bad decisions. Everybody does, and you have stepped into a trap. Look at it as a beer trap. You know, you stepped in, once it cut off your leg, you won’t step in in again.
But to recognize that it’s trap and that it is, it’s not, you are not to blame.
Shit happens in life. And I like to look at it as like a business problem. If you have a business problem, you look for solutions. You seek help, who can solve that problem for me. And that’s how I like you listening out [01:14:00] there.
Approach these problems. You have a problem. Fine. Let’s find a solution. There is a solution don’t blame yourself. You have been trapped. Don’t overdo it. It’s a problem. It can be solved. And are people like Chris and I to help you with
Chris Gazdik: Daniel? How do they find you again? And internet and all that?
Daniel Gasser: Yeah. Go over to quit the bottle.com or just write an email to Daniel. Quit the bottle.com and
Chris Gazdik: I’ll be here. Listen, listen. It’s it’s about eight 30 Eastern standard time. And I want you guys to understand this guy cares he’s he’s with us. He’s literally up about what is it now? One, two o’clock in the morning.
Half past 2:00 AM. Holy crap. CoWoLi man, go get some sleep. My friend, I really appreciate you hanging out with, through a therapist eyes, stay in touch with us and check our show out. Maybe it can be help to some of your some of the folks that you you work with, so we’ll help each other. Okay. Thanks Chris.
Thanks. All right, guys, you have a great week and we’ll see you next [01:15:00] time. Take care. Be well.