Thought Project With Ashley Rothstein

When we were deciding on a central theme/topic for the episode, David approached me with a passion of talking about how addiction, in his words, is “a$$ backwards” in this country. We talked about things like the Rat Park Experiment, which is super interesting and will probably blow your mind (it certainly did when I learned about it), the misinformation around addiction being deemed merely a chemical dependency instead of focusing on the true deep-rooted issue a lot of addicts face which is the inability to bond or connect with others, decriminalization vs. legalization and what other countries are doing around addiction, propaganda that is initiated by addiction centers and spread for profit (trippppy!), and we also talked about David’s personal experience with overcoming his addiction to binge drinking by taking the knowledge and awareness he gained from some experimentation with psychedelics, along with a concept that I LOVED…something he calls “radical self responsibility.”   David walked me through his