 Have you ever been affected by stigma, whether it's your mental health, or a mental disability, or a physical disability, or just some other aspect of you as a person? Well, in this video, we're gonna be focusing on the addiction stigma, because I just finished watching the new Taylor Nicole Dean video, and oh my God, there are some people who need Jesus. What's 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, my channel is all about mental health, addiction recovery, trying to increase awareness, decrease the stigma, and all of that. So if you're into that stuff, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. And if you haven't yet, make sure you follow me over on Instagram and Twitter at the Rewired Soul. All right, so I just got off a full work day. And I made a video, recorded a video, edited a video, uploaded it this morning. But after I watched Taylor Nicole Dean's new video, I'm like, I gotta go home and make another video, because we got some things to talk about. All right, so Taylor Nicole Dean on her second channel, I'm gonna link her video down below. She's been talking about doing this video for a while, explaining just kind of how addiction happens, the science of addiction. She doesn't dive deep into like the full science, but she does an explanation of addiction from what she learned in rehab. And I think that's very admirable because so many people like, one of the reasons I started my channel was because so many people never have the opportunity to go to a drug rehab. So I wanted to make this channel and talk about what I was teaching people at the rehab I used to work at, right? So I think it's awesome that Taylor Nicole Dean did this. So I'm gonna link her video down below. And I was actually going to review her video because I used to teach addiction education classes at the rehab. So I was gonna review her video, give it some, you know, some prompts, some critiques. So if that's something that you would like me to do, let me know down in the comment section below. She did a phenomenal job. Like if she was one of my clients, like in group, I would have given her an A plus for listening. All right, but there were a few things that I was thinking about diving in deeper on and expanding upon and things like that. So anyways, I'm just chilling at work, doing my thing, listening to this Taylor Nicole Dean video and, you know, glancing down at my phone every now and then because she has a whiteboard and everything. And then it got to a part that just absolutely disgusted me. So you pick up once that you're one drink, you're one pill, you're one line or whatever, and it sets off this allergy. And it's this reaction where your body does not respond to it the way that other people's bodies would respond to these things. When I say that, there are a few people that got this very misconstrued online when I said this. I will have, like I said, the doctor come online and talk about this, but in rehab we were taught that about 15% of the population struggles with addiction and that the other 85% of people have normal brains. I talked about this online and for some reason people will thought that I meant that only 15% of people can't use drugs and that everyone else can use heroin fine. I don't know why that idea got around online, but I've seen it in multiple comments where people are like, you can't trust Taylor when she's talking about addiction because she says that 85% of people can use heroin fine. I never said that. It's the idea of that there's only 15% of people with this allergy, allergic reaction kind of thing to drugs and this whole process that continues in their life over and over and over unless they continuously get help. Only a certain amount of people, whether it's 15% and my doctor is right or my doctor was wrong and it's 2%, whether it's 99%, whatever it is, there is a group of people in this world that have this mental illness and then there is a group of people who don't. Just wanna interject real quick and say I found it so weird. I was Googling that quote to try to find that comment that I saw once and I found this group of people that are so angry that I said a percentage of people had addiction because apparently that meant that I was trying to say I was part of a special group and that I was more special than everyone else. What? I was just stating a statistic. There's a percentage of people with every illness. If I said the percentage of people that had depression, I definitely wouldn't be trying to say I'm part of a fun little group that has depression. I would just be stating the fact. I'm not declaring I'm part of a special group. My little brother has something called Prader-Willi syndrome. They say that only every like 15,000 births are people with Prader-Willi syndrome and I'm sure they're not bragging about that. I literally was just stating the percentage. I'd love to not be a part of it. I don't get how people get upset over something like that. Even if it's wrong, the percentage amount, that would be like, hey, you got the percentage wrong, not that I'm trying to be part of a group. I am just y'all confused with the hell out of me. Also, when I was looking for that one little comment that I wanted to show, I had to open the site that I purposely tried to avoid going to at all costs. I haven't been to it since well before leaving rehab. I know that for sure. But I went to it today to just show the crazy, misconstrued way they've twisted my words. In less than half an hour, all of this was said about me. This website is literally updated by the minute about me for the last at least two years, if not more. And in just less than half an hour, this many things was said about me. I just, they insist that this is criticism and that they're just concerned. This is crazy. Anyway, I'm just gonna get back to the video, but this is absurd. Don't ever listen to people who call you this kind of stuff. It's just complete crap. It's insane. All right, all right. So those of you who are new here, if you're brand new to the whole rewired soul experience, my videos are for you. Taylor, if you happen to watch this video, I hope it helps. But my videos are for you because like I said, we're gonna be talking about the addiction stigma. And I know I have a lot of people in my audience who are like myself and in recovery from addiction. But this isn't just for addicts in recovery. This is for everybody. Because the stigma around addiction, mental health issues, like all stigmas are not good, all right? So anyways, like when I was working at the treatment center, and I was doing groups, one of the things, one of the things that I really tried to drill into my client's heads was having a support group. All right, having a support group of people in recovery, people who understand what you're going through. Like something that broke my heart was when like, at a treatment center, like you think you guys have experienced drama, like just watching stuff on YouTube. Like, oh my God, the lipsticks and the eyeshadows, no. Real drama goes down in a rehab center. It is bananas, right? But I would tell them like, yo, you guys have compassion for one another and some empathy for one another. Like everybody in this room is going through some shit. Right? Like everybody inside of a treatment center, like back home or outside of that treatment center, they have a family who might hate them. Maybe they can't see their kids. Maybe they don't know if they have a job to go back to. Like everybody has their own stuff to go back to or something that they're not going back to. You know what I mean? Some people don't even have a home to return to. So I really tried to build that connection with newly sober addicts. And I also explained to them, like there's a lot of people back home once you leave here who don't understand what you've been through. But on top of that, because when I'm doing groups, when I'm working with newcomers in recovery, like I'm honest with them. Like I never want to give the impression, like once you get sober, it's all like unicorns and butterflies and rainbows and everything. Like people are dicks. And you just saw that from that clip I played from Taylor and Nicole Dean. Like there is such a stigma around addiction. The narrative is addicts are bad people, right? But something that I think Taylor and Nicole Dean did a great job of in her video was addicts are six people. They're not bad people, right? Like a book that I can't recommend enough is Recovery by Russell Brand. And he says something along the lines in his book in one of the first chapters that everybody is an addict in some way, shape or form. And us addicts are actually the lucky ones because it manifested in a drug addiction, right? Like because we, in order to get rid of that pain or that hurt that we're feeling or to shut this crazy brain off, we turn to drugs or alcohol. But for most people out there, it might be food, it might be sex, it might be gambling, it might be shopping, right? It might be a slew of other toxic behaviors and those people may never even realize it, right? So all of us are struggling with this in some way, shape or form. Hell, this goes back to Buddhist philosophy from thousands of years ago. So if any of you watch the Taylor and Nicole Dean video, she talks about that whole inside of you. So Buddhist philosophy, they actually talk about this story of the hungry ghost, right? So imagine a ghost is trying to eat a lot, right? And then it just, it just goes right out. Like you're never satisfied. But for some of us, it's money or career advances or popularity or whatever it is, we're never satisfied, right? But for drug addicts, it's drugs or alcohol. So yeah, like what you saw, like the names that people were calling Taylor and Nicole Dean just absolutely disgust me, all right? So this is something I had to prepare my clients for, right? Because especially because many addicts, we've hurt other people in our addiction, right? We've lied, we've cheated, we've stole and people are going to be very upset with us. Many times, rightfully so. So here's what I would teach to other addicts because this is something I had to do in my early recovery as well. I'd have to teach them how to deal with it, all right? And this is for anybody. You don't even need to be an addict. Like if you are ever having the belief that just maybe someday the world will be like just rid of all the assholes, you're wrong. Not gonna happen. Stuff's gonna happen. People are dicks. You're gonna have to deal with it. So rather than having people have this false belief that maybe everybody's just gonna treat them with kindness and love and compassion, I teach them how to deal with that stuff. And here's what I teach everybody. This is something that I even teach my 10 year old son and I've been teaching him this for years and no, my son is not a drug addict that I know of but anyways, I teach him that hurt people hurt people. All right, so this is my best advice to anybody out there who is being affected by the stigma and things like that. Like people are hurt, right? Especially when it comes to the internet. Like God, like Taylor, again, if you're watching this, like people on the internet are so angry, right? It's not just on the internet. Like people in life are just so angry and sometimes you are just their punching bag, right? And we have to learn to not take this stuff so personally, right? Because we hope and we wish for compassion and empathy and other people and one of the best ways to start receiving it is to start giving it, right? Like when I was working in the treatment center, again, like I said, like everybody in there is going through their own stuff. I have people who would come up to me, cuss me out a few times. I thought I was gonna get punched in the face just all sorts of crazy stuff, right? But I knew they were hurting. So I was able to keep my cool. 99% of the time, those same people would come back and apologize to me either later while they were in treatment or later after I followed up with them after they left treatment. But this is something that we have to remind ourselves. So especially for addicts in recovery and Taylor Nicole Dean, she referenced, you know, the AA big book and things like that. But this is why I teach everybody. In the big book, something I learned was when you get into the fourth step, right? It talks about how these people are sick. It's a spiritual sickness, right? So I suffer from a sickness, right? A spiritual sickness. The spiritual malady, that's what led me to drugs and alcohol and things like that. I also struggle with mental sickness and everything. So how do I want people to treat me, right? Like those of us who struggle with mental health issues or addiction, we want people to understand it, right? Even though they can't see it physically, we want them to understand that we're still dealing with a sickness. So what helped me have compassion for other people is to realize like they're struggling with a certain type of sickness as well, right? Maybe they had a traumatic childhood. Maybe they had, you know, a death in the family recently and they're just venting it out on me. Is it fair? Absolutely not. But for me and every other addict in recovery, we have one job each and every day when we wake up in the morning and that's to not pick up a drink or a drug just one day at a time, all right? That's it. So other than that, we just learn how to deal with it, let that stuff just roll off our shoulders, right? But people are going to say these awful things to you and we just got to learn how to cope with it without having to turn to our old ways of drinking and using. And the last thing I want to touch on, I have my own method. This might work for some of you. And like, it's just a way I'm wired. I know this doesn't work for everybody. So this is just a suggestion that I have. I recommend it to anybody who this might work for. And it's I take that stuff, I take it and I use it as fuel to prove people wrong. Like when I first got sober, I had so many people calling me the names people are calling Taylor and Nicole Dean junkie. I've had people calling me a crack head and a meth head. Like they clearly don't know what those drugs do because I would be the fattest crack head on earth. But anyways, I've had people call me all these names, right? And I'm like, you know what? I'm gonna thrive. I'm gonna stay sober. And I'm just gonna absolutely kill it in life. And it's my way of just like, oh yeah, they kind of look like a jackass now, right? Like I use it as this fuel to do better and to stay in my recovery. And it kept me sober for a long time. Like now it just kind of like, I'm like, okay, whatever you called me a junkie or a drug addict. You know, I get those comments on my YouTube channel all the damn time. So if anything, like if this works for you, I recommend you take that hatred that people are throwing your way and turn it into this fuel that helps you stay on the right path, all right? Like there's nothing better than proving other people wrong because what they're expecting of you is to fall off. And whenever people are talking down to us like that, we have two options, two options. We either prove them right or we prove them wrong. And I don't know about y'all, but I choose to prove them wrong, all right? But anyways, again, go check out Taylor and Nicole Dean's new video. It's on her second channel. I'll link it down in the description below and let me know if you want me to do a review of the addiction lesson that she gave. All right, but that's all I got for this video. If you liked 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, as well as everybody who supports the channel by buying my merch or mental health books over at therewirexshow.com. You're all amazing, all right? Thanks again for watching. I'll see you next time.