Dr. Bob Weathers (Part 2) – The Future of Addiction & Recovery: Wherein Lies the Hope? Integral Responses, Skillful Social Strategies & Exploring What Leads to Real Happiness
In this riveting, disturbing, and hopeful conversation, addiction expert and recovery coach Dr. Bob Weathers explains the enormous difference it makes when we apply the Integral Model to addiction and recovery. It helps us cover all the bases in our understanding of addiction, from the neuroscientific to the spiritual, and offers a map for recovery in the form of integrated practices that target our physical, emotional, spiritual, relational, and system-coping needs. Bob’s mission in life is to educate—his clients, treatment professionals, policy makers—everyone who is affected by addiction one way or another (which is pretty much everyone) about this set of perspectives that is comprehensive enough to address something as complex as addiction. Bob is deeply familiar with addiction and the suffering it causes on a firsthand basis, and he shares his own experience with an open heart. He is also well informed about the big picture of addiction and shares the latest statistics: 46.3 million Americans are currently clinically addicted—only 6% received treatment last year.
What about the future of addiction? Technology is becoming increasingly capable of creating powerful “super stimuli,” making it ever more difficult for people to exercise self-restraint, and internet addiction and internet porn are through the roof. What can we do to influence the powers that be on a social/systemic level to guide us on a new path? One that recognizes that happiness correlates with connection, contribution, and flow rather than the never-ending quest for more acquisitions? Listening to this honest, heartfelt, and impassioned conversation, you will not be in the least surprised to find out Bob is the 2022 winner of the Most Dedicated Substance Abuse Education & Recovery Coach award. “Living a life of value, meaning, and purpose? If you want to talk about happiness, let’s talk about that.” Recorded May 15, 2023.
“We have got to begin to find creative ways to endorse restraint at all levels of our society.”
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Topics & Time Stamps – Part 2
- Making the turn towards recovery from addiction is like an “incredible lightness of liberation” (01:23)
- Transformative lifestyle changes (TLCs) and daily practice invite the grace to change (04:28)
- The crucial element of giving something up: surrendering self (06:50)
- Cultivating a daily practice of acceptance: How surrendered am I in this moment? (09:01)
- Addiction is a progressive disease—and it’s devolutionary (11:33)
- The changing face of addiction: internet addiction, internet porn, super stimuli, evolutionary traps, globesity (15:36)
- Is the plague of addiction going to get even worse? What happens when virtual reality goes online? (18:05)
- The importance of a soul-centric approach: finding your higher power and higher purpose (20:08)
- Richard Rawson’s research on the effect of drugs on the dopaminergic system in the body and the brain (23:44)
- 46.3 million Americans are currently clinically addicted—only 6% received treatment last year (25:36)
- To be human is to be enslaved: acknowledge there is no way we can compete with the stimuli we’re evolving, and the importance of restraint (26:06)
- What can we do as educators? Educate towards shifting public policy to something better than incarceration; harm reduction as opposed to a zero tolerance policy (27:38)
- What correlates with happiness? The illusion of acquisitiveness and how the happiest people are the ones who give back (29:43)
- The cultural roots of addiction (30:44)
- What makes Integral Recovery integral? (32:17)
- How would you define addiction and why can’t we be inclusive? (34:21)
Resources & References – Part 2
- Roger Walsh, Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes (TLCs) Can Be Powerful Medicines
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self Reliance*
- Tish Warren, thought leader on internet addiction, Managing Screen Time is a Family Matter (New York Times opinion)
- Carl Jung, “individuation is an opus contra naturam”
- Richard Rawson, Associate Director of UCLA Integrated Substance Abuse Programs, Current research on the epidemiology, medical and psychiatric effects, and treatment of methamphetamine use (National Library of Medicine)
- Gary Snyder, “the man who has the soul of the wolf knows the self-restraint of the wolf,” from Turtle Island*
- Martin Seligman, Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment*
- David Courtwright, Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World*
- What are the Four Quadrants? (Integral Life website)
- John Dupuy, Integral Recovery: A Revolutionary Approach to the Treatment of Alcoholism & Addiction*
- The Journey of Integral Recovery podcast with John Dupuy and Douglas Prater
- Dr. Bob Weathers, recovery coach: https://www.drbobweathers.com
* As an Amazon Associate, Deep Transformation earns from qualifying purchases.
Dr. Bob has created two powerfully healing and transformative guided meditations to which iAwake added brainwave entrainment technology. You can check them out here:
The Freedom of Forgiveness & The Gift of Gratitude
“It was a marvelous therapy for me. I’ve never been so candid and honest about myself and my past actions…it’s like months of therapy.” ~ Nina
Dr. Bob Weathers is a highly regarded addiction educator, recovery coach, author, and public speaker. Over the course of his professional career, “Dr. Bob” has provided tens of thousands of hours of therapeutic counseling and recovery coaching to satisfied clients. He has also committed over four decades to teaching, training, and inspiring graduate-level mental health providers at several southern California universities, including helping to develop their nationally accredited addiction studies certificate and mindfulness-based clinical training coursework. His two most recent books on addiction recovery are currently in press with Cambridge University Press.
Podcast produced by Vanessa Santos and Show Notes by Heidi Mitchell
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