Dr K: Masturbation & Pornography Are Rewiring Your Brain!

The way that you manage it, right? And that's kind of what I'm talking about; is like you have to understand what is happening in your brain in order to then willfully take a step back and and sort of like think about what am I feeling? And then eventually, once we understand where postnut clarity comes from, we can cultivate it without having to not just just this is I know we're on a little bit of a tangent here, but do women experience the inverse of postnut clarity? Because there's a lot of oxytocin released when we have sex. So I was just just reading a study from 2021 in the journal of sex research and it found that women were more likely to feel emotionally connected, vulnerable, and have a desire for postcoidal closeness, like cuddling or talking. However, men who are in long-term relationships reported feeling similarly bonded to women, which is probably explains actually why I'm also down to cuddle after, because she's been my partner for seven years. Yeah. So, there is so much there. So, the now we're getting I mean, if you want to go into that, that's the societal element, right?

So there is the neuroscience of pornography addiction, what it does to your brain, but there is a fundamental societal issue which is driving men towards pornography and also addresses this kind of thing where relationships between men and women are getting harder. And as relationships between men and women are getting harder, there's a part of the the the brain, more often the male brain, that is getting starved for something because we no longer have sexual connections, emotional connections with women. And so when we get hungry for something, then the brain will try to find what it can to satisfy it. Right? Right. So there there's a part of our brain that you know that drives us towards procreation, but often times in a real relationship it comes with a lot of other things. Yeah. Right. The problem is that when we're and this gets a bit technical, but when our brain wants something it usually wants a whole package. So for example, like if you feel hungry, you don't want calories. I want to eat this and I want to eat this and I want to drink this and I want to have some of this. Right? So there are lots of different things that my brain wants or my body wants, and they're usually all they all come together in in a real healthy way in in a sorry in a natural way, which is why it's healthy. Not that natural is healthy, but that's what we've adapted to. The problem with pornography is that it gives us a slice of what our brain craves. And the problem is once it gives you a slice, once you get that sexual gratification, your emotion your emotional connection is not met. You have no bond. You have no feeling of safety, nothing like that. that often times you're filled with like regret and all kinds of guilt and things like that. And so even though you're satisfying that sort of procreative drive, all of the stuff that comes with it stays unsatisfied. And then the real problem is once we satisfy the procreative drive, the motivation to go and get all of those other things disappears, right? So once I nut, postnut clarity, I don't need a relationship with anyone else. Right? I'm not willing to sacrifice to deal with this person. So, so it's it's kind of like it's sort of like if I if I fill up your stomach with just unhealthy food, like let's say I just give you straight calories like some highly processed like hamburger wrapped in donuts or whatever and drizzled with take your pick of artery clogging stuff. After you eat that, you don't have any fiber, you don't have any micronutrients, but you're not going to crave broccoli. Yeah. Right.

So that's what's happening in our society; is we're using porn as a substitute for relationships, and that's creating these really strong societal pressures and being driven by. So what have you seen happening between men and women right now? H um women I think don't need men as much as they used to, and I think this is in part because of this whole sexual revolution and the pill and the feminism and all these things which is has you know tremendous upsides. I think that women and men are having less sex, they're getting married less. Men's attitude towards women has become a little bit more resentful in certain pockets of the internet. They perceive relationships with the other sex to be disposable more than ever before. Men's spe view women I would say both. And I think in part that's because of dating apps. Just the perception of choice. The feeling that if you don't work out, there's another thousand people on my phone that I could give a shot to. I think the equation of a relationship, when we think about the investment it takes for it to work and what you get from it, people now perceive the equation not to be worth it. Okay. I think there's a lot of great stuff there. So, so you're like a fully formed adult man, right? I think so. I hope so. Yeah. Like you're you're like you're like a man. You're not like a kid. You're not like a like a dude in early stages of development. You've like you've got a career. You've got a relationship. You're buying a house. It's like you were an adult. Yeah. So if I was an 18-year-old. Yeah. And I came to you and let's say I'm your nephew or something like that and I'm like Stephen, fully formed adult, handsome man in relationship. I'm struggling to date. Yeah. What should I do? You want me to give you advice? [ __ ] Um I think you should work on yourself. Okay. Especially as an 18-year-old man because I think you need to, especially at that age, create some advantages. is. And so working on yourself could be learning, reading, going to the gym, building up the ability to provide for someone else and to protect somebody else. That's kind of really where I'd start. And again, that's biased because that's what I did at 18 years old. I actually didn't date. I think I've been on five dates my entire life. Okay.

So, let's say I do that. Yeah. And it doesn't work. Yeah. Okay. So, I'm like, "Hey, I'm on this growth journey." And I'm sure you've encountered this, and there are going to be people in the audience who are like, "The reason they're watching this podcast is because they're trying to do that. They're still not getting dates, right? It's still hard to find a girlfriend. Then what do you have to say to them? I would assume that the reason it's not working is because they're not in this frame of mind to find love. Perfect. And when someone says when a dude says I I'm trying to do everything right, what is the most common response that they get? Right. So like try harder or like Yeah. Right. If you kind of like look at Twitter, what you'll find is people will be like, "It's impossible to find a good woman." And then like men will be and let's say a dude says that or a woman says that doesn't. It's on both sides. It's impossible to find a good man. And then people won't be like, "Yeah, it's impossible to find a good man." Maybe some people will be supportive. So you'll have a woman who says it's impossible to find a good man. You know, they'll there are a lot of people who are like, "Yeah, like like men are trash." Fine. And then a lot of people will be like, "You're not trying hard enough. You're not going to the right places." is that's that gets we as men get that a lot more because there's a societal bias that men don't need help. Right? So if if if you look at like the the comparison of scholarships, male only scholarships versus female only scholarships, there's about $4.9 billion worth of scholarships given out in the United States from private sources. Uh female scholarships outside of athletics are way higher than ma male scholarships. So if you look at athletics, the number is way higher for men. But the really weird thing is that like 60% of people who graduate from college or in college somewhere in there are women. So the the people who need more gender-based support are men, but we don't really do that. We're usually like if a man has a problem, this is a man's problem to solve. And when a man goes out and says, "I'm having trouble dating." But what people will say is men will say, "Work harder. Try harder." You know, people will like like and people will really be nasty about it. They're like, "Do you not know how to talk to women? stop being a creep, things like that. And then the other thing that we're sort sort of starting to not starting, we're really seeing is that there is like this very very like deep anger, entitlement. There's like this incel movement. Um, you know, there's this like alpha male, beta male kind of thing. And I don't know if you kind of get this, but there's like a deep sense of like anger, right? There's like a in men, and I think women feel it too. This is why women are so terrified. This whole thing about would you rather be in a forest with a bear or a man? You did you hear about this? So like people would ask this question on Twitter to women. It's like would you be rather be in a forest with like a bear or a man? And like women feel safer with a wild bear than they do with a man. So I think people are picking up on this like existential and I don't know if that makes sense to you, but there's like an existential like cry coming from men which can manifest as anger. I think we're also seeing reflections of this like in South Korea with like dropping birth rates, right? Where like men are getting really really angry. they feel really entitled. And I think this is where it's important to understand a biological difference. And we'll get to what I think is going on. So a woman does not need a man in order to pass her genes along, right? So I mean like literally, I know it sounds weird, but like if you're a woman, you can just go to a sperm bank and you can get pregnant. Yeah. You can just have a child without you can also argue that it's easier for women to find a man who is willing to impregnate them than it is for a man to find a woman willing to carry their child. But I mean literally we live in a society where women can just procreate if they feel like it and men cannot. So there's a fundamental power balance there. I'm not saying it's right or wrong. I'm just saying it is what it is. So I think what we're starting to see is actually like a mass extinction event. We are seeing natural selection for a group of men who have no options.

Many years ago, I was a loser. And the the world that we lived in necessitated my entry into third spaces. I had trouble talking to girls, but I was forced into college. When I got my first job, it was serving ice cream. I was forced to interact with girls. I was active in a summer camp where I met girls, was forced to talk to girls. So, I sucked at talking to girls, but the world that I lived in was structured so that I still had to talk to girls. I had no option to retreat from interaction and painful interaction with the opposite sex. I think literally what we're seeing because all this stuff started to get really bad during CO. So, what happened in CO was actually like a natural selection event, but it wasn't a natural selection event about life and death. That's what people think natural selection is. What happened during CO? Sure, a lot of people died, and that's bad. But the postcoid world, some people were able to adapt to it and some people are not. We're seeing a spike in social anxiety. Now I can work from home. Now I have pornography. Now I have all this stuff going on to where I'm not forced to learn how to interact with women. Does that kind of make sense? Yeah. So now you can live your whole life at home. And I think what's starting to happen is literally natural selection. And the way that natural selection works is people think it's like, oh, if I'm natural, if natural selection means I'm weak and someone is strong. That's not technically correct. Natural selection is you were made a certain way, someone else is made a different way, and then the environment changes. Which one of these two is suited to? It's not even adaptation because all the adaptations have been made. And I think the best example of this is like literally Darwin's finches. So, you've got like, you know, one finch that has like a hard beak that can crack a nut. You've got another finch that has a very sharp beak that can get like a a a bug out of like a cactus like that has these very like tight tight flowers. And so, if something happens and all the cacti die out, the birds that rely on the cacti bugs will start to die out too. They don't know how to procreate in this world anymore. And I think what we're seeing with like all these alphas, betas, incels, what we're seeing in South Korea is there is a whole generation of men that is like we are literally watching them die out in real time because we've got 32-year-olds, 35-year-olds who do not have children, do not know how they're going to ever have children. And this is where like I know this sounds bizarre, but so that's actually happening. That's not bizarre. That's birth rate in South Korea is like 7. So there's a bunch of men who will never pass on their genes in the alpha male, beta male, whatever. Like, you know, in that kind of language, they talk a lot about like procreation and legacy and stuff like that. But I I almost wonder is there a mechanism in a human being that if your genes know they're dying out, what would they trigger in your mind? Right? And I think what they would trigger is exactly what we're seeing. This like existential panic, angst, even aggression, entitlement, because if these men do not behave in this way, they are literally going to die out. So what we see in this postcoid world is that people like maybe you or me who were like losers and didn't know how to talk to chicks in high school, we were forced into social interaction where we basically like that's where we developed uh in in order so that we could talk to girls. But in this postcoid world, all those spaces are gone. There's no forcable interaction. So then there are some people for whom it's natural to talk to girls. And that's why like we see this dichotomy where it's almost like you know some people like just put yourself out there, just work out, work on yourself and things will work out. And then there are a lot of other people who are like that's not working. And I imagine if you went back like 200 years, went back to the Galapagos Islands and you took Darwin's finches and you put them on Twitter, you would see that what exactly what we're seeing. Some people are like, "Oh, like you have trouble getting bugs, just crack a nut. Like just get better at cracking nuts." But they have something in their makeup, something in their attachment style, something in in their their tendency for social anxiety, something in their neuroticism, something in their circumstances, something in their support structure that allows them to put forth effort and succeed. And then there are these other people over here who will go to therapy, who will work on themselves professionally, who will show up on dating apps and because of the shape of their face which cannot be fundamentally altered or some other thing which they're not even aware of, they grew up with a certain attachment style that they're not aware of. they grew up with on the spectrum and their capacity to make eye contact and emotional connections is very difficult. So there's this whole crop of people who I think are trying really hard. I don't think they're losers. I don't think they're like pathetic or anything like that. I think there's something about the architecture of how these people are built so that standard advice does not apply to them. And what I feel when I sit with these people is like someone who is dying out. Like that's what it feels like to sit with this this person's life. They're not living a life. They're in a slow protracted process of dying. And when you are in a slow protracted process of dying, pornography shows up. And then you've got this weird thing that goes on where you get this spurt of dopamine, this existential dread of like I am not getting to participate in life. There are all these people out there that are participating. They tell me, "Oh, you should do this, but it doesn't work." And it's just imagine how terrifying it is if someone gives you advice that's supposed to work and it doesn't work for you. How [ __ ] are you? Right? Because that's the answer. It's like some people have cancer, we give them cancer treatment, they get better. But if some people have cancer and everyone's like, "Hey, do this chemotherapy." And it doesn't work, then how screwed are you? You're very screwed. So this is, I think, what we're seeing. This deep existential loss, this desire for connection is somehow like intersecting with pornography. Because I think pornography addiction has a spiritual component, too. And if you talk to people who are addicted to pornography, they can feel it. They feel like spiritually like empty. They're like, I'm not doing anything in with my life. So, one of the two variables that correlates with pornography addiction, the two strongest variables that correlate with pornography addiction, one of them is a sense of meaninglessness in life. And there's a weird spiritual angle that I talked about, but the other really simple thing is, you know, if you want to stop watching porn, you need to have a reason to stop watching porn. And the problem with porn is that you can be kind of like living your life and then in the in-between hours when you're like back from work and before you go on a date or maybe you're swiping on Tinder and no one's really answering or whatever, like you just have these hours in the day where there's nothing going on. You're not living for anything. So, you might as well jerk off. I mean, there's there's a lot that I'm thinking about. The first is if we go back up to your point about this being a bit bit of an extinction event, it poses a question about like what do you do about that? Mh. Um you said also people are trying to implement the advice but it's not working. Now does that mean that that's a question of like motivation, discipline? Is it um is it bad advice? What do we do there? And um the third I guess question that comes to mind is does society have a responsibility to intervene in some way to correct this? So I I think does society have a responsibility? I don't think that is a real thing. So I have never seen society take a responsibility. I don't think society can take a responsibility. Right? So if like like how do I get society like who do I talk to? But but if you think about other people that are in marginalized groups, society intervenes to make the world the governments and the way that we make our laws and the way that we give out money and grants and the way that we shape our communities. Yeah. So I I understand the question but I I think like this and this is just the way that I think. So if I ask you what is society you say the government and then who is the government? What is the government? It's people. Yeah. So I think this comes down to forget about societal responsibility and I think this is one of the problems. Not to say that it is the problem but this is just the way that I think. There was a case, I don't remember her name, of a woman who was being sexually assaulted in public like on a street at nighttime and there were a bunch of neighbors who were like aware that the sexual assault was happening and no one called for help. And the reason no one called for help is because everyone assumed that somebody else would call for help. You know whose problem is it? Oh, society should fix this. And the moment that we say society should fix this, we stop taking individual responsibility. And the moment that we stop taking individual responsibility, like unless someone shows up and runs for office and says, "My goal is to do this," which by the way is happening in like South Korea. So like conservatives that are very like there's this huge tension in South Korea right now between men and women and this 4B movement where women are like we're not going to have kids anymore. And then there's like this conservative kind of like pro-masculine kind of movement that is moving into government and says like this needs to change. we see

There's some weird thing going on in the universe right now, where like everyone is meditating. We all need growth. Our systems are falling apart, and like we need this new skill set. And I think addiction is on the path to meditation and spiritual growth. It's what really gets people started. So even then, it's not karmically like bad.

I've built companies from scratch and backed many more. And there's a blind spot that I keep seeing in early-stage founders. They spend very little time thinking about HR. And it's not because they're reckless or they don't care. It's because they're obsessed with building their companies. And I can't fault them for that. At that stage, you're thinking about the product, how to attract new customers, how to grow your team, really how to survive. And HR slips down the list because it doesn't feel urgent. But sooner or later it is. And when things get messy, tools like our sponsor today, Justworks, go from being a nice-to-have to being a necessity. Something goes sideways, and you find yourself having conversations you did not see coming. This is when you learn that HR really is the infrastructure of your company, and without it, things wobble. And Justworks stops you learning this the hard way. It takes care of the stuff that would otherwise drain your energy and your time, automating payroll, health insurance, benefits, and it gives your team human support at any hour. It grows with your small business, from startup through to growth, even when you start hiring team members abroad. So if you want HR support that's there through the exciting times and the challenging times, head to justworks.com now. That's justworks.com.

I've interviewed a lot of people who are deeply spiritual, and pretty much all of their stories seem to start with an addiction. Yeah. I'm really trying to understand what what the the domino effect I guess is there. Yeah. So I think what's so there are different ways to think about it. One is that if you randomly have an addiction and you conquer it, that requires an internal work, like an internal like strengthening of your anterior singulate cortex, which is what monitors your internal conflict, gives you willpower. You have to master yourself in some way. So I think that but does it stop before the addiction? Because yes, I I think so. So so I I think an addiction is like a karmic, it's like signing yourself up for a boot camp when you're getting born. So you like come into this earth prone to addiction, and then if you conquer that addiction, you will be a different person. And so I I see a huge karmic kind of thing where like we are given these addictions to spiritually grow, right? So when I lift a weight, it's not easy, but it makes me stronger. So I think we sometimes forget that the mind doesn't wear out. Can you challenge what I'm about to say then? Okay.

So the way that I would think about it is that you would something might happen in your life. Now you might think this would happen in a in a past life or in some other form, some kind of early trauma. I guess your dad screams in your face that you're a piece of [ __ ] when you're 3 years old, and because of that, I don't know, you develop some sort of addictive behaviors to deal with the stress and the dopamine, the cortisol that's running through your body. So that becomes domino number two. Great. And then you struggle and battle the addiction. It ruins your life. One domino. Okay. Okay. Yeah. It ruins your life. Um your partner says she's going to leave you because of this addiction that you have. So you decide that the pain of making a change is greater than the pain of staying the same. So you you go to rehab and you go on the journey. You overcome it. And maybe there is still a hole or a gap. There is you will not overcome it. The scenario you described, that person will relapse. Okay. So, okay. So, so the scenario that you said okay was you realize that the pain of not giving up the addiction hurts more than the pain of giving it up. That's not going to work. So, the moment that if you say okay, the consequences of the addiction are so high that I have to give it up. The reason that doesn't work is because you're being forced. Mhm. Right. So if the goal of this is to give into myself and reduce my total amount of pain. If it's a calculation to reduce my pain, I'm still giving into the part of myself that wants to lessen pain. You with me? Yeah. If I'm giving into the part of myself that wants to lessen pain, the addiction will continue. Not 100%. But that's like honestly my clinical experience. The way to beat it is saying, "Fuck it. There's going to be pain. I'm going to embrace that pain. I don't need to run away from pain anymore. I don't need to choose the lesser evil. I'm going to choose the greater evil because it's the right thing to do." Surrender. Surrender and challenge. Right? So, that's what's kind of confusing for people. Surrender. Surrender in this case means allowing yourself to walk the hard path. Not being trapped by I have to lessen the pain in my life. The domino that I would add at the beginning would be why were you born in that family? Right?

So that presumes a layer of reality that we do not generally speaking scientifically accept. Why why do you believe in that layer of reality, and what is that layer of reality? Two reasons. One is because I think that I think that there is order in the universe. I think we have abundant evidence that there are laws that govern existence. Okay. And the laws that we have so far are generally speaking, in my opinion, insufficient to answer the question why someone is born in a particular place. We have a piece of that. We have a piece of why you're born the way you are because of things like genetics. Right? So, we know that like your tendency for baldness is like determined before you're even born, right? That's what the theory of karma kind of says. It's like there's a lot of stuff about your life that is determined before you even show up. So, that's one reason. So, I I think we need a system that is sufficiently explanatory. And for me, there are other arguments like biological reductionism, and like you can say there's no broader purpose to anything or whatever. I think that's fair to say. But I I do think that there's order to things. And I think if we have a reason why if I have three dominoes, right? And and I knock them over. This is the cause. But this the finger is the cause. And then what is the cause of the finger moving? It's the shoulder. It's the head. It's that I am here in this room trying to explain a principle. So the causes keep on going back and back and back and back and back until you reach a until you reach a singularity, right? Which is what big bang theory says is that cause and effect basically kind of got created. I don't know maybe maybe physicists understand this better than I do, but what's really fascinating is if you look at some of these old eastern texts, they say that the universe is born out of a point called bindu visaraa, which is literally described as a point of infinite energy, matter, and consciousness, which then explodes into the universe.

Do you believe in a god? Uh, sure. So I I think that what we call a god. So if you look at like a person, a person has like layers, right? So if I ask like who is Steven? Steven has a body. So there's a certain level of Steven that is a physical form. There's a certain level of Steven that is a bank account. There's a certain level of Steven that is a brand. Which one of those is really Steven? They're all really Steven. So I think there is something at the resolution that people would call a god that does exist. So you think there's a higher power that is somewhat intentional? Yes. Obviously the question becomes what created that? Um so this is what's really interesting. In the west we think of time as linear. So if you ask a yogi, he'll say time is circular. So what's the first season? Spring. I'm I'm confused. But doesn't winter come before spring? So is winter the first season? I see I see what you mean. Right. So we have this conception that time moves linearly. But there are a lot of conceptions of time that are quite circular. What comes first, the chicken or the egg? So I I think that there's a circularity to time, which there's a very like simple argument against which is that we cannot move backward in time, right? Like so time seems like the sand in the hourglass only goes one way. Yeah. So this is where I'm not an expert in physics. So I wouldn't make an argument of this based on physics. But I just want to know what your intuition tells you. It's not so experience, right? So I I think when you experience certain states of meditation, you have experiences of things outside of the normative reality. Now, you can also make a biological reductionist argument that those are just illusions, hallucinations created by neurons. I don't think that that's true. What specifically you referring to that you've experienced? I don't talk about it. Uh you can ask me a more specific question, and then maybe I can say something, but what is the right question to ask you? So I'll try to explain so this is going to get weird, okay? So I realized recently that I used to value credibility over truth. You understand credibility and truth are two fundamentally different things. So credibility is saying something that is believable. Right. Mhm. So believability depends on you, not on me. Yeah. So what I realized recently is that credibility is about changing your language to the to fit the ignorance of the audience. Like literally. So I was thinking about this recently in in my own midlife crisis. And I was like, what am I here to do? Am I here to be famous and successful? If so, then I should be credible. But if I want to speak the truth, then I need to allow my brand or whatever the [ __ ] it is to like fall apart and be like not credible, for people to think that I'm an idiot. And I think that is more important, right? Because that's ego. Like people can think I'm dumb. I would rather speak the truth than be credible in this moment and in some limited ways. That's number one. So I acknowledge that what I'm about to say doesn't make sense. And I think if you want to understand this, you have to experience it. And we'll explain why in a second. So if you look at your existence in the world, you have a body, you have a mind, but then you have this other thing which I think science sort of like acknowledges, we sort of acknowledge, we don't really know what it is, but the capacity for experience. We have this subjective part of you, right? So I can see objectively what you are, but you have an element of subjectivity. Does that make sense? Yeah. Do you think? Yeah. How do I know? You don't. Do I think? I don't know. I assume so. Exactly right. It's kind of weird. So even when we're like scientists and we say anxiety comes from the amygdala, it's kind of we're doing something really really sneaky. We don't know that anxiety comes from the amygdala. We can measure blood flow in the amygdala. We can measure electrical activity using an EEG. How do we know that anxiety is comes from the amygdala? Because we ask a human being, hey, when there's blood flow going over here in this fMRI, what are you feeling? I'm feeling anxious. So there is a level of human existence that is subjective. You with me? Yeah. So what science has done is we developed telescopes and microscopes to take our physical eyes and extend them. So my physical eyes with the baseline sensory organs, I can perceive certain things and I cannot perceive other things. But if I develop an instrument, I can see a star. If I develop an instrument, I can see a bacteria. So, I'm taking my natural physical ability and I am enhancing it with technology, with me. Meditation is doing that for your subjectivity. So, if I take like the material realm which is observable objective and I use a telescope and I use a microscope, I can go further than where I started. Does that make sense? Yeah. So, now the question is for the subjective realm, can you go further in the opposite direction? And when you do that through meditation, you will discover things that are not available to the basic subjective experience. So like with the naked eye, you can't see a bacteria, but if you use this instrument, you can see it. There's there's basically an a spiritual equivalent, a subjective equivalent of a microscope and a telescope that allow you to perceive things using your baseline subjective experience that are not perceivable by normal means. That doesn't mean that they're supernatural. We call them supernatural, but I think this is all reducible to science. We just haven't figured it out yet. I think that I have seen enough stuff through personal experiences, through the clinical value of working on these things where I think like some of this stuff is real. When earlier when I asked you about your experience, you said I don't talk about it. Yes. Which is extremely rare for you to say because you talk about everything, it seems like pretty much most things. I mean, there's not a question I've ever asked you where you said I don't talk about it. So I'm curious as to why you don't talk about it.

Two or three reasons. One is that it depletes shi immensely. It depletes energy. So as you as you accumulate spiritual energy, there are certain practices that you can do, including helping people, that will deplete your energy. Second thing is anytime I talk about it, I think it it it induces a subtle form of ego, right? So it's like, oh, I have been to the other side, even like talking about not talking about it. So that's why like I won't show up on a podcast and be like, "Oh, like I've had all these experiences that I'm not going to tell you about. It's real, but by the way, so so I think there's a subtle form of ego that I really wrestle with, and I've just learned." So there are one or two times in my life where I've shared these experiences, and it wipes away like my meditative progress for like 5 years. So it'll it'll take me years of practice to get back to having those experiences. And I I I think I've also been told by my teachers, and now I'm understanding. I didn't understand back when they told me, but I I think there it's not and there's other reasons too. So it creates expectations, it creates an imagination, the moment that there's an expectation in the mind, the mind will reproduce that experience. Obviously the viewer is thinking, listen, Dr. K, I trust you, and you're s you're suggesting you've been to the other side and seen something, and I haven't been there, but that knowledge that you have might help me make more informed choices of my life. So tell tell me what you see, experience. Yes and no. So so let's understand. Okay. So any help that I can give I'm going to give. So like my understanding of this mass extinction event that is happening right now is like a spiritual sense, and I think some people may resonate with that and some people may not. So that's the first thing. Second thing is if I can help you, I will. I don't think this is going to help you. I think all it's going to do is gonna it's going to create ego. It's going to create an aura around me. I don't want that. It's going to create people hunting for this, which will inhibit it. The more I say, the harder it will be for it to help you. So, the best thing to do is if you're interested in this stuff, I mean, like literally like what are we talking about here? Let's just stop and think about this. This is crazy. This guy is saying there's stuff after death. There's like these beings out there, right? Right? Like this is wild. This is dumb. This is unbelievable. Exactly. So if you really want to know, and this is what I love about this work, this is the reason I I say it. One of the great tragedies of the world today is that it's it's explored. We know what's behind every nook and cranny. We've mapped the earth. There's no exploration. Maybe deep sea is what's left. Space is what's left. It's so exciting to explore. But most human beings on the planet do not have the opportunity to explore the frontiers of the universe. Right? The known universe. The cool thing is that I don't know if this is going to make sense. In the realm of subjectivity, no one can explore for you. You have to do the exploration yourself. And if you are hungry to be in Mellin's shoes, if you're hungry to be an astronaut and explore something that no one has ever seen before, then you should meditate. And I'm a crazy person. Like sure, am I a am I a Harvard medical school trained psychiatrist? Yes. But like I could be a crazy person. I had some experiences. I maybe joined a cult and like that. Like you can't trust me. Exactly. So don't trust me. You go see for yourself, right? Go and meditate. Take take a moment to sit, not a moment, take a year, take a decade to sit and look at that subjective experience of self and see how far you can take it. Try to get rid of all of the anchors of the material realm. If you're got an itch, you need to not focus on that. Just focus your attention fully inward. It's not a process of evolution. It's a process of involution. Put all of your attention, all of your sensory input. So if I close my eyes, what I hear is louder, right? If I smell and close my eyes, I smell something more intensely. Remove all of your sensory perceptions, and all you're left with is attention and put it inward. If you do that, you'll discover things if you practice consistently enough. And this is why it's so hard. This is why it's so unbelievable for people. I mean, the order, the time scale that we're talking about is years, if not decades. So if you do like solid esoteric spiritual practice for years and decades, hopefully it'll happen to you. Maybe it won't. I haven't figured that out. What What about if I do some magic mushrooms or some kettle instead? Uh so then you'll get some experiences, right? But you won't control what those experiences are. What are those experiences? Are they real? Are they not real? Like we're not sure. Do you think more people should try, especially people that are suffering from treatment-resistant depression or other things or struggling in their lives, should try things like psilocybin, which is the active compound in magic mushrooms? Uh, generally speaking, no, and there's a really important reason for that. So all these things so the number of people who have been that I've seen in my office who have been messed up by psychedelics far outweighs the number of people who have been helped. Really? Yes. So LSD, you like we know this, right? There's bad trips with LSD. It lives in your spine. You have like LSD flashbacks. Uh I've seen PTSD from trips. I've seen uh new anxiety disorders, panic disorders from psychedelic uh substances induced. So these are people that'll come to me like, I'm 32 years old. I was fine for my whole life. Six months ago, I used psychedelics, and now like I'm having panic attacks. Here's the key thing to understand. Psychedelics, what we know scientifically, forget about all the whether the beings exist or not, whatever, Dr. K's crazy. What we know is that they induce neuroplasticity. Now, here's the problem. Neuroplasticity means my brain is in edit mode. Okay? Which means that if you edit it in the wrong way, you'll mess up your brain. So, what we know is that this is what's really interesting. If we look at the therapeutic effects of psychedelics, set and setting matter a lot. You need to have like people with you who can like shepherd you through the journey because if you just do it on your own, you'll potentially get worse. All of those negative whatever emotions or whatever with the psychedelic experience and neuroplasticity, you you'll sometimes get you know people will call it I forget it's called um the heroic dose, right? So there was some guy who kind of coined that term. So, a super high dose which will activate your nervous system in a potentially traumatic way. So, if you look at the history of psychedelics, the way that they've been used, you're you're helped by like a shaman. Yeah. Right. So, there's someone who knows how to like do it in a way that is positive. And unfortunately, what I've seen is I've had plenty of patients who will like experiment with it when they're feeling really bad because they hear it as healing, but it

Just messes them up even more because now they're just going in, they're editing, they have a traumatic experience; some demon is there, it's hounding them, they can't escape; they like wake up from the trip and that, like, the demon is like there when they close their eyes and like all kinds of weird stuff. So I think you, it has to be done in the right way, which the studies also support that psychedelic—it's not you just take psilocybin and you're healed.

What happens is you'll have a trial that has 13 weeks of therapy with two doses of psychedelics in the middle. And one really important part is after the psychedelic, the therapist will talk to you about integrating what you learned into your life. Now that you've had this experience of a vastness of self and you feel connected with other people, what are you going to do about this divorce that you're going through? So I think there's elements that make it clinically useful. There are elements that can heal, but you need shepherding. I think there's a lot of data to support that.

So you're pro-psychedelics, but in the context where it's guided with a trained professional and the setting is controlled. I, I, I would say that I am cautiously optimistic about psychedelics, and if we want to talk about their benefits, we need to pay attention to the way in which the trials are conducted and the traditions in which they're conducted.

I want to go back up to the top of the, uh, the top of the river here to where we were—we were before we took this, um, this turn—and we were talking about the importance of cultivating a why so that you can overcome an addictive behavior. And I actually think this is super important because our whys seem to run our life. They seem to really be actually what we refer to as discipline. I think it's—people think of like, "I am disciplined. I'm not disciplined." But actually, it's, for me in my life anyway, it's when I have a really, really strong why, then I make the decision—in hindsight I wanted to make. So like going to the gym is an easy example. Going to the gym requires time. It's not always super comfortable; I don't love the running machine. But there's this overarching why that gets me there and gets me to do it. So I wanted to pause and reflect: is that accurate? But also, how does one go about cultivating a why if it really is that important?

I think yes is the short answer. Why is incredibly important. Um, and I lean on Eastern systems of cultivation because if you look at the difference between a yogi and a therapist, a therapist does something to you. Our system of psychology is designed with like a patient that I therapize, right? They have to do some work on their own. But like Freud was doing the analysis in the same way that a surgeon is doing the surgery. So in the West, we have this idea that like, "I'm trained. I'm going to do something. I'm going to therapize you." So if you want to DIY it, do it yourself. That's where the Eastern traditions come in because no one was ever meditating for the Buddha, right? The Buddha was like, "I'm going to teach you something. You're going to do it yourself." So I think the cultivation of—if you want to do stuff on your own—the spiritual traditions—and I think that's why they're so powerful—because like it's a DIY system. No one was a yogi working by themselves; they weren't working with anybody else. So they get taught things, and then you do it yourself.

So I would use the word dharma. So dharma is the Sanskrit word for duty. And cultivating dharma in your life is what I would correlate with a why. And the reason is—is exactly kind of what you described—is that there are some things in life that are painful, but we choose to do them. And we have to be a little bit careful because if we're delaying gratification, then we're still giving into desire, right? It's just like—like my desire for $10 instead of $1 means that I'm going to work two days, and then I'm going to get 10 bucks. But it's still greed that's driving us. So the thing about dharma or duty is it allows us to choose hard things. So the analogy that I use: if someone is like pointing a gun at me, I'm going to run away from it. Gun means death; it means disability; means all kinds of stuff. Someone points a gun at my kid, I'm stepping into that path. No question, no doubt. And it makes sense to everybody, right? Gun bad. But when doing dharma, gun is easy. Like I'll take that gun every single—if a bullet leaves that gun, I want it to hit me. And it's that simple—that once you discover what your dharma is, then all of the difficult things in life become easy. The things that—if you're chasing fundamentally greed—"I want something. I want money, but I don't want to work"—why is that such a problem, right? Because I'm always chasing my own betterment. So I want money because I want this, but then when I start to work, it feels bad. So I want to go home. So I'm always being pulled by my wants, being pulled by my wants. But if you ask me, "Do I want the gun? Do I want to step into the path of the gun?" No, absolutely not. I want to run away from the gun. But dharma allows me to do the things that I don't want to do. It activates a different circuit that allows me to embrace difficulty. So that's what the why is. Now, go ahead.

You know what I'm going to say, which is like, "How do I cultivate dharma?" Excellent. The reason dharma is hard to cultivate is because we don't know what we want. Instead, we know what the world tells us to want. It's like if you think about the things that you want, how did you learn that you want those things? Because you saw somebody else doing it. Like an advert. I saw the waffle or the Oreos in an advert. And absolutely right. That's why advertising is an industry because we've figured out as human beings that I can control your wants. So when I work with like young men—used to be young women, it's slightly different, but this is a bigger issue for I think women maybe 10 years ago—somehow it's gotten better, but for young men right now, if I ask them what they want, they want what they see. Also true of women. It's balancing some. But like, I, I want to be—I want to be like—"I'm going to start a podcast. I'mma be like Steven. I'mma get ripped. I'mma buy a house. I'm gonna get a girlfriend. I want this. I want that. I want this." None of those voices are coming from you; they're not dharma.

So the first thing that you have to do is evacuate anything that you want that came from outside of you. Sometimes it's hard to tell where it came from. No, cuz it almost feels on the surface like—cuz when you just said then, "I want a house," I'm like, "[ __ ] do I actually want that house, or is the reason I want that house?" Yeah. So this is the problem: is that when we want something from the outside, we internalize it, right? So this is like—if you say you should do something, right? Oh, everyone in the world is struggling with what they should do—that's not what you want; otherwise you would use the word want. So "should" is externalized expectations that we then internalize—even a lot of our desires are of those kinds of qualities—so it didn't come from you; you weren't sitting there still on a mountaintop and be like, "Ah, I want that." And then the question: so first thing you have to do is if you like saw someone getting it and you wanted it, that's not really what you want. But what you will find is that that triggered something deeper within you. So that what you saw someone else—when I don't know if this kind of makes sense—but like the things that we gravitate towards connect to what we really want, but it's a version of it. So when I see like, you know, a sexy dude with a sexy girl and I say, "I want that," that's not—that's what I think I want. And this is the whole problem: is I've worked with tons of people who've gotten what they wanted, chased these things and were still unhappy. You get the first girl, and then you need the second, and then you need the third, and it's like, "What are you even chasing here?" That's where you get to the psychological root of like, "Okay, what I want is to feel loved. I want to feel secure." And this is where people get into a lot of trouble because if I want to feel loved and I craft myself into something that cannot be denied—I'm rich, I am famous, I am handsome—and then someone chooses to love me, then I'm [ __ ] because who do they love? Do they love this crafted version of me, or do they love the loser me? I don't know. And then their marriage has all kinds of problems. So the external desires that you have will—will—if you follow them within yourself, you really ask yourself, "What, what about this do I want? Why do I want this? What is the thing that is hungry within me?" Because often times even when you get the girl, you're resentful towards her. You're like, "You rejected me when I was a loser, but now you want to date. Okay, let's go. Let's have a transactional relationship where I'm going to get laid, and I'm going to ghost you."

I did that. Yeah, a lot. I did that. This girl—this girl I met when I was 18—when I was broke—I was a loser—and um, she was—she was not interested in me, and then a couple years later she's interested in me when things are going well in my life, and it was exactly what you described; it was like there was a part of me that knew that this was—I guess I was resentful towards it—absolutely right—and and so even getting what you wanted back then doesn't satisfy you. So your dharma is—what I would say is like that's one thing—so look at the things that you want; what do they track back to within you? And then the last thing that works really, really, really well is to be silent—to try to find as much quiet as you can—to remove all the external influences and just see what comes up because the whys always come from within. They can never—people can try and go—people—my parents tried to convince me to become a doctor, right? They tried so hard. They said, "Why?" And I was like, "Why?" And they're like, "Because this and this and this and this and this and so…" And people like—people are going to be telling them why they should do this. It's this reason, this reason, this reason, why I should get married. Why you should get married, right? And it's never going to work. So the why literally comes from within. And this is why it's so hard to find the why because we live in a world where we are sensorily bombarded. We are under assault 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In my case, it was like efficiency. So podcast when I'm walking to the train, read a book on the train, podcast when I'm leaving the train, sitting down in class, lectures in the ear when I'm working out—constantly sensorily bombarded. And so you never get to spend time with yourself, right? So once you get rid of all of that, something will float up. And if you talk to people who are artists and inspiration, right? You look at something else, and I feel inspired. I'm inspired by that. But even if you listen to the language, the inspiration arises in here. It is triggered by the outside thing. Does that kind of make sense? So you have to look—really look within. And the best way to do that is just be silent. So I, I talk a lot about my spiritual journey in India and things like that. But what I don't talk a lot about is like I climb mountains—like climbed Kilimanjaro, climbed all these mountains in like Colorado and stuff like that. And like climbing is great. Like you're just with yourself for 14 hours a day, and at the top of Kilimanjaro—not the top, eight hours from the top—you have no breath to talk. It requires all of your energy, all of your concentration. You're huffing and puffing. You are just with yourself in a very deep way. You can't pay attention to what anyone else is saying or doing because each leg—my leg feels like it's made of lead. I'm just with myself so, so, so deeply. And when you're with yourself deeply in that way, the why will come.

Why is it we don't like being with ourselves? Because no one taught us how to—in the right way. That study comes to mind where they put college kids in a room and asked them if they would rather sit alone or electrocute themselves. And the college students, many of them decided they'd rather electrocute themselves than sit alone with their thoughts and wait. Yeah. Why is that? For the same reason that people engage in self-injurious behavior. So people cut, right? Burn. So when people are very mentally unhealthy, they will engage in these behaviors because pain wipes me free from all the thoughts in my head. I don't have to be with myself. Most people—their experience of themselves is negative. Because if—like, you know, I experienced this a lot where I would play video games all day, and then if I went to bed without falling asleep immediately, this torrent of negativity would come up: anxiety, regret, guilt, shame, whatever, right? And—and so if you sort of think about it like, being with us is normally a very negative place, and the reason it becomes a negative place is because we suppress all this negativity. So my mind becomes an unhealthy place to be. I don't want to be there. It sucks being me. That's why we get addicted to pornography because in the in-between spaces of my life, if I have to sit with myself, it's [ __ ]; I'm worried. I'm guilty. I'm pathetic. There's this existential crisis. AI is going to take—take my job. And it's not just negativity; it's also positivity. I should be using AI. I should start an AI startup. I'm not doing this. I really should be doing this, right? But if you just like sit with yourself, you'll notice there's all kinds of like trash desires and wants and ambitions and—"want to teach people a lesson"—and, "Oh my god, the world is such a terrible place"—it's like just not a good place. So no one ever teaches us how to sit with ourselves.

I have this habit where I get in bed—my partner, she, uh, falls asleep very, very quickly. She doesn't need any kind of stimulation. And I sit there and I like listen to—this sounds crazy talk—but I listen to like serial killer stuff, or I listen to the news. I just need—I'm conscious of saying the word "need"—I choose to listen to things to kind of preoccupy my mind. And I think what I'm scared of—if I'm being honest—is the thought of going to the—to bed and laying there and doing nothing—is just like—it's just makes me feel that there would just—I wouldn't be able to sleep. I don't know if that's true, but I just feel like they—I'd start thinking so much, and then the thoughts might make me—I don't know—get out of bed and start writing a PowerPoint presentation or something.

Yeah. So, in your case, I just continue listening to your fun thriller podcast before you go to bed. You don't need to change that. Okay? You just keep doing that. So don't worry. I'm gonna give you—but be kind. Like, cut yourself a break, bro. You're doing so much. Like, if you just want to help you get what I'm saying, and I'll help you with the issue. Yeah. But so this is really important on the road of self-development. You don't have to—like if you're going to flagellate yourself, you don't have to flagellate yourself in the nuts. What does flagellate mean? It's like when you whip yourself, you know—this like old—like, you know, like I—you don't have to do it the hardest way. You are allowed to do it in safer, easier ways. And I think bedtime is like—if that's what you like to do—like you work plenty hard, Stephen. And if you want to listen to something, just do that. All right. Now, your issue of—if I feel like it was empty, or if I didn't have a podcast or something—like all this stuff would come up. So I think you should do that work; you just don't have to do it before bed. And we've talked about this before that, you know, like I think sitting on a beach is hard for you—doing nothing, right? Yeah. So like I think like there are other places where you can sit and kind of do nothing. The other thing that I would—a couple of things that I would tell you is one is whatever comes up needs to come up. Okay? So just let whatever is coming up come up. It's kind of like your mind is so full of stuff. There's another kind of mistake that you're making is that you assume that when a thought comes up, you will get up and work on it. So the reason that your mind is a dangerous place for you is because of the way that you respond to your thoughts. If I have this thought, then I have to act. You notice that? Like I have to get up. You said that the moment that you don't have to get up is the moment that you'll be free in your mind, right? So let—let it come up. Okay. It's a thought. It's okay to get up. Sometimes I do, too. I get up. I'll—I'll write things down. That's how we get to, you know, book three is ready at the same time that book two is ready. Like—like because I—you—there's a good part of that. But I, I think it's—it, you know, learning how to sit with yourself is very important. And this is also where I, I'd recommend a practice called trataka to you if you want to meditate. It's fixed-point gazing on a candle flame. And the key thing about that practice is when you close your eyes, you'll see—so you stare at a candle flame for like 60 to 300 seconds without blinking. Whatever feels safe and comfortable to you. It'll feel a little bit uncomfortable. And then when you close your eyes, you'll see an afterimage of the candle. And then you just concentrate on that. So the first step is like being able to do a meditative practice and like not feel bad. Like it's cool. Like I, I, I, I do this practice with my kids because it gives them a sensory experience that is like gripping. So it kind of concentrates your awareness in the present. But I think you don't need to worry so much about like the bedtime.

Yeah. Yeah, I was going to say I think it's more so that I think I've associated that behavior with some kind of avoidance. So I think—and especially cuz I look over at my partner, and she's like a yogi, so she's doing everything, um, differently. I was going to say, "Well, but again, that's passing judgment on that." She's just doing everything differently. She—she can fall asleep like this. She doesn't need to listen to some someone getting murdered or something. She—she wakes up. She does her meditation. And do I think that she has a more peaceful mind than me? I probably—I think she most certainly does.

Yeah. So here's what I would say. This is going to get hard. Okay. So it's avoidance. What's wrong with that? So here you are. You're saying, "Oh, like I'm avoiding my thoughts." And then you come to me and you're like, "Dr. K, teach me how to avoid avoiding my thoughts." [Laughter] It's the same thing. Yeah. Oh, now you're going to avoid the avoidance of your thoughts. No. Never going to work. You'll do it a million. You can go back as far as you want. You see what I'm saying? Now you're like, "Oh, teach me how to like not avoid. I want to avoid avoidance." Doesn't work. That's why I'm saying like with this—what I—you just do this. Just go to bed and just look at yourself today. Are you going to listen to a podcast or not? Just—just ask yourself that. I know it's like really unsatisfying, but that's really—so the problem is like there's this paradox of like—if I'm avoiding avoidance, that's just falling into the same pattern. So you need to like crack it. Like this is why the Zen tradition is really beautiful because they have all these paradoxes and…

What we create here is a diad. There is a component that you bring. I could not do this without you, right? Right.

So, like there's something that you and I meet, and then we make something that is unique. And I think you're really good at making it with a lot of people, and you and I are going to make our own kind of baby, you know, and so it's it's honestly it's a blast. Thank you.

[Music] [Music]