0:00 the most powerful addiction on planet Earth. But, let's first talk about what I mean most [music] powerful. Do I mean what kills the most people or what hooks the most people or the addiction that is the hardest to walk away from? The most important thing we can talk about is really [music] what an addiction is and what it's not. People think an addiction has to do with a chemical or a drug. It's something that a person is not able to control anymore. They need it on a regular basis and they can't stop. And then the deeper question is what about addiction makes an addiction more of an addiction? Because in a certain countries in the world, people chew coca leaves. In other parts of the world, they snort cocaine. And other people do crack. What's the difference between these three? It really has to do with how fast these
0:47 molecules are delivered to the brain. Chewing it can take literally 20 to 30 minutes. Cocaine can happen within less than a minute. But, when someone is injected with crack, it goes to the brain within seconds, okay? Let's take a look at real food. You have to chew it. It takes a while to break down. But, what about ultra-processed food? Have you ever had a Cheeto before? It's like almost instantly broken down into powder and it satisfies your mouth, but it doesn't actually satisfy the gut. And the flavor chemicals explode on the brain very quickly. Most people never become addicted to a nicotine patch because it takes a period of time for it to be absorbed in the body. But, then take a look at nicotine when you vape, right? That can go in pretty fast or
1:32 even when you smoke a cigarette. The nicotine goes into the lungs, into the blood even faster than vaping. What about a lottery ticket, right? You don't necessarily play the lottery every hour, right? Maybe it's once a week. Maybe it's longer. But, what about the slot machines? How many times can someone spin that slot machine, right? Per hour. So, obviously the slots are way more addicting than playing the lottery. How about on social media? Scrolling through Tik Tok doesn't even come close to going to the movie theater and being entertained. What about pornography compared to going out and actually finding a real relationship? But now I want to explain something super fascinating. What's really behind addiction, okay? We have a
2:19 neurotransmitter involved called dopamine. It's not a pleasure hormone. It's a thing that causes the pursuit towards pleasure. It creates want. And then the other half of an addiction is over here, okay? Opioids. These are natural body chemicals that involve liking something. This is where you feel pleasure. But with addictions, you're never really satisfied. So, let me show you what happens. Let's say for example, they have this want at a plus five, okay? We're just giving this arbitrary number here. And then they smoke, and then they get this plus five pleasure. Then the more you do this over time, okay? You're going to get an adaptation where the dopamine, this is going to go
3:04 up. But over here on B, this is going to start going down. So, you're getting a little less pleasure every time you do this. What happens in the brain is you have another part of the brain called the amygdala. It affects emotional stress. And that's C over here. So, over time they switch from smoking to get pleasure to smoking to get relief of the pressure that addiction created. But at the same time, dopamine is going higher and higher and higher. So, you're getting more want, you're getting more drive to it, you're getting more pursuit, but you don't get the pleasure of that actual substance. Everything tends to be focused in on that one specific thing that you're
3:49 addicted to. So, you obsess over it, whether it's alcohol, drugs, gambling. Your world revolves around that and you're seeking out that to be able to then get relief that that addiction created. Here's another good analogy of what dopamine feels like. Have you ever maybe at night after dinner, you open the refrigerator and you're looking at things and you're not sure what you want. You're completely satisfied but there's something else drawing you to that. That's what dopamine is causing. Okay, let's go to number one. What addiction kills the most people? Tobacco. Okay. Smoking. A lot of people smoke. A lot of people die of lung cancer from smoking but also smoking can cause heart
4:36 problems because all that smoke goes into the bloodstream and it goes into the arteries and then it destroys the arteries which can then cause heart attacks. Number two, what hooks people the most? The same thing, tobacco. They've evaluated children 6 years old and the addiction starts after 2 days of smoking. So, it's something that actually reaches the brain really fast and then starts to create this situation right here. What is the hardest to walk away from? Opioids. Things like heroin, morphine, fentanyl. These are all things once you start, it's really hard to stop. I remember getting morphine when I was in the hospital for a certain condition and I thought to myself, wow, I can get used to this really fast. If I had access to
5:22 this, I would probably want to do it again. Okay, what's the most dangerous thing to quit? Alcohol is one of them. If someone's an alcoholic and they quit cold turkey, they can develop something called delirium tremens which is a very serious situation where you need to be treated and you need to handle it effectively. But with alcohol, I'm talking about a really hardcore alcohol addiction. I'm not talking about a mild addiction. The hardest addiction to avoid ultra-processed food. Why? Because it's in your face 24/7. As soon as you're tired, hungry, or stressed, or bored, you are going to cave into it. Okay, number six. This addiction steals the most hours of your life.
6:08 It's checking your text or your emails or your feeds with social media. An average person checks for these messages 130 to 160 times a day. An average teenager gets over 250 notifications on their cell phone every single day. I wonder who emailed me or texted me recently. Let me find out cuz I don't want to miss out on anything, right? The amount of time that checking things on your cell phone and computer rip out and steal out of your day is between 4 and 4.5 hours. That's 61 days a year. That is a total of roughly 10
6:54 years of your life checking your cell phone. And every time you're checking your cell phone, you're getting a little spike of dopamine over and over and over and over. And unfortunately, in 2023, distraction-affected crashes killed over 3,275 people in the United States. It's so tempting to grab your cell phone and check your messages when you're driving, and then look up and you're almost off the road. Very dangerous. What do we do with all these addictions? Do we use more willpower? Do we just have a better mindset? So, what is the antidote? What is the solution? Adding time. I talk about that in my new book, Change Your Environments. And there's a lot of things you can do to add friction and time between you and the thing you're
7:40 addicted to. You could actually, with your cell phone set it up where you get three notifications a day and then you actually have a personal policy that you're going to check all your emails and texts only three times a day. And you're going to take your cell phone and put it somewhere where it takes energy to go get it. Because the problem is that cell phone has taken control of our lives and it's going to literally take 10 years off your life that you could use for doing other things. If you want very powerful additional techniques and other things to do to get rid of addictions, you should watch this video right here. Check it out.
