The Truth About Addiction: Discipline Beats Disease Model

The only way you're going to be disciplined is by taking responsibility if you were a slave to whatever your brain demanded in the moment. I think it's so important that people understand feelings are terrible decision makers. The most successful people in the study in recovery, they found, were the ones that would do it regardless of how they feel. I don't think addiction so much about the substance. It is about total inability to say no. I don't have any integrated

aggression in my addiction. It was very easy. And even in early sobriety. Guys, we're here today. What's up, Dwayne? How's it going? Well, good. We're talking about the one thing I think that separates people who stay sober from people who don't. It's not what a lot of people think it is. I bought into the narrative that addiction was this mysterious disease that just happened to me. And when you it's not. I don't want to get into an argument of rewards, disease or

not. What I want to get into and what I want us to talk about is this belief that I was a victim to it and that I was powerless and that recovery was just about managing symptoms. There wasn't like life skill that I needed to understand. And this is what I'll hand it over to you, but there wasn't this like, life skill of self-discipline. And I don't think addiction so much about the substance as it is about my complete and total inability to say no to myself, if that makes sense.

Absolutely makes perfect sense. I can't say no. I don't have any integrated aggression in my addiction. It was. Very easy. And even in early sobriety. I want to this is really interesting. I don't know if you ever heard of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. It's called the NIH. It's really popular government

and everything else. They had a neuroscientist study this and this is so interesting and this is from 2025 and it said your brain plasticity means addiction creates specific neuro adaptations. But this is crazy that they found out these same narrow adaptations can be rewired. Just like they got rewired through your addiction, they can be rewired through consistent discipline, behavioral changes.

So 50 here we are sitting 5051. I can go into my addiction, rewire my neuroplasticity into addiction, and then I'm addict, addict, do drugs, alcohol, whatever it is. Or I can go this way and then I'm disciplined, going to the gym everyday, eating clean, being self aware with my anger. You see what I'm saying? But the same neuroplasque working either or away right? But though he that's where the I mean that that's where not having balls enough to to

understand the fear. I think there's a lot of people that don't know how to get discipline sounds great, but I don't know how to get past the fear part. I don't want to go into to church and go to confession. I don't want to go into the gym and get the membership because I'm back. What I'm saying, it's like this narcissistic fear. I don't know. I always go into the grocery store and I'd just go in those middle aisles, buy the box stuff and just eat that because it's easy. I don't know.

I don't know how to make our meal prep. Or did you? It's like that beginning stages of the discipline where people don't know how to address their fear. Yes, yes, 100%. And I think it starts with the comfortable lie. And I know I'm gonna, I'm gonna be controversial here and hit the elephant in the room. If that's fine, we've got some

dishes over. But the recovery industrial complex, that's what I like to call it, recovery industrial complex, any industrial complex always wants to make you the victim because there's billions and billions of dollars at stake. They've built this entire business model around this one central lie where addiction is this chronic progressive disease that you manage rather than this learned behavior that you can change.

Because we need you to understand that if you have this chronic progressive disease, then you get a get out of jail free card. Every bad decision, every relapse, every moment you choose the easy path over the right path, the discipline path, then what does that cause you to do? It causes you to be able to never take responsibility. And the only way you're going to be disciplined is by taking responsibility, if that makes sense.

You have to because you recognize as much as I do, especially for addiction, is the physical is the gateway to the emotion. It makes your body look good. People give you compliments like I'm 52 and people are like, Oh my God, you look great for 52. OK, whatever, let's get that passed. The emotional and the mental aspects of having that disciplined physical exercise daily is what keeps me sane. Because addicts, we have were

wired a little bit. Like I said before, we're for our, we've got to get tuned all the time. This is really interesting. In that study, they talked about relapse statistics and this is crazy, Dwayne. 6 sort of people treated for substance use disorders will relapse at least once. And I think it's a lot higher. I think a lot of people don't admit that they relapse, but you know what the difference is between the people that don't

relapse and people that relapse. It's not the severity of their addiction. It's not their trauma history because they looked into all that. It's not their genetics or their family history. This study hit all those things. So it's not severity that they did. It's not the trauma history, it's not the genetics, not the family history.

You know what the studies found? Self regulation that or was what positive related to length of abstinence and so that's interesting to me because that's disciplined self regulation is disciplined pure and simple yes the interesting part to doing on this could you just said it that fear art with evolutionary psychology. They found that fear causes you to get tunnel vision. Your amygdala causes you to do

that. So if you're getting chased in the jungle by a tiger thousands of years ago, you're not going to stop and look at the pretty flower. Your vision doesn't open up. See, Oh no, this is so beautiful. You're going to be so tunnel vision. And that's what the addiction does too. It creates the same amygdala fear response and causes you to have tunnel vision.

And when you have tunnel vision, you're not able to even understand or know through this fear fighter fight response to take the breath, to take the time to relax, to say, you know what? I can choose my thoughts. And that's what you're saying when you begin to have that realization that God gave you to be like, you know what, Joanne? You can choose your thoughts. You can choose your actions. You can choose your response, and you can choose it every single time because it's that choice.

And here's the magic, the moment between stimulus and response, that's where the discipline and the power lives. And that is, I believe, between stimulus and response. That's where recovery happens. And as Jocko calls it, that's where freedom lives. Yeah, yes, yes. That's so good. And the discipline doesn't

restrict freedom. A lot of people think that, especially in your addiction, like you said, it actually creates it. But when you're using, when you're caught up in your addiction, you think you're free. You were saying this earlier. I can do whatever the fuck I want, whenever I want. I have no rules, no structure, no one telling me what to do. But really, that's a lie. You weren't free at all.

You were a slave pulse, you were a slave to crazy, you were a slave to whatever your brain demanded in the moment, and you had zero choice. So that means zero choice means 0 freedom. When you're controlled by your impulses, you're not free. And real freedom to me is being able to choose your response of being controlled instead of being controlled like reactions. And what does that look like?

I want people to understand this, and I'll bish it back over to you, but every discipline moment is a vote for your recovery, and recovery is won by votes, not by feelings. When you have an undisciplined moment, that is a vote for your addiction, if that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. And, and I think it's so important that people understand feelings are terrible decision makers. But addicts, we're all just

living off our feelings. And the most successful people in the study and recovery they found were the ones that would do it regardless of how they feel. Because when you regularize, if you tell if you said President Biden or President Trump and you're like, hey, make the decision on World War 3 based off your feelings in the moment. No, you want to be logic and data and a bunch of people in Congress and Senate and all this, but you want like a committees of people looking at all this.

You don't want somebody just making feelings in ring are not real either, you know, and I don't want to get into that part, but I do want to take the next few minutes that we have and get into if we can call it 4 pillars or whatever you want to call it. But what discipline actually looks like in recovery like specifically and number one, pillar one, and we'll talk about this as the neural discipline.

And the research shows us that social support and reduced impulsivity predict fewer relapses. This means daily practices that strengthen your prefrontal cortex. Because alcohol changes your prefrontal cortex. When you drink and you do risky behavior, that's a change of the prefrontal cortex. So now you've got to do daily practices that strengthen your prefrontal cortex. That's mindfulness, breathing,

going to the gym, eating clean. You have to understand this neural discipline is brain training. You're building a part of your brain that's responsible for self-control, that addicts, they're at A1 on a scale of 1 to 10. Some people are born with like, really good self-control and other people are at a 1. And I think a lot of addicts can be more risky and less self-control. But then also when it becomes disciplined, allows you to be entrepreneurial.

Yeah, I, I love that. And that's pillar one at the neural side of things. Pillar two, you're an expert on this side is the physical discipline. Exercise literally creates new brain cells through a process called neurogenesis. So proper nutrition supports neurotransmare production. And one of the things that I love to do and that it's great for addicts, it's cold showers in the morning. And I know people think it's crazy, but it's discipline training.

If I can get up out of the hour and not lay there, not check my phone and choose discomfort first thing in the morning, first thing I'm going to hit is the cold shower. And I know from the minute that I'm laying in bed, when I wake up, my brain starts saying, no, I don't want to do that. No, we're not going to do that. So. And I can overcome that if I can choose discomfort when I'm triggered, I win every time. Yeah.

It's so interesting. You know, this leads to Pillar 3, and that's the emotional discipline. And obviously, in the study, Dwayne, experiencing closeness with others predicts not only positive emotional states. We all knew that. But guess what? It reduces impulsive behavior. So you going to a meeting when you don't feel like it reduces impulsive behavior. Isn't that crazy? Like having closeness with other people that you're struggling with in neuroscience reduces you

wanting to use. There's a reason there's a sign everybody, it's not just woo going to the meeting. There's actually science backing why you should be close with others and why you should go to meetings. Isn't that crazy? Yeah, the sex Edison security is interesting. Something that I've been learning, that my higher self has been teaching me is what is looking at somebody else in higher self sex. Let's say you find an attractive man or woman or whatever one,

they're going to get old. I'm getting all of them, getting wrinkles all over my face. But 52 and #2 the biggest thing is that person is having, no matter how beautiful they look, they're having issues inside of them. They're learning. There's learning lessons that are happening inside of them. So how can I with closeness without having that sexual abstraction? You're going to have that, that, that if somebody's beautiful, they're beautiful, whatever. And you can appreciate that and

understand that. But then at the same time, how can I operate? Am I going to operate in my monkey mind, my reptilian break? I'm going to operate in my higher self. And what does my higher self look like? And I think Jesus had tons of interactions with women constantly. Some people say he was married, some people say he wasn't. Whatever doesn't matter. But we can see him always elevating women, going against the norm, going against the societal pressures that were put on women.

And he always made them feel knowledgeable and honored and accepted and allowed to be in with the disciples and listen to the teachings. And he honored them and, and you can see that. But the story with him being with his mother over and over again and the conversations that they had together, how he loved his mom and honored his mom. And we have Mary and the status of feminism for that. And I think on the sexual side, I think that's really important.

But the status side, it's like my higher self, I have so much power that I can create worlds. Abraham Hicks taught us that. So what the fuck? I worried about what watch I have on in the moment or What Car am I driving? I'm 6 foot two. I can't even fit in a sports car, you know what I mean? I've put my knees up to the front. So it's like at the end of the day, those things are nice. If you have zeros in your bank account, great, purchase those things.

At the end of the day, that's not what I live for. I'm not concerned about what vehicle I have the same vehicle I've had for five years, but I never have any dead and everything's paid off. I don't have to worry about these things because I'm not worried about status. What is it recognizing? And then this is where I like the stoic mentality is I'm going to die. There's no way around, there's no way I'm going to go around that. But Marcus Aurelius talked about

that. Like, imagine your death and what that looks like. So when you begin to imagine your death, what becomes important, your family, your children is leaving a legacy. What does that look like? Why would I even get your podcast? You know, we're not getting paid. I, we both of us get paid. We're both successful. So our time is worth a lot of money. An hour of your time, an hour my time is worth a lot of fucking money. And all I'm doing this is

because this goes out forever. My children are going to be able to listen to this when I'm gone, my loved one, everybody that I know, and I'm leaving a legacy. And also there are some of you that DM us saying how the podcast is changing your life. And that's what it means to me. That's the status I want. That's the success. That's the security I want was

to leave a legacy. Yeah. And I know this third pillar on emotions, the lotions don't kill you, but running from the mic, you know, So I want to get into pillar 4, the last pillar, and that's environmental discipline and ruthlessly eliminating triggers and consciously choosing your relationships and then creating systems that make good choices automatic and bad choices harder. Why do you still have your dealer or plugs number in your phone, Junior? I'm serious about recovery.

If you still have that in there. What and how simple? How long does it take to delete those fucking numbers out of your phone? 30 seconds, I guess. Why haven't you done that? That's environmental discipline. Yeah. Discipline. Yes. Yeah, that's so good. Another way to say it is your environment is stronger than

your willpower every time. So in Stanford, if you look at the Stanford study where they had this was like an old study a long time ago where they had people being prison guards and people be prisoners. And then this shows you your environment is strawberry than your willpower every time. What had happened was they made people pretend like they were in like it looked like a prison, but they just pretending to be

prisoners and prison guards. After about a week, it got pretty serious and so then the prisoner started trying to revolve to get the prison guards. The prisoner guards had to clamp down more and more and they were being abusive. It just turned into this terrific environment. So then on the study, they decided to switch everybody the next week. So get all hell broke loose then 'cause there's fuck these prison

guards. I'm going to take, they're prisoners now, so I'm going to get my revenge. This is why we have to be ruthless on eliminating these triggers by choosing good relationships, creating systems, you know, and making these choices because, and this is what nobody tells you. And I believe every time you choose discipline over impulse, you literally, we said this earlier and it's a study, you literally are growing new neuro pathways. So what does this mean?

This is going to be controversial to help. Everybody listens to this. You're not managing a disease, you're building a new brain. And the beautiful thing is it gets easier. And I want you to talk on this. Discipline builds on itself. The more you practice, the stronger it gets. It's like a muscle. It's use or lose it. I want to kind of get into discipline destroyers and three of them real clear. I want you to comment on each of these. I think destroyer #1, discipline, destroyer #1 is

this. And you hear of this in recovery circles one day at a time. The phrase is awesome and it's supposed to be our presence. It's supposed to be about focusing on what you can control today and not being overwhelmed by the enormity of forever, but end up using this one day at a time where somewhere along the way it becomes an excuse for not planning. It becomes an excuse for not building long term discipline. It becomes an excuse. You're taking responsibility for your future.

And a lot of times it's, I don't have to be disciplined about my future 'cause I'm just taking it one day at a time. I don't need to have systems or structure or plan for next week, tomorrow break, 'cause I'm just taking it, just trying to do it now. Do you see what I'm saying? Instead of understanding one day at a time is the present moment or avoiding light destroyer #2 the powerless programming.

A lot of programs, they'll say that your power was over alcohol and somehow because you're a powerless over alcohol, but somehow it gets twisted into I'm powerless over everything. That's not what it means when it says you're powerless over alcohol. Yes, you are powerless over the fact that you have addiction. You're powerless over that, but you're not powerless over what you do about it.

You won't control whether you're an addict, but you can absolutely control whether you're a using addict or not. There's a huge difference between accepting that you have a condition and expecting that you're helpless to change your life, if that makes sense. I want to kind of get into destroyer #3 this will be our last one, and we'll close in

this one. And this is a sensitive one, but it's this when understanding becomes enabling, when your family or your group becomes more invested in your victim story than your victory story. And I see this all the time, people who've been going to the same meetings for years, telling the same stories, getting the same sympathy, making the same excuses. They're never growing, never

changing. But growth requires having the comfort of being understood for your problems and then moving into the discomfort of being responsible for your solutions. The question is of whether you can recover. We talked to you today about neuroscience, and science has answered that you absolutely can't. And we're living examples of it. The question is whether you're willing to do what it takes to recover what it actually requires. And that's becoming the most

disciplined version of yourself. You have to, as an addict's brain, we want to look for shortcuts. We want to wait for motivation, like you said earlier, and then or else you want to play the victim and expect someone else to save us. Those are all excuses. Those are all us staying comfortable in our dysfunction. And I, I want to encourage everyone that I'm pass it over to you for last comments, Dwayne, is that we need to start building discipline and we need to start today.

And we can start with one small choice and let it compound. You don't go to the gym and pick up the 45 LB weights and start doing curls. You could do those curls in a year or two. You start with the 10 lbs or the 5 lbs, whatever you need to do to start building that muscle bowl. And discipline is the bridge between where you are and where you want to be. And we've given you the blueprint today. So now it's your choice to build the bridge. Thank you.