Dr. Daniel Amen

Your spiritual health?

And so when you really get to what you want, you don't really want the substances because they don't get you what you want.

But I want to feel better.

Okay, well, there's probably 30 other ways.

to feel better, we just don't teach any of them in school.

Like, how crazy is that?

Like, one of the things I teach my patients, how to kill the ants.

Ants stands for automatic negative thoughts, thoughts that come into your mind automatically and ruin your day.

And I was 28 years old in my psychiatric residency when a professor said, you have to teach your patients not to believe every stupid thing they think.

And I'm like, but I believe every stupid thing.

It's like...

You mean I don't have to believe the noise or the nonsense that my brain creates.

They should have taught me that when I was a second grader, how to manage my mind.

I'm friends with Paul Simon.

And Paul's song, Kodachrome, is one of my favorites.

It starts with, when I think back on all the crap I learned in high school, it's a wonder I can think at all.

Yes.

And I'm like, why can't we...

Well, I think when used properly, it can be helpful.

So, for example, my mother-in-law, who I love dearly, had stage four lung cancer and wasn't eating.