Natural Ways To Optimize Your Recovery From Alcohol and/or Drugs

Whether a person is still drinking daily, regularly, or has even quit alcohol for some time, there are many ways to optimize health and the recovering process. Alcohol over-consumption can lead to severe liver toxicity. In the most extreme cases, this can be irreversible or even life-threatening.

Thus, the sooner a person begins optimizing their health the better. And in episode 233 of Elevation Recovery, Chris Scott and Matt Finch discuss many of the liver health-boosting natural therapies they’ve used to repair this vital organ after quitting drinking.

Liver Recovery After Stopping Drinking

Even moderate alcohol use can be deleterious to the liver, an indispensable organ that filters toxins. There is a high degree of correlation between liver health and mental functioning.

Symptoms of liver issues brought on by alcohol use can include:

  • Sluggishness
  • Skin rashes
  • Confusion
  • Headaches
  • Frequent illness
  • Pain in the upper right quadrant of the abdomen
  • Yellowing of skin or eyes (jaundice)

Actually, the last point above is a symptom of an inflamed pancreas. But if this situation is caused by alcohol consumption, then you can bet that your liver is not functioning at 100% either.

Alcohol is not the only compound that can jeopardize liver health.

Pollution, infections, lack of sleep, antidepressants, OTC painkillers, and a poor diet can all contribute to liver dysfunction.

Because there are no pain receptors in the liver itself (only in the capsule surrounding it), people with liver injuries sometimes have no idea that something is wrong.

Natural Liver Recovery Foods & Supplements

There is quite an impressive list of dietary supplements, foods, and other natural therapeutics for liver recovery after stopping drinking. The key is to learn about these and then take action on what makes sense to you and resonates with you.

Learning about all of these on your own can take a lot of time and energy… although it’s always worth it.

Here are some epic resources that you might enjoy on this topic:

Natural Ways To Optimize Your Recovery From Alcohol and/or Drugs

To address this topic in a fun and empowering conversation-style tutorial, Chris Scott and Matt Finch created a podcast episode where you’ll learn some of the best new supplements and other natural modalities they’ve used to continue their brain-body health optimization over the span of many years.

By watching, reading, or listening to this resource-packed podcast episode, you’ll get lots of ideas on how to radically enhance the state of your liver health, brain health, and more.

Here are some ways to learn from this episode:

Chris Scott: How long do I take this stuff? The answer is, it depends on your own biochemistry, it depends on your own subjective experience. I think we are starting to see tests come out that can help people really quantify this and analyze this, but until then trial and error is a great place to start.

Matt Finch: The untapped human potential is just, it's ridiculous. Our untapped potential, so there's so much to work with there and we have developed so fast technologically yet our spirituality and our consciousness, optimization has fallen behind.

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

Matt Finch: Greetings and welcome to episode 233 of the show, my name's Matt Finch, and I'm joined with my good friend and cohost, Chris Scott, my sidekick, Papaya, the green-cheeked conure. I am drinking Gerolsteiner, if that's how to pronounce it, sparkling natural mineral water, which you turned me on to, Chris. Natural mineral water, high mineral content, and this is from Germany. And I find that not only is it naturally carbonated, one container has what? 80 milligrams of magnesium. Let's see, 260 milligrams of calcium and some other minerals in there as well. I'm not sure if you've had that POP ROCKS candy? There's a type of candy called POP ROCKS, you open up the packet, dump it in your mouth, and it kind of pops and fizzles, this is kind of a similar version to that.

Matt Finch: So number one, I love the taste of it, number two, I love the health benefits of it, I drink it at night a lot, sometimes in the day. They sell it right down the street, I don't make any money from recommending this. Just like we always do, Chris, when we're trying new products, whether they're supplements or German waters or CB drinks, or even the clothing that we wear, like these cool shirts from old Navy, I think you're probably wearing a [inaudible 00:02:13] shirt. And so it's fun for me to share this type of stuff with our audience because it's just, I love it when people tell me about great stuff, and you and I have learned a bunch of these things from each other. So everything you learn about, I get to benefit from and vice versa.

Chris Scott: Yeah, this is a [inaudible 00:02:30] shirt. I'm jealous of your, I always said [inaudible 00:02:33], maybe it's Gerolsteiner. But they're flying off shelves, I guess maybe because we've mentioned it before. Every time I go to Whole Foods, it's like there's two left and I would buy eight of them, if I could. I've got my lemon LaCroix here, and also my Spring Dragon Tea, which is my go-to. I either have that, or green tea when I do a podcast. And I mean, I'd probably drink two or three cups of that single day, I just don't feel totally optimized without it. And lately, I actually had an appointment this morning with my functional medicine doctor to go over blood work, I got blood work done every couple of months, just to keep track of things and see what's going on.

Chris Scott: And I feel like she it's bittersweet when I come in for her, because we have a great time talking, but I always make her late for her next patient. So we're talking about everything and anything, and she wants to know how the Fit Recovery people are doing and how the podcast is going. But one of the things that was really interesting about this morning, besides me trying to sell her on adaptogenic tea, that I also have no financial interest in, I just love it. Was the fact that, so I started doing this in 2019, going through a functional medicine doctor, and my liver enzymes have been getting steadily better since 2019. They weren't scary elevated, but they were still elevated. And the only thing I can conclude is that, because even in 2019 I was still what? Five years off of alcohol.

Chris Scott: I have to conclude that it's just like continuing diet changes optimization. At some point, I realized that, NAC, N-acetyl cysteine, which is at risk of being banned, that it was really useful for me and that it gave me some energy, and that if I ever have a period where I feel sluggish, it helps me sleep better, I breathe easier and I have a little more energy. And it's also really powerful for liver detoxification. So I'm wondering if, maybe I didn't do enough liver detox, when I quit drinking years ago. And, I mean, obviously I'd eat a lot of meat, and I work out a lot, and I wouldn't say I have a low stress life, I have a Type A personality, and I tend to take on a lot of projects. So those things can contribute to higher liver enzymes.

Chris Scott: Again, even in 2019, it wasn't alcoholic type liver enzymes, my liver enzymes were off the chart when I quit drinking. I definitely had fatty liver, I may have had alcoholic steatosis. I guess I didn't have cirrhosis, but we didn't do a biopsy or find out, or try to do some ultrasound. I was just kind of hoping that I didn't, but given the amount I was drinking, it wouldn't have been necessarily surprising. I was up to a handle of hard liquor a day by the time I quit, and I'd been drinking for over a decade, even at a relatively young age. But I found it very interesting that the continued optimization I'm doing is still over time decreasing my liver enzymes, and I do feel better over time. And part is of that supplementation, part of it is really good workouts I get with my MMA coach, who's a retired UFC fighter.

Chris Scott: And I've been shifting from really heavy weights, which I did from about 2014, when I quit drinking, until about three years ago, when I started doing the MMA stuff. I was doing a lot of deadlifts, and I still do deadlifts once a week. I used to do deadlifts like three times a week, pyramid sets-

Matt Finch: I remember that.

Chris Scott: ... just nothing but deadlifts for an hour or plus. And I got great results from that, from a strength perspective, but I've kind of mixed things up. I think I probably reduced stress a little bit, even though my MMA workouts are still growing. I'm not quite as hard on myself as I used to be on, I've calmed down a little bit, I think you can probably say the same for you. And so anyway, there's a number of factors, I don't know how to disaggregate them accurately, but I'm still experiencing benefits of optimization, even now seven plus years after I transcended alcohol, and I found that interesting. So, of course, also we check things like inflammatory markers, cholesterol and everything. But I found that that was kind of the takeaway today, and I don't know, Matt, did you ever get your liver enzymes checked or was that something that you noticed when you quit drinking?

Matt Finch: I actually have never had my liver enzymes checked in my entire life, but my parents are both really popular master herbalists, and my mom would tell me so often, whether I was living with them at the time or whether I was on my own. I would tell her about these symptoms I was having, for example, like the bottom of my foot would be cramped and hurting, or my face would be kind of puffy and swollen or over here, my lower back kind of side area would be aching. I would have acne, I'd have mood swings and irritation, and proneness to anger, and a lot of other symptoms. And it was funny almost all the time, my mom would correlate those symptoms with, "Your liver is..." She wouldn't say the word, fucked, but in different words that was basically what she was saying was, "You're bingeing on alcohol, you're taking all sorts of other drugs, you're eating tons of sugar, junk food, fast food, burgers, burritos, sandwiches."

Matt Finch: Back then I had a soda with almost every meal too, and so I know I had serious liver problems, big time. And, but yeah, I've never had them tested. What I've found is that a lot of herbs, NAC, first of all, and I'm almost kind of a little bit hesitant to speak about it, but I don't care, we'll speak about it, just because some of the things that you and I have talked about on air. I remember, one time when I went to order that Spring Dragon Longevity Tea, they weren't in stock. And I had clients that were trying to order, they were emailing me. "It's not in stock." And I was like, "Oh my goodness, people are buying this stuff up all of a sudden." And so I hope that doesn't happen with NAC, but you know what? We're not greedy, so we'll share these resources with everyone because people trying to overcome alcohol or drug addiction or both, they need these things more than we do.

Matt Finch: So NAC has been all those benefits that you mentioned, more energy, clear headedness, helps you get out of fatigue, reduces liver toxic burden. I get all that stuff too, but one of the things is really good skin benefits, really good mood benefits. In fact, that's really the biggest reason I take 1200 milligrams every morning and usually every evening too. About 45 minutes before eating, it's the best way to not only boost glutathione, well, not the best way that I've taken, and I've never taken glutathione injections or infusions, which I'd expect would be better. But the real reason I use NAC, primarily, is my mood. Remember I used to have generalized anxiety and really bad social anxiety. My generalized anxiety would be from mild to moderate, most of the time, from even when I was a little kid. Even as a little kid, I was anxious.

Matt Finch: Social anxiety was from moderate to severe, to so bad, I couldn't go into a lot of stores. I was afraid to go to certain grocery stores and places to eat. Oh, social anxiety is so weird. So, of course, I do a lot of things nowadays for my mood health and physical health, but NAC is, I think, one of the main things that I use to where my mood, I don't get anxious anymore. I cannot remember the last time I got anxious. It's been so long, I can't remember the last time I got depressed. I can't even remember the last time I was socially anxious in a social setting. Regarding the liver stuff too, my dad makes this product called a Nerve Aid. So, again, for people that know about my parents, they've been on here several times, I think their website is selfhealschool.com, and my dad makes a bunch of herbal products. One of them is called Nerve Aid.

Matt Finch: The funny thing is most of the Nerve Aid that he makes, he drinks himself, and so it's hardly ever for sale. I remember a bunch of my friends back in the day were trying to quit drinking. They're like, "Matt, can I get some of your dad's Nerve Aid, that you let me try?" And it was so hard to get these people trying to quit alcohol a bottle of my dad's Nerve Aid because he's like, "Oh, I've got to make some more." And then I had to check in with him in a week, be like, "What's up with that Nerve Aid?" He's like, "Oh, I only have enough for myself." And so what's in it, is it has, I think, not Korbel Brandy, I think that's what he used to do. He used to use Korbel Brandy, it's some gnarly type of high potency alcohol, hard liquor to the extreme, that he uses to extract these sedative herbs.

Matt Finch: I think there's passion flower, valerian root, skullcap, perhaps, maybe lemon balm, I forget. The main ones are passion flower and valerian, and there's other nerving sedative herbs. And he also puts a hefty dosage of a milk thistle in there, as well. In fact, he teaches his herb students in their classes, how to, it's like harm reduction. How to go out, if they're going to party and go drinking, how to not quite megadose milk thistle, but moderately dose it before you go drinking, and that the main alkaloid in there is sylimarin, and that kind of protects your liver from the toxic effects of alcohol to where, if you do it the correct way my dad says, I don't think I believe this, at least to the extent that he talks about it. You don't get a hangover or you get much less hangover symptoms.

Matt Finch: So I'm not recommending people go do that, I'm not recommending go take a bunch of milk thistle before you drink, but that's a really good... And you've written about this, Chris, I know on the Fit Recovery website, because I read one of those articles. I think it's even in your course, Total Alcohol Recovery 2.0. You did a fantastic article on something like, Liver Repair After Quitting Drinking? And if you were to go back and rewrite that, I'm sure nowadays you'd probably add NAC to it. NAC, milk thistle, turmeric powder, especially turmeric powder combined with BioPerine, which is a kind of not brand name, but kind of blends name for black pepper or black pepper extract, which I forget the amount, but I believe it boosts the efficacy and the absorption of the turmeric powder by 2000%, something like that, I could be off.

Matt Finch: And my mom's just so big into this, Chinese medicine's big into this, most American adults have either a mild, moderate or severely toxic liver, liver burden, toxic liver burden. All these different edible food like substances, boxed foods, packaged foods, eating out, alcohol, cigarettes, too much caffeine, stress, all these things put so much pressure and burden on our livers. Gosh, and that's one of the things when people do liver cleanses, a bunch of fresh fruits and vegetables and lots of lemon water, and liver cleansing herbs, and maybe some colon cleansing stuff in there too. A one or two week liver cleanse, peoples have more energy, they get better sleep. Their skin's better, they're in a much better mood, they're having healthy bowel movements and elimination more.

Matt Finch: So yeah, most Americans and I'd expect most kind of developed countries, like we're in, where people are just, we're so far away from living like our ancestors did, walking barefoot with no shoes on the surface of the earth, being so surrounded by nature, drinking nothing but fresh water from the Springs, and just everything was fresh. The no pollution in the environment from all these power plants, 80 years ago, atomic bombs that have been dropped, nuclear reactors spills and everything. It's so much toxic shit, that even if people are on a healthy diet, just all this stuff in our air and in the atmosphere from all those, modern man just basically destroying mother earth. So I think liver repair, no matter what someone's recovering from, physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual liver repairs, it's a great one to optimize, it's so important.

Chris Scott: Right? Yeah. And I'd add a few things to that. I actually have been taking turmeric for the last couple of years, maybe the last year and a half. I haven't always taken it, I originally started taking it to reduce inflammation in my joints for MMA, boxing and Muay Thai, and that kind of stuff, getting slammed on the ground. So I would take that and tart cherry, which is also really good for the joints and for reducing inflammation, some very powerful antioxidants. You can drink the tart cherry juice, or you can take it in capsule form. And I also like to drink... Well, actually I should say, as far as the turmeric, I take BCM-95, which is supposed to be as well absorbed, if not better as the BioPerine, the black pepper.

Chris Scott: I'm not sure which is better, I know that people use both, because turmeric on its own, you can eat a lot of turmeric and it's good for you, but you don't absorb as much curcumin, which is the active compound there. I like to drink organic, unsweetened, pure lemon juice. I do that when I go on vacation because sometimes when I go on vacation, even if I've been there before and I've stayed at the hotel that I was at in San Diego, a number of times, for some reason, it's like my whole digestive system just stops and I feel like my detoxification system stopped. And I don't know if it's because I've been sitting on a plane for awhile or what, but a little bit of the Gerolsteiner, if I can find it, mixed with the organic lemon juice, it's perfect, it's not sweet. I guess someone could add Stevia or monkfruit, if they wanted to, or some honey.

Chris Scott: But I kind of embraced the sour the same way I like to embrace the bitter, things with bitter tastes are supposed to be good for delivers. So if you can find a non-alcoholic bitters, then that would be something that might help to kind of spark the production of gastric juices or bile. And while we're on this topic of liver, artichokes are supposed to be good for the liver as well, there's some evidence there. I guess that's another fissilly type of plant. I recall reading somewhere that fissilly types of plants, and I know that's an extremely unscientific term, but they tend for whatever reason to be good for the liver. So I found that to be interesting, milk thistle and artichoke and I'm sure there are some others, but I've forgotten them.

Chris Scott: And I should say, I'm not an expert in medicinal herbs or even medicinal foods. You and I, we're both generalists, but we have done a lot of research on this kind of stuff for ourselves, and I wouldn't be surprised if the combination of all of this stuff has been helping me continue to optimize over time. My sense of wellbeing still improves seven years after transcending alcohol, and I haven't necessarily been perfect to myself either. I've had periods of sleep deprivation, I've had periods of adding too much stress, I've had periods of probable over-training, although it's been a while since I've actually over-trained. I've had periods of eating crappy food, it's like a tradition now, every time I land in California, I go to In-N-Out.

Chris Scott: I mean, it's not even something I plan, it just happens. I get so excited that I see In-N-Out, which is one of like two fast food chains that I actually can eat without having to run to the bathroom afterwards or feeling sick to my stomach. And it's that and Chick-fil-A, I can do Chick-fil-A maybe three times a year and I can do In-N-Out whenever I land in California, and I usually get In-N-Out one more time before I leave, if I'm on a week long trip. So yeah, I haven't been always perfect, and I'm sure I put stress on my liver. Alcohol is not the only thing that's bad for the liver, although it's probably one of the worst things for the liver. And it's a good thing to keep up the optimization, People are always asking, "How long do I take the supplements for alcohol recovery?"

Chris Scott: I mean, and it's a valid question, because I was concerned as well when I stumbled across the first resource that I could find on that topic, which was, Joan Matthews Larson, Seven Weeks to Sobriety, which is a masterpiece. At this point, there are some parts in it that could be updated with some newer supplements and things that we know and maybe some lifestyle strategies. And I have my own opinion about whether or not alcohol addiction is a permanent long-term biochemical disorder. I do think it is a biochemical disorder and a severe one for people who are actively addicted, but anyway, fantastic book. And she recommends you do this for a set period of time, often three months for most people, and she uses megadoses for people. So there were certain things that I took for say a year, and then I stopped, like DLPA was one of those things.

Chris Scott: DL-Phenylalanine an amino acid that helps to boost naturally your endorphins and dopamine, and I took one capsule of that everyday, for a year. I'm sure some people are sick of me saying that because I've said it before in lots of videos, but I bring that up because I didn't have to take everything else. And as a megadose every day, I didn't have to take all the amino acids. Like 5-HTP, I took for two to four weeks, probably around three weeks, and after that I started rather than it making me calm and sleepy, it actually made me agitated. So the interesting thing there, serotonin in excess causing similar symptoms as a serotonin deficiency. And because I had done my research, I knew that, so I was like, "All right, time to stop taking 5-HTP. But six months down the road, I decided to stop taking the DLPA, and I felt a little bit sluggish.

Chris Scott: I didn't feel bad, but I didn't feel totally optimal, started taking it again, felt great. A year later, after I started taking it, I experimented with stopping it and I didn't feel any difference when I stopped it, so I took that to mean that my endorphins and dopamine had been boosted. And of course, that wasn't the only thing I took for those neuro chemicals, I took Mucuna pruriens, at times that took L-tyrosine for a while. Eventually I stopped the L-tyrosine because it was making me a bit, well, jittery is not the word, overstimulated would be the word. And I didn't get that effect from DLPA, probably because it's a combination of two amino acids and the LPA was in a lower dosage than the L-tyrasine had been. But I'm trying to walk through the thought processes that I had, that can hopefully help people answer the question of, "How long do I take this stuff?"

Chris Scott: The answer is, it depends on your own biochemistry, it depends on your own subjective experience. I think we are starting to see tests come out, that can help people really quantify this and analyze this, but until then, trial and error is a great place to start. Some people do start immediately with tests, or they might get Julia Ross's program or Chris Engen's, program and they can fill out questionnaires and they can start megadosing. There's always going to be a little bit of trial and error, but I'd say for a lot of people just starting out, infuse yourself with nutrients. These are very benign compounds for the most part, and when they're not you'll know why it's contraindicated. For example, serotonin precursor amino acids and SSRIs are contraindicated, and that's just one example, there are some others.

Chris Scott: But most people can benefit greatly from just starting this adventure, I say that because the word journey is so cliched. You start this adventure, you start infusing yourself with nutrients and then down the line, you figure, "Oh, I've been stressed. It's been a while since I took 300 milligrams of magnesium, because I think I repaired that deficiency. But maybe I can take it for sleep, when I feel like I'm stressed out." And then it works. And so you end up with all of these tools that help you for the rest of your life. And here I am, I'm seven years transcended from alcohol, and yet, I bet, 20 or hopefully 30 or 40 years from now, I'll still know the same compounds and hopefully even more, that can help me fine tune

Matt Finch: A lot of good stuff in there. I'll try and remember the points I wanted to pick up on. One of them, for sure, was the unsweetened fresh lemon juice, right? I think you buy it in Concentrate's, right? And [crosstalk 00:24:29]-

Chris Scott: It's [crosstalk 00:24:30] in a bottle, most of the time. Although, not just Whole Foods, I think they actually sold the same brand at CVS. But yeah, it's just a good, I don't know if it's from Concentrate, I think it's just fresh squeezed, it's in a glass bottle. [crosstalk 00:24:43]-

Matt Finch: Oh, okay. I got you.

Chris Scott: ... Yeah.

Matt Finch: I got you. Oh yeah, yeah. I was thinking one of those plastic organic lemon juice from Concentrate. Well, yeah, that's much more convenient than what I do, and I go on phases of it. Right now I have three big old juicy, giant organic Meyers lemons, you ever had those, they're super juicy, they have so much lemon juice?

Chris Scott: My parents actually grow them, sorry to interrupt you.

Matt Finch: Oh.

Chris Scott: But the funny thing is they gave them to me and I thought they were oranges. So I peeled one and started eating it, and it was only then that I realized it was a lemon.

Matt Finch: Oh.

Chris Scott: But, I mean, when you're expecting a lemon, it's fine, when you're expecting an orange, it's different. But I did turn that into lemonade, actually, I took some monkfruit crystals that I had, and formed a simple syrup and mixed it with the fresh squeezed Meyer lemon juice, it was amazing.

Matt Finch: This is the first time ever, Papaya, just sneezed on me. Now she sneezed on my shoulder many times before, over the five years or whatever I've had her, but that's the first time, just now, that I actually felt the sneeze on my neck right here. I hope you're not getting sick. [Willow 00:25:56], has a little bit of a minor cold and she's at her grandparent's house, and my sister has a minor cold. But, yeah, speaking of the lemon juice, such a liver detoxifier. One of the times I went and saw an acupuncturist, I know that I was fatigued back then, this was probably five or six years ago. And I was feeling fatigued and I think that was the main thing, I felt depleted. You know how when your body's just running on empty, you're just like, "Gosh, I don't have any juice in my batteries."

Matt Finch: And so, I needed something more than just what I was doing. So, I think it was like a Grubhub coupon or, yeah, I got a Grubhub coupon for a gift, for either my birthday or Christmas, I think it was. And so out of the things I could choose from, one of them was a free acupuncture appointment, I think it was maybe, even like an hour long. Maybe it wasn't free, maybe it was a really reduced price. And so their goal with those things is to get you in to have their service at a reduced price or free, And then you hopefully like it and will sign up. So I didn't sign up for anything extra, but the acupuncturist, she was like, "Oh yeah, your liver is messed up." And it was the main thing back then. So she told me, "Do you drink water with fresh squeezed lemon juice in there, some lemon juice?"

Matt Finch: I was like, "I've done that a bunch in the past, right now, I haven't been doing it for awhile." So that was one of the things she wanted me to put on my treatment plan. Another thing, she recommended more acupuncture visits, but I didn't really like the facility too much. Plus my mom's, one of her best friends is an acupuncturist, I'd rather go to her. They also gave me this kind of foot bath thing, I really wish I could remember the name of the treatment, that type of therapy. I forget what it was, but you stick both your feet in this, it looks like a little foot bath, and I don't remember what they put in there. But it's a certain time you go in there, and there might've even been like some type of machine stuff hooked into it, where it was like in maybe electromagnetic treatment.

Matt Finch: Anyways, long story short, depending on what color the water turns afterwards, it gives you kind of a subjective readout, really, on how optimized your health is in that regard. I wish I could remember more. Other things you were saying too, micronutrients, number one, lots of water then also micronutrients. I get that question a lot too. "How long am I going to have to take all these supplements for?" Not everyone asks me that, but it's pretty common. And my whole thing is it's so different for everyone. I've known people that didn't take any supplements and they recovered just fine. Typically it was people that ate a really good organic diet, got a lot of sunshine. I remember this one person, he was actually a vegan.

Matt Finch: He quit alcohol, maybe in his 40s, he was a vegan, but he ate really healthy for a vegan, he did a lot of outside gardening, he did a whole bunch of yoga, lots of sunlight, meditation. He didn't have a lot of stress, overall in his life after he quit drinking, and so he never used a supplement. I also had met this guy, many years ago now, at a kind of local San Diego county outpatient treatment program, and I think he's probably in his fifties, maybe mid fifties. In any ways, he was the founder and the treatment coordinator, the clinical director. And when I went and talked to him, my friend found him on LinkedIn and she was like, "Hey, Matt, I think you and this guy could help each other out." And so I was like, "All right, I'll check it out." So the guy messages me from LinkedIn, he's like, "Hey, we can help each other out. Let's meet, come up to my facility and we can see what we got in common. Maybe I can help you, maybe you can help me."

Matt Finch: So he actually laughed at me, Chris, when I told him that I taught people, in one of the things I teach, how to use supplements for substance detox, Post-Acute Withdrawal, and then maintaining recovery. And he was like, "What?" He kind of thought I was joking at first, or kind of laughable. And he's like, "Tell me, Matt, do you really think people need supplements to overcome addiction?" Something along those lines. I was like, "I don't think they need it, but I certainly think for the vast majority of people, when done right, it can be the missing link." And he's like, "Because I'll tell you, I've been off of alcohol for like, I don't know, 30 years, 35 years. And I've never taken a multivitamin even."

Matt Finch: Funny thing was, he was overweight, he had really bad ADHD, he would cut me off a bunch, he wasn't listening a lot of the time when I was talking, he was super arrogant and narcissistic. So it was kind of funny that he was like, "Oh, I haven't even taken a multivitamin." I'm all thinking, "He'd be great on this supplement, if he did this type of..." I was thinking in my head, "You may be off alcohol for all these years, but you are not optimized, you are not healthy." So for each person it's different. So what I tell people is, "No, you don't have to take supplements for the rest of your life, if you don't want to, there's plenty of people that don't need to take any supplements." However, that being said, that's pretty rare these days, our soil is so depleted in minerals.

Matt Finch: I forget the exact statistics, but I believe somewhere around a hundred years ago, if you had a can of spinach or a peach, for example, the amount of micronutrients in there was like a 100 to 150 fold greater than nowadays, if you have that same can of spinach or that same peach. Whatever fruit or vegetable root that grows out of the ground, our modern industrial agricultural systems and processes have completely, just mega stripped our beautiful, wonderful, used to be very nutritious soil of all these different minerals. People back in the day... And, Julia Ross, talks about this a lot. She says, "If you look at pictures of big groups of people." I think she was saying back in the 1950s, 1960s, even, maybe even later than that, but groups of people, whether it's dozens or hundreds, she said there was no overweight people, or very little. There was no obese people, if you look at the statistics.

Matt Finch: Mental health problems and addiction problems, a 100 years ago, 80 years ago, 50 years ago, they were so much lower than they are nowadays. Some of the only things that have really changed some of the main things is, we have way less minerals in the soil. Back then, people pretty much ate all whole foods. Now, a lot of the foods are processed, packaged preservatives, tons of stuff, so that's another thing. And I think in the 1950s, maybe 1956, 1957, somewhere around there, that's when people started to make shoes, where they're like plastic or rubber type bottoms. When prior to that, a lot of the shoes people were wearing, they were still getting lots of earthing benefits. So like now, we're completely separated, our physical bodies are completely separated from the earth's electromagnetic field that's all around it. All this stuff is proven nowadays, it's not hocus-pocus at all.

Matt Finch: There's so much research on this nowadays, it's crazy. So our food is depleted, even the whole foods, if they're organic, they're way more depleted in micronutrients than they were a hundred years ago, even if you're eating the best ship. Our feet aren't touching the ground, most people aren't getting near enough sunlight because we live indoors, a lot of us work indoors, a lot of the activities are indoors, versus back in the day, hunters and gatherers, and even way past that people were outside a lot. Now, the sun's not as powerful either, because of all the pollution in the sky, it's blocking a lot of those sun benefits. So I mean, and now with internet stuff and smartphones, and there's just so many more things and they're coming out with more and more stuff. A lot of it is really great, but there's a double-edged sword aspect to it.

Matt Finch: All of this is taking us further and further away from our healthy kind of a default, most healthy way to live on the planet earth. And they're trying to like scientifically engineer and genetically modify, and they think that they can just cure everyone's and treat everyone's health problems and problems in general with more and more technological advancements. Meanwhile, we're destroying the earth, we've never been more unhealthy and more addicted, and more sick, and more fearful, and more depressed, and more anxious, and more angry, and just people are murdering people, and we're still at war, shit is fucked up. So, "How long am I going to have to take supplements for?" "How long do you want to feel really good for?" That's what I usually say.

Matt Finch: Do you want to feel good forever? Make this a area of mastery for your personal self, get really passionate about it, and then figure it out. The more things that you have that you know about, that you can take to feel good, you don't got to take them all every day. But I mean, we're still learning about stuff, Chris, we're still learning about different natural therapy, supplements, foods, powders and so much more. And that's exciting because the more unhealthy our civilizations and planet get, and the more messed up the healthcare system is the, more we need to take personal responsibility for our own health, versus thinking that the way the American healthcare system and many other healthcare systems are, thinking that going to them for prevention is the best way to do it. Oh, the statistics are just...

Matt Finch: In China, for example, they don't go to the doctor when they're sick, they go to the doctor for prevention. And as a result, hardly the diseases, mental and physical disorders and diseases in China are way, way, way less, their lifespan is way more. And I mean, that was [crosstalk 00:36:52]-

Chris Scott: Except where they have a serious pollution problems, and in that case is-

Matt Finch: Right.

Chris Scott: ... evident. But yeah, that was a masterpiece of a monologue. So I'll do my best to follow it. I actually started reading a book called Evolutionary Herbalism, which is a big book. And it's going to take me a while, it is not one of those books where I can kind of reflect on what I'm going to have for breakfast while I'm reading it at the same time, because then I'll have to read the sentence over again. I can't remember the name of the guy who wrote it, it's Sajah [crosstalk 00:37:26]-

Matt Finch: [Sanjay Gupchic 00:37:26]?

Chris Scott: No. No, he's not that famous, but he's very articulate and he seems to be he has expertise in multiple fields science, and also what I would have called hocus-pocus before. But things like, well, Chinese and other herbalism modalities, astrology, which is something that I'm still trying to wrap my mind around. And I don't think it's a necessary for optimization, but it's interesting. And you told me that Mercury was in retrograde again, and sure enough, it took my computer 10 or 15 minutes to start, which is like my computer from 1995. So anyway, maybe there's something to it. And I feel like every book that I've read since quitting drinking and having that as my routine, reading every night, people always ask me, "Why do you have so many books in your library, you actually read all those." And I said, "Yes, not because I'm more disciplined than you, but because I have an affliction whereby I have to read every night before I go to sleep, if I want to actually fall asleep."

Chris Scott: And so, anyway, I've read so many books in the last seven years, and this is just another one in that long, hopefully a multiple decades long series of me reading before going to bed, and picking things up. And I know I'll take something from this book, but he was making very similar points as you, talking about the confluence of human consciousness and earth consciousness. And of course, the damage that we're doing through our bodies and our nutrition and also the planet at the same time. So it brings to mind, for me, some things that I was unaware before regenerative farming. It'd be nice to see systemic changes and pretty much every profession that exists right now. But especially in things, just basic stuff like farming or PE for kids, or nutrition for kids.

Chris Scott: The things that I could've learned in second grade, if they weren't feeding us Fig Newtons, and yelling at us when we ran too fast on the field. So not to criticize everyone and anyone, obviously things evolve over time and we hope that they get better, we hope that human systems get better over time. But to your point about that, anyone interested in what you were saying should check out Evolutionary Herbalism, and also learn a bit about herbalism as well, which is another topic that I thought was hocus-pocus, until you turned me on to Chinese herbs, and Ayurvedic herbs. My functional medicine doctor, this morning, was saying that she's personally had great success with certain Ayurvedic herbs. She mentioned a certain formula, that she was using with some of her patients for optimizing testosterone or maximizing testosterone levels without the use of TRT.

Matt Finch: [crosstalk 00:40:21]

Chris Scott: So she's going to send that to me, I don't have it yet. She's going to send it to me, but it is an Ayurvedic formula. And she said that they're using this and then doing tests, and they're finding that it helps. So I don't know what that is yet, and I don't think I have low testosterone, but I had brought up the idea of eventually, if I'm 50 and I have a host of low T symptoms, obviously I don't love the idea of injecting myself with something all the time and becoming dependent on that. But I also don't love the idea of being 50, 60, 70, and so on, and just kind of going off a cliff in terms of my wellbeing and my strength, and my bone density and my muscle mass. And so that's kind of how that came up. But there are all of these modalities and tangentially related topics for alcohol recovery, that I've read about, and some things that we seem to have nothing to do with it.

Chris Scott: TMS is one of those things, and now I think there is greater awareness of the relationship between the, the mechanism of TMS, which you can talk more about. But basically, Dr. John Sarno, in Healing Back Pain, came up with this theory that a lot of the pain that people feel is generated by the brain unnecessarily, or in a sort of indirect mechanism with which to hatch over unresolved trauma. So anyone who just heard that sentence can probably think of how that might pertain to addiction, and I think, Sarno, himself said that addiction is a TMS equivalent. In other words, there are all these things from back pain to ulcers, even, to addiction, to migraines, to whatever it may be, compulsive behaviors that could be a manifestation related to TMS. And then of course, the way you and I see these things is that, nothing is strictly biochemical in the same way that nothing is strictly psychological.

Chris Scott: When we're talking about human behavioral health, everything has a biochemical and a psychological. And if it is a behavior that's displayed outwardly, a social and potentially a spiritual dimension. So these are multi-dimensional afflictions that we're dealing with, and the process of optimization is also a multidimensional process. And so that's why reading about all of these things can help and, actually, speaking of TMS, I know this is a winding monologue here in response to your pretty focused one. But I did deadlifts today in the gym, for the first time since coming back from California. I did a bit of a different workout, because I'm trying to integrate some cleans in there, I'm trying to do some explosive movements that can help with MMA, master some things I haven't mastered.

Chris Scott: I got really good at deadlifts after quitting drinking, and yet I never liked the idea of having my elbows up like that and resting the bar on my collarbone. So I'm having a friend who used to do CrossFit a lot, helped me out with that. So then we got to my, it was kind of, "You helped me with the cleans, I'll help you with the deadlifts." And when I did that in one of the sets, I felt something pop in my back. And for a second, I was like, "Oh no." I hope he didn't just lose, Papaya, there?

Matt Finch: [crosstalk 00:43:40].

Chris Scott: But for a second, I was thinking, "Oh no, this could be really bad." And there was a sharp pain, and then I literally thought to myself, "It's probably just TMS, don't worry about it. You're coming back from vacation, you're hitting the ground running, you've got a lot in your mind." I haven't thought about it since. And then I did think about, actually, that's not true. I thought about it in the car, driving to dinner afterwards. And I thought, "What if I did hurt my back and it's really bad?" And then it started hurting again. And then I thought, "No, it's probably TMS." So right now I can tell that there's a slight misalignment, and I'm going to the chiropractor tomorrow, but I don't think there's anything serious.

Chris Scott: But, I mean, that kind of thing has happened so many times in the last several years. And if I hadn't read, Dr. John Sarno his work, I wouldn't be aware of the TMS phenomenon, and I would be focusing all of my consciousness' energy on things that would be amplified and magnified and made worse. So that's just one small example of how filling yourself with knowledge, taking the opportunity after you transcend addiction of whatever, whether it's the drugs or alcohol or behaviors or whatever, you get more time and you get more mental clarity, and you get more energy. And if you can find a time each day, for me it's right before bed, because I like to read before bed. If you can find time to fill yourself with useful information, then all of that information over time will help to repair you at least as well as the supplements will. And of course I would not have come across the supplements, nor would you, if we hadn't had this habit of reading.

Matt Finch: Yup. Readers, readers, readers. And I learned it from the guy that wrote the book on How to Pick Up Girls. He did a bunch of personal development when he wanted to get better at picking up girls, dating and eventually getting in a relationship. He just read, I remember one part of this book, The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists, by Neil Strauss. Such a funny book, he's a great writer. I didn't use or care about any of the dating tactics at all in there. Matter of fact, I was, at that point, at least, kind of appalled by him. I was a month off of heroin, alcohol, benzos, and other drugs, picking up girls was the last thing on my list. I was so passionate about and interested by when he wanted to learn a new skill, he would sit there and he'd just lock himself in his apartment or his bedroom for a few days or a week.

Matt Finch: And he would just read book after book, after book. How to get fit, how to be confident, how to use neuro-linguistic programming, how to use the Hawaiian, Hoʻoponopono. I forget how to pronounce that. And so I was like, "Wow, you're telling me that I can improve myself and all these different ways, relationships, my body fitness, mindset, spirituality, I can just go read a bunch of books?" I don't think that idea ever dawned on me, if it did, I don't remember that. Yeah, but then regarding the TMS, it's really funny because our medical system, at least here in America, it's all based on germ theory in like Newtonian physics, to where humans are all physical. We're just physical, if you have a pain, if you have an ache somewhere, if you've got a sore throat, then they look for one simple thing, maybe two things that are causing that physical problem.

Matt Finch: They're looking for physical things, whether it's a structural abnormality, or a germ, or a virus, or a bacteria, or whatever, that are coming into your system. Physical things affecting you physically, and so with pain, they'll cut you up with surgery or they'll adjust you, or they'll massage you, or they'll give you painkillers or other pills, all these physical treatments. The only problem with that is we're physical, we have a physical body, we have an astral energy body. This stuff is so proven by nowadays too, there are thousands and thousands of books on the human energy system. The meridians, the acupressure points, with the seven chakras. I mean, this stuff is so well-documented, there's so much research on this stuff, there's so many experts.

Matt Finch: I've been watching documentaries the past, maybe, six months. People that are neurosurgeons, double PhD physicist, quantum physicists, people that just have the most impressive educational background in career of body of work. And these people are saying, "Not only are we not just physical, but we're only 0.1% physical. We're mostly energy, we're mostly energy." What is that? We can change our energy with, foods, with a certain foods and water, but also by certain movements, by the way we think. A big thing we were saying is the beliefs. I think that's one of my biggest takeaways from Sarno's work too. Whether it comes from repressed, unpleasant emotions, emotional trauma, there's probably a lot to do with that, but so much of it is our belief.

Matt Finch: And he would teach people back then, he would do tests first to make sure they didn't have a tumor, and make sure there was nothing malignant that was going to be really hazardous. And if they didn't have anything like that going on, some ruptured discs, maybe a five-year old, tiny little rotator cuff tear. Even when people had substantial problems, he would say, "If your pain persists more than three months, it's not coming from physical stuff usually." So he'd give them the knowledge and tell them, "There's nothing wrong with your back, there's nothing wrong with your shoulder." Or, "You don't need to hyperfocus with hypervigilance on your posture and what kind of chair you're sitting in." And all this stuff. So he would help people believe, basically, in your own body's here healing miracle.

Matt Finch: We're not these little fragile things. And so nowadays, I guess, and I might just be kind of naive. I might just be wrong about a bunch of stuff, but I legitimately believe that although I used to have anxiety disorders, intermittent depressive disorders, bipolar II disorder, and a bunch of other things, chronic pain at one point for three years, nowadays I believe that not only are those things done with, but I believe that I'm immune to all of those. So maybe I'm not right, but my belief in conviction is so strong that those things could never affect me. Our beliefs create our reality and there's people out there that do the most amazing things, telekinesis, people doing remote viewing programs that they used to do in the CIA to spy on Russia, and Russia was spying on us. There's so many studies on this, if people look, it sounds a bunch of it like people can't do that.

Matt Finch: All you have to do is do a little bit of reading, there's so much evidence, it's ridiculous. So my point with all this, then we should probably get close to ending right here, is the untapped human potential it's ridiculous. Our untapped potential, so there's so much to work with there, and we have developed so fast technologically yet our spirituality and our consciousness optimization has fallen behind, that's why we're still having all these issues. Science is making breakthroughs, technology is making breakthroughs. Consciousness in America, it's not mainstream at all, versus in like countries like in India, man, they were mastering consciousness 6,000 years ago. The stuff that they came up with in those Vedic texts is life-changing when people look into it.

Matt Finch: And I find that now that I'm have learned so much about psychology and biochemistry and physical health, psychological health, relationships. I spent the first eight, nine years, after addiction, really getting proficient and all that. Now I'm like, "Oh man, consciousness is never ending experimentation, never ending learning." One guy, Dr. Steven Greer, who's a genius I've been looking at, so much of his stuff. His belief is that for the next 1000 years, that's going to be the main study in human civilization, is consciousness.

Chris Scott: Yeah. Well, I would also add, I'm not, Elon Musk, or some kind of AI genius, but I have a hunch that the high level technologists are going to find it much harder to create an identical AI silicone-based or non-human inorganic, whatever consciousness, that is identical to human consciousness, or at least commensurate with it. I think it's going to be very difficult to do. But that was a very interesting and wide ranging discussion. I think that's a great place to leave it, I think some people are going to really enjoy this and others are going to have weird dreams tonight, so we will see.

Matt Finch: I hope so.

Chris Scott: Thanks, Matt. We'll be with everyone, another episode soon.

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