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Transcription
The speaker discusses his personal experience with porn addiction and the impact it had on his life, relationships, and business. He highlights the accessibility and shame associated with internet pornography and the challenges of overcoming addiction. He also shares the reactions he received from family, friends, and business partners after giving a TED Talk about his addiction. The speaker emphasizes the importance of addressing this issue and helping others who may be struggling with porn addiction. When I talk about why I got trapped in it, it's ridiculously accessible. Internet pornography is just everything on steroids. What kept me in it was the shame. When I talk about porn addiction, I'm talking about not wanting to watch porn, promising myself that I'll never watch porn again, and then feeling this uncontrollable urge to go back, and I do. It consumed my life. So it started taking up more and more time, more and more energy, and then me pushing the boundaries, going from pixels to people. But when I peeled back the onion and I said, what am I going to porn for? I'm going to hit on girls less. I'm going to approach them less. I'm going to interact with them less. If you're married and you're watching too much porn, it creates a distance between you and your wife. If you want Xanax, you have to go to get it from somebody for a couple dollars a pop. But if you want porn, you're two seconds away from having it. The dealer's sitting right in front of you at any time. It's magnified for kids. We do so much to protect kids from alcohol, from everything under the sun, and then what do they have to do? They have to checkmark that they're 18. Porn addiction, it's a real issue. Matter of fact, 40 million adults in the U.S. visit internet porn sites on a regular basis, one in five every internet search on mobile devices of pornography. Men who are happily married are 61% less likely to look at porn. 20% of men admit to viewing pornography at work. And 88% of porn scenes contain physical aggression. 49% contain verbal aggression. My guest today is an entrepreneur CEO running a successful business. One day he decides to go talk about his porn addiction, and he doesn't just do it on a small platform with five of his friends, or maybe his relatives, maybe his mom, dad. He decides to do it on this place called TED Talks. He gives this speech. Nearly 3 million people find out about his addiction, and that led to a lot of different dialogue. So with that being said, Ellie Nash, thank you so much for being a guest on Valuetainment. Thank you, Patrick. Thanks for having me. Big fan of your work. I appreciate that. I'm glad to have you on because I think it's fair to say this is an issue that comes up amongst men all the time, but they're embarrassed to talk about it. And I get a lot of random calls on how to handle this. So prior to getting into it, one just basic question for you. So when you went and gave the talk, you've got millions of views. You run a successful business in Miami. What were some of the commentary you got from people that are close to you? Family, friends, co-workers, kids that knew you in high school in New York. I mean, Jewish community. What were some of the reactions you got from people that you know? The people closest to me reacted pretty well for the most part. Some of my family, I'm not sure what they think. They've said nice things to me. I'm not sure what they're saying about it behind my back. In business, I've had sometimes mixed reactions. So I was once trying to do business with a big client. I won't name them in here. You've got a big audience. And I had a few good calls, and then the line went dead. So I followed up with someone, the person who put me in touch. I said, hey, can you try to figure out what happened with this guy? Because I had some good calls with him. And what had happened is the company looked me up and saw something about porn and said, hey, I don't know if we want to do business with him. I'm not sure what the deal is with the whole porn addiction thing. But I'll give you another story that happened a couple of weeks ago. This guy I do business with for 10 years. One of my more important relationships. And we're at dinner. He has a little bit of wine in him. And he says, LES, want to let you know, it's such an honor to do business with you. From all the people I do business with, it's a real honor to do business with you. So I said, why do you say that? I appreciate it, but why do you say that? He's like, well, you've done on that porn thing. He's like, and a lot of people struggle with it, including me. He's like, that's just, it's so cool that you put that out there like that. And I didn't expect it. I didn't expect it from him. So I've gotten mixed responses. But I would say between the two, it's much more important to me that someone that does business with me values it than someone who's never met me. Now, Ellie, I think it's important for people to realize, you start a company called Mic Drop with you and Rush Lowe, right? I don't know if I'm pronouncing his name right. I hope I'm pronouncing it right. Can you kind of give us the optics, give us some perspective of how big the business was and your level of success was when you decided to go public with this? How successful were you guys at the time? So Mic Drop is the second business that I started more recently. Somewhat of a passion project. There's a business that I started in 2006, which is a distribution business. J&G? That's correct. Yeah, that's a distribution business. And we've been doing it since 06. Like I said, at the time of the TED Talk, we probably had about 80 employees doing north of 100 million in business a year. And Mic Drop was something that I had done because, get this, Patrick, I had a painful fear of public speaking. Get out of here. Really painful fear of public speaking. And the guy who helped me get over it was Rush Lowe. Rush Lowe was a local news reporter for Channel 7, local to Miami. So he helps me to speak a different talk I gave on child sex abuse, sharing my story within the community. And then I tell Rush, hey, I want to start this as a business. I saw the impact it had on me and on a lot of people that I introduced it to. I found it as one of the best teamwork things I've ever done in my company is to have him come in and train people to tell their story and get over that fear of public speaking. So that's how that business started. Pretty powerful. And the reason why I want the audience to know that is because you're not just like somebody, hey, let me go out there. You've got 80 employees, $100 million a year. That's not like a... It's very hard to run $100 million a year company. Most people get to a million, $10 million, $5 million, $100 million a year company, and you say, I want to get out. So walk me through what happened when you went up to your partner and said, hey, I'm thinking about doing this. What was his initial reaction to you? So here's what happened. I approached him about starting a business, helping people tell a story. I said, why don't you leave Channel 7, do this full time. It's amazing. I saw the way it changed my life. I feel like I have a voice. It was something I brought to my employees as well. I said, let's turn this into a company. So after he started his business, he goes into... He starts doing a few different projects. And I say, hey, let's do it again by us. So the first time we did it was 2016 while he was still at the newspaper. And the business we started, I believe, was 2019 or end of 2018. I said, let's bring it back and let's do it again in our company. And one of his secrets, I guess, that he offers is the CEO should always speak as well. Don't just have the company do the talk. Also have the CEO talk. So he asks me, what do you want to talk about? And I say, I know exactly what I'm talking about. I'm talking about porn addiction. And you should have seen his face. The reason why this was a big deal, we have to frame this correctly, Patrick. This guy is a guy who encourages people to share their story. That's who he is. His job is training people to tell their story. So he's trained people. And as a news reporter, he's trying to get the story. And when I tell him that I want to share my story on porn addiction, the story guy tells me you can't do that. That's why it was such a big deal. And that's what clicked for me. I said, if I can't tell the story to him, him of all people is telling me I can't say the story. I got to do it from the biggest stage. And that's when I decided I'm doing a TED Talk on porn addiction. So now that was done. TED Talks went live with your porn addiction video June 24, 2019. I'm assuming that's not the day you gave the talk. It's probably a month prior to that or two months prior to that. And it's two months prior to that. So $2.683 million. What has women's reaction been to this? Men, it's a different story. Hey, bro, I'm so glad. I've been struggling with it myself as well. Or maybe they don't even want to talk about it. They're uncomfortable. But what have women in your life said about you opening up regarding escaping porn addiction? So the two most important women in my life, my wife and my mom have been extremely supportive of it. Very, very, very supportive. My wife, in general, takes it as a huge plus. She says I trust my husband more than... I'll be honest. I spoke about porn addiction there, but here we're having a conversation. And I went from pixels to people, right? Porn addiction became a problem for me that was beyond porn itself. And being a recovered sex addict, so to speak, a recovered porn addict, my wife takes that as a source of pride as far as she's concerned. And that's one of the things that gave me the pride to speak up about it. And my mom as well. She just thinks it's awesome that I'm willing to talk about it. She understands that I'm doing it to help others. I wish I heard it from someone else about porn addiction while I was stuck in it. And that's why I talk so that someone else... I know the pain of porn addiction. And I speak to those people. I speak to what I needed to hear. Women outside of that, I don't know. I'm not talking to them. I'm a married man, man. Good answer. I get messages every once in a while on Instagram from women who are addicted to porn. Not a ton, but I do. And I just wonder, when we talk about the scale with men, like you're reading the statistics at the beginning, it's almost every man. But let's say with women, it's one in four women or one in five women that watch pornography a lot. It could also be a big problem there. I don't know the scale of it. On the woman's side is what you're saying. You don't know the scale of it. But anecdotally, I've received messages from women who say, hey, I'm addicted to porn and it's really hard for me to say anything about it. The fact that you said there's only two women, the most important women in your life, your wife and your mom. If you're a sex addict, it's good to be a sex addict while you're married because you're addicted to having sex with your wife. So I'm sure that benefits your spouse, which is a very good thing. Your wife is lucky to be married to a sex addict. That's a good place to be. For men, I run a sales organization. I was in the military. In the army, I had a sergeant in the corner who was the king. Everybody looked at this guy. They admired him. They just admired the hell out of this guy. I'm an 18-year-old kid. I've been there for a little long. Obviously, as a kid, my mom caught me under the mattress with my best high-quality porn addiction from Hustle Magazine, whatever I had. I had the nice stash, high quality and hidden in the right places. She found it one day. She was shocked by it. I said, what would you like me to have? You want me to have naked pictures or what here? Girls, men, animals. What would you like me to do here? I like women. So we had a different reaction, but there was the judgment. You always kind of feel like there's a level of judgment. Now, I go in the military. The guy in the corner, the mountains of porn VHS tapes he had was incredible. And everybody would always go to his suite. And I wonder, why is everybody going there? And then we found out. Today, we're going to look at this. Today, we're going to look at that. Fast forward to me running a business. I cannot tell you how many times I've walked into one of my sales guys, and they're sitting there. And all I hear is the sound in the background. And they're trying to close the window. I'm like, bro, what are you doing, bro? We got clients here. A few months ago, a very funny experience happened because one of my employees, I said, hey, where are we at with this image that we got to put up for the thumbnail? He says, here, let me show you the thumbnail. I have it right here. It takes his phone out proudly, shows me the phone as he's going through it. He forgot to close the window of his porn. The penetration's taking place. He was so embarrassed he couldn't talk to me for a couple weeks. Good news is he's still an employee of ours. He hasn't been fired for a porn addiction. What is it with men being addicted to porn? And why is it that is such a bad thing for men to be addicted to porn? I always speak from personal experience. I can't speak for everyone. That's what I'm bringing here. You can always have a psychologist who comes as well or a scientist. I come from personal experience. First of all, I want to say I'm not an anti-porn advocate. There are many anti-porn advocates. If it's working for someone, God bless them. It didn't work for me. I'm coming from that perspective. It may not work for anyone. It may work for everyone but me. It's not my business. But when I talk about why I got trapped in it, it's A, it's ridiculously accessible. Ridiculously accessible. But the second, and also, I mean, there's some, you know, you like women and I like women and that's all. You see the pictures and there's a lot there and they get better and better at it, right? When you talk about the magazine, it's not the same problem. There's an organization called Fight the New Drug, which combats pornography or gives information about pornography. They consider it a new drug even though pornography is as old as time itself because internet pornography is just everything on steroids. Like when you're done with that Hustle magazine or whatever it is you were looking at, to get another one, you've got to go, I don't know how old you were at the time, but you've got to work to get that next magazine, especially if you're under 18. As a teenager, it's just right there at your fingertips, more and more and more and more. So the variety and the accessibility. And for me, what kept me in it was the shame. And when I talk about porn addiction, I'm talking about not wanting to watch porn, promising myself that I'll never watch porn again, and then feeling this uncontrollable urge to go back, and I do. What the difference for me and what kept me in there, what changed, what's the real variable that changed, is shame, is talking about it. So I was in therapy for five years talking about other stuff and intense things. I was sexually abused as a child and that was a lot of the work I was doing in therapy. And I lied to him about the fact that I was watching pornography for five years. So what does that tell you about the average guy who's struggling with porn? We may be comfortable watching it and talking about it, but if we're trapped in it, can we turn to someone and ask for help? And that's what it took for me to get out of it, and that's one of the main reasons I speak, so that if someone else is having a hard time, to say no shame. There's a lot of us who've been there, and there's a way out, and the way out is through combating the shame. So what, but if you go a little deeper, I mean, I'm on the website that says the 12 step program to get, you know, stop watching porn. And, you know, I'm on the website as well. They just talked about fight the new drug. This is something where I get a lot of calls myself as a guy that runs a company with 20,000 agents. I get a call from wives sometimes saying, hey, can you every once in a while talk to the men about porn addiction? I don't want you to bring up the name, but, you know, I've caught my husband watching porn a lot, and et cetera, et cetera. So a lot of these things come from the women's side as well on, you know, I don't want my husband to watch porn because he can't stop watching porn, right? But to go kind of a little bit deeper, what is the challenge, like what is the problem of watching porn? I can speak from the experience from my behalf and what I've read on it myself when I'm studying what the challenges of this is for both were single men and married men, but for you, what was the challenge of watching too much porn? Like what kind of negative effects did it have on you? It consumed my life. So it started taking up more and more time, more and more energy, and then me pushing the boundaries, like I mentioned, going from pixels to people. But when I peel back the onion and I said, what am I going to porn for, right? Which this is a that's really the question someone has to ask them for. I'll give you a great story. So I get a call from a kid who finds me on Facebook and he's struggling a lot because he's 21, 22 years old and he's tried and failed to stop porn multiple times. Different promises, different filters on his computer, everything. He sees my talk. He reaches out to me. He said, dude, I've tried everything and failed. Maybe you can maybe you can have a call with me. I said, sure. I get on the phone with them. And the first question I ask him is, why do you watch so much porn? And he says to me, because I'm a guy. So I said, you're telling me that the reason you're going to porn every single time, the reason you're going to porn is strictly for a physical sexual need. That's what you're looking to get from it. And he said, yeah, I think so. I said, OK. Obviously, I didn't believe that to be the case because that wasn't the case with me. And this is, I think, the kicker, right? So as we continue the conversation, I said, hey, just tell me when it got the worst. When did your porn use get so bad that you said I'm done? Or tell me what's going on now that you decided to message me on Facebook? Because that's not easy to do, to reach out to someone and have this conversation. So he says, oh, I finished school. I think he was in college. I came back home. I'm back in my parents' house. One of my siblings was dealing with an illness, I think. It's very stressful. And I'm watching porn. So I said, OK, and this situation turns you on? He said, what do you mean? I said, well, you told me the reason you watch porn is because it's like just a guy, because, you know, just a guy doing his thing. It's sexual. And he understood from that question that he understood my point from that question, that the reason he was watching pornography was because he found himself in a stressful situation and he was using pornography or abusing pornography to meet some emotional need. And that's where it gets wildly destructive. Did I answer your question? Yeah, I guess what I'm trying to find out is what is the negative impact? So, OK, I have some stats here for teenagers, right? Nine out of 10 boys are exposed to pornography before the age of 18. I'm surprised it's nine out of 10. I figured it'd be 100% of kids that are exposed to pornography. Six out of 10 girls are exposed to pornography before 18. OK, on average, a male's first experience to pornography is at 12 years old. OK, 71% of teens have done something to hide what they do online from their parents. I believe that teenage boys 12 to 17 have the highest risk of developing a porn addiction, right? OK, then the next one says I have here is from my wife. My husband is addicted to porn. Pornography addiction does not only affect the addict, but it can also negatively impact the well-being of the individual's wife or girlfriend. Addiction can cause the following feelings within the wife of a porn addict. Rejection, betrayal, depression, abandonment, isolation, loneliness, humiliation, anger, right? So, did you like my way of studying a topic? If I'm struggling with something in my life, I'm trying to raise money. I have no clue what the different controls are. Before I go and raise this, you know, next money, I got to find out what controls. So, I go read everything and anything I can find on the topic. If I'm struggling with parenting a girl versus a boy, I want to go read everything I can on that topic. When you were going to the rabbit hole, did you yourself go out there and do a ton of due diligence to see the effect porn can have on men, on singles, on married? Or was it just like, look, I'm struggling with this. I met with my therapist, and then I just wanted to talk about it. Did you do a lot of research and due diligence? So, the research for me came to addiction. And that's where I spent a lot of time. And I looked at this very quickly as an addiction. As soon as I read it, I read a great book by Patrick Harns called Out of the Shadows. And Patrick Harns talks about sex addiction. He's actually the one who coined the term sex addiction, not coined the term, but he was the first therapist. They call him like the father of sex addiction recovery, where he was the first therapist to really talk about the possibility of someone being able to be addicted to sex. Some don't believe there could be an addiction. So, as soon as I read that book and I saw the parallels in my life with what he was talking about, that became my obsession. My obsession became recovery from addiction versus how destructive pornography is for anyone else. Got it. Listen, for me, it's got my motivation. And in terms of girls, I mean, what's the likelihood that I'm going to hit on girls less, I'm going to approach them less, I'm going to interact with them less? All of those things is going to, in a real human way, right? Because I have something easily available to me that met my need in some way. So, I can talk for hours about the way it affected my life. I think some of these questions that you're asking about how large of a problem it is and how much it affects people, someone else is probably better suited to answer those questions. I only ask it because if I speak on a topic, like let's just say everywhere I go, I get pulled over for different topics. If I'm a valet guy, a pull-up valet guy will get out and say he's Italian. He'll say, man, I got to tell you, out of all the interviews of mobsters, which one do you like the most? Is it Samuel de Beau Garvan? Is it Frank Collada? Is it Oscar Goodman? Just starts a conversation. Then I get hit up from emails from people from Sicily, from people from all over the world. You should interview this Russian mobster. You should interview this Albanian mobster. And then I'll go into bodybuilding. A bunch of people from bodybuilding come to me. I just wonder if you talk about a topic this sensitive as porn addiction, did a lot of doctors, psychologists, therapists come up to you, send you research to say here's the challenges? And the reason why I ask this question is because I think this is as big of a deal as you think it is, but I think the impact on this is very massive for the community, for somebody like yourself who's already made an influence. You got 3 million people on this topic. I watched Pamela Anderson talk about porn. And it was one of the most fascinating interviews I saw with Pamela Anderson. So you know when you think about Pamela, what do you think about? You think about Baywatch. You think about who's the guy she was with. What's the guy's name she was with? I don't know what his name is. You know who I'm talking about. The good looking guy. What's his name? Tommy Lee was his name. Tommy Lee. Yeah, Tommy Lee. So hey, they're together and their video came out and it was so public and all this other stuff. And then she had a son. And she talked about in an interview where, look, you know, when you're going out there meeting men and you're having sex, it's starting to get annoying because men think they have to have sex with you the way men have sex with women and porn because that's where they get their education from. So a lot of times that becomes a form of education where single men are thinking, hey, that's what I need to do to go, please, X, Y, Z. Number two is, you know, when if you're married and you're watching too much porn, it creates a distance between you and your wife almost because, you know, it's kind of like, man, you know, there's no way in the world you can meet this expectation of what I signed here. So anything below that is, you know, just not going to turn me on the way X, Y, Z turned me on in this movie that I watch or in this series that I watch. I was just curious to know if you had any thoughts on that. Can I elaborate on that point of what's turning someone on? Because one of the things that impacted me towards the end, I committed in March of 2013. That's when I committed to stop watching porn. And it's been about four and a half years since I've seen anything. So it took a few years. Zero. Zero. You haven't watched any for four and a half years. I haven't intentionally went to watch porn in four and a half years. Yeah, it's sometimes hard not to bump into things like you mentioned, right? Your employee opens a phone in front of you. So if you had a streak going, then that wouldn't work. So I'm specific about what I mean. I haven't intentionally gone to to look at porn. But I saw an interview with the porn star a couple months before my decision to stop. And she spoke about walking in on her boyfriend watching pornography. And, right, so she said her whole view of pornography changed in that instance. How? Right. Because until then, she's like, okay, I'm hotter than these other girls. That's the reason why everyone's watching me. And, you know, makes sense, right? I'm the hottest. They're less hot. So watch me have sex. And here is a guy, here's a man, the one man who I want to have sex with, and he's watching pornography of other people. That's when she realized for herself that porn kind of operates on a little bit of a different track than the regular sex drive. In the sense that it's not just I'm more attracted to this, so I want the one that's most attractive. There's something about the variety. There's something about it being as not a human being, it being inanimate. There's something about being able to watch anything that we are thinking about that day. Right? Et cetera, et cetera, that pushes us in that direction or pulls us in that direction. And she said after that, she was done with porn. She realized that, yeah, what she's doing isn't helping people. It's not, you know, it's I don't know, some people say, you know, I watch porn with my wife to kind of get myself to get the engines revved. And over there, she said, hey, this is something else going on, because if it was just about that, he'd be sleeping with me. And instead, other people are watching me, are watching me have sex, and the person who could is watching someone else have sex. Something not good is going on here. That's great perspective from somebody who's in that field. You walk in onto your man watching porn of another girl while you're a porn star and you're very, very interesting perspective. I'd be curious to know what her name is. I'd love to interview her myself to see what she can bring to the table. So, look, let's talk about this part. I think the one part with this is it's such a sensitive topic that, you know, sometimes when people talk about this topic, it almost comes across as, oh, I can't believe you do such a thing. And I can't move, you know, it's kind of like looking down at people who have watched it. And then there's also another group where it's where it's what's the big deal? You know, just it's not a big deal. Just drop it versus not realizing that, you know, just like a guy is addicted to Xanax or Vicodin or cocaine or pot or, you know, heroin, whatever, maybe it's a similar challenge and thing to get rid of. The difference is if you want Xanax, you have to go to get it from somebody for a couple dollars a pop. If you want coke, no skin, you got to go find somebody to buy it from. But if you want to, you know, porn, you're two seconds away from having it. The dealer sitting right in front of you at any time. It's only for kids. Yeah, I mean, it's magnified for kids. We do so much to protect kids from alcohol, from everything under the sun. And what do they have to do? They have to checkmark that they're 18. Yeah. And it's just a crazy question for you. Did your parents talk to you about sex early on or no? No, they didn't talk about sex early on. OK, got it. Neither did mine. I mean, my mother would ask me in Germany, have you taken science yet? I said, why do you keep asking me if I've taken science yet? Like, what are you asking me about? Why am I taking science yet? Walk me through. Someone's watching this. OK, right after they watch this interview, they clear history because they don't want to see that they're watching an interview like this about porn because they don't want anybody to know that they're watching, you know, a video with history. Something tells me this interview, the percentage of people watching the entire interview is going to be higher than usual because they want to see exactly what things are going to be said. Because I know a lot of people struggle with this. What is the process? I have it in front of me, but I'm curious to know what process you took. What was your process to go through dropping porn where for four and a half years, you haven't intentionally watched any porn? What was the process you took that worked for you? Three components of the process. There was therapy. Well, first, before that, it was whatever it takes. Right. If someone asked you what you had to do in business, the real answer is I was willing to do whatever it took. And this is what it happened to take for me. So I want to qualify that it was 100 percent whatever it took. I it was the most important priority for me. Once I noticed how much it was affecting my life and the way I found out is trying to stop doing it for a period of time. And I got at one point, the first time I tried to stop was 57 days. I was feeling freaking amazing. So many parts of my life getting better. But on the other hand, I was feeling amazing in the sense that my feelings started coming up. Right. Like I started feeling better. And some of those feelings were extremely uncomfortable feelings that were coming up when I became better at feeling because some of the porn numbed so much of it. So I started some of the trauma, some of the pain, some of the confusion, some of that started coming up as well. But in answer to your question, there was therapy, there was support groups and then a little bit of help from technology. That was kind of the three pronged approach that I took to stopping to watch porn. Can you tell me support groups and what technology? Yeah. So technology, at the time I used something like K9 browser and then the general stuff on the iPhone when I got an iPhone. I'm sure there are better stuff now. I know there's, I've worked with Covenant Eyes. Covenant Eyes I think is a really good one. Covenant Eyes uses a, it's kind of like a mentor relationship where I've been on the other side of that. So I didn't know this software when I was trying to stop. But the problem with using something like K9 browser or some of the other stuff is that there are always ways around it. Whereas Covenant Eyes kind of screenshots at random times and it gives someone on the other end, hey, the guy didn't use his phone for a long period of time or here are some snapshots versus, you know, for example, I can be on Instagram that's not picked up by the browser but I'm watching stuff that may as well be porn. Something like Covenant Eyes will see that, they'll take pictures and then you'll have a conversation with your accountability partner. So imagine one of your employees came to you and said, Patrick, I'm struggling watching porn. Will you be my accountability partner on Covenant Eyes? And then it'll send you reports and have that conversation. So there's a lot of different technology out there. I used K9 browser and the regular Apple stuff just to limit it. And the reason is this isn't a fail-safe. I don't have anything today on my phones, just to be clear. What it does is it just gives you a space between stimulus and response. And for me, that I've sat down on my computer so many times, I see the Google screen and I'm already, for years, when I saw that Google image, that was a trigger for me. So I needed something to block all Google images, even though I wore a computer for several years. Now that trigger has weakened. So one with technology, but again, that's just to put a small gap. Support groups, I use the 12 steps. I'm a big proponent of the 12 steps. Obviously, there's an anonymous factor to the 12 steps because in the 12 steps, no one wants to come and say, or not so much the 12 steps, but the specific programs within the 12 steps. So I won't name the program that I'm a part of. And the reason for the anonymous factor is, you know, let's say next week I slip on porn or I'm found in a strip club or something else. Someone doesn't say, oh, look, it doesn't work. It does work, but I don't want to be the poster child. There are no poster childs for any of these programs. And then therapy, really deep dive in therapy. And therapy means everything you can imagine. Plus, you know, are you close to both your parents, mom and dad? Yeah, I am. You're a very values guy. What did you pick up from your mom? And what did you pick up from your dad? Because you seem like a very raised, properly values and principle type of guy. Thanks. I appreciate that. Both my parents, you know, we didn't grow up with much. Both my parents decided to become more religious in their late 20s, early 30s. So they brought us up with religion, but in a way that was not indoctrinated to them, but chosen for them. So I think that was a little bit different. They both chose. It was a very religious life, a very specific life. I don't live that way today, but I saw that. My dad was very involved in the community. He helped out in pretty much anything he could. We didn't grow up with much money. I was one of nine kids. My dad was a government employee. My mom was a part-time teacher. But I saw them help people. And I saw them do what they could to be better people and be better people within the community. Well, respect. I mean, it's felt. I'm in the business of reading people. It's what I do for a living. Many times people think I'm like an entrepreneur or insurance or finance. I'm in the business of reading people. That's what I get paid to do. And I've been doing that for 20 years. And I'm not on all the time, but I can get a pretty good read for folks. So flip the question for you now on raising kids. Do you have any kids yet or no? I have three kids. You have three kids. Are you trying to beat your parents' record or no? No, but I have a two-year-old, a one-year-old, and a newborn. So we're moving quickly. Then that means that you're using your addiction in the right way. You're using it with one family and you're building your kids. By the way, Patrick, a lot of people who are porn addicts don't have a lot of sex with their wives. I know that, but I know that. I know that. It's so funny. I got a call, a very random call. Hey, how many times do you and your wife have sex? I said, what do you think? And it's like, well, we only have sex once a month. I'm like, what? We only have sex once a month. Why? I don't know. It's just once a month. And that's not one person or two or three. That's many people who have asked that weird question. And for whatever reason, that question has been asked a lot in the last five years. But here's a question for you. Just out of curiosity, we're both parents. You got three kids, two, one, and one on the way. I got three and one on the way. A newborn, that's right. I got a nine, seven, a four, and one on the way. What are you planning on, like the approach you're going to take with this with your kids? Have you thought about it? Have you sat there and said, you know, when my kids come of this age, this is how I'm going to speak to them about this. Have you processed that at all? I'll tell you something that happened a few weeks ago. But not necessarily, not for my kids. I've thought about it for my kids, but I got a lot of nephews and nieces. A few weeks ago, I come downstairs with a t-shirt. It's a t-shirt from Fight the New Drug that says, Porn Kills Love. And I don't think about wearing it around my kids because my kids don't read yet. But my nephew was over. And my nephew was, two nephews. One is 10, one is nine. And the nine-year-old says, what's porn? When he sees my t-shirt. That's a good question, by the way. So at first, I turned kind of red. I was like, oh shit, I wore the wrong t-shirt. I waited a little bit. I ran upstairs. I changed my shirt. And then, funny, I actually left. I said, I have to think about it. Let me ask you another time. And I actually went to a 12-step meeting after that. And while I was sitting there, I was thinking, saying, hey, he saw the Porn Kills Love. And he asked about porn. And I got a little bit ashamed. But if you look at those stats, that's the average age that kids look at porn. Wow. And that's what I told his mom. I said that, yes, I probably wore the wrong shirt around kids. But on the other hand, I think that a conversation has to happen. And that's what I think about with my kids. There's nothing you can do, technology-wise, to stop your kids from watching porn. Yes, you want to have blockers. You want to have filters. But what are you going to do when they're at a friend's house? And you think you're going to tell them they're not going to have a phone? Then they're going to feel like the kid that's left out. So the only thing we could do, sort of, if we want to take on the fight with the government and everything else with the porn industry, there's some people doing that. But short of that, if the industry looks like it does now, and it's as accessible, then we've got to be able to sit down and have conversations, and they know they can talk to us. Well, I can tell you there's three types of audiences that are going to watch this video, this interview. One is going to say, I don't struggle with porn. Great. Then share this with somebody who you know that may struggle with porn. Then there's going to be an audience that's going to say, yeah, I watch porn, but I don't consider myself an addict. And I think you guys are crazy if you think it's a big deal. It's just watching a movie. It's not a big deal. And they don't think they have a challenge. No problem. Then there's going to be the third kind that's going to say, you know what? I may have a porn addiction. I may have a challenge that I can't stop consuming the content. We are going to put the link to everything Ellie just shared with us, whether it's Covenant Eyes, whether it's the book he talked about, Out of Shadows, by Patrick J. Carnes. We'll put that below as well. And I'll put the link below as well, Fight the New Drug, for you to go do your own due diligence if this matters to you. And if you want to get a hold of Ellie as well, we'll put the link below for you to get a hold of Ellie. Ellie, thank you so much for your time. This was very helpful. Appreciate it, Patrick. Have an awesome night. Take care. Take care. Sensitive topic, but millions deal with it. And if you're somebody that watched the entire interview, I'd be curious to know what you took away from it. Maybe you comment anonymously. Maybe you comment proudly and say, here's where I'm at. But definitely, if you're someone that relates to Ellie, we have links below to everything he spoke about. And if you want to watch another interview that has to do regarding porn addiction and dopamine by a doctor who does this professionally, click over to watch the interview with Daniel Lieberman. Take care, everybody. Bye-bye.
