Dear Friends,
This week I interviewed Carl Honoré, the journalist who started the International Slow Movement. What Carl told me about how people behave when you take their cell phones away matches what I saw in my years treating chemical dependence, a.k.a. addiction.
Take away someone’s phone, Carl said, and the body reacts the way it does coming off some drugs. Increased heart rate, sweaty palms, anxiety. He used the word addiction and meant it. During my sixty-five-year career (and counting), chemical dependence was one of my specialties, and I am quite familiar with the various forms of withdrawal. Carl’s description of what he calls addiction falls squarely within the parameters of chemical-dependence withdrawal.
Addiction means slavery, and we have made ourselves slaves to busyness and speed. Carl calls the rushing a kind of hiding.
A busy, fast life full of distraction and stimulation and over-caffeination is a form of denial. It’s a way of running away from ourselves.
We reach for the phone when the hard questions come close. Who am I? Am I living the right life, or moving too fast to ask? Socrates said the good life is the examined one. The feed is easier to face than that.
I have watched variations of the same story in my office for decades. The drink, the drug, and now the device. We hand the inside of our lives to something that takes the discomfort away for an hour, and then it demands more.
We tell ourselves the speed makes us productive. Carl says it does the opposite:
“Multitasking is not humanly possible. What you’re actually doing when you multitask is you’re toggling.”
Hand the same work to a fast multitasker and to someone who does one thing at a time, and the multitasker makes up to twice the mistakes and takes up to twice as long. The slow way is the accurate one.
The cost reaches past our work. Carl pointed to research that loneliness harms the body as much as smoking fifteen cigarettes a day. That landed hard, because connection has been the theme of my whole working life. We are tribal animals. We heal in each other’s company and sicken alone. The rush pulls us away from the people who keep us well.
Carl does not want us to throw our phones in the river. He loves speed when speed fits. He objects to living the whole day in fast forward:
“In a world addicted to speed, slowness is a superpower.”
The young are leading the way back. Carl spoke in Paris to a hundred people, all under thirty-five, who read real books together for five hours without once reaching for a phone. They have a game they call stacking: everyone piles their phones on the table, and whoever grabs theirs first buys the round for everyone. They invented it themselves, because they can feel what being always on costs them.
Today’s Practice: Notice 3 new things.
A simple thing to take with you from this week’s conversation.
Tomorrow morning, before you pick up the phone, leave it in another room and step outside for ten minutes. Drink your coffee. Look at something green. Take off your shoes and stand on the grass if you can.
You will feel the pull. Your hand reaches for the phone the way it once reached for a cigarette. Notice it, and let it pass. Try it for a few mornings, and write back to tell me what you found on the other side of the pull.
Golden light,
Dr. Richard Louis Miller
Show notes
In this episode — Carl Honoré, the journalist whose 2004 book In Praise of Slow named the global Slow Movement, returns with the thesis sharpened. He and Richard work through what “slow” actually means, why busyness has become a measurable chemical addiction, the myth of multitasking, loneliness as a mortality risk, the acceleration that precedes burnout, and the four prescriptions any of us can start today.
Guest: Carl Honoré — journalist and author of In Praise of Slow (2004), Under Pressure (2008), The Slow Fix (2013), and Bolder (2018). His TED talk has more than 3 million views. He writes Tempo on Substack. More at carlhonore.com.
Chapters
[00:00] The case for connection
[02:34] What slow is, and what it isn’t
[04:28] The cost of a speed-driven culture
[07:31] Where the drive to speed comes from
[12:29] Busyness as addiction
[15:59] The digital detox
[19:12] What young people are getting right
[27:21] The multitasking myth
[30:09] Loneliness, longevity, and connection
[34:22] Burnout and the last burst of speed
[42:20] Carl’s four prescriptions
[51:58] Two quotes to close
Moments worth the timestamp
[02:34] What slow really is.
I often say, in a world addicted to speed, slowness is a superpower. — Carl Honoré
Slow is doing one thing at the speed it deserves — what musicians call tempo giusto. Not as fast as possible, but as well as possible.
[12:29] Busyness as addiction.
When you take away people’s phones, they have the same reaction as heroin addicts do when you take away their fix. Elevated heart rate, sweaty palms, deep anxiety. — Carl Honoré
Note: “same as heroin” is rhetorical compression. The research shows symptomatically similar physiological activation, not clinical equivalence; the underlying finding (phone-separation anxiety) is real. Foundational paper: Clayton, Leshner & Almond, 2015, JCMC.
[27:21] The multitasking myth.
Multitasking is not humanly possible. What you’re actually doing when you multitask is you’re toggling. The fast multitasker will make up to twice as many mistakes and will take up to twice as long. — Carl Honoré
The “2×” is the upper bound of the task-switching literature (Rubinstein, Meyer & Evans, 2001), fair as a public claim.
[30:09] Loneliness as a mortality risk.
Social isolation, loneliness is as bad for your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. This isn’t just a nice to have, it’s a must have. — Carl Honoré
The benchmark traces to Holt-Lunstad, Smith & Layton, 2010, PLOS Medicine (148 studies, 308,849 participants).
[42:20] Carl’s four prescriptions.
Do less. Rank the week’s list, cut from the bottom, keep a “not-to-do” list in a drawer.
Use the off button. Notifications off; phone in another room while you eat, work, or sit with people who matter.
Build one slow ritual. Carl sketches; you might knit, read poetry, or walk without headphones.
Get into nature. “Even a tree in the back garden. Just take off your shoes and touch grass.”
[51:58] Two quotes to close.
Anything worth doing is worth doing slowly. — Mae West, quoted by Carl
If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.
Resources mentioned
Carl Honoré — carlhonore.com; In Praise of Slow, Bolder, TED talk, Tempo on Substack
Clayton, Leshner & Almond, 2015, JCMC — phone separation and physiological activation
Rubinstein, Meyer & Evans, 2001, J. Experimental Psychology — task-switching costs
Holt-Lunstad, Smith & Layton, 2010, PLOS Medicine — social connection and mortality
Richard Louis Miller — Master Your Mind and The Adverse Effects and Therapeutic Potential of Psychedelic Medicines
Further reading
Johann Hari, Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention — the forces pulling our attention apart, and what helps.
Cal Newport, Digital Minimalism — a practical philosophy for using technology on your own terms.
The Offline Club — the in-person, phone-free gatherings spreading across Europe that Carl describes.
A note on working together
For those who feel drawn to working together more directly, I offer a limited number of one-on-one sessions.
These are not traditional therapy sessions. They are quiet, practical conversations focused on calming the mind, easing anxiety, and working with simple tools that support steadiness in daily life.
We move at a thoughtful pace. We work with what’s present. We focus on what helps.
My New Book
The Adverse Effects and Therapeutic Potential of Psychedelic Medicines was recently reviewed by Samuel Bendeck Sotillos in the Journal of Psychedelic Studies. I was honored by it. Read the review here.
A few words from the front of the book:
Dr. Richard Louis Miller is a true elder and wisdom keeper of the psychedelic community, and his credentials come honestly, through hard-won experience. In this book, he continues his role as an educator by sharing his knowledge of both the perils and the promise of psychedelic substances. The reader will find valuable advice on how to avoid pitfalls while realizing the maximum benefits from the thoughtful and safe use of these remarkable medicines.
— Dr. Dennis McKenna, ethnopharmacologist and author of The Brotherhood of the Screaming AbyssPutting forth the adverse effects of these substances in readable form contributes to their understanding and separates psychedelic scientists from those who would cover over, or even hide, negative effects of pharmaceuticals.
— Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris, neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco
It’s the fifth book in my series on psychedelic medicine. You can find it on Amazon.
My Other Books
Master Your Mind: Practical Tools to Calm Anxiety, Silence Your Inner Critic and Stop Overthinking
Freeing Sexuality: Psychologists, Consent Teachers, Polyamory Experts, and Sex Workers Speak Out
Psychedelic Wisdom: The Astonishing Rewards of Mind-Altering Substances
Psychedelic Medicine: The Healing Powers of LSD, MDMA, Psilocybin, and Ayahuasca
Integral Psychedelic Therapy (co-edited with Jason A. Butler & Genesee Herzberg)
