Noah B.E. Church: How (& Why) To Stop Watching Porn

I recently was working on a BuiltLean® 3-Day Reboot challenge for the spring, which includes no porn & masturbation. Through my own experience and reading about others, porn can have a negative impact on everything from relationships to energy levels.

That’s why I wanted to do more research and seek out experts. I came across Noah B.E. Church and really appreciated his no B.S. down to earth style. He also has been very open about discussing the issues he experienced watching porn starting at age 9. He’s been an evangelist for helping men & women learn about the affects of porn and overcome porn addiction and related issues.

Porn used to have a social stigma back in the day when it was on VHS, but now it’s everywhere just a click away. A huge percentage of guys watch it regularly and may not be fully aware of the effects.

What You’ll Learn

• How porn affects your brain
• Red flags when porn is becoming a problem
• Steps to quit watching porn
• When & how kids should learn about porn
• Is masturbation healthy or unhealthy

Listen Now

Listen on Spotify, Google Podcasts, and Apple Podcasts.

Links

About Noah

• Website
• Youtube
• Twitter
• Wack: Addicted to Internet Porn on Amazon (affiliate link)

Videos Mentioned

• The Great Porn Experiment with Gary Wilson
• The Demise Of Guys with Phillip Zimbardo
• Over Logging South Park Episode

About Noah Church

Noah Church has openly discussed his challenges with porn that started at age 9 and how he overcame a porn addiction and porn induced erectile dysfunction. He has since written a book called Wack about porn & masturbation and offers solutions to a challenging societal issue that affects everyone. And he also has a website www.addictedtointernetporn.com dedicated to helping people learn more about this and is a coach.

Transcript

Marc Perry
Hey guys, welcome to the BuiltLean podcast. I’m Marc Perry, the creator of BuiltLean. And today I have Noah Church with me. And so Noah has openly discussed his challenges with porn since age nine and how he overcame a porn addiction and porn induced erectile dysfunction. And he has since written a book called Wack, which is a great title by the way. And about porn and masturbation offers solutions to challenging societal issue that affects everyone. And we’re going to talk more about that today. And he also has a website dedicated to helping people learn more about this and offers coaching as well. We’ll chat about that more at the end, if that’s cool with you. And so first off before diving in, I just want to thank you Noah for being so open and honest about this whole challenge you faced. And I think it’s awesome, man, it really is. And you’re helping a lot of people out. So thank you for that, man.

Noah B.E Church
Well, thanks right back at you for tackling this topic in your podcast. And just to clarify, I’ve not been openly discussing it since age nine, just struggled with porn since nine and openly discussing it since my mid twenties.

Marc Perry
Right. No, and I apologize that that wasn’t clear for everyone, but basically it was in your mid twenties and that’s when you wrote the book, which I’ve read. And so for people listening, let’s just dive in to the, I think paint a picture of what this situation really looks like, what this challenge looks like. And so first off is what percentage of men watch porn? How frequently?

Noah B.E Church
Well, that’s a good question. And depending on the source that you look at, you can get some different numbers. The numbers that mean most to me are the ones that look at young people, especially because I think that the younger generations, the ones growing up with unlimited access to internet and internet pornography are the ones who are going to be most effected. And so what we know is that the average age of first exposure to porn for boys is anywhere between 11 and 13 years old. And that’s average, of course, for me, it was nine years old and that was back in the nineties and there was much less access than there is now. And another study showed that 87% of male college students and 31% of female college students were regular users using at least once per month, and that was from 2008.

And Canadian studies showed that 13 and 14 year old boys, one third of them were already heavy porn users, meaning they’d used more times than they could count. And in Italy, at a high school, they did a study and found that boys and girls 78% of them consumed porn regularly. 22% of their students in that high school, describe their porn use as habitual, and another 9% of the total student body described it as a kind of addiction. So that’s nearly one in 10 high school students who already think that they might be addicted to porn.

Marc Perry
That’s wild. And so just to recap, what percentage of men do you think, or again, there are many different statistics, in the U.S. I’ve seen maybe it’s 80% or 70% kind of regularly use it as in at least once a month.

Noah B.E Church
That sounds reasonable to me, yeah.

Marc Perry
Okay. And so what percentage of men do you think are actually addicted who watch it?

Noah B.E Church
Well, addiction is the terminology that I use, but addiction, the crux of it, what it means is the loss of control. You’ve realized that something that you’re doing, whether it’s drinking or gambling or using porn is damaging for you or for your relationships, and you’ve decided to either reduce your use or stop it entirely. And where we can see addiction is when you’ve made that commitment to yourself, but then you continually are breaking those promises generally over a period of six months or more. And addiction is about that loss of control. And it’s really impossible to identify addiction with people who have not yet tried to stop. So there could be a lot of people out there who are using porn regularly, think it’s perfectly fine for them. Maybe not aware of the negative impacts it’s having on their lives, but if and when they do decide, I think I’m going to give this a rest for a while or quit it altogether.

Then they might discover that they’re addicted. So it’s very difficult to pin down those numbers. But yeah, among the people that I work with, I’d say, and I’m a coach who works with people with problematic porn use issues. And I would say that about 60% of the people I work with are addicted and the rest have other porn induced problems, most likely porn induced sexual dysfunction, which I’m sure we’re going to talk more about today. And a lot of times these things overlap, but a lot of times they’re separate as well. Some guys have no problem having sex, but porn is causing other problems in their lives and they have a real difficulty controlling their use. Whereas other guys, they realize that I can’t have sex anymore, I’m so conditioned to a computer screen that a real partner who’s attracted to me and in my bed, doesn’t do it for me anymore. But once they realize that porn use is the source of that problem, they can quit and they can leave it behind forever.

Marc Perry
Cool. So actually let’s start talking about some of the effects of porn. And so I’ve kind of watched the Gary Wilson video and that sort of thing. And can you talk more about some of the effects that porn is having? And here’s an interesting thing, I think for people listening, this isn’t just for guys who are addicted to porn and are watching it two, three hours a day, this is even if you watch it once a week, it can still have a significant impact. And so I wanted to hear your thoughts on what are the effects of watching porn?

Noah B.E Church
Well, I’m going to bring this to my personal story just because I experienced probably most of the negative effects of porn use personally. And yeah, I grew up in the nineties in the arts. And so I was among that first generation to grow up with internet access. And I had always been a horny child and it didn’t take long, I was nine years old when I had that bright idea of maybe I can search for some attractive pictures of women online. And that of course opened up Pandora’s box and I found way more than I ever expected. And by the time I was 12, I was consuming content that was extreme and deviant. When you’re on the internet, searching for porn, as I’m sure many people in your audience know, you don’t just find exactly what you’re looking for. You see much more than you ever imagined might’ve been possible.

And you’re always bombarded with a slew of novel images, novel genres, anything to keep you clicking and exploring. And what many people find is that over time using pornography regularly, they become desensitized to what initially aroused them. And that certainly happened to me and to deal with that rising tolerance, we call it, a lot of them and myself included escalate in terms of the content that they’re seeking out, looking for something more novel, more shocking, more stimulating. And so that happened to me and I escalated through all these genres that made me feel very much conflicted with myself, like displaying things that I didn’t really agree with morally, but then I was relying on just to feel that high, that sensation of arousal. And I didn’t really realize it was a problem until my mid twenties, but when it really became a salient issue in my life was when I was 18.

And I had my first long-term relationship and we thought we were in love with each other, we wanted to have sex with each other for the first time for both of us. And it was something I’d been looking forward to my whole life and my body just didn’t really respond in the way that it should. And I didn’t understand what was going on. We tried many times and I just couldn’t hold an erection long enough to have sex and to enjoy that experience. And it was very confusing for me because I knew I could get an erection, I did it all the time with pornography. So at that time, 2008, there wasn’t really any information out there about what we now call porn induced sexual dysfunctions. So I just thought it was all in my head, I thought there’s something wrong with me psychologically.

Maybe we’re just not the right match. So I broke up with her and repeated that cycle many times over the next six years with different women. It was very painful. So porn induced sexual dysfunction is when it gets to that point where you’re so desensitized and so conditioned to respond to a screen rather than to the touch of a partner or the sense of her hair or just that emotional interplay between you. That real sex, real intimacy feels alien and doesn’t cue your body to respond with arousal. And so that’s what happened to me. It also definitely affected how I viewed women and viewed relationships, it’s impossible not to. You can go into watching porn, knowing rationally that it’s not a real accurate depiction of loving sex between couples or what sex will look like in a relationship, but still you’re training yourself subconsciously to desire and to pursue these things in relationships.

And we’re seeing that happen across the world. This is as Gary Wilson says, sort of a grand global experiment that we’re running on our youth. What happens when people grow up in an unlimited supply of sexual content, and we’re seeing that incidences of what we would call extreme sexual acts are becoming much more common when people are just starting to have sex. Teenage girls who say the first time they’re having sex, their boyfriend is choking them or slapping them across the face because that’s what they’ve seen in porn, that’s what they think is normal. That’s what they think sex looks like. And I personally don’t have any problem with, if two consenting adults want to explore SNM or whatever, that’s perfectly fine with me, but when it becomes our baseline I think it causes a real problem.

And it did for me because I wasn’t able to connect not just because of the sexual dysfunction, but because of the way that I had trained myself to objectify women and not really see them for the whole people, that there were, but more see them for the sexual pleasure that they could bring me. And that is just something that I didn’t realize that happened until I quit porn and my head rose out of the fog. And I could see that effect in retrospect. Some of the other effects that it had on me personally, and that it has on many others, many of my clients that I work with are that it robbed me of a lot of my ambition and my motivation and just the pleasure and the joy that I took out of life, because as I was desensitizing myself, it wasn’t just a sexual desensitization.

That part of our brain that processes stimuli that makes us desire, it doesn’t just govern sexual desire, it governs many aspects of our lives and our social and professional and personal lives. And so I just found myself sort of lazy, if the options were, I could work on this project or I could try to go for that promotion at work or think about my future, or I could use porn and that would feel a lot better. I’d often choose porn or something else that was stimulating and immediately pleasurable rather than an investment in my longterm potential for the future. And I was also just numb emotionally, looking back now, I can see that from the age of about 10, when I was starting to watch porn to my early twenties, I didn’t cry a single time. And at the time I thought that was a good thing, because I was a man, strong, stoic.

So I thought that was a good thing. But as I was healing and recovering, I regained a lot of my emotional vibrancy and I could feel things just more fully again, and I regained my ability to cry. And that’s great, I’ve cherished that now. And I also regained my ability to really love, because as I mentioned that first long-term relationship, we thought we were in love with each other, but I don’t think I was really capable of the depth of that feeling because of my porn use. And since I’ve discovered what that can actually feel like. And I feel very sad for people who are missing out on all these joys of life, because they’ve been caught in this trap of pursuing that immediate stimulation, that immediate pleasure for so long.

Marc Perry
And so even for guys, personally, I’ve never gotten to that kind of place that extreme of dysfunction ever, but I’ve certainly watched it kind of weighted more towards the earlier part of my life. So the internet kind of became around when I was like 13, that’s when people started going online. So I was instilled to 17, 18 is when I was regularly using the internet. And then of course porn happened right in college. So it was more front weighted for me, but even kind of looking back, especially after kind of preparing for this podcast and just going down this rabbit hole, I’m like, wow, this is affecting me more than I realized, even just once a month or even once every, I don’t know, even once every few months. And I guess, there’s a… Have you seen the South Park episode where they internet breaks down? Have you seen this one?

Noah B.E Church
Oh, yeah.

Marc Perry
And basically Randy, so for people listening, I think it’s funny because it’s [inaudible 00:13:34] and it’s true. So like the internet breaks down in South Park and then he bugs out because you can’t watch porn. And all of a sudden he starts searching some really weird shit online. It’s funny, but the idea is unlike and I think in the Gary Wilson presentation.

Noah B.E Church
Yeah. When he finally gets an access in California where there’s still a little vestige [crosstalk 00:13:56] left, he searches for Brazilian puke porn or something like that.

Marc Perry
Something absurd. Yeah. So anyways it’s like, Gary Wilson, I think in his presentation he’s like, listen cocaine or alcohol it’s like, you just want more of the same thing where with porn, it’s like it’s always about new things and new things and new things and new things. And it’s just constant, wait, I started out here and I’m all the way over here. And let’s also talk about the tangible effects on relationships because in your book and just again, from reading different stories out there, this is a real societal thing. It’s almost like I see things differently now, like for example, the divorce rate is 50%, but of those 50%, what is it, like 60% say that or again, there are different statistics, but 60% of people say that porn may have been a factor. So can you talk a little bit more about the societal impacts of porn and how it’s affecting people?

Noah B.E Church
Yeah. Unfortunately I don’t have any reliable numbers of what percentage of divorces could have something to do with pornography use, but I see it in my clients all the time and I see it in my friends’ relationships as well. When I first started this journey and actually started talking to people about pornography and our use of it and how it affects us, I inspired some of my friends who never got to the point that I was. They didn’t have severe sexual dysfunction, but I inspired some of them to give it a break for a while and see how it affected them. And pretty much universally, they said that they were much more passionate and invested in their relationships, not just sexually, but emotionally as well. And so I think that we see a lot of that in people who don’t yet reach the sexual dysfunction aspect.

They can still have sex, they don’t see any severe impact on their lives or their relationships. In that moment, they might still be very far from their full potential that they could be feeling in that relationship because of pornography use. And so I’ll just say right here, anyone who might be curious to see if pornography has had an effect on them. Well, you’re not going to lose anything by going one, two, three months without, and doing a little experiment for yourself and seeing how that might work. Now, for women, and I’m going to be saying women here because most of the partners that I speak to partners with problematic porn users are women, but it can be reversed as well. There are plenty of women out there who are addicted to porn who have porn induced sexual dysfunctions and whose partners don’t like it, but most of them that I work with and that I speak with are women.

And pretty much universally they’re hurt by their partner’s porn use, especially if it’s led to the lack of a sexual connection in their relationship, because you can’t match up to an unlimited amount of sexual novelty that internet porn provides. There’s no way that a single person can compete with that, it’s an unfair playing field. That’s comparing apples and oranges. And a lot of my clients are married to their 10 out of 10 women, there wouldn’t be anyone else in the world that they’d be more attracted to, or would want to be with. But they still can’t have sex with her because they’re addicted to porn and they’re conditioned so much to that screen. And so it can be very hurtful for those women who think it might be partly their fault, that they’re not attractive enough or that they’re not a woman enough to keep their husband or to keep their husband’s attention and to keep their husband’s desire.

And especially if it’s a boundary that has been established, like they’ve said that I don’t like it when you use porn or I don’t want porn to be part of our relationship. And the man has continued to do that and perhaps hide it, that can cause a lot of betrayal trauma when it comes to light. And a lot of people think of cheating as a physical affair or at the very least an emotional affair with someone else outside the relationship. But the definition of cheating that I use and that a lot of counselors and therapists use is any behavior that you’re hiding from your significant other, because you know it would hurt them or they would disapprove of it. Most often this is romantic or sexual behavior, but it can also be things like gambling away your mutual savings or behavior like that, that definitely would hurt her and is hurting her even though she might not yet be aware of it. So a lot of us are conditioned to think that porn use is no big deal, everyone uses porn, every guy uses porn.

Marc Perry
Right, that’s the thing.

Noah B.E Church
But just because it’s normal doesn’t mean it’s healthy. And it is very harmful for a lot of relationships and a lot of partners who feel like they can’t reach their partner because there’s this wall in between them.

Marc Perry
So it sounds like a potential… Well, actually a couple of things. One is that, and again, this is something that it’s almost like in the matrix, you’ve got the red pill and the blue pill and you take the red pill and you see the world differently. It’s almost like I see the world differently now after really kind of diving deeper into all of this. And I wonder how many relationships are seriously affected by porn use. Because most guys are, we got a good chunk of guys are watching it. And I guess that’s one thing, the second thing is so how do you know, or how can someone become aware that this is an issue and it might be affecting them even if they might not really understand until they’re off it for three months.

Noah B.E Church
So what are some signs.

Marc Perry
Yeah, exactly.

Noah B.E Church
Well, definitely sexual dysfunction if it’s not explainable by some medical or physical abnormality, if you’re a relatively young guy and especially if you can still get a strong erection to porn, but not with your partner, then that’s a huge red flag. Now I will say that there are guys who get to a point of porn induced ed that’s severe enough where they even struggle to maintain an erection with porn anymore. So if you still do that, it doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s something physically wrong. It could still be porn induced ed, which is reversible. Other signs to look for are if you’ve escalated in the content that you’re seeking out, especially the things that are disturbing to you or that are illegal or borderline legal, or that are just not the kind of sex that your partner wants or that most partners would want, then that’s definitely a red flag.

Other signs to look for, it can be really difficult to see a lot of these until you’re clear from porn for a while. Because a lot of them can be mistaken for other things like anxiety or depression, or just lack of motivation. Maybe you think you’re getting older or you just think you sort of have a low level bit of depression. And I’m not going to say that quitting porn is a magic pill that will make all these go away. But I have seen that oftentimes throughout the process of recovery, people can see benefit and then you have these mental health aspects. And I will warn that sometimes it gets worse before it gets better. Recovery is not a linear process and there are withdrawal symptoms that many people experience as they leave behind porn and people might wonder, well, how can that be possible?

It’s just an image on a screen, it’s just flashing lights. But it’s because it is actually stimulating the release of neurochemicals in our brain. So it is sort of a chemical dependency, it’s just endogenous chemicals that already exist within our bodies rather than exogenous ones that we would put into our bodies, like alcohol, nicotine. And pornography, especially internet porn is what we would call a super a stimulus, which is something that is more stimulating than what is found in the natural world.

And so I can go on a porn site right now and I could see a thousand different very attractive mates doing whatever I would want them to do, which would it be impossible for my grandfather to see when he was [crosstalk 00:22:12]. And I know rationally, it’s all just flashing lights on a computer screen, but the part of my brain that has evolved or was created depending on your beliefs to interpret stimuli and process that and give me feeling like desire doesn’t know that. So I am super stimulating that part of my brain and that can cause over years of consistent use real changes in the brain and real imbalance neurologically and emotionally.

Marc Perry
Okay. And so one of the things… I want to talk about masturbation as well but I’ll talk about that a little bit in a second because I know this is obviously kind of related, but so you talked about the signs and I really appreciate that the kind of red flags where it’s like, okay, I didn’t think this is an issue, but it might be an issue. And so how does someone “quit porn?” What are your general suggestions?

Noah B.E Church
Well, first step I say is educate yourself as much as possible. You can go to my website or there’s many other resources out there now for education about this and that knowledge is going to be power. And you can learn a lot from other people’s experiences too, who have gone through this before you, and you can get a lot of knowledge about what to expect in the process of recovery, that if you didn’t have you would fall prey to many of the common pitfalls that there might exist. So education number one. How do you quit porn? Well, that’s what I spend a lot of my time teaching people. So I’m struggling to come up with a quick answer, but I can say that one thing I want to make clear is that porn, for those who are problematic porn users, isn’t just porn [inaudible 00:23:57], it’s anything that you would use for the same purpose of erotic stimulation artificially from a screen or from an audio source or from a book.

So a lot of people who quit porn make the mistake of not watching porn anymore, but now they’re going to Instagram and looking at models or they’re maybe reading stories or they’re searching for that fix anywhere they can get it. And for a problematic user, you should be thinking of all those things as porn as well, anything other than a real partner the kind of sex that you want to have, or potentially masturbation to realistic fantasy. Because I’m not anti masturbation, and for most of the people I work with pornography is the problem and not necessarily masturbation itself though, the two are very much linked for them.

Marc Perry
Okay. And you actually, that was the next question you talked about kind of Instagram and my own perspective is I’m in the fitness industry and it’s like it becomes soft core porn very quickly. All of a sudden it’s like you click on one thing, you click on the next thing, all of a sudden they’re just like hot yoga checks everywhere. And it’s like, wait, what is going on here? So personally I got rid of it off my phone, I told my brother, I’m getting, this is done. I got to get rid of it. That might sound extreme to some people that it’s like, oh, this is this mainstream. Like, “Hey, everyone has this, but personally I don’t even have it on my phone.” Can you talk more about, as you said, porn is not just these hardcore porn sites, it’s stimuli that can really almost create an over-reactive type of situation, anything else on that?

Noah B.E Church
Well, a lot of people who are porn addicts, especially those who grew up on it may have the same compulsive tendencies with technology and other factors like maybe yeah, they use porn, but after they use porn, they play video games for six hours and then they use porn again. Or they’re constantly checking their phones and their social media, and they’re unable to maintain focus on their life or really just enjoy their day because their pockets always buzzing and they’re hooked on those little.

Marc Perry
We’re really talking tens of millions of people here, but continue.

Noah B.E Church
Yeah. Most of these apps are designed to be as addictive as possible and to keep our attention so that they can sell us advertising products. Like I think in the social network, whatever that documentary was that came out recently, I think on Netflix about these social platforms. If you’re not paying for the platform, then you are the product, your attention is what’s being sold to advertisers. And so they’re designed to keep our attention as much as possible. And many of the people I work with, maybe not necessary to get off of social media altogether, or to stop playing video games altogether, but they do need to be mindful about how they’re using these things and set some healthy boundaries for themselves. So maybe delete it off your phone, but yeah, I’ll check my messages and my notifications from seven to 7:30 each night on my computer, but I’m not going to have it in my pocket buzzing all day and distracting me from living my life.

Marc Perry
Right, that makes perfect sense. And I’m in the same boat, man, I’m in the same boat. So another kind of topic I want to talk about before diving into this kind of masturbation and porn and kind of some other stuff, but one thing that’s really surprising to me I never had to deal with this when I was nine, I wasn’t looking for… You can imagine how many guys are searching for boobs on Google, they’re eight, nine years old and they see crazy stuff. And I can’t imagine how a young boy’s brain would be affected by seeing this stuff so early. And obviously you experienced it, it can have significant impacts on your whole physiology. And so I guess my question is when should parents talk to their kids about porn and how do they do it?

Noah B.E Church
Great question. And yeah, this is something that is one of the most important reasons I do what I do, because when I was a kid, we were educated in schools about the dangers of cigarette smoking and drinking and how that could have an effect on your body. And I’ve smoked like three cigarettes in my life to try it, but I was aware of the dangers and I didn’t like it, but even if I did, I think I would have not really gotten into it because I knew it was going to be harmful for my body. And same with drinking, I’m a social drinker, it’s not really a problem for me at all. But if I had not been educated at all, I probably would have drank a lot more and maybe face addiction with that or some something else.

And if I had been educated that my pornography use could cause sexual dysfunction, could steal from me my opportunity to really connect and really get what I wanted, which was real relationships, real sexual intimacy, or that it could warp my sexuality and cause me to escalate all these things I really wasn’t interested in at the time and was repulsed by at the time, then I might not have stayed away completely, but I would have been much more mindful about my use and probably never gotten to the point that I was. So I think education is very important, both in schools, but also at home. And the answer is probably earlier than you think, four, five years old, you can start these conversations and you’re not going to have it on the level that we’re having it right now, but you can start those conversations and there are resources out there to help.

There’s a book called Good Pictures Bad Pictures, and there’s a book called Good Pictures Bad Pictures Junior, for even younger people. This is a book you can read together and it can help get this conversation started. And it just on a very simple level explains like, yeah, there are good pictures, like pictures of the family, pictures of cute puppies. And then there pictures out there that can be potentially harmful for you. And that can cause you distress and it encourages them if they see any of these pictures, come talk to us, we can talk it out, it doesn’t have to be something you have to keep secret. And talks a little bit about the brain and how it can change and grow over time and how when exposed to certain harmful substances or harmful media, that it can grow in a way that you don’t want it to, but then it can change in a way that you don’t want it to.

So you can start these conversations very early and there are resources out there. The same organization Protect Young Minds has a new course called Brain Defense, which is like a full course that you can take young people through to learn all about not just how pornography can affect the brain, but how other things can affect the brain as well. Because our understanding of the brain is still rudimentary, but it’s so much greater than it was 30 or 40 years ago. And we know now that the brain is even more miraculous than we thought before that it can continue to change and grow throughout our lives. And that it depends on what we do. And it’s like, if you juggle for instance, if you pick up juggling, we’ll see actual growth and changes in the brain [inaudible 00:31:04] responsible for visual acuity and physical motion.

And we can see some of the same changes or similar changes in the brains of addicts across addictions, there are four addiction related brain changes that we talk about that are seen in cocaine addicts, alcoholics, and yes, porn addicts as well. And one of those, and I’ll just briefly go over them because I think they’re really interesting is sensitization, which means you get more sensitive to the cues that lead to that pleasure of use. So for a cocaine addict, seeing a line of cocaine would cause their heart to start beating faster, it would trigger them to want to use. Alcoholic walking into a bar or the smell of liquor, and for a porn addict being at home alone with their computer. A lot of guys myself includes probably have experienced that, as you’re typing in a search term before you even see anything you’re already aroused, you’re already caught in that flow.

Marc Perry
You can use your… The phone is I would imagine it’s even used more than desktop now, way more.

Noah B.E Church
Yeah. I used the computer, so I use that example, but yeah, a lot of my clients, they’ve got a porn machine in their pocket at all times. And the second change is desensitization, which seems like, well, that’s weird, it’s the opposite, but that’s the desensitization we’re talking about becoming numb desensitized. So their desire for porn is getting stronger, but the pleasure that they get from it is getting weaker. So they want it more and more and more over the years, but they like it less and less and less. And then hypofrontality is a really interesting one. And that’s where this becomes a weakened connection between the prefrontal cortex, the part of our brain most responsible for planning and for seeing consequences and making rational decisions. And that part of our brain that feels desire, the reward center of the brain.

And so that basically means that addicts or people who have started to go down that path are less able to apply the brakes and to listen to that inner voice of reason when they really want something. And looking at an addict from the outside, it’s easy to say, why don’t you just stop, you can see how harmful this is for you. Why can’t you just control yourself? And hypofrontality is one of the reasons why they cannot. They might want to stop, they might be screaming inside their heads, “No, I don’t want to do this again,” but they’re unable to apply the brakes and that as a change like these others that can be reversed as we recover, as we abstain. But there’s also things that we can do that directly can address that weakness like mindfulness meditation is one way that we can strengthen our ability to make decisions in line with our values.

And the last addiction related brain change is just a dysfunctional stress response, which means that for a healthy person, stress is an indicator that something needs their attention. Maybe if a deadline’s coming up, they’re stressed out or they’re in danger, physical danger, there’s a lion, they’re stressed, but that stress serves a purpose so they can run away or they can fight, or they can protect themselves. But for an addict, stress becomes another cue to use. And instead of using that stress to responds to the source of the stressor, they start to want to escape from that stress or that depression or that loneliness or whatever it is by using. So all roads now lead to porn.

Marc Perry
Got it. And so just as a quick recap, you’ve got to talk to kids when they are younger than you’d probably think to talk to them because they’re going to find it potentially way earlier than you probably think. That’s number one. Number two is it’s like ideally it would be within schools and be part of education again, early on, not when they’re 12 years old and like junior high.

Noah B.E Church
Well, continuing. Early on, but also continuing that conversation throughout the years.

Marc Perry
Okay, cool. So that’s the idea is just to really… And I totally appreciate your kind of desire to, one of the motivations for you doing this is to help these young kids who are going to kind of go down this whole rabbit hole and really help educate parents to kind of be cognizant of this, so I appreciate that. And so let’s talk a little bit… So this is just interesting, I just think personally it’s like I’m a coach like yourself and it’s like I am kind of hyper aware of my habits and the cue routine reward. It’s like, I know it happens, if it happens once that can be enough, I’m like, “Okay, I’m done.” It can literally just happen once, maybe twice and before it’s like I’m done, but a lot of other people are not quite as hyper aware of these kinds of going down to the reward.

They’re not as aware of it. But at the same time, want to say porn has definitely affected my life, especially kind of looking back more than I probably even understood or realized, and it definitely has affected kind of relationships or relationships that didn’t even happen. And so let’s go on to is masturbation, I’m thinking about this, so I imagine guys have searched in this or thought about this, is masturbation healthy or not? And I guess I’m bringing this up because it’s like, over the years I’ve done the “no fat thing” before I knew it was the thing. Because intuitively I’m like, dude, whacking off, this is just not helping my life. You know what I’m saying?

I’m like, this just isn’t helping me. But then I talked to my friends about it and they’re like, well, how could you not, how are you going to survive? How can you do it [inaudible 00:37:05], how do you go to sleep? That’s one of the kind of pushbacks, well, how do you sleep? You got to clean the pipes. And if you’re not in a relationship and anyways, I’m just getting at it seems like when you look online, it’s overall a very healthy thing to do. And I want to actually go through, well, actually, let me ask you the question. What do you think, is masturbation healthy?

Noah B.E Church
That’s a great question. And I laughed a little bit earlier because I a year ago, put out a video and an article of exactly that title, is masturbation healthy or not, because I think it’s a really good question, especially for people with problematic porn use, because a lot of the guys I work with maybe have never masturbated without porn. So they’re kind of one and the same to thing, but they shouldn’t be. And I encourage people to consider them as separate topics. Should I use porn? That’s one question. Should I masturbate, and if so, how or how often? That’s a different question. And I think there’s a lot of bias in articles that are about whether or not masturbation is healthy or not. When researching that video, I told you about, I would see benefits like, oh, it’s good for you because it increases your heart rate and it’s exercise.

Well, like you might as well just go out for a walk around the block that would accomplish the same thing. And about cleaning the pipes, there’s really not enough evidence to support that sort of rationale. And the same thing with some people have said, well, if you don’t or you don’t have frequent release, then you’ll be at higher risk for prostate cancer. But there’s conflicting data about that as well, there’s nothing conclusive. And what we have seen is that according to studies, such as one that’s called the Relative Health Benefits of Different Sexual Activities, that intercourse, penile vaginal intercourse is actually associated with a whole host of positive benefits, such as longer life expectancy, lower incidence of depression, lower stress levels, better blood pressure values, improved testosterone levels and more.

And most other forms of sexual conduct generally have neutral values than these, while frequent masturbation actually tends to be negatively correlated with these things. So that’s what the research has shown, at least that research says that frequent masturbation doesn’t tend to benefit us, it actually tends to be correlated at least with these lower values on these important measures. And yet I don’t think that that means masturbation is bad or masturbation is unhealthy. I think a lot of it has to do with how you’re doing it and how often you’re doing it for what reasons you’re doing it. I think for some people, I even encourage them to consider it because there can be benefits for those who are porn addicts. For some of them it can be easier to abstain from porn, at least in the beginning, if they continue to allow themselves porn free masturbation, because now they have a sexual release and they can build a foundation of being porn free.

And if they’re curious about being completely abstinent or standing for masturbation, maybe they can then tackle that as a next step once they have a few months porn free. For others, like I said, those who have never masturbated without porn, or haven’t done it in years, it can be sort of a stepping stone to get back to your own internal fantasies and desires. And it’s important then not to just be remembering images from porn or porn inspired scenes that you’re masturbating to, but to actually imagine the kind of intimacy and sex that you want, it can be a stepping stone away from maybe those extreme porn induced desires and towards a more healthy sexual life for yourself. Other people of course find that masturbating at all, just triggers them to want more and more, and it can become a slippery slope back to porn.

So it really depends on the individual, and it depends also on where they’re at in recovery. One thing I caution people about is not to be using masturbation as an emotional crutch or a form of escapism. It’s one thing if like, “Oh, I’ve had a great week, had a great day or I’ve got an hour free, I’m kind of feeling frisky, maybe I’ll fantasize and masturbate.” And then you go to sleep, you move on with your life. But it’s another thing if like, “Man, I’m so stressed out, this paper’s due tomorrow. I don’t want to think about this, I’m just going to masturbate.” And that can become a compulsive pattern in your life and can lead to more frequent, more dysfunctional use than most people want.

Marc Perry
Right. And so I think we’re talking about it in the context of okay, someone who’s kind of watching porn can kind of take that next step and just not watch the porn. It’s basically PMO and MO, which are acronyms I came across kind of researching this stuff. And so it’s like, you got porn masturbation orgasm, and then just masturbation orgasm. And it’s almost like a stepping stone, it’s like, okay, let’s get away from PMO to just MO and then you can potentially get to the next level. And so in terms of just kind of stopping masturbation cold turkey, what are your thoughts on that?

Because again, as I was saying, just in terms of researching over the years, most of what’s online it’s like it’s healthy. You should be doing it at least a few times a week. And [inaudible 00:42:29] just to read one example, and this is what happens when you search online, “Masturbating frequently could significantly reduce a man’s risk of prostate cancer. According to recent research from Harvard University, men who have 21 or more orgasms per month could cut their odds by 33%.” There’s just a lot of, here’s one other thing.

Noah B.E Church
Yeah. But again, in that study they’re measuring orgasms per month, but they don’t isolate masturbation at all. And it’s very possible that an orgasm to masturbation and orgasm to intercourse are not created equal. There’s a whole different neurochemical imprint, and also just qualitative feeling to it. A lot of people, I’m not saying everybody or that they should, but a lot of people kind of feel a little empty or sad after masturbating because there’s no actual connection. You kind of feel like I’ve just kind of wasted my time and energy, but after a great intimate experience with somebody, that’s like a memory that you can cherish and you feel connected to somebody. And neurochemically, there’s a much higher release of oxytocin after an orgasm with a partner than there is through masturbation. So yeah, like I said, the data on the prostate cancer bit.

Marc Perry
Right. So how about this, so what are the benefits of stopping masturbation cold turkey, the NoFap movement, which has become huge. And again, I said I’ve done NoFap over the years, and I didn’t know it was a thing, but then it became a thing. And now they’re at 100,000 I think followers on the Reddit no fact thing.

Noah B.E Church
I think they’re more like 1,000,000 now.

Marc Perry
Oh my God, they’re 1,000,000 now, oh my God, anyways. It’s a huge percentage of people. So I guess my question to you is people in this kind of NoFap, no masturbation. So I guess my question to you is what are the benefits of potentially just not having any masturbation at all?

Noah B.E Church
Well, a couple of things about NoFap, one it’s at 778,000 members out there.

Marc Perry
Okay. Which is unbelievable.

Noah B.E Church
And two, NoFap as an organization is not like anti masturbation. They’re actually, maybe I should read it from their website, but it’s much more about drawing awareness to the problematic pornography usage, “NoFap is a community centered sexual health platform designed to help you overcome porn addiction, porn overuse for compulsive sexual behavior. We’re here to help you quit or reduce porn use, improve your relationships and reach your sexual health goals. We’re a science-based secular and sex positive.” So nothing actually there about abstaining from masturbation, but a lot of people.

Marc Perry
Yeah, I just associate because it’s almost they say NoFap for 30 days. It’s like, oh, no porn masturbation and orgasm, I guess I linked the two together.

Noah B.E Church
Yeah, it’s a bit ambiguous, so a lot of people do treat it that way. And a lot of people legitimately just want to experiment with that of being not only porn-free, but masturbation free as well. And there are many people who report benefits to that. Super powers is one term that is thrown around on these community forums. So people who feel like, Oh, I need less sleep, I have more energy throughout the day. I’m feeling like much more confident and socially capable and my workouts are better and I’m just getting all these benefits. And it’s not necessarily that they’re superhuman, but perhaps their frequent masturbation was actually limiting them. And what they viewed as normal was actually the subdued version of themselves. So yeah, there can be a lot of benefits that people are anecdotally reporting to abstaining from masturbation.

And for thousands of years people have been experimenting with sexual abstinence and semen retention, things like this and how it can affect their lives. I know people who grew up Christian and didn’t masturbate a single time in their entire lives and they’ve lived full, healthy, happy lives. And got married mid twenties or whatever, and had sex for the first time, and now enjoy a healthy sex life. Masturbation, orgasm, they’re not needs, you don’t need to clean the pipes. People kind of start to feel like they need it because they’re relying on it. But it’s like, I don’t drink coffee so people will be like, I can’t get up in the morning without my coffee. It doesn’t make sense to me because I never really started drinking it so I don’t have that need, you create that need when you introduce the habit.

And same thing with smoking, I can’t get through my work day if I don’t have my smoke breaks. Well, I don’t smoke so I don’t feel that need. And it can be the same with masturbation and orgasm if you’re not doing it and it can take a while for your body to become accustomed, to reduce frequency of orgasm. But once you get used to that, it just sort of feels natural. And the one thing that people can experience in the beginnings, if they’re abstaining from masturbation altogether, they might experience the feeling of “blue balls,” some mild pain or some swelling.

Marc Perry
Or the flatline. I think you’ve talked about, right?

Noah B.E Church
Yeah. People can also experience what’s called a flatline, which we can talk about. Anyone who’s changing their masturbation habits I think is at risk of a flatline. And a flatline is simply a period of time characterized by a complete lack of sexual desire or libido. And it can also come along with other symptoms lower energy or mood swings, depression, anxiety and even genitals that feel physically numb or shrunken. And it can be scary to feel like your sexuality is just gone. But what we’ve seen with these flatlines is that they’re temporary, they generally last from two weeks to months. They can last much longer and less common cases, but the way…

And we’d still no, don’t know a lot about flatline from a scientific perspective, but what I’ve seen has shown me that is sort of the body’s way of recognizing okay, after years of having unlimited access to all these hot mates, which are our body their primitive brain interprets porn as, we finally have a break, so let’s shut down the sexual system and let’s do some repairs and some healing. And most of the time with people who have porn induced sexual dysfunctions, if they do go into a flatline and allow it to run its course and end in its own time, they start to see a lot of the benefits after that flatline ends.

Marc Perry
Right. And so just to kind of I guess wrap this up and also point to, I think the recommendation in your book, it’s like for guys who are, and you can correct me if I’m wrong, for guys who are kind of watching porn regularly, potentially, you can just do the MO. But also if I’m not mistaken, you actually didn’t do anything, you cut off any masturbation at all for like 90 days plus, and it seemed like… I guess what’s your stance now? What’s your opinion on kind of the, I don’t want to call it anti masturbation, but basically yes or no with regard to that kind of question. What are your thoughts?

Noah B.E Church
It really just depends on an individual. If someone has a sexual dysfunction, porn induced and they’re trying to recover from it as quickly as possible, especially if they have a partner, then yeah, I do recommend abstaining from masturbation as well, at least until they’re at that point where sexual dysfunction has gone, they’re consistently having great sex, then they can reconsider, okay, is masturbation something that I want or am I good without it? And so for those people, yeah, I usually recommend abstaining entirely because it allows your body the rest that it needs. And this is what we call the reboot is that period of time abstaining from porn, usually abstaining from masturbation as well, allowing your body that time to heal and sort of resensitize.

And then the next phase is what we call the rewire, and there can be an overlap between these two where you’re now practicing intimacy. You’re dating, you’re kissing, you’re cuddling, you’re perhaps trying sex and you’re reconditioning yourself to respond to these scenarios, the touch of a partner, being in bed with another person rather than the conditioning you’ve been reinforcing for years, which is I get aroused when I’m alone with my phone.

Marc Perry
Cool. All right. Well, I really appreciate your time, Noah. We’re going to wrap up, is there anything that I didn’t ask that you kind of want to mention, or that I should have asked?

Noah B.E Church
I did mention this briefly, but usually the answer I give to that question is that it’s definitely not just a men’s problem. There are a lot of women out there with some of the issues and it can be even harder on them because there’s now quite a bit of support out there for guys who are going through this, but a lot less support for the women who are. So if you’re out there and that describes you, I just want to encourage you that you’re definitely not alone and healing is totally possible for you as well.

Marc Perry
Cool. Well, Noah man, I really appreciate you coming on here and I appreciate all that you’re doing in raising awareness of something that is a really big epidemic really in terms of its societal implications. And so where can people learn more about you?

Noah B.E Church
AddictedToInternetPorn.com is my website. And I’m on YouTube, Noah B.E. Church is where I put a lot of my content.

Marc Perry
Awesome. Well again, man, I really appreciate everything you’ve done to kind of raise awareness. I hope that this podcast can help raise a little bit more awareness and that’s my hope. But again, I really appreciate what you’ve done, man. I think it’s awesome, I really appreciated reading your book and I wish you the best, man.

Noah B.E Church
Well, thanks for hosting, Marc. Thanks for doing this.

Marc Perry
All right. I’ll catch you later. Bye-Bye.