Ask The Expert – Dr. Evelyn Higgins
Genetic Testing For Addiction
Dr. Evelyn Higgins is the founder of Wired For Addiction®, which specializes in the biological component of mental health and addiction recovery. Dr. Higgins is a recognized international expert in the science of addiction recovery. As a Certified Addictionologist, Diplomate of the American Board of Disability Analysts specializing in pain management, and Diplomate of the American College of Addictionology and Compulsive Disorders, Dr. Higgins has had the honor of advising the U.S. Surgeon General, producing and hosting a Gracie Award winning nationally syndicated health and wellness radio program, and serving as a 1996 Olympic Team Doctor and Olympic torch bearer.
With 35 years in practice, Dr. Higgins has specialized in the clinical application of the neuroscience and epigenetics behind mental health complexities. Dr. Higgins is also a 2022 TEDx Speaker, 2021 Nominee for Modern Healthcare’s Top 25 Innovators in Healthcare, and frequent national media healthcare commentator. Dr. Higgins is at the nexus of epigenetics, neuroscience, and health.
Tune in To Learn About:
Epigenetics and Recovery: Explore the reversible changes that behaviors and environments can make to genetic expression, affecting addiction recovery, as explained by Dr. Evelyn Higgins, an internationally recognized expert in addiction recovery science.
Neuroscience in Mental Health: Learn from Dr. Higgins about the practical application of neuroscience in addressing mental health complexities during the recovery journey, drawing from her 35 years of clinical experience.
Innovations and Advocacy: Discover how Dr. Higgins, a nominee for Modern Healthcare’s Top 25 Innovators in Healthcare, is shaping addiction recovery through innovation and advocacy, as evident in her U.S. Surgeon General advisory role and media commentary.
TEDx Speaker on Mental Health: Gain insights from Dr. Higgins’ compelling TEDx talk on the intersection of neuroscience, epigenetics, and well-being, providing a deeper understanding of the factors influencing recovery.
To find other similar episodes by topic, click here.
Connect with Dr. Higgins
Website | wiredforaddiction.com
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Episode Transcript
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Coming up on this episode of The Courage to Change sponsored by Lionrock.life.
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
We’re still not using technology the way we should, and we debate. We debate if somebody is an addict. It’s like if somebody was having a heart attack, we’d be like, “I don’t think that’s what’s going on right now. What I think is we should do this. What I think is let’s just watch it.” We would never do that. If someone had diabetes, we would do the diagnostics. We would any other disease. We would do the diagnostics first, get objective biomarkers, get information, and then move on from there. In the mental health area, which includes addiction, we still just want to talk about it and admire the problem and, “Well, I think we’ll do this well. Well, I think we’ll do that.” It’s bizarre.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Hello, beautiful people. Welcome to The Courage to Change: A Recovery Podcast. My name is Ashley Loeb Blassingame, and I am your host. Today, we have an expert episode, Dr. Evelyn Higgins. Dr. Higgins is the founder of Wired for Addiction and is a recognized international expert in the science of addiction recovery. As a certified addictionologist, Diplomate of the American Board of Disability Analysts specializing in pain management, and Diplomate of the American College of Addictionology and Compulsive Disorders, Dr. Higgins has had the honor of advising the US Surgeon General producing and hosting a Gracie award-winning nationally syndicated health and wellness radio program, and serving as a 1996 Olympic team doctor and Olympic torchbearer.
With 35 years in practice, Dr. Higgins has specialized in the clinical application of the neuroscience and epigenetics behind mental health complexities. Dr. Higgins is also a 2022 TEDx speaker, 2021 nominee for Modern Healthcare’s top 25 innovators in healthcare, and frequent national media healthcare commentator. Dr. Higgins is at the nexus of epigenetics, neuroscience, and health.
Friends, family, folks, followers, anything else F word, you are going to love this episode. What an amazing woman Dr. Higgins is, and she is spearheading the movement into precision medicine in addiction. We can find the group of addiction genes and hopefully help people identify physiological ways that they can improve their recovery or even start their recovery.
We talk a lot about epigenetics in this episode, but we did not define it, so I’m going to define it for you here. Epigenetics is the study of how your behaviors and environment can cause changes that affect the way your genes work. Unlike genetic changes, epigenetic changes are reversible and do not change your DNA sequence, but they can change how your body reads a DNA sequence.
So in my world of analogies, we all have a radio and we all play different songs on that radio. If you have an addiction song on your radio, you will always have that addiction song on your radio, but your environment will turn that up or down. So if you have addiction song on your radio and you have a lot of trauma, that will turn up the sound on that song, but it’s reversible, and also, it might never express itself if you don’t have those environmental triggers. So epigenetics are the things that turn on and off or turn up and down our genetic biomarkers. Hope that’s helpful.
Please check out Dr. Higgins’ TED Talk. Check out her company Wired for Addiction, where you can order these tests. It’s absolutely incredible. Let’s support her and I hope you enjoy this amazing conversation. Without further ado, I give you Dr. Evelyn Higgins. Let’s do this.
You’re listening to The Courage to Change: A Recovery Podcast. We are a community of recovering people who have overcome the odds and found the courage to change. Each week, we share stories of recovery from substance abuse, eating disorders, grief and loss, childhood trauma, and other life-changing experiences. Come join us no matter where you are on your recovery journey.
Thank you so much for being here. Really, really appreciate it.
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
Oh, my pleasure. Yeah, my pleasure, for sure. Looking forward to this.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Was it fun doing the TED Talk? Yeah,
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
Yeah. It was actually much more work than I thought it would be because they want it to be of a certain grade, and I get that because it’s their brand. So it’s every week we were meeting and that was a lot, and then every two weeks meeting as the entire group and then going there two days before and doing it, but wonderful experience. It made me get this out of me, so I’m grateful for that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, good, good.
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
What I had intended was nothing like what it ended up like. It’s all good. It’s all good.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Well, it was funny because when I watched your TED talk, what I heard was the simplification and the storytelling of incredible science. What I heard was, oh, my gosh, she has so much science stored up inside of her and they just made her make this into a story, which I appreciate.
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
That was it. You nailed it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I appreciate it. I heard that. I appreciate that, but for me personally as a science nerd, I was like-
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
You wanted the science.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I wanted … Yeah, when you said, “Polymorphism, I don’t want your hip,” I was like, “No, give me all the polymorphism.”
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
See? We fought over that word because they wanted me to take it out and I’m like, “Guys, I have made such incredibly complex science so simple in seven minutes that I have to use this word and I’ll make a joke about it. I’m only going to do one word like this,” I said, “but I have to or else I am deluding to the point of why bother.”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I actually think what you did was perfect because it signaled to the people who don’t know anything about it what the information could be, and if they were more curious, and it removed some of these barriers, and then for people like me who know about that piece but were really interested in the genetic components and could hear the underlying piece, I was like, “Oh, I have to learn more about what she’s doing because there’s obviously some stuff she’s doing that’s really important,” and turns out that there is. There’s some incredible stuff you’re doing.
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
Yeah, and I had started out with some statistics and it’s like, “Let’s compare it to COVID with mental health,” and they’re like, “Eh, get rid of it,” and I’m like, “Whoa,” like, “Don’t you have anything personal?” I’m like, “Ooh, okay. I need to talk to my daughter before I do this because it’s not just my story, it’s my story and my daughter’s story. If we have the green light, I’ll consider it,” I’m like, “but I don’t think I would’ve ever signed up for this.” I just wasn’t ready to go there.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What did that feel like?
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
In the rehearsal part of it, it was hard. Once I got there, I’m like, “Let’s go.” Really, every podcast or interview I’ve done since is like, “Do you mind if we go …” I’m like, “No, let’s go, let’s go,” because that I think is really what has helped so many people. It’s like, “Wait a minute, you know this stuff, and even you were there.”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Exactly, exactly. One of the things that I talk about with families and parents all the time is it’s not reasonable that you would know how to handle any of this because it’s not intuitive, it’s not taught, it’s not even talked about.
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
Right. Exactly, exactly, and it defies logic.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, and this is getting into some of the questions I have, which for the listeners who don’t know, you had a husband who was part of the community who struggles with substance use disorder and you guys had a child together. In a lot of your talks, you hit on some of the main topics. We talk about stigma, we talk about disease concept, we talk about free will, and we talk about genetic precursors. One of the things I always talk about, and I’ll go into the moral piece first, which is we say a lot of the time it’s not a moral flaw, a moral failing, but it does cause a lot of moral failing behavior. I think one of the issues with stigma is that we don’t address that we’re total assholes when we’re in the disease.
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
Absolutely, yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So when you talk about it’s not a moral flaw but it causes you to make morally questionable decisions, what is your experience as a wife, as a mother, as a scientist? How do you look at something that isn’t a moral flaw but it causes moral failings?
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
Sure. That’s a great question because we’re all human, right? Did I like that behavior? No. Was I upset, angry? Absolutely. So there’s this … It’s like the balance beam. It’s like, “Yeah, this does not feel good to be on this end of it, and if it continues, I’m out of here.” The other part of it is, okay, understanding we’ve also got to look at what got you here and start to unpack that, and that means the biopsychosocial, right? That means all of it from your physiology, your unique physiology to the psychosocial part of your life. If you are willing to do that, we’ll keep on. If you’re not, that’s where we have to make a decision.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So to restate what you are saying is that the belief that it’s not a moral failing to begin with is the reason why you’re willing to work on it if they’re willing?
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
Yes, that love. We’ve all been there. Some of us still are there and you’re like, “Love can conquer all.” We have that emotional piece to us, and then we step outside of that emotional piece and say, “Time out. We can’t just go around with blinders on,” and then we brought a child into the world. So to have the next generation continue this would be shame on me as a parent, and that’s where it was a game changer for me. It was like, “This is not going to continue because I am now responsible for another life.”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, and they’re paying attention, and if genetics are loading the gun is environment.
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
We need to know that. We need to know that. That’s a piece that we can’t avoid.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It’s something that I heard in your story. Again, for the listeners who don’t know, you were working really, really hard, and in your, I believe it was your forties, you had two strokes as a result of genetics and working too much or some combination of those things. We see a lot in partners who choose people who love us, who love addicts that they have certain qualities that are similar to one another. One of them is this desire to caretake beyond what is personally manageable, meaning that they will hurt themselves in the process of taking care of others.
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
Correct.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Is that something that shows up in the genetics as well?
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
Ooh, that’s a good question. I couldn’t say yes or no on that part of it, that caretaking. I couldn’t definitively say yes, but certainly where there are some predispositions to weakness for something in a negative end result, I could say yes to that, and that’s a great point that you bring up. I had someone say it and that really resonated with me. He said, “It’s like when we meet that person and we call it chemistry and the energy is just like, ‘Oh, my goodness.’ It’s because you’re familiar with that.” That really on the human side of me, the non-professional side was like, “Wow, yeah,” and then I think of all the guys that I dated before and after until I was like, “Okay. Step away. Time to step away.”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
No blood test for this one.
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
That it really was because it resonates with coming home and there’s so much. That’s why it’s such a complex situation. The more we learn about ourselves, the more we can start to see these pieces as we navigate life.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What makes addiction … So I’m going to group addiction, alcoholism. It’s all the same. What makes addiction a disease in the mind of a scientist?
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
Sure. So according to NIDA, addiction is a chronic relapsing disorder characterized by compulsive behavior, which creates … Despite the negative adverse consequences, we continue with it. So Britannica defines disease as a harmful deviation from the normal, structural or functional state of an organism. Clearly, it’s a disease.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So do you think that there’s a colloquial definition, a population definition of disease and a scientific definition of disease? That is, we know cancer, we know diabetes is a disease, we know that autoimmune disease, but that our mental health struggles or addiction, that colloquially we don’t see those things as a disease?
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
Right, and I think that’s because really until now, we haven’t used technology in this area. I could go on about that one, Ashley, where there’s really such an inequity because we still have that stigma and we’re like, “These people got themselves there. They can get themselves out. They choose this,” all that kind of stuff, and we’re still, despite, however we want to put the ribbon on it, we’re still doing that, right?
So in the area of mental health, which addiction is in that same place, we’re still not using technology the way we should, and we debate. We debate if somebody is an addict. It’s like if somebody was having a heart attack, we’d be like, “I don’t think that’s what’s going on right now. What I think is we should do this. What I think is let’s just watch it.” We would never do that. If someone had diabetes, we would do the diagnostics. We would any other disease. We would do the diagnostics first, get objective biomarkers, get information, and then move on from there. In the mental health area, which includes addiction, we still just want to talk about it and admire the problem and, “Well, I think we’ll do this. Well, I think we’ll do that.” It’s bizarre.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Is there any science in this of where the line is between choice free will, lifestyle, and genetic loss of choice? Where do you define that line when you’re looking at it with clients and patients?
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
So if we have those particular markers, we’ll go over the biomarkers, “Okay, we’ve got this. We’ve got a predisposition here.” So you’ve got to do everything within your lifestyle knowing this, and that to me, that’s where the power lies, Ashley. It’s like armed with information, will you make different choices knowing you don’t have the wiggle room? Your buddy may be able to do the same behavior and the next day not care about it at all. You don’t have that wiggle room. So knowing that, be really cognizant of the choices that you make.
At the end of the day, we all do have free will. That’s the beauty of this being our individual life and how are we going to play it out, but that’s where the power lies. Go back to use some other example, say cancer in someone’s family, cardiac disease in someone’s family. We’d say, “Hey, you’re going off to college now. Be careful because everybody’s going to be eating crazy, drinking crazy, doing all these things because mom and dad aren’t telling them how to do their life anymore.” We’ve got a lot of cancer in our family. We’ve got a lot of cardiovascular in our family. Start thinking about lifestyle choices that you’re going to make. This should be just as equal to that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Doesn’t that mean that you have more impulse control? So let me give you an example. When I was a teenager, I had my first drink at seven. I wasn’t a drinker at seven, and I had early childhood trauma and we moved a lot, and I was the classic. I felt like I was born with my skin on too tight. If you had tested me at 10, which is probably when I was still a reasonable person and said, “Ashley, you have this thing. It’s in your genetics,” I’m not sure I would’ve been able to make different decisions because my environment, what I had been through, all those things required a level of coping that was not provided for me.
So the difference might’ve been had my parents jumped into action knowing all the things that they know now, maybe, but when we talk about the choice, the word choice, when I think about my 10-year-old self knowing that I had a predisposition to something I didn’t really understand or hadn’t really seen up close, and I also needed something to get me through the world I was living in and my childhood and all the things I’d been through, I’m not sure I could have made a different choice.
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
I would agree with you in that 10-year-old self. You didn’t have the tools to know how to apply that information. You weren’t ready to be there. Having that information though when you move through your life and you have situations arise as you get older, hopefully you bring that information back in, but I would agree with you. A 10-year-old that didn’t have the toolbox and another 10-year-old had the likelihood of them saying, “I need to really sit down and be careful and think about this,” probably not going to happen.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Tell me about how you got into this amazing science around testing for genetic biomarkers of addiction and mental health.
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
So some 35 years ago, really when all this started professionally in a world of pain management, integrative medicine, seeing people just kind of not getting better really, and we would just have the next greatest thing, and that would be it for a while, and everybody be talking about that. There was somewhat of a dependency that I was seeing back then. I was in a rural area and then some 20 years after that, I’m in an urban area, but I’m actually seeing the same thing, “Try this, try that,” whatever is in vogue and I’m like, “This makes no sense.” If we were getting results, I’d say, “Hey, let’s keep on going. I can’t figure it out, but it’s working, so don’t change a thing.” It wasn’t working, and I’m seeing people move from dependency to addiction at that point.
Professionally, we’re doing the same thing over and over again, the definition of insanity and it didn’t make sense. Then enter my personal life where I marry a man who is an alcoholic, plus other. That wasn’t his only addiction, and we have a child together, and now I’m starting to see this behavior and I’m like, “Whoa, time out. First and foremost of anything that I am, I’m a parent. Before I’m a practitioner, before anything else,” I’m like, “I need to know what’s going on here.”
We find out a year after my daughter is born that he was adopted, my husband was adopted. So now we have this next layer of what’s going on, and within adoption, there’s a 43% chance of addiction and got to see that front row up close and personal and knew nothing of his health history, zero. So now I’m like, “All right. I am not going to see this into another generation. Got to start figuring out some stuff,” and that 35 years before I had already, because I was in a rural area, got my CAP, just to have another tool in the toolbox to help people because there were no resources then at all, and now I’m seeing we’re not doing anything different.
Now, we’re into an opioid crisis, an epidemic, and we’re doing nothing different. So during this whole time, personal, professional, just kept escalating of what I was learning, what I was doing 17 years ago, started using the neurotransmitters, brain chemicals, their relationship to our hormones from our stress hormones to our sex hormones, and technology had us have that part. It wasn’t until tail end of 2014, beginning of 2015, the technology to look at these SNPs, these polymorphisms became available. So putting all of that together and being able to see these layers because it’s not one thing, it’s the cascade of all of it together, of how we wind up with the problems that we have.
So it was really just layering throughout the entire process and technology was continuing to evolve, and that became my thing of, “My gosh. Why do we not use technology in this area? We want to continue to say, ‘Well, I think … Well, I think … Well, I think …'” I’m like, “Everybody’s thinking, but we’re not going anywhere.” It was a pure inequity and I’m like, “Let’s advance this and look at all these layers that get somebody to a disease state,” because it is so complex, because just in this conversation, we’re just talking about my personal, I’m like, “Okay. Found out my husband is adopted. Whoa, okay. Big curve ball,” and that’s not abnormal in this world.
The adverse childhood experiences, my gosh, you probably had a 10 out of 10 score in yours from what you’re telling me. So these are all the curve balls, but we have to have all that information and be willing to go to the best place of what we have available in our world today and bring it there instead of doing it like it’s 1950, like it’s 1960, like it’s 1970 and not getting the results.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So do you take a blood … It’s a blood panel or swab?
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
So it’s a couple different things. It’s a buccal swab on the genetic portion of it. It’s urine, saliva on the neurotransmitter hormone part of it. There’s only a couple of neurotransmitters that can be looked at with blood. So this is the much better, less invasive way to do it, and it’s really simple. It’s like a collection of getting any other type of sample. It’s 48 hours prior don’t eat this, don’t eat that, no heavy exercise, blah, blah, blah, like anything else.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What information … Some of the thoughts I had, “Well, okay.” So my poor children, my children are the products of two alcoholics, recovering alcoholics, and lots of other, all the mental health stuff that comes with that, depression, anxiety, et cetera. Is there any … I can give them that information and say, “You are for sure have some of this.” Is there information that we might not know? Is there a possibility they didn’t get something from us?
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
There’s a possibility that it’s going to be there. It’s going to be, “Here’s your cards. Play them out,” right?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
They’re in the cards. It’s in the deck.
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
Right, they’re in the cards, but we don’t necessarily see the behaviors, and that’s the whole fascination of science today with epigenetics. That’s what’s so cool. That’s where we can take the power back as an individual, right?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
There’s no question it’s in the deck.
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
Right, it’s in the deck.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It’s in the deck.
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
It’s in the deck, yeah. So it’s, “Okay. What stressors do we have in our life that turn those genes on, turn those genes off?” You bring up a very interesting point before that of anxiety, depression, that kind of thing. So there’s always, there’s always an underlying factor. We don’t realize. You at seven years old clearly didn’t realize you were self-medicating because it felt really good when you did that like, “Whoa, I might’ve found the secret sauce,” and it works until it doesn’t work.
Initially, it’s like, “Wow, I have no anxiety,” and you don’t even know how to label that. So no one is reaching outside of themselves to bring something in unless we’ve got this lack of homeostasis within us. So anxiety, depression, addiction, risk taking, impulse control, all of those are because of what’s underlying. The addiction is whatever it is that you get the, “Ooh, that felt really good.” It could be gambling for somebody. It could be sex for somebody. It’s whatever it is that you get that, “Oh, that felt really good.”
So it’s finding out what that it. That’s measurable, and for your children, that’s important in the beginning. It’s like, “Okay. Let’s do a panel. All right, anxiety, depression. Let’s take care of that now because I want you to experience what it’s like not to feel that.” So then you can compare it and you can now say, “You know your body so well of like, ‘Oh, I think I’m going down there.’ Okay, let’s see what’s going on,'” and that’s the power in this stuff.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So in my community, the sober community, I see a lot of parents, many of my friends are double alcoholic homes and recovering, but we see things, ADHD, ADD, various anxiety, OCD. One of the things I’m noticing is that people are afraid to get testing or get these diagnoses because what they know about treatment is that you’re going to give your kids stimulants, you’re going to give your kids … They know three of the treatments, let’s say, of some of these things.
So for example, I know that one of my kids has anxiety, but as a child treating anxiety other than maybe some supplements, if I find out, if I get a diagnosis, a confirmation that he has anxiety, is there something that I can do at six years old? I wonder if people are afraid to get some of this information because what they know about treatment is we’re going to give them a pill. Whether or not that’s a great outcome because for some kids it is, there’s fear around that.
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
Right. Sure. So the youngest that we’ve tested is two, the oldest is 98, but what I would say is I agree with you as a parent, as a grandparent. Now, I wouldn’t want a label on my grandchild. No, thank you. What we’re figuring out in these labs is where there’s a less than optimal range, whether it be too high or too low. Example with ADHD, let’s say the chemical is phenethylamine. Well, let’s support that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
How?
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
Depends on what else we see in the labs. So it could be nutraceuticals, it could be pharmaceuticals, it could be a combination of both, but the goal is not to be on this for a lifetime. The goal is to say, “We have identified where we have to support and to what level we have to support because we’ve got objective information. So let’s do that.” Then the body starts to work the way it’s supposed to, we remove ourselves from that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So one of the things that … I’ll just give you my experience because I can speak to it. I have been on SSRIs my whole life. In some way, shape or form, I went to the juvenile lockdowns in Utah and those kinds of things, and they medicated us within an inch of our life. So I’ve really honestly been on everything you can imagine, barring Haldol. My diagnoses are major depression and anxiety as far as I know, and ADD.
When I have tried to come off SSRIs in some way, shape or form several times, and I was off of them for a long period of time before I got pregnant and while I was pregnant, it was a disaster. I was lucky to escape with my sobriety, and I was really trying, and I was sober a long time. So when I hear, “SSRIs are not made for long-term, but there are ways to support these things,” I believe that. What I often hear is, “If you eat a perfect diet, if you exercise three times a day, if you take all your vitamins,” and I think to myself, “I’m not sure that I … If I don’t have any wiggle room and then I fall into that depression because I miss …” and I’m being hyperbolic here, “but because I miss a nutraceutical or I miss a workout and then I fall into that depression, I’m not coming out of it easily.”
So now, I’m digging myself out of this hole or attempting to. How does a person use information with regard to when you say, “Let’s support it”? With some of these medications, with some of these nutraceuticals, are you seeing any curative effects? Are you seeing any things that allow people to pull away from a lifetime of medication? When you support people there, are you able to see real changes for people that don’t-
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
Absolutely.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay. Yeah. So tell me some about that.
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
There’s labs in the beginning. There’s labs during. There’s labs, especially with someone with major depressive disorder because it is so tough. We recently published with Pacific Analytics with a study that we had from a professor out of University of Hawaii with a 91.3% success rate with depression. A lot of those people were on SSRIs for four or five years with no change before doing what we do. A lot of times when I have somebody that comes that, “I’ve been on an SSRI for decades,” as you said, they were never meant to be. They were for an acute situation, not a way to live, not a chronic situation. We don’t even have the data long term because it was never meant to be that, but it became so successful financially that it became the run with it, and people were being diagnosed and still are by vocabulary.
You went to the doctor, “I just don’t have the get up and go. My kids, I used to get excited, I don’t want to go to their school play, to their soccer games, to their whatever.” “Okay, you’re depressed.” Well, is it serotonin? Is it dopamine? Is it epinephrine? Is it norepinephrine? Is it one of those, two of those, three of those, four of those? We don’t know because we’re guessing. We shouldn’t be guessing. The starting point needs to be with objective information, and then we can continue to track where we’re going with that.
There’s never one neurotransmitter because the body’s always trying to stay in that homeostasis, so it’s going to borrow from everywhere. It’s going to keep the show for Ashley moving. It’s going to keep borrowing. So now, we’ve got these imbalances all over the place, not just in one area. So it’s changing, and that’s the part … It is a fluid situation. So we’ve got to continue with that, and that’s the part where I said when you’re teaching someone, especially who’s young, and this is how your body feels when it’s in balance and there’s homeostasis there, and this is how your body feels when there’s not, they can now say, “I’m not good right now. I think I need to retest, see what’s going on,” because those levels do change.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It’s a really hard thing to have struggled with something. Again, I don’t have bipolar. Some of these things are much more fluid, and I’m struggling with depression, anxiety, which frankly are run of the mill at this stage in the game, and yet, most psychiatrists that I work with they’re like, “Well, what do you think? What do think?” Luckily, in doing this a long time, I have real opinions about what’s going on, but it’s still an opinion and we’re still turning it up, turning it down, playing with the volume, and sometimes the volume’s high, and there’s all sorts of things that are in flux that are happening. Then this next phase of life as I get into my 40s and I don’t know what the hormonal balance will change.
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
That’s where I was going to go.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I don’t know what that’s going to look like, and it all feels very … I feel like an experiment, but I don’t have another option because this is the only one that I’ve ever known to help me stabilize.
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
Really because we’ve advanced this so far. Looking into your own unique personal DNA is really the game changer for people because we relish the fact that there’s 7.5 billion people on earth and we’re all different, and isn’t that great? On any given day, it’s so good we’re all different. We don’t treat anybody differently. We’re treating everybody exactly the same, “Sounds like you’re depressed. Do this. Sounds like … Do this.” The part that makes me crazy is that science has gotten to a place where we can actually look at an individual as an individual and we fail to do that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, back to who’s going to pay for it. That’s really where we come back to. Do you notice a difference in the expression of genes with people who have more exposure to things like environmental toxins, if you will, that they are more fragile and that people who have more inflammation are more susceptible to any of this stuff?
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
Absolutely.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Is there a real emission?
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
Absolutely. Inflammatory markers are one of the areas that we look at. As we go over, whether it be me or one of our other doctors go over those markers, we could know nothing about the individual and they’re like, “I don’t believe this. This is so spot on. Why I continue to get this? Why I get that? Why every bacteria or virus seems to be like, ‘Hey, pick me’?” It’s all of those pieces. As I said, it’s a cascade. It’s all of those things. Where is our body weak?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You mentioned there’s a gene for glass half full thinking or glass half empty. Can tell me a little bit about that? I was very curious about how that works.
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
Sure. So it’s like clinical correlations, things that we see, people with specific markers, so GAD1 gene, goes through life with the glass half empty and dysphoria, meaning just like there’s no love of life kind of thing. We can even see physically spasticity with those same markers. So yeah, really interesting, and when go over this with people, there’s some people that cry.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, I bet.
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
It’s a cry of relief like, “I’m not, air quotes, ‘crazy’. This is really what’s going on in my body that creates me to think this way, to be this way?” I’m like, “Yeah, this is, boom, this is you.” “Whoa.” Then the family all of a sudden sees that support in a very different way. They’re not trying to act out. They’re not trying to ruin every holiday. All of a sudden there’s like, “There’s reasons for this.” To me, anything in life, it’s like if I can understand the theory behind it, I’m willing to keep on going to understand, “Okay. Let’s see what we can figure out,” but it starts with understanding the theory behind it. That family now goes, “I get it.” Sometimes they start looking at themselves like, “Okay.”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
“Maybe there’s something here.”
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
“I see the same stuff in myself here, and do I want to tackle that?” The whole premise behind this, Ashley, is to empower people. We don’t have to sit in it and say, “Well, this is me, this is me.” This is you, but with epigenetics, we can change the expression of those genes. My gosh. Can you think of anything that could be more powerful to you? No. If you feel good here and here, life is different.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I saw on your testing that you guys, you do 85 biomarkers, basically triggers of information, and a lot of them are ones that we look at for mental health and addiction. One of my biggest gripes, and I think you have the same one but feel free to disagree, is that we separate mental health and substance use disorder. It drives me batty. I always say I personally have never met a person with substance use disorder who wasn’t at minimum struggling with depression and anxiety as a result of their substance use disorder. So even if it was situational, I’ve literally never met … People do talk about this unicorn of a person who has substance use disorder but no mental health stuff. Have you met them?
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
No, it doesn’t exist.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It doesn’t exist. Oh, good, you’re checking.
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
No, it doesn’t exist. No, I’ve met the people who say, “No, it’s this way,” because they have a facility that has licensing for this. So that’s why it’s that. No, no, they don’t exist.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay, just making sure.
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
No, no, no, they do not exist.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
They don’t exist. Okay. Good.
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
No. No.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So since they don’t exist, right? Great. Okay. So glad I’m not crazy there. I’m like, “I’ve never met this person.” Why do we do it and how do we get people to see mental health and substance use disorder as the same thing? Because we are in a place in society where we’re willing to talk about mental health. We are willing. Everybody’s, “Wellness, mental wellness, mental health, mental, whatever. Oh, my mental illness.” People are willing to talk about it, but substance use disorder is being pulled out of that conversation and still kept in the corner where it’s always been. It’s part of the conversation because it’s a pit stop on the road. It’s a reaction. It’s an attempt to cope with the mental health stuff. How do we get people to see that they’re not any different even with these biomarkers?
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
Well, keep on having the conversations that you’re having, that I’m having, that we’re having together. It makes so much sense when someone’s willing to say, “Hey, this is all under the same umbrella,” and then politically, to be taking action. We go to the state, we go to the Capitol quarterly at least and have these conversations to get legislators to realize this is all the same umbrella. This is all the same thing. No one is going … As I said in the beginning, you’re reaching outside of yourself to fix something inside. There’s an imbalance in there, game opener, at least anxiety and depression, and move on from there.
Even if that unicorn that doesn’t exist, even if it existed, as a result, let’s just use alcohol, as a result of using alcohol, you’ll have anxiety as you are doing it. The next day, you will have depression as a result of doing that, and now let’s continue doing that and we live the life of a roller coaster, which is exactly what you’re experiencing. It’s all hand-in-hand. I think even in the TED Talk, I’ve said that. I bring up data about mental health. I’m like, “Well, if I’m here to talk about addiction, why am I talking about mental health? Because that’s where it starts. Self-medicating is where it starts.”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
When you’re working with little kids like the two-year-olds or some of the teens, and they’re not in my scenario. They have the tools or ability to get the tools. Can you give us an example of some vignette of a person that you have worked with where a young person before, things were off the rails? Can you give us an example of what it looked like the road to success for one or two people looked like?
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
Sure, sure. So one of my happiest stories that always brings a smile, and I use this as a case study at the International Society in Abu Dhabi last year, presented this case because it’s so like, “Guys, get this, get this.” So child was six years old, already kicked out of several schools, adopted, foster parents adopt the child. Child was born neonatal abstinence syndrome, addicted, coded three times before out of the hospital, rough road. From the beginning, she hit this place, this planet earth, rough road. Now, she’s in school, she’s having difficulty with the other kids. She’s having difficulty learning. She’s also part of a family where there’s another adopted child and there’s two biological children. So the other kids are like, “Come on, this is getting rough at home.”
Parents reach out. We do the protocol. At the end of the year, she actually got the character award for school. How did this kid’s life change? Our life changed but everybody around her. From the kids in her class to her siblings were like they got to see the changes that are possible. That’s how this stuff becomes so impactful because it’s beyond just the talking about it. You got to see through the school year, this kid changed and then she’s rewarded at the end, and all of the people in her life that saw that are like, “This is possible.”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What were some of the things that you did for her?
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
Within her protocol, her markers, she had dopamine, she had glutamate, she had in … I don’t remember all the particulars. She had the genetic biomarkers, obviously, being handed down from mom and dad. So she was a time bomb. Had their parents not been progressive enough to say, “We need to change this now,” because what happens in a kid that’s six years old? You’re going to double down on those habits. If I’m bad all the time, let me show you how bad I am. This is how a kid goes down the road of out of control and through no fault of their own winds up in the same place that her bio mom did at that age because we’ve just watched it happen.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Did you guys employ nutraceuticals or was it a pharmacological?
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
Nutraceuticals, pharmaceuticals, and then some … Really got to know the kid and said, “Okay. I think what would be really powerful here is to have something in your family be something of her own. How about maybe … She likes music, maybe keyboard lessons, Something that she comes home with that she got to do today that’s different than everybody else,” and, “Let me show you how good I did.” Last time I saw her, she was playing for me, doing the back, “Hey, look at how good I am,” but it made her feel good about herself. Had her physiology not changed, she would not have been able to sit there and do that. Wasn’t going to happen.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Have you had the kids where it’s extremely difficult to change any of their food stuff? So I’m thinking like, oh, with these young kids, you probably have a nutrition plan, right?
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
Yeah, and sometimes it is difficult. Sometimes when you’re working with a young person, the family members can be just as difficult. I say that because I know you know with that smile you just gave me. So you’re now doing battle with them too because they want to be the gatekeepers and everything else like, “Then don’t do this with me. Don’t spend the money,” very honestly, “Don’t do it. Don’t do it.” I can tell you what to do, but if you’re not going to do it, don’t bother. My child won’t do this. My child won’t do that. Well, let’s figure it out. My child won’t swallow a capsule. Let’s open the capsule and let’s put it into something they like. They don’t like anything. Well, let’s play a game. Let’s make believe it’s Celebrity Chef, and let’s get out some yogurt and let’s put it in there, and then let them win the contest by putting sprinkles on and whip cream. When you go to the store, let them pick it out. I’m like, “Be the parent. Use child psychology.” So it can be difficult, but it can be done. It can be done.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What’s the typical … You mentioned you have a program. Obviously, there’s the testing. Can you tell me about the program?
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
Right. So we do it one of two ways. Either we’ll do the 85 biomarkers, the lab come up with the biomarker evaluation report, 31-page report that goes over each one of those biomarkers what they mean. We go over in a very extensive conversation like we’re having here on each one of those biomarkers so you understand it. We create the protocol, “Here’s why. Here’s the phases of it, here’s how to do it. Do it on your own,” or, “Do all of that, and then if you want to work with us, you can work with us over a six-month period of time.”
People choose either, whatever is most realistic in their life or they’re already working with somebody. They already are in a program, an at home program. They already have therapists that they’re using. Keep doing it, don’t change it. That program’s doing the heavy lifting. They’re dealing with all the psychosocial part of what we’re doing. We’re adding the physiology. So if you are already doing that, keep doing it. Just add the physiology piece to it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Do you ever see people who are doing things, maybe they’re taking vitamins, they’re taking vitamins, and they’re eating really well, but it turns out that their genetics, they shouldn’t be eating broccoli or there’s a real surprise as to what works for them because it would be considered healthy for most of the population or without this information?
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
Sure, and there’s some people that may have trouble absorbing. You could be eating a perfect diet and you have a problem absorbing. We’re going to have to figure out how to deal with that or you could have an adverse reaction to a specific food and that’s like, “Here’s what we need to get more of.” We have to figure it out. We have to go a different way with you. Absolutely. Yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
How do you handle privacy around the genetic information? One of the things that my concerns with doing some of the bigger genetic testing, which I know lots of people have, is concerns around who’s owning that information, what they’re doing with it over the long term. What’s your stance on that?
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
Sure. We have everybody check off the box of you do not want anything to be done with your information. It’s to be between you, me, and-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
God.
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
Yeah, that’s it, and especially because we also work in the criminal justice space. So that comes up. That question is definitely more frequent with that group of … I’ll tell you one thing, across the board, judges love to see this because they have said, “You’ve made my job easier. I now have a reason of why I am saying what I’m saying and it’s backed with objective information and data points. I feel good about what I’m saying,” instead of like, “Oh, I don’t know which way to go with this,” and everybody comes out a winner. If somebody gets help during the situation, regardless of what your politics are or anything else in today’s environment, that doesn’t even matter. Everybody winds up more of a winner if we get people in better mental health.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, and ultimately, can we say that addiction is is a … Is it a gene or is it a grouping of genes?
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
Grouping, yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Grouping, okay.
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
It’s not just one. It’s how all of what we’ve got going on in that individual interact with them. So it’s that cascade of what this is doing to this and what it’s doing to that. Even earlier we talked about inflammation. Well, specific markers, are they creating neuroinflammation in these mood biomarkers that we have? Yes. That’s what we’re seeing. So it’s all a cascade.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Do you see any different biomarkers for process addictions like gambling, sex addiction, et cetera, than chemical addictions?
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
No. No, and oftentimes, people that go addiction swapping like California Sober, “I’m not drinking, so I’m going to smoke a big fatty,” it’s the same thing. You’re just changing. Sex addiction, same thing. Oftentimes, we’ll see more in the process addiction. Somebody with a sex addiction will be more likely to be a gambler than because they found their process addiction is their happy place versus a substance, but no, the addiction is the addiction, be it process or a substance.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Is there any … So I have anecdata on how people, what I’ve seen in terms of the personalities of people who turn out to be meth users, turn out to be … It’s nothing I’ve studied. I just have seen who comes out of these situations. Is there anything in the genetics that helps dictate what the drug of choice is going to be?
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
Not really. It’s more of at what age in their timeline they met up with whatever the addiction was and what it did for them at that point because that becomes their go-to.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Interesting.
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
Then swapping can happen as they go and become, “Now I’m old enough to get into a casino,” or whatever the case may be.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Because one of the things I’ve seen is the people who have ADD or ADHD, they’re going to really like the uppers. They’re going to really go for it because it’s a calming effect, where others, they don’t want anything to do with that. So can you-
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
ADHD, yeah. I’ve seen more with sex addiction with ADD, ADHD, more of that spike as a correlation. Not that I can say more than that yet, but I see more ADHD with that particular process addiction
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
For people who … I noticed I’m a novelty seeker, and dopamine is … There’s a great book, you’ve probably heard Dopamine Nation.
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
Yup.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I interviewed her. She was on the podcast. Are there things to increase dopamine that are nutraceutical based or pharmacological based other than retraining your brain on how to release it?
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
Yeah, in both nutraceuticals, pharmaceuticals, yes. That’s part of it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
To increase the production? Does it give you dopamine or is it increase production?
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
The goal is to increase production.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, on your own.
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
Yeah, all of it. That’s the goal of all of it, to support the body in what it needs to start making, and then we get out of the way, and let’s see if this is going to be able to do it on its own. That’s the goal, not to forever be doing this, but let’s support the body in what it needs. That’s why we look at each one of those biochemical pathways to get through each step what do we need to happen correctly to get there.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Do you work with families? So you mentioned that you have worked with people who are in active addiction. So do parents call you with their teenager, and do you find that teenagers or young adults are cooperative when they are in active addiction at all with this process?
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
It depends on the individual, 50/50.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, 50/50.
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
Then a lot of times, I do see the behavior of the parent helping or not helping, what that end result looks like.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That’s where the cognitive behavioral therapy comes into play, how to-
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Is there anything that people who have … Do you see people who have a lot of information about their mental health or people who have a long list of diagnoses and then you do the biomarkers and you do the tests and it’s totally off or is there information that you get that helps dispel certain diagnoses?
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
Yeah, I think maybe say dispel certain diagnoses would be a good way to do it because I’m going to say, “Here’s where we want to be with this particular chemical. Here’s where we are. The clinical correlation, the behavior we would see with is this.” Then people can say for themselves, “So I am or I am not XYZ,” whatever the diagnosis was. Again, if we support that, the goal is to change that level. When you look at how all these pharmaceuticals that became the go-to of choice came about was because we started diagnosing everybody, be it right or wrong, we started diagnosing everybody with that, and then they just took off on their own. I can’t tell you how many times somebody has been on an SSRI for decades and do their labs and their serotonin is in the tank.
I’m like, “Because that was never the problem, but because you were diagnosed using vocabulary, your walkaway was, ‘I’m depressed.’ It was never going to work for you, and it didn’t. So your kidneys, your bladder, your liver has been processing this stuff for 20 something years to no avail.” If it worked, I’d say, “Well, you know what? It’s the cost of business.”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Totally.
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
We have to keep doing it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So how can people work with you? Someone wants to go check this out and I want to go and purchase. How do I start?
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
So first thing would be go to the website, Wired For Addiction, all spelled out, wiredforaddiction.com. Take a look at everything that’s in there, how people come to us directly, as I said, or they’re working with a facility, they want to add this on or they’re in the criminal justice space, whatever it is, whatever resonates with you. We even offer to talk with somebody for 15 minutes with one of our clinicians to say, “What are you doing? What’s gone on so far? What’s helped? What hasn’t helped? Have you looked at any of the physiology parts of it?” and then decide what works for you. You’re already in a program, keep there. Don’t stop doing that. Just add the physiology piece.
So just get the lab part and the protocol and go from there. Keep on doing what you are already doing. If you are on no man’s land and you’re on your own island and you don’t want to go to a program or you can’t for whatever reason, then if you want, do the six month with us, but if you’re working somewhere, keep doing it. Don’t stop.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Perfect.
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
Just add this piece.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Perfect. Well, I’m so grateful to you for what you’re doing. We really need this technology and innovation in our space and lots of conversation around being able to take control of our health and have real information around this problem. So I’m super, super grateful, and thank you.
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
Oh, thank you, and thank you for the work that you do and continue these conversations. Don’t stop because that’s how people are going to put the pieces together of all this is interrelated and we have to look at the big picture of it. So thank you.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes. Wiredforaddiction.com, go check out what is available and let’s all get tested.
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
Thank you, Ashley.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Thank you.
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
I feel like I want to get tested.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah?
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
Do you think I have addiction? What if it … Oh, my God.
Scott Drochelman:
What if it came back as not?
Dr. Evelyn Higgins:
Plot fucking twist.
Scott Drochelman:
You are not the father.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What if I was not the father?
Scott Drochelman:
Whoa. That would be-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Dude, what if I came back not addiction.
Scott Drochelman:
What would you do with that? What would you even do with that?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Immediately drink.
Scott Drochelman:
My body has kicked it out. It just kicked it right out.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Ready? Sure. There was a lifelong error mate here. Oh, my God. That would straight-
Scott Drochelman:
Guys, check your note. Check it. It’s not even there anymore.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Have you seen my genome? There’s a couple ways I could play it. One would be I’m such an addict that I didn’t even need the gene. I skipped it. That’s one avenue for this.
Scott Drochelman:
Right. You manifested it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I manifested it. Another is I cured it.
Scott Drochelman:
Oh, yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right? Right? Because plausible deniability, I don’t have the testing from back in the day.
Scott Drochelman:
You’ve been sleeping in a hyperbaric chamber, and that cured it somehow.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I cured it. So there’s that. I don’t know. That would really mess with the old … but I would also feel better about my children and be like, “Well, genetically, maybe they’re less bad.”
Scott Drochelman:
It’s a coin flip now. It’s a coin flip.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. I’m still … I don’t know. What if yours told you you were?
Scott Drochelman:
Ooh.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Would you do anything differently?
Scott Drochelman:
That’s a really good question.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
He’s very prone to butt plugs.
Scott Drochelman:
What?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I was just thinking. I’m sorry. Sorry, that was … I did not-
Scott Drochelman:
What does prone to butt plugs mean?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, sorry. I was thinking of the process addictions. I went process addiction, sex addiction, butt plugs, and I was just laughing thinking if it had a little icon and it said proclivity. Sorry. I went all the way down.
Scott Drochelman:
As someone who mentally skips a lot of steps in conversation, I understand the impulse, and boy, I was left in the dust.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Left in the dust. Yeah. You can imagine what me looking at YouTube is like. It’s like I start out researching something about the human genome and next thing I know I’m on pole dancing contests in the Ukraine.
Scott Drochelman:
I feel exactly the same way though though. I think that’s just being a high novelty person.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay. Good.
Scott Drochelman:
Because I feel the same-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I’m like, “Why? Why? What’s wrong? How did I get over here? Someone made me. Stop.”
Scott Drochelman:
I feel like I want to explain to people sometimes why I’m watching what I’m watching.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, 100%.
Scott Drochelman:
I picture them walking in the room and being like, “I saw this. I don’t know why. This is really douchey. This is so douchey.” “I know. I know. It is. It’s so douchey. I don’t know why I watched. I watched the whole thing. I did watch the whole thing. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know why. I don’t know why.” I felt that way.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I did. It’s 17 minutes, I made it to the end. I watched. I was on Netflix and I watched … You remember that guy who killed his whole family? I know it’s hard to narrow that down, but anyway, I was watching this show and that is exactly how I felt. I watched the whole thing. Now to be clear, this was a news story, so I knew how the story ended. I knew what happened. I’d read the news story, but I felt compelled to watch the documentary, and worse off, I had a senior moment, that’s just what I’m going to call it right now, because when I finished it, I realized I had watched it before.
Scott Drochelman:
Oh, it’s the last line. That’s what reminded me. Jog the old memory.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I was like, “Man, I feel like I’ve seen this before. Why am I watching this?” but I didn’t turn it off. I didn’t turn it off.
Scott Drochelman:
Well, you do have a certain proclivity. Behind the curtain a little bit, behind the curtain a little bit is that some of our process in booking guests is it comes some from me, some from you, some from somewhere else in the ether-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What are you trying to say?
Scott Drochelman:
… as far as where we get our guests, and there was a stretch where we had about 15 guest recommendations from Ashley that were murder-related in some way.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Hello?
Scott Drochelman:
That has its place on the show, certainly.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It does. It does have its place. We need to talk … Is there-
Scott Drochelman:
Certainly, but we can’t do 15 in a row.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Not in a row. Don’t make it weird, but also, is there a murder gene?
Scott Drochelman:
We should ask her.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay. Can I just say that if I had a murder gene that came out, I would tell my husband.
Scott Drochelman:
Yeah? As a threat?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, for sure.
Scott Drochelman:
Instill it over his head?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
No, I just let him know casually.
Scott Drochelman:
I think casually is the way to do it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Like, “Genetically …”
Scott Drochelman:
“I haven’t done it yet.”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
“Not emotionally, but genetically.”
Scott Drochelman:
“When I do look at you while you’re asleep, things cross my mind, genetically.”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Genetically. “It would require epigenetics for it to happen. So don’t push me. Just saying, don’t push me, but also …”
Scott Drochelman:
“But also, think about Mother’s Day a little more.”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
My poor husband, he’s wonderful. It’s hard to be married to me. He got beat up by me last night. I had a dream. So I tend to have dreams. I wonder if this is genetic. I tend to have dreams that occur in the same place over and over and over again.
Scott Drochelman:
Oh, that’s very weird.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I have a couple that, yeah, I’ve dissected those with my therapist, and there’s this one that occurs in this same house and it’s very, very haunted house, but the room that I sleep in is the ghost and zombies don’t come into that room for whatever reason, but if you go out in the middle, it’s not haunted during the day, but if you go out into the rest of the house at night, there are, whatever, creepy crawlers situations. So in the stream I had last night, for whatever reason, I went out, dumbass, into the-
Scott Drochelman:
Don’t do that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I don’t know. I’ve been here before. I’ve had this dream before. So I go out into the hallway and there’s some apparition, but it felt more like a lot of the time the apparitions are ghost, like you could put your hand through them kind of deal, but not this one. So this one starts chasing me back to the bedroom that’s usually a safe place, right? Well, here’s where it gets weird. Here’s where reality met my dream. So when it chased me back into the room and I hopped back into the bed in the dream, I hopped into the right side of the bed in the dream if you’re laying in the bed on the right side, but I sleep in real life on the left side of the bed and my husband sleeps on the right side of the bed. So as this creature came into the room and came up to the side of the bed, and in my dream I’m on the right side and the creature’s coming to me, coming in on the right. I put my feet out. I start kicking this bitch down, right? I’m taking this … I’m not going without a fight.
So I start kicking the shit out of this apparition. Well, I awaken because I’m screaming, but also so is my husband because I am kicking the shit out of my husband last night, and he’s yelling, this poor guy. He’s like, “What is wrong with you? 15 fucking years and this chick is just nuts.” Oh, my God, yeah. This morning I was like, “Hey, did I hurt you? Did I hurt you last night?” and he’s like, “Yeah, you did. You were kicking me.” I’m like, “I’m really sorry, but also you have to understand, I was on the right side of the bed in the dream and there was an apparition.” So anyway, hopefully that’s not genetic. That’s the whole thing, murder.
Scott Drochelman:
You know what I feel comforted by is that I feel like you held your own against the apparition, right?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Thank you.
Scott Drochelman:
That’s what’s important today.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Thank you. So all that is to say that I would like to know how I can better support my genetics because I think they are deeply flawed.
Scott Drochelman:
Well, it’s all very hope-producing for me. I hope that people will check out Dr. Higgins outside of this podcast and dig more into the work that she’s doing because there’s a lot of great stuff out there, and just being able to check out what is available to you and what options you might have is a cool thing. So this week, we are rooting for you as we always are. Maybe we’re rooting for you in a science-backed way this week. I feel like it should be a little bit different flavor of rooting for people each week. You know what I mean?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
A nutraceutical flavor.
Scott Drochelman:
This is a nutraceutical rooting for you this week is what I’ve got for you.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, boy.
Scott Drochelman:
Ashley, anything you want to leave the people with this week?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yes. Go check out wiredforaddiction.com. Go check out Dr. Evelyn Higgins’ TED Talk, super amazing, and please, please reach out to us if you need guidance or if there’s any way that we can be helpful. We are rooting for you, and as always, we will see you next time. Thanks for listening.
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