Joshua Shea-Overcoming Pornography Addiction

Show Transcript

Overcoming Pornography Addiction

[00:00:00] Bob Gatty: Joshua Shea is a former pornography addict now on a mission to get the world talking about pornography addiction and the potential ramifications of being addicted to porn. He's written four books on the subject. Stay with us. 

[00:00:16] Joshua's most recent book, "I'm reading this book about porn addiction for a friend," introduces readers who are struggling in early recovery or looking for more information about a suspected addiction.

[00:00:30] It includes symptoms, stories of addicts with whom Shea has worked, and a series of activities to personalize the process. His third book, "Porn and the pandemic, how three months in 2020 changed everything,' was released in July, 2020. It looks at how the world of online pornography changed overnight during the Covid 19 Coronavirus outbreak.

[00:00:58] With analysis and interviews from current and former pornography addicts, "cam models" who use sites like Chaturbate and OnlyFans, and a bevy of mental health and addiction professionals, online pornography exploded during the pandemic. 

[00:01:17] Joshua also was the author of "The Addiction. Nobody Will Talk About: how I let my pornography addiction hurt people and destroy relationships". That was published in 2018. It's a memoir about his descent during the final days of his addiction. He also wrote, "He's a Porn Addict...Now What? In 2019, written for female partners of male porn addicts who are grappling with the revelation their loved one is an addict. It was co-written with Tony Overbay. 

[00:01:52] Since 2018, Shea has appeared in over 350 podcasts. Here I thought I was the only one. Television and radio. 

[00:02:02] Joshua Shea: What'd you say? You're my favorite. Oh, already? Yeah, 

[00:02:07] Bob Gatty: already. See, it's just so easy. All right. Here we where were we?

[00:02:12] He's appeared in over 350 podcasts, television and radio shows, using his personal story to promote the idea that porn addiction spans all demographics and those with the problems should seek help before it's too late. Prior to admitting his addiction, Joshua was a prominent magazine publisher, award-winning journalist, film festival, founder and politician in Central Maine. 

[00:02:42] Sober since early 2014, joshua comes to us from Central Maine where he lives with his wife, two children, four dogs, and eight cats. Joshua, welcome to the Lean to the Left Podcast pal. 

[00:02:57] Joshua Shea: Thank you very much for having me. I appreciate it. 

[00:03:01] Bob Gatty: It's a pleasure. This is a topic that is really interesting and I was fascinated when I received the information that you would be available to do this show.

[00:03:14] Can you give us the cliff notes version Joshua, of your journey? How did your addiction begin and what happened that made you realize you had a serious problem? 

[00:03:25] Joshua Shea: Yeah. I am very textbook when it comes to somebody who is a pornography addict from my generation, which means prior to high speed internet.

[00:03:40] And I. Had trauma when I was a kid, I was abused by a babysitter and I also had some abuse at the hands of my grandmother. And when I was 12, this was when I was a small child. When I was 12 years old, I was introduced to hardcore pornography, fell in love with it immediately. I was addicted right away and I think the reason was because it, seeing those images on those pages of that magazine normalized the kind of abuse that happened to me in a way. It made it acceptable cuz it was the first time that I'd ever seen it. In a picture in front of me instead of me being forced to do it, Uhhuh or, it being done to me. Okay? Two years after that, when I was 14, I got drunk for the first time became an alcoholic almost immediately. 

[00:04:38] And then the short version is whether I was in high school, college, early career, later career, whether I was dating with nobody or with my wife. Whether I had my kids or not for the next 24 years with porn for the next 22 years with alcohol I was absolutely hooked. And then finally, when I was 36 years old, I was the publisher of a magazine company.

[00:05:08] We created three magazines here in Central Maine. And my two co-owners who didn't work there day-to-day. I was the one who ran it day to day. My two co-owners basically came in and fired me. And said that I was just drunk all the time at work, which was true, right? I ended up having an intervention from my family and went off to rehab for alcohol abuse.

[00:05:36] It was while I was there that my case worker had me talk to a certified sex addiction therapist because he could recognize something was up with me. But wasn't sure what it was. This gentleman helped me understand that I actually had a porn addiction. It wasn't just something I did when I was drunk.

[00:05:57] And my porn addiction, which I never really knew I had until then. He showed me how it predated the alcoholism, how it probably hurt more people than the alcoholism. And he was also the one who ultimately convinced me that addiction was a disease, not just a bad choice, and that I would have to address the underlying reasons underneath the addictions if I was ever going to get better. So I started to do that. And my being a journalist, I wanted to find research about this stuff. So I went to a bookstore, if you remember what those used to be. And I went to the self-help section, went to the whatever section that was with addiction books.

[00:06:49] There were books on general addiction. There were books on alcoholism. There was nothing on sex or porn addiction. So I decided since I am an okay writer, I would start writing books about this stuff for the average person. And that was seven years ago. And it's just been going ever since that I've been talking about this stuff or giving speeches.

[00:07:13] And now the last couple years I've been doing full-time coaching for people who have porn addiction or betrayal trauma. 

[00:07:22] Bob Gatty: So you turned this addiction, you turned this addiction to both alcoholism and pornography into a income stream. 

[00:07:34] Joshua Shea: Yeah. Yeah. I, just, I realized there was nobody talking about this, and I enjoy reading academic papers. I enjoy reading things like the New England Journal of Medicine. Okay. I know most people don't. It's like reading Shakespeare for most people. We're not gonna do that by choice. Sure. So I thought maybe if I could take my experience, 24 years as an addict, my experience getting better. And all of these statistics that people weren't reading because the statistics were very damning and very scary. Yeah. But they weren't getting out there. So I, decided to try to write books for the average guy who could understand this problem. I see. Because we needed to get it out and let people know that, especially since the advent of high speed internet, this has become a massive problem.

[00:08:25] Bob Gatty: Okay. Before we get into that you mentioned intervention by your family. What did that involve? 

[00:08:32] Joshua Shea: That was not as well run as the TV show. It was basically being tricked into going to my parents' house and there being oh, eight, nine people there who all said, It's time to get your act together.

[00:08:52] It wasn't like the interventions I've seen on tv, there was no interventionist running it. But I'll tell you what got to me was I realized that was the end of the road with my wife and my kids, and that's what ultimately sent me to rehab. Was that I realized that she was going to finally leave.

[00:09:13] She was going to take the kids. And that the lifestyle I knew was done because I was fired. But the home lifestyle I knew was going to disappear if I didn't take this seriously and didn't do something about it. And when it's between this thing that's destroying your life and your family, Picking your family is an easy decision.

[00:09:39] So I agreed that I would go off and get help for my drinking at that point. 

[00:09:44] Bob Gatty: Okay, but it was your drinking, it wasn't anything about porn? 

[00:09:49] Joshua Shea: No. Nobody knew. It's, everybody can tell when you're an alcoholic. Sure. You smell, you slur. It's hidden when it's porn. Yeah. And with me, I knew I watched a lot of porn, but I had convinced myself that was just something I did when I was drunk.

[00:10:04] Okay. It wasn't until I got to the rehab and was able to talk to some sex specialists that it was obvious this was something totally different. I did. And something that I hid from everybody. 

[00:10:18] Bob Gatty: So this didn't have anything to do with whatever your relationship was sexually with your wife. This nothing, to do with that.

[00:10:28] Joshua Shea: No, and that's the thing that's important to recognize with people who are addicts is that I wasn't doing it because I like seeing naked people do naked things. Uhhuh. This wasn't a surrogacy for sex for me. Okay. This was just, I learned when I was young, this was the method by which, and I didn't know it exactly the medicine part of it at the time, but this was the method by which I was able to get certain pleasure chemicals going in my head. Okay. Dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin. When I used porn or, when I drank, but when I used porn, I was able to create a chemical reaction in my head that sent all these pleasure chemicals all through me. 

[00:11:16] And ultimately I did not use pornography because I just wanted to get pleasure and just have an orgasm. I used pornography because that was the way I got to those chemicals in my head and when I became, when I was truly an addict, I didn't care what was on the screen. I didn't care what I was looking at. I wasn't doing it for cheap thrills. Okay. I was doing it because I needed to get that chemical reaction going in my head because that's my mind and my body told me I needed that to survive.

[00:11:52] Bob Gatty: Okay. Wow. You lost your job. There was a period then when you didn't have a job, right? You were dealing with, your 

[00:12:04] Joshua Shea: I didn't work for over a year and a half after that, I went to rehab for alcoholism. I was there for 10 weeks. And then I came home and I got into some pretty deep therapy and after a few months of that, I decided along with my therapist, that would probably be good if I went to an inpatient rehab facility for the porn addiction.

[00:12:29] Wow. So I went to another rehab and it was good that I went there and I'd already been sober from porn for several months. And that was where I started to do the work on trauma. And I learned about the role trauma plays in creating addictions. Okay. And how that trauma plays out.

[00:12:48] And until you deal with that trauma, odds are you're not going to recover from the addiction. 

[00:12:55] Bob Gatty: Did you have other financial resources that allowed you to take a year and a half off of work? 

[00:13:03] Joshua Shea: I had a lot in savings at that point. Okay. I'd been saving money for 20 years. And I did also have to lean on my parents for some help.

[00:13:14] Bob Gatty: Okay. So it was not an easy thing. It took a great deal of commitment and determination for you to overcome this. 

[00:13:22] Joshua Shea: Oh, absolutely. It was. It was, like I said, that first year and a half, it was my full-time job just getting better. Okay. Just trying to get healthy. 

[00:13:32] Bob Gatty: It, seems to me that it's a credit to you that you were willing to confront these twin problems that you had and deal with them, because dealing with alcohol addiction is tough enough.

[00:13:47] Joshua Shea: Yeah. I, know my personality and I knew that if I didn't quit both at the same time I wasn't going to quit either successfully. And I went cold. I went cold Turkey and in, it's been nine years and I have not relapsed once. 

[00:14:06] Bob Gatty: Wow. Wow. That is incredible. 

[00:14:10] Joshua Shea: I believe when you are ready to quit, when you have that reason that you must quit, and that was literally the first time I ever truly saw my wife and kids as reasons to quit. First time I ever saw the life that I was living. As a reason to quit. Once I finally saw that and it was like, I can either have the porn or I can have my wife and kids.

[00:14:34] It was no question. I needed the wife and kids Of course. So I finally had my motivation that was going to make me succeed. 

[00:14:44] Bob Gatty: And I bet you that your relationship with your family is much, much, improved as a result of the fact that they recognized what you did to overcome this.

[00:14:59] Is that true? 

[00:15:00] Joshua Shea: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And the thing is, when you are an alcoholic, when you are a porn addict when you are a workaholic I was neglecting them for years and years. I wouldn't go so far as to say as we were estranged. But I was neglecting my wife and kids for years.

[00:15:19] I was not a good father. I was not a good husband. And one of the things that being able to not work for a year and a half and then getting into the recovery part of things, the last nine years I have been a better husband, a better father than I ever was. When I was dealing with the addictions, and I just thank God that I didn't wait another 10 years to get better, that I still had some time while my kids were young.

[00:15:49] I had time to save the marriage. And I'm, so thankful for that. 

[00:15:54] Bob Gatty: That's, awesome that you did that and it's a credit to your wife that she stuck with you all the trauma, 

[00:16:02] Joshua Shea: all that abso Absolutely. Absolutely. 

[00:16:05] Bob Gatty: She, must love you a great deal. That's incredible.

[00:16:07] Joshua Shea: Yeah. She, said when, you know it all came out, she said we know you're sick. Oh we know that you're sick and you need to get better. 

[00:16:16] Bob Gatty: Was it embarrassing when they found out that you were addicted to porn and that was going on? Was that embarrassing to you? 

[00:16:23] Joshua Shea: I've always been able to be pretty honest about myself and own my mistakes. So I, wouldn't say it was embarrassing as much as, it's amazing how many people, when I would say I was a porn addict would express, oh, I've watched a lot of that too. Or I've done this. Or I've done it's one of these things where it's like you open a door to allow people to tell you their secrets.

[00:16:52] Bob Gatty: When you do this online porn, is there danger in that?

[00:16:56] Joshua Shea: In the pornography itself. Absolutely. Absolutely. And it can affect so many different people, different ways. Yeah. For, me, back in the day, it was magazines and videotapes, but we have high speed internet now. 

[00:17:13] Bob Gatty: Yeah.

[00:17:14] When you went on internet, on the internet to do this were you conversing with women directly. 

[00:17:24] Joshua Shea: Sometimes, I'd do that. Sometimes I'd just watch videos. Sometimes I'd just look at pictures, but I did do the chat room thing. Really, whatever the choice for what to do on any given day was just whatever would get me aroused enough. That I could get that chemical reaction. And it could be completely vanilla, soft sort of stuff, or it could be triple X nasty stuff. It didn't matter to me. Okay. Because three minutes after I was done, I wouldn't remember what I'd even looked at really. I was only there for that chemical reaction.

[00:18:07] If I wanted sex, I had my wife. If it was just, I was just doing it so I could get my chemicals, had I been a gambling addict, I would've been at the casino every day and never thinking about porn. It was just, this was the vehicle by which I could get my, my chemicals delivered to me.

[00:18:29] Bob Gatty: Okay, so in 2017 Joshua you launched pAddictRecovery.com, which is still online now. Yeah. Tell us about that and, tell us about the coaching that you're doing, how you've turned this into a positive way to affect people and help people. Yeah. 

[00:18:53] Joshua Shea: And like I mentioned, Bob, when I went to that bookstore, there was nothing there.

[00:18:57] Yeah. Or the average guy. So I said since I'm a journalist, since I can write decently, since I know how to do the research, I'll write a book about this. I thought that was going to be it. But, My publisher said that I had to start a website to promote the book. That was part of the deal.

[00:19:15] So I started pAddictRecovery and the book came out and I thought that was gonna be my only contribution to this world. But what ended up happening was I thought I'd get some messages from addicts. I did get a few, what I got was a deluge of messages from girlfriends and wives and mothers saying, Hey, I've got a guy in my life who's a porn addict.

[00:19:40] I read your book, it looks like you fixed yourself. How can I fix this guy? And then I, that's when I learned about the betrayal trauma that happens to partners. And so I decided that I would team with, my friend Tony, who is a therapist, and we wrote that second book.

[00:19:59] And by the time I wrote the second book, I was getting invitations to give speeches about pornography addiction and I thought that was going to be my profession moving forward because you, you can make some good money off giving speeches. Sure. And I thought that's what I would do. Then the pandemic hit and suddenly nobody wants you at their venue because the venue is locked.

[00:20:24] Everybody's at home. And my friend Tony he, said to me you're so good talking about this with people. Why don't you try coaching? If you're gonna be stuck at home and you can't make money off this, maybe you could make money off coaching because with the pandemic, once this is over, there are gonna be so many more people who need help.

[00:20:49] Bob Gatty: Yeah. And that really happened, didn't it? 

[00:20:51] Joshua Shea: Absolutely. I could, at this point in my life I could coach 24 7 if I wanted to. 

[00:20:59] Bob Gatty: How do these coaching sessions go? Just tell me how that works. 

[00:21:05] Joshua Shea: Depending on where the person is in their recovery, the first thing that we have to do is stop the addiction itself.

[00:21:13] Yeah. And that's not super difficult to get people to cut down to 75% of, or 25% of what they were doing. And we, get them off of it. It's not that difficult. What's difficult is when you start to do the work on why did they become a porn addict? And that's the trauma part of it. That's the part that takes the longest to work through.

[00:21:38] And trauma is just a fancy way of saying unresolved pain. And you help them through this unresolved pain, and you also help them to understand how did this trauma play into their life? How did it change their decisions? How did it inform their decision making? At that point, you get them to then tell their own story why do you think this happened this way?

[00:22:06] What were you thinking at this time? Because these are questions people never really ask themselves. Sure. And they get through that trauma. They understand why that trauma was there, and then the final part of recovery. Is deciding what kind of a person you want to be moving forward. Now that you're healthy.

[00:22:25] So depending on where they are, we are doing one of those three things in the coaching. We're either working on the addiction itself, we are working on the trauma part of it, or we are working on helping them become the type of person they want to be in the future. 

[00:22:40] Bob Gatty: Okay. Now is this all done in person or using zoom like we're using today or what?

[00:22:46] Joshua Shea: All zoom. All zoom. Zoom, zoom. Yeah, I live in the sticks in Maine. Nobody would come to me, nobody would come. No. And I, have clients ranging from Western Europe all the way to Australia and every time zone in the us. I think I have people now in eight different time zones, and I wouldn't be able to do that if I was just a therapist only seeing people at a location. 

[00:23:14] Bob Gatty: Okay. All right. So I understand that. I know you, do give speeches cuz you did some TED talks. But, your notes that you provided to me indicate that your favorite presentations are to college age kids. Why is that? 

[00:23:32] Joshua Shea: Two reasons. They are the only age group that is taking this seriously.

[00:23:39] They recognize that this is a problem. I talk to people in, in, in general, gen X, my age group, or even the millennials, and there's still a lot of, now porn addiction can't be real. What are you talking about? With the youngest kids. They grew up with the internet. They don't know a world before the internet and they know what pornography is doing to their generation.

[00:24:03] Yeah. The amount of men who are 18, 19 years old and have erectile dysfunction because of pornography is ridiculous. It's a thousand times what it was when I was in my twenties. It's having a very negative effect on that generation and they are taking it seriously. 

[00:24:24] Bob Gatty: I don't understand, I don't know, maybe I shouldn't ask you this question, but I don't understand how it can cause erectile dysfunction.

[00:24:34] Joshua Shea: It's actually so prevalent that it's known as porn induced erectile dysfunction. It's got its own name now. Really. And I'll tell you before I explain how it happens, I'll tell you later.

[00:24:45] Bob Gatty: So it's, it really is a thing. 

[00:24:47] Joshua Shea: It is. Yeah. I'll tell you a scary statistic. 25 years ago, when I was 20 years old, the average rate of erectile dysfunction in a 20 year old male was two to 4%, right?

[00:24:59] These days. The average erectile dysfunction rate in a 20 year old male is 20 to 25%. 

[00:25:08] Bob Gatty: Holy mackerel. No wonder we have all these ads on TV about erectile dysfunction stuff. 

[00:25:14] Joshua Shea: Yeah, abso absolutely. 

[00:25:16] Bob Gatty: And I thought it was just old geezers like me. 

[00:25:19] Joshua Shea: No, There's a lot of, there's a lot of young kids who are having this problem too, and are, being absolutely prescribed some of these meds.

[00:25:26] And the thing is Most of the time they have the erectile dysfunction, it's with their partner. And the reason is this happens because of two things that happen in the body. The first is that we understand that the mind can't always tell the difference between an image on a screen or an image in real life.

[00:25:47] It can't always tell what a moving image is. It can't always tell what a still image is. The brain is not actually that good at processing images. So we know that number one, number two, we know about this phenomenon in science and in sexuality called the Coolidge Effect. And this has been studied in many species.

[00:26:06] And basically what it shows is that the male of a species over time begins to become less sexually excited when he's presented with the same sexual imagery and the same sexual opportunities again and again. Okay. If you look at they say this in rats. A male rat and a female rat are kept together.

[00:26:30] After a while, the male rat has no interest or not a lot of interest in having sex with that female rat. However, if you introduce a new female rat to the situation, that male rat acts like he did back in the day and he becomes intensely sexually attracted and all of his sex organs and everything.

[00:26:52] He becomes a horny little rack and because there's something new there. If you think of that in terms of us, we know that every time somebody sits there and looks at pornography with every new picture or every new video, there's a dopamine rush. So you can just sit there all day pushing the button on the computer, getting a different picture or a different video time and time again, and it's a new dopamine rush every time. The biggest dopamine rush comes from a new video, a new image. So you can imagine if somebody who is an addict is sitting there watching new videos all the time. And then they go home to their partner or their, with their partner. They've seen their partner naked hundreds, if not thousands of times.

[00:27:42] They've had sex with their partner. Hundreds, if not thousands of times. They know how that movie ends. There's nothing and, there's nothing exciting about that anymore. And so the pornography is an exciting thing, but the real life partner isn't, and since the real life partner isn't exciting anymore, the guy has trouble getting an erection.

[00:28:03] And that's where you see the porn induced erectile dysfunction. Yeah. 

[00:28:06] Bob Gatty: All right. Now what are some signs of pornography addiction? 

[00:28:13] Joshua Shea: The first big one is if you ask yourself if you have a problem. All right? Because let's be honest, do you ask yourself if you have an addiction to washing the dishes?

[00:28:26] Do you ask yourself if you have an addiction to vacuuming? No, because you don't, so just asking yourself if you have an addiction is a sign and other things. Are you planning your day around pornography around when you're gonna use it? Do you decide to, are you using pornography at times that you used to do other pleasurable activities and you don't do that anymore. You used to go to Wednesday night poker night with your buddies. But now you stay home and use porn or there's girls night out on Friday, but you stay home to use porn. Making porn a priority over many other things as far as once you're using the pornography if you are easily losing track of time.

[00:29:13] That's a sign for addicts. Most addicts spend far more time using than they want because they're always searching for the perfect piece of pornography. That's another big sign of things. And and then also the content of what you're looking at escalating in extremeness over time.

[00:29:35] Because people like, like people get used to a certain amount of alcohol, so they have to drink more. Or a gambling addict gets used to betting a certain amount, so he has to bet more, right? Porn addicts need to see more intense and hardcore imagery. If the, urge is there for that's often a sign of addiction.

[00:29:57] And I truly believe ultimately, That most addicts absolutely know they have a problem. It's just that we learn to gaslight very well. We learn to lie to people very well, and the first person we learn to lie to is ourselves. And we learn to manipulate ourselves and to believe anything we wanna believe.

[00:30:22] But I know, and based on talking to hundreds of people, I think we know we're addicts. We don't want to admit it, we don't want to do anything about it. We don't know if we can do anything about it. But I think for the most part, people know that they have a problem. And if you're wondering if you have a porn addiction, I am going to say that you need to talk to somebody because that's not a thought most people have.

[00:30:47] Bob Gatty: Yeah, all right, so I know some, might say if you're watching porn, you're doing this on your privately, you're it's a solitary act. What's the harm? What's it hurting? Who's it hurting? 

[00:31:03] Joshua Shea: The first part of it is that overall in America, 18% of people fit the definition of pornography addiction.

[00:31:15] If you bring that just down to the 18 to 30 year old group, yeah. It's almost one third who have some issue with pornography. So that just naturally makes their sexuality unhealthy. But because we give every child a smartphone and say, there you go. Go off to school. Have a good life. These kids are seeing pornography at earlier ages than they ever have.

[00:31:43] They are viewing this stuff and they are thinking they are getting their imagery of sexuality from pornography, these 12 and 13 year old boys and girls. Are learning their sex ed from porn. Wow. And the problem is that there was a college that recently did a study. They looked at a hundred video clips from the two biggest porn sites, and they found 97% of the videos showed some kind of aggression from the male towards the female.

[00:32:17] Whether it was physical or it was it was out loud, right? These videos show men manhandling women, twisting them into positions like pretzels, saying the most nasty things to them, and the women don't do this back to the men in the videos. So these 12 and 13 year olds who are watching this, is what they think sex is, this is what they think sexuality is.

[00:32:43] And as they grow older and see thousands of hours of this stuff it's affecting them. One thing a lot of people don't recognize right now is among generation X among people in their late teens and twenties, rates of actually having sex are lower than they've ever been.

[00:33:01] Because there's so much pornography going on, and what I've learned talking to 1,000,001 college girls is that they don't want to have sex with virgin men anymore. They don't wanna have sex with that 17, 18, 19 year old guy who's never had sex, because the odds are that guy has been raised on pornography.

[00:33:23] And they don't want to have to explain to this guy and retrain this guy, no, this is not how normal people have sex. Because any of us who have been in a normal relationship, a normal sexual relationship, we know that pornography is fantasy. Yeah. That's not the way people look. That's not the way people really have sex.

[00:33:42] But if you're a 12 year old kid, how are you supposed to know that? And when you finally get your first big opportunity to have sex, aren't you just gonna repeat what you've seen? And that's happening all over the place. And that's why that's you're seeing a lot of women not want to have sex with these guys.

[00:34:00] And if this keeps happening, if we don't start educating about the dangers of pornography, this is just going to keep happening. And the big turn for this in society was when the internet went from dial up to a high speed modem because now it's nonstop. Back in the day, if you and I had a magazine, you had a Playboy magazine had 40 or 50 pictures.

[00:34:31] And then you had to wait till next month. Yeah. We live in a world now where it is nonstop and it is more explicit. And more graphic than it's ever been. Let's be honest, if you can spell man, woman, and sex, which any eight year old can, if they type that into a browser, they can watch a man having woman having sex with a woman.

[00:35:00] And I, say this jokingly, but it's true if you can also type man sex goat. You can watch a man having sex with a goat online. And goat is an eight year old vocabulary word too. We just have this stuff out there. And we are not educated about it. That's my biggest thing is that I understand pornography is going nowhere.

[00:35:25] It's been around since cavemen. But, We don't have the education around what high speed internet has done to a generation of brains, or we're just learning about it and we now have to start talking about this. And I think the problem is that society and even parents think that this is the birds and the bees speech.

[00:35:49] This is all about dirty sex. And, we can't talk about that taboo stuff. But you and I have been talking for 40 minutes now. We haven't got graphic once, right? You don't have to, you don't have to get graphic talking about this. Sure. But we have to talk about it and it's not the birds and the bees speech.

[00:36:07] It's similar to the, we don't drink a alcohol in this house when we are kids speech. We don't smoke in this house. That's the speech that you gotta give. You're young, when you're older if you wanna look at pornography, you can, but right now you're 12 years old and we don't look at pornography in this house.

[00:36:26] It can be as simple as that. But parents aren't doing even that these days. 

[00:36:32] Bob Gatty: It's harder to control though, because these kids have their own devices. They have their own electronic devices, their phones, their iPads their desktops and, It is. But 

[00:36:44] Joshua Shea: I think that's an excuse that it's difficult cuz people say sex is everywhere. Porn is everywhere. You know what else is everywhere? Bleach. You can buy bleach in hardware stores and grocery stores at 7-Eleven. It's everywhere. Yeah. How come? How come not everybody's dying of drinking bleach? Because we are taught not to. 

[00:37:05] Bob Gatty: Oh, wait a minute now, there was a president who said that we should drink bleach to get rid of covid.

[00:37:12] Remember that? 

[00:37:13] Joshua Shea: And you saw how that worked out. 

[00:37:15] Bob Gatty: I just had to throw that in. Appreciate. Cause you gotta remember. I appreciate You gotta remember this is the Lean to the Left podcast, right? 

[00:37:22] Joshua Shea: Yes, 

[00:37:22] No, I absolutely appreciate that. But you know what and, just to get political for a second, yeah.

[00:37:28] I thought that was great. I really hoped a lot of his supporters were gonna start drinking bleach.

[00:37:34] Bob Gatty: There might have been few of them left. Happened. Oh my, All right, let's get back to the subject at hand. Now I wanted to ask you, We're talking about kids a minute ago. How can we, so how do we prevent the next generation of kids from becoming addicted to pornography?

[00:37:58] Joshua Shea: I think that you can raise kids age appropriately. Yeah. Kids want to learn. Kids want to know what the right thing to do is. At four or five years old, you can tell them something very simple like you don't ever let anybody take a picture of you without your clothes on, and you don't ever take a picture of someone else without their clothes on.

[00:38:22] And leave it at that for that year. And then the when they go off to school, kindergarten, first grades somebody may have a tablet or a phone and they may have naked people on it. If you see that let a teacher or let mommy and daddy know. Because kids aren't supposed to look at that.

[00:38:41] Yeah. And I think as the child gets older, you can introduce the concept of pornography is, listen, there are adults who look at this stuff, just like there are adults who drink beer, just like there are adults who smoke cigarettes. It's not a smart move, but when you're old enough, you're gonna have to make your own decision.

[00:39:00] But for now we don't want you doing that here. And I think this, finishes off at 12 or 13 years old with boys learning about porn induced erectile dysfunction. Because boys who are 12, 13, 14, they don't wanna be porn addicts. They just wanna have a girlfriend. That's right. They just wanna be able to kiss somebody.

[00:39:20] That's right. But if they don't have that they'll take the next thing they can get, which is porn. But I think if we told these 13 year old boys, Hey, if you watched too much of this stuff, if you pleasure yourself to this too much. There's a chance your penis can break. Because let's admit that's what erectile dysfunction is.

[00:39:42] Your penis is broken. That's true. I think we can probably scare the hell out of a generation of 13 year old boys because good God, they don't want that to happen. I think we would see great drops in the use of pornography could be if these boys knew what might happen, because you can tell them by the time you're 20, if it's not working, the girls aren't gonna be interested in you.

[00:40:06] Yeah, that's true. 

[00:40:08] Bob Gatty: So be careful with this stuff. Kinda reminds me of the ads, kinda of reminds me of the ads we see on tv. It's what is it? The bent carrot syndrome. That's not Yes, exactly. That's not pornography, but that poor, whoever. That's a bent carrot. That's a bad thing. Alright, so let's see here.

[00:40:29] We talked a little bit about the problems that can occur with families and relationships, the impact on the partner. Talk to me a little bit about that and what should you do with a partner if you've got this problem and that they've expressed concern to you about it.

[00:40:54] Joshua Shea: First as far as the betrayal trauma goes I don't think there's an addiction other than porn or intercourse addiction that hits the partner in their self-esteem in their self-image harder than porn and, intercourse addiction.

[00:41:18] I don't think if you are a heroin addict, your partner is wondering did they do this because I'm not good enough in bed. If you're a gambling addict, the partner doesn't wonder, is this because I'm not pretty enough? But when you're talking about intercourse and porn addiction, You cause a bunch of problems with your partner.

[00:41:42] Number one, odds are you've been lying about using porn for a long time. Yeah. And suddenly the partner finds out that you've been lying. And they have they, that's traumatic because you've been lying about something important for a very long time. What else have you been lying about? Who are you what, This person asked a question who you even are anymore, if you've been successfully lying to them about using porn for five years or 10 years, which regularly happens with my clients. Sure. It, leaves them wondering who you are. It leaves them wondering, like I said, did they have anything to do with it?

[00:42:22] Is this because they're not sexy enough? 

[00:42:24] Bob Gatty: Yeah. What should you say to the partners of, what do you say to partners who discover their loved one is a porn addict?.

[00:42:34] Joshua Shea: It's not your fault. It's not your fault. And I, use my own illustration. I was a porn addict at 12 years old. I met my wife when she, when I was 26. How could she have anything to do with my pornography addiction? Sure. And the reality is the seeds of pornography addiction, I would say in 99% of the people I've met are there before their 18th birthday.

[00:43:06] It's before you meet your partner. It has nothing to do with your partner, it has nothing to do with wanting to be with your partner, but your partner, even though they might know that objectively it feels like you're the biggest liar they've ever seen, it feels like you've turned your back on them, right?

[00:43:22] And they're left wondering what's going on? What can I do in life? How am I supposed to move forward? We've got kids, we've got a house, and now this guy is, I find out he's, a porn addict. Yeah. Which is exactly what I didn't want. What do I divorce him? Do I send him to rehab? What if he doesn't want to go to rehab?

[00:43:41] What do I do then? It's very confusing and I help these people navigate the early parts of this to figure out what's best for them, what's best for their family, and ultimately have them understand that they have to take care of theirselves first and foremost, not their addict partner not anybody else.

[00:44:04] They have to make sure that they are staying healthy for themselves because far too often, a betrayed partner will throw all of their energy into helping the person who has the problem and start neglecting themselves. 

[00:44:19] Bob Gatty: Okay. Where can viewers get more resources about pornography addiction? Joshua 

[00:44:26] Joshua Shea: I do have a page on my on my internet @ paddictrecovery.com , and you, can go there.

[00:44:33] You can look on sites like YouTube or Google or Reddit. There's a lot of resources starting to be out there these days. YouTube now has sex addicts anonymous meetings. If you're ever wondering what a 12 step meeting is oh wow. There are plenty of books out there on Amazon and not just mine, although I suggest people buy those first.

[00:44:59] There is, there are now plenty of sex therapists out there. And sex addiction therapists out there where there wasn't even 10 years ago. Yeah. For me to find when I was in trouble. So there, there is a lot of help out there now compared to what there was 10 years ago. 

[00:45:19] Bob Gatty: Okay. And your books are available on Amazon?

[00:45:24] Yep. Absolutely. Anywhere, are they just online or what 

[00:45:28] Joshua Shea: The book "he's a porn addict now," what is available in some stores, and it's available in other retailers because it's done very, well. The rest at this point are Amazon, Barnes and Noble, just online. Okay. 

[00:45:45] Bob Gatty: All right, fine. Okay. And can people feel free to reach out to you?

[00:45:50] How can they do that? 

[00:45:51] Joshua Shea: Absolutely. You can contact me either through the website, paddictrecovery.com, or I am very active on both Instagram and TikTok. My name on there is that Corn Coach, because you can't say porn on social media, you have to use the word corn. That's our code word.

[00:46:15] Okay. Because most of the, most of those sites will just ban you if you use the word porn okay.

[00:46:21] Bob Gatty: How about on YouTube? Can you use the word porn on YouTube? 

[00:46:24] Joshua Shea: Yep. Yep. YouTube is a lot freer.

[00:46:27] Okay, great for you to use. 

[00:46:29] Bob Gatty: Okay. All right. Anything else you'd like to add? 

[00:46:35] Joshua Shea: Just wanna remind people that they can't disqualify themselves or someone else as not being a porn addict because of what kind of person they are. There's still a lot of people who believe that a porn addict can only be that 19 year old kid who lives in his mom's basement that's never kissed a girl. Or it's that creepy 50 year old guy who runs through the park flashing people, and I'm sure they are porn addicts. But I have met men and women ranging in age from 15 to 75. I have met professionals, doctors, lawyers, nurses.

[00:47:14] I've met some of the smartest people. I've met people of every religion, every color. There is no stereotypical porn addict. If you think that there's a problem, get it checked out because it's not a matter of I'm not that type of person. Yeah, Anybody can be that type of person. 

[00:47:35] Bob Gatty: All right. Thank you very much for being with us today on the Lean to the Left Podcast, Joshua. I really appreciate it 

[00:47:42] Joshua Shea: and I'm glad we got one slam in on Trump at least. I was hoping, we'd get at least one 

[00:47:47] Bob Gatty: in, or you want to get more in why you wouldn't do that? 

[00:47:49] Joshua Shea: No I don't like to, you think the guy's going to jail?

[00:47:53] I'd like to. I don't like to make fun of people who are slower than me. 

[00:47:56] Bob Gatty: Do you think the guy's going to jail? 

[00:47:58] Joshua Shea: No, I think he'll avoid it. I think he'll avoid it, but I don't think he'll ever be serving in public office again. Yeah. 

[00:48:05] Bob Gatty: That'll be a positive. Alright, my friend. Thank you so much. 

[00:48:10] 

Joshua Shea:

 Thank you very