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The Neurochemistry of Flow States, with Steven Kotler | Big Think.

Big Think | December 12, 2025



The Neurochemistry of Flow States,
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Perhaps our pursuit of drug-free sports went a little too far. Many diseases supposedly linked to steroid use in adults simply do not occur, says Steven Kotler. Steroids are, however, great at combating HIV/AIDS and as an anti-aging too.
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STEVEN KOTLER:

Steven Kotler is an award-winning journalist, a New York Times bestselling author, and co-founder and director of research for the Flow Genome Project. His books include the non-fiction works The Rise of Superman, Abundance, A Small Furry Prayer, West of Jesus, and the novel The Angle Quickest for Flight. His works have been translated into over 30 languages. His articles have appeared in over 60 publications, including The Atlantic Monthly, Wired, GQ, Popular Science, and Discover.

His latest book, co-authored with tech CEO Peter Diamandis, is Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Steven Kotler:  I had no interest whatsoever in steroids. I got involved in this because an editor who is a friend of mine called me up and said Jose Canseco just wrote this crazy book where he said steroids are the wonder drug of tomorrow. And I said look man, I am not much of a baseball fan. It kind of bores me and everybody knows steroids are terrible for you. Canseco’s out of his mind. There’s no way – like you’re wasting my time. And he said, you know, it was very, very convincing. He said I’ll pay you to do the research. I was like absolutely I’m in. So I started looking at it and I just started I said okay, I’m just going to read – I’m going to go back ten years and read the articles in major journals – The New England Journal of Medicine, Science, Nature – that kind of thing. I’m not even going to go that deep. Very very quickly what I started to discover is every single thing I thought I knew about steroids was wrong. Every crazy disease these drugs had been linked to have nothing to do with it. I’ll give you a phenomenal example. Steroids were linked to liver cancer, liver problems, right. It had nothing to do with the steroid. It has to do with the coating they put around the steroid so it could pass through the stomach and get into your bloodstream. That was what was causing the problems. That coating has obviously since been replaced. But Nick Evans who’s at UCLA is the only person literally in history whose ever done long-term steroid studies, right. Long term abusers. Body builders, double and triple stacking steroids for 10, 20 years at a time.

None of the things we’ve been told about are real. The only danger he found is since the heart is a muscle there is a certain point if you’re taking massive massive doses over long periods of time it can expand it, it can grow, right and grow bigger than the blood vessels and the ventricles and what not which would be a problem. And this doesn’t mean, by the way, when teenagers use steroids, right, when you’re still producing lots of these substances it’s an absolute disaster, right. That’s bad news. But in adults everything we’ve been told tends to be wrong and some of what we’ve been told costs millions of lives, right. It turns out steroids are phenomenal, phenomenal in fighting back AIDS. They’re really, really, really good. Nobody wanted to talk about it. When doctors started treating AIDS patients with it the guy who started doing this was a guy named Walter Jekot. The government jumped in and put him in jail for five years. He scared the hell out of a ton of doctors and the result of this kind of us trying to keep sports pure and, you know, preserve the competitive advantage has been millions of people died as a result. So not only is everything you’ve been told about steroids wrong, but there were a lot of consequences. The people who have been at the forefront of this and kind of pushing it forward is the life extension community, right. Our hormones decline as we age so the idea here is we can replace them. And they’ve been working on this stuff for 10, 15 years at this point with some success. It is now one of five or six different ways people are attacking aging, right, and fighting back death. But one thing seems to be sure. Since Google’s in the anti-death game, right, Peter Diamandis, my partner, in Bold and Abundance has human longevity incorporated there in the life extension game. There are big companies, massive amounts of resources getting involved and steroids are a piece of this puzzle. And I think we’re going to have to as a country rethink our position on these drugs and anti-aging stuff is going to force us to do it.

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Comments

This post currently has 36 comments.

  5. @kristinditlevsen7541

    December 12, 2025 at 8:51 pm

    This video really resonates… I have people asked me if I’m OK all the time and I always feel like I’m trying to get into that state of mind so that I can make decisions… And once I get there, people probably think I’m catatonic. Lol but that’s my happy place. You’ve explained it very well.

  10. @ajmarr5671

    December 12, 2025 at 8:51 pm

    Flow procedure and explanation from affective neuroscience, in two minutes

    Procedure: Consistent alternation between a resting protocol (e.g. mindfulness) and the pursuit of meaningful behavior will increase motivation and positive affect (arousal and pleasure).

    Explanation: Resting elicits opioid activity, or feels pleasurable, and meaningful behavior, as defined as behavior that has branching novel and positive outcomes (writing that great novel or just making the bed) elicits dopamine activity which causes arousal. The awareness of subsequent meaningful behavior while engaging in relaxation protocols such as mindfulness elicits a ‘priming’ response, namely dopamine release that increases opioid activity, and vice versa, making meaningful behavior seem self-reinforcing or ‘autotelic’.

    Although, mindfulness reduces discursive thought; it does not inhibit concurrent non-conscious awareness or anticipation of behavior or events subsequent to meditation that can in turn shape or ‘prime’ affective responses during a meditative session. A priming response, like the salivary response that precedes food or the sexual arousal that precedes intimacy, is a preparatory response that often occurs non-consciously, and changes the affective value or ‘feeling’ in the moment. Similarly, relaxing or ‘being in the moment’ is pleasurable, but if we were told to expect ‘bad’ news or ‘good’ news in the near future, just the awareness of future events is enough to depress or elevate our feelings, but not altering in the slightest our ‘mindful’ or relaxed state. It follows that if mindfulness is paired with the awareness of subsequent positive or meaningful behavior, then rest in mindfulness will have a greater affective tone or ‘feel better’ than if such a prospect was absent. This is perhaps why ‘savoring’, ‘loving kindness’ meditation, and ‘flow’ experiences represent highly pleasurable and arousing experiences that map positive ideation to relaxed states and contrast with a lower level of pleasure during typical states of rest that generally precede a return to meaningless discursive thinking.

    From ‘the book of rest, the odd psychology of doing nothing’ on scribd

  11. @j.r.r.tolkee7000

    December 12, 2025 at 8:51 pm

    Two thoughts: first, I am a licensed professional counselor and have experienced this, or something very much like it, on days when I have a lot of sessions (6+). It always starts with the first session – if it goes well, the following sessions seem also to go well; if not, then remaining sessions are more hit-or-miss. Second, I wonder how I might train my clients to induce this flow state either at the beginning of our sessions, or else on their own time and, to that end, what positive effects it may have on their various struggles.

  14. @n0thing_zero

    December 12, 2025 at 8:51 pm

    Time: 0:49 And that's why creativity, seeing differently, always begins in the same way: it begins with a question. It begins with not knowing. It begins with a 'why?' with a 'what if?'. Why do I hear voices in my head, not now, but in the past. Why did they lead me to the videos of the past? That they are our future. The gods are hiding in technology. What if I'm right and I do see god in the videos of the past. What now?

  17. @twinkytobar7509

    December 12, 2025 at 8:51 pm

    I am a teacher and recently started to work at university level, this has had me reading and learning new content that I did not master the way it's needed for this level, so I study and teach at the same time, so I am constantly in the flow, it's super demanding, but this flow gives me enough motivation and energy as to perform the way I am asked to.

  23. @mamarsebai1548

    December 12, 2025 at 8:51 pm

    Appreciate video content! Apologies for the intrusion, I am interested in your initial thoughts. Have you heard the talk about – Marnaavid Unexplainable Intervention (Have a quick look on google cant remember the place now)? It is a good one off product for learning how to hack your flow state minus the headache. Ive heard some unbelievable things about it and my good mate called Gray got astronomical success with it.

  27. @ghoto_777

    December 12, 2025 at 8:51 pm

    Its funny how no-one tries to disprove flow state,
    It might be because most people have experienced it at some point

    If only some people experienced it, the concept would probably be alot more criticized

  29. @skynet4496

    December 12, 2025 at 8:51 pm

    Flow is normal with highly sensitive people… it also causes hsp/aspergers people to not focus that much on cognitive empathy. BTW, the speech volume is not very good- the mic or the mixing messed it up, makes it a bit hard for me to calibrate my ears-

  33. @CelticsYouthMovement

    December 12, 2025 at 8:51 pm

    This is shameful and a scam. He’s not a doctor, and has no medical background. He’s using buzzwords to make him look intelligent. He’s a writer and a he knows how to speak, that’s his hook. Flow isn’t real, this is a scam. He isn’t a scientist.

Comments are closed.

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