The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

The selfish paths are romance. Download chapter one for free at DrKenner.com and Amazon.com. I can't stand people. I hate them. Oh, yeah, you hate them, no, but I seem to feel better when they're not around.

Hey, barkeep. Saskatchewan water.

Like, what do you do? I drink?

What do you do if you yourself have a substance abuse problem, whether it's alcohol or drugs, how do you kick the habit? And how many times do you have to go to rehab or to get into AA or some program to get rid of the habit? With me today to talk about substance abuse and how to think about it differently and maybe help yourself, is Dr. Corey Newman. He's the director of the Center for Cognitive Therapy in Philadelphia. He's an associate professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. He's an exceptional therapist, an international lecturer, and he's the author of several books, including "Choosing to Live," "Cognitive Therapy of Substance Abuse," along with "Bipolar Disorder: A Cognitive Therapy Approach." He's energetic, he's smart, he's playful, and he's an effective teacher. Welcome, Dr. Newman.

Thanks very much. Happy to be here.

Great to have you on the show again. What happens if I'm someone like Hank and I say to you, you know, I know I've got drug problems. I know I drink more alcohol than I should. You know, I know I can go through many six packs or, not maybe not many, but I go through a lot. Yeah, and, and, but, you know, I can control it. I can really control it. And my wife complains, but hey, you know, I drink in the morning, and I then I work a late shift anyway, so I can sleep it off. And then I go to work in the afternoon. And when I come home, you know, early morning, I say hi to the kids, then I drink. They're off at school. So it's like I have a little zone in my life where I drink. Big deal. It's not affecting anyone.

I'll break out of role for one moment here and just tell you all the things that would cross my mind as Hank's cognitive therapist, okay? First of all, he's ambivalent. That, on the one hand, he says, I know I drink too much. I know my wife is upset with me, but it's really important to me. I enjoy it. It's a big part of my life. I feel like I have it under control. Please don't take this away from me. And I'm going to be making a mistake if I rush in there judgmentally and say, essentially, Thou shalt not do any drinking. You must be abstinent, blah, blah, blah. Certainly clinically speaking, I am trying to help him attain the goal of abstinence because in this particular case, it's very clear there are lots of negative consequences he's already facing, and yet he's using what we call permission-giving beliefs. Since cognitive therapies look at people's beliefs, how they structure their lives, how they make sense of things. One of the ways we make sense of our lives is, well, okay. What does it mean if I do this habit? Well, is it good? Is it bad? A permission-giving belief is a way we sort of fool ourselves or seduce ourselves into thinking, well, it's okay. This time, it's okay under these conditions. His permission-giving belief here, which I will hope to tactfully point out to him at some point when we have a good rapport, is that it's okay to use a lot of alcohol, maybe even drugs under certain conditions, like maybe only on the weekend, or maybe if I know how to hold my beer really well, or if I know it doesn't interfere with my work. But it's really a fallacy because I have a colleague, Dr. Marianne Laden, who had a great analogy. She said that when people say, well, I only drink or use cocaine on Saturday and Sundays, or it doesn't affect my job or my marriage, that's like someone saying, I have—

Hey, I got to interrupt this, because we've got to pay some bills. 30 seconds. That's it. A very quick ad, and then Alan will be back.

Romance. Oh, I wish guys knew more about what we want from a relationship. Boy, I wish I knew more about what I want. Where's that ad I saw? Here it is: The Selfish Path to Romance, a serious romance guidebook. Download chapter one for free at selfishromance.com and buy it at Amazon.com. The Selfish Path to Romance—that is interesting.

She said that when people say, well, I only drink or use cocaine on Saturday and Sundays or it doesn't affect my job or my marriage, that's like someone saying, I have a swimming pool out back, and it has a P zone and a no P zone, which, of course, is ridiculous because if you're going to contaminate one part of the pool, it will, in fact, diffuse and make the entire pool contaminated. Same thing goes with drug abuse; if you are putting drugs and alcohol into your system, into your body, it's not going to make a difference whether it's Saturday or Monday or Friday. It's affecting your organs. It won't matter if you drink on the weekends versus the weekdays. You will still not be as effective in your job or as a family person if you've been drinking and drugging heavily, no matter when it is. And so my job is not to be judgmental and say you're being a really bad person doing this, but to point out that there's certainly a problem with the way he's thinking, that he is fooling himself with this permission-giving belief into thinking everything's fine, but things aren't fine.

And you're saying that with these permission-giving beliefs, he also has an awareness, as you said earlier, that ambivalence. He has an awareness that he'd love to kick the habit. I know I'm drinking too much, so that slips out in the conversation. I know I'm drinking too much as I don't know, six packs, several six packs, I don't know, and but then he comes in with the buts.

That's right, but it's just a little, or it's only one, so it's a little bit now, and use words—

Are a tip-off. Exactly. When people use words like a little bit, just only, those are the kinds of words that are trying to sugarcoat things, make things okay. I just want to have a drink. You know, after work, I only snorted one or two lines. I really just want to have a little bit of this stuff. If you hear someone saying that—

You're saying it to yourself or to yourself.

Say it again. But take out those words. Take out the just and the only. Don't say to yourself, I just want to have a drink. Say, I want to have a drink. Don't say to yourself, I only want to have a little. I only want to use a little bit. Say, I want to use. And you take out those words, and suddenly it becomes very stark. What you're saying is, I need this. I want this. It sounds more desperate. It sounds more like an addiction.

Bingo.

And then it's harder to act on that. If you say, I want to drink—

That's right, it's harder to follow through on that because it's your own mind's recognition that you've got an alcohol problem.

You'll tend to take the problem more seriously. And a big part of treatment for substance abuse, a huge part of it, is getting the person with the problem to take it seriously and look in the mirror and say, you know what? This is starting to really affect my life. I can't have this. That's half the battle.

Right? Because the benefits that they perceive are genuine too. You know? It gives me relief from my job, from all my problems. I don't have to think—

Is the problem. Those are other beliefs we deal with, the beliefs that put a glow on the effect of the drugs and alcohol. I need this to be social. I couldn't be a happy person without this. I'd be miserable if I didn't drink.

It's my one pleasure in life. Why would you rob me of it?

That's right. My comeback would be, well, as long as you really view this as your only source of pleasure, certainly you will hang on to it for dear life, even if it kills you. Pardon the pun, but maybe with your permission, with your collaboration, we can talk about how you can have other ways in your life to have some joy and pleasure, which right now it seems like you don't have—what means you think you don't have.

And that's the big hurdle. Then we're back into what you and I have talked about before, which is people having difficulty facing what they perceive as an overwhelming number of problems in their life, that the alcohol or the drugs are drowning.

It's quicker and easier to use drugs and alcohol to feel better temporarily, but quicker and easier isn't better. Better is being able to help yourself through coping, through managing problems, through finding a better way, through using your support system, through using your personal strengths and skills—your thinking skills.

Fundamental thinking skills, absolutely right? And that's what cognitive therapy offers them. With Dr. Corey Newman right now. He's the director of the Center for Cognitive Therapy. And if you could give a website for people to contact, where they could find out, perhaps, if there's a cognitive therapist—

There is a group called the Academy of Cognitive Therapy, and the website is in one big blurb, Academy of CT at CTS and Cognitive Therapy, Academy of ct.org. On that website, you will be able to find therapists, cognitive therapists, who have met the high bar of criteria for being in this academy in almost any state in the USA and many nations as well.

Okay, thank you so much for joining us today, Dr. Corey Newman. For more Dr. Kenner podcasts, go to DrKenner.com and please listen to this.

Here's an excerpt from The Selfish Path to Romance, the serious romance guidebook by clinical psychologist Dr. Ellen Kenner.

How do you make yourself worthy? Genuine self-esteem comes from relying on your power to think. Here are some examples of what that means: taking rational action to pursue your values, not being paralyzed by fear, doubt, or guilt. Is there something that you really want in life, some rational value, but are afraid to go after? Taking conscious pride in the achievements you have honestly earned. Do you ever feel unwarranted guilt about a genuine achievement or about your moral virtues? Developing your moral character. Do you lie when it's convenient? Do you routinely break promises? Working to understand yourself. Are you afraid of looking into your own mind?

You can download chapter one for free by going to DrKenner.com, and you can buy The Selfish Path to Romance at Amazon.com.