The Porn Addiction Crisis No One Wants to Talk About – Dr. K

Anytime we watch pornography, masturbate and get sexual stimulation, our negative emotions like fear and anxiety, that part of your brain just gets suppressed. And this is where people get into a lot of trouble because suppressed emotions just grow over time. So the more guilty I become, the more of a loser I become, the harder it is to date, the worse I feel about myself, the more I fall into pornography. So this becomes a neurological cycle. But here's the real problem. All addictions are on the rise. And this is why Dr. K is back and the Harvard trained psychiatrist is breaking down modern mental health, addiction, and the non-traditional ways to break away from their cycles. There's lots of stuff happening around us that affects our lives that we have no control over. For example, because of the dating and mating crisis, we no longer have sexual connections, emotional connections, and there's a part of the brain that is getting starved because sex is so important. So, there's something missing in our lives, and that's what is necessary for addiction to grow. And this is creating huge problems because it's sort of like if I fill up your stomach with unhealthy food. You don't have any micronutrients, but you're not going to crave broccoli. So that's what's happening in our society. We're using porn as a substitute for relationships. And that's creating these really strong societal pressures, including a mass extinction event because we've got 32-year-olds who do not know how they're going to ever have children. Men are getting really, really angry. There's like this incel movement. Like women feel safer with a wild bear than they do with a man. I mean there's there's a lot that I'm thinking about like what do you do about this? The whole reason we get trapped in a cycle of addiction is because we have one solution to one problem. The moment that we create a second solution, a lot of things change and we'll get to that. What what about psychedelics? So here's the real problem with psychedelics. Listen to my regular listeners. I know you don't like it when I ask you to subscribe at the start of these conversations. I don't like saying I don't like it being in there. None of us like it. It's frustrating. Do you know what's also frustrating? It's also frustrating when I go into the back end of the YouTube channel and I see that 56% of you that listen frequently to this podcast haven't yet subscribed and so many of you don't even know that you haven't subscribed because I see in the comment section you say to me, you go, "I didn't even realize I didn't subscribe." And that actually fuels the show. It's basically like you're making a donation to the show. So that's why I ask all the time because it enables us to build and build and build and build and we're going for the long term here. So, all I'd ask you is if you've seen this show before and you like it, help me, help my team here. Hit the subscribe button and we'll continue to build this show for you. That's my promise. Thank you to all of you guys that do subscribe. Means the world to me. Let's get on with the show. [Music] Dr. K, Stephen, what's up, dude? We've obviously met several times before, but for those of you that might not be familiar, who are you and what do you do? I'm a psychiatrist and what I try to do is help people understand themselves because one of the harsh lessons of the world that we live in today is there's lots of stuff happening around us that affects our lives that we have no control over. So if you look at fundamentally, you know, there's like war, there's inflation, there's like a dating and mating crisis, like whatever, there's AI, there all these like existential threats, but like you as a human can do nothing about any of that. All you can really control is like the bounds of what's in here, right? That's like literally the only thing that you have control over. And so, um, one of the lessons I learned very early on, I I spent years studying to become a monk, was that if I can learn how to master this, then the rest of the world becomes way more manageable um, at a minimum and hopefully incredibly easy. Is there a step one in understanding that this is all we can control and taking control of just this? Is there a first step that you went through? Yes, absolutely. Yeah. The first step is uh trying to control things outside of me and failing miserably time after time after time. Check because I think it's wild, right? So I I think it's like most people will try to get their boss to do something, try to get their boyfriend to do something, try to get their girlfriend, and forget about boyfriend, girlfriend, this person that I am texting, right? Try to get them to respond. And we spend so much of our energy trying to shape the world to fit us. And this has also been the direction of like technology too where we don't want to change anymore. We want the things around us to adapt to our environments like air conditioning. I don't want to change my tolerance to heat. I want to change the entire space that I live in to be more comfortable for me. And this is creating huge problems because I want to change the environment to suit my preferences. you want to change the environment to suit your preferences and then we have to be in the same room. So this is why we fight over where the climate control is. And what's the risk there then of of us having this focus on changing our external environment? Obviously we're going to fight, but is there any other risk in that? Is it just going to be that me and you our relationship's going to fray when you want a certain temperature and I want a different temperature? That's a huge problem, right? So I think if we look at like conflict in the world, it is two groups of people wanting the world to be different. So I want the boundaries of my country to be here. You want the boundaries of you want to move that line somewhere else. And this is literally why wars start. So I I think that what we spend a lot of time and energy in is trying to shape the world towards us. But that is not fundamentally possible. And so instead like we could be investing that energy into ourselves. learn how to craft myself into let's say perfection loaded word which carries a lot of stuff but then the moment that you do that things become really really easy things become really easy yeah so I think if you look at like um you know there's a ton of research that shows that you know happiness productivity success all of these three things like come together so the one of the biggest mistakes I think people make in society is like they talk about work life balance like that's wrong. Work life balance implies that you have to make a sacrifice for the other thing, right? That these two I I don't think that that's actually technically true. If you if you look at the way that society really I mean the way that a human being really works, people who are happy with their work will feel happy and they will work the best, right? The outcomes from their productivity will be higher. This is not a trade-off that we need to make. The biggest problem is that most people are forced to make trade-offs and then what they try to do is they try to find the perfect job. And this is what's so silly, right? People will say do what you love for work and you'll never work a day in your life, right? Like people will say like if your passion becomes your job, like you'll never work a day in your life. And then there are other people who also say, you know, keep your passion is your passion because the moment it becomes your job, you'll start to hate it. And that's like how can both of these things be true? It's and it kind of is like there's no way to win. So I think that's where like winning happens internally and once you start doing that and there's tons of research about flow state and things like that that once you become happy internally even in terms of relationship success you know if you carry a lot of unhappiness with you in a relationship it won't work well. So internal work like will manifest outward and I don't mean that in a spiritual sense I mean that like in a I mean that that is true but in in like a very concrete sense right if you show up at work and you feel happy like people will like you more you'll be more productive and is so is there a second step so I understand I tried to control the world I wasn't successful step two is to focus that energy inwards and take control of my internal state which is difficult because it feels to us like We're very much being dragged often by our temptations, the dopamine receptors in our brain or something. Yeah. And we have a bad night's sleep, we wake up in a bad mood, and then we have a bad day. That's how it feels. So So, and I I think if we sort of think about it, right? So, it's like uh you know, I I started my car this morning. I I looked at the gas tank. There was only a little bit of gas left and then I ended up on the highway without any gas. I ran out of gas. Right? That's one follows the other. Like that's how it feels, right? Like I just I left and I'm like, "Oh no, I'm running low on gas." And then I run out of gas. That's what happens logically, right? So how do you fix that problem? Go to the gas station. Absolutely. The whole problem is if I ask you what is go to the gas, what's the equivalent in that analogy for a human being? No one knows. You're like, right? So if I were to ask you, okay, you wake up, you slept poorly, you wake up, now you're in a bad mood, therefore you have a bad day. you're assuming that those two things are connected. Those two things, I mean, are connected, but only if you don't know how to go to the gas station. So, they're literally everything from like practices to things you can eat to all kinds of things to alter that chain of causality. So, I think the second step is first of all understanding what is going on inside you. How how do how can you move the levers? What is the internal chain of causality? And once you understand that, then you can start to implement change. And that's when it becomes easy. So if you sort of think about it like I know it sounds weird because it sounds really hard but literally the difference between something hard and something easy is whether you know how to do it. Right. Yeah. It's like oh like the Rubik's cube is hard. Like a Rubik's cube is hard but if you know how to do it it becomes easy. So it's about really understanding where do my desires come from? Where do my temptations come from? And here you are trying to control them. Forget about controlling them. Like I don't like controlling my desires. I hate it. It's hard. It requires a lot of discipline. It requires a lot of willpower. What works way better is sublimating them. What does that mean? Getting rid of them. How would how would you put it in the context of pornography in terms of controlling that desire and being productive and not letting it consume you. Let's start with PR first principle. Good diagnosis precedes good treatment. Right? So in medicine, the quality, this is what a lot of people think. Doctors are about treating people, right? Medicine is about treating things. But actually 50% or more of our training is in diagnosis. So you have to understand the problem. And this is not just true of doctors. This is like if I have a plumber who's coming to my house, whether they can fix what the problem is depends on whether they can find the problem, right? What's actually causing the leak. Then you replace that. So that's true of life in general. So if you have a problem like pornography, the first thing that you have to do is understand why you were addicted to it because that'll show you what you need to fix. And with pornography, I think there are basically like five layers to it. The first is a societal layer. There's a reason why all addictions are on the rise. There is a fundamental change in society, in the way that we connect with society that makes us more addicted to stuff. So if it was in the substance itself like in pornography itself then what we would see is there's a rise only in pornography addiction. But since there's a rise in everything that means that something is fundamental is going on. We can get to that a little bit later. Next thing that we need to do about understanding about pornography addiction is understand physiology neuroscience and psychology. So if we look at pornography addiction first thing is that it is a very powerful emo emotional coping mechanism. So the way that our brain is designed is like procreation kind of is the point, right? We can sort of say that like the reason that life exists, the purpose of life is to procreate, which means to have kids. Yeah. Right. So So this is where if you kind of look at like the way that our body and our brain are designed, it's like if the opportunity for sexual relations and procreations is there, then we're going to push everything else to the side. So anytime we watch pornography or we get sexual stimulation, our amygdala, which is our emotional circuit of the brain, experiences negative emotions like fear and anxiety. It's also our survival center of the brain. And you turn on porn. That part of your brain just gets suppressed. And this is why a lot of people don't realize what a pornography addict looks like. A lot of people think it means like I'm watching porn and masturbating a lot. But most pornography addicts will watch it and not even necessarily masturbate or they'll watch it for hours throughout the day and aren't necessarily masturbating during that time. And that's because once you have that stimulation on the side, it's kind of like aromatherapy for your brain. It's kind of suppressing your amydala. It's kind of calming you down because it has that neurologic effect. The reason that it has that neurologic effect is because sex is so important, right? So these circuits of the brain are very powerfully activated. The other thing that is really addictive about pornography is that it does cause a dopamine secretion. So orgasm feels really good. And so anytime we have an orgasm, we get a a surge of dopamine. We get a surge of pleasure. It feels really really good. And then the other problem that that creates and this is the curse of humanity is that anytime we get pleasure we also buy ourselves craving and motivation. So when we secrete dopamine in the nucleus ccumbent, it doesn't just do one thing. These three functions are fundamentally tied together in our neurosircuitry. So if I, you know, drink this and I enjoy it, I will want it tomorrow. That's like there's no way to escape that effect. So when I gain pleasure from pornography, I am buying myself craving. I am buying myself motivation towards it in the future. In the future 100%. Right? So it's it's behavioral reinforcement. And then what happens is so these are the two fundamental pieces at a neuroscience level. Then what happens is we kind of find ourselves like in a trap because since it is so good at these two things nothing else is as effective. And we as human beings if you look at like what we're designed to do on a physiologic level it is to be efficient. So why do we love unhealthy food? because we evolved in in areas where if there's one bite that has 300 calories, like that bite will save you, right? That's that's what allows you to survive. So, what we sort of got is like a a calorie dense neurological dopamine surge from pornography. And it's also like suppresses our emotions really, really, really deeply. And this is like like literally true. So, I don't know if you've ever, you know, if you've been in love or like you've known friends who who are in love, but like when you're in love and you're like horny for something, right? There's like this idea of postnut clarity and like pre-nut fog, I guess. So, literally the way that our our lust circuitry works is it suppresses all of these other parts of the brain. It suppresses the part of our brain that assesses risk. For someone that doesn't know what that means, could you be a bit bit more sort of direct? Yeah. So like when you fall in love on the less vulgar side. So when you fall in love like you start to do stupid things, right? Like you do stupid things when you're in love. And that's not a mistake. That's the way that it's wired because evolutionarily there were basically two human beings. Okay. One who would fall in love and did not do stupid things and one who did fall in love and did do stupid things. Which one of those two do you think is more likely to procreate? When you say stupid things, give me an example. Uh, I'm gonna ignore my job. I've just gotten financially stable and I've fallen in love with someone who has a pile of credit card debt. This is a terrible idea to enter a relationship with them because I've just gotten all my [ __ ] sorted out and they don't have any of their [ __ ] sorted out. So, there are all kinds of red flags that we ignore on purpose because if if we didn't ignore those red flags, then we wouldn't end up procreating. Got you. We don't want to be rational in that moment because rationality would say and and that's literally what happens. So we have circuits of the brain that will actually inhibit and shut off the rational parts of our brain. And this is where we get to postnot clarity which is this experience that many men have where after you finish the sexual act you feel like very clear-headed right and so then what happens is now what's and why is that? That's because the lustful parts of your brain, we're inhibiting, like literally inhibiting and and and shutting off the thinking parts of your brain. And once the lustful part shuts off, then we start thinking again. Probably in my early 20s was the first time I experienced postnut clarity. And it was, I think it was 2 3 a.m. in the morning. Here's me talking about my masturbation. It was like 2 3:00 a.m. in the morning. And there was this person that I was like vaguely interested in. I'm like super horny. I'm arranging to meet them at like 3:00 a.m. I think I'm like 21 years old. And I decide to masturbate instead. And immediately after I masturbated instead, it was like a completely different person inhabited my body. I was like, why? Within seconds, I was like, why the [ __ ] were you going to get out of bed at 3:00 a.m. in the morning and drive for 55 minutes to meet someone you have really no interest in? And it was like that person could not recognize the person I was 10 minutes earlier. And I I I remember one day trying to explain this to um a woman and she couldn't understand it. And I actually think she was quite offended by it because it's quite an offense offensive concept I imagine to a woman to hear that men experience a a drop in interest potentially sometimes um after they masturbate. Yeah. And I I think the reason it's offensive to women is because in that moment the dude is objectifying her, right? Like it's like the the woman becomes a sexual object. It's you're not a human anymore. And like the reason they're offended is because that's exactly what happens. In that moment, there are such powerful drivers in our brain to drive us to procreate that like we don't view them as a complex human being with thoughts and feelings, right? We are just really really horny. And that's literally what happens like in our brain. We stop viewing them as complex objects. And so the reason they get offended is is sort of because they're right. and we start to view them that way and but that's also like biological there are absolutely like societal and psychological things that we can get into in a minute but like that that make things that worse but I think it's like it's understandable and it's also like how we work yeah it's which is difficult to say you just I just want to be honest about it because I think if we start from a place of like total honesty about these things we can actually reason up to some real solutions if we're trying to be politically correct or whatever we're never going to get to real answers here absolutely and all all men I I hope will experience postnut clarity and also like that doesn't make us bad men. It's a it's a physiologic thing. And I think the key thing about whether you're good or bad is the way that you manage it, right? And that's kind of what I'm talking about is like you have to understand what is happening in your brain in order to then willfully take a step back and and sort of like think about what am I feeling? And then eventually once we understand where postnut clarity comes from, we can cultivate it without having to not just just this is I know we're on a little bit of a tangent here, but do women experience the inverse of postnut clarity because there's a lot of oxytocin released when we have sex. So I was just just reading a study from 2021 in the journal of sex research and it found that women were more likely to feel emotionally connected, vulnerable and have a desire for postcoidal closeness like cuddling or talking. However, men who are in long-term relationships reported feeling similarly bonded to women, which is probably explains actually why I'm also down to cuddle after because she's been my partner for seven years. Yeah. So, there is so much there. So, the now we're getting I mean, if you want to go into that, that's the societal element, right? So there is the neuroscience of pornography addiction, what it does to your brain, but there is a fundamental societal issue which is driving men towards pornography and also addresses this kind of thing where relationships between men and women are getting harder. And as relationships between men and women are getting harder, there's a part of the the the brain more often the male brain that is getting starved for something because we no longer have sexual connections, emotional connections with women. And so when we get hungry for something, then the brain will try to find what it can to satisfy it. Right? Right. So there there's a part of our brain that you know that drives us towards procreation but often times in a real relationship it comes with a lot of other things. Yeah. Right. The problem is that when we're and this gets a bit technical but when our brain wants something it usually wants a whole package. So for example like if you feel hungry you don't want calories. I want to eat this and I want to eat this and I want to drink this and I want to have some of this. Right? So there are lots of different things that my brain wants or my body wants and they're usually all they all come together in in a real healthy way in in a sorry in a natural way which is why it's healthy. Not that natural is healthy but that's what we've adapted to. The problem with pornography is that it gives us a slice of what our brain craves. And the problem is once it gives you a slice once you get that sexual gratification your emotion your emotional connection is not met. You have no bond. You have no feeling of safety nothing like that. that often times you're filled with like regret and all kinds of guilt and things like that. And so even though you're satisfying that sort of procreative drive, all of the stuff that comes with it stays unsatisfied. And then the real problem is once we satisfy the procreative drive, the motivation to go and get all of those other things disappears, right? So once I nut postnut clarity, I don't need a relationship with anyone else. Right? I'm not willing to sacrifice to deal with this person. So, so it's it's kind of like it's sort of like if I if I fill up your stomach with just unhealthy food, like let's say I just give you straight calories like some highly processed like hamburger wrapped in donuts or whatever and drizzled with take your pick of artery clogging stuff. After you eat that, you don't have any fiber, you don't have any micronutrients, but you're not going to crave broccoli. Yeah. Right. So that's what's happening in our society is we're using porn as a substitute for relationships and that's creating these really strong societal pressures and being driven by. So what have you seen happening between men and women right now? H um women I think don't need men as much as they used to and I think this is in part because of this whole sexual revolution and the pill and the feminism and all these things which is has you know tremendous upsides. I think that women and men are having less sex, they're getting married less. Men's attitude towards women has become a little bit more resentful in certain pockets of the internet. They perceive relationships with the other sex to be disposable more than ever before. Men's spe view women I would say both. And I think in part that's because of dating apps. Just the perception of choice. The feeling that if you don't work out there's another thousand people on my phone that I could give a shot to. I think the equation of a relationship when we think about the investment it takes for it to work and what you get from it, people now perceive the equation not to be worth it. Okay. I think there's a lot of great stuff there. So, so you're like a fully formed adult man, right? I think so. I hope so. Yeah. Like you're you're like you're like a man. You're not like a kid. You're not like a like a dude in early stages of development. You've like you've got a career. You've got a relationship. You're buying a house. Like you were an adult. Yeah. So if I was an 18year-old. Yeah. And I came to you and let's say I'm your nephew or something like that and I'm like Stephen, fully formed adult, handsome man in relationship. I'm struggling to date. Yeah. What should I do? You want me to give you advice? [ __ ] Um I think you should work on yourself. Okay. Especially as an 18-year-old man because I think you need to, especially at that age, create some advantages. is. And so working on yourself could be learning, reading, going to the gym, building up the ability to provide for someone else and to protect somebody else. That's kind of really where I'd start. And again, that's biased because that's what I did at 18 years old. I actually didn't date. I think I've been on five dates my entire life. Okay. So, let's say I do that. Yeah. And it doesn't work. Yeah. Okay. So, I'm like, "Hey, I'm on this growth journey." And I'm sure you've encountered this and there are going to be people in the audience who are like, "The reason they're watching this podcast is because they're trying to do that. They're still not getting dates, right? It's still hard to find a girlfriend. Then what do you have to say to them? I would assume that the reason it's not working is because they're not in this frame of mind to find love. And when someone says when a dude says, I I'm trying to do everything right, what is the most common response that they get? Right. So like try harder or like Yeah. Right. If you kind of like look at Twitter, what you'll find is people will be like, "It's impossible to find a good woman." And then like men will be and let's say a dude says that or a woman says that doesn't. It's on both sides. It's impossible to find a good man. And then people won't be like, "Yeah, it's impossible to find a good man." Maybe some people will be supportive. So you'll have a woman who says it's impossible to find a good man. You know, they'll there are a lot of people who are like, "Yeah, like like men are trash." Fine. And then a lot of people will be like, "You're not trying hard enough. You're not going to the right places." is that's that gets we as men get that a lot more because there's a societal bias that men don't need help. Right? So if if if you look at like the the comparison of scholarships, male only scholarships versus female only scholarships, there's about $4.9 billion worth of scholarships given out in the United States from private sources. Uh female scholarships outside of athletics are way higher than ma male scholarships. So if you look at athletics, the number is way higher for men. But the really weird thing is that like 60% of people who graduate from college or in college somewhere in there are women. So the the people who need more gender-based support are men, but we don't really do that. We're usually like if a man has a problem, this is a man's problem to solve. And when a man goes out and says, "I'm having trouble dating." But what people will say is men will say, "Work harder, try harder." You know, people will like like and people will really be nasty about it. They're like, "Do you not know how to talk to women? stop being a creep, things like that. And then the other thing that we're sort sort of starting to not starting, we're really seeing is that there is like this very very like deep anger, entitlement. There's like this incel movement. Um, you know, there's this like alpha male, beta male kind of thing. And I don't know if you kind of get this, but there's like a deep sense of like anger, right? There's like a in men, and I think women feel it too. This is why women are so terrified. This whole thing about would you rather be in a forest with a bear or a man? You did you hear about this? So like people would ask this question on Twitter to women. It's like would you be rather be in a forest with like a bear or a man? And like women feel safer with a wild bear than they do with a man. So I think people are picking up on this like existential and I don't know if that makes sense to you, but there's like an existential like cry coming from men which can manifest as anger. I think we're also seeing reflections of this like in South Korea with like dropping birth rates, right? Where like men are getting really really angry. They feel really entitled. And I think this is where it's important to understand a biological difference. And we'll get to what I think is going on. So a woman does not need a man in order to pass her genes along, right? So I mean like literally, I know it sounds weird, but like if you're a woman, you can just go to a sperm bank and you can get pregnant. Yeah. You can just have a child without you can also argue that it's easier for women to find a man who is willing to impregnate them than it is for a man to find a woman willing to carry their child. But I mean literally we live in a society where women can just procreate if they feel like it and men cannot. So there's a fundamental power balance there. I'm not saying it's right or wrong. I'm just saying it is what it is. So I think what we're starting to see is actually like a mass extinction event. We are seeing natural selection for a group of men who have no options. Many years ago, I was a loser. And the the world that we lived in necessitated my entry into third spaces. I had trouble talking to girls, but I was forced into college. When I got my first job, it was serving ice cream. I was forced to interact with girls. I was active in a s summer camp where I met girls, was forced to talk to girls. So, I sucked at talking to girls, but the world that I lived in was structured so that I still had to talk to girls. I had no option to retreat from interaction and painful interaction with the opposite sex. I think literally what we're seeing because all this stuff started to get really bad during CO. So, what happened in CO was actually like a natural selection event, but it wasn't a natural selection event about life and death. That's what people think natural selection is. What happened during CO? Sure, a lot of people died and that's bad. But the postcoid world, some people were able to adapt to it and some people are not. We're seeing a spike in social anxiety. Now I can work from home. Now I have pornography. Now I have all this stuff going on to where I'm not forced to learn how to interact with women. Does that kind of make sense? Yeah. So now you can live your whole life at home. And I think what's starting to happen is literally natural selection. And the way that natural selection works is people think it's like, oh, if I'm natural, natural selection means I'm weak and someone is strong. That's not technically correct. Natural selection is you were made a certain way, someone else is made a different way and then the environment changes. Which one of these two is suited to? It's not even adaptation because all the adaptations have been made. And I think the best example of this is like literally Darwin's finches. So, you've got like, you know, one finch that has like a hard beak that can crack a nut. You've got another finch that has a very sharp beak that can get like a a a bug out of like a cactus like that has these very like tight tight flowers. And so, if something happens and all the cacti die out, the birds that rely on the cacti bugs will start to die out too. They don't know how to procreate in this world anymore. And I think what we're seeing with like all these alphas, betas, incelss, what we're seeing in South Korea is there is a whole generation of men that is like we are literally watching them die out in real time because we've got 32 year olds, 35year-olds who do not have children, do not know how they're going to ever have children. And this is where like I know this sounds bizarre, but so that's actually happening. That's not bizarre. That's birth rate in South Korea is like 7. So there's a bunch of men who will never pass on their genes in the alpha male, beta male, whatever. Like, you know, in that kind of language, they talk a lot about like procreation and legacy and stuff like that. But I I almost wonder is there a mechanism in a human being that if your genes know they're dying out, what would they trigger in your mind? Right? And I think what they would trigger is exactly what we're seeing. This like existential panic, angst, even aggression, entitlement, because if these men do not behave in this way, they are literally going to die out. So what we see in this postcoid world is that people like maybe you or me who were like losers and didn't know how to talk to chicks in high school, we were forced into social interaction where we basically like that's where we developed uh in in order so that we could talk to girls. But in this postcoid world, all those spaces are gone. There's no forcable interaction. So then there are some people for whom it's natural to talk to girls. And that's why like we see this dichotomy where it's almost like you know some people like just put yourself out there, just work out, work on yourself and things will work out. And then there are a lot of other people who are like that's not working. And I imagine if you went back like 200 years, went back to the Gapagos Islands and you took Darwin's finches and you put them on Twitter, you would see that what exactly what we're seeing. Some people are like, "Oh, like you have trouble getting bugs, just crack a nut. Like just get better at cracking nuts." But they have something in their makeup, something in their attachment style, something in in their their tendency for social anxiety, something in their neuroticism, something in their circumstances, something in their support structure that allows them to put forth effort and succeed. And then there are these other people over here who will go to therapy, who will work on themselves professionally, who will show up on dating apps and because of the shape of their face which cannot be fundamentally altered or some other thing which they're not even aware of, they grew up with a certain attachment style that they're not aware of. they grew up with on the spectrum and their capacity to make eye contact and emotional connections is very difficult. So there's this whole crop of people who I think are trying really hard. I don't think they're losers. I don't think they're like pathetic or anything like that. I think there's something about the architecture of how these people are built so that standard advice does not apply to them. And what I feel when I sit with these people is like someone who is dying out. Like that's what it feels like to sit with this this person's life. They're not living a life. They're in a slow protracted process of dying. And when you are in a slow protracted process of dying, pornography shows up. And then you've got this weird thing that goes on where you get this spurt of dopamine, this existential dread of like I am not getting to participate in life. There are all these people out there that are participating. They tell me, "Oh, you should do this, but it doesn't work." And it's just imagine how terrifying it is if someone gives you advice that's supposed to work and it doesn't work for you. How [ __ ] are you? Right? Because that's the answer. It's like some people have cancer, we give them cancer treatment, they get better. But if some people have cancer and everyone's like, "Hey, do this chemotherapy." And it doesn't work, then how screwed are you? You're very screwed. So this is, I think, what we're seeing. This deep existential loss, this desire for connection is somehow like intersecting with pornography. Because I think pornography addiction has a spiritual component, too. And if you talk to people who are addicted to pornography, they can feel it. They feel like spiritually like empty. They're like, I'm not doing anything in with my life. So, one of the two variables that correlates with pornography addiction, the two strongest variables that correlate with pornography addiction, one of them is a sense of meaninglessness in life. And there's a weird spiritual angle that I talked about, but the other really simple thing is, you know, if you want to stop watching porn, you need to have a reason to stop watching porn. And the problem with porn is that you can be kind of like living your life and then in the in between hours when you're like back from work and before you go on a date or maybe you're swiping on Tinder and no one's really answering or whatever, like you just have these hours in the day where there's nothing going on. You're not living for anything. So, you might as well jerk off. I mean, there's there's a lot that I'm thinking about. The first is if we go back up to your point about this being a bit bit of an extinction event, it poses a question about like what do you do about that? M um you said also people are trying to implement the advice but it's not working. Now does that mean that that's a question of like motivation, discipline? Is it um is it bad advice? What do we do there? And um the third I guess question that comes to mind is does society have a responsibility to intervene in some way to correct this? So I I think does society have a responsibility? I don't think that is a real thing. So I have never seen society take a responsibility. I don't think society can take a responsibility. Right? So if like like how do I get society like who do I talk to? But but if you think about other people that are in marginalized groups, society intervenes to make the world the governments and the way that we make our laws and the way that we give out money and grants and the way that we shape our communities. Yeah. So I I understand the question but I I think like this and this is just the way that I think. So if I ask you what is society you say the government and then who is the government? What is the government? It's people. Yeah. So I think this comes down to forget about societal responsibility and I think this is one of the problems. Not to say that it is the problem but this is just the way that I think. There was a case, I don't remember her name, of a woman who was being sexually assaulted in public like on a street at nighttime and there were a bunch of neighbors who were like aware that the sexual assault was happening and no one called for help. And the reason no one called for help is because everyone assumed that somebody else would call for help. You know whose problem is it? Oh, society should fix this. And the moment that we say society should fix this, we stop taking individual responsibility. And the moment that we stop taking individual responsibility, like unless someone shows up and runs for office and says, "My goal is to do this," which by the way is happening in like South Korea. So like conservatives that are very like there's this huge tension in South Korea right now between men and women and this 4B movement where women are like we're not going to have kids anymore. And then there's like this conservative kind of like pro-masculine kind of movement that is moving into government and says like this needs to change. we see governments responding to this mating crisis. Um, right. So, I think like China is now paying people to have children. So, there's all kinds of like moves that are happening. So, is it society's responsibility? Like, I don't know. So, I think if society doesn't do anything, what's going to happen will be really simple. And that's what I mean by we're we're witnessing a mass extinction event. We have a group of young men who are somewhere between 15 to 50 who will just never procreate and then they will literally die out, right? their genes will not be passed on and for the people who do procreate they will have been adapted to the postcoid world. Yeah. Right. So they know how to form they they succeed on Tinder. Whereas like if you go and you look at like if you go to like um some kind of senior event and you look at all the people who have grandkids, half the men there would not have succeeded on Tinder. Yeah. Right. And this is something that really like shocks people when I kind of tell them this, but if you want to see like who's succeeding, it's not the the dudes on Tinder who are getting laid 15 times. Like go to like a I mean, this is sometimes a little creepy, but like if you go to a playground, you're going to see like a lot of like averagel looking men with like average looking dad bods, which with average median incomes who are like having kids, and that's what's really happening. But even those men are adapted in some way, right? because they're not exceptionally attractive. They're not exceptionally rich, but they have something going on in their psychological makeup which allows them to form bonds and procreate. You just said that a huge amount of men between the age of 15 and 50 will not pass on their genes. They will effectively die out of the gene mating pool. So, people will hear that and many people will go, "Well, that's evolution." Yeah. And but I want to understand if there's a counterpoint to that. it should should society intervene should why is you know in the short term we're going to have a lot of men who are disillusioned that become incel find themselves in pockets of the internet are resentful all those kinds of things but should society intervene to course correct that should we put systems in place to make sure that those men meet partners I I'm going to I'm going to answer that question with a question okay if let's say a huge swath of people are dying out from cancer yeah should we intervene with that yes if a huge swath of people are dying out from like a virus should we intervene 100% yes if a huge swath of people are dying out from genocide should we inter intervene with that yes so I think there are two important things one it's slightly different though isn't it because it's just it's whether you so one is about death right so one is like if if a human being is dying we should step in but natural selection isn't necessarily about death this is what's really tricky about it this is why I think it gets hard natural selection is about passing on your genes Yeah, right. It's about creating viable offspring. And this is where if someone, you know, and I think we also say yes, like if there's, you know, a couple that wants to have a child and that child has cystic fibrosis, should we help that couple? Should we help a couple procreate? We also say yes. Yeah. So that's why we have IVF and things like that. So I think the the tricky thing about the reason that this is different is because that's a couple. If if a woman is unable to have kids, even if we say if a man is unable to have kids, should we medically intervene so that it they're capable of having kids? Yes. Right. So, if we're talking about a couple, if we're talking about a human being and there's a medical problem or if we're talking about protecting people from death, the answer is yes. This is a new question which is do people have the right and I don't know if right is and maybe that's the right word to reproduce and this is what's so challenging about it is like the answer is basically no because for men that requires the consent of someone else and my right to reproduce never trumps someone's right to not want to reproduce with me. I think we sort of accept that right that that's correct. Now, this is where the fundamental biological difference comes in because a woman doesn't need a man to reproduce. I can go to a sperm bank. And once again, you can argue that you can get laid if you want to, but I that hasn't been my experience. I think women struggle with loneliness and finding sexual partners and stuff quite a bit as well. There's some really bad perceptions on the internet. So, I think this is like a new problem for society, which is why it hasn't been solved. Now, that's why the the the track that I take, I don't know what the societal answer is. I'm not a sociologist. So what I have found thankfully we don't need to sol I don't think we need to solve that problem. Does it need to be solved? Sure. Should someone solve it? I think so. But I think what what what I found works really well is that usually the problem that these men are failing to adapt to I is can be fixed. But the problem is that the solutions that work for the people who are successful will not work for the people who are unsuccessful. These are apples and oranges right? So like and this is the big mistake is that when when I say okay I am happily married with two kids but the thing that I did won't work for these people that's been my clinical experience my advice does not work for them your advice won't work for them what we need is a different system that addresses their fundamental problems right cuz I had what it takes internally I was loved as a child like f like this is how deep it runs. So, I knew how to give love and receive love. A third of the men that I meet do not know how to give love and do not know how to receive love. Has nothing to do with their Tinder profiles, that's why they're [ __ ] And when people can say, "Go to the gym, make more money." But if you do not know how to fundamentally give or receive love, then like that's a huge problem. Is that where you start when you're trying to solve this on an individual basis? Uh, yeah. So I mean I start giving and receiving love is not where I start because that's like so foreign to them that they don't know how to do that. Okay? Right? So I think there are a couple of things. Uh the first place that I start with most men is in understanding their emotions. So we have all kinds of patterns that we engage in that are driven by different parts of us that we have no insight into. And usually this is like where the money is. So I I was I had had a great conversation yesterday with a buddy of mine and you know he he gave me this fantastic example which I've seen so many times. So you know there's a a lot of women will talk about men who are afraid of commitment. Yeah. You know so it's like oh like I'm dating this person he's great but he's afraid of commitment. He's afraid of commitment. And then and then then it kind of becomes like oh like the dude is like he like needs to step up and he needs to like be a man and needs to like learn how to commit. So we sort of put put the onus on the man. You're afraid of commitment. You need to fix that. It's a really funny thing is if you look at like women that I've worked with, they sort of fall into this pattern where they date men who are afraid of commitment and that's why they're looking for commitment because they haven't found it yet, right? And so the really funny thing is sometimes women will select for a man who is afraid of commitment because deep down they are afraid of commitment. So true. So I I'm going to find someone who I know is afraid of commitment and therefore I can blame them for never committing. And this is how I know this because sometimes the dude will come into my office and he will work on his fear of commitment and he will conquer it. And the moment that he conquers his fear on commitment, the woman will retreat. They'll get terrified. They'll start to find all kinds of problems. And it's not just like men and it's not just women are guilty of this. So there are all kinds of patterns that people will engage in that they have no insight into. First of all, understand your emotions. Then you will understand your behaviors. Oh, like why do I keep on pe selecting people who are afraid of commitment? Because I'm afraid of commitment. And if I can find somebody else who's afraid of commitment, I can blame them from it. And I never have to deal with my lattering up my fear of commitment. So there's a lot of stuff that comes with emotions. So awareness of emotions, awareness of your your patterns, the ability to regulate them, and I'd say that kind of ties it up. So step one is understanding one's emotions, and then step two is sort of giving them a way to deal with those emotions that isn't the pornography or the addictive behavior or the short-term desire that might be destructive for their long-term their long-term goals. I think so. And and what is that? How do I deal with the emotions? So if I'm if I'm if I have a craving to to engage in some kind of addictive behavior like pornography, what should I do instead? So, so if we're getting super practical, I can give you kind of like my paradigm for treating pornography addiction. So, the first thing is that I know this sounds kind of weird, but the first thing that I recommend people do is schedule their pornography usage. So, pick one hour of the day where they watch pornography. So, if we look at like one of the problems with pornography, it's that it invades all the cracks in your life. And then over time, what it does is it widens those cracks. So, the first thing that you've got to do is like move it to like one part of the day. I know a lot of people are fans of like cold turkey and like like you know sobriety and things like that. I think for the digital addictions that's harder. So, log out of all of your devices. Restrict it to one hour of the day. Next thing that you need to do is anticipate what are going to be the hard parts of your day. So, what are the parts where you're going to feel really bad about something and what's your plan? What's your alternative in those moments? So the other really tricky thing about the brain is that when we are suffering, we cannot create new solutions. So usually when we get attacked by something, our survival instincts kick in. Our reflexes kick in. Reflexes and innovation are at two opposite ends of the spectrum. So you have to innovate before you need to use it. Right? We need to have a fire hydrant in our house before the fire starts. You can't go finding a fire hydrant. That's a big mistake that a lot of people make. So, your emotional regulation techniques, you need to be practiced, whether that's meditation. Um, I really like something called urge surfing. So, urge surfing is something that's confuses a lot of people. So, if you have a desire, Stephen, like, do you want anything right now? That house I've put an offer in. Okay, great. Or I'm I'm getting a little bit hungry. So, maybe some In either case, if you don't get those things, the desire will disappear over time, right? So if you don't get the house 40 years from now, there may be a seed of desire left, but you're not going to like want that house 40 like you know that's what's really confusing for people is people don't realize that if you do not give into your desire it'll disappear on its own and people sort of know this if you've been hungry and you'll notice that you feel hungry but if you don't feed yourself the hunger goes away. It'll come back because your s it'll be get recreated stronger by certain signals in your body. But the desire disappears if you don't give into it. So urge surfing is recognizing that you don't need to conquer your addiction. You need to wait it out. So if you have a desire for pornography, the desire will start, it'll increase, it'll peak, and then it'll disappear on its own. any addictive substance, you just need to play the waiting game. So, it can help to have an emotional regulation technique. So, the the technique that I recommend for most of my patients is alternate nostril breathing. So, there's something about our nose that when we change the way that we breathe, it alters our sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system and causes us to calm down. Anytime we have an urge for something, we feel unsatisfied. When we feel unsatisfied, it creates stress. Stress causes a spike in cortisol. Cortisol will then activate our nervous system. So when you want something, it's like I I want it. So you need to just calm yourself down. So alternate nostril breathing is a great way to do that. We start that by taking your hand, do this. Okay? And then thumb is out. Great. Then what we're going to do is take your thumb, block the right nostril, breathe in. Now with a full breath of air, switch. There you go. Breathe out. Breathe in through the same nostril. Switch. Breathe out. In. Switch. Out. In. Switch. out. We'll do one more. So, breathe in through the same nostril. Switch and out. So, if you do that practice, you'll notice a couple things. One is that one of your nostrils is more closed than the other. That's completely normal. It'll alternate about every 90 minutes if you're healthy. Okay? So this practice if we sort of think about it, what were we talking about again? Can't remember. Exactly. Right. So this practice is interesting because it forces our attention. If I just tell you to take deep breaths, that doesn't work well because the mind can continue to be engaged. Right? The mind can think about whatever it wants to. We can talk about marriage. We can talk about your house. We can talk about what you want to eat. And if I'm just sitting there meditating, observing my breath, it doesn't anchor the mind. So alternate nostril breathing is really good for a couple of reasons. The first is that it requires you to pay attention. And if you're concentrating, because we're doing all this weird stuff, right? You're kind of screwing up. That's the point because then you're not thinking about something else. So then something really cool happens. I feel like watching pornography. I do this for a while. Which which bre which one? Which one again? And then you do it for a little while. Calms down the physiology. You'll feel a little bit calmer. And now the urge has disappeared. It'll come back. It'll come back stronger. But your brain has learned an alternative. The whole reason we get trapped in a cycle of addiction is because we have one solution to one problem. The moment that we create a second solution, a lot of things change. Now, we have to train that a little bit ahead of time. It's hard to do that for the first time when you have a craving. So, you need to practice it for like maybe 5 to 15 minutes every single day. as you get good at it. If you have a craving pornog for pornography, you can use that practice. And can you use that practice for other types of cravings? 100%. You can use it for anything. Is there a longer term piece of work I would need to do to get over that craving though? Because, you know, yes and no. So, so start by logging out of all your devices that you watch pornography on. Use only one device and schedule one amount of time for the day. Practice urge surfing. Urge surfing is just the awareness that urges will disappear. I would encourage you to like pay attention to other things. So, if you sit down to eat a meal and you want a soda, you've got your food in front of you. It's really weird. Just don't eat and don't do anything for a little bit and just watch the desire for the soda. You'll see it peak and then as you observe it, you will see it disappear. So, this is what's really weird. Okay, I'm going to say this. I don't know if this is going to make sense. When you relapse, you know you're going to relapse and then you stop thinking about it. Like you have this internal struggle like should I do it? Should I not do it? Should I do it? Should I not do it? And then something happens and you're like, oh, like I'm going to do it. And then you like let the fight happen for a little while and then it kind of disappears from your mind. You know what I mean? So what a lot of people don't realize is that internal conflict is willpower. They think willpower means winning the internal conflict. That's technically not the case. If we look at the part of our brain that exerts willpower, it is the same part of our brain that monitors internal conflict. If you are internally conflicted, that is your willpower acting. That's you fighting. That's the willpower itself. So, as long as you are monitoring your internal conflict, the only way an addiction can win is when you leave the ring. Literally. Are you saying keep the conflict going? Keep the conflict going and you will win 100% of the time. And if people have struggled with addiction, they're going to know. In the back of your mind, you make a decision and then you pretend to fight for a little while. You've already decided and then you feel really good. You're like, "Oh yeah, we're going to just do it." Some justification happens. And then you stop the fight. And then you don't even do it right away. You don't do it like right away. You're like, "Wait." And then it just happens on its own. But if you really pay attention to your internal process, you'll see that going on. Okay. So, urge surfing, alternate nostril breathing practiced ideally ahead of time so that when you are doing it, you know, it's like if I want to learn, if I want to defend myself with a sword, I don't want to pick it up for the first time when barbarians are attacking me, right? I need to practice. Same is true of cognitive skills. So, we want to do those cognitive skills and then when we have those urges, we want to deal with them. The other thing that we need to do is anticipate the hard emotional parts of our day. So, am I going to have this conversation? Is this going to be hard? And then prepare yourself for that emotion. Then when the allotted hour comes in, you can use pornography. So, the first thing that we want to do is we want to like not have it invade every part of your life. Just just localize it to a particular thing. And this may not work for substances, but I think it works for digital addictions way better. And then over time, you can reduce it. you can start skipping a day. And is there internal deeper work? Absolutely. So finding a sense of purpose. So people have conquered pornography addiction when they have no time for it anymore. So there's like deeper work about finding your purpose in life. That will help you a lot. Overcoming an addiction requires a why. So everyone's like, "Oh, like I got to do it. Why? It's because it's bad for me." That's not that's not going to motivate you. You need like a real reason to do it. This is also why a lot of men will relapse with pornography when their partner has a problem with it. Because keeping my partner from getting mad at me is not a sufficient reason to conquer the addiction. Usually what'll happen is the addiction will then use deception. So if if if I if I'm trying to give up pornography to keep my partner happy, my addict's brain will be like if she doesn't know, I can check that box and I can use. Does that kind of make sense? Yeah. So you need an internal reason why you need to give it up. And that enters the realm of maybe psychotherapy, maybe a lot of introspection, hiking, meditation, and then there's a spiritual component, too. The reason we're seeing an increase in addictions is because we as a society need to grow spiritually. And anyone, you'll notice this, people who are like spiritually powerful, not necessarily monks, but like a lot of like the regular people have overcome an addiction. And anytime I have a patient with an addiction, once they're on the other side, they are like absolute beasts on the spiritual level. They can handle all kinds of adversity because they have mastered themselves. So I think there's some weird thing going on in the universe right now where like everyone is meditating. We all need growth. Our systems are falling apart and like we need this new skill set. And I think addiction is on the path to meditation and spiritual growth. It's what really gets people started. So even then, it's not karmically like bad. I've built companies from scratch and backed many more. And there's a blind spot that I keep seeing in early stage founders. They spend very little time thinking about HR. And it's not because they're reckless or they don't care. It's because they're obsessed with building their companies. And I can't fault them for that. At that stage, you're thinking about the product. 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I've interviewed a lot of people who are deeply spiritual and pretty much all of their stories seem to start with an addiction. Yeah. I'm really trying to understand what what the the domino effect I guess is there. Yeah. So I think what's so there are different ways to think about it. One is that if you randomly have an addiction and you conquer it, that requires an internal work like an internal like strengthening of your anterior singulate cortex which is what monitors your internal conflict gives you willpower. You have to master yourself in some way. So I think that but does it stop before the addiction because yes I I think so. So so I I think an addiction is like a karmic it's like signing yourself up for a boot camp when you're getting born. So you like come into this earth prone to addiction and then if you conquer that addiction you will be a different person. And so I I see a huge karmic kind of thing where like we are given these addictions to spiritually grow right. So when I lift a weight it's not easy but it makes me stronger. So I think we sometimes forget that the mind doesn't wear out. Can you challenge what I'm about to say then? Okay. So the way that I would think about it is that you would something might happen in your life. Now you might think this would happen in a in a past life or in some other form some kind of early trauma I guess your dad screams in your face that you're a piece of [ __ ] when you're 3 years old and because of that I don't know you develop some sort of addictive behaviors to deal with the stress and the dopamine the cortisol that's running through your body. So that becomes domino number two. Great. And then you struggle and battle the addiction. It ruins your life. One domino. Okay. Okay. Yeah. It ruins your life. Um your partner says she's going to leave you because of this addiction that you have. So you decide that the pain of making a change is greater than the pain of staying the same. So you you go to rehab and you go on the journey. You overcome it. And maybe there is still a hole or a gap. there is you will not overcome it. The scenario you described that person will relapse. Okay. So, okay. So, so the scenario that you said okay was you realize that the pain of not giving up the addiction hurts more than the pain of giving it up. That's not going to work. So, the moment that if you say okay the consequences of the addiction are so high that I have to give it up. The reason that doesn't work is because you're being forced. Mhm. Right. So if the goal of this is to give into myself and reduce my total amount of pain. If it's a calculation to reduce my pain, I'm still giving into the part of myself that wants to lessen pain. You with me? Yeah. If I'm giving into the part of myself that wants to lessen pain, the addiction will continue. Not 100%. But that's like honestly my clinical experience. The way to beat it is saying, "Fuck it. There's going to be pain. I'm going to embrace that pain. I don't need to run away from pain anymore. I don't need to choose the lesser evil. I'm going to choose the greater evil because it's the right thing to do." Surrender. Surrender and challenge. Right? So, that's what's kind of confusing for people. Surrender. Surrender in this case means allowing yourself to walk the hard path. Not being trapped by I have to lessen the pain in my life. The domino that I would add at the beginning would be why were you born in that family? Right? So that presumes a layer of reality that we do not generally speaking scientifically accept. Why why do you believe in that layer of reality and what is that layer of reality? Two reasons. One is because I think that I think that there is order in the universe. I think we have abundant evidence that there are laws that govern existence. Okay. And the laws that we have so far are generally speaking in my opinion insufficient to answer the question why someone is born in a particular place. We have a piece of that. We have a piece of why you're born the way you are because of things like genetics. Right? So, we know that like your tendency for baldness is like determined before you're even born, right? That's what the theory of karma kind of says. It's like there's a lot of stuff about your life that is determined before you even show up. So, that's one reason. So, I I think we need a system that is sufficiently explanatory. And for me, there are other arguments like biological reductionism and like you can say there's no broader purpose to anything or whatever. I think that's fair to say. But I I do think that there's order to things. And I think if we have a reason why if I have three dominoes, right? And and I knock them over. This is the cause. But this the finger is the cause. And then what is the cause of the finger moving? It's the shoulder. It's the head. It's that I am here in this room trying to explain a principle. So the causes keep on going back and back and back and back and back until you reach a until you reach a singularity, right? Which is what big bang theory says is that cause and effect basically kind of got created. I don't know maybe maybe physicists understand this better than I do but what's really fascinating is if you look at some of these old eastern texts they say that the universe is born out of a point called bindu visaraa which is literally described as a point of infinite energy matter and consciousness which then explodes into the universe. Do you believe in a god? Uh sure. So I I think that what we call a god. So if you look at like a person, a person has like layers, right? So if I ask like who is Steven? Steven has a body. So there's a certain level of Steven that is a physical form. There's a certain level of Steven that is a bank account. There's a certain level of Steven that is a brand. Which one of those is really Steven? They're all really Steven. So I think there is something at the resolution that people would call a god that does exist. So you think there's a higher power that is somewhat intentional? Yes. Obviously the question becomes what created that? Um so this is what's really interesting. In the west we think of time as linear. So if you ask a yogi he'll say time is circular. So what's the first season? Spring. I'm I'm confused. But doesn't winter come before spring? So is winter the first season? I see I see what you mean. Right. So we have this conception that time moves linearly. But there are a lot of conceptions of time that are quite circular. What comes first, the chicken or the egg? So I I think that there's a circularity to time which there's a very like simple argument against which is that we cannot move backward in time, right? Like so time seem like the sand in the hourglass only goes one way. Yeah. So this is where I'm not an expert in physics. So I wouldn't make an argument of this based on physics. But I just want to know what your intuition tells you. It's not so experience, right? So I I think when you experience certain states of meditation, you have experiences of things outside of the normative reality. Now, you can also make a biological reductionist argument that those are just illusions, hallucinations created by neurons. I don't think that that's true. What specifically you referring to that you've experienced? I don't talk about it. uh you can ask me a more specific question and then maybe I can say something but what is the right question to ask you so I'll try to explain so this is going to get weird okay so I realized recently that I used to value credibility over truth you understand credibility and truth are two fundamentally different things so credibility is saying something that is believable Right. Mhm. So believability depends on you, not on me. Yeah. So what I realized recently is that credibility is about changing your language to the to fit the ignorance of the audience. Like literally. So I was thinking about this recently in in my own midlife crisis. And I was like, what am I here to do? Am I here to be famous and successful? If so, then I should be credible. But if I want to speak the truth, then I need to allow my brand or whatever the [ __ ] it is to like fall apart and be like not credible for people to think that I'm an idiot. And I think that is more important, right? Because that's ego. Like people can think I'm dumb. I would rather speak the truth than be credible in this moment and in some limited ways. That's number one. So I acknowledge that what I'm about to say doesn't make sense. And I think if you want to understand this, you have to experience it. And we'll explain why in a second. So if you look at your existence in the world, you have a body, you have a mind, but then you have this other thing which I think science sort of like acknowledge, we sort of acknowledge, we don't really know what it is, but the capacity for experience. We have this subjective part of you, right? So I can see objectively what you are, but you have an element of subjectivity. Does that make sense? Yeah. Do you think? Yeah. How do I know? You don't. Do I think? I don't know. I assume so. Exactly right. It's kind of weird. So even when we're like scientists and we say anxiety comes from the amygdala, it's kind of we're doing something really really sneaky. We don't know that anxiety comes from the amydala. We can measure blood flow in the amydala. We can measure electrical activity using an EEG. How do we know that anxiety is comes from the amydala? Because we ask a human being, hey, when there's blood flow going over here in this fMRI, what are you feeling? I'm feeling anxious. So there is a level of human existence that is subjective. You with me? Yeah. So what science has done is we developed telescopes and microscopes to take our physical eyes and extend them. So my physical eyes with the baseline sensory organs I can perceive certain things and I cannot perceive other things. But if I develop an instrument I can see a star. If I develop an instrument, I can see a bacteria. So, I'm taking my natural physical ability and I am enhancing it with technology with me. Meditation is doing that for your subjectivity. So, if I take like the material realm, which is observable, objective, and I use a telescope and I use a microscope, I can go further than where I started. Does that make sense? Yeah. So, now the question is for the subjective realm, can you go further in the opposite direction? And when you do that through meditation, you will discover things that are not available to the basic subjective experience. So like with the naked eye, you can't see a bacteria, but if you use this instrument, you can see it. There's there's basically an a spiritual equivalent, a subjective equivalent of a microscope and a telescope that allow you to perceive things using your baseline subjective experience that are not perceivable by normal means. That doesn't mean that they're supernatural. We call them supernatural, but I think this is all reducible to science. We just haven't figured it out yet. I think that I have seen enough stuff through personal experiences, through the clinical value of working on these things where I think like some of this stuff is real. When earlier when I asked you about your experience, you said I don't talk about it. Yes. Which is extremely rare for you to say because you talk about everything it seems like pretty much most things. I mean there's not a question I've ever asked you where you said I don't talk about it. So I'm curious as to why you don't talk about it. Two or three reasons. One is that it depletes shi immensely. It depletes energy. So as you as you accumulate spiritual energy, there are certain practices that you can do including helping people that will deplete your energy. Second thing is anytime I talk about it, I think it it it induces a subtle form of ego, right? So it's like, oh, I have been to the other side even like talking about not talking about it. So that's why like I won't show up on a podcast and be like, "Oh, like I've had all these experiences that I'm not going to tell you about. It's real, but by the way, so so I think there's a subtle form of ego that I really wrestle with and I've just learned." So there are one or two times in my life where I've shared these experiences and it wipes away like my meditative progress for like 5 years. So it'll it'll take me years of practice to get back to having those experiences. And I I I think I've also been told by my teachers and now I'm understanding. I didn't understand back when they told me but I I think there it's not and there's other reasons too. So it creates expectations it creates an imagination the moment that there's an expectation in the mind the mind will reproduce that experience. Obviously the viewer is thinking listen Dr. K I trust you and you're s you're suggesting you've been to the other side and seen something and I haven't been there but that knowledge that you have might help me make more informed choices of my life. So tell tell me what you see experience. Yes and no. So so let's understand. Okay. So any help that I can give I'm going to give. So like my understanding of this mass extinction event that is happening right now is like a spiritual sense and I think some people may resonate with that and some people may not. So that's the first thing. Second thing is if I can help you I will. I don't think this is going to help you. I think all it's going to do is gonna it's going to create ego. It's going to create an aura around me. I don't want that. It's going to create people hunting for this which will inhibit it. The more I say, the harder it will be for it to help you. So, the best thing to do is if you're interested in this stuff, I mean, like literally like what are we talking about here? Let's just stop and think about this. This is crazy. This guy is saying there's stuff after death. There's like these beings out there, right? Right? Like this is wild. This is dumb. This is unbelievable. Exactly. So if you really want to know, and this is what I love about this work, this is the reason I I say it. One of the great tragedies of the world today is that it's it's explored. We know what's behind every nook and cranny. We've mapped the earth. There's no exploration. Maybe deep sea is what's left. Space is what's left. It's so exciting to explore. But most human beings on the planet do not have the opportunity to explore the frontiers of the universe. Right? The known universe. The cool thing is that I don't know if this is going to make sense. In the realm of subjectivity, no one can explore for you. You have to do the exploration yourself. And if you are hungry to be in Mellin's shoes, if you're hungry to be an astronaut and explore something that no one has ever seen before, then you should meditate. And I'm a crazy person. Like sure, am I a am I a Harvard medical school trained psychiatrist? Yes. But like I could be a crazy person. I had some experiences. I maybe joined a cult and like that. Like you can't trust me. Exactly. So don't trust me. You go see for yourself, right? Go and meditate. Take take a moment to sit, not a moment, take a year, take a decade to sit and look at that subjective experience of self and see how far you can take it. Try to get rid of all of the anchors of the material realm. If you're got an itch, you need to not focus on that. Just focus your attention fully inward. It's not a process of evolution. It's a process of involution. Put all of your attention, all of your sensory input. So if I close my eyes, what I hear is louder, right? If I smell and close my eyes, I smell something more intensely. Remove all of your sensory perceptions and all you're left with is attention and put it inward. If you do that, you'll discover things if you practice consistently enough. And this is why it's so hard. This is why it's so unbelievable for people. I mean, the order, the time scale that we're talking about is years, if not decades. So if you do like solid esoteric spiritual practice for years and decades, hopefully it'll happen to you. Maybe it won't. I haven't figured that out. What What about if I do some magic mushrooms or some kettle instead? Uh so then you'll get some experiences, right? But you won't control what those experiences are. What are those experiences? Are they real? Are they not real? Like we're not sure. Do you think more people should try especially people that are suffering from treatment resistant depression or other things or struggling in their lives should try things like psilocybin which is the active compound in magic mushrooms? Uh generally speaking no and there's a really important reason for that. So all these things so the number of people who have been that I've seen in my office who have been messed up by psychedelics far outweighs the number of people who have been helped. Really? Yes. So LSD, you like we know this, right? There's bad trips with LSD. It lives in your spine. You have like LSD flashbacks. Uh I've seen PTSD from trips. I've seen uh new anxiety disorders, panic disorders from psychedelic uh substances induced. So these are people that'll come to me like, I'm 32 years old. I was fine for my whole life. Six months ago, I used psychedelics and now like I'm having panic attacks. Here's the key thing to understand. Psychedelics, what we know scientifically, forget about all the whether the beings exist or not, whatever, Dr. K's crazy. What we know is that they induce neuroplasticity. Now, here's the problem. Neuroplasticity means my brain is in edit mode. Okay? Which means that if you edit it in the wrong way, you'll mess up your brain. So, what we know is that this is what's really interesting. If we look at the therapeutic effects of psychedelics, set and setting matter a lot. You need to have like people with you who can like shepherd you through the journey because if you just do it on your own, you'll potentially get worse. All of those negative whatever emotions or whatever with the psychedelic experience and neuroplasticity, you you'll sometimes get you know people will call it I forget it's called um the heroic dose, right? So there was some guy who kind of coined that term. So, a super high dose which will activate your nervous system in a potentially traumatic way. So, if you look at the history of psychedelics, the way that they've been used, you're you're helped by like a shaman. Yeah. Right. So, there's someone who knows how to like do it in a way that is positive. And unfortunately, what I've seen is I've had plenty of patients who will like experiment with it when they're feeling really bad because they hear it as healing, but it just messes them up even more because now they're just going in, they're editing, they have a traumatic experience, some demon is there, it's hounding them, they can't escape, they like wake up from the trip and that like the demon is like there when they close their eyes and like all kinds of weird stuff. So I think you it has to be done in the right way which the studies also support that psychedelic it's not you just take psilocybin and you're healed. What happens is you'll have a trial that has 13 weeks of therapy with two doses of psychedelics in the middle. And one really important part is after the psychedelic the therapist will talk to you about integrating what you learned into your life. Now that you've had this experience of a vastness of self and you feel connected with other people, what are you going to do about this divorce that you're going through? So I think there's elements that make it clinically useful. There are elements that can heal, but you need shephering. I think there's a lot of data to support that. So you're pro- psychedelics, but in the context where it's guided with a a trained professional and the certain setting is controlled. I I I would say that I am optimi cautiously optimistic about psychedelics and if we want to talk about their benefits, we need to pay attention to the way in which the trials are conducted and the traditions in which they're conducted. I want to go back up to the top of the uh the top of the river here to where we were we were before we took this um this turn and we were talking about the importance of cultivating a why so that you can overcome an addictive behavior. And I actually think this is super important because our wise seem to run our life. They seem to really be actually what we refer to as discipline. I think it's people think of like I am disciplined. I'm not disciplined. But actually it's for me in my life anyway. It's when I have a really really strong why then I make the decision in hindsight I wanted to make. So like going to the gym is a easy example. Going to the gym requires time. It's not always super comfortable. I don't love the running machine. But there's this overarching why that gets me there and gets me to do it. So I wanted to a pause and reflect is like is that accurate? But also how does one go about cultivating a why if it really is that important? I think yes is the short answer. Why is incredibly important? Um and I lean on eastern systems of cultivation because if you look at the difference between a yogi and a therapist, a therapist does something to you. Our system of psychology is designed with like a patient that I therapize, right? They have to do some work on their own. But like Freud was doing the analysis in the same way that a surgeon is doing the surgery. So in the west we have this idea that like I'm trained. I'm going to do something. I'm going to therapize you. So if you want to DIY it, do it yourself. That's where the Eastern traditions come in because no one was ever meditating for the Buddha, right? The Buddha was like, "I'm going to teach you something. You're going to do it yourself." So, I think the cultivation of if you were want to do stuff on your own, the spiritual traditions and I think that's why they're so powerful because like it's a DIY system. No one was a yogi was working by themselves. They weren't working with anybody else. So, they get taught things and then you do it yourself. So, I would use the word dharma. So, dharma is the Sanskrit word for duty. And cultivating dharma in your life is what I would correlate with a why. And the reason is is exactly kind of what you described is that there are some things in life that are painful but we choose to do them. And we have to be a little bit careful because if we're delaying gratification, then we're still giving into desire, right? It's just like like my desire for $10 instead of $1 means that I'm going to work two days and then I'm going to get 10 bucks. But it's still greed that's driving us. So the thing about dharma or duty is it allows us to choose hard things. So the analogy that I use if someone is like pointing a gun at me, I'm going to run away from it. Gun means death. It means disability. It means all kinds of stuff. Someone points a gun at my kid, I'm stepping into that path. No question, no doubt. And it makes sense to everybody, right? Gun bad. But when doing dharma, gun is easy. Like I'll take that gun every single if a bullet leaves that gun. I want it to hit me. And it's that simple that once you discover what your dharma is, then all of the difficult things in life become easy. The things that if you're chasing fundamentally greed, I want something. I want money, but I don't want to work. Why is that such a problem, right? Because I'm always chasing my own betterment. So, I want money because I want this, but then when I start to work, it feels bad. So, I want to go home. So, I'm always being pulled by my wants, being pulled by my wants. But if you ask me, do I want the gun? Do I want to step into the path of the gun? No, absolutely not. I want to run away from the gun. But dharma allows me to do the things that I don't want to do. It activates a different circuit that allows me to embrace difficulty. So that's what the why is. Now, go ahead. You know what I'm going to say, which is like, how do I cultivate dharma? Excellent. The reason dharma is hard to cultivate is because we don't know what we want. Instead, we know what the world tells us to want. It's like if you think about the things that you want, how did you learn that you want those things? Because you saw somebody else doing it. Like an advert. I saw the the waffle or the Oreos in an advert. And absolutely right. That's why advertising is an industry because we've figured out as human beings that I can control your wants. So when I work with like young men, used to be young women, it's slightly different, but this is a bigger issue for I think women maybe 10 years ago some somehow it's gotten better, but for young men right now if I ask them what they want, they want what they see. Also true of women. It's balancing some. But like I I want to be I want to be like I'm going to start a podcast. I'mma be like Steven. I'mma get ripped. I'mma buy a house. I'm gonna get a girlfriend. I want this. I want one want. None of those voices are coming from you. They're not dharma. So, the first thing that you have to do is evacuate anything that you want that came from outside of you. Sometimes it's hard to tell where it came from. No, cuz it almost feels on the surface like cuz when you just said then I want a house, I'm like [ __ ] do I actually want that house or is the reason I want that house? Yeah. So this is the problem is that when we want something from the outside we internalize it right so this is like if you say you should do something right oh everyone in the world is struggling with what they should do that's not what you want otherwise you would use the word want so should is externalized expectations that we then internalize even a lot of our desires are of those kinds of qualities so it didn't come from you weren't sitting there still on a mountaintop and be like ah I want that house and then the question so first thing you have to do is if you like saw someone getting it and you wanted it that's not really what you want but what you will find is that that triggered something deeper within you so that what you saw someone else when I don't know if this kind of makes sense but like the things that we gravitate towards connect to what we really want but it's a version of it so when I see like you know a sexy dude with a sexy girl and I say, "I want that. That's not that's what I think I want." And this is the whole problem is I've worked with tons of people who've gotten what they wanted, chased these things, and were still unhappy. You get the first girl, and then you need the second, and then you need the third, and it's like, "What are you even chasing here?" That's where you get to the the psychological root of like, "Okay, what I want is to feel loved. I want to feel secure." And this is where people get into a lot of trouble because if I want to feel loved and I craft myself into something that cannot be denied, I'm rich, I am famous, I am handsome, and then someone chooses to love me, then I'm [ __ ] because who do they love? Do they love this crafted version of me or do they love the loser me? I don't know. And then their marriage has all kinds of problems. So the external desires that you have will will if you follow them within yourself, you really ask yourself what what about this do I want? Why do I want this? What is the thing that is hungry within me? Because often times even when you get the girl, you're resentful towards her. You're like, you rejected me when I was a loser, but now you want to date. Okay, let's go. Let's have a transactional relationship where I'm going to get laid and I'm going to ghost you. I did that. Yeah, a lot. I did that. this girl this girl I met when I was 18 when I was a broke I was a loser and um she was she was not interested in me and then a couple years later she's interested in me when things are going well in my life and it was exactly what you described it was like there was a part of me that knew that this was I guess I was resentful towards it absolutely right and and so even getting what you wanted back then doesn't satisfy you so your dharma is what I would say is like that's one thing so look at the things that you want, what do they track back to within you? And then the last thing that works really, really, really well is to be silent to try to find as much quiet as you can to remove all the external influences and just see what comes up because the things that the wise always come from within. They can never people can try and go people my parents tried to convince me to become a doctor, right? They tried so hard. They said why? And I was like why? And they're like because this and this and this and this and this and so and people like people are going to be telling them why they should do this. It's this reason, this reason, this reason, why I should get married. The why you should get married, right? And it's never going to work. So the why literally comes from within. And this is why it's so hard to find the why because we live in a world where we are sensorally bombarded. We are under assault 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In my case, it was like efficiency. So podcast when I'm walking to the train, read a book on the train, podcast when I'm leaving the train, sitting down in class, lectures in the ear when I'm working out, constantly sensorally bonded bombarded. And so you never get to spend time with yourself, right? So once you get rid of all of that, something will float up. And if you talk to people who are artists and inspiration, right? You look at something else and I feel inspired. I'm inspired by that. But even if you listen to the language, the inspiration arises in here. It is triggered by the outside thing. Does that kind of make sense? So you have to look really look within. And the best way to do that is just be silent. So I I talk a lot about my spiritual journey in India and things like that. But what I don't talk a lot about is like I climb mountains like climbed to Kilamanjaro, climbed all these mountains in like Colorado and stuff like that. And like climbing is great. Like you're just with yourself for 14 hours a day and at the top of Kilamanjar, not the top, eight hours from the top. You have no breath to talk. It requires all of your energy, all of your concentration. You're huffing and puffing. You are just with yourself in a very deep way. You can't pay attention to what anyone else is saying or doing because each leg, my leg feels like it's made of lead. I'm just with myself so so so deeply. And when you're with yourself deeply in that way, the why will come. Why is it we don't like being with ourselves? Because no one taught us how to in the right way. That study comes to mind where they put college kids in a room and asked them if they would rather sit alone or electrocute themselves. And the college students, many of them decided they'd rather electrocute themselves than sit alone with their thoughts and wait. Yeah. Why is that? For the same reason that people engage in self-injurious behavior. So people cut, right? Burn. So when people are very mentally unhealthy, they will engage in these behaviors because pain wipes me free from all the thoughts in my head. I don't have to be with myself. Most people their experience of themselves is negative. Because if like, you know, I experienced this a lot where I would play video games all day and then if I went to bed without falling asleep immediately, this torrent of negative negativity would come up, anxiety, regret, guilt, shame, whatever, right? And and so if you sort of think about it like being with us is normally a ne a very negative place and the reason it becomes a negative place is because we suppress all this negativity. So my mind becomes an unhealthy place to be. I don't want to be there. It sucks being me. That's why we get addicted to pornography because in the in between spaces of my life, if I have to sit with myself, it's [ __ ] I'm worried. I'm guilty. I'm pathetic. There's this existential crisis. AI is going to take take my job. And it's not just negativity. It's also positivity. I should be using AI. I should start an AI startup. I'm not doing this. I really should be doing this. Right? But if you just like sit with yourself, you'll notice there's all kinds of like trash desires and wants and ambitions and want to teach people a lesson and oh my god, the world is such a terrible place. It's like just not a good place. So no one ever teaches us how to sit with ourselves. I have this habit where I get in bed, my partner, she uh falls asleep very very quickly. She doesn't need any kind of stimulation. And I sit there and I like listen to this sounds crazy, but I listen to like serial killer stuff or I listen to the news. I just need to I'm conscious of saying the word need. I choose to listen to things to kind of preoccupy my mind. And I think what I'm scared of, if I'm being honest, is the thought of going to the to bed and laying there and doing nothing is just like it's just makes me feel that there would just I wouldn't be able to sleep. I don't know if that's true, but I just feel like they I'd start thinking so much and then the thoughts might make me, I don't know, get out of bed and start writing a PowerPoint presentation or something. Yeah. So, in your case, I just continue listening to your fun thriller podcast before you go to bed. You don't need to change that. Okay? You just keep doing that. So, don't worry. I'm gonna give you But be kind. Like, cut yourself a break, bro. You're doing so much. Like, if you just want to help you get what I'm saying and I'll help you with the issue. Yeah. But so this is really important on the road of self-development. You don't have to like if you're going to flagagillate yourself, you don't have to flagagillate yourself in the nuts. What does flagagulate mean? It's like when you whip yourself, you know this like old like you know like I you don't have to do it the hardest way. You are allowed to do it in safer, easier ways. And I think bedtime is like if that's what you like to do like you work plenty hard, Stephen. And if you want to listen to something for just do that. All right. Now, your issue of if I feel like it was empty or if I didn't have a podcast or something like all this stuff would come up. So, I think you should do that work. You just don't have to do it before bed. And we've talked about this before that, you know, like I think sitting on a beach is hard for you doing nothing, right? Yeah. So, like I think like there are other places where you can sit and kind of do nothing. The other thing that I would a couple of things that I would tell you is one is whatever comes up needs to come up. Okay. So, just let whatever is coming up coming up. It's kind of like your mind is so full of stuff. There's another kind of mistake that you're making is that you assume that when a thought comes up, you will get up and work on it. So, the reason that your mind is a dangerous place for you is because of the way that you respond to your thoughts. If I have this thought, then I have to act. You notice that like I have to get up. You said that the moment that you don't have to get up is the moment that you'll be free in your mind, right? So, let let it come up. Okay. It's a thought. It's okay to get up. Sometimes I do, too. I get up. I'll I'll write things down. That's how we get to, you know, book three is ready at the same time that book two is ready. Like like because I you there's a good part of that. But I I think it's it you know, learning how to sit with yourself is very important. And this is also where I I'd recommend a practice called thratika to you if you want to meditate. It's fixed point gazing on a candle flame. And the key thing about that practice is when you close your eyes, you'll see so you stare at a candle flame for like 60 to 300 seconds without blinking. Whatever feels safe and comfortable to you. It'll feel a little bit uncomfortable. And then when you close your eyes, you'll see an after image of the candle. And then you just concentrate on that. So the first step is like being able to do a meditative practice and like not feel bad. Like it's cool. Like I I I I do this practice with my kids because it gives them a sensory experience that is like gripping. So it kind of concentrates your your awareness in the present. But I think you don't need to worry so much about like the bedtime. Yeah. Yeah, I was going to say I think it's more so that I think I've associated that behavior with some kind of avoidance. So I think and especially cuz I look over at my partner and she's like a yogi so she's doing everything um differently. I was going to say well but again that's passing judgment on that. She's just doing everything differently. She she can fall asleep like this. She doesn't need to listen to some someone getting murdered or something. She she wakes up. She does her meditation. And do I think that she has a more peaceful mind than me? I probably I think she most certainly does. Yeah. So, here's what I would say. This is going to get hard. Okay. So, it's avoidance. What's wrong with that? So, here you are. You're saying, "Oh, like I'm avoiding my thoughts." And then you come to me and you're like, "Dr. K, teach me how to avoid avoiding my thoughts." [Laughter] It's the same thing. Yeah. Oh, now you're going to avoid the avoidance of your thoughts. No. never going to work. You'll do it a million. You can go back as far as you want. You see what I'm saying? Now you're like, "Oh, teach me how to like not avoid. I want to avoid avoidance." Doesn't work. That's why I'm saying like with this what I you just do this. Just go to bed and just look at yourself today. Are you going to listen to a podcast or not? Just just ask yourself that. I know it's like really unsatisfying, but that's really So the problem is like there's this paradox of like if I'm avoiding avoidance, that's just falling into the same pattern. So you need to like crack it. Like this is why the Zen tradition is really beautiful because they have all these paradoxes and there's this like weird like transcendent transcendental understanding where it'll click for you and then you'll realize you don't need to listen to the podcast anymore. But it's not going to come through the resisting. Exactly. So just when you go to bed today, am I going to give in to this part of myself or do I need to be better? And what you'll discover, what I found is that there's a lot of laughter there, right? is like the absurdity of it's like, "All right, I'm going to lose today. I'm going to win today. Oh man, winning feels way worse than losing." There's a certain like humor to it that you just have to sit with. There's no safe like Simply Safe, the sponsor of today's episode. A few years ago, someone broke into the Diary of a SEO studio and stole all of our cameras and a few key hard drives. And it was devastating and one that led us on a quest to figure out how we could secure our building. And through this, we discovered Simply Safe. Interestingly, we did have security at the time, but the type that we had only triggered an alarm once intruders were inside the building. What I like about Simply Safe is their active guard outdoor protection notifies you and their live monitoring agents when suspicious characters are outside, but it also means that guards can trigger alarms or turn on spotlights to deter someone from entering your building. If we had had Simply Safe, we would have known earlier that intruders were trying to get in. So maybe this is your reminder to make sure your home and workplace is secure. Simply Safe is offering my listeners in the United States an exclusive discount of 50% off their new Simplysafe security system when you sign up by visiting simplysafe.com/doac to claim 50% off your new system with a professional monitoring plan and get your first month free. That's simplysafe.com/doac. There's no safe like simply safe. Make sure you keep what I'm about to say to yourself. I'm inviting 10,000 of you to come even deeper into the diary of a CEO. Welcome to my inner circle. This is a brand new private community that I'm launching to the world. We have so many incredible things that happen that you are never shown. We have the briefs that are on my iPad when I'm recording the conversation. We have clips we've never released. We have behindthe-scenes conversations with the guests and also the episodes that we've never ever released. And so much more. In the circle, you'll have direct access to me. You can tell us what you want this show to be, who you want us to interview, and the types of conversations you would love us to have. But remember, for now, we're only inviting the first 10,000 people that join before it closes. So, if you want to join our private close community, head to the link in the description below or go to daccircle.com. I will speak to you there. There's this quote that I found in one of your videos from Sunsu. The video is titled how quitting porn can be dangerous. What is that Sunu quote and can you explain it to me? So Sunzu has a great quote. He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight. And a big part of like overcoming addiction is choosing your battles and making sure doing everything that you can to make sure that you're going to win when you fight. So this is something that really confuses people about pornography addiction. So, one of the things that I I'll tell people is that resisting pornography is one of the worst things you can do. So, I'll explain this to you. So, this I learned when I was dealing with people with o who had opioid addiction. So, let's say I'm addicted to opiates and so I feel like using opiates. Okay. Now, I don't know how much you know, but we'll just find out. If I resist my opioid addiction, what will I experience? Stress. Absolutely. And then what will I what do opioids do? Do you know why we give them? No. We give them for pain relief. Okay. So like you have a dental surgery. So then you I feel stressed and then I want it more and then if I don't give my body opioids, what do you think happens? What for what period of time? Like in the next hour, two hours, three hours. Brilliant question. You get cravings? Absolutely. I get cravings. And if I don't give into them, what happens? For what period of time? four hours, five hours, six hours, basically what happens is the cravings intensify and then opioid addicts especially start to feel pain. So they start to feel this like whole body pain. You start to go into withdrawal and so the craving intensify. Does does that make sense? I start to feel worse and then if I use opioids then it all gets better. You with me? Yeah. So then if you follow that cycle of resisting, resisting, resisting and then caving. Okay, your body learns a very, very bad lesson. It says, "Making him hurt 10%, I don't get what I want." Making him hurt 20%, I don't get what I want. Making him him hurt 40%, I don't get what I want. Making him hurt 80%, then he gives me what I want. The second time around, you'll jump straight to 80%. So, you will start to suffer more. So your body literally learns what signals do I need to send this dumbass to give me what I need. And so the more that you resist addiction, the stronger the addiction will like the the stronger the withdrawal will become. Now here's what I mean by resist. If you cave, then it'll intensify. But it so so if you're going to give in, you like need to give in early. Otherwise, it'll get harder and harder and harder and the cravings will intensify, intensify, intensify as you try to give it up, which is why it's really important to pick your battles. So once you make a decision or you create a structured environment where you go into rehab so that like you can't give in and then if you can make it all the way on the other side of the craving and the craving disappears and then you're like you finish the withdrawal process then you'll be really strong. But literally I've seen this principle time and time and time again where if you resist something and end up losing the craving will only intensify over time and it'll be you'll lose one battle and you'll start losing the war. So instead, what you really need to do is pick and choose when you are going to fight that battle, when you're going to give in. And and if you decide that you're going to not use pornography, then it needs to be like you're dying on that hill no matter what. Otherwise, the cravings will intensify and it'll become harder. What about artificial intelligence? Does that change the picture at all in your view? No. I think artificial intelligence is like just building on a lot of these trends. So what we're seeing with things like pornography is that there is a fundamental need that is not being met. I'm looking at this graph here. Okay. And it's the search volume for people searching for an AI girlfriend. Yep. Which is going up and to the right. I don't know if I did this on your podcast, but I made this prediction a few years ago that we're going to get some this is going to get worse before it gets better, I think. So here's the next prediction is the first version of AI girlfriends will be everything that you want. Then someone is going to figure out that it is more addicting to have an AI girlfriend who gets pissed at you once a month. So every now and then like the AI girlfriend is not going to want to talk to you and that's the one that people are going to stick with. That's my next prediction. That maps in terms of addiction psychology, doesn't it? If there's what's it called? Unpredictable reward. Yeah. Random reinforcement schedule. So, it's going to be like an AI girlfriend. That's a loot box. That's what my girlfriend's like. Exactly. Why? It's going to be addictive, right? Because if she was nice to you all the time, like, you'd go crazy. I'm thinking of the um the pigeon study that I learned about when I was 16 in psychology classes of, you know, the study where they give the p pigeon the reward at random intervals. And the pigeon that's most addicted to performing the behavior per se is the pigeon who gets given the treat randomly, not in a predictable scheduled way. So random rewards seem to reinforce engagement with behavior. Absolutely 100%. So our AI girlfriends and boyfriends are going to be volatile. Yeah, I think they're going to learn to be volatile because what's going to happen is someone is going to give you an AI that it gives you the answers that you want all the time and then someone's going to give you an AI that gives you the answers that you want some of the time. And I think what we're seeing with AI girlfriends is in the same way as pornography, we are craving these things and it's so much easier to talk to an AI, but I think that over time it's going to mess us up. I I don't think that it will be able to create the neurochemical and physiological connection that real humans do that will really satisfy us. I mean, you've probably heard of the study from MIT which showed that essentially using chatbt is making our brains atrophy. For context, they had roughly 54 participants, I think it was, over four months. And they allowed some of them to use just their brain, some of them to use Google search, and some of them to use chatbt. And they found a bunch of different interesting findings. One of them was that roughly 80% of people that use chatbt to write an essay could not remember a single sentence from what they just produced. um versus the brain group and the Google group who could remember pretty much everything that they had written. The other finding was that the the communication was soulless described as soulless by objective observers. And the last thing is just the impact it had on the brain. They found that the connections in the brain I think were roughly 50% weaker um because they hadn't been using their brain. And you think about this atrophy. So like we talk about go to the gym, you use it. If you don't use it, you lose it. but also um as it relates to the brain and maybe our skills to form relationships, maybe there's going to be an atrophy there. Oh, there absolutely is. So, I I think it's really simple to understand. The the human body is efficient more than anything else. It is an energyconserving mechanism beyond anything else. So, anything that it doesn't need, it's going to get rid of. So, this is why we forget languages that we don't use. skills atrophy over time. That is not a problem. That's the way we're designed. Our brain is like, if you don't need it, get rid of it. So, if Stephen, everyone was were to be riding around in electric wheelchairs for hours and hours a day instead of walking, what would happen? We'd lose our legs. Absolutely. Right. So, and and our brain is like, "Hey, we don't need these muscle." Our body is like, "We don't need these muscles." And so, what we're seeing is an atrophy of critical thinking skills. Absolutely. with AI usage. And the reason is because we don't need them anymore. The real question and this gets this is what because the AI does it for us, right? Why do I need to learn how to write an essay if an AI can if I can click I can just put a prompt in and then it gives me an answer. They actually found that in the study. I was reading about it last night. They found that people who then tried to write an essay without chatt was significantly worse at that than those who had never used it. Absolutely. So, but that and also they started thinking and speaking like the the AI. So, it said that they internalized the way that the AI was speaking when they wrote their own essays. It makes a lot of sense. So, I think there's there's a couple of even scarier things going on. The first is that when we use an AI uh so I I did a really fun experiment with a couple of friends of mine. We like streamed this thing where we basically gave the AI clinical cases. So, it was me and and two psychologist friends of mine and we basically like I I wrote up like a clinical history, pulled some things from my notes and I put it into AI. So, when I asked my friends, you know, what here's the clinical history word for word. I read it aloud. I got their thoughts on it and then I put it into the AI and and some some situations they were pretty close. But there are a couple of really great cases of of uh patients who are incredibly narcissistic who will like come in will say, "My daughter doesn't want to talk to me anymore. She does this and she does this. I try my best. I make sacrifices. I do this. I'm like basically she's like incredibly narcissistic. Talks about how our daughter is the problem." So immediately the two therapists pick it up and they're like, "This person sounds a little bit I I think this person is missing something. We're missing some part of the equation here." Whereas the AI is like, "Oh yeah, like sometimes this is hard. you've got emptiness nest syndrome. Sometimes kids aren't grateful to you. You're like you're not doing anything wrong. It can be useful to like share with them how you feel, right? So the AI reflects back what you give it. So the AI, if you have a really strong cognitive bias, the AI will just reflect that back to you, which is why it feels so right. If I take the most narcissistic person on the planet and I tell them, "Oh my god, you are beautiful. You're intelligent. you're brilliant, you're the best. That person will look at me and say, "Oh my god, this guy is brilliant." So, this is the real problem with with AI is that it's going to just give you whatever you're looking for. It won't give you the truth. And the problem is if you have a strong cognitive bias, what you want to hear is what you think the truth is. The really scary thing is the AI can give you the right answer, but you have to know how to ask it. Yeah. So, what I'm what I'm seeing is that prompt engineering. So, if we play around with what I ask the AI with that case, it starts to get closer and closer to narcissism. But here's the real problem is that you don't know how do you know what to ask the AI. The real skill of AI usage is in asking the right questions because that will I think get you the closest to the truth. But we don't know if it's the right question. So, you can ask it one question. Is that the right question or could you ask it better? Are you moving in the right direction with your prompt engineering or the wrong direction with your prompt engineering? So, I think this is what's really scary about it is it it can just let you feed into your existing cognitive biases, make you think you're learning a lot, give you a lot of sense of validation, and it's incredibly validating by the way. And do you think it's going to atrophy our ability to form relationships? Because one of them is just we're like forgetting how to communicate and think for ourselves. Absolutely. critical thinking's key to having a good good relationship with the opposite sex. It it will absolutely atrophy our so it'll give us right now it's at a phase where it can teach us a couple of really important things. So I think it's really good at disseminating some good information but it will never give us skills and atrophy is on the level of skill not knowledge like knowledge doesn't atrophy atrophy really applies to a loss of function. So, it'll get worse and worse. And then what'll absolutely happen is some uh dating app will will collaborate with an AI to have you text. It'll like modify your texts to be really really responsive. And then what'll happen, we're already seeing this in the employment space. So employers used to use like tools like AI to filter through applications, right? We can have a bunch of applications. I can scan it. I can filter based on this. Now that we have access to AIS like chat GPT, it's just some weird dead internet kind of thing where the employer has a bot and now I'm submitting a bot with a res like I have a resume writing a bot. So it's just bots talking to bots and employers are like we're getting all these AI generated resumes whereas they've been using like computing to get rid of résumés and filter things out for a long time. So what's the advice then? Is it to not use AI, not use large language models or No, I mean I So I think this is what's really tricky is you have to use AI now because you're going to be out competed by the people who don't. So I I would kind of think about it like, you know, caffeine where it's like a certain amount is probably good for you, but if you get really addicted to energy drinks and things like that, you're doing yourself a disservice. So what I tend to what I would recommend for people is that you don't let it do your thinking for you but you you can let it do so I let it do some refining for me but every refining that I let it do it weakens my ability to refine. So the way actually maybe the best analogy is think of chat GPT like taking the elevator. So for this trip, it will make things easy for you, but it will make every single trip that you take after it harder because there's some atrophy. Absolutely. By not taking the stairs, right? And I sometimes take the elevator and I sometimes take the stairs. Dr. K, thank you. We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not knowing who they're leaving it for. And a question that's been left for you is What is the most powerful love in your life and why? The most I mean I I would have to say it's my the love for my nuclear family like hands down and without a doubt. Um and I think it's kind of interesting because it's not localized on one person. So, I have two daughters and I I have a wife and we started playing Dungeons and Dragons recently. And we also I create we created a new holiday called Mother's Day Eve, which is like Christmas Eve, but for Mother's Day. And I love this holiday. So, it's basically like a chance like we we prepare and we get all the stuff that my wife loves like ready for her. And instead of like Mother's Day being like, oh, like here's breakfast in bed, like we we like party basically doing all of her favorite things. So, I'd say the mo the biggest love in my life, I don't remember exactly what the question is, but I think it's encapsulated with Mother's Day Eve. And I think if y'all are listening to this and you want a really fun holiday that has not been overly commercialized, Father's Day Eve and Mother's Day Eve are are the two. Just like make a celebration of all the things that this person does. Do it at night the night before, not the morning. And it's great. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. I really appreciate this these conversations. I mean, I don't have to tell you, but um every single time it it's kind of like a reset in my life speaking to you for so many reasons because it helps me brings me back from whatever [ __ ] has consumed me since we last spoke. Yeah. I I And uh it's really it's almost like a baptism. That's the way I would describe it. But I know it is for my listeners, too, cuz they come up to me in the streets. I was I was saying to you before we started recording, they come up to you all over the world. I remember a lady in New York a couple of weeks ago came over to me midworkout and told me um what she was like I'm listening to Dr. K right now and showed me her phone and was like can you get her back on the podcast? Um, and it's it's it's incredible and I actually aspire to be like you in so many ways because I think there's a spiritual component to me that I'm yet to explore. And I think spending time with you as someone I trust so much in so many areas really is a handheld into a new realm which I'm a little bit sort of hesitant to investigate. Do I get to respond? No, I'm joking. Of course, you do. No, I mean sometimes we get into this last word game where it's like meeting of the mutual appreciation club. So Stephen, I what I love about you and I I really do love coming here. They say, "Oh, you should have me back on the podcast." What we create here is a diad. There is a component that you bring. I could not do this without you, right? Right. So, like there's something that you and I meet and then we make something that is unique and I think you're really good at making it with a lot of people and you and I are going to make our own kind of baby, you know, and so it's it's honestly it's a blast. Thank you. [Music]