Finding the Support to Break Free from Unwanted Habits with Unchained Leader's Mason Cain

This episode Jeff sits Down with Unchained Leader's own Mason Cain. Mason turned a difficult time in his life where he was at his lowest into an opportunity to lead and help others overcome the habits they don't want to be involved with anymore!

👇 In this episode:
Dealing with Addiction
Pornography Struggles
Finding a Supportive Community
Learning You Need Support
Not Trying to Do it Alone

How to find Mason Cain
Instagram: @official_masoncain
https://www.instagram.com/official_masoncain/

🎧 More episodes: Who Gave Jeff Allen a Podcast?
🎟️ Tickets at JeffAllenComedy.com

Transcript

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It starts out and then now the escalation requires variety. So the way this works is I start out in like vanilla porn, then all of a sudden I'm onto this category, and then like this really dark category that anybody can't, you know, like nobody can find out about this. Now I'm seeking it out in person because, like, you know, the the the screen isn't really doing it. So your brain is wired this way, right? Like when I'm getting a dose of dopamine, it builds a tolerance to it really quickly. Now it requires a new variety, something new, something exciting, right? Hey everybody, this is Jeff Allen. Welcome to Who Gave Jeff Allen a podcast. We are looking for you. We're gonna find you six billion of you out there. One by one, we're gonna find who gave this to me because somebody's gonna pay a price. Anyway, it's good to be back in the studio. Um, back in Nashville. Uh, been out on the road quite a bit. Check my uh website, jeffallencomedy.com. I am coming to a city near you, probably busier than I should be at 70 years old, but uh really enjoying it out there. Uh Tammy's coming with me for a week. Uh this will be aired after she uh has been out there, but um, we are uh hopefully married after that week. That'll be nice uh to spend some time with my bride. Um what else going on? Oh, we did the pilot for the book. Uh the series is coming out. We're gonna be uh reaching out uh to uh the last bit of financing. We have a 501c. Do you have one of the cards, Carolyn? Let me hold that up. A 501c. You can donate uh anything 10, 15, 20, 25. If you donate a $100 or more, look at this. A beautiful little card. Um if you donate $100 or more, we'll put your name in the credits at the end of the pilot episode as a thank you uh for that. Uh Jeff Dye uh is the uh he's really the lead. They put me on top because uh I printed these myself, so I got top billing. But Jeff Dye, um, as a um it was a very I believe uh we have something special. I really do. Uh based on uh the early reports coming out of the editing room, um, they were able to make me look good. So uh that in itself is a miracle. Uh today's guest uh is something uh someone something. I got you as a as a different thing these days, I got you as a thing. Uh uh I've been wanting, I've been I've been following this um a young man on Instagram for a couple of years, and uh got a chance to um uh uh to call him. I um uh we'll we'll get uh talking about his organization and uh what he does. Um I am a um member of it, um signed on for it, and uh it has helped me tremendously uh in my um uh my addiction. Uh we we're gonna talk about that uh in my my proclivities. Yeah. Uh my my lust procrip proclivities. Uh we're gonna talk a lot about that. Uh Mason Kane, um, I guess I should just uh welcome you uh to the to the podcast and and we will uh will go forward. Tell us about yourself. Uh where were you born and raised? I was born in uh Tampa, Florida. We're one of the few that are like seven generations deep in Tampa. So born and raised there, whole family is there, and uh yeah, we still reside there now. Okay, and you are the uh founder, CEO, and um creator of Unchained Leader. Uh what how would you describe it? Because I normally I get something in a in a bio and I just figure well you're here. You can tell us what it is. Yeah, man. We uh you know we can talk about kind of the journey to Unchained Leader, but right now we're one of the only faith-based, legit script certified intensive programs for men battling with addiction, uh, men and women now, which we can jump into. Um, mainly pornography, sexual addictions, unwanted sexual behaviors. We also have a lot of guys that come in that you know identify with a sexual behavior, but then it's like, well, I also drink too much and I spend too much and I eat too much, you know, and they start to discover these things as they come through. So now we're serving alcohol, drug addiction, um, uh gambling addiction as well. Yeah, that's kind of what I figured out. I got into AA. I get yelled at for mentioning it's so funny to me. Uh yeah again, the traditions say on the level of press radio and films, but if I tell you I'm I'm going to a 12-step program for alcohol, nobody will figure it out. It's a mystery. I know it's a mystery. But when I got into the 12-step program for alcohol, it became whack-a-mole. Yeah. Yeah, I realized that, and and now my line is if you go to a 12-step program that's anonymously run, I probably should be going um for whatever it is. Um, you know. Uh and I think that's what we're gonna touch upon, is that the symptom is uh the the the salve that heals the or that you feel heals the wound is really not the cause. Yeah. Right. And that's that was kind of the birth of of Unchained Leader, was me going through the same thing. You know, it's like I went through the the clinical side that um you know told me that I had a disease that was permanent. And um for me initially, and there's research that we can jump into that shows that that's not the case, right? But biblically, like I read the verses that talked about you can die and become a new creation, right? You can be transformed and renew your mind. And it's like I I really don't think I have a disease for life, you know. And then I go into you know, 12, we'll call them 12-step meetings, and it's omanadic, dominatic, dominatic, and I'm like, I I really don't think that that's biblically aligned with my true identity, you know? And so we we look at this behavior model of, hey, your behavior right now is sexual addiction, and then it's you know, well, let's white knuckle and squeeze that out, and you're like, I'm seeing success. But then all of a sudden I'd find myself at the fridge eating high carb high sugar foods more, or on Amazon making sure a package was at my house every day. You know, I got to the point, I don't know if anybody's been like this, but it's like package shows up. I don't even know what it is, man. You know, it's kind of it's like Christmas morning. Yeah, you know, and then I started crying in a counseling session when, you know, my counselor's like, Do you realize that you're trying to make it like Christmas morning because of what happened in your childhood? And I'm like, start weeping. I'm like, yeah, that is what I was doing, right? So, like, you know, all that to say, this stuff is deeper, you know, and anybody that anybody that's experienced trying to just use willpower to, you know, stop the behavior, and then you see it pop up in other places, it's like, well, that's gonna happen, and you're gonna have this surface level behavior pattern pop up in a lot of a lot of places if there's something deeper actually going on, and you're not addressing that part. Yeah. So then it would just train you you just move whatever that salve is. Yeah. You know, and um, it's interesting when you talk about Amazon. Uh every day something flies over our fence. Yeah. You know, we have the gate is closed, so they just toss it over the fence. And I look at Tammy and I go, What is that? She goes, ooh, uh it could be vitamins, could be, you know, I I I don't know. But uh I'm that way. I I still uh am that way. And uh it's interesting. I heard a um a speaker once at uh um an AA convention talk about um his um his relationships with women were songs and dances. He had eight six songs, six dances, you know, and a song might be I'll take her up to um uh the hills in Hollywood and tell her that I never brought another woman up here. Ignore the footprints of the other twenty-two, you know. Yeah but I've never brought anybody up here. You're special. This is where I used to shoot heroin, and um, you know, so I'm uh you're special. Well that was played out. Now he had to come up with another song and then another dance. And then he said, I got I got successful as a writer in Hollywood, and I was able to put a credit card into her lap. Um but there came a point in every one of his relationships where she looked across the table and I saw something in her eyes that she wanted from me that I couldn't deliver, and I knew the relationship was over. And that resonated with me because prior to meeting and prior to getting married, I I didn't have to stay with anybody. I could flee. And I rec I recognized that look, you know, because it was fun being with a comedian for a certain period of time. The partying was fun. And then there came a point where she goes, Let's stay home tonight. I want to stay home. Okay. I think we're this is the thread that's gonna unravel this thing. You want a normal life. I just want to go out and and party. Well, when we got married, and all of a sudden she looked at me like and and I realized I um that's when I quit. I had to quit. I knew I couldn't do both. Yeah. And that set me on that journey of of digging inside and realizing that the wounds that we carry, um, and I'm with you, I had a real hard time with that disease thing because that let me off the hook. So what's what's interesting is I like a lot of men identify with exactly what you're describing, and internally, like we either have peacetime or wartime, right? And so for me, and I was not conscious to this initially in my you know starting to work through my addiction, but I was always flipped on as like a wartime, like I had to be doing something, I couldn't just sit and be with somebody, and deeper than that, I couldn't sit and just be with myself, you know. Absolutely. Well, you're an alpha guy anyway. I mean, we we we talked off air about the jujitsu and MMA and uh so you adrenaline, yeah, dopamine, yeah, all of that. And I'm using that to try to silence or I'm using that as a way to not sit with the other voices in my head, you know, and that was that was the whole dynamic. See, and that's another thing too, because if uh there are people who go, Oh, you have ADD because you can't sit still. Yeah, well, you have a symptom of ADD. Well, yeah, yeah, but it's it's deeper than that. It is, you know. It's interesting. Um Do you ride at all with the radio off in the car and I do now quiet? I couldn't before like I couldn't uh I couldn't walk around the house without music. Um, I couldn't ride in the car without music. There was always something I was either listening to in audiobook or music. Um and there's actually a point where I realized it was not right. You know, like there's gotta be something off because I like I can't I like I have this impulsive, you know, like controlling desire to have to have something on. Well it's funny because yeah, on the road when I used to act out and when I got involved in Unchained Leader, um, I realized that as long as I have a television show to go look forward to to get back to my hotel room, I was fine. Yeah, but I needed that television show, otherwise I'd sit there and then my brain would start, and then I would eventually wind up on things that I shouldn't be. Yeah. And um I'm really good now at driving around with the nothing on in the car, uh, and just being alone with this cesspool. Yeah. Yeah that's my brain. Yeah. Uh that's a hard place to get to. It is. It takes a lot of work, a lot of intentional work. Briefly with your story, when bottom. Yeah, and I think that's a good place to get to. Were you married at the bottom? I was married at the bottom, man. And um, you know, we won't dig too deep into childhood, but you know, I had my first sexual encounter at five years old. Um, no way to process it at five, but I remember understanding what was kind of going on in my body and also understanding like there was something wrong happening. Um, 10 years old, exposed to pornography, raised in a very conservative Christian home the whole time. Um, and so as soon as that started, as soon as I realized that I I was like in this behavior, it became hidden. Um, grew from there to about age 15, gave my life to Christ, um, baptized. I fully believe when I come out of the water and this problem is gone. And part of what drove me to baptism was I reached a point where I was like, I can't, it was so in conflict of my morals and values, and my actions were like way over here, you know. And I was like, one person helped people understand that dichotomy because that's and that's what gets guys people outside of this circle, yeah, look at it and go, just quit. Yeah. Why why do you do that? Why? I mean, you know, you're a child of God, yeah, a professed Christian. So explain that dichotomy. I mean Well, you know, first of all, if that worked, you know, the 12-step meetings would be one step. You just walk in and they go, just quit and we'll go. You know, it'd be super simple. It's right. Yeah, that would be. Yeah, yeah. So I think there's a point where you realize yourself it's it's not that simple, even though maybe you think that it should be. Like, and a lot of times it, you know, you talked about other people saying that. A lot of times it's yourself saying it to yourself, like, man, like you're a child of God, like you, you, you know, or all of these things, like, why can't you just quit? And it's this voice of shame and this voice of of conviction and condemn condemnation. And, you know, we talk about like pornography, for example, and a lot of people look at that as like it's just porn, man. But deeper than that, and what guys hit a point where they're like, this has to change, is the the internal division, right? It's not necessarily, oh, I watched porn. It's no, you don't understand, man. My entire life was built on a facade. It was like this magic show, you know, and I would I would overcompensate, you know, through my teenage years, it was like captain of the football team, and you know, um, I'm doing all this stuff. I'm I'm working out, you know, I'm I'm like the fit guy. Um, you know, leading into like early marriage, it's like, you know, I got into sales, like I'm gonna be the top sales guys, like I'm doing all the stuff at church, you know, I'm the guy that's leading devotionals, you know, we're going on mission trips, and it's like, here's Mason that I want everybody to see. And I was trying to build that bigger and bigger because the Mason behind closed doors, I knew if anybody knew that guy, they would never want to be around me again. And when you live in a divided house internally, man, that that's what sent me to a place where, you know, I'm in my mid-20s, I'm married. We just had our first child. Um, obviously there's not a lot of sex going on, you know, right after you have a kid. Um, I'm just acting out. And this is after me trying to seek help in, you know, Bible and prayer, you know, the whole time, um, since a teenager and trying to seek help from the clinical side of things. They're telling me I got a disease. Um, trying to seek help in the the 12-step side of things, they're saying you got to stand up every week and say, hi, I'm Mason, I'm a sex addict. And um Is your wife involved in this process at all, or were you just doing this without her knowledge? Most of the time without her knowledge, and this is at this point about a year into I would say about six months into like in involving her. Um, and then also at that point, I had given her a full disclosure. I cheated on her, um, kept it a secret for three years. Um, you know, I had pornography my whole life, kept it a secret for my whole life, never told her. Um, so at this point, you know, I'd disclosed everything to her. Like now she knows I'm trying to get help. I'm flying across the country to these, you know, week-long intensives that I like check myself into, you know, I'm like doing everything. And um I hit this point at 20 mid-20s. Um and uh I just acted out again, let her know. We were supposed to have this great vacation in Orlando. The drive back we'd had like divorce arguments before. Um, like, you know, we're gonna get divorced. This time it shifted from arguing about the concept of divorce to arguing about the logistics of what's gonna happen after we get divorced and uh how often I'm gonna get to see my son, you know, all this stuff. And I remember getting home and uh pulled in the in the driveway. She goes in the house, slams the door, sitting on a cooler in my garage. And uh, you know, for the first time I was like, you know what, like my wife is gonna be better off with another man that's like a real man that could be a godly husband to her, and my son is gonna be much better off with uh somebody else in his life, another man that can lead him the way that he needs to be led. And the comment that my you know wife had made to me was um you know, I was asking how much I can see him, and she's like, Well, I'm gonna make sure that you don't get to see him as much as possible because I don't want him to grow up to be like you. And I sat with that and I'm like, I don't want him to grow up to be like me either, you know, so you know I can take myself out of the picture at that point, and that was the uh the point of the lowest of the low. And um, you know, in that setting, there was not like a conversation like God came out of the clouds or anything. I hear people say stuff like that. This is just like kind of a a thought um as I was actually getting up to grab the pistol out of my truck, and there was this thought of connecting my addiction with all of the like coaching and stuff that I'd been doing with other guys. See, like um during this time I was running a company called Biblical Businessman, being a huge hypocrite, you know, still acting out on pornography, teaching these guys how to run their business on, you know, biblical principles, King Solomon's teachings, you know, they're seeing success. And um, what's interesting is businesses don't really have problems, they have people. The people have problems. And so the problems that these guys had were like they were showing up in their business and and operating it in a way that was out of alignment with their belief system. And the only thing that I had found that had worked and was creating change in them was like walking them back to childhood and going, like, do you realize that the reason that you won't let anybody else do inventory, even though you hired staff to do that, is because when you were 12 years old, your dad told you that you can't play football because you're not big enough. And when you do inventory and you do something right, you're still trying to prove to dad that you're big enough and you're good enough. These guys would break down crying, you know, and they'd realize how these things are associated. So that thought that I had was like, you know, at this point, I knew that I couldn't figure it out on my own. So I'm relying on the clinical side and the 12-step side and you know, trying to read my Bible more and all this stuff, and was like, what if that's what's going on with me too? Like, what if there's some stuff in childhood that I haven't really delved into, you know? Um, and that started a journey with, you know, bringing on some additional counselors, therapists, um, you know, reading a bunch of books where I started to realize, hey, we've really been approaching addiction the the wrong way. Like it's it's not an identity of who you are for the rest of your life. It's not a disease that you're gonna have to just maintain the rest of your life. Like there are some childhood wounds, but more importantly, they're there are emotional injuries, right? And there's some narratives that you believe about yourself, about others, about the world, about God that are miscalibrated. That's why you have this state of misery, right? Right. And that's why you're trying to medicate it with all of these things, right? Cut out porn. Well, now alcohol pops up. I find myself blacked out at a place that I shouldn't be blacked out. What's going on? You know, find myself spending too much money. I found myself not um in a hardcore like gambling addiction at a casino, but like I was gambling with my finances and my business every day. Yeah, I did that. I I I got into the futures market for a heartbeat and lost half our retirement. That was a great conversation to have with your wife. Yeah. And uh I guess such a beautiful woman, she just looked at me and go, You're done, right? Yeah, I handed it over to somebody else. But I never looked at it as a gambling thing. No, but it was. I'm not one of those because I I've worked Vegas for years, and the first week I worked there, uh, I got there on Monday and I went through my check by Wednesday, and that was it for me. Every time I worked Vegas, I wouldn't touch a thing until I left for the airport. I'd take 20 bucks and play mega millions and then go to the airport. So I didn't think I had a gambling issue. Yep. And then all this online trading came out, and I took a class at the Bridgestone. Yep. And uh I'm sitting in my living room eating ribs and playing the futures market. This is this is the way you want to play oil and gas futures where you're watching a movie and eating ribs, and I hit a I buy a thing, and eight seconds I'm down twelve hundred bucks. Oh man. Yeah, and I can't react because my wife is sitting across the room. I I can't throw the computer across the room. I'm like, oh my god, I spent the rest of the night getting that twelve hundred back and the adrenaline and the dopamine. You'd think now a normal human being would go, I can't do this. I don't have the money, I shouldn't be doing this next day. Bam, I was up. Well, you were thinking about everything except for the real problem in here. Right. Absolutely. You're sitting with everything except for well, it was a new form of dopamine that I I couldn't I didn't have before. Yep. Um, and um I've been blessed. Again, after the humiliation, I mean I literally threw a phone out the window. I'm doing again trading while I'm driving. I mean, that's how stupid I was. You know. But again, it was about the the the nervousness and the the the But you didn't have a gambling addiction. Not at all. Yeah. Not at all. Which is which is interesting because one of the first like tick marks on, hey, what is an uh and and I want to be clear here, a simp you're experiencing symptoms of an addiction, right? Right. Um first tick marks on experience symptoms of an addiction is justification, right? So now I'm I'm j I'm not, you know, I'm not a porn addict, right? Right. I watch it only once a week. Right? Right. So it's like these these justifying things in your head of like, and that's where most guys get before they hit a breaking point where it's like, all right, this is a problem. You live there for a long time, justifying, minimizing. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Because God inherently puts in us um a conscience and we know we're doing wrong. Yeah. You know. So without the rationale, uh you would stop doing you know um what you are doing. So now you've you've you're s you've sitting on the cooler, yeah, and uh believe me, I've been there. Yeah. Um we were on the side of the road uh on an interstate ready to file divorce papers when Tammy said, Let's go home, and I said, You're out. You deserve better than me. You know. Which is so heartbreaking because obviously you love your wife. To have that thought that she would be better without you. She deserves better than you. Um I know that. I know that feeling. And um you look at your voice, and that was what was heartbreaking. What broke me was thinking that phone call from your son. He spanked me, Daddy, he spanked me. I mean, it goes from rage to sadness to I don't want another man in their lives. So what do I gotta do? You know? And then we came to a point where there was nothing I could do. I couldn't stop raging at the home. Yeah. So we we're gonna end it. And we did. I I look at that as the end. And then it was probably a year later we we both gave our lives to Christ and said, we'll build this marriage on a biblical foundation. Well, uh, you know, and and this for the sake of dying and becoming a new creation, it's like you yourself have to die, the version of you, become a new creation, and the marriage also has to die in order to become new, you know. And I I think what we're doing here is like sharing our experience of of, you know, I don't even want to say suicide ideation, but like I I had a I was having a negotiation with suicide, you know, like I was I was intent walking in my truck. Um, we've had about 10,000, I think it's like 10,600 something men come through our program at this point. The vast majority of them have had the same exact experience and some different nuance, side of the road, cooler, kitchen, shed, whatever, right? Um, and I think men, and especially inside of the church, there's a stigma of shame of admitting that you've had that thought or been in that place, right? And so I think just by like I want to just sit with this for a second because sharing these things, if anybody's listed listening in, it's like that is a very common and I will just say very common thing that most guys have experienced, right? And if you get to that place and you believe that you're one of the uncommon ones or you're one of the exceptionally messed up ones that have these thoughts, that will drive you to taking the action. Terminal uniqueness, they call it. Yeah. We think that we're the only ones that have, and that's the the the way the um the enemy of our soul, the um Satan, the devil, operates. 100%. If he can isolate you and then get in between your ears and convince you that nobody's like you, you are a freak of nature. Well, and he he gives you hopelessness, right? And so like I was born this way, it's in my DNA, it was passed down to my DNA. You know, that's that's been um and I can give you a chance to do that. Just like your father. Yeah, just like your father. You'll never change, right? It's you'll you'll never change. You're exceptionally messed up. Like there's some people that watch porn, but like the porn that you're watching and the stuff that you're doing, like that's that's just and like that uniqueness of uniquely messed up is what drives guys to make that decision, you know, and who wins there? You know, our adversary wins. So I I think these conversations are important, man. They're uncommon conversations, right? Um, they're they're needed. Yeah, and and what is you we I'm jumping around. Yeah, all good. But again, it's the way my brain operates. The stigma that comes with, because you and I both know this. We we we are in churches, uh, we're behind closed doors with pastors, and um uh this issue, certainly with uh lust, is um it's making very strong, powerful communicators weak because it's tearing them apart privately. They can't go public because they'll lose their their livelihood, yeah. They'll lose their neighborhood, they'll kick them out of the basically they're chastised out of the neighborhood. Um I meet with uh a group on Mondays, every Monday, uh in Zoom, and one guy um confessed. He didn't get caught, he just went in and confessed because he wanted to get help. Lost everything. 22-year career. They fired him on the spot, just fired him on the spot. And it was like, holy cow, you're doing the right thing. Yep. And what that message sends to every other employee in that place, because believe me, I'm sure he's not the only man in an organization uh that just told me I okay, I gotta dig deeper into keeping this dark and quiet. Yeah. I'm gonna I'm gonna link arms and get even closer with the enemy. I kind of look at this issue the way alcohol was and alcoholism was in the 40s. Uh, there was a stigma attached to it. If your husband was an alcoholic or your wife, uh nobody wanted to be around you, you know, you were a gutter drunk. That's the way they looked at it. The mind goes there. What can we do to think? I mean, we'll get into Unchained Leader because I I I that's why I wanted John here. I wanted to get this word out of what you do because it helped me so much. Um but what do we do about the stigma? I I told you last night at dinner we uh I was doing a men's retreat for lust addiction, and they're at their church, and there were six or seven uh women uh looking through the doors, and I told the pastor, I go, I thought this was an all-mens thing. Well, there's wives that want to know whose husbands, and I go, that that ends it right there. Yeah, nobody's coming back. No, you know, word will get out, you know. Um I told you, I went to SA briefly and got recognized three times in one week. Yeah. Uh and I just thought, if this gets out, yeah, uh, then I'm done. Yeah. Uh, you know, so what do we do about the stigma? I mean, I think I think it's it's it's a very complex problem that has a very simple solution, you know. Um, if we like we use this terminology, spiritual warfare, right? And it sounds like this very complex, complicated thing. Really, it's it's a war of the belief of truth versus the belief of lies, right? Like the stigma comes from us and a lot of other people societally, we're believing a lot of lies, right? So the way that we combat that is just share truth. So I brought some statistics, um, exceptional like this pastor, right? Well, he's gotta be one of the only ones, the only pastors, like we gotta, you know, we gotta get rid of this guy. And if we look at sexual addiction specifically or lust as a problem, it's like, man, that one is just like we can't deal with that. But if a pastor gets up behind the pulpit and he's obese and he's actively involved in the addiction of food, well, that guy's fine. Nobody even says anything about it. You know, maybe I'm stepping on some toes here. Good. That's why God put me here, right? So, you know, that's not a problem. This guy's ending his life early because of his eating habits, right? And setting an example of, you know, hey, let's just eat whatever we want and indulge in pleasure of food and sugar and carbs, right? That's fine. But if this guy's struggling with pornography, out, right? So that's that's the first thing, right? We gotta we gotta realize these are two of the same things, right? Both are sin, as we, you know, the also I think sen is looked at as like this condemning thing. And it's like the original Hebrew translation of that is like you've missed the mark for God's intention. Wasn't it an archery term? Yeah, yeah. So it's like, you know, you know, God's intention and his design of like, you know, abundance and pleasure and delight, which like the Garden of Eden is an enclosure of pleasure and delight, and he put us there. That was his intention, right? And then if you shoot an arrow and you miss that a little bit, like you've sinned, you're just a little bit off the mark, right? It's not like you're a dirty, filthy, rotten sinner. You know, that's an I that's a broken identity. No, man, you're a son of the king, but you've you've missed the mark a little bit. So like let's dial that in, right? So I think first this perception of, well, sexual addiction is this, you know, exceptional thing that, you know, is far different than food addiction or you know, a gambling addiction, or you know, even alcohol, I think is more accepted now. So the stigma around that um is important. And the way that we combat that is like, let's pull back the curtain and show how common this actually is and how many guys are actually struggling. Um, Barna Research did a study in just 2024 is the most recent one. Um, and their findings, they they surveyed, I think it was about 3,000 evangelical church members. The findings answered anonymously, 75% of Christian men and 40% of Christian women acknowledge they be view pornography to some extent, right? Um 67% of pastors said they have a personal history of use at some point in their past. Um, 18% admitting that it's a current struggle. You know, and I those one in five. One in five. Those are high numbers. Here's the thing. My experience has been 10,000 men coming through our program and having this conversation often. Whenever I have a private conversation with a man behind closed doors, the statistics of that being a yes, I still currently struggle with that, are in like the 90th percentile. You know, so how many of these guys, knowing it's an anonymous survey, actually answered accurately? I think the real numbers are even higher than that, you know. So it's like if we're not acknowledging this stuff and going, hey, maybe, and the the other finding was less than 10% of churches actually had a program or some formalized help for pornography or sexual addiction, right? So if we're going, hey, this isn't a problem, and the one guy that may struggle with it is an exception, right? We're giving the enemy this entire playing field inside of the church and outside of the church to just take these guys captive, you know, and then hold them there because they're fearful of what would happen if they told the truth, right? Right. So back to spiritual warfare, truth is what we're trying to shine light on, right? And lies and secrecy and all this stuff is, you know, the enemy at this point, um, because we're not talking about it and because we put the stigma about it, like the stats say that he's winning the war, you know. So we got to do this more. Yeah, it's interesting. My pastor, uh my senior pastor is very funny. I I called him out on it too. All the hard sermons he passes off, you know, like Ephesians 5, you know, women submit to your husbands, passes it off to the associate, yeah, and then the uh the porn talk to the men. Yeah. Um uh Shane, our associate pastor, gets up on Sunday and he goes, uh, I sent out an email to every man in this church. If you're struggling with this, uh send it back and because we're gonna talk about it this particular Sunday. I didn't get one reply. So you're telling me not one man in this church, you know. And and uh I said uh I text him because I was on the road listening to the sermon. I said, I would have raised my hand, man. You know, he said, uh I'm uh I'm done hiding um and pretending, you know. Um and again, I wanted to talk about Unchained Leader because of all the things I tried, like you. I I tried um uh I was talked into, I canceled two different intensives because of work. Um I had them scheduled, I was gonna go, they've helped some friends of mine. Um but um what Unchained Leader did, um, it got me into deeper into the childhood stuff and the realization of um uh you know getting molested at nine and um my brother showing me stag films at 10, yeah and my father giving me Playboy at 12 to learn about women. I mean, yeah, I was groomed, I mean I was trained, you know, and again, I'm not faulting anybody, I'm just trying to get information, like you said, truth or lies. Um but then the shame that's where when I got deep into prayer and praying about it, it became what did you feel? I felt excitement. What did you think God felt? Um uh disappointment. Um where was God in this? He was there. What was um what was his reaction? Love and peace. But my reaction was guilt and shame, and it's just piled one upon the other. Um so what your program ex explain to me, uh explain to the people. Yeah. Um uh you walk men through a daily module, um, which is what really helped me to have a task every morning. Yeah. Uh if I was to look um at um porn, it was in the morning. Um and not a way to start your day, yeah, but it would you know get me full of shame uh to start my day, you know. Um and was told as I'd lay in bed in my head that you can't get away from this, you'll never get away from this. You're you're you know, and then the the old tapes, you're a loser, you'll always be this way. If they knew about you, they would they would cancel you, they would not come out to your shows, they would not, your career would be over. All of that. And um that may be true, but that um the lie is that um I have to hold this to myself. That's the lie. Yep, you're not alone. Um, and um, so walk us through the the modules uh starting with um the first month is pretty intense. Yeah, it it is intense, man. And and we like I designed this as a solution for all the frustrations that I had trying to find help. Number one, um, when I started trying to find help for pornography or sexual addiction in general, um, and it you know, that loops in pornography, masturbation, visiting parlors, paying for sex, all of this stuff. Um, there weren't many good options, you know. And then the ones that I did find that look promising, it's like, all right, book a trip, fly across the country, check in for you know X amount of days. And, you know, a lot of these clinical um check-in facilities are 30,000, 60,000 a month. You know, um, which is you know unattainable for most people. And then um, you know, I I found you know, some of the teachings there were again based off the disease model, right? So it's like in that sense, you're almost worst off coming out of this, and then um access to counselors, right? Like there's some amazing counselors out there. Um, two problems. Number one, they're really hard to find. Um, a good indication of you found a good one is they're not taking on clients, right? They're booked up. If somebody's like, Yeah, I got you know, every day of the week open, book, book, it's like, okay. I had a great counselor that uh charged $15 an hour. I said, if you're gonna go, go to someone who works for the state, you know, because they're not in it for the money. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. I walked in. Well, I I was looking for permission to get a divorce. Yeah. I was gonna tell my tailor woe. She was gonna pat my hand and tell me, You poor man, you need to let this woman go. Yeah. She looked right through my soul and said, if you came here looking for permission for divorce, you came to the wrong woman. And I'm no, no, no, God, no. Yeah, that's not what I was saying. Not at all. And I knew I had the right one. Yeah. She saw my BS. And there's some good ones out there, and you know, they're they're they're hard to find. The the other um, I would say deficiency in cal in counseling, which again, I think everybody should have a counselor and a therapist that I see once a week still, the frequency, right? So, like the and level of intensity required to break an addiction pattern. Well, they also have had to do their work. Yeah. Because if you get into an area that they haven't dealt with in their own life, yeah, they will deflect and move you away from that area. Yeah, they'll tell you, ah, that's not that important. That one, we'll deal with that later, you know. Yeah. Yeah. When Proverbs talks about um there's safety in a multitude of advisors, right? It's talking about advisors that earned their wisdom through experience, right? Not somebody theoretically teaching you things. So um, but back to the the frequency side of things, it's like a once a week um thing that you're like, hey, I'm I'm working on my addiction one hour a week. It's it's it's there's actually studies, um, and I forget the exact quote of this one. I can I can add it to the footnotes of this episode for you guys. But um the difference between a once a week and a daily practice of any type of behavior change, right? Any type of root level change, um, you're five times more effective if you're doing it every day, right? So that compounds into if I'm doing one week, one hour a week versus an hour every single day, it the hour a week is gonna take you five to seven years, and the hour a day is gonna take you about 90 days, right? Massive difference down the road. Well, Matt explains it. Yeah because uh you know, my it was it's interesting, the rationale. Yeah. I put my Bible on the iPad. Yeah. So because I told myself, you know, I got so much stuff in my backpack, I need the iPad. So I'd start reading the Bible, and then the brain would go, let's go to Instagram, and then I'd go to Instagram, and then and that was a pattern every morning. Yeah. Um, and it's funny, as again, as someone who's done a lot of work to get sucked into that daily thing and rationalize and justify and all of that. Yeah. So with Unchained Leader, with the module, I would sit with the iPad, and and I would do, I would type out, I would do the work, and then I uh you know, um it it moved my brain to a different area. Yep. And then then I began where I I I got a New Testament Bible, that's all I got. And I would finish your module, and then I would go and I'd started just reading Matthew again to take my mind out of what it wants to do, you know. Um, and I never heard that stat, but that makes so much sense because the the habit changed where I look forward to the module, and I look forward to to getting in God's word. Um and it completely flipped um the internal dialogue. A hundred percent. And and that's where Paul said renewing your mind. It sounds like it's a process. It is, you know, it's yeah, it's like accepting Jesus as a a gift that we don't deserve, and it's you know, a relatively simple decision, right? Becoming like Jesus, well, that's that's a lifetime of work. You know, it's like salvation versus sanctification. Like, dude, you know, the sanctification side of things is gonna take a lot of work, you know, ideally daily on your side, but you know, Unchained Leader was created to fill these gaps that we're talking about, you know, is like the gap of the ability to take off of work and fly across the country and check into a facility that's $30,000 to $60,000, not attainable for a lot of people. Um, you kind of mentioned it yourself as like I wanted to do these intensives, but I had you know these things lined up and it like wouldn't fit. So it's like, okay, well, let's bring that process into a way that you can consume it on your devices, right? So the other thing is like we're I look at that as redeeming the device, right? Because like I I said porn on this thing. Right. Yeah. Absolutely. I consume porn on the phone, the iPad, but like rather than hey, let's get a flip phone and like run away from these things, it's like, no man, like let's redeem this device and use it as a tool for life. Uh flip phone was the first phone that came out. You know, uh seen one of those. I know. Yeah, yeah. Just explaining to the to the youngster over there. Yeah. Right. Which you're actually younger than her. So I had one though. I had a flip phone. I did too. Who didn't? Yeah. You know, texting on that. I used to say if you want to get off a porn, just go back to the old AOL dial-up. Yeah. You know, by the time a photo loaded, my brain would go, What am I loading? Yeah. Yep. And then you're on to you know, eating too much food or going back to Amazon. So but yeah, so bringing it, bringing it to where it can fit into your time frame, right? So like I'm not having to disrupt my life and check into a facility, right? Like we're bringing that in. Um, the other thing is the daily module, like you were talking about, man. Like that that intensity and consistency of the daily you're walking through a recovery process is a massive shift from again, 90 days in that setting. And this has been proven by studies, and I'll share this. Even in uh the 12-step program will tell you 90 and 90. Yeah. You know, every sponsor you get if you walk in on day one, they'll tell you you need to do 90 and 90. Yeah. You know, and again, you're getting in the car, you're driving to a meeting. Yep. This, like you said, I mean, I can do it in a hotel, we can do it on the plane, I can do it wherever I was at. I mean, the work itself I had to do because again, it was pretty intense. Yeah. Yeah. And then the other thing is like you're not having to choose between science, right? Which like there's some there's some science that isn't in alignment with scripture. And I look at that as fallacy, right? Typically we see those disproved later on down the road with more research. But a lot of times, like in the addiction space, you have to choose between psychology and scripture. And it's like, you know, here we wanted to ingrain both of those and show how all of these studies are actually rooted in scripture, you know, like the the ones that are true, right? Um, and then the uh the other side of that is having a process that actually walks you through the roots of the problem, right? So this isn't behavior modification is is proven to not work. Um this is diving into what you were talking about. Like you're we're taking guys through a really intense timeline process of identifying these core events in their lives, identifying how it planted this narrative about themselves, others, and God. Um, and then identifying, like, hey man, at 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, when you're getting triggered, it has a lot more to do with what happened throughout your developmental years than it did what's going on right now in life, right? But we're not aware of that until we see it. The other thing is like, you know, and you probably experienced this too, but when you talk about your story of, you know, I was molested and then you know, dad gave me the magazine and brother this, like when we walk through that and you actually unpack it in a very systematic way, it becomes kind of unrealistic to not be struggling with lust, right? Like if you do the math and you add all that stuff up, it's like well, no wonder. Yeah, no wonder, right? So now it's like, okay, it's a logical thing that I'm dealing with this human, you know, behavior pattern. It's not that I inherited some family curse or I have, you know, I'm made up this, you know, this exceptionally messed up, perverted, twisted individual. It's like, no, man, your brain has certain patterns because of how it's been programmed. And it's been programmed against your permission, man. Like at five years old, when I had that experience, that I didn't give permission for that to happen, you know, but it was programmed. And most adults never go back and look at this stuff and actually sit with it and actually recalibrate these narratives to narratives of truth. You know, like I picked up that I was something was wrong with me at five. You know, like I this this event happened and uh like I remember like and I I I forgot about this until I started going back through this work, right? And like this five, this event at five was repressed until about my mid-20s. When I started going through the work that we take guys through, it's like this popped up, and I was like, that did happen. And then I these memories started coming back of I I viewed myself as different than everybody else, starting at five, you know? And so that is a monumental thing to like number one remember, right, and have that repressed memory come up, but number two, to be able to sit with it as an adult and like kind of reparent that version of myself in alignment with truth that changed everything about every interaction that I had with every single person as an adult. Well, it's interesting because it one of the things I liked about it as well is you're not blaming. I I I went through the 80s with all the self-help, and it became this thing where you just tore your parents to shreds. Yeah. And I flat out refused it. When you become a parent, you you kind of lighten up on your own parents. When you realize how hard it is to be a parent, but um uh there was a lot of that um and that repressed memory stuff that they would walk you through, and it destroyed a lot of families. Yeah. Um, and what I liked about it, it's not about it's just about getting to the root, yeah, the truth of what happened. You don't deny that the the the event, no, but you don't assign blame to the event. Well, what's what's beautiful too is like when you when you go through that and you understand the math of your current behavior patterns, and you like you truly understand it. Now I can view dad and I can go, it makes so much sense, man. Right. You know, like I I know a little bit about his childhood. Well, that's how I used to tell people you want to have fun? Go to your parents' siblings and ask them what your parents' childhood was like. My dad, my grandmother used to beat him with a broom and call him Satan's child. Yeah. And no wonder he turned his back. You know, when he hit 16, he joined the army and got out of that house. And well, here's you know, yeah, here's a loop back to he's an addict. He's Satan's child, right? Like, if we want to, and and this makes you a better parent, too, which has been like amazing in my life. I'm so thankful. Like now I'm thankful that I went through a experience of addiction and coming out on the other side of it because this very thing we're talking about. Imagine you have a kid and you're like, oh, there's Jeff the troublemaker. Oh, there's the troublemaker. Oh man, you're such a troublemaker. Well, what is that kid gonna live into? What identity is he gonna step into? Right, he's gonna step into a troublemaker and then he keeps making trouble, and you're like, What's wrong with this kid? What's going on? It's like you literally gave him that identity to step into, right? Same thing with the addict, right? I'm an addict, I'm an addict, I'm an addict, I'm an addict. Well, you step into that of identity, right? Yeah, I've used that as an excuse quite a bit. Addicts do what addicts do. Yeah, I'm an addict, you know. That's what I do. Yeah, you know, it absolves self-responsibility. And then you realize that it's a lie. Yeah. Um, it's to me now, um I just looked at it as a salve for a wound. And once I get the wound in the light, once I get it outside and look at it for what it is, it's just it makes perfect sense. We were talking about that last night. Uh explain to me what you said to me last night. I I tried to jot it down when I got home. I completely forgot it. At least now I'll have it on tape and I can go back. Yeah, yeah. But you said when when the when the um how to how to look at like unwanted urges comes from. Unwanted urges. That's so I and I I don't want to misquote this, so actually I wrote it down. Um okay, so this one is done by Jason Brewer, which I I love his research. At the point that he did this study, he was at Yale. Um I think he's at Brown at this point now. Um, and it was a smoking cessation trial done in 2011, right? And so they had one group, they used the American Lung Association's Freedom from Smoking Protocol, right? Which is mainly made up of behavior modification, right? Like get rid of your lighters, get rid of cigarettes, make sure they're, you know, nowhere, like you're just gonna get rid of everything, you know, flush the drugs down the toilet. Like it's just gonna solve the problem, right? Yeah, that was the life, the life. Terry was quitting. And I I told her, you suck on hard candy. Yeah. Because you do this if you you're the candy cigarettes. You smoke a pack a day, you do this a hundred thousand times a year. She smoked two packs a day. Yeah. So 200,000 times a year, you're doing this. You need an oral fixation. Put a straw in your mouth, yeah, and then suck on i. So I come home one day and she's frantic. She's walking around and I go, What's going on? She goes, I can't find my F and Keys. And I go, they're in your hand. And she looks at me, she throws the whole bag of hard candy at me. And I looked at her and I said, If you're looking for permission to light up a cigarette, you came to the wrong attic. Yeah. You know, so anyway, she just left, went to Flying J, got a pack of cigarettes, and drove home. That's what behavior modification did for her. Yeah. And the the unfortunate thing, man, is like, you know, for a long time, and for a lot of people still, they're getting this advice that's setting them up for failure. And we're gonna, we're gonna see the conclusion of this this study here, which is fascinating. Um, but you're using a strategy that's going to lead you into more defeat and more frustration and tighten the addiction cycle, right? So the conclusion of this study from the people using behavior modification at this um, you know, American Lung Associations at the time, which just to take a quick like this is a institution well recognized, publishing like what you should do, right? Right. So when we look at the Western medical um disease model for addiction, like here's an example where something that was the standard was completely wrong, right? We'll see in this this uh experiment here. So the other group was taught to become curious about why they were getting the urges, right? So one group is hey, I get an urge to smoke, um, you know, throwing my cigarettes out, like I'm gonna do push-ups, I'm gonna do any other behavior modification. The other one, the other group is become curious about why you desire a cigarette right now. What's going on? Are you stressed? What's going on in relationships? You know, have you gotten good sleep? Have you fed yourself? Right. So the conclusion of this is 31% quit in the group of becoming curious, six percent quit in the behavior modification. That is a 5x effectiveness, right? Right. So five times more effective to become curious about why do I have this unwanted urge right now to act out on an unwanted behavior? And that's exactly what we do inside of Unchained Leader, right? So what that's doing is in an illustration here is willpower is I get an urge, let me run away from it to something else. Curiosity is I get an urge, let me churn towards it, let me examine it, let me sit with it, let me unpack it, right? Inside of Unchained Leader, what we do is we walk you through a process of your entire life, man. Like all of these skeletons in your closet that you never want anybody to find out about, all of these things that have hurt you or wounded you in some type of way, we're gonna sit with them and we're gonna turn towards the problem. We're actually gonna face this monster, you know, and we're gonna solve it rather than and it's interesting too, like behavior modification, addiction is an avoidance mechanism. Life gets hard, I gotta avoid it in some way. I'm gonna medicate sedate some type of way. Well, that's you know, when I got into the 12 steps, uh somebody slipped a vodka into an orange juice, I spit it across the bar and I screamed at the guy. And I go to a meeting that night and I raise my hand and I go, Did I lose my sobriety date? That's another thing. Uh I'm proud of the fact I've had 38 years. I every September 29th, I celebrate a year of sobriety. Um, it's a birthday. I I put it out. I I I'm happy. Tammy uh used to bake me a cake, you know. Um now I shouldn't do anything. But anyway. Um so anyway, I go to the meeting, I raise my hand, I go, Did I lose my sobriety? And he said, What are you doing in a bar? Well, I make my living in a bar. And they said, Well, you have to quit. And I go, Why? Well, you can't be in a place and stay sober. And I said, I didn't come here for career advice. Yeah, I actually came here to learn how to live in a world that has alcohol in it, yeah, and not imbibing it myself. Yeah, and if you can't help me, I can save myself five, six hours a week. I don't have to come here anymore. And with the porn, you know, I used to fall into that avert your eyes, uh, like Abraham, avert your eyes. And I'd go, well, okay. So I go to the airport and they tell me, don't look at bananas. And every store is lined with bananas everywhere, and women walking by at banana heads, you know, all this stuff. Yeah. How do you avert your eyes in this culture from everything? So that's the behavior thing that I went through for years, and it set me up to fail and fail. And again, you'd put time together a week here, two weeks there, whatever. But again, you'd fail because this model fails. You cannot will yourself unwounded. So actually makes things worse, right? There's another specific. I'm weak. I mean, all the stuff that comes in. Yeah, you'll never, you'll never got you know get this. I'm weak. I can't, you know. When I told Tammy, uh you you need you deserve better of me. I said, I'm damaged, yeah, permanently damaged. My father was, my brother was, and I'm permanently damaged. Well, I'm here to tell you that was a lie. Uh Christ began the healing process and the renewing process. Yeah. And it's been going on for 30 years now. Um, and that's another thing I want to talk about because I I another lie I told myself was I'll age out of this urge. I will age out of this urge. It'll pass. At some point, some 65-year-old man can't possibly be you know concerned about this. Well, didn't you tell me we have somebody like 80? I think, yeah, we we tracked our, I mean, I maybe we shouldn't tell people we do this, but we tracked our oldest member. I think was 86 now is the new um age. But this is important to share, right? And I think you talking about is is is super important too, because like the whole premise of of like why I believe I'm on earth, why I believe you're you're on earth, like anybody that has a kingdom mind, it's like let's shine light in the darkness, right? And this whole belief of it's gonna, it's I'm gonna stop when I get married. Well, how'd that work out? It's gonna stop when I hit 60. Well, how'd that work out? Right. So this fallacy of when I get older, it'll get better. No, in fact, we see the opposite, right? So in addiction, it's called escalation, right? With substances, it's volume. So alcohol, I'm gonna have more volume, more volume, more volume, drugs, more volume. With any behavior addiction, right? Which any sexual addiction falls into that. We use pornography, for example. It starts out, and then now the escalation requires variety. So the way this works is I start out in like vanilla porn, then all of a sudden I'm onto this category, and then like this really dark category that anybody can't, you know, like nobody can find out about this. Now I'm seeking it out in person because like, you know, the the the screen isn't really doing it. So your brain is wired this way, right? Like when I'm getting a dose of dopamine, it builds a tolerance to it really quickly. Now it requires a new variety, something new, something exciting, right? Yeah. I mean, I as kids, you remember I you know, I don't know, you're probably not the age, national National Geographic is the uh That would do it. Yes, you know, and I I'm of age. Yeah, exactly. And then now with me, if I put time together in the past, uh it would start on Instagram with with the fitness models. I would just tell Tam I'm I'm looking for a new way to do ab work. And so over 65 years. But these these are better. Right, but these are better. They're they're more lithe. You know, lithe with the word. Uh flexible. So anyway, uh yeah, and that's where it would start. And at 65, did that all go away? Not at all. No. Not at all. So I I think like we need getting that out and helping people see that is so powerful, man. And that's where it's like, you know, I'm I'm thankful for you being willing to share your experience because like I can share it from from my age standpoint, right? But having somebody's personal account go, no, man, like this is not going to get better the older that you get, might be what somebody needs to hear to go, okay, well, if if I don't conquer this now, it's just gonna progressively escalate. Well, I can attest, it's so interesting when you go on the that first coach call, you know, and you see 45 guys on your screen, yeah, and they're all different ages, all different sizes, all different with one common uh desire, and that's just to get rid of this. Yeah, and that's what I love about the name unchained, because you are chained to this until you uh you get free from it. Yeah, and I can attest to this. Um uh yeah, I i i it stumbles, you slip, you fall, but that all-encompassing um urge is gone. Yeah. Uh five, six months now, you know, it's gone. I can attest to that. And uh the work, I'm going back through it again. I'm gonna start on day one again. I'm just gonna go through the uh the whole thing again because more stuff will come up. It will, you know, and um we'll be able to um you know to dig even deeper because my desire is to be what God intended me to be for her. To be there, to be focused there, to be you know, I told you last night there was a time I remember uh rarely that we would make love and she would go while you were there. You know, and she was right, my mind would wander, my mind would go to things, you know, and I want to be to be there. I mean again, I'm 70, she's 65, and you know, I want to finish well. And um let's talk a little bit about your organization and the trouble you're having getting the word out on Google. Yeah, so I'm gonna I'm gonna segue into that just from going. I think you like what you brought up is what I like about you is you're focused. I try. I try. Yeah, like just to keep it. Between the two of us, we might have a decent review. Hey man, you know, I'm scattered enough that I'm enjoying it. Yeah, I'm enjoying it. God put us together for a reason, right? So um what what you're kind of communicating there is it's like, you know, for me, and I probably for you and most guys, or in women, we have a huge women's program now. That's why I wanted to talk about that as well. So we we count the cost of what porn's doing to us. Rarely do we count the cost of what we're missing out on if we solve this problem. How good of a husband, father, leader, son of the king could I be if I actually focused on this problem, put the intensity and consistency required to heal from it, and finally step into the full potential of like God's design for me. And that's where the leader part comes in, you know, unchained leader. And it's like, man, every single person walking around with a pulse and is breathing oxygen, right? God created you to be a leader in some way, shape, or form, right? Through the process of life, like you've become chained, right? And so like that leader still exists, and all we're doing is we're breaking the chains that have been holding you back from stepping into your kingdom assignment, from stepping into your potential, for stepping into your purpose, right? Right. And so to segue into, you know, the the whole Google thing, um, I think is is a good segue because we also understand there's an adversary whose entire goal is to make sure we don't step into that purpose, to make sure that we're so riddled with shame that I don't even believe that I'm capable of doing these things that I feel like God's calling me to do. And it could be something something simple but eternally significant of share the gospel with that guy. And you're like, who am I? Who am I? The guy that just watched porn this morning and started my day off with that. Who am I to go share the gospel with that guy? Well, you could have radically changed that guy's life and his entire family tree by that conversation. And because you're riddled with shame, the enemy wins, right? So I I look at this as a battle of darkness and light. You know, we we bring Google into the mix and I'll I'll tread not lightly here. Um yeah, so you know, we look at we look at what's going on in the world right now. Like we'll we'll zoom out to a 30,000 foot view. Um, I think for people that are aware of politics, entertainment, like there's it's becoming more and more clear for My viewpoint, this darkness and light, truth for slies, like there's there's two sides here. And I think a lot of the things that are going on we're trying to explain with logic and the absence of taking a spiritual perspective in account, right? Like there's a lot of deception going on, and there's there's like there's really two sides here. Um, these individuals are not our enemy, but we got to recognize we have an enemy and we also have our creator, right? So um most of our outreach is done through paid marketing, right? Like this opportunity is amazing. We're trying to do more stuff like this. Um, but you know, getting a company going and establishing a program, you don't get a whole lot of you know options like that. So paid marketing with Google, we had worked up to a place of spending about $800,000 a month with them on marketing, right? Why do I do that? Well, I believe that the value of a soul and a life changed is more valuable than a dollar, right? And so if I can spend money to bring souls into our program, see them become a radically different husband, father, and leader, and like create a different experience for their kids and their trajectory, I'll do that. And if we can make the math make sense where we put a dollar in and we get enough out to like continue doing that, I'll put as much in as possible. Well, as we started to grow, as we started to expand impact, as we started to get to the point where, you know, I walk through the airport and people recognize who I am and they recognize the brand and like we're we're accomplishing what I felt like God put us here to do. And the reason why he called me to start Unchained Leader, we started to get suppressed, right? Um, and again, I don't think Google is my enemy. I don't think that the people running Google are my enemy. Um, but I believe that we have the adversary has influence on these platforms, right? So um all of a sudden we're getting hit with policy violations, right? And like I everything that we've built through Google specifically is based off of the compliance guidebook, their their playbook. You know, we we we built everything in compliance. So the first thing we started getting hit with, and this is wild, using faith and religion and personalized advertising apparently is a policy violation, right? So the first thing I had to start doing is I could not say God in my ads. I could not say Jesus, I couldn't say church, I couldn't say Bible, right? So if you see any of my ads, it's like, you know, I'll have a Bible on my desk and I'm like, you know, you know what it says in this book, and like I don't say Bible, right? Um, or I'll say like, you know, I would I would be here on Sunday morning services and then over here, right? And it's like I'm saying, I'm saying church, but not saying it, right? So I'm like, this is just crazy, but whatever. Um wow. Then it got, you know, they're like, oh, he's he's skating around. Like he, you know, he's so the next thing we started getting hammered with is uh, you know, I'll go back to July, you know, we're we're spending a significant amount in partnership with Google. Um they come in and shut all of 800 grand a month in revenue. I've I've built a staff and a team. We have about 40 uh full-time team members right now uh inside of the company. I come, I wake up the next morning, 750 something ads, our entire account shut down. So from 800,000 a month that we're relying on and have like built a company off the foundation, nothing. And I reach out to my account rep and he's like, you know, this this guy gets bonus off of our ad spins, how it works at Google. Um, he's like, Yeah, man, I don't know what's going on. Like, I'll get back to you. And what they put on every single policy violation was sexually explicit content. And I'm like, brother, like, we're doing the opposite. Like, there couldn't be anything more opposite than sexually explicit, right? So, like, if you guys are gonna shut me down, like at least come up with something better. And um, that began a three-month process of um initially our rep going to the compliance team. You know, compliance team takes about a month, reviews our account, reviews all of our websites, reviews all of the Fox News articles and things like that that we have on the internet, and uh comes back and they're like, Yeah, he's not breaking any compliance, like green light, check, right? So next up Meanwhile, you're out for three months. Meanwhile, I'm I'm you know, at this point, I'm I'm two months into um, you know, that lost revenue and you know, I'm having to figure things out and scramble, which we did. Um, you know, God provided a path for us, right? Um now it goes to the engineering team. They're like, okay, cool, we're we're approved from a compliance standpoint. Now the engineering team is going to code your account so that our automated bots don't come in and just disable everything because it is, you know, in a gray area, is what they're telling me. Um, you know, and that's what had happened initially. So engineering team works on it for another month. Now we're three months in. And I'm supposed to have a meeting with my account rep. Um, you know, compliance greenlighted it, account rep green account rep greenlighted it, engineering greenlighted it. We're whitelisted now, is what they call it. And um, before our meeting, I get on the meeting and it's his face is just like white, and he's like, There's no easy way to say this, man. He's like, right before we jumped on, um, somebody walked into my office and said they cannot run ads for anything to do with sexual addiction. They can run drug addiction, gambling addiction, nicotine addiction, any whatever, nothing to do with anything with pornography. Um, if you see some of my ads, I would I would say like the P word, you know, to kind of get around, like I'm not saying the word porn. Even though it goes, you know, nothing is violating any compliance that we gave them initially, they cannot advertise for it. Gives you an idea how much money Google makes off the porn industry. Yeah, I told you last night, I mean, if I went to Fox News and said I have a holistic uh company and I can get you off of all pharmaceutical drugs, you think they'd run my ads? No. Not a chance. Yeah. They would go, uh, we don't we're not picking you up. Yeah. We're not going to use it. We they make too much money off of which of you know, which is again, if you want to look at lightness and dark, you know, um and the enemy is um uh is doing a good job. Yeah. I mean, really is. Um have you ever thought about Rumble? Uh Rumble is a um free speech platform that that grew during um I think it was the first Obama administration when the censorship really started. Yeah. So it started like uh during Trump, actually, when they started throttling back. It was interesting. Um uh I saw the CEO on a on a talk show, a young kid, he just started doing cat videos as an alternative to YouTube. Yeah. And then he got caught in the being a young kid, he started just putting you know protected copyrighted material on his platform, and and they got shut down pretty quick. So he had to come up with well anyway, he's building his own server farm because of what they did to Parlour. Remember what happened to Parlour? Yeah, got shut down. Yep. So um uh uh uh Bezos did that, Amazon, uh AWS, their um their web servers. Yeah, so he started building his own server farm. Um it's a growing company. I I own stock in it. Um I don't do much on there because it's hard enough for me to build a YouTube channel, and I don't put stuff on, I don't do politics, I don't do so far. Uh I haven't done anything that would warrant um you know, again, I'm just trying to make people laugh. That's that's the goal. And with with this, I'm trying to bring people into the kingdom. I mean, it's easier to laugh when you're healed. Well, it is one and the same. Well, it is, and uh laughter is such a a a healing thing with the endorphins and the I mean it again, I don't know how you look at it and I think it's by design, it's not by design. It's just some accident that that nature put together. No, I mean it's it's important. So I'll I'll say that like I I took that initially very personally and like very because I got a I got a team of like the most amazing people ever, you know, and like being uh uh like who's in charge and responsible for the company in payroll, it's like I see that happen, and my first fear is like we gotta let go of some people. Um, you know, luckily God created a a path for you know, we we did have to make um you know an initial trim, and then we were able to hire some of those back on as we got restabilized. But I I took it as a notch in the belt of like, okay, like I'm gonna change the meaning of this and go Well, I see on Instagram, which is Meta. Yeah. Is Meta Meta Meta suppresses us organically, but they're happy to take our money right now, which I'm you know, yeah, I'm not gonna complain about. Like it is what it is. Um, but you know, when you have, I think we're 400 something thousand followers and I, you know, post a video and we're verified in the whole whole deal, you know, I post a video up and it, it gets, you know, 349 people see it. Like I can see how many people it showed to on the analytics. Yeah, yeah, we've talked about it. Yeah. Okay. Um you know, but meanwhile, you know, these girls out of 400,000, only 300 would see it. Yeah, but I get this girl that's shaking her butt on Instagram, you know, pointing to her OnlyFans, and it's like three million views, and I'm like, Yeah, it doesn't, you know, whatever, whatever. Like we won't we'll we'll uh call a spade a spade, right? But um, you know, I took it as a notch in the belt. And just to clarify, man, because I I I think that the enemy's ultimate goal is division, right? And like God's ultimate goal is unity. Like, I don't look at I don't want this to become a war of like, oh, Google's this big, big, bad organization, or the the people there, like whoever walked in and said they can't run ads, man, that person's not my enemy, right? But I I know that our adversary has influence on these things, that's my enemy. Not this, not this human, not this organization, right? And I think as as Christians, it's important to understand, like, we're fighting for unity, right? Like the the greatest. Well, even with between our ears. There's something you said earlier what really hit me a divided house falls, but our minds are divided. Consider the internal and the external war are the same. Yeah. And in order to, in order to excel at the external war that I believe we're put here to accomplish is is bringing unity, right? Reestablishing love and relationships, all of these things that scripture talks about. How can I do that if I don't love myself? How can I do that if I have internal division here, right? Like it renders me ineffective and it's it's it's interesting. Um, I'm I don't know, I'm fascinated by this stuff, but I think that the Bible is very real and true literally, and then also very real and true from a metaphysical standpoint. You know, we talked about this war of light and darkness. Well, this war of like these institutions and stuff that's going on here is mirrored identically of the war in here. You know, I have this, this, this version of myself that's carrying emotional injuries and and lies and deception at war with this version of myself that wants to be a son of the king, that wants to be um used by God, that wants to be the best husband and father possible. And I think a lot of men, a lot of women experience that. We have a lot of women, um, you know, that stat I read 40% of women in the church. I believe it's much more than that. Um, but we have hundreds of women that have come into the program. And um, you know, some of it's pornography specifically. Um, some of it is very common in women, is the romance novels, the erotic novels. Um, you know, and I was unaware of this until we started having women come in and like, can you help me? Like, I don't watch porn, but um, I'm addicted to these books. And I'm like, I hate reading, like, I don't understand that at all. Yeah, you know, lust is lust. Yeah, lust is lust. And they're like, and they're describing it to me of like, no, like I'm I'm up at 3 a.m. and I know I need to go to sleep so I can take care of my kids and like be a good mom and a good wife in the morning, but like I it's 3 a.m. and I can't put this novel down. I'm like, oh my gosh, man, like the dynamic of what they're explaining is exactly the same. Same thing with alcohol, you know. I know I need to do this, but you know, the alcohol, like I just keep, you know, this unwanted behavior over takes control, right? And dominion over me. Yeah, I used to call it the beast. Yeah, the beast has to be fed. Yeah. You know, why do you do that? The beast needs to be fed. I used to laugh about it. You know, Tammy would go, Why do you, you know, why can't you just have two or three? Yeah. The beast wants 23. Yeah, you know. And biblically, the addiction is a dominion problem. Yeah. Right. So it's like, okay, I watch porn. I don't really think God cares as much about the behavior as he does your heart and what's going on, right? So it's like the dynamic that you see in an addiction is it's like, this behavior has dominion over me. I don't have dominion over it, right? And when you realize there's some type of unwanted desire or unwanted behavior that's controlling you, that's breaking the dominion design that God had for us, have dominion, right? Now I got something that has dominion over me. Well, you know, there's a there's a sobering realization and a conversation and some action that needs to be taken in that dynamic. Yeah. Now it's funny what it is. Yeah, one of the things that popped into my head about loving yourself. Um, you know, Jesus said to um to love God with all your heart, mind, and soul, and to love your neighbor as yourself. If if you don't get the first one right, the second one could be a nightmare. And a lot of us do love other people as we love ourselves. The problem is we don't love ourselves very much. Yep. So we're gonna do that. And that's not a um it's not a narcissistic love. No. It's an understanding of that he f we love because he first loved. And I remember sitting at breakfast with a a an old friend, I miss him so much. He moved down to Texas. We used to have breakfast once or twice a month at Cracker Barrel. And um I I had worked myself into full-blown legalism. Um and again, I wasn't raised in a church. I went to it just um within five years I had become a complete, you know, behavior. Uh if my behavior wasn't good, then God couldn't love me. I needed to behave better to be loved by God. I needed this. And he said, So God's grace isn't enough for you. And I said, What are you talking about? He goes, Well, it sounds to me like you need you know, you need to do things right in order to to be loved by God. And he says you don't. I just you know, I I love you because of who you are. I went to the cross, I took all of this on me and you're throwing it back in my face. And it broke me because I realized you know, and it's funny, Tammy. I don't think I'm breaking a confidentiality here. Uh she shared in a small group a few weeks ago that she's finally understood that God loves her for who she is. And somebody in the group said, When did you realize that? She said, Last year. Been walking with Jesus for t twenty-five thirty years almost. And a year ago she gets God truly loves her for who she is. That's how wounded um we we walk around and and and are. And some people wear their wounds on their sleeves, it's a little obvious, but a lot of us carry them in deep and dark uh places, and we we don't want people to see those. Um what's the best way for someone who is listening to this that that wants to get unchained from whatever it is they're chained to to reach out to you guys? Um again, I found you on Instagram, I reached out, someone got a hold of me right away, started a process. There was an interviewing process. Yeah. Um, and again, I always ask this when I used to sponsor people. Um I have a new I have a new sponsee. Um, he's coming in for an interview. Um, he's 38 years sober. And I remember I told you last night, he goes, his sponsor after 44 years started drinking again. You know, again, I say addicts do what addicts do, but it was opiates that got him. And uh anyway, he's I said, What do you need a sponsor for? You're 38 years, he goes, I complain a lot. I go, all right, well, just call me and complain. Yeah, that'll be nice. So my question always was to new to new um uh sponsees was what length are you willing to go to get free from this? Yeah. And when you start hedging on what people who've been through it, I know this works. So when you get in there and you go, I'm not doing that. I'm not gonna do that. Then you have to step back and start doing the process of why am I resisting this so much. Yeah, man. Um, there's a few ways, you know. Uh my Instagram that you were talking about is official underscore Mason Kane. You'll see Unchained Leader. There's about 400 something thousand followers on there at this point that we're recording that. There's some fake accounts out there too. So I mentioned that of like find that account, it's verified, has the little blue check mark. Um, unchainleader.com. If you go on there, we have a bunch of free resources. Um, I started with your book. Yeah, so the the book, um, the black book that's on there. There's also a new devotional that I just came out with, Seven Lies of the Divided Leader. Um, it's a seven-day intensive. There's a new tool that we put out called a UDRM, which is a unwanted desire root mapping diagnostic. And five minutes, if somebody answers the question on that, it's going to give a full 25-page diagnostics that's legit script certified. And it actually helps you understand the dynamic of your father, your mother, what age were you're exposed to pornography, um, what generation did you grow up in, like all of these things. It like it actually shows you your roots, which is profound. Yeah, I look at it as a you're you're a child. Yeah. And this is what what what when I when someone told me that anger was a cover emotion for sadness, I couldn't get my head around it until I one day I yelled at my son, he was five or six, and he, of course, he only cried, he went to his room. And I walked in to apologize. And I said, How do you feel when daddy yells like that? And he said, sad. And I said, What do you mean sad? Don't you get angry? He goes, No, Daddy, it makes me sad. Yeah. And that's when it hit me as a four, five, six, seven, eight-year-old, you're sad when your father, because that's your hero, that's your that's your God, actually. That's your, you know, and when he is disappointed in you, or he's frustrated in you, or he's angry with you, makes you sad. And then there comes a point where you just go, I'm gonna pound the table, I'm not gonna feel this anymore. Sadness is it becomes unaccepted. Well, that's it, because I'm not gonna feel this anymore. And then the anger starts coming. I'm gonna get start lashing out a bit. That was profound for me. Yeah. Profound to realize that I was just this sad little kid that um uh you know just covered it all with blustery, anger, and it kept people at a distance. Nobody can get close, don't get too close. You know, and um so I looked at it as your children, you're as child, we're just computers, we're emotional computers. My young, my oldest son couldn't express, remember use your words? He used to bite kids. I used to do a bit about this in my act. You know, when you're a parent of a biter, you walk into some school. That's the you know, yeah. They think that's how you you know, that's how you discipline. Yeah, he's over here. Must bite his kid. Yeah, you know, they learned it from somewhere. Yeah, but he was front, he couldn't use his words. He was frustrated, so he would bite, you know. And it was funny when when I met Tammy, he was just she was a single mom, then we had Ryan, so now he has someone to actually bite. We would catch him trying to gnaw on his brother. We'd go, No, use your words, and he'd pull back. And but you become this emotional computer. Yeah, you don't know how to express yourself through words, you don't. So you you do it through emotion and behavior, and that gets just in there. Yeah. So when someone says something that used to trigger, I mean, I understand trigger. Yeah, and that was what I learned on the elevator one day. You know, I had a woman back into a corner out of afraid of me. And my initial reaction, there was a point where I would have gone, what's your problem? And then you realize you don't know. She could have been assaulted on an elevator, she could have been, you know, well, she's she's she has a narrative vision, right? There's a story that happened in her life, and she's seeing through the lens of that. But it would have been I think at this point in my life, um, I would ask. Yeah, I'm sorry, man. You know, what what uh have you been through something? You know. Uh so healing allows you to heal others. Well, that's it. I mean, it gives you a different perspective on uh um when you do your own work, you start looking at other people and and the way they talk and the way they behave. Yeah. You know, there's people in my life that um are deeply rooted into all the politics and the hyperbole. And it was a point where I would have, you know, I probably years ago I would have engaged and gotten out and we'd have no relationship. And I told you about my you know, my sibling. I called her, you know, and I said, Look, I don't want this to get between us. I love you too much. Can we agree to disagree and and not talk about this? So anyway, we had breakfast for an hour and a half, didn't talk about it, talked about our lives and what's going on and and all of that, you know. So um it it can be done. Yeah, and I'm living proof. Um, believe me, I never thought um that I would be unchained from this. Yeah. Um Mason Kane. Uh if there's anything we can do, we'll put the the links um in in there. Um and uh I I personally would like to tell you uh you're not alone at all. And you're not a freak, and you're not a loser. You're just wounded. And um there's help. There's help out there in a group, in a kind in a find somebody, something. If Unchained Leader's not for you, there's other groups out there. Um but um you're not alone. Don't do this alone. Um because it and that voice inside your head that that it's lies. Um there we call him the author of lies for a reason. Um you are loved, and uh God's grace is extended to all. So thank you for listening. Um and uh we'll we'll we'll stay in touch. Yeah, and get that kid into golf, man. So when I go to Tampa, first thing we're doing is that grip you gave me. I got someone to play golf with. Yeah, yeah. So God bless you. We'll see you out there on the road. Uh subscribe or hit it or whatever, share it uh if you can. Um uh uh we're looking for sponsors uh uh to help uh offset this. Right now it's a labor of love. Um and um spend the money uh that I may or may not have, but um I uh might get to meet people like this, so uh who wouldn't do this. Uh something else, uh the pilot episode again. Uh we're looking for uh donations to fund the last bit of the pilot. Uh go to the well, it'll be on the website, right? Or on the uh uh the QR code go. It's a 501c. You can deduct it 10, 15, 20, 25, 100, whatever you can spare. We're just trying to raise a few grand uh to um finish up the project. And uh believe me, I think we got something here. So uh God bless you guys, and we'll we'll see you out there.