I’ve always been curious about energy—
where people lose it,
and how they try to get it back.
In my work, I don’t just look at pain or symptoms.
I look at drain.
When a client is using a substance, I’m not judging it—I’m listening to it.
Because each one tells me something about what the person is needing.
Cocaine lifts the system.
It gives confidence.
It amplifies personality, power, presence.
Weed quiets the energy.
It softens anxiety, slows the mind, takes the edge off feeling too much.
Alcohol does something similar—
numbing, smoothing, dulling the sharpness of what’s underneath.
And when people use both—uppers and downers—they’re often living in an artificial rhythm of up and down, slowly drifting farther away from knowing their own source of energy.
This isn’t about morality. It’s about regulation.
These reflections were sparked by insights shared by Matt Willis on the On the Mend Podcast, and they land because the body already understands them.
Porn is loneliness sold as sex.
Alcohol is escape sold as fun.
Drugs are numbness sold as peace.
Scrolling is distraction sold as rest.
Social media is validation sold as friendship.
Scrolling fragments the nervous system.
The eyes dart rapidly from image to image, headline to headline, face to face—never settling. This constant visual scanning creates subtle unease in the body: shallow breath, tightened jaw, restless limbs, a low-grade agitation that the mind often misses.
Instead of turning inward, we are pulled outward.
Scrolling interrupts our ability to connect with ourselves—
to feel into the body,
to access creativity,
to sense what’s true,
to feel like us.
It looks like rest, but it keeps the system alert.
It looks like connection, but it prevents presence.
Social media lacks something the human nervous system depends on: reciprocation.
There is no shared breath.
No body language.
No micro-expressions.
No felt sense of the other person in the room.
Without these cues, empathy weakens. We lose the ability to read what another person may need—or to feel when we are being felt. The body learns to perform rather than relate, to seek validation instead of resonance.
Connection without embodiment leaves the emotional body undernourished.
Porn pulls pleasure and connection outside of the self.
It bypasses curiosity, intimacy, awkwardness, vulnerability—the very experiences that grow real relationship. Over time, the body learns stimulation without attunement, release without reciprocity.
This can stall the development of real relational capacity.
The nervous system doesn’t practice meeting another human—it practices consuming an image.
What’s lost isn’t desire.
It’s connection.
We are constantly trading real energy for fake fuel.
The energy body—the living current that moves through the heart, breath, gut, and spine—was never meant to be replaced. When it’s depleted, the system looks outward for stimulation instead of inward for truth.
At the root of this is the emotional body.
Unmet needs.
Unprocessed grief.
Suppressed fear and anger.
Longing for confidence, calm, connection, relief.
We aren’t broken for reaching.
But we are at risk of losing ourselves to artificial energy.
Everything in life is about balance.
And as humans with more stimulation at our fingertips than ever before, it will require discipline, not punishment, but devotion to protect what’s essential.
If we don’t learn how to source energy from within,
we risk losing not just our health,
but our soul.
Healing, to me, is about finding our way back to real energy.
Finding health in the soul.
With heart,
Dr. G
Physioenergetic Therapy with Dr. G, by Gina Calderone, PT, DPT is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. For additional insights and updates, follow me on Instagram.
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Weekly articles and letters from a physioenergetic therapist’s body journal where physiology meets energy, and science meets lived experience. In this space, we explore how trauma, grief, fear, and love organize themselves in the body through the nervous system, fascia, and energy field. These reflections are shaped by research, clinical insight, and the quiet wisdom gathered from thousands of hours listening to bodies tell their stories. This work is not just mine, it belongs to the people, patterns, and generations that pass through the body asking to be healed.