19. You Don’t Watch Porn for Dopamine

Welcome back to the Breaking Free from Porn podcast. My name is Samir Gardner Gardner. Today we're going to talk about fantasy. Fantasy is actually something very critical, very important that you understand. A lot of people, they think that they watch porn because of the dopamine, or for example, they attribute the reason as to why they watch porn, or they blame that porn hijacks their brain. And it's all of these pleasure chemicals. Which sounds scientific and it sounds like, okay, this is actually what's going on. Like, it's a good explanation basically. And whilst there's some truth to it, that it's not the whole picture, it's not the whole story. It's a bit more deeper than that. We need to look at why is it that this reaction— why is it that porn feel pleasurable in the first place? Why is it that we release dopamine for porn in the first place? And this, this is what we call fantasy. If you've never watched any of my YouTube videos, I highly suggest you do. It's on YouTube called— just type Samir Gardner, my full name, and you'll find them. I do talk about fantasy a bit more in depth there. But what is fantasy? Think about it. I'll ask you first, when is it that you watch porn? Do you watch porn when you feel happy, when you feel fulfilled, when you feel on top of the world, when you feel confident, worthy, when you just feel good overall? Or do you watch it when you feel low, when you feel like life is not going your way, when you start panicking, when you start stressing, when overall you just feel negative? We'll see that 99.9% of the time if porn goes against your morals and values, or that you actually want to quit porn, you never watch porn when you feel happy. You never watch porn when you feel good. You only watch porn when you feel low, when you feel negative. So what do we get out of porn then? We want to feel better. It's that simple. We want to feel an emotion in that moment And that emotion, this is, by the way, this is just how fantasy works. It's super simple. We want to feel a certain emotion that we feel like we're lacking at that moment. That's it. Sure, we can go more in depth. That's what I do with my coaching students, understanding the real root cause behind that. Why is it that we want that emotion and other things related to that? But for this podcast, let me explain how fantasy works so you can actually work on it. So think about it like this. You've grown up in a society, in an environment that has told you repetitively across different medias, across different outlets, that if you are in a relationship, if you get married, if you are attractive to the opposite gender, you essentially won at life. You're valuable, you're worthy. We don't say these things explicitly, like we don't say, oh yeah, you're valuable if you can— some people say that, like for example the red pill movement nowadays. The red pill movement will say, well, the man that can sleep with as many as women, uh, with as many women as he can, then he's more valuable. And because of things like, for example, music— think about it, was it— what is the music we listen to nowadays? I haven't listened to music in a while, actually, um, over 2 years, I believe, maybe 3. And I know that the music nowadays that people listen to, it often— because I used to listen to it back then— it often talks about especially we're talking about rap, how they are flexing, meaning they are showing that they have something of value, which is sleeping with women. They're able to attract women, as many women as they can. If you look at movies, we get shown like these beautiful stories, like the— we can just go look at Disney, to be honest. We can just look at like these beautiful romantic stories and The man is just like living the peak of life. He's in love. And we look at these things and we're like, man, this guy is valuable, he's confident, he's attractive, and we want to be like that. Or maybe nowadays a lot of people, they started listening to Andrew Tate. They listen to Andrew Tate and they're like, oh yeah, if I have the money, if I can attract women, if I can have as many women, uh, in my roster, as, as we say, then I am valuable, then I am worthy, then I am accomplished. So do you notice a pattern here? We attach all of these emotions, all of these feelings, to lust. Accomplishment— we feel accomplished. Worthiness. Flexing means like you're valuable. And so many things. So whenever we want to feel this emo— these emotions, let's say for example, we just lost our job and because of that we feel unworthy because we have no money and that we're not valuable. Well, then what? We want to feel valuable. We want to feel worthy. These are emotional needs. So we go to what we've been told will make us feel worthy, valuable, accomplished, and so on, which would be women, which would be to sleep with women, uh, or depending on your morals and values, to maybe go on a date, or for, for some, depending on your morals and values, obviously, for some people to get married. But getting married and all of these things, uh, just overall dealing with women is much harder than porn itself. So as you can see so far, we see that we've attached all of these things to lust because of how we grew up, the education that we were fed. I mean, the, the media and the— so social media nowadays is a good example of that, music, movie, movies, and so on. So we think, okay, I can feel these things that I want to feel from lust. Now, most people nowadays, they— at least I'm talking from personal experience coaching people and so on— obviously, uh, most people are not in a situation— if you're from the age of 25 and up, which are most people that are listening to this podcast, I know you're 25 and up, or most people I coach are 25 and up. So it's oftentimes like we don't just have access to women, like we're not married, or we can't just get married anytime soon because we're not ready yet, for example. And let's say that's the only way that we can get real intimacy. So what happens is we go to porn. Now we don't go to porn just because, yeah, porn is a substitute. We know it's not the same thing as if like you were getting in a real marriage and there's love and this and that. But porn gives the same thing that we're looking for. What is it? Think about it. When you watch porn, are you after pixels on the screen? Are you after a screen? Are you after, oh, I just want to get the chemical buzzing in my brain and that's what I really want? Most people— I mean, some people think that this is the case. They just want to get like the chemicals and the dopamine, the pleasure. But that's just like the surface. The truth is, when you watch porn, what do you do? Or when you masturbate without porn, that's a, uh, another example. Or when you just fantasize, what do you do? I mean, when you watch porn, you masturbate, what do you do? You fantasize. You watch these videos thinking you're either the guy in the video, or you fantasize about yourself doing the things that they do in the video but with another woman. And when you fantasize about something, when you visualize something in your mind, as we say, the, the brain, the mind cannot tell the difference between imagination and reality. The mind, the brain cannot tell the difference between imagination and reality. So if you visualize yourself having intimacy with a woman You're going to feel as if you were having intimacy, even though you're not. Now, it's important you understand this because you get what we call the emotional needs out of it. We get the emotional needs in a sense of you get to feel in that moment worthy, valuable, maybe loved, maybe accomplished, because you're visualizing yourself doing these things. It's like if— I don't know if you guys do this, but I, I do this sometimes with, for example, my vision, like the goals I have in life. I visualize myself accomplishing them, and I feel so confident, and and I just feel so good. And so what happens is you just— you're there and you feel as if you accomplished these goals even though you did nothing at all whatsoever. So the point that I'm trying to make with all of this is that when it comes to porn Just like anything in life, we're not after just like the chemicals in the brain and like the dopamine. And it's because the brain wants to get like its hit, or we just want stress relief. We want to feel something that in that moment we're trying to feel. That's how fantasy works. Of course, it goes more in depth. Like, you I usually go with my students and we work on these things so that we can tackle them. We tackle the root. It's not necessarily the root, but this is really an explanation of how fatigue works. And if you have any questions, guys, I'm always on Instagram. I reply to my DMs. You can also watch my videos on YouTube, but I'll see you guys in the next episode.