GABE'S INTERVIEW WITH MATT FRADD
I am going to break down Gabe's interview with Matt Fradd, but before I do want to remind all members that every little bit can help Gabe educate people about how excessive use of porn can alter brain pathways and become problematic for some people. So, go to the Patreon link, above, sign in, and give a few bucks a month.
This not a report on the interview, but my thoughts on points raised in it.
I don't know Matt Fradd, nor had I heard of him before this interview, but the first thing he broadcasts is that he is very Catholic. This makes it interesting, because I am a totally secular individual and believe in no religion. But, if you do, no haters.
Talks about Thomas Aquainus and lust. Thomas Acquinas was a Catholic thinker and philosopher who existed approximately 800 years before the brain science that currently supports a porn addiction model existed, before psychiatry, as we know it, existed, before neurology and neurological studies of the brain existed. One of the big problems in running an analysis of porn addiction through a religious filter is that we have to add additional, debatable, often contested, always complex concepts that are completely unnecessary to an understanding of this problem which is simply use of High Speed Internet Porn to trigger a brain reward event, which many of us call a dopamine high. Just-that-simple.
Matt is REALLY into Thomas Aquainus. There are worse hobbies, aka porn. So, better this than that.
One of the first interesting--I would say problematic--things that Matt does is to equate porn with lust. Concepts such as lust are loaded, and your recovery will probably be more efficient if you simply accept that a relatively new technology, High Speed Internet Porn, created, again, approximately 800 years after Aqinus's death, is a relatively new tool humanity figured out to use to obtain a dopamine high. It is a very simple, almost mechanical event. Watch porn=sexual thoughts, sexual thoughts=dopamine high. Just that simple, no demons rolling around in there pushing you to do it. Do it enough and your brain becomes dependent on the high, so much so that when you quit, your brain suffers withdrawals, which is where you have achieve the condition many call porn addiction. This is a cause and reward event, in your brain, period. Trying to get clean in the context of morality and religion is for the most part unhelpful in my opinion. I see a lot of guys trying to fix themselves in a lot of ways here, when in fact this place is most efficient if you use it to fix your porn problem. After that if you want to become a saint, do it, but you will find success most efficiently in this place if you use it as a tool to fix your porn problem. What is "fixing" your porn problem, what does that look like? It is quitting using porn to get a dopamine high for long enough that you quit missing the high. That takes time and effort and is painful. Just know that going in and know the pain goes away.
Matt says quitting porn is a way to live a more beautiful life. Maybe. I have said it a bit differently in that quitting porn makes having a better life more likely, but quitting it, in and of itself, does not make your life better. If you have problems in your life, and we all do, facing those problems without compulsive porn consumption makes it more likely you will fix them.
Matt likes beer. I like beer. Obviously we both like to use external stimulation to achieve a dopamine high, so there must be some bridge between us.
Gabe comes in about 4:30 into the show. Gabe experienced porn at an early age. Most of us do. Since the 50s porn has been commercial, open, a money maker, and mass produced.
Then, around 2007, we invented High Speed Internet Porn. Before that a lot of us loved porn, or, could use it to trigger a neurological reward event, which is how you must conceive of its use. Forget everything you think you know about what porn is, because it is none of those things, it is a tool you have been using, unconsciously, unwittingly, without education, to produce a stimulation that is naturally occurring, naturally healthy, naturally absolutely necessary to the survival of the species, but with the invention of HSIP can be triggered in an unnaturally regular and recurring way.
This is a relatively new event, use of HSIP. Porn has been around forever. Many of us get a dopamine high from it, and have for as long as there has been human records. But, HSIP is new, different, unique, and makes the current problem possible.
Gabe became sexually active at 14. Porn use competes with actual sex as a brain reward event. Porn is more efficient that sex in achieving a dopamine high. This can lead the brain to prefer porn over actual sex, which leads to what we call porn induced erectile dysfunction. At that point the porn addict can get an erection with porn, but not with an actual partner. That happened to Gabe.
This was early days in High Speed Internet Porn, and Gabe had no idea what the problem was, so he went out and researched it. That lead eventually to this site and others coming into creation.
Gabe did not believe porn was a problem. Neither did I. I denied porn addiction was a real thing. Then one day I had to admit it was. That day sucked, but that thought is a thought I had to have to overcome this. I have become skeptical about the concept of "porn addiction", but I can report I had to have that thought about myself in order to overcome compulsive porn consumption, which technically is producing a dopamine high over and over, daily, for years. We likey.
Gabe did the masturbation test, which is if you can rub one off without porn, porn may not be the problem, but if you need porn to reach O, and cannot with a partner, you have a porn problem.
Gabe talks about neuroplasticity, or the ability to change the brain, the ability of you, an individual, to condition, or re-condition your brain not to miss it. That is the thing about porn. It is not so much you condition your brain not to love porn, not to trigger to it, to hate it; the real challenge is conditioning your brain NOT TO MISS IT. If it was easy to give up, it would not be called an addiction.
Gabe talks about the reboot, or trying to set the brain's pleasure expectations back to a natural level, or a level that would exist in humanity prior to the invention of commercial porn, and, especially HSIP.
Now, a lot of humans experience HSIP as adolescents, who are especially vulnerable to developing reliance on porn to achieve an artificially produced dopamine high.
Novelty, searching for something new, never seen, never experienced, is also associated with a dopamine reward. This is in part why pornographers and the tube sites are constantly churning out new porn. Old porn eventually starts to cause less of a dopamine high, and in order to achieve that higher dopamine high the user must move on to new and different porn. This will sometimes cause what I call moving through the categories, meaning many users end up watching porn that they do not see as their normal sexuality. That is where some people determine that there is a problem.
Gabe talks about occasional use, and says don't do it.
Gabe talks about Reboot Nation. I don't know if Gabe does anything else, but this is one reason why anyone here should support him as a Patreon. Talking about porn addiction and porn generally may be his main income.
Matt talks about porn as an addiction, and implies it is not, and that calling this problem that trivializes real addictions.
Gabe talks about behavioral addictions. For me, it all misses the point. Addiction or not addiction, if you have problem stopping, you have a problem. The addiction, if it exists, is not to porn, but to the dopamine high you can use to achieve it.
Gabes talks about sensitization, Pavlov's dog, desentization, and resensitization. Gabe believes porn is addictive. Again, the word is older than Aqinus, and I think we need a more modern language to define this. Regardless, the brain studies show that the brains of people who get a dopamine high from any trigger light up pretty much the same way and a dopamine high is a key aspect in all behaviors we call addicted.
Gabe describes addiction as continued use despite negative consequences.
She who shall not be named is discussed. She denies porn addiction, but her studies seem to support a porn addiction finding.
Look, porn is used, and ONLY used, by people to achieve a change in the brain. Without the dopamine reward it would be interesting as watching paint peel. Think of porn as a tool. It is not something that is happening to you, it is something you are doing to yourself, to achieve a brain change, a brain reward event, a dopamine high.
Gabe says education is everything, he is absolutely right. We need to teach kids about how the brain works, about using triggers to achieve a dopamine high. Whether addictive or not, we can use many things to trigger a dopamine high. Gabe says big business sells dopamine highs, not just porn. Gabe is a believer in support communities. Reboot and Nofap were very helpful for me. Writing and responding to posts is helpful to the recovery. Get off the sidelines, get in the porn quitting game. Totally sucks, quitting porn, because you are denying yourself a dopamine high you have been using for years without knowing you were using it. But it helps to be with others when going through that total suckiness. Yes, suckiness is a real word invented to describe quitting porn addiction. Just made that up. The solution is to rewire the brain not to miss it. Missing it is called withdrawals. When the withdrawals go away, you are recovered.
Gabe talks about replacement activities. I think that especially in the quitting phase, you have to have them, and need to plan on having them in advance of quitting so that when the withdrawals do happen, and they will, you already have a plan to fill in that time NOT WATCHING PORK, aka NOT GETTING HIGH.
Gabe says to avoid replacement activities that generate a dopamine high. Very important for a newbie to understand. You are addicted to a dopamine high, not porn, so trying to replace porn with another means of achieving a dopamine high, such as video games, is just you continuing to use. You are going to have to consciously avoid artificially produced dopamine highs for about 90 days, and let's be honest, you need to avoid ALL dopamine highs for that time period as well. Why? If the problem is dopamine highs, and it is, you need to retrain your brain to live without them for a while. Did I mentioned this sucks? It is going to hurt. Know that going in. It will be physical, mental, and emotional pain, and you are going to want to use to make those horrible feelings go away, but you are going to have experience those horrible feelings to get clean. This is easy advice to give and hard to take, but be glad when you feel withdrawals, because that is a symptom of your brain rewiring. It is not a life sentence. The worst, and maybe all, are over in the 90 day reboot period, for most people. But that is if you really do it and do not cheat along the way.
Gabe talks about using exercise in the reboot and beyond, and Matt agrees. Let me translate. Over the last 2 million years the human brain evolved so that certain experiences were rewarded with a dopamine high. Pretty much, the two most rewarded activities are sex and eating. But, in both cases, thinking about sex and eating also achieves a dopamine high. Why? Because thinking about sex and eating leads to searching for sex and eating, and searching for sex and eating leads, often, to the real deal. Nature figured out a long time ago that to motivate humanity to do these things is a big step into us actually engaging in these activities. It is the same in all species. The most successful species are those that can survive, and reproduce, and neurological rewards are why these activities are engaged in. So what Matt and Gabe are both talking to is engaging in behaviors that look a lot more like activities humans engage in well prior to the invention of HSIP. We were a lot more physical then, so it helps to replace porn with physical activities and exercise.
Gabe and Matt agree about socialization. Porn is a highly unsocial and solitary behavior. One of the painful things in the reboot that will help you get back to more or less normal is reaching out to others and interacting with them. Learning to interact with reality as opposed to pixels is painful, but necessary. Do it, talk to people, be nice to people. I am actually a misanthrope, so doing this was difficult for me in the reboot, but I did it anyway, and it was helpful. Go mow someone;s yard, help the landlady get her groceries in, encourage someone.
Avoid super normal stimulation. Translation: avoid anything not occurring in nature to achieve a dopamine high. Get your dopamine highs the old fashioned way, which will be difficult, especially at first, because it means living with a lot less highs.
Matt asks about sex addiction v. porn addiction. They are not the same. All addictions involve use of super stimulation to achieve a dopamine high. Porn addiction requires no sex. Sex addiction does. Porn is not sex, sex is not porn. Sex can be healthy, but porn is not sex, and is unhealthy. Gabe points out how porn can be more efficient at getting a dopamine high than sex.
Matt asks about therapy. This is where, in part, I diverge from the porn addiction model. One of the big problems we have is that while, in this place, Reboot Nation, porn addiction is accepted as real definable condition, out in the real world, it is not. The DSM does not recognize it as an addiction. Part of my problem with calling it an addiction is that addictions are deemed maladies or illnesses, something to be cured, and most addiction models translate that as need to be cured for life. I now understand that what we call porn addiction is just the result of having used porn to condition my brain to achieve a reward event, a dopamine high. The cure is not, in my opinion, therapy, but education. I know of no one who went to therapy for porn addiction and over came it, but I know a lot of people who got educated and quit it. We will have to see where it goes in the future. From an evolutionary perspective, the understanding that porn is a tool to achieve a dopamine high, and the ability to measure it, is about two seconds old. Placing it in the category of a thing that is an illness that requires treatment to achieve a cure is taking it in a direction that may be premature to take it.
Nonetheless, Gabe talks about treatment with sex therapists and says they might offer some help. Gabe says one looking for external help should seek out a Certified Sexual Addiction Therapist.
Matt asks about relapses. Gabe says every day without porn aka a dopamine high, it is progress. He is right. The most efficient way is 90 days hard mode, but every moment not being high helps bend the brain back a little to a pre-porn brain, with pre-porn dopamine expectations. My advice is, for the most efficient fix, go hardmode 90 days, and maybe try and go hardmore for as many times as you need until you achieve it. Once you get clean, once you get to the days where you don't miss the high, I promise you are going to NOT want to go back to it, because quitting it once is hell, quitting it twice is hell times two.
Gabe talks about changing your lifestyle during the reboot. There are some simple tricks. For instance, if you can give up internet for the hard 90, do it. If you have a smart phone, get a dumb phone. It you must use the internet, get blockers. If you have accessed porn in a private or secretive manner, put the computer in a public place, and don't access the internet unless people who can watch you are present. Keep your door open at work, at school, in the dorm, in your house, and move your computer to where people passing can see what you are watching. Make plans, now, for what activities you are going to engage in when the withdrawals hit. Develop distraction techniques, means of stopping a two second sexual thought from becoming a dopamine soaked sex opera in your head. Don't wake up one day and say today is the day I quit. Make plans for how you are going to quit, how you will fill the time you have been using watching porn with something healthy and non stimulating, and plan on when you have a sexual thought, how you can shut it down. I have heard some people wear a rubber band and snap it really hard when the thoughts creep in during the reboot. Plan now for what will happen in the moments when your brain punishes you for not giving it the high you have been giving it, for years.
Matt asks about sexaholics anonymous. Gabe discusses the addiction for life model, and disagrees with it. I agree. This addiction is not for life. I don't wake up anymore and plan my day around how to get high. I don't think about porn or using it to get high most days. I no longer miss it. I don't need weekly meetings not to watch it, not to use it. Gabe says nothing against SA, and there are some advantages, but some of it he does not agree with. The state of "not missing it" means the withdrawals are behind me, and my brain is pretty much back to normal factory settings.
Gabe says change how you view porn. Exactly. Quit thinking of it as anything other than a tool to get a dopamine high. Do not romanticize it, do not believe you see your sexuality in it, at all. View porn as a conditioned bad habit that your life will be better without. Long term consequences of porn consumption are nothing but negative for your brain.
Gabe was recently married. Did not know that. Congratulations. He has a normal sex life (implied, not stated).
Matt talks about pornography being counterfeit. It is. It is fake, it is false, it is not real. You can use it to get high, but if you want to quit you have to intellectually commit not to, as in not getting high. It is not just in porn, but commercial sexuality permeates society. Sex sells because it gets our attention, because getting our attention is giving us a dopamine high, which we love.
Gabe talks about escalation through the porn categories. If you have this problem, you have almost certainly done this. Shocking new content helps achieve a dopamine high, once you become desensitized to the porn you first started with, which probably reflected, in your mind, your normal sexuality. You probably started at vanilla, and are now way outside your initial genre.
Gabe talks about how this condition is a conditioned condition. You did it to yourself, it did not happen to you. You trained your brain without knowing it.
Gabe talks about Reboot Nation and his Youtube Channel as good sources of information. They are.
Thanks Gabe and Matt for the video. It was interesting.
Much love.