Navigating Mental Health and Addiction

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This chapter delves into the complexity of emotional well-being and mental health, highlighting the difficulty in giving advice to someone struggling with addiction and mental illness. It emphasizes the prevalence of unsolicited advice and acknowledges the societal shame and stigma surrounding mental illness and addiction. The speaker shares their personal journey, detailing how their drug addiction led them to drop out of school, engage in harmful behaviors, and isolate themselves from others.

Episode #264. Every day for more than 20 years, Adam Sud woke up to a life that didn’t feel like a safe, secure, or hopeful place to be. Struggling with mental health from an early age and relying on addiction as the only dependable “solution”, he spent years facing each day as the most painful one he’d ever had.

More than a decade on from the turning point in his journey towards recovery, Adam shares his story and some defining realisations that helped shaped the life he is now excited to experience.

Everyone has something to learn from Adam’s story. Regardless of whether you have personally struggled with addiction and mental health, Adam’s profound understanding of behaviour and mindset will resonate with you, and potentially even shift the way you look at your life.

Specifically, we discuss:

Intro (00:00)
Adam Sud on recovery (04:15)
Why expressing love can be difficult (08:55)
Substance use disorder (Drug addiction) (14:37)
Adam's story (16:46)
Nurturing a child with ADHD (24:42)
Becoming hooked on Adderall (32:41)
Understanding our choices for pleasure (36:09)
Addiction and the fear of judgment (41:00)
Adam's suicide attempt & his treatment and recovery (46:00)
Plant-based diet and the pleasure trap (1:02:21)
Psychological factors behind unhealthy choices (1:09:25)
Remarkable recovery through nutrition (1:18:29)
Self-worth, loneliness, and recovery (1:25:40)
A call for a safer and compassionate approach to drug use (1:31:56)
The INFINITE study (1:41:03)
Adam on hitting rock bottom (1:46:24)
Outro (1:53:46)

To connect with Adam Sud, you can find him on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Don’t forget to visit his website, https://www.adamsud.com/, to learn more about Adam and read about The Infinite Study. Listen to Adam’s past appearances on The Proof in Episode #66 and Episode #144.

Please note that this episode covers disordered eating and suicide. If these topics are potential triggers for you, please listen with discretion or tune in to the next episode. You can find more episodes about mental health that focus less on personal experience here.

Enjoy, friends.

Simon

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Simon Hill, MSc, BSc (Hons)

Creator of theproof.com and host of The Proof with Simon Hill

Author of The Proof is in the Plants

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