so many men out there are starved for any kind of attention, any kind of affection, any kind of human contact, and it's like if you feed a cat, the cat will come back.

If you're kind to a man, the man will come back just like an animal because we don't have love, we don't have friendship, we don't have touch, we don't have respect, we don't have kindness, we don't have compassion, so anytime someone gives us just a little bit of kindness and compassion, we latch on to them.

Today we're going to talk about the root of addiction, and there's been an explosion of neuroscience and psychiatric research all on addictions.

We're seeing a rise in behavioral addictions like video game addiction, pornography addiction, and we're also seeing an increase in substance use disorders like alcoholism and especially things like marijuana use.

We're breeding strains of marijuana that are higher potency in THC and therefore appear to have more addictive effects. But even though there's all of this research in all these neuroscience circuits and sort of advanced things about neurotransmitters and receptors, it turns out that the root of addiction is far simpler than that.

The root of addiction is isolation, and the antidote to addiction is actually connection. So there's a great TED talk about this where someone talks about this experiment where there's a rat who's in this cage, and in the cage they can have some cocaine, so they press a lever and they get some cocaine.

And what we sort of find is that when they're stuck in this cage and then there's this cocaine kind of sitting in front of them, what they end up doing is using so much cocaine that they'll induce a heart attack and die.

Boom. Cocaine is addictive, but if you look at clearer research—a little bit of research that's a little bit more well-crafted—what we begin to realize is that the dependency of the rat on the cocaine depends on the rat's environment, depends on the other kinds of stimulation the rat has, and most importantly, depends on the presence of other rats.

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Now, what I've seen as a psychiatrist working primarily in addiction is, anytime I'm working with someone with an addiction, sure, there's neurotransmitter stuff going on, there's trauma stuff going on, there's brain circuitry stuff going on, but undoubtedly in these lives of the people who are struggling with these addictions, there's something empty and missing.

There's a lack of motivation, there's a lack of purpose, most often there's a lack of connection.

And the more that I work with these people, the more that I realize that the lack of motivation and purpose is also due to a lack of connection.

So, when I work with patients, for example, that have dealt with addictions even on their own and I ask them, "Oh, you've been drinking alcohol for 15 years, how were you able to stop?

" The answers are things like, "Well, I had a 2-year-old kid and I realized one day that enough was enough and I had to stop drinking because I have a 2-year-old now and I can't be doing that.

I can't be drunk when they're, you know, wanting to play with me and things like that." This was unacceptable, so they were able to attain sobriety on their own without clinical help.

I was meeting with them for other reasons, but still, if you tunnel down into what is driving this, it is a relationship with another human being.

And if we look at sort of what motivates us, what gives us purpose in life, purpose is rarely found in isolation.

So you could argue that my purpose is to help this generation with their mental health; that's still about other people.

There are people whose purpose it is in life to develop renewable energy, and what's that for? That's for the benefit of humanity. So even a lot of our motivation, our purpose, you know, we'll get particular jobs to make our spouses happy.

We want to make sacrifices for the people that we love, and so in the absence of these connections, we are empty inside.

And when we are empty inside, addiction comes in and fills the gap. Addictions give us a reason to wake up in the morning.

Addictions give us a reason to look forward to the weekend. Addictions take, literally, the numbness and emptiness that we feel and fill it with some kind of joy.

And so the research predominantly states that the solution to addiction is actually connection, and we've seen that historically, because what is the historically most effective route for people who are addicted to a substance to become sober?

It's something called Alcoholics Anonymous.

And what is Alcoholics Anonymous about, right? What do they actually do? Do they teach people principles of neuroscience? Do they do cognitive behavioral therapy?

No, none of those things. It's about connection. We show up every week together, and we just share stories about our struggle. We don't even try to help each other out.

We don't give each other answers, we don't give each other advice; we just share our experiences.

It's about having a sponsor, someone you can call 24 hours of the day, 7 days a week. They're not even a trained mental health professional, but they are available for you to form a connection.

And sponsors have done more good in this world than probably any other group out there.

And so we see that connection that is fostered through community support, through things like sponsors, people who are available to you when you are struggling, has good outcomes when it comes to addiction, and that's because the human mind is the only organ of the body that requires things outside of itself to be healthy.

Right? In order for my heart health, I have to exercise and I have to eat right. In order for my gut health, I can take probiotics, I can eat kimchi, I can eat right, I can make sure that I poop in the appropriate squatting position.

There are all kinds of things that I can do to help my muscles, help my bones, help my organs, but the mind is the only organ that you can't fix on your own because the mind requires human contact.

And so, if we sort of say, "Okay, connection is the antidote to addiction," and that isolation and emptiness are the roots of addiction, then it would follow that if there is a vulnerable population to isolation and the lack of connection, that this population would be more prone to addiction, and that's exactly what we see.

So, men are more likely—three to four times more likely—to develop an addiction than women. And if we sort of look at the roots of what men really struggle with today, it's about isolation and a lack of connection.

So, we even see large-scale demographic and epidemiologic data to support this idea that if one group struggles to connect—and we'll talk about why that is in a second—that this group is more vulnerable to addiction, and that's exactly what we see.

Now, let's talk for a second about why men are more likely to get addicted. So, this was something that I shared publicly.

I talked a little bit about how men struggle with isolation and loneliness. And by the way, this problem is changing very quickly, and the Surgeon General of the United States recently released a report on isolation and loneliness where it seems like women actually feel more isolated and lonely.

in today's society than men do, and I think what we're going to see as a consequence of that is in 5 to 10 years the rates of addiction between men and women are going to even out.

But going back to why are men struggling to have connection? So, I did something silly, which is I talked about this on a podcast, and I said part of the problem that men really face is that they struggle with isolation and connection because men are faced in a society today where there are historically, and even today, there are predatory men.

And one out of three women has been sexually assaulted, and I want y'all to really think about this for a second: how large this number is.

So if we take our standard family of grandmother, mother, daughter, one person in that nuclear family has been sexually assaulted.

So this isn't like, oh, my second cousin has been sexually assaulted, oh this one girl I knew got sexually assaulted; this is literally statistically within just about every household in the world, and in the United States, chances are one person has been sexually assaulted.

But between your grandma, your mom, and if you're a girl, you, one of y'all has been sexually assaulted.

If you've got two sisters, chances are one of the three of y'all will get sexually assaulted in your lifetime.

So this is an incredibly common problem. So what ends up happening is that women are afraid of men, and one of the problems that I sort of emphasized is that, like, I think the problem in the world today is that men can't fix their own loneliness, right?

So this is the problem, is that loneliness is the one thing that I can't develop a protocol to fix. Like, I can't take more tests, testosterone or meditate more or do more yoga or hit the gym more, there's nothing I can do to fix my own loneliness.

Loneliness is something that someone else has to do for you. Someone else has to extend a kind hand to you. Now, I mentioned this and then something very interesting happened.

So, I heard something on a podcast that shifted my reality: some men go months without being hugged. The guest said men can't solve loneliness, touch starvation, or isolation on their own.

Unless everyone who's listening to this goes out and hugs a man, no one will. The second I heard this, I kid you not, I decided to hug as many people as possible at the weekly event I host, especially men I feel subtle resistance towards when I meet them for the first time.

You know that flickering moment when your gut whispers, "I don't want to hug this person," and you shake their hand instead or avoid contact entirely?

I push past that moment of resistance and try to greet them like a good friend. Because if I have such an open heart and spirit, and even if I don't want to hug this person, who will?

I'll never know if I'm making a difference with this small, seconds-long gesture, but I can rest easier knowing that the men in my space don't go months without a hug, which seriously made me tear up when I first heard it.

We talk a lot about the loneliness crisis, so what if we all decide to play a small role in making small, seconds-long gestures towards a kinder and more connected world?

It really can be as simple as hugging people more freely. So, this person started hugging people, so now we get to the second response, right?

So, especially men I feel subtle resistance towards when I meet them for the first time you know that flickering moment when your gut whispers, "I don't want to hug this person," you shake your hand, avoid contact, grooming.

Let women have boundaries, right? So here is a human being who said, "Oh my goodness, there are lonely people in the world, let me try to do a small kindness," and like, the second tweet is like accusing them of grooming, right?

So, I'm going to hug the homies a little more often now.

Awesome. I think you should do that, please do. If one person hugs men more often because of this tweet, we win. I completely agree. Okay, I have had the exact attitude as you, but I learned the hard way that you have to be very careful about becoming someone's emotional crutch.

Fair enough. Right, there was a survey of prisoners that said the number one thing they missed the most was simply being hugged.

I think many kids 8 to 16 don't get touched much and it leads to many problems.

I completely agree. Also, this is why dogs are really good to live with, and they demand touching. They also increase lifespan and improve mental health outcomes.

Okay, right. I still feel the couple of hugs I had in high school. The last hug I had was a fling a couple of years ago, and before that, it was a dude I used to work with back in 2020 when we knew we'd never work with each other again.

Didn't realize hugging was a casual thing people just did with each other until I was 22 plus. That's what 40,000 hours of gaming and internet addiction since 10 does to you.

Okay, you know, this person goes out there and says, "I'm going to try to start hugging people because, like, people need hugs," and the internet—like, I didn't share most of the negative comments, but, like, at the very beginning, people are like, "Wow, this is like so great, thank you for doing this.

You know, I haven't had a hug since 2020," and then people start coming out of the woodwork, right?

They're like, "Oh my God, you're ignoring your instincts, like that's grooming." So people will start like saying like, "Oh, like it's not your responsibility, like why can't men hug each other?

So it's their problem, men have this problem, it's their problem, they should deal with it, it's not our responsibility. Women have been made responsible for men's problems for long enough, and by the way, that's a fair argument.

These people are not wrong, right? Let's be subtle, let's be nuanced, let's be critical thinkers.

So I loved the response that this person had to the person who was like, "This is going to result in grooming." So this is so beautiful, right?

So, "Hi Serena, thank you for sharing your perspective. To be clear, I do not want anyone, especially women, to ignore their intuition or interact with people who feel unsafe.

I do not want anyone to hug, touch, or even talk to strangers who feel unsafe. I do not hug random strangers, and men who feel unsafe." Now, this is the truly brilliant part: "What I didn't explain thoroughly, because this is Twitter, because my tweets typically go to a smaller audience who is familiar with my work in my weekly event, a community walk for meaningful conversations, is that I'm not overriding my intuitive voice in these scenarios.

The men I'm hugging at my event do not feel unsafe to me, but are rather just socially awkward and/or anxious while attending the event for the first time.

I've noticed, and this is brilliant neuroscience by the way, I've noticed that when someone new shows up at my event with heavy social awkwardness, men and women, but especially men, that energy boomerangs to me, and despite me being very friendly by nature, I hold off on hugging or handshaking them.

My intuitive voice does not say danger, it says, "Oh, geez, this is really awkward, and I'd rather not encourage them to come back by being welcoming, so I withhold the shake or the hug.

Okay, to be honest, my behavior here makes me really sad, because I've seen, after hosting 104 events, that socially awkward people are almost always good people with good hearts.

They don't realize how they're coming across, and they consistently get ignored or dismissed.

This is what compassion is, ladies and gentlemen and everything in between. I don't want to treat them differently because they're awkward. The podcast episode that inspired my tweet made me realize my bias months ago, blah blah blah, especially men, because what I learned in the podcast, but I also push past that same awkward resistance with women.

Now we're going to talk about this, okay? So, like, there's one more response. I know I'm just, like, reading Twitter stuff, but, like, this is honestly, like, this is what happens.

I think this is what we really need to understand. At first, people said, "I'm going to hug the homies more," and retweeted with gratitude, and then negative replies poured in after one person with a large following quote-tweeted me in all caps and said, grooming.

After that one tweet, the insults began. You're welcome to read them. They say I have no survival instincts and I'm foolish for ignoring my intuition and that I will be violated for hugging men right at the weekly walk I host at 8:00 a.

plus, look, good people and that I am picking who's doing emotional labor for hugging men because they can just hug each other instead, to be honest with you.

I wrote this tweet before I went to bed, and then this is what I really want you all to pay attention to. There are a lot of things that I could dive into because it's a case study in how we all project our own emotions and experiences onto other people's words.

But I'm going to focus on comments that accused me of putting women in danger for suggesting that they should hug stranger men.

So this is really important: the most interesting thing about this, I never said it. Reread my tweet; I never once said that women or suggested that women should hug stranger men.

I also never said the words "hug stranger men." Yet, because I am a woman who wrote about my personal decision to and this is a direct quote from the tweet: "hug as many people as possible at my weekly community event," people invented the claim and then started insulting me for it.

This person never said, "Hey, it is our responsibility as women to hug men." This person never said, "Hey, you should ignore all of the danger signals and put yourself in danger." This person never actually said any of those things.

But this is how we respond to the situation: the person said, "Hey, I've realized there's loneliness going on.

I'm going to try to hug as many people as possible." This person also examined their intuition, and this—this is something I'll say as a psychiatrist, so you should trust your intuition, but is intuition logical correctness by definition?

No. Intuition is the thing that human beings get wrong the most, right?

Because it is not critical thinking; it is an instinctive response. And the more that you've been traumatized, if you've been abused, your intuition is that other people are better than you, your intuition is that you're in danger all the time, your intuition is that you can't trust other people.

If you've been cheated on, your intuition is that the next person will cheat on you, so it's not that intuition should not be taken seriously.

But intuition—literally, in my day job as a psychiatrist, the thing that I work on the most with my patients is to critically examine their intuition.

How Loneliness Makes Men More Addicted

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How Loneliness Makes Men More Addicted

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