Unmasking Porn Addiction, Emotional Isolation and the Pressure to Be a Man

Recovery is possible. Recovery is possible.

Recovery is possible.

Recovery is possible.

Recovery is possible. Recovery Dialogues and Sober Stories.

Welcome to Recovery Dialogues, and Sober Stories, where we dive deep into the human experiences that shape our recovery journeys. Today's episode tackles a topic that too often lives in the shadows: porn addiction. There's a particular silence that follows some forms of addiction, not because they're uncommon, but because they're uncomfortable to name. Porn addiction is one of them. It's a struggle that intersects with masculinity in powerful and complicated ways, one that's rarely discussed in polite company but deserves our full attention. Let's start by unpacking the landscape of porn addiction, masculinity, and recovery, a conversation that matters for every man who's ever felt isolated in his struggles and for every person who loves him. Pornography addiction is often misunderstood. Dismissing it as mere habit or moral failing overlooks its deep roots in both neurobiology and cultural conditioning. At its core, it's a behavioral addiction that hijacks the brain's reward pathways, releasing dopamine in ways strikingly similar to substance addictions. Over time, frequent use can rewire the brain, creating tolerance and driving users to seek more intense or novel content. Research even shows that heavy users may experience reduced responsiveness in the brain's pleasure centers, a sign of deepening dependency. Stress is a powerful accelerant here. When life pressures mount, pornography can feel like an instant escape, flooding the brain with dopamine and other feel-good chemicals. But this relief is temporary, creating a cycle where shame and avoidance push men deeper into compulsive behaviors. Masculinity, as culturally defined, often makes things worse. From an early age, many boys are taught that showing vulnerability is a weakness. "Boys don't cry," they hear, learning to bottle up feelings rather than express them. This emotional suppression can set the stage for unhealthy coping mechanisms, including porn use. Stigma piles on, making it even harder for men to ask for help. Minority groups and those with limited access to mental health resources face extra challenges. Toxic masculinity takes this to an extreme, pushing ideals of aggression, emotional callousness, and stoicism that not only discourage help-seeking but can actually worsen addiction. It's no surprise that men with rigid beliefs about masculinity are less likely to access mental health care. Treatment, however, offers hope. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) helps men identify and change the thought patterns that fuel addiction. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and mindfulness-based approaches are also effective, teaching men to sit with discomfort rather than run from it. 12-step programs and men's support groups provide spaces for sharing experiences without judgment, vital for breaking shame's grip. Digital tools add accessibility, especially for those hesitant to seek in-person help. Still, recovery isn't just about abstinence; it's about building a new, healthier masculinity that embraces emotional authenticity and connection. This shift can transform not just individual lives but entire communities, redefining what it means to be a man in recovery. Before we dive deeper into the clinical insights, I want to introduce someone whose story truly embodies the complexities we're talking about today. Andrew Myssen is a science writer and a psychedelic beat reporter who has lived the journey of porn addiction, exploring its roots in shame, emotional isolation, and cultural norms. He's here to share how addiction reshaped his sense of self, what it took to reclaim his life, and the insights he's along the way, insights that help us see the human story behind the statistics. Let's listen in as Andrew shares his experience. Can you describe your earliest memories or experiences with pornography and how those moments shaped your relationship to it over time?

My exposure to pornography began in my childhood, loosely through a cartoon in hindsight. There's this cartoon I watched when I was maybe 8 years old called King Size Canary. It is about these animals that encounter this elixir, grow into bigger beasts. It starts with this cat trying to get this bird, this canary, and the bird encounters like this Miracle-Gro potion, I guess, used for plants or something to make a plant grow larger, and drinks it and gets into this big buff bird and can pummel and resists the cat, who then finds the elixir, gets larger, who then finds— the cat encounters— has an encounter with the bulldog, then gets the elixir and tries to dominate the cat. And they all switch around getting this elixir and getting larger until they're like the size of the planet itself. And then the show ends because they're like equal size and don't know what else to do. Something about that I saw other cartoons from this person and noticed that the female characters were pretty sexual. There was often a romantic element in them from this particular artist, Tex Avery. What's significant here is that after I first saw King Size Cannery when I was 8, I had this dream, I think of— I don't know what exactly it was, either myself getting larger or— there was something about getting larger that, like, first, not even turned me on, I wasn't sexually aroused, but it arose that energy in me. I got looped into that somehow. There's something, like, desirable about it. I think that essence of whatever Tex Avery was drawing— like, I imagine he must have drawn porn on the side or something. You can tell when artists do porn on the side. It felt that way with his cartoon. I only recognize that as an adult now. When I was curious about where all this started, I've only made these connections as an adult. But that was formative for me as a child. Years later, I was watching a movie called Epic Movie with my family. There was this kind of pseudo-romantic— it was like a sex scene, and this— they're like, they're portraying all kinds of fictional characters, and Mystique from X-Men— in this, it's a satirical movie— Mystique from X-Men, she comes in and approaches this guy from Narnia. It's just a funny movie, and Says, what do you like? And he's like, oh, I like big boot— like butts and big breasts and stuff. And Mystique like changes her form into having bigger endowments. And I remember getting turned on from that. I was with my family and it was super awkward. We didn't say anything till the next scene. I think I started looking up stuff. I looked up that scene online. YouTube was just coming online around that time. And I started finding porn there. And I was like, what's this? I feel some sort of excitement from this. So I just watch it casually, but that growth element was still what I was really looking for that I found with King Size Cannery. I have no idea why to this day. I don't really know why, but it was around this time that a friend of mine showed me like an image, just like a GIF of a video game character who, whose breasts just got larger for no apparent reason. And I went home and started looking up, trying to find that again because I felt really aroused from that. Look what I found. And that's when I found expansion porn, which is growth fetish porn, body parts growing larger, people growing larger. And I found my sexual fantasy home. It just felt good. It was interesting. It was a niche fetish. Over the next 15 years, I just exhausted all that content on the internet. If there's that type of porn out there, I've probably seen a lot of it. It became just something I watched up to a couple hours every few days. Some days I had binges and other days I had marathons. Whether or not I was masturbating, that didn't happen until about 4 years after I encountered porn for the first time. Yeah, that is how my first encounter shaped everything for me with porn addiction.

At what point did you start to feel like your use had shifted from curiosity or coping to something compulsive or problematic?

I really like this question. I don't remember the first time. Sometimes fights happened in my family. I also played video games a lot, and that was— it was fine refuge in a sense because it was pleasurable. It was an essence that felt like, oh, here's something that feels good that isn't fighting. It felt I'm showing myself I love myself. To a degree, that's true. That is what I was doing, but I didn't know the chemistry of what I was really doing to myself and how dangerous that was. I think the main triggers though were my homework. It's what I can remember. My homework was a constant source of stress, and this does tie into the family dynamics and the other things that made homework difficult to do when I got home. Excuse me, that when I got home. So there's a chain of problems here, but one that was an often trigger was, yeah, I was, I needed to do homework. I was often behind and I would get stressed and I'd look to use porn or video games to reduce that stress and would, yeah, just have it on another tab many nights and just like an IV drip whenever I needed it. I would play games 5, 6 hours a day after school. And then when I was bored in my games, I wanted to do something else, I'd Flip over into another web browser and while my game's in the background, watch some porn and flip back to the game. And then college came around. I had my first girlfriend the first week of college. We were playing around in bed, nothing overtly sexual, but I really didn't know what I was doing. And she was used to having sex. I just remember going back to my room not long after we'd hung out in that way. And viewing an illustrated comic. I remember this day. I was in the expansion Porn Fetish, masturbating for the first time and feeling, whoa, what was that? Like, I hadn't had an orgasm. And I felt really proud of myself and elated, and I told my then-girlfriend at the time. She's like, that's sweet, honey, congratulations, good for you. She was also a little awkward about it. We talked about it privately in the science lab we worked in together. She was happy for me. I've come to learn that porn gratification is it can only go so far, and it, it did jeopardize our intimacy. I believe it opened a sexual life for me in that way, but I never fully found the beauty of my girlfriend. I never found full attraction to her. I remember using porn more often as the stress of my college increased, as I had more assignments. I would do it in the morning, I'd do it at night, and I was also in the beginning of this college phase And having just orgasmed the first time, being like, okay, like, how much porn is out there? There's so much. And I wanted to see more of it. So it was like a new, almost hobby. And my energy drained over the year pretty dramatically. Took something from me. And what followed were some of the most stressful and dangerous periods of my life. Over the next few years, it made college extra stressful, really contributed, made me more vulnerable to trauma. It wasn't a useful coping mechanism for actually getting my work done, even if for a moment it was like an opiate. It caused a lot of confusion. And, and then some years later, after I graduated college, it became a giant problem. It became a really big issue. For nearly a decade, I was compulsively using porn and gaming, binging pretty hard.

What emotions or situations would typically trigger your urge to watch pornography?

Yeah, it was work stress for sure. Homework, and even my adult life. Work. That's the main one. There are other ones. It eventually became something I could do if I was bored, lonely, curious about pleasure or beauty or some positive virtue that I saw. And to this day, I think of all the approaches, that was the healthiest, and that probably helped me more in my recovery. Once I started to approach porn with that attitude of, I'm going to allow myself to enjoy this and to find beauty and love in this, it made me happier. Of porn still had their effects, negative serious effects, but it was a good bridge into finding that in my real life. Because I had built that muscle of looking for beauty and love and happiness, I could find it in my real life easier with that muscle developed. Stress, anxiety, worry, boredom, sometimes celebration, sometimes curiosity. Coping with negative emotions is a pretty common one, and it also sometimes just felt like a habit. But when you examine the habit in detail, there's an emotional state of presence that you have.

Did you seek professional help? Was there a belief or understanding of being a man that influenced your willingness or reluctance to seek help or even admit there was a problem?

I think for me, the greatest challenge was validating it as an addiction. Initially, when I started to talk about the— my porn use and the negative effects of porn use, I encountered among my friends at the time and the people I talked with not a total devalidation, but definitely a resistance. They did not want to hear it. They came from an attitude of sex positivity, saying sex can be good for stress, masturbation can be good for stress, it is totally normal and healthy. And that was not lining up with how my use was for me and deeply confused me. And only took years and years of seeing the nuance of what was going on to both see what they were seeing and also honor the truth of my own experience that one, I didn't want to do this behavior and it was compulsive, it was exposing me to a type of energy I just didn't want in my life. And that it actually didn't feel healthy overall to me, even as I approached it in a healthy way, it was draining me somehow. And that was basically a solo warrior journey coming to terms with what my experience really was like. Uncover, it really felt like I was facing a massive delusion in the world. And that took a lot of bravery to face. And still can, because pornography is a big industry and there is a way to view health and happiness in these things. But it is, it is just, it's just a bit more complicated than that. It drained my sense of masculinity. I felt like it probably depleted my testosterone or influenced my hormones in a different way. I did seek help only years later. I actually didn't recognize it was a huge problem until about mid-college. No, I always sensed that something was a little up. My neuroscience education, I was trained in a bachelor's in neuroscience in college. As I got deeper training, I started to see that there were negative effects and I started to connect it with how I was feeling, but I also just intuitively could feel the rise and the crash. And then I wanted to stop from early on, but it felt pleasurable, stress relieving for a little, maybe half an hour, however long you can ignore whatever you're stressing through great pleasure, which is still in your subconscious, by the way. It's never full ignorance in my experience. But yeah, it was over a decade of recovery efforts. And the religious stuff, I don't really recall ever having any religious shaming in my life or anything about this.

Did you experience a unique kind of shame around your addiction because it involved sexuality? If so, how did that affect your recovery?

Yeah, I did experience shame. That was probably the biggest element, and I still have that shame to this day. I actually am still trying to see what I need to heal that. There's a sense with all the content I used, enjoyed, engaged with, that it's private, that pornography is really hard and challenging to talk about. I just didn't have outlets of people to talk with about it. I didn't have many relationships that lasted long, and none lasted more than 2 months in my life. It just felt like I was going into my mind rather than in the present moment with this wonderful person who was dating me. I never got to really enjoy porn or watch it with someone. Actually, that's not true. I did have a girlfriend where we watched it together, and she saw me get really absorbed into it, almost to the exclusion of everything around me, including her. She felt like I narrowed into this kind of tunnel of focus. But the shame— it doesn't feel great to make a promise, to put a lot of effort, and then to see yourself not do the thing you said. That was a tricky one to move through. But ultimately, I learned that the shame was a helpful teacher because when I looked into that feeling, I noticed someone, me, who wanted to do something different. So there was useful information in that. Now, the thing that there is still difficult is maybe forgiveness. And also, I think more open dialogues about sex, about pornography would be helpful. I might say I'm not going to point to an external source for the world to change first, but that would be helpful to have a bit less fear around talking about these subjects. Hopefully we can do that in a way that doesn't trigger people to use more pornography or anything else like that. But yeah, these things stick around in your conscious. If you read a book, that book is with you for the day. It's with your thoughts as they come up. It's with how you feel. And so if you read a bunch of pornographic literature or view a bunch of images, watch pornographic video, your mind has that content for some time. When you walk around influenced by that, with those thoughts, with that type of energy in your body, at least for me, I was like, I don't want to infect other people with this because I actually don't like this behavior. It's damaging for me. I see how damaging, and I don't want to damage other people. I don't want to get them involved. A type of behavior I'd have and type of feeling was shame. It felt isolating. It felt challenging. It felt like a tension between Okay, I'm done with porn, I want to connect with other people and be in my life, but my body is carrying an energy that I don't want to share with them. In some sense, I do want to share it with them freely, but not in a way that they would join in on it. There's something in it that I didn't want to open up to for fear of hurting other people, and I just never developed the precise wisdom to do that with full confidence. And so I erred on the side of caution and was a bit shyer and quiet for some days after the porn use. And I also recognize that's probably— I just feel drained after porn use, no matter how good I'm doing or how low I am. But yeah, that was the shame.

Was there a specific moment that made you say, I can't keep living like this? What did that turning point look like for you?

There's a few of them in my life, but the main two were some years after college. I was deeply depressed because I was using porn maybe every day. I was gaming for up to 20 hours, sometimes less, a day. And yeah, just masturbating a few times a day, sometimes every other day, just frequent rhythms. Um, and sometimes at rhythms that when I looked on the internet, they said it was like normal to masturbate a few times a day, normal to watch pornography. I was deeply depressed and suffering. The first breaking point was 2019, in October. I think it was like October 17th. I had found psychedelics. A neighbor had given me 5 squares of LSD. When I took LSD, I felt insight into what I was doing. So when I had LSD and I used porn and my games, I could feel the pleasure more viscerally, which in itself is exciting, but then I also felt the crash more, and that really sucked. And I was able to observe the pattern I was going through more vividly. And as I continued to use LSD, I was noticing this pattern is really destructive, and I'm starting to develop an instinct to not want to use porn or games. A study at Columbia University, this October 2019. They just gave me one infusion of ketamine to see how it would treat me in the long term with depression. And in my ketamine experience, I just really felt the compassion of the doctors and scientists of this study. They'd framed it to me from the beginning that they were ultimately trying to help me, that they're going to give me one ketamine infusion and hopefully it did help my depression symptoms, but that they're also gonna check in with me every week and help me find the services I needed to move forward in life. That was the goal. They really wanted to help me. That was the priority. And when I had ketamine in that context, in that set, that setting, you know, that settled into my mind, everything they'd said, I felt great compassion for myself and I felt worth for myself and I felt connected to others. I felt connected to the compassion they were giving me and those other nice people. I had a good week after that ketamine experience. I didn't feel as depressed. I still gamed, still used porn, as I recall, but I felt not depressed. And antidepressant effect wore off pretty much entirely. I felt like back to square one. And then I thought, okay, I really don't want to go through this again. That's ridiculous. I don't want to do this addiction stuff. I want to move on in my life. Long story short with that, I took LSD, not a huge amount. I wrote fake suicide notes. I wrote Before I, sorry, before I took LSD, I'd written fake suicide notes because I had learned of another addict's story of their own turning point, how they had written suicide notes. This is for gaming addiction and had written suicide notes. Then something happened in their life or a friend reached out and they came back to their place, saw the suicide notes and realized they wanted a different life. So I also had written what I felt were fake suicide notes of what happens if I just replicate that. Success story I just heard about, you know, that turning point of what is it like to write a suicide note? I was curious. I was writing to my family, to my friends, to experimenters, just thanking them for my life, for trying to help me. And then when I took the LSD, I realized, wow, it's really sad. I'm even writing fake suicide notes. I'm really in a shitty place in life. Something really needs to change. Oh my God. And I realized, I don't know what it's going to be. I don't know what I need to change. I don't know what's at the bottom of this, but I'm gonna just do it. And I went in the mirror, I looked myself dead in the eyes, I played some epic cinematic victory Brave music, and I shaved my head so that every time I looked in the mirror or felt my scalp with the wind breeze, I would remember I had changed. Initially, that worked. I stopped gaming for 2 years. I did not stop using porn, but that did slow down some. It was still a real problem, but I'd stopped one of the addictions. 2 years later, the gaming came back for a variety of reasons, mostly out of curiosity, and I was still obsessing in my thoughts about gaming. And then the second turning point was this winter, 5 months ago, I was doing a lot of writing work and I noticed I was starting to get consumed by darkness and my addictions were getting out of control. And I want to take a break. Mid-December came, I stopped all my writing assignments. I'm a writer and I was like, okay, I'm gonna take a break. I'm just gonna read books. I'm not gonna use much technology. I binged really hard. I binged so hard on games and pornography that I went to the ER for food poisoning because I wasn't paying attention to the food I was eating. And it was really bad. At this point, I was using AI porn and it was getting really bad. I could create my own content. It wasn't just that I could find all the content out there and consume it. I guess I'll wait a few days till more and my fetish content is created. Now I just had an endless supply through AI, and that was super dangerous. I remember going to a social club I'm a part of, the Psychedelic Assembly, and feeling horny. I think I'd taken a little bit of marijuana, which I don't normally do, but I did that day. And I just used porn and interacted with one of my friends, a good friend of mine, I didn't think much of it. I thought it was fine, but I felt a little attracted to her and definitely attracted to another new woman I met and had some sexual fantasies with this new woman. A month passed and the friend who I'd only lightly had some sexual thoughts about, she said, hey, your energy was really bothering me that day and it's made me afraid to come into the psychedelic assembly. This is really hard to say, but just please don't do that again. I caught you staring at me. Crossed the room and didn't feel good, so please don't do that again. And I texted her back saying, I've been consumed by darkness, I've been through a hard time, and I had some sexual thoughts about you, and just, and I just alluded to that, and that freaked her out. She's like, oh my God, don't text me again. Please, just don't text me again. The crushing blow to that good friendship that felt tied to my porn use was such a wake-up call. It hurt so, so fucking bad. That I knew I really needed to do something, like really need to do something. So I decided to go to a monastery, went to Zen Mountain Monastery for over a month, and then I— from the end of February to end of March this year, and now it's May— and then right after that, I did a week of ayahuasca in Costa Rica. I was deeply helped by those experiences. They were transformative. I let that energy shed off. I let my dopamine systems rebalance. I let myself see all my thoughts, all my negativities that were causing the addictions to continue. All that stress, all that trauma, all the stuff that could come from family or whatever in life. Seeing how bad it was in the back of my mind and body and developing new behaviors, just sitting with it, doing nothing with it, feeling it, however awful it felt, and saying compassionate things like, may all beings be well, just turning my mind into a happier replaced with meditation. And ayahuasca, it was a huge energetic purging, really intense, deeply feeling it and deeply seeing my mind, yelling, crying, shaking all that energy out, getting it out with the help of shamans and a group of other people talking things out. That helped so much. When I came back, first thing I noticed was I faced the pain of loneliness and the pain of boredom. And not, I didn't last long. It was such a sharp pain. To feel how lonely and how bored I was. And I realized that was a massive trigger, and I relapsed even after that huge heroic effort of the monastery and the ayahuasca back to back. And it was about a week and a half of deep suffering again, but it was different because now I developed an awareness of what was going on as well as a deep love for myself through that heroic effort, that month and a half. And so I more readily called my parents anytime I had an urge. I just called other friends, texted other people, ways I could get better. Even while I was watching porn or playing games, I was looking up videos of how to stop watching porn or playing games. Like, I was really in the fight now. And then basically at some point I was starting to hit such a deep low point. I realized there's something out of compassion for myself and deep inner strength. I just pulled it out. There's not gonna be a perfect time for this. I just gotta stop right now. And it just said, I'm pulling myself away. From this computer. I am choosing a different life. And I've been sober since then. It's been over a month. No games, no porn. I even stopped sugar. I'm doing a sugar detox. I continue to have a little bit more ayahuasca to help further shed that trauma energy, to make my life a little easier, to have more ability to focus rather than fight urges all the time. But what I fundamentally learned was that inner strength, that no matter what, no matter how hard things are, you're gonna have to give all your strength. Overcome that urge, and that is all you have to do. And that's winning, if you want to call it a war. It's best to look beyond it. You're really just choosing a happy life. There's no war in that. You're looking for peace. Thank you for asking.

How did people in your life, friends, partners, or family, respond when you opened up about your addiction? Were you believed, judged, supported?

I said a bit of this in my previous one, so I'll just say shortly here. Mostly judged, just more people confused. People didn't recognize the issue for what it was or how bad it was. The main people I could find were online who really recognized it. Everyone else, even therapists I went to, were curious. What is his problem? Maybe it's something else. And they didn't really see porn use in and of itself as being harmful. It must be something else. And to this day, I know that both are true, that porn use is like smoking a cigarette. It does have consequences. To use this analogy, safe and have been used by indigenous in a healthy way. However, they do have minor consequences even when used safely that can be negative, especially in the context of cigarettes. There's a bunch of other toxins that make it really bad. And so there's sexual things you can do, some more safe than others. It's minor consequences, like even having sex will have a negative impact to a degree on your biology, but in the context of good, loving, supportive sex, that negativity can be minor, but it does deplete your dopamine system no matter how you frame it. So porn use is really a supercharged thing for the human nervous system. It excites it and crashes it in a big way. And masturbation, even to thoughts of porn, is crashy too. I learned that through research on my own. And watching helpful YouTube videos of porn— pornography addiction experts like Dr. K or Healthy Gamer. Even thinking about porn rises your dopamine and crashes it. And same goes for sex too. Think about sex, rises, crashes dopamine. And that's essentially what you need to feel motivated, to, to feel motivation to move and to feel joy. And without that, if that's crashed chronically in your life through constant porn use and through the constant thoughts about sex, You're going to feel depressed. You're going to look depressed and people aren't going to necessarily recognize that it's a low amount of dopamine in your system. Treating it with an antidepressant that targets serotonin and you're going to feel maybe indirectly better to that, but you won't feel healed to the root of what you're going through because it's not the full system that you need help with. There's something else going on that involves porn use and involves whatever is inspiring you to keep compulsively using that. So that was a very tricky thing to untangle, but I'm glad I did. And I accredit my current freedom to that understanding. Not many people have that in the world. It's a pretty rare knowledge, unfortunately. We need more education about it.

How has your idea of masculinity evolved through recovery? What traits do you now value that you once saw as weak?

Softness as a man. There's great power in being loving and gentle. That's actually the greatest strength a man can have, is deep respect for another human being. It is a type of kindness that can pierce through all darkness and a type of kindness that can really save someone's life and let them see the light in life and awaken to the beauty of the life they're living right now. The saddest thing is to see someone so mired in their suffering, addiction, in trauma, in a mind full of negativity, and for them to miss the great beauty and the paradise that is the life they're living right now, this one unique, precious life. There's no guarantee there's a hell or a heaven afterlife. There's no guarantee that there will be anything but this beauty that is our life right now. But you can awaken to that, and that is very much helped by a path of recovery. And I think that is partially a merit to things like Alcoholics Anonymous and the spiritual framing they have around it, there is an essential element there that secular groups may not awaken to, which is finding that spirit of your life, that shining radiance where everything is new and fresh and life couldn't be better. That's true recovery if you come to see that.

What practical tools, practices, or mindsets have helped you stay in recovery?

Every morning when I wake up, I have a whole routine. It involves journaling, the first thing. Just check in with myself. I'd meditate, I pray. But most precisely to this, I directly address it every morning. I address how much momentum of addiction I have in my body, and I convert that every day. I watch up to 5 minutes of 2 YouTube creators, Game Quitters. It's a channel dedicated to video game addiction, and Healthy Gamer, Dr. K, mostly for the porn addiction recovery content. I've watched up to 5 minutes of content of Misha's people. It helps refresh my mind, learn something new about these. And I will make a slight correction. I did that for a few weeks, started out doing that, and then it evolved as I exhausted their content. I was rewatching some of it, but I just found the natural impulse to use the knowledge in my recovery to help other people. So now every morning, if I don't watch those videos, I spend that same amount of time helping someone with gaming addiction and someone with porn addiction. I go on a Game Quitters forum and I help someone with a gaming addiction. If there's no one to help at the time, I'll just do a daily journal on the game forum, Game Quitters forum, and say, here's how my day is, here is a status of my recovery. So I check in with myself in that way, contribute to my recovery, whether it's through just acknowledging myself or someone else. And then I go on Reddit, go to the NoFap subreddit, and find someone who's looking for help and just send them a message saying, you're struggling right now, here's a loving message that I hope helps you. I'm very happy to be in a place where I do not have to feel so focused on myself in recovery. It's very nice to give to others. It feels purposeful, adds joy to my life. I do that every day.

Lastly, what will you say to someone listening who's dealing with this in silence, especially a man who feels alone or ashamed?

If you've noticed something in what I've said that appeals to you, such as awakening to great joy in life, please follow that. This is not about stopping a behavior. It includes that, but there's a bigger picture involved. And that bigger picture is this beautiful life you're waking up to, your beautiful life. It's not like recovery isn't a vague term that involves stopping doing something. You're recovering your soul, basically. You're recovering your true authentic happiness, your true authentic self. That's a very obvious thing that you recover, that you know when you have it. So if you're in the fight right now, keep in the fight, but know that you will eventually not need to fight so much or at all. And it's never really about the fighting. You are being a warrior of peace, for peace, for happiness, for yourself. And ultimately, as you do these things and you recover, you can be a happy person for others who appreciate you more, and your life just becomes gorgeous and happy and much easier. And the challenges you have in life that feel so daunting, so, oh my God, I can't deal with that, you have the capacity to handle challenges. It's like you gain an ability to endure hardship without it feeling like you're in hell. If you feel like you're in hell right now, you're using porn a lot, it's normal. Chronic porn use puts you in a feeling state that feels like I am in hell. Not much feels that interesting. I think about sex all the time, and when I do, I feel a little better, but I also feel very narrow and focused on this one thing. And you have, as you recognize, even in that narrow tunnel, let's say the light at the end of the tunnel, book it for that light, just find it. So you make your way out of the tunnel. And as you do that again and again, you will widen up to a huge, wonderful, beautiful world. I wish for you to do that. Just keep going.

Andrew's story reminds us that behind every struggle, there's a person, someone with dreams, relationships, and a future that's worth fighting for. To help us unpack the clinical side of porn addiction and its ties to masculinity, I'm bringing in Adam Wick. Adam is a board-approved, licensed alcohol and drug counselor supervisor, a certified sexual addiction therapist, and a licensed professional clinical counselor. He's the founder of Vital Mental Health. And has dedicated his career to guiding men toward healing from destructive addictive behaviors. Adam was with us before on our episode, Faith and Recovery: Can Spirituality Help You Heal? And I'm so glad to have him back. His work bridges the personal and the professional, showing how trauma, shame, and outdated ideas about masculinity can feed addiction and how recovery is about reconnecting with your true self. Let's hear from Adam as he shares his insights on how men can break free from the grip of addiction and why vulnerability is more than just a buzzword. It's a pathway to healing. How do clinicians distinguish between high-frequency pornography use and diagnosable addiction? What are the most critical diagnostic markers?

That's a really important distinction to make. I think that a lot of people, including clinicians, tend to oversimplify. High-frequency porn use isn't inherently problematic. The difference comes down to function and impact. When I'm with a client, I'm not asking, how much porn do you watch? I'm asking, what's the cost? Really, we look at if the porn use is interfering with someone's relationships or work, emotional presence. Or their ability to connect with others in a meaningful way, and they keep doing it despite the consequences, then we're crossing into addiction territory. I look for 3 things: 1, loss of control; 2, compulsivity; and 3, continued use despite the negative consequence. So it has really nothing to do with frequency. It's entirely possible for somebody to be addicted to pornography and only watch porn once a week if they are using pornography despite the consequences. It's much like alcoholism in that respect, where if somebody drinks once a week, but they get a DUI every time they drink or they get arrested or ended up in a sticky situation because of it, and they continue to drink, they're really looking at alcoholism rather than just heavy drinking. Another important thing is that there's usually some failed attempts to stop. A guy will come in saying something like, I told myself I wouldn't do this again. And here I am, I still did it. It's not just a boundary violation, but it's a loss of agency. Usually this leads to a cycle that includes secrecy, shame, isolation. And then as a result of that, often some escalation into the content.

What does current research reveal about the neurological parallels between pornography pornography addiction and substance use disorders.

There's a growing body of research showing that our brains don't really care whether the stimulus that we come across is behavioral or chemical. The neurotransmitter response in our brains looks very similar. Our brains can't really tell if it's a cocaine or pornography binge. Often, or we're often talking about the same reward circuitry. The ventral tegmental area, nucleus accumbens, and prefrontal cortex. So when somebody repeatedly turns to porn as a coping strategy, we'll see patterns of tolerance, withdrawal, and neuroadaptation that we see with substances. Over time, it takes more intense, more novel, or more extreme content to get the same neurotransmitter dopamine hit. You think of it as like a behavioral tolerance. When someone tries to stop, they experience the same symptoms like a drug or alcohol addict would— withdrawal, irritability, restlessness, anxiety, depression. What's critical is that executive function, specifically in the PFC or prefrontal cortex, gets hijacked. The brakes really go offline. That's where interventions like cognitive behavioral therapy are helpful. These help guys understand their triggers, challenge distorted thoughts, and then start to rebuild behavioral boundaries. In my clinical experience, cognitive, cognitive strategies like CBT or ACT don't really touch the deeper wound. I will lean on something like EMDR or another trauma-informed approach. Once those behaviors are stopped. Many of the men I work with have an early sort of attachment injury, or mother-son enmeshment is very common with pornography addiction. They're not just chasing arousal, but they're rather trying to escape the states that they never learned how to regulate internally. So when that emotional dysregulation starts when they're really little, particularly in the context of neglect or shame. Pornography becomes a form of self-binding. If you've read Dopamine Nation, this is what Anna Lembke calls a way to manage pain through pleasure. Neurologically, yes, it is addiction. Behaviorally and emotionally, it's often a trauma response. To treat it effectively, we have to work at both levels.

From a therapeutic standpoint, how does emotional avoidance, especially in men, drive compulsive sexual behavior?

So compulsive sexual behavior in men is usually a strategy to avoid Not just emotions, but the body's response to those emotions. When a guy feels overwhelmed or ashamed, maybe rejected, he disconnects from himself. Porn or masturbation are very efficient, fast ways to do this. Remember, it's not about chasing pleasure. It's about avoiding pain. And if you grew up in a family, let's say, where emotional expression wasn't safe, that pattern of shutting down runs deep. Arousal becomes an on-ramp for dissociation is one way to think about it. So in therapy, we work to reverse that. EMDR, somatic awareness, and the 30 Tasks Model developed by Dr. Patrick Carnes help men really to reconnect with their bodies and stay present with difficult emotions instead of fleeing into compulsion or fantasy. The goal isn't just stopping the behavior. It's about expanding their window of tolerance so he can stay emotionally present when things inevitably get hard.

How do traditional masculine norms affect men's willingness to engage in therapy or even recognize their behavior as addictive?

Traditionally, masculinity teaches men to stay in control, avoid emotion, be self-sufficient, and solve problems on their own. Admitting they're struggling, especially with something like porn, feels like a weakness. Most won't call it addiction. They'll say things like, I need to stop, or I keep screwing up. Because porn especially is normalized, and oftentimes with men, our emotional language is underdeveloped. It takes longer for men to connect the dots. And let's say, if they're still functioning with a job, family, no legal consequences, they don't always see the cost until there's some sort of crisis or collapse. That's where therapy comes in. Therapy almost always starts with a crisis for men. As a therapist, the work is reframing vulnerability as strength. It's very challenging at times, but that's the real key for transformation in men. When men start to see honesty and emotional presence as inherently masculine rather than weak, they start to engage. Until that happens, shame and denial will keep them stuck.

What role does shame play in maintaining addiction cycles, and how do you help clients move from shame into self-compassion?

Another really good question. Shame is the fuel source for addiction. It doesn't just follow the behavior, it actually drives it. So when a guy acts out with pornography or really any sort of compulsive behavior, he feels worthless and will use again to escape that feeling. This starts this sort of shame spiral with a real downward trajectory. That cycle reinforces the core belief of something along the lines of, I'm broken. I'm the problem. I'm deficient in some way. For a lot of men, shame is very old. It predates the addiction almost always. It'll come from trauma or enmeshment or emotional neglect. The acting out or compulsivity becomes the latest chapter in a story that has been playing in their internal dialogue for decades. So therapeutically, what I do is the first step is separating the behavior from somebody's identity. You are not your addiction. You're responsible for your behavior, but that doesn't define you. So when we name the shame, we track where it lives in the body and start processing it. I'll use EMDR or Internal Family Systems, Parts Work, Group therapy is really effective and so are the 12 steps because they help to break the isolation. When a man hears me too from someone else who's been there, shame tends to lose its power quickly. Self-compassion isn't going to come through things like affirmation. It comes through accountability with empathy. And that's really the bridge.

What treatment approaches have you found most effective, CBT, ACT, mindfulness, group therapy, et cetera, for men struggling with porn addiction?

It's a little different for everybody since cases are always so complex, but typically I'll start off with a task-based model, specifically the 30-Task Model from Patrick Carnes. It gives clients structure, accountability, tracks progress across multiple phases, uh, like breaking denial, establishing sobriety, trauma work, and then the start to re— rebuild intimacy. I typically look at pornography addiction more of an intimacy disorder than anything else. After sobriety is established, and we're talking maybe a period of 6 to 9 months of regular individual therapy, we'll start to address unresolved trauma. EMDR is my go-to. Porn use is often like a dissociative response to some sort of internal distress or trauma. We've got to work at it on the nervous system level, not just cognitively. Group therapy is key. Most men don't want to go to a porn addiction group, but that's the very, very thing they need. Also, I encourage 12-step recovery for long-term support, spirituality, community. The therapy hour is 1 hour out of the week in building community with people who have gone through what my clients have gone through outside of the therapy office. Is really important. I've also seen it be a really useful healing mechanism for a lot of men. They get accountability, they get understanding, they get really a spiritual experience by doing something that they don't want to.

What benefits or challenges arise in all-male recovery groups dealing with behavioral addictions like porn use?

The biggest benefit, I would say, men stop performing and start telling the truth. Most of the guys I work with have spent years managing their image of being strong or in control, detached, unemotional. But in an all-male group, especially around processed addictions like pornography, they finally get the chance to drop the act. You know, people who show up to that group are all in the same situation. There's really no reason to do the posturing. Once they start to hear other men talk about shame and fear compulsivity, the struggles that they're having, they like immediately feel that they're not alone. When connection like that is developed, men start to feel that they're not alone. It starts to snuff out addiction because connection is the opposite of addiction, as someone famously said. And I think that there's some truth to that. The group also shares space to deal with stuff that we don't really talk about. Maybe it's a wound from the father or some sexual shame. Emotional neglect, things like that. These all play out differently for each individual man, but the only male room gives them permission to unpack it without posturing or trying to be somebody else. I think one of the most cha— the biggest challenge I should say is that at first most guys will posture if they show up to the group. It's tough to get somebody bought into going to a group group about, let's say, pornography addiction, since there's so much shame and stigma around it. A lot of times guys will try and look good or to say the right thing, quote books. But really, you can't outsmart addiction. You have to feel it. And once guys begin to realize that the group's not there to judge, they start to get honest, and that's really where recovery can start.

How often do you see porn addiction alongside other mental health conditions like anxiety, depression, or trauma, and how do you treat both?

In nearly every case, porn addiction almost always shows up with something else. It'd be anxiety, depression, trauma. But here's the thing, when somebody's actively engaged with addiction, or that can be behavioral addiction or substance use, it's nearly impossible to get like a clean read on any of it. The compulsive behavior will mask symptoms. So you don't know what's clinical and what's just withdrawal or emotional numbing. I always start with establishing sobriety. Until we get a stretch of sexual sobriety, no porn, no masturbation, no compulsive acting out, we're not treating the full picture. It's like trying to measure somebody's blood pressure during a panic attack. Once there's stabilization, then we'll start to assess what's underneath. If we're seeing persistent anxiety or depression, we'll bring in CBT. If there's some sort of trauma history, which there almost always is, We'll look at EMDR as long as the client has enough internal stability to tolerate it, but without sobriety, everything else is clouded. That's why I think the task-based models like Carnes's are so helpful. And 12 steps we could throw in there too. They give structure and help sequence the work therapeutically. Otherwise we end up just spinning our wheels.

How do accessibility and anonymity in digital platforms affect addiction severity and treatment outcomes.

It's like being addicted to crack and having an unlimited supply in your pocket on your iPhone, except that the crack pipe is between your legs and it's free to use. That's really the level of access we're dealing with. There's no friction, there's no risk, there's no shame, there's no one watching. It accelerates use compulsively, which in turn deepens the shame. And keeps guys isolated at an accelerating rate. I've worked with plenty of men who have been acting out multiple times a day for years before anybody even success— suspected anything. The same anonymity can also be a gateway into recovery. There's gotta be some structure to it though. Some guys will join online group or start telehealth because walking into the office feels is dang near impossible. It's my belief that without real accountability, digital tools are just going to feed the cycle. With the right guardrails and structure, though, I think they can be part of the solution.

What does successful recovery look like? Not just abstinence, but in terms of identity, intimacy, and emotional growth?

Great question. It's helpful to know what direction somebody is headed and what orientation to follow. I I think abstinence is the floor, not the ceiling. If a guy stops watching porn, but stays emotionally shut down or avoidant, it's not really recovery. That's just managing a behavior. Real recovery shows up when he's in how, you know, he starts to handle discomfort differently. Can he sit with his loneliness without fantasizing? Can he have a hard conversation with his partner without shutting down? Can he feel his feelings and stay present? Intimacy really is a core marker. I don't just mean sex, emotional presence, trust, the ability to be vulnerable. Is he known? Is he accountable? Can he receive feedback without collapsing into shame? Also, I look for ownership. Is the guy telling the truth? Is he leading his recovery or complying with it? There's a shift from secrecy to transparency, which really tells us whether or not the work is sticking. Successful recovery is about integrity, intimacy, emotional resilience. Remember, porn is never the problem. It was the solution to the problem and oftentimes a deeper wound. When that wound starts to heal, everything changes.

Adam's insights remind us that healing is more than just stopping a behavior. It's about building a life rooted in honesty, accountability, and deep human connection. Thank you, Adam and Andrew, for being on the show. As we wrap up today's episode, I want to remind you that Recovery Dialogues and Sober Stories is listener supported. If you'd like to help us keep bringing these important conversations to light, You can make a donation through Dystopia, our host site, or at gofundme.com/recoverydialogs. We also have a growing merch shop at recoverydialogs.com where you can wear your recovery journey proudly with our artistic recovery mantra t-shirts, hats, bags, mugs, and more. Every purchase supports the and the message of hope we share. And finally, we're always looking for sponsors to help sustain and grow this work. If you or your organization would like to sponsor an, an episode or even a season, please reach out. Your support means the world to us. Until next time, keep showing up for yourself. Every step you take toward healing is a step toward a life worth living. Thanks for being part of this conversation and this community.

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