Episode 40: Lowest Common Denominator
Kyle destigmatizes substance use and mental health by opening up about his own journey through recovery after a two-decade-long battle with drugs and alcohol that almost took his life in October of 2021.
His fear of failure, fear of falling, and fear of inadequacy don’t compare to the fear of not living a full life. Kyle’s path to being substance-free embraces some of fear’s corresponding counterparts—joy, success, the exhilaration of free-fall, and the inner sanctum of the non-comparative derivation of self-worth.
Addiction…is a public health crisis. Just about any behavior or stimulus can go from well-adapted and functional to maladaptive and dysfunctional, but the more that we bring it into public discussion, the more that people can feel like they can support each other and talk about it openly, and not act like it’s this *thing* that we have to hide.
For the Love of Climbing is presented by Patagonia. Additional support is from deuter USA, Gnarly Nutrition, Allez Outdoor, Ocún, and the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA).
Music is by Chad Crouch. Additional music is licensed by Music Bed.
Cover photo by Kika MacFarlane.
Catch up on podcast (pod-Kath?) updates and general life things: @inheadlights
This podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Because therapy is for everyone.
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
(KATHY KARLO): This podcast is presented by Patagonia. Not bound by convention, Patagonia’s in business to save our home planet.
- This podcast is sponsored by deuter, one of the leading backpack brands that will help you hit the trails with confidence and comfort, but most importantly–your snacks.
deuter has a history of first ascents and alpine roots. Their head of product development even climbed Everest once, in jeans (hashtag not fake news.) deuter is known for fit, comfort, and ventilation. Founded in 1898, deuter believes in good fitting backpacks, so you can focus on way cooler things like puppies, pocket bacon, and gettin’ sendy, whether at the crag or in the alpine.
(FEMALE VOICE): Today we’re going to talk about “allez”. “Allez” means “come on!” in a way, or to encourage. Ok! We are done with the simple and normal uses of “allez”, now let’s cut to the chase:
(KATHY KARLO): Allez Outdoor Personal Care products are made by climbers for those who love the outdoors. Their rich and repairing ingredients for their skincare collection are inspired by desert landscapes, and their simple and recyclable packaging makes them eco-sustainable. Allez commits to protecting the open spaces that we love by partnering with the Access Fund and 1% for the Planet. That’s Allez Outdoor: “A-L-L-E-Z”). Allez Outdoor—made by climbers, for those who love the outdoors.
- This podcast gets support from Gnarly Nutrition, one of the leading protein supplements that tastes “whey” better than they need to, because they use quality natural ingredients. So, whether you’re a working mom who runs circles around your kids on weekends or an unprofessional climber trying to send that 5.13 in the gym, Gnarly Nutrition has all of your recovery needs.
The only question you need to ask yourself is: Are you a sucker for anything that tastes like chocolate ice cream? (Yeah, me neither.) Gnarly Nutrition is designed to enhance your progress—and taste like a milkshake, without all the crap.
(MALE VOICE): Ocún?
(bell dinging)
(FEMALE VOICE): No.
(MALE VOICE #2): Ocún?
(MALE VOICE #3): Nope.
(MALE VOICE #4): Ocún?
(MALE VOICE #3): Really?
(FEMALE VOICE #2): Ocún?
(NON-GENDERED VOICE): No!
(KK): Who is Ocún? More than prolific crack climbing gloves, Ocún has been making innovative gear engineered for climbing to improve your performance since 1998. Their climbing shoe designs are all original, developed and manufactured in Czech Republic and one hundred percent gender neutral. Beyond their sticky rubber, Ocún is renowned for their hardware, harnesses, and the biggest lightest crash pad on the market. Find your new favorite climbing shoes and accessories at Backcountry, Moosejaw, Camp Saver, and Amazon.
- This podcast is sponsored by the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. Because you listen to this show, we know that responsible recreation is important to all of you.
Increasing visitation and rapid expansion of human-powered recreation has adverse impact to the delicate desert ecosystem. What climbers and other recreationists need are more thoughtful land management plans, which can help minimize the impact of camping and recreating in fragile desert environments.
Help protect the places you love to climb by asking the Bureau of Land Management to better manage recreation. Visit suwa.org/recreation (that’s S-U-W-A) or text UTAH R-E-C to 52886 to get started and protect wild Utah.
- Hey, a quick heads up. Episode forty contains discussion about alcohol and substance use.
(KYLE TOWNSEND): You know, it kind of spontaneously arose. You and I started chatting through Instagram, and I had remembered that you’d had a podcast that was a climbing—that’s about more than climbing. And I thought that it would be a really great venue to talk about recovery.
And by recovery, I mean—people that have undergone some kind of substance use or mental health dilemma in their life and been able to find their balance again and resume functioning in a way that feels really satisfying and safe for them.
Because I know that for myself, I have had a lot of shame surrounding my own struggle with addiction and the stigma that surrounds that, and I think that the more that we bring that into public discussion, the more that people can feel like they can support each other and talk about it openly, and not act like it’s this thing that we have to hide.
I think that a lot of the demonization of addiction comes back to our philosophical framework about the nature of choice. And I think that when you frame a person that is using a substance and it’s derailing their life to the point where they’re neglecting their sleep, their nutrition, their human relationships, their work—the list goes on, right
It’s easy to look from the outside and say, “Why are they choosing to do that? Why are they hurting the people they love? Why are they neglecting themself and allowing their life to deteriorate?”
(KK): In December of 2021, Kyle reached out to the podcast about recovery from substance use, mental health, and the relationship between those and climbing. For a long time, he avoided talking about his own journey in a public forum, which is a classic example of the problem at hand.
Last March, we sat down to discuss how we can work to break down the antiquated and inaccurate belief that addiction is a moral failing, instead of what we know it to be—a chronic, treatable condition—not a choice.
(KT): And so, if we have that perspective of: every person freely chooses every choice in their life at every moment, then I think that that perspective would make sense. But I think that the landscape may be shifting a lot because of some of the advances in neuroscience.
So, I was a psychology minor in my undergrad with an emphasis on neuroscience. So, through FMRI, which is functional magnetic resonance imaging, we’re able to see some of the brain structures that are being activated when a person is feeling the sensation of craving.
If you were to show say, a person addicted to cocaine, a pile of cocaine next to a razor or something like that, certain brain areas would really light up. And those brain areas are in a dopaminergic track—what’s called the mesolimbic reward pathway.
And the current theory on that is that this structure of the brain, which is more primitive than the prefrontal cortex, being sort of our executive decision-making. It regulates our motivational system. And if I was to reduce that, I would say that our motivational system, essentially, is to seek pleasure and to avoid pain.
And so, addictive processes, by their nature, are something that sabotages that system because when you have a stimulus that gives you a reward that is a factor of ten, a hundred, a thousand times more than getting a promotion at your job or getting a good night’s sleep or being affirmed by someone you really admire—then, that’s really confusing, right?
Suddenly, your motivational system is like, “Ok. Well, why would we pursue a promotion at work or a healthy relationship when there’s this substance or stimulus that offers such a greater reward for such less effort? I think as organisms, we’re always striving for efficiency.
So, when you start to look at it as a series of events that undermine someone’s ability to freely choose the course of their life, then it changes how much you can hold them personally responsible at all times for, quote, unquote, freely choosing a behavior.
(KK): For anyone who’s familiar with Pavlov and the idea of ringing a bell and that signifying feeding time for an animal—well, with humans, we have such a sophisticated nervous system that you can make several more degrees of separation.
(KT): For example, if someone who is an IV user sees a spoon—you know, the spoon is what the drug goes in and then, the water goes in and then, that goes into a syringe and then, that syringe goes into an arm, and then, that goes into the bloodstream.
I mean, that’s about six or seven different degrees of separation, but yet, that spoon is still a powerful trigger for somebody in that position. And so, if you were to show an image of a spoon to that person, and then, hook them to a FMRI scan, you would see that area of the brain light up like a Christmas tree.
And that area of the brain being the mesolimbic reward pathway that sort of signifies what they call “incentive salience”, which is our sort of ability to experience an environment and the things that are most important to us sort of pop out. You know, you can think of it as—you go to a Christmas party. Which thing on the tray looks the most tasty, right? That would be “incentive salience”.
It’s a very complex phenomenon, and I would say having a working definition of addiction that goes beyond just substances and people is really important because any relationship that you have to a behavior or a stimulus that is so compelling that all of the other things in your life that normally take precedence fade into the background—that’s what addiction is. It can be gambling, it can be sex, it can be work.
(KK): It can be climbing.
(KT): It can be climbing.
(laughs)
(ALEX HONNOLD) (to himself): Ok, I’m Alex Honnold. You’re listening to the love of climbing podcast. It’s a funny, sad, somewhat uncomfortable podcast—
(louder)
I was like, “Wow, this is the opposite of my podcast. But, you know, here we go!”
(laughs)
(upbeat music)
“I’m Alex Honnold and you’re listening to For the Love of Climbing—”
—is it “to the”? Or “to—“ Do you say “to For the Love of Climbing Podcast”?
“I’m Alex Honnold and you’re listening to For the Love of Climbing Podcast.”
Yeah. Yeah, I see it.
“You’re listening to For the Love of Climbing Podcast. This is not a climbing podcast. Well, sorta. It’s a funny, sad, and somewhat uncomfortable podcast about choosing vulnerability. Here’s the show.”
Easy cheesy!
(KT): My name’s Kyle Harmon-Townsend. I usually just go by “Kyle Townsend” for short because the hyphenated last name tends to throw people, and especially computers, for a loop. I’m thirty-five, I grew up in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and I’m currently living there. I’m staying with my parents right now and applying to physical therapy schools.
(KK): Kyle and I met in Chattanooga to sit down and record this important episode, but before we get into it, we wanted to first emphasize the urgent need to eliminate stereotyping and discrimination surrounding addiction.
One huge way is by revising the language that we use while discussing substance use disorder. Research indicates that the use of “person-first” language is essential for stigma reduction, focusing on the person and not their condition. You can check out more resource links at the end of the transcript online.
(KT): But, yeah. I’m really excited about the physical therapy thing. I’m applying to Winston-Salem State in my hometown. I’m also applying to UTC here in Chattanooga, as well as University of Colorado Denver and University of Utah in Salt Lake. So, we’ll see.
(KK): Do you have a preference where you’ll land, or—
(KT): I think I’d be really happy in all those places. They’re all great climbing communities, and I really wanna be somewhere that has enough of a vibrant climbing scene that I can eventually open my own private practice and do coaching, as well as rehabilitation for climbing-specific injuries.
It’s a very informal and casual thing. I haven’t built a website yet, but that’s in the works. I own two domains—one is innerpeaktraining.com and the other is peakperformanceclimbing.com. And so, my idea with those is the Inner Peak Training, I want to be more inclusive.
The phrase “life coaching” has become so overused and has kinda gotten a bad rap, but I want that to be a service that is something that I can use to support people in recovery or people who just need an ally because they’re having a hard time in life. Not quite therapy, per se. And then, the Peak Performance Climbing would be, of course, climbing-specific coaching.
It’s just nice to have somebody that unconditionally supports you. You know, you can get that with friends and partners sometimes, but there inevitably arises this role conflict if you overburden a person in your life. Constantly sorta like, barraging them with needing support and help—that can be problematic. Whereas, if you have somebody that their specific intentional role is to do that, then that can be a really great and mutualistic relationship.
I would say that I am a very curious person. I love learning and I really love to geek out on science and try to understand how things work. I’m very much an environmentalist. I’m very much a proponent of gender equality and racial equality.
I see the things that are happening in the world and, like many of us, I’m sure, I’m very troubled by the way that we’re treating our environment, each other. You know, this thing that’s happening with Russia and Ukraine is horrible and breaks my heart that we still, as a species, haven’t figured out how to transcend some of the aggression and more primitive instincts that we have.
But I’m also a very emotive person and I also am very affectionate and very loving. I love my friends. I love the climbing community because of how we have this ready-made network, globally, of people that we can connect with, and usually, it’s not just the climbing. Most of us have shared values that go far beyond that.
Like many, I was exposed to climbing through a birthday party at a climbing gym I had a childhood friend. He and his dad were into climbing at this crag called Pilot Mountain that’s about thirty minutes from Winston-Salem. And so, I went out there and got to climb outside for a few times and just thought it was amazing.
But then, I became a teenager and got really sidetracked with the typical teenager stuff, and it got put on the back burner until I was in my early twenties. I was working at a restaurant and one of the bartenders there was super into climbing. He was this really gruff ex-Marine guy. And he kinda took me under this wing and showed me how to trad climb—‘cause a lot of the climbing in North Carolina, as you know, is gear.
(KK): Scary trad climbing.
(KT): Yeah, yeah, yeah! So, we started climbing at Moore’s Wall and I got really psyched after that.
(KK): Like most adults, teens are highly motivated to pursue the reward and avoid pain, but their decision-making skills are still limited. This affects their ability to accurately weigh risk and make good decisions—versus some of the really bad teen decisions you could make including, but not limited to:
(alternative music)
(MALE SINGER): Cut my life into pieces
This is my last resort
Suffocation
No breathing
Don't give a fuck if I cut my arm, bleeding
This is my last resort
(KK): —listening to “Last Resort" by Papa Roach because nobody understood you or would tell you you’re fine, tube tops, posting your mood to Live Journal, your AIM screen name, AIM away message, and, of course, your first AIM boyfriend. Oh, and body glitter. Like, so much body glitter.
This also includes decisions about drugs and alcohol.
(KT): Yeah, so I smoked marijuana for the first time when I was thirteen and tried alcohol around that exact same time. And from the very beginning, I just was really amazed that there was a chemical that you could put into your body that completely changed your psyche. And suddenly, I felt less anxious. I felt like I belonged more. I felt more comfortable in my own skin. And it was kind of a profound experience from the start.
And then, in high school is where things began to accelerate a little bit and I began experimenting with hallucinogens, which I also thought were incredibly cool. Having a psychedelic experience can be really, truly amazing and powerful and can be a learning experience that’s very meaningful.
And I went to a Magnet school during middle school and so, when I went to high school, all the kids in that district knew each other from kindergarten all the way through. And the way that I linked up with people was through smoking weed. And I hung out with the stoner musician kids and we would smoke a bowl and play guitar and sing together.
And at first, it was all very innocent and beautiful and naive but I ended up on a journey that I didn’t really sign up for, initially. But sometimes, life gives you unexpected turns and you just have to deal with it.
The problem is—some of the same people that you might buy pot from might also have cocaine, or they might have pills. And so, being in that world, I was exposed to cocaine and benzodiazepines, which are like Xanax, Valium, et cetera—and opioids. And by the time I was eighteen, I was so addicted to alcohol and cocaine that I went to my first in-patient treatment center.
And it was kind of a hybrid between my parents really wanting me to go and me admittedly realizing that this was not sustainable, and that I had a problem. And so, that was the first of six in-patient treatments that I went to from age eighteen to the last one I went to. I was twenty-seven or twenty-eight. So, it’s been a very long and tortuous journey, for sure.
For most people, it is like my story that you have a period of remittance, then you have a relapse. And then, you have a period of abstinence and then, you have a relapse. But each time, you learn different things and, hopefully, are able to take those things that you learned and build on that.
You know, kinda like every time you get injured climbing, you may have to take two or three months off and you might get weaker, in some ways. But I think we also get smarter in other ways and we learn how to train in ways that are more sustainable, and we learn how to respect our bodies and back off instead of doing just one last go when you’re already tired and thrashed at the end of the day. It’s very similar.
One thing that happened every time is once I started using again, I lost climbing and I quickly lost any job, any relationship, because most of the day was spent trying to find money to get what I needed to get to feel like I was ok.
And what I call the last stop on the train station is opioids, and that is the case for many people who struggle with addiction because opioids have such a pronounced withdrawal that is so painful and unpleasant that you get stuck in a cycle of:
You have to keep using because you’re simultaneously chasing pleasure. And, you know, we talked about the motivational system and it’s a double-edged sword with that. You’re chasing pleasure, but you’re also desperately avoiding pain because withdrawal is just heinous. It feels like pins and needles through your whole body, cold sweats.
But more than all of the physical symptoms, which are very unpleasant, is the psychological sense of dread and anxiety and fear—and knowing that you could fix it if you just had this one thing. Whereas, when you have the flu, you’re like, “Ok, I have the flu. It’s gonna take a few days. I just need to wait it out.”
There’s this kind of acceptance to that. But when you’re in withdrawal, you’re like, “I know I can fix this.” So, every day is kind of that chase. You feel like a hamster on a hamster wheel. It’s terribly painful, because all those wonderful things I just talked about—that climbing can enrich a person’s life with, I not only lost all those, but I also gained a world of problems.
Physically, I deteriorated and became skinny and emaciated. Mentally, I became erratic.
(pauses)
Emotionally, I became filled with fear. And then, spiritually, I felt empty inside. It’s a daily quest. Every day, a mission to go find the one thing that will make me feel ok—that is also killing me. The only thing that gave me connection was to have my drug and it was a fleeting connection that was not reciprocal. I gave up everything to have that and it gave me nothing in return, other than almost, death.
(KK): Relapse isn’t quite as simple as not having enough willpower. Addiction is physiologically hard to overcome because, over time, it overwhelms the brain’s control circuit by dulling its sensitivity to rewards like dopamine, while increasing expectation for more pleasure.
It’s important to know that relapse is as possible as it is common, however, claiming it’s a natural part of the recovery process suggests that they go hand in hand. Because relapse is a process rather than an “event”, knowing triggers, identifying solutions, and being willing to modify the plan are all ways to meet people where they’re at. Kyle was familiar with the experience, but his relapse last October was different.
(KT): I had about four years clean and during that time, I was able to get my bachelor’s degree from UNC Asheville, which, you know, in the despair of addiction, I thought to myself, “I’ll never do it. I’ll never be able to get a degree. I’ll never be able to get a real job. This is just my fate. Like, I’m just doomed to living this life of kind of squalor.”
But I was able to stay clean for four years, get a degree. During that time, I worked in a treatment center and I was able to help other people that were in recovery, and that was really meaningful work. It was really supportive of my recovery, because I was constantly in an environment where we were discussing topics related to recovery and addiction.
And also, giving back. I think that being of service is a really important part of recovery—and just life. But this most recent relapse was very different. I began drinking and I had this delusional thought that, somehow, since I had been abstaining for over four years that perhaps—and this is the danger of being too much of a nerd and a geek, is that you can contrive these bogus rationalizations that somehow:
“Oh, my neuro-circuitry has probably had enough opportunity to rewire and to heal and maybe I can establish a new relationship with this behavior.”
And at first, it was like that and I was like, “I’m cured! This is amazing.” I drank normally, quote, unquote, a few times where I would have a beer or two. But it’s so insidious the way that that will creep up because once I let my guard down and felt, “Oh, I’m normal now. I don’t have to worry about anything,” I wasn’t being vigilant. And so, I started drinking a little bit more and a little bit more—and a little bit more.
And then, the problem with alcohol—people call marijuana a gateway drug and I beg to differ. I think that alcohol is the ultimate gateway drug, not only to other drugs, but also to very bad decisions.
(laughs)
You know. And it’s amazing when you look at the statistics of people who are incarcerated and how many of them committed their crime while they were inebriated. It’s kind of staggering—but I digress.
(KK): And it’s legal.
(KT): And it’s legal!
(laughs)
Whoa! But anyway, so, when I would get drunk enough, I lost my inhibitions and I lost my ability to decide not to use hard drugs. And so, over the summer last year when I was in Ten Sleep—I mean, what? Am I going to go ask a cowboy if they know where I can get some cocaine or heroin or something?
(pauses)
Although, who knows! Maybe.
(laughs)
But the problem was, once I was in a place like Salt Lake City or passing through Denver, you know, you can go to any low SES neighborhood in an inner-city and just start talking to people or go to a homeless encampment and start talking to people, and find what it is that you think you want in that moment of time which, of course, isn’t what I actually want.
And so, I actually had an overdose that was near fatal and that happened on Halloween of last year. And what happened was, I was on the way to the Red to meet some good friends, and I stopped in Knoxville—almost against my own will. It was this bizarre experience of watching myself exit. Like, from a third-person perspective thinking, “What am I doing?”
Next thing I know, I’m under a bridge in a homeless encampment and I’m talking to people trying to find what I want—which is an opioid. And I found it. And using intravenous opioids was never safe to begin with, but in today’s landscape, most of it is being cut with fentanyl.
I don’t know if you’re familiar, but fentanyl is a fully synthetic opioid that is fifty to a hundred times more powerful than morphine. For someone who does not have a tolerance, one milligram is enough for a fatal overdose which is, I mean, we’re talking about grains of sand here.
And so, I used that night and I went unconscious in my car and was unconscious for about nine hours and my right glut was pinned against the car door long enough that it occluded the blood flow in the muscle, and so, the muscle began to die and those cells released myoglobin.
Myoglobin is actually toxic if it’s just released freely into your bloodstream. And so, it clogged up the nephrons in my kidneys, resulting in kidney failure. They called this process “rhabdomyolysis”. And so, I went to the ER, and sadly, you know with Covid, the hospitals are very, very busy. And I had to wait for about seven hours to get into a bed as I was slowly dying.
(KK): We’re gonna take a short break—so don’t go anywhere. Or…we’re a podcast. You can take us everywhere.
- Patagonia reintroduces “Clean climbing”: a philosophy that challenges us to ask ourselves, "What constitutes success?" From the commercial introduction of chocks in 1972 to cams in 1978, clean climbing meant that we could finally climb free. This was the beginning of modern climbing.
Yvon Chouinard and Tom Frost argued that this ethic of style over summit should also inspire climbers and mountaineers to restore our commitments: to each other, and to the planet we’re working to save.
Go deeper and check out the 2022 reflection on the state of clean climbing, “Bring Back Clean Climbing,” by Mailee Hung on the Patagonia website. Visit Patagonia.com/stories for more.
(KT): You know, I’m not a doctor, but I think that a lot of us who really value critical thinking and have a supercomputer in our pocket have the ability to do differential diagnosis and say, “Ok. This is what happened. These are the different things that it could be. What are my symptoms?”
And I just knew in my heart that if it was left untreated, it was going to be fatal. Luckily, they were able to save my life. I’m very fortunate for the medical staff. And I ended up being in that hospital for about seventeen days and have kidney dialysis.
And then, I had to continue having dialysis for another two to three weeks after my discharge on an outpatient basis. And thankfully, my kidneys resumed functioning and I’m ok now, and I haven’t used since then.
(pauses)
And it was a powerful experience.
(KK): Kyle’s relapse was after four years of continued abstinence, so it would be easy for him to be discouraged. But, as it turns out, it would be harder for him to just give up.
(KT): I have dealt with this for twenty years and it would be easy to throw in the towel and say, “Why bother?” I’m clearly a malfunctioning—
(laughs)
—I have a malfunctioning operating system. There’s too many bugs! We’ll never get a software update that’ll work! Might as well just throw in the towel. But I can’t! I love life, and I wanna be here. And I love the people in my life. I love climbing, and I want to become a PT and be able to give back. I want to—
(sighs)
—find purpose and meaning in my life, The fact is, addiction has taken from me having an ability to join society as a productive, working member. You know, I’ve had so many setbacks. Setback after setback, and there’s a lot of shame around that.
And when someone says, “Hey, what do you do for work?” You know, and you say, “Well, I actually almost just died four and a half months ago and I’m trying to get back on my feet right now.”
It’s really vulnerable to say that, even though I think a lot of people would be like, “Hey, man. Good for you. Way to fight this thing, tooth, and nail, and not just slowly slip away and fade into that good night.” But, alas. I’m here. I’m alive, and the fight goes on.
(laughs)
(KK): We would be remiss to not acknowledge some of the brutal conditioning that a majority of men have grown up with and how it’s contributed to a collective societal expectation that they need to be tough, they need to be successful, and brave.
The reason that we don’t see more masculine openness or tenderness isn’t that men lack the capacity. But the conditions haven’t always felt safe enough to honor their feelings in order to soften the armor.
So, how do we move past societal conditioning and start to heal from toxic gender roles and behavior? How can men step out of the frame of patriarchy, and how do we create space for them to feel safe enough to do so?
(KT): I feel like I’ve absorbed some of that conditioning that if a man doesn’t have productive, meaningful work—what’s he good for? I loved the show “Breaking Bad” and there’s a really beautiful exchange between Gus Fring and Walter White where Gus says to Walter,
“What does a man do, Walter? A man provides. A man provides for his family and he asks nothing in return.” You know? And so, for me, I’m like, “Oh! Well, I guess I am useless and have no value—
(laughs)
—according to that paradigm!
(KK): We fling around buzzwords like “toxic masculinity”, but that alone fails to create the much-needed space to address it. Studies show that if we removed the pressure we place on men to behave within certain masculine norms, sexual violence could be reduced by, at minimum, 69%, bullying and violence by 40%, and male suicide in the U.S. by 39%.
A lot of the old paradigms are changing, and we can see some of the impact and where we all have a role to play in creating a world where men feel safe to use their physical and emotional strength as much as they do for rock climbing.
(KT): I think the landscape is slowly shifting. I’m really happy that most of my male friends and I hug and most of my male friends and I say, “I love you”. The problem with that is that sometimes, it’s really easy to have two or three things that make it seem like the big picture has gone away.
And the fact is that I still have this deep sense of inner turmoil surrounding the fact that if I don’t have work, I don’t have worth. And I think that work is important, and I don’t want to take away from that. I think that having meaningful work is one of the most health-promoting things that an individual can have.
If you have work that is meaningful to you and fills you with a sense of purpose and passion and allows you to connect with community and allows you to feel like you’re making a difference and helping others—that’s so positively health-promoting!
But I think that it’s also important to give ourselves a break sometimes. I don’t think that in this point of time, there’s any reason for me to feel shame or guilt or to punish myself or be cruel or mean to myself—I’m doing the best that I can.
And we have to show ourselves some compassion when we’re trying to get back on our feet. And I think that it’s ok to say, “You know, Kyle. You’re doing alright today. You’re not a worthless piece of crap.”
(laughs lightly)
(KK): Internalized criticism partly comes from our need to constantly succeed, to be the best—and all outcomes influence our perception of self because of it. And it’s all good when we’re achieving, and everything’s an onsight. But that kind success isn’t linear. We’ve all been there. But what a game-changer it is when you do something as simple as being nice to you.
(KT): You know, I think there’s an awesome parallel there because sending is like a reward and then, all of the work behind the scenes is sort of like this process. And I think that what drugs are, essentially, is a human being striving to have the reward without the work. And when you separate those things, it’s really problematic.
It’s not possible to just be sending all the time—not at your limit. No one, even people who climb V15 and V16. And a lot of times, we don’t see the thirty days that that person put into working that problem. Chucking their chalk bag at the wall and screaming the F-bomb, and getting really close and then, botching the last move only to regress for the next three or four sessions.
The times where I’ve clipped the chains or topped a boulder that were the most satisfying were the times I had to work my butt off. And I think that, in the same vein, we live in a society that is so full of opportunities to be sold—“Here, you can have the reward without the work. Fast food! Scroll social media and get that—“
(snaps fingers)
“—bop-bop-bop-bop-bop.”
But, at the end of the day, you scroll social media for four or five hours, how do you feel afterwards? Do you feel uplifted and energetic and ready to go out and get it?
(laughs)
And all of these things can be ok, you know, in moderation. But we have to be careful because our motivational system is so vulnerable to being hijacked. And so, the more exposure that we have to fast food or to anything that tries to give you a reward without the work. I mean, it’s a slippery slope.
And so yeah, I think that the best way that we can arm ourself is try to be aware of our patterns and to be introspective and to see when things are working for us, and when they’re not.
(KK): Most people understand addiction when it comes to dependence on substances, but behavioral addictions can be problematic, as well. Introspection, in tandem with e
xperience, has allowed Kyle the ability to check in and moderate his activities for a better life balance.
(KT): We talk about the term “metacognition” in psychology, which is the idea of thinking about thinking. And what’s so funny about that is that can kind of go ad infinitum. You can think about thinking about thinking about thinking about—
(laughs)
—and that can actually spiral out of control and be neurotic, to a point. So, I think that my initial introspection was probably born a little bit out of a neurotic process of being sort of anxious and being a little bit paranoid. But I think that things that are born out of maladaptive processes can become adaptive, and we can sort of retool them and repurpose them and make it a great strength.
And I think a lot of us are really distracted in today’s world, and I think that that distraction can really impede our ability to really think deeply. And I think that’s why, for myself and for so many others, if we were asked to sit quietly and meditate for fifteen minutes, everyone’s like, “No—please don’t make me do it! I don’t wanna go in there!”
(laughs)
Instagram has been incredibly successful capitalizing on our compulsive addiction to affirmation, and I have to check myself because sometimes, you can just be at the whim of the algorithm and your post just might not get that much visibility and you might get half the number of likes that you anticipated for a shot that you spent hours editing, that is one of your most proud shots you’ve ever taken.
And then, you just kinda have to stomach that and say, “You know what? I really love this shot.” But if I have a really successful post, that feeling—it only lasts for a fleeting moment until I’m like, “I gotta come up with a new post!” So, I think that we would be really smart to be wary of the dangers of social media and to not just sort of blindly participate in a way that isn’t conscious.
Social media can be beautiful, and I can’t tell you how many times that I’ve been able to find a place to stay or people to have dinner with, you know, et cetera. It’s a wonderful tool for connection, but it can also be sad sometimes when we start to really lose our ability to pay attention.
It’s like, we used to write letters to each other. We used to read the newspaper—and those things are very slow. And then, it was T.V. and now it’s Instagram and DMs. You know, and again, there’s that relationship between the timeliness of the process and the reward.
And it’s just like, we keep distilling our attention span down and the problem with technology is that you adopt it or you become obsolete. And I think a lot of people refuse to participate in social media. It’s like, yeah you might have some peace of mind, but you’re also gonna be at social events where everybody is talking about certain things that you have no idea what’s going on. Inevitably, you’ll probably feel left out.
And so, there’s always that opportunity cost, and I think it’s really hard to choose wisely because, like you said, we live in a world of half-truths. Because now, you look at reels, and it’s what everybody wants to do on Instagram. Reels, where it’s just like—
(slaps hands repeatedly)
—wham, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam—peace! And so, for those people that are spilling out really heart-felt things, how many people are gonna read that paragraph? Or even a sentence? There’s a lot at stake, right? I mean, we’re losing our ability to talk to one another—to really talk to one another, to have conversation.
So, it’s tough. But interestingly, I think that podcasts are actually one of the few ways that we have left to really have an audience for a message that takes more than a sentence or two. And it’s probably only because climbers spend a lot of time in the car driving—
(laughs)
—and they want something to listen to. ‘Cause they can’t scroll while driving! That’s the only reason!
(KK): You shouldn’t scroll while you’re driving, folks!
(KT): Yeah, PSA.
(KK): In a pre-selfie era, I think that we used to move a lot slower. Maybe we paid more attention. Maybe we had more time. It’s hard to measure something like time when life gets distilled down to fifteen seconds of visuals and trendy hip hop music. And while TikTok’s whipped coffee and upbeat dances gave us hope and distraction during quarantine, there’s still a line between overuse and abuse of technology—and how we choose to utilize it.
Social media, in 2022, has become more polarizing than I think any of us could have imagined. Humans have a mechanism built into our neurons that allow us to empathize with others and to have immediate, genuine emotional responses when we have conversation, face-to-face.
Mirror neurons respond in accordance to others when we see them expressing an emotion. Because we’re actually wired to see people as similar to us, rather than different. We’re wired for connection. And while we may have taken the internet and turned it into the largest web of connections, we’re losing something in comment threads and forums and doom scrolls and Instagram reels.
Empathy is our highest capacity—the vicarious experience through another’s thoughts, feelings, stories, and words. And stories give us someplace to go—to rest and feel held. At the root, all humans are looking for some connection. We’re biologically, cognitively, physically, and spiritually wired to belong—and that’s especially true in a digitally-engaged world.
Connection isn’t just an exchange of information. It’s been said that it’s an exchange of humanity, and it fundamentally can’t work if we’re trying to be something that we’re not.
(KT): I agree with you entirely, and I think that it’s really difficult to pay attention—at least, for the duration, you know, that we can like we’re doing right now, face-to-face. Because it’s just a flat, two-dimensional screen with a bunch of grainy renderings of humans. It’s not that compelling, whereas, like you said, when you look into someone’s eyes and you’re occupying physical space with that person, they’re three-dimensional.
And obviously, when the sound is transmitted it eventually becomes three-dimensional on the other side, but it’s not the same as being in a live environment, hearing the sound, occupy that physical space. It’s different.
And you know, as we’re talking about all of these things, I think it’s important to recognize and communicate to a listening audience that myself and I’m sure, you Kathy, are guilty of all the different things that we’ve been talking about. And in no way are we trying to be like, “Oh, we’re so cool. We never scroll Instagram—“
(both laugh)
“—or anything!” Like, “Oh yeah I’m so balanced!”
You know? But at the same time, that again, you know, we’ve talked a lot about fine lines here and we’ve talked a lot about balance and about moderation and about how just about any behavior or stimulus can go from well-adapted and functional to maladaptive and dysfunctional. And I think we probably all struggle with that.
(KK): Um, no—Kyle. I’ve obviously evolved to a higher plane where I’m impervious to the toxicity and deliberate awfulness and capitalism of social media. Ok, ok. I lied, that’s not true. But I did install a one-hour daily reminder to GTFO Instagram and go be a person in the world—
(exhales)
—it’s been really nice. If you haven’t already done it, I highly recommend.
On the one hand, sharing stories and pictures of life allows us to interact with communities outside of our own. And it does give people a platform during a time when we need to hear more diverse voices than ever before. But, with the good that social media has the potential to bring, also comes the bad.
We’re all a little burnt out from scrolling, and yet, so many of us remain subscribed. We make sure that stories get packaged up in the shiniest wrapping to appeal to the masses. Sometimes, we play the algorithm game—even though we know we’ll lose. Little by little, we’re hypnotized by shallow, toxic culture that radiates from image-based social media apps because it’s addictive by design.
We owe it to ourselves to take breaks, step back, unplug, and create boundaries for ourselves. Scroll for good news—or, don’t scroll at all today. Be intentional with checking your phone—because rest assured, it will all be there the next morning.
And when you wake up in the morning, the checkmark by your name, the thumbnail, the perfect and most eloquent of captions still won’t matter as much as your mental well-being and the people you love. At the end of the day, how we live our lives is more important than how we say we live our lives on a screen.
(KT): A lot of the ways that I diffuse my anxiety socially is by trying to make other people laugh. Because if I make other people laugh and feel comfortable, then it makes me feel more comfortable. And the fact is, is that I don’t get the refuge of alcohol or drugs anymore—they’re life-threatening for me. And so, I have to find other ways to deal with that.
You know, I tried a lot of sports in my life, mostly in the outdoor adventure sport category. I used to ski a lot, I worked a couple of winter seasons in Mammoth California, and loved that—I loved skiing. I also mountain biked for a long time, cross-country style. I am amazed at the people that do downhill. It just seems crazy to just be willing to break all your ribs!
(laughs)
But anyway, those sports were amazing, but when I found climbing, I just was so blown away by how it seems to satisfy so many different fundamental human needs and that became sort of the premise for the idea of Inner Peak Training. Because climbing, for me, satisfies me emotionally because you’re dealing with fear—you’re learning how to manage fear.
And it’s not just fear of heights or fear of falling; it’s also fear of failure and fear of inadequacy, which are really deeply rooted in the human psyche. Learning to work through that is such an amazing process of self-development.
And the mental and intellectual component, I think, is incredible because it’s problem-solving. You know, “Hey if I oppose this side pull with my foot in this particular vector, then I’m gonna feel stable in this position and be able to do this move.” That’s so cool.
And then, in the physical realm, we develop strength, power, and endurance, and I think that a lot of climbers had the experience of going from, maybe not being that psyched on the way that they look or the way that their body feels and then, finding climbing and suddenly being very confident and feeling like, “I feel really strong in my body. I feel really fit. I feel really capable—and I feel beautiful.” And I think all those things are amazing.
And the word spiritual is very loaded and when I say spiritual, I just refer to a feeling of deep connection. And on the spiritual side of things, I think for a lot of people, climbing is a way to connect with nature and be in beautiful outdoor spaces. And it’s also a way to connect with this feeling of being in a flow state.
I don’t know about you, but when I’m on a hard onsight or a hard redpoint, I just feel nothing but the present moment. I feel nothing but my breath, my skin against my rock, the breeze in the air, hopefully, if there is one.
(laughs)
And I think that that flow state is amazing because I know that for myself, my mind is often so cluttered and filled with different thoughts that I don’t even feel like I author. You know? Worried about this, worried about that. I’m like, “Who is even thinking this? I’m not even choosing these thoughts!”
And so, when you’re in that present moment, it’s just beautiful and can be very liberating. And then, there’s the social connectivity in which we touched on earlier. You feel like you can go anywhere and just have a ready-made group of friends.
It’s kind of like the idea, I’m sure you’ve heard the metaphor of a three-legged stool. If you remove a leg, it falls over. And I think humans, we have a lot more legs than that. We have our social, our intellectual element, our spiritual element, our emotional element, our physical element.
And I think that we have to be mindful about nourishing ourselves in all those ways because when we’re well, we can be there for others and help other people be well.
(KK): Kyle can’t turn back time—none of us can. We’re not even sure that if we had that kind of power, we’d do anything differently at all. Because, one, hindsight. And we also don’t live in a parallel universe—we don’t get to play the “what if” game in life.
But—what if you could tell your younger self, not necessarily what to avoid, but rather, what there is to look forward to? What the future ahead could look like, if you just knew to hold fast through the hard parts.
(KT): First of all, I would tell thirteen-year-old Kyle that he is enough and that he is lovable and that he is worthy, exactly the way that he is. And then, that he doesn’t have to do anything or say anything or be funny or be smart or be something to be worthy of love.
I would say that you have to look forward to a beautifully mixed bag of pain and pleasure, joy and suffering, ups and downs that if you are able to sit with those experiences rather than flee from them, will help you to become a kinder, gentler, more loving person that feels ok, and feels comfortable in my own skin.
De-stigmatizing mental health and substance abuse is important, not just for people in that community, but also for everyone, as a whole. And I think there’s several arguments for that, one being that almost everyone is touched by mental health or addiction, in some way. It is incredibly unlikely that any human being doesn’t have a friend or family member, at least one, that struggles with depression, anxiety, alcoholism—you name it.
And when we’re able to support each other as individuals, it makes us better as a whole, as a collective society. I think that if we neglect the unhoused, if we neglect the people that suffer from mental health and substance use problems, which, by the way, those two populations are very co-occurring.
If we neglect the downtrodden, the poor, then I think that we’re reduced to our lowest common denominator and—
(pauses)
—I don’t think that we’re able to truly thrive.
(KK): You’re listening to For the Love of Climbing Podcast. A huge thank you to deuter, one of the leading backpack brands that will help you hit the trails with confidence and comfort. And a big thank you to Gnarly Nutrition for supporting this podcast and the messages that we share. Gnarly Nutrition supports a community of vulnerability and equality—and tastes like a milkshake, without all the crap. A big shout out to Allez Outdoor for supporting the Access Fund and 1% for the Planet. And to Ocún—innovative gear engineered for climbing to improve your performance.
And thanks to Patagonia. Not bound by convention, Patagonia is in business to save our home planet. Support companies who support this podcast—we couldn’t do it without them. If you liked what you heard, you can leave a review on iTunes or give us a like—like all good things, you can find us on the internet.
Additional Resources, and Credible Organizations and Websites:
Support Hotlines + Resources
National Suicide Prevention Hotline
24/7 hotline, staffed by trained individuals, for those in suicidal crisis or emotional distress
Crisis hotline: 800-273-TALK (8255); 888-628-9454 (en español)
SAMHSA’s National Helpline is a free, confidential, 24/7, 365-day-a-year treatment referral and information service (in English and Spanish) for individuals and families facing mental and/or substance use disorders.
SAMHSA’s National Helpline, 1-800-662-HELP (4357) (also known as the Treatment Referral Routing Service), or TTY: 1-800-487-4889 is a confidential, free, 24-hour-a-day, 365-day-a-year, information service, in English and Spanish, for individuals and family members facing mental and/or substance use disorders. This service provides referrals to local treatment facilities, support groups, and community-based organizations.
Behavioral Health Treatment Services Locator
The Behavioral Health Treatment Services Locator is a confidential and anonymous source of information for persons seeking treatment facilities in the United States or U.S. Territories for substance use/addiction and/or mental health problems.
Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine - Substance Use Resources For Adolescents and Young Adults
YOUTH-FRIENDLY SUBSTANCE USE ONLINE RESOURCES
Kelty Mental Health Resource Centre | Resources are available on this website for youth and teens about substance use, including in-depth information on various substances and concurrent disorders, as well as steps to seek help.
Partnership for Drug-Free Kids | This website works to reduce substance abuse among adolescents by supporting families and engaging with teens.
Truth Campaign | This campaign provides information and uses videos and social media to engage youth in taking action against tobacco and tobacco companies.
Your Room | This website offers information about alcohol and a wide range of drugs, their effects, withdrawal, and how to get help for yourself or for anyone else who needs it.
SUBSTANCE USE RESOURCE INSTITUTES
National Council on Alcohol and Drug Dependence | This informational website provides support to those who need assistance confronting the diseases of alcoholism and drug dependence
National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism | NIAAA supports and conducts research on the impact of alcohol use on human health and wellbeing. They provide resources directed toward young people to evaluate your drinking and tools to stay in control.
NIDA for Teens | NIDA provides a wealth of knowledge and resources including easy-to-read guides about various drugs. Their website for adolescents includes videos, blog posts, and drug facts.
TREATMENT SERVICE LOCATORS
Behavioral Health Treatment Services Locator | Find treatment facilities for substance abuse/addiction and/or mental health problems.
Buprenorphine Treatment Physician Locator | Find physicians authorized to treat opioid dependency with buprenorphine by state.
Opioid Treatment Program Directory | Search opioid treatment programs by state.
Sober Nation Treatment Locator | An extensive directory of recovery centers.
SUPPORT GROUPS
Al-Anon Family for Teens | A group for problem drinkers who can find understanding and support through group meetings, podcasts, and other resources.
Alcohol Anonymous | The AA website can help young people find AA meetings near them and has brochures directed at young people.
Narcotics Anonymous | The NA website can help young people find NA meetings near them and has resources including brochures for young addicts.
Smart Recovery | SMART Recovery is a leading self-empowering addiction recovery support group. The website provides resources for teens and youth support programs, meeting locations, and an online community.
HELPLINES
Crisis Call Center: Visit http://crisiscallcenter.org/, call 1-800-273-8255, or text “ANSWER” to 839863
Crisis Text Line: Visit www.crisistextline.org/ or text “START” to 741-741
Additional Resources:
Change your language to help fight addiction stigma | Words shape how we view people and how we treat them.
Stigma of Addiction | Advocacy - Hazelden Betty Ford | The Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation is committed to smashing the stigma of addiction to drugs and alcohol to eliminate shame and change public opinion.
Reducing the Stigma of Addiction - Johns Hopkins Medicine
End Opioid Addiction - There Is Hope for Recovery | If you or someone you know is struggling, recovery is possible and help is available. Help end the opioid overdose epidemic. Visit the CDC Rx website to learn more.