Q&A – Is porn consumption a problem?

Narrator: This is Pathway to Recovery, an SA Lifeline Foundation podcast featuring hosts Tara McCausland, who is the SA Lifeline Executive Director, and Justin B., a sex addict living in long-term recovery. We have conversations with experts and individuals who understand the pathway to healing from sexual addiction and betrayal trauma because we believe that recovering individuals leads to the healing of families. Welcome to this Pathway to Recovery Q&A.

Tara McCausland: I am Tara McCausland and I have here with me my co-host Justin B. Thanks for being with me, Justin.

Justin B.: Hey, I'm excited to be here. Thanks, Tara.

Tara McCausland: Yeah, and this being our first Q&A, this is just a short 10-minute max 15-minute back and forth, uh, in regards to a question that we either have received from a listener, or in this case, this is just a question that we know is on a lot of people's minds. So the question that we're going to be responding to today is, is porn use a problem? And, you know, Justin, there's There's a lot of different opinions swirling around in professional, religious, and other circles.

Why even ask that question?

Justin B.: I think that's an interesting question and one that in, you know, I come at it pretty biased from my own experience, and I'll speak from my own experience. For me, porn started out being a solution to the ills of life, a solution with a small s, and You know, something that I've shared here recently with some people is rejection is a big negative emotion that when I feel rejected by something, somebody, whatever, I feel the need to escape.

And never once has porn rejected me. Mm-hmm. And so it's an easy, quick path to go back to, but it has let me down big time after each quote unquote acceptance that happened. So is it a problem? Yeah, it is because it's not a real solution. it's an empty, empty counterfeit solution. Does that answer the question at all there? Yeah.

Tara McCausland: Well, and I think we're going to kind of come at this from a different perspective than you may have heard before. We could put forward data and research that suggests that porn is harmful to mental health. It is harmful to committed relationships. It's overall harmful to society in that Porn increases things like sex trafficking, and there's connection between a lot of other social ills that we're dealing with. However, I think if we come at it from this perspective of not is porn bad, but what are the fruits of porn?

You might say, if I'm understanding you right, Justin, porn was the solution that became the problem for you.

Justin B.: Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a pretty good way of saying it. Porn was the solution, or a solution, but it was the easiest and quickest and most reliable solution to the problems that I faced in negative emotions. But soon enough, it, it's let me down and it became my master rather than the salve to soothe the negative emotions I was feeling. It became my master because it soon moved from When I feel rejected to when I feel celebratory, or when I feel sad and when I feel happy, to numb and regulate any emotion that seemed to make me uncomfortable.

I would retreat from those emotions back to numbness, basically, because feeling was too painful.

Tara McCausland: Yeah. Kathy Kinghorn, who is a CSAT therapist, She explained in the women's workshop this past month that addiction or addictive behaviors increase pleasure or decrease pain. And so what you're saying, Justin, really, I think, speaks to that concept that the behavior, while maladaptive, becomes a way for people to deal with life, with boredom, with rejection, with anxiety. And, and it does for a time. Yeah. Play this role of, of being a solution. So just a thought from Roy Kim, who was our guest in our last episode.

He posted something really great some time ago on his Instagram, and I just wanted to read this. And it, it speaks to this idea of what is our solution when we're dealing with daily life with the ups and downs. He said, when I'm hungry, I eat. When I'm thirsty, I drink. When I'm cold, I wear something. When I'm broke, I look for work. When I'm lonely, porn. When I'm anxious, porn. When I'm angry, porn. When I'm overwhelmed, porn.

He said it's time to reevaluate our solutions. What are your thoughts about that?

Justin B.: Yeah, I totally identify with that. And I would add a couple more, like I mentioned earlier. When I celebrate, porn. Yeah. When I'm happy, when I'm overly happy, porn. When I feel rejected, like I mentioned, porn. Any emotion. The reason why is because the addict me likes the effect of pornography, of sex, of, of all of the related things there. It takes me back to in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous on page Roman numeral XXVIII in the doctor's opinion.

I wanna read a paragraph here. And this also addresses the question of what does addiction talk, act, and think like? So, and I'm going to change the pronouns in here to I and me because this pertains to me. And it— and I would invite anybody who reads these types of things to not think about someone else, but to think about themselves. I drink or use porn or act out essentially because I like the effect produced by that drug of choice.

The sensation is so elusive that while I admit it's injurious, I know it's injurious, I know it's not good for me. I cannot after a time differentiate the true from the false. That's when it becomes my master. I can't differentiate anymore. To me, my addict life seems the only normal one. It's the only one that feels right at that time. It feels safe. I am restless, irritable, and discontented unless I can again experience the sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks, looking at a few images, doing, you know, whatever action I take in lust.

Hmm. Those actions which I see others taking with impunity. Some people can occasionally look at porn, can occasionally do things and not be addicted and just leave it alone. Unfortunately, I'm not that person. After I have succumbed to the desire again, as so many do, and the phenomenon of craving develops, I pass through the well-known stages of a spree, emerging remorseful with a firm resolution to not Act out again. This is repeated over and over, and unless I can experience an entire psychic change, there is very little hope of my recovery.

I act out because I like it. The addict likes it. No matter how much I say, no, I don't want to like it, this is disgusting, I don't want to like it, the truth is I like it. It is a quick, easy solution. Until I find an alternative that works every single time, I'm gonna go back to this solution, you know?

Tara McCausland: So in the explanation that Roy Kim gives to this Instagram post, he says, a porn addiction usually has little to do with being oversexed, perverted, or degenerate. It often has more to do with having found something that predictably and successfully transports us away from a problem or a mood. The bad thing is that the problem or the mood do not get addressed. The solution is not just stopping the porn, he said, although that is a fundamental first step.

And so what I'm hearing you say is until we find better tools, the porn or the addictive behavior will continue to be the solution. Is that right?

Justin B.: Yeah, that's my experience. Absolutely. And I like I like this. The bad thing is that the problem or the mood does not get addressed when I seek to escape through my drug of choice, whatever that may be. Going a little bit further down this path of, of that, I, I like the look and smell of roses, but for me, once I see a rose bush or smell a rose, I am not going to stay there and look at and smell the roses nonstop until they die in the late fall and then mourn all winter long because I can't see or smell the roses.

But as an addict, if I can't consume my drug of choice all the time, I am going to be depressed. I'm going to mourn until I can get back to it. Another thing, I love mowing the lawn, but once I start mowing the lawn, I'm not going to go mow my lawn, my neighbor's lawn, and every lawn that I find until I've destroyed my lawnmower. But in lust, in sex, in pornography, I'm going to do that.

I'm, I'm just going to keep consuming until it's destroyed everything. Myself, my family, everything. And I won't be able to stop until I've exhausted everything— myself, my money, my respectability, my morals, you name it. As an untreated addict, as one who has not had an entire psychic change that we talked about here in that doctor's opinion quote, and maintains that entire psychic change every single day no matter what, I throw away everything that really is most important, everything that I really love.

except for that sensation of escape that's so elusive that while I admit it's injurious, I cannot differentiate the true from the false. Hmm. You know, it's not an excuse because I still have 100% choice to not entertain the thought or to not start the ritualizations. But that choice exists in an addict, especially an active addict, for like milliseconds. Once, once I start having the thought, I have to immediately change, or it's, it's going to take me over and I will not have choice anymore.

I need that entire psychic change. And we can talk about more of what that means in future episodes because there's so much to this.

Tara McCausland: Yeah. Well, going back to this initial question that we are addressing, is porn use a problem? Is porn bad? Because again, well-meaning people can probably cite information that might speak to one side or the other. What we might invite you to do is, rather than asking that question, is porn bad, asking yourself, does it produce more or less self-respect? Does it produce more or less respect for others? Does it increase or decrease connection with God and with others, especially those who we are in committed relationships with?

Does it cause us to want to be in a space where we are connecting in healthy ways, or does it cause us to pull away and isolate? Is porn helping me to create the life I want? Thank you, Justin. I think this is, this is something we could talk about for a long time. Yeah. But I think this gives us some different ways to consider porn and how the solution became the problem and a maladaptive way of dealing with life.

Justin B.: Yeah, absolutely. And I do look forward to further developing this over, you know, the, the time that we're doing this together. This is gonna be good. Thank you so much, Tara.

Tara McCausland: Thank you. And thank you to our listeners. We'll see you next time.

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