123. Five Compelling Reasons to Quit Porn in 2025

Hey friends, welcome back to the channel! In this episode, I'm diving into five powerful reasons why quitting porn in 2025 might be one of the best decisions you ever make. Drawing from my personal journey and professional experience as a men's coach and former porn addict, I discuss how porn impacts your life and why eliminating it can help you reclaim your mind, energy, and potential. 

In this episode, you can expect to learn: - How porn creates unrealistic expectations about sex, intimacy, and relationships - Why porn trains your brain to chase novelty and how it affects real-life commitments - The cognitive costs of porn addiction, including its impact on focus and deep work - The emotional toll of lust and how it perpetuates a state of suffering - The dark side of the porn industry, including exploitation and abuse 

Thanks for watching, and if you want to learn more about breaking free from porn, check out my website for free resources or my group coaching program, Unhooked Academy.

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Shownotes

00:00 Introduction: Why Quitting Porn in 2025 is Worth It

01:10 The Impact of Unrealistic Expectations

03:08 The Craving for Novelty and Its Consequences

04:49 How Porn Affects Focus and Deep Work

06:42 Understanding Lust as a Form of Suffering

08:22 The Dark Side of the Porn Industry

10:25 Conclusion and Next Steps

Transcript

 

If you've ever wondered whether quitting porn is worth it, keep watching, because today I'm sharing five powerful reasons why quitting porn in 2025 might be one of the best decisions you ever make.

So hey friends, welcome back to the channel. If you're new here, my name is Jeremy Lipkowitz. I'm a men's coach, former scientist, and founder of the mindfulness based porn recovery program, Unhooked Academy.



For years, I told myself that watching porn was just a normal habit, something that everyone did. I never thought it was a big deal.

But when I finally stopped, I realized just how much it had been affecting me, my focus, my relationships, my confidence, even my overall happiness. What I discovered in my own journey and what I want to share with you today is that quitting porn isn't just about stopping a habit. It's not a religious argument.

It's about reclaiming your mind, your energy, and your potential. So if you've ever felt like something in your life is holding you back, if you've ever wondered whether porn is keeping you stuck, then this video is for you. 

Now, let's dive into the five biggest reasons why quitting porn could change your life.





Number one, porn creates unrealistic expectations.  One of the biggest reasons porn messes with your life is by giving you unrealistic expectations about sex and intimacy and your partner's bodies. It distorts what arouses you. On a subconscious level, it changes your desires. Just think about it. If you spend years or decades watching highly curated, surgically enhanced performers, on a subtle neurological level, your brain starts to expect that as the standard.

All of a sudden, your real life relationships and real life bodies that you are interacting with can feel underwhelming or not good enough. Maybe you think your partner has a little bit of body fat. a little too much acne, maybe bad breath. Again, your brain, which has been conditioned by years of porn, maybe decades, might struggle to find normal bodies attractive.

In short, your expectations become unrealistic. 

And it's not just about the looks here. You know, it's also about what you expect from intimacy and expect from your partner.  Porn is a fantasy. It's based on wild scenarios. It is not a depiction of what healthy intimacy looks like. It's definitely not what every girl wants. 

And in relationships, there's so much more to it. There's vulnerability, emotional connection, there's awkward moments, but in porn, there's none of that.  So you get used to this high speed, hyper stimulating world of porn, and as a result of that, real intimacy can feel boring by comparison.  So instead of recognizing that porn is the issue, you might be blaming your partners as not living up to the standards that you're used to. 

So if you want to build deep, meaningful connections in your romantic relationships, quitting porn can help you reset your expectations and bring your desires back to reality.

 Number two, porn trains your brain to chase novelty. The second reason you should consider quitting porn is because porn trains your brain to crave novelty and variety. You know, if you've ever found yourself buying some new gadget thinking that it's going to make you happy, and then a few days later you want a newer version of it or a better version or a different version,  this is what that's all about.

In some ways, it's human nature to constantly want new and better things, but porn takes that tendency and puts it on steroids. When you watch porn, your brain gets hooked on novelty. Every new video you see, every new face, it gives you that little hit of dopamine, the brain's reward chemical, so you get rewarded by finding something new. 

Over time, your brain begins to have a dependence on novelty, it begins to seek out novelty as the source of your happiness. Always wanting something new and exciting. And here's the big problem. That same habit spills over into your real relationships.  Even though you might have exactly what you want right in front of you, or exactly what you've always thought you wanted, your brain will start telling you that you need something new. 

This is what happened to Tiger Woods, who ended up cheating on his date. Swedish supermodel girlfriend. This is what I noticed in my own relationships is that even when I got what I wanted,  I would then crave something different just because that's what my brain had become addicted to.

So quitting porn allows you to retrain your mind to appreciate depth and quality of your connections over just seeking novelty. It allows you to value commitment over constant change.





Number three, porn addiction hijacks your focus and your ability to do deep work.  So the third reason is that porn hijacks your attention centers of your brain. It makes it harder to focus or to do deep, challenging work. You've probably heard this joke that guys think about sex every three seconds.

And when I was addicted to porn, that wasn't that far from the truth. I remember that everywhere I went, I found myself constantly thinking about sex, fantasizing about women, checking people out.  My mind was consumed by thoughts of lust and it was exhausting. What I wanted was to be fully present in my life, whether it was focusing on my work, enjoying a good book.

or just having a meaningful conversation with friends. But my mind was always out of control. You know, lust was the one driving the bus.  And science backs this up.  There's a saying in neuroscience that I love. It says, neurons that fire together, wire together. The more you watch porn, the more you strengthen those neural pathways of looking for sex, looking for images that you find attractive. 

Not only that, but for many men, porn and masturbation is a procrastination tool. So when you're working on that challenging deep work project and you hit a roadblock, immediately your mind goes to thinking about using porn or masturbation as an escape. So making progress on your deep work projects becomes more and more challenging the more hooked you are by porn.

When you make that decision to stop watching porn, it takes time to rewire your brain and restore healthy balance to your attentional control regions. But once you do, you free up so much mental space. You reclaim your ability to focus, to get things done, to spend time paying attention to what's most important.





Number four, lust itself is a form of suffering.  The fourth reason you should consider quitting porn is simply realizing that lust itself is a state of suffering. It's a state of lack rather than a state of abundance. This was probably the biggest game changing insight for me in my own recovery. I remember very distinctly walking down the street one day and feeling this intense craving when I saw an attractive girl in front of me.

And it wasn't a pleasant feeling. It was like an itch that I couldn't scratch. It was this black hole that opened up inside of me, an emptiness. It was a hunger that I couldn't satisfy. You know, even if I went and did something about it, that hunger would never be satisfied. And that's when it hit me, lust is a state of suffering. 

No matter how much porn I watched, no matter how much I chased pleasure and found it and got it, it never actually made me happy. It never brought me lasting satisfaction. If anything, the more I chased it, the stronger my cravings became and the more I suffered.  You know, the Buddha had this figured out. 2, 500 years ago when he equated craving or clinging with suffering. 

When you crave what you don't have, you suffer. And the more I engaged with porn, the more I fed that craving, the more I suffered. I realized that I was throwing fuel on the fire of my own unhappiness and dissatisfaction. And when I finally decided to let go of that, I felt a kind of inner peace and contentment that I hadn't experienced in years.



Number five, the dark side of the porn industry.  The final reason you should consider quitting porn is the disturbing reality of how deeply the porn industry is entangled with exploitation, abuse, and sex trafficking. Now most people assume that the content that they're watching is ethical, that everyone involved is there by choice, and that it's all just harmless entertainment. This is definitely what I thought.  But the truth is, you don't really know what's happening behind the scenes. More and more investigations are uncovering stories of performers being coerced, manipulated, and forced into the industry under false promises.

There are now countless cases of people regretting their participation, having their videos leaked against their will,  or being trapped in cycles of abuse.  And on top of that, there's also the rise of non consensual content. So these are videos that feature real acts of assault, or rape, or minors being exploited. 

Some of the largest porn sites in the world, the ones you are likely using, have been caught hosting this kind of content, profiting off of it, and only removing it when they're forced to by lawsuits or public outrage.  Now, even beyond the ethical concerns, porn plays a powerful role in perpetuating harmful attitudes about sex and relationships.

Studies have shown that the most popular porn today, the stuff you see on the homepage, is increasingly violent and degrading, particularly towards women. And young viewers, young boys and girls, some of who start watching porn as early as 10 or 11 years old, are absorbing these messages. Often without even realizing it.

So even if you think your porn consumption is harmless, you have to consider the bigger picture. What kind of industry are you supporting? And remember, this is an industry. There are billions of dollars behind this. So by quitting porn, you're not just reclaiming your own mind. You're also refusing to support an industry that profits from the suffering of others.





So there you have it, folks, five reasons why I quit porn and why you might want to consider quitting this year as well. 

 

If you want to learn more about how to actually break free from porn and build better habits, check out this video here about what I would do if I was deciding to quit in 2025 starting from scratch.

And



 

if you'd like support in overcoming addiction, head over to my website, check out some of the free resources that we have on overcoming this addiction, or check out my group coaching program, Unhooked Academy, which provides a proven roadmap for success and accountability in breaking free. Thanks for watching.

I'll see you in the next one.