 I am James Swannick and we are joined today by a legend when it comes to relationships between men and women, John Gray, the author of The Famous or Infamous, whichever way you want to call it. Men are from Mars. Women are from Venus. It sold more than 50 million copies and today we're going to be talking about addiction. John obviously talked about relationships between men and women in his book, Men are from Mars. Women are from Venus. But there's also some differences between the sexes when it comes to addiction and obviously we're talking about alcohol and alcoholism right here in this particular subject. So John's going to explain how alcohol affects men and women differently and what can be done to remedy that. So John Gray, welcome Sir Gray, to have you here. Well thanks so much and while we are going to focus on alcohol today, it's certainly not the only addiction. It's ironic that some people can be addicted to dysfunctional relationships. Some people can be addicted to complaining. Some people can be addicted to always seeing the dark side of things. This is very interesting, like Debbie Downer on Saturday Night Live. She always has to bring in something down everybody that actually stimulates some of the same brain chemicals that alcohol stimulates and that's what we're going to understand is where the brain works differently and how men and women's brains are different and how we're affected by alcohol differently. Yeah, absolutely. And so how are men and women different when it comes to addictions in general? Just before we get into alcohol, addictions, what is addictions and how do men and women respond to addictions differently? I explore this in great detail in my book, Staying Focused in a Hyperworld, Natural Solutions for ADHD, Memory and Brain Performance. In that book, I focus on ADHD and the irony is addictions can cause ADHD and always underneath every addiction is the ADHD brain. So that's like really if you ask me what's ADHD, it's the same answer as what is an addictive brain. It's just that ADHD is more broad but when you come to addiction, understand the way the brain becomes addicted to something and there's nothing wrong with being addicted to healthy food, say. That would be called a healthy need, addictive to positive relationships. But an addiction is when you hold on to something, when we call an addiction, it's we're holding on to something that's not useful for us, something we like to let go of, something that's having a negative effect in our lives. And why do we hold on to something that doesn't serve us? You know, I mean in the beginning with an addiction, you take something, you feel good, you feel high, this is wonderful, but then you realize afterwards it brings you down. So anything that any substance that brings its way up tends to leave us down and numbed out to where life is flat and then we crave it again and it brings us up and then we go down. And after that cycle repeats itself, life becomes more and more flat, unenjoyable, dissatisfying, more difficult, more irritable, unhappy, producing feelings. So what's going on is at a certain point, you now depend upon your addiction just to feel normal. It doesn't even bring you high, you hate the drug but nothing else can make you even feel somewhat alive because life makes you feel flat. So it's very useful to understand what's happening in the brain. So there's this feel-good brain chemical called dopamine. And dopamine is like the accelerator. When you're driving your car fast, dopamine gets produced for those who like to drive their car fast. And if you eat white sugar, white sugar, you know, you just, I was in my grandkids yesterday and I gave them, I had some granola that had a little sugar in it. And they kept, it was just dry but they kept coming back like little birds for food. Don't give me more. I felt a little guilty because I was winning their favor because you give someone sugar. They want more of it. Why is that? Sugar stimulates the same part of the brain that we found cocaine stimulates and for people who get addicted to alcohol, that same part of the brain. It's a pleasure part of the brain. It's called the nucleus accumbus. And that part of the brain motivates us to do things. So let's say you've never had sugar and you never had alcohol or you've never taken methamphetamines and you've never seen a TV set. You're just a kind of an indigenous person. The most important driving need that these people have is the approval of their parents, the approval of their community. Wow. So this is, because when somebody's happy with you, we all like people to be happy with you. If I give a talk and people clap, I go, yay, I did a good job. That feels really good. If it's 50 people, it feels really good. If it's 5,000 people, it's like taking cocaine. And this is why you see so many of the superstars, movie stars, very famous influential people end up having drug problems and going to rehab all the time because getting that much dopamine stimulation is like a drug. And always when it overstimulates, you will go down. I found it most useful to have this extra insight is, well, why do you go down? Can't you just go up and stay up? The body won't let you. What's happening is you have a basic set point. And when something overstimulates you, your brain goes, wow, that feels good, but it's too much. When it's too much stimulation, then these receptor sites, dopamine goes into a receptor site. And if there's too much dopamine, the receptor sites begin to close down and they disappear. And you lose your receptor sites. So now something that would normally stimulate dopamine, 30 people in the audience clapping you, it doesn't do anything for you. Or your parental approval doesn't do much for you either way. Parents today are often saying to their kids, OK, I want you to do this. And if you do this, then I'll give you your treat. We're using sugar to motivate our children. Or you'll get this much time on your iPad or you get this much time on your computer, which is a major dopamine stimulator. So we bring all this back to alcohol. 50% of the population has a gene that will convert alcohol into dopamine. Wow. So when they say, I'm an alcoholic, I'm always an alcoholic. Well, people who are alcoholics have the potential to be alcoholics always, but they don't have to have the addiction. And that's important, but they do have the potential for it. Other people, the other half of the population that doesn't drink, but occasional drink here or there, they don't even have the potential to be an alcoholic. They just drink alcohol and get a little sleepy. Yeah. And so it's literally they don't have the gene that will convert alcohol into this high level of dopamine. So it's interesting what you were saying there, the dopamine that is released when you get a sugar hit. A lot of people after a strenuous day at work, they come home, they sit down on the sofa, they turn on the TV. And all they want to do is just pour a glass of wine or open up a beer and just sit there. And they feel like it takes the edge off. Is that the dopamine rush that you're talking about? Exactly. And it's not just dopamine. What's what's interesting is for women, it produces serotonin. It, you know, for men, it will produce if you don't have the gene that converts it to dopamine, alcohol will make serotonin, which is why I don't have that gene to make me an alcoholic. I can still be addicted to things, but not alcohol. Now, alcohol doesn't stimulate a dopamine for me. It will make serotonin for me. Well, serotonin is this laid back, I'm relaxed and whatever. And if I had the gene to make dopamine, it would first make me laid back, relaxed, because that happens for everybody. But then if you take more, it makes you sleepy. OK, that's too much serotonin. Everything's so good, I don't have anything to think about. So we just zone out. But while you're relaxing, which is what alcohol does, if you also have the gene to make dopamine, then you're able to relax and experience this surge of focus and interest and motivation. And it produces way more pleasure. So, I mean, you can, you know, other things like sugar gives you this pleasure, which is different from drinking alcohol for me. But for an alcoholic, they have the gene that gets the pleasure and the relaxation. So someone might be watching this now, John, a man or a woman. And he or she is convinced that he or she is not an alcoholic. OK, but they're exploring their relationship with alcohol. Maybe they drink a bit too much on occasion. Maybe they say the wrong thing. Maybe they're tired of being 20 pounds overweight. Maybe they're tired of not sleeping well. They want a lot more clarity and to be more productive. For those people, for that person, how does alcohol affect them differently? Let's deal with the man first and then with a woman. This is again, this is someone who's pretty who's convinced almost certainly that they're not an alcoholic, but, you know, they know that they maybe they've got into habits, social habits, where drinking is part of their culture, drinking is part of their day to day routine, and they want to break that habit. Well, let me, you know, this is such a subjective thing here. Well, first of all, you said you want to break the habit. That's different. But if you look at the standards of many Americans and what's an alcoholic, you could say all of Europe is an alcoholic because, you know, it's children are drinking wine at the dinner table there. I mean, it's acceptable. You drink a little wine. The difference is when you drink too much and what is too much? It's a very subjective evaluation. You're right. Yeah. You know, and to know that you're addicted to something, it just is. If you were to go off of it for, you know, a month, is it easy? Can you do it easily? And that if you can't do it easily, there's some form of addiction. Now, what does it mean to have some form of addiction? If you keep your mind, you say, I kind of stop that. And then late at night, you go, I just want that, or I really want that. And you go back on your will, you say, I'm going to stop. I'm an experiment stop for a month. Can I do it? Do I keep going back? And they might say, I'm not addicted. One of my friends said he was a I pointed out he was addicted to marijuana, which you can be addicted to marijuana to, although people think you can't. You can and it doesn't have the same dopamine grip marijuana. But it does this is what he said to me. I said, you're addicted to it. He does it every day all the time. He lives in the state of marijuana. And I said, well, just go off of it. He says, I can go off of it. I've gone off of it. It's just my life isn't fun. Well, OK, you know, life should be fun. Life should be positive. And if we're dependent upon substances to alter our state, then our normal state isn't providing happiness when our normal state isn't providing happiness. That means we have to look at how we're coping with stress. Yes. One way to cope with stress. See, stress is producing these disturbing emotions inside. Now, there's ways to process that. There's ways to meditate. There's ways to exercise. There's ways to talk to a therapist. There's ways to journal your feelings. All kinds of good ways to cope with stress. And you can also just drink a glass of wine. Or you could also drink five glasses of wine. Now, I have no problem with people drinking one glass of wine because it's not a major addiction. It's a little one. And OK, little ones is no big deal. You want to, you know, take the edge off. You want to be able to forget what's bothering you. No problem. And in a sense, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. It's just when you when you finish the glass of wine and now you start feeling unhappy again and you have to have another one and another one. That's when it becomes a problem. And particularly for alcohol, it's you know, many people say has benefits for you one glass, but as soon as you have two glasses. Now you're getting to the zone where you could be causing liver problems over the long haul. Yeah. And, you know, I outlined this in my book a lot. It's a lot of science, but I'll try to shorten it. It's pretty easy to understand, but it just takes too long. But the liver is necessary producing a protein called glutathione. Glutathione makes brain chemicals. So if you're not making enough dopamine during the day or at the end of the day, you've used it up, you want to make some more dopamine to feel good. If life doesn't do it, then you need a stimulant to do it. And that just depletes you more of dopamine and more of dopamine. Yeah. The problem with with alcohol is that over time, alcohol damages, injures the liver, the liver then can't make enough glutathione. And glutathione makes dopamine. So it's all it's all connected. It's all connected. It's all connected. So alcoholic over time, the alcohol doesn't do it for them. Their body just doesn't make enough dopamine when they drink their alcohol, as well as it repeated surges of alcohol causes surges of dopamine cause the receptor sites to go down, down, down. So now life is even more sort of flat and boring. So you want that extra stimulation and that's the addiction going back to it again and again. I haven't drunk alcohol in five years, John. I gave up in March of 2010 and I didn't drink excessively. Although when I did drink excessively, I got hungover. So what I mean by that is that I was a good binge drinker. I drank on a Friday and Saturday night and I rarely drank during the week. But I do remember feeling quite stressed on occasions on a Friday after a long week at work and really looking forward to having a few beers or a bottle of red wine on a Friday night. And it was only when I took a 30 day break from alcohol altogether. I did my own 30 day no alcohol challenge, which turned into five years. Did I find other ways to cope with stress? And some of the ways was what you just would just have what you referred to, which was exercise, meditation. I've spoken to a therapist on occasion, although I didn't do it with any great regularity. But I found for me the exercise really gave me a great amount of what I would consider dopamine, Russia, serotonin or the endorphins that that I released from exercise was more than enough for me to handle my my stress levels. Does that make sense from a physiological point of view that exercise might be you could get the same high from something like exercise, then what someone is getting from having, you know, one or two or three glasses of wine? Well, maybe some people get the same high, but I don't think you need the same high. What you want to do is come back to where you don't need that super high, but you're just feeling good. See, that need to get high is showing that you're too low. So when you're stressed, exercise is one of the most powerful ways to lower stress when you but you can become addicted to exercise. As you just mentioned, the high. Yeah, I think I became addicted to exercise. I'm not going to lift weights. Right. So it's just I'm just swapping one addiction for the next one. That's exactly right, but it's a better addiction. OK, it's a better addiction. You know, if you go to an alcoholic meeting quite often, you see everybody in the old days, they'd all go from alcohol to smoking, which also produced high dopamine. So they replaced one addiction with another. Now it's at least in California, you can't smoke that much here. People. It's not like socially acceptable to smoke that much. So they go from alcohol to donuts and coffee and in America. Really, alcohol has gone way down in America, but coffee has gone way up. Yeah, he stimulates high levels of dopamine as well. So you replace one thing with another thing. Yeah. And ironically, you can you mix those two things together. Coffee and alcohol, you have the best solution of all for them. You could drink a little bit of a little too much serotonin and too much alcohol. Then you you take your dopamine from coffee. It then sobers you up a bit so you can drink some more. I mean, this is a life where you're just depending on the outside stimulation as your major source of happiness and you go out of balance because it disconnects us from our inner source of happiness. So you do it is you want to find the inner source along with the outer source. So you're talking about the inner source and the outer source. So what's the solution here? If we were going to just round this up, John, and I just actually just before we do you suggest the solution here. How do the women digest or break down alcohol differently than men? Because I've read somewhere that because men are obviously bigger physically and they don't store as much fat as women, they they they're able to metabolize alcohol a lot quicker or a lot more effectively than a woman who's smaller and maybe you've got more fat. Maybe I'm getting that wrong. Could you there's a difference in our metabolism for men and women? And also the reasons when we get to alcoholism, most the research shows that most women become alcoholics because they're treating their depression. Most men become alcoholics because they were exposed to alcohol and they weren't feeling that good. You don't have to be depressed to become an alcoholic if you're a guy. But it will eventually lead you to depression because it eventually changes the brain down, regulates receptor sites, inhibits glutathione to make more dopamine. So then you start moving down. In a sense, it's really not fair to say that men don't drink too much out of depression, but really from our experience, if I understand it, if I want to look at male-female physiology, depression is different for men and women. The first stage of depression for men is just boredom. OK, I'm kind of bored. The first stage of depression for women is I feel despair. Women go right to despair. Men start out with kind of a boredom, a flat, but we're content. You know, we're just kind of like laid back, you know, these guys that don't do anything when their lives, they're actually the first stage of depression and alcohol will take you out of that pretty easily, so will sugar, so will TV and various things. But you become overly passive and you don't use your muscles, so to speak. You're not doing things. You don't have a sense of purpose and mission. So that's the first stage for men is they sort of hit this boredom, flatness. Then the next stage is they go into a lack of serotonin and they go into despair. Women start out in despair. The women are depressed. They just they don't go to the boredom's days. They're just really unhappy. Then they get into flatness and lack of motivation and so forth. So it's different because of our different brain preferences in the brain and men tend to be more dopamine oriented. We run out of dopamine very quickly. So at the end of the day, OK, so here's a work day. I work really, really hard. I will have run out of dopamine. Women don't. So I sit home and I have no dopamine motivates you. So I'll come home and I'm just like ready to be sitting here. But men have plenty of serotonin. We don't run out of serotonin very quickly. So I got all this serotonin, which says everything's OK. My dopamine levels are low, which says there's nothing to do. So I'm sitting there and I'm happy. And and a woman said, what are you sitting there for? We've got this to do this to do. We've got to do it now because she's run out of serotonin, which creates emergency danger, danger. And she has plenty of dopamine to get things done. So women are overactive. Men become underactive. And this is our natural tendencies due to our different body shapes. OK, now, why is that is men have more muscle mass. So when you have more muscle mass, yeah, what happens is your muscles can absorb all of the amino acids in your protein, OK, brain chemicals come from glutathione and amino acids in your protein. So our muscle mass absorbs the long chain amino acids into the muscles except for one and that's called tryptophan. Tryptophan then shoots into the brain and makes serotonin. So all men have to do is physically use their body, use their muscles to absorb muscle, absorb amino acids and tryptophan shoots into the brain. And we have plenty of serotonin, but we do run out of dopamine. Women, on the other hand, don't run out of dopamine as quickly as men. And they typically never run out of it. They're always like when women are pretty much depressed, they're busy thinking, what do I have to do? What do I have to do thinking about this and this and this? They've run out of serotonin. And the reason they run out of serotonin is they don't have the muscle mass to absorb the long chain amino acids. Therefore, tryptophan doesn't get into the brain. It's a short chain amino acid. So it's the last to get into the brain. So that's why women can feel really good if they exercise because in our body there absorbs the long chain amino acids and tryptophan goes into the brain. But it's much easier for men because we get way, way more serotonin. And men's brains have adapted over millions of years to where the Canadians did a study showing that men's brains store 50 percent more serotonin. So we just have this backup system, which is an adaptation, because we're the ones that would go into danger. So when you're going into danger, you have to be thinking positive thoughts. You have to be thinking, well, if I die, they'll have a statue for me. So it had to be something positive. So women are often drinking the alcohol in order to pump up their serotonin. Men are often drinking the alcohol to pump up their dopamine. And that's that's a tendency towards addiction. Yeah, that's fascinating stuff. I mean, if we were if the person watching right now has never heard of serotonin, dopamine or what was the other word, tryptophan? Tryptophan, there you go. I can't even pronounce it properly. Amino acid tryptophan. Yeah. OK. So bottom line, if someone is feels that they've got an addiction towards alcohol, based on all of the science we know, based on everything that you've just spoken about, what can they do? A man or a woman to try and break this, break this addiction based on what you have studied and what you've written about extensively in your books. OK, first thing is start start being aware of replacing your addiction with another addiction, even if it's destructive. Like you mentioned, going to exercise over alcohol. Oh, my God, that's such a better addiction. Get a trainer if you can afford one and have me out there till you're starting to pump higher levels of dopamine and endorphins. And suddenly you get addicted to that. That's a much better addiction. That's what actually AA is. It's a, you know, I hesitate to say it this way, but people get addicted to talking about how long they've been alcoholics. You know, it's like, see, whenever you say how what I've done, I did this, a statue for me, I get a medal of honor. Dopamine goes up. So they go to the meetings to get their dopamine surge by. It's been this long for me and and God bless them. If it works for them, that's great. It's also being able to hear other people's problems. You know, if you're a man and this is for men, if you hear another man's problem and you solve that problem, that gives you another dopamine lift. Just hearing other people's problems that you've handled makes you feel stronger. So there's a whole sense of community and communities of dopamine stimulator where people know your name, they acknowledge you, look what you've done. I'm one of you. I've been there, all this stuff. So, you know, that's what therapy could give. That's what group settings can give. That's what friendships give. So it's a big dopamine stimulator. So there's a book. There's a book that I've just read called Social by Matthew Lieberman, who is a very is a leading social scientist, I guess you would say. And he was saying that that social pain that is being, you know, ridiculed in public or being ostracized from a group of people can be many times worse, a worse pain than the pain of, say, suffering a broken arm or broken leg and that the pain of having your heart broken, you know, figuratively speaking, is a lot more painful than someone putting your head in a ringer, you know, or someone like literally like giving you a Chinese burn like from physical pain. So it's true, isn't it? I mean, you're talking about the dopamine release. It stands to reason that people who get who are very social and who are admired or who are able to solve problems for others will get the opposite of that, which is a huge euphoria, that dopamine rush that you're referring to. Well, that's what we're both getting right now as we're talking and being so brilliant. You know, I started writing this. I just got back into a writing mode and I walked up to the house and my wife said to me the other day, she says, oh, you started another book. I went, yeah, yeah. And she said, you look so happy. So she knows when you do something you're good at, you feel good at. You feel dopamine. The flip side of this is the same group meetings if you look for women. When women tell their story about how life has been bad and what happened to them and what something happened to them. Whenever you're showing sort of your at the effect of unpleasant things, then serotonin gets produced. People give you empathy. People give you sympathy. You get to tell your story and you get to share sharing about what you feel is important for men, 10 times more important for women. It's a serotonin producer. So the same meeting structure where men are hearing other people's problems. Men feel better. Women having other people hear their feelings. The woman feels better. So it's all about sharing. That's one form of support. Now, let me say that my own experience is a lot of these. I have lots of people I know who've been in these groups and so forth, and they feel addicted to the group. And I say, you know, you need to like move beyond that, but it's very hard for them to and and some people say I shouldn't say that. But when people tell me they continue to crave the alcohol, they continue to crave the cocaine, they continue to crave that abusive lover that they had, they continue to whine about that loss. That's an addiction. And what they want to do, it hasn't healed in the brain. They may have replaced it somewhat with something. But to heal it in the brain, you have to help the receptor sites go back up. And that's an additional piece of information, which is to increase the glutathione and the liver, which is by taking a supplement, NLC, N-A-C, which which people give to avoid hangover as well. It up regulates the receptor sites in the brain. Another one is lithium orate. Lithium orate protects the brain receptor sites and allows them to up regulate. So lithium orate and N-A-C and vitamin C, all very, very helpful to up regulate those receptor sites. And those are probably the most powerful things. So you could be doing trying to give up, doing all the right things. But if your brain doesn't get the extra nutrition it needs, more than normal, it needs for a while for several months, you need to flood your body with 4,000 milligrams of N-A-C, with 1,000 milligrams of liposomal vitamin C, with 25 milligrams of lithium orate. You know, these are more than normal doses. There's no toxic side effect of what I've just described. And oh, my gosh, it will help the brain get what it needs to upregulate those receptor sites. So is that just so I get this clear, is it N-A-C, vitamin C and lithium orate? Yes, yes. And where can one purchase these things? All those things are available in some health food stores, always available online. And, you know, there's there's there's how to take them and so forth. And at my website, I do have videos for each of those supplements on how to take them, where to get them and so forth. You just go to my health blogs. Yeah, terrific. OK, so we're just summarizing here that the, you know, the end goal of this, I guess, or the end strategy. So we're saying, obviously, if you're going to replace one addiction with another addiction, make the addiction something healthy and good for you, like exercise or meditation. The second one was you were talking about some supplementation there, like N-A-C, vitamin C, lithium orate. What else? What else, John? Well, to know that managing stress effectively, yeah, we just have to have ways to manage stress. And ultimately, we have to realize that inside of stress, there's emotions, emotions we don't want to look at. You know, we talked about physical pain. Emotions are the expression of non-physical pain, but emotional pain. It's somewhere when you're when your pain is there, you have to feel it. You have to communicate it. You have to give it words. And let me explain why this happens. And nobody's ever heard this explanation before. And it's so simple. I've been doing this for 45 years. And it's the middle part of the brain, the limbic system, is where all these emotions live, anger and hurt and fear and you're scared and defensive. It's all in the middle part of the brain. Then there's the prefrontal cortex. This is where we're able to make decisions. This is where we can actually stop an addiction. When you're under stress, if you're stressed, blood flow stops to the front part of the brain, which allows you to control your life. And suddenly you're in the back part of the brain, which is your history. You're no longer living in present time. You're reacting in the past. So what we have to do is effectively manage stress so we can get out of the middle brain or we're in the middle brain, but let the front brain be active as well. And that's by learning to connect these emotions back in the middle brain to the front brain. And that's done by being able to feel your emotions and not act on them. That's the first step. Feel your emotions and not act on them. That means you're who's acting that who's make who's in charge is the front part of your brain. The second thing is feel your emotions. Don't act on them and now identify the emotions that using the front part of the brain can give language to the middle part of the brain, which is sort of these urges that we feel we get mad, we're sad, we grieve or cry. I'm not saying to suppress those feelings, but to simply identify them without acting on them. And that can be done by writing them out. So I've got a lot of tools and techniques, but ultimately just when you're upset with somebody, write them a letter, but don't give them the letter and identify the emotions. Yeah, I did a 10 day silent meditation called Vipassana in the Joshua Tree in California. And that's one of the way one of the things that they teach, which is obviously breathe and just and you know, and meditate, but I identify your emotions, look at them, say, oh, yeah, I'm feeling sad or I'm feeling angry or I'm feeling joyous or whatever. And then when you do that, those feelings tend to subside. And that's that's the point I think you're you're making there. Identifying your emotions in your case, writing them out helps you then manage your emotions a lot more effectively. A lot of us feel we want to do something. And when you write them out, you actually are doing something with both the middle parts of your brain. But the idea here is to let the front part of the brain control the middle part. Well, instead of letting the middle part of the brain control the front part. And when you're doing Vipassana, the ultimate benefit there, you're sitting there, you're not doing anything based on those emotions because the emotions are telling you to get upset or leave or go do something else, you stay seated so you're not letting your emotions control yourself. The next step is then to identify the emotions. The next step is to transform the emotions by getting in touch with what is the frustrated desire? What is it you're wanting that's frustrated? You feel disappointed about you feel scared. You're not going to get it. Feel the desire because inside the desire is the seed of wisdom knowing that you have what you need to get what you want. That's all within us. But it's a matter of going inside as opposed to using addictions on the outside to sort of make us feel good when really the feeling is not coming from within our soul. My favorite example of this is heroin. Heroin comes from the German root word hero. When you don't feel like a hero, take heroin. It will make you feel like a hero without having to do anything. But it's a loser's approach. Your life only goes downhill. So manage stress effectively. The first one was obviously replace your addiction with something else like exercise. Second one was supplementation, NAC, vitamin C, lithium orate. The third one is manage stress effectively, which includes feeling your emotions. Don't act on them. Identify your emotions such as writing them out. Is there one more one more tip, John, before we wrap this up? No, I think those are really great suggestions. OK, terrific. Surround yourself with people who don't have the addiction that you were afflicted with. That's probably the most important thing. Yeah, you're a heroin addict or an alcoholic. You've got a lot of friends who go out and drink. You don't go out with them if they're drinking. That's all there is to it. It's amazing, actually. And I'll tell you one thing, John, when I quit alcohol, I made new friends and not only did I make new friends, but I made amazing new friends like people with different interests and different hobbies exposing me to different ways of seeing the world. And it's true. Some of my old friends got left behind because I just didn't want to party anymore. It wasn't because I thought that they were bad people or thought any worse of them or any less of them. It's just I was exposed to something new, something interesting, something more in line with my interests. Some of my friends who I kept and who have remained my friends who still drink heavily will always be my friends. It's just I don't tend to go out on the town with them and party like I once did when I drank. So it's an excellent point you make there, John, which is don't surround yourself with people who drink a lot or don't put yourself in environments where everybody is drinking heavily and going crazy. Unless, of course, you've got the self-discipline enough to be able to enjoy yourself without fear of reaching for the wine or reaching for the beer. Just as a little side benefit to this conversation, when people do drink, even if they're drinking moderately, those supplements to take them that night will prevent hangover. Is that right? OK, there you go. So if you're watching this now and your 30-day challenge is coming to an end and you've done, then now you want to go back and just drink not so heavily. But every now and again, you want to have a blowout like you go to a wedding or you're celebrating a child's birth or whatever it is. That's the word from John Gray. Make sure you take NAC, vitamin C or lithium orate and your hangover won't be nearly as bad. I know that was a great ending, but I have one other thought. If I can share it, something so brilliant. If you're going to a wedding, if you're going to a party, you're already feeling good, then it's OK to drink a bit more because it's only going to take you higher. But when you come down, you'll come back to feeling good. The danger of alcohol is when you use alcohol, when you're feeling down and you're using alcohol to bring you up, it will always leave you further down. And that creates the addiction. But if you're feeling good and you drink a bit or you're just a little stressed, but you want to feel a little good, then you're not going to come further down. You're just going to kind of come back down a little bit down and then easily come back up. Does that make sense? Don't use it to take you out of your depression. John, you've just given us all a license to drink heavily at any wedding or future party that we go to. Thank you very much that everyone who's watching wants to give you a virtual high five high five. Dr. John Gray, thank you very much. You've been a wealth of knowledge, a wealth of information. I appreciate that very much. Just tell our viewer right now where they can find your books specifically on these topics. Of course, they know men are from Mars, women are from Venus, but where can they find more about this kind of thing and addiction? All the topics we talked about are in my book, Staying Focused in a Hyper World. It's at Amazon, Natural Solutions for ADHD, memory and brain performance. Addictions aren't in the title, but all the explanations are in there. And so that's a place they can find out or they can just go to my website and there's tons of video blogs on this subject. It is at MarsVenus.com. Dr. John Gray, thank you very much, sir. I really appreciate your advice, your knowledge and all the great information that you've been able to give me and to the viewer and listener right now. So thank you so much, sir. Thank you.