How To Use C-M3 For Alcohol & Drug Addiction Recovery (Step-by-Step)

Matt Finch: That food-based healing system has totally reshaped my life, and a lot of the stuff that I learned can be used for optimizing nutrition protocols, for whether someone's quitting a substance cold turkey or tapering, whether they're going through post-acute withdrawal, or whether they're doing relapse prevention, trying to nail their own customized recovery diet, and this drink is a lot of the stuff actually that I learned from that training program.

Announcer: Thanks for tuning in to the Elevation Recovery Podcast, your hub for addiction recovery strategies, hosted by Chris Scott and Matt Finch.

Matt Finch: Welcome to episode 254 of Elevation Recovery. My name's Matt Finch, I'm your host, and in today's special episode, you're going to be learning how to make a addiction recovery elixir that I've called Chocolate M-3. This can be used for addiction recovery, whether it's drug recovery, alcohol recovery, drug cravings, alcohol cravings, or mental health optimization in general, such as for energy, to fight fatigue, for fighting depression, and even anxiety. This drink is very, very versatile.

Matt Finch: The reason it's called Chocolate M-3 is because that is the main ingredients, one of the main ingredients is organic cacao powder, so that's the chocolate, and then M-3, meaning there's three different Ms. One is milk, two is matcha powder, preferably organic, and number three is maca powder, preferably organic. So I'm going to teach you how to make this drink, what the benefits are, and the ingredients I use, which can also be substituted for other brands and other types as well.

Matt Finch: For those of you that know me, welcome back to the show. If this is your first time tuning in, my name is Matt Finch, I'm the cohost of the Elevation Recovery Podcast, and an addiction recovery coach, so I help people to heal from substance use disorder, whether it's alcohol use disorder, opioid use disorder, or anything else. My specialty is helping people quit alcohol and opioids and other CNS depressants, although I have helped people with addictions to cannabis, nicotine, stimulants, and other drugs.

Matt Finch: One of my background trainings, I used to be a certified substance abuse counselor, went to school for it, and worked in the traditional field of substance abuse counseling. After a few years of doing that, I launched my own coaching practice and my first addiction recovery website, and now it has been around seven years of being a private practice coach and creating lots of different online content.

Matt Finch: But one of my other background trainings that doesn't have to do necessarily with addiction recovery, although I have used a lot of this training for addiction recovery, is I'm an advanced food-based healing instructor. My teacher, Jeff Primack, the founder of Supreme Science Qigong, I went and did a lot of training and certifications for him for both qigong instruction and advanced food-based healing instruction. That food-based healing system has totally reshaped my life, and a lot of the stuff that I learned can be used for optimizing nutrition protocols for whether someone's quitting a substance cold turkey or tapering, whether they're going through post-acute withdrawal, or whether they're doing relapse prevention, trying to nail their own customized recovery diet, and this drink is a lot of the stuff actually that I learned from that training program. A couple of these ingredients that I'm going to share with you I learned about from that food healing system, very, very powerful superfood powders. So without further ado, let's get right into it.

Matt Finch: Number one ingredient is milk, and not just typical milk, I advise against it actually. A quick disclaimer, this is not medical advice, just for informational use, but not the regular milk at the store that you buy, because it's got hormones in it, it's pasteurized, a lot of stuff where it doesn't have as many nutrients, and it can have some nasty stuff in there like hormones that they feed to the cows, the poor inflammatory diets, et cetera. So the type of milk I use, which I'm going to share the brand in here for all these different ingredients, but I like to use raw grass-fed milk. So you can use raw milk or just regular grass-fed whole milk. I prefer whole milk, but it just really depends on what floats your boat. My favorite for this drink is raw grass-fed whole milk. You can also use just grass-fed milk, just organic milk.

Matt Finch: You can use goat milk, and I've actually used that before. Regular goat milk, raw goat milk. I've used organic almond milk. I've used organic coconut milk. I have not yet tried organic oat milk or organic hemp milk, but the type of milk doesn't really have to be specific, really comes down to what your preferences are, and also what you have in your local area. So those are the different types of milk, that's the base.

Matt Finch: With the raw grass-fed milk, raw milk has a lot of... A lot more enzymes. When the milk is not raw, then all of a sudden you lose a lot of the enzyme activation from the process of heating. So a lot of people don't like to drink raw milk because it can have chunks in it, depending on the brand. Some people, depending on where you live, it's actually pretty hard to get.

Matt Finch: I even live in a very health-conscious high population area in San Diego, California, and there's only one store that I know of, one grocery store in all the stores around me, and there's a lot, that has raw milk, nowhere else has it, so it can be slim pickings, but if you don't want to use raw milk or if you can't get it, like I said, no worries. Just any of these other ones, like I said, organic almond milk or regular almond milk if you can't even get organic. This is really not a big deal. Like I said, it just comes down to your personal preference, what you have in your area, but I love the grass-fed raw whole milk. It's got lots of enzymes, really high in protein.

Matt Finch: I don't mind the saturated fat at all, because I don't get a whole lot of saturated fat in my diet anyways, and good, healthy saturated fats, like from grass-fed rib eye and raw milk, and grass-fed unsalted butter, and other types of these saturated fats, they can actually help with testosterone, or for female sex hormone production, for neurotransmitters, and energy too, just mental health in general.

Matt Finch: So I know, depending on your unique biochemical individuality, and your unique food allergies and sensitivities and preferences, there can be a lot of range in what's going to be the most optimized for you, but out of all these different ones, milk, goat milk, almond milk, coconut milk, hemp milk, there's so many different types. I'm pretty sure there's going to be at least one, if not more, that you can use that will optimize your diet and create a good, healthy base for this Chocolate M-3 addiction recovery mental health elixir.

Matt Finch: Ingredient number two is maca. Maca is nicknamed Peruvian ginseng. If you've ever heard of ginseng, that's a Chinese adaptogen herb, which helps with energy, endurance, and can help to alleviate physical, environmental, and even psychological stress. Maca is a root, and it only grows, I believe, above the elevation of 14,000 feet in the Andes Mountains in Peru. So this stuff is, like I said, nicknamed Peruvian ginseng. It is an adaptogen, just like ginseng, and it is a root, just like ginseng, but it's not one of the different types of ginseng, just has some similar properties. I actually like maca better than most of the ginsengs that are available on the market.

Matt Finch: Maca has been shown in studies to increase endurance, increase energy. It is one of the most powerful and potent antidepressants, natural antidepressant foods on the planet. It is a gigantically awesome endocrine system optimizer. So alcohol, opioids, all these different types of drugs, methamphetamines, doesn't matter what the substance, if it's an addictive drug, even things like antidepressants, SSRIs and other... SNRIs and atypical antidepressants, a lot of these substances, drugs, alcohol, and even prescription drugs, prescription medicines for depression, for anxiety, they can really, really deplete our endocrine system.

Matt Finch: When I used to be addicted to alcohol, my endocrine system was screwed. My testosterone was super low, I was really tired and depressed without alcohol. Same thing happened when I took opioids on a regular basis, and then a daily basis. Opioids really, really can deplete the functioning of your endocrine system. That'll make you more tired, more depressed, you won't get as good sleep. For females, it can make your hormone, your monthly cycles all over the place. But maca here, this one little powdered superfood root, can really, really help, even just like one teaspoon every single morning, even something as small as that can really help to offset the damage that alcohol and/or drugs, or even prescription drugs, have been doing to your endocrine system.

Matt Finch: They can help men be a precursor to testosterone. They can help women to optimize their female hormones. Maca's a huge libido-enhancer. It can really, really enliven your sex life, your love life. For men that have not been able to get an erection, or get a powerful erection, or sustain an erection, maca can be a very good remedy. So some of the main benefits are it's really good for endurance, it offsets fatigue, it helps with stress, and it's an antidepressant too, and it boosts your libido. In Chinese medicine, and I know this is not a Chinese herb, but Chinese medicine theory, anything that can enhance your libido is also typically really good for your health and really good for your mood. Think about it, have you ever been really horny and also been depressed at the same time? I can't remember a time that that happened to me.

Matt Finch: So the type I use is organic gelatinized maca root powder. The gelatinized just makes it easier to digest, it's definitely not required. There's raw maca, organic maca, gelatinized maca, red maca, black maca, and maybe even a few other varieties. Towards the end of this video, I'm going to show you the exact type of maca and the exact brand I use. I get this all, it's at the health food store called Sprouts, I'm not sure how big of a chain it is. Here in Southern California, Sprouts is a really big chain. You can also order these off Amazon, order them off other websites. And you know what? With all these products I want to talk about, the brand isn't important, as long as you're getting something that's good. There's plenty of different good brands of all of these different ingredients for the Chocolate M-3 elixir.

Matt Finch: Number three is organic matcha powder. Well, doesn't have to be organic, but that's definitely preferable. Matcha is the most powerful type of green tea. If you've ever had green tea before, you put the tea leaves or the ground-up tea leaves into the hot water and you make tea. Matcha is a powder, so it's a specific type of green tea and it's powdered, thus it's more concentrated. Matcha has low levels of caffeine in it, and caffeine can increase dopamine, norepinephrine, so it can give you some focus, some motivation, some mental and even physical energy. It's also very high in a non-dietary amino acid called L-theanine. When I say non-dietary, I mean that it's not one of the essential amino acids that we need to get from foods and/or supplements otherwise our body's not going to work properly, this is kind of like an extra credit one.

Matt Finch: L-theanine is very powerful as a mood booster. L-theanine can help to offset caffeine jitters, and it also boosts the following neurotransmitters, dopamine, GABA, and serotonin. So three of these bliss-inducing, mood-enhancing neurotransmitters that can often become deficient when people are using alcohol and/or drugs on a regular basis. Dopamine helps with motivation, reward, a sense of pleasure, focus, drive, and serotonin is like an emotional relaxant, and GABA is like a mental and physical relaxant.

Matt Finch: GABA is an inhibitory neurotransmitter, which slow down brain impulses, and so L-theanine can be really, really, really good for anxiety. Some people take the L-theanine supplements, which come in liquids, easy melts, and capsules. And of course, the best way to absorb nutrients is through food. When we take supplements, unless they're whole food supplements, typically the supplements are semisynthetic or synthetic, and a lot of the times, we don't absorb a lot of the supplements that we're taking, especially if they're things like tablets or capsules from semisynthetic or synthetic sources.

Matt Finch: So with matcha, it's not going to have as much L-theanine as you would get from a supplement, but it is going to absorb a lot better, plus you're going to get all the other things packed inside matcha that God put in there for us to use and benefit from. L-theanine also puts our brains into alpha waves. The day-to-day kind of waking daytime brainwaves are typically beta waves, and that can lead to anxiety, neuroticism, worrisome thoughts, especially if you're trying to quit alcohol or opioids or benzos or another CNS depressant, that can exacerbate anxiety, that can lead to anxiety, that can exacerbate anxiety disorders. So matcha's really, really good as a natural anxiolytic, and these alpha brainwaves are the brainwaves one step lower than beta waves. Alpha waves is like a meditative, hypnotic kind of idling brainwave state that fights off anxiety. I don't think it's possible to have much if any anxiety when you're in low alpha brainwave state.

Matt Finch: Matcha also is really high in EGCG and some polyphenols, which are very, very powerful antioxidants. They can help you to lose weight. What I've noticed when I drink this Chocolate M-3 in the morning, with all these different superfoods, powdered superfoods, totally micronutrient-dense, just packed in there, is not only do I feel great and it gives me a lot of non-jittery energy, but it helps me to not crave crappy foods and crappy drinks and junk foods throughout the rest of the day. When you're giving your body such a powerful micronutrient, and with the milk, macronutrient powerhouse, giving yourself all these great things, well, all of a sudden, you might find that you don't have cravings to drink that day. You don't have cravings to eat junk food or binge on sugar.

Matt Finch: Moving along, number four, and the final ingredient, is cacao powder, preferably organic cacao powder. And again, I'm going to show you the brand that I use for all these, and I get everything at the Sprouts grocery store, depending on the Sprouts. Different Sprouts might not have it, but again, all of these are easily orderable online. So organic cacao powder has a little bit of caffeine in it, not a whole lot, that's the type that I use, I think for one serving, it has like 39 milligrams of caffeine, so not a lot of caffeine at all, but some. And like I said, that increases dopamine, norepinephrine, can increase motivation, feelings of pleasure, drive.

Matt Finch: This organic cacao powder also is really high in polyphenols. Polyphenols are extremely healthy antioxidants. So what antioxidants do is they help to neutralize free radicals in your body, that is to neutralize and eradicate oxidative stress. I've heard from really smart specialist nutritionist doctors in the past, saying that most people's mental and physical health disorders are either largely in part, and for some, completely in part, to either inflammation or free radicals, or a combination of both inflammation and free radicals.

Matt Finch: So when you have the powerful polyphenol antioxidants in this cacao, powerful polyphenol antioxidants in the matcha powder, not only are you getting a low dose caffeinated beverage, but it's also a high dose, very high dose, polyphenols, these super plant antioxidants that are just so good for us. Cacao also is pretty high in a compound called theobromine. Theobromine is a lot like caffeine. I think I might even like it better than caffeine, and it's very synergistic with caffeine, which the cacao and matcha have in it. Theobromine is a stimulant, it can increase dopamine. So again, motivation, energy, endurance, drive, feelings of pleasure. It can offset or can fight depression big time.

Matt Finch: And guess what? This organic cacao powder tastes delicious. It's not really sweetened, so not on its own, but when I mix it with the raw grass-fed milk, well, that raw grass-fed milk has lactose in it. Lactose is a type of sugar, and this sugar is sweet, so I don't even need to add any type of natural sweeteners, any type of sugar sweeteners or anything for my beverage when I make the Chocolate M-3 with the whole milk, getting all that powerful fat in there too. So with the saturated fat in a good amount, and with the lactose in a good amount, that makes it taste delicious, chocolate whole milk. This is a chocolate whole milk beverage that is not like a regular chocolate milk that you buy at the typical grocery store like Vons or Ralphs or Albertsons, no, no, no, no, no, something that's packed with hormones, packed with high-fructose corn syrup or some other type of... Just high sugar amounts in there.

Matt Finch: Cacao, organic powdered cacao, is such an awesome superfood, and all these things that I'm talking about are pretty inexpensive too. The grass-fed raw whole milk that I get is not cheap, but when I'm only drinking eight to 12 ounces a day, it's actually very affordable, and all these powdered superfoods, the cacao, the matcha and the maca, these are all almost dirt cheap. I mean, it's like really... Since you only need between a teaspoon and a few teaspoons of all these different ingredients, one bag can last a long time, so this is a very affordable whole food delicious addiction recovery mental health elixir, and even physical health elixir.

Matt Finch: Here are the directions for Chocolate M-3, or you could call it CM-3 if you like for short. It does take a blender if you want to make it easy. You don't need a blender, you can put it all in a shaker cup, that works too. Doing it, mixing it all up with the spoon is a bit difficult, just because you got to use a few tablespoons of the cacao powder, and I've tried this before, it just didn't go as good, plus I couldn't get the texture nice and creamy and frothy unless I was using either a shaker cup, or even better, a blender.

Matt Finch: So the preferred way is to put it all into a blender. First, you put the eight to 12 ounces of milk in a blender, then you put the powdered ingredients, three powdered ingredients, M-3, milk, maca, matcha, that's the M-3, and then cacao, so Chocolate M-3. Eight to 12 ounces of your type of desired milk, one to three teaspoons of maca root powder. I usually put a whole tablespoon in, which I think is around two and a half teaspoons, I think. One to two teaspoons of matcha powder, and two to four tablespoons of cacao powder.

Matt Finch: Preferably, you want your maca and matcha and cacao organic, and if not, if it's not possible, no worries, but just try and get the milk grass-fed if you can. If all else, if you're using cow milk, try to get at least grass-fed, or use like an organic almond. Most of the grocery stores nowadays have a lot of organic and grass-fed options. So it's not necessary, it's not mandatory, but grass-fed and organic, those types of ingredients are usually the best, albeit the most expensive too.

Matt Finch: So again, I'll repeat, you add eight to 12 ounces of your desired type of milk to the blender, you can add more if you like. You add one to three teaspoons of maca root powder, I'm going to share in a minute what kind I use. I use an organic gelatinized maca powder. One to two teaspoons of matcha powder, preferably organic, and two to four tablespoons of cacao powder, preferably organic, then you blend for 30 seconds. You can also blend it for less if you like, you can blend it for more. You can add ice cubes with it if you like. You can add a banana, either a room-temperature banana or a frozen banana, I've done both those before. Oh, that makes it taste even better, makes it more filling too, it's really like a meal when you add a banana in there. Frozen banana, some cold milk, put the rest of the stuff in there, maybe even some ice in there. You could add some peanut butter to it if you wanted to, or some walnut butter or some almond butter, lots of different things that you could add to it.

Matt Finch: Sometimes I add my Dragon Herbs powders and Dragon Herbs liquid extracts in there, more tonic adaptogen whole food supplements that just help with addiction recovery, mental health, and physical health, even more. I don't want to give you analysis paralysis, wanted to make it real simple and not give you too many different extra add-on options, because then it takes away the simplicity, and complexity is the enemy of execution. So I actually do a Chocolate M-4, with another ingredient that starts with M, but I don't want to totally fire-hose you with information, so maybe in a future episode, we can talk about more of these types of elixirs and get more technical, but for this, now you know the directions and the ingredients and the benefits for Chocolate M-3 or CM-3, this delicious elixir.

Matt Finch: The type, the brand I use for the powdered ingredients, is Navitas or Navitas, I'm not sure how to pronounce it. It's N-A-V-I-T-A-S, Navitas or Navitas Organics. Navitas Organics, Navitas Organics. So, they have an organic maca powder. I use the gelatinized one, but they also have a regular one. Again, the gelatinized just makes... You can digest it easier. It's not mandatory. And the same brand, I use their organic cacao powder. These are all plant-based superfood powders. This brand is really affordable, you get a pretty decent-sized bag of all these, and most of them are really inexpensive. I think the matcha is the most expensive. Yeah, and I use the same brand, Navitas, Navitas Organics, organic matcha powder. All plant-based superfoods. Premium green tea powder right here.

Matt Finch: The grocery store I go to, Sprouts, they've got an end cap at the end of an aisle where it's got this brand, there's a whole bunch of different products, these are just a few of them. Some of the other stuff they have... And I don't make any money from this company, this is not like an ad or a sponsorship or anything, it's just a really good deal. They got great tasting stuff, works really well, and inexpensive and very convenient when I go to the grocery store, and it's all right there next to each other, I can just, boom, boom. "Oh, I'm out of matcha," get some more of that. "Oh, I'm out of cacao," get some more of that.

Matt Finch: And then for the organic raw milk, grass-fed raw milk I use, it's called Organic Pastures. They also have this at the Sprouts that I go to, but as I was saying earlier, I don't know a single other grocery store in all of... All of the grocery stores in my radius, in my area of where I shop, this is the only store that I see that has any raw milk whatsoever. This is the only brand they have, luckily I really love it. It's Organic Pastures grass-fed, grass-grazed raw milk. Delicious, not too chunky, and if you shake it up real good, it's not chunky at all, then of course, when you blend it, it is nice and smooth.

Matt Finch: But in the past, I've had other good brands of raw grass-fed milk. Nowadays, it just seems much harder to come by. Not as many options for me, just one option at one store, but I've also used organic almond milk, organic coconut milk. You could also put hemp milk in there, what I was saying earlier, oat milk, and I have used regular goat milk and raw goat milk. At Sprouts, I get raw goat milk sometimes. I do not particularly like the taste of raw goat milk. I like their regular goat milk, the taste, much better.

Matt Finch: But my favorite as far as taste is this raw grass-fed milk. My daughter Willow, I make her this Chocolate M-3 sometimes. I put less of the superfood powders in there, because she's only 11, but she'll be 12 soon, and boy, she's really, really tall, I think she's five foot six. She is going to be 12 February 20th, and she's in sixth grade. She's taller in sixth grade as a female than I was the start of my sophomore year in high school as a male. The doctor that did her physical last said that based on the information she had, Willow might be six foot one to six foot three. I'm six foot three and a quarter inch, her birth mother is five foot 10, and so she's already just sprouting.

Matt Finch: I spend a lot of money, a lot of the money I spend is on food for her. She eats and eats and eats and eats, and it's really expensive, but I love it, because of course she's my kid, and that's the best thing for me to spend money on, is housing and food, healthy food for Willow and myself, and our bird Papaya. Right, Papaya? You like to share healthy foods and beverages with me, right? She's awfully quiet today.

Matt Finch: All right, that's all I have for today. Thank you so much for tuning in. Now you have one more resource available. Actually, several resources if you consider maca as a supplement, matcha as a supplement, cacao powder as a supplement, raw grass-fed milk as a health beverage, depending on your biochemistry and diet plan, et cetera. So that's actually several different resources, four, and you can add them all together to make this one beverage, Chocolate M-3. Thanks so much, and I'll see you next time.