 How to deal with depression and addiction, because I truly believe you can't have one without the other. Depression is addiction, addiction is depression, it's a vicious cycle that goes back and forth. And so, I'm naturally a depressive person, been like that my whole life. And it was about a decade ago that I found certain things in my life that helped me in my life to overcome both my addiction and my depression. A little quick background about myself. I've done every drug possible. I've had two ODs in my life back in my party days. And I used to be a heavy smoker, heavy drinker, heavy abuser of party drugs. That being said, I had many really interesting chance encounters with people. And through my experiences in my life, I've found certain things that have completely helped me transform my outlook in life, transform my body, my mind, my soul, my spirit, whatever you want to call it. And what I'm going to do for you today is I'm going to lay out what personally has helped me. And through my personal experiences, me sharing with you, hopefully this can help you too. Okay, so I'm going to talk about like five key things when it comes to depression and addiction. Number one, it's something in that particular you can do, but it's very interesting. I'm not too sure if you guys have heard about this before, but there's a really fascinating study. It's called a rat park study. And so in a nutshell, they've experimented with two kinds of rat parks. One rat park was a ghetto park. I mean really fucking ghetto. You had no other rats in there. You had no females in there. You had no activities that can partake in there. You pretty much had an empty cage. And in this rat park, the rats were offered cocaine in liquid form, you know, like the water feeder. It doesn't take a rocket science to figure out what's going to happen. The rats partake in the cocaine and they got high. Okay, now the scientists like, let's try to figure out some other scenarios we can put the rats in. So they created a rat amusement park and this is a fucking pimped out rat amusement park. They had women rat in there. Obviously they had wheels. They had things the rats can play with. It was like a Hugh Hefner playground for rats, both men and women enjoying themselves as a big fucking party. And they gave the opportunity for rats to partake in cocaine. Well, guess what happened? The rats didn't partake in the cocaine. So the scientists like, wait a second, that's pretty interesting. So what's going on here? They soon discovered that wait a second, maybe this whole depression addiction is really controlled by our environment. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. We got something over here. And the more you look into the research, the more you look into the science, the more you realize that how you behave is directly correlated to your environment. The world that you spend time with, the places that you live, the things that you experience directly correlate with how you behave. Period. And so there's something interesting to take from this. And I'm going to be getting into my steps and some of my steps relate to the rat park study. But I just wanted to start with this story. How fascinating it is where they've had the option to take cocaine and they didn't. Your environment fucking dictates how you behave. And this is why willpower is a scam. Willpower is the biggest myth. So there's no such thing as willpower. And this is why if you look at every successful person from an entrepreneur to an athlete, to relationship success, to family success, it all depends on the systems that you create and the environment that you create to benefit you. Your environment should be the best environment to instigate the reactions internally from you. Okay, let's begin what has helped me in my past. Number one, diet. Most people obviously are eating an American side diet, high in sugar, processed foods, high fructose corn syrup, yada yada yada. It's garbage, come on. I don't have to say here and tell you the story of how shitty our food pyramid is and how shitty the options for food are out there. Meaning, you know, fast food. So what do I do for diet? And I'm not here to preach diets. I'm just telling you what worked for me. You can figure out what works for you. And you can look at the science and research for this as well. For me personally, a high fat, low carbohydrate diet works wonders for me. As soon as I started eating high fat, low carb, I wouldn't even say high protein, high protein, high fat, low carb, it was almost like day and night difference. My energy levels improved, my mood improved, my cravings, big one for me, my cravings for sugar decreased. And something that I think is very simple for people to do and I highly recommend people to do is start your day with a big ass fucking breakfast. High fat, high protein. And so basically what I do is like, I wake up and this is not always, but this is what I've done in the past is I start off right away within the first, let's say, half an hour to 45 minutes. Usually my go to breakfast was like grass fed, grass fed sausages. I chopped them up. I cooked them. I put like six eggs in there. I had some nice broccoli, some seasoning on there and I go out and that satiates me and fills me for like eight hours straight. It optimizes my hormones like leptin and ghrelin. It gives me clarity. It gives me energy. I don't have any hypoglycemic periods. It stabilizes my blood sugar levels. And so that's what's worked for me. You know, you can look it up for yourself, but people to study for this would be, for example, Dr. Rhonda Patrick is really good to look at this. Yeah, start off there. But for me personally, diet's a big one. You can figure out what works for you, but fix your diet. That's number one. Number two, with diet obviously becomes exercise and there's so much research when it comes to exercise and addiction. In fact, a little side note, if you look at a lot of professional bodybuilders today, a lot of them come from a very addictive background. They have OTC tendency and they've had drug abuse in the past. And if you look at bodybuilding, it makes sense because for you to be a successful bodybuilder, the dedication, the addiction that you need to wake up every day to measure your food, to make sure you're in your macros and micronutrients, to make sure that you're training too. It's like you're literally a fucking roba when you're a bodybuilder. So it kind of makes sense where a lot of them had an addicted past and now they're bodybuilders. But for me, exercise, man. And it doesn't have to be a lot like exercise five minutes a day. There's a great Russian saying from Pavlya Tutslion. It's called greasing the groove, right? So instead of you just dedicating, let's say an hour a day, man, start off with five minutes a day. As long as you're doing something, it's better than zero. Something is better than zero. And so for me, it's like, honestly, how my life is scheduled because I'm busy as fuck running a couple of companies is if it's not in my calendar, meaning if it's not in my Google calendar booked in, it doesn't exist in my reality. Period. So I have literally every gym session booked into my calendar. I have booked in when I have lunch with friends. I have everything booked in. My whole life is booked into my Google calendar. It gives me notifications. So a little tip that has worked for me is book in your gym sessions in your calendar. And oh, by the way, if you can keep your gym as close as possible to you or better yet in your house or better yet, you don't even need a gym. All you need is a kettlebell or rings. The time that it takes to get to something also diminishes your ROI, meaning the likelihood of you succeeding if you have to travel 45 minutes to go somewhere, the likelihood of you succeeding, it diminishes. The shorter the distance, the better. Okay. So exercise number four. I made a video about this maybe five, six years ago. Dump your shitty friends. So this goes back to the rat park study is what kind of friends do you have? Right. If you have people, I like to call them energy vampires. You got people who are sucking your energy. We're putting your down. And this is for your family. I know, I know people talk about family. For me, for me, family is everybody. Family is people that love and support you regardless of if they are your blood. Family is somebody that when you tell them something, they promote you. They help you. They do everything in their, it's not just like they do everything. They actually generally are proud of you and generally are happy that what you're doing is pushing yourself in the right direction. And you really got to audit your friends. If your family or friends are always putting you down, be conscious of that and then love yourself enough, man. Love yourself enough to fucking cut them out of your life regardless of if you're family. Just cut them out, man. Cut them out. You do not deserve that. You deserve the best people in your life. You deserve people that help you, that promote you, that love you, that nurture you, that care for you, that want you to succeed, generally want you to fucking succeed as opposed, want you to fail. Okay. Number four is a major one, man. It's a major one that ties into number one with the rat park study. Control your environment. That's number four. Number five, this one's going to be interesting. This one's not for everybody. And remember, I'm telling you things that personally helped me in my past. I'm not telling you things that I just pulled out of my ass. I'm telling you, well, has helped me and hopefully can help you. Number five is psychedelics. And I know I've had some of you reach out for exact psychedelics. Remember, I'm not a doctor. I'm just telling you what worked for me. I'm not going to get into doses or anything, but the two ones I have, I would say three ones. The three ones have been highly impactful for me was number one, MDMA, more or less controlled MDMA, very similar to the maps protocol where it's assisted in going through a process. Number two would be micro dosing of Ibogaine and Boga. In fact, Ibogaine and Boga is probably the best substance so far. I have investigated, read about both from a scientific perspective and first-hand encounter with dealing with addiction. Like, Gabor Maté talks about Iboga. Look it up, Ibogaine. It's remarkable, but it's not for everybody. I do highly state caution when it comes to Iboga. Please find a professional, reach out to maps, but it's very interesting. And then finally, psilocybin, magic mushrooms, micro dosing with that. These three, so Iboga, MDMA and psilocybin have helped me internalize the emotions that I'm feeling. It doesn't help you as in like, hey, you got to do this. It helps you internalize what you're feeling because let's say you're depressed. Let's say you have an addicted personality. Let's say through your addiction, through your depression, you're feeling certain emotions, but you don't understand why you're feeling these emotions. So psychedelics helps you connect deeply with your emotions so you understand them. And once you understand your emotions, you can place them a certain order in your body and you can come to love and respect your emotions, right? So when you're feeling a certain way, when you get angry, or when you're having a craving for something, or when you have a quick impulse, you then understand why you're having this reaction. Then, instead of reacting, you respond. This is something that Victor Frankel from Man Search for Meaning, another book I highly recommend that you get talks about. Instead of reacting, you respond. And so those are my five really important things to talk about when it comes to addiction and depression. Look at the Rat Park study. Diet, exercise, friends, controlling the proper circle, having really supportive people around you, and psychedelics. If you enjoyed this video, guys, highly recommend a like, a share, and subscribe. Also, if you have any questions or comments about this, please don't hesitate to reach out because I know it's a very sensitive topic and subject. Have a great day, guys. Peace.