Addiction — Full webinar with Michael Adamedes

0:00Hi everyone, welcome. This is the fifth presentation in the emotional series and in this presentation there are three parts. Part one covers the conventional medical understanding of addiction, part two, a conventional way of managing addiction, the way medical people would talk about it. While part three is a conscious interpretation of addiction. And just before we start,

0:29I'd like to do a one minute centering exercise. It can just bring us all into the present moment. So spine straight, head erect, eyes gently closed, and absolutely perfectly still. And take in a really deep breath through the nose and make a long sigh sound out through the mouth. Now take two long slow breaths in and out through your nose and return your attention to the screen.

1:49And so for today's presentation it's about addiction. Addiction has become an epidemic and the medical interpretation is that addiction is a disease and it's like something that's gripping the planet at this time. From my perspective it's the amount of unresolved pain that sits in the collective human unconscious. And the way we've been taught and the way

2:21most people are dealing with it is to suppress it. And the dictionary definition of addiction is the continued use of a substance or engaging in the behavior despite its detrimental consequences. And according to the National Institute of Drug Abuse in the United States, in 2016 the use and addiction of alcohol, nicotine, and illicit drugs,

2:56cost the nation more than $740 billion a year. And that was related to healthcare, crime, and lost productivity. Also in that same year drug overdoses killed over 63,000 people in the United States. While 88,000 people died from excessive alcohol use and tobacco is linked to an estimated 400 and 80,000 deaths per year. It's madness. Total madness. This is just the United States.

3:39And if you look at the next slide, it shows the graph on the statistics in 2018, 67,367 people died from drug overdose deaths in the United States. And a slight consolation is that it's a 4.1% decline from the previous year in 2017. But this is again, it's madness. And in 2018, 20.3 million people in the United States aged 12 years or older had a substance abuse

4:24disorder disorder. 14.8 million people with an alcohol disorder, 8.1 million with an illegal drug disorder. And they most commonly abused drug being marijuana with 4.4 million people having a marijuana disorder, meaning it's just out of control. And 2 million people have an opioid disorder, including prescription medication and heroin abuse. So drugs are a major issue,

4:59and particularly in Western countries. And I mean Australia and in Australia there would be a parallel to these statistics. I'd say we're running a few years behind the situation in America, but on a capita basis, we're probably in a similar position. And when you think about drugs, there are two types of addiction. And the first one is substance and the second one is process.

5:32And with substance addiction, it includes illicit drugs, metaphedamine, met meth, rather metaphedamine, heroin, cocaine, cannabis. It includes alcohol, nicotine, prescription medication, caffeine, and sugar. So people are ingesting these substances in order to change their feeling state. It changes the biochemistry of the body and in turn changes the way you feel. And it gives you takes away the

6:09heaviness and gives you a high for a period of time. The other way in which addiction occurs is called process, and that's gambling, sex can be mobile devices, the internet, gaming, work, even exercise. So anything where people become fixated in a particular activity. And so between the substance abuse and the process abuse, this is how we addict ourselves. So we addict ourselves by ingesting

6:50external stimulants or we overstimulate ourselves. So we are internal biochemistry starts to stimulate because we're not feeling okay in some way and we're not dealing with not feeling okay. And so there are actually two effects from addiction. And one's a chemical effect and the other one is a psychological effect. And the chemical substances can affect many parts of the body,

7:28but the organ most affected is the brain. And when a person takes a drug or drinks alcohol, their brain produces large amounts of dopamine, which triggers the brain's reward system. And after repeated drug use, the brain is unable to produce normal amounts of dopamine on its own. And this means that a person needs to find more and more stimulus to give them the high.

7:58It becomes difficult for them just to enjoy normal activities, like spending time with their family or friends or just going out and having fun so that when they're not under the influence of drugs or alcohol, they're just not feeling okay. And they need to take more. The psychological effect of addiction is that there's an intense craving for more of the substance.

8:26There's a high feeling of anxiety. There's a loss of appetite. The person feels unable to cope without taking this substance or engaging in that behaviour. And there's often denials about their problem. They don't think they've got an issue. You know, I'm just doing what I'm doing, but I'm okay. And there's feelings of restlessness,

8:51mental obsession with obtaining alcohol and drugs and the symptoms of depression. And so it goes on. And so there's both a psychological addiction and there is a chemical addiction to this behaviour. And then on this next slide is an illustration of how meth, methamphetamine affects the brain. Now this is a particularly strong drug and it's probably

9:25the strongest of drugs that people would be subjected to. But it highlights the way it works in the brain. If you look at section three on the slide, what meth is doing is it's stimulating the release of dopamine. And dopamine is the reward receptor. So when you have more dopamine, it means the neurons are firing more often and you're getting a better feeling.

9:56So this is releasing more dopamine into the body. And therefore more receptors are feeling pleasure and you're getting this pleasure response. But the problem is that over a period of time, as more dopamine is being released, you're depleting the supply of dopamine in the body. And so the body has less and less to put out and more and more of the drug is required. In the next slide,

10:27this is a graph showing the amount of dopamine released by meth compared to other drugs. Now dopamine, I mean meth is like a real evil sort of drug in that it really gives you a massive spike. You look at cocaine, nicotine, alcohol. They give you spikes. Even food, if you're eating something, you really enjoy will give you a spike. But in comparison to meth, it goes right off the chart.

10:58But fundamentally what it's doing is that it is stimulating the dopamine release so that you get a higher pleasure response. But that in turn is depleting the amount of dopamine in the body. So then you need more and more of the drug to feel better. And that goes for not just meth, it goes for cocaine, it goes for nicotine, it goes for alcohol. So if you are regularly using a drug, then you need more

11:31of the drug over a time to continue to get the same level of high. And this is the trap with it. But for the average person, the four most common forms of addiction, most people aren't going to be into meth. But the most common form of addiction, alcohol, it changes the body's chemistry and it can become very addictive. In 2016, as mentioned earlier, 88,000 people are reputed to have died from

12:08alcohol abuse in the United States. What it's just a crazy alarming statistic. Probably alcohol, abuse in alcohol death is probably the greatest of all the drugs that are occurring. So we've just got to be very careful about drinking and how, what we do with it. And it's not, it's like the excessive use of alcohol. You know, occasional glass of wine, a beer here and there isn't an addict,

12:40isn't going to create all these problems. But if I'm using alcohol on a regular basis in order to cope with my life to deal with my stress to feel better, then you really have to consider, you know, what's going on here. The other one is sugar. And sugar for a long time was not considered a problem. But it's really become a major problem. And it's this refined sugar. If you're getting sugar from fruit,

13:12it's a different ball game. If you're eating unrefined, unprocessed honey, that's pretty okay. And there are other forms of natural sweetness that are okay. What I'm really talking about here when I say sugar is refined sugar. And refined sugar has gotten to the point of almost like a refined chemical. It's been reduced to this very basic white crystal. And in some research papers, they're showing that

13:43rats would prefer sugar to cocaine. And that's the extent of stimulant and addiction that they're receiving. So sugar, what it does is it stimulates the neurotransmitters of dopamine and serotonin, and the hormone of endorphin. So what it's doing is it's stimulating the pleasure parts of the brain. The brain's reward system. And so we're getting stimulated and we just wow, we want the sugar.

14:21And research is from the University of Gellif in Canada state that eating a lot of sweets and foods with a high glycemic index may eventually change your brain chemistry, reducing the number of receptors for dopamine so that more and more sugar is needed to produce the same effect. And also according to the Department of Health in New Hampshire, in the United States, sugar consumption over the last 200 years

14:55has grown from the average of two pounds of sugar per person per year to between 150 to 170 pounds of sugar per person per year. That's the consumption has risen over 200 years for the average person in the United States. And most likely in most Western countries, from one kilo of sugar a year to 65 kilos of sugar a year. And one of the problems with sugar is that it's hidden in so many other

15:33foods. You can get it in bread, you get it in cereal, in most drinks, even health drinks, soft drinks, a full of sugar. And so and certainly fizzy drinks and cakes and sweets and things like that. But the amount of sugar we're getting is really loading the system big time. And more people dying the world today from obesity than from malnutrition. And the world health organization

16:06blames this in part to the massive sugar consumption, which is also linked to obesity type to diabetes and cardiovascular disease. So sugar is a big deal. And this is one of those silent things that most of us will be subjected to. And I could say my greatest addiction is sugar and really cutting back on it, not putting sugar in my tea, not eating sweets, being very much aware of the

16:42products that I'm buying and looking at the labels and looking at things that have low sugar content. So sugar is a big deal. And it's one of those silent quiet things that slip in. The next thing that the average person would probably have to deal with is painkillers. And this is like I've got a headache and I'll take something, you know, paracetamol and things like this. And it's like it changes

17:12your body chemistry. And it reduces your capacity to deal with discomfort. You start to lose your confidence around certain things. If you have a headache, the best thing to do is go and lie down and rest. Have a glass of water, have a drink. You may be dehydrated. Have something to drink. Slow yourself down. Relax. Try and go through it without having to change your biochemistry by ingesting some

17:47substance. And so painkillers have now become a major source of addiction. The average person is being told that, you know, taking something for a headache is okay. Taking something for, you know, some, you know, a back problem or whatever is okay. It's better to rest, work out, why is that occurring? And most likely it's a stress related thing. And it's probably something to do with your diet

18:19or your hydration. The other major issue for the average person is smoke smartphones and smartphones have just gone off the Richter scale. And in researching this presentation, you know, I thought smartphones were a problem. It's one of those things. My generation is not a problem for me. I'm happy to go and not look at my phone. And I'm happy to just leave it. And I literally could go days

18:49without looking at my phone and easy for me if it wasn't for business. I would just not look at my emails or certainly not go on to social media. But that's a generational thing. But for my daughter, she was brought up, she's 25. She was brought up with social media. This is the way her friends communicate. This is how she connects to her social network. And so it's a thing that

19:17they're involved all the time. On the in this next slide, I have an illustration from a magazine called What the Doctors Don't Tell You, a fabulous magazine highly recommend it. And in this thing, it just shows you, you know, smartphone addiction. For instance, it's saying that this particular research comes from a vote of phone in the United Kingdom. And it says that when they

19:56research these people, that 33% of people responded that they would be prepared to answer their phone in the middle of sex. And 51% have to go closer to this. Would answer the phone during, you know, at a wedding or a special event. And that people would do it in dinner. And that people would prepare to answer the phone when they're with other people, even though they're engaged in a

20:27conversation. To me, it's like, hang on a minute, where are your priorities? I'm here with you. We're in real time with each other. Someone who's outside has rung. Maybe ring it and say, I'll talk to you later, but often people will ring it. And have a major conversation and I'm sitting here waiting. It's like, what's the etiquette around smartphones when you're with other people, when you're

20:54having meals together when you're attending special events, a funeral, a wedding. And the same survey showed that majority of people thought that smartphones and internet thing was a major addiction. And so it's a matter of being aware of it. What it does is it's triggering the endorphins, the dopamine in the brain. And it's just saying, wow, I'm feeling good. It's

21:28exciting. I'm looking at this all the time. And so being aware of it and being able to put boundaries around it and change it. The next slide is, this is from this magazine that I recommend. What the doctors don't tell you, just go on to the internet. You'll find a connection to it. Highly recommend getting another perspective. It's great to look at the conventional medical perspective

21:58because they've got amazing resources and this tremendous amount. But to rely on that exclusively, I think you miss out on something else. In the next section, I want to talk about managing addiction. So in part two, I'd like to give you a conventional explanation of managing addiction. So these are just some points that I would recommend. The first one is it's acknowledging the

22:33addiction. You'd think that that would be normal in common sense, but often people are in denial. Particularly with alcohol and painkillers. And it's like, oh no, I'm just having a drink here and there. I'm not really caught up in this. And the same with painkillers because the doctor prescribed it, it must be okay. And so you could understand that there is something out of balance

23:00and can you run your life without the alcohol, the painkillers, without the sugar, and without the mobile phone? How do you feel if you went a month without these things? And this is really just a matter of being real honest with yourself. The second thing is detoxification. And the detox is the process of letting the body remove the drugs or disconnect from the habit. And the purpose of the detox

23:38is to safely manage the withdrawal symptoms because when someone stops taking drugs or alcohol, there's a whole lot of physical effects they have. Nausea headaches, they can get quite ill and shaking. They get insomnia, a lot of anxiety. And it's very much an individual experience. Everyone goes through it differently. They have their own individual

24:04psychology. Also everyone has their own history around the exposure to the drug or to the experience. And so it's a matter of looking at it and seeing how they manage it. And the coming off can be the chemical effect of a drug can take between four to 12 weeks. It's not a simple thing. And that requires a lot of support. And four to 12 weeks in my way of thinking about

24:38it would be in a residential experience. It wouldn't be four to 12 weeks at home doing it on your own. It's very unlikely you'd be able to do it on your own. And it's a big deal being able to come off the drugs. Many years ago I worked in a maximum security prison in Australia as a counselor to heroin and alcohol addicted inmates. And I was interviewing a long-term heroin addict.

25:08and I asked him how did you get off the heroin? And he said I'd only been in jail for a few weeks and started to experience headaches and nausea. And after a few days of this it just became uncontrollable. So they put me into solitary. They'll basically try to help him to let me go through it. But in the middle of the night it became so bad that I began hitting my head against the concrete.

25:39And then the guards came in and put me into a straight jacket and strapped me to the bed. You know in each of these prison cells, when you're in confinement like that, there's a close-circuit TV camera so they can watch everything that's going on. The bed's bolted to the floor. And he strapped to in a straight jacket, strapped to the bed. And he had to go like this for

26:09a while. And he said it took me a few days to fully come out of it. Then I asked him why did you hit your head against the wall? Because he was bashing his head against the wall. He had a scar from where he had done that and he bludled over him at the time. He said it because he felt like rats were eating my brain and hitting my head against the concrete wall was less painful.

26:36Now this is an absolute extreme over the top example of detox and I would never wish that on anyone. But the extent of coming off a drug, particularly if someone has been on it and it's completely taken them over, is a big deal. And until you come off, until your detox, you really can't take the next step. And the next step is counseling and behavioral therapy. So if I have someone come to see

27:08me for therapy and they have a drug problem, I will say when was the last time you had a drink? When was the last time you had a shot? When was the last time you did it? And by my standards, I want them to be drug free, process free for a minimum of six months. Otherwise you just can't trust them. You can't trust them, not because they are someone who is going to take advantage of you, although

27:42sometimes they can or they're immoral or something. You can't trust them because they have no control over their own feeling function. They have no control over their own biochemistry. They have no control over their thinking and their feeling. They have no self-discipline or willpower. And so they'll sit there, promise you everything and be totally congruent and really believe it. And then 24 hours

28:08they're completely gone the other way. And gambling is a real example of something like that. Yes, I'll never do it again. And then by the next week I see them, wow, I just blew another five grand or something. But you've got to come off it. You've got to come off it, the physical and the psychological, at least the physical effect of the addiction. Then we can go into the next stage.

28:33And this next stage is counseling and behavioral therapies. And basically you need to work out why the addiction is occurring and what the triggers are. And some of the reasons are loneliness because loneliness can be powerful. Very, very painful. And there's a desire to numb it as a family history. And there's a kind of a genetic connection. Some people grow up in homes where they're exposed

28:59to drugs and addiction. And this has a major impact on their behavior. And also it can affect their genetics even. Then this peer pressure, it's one of the most powerful influences on a person's behavior. And this is especially true for young people for teenagers and everyone wants to be liked and accepted. And thus they're very open to being influenced by their friends. And they may

29:31engage in things because their friends are doing it. And even though they aren't healthy and the best things, they'll do it because they want to be part of the crowd. Also there's another reason why people will go into addiction is escape from pain. And many people struggle with sadness, depression, anger. There's been a breakup in a relationship, anxiety, fear among other things. So people get caught

30:01up in all these feelings. They can't deal with the feelings. And then they go to drugs. The way the handle feelings discuss the great length in other presentations. But right here now, the simple thing is hanging here, breathe through your nose, say to yourself, this will pass. And then one of the things I would recommend in the first instance is to break the pattern. You may go for a walk,

30:35have a shower, lie down, jump in the ocean, have a run, change your biochemistry in an actual way. And then you can come back and start to think why did this occur? What's going on? What does that represent in me? Another part of the counseling can be looking at why teenagers going into drugs. And sometimes it's a form of rebellion. They may want attention, they're trying to break free from

31:03the family or they're angry with their parents and they're trying to get back at them. Another aspect of the counseling is looking at prescription drugs. Many people find themselves to the drugs as a result of the legal drugs prescribed to them by their doctor. So they think okay, because the doctor gave it to me, then it must be okay. Most of the time, the drugs are going to be

31:33helping, but they can also have a downside. And particularly if the only way you're going to be able to cope is beyond drugs. When someone says to me, you need to take this drug for the rest of your life, warning signs come on. What do you mean for the rest of my life? I'm here to resolve something. I'm here to work it out. I'm not here to become a drug addict. And so this whole

32:03medical prescribed drugs has just become a bigger problem over the time. And people get caught in it. Stress and trauma are other factors that can occur where people get addicted. A very obvious example is post-traumatic stress disorder, veterans returning from combat zone are very prone to addiction because they've just witnessed so many terrible things. And they're almost like they're full

32:35of this pain. And so also people who have witnessed the death of a loved one, you know, car accident or someone close, you love died. There could have been someone who just went through a long, slow death and it took years for them to die of cancer or something. And then they feel very much caught up in that. And so they could go on to medication to try and resolve that which

33:06then can resolve in addiction. Or sometimes people are victims of abuse from childhood or something. So there's a number of factors that you could look at and look at the behavioral things and then understanding where's it coming from in my childhood? What is it represent? How can I resolve it? That's my specialty for the sort of people who are open to this, who are open to understanding

33:35where it comes from, taking personal responsibility around their behaviour and are prepared to look into their past, then this can be quite amazing and revelatory and has a fabulous ability to change things. Another thing to look at is lifestyle. So you've just got to watch your diet, basic rules are eat fresh organic if you can and eat in moderation and then exercise 20 minutes,

34:08four times a week, bang, basic stuff, eat well and exercise and stress. You know, am I caught up in a whole stressful lifestyle? How can I change that? Is it worth it and stress is a big factor? So lifestyle, work, life, balance, exercise, diet, basic things. There's so much information out there. Slow, start small, start with little things. If you get a change of diet, it could be as simple as

34:41I will not put sugar in my tea or coffee. I will stop eating biscuits. I won't eat fizzy drinks. Okay, pick one, go easy on it and then go easy and once that becomes normalised, then you can change something. The biggest problem people have is they try and change too much. It's unsustainable and then after three or four weeks they're back to their own habits. It's best to do less to

35:10begin with. You do a little bit. You get that grounded into your behaviour, into you and then that's part of who you are. Then you can take another little step. Little steps are the way to go with all in changing lifestyle. The other fact, the last bit is support self-help groups. You can't do this on your own, particularly if you have a compulsion to behave in a certain way and if you've had

35:47an addictive sort of, you're taking something out the hole or drugs or whatever. This is where the right sort of family and friends can help. Family and friends can be a disadvantage, but if you get the right friend or you have the right member of the family, they can be quite supportive and it's an opportunity to talk things through. Without you feeling as though you're being made wrong.

36:13And then there are support groups, you know, alcoholics anonymous, if that's the sort of thing you're into. Narcotics are non-caughtics anonymous. There's another group called Smart Recovery, Al-Anon, and they're just various groups. If you're doing this, you do need support and managing the addiction is a big deal. But from a consciousness perspective, there's a whole other way of doing this. And in

36:48this next section, I want to talk in section three about the conscious understanding of addiction. And basically from a conscious perspective, it's when we try to avoid the pain of anxiety. And we are born undivided. We are neither a body nor a mind. We are both a body and a mind. We are a body mind. Body and mind are two aspects of our being, not two divisions.

37:21But we're taught that we are a body and a mind. This is part of how society has evolved. And then we begin to identify with the mind and not with the body. We think that we are a mind and that our thinking is our center. And the thinking is just the device we use. It's not your center because your center, because you can exist without your thinking. When you're very young, you're

38:02existed without thinking. And so thinking is not necessary for your existence. You can go into deep meditation and there will be no thinking and yet you're still here. If you become unconscious, you will still be. But there will be no thinking. And also in deep sleep, you will be. But there will be no thinking. Your being is deeper than thinking. But you are being taught that you are

38:37two, a body and a mind. And that really you are the mind and you possess the body. The mind becomes the master and the body becomes the slave. And a part of you struggles against the body. This creates a rift, a separation. And that separation of mind body is the problem. This is from a consciousness perspective. All neurosis is born out of that separation. All anxiety is

39:09born out of that separation. And addiction is the consequence of trying to manage, which usually means suppressing the anxiety. Your being is rooted in your body and your body is not just something separate from existence. Your body is part of existence. Your body is part of the whole universe. It's not something limited and finite. You may not have observed but try to observe where your body

39:44really ends. Where does it end? Do you think that your body ends? Where your skin ends? If for a single moment, there was no air, you would be dead. Your breath is your life. If your breath is your life, then the whole atmosphere is part of you. You cannot exist without it. So where does your body really end? Where is the limit? If you go into deep meditation and you really

40:19get there, there is no limit to your body, your sense of self. If you observe, if you go deep, you'll find that the limit of the universe is your body's limit. The whole universe is involved in you. So your body is not just your body. It's your connection to the universe. It's your universe and your ground at in it. Your mind cannot exist without the body. It's part of it. It's a process within it. It's a

40:56process with it. Division is destructive and with the division of body and mind, you are bound to become identified with the mind. The mind is the ego. The mind is the perspective of what who I think I am. You think and without thinking, there is no division. You think and there is division. Without thinking, there is no division. You think and the problem is you become identified with your thinking

41:29and then you feel as if you possess the body. This is a complete reversal of the truth. You do not possess the body. Neither does the body possess you. They are not two things. Your existence is one, a deep harmony of opposite poles. A deep harmony of these two opposites that are a whole and me. With the identification that I am my mind, everything becomes false. You become unreal because this

42:07identity is false. And this has to change. The mind can't hold reality. It's only able to perceive a small part of what is. It filters and interprets meaning from what it perceives. But it only perceives a small part of what it sees. Living in the mind is as if someone is living in a mirror. A mirror is just a reflecting phenomena. The reality is reflected in it but reflections are not real. And if you get

42:40cordon reflections, you will miss reality completely. And that's where most people are at this moment. They're caught up in the reflections of their mind in the filtering of their existence. And they believe this is it. This is who I am. This is what it is. This is how it's represented. And this is what I believe. And so we need meditation because we're out of centre. We live with a false centre,

43:12the centre of the mind which is the centre of the ego. Our true centre is beyond the mind and beyond the body. And because the real centre can't be destroyed and we live in a false centre, there's a tension between our real centre and the false ego mind centre. If the real centre could be destroyed, then we would not experience tension. The tension is that there is something

43:39unreal that we're hooked into. And meditation is a medicine for the mind. It's a medicine, it's a mechanism for transcending their mind. And there have been two techniques that I have found valuable for finding my true centre. And one is the Pashna and the other one is the reburthing technique. And in this next illustration there's an idealised romanticised illustration

44:13of Buddha. And here he is sitting under a tree with his disciples around him. And it's said that more people have become enlightened from the Pashna and Unappana meditations which are connected than any other technique. Thousands of people have reached this place. And so it's a meditation that's best done in a residential retreat. It's an easy technique to learn but not an easy technique

44:40to master. And there are two parts to it. Unappana which is breath awareness watching the breath coming in but watching the breath going out. And for Pashna. When we do that centering exercise, I'm doing Unappana. It's like the beginning of it. Just helping you to be still focus here in the moment. And for Pashna is a circulation of awareness. The trick is you've got to go and do it at a course.

45:12It's too. It's easy to do but you won't actually get it unless you go there. I can remember. I've done it quite a number of times. It wasn't until I did my fifth 10 day meditation retreat that I actually got the ability to meditate. It took me from the time I first started to when I could actually do it almost 13 years to be able to meditate. Meditation for a very few group of people

45:46is straightforward but for the majority of people it's an extremely difficult process because we are caught up in the thinking process. We are so overstimulated that we can't stop and be still. And so meditation is a complex process. It took me 13 years to be for I could go into meditation. And the first time I did a 10 day meditation course was in 1987 and that was a major challenge

46:21because I just couldn't get past the discomfort and the whole thing that was going on in my mind. And then it didn't come back for some period of time years later. But from the first time I started to my fifth 10 day Vipashna it was about a 13 year process. And by that time, Geboom, I learnt to meditate and I've learnt to be really still and the whole game is very different.

46:50And so if someone's suffering from a major addiction and they're prepared to take responsibility and they're looking at a high level to work with, then the Vipashna is definitely the way to go. The Vipashna is a process of inner awareness and they would start at 4 a.m. in the morning and go through to a 8 o'clock at night having 11 hours of meditating a day in silence for 9 out of the

47:2510 days. And you would have breaks, you know, the longest session would be a couple of hours, but most of them would be an hour. And you would have an hour off or so in between. But it was still a major, major effort and highly highly recommended. It's worth the effort and as difficult and as hard as it is if you persevere, I guarantee remarkable results. The other technique that has literally

47:57saved my life is the reburthing breathing technique. And the breathing technique, the reburthing technique, very misunderstood by people who aren't involved in it. It's really a conscious connected breathing technique. And what you're doing is you're breathing in and out through your nose or in and out through your mouth and you're building energy in your body. So basically the technique is really to

48:23energise, vitalise you. And as you energise and vitalise, there is a priority on the use of energy. So just breathing and breathing and breathing, because people never really breathe enough and they never really build their energy enough. They have no reality around it. This is for the average person. But so most people just have enough energy to carry on and do the everyday things and usually

48:52running on empty. But if you start to build the energy, the body takes you into detox and the detox can occur in three different ways. It can occur in a physical way. You can get tightness, tingling, nausea, hot cold, perspiring, all these sort of things. But if you keep going and that's physically, then you can go emotionally detoxing. You can connect to feelings that you have

49:16dealt with, sadness or anger or anxiety of some sort. And then you can connect to it mentally. And so the detox can occur physically, emotionally, mentally. And mentally you start to remember things. And it's not so much you've forgotten. It's more to do with you, hadn't realised the significance of those memories. Or sometimes it is things you've forgotten.

49:41And then bang the realisation of why that was important, changes things. And then if you keep breathing and breathing and breathing, you go past this detox phase and you're going to rebuilding. If body starts to strengthen heal, you feel light, light, you feel all up better, your health improves, a whole lot of positive things happen. And if you keep building the energy,

50:08something shifts. And there's a shift in awareness. Most of us see ourselves, you know, if you use the analogy of a hand as a separate finger. And so here I am with these four other things. You know, if I'm a thumb, then there are four fingers or I'm a index finger and here are my three fingers and thumb. And what happens when you start to breathe and you go into this transcendent state is

50:37your perspective changes, you suddenly go from a finger to a hand. Oh right, we're connected. And if you keep going, you go into I'm an arm. And next thing, you know, here's one arm and here's another arm. My perspective just keeps growing. There's a recognition that I am not my physical body. I'm not my mind. I'm not my emotions. I'm not my behaviours. I'm not my past conditioning.

51:02I'm something else. I am this presence. And it's this presence that frees everything. Shifts the whole game. And it's not something someone can tell you. It's something you have to directly experience. Reality is a profound subjective experience. If you haven't experienced it, you can't know it. You can't be taken away and be objective. You can't use the scientific

51:38method on this. It is a process of directly feeling it. The reburthing technique is a mechanism for directly feeling it. The vipashana technique is a mechanism for directly feeling it. To get to that place is a big deal because you are living under a layer of concrete. This layer of concrete is your mental conditioning, your ego inherited from the society, your life experiences,

52:10your parents, places, you know, your spirit, whoever you were before you came here. This deep sense of being locked in the way of thinking about things and all this unresolved emotional stuff. It's like a layer of concrete. You get to break through it. That's the detoxing process. And you pop your head through. You get a moment. You get a clear thing. You make a transcendent

52:39connection. Then a few days later you drop back out of it again. Or a few minutes later you drop back out of it again. And then you go through the process again. Eventually you've broken through enough times that getting through becomes easy. And eventually you get to the point of being fully connected. There is no new rosy. There is no separation. It's all to do with the perspective.

53:03It's all to do with the conditioning we have inherited. It's part of this thing. And so the breathing process is spectacular. It's amazing. So you're building energy and lifting yourself to the next level. And the difference that I would describe the difference between vipashna and reburthing is that if you're trying to connect to the infinite you could do it through a telescope

53:33and you look up into the stars or you could get a microscope and look down into the infinitely small. Reverthing is akin to looking at the stars. It's an expansion process. The vipashna is a process of looking down into a microscope. It's a containment process. Both take you to the same place I diametrically opposite methods. And that's why it can be misunderstood by either camp. The people

54:04doing the breathing don't quite understand the vipashna and the vipashna don't understand the breathing. But you're going to the same place in a different direction. I would recommend both. And in order to save confusion I wouldn't talk about one to the other. I wouldn't talk about vipashna. Reverthing to the vipashna. People are vipashna to reburthing people unless they're

54:27used to it because they just have you get locked in a bit to perspective. You think expansion is where it's all at or you think it's going down into it. It's all at. And so the whole process of doing this is to break through and detox the conditioned mind and ultimately to bring you into this next stage which is the presence. And so because the only reality is the reality now to be here in this

55:04moment and to be present with what is. And so one of the symptoms of addiction is the inability to be in the present. One of the mechanisms for healing addiction is to be in the presence. Using the techniques of vipashna and rebirth breathing help us release the conditioning and also to bring us into presence. You can come into presence purely as an active will. You can come into

55:34presence purely by being focused on your breath and in particular breathing through your nose. Breathing through your nose is a big deal. And so bringing this thing to a conclusion in summary addiction can be either substance and process. We can take things in or we caught up in activities. If there's a detox it's like letting go of unresolved from the past. Solutions can be vipashna

56:03and reburthing and it's bringing yourself into present time awareness. The breath awareness being aware of your breath just feeling it or choosing to be present. Addiction is difficult as it is is also if it's really faced is an opportunity to heal yourself. Now opportunity to expand yourself. And so thank you for watching and a blessing and a joy to you all. Thank you. I would also like to thank

56:41Radion Sokolov for marketing production and web design and Aaron McFarland for his patience and camera sound and lights and post production. And remember breath through your nose. And the next webinar is the six present station in the emotional series and it's titled power finding your authentic self. It's two weeks away on Tuesday the 16th of February from 7 till 8pm

57:32Australian Eastern Daylight time. And if you think someone would benefit from these presentations you're welcome to invite them to watch. You can join the members group for five US dollars a month and watch all the past presentations and watch any of the future presentations. You need to go to the website and register for the next presentation and or if you want to join

57:57the members group. So over the next few months I will be adding more services and information to the members group such as meditations, handouts, illustrations from the slides and starting a forum to answer questions and help with life issues. And as I've said before I can't give psychological counseling through the forum but I can answer general questions about

58:22life's problems. Also other members of the forum can offer advice. Tonight's presentation will be uploaded to the website by tomorrow evening. So let's go to questions and thank you.