Two Percent with Michael Easter
Why Most Habit Change Fails (And How to Break the Addiction Cycle)
14 May 2026
Chapter 1: What is discussed at the start of this section?
Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy? Not quite! On Humor Me with Robert Smigel and Friends, me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guests, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an acapella band with their between-songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes.
Those people are starving for banter. Listen to Humor Me with Robert Smigel and friends on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and host of the podcast, A Slight Change of Plans, a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans.
I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes.
You can have opinions. You can have like a strong stance.
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Chapter 2: How did Ryan Soave transition from addiction medicine to therapy?
And then there's your body having its own program.
Listen to A Slight Change of Plans on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
This is Saigon, the story of my family and of the country that shaped us. From iHeart Podcasts, Saigon. You don't think I'm serious about a free Vietnam?
One city, a divided country, and the war that tore America apart.
This is for Vietnam. They're pouring petrol all over here.
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Chapter 3: What are the underlying reasons for counterproductive behaviors?
Freedom for Vietnam! There's a fire coming to this country and it's going to burn out everything.
Listen to Saigon on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
The story I've told myself can then shape my behavior and that can lead me to sabotage the possibility of connection. This Mental Health Awareness Month, tune into the podcast Deeply Well with Debbie Brown. If you've been searching for a soft place to land while doing the work to become whole, this podcast is for you.
To hear more, listen to Deeply Well with Debbie Brown from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Welcome to 2%. I'm your host, Michael Easter. Last night, me and one of my good friends, Ryan Suave, we went and saw the band Phish at the Las Vegas Sphere.
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Chapter 4: How can one improve their life and mindset effectively?
So I want you to picture two sober guys in a sea of hippies who are all smoking weed, all probably on psychedelics, and there we are, having an amazing time, despite the fact that we weren't on any substances. Now, Ryan's background is he's one of the top therapists in the country.
He started in addiction medicine after he himself got sober, but he has since pivoted to working with high performers in all different areas, helping them get their mind right, helping them get their habits on track in order to live a better life, have better relationships, make more money, just be better people in general. So this morning,
After the show, running on three hours of sleep each, I dragged Ryan into the studio.
I sat him down and I stole as much of his wisdom as I could for all of you. So we had a long sweeping conversation. We talked about habit change.
We talked about the real underlying reasons people do things that seem to be counterproductive and hurt them in the long run. We talked about how to improve your life, how to improve your mindset, and a lot of different things that will help you, the listener, and leave you with tools to act better in the real world right now. So let's bring on Ryan.
Ryan, thanks for coming on the show, man.
Thanks for having me. This is great.
All right, we went to fish last night at the Spear. How did it feel to be one of the only sober human beings in the building in addition to me and maybe three to four others?
I think there might've been some more than that, but it was definitely a... Well, I think first off, it started at 8 o'clock. I think both of us agreed that we probably would have been close to in bed by then.
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Chapter 5: How can we learn to let go of the need to be right?
And he's like, all right. And he takes a breath and nothing else matters after that. Yeah, totally. Like I can let most of the stuff was like, if we've had a fight or an argument a week later, I can never even remember what it was. So how important was it? But in that moment, it can be like the whole universe.
Yeah.
I remember someone told me in a similar situation, do you want to be right or do you want to be happy? Both. I mean, listen, I think I'm far more addicted to being right than I was alcohol or drugs. That might be the most common addiction in the world. So back to addiction.
Do you think people can be addicted to something that otherwise was publicly seen as healthy, like exercise?
Well, this goes back again to that question. Depending on how we define addiction, yes. I think if we rephrase your question to be something like, can people be harmed or can their lives be affected negatively by their relationship with things that everybody sees as healthy? Yeah. 100%.
Mm-hmm.
100%. If it's like, of course, people, we should exercise, we should eat right. But if you're doing that at the expense of enjoying your life or the expense of the people you're in relationships, or if you can't exercise today, you're a miserable person, then there's something to look at there. Does that mean that it's addiction in the way that someone's addicted to heroin? No.
You know, probably not, but it goes back to Thoreau saying most men lead lives of quiet desperation. Like, okay, what is it blocking you from? Yeah. Here's an extreme example.
The Wall Street Journal, and this was years ago, they ran a story about men who got so into triathlons, like Ironmans, which requires hours and hours of training a week that these guys would work all day. And then they'd get home and they'd go out for like a four-hour bike ride.
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Chapter 6: Can healthy activities become addictive?
Meanwhile, they're not seeing their family at all. And it interviewed a lot of the wives. They're like, I never see my husband because they want to do this Ironman and I'm having to take on all this work. And even the men were like, I just have to do the Ironman. I want to see my family, but I got to do the Ironman and train. And so I think it's like, what are you giving up by that?
And to your point, what's the underlying reason you're doing the thing?
Anything can become an escape. Anything. Yeah. Yeah, of course. And that doesn't mean that you have to stop doing those things either. It's like, how do you find balance?
Yeah.
You know, and people tend to, maybe it's not all people, but maybe the subset of people that are coming for help or the people that I'm around, but they tend to be like, all like very binary. It's like, I got to be all into this or all out of it. And that's just not, it's not black or white. Like life is in the, life is in the gray. Yeah. So first off, you know, why, why am I doing the triathlon?
And, and you don't even have to have a big reason to do it, but What's this need that I have this, what you're describing is like a compulsion. And I think that's where the challenge lies. And this can go back to, you know, anything. Like, how are we using it and what are we using it for? We were talking last night, like, you know, we've got the opioids that people are abusing.
You know, we've got heroin. We've got opium that's starting. I mean, this is not a new problem, by the way. I mean, opium dens have been around for a long time. Very long time. It was also very legal. It was the Bayer Heroin Company. It was like, take heroin for a stomachache, you know? Yeah. Coca-Cola has the word coconut for a reason too.
But then there's the other side where we've been able to make medicines from it that help people have surgeries, deal with pain. I think there's an argument to be made that more people have been able to lengthen their life and survive things because of opioids. Yeah.
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Chapter 7: What role does community play in overcoming addiction?
Totally. Both directions. And then we trace it back. It all came from a poppy, which was a flower. So it's just a flower. How do we manipulate it to make the compounds? And then how are we using it? Yeah. Or as the greatest philosopher ever, Homer Simpson said, beer, the cause of and solution to all the world's problems. Totally. What are you using it for? Right.
And this is where it's hard because sometimes people aren't, they don't see that yet. And it takes a level of honesty and reflection to be able to do that. But also people are, you know, these are the strategies that they've developed to survive. Whether they realize it or not, they might not be thinking, I'm going to die if I don't do a triathlon.
But if someone's thinking like, if I don't do this thing, I'm not going to be okay. Right. I'm not going to be okay is in the direction of I'm going to die.
Right.
It's like almost all anxiety is a death anxiety. Right.
What you said about the wonderful Homer Simpson quote. It reminds me of the, we had this guy Dean Statman on recently, and he wrote this piece for GQ about how his New Year's resolution was to drink more because he'd done, you know, he'd listened to too many health podcasts, read too many stories, and stopped drinking.
I listened to it. I love what you said. His goal was to get on the wagon? No, maybe it was to fall off the wagon.
Yeah, fall off the wagon. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So he was a moderate drinker though.
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Chapter 8: How can we redefine our relationship with discomfort?
Alcohol for me is ultimately something that overall big picture improves my life. Yes, he could be like, oh, if I have a beer, my whoop score goes down five points, whatever. But he goes, overall, I think this is a good thing for me.
What are your thoughts on that? I mean, listen, we see people now wearing continuous glucose monitors, right? Which is they, many of them probably aren't diabetic.
They're managing, they want, but they're doing this for a reason that they want to see what they're, I mean, I don't know why everybody's doing it, but I think generally it's to see how certain food infects that, infects them, affects them. I guess some food can infect you, but see how some food affects them and optimizing their health in some way.
But if they're not diabetic and they're doing that, like, okay, they could probably have some dessert and see it go up and it's not gonna impact them. And I know not all diabetics can't have dessert, but if you're diabetic, on the other hand,
And your insulin is out, your blood sugar is out of control and you haven't been able to manage your insulin and you're eating a pint of ice cream every night.
I mean, those are two very different things where the person that's trying to optimize their health, like if all their friends are going out for ice cream and their kids are with them and they want to have ice cream to enjoy it, then they all be by all means go do it. Yeah.
I don't know if that's the exact correlation, but I think for, even in some of the writings in Alcoholics Anonymous that I can talk about from an academic perspective, they don't say, this is what you have to do. They say, we don't have a monopoly on this. If you don't think you're an alcoholic, go out and try some controlled drinking. If you can do it, our hats are off to you.
That for most people, it says, you know, drinking means conviviality, release from boredom and fear, and it's adding to their life. Yeah. You know, and what is alcohol even called? It's like, it's called spirits, right? Raises people's spirits, lowers their ambitions of doing that for years. If it's something that's a problem for you, then it's a problem for you. And it's not doing that.
I reached a point, sounds like you reached a point, a lot of other people I know reached a point where it wasn't helping anymore. In fact, it was making it worse. But I also know in my history, I believe I had a spiritual relationship with alcohol.
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