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Addicted to Porn: Chasing the Cardboard Butterfly (2017)
In the beginning, there was man,
and there was woman. From that moment on, things have been tricky. Going back to Adam and Eve, temptation has always been a third party participant in human life. From the time that cavemen wrote on walls, a struggle has ensued. On down through time, the tinge of desire has pumped through the veins of history. In Asia, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans. In 1748, temptation and sexuality hit a whole new level in England with the publication of "Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure", a book better known as "Fanny Hill". Fast forward to 1896, when Fatima did her belly dance. And we see sex now, coming out of the shadows and into the cinematic mainstream. In the 1960s, "I Am Curious" hit the silver screen in Sweden, and Pandora was given a pretty little box to open. Pornographic film erupted in the 1970s, and an IV of sexual material was injected directly into the main vein of humanity. As the appetite for sex and pornography rumbled in the stomach of society, along came an all-you-can-eat buffet of porn, the world wide web. Because of that, we are now a planet of technologically dependent beings with our personal power cord plugged directly into anything and everything, and the current running through our cables is high voltage. We are wired, sexual beings. Sexuality is a fundamental part of our basic human drives. We're hardwired for sexuality. It's a part of our structure, cellular and DNA, is to be sexual and to have sex. And anything that activates the sexual part of us is already hitting something innate with us. It releases all these chemicals in our body that make us feel good. Why? 'Cause that's the way we're made. 'Cause sex is supposed to make you feel good, so you have more sex. That's the way it works. Um, that's human. That's normal. That's healthy. We have a almond-sized area in the center of our brain, the nucleus accumbens. It's the I-want-it part of our brain. It focuses on what we want, and it's important because it allows us to survive by focusing on food and on reproduction, for instance. We survive as a species, as an individual. The chemical dopamine is produced in an area called the mid-brain, and there are wires that take this dopamine, this chemical, all the way to the nucleus accumbens, to a different part of the brain. It really powers the brain with desire, the mid-brain dopamine factory does. We call it the ventral tegmental area. The neurochemicals that exist in the brain during sex are the neurochemicals that are supposed to be there. Whether you're masturbating to pornography or having sex with a wife that you've been married to for 30 years, ain't no difference. A fascinating study has shown actual growth in parts of the brain that are used more and atrophy in areas that are used less. It was first noticed in a study of violin players and further explored with brain scans of medical students both before and after an intense three-month period of studying for exams. Not only did the brain grow and shrink, but new neurological pathways were formed as well. In short, the brain is actually reshaped. That physical change that we've scanned with violin players and medical students, that is, um, microscopic change that happens in that we form, literally, new brain connections between brain cells when we learn something new. Particularly for powerful reward learning. Something as powerful as pornography. Here's a different analogy. Imagine your brain is a dense forest. As your brain continues to create new neurological pathways through reward learning as Hilton states, it's as if we're wearing a new pathway in the forest by walking it again and again. Over time, almost all thoughts can begin to take that same pathway. The trail can be forged by a number of things, including sex and pornography. Obviously, you drink alcohol. You snort cocaine. You inject heroin. So these are physical agents that you take into your body. What do they do to you? What is the common mechanism that these agents that are coming into your body do? Well, they turn on your reward system in your brain. That's the common mechanism. We see that not only with drugs, but we see that with pornography and with sexual addictions. We're not designed for alcohol, for meth, for crystal, for all these other drugs. Our bodies will respond to them pretty quickly, but not as fast as we will to something that's arousing sexually. That is the ultimate high, and it's innate and natural to us. And so, we're gonna very commonly seek something of a sexual nature to medicate feelings of shame, and pain, and guilt, and remorse, and sorrow, and fear, and loneliness. And pornography is the perfect solution for that, if I'm looking for something sexual, because it's something I can do it by myself, it's pretty darn cheap or free, and its relatively consequence-free, at least in my mind, because I don't perceive in the moment an immediate consequence to it. Perhaps the trickiest part of taking on a subject like pornography is the most simple part, defining it. Entrapping the true meaning of "porn" into a simplified group of words is nearly impossible, which is one of the reasons it's remained such an elusive social issue for so long. How does one define it? Trying to define pornography is like trying to describe air, sometimes. I mean, the reality is it's gonna be a different sensation for different people, but at the end of the day, from a clinical perspective, when I'm working with clients, they're the ones that can articulate pretty well to me what pornography is. I'm simply just asking them what they're looking at, what they're exposing themselves to. "What makes something pornographic versus just sexually explicit or sexually provocative"? I think is also a debate that needs to be had. We are learning so much about sexuality that we never knew before. And we're having our ideas challenged of what we think is normal and what we think is healthy by finding out that there are a lot of people out there who are interested in all kinds of kinky sorts of things. So how do you define something so broad and so subjective? In this case, you look for a common denominator. For the purpose of this documentary, that common denominator is right here, the brain. The spectrum of pornographic material is infinitely wide at this point, but the physiological and neurological responses by individuals seems to be the same, regardless of the content. In short, no matter what a person looks at, the mind and body seem to have a similar reaction across the board. To use a more simple analogy, Bob likes football, Jim like baseball, and Suzanne likes golf, but they all like sports. Just like everyone's brain releases messages of pain when a person gets hurt, experts agree that it releases chemicals of pleasure when it is aroused, chemicals like DeltaFosB. There are engines of desire, molecular engines of desire, chemical engines that cause us to want. And when we see something that we've trained our brain to want, we turn those engines on. DeltaFosB is a switch that turns on these engines of desire. And we know that DeltaFosB and other signaling, cascade chemicals are very important in building these wires, these brain wires of wanting. So sex looks just like those drugs. Pornography, in and of itself, is designed to just expedite a sexual experience. It's meant for an instantaneous hit, just like a drug, um, and it gets us there faster than we're typically designed to go. So, at the end of the day, pornography, in my opinion, is simply those things that are designed to quickly get us to a sexualized state, an erotic moment. And it could be, as I said, from a visual, a verbal, it could be something written it could be something... Anything that's designed to activate those senses, separate from an interaction with somebody you're actually with. Since we've already highlighted that sexuality has been a major component of human nature since the beginning of time, and considering that the US is relatively young compared to the rest of the world, here's how other cultures view pornography and its place in their respective societies. Personally, I think we're moving towards a very sexualized culture at the moment. We're becoming more liberal. They had a very liberal movement in the 70s, and I believe we're repeating that again now. And as sexualism becomes more accepted, I think porn's a very normal part of the Australian culture. I think as a society we're probably becoming a little bit more, uh, relaxed and able to talk about sexuality. It's definitely something that males engage in more, and I think women watch reluctantly. Or if they have watched it, it's not something they necessarily own to, or they watch it as a bit of a joke. Certainly does fit into the Australian culture. I think, um... Is it a normal thing? And I don't think that pornography is normal, in my opinion. Because it's not real. Especially when it comes to marketing any kind of product in Australia, then certainly, sex is used to sort of, you know, represent or turn people on to buy a certain product. Is it a problem? Yeah, I think it's a big problem. It obviously works. People respond to sexualism. If people didn't respond, it wouldn't be so rampant. So I think from a marketing perspective, as long as it's working, we're going to continue to use it. And with that in mind, I think we're probably only at the tip of the iceberg. I think we're seeing a phase where sexuality and over-sexualization of kids is generally pushing media to explore different ways to make money. For example, every time you pick up a magazine with a picture of Kylie Minogue, she looks like she's having an orgasm. And the fact of the matter is that women don't look like that, and they shouldn't have to look like that to be... To be thought of as being attractive or sexy. It just places unrealistic expectations on individuals to, you know, view sex in a different way, and it also... In relationships, it's... It makes it uncomfortable if people aren't comfortable with those type of things as well. But I guess, you know, it's part of what's going on right now. It's very accessible. I think that as many Americans as many French people, you know, everybody has their addictions, you know. I don't think they're more addicted people to sex in the USA than in France. I think, in France, we watch pornography, and it's okay about that. But I think in the United Sates, you can watch it, but it's a little bit taboo, you know what I mean? There is a paradox between that, because United States may be the biggest producer in pornography in the world, - but it's very... - Puritan. But it's very puritan at the same time. So you can watch it, but you don't say that. In France, I think it's not really something you talk about. It's a kind of deviance. I don't think it's a natural thing. You shouldn't need it, because you should find the thing you need in your partner. It's still a taboo, even if it's changing now, but we are now... You know, we change these few years, but now we are in so much... So much... Big exposure... to the body, to the... you know, whatever we sell in advertising. Pornography is like the opposite of romance. To me, it's like seeing a close up of a big dick, and a vagina, and the woman goes... like that. I'm like... It's not romantic. To me, sex goes with feelings. I see it is a very complicated question. Because it's... It's play with all of the collective subconscious, and, uh... And the way we build a society, and so it is, uh... It is, uh... - An ocean? - An ocean. Yes. But not everyone buys into the concept that porn abuse and porn addiction is a real issue. David Ley is a clinical psychologist who feels that pornography is a lesser element of greater issues. At first, my opinion was, "Well, this is just pop psychology, sort of harmless." I ended up believing, in fact, that this is pretty dangerous. That this is... psychology and medicine playing a role in suppressing sexuality in our culture. The idea of porn addiction and the idea of sex addiction is a very powerful concept. It has stuck around for 30 years and plus for a lot of reasons. Porn addiction and sex addiction is a way for culture and society to label sex as dangerous, something that we need to be afraid of. It is a way for society to exert control over people's sexual behavior in a time when sexuality is changing dramatically. And especially when we look at cultures that are less shaming about sex and are less strangely obsessed with it, they don't have problems with sex addiction. There are cultures through history and cultures in the world today that don't treat sex in this way. That don't treat it as taboo. Perhaps, due to the more puritan principles of America's founding fathers, Ley says he sees the issue, the porn panic as he calls it, as more of a juxtaposition between our sexual desires and our social values. Moral panic is when the media and society buy into a certain issue, make it a moral and a social concern. It turns into a crusade. Masturbation is the most common form of sexuality worldwide throughout history. People masturbate far more than they actually have sex, intercourse. Why would we distinguish masturbation from other kinds of sexuality? What's the difference? I'll tell you what the difference is. Cultural and social values. Because there is the idea in our society that the right kind of sex is intimate, emotionally committed, loving, monogamous, heterosexual sex. That is a cultural value. It's not a medical one. It's not a scientific one. Ley even balks at argument of neurochemical addiction and the comparison of porn to other drugs, claiming that pornography is a neutral element in a far bigger picture that stems from social fear. The idea that, uh, we are getting addicted to dopamine, and that's one of the common kind of neurochemicals that gets thrown out there, is reductionistic, because guess what, there are many neurochemicals that are released in our body during sex. Dopamine is just one of them. There is little difference between those neurochemicals and the neurochemicals that get released when we exercise. Why is it okay to exercise, and have those neurochemicals released, and use that as a form of stress management or coping, but it's not okay for sex? And as a result, men are afraid of it, and women are afraid of it. They're afraid of the effects of pornography. That's why people are scared to talk about it. And that's why there are very few people like me, who are professionals and scientists who are willing to come out and say, "Wait a minute. This isn't real. Porn is no different than any of the other things that we might do that hurt other people or hurt ourselves. It can be good It can be bad." Porn itself is neutral, just like cars. Used irresponsibly, cars are incredibly dangerous. Used irresponsibly, porn can be dangerous. But when we have a panicked conversation about the danger of porn, we ignore the fact that it's neutral. It really is devastating when people like David Ley can try to say that it's perhaps even good for kids to broaden their adolescence and college-aged kids to broaden their perspectives with pornography. It's ludicrous. Is it really just pornography that's to blame? Or can a finger be pointed at media, the Internet, and modern technology as well? Is pornography really just an ocean fed by millions and millions of media and technological tributaries that slowly trickle through society? We seem to be creating a moral whirlpool for ourselves wherein people become trapped in a cycle of shame. So, perhaps it's time we take a look at what's potentially going on here. You can't show bare breasts on network TV, for example. So we exist in this paradoxed world where, on one hand, I've got it on my phone at any time, whatever I want, and yet at the same time, what we're fed is this mixed message that it's taboo, that it's to be hidden. And so that paradox of those two dynamics... On the one hand, it's there. On the one hand, we sell it to you. And at the same time, "This is dirty stuff. Don't look at it." That screws with our heads. We don't talk openly about sex in a healthy, productive way. But we're more than happy to talk about an innuendo or blast it all over the media. So again, there's an imbalance there. It's part of the conundrum. I mean, we haven't figured out what we want to grow up and be yet as a society. We're still very adolescent in that way, and unfortunately, pornography... When we mess with sexuality, uh, we're messing with a basic biological drive that's essential to our survival. And to trivialize something as powerful as sexuality, as many are, as some professionals are, as culturally, the entertainment industry is, is irresponsible. And even more so, it's dangerous. The media is a very significant force. I talk to my clients about the importance of having a neuro net around them and this neuro net, uh, is basically a media filter where they have to determine what is healthy for them, what is unhealthy. And this is a part of what continues to build into that objectification that we have, where we're not seeing people as whole. We're seeing parts and pieces of different moments, and snapshots, and body parts, and so forth. The world is now providing us with the very thing that it's conditioned us for. More and more novelty, more and more intrigue. Something more and more extreme. The place where most of that novelty, that intrigue really began to take root on a large scale in daily life was with the development of the Internet. It's no secret that trying to describe how the Internet changed humanity for both the better and worse could be, and maybe should be, a documentary in and of itself. But what's more alarming is how the technology of today is advancing at a much faster pace than the Internet ever did. And its accessibility creates an anonymity that is both dangerous and damaging. Our ignorance around technology, our willingness to incorporate things into our lives without being informed and educated, that's the adversary. Guys will talk about sitting in the car, viewing pornography on their phone as they're driving down the highway. You know, when they pull up in the driveway, the first thing they do is they hit their history and erase it. And so, there was no financial cost. Nobody could catch them. Nobody could see them doing it. There's no cost in terms of the marriage finding out about it. They don't have to worry about someone who saw them in the adult bookstore seeing them the next day, or seeing their car in a place where it's not supposed to be. So there's an anonymity, a sense that, "I can do this and still maintain the image that I have to everyone around me." We make computers and technology our number one relationship or the entity with which we spend the most time and invested energy as well as our sexual self, then we've essentially created... an artificial intelligence for us to be intimate with, and we can't truly be intimate with artificial intelligence. Hence the term, "Artificial." We don't go backwards in this world when it comes to technology. So it's only gonna become more available. It's only gonna become more prevalent. So let's figure out a way to deal with that reality. Now that the picture starts to become more clear about the accessibility of porn and modern culture, it's time to zoom out and look at the new set of dangers associated with that. Part of the hope for this film is to illustrate the obvious progression that porn and its ease of access is creating. So far, we've learned how pornography affects the brain, and we know that it's now available to just about anyone old enough to hold a smart phone. Admit it or not, our children are potentially exposed to massive amounts of pornography on a daily basis by the tap of a finger. It's very common now to hear stories of men experiencing pornography as young as five, six years old. We wouldn't let people learn to shoot handguns by watching Bruce Willis movies. And if they did, we wouldn't be surprised if somebody died. We shouldn't be surprised that kids are making bad choices if they are learning about sex from pornography. But that is on us. It's like you said. It's a social issue that we've got to have a conversation about. Before my generation, my parents were talking about finding Uncle Joe's "Playboy", you know, over in the corner somewhere. That's not the case anymore. Print pornography's kinda going the way of the dodo. The youth aren't really interested in that. What they're looking at online, they're not even really interpreting as pornography. They're just looking at it as something that's like a video game or anything else that's entertaining. That, in and of itself, is a danger, because they're not having an age-appropriate sexual experience, drawn out over a natural developmental period. It's all crammed into a time when their brain isn't even designed to handle the natural range of sexuality, let alone the bizarre and extreme that the world is now offering them. It's interesting, most of these scenes, and Ana Bridges's paper, which did show that up to 90 percent of porn scenes do show aggression towards women also specified, in these scenes, that they all show withdrawal and ejaculation on the female's body. Frequently, in her face. So, Bill Margold, the pornography star, interestingly said that, "I believe the most violent we can get is ejaculation to the face." He said, "We want to inundate the world with orgasms to the face." So, all these young adolescents you're referring to are resonating with Bill Margold. He's their new teacher. What happens with this pornography exposure, they're getting a sense of what relationships are supposed to be like, based on pornography's myth. And when we're looking at what pornography offers, it's talking and showing instantaneous gratification. There is very little, if any, foreplay. There's very little, if any, romance or courtship in the sense of taking somebody on a date, and getting to know the family, and getting to know each others' likes, and so forth. We're talking about somebody knocks on the door, and within 30 seconds, we're completely naked and going at it. And so, that's not the normed courtship patterns for humans. It never has been, and it's not something that sustains intimacy. In fact, it's... It deprives intimacy. When you are a teenager, you start to come into sexuality, but you don't know anything about it, because nobody talk about it. Nobody give any transmission about it. So you are like... "What do I have to do? Am I... Am I allowed to do it? Should I not do it? When is it a good time? Is it a good person? Am I ready to do it?" Should kids be learning about sex from pornography? Fuck, no! But if they are, why? They're learning about sex from pornography, 'cause we're not doing a good enough job about educating them. And so, kids are going to the resource of pornography. Pornography was never intended to be educational. What you get out of the education here in this country is ridiculous. As a young tucker, if I had a look at pornography, I don't think I would've known what I was doing, to be honest. I hope that, you know, next generations can realize making love is not choking, and slapping, and spanking, and pulling hair while you're having sex. That's not love. And... It shouldn't be the porn industry teaching our kids how to have sex, how to make love. This is the first wave of digital citizens. You know, this is the first wave of kids for whom, a world without the Internet sounds like what you and I... A world without cars. You know? So, to teach them how to be good digital citizens with respect to their sexual... Respect to all their behavior, but specifically with respect to their sexual behavior. So what is the state of sexual education in public schools in the US? Or the state of education on pornography, for that matter? According to findings by the National Conference of State Legislatures, it's alarming. Only 22 states have mandates requiring public schools to teach sex education. Nineteen states require that if sex education is provided, it must be, quote, "medically, factually, or technically accurate," citing a long list of cold, clinical criteria. Three states require parental consent before a child can receive sex education, and 35 states allow parents to opt out on behalf of their children. In researching this, it not only seems that sex education is not a high priority, it's a subject matter that both educators and parents are still fearful of approaching. It's as real as any other issue that students go on to face in their adult lives, yet you see no opt out for math or science classes. Ironically, listed among the same statistics, are the facts that 47 percent of high school students say they've already had sex, one in four girls will become pregnant by their 20th birthday, and teen childbearing costs American tax payers roughly $9.4 billion annually. So it seems fair to say that considering what has been learned thus far, there's a great need to get parents and educators on the same page in understanding the importance of sexual education, including that of pornography. By and large, the kids know more than the adults at this point. So, the adults, we could really learn a lot from them if we start opening a dialog, 'cause they're gonna educate us to what's really happening to them, what they're really being exposed to. And then we can give them at least a paternal, or maternal, or a mentor's perspective around what that might do for them. Positive and negative. And thus you see the linear nature of the issue. With technology offering high exposure to porn, and a limited amount of education in public schools, young people then take the issue into their college years. Here are some students from Arizona State University. No, it's everyone's normal part of life. Literally, every single person. I don't know anyone who doesn't watch it at all. I know a lot of guys do it, and even girls, too, but I feel like guys do it more than girls. Normal with guys my age, probably just... Just hooking up at random parties with people that don't care about you. It has nothing to do with love, or being intimate with each other, or actually caring about each other. It's just about the act. So I guess people portray what they see, what they grow up with. And again, watching television and just seeing the ratio of love versus violence. It influence little kids, or teenagers, or young people. "Oh, girls aren't worth this much. They're only worth... I'mma hit it for a one night stand and then leave. And then I'll just meet another girl." Girls take it more seriously than guys, because girls get more attached to a man after intercourse, while a guys can just like hit it and quit it, and it's good and done. So, maybe women turn to that, because it's just an easier route, and they don't feel disrespect. Historically and traditionally, it is an emotional bond. But what we're seeing is that's also shifting. You're seeing women more and more becoming more carnal, if you wanna say, or there's a physical appetite there that they're looking to feed. I don't know if it's an increase in women actually being affected by it, or the fact that more and more of them are willing to come in and get treatment. Most people, even in current day culture would find it hard to believe that the words "woman" and "porn addict" could belong in the same sentence. The fact of the matter is that research now shows that an estimated one out of every three pornography addicts is a woman. And we're not talking about the emotional pornography that you might find in a sappy romance novel, but full-on, hardcore porn. So the first time, I remember pulling it up and seeing some clips. It was just this overwhelming rush. I mean, it was a rush that I'd never felt before. It was like, "I'm in a world right now that is really scary, and I should not be here, but I can't step out of it." It was just... I'll just never forget. It was like a cold rush. Almost like ice going through my veins. This woman, who we'll call Jane, was very open about her attachment to pornography and the deep, dark, cold waters of addiction that she fell into from the very first time she saw it. The minute I woke up, I had a laptop, and it was the first thing I did before I got out of bed and the last thing before I went to sleep. It got to the point of sometimes six times a day. And then there would be days that it would just be playing over and over in my mind. And at work, I just couldn't focus on work until I just took care of things, you know, to get it out of my mind. It just... It took over. It took over my mind. Just my thought processes. It altered me. It just... It's taken away some innocence from me that I can't get back. And even now, I'll find myself slipping into some behaviors in the bedroom that I know where they're coming from. It wasn't just satisfying enough to watch a male and a female anymore. That my level of addiction had gotten to a place where I needed to watch darker things, and that's really what started to scare me. Because it wasn't just, you know, watching porn. It was watching things that were darker and darker. For Jane, as that addiction got darker and darker, as she says, it also cost her several relationships. Therein lies a sample of the trend that is growing more and more amongst society. As people become increasingly attached to the bonds formed through pornography, they become equally detached from the authenticity of a real connection with another human being. That, in turn, gets brought into future relationships, typically, with bad results. The most powerful bonding experience that we have physiologically is the bonding of the sexual relationship. And so where a person has bonded or connected their arousal with pornography for so long, they no longer become sexually aroused without the use of pornography. Many of the people that are looking at pornography, they'll spend most of their time looking for that ideal person. And once they find them, uh, that person is no longer ideal anymore. There's gotta be somebody else. So they continue the search. But mostly for them, it's about mimicking behavior. It's about, "Oh, okay, that's how I'm supposed to do it. That's what I look like when I'm masculine." Okay? For women, they look at that, and the sexual behavior takes a back seat to the physical appearance of the woman and the pressure that puts on them. Sadly, thus begins the breakdown of intimacy and the ability to connect with each other as human beings. The single men that I work with, it's ironic how many of them are not able to have any kind of relationship because of the pornography. They, uh, they will never find anybody that is exactly the person that they want because of what they've been looking at, uh, you know, in their pornography. Intimacy requires, obviously, that vulnerability. But it's that intimacy that builds a sense of connection, builds a sense of humanity, builds a sense of compassion, builds a sense of humility, of tenderness, you know, that exists between a man and a woman. When you're looking at sexual behavior that's aggressive, you are de-personalizing the other person, or objectifying the other person, if you wanna look at it in that language. "I've made this person an object of sexual release, an object of sexual pleasure." The danger in that is that we lose the ability to connect. We lose the ability to truly empathize with another person. There's this self-regulation that we have individually that also impacts our relationships. And we lose that ability to self-regulate, not just internally, which is a tremendous damage, but we also lose that ability to self-regulate socially. It's not destructive, but it's not constructive. Because you're just thinking about you and your own pleasure, as I said. And I think if you do that, and your partner do that, it's not great for the couple. So, Jack meets Jill. They seem to fall in love. All is right with the world. Except for one problem. One of them, or potentially both, have had or still do have an issue with porn. The private nature of it is one of its greatest strengths, is that it's not something that's if ever, rarely, is gonna be something that you can notice in somebody. Unless they're verbally discussing it and describing what they're doing, most times, you have no clue. Let's see. I was a single mom of a young boy, and we met through a mutual friend. He introduced us and... He was so charming, and handsome, and just... I don't know. You just looked at him, and he was all-American guy. And, uh, beautiful eyes and big smile. He had a good job, a good education, and he liked me. We became best friends very quickly. And, uh, it worked. It was really good. He was my best friend. He just took my son under his wing and really stepped into that role, which was amazing. He was it. He was my rock in so many areas of my life. He was my protector. He was my knight in shining armor. Sometimes we'd go six weeks without even having any kind of intimacy. He would say, "Well, I just don't have the sex drive that most normal guys do." That's what he would tell me, and I didn't know. I mean, I was in my early 20s. I'm just like, "Okay." He had a really difficult time... either performing or lasting. And sometimes, we would get to the point where we couldn't even physically have sex. And it just... It was over before it even started. And it was very difficult. In my mind, it felt like, "I'm not fat, I'm not ugly, and I like you. What's the problem? Like..." You know? And sometimes, it was... Literally, he would try, and then other times, it was, you know, "Goodnight," as I pranced around in a nightie or something. And it just... It was very... As a woman, it was very difficult to understand what my role was. And I know relationships aren't all about sex, but I mean, isn't that a perk of being married? Let's get it on, you know, and I just... It was just not there sometimes. My little sister and I, she was like 11 at the time, we were on LimeWire, trying to find some music, and it popped up in the history... some really just bad stuff. And my sister was like "What in the world is that?" I was like, "Ah, don't look at that!" You know, she's 11! And I flipped out. And, you know, he lied about it. He blamed it on his brother. And I banned his brother from the house. I said, "He's never allowed to come back here. Why would he do that in our house?" And I was very hurt. I was extremely hurt, and I confronted him about it, and I said, "I just don't understand. You sleep next to me every night, and you don't want to have sex with me, but... I'll find pictures of naked women. So you must have a sex drive. You must want to have sex or something. Like, I don't understand. Just come down the hall, you know, and lay down next to me. We can have that relationship." And, um, that was the first time. And it was scary to me, I guess. I didn't understand and... It was probably in college. I started college right around, you know, the birth of the Internet, as when it started to get big. And, uh, you know, I found myself... I had a single room that I lived in and found myself alone in my room more and more often. And at that point, you know, I just figured it was something everybody did, but I think I noticed I was doing it more. But at that point, I did realize it was a problem. I figured everybody, you know... All the college kids do this. The magnitude of it, I don't think hit me until later on when I was married. There were multiple times in my marriage where she caught me on the Internet or whatever, and at that point, I started saying, "Okay, well, I'm sorry. I won't do it anymore." And that happened a couple more times, and at that point, it was just like... I was... You know, I thought to myself, "Well, I'm starting to hide... I feel like I'm hiding this. That can't be right." It's a compulsion. It's like any other addiction. Uh, like I said, when I was young, it was something that made me feel good. It was somewhere I could run to, um, for protection almost. Uh, it became a cure for boredom, for loneliness, for anger, for sadness, uh, for anything. And it... When I've done something that long, it's just something you just... I go back to, and I go back to. It absolutely made me feel like something was wrong with me. It made me feel un-sexy, un-lovable. Um, I felt like there had to be something wrong with me. It all boiled down to that. There was something wrong with me. I was too... I mean, at the time, gee, I think I weighed 98 pounds. You know, I couldn't be skinny enough. I couldn't be pretty enough. I think it was more, for me, that it was... You know, the act of intimacy and sex took a whole lot of effort and for me, at that point, it was so much easier to look at pornography. You know, everything could be, uh, you know... There wasn't... I didn't have to... please the other person, the other "person" involved. Sadly, you know, it just seemed like it was easier to do that. I was only gone for maybe three days, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. I came home, and at that point in time, Carrie Underwood's "Jesus, Take the Wheel" was a huge song. And I loved it, and I was googling the words. So, I typed in Google search, "Carrie Underwood, 'Jesus, Take the Wheel'", and as I'm typing in "Carrie Underwood", a list of female names pops down. And I'm like, "What is all of this?" And my heart starts, you know, going, because... I've been kind of down this road before, and we were in such a good place that I was like, "There's no way. There's no way that we're going through this right now." And I started clicking on all the names, and you know how your search history is with Google, and even back then, the page would pop up, and the links that you go to are already purple, and the ones that you haven't gone to are blue. And it's, you know, "Jenny XXX" or whatever. And I'm like, "What in the hell is all of this?" So, of course, I'm completely nosy, and I start clicking on everything. And I'm just looking at all of these things, and then I'm furious. Heart's pounding? I'm just... I'm a mess. And I start taking Post-it Notes, and I write down every single female name that I saw that he clicked on. And I just put them all over the desk, all over the screen, everywhere. And at some point in time, you know, he had come back in, and he said something to me, and all I said was, "Why don't you ask all your girlfriends?" And he's like... "Oh." I'm like, "What the hell are you doing while I'm gone? I'm gone for three days. Are you kidding me?" I think it really didn't hit me until... There was one point in my marriage, when she... confronted me about it, and I kinda came clean. And it's like, "I feel like it's me. But in my head, it doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense. How is it me? And what is wrong with you? Why don't you like real women?" And I think I even said that to him at some point. Like, "What is wrong with you?" And he stopped and... And we're standing, you know, in our office, and he said, "I think I'm addicted to porn." And I sat on the floor in my office, and I bawled. Because I didn't know what that meant. What does that mean? I know what it means to be addicted to alcohol. I know what it means to be addicted to drugs. What do you mean you're addicted to porn? What does that mean? I feel cheated on a million times over by a hundred different girls. I feel inadequate. I feel like I don't know what to do. I gave him many ultimatums. Me or porn. Your family or porn. Um, and every time, he truly, truly believed it, and I wanted to believe it when he would say, "I choose you. I choose my family. I don't want to look at porn. I want to be with you, I want to get better." Um, and he would cry and I would cry, and it never lasted. He was always sucked back in. My knight in shining armor was a porn addict. How do you... How do you pick up the pieces from that? How do you go on with your life when you've given yourself, and your son... and your everything to this person, and they can't stop looking at it? He has these eyes, these eyes that are crystal blue. And I used to love his eyes. And I got to the point where I would look at his eyes, and I wanted to stab him in his eyes. I wanted to poke him, because I knew what he would look at all day. And his hands, you know... When you look at Nathan, he's so all-American and handsome, and you would never think... You know, when you think of just an addict in general, you think of dirty, and you don't bathe, and you're kind of gross. He was a stand-up, just handsome man. And his hands... I would look at his hands, and I would cringe when he'd touch me. And I would just... I'd want to cut his hands off. 'Cause I knew what he was doing with his hands all day. Just being denied by the man that you love and want... over, and over, and over again, it just... You just... There's a point where you just can't move on anymore. I think that was the point when I realized that I needed to do something about it, but I was still really unable to make good, solid progress. I started going to some meetings, but it seemed like I wasn't... really into it for me. I didn't really want to make the change. I just wanted to save my marriage, and, uh... I didn't really get it until it was too late. I would say that the victims here were me, and my children, and my marriage. And that's a shame, and it's a... It's a crime even, because you can't even imagine the pain and the toll that this took on our family. It's indescribable. It's definitely something that people disagree over, that pushes boundaries, and that they fight about. I think it causes jealousy. I think it causes insecurity. And I think it contributes to the overall situation that's gonna lead to the divorce. And I think it adds a sexual cheating component even if actual cheating isn't occurring, uh, to that mix. At least, it adds to the insecurity. Brad Dalley is a former divorce attorney who has seen time and time again situations unfold much like that of Betsy and Nate. He points out that there is another victim here that really has no control over the situation. Well, I mean, who's the real victim in any divorce? If there's children, who pays? You know, I mean, the kids are always the ones that lose. I think the parents lose, too, but the kids always lose more. Maybe you believe it doesn't hurt you or other people, but if it's hurting your relationship with your spouse, um, it's gonna have a... An impact on your relationship with your children, as well. And if that leads to a divorce, well, you know, I hope you enjoy spending a lot less time with your kids, 'cause that's what's gonna happen. You know, and have fun explaining why you got a divorce to people. Despite Betsy and Nate's best efforts to shield their children from the situation, it eventually found its way into their lives, as well. So, at the tender age of eight, I had to sit down with my son and say, "This is not how you have a relationship in real life. Sex is beautiful, and it's wonderful. And one day, you will experience that, but not like this. This is not real. This is disgusting. People don't really do this when they have sex. Not like this." And how do you really make an eight year old understand that? As you can see, the issue has a massive ripple effect, not only taking a toll on the addict, but their partner, their friends, their family, their entire environment. So how does an active addict keep from perpetuating the issue? What does a man like Nate say to his son? I just tried to tell him about my experiences, I guess, and how it's affected my life, how it's affected my marriage. How it affects my well-being. 'Cause this is, uh... I mean, it's not like a drug where it physically affects my appearance or anything like that, but, uh... From the outside, I look like a normal guy. On the inside, half the time, I'm so twisted up that, you know, it's... Sometimes it's hard just to get through a day. And that's what I fight against now. You know, I can never get that marriage back. I thank God I didn't lose my kids because of this. But it is... It's a moral issue now, and it's something that just... You know, it's a battle for my soul almost. If I could go back and change it, I would. I know that's not possible now. Does that bother you? Yeah. I mean, uh... She never... She never asked to be in a relationship like that. I can be happy for her now. You know, that's... I can be happy for her now that she's remarried, and she's happy. You know, there are things that people say they never wish on their worst enemy, and this is it. There's another issue here, a side effect to be addressed. Aside from the pain that can be felt through this synthetic infidelity, if you will, is the impact it has on the partner, more commonly the woman, when they find themselves competing with and comparing themselves to pornography. When a person finds themselves trying to outdo a world of options, sometimes the only option is to give up. What pornography does is say that the only thing that is valued is youth, and beauty, and the, uh... The view of beauty is, uh, basically what Hollywood has been selling, that they've got to be a certain age, certain body type, certain shape. And, uh, yeah, that's... That's... very degrading to wives to see, you know, their husband is not satisfied with her, which is the way she sees it. But when you look at women, and how they're, in one of the ways they are negatively impacted by porn, all right, it has to do with the image of the women that they see on film and the quote-unquote "perfection" of their body. The way that the stereotypical portrayal of what beauty looks like absent the sexual behavior. The sexual behavior for many of the women is irrelevant to, "What does that woman look like, and do I need to now live up to that?" Because when you're with a man that you know has been watching porn, you think he's looking at you because you don't look like them. That your body isn't great. You know, that you can't do it for him. Women just obsess and obsess about that. And you get to a point where you just almost want to give up. You know, you just feel like, "I can never compete with that, so why even try?" So, a lot of my friends have those issues. They lose their self-esteem. They lose their identity. They feel less than. I just think that men need to understand that not every girl is gonna do what the girls in the clips do, and to put that kind of demand on a female is really unfair. You know, so I think women just need to be able to say, "I'm just... I'm not gonna do that." I remember thinking, "These women are beautiful, and I am not like that. And he could have a new girl at the click of a button, and I'm just me. But I love you, and I don't understand why I'm not good enough. I am a real woman with stretch marks and a saggy butt. Uh, what more do you want from me? I really... I'm not fat. I'm not ugly. I do love you. I'm not perfect. But I cannot compete with that no matter what I do. I can't." My... perception of myself changed so drastically. I still struggle with some of the residual from that. And... And... I don't feel like I had the... You know, men are supposed to be nurturing to their wives, and make them feel beautiful, and all of those things, and I didn't feel any of that. They want to know that there is a man that they desire, that they respect, that looks at them, and treats them differently than any other woman in the world. That there is something special or unique about who they are that can somehow touch this man the way no other woman does. So, woman who have that need, women who have that desire in a world where pornography is the norm are totally hopeless to feel special in a real relationship. Here's an interesting thought. It takes alcohol less than 24 hours to leave your system. Cocaine takes about two to four days. But pornography can never be purged from the mind. Essentially, the person's carrying around their drug. So, memories of previous viewings, of previous images can be replayed any time. And so, a person that is not in recovery will re-play those images, and that will trigger an intense desire to revisit and to escalate with time. Just what is it that keeps drawing people into the deep chasm of porn and holding them there? Many experts and those that are stuck in the throes of addiction have a simple term for that psychological process that holds so many captive. The shame cycle. You know, secrets have shame attached to them. As long as a person has that secret behavior and the shame, I think it acts really like a magnet to draw them back into that behavior. A person's feeling bad about what they're doing. "Gee, what would make me feel better?" It's torturous. I've worked with too many spouses and partners of folks who've been struggling with sexually compulsive behaviors to not see it as a completely traumatic experience for them. And so the trauma that they're going through is very real. And when we go into a trauma state, what do people tend to do in their trauma? They don't tend to reach out. They tend to close in. They go back and revert to whatever it was, historically, that they used in the past to take care of themself. It's exactly how it works. Once you... Once I would, you know, go all the way, so to speak, and look at porn, and masturbate, and get what I was after, I would feel terrible. I'd feel awful about it, and at that point, that shame just kept building up inside of me, and building up and building up to the point where I was looking to not feel ashamed of myself anymore. And what would I do? Go back to the only way that I knew how to make myself feel better. It's both a consequence and a precursor. It's a byproduct of what I've been doing. It's the shame, and it leads me back into it. And then by doing it, it builds up the shame, and we call it the shame cycle. We call it the addictive cycle. It just keeps playing itself back out. It's a self-defeating cycle, self-defeating process. And it's the one thing I can go to to alleviate the pain that I feel as a result of doing it. It's insidious. One of the biggest costs that's there is in the struggle with my own sense of identity. I maintain to the people around me that I am this one particular person. And my way of viewing myself, I see myself much less of a person than what I portray to those around me. Every time I participate in behavior that I deem to be wrong, that I believe to be something that people who are important to me would disapprove of that behavior, the gap between who I see that I am and who I portray to other people becomes larger. And the larger that gap, the more my sense that I am a poser, an impostor. The more my sense that I am a fraud. The more of a sense that if people knew me, they would reject me. And so, the walls and the barriers to intimacy become higher, and stronger, and thicker. So it really is a shame cycle, and it continues over. If anybody found out, you know, that I struggle with this... How do I come clean with this? When I'm in my deepest shame, it's when I'm in those places where I have my biggest vulnerabilities. And human beings are fairly vulnerable when it comes to our sexuality. Being naked with another person and being seen. "Do I perform well? Do I measure up? Am I doing the right things?" And anything that's outside of the quote-unquote "norm", the consequence to the human being that's experiencing that is gonna be despair, and hurt, and confusion, and fear. And I have no desire for anybody to know this about me, and I'll do anything and everything to throw a mask on, so you don't see this part of me. I think that shame and stigma are really damaging and dangerous. You know, as a kid, I was born with one hand, and I grew up being different. I know what it's like to be different. And I know what it's like to be stigmatized and excluded as being different. That's what I see happening with people who are called porn addicts and sex addicts. They're shamed. They're said they're different. They're told, "There's something wrong with you, and you need to stop." The DSM-5, otherwise known as the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders", is the standard classification of mental disorders used by mental health professionals in the United States. In it, you will find such disorders as schizophrenia, anorexia, bulimia, hoarding, even gambling addiction. What you won't find is any literature on sexual addiction, more specifically, addiction to pornography. Ask those in the field, and you'll get a myriad of answers ranging from "a void of scientific proof," "society being behind the curve in understanding its own nature." Or the DSM simply lacking common sense. One thing is apparent. There is a clear need to begin discussing and understanding this issue and its very real existence, how ever it is to be labeled. Problematic porn use looks like addiction. Is it? That's the question. That's the question at the heart of it. Is it addiction in the same way that addiction to drugs exists? Is there a tolerance? Does it take more of that drug of choice to bring about the same kind of behavior? Are they engaged in things that, in behaviors that are harming them or harming somebody else? Do they repeat 'em? Do they lie to cover it up? Do they make efforts to stop and are unable to stop? Do they make promises to stop, and then they go back, um, to that same old behavior? When I see all of these things taking place, then I say, you know, there probably is an addiction going on with that person, whether they recognize it or not. And then there is the DSM-5. In the DSM-5, the new manual for addictions, the word "addiction" is... The new manual for mental health disorders, I'm sorry. The word "addiction" is used once. And it's used with a line that says... "Addiction is not a precise enough term anymore." Because we don't really know what it means. Sex looks just like those drugs, and the more we learn about that, the more we understand it's a contextual thing, really. That's why the American Society of Addiction Medicine, which is comprised of medical doctors like myself, who are more biologically based, redefined addiction in 2011 as a disease of the brain. They used the "disease" word. Affecting three systems, reward, motivation, and memory. And the second part of their definition was that sex, food, and gambling are addictions just as much as alcohol, cocaine, or heroin. And yet, one the DSM is gonna say is an addiction, and the other is not? It's ludicrous. It really is. And the DSM-5 is deeply flawed for that reason. And so, anyone that would... would say that if it's not in the DSM-5, it's not an addiction simply doesn't understand the neurobiology of the brain. There's so many subjective perspectives on that based on family of origin, culture, heritage, faith, and so forth, that it's going to require very specific data, very specific empirical evidence to even get the conversation started. And even then, as you well know, many people, despite evidence, will still push back against that. And that's common throughout humanity. But we have to at least have that data. Be it psychological or biological, the rift between these two very important fields could well be one of the reasons that this issue has flown under the radar for so long. Imagine if the two very intelligent groups united. I personally don't see the two sides needing to be at odds. At the end of the day, we want to help individuals that are struggling. You say it's this. We say it's that. At the end of the day, we want the same outcome. We want them to have mental health. We want them to have emotional health. We want them to have relational health. We want them to have success, and stability, and a sense of well-being within themselves. And I think there's multiple ways to get to that. And I don't see us needing to be as diametrically opposed as many times we're being pitted against each other. Speaking of biology versus psychology, is it fair to ask if this is an issue of neurochemical dependency versus moral deficiency? In essence, are we talking about addiction versus being a bad person? When you talk about addiction of any kind, the thing that's the most difficult for people to relate to is the loss of control. That people who aren't, who can't relate personally, look at somebody... who's in the grips of addiction and say, "How could you choose X, Y, Z over your family? How could you choose drugs over your kids? How could you choose porn over your wife?" That's very hard for the average person to relate to. And yet, on the flip side, the person that's struggling with that addiction in its true form looks at it and says, "What choice?" And I found something in it that was so repulsive to me, but yet it was such a dark place to kind of hide out. I don't know. For me, it just... It got me, and it would not let go of me. It was the most shameful thing that I've ever had to deal with. Is there a way we can talk about it then without using the moral card? Absolutely. So, it's not just a moral problem for people that believe in morals. It is a brain problem. It is an addiction independent of any moral basis or judgment. By and large, no, this is not a value-less person that you're dealing with, a moral-less person. It's somebody who has really strong values and morals but has become disconnected from them, or become distracted from them, or their obsession has pulled them away from a focus in that part of them that is their healthiest self. And there is still a part of them that's screaming and saying, "Please get me back to balance. But I don't know how to get there without doing the thing that I know to do now that feels like balanced and normal." The person who's spending his time with pornography, um, you know, if it's approached as a moral problem, then the response is, uh, for him to feel shame, and, uh, you know, if somebody will just preach to him enough and really make him understand how bad he is, maybe he'll stop. No, he doesn't stop. Shame ends up being a very powerful, um, a very powerful trigger then. A very powerful, uh, thing that propels the addiction. Whatever your perspective may be, we cannot just pretend that this pornography issue doesn't exist. It has very real, very apparent potential to infiltrate individuals, relationships, families, and break down the very nature of community as it's meant to be. We are sexual beings. We always have been and always will be. It's how we begin to handle that sexuality now, or at least try to understand it, that will have great impact on the future. As we lose the ability to be intimate, what we can predict is a generation of children that have this inability to self-regulate themselves emotionally. An inability to form satisfactory, close human relationships, who will then pass it on to their children, who'll pass it on to their children. When we say something is an addiction, the answer is real easy. Stop doing it. The answer here is not so simple. These are complex issues that involve marriages, involve sexual values, involve men and women, involve masculinity and femininity, involve education, involve culture and society, involve sexually transmitted diseases, involve libido and all kinds of things. If your film can generate that kind of conversation, I think it's healthy. I think that's the ultimate goal, and that's my ultimate goal. Because calling it addiction stops the conversation. We've walked on the moon. We can perform intricate surgeries. We can write beautiful sonnets. We can compose music. We can do all of these marvelous things. We can love our children, our spouse, experience these powerful, deep human emotions. And then we cheapen it by commoditizing human beings. We're better than that. We're much better than that. Sexuality has a much higher purpose in humans than that. The unfortunate thing is that pornography is ruining and destroying many families, uh, and many individuals. Black and white thinking when it comes to pornography is just not a luxury that we can indulge ourselves in. That's a scary thing to think about, when you talk about how does this impact the formation of coupleships and family establishment? And then there's the values that we carry forth, of do we see ourselves as a communal being, or do see ourselves as individuals in isolation? Be careful with pornography. Don't treat it like it's a benign thing. Because it's not. And when people perceive an actual partner in real life as bad porn, then we've really taken a real critical shift for the worse, in my opinion. The idea of porn addiction and sex addiction is about a moral conflict within the person and within society. I think it is really important that we help people have that conversation. And that is precisely the sole purpose of this film, to initiate conversation. It is not to indict, to accuse, or to demonize. It is to shine a light into a darkness that looms over us as a human race. Some may contend that pornography is a neutral element that is harmless unless used irresponsibly. To the contrary, as we've shown, it is shackling our children to a powerful, preconceived notion of false intimacy. It is teaching them a lie. It is belittling spouses, emasculating men, and destroying the beautiful essence of women. It can no longer be the erotic elephant in the room that we hide behind the closed doors of our homes and offices. It can no longer be the educator of our youth. Is it the fear of social disgrace that keeps us from permitting each other to be free of its bondage? Like it or not, admit it or not, it is here, and it is harmful. It's time to talk about it openly and honestly in all facets of society. There is great power among people when they learn that they're not alone in a struggle. There is, conversely, great power in the shame that keeps people down. And shame should not win. A man named Tinbergen in 1973, won the Nobel Prize for describing what he termed as supernormal stimulus. In other words, a stimulus that an animal encounters that's above the natural stimulus they would encounter in nature. He took butterflies, and it was a species where the male would find the female based on the color and size of her wings. And so he painted cardboard butterfly, female butterfly wings that were bigger and brighter than natural female butterflies. And lo and behold, the males would ignore the female butterflies. I think humans are following a similar path with regard to mating with celluloid and mating with electrons on a screen, just like the butterflies tried to mate with these artificial, cardboard butterflies. |
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