EP312 - Digital & Mental Health - Reacting to & Protecting from Addiction with Dr. Karl Benzio

I think one of the big things is to understand that like I said in the beginning is we're all addicted to comfort. You know, we all have everybody has an idol of the heart, something that they go to instead of God.

And if you know, for the listeners to just think about you know, whenever adversity strikes or they don't get their agenda, what do they go to first?

Welcome to the Church Digital Podcast. Through this podcast, we'll talk about the technological innovations within the church. But more than tech for tech itself, we'll address deeper questions. Is making possible digitally? How should we approach the digital mission field? Can a biblically grounded church operate in digital space? Oh, and where does the metaverse and artificial intelligence fit into all of this?

Whether you're a big or small church, the Church Digital's goal is to help churches like yours learn to be a multiplying church digitally and physically.

And now here's your host, Jeff Reed.

All right. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Church Digital Podcast. We are live once again. Broadcasting this right now on Twitch.

Jeff Reed here, founder of the Church Digital. Doing episode 312, 312. Um on addictions. Now, remember, we're in this season of um digital mental health uh really created by co-host here, Megan Carter.

Megan, you know, you did a great job putting the season together. Uh as as we're coming into to 312 talking about addictions, any any thoughts as you're walking in?

Uh man, I don't know. I've loved this season. I've loved being able to walk through so many different avenues of mental health and there's like so many we didn't even hit on.

We could go into so much like more detail of different things and even just the episodes we went through already with every guest. It was incredible.

So, I'm really excited about this one today too cuz I think we've a lot of people have people in their life or there's something they've struggled with.

So, this is a really um topic big topic that we we need to talk about and it deals with in people that you're in the physical with or just even just online.

We have that in both spaces. So, I'm really excited about this conversation.

Yeah, as as we've gone deeper into this season, uh we've definitely gone um higher up the uh I don't I don't want to say pay grade, but higher up the the the the mental health scale of intelligence uh here at the conversation. You know, we opened up with uh uh some some more digital ministry type people that that are are are struggling with or have adapted and and are working through some some mental health issues, but uh you know, here with with today, we're we're bringing in a a an expert, somebody who uh is is certified, who has, you know, done the work and is actually uh you know, a doctor in this space. Uh and so, I want to introduce uh Dr. Carl, Dr. Carl. Dr. Carl Benzio uh with the American Association of Christian Counselors. Doctor, hey, thanks for joining the the stream here and and being part of this uh season with us.

Hey, thanks, guys. Looking forward to this and uh just an honor and feel blessed to serve you guys in this way.

Yeah, so uh Dr. Carl, we did some work with with uh ACC and Dr. Carl back uh with some blue stuff and really just have have loved the conversation.

We wanted to do a a conversation uh centered on neurodivergence uh sometime last year and it kind of just fell off the radar and a lot of my gaming friends like that's a that's a a really big thing.

Uh and so, we'll come back to that conversation at some point, but as we're as we're looking at this season, um really the idea of addictions uh kind of came up in the conversation.

You know, not only like ministering to and and dealing with people that are uh in uh that are dealing with addictions, but also, you know, in many ways, the areas that we're doing ministry are in and themselves addictive areas.

Like getting addicted to mobile devices or getting addicted to virtual reality or you know, it's funny, I had a CEO as as right when I was writing the book for my for the virtual reality uh chin church church in virtual reality book.

A CEO of a Christian tech company says to me, "Hey, Jeff, what's the church going to do when virtual reality actually becomes a better reality than the physical reality that we're in and more people get addicted to that?" They don't And I was like, "That's a great question." And so, I almost want to like see what Dr. Carl's response is to something like that. But I'm I'm really looking forward to this conversation here. And uh I know that um that Megan's put a lot of work into the ideas centered around even just uh addiction and mental health and digital.

And so, hey, Megan, why don't you kick us off here uh in in the conversation?

Yeah, I I think we should just start with like let's give a definition of what addiction is and then kind of just go into like you mentioned a little bit, Jeff, is that it's a lot of times we think of maybe substance or different things like that, but there's other things that can you can get addicted to. So, maybe go into what it is and then what are some things maybe we don't think of that we can become addicted to.

Yeah, so um addiction uh we you know, the CDC lists the leading causes of death in the United States and cardiovascular and cancer and then accidents are usually the top three.

But if you really parse into the numbers, abortion is number one and addiction is real close with abortion. Cardiovascular is about 700,000, but addiction kills anywhere from 850,000 to 1 million people a year in the United States.

So, we're talking about something that's really significant here, not just, "Okay, well, we have a couple people that have an alcohol problem or smoking or whatever." This is one of the leading causes of death in the United States, addiction.

So, a definition sort of a layman's term uh definition for addiction is when a person has trouble stopping a substance or a behavior even though they have repeated disruptive consequences.

So, they have trouble stopping a substance or a behavior even though there's repeated disruptive consequences. And then our scientific psychiatric realm, we have this book called the DSM-5 and the DSM-5 lists these 11 criteria that a person needs to meet a certain set of them.

Uh using more than usual, um unsuccessful efforts to cut down, it's disruptive in their life, interferes with work, school, or relationships. There can be tolerance where you need more to get the same high.

Uh there you can have withdrawal symptoms from some, not just substances, but um things like uh what we talk about screen addictions. You know, you can have a withdrawal from even screen addictions or pornography.

So, we can get into that a little bit later. Um So, that's sort of some of the definition of it. You know, to me, a biblical definition is when we pursue something other than God.

We pursue something other than God in a repetitive, habitual, or patterned way to get our needs met. You know, so God gives us He knows we're going to be addicts.

We're designed to worship Him. He knows we're going to be addicts. So, He gives us these two commandments, the first two commandments, "Thou shalt have no other god before me." And when a person gets addicted to something, that that thing, that object, that addiction object becomes the god in their life.

It becomes something that everything else in their life revolves around. That addiction object sort of forms the orbits of everything else in their life.

And He says, "Don't fashion anything, you know, in the skies above, on the earth here, or even below the earth to worship." You know, because He knows that that's going to be what we're um uh sort of called to or or sort of pulled to in our flesh, you know, to worship something other than Him. And so, that's what that addiction process is. So, pursuing something other than God in a repetitive, habitual, or patterned way to get our needs met.

I believe looking at, you know, I've treated patients for 35 years and in my own life that we're all addicts. We're all addicted to comfort.

So, if you see the things that we do in our life, we're all pursuing comfort, whether we have a job so we can have a roof over our head and so I'm comfortable as a dad because my kids have shoes and have food and uh those kind of things.

We just don't like discomfort. We're great at telling other people, "Hey, no pain, no gain. Keep on pushing." But when we have pain in our lives, we don't like it at all.

It's amazing what we look to to relieve that discomfort or relieve that uh pain in our lives. So, oftentimes, addiction sort of sneak up on people and you know, I think it's real important to understand the six stages of addiction.

So, there's six stages to addiction and a person usually doesn't go through each one linearly like, "Okay, I'm going to spend time at this time at this time at this." and go through.

But for the most part, they do go through these six stages if they're really in the throes of addiction. The first one is experimental.

When you know, there's no agenda, they just sort of, you know, use a substance, "Oh, I've heard about this thing and I just want to try it out." Some people stop at that.

Some people continue on to recreational where it's usually in a social setting. They're with a bunch of buds. Somebody has something and okay, I'll try it out.

Whether it's a substance, whether it's, you know, pornography, whether it's a a video game or whatever. Then the third stage, this is the critical stage.

This is circumstantial use. So, circumstantial use it means whenever a person uses that particular addiction object, we're going to talk about chemicals right now, substances, alcohol, caffeine, uh heroin, painkillers, stimulants, whatever.

They get some benefit from that chemical. So, whether they're studying for a test and they need to stay up longer, so they use some at you know, their buddy's Adderall, uh their roommate's, you know, Ritalin, um they use a little cocaine.

They're nervous about going to a party and talking to girls, so they'll drink some alcohol. Um a lot of stress at home, so they need a drink or they need to smoke some uh smoke some weed.

So, circumstantial use is that very dangerous um stage because a person is tricked into thinking that, "Wow, this addiction object actually has some benefit for me.

It sort of gets me out of something. It fixes a problem that I'm struggling with. So whenever we get tricked into thinking, "Oh, instead of being harmful, this thing is actually beneficial for me." Then we start to use it more.

We start to apply it to a whole bunch of other different issues and struggles that we have. We call that regular use, stage four.

Then we start to usually get some consequences. Sometimes people back off when those consequences start adding up. Some time people don't, and then we they go into that intensified use where legal, financial, relationship, uh sometimes physical issues start to occur.

Then the sixth stage is compulsive where that person just has a hard time stopping on their own. They've tried to stop. It just becomes such a sort of innate part of who they are, um that they are a compulsive user, and they really need some outside intervention, whether a treatment center, um a significant intervention. They need to be physically separated from the object that they're addicted to to be able to get some relief. So those are the six stages.

Again, that circumstantial stage when Satan tricks us into thinking, "Well, that whatever that addiction object is, it's beneficial for me. It makes my life easier.

It solves a problem for me." That's the dangerous step cuz then we start to think, "Oh, really, it's not that bad. I can use it in a whole lot of different ways, and my life is going to be better." When in reality, it leads to destruction.

Nothing really better comes from it. It's tough to kick these addiction objects because there's an underlying psycho-spiritual problem that we're dealing with.

So for a long time, well, we thought addiction was the primary problem. So we looked to most of the treatment facilities out there that treat addictions, and they don't treat the underlying problem. They look at addiction as the primary issue. And so they try to behaviorally help the person stay away from using that addiction object. So I started Honey Lake Clinic, a treatment center, because in all my years of treating people, I always saw that there was an underlying issue, that circumstantial space, or something underneath that they're trying to self-medicate, trying to escape from, trying to distract from, trying to heal from. And so their addiction object is their attempt to get at that underlying issue.

So it's tough to kick because usually people don't have an awareness of the underlying issue, whether it's something that happened thirty years ago, something that happened five years ago, something that happened twenty minutes ago. There's hurts and losses and struggles that pile up along the way. And because we don't ever—I don't say don't ever. Because it's difficult for us to have a lot of good awareness about what's going on inside and how those ripples sort of play out into this addiction process.

That's why it's really hard for a lot of people to stop their addiction because you're trying to do these behavioral things and not really get at the psychological and the spiritual aspects that are underneath.

Addiction objects feed the flesh. So we get tricked into again that circumstantial feeling good, and we get a dopamine release in that reward pathway that makes us feel good and gives us a euphoria. So that flesh feels good. So I say, "Oh, wow, this thing must be good for me." And the other thing that happens is when we turn to this addiction object in a repetitive, frequent way, those other skills that we should be growing, that we should be getting better at, that we should be using psychologically, relationally, emotionally, spiritually, we're not using those skills anymore. We're not growing those skills. So those skills are starting to atrophy or wither away, and now they're not available for us.

So now the only thing that we have is that addiction object. So we just keep on going to that because our other skills are, you know, locked deep down inside where they've even atrophied and withered away. So we don't even think that we have those skills anymore. And so that's why it's hard for people. Once they get into that regular or intensified use, it's just really hard for them to dig out because, you know, some people say that you're the emotional age that you first started using. So if you started using at age fifteen or sixteen, and now you're thirty-five, your emotional age is still sixteen. That's not necessarily fully accurate, but the idea is you haven't developed those skills from sixteen to twenty-five or thirty-five that other people have developed to try to dig out of the psycho-spiritual struggle that you're in.

That's interesting. I had never taken that into consideration with addiction, that there's a part of you because you're adapting with the addiction, there's a part of you that's atrophying or that's weakening because you're not dealing with it at the emotional level.

Yeah, so if you think of a person wearing a cast, their leg is broken, they're wearing a cast. Well, the cast is somewhat helpful. It gets them through a particular issue, but if the cast is on too long, if they're using it too frequently, now all those muscles underneath atrophy. So when they take the cast off, they can't walk. They need physical therapy now to rebuild back up. And so psychologically and emotionally and spiritually, that's the same thing that happens. Those things atrophy, and that's what people don't have a realization or an understanding of.

What do we look for to understand at an interpersonal level what's atrophying or not? Like if there's someone here that's listening to this that's struggling with an addiction, what are the symptoms or what are the tell signs or how do you work through that at what's atrophying?

Yeah, so those things that we call emotional intelligence. So people being aware of their emotions that are going on inside, being able to understand those emotions, you know, these uncomfortable feelings that we have, anger, sadness. You know, we don't like them, but that's the warning system that God has given us to let us know that something's not going right or there's potential danger. It's like the red light on the dashboard. We're never thrilled when our red light on our dashboard lights up. But that is really good that that happens because that lets us know, "Hey, there's a problem that we need to pay attention to."

So whenever people have trouble identifying, talking about, processing those emotions, that's a big problem. When people are impulsive, they don't think through their decisions. They become sort of rash, sort of crude decision-makers. Whenever they become isolated, they because of shame, because of guilt, you know, the opposite of addiction is belonging. And so when a person is starting to get addicted to something, it starts to take up their space, their relational space. They develop a relationship with that addiction object, and now they're sort of pushing out the other people. Partly because they don't have space for those other people. Partly because some of their psychological and emotional skills are starting to atrophy, so they're not a really good person in relationships. They don't hold up their end of the relationship bargain a lot of times.

But then also those people are telling them, "Hey, what you're doing isn't good for you. That's unhealthy. You're making a mistake." And the addict doesn't want to hear that message, so they're pulling away from those people. So their island is drifting farther and farther away from the mainland.

So that sort of isolation that occurs. Sometimes there's a lot of blame. They blame their boss. They blame their wife. They blame their kids. They blame, "I don't have enough money or I can't get to treatment or whatever." There's always looking sort of at an external focus of why they're struggling and not really looking internally of what psychologically and spiritually is going on inside me that's the cause of my poor decision-making and my sort of immature behavior and conduct.

So those are some signs that you know, temperamental, temper tantrums, being impulsive, not making sense sometimes. Sometimes you'll see things that don't line up because now they're starting to lie. They're starting to have lame excuses. Well, you told me two years ago you were out because your grandmother died, but now your grandmother died again, you know. So just things just aren't lining up. You see these inconsistencies in their life and their stories.

Yeah, and I think that there is such a huge stigma attached to addiction. And our church works a lot with recovery homes and transitional homes and those kinds of things. And we have a pretty large population that have been through addiction or different things like that. And that's really changed my view, getting and meeting with the people and talking with them and hearing their experience. So that's helped me so much.

But what is something that we could do to help change, to get rid of that stigma? Because obviously not everybody falls under one category. They don't all like all. They're not all going to let you down. They're not all going to do this. There are some that are really trying to work hard and a lot is fighting against them. So what are some things that maybe we can do to help with that?

I think one of the big things is to understand that, like I said in the beginning, is we're all addicted to comfort. You know, we all have. Everybody has an idol of the heart, something that they go to instead of God. And if, you know, for the listeners to just think about, you know, whenever adversity strikes or they don't get their agenda, what do they go to first? It could be a substance. It could be a thought pattern. It could be an emotion. Very rarely do we go to God and say, "Boy, God, you know, my agenda just didn't happen. What are you trying to teach me? What's your plan? What's your goal right now?"

You know, I remember one time whenever I was on a missions trip, and we were in Kenya, and you know, we had all this great PowerPoint set up, and we had worked through our talks, but there was no electricity. And so we're trying to figure out all these ways to sort of pull together electricity in this little shack and stuff, and we're trying generators and this and that. And you know, one of our hosts comes back and says, "Hey, did we pray?" And like, "Oh, yeah. Boy, I guess we could have prayed about that problem first."

But, you know, whether it's productivity, whether it's our own skills, whether it's our education, whether it's our IQ, whether it's our ability to make people laugh, people-pleasing, work, exercise. There's a bunch of different process addictions, screens, social media that we have to soothe ourselves. So there's a whole bunch of things that happen. Donuts, ice cream, you know, you look at our church population and we have a lot of obesity. You know, a lot of people are addicted to food that, um, they won't say anything, but they'll have a judgmental attitude about the person that comes in with tattoos that might have just gotten out of rehab or just got out of detox and wow, that person has a problem, but yet all their health is off the chart because of their obesity and their difficulty managing decisions around food.

So I think just being able to have the idea that hey, we all struggle. We all have, you know, Jesus had perfect brain chemistry. All the rest of us don't. You know, we all have psychological struggles and we all have an addiction. We're all addicted to comfort and each one of us has several different process addictions, whether it's power, whether it's control, people-pleasing, victim mentality, anger. You know, we all have something that we go to in a repetitive, habitual, patterned way to get our needs met instead of going to God.

And I think when we sort of put everybody on an even playing field, that helps a person have a little bit more compassion and empathy for somebody who has a struggle in an area that I don't. You know, so I might not have a struggle with heroin, but I had a significant struggle with alcohol. I mean, I ended up in jail for six counts of aggravated assault, you know, a convicted felon whenever I was back in my twenties because of my alcohol use, anxiety and anger and a whole bunch of fights and just the attitude that I had.

But there were other things that I didn't struggle with that, you know, gambling. I never struggled with gambling. I could easily look at a gambling addict and say, "Wow, how can you do that? That's so stupid. Why would you be wasting your money on that?" And he's looking at me saying, "Well, you're an alcoholic."

You know, you got you were in jail for aggravated assault. Like, why would you do anything like that? I mean, gambling, I don't hurt anybody gambling, whereas you were beating up on people and getting beat up. You know, so I think for us to all understand that hey, we all have addictions.

I think that levels the playing field. I think to look at the idea that we need to look at spirit, mind, and body. That the addiction isn't the primary thing. There's a lot of hurt underneath. Everybody has a, you know, the one thing I love about my job as a psychiatrist is I get to ask people very personal questions.

I say, "Hey, tell me about your story. Tell me about your life." And it's just amazing to hear the different things that, you know, a person will relate to you that helps you understand, you know, how they got to this point now.

And there's, you know, ups and celebrations and highs and there's downs and hurts and losses and, you know, pain and sorrow. And I think if we took time to listen to each other, hear each other's stories to see what it is to walk in that person's life, to wear that person's shoes, you know, and go through their last month or the last week or those kind of things, it would give us a lot more empathy, a lot more compassion, a lot more appreciation of that person and their story and how to sort of protect it, honor it, dignify it, respect it.

Just like the Good Samaritan, he didn't really ask the guy, you know, questions. He said, "Wow, this person needs help and I'm going to jump in. You know, maybe he did a stupid thing, maybe he was an alcoholic and he got trashed and he's on the wrong road or whatever." He didn't do any of that. He just went, "This person needs help. How do I jump in and help this person?"

I think, you know, if we had that kind of attitude, just assuming that a person, you know, is struggling and they need our help. God wants us to, you know, there's the story of Lazarus. Lazarus is dying. You know, they send out messengers to Jesus to say, "Hey, your buddy's, you know, he might die. We need your help." He's like, "Well, I got stuff to do. I can't make it." Jesus gets back late. Lazarus is dead for four days.

You know, Jesus is sad that I think the people just don't get it of who he really is. He says, "Roll back the stone." They roll back the stone. He says, "Lazarus, rise and come forth." Lazarus rises and comes forth. The next thing Jesus says to the people next to Lazarus is, "Hey, unbind him." Because Lazarus had these death wrappings around his face, around his body. They interfered with his perspective, his vision, interfered with his movement, his walk, his freedom.

He didn't say, "Hey, Lazarus, unbind yourself." He told the people next to him, "Hey, unbind him." And we all have death wrappings. We all have psychological, I call it psychological baggage, right? Is what we call it. But we all have those death wrappings that, you know, none of us got a brain transplant. We become saved or sins later is washed clean, but our memory banks aren't washed clean. So we got all that stuff that we've come into this Christian walk with and we need help with those death wrappings, you know, unbinding.

And I think we need to look at all of us that we all have death wrappings and we all need help unbinding and that's why we need to come alongside and God has put us in. He's built us for relationship and he's put us in these different sized communities so that we can help unbind each other and help get unbound by others. So we all need help unbinding ourselves and we all need to give some help to others in their unbinding process.

Yeah, I'm going to flip it on you just a little bit because you said in your daily life you ask people their stories. I want to ask your story just a little bit, but really like what was that turning point for you? Like, what was that moment that you started to see a shift and a change?

Yeah, so I grew up and ever since I was five years old, I've always wanted to help people with decision making, that God laid that on my heart at a very young age. But as a young kid at four, I started school, started kindergarten. I was a pretty good reader, so I went to a third grade class to read as a kindergartner. But I had a terrible stutter. A really difficult time stuttering. And so people would make fun of me, they'd call me names, they'd hit me on the back of the head to get the words out.

And so as a stutterer, you're in your head a lot because you're trying to figure out, well, what words can I start a sentence with so I don't stammer. Once I got on a roll, I could speak pretty decently, but it was just getting those first words out. So you're in your head a lot.

We moved around a lot when I was a kid and so, you know, you move into a place and you're trying to get into that inner circle, but then you move and you lose those friendships and then you move into another one and leave, move into another one. So at a point you start, well, why do I even make friends? I'm just going to leave them. So I became more isolated, withdrawn, had some anxiety, had some depression.

I was really good in sports, so I did things on a national level like age twelve, thirteen, national TV and stuff. So I was able to get into some of that circle of my male peers, but I wasn't able to get into that inner circle and that really ate at me that process. And so to try to fit in, to try to, you know, be liked, to be admired and accepted by my peer group, I got into a lot of inappropriate behaviors and alcohol being one of them and ended up drinking more and more and more, ended up losing an Air Force ROTC scholarship at Duke, ended up losing a baseball scholarship. I played baseball in college. I got caught cheating on an engineering exam in college and got put on academic probation and almost kicked out of school, almost flunked out of school.

I'm a really good test taker, so I did well on the MCAT to get into medical school, but I didn't get into any school. My home school in New Jersey, I got put on the waiting list. And a couple days before the semester started, I get this call and the registrar's office called and she goes, "Carl, it's a miracle." I'm like, "What do you mean it's a miracle?" She goes, "Well, we've never gotten this low on the waiting list before, but we've got to your number. Do you still want to come?" I was like, "Yeah, I want to come." "Well, can you afford it?" I was like, "Well, just hook me up with your student loan office and I'll get the money."

So I go into medical school and in my head I'm thinking, "Wow, all those things I'm doing got me to where I want to go, so I can just continue doing them." So I continued drinking, anger, fights, inappropriate behaviors in other areas too and ended up getting arrested for six counts of aggravated assault and felony charges in jail. And it was at that time in jail, this is the big turning point that Jesus said to me, "Carl, you made me your savior when you were a little kid, but you never made me the lord of your life."

And I did. I answered, you know, altar calls. You know, I don't know, "Who wants to burn in hell forever, right?" When you're raised in the church. But you never made me the lord of your life. He says, "If you make me the lord of your life, I'm going to teach you things about decision making," which is what I was studying. I was always enamored with decision making. "I'm going to teach you things about decision making that are going to allow you to renew your mind, transform your life, and help you transform other people's lives as well."

And when I heard lord, I heard authority. When I heard authority, I heard author. And when I heard author, I realized that I had always thought I was the most qualified person to write the book, "How Does Carl Get the Most Out of Life Instruction Manual?" I loved me more than anybody else loved me. I cared for me. I knew my mistakes. I knew my weaknesses. I knew my desires. I knew what I wanted out of my future better than anybody else. So I'm obviously the one who's most qualified.

And as I would sort of follow that instruction manual, boy, that chapter didn't work. I'd rip it out, write another one. That didn't work, rip it out, write another one. And when I heard lord, authority, author, I realized the second big turning point was God is the most qualified person to write "How Does Carl Get the Most Out of Life Instruction Manual?" And he did. The Bible, the best instruction book for living every day.

And so as I saw that, wow, if I want to be better at decision making, who's a perfect decision maker? Jesus. So I got into the gospels. I started studying Jesus' decision making and it was about a two or three-year process of me sort of digging out, sort of was in therapy, getting out of jail, sort of getting my life back in order.

God brought a great woman into my life that, you know, loved me unconditionally, forgave me, and I was able to sort of see myself and see how God saw me in a different way and how God sort of related to me not as sort of that angry, judgmental, demeaning God, but somebody who was just loving, caring, always pursuing me, sort of like my wife was. And I was given three, you know, wonderful daughters that sort of brought out a softer side instead of my angry, growing up in that Italian sort of household, you know, an angry background.

And just my life has been amazing ever since that. But those were the two main turning points, making him the Lord of my life, which, you know, I'm obviously still struggle with that. I'm not perfect at that, but I do it way better than I used to do. And really looking at the Bible as that instruction manual.

And that's what we try to teach patients through my practice in Honey Lake Clinic, how to really engage that relationship with God, seeing him as the Lord, but a Lord that's a loving, compassionate, pursuing, forgiving Lord. And then he's got the instruction manual. How do we, you know, as I work with people that struggle with addictions, that big step of humility, how do you, are you ready to decide that your way isn't working, your instruction manual isn't working, you're not the one who's best qualified to write the instruction manual of how do you get the most out of life?

That here's this book that has been, you know, proven over the centuries, but even our science now shows that these principles in the Bible actually change brain chemistry, allow us to psychologically and spiritually grow to lead, you know, free, abundant, healthy, flourishing lives. And in the healing process, you know, what has been amazing for me is to see what Satan intended for evil, right?

All those mistakes I made, those stupid things that I did, you know, the addictions that I had, the many people that I had hurt, hurt that I had absorbed, you know, God has been able to turn that around not only to help in my healing process, but for that to be an agent in other people's healing. And I think people that are struggling, you know, with whatever it is, depression, anxiety, you know, we're talking about addiction here.

As you're struggling with addiction, there's underlying issues, but as you come to freedom in your addiction, which I believe cure is possible, not just in our secular world where, hey, this is something you have to live with for the rest of your life. I do think full transformation is available to us in this lifetime. But that's the superpower that Satan wants to keep sidelined. That superpower, that story, we're talking about stories, that healing, that comfort that you've been given, now you're going to be able to utilize that to help other people that see their story.

In you, that hear you when you talk about your sick, wow, I was arrested too, or wow, I had this problem too, or wow, I got abused too, or wow, that person can understand, he can empathize with me, he can be compassionate, he can understand why I think the way I do or why I make the mistakes I make. And so many times people that have struggled, you know, they've come through their struggle, but they're ashamed of that struggle. So they don't want to share it with anybody else, but through our pain comes our purpose, right? And so, you know, in that pain that we are able to engage it and see God bring healing into that very difficult space, that's where we start to find maybe here there's some purpose for that pain. And here's how God wants to use that not only in my healing and growth process, but some of the people he's going to bring into my life, that story is going to be impactful and powerful in my superpower I get to unleash to be able to be salt and light in other people's lives as well. And whenever I see patients start to get to that end where not only are they getting healing, but they're also being a catalyst for other people's healings, their eyes light up and they just are so bright and so empowered in that process and so engaged by the Holy Spirit to just continue to walk in that power. I love that. I love the idea of people being a catalyst and helping others and using their experiences to minister and to help others that are struggling with that.

You know, a lot of what we, who the lot of the people that we work with, Doc Dr. Carl, are bi-vocational ministers. We're talking not seminary trained, you know, college graduates or even not even that, but it's people just Jimmy Bob, normal people. We call them normies, that are doing ministry and empowering them to do that. So here's my question. Because, you know, there's I've had experiences where people jump in, you know, and dealing with addictions and we're having conversations and other episode coming up is like dealing with people that are going through suicidal seasons and crisis, you know, seasons and things like that. And so there are people that are very deep into, yes, I want to help these people. And then there also that are there are people that are, well, that's the job of the pastor. Let me get you connected to a pastor for that.

In your opinion, what can a normie, a normal person, like what level can they do, what level should they hand off to a pastor, to a professional? Like what level are they getting involved versus triage to hand off to somebody else? Like what's a good role that maybe we could operate off of?

Jeff, that's a great great question. And you know, so many times we see it as, you know, very binary, either I'm involved or I'm not and somebody else is involved. And I like to look at it more as, hey, we're a team coming together to act as a team. So even though somebody needs to be bumped up to me, you know, the clinical expert psychiatrist, I don't want the other people to fall out of their life and say, oh well, it's, you know, it's past my pay grade, I'm just going to pass it off to the psychiatrist. We need those people in, you know, that ministry that they're volunteering with, like, you know, in that valet ministry or the hospitality ministry. If they're in that home fellowship, whether online or, you know, in a you know, bricks and mortar home kind of thing, you know, that is that home fellowship, rubbing with them, encouraging them, bring a prayer partner with them. If there's people in the church that are having an addiction ministry, and so they have a little bit more understanding, there's getting peer support and there's a facilitator of some kind of curriculum, you know, in that meeting. I want that person to be involved. If there's a therapist, I want that person to be involved. If there's a marriage therapist working on, how do we reconcile this marriage and we help them understand and start to reconnect with each other. So it's not just, hey, we're just going to pass it off in this very sort of linear, just one at a time, but hey, hopefully we're all coming together to help this person unbind, you know, as a team.

And so, to be able to have that kind of mentality and then to figure out, well, what is my role based on my involvement with this person. You know, a good friend David Hager who's a OBGYN, I do a lot of work at Focus on the Family with a bunch of physicians and he's one of them. He wrote a book called On the Way with the idea that, you know, Jesus is usually going to a destination where he has a game plan and ministry is going to happen at that destination. But often in the passage it says, well, on the way so-and-so comes up to him, the bleeding woman or the blind man or the lame person, and he's doing ministry there. So, wherever we're at in our life, there's going to be on the way stuff that God is going to bring into our life that we're going to need to do, that we're called upon to do, that we're going to be a good Samaritan in some way.

And so, first of all, just to embark on your own healing journey so that you have some inner sense of, you know, who God is, who you are, how can you continue to have an understanding of, well, where am I on that psychological maturity scale? Am I a two out of ten? Am I a three out of ten? Well, I want to continue to move my needle because God is going to bring people into my life and he's going to want to use me to be able to speak into these people's lives in the better I can to be able to respect, you know, somebody, to honor their story, to listen, to ask questions, to be curious, not in a nosy, gossipy way, but in a compassionate, empathetic way. Hey, you know, I'm here with you. I want to help you. You know, what do you need? And if I can supply that, great. And if I can't supply that, hey, let me help you find the person in our church or our community who can supply, you know, for that need. And let me if I have to drive you to that appointment, if you need a, you know, a dinner to be brought over for the kids so you can get to that, you know, whatever that is.

We all have skills. Our care team at our church has about seventy different people in it. We have psychiatrists, we have nurses, we have, you know, various different levels of skills, but a lot of them are normies, you know, in that process. But we've helped them with some, you know, very short kind of programming, with some education, with some in-services, but we want to help them in their healing process so they have a heart that's open and that can be led by the spirit to be able to whatever that unbinding role that they have in a person's life, how can they sense what that is and to be able to deliver that and to know what their lane is. You know, hey, I'm not going to be the psychiatrist, I'm not going to be prescribing this guy meds, I'm not going to be able to say, hey, that's a withdrawal symptom, you need to go I need to get them to somebody else that has a little bit more understanding. Go, oh, this person's in withdrawal, they need to be able to get to this kind of level of care to be able to help that.

Is there any one more question on my side? Is there any hesitancy to lean into addictions that are complementary to what you have? Like, you know, if I'm dealing with alcohol, I don't want to minister to somebody or help someone that's also going through it because that might be triggering to me or is it healthier to work with someone that is in a similar area because of the symbiotic like relationship of that, being able to pull them out. Yeah, that's a great question. You know, to me there's whenever a person has a sexual addiction or pornography addiction, then working with the opposite sex or working in situations that are that can trigger those, that's probably the most difficult one that you really need to have good boundaries and good lanes to. Working with people that struggle with a very similar addiction that either you're currently struggling with or have struggled with in the past and have some freedom and transformation from, that usually is a pretty good thing to help keep you an understanding that and reduce the complacency that sometimes easy to creep in that, oh well, I've got this thing beat or I have no problem with this or whenever you see somebody else is struggling with it, it's pretty easy to see, "Oh, wow, you know, but by the grace of God, I could easily fall back into that." And so, it keeps you on your toes a little bit. The more you, you know, for me and my personal struggles, the more I preach it, the more I teach it, the more I help patients with it, the easier it is for me to be convicted to apply it, you know, to my life more and say, "Wow, boy, I'm telling Jeff about this, but that marital issue I'm struggling with as well. I need to you know, double down with what I'm doing in my marriage a little bit more to be able to address that. It's not good enough for me to just sort of teach it to others, but yet have it be a you know, a broken issue in my life as well."

So, it convicts us to be able to sort of, you know, what some of our blind spots can be as we're sort of helping other people. God uses those people to show us what we need to be helped in. If it's an area where it could be triggering, the person's probably going to be triggered in other things since there's usually other triggers around other than that person, you know, to be able to trigger them in. And so, if they're if they're really struggling, they're going to be triggered anyways by other things, not just that particular individual. Usually helping somebody is something that allows you to have a little bit more autonomy, some confidence, some empowerment to be able to give you a little bit more victory over what you're you know, the issues that you're dealing with and struggling with and fighting. And I think I hear over and over, and we've talked about this a little bit before, how how important a support system is.

Wait, can I I'm sorry, Megan, can I just go back to one thing? And so, you know, sorry for interrupting, but so that's why whenever we, so as you talked to Jeff about that person being triggered and helping, that's why that person doesn't want to stop getting their own therapy, their own treatment, being in their own support because that's hopefully where they're processing some of those things with that team, with that person, so that they can get feedback of, "Hey, maybe you're getting too close or maybe that is hitting home or maybe that is a little bit triggering for you." Right? They're not unbinding themselves. They hopefully they're helping unbind some people, but then they're also, you know, getting unbinding from others in their life. So, we don't want them to stop, "Okay, now I've graduated to helping others. I don't need any help anymore." And I'm distancing myself from all those all those supports. We want to keep those supports in our life. And those are the kind of things you want to be able to continue to express to them and talk to them about so they can, you know, help you be on guard for those kind of situations. So, sorry, I just wanted to you know, make that clear, too. No, I think that kind of answered a little bit what I was going to ask anyways. It's just like making sure we keep a support system around us, and that's going to include like professionals. That can include, you know, family, trusted friends, those safe people in your life, but you've got to have those built around you.

So, I think if somebody's struggling, like find those people. Find those people to come around you to help support you in this.

Yeah, one thing I always give my patients as a homework assignment is to develop their board of directors, I call it. So, just like, you know, every corporation, you know, it wants to do great things and they have a president, but then they also have a board of directors.

That board of directors serves a key role. It evaluates the CEO. It corrects. It gives guidance. It gives advice. It cheers leads. It consoles. It allows for that CEO or president to express themselves or to problem solve, to think out loud, to run things by.

And so, you know, I'm president of corporation Carl Bengeaux, but if I don't have a board of directors, I'm not going to get very far as a corporation.

So, you know, we're really good at getting board members that are, you know, I have a dentist because I'm not going to pull my own teeth. So, I have a dentist that has dental expertise. You know, I have an accountant because I don't want to run afoul of any tax law. So, I have an accountant that I, you know, that does my taxes. So, in some of these external things, we're really good at, you know, I got a landscaper that comes and, you know, seeds and plants and does those kind of things or my grass looks crappy. I don't do that on myself because I have no idea what the heck I'm doing. But in our inner space, in our personal life, we're usually not very good at figuring out, well, who's going to be on my board that give me that expertise.

You know, we don't want ten psychiatrists on our board. No corporation would run very well if they had just ten psychiatrists on the board and nobody else.

So, we'd like to pick different expertises and different skill sets to be on that board to round out all the different expertises that are needed for that corporation to move forward.

So, to have a marriage expert on your board of directors, you know, somebody that you know that is a trusted person in your life that, "Wow, they have a great track record. Their marriage is awesome. They seem to understand how to make marriage work, how to communicate, how to forgive each other, how to connect." I want that person on my board. They have a good track record and they can speak into my life and marriage. I want a parenting, somebody who has good, you know, they've raised their kids and they, boy, they've been through some trials and tribulations parenting. They've been able to navigate those really well. They have expertise in that area. I want somebody who's been able to navigate addiction. I want somebody who's been able to manage, you know, anger and emotional, you know, ups and downs or manage pain or manage their finances.

So, we want all these different, you know, board members, but then we need to be open and transparent with them. And we don't want to pick board members that are just yes people that are going to tell me just what I want to hear, right?

We want people that are going to be honest with us, that are willing to tell us the good things that we're doing, cheerlead with us, but also the things we're not doing well. How to be able to communicate that in a compassionate, caring, "I love you, I care for you, but boy, hey, there's something I noticed that I'm curious as to why you're doing this or why you're making that decision or why you're falling into that struggle again. Let's talk that over. Let's try to problem solve." And that's so, you have board members that are able to do that. That's what that support system again, Lazarus. We need unbinding. So, we need those people. Ideally, we have people with various expertises that can come speak into us that we don't have sort of the blind leading the blind.

Obviously a therapist, you know, a support group that is, you know, whether it's a Celebrate Recovery, whether it's a Recovery Alive, whether it's Overcomers in Christ. There's a whole bunch of different, you know, support groups out there for people with addiction. And most of them aren't just for addiction, but really look at the idea that hey, we're all in a recovery process. We're all trying to recover from sin in our life, from our, you know, those idols of our heart that we pursue. So, we're all on this psycho-spiritual journey.

And so, most of those Celebrate Recovery, even though they get pigeonholed as addiction support groups, they do much more than just addictions. They really reach into that deeper, "Well, what are what are my psychological and spiritual struggles that then lead to an addiction, lead to me self-medicating with power, control, pornography, you know, scrolling through my, you know, screens over and over looking for affirmation, how many likes did I get or boy, my life is terrible compared to this person who's always in Aruba and doing this and doing that and has a great hat every week and blah blah blah." You know, so those are the kind of things that we're trying to, you know, navigate and to find those supports in various different areas from. And they don't have to be the expert like I have to go to a parenting therapist, but I just need to look at somebody in my life who has a nice track record of being a good parent, a nice track record of a healthy marriage to say, "Hey, would you be willing to speak into? I really admire what you've had and what you've built and how you go about things. Would you be willing to speak into my life in some way that if we meet for lunch, maybe twice a month kind of thing that I can share with you some of the struggles that I might have. Are you open to that?" And you'd be amazed at how many people are willing to help out people that are struggling give the comfort they've been given.

And again, you know, pay it forward kind of thing. I love that. And that's even in my own life. I've done things like that. I never considered it a board of directors. And it's funny like that that actually really resonates with me because I understand that framework very well.

But you know, there are guys where I mean literally I've got three guys in in my goal is to sit down with them once a month. And to have a face-to-face conversation either in group or individual, but you know, my goal is to have a face-to-face conversation where we, you know, we dig into that and and hold each other accountable and have those hard conversations together and and addictions.

And you know, it's interesting. There's a side conversation going on in Twitch in the Twitch chat right now centered around the difference between addictions and vices. You know, and they're the thought was that vices is more like a coffee addiction or something that was a little more harmless. My name vice resonates with me and I'm thinking Don Johnson and Coke. So, you know, what is, uh, like I just being here in Miami, of course that's where I go. Crockett and Tubbs all the way. But um tell me like what is there a difference between addictions and vice? And and even, you know, simple stuff like a coffee addiction. Like is this something that we need to be worried about? Like give us some inside tips here. Oh, man, you like you know, pricked a little thing in me, man, with caffeine.

Caffeine, I am a I hate caffeine. Honey Lake Clinic, we are a caffeine-free facility, but now they allow the patients one cup of coffee a day and it like it pains me.

You know, caffeine is the most common chemical addiction in the world. Even kids as young as, you know, four, five, six years old addicted to caffeine. Caffeine messes with your brain. It increases agitation, lowers frustration tolerance, increases irritability, it causes more stress, it decreases the blood flow to the brain. So, over time, it worsens things in our brain. But it's amazing that, you know, you would think the two places that addictions should not be happening would be work and church. And those are the two places we give it away for free. We give caffeine away for free, right? So, so a vice to me, a vice or a bad habit is something where it only takes mild to moderate effort to cut down. Like so, if you really had to, you could. And it doesn't have as much deleterious impactful consequences, at least up front, as you know, some of the other addiction objects that we look at.

But just like work, you know, work is a significant addiction that a lot of guys have, especially work addiction to productivity. And initially it doesn't start out that bad. It's a vice. Oh, that guy stays late. He works, you know, but boy, the ripple sheet it has whenever he's, you know, the kids don't have a dad that's emotionally engaged with them and what that, you know, what that sets them up to. It, you know, it doesn't curse them for life, but boy, puts them behind a lot, you know, all the different measures of the outcomes of a person's life.

The one key thing we always find is, did they have a father male figure that was home and emotionally involved with them in their childhood?

And so, if a person's a workaholic, we might say, "Well, that's a vice. That's just a bad habit. That's just the way they're wired." But it's not the way they're wired. They can change it. It is not just a bad habit. It's something that's an addiction that has many other ripples in their life.

You know, we don't often think of addiction as being caused by a bacteria or a virus. But it's amazing how addictions are contagious and they infect the people in our lives that, you know, have to live with that person who has, you know, that addiction.

So, there's these long-term consequences. You know, to me, short-term would be if I'm engaging with, you know, if I can't get into a church service until I get my cup of coffee, and, you know, I'm thinking about worshipping God, but I need to get that. That's a problem. You know, that's a problem. That's not putting God at the center of my universe. Someone told me that the word for glorify and gravity in Greek are very similar. Very similar root words. I don't know if that's true or not, I'll go with it for this point. So, that thing that we worship, that we glorify, we put at the center of the universe. And the center of the universe, the sun, is the thing that because of its gravitational power, it forms the orbits of everything else. It causes the orbits and the rotation of all the other things in that person's life.

So, I don't you know, we have we have a lot of stress in our world. There's a lot of chaos, social media, technology, the truth is dying. People are believing in atrocities. And so, they're believing in absurdities, so they commit atrocities, as Voltaire said many, many centuries ago. But I think part of it is we have caffeine on every corner. So, we have this addictive process that sort of fuels the pump, primes the dopamine pump that we need to get stimulation all the time, and our irritability, our anxiety level, our stress level are increased, I think because, you know, everybody's pumping in so much caffeine that it's there's there's some cause and effect of that. It's not the only cause, certainly, but anything that we have that's an addictive process makes it easier for us to fall prey to other addictions.

And again, that atrophying of those other skills. So, well, if I need coffee to wake me up in the morning, then I don't really need to get a good night's sleep. So, now I'm going to let my sleep hygiene decay, and I don't need to maybe do as much exercise to keep my weight down because caffeine keeps my weight down.

And so there's a lot of other ripples of how that interferes with our development of other better coping skills whenever we use an addiction object to be our go-to, our circumstantial stage, you know, that helps us solve that problem in that particular circumstance. That hurts on a lot of levels.

Well, you know, I get a lot of youth pastors that'll go in and they're going to talk to these 13, 14-year-olds about porn and porn addiction and porn on the internet and all this stuff. But then they have this Monster drink or their, you know, their five-hour energy drink and they're saying, "Well, I'm late because I had to stop and get that because I can't go a day without this. This is, you know, it's..." But yet they're telling this kid, "Hey, you got to give up this." But then they're showing them, "Hey, I can't give up this." I mean, that's, you know, what a mixed message that is for, you know, a 13-year-old, right?

Yeah, guilty. Let me literally, my 13-year-old, I'm just going to call myself out here. My 13-year-old son has a hard time staying awake in adult church. And so he's discovered a Starbucks dirty chai. It's a chai latte with a shot of espresso. That shot of espresso keeps him awake for church. And so I'm not going to lie, it's easier for us to do that and buy that so he gets the energy to stay awake for the sermon. We have conversations about the sermon afterwards. And it's, you know, and as a parent, you know, my wife and I, we fell back on, "Okay, that's the easiest way to do it." We didn't even take into account the addiction, the fact that we're feeding that addiction right now and that he's not developing something else that he needs to in order to compensate instead. And we're complementing that with caffeine.

My wife and I are both caffeine addicts. So, yeah, a lot, a lot, a lot of our country is. That's for sure.

You know, the funny thing, like we were literally out of college, I started a dot com. And it was churchonline.com, ebeliever.com. And we were either going to start an online dot com or we were going to start a coffee shop. Like one of us, we thought out of college, which one is before Starbucks was Starbucks. We'll do both. Yeah, and we fought which one of us was going to get the business. And I won. But, you know, I love this. This has been a very challenging conversation.

You know, I remember, um, Megan, I think it, I'll come out, all the conversations are running together. I don't remember if it was Mindy or who said it, but you are loved only to the level that you are known. I think that was a phrase that was said recently either by Mindy or, oh my gosh, it's they're all just running together. But really this idea of being known and having others know you, hold you accountable, be transparent with who you are and where you are.

You know, this is the idea that's resonating very much, even as we're doing ministry in those spaces, in these spaces that are addicting, dealing with people that are very open with their addiction. You know, we talked about this recently. In digital, there's two different ways to do digital ministry in my opinion. And there's the broadcast idea. We've got people that are engaging with the outside world. Like, you know, church is engaging with the outside world, the one hour on Sunday. And that's, and you know, when we talk about addiction with those people, you know, they don't often see a lot of the addiction or a lot of the mental health challenges or a lot of the suicidal crisis because, I mean, to be honest, that one hour on Sunday, even online, people have a mask, you know, they're hiding behind it. The Christian four-letter F word is fine. Hey, how you doing today? I'm fine. How are you? Oh, I'm fine, too. Okay, good. Hey, I'll see you next week, right? That's the Christian four-letter F word.

Dr. Carl, that is tattoo-worthy. That may actually, that may, I know there's a running joke on the show. You know, is a statement good enough for you to put your name tattooed on my body? And the Christian four-letter F word, fine. Do you own that? Is that you or is that somebody else? Is that your saying?

I've never heard anybody else say it, no.

Dr. Carl, that is in the running. My wife will of course say no, so I'll have to sneak out one day and get it when she's not, which may open up some other issues, but that's another podcast for a different day.

That's why I say the opposite of addiction is belonging because if we're not transparent, right? If we don't open up, if we don't show people who we are, and part of that addiction issue is that if they really knew me, they wouldn't like me. They wouldn't hang out with me. They wouldn't connect with me. And I wouldn't belong. So that's what we're trying to do is, well, how do we help people belong? That would, you know, so for treating, well, if we put them in prison, well, now we're just sort of continuing to segregate them away and say, "Boy, you're never going to belong," right?

And I'm not saying there shouldn't be consequences when we do inappropriate things, but trying to figure out how we can put that in a context of connection and belonging, I think we'd get a lot farther in the process, just like you're saying, that transparency, how to be open. You only can be loved as far as you're going to be able to be open.

Yeah, look, just a flat cap to wrap up here. Flat cap's asking a question in the chat. Does FOMO, fear of missing out, play into addictions? Like, what's the parallel there that you're seeing?

Yeah, I think there's a, you know, we have this dopamine reward pathway and we have, we want it to be stimulated. We want dopamine to be released. Instead of just a slow drip of just little small things that give us a little bit of satisfaction, a smile, a smile on my wife's face. Well, there's a little bit of dopamine, but, you know, I want big dopamine drips. And so in that FOMO is, well, I'm going to miss out on a big dopamine drip. I'm going to, you know, or a big dopamine surge kind of thing. And I don't want to miss out. I don't want, I need stimulation. I need to be in the middle of things. I need to be part of, you know, something. You know, they're looking for that belonging, but belonging isn't just because you're in something that you didn't miss out on. Belonging is really connecting relationally, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually with somebody.

You know, I can be in, you know, one-tenth of the activities with my kids that they're involved in, but I can still have really strong connections and a sense of they belong to me and I belong to them and we belong together kind of thing without being involved in every single activity, right? And so I think FOMO is that need to artificially feel like you're belonging whenever there's a lot of other better ways to be able to do that and that dopamine surge isn't as necessary.

We can have a little bit more self-control and a little bit more patience to wait for the drip and understand how the drip works actually better in the long run than episodic surges.

What is, oh my gosh, I feel like I could go another hour. Okay, everything I hear about dopamine is getting it in a negative context. Like, you know, you're getting that dopamine hit by thumb scrolling, doom scrolling. You're getting that dopamine hit with pornography. Is there a healthy way to get dopamine or is dopamine, yeah, like what is that? Tell me a healthy way to get. Everybody's negative on dopamine. Give me a positive way.

Hey, if you're married, have sex with your spouse. You get great dopamine surges with that. Go exercise. Exercise, great dopamine surges. Just look at a picture of your grandchild or your child smiling at you. You know, that's a little dopamine, like again, a dopamine drip. Having a dopamine drip that's relatively consistent is a lot better and healthier for you than getting episodic surges of dopamine because you're, you know, taking a hit of cocaine or you're looking at pornography or you're masturbating or you're stealing something or you're, you know, yeah, you'll get a dopamine surge from some of those kind of things, but that's not healthy. Your system wasn't meant to tolerate those kind of episodic surges. Your system was really built to take, you know, a sort of a continuous drip by finding joy in all the different things that we do that God brings into our life.

Very good, very good. Yeah, so dopamine is a good thing. We want dopamine. Dopamine is great. We just don't want these blasts of dopamine or for a person to be so immune to the little dopamine hits that they get. Sometimes our radar is whenever we get these big dopamine blasts, we have very poor radar for the subtler dopamine bounces that we get, right? And so those don't register because, well, that was a two on the dopamine scale. I want a, you know, I want a 75. If it ain't a 75, anything less than 50 just ain't worth it.

Well, no, you know, and that's why that tolerance of, you know, well, I need to get back to that original euphoria, so we need to use more and more and more and more to be able to get that dopamine surge that we initially had when we first used that particular addiction object. That's not what we were designed to do. That's corrupted chemistry that unfortunately we get trapped in.

Megan, as we're wrapping up, is this making sense? Where are we at?

Yeah, no, I think it is. I think it's been really good and really informative for people who are maybe struggling or people who are, you know, working with people who are struggling in those areas. And I think you said we all can find a little area that we might need to just keep an eye on and make sure that it doesn't go into something that's taking us out of reality, basically.

So no, I've loved you, Dr. Carl, for being a part of this and really just bringing your wealth of knowledge. You know, and if your team, if you have questions or there's things that they resonate, they want to talk, you know, I'd love to be able to come back. I just have my senior team, you know, calling me saying, "Hey, you know, from Honey Lake Clinic, hey, are you coming to the meeting or not?" All right.

So we're going to wrap up. This has been great, but Dr. Carl, thank you very much for the podcast here. We're going to let you go, but for Carl, Dr. Carl, for Megan, this is Jeff with Church Digital. Thanks for joining us here on the podcast and we'll see you next time on the show. Y'all have a good one.