ADDICTION AND THE FLIPSIDE

Richard Martini

3 min read

Addiction and the Flipside.

We did not plan for this episode. But our moderator on the flipside, Luana Anders clearly did, and brought a number of people to chat about it.

She said she wanted to discuss the process of addiction.

Elvis came to give his two cents about it. About how wanting to escape from reality comes from the idea that one is unloved, or suffering. Points out that in his life, he didn’t realize that he was causing others to suffer — and yet he now regrets having done so.

Janis Joplin came through to talk about her addictions — and how trying to escape from reality “was an illusion.” She offers that “escaping from the illusion of reality” — meaning becoming aware that one is onstage during their lifetime, creating a reality, and that by trying to escape from the reality they created for themselves, they lose the connections to others.

Then Aretha came through to say “everyone has addiction in their family.” She pointed out some of the smaller ones, like being addicted to soft drinks, or other vices that people have — that’s another form of addiction. And how everyone has a family member that suffers from addiction, so can be more empathetic about it.

Then Junior Seau showed up to talk about how addiction affects the brain in a similar manner to CTE (which he took his own life over). How the “hits to the head” cause the CTE, but the addiction is like taking “hits to the head.” Then he made the statement that the same therapy that cured Joe Namath from his CTE (which he’d come through to tell us before and is in the film TALKING TO PAUL ALLEN, JUNIOR SEAU AND DAVE DUERSON on Youtube for free) — he said that “oxygen therapy for the brain will help with the treatment of addiction.”

That may be a known fact — I don’t know. But it certainly bears looking into. I just hope people remember where they heard it — from Junior Seau on the Flipside.

Finally Anthony Bourdain came through and talked about how his use of heroin as a youngster had robbed him of the ability to experience joy, which contributed to his leaving the planet early. He expresses remorse for that — as noted he’s come through often on our podcast, and is always hilarious- but in this case, he reiterates how meditation can help people to survive being on the planet, but emphatically argues that “rehab” and “detox” are blips on a person’s time line. That they should have no fear of doing so, that they should say “fuck it, I’m going to do this” as well as to love oneself enough to care to fix the problem.

That was his “mic drop moment” which ends the podcast.

Again — no planning was done between Jennifer and I, the comments are so out there, so profound, so beyond any scope of theory or belief that either I or Jennifer could invent, and anyone who is a therapist, or interested in the subject of addiction should take a lesson.

Finally, I asked Anthony to ask someone in our class a question, and the one he asked them is “what’s the one thing that would have stopped you from being caught up in addiction?” and they all answered with the same word.

“Love.”

Mind bending to hear, mind bending to report.

Jennifer can be found at JenniferShaffer.com, the podcast is HACKING THE AFTERLIFE on itunes, the forum is HACKING THE AFTERLIFE on Quora, the website is HackingtheAfterlife.com and the film is on Amazon HACKING THE AFTERLIFE.

It’s an hour long podcast today, but is worth listening to by anyone.