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.

Two of the biggest problems I see in our community are that people have fallen behind in life or they're burnt out and looking to make a career pivot, and we offer a lot of great advice about what to do in your mind or how to meditate your anxiety away, but the practical matter of how to actually catch up or make a change still remains.

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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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중독의 근본 원인은 고립과 관계의 단절이며, 이를 해결하는 가장 효과적인 해독제는 타인과의 진정한 인간적 연결입니다.

남성은 사회적으로 신체 접촉이나 정서적 표현을 억제하도록 교육받아 외로움과 접촉 결핍에 더욱 취약하며, 이는 중독으로 이어지는 악순환을 만듭니다.

친절한 타인에게 집착하거나 로맨틱한 환상을 갖는 대신, 감사를 표현하고 상대의 경계를 존중하며 건강한 우정을 쌓아가는 정서적 자립이 필요합니다.

신경과학적 연구는 행동 중독과 물질 사용 장애의 증가를 다루지만, 정작 핵심은 더 단순합니다. 쥐 실험을 통해 밝혀졌듯, 코카인과 같은 자극에 중독되는 것은 고립된 환경에서 비롯되며, **중독의 진정한 해독제는 타인과의 실질적인 연결**입니다.

임상 현장에서 관찰한 중독 환자들의 가장 큰 문제는 동기 부여와 목적의식의 결여입니다. 놀라운 점은 스스로 중독을 극복한 사례들을 분석해보면, 그들의 변화는 결국 '사랑하는 사람(자녀나 가족 등)과의 관계'에서 비롯되었으며, **삶의 목적과 동기는 절대 고립된 상태에서 발견될 수 없다**는 것입니다.

내면이 공허할 때 중독은 그 빈틈을 일시적인 즐거움으로 채우며 우리에게 살아갈 이유를 강요합니다. AA(알코올 중독자 모임)와 같은 사례가 효과적인 이유는 복잡한 치료법 때문이 아니라, 매주 고통을 공유하고 곁에 있어 주는 '연결'을 통해 **혼자서는 치유할 수 없는 마음이라는 기관을 외부의 도움으로 치유**하기 때문입니다.

남성의 외로움과 사회적 딜레마

남성은 여성보다 중독에 빠질 확률이 3~4배 더 높습니다. 특히 현대 사회에서 남성들은 역사적 이유와 성폭력 문제 등으로 인해 사회적으로 위축되어 있으며, **남성들의 고충인 고립과 접촉 결핍은 명상이나 개인적인 노력만으로는 해결할 수 없는 타인 의존적 영역**입니다.

저자는 사회적으로 서툰 남성들에게 작은 친절과 포옹을 실천하자고 제안했으나, 이는 인터넷상에서 '그루밍(지배를 위한 조종)'이라는 비난에 직면했습니다. 이 과정에서 **여성들이 낯선 남성을 두려워하는 것은 타당한 방어 기제**이나, 동시에 고립된 남성들에게 도움의 손길을 내미는 행위까지 '그루밍'으로 매도하는 문화는 경계해야 합니다.

직관과 책임: 올바른 관계 맺기

자신의 직관은 중요하지만, 트라우마가 있는 경우 왜곡될 수 있으므로 이를 비판적으로 검토해야 합니다. 사회적으로 서툰 이들은 악의가 있는 것이 아니라 단지 신호를 읽지 못할 뿐이며, **우리는 그들을 배척하기보다 자비로운 태도로 포용함으로써 사회적 고립의 악순환을 끊어낼 책임**이 있습니다.

남성들이 서로를 안아주지 않는 이유는 '노 호모(No homo)'와 같이 남성성이라는 이름 아래 신체 접촉이 억압받아온 조건화된 역사 때문입니다. 남성들은 타인을 사랑해도 그 접촉이 처벌받는 환경 속에서 성장하며, 결과적으로 **남성 간의 신체 접촉은 사회적으로 금기시되는 기형적인 상태**가 되었습니다.

친절에 굶주린 남성들이 누군가의 도움에 집착하는 것은 본능적이지만, 이는 상대의 경계를 침범하는 행위가 될 수 있습니다. 따라서 **친절을 베푸는 상대를 로맨틱한 파트너가 아닌 인간 대 인간으로 대하고, 빚진 기분을 해소하기 위해 집착 대신 감사와 호의를 표현하는 기술**을 배워야 합니다.

결론적으로 중독은 외부의 무언가로 고통을 해결하려는 시도에서 시작됩니다. 남성은 스스로 모든 것을 고치려는 문제 해결사 성향이 강하지만, **고립은 혼자 해결할 수 없는 유일한 문제입니다.** 따라서 우리는 서로에게 도움을 구하고, 타인에게 친절을 베푸는 연결을 통해 중독의 뿌리인 공허를 채워나가야 합니다.

영상에서 언급된 '중독의 뿌리'와 그에 대한 '해독제'는 무엇을 의미하나요?

남성이 여성보다 중독에 빠질 확률이 더 높은 근본적인 이유는 무엇이며, 이 현상은 사회적으로 어떻게 설명되나요?

남성이 타인의 친절에 지나치게 집착하거나 매달리게 되는 심리적 이유는 무엇이고, 이를 건강하게 극복하기 위해 제안된 방법은 무엇인가요?

왜 남성들 사이에서는 서로 신체적 접촉이나 포옹을 하는 것이 어려운 문화가 형성되었나요?

타인의 친절에 대해 '빚을 졌다고 느끼는 심리적 불균형'을 해소하고, 건강한 관계를 유지하기 위해 권장되는 구체적인 행동은 무엇인가요?

신경과학 연구는 중독의 생물학적 회로를 설명하지만, 중독의 뿌리는 사실 '고립'이며 그 해독제는 '관계 맺기'라는 점이 실험을 통해 입증되었다.

쥐 실험에서 코카인에 노출된 쥐가 고립된 환경에서는 죽을 때까지 중독되지만, 다른 쥐들과 교류할 수 있는 환경에서는 중독으로부터 멀어진다.

커리어 전환과 번아웃으로 인한 고통을 해소하기 위한 실질적 방법론으로서의 TripleTen 플랫폼 소개.

TripleTen은 높은 취업률과 수강료 환불 정책을 통해 기술직 커리어 전환을 지원하며, 업무 만족도를 높여 전반적인 삶의 질 향상을 돕는다.

중독의 동기인 동기 부여 결여와 목적의식 부재는 결국 타인과의 단절에서 비롯된다는 정신과적 통찰.

중독을 스스로 극복한 환자들은 대개 타인(예: 자녀)을 위한 관계적 동기를 가지고 있었으며, 인간의 모든 목적은 사실 관계에서 완성된다.

내면이 공허할 때 중독은 아침에 일어나야 할 이유나 주말을 기다릴 목적을 인위적으로 대체하며 공허함을 메우는 수단이 된다.

알코올 중독자 모임(AA)의 사례를 통해 증명된 '연결'의 치료적 효과와 인간의 마음이 관계를 필요로 하는 특성.

신체 건강을 위한 운동이나 식단과 달리, 인간의 마음은 타인 없이는 치유될 수 없는 유일한 기관이므로 고립은 치명적이다.

남성이 여성보다 중독 비율이 3~4배 높은 이유와 사회적 고립의 구조적 원인.

여성 3명 중 1명이 성폭력을 경험하는 현실 때문에 남성에 대한 두려움이 존재하며, 남성들 스스로도 자신의 외로움을 해결할 방안을 찾지 못하고 있다.

외로움과 접촉 결핍을 해결하기 위해 커뮤니티에서 실천하는 포옹과 이에 대한 사회적 반응.

친절한 의도로 실천한 포옹이 인터넷상에서 '그루밍' 혐의로 몰리며 비난받는 현상은 타인의 행동에 자신의 트라우마와 투사를 덧씌우는 사례다.

사회적 불안감을 가진 사람들과의 접촉 시 느껴지는 어색함은 위험 신호가 아니라 단순히 공감 회로가 작동하는 과정일 수 있으므로 비판적 검토가 필요하다.

남성들이 포옹을 하지 않는 이유와 '노 호모(No homo)' 문화로 대변되는 남성 사회의 접촉 금지 조건화.

성장 과정에서 접촉을 부적절한 것으로 교육받은 남성들은 어른이 되어서도 타인, 특히 아이들과의 신체적 거리를 둘 수밖에 없는 강박을 갖게 된다.

중독의 악순환에서 벗어나기 위한 인간관계의 기술과 친절을 대하는 태도.

타인의 친절을 성적 욕구나 로맨스로 치환하지 말고 인간으로서 대하며, 과도하게 집착하지 않도록 감사 인사를 통해 심리적 부채감을 닫아야 한다.

남성은 기분 전환을 위해 외부적인 행동을 하는 문제 해결 중심적 교육을 받아왔기에, 내면의 문제를 외부 중독물질로 해결하려는 경향이 강하다.

고립은 스스로 해결할 수 없기에 서로에게 연결되어 도움을 주고받아야 하며, 이것이 중독 치료의 유일하고 가장 효과적인 해독제이다.

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