7. Trauma, Addiction, and Death Acceptance

A conversation with Brooklyn. We discuss such things as: why I don't drink coffee, the 10 minute version of Brooklyn's life story, having a shallow sense of purpose, the hyper-effective escapism of heroin, the antidote to addiction, Brooklyn's joy of life, the rat park addiction experiment, the role of determination in overcoming addiction, the importance of accepting help from others and saying yes, the importance of spending time with friends, viewing trauma as the source of mental/emotional health problems, Erik Erikson's eight stages of human development, mental health problems as a result of genetics, antisocial personality disorder, how the word trauma is applied to too many things, the nurture assumption by Judith Rich Harris, parent to child effects vs child to parent effects, problems with the trauma view, death acceptance and the beauty of death, the root of all fears, meditation and whether consciousness is eternal, pantheism, how things all throughout the universe have similarities, atheist spirituality, the experience of being dead, being in the present moment, the benefits of meditation, technological immortality, cancer and doing what's natural, the benefits of exercise, rewiring your brain, journaling, the death of other people, being too accepting of death, Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky, declining rates of violence, and what Brooklyn and I think everyone should do at least once in life.