Dhru Purohit Show
Break Free of People Pleasing, Sugar Addiction, and Limiting Beliefs that are Holding You Back From Living the Life You Desire with Dr. Adi Jaffe
16 Apr 2025
This episode is brought to you by Momentous, Cozy Earth, and Levels. In today’s world, addiction takes many forms—whether it’s alcohol, drugs, social media, or people-pleasing. Certain key factors drive these behaviors and make breaking the cycle incredibly challenging. Today’s guest offers powerful insights into brain health and psychology, explaining why these patterns emerge and how we can begin to unhook from them. On this episode of The Dhru Purohit Show, Dhru sits down with psychologist and addiction expert Dr. Adi Jaffe. Dr. Jaffe breaks down the “hook” that keeps us stuck in addictive behaviors and explores the root causes that draw us back to them. He takes a deep dive into shame—the true fuel behind addiction—and explains why people-pleasing is one of the hardest patterns to break. He also shares his own powerful journey of overcoming addiction and highlights the importance of holding onto beliefs that serve us—and letting go of those that don’t. Dr. Adi Jaffe is a UCLA-trained psychologist and a leading expert on mental health, addiction, and relationships. Once a meth addict and drug dealer, his life changed after a SWAT arrest and jail sentence. Now the author of The Abstinence Myth and Unhooked, Dr. Jaffe challenges traditional addiction treatment and leads IGNTD, an organization helping former inmates find support for addiction and mental health. His work has been featured on CNN, Fox, NBC, and Psychology Today. In this episode, Dhru and Dr. Jaffe dive into: The hook beneath addiction (00:00) What you gain by holding onto your addiction (5:47) The deeper roots of people-pleasing (7:15) Dhru and Dr. Jaffe's personal stories with people-pleasing (11:58) The SPARO Method explained (19:38) Dr. Jaffe's personal addiction story and how Unhooked was created (24:40) Why shame is the true fuel behind addiction (36:02) The hooks and stimulants that fueled Dr. Jaffe's past addictions (41:22) Fixed mindset vs. growth mindset (50:21) The capacity for change: being reactive vs. proactive (55:01) How Dr. Jaffe overcame his addiction (58:30) Common habits that unknowingly lead to addiction (1:07:34) Understanding the addiction of self-criticism (1:22:21) Letting go of limiting beliefs and embracing self-evaluation (1:29:15) The power of celebrating small wins (1:37:30) Where to follow Dr. Jaffe’s work (1:44:08) Also mentioned in this episode: Unhooked: Free Yourself from Addiction Forever How to Heal Your Body and Manifest Reality with Bruce Lipton For more on Dr.Jaffe, follow him on Facebook, Instagram, X/Twitter, Apple Podcast, LinkedIn, his Website, and other platforms, such as IGNTD™. This episode is brought to you by Momentous, Cozy Earth, and Levels, Optimize your energy and mental clarity with the Momentous Three: Protein, Omega-3s, and Creatine made by and used by the best. Head to livemomentous.com and use code DHRU for 35% off your first subscription. Right now, get 40% off your Cozy Earth sheets. Just head over to cozyearth.com/dhru and use code DHRUP. Right now, Levels is offering my listeners an additional 2 FREE months of the Levels annual Membership when you use my link, levels.link/DHRU. Make moves on your metabolic health with Levels today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Full Episode
Dr. Adi Jaffe, welcome to the podcast. Addiction in all its forms can quietly or sometimes loudly ruin our lives. And today you're here to talk about this conversation, but most importantly, help people break free. Whether somebody listening today is struggling with sugar addiction or
people pleasing, which is an addiction as well, or something more severe like porn, gambling, or even drugs, you have an important reminder for them. And the core reminder that you're here to present to us today is the problem is not the behavior. It's the hook underneath. Expand on this and give us an example of what you mean.
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for having me on, Drew. And I think sugar is a great example, actually, to start with, which you used, because I think of sugar as almost one of the first drugs that we have, purified sugar, if you will. And here's the point, right? We all have access to purified sugar in society at large.
And yet a subset of people find themselves having a hard time controlling their intake. And the question becomes, and people might come to me, the reason I call the book Unhooked is people come and say, I'm hooked on sugar. I'm hooked on alcohol. I'm hooked on porn. I'm hooked on the show, whatever. They use the thing that they're hooked on as the explanation for the behavior.
And when I said, hold on, that is the symptom. The reality is that the reason you are using the sugar, the reason you're stuck people pleasing, the reason you're drinking too much when you get home at night is because those things were used to mask underlying behaviors, struggles, early life experiences, traumas that you've had probably for a long time, like 10, 15 years at the least.
That's kind of the average we get. And what happens to a lot of people is that finally explains to them why stopping the behavior has been so tough. Because everybody's tried, right? If you feel like you're hooked on sugar and you've tried to cut down your sugar intake, and you've been unsuccessful, you end up beating yourself up. You go, well, what's wrong with me?
Why can't I control my behavior? And for a lot of people, once they understand that there's actually a whole sea of underlying issues, it gives them a different frame and something else to start attacking in order to actually change their behavior.
Let's talk about that C. For example, what are the common things that you see for somebody in that situation who might be hooked on sugar? What are the underlining behaviors that could be potentially present?
Yeah. So I kind of named them quickly, but let's just break them down. Number one is actually early developmental modeling and behavioral development. So the environment you were born into taught you a lot about the world. A lot. but you were zero to eight, nine, 10 years old. Most of it you don't remember in terms of an explicit memory.
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