“The Man Up Show” Ep.245 – How to Break Pornography Addiction & Become a Better Man w/ Josh Hudson

Josh Hudson: Basically defines addiction as two folds, right? So for guys listening, it’s – doing it despite consequences, it’s like, so are there consequences to your porn use? And are you still doing it despite that? And secondly, you’re doing it compulsively, which means you kind of do it on autopilot like, you just catch yourself staring at pictures and you’re thinking to yourself “How did I get to this website? I don’t even remember clicking on it.” So, those two things are another markers of addiction. As far as solution-based, I see the biggest mistake men make is they –

David Tian: Masculinity for the Intelligent Man. I’m David Tian, Ph.D., and this is Man Up.

David Tian: Welcome to the Man Up Podcast, it’s been a while. This is Man Up, Masculinity for the Intelligent Man and I’m David Tian. For the past 14 years now, I’ve been helping hundreds of thousands of people in over 87 countries obtain success, happiness and fulfillment in life and love, and I’m joined here by a good friend, Josh Hudson who helps men as a licensed therapist, specially quitting porn and he’s been doing this for over eight years already. Welcome, Josh.

Josh Hudson: Thanks for having me, I’m so excited. [laughs]

David Tian: Great to have you on, it’s been a while. So, I wanted to just give a background of this – how I got into this topic through our relationship through working with you here and helping guys in this area. So one of the things we did last year was we reached out about a new course or program that you’ve got running and it looked really good. So, I sent that out and we did a quick webinar and let you go into more detail on the course program in that, and it got a lot of really good responses from my audience and I got lots of detailed responses by email and various messaging platforms. And I didn’t realize how big of a problem porn use is, especially among men who are younger than me, I’m turning 45 this year.

It was shocking that it was normal for them to be using porn everyday like, all their friends were using it everyday. What the standard or the threshold for what was considered – what they would consider addicted would be like, many hours each day. So it was like, they’re asking, “Am I addicted? Because I use it every day and it’s only an hour a day but I – sometimes I have to – I feel like I need to use it in the middle of the day so that kind of is disruptive to my life. Is this addiction?”

Josh Hudson: Right.

David Tian: And I’m like: yes, of course it is. “But all my friends do that too and everyone I know.” And they’re – it was almost like – so, some of the messaging was like “You don’t do it like that either?” And I’m like – they were thinking everybody does. So I was wondering, why did I not realize this until now? Working with you on this – promoting this program of yours. And I’m a Gen Xer so – like again, I’m 45 – so, I didn’t have access to internet porn until I was already getting pretty good at pick-up, because back then I was a pickup coach, and it was almost like a sign of defeat, if I have to open up the browser and… So it’s sort of like, if you got nothing that week, well, you get this. [laughs] You know? And –

Josh Hudson: [INAUDIBLE 00:03:13 Here are results of] Pamela Anderson, yeah. [laughs]

David Tian: Yeah, yeah. Here’s your consolation prize. [laughs] And so before that – so, guys are growing up with porn now, I guess it’s – they’re – the moment they get their first device, an iPhone, iPad, whatever it is, they’ll figure out a way to get around the parental controls and boom, so easy to get [INAUDIBLE 00:03:31 to it started soon]. So I assume, like, some of them are seeing their first full-on penetration like 8, 9 years old, and that’s crazy. So, my first time even seeing a vagina, like a photo, I mean, [INAUDIBLE 00:03:43 maybe not a real thing], it was like 14 years old I think and… Well, actually that’s not true, we had [INAUDIBLE 00:03:49 a riot] in middle school. Some guy who lived – there was a house near the bus stop, and this guy had a stack of old Penthouses and Playboys like, wrapped up and he threw them by the trash pickup, and – [laughs]

Josh Hudson: Yep, I’ve heard that story before.

David Tian: Boys waiting at the bus stop like “What is this?”

Josh Hudson: Yep, yep.

David Tian: Like finding gold. But they were all old, used –

Josh Hudson: His wife made him throw them out.

David Tian: Yeah, right? [laughs]

Josh Hudson: Hundred percent now, I’ve heard that story from multiple men.

David Tian: Yeah, so that was it like, you have to – and then, we were looking at them but you don’t get to take them home. There was sort of like, library use among the guys, and they’re used, so, you know… So it wasn’t – I remember in undergrad, you’d still have to – you buy them, like magazines, because you wouldn’t want to get DVDs because you’d have to drive out to some really far away, really sleazy looking place, and if you walk in there – it’s just like an assumption, your life sucks. Like, you’re in the parking lot, you’re like “My life sucks, I’m just going to go and…”

Josh Hudson: [laughs] Yeah.

David Tian: And if you rent it, you know you have to come back so it’s like “Ah, fuck.”

Josh Hudson: The shame.

David Tian: Yeah, the shame, the embarrass – yeah definitely the shame. And then in the convenience store where you have magazines at the top, you’re kind of waiting until there’s no women around then you sneak it in, and then you hide it behind the Sports Illustrated, you walk to [INAUDIBLE 00:05:00 the counter] and there’s some guy behind it like “Still want the Sports Illustrated?” [laughs] it was like, you know, he knows what’s up, puts it in a brown paper bag. That’s how hard it was for my generation to get access to that so, I can only imagine now how much of a dopamine rush how easily that is to tripwire our normal, mental condition – or control around these very stimulating sources. You’re the expert on this and you’ve been working on this with a lot of guys for many years, so I’m going to throw it over to you. How bad is the situation? Maybe you can explain it to me, I’m quite curious to know this better as a Gen Xer.

Josh Hudson: Yeah I mean, how do we truly know how bad it is? I can go only off of the numbers and the personal stories of the clients I’ve worked with, right? And I was much like you, even when I’m a generation below. When I start making videos on how to quit porn, I didn’t think it was going to be that successful. I knew my struggle, but as men, we don’t talk about this, right? This is not something we go to our bros and be like “Man, I am having a struggle watching too much porn.” Like, that rarely ever happens, right? And so – but, especially with the younger generations, they’re getting access… I get emails from guys that are literally 10 and 11 years old, trying to quit porn, and I can’t help them because I don’t help anyone under 18 but I’m like “Hey, watch these videos.” But it’s sad, right?

But a lot of men, we don’t talk about this and we don’t look at the detrimental effects but, I mean – yeah, there’s so many things out there that we just blindly accept it because everyone does it so it must be okay, right? There’s been – I’m not going to mention things across history, but think of all the things across history where the mass majority of society did it, and then we look at it decades and centuries down the road, we’re like “Wow, I can’t believe we did that.” I think porn’s going to be one of those things, like “Wow, I can’t believe we did that.” Could be wrong, but there’s so many detrimental effects that I can get into right now if you want but I’m [INAUDIBLE 00:06:48].

David Tian: Yeah, so let’s get into – yeah, just so – Why is this so bad? Why is this – how would this affect the guy in other areas of life where if he spends an hour a day jerking it to porn, what are the downstream effects?

Josh Hudson: Before I go down into that, I just want to say to anyone listening like, if you think “Do I really have this [00:07:06]? It’s just really something that I’m struggling with.” Try to give it up by yourself for 30 days, maybe 60. And if your gut reaction is like “I don’t want to” or “I don’t know if I can” or if you try and you can’t like I was, it’s a lot more [INAUDIBLE 00:07:20] of a problem than you think it is. But if you go across the board from the biological, psychological, social aspects, like – I mean, we talked about – we already mentioned dopamine, right? So, to those listening, dopamine is that incentive molecule. The more dopamine we have in between our synapses, we’re more motivated to do something, right?

So, there’s a famous chart and study saying that when you go to eat food, 50% of your dopamine receptors are activated; when you go to have sex, it’s 100% right? And so porn, it’s like equivalent to the sex until like a lot of your dopamine’s being flooded in, and when you’re constantly getting this rush of dopamine, your brain shuts off these gates in between, so when you’re not watching the porn anymore, you become less motivated, there’s less dopamine in your system. That’s why it creates things like brain fog, you’re just less energetic, less creative, and that becomes your new default state. And so like, by quitting porn you’re thinking you’re becoming more energetic, more creative, but no that’s your default state, the porn has numbed you so much, right? So that’s just the neurological impact. And then if you want to talk about relationships – a lot of your audience is into dating, right?

Like in success with social interactions. We talk about women for one second, and that’s – so here’s a couple things that just watching porn does with your interactions with women; so one, the objectification, right? That’s pretty self-explanatory. When you’re watching these women, you don’t consider that they have emotions, they have motivations, they have their own problems. So when you’re talking to these girls, you’re thinking “immediate access, immediate access, immediate sex.” And when you get shot down and rejected, you’re like “I’m just going to watch porn, because it’s going to give me what I want. Why do I have to go through this rejection, this shit-test, all these problems, if I can just go get that immediate access.” Right? Even though it’s not fulfilling. And the other thing is – man this one’s kind of more debatable and I don’t know what you think about this but, when you’re watching someone else have sex with someone else, that’s putting you in a – I hate this term, but simp-ish, beta mentality because you’re being an observer. You’re not engaging in it, you’re watching having someone else have sex with a girl.

So it’s like the definition of a simp, right? And so you become more like this passive observer in the main dynamic, right? And so when you’re in the bar, you’re like – you’re going to be a voyeur, you’re going to be watching other people talk to girls, you’re going to be sitting there with your drink in your hand, frustrated. So those are just two effects with the girls I’ve seen with – because if you stop watching it, there’s this one more study that I want to throw in there is if you stop watching porn and masturbating for seven days, the study, it showed – I can link this to you – 143% increase in testosterone.

David Tian: Oh yeah, that’s – yeah, I know about that.

Josh Hudson: Yeah, and like, think of it like the motivation when you see a girl, you’re just like “I want to go talk to her” right? Just automatically.

David Tian: Yeah, so one of the biggest downsides of porn use among guys who are in – trying to get better with dating, and if you’re already in a relationship, is that you start to prime your mind or your brain to only be stimulated by that stimuli. And the problem is most of the porn that guys are watching is not in the angle of a POV – so, there is POV porn, of course, but most of it is looking at it from a weird angle that you would never see it at if you were actually the guy doing it. And then it becomes like, you need to see it, right? So then you might put up a whole bunch of mirrors around, trying to get that angle that you’re used to until – and then – so that’s one of the issues, right? So, you’re getting used to sex being a certain way that it very rarely ever is, and in order for you to take that angle, it would mean that, as you were saying, you’re not even involved, you’re the guy watching. And the other one is, part of the objectification is, it will be the case that you will treat the women as just things for you to use, so you’ll just be very – it’ll reinforce the self-centeredness which will make it hard for you to form emotional connections.

But even then, when she does start to act as an agent with free will – so she’s not like, “Oh Mister Mailman, what – ” you know, like the kind – but she’s actually coming back at you with stuff that now you actually have to connect or go back and forth and banter. You’re immediately feeling bad about yourself because it’s like “Oh, it’s not going the way it’s supposed to, it must be something about me.” Right? So it could be, you take the narcissist view of “Oh, you’re not good enough for me, I want the next girl.” Or it could be you blame yourself when you go in and then you have very few resources to deal with that kind of back and forth where it’s not going to be sex right away. And then it makes it hard for you to just interact with other human beings as a human being if you’re so focused on the sex.

Josh Hudson: Yep, and one of the other biggest things that I don’t hear people talk about is… So, women like to be seduced and they like to take their time with the seduction process. If you think about in the bedroom, they don’t want – as men, we want straight to the point, straight to the point. And if you’re training your brain to “I want to have sex as soon as possible.” You’re coming across as needy, right? Like “I talked to you for five minutes, give me your number. Oh, I texted you for two text messages, let’s go hang out immediately.” The girl wants to have this back and forth a little bit, and if you’re constantly watching porn, you’re thinking “Oh, I don’t need to delay my gratification. I don’t need to fall in love with the process of seducing the girl – of the game, right?” The game is fun, and I think when guys watch porn a lot consistently, they’re learning that they don’t want to play the game, they just want that immediate access.

David Tian: Yeah, and then the way that they – yeah, absolutely. So, the seductive process is lost, the biggest sexual organ in the human being – especially in a woman, is her brain, and they’re not good at stimulating that. And then it becomes the type of sex that they have, which is just sort of this just [INAUDIBLE 00:12:42 “Bam” [imitating hard sex pounding sounds]] –

Josh Hudson: Yeah, I didn’t even go into ED of the amount of men that I worked with that have sexual performance issues, you know? That they’re trying to seduce a girl and then they can’t get it up and – you know. There’s a book called “Your Brain on Porn” by Gary Wilson, I’m sure you’ve heard of it but for your audience, Your Brain on Porn by Gary Wilson, and it talks about consistent, recent studies about the sexual performance issues and as a direct relation to the porn use.

David Tian: Yeah, Your Brain on Porn. Yeah I mean, it’s for – over a decade, when I was working in the dating coach, specifically the dating coach area, guys would take the techniques, strategies and methods, and then do great. But then the one area that I didn’t anticipate and that I wasn’t really – this isn’t what they paid me for, but I helped them with their porn use, it just – it fails them. So they get to the end – the end goal there, at the end zone, and now they can’t perform. They got there consistently, but now it’s not what they had hoped, or anticipated, or expected because they had trained their brain on porn. It was this unrealistic depiction of good sex. Okay so, I want to figure out how you got into this, so let’s talk about that.

Josh Hudson: Oh man, it’s so cliché but I kind of fell into it, right? I remember – so, throughout college, I didn’t think porn was an issue and then I started working – through grad school, I started working with sex offenders, the last population of people I’d ever thought I’d work with and I heard this story about this man who, normal job, very articulate, was with a woman who had a daughter and he watched child porn, of all porn, right? And came to me as a sex offender because he got caught and – this guy started off normal, normal history through out his life, no sexual abuse, and he was just addicted to the escapism. The isolation of porn was always that vehicle for him to make him feel okay, and what happened with [INAUDIBLE 00:14:33 doping down regulations,] you want more novelty, more – it’s a very male trait to go from more novelty, more novelty. The internet porn provides an endless supply of this and so, he basically kept on watching more and more deviant porn to the point – and studies can show this, that he started watching this more and more taboo stuff and then he got illegal and then just that – that connection with that taboo nature and the sexual arousal was just so interconnected in his mind that it led him down a dark path. So for me, that scared me. [laughs]

So I was like, I’m going to stop watching porn. And I tried to use willpower, and it got me to like, 50 to 60 days, or a little bit more. And then, I thought I had it, I was walking out from the gym, I did a PR in the squats, I saw this cute girl, I walk up to her, I get her number, I go back inside my house and then all the adrenaline in the pre-workout mixed together like [INAUDIBLE 00:15:16 crazy concoction] this huge urge, and I go watch porn for like, four hours straight, after like, 60 days of not watching it. And I was like, “What happened?” And I watched a deviant, disgusting, dark porn that I never thought I would watch. I looked at myself in the mirror and I was disgusted with myself, I said to myself that if I ever watch that again, I’d wanted to take my own life, that’s how I felt, so I got to figure this out, I said “I have to figure this out.” So for me, it started off with just my own personal “save my own life.”

Like – and so I started putting content out there on my channel, and I didn’t realize a lot of other guys are struggling with the same issue because we repress, we don’t talk about this in our society. But you look at porn searches, the amount of porn visits per year, per day and the types of porn that are – PornHub has their statistics, but what we watch is very – it’s not normal, vanilla porn. It’s very deviant and twisted and – there’s like incest stuff, right? So it’s not normal porn and I was like “You know what, I’m going to save my life. I’m going to go to grad school, I’m going to figure this out.” Like, how to overcome this addiction. And I’ve seen what can happen to me if I don’t figure this out, and then other men just have the same issue and they just resonated with the material and I was like “You know, I want to help guys figure out.” Because it took me all through grad school to finally overcome this thing and so… Yeah.

David Tian: Yeah, it’s interesting how it gets more and more extreme that you need more and more, just like any other addiction. The old stuff doesn’t do it for you anymore, and then it’s just this downward spiral under your control.

Josh Hudson: Yeah, a hundred percent. And it’s – yeah, go ahead.

David Tian: Yeah and a big part of it, I think, it seems like it is control so if you’re still wondering whether you are addicted, go ahead and try to stop on your own so that you at least can see – you get a baseline. One of the things that I’ve noticed for the guys who have been writing in, asking if they are addicted or not, a really good sign is “can you just – can you stop? And how hard is it for you to stop?” And a lot of guys, it’s a big deal to just go without porn for like, three days, or a week. To think “Oh, you can possibly be a casual user. Like the way – drinking, you can be a casual drinker.” But not if you are addicted, and if you’re not getting to the root issues of the addiction, right? That’s – so maybe we can move into some of these solutions. So, we kind of painted this picture of the reality of the situation nowadays with the ready availability of online porn and how damaging it can be, and all these different facets of your personal life and professional life. What can they do about it?

Josh Hudson: Yeah, before I say that, I just want to say one of the thing – Doctor Gabor Maté, addiction specialist, in Montreal, he basically defines addiction as twofold, right? So for guys listening, it’s – doing it despite consequences, it’s like, so are there consequences to your porn use? And are you still doing it despite that? And secondly, you’re doing it compulsively, which means you kind of do it on autopilot like, you just catch yourself staring at pictures and you’re thinking to yourself “How did I get to this website? I don’t even remember clicking on it.”

So, those two things are another markers of addiction. As far as solution-based, I see the biggest mistake men make is they think – so there’s the service-level needs and then there’s the real-level needs, and the metaphor I always use is: imagine right now, there’s like a waterpipe leaking, like it dripping down on my ceiling to my head, right? Now, what guys will try to do with the solution is like, they’ll use willpower or this basic information to – that’s basically equivalent to like, duct tape. Duct taping the ceiling, well what’s going to happen is that water is still going to be leaking, right? And it’s eventually going to just burst and blow out, and that’s like a relapse for a lot of guys. So instead, you go to the source of where the pipe is leaking and fix it at the source, and that’s a lot of the deep, internal psychological work that we’re both trained in, right?

So, you’re not watching porn because you’re bored, you’re not watching porn because you’re turned on, you’re watching porn because you’re lonely, you’re stressed out, you lack purpose in life, right? It was Viktor Frankl, I think, Man’s Search For Meaning. He said, “We distract ourselves in pleasure when we lack meaning in life.” Right? So, ultimately you’re not watching porn because you’re bored, you’re lacking purpose, or you’re lacking connection which is a huge piece, especially with COVID. I’ve seen a lot of men struggling with their porn use because there’s this – or lacking social connection more than ever, you know?

David Tian: Mm-hmm, absolutely. Now obviously, the deeper it goes, the bigger it gets and the more time you would need to unpack it, and it’s one thing to just explain the psychological process intellectually, and it’s another to go to through it emotionally, you are basically working with the – parts of the unconscious. But, let’s do a little bit of that, just so – like a preview or a teaser, what is it actually that we need to do then? So, what is – yeah, can you give us a taste of what that would be like?

Josh Hudson: Oh, I would give it – yeah, a hundred percent. So, a lot of the exercises I have guys do is first, when you have your next urge or your desire to watch porn, stop yourself for a second before – like, allow yourself to act on – if you still want to watch it, watch, but before you do, take a second before that stimulus – before you respond to that stimulus, and say “Why am I truly watching this?” Talk to yourself, have a conversation with yourself. One of the exercises I use – I don’t know if you heard the book “Feed Your Demons,” Doctor Tian? Yeah, it’s like, you imagine that urge or that emotion as a separate entity inside of you that has a strong desire to do something and you talk to it, you talk to yourself. Imagine seeing yourself with this, like – this guy’s like “I’m really bored, I need this pleasure. I want to go do something.” And as – be the calam, mature adult, like “Okay, I see you, I see you. I see you, child, that you want to have this pleasure or you want to escape just some boredom.” And then ask them what they really need. He’s not going to say “I want pleasure.” He’s going to say “I need security” or “I need some purpose in life” or “I need to feel okay” or “I need to distract myself.” You’ll get the real reason why you’re doing it. So that’s one thing I do, another thing I do is – from James Clear, Atomic Habits, he talks about the environmental change, right? That’s an aspect of change as well. Like, what is it in your environment that’s triggering you? So a lot of guys, when I say environment, it’s your phones, right? It’s social media… Like, Instagram, TikTok and all these things.

Guys follow hot girls all the time, we see these hot girls. It reminds us “Oh, I’m single right now. I’m lonely. I’m going to go have that connection through a computer.” Bill W., the creator of Alcoholics Anonymous said “We’re trying to find God at the end of every bottle, every alcoholic is.” I think we’re trying to find love and connection at the click of every mouse, as men, through porn. And so like, you’re probably not really wanting to watch porn, you just want to connect with a woman, right? And so recognizing and stopping yourself before you take action, and to watch porn, and say “What am I really trying to get here?” And then go get that fulfilled need, not the external source that is empty, right? So there’s a difference between connecting with someone in person, versus connecting over a computer screen. And so the last thing I would say to someone right now listening is the next time you’re with someone, connecting with them one on one – even a guy or a girl, or you’re with a bunch of friends having a good time, on a scale from 1 to 10, 10 being like a very strong urge and 0 being non-existent, what was your urge level at when you were connecting with people? For most men, it’s a one or a zero. They didn’t really care to go watch porn because they’re connecting, it’s that social connection that we crave. And so, for a lot of these guys, it’s understanding the source, the true reason why we do it, changing your environment by getting rid of those triggers, and then connecting with people. Those are the main three, I would say.

David Tian: Oh, that’s awesome. Yeah, I have a lot to say about – So, the way that you’re dealing with the stimulus response – and that gap is beautiful. That’s something that is very much in line with one of the main modalities that I use, which is IFS therapy, the parts work. So, it sounds like what you’re doing there is having them speak to one of their parts from a healthy, mature adult self, and that’s absolutely powerful and what needs to be done and that’s a really deep way of approaching it, so that’s awesome. I have nothing more to say to that than just to say that’s awesome. [laughs] The environmental changes, everything, like, part of it why I was explaining my old man story about being from Gen X is because we didn’t the same environment like, that’s why we didn’t fall – like, I probably would’ve become addicted to porn too, but I just didn’t have the same environment. And if you can set up your environment so that you can control these devices – I mean, even the vices themselves are such dopamine down regulation type of addictive devices. You see a 5-year old child pick up an iPad and it’s just… They know how to go through it better than I do, right? And soon, they will find backdoors of things and know where all the apps are, and they know exactly how to get more of whatever tokens in their game and all that stuff, and they’re like 7-years old. And then if you’ve ever seen a child who has access to a touchscreen device, and then you take it away from them for very long, you see them go “Oh I can’t handle it, I need it, I need it.”

Josh Hudson: So much anxiety, yeah.

David Tian: Oh, it’s crazy. I saw that happen with my nephew and then having to deal with that, it’s – yeah, just the actual device itself, even if you would have substitute the content, it could just be a game. I think just these addictive… It’s so easy to without – if you don’t go to do the healing or the – or if you don’t address the deeper psychological issues, you might conquer your porn addiction, and then just substitute it with another addiction. So, going deep is the only real way to uproot it at its source because addicts are – they might quit the alcohol and then just take up a drug addiction, or they could quit the drug and take up a sex addiction.

Josh Hudson: Or they’ll just smoke 10 packs of cigarettes a day and pour coffees and – [laughs]

David Tian: Oh yeah, just switch the coping mechanism or the coping substance. So then, the environment will help you – the environmental change will help you, it’ll be more – it’ll bring it to the fore and make it more stark for you that how badly things – how bad things are. Yeah, I mean, the connection is so great because like, I hadn’t thought of it that way but dudes love to still sit around, chat with their buddies.

Josh Hudson: Have you heard of Rat Park, the study, right?

David Tian: Oh, of course, yeah, that’s a deep one.

Josh Hudson: I feel like we should share that, yeah, I mean…

David Tian: Yeah, we talked about that, yeah.

Josh Hudson: So, okay. Yeah, it’s really relevant to this. So basically, this scientist did an experiment on a rat and he gave him normal water and cocaine water. They like “Okay, so let’s see what they choose.” The rat chose like, 95% of the time cocaine water. Another guy’s looking at him, he’s an another scientist, he’s like “Well, let’s wait a second. Let’s put this rat in an environment that kind of mimics actual – his natural habitat and see if he still goes to the drug.” So he made a rat park which was with all these other female rats, they could have sex with games, lots of food. The rats only went to the cocaine water, I think 20% of the times instead of 95% of the time, right? And that’s basically saying that when you’re in an environment that’s soothing your connection, all these basic core needs like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, there’s connection, there’s love, there’s challenge, there’s purpose – whatever it is, you’re not going to go to these external stimuli with food, drugs, or porn to try to satisfy that need, right? Another example of this is Vietnam vets that were addicted to opiates. When they got back to America, over 95% of them stopped using the drug because they were back in a social environment that was connecting with them, with other people. So, our society nowadays, more than ever, we’re lacking that connection, that actual, real face to face connection. We’re trying to connect through our phones which doesn’t give the same psychological benefit that we actually need.

David Tian: Yeah. Like, when I was having a [INAUDIBLE 00:25:57] Actually, it was more of when our Wi-Fi connections were fast enough to stream without interruption. By that point, my social life was thriving, and I was actually with real women. So, it was like – it wasn’t even a temptation, really, and when I tell that to a guy, he’s just like “This is not how you use porn.” [laughs] Because you just do it on a regular basis, you got to build it up.

Josh Hudson: Yeah, it’s like your daily medicine, right? [laughs]

David Tian: Yeah, it’s just like taking your – like with cereal, or your coffee. But yeah, it’ll prevent you from getting that connection as well, so you get used – so what I’ve noticed the most is I start to be able to tell when I’m getting a message from a guy who used his porn when it’s not about porn. Because what will happen is, when he finally does go on a Tinder date or whatever it is – of course, it’s a Tinder date, because it includes their devices because the porn’s on there – they’re not meeting people in real life. So anyway, and then they go on a Tinder date, and then it’s all emotions. He’s seeing his future with her, he’s interviewing her as a future wife because his sexual needs are met somewhere else, and then, of course, that fucks up, right? But a girl will – she might go for three days with a guy like that because she’s like “Oh, this is going to be a deep connection thing, emotions.” But it’s like, sterile, because there’s very little of that “oomph” to it because it’s – the sexual part, that libido, that [INAUDIBLE 00:27:21 crosstalk] is not there.

Josh Hudson: That polarity is not there, right?

David Tian: Yeah, and then becomes this needy, crybaby guy and she’s like “What happened?” So, that might actually trigger her little crybaby and that creates drama and he’s like “Oh, all girls are bitches” or whatever, you know? And then he just goes back to the porn and be like “I want a girl who’s not going to give me these problems like these porn girls.” And it just creates all kinds of problems that they don’t even know the source of because it started from the beginning before he would even show up on the date. He’s wired his brain to get connection or to look for some types of connection in other’s areas, and he’s meeting this need in this area. A woman wants the full man, but he’s not showing up as the full man, he’s showing up as this kind of desiccated little boy who needs mommy now, but doesn’t realize it.

Josh Hudson: Yeah, and there’s not just more deviant porn but I’ve had multiple people in my program and just clients in general who – they’re like – they give up on that emotional aspect, they don’t know how to train that part, they just want to give up and so they end up satisfying that need through prostitutes, right? Because it’s actually a physical connection, there’s a little bit more there but no emotions at all. That emotional EQ is like pshh out the window, right?

David Tian: Yeah, right, and then they train that. [laughs] So then yeah, and then they’re wondering, years down the road “Why am I single, still?” And it’s this – now we’re having to fight years of this habit. And it’s not just physical action, it’s happening in the brain. Neural pathways being formed and being triggered by certain stimuli so, the earlier you get to it, the better. Yeah, so, I didn’t realize just how bad this was until we ran that promotion for that course a while ago and now I’m very motivated to research more on this area and help guys, so, this is awesome that you’re doing this course. So yeah, we did a webinar a bit back and I’ll put the link to that and you can see whether the course is open at that link. Is there anything that you want to say about the course of the program? It opens at certain times of the year so, you’ll probably hear more about it if you go watch that webinar replay.

Josh Hudson: Yeah, I could speak a little bit about it if you guys are probably curious just about what does it entail, what does it involve. So I basically took – when I first started off, I did  one-on-one coaching clients and I was charging like, you know, 3 to 5K, they kept paying more and more and was helping guys quit porn, and I was like “How do I help more men do this for less money?” Right? So I basically put my whole entire 12-week coaching program into recorded videos, and then I have weekly calls like, every single week like – today, one of the calls, Q and A calls guys come on to the – we have like two hours to talk with insides, obstacles, we’re all kind of this brotherhood of guys talking about it each and every week and then I have the private Facebook group, and that’s the end of the 24/7 access to my coaches that we talk to throughout the group as well and that’s pretty much what the course involves.

Also, you can an accountability partner, and now I’m basically doing these groups so guys got cohorts like – so you come into the group, you come in with like, four of their guys, try to match them up with the country and time zone, and you go through the course with these four to five other guys and everyone’s trying to promote this brotherhood and like, really expressing their emotions. They’re opening up and being vulnerable, because that’s what’s going to really create a powerful change, right? Just connecting with other males with the same issue. The deeper the wound, the more universal it is so if we share and get used the guys creating an atmosphere of sharing, they’re really going to overcome this problem. So, that’s essential with the course details out, each week gets specifically designed to lead you down to that part of these deeper parts of your subconscious process, the habit formation, your identity level change, all that good stuff.

David Tian: Awesome, that sounds very thorough. And I love the accountability and the community aspect.

Josh Hudson: It’s vital, yeah.

David Tian: Yeah, that’s fantastic. And it’s one of those things that most guys feel like they’re dealing with on their own because there’s so much shame around it, so, knowing that there is a group – and then it kind of makes it into kind of like a jock kind of thing, so now you can take pride in how long you – so I know that there are abstinence type of like, Reddit threads and stuff like that, but they don’t go deep enough, not nearly, and they’re trying to use this willpower to just stop. Yeah, so we already talked about how futile that is, but adding in the community aspect to the deeper psychological work, I think is just fantastic. Anyway, I’ll put the link to the webinar that we did and hopefully these guys can follow you and figure out when the next opening for the course is, and it’s awesome that you’re doing that.

Josh Hudson: Thanks, I was just going to say [INAUDIBLE 00:31:47] willpower like, I always relate everything back to dating because it was the first level mastery that I got to, it’s like, using willpower is like walking to a girl and saying “Okay, if I try harder to get her to like me, she’ll like me more.” [laughs]

David Tian: Right? “If I just persist getting her eye contact, that’ll… Look at me god damn it.” [laughs]

Josh Hudson: “Do you see how much I like you? Do you see – ” [laughs] [INAUDIBLE 00:32:10]

David Tian: Yeah, it’s a great way to get the cops called on you, yeah. [laughs] Awesome man. Well, thanks for that illuminating discussion, and keep up the good work, man.

Josh Hudson: Thank you, Doctor Tian.

David Tian: Yeah, I hope the guys go check out the webinar we did, and love to hear from you guys about your struggles with this area of your life. If you need any further help, feel free to reach out. Thanks again, Josh Hudson.

Josh Hudson: Thank you.