Mental Health

#50: Addiction Recovery Expert Dr. Robb Kelly

Hosted by Josh Gonsalves
8.3.2022
1 HR 5 MIN
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Episode Description

Robb Kelly, PhD is an addiction recovery expert who successfully recovered from alcoholism. During his early twenties, he worked at the elite and influential Abbey Roads Studio as a session musician in London and has worked with thousands of people including celebrities of film, music, and sports.

Based on his own experiences working with addicts and alcoholics over the last 20 years, combined with a PhD in psychology, and as a recovered alcoholic himself – he is a triple threat against the disease of addiction.

He has lectured at many high profile universities and hospitals on the subject of addiction, and is recognized as a leading authority on addiction recovery methods that are changing lives all around the world.

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COMING SOON

[00:00:00] Dr. Robb: If you're sad at home, listening to this and you're struggling from alcoholism or depression or addiction, you never think you'll amount to anything. You never think you're any good. You never think you'll do anything in life.

[00:00:10] I want to apologize to you guys because somebody put that there. That's not how we're born. We're born with million dollar minds. Why the fuck are you still hanging around 10 cent minds. and it literally is that easy. what you can visualize in your head, you can hold in your hand. The only thing that's stopping you from succeeding is you.

[00:00:31] Josh: All right, well, Dr. Rob, thanks for joining me on Mind Meld. I know that this is not your first Mind Meld podcast. As I was doing some research, I saw you were on another Mind Meld, but I really appreciate you coming on this one and chatting with me today.

[00:00:49] Dr. Robb: no problems is going to be awesome, Josh, as we both know. So yeah. Looking for.

[00:00:54] Josh: A hundred percent. There's just so much that I really want to get into. So hopefully we can get it all in, in about an hour, an hour and a bit. but you know, I think really just for the people listening right now, there's going to be a bunch of people that are going to get a lot out of this episode from some things I already know I want to ask you.

[00:01:09] But I think just before we even get into that, I think it's worth you sharing your story of how you got to now, how you actually became, um, who you are now as a person to help people. And that story is really fascinating from life heard. And I'd love for you to kind of share that before we get in, so people have a little bit of context around this conversation.

[00:01:26] Dr. Robb: you know, I, I'm an alcoholic, chronic alcoholic. I used to be about an hour recovered alcoholic. they call me Doctor robb and the addiction doctor is the tagline because I worked with the addiction and alcoholism, but I took my first drink at the age of nine.

[00:01:40] Grew up on a project A musical family. Uh, my first drink and the whole world changed me right there. And then I knew that this alcohol stuff, even the age of nine was going to be my hair or going through life because I was pretty shy. You know, I didn't really amount to much in school. Um, I played soccer, but not very good.

[00:02:01] I played rugby, but not very good. And I think I could do is play music. So I was the talker that school, whenever I was playing in town, you have moms and dads would come see us. We played in pubs and clubs around the greater Manchester back in the UK. I grew up, I always wanted to do better, and I never knew why I was always embarrassed where we lived on, on the, on the project.

[00:02:24] So if you listen to in England, the council, the states, and one of, one of the worst in England as well, race course, counselor state, uh, and I just didn't want to be long. I always wanted to better myself. You say really? I'm supposed to grow up, leave school. No really education, uh, get married, have two children, uh, work at the local company and go for a drink every Friday, Saturday, Sunday night.

[00:02:47] And that was my lot, do that for 40 years and retire. Uh, and I didn't like that. It was like, I don't like this at all. So I've always been the reason I've done so much in my life is because I seize the opportunity when it comes along. And the reason why I do is because I'm an old guy who sat in the bus station.

[00:03:05] I sat on this chair next to him, waiting for the boss. And he said to me, son, let me give you some advice from this old man. And he said, always take every opportunity and never say no to anything you can do. And that's what I've done. So my drinking was through school. And why don't you go to college?

[00:03:22] Nobody's been to college in my family. So, uh, I joined the Freemasons at the age of 15. It was early. It's supposed to be 18, but I can play the organ. So they love my organ play. And I got some contacts to go to Oxford. I went to Oxford, I graduated with a PhD, just, uh, and I started a small practice in England working with, uh, alcoholics because I was intrigued.

[00:03:43] I was really intrigued that my, my alcoholism was getting a little bit out of hand, but it wasn't really too much. And then, uh, as time went by, I got married. I had two children, uh, and then devastating enough. I lost everything. Um, my youngest daughter still doesn't speak to me all these years on. Uh, and then about 15 years ago, I came across to America and are wanting to change the world or wanting to do as much positive stuff in the world, uh, to make a difference.

[00:04:16] So why did you leave a legacy? So we set about different things were successful, got married, getting divorced to in America. And then I lost everything again, walked out and left my wife with everything. And started again, seven years, eight years ago. And we built an empire in that. I mean, work with chronic alcoholics and their families.

[00:04:34] We have to include the family. And, uh, yeah, I mean, I got voted from, uh, Harvard university hospital McLean hospital, and it's one of the best addiction doctors in the USA, which is a pretty high honor for me to say that I come from the council of states. So yeah, that's a rough, I came there for two weeks.

[00:04:52] That's, that's the crazy thing. I came there for two weeks, uh, to speak and do some lecturing and work with the youth ministry within a big church in Dallas. And the weirdest thing happened because I came with two weeks with a close two weeks with the money I wasn't really doing well in England. And I came across an as soon as I stepped on the tarmac, but obviously it was outside.

[00:05:15] I knew I'd never go back to England to live and you'd have to stay here. And that's what I did. It felt like everything fell into. To make trip to become Hare to that. I mean, I want, I mean, everything like four or five days, maybe, I dunno, maybe 6, 7, 8 days before I supposed to come to America for the two weeks and getting all my stuff.

[00:05:33] I'm so excited. I've never been to America before and also our passport and it was like three or four days out. It was an expired. So I jumped on the bus. I went down to Liverpool, which is 35 miles away. I got to the passport office and I put it in and the guy said, okay, be between eight and 12 weeks. And I said, let me expedite it.

[00:05:53] I need it in a week. And he said, expedite is going to do it in like a month. You're never going to get your passport in, in a week. So you're just not going to do it. So I paid, I didn't even pay for an extra day. I just paid normally, uh, I wait 12 weeks, four days, five days later, or six days later, it was knock on my door and they delivered my passport.

[00:06:14] And that made, that gives me the right to come here. And that's what started all this crazy spiritual journey that.

[00:06:19] I've been on

[00:06:20] Josh: Wow. So where are you based out of.

[00:06:22] Dr. Robb: I'm actually in San Antonio, we stopped. I didn't tell us. So I'm in San Antonio, the head office. We have, uh, four or five locations around the world. We have San Antonio. We have Dallas, we have Spain, we have Switzerland, uh, we have two offices in England,

[00:06:41] Josh: Wow. Wow, no

[00:06:42] Dr. Robb: Crazy, crazy stuff.

[00:06:44] Josh: yeah. Yeah. Talk about an empire, man. That's amazing. So I love talking to people with these kinds of stories and these journeys, like you're still writing the story as you're going, like you're kind of in the thick of what you're meant to be doing, what it seems, you know, you had this tough time, um, earlier on in life while you're still in England that has obviously.

[00:07:03] Um, influence what you're doing now and the people you're helping. Now, what I would love to kind of bring up is kind of your past life before becoming a, an addiction treatment specialist. And that's in your music career. We talked about this before. I'd love for you to kind of talk about that. Cause I feel like that might have influenced kind of the people that you're helping now.

[00:07:23] And I want to get into the types of people that you might be working with nowadays.

[00:07:28] Dr. Robb: so I've always been musical. Uh, I picked up the guitar at the age of four or five and I, I could play it, never taken a lesson in my life. I can play any instrument. So I'm going to get me backpacks once as a joke. And within 10 minutes I could play, I could play a tune and not saying that was great. I can play a tune.

[00:07:44] That's just my forte. People can decorate build houses. I can't do that mechanic. I have no idea what's under the hood, but I can't play music. So at the early age I was on stage. And then I discovered that this place it's in Stockport about 50 miles outside Manchester, wasn't recording studio. And it was all by 10 CC.

[00:08:04] The group tends to DC. I think we had one, two hits away. Um, and I would, I went there as a session bass player. Now we would play bass tracks on commercials for TV and radio. And when I did it, they gave me money for it, but they didn't just give him money. It was an extortion amount of money for what I just did.

[00:08:22] Cause I could sight read. I didn't have to spend 20 minutes going through putting from there, play the bass track. Someone has a child producer go that's awesome. Go out and give me like a hundred pounds or something. Ridiculous. So I did that heavily, uh, always wanting to be a famous musician, uh, but it didn't happen for me.

[00:08:41] And just before I ever thought about going to college, uh, melody maker was a newspaper in England and I saw a advertisement for a bass player. He wrote a famous Abbey road where everybody used anybody as recorded, but the most famous band is the Beatles obviously recorded there. So I applied for at seven interviews.

[00:09:01] I gained some of the best by played bass players, I guess in England. I don't know they were all seasoned players. And then. 1516 years old, uh, trying out, but my confidence regarding music, it was very high and I was a kid that didn't have any fear of anything. So after I started, I got the job and, uh, in our playing with Dave Barry out with John queen, Freddie mercury, all in great guys, I've put tracks on their songs.

[00:09:26] Uh, during that time was there, I was there about two or three years, I think, but it unfortunately, well, fortunately that was a great time. Me and Freddie used to spend hours and hours in the early morning in the green room or something, just chatting away and philosophy and putting the worlds to right or the bad side of it is during that time, I got heavily into the alcohol and cocaine.

[00:09:48] The first time I took cocaine and stopped drinking, it was just like, it was phenomenal. I could go to school during the day and I could work at Abbey Road during the nights and sleep all weekend. So yeah, that was, it was a great.

[00:10:00] Josh: Yeah. I'm imagining that you have some pretty crazy stories about some of the people who worked there. Do you have any that comes to mind?

[00:10:07] Dr. Robb: I have one about Elton John. It's crazy. W we recorded one night and it was really bad weather. It was storms, thunder, lightning, rain, everything. And, uh, the generator kept kicking off and kicking on the backup generator. And we kind of lost a few tracks. So Elton called it and said, Hey, let's go back to the hotel.

[00:10:25] Now we went back to the Savoy hotel. Now you've got to remember late seventies, early eighties. The Savoy hotel was one of the best hotels in the world, five star elegance all the way. So he gets up to the penthouse suite. And with those girls, there There's a few guys there There's Elton there's drinks There's everything else you can imagine for the partaking of which we did.

[00:10:47] And the music playing this huge. suite at the top of the top of the hotel, and then, uh, I heard Elton in the bedroom screaming Uh, at somebody or something. So I walked in and he's on the telephone and I'm like, what's, who's he talking to? And as I got nearer to him, he was actually screaming at the manager of the hotel, telling them if he didn't stop the rain and the wind immediately that I would never book into that hotel again.

[00:11:19] I think it was right there. And then I thought, oh my God, I'm part of this crazy world. And I've kind of been in that crazy world in a sense, to be honest, because I live life the way it's supposed to be lived. I don't follow the rules. We got married and my third and final wife, Kay, she's listening. Uh, and we had an argument after two or three days and I said, I don't like this.

[00:11:39] And she said, well, that's the way marriage is supposed to be. And I said, said, who who's making these rules. I don't fucking like these rules let's change it. So we danced in the bathroom morning. We throw stuff at us. She'll be an air shortlist, squirting water or something to make me laugh. You know, we do crazy stuff.

[00:11:54] Cause we make our own life up. Nobody's going to come to rescue me. I found that an early age now they're not gonna go rescue me. I'm all alone here. I ever got in my life, a spiritual God and that have all these great people around me who lift me up. And that there's this thing as well. I always tell people, if you're sad at home, listening to this and you're struggling from alcoholism or depression or addiction, you never think you'll amount to anything.

[00:12:17] You never think you're any good. You never think you'll do anything in life. I want to apologize to you guys because somebody put that there. That's not how we're born. We're born with million dollar minds. Why the fuck are you still hanging around 10 cent minds and it literally is that easy. Well, it can't be that No what you can visualize in your head.

[00:12:37] You can hold in your hand. The only thing that's stopping you from succeeding is you, especially if you suffer from addiction, self-sabotaging neural pathways will take us down in an internal dialogue. Oh God, I can't do that says, Who So the only reason, but the only difference between a guy trying to make it.

[00:12:57] And the guy at CEO in front of you from multi-billion dollar company is he believes he can do it. We're not even talking about college or education that doesn't go very far today. Look at apple, look at Google, look at all these great Amazon look at all these great companies that don't need a college degree to get in.

[00:13:12] Well, the 2021 and 2022 are the finest years we could ever have right now of earning maximum potential. And I, and I tell somebody, well, if you're, again, if you're thinking, well, I can do this. I want to do this. Do me a favor, get your checkbook out right now and write on it. That number that you want to go into your bank account.

[00:13:33] Mine was a million, by the way, when I did it back in the day, it was a million dollars. I cashed that million dollars. About five years ago, my first million dollars in the bank Write down, it could be 50 grand. It could be a hundred grand. Write it down on a check and sign it and stick it on the bathroom mirror.

[00:13:48] So you see every day And you will do it. I promise you you'll do it.

[00:13:52] Josh: See, I know already, just from even this, there's going to be so many of these little strategies and tactics that I would really like to extract here for the people listening, whether they are struggling with addiction themselves, or they know someone, or, you know, they're just kind of in this kind of like negative mindset, they're kind of like maybe just experiencing depression or maybe they're just like, they're not really living their true life.

[00:14:15] There's so much out here. They don't even know that exists. Right. They're kind of trapped in this little bubble, this little shit storm.

[00:14:22] How do you get people out of that? Like how do you get people to first recognize that they can do this stuff and believe they can.

[00:14:29] Dr. Robb: Always remember that. We never see ourselves as we are. So you see other people go, Kati is doing great. He doesn't know he's doing great. You look at the guy just bought a new car and they've got an amazing girlfriend. Husking. Are you doing, uh, I'm doing okay. You confident? Uh, well, a little bit things.

[00:14:45] Things are looking up. It's it's getting with somebody who will tell you the truth and the realization that you are amazing and you are worth, and you can do this. Everyone has a niche in life. Everyone's been brought in a search to do something, find out what your niche is. If it's football gone, pay professional football, but it can't be that easy.

[00:15:05] Let's really is hang around the people. If you're and earning $40,000 a year, start hanging around the guys in 60 and your students 60, show me your friends and I'll show you a future. The only difference between alcoholism, trauma, and depression and all that is trauma. Alcoholism is not about the alcohol and drug.

[00:15:24] Addiction is not about drugs and depression. It is not about sitting there crying cause you can't stand the world anymore. It's all to do with trauma. Once you go back and fix that trauma and find out who the hell you are and hang around and people who tell you who the hell you are, because my circle, if any.

[00:15:41] You know, tries to pull me down there out. I don't need that stuff. Even after all these years in recovery Mind in negative mind will take hold of it and run. And I'll give you an example. I was speaking in California once and there was a thousand people booked to go in and a thousand people was there and I did a talk for about two hours and I come off stage and my manager said like, at the end of the tour, you've got to give at least one to two hours.

[00:16:03] Everybody will shake your hand, you know, and tell you great job. I'm 999 people said it was amazing. And one person said you were shit for the last two or three weeks. I concentrate on that one person instead of the 999. That's the way our minds work. Especially if you suffer from mental, any mental injury, we don't call

[00:16:24] Josh: Why do you think that is? It's so true? Like we can have a million things

[00:16:27] going on, right.

[00:16:28] Dr. Robb: Yeah. Self sabotage in Europe, pathways from trauma. If you put a white piece of paper up and with a black spot on it and say, what can you see it? Everyone's going to say the black spot. That's how the mind goes with very rarely take home. We can't do that. Oh, I should. I just, ah, just something to throw on, you know, on nice shoes.

[00:16:46] Uh, yeah. How about just saying, thank you. That's a confidence builder. And when you, when you started complimenting people, Delta man is released into your brain. That's a good feeling. And when you come and people, people will compliment you back and try little things, set your mind to something, but I can't go and run a multi-billion dollar company now.

[00:17:04] No, you probably can't, but what's more by next month or the month after the year after. So make them little things and try yourself out. You know, that job that I was going to do. Part-time let's see if I can get it. Walk in there. Listen, I'm going to tell you something. Now it's going to blow your mind.

[00:17:18] Guys. Listen to all quartz and physics. Let's talk about quantum physics for a second. Let's say a basketball court. Cartoon physics tells me that I could be 25 places at the same time on that call because nothing's really solid guys. 25 places. Now visualize that for us. Twenty-five places I can be on that cold.

[00:17:44] Where do I want to be? But obviously I want to be over near the goal. So when I get the ball, I'll slam it into the net and I'll be the hero of the game. Okay. Listen up guys. How do I get that? You walk over and you take that position. You don't beg for it. You don't plead for it. You walk over and you take it.

[00:18:04] Cause what you visualize, Hey, you can hold here that all the secret of mankind is one you have. Once you have believing oneself, there's nothing you can't achieve. And I really mean that. And people you say to me, yeah, but I can't be president of the United States. Rarely I beg to differ today because we had a businessman, whatever your political sides and views are at the end of the day, we had a business I'm running the country.

[00:18:28] So don't tell me you can't do this. It's bullshit. It's that self sabotage and part of the brain going, you never know. You know, I came to this conclusion years ago. I'm never going to be blonde enough, tall enough and enough are rich enough. That's just the way my mind works. Uh, once I decided that I'm taught that away, everything else was like cream on top.

[00:18:47] You are worth it. You are amazing. You can do whatever you want to do. You can't date that girl, get that count, get that house, get that job you can. And you do it just spend some time. Every morning focuses on you do the 10. I love use face-to-face in the mirror every single morning, because that sets the subconscious brain storing them.

[00:19:07] I love use. So when you get to that job, that car, but how's that girl instead of your brain going up fucking up and I can do this over. It comes to the prefrontal cortex. I love you. You're amazing. You can walk this and then walk in and fucking take the position guys. That's all there is to it. Don't be on the outside.

[00:19:26] Looking in, you know, many years ago, I used to drive a taxi from my bad. I used to pick up these guys for these really partial to. Just read. Cause I can come from that. There's no way could I finally do anything like that, but I'm going to England in a couple of weeks time in 10 days, time, we stay in one of the most exclusive hotels in Manchester.

[00:19:47] That was my goal. It's taken 30 odd years to achieve, but I'm going to go back and I'm going to do it. And, and my life is absolutely amazing. I mean, I, I have everything a man wants and everything and my needs and my only aim now, cause we give 25% of our earnings. So last this year alone, sorry, I keep saying last year, this year alone, probably children 20, we canceled today.

[00:20:13] Two 20, we give away $220,000 to the needy, to the homeless, to the addicts. I want to get the life pack and the kids back go to court. We spend active like that, you know, and, and I, my primary purpose today is proven to the other person that you can.

[00:20:30] Josh: That's that's incredible. And, and for you, like, what was that like awakening moment? Like you're, you're talking about spirituality here as well. I'm a very spiritual person as well. I love to kind of spread that. A lot of people aren't, they're very stuck in like the material world. This is how things are, this is how my life just is.

[00:20:46] And you kind of even just, you know, scratch the surface there, like quantum physics and spirituality. How did you first come. How did you first originally have that awakening moment? Was there something that happened or was it like over time?

[00:21:00] Dr. Robb: it was started to me because I'd grew up in the church, but my choir master stroke, headmaster, uh, molested me a few times. Uh, like they registered so later on, so I wasn't a church, God person, I'm not going to never going to go there. Uh, I've never been to church since in the last 50 something years. I've never been back to church, but I was homeless.

[00:21:23] It got that bad that everything was stripped up. Me, my wife left, they took my two little babies age, 100. Uh, the house was foreclosed on the cars went back and I ended up homeless after about two or three weeks of something really bad happening. Uh, I was sat on the streets of Manchester going, wow, what just went wrong?

[00:21:42] And I stayed there for 14 months begging beating people up, drinking all day, passing out, you know, it was, it was a crazy book. About 14 months around the area. I was, I tried suicide six times on two occasions. It worked, but they brought me back to life. My heart actually stopped and the paramedics brought me back.

[00:22:00] I was pissed at them guys for a long time, cause I didn't want to live anymore. So I'm walking on the backends of Manchester where nobody goes cobbled streets, you know, like it's pitch black. And I dropped down to my hands and knees and I started to cry like a baby, you know, from the. Does it different cry to Christ one from here when you're upset, but one from you stomach, when you get that loss, that grieving now that horrible pain your stomach.

[00:22:26] And so when I got down and was looking down to the floor of my hands and knees and my tears were hitting the cobblestones. So the rain was hits me in back of the head. It was coming around my face and it was dripping. Then make it purple colors on the floor. And I was sobbing. So the crazy thing is I wasn't sobbing because I lost my wife, my kids, my money, my houses, anything I was crying because the first time in my life, I realized it comes up drinking and he took all that for me.

[00:22:51] And I looked into the sky and I said, if there's a God up there, I can't do this on my own anymore. 30 seconds later, a guy walked around the corner in the middle of nowhere with a Bible. In his hand, it missed his last person from a Bible study. He'd been walking an hour. He passes me and he says, Hey mate, do you want help?

[00:23:08] And I said, yeah, I'm an alcoholic. And I'm dying. And he said, I'm an alcoholic in recovery, man. Come back to the house. So what of that. And he said his name was Derek. And he said, Rob, you can stay here for as long as you like, so you get your life together. But there's only one condition. I said, okay, what's the condition?

[00:23:24] He said, you've got to come to AA meetings with me, which I hated them, places that just full of bullshit and war stories. So I agreed because it was a dry bed. And the next night he took me to this meeting. And my only aim was trying to get out of there without me knowing and get some body kind of get back into the me, but it didn't happen.

[00:23:41] And when I was about halfway through the meeting, this guy across from me, the, a white bear, white hair, quite loosely, but smartly dressed, he said, my name is John and I'm a recovered alcoholic. I was intrigued what stuff he was pointing out in the book. And he talks about God a lot. So after the meeting, I went over to him and they should have been assigned, but it didn't, it wasn't, I didn't notice a sign.

[00:24:04] I said, Hey, John, you know, my name is Rob, will you sponsor me? And he said, no, but I will be a spiritual advisor for a period of 12. And I thought, okay, that's weird. You said, come to my address, bring a big book and a dictionary. This says, oh, I worry about addiction. I went to Oxford. He said, bring a dictionary.

[00:24:24] So I did every Wednesday evening. I worked an hour to that man's house. We spent an hour together and I walked an hour back for 12 weeks. After the last visit, I knew I would never drink alcohol again. If I continue to follow the program, essentially, and life's going to change, I said it can't change. John I'm living in a guy's basement.

[00:24:47] Nobody knows on that. How come I life change the next day I got part-time job offensively late to that week. It turned into a full-time job. The week after next in with everybody, someone gave me a mini car to get to work and things were starting to happen. I was going into meetings with this big book and I was preaching and teaching and it was amazing.

[00:25:05] People came well in short time. So after two or three weeks, I got my first pay packet. I went to the local petrol station gas. And I brought you on a little Teddy bear, this big it's all I could afford and a little card and the road sign. Thank you for introducing me to God. He took the compulsion away and I walked back to his house when I got there.

[00:25:23] And he's he's looks like it was nobody there. I was banging on the door and right. A neighbor come out and just kind of help you. I said, can you tell him what John's moved to? And she said, John, you've got the wrong apartment. Nobody's been in that apartment for at least six months. I know of that. I've been here.

[00:25:38] So a lot of close the door, obviously a bit loopy. So right to the left hand side and not sell his apartment. And the guy comes to the door and he said, can you tell him where John relocated to? And he said, John, and I'm like, fuck. Yeah, I'll keep saying John. He said, look, man, I don't know where you've been or what you've done, but that apartment is derelict.

[00:25:55] That one's lived there for 12 months. You can't go in next dangerous. I'm really confused now because I've got the right house. And I knew this guy. So I went back the next night to the meeting. I first met him. And I said to the chairman, Hey, you remember that? John Gainey went, John, oh fuck. Here we go.

[00:26:10] Again. I said, the guy that was in the meeting said he wasn't recovered alcoholic. And then we went over to the coffee machine and I asked him to sponsor me that job. And somebody snickered Josh over my shoulder. And I turned around when I grabbed him by the Scruff of the neck, I said, don't you ever laugh at me?

[00:26:28] And the guys pulled me off and he said, Rob, Rob, stop. You don't understand wrong. He was over in the cuff machine, talking to yourself, never found that, man. No, one's heard of him. I was having fun, but he showed me a program that I mixed with psychology today that have a 97% success rate.

[00:26:46] Josh: Whoa.

[00:26:47] Dr. Robb: powerful it is.

[00:26:48] So that's where my journey started. He was like, I have to have a spiritual awakening, a psychic change in the alcoholics anonymous I belong to. And when it, my research shows us that when then to happen, I DNA changes.

[00:27:00] Josh: Really? How does that

[00:27:01] Dr. Robb: What.

[00:27:02] Josh: What. like, what's

[00:27:03] Dr. Robb: Uh, well, it was for the spiritual and the psychic and they, you know, that the changing of the energy around you and it changes googly.

[00:27:10] It changes it's ever so slightly, but it changes. Which means that after I do my work, my stats, all that stuff, then I'm not the same man as I was before. Cause that book says, say, man will drink again. I didn't want to drink again. You know? And that's where, that's where my spiritual journey. And I'm very big on the spiritual side, you know, very big.

[00:27:30] I mean there's 26,000 gods in the world. Just fucking pick one. I get these guys are can't believe in God. You're I have trust issues, especially women. I have trusted listen, girl, I saw you last night getting a flipping car with three drug dealers. Don't fucking talk to me about fucking, you know, trust issues as bullshit.

[00:27:48] Just get the car in your life. You can choose any conception, just get eight. God can't be a tree. Can't be a rule. Can't be people and move the ship forward because life is for living. I went to bed last night. I was 19. I got up this morning and I was 60. That's how fast life goes.

[00:28:05] Josh: it's crazy how

[00:28:06] Dr. Robb: So you have to read.

[00:28:08] Josh: Like I've totally done that kind of time traveling. Like, I'm pretty sure I was just in high school, like yesterday, which has happened.

[00:28:13] Dr. Robb: Yeah, yeah. It travels so quickly when you've got fathers or mothers are listening. What's your children grow one minute. They're at kindergarten. And next minute they're in high school. The next minute they come through colleagues like the guy where's that time. I should've spent more time with them. That is one day at a time that is stopping today and playing with my dogs, hugging my wife, complimenting people, calling him random people and ask him how the day's going.

[00:28:34] Stopping celebrities. Whenever I see them go, Hey, how are you? They go, I'm fine. No, no, no, no. How are you? He blows the mind. He's like, nobody's really asked me that we don't do that as people then when COVID sets in, we all isolated and became images on screens, you know, people's Hey, Rob, I've got loads of friends.

[00:28:52] I've got like 5,000 friends on Facebook. Now what you're doing Sunday is you plugged into the fucking. That's what you doing? They're not friends. They're not what we're born for, where we're social animals, you know, unless we have that, we will crazily go insane. The study has been done on death row about isolation and something like 90 something percent of people on that fro that get to the chamber are insane.

[00:29:17] By the time they get there, because the isolation, they don't see anybody, they don't speak to anybody in there. And the darkness and the silence over a period of many years starts to get you into a place where you can't come back from.

[00:29:28] Josh: Yeah, and that's very tough. I mean, you brought up the whole COVID thing right now, especially, uh, where I am in Canada. There's still some pretty tough regulations and, you know, numbers coming up. Like I even have family members who, you know, they refuse to go have family time. They refuse to go and meet up with people.

[00:29:44] Cause they're scared of catching this virus and it's further keeping them in isolation. It's really tough.

[00:29:51] Dr. Robb: It's very, very tough. And an isolation with my industries were killed. Uh, literally over the last 12 months in Texas, do you want to speak about Texas alcohol set with sales went up by 72%. Uh, divorces went up by 43% deaths or murders by not by 26%. It's all a reflection of isolation. That's what's caused it.

[00:30:16] We know we're in about a place where an essential business is a liquor store. There's something wrong there without with our society.

[00:30:23] Josh: It's it's messed up and I want to bring this back around because the last guest I had on the podcast, I'm guessing by the time this comes out, that episode would be out as well. So with the Keke and down, or the co-founder, well, I guess main founder. Mindful meds. And he went through a similar journey with, um, alcoholism and addiction and what helped him was psychedelics.

[00:30:46] It was micro-dosing psilocybin and eventually doing some macro doses. he used that to build out his company and bring that to the world for other people. So I want to know what your thoughts are on psychedelics too, because it's also very non-addictive. He talked about that in depth in the episode, but also just from the spiritual standpoint, uh, if you've read the book, I believe it's, um, how to change your mind by Michael Pollan.

[00:31:09] He talks about how many people who have a macro dose of psychedelics psilocybin specifically have a, um, like a spiritual experience. And what happens is it just shuts down the default mode network, and that can trigger like a spiritual experience. So you talked about there's like 26,000 gods probably way more like there's a millions of gods, but like, you know, people can have their own personal. Um, spiritual experience with these, with this medicine, I don't even want to call it a drug. Like it's the native Americans will get actually mad at you if you call it a drug it's medicine. Right. So I'm wondering what your stance is on that. And if you've ever used that as part of a recovery methods,

[00:31:48] Dr. Robb: Well, the answer is no, we've never used it and we've been against it with, uh, alcohol, pure alcoholics, chronic alcoholics. Uh, but you have to really get into a deep conversation about that, to understand, because what happens with psychedelics and stuff like that is a part of the brain called the basal ganglia.

[00:32:07] It's our repetition part of the brain. And when we are born with alcoholism, so alcohol will always be a problem to somebody who's born whenever they first take it. And what happens with any addiction is a basal ganglia, starts to, it goes round and round and repetition, strengthened and confirms all the time.

[00:32:26] So if you're trying to get sober for a bit and don't really work on yourself, you're going to fall back because the brain is telling you, that's also tied to the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus is the basis towards the back a little bit, the hypothalamus as a couple of, uh, a couple of jobs to do, but one of it is a fight or flight.

[00:32:44] Yeah, I'll tell you about, you know, what to do to stay alive. So it tells a normal human being to drink water and eat food. Now with alcoholics, once across over the line from heavy drinking to alcoholism, um, it tells the alcoholic to drink alcohol. And that's why you can see alcoholics going days, even weeks without water or food.

[00:33:02] So what the psychedelics does is he breaks that chain in the basal ganglia, and he breaks that communication from the hypothalamus to the prefrontal cortex. So we don't actually know what happens to her, but the certain Euro is an energy firing in the brain that nine out of 10 people have this spiritual awakening.

[00:33:22] But you just have to be careful because if it's used in alcoholics, is it good? Is it bad? We don't know because it's not about the alcoholic. It's not about the drugs. Most people think alcoholism is somebody who drinks too much. Alcohol's 1% of alcoholism. You come from the trauma in the past. Now, if something like this could be taken to cause the spirits of awakening, that belief in something bigger than yourself, and then brave enough to go back and clear the record from the past, go back to the scene of the crime and Claire though, it can only be a good thing, but we've always been against it because there's been never solid research behind it that says, Hey, if we do this, this could possibly happen because it could possibly happen.

[00:34:05] There's never been full studies, but you know, it's like weed. I've never seen anybody on weed. Stop. Somebody killed somebody in a car, shoot somebody. And it's just, it's a different chemical altogether. Is it good? Is it bad? I don't know. Many people say to me, Hey, is cannabis is weed. That's a gateway drug Arab.

[00:34:23] And I go, no traumas, the gateway drug, they actual substance got nothing to do with it. It's the symptom of any disease that you get regardless. The gym is the symptom. The sex is essential in the pawn. The food has a sense of what's actually going on in the brain. So don't put that chemical in cybers and it mixes to break signals and take her in a different direction, which is the direction you should always be mean to go anyway.

[00:34:46] But this disease messes all that up. It remaps the brains of self-sabotaging neuro pathways and that's why I could get really good at, so, I mean, I get that job and then I go for a manager's job. I get that. And then all of a sudden I'll go on a spree and I'll bring everything down in my head cause it's self sabotage in your pathways.

[00:35:04] And the only way to get around that is to solidify self care, neural pathways. And again, going back to repetition, strengthened and confirmed. So again, is it good? Is it bad? I don't know, but I've seen both sides of it and I would be willing to look into that in years to come. I think.

[00:35:21] Josh: Yes. I definitely see that being a really big point for a lot of research do, um, Alex in Canada and Canada, there's a lot of research being done there. Um, I'm trying to stay on top of that, cause it's really interesting to me, it really just, it just from what I've seen and what I've spoken to some people about, it just seems like it's like not a magic pill by any means, but it sort of just feels like it's that tool that the mental health industry needs.

[00:35:45] or have you, have you done any psychedelics, something that you want to talk about if you had experienced with.

[00:35:51] Dr. Robb: no Def I definitely not my journey, my time. It was all alcohol, and then cocaine, when I was at Abbey Road and then Heroin grabbed the area I was living in and I was lucky enough to go to college down in Oxford, so I missed that, but it was mainly heroin. All my friends, I went to school with the dead, all my colleagues, all my, you know, just people that I know off that dead.

[00:36:12] Cause heroin hit the, cancel, the state really bad and everybody was on it. And I kind of think you, but I would stay there. I would be dead as well. Cause I would've definitely done something like that. Like.

[00:36:22] So that's been a lot of scraped to me on the way that I've got buy in. At first you can only have so many scrapes or wow.

[00:36:29] That was lucky. Oh God, I'm glad I got out of that before you stop believing that this is not coincidence.

[00:36:35] Josh: How many times does it take before you realize, oh, it's not a coincidence. There's something bigger here. You know, pulling me along this path.

[00:36:41] Dr. Robb: always that your path is already made out. So if you're, if you are against, I own depressed, got no job. Don't know what to do is pulling outside. You're pissed off. You can't drink, blah, blah, blah, blah. This will pass. It's not temporary. Nothing's it's temporary. Sorry. Nothing is forever. Everything's temporary.

[00:36:59] You know, so when the guys that do suicide and we talk them out of it, we tell them, you know, that's just an absolute, permanent decision you're making for a temporary problem that you can handle in life. Doesn't matter what it is. Once you get your head clear and start then self care from. I can do anything.

[00:37:17] Neuropathways then the body follows it's age. It's amazing what we can do. So that's, that was a guy many years ago, back in Manchester, a Java heavy goods vehicles in Manchester, which overhead I think they call it a 16 Wheeler, uh, with a refrigerated part on the back. And he was loading or unloading some stuff for the refrigerator.

[00:37:39] And then he went for coffee and he came back and as he was checking the back of the refrigerator, which had defrosted by now, because the doors were open. Somehow the doors got slammed with the wind and he was locked inside and he was banging and screaming cause he knew it freezed it. I think he stayed in there and he screamed and he pined and he got a note and he says, I am dying from hypothermia.

[00:38:03] If I don't leave, say, say, you know, I love you to my wife. And he wrote this little note when somebody finally found him and traced it back, they opened the doors and he had frozen. From hypothermia and, and the freezing cold. But the funny thing is it was 63 degrees in that trailer and had been when he stepped into it.

[00:38:26] So his brain told him he was going to die of hypothermia that strongly, that he believed that he did his probably was frozen. And yet it was 63, 64 degrees in that part. So that's how powerful the brain could be. If I tell you, you could do something, you might believe that you might not, but at the end of the day, if you believe it enough, you can do it.

[00:38:43] That's how powerful the brain is. We, we only know like six or 7% of what the brain is capable of doing. Is Katelyn doing much more when you start taking the blinkers off life and you look around and you go, wow, you think I could do that? I'm still pushing it. I always say, let's push the envelope. Why were you going to do all the Fremont analysis yet?

[00:39:01] Let's, let's see. Let's even get away with that. See if we can push this even further. Ah, bang. We did it. Okay. What's my next thing. Say the more money I earned the moment I can get away. That's what it comes down to. I always carry three or $400 in my, in my, in my wallet at any time. Cause I'm, I'm just creating a stop somewhere, putting gas in the woman behind me, but five kids in the car.

[00:39:20] So trying to squeeze out $10, fill it up. That's a hundred dollars for the kids. That's a hundred dollars for the shopping. It's like, get, go give it away. It's not mine. It's it's, it's God's money. When he's saying, God, I don't mean the Catholic that you hate it. Just, I call it God, somebody looking after me, it's not my money.

[00:39:37] Money's hairs. And I'll tell you something in life, you'll never go broke by giving away the old man's home and on the bench outside school. And it's been so true, you know, when you give it the right reason, because we stopped at a signal life even today and again, come up and I'll give him $20. And my friend next to me, he said off, you shouldn't have done that.

[00:39:55] You know what we're going to do with it? And my answer is I hope they go buy drugs or alcohol with it. Cause that's what I would have been doing if I was on the streets. Well he does with that. It's not my concern. My concern is. Well, it does what it is. I, that's not my job. My job is done when the money's taken out my hand and I can walk away saying I tried to did my best.

[00:40:14] Cause that's all I want to do in life is I want to do my best and leave a legacy. Go, not guy work with as many people as he could. And he was a good guy.

[00:40:21] Josh: That's that's awesome. That's that actually really warms my heart to hear, because a lot of people, like you said were just be like, no, don't give them any money because you know what they're going to do with it. And that comes down to like the enablement kind of thing. Right. And actually one thing this might kind of tie in.

[00:40:33] Well, one question I had for you was about these sort of safe injection sites, right? For heroin and whatever else you're doing. Because little backstory, when I was a university in Toronto at Ryerson, like the cordless, it's basically like the Canadian time square, our university campuses right there. You have to come out of the subway and then you go around this corner to get to the campus.

[00:40:54] But on that corner is the safe injection site in Toronto, the main one. So all these kids go into. They're just seeing people strung out, you know, they're just getting their fix. They're getting a shot up. And I've seen so many people to shooting up around there while I was going to school. And then there's a lot of people saying like, oh, they're, they're enabling it.

[00:41:13] Like, why would they allow them to do it? But I think there's like, there's reasons for it, um, for them to be able to do it safely. So I wanted to hear your thoughts on that and why it might be actually a beneficial thing or maybe it shouldn't be, if that should not be part of like the sort of recovery system.

[00:41:31] I just want to know from your, your side, what you think about that whole, that whole thing.

[00:41:36] Dr. Robb: but if you Google that, uh, injection sites, my name and the doctors, I did an episode on the doctors where we spoke exclusively on that, and I'd done my homework and data, and there's a couple of obviously positive things, a couple of negative, but at the end of the day, they're going to do it anyway. You want your kid to stop on a needle and pick it up again.

[00:41:55] You know, are you wanting to safely dispose of the needles? I mean, the site outside is not good, but it may, it may get somebody to go fuck that. I never want to be like that. You know? So is it good? Is it bad again? Well, only time will tell, but I know they started a few locations after a broadcast that now episode, uh, because everybody wants to look down and the drug and alcoholic, and the more we go into 21, 22 with the isolation and families are really finding out because everybody knows somebody.

[00:42:23] And if you don't, it's probably you, when you start finding the family, they got problems. Their heart turns and softens a little bit because we're not talking about drug addicts, you know, down and out. It's no good at school. We're talking about professors, which are doctors. We're talking about teenagers, we're talking about business owners.

[00:42:40] These are the guys that end up on that stuff. You know, Housewives. We started in 99 or 98% of heroin addicts that come to see me started in the doctor's office with, with payments. So that's. So we need to start looking down on these people and going, Hey, is it good? Is it bad? Uh, we just need to realize that, you know, we're not helping them.

[00:43:01] We're not enabling them. What we're actually doing is lucky a better way to keep them off the streets for awhile while they do this.

[00:43:10] Josh: Yeah, I think that's, that's true. I think that's the way to go forward. Um, because I know there's a lot of, um, programs out there where they just, you know, while they're actually, when people are seeking recovery, they're just going completely taken away from the outside world. Take them away from all substances.

[00:43:24] Is that what you do when you work with someone? What is that process? If someone comes to you and you decide like you can work with them and maybe even back it up, but just like, how do you even decide to work with someone then? What does that process look like when you do start to work with them?

[00:43:36] Dr. Robb: well, they have, with us, there is one again, where we have such a high success rate of about 97% is with after passing an assessment. And if they, if they can prove to me that they are going to do the work and they're really. Uh, then we'll take them off now. 19 5% of our work is, is telehealth because what we found as well, he's doing telehealth eight years ago.

[00:43:55] So we're not like overnight with a telehealth provider. It doesn't work like that. I got second PhD in behavioral science to become a telehealth provider because wherever you see it on the screen, you can tell people get well in their own environment. They feel more comfortable. You can get to somebody quicker in your own environment.

[00:44:12] So that, that's what we find to traits. Then sticking somebody in a treatment center for 30 days, doesn't work, shielding them from drugs and alcohol does not work. If the psychic change, changing your pathways doesn't happen. The education, and also the spiritual awakening. You will relapse if your relapse, uh, how they can drug in it.

[00:44:33] Now there's some great treatment centers out that, that we like that are doing it, right. I'm not saying then, but there's about 78, 70 9% of treatment centers. It was in this. So Y Y this is what we do, that they, they will take little Johnny back for the fourth and fifth time in the same 3%. I charge him 30,000 times, $30,000.

[00:44:53] Every time he comes back. And my message and not to you guys is shame on you. Shame on you were the only company in the world that offers a money back guarantee. So if you follow my program, if you follow it to the T and you relapse, I will refund your money to either you or your parents. That's how serious we are.

[00:45:15] I'm the guy that turned down, Brittany Spears in a restaurant in Dallas, because she wasn't ready to do this program. And she came to me drunk after a concert in Dallas. So the whole restaurant was closed down just for her to meet me and her dad. Jamie took a check out, cause I said, I can't work with Jimmy.

[00:45:36] I'm sorry. And he wrote a million dollars on it. And he said cash that tomorrow, Dr. Rob just worked. And I said, no, I can't do that. That's not true to my nature. And I'd be just taking your money, even though I could have really dumb it up million dollars, you know, but I couldn't take it two days later, she's in the papers, shaving her head off and everything.

[00:45:56] You've got to be careful and you've got to is something that I have inside me that can tell within seconds if the guys are girls being serious,

[00:46:03] Josh: Wow. So for people listening and even for myself, how would you know, um, you know, if someone's, you know, going through addiction, like you may, like you said, a lot of people do this on the dark almost. It's like your friends, family who are like doing this dark, how can you actually tell that they're going through this and how can you maybe help?

[00:46:20] So like, I have family, like maybe not hard hardcore addictions, but even like smoking, like smoking cigarettes, like that's a very addictive thing with the nicotine and, you know, the way that, that whole industry's set up, how can we help our loved ones kind of get through this? What are some steps that we can look for?

[00:46:36] Some things that we can maybe, help them out with.

[00:46:39] Dr. Robb: So, whether it's drugs, alcohol, or anything else, that's going in the house, especially with, uh, sons and daughters, even in the twenties and thirties, uh, biggest tip, biggest things, uh, isolation. When he got to the bedroom and welcome out, even for dinner, he used to come down for dinner every night. Now they don't, you know, watch for that on Kent, not shaving yesterday's clothes on.

[00:47:00] Look out for that, that you're sleeping. Look out for behavior changes. There'll be patterns that all over the place, alcohol or addiction never comes on Monday and goes, Hey, Rob, let's have a drink. It's a week or two before when my behavior changes or my traits changed, look for them. And the biggest advice I can give anybody is dialogue.

[00:47:18] Start dialogue with these guys. You know, if it's your son have that talk because nobody had that talk with me, Josh, nobody. If my parents would have sat me down the age of 6, 7, 8, 9, and said, Hey, there's this thing called alcoholism in the family. And most of our families suffered from it. I might have took a different route.

[00:47:35] So. How old should you be? 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. You choose of your own child and maturity, but they need to know that alcohol is not necessarily good because he's skipped generations at hatred. Somebody think there was an alcoholic and there wasn't, because alcohol brings so much joy to people. It's amazing, but just have that conversation dialogue.

[00:47:55] And this is what we always say as well. It's like, we always put our money where our mouth is. It's like, if you're struggling at home, if you're a parent that needs information or direction, uh, call me, don't know you, you hit that right. Colby. Don't come. My assistant, my secretary don't call the front desk.

[00:48:12] Call me or my car is not going to give you his phone number. It's my cell phone number (214) 600-0210 at Texas. I was best first. So I can call you back when I'm free. Listen, I'd give that it's going to be free all day long and you can call a hundred times. If you're really desperate and don't know what to do, we'll guide you through it.

[00:48:33] I've never cost you anything wanting to sell you anything. This is me giving back. People think I'm crazy. It's like, well, secondly, they call the company and I'm near the phone. I grabbed it. Like I rocket on coding group. You go, oh, are you like a, like a brother of Dr. Rob? And say no. Dr. Rob, no. What do you mean?

[00:48:50] No, I can't. I can't believe I'm speaking to you, dude. I'm the guy in the trenches hammock. I had a step, my wife three times when I, cause she will let me finish drinking. I'm the one that abandoned these kids. I will fucking never between fucking posture answer phone, never. And if I ever, I get like that, it's time for me to start drinking again and I'm moving on because that's not the way I hold court.

[00:49:14] You know, I should always be there in the trenches. So don't forget 2, 1, 4, 600 0 2 10 if depressed. And you're going through it. If you don't have to get out of it, if you're worried about somebody, if you're a parent call me, but if you're a guy that wants to get out of it, I'll give you a 10, many pets or that will change your fucking.

[00:49:30] Believe me, I've done it thousands of times because you are special guys. I want to apologize to you. If you like that. Someone's putting out there. Remember we're born with million dollar mine, stop hanging around 10 cent lines, grab life while you can. And I'll tell you this, and this is the ego it's facts.

[00:49:47] You will never get another opportunity to like this. So I don't know whether I should call text. Let's get together. Let's get something motivated and go in and watch your life change. I've worked with 7,000 people that are roundabouts seven, not 770 or 77,000 people have last 30 years. I want both. I want boys to call me.

[00:50:08] You can do me a favor.

[00:50:09] Josh: Okay, guys, you heard them, I'm putting your number in the description call Dr. Rob, honestly. And like, this is, it can also be for people who maybe are not down and out, right. They're just struggling with whatever it is. You mentioned earlier.

[00:50:21] Dr. Robb: a hundred

[00:50:22] percent.

[00:50:22] Josh: a symptom. The sub substances that they're doing, or you even mentioned before, it could be anything, could be porn, gaming, like all these different things that people become addicted to. a symptom from something deeper. So I'm interested to hear kind of like what you do to dig deeper in that. But I'm also wondering, at what point is an addiction simply a habit. And when does a habit become an addiction? We know you talked about the habit loops in the brain and that's how a lot of these things happen.

[00:50:49] Happy, talked about like habit change. What is the difference and how can we spot the difference?

[00:50:53] Dr. Robb: real simple guys, real simple. If you have to spend time away from your family, girlfriend, wife, children, to do your thing you're doing, and they are suffering from that. That's an addiction. You really need to look at that. You know, if you're going on vacation with your family and you're looking in frantically around for a gym every day, there's something wrong with that.

[00:51:15] Your body lasts seven days without training. Don't worry, you know, but that turns into. So anything that's repeated over, over again with the addicted brain, Dixie brains are amazing. The addicted brain that doesn't take drugs or alcohol they're. The guys are in apple and Google and Amazon remember the smartest guys in the room.

[00:51:33] That's the brain. So he's back on the open watch for that. What you're doing, you know, the basal ganglia we'll get that training going every day. But if it starts to affect other people, just like alcohol starts to affect other people. And you're doing this at the baby's one. When you come from what to spend time, if you want to spend three hours at the gym, leave your husband out with the baby.

[00:51:51] And he's been with them all day. Cause he's a, a house guy, you know, you gotta think about that. And that's when he turns into a dangerous,

[00:51:58] Josh: Yeah. And how can we break those, those habit loops.

[00:52:01] Dr. Robb: yeah, well obviously, um, if you don't Australia, call me up and uh, I will explain to you, but I'll just go quickly over. It's a change of neuropathways are presented when we do something new. So walking to the walk into the store with a crazy hat on and purple glasses, that's a new in Europe. So next time I do that, like, oh, remember that time I did that.

[00:52:21] But to do it again, I sent you in your pathway. It's like when you go to a foreign country for like five years and you come back and you've not drove a car for five years, that neuropathways recruit big decrease, then you've got to start again with it. So let's start a new ways. New outlooks. Instead of going to the gym tonight, a family, she had sold one at like a two mile walk.

[00:52:40] That's where we start. And that's where we start to change the ganglia into thinking, Hey, we have different routes here. And then the neuro pathways have changed from some sabotage flipped over to self. Good. All has been given. Give yourself in your time. Yeah. Get your hour in a day when it doesn't really hurt anybody.

[00:52:56] If you're single great carry on, but just watch for that habit. If you have the addictive brain, go back through your family history. If there's no mental illness or injuries, we say, uh, in your past, no alcoholism, drug addiction and your past generations go back four generations. If you can. And there's none of that apparent you could train every night.

[00:53:16] You just got to be careful.

[00:53:17] Josh: And I was going through your site and some of the other things that you do in some of your, I guess you can say services here, or maybe it's more of your expertise, but there's these kind of interesting categories I want to bring up. I'd love for you to kind of explain. These are kind of new ones for me.

[00:53:32] So NLP, I kind of know, but what is NLP? How can you explain that? And how do you use that in your, in your program?

[00:53:39] Dr. Robb: Full wording is neuro-linguistic program. It's the same things. It's changing your pathways without you knowing that we're changing habits. It's very, very clever, quick idea. We took a patient once, uh, from, uh, he came in and he loved, um, Dr. Pepper. Wasn't a fan of Coke, just loved Dr. Pepper. And it was, it was proven a science point and a driver to take him out in the past for Coca-Cola advertisements.

[00:54:05] When he got out of the car in the carpark and came to the front of the building, there was a can of Coke that was empty, that we placed on the side of the wall. As he passed, we'd placed a Coca Cola. Flag in the elevator. When he got them to the office, he came in and I said, what you having to drink? He said, you know, some good, fuck it.

[00:54:22] I'll have a Coke.

[00:54:23] That's how I know NLP works.

[00:54:25] Josh: And I guess businesses do that all the time. Marketing departments from companies do this all the time,

[00:54:30] Dr. Robb: Well, what happens is we have a, we have a part in the brain called a myriad part of the brain. And what we reflect back is what we take any, any good salesman will tell you, you got to see a customer. He has coffee, you have coffee. He has chips. You have chips. You know, it's the memory part of the brain is like, oh man, this sounds good.

[00:54:46] It's familiar. So when you get back to the office and say, what do you want to drink? You what's brain goes bang, pre from context, Coke, Coke. We're familiar. I know about Coke. Oh yeah. Coke. And that's what he says.

[00:54:56] Josh: that's amazing. Uh, next one here. What is somatic experiencing techniques?

[00:55:01] Dr. Robb: So now you've got experiences listening to your body, you know, listening to what your body's telling. You're usually hurting. If you're in pain, not physical, but it might be or emotional pain. Listen to that pain. We identify the pain, we give it a color. And then we take you on this meditation that flushes the color out.

[00:55:21] So it's really just listening to your body.

[00:55:23] Josh: Interesting. What are some more examples of people could, take and try that for themselves? Maybe let's just use the example of a smoking. Someone who's trying to quit smoking cigarettes.

[00:55:34] Dr. Robb: So if you say you're smoking 10 times a day, uh, and you want to go down tonight, join that one time. When you want go outside, do some box breathing box breathing. You want the SAS created many years ago when you're in that place where your mind says, do something, but it's so dangerous that you can't do it.

[00:55:50] And you start getting all hyped up. You stop reading like this it's in for five seconds. Hold it for five seconds. Exhale for five seconds. Hold it for five seconds. Try and do that four or five times and okay. The urge to small will be relieved just for that one time. And then the next week come up again, try two times outside and do it and started with shortly, the neural pathways will change your body's getting awful energy and all the nerve endings and everything, getting this fresh air, your lungs are expanding because we only breathe.

[00:56:23] Like we don't go when you fill it up. Arrogant gets like nutrition and life into it. And it's try that. It's been amazing.

[00:56:33] Josh: That's incredible. Yeah, that's really cool. Um, okay. So the next one here I have is, uh, brainspotting. One thing I have not heard about for sure.

[00:56:40] Dr. Robb: it's a, it's a new technique that I got certified in. Uh, the basic thing is it's a little bit, bit like EMDR, but the difference is, is it goes from the pure cost of the pupil to the subconscious. And I'm going to repeat that. I know we're running out of time, but listen, it goes from a pupil to the subconscious brain.

[00:57:01] So even you don't know what you're going to say, and we pull that trauma out of you poly out of you. And then when you finally did this number, you know what happened here? I want them you probably, oh my God. Yeah. I remember that. So we pull that information, then we heal it. You go back and make all that stuff up.

[00:57:18] Josh: Okay. So this is the perfect segue into this last little category I want to get into, because this is where it gets a little bit deeper. you know, you've, you've talked about it before. It's really about, you know, the symptoms that are come back from these deeper traumas and you'd kind of just brought up there, like pulling it out and even you, yourself, you're kind of going through something right now.

[00:57:35] Is this something that if you're interested, if you're like open to talking about it, um, but I'm wondering how you personally work through these kinds of deeper things yourself and how, you know, you can kind of be an example for others.

[00:57:46] Dr. Robb: When you work on yourself is always good. So my dad, my father died two days ago. I got to call it my sister in England. That's seven 30 in the morning. Now she's never called me at seven 30. So there's a behavior change. I need something drunk before I pick you up. And the first thing she said is I have covered.

[00:58:01] And I said, I'm so sorry. And then she said, there's something else and said, batches past 30 minutes ago, you, my first call, when I put the phone down, it was sadness and crying and we got through that. And then the second day was absolute loss and emptiness and abandonment, which have suffered from a lie.

[00:58:20] So it's about me already doing my work on myself, knowing that I'm worthy, knowing that this had nothing to do with knowing that I can't fix this, but I can stand back as an adult and grieve like I did for two days. And then yesterday, when I got back to it, it was like, it was great. So apple on Monday and then Tuesday, Wednesday today's Thursday.

[00:58:39] So today was great. Uh, Wednesday and Thursday. Great. So it's just about doing your work. And he said, which I did, you know, I accepted it. I don't go straight for the, oh my God, I'm going to drink. I'm so traumatized. Now, now that will be an excuse for me to self sabotage. So I calmly go through the day and plan out, you know, I need to, I need to mourn for this.

[00:59:01] I need to spend some time crying. I need to get it out to somebody and talk to them about it. And so in short, it was healed and I'm pretty proud of myself for doing that.

[00:59:09] Josh: I could imagine that it's not something that just happens over day and it'll be coming wave some sure. Like it doesn't, you know, just a week or a month, like, there'll be things that remind you. And like that just brings it back to other things where you have like past traumas that you might even be fully like unaware of on surface level, you know, and then they come back and then they're gonna mess with your brain.

[00:59:28] They're gonna mess with your mind. You're going to go back to doing these self harming behavior. So I'm wondering, you know, if you have. Some kind of tools or strategies and how to deal with this kind of stuff and something you might be thinking about going through your tough time right now as well.

[00:59:43] Dr. Robb: Yeah, it's just self awareness and calmness, you know, you have to get in a calm place to slowly to them use the box. Breathing, use the pause in when you ever get agitated or upset. And just think of the reality that if there's a death in the family, even if it was a media and not expected, the belief in they've gone on to a better place is always good as soon as nerves.

[01:00:05] And it's another reason guys, one pain people ask my patients all the time is if you died tomorrow, would you not? What you create? And I can tell somebody and everyone says, oh, my wife and my kids that I love him. And I go, why the fuck have you not told him? Wow. Yeah. So, you know, the realization that you were around, you had some amazing times and the who knows what happens.

[01:00:29] If nothing happens in God's word by mistake, who knows what happens after, and then greet, allowing yourself to be upset, allow yourself to, you know, to grieve, allow yourself to do that. Because if you don't, you're going to keep that in. I'm telling you now that's trauma that will come up later in life and destroy you.

[01:00:45] So if you don't steal with your trauma, it will deal with you.

[01:00:48] Josh: that seems like the deepest, like that might be the core of where all of this stems from. So, you know, again, I appreciate you taking the time to be on this call, even though you were going through a tough time, just a few days ago, I even messaged your assistant, making sure that everything was good.

[01:01:03] I'm like if he needs to reschedule, I'm totally okay with that. I totally understand. But you know, the fact that you're still here chatting and sharing all this wisdom and everything is just incredible. I really, really appreciate it. And I just want to thank you so much for, uh, for being on the podcast.

[01:01:18] I do have some final questions for you. Um, you know, as we're kind of coming up on an hour here, one thing I do want to know is for you in your industry, what is something that's sort of like new on the fringe that you're learning about now, yourself, that you find really interesting that might be coming up, um, on people's feeds or thinking about, um, new techniques.

[01:01:39] Dr. Robb: I think, I think they, there, they're still research into the subconscious brain regarding the eviction and just normal life is going to be really exciting going. Uh, and I think that we're getting more into the body now morning to the central nervous system. I think there's a lot, lot more work that we want to do on that, but more scientific.

[01:01:57] We don't want to do it. Cause I think we've only scratched the surface

[01:01:59] Josh: If you had a $1 billion advertising budget to just put a message on every phone, every computer, every billboard, every person in the world will see this message. What would that be?

[01:02:11] Dr. Robb: it will be okay.

[01:02:13] Josh: I love that.

[01:02:14] Dr. Robb: That's all, you know, it's like, I hate to spend, I hate to spoil the ending for you guys, but it really is going to be okay.

[01:02:21] Josh: What is, um, I guess what are some resources that you could point people towards? You already mentioned the best one, which is calling you to do you want to, uh, to reiterate your number again for people who might want.

[01:02:32] Dr. Robb: So 214-600-0210 is the phone number, my phone number. Uh, I spell the name with two BS, as you can see on the screen. So Rob kelly.com is the website jump on to any search engine that you have. Dr. Rob Kelly. All my information will come up. If you jump onto Amazon, there's a book called daddy, daddy, please stop drinking.

[01:02:52] It's what my eldest daughter said to me. The last thing she said to me, uh, all of the money goes in the profits, all of every single dime of that $9 a year per it goes back into the community. So do good. Go and buy it. If you don't like it, guys, I'm being serious. Call that number. I'll refund your money.

[01:03:08] Don't worry about that. It's just about giving back to the community. So come find me guys.

[01:03:13] Josh: That's amazing. And I want to end this off with just some optimism, positivity. What's something that you're looking forward to right now in life business. Just anything.

[01:03:25] Dr. Robb: I'm actually looking forward, uh, in 10, in nine days. Now we travel over to the UK and I'll see my daughter. I don't see my youngest daughter. She sort of strange. I see my daughter, who's now my therapist in my Manchester office. I see my granddaughter. I get to see my sister and we go to the funeral of my father and I get to stand up and speak to all the family that will be there.

[01:03:45] What a great money is or was

[01:03:47] Josh: Oh, that's amazing. Well, I'm so glad you get to do that. It's an unfortunate circumstance, but I'm glad that you have family and everyone's going to be there. And I'm so happy to hear that you're, you're back together with most of your family. That's unfortunate about your, your second daughter, but Hey, like, like you said, the story's not over just yet, man.

[01:04:04] So, you know, I'm still rooting for you. Um, yeah, no, honestly, it's great. And once again, like just thank you so much. For being on this podcast and sharing this wisdom, there's just so much even just from your story, like, you know, I think that's the biggest thing to reiterate here is like you can be seemingly down and out, you know, in your deepest, darkest pit, you can kind of think that like, life is going to be over, but you can come through and you can be better than ever.

[01:04:26] Like, you're the best example of that I've seen so far. So just

[01:04:30] Dr. Robb: part of the same. Now my pleasure. Great to see Josh and we'll speak real soon. Yeah.

[01:04:34] Josh: Absolutely. Take care Robb.

Thanks for coming this far! if you're reading this, it is no accident. The universe brought you to this corner of the internet for a reason, and you're on the right track. I already know that you're an amazing person and I can't wait to connect with you!

— Josh

Episode Transcript

Josh Gonsalves
Mind Meld Podcast Host

Hi, I'm Josh Gonsalves, the host and producer of Mind Meld. I'm also a Canadian Academy Award-nominated director and Co-founder of Contraverse, an immersive media company. I'm a multi-media experience designer living and working in Toronto, operating at the intersection of design and exponential technologies to develop solutions that change the world for the better.

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