This is Annie Grace and you're listening to this naked mind podcast where without judgment,

pain or rules, we explore the role of alcohol in our lives and culture.

Hi, this is Annie Grace and welcome to this naked mind podcast. Today I'm so excited because we have a guest who is going to help us dive into other areas of addiction beyond alcohol and it's so important.

It's so important. It is so important, especially with everything that's going on in our culture, specifically in the opioid crisis. So welcome, Dr. Leslie Cole. Thank you so much for being here.

Thank you for inviting me.

That's awesome. So let me give your little intro and then I actually wanted to kind of dive into some of your story and then we can get into your work and where it's going. So, and I'm going to read this because I don't want to get it wrong and I think it's just so great.

So, board certified addiction medicine and internal medicine physician, you've been working with opioid addicted people and you have an ebook coming out of quit pain pills without withdrawal, which so powerful and so important.

So, I'm so excited to get into all of that and I have a very, very, very brief but very almost dangerous history with pain pills myself that I have not shared before that I will share today. So that will be cool to go into.

Leslie, first let's start with you like where where did your interest come? Like what is your story?

Well, my story is mostly around food and having not exactly an addiction to food, but more of a compulsive.

It would probably be closer to anorexia with a little bit of bulamia where it would I was preoccupied with thinking about food, preoccupied with thinking about way preoccupied with thinking about how I don't want to get fat and yet I want to eat this entire cake.

What is wrong with me? What's wrong with me? And I had it a little bit in high school and then when I went to medical school, it kind of went in the background, but in my 30s it totally came back with obsessing about am I am I fat? Am I am I gaining weight?

I've got to control what I'm eating, I've got to control it and the more I tried to control it, the more I was unable to control it.

And I did not see I couldn't see at all that it was it had come back and was bothering me until a friend of mine.

I mean, I just flipped open a book at work because I was working with a guy who was having some nutritional issues.

And on the flip side, it talked about eating disorder and how it can sneak up in highly educated people who had very strict upbringing.

And I went, oh my gosh, this is what I've got. And so I reached out to a friend of mine who worked with eating disorders, his therapist and ended up talking to several therapists and really started thinking about what was going on in my own mind.

And where I resonate with your book was realizing I am using this food for an emotional feeling and it is a lie.

What is the truth underneath everything? What is the truth?

This piece of cake is not answering my need for people. It's not working.

And so I started really writing journaling and thinking about what are the underneath drivers, underneath purposes, underneath things.

I was probably a couple years ago. It will actually five years ago. I just went full into addiction medicine because it was the same kind of thinking and I understand it so much more.

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