The opioid epidemic is just one of the symptoms of the general deterioration of Western society. Now, more people than ever are either dealing with the ravages of drug and alcohol addiction themselves, or dealing with someone who is. What can we do about this scourge? Today on Solutions Watch, James talks to Iain Davis, a drug and alcohol addiction counselor with 20 years of experience in the field, and Derrick Broze, who has just penned a gripping new memoir about his own struggles with addiction and how he overcame them.
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SHOW NOTES
GREENLANDERS MOCK AMERICANS by imitationg FENTANYL EFFECTS in viral video
The Technocratic Dark State by Iain Davis
Acceptance of and Commitment To Freedom – #SolutionsWatch
Pick Your Pieces – Some Thoughts to Think About by Joseph Plummer
Pick Your Pieces – #SolutionsWatch
A Man of My Word: How I Overcame Addiction, Depression, and Mental & Physical Prisons
From what I’ve noticed in my life, addiction tends to be in people that need immediate gratification. People who prefer delayed gratification don’t tend to get addicted to things.
Make sense when you think about it.
Don’t eat the cookie right away, and get a second one later, when you do decide to eat it. Use a timer before you can eat the cookie. All it takes is that first time that you can wait. Then, you just need that one time to succeed in waiting when you’ve made the wait longer.
With many exceptions of course, but we are a weak culture. IMO, mostly because the ‘pop’ culture thrives on the propaganda of celebrity-hood and personal status. When young kids would rather be famous then smart it doesn’t bode well for society’s future does it?
Throw in decades of clever advertising using the conditioning skills and knowledge of Bernays, Freud, Skinner, Pavlov, etc. and who knows what DARPA has come up with, the people/cattle are well-trained.
Far too many talk with trivial cliche’ speak, cut and past Internectuals.
If this fat, old mad man of a president is allowed to continue being Israels Beotch, we may be getting a taste of what is going on in Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, Iran, etc. on our own streets and property.
Then we will have the ultimate cure to our addictions…death, disease, starvation and poverty.
WHAT NEEDS TO BE SAID (song)
https://old.bitchute.com/video/lMHyu4q52X3Y/
The addiction I see all around me is not drugs or alcohol but smartphone addiction. It’s like the elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about – because they themselves are addicts and not ready to admit it. The effects of this addiction are horrendous – including wasted lives scrolling through endless social media feeds, a deterioration in mental ability to hold ones attention on any subject, a degradation of ones ability to write or communicate effectively, a neglect and deterioration in real social life with others preferring to retreat into a virtual social life on ones smartphone with fellow addicts.
Smartphone addiction is the real zombie apocalypse unfolding right in front of us. Until we are willing to accept it is a problem and start talking about it, I see no light at the end of this dark tunnel.
@kumro
I’ve been singing about it for five years friend. It is the intentional addiction to social engineering to create predictive behavior in people by the controllers. It helps to establish a need to be liked by unknown “friends” who embrace this ‘tribal’ attitude of anonymous internet evangelists exchanging critical thinking skills from investigation to supposition. Baaa Baaa
GET OFF THE PHONE (song)
https://old.bitchute.com/video/2QbsxZOkIYjA/
This addiction is the strongest.
I’ve only really flirted with drink and drugs but never fell into addiction. Then there is Tobacco which (today happens to be my 60th birthday) I have been addicted to for 47 years and is now noticeably killing me.
I have self reflected on the causes of this addiction and know they are deeply intwined with my relationship to my parents ( they were both heavy smokers that used cigarettes to bribe me as a 13yr old). I have tried only twice and quickly failed to kick the habit. I think that it is a self harm behaviour and a reflection of a deep nihilistic trait within me, mirroring helplessness and hopelessness I often feel in a world run by evil people. It is in effect a long drawn out suicide.
Though undiagnosed by a doctor I am pretty sure I would now be told I have COPD if I were to go to one. And thus far I have no plan to quit.
Candide revived,
I smoke cigarettes too. Since 1971. I try to avoid the chemicals in tobacco. I buy pound bags of pipe tobacco for $15 and then with a machine inject the tobacco into cigarette tubes, which saves lots of money.
In May 2025, James Corbett wrote an interesting piece:
The Strange But True Story of How Smoking Bans Paved the Way for Global Government
https://corbettreport.com/the-strange-but-true-story-of-how-smoking-bans-paved-the-way-for-global-government/
I found that exercise and also leafy green vegetable smoothies help counteract some of the harmful effects of smoking.
Ultraviolet Light Blood Therapy is also called BioPhotonic Therapy or UBI (Ultraviolet Blood Irradiation); and this therapy quickly helps with COPD symptoms along with a myriad of other health issues.
Nebulizing a small amount of hydrogen peroxide mixed with salt water helps the lungs on occasions.
There have been solid weeks that I have been without cigarettes, but I get no cold turkey phenomena nor gut issues (nicotinic choline receptors in the gut start to fade away.)
Smoking does increase one’s choline receptors. Choline is a brain chemical.
During the Pandemic I logged countless THERAPIES on linked SUBTHREADS.
https://corbettreport.com/this-is-the-global-reset-prepare-accordingly/#comment-77070
You will see UBI and nebulizing and many other things on those subthreads.
Covid-19 and Smoking Tobacco – Nicotine
With the Coronavirus in April 2020, France banned online sales of nicotine products.
Some folks say that the tobacco industry pushed the idea.
But the cholinergic anti-inflammatory pathway has been shown to modulate lung inflammation in patients with COVID-19.
I have a short writeup on SMOKING and COVID here…
https://corbettreport.com/are-you-prepared-for-the-infodemic/#comment-79860
When I had my first kid it was easy to give up smoking, even though I found it impossible before.
Now they’re big I went back to it because I like smoking and I’m not near as necessary , and (with my decades long break) reckon I’ll die of something else before it gets me.
I guess not having anything more important to do is why you don’t really care about living?
Why is the elephant in the room never mentioned when it comes to addiction. Kumro talked about smartphone addiction but what about the stuff many use smartphones to view; pornography? Pornography addiction is huge and growing and it’s starting with children at a very young age. Some would argue it’s not an addiction, but I vehemently disagree.
If it’s stopping children from developing normal relationships with the opposite sex, marrying and having children then it is very destructive behavior. More so than alcohol and drugs IMO. Alcoholics and drug addicts still seem to have families, they just aren’t very happy.
It’s a topic that is hard to bring up. No one wants to admit to the things they get off to around their peers. That is one reason it is so dangerous. You can’t get help if you are too ashamed to ask for it. It’s incredibly sad how large the reach of the porn industry is and how little coverage it gets.
Educating your kids about this stuff is the best way to combat it.
Kirm
Porn is a weapon.
I was going to post the reason magazine article about the Israelis beaming porn out of the captured TV station when they invaded (iirc) the west bank in 2000 but it’s not showing up and THIS article is actually a bit funny but shows the same use
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/la-ed-porn01sep01-story.html
In the most Kafkaesque manner we begin the death march the day we are born. We chose daily to rise. By the time we are three or four we have habituated ourselves to the drudgery of life. Therefore we can lay blame for all our addictions on the choice to live. It’s all mental disease. Blame something. The repetitive behaviour that drives a person to the compulsive desire to live leeds to excess. To watch someone die affirms this. The body hangs on long after the soal has left the body.
“Any behavior you do to excess can be problematic .” Problematic on soooo many levels.
So, it’s a complement to you James and Ian to say ” you just kill me with these heady ( Uber-lectual ) topics. Mary Baker Eddy had a lot to say about ” just say no” or as I see it just say now, and returning the lust for life to the most shattered soal can happen before the w in now has left the mouth.
Reality has a now and every now moment has no beginning,middle or end or material substance.
Thanks for reading,
I’d love to know if anyone in the community is growing their own food. I was really interested in the sustainable/residential farming episode of of solutions watch. I almost ordered the book the guest speaker had written, then remembered I don’t have a garden 😂
Thanks for reading,
I’d love to know if anyone in the community is growing their own food. I was really interested in the sustainable/residential farming episode of of solutions watch. I almost ordered the book the guest speaker had written, then remembered I don’t have a garden
The first guest advocates for the behavioral model for recovery which I don’t necessarily disagree with but “long-term recovery” for this model’s efficacy ultimately ends up with an ongoing 12-step community based program. Ian is a recovery professional, part of the ‘recovery industry’ of which will become continued therapy appointments and/or outsourcing to AA or NA group meetings communities.
The second guest referred to, may have found recovery through institutional incarceration, and his own version of self-help recovery, but reading his book is inadequate to most with addiction issues because his recovery experience is unique and not simply duplicated, as are 12 step programs, comparatively.
If any Corbett Report subscribers wish to observe or participate in an actual recovery ‘volunteerism’ model with millions of successful recovered/recovering alcoholics and addicts, there are regularly scheduled (free) meetings in virtually every city and county in the US.
Hi John, as I mentioned in the discussion with James I worked in a service with a 27% successful 6 month outcome (people abstinent for 6 months). That is extremely high for any recovery model, usually it is around the 10% ‘ish or less range. I agree that ongoing support is often found in 12-step programs but behavioural group session support is also commonly available.
One of the major issues our highly successful service (which was expensive and so ultimately lost its funding) tackled was the recovery model itself. We encouraged our clients not to see themselves as “in recovery” but to move “toward life.” That is to say we discussed with clients what the point of their recovery was.
Too often people identify with recovery as if that recovery defines them. They remain “in recovery” for a very long time. This is a risk, in my view, because it maintains connections with former “addicts” who also see themselves as permanently “in recovery.” This is one facet of 12 step programs that, personally, I question.
While recognising the value of having support from people who understand the recovery journey, we encourage our clients to ultimately move away from recovery entirely and, to put it bluntly, get on with their lives. Whatever the clients valued, be it family, personal relationships, work, leisure activities, etc., we stressed that doing the things that mattered to them free from both addiction and “recovery” was the purpose of recovery.
This appeared to work very well in a city with a large client base. Sadly, as I said, our service was highly focused and intensive and not cheap compared to others. The local authority ultimately declined to continue funding.
Thank you for your insightful response and comments Ian. I appreciate your service as a recovery professional in the behavioral model of addiction treatment.
I’m in California where inpatient and outpatient programs are quite commonly publicly funded in the behavioral model.
Sober Living Environments are also publicly funded, and are highly effective WHILE the alcoholic/addict is in residence.
6 months abstinence is certainly very impressive (@ 27%) for any program as you described.
Incarceration may accomplish the same outcomes, but as we may agree, do not offer the necessary lifestyle determinations that provide for sustained recovery.
The AA model recognizes that any goal or time frame of recovery is accomplished one day at a time, often one moment at a time, in accumulative sobriety.
Relapse is understood as a likely outcome of the process, especially in early sobriety & none are rejected if they ‘keep coming back’ AND are honored in so doing incrementally, by 24 hours, one week, one month,etc.
The AA model is self-sustaining financially and because of the volunteerism (service) involved, as you may know, has over 80 years of success by it’s 12 steps and 12 traditions of this model.
Every county in the US has regular free meetings (often hundreds a week) and is referred to by the courts, hospitals, Public Health departments, & religious institutions.Thousands of daily meetings are attended worldwide.
You may “question” one aspect of this recovery/recovering model, but there’s no questioning it’s success as a sustained model.
[SNIP – no bare links in the comments section, please. Please repost the links with a title and/or explanation of why people should be clicking on them. -JC]
Help! I am addicted to the Corbett Report! It is getting so bad, that I even bought Reportage. Please, someone, give me a shred of hope!
Me too, and now I’m even reading Reportage for a second time . . .
Hankey don’t panic, it’s not like it’s Alex Jones…. That stuff will mess you up man.
LOL. Me too! But not all “addictions” are problems. Just to give a lighthearted anecdote, we often spoke with clients about “problematic use.” We used to joke (privately) that if you have a £2000 per week salary and a £500 per week bar tab you haven’t got a problem.
I am hooked on the prioritization of logic that I find here. I really can’t find a good, potent substitute.
PS Thank you for your participation and contribution.
Digressing, simply due to your accent,…
REAL ID (TSA): As of May 7, 2025, TSA requires a REAL ID-compliant state-issued license or a passport for airport security screening.
UK ETA: Starting January 8, 2025, U.S. citizens must apply for an Electronic Travel Authorization (ETA) online before traveling. It is valid for 2 years.
There must be a government funded 12 step program to help us. It is a deadly disease, right?
Teal Swan on the causes of addiction, rehab centres, the 12 steps, and the power of Ayahuasca & Ibogaine in healing addiction:
https://youtu.be/hvckp7mTtY0?si=7C8GBxMTNyqPV3uP&t=3102
Addiction and How to Overcome Addiction by Teal Swan (Trauma, healing, emotional pain, loneliness, emotionally unsafe environments, dysfunctional relationships, unmet needs, and more):
https://odysee.com/@TealSwan:1/addiction-and-how-to-overcome-addiction:0
Darlaran
I saw her once on YT and she struck me as creepy as hell and definitely not someone to let into my mind. Is it true she says she has a personality disorder?
Now I don’t know too much about this other lady who has some kinda choice things to say about her but TBH my gut didn’t like TealSwan at all. Letting a new age weirdo into your mind can be a real bad idea – esp if u have some kind of life issue already
A search for
The farm , teal swan , Elizabeth Russell
Will find the epp, but I will link the Farm episode via listen notes
https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/the-farm-podcast/mormon-stories-i-teal-swan-w-NuSza9nZRCq/?srsltid=AfmBOopooiSmTXu539fGRqxcbOjeDrUeU17pwOYetA0HOAYjh1oh6Eb3
To suffer from addictions feels deeply cruel and unfair. To defeat them isn’t guaranteed either. But there’s one thing to keep in mind if you’re trying to recover from an addiction: to overcome it will bring unexpected rewards.
Twelve Step programs indeed work on the psychological and behavioral issues that require working on ego and habits, by recognizing you have no control, no off switch. You’ll never win a battle with the bottle, so stop fighting, learn a new way to live every day.
It’s the only program that requires you “work it” on a daily basis, developing new habits. Studying theories is useless, it requires action. Atheists are welcome, there is no need to pray to a god; it’s finding out you’re not the center of the universe, and a massive relief finding out you’re not alone in your twisted thinking by hearing others identical delusions. Taking personal inventory and actually apologizing brings accountability; while addicts blame everyone and everything else. And finally, helping others cements commitment with great rewards.
There is a whole chapter in the Big Book of AA on the futile and hilariously self-delusional ways all of us tried to CONTROL alcohol. Finding tools that relieve the insane obsession is a miracle change in thinking, and lifts the burden.
Being with others who have recovered gives a social connection, in an anarchic structure, where no one is in charge to fight against, is a relief for oppositional defiants. (Being anti-authoritarian has its down side when it becomes reactionary.) Hearing their stories, the same message from a thousand unique sufferers means you’ll eventually hear one that resonates with you.
The techniques Davis is discussing are all there in AA. Unless you yourself experience addiction, most of it is unintelligible. So many monopolized investor owned recovery centers have abandoned the model of addicts working with other addicts, which is tragic. Those who haven’t experienced the obsession are speaking a foreign language, with glaring holes in their comprehension of recovery.
A wonderful book on the topic is Gabor Mate’s “In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts” about the scope of addictions in this sick society. To war, to money, power, consumerism, gambling, and substances, that all protect us from seeing our monstrous selves, and separate us from others.
Biological systems usually achieve homeostasis through feedback loops. There is a negative feedback: if a hormone or something else goes too far in one direction, it gets corrected by going in the opposite direction to reach the desired level, like a thermostat. But there is also a positive feedback loop, when a change is going in the same direction until it “hits a wall”. It’s a bit like a difference between a normal drinker and an addict. Normal drinker feels less and less like having another drink, an addict – more and more., as if his “off switch” is not working. The right hemisphere is capable of freeing us through the negative feedback. The left hemisphere gravitates towards the positive feedback and we can become stuck. Lesions in frontolimbic region of the right hemisphere are associated with addictive behavior. When addicts seriously engage in mindfulness meditation and thereby stimulate (use!) their right hemisphere, addictive behaviours dissipate. Pathological gamblers have frontal deficits on the right side. When people are treated with L-Dopa for Parkinson’s disease, they can develop pathological gambling behavior, Nassim Taleb mentioned a case when the patient sued his doc. for prescription of dopamine (L-Dopa) when he gambled away his fortune as a result. Dopaminergic neuron network is lateralized in the left hemisphere, dopamine is the left-hemispheric preferential neurotransmitter. Stimulating the right hemisphere in cocaine addicts reduced craving for cocaine (Camprodon, Martinez-Raga, 2007)
Dr. Judson Brewer is working with addicts using just mindfulness meditation, apparently successfully.
Addiction is not the only problem of left-right brain hemispheres disbalance, if you look into the issue, virtually all our modern problems stem from it. Dr.Iain McGilchrist devoted the rest of his life to educating people in an attempt to save humanity from the existential threat we are facing.
Thanks for another good video James. Another tool that isn’t well know but has helped people break addictions / depression like junk food and smoking is emotional freedom technique, or EFT. Other similar ones also work where you tap on specific points of the body and it helps. Mark passio’s ARK driven contains some seminars from practioners. Super cool and costs you nothing. I recommend looking into it.
https://content.blubrry.com/3955508/We_talked_with_the_future_of_mental_health_today.mp3
Dr. Peter Breggin interviewing Dr.Terralyn Sell
today about getting off psychiatric medicines.
Iain Davis’ behavioral approach to the problem an individual may have with an addiction can be used successfully to other types of life situations that are problematic for a person.
I had a real problem with taking on and completing school papers and projects. Iain supported his clients in their effort to identify what was important to them. It was very important to me to be able to carry out my writing and other projects. A roadblock was my experience of them as daunting and I believed I would fail, that I couldn’t accomplish them.
Iain guides his clients in breaking down and handling differently each part of the defeating behavior process. I changed the way I worked on my papers and projects. First I just created a place for the project: a folder. If there was any rules for the assignment, I created a document with all the rules at the top. Now I was ready to start “building” the paper or project. Taking each rule, I started to address it informally, just from what was in my mind. Then I proceeded to identify what else I needed to write about, research and think about. I also started projects way ahead of when they were due, so I was able to work at them a little at a time, minimizing periods of feeling blocked. So I changed my behavior to what was more appropriate to what I actually wanted to do: complete the assignment. For some reason, I was “addicted” or had a certain behavior based on a way of thinking and approach, to being a failed student. I transformed myself from delinquent to completer.
Being forced to confronted yourself and what your true aims really are, as Derrick Broze relates, helps you to see the path forward to those aims. As Iain says, you need to know what you want, and then you need to break down the self-defeating behavior into components so you can bring them into line with what you really want to be doing.
IRL Problems & Solutions
So I’ve spent decades complaining about the state the world is in and how corrupt beyond repair ‘our government’s’ are, and my wife was sick of it. She’d often tell me to please stop venting at her and other people and actually do something about it, at the time I obviously thought she was borderline insane for suggesting such an impossible task. However since watching Solutions Watch I’ve changed my mind, and I’m thinking maybe my wife’s not crazy after all.
I’ve thanked my wife and would also like to thank James if he reads the comments section.
Inspired by Solutions Watch so far, I’ve;
Written a short blog about Sortition (Jury Service for Governance)
https://medium.com/@rob.pietryszyn/so-what-is-democracy-is-it-a-random-event-68c3ca9a84c3
Created a web directory for Your Party, a new British political party that promised a new kind of bottom-up, grassroots, democracy but is delivering the same old top-down, establishment insider, olygarchy. The aim of the directory is to enable groups who spontaneously formed after the ‘promise’ to collaborate and hopefully become a network for political activism
https://yourparty-branches.uk
Lastly I’ve conceived of and written a system for co-writing/creating documents that could be used to create documents in large groups but remotely. It’s spawned from the idea of system control used to write software using remote teams, however as of yet one has participated :'(
https://medium.com/@rob.pietryszyn/maximum-democracy-for-your-party-how-branches-can-write-history-together-efdd48120066
Next on my agenda is the far more realistic goal of helping to save our local Hacker Space, wish me luck.
I’d love to know if anyone else has or is thinking of creating their own Solution to a problem in their life?
If you got this far, Thank You for reading
“I got this far.” – 😉
r,
Thanks for the write-up.
And ‘r’, there is a good bet that James Corbett often eyeballs these comments.
Thanks for reading,
I’d love to know if anyone in the community is growing their own food. I was really interested in the sustainable/residential farming episode of of solutions watch. I almost ordered the book the guest speaker had written, then remembered I don’t have a garden 😂
‘G’ or Gavin has a lot to say for growing/utilizing plants, especially in his neck of the woods.
James Corbett has interviewed many people about growing your own food on these #SolutionsWatch episodes.
My suggestion:
Start small with something easy and simple for your climate and situation.
(For example: In the south, sometimes the overnight temperatures stay high and garden plants don’t have a chance to ‘rest’.)
Fruit trees are easy, simple and low maintenance.
Try a few vegetables in a small plot.
Start small and gradual.
Batteled with nicotine addiction from age 12-22. What got me out was a deep depression. I hated myself for being out of control, not being able to quit smoking (tried it before and it never worked.) This time I was already feeling so low, I decided that quitting cold turkey could only make me feel better. And this time it worked! I have not touched a cigarette since that time. I connected smoking with falling back into that black hole I had to work myself out of. So I never went back.
My alcohol addiction also began with 12 and lasted much longer, on and off until about the age of 52. I tried many things, controlled drinking in all variations. I always ended up drinking too much too frequently. Then I would stop and start again a few months or weeks later. My last drunk episode I woke up at 4 am totally dehydrated and drank half a bottle of water. A voice inside said “What are you doing to yourself? WATER IS BETTER!” That became my mantra. From the next day onward now for 11 years I have always chosen water over alcohol. I am so relieved to have quit those two addictions.
Still, with online, food, love, there are subtler, less obvious ways to stay addicted. It’s much harder with those, because you can’t get 100% off all those things. To find a healthy middle way it takes constant honesty and awareness.