 in a program like Under and Is Anonymous. Druggle. So what happened? And it becomes especially poignant for newcomers who ask me that when they hear other people, like when I celebrate or when I tell my story and people who've been here before I got here will share, you know, humorously, because it got some funny war stories with me. And they'll share about like, oh, God, this guy. And they'll go on to describe what it was like sitting next to me at a meeting. You know, if we were alcoholics anonymous, I'd be the guy who smelled like alcohol at the AA meeting, you know? And they'd say, so what changed? What happened? So I want to share a couple of things that happened and maybe even a little bit about my first three steps. Hey, we've got Elliott Blatt here. Elliott, what's going down, bro? Blessings, Luke. Good morning. Good morning. Thank you. Long time caller. San Francisco, I'm listening. All right. So what an eventful week, huh? Yes. So the whole Adderall situation has provoked a lot of controversy. It has. Yeah, no, it felt like, I have to say, you had a very sort of adversarial posture in your last video, the sundown video of Thanksgiving Eve, I believe. Do you feel defensive about this? Well, I'll just repeat my basic point that people in general don't want you to change. And when you're making a change, family, friends will usually try to fight against it. And if you're sick and there's a medication that can make you well, sick people want you to stay sick and well people want you to get well. Okay, back to you. Well, what led you to the conclusion that you feel like you have ADHD? Because you don't seem to, as far from my outsider perspective, you don't sort of exhibit any of the traits I associate with ADHD. I mean, you're pretty productive, you're more than pretty productive, you're highly productive and you seem to work all the time. You produce, you know, a live stream on a very regular basis. So you have a lot of accomplishments and I associate people with ADHD with people who just can't seem to sort of execute on things. Is this a false, you know, I'm making some false assumptions here. Well, I think you're touching on some symptoms of ADHD, but for me, it was humiliation, right? I didn't go and get this ADHD check out, you know, on the wings of victory, right? I came to it on the wings of defeat and humiliation whereby failing to pay attention to mundane details I cost myself thousands upon thousands upon thousands of dollars and I've repeatedly had this problem. So for example, I sold a car and I didn't get the appropriate paperwork filled out and it was just endless aggravation and lost income. I suffered, you know, another humiliation recently that's costing me thousands upon thousands of dollars. This has happened to me time and time again, a failure on my part to pay attention to non-exciting details, to failure to pay attention to mundane details that normal people in my peer group do pay attention to and failure, humiliation and the loss of thousands upon thousands of dollars is and then talking about that with people close to me and them pleading with me to go get checked out for ADHD. I stopped fighting it and I just, okay, let me, let me go get a consult. So here are some of the symptoms being unable to sit still, especially in calm or quiet surroundings. That's basically true for me, constant fidgeting, pretty much true for me. You'll notice I'm usually like squeezing something when I'm doing my streams, being unable to concentrate on tasks, I have difficulty concentrating on tasks that are not exciting to me, excessive physical movement, yeah, excessive talking so I can be frequently I'm overly verbal in context where that's maladaptive, being unable to wait their turn, yeah, I frequently interrupt, unable to wait their turn, acting without thinking, yeah, interrupting conversations, just general maladaptive levels of verbal impetuosity and impulsivity, saying things that are inappropriate and then walking around with this dread that I'm going to repeat this problem over and over again, thus harming other people, but most for myself. So humiliation leading to not, you know, being invited back to meals at the homes of Orthodox Jews because I said something globally impulsive that I thought was funny, but turned out was highly inappropriate and now, you know, longtime friends have stopped inviting me around for meals. So a lot of humiliation led me to this place. Okay, humiliation is one thing, but the connection to ADHD is not entirely clear. I mean, yeah, maybe you're just a little bit, you're an energetic, excitable boy, they all said, you know. Well, these are symptoms. I mean, people who specialize in this area do regard these as serious symptoms of ADHD. I could retail more embarrassing setbacks that I've had relating to this. And so if I can minimize this problem, why would I not take that chance? You seem to take one little quirk and turn it into a big moral problem. You seem to love to pathologize what seemed to me to be relatively innocuous behavior as being some deep sort of character flaw. So at what loss of money? At what loss of income would it be worth? Because I fail to pay attention to mundane detail. So if I lose $100,000, if I lose a million dollars, at what loss of income do you think it'd be worth checking out this type of problem? At what number of not being invited back to the homes of friends? Like if it happens once, what if it happens a dozen times in a year? At what point is it worth investigating this? I'm not saying, okay, I'm not saying that these aren't behavioral problems. You know, you clearly do, I may say, have a few behavioral problems, but you're making a leap, an inductive leap going from some behavior problems to a physiological medical condition, right? No, I'm not making the leap. I'm going to get a diagnosis from people whose living is based upon making this diagnosis or not making the diagnosis. So do you know people that once had your sort of set of behavioral issues started taking ADHD and suddenly those behavior issues disappeared? Yes, I know a lot of people like that. A lot, okay, fair enough. Now it seems counter-intuitive to me because, you know, one, Adderall's an amphetamine type thing, an upper, a speed-like product, is it not? Yes. And it seems like you would want to go the other direction and maybe you need something more calming. You would think that, but not everything can you just into it as a layman compared to people who spend, you know, decades studying this. So whatever reason, the first line of drugs that are most commonly prescribed and recommended for ADHD are stimulants. So I don't just try to intuit my medication or the world around me. I do try to intuit, but I don't end with intuition. I also want to consult expertise. And I'm not someone who thinks that medication prescribed by a doctor is usually a good thing. I think it's frequently not a good thing, such as with SSRIs for depression. I think medicalizing depression is frequently wrong. I think SSRIs for depression are frequently maladaptive. I think chiropractic is a scam. I think that doctors frequently perform unnecessary operations to make money. I think dentists are constantly scamming their patients. So I'm not someone who automatically sides with the medical profession. Yeah, that's why it was all the more surprising because you do seem to be, in general, COVID exception. You do seem to be a pharma skeptic. Yeah, I have a moderate to above moderate skepticism of all professions, including the medical one. Okay. So I realize you've only tried it for a few days now, but and you've kicked off your sort of newfound productivity. No, no, no, I haven't. I haven't said that I said I was disappointed that there hasn't been a burst in productivity. I expected a more immediate change from this medication. So whatever it has done is being exceedingly subtle and just a little bit more cleaning than normal, a little bit more attention to some mundane problems like a buzzing fluorescent light bulb. But there has not been the dramatic burst of euphoria, energy or productivity that many people experience when they take Adderall. Okay. All right, but okay, so all right. So there's some improvement, but minor you're saying. It's very subtle. It's so subtle. I'm not even sure it's there. So I'm going to bounce off people who I trust. I could be completely reading into what I think it changes over the last four days that may not even be there. So I do feel medicated. Like this is a different state. I definitely feel medicated, but it's whatever effect is having on me is really subtle. It's much more hard to put my finger on than what I expected. Now you've tried the nicotine gum and that wasn't effective for you. No, it was effective. I just haven't done it much. I did, I do feel smarter when I take, when I choose some nicotine gum. So like I just, I'm just coming off the period where I sort of had to go to the gum. I've been under a lot of deadline pressure and so I've been having to work past from comfortable. And so I've been chewing some of that gum and it's worked quote unquote, but the side effects I notice I really, they're very noticeable. They're uncomfortable meaning I, my sleep has become really erratic after chewing the keen gum on a pretty consistent basis. So I'm glad that I'm not doing it now, but I had a period of about a week where I was doing it regularly and my sleep became a mess and then it had sort of negative downstream consequences from not sleeping properly. So I was just curious in that regard. Yeah, I also very curious because I have friends who warned me that Adderall just wrecked their sleep and the side effects of Adderall were just absolutely devastating. In fact, you know, we have a mutual friend who abused Adderall for years and getting off it was, you know, just devastating for him. So I haven't experienced any of the reported negative effects. It's had zero effect on my sleep. But again, I take my last Adderall pill usually about 11 a.m. So when were you taking your last bit of nicotine gum? About the same time, around lunchtime after my morning coffee had worn off. Then I would go to... I would do nicotine gum. So that would give me like a three-hour work session because I start to really fall off after noon. My energy level really starts to dip. So I was throwing in the old nicotine gum to try and, you know, arrest that drop-off. And it works. Is the drop-off typically after lunch or mid-afternoon? Basically 1 p.m. Yeah, after lunch. Whether I eat lunch or not. It's not like a digestive coma type of situation. It's not a high carb lunch. It's just any lunch or lack thereof. Well, it's just the time of day. It just seems like that's all I've got, you know? And then my brain just gets really tired. I feel like fluid's draining out of my head. There's like nothing there starting at 1 p.m. I need a nap. Maybe this is just age, Luke. When does your work day typically begin? Pretty early, like 7 p.m. Okay. Sometimes even earlier, sometimes later, but mostly 7 p.m. So, and I find if I have a meeting, like a meeting where I'm talking to people and I'm working through people's broken English, then the energy drop-off is like catastrophic. It's like the plane being shot out of the sky. I just completely spiral into the ground. So, do you have any experience with Ritalin or Adderall? No, none, none. No, I'm a Daphanel. You've never tried a Daphanel. I'm trying to think of last time I took the pharmaceutical of any type, of any type whatsoever. The probably only thing I did was like antibiotics like 20 years ago. What about a condom? Did you use condoms back in the day? Yeah, yeah, but you know what? I lied. I did take, I guess it's probably oxy-cotton after some dental work. Like I took pain pills. I broke my arm. I took the same thing. So, but that's the only pharmaceuticals I've taken or that's worse. Now, how bad would it have to get before you became open to a pharmaceutical intervention? I would have to not be able to function. Okay, so your life would have to be absolutely destroyed before you'd consider a pharmaceutical intervention? Yes, yes, yes. I have a very stoic New England self-aligned attitude with regard to these things. It could be a noise, but... And you've always had this? I have, I have. Yes. I grew up in very austere circumstances. I'm not one of these suburban, you know, powder puffs. So do you feel that because Jesus suffered on a cross that you two have your cross to bear? I do, and I bear it well, my dude. Yeah, perhaps there's a masochistic streak to my personality. I wouldn't deny that. Well, at least you see through the bullshit. I mean, for all your problems and failures and, you know, lack of achieving what you want to achieve, at least you see through the bullshit because you haven't bought into the big pharma agenda. That's right, man. I have X-ray vision. I can see it all, dude. Like an un-muddied lake. I mean, you suffer and you, you know, have your failures and you have your humiliations, but at least you see through the bullshit unlike the sheep pull out there. I'm glad you understand, Luz. I see where you're going and you're making a leap here, bro. You're making the scene ideological and it's not ideological. No, it's psychological. It's a, we all have to have ways that we feel superior. I mean, I have all my ways where I feel superior to most other people. It's like an essential part of the human condition and you have, I would assume that you've based a substantial part of your self-esteem on you see through the bullshit. No, I don't, it doesn't bolster my self-esteem. It allows me to, seeing through the bullshit that does have merit because it allows you to sidestep a lot of problems that most members of the herd, such as yourself, encounter. Now, where do you get your self-esteem? Like break it down for me. Get self-esteem from having a productive work session. Okay, so you get self-esteem from work. Yes, yes. I don't go around seeking self-esteem so I never feel it's absence. I, you have transcended the human condition because well, normal average people need to feel, need to have a good reputation with themselves. You have transcended this average form of humanity. No, well, I have a philosophy like I think self-esteem slash contentment slash happiness, these things sort of are a side effect. They're not a goal. They're a side effect of a life well-led, a discipline's life well-led. They're not a goal in and of themselves. They're not like objects that you go after that attain through assiduous effort. They're, you feel these things after doing what needs a doing, bro. Yeah, and so you get self-esteem from a life well lived. Yeah, yeah, I would say so. Well, self-esteem, I mean, that's the term you use. I would just translate that to be like feelings of contentment and satisfaction. I'm talking about the reputation you have with yourself. I assume that you get to walk around having a good reputation with yourself. Is that fair? Okay, we've briefly lost Elliott. I hope people are coming back. So just speak up at any time, Elliott. Encouragement. A few people that talked to me told me a few things that helped me even when I wasn't sober yet. I'm going to try to do this without crying. Elliott, are you there? Speak up, man. All right. Okay, I made the lane change, dude. Okay, beautiful. Yeah, so tell me more about the reputation that you have with yourself having a life that you respect, you know, a life that's well lived. So you are a hard worker. You're a productive worker. You pay your taxes reasonably honestly. Tell me more about the way you've developed a good reputation with yourself. Uh, I've made a lot of mistakes and I've reflected upon them and I've resolved to behave differently after my mistakes. I've done the school of hard knocks. Yeah, other people look for help from like psychiatrists or 12-step programs or religion or cults, but Elliott Blatt stands on his own two feet. He is willing to take responsibility for his own mistakes. He takes accountability for his choices. He learns from his mistakes and he sees through the bullshit. That's exactly right. All this other stuff is gay. It doesn't work, bro. It's a simulacra. There's no, there's no shortcut loop. That's the first lesson I learned. There are no shortcuts. Once you accept that, that's ironically a shortcut. People burn up a lot of energy seeking shortcuts. When it would just be simpler, it would be more effective to confront the problem head on. So what percentage of the general population would you wish that they had a life more like yours? Every single one. Every single person, bro. Well, I mean, think about it, Luke. I mean, who do you want to have dinner with, right? Who would you rather have a chit chat with? Someone like me or someone who's just always whining about their self-esteem, bro? Would I rather have dinner with, say, someone who earned four times your income and had, say, four times your accomplishments in life than with you? No, I'd rather have dinner with you than someone who was much more successful. It's always about the money with you, bro. They're people, bro. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not the money. Oh, dear. So, mom, my way to do some car repair, a little extracurricular activity. I saved myself like 300 or 400 bucks on a car repair by doing it myself. How do you like that? That's a great idea. I mean, instead of specializing in your labor, you are independent and self-sufficient and like, you're a man. That's right, bro. None of this weakness. I'll just get ripped off at the auto shop today. Not me, bro. I take the bull by the horns. That you do. And you do that every night, right? Only one necessary, bro. Only one necessary. Now, why are you pro mushrooms but anti-pharmaceuticals? Excellent question, bro. Because mushrooms encourage introspection. And introspection is a much more long-lasting solution than our sort of an artificial chemical lift. Mushrooms bring you to the point they allow you to examine your decision-making and resolve to make better decisions. Wow. One is system. One is like, it's like, you know, it's like do you give a man a fish or do you teach a man to fish? Mushrooms teaches a man to fish, bro. And what kind of choices and what kind of revelations have you received from use of mushrooms? Then I have a lot more control over my emotional reactions than I think I do or thought I did. So I don't need to react emotionally when I can just sort of interrupt that process of reacting emotionally and sort of reason my way through it and not do damage to my body. Like when you react emotionally, you sort of poison yourself. Your body releases all kinds of toxic chemicals and things. It takes a while to digest those toxic chemicals after you've reacted emotionally. So if you can interrupt that habit, most people have this habit, if you can learn how to interrupt that habit, you can spare yourself a lot of agony. Well, that's good because nobody ever gets poisoned from mushrooms. Well, you know, that's why you need a good hookup, bro. So let me know if I can help you there. Man, I appreciate that. Come on, man. I can't believe I honestly... So there is theoretically no toxic dose. There is no poisonous dose of... So there's no toxic, lethal dose of medical mushrooms. Silicited mushrooms, by the way. I haven't done them in a long time, but I'm really eager to, I have to say. I'm due for another journey, as it were. They're very safe. That's what you're saying. Yeah. Well, that's what the propaganda says. And when did you last do them? Um... Maybe two springs ago? Terry, that's so great. Why don't you do them since two springs ago? Because... Because you learn your lesson and then you apply the lesson and then you don't need them anymore, bro. It's not like a hardware that keeps you coming back, bro. It's a different thing. It's a moral experience, bro. It's a... It's a... It's like a therapy session with yourself, bro. All right, listen, I'm at my destination. I might have to hang up soon. Blessings. Okay, blessings. I hope this... I hope this was the... Where's your time? Okay. All right. Fantastic. Okay, question in the chat. What low sugar fruit drinks you have this morning? Didn't have any, but I often drink vegetable juice, which is the type of vegetable juice that has no fruit juice, no added sugar that's low in sugar. It's got like two grams of protein, eight grams of carbs, so relatively fresh squeezed vegetable juice. Okay, let's play a little bit more from Shim F. It works if you work it from The Daily Reprieve, which is a podcast from Sexaholics Anonymous. The first thing is, you can't leave before the miracle happens. And I really wanted the miracle to happen. And if I leave, the miracle's not going to happen. The sponsor, not the first guy I told you about. Eventually, a friend in the program took me to a meeting and got me a new sponsor, unbeknownst to me or my sponsor. He kind of just introduced us and told my sponsor, Anthony, you're his sponsor. And then he walked away. And Anthony has been my sponsor ever since recently. I found another one only because of circumstances. Anthony moved down to Maryland. He's retired. We weren't talking as much and I'm working on certain things. I needed someone local, but my sponsor would say to me, you know, suit up and show up. And that's not something I'm powerless over. I can suit up and show up whether I'm sober a day, a week, a month, a year, a decade. It doesn't matter regardless of what's going on in my life and what happened yesterday, tomorrow, right now, right here, I can get my rear end to a meeting no matter what, I can do that. So don't leave before the miracle happened became something important to me and really, really accepting that I'm a sexoholic. And the fact is that if nature takes its course, I will die a disgusting sexoholic death and there's nothing I can do about it. So get on with life. I don't mean that I shouldn't try to get sober, but if I do or don't get sober became, it didn't become the point. The point was that if I wasn't going to get sober, it wasn't going to be because I wasn't going to try. So I was going to do whatever I can do to get and stay sober. Knowing full well, it probably wasn't going to happen. And for me, that's my first step. There's this section in the book that I heard other speakers talk about over the last 24 hours. It's the acceptance paragraph in Dr. Paul's story in the big book. In the fourth edition, it's on page 417. And in there, there's a line. He says, until I could accept my alcoholism, I could not stay sober. That's a funny line. But for me, it meant I wasn't going to start staying sober until I fully conceded to my innermost self. I accepted the fact I'm a sexoholic and doesn't matter why everyone else is getting it and I'm not, but I'm a sexoholic. So the fact that I'm working my rear end off and not having any sobriety was not a good enough reason to give up. Giving up was taken off the table. And if I was going to succeed or not, it was going to be God's business. If I was going to try or not, it was going to be my business. And I can honestly say from that day to this, the only thing I've ever done consistently without any relapses is I've kept on trying without giving up. So when 12 staffers talk about powerless, that doesn't mean that they're arguing that they don't have power over anything. That means that they don't have sufficient power, not reliable enough power. So you drink to excess one out of every 10 times you drink. For many people, that's maladaptive that there's some maladaptive habit in your life and you lack sufficient power over drinking or it went out of 20 times. So when you join any 12-step program, like everybody in it will be struggling with lack of power in some area of their life. But that doesn't mean everyone in it is, just powerless over everything. We have insanity or lack of power in different areas of our life. So we can get help from each other because we have somewhat different struggles. When someone tells you that their sobriety date is June 21st of 2010, I hope you never think that means that whatever that sobriety date is that they never struggled again. They never lost it again. They never raged again. They never had those phone calls with their sponsors. Should I reset my sobriety again or not? Especially early on, there's a few things that happened in the first few months of my sobriety that I laugh at it now because if I would do something like that today, I would not be calling myself sober. But I was so desperate. It was like...