Rabbi YY Jacobson & Eli Nash on Webinar: The Shame Around Porn Addiction

[Music] the yeshiva.net so why don't we talk for a moment about how this event came about because i know less than you do about it but maybe i know as much as you do so welcome everybody thank you and thank you ellie for hosting it and for uh agreeing to be part of it i received actually an email from somebody i think it was uh last month and he grew up in a very orthodox jewish community in the world of orthodoxy in the world of torah the world of yeshiva is the world of judaism and he suffered from porn addiction for many many years since he could remember before bar mitzvah age and he told me that in the email that despite the fact that in recent months and years especially since corona there's so much more open conversation about so many struggles that people have this issue still remains largely taboo and so many so many people who are struggling and suffering cannot find places where there is open real honest authentic talk about it that is is just simply it's real it's just real without cover-ups and he asked me he asked he's would you reach out to ellie nash and maybe do an evening together and really explore he says people are dying for this he says you don't understand how many friends i have who are struggling with this people i grew up with in yeshiva people in my family and myself would you please do this and i sent off an email to ellie and i got a response i think around half an hour later and he said i'm in and here we are here we are beautiful so i don't know if you remember this uh this time maybe you do maybe you don't i was in yeshiva in montreal 2002 2003. and you came to forbrang i think they said you would show up at nine o'clock you probably showed up closer to midnight and uh verban went late or early and uh it was probably the first and only for brandon i remember in yeshiva's that touched in yeshiva that touched the topic of i mean at the time was more masturbation we didn't have access to pornography and yeshiva then a little bit tougher how old were you and how old were you at the time 17 18. wow yeah and i was definitely deep in my struggle and deep in the the loneliness of the struggle which is what i think that email was uh wanting to tend to it's the loneliness of the struggle the struggle is hard enough even in a group but when the loneliness of it is especially uh deep right should we clarify so it's it's actually a cool um i don't know it's serendipitous in some way that we're having this conversation because that was a formative point to hear a rabbi speaking about that i heard it was another rabbi rabbi farkas was known to forbid on the subject it was also in montreal but he was in the mesifta but i never i'd never experienced it so that was the first the first forebrain and it allowed for an openness to a degree about the uh the subject in the conversation you see the challenges the challenges that in many circles this issue was never discussed and there was a reason for it it was even a justified reason for it because spiritual mentors felt that sometimes you know not talking about it not you know paying so much attention to it or focusing on it allows people so to speak to move on the challenge we have in our generation is nobody's moving on people are learning all about their sexuality and about their hormones and about their addictions from their own feelings and from all that is available out there without having any guidance and mentorship that really helps them understand who they are what they're dealing with understand how to how to look at how to look at these things how to grow from it how not to sink and become submerged in into the abyss of endless shame and self-loathing and loneliness and the fact that i'm the devil and i am evil incarnate and i'm gonna be punished for eternity and god hates me forever and all types of feelings about identity that sometimes crush people's lives in horrible ways and affect their marriages years later sometimes in very destructive ways and it's so common and there's so little for people so many few places for people to turn to and get just a real education about this in a way that is soothing and in a way that they do not have to feel that they're the most horrible creatures who ever walked this planet so that's why we live in a time that is it's very important to be delicate and sensitive but so important to give people this vital information about such an intimate part of ourselves maybe the most intimate that may be the most powerful part of ourselves our sexual drives are from a jewish perspective one of the deepest if not the deepest human drive it's our drive that connects us to god it's the ability to procreate it's the ability to continue life there's no drive that is as powerful and as vital to creation as our sexual drive so i understand the fear in um and wanting to be delicate when approaching the subject but what's the reason why so many avoid it do they think that they're going to introduce the subject to someone like they think there's possibly a room full of teenagers that don't know pornography exists is that is that what they're thinking or that it's going to be an okay what is the concern i i it's hard for me to know for sure but i think it's a few things number one i think there's a naive assumption among many that maybe nobody really knows nobody really knows about it so why should i bring up a topic that is sensitive and challenging and difficult which of course is quite naive some people think maybe even people know about it but let's not make an issue out of it so they won't make an issue out of it you know you stumbled you failed yeah that's what people do get back up and live a productive life let's talk about things that are positive and productive and inspire people why do we have to go to those places of darkness other people frankly don't know how to talk about it they don't know what to say they don't know what to say other people feel it's not jewish to talk about it it's filthy it's immoral whatever the consideration is in today's generation there are hundreds and thousands of young beautiful souls who are suffering terribly because no great mentors educators parents teachers have guided them in in this field and they're left literally to be educated by youtube and by other forms of social media that everybody knows about so has your perspective shifted on the topic was there a time you were in that camp or in that camp more than you are now or well i personally and you know shortly after my marriage i i i started to teach in yeshivas and i would make it a point to try to allow the students to open up and feel that they're not going to be judged and they can talk about anything that was one of my biggest objectives i was for many years are shashiva mashpee i taught gemara i told hasidis i taught halakh i taught many subjects but my objective was to allow students to open up so i started to realize what's going on in their inner hearts and their inner worlds besides the fact that i have my own struggles as a person but i started to hear what everyone is dealing with in my class and in the yeshiva and when you have dozens of students opening up to you literally i realized that for nobody to address this is literally allowing all these people to drown in a sea of endless guilt and shame and sense sensitive souls are so sensitive and you know people would come to me before their marriages and shortly after their marriages and discuss the effects of porn addiction how it's playing out in the bedroom and then i realized yes we should not um you know some people like sensationalism and the more you know the more uh what's the word explicit language they could use the more excited they get so i i was never a fan of that i very appreciate what the gemara says to speak lush in the key a refined language and i also understood that there's so many different types of boys and girls and you have to be sensitive but still to ignore it is is is worse than anything you have to know how to talk when to talk if you remember that night in montreal i waited till 5 30 6 o'clock in the morning and the reason i'll tell you why because if i would have started with that conversation would have become sensationalism oh rabbi jacobson came and right away you know god instead of talking about the parsha or hanukkah or whatever the topic was he went right into the porn you know it becomes it's another news story and that's the antithesis of what i want and i want that people who are really dealing with it intimately should be i should be able to touch their souls and hearts so i waited till 5 30 in the morning 5 30 in the morning whoever didn't have to be there wasn't there whoever didn't really connect to me wasn't there anymore because you have better things to do five in the morning you go to sleep and people like ellie nash and some of your friends remained and we had a very very deep part to our talk and in fact there were some other people in your class or in the yeshiva who over the years came over to me and shared with me how positively impactful it was that for the first time they heard that they are not destined to eternal damnation and hell because god's hatred to them is worse than his hatred to anybody including that's where i was with it yeah you know you're worse than putin in today's vernacular so it's like how could you get worse than putin but you're worse than putin right i heard a holocaust you're killing millions of people and we'll get into some of those subjects i think what's important to know you don't you lose the world to come you're gehenna forever your family is destroyed forever and what are you doing to people's lives it's it's it's it's very it's heart-wrenching until today i get many many emails i would say i get probably every day an email on this topic sometimes five sometimes ten sometimes twenty and i just see so i answer people i answer people and it's just very important for people to have an address to be able to open up with their name or anonymously and uh we should be able to talk about it so that may be the difference in how you came about to your opinion it's just you invited people to speak openly about what was going on and then you heard and then once you understood the truth then how can you not not address it can i challenge you a little bit absolutely is that for your game it would not be a jewish program if that wouldn't happen right so in leading up to this event we went back and forth on the name and the event the name we came up with was the shame of porn addiction but there was there was also a um a version yeah that went out the shame of addiction yeah right was that was that with your knowledge did you want that is that blush in ikea is that maybe adding to the shame very good i'm trying to understand yeah i take responsibility for it i asked my staff to send out such a version and the reason was because from the people i deal with i know that some people they get i once heard from the laboratory a very interesting story he said that during the bayless trial there was a famous trial in 1913 there was a jewish ukrainian jumendal bayless he was accused of murdering a christian child to use his blood for pesach and it was a huge trial that basically consumed all of his iris russia 1913 more than 100 years ago and the rebels said that the prosecution brought to the testimony a letter from one of the rabbis proving that jews and allah used blood it's forbidden and he said that this rabbi's testimony is disqualified why because this rabbi is guilty of treason the rebels said that he's a murdered by malchus he's abusing the czar what happened the stamps had a picture of the czar on them and he said look the stamp was placed upside down which means this rabbi doesn't have the most minimal respect for the tsar zar nicholas of russia how in the world are we going to accept his testimony so there ever said then he says look what they did there was a letter full of content but because the stand by mistake was upside down he was delegitimized and they had a wonderful excuse treason he loathes the czar the point of course is we live sometimes in a culture where people will use any excuse in the world to allow themselves to distance themselves from things they have to hear one of them is the way you talk and i knew that there's even 10 people who are probably addicts or they struggle with it on some level or they have children who struggle with it but when they see the word porn addiction they'll right away say oh the stamp is upside down he's embarrassing the czar it's not how religious jews speak we can't listen to this this is not going to be a torah program it's going to be a a youtube secular non-jewish immodest program and i did i i feel empathy for them i didn't want to give them that excuse to be able to distance themselves from the program and i hope once they're on they won't necessarily go off too fast i heard from a therapist once name is dr carol clark in miami that of the alcoholics and drug addicts that she's worked with over 50 percent and she said that's being generous are over 50 percent are sex addicts as well unidentified right then porn addicts going into the uh the general category of um sex addiction so and in my experience with addiction what i understand about it is the process addictions the one like gambling the one like eating the one sexual behaviors those are far more powerful than the substance ones because they they're much more difficult to pull apart from our lives we can say okay no more alcohol but these things we don't say no more food we say healthy food we don't say no more sex we say healthy sex so it's a much much more challenging so i think it's okay according to her right what do you say um the majority is the entirety over fifty percent of addicts so if you put an ad out for addicts you can get rubric in the uh in the room so yeah who are we speaking to are we speaking to the person who's struggling and doesn't want to watch porn anymore are we talking to the person who watches doesn't think it's so bad who's who's the audience i would say the audience includes both of these demographics people who really are not interested in watching but they feel that they have an addiction and it's overwhelming people who may not sure that it's so bad they rationalize it and they say it's fine everybody does it you know so many of my friends do it we all grew up with it and i think there's a lot of rationalization i think we're talking to them and i also i think also think we're talking to parents and educators as a preemptive medicine to understand what's going on to understand what their children what their teenagers may be dealing with to understand what they can preempt how to talk about it i think we want to include all of these demographics right so in general i mean i'm happy to speak i don't take a typically a moral position obviously he's a rabbi you have to i don't think a moral position on pornography i think there's certain aspects of it that we could i in general talk to someone who says i i'm done i don't want to watch porn anymore i'm not trying to convince anyone not to if it works for them and work for them god bless not from a morals perspective just from who i feel i can uh i can influence but the person who's done who's as i have smashed laptops because they don't want to watch porn again and then somehow they find themselves back there that demoralization that's certainly who i am who i speak to but by all means let's talk to the uh let's talk to those so what would you say to those who rationalize porn and say it's not so bad maybe it keeps me away from worst people i i think i would you know there's nothing as powerful as experience all lectures in the world pale in comparison to experience so i'm wondering if you who you know is one of the you really had the courage many years ago and i'm sure was not easy to be able to really address this topic from a very personal point of view perspective would you really be able to give us some form of summation of your own story both the sadder parts of the story and your journey towards a place of enlightenment and and recovery which i'm sure is a constant and ongoing work i don't think you know you snapped your finger and you got out of it right it's also not you know you don't try to go to zero with this you do your best i would say at this point just for i'll start at the end i've watched pornography one time in the last five and a half years so i've i've sought out pornography sometimes you bump into it unfortunately you can't you can't prevent that we live in a world but to actually go and one time in five and a half years when it was there were so i actually heard from you many years ago your story about molestation that i know that i never heard from you yet this your story about i'm going to share that porn addiction i'm going to share i'm going to i'll share the whole story so i'll share where i got kind of started into it my introduction because i think this is important the the ways we're introduced sex the very first conversation i had about sex was someone three or four years older than me brought an encyclopedia and i remember showing a picture and it wasn't what he said and what i saw it was the the hiding you know it was the shame the second sex was introduced it was introduced with this level of shame remember where i was in my backyard there were these steps and he's like oh look i found this thing and he thought it was so cool to show me a uh a book in the encyclo it was an encyclopedia talking about sex with a picture how old were you six seven with that age but and he was probably nine or ten what yeah wow i didn't realize you were so young yeah my introduction to sex like that world like i've shared i've shared my story of sexual abuse this was after the after this conversation which i mentioned uh where i was sexually abused over a three year period which i've shared that story and if those have questions i'm happy to go into that but i want to make it about that i have talks on youtube about it in other places where i talk about the uh somebody grew up right there was somebody grooming you was this like correct correct over a three year period counselor a teacher a relative i don't wanna i don't wanna identify him just because i feel it's been resolved but it was a an older boy so he was six years older than i was and uh he groomed me between sports shul just giving me the love and attention that i uh and this is from whatever child from the ages of about eight to ten so say fourth grade to sixth grade and and eventually never told your parents you never told your parents no but i'll tell you something i didn't tell anyone until i was 23 years old i went to therapy and the therapy identified certain struggles that i was having with being abused but although i kept a secret for a long time i did tell the per the first person who asked which is and i went to therapy when i was 12 or 13 i got into a fight with a kid in shiva and the kid said he's going fry because of me so my punishment was i had to learn tanya about and to go to therapy and to go to therapy and i went to a therapist i'm actually surprised in hindsight i guess it was a froome therapist i think in borough parker flatbush was a from therapist i'm kind of surprised in hindsight that she didn't ask the question but i get i'm sure now they would right abuse maybe wasn't known this that was born 1985 the story in 1998 1999 i guess abuse wasn't really spoken about in the from much much less exists much much less yeah i wasn't asked the question but this doctor dr norman goldwasser in miami i went to him when i was 23 years old and within 15 minutes he asked me were you sexually abused and so that was that story shortly after that actually dr goldwasser sent me to a um one of these uh you know a psychologist which do all these tests you know the rorschach tests and these mmpi's and to give you a personality think of it jiggy and he had showed me years later what it said and one of those was that there's the potential for sexual acting out behaviors so he had introduced it a few times in my therapy but i'm skipping a little bit in the story when i first got introduced to pornography didn't start with pornography as a matter of fact what i remember is it was almost too brazen right some of those pictures like nudity is like too brazen as a as a child when i was 12 or 13 years old different magazines whether it was um i know catalogs with the lingerie sections or things like that and i became obsessed there was something the only word i can describe you could describe it as complete safety it was like all the noise stopped these magazines would show up and i made sure in a three-bedroom house one of nine kids i made sure to have a stash everywhere so at 12 or 13 years old i would have clippings in different places i'd have magazines in different sections i wanted to make sure i needed not wanted to i needed to make sure that i had a stash somewhere and everywhere eventually i think my sister was a lucky winner of a computer at a 10-yard auction so my clippings went from pictures on the computer that i would save and store in different areas of the computer so i you know you're going back to dial up internet so you know accessing a picture was a pretty big deal it's not to be taken lightly so once you already access it you don't want to lose it so i would save it and i sort of different computers and looking back the obsession how old are you when you started with this obsession 1314 wow and looking back i mean it was a full-on obsession it was to the point of using you know using those words i needed it i i had stashes everywhere stashes on the on the computer physical stashes for shabbos i was set up obviously going to yeshiva when i started going away to yeshiva was a little bit more difficult but you know sometimes the occasional porn magazine would make it around yeshiva you'd accidentally find it you didn't know who it was and you'd do a non-faceted but there was some some somewhat access to that where it really got out of control and that's one of the questions i have for you is how you're kind of seeing it progress i'm sure it's much worse today the problem than it was when i was in yeshiva because i think i mean if you hear my story what i needed to do to access pornography was jump through major hoops i'm talking watching pornography in a home with a lot of siblings on a desktop computer to wait till people were asleep it wasn't an easy feat it was dial-up internet now we have a smartphone we can access unlimited pornography very very easily anyone could so i can't imagine how my addiction would have morphed if i was dealing with it today eventually as i got older and i got out of yeshiva i mean it was you know open season i had no limitations no restrictions nothing to hide and it was you know on my computer and it got to the point it was a daily practice and evening and often times in between in my case and again i don't know if this is where we want to take the conversation but it often happens with people you know how do you know something is an addiction when it's constantly increasing right the dose that once worked stops working now and you need to increase it either in frequency or variety or intensity and i did all three and eventually the pixels turned to people and the screen wasn't enough and you know it went from there to strip clubs to et cetera et cetera et cetera we don't all the details aren't uh necessarily important ironically when i went to therapy for my abuse then some of these stuff came up like i mentioned the doctor was asking these questions but i always pushed it aside because i don't know it was working for me i said oh it's not a problem in my mind i wasn't an addict i didn't drink i didn't drug i didn't gamble i worked i i joke i had the best and worst of addictions the most respected and the least respected right i had the work addiction and the sex addiction so for me i didn't even identify it as something possible to be addicted to and i just continued doing it it wasn't until i met my wife and we started dating and i had a two or three month reprieve when we first met it was like you know the world stopped and i had that same peaceful feeling i had from once watching pornography now i had just from being in relationship with her but that period ends and when i went back afterwards then the shame really kicked in and that's where really really really spiraled um out of control it was uncontrollable on all levels and from there is when i entered a recovery program of addiction how old were you at the time how old were you so where are we up to so when i started the therapy which really was starting with the abuse i went with business issues that was 23 by the time i met my wife she's listening in so i don't want to you know i want to know the date and the year and everything perfectly i think i was 27. wow and by the time i really started addressing it i was 28 today i'm 36 and uh i entered what caused the shame so badly at that point like why when you were 19 what happened what was the cause of the shame there were levels of shame before let me because there were levels of shame before it was a secret it was something i didn't want anyone to know also the dependency on it i had seen it one one story i like to share is when i was 22 or so i got an eye infection i went to a doctor and the doctor said that i had a corneal ulcer and he was concerned that it may not respond to antibiotics he wants to see me every day it's like making a point with my office every day for the next 14 days so i see how it's reacting to what i'm giving you and i left his and he said if it doesn't react well it's you have to take this seriously because corneal ulcers could cause blindness when he said the word i knew that i was going blind and why i was going blind i was going blind because of the point i watched and i promised i if god existed you know where i was at that time if hashem existed i promised never to watch porn again i'm being punished for this eventually my eye healed and so did uh and with you know with the cornea also that went down the toilet and so did my promise a week later i was watching so for all those who think that the answer to this is more condemnation and more you know what it like the muscle approach it may work for some but for someone who's addicted it's not certainly not for where i was it it wasn't the approach and eventually i started i think i think ellie it's good to i think explain why that is because as somebody as wise person once said addiction is not the problem addiction is the solution we have to identify what the problem is if i tell you you're going to watch porn you're going to get blind you're going to become deaf you're going to lose your limbs it may scare the living daylights out of you and even if it's true i'm not addressing the problem there's a loneliness there's a shame there's an inner emptiness that's not being addressed and the addiction is not the prop addiction is the solution we're running to because of that loneliness so so scaring the person is not really dealing with their issue a week later they desperately need this like oxygen you tell somebody if you continue to breathe if you continue to go to the bathroom you're gonna burn so what do you want me to do so i could shoot myself and then i won't have to go to the bathroom exactly the best analogy i've seen for the way i felt was watching someone who's trapped under a rock you know cutting off their leg so you just see them cutting off the leg you say why are you cutting off the leg i'm cutting off my leg to save the rest of me and that's that's for addiction it certainly is so yeah the worse you feel what's the solution back back to what made you feel it's the culprit it's the coping mechanism of survival it's the reptilian brain the reptilian brain trying to survive i do want to share one more part of the story and then go back how so how did i come to speaking sorry i interrupted you no no it's good you said how you went back straight and the eye became better and you went right back into this i went right back into it right that was a shame when i when i met my wife the shame that time around when i now i was lying about it and it wasn't just like i had mentioned pixels went to people so there was many other things that i was addressing beyond the pornography ironically the other stuff were much easier to stop than porn because porn you have all the if especially for me i would say the pixels are keeping me away from the people right so there was a lot that i had to pull apart it was much more difficult to stop pornography than than some of the other behaviors a the um the way we can rationalize it and be the accessibility the accessibility is absolutely i mean it's you know it's someone walking around the flask the whole day telling them don't drink alcohol i mean it's it's really it's it's a very very very difficult um problem to tackle and it's so we talked about to tell this to people you know you have a 14 year old boy a 17 year old boy his hormones are raging you have to have compassion for the struggle oh it's huge yeah we all needed compassion we need compassion for ourselves and we must have compassion for our children and for others because without compassion we're not going to help anybody you have to have compassion there's an organization called fight the new drug right what is it what do they do they fight pornography what's new what's new about pornography right it's been going on forever but they say the way it is now it's new it's on a different level and i would say even what i dealt with i don't feel like i can talk to teenagers today about about what they went through because my experience like i said was so different i don't it's crazy i mean to be 13 14 years old with the hormones yeah with that that are going on then plus not having the impulse control fully developed and everything else and having the smartphones i it's it's a real uphill battle so definitely a lot of compassion and compassion for myself for how difficult it was then and imagine almost becoming blind doesn't stop your addiction what does stop your addiction so before i before i answer that question let me answer let me talk about why i started talking about this publicly because i think it's uh it's important so you you've heard me speak about my abuse and very likely in that speech i referenced addiction but i just had addiction i didn't say what the addiction was because it was still shame attached to it so you and some of the audience may have heard the name rashlow so rashford and i a few years ago worked on this idea mike dropped were people sharing their stories and things like that and really what i was coming from was seeing how healing it was for me to share my story about abuse anyway where'd i get the introduction to raj is i brought him into my company to say let's train employees on sharing their story with each other it's great timber team building it's a great skill and it's not a bad skill to learn how to speak publicly right and raj asked me what are you going to talk about it was the second time we were doing this as a company maybe even the third time and i said you know what i think i'm finally ready to talk to my company about my struggle with porn addiction and you should have seen this guy's face he it's like ellie you can't you're the ceo of the company you can't talk about porn addiction they're gonna laugh you out and to me it was like of all people rosh lo the guy who runs around the world telling people they have to share their story you're telling me this is a subject i can't talk about someone can get arrested can talk someone can do horrible it doesn't matter you can talk you can talk if i'm struggling with a porn addiction this is the one story not to share i said you know what rush i'm not sharing it i'm not going to share it at the company event i'm going to share it to the biggest stage i know i'm sharing it on the ted stage and that's how that's how that talk came about and now it's been seen four million times and now over four million times and i'm somewhat of a you know these kind of conversations happen as a result but it was recognizing how insidious the shame is around the subject even for the people who who are uh on the forefront of these kind of subjects because you want to know what does work um almost every single person i've worked with to overcome porn addiction with them i've encouraged them to write a thank you and a goodbye letter to pornography so i actually wonder as a as a rabbi what you think of such an idea do you did i say enough or do i need to explain it more i would like to explain more just to make sure we understand so i'll give a specific example so from guy was working with who's um he called me when his son he found that his son had an illness and when he found out his son that was born with an illness he felt so guilty because i don't know where these teachings come from and you got to help me with some of these these things where they come from where they're sourced because what he told me at the time was one of the punishments for pornography is to have unhealthy children or something like that right so he was convinced that his punishment for all the porn he watched was now his son was born with a uh a genetic defect of sorts or something else and he was so ashamed and embarrassed so what do you think he did he hired a prostitute porn was not enough he went from pixels to people and it was at that point in time that he crossed that line from guy that he reached out to me so i said so i spoke to him and i said what did porn do for you what were the benefits what did you get from it in other words where can you say thank you to pornography and he really really struggled with this what do you mean i'm a fruit person it's a terrible thing it's a navera i said i understand this in a vera but if someone was starving and they ate a ham sandwich it may be wrong but it did something for you it filled you up it gave you energy what did the porn what did the pornography do for you why did you keep going back there as a child why do you keep going back there today as an adult and it was a very difficult conversation just for him to get his head around looking at pornography that that way but without fail everyone who i've been part of their journey of recovering from porn addiction has had to write or write a thank you letter right acknowledge the benefits that porn gave to them but like a friend who's overstayed their welcome goodbye as well so thank you and goodbye and then to seek out all of those benefits that i'm enumerating here i'm not just saying thank you i'm actually going into detail you helped me during my times of loneliness you helped me turn my times of desperation you helped me when i was bored and this is how you helped me now i'm going to try to solve those in a healthier way in a more productive way i i frankly think it's brilliant and not just brilliant i think it's it's it's very authentic meaning you know a wise man once said don't talk about the addiction talk about the pain a dick talk about the pain that's what the thank you letter does the thank you letter is my addiction was my coping mechanism it was my survival skill it was something that actually helped me in crazy situations so i have to acknowledge that in order to be able to acknowledge the pain the void that was being filled by the addiction and then i can say how am i feeling filling that void today so i don't have to go to porn so so the from a religious hang up he was having of saying this isn't a vera how can i not this that's where he was struggling saying you're asking me to say thank you to this it's a very it's it's you're not none you're not saying again addiction is not the problem it's the solution that's the key we got to find out the pain you're not thanking the fact you're not being grateful for the fact that i was a porn addict you're saying thank you to your brain that devised a coping mechanism for you to survive and that actually served you well tragically you had to go there in order to save yourself it's a tragedy but could you have compassion for the tragedy let's talk about something else for a moment how many of us detach from our emotions when we are six years old because of our own anxiety because of the fact that we are emotionally neglected we have attachment disorder and it's too painful so we just go offline with our emotions and we cannot connect emotionally one day you have to say thank you your brain was trying to save you from pain is it a good thing that i had to detach no it's a tragic thing but this tragedy is what saved me now tell the addiction you served me well you did what you were trying to do you kept me alive but you know what now i want to actually live i don't want to just stay alive i don't want to be a reptile or a lizard i want to be a real person that all the parts of my brain can function together my amygdala brain my limbic brain my prefrontal lobes i can be a fully cognizant conscious aware intimate person i could be honest i could be authentic i don't have to run to porn addiction to address my pain you know why because i'm an adult i'm mature i have courage i'm going to observe what is happening inside of me what is being triggered i'm going to address it in healthy productive and meaningful ways through relationships that help build my self-esteem and really fill my void and don't cause me to run for my void i i i completely uh i completely appreciate very much your your your perspective say thank you a thank you letter and a goodbye letter in fact i would argue that you can't really give a goodbye letter if you don't give a thank you letter correct because it's an external goodbye people don't addiction is about well we're going to use here hasidic terminology you grew up in a hasidic community perfect addiction there's hitsoinius of addiction and there's the pneumonias of addiction the kitsony is of addiction the external facade of addiction is porn gambling alcohol heroin cocaine prostitutes clubs binging drinking kiddush clubs anger whatever whatever it is that's the outer facade the pnemius of addiction is the neshama it has a soul addiction has a soul there is a yearning i heard from dr twersky we were together with dr torres kenosha tono and boca you were there i think you were there no yeah i went to florida yeah the tour scale of hashallam rabbi abraham dr abraham to ask you this one coming up soon yeah who passed away last year in jerusalem and i remember he told me in boca he said i asked him dr twersky you have been dealing with recovery for 60 years could you summon sum up what you learned in 60 years i don't have patience to go learn for 60 years and he said something so profound he said the addicts among us are the most spiritual people because what happens is their void is much deeper than everybody else they're very sensitive souls so he said most of us can dismiss our voids through easy distractions they can't because the void is deep so they have to go to deep addiction so i could look at addiction and say well you're an addict or i could say wow you need a deep spiritual connection with life you need a deep connection with your spouse with your friends with your god with your soul can we address that and without the thank you letter you're not addressing that you're just looking at addiction from a very external point of view and it's going to come back next week in a letter with one of the first i think they called him a a number three so carl jung had a correspondence about him with a number one or two i think the wilson and he's he was a patient of carl jung a number three and he said to him he said that in order for this car young was writing in order for this guy to heal he needed a profound spiritual awakening everything to shift i mean i believe his words where the operating principle here is spirit us contra spiritual we need spirituality to counteract the spirit the spirit of alcohol so the word the word calling alcohol the spirit is perfect so yes it's it's been my experience as well watching addicts in that way you know the amount of people i found who rejected from cuts you know oh these guys are fry right they they want the easy way out but then embrace the life of the 12 steps which the 12 steps i know it's not full beard and had a jacket and white and everything else but it's more demanding you don't get you don't get the um you don't get the gaps you know you don't get between 9 and 10 p.m i'm offline because to say about them that they rejected judaism as the farthest things from the truth they were actually looking for authenticity they needed real judaism they couldn't deal with hypocrisy they couldn't deal with orthodox norms that makes you look good but inside you're empty and there's no honest conversation and there's no real relationship with yourself or with god the 12-step program actually gave them an opportunity to experience their own spirituality in a much deeper way so it's actually these people so you believe the addicts deserve the microphone i i not only they deserve it i think all of us i think all of us dr i asked dr torski are you an addict i asked him he said i wish i was i said why he said because i go to i go to recovery meetings he says and i it's not i'm not an addict he said unfortunately he said i'm addicted to self-loathing and self-shame have issues with self-confidence but he says i'm not a classic addict as some of the other people he says but you know what there's something i don't have because of it he says my my doctor's an addict in recovery my dentist is an addict in recovery even my barber is an addict in recovery he says i only trust them because they're always who said for an addict spirituality is for the average person spirituality is a luxury for the attic spirituality is a necessity because it's always about the void i'll never forget i was sitting at home one day says many many years ago when a young man came in grew up in a very orthodox community went to yeshiva for many years he was married with children he broke down sobbing he says everything is over i said what and he shared with me his story he was molested as a child by a sibling and he went on to molest other he went on to molest others at the age of 14 he was a full-blown full-blown porn addict he would leave yeshiva every day and he did it for years he got married but the addiction just continued and he said and now his wife discovered it his wife discovered everything the porn and the clubs and the prostitutes and the other women and to see a young man 31 years old breaking down at my dining room table i'll never forget in the middle of the day just sobbing and you look at this person and you know what ellie i have to say i did not have an ounce of judgmentalism this kid was molested at the age of six tell me how much free choice did he have how much free choice did he have nothing yeah when he experienced puberty his brain was screwed up you'll forgive me the first time he went to the mikvah as a teenager he couldn't see other people's bodies in ways that other kids see it so the brain the brain is affected we know today we know today it's not just molestation if a child is exposed to certain elements of pornography in third grade fourth grade fifth grade sixth grade or bullying or other forms even if it's not abuse and sexual molestation directly when puberty develops it often completely skews the ways they see their sexuality and the worst is they're completely confused many of them decide they're homosexual they decide they're transgender they decide they're girls they're boys they don't know what they are it creates so much pain and you look at the person the kid didn't have a choice the kid didn't have a choice and i have to tell myself this is not about him this is about god and if you believe in god you have to say god sent him on this harrowing journey for some great light that's going to come out of him and all i could do was i hugged him and i said i'll be here for you and you know he got divorced his wife said out he got divorced and he went into recovery this is seven years ago he went into recovery he lied to me also for a year he kept on he was so addicted he was just lying to me he was lying in line but i have to tell you he's been seven years sober he goes to meetings a few times a week and it's really that i meet a person with so much authenticity and spiritual integrity it's those people who can look you in the eyes and don't blink and they can talk about everything because they have been in the worst places and i have to tell you that yesterday i reached out to him and i said you have been in real recovery for seven years he remarried a beautiful marriage and his first wife it really it's a nice ending it's a tragic story because there was a divorce it was a tragedy but but they both recreated their lives which is amazing and i asked them i said what would you want to what would have you wanted to hear when you were in addiction or when you were at least struggling to come out of addiction and he told me a few things that were very meaningful that i heard from him over the years you know he said the first thing is he says i want you to know that even though i was an addict for for decades not for years for decades the fact is there are ways to deal there are ways to heal but remember it's the hardest addiction to it's the hardest addiction to break so i know people with years of recovery in aaa but they can't go three days sober when it comes to sexual addiction they can't and that's important it's a different idea it's a process and it's important you know sometimes we celebrate victories of a year two years and i say you were fifteen minutes sober celebrate it you were sober for two hours make a lechayan make a lithuanian give yourself a standing ovation i was sober for two hours you know why you are in ukraine the russian army is fighting you you are bruised you're bloody you're in a battle you're not a loser you're in combat you have serious struggles to combat give yourself credit have compassion for yourself identify how real the battle is and then you will also realize that you have very very deep resources this fellow also told me he says i wanted you to know that a life without it without this constant need for porn is a miracle beyond miracles and also he says you have to tell the wives the wives often think it's their fault he says tell the wives you can be a supermodel and you could be the greatest lover in the world and you could be an amazing woman your husband may be sick he may have a disease and without his courage and readiness to get cured you sometimes cannot do anything to cure him don't take the blame on yourself and say i would be a better wife if dinner would be much better if xyz would happen in our marriage all problems would be gone that's not the case another thing to say a great story i saw a video once a woman explaining what is something titled like why i why i left the industry why i left the porn industry and this one was explaining why she stopped as a porn star it connects directly to your last point and she said she walked in once on her boyfriend watching pornography and she says here i am thinking that it's because i'm more attractive wow everyone's watching me wow you know then i walk in and the one person that doesn't have to pay that i want to be available to he's watching someone else i said that she was she said it was at that moment that i realized that pornography is not like just about sex it's much there's something else going on it's operating on a different system and i can't feed this exactly it's not about sex it's about loneliness you know the antithesis of addiction ellie is not sobriety the antithesis of addiction is connection that's why we're here the connection it's all it's so much what do you feel about shame this shame what do you feel about the shame so let me talk about that flyer right same shameful or unhelpful so let me let's let's well my opinion obviously is that the shame is devastating for the addiction it's devastating it's the worst thing and that's one of the reasons to say thank you but i want to bring you into that conversation i was earlier with this guy where i was asking him hey write this thank you letter it's goodbye letter and he's telling me it says and i don't know where his source was but his beard was longer than mine was his shirt was whiter than mine was and he said the but you have the white keeper but you have the white keeper you probably have a black one that is true at the time at the time i may not have have had any it was just an internal one but his he was saying he he quoted something right the reason my children are sick is because i watched pornography so what we're talking about is nice and wonderful but when someone has all of these texts of how your teeth are going to fall out your breath is going to smell you're going to die young you're going to lose whatever it is right all of the horrible things about um about spilling seeds masturbation yeah what what would you tell that person right there obviously i was limited you know he didn't look at me as a uh even though i do have my rabbinical degree he didn't look at me as a rabbinical figure so i wasn't able to touch that part of it but what do you say to someone who's sitting there and has the quotes and you know everything to to throw at you right that's a great they're such a horrible person it's a great question but here's the key issue the key issue is that what i find in most cases that i can't say about all most cases of people that i know that write to me that share with me their addiction has really very little to do with what these texts talk about because to put it frankly very few people's addiction today is coming from a place of maliciousness of people who say i i want to really masturbate i really want to be an addict to porn i'm telling you ellie in 99 of cases their poor brains have experienced a trauma i want to make sure that's what you're saying you're saying that the text that was written is not is very very important not applicable to many of these cases probably most of them why not so what is the text talking about very simple take a look at your life you were six years old when somebody exposed your paternal to pornography you were eight years old when somebody started to sexually molest you can we stop for a moment and say how many choices did nine-year-old ellie nash have what did he know about sex what did he know about himself who decided the trajectory of your life you were an eight-year-old boy who said god i hate you judaism i hate you i'm going to become a porn addict till i am an adult and i am not going to care about anything is that what happened of course not so who is referring to because i'm broken tormented kid alone in the world without anybody being here for you throughout that horrific molestation can't we stop and realize where's the sinister motives here there's somebody who's trying to spill seed deliberately and intentionally these poor most of these poor people are desperately looking for some oxygen for some relief for something to release me from my my anxiety my depression my loneliness my brokenness my trauma my wounds you think i understand this and god doesn't understand this i i understand this and your creator who created you and loves you unconditionally and and chose you to come down into this world because he believed you think he doesn't understand this and he looks and he says wow you're evil you're the devil you're going to burn in hell all your kids are going to die and be blind so you say obviously listen it's 8 9 10 years old you're not going to say that but you're not going to say that but someone who's 30 years old and still when i was you know 20 29 30 and i'm still engaging in these behaviors but when you're with the islam a person who's responsible for this action but the only way for people to be able to recover is if they actually recognize their power as 30 year olds because many 30 year olds are still the eight-year-olds come on i'm 49 years old but when my trauma is triggered i'm a six-year-old boy i'm not 49 years old we are all little children when it comes to our addictions and our traumas and our wounds you know this better than anybody else we are all little little children we are vulnerable broken children desperate for love desperate for validation desperate for connection you may be 30 years old you may have a beard that's longer than i don't know than anybody's beard you may be a wonderful scholar but in terms of your emotional development in terms of your inner emotional self-confidence and wholeness you may be a six years old and the only way to help yourself is if you can actually give yourself compassion and observe the triggers that are causing you to go there and realize your wholeness that your wholeness is actually deeper than your pain that your infinite value and god's love for you transcends all of your mistakes and then you can address the addiction from a place of maturity and then you can make choices you can only make choices when you're not defined by your pain because you identify your wholeness as long as you don't identify your wholeness you're a victim to your choices freedom is a muscle you either use it or you lose it we have to create new neural pathways to have choices our neural pathways especially of an addict are very very narrow you think in one way you talk one way your consciousness follows one direction only when you can cultivate a larger version of yourself and you can observe you can have an eye that observes the triggers you could say wow look what happens when my wife says this to me why am i triggered to run away tell her i'm going to shula and instead go to a thursday night strip club you can observe it you could look at it and you could say wow can i see what happened and then you can actually start making choices and then one day you'll be lucky enough that those texts will apply to you you know what because you're lucky enough to have choice you're lucky enough to be courageous you're lucky enough to actually look at your life and say you know what yes spilling seed is not a good thing porn addiction is not a good thing masturbation is a serious thing from a jewish perspective from a jewish perspective the seed of life has infinite divine power to it because it's the sperm that really creates life and you have to be very sensitive and very respectful and and very dignified with it and also sexuality releases our deepest emotions and when my emotions are being released through masturbation or porn i'm never going to become an authentic person because it's just getting released it's being squandered only when i actually don't let it get released and i deal with myself i deal with my anger and with my pain and with my wounds and with my frustration do i become a real person judaism's opposition to porn addiction to masturbation to to prostitution is not coming because the torah wants to ruin everybody's life and stifle everybody's fun we i know we're edu some of us think that way but the truth is the exact opposite it's because torah wants you actually to live a full sexual life to actually suck the marrow out of intimacy to actually be able to enjoy intimacy in a deep real meaningful inspiring way that nourishes your body and your soul and your psyche and your heart and your physical and spiritual and for that relationship we all need boundaries just like i can be married to my wife and be interested in every other woman because it's going to compromise my relationship with my spouse so these are limits that are there to help us maximize our sexuality not destroy our sexuality but you know what you have to reach a place of deep awareness to be able to understand these things and then you look at these texts and you'll understand them in a different way it's very unfair to throw this on a 15 year old poor kid who's been exposed in sixth grade to all types of pornography and now he's in the mikveh in his yeshiva hasidic yeshiva he's 14 years old he sees other boys you know what's happening everybody's going to the mikveh to prepare for dharvani you know what he's thinking about he's thinking about i want to be with these boys what do you want from this kid can't you have compassion you're now going to tell this kid that he's going to burn in hell forever god hates him and all of his kids are going to be sick that's very cruel it is and right so my approach has always been to kind of sidestep it i don't know what i i don't know how to address it i don't speak from that perspective or anything else you're saying no let's integrate it that's just not speaking of course let me tell you something ellie the way the describes porn and masturbation is the most sophisticated and most spiritual truth about it but in order to be able to hear this you have to come from a place of self-love self-compassion a place where you make choices will you understand what's going on in your life where you don't feel that you're a valueless this is a rabbinical ruling i just want to i want to be clear that if somebody feels like a doormat if somebody feels like a valueless depressed loser to be able to share with them these laws is a form of spiritual murder what are you doing to them you're breaking them more you already feel like the loser of humanity the loser of the jewish people and what am i telling you you finally came to me the rabbi you opened up and what am i telling you i open up the text and you say let me tell you well unfortunately for a lot of us we know it you know we learned whatever it was and we see some of these things i know the text very well i know the text and these texts were written by deeply loving spiritual people but like everything you have to hear it in context and the context is somebody who is emotionally solid somebody who has connection somebody who has attachment somebody who doesn't hate themselves most of these people are going to porn because they hate themselves they can't be five minutes with themselves they have never been honest with anybody in their lives their brains have ptsd scan their brains and you will see that certain parts of their brains are so you're saying this person is choiceless this person is choices for the most part you're not saying everyone blanket ruling but for the most part the people who are struggling i don't use the word choices let me say their choice is not another person's choice their choice that they have at this moment is if they can actually listen to a voice inside of them that tells them there is hope that's the choice at the moment and sometimes even that choice doesn't exist it takes a lot of work to develop choice correct you have to be a healthy person to have choices and it's so such time to text doesn't apply to you i like it ellie how many trauma forget let's get porn for just one moment you know how many people are suffering from trauma their spouse tells them something your husband your wife your child they go crazy here's a 45 year old man he's actually a millionaire he gives tzedakah he's a nice guy okay his wife tells him something and he goes crazy he doesn't know why it's not his wife he has trauma that it was never dealt with now you tell the guy it says in safari that you're not going to do this dr bessel von der kulk the author of a body keeps the score as the leading expert on trauma told me these words he says the worst thing a therapist can tell a patient is you're not supposed to think this way he says do you think we're trying to think this way right do you think i'm trying to be addicted you think so you think i want to ruin my marriage you think i want to go into the bedroom and think about everybody else besides my wife you really think so he's a good guy we know him he's generous he's nice he'll take his shirt off his back to help a stranger you think he really wants to destroy his kids the poor guy is overwhelmed by trauma and nobody ever helped him release it he doesn't even know that he's overwhelmed by trauma what we have to do at such moments is compassion compassion to help people open up and see how big they are how beautiful they are how grand they are so that the molestation the abuse the emotional neglect doesn't have to define me for the rest of my life it's all about awareness awareness awareness once there's awareness then let's talk about choices then we'll bring in the texts that tell you about paths in life that are very destructive which includes masturbation which to be clear i'm on the same side of you i'm on the same side as you the only difference between us is i took these texts and kind of put it in a box sealed and closed you say no they're there they're there we'll learn them later i i cherish these texts i read these texts i read these texts and i say wow this these are texts that are describing truths about existence if you want a good relationship with yourself if you want a good relationship with god and a good relationship with your spouse these are ways to live if i go to masturbation it affects my marriage i might say 10 minutes a day there's a part of my soul that goes into my sperm that's going to be taken away from my wife you could deny it from today till tomorrow my marriage will be downgraded my marriage will not be the same you know why because part of my sexual fulfillment i am getting from from from movies from pornography from clubs from websites from my imagination from other people whatever this is a truth we may deny it but it's a fact and judaism understood these truths very very well that's certainly when i'm married even when i'm not married engaging in acts of masturbation really downgrades your level of life because when i have to deal with my emotions i become self-aware i can focus on growth i can become a real person i can develop friendships that are based on authenticity and honesty masturbation is a cheap fast way to release my tension without dealing up with anything inside of me and then there's the spiritual elements of masturbation and there's the spiritual elements of porn understanding what's in a seed understanding the power of sexuality understanding that it's our most divine holy it's the most divine holiest dimension in human life sexuality is where you are god-like it's our ability to create life just like god and that's why jewish law is so sensitive to it not because we love making everybody crazy about sexuality but because when you're standing face to face with god every detail counts and that's powerful but you know what this is a very mature conversation and it can only happen with people and between people who are not reacting and being triggered from a place of deep deep self-loathing so your perspective on shame seems to be in line with mine there's no room for it it's not helpful i i would just make a distinction between maybe shame and and and feeling feeling uh remorse or feeling ashamed it's important in other words if i lied to you if i lied to you yesterday we had a conversation and i just lied to you and today i feel empty i say you know what why did i have to lie why can't i be an honest person i'm ashamed with myself and i'm gonna go apologize to you or go talk to somebody about it that's good that's good it means i have a moral sensitivity and my soul is almost crying out you could live a better life you don't have to lie that type of of remorse or inner inner pain is good because it's motivating me to mend my mistakes to apologize to say i'm sorry but when shame becomes about i'm a bad person i'm a sick loser then not only is it not good it actually increases addiction it it it makes me much much more addicted you know why because all addiction is about a lack of connection all addiction is about loneliness and the moment i tell myself i'm the worst person in the world i go straight to addiction so not only so let's say someone's not addicted and that's why i asked at the end of the conversation who are we talking to i say someone's not addicted someone just you know they watch from time to time right here too you have to be very careful in in in in in jewish spiritual text it says that one of the greatest schemes of the eight sahara let's call him the toxic forces inside of us is to make people feel that they are losers guilt what we call guilt remorse could be very positive i did something wrong i insulted you i lied i hurt the feelings of my wife i hurt the feelings of my mother my sister i apologize remorse that's good it's not in line with who i am it's almost i feel ashamed of what i did i made bad mistakes fine and i want to apologize the whole institution of yom kippur of troops about that it's glorious it means we make mistakes we're vulnerable we say i'm sorry i remember when the day i got engaged my brother who you did many programs with rabbi simon jacobson he told me he said easy what he said why why one piece of advice for you don't try to be perfect in your marriage i know you you're gonna make terrible mistakes all i suggest is don't be perfect but be accountable if you make a mistake show up be accountable don't run away accountability is the name of the game it's behind all growth accountability saying yes i'm weak i make mistakes i was sitting at my desk yesterday and i i was bored i was lonely maybe i got a big bill from the irs maybe my lawyer billed me i don't know and i got into a bad mood and you know what an hour later i was i was doing stupid things and i i i and i'm vulnerable and i'm broken and i'm sorry and i want to figure out how not to do it again you're a beautiful person you're a beautiful person but if it becomes about i'm just such a bad person essentially i'm i'm i'm i'm full of self-shame what's that going to do for you it's just going to ensure that tomorrow and the next day you're going to do it again it's so important to be able to have balance and you know what i sometimes find people even rabbis they'll sometimes tell me you know that once a month they do something that is inappropriate they're not addicted but once a month and i say okay okay so learn from it but but but but but that was one thing once a month right for 10 minutes and all the other parts of the months month you didn't do it could you give yourself also credit for that could you also say you know what once a month i failed okay okay so let's let's try to talk about it let's learn from it let's see what were the circumstances that triggered you and let's see if next month we could stay away from it granted beautiful you feel bad but can you also say most of the month it was once a month most of the month i was powerful i was like even for that even for that person the harsh text we mentioned earlier it doesn't apply have you talk about yourself i know talk about me what message encourages me to fix my mistake a message that rabbi wai is a liar is a thick sick person an evil person or a message you know what you're you're so full of goodness and potential you don't need to resort to these senseless acts in order to fill your void you're capable of so much more tell me which message that you think would be more helpful from the biggest rabbi from the biggest rabbi to to the youngest child which one now if there's a person who tells me no i want somebody to tell me you are a piece of filth and that's what's going to motivate you fine because if that's what's going to stop you fine but anybody i speak to lots of audiences and i always see when i see devil would advocate for the truth right no you see clearly when you when you show people their greatness i could see a spark in their eyes you could see a twinkle in their eyes they open up they smile they're there people want to be good we're not bad people we're good people we're broken we're not bad people i don't know of bad people i'm there's a few bad people but i speak to people they're not bad why are you telling them they're bad they're not bad they're broken they don't know how good they are you know what the worst thing about people is today you know what it's a horror today of most people is that they think they're bad right that that's that's actually what causes most of the problems i think i'm bad i i can't fit in i can't live up to real expectations i'm anyway a lost case so just go you know go at least enjoy yourself for the moment if you're you're a lost case anyway and you're going to burn in hell at least have somewhat of an enjoyable life in this world it's completely divorced from the entire essence of yudhisthira and that is god wants you to have a great life in this world not just in the next world next world too it's also important have you seen a difference i mean for example from when i was in yeshiva until now you still obviously talk to uh students of that age 17 18 years old so i'm sure you've seen a difference in terms of the problem right it's much it's it's got to have accelerated it can't compare what about what about the educators yeah educators gotten better since my day listen there's still a lot of work but there's certainly more awareness the challenges you have today a boy with a phone you know he gets bored and he goes out to the bathroom you know he doesn't need to go find a magazine he doesn't have to go to a kiosk he doesn't have to go to a movie theater he doesn't have to go find the tv you know it's in his pocket 24 hours a day he goes out of the room he goes into the bathroom so it's a whole different level it's a different level completely the other day i was giving a lecture and somebody was standing online at the end he starts crying and he says i'm getting married tomorrow night he sells me he's a hustler a innocent boy 24 years old i'm getting married tomorrow night i said okay why are you crying he says i've been a porn addict since the age of 12 years old 12 years every day ellie here 12 years every day he said i'm going to get married tomorrow my expectations for my wife are not going to be normal they're going to be defined by the porn scenes what am i supposed to do tomorrow night in the bedroom when i come home from the wedding i looked at him what i was thinking was i don't understand you had to come to me the night before your wedding i mean you could have come two nights earlier couldn't come two weeks the night before the wedding but that's when he finally felt desperate he had to talk to somebody i was the first person first person in the world that he told us to well i'm looking at this person i gave him a big hug i told him listen there's gonna be work here but but your life is not destined you're not you're not destined to to live a life of hell as long as you're aware of the challenge and you're aware that a real woman is not is not a is not a prop a real woman is not a prop in a movie and not a prop on a website and not a prop and a certain in a certain app and you're aware of it and you're going to work on yourself good things will happen i have to say it's been a while now the man really he found somebody to open up to he found somebody to help him work it through he's a he's a good kid he was a good he is a very good kid he worked very hard that's what i would tell someone like that to reach out he's already doing amazing he's talking about it he's bringing it up yeah and i have to say you noticed it the day before not ten years later brutal honesty is where miracles begin we have to stop lying we lie we all do that we lie i lie we lie human beings lie tigers don't lie cheetahs don't lie they tell you when they hate you they bite you they kill you we we know how to lie this is our profession but miracles happen when there's brutal honesty you know we have to find those people in our lives with whom we can be completely honest you could spill your deepest darkest secrets people you trust people who are confidants and i also have to say people sometimes in the name of honesty you throw everything on your spouse you need direction for that your wife can't become your therapist that's not fair right there's vomiting you need careful ah yeah what they say is there's rigorous honesty which is a program term rigorous honesty and then there's brutal honesty we want rigorous honesty rigorous honesty no you have to have direction how to communicate with your spouse how to create this process it's it's it's a very serious process honesty and humility are the two foundations of all healing and all recovery knowing that you don't know knowing that there's so much more to learn so much more to discover when i'm lacking either human humility or honesty one of the two are both i'm back and i'm back into addiction so if we're going to honesty one of the questions um brought this up so about women and you know occasionally i'll have women reach out to me about this struggle and i always find if you talk about shame right the level of shame that a man has for stumbling on porn women have tenfold or 100 fold and the numbers aren't low if you look at for example from the viewers of pornography let's say it's 80 90 of men watch it several times a week and forty fifty percent of women watch it several times a week so you're not you know if you're dealing with depression and you had numbers of forty fifty percent you'd say wow it's an epidemic but because men are twice as common as women women are seen as not struggling with this and when they eventually do come to terms with it or want to address it it's a there's a lot of added shame you know around it for for many reasons societal norms the guy gets the woman is the trophy the woman is with the guy she's a [ __ ] so you have those those ideas as well so i i feel like maybe addressing some of those things to to women is have you had that experience talking to some of those what's your message to them is it different than than to men [Music] listen it's as you know as you said the shame is very very deep very very deep and from my experience sometimes the self-loathing that women i just had literally this week dealing with a woman who's been cheating on her husband for many many years and uh and she's really very wise very spiritual but broken completely broken not a not an ounce of self-esteem and the best thing we can do for ourselves and for others is become empathetic witnesses peter levine the founder of semantic therapy defined trauma he said trauma is not what happened to you trauma is that which is stuck in your body lacking an empathetic witness we have so many things stuck in us and there's no empathetic witness either i criticize it i delegitimize it i deny it i repress it i suppress it i meet this woman and i want to become an empathetic witness i want to become a container like a recom a womb the morale says the womb in hebrew is means compassion it's beautiful what's compassion compassion is i don't have solutions for you but i want to contain without judgment without criticism without repressing without denying and in that process a lot of healing happens in very very deep ways and i think for men and include for women especially that process has to happen you're going to have to acknowledge the pain of your loneliness this woman was so broken she grew up in a dysfunctional home again talk about choice okay she was abused as a girl for 10 years she got married to a man who is an ad who has serious mental illness and cannot connect emotionally yes she went to porn she went to other men she's doing things that are very very destructive but what i see is not a sinister malicious woman i see a woman who doesn't have an ounce of self love of self here and the first thing i can do is just contain her with all her pain so that she should be able to contain herself and be empathetic to herself and really feel what was taken from her at such a young age and acknowledge it and then realize back to your thank you letter everything i did was a coping mechanism those were the only tools i knew i was trying to survive women need this as much as men maybe even more than men certainly equal to men and that process is a very very sensitive and deep process the moment they can feel the love in your voice and the lack of judgmentalism they can relax and they can open up we tighten up when we feel judged that's why it's so important to be full of empathy to everybody you meet you know i have learned in my experience that there's nothing like compassion there's nothing like just containing the other person just be a womb literally what a mother does for a fetus she doesn't judge the fetus she doesn't fix the fetus it doesn't tell the fetus how to breathe how not to breathe how to grow how not to grow just i'm just gonna let you grow within me and miracles happen in nine months you have a full-fledged miracle it's incredible so and and if we can do that emotionally to people i think it's it's incredibly powerful someone asks here uh how to deal with lust uh i know there's a 12-step program that speaks a lot it's not one that i've joined but there's one maybe some some of the people listening so anyway they talk a lot about lust almost like an addiction to lust is this is this a thing is to say i have my thoughts on it which i'll address in a moment but share your thoughts and i'll i'll share your thoughts on this please yeah so every time i hear it i feel like it's a baton to beat someone else to be up over the head relentlessly because like i said i'm on a 12-step program we don't publicly say the name of the program we're in so i won't but it's not one that addresses lust addresses sex addiction i don't know what to make of lust yoga is like i have a lust addiction i don't know what that means does that mean you're human like what is his lust addiction i know when i did an action i know even when i'm obsessing over something i'm toying with the thought i'm playing with it like you know i'm writing the story in my head i've mapped out all the details i that's an action even though it's a thought there's an action to that thought i've i'm doing much more than uh you know a thought that came into my brain now i'm you know i'm massaging it i'm wrestling it i'm i'm playing with it but lust itself like this idea all i hear is someone that has an endless um like an endless whip a whip that never ends i lost it i lost it i lost it i lost it i lost it and the term drives me crazy i think it should be uh banished from any sort of recovery or healing uh process that's my personal position on it i i i think it's i think what you're saying is important i would just maybe add this maybe a little bit from a different angle and say this is a there's a beautiful teaching from the alta rabbi from the balatanya in the coty tower parshas it's an amazing teaching about recovery and he says whenever you're feeling a very powerful temptation or lust he says have the courage to strip it from the outer facade and look what it's really about very often the lust that you're feeling that you're calling lost is coming from a very very excited soul you're on fire and you want fire you don't want to live a life of quiet desperation as a great poet poet thoreau once said you don't want to live a dull life you want to live life to the fullest carpe diem seize the day you are a lustful soul you want drama you want excitement you want animation you want electricity you want nuclear energy in your relationship and i say to you great muzzle tough muzzle tough now let's figure out how to channel it in ways that are authentic and real and deep and meaningful that's what your challenge is you don't have to get rid of your creativity you're on fire so there's a few elements to it number one if you have if you're in a marriage in a good marriage can you build a relationship where you can both trust each other with your fetishes with your child-like dreams in a way that is respectful to the other person not in a way that's exploitive and abusive not in a way but in a way where you can really become a child with your spouse you could both be children that's what a good marriage is like you don't need to be mature mature you're on your office with your people right you're a ceo you got to be mature with your employees but when you have a good relationship that's where the you know the child-like party come out that's number one number two can you find that lust in your spirituality you know maimonides the rambam and his laws of repentance describes a love to god and he compares it to somebody who has a crush on a woman this is what he writes 24 hours a day he thinks about this woman when he sleeps when you eat you know we have a crush on somebody you eat and you drink and you sleep and you go to work and you go to exercise and you polish your shoes and you go on the plane and all you think remembers around my mind and he says this that quote all you think is about this woman he says some people know how to have such a relationship with god do you can you relate to this so i want to tell you that if you can find there are parts of judaism that are highly highly intoxicating from a spiritual point of view and if you're a lustful soul you will find very deep fulfillment in them very different some people find it in real prayer some people find it in kabbalah in hasidis some people find it in song and melody some people find it in friendship some people find it in becoming ambassadors leaders ambassadors of love of compassion in their marriage as people find it don't you don't have to destroy any of it you want to harness it in ways that will actually turn you into an incredibly powerful force so practically what would that look like what what what would it look like i i i i cannot have this i know what i'm trying with and i'm asking whatever it is i'm gonna i'm gonna talk about me myself okay i ha i happen to have a pretty animated soul there's lost inside of me there's lust inside of me okay now i i try to be a responsible person i try to be an anchored person which is not contrary to my nature because i'm a little artistic and i sometimes like to fly so i have to be very responsible and i anchor myself but for example i personally have a few things spiritual pursuits that i could tell you they put me on a high they're for me they're oxygen one of those things for example is learning uh the teachings of siddhas from some of the greatest spiritual masters like the balsamic the magi the altareb the leaders of chabad and some other great hasidic masters and i read i could start crying i could start singing i can start dancing and what i see is i find such deep truths of existence i'll meditate on it and it really it gives me a serenity and a tranquility and a perspective that i will not replace for anything and it allows me actually to teach lots of people and inspire people the same is true about certain relationships whether in a marriage or with other loved ones that are very deep and authentic and you can allow your lust to come out again in ways that are not exploitive i for example i heard i was a student many years and i last grew up at the feet of the lubavitchereb there was something about his talks for me that expanded my mind and my horizons incredibly in terms of understanding the world and understanding judaism till today right before our talk tonight i went on a walk on my street because we have a slope my street is on a slope so it's good exercise and i can use a little bit of it so i was listening to a talk of the rebel purim 1960 i yiddish talked for a few hours and i just have to say for me it was like the lustful part of my soul was satiated there was such spiritual existential psychological scholastic emotional depth and the integration of all parts of terror and application to life and to jewish life for me it gets my heart on fire my soul on fire find what can ignite your soul get your soul on fire you need it you're you're not a dead soul borrow hashem find it find it in your marriage find it in your judaism find it with people and if you do there are such not everybody needs it some people are more you know they're more they like monotonous huh right some are colder i understand yeah you know there's this tremendous also forms of healing today so many unbelievable forms of healing somatic healing body healing various exercises energy healing various forms of meditation breathing grounding work there's incredible stuff out there today that are so in tune with judaism and with spirituality about integrating truth into your body and releasing trauma from your body and realizing you're saying instead of instead of fighting the lusts yeah find a way to express it that's what the balance is all lost has inside a very powerful spiritual core get rid of the outer trappings and you'll see what you're really looking for is something much deeper and you know what that's going to be a loss that's going to make you that's going to make you feel proud of yourself it's good lust it's it's becoming crazy about things that you want to be crazy about it's good to have a conversation with someone i had a conversation with someone a few days ago where he was explaining to me he was talking about this topic where he has a lot of thoughts about people other than his wife and he's realized after working through this and some of it through some of the techniques you just mentioned that it's really his deep care for humanity and instead of wanting to be with every nationality perhaps he has to help every nationality so you're saying it was an interesting conversation and i was listening to him i didn't have much to say i nodded along and did my best to be what was the the a womb to him empathetic witness right to his ideas i saw they were coming from a profound place of realization for him like they came from through some of like i mentioned meditation or other kind of sound healing or other stuff he came to this realizations that maybe my sexual drives and urges is really a deep care for humanity and you know cross cross cultural i like everyone i want to help everyone and he was talking to me about how he's going to to channel that and that he spoke to his wife about it as well and you know where that was coming from how that opened up a conversation today there's a lot of centers that are using psychedelics to heal trauma and people suddenly realize that a lot of their addictions and their lust are rooted in a deep spiritual yearning for love for connection for relationships that these these these centers are helping them realize it's amazing stuff it's a time of revelation of a lot of awareness and i want to tell you something else there's a story in the talmud and gemara attracted suva's page 17 one of the greatest communic sages he was a scholar he would go to weddings and he would dance wildly wildly and one of the other sages that is said you're embarrassing all of us you're like a scholar you're a great rapper you're supposed to carry yourself with dignity and then he says when he died the time says when he died they saw that there was a pillar of fire following the coffin and this great sage says to sailor his insanity is what put him on a completely different spiritual plane it's a very powerful concept you know can you go to a wedding and just lose your self-consciousness and dance three hours like a little child that has no ego and no self-consciousness that's healthy insanity that's healthy lust there's an unbelievable story in in the book of shmool the book of samuel king david welcomes back the oran the ark david the king of israel the most powerful person was whistling and jumping and doing acrobats and gymnastic movements jumping leaping literally dancing and his wife looked out the window and she said you are an embarrassment you are a humiliation and he says humiliation i would do it much more and much deeper this i'm dancing before god that type of ecstasy we need in our lives you see we ashkenazic jews i know i know you don't come from completely from the background but me many of us ashkenazic jews we decided that all of judaism is about cerebral experiences you sit and you learn and you think and then maybe you become a lawyer you become an accountant you become a teacher you become but it's very cerebral and intellectual and many of us have lost touch with the ecstasy with the passion with the virum kite with the ability to dance to sing to jump to leap to hug to love to embrace to give that's that but we all have soul you're saying that some of this energy is coming out sideways yeah and aaron sexual yeah fantasies thoughts actions etc so you touched on something interesting which actually is apropos because the the specific um type of healing the person was doing that made him aware that a sexual drive was uh wanting to help people was actually psychedelics and the next conversation that i um intend to have this format is ketamine clinics are popping up all over and i'm going to have with a couple of people who are uh um in this field from people who are in this field of uh ketamine healing what what are your thoughts on it what are some of the texts i i saw one letter from the rubber for example on on lsd what as yeah my expectation is that over the next three to five years this will go to a therapist and they'll say okay you know ecstasy i have ecstasy for you there's mdma treatment that's licensed and you know the studies are uh yeah are revolutionary this yeah the only thing i would say is i think sometimes it could be very helpful i do think it's important that it should be supervised with a professional therapist and doctor for a simple reason and this is very very important these psychedelics cannot become a substitute for daily living they can only become sources of awareness that you then have to work and integrate in your life through your own resources what happens often and this is a big stumbling block for people they have a word of caution for those who yeah very important they're so powerful and such powerful tools of awareness that we just want to live in that space but you can't live in that space unless you want to become an angel or you want to live in another world or in another planet so what these psychedelics can do and with the proper lead with the proper supervision and direction is they can create awareness of what's happening deep inside your subconscious so that now you should know what you have to work on but this is what's called avoiding atma you really have to learn how to stimulate yourself from within with your own resources with your conscious daily tools that god has given you but i think if it's super if it's if it's not supervised i'm also try to be cautious because sometimes it just becomes a procreative form of recreation and leisure and i think it makes people often less responsible in a detachment obviously listen i mean if we're we're discussing this format you're talking about doing something in a legalized format but i think it's important to have supervision from professionals who can guide you to utilize it in a way that's actually going to enhance your vision to be able to know what you have to work on and then comes the real work when you get back home and you have to start integrating it which is much harder but that's where the real work happens so we can it's very powerful it's one of the things god embedded into our world for a reason but i think do not allow that to become a crutch and a substitute for taking responsibility for your life and believing in your ability to be able to use your day-to-day resources to live an extraordinary life are you are you familiar with the letter of the rubber that i referenced regarding lsd yes yes all right so most of the letter seems to be fairly a negative and against it how does this jive with what you're saying i mean there's two words there yeah no well i think i think with the rebels letters you always have to know what was written to him because it was a personal response and the way i understand it i didn't see the letter that was written to him but from the spirit of his responses there was a movement in the united states of people who lsd was literally a lifestyle um aldous huxley i think even wanted it to be put into the water reserve of the new york city system so that we we should wake up and the rebbe said with ebba's point was lsd it's better to do lsd as in let's start davening meaning it's like sometimes these these drugs can create awakenings but if it becomes a lifestyle it often is very counterproductive because people start living vicarious lives through them and you you see sometimes i know people that every night every night just does my basic weed a guy told me he says my marriage is not good i come home i just smoke i smoke weed and that's how i survive my marriage the challenge here is you know his wife looks into his eyes and he's just not there his children look at him you know he's not there we have to take responsibility for our lives and say i can deal with my trauma i do not have to escape i may want to use these things again in a in a supervised way but as a responsible person so i think that's the distinction between different approaches here we're right i mean there are some who say you know off limits it's not okay and the the letter that i wrote that i reference which says i mean what the question seems to have been should i use it to attain mystical experience right so it seemed to be focused on the spirituality right so i think what he meant was an ongoing basis on an ongoing basis and i think the rebbe felt very strongly that judaism is ultimately a system where you really have to be able to find a relationship with god within internally with the tools that you were given as a person but i i think especially when it comes to trauma and there's so much of it today if these can be used by professionals to help you become aware of things and release them just to say that it's all forbidden i don't think is right and i don't see the basis for that right all at all i personally know people that it opened up vistas to subconscious pain that they were never aware of well i've i've heard that the um the voltuva movement is in no small part connected to the uh to that movement but listen the uh like i said ketamine clinics are starting to pop up all over the u.s and apparently a lot of people in addiction say that some of these treatments obegain and some others have been helpful cannabis obergane ketamine you you referenced uh yeah yeah you referenced on what he said earlier earlier his um he spoke about addiction as ayahuasca is the number one treatment he's seen for uh for for addiction and i think in peru he was leading um he may even still leading these uh sort of treatments but there's also another incredible breakthrough i heard this from bessel von decock told it to me directly he said that we have discovered in recent years that very often mental illness is a result of trauma which is incredible it was always thought that a human being is a machine and sometimes your chemicals are off just like you could break your arm or break your leg something and you have a mood disorder he said that could be the case but we're finding so much of mental illness that can be attributed back to traumatic experiences so the level of synchronization today between the spiritual and the physical between the mind the body the soul is incredible it's just incredible and we're leading history is taking us to a place of of of very deep enlightened consciousness where we're going to discover the oneness of the universe the oneness of humanity the oneness with inside ourselves you know there's a line in tanya that always it's it still moves me that altered should write this in the 1700s you know before they even knew that there was something called bacteria fungus viruses electrons and neutrons what a cell looks like you know nobody knew about these things and he says and i quote he says if we had microscopic eyes if our eyes had those enhanced uh sensors uh uh detect the sensors to detect reality when we would look at matter we would see the the spiritual energy that's flowing through everything in matter and we would see that the whole world is divine energy such a beautiful description which is literally cutting edge physics and science today you know the levels of spirituality that science speak about in terms of physics and quantum mechanics and and that all of matter is really made up of energy and consciousness i mean it's incredible stuff so i think it begins within ourselves you know when you look at yourself as an addict we have to identify how spiritual we are how deep we are how divine we are which means how beautiful how gorgeous how powerful how infinite we are and and if i cannot embrace my infinity addiction is the way to go for me because addiction literally is my escape from the pain of the emptiness that comes from not knowing my strength and wanting to run away from my self-consciousness in that sense we're all addicts because self-consciousness is that innate plague of humanity that's based on detachment i come to a wedding i come to a bar mitzvah i come to a restaurant i come to your house and instead of feeling one i'm busy becoming my own narrator does he like me does he not like me am i impressive am i not impressive should i dance should i not dance do i belong or do i not belong here what should i say now and we all suffer from this like could you just get me out of my mind can you get me my self-consciousness can you let me live can you let me become one with life addicts are just people who feel it more than the others they feel it more and therefore their escapes are are much more dramatic so much i think much of judaism is an exercise in in trying to experience this oneness and when we experience this oneness so then we need much less we need less those that pornography or other stuff to be able to give us those thrillers and those highs that we need because the void is so profound i heard someone say an addict is like everyone else only more so but one thing interesting i mean when i first entered therapy i found that there is a major lack in most therapies not the stuff you're talking about right the trauma therapy and the spiritual therapy and the psychedelic therapy and the sound healing and meditation and all of those that jives very well with judaism but in the the traditional therapists the western modality is almost to strip away god from the conversation we talk about victor franco like we respect him but we couldn't give a damn about what he says because anything that from the therapeutic model we just don't deal with it it's there's an issue how do i fix it so we'll talk about it a little bit but they'll never really go to the more spiritual sides of it your brother and i did a whole conversation on this and i think that as um more of these become mainstream more of this type of healing the body-mind spirit there's going to be a need for uh a lot of rabbis and spiritual leaders to enter the healing space yeah yeah we can have these conversations we all need to expand our consciousness we have to realize that a lot of our judaism has been very ritualistic you know very you know do the right thing which is wonderful there's red lights there's green lights there's halacha you do this you don't do this which has been the foundation of jewish life over the generations but in order to really sustain it there's so much deep spirituality and deep psychological awareness out there that for judaism not just to compete with it but to remain the shining light for humanity we need to expand our consciousness to a judaism that is that is fully in sync with the deepest truths of psychology science physics spirituality and and some of our spiritual traditions have given us that gift but many of us are simply unaware of it or even if we're aware of it we're not aware of it viscerally you know our education is very it's very it's here it's in the mind like nobody ever taught us about the body it wasn't part of uh right so what you're saying to come full circle is it's kind of being woken up by the addict by the unhealed by the mentally ill it's that's what's forcing it to wake up and say okay how do i heal and and by the children who are leaving judaism in droves yeah all these and and and those among us who are suffering and they're helping us say wow wow wow wow where did we go wrong what did we not give these kids what are they looking for what are they searching for it's not an easy question to answer that's why we love blaming other people because then we don't have to look into ourselves but really i have to look at myself as maybe my judaism a little dysfunctional is maybe part of our judaism trauma driven is part of our judaism anger driven is part of our judaism driven by just our own inadequacies we want our kids to give us knachas so that we could feel good about ourselves you know if all my kids remain religious and i can marry them off and then i could look at the family picture and i could say wow i am a success story i have defeated hitler i have defeated stalin i have defeated pharaoh haman which is wonderful it's amazing and it's beautiful and it's inspiring but sometimes we have to go much deeper and say you know did i really work out all my own crap did i really work a lot like what i was being taught was a mechanism to control god right if i do this he'll do that if i do this and recovery that's one of the things that shifted where i'm stepping out of that paradigm and that mechanism saying no i'm embracing everything you know i'm living life on life's terms right to borrow a recovery term which some of what i felt like in yeshiva was okay what are the tools if i do x y and z then i control god to give me a b c and if i don't then okay it's going to go the other way so it's this whole mechanism to control god it's a theory that i've been playing with which dovetails well with this is based on stories not scientific or anything else i just i like listening to people's stories and sometimes some of the feelings that connects with different addictions so i'll share it for for what it's worth so i found that very often people who consume alcohol a lot have a very very um high self-consciousness they're very conscious of cells and somehow the out the alcohol allows them to kind of melt into the room they're not so they're not feeling their uh every cell of their being like you know like you feel a sh a brand new pair of shoes you put on and wondering what everyone thinks about it you know sometimes you walk into a meeting and it's like you feel your hands clammy and everything else and an alcoholic often feels like that 110 percent of the time until they take alcohol then it's like oh i'm not so conscious of self so what a beautiful thing right they're trying to do something to be less self-conscious for uh drug addicts almost uniformly they're looking to be like nadav just stuck stuck in outer space they want to be connected to hashem at all times and part of i i think it may have been that event we're at together at the recovery center there was uh shared a poem he had a heroin addiction and there was a beautiful refrain in it i'm gonna mess it up but it was something along the lines of god when i put that needle in my arm i was aiming for you i missed my mark and it's almost uniformly wow amongst drug addicts that i've heard that i've heard this like the feeling behind it is wanting to be connected to god and that the drug allows them to just suspend themselves in that space and then they want to go back again and feel the spirituality and feel the connection and not feel the harshness of the world gamblers are usually gambling for hope they've lost all hope so this is again a story but the sex addict which is what we're talking about here 100 of the time that i've worked with an addict there's a deep and myself included there's a deep and existential loneliness this feeling and the more people we're around and the more people we you know we surround ourselves with and sometimes the closer we get to people the more at the end of the night there's this feeling of i'm going home alone and that loneliness becomes so painful and the only way to anesthetize is this fake connection that we can fake fake connection that's the key porn is a fake connection it's a fake connection it's a glass connection and the same is true like when you have uh for you know there was a girl who committed suicide and the mother was at the funeral there were a few people she said i don't understand she had 2 000 friends on facebook where are they 2 000 likes on facebook right where are they why are they not at the funeral yeah the family connection and the spiritual person feels the fakeness so tomorrow he needs more porn he needs more intense porn to compensate for the void of yesterday's porn which left me feel empty and stupid and and deceptive so tomorrow i need a double portion but the irony is why this is so important specifically for this addiction because in that what happens with sex addiction is we all end up in an island right people don't say okay let's all get together and watch pornography even you go to a strip club right where it's more public they say okay give me a private room in the strip club okay for the intended it's not a public it's not i'm not going to a bar and drinking with 10 people saying oh i don't feel self-conscious anymore let me be around people it's a very isolating addiction it's one one of the times i knew that i had a real problem with addiction is i had a business meeting at a strip club and after the meeting ended i drove my car with everyone else i made a u-turn and i came back because what i wanted to be there for i couldn't be around anyone else and it occurred to me at the end of that night when i was leaving the strip club whatever it was at three four in the morning that hey i was the only one who turned back wow right so maybe there's something that's on a little bit more of uh of an extreme than some of the others wow but that loneliness right if we're talking about a lot of what your message here tonight was is to don't fight it don't hate it like look at it what is it i don't want to be lonely i don't want to be honest and that's a beautiful thing beautiful thing embrace that and the the addiction you know there's a beautiful beautiful void from the altareb he says that the maimonides when he speaks about abraham of rum he says he was steeped in idolatry like his father and his city he says why why does he want to defame him he was steeped in idolatry and he says because that's why he discovered god he was looking for something if he wasn't steeped in idolatry he would have never discovered god exactly he was just there to make money you know he was looking for something your pornography say thank you you were looking for a real connection you're an innocent boy you actually want love and you couldn't find love for whatever reason it's probably not your fault so porn became fake love what this fake news and this fake love it's called porn fake love this this it's funny you mention that because this conversation when it gets recorded on my side i'm showing up in your platform i'll throw it up onto the uh the podcast i have which i call in search of more so that's where i was i was in search of addiction therapist once told me he's very successful here muncie very compassionate person and he once told me he says he says i often tell addicts he says you know imagine this is i'm watching a movie and i see the face of a person and the person is sweating and his face displays anguish and he's full of blood and all i'll say about this person is he's sick call the doctor he's very ill but then as as the as the as the camera zooms out and i see the full perspective suddenly i see the person may be climbing and then when we zoom out further i see that he's actually climbing mount everest and he almost reached the top and suddenly the person who i thought a moment ago was just sick is actually very strong very healthy very athletic he's just achieved incredible success and he almost reached the top and he says i tell this to addicts you know you look in the mirror and you say i'm bleeding i'm in anguish i'm struggling i fell down again i tripped again i'm a sick person do you realize that god put mount everest in your life and you're in the middle of climbing it can you give yourself credit there's a combat there's a war yes war claims casualties if you ever watched the soldiers in normandy even those who survived it was brutal the pain the sweat the trauma but give yourself credit you're in a war you're in a combat zone and this goes even for people who didn't experience molestation yes yes yes yes yes because yes it's very deep i haven't met anyone i haven't met one person not one person with a severe addiction who doesn't have a story to tell and oftentimes you know earlier you're talking about like sexual abuse and even viewing pornography so when i tell you i said sexual abuse is not a good term because it's too mb what does it mean do i have to does a rape have to be involved there's have to be a monster at the other end of the line what if it's like me it was a teenager so does it make a difference so i say it has nothing to do with sexual abuse it's was your sexuality abused and that you could have walked into one at five years old somehow i don't know lightning hit a computer and it turned on pornography there's no bad man to point the finger at but at five years old you witnessed something that the brain wasn't able to comprehend ellie and ellie corona started and all of our kids went on to zoom for a year or two years besides the hasidim in muncie they were smart they kept their schools open but that's a separate subject everybody was on the zoom none of the parents knew what hit them we never heard of zoom right how many teenagers write to me how many of them became addicts yeah they're on zoom a whole day from eight in the morning till seven at night without social life for a whole year two years we have to we have to appreciate the battles that people are having and and every addict out there yes i'm a soldier i made mistakes i stumbled but you're in a war zone and give yourself credit for every enemy you take down if you think about what i mentioned earlier about loneliness being always connected to sex addiction in my experience and the people i've spoken to if you can get to that feeling underneath everything is that deep loneliness imagine what corona did to that right i don't know if you you know it's a very interesting thing if somebody asks from a jewish perspective what's the worst thing in the world people might tell you idol worship or or or adultery and all these types of things but if you look at the torah in bereishis genesis what's the first thing that tara says is not good it says hashem looked at creation every day and it was good he saw it was good but then comes the scene where god says loytive it's not good what's not good what the first thing that the torah says is not good is loytoy it's not good for a human being to be alone somehow loneliness is the first thing that the torah defines as not good because today we see that it's the foundation of much of our dysfunction and all trauma is a form of being alone i'm alone in the world i can't trust i can't love i'm not worthy of being loved i'm really alone and when i'm alone i need to find something to fill me up with that with that fake sense of of connection right and this is what has been so profound about my own process of speaking about this publicly which doesn't didn't come easy first of all i had a crazy fear of public speaking i was shy i whatever there are many things and then specifically about this topic i had a lot of fears i remember the day i saw my um the the talk i published the ted talk i published they didn't send me a message right i did the talk let's say in april and one day i'm in the office i don't know three months later i'm like hey did they ever publish this talk and i got an email so i googled my name and the first thing that comes up is a ted talk it just been published two or three days before and i remember this sinking feeling and saying like oh my goodness what did i do like i no control over this this thing is published now my son at the time was a year old let's say i think a year old so by the time this kid's in grade school he's going to be tormented over this video wow that's what it did it's like a porn addict the very first thing you put my name in you see escaping porn addiction are you now fully comfortable you still uh have pulpits no now i'm fully comfortable and that's that that's the other side of the story one i said okay so i have a mission my mission is that by the time he's an adult not an adult by the time he's in grade school that you know the age that they may pick on him for something like this and now my other kids who are also growing up you know year two younger than him that porn is viewed porn addiction is viewed the same way alcohol addiction is so thank you for the opportunity to spread this to more people but the other is no one you get messages from people and i get messages every single day every time i sign onto facebook instagram my email i have a message from someone else that they saw my talk and how it impacted them but it's just in this conversation as i'm talking that i'm realizing why it's so healing is because it heals that loneliness you don't feel alone when you have a struggle and someone else shares that struggle yeah it may be the most important program of all yeah or because the alcoholic has friends yes i don't know it's a i shouldn't say that right the kid is close right there's something what does billy joel say sharing the cup of loneliness but it's better than drinking alone so not that it's an easy addiction not that's an easy addiction it's not but there's something about right um sex addiction which yeah i'm encouraging for those listening reach out to people you'd be surprised how many how many people struggle with it i said i was any i spoke for yeshiva in florida a few weeks ago they were between the ages of 14 and 17. so before i started speaking i turned to the i said can i speak openly he said go ahead you're not teaching anyone anything and it's true you speak a room 14 15 say at the end one kid came over to me he struggles he's gay another person thinks he's a woman another person another couple of people were abused and i could have spent all night talking to each person the individual story i didn't have one person look at me like i had four heads when i spoke about pornography maybe they felt that way but by and large for people you know what ellie these are the conversations that everybody is most people are craving for today we're fed up with the cerebral conversations that are just detached from reality and are completely irrelevant people are just so fed up i don't know if you sit if you still sit at sermons or classes you probably don't anymore you probably checked out from that quite a few years ago but you know you see how people are just rolling their eyes and it's like okay you know bring it on again and suddenly when the teacher or the rabbi or the rabbitson or the therapist or the friend you know gets up and just speaks from their heart they're vulnerable like everybody just comes to life it's like you know the old model of communicating in an irrelevant way from the brain is just you're not talking to anybody you lost everybody and the challenge is the teenagers because when i spoke last night to a group two nights ago to a group of 150 female teenagers girls from florida 150 from a high school they came i gave them a class and then we did questions and i'm looking at them and i spoke honestly uninhibitedly to the dismay of some people in the room because they were asking very real questions not to the kids not to the dismay of the kids no for sure and you could see the fire in their eyes literally you see they're like wow wow wow wow wow we could be real we could be honest we could be authentic we're allowed to talk about struggle we're allowed to talk about we're allowed to talk about the fact that we have some serious challenges we have mental anguish we have anxiety we have wounds we have issues internal external it's so important today it's it's it's like it's a lifeline for people the the dishonesty even if it's not malicious it's just a disconnect where everything is intellectual and it's like you know reading what somebody once told me he said my education in the orthodox world he said it's like reading textbooks on cooking without ever cooking you know put in six eggs and then put in baking soda but rashi asks what if you don't have baking soda so then tyson says i'll find you something else instead of the baking soda and he says i want to taste the food stop telling me how to cook give me the food give me the food give me the experience i need to feel it in my bones i can't tell you how important this is today right all this text has to be made practical abraham torski visceral yeah someone came to abraham tourist and said how can you send people to church basements to go to uh aaa meetings and the like you have musser tanya you have all these holy books from holy rabbis he said no problem find me a room full of people who read those books like their life depends on it then i'll send them there but in the meantime all i got is the 12 steps to send somebody asks her ellie somebody says i have been telling myself in porn addiction it's not such a big deal i have a good wife i have a good marriage i'm a good father i make some money i have nice kids i do porn on the side to entertain myself do you really think it's a big deal listen like i said i never take on those arguments i never take on those arguments why for you no why was it a big deal for you why was it a big deal for me it took over my life took over your life take over my life consumed everything what i will say is that since i stopped there are many benefits actually let me say this story i wasn't sure if i should say the story but it happened this week i'll say it so several weeks ago a guy reaches out to me that his wife was abused and he's struggling with different things it's clear he's angry he wants to go after the abuser and everything else okay so i have some of that conversation with him because you know it wasn't too long ago that i was uh you know speaking at jcw events and the like and we had some of that conversation about confronting the abuser but as he spoke to me more about i said really the abuser is less important than your wife you're not trying to you've made it known already in the family you've made it known to his wife if there's anyone else you have to protect you've done that job like maybe turn your attention to your wife or her own healing to sit there and get this guy for the rest of their life i've i have yet to meet someone who was um abused not in some context yeah you hear a story someone jogging in a park and was randomly abused i was abused in context okay the context of my abuse was that i was an eight-year-old kid who didn't feel love who didn't was desperately seeking attention validation comfort and everything else not to blame anyone specifically maybe i was ultra sensitive maybe i was one of nine kids maybe i was both who knows but the fact of the matter is that it happened in a context and then this person groomed me he saw that he saw the opening and he took advantage of that so we can go and turn everyone into monsters and it's a fun game to play and and some some heads do have to roll and have rolled rightfully and there are some monsters out there but by and large we're much better off paying attention to ourselves and our own healing and what needs to happen and who was i the day before the abuse because i promised that all the abuse did for me was bring attention to the issue that needed attention thank god i was abused because had i not been abused i would have wondered until i was 75 what the hell was wrong with me but because i was abused i can walk into a therapist and say i had an issue but my abuse was there the day before also i was a lonely depressed anxious child who didn't feel loved and didn't feel had no self-esteem and everything else and there are many like them who weren't abused and i happen to be and i'll say it luckily i was abused because it got my attention if i just if i just may interrupt you and say that you're a source of inspiration and i want to just thank you as a brother to a brother as a soul to a soul for having the courage to use your own pain and story and turning it into a source of leadership and being an ambassador of truth and healing for so many people thank you could have gone in a different direction we did for a little research you could have easily got a different direction and i think you know you set an example for so many others and all of us every one of us is an addict in our own way everybody has our own deep dramas and skeletons and insecurities i can either hide them and you know dig dig in deeper into my shame and isolation or i could find a community i could find people who will be there for me and i will be there for them and we'll realize that uh that we're we're all broken and we're all trying to heal together and we all learn to learn from each other and vulnerability that's what people are leaving in droves people are leaving in droves a community where they don't feel yeah there's no vulnerability you know judgmentalism is just it's so it's it's so not it's so out of style it's like get a life like you know you're so clueless you know but i i would also say when somebody says if it's a big deal or not a big deal i wanted to finish this story yeah yeah oh yeah okay so this woman finally calls me this week i spoke to her husband several weeks ago and said my husband gave me your number previously but i figured i would talk to you and the issue essentially was that because of the abuse she was unable to be with her husband in any way and he was he was upset about it he was blaming on the abuser and putting it towards him and i guess the message that i gave to her is the message that i gave to i was that will give to this person who's watching porn i said obviously because she was abused she's incapable of being intimate with her husband but because she was abused she has no idea what she's missing out on anyway so she sits there and says the only reason she's even paying attention to this she doesn't have an issue right she's she's not the fat person she's a skinny person i don't have a food problem everyone thinks i'm beautiful right everyone thinks she's a saint she doesn't even need sex right and it's so what i said to her is listen i said we both went through the same experience our sexuality was abused i went one way hypersexuality you went the other way hyposexuality i said but the journey of recovering from it has not been not watching porn the the journey has actually been finding the beauty of sexuality with my wife and recrea and reconnecting to a healthy sexuality so i'm as distant from it as you are i obviously mine was in a much more you know there were risks of disease and there were risks of arrest and there were all sorts of other components and i was hurting i was hurting people in other ways so it's kind of the same thing i would tell this person who's struggling with who's watching porn they're okay with it okay do whatever you want god bless you it's not it's not eating your life but you don't know what you're missing out on and what certainly you're not getting is that deep level of connection and sexuality the the brilliance of sexuality the gift of sexuality right and that's what i'd really say in the last two or three years i feel like um that's the journey i'm on now it's how do i reconnect beautifully beautiful intimacy is into me see and uh yeah the shame and the guilt of your porn whoever's asking this question it certainly affects also other relationships and it affects your work it affects your friendships it affects your relationship with your parents your siblings your children because at the core it's really defining the way you react to the world there's a part of you that is fake to the part of you that is living in trauma and healing will will just enhance your life significantly even if you don't feel your life is being destroyed now right and this is where the addict sometimes has the benefits the addict sometimes has a benefit right what's step one step one is shattering denial right so sometimes the problem needs to be big enough for denial to be shattered and i think that's what's going on in the communities also is the problems are coming to the surface that it's very hard not to ignore the uh right somebody says he says i am a raging sex addict it's all i think about from morning to night i have no other life this is what i dream about this is what i do constantly it's like i'm completely overtaken where do i even begin the journey of healing wow if someone's a raging sex addict if they're at that place and identifying as such then raise your hand and say i'm a sex addict and go to some of those meetings right and and i i think so yes and i would also just suggest you know ultimately our victories come when we can identify deep down in ourselves do we have anything that we still feel is worth fighting for do you have values do you have priorities is there something you love is there something you cherish is there anything that's meaningful to you in your life can you start building that can you start getting involved in that is there anything that turns you on is there anything that excites you because the ultimate substitute for addiction is connection you need to be connected to something so ask yourself is there still anything or everything is dead maybe everything has died inside of you and then we need very serious you know form of shock treatment but maybe not maybe you'll look in and you'll find this there's something still alive inside of you there's some passion there's some love there's some fire what do you care for do you care for your kids do you care for relationships what that message reminded me of is kind of like the the last feeling i had before i came to meetings was i stopped going to these places or doing any of these things because i wanted to do it i i was doing it in order to get a reprieve from thinking about it my mind was it was just constant and i saw okay if i did it like you know it's then go do it do it do it do it do it do it do it okay i'll do it you leave me alone for 20 minutes it used to be two hours then it became 20 minutes and it became five minutes but eventually what i will say is there's a different way and it changes the gemara said i've learned to understand it well i learned it when i was a kid and i remember i remembered it for a while there's a limb when you feed it when you feed it it's hungry when you starve it it's full so when you starve it it's full yeah it must be a rav my rivo it must be a yeah there is a way out of the mess some but there's a way out of the mess a lot of accountability a lot of honesty authenticity integrity and slowly finding the voice inside of you that's there it's still there you're not completely dead because if you would be you wouldn't ask this question the obsession is distracting us from something and i'll i'll say i'll say a story for example now i was on a uh i was on about 45 days sober early recovery and i got on a phone call and during the phone call someone said something that upset me and quite literally i put the phone on speaker and started searching for pornography wow but now you know one of the things that changes in recovery is you don't just get on the train you watch yourself get on the train so now i'm watching myself get on the train i'm like whoa what just happened i was on a call for 20 minutes i was fine i was you know why am i on pornography suddenly and then i went and the conversation i said you know what the person upset me and i didn't express my my discomfort so i expressed it and as i described the eyes as i expressed it the urge went away unbelievable yeah so it's understanding what's beneath this those words that you said are critical words i think for all of us don't just get on the train watch yourself getting on the train and that's the key to all healing recovery is all about awareness correct in other words i'm still being triggered i still want to go to do porn but i'm watching it i see it there is an eye that transcends the addiction and the eye watches and sees what's happening in my brain and i'm like wow wow i am in this position i am really vulnerable and then you can see you can see the feelings right you swatch it happen you start preceding it and and suddenly you also there's a separation between your eye and those feelings you're not your thoughts and then you realize it's not me it's inside of me it's part of me but it's not me there's actually correct a me that is that could contain it that could be a womb that could contain it somebody writes here he says everything you said about lust is completely irrelevant to me i am an addict with lust i'm always erratic i speak inappropriately constantly i'm always turning my head to find somebody else to be with i'm just completely completely consumed by the lust of sexuality and this is my life and when you start talking about harnessing lust it's absolutely ludicrous very good point very good point and and i i stand corrected here because i i i went ahead of myself we have to state the obvious before you harness you lost you first have to have boundaries if you have no discipline harnessing lust is very dangerous we have to have the courage to say yes to certain expressions of loss that i'm not going to because you won't even discover any other form of lust as long as you're surrendering to this type of law so you're right it begins with with real boundaries with real lust somebody asks with real boundaries to fight the lust and then you could think about finding the depth of it and harnessing it in different ways you're right ellie somebody asks a very interesting question he says i i am sometimes addicted i get overwhelmed by sexuality sometimes it takes me over sometimes it doesn't take me over what should i do on a day-to-day basis to live a healthier life be practical with me what would you answer to that that's a very good question i'd like to see the uh the words over here so am i towards the top towards the bottom where do you see it though it's by me here it's not on the question and answer no oh i could text it to you yeah yeah i want to see the words just so i uh i answer the question exactly you're sending it to me here on the i'll also let me let me let me give my answer that i'm going to send it to you because i want to hear your answer it's it's i think it's a wonderful question because it's really i think it really affects all of us and i would just say one dimension to it i would love to hear what you know others say as well but i think it's so important to really take responsibility for your schedule and be anchored in a lifestyle that keeps you out of the mess as often as possible which means ask yourself what are the hours in the day that you go to porn what are the triggers that cause you to go to porn ellie just said he had that conversation and somebody said something hurtful and he didn't respond he didn't defend himself and it actually infer enforced his sense of low self-esteem and he went to porn ask yourself is it 10 o'clock at night is it in the office is it when you get into an argument with your wife is it when your children make give you a headache is what what is it is it shabbos is it holy days maybe i know people the worst days for them are jewish holidays because the expectations of spirituality are so deep and nothing happens and they go straight into porn addiction so figure out the moments when you're triggered most and then create a schedule that allows you to avoid those obstacles because once you're in the hole it's very hard to crawl out but if you can avoid the hole then you can live a much better life so imagine wake up in the morning at an early hour do things that make you a strong person a good davening learning exercise meditation yoga pilates jogging swimming massages hiking journaling dancing whatever it is but live a life that's anchored in your neshama in your serenity in your strength and your power and your god and live that schedule and be disciplined about it don't just hang out at a wedding or at a some summer till two o'clock in the morning and you wake up late and then you're bored and you're lonely and you feel bad about yourself and i don't know about your financial situation but really be responsible for your schedule create a schedule that is all about nurturing your inner and outer self being productive being an ambassador of truth of love of light of hope and eliminate all those circumstances that really bring you down into the abyss make schedules make chavrusas whatever community you're in but find a way to create a schedule that is full of life and vitality and meaning and inspiration intellectually emotionally spiritually maybe it means taking every day a walk with your wife maybe it means going every day on a hike for an hour i don't know where you live maybe it means going to a gym getting a personal trainer doing things challenging yourself getting involved in some charitable projects but i would say really take responsibility for your schedule 24 hours a day know when you're waking up when you're going to sleep what's happening in between and be very disciplined about it and make sure that schedule is filled to capacity with things that build you and build the people around you that i think is the beginning of creating a life where you look at yourself and you feel like you're a mensch you're a mensch you're you're you're sucking the marrow out of life a day is a day a day is not just a wasted uh wasted entity it's it's a real day i mean that's those are some basic thoughts that i would uh suggest if you text me that i'll address but i'll spend a few minutes on um let me just yeah you know people wanting to stop the addiction and what's you know what i've seen work for myself so i do have a much longer conversation that i've done it's both on youtube and on podcast form i call it uh i think escaping porn addiction was maybe three or four hours and what i what i um what i go through there is what i used myself which kind of was a three-pronged approach to um overcoming the you know freeing myself from porn addiction one is a technology component the second is support groups and the third is kind of the the deep inner healing call it a therapist or the therapies technology is important because if it's too accessible and too quick it's just it's we're going to go there i don't have any locks on my phone today but for about two years i needed it just because my the wiring was so every time i saw google the words went in every time i you know i had to get i had to i get my fingers accustomed not to working faster than my brain so without putting those protections in place or a number of different programs covenant eyes is a pretty good one i like it because it's uh it creates a conversation a connection it doesn't just block it that you can get around it's if there's any searches someone's notified if they haven't seen you on the phone for a day which may suggest that you're using something else they get notified there's screenshots that are taken that are blurred out they get notified and then it facilitates the conversations guard your eyes someone mentioned has a much more wholesome approach to uh to the whole um at least it's the fourth to the last chat just uh the fourth to the last shadow the question and answer no chat okay i think it's the fourth of the fifth to the last how to create a schedule to avoid porn sometimes an addict it's basically i like the question because it's you know getting into a good good the best is always the preemptive medicine you know so the the technology part i address which is just it's not the solution i know a lot of people run after technology tools thinking i'm going to find the perfect tool it reminds me of this i used to have this box at home it's called the k-safe and i used it sometimes to throw my phone in every dinner a few friends are over put your phone in you put a lock on the box and this little piece of plastic and it has a timer it can be for 30 minutes it can be for an hour so when i bought it i was looking at reviews and one person writes this thing's a piece of junk you can break it with a hammer okay so it's not the idea the idea wasn't to create a vault for your phone the create the idea was create a barrier between you and your phone or in this case ideas create a barrier between you and pornography so technology is not going to save you having the perfect tools because you always go to best buy and buy another one you can always borrow something you can figure out how to get around any luck the idea is that when the thought comes your fingers don't work faster than your brain that's all so you have momentary pause before you get on the train because once you're on you're on and then the next day you're picking it up it's very difficult once you've crossed a certain point in what one of the um understandings of the 12 steps is that there's an allergic reaction to the drug itself so unlike other therapies at the time in the 1930s when the tall steps started which was okay let's try to moderate if a guy needs alcohol so badly why am i going to take everything away let's try to teach him how to have a beer a night and he can function and a.a said no this isn't the way there's an allergic reaction the mind the body the spirit everything derails once there's an ounce of alcohol that touches a person's lip this person's lips and they go i mean you read that you read the literature they go insane when they touch the alcohol their mind goes insane so it's kind of the same thing once i see the first picture my mind's insane something shifts inside me and i've seen it happen to me i was in a restaurant once i walked into the bathroom to use a urinal and there was pornography on the uh um in the uh in the bathroom stall it was like a french place and i don't know pornography is kind of beautiful and it altered the next few days for me i didn't intentionally see it but i kind of was stuck standing there it was right in front of me i noticed it until i was already using the urinal and for the next 20 seconds i'm sitting there looking at something and my brain chemistry was different for the next two days i didn't choose i went to see a home with my wife a year and a half ago all over the home was what people call art was pornography my brain was not the same for the next two days i didn't go to sea i don't consider it a slip or relapse wow but it was there my wife noticed it right away as i walked out of the house i wasn't the same something shifted so we need to put a little bit of technology in front of us just to give us that space the second is support groups those things are so important have a community of friends who are working on the same problem we can talk to about it if we slip there are phone numbers my plan if i ever have an urge i don't have any strategy not to have an urge my strategy is when i have an urge i call three friends i write about it and then i do exactly what i intended to do and using that for which means watch porn and using that formula i've never once had the urge to watch porn after those conversations when i say i call three people i don't talk to three people i call three people until i at least get one person on the phone after three i don't i'll leave a message with each one i if i don't if i speak to one then i'm done i have a conversation i just talk about what's going on if after that conversation i still intend to watch porn i have no reason to fight it i've used this formula i've never wanted to watch porn once after this conversation after after a conversation i write i write as well i won't just talk to someone you journal your emotions you journal your emotions what's going on what happens yeah just write it out when i've done those things there's nothing to fight i can't withstand this if you have an itch how long can you withstand an itch 20 minutes 30 minutes even that's a long time don't fight the beast you don't you don't get in the you don't get into a wrestling match with uh the top wrestlers in the world your addict is it's the best at convincing you of everything so the only thing you can do is play to its name say you know what i'm there i'm listening to you just i have to take care of these two things that's the deal we made a deal i'm going to call someone if they don't answer i'm going to call someone else if they don't answer them to call someone else i'm going to write it out and then i'll take care of you exactly what you say to do but then they stop they stop saying it the same way the way i say it for me my own experience this isn't everyone is if it doesn't come out of my mouth it comes at a different part of my body so it's got to be expressed beautiful the energy has got to come out so the support groups are so so important and the third is the the deep healing work that's needed the trauma exists the the crush self-esteem whatever the shame the deep deep deep shame the reservoirs of shame i found in myself they seem never-ending and they can be about everything and it can be about body image it can be about intelligence it can who knows be about mistakes i made guilt i had from decisions anything under the sun can demoralize me and going and healing and seeing how the trauma affected me and seeing where it lives in my body and literally uprooting it needs to be done and those are the three parts i found in order to live a porn free life i have a podcast like i mentioned where i go into much more detail with a professional a therapist the founder of porn anonymous someone who's works with one of these programs and we spend four hours on this topic if you're interested in but that's the most important thing is whatever it takes attitude i'm do whatever it takes in order to get healthy and those three those three prongs were the most important is your support community the 12-step recovery meetings or no you have your own uh no 12-step meetings how often do you go now less since covet last but prior to covert was three four times a week wow it was a regular part of my life yeah i literally moved to uh two blocks away from the meetings i was going to it just it became my life and you spoke you would speak there you go to a meeting you're sharing at the meeting yeah as a rule you share at the meeting you go you share especially at the beginning if you're uncomfortable if you're not sharing because you want to leave it you're not feeling that triggered that day then okay leave it to someone else to share if you're not sharing because you're shy then you got to share if you're not sharing because you're ashamed then you got to share and your sponsor plays a big role in recovery you have a sponsor huge yeah i still have a sponsor now most of our conversations are about i've a number of sponsees and most of my conversations are about that but of course yeah it's very important yeah and you work the steps with your sponsor i've gone through it three or four times so in summation the three things you said you simply have to stay away from those things that will just trigger you and overwhelm your mind you need to have that boundary that space the second thing is you have to have a support group a support community people you're open with and number three you have to be able to do the inner work and the healing of of healing healing the wounds healing the trauma healing the childhood scars yes some of these other methodologies of healing that i've um engaged in the last couple of years so you know the trauma work more of the body work the body mind and spirit work i found a major shift from obsession but where i've really seen i knew something really shifted in me actually the last time i watched it i watched foreign so i had by the time i did the talk i was about three years sober the you know so so okay i'm feeling pretty good i i've earned the right to sit on the stage i used to not be able to go 24 hours without this i'm like okay i can talk and a number of times the thought went through my head you know what if i relapse like would i have to take down my talk and about six months ago eight months ago someone gifted me with a vr headset and i couldn't get the thought out of my head you know what what does porn look like on the vr headset and i wrestled and wrestled and fought and tried and this and that it was like just it tormented me for i don't know a week ten days and eventually one night my wife wasn't home i said okay i'm gonna and i went back i went boom i just went in you know and when i came to after a few hours more than a few hours you know that's what i was like once i went in i was just like i was five years before the same with the intensity with all of it it was my mind just like i said from the first clip i went insane and when i came to i was like wow this is embarrassing like i'm the guy people look to for you people call me about this like okay i gotta hang up the the hat i failed and then the next thought was that's the addict that's yeah it's good that's the addict it's gonna kill me if i let it go just the opposite just the opposite that's that's what's real is the struggle and yeah there was obviously it took me a couple months to share the story this is probably the first time i'm sharing it very publicly but that's the truth that's my story my story is not one of perfection it's not supposed to be and the addict wants me to believe like that's that's what we're talking about here right it's that shame if i would have let that shame seep in and it wanted to it was and it had a lot of different arguments to use right all the talks i've given all the the all the podcasts all the people who call me for help about this you're a liar you're the most deceptive con artist on the planet right that's all and a few days later i said you know something now i know something shifted the fact that it didn't even get me for a day it didn't get me for a day was one evening i i went to town the next day was done the vr headset is still in my house i haven't gone back there it's done so it's not only that you watched yourself getting on the train you watched yourself killing yourself for getting on the train you watched yourself trying to delegitimize yourself trying to turn you in an eternal into an eternal impostor you watched that happen and you said no i'm not going there i'm not going to be that addict my neural pathways will choose a different highway in my brain i failed i'm working on myself yes i'm in a battle sometimes i fail and and one of the things you know you see it in uh in religion often you see like the the secondary becomes the primary the primary becomes the secondary yeah so in 12 steps where this happens is with the chips there's nowhere in the books that it says anywhere about chips the chip system is the length of recovery that people have there's nowhere in the literature it's not like um what do you call it it's not in the terror ship itself you know yeah anything about i want everybody to hear something i want everybody to hear this ellie nash is considered a guru on recovery today because he's the one who came out now he himself fell prey to porn addiction when he got the stupid vr so i just want everybody to realize that he's asking himself would be like the chief rabbi being caught in doing some major sin you have to quit you have to resign like you're such a liar and a hypocrite and yet he identified that as the addict that's the addict in him that's going to delegitimize him completely and turn him into a shameful disgusting repulsive abominable human being it's exactly what addiction wants to do to you but it uses god it uses truth it uses honesty to lure you into the trap right it doesn't use the words of recovery it said what it said was hey you were able to pick up a chip four years yeah and in another few months you would have picked up a five-year chip you thrown it all away you can't pick up the chip yeah i said you know what now my new chip is once in five years eat that yes very powerful it's amazing so wow that's uh there's a beautiful there's a beautiful hasidic interpretation we say in mayriv and the evening services every night vahasser satan remove satan from before us and from behind us so i understand why satan is in front of me you know he's trying to be my tour guide but why is he behind me so there's a beautiful interpretation satan in front of me tries to guide me towards sin towards addiction satan behind me after i do it he stands behind me and he says oh yeah yeah you're such a bad person you're such a horrible person it's after the act and that satan is worse than anybody because for sin for a sin you could do chuva for the guilt about the sin there's no truth because you think the guilt is holy i'm so holy i'm sensitive i'm in recovery i'm not a liar i'm honest how can i do this ever again but that's sometimes it's it's the word it's the worst because that satan keeps you down literally in the abyss forever yeah and that's that that's my final word on shame so to speak is what will it do to you ultimately if i would have believed that voice i'd would have continued from that day and gone right back and it was all for you what was five six years ago i would have been a full-fledged porn addict i'm just wondering how does your wife deal with all this exposure that you always talk about this give me a second such an important story ellie's sharing such an important story everybody you know the shame the shame becomes so destructive i wanted to ask him about how his wife deals with it so there's a woman who says here my husband i i am a full-blown addict and i really don't know what to do what am i supposed to do about this and i would say to you you know it's similar to what we would tell the men there's a deep void in you and and you need to work on your relationship with yourself you probably have so much brokenness in you and have compassion and the only thing i can hope is that you can build a relationship with your husband that is deep and meaningful because if you can have such a real relationship you won't have to go to porn and and prostitution to fill it so but maybe you can't maybe your marriage is in a state where you can't go there at the moment but at least you have to become aware of the things that are broken in you and what you really need to fill your void listen women are sensitive men are also sensitive but that sensitivity is what i think is driving all of this and ellie i was asking you how does your wife deal with the fact that you talk about all of this so openly i mean i don't know if i'm trespassing my boundaries no it's a fear question um