97. My Story of Overcoming Porn Addiction – A "WTF Do I Do Now" interview with Mandy Pitera & Jeremy Lipkowitz

In today's episode of 'Unhooked,' I had the pleasure of being interviewed on the 'What the Fuck Do I Do Now?' podcast with Mandy Pitera. Mandy is a dear friend and has graciously allowed me to share this interview here on Unhooked. So please go and support Mandy by checking out her podcast, WTF do I do now. 

In this conversation we dive deep into my own personal journey with porn addiction, beginning from my early childhood encounters, through my struggles in my college years, and finally to the transformative healing journey that I went on to break free. 

We discuss the pervasive impacts of porn addiction on relationships, mental clarity, and overall well-being. 

We also tackle some common misconceptions on porn, shedding light on how it affects both individuals and their partners. 

This episode provides practical advice for anyone struggling with addiction or seeking to support a loved one on their recovery journey. 

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Interested in joining the Unhooked Academy Program? Sign up for a free call:
https://www.unhookedacademy.com/

Interested in 1:1 coaching? Click here: https://www.jeremylipkowitz.com/intro

Connect with me on Social:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jeremylipkowitz/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/JeremyLipkowitz

Shownotes:

00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome

00:15 Meeting Jeremy in Bali

01:26 Jeremy's Impact on the Podcast

02:38 Jeremy's Journey with Porn Addiction

05:34 Effects of Porn Addiction

08:46 Escalation and Relationship Impact

10:36 Healthy vs. Unhealthy Relationship with Porn

15:18 Addressing Partner Concerns

26:59 Shame and Addiction

30:01 Types of Porn Addiction and Personal Struggles

30:41 Breaking Free and Finding Healing

32:35 The Normalization of Porn in Society

35:03 Challenges in Overcoming Porn Addiction

36:29 The Three A's of Porn Addiction

44:54 Impact of Porn on Sexual Health

53:48 The Role of Meditation in Recovery

57:10 Final Thoughts and Resources



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ABOUT JEREMY LIPKOWITZ

Jeremy overcame addiction, shame, self-judgement, and depression in his early twenties with the help of mindfulness meditation. Mindfulness not only helped him let go of destructive behaviors, it also allowed him to connect with deeper meaning and purpose in his life.

For the past 10 years Jeremy has been teaching mindfulness and emotional intelligence practices at universities, recovery centers, and companies throughout Asia and the US. He holds a Bachelors and Master’s degree in Genetics and Genomics, and spent several years at Duke University working towards a PhD in Genetics & Systems Biology before he turned full-time to teaching mindfulness.

Jeremy is also an ICF certified Executive Coach. As a former scientist and academic, Jeremy has a great passion for bringing his EI based coaching skills into the corporate and professional world. He realizes how powerful & transformative these practices can be for skeptics and senior-level managers. He is known for his calm and grounded demeanor, his expertise in habits and high-performance, and his compassionate approach to transformation.

Transcript

 All right, welcome back to another episode of What the Fuck Do I Do Now? I'm super excited to invite our next guest, Jeremy. He,  actually, I want to give a little backstory into how I know Jeremy, because I think this is a really cool, this is a very meaningful guest for me to have on here. So when I was in Bali, that's right around the time, a few months after the betrayal trauma, and I was getting interested in learning more about porn addiction, and I just started, you know,  praying, speaking to God, the universe, whoever you want to call it.

And one day I was like, give me a sign if this is something I should start to speak up about. And the next day I start listening to a podcast about porn addiction. And at the end of the podcast episode, the man who is Jeremy goes with love from Bali. And I was like, what? He's in Bali. I'm in Bali right now.

This is sweet. So I stalked his Instagram found out what area he was living in Bali And it was like an hour drive away from me so like, you know what i'm just gonna reach out to him see if he'll talk to me because I have so many questions as i'm trying to Understand porn addiction and I reach out to him and he was so kind.

He's like, yeah, absolutely we can meet and so We met in Bali and I just asked him questions about porn addiction and looking back at the whole Healing journey. I do feel like that was a pivotal Moment in my healing journey just being able to talk to someone so openly about addiction And he coaches and helps other people recover from porn addiction and overcome porn addiction. So it was great having that insights um, so yeah, and then fast forward like a few months later, I he did a He did a podcast with me on his podcast, an interview, podcast interview.  And then after that, I was like, I want to start a podcast. And so then I started a podcast. So Jeremy is a huge reason why my podcast even exists today.

So Jeremy, thank you so much. I just, yeah, you have made such an impactful,  just like change in my life. So

thank 

you. 

You're very welcome. It was a, it was a joy to meet up in Bali and I've loved seeing what you're doing with the, what the fuck do I do now podcast. It's been cool to watch it grow and flourish. Yeah.

Thank you. Yeah. Well, I, I don't know if I would have gotten here without your

help. So thank you. 

Yeah.  

And so we can go ahead and just set the stage. Um, I think it'd be great just to give listeners a little background description of what got you into this journey, a little bit about your past.  Um, struggle with pornography consumption and how it has led you to now create this amazing coaching business, helping others navigate it. 

Yeah, so my story of how it all began really starts with my own addiction to porn.  It's something that started, I mean, I think I must have been, I don't know, six or seven years old when I started looking at,  at things and engaging in self pleasure. It started with Victoria's Secrets catalogs that were coming in the mail and like the Macy's catalog and, um, over time it developed into to porn when I got to college,  and it was something around my college years when I noticed I had an issue with it.

I noticed the ways it was starting to affect my life, uh, the ways it was, uh, impacting my relationships, my intimacy, my focus and concentration, my, just my mental health in so many ways. And we can talk about this later, but  there's a thousand different small ways that it can impact your life. And I started to notice that in my life and realized I had an issue and had to find a way out. 

And so that led me on a long journey. It ended up sending me to India and getting me into Buddhist philosophy and meditation. And that really changed my life, like a full 180 degree change.  Um, and so that was,  you know, where I got out of porn and that was at this point, maybe 15 years ago. Uh, and I got so into meditation in the process and Buddhist philosophy that ended up becoming something I was very passionate about.

I started teaching meditation and made a career out of that. And did that for about 10 years and then about 10 years into my journey of teaching meditation and Starting to work with people one on one  I realized that there was this  still this huge issue of so many other men struggling with porn addiction and silence And so I kind of went back to my origins and started helping men with this problem, uh, and that was That was about five or six years ago.

And ever since then, it's been my main,  my main thing. My main purpose in life is to shed light on this problem because it's a huge problem. It's not,  not going away. It's just getting bigger. Um, and that's what I do with my time. 

Thank you so much. That was so insightful and cheers to you. I just love hearing that story. It's amazing. Um, and I think you bring such a  important topic or important point saying how  porn impacts your lives in many ways. And I think there is such a  misinformation out where people, I mean, whenever I post on social media, I'll get at least a few people think, oh, porn is just porn.

Porn is harmless, you know, like it's  stop being insecure, stop being dramatic, but Could you talk more about how porn was impacting your life and, and, or how you see it, how, how it's impacting your client's lives as well? 

Yeah. And it's going to be different for everyone. So there's, you know, there's a thousand different ways that it can impact your life and each person will have a different, Set up of those thousand different ways, um, some of the ways for me personally that I was noticing and that was the real motivation for me to quit, um, was the ways that lust  was taking over, taking control of my life,  you know, it wasn't,  wasn't that I was, yeah, 

 

I wasn't sitting in some dark alleyway, you know, shooting up heroin and, you know,  this like really dark stuff, but it was just that my brain had become so hardwired for lust.

And for seeking sexual pleasure that it really took control over my life. And it was hard for me to go places without, you know, scanning the room and seeing who was attractive there. And  one of the other ways that that kind of seeped into my life was in terms of my intimate relationships with women.

You know, one of the things that engaging in heavy porn use does is it gets you addicted to novelty.  Because every time you log on to. Pornhub or whatever it is that you're using to search and you're scanning through, you know, hundreds of thumbnails or thousands of different videos and Every time you see a new video or a new face you get this little dopamine hit And so what that's training your brain to do is you're getting addicted to seeing something new to wanting something novel or something fresh something exciting.

And you're training your brain that your sexual satisfaction comes from a fresh face, or a fresh video, or a new thing. And so I started to notice that in my relationships, the ways that I was constantly just searching for something new, wanting something different. So I would be with someone, And I might have really wanted to be with that person. 

Maybe, you know, for weeks or months, I was, you know, trying to get with some person and start a relationship. And then I would get with them. And maybe after a week or two weeks, I would get bored and I would make up some excuse. There's something, something not quite right, or they're not quite perfect. And then I would try to look for someone else.

And the really painful thing is I could see where that was heading. If I didn't make a change, if I didn't do something about it, where that was leading me in the future, you know, I didn't want to be some 50 or 60 year old man who is just constantly sleeping around and looking for new people to sleep with. 

And so that was one of the ways that it was impacting me. Um,  you know, there's also all the other little ways, the ways that affects your mental clarity, gives you brain fog, hard to focus, you know, it's just such a dopaminergic substance that it screws with your dopamine system. And that I was definitely noticing, you know, it was harder and harder to focus harder and harder to have a clear head. 

yeah, just the ways that it,  It can contribute to objectification and over reliance on stimulation.  There's a million different ways. So that, that was my journey. Personally,  there's also for many men, things like erectile dysfunction and issues, uh, with intimacy and bed. It can also lead to escalation in terms of content.

Many men notice that it will escalate what they're interested in because they need bigger and bigger. Okay. Uh, more, more exciting things to get aroused and so they'll escalate into things that are maybe outside of their values, outside of being an integrity.  It can also escalate beyond porn into things like infidelity, to cheating, to, you know, happy ending massages or prostitution.

There's a lot of ways that it can escalate outside of porn as well.



Yeah. And I think, I mean, you made so many good points, but two that really stuck out for me that I'd love to talk about more as the novelty, just knowing that this podcast is mostly women who are listening and arbitrate partners and they think like, Oh, the addiction was because they weren't good

enough. et cetera, et cetera, which isn't true, but also the escalation. And I'll also I have a lot of girls message me on TikTok and Instagram being like, Oh, my boyfriend watches porn. Should I be worried? I don't like it. And I mean, that's not a situation I can give advice and like every person is different, but I do think it's really important to educate people more on the topic of escalation. And  like, for example, with my ex, I know he was a porn addict, which escalated into a sex addiction and acting out in real life. And a big reason  Previously, I never really had, never really second guessed porn because I was like, Oh, it's just a girl on the screen. What's the big deal?  But now knowing and having met so many other betrayed partners where  the man did eventually act out in real life, is that,  would you say that's a common theme among either the people you work with or just conversations you have with people about porn?

Mm hmm. 

it's a good question. I would say it's not necessarily like, I wouldn't want to give the impression that it's an inevitability  And I should also say, you know, I, I don't hold the view that  everyone who watches porn is addicted to porn. You know, I do 

hmm. 

Absolutely.

there are people out there who  I think it's a smaller and smaller subset, but I think there are people out there who it's not really having a major impact on their life.

Maybe they watch it  once a month and their partner knows about it and it doesn't lead to escalation and it's. You know, there are subsets of people where it's not going to have this crazy impact. I think we could talk about what those scenarios would be. And how do you know if it's if it's healthy? I think 1 of the biggest ones is as long as you're not hiding it from your partner. 

Um,  but the escalation, you know, it's. For some people, it'll escalate into things outside of porn. For some people, it will just escalate in terms of the content of the porn that they're watching. More and more extreme types of things that they're watching. And some people, it won't escalate. And if it doesn't escalate, that's a pretty good sign that you might have a semi healthy relationship with it.

And I want to caveat that with semi healthy. Like, I view porn  In the similar way that I might view junk food, I think it's a different thing and it's, there are worse consequences. But junk food, for example, you know, I don't think like eating a Krispy Kreme donut, I don't think is ever going to really benefit your life in terms of like the health benefits. 

But I also don't think that like, if you have a Krispy Kreme donut once a month, that like your life is gonna Be over and it's going to ruin your 

Mm hmm. 

so I think in a similar way, like porn, um, I think for some people, it might not ruin their life, but I think it's not necessarily something that I would ever call, Oh, this is a healthy thing for you to engage in. 

hmm.  Yeah. And how,  I'm just out of general curiosity, I don't know, how would you know if you have a semi healthy relationship or healthy or unhealthy? Like what,  as the consumer, how can you, I guess, like keep

track of that? 

Yeah. And so it's a great question. I mean, the way that I approach it and the way that many of my clients approach it is that. It's just better to not even try that. It's such a hard thing to have a healthy relationship with that. If you have any signs of kind of problematic use, um, you know, if you're, if you're hiding it at all, if you are,  Looking at stuff that you just don't feel quite right about, like, you know, it's kind of out of integrity.

It's better to not even try to have a quote unquote healthy relationship with it. Um,  I would say if you want to try to have a healthy relationship with it, some signs would be one is being fully transparent with your partner. And if you don't have a partner with any, you know, potential partners that you have, but if there's any kind of hiding.

Uh, behavior where you are hiding your use of it, then it's a, it's a pretty big flag that there's some unhealthy stuff going on, that it's a, maybe more of a compulsive or addictive relationship with it.  The other thing is how you watch, you know, if you open up a tab and you find the first video you, you know, you see, and you watch it for 20 minutes and you're not kind of like looking for more and more videos.

Um, that's another good sign. You know, if it's just like, okay, I'll just watch this video and you watch it from start to finish and that's all you need. It's maybe 5 or 10 minutes, something like that, because what we see with people with addiction is often,  you know, you have 10 tabs open, you're scrolling through the video to find your favorite position or your favorite scene.

And that's an indication of maybe an unhealthy relationship with it.  So yeah, it's it's hard to have a healthy relationship with it But I won't 

 

I won't argue with anyone if anyone says that's it's fine for me and my partner And it doesn't impact our life. I would challenge them to say like okay Does your partner know because this is it's really funny I do get some guys who say like yeah, it's not a big deal And I say does your partner know about it and then they'll pause and they'll say I think You know, it's like they've,  they've never had a conversation with their partner about it.

And so I'm like, listen, dude, if your partner doesn't know about it, like maybe you think it's fine, but it might be that your partner really is not okay with you doing it. And so you can say it's healthy, but if you're lying about it and hiding it from your partner,  you know, you've got to really check in with yourself and say, is this really healthy? 

Yeah, I think that's such a good point. And, So I also receive a lot of messages from girls who say, Oh, I told my partner I don't want him watching porn and I caught him lying about it. And  one, I mean, that sucks, of course, but do you have  any advice on, I guess if there's  differently a girl could do in the situation or if she's coming across like a repetitive issue of or I talked to my boyfriend about It he says he'll stop then I catch him lying. Like  what would you recommend as a next next step? 

If a partner is repeatedly, like, if you've gotten to, so the first stage, even before that is having the conversation, right? And that's, that's a huge step that a lot of people haven't had yet. If you haven't sat down and had an honest conversation and saying, Hey, let's, let's talk about porn. Are you using it?

And I want to know. And for that, I would really recommend as best as you can, if you can make it a safe  conversation and to say, Hey, you know, I'm not here to judge and I really just want to know the truth. You know, I'm not going to get, or, you know, I'll try to moderate my anger, you know, to try to make it a safe place where your partner feels that they can be honest and truthful.

That's the important first step because we haven't talked about this yet, but there's a huge amount of shame for men with this issue.  Men get very defensive, they get very triggered, they get, you know, because it's a, it's just a very shameful, sensitive topic for many men. And so as a partner, as best you can, like making it a safe space to have that conversation and say, you know, I really just want to know, you know, or is this something you do?

How often do you do it?  That's the first step.  If it turns out they lie and say, no, no, no, I don't watch porn. You But you're catching them watching porn, and if that's a repeated behavior, you know, at some point you have to put down a boundary, you might have to  leave, if it's something that's serious enough for you that you can't handle that line, then, you know, I don't know how I could be in a relationship with someone who's lying to my face repeatedly. 

It's harder if you, if you can't catch them, like if you just kind of have this feeling, but you're not really sure that's a harder situation, like if they say they're not watching porn and you don't have any. actual evidence, you just feel like something's up.  You know, it's hard to say because it could be that it's just a feeling you're having and it's not actually true.

Um, but if you know that they're watching porn and they're lying about it,  you just gotta  You know,  you know, I'm not here to give relationship advice and say 

Yeah, yeah 

to leave this 

person, but I would say that like you're in within your right to say, like, this is not okay. Like, you're lying to my face about this thing.

This keeps happening. You say you're going to quit. And this is the thing. If somebody, if a guy says he. He's quit and you keep catching him and he says he's trying he's trying you gotta ask him like what is he actually trying? Is he just trying harder or is he actually getting professional support? Like is he actually getting help with this?

Is he joining a men's group? Is he joining an online program? Is he doing shadow work and going to therapy like? Is he actually working on the issues of why he has this addiction, this unwanted porn use in the first place? Because if he just says, Oh, I'm trying, I'm trying, but he's not actually doing anything except for trying harder,  it's not going to work.

Yeah. 

I completely agree and I never I never want to give  Relationship advice saying oh like just leave because every relationship is different every man is different, but I do think it Would just be really validating for a woman to hear from a man, you. It's like you have every right to leave if someone is lying to you because I think porn has become so normalized in our society obviously and some women just don't  They just feel like oh if they're gonna care about porn that makes them insecure or jealous or high maintenance and that that's something that they Don't have a right to care about so I think it's really powerful hearing from you say yeah You you're allowed to leave  if he's lying And again, knowing that you're not giving relationship advice, but it's just, it's just another tier of validation, which is nice when you're stuck in that situation because you have no idea what to do. Like, I'm at wit's end. I

don't, I don't know Every 

I do know women who genuinely don't care if their partner watches porn. And if, if you and your partner have a really healthy, vibrant sex life, like if the intimacy is going well and they're not lying about their porn use, they're kind of, yeah, I watched some porn last night.

If like, and if you're okay with it, then, then that's a totally different story. But you know, there's a million different reasons why you might not be okay with it and that's a hundred percent. Okay. 

person's different. Everyone has their

own preferences. 

Yeah,  

And I want to tie back to what you were saying earlier about the novelty, because I think, I think, that's something that really helped me overcome The self limiting belief after finding  out about the porn addiction, where I very much so believe like, Oh, it was because my body wasn't good enough because I wasn't attractive enough because I wasn't a sexy enough because I wasn't doing enough in bed because maybe just like anything you could think of, I'm like, Oh, it's my fault.

And  could, for any women who are listening and are having those thoughts right now,  is there anything you could share about going back to the novelty and how.  That's not the case.

yeah, yeah, it's there's this common thing for women of men who are struggling with porn addiction that there is this feeling of, oh, it must be me, you know, like, maybe I'm not attractive enough, or I'm not doing enough. And it's just, it's so far from the truth. You know, one component of that is the novelty thing, which is, again, you could be  the most attractive, most beautiful person.

You could be a 10 in your partner's eyes, and it's just not even about that. It's just that, you know, his brain is hooked on. I need something novel. I need something new. I need something fresh.  Um, I mean this, you know, remember when Tiger Woods got caught cheating, like his wife at the time was a model, like an actual model, right?

So it's not like she wasn't attractive, it's like he was sleeping around because he had this addiction to, I need something else, I need something more, right?  Like he was married to an actual model.  And so it's like, if you ever sit and think like, oh, it must be me. It's like, I don't know. Like, even if I'm a model, like this will still happen because it's his brain that's messed up.

It's not my body that's messed up. Right.  So the other thing to remember about this is like, unless you got with your partner when you guys were both six years old,  Chances are his addiction, like, predates you,  right? Unless you guys, you know, are in some weird cult and, like, got married when you're six. 

Chances are he started having a relationship with self pleasure, and pleasing himself, and masturbation, and kind of a compulsive relationship with masturbation and self pleasure way before he met you.  And so just to remember that, that like this predates you by a long shot. And it's something that has been in his life  for most men, you know,  starts when you're, you know, six to 12 years old, when you start noticing, Oh, I can touch myself.

And that brings pleasure  and you start, you know, engaging, you know, for me, it was like Macy's catalogs and Victoria secrets, like comic books where I was like, Oh, this, I see this picture and it lights up something within me that feels good. And I get this sense of power and control and all that. And so it's definitely not about you.

It's like a way ages old habit for many men. 

Yeah. And I'm glad you said that too, because I don't even know how I'm going to form this next question. So I'm just going to go with it and see where it goes. But  the more I speak on mainly Tik Tok about my ex partner's porn addiction, the amount of comments I get from, to be fair, they're like troll fake accounts.

It's like the. It's not a real person, but the amount of comments I get of men saying, oh, it's because you didn't put out enough. Like, oh, it's because you were denying him in bed. Like, oh, it's because you weren't good enough. And I'm just like,  at what point does it stop becoming the partner's fault? Like, fault in air quotes, because it's not, but.  Yeah, I don't know where I was going with this, but it's, it's just nice to hear a man say like, no, it's actually not the partner's fault. Like, and, and I think it totally does date back to, they've had the self pleasure  practice routine habit, whatever you want, anything you want to call it way before the relationship even started.

So how can all of, how is it all now all of a sudden the partner's fault? 

Yeah. And it's very rarely is it even about sex? I mean, a lot of men's porn addiction doesn't even have to do with their sexuality. It's a,  it's a coping mechanism. It's an escape mechanism. It's a way to deal with pain.  You know, it's a sedative in many regards. It's a numbing agent that might be about their work.

It might be about their sense of insecurity.  It might be about something in the relationship. It doesn't mean that it condones their behavior, gives them a right to, but it might be that  there is something in the relationship that they're unsatisfied with and and they're reaching out to this. So I don't want to say that it's like,  That you have zero, you know, there might be something in the relationship where it's like, okay, maybe we need to look at this, but it's also the thousand other things in their life that they're trying to. 

And, um, you know, it's, it's not even about sex and, you know, those comments, they're frustrating and hilarious at the same time. It just shows how 

I know 

ignorance and misogyny there is. Yeah, it's just cause I, you know, I, I get these comments too, you know, from these people and the amount of, of just  lunacy from some of these comments. People are just so have their head in the sand and  it's wild to see what's out there. 

Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's shocking. Honestly. I, I remember the This was probably like a week ago. I had a TikTok video that did like kind of well. And every time I was checking it, the amount of anxiety I got was insane. Like in my st I literally had to lay down on my bathroom ground. To like literally ground. Because it was so many men just like going at me. And I was like,  what? I don't know. It just surprised me. And again, I'm not I know this isn't all men, I'm not saying that at all, this is just a percentage of men and like it's troll accounts, but yeah, it's,  it's really eyeopening and also really heartbreaking to see that  a lot of people aren't aware of how porn may be impacting them or it's not, but  yeah, it's just heartbreaking to see that as a society.

It makes me  really worried for

society. 

Yeah,  I feel the same. It's quite sad. 

You mentioned shame earlier, and I think that's a really important thing we should talk about um, so could you dive in a little bit more on just how the shame that men have associated with it, and how it's a little bit taboo, and 

all of that. 

Yeah. I mean,  

shame is one of the biggest drivers of addiction. It's one of the things that keeps us locked in addiction when we're ashamed of our habits or our behaviors or who we are, you know, we think that we're broken in some way.  And that keeps us, one of the main ways that it contributes to addiction is it keeps us isolated.

You know, we, when we feel ashamed of something about ourselves, we don't want other people to see that.  And so we hide, we run away, we isolate,  and it's, it's a downward spiral. It's really sad because the, one of the most powerful ways to get out of addiction is to let yourself be seen by other people,  you know, to be seen by other men.

who know what this is and who aren't judging you or demonizing you. Because one of the other things that I noticed for myself and many men notices too, is you, in some ways you feel like a monster. You know, the shame makes you feel 

so dirty or so broken. Like, Oh my God, I'm so messed up. I'm such a pervert.

Um, and it, it really, you know, it makes you want to act out even more because you want to escape that feeling. And this is, we haven't even gotten into this yet, but like what addiction is, is it, and it. Attempt to escape pain.  It's running away from pain. Any kind of  unpleasant emotion, sadness, anxiety, stress. 

Insecurity, shame, um, you know, even physical pain. Uh, that's what addiction is, is when we're trying to escape pain and numb ourselves.  And so shame is a huge source of pain. And so when we feel that, of course we want to escape it. So we reach to our addiction, which is often porn or junk food or video games or whatever it is for men. 

Um, so shame is a huge component and it's one of the first things you have to do if you want to recover is to let go of shame. 



And how does one let go of shame? 



Yeah, it's a, it's a great question for me and for many of the men that I work with, um, being in community where you, you can talk about. You know, for me, it took me  a million years to be able to talk about porn. Now it's crazy, like the fact that I, 

yeah,  

oh my gosh, the fact that I talk about it like publicly on all my social media and this is like my thing that I do now, it's wild to me because I was so ashamed of it for, for decades, you know,  like I didn't want anybody to even know that I looked at porn.

When I was in college and looking at porn, every night. I was terrified that somebody would even know that I watched porn.  You know, there, there's kind of two kinds of guys that, like,  are addicted. Half the guys that are addicted are really ashamed of it and very secretive about it. The other half that are addicted are like the misogynistic troll bunch, like, you know, kind of, Hey, I saw this, you know, hot video, gangbang, whatever.

It's like 

Yeah. 

two types of guys, like ones that have zero shame.  I wouldn't even say zero shame, but it's like, this is like zero filter, and they just, you know, complete misogynistic kind of culture. And then there's the other ones who are just like, They might even joke about it, but in private, they, they feel bad about it, but there's that shame associated.

And for me, I was so ashamed of it. I couldn't talk about it. If anybody knew, I would feel, you know, just horrible.  And then even when I broke free from porn, so I broke free when I was like 20, 24, 25. And even after I broke free from it, it took me like another five or six years before I could really even talk about it with a single person. 

Wow. 

to even mention, Hey, actually.  Because this was a big part of my journey, what got me into meditation and mindfulness and Buddhism, so much so that I ended up leaving my academic career. I was a PhD student in genetics at Duke. I left my whole academic career and started teaching meditation. And  what got me into meditation was.

My point addiction was realizing that it was the source of a lot of my suffering, but it took me five years before I could even open up to a single person.  And I, I remember the moment it was another graduate student, uh, at Duke, and we were like having coffee and he was another Buddhist practitioner and meditator.

And,  um, I forget how it came up, but, you know, at some point I, you know, I had the courage and say like, yeah, what got me into this was,  you know, realizing that I was addicted to porn and creating a lot of my own suffering.  And I remember it was so healing. He, you know, just turned to me and he said, like, yeah, I struggle with that too. 

And that moment was like a huge weight off my shoulders. To realize that I could share something that I was ashamed of  and it would be held in a safe way, like in a non judgmental way,  that is one of the biggest things you can do to heal shame. 

Wow. That is I'm so glad you had such a healing experience sharing about that the first time and really got it Like didn't go sideways because I would be quite literally like living hell And  I'm curious.  I'm curious because I feel like the general  Understanding or belief of society is that all men watch porn like that's just what men do It's guys would be guys that type of thing But then when it comes like talking about it with others Or the shame  is,  like, where's the disconnect there, I guess? 

Yeah. It's like you said, it's very normalized in our society. Um, and  it's part of that kind of, you know, what, what we might call toxic masculinity, uh, culture, which, you know, jokes about it and that locker room kind of talk. 

Mm hmm. 

think a lot of men use it as a defense mechanism or a bonding, uh, mechanism to, to talk about it in that way. Um, and it is very hard to have,  you know, genuine vulnerable conversations about, Hey, I think this is actually impacting me or, Hey, I don't actually feel so great about the things I'm watching or, It's hard to have those spaces and this is why it's so important to have things like men's groups or support groups.

Um, it's one of the things we do in my program, but you know, many other support groups or men's groups provide that space where you can actually say,  you know, this actually does, it feels like it's impacting me and I'm not sure if this is healthy for me. And also where you can have men who are older or wiser or whatever, who can call you out.

And say, hey, I see you're kind of joking about this, but,  you know, what's behind that joke?  Like, why are you joking about this? This actually isn't something that's funny. To be called out in that way is actually really helpful also. 

Yeah, I feel like that would catch me so off guard if someone just saw right through my bullshit, like, oh gosh, okay, let's get real

for a moment. 

yeah, because we all do it. I mean, it's not just a men's thing. It's a human thing. And you know, I'm sure women have like their own version of, of things that might be like,  that they joke about in an unhealthy or kind of toxic way. And really there's some deeper pain underneath it. 

Yeah. Yeah, right when you said that, the first thing that came up to me was like eating disorders or body image issues where. Um,  you want to look a certain way, but you also don't tell people that, Oh, I, I haven't eaten at all today. Or like I was binge eating last night or just weird relationships with food.

So that was the first thing that came to mind when you said that. So that, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Um, and then I would love to talk about kind of like what the road to recovery looks like. I, of course it's going to vary by person, but  I think. I think there's a big misconception that, oh, you're addicted to porn, just stop watching it. Or like, oh, you're addicted to porn, just like put up blockers and filters on your internet, you're fine. Um, so could you talk more about kind of like the obstacles of actually overcoming a porn addiction and why it's not just easier said than

done?  

Yeah, well, this brings me back to something you and I talked about in Bali, um, which I know like really you found insightful, um,  which is, you know, it's like thinking about someone who's struggling with porn addiction is very similar to thinking about somebody who is struggling with cocaine addiction and just imagine if they always have a bag of cocaine in their pocket and they are not allowed to take that bag of cocaine out of their pocket.

It's like wherever they go, they have to

travel with cocaine. And that's in some ways how it is for men with porn addiction. It's like their phone, which is a immediate source of, uh, of acting out is always on them and with them.  And so they're always like a,

you know,  a hand movement away from being able to access it.

So it's a very,  it's a very hard thing to beat because it's just so accessible. And this relates to one of the things that's called  



the three A's of porn addiction. There are these three things that make porn very addictive.  And so it's affordability, accessibility,  and anonymity. So the affordability part is, and these are three things that like, it can be anything.

Um, you know, it could be video games, whatever. You look at these three components and you say, okay, the more that we have these things, the more addictive the substance is going to be. So for example, affordability, if you have a drug, That costs 10, 000 every time you want to take a hit.  It's not going to be super addictive, right?

Unless you're a billionaire. But for most people, it's like, it's just not an affordable mechanism of addiction, right? Versus if you have something that's 

free.  Well, let's say, you know, it's 1 every time you want to take a hit, the more you can get it to free, the more addictive it's going to be  because there's no barrier to actually using it when you want to medicate your pain away, right? 

So that's the affordability. The accessibility is just like, how easily can you get it? You know, if you, let's say you have a drug that's free, but, you know, takes 4 weeks to get delivered to your house. And you can only, you know, order it like one at a time, and it's like, it's not very accessible. And so it's not likely going to develop into a strong addiction.

But again, if you have something that's immediately accessible, you can get it on your browser, on your phone, whenever you want, and you can get unlimited variety,  you know, that's going to make it more addictive. And then the last one, anonymity. It's like, if you can use it anonymously, it also contributes to addictiveness.

Thanks.  If it's something that you have to be public about, you know, if you're an alcoholic,  you have to go to a store and buy it, you have to go to a bar and order it. There are ways you can make it more anonymous. You can order your alcohol online and have it delivered to your door, I guess.  But the more anonymous you can be, the more that you can hide away and isolate into that addiction. 

The other thing that helps something become addictive is the You know, the variability  and the ways that it can be novel. And so, you know, I talked about this also with junk food. If you're addicted to sugar, like if you have a mountain of candy bars sitting in front of you,  at some point you're going to just get physically sick, right?

You just, you can't really eat more candy bars. You can eat a lot of candy bars, but at some point, like you just, You can't put more in your mouth, right? But with porn, because there's an infinite amount of variety and novelty,  every time you find a new video or find a new, you know, whatever, it hits that dopamine button. 

And so this is why guys can go for eight hours or 10 hours watching porn is,  Oh yeah, yeah, it can get bad.

You could just sit there all day. I mean, it's same with video games. Video games can keep people hooked. You know, like when there's a world of Warcraft. Thinking about like, people would sit there for 24 hours because they were just so engaged because there was a constant feedback loop of more novelty, you know, a new quest, a new, whatever.

Same with porn. It's like a new hunt for another video, right? 

Whoa. 

For most guys, it's not eight hours. You know, I don't want to give that 

Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

like average. Um, but it's something that you can just, because of the variety that exists. Back in the day when it was just.  It was again, much harder, like if you had a single magazine,  it was much harder to develop a really strong addiction because you couldn't sit there for eight hours.

With a single magazine,  

Mm 

because at some point you get bored of the same photo, but now with modern, and this is one of the things I like to get across is that

 



modern pornography, modern high speed internet, hardcore pornography is uniquely addictive in a way that it has never been before. In our history as a civilization,  like a porn magazine is a very different thing  because it's like, you see a few photos and then it's like, okay, you get kind of bored.

It's not going to really suck you into this pit.  That lasts for, you know, years and years and hours and hours each time you do it. But with  high speed internet porn, something like Pornhub, you know, you can spend hours and hours on there because there's so, you know, 

 





I remember this one statistic, something like this, more porn websites on the internet than non porn websites. 

What? 

Like, I don't, I 

Oh my god. 

I remember hearing it once and I, I believe it. Um, 

Yeah. 

but it, it, it's kind of like,  

it's shocking that there is just so much porn on the internet.  That there's an infinite variety and so it is one of these things that makes it so addictive.  It's accessible, it's affordable, it's anonymous, there's an infinite variety.

Right, and it taps directly also into something that's very primal for many men, you know, our sexual energy, which is so powerful and beautiful. It taps directly into that need that most men have of, of feeling, you know,  feeling their sexuality is such an important thing. This is also one of the paths to recovery is learning how to cultivate healthy sexuality.

Not to, because there's two extremes. One is you indulge completely in an unhealthy way. The other extreme is you completely repress it and shove it down and suppress and deny it, right? Which is also very unhealthy.

And so learning how to actually embrace a healthy sexuality is an important part of recovery.

Because it is a part of being human. It's a beautiful part of being human.  Um, so those are some of the reasons why it's, it's very hard to break free from. 

Yeah, that was, I'm honestly still shocked about the 8 hour thing.  I mean, I, but I,  so this might be TMI, but are they finishing

every time? Like, or are you just like watching it how you'd like watch a 

TV show, I 

guess? But like, are you pleasuring that entire

time?  

So you might, you know, you might pleasure for, you might, uh,  you might finish a couple of times that you might like, you know, go for one or two hours and then like finish and then have another few hours. But so edging is this process where you are like right on the edge of.

Orgasming,  but you, you don't finish yet. I mean, this is something I experienced when I was in the,  in the heat of my addiction is, you know, I was, you know, searching around trying to find the perfect video to finish on.  And so, you know, I would be, you know, keeping my erection, you know, just at the point of, like, being right there edging, but not actually finishing until I found the quote unquote perfect video. 

And it was that hunt. It's like,  and this, you know, relates to why it was causing so much suffering and why it was impacting the relationships, my relationships, the way it was is  like, every video was just not quite perfect. I always wanted something a little bit better.  Right? And so I would, this is how you can start to see if you have an addiction is if you have this kind of mentality of, I want something a little bit better, as opposed to you click on the 1st video you see, like, this is good enough.

I'll watch this for 10 minutes and then finish, and that's okay, right? That, again, is like a little bit of a healthier way to approach it.  But, yeah, for some, it's just the hunt that's so addictive.  Searching for that next video, that next thing. 

Yeah, that's, that's really interesting. And then something that came to mind when you're talking about that, um, cause I've had, a good amount of girls reach out to me just confused about why erectile dysfunction. They're like, Oh, I've, and this happened to me in my past relationship where like,  it was fine.

Like there was performance wasn't an issue, but then all of a sudden it did become an issue and then it became a repetitive issue. And  I've heard a lot of girls think that it was a result because of them. Of course, like, Oh, I can't, he's not attracted to me. I can't turn around. So could you talk more about how. A porn addiction, or porn consumption, can lead to erectile dysfunction. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. 

stimulus.

And so what's going on is men are getting 



habituated to this high level of stimulation and they're hardwiring their brain, their neural circuitry to associate super high levels of eroticism and stimulation with arousal. And so then when some, Like a normal, healthy kind of like interaction with your partner, it's like, Oh my God, there's no  choking and gangbang and, you know, crazy kind of stuff going on.

Well, this isn't doing it for me because it's not crazy enough. It's not stimulating enough because they're used to just such a high. It's like if you, um,  if you get accustomed to eating like Doritos, Potato chips, like super you know, some crazy flavor of like nacho supreme, cool ranch blast. You know, it's like you put that on your tongue and it's like this explosion of flavor, right?

And if you eat that every day and you start getting accustomed to that's what food needs to taste like. Then if you will go have like,  Chicken breast and broccoli  with like maybe a little bit of salt. It's like my this isn't I need I need a Doritos And you know bacon cheeseburger and a vanilla milkshake.

It's like you're over amplifying  and getting these unrealistic expectations of what sex is supposed to look like and feel like  and again It's not even like  that, you know, like you should As the female, like, you say, Oh, well, I'm just a boiled potato and like plain chicken breast. It's an, uh, it's just an unrealistic, it's like, imagine if there was this magical bag of Doritos that every chip you pulled out was a new flavor and it was constantly morphing into a new variety, right?

And men are accustomed to this kind of like hyper stimulus that's always evolving and always changing,  always wanting something new. Like, if you're a guy and you watch the exact same porn video every time, that's a great sign. If you have one porn video and you're just, like, satisfied with that one porn video,  good on you, man.

Like, you're just like, okay, I'm just horny and I want, like But if you're, again, looking for something new every time,  you're telling your brain that what's gonna get you aroused is something novel, something fresh.  And that's, you know, again, it's not about you. It's not about your body. It's just like men's brains are hijacked by porn to think that what's going to turn them on is something fresh and new.

So that leads to erectile dysfunction because as soon as they don't have that hyper stimulus.  Their, you know, junk doesn't recognize it. It's like, you know, I'm not aroused by this, right? This isn't stimulating enough.  And so then they can't get it up or they can't keep it up. And so this, it happens to a lot of men where they have to like close their eyes and picture a porn scene that they recently saw while they're having sex in order to get aroused. 

Yeah. I remember, I'm pretty sure it was when I was talking with you about, um, um, um,  Just how the porn effect addiction was affecting my relationship and like when we're talking about intimacy and I was like, yeah It always felt like he was in a different room Like when we're having sex it felt like he just wasn't there wasn't pressing present and always closed in his eyes Then you made the connection.

I guess probably visualizing porn scenes and I was like,  oh  I had just never thought of that before it was such  an eye opener and then it also makes me  Feel bad for the porn addict because now you can't even enjoy real life sex, which I would say is so much better than having to watch it behind a screen.

So like,  it hurts everyone involved. 

Yeah, yeah,

 



men become very disconnected from their bodies with porn sex, you know, when they're engaged in porn. It's a Completely in their head.  They're not actually in their body and this you know There's an experience that many women of men with porn addiction can relate to it's like it doesn't even feel like he's there, right?

He's just kind of lost in space in his head somewhere And  it's very different from having an embodied experience of sex and intimacy, where you're really present with your partner, you're in your body, you're feeling all your sensations, as opposed to just in your imagination, thinking of something. 

Mm hmm. Yeah.  Yeah, that's  just sucks. I  hate porn so much. It's impacted so many relations, just people as a whole, and I just hate how Normalized it has become in society and like that's not too much shaming people who watch it like not at all But just  I hate that we even have to be having this conversation that this That porn was created to be the way that it is where it's so intense and extreme and so addictive where it's like I wish I could just go back in time to the magazines and that just be that or just having intimacy with your partner 

Yeah, it's a whole 

Yeah, and, you know, this is something that we talked about also, when we had our conversation in Bali, is that I think many men who are struggling with porn addiction feel the same.  You know, it's like they wish porn wasn't a thing also,  you know, it's 

Wow,

yeah Yeah, 

you know, it's an addiction. It's like when you, you can't help yourself and you wish it didn't even exist,  but it's just this, this thing you feel almost compelled or almost powerless against that you just like,  I just wish this wasn't even a thing.

I wish I wasn't doing this. I wish I wasn't addicted.  And you can tell yourself that all day, all day, all day. And then  nighttime comes and you find yourself there again, like just drawn to it.  Um, and I think it does bring a lot of compassion, you know, it's not a shaming thing. It's a, these poor guys that, you know, are getting sucked into this trap, which it is.

It's a trap, you know, it's a,  there's a huge industry behind it. You know, there's a lot of money in the porn industry and it makes money for a lot of people  and it, you know, there's a reason why it's so addictive.  So to have compassion for the people who are getting sucked into that, 

isn't, doesn't the porn industry make more money than like The NFL, NBA, and what's, what's the other one? Sport. I'm

not 

a sports girl. I don't

I think all 

the other, 

sports leagues 

combined, 

yeah, yeah, that is,  uh, it's, it's so interesting when you think of it as an industry, because yeah, they're making so much money and just the amount of like traffic they even get to their sites, isn't it more than like Amazon, Netflix and all the big sites combined.

It's just like, 

Yeah,

yeah, it's, it's a monster, an absolute monster. But not shaming the ones, people who watch it. Just the industry in and of itself. Um, but I do want to be cautious of time. Is there anything before we hop off that you'd like to say or anything that we didn't get to?  

 I think, um,  one of the things we, we briefly touched on this, but just understanding what addiction really is and that  it's really, it's an attempt to  numb  a sense of pain. You know, it's a, it's an escape.  And that if men want to break free from the thing, they really have to understand the underlying dynamics of the addiction. 



 



I see a lot of men trying to just  quit and use willpower and, you know, try harder, but they're not actually addressing the underlying reason of why they have this addiction,  of the constant running away from pain and chasing pleasure. Uh, if you don't address that underlying issue, then it's not, You're not really going to make any meaningful changes.

You might be able to stop for a few weeks or even a couple months using willpower, but inevitably something's going to come back. Because if you don't develop the tools and the resources, the emotional intelligence to actually be with difficult emotions.  Then, as soon as a strong, difficult emotion comes back, you're going to reach out to some addiction.

It might be porn, it might be something else.  And so a lot of the work that we need to do is  learning how to be with unpleasant emotions. Learning how to be with  anxiety. Learning how to be with loneliness.  Learning how to be with insecurity, whatever it is, like you have to learn how to actually work with those things. 

So that I think it's just such an important  thing for people to understand. 

Yeah. And that's where one of the meditation tools can come in. So helpful just  to get you to be aware of your emotions and thoughts and to let you know that you are not your emotions and thoughts. But  yeah, I think it's so cool how Meditation was one of the things that helped you move, work through your addiction that it just speaks volumes of how powerful meditation really is. 

Yeah. And that, you know, just one other thing to mention is when we were talking earlier about some of the,  the problems that I was noticing, like what porn was causing in my life,  in some ways, the biggest thing, the overarching theme of porn, The problems it was causing in my life was just how much suffering it was causing for my life,  that I started to realize that when there's something that you want that you don't have,  that is suffering.

You know, when you're craving something that you don't have. And you want this thing, you don't have it. That is what suffering is. And similarly, when there's something you do have some emotion, some experience and you don't want it, and you're trying to push it away, that's also suffering.  And 

 



I realized that porn was directly leading to both of those things.

You know, just this. immense suffering in my life of constantly wanting what I don't have and not wanting what I do have.  And this is what meditation, particularly mindfulness meditation, helps us deal with,  is it helps us learn how to stop just chasing things that we don't have,  how to be actually content and grateful and appreciative of what we have in the moment, and also how to stop running away from unpleasant things.

You know, when there's some pain in your body, you just say, Oh, this is This is unpleasant, but I don't need to suffer. I don't need to run away from it. Similarly, like a painful emotion,  sadness, anxiety, loneliness, whatever you can just, you can actually be with it instead of this constant running away from it. 

And that is the power of meditation. That's why meditation for me is one of the most important things you can do in your recovery. I mean,  letting go of shame, being in a safe community, but also learning how to work with your mind. It is such an important thing. 

Yeah, yeah, that is so important. And I'd even say meditation is one of the most important things for me like healing during the betrayal trauma too because you I mean it's just an overwhelm and just such strong emotions and your mind just becomes such an inner critic and you were just You were like emotionally abusing yourself with all the bad thoughts you have about yourself and I did a five day silent retreat in Bali Which was Probably four months after the betrayal and  that was a dark time, just like sitting in silence with my thoughts.

But I, I also think that was also one of the most healing moments of looking back at my whole healing journey because  to just sit down with your thoughts and to know that You don't have to like act out on them. You can just sit with them. And  it's, it's not, you want your thoughts, you're not your emotions.

And yeah, it's just so powerful. So yeah, I, I could go on and on about meditation. It's changed like every aspect of my life. I, I can't go a day without it. Like I can literally notice a day if I don't meditate in the morning, like I just feel so much more like antsy or irritated throughout the day or like my, I'm so in my head instead of just being in my body.

it's

it's wild. 



Yeah.  

Well, thank you so much. If anyone's listening and they want to get in contact with you, what would be the best way for them to reach out to 

you?

Yeah. So you could go to unhooked academy.com if you wanna learn more about the, the men's group, the support group, and the Unhooked Academy program. Um, so that's unhooked academy.com. You can also just go to my website, jeremy lipitz.com. Uh, and then you could sign up for a free discovery call on either of those sites if you're interested in, in coaching or in the group program. 

Amazing. I will link all that in the show notes. So, yeah, thank you so much, Jeremy. I really appreciate it. This was amazing. It's, yeah, I'm so happy you, um, Went on your healing journey and overcame this and now get to help others because you're making such a Impact in the world. So thank you.

my pleasure

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