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The Bad Mom Podcast is where raw parenting stories meet real solutions for raising resilient kids in today’s anxious, digital world. Hosted by humanitarian and Just Like My Child Foundation founder, Vivian Glyck, each episode blends unfiltered conversations, expert insights, and lived experiences to help parents swap guilt for grit—and discover how imperfect parenting can still support and encourage strong, thriving humans.
Bad Mom - Joe Polish
Most people as parents hear that's what my child needs. They don't realize you need it too. Intimacy is a mutual exploration of a shared safe place and addictions are what we do to make ourselves feel good when we don't have a safe place.
Anything you put ahead of your recovery, you're going to lose. They say it's your fault, but the system is what's broken. Real talk for parents fighting for their kids in a world built to break them.
Where we're left trying to parent the anxious generation with our hands tied behind our backs. Your kid isn't broken, they're under attack. Welcome to the Bad Mom Podcast, Parenting the Anxious Generation with Vivian Glick.
This is The Resistance. What I really love to do on this Bad Mom Podcast and we can just get going is, I know that you have a wealth of information and knowledge and personal experience in substance use, addiction, recovery. This is something that I've had to learn an awful lot about over the last couple of years in my own family.
What I saw was that so much of it had to do with what came before that. What came before, I need to find something to make me feel better. What I'd love to do is talk to you a little bit about, when did you start noticing your struggle with anxiety or the issues that were facing you and started to experience that sort of draw towards substances, addiction, etc.
Learn a little bit about your story and how you would counsel yourself now. There are just situations we just don't know how to handle. In 12-step groups and in support groups, there's this line that often gets thrown around that says, God never gives you more than you can handle.
I've even seen that at signs that they put up on the wall. Actually, rehab centers, jails, prisons, mental institutions are filled with people that got more than they could handle. There are things where you just don't know how to handle it.
What do you do? I think one of your goals and motivation for your podcast and with putting these conversations out there is to help people navigate very complex, difficult situations, many where everything seems to be going well, and then like a smoldering flame, it blows up into a volcano. What the heck do you actually do? I'll probably say the quote, not exact, but it's from a book written in the 1990s called The Book of Survival by Anthony Greenback. He says, in order to get through an impossible situation, you don't need the reflexes of a Grand Prix driver, the mind of an Einstein, the muscles of a Hercules.
You simply need to know what to do. I tend to approach, even no matter who's listening or what difficult things, you don't need to be Superman or Superwoman. You just simply need to know what to do.
The question is, some things are not just a one word or a one sentence or a one paragraph or a one book answer. Some things are very complex and there's many layers to it, but that doesn't mean there's not a solution. It doesn't mean there's not an easier solution or a simple solution, but sometimes we just have to navigate it.
So I just want to preface with saying anything that we talk about today, it's like a 12-step group. Take what you like and leave the rest with the caveat that sometimes the advice or suggestions that are the hardest to take or hear are the ones you need to do the most. Yeah, and sometimes they're just the hardest to understand and not to go down a rabbit hole, but I will say that with everything that I was going through, because anytime there's addiction, the whole family's going through it.
And I had to really examine, you know, of course, this is where bad mom comes from, because what was I doing wrong? What was I doing wrong? What was I doing wrong? And it wasn't until I got to Al-Anon, you know, I thought Al-Anon was like some old-fashioned thing. I couldn't understand, like, what was in it for me. And until I got there and I really just absorbed the serenity prayer, what can I control? What can I control? What's the difference? It took me so, like, that is what to do, right? Stop trying to control things you can't control and control what you can, which is myself.
And I swear, Joe, I would, like, I would go to bed praying the serenity prayer just because I didn't understand, like, I couldn't wrap my brain around it, or I would get it and then it would disappear. So to your point about knowing what to do, sometimes the answer is right there, but it's really hard to implement because it's like, that looks so easy. Why couldn't I just do that? So, you know, but with that, I have so much reverence for 12-Step, and I just think it should be taught in kindergarten.
I don't know why it's not the operating system. It is the operating system for life, but somehow it got handed to the, you know, the addiction community. But I'd love to learn a little bit about your story, and then I'd love to just sort of round it out with, like, what are the top five things that you would recommend for a parent who is in a really difficult situation watching their kid? And we know that so much is going on with adolescent mental health, anxiety, depression, isolation, addiction, et cetera, and it sort of seems like an overwhelming thing.
But when it's your kid, you better find that solution. So I know you have a lot of knowledge. Yeah, and the knowledge I would have would just simply come because I've, you know, in my own life have navigated a lot of my own struggles, and now I have an addiction recovery foundation called Genius Recovery, and, you know, and it's just something I do because it actually helps me.
Like it's not because I'm some philanthropic angel or anything. You know, when you do – when you're in recovery and then you put yourself in a position to where you're helping other people, it actually – one of the biggest benefactors of that help, of helping others, is you help yourself. And so, you know, it's really hard for me to not go down a really path where my brain can ruminate on fantasy and drinking and drugs and sex and all of the other crazy things that – That's good.
Yeah, of course, of course. You know, addiction is a solution to pain. You know, I know – and I'm going to talk about this.
I'll maybe use addiction references, but even if it's not addiction, it could be depression. It could be loneliness. It could be social isolation.
It could be, you know, suicidal thoughts. It could be hopelessness. There's all kinds of betrayals and abuse, mental, physical, sexual, spiritual.
There's all kinds of ways that get people into a hurting state. And, you know, addiction, that Johann Harlein, the opposite of addiction, is connection. So connection is the antidote for a lot of this food, nutrition, community, biochemical trauma work, the environment.
I'll go into talking about what I mean by some of those things. You said for five things. I'll just tell you five things right now, and then I'll tell you about my story.
So one is that unlearning is more important than learning in recovery. If you are a parent or a employer or a brother or a sister or a mother or a father or a grandparent, and you have someone that is close to you and you're just trying to help them, you may have ideas of what to do and how to do it. And sometimes you don't even realize the problem is you, and that when you're trying to get help for your children, as an example, you also have to get help for you.
And you, of course, identify that with Al-Anon. You know, what Al-Anon was was a lot of addicts were getting alcoholics, let's say, because when it started it was alcoholism back in the 30s. And they were getting sober, and they were getting better.
And oftentimes the wives would have these alcoholic husbands that were embarrassing them in the community, and they would say, I would do anything to have the person get sober. And some of these people would quit drinking, which doesn't necessarily mean being sober. You can be a dry drunk, and we'll talk about that too.
And then all of a sudden the family members would unravel. And so they were addicted to the addict. There's always this co-addict.
So you got to help the helper. That's the whole point. And so Al-Anon, there's two great lines.
I think we've maybe discussed this before. My friend Anna David is the one that shared these with me originally. I co-authored the book The Miracle Morning for Addiction Recovery with her and Hal Elrod.
And she's been in recovery for many, many years, written many books on it. And so she knows 12 steps inside and out. But one of the lines I love from Al-Anon is, you know, say what you mean, but don't be mean.
And that which is hysterical is historical. So whenever someone's overreacting or freaking out or underreacting, you know, something crazy happens and they're like, oh, what, you know, that's equally weird. So when the reaction is not equal to what is going on, it usually has nothing to do with what's going on there.
It's this learned behavior. So we need to unlearn stuff, learn helplessness, all kinds of stuff. So that, and I will get to my story in a moment, but the first is unlearning is more important than learning.
That's why being around other people and really, really being aware and witnessing how you make decisions and letting go. You know, you're talking about the serenity prayer. You know, God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
And there's this funny book that said, the wisdom to know I can't do either. You know, there's this thing, there's an entire book written about just the serenity prayer. And the original prayer was not just the serenity prayer.
It was a much longer prayer, but they took those lines out. And there's like a long book written just breaking down the serenity prayer and the history of it, the meaning behind it. But it's the wisdom to know the difference is so freaking hard, especially if you're a helper.
Like at what stage do you let them hit a bottom? What is a bottom? Do you need to hit bottom? Do you need to let go? Do you support them? Are you an enabler? Are you driving yourself more crazy? Are you responsible for it? What are you responsible for? It's a very complex thing. So silent battles are the hardest battles to fight. So the first one is unlearning.
The second is you've got to have community, not just for the children, not just for the kids, but for yourself. Anyone in addiction is an example. I've never met a true addict that ever recovers in isolation.
You're as sick as your secrets. And if you don't have someone to talk to and to share with, it's very difficult to go down this road alone. So you want support.
So the first thing is it's community. Second, if we go to addiction, what's going on with the kids and even the caretakers, it's biochemical, serotonin, dopamine. We are a bundle of biochemistry.
And you'll probably have her on your podcast in the future. But my friend, Dr. Anna Lemke, who wrote the book Dopamine Nation. Mind-blowing book.
Incredible. Yeah, really breaks down. And Anna is a doctor at Stanford.
Absolutely brilliant. I used to think that all addiction was a response to trauma because I do believe addiction is a solution. It's a solution for something, pain, boredom.
If you're hungry, angry, lonely, tired, as they call it, the halt state, it feels good to have a drink or to look at the Internet or to gamble or to do gaming or look at porn or to act out however you're acting out or to consume the number one killers in America, sugar first, tobacco second, alcohol third, opiates fourth. All of those things make you feel better, satiated, buzzed, whatever at some level, but they can also really wreck your life. So addiction is a solution.
It's not a very good solution, but in the moment it does what the craving state, the craving brain, the craving body, and a lot of that is not intellectual. It's literally physical. So the biochemical aspects, that's where food and nutrition come in and a lot of things affect that from sleep and stuff.
I won't go deeply into it, but there's far smarter experts than me. They can break it down, and there's a lot of things that can be done with neuro-nutrient therapy and things like that. The third is the underlying trauma work.
So that is where EMDR, meditation, breathing, getting into a flow state, and I have to really emphasize the proper use of plant medicines and psychedelics because there's amazing things that I've seen happen, but you can also mess yourself up too, and there's way too many people running around calling themselves shaman and spiritual healers that really have no business doing and administering plant medicines on top of the fact that in the U.S. they're illegal. So depending on where you go and how you do these, that's very important. Yeah, it's a slippery slope.
I agree. Having people whom I love who are not using substances out of a lot of work, trying to not use substances and making commitments, it's a really difficult thing to just be like, okay, well, let's try this. Exactly, and I have a lot of friends, as do you, that go to Burning Man, get high in a camper, and call it a spiritual experience.
So there's that. But the underlying trauma work, like getting into a flow state and doing a lot of cold plunges, saunas, like a lot of things. The issues are in the tissues.
So somatic therapy, those things are very beneficial and helpful. And then the fourth would be the environment. And I always go back to the rat park studies for Dr. Bruce Alexander, who wrote The Globalization of Addiction, I believe it was called.
And I've spoken with him on the phone before. But, you know, you put a rat in a cage and give them just drugs and water, they'll drink that, they'll take the drugs over food, over sex, over sleep if they're very stressed out and they've got no other options. But if you create a more conducive environment, they are more apt to not take the drugs, even if you've administered to them and get them quote-unquote addicted.
But to break it down again, unlearning, community, biochemical, food, nutrition, trauma work, and the environment. And there's a lot of other things that I could probably put under those categories. We could look at genetics.
I'm always looking to learn things because I'll tell you, when I first got into this, I thought I was a hotshot and I thought I was smart and I thought I could understand it and I could say things that sounded smart and I realized dealing with my own addiction, it's like the people that are the hardest to get help and recover, and I would say this goes to kids and to parents, the ones that have the most difficult times are the really intelligent ones. The people that think they can intellectualize their way out of something that is really far deeper than intelligence. I've sat down with billionaires that cannot get out of their own way because they've had so much success in other areas in life that they think they can outmaneuver, outthink trauma.
And it's very hard. I mean, sometimes people that you would be like, boy, I don't know if this person is going to, you know, you may perceive someone not being all that bright and they just do what you tell them to do and all of a sudden their life starts working. And yeah, it's like, wow, you're actually just, you have a program now.
So you need a program. And when someone's like, I got the cure for addiction or I've got the solution, I'm like, well, there's these four things. So do they fit under there? And so here, but here's the kicker.
Most people as parents hear that's what my child needs. They don't realize you need it too. And oftentimes one of our clients in my entrepreneurial group, his name is Dr. Don Wood.
He's a trauma therapist and he has this great line. He says, if you understood the atmospheric conditions of somebody's life, it would make sense why they are the way that they are. And I've always held on to that because it's like, yeah, you know, if someone's doing whatever they're doing, even people doing the worst things in the world, killing other people, abusing other people, abusing themselves, what happened that led to that? What events happen? And so oftentimes the child can't easily impact the atmospheric conditions because there's other things happening.
But as an adult, you're in a position where you can be a lot more responsible. And even if you have no one there to save you, you got to figure out how to resource yourself and how to, you know, and addicts and criminals and people that just get away with stuff and even destroying your life as weird as it sounds, you have to be a pretty resourceful person in order to be a good drug addict. Because in order to live a double life, you have to lie, cheat and steal.
You have to be able to hide things and convince other people. So some of the best salespeople in the world are addicts or criminals. The question is, can you redirect that behavior in those capabilities into something that isn't destroying your life and making it a complete nightmare for other people? So I think that, I mean, to that point, I think that what ends up happening and it happens for, in my experience, the addict and the family is, and this is also what I want to talk about with the whole bad mom thing, is shame, right? Like you learn to hide and cheat and steal.
Then you've created a whole persona that is covering all of that. And I think that ends up feeding the addiction, right? Because if anyone ever knew who I really am, then I could never be accepted, right? And that's part of, I think it's like the fourth step or the fifth step, you know, making an assessment. Yeah, an inventory.
Well, here's what I would say. Let me respond back to that in my own story that you asked me earlier that it took me however long to get into here. So you asked, where did it start? I mean, four years old, probably earlier.
I was, so I have an older brother, four and a half years older than me. My father, he was in the Army. He was drafted, had a really tough life.
Nine siblings, grew up very poor, met, you know, hurt himself, injured himself when he was, you know, part of the Korean War, not in combat but in other things around that. He was constantly in pain. So he was just, you know, smoking, doing things to try to constantly deal with the pain in his knee.
He had multiple surgeries, had a wire in his leg. And, you know, back then, because he was born in 1928, so back then the medical advancements are much greater today than they were back then. But he was in a lot of pain.
But he met the love of his life, which was my mother, in church. She was a former nun. The story I was told, she left the convent because she had gotten ill.
But she was still very, you know, committed to Catholicism. And she wrote some of the very first books teaching children how to read using the phonetic method. So my mother's books taught millions of kids how to read.
So she was very smart, and she was very capable. But unfortunately, she died of ovarian cancer when I was four years old. So I have no remembrance of my mother's voice.
The only thing that I have is a very short, silent video of her and my father in picture. So my mother died. And I remember, you know, jumping on the bed when she was sick, and someone yanked me off the bed.
I'm pretty positive it was my father. And then I remember seeing her with tubes up her nose in the hospital, which could have been a week before, a couple of days before, the day, I don't know, of when she died. And then I remember when she did die, we were at the hospital.
You know, I'm four years old. My brother's eight. My father's out by a tree, crying, sobbing by a tree, and just completely lost.
And so he, you know, he did the best he knew. It's the atmospheric conditions, right? I mean, I was really angry at my father for many years because of just a lot of the, you know, physical getting beat with belts and stuff, you know. He wasn't putting cigarette burns out of my hand or anything like that.
There's some real severe abuse. And every day I hear something where I'm like, oh, my God, I can't believe somebody went through this. And so for me, you know, we moved every year, two years, my entire childhood.
I was incredibly shy. I had to constantly maneuver, you know, a very broken, traumatized person, which is, you know, basically my father and brother. My brother was older than me, so he had more memory of my mother than I did.
So in some ways maybe that was a good thing. But around the age of eight, I don't know exactly when because I blacked out so much in my childhood I started getting sexually abused. And eight to ten years old, I was molested.
I was raped as a kid. I was paid money not to say anything. Once that happened, an already shy, introverted, scared kid became completely terrified of the world.
And every day I would pray to not have bad things happen to me. It seemed like those prayers were never answered. And that was complex because here I was going to Catholic church for a good part of my childhood praying to a God that I never really knew but I was trying to believe in but I never felt was protecting me.
And it was awful. And, you know, I would get picked on. I tried to get into sports, but then I had a sadistic little league coach that would force me to hold the baseball bat in a certain way.
And I ended up quitting the team because I couldn't play the game. And I was the only one I was aware of that he was picking on. And I had not yet grown up to be the smart-ass sort of blunt person that I am today.
I was just like this shy kid. And that was awful. And then I came home one day, and the only dog I ever had, which was a black lab named Panther, my father had given away the dog one day.
Even though we lived in this crappy house on four acres, I took care of this dog. It was the closest thing. And for whatever reason, he felt it would be better to give the dog away.
And I could never get the dog back, and I remember seeing that dog in someone's backyard caged up with a bunch of other animals, and it was just heartbreaking. And so my childhood sucked. Not every aspect of it, of course, but there were many things.
So I started doing drugs early on, and that helped. That made me feel better. And I started that led into speed and then snorting cocaine and crystal meth.
And by the time I was 18 years old, you know, I was a full-blown drug addict. And I was, you know, the summer after my high school graduation. And the night of my high school graduation, I never walked.
I barely made the grade. But I watched over the fence of a friend's backyard, our high school graduation at Dobson High School in Mesa, Arizona, while I was freebasing cocaine, which is basically smoking it out of a glass pipe like crack. How was that? You know, exhilarating and horrible.
I mean, you know what's interesting? I learned from Anna Lemke on, like, rat studies and stuff. You get a 225% dopamine hit from cocaine, 200% from cold plunges, 150% from sex, 55%, I believe it is, from chocolate, and I think it's 1,000% from crystal meth. So you wonder, why do people do these drugs? Because they're dopamine hits.
Why do people, are they addicted to porn? What is the draw, right? So addiction lives in fantasy. Addiction lives in these feelings. But it was this awful.
And in my worst state, there was one week where I would, like, after my high school graduation, every single day for three months straight, I was snorting or freebasing cocaine. I was an absolute wreck. I weighed about 120 pounds on average.
But there was one week where I went an entire week with barely eating anything. I was, like, literally the whole week was just doing amphetamines, drinking, pot, cigarettes, alcohol, cocaine, LSD. I mean, there was one day where I was on all of them all at the same time.
I weighed 105 pounds. I weighed myself, and I weighed 105 pounds. And one of the worst days, I remember, I had gotten some change out of the, like, inside this piece of crap pickup truck I had where there's some loose change that fell in between.
And I went to McDonald's, which I would never recommend anyone eating. But back then, I went to McDonald's and got Chicken McNuggets. And I was, like, so excited because I had not eaten in, like, several days anything other than, like, potato chips and sodas and stuff.
And I took it home, and I was going to eat. And there was some other people that showed up because I was living in a house where everyone was doing drugs. When you're a drug addict, all of your relationships are other people that do drugs.
I mean, you deal drugs to support your habit. You hang out with other drug addicts and people that do drugs. And so I got there, and they had just scored some Coke.
And I remember, like, just putting the food to the side even though I was starving. And I did drugs for, like, six hours straight. And then I remember going back and having these sort of hardened, disgusting things and eating them.
And that was my freaking life. And, you know, there's a whole series of events. Someone made a movie about my life.
I won't go into the whole thing. Suffice it to say, by the grace of God, I somehow just managed to have something blow up so badly where a guy freaked out one day that we were living with. This was, like, a few months after that episode.
And he busted into the house with a can. I mean, literally, like, charging the house while I was watching TV with a friend, screaming. Like, I was, like, thinking the cops are showing up or something, and had a can of lighter fluid that he was spraying all over the place.
And I had long hair. I had this weird sort of, like, kind of mohawk and long hair in the back, like the weird-looking mullet sort of thing. I don't even know what you would call this hairstyle I had back then.
I think I've seen pictures of it. Yeah. Oh, yeah.
I was, like, bleach blonde. I dyed my hair. It was, like, I looked like a complete—so any parents out there, I will say this.
Like, if you would have seen me as a kid, like, I see some of these kids that parents come to me and say, my child has problems. I'm like, this kid is, like, a hundred times in a better place than I was when I was his age, you know? And so oftentimes someone creates these fatalistic beliefs that they're never going to get out of this. You know, and I understand.
It's your own child. Of course you care. You don't want to see anyone hurting, especially your own child, right? But I'll tell you.
So I'm at this place, and he's spraying lighter fluid, and then he holds up a lighter and lights it. He's like, I'm going to torch it. You know, he's cussing.
I'm going to torch this whole effing place. And I'm, like, got lighter fluid dripping off of my hair, and I'm, like, put the lighter—like, and I'm thinking, I'm going to freaking die. And after that, like, I was like, I got to get the hell out of this place, and I packed up whatever remaining crap I had.
I drove to basically Las Cruces, New Mexico, and lived in a trailer, because half my life I lived in trailer parks. But we did have a house when I went to high school, but mostly mobile homes and crappy houses growing up. And then I went and lived in a mobile home with my father while I spent six months just getting sober.
And I didn't go to treatment or rehab. I was taking Tylenol and Advil and aspirin every day just to deal with the massive headaches and the cravings. But eventually that subsided.
I ended up getting a job at a gym of all places selling memberships as a skinny kid. My friend Artie is the one who hired me, and to this day I'm still friends with her. And that was at Tom Young's Fitness Center, which was—I don't even know if they're in business anymore.
That was many years ago. And I went to New Mexico State University, but I really went there not to go to college. I went there to get sober from being a drug addict, and I ended up taking classes like criminal justice and psychology.
I never got a degree in anything, but I got sober. And when I was working out in the gym, I ended up meeting a guy that ran a mental hospital and offered me a job, and I went to work as a mental health tech. And I'll tell you, some of the patients in that place were more sane than the people that were running the hospital.
But I would drive the patients, the adult patients in the adult ward. There was an adolescent ward, an adult ward, and I would take them to AA meetings, Alcoholics Anonymous, NA meetings, Narcotics Anonymous, and CA meetings, Cocaine Anonymous, just as the driver. And I would sit in on some of these meetings, and I didn't realize how much impact that would later have in my life.
So I quit doing drugs, but I had never dealt with the underlying issue of abuse and trauma. So, you know, to make a long story short, Vivian, because, you know, my story is one of many stories, I just wanted to be instructional. I was, you can be, there's a book called Second Stage Recovery by Ernie Larson, and the first stage of recovery is getting sober, stopping the drugs, the drinking, the behavior.
That's what a lot of people think is sobriety. And recovery, but that's only first stage. Second stage is dealing with all the underlying issues which cause you to have these issues, you know, the reliance or use of drugs and alcohol in the first place, and that's what Ernie Larson would call second stage, and it usually has to do with relationships, especially with yourself.
So I had still many years of messing up my life to go, even though I became a millionaire before the age of 30, because I really became skilled at understanding marketing. I had this small carpet cleaning business. I turned that around.
I built the largest training organization in the world at the time for marketing for carpet and upholstery cleaners and people that do fire and flood restoration, but I was still actively in behavior addiction. I didn't even know it back then, but it was, I never dealt with the trauma, so it was sexual addiction. And I would pay for sex because it wired in my head that sex is shameful and dirty unless you pay for it because that was what was done to me when I was being molested as a kid.
A little, yeah. And so, yeah, so that's where I started. And so I did 12 steps.
I've spent over half a million on therapy, treatment centers. I've been in rehab centers. I've done week-long intensives.
I've done plant medicine journeys. I've done more therapy and seminars than most people. I've read countless books, but I never, you know, I never gave up, even though in my mind I gave up a thousand times, meaning I never gave up.
I didn't die. Even though I've had guns in my mouth from being suicidal and I've had suicidal ideation, you know, over the years many, many times, you know, and today I'm in the best place I've ever been in terms of peace, how I feel, you know, and I've had the longest stretch of sobriety that I've ever had. And it was easier for me with drugs and alcohol.
The sexual stuff was complicated because sex is kind of like, you know, it's like people that have addictions to food. You know, you have to eat. You have these desires.
What's healthy? What's unhealthy? And so there's different, you know, there's different ways to measure that, but it put me in a position to I've never talked about it because, you know, what I wanted to get to was shame. Fill with shame. I eventually started talking about drugs and alcohol, but I would never talk about the sexual stuff because how am I going to be viewed? How am I going to sound like a weirdo or how can people reject me? Because I've already spent my life rejecting myself, right? So in 2015 I got up on stage in a very high level event.
I had a couple of billionaires there, famous people. And I just said, you know what? I've done enough work. I've done enough disclosure with therapists and with 12 step groups.
I think I'm ready to talk about this because I always caution people, you know, don't do a Facebook confessional, you know, before you just go out and start sharing all the deep dark things you're, you know, cause the most guilt and shame, you know, do it within a support group, do it with a therapist, do it with someone that you know can be trusted as much as you can, because many people don't trust anybody, right? So you gotta be able to let go to a degree, but just, you know, be aware of that. And it's not always everyone's business, right? It's like, what's healing for you versus creating a whole, a whole dynamic and getting information out there that is just, it's not useful. So, I mean, I think you've done a really amazing job.
I mean, you have an incredible network. I mean, you're probably the most connected person I've ever met and super generous with that. And that's an unbelievable story.
I know I've heard your story many times, but it is, we all have a story and that is an incredible one and what you've overcome. And I think just your commitment to getting the word out that this is an issue. And, and, and I think that what kids are facing today, in terms of being set up for addiction, like you were talking about Anna Lemke, it just with a dopamine stimulation from such an early age is, is so extreme.
And so you take just kind of all the trauma that comes with life anyway, and then completely quadruple or, you know, exponentially increase the likelihood of reliance on external factors. And it sounds to me like in addition to those, you know, when it probably one of the most healing things that you did, and I I've seen this with my son also is to just really be in service and to, and to continue to, to offer, to make a difference. Nothing, nothing is more healing.
You've given us a lot of advice, but what would your top three pieces of advice for parents? Let's who are listening or moms, whoever caregivers who think that their kid is like going a little bit to the dark side. Cause that's kind of what I saw. Like, I'm just watching.
I'm like, this is looking pretty dark over here. I don't know what's going on. Like, what would you recommend? As you're trying to help your kids, you want to be able to help yourself.
And the most expensive information in the world is bad information. Even if it's free, if it sends you down a path. And this is definitely where you want to ask for directions.
You know, don't let your ego or your intelligence or your shame, because let's say the addiction cycle. So starts off with the preoccupation. You're thinking about it.
Then there's ritualization. You're living your kid. It could be anyone living in a certain way that you have a ritual around it.
You know, you drive to a certain place, you, you know, pick up your phone. If you're, you know, addicted to, you know, looking at your phone and looking at porn is an example. It goes through an addictive cycle.
Like all addictions, drinking drugs, smoking, gaming, gambling, et cetera. So there's a ritualization. Then there's the compulsive act, drinking drugs, the acting out behavior.
And then once you do that, you're in a state of experiencing guilt and shame. Guilt is, you know, I feel bad. Shame is I am bad.
And when you fundamentally look at yourself as bad, how do you treat something that you don't think is good? You don't take care of it, right? So if you're in a state of guilt and shame, you feel despair. And when you feel despair and guilt and shame and all the other emotions, the best way for some addicts that they think, it's not the best way, but the brain, the being, the craving state, the addict mind, whatever metaphor I can use, one way to get out of it is start the whole darn cycle all over again. Preoccupation.
So lots of my time is an example of spending rumination, fantasy, you know, just hoping, but it was, it was a delusion, right? So you live in a state of delusion. So get help. Don't, don't do it alone.
Resource yourself. If you, you know, it don't underreact, but don't overreact either. If you start flipping out, you're an energy vessel.
And if you are flipping out, flip out with support. Okay. Or flip, you know, cause it, that's okay.
Just don't flip out on your kids because if you start going out of control, it becomes a snowball. So one suggestion would be, don't think it's about your kid. It's usually a whole family affair.
I mean, I cannot tell you, like I have a, one person I recommend when an intervention is needed is, is Chris Doyle and Chris Doyle to him soon. Yeah, he's great. And I got a great interview with him and I'm glad you're interviewing him because he's, he's, he's one of my many resources.
Whenever like a family's going through stuff and they're like, what do I do? How do I do this? And they're reading books. They're using chat GPT. They're getting an AI therapist.
They're doing it. And look, there's lots to be said that for guidance, but ultimately, you know, someone that's been there done that do all of those, those things that are helpful, but get a real fricking human that knows how to, who has had experience with ticking time bombs. And sometimes the ticking time bomb is the, like, I've sat with children of parents are like, my kid is messed up.
My kid needs help. And you know, in those times where I'll sit and listen to the whole family, it's like, you know, I kind of understand how the kid got here. Like in the parents, they love the child, but they don't, they're not even aware of what their own behavior is doing.
So get help for yourself. That's the first. Second is one of my goals is I want to change the global conversation about how people view and treat addicts with compassion instead of judgment and find the best forms of treatment that have efficacy and share it with the world.
So as much as you can bring up compassionate loving approach, it's a connection disorder. Connection addiction is a connection disorder, depression. A lot of things are, it really is, is connection.
And so there's a level of intimacy that you want to build and develop within the trust and within yourself. My favorite definition of intimacy was given to me by a gay man in his eighties at the time, this was years ago, and he's still alive. He's in his nineties now.
And at the time he said, intimacy is a mutual exploration of a shared safe place. Abuse is anything that takes away the safe place and addictions are what we do to make ourselves feel good when we don't have a safe place. So if, if anyone, Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow.
That was incredible. Well, yeah. So I'll say, I'll say it again.
Intimacy is a mutual exploration of a shared safe place. So a shared safe place, abuse or, or, or perception, you know, anything they can, whatever you're exposed to, abuse is anything that takes away the safe place and addictions are what we do to make ourselves feel good when we don't have a safe place. Wow.
And, and if you don't feel safe in the world, you're going to look for a way to feel safe. Oftentimes that's drugs. It's inebriation, it's gaming, it's distraction, it's danger.
It's like, screw it. I got a case of the efforts and, uh, I don't give it, I don't give a crap anymore. I'm just going to do whatever.
So there I've met some of the like MMA fighters, strong bodybuilders, wealthy people that have such high status that do not feel safe in the world, even though they walk around with bodyguards. So in some of those people are addicts, it's, it's, it's an internal thing. So wherever, however you can create safety or at least the perception of it, because some people, they just cannot perceive it.
And then understand that you don't know everything and there's a lot to learn and there's a lot to do. So do the, do, do the program. So meaning listen to anything like this podcast, if it's helpful, read books, educate yourself, unlearn as much as you're learning.
I have a friend, Ned Hollowell, who's one of the top ADD, ADHD psychiatrists in the world. Many consider him the top one. And he has, years ago, he told me the three-step worry plan.
Don't worry alone, which is like if you're worried about something, find someone to worry with. That's where support groups come in or therapists or however, you know, however you're finding your help. Get the facts.
He's like, someone may have a pain in their side or a tumor. I don't want to go find out if I got cancer. He's like, well, if you, if you don't get the facts, you don't know how to deal with it.
So get the facts, figure out what's going on as best you can, and then have a plan. And having a plan, it all kind of ties into, into things, you know, sometimes it's just getting sleep. Look at how do you solve one problem that solves 10 others, you know? Yeah, like what's the one simple step.
And I think those basic lifestyle things, even for the parent who's struggling is get some sleep, get some exercise, get some sunlight. Yeah. The time where you think you're too busy to go to a meeting is when you have to go.
And here's the other thing too. Anything. I share this because it was shared with me.
Anything that I'm saying is because I gratefully, someone shared it with me or I read it or I learned it somewhere. I mean, this just didn't happen to me. I just learned stuff.
Is anything you put ahead of your recovery, you're going to lose. So if you are really serious about your recovery of your, if you have a family member, a friend, a child that is going through this, or in your own life, if you put your career ahead of it, you may lose your career. If you put money ahead of it, pursuit of money, you may lose all your money.
If you put, you know, your status ahead of it, you may lose your reputation. Or your relationship. Exactly.
If you, you know, anything that you put ahead of the recovery, you could lose. So in the beginning you have to be very diligent. And I'll say this too.
It's like, I don't have time to do all this stuff. I have a business to run. I have a family.
It's like, well, when you're the addict, as an example, it's me, you know, it's, and by the way, it's much easier to say this stuff than do this. You know, as, as we all know, it's easier to deal with someone's business problems or life problems and deal with your own. It's one of those things to where if you put 10% of the effort into the recovery as one did to the acting out, you got plenty of time.
You got, you know, the time is there. It's just how it's being allocated. And oftentimes you have to walk away.
You have to walk away from things that seem like I've spent my whole life. It usually doesn't have to get this drastic though. Oftentimes it's just building a community and doing the work and, and not trying to control it because that, that is a recipe for disaster.
And that's the hardest, you know, I love the line. Don't handicap your kids by making their lives too easy. Well, that is said usually before things blow up.
If you give them, if you never let the kid learn how to go through challenges, not purposely, don't throw them into unnecessary messes. The thing though is there are, if you keep coddling them and coddling them, you have enabled them. And that's the hardest thing because I, I talked to so many parents that they would die for their kids while they're doing things in ways that are not supporting anything.
And they need some from the outside to usually point that out. It's so hard to see. Well, I think, I think it's, we've had the great rethinking of parenting.
We want to be so much more conscious than we, than parents were, right? Than so many things that were so toxic and harmful to previous generations. We want to repair that, but now it's almost like become commoditized. Like if you're not like doing exactly what everybody else is doing, there's a whole bunch of competition about how you're a bad parent, right? We're always assessing ourselves.
And I think there has to be a great rethinking of that. This has just been so powerful, Joe. I'm, I'm, I'm blown away by how resourceful this has been.
And I think really useful for people. And I, so people can find out a little bit more. Well, first of all, you have this incredible, incredible community genius network, which is some of the most successful breakthrough out of the box entrepreneurs in the world coming together and you created this incredible community, which has probably really helped you with your own path and your own sobriety.
And then you've gone on to write a number of different books. What is the most recent book that you, that you have out now? Well, we have a crowdsourced one that we did with all of our members called winners find ways. But the one that is people is worth reading is a life gives to the giver, which people can get that for free.
If they want to download it at Joe's free book.com or, and my latest one is what's in it for them, which is a whole book on if you're a giver, how to better boundary yourself from takers. And the question is like, what's in it for them? Because how do you connect with other people? And the first chapter is all about pain because pain and you, you already know this Vivian. I mean, it, I hate that this is the case.
And I'm using the word hate to exaggerate a bit, but it's, it's, it's true. Suffering, suffering and pain is the greatest teacher as long as it doesn't kill you. And as long as it doesn't ruin your life.
But I'll tell you when you go through this sort of stuff, even though it sucks to be in the middle of it, if you navigate through it, what's on the other side is incredible. I would go to meetings in the beginning of my, you know, it took 20 years to understand this. Cause I, if I would have taken things more seriously and didn't get my, let my ego get in the way, I would have had a lot more quicker of recovery.
And, but for whatever reason, I needed to hold, hold onto it as people would say the gifts of recovery. And I'm like, what is a gift about this? I don't know any, this sucks. Like what is the gift about this? But you know, I never would have wrote the books, you know, I mean, one book is Understanding Addiction Recovery, which is a summary of some of my best interviews on addiction.
And people can download that for free at GeniusRecovery.org. And I don't pay myself anything from the foundation. It's not a money-making thing for me. We have a very small team, but you know, our goal is to hopefully save 20,000 lives a year, the a hundred thousand plus dying from opiate addiction.
So we've got a big crazy goal, but you know, educate yourself and read and cut all ties with dishonest, negative and lazy people. And let me say one thing too, because you started to keep rambling here. You made me think about it where I write about in What's In It For Them, that red flags, there was this point when you're, when you're numbed by addiction, or you think you can outwit something that you can outwit, there's red flags and you ignore them.
And every time we ignore our gut feelings, because you said your intuition, it's really true. You know, what does your intuition tell you? Like really learn to listen with that. If there's something that feels off, it's, it's for whatever, whatever frequency it is, that is a warning sign.
It is a, you're, it's your spidey senses that are trying to communicate with you and people will numb it with alcohol and drugs and food and all of the different ways that we inebriate ourselves on a societal level. I ignored red flags oftentimes, always get in trouble, but I didn't even notice yellow flags. I didn't notice them.
And until you develop your spidey senses, you see all these yellow flags. And if you see a pothole in the road, that pothole didn't just appear one day. It was constant.
So, you know, you gotta, you can't fix the world with broken hands and you, you have to look at these things and notice them. And I think that's your whole point about intuition. There's so much we have inside of us.
We just need to look at it and we need to listen and we need to navigate it and get help and know that, you know, it may suck right now and that's okay. You may feel terrible, but feelings are not often facts. You know, look, I just want to say, I think you're doing a great job by taking all the crazy stuff that you've gone through and now you want to, because that's who Vivian is.
You know, let me figure something out. Let me, you know, navigate this mountain and then I'm going to, you know, try to, you know, it's that Ram Daslan, you know, we're all just trying to walk each other home. And so.
Oh yeah. I mean, I think, I don't know, probably the people whom we all love the most in this world are those people who face an overwhelming issue, find a solution to it because it's personal. And then figure out how to make it accessible to other people.
And I feel a little bit crazy starting this whole thing. And I think that the best things I've ever done in my life are, you know, everyone thought I was crazy and it all turned out better than I could have possibly imagined. Right.
So yeah. Yeah. Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly in the beginning in order to learn how to do it with the caveat that if you're a pilot, you don't want to fly a plane poorly there.
You know, you built, you may fly the simulator poorly, but. Simulators for. Yeah.
But one thing I have to say to service work, helping others. If you're depressed, lonely, feeling like your life sucks, go out and find someone who needs help. And in many cases in worse shape than you, it will instantly give you a lift because contribution and giving begets resourcefulness.
And so we take our members to prisons to the women's prison every month before we, you know, like do volunteer work. And if you can bring kids to something so that they can be of service to other people that are in pain, oftentimes it really helps them get a perspective because I, I swear to God it's counterintuitive, but whenever we feel depleted, how could you give any more by giving in a certain way? You actually resource yourself. I like, I cannot emphasize that enough.
And sometimes you just can't even drag yourself out of bed. You just feel so hopeless and hope heals if it's applied in the right way, but false hope will make things worse. So you don't want to BS yourself with false health.
I mean, life is hard at times, not all the time. However, you know, just be of service, do the service where it contributes. In a lot of ways, that's why I think you're doing this too, because you know that if you've learned something, go teach it to someone else.
It's, it's a great way to accelerate stuff. One thing that I want to add on here also, and I think is that things take time, you know, like you're describing your recovery is, you know, over a 20 year process and you grew and you evolved and humans are built to survive. And so I think for parents who are facing really, really challenging odds, and I know a lot of them, it goes from my kids on the phone too much to, oh my gosh, this kid is, you know, breaking the law, stealing things, et cetera, like things you just never imagined and things do take time.
And one of the, one of probably the most priceless photos that I have that I shot a couple of days ago, my son's birthday. And I had my, I have my 93 year old mom here. So my son hadn't seen his mom, his grandmother in a couple of years.
And just that moment, like, just like hold the vision for the transformation that, you know, family can come back together, that you can, that there can be healing. And I think that's so much of what you're pursuing with Genius Recovery. So just really want to thank you.
You've had me almost in tears. You're the first one the entire hour, because it's so on the money, everything that you're talking about. And, you know, we all deserve to have satisfaction and happiness and connection.
Absolutely. And so whenever there's darkness, look for the light, be some sunshine for other people. And, you know, even though you're going through the path, going through the journey, use this as a way, even if you have no other voices right now to listen to, I hope that they found this inspiring and I wish everyone the very best.
And like they say, this too shall pass. And sometimes it gets worse before it gets better. But that's where, that's where the healing comes from.
And yeah. So, I mean, keep doing the work. All right.
Thank you, Joe Polish.