Ken Rideout

Maybe I would've been making tens of millions, who knows?

But I was also spending money as fast as I was getting it because when you're doing that kind of shit to your brain, all of a sudden, all the natural dopamine receptors and all the feel-good chemicals become dull.

So for a very long time, like year plus,

The things that normally make you happy, like waking up in Hawaii, looking at the sunset, having sex, like these kinds of things, they just don't fill that void.

It's not the same kind of high because when you hijack your like reward system by artificially multiple times a day, like getting your like dopamine, like boom through the roof, you're like, no, that's the high that I'm looking for.

This other stuff is like, they're not even moving the needle until you like get back to baseline and then you have to reset everything.

So you just...

But that's what makes it so difficult because people eventually then a lot of times will give up and be like, I need to feel good for a minute.

Which is what would happen is I'd be like sober for like six to 12 months.

And I'd be like, I'm going to get high just to have a day.

I need a day off from life.

And it would take like a day or two, three, four days of like being high around the clock to be like, what am I doing?

And then my wife would also start to figure it out.

She would notice the shift in my personality.

And you can look at someone's eyes and tell right away.

The pupils dilate.

I can look right at someone and be like, dude, that guy's fucking whacked out of his mind.

And my wife will be like, why do you know?

I'm like, look at his eyes.

Five years.