Episode 105: Spiritual Wellness, Addiction, and Psychiatry with Dr. Justin Hendricks MD, Psychiatrist in Columbus, Ohio
105. Spiritual Wellness, Addiction, and Psychiatry with Dr. Justin Hendricks MD, Psychiatrist in Columbus, Ohio
Alicja welcomes Dr. Justin Hendricks, a psychiatrist focusing on addiction and spiritual wellness. Dr. Hendricks shares his journey into psychiatry and discusses the importance of a holistic approach to mental health treatment. Topics covered include the treatment of alcohol and opioid addiction and the need for naloxone availability. He also touches on the balance between pleasure and pain, managing social media addiction, and the role of faith in coping with suffering. The episode dives into the importance of patient education and being one's own advocate in a fragmented healthcare system.
TOPICS
00:00 Intro
00:25 Alcohol Addiction and Holistic Healthcare
02:41 Journey into Psychiatry and Spiritual Wellness
03:58 Personal Stories and Influences
05:19 Meeting His Wife and Family Life
07:02 ADHD and Bipolar Disorder
08:25 Substance Use Disorder and Naloxone
10:56 Challenges in Treating Alcohol Addiction
17:18 Challenges of Fee-for-Service Healthcare
18:04 Private Practice and Telehealth
19:02 Mirror Neurons
20:47 The Role of Faith in Coping with Suffering
22:30 Dopamine and Addiction
30:33 Social Media Addiction
33:15 Final Thoughts and Pearls of Wisdom
FIND DR. HENDRICKS
TRANSCRIPT
So this is, this is a good story. I want to hear it. You want to hear this? This is a scandalous, slightly scandalous story. Oh, I love that. Have you heard the song, Cold Beer Calling My Name? Can you sing it for us? I mean, no.
So it's added into prescription Adderall or it's added into street Adderall? Everything. So alcohol addiction typically these days is not very much talked about. You can target pain. In your capacity to deal with sadness in a healthy way increases your capacity to have joy. It's kind of like the, you know, what doesn't kill us makes us stronger.
The word holistic, you hear it so often. It's used so often because it's really what's lacking in our healthcare system because we're fee for service. Primary care oftentimes doesn't necessarily want to treat addiction. Internal medicine, psychiatry, all these different places. Question, turtle medicine with turtles?
Internal medicine. Do you find that you easily get distracted? Well, yes. Do you have, um, He's going to diagnose me right now on the show.
Welcome to our Naked Truth Podcast where we sit fully clothed and have wonderful conversations with wonderful guests. Today we're going to talk to Dr. Jimi Hendrix. Is that Jimi Hendrix? It's Justin Hendrix. Justin Hendrix. Close enough. But my uncle is Jimi Hendrix. Okay. And he's a professional musician.
He plays with Jameson Rogers. He's a country musician. Very cool. So we need to interview your uncle next. Yeah, have you heard the song Cold Beer Calling My Name? Can you sing it for us? I mean, no. But it was a popular song, um, so I bet you some of your listeners have heard that song and my uncle plays with that band.
That's very cool. Join us today as Dr. Hendricks is going to have this awesome interview with us and tell us all about spiritual wellness and, uh, how did you get into spiritual wellness and psychiatry? How did you? Well, I mean, I guess the decision goes back to, um, when I decided psychiatry. I started medical school pretty young because I was part of NeoMed.
I've heard of Neo from Matrix. This one's less exciting. Neo stands for Northeastern Ohio. Oh, okay. Which is less exciting than many things. Uh, In medical school, we rotate through internal medicine, psychiatry, all these different places. Question, turtle medicine with turtles? Internal medicine. Oh, turtles.
But you know when, so I thought I was going to be a cardiologist and I had done some research and the heart is absolutely fascinating and then I got to psychiatry clerkship and just fell in This is so Interesting. This is so fascinating. The first patient that I ever talked to was deaf and actively manic and they sent me in to talk to her on my own.
Oh, wow. Which, yeah. Very exciting. Yeah. So I'm talking to this person and I'm like writing things down and, and she didn't even remember me the next day. It's, you know, this, this is such an abstract, interesting puzzle to solve and I felt like I had a knack for it. That was kind of my decision then to do psychiatry instead of internal medicine or cardiology.
And then, you know, my faith journey just sort of lends itself to, To, you know, for me realizing that that is absolutely crucial to our mental health and well being. How did you realize? Any cool personal stories, touched by an angel, anything like that? I remember that show. Yeah. That's a nice 25 year callback.
I remember that. So I mean, if you want to hear my conversion story. Yeah. Why not? Unless it's off limits. No, it's, it's definitely not. So. We also want any secrets that you have that nobody else knows. I mean, that's the whole title of the podcast. That's right. Yeah. So, you know, growing up, I went to the vineyard, and that was back when I was a kid.
You know, C. S. Lewis, um, was a big part of my life, um, I don't know if you're familiar with him, um, but he wrote the Chronicles of Narnia. Yeah, okay, okay. That's what I thought, that it was an author, but I just didn't connect the two. Okay. But he, he wrote some other books about Christianity called Mere Christianity, which is just kind of breaks down the essence of Christianity, and that's a fascinating story.
He wrote Problem of Pain, Four Loves, just a lot of books explaining Christianity and the world through a Christian lens. And so throughout med school, I would read C. S. Lewis, listen to C. S. Lewis, and, and that. What's a big part of my spiritual growth, and then I started, uh, to learn about Thomas Merton. I don't know if you're familiar with Thomas Merton.
I'm really bad with names. If you didn't notice, I already called you Jimi Hendrix once, so. Yeah, no, that's okay. I mean, so Thomas Merton, you might find it interesting. He's, uh, um, or he, he was a Catholic monk. So he tried to combine Eastern religion and Western religion, Catholicism, together, and, uh, he, he worked with Thich Nhat Hanh.
Oh, maybe I would like that. Yeah, and he, that's, he wrote some very interesting books that were so Eastern that, you know, there's some Catholics who don't necessarily like him because he's, he's, uh, So eclectic, but he kind of started me on that Catholic journey. And then I met my wife in New Orleans. And then prior to How?
Was she throwing the beads over there at that, uh, special So this is, this is a good story. I want to hear it. You want to hear this? This is a scandalous, slightly scandalous story. Ooh, I love that! We're gonna get naked on Naked Truth. It's, it's, I don't want to hype it up too much, but so I had just started New Orleans.
I moved there and I think this was like my second or third month there and she was my medical student. That's scandalous and you know, I remember, um, you know, seeing her across the table and just being, you know, awestruck and you know, so I waited until we were not on clerkship together. Literally the drive home and then I called her and How, how did it go?
Where are you like, damn woman, you're smoking hot. I'll go out with you. It didn't quite go like that. I mean, so I was more measured than that. Most people are. Most people are. Yes. The first date, I blew a tire driving there on a pothole. Um, so I knew, I was like, this, there must be something good here. And so, you know, changed the tire, drove over there, and so we've been married now for going, almost nine years in, in May, and we have three children, and.
Wonderful. Yeah. So you have great taste in women and great taste in cars because I saw you're driving a ridge line. Mm-Hmm. and woo woo. Reach the ridge line. Yay, . Yeah, that's, I just got that truck, uh, in February. It's very functional. That's all you need in life. It's just prac being practical and functional.
I can transport all kinds of drywall and anything I want to. Right. What are you, drywalling? Anything that I can. I have like 20 projects going on at the same time, trying to refinish a little house and yeah, I'm always working. Do you find that you easily get distracted? Well, yes Do you have um, he's gonna diagnose me right now on the show Do the dig fast, you know acronym.
Oh, what is it? Distractibility, grandiosity, fast speech, increased activities, talkativeness, um, I might have missed something there, insomnia. Yes, thank you. I, I will be a, a little bipolar today, and that's okay, you know, you harness that energy and you can be very productive. Very true. I'm very productive most days.
I most of the time get diagnosed with ADHD. Uh, no diagnosis makes life really boring. Yeah. You know, some variables. What was it? Uh, no sleep makes Jack a doll boy. What was the quote from, uh? It's like no pleasure makes Jack a doll boy. No play or no. Or something like that. Yeah. All work, no play makes Jack a doll boy.
A doll boy. That's right. So my diagnosis, whichever one, I embrace all of them. Good. By the end of the show, I might just do this and be really depressed, you know? Like, who knows what's gonna happen. That's our job, right? Yeah. If you have too much energy, well, we gotta fix that. Exactly. Uh, where do you currently work?
And then maybe you will tell us a little more about your private practice. Yeah, great. I work from home. I'm part of a substance use disorder expansion project. We have been focusing on different things. Our first project was naloxone and specifically for stimulant use disorder patients to get naloxone.
So tell us more about how people could potentially develop a problem when they are treated for ADHD. Or treated on the streets for ADHD. Yeah, so, you know, Fentanyl is in everything. And we're actually running a dizilazine now, too. But yeah, Fentanyl is in things like, like ADHD medications. There was an Ohio State student who, you know, bought Adderall to help study and they overdosed on Fentanyl.
Oh my gosh. I think that was a year or two ago. So it's added into prescription Adderall or it's added into street Adderall? Everything. Everything. I don't know whether what they overdosed on was prescription Adderall. Bottom line is that it can be in anything. Having naloxone everywhere is really important so that if somebody uses something that's, you know, has fentanyl, which if you have no opioid tolerance, then any amount of fentanyl can overdose you.
If naloxone is everywhere, then, you know, people can, can survive. So you would recommend that, for example, if we're treating patients for any kind of a condition that we would prescribe naloxone as kind of a preventive, like almost like an allergy kind of a medicine so they have it in their medicine cabinet so that if for some reason they or their family member did something, they have that dose.
One of the ways that we educate is it's like an EpiPen and there's no risk really. Got it and they didn't need it, nothing would happen. Right. I mean, you only use it if it's going to save a person's life. How would you know to use it? Yeah, great question. So, you know, the signs of somebody being overdosed on opioids is they're not breathing, their pupils are constricted.
If they're really not breathing, their lips blue, things like that. You know, in that instance, you give Naloxone, The one that we prescribe is the intranasal. There, there are, uh, intramuscular. You just squirt it. Yeah, and you don't prime it. So, so they usually have two and you, you squirt one and then if that doesn't work, you squirt the second, but you don't need to prime it.
Usually we say in between the first dose and second dose, you call 911. And, and the only real risk to it is people wake up in opioid patrol and they're usually pretty angry. They don't like it. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but at the same time, I don't want to be the person giving it to them. It's a, it's a fair concern, and, and I've only seen it one time in an emergency room.
It's definitely something to be cautious about, but it does save their life. So, you're treating mostly patients with an opiate addiction? Mostly they're suffering from alcohol use disorder. Okay. That's, that's way more common. So, alcohol addiction typically These days it's not very much talked about. It seems like, you know, opiate addiction is usually something that we talk about a lot in psychiatry these days.
Ketamine seems like, ADHD, you know, the big, big things kind of out there. But alcohol addiction doesn't seem to be us focused on. You said it's very common though. Uh, in the population you work with. Yeah, and it's just about money. There's a lot of money on the way related to opioids. And I mean, it's not just about money.
It's also about, you know, severity when, you know, you have people overdosing and And dying. Opioids is a real, you know, significant issue. But I do think that money is part of that. Absolutely. You know, um Grants and things are being definitely focused on opiate addiction, so Yeah, and opioids is Alcohol is kind of like the slow death, you know, and so I think it's, it's been around for such a time, but I mean, it absolutely destroys your physical and mental health.
Yes. I'm hopeful that we can, right now we're still focused on opioids at my job right now, but I would love to also be able to work on alcohol. What kind of medications do you end up using for alcohol addiction? Naltrexone is, you know, the most common one, the injectable form of that, Vivitrol. There are some others, but those are, those are kind of the two mainstays.
Ampril, do you use that a lot or no? Um, yeah, I mean, I don't. Definitely people do. The dosing makes that difficult, you know, take three times a day. Yeah, 333 milligrams, like. Three times or four, I don't know, two, two, three times a day, I think that's how it works. And, and people don't want to do that. Yeah, don't want to take things three times a day, yeah.
Any other tricks of the trade that maybe you're going to tell us? No, I mean, I think patient education and helping them understand that the feeling that they have, that drive to get alcohol. Why does that occur? And the fact that it's temporary. And so, in my Life Past Substances group, part of our new IOP, which is Intensive Outpatient, um, Practice or Program, thanks.
So, it's like a four week, one hour per week I get to do that and it's like a rolling series. And one of the weeks I talk about alcohol and what I do is I have this seesaw with GABA and glutamate. And I explained to them how their brain adjusts over time to where their baseline glutamate is higher. And it's counteracted by the alcohol that they drink, but the second that you aren't putting the weight on the gamma side, then your glutamate is just taking over your brain and how over time that's built up, but also your brain can heal itself and normalize and trying to contextualize that.
the withdrawal symptoms and let people know that if they follow treatment protocol and that that addiction is temporary. So just taking the time to let them know that that is treatable in the context, not just here this medication, naltrexone, will help you not drink. Do you have like a standard amount of time that you think a patient with alcohol addiction should stay on the Vivitrol naltrexone or does it vary or is it like a year, two years Yeah, I mean, I think you look at, like, what are the negative effects of naltrexone that the patient's experiencing.
And if they've used naltrexone and stayed sober for such a time and they're worried that, you know, stopping naltrexone, they might relapse. I think it's a very, uh, individualized basis. What do you think about someone being on naltrexone and then, you know, the medical community doesn't understand? really seem to be connected and work well together.
So what if a patient goes for a surgery, for example, and is told stop taking naltrexone and then be put on an opiate post surgery? What do you think the risks are of relapse there? Yeah, that's a really good point. Pain, it depends on the surgery and there are other ways of mitigating pain. You can get local blocks and things right after the surgery for some of the procedures and you don't have to take opioids post op.
But if you don't know and the doctor prescribes it and you start taking it. Yeah. And then you stop your naltrexone because that's what they told you to do and nobody really Took the time to talk to you about the risk of relapse and addiction. Maybe you've never been exposed to opioids before. And now you're like, wow, you know.
That's crazy, right? So if you're just taking, just kind of picking your brain, but if you're taking naltrexone, let's say for a year, to curb cravings, to not, you know, to not drink, and then you suddenly stop because a medical professional or someone tells you you need to stop or you ran out of your medication, what happens with the cravings for alcohol?
From a, you know, chemical brain, Perspective. Yeah, I mean, so I think of Naltrexone as putting a ceiling on the amount of pleasure that you get from drinking. I think if you've had a year abstinence from alcohol, hopefully that drive wouldn't be there. But if you did happen to relapse, then realizing that that ceiling's no longer lowered, I think your chance of continuing to drink then would, would be much higher.
So in a way, if you are trying to get better with your alcohol addiction and you are on Naltrexone and you're not drinking and then you suddenly are. Taken off of Naltrexone, the risk of you relapsing and drinking are even higher than prior to starting Naltrexone because your ceiling for pleasure is, do you think it would be higher than prior to starting Naltrexone?
I'm just wondering because I mean, I don't know. Yeah, I don't, I don't know either. Theoretically, I, I think it probably returns you back. The worry would be returning you back to pre naltrexone. I don't know that it would necessarily be higher than prior to naltrexone. But it's definitely like you're making a good point and that, you know, that surgery you run into all these addiction risks and they're not brought up.
That everything is really siloed. Primary care oftentimes doesn't necessarily want to treat addiction. And, you know, that's one of the things that we run into. Yeah. Yeah. So it seems like the patient has to be the one that's really educated on this and knows that, Hey, if I'm on this medication, I need to watch it.
So if I'm going through a surgery or some other life event where I have to stop taking my naltrexone and maybe I'm on an opiate, I need to really watch this because I might relapse. Yeah. I mean, you need to be your own advocate. You almost need to be educated and be in a provider, you know, and that's a shame.
And I think that's why the word holistic. You hear it so often, it's used so often because it's really what's lacking in our healthcare system because we're fee for service. When you're fee for service, you're just segmenting all of these different aspects of healthcare. But if you had one provider that cared enough about your case to spend the time with you to actually make sure that all of the ducks were in a row, your health would be much better.
But that in some ways has to be you, you know, you, you have to be your own advocate and it's hard. That's the, that's the way it's set up right now. It seems like for all of us, providers and patients. We are expected to sort of be an expert on everything anymore. Yeah, it's not just healthcare. No. And, and do they even have my best interests in mind?
I mean, look at your financial advisors. Most of them aren't even fiduciary. Well, talking about financial wellness, we will need to, uh, do another podcast with you. Sounds like you know a lot about that, too. Yeah. Yeah. Ha, ha, ha, ha. So tell us a little more about your private practice and you mentioned that it's a lot of telehealth visits, it's fully remote and tell us how you like it.
Yeah. So it's fully virtual. I use Charm EHR. Right now I'm cash only. I charge 225 for an hour initial visit, 150 for a follow up. Yeah. I mean, so far so good. It's nice that I can be, you know, in my basement where I've got my setup and I can see a patient there. And then when I'm done. Then I'm still at home and I can get back to my responsibilities at home.
You know, I think there's some disadvantages to video visits, but I try to mitigate those just by my attention and care for the patient. That's awesome. So do you get patients mostly in Ohio or from all over the U. S. or? So I'm only licensed in Ohio right now. I am trying to get the compact license, but right now just Ohio.
If you're interested to learn more about my clinic, the website is www.mirrorhealthclinic. com and I guess I could tell you why MIR. Absolutely. Tell me more because we have a mirror back there. So, well, you know, I've been fascinated by the concept of mere neurons and how, you know, people kind of mirror, you know, one another when they're talking.
And that's fascinating that you mentioned that because that's something I've been thinking about because it seems like every guest that I have, I will. Act just a little different, you know, because I, I think you're right. We're all mirroring sort of each other. I definitely do that too. Um, you know, and that's, that's sort of the adaptability and, and there's definitely like personality schemes where people are more likely to mimic others.
And, but you know, I, I think that our surroundings really affect. Dr. Tim Jackson, MD, PhD So it's like mirror neurons, yes, but it's also like mirror environment. Interesting. So you're, you're saying toxic people in our life that are unhealthy themselves, we could potentially almost develop similar neuronal pathways, almost like thought patterns and resemble and kind of follow the same patterns of behaviors.
Yeah. Wow. You know, I think as mental health providers, that's one of the things that you, you definitely have to be aware of. You're actually more likely to do it because your brain develops these neurons. Yeah, I mean, think about how your kids learn. They see what you do and they, they mimic it. But you're saying there's something called mirror neurons and they will just literally like Yeah, we're all Like telepathy.
Yeah, I mean, yeah, kind of, you know, which is, you know, I, so here I'm talking about mirror neurons and I have a virtual practice, which, you know, would suggest like less mirror neurons going on in a virtual practice. But I really do think that we have to pay attention to like part of holistic, what is your environment?
What is influencing you? The people who are most influential in your lives absolutely do affect your wellbeing. So that's why mirror. What about faith? Yeah. I mean, so the reason why I think Catholicism for me is so important for my well being and my spiritual well being is that it puts suffering into context.
I felt like with a lot of my practice, people are just like, I don't want to suffer, which is understandable. Like who, who wants to suffer? But the thing that my faith does for me is, is it helps me understand like, where is this suffering from? Um, how can I. best shoulder that. And if it is to be avoided in some way, if it's, if it's overwhelming, if it's too much, then I can get treatment, whether it be therapy or medications.
But you're never going to fully alleviate suffering. And so what my faith does for me is I'm able to say, okay, this is my burden, this is my cross, and I'm going to unite that with my God, with Christ. And through that, you can learn to grow. Because if you're always avoiding suffering, Then you will suffer a lot.
That's part of my life past substances group is we talk about pleasure pain on a, on a continuum. My faith helps me put suffering into context. And so if you had that situation with your spouse, you know, obviously you pray and you learn to suffer, you know, through love for that person. But, you know, we, we all suffer and being able to place that suffering into context is, I was trying to think, who do I know that, uh, loves suffering?
Masochists. That was the only, the only thing I came up with. It's not, it's not necessarily a love of suffering. Um, it's, it's more just being able to, to say like, okay, I'm not going to be able to avoid this amount of suffering. What do I do with that? You know, and we live in a society where it's like, well, you just distract yourself or find other means of pleasure.
Pleasure and to the point where you're not feeling suffering. And so there's a really interesting book called Dopamine Nation. Mm hmm. Have you heard of it? I've heard of it, yeah. Highly recommended, Dr. Anna Lemke. So we're all addicted to dopamine. She has these, so the seesaw idea with the GABA and glutamate that we talked about.
She has these awesome seesaws. With dopamine. With dopamine, so pleasure and pain. Mhm. And so one of my groups, we talk about this, where you have this person on one side where they're doing all these pleasurable things like gambling or That's what I do all the time. I live right by the casino. I'm like, let's do this.
You don't need a casino anymore. You know, Michigan, they have full casinos on your phone. There's like a couple states. Um, sports gambling's everywhere. That's going to be a silent epidemic on the way. There's all these ways of getting pleasure. You know, food, alcohol. Pornography. Pornography, gambling. And they leave a person absolutely miserable.
Mm hmm. Because your brain is always trying to balance that pleasure pain. So you're using up all your dopamine and then you're depleted, so then you feel miserable. Yeah, and on her graphics, she has, like, on one side, they have this, this guy who's, you know, initially happy, and then on the other side, these gremlins kind of move on to the pain side.
Mm hmm. And then, you know, he keeps trying to use all of those means of pleasure, and then more gremlins move on, and then, then the pain side gets heavier and heavier, and then by the end of the graphics, they have, like, a U Haul, On the pain side, they're grilling burgers with the gremlins, you know, because and then the person on the other side is miserable, you know, he has his hands over his head and he's crying and, and the only thing that he can think to do is go do more pleasurable things.
And so what she says is that you can target pain and through exercise, prayer, meditation. Would you call those distractions or no? This is a positive coping mechanism. The, the pain side? Yeah, the prayer, the, you know, going exercising, walking, hiking. This is not distraction. Yeah, I mean, so they are in some ways distracting, you know, um, and so they are kind of distractions, but they're like positive coping mechanisms, or So gambling would be a negative distraction?
There's nothing good about gambling. Oh, come on. Going back to that, that continuum is, so if you intentionally do things that are difficult, Mm hmm. Then the gremlins move in on the other side. And the nice thing about having gremlins on the pleasure side is that's like sustained. Where you're feeling better in a sustained way instead of the short burst of dopamine.
If you do things that are difficult or if you learn to suffer in a healthy way. Then your pleasure balance will be better on the pleasure side. And you won't feel the need to, you know, go eat McDonald's and then feel terrible 30 minutes later. And then do gambling on your phone. Yeah, I mean you can, you can gamble on your phone while you eat McDonald's.
That's blowing my mind. It's a really good book. I highly recommend it. Dopamination. Dopamination, yeah. I think several people had recommended it to me and I was like, okay, fine. And then I'm like, yeah, this is really informative, yeah. Any other cool wisdom things from that book? You know, I guess I would want to tell you about, and this isn't necessarily from the book, in the Life Past Substances group, one of the things that I think was profound for some of my patients, I took a picture of this theme park and I put all of those different pleasure activities.
Not gremlins, pleasure activities. Just pleasure activities, and we covered those. And then I put on the best roller coaster there was drugs and alcohol. And I think one of the disservices that we do to our addiction patients is we say, you can stay in the theme park, live in the theme park, but don't go on your favorite roller coaster.
Spend time in the desert. Spend time fasting, you know, spend time not engaging in high pleasure activities. And eventually they, you know, it's, how do you stay in a theme park and not go on your favorite roller coaster? You know, you might be able to do that for a month or so, but relapse rates are so high because we're not teaching people the pain side of that scale and how to actually utilize that to have a better life.
We're so avoidant of it. You know, it's, it's interesting that you say that, because what, what I've seen a lot of is that people are afraid to cry. They are afraid to experience the depression or the pain. Mm hmm. And, They are running away from that and they come in to counseling sometimes or to mental health treatment wanting to be assessed because they, they think that there's something really wrong with them because they are crying or, you know, it's almost like that is a normal part of life.
So are you crying every day for hours or is it once in a while you cry because you're sad? It's almost like we don't advertise that sadness. It's just, just as normal as joy, you know, it's, it's just people don't understand it anymore. I think it's that social media push of, um, showing people being happy, doing those high risk activities or going on these roller coasters, right?
It's always about things that are feeding our dopamine system. And so people don't understand that withdrawing occasionally or not wanting to be around people or crying once in a while, like none of that is abnormal and you don't. necessarily have to get a medication to treat that because that's just normal.
In your capacity to deal with sadness in a healthy way increases your capacity to have joy. One of the things that I talk about is pleasure versus contentment. So I have the, there's kind of three groups is pleasure versus pain, pleasure versus contentment. And then the alcohol group, the pleasure versus contentment, the difference between being able to have that sustained joy.
Like what's the difference between somebody who's joyful and a joyful person will be able to experience those lows of sadness and the isolation and times and realize that life, you have seasons, you know, and being able to embrace those and, and, you know, and it comes down to function. So when you're talking to a patient, it's like, when do you need treatment for that emotional suffering?
Are you able to Come out of those moments of sadness and, and then experience joy. Because if you're not, if you, if you're feeling sad for 50 percent plus more of the time and you can't go to work and things like that, then you do need treatment. And that's what we're here for. But you're right. There are some people who are absolutely running away from, from any experience of negativity.
And it goes back to that, you know, seesaw. So I, what I do is I just sign up for pain. So I'll sign up for like Really deep tissue massage where I'm bruised afterwards. Yeah, you know what I don't like with massages is when they're like super light. I know. And you're just like, what, like, I understand that you're doing this all day and you're probably exhausted, but like you, I just paid that money for a tickle, like.
Tickles are good too. I don't know about getting bruised, but I like a good deep tissue massage. Yeah, because it relieves a lot of pressure, a lot of tension in the body, a lot of stress. Yeah. That's what I like. Yeah, I mean, in saunas, cold showers, you know, um, but I mean, honestly, like, every day we have enough suffering and difficulty that if instead of, you know, avoiding it, if we just sort of, you know, what is it that I have to cope with today?
If we do that in a healthy way, you can grow as a person. Beautiful. Hermesis. And also, let's talk about social media addiction, because I think both fit. Yeah, let's talk about it. So, Hermesis, um, is where you stress an organism, and the stress toward that organism makes the organism stronger up to a point.
And obviously, if you overstress an organism, you can kill it. It's kind of like the, you know, what doesn't kill us makes us stronger. It's similar to that concept. And so, going back to, like, the cold showers, and saunas, exercise, things like that. Stressing yourself in a healthy way and being resilient past the stress makes you a stronger organism or person, so to speak.
Um, so that was, uh, a good, um, sort of concept to bring up and, context of what we were talking about previously with that pleasure pain balance. What about social media addiction because that's pretty big right now and also it seems like we call everything an addiction anymore, but what about social media?
Does that fuel our dopamine pathways and therefore creates some kind of an addiction or do you think it's not really an addiction? Yeah, I think it's definitely an addiction, and I think that there's this pattern that, again, that book, Scarcity Brain, talks about. He says this is what we have in slot machines, and it's very similar to your scrolling.
So what are the elements of addiction with scrolling? So if I'm doing this, like, constantly, that's creating an addiction. Absolutely. So if I'm, okay, this is what I do. I sit on Facebook when I have some time and I scroll down and I read funny memes and I'm laughing so hard I'm crying. And I'll do that for 10 to 15 minutes and then I'll stop and put it away.
Yeah. That's probably 10 to 15 minutes a day total. That's not bad. Okay. That's probably much better than most people. I, I think there's people who spend hours and hours and hours. Okay. Um, and the reason, and it's, you know, people do that with slot machines too, right? You know, people just orders, nickels, whatever.
The pattern there is there's opportunity. So what's the opportunity on a slot machine? It's money, right? Mm hmm. The opportunity on Facebook is funny memes or whatever you're looking for there. And then there's unpredictable. So you don't know exactly what thing's going to pop up on your feed. So the opportunities, there's different opportunities on social media.
There's unpredictable things that they're showing you, and then quick repeatability. That pattern mimics the sort of foraging that we would do thousands of years ago. We'd go looking for berries and, oh, there's no berries in this bush. Okay, let me go to this one. And, you know, see what I find here. And so Facebook and TikTok are like our new berries kind of system.
Like, we're like, oh, there's a berry here. I gotta like, that's our like little Yeah. Dopamine rush. Okay. Yeah. And it, and it's so primal and it's so ingrained to, to just constantly seek what's like, we need opportunity. We need opportunity to feed ourselves. Repeatability. So I'm going to go to this place, this place, this place.
And that book, he talks about how there's this casino that's outside of Las Vegas. That's sponsored by all of these technology companies. So Facebook, Google, all those companies are sponsoring a casino where they're refining those addictive steps to keep us hooked and engaged with their, with their media.
Yeah. Wow. So there's people spending time on trying to figure out how to keep us addicted. Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy. I guess. But that's what makes money, I guess. Right? The addiction feeds some kind of behavior that people want to keep doing and then they want to keep paying for that. So I guess somebody makes money off of it.
And so it's all about money in life, I guess. Yeah. Well, and the more you scroll, the more ads Facebook's going to show you, right? Yeah. So any naked truth for today? Any kind of pearls of wisdom that you can share with our listeners? Yeah, I mean, I think what we just talked about was pretty heavy, you know, as far as pearls of wisdom go.
Um, I think if, if you can learn to, to walk that balance of like, can I suffer in a healthy way? And when is suffering to the point where I need to reach out for professional help in working with your mental health provider to, to walk that balance, but to not, you know, necessarily avoid all kinds of suffering.
Be open to suffering. I like it. When I was going through my divorce, I actually felt like that that was what I arrived at. You know, I had so many thoughts and I thought about everything, you know, and I felt like there was definitely a connection between pain and love all on the same continuum. Yeah. And life is very complex.
Mm hmm. Remember, Dr. Hendricks, that you signed a non compete for this podcast. You cannot start a podcast now for the rest of your life because you participated in this one. Okay. How do you feel about non competes? I think it's wonderful that the FCC has banned non competes. I think that they have been unjust, limiting providers abilities to, to seek employment in the city that they live.
The, the overreach from these corporations, hopefully that stands, you know, I think that there's going to be some lawsuits trying to hold those in place, but hopefully that should give us the ability to, to work where we think would be best. So our non compete is now void. You can Yeah, I can start my own podcast.
Like right now, you can even do that. So I got a lot of stuff going on, but it's been a pleasure talking with you on here and getting to experience that. Thank you so much for sharing with us and, uh, I, I love to hear about all kinds of different perspectives and ways of approaching psychiatry. And so I love that you have that spiritual wellness component to your practice as well.
And I hope people find you. I hope that you go on and you keep helping people. Everyone out there and you saved the world for us. I need some more healthy people in the world. Yeah. So now that we said social media is so bad and addictive, where do we find you in social media? I do have a Facebook mere health page, um, but it's pretty sparse.
I think the only thing I posted about was the social media addiction steps, actually. But my website is merehealthclinic. com and that's mere like a reflection mirror. Thank you so much for being here. And I hope everyone finds you and you continue saving the world. Awesome. Thanks.
