Podcast Transcript | Ep. 20
Porn & Inner Decay
[00:00:43] Hello and welcome everyone. I'm your host, Brandon Ward. Back with another episode of order within.
[00:00:50] Today is a very interesting topic. It feels controversial. Because it's such a common. Aspect of our society these days.
[00:01:01] To me, it's one of those Trojan horses that we have not yet considered the implications on our society, on our wellbeing and how it influences each of us and the relationships we experience.
[00:01:14] Porn. And it's usage.
[00:01:17] Why does it seem so common today? And why has it not been. Looked upon and analyzed for the impact, both positive and negative. There's more discussion around the negative impacts that porn has on our wellbeing, our health. I want to talk about a few of those things in this episode, just the biological.
[00:01:44] And mental aspect, not to mention the physical aspect. Of what porn can do to us.
[00:01:54] I started using porn very early in my life. I was fortunate enough to have a computer in our home. In the nineties, we had dial up internet. It's still crazy to think about. I was so obsessed with AOL instant messenger. When we had that computer, I remembered how excited I was to go through the encyclopedia Britannica.
[00:02:18] CDs that we had, I would spend hours nerding out on that information. But one of the downsides of that and having the internet. Was the access to porn. And as a young. 1213 year old boy, teenage boy. This discovery was initially exhilarating.
[00:02:43] And from a very young age, it was not only myself, but many of my friends were also learning and discovering porn for the first time. Now.
[00:02:52] The seventies and eighties, a lot of this change, there's always been. Sexualized material. And that's not what I'm talking about per se here, when I'm talking about is the. Digital form. The video form. Of pornography that is readily available all over the internet. When I first, when I was young, you had to find.
[00:03:17] These websites that you could download the actual clips from and then watch them. It was a very clunky, arduous process. It's evolved rapidly now. Where it's literally on demand websites like PornHub. X videos, some of these others.
[00:03:35] They have. Millions of millions and millions of videos. A lot of them are self submitted. By other people creating videos. There's all these porn production companies. But.
[00:03:49] It's very normalized now. There's a lot of negativity around the industry itself. That's not what we're going to talk about so much today. That's a whole other aspect of porn in the impact that it has on our society. What we're going to cover in today's show is how these things impact us internally.
[00:04:10] Because a part of order within an understanding what order within means. Is realizing. Not only is it managing our inner world, our thoughts, our emotions, our feelings, our stories.
[00:04:24] Having that relationship with ourselves. And caring for ourselves, nurturing ourselves.
[00:04:31] Getting exercise, all of those things. Those are components of self care. But what. Is also part of this is the world that we live in the. Things that we must navigate the possible roadblocks. And stall outs that can happen. The dangers that exist upon our path. Of awakening. And self-actualization and porn is one of those things, just like drugs and alcohol and sex and money and all of these things that we can lose ourselves in.
[00:05:10] Porn is actually another one of those things. I didn't know that when I was young, I don't think society still has accepted or recognized. The detriment that it has to our being in our wellness. There's a great debate happening. Around its usage. And so my wife has a blog that she does around motherhood, womanhood, parenting.
[00:05:34] And so she's reading. Reddit threads a lot.
[00:05:38] And one of the most common stories that she shares with me in the evenings when we're spending our time together, after we get the baby down and getting to be adults for a few hours before we go to sleep.
[00:05:50] The common stories and the pain that people are experiencing from symptoms of porn usage. Is insane. To me. It's the real. Pandemic. It's an epidemic of that sense because it's hidden. If we recall back in the day, cigarettes used to be claimed to be good for our health. Morphine at one point was claimed to be good for our health.
[00:06:19] There are lots of practices. Bloodletting was considered a good practice at one point in the medical field.
[00:06:27] There are plethoras of examples, plethora of examples, to look at and. See examples of things that throughout history, Have been deemed as good for us at one moment in time, but have since changed because we've learned, we've gathered new information. We realized that we were incorrect. We were operating out of a place of limited information.
[00:06:51] And we were making assumptions and those assumptions were incorrect. I believe that porn is exactly like that today. In our world today. Because ultimately without understanding the impact that it has on ourselves and those around us. And our entire society, we will continue to decline and slide into decay.
[00:07:14] My experience, as I was mentioning, I started very young. A lot of my friends were also watching porn at very young ages. You know, boys, we were boys developing boys. Watching people, adults. Graphically have sex. In ways that are not normal. What I've learned as an adult is that type of sexual expression.
[00:07:40] When it's all, you know, is not healthy. It's actually very abusive. And one way in many instances,
[00:07:46] And so understanding that one it's teaching us. Unnatural ways of behaving with. The other with people that we are attracted With partners. Spouses. Whatever it is. It's training our minds to view things in a certain way. It's also influencing our biology men do not realize what it's doing to our minds, how it's training us to like certain things to actually enjoy watching sex more than the act of sex itself.
[00:08:25] There are common traits when you're looking at instances. Where men may be addicted to porn. Now, this is not just the single thing, right? This is not a single point issue. As things rarely are. There's always layers to this. As people, we have things that we must uncover. As we've talked a lot about on this show.
[00:08:49] Self-esteem. Covering that aspect. We've covered self parenting. The importance of nurturing ourselves there's work that we have to do to care for ourselves, but porn I've learned. Through my own experience with it, and then learning about what it does to our biology. Is truly destroying us from within.
[00:09:11] And it's doing that by rewiring our
[00:09:13] It's retraining our reward system. It's retraining our dopamine system. And it's creating addictions.
[00:09:22] And what this does is it puts us in a cycle. Of addiction and dopamine deprivation. And we only can get our hit when we go and watch Now for those of you that, that use porn. I remember these days, I haven't used it in it's been almost three years, I believe at this and going, and I'm telling you, I've never felt better and there's specific reasons
[00:09:47] It's related to our the biological changes that it has happens while we watch. And the way it wires our brains as we watch. And the reward system that's created from watching porn puts us in a state of dependency. This is where the addiction cycle comes into play. We need those hits of dopamine to feel good about ourselves for the very fleeting moment that it is.
[00:10:13] And the more we do that, the more we depend upon. External. Stimulus like porn. The more hits we need, the more extreme it must be. That's why when you start out in porn, It's very innocent. It's very simple. You're fascinated with what it is. As a kid, I was blown away. I had no idea what this was. I.
[00:10:35] I'd see my father's Playboys when I was a kid. That was, but to me that almost looks like art. Now. It's just, you're envisioning the feminine body. It's beautiful in that expression. But porn is not that it's very animalistic. It's very primal. It's honestly, beyond
[00:10:51] It's really in many ways it's inhuman because this isn't human to treat one another, like this. And to behave in this way. And so when we're, when as men, when we're watching porn, we're training our minds to say, I get more pleasure out of watching than I do acting in participating. And so what we start doing is we train our mind to see women as objects, a voyeurism
[00:11:21] that's why so many men today in their twenties and thirties. Have erectile dysfunction. It's not because they're unhealthy. Or because something's wrong with them. They've been watching porn for years and they've trained their mind. Too. Be drawn to voyeurism. So when you actually get into an instance where you could be intimate with someone, your body doesn't know what to do.
[00:11:50] So your Dick doesn't work.
[00:11:52] That's a cycle that is created in many men. I've been there myself. I have been in these cycles and not only that. So from a sexual perspective, it really messes with your mind and trained your body to watch instead of participate. So our, our bodies literally don't function and respond to actual sexual intimacy.
[00:12:16] It creates more and more extremes. And what we need to feel better and get the hit of dopamine we need. And it also breaks our reward system in seeking external influence through observation to get the hits that we need as opposed to living, to being, to experiencing. And when you're looking at symptoms around porn usage.
[00:12:41] Lethargy. Laziness, lack of energy, lack of motivation, depression, sadness. Now, like I said, this is not a single point issue. There's most likely other things inside there. That is perpetuating this behavior. We we have a lack of self-esteem. We have a lack of self care. We don't have that developed relationship with ourself to nurture and build and grow and honor who we are. And so this fields avoid porn usage fills the void that we feel inside of ourselves.
[00:13:14] And so it creates that addictive cycle.
[00:13:16] But. What we don't realize is that cycle is breaking our reward system and enabling us to it's. Well, it's really disabling us as humans. All of those things, the lethargy, the lack of energy, the lack of motivation are symptoms of this broken reward cycle. And when you're coming out of this.
[00:13:40] When I look back and I reflect on myself in those times. I was so sad and lonely, there would be days where I would masturbate to porn multiple times a day. And there was some times when I was in my apartment living alone and I would do it five times a day, six times a day. And I, every time I would feel more and more pathetic and sad and depressed and disconnected and isolated from myself because.
[00:14:06] I never felt the pleasure that I thought I would. I was aiming to feel better. That's why I was doing this. And every time. The, it was a brief moment. Three seconds may be of that peak. And then from there it was. It was pain. It was discomfort. It was sadness. It was. Shame. I felt shame.
[00:14:30] That's the cycle that we go through so much. I was so sad and depressed at those points in my life and my And looking back now, I realize it's because I was training myself to do that. And it was perpetuating that cycle. It wasn't until I actually stopped watching porn, I started to learn about it.
[00:14:50] I was watching videos on YouTube. I was going through because I had met my she's now my wife and we had been dating a few months. We're probably less than six months in. And I was deeply attracted to her. I've never been more attracted to a woman than I am. Ashley. And I was struggling with my erections, with my draw towards her sexuality, towards her sexually.
[00:15:14] I was struggling with. My attraction to other women that I wasn't interested in, but I felt this insane pool. Because I had been training myself for novelty. For voyeurism, looking at women as objects, not seeing them as something more than just sexual things to fulfill a need that I have. Porn trains us to think these ways.
[00:15:38] It teaches our brain to seek novelty, to look at women solely as objects and to constantly need more. We're never satisfied. So it has the perfect ability to destroy healthy, loving relationships. Around this cycle, this negative cycle.
[00:15:57] And so we're setting ourselves up for failure by our own behavior unknowingly.
[00:16:02] We don't even realize we're doing I had no idea that this was happening. I was struggling with this feeling this way. Unmotivated. Up and down. And that's another thing too, is the highs and lows. The constant ebbing and flowing was exhausting. I was exhausted. But I was ruthless. I was relentless.
[00:16:25] I was never going to surrender until I began to feel better. And thank goodness again. That's the thing about that pursuit is when you refuse to surrender. And you continue to pursue whatever it is that's pulling you forward. I had no idea what it was. I still am pulled by this. Feeling that's just driving me to somewhere. I don't know where it is.
[00:16:47] But it just keeps getting better. And so when we follow that pool, we can learn from things. And I learned from that pool that this was destroying my life, my relationships, my. Sense of self. It was creating isolation in ways that I had no idea it was. And it was destroying my at the time. Really great relationship.
[00:17:12] And so once I learned about what porn did to our brain, how it rewires our reward system. How it trains us to chase novelty. And the fact that as men. Our semen. Ejaculation isn't something that should happen all the time throughout human history.
[00:17:33] Sex was something that came. Sporadically. So we retained a lot of this. That was something that I didn't see. It helped my relationship with my now wife, as I began to understand this and quit. But I did not expect. The physical benefits that came from And that's another aspect of the other side of this. This is not a puritanical.
[00:18:01] Rebuke of porn. It's not about judgment or morality. Now there's a whole lot of moral reasons to not support the porn industry. Human trafficking abuse, rape. There's horrible things on the internet. That is facilitated by this industry. Uh, tons of abuse. So there's absolutely more reasons to lean into this, but what I'm talking about is purely based on your own experience and how you feel within yourself.
[00:18:31] Be selfish like this in this instance. And the other things will change. I think that's something too that I've learned is by taking care of ourselves, by honoring who we are, the external changes that happen. Can flourish. When we move out of our toxicity, because now we're spreading a different vibe. We're sharing different energy, but when, what is living within us is decay. Rot.
[00:19:00] And toxicity. That's what we will exude no matter our efforts, no matter what we intend to have happen.
[00:19:08] We are what we are. And so those motions create ripples in our existence. And until we change those things, that's what will continue to happen. So by adjusting, by learning for me, once I learned the addictive cycle that it was doing and how it was destroying my relationship with myself, with Ashley, with the people that I cared about, how it was changing my wiring around women.
[00:19:34] I knew I had to change. I didn't want to live that way anymore. I didn't want to feel that way. I didn't wanna see women in that way. In that way. I didn't want to destroy a relationship that felt sacred and valuable to me in a way that no relationship had. So I knew I had to break the cycle. And so once I learned what this was doing,
[00:19:53] I quit cold Turkey. I was like, there's no way I'm doing this anymore. I have to see, I have to try. Let's just try it. So I quit. I had one relapse in the first, like three months that I had done this because I was traveling a lot. I was at the time I was running. A small company. Up in Canada, it was trying to go public. I was living in California. I was traveling Toronto.
[00:20:14] A lot. I was spending a lot of time and Airbnb's by myself. So I got lonely one night and I did it and it was, it brought me back to all the terrible things that I was leaving. And I realized at that moment, I'm not doing this anymore. Never again. Because it enabled me to see the distinction. I felt the shame again, the pain of that process. It wounded me.
[00:20:38] Again, I realized that I had been wounding myself by this behavior.
[00:20:41] And it was preventing me from connecting and loving the person that I cared about more than anyone in the world. From that point I quit and I was done. And what ended up happening really has been tremendous in the last several years of doing this. I. Am shocked at how much I've changed. I don't, I.
[00:21:01] And I'm telling you this, not because I want to brag about myself, but because it's possible for you too, and this is not just for men. There are women that are listening to this that may be listening to this who have partners who are using porn. Who are men who are using porn? It is absolutely impacting your relationship.
[00:21:21] And if you're experiencing these things, if your partner can't. Isn't into the sex that you used that you once were and that they are struggling with a lot of these lethargy, the lack of motivation. The challenges with erectile dysfunction. Like these could be potential symptoms that they also are doing these things and experiencing these things.
[00:21:42] And we can help facilitate that change if we can help them to understand. There's some great YouTube videos, but honestly, your book on porn or your brain on porn is a great
[00:21:53] There's a website I'll link to it to share. That's what I read this website. I was reading through these things and then I watched some YouTube videos and I was like, okay. Um, and then since then, I've only just seen the, this expansion of knowledge. And awareness around what this does. And so because of that,
[00:22:12] I'm I firmly believe in how important this is. To make these changes. And the positive impact it can have in our lives, because what ended up happening for me now that, um, I think we we're three years of doing this now. It's been tremendous. I really, I have more energy now than I did when I was 18.
[00:22:31] I have more focus, more clarity. More fire than I ever have in my life. And. My. Biological aspect. Has changed as well. I have a tremendous amount of attraction to my wife in ways that I never have. It's more, I'm more attracted to my wife now than I was when we were early in our relationship.
[00:22:58] Our sex is fantastic. And what's interesting about this is that we start to retrain our brain to go deeper into our relationship instead of seeking novelty and constant extreme states to get us going. We go deeper and deeper and deeper into a connection with those that we choose. So instead of going wide, broad and shallow, we go deep and narrow.
[00:23:23] Into a meaningful relationship. That's something I did not anticipate that the sex would improve.
[00:23:28] Also my physical state. I'm back to what it was when I was a kid. I literally not to be graphic, but I'll get erections. Randomly throughout the day. Because again, that's a symptom of a healthy, physical male body. I'm almost 40 years old.
[00:23:48] This is not supposed to be possible, but when you look at our society and how sick it is, it's no wonder that we're struggling and we're decaying with age. Because we're not facilitating our natural. Growth process, our loving support of evolution. We're destroying all that is. And so understanding that.
[00:24:10] It can reactivate. Uh, fire and energy, a change within it enables us to commit to our partners in ways that are different. It changes the way that we look at women. Now I have a daughter that's also impacted the way I view women. Now I view them all in a very different It's much more nurturing now. That doesn't mean I don't look at a woman, a beautiful woman and can appreciate the beauty, right? I'm not a.
[00:24:37] I'm not a. Munich. I don't know if that's a term, but I still have that passion, that fire, but the difference is I don't see them as conquest. It's more like a work of art to me, just like I would look at the sunset and go, wow, look at those clouds. Look at how fantastic the sky looks. The colors are insane.
[00:24:59] And I'm just enjoying this beautiful sunset. It's the same thing with humans, we can look at one another and. And appreciate the physical beauty that we carry and look at it as a work of art, not as something to be consumed or conquered. So your mind. Your perspective, your biology, all of these things began to change.
[00:25:22] Not to mention as a man, because of the retention of my semen. I did not know this was a thing I've learned about it, but. Our body just consumes that. If we don't release it all the time. So what's happening now is I have so much fire. And my testosterone levels are up.
[00:25:44] I'm. I don't even exercise hardly anymore. Like I go on walks with my daughter. That's really the only form of exercising. I'll go hiking at this point. I still have muscle tone as if I'd been going to the gym and lifting heavy. That's only possible because of. This retention.
[00:26:03] Nothing else has changed. I can't wait to actually get back in the gym and start lifting heavy. Um, I'm astound. I can't wait to see what the body is capable of, what my body is capable of, but that's the point. The point is we don't realize how this is impacting us physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually.
[00:26:25] And there's so much resistance to this idea. To quitting it to. Denying it to turning away from it. You're it's like you're treated as some prude you're being cruel or controlling. If you think that there's a problem with porn usage. And I can tell you right now, it's the other way. It's the cigarettes of our time.
[00:26:48] That's what it is. And so understanding that.
[00:26:51] Using these things. Watching these things. Impacts us in ways that we can't imagine. And the only way to know this, I mean you, well, one do your research. You don't have to listen. You don't have to believe me. Do research on it because there's a lot of great information out there. I'll link to some for the, in the show notes, so you can find it so you can do some research.
[00:27:14] But also try it out.
[00:27:16] Try it for 30 days. And see.
[00:27:18] And watch.
[00:27:20] The thing that I love, that's been a great change is obviously the energy, the focus, the fire. But it makes me so happy knowing that my loyalty to Ashley. Is now legitimately possible because I'm not.
[00:27:34] Pushing myself, my brain through that negative activity to seek novel novelty and new partners. Uh, no longer facilitating that process. I'm no longer supporting that type of way. I moved away from it. And so I'm going deeper with her, which is grown that attraction that's possible for
[00:27:54] And even if you're not in a relationship, if you're a man, you can't fathom. The resonance and vibration and attraction that you will be putting out. If you deploy this.
[00:28:07] It's palpable. Everyone around, you will notice it, even if they can't put their finger on it. I have friends that I've known for years that are like, dude, just something's different about you, man. And I tell them that's what it is. That's what it is. That's the biggest change that's now. So there's many things that have happened in my life for different reasons that have influenced and changed me. But this I can say is the most material change, the most direct material change that I've ever had by implementing something in my life. And it's.
[00:28:39] So doable and within reach for many of us.
[00:28:43] So I encourage you do research, learn about this. Try it. Try for 30 days. See what happens. Journal take note of it. Observe yourself. And watch what happens. I it's kind of insane. The level of change and transformation that can happen when we commit to this path.
[00:29:05] So I hope you enjoyed the show. I'm going to be doing a little more free. So flow style on the show as well. I'm going to continue to layer in books that I'm reading and doing things and I'm learning from obviously, but I really just sharing stories, learning. I think that's what it's about being human. We're all on this planet, trying to learn, grow, get better. Live our best lives.
[00:29:30] Be true to who we are. It's the whole purpose of this show is just to be authentic, be true to who we are and activate our inner selves to live our best lives. So I hope you're enjoying the show. I would love to hear if there are any topics or content or anything that you would like to hear from, or have a show on.
[00:29:49] You can comment. You can hit me up on Twitter. If you're on my sub stack, you can hit me there. Kind of all over the place. I hope you are having a good week so far. And with that being said, Until next time y'all.
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