In this podcast episode, Sean Dustin interviews Jack Allen Levine, an addiction specialist, author, and serial entrepreneur. Sean introduces Jack and highlights his success in various businesses. Jack shares his story and mentions that he had a middle-class upbringing with loving parents. At 16, he started smoking and went on to use drugs such as pot, Quaaludes, cocaine, and Percocet. Jack reveals that his addiction didn't lead him to prison, but some of his choices and decisions could have. Despite his struggles with addiction, Jack managed to graduate from Syracuse University and build a successful career in advertising.
Jack has embraced the recovery lifestyle and sees it as a journey and adventure, rather than a struggle. He emphasizes the importance of plugging into the recovery lifestyle and having sober friends, and compares addiction recovery to being traded to a different team. He acknowledges that there are emotions that he now feels that he used to mask with drugs, but overall, he feels that his new life is so much better than his old life of addiction. He advises people struggling with addiction not to make promises they may not be able to keep, but instead let their actions speak for them.
Jack is also involved with Louisiana Addiction Research Center, which is studying psychedelics as a potential treatment for addiction. He hopes that psychedelics can be a cure for addiction, but acknowledges that it's a long road and that not everyone will be able to afford a trip guide. Moreover, he questions whether it's really a one-time or two-time treatment, or if it's a continuous treatment for the rest of a person's life, in which case it may replace one drug with another. However, Levine believes that if medically assisted treatment such as Suboxone or other treatments keep people alive and able to seek help for their addiction, it's better than having them dead from overdosing. At the end of the day, the most important question is whether a person wants help. Levine believes that there are seven ways out of drug addiction and alcohol addiction, and that there's hope for everybody who wants to recover.
Jack and Sean move into a discussion on how mistakes and relapses are not the end of the world in recovery. Levine points out that we should look at our hearts and strive for a gold standard, but not beat ourselves up over mistakes. Instead, we should take it as an opportunity to reassess and see what is not working in our recovery program. Levine stresses the importance of following the recipe for recovery and trusting the advice of people who have been sober for a long time. He emphasizes the need for surrender, which is a sign that someone is ready for recovery, and to follow the advice of those who have been there before. The conversation ends with the idea that the people we may not initially like are usually the ones who will help us the most.
