Break the Cycle of Pornography Addiction | Ryan Soave & Dr. Andrew Huberman

00:00:00.000 | - These days I hear a ton of really desperate stories,

00:00:05.000 | mostly from young guys.

00:00:10.520 | I've heard from maybe four or five women on this,

00:00:12.920 | but literally thousands of young men about porn addiction.

00:00:17.920 | Every time I hear about it,

00:00:19.080 | I feel so fortunate that I grew up in a time where,

00:00:22.720 | or maybe I just don't have the wiring for it.

00:00:25.020 | And if I did, I would be, I'm pretty open on this podcast.

00:00:28.040 | I, it's never been an issue for me.

00:00:31.320 | And they're telling me that they can't stop watching porn.

00:00:36.360 | I get the sense that they're not enjoying

00:00:38.860 | this experience anymore because they're reaching out to me

00:00:42.000 | saying, how in the world can I quit?

00:00:44.560 | And what do I tell them?

00:00:50.260 | - I remember, and again, I don't know this study,

00:00:53.000 | but I remember somebody referencing many years ago

00:00:55.760 | when I was first getting in the field that porn addiction

00:00:58.840 | at the time, specifically related to video pornography,

00:01:03.680 | which is what it all is now, right?

00:01:05.660 | It was having the same impact on the brain and young men

00:01:11.320 | as crack cocaine.

00:01:12.720 | I mean, it's extremely powerful.

00:01:15.160 | Has a lot of other effects in that it sets up a very unrealistic

00:01:20.160 | idea and perspective of what sex and intimacy is.

00:01:25.120 | It also can help or can lead to kind of setting their sexual template.

00:01:31.920 | You know, they can quickly escalate, just like you would escalate,

00:01:35.680 | kind of back to the hot fudge sundae where it doesn't work anymore,

00:01:41.200 | from something that might seem like normal sex to violent sex to really out there things that

00:01:49.120 | can bring a lot of shame that they're even watching, and it can escalate quickly.

00:01:56.000 | And then have an impact on their own lives and relationships, because they're playing out

00:02:02.080 | those relationships or that amount of intimacy, depending on what they're doing. Also, if there's

00:02:06.320 | masturbation along with it in a fantasy.

00:02:10.240 | Well, what I'm also hearing is that anytime they are in a real life intimate scenario,

00:02:15.440 | which seems to be fewer and fewer times nowadays in the younger generation, that they're having sexual

00:02:23.040 | anxiety, sexual performance issues, which makes sense if their brain and nervous system is getting

00:02:29.680 | wired by porn to observe sexual behavior, as opposed to being in the experience of intimate sex.

00:02:36.240 | behavior, right? Two different things to be in the experience versus watching someone else's

00:02:40.160 | experience of it, which is what pornography is.

00:02:42.080 | Yeah. This was probably 10, 15 years ago, where we're treating some, but we were treating a lot of

00:02:50.160 | soldiers that had come back from Afghanistan or Iraq. And, you know, they had access, this was like

00:02:55.760 | the first wars where they had access to the internet. And there's a lot of other things. So there was a lot of

00:03:02.720 | kind of combining of sex and violence, right? They're around a lot of violence, and then they're watching

00:03:08.880 | sex. And then that kind of sexual template would set around, like, in order for them to get pleasure out

00:03:14.480 | of sex, it would need to be aggressive or even violent or very risky. You know, so there's all these

00:03:22.640 | things that kind of collapse together. There were other things going on. It was like the first time that

00:03:27.120 | they had also really had access to video chats to be able to, like, be on a battlefield and then come

00:03:34.320 | back and be talking to their spouse about something that's going on with the kids. It was a very

00:03:39.440 | confusing environment for those guys, men and women. You know, the porn addiction is a tough one,

00:03:51.760 | you know, because it's everywhere. I mean, now you can find it on any social media, almost. Maybe not

00:04:01.520 | anyone, but it's not really limited, you know. And even if it's not, you know, I know certain states have

00:04:06.720 | just put in where you have to put in your ID to get it, but there's tons of ways around that and

00:04:11.600 | other sites that people can go to. And I've run into that with a lot of, it does seem to be young

00:04:19.520 | men, you know, and it's a way for them to play out some sort of fantasy around connection and

00:04:24.960 | relationship. And it makes their world really small. I don't think it's the same as gambling,

00:04:32.400 | but it can make it, it can make their world very, very small in that they're, instead of

00:04:37.760 | finding relationships out in the world, and it's not necessarily a relationship, but they're what they

00:04:43.040 | believe they're getting out of a relationship, they're then getting out of watching porn.

00:04:46.480 | It seems like basically stopping completely is the answer. And people say, and I'm not trying to

00:04:52.640 | moralize here, right? I'm not telling people what's moral about this. I just know that any behavior or

00:04:57.680 | substance that leads to quick repeated inflections and dopamine is going to create a groove in the

00:05:04.880 | nervous system where you're going to crave that thing. And it's going to give you a lower and lower

00:05:09.360 | sense of satisfaction over time. And the only way to reset that circuit is to stop and do something else

00:05:15.840 | in its place. Ideally, that's adaptive.

00:05:17.680 | These are people that are asking you how they can stop. You know, they're telling you, I can't stop.

00:05:23.360 | How do I do it? So it can be similar to other addictions. You know, I mean, first,

00:05:28.800 | the admission part that it's a problem or awareness that is, and then being able to start to talk to

00:05:34.800 | somebody and start to take some accountability around it. Not accountability like you're doing something

00:05:40.640 | wrong, but to be able to have some sort of identify the behaviors that start leading to that. You know,

00:05:46.640 | I mean, there, uh, that can be done in therapy and there's other 12 step groups that can help people

00:05:52.160 | with that to identify what their sobriety would look like. If you want to call it sobriety, what it looks

00:05:58.160 | like. And if it does involve not watching any porn, then that's the rule set that they have. And then they

00:06:03.360 | figure out either with their therapist or in their treatment center or with their sponsor or community

00:06:09.840 | in 12 step, like, how am I going to be held accountable to that? And that might be doing

00:06:15.120 | the things like we talked about laying out, looking at your, your day ahead at the beginning, they might

00:06:19.920 | need to look at things like, you know, uh, there's ways and software out there to not be able to look

00:06:25.840 | at that on your phone or have an accountability partner that can, you know, you have to, they have

00:06:29.680 | to approve websites you go to. And, and that, that, that's not to say that they have to do

00:06:33.840 | that forever, but it's something that's available right. You know, 50 years ago or 30 years ago,

00:06:39.360 | someone had to like find their dad's porno mag somewhere and then look at it. You know,

00:06:45.440 | now it's on their phones or computers. Well, we know that accessibility,

00:06:49.360 | increasing accessibility increases addiction, right? This has been studied over and over again. And people

00:06:54.080 | say, well, what about red light districts and things? And there's some caveats that have to do

00:06:57.760 | with when you, uh, create areas within cities where certain things are allowed, but you know,

00:07:02.160 | this has been tested many, many times. Um, it's also true and it's kind of a duh, but to quote

00:07:07.680 | Anna Lemke, it's impossible to get addicted to a substance or a behavior that you've never taken

00:07:11.680 | or engaged in. Right.

00:07:12.960 | So some things are best avoided entirely. Um, are there specific 12 step programs for porn addiction

00:07:20.560 | that are separate from say sex addiction?

00:07:22.560 | If you, people look it up, I'm sure there's meetings out there that, that are specific to

00:07:26.160 | that. There are, um, some treatment centers that have tracks that deal specifically with that.

00:07:30.480 | There's therapists that work very closely with that. And I, I believe that there are some 12 step,

00:07:35.200 | I mean, there's pretty much 12 step programs for any sort of, you know, within things like SA or SLA,

00:07:40.400 | there'll be subsets of meetings for people that are with a very specific condition.

00:07:44.640 | And one of the reasons I wanted to discuss this today is because I hear about it so much is

00:07:48.400 | unlike alcohol or drugs, there's a kind of extra layer of shame associated with,

00:07:55.040 | with pornography addiction for people. Um, you know, so many times we've heard,

00:08:00.320 | oh, like this celebrity was an alcoholic or drug addict, you know, wrapped their car around a pole,

00:08:05.600 | was arrested, this and that, then they get sober and everyone still loves them, loves them more.

00:08:09.440 | Right. If we knew that a given celebrity was like a porn, porn addict or something,

00:08:14.480 | we look at that person differently, especially if they're male, we just look at them differently.

00:08:19.520 | And so reducing some of the shame around it, I think it's key to, to helping them recover.

00:08:24.720 | Because I can tell you there's the, the questions initially came in kind of like, as is often the

00:08:30.320 | case with, with men, when they're trying to talk about issues that they were kind of cloaked in,

00:08:35.600 | like, what are your thoughts about NoFap? Which is this thing where guys, um, withhold ejaculation.

00:08:40.320 | Okay.

00:08:40.640 | Does it increase testosterone? It turns out in the short run, it does. In the long term,

00:08:43.840 | it's probably not good for the prostate, et cetera. But then it turned out they were really asking about

00:08:47.360 | masturbation. They were really asking about pornography. And then all of a sudden, I don't

00:08:54.400 | know what changed out there, but there's been this deluge of, of questions from young guys of how they

00:09:00.000 | can stop engaging in online porn. A key to that is what you said about, we look at them differently.

00:09:07.600 | You know, they're going to keep it secret, you know, and there's a saying secrets keep us sick,

00:09:13.200 | but I believe there's like a real, almost a biology to that. And that, you know, if you're

00:09:17.920 | holding it in, not sharing it, you know, where there's no really place for it to go, but shame

00:09:22.480 | and shame separates us and separate. We're not connected and not connected. We're alone and alone.

00:09:30.800 | We're, you know, we keep carrying that forward alone. We're dead, you know, maybe not in that sense

00:09:36.560 | anymore. Like we talked about earlier, but like, we're not really living. And so they're, you know,

00:09:42.640 | these guys are hearing you on a podcast and then DMing you, right? They're probably not in

00:09:50.000 | a personal close relationship with you, right? It's easier to send it there than maybe go ask for help

00:09:57.280 | with somebody in their area or go to a meeting or something like that because of the stigma.

00:10:02.640 | So it's good that you've opened up the ability for people to do that, but to continue to direct them

00:10:07.200 | back to, you know, let's try to treat this like we would any other addiction, at least from the

00:10:12.720 | standpoint of you've got to talk about it. You've got to have some sort of admission. You've got to be

00:10:17.440 | able to find a community around it. You want to be able to do work, you know, most likely with a

00:10:22.400 | therapist or a team of therapists that can help you understand what's driving that behavior.

Break the Cycle of Pornography Addiction | Ryan Soave & Dr. Andrew Huberman

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