Ryan Reynolds (18:32)

My dad works in B2B marketing. He came by my school for career day and said he was a big roas man. Then he told everyone how much he loved calculating his return on ad spend. My friends still laugh at me to this day. Not everyone gets B2B, but with LinkedIn you'll be able to reach people who do get a $100 credit on your next ad campaign. Go to LinkedIn.com results to claim your credit. That's LinkedIn.com results. Terms and conditions apply. LinkedIn the place to be, to be.

Dr. Alok Kanojia (19:09)

Welcome back. Here's our conversation with Dr. K, a psychiatrist and the co founder of the mental health coaching company, healthy gamer. Dr. K, where does this podcast find you?

Ryan Reynolds (19:19)

I'm in Houston, Texas.

Dr. Alok Kanojia (19:21)

Dr. K, how do you describe what you do?

Ryan Reynolds (19:24)

I support the mental health of the digital generation.

Dr. Alok Kanojia (19:28)

I love that. And tell us about your journey. You went from being a video game addict to studying to be a monk to later becoming a doctor. Give us a little bit, give us some color on your origin story.

Ryan Reynolds (19:42)

So my parents are both doctors. They're first generation immigrants from India. I was born in Texas and grew up here. And then basically like, I was genetically pre med. So I'm one of these, like South Asian diaspora kids that, you know, was told, like, when I was nine years old, like my. My dad told me and my brother, he was like, one of y'all is going to be a doctor and one of y'all is going to be a lawyer. And so grew up kind of genetically pre med, really had no interest in it. And so was like pre med as a freshman in college and then just completely started, like, spiraling. So, like, I had freedom for the first time in my life. Like, was playing video games a lot, joined a fraternity, failed out of, like, college, basically was on academic probation, had a bunch of Fs. And then my parents tried everything. So they tried to, like, you know, they tried tough love, they tried being supportive. They were like, really good parents. They just didn't know what they were dealing with, so they didn't understand what was going on. So after two years of second year in college, I was barely able to, like, pass my classes.

Dr. Alok Kanojia (20:43)

Where were you in school, doctor?

Ryan Reynolds (20:44)

University of Texas at Austin. And then after that, I. My dad was like, look, we gotta do something. Like, this is not working. So he's like, I think you need to go to India. And this is one of the rare times that I chose to listen. So I was like, why do I need to go? And he was like, I don't know, it's just nothing else is working. So I boarded a flight about one week later and went to an ashram, which I'd never been to before. And then really, like the first two weeks were like some of the worst, probably the lowest point of my life. And then after that, discovered something amazing, which was like, when I was in college, I remember remember being frustrated with myself. I knew I needed to go to class, all I needed to do was show up. Because I had missed so many days of class that each subsequent day of class I missed, I dropped a whole letter grade. So it was like, if I miss one more day of class, the highest grade I can possibly get is a B. And then one more day was a C and one more. So over the course of five days, I went from A to F. And I just couldn't get myself to go. Like, I couldn't understand why I would play games when I know I shouldn't. I had no control over myself. So what I found in India was a system that teaches you how human beings work. Where do desires come from? What really is the nature of willpower? What's the nature of attachment? And I absolutely fell in love with it. So I felt like it was kind of like an owner's manual for myself. So decided to become a monk. Spent seven years sort of focused on that goal. Would spend my summers in India, and then my teachers would give me a set of practices. But they also said, I tried to become a Mon at 21. And they said, you need to go back, finish your school, go get a doctoral degree of any kind. Doesn't matter how, what kind. And then when you're 30 years old, if you still want to become a monk, then you can take your vows. So I was like, okay, fine. So they're like, go participate in the world for a little while, and then if you want to, you can come back. So I would travel back and forth, study more advanced meditation, and then ended up meeting my wife, which I'm pretty sure my teachers understood that I wasn't ready to give up my life yet. And then ultimately decided to try to go to medical school. And that was because one of my teachers said, anything you try to do in the spiritual world is going to be way harder than anything you can accomplish in the material world. So try to do something very difficult in the material world, and that'll be training for a spiritual path. So I had set my target on becoming a doctor also because I wanted to understand, like, humans from the other side, right? So I learned this, like, Owner's Manual of the Self. But then, like, what does medicine teach us? So went to medical school at Tufts and then realized I loved psychiatry. Like, towards the end, I loved, like, sitting with people. The mind is my favorite organ. And then to the chagrin of my family, decided to become a psychiatrist. Ended up training at Mass General McLean in Harvard. Was faculty there for a couple of years.

Dr. Alok Kanojia (23:43)

So I want to go back. There was a point. To a certain point, you and I have a very similar origin story. I went to ucla. I think UT Austin are kind. They're kind of similar, big land grant, public schools. I also joined a fraternity. I was 17 when I showed up to UCLA, I had a lack of self discipline. I, like you, was getting a lot of Fs. I was on academic probation. I didn't have video games like you did. I wonder if I really. And I didn't have porn. If I'd had video games and porn, I'm not sure I would. I would have. I mean, I was. I went on academic probation and all I needed to get was a C average to get another two semesters before they would kick me out. So I kept doing that over and over. But I decided I. While it was a kind of, I don't know, a fairly superficial life, void of meaning, as far as superficial lives, void of meaning go, it was pretty good and I was enjoying myself. You decided to get on a plane for India. Like, what happened? Or what was your thought process? I'm at UT Austin in a fraternity. You know, that, to me sounds like a pretty good life. Even if you're not doing well academically. What inspired you to get on a plane and go to India? Like, did you hit. Was there a moment where you hit sort of rock bottom or did your parents force you? Like, what happened there?

Ryan Reynolds (24:57)

Yeah, so I remember I had a conversation with my dad in our living room at, like, 2 in the morning. It was like one of these conversations where he was kind of, like, done. Like, not in a bad way, but he's like, look, I've tried everything. I've tried being supportive. I've tried tough love. Like, nothing is working. So he's like. And he was like, look, your life is not moving in a good direction. I knew that. I mean, sure, in some ways it was a lot of fun. So I loved my first two years of college from a dopaminergic standpoint, but from, like, a meaning, a purpose. I was just sort of existing. So there's a really interesting conception from existential depression, which is that. So existential depression is kind of like when we struggle to, like, look into the future. And so we can't move forward in life. So instead, what we start doing is we start moving laterally. So there's no point in moving towards something. So I'm just gonna spend all of my energy in the lateral direction. So this is like partying. Like, partying never leads to anywhere. Video games never lead to anywhere. So I was spending all of my time engaging in actions that don't lead to anything. So I knew that something was horribly wrong. Like, I was out of control. Like, I didn't. I mean, I enjoyed. Let's Say a four hour brick of my life, but I did not enjoy a four week period. Like I was, I wasn't going anywhere. I understood that. He understood that. I now understand this is all karmic too. So. So there was just like, there were just no other options. And I asked my dad, I was like, what am I going to learn there? Why? And he's like, I don't know. And it was really interesting because I think oftentimes when we give guidance to lost young men, we never say, you should do this. And then they ask why? And then you say, I don't know. Right. We always like give them the answer at the very beginning. But I think in retrospect something about that like really appealed to me that looks, you don't know what's going on with your life. We don't know how to fix it, but you gotta try something.

Dr. Alok Kanojia (27:00)

How do you discern? I drink a shit ton of alcohol. I smoked a lot of pot, but I never felt like I was an addict. And at some point they were definitely inhibiting my academic progress. They were probably, I would argue that it was worth it. It created a lot of friendships, a lot of figuring out my limits. I've often said I got more out of alcohol than it's gotten out of me. But it also, had it gotten just a touch more frequent, I could have easily gone down a very dark path. If you're someone listening to this right now and you're at college or not in college, and you think, I'm playing a lot of video games, I'm drinking a lot, I'm smoking a lot of pot, I'm watching a lot of porn. What are in your mind, the signals that discern between what I'll call youthful, if a bit reckless behavior or irresponsible behavior and when you are an addict and you need to do something.

Ryan Reynolds (27:58)

So I've got kind of two answers. So one is like a psychiatric answer, right? So we say that impairment of function is what causes. Where's the dividing line for addiction? Well, if it impairs your function, you have an addiction. So if it's interfering with your academic performance, if it's interfering with your job, if it's interfering with your physical health, your mental health, your relationships, that's the threshold of addiction. Now, in your question, I hear two things. I have a psychiatric answer, but then I also have a life answer, which is that sometimes addictions, and I do a lot of addiction psychiatry, sometimes addictions are part of our journey. So there's this concept of something called post traumatic growth, which is like you kind of say that you got more out of alcohol than alcohol did of you. So I was addicted to video games, but I started a company called Healthy Gamer because it's a part of my journey. Just because I had an addiction doesn't mean that. And you know, people will ask me, if you could go back and change something about your life, what would you change? I say, honestly, absolutely nothing, because I'm pretty happy with where I am now. And then even addictions were without my video game addiction, I would not have walked the journey of self discovery that I did see. We talk about addiction as an impairment of function, but I think that mental illness is oftentimes a sign that who we are does not fit with our circumstances. So one of the biggest challenges that I see as a psychiatrist is that when we kind of medicate problems away, we can maintain an unhealthy way of living life. Right. So if I have like back pain and I start taking opiates, I may continue to engage in the behaviors that are creating back pain. So you were kind of asking, how do you know, you know, when an addiction is part of your journey? And that's kind of the way that I see it, is that, yeah, it's causing a problem now, but it is also a signal for you to fundamentally make a change in your life so that there's something within you that is not gelling with the society around you. And that's kind of really like the way that I see some of these issues like addiction. It's like addiction is a sign that something in your life is not going well. You require some sort of external crutch to cope with all of the negativity in your life. And the real solution to addiction is not just sobriety. It's fixing all of the sources of those negativities that you need the substance to deal with.

Dr. Alok Kanojia (30:29)

Yeah, I like that. And one of the issues I have with the industrial medical complex is like, okay, Doctors Attia and Huberman, who I think are fantastic, I've had them both on the podcast, have basically declared war on alcohol. And where they see drunkenness, for most people, most young people, I see togetherness. I think there's an upside to alcohol. And I find it's very binary that people. My guess is my son plays and I'm going to speak specifically. I have a 14 year old boy and he plays probably about 30 to 60 minutes of video games a day. That sounds about right. And I hear him upstairs and he'll let out this battle cry of he'll go, I'll literally hear from the upstairs, ya. And then I hear all his friends laughing and him laughing and them talking. And it's group dynamics and teams and learning how to lose. And I actually think video games are additive to his life and it's as a parent. At the same time, there's been periods in his life where he'll hide his phone and go into the bathroom and pretend he's not well and in the bathroom it won't come out. And I know he's on TikTok. And it is really. This is a long winded way of saying with kids or with adults, I'm addicted. I'm addicted to my phone. I just am. If I'm anywhere bored, sometimes I make excuses to go to the bathroom at dinner so I can check my phone. And I'm not proud of that, but at least I'm old enough to recognize it and modulate it. I really worry about the young male brain and screen time and video games and social and porn. What do you think as a young man or as a parent, you can, you know, what are some practices or best practices for ensuring you are trying to use these things in a positive way? Is your view put time limits on it with kids? Not under a certain age, with your kids, what will be your approach to screen time?

Ryan Reynolds (32:34)

So, you know, I think one of the biggest challenges with raising kids with technology nowadays is that I think most of the advice is geared towards mothers. And I think we don't talk enough from a dad's perspective. So if we look at single parent households, more likely to be single parent moms. And I think first of all, if you're a dad out there, the most important thing, because some of these problems like pornography are problems that are going to be foreign to moms and foreign to daughters. So age of first exposure to pornography is usually on average 9. So kids are getting exposed to pornography at a very young age. And you know, a lot of times like we don't really know what to do about it. So I'd say the first thing to do is like talk to your kids, try to explain to them, try to explain to them that they're growing up in a world where all of these apps like TikTok and pornography and all this kind of stuff, all of these people have a goal to try to addict you. Like that's their goal, that's their monetization model. So I think sort of sitting down with your kids and really talking to them about what impact is this having on your brain what attracts you to it. Right. Trying to really help your child exercise some like meta awareness about if you're sitting in your bathroom and you're scrolling TikTok, like what's up with that? Why are you doing that? Like what's driving that? And over the course of, let's say one or two months, really sitting down with your kid and asking them, okay, let's take a look at your like screen app usage. So you've spent 32 hours over the last two months on TikTok. How do you feel about that? Is this the kind of life that.

Dr. Alok Kanojia (34:14)

You want to live in the last two weeks?

Ryan Reynolds (34:17)

Yeah. Right. So average telephone use is four to six hours a day.

Dr. Alok Kanojia (34:21)

Average TikTok usage in 14 year old males in the US is 17 hours a week.

Ryan Reynolds (34:25)

Yeah, so this is like, and really sitting down. I think the biggest mistake that parents make is that we try to regulate our technology, regulate the technology use for our kids. So we try to do things like limit screen time, but instead what I think is way, way, way more effective is having your child understand why it's important from their perspective. Do you want to spend 17 hours a week on TikTok? Is this really the kind of life that you want to live? And once you start to get to those kinds of questions and conversations and I find that like, you know, dads having these kinds of conversations with their son, you know, how much pornography do you watch? Like you shouldn't ask, do you watch pornography? I think you start with how much do you watch? How do you feel about that? Is this the kind of life that you want live? And oftentimes what we'll find is when you have these kinds of conversations with your kids, what you'll discover is that your kids are being drawn to the technology because something is missing in their life. The reason I watch porn is because I have a crush on a girl. I'm 15 years old and I don't know how to talk to her. And so then the beautiful thing happens when you start talking to your kids about why they use technology, what's going on there, you'll start to uncover things that you can actually start to address. And so then hopefully if you're a good dad and you've got a kid, you can be like, okay, let's have a conversation about how to talk to girls. And so I think this is something that's really missing. We're all about regulation and taking things away. Instead of understanding what is driving the teenage mind to technology and offering it A healthier alternative.

Dr. Alok Kanojia (36:00)

I think I'm going to follow your dad's lead and put him on a plane for India. I like that. I thought that was. That was a gangster move. And not only that, I appreciate that you actually agreed. I think that's such an interesting pivotal moment in your life. What have you found, especially with young men, is the most common demon they're fighting that they need to address, where the addiction itself is just their attempt to medicate it. What is the most common shape and manifestation that that demon is when they get to the real problem.

Ryan Reynolds (36:35)

So men are. Young men are being blamed no matter what they do. So the basic problem is that we. There's no way for a young man to win in this world. That's the most common thing, manifests all kinds of things. I'll give you a simple example. Okay. So nowadays we're all saying, oh, like, men should be in touch with their emotions. Right? Like, emotional expression is healthy. Correct. And, like, there's no such thing as, like, good emotion and bad emotion. Right? Like, these are all things we hear, we say to young men. So if I'm a man and I get angry and I raise my tone of voice, is this considered an acceptable emotional expression?

Dr. Alok Kanojia (37:14)

No. It's abusive.

Ryan Reynolds (37:15)

Absolutely.

Dr. Alok Kanojia (37:17)

I don't feel safe around you.

Ryan Reynolds (37:19)

And now this is the other thing that I see so much in society today, which I think is very, very unhealthy. Your feelings of safety become my responsibility. So I saw this all the time when I was working in the emergency room at Mass General. We would get kids from Harvard and MIT and university health services and stuff all the time. And one day I was talking to one of the chiefs of security at mit and I was like, a lot of students feel unsafe. And he said something to me that stuck with me so well, he said, my job is not to make students feel safe. My job is to keep students safe. And there's a very big difference. So now what started to happen is that if someone feels unsafe around a man, that isn't their own unprocessed trauma, that's not their lack of emotional regulation. This now becomes the man's fault. So men are now put in basically unwinnable situations. So women, you can look at global kind of survey data about dating preferences and things like that. More than 50% of people who graduate from college are now women. But the average woman wants the male that she dates to make more money than they do. That's just becoming an untenable situation. So we teach kids, men, boys, it's okay to express your emotions. But we punish them anytime they express their emotions. We don't teach. We say, oh, men need. Like, boys need to do this, and they need to do this. No one is accepting responsibility for teaching men how to express emotions. No one is accepting responsibility for holding the space for that kind of thing. So we're setting a lot of fundamentally unachievable societal standards for men. And then we do one other thing. Young men and men in general are the only class in society that does not deserve help. So there's such a systemic bias that if it's a man, so we say, oh, it's not our job to help you.

Dr. Alok Kanojia (39:23)

So I do think that young men are getting a lot of mixed messages at the same time. Well, I'll put forward some. I think about this a lot, and I'll put forward some other theses and you respond to them. I think an even, perhaps an even bigger issue is male involvement or lack of male involvement. You had. You're blessed. You had a male role model that tried really hard, showed you that he loved you, was present in your life, noticed, gave witness to your life, and then ultimately helped you kind of get back on track. And there's a lot of young men who don't have the blessings you had. And without the presence of a male role model, whether it's a coach, whether it's an uncle that gets involved in your life, hopefully your dad, brothers that care about you. For me, it was my fraternity brothers at ucla. They took an interest in my life. They would. I remember my, you know, I don't know if you had an inferno. My big brother, like, four weeks into my freshman year is like, dude, you got to smoke less pot, man. You're like, you're not. You're going to fail out your first semester. Stop, stop smoking, stop getting high every night. And because he noticed my life and my. I didn't have a present father, but the absence of. The absence of men being involved in young men's lives for a lot of reasons, whether it's family court, whether it's male abandonment, whatever it might be a lot of single family homes. And we can go into. Go into the reasons or that's a longer conversation and also a lack of economic opportunity for young men because so many jobs now require the skills that women are showing at a greater propensity. And they've earned it. It ends up when we leveled the playing field, they blew by us academically, and they've earned it. Don't want to do anything to get in the way of that. But it used to be one third of jobs required a college degree. Now it's two thirds. Women, it ends up are better suited for college than most men. So there's just a lack of economic opportunity. Do you see? I see those two as maybe even being bigger causes for men trying to medicate than than the mixed messages they might be getting from society and women. Your thoughts?

Ryan Reynolds (41:37)

So here's why I think men medicate. So men are taught to be something called external problem solvers. So this is the way we're conditioned. So if the world is unhappy with us and we're a man, we should step up and fix it. Right. So if I'm married to someone who is unhappy with the amount of money that I make, I should earn a promotion. If I get a bad performance review, I need to do better next time. So what we're taught as men. I don't know if this kind of makes sense, but anytime there's a negative event in life, this creates an emotion within me. There's this external thing that creates an emotional response within me. And the way that we're taught to deal with that emotion is not internally, but we have to correct the external circumstance. Right. So if I can get my boss to give me a good performance review, if I can prove to myself that this person is an idiot, then the negative emotion goes away. Does that kind of make sense? If someone disapproves of me and I feel shame, the way to resolve my shame is to earn their approval. And if I can earn their approval, then the shame goes away. So this is a huge problem. This is why men, I think, turn to substances. Because we are not taught. When you feel shame, we are actually conditioned to be. To live up to the expectations of others. We use an external tool from the outside. It can be a promotion, a drink of alcohol, marijuana, video games, pornography. We use things outside of us to manage and control our internal emotional state. That's why I think men are three to four times more likely to become addicted to anything than women are.

Dr. Alok Kanojia (43:11)

Yeah, it's really back to your point about a lack of empathy. I mean, to a certain extent, we don't have an opiate, a homeless crisis. We have a male opiate, a male homeless crisis. You know, like as you said, three out of four, four out of five suicides. When someone comes in with an addiction issue, what I'd like you to do, if you can, is stack rank the addictions. The addictions, when they walk in the door, you think, okay, we can handle this or an addiction walks through the door and they go, oh, no. Stack, Rank, House. From what you think are most serious, generally speaking, to least serious or most addressable, I should say addictions.

Ryan Reynolds (43:44)

So my first answer is that I think all addictions are addressable because their root is the same, this cycle of addiction, which is, I'm going to use this external thing to manage my internal emotional state. That's common for all addictions. So Nora Volkow, I don't know how to pronounce her last name, who's the head of NIMH or maybe the head of addictions in the U.S. you know, she talks about, illustrates this beautifully. There are just a lot of common pathways to addiction and addictions. For anything to be addictive, it needs two requirements. One is to give pleasure, and the second is to take away pain. So in that sense, there is a very common root and common solution to addiction. As long as we can help people manage their pain in other, healthier ways, then we can conquer any addiction. That's my belief. That being said, I think probably the hardest addiction to treat is probably body dysmorphia. So when people get addicted to a version of themselves, this is the hardest addiction to treat. So anytime I'll give you examples of this. So, like, what does that mean, addiction to a version of yourself? When someone comes in and says, I love marijuana, not because it makes me high, but it allows me to be normal, I like the normal me. The hardest addictions I've had to treat are when marijuana allows someone to participate in a normal life the way that all of the other humans do. I've worked with people who have addictions to things like stimulant medication, like people with adhd. So they exist in the world. They can't focus. They have difficulty regulating their emotions because that's a feature of adhd. They struggle with issues of confidence. And if they take Adderall, they feel normal. They feel, like, confident. I love this version of myself. And I also see that in body dysmorphia, where it's like, I don't want to be grotesque. I don't want to be ugly. I don't want to be pathetic. I want to achieve. I want to be good. I want to be proud of myself. I want to be happy. When I look in the mirror and I see myself. This is what they strive for. And what we know about genetics is like, you know, when you have an addictive, let's say personality, you may just have a drug of choice. So, you know, your opioid receptors. Your mu receptors may just be genetically a little bit different. In some people, GABA receptors, which are or for alcohol, may be a little bit different. You know, so you may have just a genetic vulnerability to a particular drug of choice, and that's why human beings have drugs of choice. But the underlying mechanism of addiction is, like, pretty shared. And the hardest ones to treat are when the substance allows you to be a version of yourself that you like and you don't like. The sober you.

Dr. Alok Kanojia (46:32)

We'll be right back.

Ryan Reynolds (46:38)

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Dr. Alok Kanojia (47:20)

I am really scared. The United States was the best place in the world to do science and and that has never felt more threatened in my career than it does right now.

Ryan Reynolds (47:31)

This week on Unexplainable. What does all this mean for the future of science in America? Follow Unexplainable for new episodes every Wednesday. The Republicans have been saying lots of things. Just yesterday, their leader said he wants to own Gaza.

Dr. Alok Kanojia (47:51)

The US Will take over the Gaza.

Ryan Reynolds (47:53)

Strip and we will do a job with it, too.

Dr. Alok Kanojia (47:56)

We'll own it.

Ryan Reynolds (47:57)

On Monday, the Secretary of state said an entire federal agency was insubordinate. USAID in particular.

Dr. Alok Kanojia (48:03)

They refused to tell us anything. We won't tell you what the money's going to, where the money's for, who has it.

Ryan Reynolds (48:08)

Over the weekend, Vice President Elon Musk, the richest man on earth, tweeted about the same agency that, you know, gives money to the poorest people on earth. We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper. Could gone to some great parties, did that instead. But what have the Democrats been saying? People are aroused.

Dr. Alok Kanojia (48:29)

I haven't seen people so aroused in.

Ryan Reynolds (48:31)

A very, very long time. Huh. That's a weird way to put it. Senator, we're gonna ask what exactly is the Democrats strategy to push back on? Republicans on Today explained.

Dr. Alok Kanojia (48:45)

I want to go somewhere a little bit more positive Here, one of the things you talk about that is really is super interesting is what science can tell us about the formation of relationships and falling in love. What does the latest research reveal about how we form deep connections and how is technology reshaping this process? Or put more basely, how can someone today in this digital age find love?

Ryan Reynolds (49:13)

Oh, it's so hard. So first thing to understand is that we have birth rate crises in parts of East Asia. I don't know if you're familiar with the 4B movement in South Korea. And so there's like, you know, people are getting engaging in fewer long term relationships. We're seeing a lot of like situationships and friends with benefits. People are, there's a loneliness crisis, there's a mental health crisis, there's a dating crisis. And all three of these things are correlated with an increase in technology use across society. So how do these two things actually interface? So this is what a lot of people don't understand. So falling in love, if you really think about it, is an addiction. So what we know is that falling in love is governed by our dopaminergic circuitry. And let's just think about this, right? So if you're lucky enough to have fallen in love, you are obsessed with this person. So if we look at dopamine in the mesocortical circuit, this is the nucleus accumbens, this is our addictive part of the brain. Dopamine does three things. Gives us pleasure, gives us craving, and reinforces behavior. So when you're in love with someone, you crave them, you think about them all the time. Like literally, like what happens in your brain. These can best be described as cravings. They're preoccupations with this person. And then when you're in this person's presence, the presence alone creates dopamine in your brain. So just like sitting there and being with them feels like the most amazing thing in the world. So. And there's also other things that we know about addiction. So addictions also suppress the risk assessment parts of your brain. So once you fall in love or your best friend falls in love, they start to change who they are, they start making stupid decisions. And all of your friends get worried about you when you fall in love because you don't realize you're missing all of these red flags. That's not a bug, that's a feature. So thousands of years ago, millions of years ago, when our brains were evolving, they realized there were two humans. One human who was able to accurately assess risk, and one human whose Dopaminergic circuitry was suppressing risk. Which one of them ended up mating the person who suppresses risk. So dopamine creates impulsivity, creates craving, creates pleasure, suppresses our ability to gauge risk. And this is what falling in love is. Falling in love is stupid. It's beautiful. It's idiotic.

Dr. Alok Kanojia (51:39)

I mean, I jokingly say that young people should go out and drink more and make a series of bad decisions. Doesn't that mean we should be a little bit more reckless with our emotions?

Ryan Reynolds (51:47)

Yes and no. So I think the way that we should correct this is by fixing what causes the root problem. So the root problem is that when we use social media, when we use technology, it alters our dopaminergic circuitry. And those alterations, once your brain changes from social media use or video game use or pornography use, that same brain becomes more incapable of falling in love. And so what I'll tell people, like, who are struggling to fall in love is before you go on a date, walk for one hour and do not touch a device. What I find is that people who do that, the quality of their dates improves. There's another really fascinating mechanism. So remember that all social media and technology and all this kind of stuff suppresses our negative emotional circuitry and evokes emotional circuitry. And one of the key factors for falling in love is shared emotional experience. So this is. There's a beautiful study that, that. That illustrated this. So they had a group of. Two groups of couples go on dates where they met on a bridge. But there are two bridges. One is a stone bridge that's stable. One is a wood bridge that's rickety. And what they found is that when you meet in the middle of, like, a wood bridge, that's rickety. We're both a little bit scared. And so since there is a shared emotional experience between these, I think we're heteronormative dates. When you have two human beings that are both share the same emotion and we're both scared on the bridge, we actually bind together a little bit. The empathic connection becomes strong. And when we meet in a stable place where there is not a shared emotional state, then those people feel less connected.

Dr. Alok Kanojia (53:28)

I want to bring it down to kind of a ground level. And that is, I think that probably, I mean, in addition to a good job and supportive parents and a male role model, if I could wish anything more of on young men right now, it'd be relationships. Not only friendships, but romantic relationships. Only one in three men under the age of 30 is in a relationship, two in three women under the age of 30. And you think, well, that's mathematically impossible. It's not because women want more economically and emotionally viable men, so they're dating older. And I find without the joy and probably more importantly, the guardrails of a relationship, men just come off the tracks. That women reinvest that energy in work and friends, and men reinvest it in video games and conspiracy theory. Your thoughts on limiting the amount of porn such that a young man, quite frankly, builds up more desire and is willing to take more risks in terms of meeting women or putting himself in a context or another man where he can take that leap of faith and endure the rejection, take the risk. Thoughts?

Ryan Reynolds (54:38)

This is the biggest problem that I see right now. We are coping with our negative emotions instead of harnessing them. So this is something that I want you to really think about. Why do human beings have negative emotions? Right. So negative emotions are, first of all, much more powerful motivators of behavior than positive emotions. Curiosity will get you interested in something for a little while. Joy will get you interested in something in a little while. Shame, sadness, and anger are incredibly powerful motivators. Now, why are they such powerful motivators? Because these are the signals that our brain sends us to tell us we need to make a change. If I'm ashamed of my body, the solution to that, in the way that our brain evolved because we couldn't avoid people, we were in tribes of 300. So I had to see these people every single day. Day. That shame is a powerful motivator to change the way that I look, change the way that I act. And even this hunger for companionship, this sexual drive, which is one of the strongest drives in the human being overall, is what causes us to reach out and overcome our shame. And now what's happening with things like pornography and technology, social media, video games, is we are taking all of these negative emotions, which normally are the most powerful fuel to allow us to fix our lives, and we're wiping them away with things like porn or video games. And now what we're doing is we are disabling our primary motivational fuel, which is negative emotion. And you'll see this all the time. Like, even if you look at movies, right? When the hero becomes a hero, it's not curiosity that makes him a hero. It's a powerful negative emotion. A sense of betrayal, a sense of anger, a sense of shame. I'm never gonna be this way again. Never. I'm never going to be weak again. And that's what drives them to change. And so what we're actually doing is short circuiting our most potent motivational drives through things like pornography.

Dr. Alok Kanojia (56:44)

If you could give. And this is a difficult question to answer, but advice to younger men in terms of they're starting out, maybe their first job or college, as it relates to addiction, as it relates to establishing healthy relationship, Any practices you recommend that are more likely to set them on a strong path. What advice do you have to young men as it relates to recognizing addiction? Screen time, activities, behavior modification in a digital age where obviously addiction is kind of sort of one click away everywhere.

Ryan Reynolds (57:23)

So. So I'd probably say that, see, the reason we rely so much on these technological devices and addictions is because we cannot tolerate life without them, right? So if we think about if I told you to take your phone away from a day for a day, it would be really hard for people to exist. So one thing that we do in our community is a beautiful meditation practice that we tell people to do, which is stare at a wall for an hour and just look at what comes up. So at the beginning, you'll be bored. And then, like, the basic problem is that dudes today are trying to always move away from themselves and towards something. I need to be sexier. I need to be healthier. I need to be more fit. I need to have more friends. I need to join a fraternity. I need to be like these guys. One of the weirdest things I've always heard is the men that I work with long for rock bottom. They want nothing more than rock bottom. I want to hit rock bottom because that's when I know I'm going to die or I will be reborn. They long for that more than anything else. They just want anything except for this numb existence. They would rather break it or make it one of the two, but just no more of this limbo. They hate limbo. The way to get out of that limbo is to, first of all, stop paying attention and stop caring about the world thinks, because you're getting all of this contrary advice, right? So, you know, be a more masculine man so that you can attract women or be more emotionally available so that you can attract women, make more money, assert yourself, or be more passive. There's just no way that you can make anyone else happy like you've tried, and it doesn't work. So instead, what you need to do is sit your ass in front of a wall and look at what comes up for one hour. And what you really need to do for your compass in life is listen to what comes up. Because you've tried to make the rest of the world happy. It ain't working. So stop trying and start trying to make yourself happy. Listen to the signals on the inside and try to make those signals happy irrespective of how painful it feels. Because you will get better at managing the pain. Whatever you do, you will get better at. The problem is that we end up trying to make everybody else happy, avoiding all of our emotions. And so then we become puppets to the world around us.

Dr. Alok Kanojia (59:44)

Dr. Alok Kanogia, known as Dr. K, is a psychiatrist and co founder of the mental health coaching company Healthy Gamer, which aims to help with modern stressors including social media, video games and online dating. He joins us from his home in Houston. And also we should to note that Dr. K is also a popular Twitch streamer who engages with audiences by discussing mental health, addressing issues including addiction, motivation and depression. The Good Doctor has a book out, how to raise a healthy gamer and power struggles, break bad screen habits and transfer your relationships with your kids. It was published last year. I really enjoyed this conversation, doctor. If any, I find your story inspiring. I mean, what I just would want to. I wish what has happened to you for more people. I think it's such a neat story and such a nice. Just so nice to hear about a young man who kind of comes off the rails and then ends up on the fucking Concord. Somehow I just think it's such a nice story. Congratulations on all your blessings and your success. This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez. Our intern is Dan Shalon. Drew Burrows is our Technical Director. Thank you for listening to the Prophecy Pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network. We will catch you on Saturday for no Mercy, no Malice as read by George Hahn. And please follow our Profit Markets pod wherever you get your pods for new episodes every Monday and Thursday.