Pornography Addiction Recovery: The Basics

Hey there everybody. Welcome to this video on porn addiction recovery, the basics. I'm your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. In this video, we're going to review the basic criteria for pornography addiction, introduce the concept of post acute withdrawal, and summarize the recovery process. So let's start out with the burning question, do I have an addiction? And a lot of people are told they have an addiction when actually they are using responsibly but recreationally. So it's important to recognize whether your behaviors represent an addiction or whether your behaviors are merely offensive to someone else. So let's take a look at it. Basically to sum up all the criteria. The answer the question, do you continue to use porn even though it is causing problems in one or more pieces of your life? And pieces stands for physical, interpersonal, emotional, cognitive, environmental, or spiritual. So do you continue to use porn even though it is causing arousal problems, Even though it's causing sexual problems? Even though it is causing problems with you getting to sleep each night, Are you having physical issues as a result of porn use? If so, and you keep using, then you might have an addiction. Is it causing problems in your interpersonal relationships? And this is important to look at Again, I said sometimes people may not like the fact that someone watches porn, okay? That's their opinion. That is their right to have that thought. However, if the person who is hurt or offended by it is important in your life and you continue to use it anyway, then you might have a problem. Is it causing emotional problems in your life? Is it causing you to feel anxious or depressed or flat or angry all time? Is it causing you distress? Emotional distress? Cognitively, if you're not getting good sleep and as addiction develops as a result of compulsive use, both things can lead to brain fog and problems thinking clearly and making decisions. If you've got that and you continue to use porn, that might be a problem. And spiritually, environmentally, the porn rarely causes problems in your environment. Unless maybe you got kicked out of your house by your spouse because they found out you were using porn. But then you've got environmental and interpersonal problems. So spiritually is really focusing on your connection with others. Does using porn make you feel less connected with others? Make you feel less well connected? And. Or when you look at yourself and your idea of yourself, does it work? Does it support or go against your vision of yourself? Now, according to the diagnostic criteria, distress entirely related to moral judgment about sexual impulses, urges or behaviors is not sufficient. Sufficient. So if you were taught growing up that watching porn is bad and you feel guilty because you have those messages in your head and you keep doing it anyway. That is not sufficient necessarily for a diagnosis of addiction unless it's causing a lot of emotional turmoil and cognitive turmoil and stuff. However, you know, I don't really like that one because it does cause problems for people. And I think if you are experiencing significant distress and continuing to use, that's an indication there might be a problem that needs to be addressed. Whether you want to diagnose it as an addiction or not, does it really matter? We're talking semantics. You got a problem, you're not happy, let's help you get happy. And as I mentioned earlier, another person's distress about your use may not qualify if that person is not an important part of your life. If somebody you've been seeing for a week or somebody that you're talking to on Tinder finds out about your porn use and they don't like it, is that really important to you? Is that person important in your life? That's far different than your spouse or your significant other finding out about it, or maybe even your parents or caregivers finding out about it and having a problem with it. All right, so if you're continuing to watch, you're thinking, well, I might have an addiction to porn. Okay, so let's talk about post acute withdrawal. When you stop using porn, it's going to suck. That's just the way it is. Your body has rebalanced its hormones and brain chemicals to protect itself from overload due to excessive porn use. So your body factory is completely uncalibrated. It's completely out of whack for what you would expect in typical day to day living. It is used to having those floods of neurochemicals. And think about, you know, in, in real estate where you have houses that are in a flood zone. Well, if somebody knows that they're going to build in a flood zone, they typically build their house up on stilts. So when it floods, they don't have to worry about damage to their house. And your brain sort of does the same thing. If there's regularly floods of these chemicals going on, it adjusts. It actually physically changes the neurocircuitry. When you stop using, it takes time for the body to first get the message that you're not going to use. So go back to that flood again. If you're living in this area that is prone to floods, then people are going to build up on stilts. If it's been 10 years since a flood, you might start Thinking, maybe it's not going to flood anymore. But you're not sure, you're not a hundred percent sure that there's not another flood coming. So you keep building the house on stilts for a while and then you find out, hey, they built a dam, so it's not going to flood anymore, and I can start building the houses on the ground. And the same thing is true for your brain once it gets the message that, hey, I can send out these cravings to this person and the person is not going to respond. And in order to function, I need more of these chemicals than I'm getting right now. So I need to reconstruct what was remodeled before. Symptoms of chemical imbalance are what we experience in post acute withdrawal. This is the body going, ah, yeah, I was preparing for the flood and I'm not getting it. Physical symptoms, sleep problems, gastrointestinal problems. And for a lot of people, when they are craving, they're stressed out, their body is recognizing that there is a deficit and that needs to be filled. So it triggers the stress response, or what I'm going to call throughout the series, the HPA axis. When that happens, that speeds things up. It puts you into fight or flee. And you know what happens to your gut during fight or flee? You know it, it tends to become uncomfortable at best. You may be restless. Your body, again, that stress response is kicking off and your body is saying, okay, I've got this energy to go and figure out how to get this hit of excitatory neurochemicals. I need to get another hit. And you're sitting on, on the couch going, nope, not going to do it. And your body's going, but I got to do it, I got to do it, I got to do it. So you may feel restless, you may feel have difficulty focusing on things because you're in fight or flee. Your body is saying, hey, you need to do something now. Need and want are a little bit hazy. In post acute withdrawal, in order to feel good, yes, you need to do it. However, in order to force the brain to remodel, you can't do it. Are you going to die if you don't engage in the behavior? No. Is it going to be unpleasant? Well, initially, yes. You may have libido changes. Some days you may be really aroused and just really craving, having a sexual release. Other days, not so much. Pain intensity increases, your pain threshold goes down, and this is normal. It's important to recognize that all of the chemicals that are involved in pleasure are also involved in pain regulation. And because they were out of whack, because the brain is expecting a flood of them. It's not, to oversimplify, it's not producing as much anymore. So you don't have those as much of those chemicals. So you are going to be a little bit more achy, a little bit more painful sometimes. Energy levels are probably going to go down. I'm just. That's the way it is. Number one, if you're not sleeping well, your energy levels are going to go down. Number two, dopamine, which is one of our main chemicals in addiction, not the only energy chemical, but one of the main ones. Your dopamine levels are exceedingly low. And we know when dopamine goes down, people get tired. That's why people on certain medications like antipsychotics feel exhausted all the time because it's suppressing their dopamine levels. Once your brain remodels and you're back to your preset level of dopamine, you're going to feel a lot better. But initially dopamine levels are really low and you may start craving junk food. And why do I say junk food instead of just food? Because junk food produces dopamine and serotonin release. And that may be your body's way of going, well, if I can't have that, can I have this over here? And we see a lot of people in early recovery. Obviously there are lots of people who have talked about it when there's stopping smoking. But the same thing is true when stopping porn addiction and gambling addiction and any addiction. People will start to crave high fat, highly processed, high sugar foods because that does give them a little bit of a hit of dopamine and serotonin. When I ran a residential treatment facility, unfortunately when I first started there, they used to get pastries, day old pastries delivered every single day. And they were out in the rec room for people to graze on throughout the day. And people were great, were doing it. And in 30 days, it was not uncommon to see people put on 10 or 12 pounds, even if they were not malnourished to begin with because they were replacing the dopamine with junk food. We'll talk about how to handle that in, in later videos. Interpersonally, in post acute withdrawal, you aren't feeling very well. You don't. So you probably don't have a lot of patience, tolerance or desire to be around other people. Especially when it comes to porn addiction. Once you've gotten to the point where you are addicted to porn, real life people may not actually trigger an arousal response. So there's no benefit. It's not like, you know, you can go to on Tinder to a club or something and meet somebody and hook up and feel better. Not that I'm recommending that at all, but you know that IRL relationships don't even work right now. Emotional symptoms as I mentioned. Well, when you're sleep deprived, when you're restless, when you're in pain, when you've got low energy, when you can't access that thing that you know might make you feel better, you're going to feel irritable. You may also have low motivation and apathy and this comes from low levels of dopamine and serotonin. Now don't think that you can start taking XYZ supplement and increase your dopamine and serotonin levels and feel better. Number one, that doesn't work. There are a lot of things you can do. And again, we'll talk about that in later videos. But it's important for the brain to not be flooded. It's important for the brain to get the message that hey, it's time to remodel the remodel cognitive symptoms Brain fog. When those hormones and brain chemicals get out of whack, you're going to experience brain fog. It's going to be hard to remember things. It's like it's right on the tip of your tongue but you can't remember it. Your memory is going to be crap. It's going to be harder to concentrate and pay attention to things. Maybe harder to make decisions and solve problems. Things that used to be really easy for you to do may seem a lot harder. And that is a result of the change in the balance of the brain chemicals. That is not permanent. But it can be very, very frustrating. And it's important to mitigate that as much as possible and be compassionate with yourself. And then environmentally, in post acute withdrawal, there may be hyper awareness of porn related triggers because your brain walks into a room and it sees a computer and it says, oh, I know what that can do for me. So you become more aware of things that are porn related and may cause you to start craving again because your brain says it's so close but yet so far. So the recovery process takes time. It's like restoring a car or cooking a big Thanksgiving meal. And it's a process. The first thing is you need some knowledge about what you're getting ready to do. If you were getting ready to cook and you'd never been in a kitchen before, wouldn't do you a lot of good. If you were getting ready to restore a car and you knew nothing about restoring cars, who knows? So you'd probably go on YouTube or somewhere else and get some knowledge first. And that's what these videos are designed to do, is to help you get some knowledge. You also need to get the resources together before you get started. You don't want to be halfway through making the pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving dinner or halfway through rebuilding the engine for your car and realize that you're missing parts. That's frustrating and inefficient at best, and sometimes it can be detrimental. There are many different things that need to be done, and they all cannot be done at once. And this is one of the biggest hurdles or mistakes that people make in recovery is trying to do everything at once. It ain't gonna happen, but you'll get there. So prioritize, Identify all the things that need to be done and then figure out which ones need to be done first and then which one and. And prioritize from there. Some things need to be done first. Making Thanksgiving dinner, you're going to need to put the turkey in a lot earlier than the dinner rolls if you're planning on serving them all warm at the same time. With restoring a car, you're going to need to repair the dents in the car before you repaint it. You know, there are certain things that have to happen first, but there are a lot of things that need to be done. So you can choose, for example, with the car, are you going to rebuild the engine first, or are you going to redo the wiring or redo the upholstery? You know, you may be motivated to do one over the other, and that's okay. And the same thing is true in treatment. Not everybody wants to start out addressing the emotional issues. All right, that's fine. Let's help you start feeling better. Let's address some of the physical issues, like sleep and pain. You'll be more motivated to work on some things than others, but everything you complete helps you move toward your end goal. Every dish you complete for the Thanksgiving meal helps you get the meal ready. Every project on the car restoration gets you one step closer to having that beautiful, completely restored car. It takes time, but you're still marking off things. It's. Everything you do is working toward that end goal. So it's important to recognize progress. Yeah. With the car, it might not be running yet. You might have a lot of things done, but it's not running yet. Okay. It isn't but look at all the other stuff that you have gotten accomplished, and you just have a few more things to do in terms of a recovery. Outline the steps that I advise for people to take in recovery. Determine if you've got a problem. Do you have an addiction? If you say yes, okay, move on. Develop an initial relapse prevention plan. How can I stop using porn? And this is important to do early. And you may be scratching your head going, well, if I knew that, I wouldn't have a problem. Well, that's true. That's why I call it an initial relapse prevention plan. You need to think to yourself, okay, I don't want to use anymore. What are some steps I can take that can help me resist these urges, that can help me get through the next week, month, six months, whatever. So I encourage people. I have an entire unit in my program that encourages people to develop an initial relapse prevention plan. The next step is learning how to use basic behavior modification to identify progress and stay motivated as you move toward your goals. Many people don't really conceptualize everything that goes into changing a behavior, and they miss things. So in my program, I go over a lot of different tools, behavior modification tools, not too technical, that can help you learn from past relapses and prevent future relapses, rewarding the behaviors that are important to you and making porn seem less desirable. Then you'll begin increasing your awareness of relapse warning signs and redirecting your energy toward recovery through mindfulness. And mindfulness may make you kind of, er. Some people don't like that word. I am not talking about meditation. I am talking about project management. That's what mindfulness is. In this program, it's starting the day, envisioning the end goal, envisioning what you need to do, planning for how you're going to make it happen. Ending the day, looking back and saying, did I accomplish my goals? If I did score, if I didn't, what went wrong? What do I need to change? What can I learn and how can I do better tomorrow? That's what mindfulness is in this program. Then you're going to define your rich and meaningful life. And this is important because that is the goal that you're working toward. Stopping porn use. You're doing it for a reason. You're doing it for a reason. In order to help you achieve your rich and meaningful life. And it's important to focus on things that in the big picture, sometimes not just porn, you got to pick your head up and look up and Say, why am I doing this? So defining your rich and meaningful life is really important. If you are a. Let's talk project management again. You may be starting a company and you want to eventually be listed on the s and P500. Well, that's great, but you're not going to get there overnight. You want to define what that looks like, but you also want to figure out what you need to do to get there and how that's going to flourish. Instead of a rich and meaningful life, you'll have a rich and meaningful business, but your business is going to grow and things are going to change. In your rich and meaningful life, you're focusing on not only. Well, you're actually not focusing on not using porn, you're focusing on what you're going to use your energy for instead and what will help you be happy and healthy. Then and only then, now that you know what you're working toward, you're starting to feel a little motivated. You're starting to become more aware of your triggers and what's going on. You, you've been using your initial relapse prevention plan, so you're starting to feel a little bit more confident. Okay, now you're going to look at the impact excessive porn use has had on all pieces of your life. Oh, that let some of the air out of the balloon. But that's okay. Now that you've got a little bit of confidence and you've got a little bit of excitement or anticipation for where you're going. Now we need to go back and look at some of the hard stuff. What are some of the consequences of the porn use? And then once you know the problems, then you can start addressing the problems. You can learn how to enhance motivation for recovery in all pieces of your life. You can explore how you got here and increase motivation for unpacking your baggage. Not everybody has had a horrible childhood or traumas that led to porn use. Actually, the majority of people haven't that are addicted to porn they're not using in order to escape trauma. Some people are, but the majority of people aren't. However, they've experienced losses and problems as a result of their use and they need to examine that. They need to understand for themselves because each individual is different. How did they get from not knowing anything about porn to recreational use to having it be an all consuming problem? How did that progress? And once you understand how it progresses, then you can understand better how to unwind it as well. And then you'll begin addressing the pieces of your life in the order that makes sense to you. As I mentioned earlier, not everybody wants to start with physical recovery. Not everybody wants to start living healthfully and stuff. They want to address the relationship problems or they want to clear up their brain fog so they can think more clearly. All right. And that's the wonderful thing about this program is each segment, each piece of the recovery process is independent. So you can choose which one you want to do. And just like rebuilding that car or, or making that meal, your everything that you do is going to lead to your ultimate recovery. The Porn Addiction Recovery Program, which can be found@doc snipes.com Par is designed to help you work through early recovery activities in a meaningful way. For many people there may be a lot more to do, such as developing emotional intelligence, improving self esteem, enhancing relationship and communication skills, and working through any relationship issues. And I have other videos on those. And you can also consult with a therapist. The PAR program can be effective as a tool that you use with a therapist if you want to. If you don't want to, do it as a self help activity. However, if you're experiencing significant anxiety or depression, you you need to reach out to your doctor or a therapist. This is not treatment. This is self help. This is education. And if you are feeling really anxious or depressed, a therapist or doctor in your area can help you. In addition to working on your porn addiction.