Dr. Alok Kanojia

So a lot of addiction treatment is about, I can't win against the alcohol.

But if you go to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, there's something really beautiful

About, hi, my name is Alok and I'm an alcoholic.

I've been sober for 30 years and I'm an alcoholic.

It's kind of this weird paradoxical empowerment where you start with, I can't control this.

Fingers crossed.

I'm going to do the best that I can.

I don't think it's tiny.

I think it's huge.

Right.

To admit that you were not perfect.

Yeah.

And once you admit, right, and we're parents and hopefully you've got parents listening to this, like once you acknowledge that there is a problem, right, like if you've got kids who are struggling in school or going through a breakup or something and like your kid comes to you, how do I make sure that my ex starts dating me again?

Yeah.

You know, you gotta say, hey, there's nothing you can do to guarantee that outcome.

But there's a lot of stuff that we can do, right?

So I think that empowerment becomes really important for addiction.

Yeah, yeah.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense.