Laughing at Addiction the science of using humor to heal.
so this may come as a surprise here but
these pictures are of the same person
this is me at the end of my addiction
and this is me six months ago it’s
amazing what a shower can do right
i know we’re here to talk about humor
today but let’s start with addiction
because anyone who looks at this lovely
picture
should also remember the one that came
before it
and you wouldn’t be alone if you were
wondering what the hell happened to jess
my parents asked that every day for
years my brother
my friends anyone who would ever know me
to look like this
and then later saw me become this
would you believe me if i told you i had
what most people would think of as an
ideal childhood
i was loved by my parents who were still
married today
my dad coached my soccer teams i got
good grades i was socially involved i
was this girl
i remember laughing and playing with my
friends every summer i would go and stay
with my cousin emily and all
we would do was laugh we would just lay
on our bed and speak to each other in
different accents and
tell ridiculous stories and just laugh
so hard until we peed
do you remember the last time you left
so hard you feed your pants
sadly i do it all the time how about you
laugh so hard you cried
we all know that deep awesome laughter
that just makes you forget the tough
stuff in life
that’s what i found in childhood but
then other things happen
too and it’s the other things that bring
us back to her
so here’s the not so funny part i was
molested from the age of four to five by
a babysitter
i’m telling you this because i think
it’s important that we stop hiding our
secrets and like renee brown says
get out from under shame this happened
on a regular basis
every time i was babysat and i never
told a soul about it
as a child i felt like i did something
to bring this on like it was my fault
that it started happening as a lot of
children do
and to keep the shame and the guilt from
killing me at the age of 13 i started
binging and purging and sneaking alcohol
from my dad’s liquor cabinet
i called this shame the screaming demon
and food and alcohol were the only
things that successfully quieted the
screaming demon
it was as if an elephant was lifted off
my chest and for the first time i could
breathe
this is how i medicated my anxiety and
panic that permeated my life due to
holding on to this insidious secret
alcohol became the only way i could cope
with life
until it brought me back to this so
you’re probably wondering
what brought me there and why did i keep
the picture
by my early twenties i was functioning
but barely hanging on by a thread
my addiction had progressed to drinking
a fifth of vodka a day
shockingly all while working as a
comedic actor
you see this is when i used comedy to
numb like a lot of comedians do
i hadn’t yet discovered that it could
heal at 27 i went to my first of nine
treatment centers and was admitted to
six different psychiatric hospitals that
same year in 2013 during a relapse i had
a hemorrhagic stroke from falling over a
railing drunk and ended up paralyzed and
in emergency brain
surgery so they say first using is fun
then it’s fun with problems then it’s
just problems
you could say i traveled to the deep end
of that last stage
after only two weeks in the acute rehab
facility
my brain had miraculously healed i was
able to walk again
and i was released but because my deep
end just wasn’t deep enough yet
i began drinking again just two months
after having brain surgery and it got
way worse just six months later in 2014
i was admitted to icu weighing only 78
pounds with a
rampant blood staph infection and a
blood alcohol concentration of 0.503
the acid from my urine had burned holes
through my skin because i had been lying
in one spot for over a month in a
drunken stupor i needed two
immediate blood transfusions and every
organ in my body
including my heart and brain were
failing my doctor told me i would not
have survived the night without medical
intervention
and that’s why i keep this photo because
laughter heals
but trauma reminds after finally getting
sober i began to look at my addiction
not just as an escape from pain or a bad
habit
but as a manifestation of dysfunctional
brain chemistry
and i believe that adverse childhood
experiences known as aces
can trigger this manifestation of course
addiction
is multifactorial and in my opinion
there’s not just
one cause it’s the perfect storm of
genetic susceptibility
environment upbringing trauma but let me
explain the correlation between adverse
childhood experiences
and addiction aces actually change how
our brain works
and how we process and respond to life
events
because here’s the other thing i’m not
alone
and alarming 90 of women with substance
dependence
were sexually abused during childhood so
now for the science part
it’s always a science part right the
primary brain system involved in trauma
is the nucleus accumbens
which is the pleasure reward center it’s
the same part of the brain that is
implicated in substance dependence
it inhibits the prefrontal cortex which
oversees impulse control
executive function rational decision
making
there are also changes in the amygdala
the brain’s fear response center
so you see those deepened problems were
actually part of my primitive survival
area of my brain
or what some people call the reptilian
part of the brain and this part of my
brain was now in the driver’s seat
dictating my life and behavior
my brain was like the upside down in the
show stranger things
there are real neurologic reasons why
people exposed to early adversity or
childhood trauma are more likely to
engage in high risk or addictive
behavior
when a child experiences adversity or
trauma
there is a cascade effect in their
brains and bodies and when the stress
response is
triggered over and over which is what we
do we relive the trauma over and over
this puts the person in a perpetual
state of survival
and when a human is in survival mode
long enough
illness manifests alcohol on a physical
level
initially suppressed my overactive
nervous system it also successfully
inhibited my hyper-vigilant fear
response making the world seem like a
safer place to be in
i used alcohol like most people use
medication
after it had progressed to physical
dependence however
it created a rebound effect causing an
increase in stress response and cortisol
leading to withdrawal and that
vicious cycle of relapse i was bound to
alcohol as the only survival mechanism i
knew
and the longer i depended on it the more
it seemed like there was no way out
ever since i was a little kid i had this
inherent feeling there was something
beyond the physical world just
waiting to be discovered i would always
ask my parents questions like
what is god or why do humans exist
you know regular eight-year-old stuff
the world
felt like a terrifying place and i
wanted answers
dr daniel sumrock the director of the
center of addiction sciences at the
university of tennessee
calls addiction ritualized compulsive
comfort seeking
having found food and alcohol at a young
age i was compulsively seeking comfort
even at the price of my own life
dr sumac says the solution to changing
the unhealthy ritualized compulsive
comfort seeking
is to address a person’s adverse
childhood experiences
treat them with respect and help them
find a ritualized compulsive comfort
seeking behavior
that won’t kill them or put them in jail
or make them take amazing glamour shots
like
what i’ve showed you whether we’re
talking about obesity
addiction to cigarettes alcohol or
opioids
they all have one thing in common they
are ritualized compulsive comfort
seeking behaviors people do
in order to ameliorate their deep seated
pain
as gabor mate says we shouldn’t be
asking why the addiction
we should be asking why the pain so now
for the part when life starts getting
fun again
i remember the first time i realized i
might be okay i was sitting in a
recovery meeting and i was asked to
share my story
i was sharing about a very vulnerable
dark part of my story and
suddenly everyone started laughing and
then i found myself laughing
it was that deep awesome contagious
laughter
that just filled the room with hope and
levity
something in me began to soften i felt
like i was back on emily’s bed again
giggling over our accents i suddenly had
an epiphany
why would human beings be biologically
hardwired to laugh
if it didn’t serve a purpose that was
advantageous to their survival
this was it this is what we needed to
heal
our pain and our past
there’s a yiddish proverb as soap is to
the body
laughter is to the soul and that night
in that dingy church basement
i began to heal i began to feel cleansed
have you ever seen steel magnolias
there’s this great scene where all the
ladies are at the funeral of julia
roberts character who’s sally field’s
daughter
sally is angry she’s mad at the world
for taking her daughter
and she’s deep in her pain and her
trauma when all of a sudden olympia
dukakis’s character
shoves forward the old grump of the
group wheezy played by shirley maclaine
and says hit wheezy and weezy’s like
what the hell
and she says it again hit wheezy
and all anyone can do is laugh including
sally fields
and you know in that moment that no
matter what we’re going through
we’re going to be okay that is the power
of laughter
and wheezy is not the only evidence in a
recent study conducted at loma linda
university in southern california
20 normal healthy adults sat in a room
and watched a funny video for 20 minutes
while a control group sat in a room
calmly with no video
afterwards their saliva levels were
analyzed for stress hormones
those who got to laugh for 20 minutes
scored better on short-term memory tests
and had a significant decrease
in the saliva levels of the stress
hormone cortisol
in addition to reducing stress hormones
laughter increases endorphins
releasing dopamine in the brain
providing a sense of pleasure and reward
it triggers the release of endogenous
opiate which helps modulate
pain it also activates the release of
serotonin the neural chemical that is
affected by the most common types of
ssris or antidepressants
laughter is literally medicine
neuroscientist
and author dan siegel says the only way
we can change the neural pathways of the
brain are through empathy
and connection one of the best ways to
connect with others
is through laughter laughter subverts
language it contagiously forms social
bonds
have you ever been to another country
and you started laughing at something
with someone from that country
but neither of you spoke each other’s
language but you both knew what you were
laughing about
that’s the connection that it instantly
creates
the endorphin effect also explains why
laughter is so contagious
spreading endorphins through a group
promotes a sense of safety and
togetherness
that’s why when someone starts laughing
others will start laughing even if
they’re not sure what everyone’s
laughing about
laughter is a neurological response to
someone else’s joy
and when we participate in joy we begin
to heal
trauma but it does so much more than
that laughter also has an impact on your
physical health
research has shown that laughter has an
anti-inflammatory effect that protects
the blood vessels and the heart muscles
from the damaging effects of
cardiovascular disease
it also lessens the body’s response to
stress which is directly linked to
inflammation
addiction cancer you name it when i was
in that church basement that night i
didn’t know what laughter was doing to
me
in a way its effects were just as
surprising as addiction
for so many years i had been this girl
and that girl hadn’t laughed really
laughed in
years my life was a crushing struggle
for survival
there were days i didn’t even want to
live but then i found other people with
that same photo at home
those same struggles the same questions
from their friends and family
how did this happen to them and through
their stories of making it
i began to respond to their joy i
learned to hit weezy
and i was brought back to those summers
laughing until i peed
it’s been in the last couple of years
that i’ve begun to heal this little girl
that i have finally become this woman
and if i’m now laughing my way through
this journey we all can
thank you