The Truth About Pornography | Dr. Jordan Peterson & Dr. Andrew Huberman

00:00:00.000 | Nowadays, I get a lot of questions about pornography.

00:00:09.880 | And the discussion around pornography is always related to the discussion around masturbation.

00:00:16.600 | But let's just talk about pornography for a moment in this context of these primitive

00:00:20.840 | drives and these circuits within the hypothalamus, which we were all born with, that clearly

00:00:26.760 | some of them are devoted to our progression as a species through reproduction, zero question

00:00:31.220 | about that.

00:00:32.220 | Sexual behavior being linked to reproduction, not always, but certainly we can all agree

00:00:36.040 | on that.

00:00:37.040 | It's a necessary precondition.

00:00:38.040 | I hope we can still all agree on that.

00:00:39.680 | But last time I checked, that's still true.

00:00:41.480 | A sperm and an egg met someplace in some context to create all of us.

00:00:45.760 | Okay.

00:00:46.760 | We're still grounded in that.

00:00:50.280 | Pornography is something that I hear quite a lot from typically young males, but sometimes

00:00:57.820 | young females or even older females who say that they can see themselves trying to resist

00:01:04.940 | the desire to go look at it.

00:01:07.000 | And it almost doesn't feel like a desire anymore.

00:01:09.240 | They're sort of just in a compulsion that is almost unconscious, but they're just aware

00:01:16.120 | of the fact that they're-

00:01:17.120 | Like an eating disorder.

00:01:18.120 | Like an eating disorder.

00:01:19.120 | They're doing it.

00:01:20.120 | They're just doing it and they can't help themselves.

00:01:22.600 | And we could think about two ways to attack this if one believes it's a real concern,

00:01:26.760 | and they certainly do.

00:01:27.760 | So I do.

00:01:28.760 | I don't, I would be open if I had or do.

00:01:31.720 | Pornography has not been my thing and I don't struggle with it.

00:01:34.960 | But when I hear from these people, it's so clear that they're asking, is it the prevalence

00:01:40.160 | of pornography out there or is it something really broken in them?

00:01:45.160 | Like are they broken?

00:01:46.460 | And I don't know that I would say after having the discussion we've had thus far, that they're

00:01:51.300 | broken.

00:01:52.300 | It seems to me that it's like, as you said, it's the manifestation of one part of their,

00:01:57.460 | it's one personality within them.

00:01:59.260 | Well, and it's been compulsively rewarded.

00:02:02.780 | So when you see yourself moving towards the culmination of a desired goal, a dopamine,

00:02:11.980 | that's accompanied by dopamine release, okay?

00:02:13.820 | And so two things, you know this, but everybody who's listening might not.

00:02:17.260 | There's two elements to that dopamine release.

00:02:19.420 | One is pleasure, but the other is that the dopamine, imagine that there are circuits

00:02:24.940 | activated as you're acting.

00:02:28.100 | What the dopamine does is increase the probability that the circuits were, that were activated

00:02:32.600 | just before the positive experience happened, grow.

00:02:35.980 | Okay, so now if you're engaged with pornography and that culminates in successful sexual satiation,

00:02:44.540 | which it can, that's what masturbation does, then the whole personality that's oriented

00:02:49.500 | toward that set of stimuli is going to come to dominate.

00:02:51.980 | It's very much like an addiction, except it's, you know, there has been, there's been work

00:02:59.000 | done with generally simpler animals on these phenomena called super stimuli.

00:03:04.500 | I think it's stickleback fish where this was first observed.

00:03:07.740 | So males, I hope I get this right, but I've got it approximately right.

00:03:12.420 | I believe it's male sticklebacks will, they're very aggressive towards other male sticklebacks.

00:03:18.820 | And the reason they're aggressive is because the other male sticklebacks have a red dot

00:03:22.260 | on their bellies, so they don't like red dots at all.

00:03:26.180 | And so you could really enrage a stickleback with a red dot.

00:03:29.720 | And if you use a red dot that's a little bigger and a little brighter than the typical red

00:03:33.840 | dot, you get a super stimulus.

00:03:36.140 | It's virtually irresistible to the stickleback.

00:03:38.980 | And it's weird because the maximal activation is produced by a stimulus that they wouldn't

00:03:43.420 | see in nature.

00:03:44.420 | It slightly exceeds, that's exactly what pornography does, it's a super stimulus, right?

00:03:49.620 | And it's not surprising that young males in particular are susceptible to that because

00:03:53.720 | male sexuality in human beings is very visually oriented, very.

00:03:57.840 | And a lot of our brain is visual, way more than virtually every other animal, certainly

00:04:02.300 | every other primate and every other mammal.

00:04:05.340 | And so we have a situation where any 13-year-old boy can see more hyper-attractive super stimulus

00:04:13.060 | women in one day than the most successful man who ever lived 100 years ago would have

00:04:18.540 | ever seen in his whole life.

00:04:20.100 | Yeah, well that's like an evolutionary, ecological, radical ecological transformation.

00:04:27.500 | And it's worse because it's easily accessible so it takes no work, right?

00:04:31.960 | So not only is it a super stimulus, it's one that's at hand so to speak.

00:04:37.420 | And the analog in the food world would be highly palatable, highly processed food.

00:04:45.300 | Yeah, sugar, fat combination.

00:04:47.060 | The other day I went into a gas station to use the restroom because I was traveling home

00:04:50.100 | for Thanksgiving and I looked around and I thought, this isn't a convenience store, this

00:04:55.100 | is a pharmacy.

00:04:57.460 | Anything that had chocolate also seemed to have caffeine and color, everything, every

00:05:01.760 | drink seemed to combine not just sugar but also caffeine and some other things that would

00:05:06.520 | provide stimulants.

00:05:07.520 | Then you've got nicotine.

00:05:08.520 | Energy drinks.

00:05:09.520 | And these things on their own aren't necessarily bad, any one of these one elements in low

00:05:13.600 | enough doses, in frequent use, et cetera.

00:05:15.600 | But maybe sugar being the one that clearly I think deserves deeper investigation, right?

00:05:23.080 | But it just occurred to me that-

00:05:24.480 | That's different than the difference between manufacturing sugar and manufacturing cocaine.

00:05:28.740 | I mean, you take something that's available in its natural form in relatively low concentrations

00:05:34.860 | and purify it.

00:05:35.860 | I mean, coca leaves, the natives used coca leaves forever as mild stimulant, didn't seem

00:05:40.200 | to cause them any trouble.

00:05:41.300 | But that's way different than cocaine, right?

00:05:44.500 | And sugar has the same, arguably, the same pathological properties.

00:05:49.300 | Well, I didn't think we were going to go here, but I think it's extremely appropriate and

00:05:52.500 | important that we do.

00:05:54.180 | So I know that you followed what is essentially an elimination diet for a number of years.

00:05:58.040 | You eat meat, right?

00:05:59.800 | I eat meat, vegetables, fruit, and some starches, unrefined starches, in any event.

00:06:05.520 | One thing that I think is absolutely clear from following a clean diet, so to speak,

00:06:10.960 | of any kind, but let's say of the sort that you follow or I follow, is that you very soon

00:06:17.560 | learn the relationship between taste of the food, volume of the food, macronutrient, so

00:06:24.880 | protein, fat, or carbohydrate content, micronutrients, and satiation.

00:06:30.480 | Which is, if you think about it, it's sort of like a big plate of broccoli or a big steak

00:06:33.800 | or something, the brain learns and the hypothalamus learns the association between the taste,

00:06:39.480 | the caloric content, what else is in there, and satiation.

00:06:42.640 | If you think about highly processed food or even combinations of multiple ingredients,

00:06:47.360 | it's absolutely impossible to do.

00:06:49.160 | The brain can't parse what are the various things in here and how do they relate to my

00:06:53.380 | feelings of satisfaction.

00:06:54.840 | It's the difference between a super drug and what I believe are the elements that were,

00:07:00.920 | that we have-

00:07:01.920 | - Explain why you think that link about satiation can't be learned in the case of these processed

00:07:07.880 | foods.

00:07:08.880 | - Yeah, because in the context of these processed foods, they're activating multiple neuron

00:07:12.720 | systems in the hypothalamus and gut.

00:07:14.720 | We know that the gut has neurons that can respond to sugar, fatty acids, and amino acid

00:07:20.040 | content.

00:07:21.040 | And there's this prominent theory that one of the main reasons we eat is to forage for

00:07:24.240 | amino acids, that we'll eat until we get enough of the essential amino acids.

00:07:28.200 | - For sure.

00:07:29.200 | - And we correlate that with taste, but that the gut has neurons, we know the gut has neurons

00:07:33.880 | that signal through the vagus, up through a little relay called the no-dose ganglion,

00:07:37.080 | if you wanna look at it, fun name, and then up to the dopaminergic centers of the brain,

00:07:41.880 | which make us, oh, when we eat something that has a high essential amino acid content, like

00:07:46.680 | a steak, like a really tasty steak, the neurons in the gut in a way that is independent of

00:07:51.720 | taste are signaling to the brain, ah, I'm getting essential amino acids, you should

00:07:55.960 | eat more of this thing.

00:07:57.580 | If those, let's just say a small fraction of those amino acids that are present in a

00:08:01.120 | candy bar or in a, you know, a package of Skittles, which I'm guessing there's very

00:08:05.880 | few of them, if any, you're gonna continue to forage for food because those neurons will

00:08:10.640 | also respond to sugar, basically, it will keep you eating until you get enough of those

00:08:14.340 | amino acids.

00:08:15.340 | In other words, there are two parallel tracks, one within our taste system.

00:08:18.240 | - Multiple pathways to satiation.

00:08:19.720 | - Right, totally, right, multiple pathways to satiation, one dependent on taste, one

00:08:23.080 | dependent on actual nutrient content.

00:08:25.600 | The mouth can only learn taste association, the mouth can't actually learn nutrient content,

00:08:31.200 | the gut knows nutrient content, the problem is you take a food that is low in a micronutrient

00:08:36.200 | or macronutrient or essential amino acids or essential fatty acids, after all, there

00:08:39.480 | are no essential carbohydrates, there are only essential amino acids and essential fatty

00:08:43.400 | acids.

00:08:44.400 | - Right, right, right.

00:08:45.400 | - And it will keep you eating and it will keep the appetite system revving until you

00:08:50.000 | get enough of those.

00:08:51.000 | Now, here's the issue, if you've ever done this, it's probably been--

00:08:53.040 | - So that's empty calories.

00:08:54.040 | - Empty calories.

00:08:55.040 | - Yeah, oh yeah.

00:08:56.040 | - But what's, so in some ways, you know, this again is an analog to the whole discussion

00:09:00.760 | around pornography, masturbation and reproduction, right?

00:09:04.160 | I'm not saying that reproduction is the be all, end all of sexual activity, but in the

00:09:07.880 | evolutionary sense, it absolutely is, right?

00:09:10.400 | There's no question about that, there's no moral judgment there, that's just the reality.

00:09:13.560 | So the situation with food is the following, if we are eating without any gut level understanding

00:09:23.200 | of what's coming in, we will keep eating.

00:09:25.800 | If you, let me give an example, you probably haven't done this experiment in a while, but

00:09:29.520 | if you've ever just had, you know, ribeye steak or two, it's pretty satiating.

00:09:33.000 | Maybe you also have a salad if you're me or some broccoli or something like that.

00:09:37.280 | If one takes, then even after you've eaten all that, one bite of pasta, one bite of pasta,

00:09:43.000 | the next impulse is more, right?

00:09:45.320 | Even though you already have enough essential amino acids from those steaks, you're loosing,

00:09:49.760 | you know, threshold, you've reached that, et cetera, all of that good stuff, why?

00:09:53.960 | Because blood glucose goes up and then you desire more because blood glucose elevations

00:09:57.540 | are linked directly to the dopaminergic system.

00:10:00.260 | So what I'm basically trying to say here is that I do think that there are elements to

00:10:03.420 | our food, modern food, if you will.

00:10:06.240 | It seems like it's, you know, anything but modern in the sense that it's worse for us

00:10:09.060 | than the more primitive foods, but highly processed foods, pornography, any drug that

00:10:14.380 | spikes dopamine dramatically, like methamphetamine, for instance, any behavior that spikes dopamine

00:10:20.920 | dramatically that very quickly hijacks these circuits.

00:10:24.800 | And to me, the way to teach those circuits a calmer, more prudent version of themselves,

00:10:32.120 | right, to enter a different hypothalamic activation pattern, is to start breaking the things down

00:10:38.080 | into their essential elements, right?

00:10:40.440 | About the motivation, the pleasure, et cetera, to tamp all that down.

00:10:43.560 | I mean, we know that for pornography, if the pornography is very extreme, then less extreme

00:10:48.800 | pornography doesn't seem to work.

00:10:50.400 | - Well, that's 'cause there's also a novelty kick in dopaminergic striving, right?

00:10:55.120 | So, with any basic appetitive pleasure, there's a dopaminergic kick, but with any novelty,

00:11:04.680 | there's also a dopaminergic kick.

00:11:06.520 | So there's an optimized threshold for novelty in appetitive striving that plays out in pornography.

00:11:12.280 | So there's the direct effect of the stimulus as such, but there's variation in the stimulus

00:11:22.000 | that's also novel, and so it's a common pattern for pornographic usage to become more, what

00:11:30.360 | would you say, fetishistic.

00:11:32.560 | That's one way of thinking about it as it progresses, because that keeps the novelty

00:11:36.080 | alive.

00:11:37.080 | That's very dangerous, that's a very dangerous development.

00:11:39.600 | - Right, and I would venture in a very different domain, that if you were to eat your steak

00:11:42.640 | slathered in barbecue sauce for a couple of weeks, going back to the way that you eat

00:11:46.120 | them now, which by the way, this is a great opportunity to educate people about something

00:11:50.200 | that you taught me when we had dinner last, which is that if you're gonna order a steak,

00:11:54.280 | order a Pittsburgh char.

00:11:56.000 | The char on the outside is incredibly tasty.

00:11:59.000 | We love that, the umami taste, I wish you have a devoted taste receptor for that.

00:12:03.120 | - It's complex.

00:12:04.120 | - Yeah, and if they don't know what a Pittsburgh char is, then maybe you're in the wrong restaurant

00:12:07.280 | or you need to educate them, but incredibly satiating, delicious, right?

00:12:11.480 | But if you were to slather those steaks in a bunch of things, I would suspect that after

00:12:16.200 | a while, your plain steaks wouldn't taste as good.

00:12:19.320 | But the way to make them taste good again would be to eat them plain for a period of

00:12:23.120 | time in which the stuff that all the condiments, et cetera, would start to become aversive.

00:12:27.920 | I do believe that when we return to the sort of most naturally satisfying mode of engaging

00:12:35.880 | with these circuits, here we're talking about food and sex in parallel, that they become

00:12:41.140 | especially satiating.

00:12:43.440 | And I think that, you know, in hearing from all these people that are addicted to pornography,

00:12:48.520 | and they're not addicted like it's telling me they love it and they can't stop.

00:12:51.440 | They're telling me it's no longer working for them, that there's this, you know, diminishment

00:12:54.880 | in the amount of dopamine that they're getting over time, and they feel trapped within it,

00:12:58.420 | and they have no sense whatsoever because they haven't been socialized to go out and

00:13:01.600 | find a real relationship, a real sexual relationship or a relationship of any kind.

00:13:06.240 | - Well, it's also, there is some evidence suggesting too that if you've been socialized

00:13:10.840 | into pornography sexuality, it's actually quite difficult to establish a sexual relationship

00:13:16.200 | with an actual partner.

00:13:17.480 | Now, I would say to some degree that's always been difficult because it's a complex form

00:13:22.080 | of behavior, but the introduction of pornography, well, it sets up a whole landscape of expectation,

00:13:29.480 | for example, that's not necessarily going to play out that well in the real world, let's

00:13:33.080 | say.

00:13:34.080 | - And there's also a learning of those biological systems in the brain to evoke arousal by observing

00:13:41.240 | sex as opposed to participating, completely different.

00:13:45.600 | So some of these-

00:13:46.600 | - Right, that's voyeur, right?

00:13:47.880 | You're basically learning to be a voyeur, right, right.

00:13:50.880 | - And so you think about young brains that are highly plastic, learning that.

00:13:55.440 | So the returning-

00:13:56.440 | - Yeah, we have no idea what to make of that because, especially for young men, because

00:13:59.760 | when they hit puberty, sexuality becomes a very insistent force, and we have no idea

00:14:07.280 | what effect pornography has on the development of male sexuality, none.

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The Truth About Pornography | Dr. Jordan Peterson & Dr. Andrew Huberman

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