Note: Transcripts may contain errors. If you wish to re-use all, or part of, a transcript, please contact CBC for permission. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. Copyright © CBC 2018

The Current Transcript for December 21, 2018

Host: Piya Chattopadhyay

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

PIYA CHATTOPADHYAY: I am Piya Chattopadhyay and this is the Friday edition of The Current.

Back To Top »

Meet the man who travelled the world to thank the 1,000 people who made his morning coffee

Guests: A.J. Jacobs, Jeremy David Engels

SOUNDCLIP

You've got to live in the space of gratitude. That is my number one spiritual practice. I practice being grateful. I ran across this beautiful quote the other day. I can't even remember who it was from that said, "Do not waste your time desiring what other people have. Remember the things that you now have are things you once only the hoped for". So I live in that space, every day.

PC: That is the grand dame of self-improvement, Oprah Winfrey, extolling the virtues of gratitude during a commencement speech a couple of years ago. And Oprah's hardly alone these days; the Internet and bookstores are full of advice on how to be more grateful especially at this time of year when it's easy to get caught up in the materialism of the holidays. In fact if you browse online, there are dozens of different gratitude journals available for purchase - anyone see the irony there. Earlier this year a study out of California actually made a connection between expressing thanks and developing better eating habits. Another study showed that teens who kept a gratitude journal for two weeks, ended up less materialistic and more charitable than those who didn't. Still, it is not always easy to focus on the positive. American Author A.J. Jacobs says gratitude, it doesn't come naturally to him. Lately he's been going to great lengths to make it a regular part of his routine. Jacobs is the author of a number of books chronicling his efforts to change his own life by embarking on challenging adventures. You might remember his Year of Living Biblically when he tried to follow the literal advice in the Bible for an entire year. A.J. Jacob's Latest book is called Thanks a Thousand: A Gratitude Journey and A.J. Jacobs is in our New York City studio. Hello.

A.J. JACOBS: Hello. Thank you of course for having me on.

PC: Thank you for being with us. Tell me first why doesn't gratitude come easily to you?

A.J. JACOBS: Well I think we all have in our brain the two sides. I call them the Larry David side and the Mr. Rogers side and they are constantly at war. And I think I was born with a very strong Larry David side, the cynical sort of pessimistic side. But I had read all those studies you mentioned about how gratitude is the key to happiness. So I thought I would try to start this gratitude practice and a couple of years ago I started before meals. I started to say a prayer of thanksgiving, although prayer is kind of the wrong word because I am not religious. So instead of thanking God I would try to thank all the people who helped make my food a reality. Thank the tomato farmer and thank the woman who sold me the tomatoes. My son has said to me that's fine Dad but that's also lame because you know not thanking this person and they are not here. They can't hear you. So he suggested I thank them in person. And that set me off on the journey that became this book.

PC: And the journey is not about thanking the tomato farmer. It's about something else. So tell us what it's about.

A.J. JACOBS: I decide to focus on coffee because I love it. I consider it a necessity. And I went around the world and thanked every person I could who had even the smallest role in making my morning cup of coffee reality. So I thank the barista, the farmer, but there's hundreds, thousands of others. People that we take for granted. The truck driver, the logo designer, the person who who paved the road so the truck could bring my coffee beans to my cafe. So I kind of went why. I kind of went six degrees of gratitude and just went on a gratitude frenzy.

PC: And I'm going to ask you about some of those people who you gave thanks to. But just before we get to this, I mean you admit in the book that the idea is kind of absurd on one level; trying to get everyone involved in your coffee. But as you say you're doing it to kind of explore a larger issue or - as it's sometimes described these days - a movement, the gratitude movement. What were you hoping broadly to get out of this experiment?

A.J. JACOBS: Well I was hoping to train my brain to notice the hundreds of things that go right every day instead of the three or four that go wrong. Because I think I- and I think all humans are born with a negative bias. You know if you hear 100 compliments and a single insult what do you remember? At least I remember the insult. And there were evolutionary reasons for this. When you're on the savannah, you want to be aware of the lion. But it's not really a great way to go through life. So I was trying to retrain my brain to focus on the hundreds of things that I usually take for granted.

PC: You know it's interesting that you say that because you know when you go home at the end of the day and someone tells 'you how was your day', you usually tell them about the negative 'traffic was bad'. 'Oh someone did this to me at work today'. You might get around to 'it wasn't bad', but you generally don't list. Like you know 'I had a great day' and stop there, generally us, as humans.

A.J. JACOBS: You don't say 'oh I press the elevator button and it arrived in two seconds'. You never say that but that's something to be thankful for.

PC: Okay so in your coffee journey, I imagine the first person that you one would think of where the person is the person who serves my coffee, my barista which you mentioned. So is that who you thanked first?

A.J. JACOBS: Right. I started with my barista. I live in New York City , and her name is Chung and thank you again, Chung. And I thanked her and she thanked me for thanking her. And I was tempted to continue that but I cut it off. I didn't want to go into an infinite loop of gratitude. And I asked her what's it like to be a barrister. It's not an easy job. I mean you're meeting people in a very dangerous state which is pre- caffeination. So she rarely gets thanked. And by the way she would never do this but I do. I hear that some barristers if you're rude to them will give you decaf coffee. Oh well there's - that spites. So there is a reason, a selfish reason, to be nice to them. But she would never do that. She told me the hardest part is when people don't even treat her like a human. They just treat her like a vending machine or a kiosk, hand in their credit card without even looking up from their phones. And it reminded me that taking those two seconds to just look someone in the eye, acknowledge they are human, is so important. It's so easy and small but it has such a big impact on both you and the person you're dealing with. Because we are wired to interact with humans face to face is.

PC: It seems so obvious: treat humans like humans. Be kind and respectful of people you come across in your daily life.

A.J. JACOBS: It seems so simple and yes I realized when she was describing this I had done that hundreds of times, where ideas don't even look at the person I am dealing with.

PC: I often and have been guilty of this and try not to order the coffee with my headphones and kind of half look up and say 'I'd like my whatever coffee' and then look back down at my phone. Going to change my behavior. Then you meet a man named Doug Fleming. So tell me about Doug Fleming and what you learned from him about gratitude.

A.J. JACOBS: Yes. This was one of my favorite conversations. I ended up thinking a thousand people, either in person or by email or phone. Doug Fleming was the guy who designed my coffee cup lid, which I had given absolutely no thought to before but I loved talking to him because he was so passionate about it. You know he was like an artist and describing how he wanted to make my drinking experience-- 'A bad lead can ruin your coffee by blocking the aroma'. So he made the opening for the nose much bigger and he designed it so you could really burrow your nose in. He talked about the shape of the mouth opening that he had to get special tools, from Canada by the way, so thank you Canada your one for helping with my lid and my drinking experience. But I loved it because it did reinforce a bigger point which is that there are hundreds of things. There are these little masterpieces all around us that we take for granted. And I was just looking at my lamp on my desk which chairs an on off switch, with a little indentation for my thumb, that perfectly fits my thumb. And just noticing these little things helps with an emotion that's related to gratitude, I think which is awe and a wonder.

PC: You not only delve into that the cup, the outer party your coffee, the actual coffee, the water that was used to make coffee, right?

PC: Yes.

PC: You gave thanks for the water. Who'd you give thanks to?

A.J. JACOBS: Yes. I mean the coffee is 98.8 percent Water. So I live in New York so I went upstate where our reservoirs are thanked the hundreds of people who helped make the water possible. And there are scientists and people who wade out in the cold to test the water. There are people who go around and pick up the deer poop around the reservoir so that it doesn't wash in. You know it made me realize, I told my kids, you know there's that old cliché about half full or half empty water. But maybe that's the wrong way to look at it. Maybe we should just be amazed that we can turn our tap and turn a little knob and get drinkable water. That's not available. That hasn't been available 99 percent of human history and is still not available to billions of people.

PC: So as you say, A.J. Jacobs, you ended up thinking about a thousand people who were involved in your morning jabba, some in person, some via email or a thank you notes. I'm curious what happened on the are end? Like was everyone just grateful for you for showing them your gratitude?

A.J. JACOBS: Well it was interesting I had a range of responses. So you did have some people who were like, 'What's going on? Is this a pyramid scheme? Where are you trying to sell?' But delightly the majority were actually grateful to be thanked. I called the woman who does pest control for the coffee beans for the warehouse where the coffee beans are stored. And I said I know this is a little odd but I want to thank you for keeping the insects out of my coffee, and she said, "Well that is a little odd but thank you. You know I don’t get a lot of positive feedback. Thank you for making my day". Which in turn made my day.

PC: This is gratitude loop.

A.J. JACOBS: Yes that’s the positive feedback loop that you want that gratitude should be a good experience for both, it should be a two way street.

PC: And the Larry David inside of my brain is kicking in with this question yes. Does everyone involved in your coffee actually deserve your gratitude? So if you think of the coffee industry has been criticised for unfair conditions for farmers and for causing environmental problems.

A.J. JACOBS: Right.

PC: Gratitude, no gratitude?

A.J. JACOBS: Well it is a great question and one I struggle with and I have two thoughts on that. First, one of the really hard moments was when I had to thank the CEO of Axion because my coffee is driven in cars that use their gasoline and trucks they use. So I don’t know what to do because I do believe the oil companies are helping to destroy our world. So I sent him the most passive aggressive thank you note in history, where I said, "I thank you for the gas that brings my coffee to me. I love coffee and I want to be able to drink it in 20 years which is not going to happen if the environment is destroyed. So please consider alternative fuels. But thank you".

PC: The response?

A.J. JACOBS: Shockingly no response. But then the other question, yes, you bring up there is exploitation. Whenever you dive into the supply chain, you're going to see that capitalism - which I am for overall - has an ugly side and there is exploitation and suffering and that really was something I struggled with. One thing that occurred to me is that gratitude does not have to equal complacency. Just because you’re thinking people doesn't mean you have to be satisfied with the status quo, which I think is a fear. There is a very interesting op ed in The New York Times a few years ago. Barbara Ehrenreich wrote she thought the gratitude industry the sort of a right wing plot so that Wal-Mart employees would be grateful for their low pay. And it's an interesting point. I don’t agree with it totally because I think the research shows, there have been studies that when you are grateful you are actually more pro social. You want to fix things. You want to pay things forward. And I found this from a personal level. Realizing how lucky I am to get water inspired me to get involved with a wonderful charity that provides safe water dispensers for developing countries. And I'm not expecting a Nobel, but it proved to me that are not mutually exclusive. That gratitude does not have to mean 'oh everything's wonderful'. You can be grateful and want to improve the world.

PC: This is an A.J. Jacobs just speaking. You talked to researchers who study this thing. So what does the science say, because you delved into this, about the psychological benefits of gratitude?

A.J. JACOBS: Right. And just you know in general I am a skeptical of a single studies. So I can say this is for sure. But there does seem to be some research that says when you are grateful you are more likely to be pro social. There is a very interesting study. I won't go into too much detail, but basically when people had a favor done to them - someone helped fix their crashed computer - then they were more likely to help a stranger. And I thought that was a lovely finding because you do want to pay forward. Gratitude should not be a selfish, it's not all about oh I want to feel good. I want to feel better about myself.

PC: I want to get back to one more thing about the coffee experiment. You got on plane. You went to Columbia. You thank the farmers who actually grow the beans.

A.J. JACOBS: Yes yes that was one of the most interesting parts. It was a small town in Columbia and it was actually terrified because I was driven along these mountain cliffs side roads. And every time we went around a hairpin turn the driver would do the sign of the cross and I knew what that meant. I would say, in my mind, 'Thank you for that, but can you do the sign of the cross while keeping your hands on the wheel?' But we got there safely and I thanked the farmers. It's a small farm eight brothers and one sister, fair-trade and all that. They were a little baffled I think at the beginning I think. I explained it and they sort of got into the spirit and talked about how they were thankful for all of the people who made their job possible. For instance they picked the coffee fruits. Coffee is grown in these little red grape, like grape tomatoes, and you have to squish them with a machine and that machine was made in Brazil. So they talked about how it doesn't just take a village to make a cup of coffee. It takes the world higher. There so much that goes into it.

PC: Here is a thing sometimes with gratitude, it is a comparative analysis. In other words I say one thankful for what I have because I don't have it as bad as A.J. Jacobs. So is it really a noble emotion to just feel like you’re better off than the next guy and thank goodness for that.

A.J. JACOBS: That is a wonderful question. Thank you for asking. Well I think it has.

PC: This is getting old, my friend.

[Laughter]

A.J. JACOBS: I will not be thanking you again for the rest-- I was just using that to stall so that I can come up with an answer. I would say that it doesn't have to be comparative. You can be grateful for the hundreds of good things that happen without glorying in the fact that other people have it worse. One strategy I do is just take a minute every day and try to be grateful for, try to notice the hundreds of things that go right. Like I said, you press the elevator button and it comes. You get in the elevator doesn't fall to the basement and break your pelvis. You know these are remarkable facts.

PC: The fact that that thought goes through your brain when you go into an elevator, that this might plummet. Chances are it's going to go up.

A.J. JACOBS: I told you my Larry David side is strong.

PC: Fair enough. I got about a minute left and then I got to let it go. So what did you conclude about the value of gratitude? Like what's your big take away, other than saying thanks repeatedly to people?

A.J. JACOBS: Well I would say there are several but one that it's important to cite are negative bias because it takes discipline. And one ritual - I'll just give one last ritual that really I find helpful - when going to sleep, instead of worrying about what I'm going to do the next day or what mistakes I made, I try to list all the things I am grateful for, alphabetically. That's the key. You have them structured. So, A, I could be thankful for the apple pancakes my kids made. B, I can be thankful for Barry the TV show on HBO which I love. So it doesn't have to be big things. I rarely make it as I am usually asleep by F or G. So I think that's the big takeaway for me is have these practices because it doesn't come naturally. And one Benedictine Monk that I quote says, "Happiness does not lead to gratitude. Gratitude leads to happiness". And I found that in my own life.

PC: Well you have served me right up. I am going to start with my A and say thank you A.J. Jacobs for talking to me about gratitude.

A.J. JACOBS: Well thank you. I am leary of thanking you because you told me I over thanked.

PC: Thank you for thanking me.

A.J. JACOBS: There you go.

PC: Take good care.

A.J. JACOBS: Thank you, you too, Piya.

PC: A.J. Jacobs latest Book is called Thanks a Thousand: A Gratitude Journey. We reached him in New York City.

[Music: Theme]

PC: Well we just heard about A.J. Jacobs' long and winding journey of gratitude. And that feeling of giving thanks really is everywhere at this time of year, even in this message for U.S. president Donald Trump's 2020 re-election campaign.

SOUNDCLIP

This is Brad Parscale, Campaign manager for President Trump. President Trump has achieved more during his time in his office than any President in history. And that is why I need every Trump supporter to pick up the phone right now and deliver a personal thank you to your president. We have a booming economy, historic low unemployment, including the lowest unemployment rate for minorities in history. We're bringing jobs back to America through new trade deals, and the world is a safer place. We need to let President Trump know that we appreciate what he's doing for America. I need you to call the number on your screen and deliver a thank you to President Trump. Call, or go online now.

PC: Well it is really is a message for the U.S. presence re-election campaign and it is just one more example of gratitude being exalted in our culture today. But what if gratitude can leave people feeling more indebted than appreciate. Jeremy David Engels is the author of The Art of Gratitude. He is also an associate professor of communications and arts and sciences at the Pennsylvania State University. We've reached him in Wichita, Kansas. Hello.

JEREMY DAVID ENGELS: Hello.

PC: What got you thinking about how gratitude can feel a whole lot like indebtedness?

JEREMY DAVID ENGELS: Yes. I grew up in I think probably one of the most friendly places in the world, the American Midwest. That's really a place of 'please and thank you'. And so I think gratitude in a lot of ways is in my bones. But in my academic research I'm really interested in how people express their emotions and how they use language to control their emotions and control the emotions of others. And when you think about it, the language of gratitude - which is the language that I grew up speaking and so many others grew up speaking - it is really fascinating but at times it's actually quite troubling. So I was thinking about-- I loved A.J.'s interview and I'm very much part of that gratitude movement, but when you think about how people actually express their gratitude, the phrasing, it's really interesting. So you know a lot of times when people do something nice for us, they give a gift, it's customary to say 'I owe you a debt of gratitude'.

PC: Ha, as an exchange.

JEREMY DAVID ENGELS: Yes. And we have a number of phrases you know that are similar. So we say 'one good turn deserves another' or you know 'tit for tat' or something like that. And when we talk like, this gratitude that's so wonderful, this gratitude of appreciation, what A.J. was speaking about, what I think is so important certainly during the holiday season becomes something like a transaction. It's like I give so that you will give back to me in return.

PC: So someone brought me a beer the other day and I said thanks. And I said I'll get you next time or, I owe you a beer. So it's that simple where you said it's a transaction. Like I'm not just saying thank you for buying me a drink. And that's where my brain stops. I've trained to myself to say I have to give you something back because you did something nice for me and I said thanks.

JEREMY DAVID ENGELS: Yes. What's really interesting is going back to the foundations of Western civilization, philosophers like Aristotle and Cicero and Seneca, imagined gratitude in exactly that way, as a synonym for indebtedness. So many of the writers who were preaching this gratitude doctrine today talk about gratitude as the kind of debt that we incur during daily life. And one of the most surprising examples I found in my research, a very very popular book about gratitude that talks about keeping a gratitude journal, which is a practice that so many people are doing today. But his author said we should keep a gratitude journal like we keep our check book registry. So during the day, you should think of every nice thing that everyone does for you and you should write it down. Then at the end of the day, you should go over that list and meditate on how you're going to repay everyone. That's your gratitude meditation.

PC: I want to talk to you about so many things. So we're going to push through a little bit of a little quicker than I would like, to but here we go. There are all kinds of studies showing that gratitude is good for your well-being, mental health, physical health. I mean do you rebut that or what do you make of that kind of evidence?

JEREMY DAVID ENGELS: I think those studies are really interesting when we come to the low level of language. What language of gratitude are the scholars using in their experiments? So are they testing something like a kind of gratitude appreciation or are they testing this gratitude as indebtedness? And one thing that's interesting to me about a lot of these studies is that they're so often based on a kind of conspiracy and logic. And so I'm asked to feel better about how I am to feel grateful about how I am by comparing myself to someone else. And you spoke about this a little bit in the last interview. And I think that that comparison logic which is implicit in many of these studies is problematic because we become invested in someone else actually having less than us. And if they get something more then that becomes a threat to us. And so some of the individual wellbeing that's being promoted - I think that we see in these studies - it might promote individual wellbeing for a time but I think that it's actually quite bad for society as a whole.

PC: Ha okay let's put this in some particular context. What happens when this attitude of gratitude, as in debt, and this move from the interpersonal level - the beer exchange example - up to the political one. And if you can give me an example that would probably be helpful.

JEREMY DAVID ENGELS: Of course. I think on an inter-personal level thinking of our relationships as economic transactions, that's problematic enough. But on a political level it's really scary because gratitude can be so easily weaponized. And so an example I used in my book is during 2007 early in the year President Bush was talking about the war in Iraq, a war that was not going well at the time he was pushing for troop increases. He argued in a national speech that Iraqis owe Americans a huge debt of gratitude for what we had done in Iraq. What's interesting about that phrasing is that it turns out the war into a gift. And so this is actually a gift that Americans gave to Iraqis, but it was a gift that came with some very large strings attached. In response, President Bush was saying that Iraqis owed Americans thanks. They owed us gratitude but they also owed a return gift. So just like you know I'll get your beer next time. President Bush was saying Iraqis owe something. And what do they owe us? They owe us obedience. They owe us complacency. They are doing what they're told, stop protesting, be quiet. In that message President Bush was not just talking to Iraqis, he was also talking to Americans. It was a message of 'be grateful for what the government does for you and be quiet'.

PC: Okay I'm glad you're talking about that example because I want to play a bit of tape for you and it's related. Last year this show, The Current, spoke with Dina Nyeri who as a child arriving state as a refugee from Iran. So I want you to hear some of what she had to say about gratitude.

JEREMY DAVID ENGELS: Sure.

SOUNDCLIP

That's a really healthy emotion and it's a very natural one and one that I felt a lot in my first year you know even beyond. But I think that in my own experience was that gratitude quickly came to be expected. It came to be expected in individual interactions with people who really had very little to do with accepting us. It started to be that the way Refugees and Immigrants are expected to interact with natives and that felt very problematic for me. So I think it's hard for me not to hear that in the repetition of the word, in relation to these people who have been displaced and their lives have been turned upside down, and what they need is so much support and so much help and love and to be welcomed and to be thought of a neighbor, not someone who should be grateful.

PC: Jeremy David Engle's what do you think when you hear that?

JEREMY DAVID ENGELS: That's really powerful, really powerful. And I think that what she's gesturing to is this weight of gratitude, this sense that somehow by doing something nice for her as a refugee, in turn she owed something to everyone around her. And that sense of owning becomes really burdensome after a time. And it sounds like she was calling for what I call for in my book, a sense of camaraderie, a sense of we're all in this together, that we're in monad bouncing through space, that we are collaborating in life. So it seems like less gratitude as indebtedness and more gratitude appreciation. And I think that's why the language of gratitude is so important.

PC: I want to ask you about one more thing. This is a comparison context, right? So for example you might hear, "I'm so grateful to be in Canada instead of the United States" just by example. No offense.

JEREMY DAVID ENGELS: Is that something you all say?

PC: No it isn't. Some people do, well you know preach their own. What do you make of that kind of gratitude when it's turned into a comparison or, "you really lucky to live in Canada it's not as racist as the United States". So you hear those kinds of things. So what do you make of those kinds of comparisons?

JEREMY DAVID ENGELS: I think anytime gratitude becomes about comparison, there is the chance that we become invested in maintaining unequal relationships with someone else. Because if we're so grateful we live in Canada because that's not the United States, then it's good that the United States stays in the condition it's in, because then we can continue to feel better off than another. When in fact I think actually our duty is to raise everyone up so that everyone is well off. So I think that's one thing to be aware of in situations like that.

PC: There is a connection between gratefulness and superiority.

JEREMY DAVID ENGELS: Exactly, yes. Superiority and hierarchy and scarcity I think. But I think that's also a kind of fragile gratitude because if my gratitude as dependent upon your state and your state changes, then my gratitude will change as well. So can gratitude instead be more solid and based on my own state as opposed to a comparison to you.

PC: I got 40 seconds left with you. Are there ways to think about gratitude that removes it from these transactional terms?

JEREMY DAVID ENGELS: I think the gratitude movement should stop using the language of debt and should stop thinking in terms of comparison. And instead think more about shared experiences that we have together. And so what is it that we appreciate amd how does it connect to others. And I think of doing that, especially during this time of year, but in general, I think it cuts off a lot of the bad aspects of gratitude that are really quite frightening in the political realm.

PC: Jeremy David Engels, thank you, sincerely, appreciate your time.

JEREMY DAVID ENGELS: Thank you so much for having me on.

PC: Jeremy David Engles is a rhetorical scholar and the author of The Art of Gratitude. He's in Wichita, Kansas.

Back To Top »

A dying man left 14 gifts for his neighbour's young daughter — one a year until her 16th birthday

Guest: Owen Williams

PC: Hi I'm Piya Chattopadhyay and this is the Friday edition of the client.

[Music: Theme]

PC: We do have one more story about gratitude to bring you today and it comes to us from across the ocean in Barry, Wales. That's where Owen Williams lives and this season he's found himself extremely grateful for his next door neighbor, Ken Watson. I should actually say that Mr. Watson was his next door neighbour. Ken Watson passed away earlier this year. And so you can imagine Owen Williams' surprise when he received a Christmas present from his late next door neighbour, and quite a present it was. Owen Williams is with us today from Cardiff. Hello.

OWEN WILLIAMS: Good morning, Piya. How are you today?

PC: I'm okay. Ken Watson's daughter, she's an adult, showed up on your doorstep recently. What did she bring you?

OWEN WILLIAMS: She did and she was clutching-- The doorbell rang on on Monday night late and we just sat down to dinner and I got up and answered the door. And as she was standing there clutching what looked like a trash bag. I just put two and two together and got 18 and just assumed that she wanted me to throw some trash away for her. And I thought, yes I can do that for you. And she said, "These are all the gifts my dad put away for Cadi - our daughter - for the next few years" and you could have knocked me down with a feather at that point, because how does one respond to something like that on a rainy Monday night near Christmas. And I took the bag into the kitchen. I placed it on the counter and my wife was on face time with her mum in Ireland at the time. I started to open this bag and my wife said, "What's that?" And I said it's all the gifts Ken put away for the next few years for Cadi and you know she started to tear up now. I got a lump in my throat. Her mother was on Face Time going, "What's going on?" And I started pulling these gifts out of this trash bag. Well it wasn't a trash bag. It was just a large black plastic bag. And I started pulling these gifts out and there were 14 gifts. And it was like - you remember the first Mary Poppins movie - it was like pulling constantly just pulling more and more things out of this bag. It was just unreal, unreal.

PC: So let me get this right. Your next door neighbor, who passed away earlier this year - before obviously he passed away - he borrowed a bunch of presents for your daughter for her to unwrap this Christmas?

OWEN WILLIAMS: That's my belief. Let me-- if I can take a moment of your time, let me just frame Ken Watson for you, because I think that's really important for this story.

PC: Please do.

OWEN WILLIAMS: So when my wife and I moved to Barry, three years ago in September of 2015, we took a bottle of wine to the neighbors to sort of say hello and ingratiate themselves into the locale. And I don’t think Ken was in at the time. So the following day I heard this banging outside and Ken had erected scaffold up the front of his house to do some work on the underside of his roofline, and there was this elderly man and he was about 83 at the time, an elderly man in navy blue sort of old coveralls, overalls, standing at the very top of this 20 foot tall ladder. And he used the ladder to pogo hop between one section of scaffold and the other. Now imagine like waggly coyote atop of an enormous pogo stick, bouncing the ladder across the ground 20 foot below. That was the first time I met him and you know I was gobsmacked. It was just the most bizarre crazy daredevil thing I'd ever seen. But this was a man to whom risk was no object. He'd been a salvage, a marine salvage diving, diving in some of those dangerous waters in the world to try and rescue what was left of ships, and in conditions where you couldn't see your hand in front of your face and feeling around for wreckage. So health and safety didn't mean anything to him at all and neither - it turned out - did the rules. Because my dog came out to say hello to him, and he said, "Could I give your dog a chocolate? A chocolate cookie, a chocolate biscuit?" And I said, "Well no chocolate is poisonous to dogs". So he ignored me completely and gave the dog a biscuit anyway. And my dog fell madly and passionately in love with him at that point. He was crazy about him.

PC: He is, as you say, he was a daredevil. Like he wind walked on a plane right? He was out there right?

OWEN WILLIAMS: So two years ago he wind walked for his birthday on a bike plane just because he missed his wife and wanted to alleviate boredom. And that's perhaps the sign of a man you know.

PC: And so he left these presents for your daughter, Cadi is her name, how old is she?

OWEN WILLIAMS: She's two and a half now.

PC: She's two and a half. So Ken was around for her first couple of birthdays anyway. Has he ever given her a Christmas present before?

OWEN WILLIAMS: Yes he had. So her very first she was about six months old, her first Christmas in 2016. And she turned up at the door with an enormous package, this enormous wrapped package, and inside was this four foot tall psychedelic stripy lion doll with about gangly arms. It was four times as big as Cadi at the time and it is called an Elvis, it's by a famous toy company. My wife and I and our baby were down in the local toy store, your lovely little independent toy store down there just on the hill from us, and we were in the toy store three weeks later. There was an Elvis in the window and I said to the lady in the shop, "Oh our elderly neighbors just bought one of those for my daughter for Christmas" and she said, "Oh it's an elderly neighbor- does he have glasses and a bald head? Ken?" I said, "Yes. That's the one". You know that was very strange "How would you know?" And she said, "Yes. He's bought all of them for all your neighbours children".

PC: Oh wow.

OWEN WILLIAMS: She couldn't stock the shop fast enough because he kept on buying them whenever she had one in. She had one in the window an order for him. So it just goes to show he planned ahead. So people have said to me I've had many many many many thousands and thousands of Twitter messages and emails and phone calls all over the world and people asking me how do I know not all 14 gifts for her this Christmas, and all I can say to that is one - for the last two years, he's only ever given her one Christmas gift and one birthday gift and also the Elvis story just makes me think that he was just someone who planned ahead. So he just planned ahead.

PC: So he's left 14 gifts with no explanation to say, look one of these-- all these are for this year, for 2018 ,or you should use one of these every year. You've got to figure that out.

OWEN WILLIAMS: No there's no explanation. Although his son Ian did give an interview to a major daily newspaper here and he said that he knew he'd been putting the way for Cadi. So that's all I know. That's all I can tell you. But it's been quite an emotional week in many respects, mostly because I haven't slept because I’ve had so many phone calls, but also it's a very emotional story.

PC: There are all wrapped, these gifts?

OWEN WILLIAMS: They're all wrapped with the exception of one. My wife's curiosity got the better of it, she unwrapped the side of one book just to take a look. It's this beautiful hardback olive green book called Christmas Eve with the Mellipses. It's a translation of a German book by a chap named Tomi Ungerer and his team saw the tweets and was so thrilled that they've offered to sign, for Tomi, to sign the book for me and my next door neighbors and Ken's children as well which is just so sweet.

PC: I want to know more about Ken because he wasn't like your kind of regular next door neighbor. I assume you two and your family formed quite a bond with him. I am asking you that because I want to try and understand what you think Ken's motivation might have been to leave all these for cadi?

OWEN WILLIAMS: I think it was just one of those-- He didn't have grandchildren. So there was an affinity for the children in the streets. But we looked out for him and he looked out for us, and we take parcels for him, and we had a key to his house just in case. He had suffered from arthritis later in life and he said to me once, "Look I'm going to give you leave you with a key, just in case you don't see me for a few days. Come in and check because I just want to be safe than sorry", and I thought okay I can do that for you. So we always keep to key to his house and. And no we just generally need looked out for him and made sure he was okay and made sure when the winter was coming around that he was warm enough and you know he could come in at any time and have a cup of tea or a cup of coffee or something. And you know we thought an awful lot of him. He'd lived an extraordinary life. He'd been a chef. He'd been a master [unintelligible]. He'd been in the Air Force. He'd been a baker. You'd owned a bakery, a family bakery in Cardiff. He baked his own wedding cake for goodness sakes. So you didn't suffer fools gladly. He'd been an election convener and a campaigner for the local Member of Parliament. He really did live a rather extraordinary life. I'm so please in a way that I get to mention some of this. Quite a few people have said to me this sounds like the beginning of a Christmas movie, and I must confess reading through the tweets and reading through the reaction, it's starting to feel like there's a bit of Hollywood sparkle about all of this. It's very strange.

PC: Hmm. I'm not a [unintelligible] person. You're making me tear up here my friend's.

OWEN WILLIAMS: I'm so sorry. Do you know you're not the first hardened embittered jounralist I've spoken to who has teared up on the phone?

[Laughter]

PC: I'm not hardened and embittered, but I take the point. Well let me then end this way. I mean what is the bigger thing you want us all to think about? I mean as you say this week's emotional, opening the gifts from Ken, when Cadi does over the years will always - I assume - be emotional for all of you. What do you want us to think about when we think about you when Ken in this story?

OWEN WILLIAMS: Well well just to say, if I may, I have had someone's response to the Twitter poll that I put out, 67000 people responded, put up for 24 hours. I couldn't quite believe that.

PC: Saying what? What was the question?

OWEN WILLIAMS: So the question 'Should reading unwrap them and rewrap them just to get age appropriate gifts for Cadi, or should we just have a lucky dip until 2032, when she'd be 16? Should we just do that?' And people wanted us - 69 percent of the of the 67000 people who voted. And I've had a few messages asking me how people can vote now, even though the vote is closed. They can't. We're going to abide by that and we are going to open one every year. And as long as Twitter is still a thing I'm going to add and those photos to the thread. But in terms of in terms of something we've learnt- I mean for my take what's been quite revealing to me is the number of people who have said quite quite genuinely, 'That's so lovely to have that relationship with your neighbour. I don't even know my neighbours'. And I genuinely think that's a sort of indictment on society nowadays I think and that makes me quite sad you know, that people don’t know the neighbours. Because your family and your friends, of course they'll always be there, and you can’t choose your family but you choose your friends and they will always be there. But they won't physically always be there. They won't literally be next door or upstairs are over the road or in the apartment below you or across the street or around the block. These are the people who in an emergency would wrap you up in warm blankets to put you safely. These are the people who will lend you a cup of sugar or milk for your baby if the baby’s crying and won't to settle. These are the people who are literally always there. And I would say to anyone who’s listening: at Christmas time there is no find the time to meet someone you've never met before and say hi and to say I live over, here as a small token for Christmas and lovely meet you with whomever else. I think that if you can't do that at Christmas, you can't do it any other time of year. So people should meet their neighbours. It's so important.

PC: Well if Ken's house is up for sale, I might become your next door neighbor my friend. You sound just like...

OWEN WILLIAMS: It could well be.

PC: Owen thank you and Merry Christmas to you and your wife and Cadi.

OWEN WILLIAMS: Merry Christmas. And as we say over here 'nadolig llawen'. Merry Christmas.

PC: Thank you. Bye bye.

OWEN WILLIAMS: Bye bye now.

PC: Owen Williams joined us from Cardiff, Wales.

Back To Top »

Mixing pot and sex? Make communication a priority, says sexologist

Guests: Darren Roberts

PC: I'm Piya Chattopadhyay and you're listening to The Friday edition of the Current. The legalization of pot has been one of the biggest storylines of the year here in Canada and, like all good storylines, there's a little romance involved.

SOUNDCLIP

SPEAKER: The pros of being with someone who smokes is I rarely smoke alone. My girlfriend and I take turns rolling joints and buying weed. And sometimes, we’ll smoke when we have sex.

SPEAKER TWO: I've had relationships where weed was not as positive. I've dated people who smoked way too much weed. In past relationships, it's been sort of a situation where I'll go over to my partner's house, and he's stoned, and just wants to watch dumb videos on the Internet. It's just a bummer of a time.

SPEAKER THREE: My boyfriend and I are really lucky that we both have pretty similar weed habits and comfort levels. It feels like just another thing we do together — like eating food or drinking.

SPEAKER FOUR: I love having a partner I can smoke with. Pot is such a big part of my mental health and self-care practices that it feels a little alienating if my partner can't join in with me. When I was dating people who didn't smoke up, it was always a little sad for me because it's one of the ways we have quality time. You know get stoned, eat lots of food, get high, and [censored].

PC: Well, those were comments from some real cannabis consumers, who posted online about their experiences with marijuana and relationships. Of course, it can become an issue — positive or negative — for people in relationships. We're going to explore those dynamics and more with guests, including a sexologist who says more and more couples are inviting cannabis into the bedroom. My first guest is someone who helps marijuana lovers find love. Darren Roberts is the CEO and co-founder of High There, a dating app known as the Tinder for tokers. We have reached him in Boca Raton, Florida. Hello.

DARREN ROBERTS: Hi. Good morning, Piya. Thanks for having me.

PC: Why in the world do people need a dating app for people who use cannabis? Why do we need that?

DR: You know just as one of the interviews just stated, you know there is stigma historically that's been so associated with cannabis consumption. And there's been a lot of experience too is where people start to date, and one of the partners consumes, the other doesn't — maybe a little bit too much or not. So right off the bat by creating a platform where you come in and everyone is some form of you know pro-cannabis or consumer, you know it's something that you have in common, and that's part of your lifestyle. And that was really lacking in the marketplace for the cannabis consumer.

PC: I want to play a bit of tape for you. This is Sean Berragin and Vanessa Lyn Mercier. They are Prince Edward Island couple who regularly use cannabis together, but it didn't start out that way. Take a listen.

SOUNDCLIP

SEAN BERRAGIN: I first tried cannabis when I was 15, and have been a fairly regular almost daily user since then. And like Vanessa thought in the early stage of thought that it controlled, and she had a very stigmatized opinion cannabis use. And I don't think she really liked it that much.

VANESSA LYN MERCIER: So he kind of introduced me to it. I did not consume cannabis before meeting Sean. It was just this whole thing that I think it was more ignorance than anything. Like I thought that he had burned brain cells. I thought that it made you lazy. I think that I just didn't have a good education enough. And just I hadn’t been around people who consumed cannabis.

PC: Darren Roberts, that sort of stigma that anyone who uses cannabis is sort of this lazy pothead sits on the couch it's very real, as you know, in both pop culture and in some people's own minds. Have you heard about that stigma that Vanessa was describing there? To what extent do people say that's why I don’t want to be in a relationship with someone who smokes dope?

DR: Yeah, you know I think it has a different effect on a lot of different individuals without question. You know there is that sort of stereotype. And sometimes, depending on the environment, you know that's really where people tend to gravitate. But you know we have members of our community that you know are doctors, lawyers, entrepreneurs that actually enjoy cannabis as a stimulus as well. And not only socialize, but are able to in their daily lives you know continue to go and to excel. So I think it's also a combination of just sort of experience. You know she mentioned in that piece as well that you know there is a level of just sort of ignorance and not knowing. And just like anything else I think if you open yourself up a little bit it can have an effect on individuals in a different way, and sort of educate them you know to sort of get rid of that stigma that's been associated with quote/unquote “the typical stoner”, which is far from what a cannabis consumer is.

PC: OK. By the way, your thing is called. High There it's H.I.G.H. — High. So like how does it work? Swipe left if I like edibles? Swipe right if I like to smoke? Like what do I do?

DR: Yeah. So when people download the app, it will ask some questions about your location. So first and foremost, we want people to be able to connect on a local level. But, at the same time, you can communicate with people globally. It asks a little bit about your consumption preferences, what you do like. But it also, cannabis consumers are you know individuals that also have interests in culture and food and fitness. So we really want to try and get to know you as well so we can match you with common people. And then yes, it's swipe. We have significant updates and changes coming to the platform because we've also found from our community, not only are people interested in dating, but also establishing friendships, and seeing where that takes them. And you know we've been fortunate we've had multiple marriages, and thousands upon thousands of relationships, and some really good friendships that have been established as well.

PC: You’re an American app maker. Is your app popular here in Canada?

DR: You know, actually, we haven't really up until now really moved forward in targeting and getting involved in Canada. We're super excited right now with the legalization in what cannabis is doing for Canada. We actually have about 7 per cent of our user base, if you will, our community, is in Canada. So we're really excited to expand on that and bring more really cool features and a good platform to the country.

PC: I'm curious though now that it is legal here, and arguably the stigma will deteriorate with that. Will Canadian cannabis users still need an app for dating?

DR: Yeah, I think so. Just because legalization is taking place, you know it doesn't necessarily mean that people are comfortable and/or ready just to walk out their front door and say hey, I'm a cannabis consumer. I think being in an environment that you know you do have like-minded people that can sort of relate to. I think a stigma and judgment you know although will you know decrease significantly over time it's not something necessarily that happens immediately. And this type of platform keeps you in an environment where you know you might not be connected to your colleagues at work as much, or your bosses, or other people in your lives where you can have a little bit more of an anonymity that does not necessarily exist in some of the other social platforms.

PC: I guess the question now, especially now that it is legal here, is like I don't think that there's a dating app that exists for people who like beer or wine, and that is the baseline of which you're going to meet someone romantically. So why do we need one for cannabis beyond the stigma?

DR: It's just you know beer and wine you know have been around for decades upon decades, and it's socially acceptable. Here, you know cannabis still… and I envision even despite the legalization for a very you know in the near future as well will really be necessary for people to really relate and to talk about. It's really part of a lifestyle that you know just historically has been looked on because the legalization is something that's sort of taboo and profiled. And really right now also with education and people using cannabis for multiple reasons, whether it's medically, or recreationally, it's an area where they want to talk about. It’s very topical. And it can be very, very specific about people's individual interests. You know as well as you know learning more about the plant and all the effects that it has on people and how they enjoy it.

PC: Do you think mixing love and cannabis is a good thing romantically speaking?

DR: I do. You know I think cannabis creates an opportunity for people to sort of relax, enjoy themselves. Any time people enjoy it get a little bit more comfortable you know that always helps you know whatever that may be, whether it's cannabis, or whatever. It always gives people a level of more comfort to open up more and be more relaxed, which when it comes to you know you know sex and relaxation, I think you know everyone understands how important those to go together.

PC: Darren Roberts, thank you. Darren Roberts is the CEO and co-founder of High There, it is a dating app for cannabis users. We reached him in Boca Raton, Florida.

SOUNDCLIP

SPEAKER ONE: Well, have you ever made love high?

SPEAKER TWO: Me? No, you know if I have grass or alcohol or anything I get unbearably wonderful. I don't know why you have to get high every time we make love?

SPEAKER ONE: It relaxes me.

SPEAKER TWO: You have to be artificially relaxed before we can go to bed?

SPEAKER ONE: I need grass.

SPEAKER TWO: Well, it ruins it for me if you have grass because you know I'm like a comedian, so if I get a laugh from a person who's high it doesn't count, you know? Because they're always laughing.

PC: Well, that is a classic scene from “Annie Hall”, the 1977 film starring Woody Allen and Diane Keaton. Diane Keaton's character says she needs a little grass before making love, even if it is a downer for her boyfriend. Annie Hall isn't alone in considering marijuana as an aphrodisiac. For more on that particular aspect of how the drug works, we're joined by Carlen Costa. She's a clinical sexologist and relationship psychotherapist. She is currently traveling across Canada with a cannabis company geared toward women. And she is in our London, Ontario studio today. Hello.

CARLEN COSTA: Hi, good morning.

PC: That scene from Annie Hall how common is this woman wanting to get high before having sex?

CC: Very common actually. It's a question I think I get asked at every one of the summits that we've been hosting across the country.

PC: Huh. And you know Annie Hall’s romantic partner is uncomfortable with the idea of her having to be artificially relaxed before they get romantic. What would you say to real life men who feel the same way?

CC: Well, sex and weed has always created contradictory claims regarding the effect, right? But when you find that one of the partners is feeling it into their ego about whether or not the other person needs to relax a little bit in order to be intimate with you that's really what they're talking about and they're feeding into is that ego — that personality that you know I need you to be present so that I can be aroused.

PC: What are the issues that arise if you're already in a relationship with a partner who hasn't used cannabis before? What is your advice, and how do you introduce that, especially now that it is legal?

CC: Well, I think you know kind of the rule about cannabis use and introduction is low and slow is the way to go. So whether you are a cannabis consumer currently, or you are trying to introduce that into your relationship, it's about first of all having that conversation, right? Communication is the key to a really positive relationship. So if you can introduce it slowly, and talk about how it helps you, how it supports you and how it will help increase your desire, pleasure and arouseability then you know that's a great place to start.

PC: So not necessarily a deal breaker if one partner smokes and the other doesn't?

CC: No, definitely not necessarily a deal breaker.

PC: So you're on tour with Van der Pop, A Canadian cannabis company specifically targeting women, speaking about cannabis and sexual health. So you know you talked about the pros. Do you talk about the cons of the two things going together?

CC: Definitely we talk about the pros and the cons. Now, I'm speaking to two women primarily across the country because as some of you may know, cannabis is a female plant. And I like to say that cannabis was created for women. And there are contradictory claims for both men and women that are dose-dependent onto the impact on our sexual performance, on our arousability, how we respond, how we enjoy sex and sexuality. And I actually see based on research more negative impact on men than on women. It actually has become more positive for women and the expression of their sensuality.

PC: OK, I'm glad you brought that up because I want to make a clip of Michael Eisenberg who is a urologist and director of male reproductive medicine and surgery at Stanford University. Last year, in 2017, he did a study. It was published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine. And it is one of the largest studies ever conducted on marijuana use and sex. Take a listen to what he had to say.

SOUNDCLIP

MICHAEL EISENBERG: What we found was that there was a positive association. In other words, the more marijuana use reported, the more sexual frequency that was also reported. There could be some biologic link. It's possible that the chemicals in marijuana may actually improve sexual function. You know another possibility is there could be sort of a confounded relationship. In other words, people that use marijuana or even report using marijuana may be more of a disinhibited. And they may just naturally engage in more sex. I think it's certainly possible that marijuana could have a used therapeutically. As we learn more about its potential risks as well as benefits, I think that certainly the study suggests that maybe sexual function can be one of those avenues.

PC: OK, Carlen Costa, he's saying you know good for the men as well. What have you seen in your practice — you're a sexologist — while working with couples who are using cannabis in the bedroom?

CC: Well, I'm actually glad that you brought up that study. I was just refreshing my thoughts on it this morning. And that study actually said that there is a positive link between cannabis and sex. And actually, a 15 to 20 per cent increase in sex frequency for cannabis users, which is a pretty good I'd say, right Piya? But when I'm speaking with my clients, you know I talk about what they're comfortable with. And I discuss you know what their usage was Up until this point, and what it is how they’d like to explore going into the future.

PC: So you know we started with a clip of Annie Hall, and talking about you know cannabis the aphrodisiac. Is cannabis an aphrodisiac?

CC: Well, I think the definition of aphrodisiac can be kind of contradictory, whether it actually has a physiological response or psychological response. Aphrodisiac tend to have one or the other, or both. But in terms of being able to fully express or accept our sensuality in terms of increasing our relaxation, decreasing our pain that we're feeling in our body. Because many women especially feel pain due to due to sexual penetration, right? It increases our connection and our presence. And it also slows down our time perception. So it allows us to get out of our heads and back into our bodies, whether you are a man or a woman.

PC: Carlen Costa, thank you for your time as well. I do appreciate it.

CC: Thank you.

PC: Carlen Costa is a clinical sexologist and relationship psychotherapist. She was at our studio in London, Ontario. Well, we have heard a lot about the benefits of mixing cannabis and romance, but it's not a positive combination for everyone who tries it.

SOUNDCLIP

SPEAKER: You know it started off on college as freshmen whatever on the weekends, had fun. And you know it slowly became something I used in situations I kind of didn't want to be in. Like if I had to go do something I didn’t want to do, or I mean I'd like to be high because if I was high I always felt happy. And you know then I met someone I really, really liked. And I know people are like it doesn't make you make bad decisions you know if you're on drugs. But you know what? It does — at least for me it does. Because every time that I would get high I was not the same person — not at all. It was all about me. And that's when I made bad decisions. And you know I had a you know that’s when I ruined a perfect relationship.

PC: That was Ryan Bonville, from New York. Sharing the story of how marijuana ended up costing him a relationship. It's a topic that Jonathan Bertram has spent time working on. Jonathan Bertram is an addiction physician at CAMH — the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. And we reached him today in Bomanville, Ontario. Hello to you.

JONATHAN BERTAM: hi, Piya.

PC: What issues have you seen in your practice when it comes to people's cannabis consumption?

JB: Well, the people I see for cannabis use are usually coming forward because they want help with some with changing their cannabis use. And when they come for an appointment, we're trying to identify whether their use is problematic, whether it fits into an addiction category. And in many of those situations, whether it's problematic on its own without there necessarily being an addiction, or if there is in fact a diagnosable use disorder, which is the more official term for cannabis addiction that meets certain criteria. They do complain of problems with their relationships. But those two things aren't equivocal.

PC: You said if their use is problematic. I want to ask you about this about addiction in marijuana. There is a myth that you can't addicted to marijuana. Is that true or not?

JB: So it's true. It is a myth. A substance like marijuana has addictive potential. And you know speaking generally about addictive substances you know all substances carry with them the risk for addiction. That does not mean that, and if we're talking about cannabis, that a person who uses cannabis is going to get addicted. There are a lot of other factors that go into developing an addiction to cannabis, and for that matter any substance. And those are circumstantial, they're historical and obviously that plays a part when it comes to deciding if that's going to have an impact on your relationship, or already is having an impact.

PC: OK. You know we’re 0 plus 1 in terms of cannabis legalization in our country. There are lots of aspects to talk about this — the good things and the bad things. But as we're focusing on relationships today, I want you to take a listen to this. These are some couples chronicling their experience smoking up a little before going on a blind date together, which is you know most often a nervous experience. But they say we're smoking up or using marijuana to ease their nerves.

SOUNDCLIP

SPEAKER ONE: Are you as nervous as I am?

SPEAKER TWO: A little, yeah. I'm like waiting for the weed to get smoked and kicking.

SPEAKER ONE: My name Chi.

PC: All right, Jonathan Bertram. You know people going out on blind dates or dating, nervous before they go. But what comes to mind for you when you hear about people using marijuana to reduce anxiety before going on those kinds of dates, or in romantic relationships?

JB: I hear people report that to me quite often. It's not exclusive to marijuana. There are a lot of other substances that either people will use generally or in some cases they might have a unique response to it, and so it's quite common to hear people talk about using something that will help them be less anxious so that they can either you know handle a first date well, or manage that encounter well, or just put their best foot forward. So these all sound like benefits that a person is identifying. And this very much falls in line with the time line for a person using the substance. That's at the start they use it for their benefits. In some cases, those benefits remain. And there is a sustainable relationship. We're talking about the relationship between the person and the substance I mean. And in some cases, it becomes unsustainable because in many situations those benefits fade. And that applies to cannabis as well.

PC: Yeah, using marijuana's coping strategy in other words?

JB: For one.

PC: OK. How can people know if they veered into dangerous territory with cannabis, either in a relationship or alone? What are the signs you’re kind of asking yourself like is this a problem, or is this helping with my anxiousness or anxiety in the dating world?

JB: Great question. And I think a good one for discussion because it involves some objective pieces. Not always the easiest to put into practice when a person is trying to monitor themselves. But I think valuable nonetheless. Some of the things that we look at when a person's coming to us and kind of telling us their story with cannabis use, and for that matter any other substance, is it interfering with my personal relationships? Is interfering with my professional relationships? So much when I think back, is my use of my substance, in this case cannabis, getting in the way of my being able to keep up and fulfill obligations to people, and professional contacts, and for that matter school as well in my life? Am I trying to change my use either in response to those problems? Or you know just for my own motivation for different reasons. And in trying to change my use, am I not able to? And have I stopped or reduced my use in the past, but not been able to sustain that? Those are those are some of the sort of perceptual challenges that we talk about. And then more objective things are do I notice physically changes to myself if I stop using or I reduce significantly? So you know some basic things like am I sweating more, am I getting noxious? Or am I vomiting more? Am I more anxious in the mornings if I didn't smoke the night before and I didn’t smoke that morning?

PC: OK. We're going to have to leave it there. Jonathan Bertram, thank you for your time.

JB: Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

PC: That was my conversation with Jonathan Bertram. He is an addiction physician at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in October. We reached him in Oshawa, Ontario... this past October. That's our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for Q. Today, the musical duo of Melissa McClelland and Luke Doucet, known as Whitehorse,will be on the show to perform from their new holiday album. And remember, you can always take The Current with you to go on the CBC Radio app. It lets you browse through past episodes of our show and start listening in just a few seconds. You can search for stories you missed or want to hear again, or listen LIVE to your local CBC station, right from your smartphone or tablet, hear the day's top stories, even make your own playlist of your favourite stuff to listen to later. It's free from the App Store or Google Play. Finally today, after our fulsome conversations about gratitude and intimacy, let's end things off today with a song that touches on both topics. This is Sam and Dave, with "I Thank You," from 1968. I'm Piya Chattoapdhyay. Thanks for listening to the Friday Edition of The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

[Song: I Thank You by Sam and Dave]

Back To Top »

Provide Transcript Feedback

CBC would like to acknowledge the support of the Broadcasting Accessibility Fund.

Full Transcript for Friday December 21, 2018

More Stories Like This