The Primal Method: A Book for Emerging Men

By Gregory Koufacos

The general public is starting to recognize what parents, teachers and therapists have known for years: we are losing our young men. 

Now more than ever, emerging men between 16 and 35 find themselves stuck in limbo bet

• Language: English
• Publisher: Latah Books
• Release date: Feb 4, 2022
• ISBN: 9781957607009

Gregory Koufacos

Gregory Koufacos is the founder and CEO of Velocity Mentoring and an addiction professional with almost 15 years of experience. He holds a Master's Degree in Psychology from The New School for Social Research, is a Licensed Clinical Alcohol and Drug Counselor, and a Nationally Certified Recovery Coach.

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The Primal Method

A Book for Emerging Men

Gregory Koufacos

The Primal Method

Copyright © 2020 Gregory Koufacos

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

For permissions contact: [e-mail]

No responsibility for loss caused by any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by the author or the publisher. The author and the content of this book should not be considered a substitute for those needing professional and/or medical assistance for substance use or mental health challenges.

Book design by Gray Dog Press and Kevin Breen

Cover image by Junriel Boquecosa

Softcover ISBN: 978-1-7360127-0-3

eBook ISBN: 978-1-957607-00-9

Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request

Published by

Latah Books, Spokane, Washington

www.latahbooks.com

The author may be contacted at www.theprimalmethod.org

For CG,

To the memory of the world you helped create.

To the memory that is your Soul’s to take!

and

For Corinna,

I love you.

Your beloved son — send him on a journey.

—Japanese proverb

Contents

Introduction

Part One: The Primal Tools

Leaving the Cave

The Walking Cure

The Mirror Effect

Miyagi Mentoring

Finding a Miyagi

Enter the Agora

Emphatic Challenge

Hold the Line

Let Them Suffer

Connection is the Foundation

Eddie Would Go

Get a Job

Primal Storytelling

The Male Womb

The Great Catalyst

Part Two: My Primal Story

Crazy Train

Sisyphus’s Boulder

Hungry for Hunger

One Year to Live

The Eagle Has Landed

Learning to Love

Meet My Mentor

Victory Begins in Defeat

The Man Watching

Afterword

Acknowledgments

Introduction

People in my profession have known something the general public is only now starting to recognize: we are facing an epidemic with our young men. Electronic and chemical addictions, mental breakdowns, overall apathy and listlessness, and lives ending before they have even had a chance to begin. We are losing our young men.

Here is our guy. . . .

He is in his mid-20s. I see him sometimes at the local juice bar. He is wearing the same gray hoodie today that he wore the last time I saw him, and the time before that. I wonder what he is doing at the juice bar in the middle of the day. There is a ghostly quality to him. He is present but absent. Is he high? I can usually tell the exact drugs a person is consuming just by observing their eyes and their body posture, a skill that came in handy when I ran a young adult substance abuse program. Judging by the dullness in his eyes and by the deep body slouch, he hasn’t yet smoked the weed he loves so much this morning.

A woman arrives, who seems to be an old high school friend. There is lightness in her eyes and a vibrancy in the way she engages with him and the people around her. She clearly has made something of her life. He clearly has not.

After she leaves, I see him playing a video game on his phone. His eyes light up briefly, but not for long. They have a weak glimmer, like a bad shoeshine done quickly and with no real effort.

He pushes his matted hair away from his face. My guess is he hasn’t showered in a couple of days. I don’t even have to guess whether he has a job or not. No way. He has no job, he has no power. His sweatshirt stinks, his hair stinks, his body stinks, his life stinks.

Still, he’s drinking a smoothie. He’s trying to be healthy. Maybe he’ll make something out of today after all. Maybe he will finish that application and send it out. Most likely not. He will get high before midday, whether he wants to or not. His promises, his affirmations, his goals will go up in smoke along with his blunt. He will play video games for the rest of the day, perhaps for the rest of the decade. To look at our guy is to take in what true lack of purpose and power really is.

Away he goes, like a leaf in the wind, back to his parents’ house or some apartment they are paying for. The people who love him watch as he blows, keeping hope that one day he will find a reason for his life and the power to fight.

Our guy is not alone. As an addiction counselor, I am a daily witness to the struggle that so many young men experience as they seek independence and true happiness. Too many of them are getting trapped in the stage between boyhood and adulthood.

The thirty-year-old who has been having a few drinks every day, now drinks around the clock and has lost nearly everything. He still lives with his parents. The twenty-year-old who just failed out of his second college has no job, no sense of purpose, no independence and no happiness. He also has no idea what happened to him. He was once a happy kid! Now he doesn’t even want to get out of bed in the morning and has no reason to do so. For him, this has happened in the blink of an eye.

This state of apathy is especially true for emerging men — males between age 16 and 35. This stage of life is a threshold, a natural and also challenging passage from boyhood to manhood. If you look at the results today, we are miserably failing these threshold men. It has quickly gone from being a stage of emergence to a state of emergency. We are a nation watching as our young men flail and ultimately sink.

Looking at this, you can’t help but ask: How are young men like this getting lured and trapped into states of weakness, confusion and powerlessness? And, what will help them out of their prison?

Will a rational approach help, like sitting them down and talking about their goals in life? What about giving them the skills to move on? Or giving them therapy to help them understand the emotions they are having? It all sounds pretty reasonable, and this is mostly what is being offered to emerging men who are stuck.

When he was young, our guy played a board game while a doctor observed him. Later, he sat on a couch or chair and talked about his issues and how he felt about things. Since then, he has been sent, sometimes willingly and sometimes not, to various programs. He has been encouraged or even forced to take medications. And yet, look at where he is. He is slightly better off, but these methods did not lead to the mighty change.

If you ask any of these young men if what they are doing is right, or if they are happy with their life, they will say ‘no.’ So what’s the problem? Why doesn’t he move on and move out?

The reason the boy doesn’t grow up and the slacker doesn’t move out is the same: they have the rational understanding of the need to move out, but not the primal motivation to do so.

For this reason, any form of help that only treats this situation on the rational level (i.e. skill building, talking about feelings, etc.) and not the primal level, will ultimately fall short, especially with emerging men.

Primal motivation is a type of awareness: a blend of vision, hunger, and power. Without primal motivation, our guy is trapped in states of weakness and confusion. With it, our guy can change the course of his life.

I know, because I was that guy in the hoodie at the juice bar. This book is the story of my personal journey, and the professional journey I took as an addiction recovery counselor to forge a different path with the young men I worked with, a path that activated our primal power and awakened the lion within.

Part One

The Primal Tools

Chapter 1

Leaving the Cave

Brad was barreling top speed toward his end at the clinic where I’d been working. He was taking risk after risk, had damaged his mind and his awareness with his drug use, and nothing I or anyone said even remotely reached him.

Screw it, I thought. If you can’t change it, then at least let’s honor it. I decided to hold a mock funeral for him.

I was young, brash, and eager, even desperate to shake up these young men who so reminded me of prior versions of myself. Brad was not allowed to say anything during the funeral because, of course, he was dead.

His groupmates were ruthlessly honest. They told the story of an arrogant and immature boy who took extreme risks in life but refused to take his chance to live.

I had invited his parents and siblings to be part of the funeral. They brought flowers, old pictures of him, mementos of their life with him and placed them next to the coffin, which was a chair with a family blanket on it.

They delivered a very touching eulogy. At one point I told Brad to look at what his family had brought. He sat there, indifferently looking at matchbox cars from his childhood.

The family also brought in pictures of Brad as a young child. One of the photos was him sitting on the sand at the beach, beaming with a smile from ear to ear. How poignant it was to see what started as a happy kid filled with joy and wonder, ending up like this.

Look at your smile in this picture, I said. Do you remember what you were feeling?

He just slouched in his chair-coffin, his face blank.

So, I told him to look at his family. He resisted, but I refused to give in. Finally, he turned and looked at his parents. I saw him go through the layers of denial, the armor that was keeping him from his heart. His thick veneer was starting to crack. At one point, he closed his eyes. I saw his lips shaking.

I want to say something to them, he said, almost at a whisper.

What’s that? I asked.

Desperately struggling to hold his tears back, he could barely speak. I want to say . . . I’m sorry.

You could feel how badly he wanted to make contact with his family, how much he loved them and wanted their love, and he’d finally realized it. He wanted to fix his life, to be forgiven and loved.

The family and group members gazed at each other in total silence, witnessing this glimmer of hope. I wanted to congratulate them on a group well done, but I sensed that it was premature. Like most young men, Brad wanted to be pardoned, not perfected. A true transformation would require hard work and change.

No. You cannot, I said sternly. You’re dead. And all that you and your family are left with is your wishes and memories.

Well, news travels fast in hospitals and rehabs. When the group was over, a picket line of angry nurses and social workers gathered outside my office, demanding I be reprimanded or even fired. They said