 So, hi. My name's Chris and I'm a recovering drug addict and alcoholic and word on the street is people got really upset with Drew Monson for saying addiction is a disease and comparing it to cancer. So let's talk about that. What is up everybody? This is Chris from the Rewired Soul where we talk about the problem but focus on the solution and if you're new to my channel what I try to do is take different topics going on in the YouTube community try to see what lessons we can learn from them to improve our own mental and emotional well-being. So if you're into that stuff make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell and yeah I got like I don't know almost a dozen requests to make this video so I'm like okay I'll check this out but before we jump into it real quick we are halfway through the month and my brand new book Canceled Inside YouTube Cancel Culture is out now and I have free copies available until the end of the month check out the description down below check out the pinned comments all right and make sure you stay tuned until this end of this video because if you like free stuff I have a really exciting announcement all right so yeah let's talk about Drew Monson and his new video and before I talk about the addiction aspect I just want to say like I've made some videos about Drew Monson in the past opening up about his depression because I cover a lot of mental health topics on this channel and I cannot express how proud I am of this dude right like I was watching another creator yesterday who does some commentary and things like that covers some negative topics and like they want to cover more positive things and and yeah it's difficult sometimes and I just want to shine a light on people doing awesome things like be inspired by Drew Monson okay like in this video he talks about how he's been feeling down and depressed lately but he's been so consistent lately like remember when Drew Monson used to get depressed he would disappear for like six months he's pushing through it and like if you are a fan or a viewer of Drew Monson see what you can learn from it look at Drew and say yo if this dude can go on his channel with over a million subscribers and produce content maybe I can get out of bed and go to work today maybe I can get out of bed and hang out with my friends or family today you see what I mean so like huge huge huge props to Drew Monson all right but anyways as far as the addiction topic goes and I apologize if this video is a little bit longer than usual but I got a lot to say but let me have Drew explain why people got a little bit upset I basically uh tweeted something I'll read it to you people got so mad at me for this here's what I said addiction is a disease it's a result of your brain chemistry I don't care how many people say it's not you are not weak and you're not just an idiot who makes bad decisions being addicted to drugs is exactly as embarrassing as having cancer it isn't okay the cancer part maybe went a little too far sometimes you have to be a little outrageous I think more people saw that tweet because I said the word cancer listen I've had family members die of cancer it's not something I am making fun of and nowhere on that tweet did I say that it's exactly the same as a drug addiction and I even replied to the tweet under it saying that I wasn't saying that and so many people were so mad at me for that so yeah before I jump into this topic let me explain why the hell I'm talking about this am I qualified what's my experience and all that so for those of you who don't know me I mentioned it in the intro but yes my name is Chris I'm a recovering drug addict and alcoholic my drug of choice was prescription opioids but I pretty much took anything that would alter my state of mind I was in my act of addiction for almost a decade I just celebrated seven years clean and sober on June 23rd of this year all right aside from that I worked in a drug and alcohol treatment center for over three years we specialized in drug addiction as well as mental illness it was a dual diagnosis treatment center I'm also halfway through getting my CADC which is a certified alcohol and drug counselor and aside from that I am a big nerd and love learning everything I can about drug addiction and mental health so I know why you guys wanted me to talk about this topic okay so first let me touch on the shame aspect of it that Drew discussed and like I can definitely relate to that so I'm gonna be talking about some other components and risk factors and why people become addicted in this video and the science behind it but I can definitely relate to the shame like we are fed this story that if you're an addict or an alcoholic you are this bad person you should just have more willpower right and that's what makes it so hard for some people to admit they have this problem because you are surrendering you're admitting defeat you're saying that I cannot do this right I cannot stop drinking or using drugs on my own and a lot of people are like I was like I did everything I was so independent I moved out when I was 17 years old I was a provider for you know my son's mom and my son I took care of everything on my own but for some reason my drug and alcohol addiction was something that I could not stop you know what I mean so I ended up learning that addiction is a disease and there is actually a biological component to this thing the best way I could describe it is it's like an allergy and when I realize that analogy that it's like an allergy like what's an allergy right having an adverse reaction to a substance you see what I mean so people who drink or use drugs and are addicts they react differently to that substance like you you have a drink and you say oh I got to work tomorrow me I drink and I don't care about work tomorrow or getting to you know the parent teacher conference with my son or any other of my responsibilities right but here's the thing science has actually proven this okay so those of you who are interested check out the National Institute of Drug Abuse all right I go there all the time to check up on the latest research when it comes to addiction everything like that but science has proven that the addicted brain is different than the normal brain okay Bill Nye the science guy actually did an episode of this over on his series on Netflix as well if you want to learn more about that but anyways what they discovered is if you hooked me up to an fmri brain scan right that monitors brain activity and I have a brain that's prone to addiction you hooked up the average person if both of us took a shot of alcohol or both of us took you know a pain medication our brains light up in different ways all right so here's a little neuroscience for all of you two primary parts of your brain are the limbic system and the prefrontal cortex okay think of the limbic system as kind of like the engine of your car and the prefrontal cortex being the brakes okay the limbic system when you drink when you use drugs when you go shopping when you eat chocolate it fires off dopamine okay and basically that sends up signals to the prefrontal cortex your prefrontal cortex is responsible for impulse control logical decision-making and everything like that so the average person's like yo I need to stop drinking because I have stuff to do later or yo I need to quit eating food because I'm gonna throw up I'm gonna put on weight it's unhealthy right well what they discovered with these brain scans is that the engine is working way too well and the brake system is not all right so imagine imagine your brakes being cut whenever you did anything pleasurably right that is what having an addiction is like and science has proven this okay this is one of the reasons when I work with other drug addicts and alcoholics I try to teach them different ways to strengthen the prefrontal cortex although it's 2019 there was still no cure for addiction but we can strengthen our prefrontal cortex and gain back some of the other beautiful things it does like our impulse control our emotional regulation our logical decision-making skills and everything like that now why does this happen Drew discussed the biological component yes there is a biological component to addiction okay they have something called the addiction disease or not addiction disease with the addiction gene so you know how many go to the doctor and you write down if you have like a family history of like cancer or diabetes or high blood pressure whatever it is right that doesn't mean that you're going to have those things but it's good for your doctor to know because you might be genetically predisposed to those things that could add addiction to that list and frankly they should with all the addictive medications out there so addiction actually runs in my family my mom is a recovering addict my aunt is a recovering addict my uncle is a recovering addict and so is my sister and then you have me too but to get you even more information about that my grandmother years ago when she had a heart surgery and they did all these tests they actually found that the addiction gene runs on her side of the family and here's what's fascinating about that the same gene responsible for addiction is also responsible for Parkinson's disease so although my grandmother whose side of the family that gene was on she never had an addiction I don't even remember my grandma drinking but my grandma actually developed Parkinson's disease which is what she passed away from just some years ago all right so that gene can activate into addiction or Parkinson's or it just lies dormant so something that Drew Monson is talking about is like some people are just genetically predisposed so when they take that first drink when they take that first drug their brain is already getting an excess flood of dopamine and they want more and it's an absolute ridiculous argument to say well just don't pick up a drink or a drug like if you're somebody who says that the only way that you can say that without feeling like a hypocritical dick all right is if you've never drank or picked up a drug in your life right because you don't know until you do it and most human beings are going to experiment with alcohol or experiment with drugs hell I'm letting you know right now my son's 10 years old and since he popped out of the womb I've been worried about when he tries his first drink or a drug because addiction runs in my family now there's something else called epigenetics all right epigenetics or when you have a gene that lies dormant all right and typically that gene is not activated until some type of traumatic or extremely stressful experience happens so some people have the addiction gene but they don't develop an addiction until way later in life a prime example of this is war veterans people who have been assaulted physically sexually maybe they were in an abusive relationship and then it triggers that addiction gene so maybe they didn't have a problem with alcohol or drugs their entire life and then all of a sudden boom they have it all right so one of the risk factors is your genetics okay the next biggest risk factor and one of the reasons I talk about mental health so so much is mental illness is the number one leading cause of addiction okay like when I first started my channel it was primarily addiction and I've had a lot of people say why don't you talk about addiction more why don't you talk about addiction more right and like I try to but I know that mental illness is one of the leading causes of addiction so I try to talk about mental health because I figure if we can start dealing with that then a lot of people won't start self medicating because so many of us go untreated or undiagnosed with our mental illness and we don't know what's going on so we start self medicating with drugs or alcohol all right this is why our mental health is so important having an untreated mental illness is also the leading cause of relapse so why do you think I focus on this thing so much when I make sure my mental health is in order it keeps my sobriety in order and one of the biggest mental illnesses that we need to talk about is trauma all right like again I worked in an addiction treatment center for over three years and I have worked with thousands of clients and I've had so many people sit down and share their stories with me and it breaks my heart when I hear people just like oh why are you turning to drugs why are you turning to alcohol I've heard the most horrific stories and not just one or two I've heard hundreds of stories what happened to these men and women as children or even as adults in the relationships they were in right I sit there I'm like god no wonder you turned to drugs and alcohol like that is awful right so like I just hope that you have a little bit of empathy and understand like not many people just wake up in the morning and say oh I'm gonna become addicted to heroin or oh you know I want to you know become a you know an alcoholic right now I'm not saying this is an excuse but trauma is a major reason mental illness is a major reason genetics are a major reason all right so when I was working in the treatment center and I would be talking about this one of the number one questions I would get asked is my you know my family doesn't believe that addiction is a disease what should I do or my friends or my family or my spouse or whatever it is and here's the thing here's what I tell people and here's what I'll tell Drew Drew Monson if you ever watch this video this for you tell them to argue with the surgeon general and scientist okay because back in god what was it I want to say 2015 maybe um the surgeon general came out and classified addiction as a disease and there's plenty of studies that backed that up as well my goal when I'm working with other addicts and alcoholics is that I want you to understand that addiction is a disease all right to keep my recovery I need to know that it doesn't matter if my girlfriend or my family or my friends or a society understands that addiction is a disease I have to know it all right and one of the other pieces of evidence aside from the the brain differences with people who have addictions is why do you think relapse happens why do you think people have such a long period of recovery and then if they relapse they pick up right where they left off because they haven't been cured there isn't a cure for addiction they are biologically different than other people all right so the last thing I want to touch on is um a lot of people are upset because Drew Monson compared to cancer and trust me I get it I get why people get upset with that but here's here's the issue that I take a lot of people for some reason on this weird subconscious level feel that if we classify addiction as a disease then it's taking away from cancer patients and that's not the case at all like when was the last time you heard of cancer research being defunded for addiction did you know that the war on cancer and the war on drugs started the same year right over here we have billions of dollars being raised for cancer research and over here we're locking people up who are suffering from the disease of addiction we're punishing them rather than rehabilitating them but there are a lot of places that have things like drug court and give people the option to get treatment to seek help and everything like that one of the reasons that addiction is looked down upon so much more is because when you get cancer unless you're like Walter White like you don't become a bad person addiction with the way that it affects the brain because that limbic system I told you about it's responsible for your survival okay so your brain is telling you you need drugs you need alcohol to survive so you will lie cheat and steal you will rob your mama to get your drugs right you don't do that when you have cancer so I understand the the perception that you know these are two totally different things but we need to understand like the disease of addiction is affecting people's brains in this way the good news is that when you recover you improve your life and you not you're not that person anymore all right I don't lie cheat and steal anymore it's pretty sick okay so anyways I appreciate Drew Monson for being an ally when it comes to addiction awareness and everything like that and for mental illness and just killing it I just I can't say as somebody who struggles with addiction and tries to educate and raise awareness I really appreciate that but anyways y'all are probably like Chris has been like what 16 minutes what's that exciting nuts man um I have an entire course on addiction and it's absolutely absolutely free it's called the science of addiction so a lot of the stuff I just talked about that is a course that I taught in the drug and alcohol treatment center I would teach it to the clients as well as their loved ones and I made the course available online because a lot of people had family members back home who were interested in learning about it so I put it online and I let their families check it out too so if you would like to learn more about addiction check out the description down below it's a free course it's only like an hour and a half because I would do it like in a group setting but I talk about some of the things I talked about in this video and obviously a whole lot more all right and don't forget free copies of cancelled inside youtube cancel culture is available until the end of the month that's also in the description down in the pinned comment below and if you want you can buy a copy because youtube probably demonetized this video anyways that's all I got for this video if you like this video please give it a thumbs up if you're new make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell and a huge huge thank you to everybody supporting the channel over on patreon you're all amazing and if you're a patron make sure you go check it out I ask for your suggestions on new stuff for patreon so make sure that you let me know and if you want to become a patron get involved with all that cool stuff click the top right there all right thanks again for watching I'll see you next time