Porn RECOVERY For Husbands Without Shame ft. Jeremy Lipkowitz | EP 45

Become a Better Husband in Just Two Minutes a Week for FREE: HERE

What if your porn habit has nothing to do with sex?

Alessandro sits down with Jeremy Lipkowitz, a porn addiction recovery coach who has helped hundreds of men break free from compulsive porn use without shame, without moral panic, and without white-knuckling it for the rest of their lives.

Porn is rarely just about sex. For most men, it becomes a way to cope with loneliness, stress, boredom, anxiety, and emotions they were never taught how to process.

Jeremy has lived this himself. And in this episode, he brings a rare mix of brutal honesty, neuroscience, Buddhist psychology, and practical recovery tools that actually meet men where they are.

Alessandro also shares his own rock bottom in detail, the triggers he still carries today, and the moment he finally told his wife the truth. That moment changed his marriage.

Chapters:
02:13 - The Real Reason Men Use Porn
04:12 - Why Just Stopping Usually Fails
06:45 - Don’t Ask Why the Addiction
08:40 - Is Porn Evil?
13:52 - Your Phone Is the Slippery Slope
16:30 - Build the Man You Actually Want to Become
20:20 - What Men Fear Losing When They Quit
22:46 - Ending the Relationship With Porn
24:37 - Post-Nut Clarity Is Real
27:02 - The Trigger Hiding Under the Habit
29:47 - What You’re Really Running From
33:15 - How Buddhism Changed His Recovery
37:36 - The Hungry Ghost Inside Addiction
42:30 - The Life That Makes Porn Lose Its Pull

You’ll learn why the shame spiral after porn is not proof that you are weak. It’s your brain coming back online after being hijacked. You’ll understand why simply deciding to stop usually fails when you never deal with what you’re trying to escape. 

Press play and learn the experiment that reframes everything most men think they know about addiction, recovery, and what actually sets men free.

Connect with Jeremy: https://www.instagram.com/jeremylipkowitz/?hl=enBreak Free From Porn: https://www.unhookedacademy.com/

Become a Better Husband in Just Two Minutes a Week for Free: HERE

Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for therapy. Always seek qualified guidance for your personal situation.

Views shared by Alessandro Frosali and his guests reflect their lived experiences and opinions. Every listener’s journey is unique, and no therapeutic relationship is created.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

You don't have a porn problem. You have a pain problem. And until you understand the difference, you'll keep light knuckling your way through life while the real issue quietly eats away at your marriage. I'm Alessandra Frostali, and this is Shut the Fuck Up and Listen. This is the podcast for men who are done with boy patterns, ready to take radical responsibility and ownership of their lives and want to become the husband and man that their family actually needs. Today I sit down with Jeremy Lipkowitz. He's a porn addiction recovery coach who helps men break free from compulsive behaviors and actually show up in their relationships. Now, Jeremy doesn't come at this with shame. He actually goes straight underneath the behavior, and that's exactly why I wanted him on this show. It's exactly what makes this a great episode, because pornography has little to do with sex, despite what our wives believe. It actually has more to do with escape. And the man who keeps escaping is not fully showing up for his marriage. Now, in this episode, you'll learn why watching porn is a coping mechanism for emotions nobody ever taught men to deal with. You'll find out why willpower alone will never be enough and what actually has to change for the behavior to stop. You'll hear why the moment after orgasm might be the clearest your mind gets all day, and what that clarity is trying to show you. And what I love about this episode is Jeremy flips the whole recovery model on its head. It's like instead of fighting porn forever, you'll learn how to build a life that makes it irrelevant. He also shares a specific exercise called the default future. A lot of men I see coaching, a lot of men I see online, yeah, they're avoiding that exact exercise. They're an autopilot. They don't give a fuck where they're going. This will change that. Because when you do it, you never come back the same. That's why I know you're here. Let's get into it. Welcome to Shut the Fuck Up and Listen, Jeremy.

SPEAKER_01 1:42

I'm excited to be here. And it's a great name for a podcast, by the way. I love it.

SPEAKER_00 1:46

Oh, you know, shut the fuck up and listen was it's something I've actually tattooed on myself. I don't know if I even mentioned that on there before. Um, but I tattooed on myself because shut the fuck up and listen was a philosophy that I kind of my interpretation of Socrates in a way. And if he was here in modern times, he would be somebody who would just shut the fuck up and listen. And then when it came to naming the podcast, that just popped up as the as the right way to go. So look, Jeremy, I absolutely love everything about our pre-conversation podcast chat. For everyone who doesn't know, I actually chat to everyone who jumps on the podcast first because we want to work out why we should jump on the podcast together. And really, the main reason why I want to jump on the podcast with Jeremy Jeremy is because he's very passionate about a topic that is and speaks to so many men in this world: pornography. And I think handling pornography is something that's quite difficult, I guess, to a lot of people. But to you, it doesn't seem so. It actually seems something that that you don't look at as so taboo or so big. Why is that?

SPEAKER_01 2:58

Trial and error. It it's a lot of experience. It what I mean by that is the first time I talked about porn publicly was the most terrifying experience of my life. And it was I I was panicking, I was nervous, my heart rate was through the roof. And it took me a long time to be able to talk about porn openly and and vulnerably to share my own story. Now I do it on a regular basis and I realize it's it's not that bad and it affects most people, and I'm not alone and all these things. So these days it's very easy for me to talk about it openly, and I am quite passionate about it, but it it wasn't always that way. And so I know what it's like to be in that space where you're afraid to even admit that you have watched porn, let alone that you might have a problem with it or kind of compulsive behaviors around it. So yeah, it's something I know very, very well.

SPEAKER_00 3:52

Aaron Powell I asked you a question about like what would make this a really good episode. And I think one of the things that you said was to be vulnerable, to, to be, to be real. And and I love that because I think when we're talking about pornography in general, there is It's almost a stigma in a weird way of like people saying, okay, you've got to look after your seed or you've got to be perfect and pure, and then you know, you can almost see them in the in the in the bathroom in the back corner, you know, releasing to pornography. And what I would love to do is talk about why do men in general actually use pornography? Is that something that that you've seen over and over again? Are there trends to this? Is this a particular pattern or is everybody's different? What's going on here?

SPEAKER_01 4:42

Yeah, the answer is yes to all of that. I mean, there are patterns and it's also unique to every individual. But that question of why do guys watch porn, the big misconception is that guys watch porn because they're horny or because they're a pervert or because they're they need a sexual outlet. The majority of why guys watch porn has nothing to do with sex and has nothing to do with their sexuality. It's a coping mechanism for most guys, most of the time. It's a way to deal with emotions, to deal with stress, to deal with anxiety and boredom and loneliness and all the things that plague men these days that they don't know how to deal with. So for the most part, it's a it's a coping mechanism that guys use. And they learned at a very young age that if they pull up a porn website, that it's a very quick and easy and reliable way to numb out and to escape and have some stimulation and some distraction. So for most men, the why, which they might not even be aware of it, but the why has to do with more with managing emotions as a coping mechanism.

SPEAKER_00 5:47

It's very interesting because you know, when we talk about understanding the why, and I mean, here we get into the meat of it, I guess, is is it important to understand the why, or is it important just to stop? Or like what's the actual important thing here? You know, because I even look at it and I and while listening to you talk, I'm like, okay, anxiety, stress, loneliness, boredom. I mean, I'm sure there's a load of different things that we can cope from. But in your in your mind, like what's the what's the way to actually get resolved? So let's say a man wants to stop. Does he need to understand why he's doing it?

SPEAKER_01 6:23

Does he need to thing that I'm most passionate about in this whole topic is is that there's nuance to this conversation that a lot of people just don't uh explore the nuances of it. And what I mean by that is that there's a lot of different ways to approach this. And you don't necessarily have to go into your deepest, darkest trauma and understand what happened to you when you were three years old in order to break free from it. That is a route that some people will take and it might be beneficial for some people. And, you know, for example, seeking therapy is very powerful. But not everybody has to uncover their trauma in order to break free from it. You might want to do that for separate reasons, and it might also be an aid to it. But whether or not you do the therapeutic approach and explore your trauma, which everybody has to some greater or lesser degree, might be lowercase T trauma, just in the way that you can get your needs met. I do think it's important to understand not necessarily the why, but the what. And what I mean by that is understanding the way your mind is functioning, understanding how your mind gets hijacked, what's going on at a moment-to-moment basis when you're wanting to act out with porn. So I try to separate that. The why is okay, what happened to you when you were five years old might be more of the why, but the what is what is going on in my brain in this moment? What am I looking to escape from? How am I using this? And what is this telling me that I'm actually looking for in this moment? That I do think is important. You can't just stop an addictive behavior without looking at what is it that you're actually seeking in that moment. If you just try to stop without addressing the what, it's just like white knuckling it and it might work for a couple hours, a couple days, maybe a couple weeks. But if you never address why you're reaching out to that substance or behavior in the first place, it's just going to pop up somewhere else.

SPEAKER_00 8:20

Remind me of that beautiful line of Kabo Mate.

SPEAKER_01 8:23

Yeah, he has so many beautiful lines. The one I think we talked about on the pre-call, he said he said a couple things. One is he said we shouldn't ask why the addiction, but why the pain. The addiction is the attempt to solve the problem. And it it points to this underlying truth that any compulsive behavior, any addictive behavior, it's really an attempt to deal with some underlying pain or some unmet need. And so to really break free from a compulsive behavior, you have to explore and understand what is that problem underneath. You know, what's the reason you develop this relationship with that substance or behavior in the first place? And that's where the work of Gabriel Mate is so beautiful. It's it's not demonizing the behavior or the substance. It's saying, hey, this is this is a strategy that you're using. We shouldn't ask, why are you watching, you know, what's wrong with porn? We should say, what's the pain underlying that you are trying to deal with?

SPEAKER_00 9:19

Yeah, it's an interesting one. That's an interesting one. Now, is it always pain with porn? I mean, and that's now going into the question and the morality of porn if we if we wanted to go that direction. I mean, I think we should touch on that briefly because I think a lot of people, let's put it this way. I know for this podcast, you know, we we're we're a specific aim for becoming a better husband, right? And let's imagine that a wife has found out about a porn addiction or something like this and has asked the husband to stop. Now, in that moment, the husband can say, Look, I want to stop, right? They might know it internally, but they might also find the, they might not necessarily know if there's a truth to let's say their wife goes all the way to say this is evil, and then they find themselves arguing about the the quote unquote evil nature of it. How should a man look at porn? And what are the questions that maybe he can ask himself to work out whether he thinks it's a moral like morality, it's a good or a bad thing?

SPEAKER_01 10:15

Yeah. Fortunately, you you don't even have to explore the morality question in order to look at just how it's impacting your life. I mean, even if you just put that whole question to the side and say, I'm just gonna even ignore the question of whether or not the porn industry is evil or is really kind of out of integrity and causing a lot of harm. Just looking at the way it's impacting my relationship, the way it's impacting my life, my mental clarity, my ability to focus, my sense of satisfaction. I mean, that was just my own, very candidly, my own personal journey had nothing to do with thinking that porn was evil or that the porn industry was a bad influence. It had everything to do with just realizing that it was impacting my own ability to be happy in life, that it was throwing fuel on the fire of my own dissatisfaction. It was robbing me of the ability to be content and be grateful for the things I had. So you don't even have to go to that, you know, that contemplation of is porn the porn industry evil. You can just say, how is this impacting my relationship? How is this benefiting my life or causing harm in my life? And even that alone, 99.9% of guys, if they are honest with themselves, will will look at it and say, this is causing more harm than it's doing good. And it's okay to be honest about there's some good it brings into someone's life, some distraction or pleasure, but you know, is it really worth it? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:47

Is it really worth it? So let's say a man then understands, okay, you know, maybe he knows or I do it whenever I'm alone, I do it whenever you know I've got time for myself. So I know that I've done the the the why, I understand this, okay. But and I know it's bad for me. I know it's bad uh mentally and everything, but I just can't stop. I just feel compulsion. And when I feel that compulsion, I just do it. Like I think I think that's something that I see. You know, I even just got off the phone with somebody yesterday who was talking to me about a coaching client. He's talking to me about how he knows he needs to do exercise. He knows that it's good for himself, and yet he just doesn't. He just doesn't. When it's either the Snickers bar or it's the exercise, he just will go with the Snickers bar. And he knows all the things and he knows the the the the thing. What's gonna get us to move? What's this thing that's stopping us? What what is that? Do we even know?

SPEAKER_01 12:50

That is the the fundamental question and predicament of addiction is why do we keep doing the things that we know are bad for us? When we know certain things are bad for us, why do we keep doing it? And why do we not do the things that we know are good for us? And you know, uh understanding that exercise is good for you and eating healthy is good for you is very different from having the motivation, the drive, the discipline, the accountability to doing it. And I think what I just said there kind of gives us a little glimpse of what we actually need. Most people think, oh, I just need to try harder. I just need to, you know, really want it and then I'll I'll do it and muster up the motivation. And it just doesn't work that way. I mean, willpower isn't enough on its own. Willpower is really beautiful. I think we we've kind of in our modern society, particularly in the recovery space, thrown willpower under the bus and said, oh, you don't rely on willpower. Willpower is really powerful and important, and you can actually strengthen it through different practices. You can train your willpower muscle, and it's a really important critical piece of recovery to build impulse control and willpower. But it's not enough on its own. And this is where we need other things around us to support living our best lives and stepping into our greatest self. So things like being a part of community, and particularly, you know, something like a men's group that holds you accountable and says, hey, I know you can do better and I know that you know you want this, and let's hold you accountable and not just let you isolate yourself and pretend it doesn't matter. Let's actually shine a light on your behavior, not in a shameful way and not in a judging way, but in a in a way that calls you out and says, you can do this. You know, don't hide and isolate and pretend you don't exist. So that's one component is getting real accountability and support. There's also just a lot of, you know, scientific things that we know about building better habits and breaking bad habits around something called behavioral architecture. So setting up your environment in a way that supports your best intentions. You know, if you're trying to quit eating junk food, but you fill your cupboard with Snickers and gummy bears and all kinds of things, it makes it very challenging to stick to your plan. But if you set up your environment where you surround yourself with healthy food, you're not putting these tempting foods right in front of your eyeballs every time you open the cupboard. It supports you. And it's not there's nothing wrong with being smart about your recovery in that way.

SPEAKER_00 15:24

Aaron Powell So how do how do men do that with pornography when it's like directly on their phones?

SPEAKER_01 15:28

Aaron Powell Yeah. I mean, being smart about this is where the understanding things like slippery slopes and thirst traps and the things that are might be gray areas that start to trigger your cravings. You know, there's the whole habit loop, the cue, you know, trigger, it triggers a craving. And so being smart about the types of media that you consume, if you know that every time you go on Instagram, it's full of thirst traps and bikini models, there's a lot of things you can do about that. You can decide to not go on Instagram. You can start to unfollow or mute all these thirst traps that are.

SPEAKER_00 16:06

Retrain that algorithm?

SPEAKER_01 16:08

Exactly. Yeah. So there's a lot of things you can do there. The one other thing I'll say, and this is something that I think is really important, particularly around porn addiction, when it comes to what can actually help you break free and stop acting out, when you say, like, I know I want to, but I just can't do it. One thing I have my guys do in my program is at the very beginning to do two things. One, I call the default feature exercise, where you take time to intentionally sit down and say, if I keep going down this road, what is my life going to look like five years from now or 10 years from now? Because one of the problems with porn, and this is true for a lot of other kinds of addictions in our society, is that the consequences are very subtle. They're small, they're, you know, they're almost imperceptible on a daily basis. But over a lifetime, they add up to be really consequential. And so it's easy on any given day to say, well, it's just a little bit more porn. Like I've been doing this my whole life. What's the big deal? I'll just, what's one more day? But if you sit down and say, okay, if I keep doing this for the next 20 years of my life, what's going to be the quality of my relationship with my wife? How am I going to be a good father for my kids if I'm constantly escaping into porn in the back room? You know, so really looking at if this adds up if I keep going down this path, and that can actually engender a little bit of healthy fear, you know, like I don't want to go down that path. And that was my turning point. When I was in college, you know, I was 23, 24, watching porn every day. And I had this moment of seeing myself as a creepy 60-year-old dude hitting on girls at college bars. And that woke me up because I realized, yeah, it's fine right now, but if I keep living my life this way, this is the consequence. This is where I'm headed. And so that can also kind of shake people out of a rut. The flip side of that, the next exercise is to just look at your dream future and say, 20 years from now, what does my best self look like? And that inspires people, you know, to think about what they want to build, not just what they want to run away from.

SPEAKER_00 18:16

For sure. For sure. I do that a lot with I mean, I do exactly that exercise when we do when we start within the academy because it's it's so powerful for us to imagine these things. And I I think it's actually it's really beautiful to imagine this with specific habits. Because what I actually see, I studied a movie in in school, film school. I think it's called American Beauty with what's his name?

SPEAKER_01 18:38

Kevin Spacey.

SPEAKER_00 18:39

Kevin Spacey. And there's this image right at the beginning of the movie where he's where he's like jacking off in a shower and and he's like completely lustful over an 18-year-old girl and he has like no relationship with his wife and his daughter hates him. And you look at that and it's like that that's a wonderful analogy because underneath the porn addiction is not necessarily like no one's necessarily finding him w watch porn. It's not about that moment when he's in the shower. It's about his ability to be connected to his wife to actually also then have a say in whether that connection is going well or not. Numbing often, from what I see, is like it does this thing where it chips away at your resolve to deal with the relationship issues. You know, and instead of, you know, I'm gonna have a hard conversation about this right now, it's like I'll just leave it and I'll just go jack off in the back. And it's so I like yeah, it's interesting just you saying that, imagining in the future with the specific act, it's like, oh, he's uh he's a bad image to look at, but it it's it's straight there at the beginning of the movie, right there. It could be a huge part of it.

SPEAKER_01 19:57

And I think, I mean, it's just like you said, like it's such a powerful thing to do with any habit or behavior to really and and to get really visual with it and to say what what will that look like? What do I see when I envision myself as a 60-year-old man? What do I see if I, you know, if I really keep going down this path? And it's a great wake-up call.

SPEAKER_00 20:17

Yeah, for sure. And I think it's also, you know, often wives will say, why don't you eat better? And you're like, ah, it's okay. I don't have to eat better. And then Yeah. The flip side is not necessarily imagining the the bad side. And if you imagine that good side of that person, like what kind of skills will he have to develop in order to become that person? Right? There will be this skill of discipline.

SPEAKER_01 20:39

And yeah, it also makes you reflect on what's actually important to you. You know, a lot of guys when they do this dream future envisioning, they realize, you know, what they really long for, what they really aspire to is deep connections, deep relationships, you know, a fulfilling house, you know, and time in nature, time with friends, and all the other stuff that we get distracted by and we think is important, like more money in the bank and in this and that. A lot of that falls by the wayside when you realize, oh, what I really want is a sense of integrity. I mean, a lot of guys, that's the surprising thing. What most guys tell me when they get to that part is what they really want is to feel that sense of integrity with their life and who they are. They want to be able to look themselves in the mirror without flinching. And that, I mean, that's a powerful thing to realize. Like, that's what I really want is inner peace to be at peace with who I am.

SPEAKER_00 21:37

No little demon on the shoulder saying, Yeah, but you're not good enough because you do this. Yeah, yeah, that's beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 21:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:43

That's beautiful. One little NLP trick I love, because I like neurolinguistic programming, but often when coaches use it, they use it in um on somebody rather than with somebody. And I always love using it with somebody. So one of the things I learned was that let's say we wanted to go. And you think what would be the thing that stops people from going on a diet? And you think it's actually like because it's hard or because of this. Often it's none of that. Often the thing that stops people going on a diet is who they fear they would become in success. In actual fact, the perceived losses. So for example, you know, if you if you actually succeed at getting that six-pack, then you have to maintain that. It means you might not you might lose your time with your friends. You might lose that beer that you actually really like on that Friday night. You might lose the relaxed nature of life and all of a sudden everything's so strict. And so the thing you say you want is actually not necessarily what you want. You you just you're terrified of what success would look like. What have you come across in porn that people tell themselves or at least perceive that they will lose by stopping?

SPEAKER_01 22:57

Aaron Powell This one comes up a lot. I mean, people, you know, it's so interesting. For most of us men, we start engaging with porn or things that are porn adjacent when we're seven, eight, nine years old. You know, it doesn't always start at porn, sometimes it starts with lingerie catalogs or something else.

SPEAKER_00 23:16

For me, it was 13 years old on a motor or a flip phone.

SPEAKER_01 23:20

Oh, really?

SPEAKER_00 23:21

Yeah. Remember it very vividly.

SPEAKER_01 23:24

Yeah. For me, it was I think I was eight years old. It was the Victoria's Secret catalog. Like that was my first thing that I started using in an intentional way. But you know, what's interesting is for so many guys, it starts very young, you know, anywhere from seven years old to 15 years old, right? And so for a lot of guys, without really even realizing this, they have developed a relationship with porn. I mean, it is one of their biggest relationships that they have with that behavior. Because every time you orgasm, you're actually releasing a whole host of neurotransmitters and a cocktail of things that make you actually feel more emotionally attached to that behavior. And so it's it's actually quite fascinating that when guys are thinking about quitting, there is this fear of loss of am I ever going to be able to enjoy this high anymore? I'm going to lose this.

SPEAKER_00 24:21

Ending the relationship with the woman with a thousand faces.

SPEAKER_01 24:25

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's it can be quite an intimate experience for many guys. It's it's the only place where they feel that they can let their full desires out and not be judged. And so it there is a grieving that needs to happen for a lot of guys when they when they give up that life.

SPEAKER_00 24:44

I think that's actually very strong to understand. Because I I know I also have some wives that listen to this and they might listen to this and go, like, that's absolutely ridiculous. And that's, you know, because I find often wives completely you said it at the top of the show, you know, like often the misconception is that you're doing it because you're horny or you're doing it because of X, Y, and Z. But there is a there's a strong sense, I I can imagine, and I know even from my past, to be honest, there was a strong sense of limitless desire. Limitless desire. And that's what that gives you. A way to just be solely you. But then ironically, you know, straight after the the act, then it's then it's disgust or, you know, whatever it is.

SPEAKER_01 25:31

It's a roller coaster. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:33

Yeah. It's the whole thing. I mean, I I I guess it's a akin to to to sleeping with an ex that you really shouldn't sleep with, and then you know it straight afterwards, I guess, or something like that. Is there anything in your work that you do about like the the aftermath of it?

SPEAKER_01 25:47

The aftermath of it.

SPEAKER_00 25:47

And how you feel? Like so let's say after release, like like um to to know that if something's good for you or that you feel because I mean, I think is that a is that a I don't know whether that's just something that's in my head as like I've seen in the in the zeitgeist of this, like if you feel great afterwards, then it's good for you. And if you feel like shame afterwards, it's bad for you. Is that a thing?

SPEAKER_01 26:09

I wouldn't be so hyperbolistic. I don't know if that's if that's a even a word, but I wouldn't be so kind of like, oh yes, that's always true that if you feel bad after it, it's yeah, I wouldn't be so binary about it that that's always true. Because sometimes you do things and you feel good afterwards, but you're just not aware of the consequences. You know, you're not aware of the subtle ways that it's impacting you. And so, you know, I I wouldn't kind of use that as the rule of thumb. But this thing that you talk about, a lot of guys have this realization after they come, after they orgasm. This, you know, it's sounds almost gross to say it or sounds kind of adolescent, but that post-nut clarity that a lot of guys joke about is a real thing. You know, you you get hooked, your your brainstem gets hooked and triggered by this thing and this craving where it says, you need this, you need this, and your prefrontal cortex shuts down. Your access to your reasoning skills and your rational thought and thinking about the future literally shuts down because your amygdala hijacks the rest of the brain. It's called the amygdala hijack. It hijacks the brain, it turns off your prefrontal cortex, and you become a bit more like a caveman that just says, I wanna, it says, you know, fuck that, you know, eat this, and you know. And so this is happening on a neurological level. What happens is you get into this zombie-like state, and after you release, you come to your senses almost, and you realize you're in a puddle of zombie. You come to your senses, huh? Yeah. Didn't even think about that. But you know, I remember this very clearly. I after like a two-hour porn binge, I would orgasm, and then I would come to my senses, and I would literally be in a puddle of sweat. My my sheets would be soaked through with sweat. And I just spent the last two, three hours staring like a zombie, clicking, you know, on link from link to link to link. And it's like, where did all that time go? What have I just done with my life? And so coming back to yourself is a really powerful and important thing. And there are ways you can capitalize on that and kind of connect and say, yeah, this is not how I want to live my life. You know, a rock bottom is beautiful saying, a rock bottom is a very stable platform to launch yourself off of. And it's true. So you can use those rock bottom moments to say, this is not how I want to live.

SPEAKER_00 28:34

Yeah. Yeah, I remember a rock bottom like that for myself, to be honest. And it was when a bunch of disrupt disruptive habits all formed at once. When I was young, I was actually kind of knew everything that wasn't good for me. I didn't s I didn't drink, I didn't smoke, I didn't do too much. I think I played a lot of video games. And porn was always a stable back then. After being in uh meeting my wife, and she wasn't my wife at the time, but she at the start smoked and and I then started smoking. And then I remember like there was this moment where I was she left, and I always knew that that was my trigger. Like whenever she was leaving the house, like I that was like the trigger for me. And I remember there was porn, chain smoking, and playing frickin' Hearthstone on the phone, and it was just like it was really bad. I like after after the moment of of like ejaculating it while doing it and feeling so sick from the smoking, I was like, what the hell? This is not me. I just sort of sat there and I was just like, something's gotta change. I can't ever do that again. Very s very soon after that, I actually told Julia about the the porn addiction and that and that that changed everything, I guess. But at the same time, you know, that it's still I still have that trigger in me. I still have that trigger in me. It moves to emotional eating sometimes. And so it's interesting because I really resonate with this idea. It's not necessarily about the it's not necessarily about the porn. It's it's this for me, the trigger is being alone. And so I know there's probably some like some meat to extract somewhere along the lines.

SPEAKER_01 30:22

Yeah. But that's a it's a very common one. I mean, this sense of, you know, especially for guys who really have it all together and, you know, are very disciplined in their work and, you know, kind of high functioning. And then there's this kind of rebellious side that wants to say, I have no rules and no accountability, and I can do whatever I want because mom and dad have left the house or wife has left the house. You know, and it's this feeling of now I get to do what I want and nobody knows. And so that can be a very strong trigger. And these triggers can, you know, they can follow us if we don't really address what's going on or start to really look at, oh, what is it that that this is telling me that I need to look at? You know, hotels, traveling internationally and staying in hotels are big triggers for a lot of guys with porn. Because it feels like this space, this limbo space, that it's a free pass, it doesn't count.

SPEAKER_00 31:14

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 31:15

Yeah. A lot of it's environmental, you know, these triggers.

SPEAKER_00 31:19

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, when we start going into that, is there a lot of like I can imagine there'd be a lot of Carl Jung shadow work here and jumping in and and going, okay, so what is like, what are the dark part of you wanting to actually how do you integrate that and and bring that? Would you say that that would be the path forward in in your mind?

SPEAKER_01 31:40

I think that's the path that some people like to take. It's not particularly the path that I took, and it's not the the path that I I walk some guys through. Mine is is less about kind of shadow work. Shadow work, I mean, it's all semantics, really. I mean, it's you know, what the shadow is or isn't, but looking at these kind of parts of our mind that we want to run away from, you know, the boredom, the loneliness. My lens is much more from kind of the Buddhist lens of looking at mental states and how they affect you and you know, wanting to run away from unpleasant experiences and run towards pleasant ones.

SPEAKER_00 32:15

So tell us more about those Buddhist approaches.

SPEAKER_01 32:19

Yeah, yeah. It's it's really just looking at the dynamics of the mind, how the mind works and how the mind can get hijacked and out of control when we're not aware. You know, what goes on on the subconscious level that we might not even be aware of, that might have developed when we were five, six, seven years old, you know, as as coping mechanisms for dealing with loneliness, boredom, anxiety, fear, insecurity. These are unpleasant emotional experiences. And if we don't get taught how to process unpleasant emotional experiences, the kind of the innate response of the mind is usually to want to run away from that experience. And that's natural. We don't want to experience things that are unpleasant. It's natural to want to move away from that. The problem is that we learn some of these coping mechanisms when we're very young and they start to take root and get deeply ingrained to the point where they cause problems later on. And in our attempt to run away from unpleasant, you know, the attempt to run away from insecurity. Oh, I don't want to feel insecure. I don't want to feel anxious. Oh, I know that if I look at porn, oh, it makes me feel better in the moment. I escape that feeling. And so it's just a learned coping mechanism. And so the the reason I bring that up is, you know, you you don't have to go and do this shadow work. You don't have to understand your three-year-old trauma. You can really just start to explore what is it that is going on in my mind? How is my mind functioning? What is it that I'm running away from? It might benefit you to add on some therapy and some shadow work and all kinds of other modalities, but it also is enough to just look at the nature of the mind and start to observe the mind and learn how to shift it in a healthier direction. You know, to say, oh, okay, you know, maybe what I need right now is rest. Or what I need right now is a hug from my partner. And then to enact that, you know, it takes some mental training.

SPEAKER_00 34:20

Yeah. No, I see that. I think it's good. I mean, even when we talk about modalities and everything like that, like it's almost it's beautiful because they're all just metaphors or frameworks that we create just to try and understand the mind. And yet every mind is a little bit different. So there's always going to be outliers. So certain ones will work for certain people.

SPEAKER_01 34:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:41

Um how did you come across Buddhism? How did that like come into your space?

SPEAKER_01 34:46

Yeah, for me, it was intertwined with my porn addiction story and my recovery from porn addiction. To make a long story short, I was in college watching porn on a regular basis, had a good life. You know, I was a stellar student, you know, top of my class in in a big school, ended up getting a scholarship to go to Duke University and work on a PhD. So I was a good student, high-achieving captain of a sports team. I had a great life. And yet I was constantly filled with dissatisfaction. I never felt like I had enough. I never felt good enough. I always wanted more. And particularly around sex and relationships, I always noticed the way that I constantly was looking at what I didn't have, constantly lusting after women. It never felt like I had enough. And I had this one moment of just realizing how much my mind had been consumed by porn and by lust. And it it sent me down a dark existential crisis where I started to really question will I ever be happy? This is where I saw my future also. I said, if I keep living like this, I'll end up as a creep who hits on girls at college bars. And that fortunately, because of my kind of academic inclination, it sent me to a bookstore where I started looking at books on happiness and the meaning of life. And I ended up finding a book on Buddhist meditation called Happiness by Matthew Ricard. And that book just completely turned my life around, 180 degrees. It really, for the first time ever, started in a very scientific, secular way, started to show me what happiness, real happiness, the inner fulfillment kind of happiness, not just the bubbly going to a rave kind of happiness, but what real inner fulfillment looked like and what led to suffering and also what led to genuine inner peace. And that it was things that you could cultivate mostly in part due to what we now know as neuroplasticity, that your mind is constantly changing and forming new connections as you grow, depending on what you do with your mind. So the the biggest insight I had is realizing, first of all, that lust is a state of suffering. When you are looking at something you don't have and thinking, I need to have that in order to be happy, you are in a state of lack, in a state of suffering. You are not in a state of abundance. And that was the thing I realized. I had so much good in my life. I had all these friends and lovers and good grades and everything. And yet I was filled with lack because of what I was paying attention to. So I realized porn was making me, you know, live in a constant state of suffering. But the benefit is that you could use neuroplasticity to start to cultivate the factors that lead to happiness. Things like contentment and gratitude and patience, and you could train your mind to strengthen those neural pathways. And that's what meditation, that's what Buddhist philosophy really is. It's not a religion about where the world comes from or the Buddha wasn't a god. He was just a guy who got really good at meditation.

SPEAKER_00 38:02

Could control his mind. Beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 38:05

And a little nuance here, but it's it's not like controlling your mind is part of it. But it's also deeper than that where it's like letting go of the need to control everything. Part of it is like the acceptance of knowing, okay, there will be pain, and I don't need to control the pain. I don't need to fix the pain. I can just let there be pain. You know, sadness will come, and I don't need to control it and have joy and, you know, happiness all the time. I can just let there be sadness. And that, like, the liberation that you feel when you don't need to fix everything. When you can actually just let emotions pass through you is part of, you know, what makes it such a beautiful practice. Because that's what addiction is. Addiction is like, I need to feel good all the time. I need to control everything all the time. I need to always feel good and always to feel safe and always to feel secure. And if I don't feel those things, let me inject something or watch something or eat something to make me feel better. And it's just, it's a never-ending, it's insatiable. Are you familiar with the realm of hungry ghosts? That concept? Oh. Okay, let me tell you this. It's a modern Yeah, it comes from like it comes from Buddhist kind of philosophy. So in Buddhist cosmology, there are these different realms of existence. And we know now they're not real places that people go. They're more manifestations of the mind. So there's things like the heavenly realm where everything is just pleasure all the time. There's the hell realm where everything is just pain and suffering and torment all the time. There's the human realm that we live in. There's an animal realm where it's all primal urges and animals. And then there's this one realm called the realm of hungry ghosts. And it's filled with these ghost-like creatures that have these massive stomachs, these huge bellies, and they have tiny pinhole mouths and needle-like throats. And so they wander their existence. They can never eat enough to satisfy their massive hunger. So they live in this constant, perpetual state of hunger that they can never satisfy. And that's what it feels like to be an addict is you're just wandering around constantly hungry for more, and you can never satisfy that hunger. And that's what it's like to be an addict. It's like nothing satisfies. You just keep trying to shove more in, more sex, more video games, more cigarettes, more validation, more money. And it's it doesn't, it's it's not, it can't ever satisfy you because it's not the thing that satisfies us.

SPEAKER_00 40:47

So what is the brilliant image? Brilliant image. And I can actually I viscerally can see it and feel it. Yeah. When somebody is, do they go into the hungry ghost realm? Are they a hungry ghost? Or do they befriend the hungry ghost? Do we sit with it and and and and just say give it a hug?

SPEAKER_01 41:13

Amen, brother. Yes to all of the above. I mean, all of those are beautiful things. You know, you are a hungry ghost and and you can visit the realm of hungry ghosts, and you're not a hungry ghost, and go give it a hug. And also, you know, it's all these things, but just to recognize that like that strategy doesn't work. And that there is something else that will nourish you and fill you up. And this is, you know, for me the beauty of Buddhist philosophy. It's understanding that there are things that lead to genuine inner peace and inner fulfillment. And it's things like, you know, gratitude, patience, equanimity, being of service, being in community, practicing generosity, like all of these things that genuinely fill your soul and fill you up and make you feel good inside. But they don't teach us that in school because it doesn't align with the materialistic interests of big industry.

SPEAKER_00 42:11

Well, because a hungry ghost makes money.

SPEAKER_01 42:13

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 42:15

When we are hungry ghosts, we spend a lot of money.

SPEAKER_01 42:18

Yeah. I mean, we live very much in this society of hungry ghosts.

SPEAKER_00 42:23

Well, yeah. I mean, it's almost as if it's almost as if we it's incentivized for us to become hungry ghosts. I mean, we d that's a whole nother topic in and of itself, and and not worth not worth us becoming victims over, so to speak. It's more along the lines of I think to recognize it. I think whatever your modality is, like I I can see that hungry ghost, and I just look at it and I'm like, yeah, like where I would tactically go for it, because I can imagine even just after you saying that, if somebody ever comes to me with an addiction, it's almost getting them to confront that hungry ghost and getting them to decide what they would do with it, you know, because it ev we have such wisdom within ourselves, right? Because the moment I say to you, you know, you there is a hungry ghost in front of you, you you might say, well, I need to hug him. Another one might say, I am him and I need to be at peace with that. And and another one like might be, you know, I just need to sit there and understand that that's not gonna work. But I think it's a very powerful image because I don't know, I'm really big on separating things from ourselves, right? Because I think, I think I see so many times we have these, these, these voices, you know, whether we talk about it as shadow or whether we talk about it as like an addiction or whatever. And it's like there's there's often these these voices. And I love the idea that you are not the your thoughts. You can observe them and you can let them go through. And so I'm really big on that externalization. So thank you for the hungry ghost. I think it's uh very powerful.

SPEAKER_01 43:51

Yeah. Can I tell you one more powerful little story? Because it's it's very pleased. And it also relates to, you know, how do we deal with the realm of the hungry ghosts? And it's it's kind of Of a pathway out. Are you familiar with the rat park experiment?

SPEAKER_00 44:04

Yes. But tell it on it.

SPEAKER_01 44:06

Yeah. It's for all the listeners out there who haven't heard it yet. They were studying addiction in the 70s and 80s, and they would study morphine in rats. So they would give these rats, they'd put them in cages, give them a bottle of water with morphine, and they found out that the rats loved the morphine water. They got so addicted they would just sit there and drink and do nothing else, eventually till they collapsed or died. So it showed how strong addiction really was, that it could really break someone. But this one researcher had a really interesting insight. He said, These rats are living in these miserable conditions, these wire cages with no friends or running wheels or anything. What if we got them addicted, but then we gave them a rat park with other rats to play with and exercise wheels? They did that. They got them addicted and then put them in a rat park where they had a full life with friends and exercise and nature and shrubbery, and they barely touched the morphine water after that. And it just really shows us that addiction is there when we're living in a completely unfulfilling, unnatural way, we're not getting our actual needs met. And if you want to break free from addiction, break free from that realm of the hungry ghosts, it's about building a deeply fulfilling life where you're getting your needs met. And that when you have that addiction, even if it's right in front of you, even if porn is in your pocket, which it is for all of us, you're not gonna be tempted because it just doesn't pull at you that way. And that's what we really want in recovery, is not to have a lifelong battle where you're fighting against porn for the rest of your life, but to become a person who doesn't feel the pull, even if it's right there in your pocket, it just doesn't have any appeal to you because your life is so full and wonderful without it.

SPEAKER_00 45:57

Beautiful, Jeremy. Thanks. I think that's the perfect thing to end up on. So we've got Jeremy's links underneath. Jeremy, correct me if I'm wrong, but you have a community, right? You you guide men through this. And uh you also help men through this one by one. Yeah. If you want to connect with him, follow the links on below. Before we head off, is there one last thing you'd like to say to everyone?

SPEAKER_01 46:20

I I mean we we kind of talked about already, but just to know that you're not alone. You know, if you're out there, whether you're a man or a woman, you know, struggling with this, because women struggle too, that you're not alone, no matter how much you feel like you're the only one or you're uniquely broken in some way, is that you're not. And it's it's not your fault. It is your responsibility, but it's not your fault that that it's this way. And you can break free. And it's just it takes having a, you know, a smart approach to your recovery, getting connected, you know, learning how to approach this in in a healthy way. And you can change your life. So that's the last little thing I'll leave with your listeners.

SPEAKER_00 47:01

You can. You can. Thanks so much, Jeremy.

SPEAKER_01 47:04

My pleasure. Happy coming on.

SPEAKER_00 47:06

That's the episode. That's all I got for you today. Just want you to remember you're not alone in this. Make sure you subscribe to stay connected, of course, and comment your win, you know, because every time a man sees other men winning, they don't feel alone anymore. And I love that. Tools are in the show notes, starting with the better husband in two minute emails. Let's build this together. I'll see you next week.