Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Summary
On episode 679 of 40+ Fitness, Coach Allan sits down with Dr. Adi Jaffe, a nationally recognized expert on mental health, addiction, relationships, and shame. A former lecturer in the UCLA Psychology Department and co-founder of one of the most progressive mental health treatment facilities in the country, he is the founder of IGNTD Recovery, writes for Psychology Today, and is the author of Unhooked: Free Yourself from Addiction Forever.
Adi makes a case that reshapes how we think about habits: addiction was never one thing, and calling it a disease has done more harm than good. There is no addictive gene and no medication that cures it, because two people with the same symptoms can have completely different reasons for them. Lasting change comes from understanding why you do what you do, not just white-knuckling the behavior.
From there the conversation gets practical. Adi walks through his E.A.T. process (explore, accept, transform), the SPARO cycle behind every choice, why chasing your triggers is a dead end, and how fitness and daily rituals became central to his own recovery.
Links
- https://readunhooked.com
- https://www.adijaffe.com
Key Takeaways
- Addiction is a syndrome, not a disease. A disease has an identified biological cause that produces the same outcome every time, like a specific cancer or virus. A syndrome is just a set of symptoms that show up together for reasons that can be totally different, the way irritable bowel syndrome can stem from anxiety, diet, or environmental toxins. Calling addiction a disease made people believe they were all part of one group, when they never were.
- Nobody has found an addictive gene or a medication that treats addiction, because it was never one condition. Adi is careful to say this outright as a research psychologist. Two people can show the same symptoms and have completely different underlying causes, so a one-size-fits-all biological fix does not exist.
- You never react to the trigger, you react to your perception of it. If a stranger insults you and you read it as a threat, you get anxious or aggressive. If you read the same words as a friend joking around, you laugh and hug them. Same trigger, opposite reaction, which means the leverage for change is in the perception and the feelings it creates, not in avoiding the trigger itself.
- Habits become habits through repetition, not necessarily because they feel rewarding. Adi points to his own daily cold plunge, which never feels good in the moment, as proof that classic behaviorist reward-and-punishment thinking does not explain most human behavior. Look for the behaviors that build the life you want, not just the ones that feel good right now.
- The E.A.T. process (explore, accept, transform) replaces avoidance with analysis. Most people bury a bad day and either quit trying or make excuses. Adi’s method is to pause, explore what actually went wrong that night, accept the imperfection without shame, and then treat transformation like a scavenger hunt for better tools.
- A compulsive habit is often standing in for an unresolved problem, not a character flaw. Adi describes a client who threw up from anxiety before every school event, was handed a joint by a friend, and used weed to manage undiagnosed social anxiety for 35 years without ever connecting the two. Treating the anxiety, not the weed, was what actually freed her.
- You cannot avoid triggers, so the real work is changing how you process them. Even isolating yourself just swaps one trigger (people) for another (loneliness and boredom). Adi’s example client had to learn to speak in public sober, which rebuilt her trust in herself rather than removing every uncomfortable situation from her life.
- The SPARO cycle (stimulus, perception, activation, response, outcome) is a diagnostic tool for figuring out what went wrong. When an outcome disappoints you, work backward: what was the trigger, how did you perceive it, what feelings did that create, and what response did you choose from your limited menu of options. Once you can name each step, you can consciously build better response options instead of defaulting to the same one.
- Adi’s three strategies to get and stay well: focus most of your energy on your sphere of influence, the things you actually control, rather than on outside circumstances; build a morning and evening ritual to create consistency, energy, and self-confidence; and challenge yourself to do something hard every day, physical or not, like a gratitude practice, to keep proving to yourself that you are capable.
“We don’t react to the trigger. We react to the feelings that our perception of the trigger created.”
Dr. Adi Jaffe
Another Episode You May Enjoy
Episode 695 – Break free from alcohol with James Swanwick
Episode Notes
Podcast: 40+ Fitness
Episode: 679
Published: 2025-01-28
Host: Allan Misner (aka Coach Allan), author of The Wellness Roadmap
Guest(s): Dr. Adi Jaffe, a nationally recognized expert on mental health, addiction, relationships, and shame, Unhooked: Free Yourself from Addiction Forever
Listen & Subscribe: Apple Podcasts · Spotify · YouTube (audio only)