Lessons Learned from Meth | Nicolas Taylor | TEDxPaonia

Hello, as some of you may know, about a decade ago

meth

hit our community pretty hard and at that time it became difficult to find anyone whose life had not been affected by

meth

in one way or another, unfortunately, there were some people, of course, who had. They started using the drug themselves, but there were others who had family, neighbors, friends, relatives who had also gotten involved in it and I am a treatment provider here in this area and I realized that very quickly the methods for the that he had been trained to use it was completely ineffective in treating methamphetamine addiction;

In fact, I remember an experience where I tried to use some of the manual-based approaches and I was actually in my office studying the manual during a break during a treatment group so I could know what to do next and the participants from my show they were actually at the Pro in the parking lot and what do you think they were doing to get them to come back? I began to realize very quickly that they were under the influence and that what I was doing was not working. Along with other community leaders, many of whom are here right now in this theater, we determined that we were going to develop a community treatment model to address methamphetamine addiction and we knew it had to be something beyond what was being used . across the country it had to be something specific to our communities, so we realized we needed to answer an important question and it was this: We had an idea of ​​why people would start using meth in the first place, but what confused us en Why would they continue to do it despite the fact that it caused them so many destructive consequences.

That puzzled us and we discovered that the answer to that question was actually twofold. First, we noticed that there were powerful social dynamics that were impacting continued use. of methamphetamine and then secondly, we noticed that the methamphetamine took over his experience of pleasure. I would like to explain that they both started with powerful social dynamics. Powerful social dynamics were entirely related to usage patterns. When someone first started using meth, they were in a pattern of what it is. known as chipping, where they only used it occasionally, maybe on the weekend it wasn't a drug they bought themselves, maybe it was given to them at a party or something and they decided to try it, it seemed pretty harmless to them. however, they would then move on to a stage of moderate use, now things were very different, the main difference was twofold: first, they started using during the week and then secondly, they would start using sequentially, so there would be several days in a row and often would not sleep between those periods of use and then would crash and not wake up for a day or two after use.

What we began to notice is that it had a significant impact on his ability to fulfill family and work responsibilities, so now all of a sudden a change would begin to occur, either moving away from his sober social support group and toward the community of people who use methamphetamine. Now let me talk about that community for a moment. Remember that the effect of methamphetamine is that it creates a feeling of suspicion, a feeling of paranoia, so they were very intolerant of anyone who could be passing through the community, even if it was casually or doing a chip, as mentioned, they wanted know, hey, are you going to be a part of us and then very quickly, they would move away? to a stage of heavy use or what was called adjustment, where someone consumes virtually all the time they are making, distributing or using the drug when they are awake and then, when they are not awake, they collapse and recover from use. and that is when the influence of that community becomes completely overwhelming and once again what is generated by both fear and misery is based on fear because that is suspicious and a paranoid community wants to know if you are in or out because You know how most of us would imagine that you keep your friends close to your enemies, so if you could imagine that kind of old-fashioned schoolyard tug of war, but instead of there being a rope, there's actually individuals and are being pulled between two communities a sober social support community family friends others who want to support the individual and move towards a healthier lifestyle and a meth using community that is self protective that is incestuous and wants to keep people in of that community motivated as I mentioned by fear and also by misery motivated by misery because we all know that misery loves company but misery not only loves company misery loves miserable company the sober community can be motivated by compassion out of love for the professional duty of the treatment provider that may be involved but we noticed very quickly that the influence of that community was not enough, it was not what it needed to be to counteract the influence of the user community, so we determined in that moment that we needed to improve community influence and I'll talk more about how that was done here at Wait, I also mentioned that meth hijacks the pleasure response because it is such an overwhelming feeling of pleasure that it completely overwhelms the pleasure that may be associated with it. with anything else, subsequently the individual loses the ability to measure their sense of pleasure coming from anything other than the drug.

There are two examples that really stand out in my mind that illustrate this was that of a really wonderful young woman who unfortunately she had started using methamphetamine, she got pregnant and continued using it throughout her pregnancy and then she gave birth to her baby and her family and friends were rejoicing at the arrival of this wonderful new baby and I will never forget the look on her face, that's what We mean in my field, it's a plastic effect, almost a blank expression on his face, there was an inability to connect with joy. of the experience of having a baby and her mind was instead on getting meth because that was what was going to give her a sense of joy.

The other is the example of a man who was grateful to go to his daughter's kindergarten graduation. I was excited to go and see everything that happens and it was a wonderful experience, but unfortunately because it was a celebration of some kind and I was thinking, oh, it's a celebration, he got high before he went, so he went to the graduation of the daughter's kindergarten. and I'll never forget what he said to me afterwards, he said what's my problem, it's like I can't even go to my daughter's kindergarten graduation without being high, so the meth completely overpowered his sense of pleasure, his ability of feeling pleasure due to other things. was lost, so we turned to the classical conditioning model to help us understand a little better what was happening when meth hijacked pleasure.

You may remember that classical conditioning, of course, has to do with the original model, it has to do with a dog and a bell and some saliva and it says something like this here's a dog and here's what if you introduce it to food, the dog will salivate and that is because food is an unconditioned stimulus and salivation to food is an unconditioned response. It happens naturally, it was not necessary to teach the dog to salivate over food; However, if we combine a neutral stimulus like a bell or chime with the unconditioned stimulus of food and do it over time, eventually something interesting starts to happen as You could imagine that just by presenting the bell to the dog, simply ringing the bell or a doorbell, the dog will salivate, that is because salivation to the bell becomes a conditioned response and the bell itself becomes a conditioned stimulus.

Now this is where it becomes very interesting in terms. To understand how methamphetamine hijacks pleasure and that is the conditioned response of salivation to the Bell, is it the same as the unconditioned response of salivation to food? Well, they are the same in that they both involve salivation but they are not the same. Same thing because the conditioned salivation response to the artificial Bella had to be

learned

and you'll notice in the graph here that a dog is also less likely to salivate less with a bell than with two foods. Why does that make a lot of sense? it's food it's natural salivation to food it happens naturally it doesn't need to be taught there's no conditioning the food tastes good what the bell tastes like nothing all it does is point at something now we look at that and think how does that help us understand how methamphetamine kidnaps Pleasure starts with observing naturally pleasurable activities things we like to do really it could be anything it could be skiing maybe you are someone who loves to ski it could be rafting it could be spending time with family or playing with kids all of those things are naturally joyful activities are an unconditioned stimulus because in response to those naturally joyful activities we have the sensation of pleasure, we experience pleasure, it happens without any learning, right, you didn't need to be taught to feel pleasure the first time. time you held a grandchild in your arms you didn't need to be taught to feel pleasure the first time you stood in front of an open field with freshly fallen snow and you were the first person to cross it with your skis or if you are I'm not a skier, imagine That you're the first person to open a jar of peanut butter, okay, you're just going to dip the knife and keep crashing.

Wow, that feels great, doesn't it? They didn't have to teach you that it happens naturally, now what? If we combine something like methamphetamine together with that naturally joyful activity, the pleasure associated with the activity diminishes and disappears and instead, this pleasure that is experienced is only that which is associated with the use of the drug, it now becomes a associated conditioned response. Just with that overwhelming feeling of pleasure that comes from using methamphetamine, we can ask the same question we asked before and that is that the conditioned pleasure response to methamphetamine is the same as the unconditioned pleasure response to a natural pleasure. activity when I look at that, I think it's probably more intense, it's not an even more intense sensation of pleasure when, in fact, just as we said that the conditioned response in a rescue dog to a Bell is not the same as the unconditioned one.

The salivation response to food is also not the conditioned pleasure response in response to methamphetamine the same as the unconditioned pleasure response in response to a naturally joyful activity. Well, why is it like this? Because the pleasure that comes from a naturally joyful activity is not. We've

learned

that it's something we've happened almost as a reflex, while the pleasure in response to meth is a forced pleasure, it's like it's the difference between eating and eating a healthy, satisfying meal versus gorging on cotton candy and mashed potatoes. potatoes and just a bunch of carbs says the meal is filling but it's actually not that satisfying.

Well, we look at those two concepts: how do we develop or how do people who use methamphetamine go very quickly from initial use to heavy use impacted by social dynamics, powerful social dynamics and the fact that methamphetamine hijacks pleasure and we thought we had to have a program that somehow addresses these two things, so here and in our communities this effort was developed and some of you. We may have even participated and what we did was very simple. The first thing we did was recruit many sober volunteers who would be willing to participate with us and then by doing so we hope to increase the influence of the community to become stronger and we also hope to create a niche within that sober community where our participants would be welcome, they could have a sober social support group that would help bring them into the meth community and then the second thing we did, which was a lot of fun and so we invited volunteers from the community to do things that they liked, but we ask that they not just participate in the activity they were doing, whatever they liked, whether it was gardening or pottery. or go hiking or crochet or whatever, we ask that when you do it, you really enjoy it and openly share why you enjoy it so much, so if you're cooking, you talk about what it is that you like about cooking and how wonderful it is. try various things, if you are gardening, talk openly about your joy of gardening and why you love that experience, if you were going on a hike, talk about the beautiful views and the experience of the hike, and share that openly with our participants, the goal is of course for our participants to start learning to feel pleasure once again from things that are naturally pleasurable and, as I mentioned, also to increase the influence of that sober community that the projects have been going on for now. over a decade and it has been very successful and we are very excited tosee the impact that it has certainly had not only on the lives of people who previously used meth and are now sober, but also on the lives of members of our community who participated, but I have to ask this question: are there

lessons

that Now can they be learned because of this or from this?

Maybe they apply to all of us and I think we all need to feel connected, don't we? That sense of connection can not only help. Curing a community ailment like meth addiction can also help prevent it from happening in the first place and we all need to feel pleasure from things that are naturally pleasurable, however, both of these experiences are the experience of being connected to a community. and the experience of feeling pleasure due to something that is naturally pleasurable, both of these experiences are currently threatened in our world of personal space and personal media. Think about the last time you walked into a restaurant, looked around, and saw customers sitting throughout the restaurant. at tables in front of their loved ones, people they care about, even with delicious food in front of them, yes, there they were, each individually staring at the bright screens, making you wonder what the ratio of time in front of them is. screen compared to face-to-face time, plus our ability to experience pleasure from things that are naturally pleasurable is diminishing, whether you're addicted to meth or social media or even the internal distractions of your own mind. , we all need to recalibrate our pleasure response so that we can be fully present to experience. the pleasure of a naturally pleasurable moment, so don't be anywhere else if you're standing in front of a view, whether it's a beautiful mountain scene, a cityscape or a sunset, just enjoy it, don't be on your phone, don't you are. distracted by anything not directly related to what you're looking at Just two weeks ago today I had the opportunity to witness a spectacular full moon set and as I watched it I thought to myself about my entire life there.

There have certainly been countless equally spectacular scenes of that January full moon, yes, where was it? How could I miss this? Why did I get distracted by something else? So enjoy the taste and texture of the food enjoy the laughter of a child enjoy the full body experience of a laugh enjoy the wag of a dog's tail and finally connect with your community and connect with others around you practice joy of listening carefully when what the person is telling you has the full attention of your soul and enjoy what it means to connect to be connected not virtually thank you