#663 - Porn Recovery Coach Steven Wolt

Wow, it's with you for a year in the third stage.

“A couple of years after the high school.”

I don't know if that's what I wanted. Stream up on the 13th April, parallel to U.S. It's really a new episode. That's a problem. And you're a part of the title track.

Give it a try. Before I get out of it, I'll show you how to drag in and wake up. All of the two of us are 18 and 90 in the month. Streaming, but not so, wow. Today's guest is a certified coach

and a founder of Valor Recovery. It's a recovery program that focuses on porn addiction, pornography addiction, intimacy disorders, commitment, disorders, the whole gamut of stuff in there. There's a lot of things when it comes to emotional connection.

He and I have known each other for years. He's a dear friend of mine. He's been a mentor. He's been a guide.

And at times he's been a hero.

I'll say that. This episode didn't really for children. If you have children, maybe in the back seat or something, I mean, it's not graphic, but I don't know. Just, you know, I hope this episode reaches who it reaches.

I would like to say that. I had a great chat today with my guest and friend, Mr. Steve. Walt. [MUSIC] Thank you.

I think it's coming. Yeah, let me too, Ralph. Been a long time, I know it has been a long time, man. For some of you guys, you don't know. Today's guest is my friend, Steve Walt,

who is who started a program called Valor Recovery. And it's a recovery program for men who have suffered with pornography addiction. Is that pretty much the safe way to say it, Steve? It's a good way to say it.

OK, cool. And thank you so much, dude. I love the work that you do. Thank you for, like, you know, you've been a guide online. And my life, and just a partner in crime.

And, you know, in positive crime. And yeah, I just want to like, we start. We met in recovery rooms, right? Yeah. Long time ago.

Yeah, we met above the bank. Over there, we're going to recover rooms in the palacades. Yeah. I didn't suffer from porn addiction. But I did.

I have dealt with that, like, parts of that. And I have, like, you know, I had, like, and a miscede disorder, like, commitment issues. That sort of thing, you know, which those meetings cover all of that.

Your recovery started with drugs and alcohols? It did. I mean, I was one of those kind of men that kind of struggled with a lot of stuff. But, you know, as you look back,

I definitely think pornography was the culprit. Really? Yeah, I do.

“You know, I think pornography was this kind of gateway drug”

that led me to a lot of dark places. Yeah, I'd love to hear your experience. Strengthen hope today. Just take us kind of on your journey. This is what people do in meetings a lot.

They'll share their experience, strength, and hope. And your journey with, like, intimacy, sex addiction, pornography addiction, et cetera. Is that okay? Yeah, that's great.

And so, you know, I think it started for me in the late '90s. You know, I was living in New York City. Working in financial services from all outward appearances, like doing great in life.

You know, I remember moving kind of my first nice apartment

and 30 second floor of the building. I'd work so hard for this, right? Like, my goodness. I'd walk up now. No.

Wasn't a walk up. 32 floors of the long way to walk. Oh, yeah. But what I do remember within a few weeks is getting the internet and my apartment

for the first time. Pretty cool. Right? People could do research, take it a lot of things in the internet, like, not this guy.

I mean, I mean, I use the internet for porn. And so really, for the first time, my life, I had, like, unlimited access to pornography. And I'll tell you what, when I watch porn, it lit me up like a Christmas tree.

When I watch porn that fog of depression, that kind of hovered over me much of my life lifted. Really? Yeah, a hundred percent. I can kind of relate a little bit of what you're talking about,

but there's something else with it that feels very addictive. You know, there's a euphoria to it. That's what I'm saying. I mean, it works just like work, just like a drug for me. Right?

That anxiety, I felt, that who, that kind of loneliness that was so profound, vanished when I watched porn. So I watched porn to really numb difficult emotions. And it worked. It worked really, really well.

And when were you using it like,

“I mean, were you just kind of like using it once a day?”

Like, I mean, was there an actual heavy use of it? Or it was just like this outlet that was that you knew that was there. You know, it started off as an outlet, but then things started to change.

You know, this was long before we had cell phones

So this was on the laptop in my home. And what I noticed was this progression. I started watching porn for longer lines of time with more frequency. I kind of needed porn.

You know, there were nights I'd be watching porn throughout most of the evening. What? 100 ago for hours. Wow.

And you know, I'd wake up or I'd come to in the morning like disgusted with myself. Oh yeah. Disgusting.

I'm never doing this again.

I would actually have multiple times. I would get the laptop. And I would throw it down the garbage shoot on the 32nd floor in absolute disgust. But you know, a few days later, I'd be back in the computer store.

Telling this poor guy there, I would have a growing business and we need more technology. Little thing I know, I just thought I could put it away 'cause I couldn't stop watching porn on it. Because I did.

Too bad they don't have an Olympic event. For guys who are sick of watching porn on their laptops,

“that would be so much further than discous, I think.”

You know? But dude, that's crazy. Imagine like some guys just like some little R2D2 human. And there is like, what another one? Another one.

He's got a very successful business. He's hiring, he needs a computer.

Oh, dude, that's so crazy dude.

I do remember like when I was a kid as a kid if I interjected. Yeah, please. Yeah. And just to share, man, like I remember like when I was a kid,

they had one, some fella had pornos at his house. He had magazine. And we'd had somebody had chiseled some tits and into a tree near our home and stuff like that. And we had that when I was young.

And people would show up to that, like it was some like kind of like a, you know, some mahogany chest mecca or something. You know, people would make the pilgrim as to see that in the woods.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's hot. But at one point, I had a, I found out I had a buddy in his dad had some pornos magazines.

“And dude, I remember once I'd seen those,”

I would bike across town on the weekends to go and to go to their home. And I would kind of loiter around the house until there was an opportunity to go see him. And one week, and I even broke into their,

like, broke into a window. I didn't break the glass, that's crazy. But I did, I would have been too much. Yeah, you were across the long. But I snuck into, and I didn't realize it at the time.

It was just like, I didn't even realize that I was doing it, but when I later looked back at, it was like, oh, it just like there was something that was a comforting thing or there was like this addiction that started.

Anyway, go on, man, so you had taken these computers in. Yeah, and, you know, it was just a sign that I was really struggling with this. I couldn't stop. And, you know, there was such a progression to this.

Even like taking more risk on where I'd watch porn, I'd watch it in the office on my work computer, which is kind of insane when you think about it. And, you know, I'd start watching different types of porn.

“You know, a category said, even though it existed, right?”

You go down a left-hand side of that porn, a category after category after category, and for me, you know, I started gravitating towards, like, fetish porn. And then, eventually, porn outside of my sexual orientation.

And, I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know why this was so intoxicating and why I couldn't stop. And, the problem was wrong with that type of porn, but for me it brought up so much shame.

And, that shame was so debilitating in my life. And, so it was really a painful experience. You know, this was a long time ago. So, there wasn't information around that. There wasn't a place to go and talk about this stuff.

So, you know, I just had this kind of really horrible feeling. I was engaging in a behavior that didn't feel like it was an alignment with my values, and I was suffering. - Mm. - Man, I'm sorry to hear, I'm sorry to hear that, man.

I know that we've talked about this kind of a lot and I've heard you share before. But, anytime somebody says that they feel a lot of shame, like it just really resonates with a man. You know, I've talked a lot about it in my life

is just shame for different things, you know?

It's so powerful and you can't stop.

And, you said this sounds like a long time ago, man. I've had friends that I've talked to this week that it's the same story. Yeah, man, I can relate to like looking at pornography and just to shade the horror you feel after.

But, then you still need something at it, but then like it kind of wears off where you get out of that shame and then you're again or look over something that'll kind of give you a feeling, something, make me feel good about myself or I'm not having,

I'm not dating well or I'm afraid of women, anything, whatever's going on and then you find yourself back there. - Well, you know, it's interesting. The ease and accessibility of porn today, anyway, make it so easy to regulate your emotions with it.

Right? You just think about how you're able to really avoid discomfort. Like what do you mean exactly? - Because of it.

If you're feeling anxious, you watch porn. You feel temporarily calm, right? You're feeling bored, you watch porn,

“you feel some stimulation, you're feeling lonely.”

You watch porn, you feel artificial connection. So porn for me can actually affect and change my mood. So why is that a bad thing, right? And so, 'cause porn can work in the short term. But what happens, firstly, for me is I weaken my ability

to regulate my own emotions. So, stopping watching porn wasn't just stopping a bad habit. I had to learn how to regulate my own emotions. I had to learn to deal with triggers and urges.

And so there was this kind of incredible process

that kind of leaning myself off porn was just not easy. - Thanks for sharing, man. - Yeah, let's go back into your journey a little bit. - Yeah, and so, you know, we're in this place right now, where I'm, you know, using porn to deal with the pain

of being Steve, you were in this place. - Yeah, so, and, you know, at that time, I was in a relationship as well and great girl. And, you know, throughout that relationship, the more porn that I consumed, things started to change, you know.

Sex wasn't about connection, making love. It was about intercourse over time. It was about replicating what I'd seen in the movies. You know, I often like to say pornography abuse literally burns off the nerve endings of sensuality in relationships,

less kissing, touching, holding, caressing. And that certainly was the case for me.

And, you know, over time in that relationship, you know,

I experienced a lot of sexual dysfunction. I had difficulty getting a maintaining an erection during sex. Yeah, yeah. Over time, I actually didn't even want to have sex with her.

I've been so de-sensitized to sex with all the porn I was watching in masturbation. I was engaging in. And towards the very end, I couldn't orgasm. Unless I was thinking about a porn scene,

I had seen earlier that day. - Wow. - So, pornography robbed me of my manhood. And, you know, that pearl, poor girl. I mean, I mean, talk about affecting her self-esteem

and self-worth, like, what's wrong with me? Why doesn't he desire me anymore? Am I not attractive anymore? And I had no ability to talk about this at this time. I had so much shame over.

I had this incredible double life. So, you know, porn helped destroy that relationship. And so, I'm not not talking about the guy who's casually consuming porn. I was abusing pornography.

And, you know, lying on it. Yeah. Yeah. It was just what you notice is that men who abuse pornography, you know, it comes with some consequences.

“And, you know, for me, pornography was his gateway drug, right?”

All those lines in the sand, I had a behaviors

that I would never cross over and engage in all got washed away.

Really? Yeah. Pornography was a gateway drug that led to strip clubs, erotic massages, escorts, really dark, dark places. It was so painful, you know, that came a point in time.

My life where I couldn't even make eye contact with the man in the mirror, really, 'cause I knew the truth. When I think about this journey, I mean, porn was like the culprit.

So, just didn't work for me. Did it get to a point where it didn't work and then you kind of evolved onto other stuff or had it, like, you know, in 2008, my life just kind of blew up a collapsed,

emotionally spiritually, professionally, everything kind of came to a head and I absolutely blew up my life, unfortunately. And, but that was the time I also had the courage to kind of ask for and get help.

And, not an easy thing to do to kind of talk about these issues, get help for these issues. And, it was hard coming out of the gates to get better from this stuff, you know? - Yeah, how do you know what was the kind of a breaking point

if it's okay to ask? - Yeah, please. I mean, thank you, Bradford, it's been so open and like transparent about some of this,

“and I think I was scared about even like talking about this,”

not 'cause I'm scared of, like, I don't know. I don't know why I was, I don't know. I know you're such like a, you know, this is like your world, you care so much about helping people with this situation, man.

So, I don't know why I was. But, like, did there come a point for you where it was just like, this is like, this is it, you know? - You know, I think the, I knew I had to get help. I knew I was on the law of trouble.

I was getting the best help that was available. I know I was still struggling. And, not 'cause I had a desire to get better.

is I didn't give up, I kept coming back. The one thing I really did well was I had so many good people in my life

“that saw something in me, I couldn't see in myself.”

They refused to give up on me. I'd incredible family, my mom, my brothers, my sister, who loved me unconditionally and were like us. Pillar of strength when I was so weak. So, I was so lucky to have such good people in my life.

And I had to fight for my recovery, wasn't easy. It was not easy, I had to fight and fight and fight.

But I'll tell you what, I never gave up.

And I live a pretty incredible life today. Yeah, you know, I married to a woman, I absolutely adore my wife, Jennifer, best thing that's ever happened to me. She's an incredible, incredible human being, amen.

It has made me such a healthier, better man. I am so blessed for her and we had our son, Viel, almost a year ago, and we started a family and all byproducts of recovery. And so, I made huge believer in the power of recovery.

The benefits of man getting into recovery especially as it relates to sexual compulsivity and porn abuse.

“You know, you think about my recovery journey, right?”

I think about it kind of in three stages. Healthy intimacy, healthy sexuality, and healthy masculinity, healthy intimacy. First person I had to have an intimate relationship with is myself.

I had to get more comfortable with Steve. I had to stop running and numbing. I had to learn to sit with this comfort. I had to learn to really identify the root causes that were driving these compulsions.

Because porn was not my problem. Steve was my problem. Wow. Yeah, man, get into know yourself. Did you feel like yourself was like hidden, kind of,

or that yourself had never developed?

Does that make any sense? Yeah, I think probably both. All I know is I was so uncomfortable in my own skin. I suffered with anxiety, I suffered with depression. I didn't feel good about myself as a man.

I had such trouble being in relationships, experiencing love. And I was so disconnected, not only from myself, but from others. And it kind of made sense why I abuse pornography. I was just really unhappy.

Yeah, you know, and that's, you know, the thing that I've learned over the years is that recovery is not about stopping a behavior. Recovery is about building a life you don't need to escape from. Hmm, were you able to notice some of the things

that you felt like you were escaping?

From that you felt like we're kind of sending you in that direction?

Yeah, right? And I was kind of emotionally unstable, right? And so part of recovery is being able to regulate your own emotions, right? Part of the little thing that recovery looks like this, it doesn't.

It looks like a chart of the Dow Jones, right? And so what you, I end up doing recovery is just kind of softening the peaks and valleys so that I could exist in life. And you know, not have to numb the pain

of the way I was living my life. And so, you know, part of that involved being able to have a relationship with my sexuality, that's beautiful and empowering and made me feel good about myself as a man.

That's so missed in recovery circles. Everything is about abstinence. And I get that, there's value in abstinence. But if you truly want to transcend this compulsion,

“you have to build the life that's more enjoyable,”

more purposeful than the life you were living, right? A rush you're gonna be vulnerable to returning to it. So part of that means like, dude Steve, you've got to learn how to be in a relationship. You've got to learn how to experience the joys

of your sexuality. You have to learn how to experience meaningful connection or to truly transcend this compulsion. - Yeah, it's so funny you're saying this cause I was thinking the other day it's like, it's one thing

that kind of like, refrain from things, right? Like I'm refrained from drugs and alcohol and I'm, you know, like I'm refrained from things that I'm addicted to. But it's another thing like,

but if you don't have a life outside of that, then you're just sitting there playing defense all the time. I was just saying about that the other day it's somebody's like, what do you like to do? And I'm like, you know, my hobbies became my jobs

and I'm like, yeah, I gotta find some things to fall in love with. I gotta find, like, and there's so many things. - But it's very woman. - Yeah, I mean, yeah, that would be awesome.

but yeah, I see exactly what you're saying.

- Like I live a life today where I don't need pornography. I don't need alcohol, I don't need drugs, you know. This is like a journey around really healthy masculinity. You know, for so much of my life, my behaviors

“were not in alignment with my values and I suffered, right?”

I needed porn to deal with the way I was living my life. So when I started to live my life in alignment with like honor and integrity, love, service, kindness, I felt good about myself as a man. Like I didn't need to dump the pain of Steve.

- Yeah. - I could look in the mirror and like, that's a good guy, most days. - Yeah, that's good stuff. - Yeah.

- So that's often what's missed in recovery. This is not just about abstinence. It's about becoming emotionally regulated, kind of socially connected, living with honesty and integrity, for that you don't need some maladaptive

coping mechanism to deal with life, you know. - Yeah, I think this has been like, I mean, I have so many friends that talk about this a lot and even women. I was talking to this girl the other day.

And I said, you know, I have a guy coming in, he started a recovery center for a porn addiction. And she's like, oh, you know, I struggle with that. I was like, it shocked me.

It's, I had never heard a woman just say that to my faith

and casually, you know. Why do so many men struggle with this? - Well, here's the truth. That no one tells anybody. This is really, really difficult to overcome.

It's almost comical. You go online and you see these ads. We'll fix your porn problem in 14 days. Now you won't, you know, not happen. Sorry, you know, there are a bunch of reasons why this is so hard.

The ease and accessibility of this make this like a phenomenon we've never seen before. And it's not just porn, it's sexualized social media. And so I'm a long-term recovery from cocaine addiction. And could you imagine an early recovery having to walk around

all day long with a pocket full of cocaine and not do it when you have some uncomfortable feeling come up? What do you think is like with these guys that have their drug of choice and their hand on their phone? - Yeah.

- So the instant access makes this challenging. So that's one thing, but there's a lot more going on.

“And so when you think, this is the way I think about it, right?”

And so I think that pornography kind of hijacked the brains of a ward system and so dysregulation nervous system. porn becomes this learned shortcut to avoid discomfort. So when you stop watching porn, you're not just stopping a bad habit. You are literally kind of throwing away your primary regulation tool.

And when you stop watching porn, I know if you can relate to this, I certainly can. Your nervous system can go haywire, right? You can feel irritable, you can feel anxious, flat mood, low energy, and cravings.

And these cravings can feel primal. They're literally a function of multiple systems in your brain and body, like screaming out all at once that's something's missing for your survival. That's why guys return to the behavior

or quote unquote relapse. This is not about willpower. This is not about moral failure. This is biology and neuroscience. Your brain has been conditioned with all the porn that you've watched

and your nervous system has yet to find another way to regulate itself. So recovery is not just about stopping a behavior. It's retraining your nervous system. It's learned how to deal with urges and cravings so they weaken over time.

Second challenge is that you've heard it in my story, right?

Men use porn as a way to numb avoid a suppress emotional pain, anger, pressure, anxiety, depression, trauma that none of us want to feel. And so when you stop watching porn, these feelings come back with a vengeance.

So unless you begin to identify and heal those root causes, you're going to routinely return to the one thing you know provides you temporary relief. And that's porn. - In the past, I've been hesitant to invest

to put my money somewhere. I'm that guy, I make my money. I keep my mind like to keep it locked in, you know? And sometimes I was just too busy to learn about how investing even worked.

The strategy of it, the long term idea of it. You know, I was too busy focusing on just where I was at the moment. That's how it happens with a lot of us.

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It's like a guy may not have a lot of problem, a guy may be healthy, but he accidentally picks up some cocaine off the street and now he's using it, right? As opposed to a guy who is hurting and goes to look for cocaine or porn, I'm using cocaine as I don't know why I use that, but like, you know, there's some guys who accidentally just shows up on their phone, maybe it's a pop or whatever, or they just have some sexual

energy and they take it there and they're not really, maybe they're healthy when they get there. And then there's guys who are unhealthy that go there for a fix, it feels like so it feels like there's kind of two different hundreds of percent there's casual porn use. Okay, so not everybody is not at all, like it's trying to, has all these things that they need

to repair. That's correct. Okay, got it. There are guys out there that can continue to engage in the behavior despite consequences.

“And right, so I think these statistics say 10 to 15 percent of men have an addiction or”

severe unhealthy relationship with pornography. So I'm talking about that category of men.

Yeah, because for me, I know, I never had like the addiction to pornography, like I had

the use of it. Give it time. Give it time. Don't tell you something short. Please, no, but I definitely had where it was a way instead of having to connect with the

woman. I would, this is an easier way. And that became just an easier, safe way. I didn't have it. So I guess there isn't an addictive element there, but I didn't have the daily, like, you

know, like that draw to it. I had more like an MSC issues with talking with women and stuff like that, and then I would just end up using doing masturbation a lot of times not even two pornography. But then once porn came more prevalent and stuff like that, it was easier.

“Well, I think you highlighted a really good point.”

There's another component to this, porn abuse, porn addiction, sexual compulsory, whatever label you're throwing at it is often referred to as an intimacy disorder, meaning for many men. This is about more than just a sexual behavior. This is about a pattern of avoiding emotional connection.

You just highlight. That was my thing. That's right. Emotional connection was tough for me. I didn't have any experience of it.

And so when I finally got into like dating or like where you're having attraction with

I guess or it was alarming.

It was a lot of things. I didn't have like a safe outlet to talk about it. And I didn't have any groundwork of like healthy connection at all.

“So I think it, yeah, that just made it kind of tough.”

And then to avoid it, I would be like, okay, well, I have these sexual feelings. I'll just go and use jerking off or whatever, something like that as opposed to trying to figure out how to work them out. Just working them out in real time when you're a kid, like when you're young, you know, when you're at at a lesson or whatever, it's kind of scared, you know, it's like a lot of

that scary, you know? Yeah, where do you go to talk about this stuff? Right. And your peers, like some of them are kind of helpful, but some of them are also like, like,

other kids can be assholes about this stuff.

So anyway, I'm trying to, some of it, I can't, I can't remember exactly some of the ways. But yeah, instead of like engaging, sometimes I'll be like, oh, I'm too nervous to even talk to that girl. I'll just masturbate later on.

You know, it's, it's interesting. Does it make sense? It all makes sense. Okay. Man, begin to prefer the safety of porn versus the unpredictability of relationships

and real people. Yeah. So once again, recovery is not just about stopping a behavior.

Recovery is learning how to relate engaged and connect with others.

Recovery is about learning how to speak real intimacy, which sorry has to include some vulnerability and taking some emotional risk. Recovery is about learning to experience the joys of connection and love. Right. You know, if you're not on that path, it's hard not to be in pain and suffering.

And so, so important in recovery.

“So when you think about why this is so hard, right, you just talked about it, right?”

If you don't understand the neuroscience and the nervous system regulation, guys just stay in this hamster will loop. If you don't identify some of the root causes that are driving this compulsion, you're vulnerable to returning to it. And if you don't do a deeper dive around intimacy and what's blocking you from connection,

you stay in pain and lonely. So kind of all three of these need to be addressed in order for lasting recovery to occur. Yeah. But it's more than that. And I'll tell you a few other thoughts I have on why this is so hard.

Really recovery can be very painful. And so when you show overstimulate your brain from pornography and from sexualized social media, when you stop engaging those behaviors, your mood can be flat. You can have low energy and you can have intolerable boredom. And people think that boredom is the enemy.

It's not. It's actually your body recalibrating.

“Everything you want in life is on the other side of you learning how to tolerate boredom.”

But for so many men, they quit too early because they can't sit with this discomfort. The other challenge we see constantly is that so many guys quit before the miracle happens. Yeah. I struggle for many years before I was able to make real progress in my recovery. You know, oftentimes in recovery circles, we measure, sobriety, success.

By continuous days of sobriety, 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, six months a year, all good stuff. Right. All this up. Right. However, that cannot be the sole measurement of progress because for many guys, myself included,

they're not going to get it right away, right? It's going to be a journey. And if you keep kind of having to relapse and you go down this massive shame spiral that you are failing, that you're a failure, you give up. So recovery is about becoming emotionally regulated, socially connected, learning to live

with honor and integrity so that you don't need porn anymore. That can take time, recoveries about building a life you don't need to escape from. That can take time. And so for many guys, especially single guys, right, where there's not external leverage or consequences on you, right, a married guy, he's really in troubles relationship, he's

got to get sober or the marriages at risk. Right. That's one dynamic. But now you've got a single guy right now. What is the motivation for him right now to continue on this work?

You've got to keep that person inspired and motivated to continue to do the work. And guess what? If the best that you can do is watch 80 to 90% less porn than any given month, great job. Right. Great job.

That is conjunction with you developing new habits to take better care of yourself, physically,

Amen. Right.

“Recovery is a, the ability to sustain abstinence will be a by-product of you taking”

better care of yourself, physically and emotionally and spiritually.

Yeah. It's a three side of deal. 100%. Yeah. So guys quit too early.

Like where you go? And we just got started. And so why not also measure consistency of going to the gym, consistency of making social plans, consistency of learning a new hobby, keeping your word. Dude.

Take care of yourself. Make sure that stuff in addition to your sober day count. Yeah. There's a lot of other factors that start to gauge like that you can use to self-gages. Well, and that are super important.

But also a lot of those factors are things that it's also just like, you know, it's

getting up, it's getting up, being active. I want to take care of myself, physically. You know, I want to meditate. I want to have a relationship with a higher power. I want to like nurture this gift, this thing that I am.

Right. And there's this other, it's such a Pandora's box porn is because it's like, here's this thing. And it's just, it's tricked. It's tricked.

“It's like, it's a, it's just a finely calculated molecule of the devil, you know?”

And it's, and so when someone's people are like, man, we're not at war. There's not a lot going on. But if we're sitting here, losing a battle a lot of times. So I do think there's, there is this inspirational element sometimes where I feel like, I can, I, like, if I want to war, there's one every single day for me against the dark arts,

against the things that want to drag me down, you know, against the things that are literally

are, are finessed to take away the essence of me, right? The essence of me, man. And so it's like, there's a battle right now. I think for a lot of that, and a lot of us don't realize, whoa, and we can get kind of like, lullabied into the comfort of it.

You don't think it's a big deal. You're looking at it once or twice, right? But then you, you, like, I would notice for myself, if I was doing jerking off or whatever, something like that, the next day, I'd feel a little bit kind of bad about myself or I'd be shorter with people.

If I looked at pornography, it made me look at, like, dates and stuff. It just made me, like, it cared a little bit of shame inside of me. You don't even realize it. Sometimes it's like, you don't think it's on the forefront of you or that it's affecting them like the look in your eyes or anything, but there's a little bit of that in there.

You know, it kind of like colors your coffee a little bit. It's like, um, but it's not the best color. You know, does any of this stuff make sense? Yeah. You, you, you, you kind of ramble.

No, no, no, no. There's, I want to, I want to. It's hard to explain. You did a good job with a few things that come to mind. Number one, you talk about the rig system.

And so I read this. I share this with you on a phone a few weeks ago. I read this stat that said that the dopamine spike is from the anticipation of watching the next video and not the video, you're actually watching. Wow.

So the addiction is to the scroll.

“And I dopamine, this is, I might butcher this, but I think that's what it said.”

Dopamine is not the pleasure chemical. It's the motivation chemical. It's the chemical of pursuit what's next. So social media is rig this way, pornography is rig this way. You know, back in the day, you know, getting access to porn was going to some creepy video

store. In between a curtain that said to don't only or be to those beads that would hang it. You obviously know. And all of a sudden to get this VHS and a brown paper bag, put it underneath your arm

and do the walk of shame home, right? But you go watch that VHS for 15 minutes. Do whatever. Go about your day. That's not what modern day porn abuse looks like.

It's infinite novelty where you're constantly scrolling for sexual imagery hours at a time. This is a whole new beast. Yeah. It says it right here.

Industry analytics and search engine studies estimate that pornographic content accounts for roughly 20% of all internet searches on mobile devices. That's astronomical. This is notably higher than desktop search rates, which generally clocked in around 13%. The primary driver of this higher mobile percentage is the privacy portability and convenience

that smart phones provide. Because of this, studies from major adult entertainment networks indicate the vast majority of adult content is an access via a cell phone.

I do want to say that. Is that right? You have to have an ID. That's correct.

And that's how that do that.

That thing that they have. I think it's the Tennessee Miners Act. Is that what it is? The Protect Tennessee Miners Act is a state law mandating that commercial websites and digital platforms containing a substantial portion of content harmful to miners, implement reasonable

age verification methods. So you have to enter your ID. Let's go stuff. That's a huge thing because it makes you take some accountability.

“Well, is this something that I'm willing to say I do?”

Right? Is this something I'm willing to put my name, my height, my data, am I really, you know, I'm saying I'm willing to go that far with it? I love that. I love that.

There's been times where I've wanted to go look at stuff and that stopped me right there. Great. Yeah. So I do find that that is helpful because it like, yeah, I don't want to put myself

in there really. I want to look at it as like this guy in the distance. Have they seen fake ID spiking right now because people want the great question. Good business, perhaps. Yeah.

Around 7 to 11% of men's self-report experiencing problematic pornography use or feeling addicted. I mean, that's unbelievable, man. And it's just not porn, right? You look at the content that's on X.

You look at the content that's on Instagram, Facebook, Reels, right? That sexualized content can have the same effect on the brain as watching porn. And so it's an issue. And so we're living a really tricky time right now because it's everywhere. It's unbelievable that it exists and it's unbelievable that we allow it as well.

You know, that we allow it.

“Well, there's also a societal thing with guys like it's, that's what guys do, right?”

It's cool. Watch and porn. And I'll tell you the truth. I ain't so cool, right? Guys don't do it together.

Guys watch a game together.

I've never had a guy be like, hey, man, I'm having a couple of the guys over to watch

some porn. Yeah. The thing that's really interesting to me is here's the truth. So many men who abuse pornography, right, it affects their sexual performance. It affects how they show up in relationships and it builds shame.

Right. So so many men struggle with sexual performance. That's not a new thing. But what is new, and I think quite concerning is how many of those men are under the age of 40.

They turn to siallus, viagra, testosterone, placement therapy, thinking that something's wrong with them physically. When the truth is and the reality is, is there sexual dysfunction is probably caused by all the porn they're consuming. So heavy porn use can rewire the brain.

And even my own stories that true, heavy porn use can rewire the brain and cause odd all types of problems in the bedroom. Like even in my own story, right? I had difficulty getting a maintaining interaction during sex, especially with a partner. I had difficulty orgasming towards the end of my run with pornography.

I had difficulty maintaining an erection and I needed porn stimulation to stay aroused. And heavy porn use can absolutely lead to premature ejaculation. Hmm. You know, one of the things that didn't share in my story, which is important to talk about, right?

Because there's probably a bunch of your listeners right now listening, waiting for someone to tell that I am true.

You know, when I first started consuming porn early in my life, before that relationship,

I struggled with premature ejaculation and I had so much shame and embarrassment around it. I got to a point where I'd rather not be with a woman than be with a woman and have that type of sexual performance. You feel like you're just so nervous about sex.

I mean, to make sense, sex is a nervous thing for me. So I'll tell you a few things that I did for a youngster. I didn't realize a few things.

“For the children, sex is nervous for the children, you know?”

It's a nervous thing. He verdults. Yeah. And so what I didn't realize at that time was that all the porn that I was consuming. And the way that I was actually masturbating to it, kind of conditioned my brain to orgasm

quickly. And that carried over to real life scenarios. I didn't realize at that time that the intense porn that I was watching, so overstimulated my brain leading to early orgasm. So my porn use was tied to shame and secrecy, which fueled kind of anxiety around

sex, making it kind of uncomfortable. And porn was the cause of this. Yeah. So that's one area. Men, not so manly when you think about, hey, you know, is it really that cool?

Right. Second challenge. That guy's tend to have. It can totally affect how guys show up in relationships. Oh, yeah, dude.

Actually touching your body or whatever, jerking off or whatever, it was like, it just made

It made it all just easier. And if you came from like in it, for me, I just, there was so much, it was so uncomfortable that I was like, I don't really, I mean, I guess I had a choice. But if just was too much of a, of an easy alternative, it was like, I don't, I don't know. Like, you know, I'm so embarrassed, I'm so like, just have so low self worked, so many

little things. They're like, man, I can't, I can't go as this girl out or do, you know, so it became this little thing. And then this was the part that I was going to get that you made me think about, sorry, everything about sex, felt like a secret, right?

Like I would, like, it was always, like when I was growing up, we would go in the woods and

see the tits or whatever, chiseled in the wood or whatever, or you would sneak in a, that's still around you thing.

“I'm sure it's been, no, I think they had weevils or whatever, got it, I think it was”

that. I can't remember exactly. I have to look it up. Or it could have been one of those new ticks that Bill Gates, on least, forever. But whatever, I'm sure it's gone, or it's really, it's a road to an A-cup, for sure.

It was the point to visit it then, right? Come on. At the time, that was the thing. That's right. I'm making a road trip for an A-cup.

Dude, they had a woodpecker with land on one of them. That's big. Pretty nice. Oh, so, but dude, the biggest thing I think about, like, it was just like, seek, everything was sex when I was young, but it came like secretive.

It became like secretive because, yeah, if you were looking at pornography, if you was doing masturbation, you was sneaking off and doing it. So everything became secretive. So then, like, everything, like, even like, gating, I don't ever want anybody to know what was, I was very secretive about stuff.

So it always had all this, like, a little bit of extra, like, kind of taboo around, I don't

even know what that means, but it was just like, you know, with things are in secret. It's, you know, the things in secret can be kind of uncomfortable. Things are always trying to hide, can be kind of uncomfortable. That's right.

“I think also, that secrecy can lead to shame.”

Yeah. Oh, yeah, well, you're always, if something's in secret, you're always worried something's going to find out about something. And I didn't have any positive, like, relationship with sex or no, like, I didn't have any, not, like, I didn't, nobody taught me, it was told me nothing about it.

It was just like, your body, your change, and then you're like dealing with it. And I was still waiting to get the birds and be its conversations on that. Yeah. Yeah. Did I say it?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Have a decent man that travels around the country helping just have the birds in the peace conversation.

Like a temporary rented bag to have the conversation with you when you're like 12. Yeah. Just like some wainer Santa or whatever, he travels around. He pulls up, you know, saying, do it outside where it's in view of, you know, where the Lord can see it.

But anyway, you were going into a second part about relationships, how it affects relationships.

And do it. And we're like, if you, if I, if I say, if you, but if I'd been like, you know, doing touching myself or whatever, you're looking off or whatever, like that, then I would, it, your right when you said it's like, it changed your mind of intimacy. Now it's like, if my girl and I are going somewhere, maybe I, I don't, I would, I wouldn't

touch her, touch her elbow or like, you know what I'm saying or like give her a pinch or like, you know what I'm saying? I wouldn't create that energy. So a lot of that energy disappears.

“And that's the thing I think that we don't realize a lot.”

It's that little like, that yinning yang, that whole thing that keeps like nature and society and, and really the future, because of procreation, which keeps it all in balance, is this kind of tension, right, a romantic kind of like sombo between like her aura and mine. And pornography, like, uh, weakens that. And then you're right, people take into their head, like a woman will take in her head, like,

oh, something's wrong with me or he thinks I'm not this way or I can't. And do these things. Yeah. Which is, and that you don't say it, so it's just, it's a tough cycle. And I think a lot of it does fall in us men, but because we got to be stronger, you know,

I'm not saying that I'm great at it or anything. But I do think that somebody's got to come to the rescue of us and I think it has to be us. Well, no one's coming to rescue us, right? You've got to take accountability in your own life.

But I think you, you really eloquently kind of laid out the dynamics that point of view can have in relation. Yeah, really? You really did. I was really all said.

And, you know, I'm just, I've had feel bad about some of the, I feel like dang. I wasted a couple of relations. I wasted some, and I wasted somebody's time, and I wasted like, and I didn't even know it. But yeah, some of that.

Oh, no. Yeah. Yeah. and, you know, when you're often see when men abuse porn over time, they can

How unfair is that? Yeah. Right. That could be less desire for romance. I'll say it again.

Pornography abuse burns off the nerve endings of sensuality and relationships, less touching, holding, kissing, caressing. So if I'm watching porn, you know, maybe I don't notice the waves in my wife's hair. I'm watching porn, we hold hands less perhaps.

So pornography abuse can dead in the vibrancy of our partners, our wives, and our marriages. I mean, that kind of sucks. Yeah. Well, it dims the way you feel. For me, it dims the way I feel.

If I'm waking up. That's right. Like, oh, I still love. My first thought sometimes is, if I looked at pornography today before, it's like, oh,

“man, I wish I hadn't done that, I think I could not do it.”

You know, it's like, but you're always in this warrior here and we put you always in like

this battlefield. That's like being hooked up to an ivy drip of shame. And for not every guy, right, we're not talking about the casual use. We're talking about the compulsive use and the other thing is the attend to see over time the guys that end up abusing pornography, porn and masturbation just become the preferred

sexual outlet and shame and secrecy and guilt become the norm. And because of that shame, so many guys, especially our young guys are not dating. They're not actually having physical sex. I read a stat not too long ago that one out of three men under the age of 30 have not had sex in the last year.

One out of three men, one out of three men under the age of 30 have not had sex in the last year. But some of those men could be 10 years older, whatever. I would imagine, I would imagine, look at the fine print of the thing. I would imagine it probably told me age 18 to 30 or 30.

Oh, they should say that then. That they should probably. Yeah, good point. Yeah, if it's like, hey, this five of your friends, you know, it's like, yeah, yeah. We won.

We don't fact check this right now. Anyway, recent data from the general social survey indicates that nearly one quarter of young adults, age 18 to 29 reported having no sex in the past year, looking specifically at younger, single men under 30.

The rate of sex is in the same client closure to one third.

And then bro, you know what happens?

“I think when when you start to when you start to like when you dim the man in a culture,”

anything can come in there, it's like when you dim the warriors who are standing at the gate, anything can slip in there, you know, and then they come in and now they got the women on only fans because they're not in a relationship and there's not like a provider and there's not like a leader and you're not part of like a, we're doing this together, right? And then like everything's for sale.

It's like what's for sale now, you know? And I don't mean that, it's not net, none of that's negativity at anybody. It's just like, you know, it's just like, I don't know, and do I sound judgmental? I'm just kind of like, I think it all makes me just like, I don't know. I feel like we're stronger than this, but we are in a war.

Well, I think what you're highlighting and what I'm hearing you say is so many of our young men in particular, they're that confidence in themselves, they're full of shame, right? They don't have the, they can't handle rejection, right? The world needs healthy, strong men and pornography abuse is a masculating our men today. That's what I'm saying.

That was definitely the case for me, 100%, but here's the deal. And I need your listeners to hear this right now. Yeah, I mean, because I don't want to get stuck in the down parts of it and that things are not healable. But that's not the truth.

That's not the truth. That's not the truth. It is time to reclaim your damn manhood. I'm shit. You know, seriously.

No, I feel you. Enough is enough. Right. Enough is enough right now.

“Are there's a cesspool out there that are killing our men today?”

So let me tell you, in my own journey, when I got the right type of help, I was able to work through these sexual dysfunction. When I got the right type of help, I was able to be in a healthy relationship where I felt good about myself as a partner, as a man. So it's not just like Steve stops watching porn and everything fixes Excel, right?

Don't work that way. It's a process of retraining your brain, your body, and your relationship to intimacy. Amen.

What were some of the first, like the initial moments, was there a kind of like a day or

a time and a rehab? Because you went to some different, is it okay to say that you went to some different rehab? Yeah. And all of you were like, dude, Steve was an animal out there in the part like his old

partying stories are great, bro. That's right. You know when I'm not talking to you, I'm not talking to sex, I'm talking like, just the your AA party in stories. And sometimes we tell those war stories because it keeps you out of the battle.

100%. And you got to laugh out of them now. Oh, dude. If I go to an AA meeting and I laugh with my friends about like times where we also did do stupid stuff or something ridiculous, the feeling I get laughing with friends, I

leave out of there.

Of course not.

I don't want to do anything harm for myself because I've just felt connection.

And that gives me something that I'm supposed to have. So like, you know what you're like going to maybe feel on the red hot chili peppers going toward. They have t-shirts that list all the cities they visited. Yeah.

I did that with rehabs. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, come on, dude. And so what you're to work all day, I don't have a name for it.

Maybe you can help me out with that. And so, you know, it's just the journey's the journey, man. Yeah. So once again, it's, you know, it's about perseverance and not giving up. But I'll tell you some things that are interesting that when I was able to get the right

type of help as it relates to my porn addiction, I was able to stabilize my arousal. Stabilize your arousal. I'm arousal. Okay. When I tell you what that means, I mean, you say that, you know, I was pornography abuse so distorted

my view of women, pornography abuse had me in a constant place of euphoric recoil and fantasy, right? And so I had to learn how to not rely on that kind of dopamine fueled kind of energy to deal with life. I had to learn how to build sensation for sexual experiences, to be present in sexual experiences.

So when I got into recovery, dude, my sex life was so enjoyable, right? I learned how to kind of make love and connection and kissing and sensuality, all kind of beautiful stuff. When you get into recovery oftentimes here, you have better erections and more satisfying sex.

That's what I want. I want that super erection. That's it. And you hear all the time, guys, get into recovery and sustain recovery. It's so much more enjoyable, they're present for it, they're not full of shame, there's

a confidence that comes from it.

“Yeah, that's what I want that winner that's like plays the game.”

I feel like my winners like a designated hit or like it'll get up to the play, it's kind of like, but it knows it's not going to be out in the pitch, it's just like showing up for the frickin' you know. Autonies of D.H. sometimes. Autonias?

Yes. So. Well, what are you trying to say? I got a small winner. I wanted to say that.

I'm not sure what I was saying with that, although he has a lot of home runs. So, that's what we're talking about. Yeah, we might take that part out, which is fine.

So you're saying like you notice that, like, do you remember, do you remember like a first

experience, or you kind of noticed something small that you were like, oh wow, these things that I'm doing in recovery are working? And then what were some of the things that you were doing in the recovery? Well, I did a bunch in recovery, right? And so I did a lot of therapy, I was really active in 12-step recovery, I was, you know,

I had my own personal coaches that were really helpful. And I'll tell you, I believe that recovery is a team sport. I think men need other men to become better men, amen. I think men need vulnerability role models, men need love and support, men need run other men that have similar life experiences around sex to transcend the shame that's keeping

our lives small. Praise God.

“I think that's really, really important.”

I think men heal best in community as it relates to sexual compulsivity. And so yeah, it's so hard to heal and shame by yourself. It can't. I don't think you can't. I know man.

I don't think you can't. It's tough for people. Yeah, so I think, you know, and conjunction with that, so many men today are so isolated and so lonely. And so that's the driver of some of these behaviors.

So once again, the roadmap to healing has to lay the groundwork for connection and community. And so where you practice kind of being part of something bigger than yourself. You practice honesty, you practice vulnerability. It gets modeled to you. Really important for men to see other men living this way.

Like in recovery circles is 100%. Oh, yeah, man. Oh, I'll sometimes man, I'll be in a meeting and it's like some guy will say something.

My friend James Basharah, he always tells me he says, we are the keys to each other's

locks. That's what he says. That's sweet. It's one of the best things, man.

“I think about it every single day, you know, it's like something that gives me hope.”

I think a lot of times. Yeah, because it's like somebody will say something, man, that like something's out of me's been trying to save my whole life and I just couldn't put the right few words together. Not even have to be a big huge words or fancy words, sometimes it's just a simple thing,

but somebody will say it. And a part of me will exhale that's been waiting to exhale for so long. How sweet is that? Yeah, it's amazing, man. So yeah, I can't iterate how much recovery and the community, right?

And then the fact that like, dude, sometimes like I'll notice like, especially these days,

But it almost feels like a gift when I think about when somebody else comes into my mind or heart. Like, just times where I purposely sit down, I want to think about people and stuff. But if I'm just like, oh, I'll be like, oh, I just saw them the other day and they mentioned this, let me call and check in about it, or just something that's like, if it's about

somebody else, bro, it's like, when that happens naturally in my head, it's a best thing it ever happened to me.

It's just because of the community, just basically it only happens if I go to those meetings

“if I'm interacting with guys, if I'm a part of community, right?”

And you need guys in your life, like, okay, the enough with the show, what's really going on? Right. You need guys like that. Oh, dude, to tell somebody that, bro, I'm fucking, yeah, like this, I was in a meeting this morning, man, I'm trying to let me think about what I said if I'm really honest, right?

I got into a meeting, a lot of times I'll do a Zoom in the mornings. You and I go to one of the similar, is that okay to say? Please. Um, and I'll be in the gym, I'll work out while I'm in there, so I'll listen because it helps me get two things done and makes me feel pretty like I'm doing something.

And, uh, what I said today, oh, I'm trying to keep some negative things out of my head,

so I'm staying focused, I'm staying on a path, um, like I'm, I'm staying active because

if I stay active, I'll stand a better chance when those things come into my head, uh, and I was trying to be honest to guys, like, hey, these are some of the things that I've been thinking about. I know that these things grow if I don't share about them at this level, at this level of being a seed, I know it'll grow into a, it'll grow into a cactus that I don't want

“inside of me, so I have to share it at a seed, right?”

I'd learn a lot of times, I forget jogging a lot of cactus is because, but learning to share something at a seed level, um, calling it out early, calling it out early, yes. And then just like, uh, yeah, like, I'm so sick of myself, but I feel like I'm the only person that I have, um, and that was like, and I know it's not true, but to share even if it's a feeling, right?

Because once I share it's feeling, I know it's not true. I have a ton, I have a lot of friends. I have people that love me, but sometimes I have to share what a feeling is, right? So it doesn't, 'cause that feeling of someone can grow if I don't share it, it sits in there.

You know? Anybody, is it making me sad? I make, you know, it's so interesting as you're, as you're sharing, I'm just thinking about this concept of like, like, recovery is about this journey towards healthy masculinity. And when you think about like, like, the word masculinity often gets conflated with toxicity

today, which I think is kind of unfair. Oh, it's unfair. And I think it's by design. That's right, masculinity to me is what you just talked about, honesty, integrity, vulnerability, courage, being a protector, being a provider, being a great friend, showing

up for others, and living a life that's bigger than just yours. Yeah. And so when you think about like, this journey of recovery, this journey to becoming a healthy man, what a beautiful journey it is, right? You think about like, you know, porn abuse teaches us and trains us to objectify and disrespect

women.

I think healthy masculinity is about humanizing women, women are beautiful and amazing.

And we came from a woman, like, I want to with the effects are, see if you can find something about this, what are the effects of pornography on young men's relationships with their mothers of watching pornography? You know what I'm saying? Like, if you start, because it's like, I do notice when I'm healthy and I'm taking care

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“You know, I think a lot of guys are in hiding.”

I think a lot of us are afraid to say that we know that we're in a war and everybody's going and fighting behind closed doors. And that's kind of crazy. When you think about that, that's kind of, when you think, that's scary, right? And how can, is there a way to win it that way, I don't know?

Well, you know, I can tell you from the life I live today, I mean, I don't feel like I'm in a war, you know, I have a life that's kind of rooted in love. But you've changed so much since I met you, man. Yeah, I have. You give me hope for the life I could live, man.

Right. And you know, you really do, I'm glad you do.

And you were always everybody's favorite.

You said earlier that people cared about you or like there was something, there was always somebody like your family's always. You were like the guy in the meetings, dude. It was like, because we went to meetings that had like some fancy people in them. Real fancy.

Some tall people, too. Oh, yeah. Oh, guys, all types of long tall guys, yeah, couple of real great, eh, perverts, right? They're in they luck, right? Right.

And it was, bro, we got in those rooms.

“And we, here's the thing, we laughed in there.”

We were, people were honest, we laughed. But yeah, you were always like, dude, I wish I could be friends with Steve. That's sweet. It was a truth. Thank you.

And you just made, it's so important to laugh in recovery. Oh, dude. People don't, you got to realize it, shit, it is a lot of people laugh so much. It's not just this dauer thing. No.

No. Because this stuff is dark, it's heavy. And that dude, laughing at each other, I think laughter is so good for the soul, man. You read the news right now, it's so heavy. You listen to the news, it's so heavy.

Finding a place to be light, hard, to have fun, and to laugh is so healing. Oh. Yeah, man. Yeah, me guys, I struggle with that, that's, I talk to, and work with that, I're struggling. And if I can get them on for them, I can get them to laugh.

Amen. Oh, dude. Oh, yeah. It just takes it from a nine out of a ten to a six out of a ten. Yes.

And it's just so important to let the air out of the blue with laughter. What are the things, how to, how do guys not realize, okay, here, Trevin found something right here.

I'm going to interject real quick here to go back, because I never thought about that before.

Does it affect the way I look at my sister, my mother, women in my life in world could be your teacher. Anyone, if you're consuming pornography, how porn shape beliefs affect views of mothers. This article explains that frequent exposure to pornography reinforces rigid gender norms and the objectification of women, or where women are seen primarily as sexual objects

rather than full complex people. Yeah. As he's added to his become part of a teenage boys belief system, he may begin to see women, including his mother, throw more dehumanized, stereotyped lens, weakening genuine mutual respect.

And I'll tell you the challenge, stay with what you just read, is so many men today started

“watching porn when they're 10, 11, 12 years old, right?”

That was like the part of a generation where the iPhone just came out.

And so at the time you get to work with them in treatment of therapy and you hear about

like their child, they've had pretty normal childhood, normal, not a lot of trauma, as we would understand trauma. The trauma is the porn that they started watching at 10 years old and it's just intense porn. How many guys you hear like 10, 11, 12 years old watching rape porn?

Oh, I mean, how painful is that when you think about that?

“Well, yeah, you have to know, oh, it's unbelievable.”

It's unbelievable. And you have to know that these companies, and I'm not set in myself as a part from anybody like I've been down these roads, you know? But you have to know that these companies, this is strategy by them. This is it.

This is, I believe, I don't think that the people that work in porn or sex worker, anything like that. I don't have any, it will thaw to any of that towards anybody like that that's involved in it. I just think as a mass that they don't have the best, these companies don't have the best

interest for us. Right? Like a lot of the pornography now, it's like mother son, grandmother son, you can't unsee that. Right.

Right.

And it's also makes you think it's like, well, these are the most important relationships

in the world, boss, secretary, you know, or just like whatever it is, sisters, you know, it's like they're taking the most valuable relationships that have been given to us by our creator and by the world, and even by science and they're trying to manipulate those that they don't have any value to us other than sexual, some sexual per, per, per version. And if you're 12, 13, 14 years old, consuming this stuff, yeah, how are you supposed

to process that? Yeah, just even seeing the words, while you're looking at pornography, see the word mother

“son, father, it's all like it's all a strategy, the devil is at word, I believe that,”

you know, it's the dark arts, and I'm not saying that I don't weigh through the waters of them, you know, but that's one thing that you said, it's like, we continue to fight. We don't give up, you know, and you learned so much along the way. Yeah. Yeah, before we keep moving, I want to ask you to Steve, what are there things that could

be happening that mothers or fathers might not see that how their use of pornography or like

checking out like that, sexually checking out of like their environment, you know, they're

used to watch in pornography, could be affecting things with their interactions with their children or their own life. Yeah, totally. You know, it's so interesting as, as a, because sometimes you don't correlate that, no, you don't, you don't say it.

You just think, man, my marriage didn't work, but separately I'm watching porn. That's right. And so when you think about the idea of healthy masculinity, being in recovery and being a father, right, and so I'm a new father right now, and, you know, my son's young is almost about a year right now, but they're just the responsibility I have in modeling

“to him how you treat a woman, really important, right?”

The kindness that I show his wife getting to see affection, touch, all that stuff is really important. I don't, you know, I don't know your story from your childhood, you know, my story from my childhood, that wasn't necessarily modeled to us. And so if you're watching pornography, right, and as a result of that, it's distorting

your view of women can be challenging, right? You think maybe they don't know, trust me, they know. I mean, I know you're watching porn, but that energy you have, that you, you can't hide that. Yeah, but let's a little bit of shame.

It's a little bit of, I'm keeping something secret. That's right. That's right. It's a little bit of something's wrong. It's a bit of, I'm scared, somebody's going to figure this out and I don't even know what

it is. Well, you know what happens to, also, guys that abuse porn, right, they're just not present for their lives. Yeah. They're not showing up for, for their kids, right, they're on their phones, they're consumed

in fantasy. They're not present. They're missing life. Yeah. You're missing life.

And so when you get guys getting to recovery, dude, you see this all the time, they start coaching, flag football teams and loving it. They're able to show up in their lives and be present. They're better fathers, they're better husbands, they're emotionally regulated. Yeah.

They're not involved. It's almost like porn is like, it's like your, it's like your win or playing video games. That's it. It's not real. If you walk into a room every day in your win or it's playing a video game, it's

something you'd like, turn it off and get the fuck up and go outside. You know what I'm saying? Like you would tell, you'd want your mate, you'd want that one video game. That's a good point. If it's Castlevania or something, yeah.

But I'm just saying like, anyway, I don't know what I'm saying. That's one thing I noticed in meetings where I'm in and when people share and people

with my kids, to engage, to go outside and do this with my daughter, to like flirt with my wife and the kitchen, like I walk in the house and there's a look on my face that I'm excited to see this person that loves me, just little things like that that I've heard guys share and meetings that are like, that just let me know that that recovery's real, you know?

And the joy of living. Yeah, what have you seen recovery look like for people like, what are some testimonials that you've experienced in the rooms? Yeah. And even through valor.

Yeah. And so lots of good stuff, let me think about a few good ones that might be, well, I'll share a story, one of our first clients, 62-year-old man, been abusing porn for about 40 years, and a long time, you know, and my time he got the valor, he was six years sober and alcoholics anonymous, but he was in so much pain.

He had not been divorced for 10 years, had not had sex in 10 years, and was so full of shame. And when I first met with him, you know, I would try to get some goals, like what do you want to try to accomplish here? And I said, well, I want to stop watching porn, I said, awesome, we're going to help you

do that. What else? Tell me what to play with. He just couldn't get there. Just make something up.

Tell me a long-term goal. If you had like a genie in a bottle, you had to wish. Give me something.

I never forget what he said.

“He said, you know, something's Steve, for as long as I can remember now, on Sundays, I go”

grocery shopping by myself for the week. And I see family shopping and couple shopping, and it's so lonely. He goes, one day, I'd like to go shopping with a girl I'm dating, I said, okay. You know, about eight months later, that guy sent me a shot of him and his girlfriend and grocery shopping and it broke me.

And I remember telling my wife this story and just crying, and she's like, what's coming up for him? And she can't really understand, because two things, I know that pain of loneliness. And I know how good it feels to be free of it. Well, great story, love that story on what's on offer here.

That's what's on offer here.

Yeah, I do always have living, finding love, not the great story you hear.

You hear this with consistency, you know, I get a phone call with a guy that's maybe sober six, nine months, this one guy in particular and he says, Steve, you know, last night I was on the couch, staring at my wife. And it's like I'm seeing her for the first time, and I can't believe how pretty she is. Well, like to me, hearing that brings me so much joy.

And you kind of, that fog lifts, that porn-induced shame-based fog lifts, and you can actually see life in color versus black and white. What a gift, you know. Yeah, man. And then you see guys that get time, this is what drives me wild.

They get time, they get six months, nine months, a year away from pornography, and wild stuff starts happening. They go back to grad school. They launch a new business, they get a big raise.

“Like, what the hell's I got to do with you now watching porn?”

Yeah, answers everything, because what's happening now is you're transcending the shame that's keeping your life small. You know, he's here like a guy all the sudden, guy lacks confidence in himself. He's so full of shame.

If it's a double life, he walks into a restaurant, can never actually make eye contact with

that woman at the bar. And maybe he looks over, puts his head down, and walks to his table. He's now nine months sober, right? He makes eye contact, walks over and introduces himself, and they're now engaged. Let's go!

These are the stories of a covering, didn't mention anything about not watching porn. Not watching porn is just the point of entry, learning how to live a life that you don't need to escape from, as what recoveries all about, recoveries about learning how to experience the joys of love and connection. So one simple question I tell guys, all the time, it's real simple, it's real simple.

It's your porn you're spraying and you closer to or further away from the man you want to be.

“And if you don't like the answer to that question, what do you want to do about it?”

Yeah. It's a, I've been in a lot of the meetings where I've seen guys share about stuff, and

When does a lot of this, is there a time that you notice how and when a lot of this starts

“for a lot of guys, Steve, have you been able to put together any theories about that?”

Younger and younger, you know, because you've talked a lot about valor on your podcast, we have seen a lot of younger men in their 20s.

When I first started valor, I thought I would work with guys like me, older professional

men that are dealing with a porn addiction, sexual compulsivity, and need to get help. When we work with a fair amount of that, but because of your fan base, there are a lot of single men in their 20s. And challenging dynamic, because they're not married, they're not in a relationship. There's no external consequences, and they've been doing this for like 10, 15 years.

And so it's like, you know, they've been in full blown addiction for over a decade, and they're 22 years old. And even realize it. I don't even realize it. That's a craziest part.

Wild. Wild. It's just like a regular habit. It's like taking them, melatonin. 100%.

It's just part of their life. Yeah. Wild and condition their brain, and they're full of so much shame, and they lack such confidence in themselves. So breaking them free of porn, it's interesting.

“How do you motivate and inspire a guy like that to stay on this journey?”

How do you create motivation in their life to continue on this path, even though their path can be choppy at times? Yes. How do you get that guy to continue to show up and not be in shame if he watches a little

bit of porn, right that guy can be getting better, watching 80 to 90 percent less porn

over any given month, great job, keep coming back. If you return to the behavior and your relapse or return to use own it quickly, talk about it, learn from it, and keep growing. Yeah. And so motivating younger men is been a little different, and to create inspiration, because

here's the truth, they're so isolated and so disconnected. They have significantly less friends than decades before. Everything is kind of online, everything is virtual, and so the loneliness is profound. Well, as part of existence, it's not like I think some people don't even notice that you're lonely anymore, that's one of the wildest things.

You'll spend all day by yourself, but you won't really notice that you're, because you have some interactions, you see people, you see them. So there's all this hijacking of things that are real that would normally make you feel like you are not alone. You see people, you hear voices, you know, I mean, you can even engage.

“I mean, hearing voices is perhaps not the best thing.”

It's like you can see people on your phone or on your computer, you can do face time, like you can, so there's all these like, like these secondary little pieces, but the connection, the reality, and remote work certainly doesn't help. I mean, there are guys that just don't leave their home.

Well, yeah, it's like you, like you could basically go to work online, you could get

off or get some orders from food online, then you could look at pornography, something to go to bed and that your day and that your existence and you're just sort of this thing, but there's so much we're supposed to be so much more than that. I think some of it is become almost as this habit that we don't even know that we're in. Yeah, I could see that.

I mean, yeah, and I'm not preaching at anybody. I think it's just like, I don't know, just the awareness that you could be in something and not realize it is something kind of wild. Yeah, I think that's absolutely true and what are some, what are, I want to ask you outside of Valor because you run Valor Recovery, that's your program and, and thank you so much.

I know there was a lot of guys like who kind of came in through the podcast who you were like we're trying to help and offer recovery too. So thank you so much for having conversations with those guys over the years. And by the way, so many of those guys are killing it right now. Yes, they are.

And I'm going to say this to you because it needs to be heard. There are so many men that because of your vulnerability on this podcast talking about your challenges around that gave them the courage to reach out and ask for help. So your vulnerability is a gift to this world. Well, thank you.

I appreciate that. Yeah. Yeah, some of the scary to be vulnerable. I don't know. It's like, I don't know.

I don't know any other way to live really. You know, I don't think I know any other way to live. I don't know. I don't know.

relates to this topic, I can't tell you how many conversations we've had in the thousands

now, where the conversation starts, Theo said it was okay to talk about this. And I've shared those stories with you over the years. Yeah, I know you have. I appreciate it. That's important, man.

Yeah. It's important stuff. What a gift. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, it makes it.

“It's tough to know that a lot of people are hurting, you know?”

It's tough to know that we've all heard. It's tough to know. Most of the people that I love the most have hurt a lot of us. You know. Me included.

And we didn't just end up, you know? Yeah, I'm just glad I met a lot of good guys through recovery, you know? There wouldn't be a program, you know, if you didn't do it. That's right.

And the great thing about recovery is you can live a life that's superior to the life you

were living. Yeah, that's the truth. That's a beauty of it. And so not easy sometimes to get there, but if you stay the chorus, you don't give up. Keep leaning into this.

You're going to build a life that brings you joy where you don't need to engage in behaviors to numb the pain that you're in. That's a process. Yeah. What are some of the triggers that you see that you notice?

Yeah. I can know there's just a patterns, right? So many men struggle with profound loneliness and boredom. They're disconnected. They're alone.

And so when you look at these urges, right?

“There's tends to be a predictability to when you're vulnerable to them, right?”

So late at night scrolling on your phone. Dude, leave the phone. Don't bring the phone to the bedroom. Yes, set it down. Simple fix.

Well, Steve, I work all week long Friday nights, I'm by myself.

And there's just this period of time right now of unstructured time where I'm really vulnerable. Okay. Let's make a plan around that. Why don't you watch a book dinner? Why don't you book in the evening with a friend of yours?

So you're not alone right now. Make some dinner date with a friend right now. Get out of the house, right? And so there's just these patterns that men experience as it relates to stress, boredom, and loneliness. And so when you pull up and kind of look at this stuff, right?

And learn from this stuff, you can men don't plan to fail. They fail to plan. And so working with people that understand this can go a long way to putting you on the path to being successful. Amen. Yeah.

The other thing that's really tricky today is I was going for a walk with a friend. Just go for a walk. Dude, my best time. Maybe we'll go for a walk after this, man. Yeah.

I'll go for a walk. Yeah, sure. A little time. I'll make time. I'd love it, dude.

Yeah, bro. Thank you, bro. Dude, just nothing better than going for a walk with one of your friends. It might seem like an even if you're straight, you can do it. You're not straight.

You can do it. But some of that stuff got hijacked by the gay community, I think. I just go for a walk with your buddy. I'm not saying it did. Yeah.

But it got slightly hijacked. Just a second. Yeah. We got to take our pedestrian rights back. But anyway, where are we?

We're doing my triggers. Oh, yeah. So that's one for me. I noticed things that would leave me to do masturbation and be touching my body. Sometimes like that, looking at pornography.

Stress. Right? I'm up later than I need to be. A lot of times I'll have to deal with myself. I would plan to go to bed.

Shit will happen. She'll have my work next year. I'm up 45 minutes later. I can't handle it. Right?

So now it's like I got to go to sleep. I'll think that masturbation will help me go to sleep, right? What else? Social media. Yeah.

Social media. I know that that keeps me up late. So I don't do a pretty good job of that. I know now. When I open up, there's not even super good in there.

You know, I'll maybe say, alright, I'm going to go for 30 seconds. If I want one thing, it's kind of engaged and I'm shutting it down. I'm starting to realize that what a Pandora's box it is. It really is. And you know, the science will support that.

Like these dopamine spikes from this endless scrolling on social media. Yeah. And you look at the sexual content on social media. It may not be full porn, but it can be pretty explicit. Yeah.

And so it's a real problem because it's this funnel. And all the time guys in early recovery get tripped up because they're on Instagram right now. There's this kind of image, which is a link to an only fans account and all of a sudden they're back in the dance. Yeah. And so that's really important.

That's kind of, you know, endless scrolling and the seeking novelty can be really challenging.

“Because in the alternative, the alternative is though you have to think of what that is.”

And you have to plan for that in your head. I noticed from myself, right? So if I'm not going to be scrolling, I might just be laying there in my bed.

And what's wrong with that? There's nothing wrong with it.

But at first it can feel a little bit uncomfortable.

Oh, I should be doing something. Those are the feelings I go through. I should be doing something, right?

“And you know, you're like, well, what would that be?”

So at first it's a little tough now. Sometimes my mind will start to just imagine or think of things, which is kind of nice, right? Like if it's not negative stuff, it's like my mind. It's like daydreaming or something. You used to be something people did a lot of daydreaming.

But so that can happen or I can read or I can just go to sleep. But there is a little bit of like an uncomfortable moment sometimes. Or it's like, ah, should be doing something. But I don't really, I'm not really playing. I don't really mean I should be doing something.

I mean, I'm usually mean I should be looking at something on my phone.

Can you tolerate the boredom in that moment?

What do you need to go get a quick fix? If I do, I'm doing meditation pretty regularly now. Good. So I'm having a little bit more tolerate, more toleration with it. And some more toleration with it, like the short form videos.

These kind of quick fixes on all these social media is such a distraction, right? And so getting time away from your phone. Oh yeah, that's key. Long form reading. Hobbies, creativity, working on projects.

I think it's so healthy for you.

“Yeah, I think yeah, doing things building a little birdhouse, doing something like that.”

Getting excited about leap year, just doing regular shit. Winnously, you know, huh? Winnously, next leap year.

We'll never know, bro, because for you know what it's going.

That's right. That's how it is. I missed a lot of leap years over the years. Who was it, man? Let's look at some of the stats.

What did you have, Trevor? I want to get in a little bit of information here. I want to say this just so people, to give a little bit more context to pornography overall. PoornHub was the fifth most visited website in the world by December 2020.

Just if people don't think that we are at war, right? Some people think like, oh, America, we're safe. We're not, we're, we're at war. PoornHub had about 170 million visits per day and 62 billion visits per year. And that was a 2020.

The amount of content uploaded upon up in a single year would take about $169 to watch if you played the videos back to back. And this was, this was some information because there's sometimes that you're watching stuff on there where the people in it have not consented to it being put online.

Or that it was even recorded. And sometimes that it's not that they haven't consented even to the sex in the video, right? The Broward County Florida case, this was a case, a 15 year old girl missing for a year was found only after a porn hub user recognized her and

tipped off her mother. Police eventually found her in 58 monetized videos on the site. So just to know how poornHub is okay with operating. Lyle and Michael wait, who came on here and she's, has done a great job with exposing the porn industry for the negative aspects of it.

The London Sunday Times investigation reporters able to find dozens of illegal videos on the site with him. Minutes including videos of children as young as three. That were on on porn hub. So just to let you know like the kind of stuff that can be happening on there.

Oh, nice. So Lyle attested that. Oh, at the time Lyle attested the upload flow to just see how easy it was. It just put something up. All it took to upload a video was an email address.

There was no idea or age verification. No consent verification required for people in the videos. Huh. Anyone of the smartphone could upload a video in under 10 minutes from anywhere in the world. So anyway, it just gives a little more context to what we're even watching.

Because sometimes you're looking at something and you don't even really know what it is. Where it came from or where it came from, right? And if you can add some context to it, it makes it a little bit different. You know, so many of those people are been either physically or sexually abused in your childhood. Right.

Have been traffic. This is not sometimes this is non consent. And there's just a gross element to a lot of it. There is.

“And you get, you kind of get tricked in a little, I think, in a way.”

You don't maybe realize it. I don't know, especially if you're kind of susceptible. Oh, yeah, this right here. I remember this Visa and MasterCard suspend payments for ad purchases on porn hub and mind geek amid controversy. Visa and MasterCard said there's a card payments for advertising on porn hub and it's parent company.

Mind geek would be suspended after a lawsuit stoke controversy or either the payment giants could be facilitating child pornography. Visa condemns sex trafficking, sexual exploitation and child sexual abuse. It is illegal and Visa does not permit the use of our network for illegal activity. Because Visa was was being accepted on these websites.

So you're saying that if this is happening on these websites, then you're okay with your.

Kind of complicit, right, you're kind of complicit. Give me an update on that if you can.

“And who owns mind geek changed to a low, I remember it.”

That A Y L O who owns that company. Ethical capital partners. Of course they do. Of course they do. Unbelievable.

Parent organization is ethical capital partners. Key ECP leadership is fighting on sewer, managing partner, Rocco, Mealy Ambro and Solomon Friedman. Through its parent company, ECP owned some of those highly traffic digital networks in the adult entertainment industry, including porn hub,

Red Tube, you porn browsers and men.com. Find photos of those guys if you can. Just so we can put the faces with just two they are. And that's all according to what site? Wikipedia.

Okay, that's all Google and Wikipedia.

“So yeah, give me pictures of those three guys.”

Let's put them up. Just so people know who is who feels like it's okay, you know. And I do want to say most recent I saw there was an art. There was a story I saw where. One of the financial companies failed to stop a payment for.

Was it only fan? It was something that was. Mastercard visa failed to stop payments on only fans for child sex abuse content. Says a whistleblower. Let me see.

Mastercard and visa failed to stop their payment networks from laundering proceeds from child sex abuse material and sex trafficking on the popular website. Only fans. According to allegations in a previously unexclosed whistleblower. Whistleblower compliant. Complaint.

Fill with the U.S. Treasury's financial crimes unit. The complaint was filed in January 2023. The complaints had the whistleblower and other anti trafficking experts. Including US federal agents alerted visa and Mastercard to unlawful content on only fans in a series of calls in 2021 and 2022. The federal agents corroborated the presence of child sexual abuse material on only fans.

The complaint said it also drew heavily on a 2022 study by an anti trafficking group. That said, it had found a high volume of only fans accounts with common indicators of child sexual abuse material or sex trafficking. The whistleblower said he helped with the study, which was shared with the card companies.

In the interview, the whistleblower said the agencies never contacted him to discuss his complaint.

The card companies had the power to turn off the switch to stop illicit material from being monetized. So there's just you know, it goes to that place. I guess there's like a business element to it. A visa spokesperson said financial institutions and merchants that don't comply with visas robust compliance requirements will be terminated from its network. The companies is best in class controls to deter, detect and remediate illegal activity. If there's anything else I should in there, let me know.

Since the whistleblower complaint was filed, routers uncovered more allegations of child sexual abuse and sex trafficking, on only fans, a porn driven site that generates money through subscriptions and paper view content. I mean, those companies also so big. I bet it's so hard to police everything. Sure. And that was just a complaint, Trevin.

That's right. Not a ruling. But it was officially filed. It's on the record. Okay. Got it. Okay. Thank you so much. Tell me a little bit about Valor recovery. In this episode was not intended, it ought to be an ad for your company.

We think that. Sure. But you know, this is just such a thing in your, the guy that I know and we've been friends for so long. But tell me about Valor and thank you for starting it. Yeah. Thank you. Valor recovery is a company I founded many years ago now, that helps men that are struggling with pornography abuse and sexual compulsivity.

It's a virtual program. You know, what we have found over the years is so many men struggle getting help for this, finding the right type of help.

“Using community-based resources are challenging because of shame and stigma, like what do you mean by that?”

Like going to a meeting locally, going to a program locally, people are just, they're so concerned, given the nature of this.

And they don't think a bandage of those resources. So creating a virtual program that can be accessible with a click of a button, right, is amazing, right?

And offering something that's more discreet, just helps guys feel more comfortable getting help. And so virtual program, it's a coaching program. And the thing that's really unique about that what we have found is so many men benefit from coaching on this topic, different than therapy. Therapy is very valuable as well. But coaching is around accountability, setting goals, learning new skills, and practicing those skills.

You have to put something on the other side of the scale. That's one thing I've learned in recovery. I'm not saying I do it all the time.

“But you can't just, you have to put something on the other side of the scale that has valuable weight to it.”

I think that's right. And so, you know, the program is unique. One of the unique aspects around it, everyone that works at Valor Recovery is in long-term sexual recovery. So these are men that have 10 years, 20 years in several cases, 30 years of sexual sobriety. Why is that important? It's just the shared life experience puts us in a very unique position to help people to understand people because we've been there. We are you. So collectively, this team is helping thousands of people over their lifetime deal with these challenges. Right. So that's really important.

It's a program that really is set up with small intimate groups, so that men learn to be part of a community. Got it. Men learn to connect with each other. You know, the opposite of addiction is often not recovery. It's often said to be connection. And so we're a program that offers small group settings, process groups, this curriculum around, you know, how to deal with urges and triggers identify root cause that are driving compulsions. You know, curriculum around healthy intimacy, healthy sexuality, and healthy masculinity, my men.

So we've had a lot of men come to this program and get better, something we take a lot of pride in. Now it's not easy work. I can promise you that it's not easy work, but we take a lot of pride in helping men become the men God intended them to be. And whatever that word God means you hire self, whatever that is, we help men put them in alignment with their hire self so they can go on and do good things in their lives.

“Are there guys or women out there who may not have a problem specifically with porn, but is there other things they could be having a problem with?”

Yeah, I think what you're asking me is if the can people be suffering from other behaviors other than pornography. That could be having the same outcome for them. That's correct. Yeah, that's a mask. Is it relationship compulsivity in fidelity in relationships, prostitution? I mean, there's just a host of behaviors that can manifest itself that are just really unhealthy for people. And so men or women doesn't necessarily have to be pornography.

And so the answer is yes, and there are just a lot of great resources out there for both men and women to deal with these issues,

whether it's working with a therapist that may be trained in sexual compulsivity or sex addiction. They're a great 12 step programs out. They're different fellowships for men and women, sex addicts anonymous, sex and love addicts anonymous. Sex a hallics anonymous that men and women that are community based 12 step based programs that can be really valuable. There's a lot of important, yeah, people don't realize that there's things out there that it's like, you might be like, well, I'm not this.

I don't have this, but maybe my parent did and you lived in the shadows of it, or you lived as a recipient of the byproducts of it. There's recovery stuff for that. And we're not seeing everybody needs recovery, but we're saying that this, some of this stuff is a big issue that's facing people. And we both struggle with it, so shit, other people might.

“And that's right, and I think the one thing you can listen to, this is not a life sentence.”

I've done sentence, man, you can get better for sure. You can actually get better and you can live that life that you've dreamed of. It's going to take work, but they're great people out there to help you. Yes. And so if you're struggling, I mean, have the courage to reach out and get some help.

Yeah. And we'll put links to like a Valor, we'll put links to sex and love addiction, intimacy disorder anonymous. Just if we'll put a link to some of those things in this, so people can check it out. There's like some online like Zoom sex addiction meetings that you can go to. Can I share that?

Sure. Yeah, there's those meetings that you can go to. You can sit with your camera off and just listen and see what it's like. See how people are sharing and see what's going on. Yeah, I just want to know that that stuff's out there.

I think sometimes people don't even know that it's out there. I didn't know it existed, you know, until you get in a certain place isn't you're like, You know, I was realizing I was just having such a tough time and relationships and a relationship with myself. It was like, it was so hard for me to get to know myself without like,

I always felt like I had to just prove who I was even to me.

Like almost every day, it was like, Yeah, it was like, if I didn't, I had to do something to show you who I was. I couldn't just be, right? Um, I've had like that love.

Love attraction? Love avoidance? What is it? But what is it when you, it's like, come here, go away or whatever that thing. It's like, come here, go away.

I would hate whatever that shit was. Sounds awful. Yeah. Oh, but it was, it was a lot of my relationships. Yeah.

It was like, hey, I need you over here. You know, I want to be with you, but then with second somebody got close. I could, I was like, that's right. I think for a lot of guys, there's sexual andorexia. What is that?

I mean, just a complete avoidance of all sex. Oh, I thought you're starving. So you have sex or whatever. They're a good hamburger. No.

No.

“That's how that American policy came in the day.”

Sexual andorexia is a term 2175 by psychologists Nathan Hayer to describe a fear or deep a version of sexual activity. It is considered a loss of appetite for sexual contact, conduct, and may result in a fear of intimacy. May result in a fear of intimacy or an aversion to any type of sexual interaction. And the compulsive non-sex is an addiction of it itself.

Right? And so you just think about like, you know, what we are striving for, right? Is a version of healthy sexuality that works for you. Yeah, you know, so many guys get into recovery, and then that's it. I've stopped these behaviors, and they can go for a while, but they're kind of unhappy and miserable.

So unless you kind of lean and challenge yourself to date, companionship, connection, healthy sex, that's what recovery is about. Yeah.

That's how you put these behaviors in the rear view memory and never look back.

You have to replace it with something that brings you more joy and purpose. Same in. Yeah. And a lot of times that will happen because you're the way the program set up. It's like you interact with more people, you say yes to more things.

It's like, you know, so it's like, it's easier to say yes when you're not full of shame. Oh, for sure. When you're feeling better about yourself, because you're not putting that junk in your system with consistency, you know, it just gives you ability to show up as the best version of yourself. Kind of happens over time.

Yeah. Yeah. It's a learning process, man. Yeah. And the thing is the program is always there.

So if you, if something happens or something, you know, I'm saying if you have a setback or whatever is going on, it's always there. It's there. It's like unconditional. Mm-hmm.

That's pretty cool. That's great. That's like that. Oh, here's a summary of how shories come here, go away the dynamics of fearful attachment. Wow.

“I think this is what I had past tense, fearful attachment.”

Yeah, I don't think I have this anymore. Nice. Which is kind of crazy.

It's like now I feel like I used to never think I would do that.

It's so funny when I was a kid. This is true. And when I was even a teen and young adult, I didn't understand how people could be married. It didn't even make sense to me at a level of like human affection. Like, I don't even understand.

Remember, I go watch people's families eat dinner and should I go sit and watch peep and time and or whatever, right? Because it was like a full, I didn't even understand it. Well, it was modeled to you in your childhood home. Now you understand it.

Nothing. There it is. I mean nothing. In fact, the opposite. So like, the opposite.

Yes. Less than nothing. Less than nothing. Dude. Some weird integer.

But due to, I can't. But, and at the time, I didn't even know what I was doing. But I was just so like, it was like watching somebody find something. I don't know. See something foreign.

And then, uh, and then slowly over time, it made sense to me. And then there was like times were like, I'm in the first time that I thought I wanted to have a family. For I blew my mind.

I'd never felt that in my life.

You know, I cannot wait till you get married and have a kid. Yeah, we got to get it out there, boy. I cannot wait. You're going to just, hey, you're going to be a, you have a heart. As big as any person, I know.

Thanks, bro. And the more that you get comfortable showing that side of you to a woman and build the life right now with that person, my goodness. Come in, incredible to be part of. Yeah, we have to get a camper dude.

We have to hit the road. Yeah, take that live on the road, brother. But no, I feel you, man, thank you, bro. Yeah. Like, yeah, my first instinct is to kind of joke.

Sometimes when things get serious or something. And I used to be that way all the time. Now I'm not that way. You know, there's times where I can be in some of those spaces.

“But did I remember the first time I thought, man, I would like that.”

You know, if blew my mind. But it's all because of just things I've learned in meetings over time. It's a different way, right? Yeah, what would you say, somebody out there who's thinking, I think this is me, right?

Yeah, what can they do to start getting some help?

Yeah, there are lots of great resources out there. And we put Valor 2. Valor recovery is a great resource out there. Happy to talk to anybody listening here to see if there's a way we can help you. Happy to refer you to other programs as well if you need a higher level of care.

Right? They're a great therapist out there. They're a great 12 step communities out there.

“I think anybody that listening to this, the one thing I hope is that you have the courage”

to reach out and ask for help. Amen, bro. That's it. Dude, and I want to say this, I want to say thank you. There was like, I have received messages from so many guys.

I said, I called and I talked to Steve. I like he like, you know, a lot of places. That's not the thing. No, it's a project early on. I promise you.

I made a promise to you that I was going to handle your people that called me a podcast myself personally.

Yeah. And I did. I appreciate that. I did. It was important.

And I, you know, it was, it was rewarding. I learned so much about how these men are hurting and struggling. And I also learned so much on how important your voice is in these men's lives. And so keep doing what you're doing, brother. Well, thanks, man.

Yeah. Yeah. We're just learning as we go, you know, and we're going to have to do it alone. So I haven't had to do it alone with this show. This show helped me not be alone.

This show gave me something to do like, you know, or times I probably would have been used and are doing things that I, you know, like, there's times it hasn't saved me from that, but there's been so many times where it has. You know, where it gave me like some sense of like value or

purpose, you know, your voice matters, man.

And sometimes not even my voice just listening to just being somebody like, I'll learn that at some time. Sometimes I still make mistakes on it, but let me just listen. So other people can listen. Yeah.

Beautiful. You know, and I don't mean that in any, you go to square. I just feel like it's just been like. Yeah. When I was little, I just wanted to have a voice like I just,

like, I wanted to like, yeah, I was just, I think when I was really young, I was in so much pain and just nobody could hear me, you know, and I didn't even know what was wrong. I just knew that it hurt.

And then yeah, you get to like, and that's all I wanted and God helped me have that. You know, and so it's been like, it's not by accident. You're here. Yeah.

We all have this belief like some reason, like going, it should have looked differently. It should be different than it was.

“And the truth is, it all happened exactly the way it had to happen to be here right now.”

Right? I look back at my history and like, oh my God. Like that should have looked all the money that I wasted on drugs or crazy behaviors. Well, if I had one dollar more, maybe I would have bought that line of coke and head fentanyl.

If I had one dollar more, perhaps I don't meet my wife, have my son or start valor recovery. So who might have go back and say that should have looked differently? Everything I went through, I had to go through to be here right now.

The only way to put purpose to your pain is to have lived through that pain. I think that's what you just shared. Thanks, man. Yeah, I'm in. I'm glad you did, bro.

I'm glad you stayed the course. Me too. I really am man or super him. Mike Tyson said that same thing when I talked to him. He just said, man, I wouldn't trade any of it.

As painful as parts of his word, as disgraceful as parts of it were. You know, I had to go through all of it to be the man I am today. Yeah. It's kind of crap. I mean, it's dead.

I mean, it's unbelievable, really. It's kind of crazy. Yes. It's kind of crazy. You had to go through everything you had.

“I know a lot about your child and a lot about your life, right?”

It, it, it prepared you for this moment. So it's crazy to go back. Oh, it should have looked differently. That's a good point, huh? Wow.

I think sometimes it's tough to, yeah, you're so right. And sometimes I still will think that. I don't know if I still will think that, but I still will suffer. Some of like there's still like some old pain that flers off. Me too.

Me too. And people sometimes would be like, give to get over. We have to get rid of that. And it's like, you can, but sometimes it's, it's still a real thing. It's like, just because you forgive and you move on, doesn't mean that.

There's sometimes still not some shit that hurts. That's right. And both things can be true. You can be living a good life and still be hurt in a time from your past. Yeah.

It's not either or, yes, and yeah. I agree with you. There's this idea in recovery that, you know, everything is rainbows and unicorns. Yeah. That's not life.

That's that life. Yeah.

Part of life is discomfort.

Being uncomfortable. Yeah.

“And I wish he kind of would have told us that.”

Would you join to feel that, what's the self? That's a point out. If you, if they would have told us that. So here's the duty. You're not really going to feel that much better about yourself.

But come on in. Try this. I'm not sure that's a good selling point. Yeah. Dude, they just show your future.

And it's just you like, you're just crying by the wind. Dixie in your truck. You guys are better selling me on this recovery thing than that. Dude. That's so true, bro.

We had some calls. These are calls.

We have a hotline here on 95, 6, 6, 4, 9, 5, 0, 3.

That's a lot. We're coming up on 10 years. I think we've had this podcast. When did this podcast start? December of 2016.

Wow. Incredible. That's crazy. Incredible. In your place in LA.

Yeah. Incredible. In my kitchen.

“If they're in Westwood, we'll put this curtains up.”

Shout it to my ex girlfriend Megan who would put up with me. And when I would, you know, it'd be like our one night of the week to spend together. And I would, you know, I would spend it doing this. Yeah. And then like getting a bed, you know, just, you know, she was such a nice person.

I know, she's the best. Yeah. She's the best. Let's play a couple calls that have come in on the hotline. And this may sound weird because it's like we're like one of those call-in shows

where we're like experts. We're not experts. We don't know anything. We're just two guys who are surviving and doing our best. Steve's doing better than me.

But let's play some of those calls if we can. Please. Steve, if you'll sit here. Sure. Thanks, man.

Hey, see you. This is Siege from New Mexico. And I just want to say, man, you've been healthy. You've been a great help. And I know I'm kind of drunk right now.

It's like 12, you know, after noon. It's about 110 or whatever. But I just want to seek for advice on some shit. You know, I've been addicted to porn and masturbation my entire life. And that led me to being addicted to alcohol.

And the way to coat may be I don't know. But, you know, I was texting these Filipino ladies on some bullshit ad. And it turned into me sending a money. And it's me news. And then it turns out it was all scam.

Obviously, I should have known that. And I did know it before I even went into. But I don't even know if I'm addicted. I've been on a seven month, seven month vendor.

“I think of only this four days of drinking alcohol for the last seven months.”

Hey, Siege. Thanks for the call, man. Yeah. I just appreciate you sharing so honestly. Steve, what do you think is like, can addictions jump from one of the next.

What have you noticed about that? That's kind of the thing that I'm taking away from just listening to this. Yeah. And thank you, Siege, bro. And just thanks for being honest.

And I think I'm gonna let Steve kind of share some of his insights here. I see that with frequency, just a relationship between alcohol and drugs and compulsive porn use. And so making recovery difficult. You know, that was the case for me. That history of porn abuse, but also challenges with cocaine and alcohol.

And hard. Really hard. Yeah, because it'll be one, you one can cause the other. Check out the egg. Yeah, checking out the egg and how many guys kind of because they're hung over.

Trying to porn to try to feel better. How many guys kind of make a bad decision. Like he did reaching out, giving money to this scam. Because it's under the influence of alcohol or drugs. It's just really hard.

And in one of the thing, the highlight of these scams. How often we hear guys kind of being blackmailed. Because they got caught up reaching out to people. There's photos, there's information. It's dark stuff.

It's really dark stuff. So sounds like this person can really benefit and get in help. And here's the truth. You know, sometimes it's hard to address all this at once. Right.

And so maybe you pick one. And maybe you start without the whole. And say, OK, I'm having some issues with alcohol. What can I do to get help? I mean, I'm a huge fan as are you, alcohol, synonymous.

Great resource right there. Oftentimes you see guys kind of porn you spike in early recovery coming off alcohol. Because it's just a way to numb. Oh, yeah, I've had issues where it's like I don't want to engage in certain behaviors. So I'll even masturbate to keep myself away from those behaviors.

It's like, songs you're, you know, you're cutting off a chicken to save the horse or whatever it's called. I like to think of it as harm reduction. Yeah, harm reduction. That's another one with that. Yeah, nothing wrong with that.

Especially, you know, oftentimes even with sexual recovery.

Sometimes you get sober off more detrimental behaviors first.

You know, if a guy has issues with a married guy and you're dealing with things that might end the marriage.

You know, getting sober off those first.

Can be critically important.

“And then over time exploring your relationship with porn and masturbation.”

Oftentimes, point of masturbation can be a harm reduction tool not to engage in more harmful behaviors. Yeah. Yeah, it's, and it's all a process. And the good thing is even if you just go to AA, you go to a 12 star. You start learning about this.

You start getting into the world of it. You know, or if you go to like a SLA zoom or if you call and talk to someone that works over at Valor, it's like, you know, you just start to get into the world of realizing that there's some hope for whatever is going on. Well, you're not alone. Yeah, that's not fine.

You're not alone, man. You're not alone. I'm looking at two guys right here. Yeah. You're not alone.

You know, I know, man. You're not alone. And anything is possible. That's right. You know, anything is still possible.

But I'm going to quote one line that here. You say, you say, all the time, nothing changes. If nothing changes. Nothing changes. Yeah.

And guess what I'll earn that in the rooms. That's right. So whatever you do something. Don't do nothing. Yeah.

I can guarantee that one way nothing will improve is doing nothing. That's for sure. There's ain't rockers. Oh, dude. I've walked in in some meeting rooms and be five, like,

and then 10 years later walked in again. That's what?

“Walked in and said, man, I think I need this, but I'm not sure.”

10 years later, back five years later, I'm back. You hear that all the time. Guys, like, I knew 15 years ago there was something wrong, but I didn't, I didn't step all the way in. It's okay.

Yeah, it's okay. Here you know. It takes what it takes. That's what they say, too. That's right.

It takes what it takes. Let's take another call. Thank you, Siege, Bra. Thank you. This is Ashley.

Um. I'm just going to call. I think it comes as I say about my relationship. My boyfriend, um, almost two years now, um, she lives a lot with luck and luck.

Lost. Being able to control himself when it comes to looking at porn or anything and things like that. And I love him so much. And I just want to get your advice on if you think men can change.

That's a nice, that's thoughtful of her to call. Okay, I'll feel when you heard that. Uh. Just thought it was nice how much she cares. That she chose to call up.

First of all, believe her.

Sometimes you get a lot of calls. You say, you know, I don't know. This person's realistic or not. But I just for for to me, I felt like she was genuine about it. Um.

And it was kind of in it and can people change. She didn't really make it about her. You know, and she said about lust. Like she understands the bigger picture of it. So it's obviously that she's put up some attention towards it to maybe even.

Look, go search and look online. See, see some ideas or read up on it or something. Because it's not just like, hey, this guy's watching porn. It's like he has a problem with lust. And it's fascinating to think about lust.

What do you like, what did she say? Is that like, what do you kind of think? She like, what is that about? Like, well, first thing I thought was she was sharing. I felt the first thing I felt was a little sadness.

Oh, yeah, I did feel some sadness for her. I know she's going through a tough time and thank you Ashley for calling. Sorry, I should have said that first. Thinking about her boyfriend. Uh, the behavior that she actually knows that he's engaging in.

Um, are leading him down just a dark path. And, and so first thing I was thinking about is, wow. You know, I hope she has the ability to take care of herself. You know, oftentimes, you know, we focus so much on trying to get the significant other some help, which is important, directing him to really good resources out there.

“If he wants to get better, does he recognize this as a problem?”

And if he does, you know, get him some help. Because guys can get better and your relationship can thrive at some point in time in the future. As he does the work and hopefully you guys get to do the work together and grow closer together.

Doesn't always work that way.

But there are some countless amazing stories where couples kind of do the work. And their relationship gets better than it ever was before. That's the truth. That's the truth. That's the truth.

Sometimes it doesn't work out that way. But Mike West, as she was sharing, I just hope she's got a place to go, a person to talk to, perhaps a therapist that she can just share, find ways to take care of herself in the process right now. Yeah. And she stays on this journey.

Yeah. And, you know, what's in on? It's like the first time you have a real intimate conversation with somebody. You know, I was at a meeting the other day. My friends and I were talking to them. They were saying, "Aph, like, dude, we never even really talk like this."

Hey, hey, like recovery gave me the...

I've been waiting my whole life to talk about something that meant something. And it gave me the language, too.

“Like, think about growing up with like the kind of man rules, right?”

Men don't cry, men are tough, right? If you're sensitive, you are a fill in the blank. Yeah. And so you see a Ford Festiva, you got to yell, "F***" down the street. Like that. Yeah. And so not a Mustang.

And so it's not a Mustang, dude. And so, you know, so we're so many men, right? You know, where do we learn how to be vulnerable? Where is it a safe place to be vulnerable, to be sensitive? Yeah.

The truth of matters, I'm a very sensitive guy. A lot of men in recovery or dealing with this are very sensitive men. And for so much of my life, I tried to hide that part of me. That thinking it was a weakness. Yeah.

And I used drugs, I acted out in certain ways to numb the pain of that sensitivity. I can tell you right now, my sensitivity today is a superpower. Amen.

Because that allows me to have empathy and to feel your experiences in pain,

given where I've been with this. Thanks, dude. Yeah, man, facts, bro. And you have the best stories, too, dude. We didn't really tell anyone today.

“Thank God, because you probably have to filter them out.”

Yeah, the best stories, dude. Yeah, yeah. And we can take this out. But you have one story I remember about party and so hard in Miami that you and a friend went instead of like, you guys bought more drugs

and more diapers out on the dance verse. You didn't have to... Yeah. Well, we bought dope. It was obviously laced with a laxative.

And we had a choice. We had a choice to either throw the drugs out or make these kind of makeshift diapers and keep the party going. Needless to say, you know how that rest of the story goes.

Yeah, bro, no. Just say you got no. The Eve is a real one. The Steve is a mess. That is the tip of the evil.

That's the tip of the iceberg. Steve is a real one. And what else, who's asking about something else? Oh, she was asking...

“Oh, do you think it's possible for me to get better?”

Did we answer all that? I am such a believer in the power of recovery. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, no doubt. This whole episode, I think, could maybe be beneficial to him

if you want to share with him. You can tell him like, it's just say, hey, Matthew, I want to use a listen to this. If you want, I don't know if I know him or not or if I've ever met him.

You know, you meet a lot of people. So, yeah, just say, hey, man. Hey, this is something you're going to want to do. Listen to. I've had issues with it.

So, if you feel okay listening to it, then check it out. So, you can send him that little clip right there. And that can go along with this episode if you want. And then, oh, lust. She talked about lust.

Lust kind of gets hijacked or something, doesn't it? We don't talk about lust too much, do we? Yeah, you know. Does it matter? Is it a word? It's just a word.

But I'll tell you what it's interesting. How many guys come to me and like, Steve, you don't understand. I think I'm just so horny. Maybe.

But it was probably closer to the truth. Is you're actually just really uncomfortable. And you've sexualized that discomfort. Oh, yeah. Every time you get uncomfortable, you know,

jerk an awful looking pornography, then when you get uncomfortable, you're like, oh, I'm horny. If they're not connected to when you're brain. And so, you know. And what happens when guys get into recovery and get some time,

you know, they stabilize. And they realize that they're not as horny as they think. Yeah. Because you're no longer using as a tool to deal with your emotions. Right.

Dude, they hijacked us, bro. The devil hijacked a lot of us, bro. You gotta get profited to devil in a weird way because he check on this one. You know.

Yeah, they win this round. They won this round. They won this round. They won this round. They won this round.

Hey, what's going on? Bill. Oh, my name's Donald. Oh, so I have a situation. I have a girlfriend.

She's a long distance type shit. We've been together for three years.

But for the first year and a half,

I would just, I was just, you know. I played that seeming around, type shit. Yeah, I was looking for Donald. She didn't hear us off. My daughter a couple of times.

You know, I've made me feel a bit proud of myself. But yeah, lately, you know, it's been a while. And I've just been tricking off to be honest. I've just been tricking off a couple times a day, honestly.

I mean, it's better than cheating.

But, you know, I'm struggling out here. Oh. Yeah, we're watching Mom point. I think, yeah. Okay.

Yeah, dude.

“I think we've kind of, we've talked about some of this.”

Thanks for calling, bro. Donovan, our Jonathan. Donald. Donald. Okay, thanks for calling Donald.

I didn't know people saw the name Donald, but I'm glad they do. I'm glad they do, bro. And bring it back. B-Y-O-D, bro. What I'm saying is this, dude, is, um...

Yes, sorry.

This whole segment to me, it feels like it's very foreign.

It feels like, here's the energy I don't like. And this isn't the real energy of it. That we know something you don't, right? Like, we're just two guys who fucking try on our best here. But we have shown up a lot to places to try our best.

So I'll give us a lot of credit with that. And Steve has done a great job of like transforming his whole life. Yeah, dude. I just know if you do that, it just weakens the spirit. So something's uncomfortable in you.

Something's uncomfortable in your spirit, right? And you're only going to get clues from it. Probably if you stop masturbating, this stuff you'll start to get some clues. But the tough part is, and this has been tough for me, the clues get scary, and it's hard to handle.

It's hard to handle. You don't know something's off. You know, sometimes you just want to scream.

Sometimes it's like primal stuff, you don't know what's going on.

And so you just, you sedate yourself with like pornography or masturbations to keep yourself at bay. But, um, but it can be different, right, Steve? Yeah, what I took from the call was this kind of idea. Like, you can't really do this alone. Uh, yeah, because this dude sounds like he's pretty capable of getting stuff done.

That's right. And he's insightful, he's honest, but he's running the show. Right. And so, you know, I would strongly suggest to get some help. You know, willpower will only get you so far. Yeah. Right. Getting some time to understand what's driving these behaviors. Get to the root cause of some of these challenges.

Get some professional help. Great resource. Again, while in the community, a men's group where you can kind of have some abandoned brothers, where you can kind of run stuff by and talk through these things, tough to do this by yourself. Yeah.

What happens is it'll be 10 years from now. And you'll still be struggling with this stuff. And you'll just lose time. That's bro, that is the truest thing. If you relate to some of this stuff,

if you relate to it at a pretty strong level,

“you'd like, I think I had it just not just go away.”

No. I cannot. There's nothing that's been this and most honestly, I could ever tell you my whole life. It does not just go.

When I started this process, I had a head of hair like you. And I look at this thing right now. You just lose time, you lose hair. You look great, man. And bro, you've done a great job today too, dude.

Yeah. Thank you. It's been a pleasure being here. Thank you, bro. Thank you so much. Just for being here, for talking about this, man.

Some stuff, it's like, I don't know. I just have been so much more comfortable and I thought it would be. And I'm going to why I didn't think it would be. You know?

All right, let's see. Let's have one more call that came in, please. Take the old. Who's Cody from Florida?

“And I think you're really big on porn editions.”

It's kind of a weird topic to get personal about, you know what I mean? Very awkward topic. But I feel like I feel like I just lost the love of my life because of it. I can't control myself.

I can't. I feel like this is my generation because I'm 19, man. I just, I feel like it's so normalized, it's so routine. It's so normal for me to feel normalized about doing this. And I just lost the best things I've ever happened to me.

She broke up with me, man. This is the fucking, this is a goon or national anthem right now. I can't believe it, bro. I can't stop thinking about it. I can't stop dreaming about it.

I can't get past the memories that we had because my actions, my actions, my actions make me lose it, bro. And I just wanted to keep on getting some advice from you. Yeah, do you think you're calling me in about a bro? Yes, I was kind of joking around, dude, but it's real.

And it's, and if you really have this porn addiction, if you've related to it enough, you kind of call, you heard it and thought about it and called.

that's connecting with it, right? If you've even just heard me talk about it before, because today's the most we ever even talked about it ever. So if you're picking up on something from before, it won't get better.

“You have to, you've got to help it get better, right?”

So you've got to show up for it, help it get better and it will get better. And as far as, yeah, you might have lost your growth this situation for now.

But I believe you get it second chances.

And I believe that you won't miss out on the next good one. And you will be so grateful down the line that you started to solve the solve some of the issues now, then waited. That's what I think, man, from my own experience. Steve, what do you think?

I think everywhere I go, there I am, meaning that that's just the reality. If I could date that woman without me, probably a great experience. But I bring me to that relationship. So I think pain is the cornerstone of spiritual growth. And what happened happened sounds like awful, tragic, horrible.

But I'll tell you what would be really tragic if you didn't use this moment in time to get the help you need. Leverage the pain you're in right now to get the help you need. Really important, right, the gift of desperation. Don't let this go by and pass and like, oh, maybe it wasn't that bad.

Use the pain you're in as leverage to get help. Amen. That's the truth, bro. That's cool, dude. Yeah, bro, the gift of desperation. We both lived it.

But yeah, thanks, Cody, for calling in.

“Did we get those three guys guys by chance?”

We have accurate shot. Here we go right here. These are the ethical capital partners. There's a couple of guys right here. There's the managing partner, Fadi Mansoor.

Rocco Meliambro. He's definitely been good and Solomon Friedman had a feeling he was involved. There he is right now. He's the partner VP compliance. I love how compliance is part of it.

What do you do? Working at a porn company for compliance. Yeah, I'm curious. I don't know, dude. I do not know.

So there's their ethical capital partners.

So we want to thank those guys for being basically.

They are those your porn settler family right there. That's what I call them. That's just my thoughts. Those are the settlers of pornography right there. This is good people.

Fadi Mansoor, Rocco Meliambro and Solomon Friedman. Thank you guys for your service. Steve, won't man. Thank you for your service, dude. Today is a service call.

That's what they say in recovery rooms. If you make a service call on people, you do something to be helpful to the group or to someone. So what a treat to be here. Thank you. Dude, what a long journey, huh?

Yeah. It's only just started. That's the craziest part for us. And that's the best attitude to have. Congratulations, man.

I started in a family. I'm making something real out of something that was just. Like, do you look back sometimes and you're like, I cannot even believe it? I really do. I just talked to my wife last night in anticipation of this. And I was like, I can't believe I'm here.

Really unfathomable. How'd I get here? Just one day at a time, one step at a time, taking better, making better decisions. Yeah. Anybody can do it, huh?

100%. You believe that? I really do. Yeah, it doesn't matter if you have money or don't money if you're in a wheelchair. If you can't see far, it doesn't matter.

No. Anybody can do it. As long as you don't quit before the miracle happens. They, man. Steve Volbera, I love you, bro.

Thank you for being a part of my life, bro. Thank you for letting me be a part of your life.

“You should have for my comedy show when I came out to Ben Oregon.”

We had so much fun. That was awesome. That was cool, dude. It was awesome. And you've just been such a light over the years.

Do we know so many friends? Most of like the most important people in my life. You know him. That's right. Best friends in the world that have friends in recovery.

Oh, dude. Nothing, no. Nothing better. No. Amazing human beings.

Craziest can be. There could be decades over off their rockers. Incredible and beautiful. Yeah. Oh, the good that the good times do not end, bro.

Oh, they don't.

You finally, you always want to know who's got the best story in the room, dude.

You finally get to meet all of those people. That's right. That's right. Steve Volbera recovery. You guys can check out his program.

Steve, I love you, bro. Thank you, bro. Thank you.