Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
- Guest
- Ryan Soave
- Read time
- ~5 min
- Uploaded
- 21 Apr 2025
- Duration
- 3:07:32
- Views
- 458.9K
KEYPOINTS
- 01
Addiction is a solution to something, and that solution becomes the problem
Soave, chief clinical officer at Guardian Recovery, sees substances and compulsive behaviors as relief from an underlying stressor. He quotes Dr. William Silkworth, an early supporter of Alcoholics Anonymous: people drink because they like the effect alcohol produces, and 'that effect is relief.' The clinical question then becomes what the person is trying to get relief from.
- 02
Ask whether you have it, or it has you
Clinically, the terms are substance or alcohol use disorder, rated by severity. Soave notes that not everyone who meets the criteria at one point in life is permanently an addict, though they probably shouldn't 'gamble with it.' He applies the question beyond drugs, to TV, exercise and work. Bingeing Netflix on a plane is different from bingeing to avoid a stressful day and then losing sleep.
- 03
Detox comes first, and early sobriety often feels worse
Treatment starts with medical and nursing assessments, and sometimes a trip to the ER, because stopping alcohol abruptly can cause seizures and death. Once the substance is gone, people have to face life without their 'medicine,' so they often feel worse at first. Soave likes it when patients arrive fighting. Like an arrow pulled further back, that tension can carry them further than patients who just tick boxes.
- 04
Recovery has to build a life, not just remove something
Cutting something out isn't sustainable if it was serving a purpose. Recovery means learning to notice sooner when you're out of balance and to return to peace faster, again and again. Soave borrows a definition of humility from Bill Wilson: an honest recognition of who and what we've become, followed by a deep desire to become who we can be.
- 05
We confuse discomfort with threat
Soave calls this possibly our biggest psychological challenge. He compares it to a sailor who assumes calm seas mean he's on course and rough seas mean he's off course, and keeps changing direction. A skilled sailor decides whether to go through a storm or around it. Distress tolerance means being able to choose a response rather than simply react.
- 06
Build calm proactively, before you need it
The 'gap between stimulus and response' is hard to find in the moment, so Soave schedules regulation practices whether or not he needs them that day. He compares it to therapy: the second-best time is during a crisis, and the best time is when you're not in one. Huberman adds that learning to notice the fast bodily signs of adrenaline helps you spot a stress wave earlier, as in the idea 'stilling leads to seeing.'
- 07
Gambling is the addiction where the next hit promises to fix everything
Someone using heroin doesn't believe the next dose will solve their life, but a gambler down $300,000 can believe one bet will. Soave says he has seen research suggesting gambling addicts have very high suicide rates. He's alarmed by unregulated offshore sites and crypto betting reaching kids, and by how saturated sports broadcasts now are with betting ads.
- 08
Stimulant addiction is mostly psychological, and that makes it hard
Unlike alcohol, opioids or benzodiazepines, stimulants don't require a physical detox, yet quitting them is 'really hard' because of a mental obsession. Huberman notes that smoking crack or injecting cocaine raises dopamine fastest, and that the speed of the rise matters as much as the peak.
- 09
Some people are 'addicted' to intensity
Soave describes special forces veterans whose training is largely nervous-system training: doing skills under extreme stress and sleep loss. At home, ordinary life can feel flat, and high-adrenaline risk-taking only brings them up to baseline. He calls it a drive and Huberman calls it intensity addiction, but both describe a nervous system calibrated very high.
EXAMPLES
- 01
The 30-day litmus test
Huberman admits he has worked 10–16 hours a day, five or six days a week, since he was 19. Their test is whether you could take 30 days away from something without falling apart. Soave adds that you should tell a therapist or trusted friend how it's going, because it's hard to be honest with yourself.
- 02
The emotional weather forecast
Each morning: (1) note gratitude, including for something that challenges you; (2) sketch the day's plans, such as school run, three flights, business dinner; (3) name your current emotional state, including fears, resentments, guilt or shame; (4) predict which 'liabilities' could flare, such as impatience or control; and (5) choose what to strive for, such as patience or kindness. Like packing a raincoat, it won't stop you getting wet, but it's there when you need it.
- 03
A mother changed only one thing
Between two parts of a yoga nidra training in Florida, a stressed single mother of two young boys did nothing differently except practice nidra twice a day. When she returned she said, 'my boys changed.' Soave suspects the boys were the same, and she had built the tolerance to handle ordinary boy behavior.
- 04
Opioids and the poppy
The same flower gives us surgical pain relief that Soave believes has saved more lives than it has cost, and heroin and fentanyl. US overdose deaths went from about 50,000, which surpassed car-crash deaths, to roughly 100,000 a year. Teens now die from counterfeit 'Xanax' or 'Valium' pills laced with fentanyl.
- 05
Powerlessness as the first step
Only the first of AA's 12 steps mentions alcohol. The rest are a 'design for living.' Soave frames admitting powerlessness as like a kid who stops picking fights with the five biggest guys on the block every day: once you see where you can't win, you can find real power elsewhere.
OTHER RELEVANT
- 01
Schedule yoga nidra or NSDR
Soave's preferred timing for 20–35 minute sessions is morning and late afternoon, then evening, then whenever you can. His treatment programmes started each day with an hour of nidra. Regular practice makes it faster to move from a dysregulated state to a regulated one.
- 02
Watch for HALT
Hungry, angry, lonely, tired: these are the states that raise relapse risk, often several at once. Soave has heard anecdotally that diabetic alcoholics who keep their blood sugar stable relapse less often, and he says early research suggests GLP-1 drugs may reduce cravings, though he doesn't know of on-label use for addiction.
- 03
For porn or similar compulsions, define your own sobriety
Admit the problem, decide with a therapist, sponsor or group what sobriety means for you (often stopping completely), then add accountability, such as blocking software or a partner who approves the sites you visit. Huberman notes that fast, repeated dopamine spikes carve a groove and deliver less and less satisfaction over time.
- 04
Helping someone you love
Talk to them without shaming them, treating them as a sick friend rather than a bad person. Get support yourself through Al-Anon or a treatment center, and offer to go with them to an open 12-step meeting, which anyone can attend. You can just say 'pass' if it's your turn to share.