 I guess the counterargument would be look at all the work that's done with say addiction services to help people. Now we know that a lot of people with support can come out of addiction, whether it's true fentanyl, whether it's, you know, the really serious stuff, the opiates alcohol, but without support and without help and without that clinical intervention, it's exceedingly more difficult. Recidivism in rehab, and I've spent 10 years in rehab centers, recidivism in rehab, the rate of recidivism within one year is 81%. Okay, that means you go through rehab, and you have an 81% chance to go back on your drug of choice, alcohol, whatever. If you and that's one year. And we measure only one year, recidivism only in one year. And you know why? Because if we were to measure five years, the rate would be almost 100%. So rehab centers are the greatest conceivable scam, the greatest conceivable scam. And they combine talk therapy with medication with, you know, they have all the trappings of science. There is no treatment in medicine, none that is so poor. None and that includes cancer. The only comparable thing is pancreatic and liver cancer. So if you were looking for a model, an interventionist model, to help from your perspective, where where would you start then if you're saying the rehab centers don't work? And rehab centers don't work. That's a fact. So how would you where would you start by offering some help and some treatments and say people that are in the grips of severe addiction, right? Are you saying no intervention and no rehab centers, no clinical? Definitely intervention. Okay, provide them with clean needles. You should provide them with drug substitutes. Okay, provide them with keys for overdose against to counter overdoses. Yeah, you should intervene. Well, that's more about intervention is more supporting and enabling as opposed to it's preventing preventing the adverse outcomes of drug addiction, overdoses, for example, because there's nothing you can do about it. And anyone who tells you that there is something you can do about drug addiction is lying to you through its teeth, through its teeth. It's a lie. It's not even a myth. It's a straightforward lie. You don't have to trust me. Once this program is over, go online. Check, check recidivism, recidivism rates for rehabs. Yeah, I have, I do have I have looked at this anecdotally, I don't have the stats in front of me. What I heard that recidivism in the first year was 90% was higher than 81%. Actually, it's 81. But 81, I mean, for all substance abuse disorders. It's true that alcoholism, for example, is 80%. And some other types of drugs are close to 100. So when you average, then it's about 81. 81 is bad. 81 is seriously bad. This is the remission rate in pancreatic and liver cancer, which are the two deadliest forms of cancer, and have no cure. Yeah, seriously bad. There is we don't know what is addiction. We have had the nonsensical hypothesis of addictive personality, which has now been luckily finally discarded. We have not we don't have a clue what is an addiction. We know, of course that addiction changes. Biochemical reactions in the brain pathways creates new pathways and we know we have fmr eyes, we have nice toys. We like to play with these toys. They're very colorful, you know, and they impress the layman. And they it's good that they impress the layman, because layman pay taxes, and then you can get grants, and you can live the rest of your life of the grants. This is the way science works, so called science works. So, but the truth is, we have no idea what is addiction. Actually, a few years ago, when I was still involved with with the right side of drugs and alcohol, I mean, in the rehab side, I suggested in a series of peer reviewed articles, I suggested that addiction is actually a positive thing. And the reason I suggested it is because about one third of the brain is geared to tackle addictions. It's as if we have a machine here that is built to generate addictions, and then to manage. Now, why, from the point of view of evolution? Why would we end up with a brain whose possibly main task is addiction? Like the addiction areas in the brain, for example, the dopaminergic pathway is the addiction areas are about 10 times larger than the areas that deal with language. Brokers, organs, if you put all the areas that deal with language, they are 10% of the areas that deal with addiction. Why? If addiction was a bad thing, a horrible thing, as well, why would I bring? Why do we have receptors? Why do we have receptors for cannabinoids and endorphins? And why? So I suggested that actually addiction is a positive thing. Not a negative thing. It's something involved in learning in attachment, in bonding. Love is a form of addiction. Clearly, there is definitely an addictive process between newborn and mother. And now I'm talking biology, not psychology, there's no psychology at this age. So it seems that addiction predisposes us to social connections, on the one hand, getting attached and bonded, not only to human beings, but also to objects or whatever. And then of course, some people are going to misuse it. Of course, some people are going to abuse this mechanism as they some people abuse abuse reading, they read too much. Some people abuse binge watching. Yeah, well, I guess some past times are constructive. Some are not the if you were to add up all of the potential addictions that people suffer from, right? So you have food, sex, you've got all of the negative stuff, drugs, alcohol, porn. You could be looking at over 85 90% of the general population, at least in Western society. I mean, you could even be getting close to 90 to 100. Everybody has something. So I take your point. Right, I take your point that there does seem to be some kind of biological wiring in there that predisposes us to pursue maybe in an obsessive compulsive way. But then you could argue that that gives us the human drive to is related to the human drive to achieve. Like how would you get a man on the moon? If somebody wasn't obsessed, why would you get why would you get a man on the moon? Yeah, that's precisely that's precisely the issue. Not how but why. It's precisely the issue. I agree with you fully. Today, maybe 100% of population are addicted one way or another. Some addictions are more benign benign. Yeah. But overall, I agree. Why? Because we have created a civilization that encourages addiction. So environment is at the core of addiction. We have we incentivize we have a set of incentives that encourages addiction. For example, consumerism, food, what we put into food additives and food. I mean, that's a whole podcast by itself. Social media, consumerism. These are all forms of addiction. So it seems that we have chosen addiction as the main mode of existence is an existential mode. It doesn't mean that addiction is bad. It means that collectively, we are making bad use of it. So can we define addiction by saying that addiction is only really becomes addiction when it's outside of our control on what we're doing is we are not in control of the past time. Yes, and it's not a bad thing. Yeah. And it's not necessarily a bad thing. For example, I don't think a baby is in control of his addiction to his mother. Or an advisor, by the way, it's a mutual addiction. I don't think it's a bad thing at all. In itself is not a bad thing. Of course, if you make it an organizing principle of life, and also a principle that imbues life with meaning makes sense of life, because the junkie, you know, I've worked with junkies, the addiction provides him with a with an agenda, a timetable, a goal, you know, it becomes it becomes his Bible, it becomes his his raison d'etre. And addiction helps him to socialize addiction has massive social dimensions. And addiction, of course, has psychological components. And of course, in due time, it affects the brain, it's very difficult to reverse and so on so forth. So addiction is a complex, such a complex phenomenon that to reduce it to a sentence like, we can treat it, I think is counterproductive and counterfactual. I don't think we have a clue what is addiction. And we're beginning in 100 years time, we may get right now, we don't. I suspect environment, we will discover over time that environment, and people's personal lives play a greater part in the behavior than we would have. It's like the famous study of the American GI is coming back from Vietnam, you know about this study, right? A lot of them were using opioids on a daily basis. They get out of the environment, they come back to the United States. And 85, over 85% of them just stopped using clearly an environmental impact. But as what you just said, we've constructed a civilization that incentivizes, rewards, positively reinforces if you want to use a concept from behaviorism, positively reinforces addiction. Addiction is queued by the environment, addiction is a response to signaling. And when you get the right set of rewards and positive reinforcements, then you choose, it's a choice, you choose to be, how do I know that addiction is a choice? Because I have seen the most God awful addicts. Give it up in a day, literally. Literally, if this were really a brain disease, if this were really something biological, neurological, and so on, you could not give it up in a day. Addiction is absolutely a choice. 10 years of exposure to this field, I'm absolutely convinced it's a choice. However, of course, it's a choice that has impacts on the brain. But it's a choice that is I agree with you fully environmentally queued. It's a reaction to the environment. If you were, if you live in Saudi Arabia, you're extremely unlikely to become an alcoholic. Of course, everyone you could drink in secret and end up being decapitated or something. But, but you're very unlikely to become an alcoholic. Because you're not exposed to alcohol bottle, but alcohol in bottles, you're not exposed to visuals, you're not exposed to advertising, you're not exposed to your friends drinking and offering your drink, you're not exposed to bars, you're not clearly the environment conditions you to not be an alcoholic, exactly as it conditions you to be an alcoholic. Same goes, comes to sex addiction, for example, same goes, same, I think all addictions are pornography is a particularly pernicious one because it's ubiquitous, it's everywhere. Pornography is particularly pernicious one because the damage it's gonna it's going to have on pair bonding relationships. Here, there's a bit of a problem with the science. We still don't have studies that conclusively demonstrate that there is addiction to pornography. So, while I understand what you're saying, and I have come across people who can't stop, which is the test of addiction. You can't stop. We really want to stop and you can't stop. I've come across such people. I've come even across people who damaged their genitalia, masturbating and so on. Probably it is an addiction. I'm not disputing this, but at this stage, there's no foundation, there's no scientific foundation, there's no studies that corroborate. What is clear and there of course, there are studies by Zimbardo and many others. What is clear is that pornography shapes the way people who are exposed to pornography regard sex, sexuality, sexual interactions, sexual orientations, permissible and impermissible acts in sex, etc, etc. So shapes what we call sexual scripts. Until the 1950s and 1960s, sexual scripts were handed down from one generation to the next. A sexual script tells you how to flirt, how to have what is allowed in sex and what is not allowed in sex, what constitutes coercion and rape and what doesn't, how to interact with the with the other quality and so on. So this is known as a sexual script. Today, sexual script is determined by peers, peers and pornography, the two peers, peers and pornography. And peers derive their scripts from pornography, so ultimately, pornography. And today, when young people go to a room to have a one night stand, they reenact pornographic acts. So that's why, for example, choking. Choking has been described in well over 80% of one night stands under the age of 25. Similarly, anal sex is now more predominant than vaginal sex. In one night stands in heterosexual, in heterosexual couples, among age group under under 25. Why? Because anal sex and choking, these are porn, porn tropes, these are, you know, see them porn hub. And of course, the objectification of the, I'm talking, I'm limiting myself to heterosexual sex. Of course, the objectification of the woman. And to some extent, the humanization of the woman, about 10% of women report having had an orgasm in a one night stand compared to 53% of men. So it's like the man is using the woman's body to masturbate. Yeah. And so, so all this is pornography. Let me ask you kind of a, just one thing, which I think would interest your viewers. Yeah. The problem with pornography is this, the human mind, the human brain, I'm sorry, cannot tell the difference between three dimensional flesh and blood visuals, and two dimensional visuals on the screen. That's a fact. The brain cannot tell the difference. So when the brain is exposed to two dimensional pictures, moving pictures on a screen, the brain has had sex. The brain believes that it has had sex. It's not taking in the physical sense of the touch that the third dimension, it's not, it's not not really there. And that's why men, for example, are the main consumers of pornography. And also men are titillated and aroused by visuals. While women are titillated and aroused by text, story, story, narratives, text, and so on. So if you say, if you say to a woman something nice, if you if you're nice to a woman, if you if you have a way with words, if you're eloquent, you're much more likely to get in her pants. Sorry for the expression. Then if you're hunk, but a man would be attracted to a good looking. Let me ask, this might be outside your agreement, but from a philosophical legislative point of view, if you're asked, pardon me, should we ban hardcore pornography, not just for under 18s? I have a Dr. Richard Hogan, one of my former guests is launching a campaign to suppress the proliferation of pornography for under 18s. And I was thinking about it, just banning it wholesale. Well, what would your perspective be? Would it create a black market? Would you go, yes, listen, this, this, this offers no value to society whatsoever. Let's just get rid of it completely. The problem is that there's no sex education. The only sex education available is through pornography. In the United States, for example, there's no sex education. And whatever sex education there is, it's rudimentary. It's it doesn't tackle problems that young people face. So they use pornography as a teaching moment, an instrument. So you think improved sex education would offset the damage, the societal damage by pornography? Unboundary sex education. Sex education where you're allowed to talk about anything and everything. And you're going to get authoritative answers from non blushing adults. People need to grow up. So it's while maybe ethically and so on, it's a good idea. It won't work. People who consume pornography illegally, like they do today on the dark web and so on. You have types of pornography that you can consume only on the dark web. Snuff pictures, for example, not real. They're simulated, but never mind snuff pictures only on the dark web. You can't say a real incest. Forget what you get via Google. That's not real incest, but you do have real incest pornography on the dark web in real time. You have on the dark web. They are prescribed. They're illegal. You could go the rest of your life to prison for some of these things. And yet they're available. What's the dark web? You have a tour browser in the dark web? So there's no intervention, really, that we couldn't make that would stop somebody who's it would stop people who are less determined, if you like. You can't stop people who are whole hardly determined to get access to that kind of stuff. But you would stop people inadvertently falling into it. That's a short clip from Episode 33 with Professor Sam Vakneen. For the full episode, click somewhere roundabout down here and for the subscribe button, it should be somewhere over here. A big shout out to everybody that has subscribed so far. I appreciate each and every one of you. Here's to fantastic, prosperous, successful, healthy and fun filled 2024. I've got some really interesting guests lined up, people I think you'll be interested in hearing from. I certainly know I'll be interested in talking to. So here's to 2024, everybody. Thank you so much.