HealthyGamerGG - Dr. K interviews a NoFap Group

Episode Date: July 21, 2020

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Okay, let's get started. So welcome, guys, to another healthy gamer Gigi stream. My name is Olo Kanoja. I'm a psychiatrist practicing in Boston, Massachusetts. Can you tell us how masturbation is bad? So we'll get into that kind of stuff. So let's hop in. Welcome, friends.

Hey. So let's just do a quick... We'll do like a volume check as we do introductions. So welcome, guys. So I think this is another stream talking about, I guess, fap and porn addiction. So first of all, huge props to y'all for coming on and talking about something that is a community we usually don't talk about pretty openly. And so we had a porn addiction stream a couple of months ago now, and I think it was actually the most positive

YouTube comment section I've ever seen on YouTube, which is just really, really bizarre. because it's something that normally comes with a lot of shame. So props to you guys for coming on and talking about this. So if you guys are on Twitch, I highly recommend minimizing it because I think it's only going to be distracting. And let's go ahead and start with introductions. And why don't you all, you know, tell us what you want to be called over the course of the stream

and tell us a little bit about your experience with no-fap or porn addiction. So I think I'll start. I'm going by Bob today. Okay. I first saw porn when I was about 12 years old. And there was a lot of, like, I had a lot of, like, family conflict and stuff at the time. And that was my first introduction into it. And it got a little bit better when I was around 18. I got a girlfriend.

And then lost said girlfriend. And I started looking at porn again when I was around 19. And it got gradually worse and worse along with issues of social anxiety and isolation, along with the internet addiction. And then around 23, my dad got cancer and died, and that exacerbated it, and it got worse. And I had a series of panic attacks and, like, pretty severe. issues. And it seemed to dovetail with that. Internet addiction, video game addiction, and pornography addiction. And there was a long period of using for hours on end, losing sleep, that sort of thing.

Intensification of just weirdness in general in that department. And I only started getting control of it when I got to be around 26 or 27. and started thinking about it as a problem and tried to do what's, you know, a streak for three days, a week, a month. And I noticed that a lot of the time when I would get on a long streak, a lot of these issues would come up again. My life would improve in some ways or it would get more difficult in other ways. and whenever I got on the Brahmacharya channel with all these other people and I started talking to them, we really had, it was a great support group and it really has helped me a lot to figure out how to manage this, why it's happening, how I can sort of use this discipline to improve my self-understanding in my life. and that is where I'm at now. Look at the introduction, Bob.

Thanks for sharing, man. Thanks for having me. Anyone else want to go? Yeah, I'll go next. You can call me a moon. So I first started watching porn whenever I was probably about 12 as well. And it wasn't really a problem when I was a kid, but it kind of ramped up to a way I would bury my emotions

and kind of escape reality, I'd say. and I kind of built up to a really bad problem, you know, in the past few years. And currently I'm on my longest streak probably in like five, six years. Right now I have 50 days without it of like porn or masturbation. So I'm pretty happy with that. But yeah, definitely it was a way that I would numb my emotions. Okay. Thanks for sharing, Moon.

We'll definitely get into, you know, what that, what the no-falfa. streak is like and things like that. So cool. Sounds good. Thanks for coming on man. Yeah, then I then go next. You can call me atzai. I watched porn the first time when I was 10 years old and it was usually I would say normal like once a day and I had no seemingly no problems outside of it but then I became a Christian on my own and discovered it's a sin and I need to stop. And I really had a hard time stopping and I could only go for like three days. And then at some point I googled porn addiction and then I found, oh, it's not just religious talk that it's harmful, but there are also a lot of, there's also a lot of

scientific evidence and many reports from people. And seeing all these reports and describing their problems they had. And these were exactly the problems also I had at the time. Like social anxiety, I was very shy and I didn't want to interact with people a lot. And once I got into it, I got my longest streak back then. It was around, it was in 2016. And I had a 70-day long streak. And in that time, my life improved drastically in areas, especially in like social anxiety, talking with girls, and just being in general, I wasn't depressed anymore. I had more motivation and stuff like that, but ever since then, it got slightly worse, and I'm now at a place where I'm struggling to get over one week. And I start also to binge a lot, which didn't happen, which means like,

five times in a row which is like extremely unhealthy hence yeah that's where I am right now wow sounds like quite the journey it's outside yeah exactly thanks for sharing man I think I'm gonna go next

you can call me flow I started watching porn when I was 12 and it was like at the same time as I was entering high school. And that time, a few friends that I had been with on like primary school kind of like turned on me and started bullying me in high school. And yeah, it was like pretty good timing to discover porn because I would like use it to numb like the pain I felt at

that time. Around the same time I started like getting like suicidal thoughts. And yeah, I'm not sure if I had like a depression, but I'm pretty certain. And then I just like went with it until I was 18 and traveling around in Australia for a year. And being there, I had like no social anxiety and like a lot of good friends that were there for me. And I discovered that I was addicted to pornography because I was just using it less and emotions were coming up. And I was like feeling a lot of different emotions. And I started to do like no fab and wasn't really able to stop. And when I was back at home after traveling, it got worse because I moved back in with my parents.

and I had like lots of family issues with them beforehand. And I felt really helpless. And so I went to a psychiatrist and started therapy basically with somebody like doing like behavioral addictions. And yeah, I've been trying to quit since then. And yeah, I still feel pretty helpless with this topic. Sorry, you feel that way. Hopefully we'll, I don't know if we can make you feel less helpless, but we're, hopefully we'll try to understand it a little bit.

Sounds like you put in a lot of effort to trying to get a control, like get a, get a handle on it. Has it been? Yeah. All of us, I think, are like pretty, like trying their best. Yeah. So. Is that good enough?

Well, we all relapse at some point, but I think it has improved, definitely also being with these guys and chatting about it. Cool. Welcome, Flo. Thanks for sharing. Thank you. Okay, and I'll go next. So on the Discord, my name is Azalea Bays, but I'll go by Zizi. Shout out to Esmoon from Grammachari Discord and my friend Tyler.

everybody else forgot. So I first watched porn when I was 11, and I got like a lot of viruses on my mom's computer. So, I mean, everybody, I think everybody remembers that from the old days of the internet. It wasn't exactly safe to watch porn. But now, if I do use, I use it on my mobile phone, which I think is probably one of the hardest things, because now we have mobile phones and iPads and that sort of. thing. The longest streak I ever had was when I was in a dual diagnosis rehab. So I have a, I have like a mental disability as well as like traditional addiction. So 30 days without the

internet means 30 days without porn. So yeah. And recently I find it very hard to really start a streak. A lot of traumatic events have happened recently. I got into a car accident. I recently overdosed. I got into mental hospitals. I've been in mental hospitals in and out due to my disability. But otherwise, I'm happy to be on the stream and hopefully this helps other people as well as myself. Man, sounds like you've been had some challenges and you all have. I guess that leaves me. Yeah. Sorry if I ramble. You guys can call me Annie. I'm 20 years old and I think I And tell me if my mic is too loud. First time I saw porn.

I think it was in my early teens, and it was mainly out of curiosity. But now that I look back, I think I was kind of using it to kind of escape my bullying and my very toxic relationship with my parents. And sorry, give me a second. And I didn't think my... about it and I moved to America when I was 15 and as my life started getting worse, I started

using porn more as an escaping tool and to escape my insecurities, mainly because of my bad relationship, especially with my parents. And I started using it as an as a stress tool and as a sleeping tool, as a stress relief tool and as a sleeping tool. And um, um, you know, My depression and my anxiety and my trauma got childhood trauma. It got very bad over time. And the more and more I got, I felt deeper into depression. The more and more I started using porn. And eventually I kind of had like a, I fell down very low.

I did stuff I didn't want to do, like partying and being with people I don't want to be. And I kind of lost it mentally. And I started a self-help journey after that. and I've been doing really good and doing good in school and exercising and breathing and meditating. And the more and more I started helping myself, the more and more I started realizing that I'm addicted to porn. I didn't want to admit it, but starting January, I started really taking care of myself. And I took it as a challenge to start no-fab to prove to myself that I'm not addicted to porn. And the exact opposite happened.

I couldn't last for more than a few days. And when I came back, I was binging all day. It consumed me. I would do it five, six times in a row. Very unhealthy. And my whole day was just porn and fapping. And for months now, I haven't been able to keep a streak longer than a week. And actually today will make my longest streak of seven days.

and it's porn addiction I think is just part of the puzzle and for me it kind of fits with depression anxiety and what I'm trying to learn from this stream is mainly I guess the only thing always holding me back from keeping a very long streak is I kind of ask myself why am I defying my urges. Like, I feel great when I'm on NOFAP. I feel very good. I feel normal, as you would say. And then when I binge, I feel horrible, but the urges feel great, like the pleasure. So I don't know if I'm doing something wrong by defying my pleasures or defying the urges for, like, feeling normal on NOFAP. And sorry if I was speaking for too long, but I guess that's it. No, that's great, man. It's Ani? Yeah, Annie. Annie. Okay, so that was awesome in productions, everyone.

I think if it's okay with you guys, I'm going to just try to outline like kind of a thread for our discussions today. I'm going to point out a couple of themes and then propose sort of a order to tackle them. So the first thing I think we should talk a little bit about is, you know, how do you understand if you're addicted to porn? so I'm hearing from many people that they had kind of this journey where they like sort of figured out at some point, I'm addicted to porn and that this is not okay.

I think related to that, a lot of people have mentioned that they find their addiction to be harmful. And, you know, some people have mentioned science or consequences or things like that. So maybe we can talk, first of all, about how you know you're addicted to porn. Secondly, about what's harmful or unhealthy about it. Third is kind of exploring. So everyone seems like they add some difficulties or challenges and that they use porn as an escape. So I think we should sort of think a little bit about that idea of porn as an escape.

The other interesting thing that people have mentioned is that as they start to do no-fap, things come up for them. Right. So I think that's something that is very, very, very poorly understood. So like even if we define and people have a sense of like, you know, this is what porn addiction is. I think one of the challenges that happens is like as you start doing no fap or something else, is you take away the coping mechanism. Everything that it's been balancing is going to come back up. So what's that experience been like for you guys?

And then, yeah, so like numb things coming up, stuff like that. And then I think one person said, I think it was Bob who said, you use the phrase intensification of weirdness. I'm not sure exactly what he was referring to. But, you know, it sounds like the journey has certain challenges that are unexpected. And hopefully as we understand like what we're dealing with, we can get better at dealing with it. Then what I'd like to kind of think a little bit about is how you guys got to nofap. Like what nofap is, what's been y'all's experience of nofap? maybe that has something to do with the coping mechanisms as well and what comes up.

And then we can think a little bit about Brahmacharya and what that means, because I imagine a lot of people don't know what y'all are talking about, what your experience with our community has been. And then the last thing that we'll kind of explore is sort of like how to move forward. So this will be a discussion. You know, some people have mentioned that they've tried behavioral treatment. things about defying the urge, how can we understand urges, how can we understand what's healthy, what our body is doing, what our mind is doing, and sort of maybe try to think a little bit about

how to take another step forward. For those of you who have done longer streaks, maybe you can share with us what you've been able to do or how you were able to do it. And we can talk a little bit about streaks and how long they last and what makes them easy, what makes them hard. Does that sound okay? sounds great so let's start with how do you know you're addicted to porn can I profile something

because it goes like hand in hand with what nofab is and how we like how we realized so like no fab started off by like one guy on the internet I don't know his name

but he started like a community where he was trying to build a way for porn addiction. And he introduced it as like a challenge, I think, of 30 days to just try and stop consuming pornography and like PMO, so like porn masturbation and orgasm. And he basically built like a pretty big community around him. There's a popular subreddit that's called NoFab.

And basically I think all of us realized because we try to quit. And personally, I looked at the NOFAP website. And I saw that there were like some physical symptoms that people with like abuse of masturbation had. Like for example, issues with erections or performing in bed. with actual people in contrast to masturbating on your own or something like a fog in your mind that you can't really think clearly from times to times. And I basically checked like every single mark or every box on that list. And yeah, I thought it was time to try and quit.

okay when you say fog is that during like is that like pretty constant or is that change with fapping or not fapping um before quitting i wasn't really sure what it meant but um basically when you abstain from it like a longer time you see that for like a really long constant time you've been thinking differently and maybe you didn't have as much focus in that time when you were like relapsing every day or like a couple times a day. So it was like a constant thing. Okay. Great. Thanks for sharing. Anybody else want to chime in about how they figured out they were addicted? Sure. To me, I think like of born as a escaping tool, right? And when thinking of any escaping tool in my eyes, you see that you're using it, like, if it helps you escape, you understand if you're spending hours like on Twitch

or YouTube or video games, right? Once you've done it for a while, you're like, oh, okay, while I've been using this for a long time, I must be escaping, right? And then it also comes to understanding why you're using everything. So, to me, at least, with porn, it was like, I realize that it's just a habit. Anytime I feel sad or stressed out, I would use it, I would try to escape it. So once I realized that there was a system, right? I get stressed. I get anxious. I get sad.

I use porn. That's what I realized that like, oh, I need it every time I get those feelings. That's what I thought was addicting. And I trying to deny it. And then what also proved it to me was once I started in NOFAP, I couldn't deny it. I needed it when I felt those feelings. Like when those feelings came back like anxiety, depression, whatever, right? whatever insecurities I had.

And I didn't have that tool, I felt, I felt horrible. I felt like I needed to escape. And porn is easily the most instant gratification for the least amount of work. And it also helps with relationships, like when you're insecure with relationships and stuff. So it's a very common, very common escaping tool. Bob, I saw, thanks a lot, Andy. No problem. Thank you.

Bob, I saw you nodding emphatically at one point. Yeah. So I was thinking that like when there's a point where you can tell that your behavior and your life is revolving around this thing. And you know that there's some component in it that makes you feel better. You're hitting that dopamine button over and over and over again. And for me, it got bad to the point where a lot of lack of sleep. watching it consume my time and behavior. It got obvious to me, but the only point where I realized it was that bad of an addiction is whenever the idea was put in my mind that you could try to quit and that maybe this isn't good for you.

And like he said, whenever you can't stop, you just know that this thing has control over your desire and your behavior. and it's the effects are not you know just um you know but trivial they're they're they're they're pretty they've been pretty serious thanks for sharing if i can add to that yeah yeah um yeah it seems like um when you relapse at least for me i don't know if this is for anyone else it feels like every like you're kind of controlled by as bob said it's kind of controls your like actions and emotions and you become someone else when for me i become someone else when i relapse my whole for me i mean at best it's my whole day sometimes my whole week right like when i relapse because i become it like it controls me i feel like i'm not myself that's why i feel no vibe is so great when you're on it

because i feel normal i guess is what you say but yeah i just want to add to that okay we can talk about some of that. The thing is for me, when it started, when I discovered Nofab, it was just I didn't have this realization that for example, I how would you put it? It wasn't like I was in a deep mess.

It was just like purely for the religious purpose. And so it just it was basically just this and having like a very big spiritual aspect was for me a really big helping point for trying to quit because I knew now I'm distancing

I'm distancing myself from the sin and I can be I no longer have to be too much ashamed of it and really feeling like some kind of spiritual or like big meaning behind it and like some connection to God and maybe nature. Wait, did he crash or is it just me? He lied out. I got kind of scared.

Okay. Well, we'll come back to outside when he's back with us. Anybody else kind of want to add how they kind of, yeah, go for it. Yeah, so I'd say the way that I found out that I was addicted was it became routine. I would do it every day, I would think, like, do I even want to watch porn tonight or, like, right now?

I would think no, and I would still do it. And I'd say an easy way for someone watching to figure out if they're addicted to porn is to try to go, let's say, one week, two weeks without it, and see if there's any kind of, like, you know, want for it or desire. And, like, I have a friend who I bet 20 bucks, and he's pretty broke. I bet 20 bucks that he couldn't go two weeks without, you know, watching porn. And he went like, I think it was like six or seven days. I mean, most people can't really go that long without it.

So in my opinion, that means they're probably addicted. What also plays like a role is that it's not, it doesn't mean you don't have sexual desires. Like, for most of us, it isn't even like a sexual thing anymore. Because, like, abstaining from porn doesn't mean you can't, like, touch yourself or have sexual thoughts or anything. But it's, let's say purely the porn that you're addicted. too. Some people try no-fab, which includes not masturbating, but you can check if you're addicted to porn by just quitting porn, and you can still have all the desires. That's like not... Interesting. That's a really important point, I think. So it's not just the masturbation component

or the orgasm component. There can be just a pure porn addiction where you can still have other kinds of sexual activity. I completely agree. It really seems like a dopamine hijack, like the other stuff, video game addiction, internet addiction, all that stuff. It's just a different flavor, I think. Great. I think you cut out there. You were talking a little bit. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm sorry for that. No problem. When did it cut out at what point? I think you were talking a little bit about sort of the advantage of having sort of a spiritual component. something about a lack of shame that helped you kind of overcome shame? Yeah, because it was at that time really, like, for me, a shameful thing and something in general I didn't really identify with even before, like when all the other guys in my

class would talk about porn. It was something I didn't like talking about. And then when the religious aspect came and said, it is wrong and I need to stop. there was something I could really identify with. And as soon as I got over the first hurdles, like I always relapse at day three. And then when I got over that hurdle, it just flowed from there naturally.

And I just felt a real sense of pride of controlling myself and not engaging in this behavior I don't want to be associated with. And so also the spiritual aspect really helped me because I felt like it could be something because now I'm atheist, so things have changed since then. But I would say I associated with NOFAP something with a greater purpose, like being a godly man and just having pride in myself that I can take control over myself, which felt really good at that time.

Your religious journey sounds fascinating. that's why it's actually kind of fucked up because it wasn't i got into end time stuff and it was actually kind of traumatizing because at that time it shattered my whole world view and i was engaged in a lot of conspiracies and it's in the i'm now really glad that i'm out of it because it has gotten to a point where I cut social ties with friends I had. But I kept the no-fab stuff because I know that it isn't just religious bogus. There's actually signs behind it. And yeah.

Cool. Sounds like a fascinating story, maybe for another day. So do you all want to talk a little bit about the harmful effects of being addicted to pornography? I've got an idea about addiction. I just was the last person to talk on the topic. So based on what Otse said, essentially I view addiction in general as a spiritual malady. I was talking about this with Bob and a couple others last night. And what I view addiction is it's a spiritual malady in the sense that there's a, so this is a very Catholic interpretation of things.

but everybody has a God-shaped hole in their heart, and everybody tries to fill it with something else, whether it be porn or drugs or alcohol. Everybody has something which they need, and what religion and spirituality tells us is what we need is the divine. So Ramacharya, what Sard Guru said, is that it's one on the path to the divine,

and it is the pursuit of joy instead of the pursuit of pleasure. And just to add on what everybody else was saying, I'd say that if you, if you, my biggest definition of addiction is if you try to stop, but you find that you cannot, that's addiction. Like the harmful effects and everything else comes later. It might not be there right now. But if you try to stop and you can't, so try to go a week without that thing. And if you can't, you might be an addict.

Okay. Yeah, I think that's, go ahead. Annie. Yeah. I think for me, addiction is, I just had a brainfire. I'm sorry. I literally forgot what I was going to say. Yeah, just go on.

I'm sorry. I think you were about to say something about what your understanding of addiction was or how you define it. Yeah, I just forgot what my point was going to be. No problem. I'm sure it'll come back up. I'll let you know. So let's think a little bit about, so we can talk about addiction as a spiritual malady

maybe towards the end and just how we understand. And yeah. I figured out. Why I think porn addiction is so bad is because it's an instant gratification tool. You're doing pretty much minimal work in seconds or minutes or whatever. And you're getting one of the biggest dopamine effects as you can from, from, you know, pleasure, like sexual pleasure. And I think that's very toxic to because it kind of sucks you into, like, not put any way. work and get instant gratification for it. Unlike with like going out and searching for for like a

partner and having a relationship with them an intimate relationship and having sex as a connection rather than just an instant gratification tool. I think that's what's horrible about porn addiction. Or even you know even trying attempting to you know deal with those thoughts and emotions about how to relate to other people to connect with other people. You know, it's just much easier to just have this compulsion and desire, and then that goes away. Yeah. We'll definitely get to that. I think in terms of how to move forward, I'm going to kind of table some of those ideas about what addiction is and how we understand it.

What would you guys say are the harmful effects of porn addiction? there's one thing I'm still like really worried about which is over sexualization which means that whenever I'm at like a bus stop and I see like attractive women my head goes right into like sexual fantasies and stuff like that and I don't like I don't have sexual desires at that basically. Like I'm not horny, but I fantasize instantly. And like that can even mess with friendships, for example, that you just can't see a person that likes you for who you are other than as like this object. And it sucks because I know that

it's not right and I'm kind of being addicted to that person but I have no way of um like it's not like a there's no off switch to that it's just like a like a mode my mind goes into when I see attractive people so I want to also yeah if I can just say um yeah okay go ahead real quick outside so I want to just highlight something that we'll get back to so I want to just highlight something that we'll get back to so I want you guys to notice for a second that what Flo is saying is that he says he's being a dick, but I don't think that that's accurate. So what's happening is that Flo's mind is automatically doing, like, so he's like, he laid it out pretty well, right? So his mind automatically turns on a particular program whenever he gets exposed to certain stimuli.

And Flo himself doesn't want to think those thoughts, and he's not even horny. So if we think about like horniness, horniness is sort of like a, you know, it's sort of like a whole being kind of thing. Right. And what we can notice in flow is that his mind has a certain kind of like automaticity to it that he himself is not happy about.

But that's not flow. That's just the way his mind has been programmed. And we'll kind of get to that more. But that's, I go ahead. Sorry. Yeah. Concerning the, it's like,

the objectification of women is definitely a big part of porn. And I saw that with a lot of my friends at the time. And it was also something which I wasn't really, like usually it would be considered normal. But it was sometimes with my friends, they would talk just too much about how like the body of a girl looks and how nice it is. But they would never talk about like the human aspect of a girl. And when I got into my long streaks, that definitely started for me. When I could really go, there was the first time I really started to have friendships with girls and not just have a sexual interest in them.

It's like there, but you start to develop more a holistic view of a woman or of girls. You see more the personality because at some point, for me, it was like every girl looked that good that the only thing that would, like, is now differentiating them would be the personality. And it feels kind of nicer to not just look at the body, but also start seeing women as humans more, which was for me not the case before all of that. How do you the rest you all feel about what Atzai is saying? I totally agree. Yeah. Yes.

I feel like porn makes you objectify women a lot. And once you're a no-fab, for me at least, it felt like I could have like just a normal conversation on the girl without thinking anything or, you know, just viewing them as a human, you know? So what I think it is is a kind of perceptual distortion because there's that connection with the dopamine thing. It's like, it's almost like it primes for that. And whenever you're taking that away. Yeah, and porn conditions you for that. I mean, no one, no one ever just goes on the porn site and looks for personality traits or something. It's just like, it's just like body parts and not a whole human.

That's the category makes you feel at home. Yeah, and it's also the problem that has gotten really specific. And it is also tied to the desensitization with porn addiction, with you needing more and more extreme stuff like I think for any one of us the stuff you view at the beginning doesn't stay the same and for some people it gets really extreme

and I think that's why there are these like categories of stuff which you would never do in real life because like the porn industry is just out for profit and if people are desensitized to the stuff that is already there, they need to produce more extreme stuff. And that is also a side of porn addiction, which can be really harmful,

that you are training your brain to only become, like, attracted to certain things, which are really far from normality. Fantasticical, even. I think that's a great point. I do think that porn kind of builds a lie on what sex is supposed to be. and I feel like it's kind of porn has kind of been integrated in the culture more where we kind of use sex more as a transaction rather than a connection and I think that's a big big problem that porn builds

and yeah I guess that's my point so can I ask a little bit like of an off topic question that may be a touch controversial sure so there are communities on the internet that actually actively pride to do the opposite of what you guys are describing, which is to view women, to view relationships with women as

transactional. To think about women actively teach and advocate for a view that does not view women as people, but is like, so I'm thinking predominantly of communities like Red Pill. Are you all familiar with Red Pill?

Yeah. Yeah. So does somebody want to explain what Red Pill is? As far as I know, it's just basically there's a lot of, they have the, I think they have the thoughts from evolution and they think that there are just certain evolutionary aspects that make a man attractive, like status, money and all that stuff. And they are really into gaming or daytime game where they try to figure out the perfect way to approach women and to get just, they try to figure out. They try to figure out the perfect way to convince women to have sex with them, but also not in a long term, because they also think that women have the polygamous nature, and they also are just out for resources and not very, like, relationship on a human to human level. It's just very animalistic thinking, I would say. Sounds like an online fraternity.

yeah that's a great way to describe it so so like yeah i get it yeah so what do you guys think about that it's fucked up why um you're making the woman literally objects in their eyes and they're not only doing it from the cells but they're actually teaching it to others and spreading that toxic mindset but what's what's wrong with that i know it sounds like a weird question but kind of like they were saying earlier i mean women are people too it sounds funny to say it like that but they're people as well like they're not you're not like a you know just a way to have sex or you know an emotional like i don't know like island or whatever but they're actual people who have feelings and you know it can hurt somebody to just take advantage of somebody just to have sex like

the idea with the red pill a lot of times is uh i see a girl you know i have sex you know i have sex you know I pretend that I really like her and want to be with her, and then I have sex, and then I dump her. And that idea is absolutely fucked up. That's just using somebody as a means to an end and not an end of itself. I think there's a lot of resentment and fear of loss in there that, you know, I can't be loved for just being me. Like it has to be status or money or whatever. Yeah, it's just a very simple way of looking at it. Go ahead, Zizi.

Yeah, that was actually exactly what I was about to say. It's a very simplistic view of human relations. And using like evolutionary psychology is still a burgeoning field and we still don't know everything. But the thing about the red pill is that they say that they are an authority on this. So as you were saying earlier, the actual ideology is men are polygamous, which means they try to find as many women as possible and essentially spread the seed and have as many men or have as, I'm sorry, as many women as possible and impregnate as many women as possible. And women are hypergamous, which means they try to find the top tier man in their lives and try to get impregnated by that person.

But it really and completely sidelines the entire emotional process behind relationships. And it's all about tricks and it seems like devious. And it by itself is part of the seduction community. and it in itself is basically like saying you are a beta and we are Chad's so we know what's best so in order to have sex you need to listen to what Chad's said that's essentially what it is and it's very intoxicating how they recruit what do you guys think that that people who are a fan of red pill philosophy would say about y'all that we're weak yeah that we are blue pills yeah or beta For what actually is.

I think that... Are you all simps? Is that another? No. You could be a sims. I'm just a little bit different, I would say. So what do you guys think about that? Are you weak?

I'm just kind of annoyed by all of the language, period. Like, it suffuses the internet. Like, honestly, I... It annoys me and I don't care, really. because I try to treat people on an individual basis, but it's still there nonetheless. And you can turn it around, I would say, like most of the time with these Red Pill guys,

they don't invest emotions into the relationships, and they try to stay away from that, and they don't want to get hurt, I would say, in these short-term pleasures, because you can keep, like, a fantasy alive and just have not the thought of, like, a... women that is not a human but more like a status symbol and a number you can say like how many girls you have slept with and I would say there's a lot of emotional detachment from these guys

because I think many of them have been heard in the past and they just just don't want that to happen again yeah our problem was that we didn't want to base our emotions so we use porn as an escape. And with the Red Bull, the idea is there's no emotional aspect to talking to women. So there's no reason to have to worry about pacing emotions. It's kind of like exactly what we're trying to avoid. It's like, it's very like stimulus response. It's like not emotional at all. It's like I'm trying to these inputs. If I were to, I'm going to draw kind of a path. Yeah, go for it. I was going to, I was going to say for me personally, I'm still trying to think like Is it wrong to be overly sexual?

Because I've had sexual relationship before, right? Sexual transactions, I would say. And the girls in those relationships, they didn't mind. They wanted to be a transaction. But at the end of it, I felt emotionally not completed. Like, I didn't feel fulfilled emotionally. And that's what really straighted me away from just having transactions, as I was calling with girls.

But they didn't mind. So I'm like, well, if they don't mind, why is this so wrong? So I think I'm kind of neutral on the topic. I do think the internet has made it very easy to over sexualize and, you know, build kind of societies or whatever, like red pill. I think it's a side effect of the internet, but I might be wrong and how kind of culture and porn, since it's so accessible, how it's integrated in the culture. So if I'm hearing you guys, it's interesting because I think. Mood was sort of suggesting that emotional hurt and the avoidance of emotional hurt basically has like a couple of strategies. One is that you can become addicted to porn and that allows you to have an escape.

The other is that you can actively and intentionally sort of objectify women remove emotional stuff from relationships and it kind of becoming transactional. It almost sounds to me like, like, you know, there's a fork in the road. And, and, you know, a common, like a 13-year-old kid on the internet could wind up, like start in one place and could wind up in any number of communities that share a common route. What do you guys think about that? Absolutely. Absolutely. I think I agree. Interesting.

So once again, maybe a conversation for a different day because we have, you know, a couple of other things. So, like, speak. Yeah. May I add two little things? First of all, I know we are all guys here, but I've read online that girls have similar issues, some girls. So if you are like a girl watching this dream, it's not only guys that have been addicted to pornography and masturbation. And the other thing is, I don't think we are really, I mean, I think we are weak on like the emotional aspect because we still like. need that numbing effect but when I see chats I would suspect use Red Bull I always

think like at least we are conscious of it and we are actively trying to fight against it and we are like one step ahead of them so what I've heard too is let's say I was 16 years old and I first started watching porn all the time and let's say for the last you know let's say six years let's say I'm 22 now I've watched porn every day. I'm pretty much like emotionally. I'm still 16 years old because I never really faced any emotions since I was 16. So I never really grew up in that sense.

That's kind of a common problem I've seen with some people. Yeah, I want to talk a lot. I mean, this is something that I've been writing a lot about, about how like is a community, like we're stunted developmentally. Like we get stuck sometimes in terms of our growth. And it's almost like we stall. And I've been thinking a lot about how to help people like get unstuck. I don't think I get that.

Could you elaborate that bit? Yeah. So it's a half form thought, Annie, first of all. But basically like, you know, Moon was saying that he feels like he, like when he started watching porn every day, like he didn't continue to develop as a human being. Like even at the age of 22, he sort of still has the emotional, like his, his, you know, emotional skill level. hasn't leveled up at all. So he's like stuck at like level five or whatever he wasn't.

So he hasn't been gaining any XP. And just as is a community, I think we tend to get developmentally stock in a lot of ways, like in terms of the development of our social skills, in terms of our ability to understand and manage our emotions, in terms of expectations that we have for ourselves, in terms of like really, really simple stuff, like how to plan and execute tasks. I think as a community we're sort of developmentally stunted. Like I think we don't have good role models. So, you know, recently we had a couple weeks ago, we had a group of female gamers who came on.

And I think that like the men that they interact with online, like don't know how else to act. Can I say something? Because I actually wrote an exam on it today in developmental psychology. And there we go. I read something from 1973 and it was like psychoanalytic stuff, but it basically talked about that the adolescence phase, like between 12 and 20, is the time where the sexuality really develops.

And because like today, in the text, he says that in this time you seek for like sexuality, in your peer group and girls in school and stuff like that. But at that time, no one had the idea of internet porn. And in psychoanalytic theory, the reality principle is really important, where you have to adapt to your reality. And I think with online stuff, and especially porn and video games, you can really escape into another world. And I think the human brain doesn't grasp the idea of virtual reality.

And so because there are, when you go out and want to like get a girlfriend, there are so much more challenges you have to overcome. And you have to go through difficult feelings, like feeling sometimes worthless or unlovable. And you don't experience these things with porn. And you don't go through these little crises. And so I think that is something really important on the developmental side, that there are so many more ways to just escape the usual normal developmental tasks a human has to go through. Yeah, absolutely.

I think we're developmentally stunted for sure as a community. So let's kind of shift gears a little bit. So like you guys were kind of a common theme that's come up and even in terms of like the red pillars in their emotional detachment. We've talked about escapism. We've talked about numbness and numbing feelings. And we've also talked a little bit about how no fap tends to bring out feelings. So can you guys explain to us a little bit about like, you know, what is it that you, that porn helped you escape from? How did it help you escape?

and then we'll kind of cover what happens when you stop escaping. I think it's, I think it's Flo, right? I think it's a good point to kind of base off from Flo, what he said. I think porn gives a one-sided relationship. So for me, I try to escape my horrible relationship with my parents, which is not obviously sexual. But it was a very toxic, horrible relationship. very abusive and porn kind of doesn't have the other person to talk to it just kind of you get what you want you you get exactly what you want in seconds and yeah in regards to numbing um like one of the first things i told my psychologist um the way i feel when i watch porn i have no idea what time it is i don't even know how much time i spend on the computer at that point i

point. I have like tunnel vision into my PC. Like I don't even notice anything around me. Which basically shows itself when I, when my place is like really like dirty and I didn't like make my bed or something like that. because I would just like watch my PC only and nothing else. And while I'm watching porn, I have no worries. I don't think about any stressful thing. I have no anxiety.

It was pretty hard not to watch porn today because I was so nervous to be here. And it just like helps with like every feeling you want to numb. basically. It's got you, it's like you have like this little bubble, like this little safe, little safe bubble of pleasure that like everything outside of it is just not there. I had a, oh, I just go ahead. Oh, okay. Um, I did this was, I just needed to get this off my mind because I'd say that a lot of what, uh, Buddhism talks about is the renunciation of the ego and pornography is essentially that heightening of the ego and a lot of drugs and psychic you know things can also heighten the ego in this way I would say that porn is a maladaptive coping mechanism first of all

and it is also in a sense the worship of the self with a harem of imaginary woman and your brain really does not know the difference so every time you masturbate to a fantasy it can cause and I mean there are symptoms like low brain performance, brain fogs, memory issues when you masturbate because of that like refraction period where it says your brain is telling you or your body is telling you, you have orgasm, you can now just relax and do nothing. And I would say, last point, that my emotional issues kind of stemmed from like not really ever having like a good sexual relationship. I'm 22 right now. I've never been in a sexual relationship, let alone a relationship with a girl. And I'm courting this girl right now. And every

Every time she doesn't respond, I know she works a lot. I'm just like, oh, she's not responding. My brain is just like, go find another woman to talk to. And for me, it was just always porn. And that numbed my feelings for the longest time. I would say I'm emotionally stunted. Like Moon was saying, I'm still stuck in the mind of basically like an 11-year-old because that's when I started using.

Every time you masturbate to escape a feeling, I would say it's a maladaptive coping mechanism. and it can cause serious harm to your brain. And going on no-fap and stopping fapping allows your brain to return to normal. That symptomology slowly but surely disappears. Moon, I saw you nodding and smiling at some point, too. Yeah, going on the other than what you said earlier, too, Zizi is almost like, you know, we have the hole in our heart, like a God-shaped hole as you described it. And filling that with porn is an easy way.

to like it's almost like a band-aid you know you don't heal that hole or you don't fill it with anything you know worthwhile but you cover it up and kind of ignore it for a while and it builds up and um for me what shit kind of comes up whenever uh whenever i like you know get into a streak is kind of like usually what i would use it to uh like numb was like feeling lonely or uh depressed and you know I wouldn't feel alone whenever my brain thought I had a partner on a screen so So, you know, I could go to bed and I, you know, fall asleep just fine. He'd be like, you know, my brain thinks I have a partner. And I kind of just fucked with the entire wiring of my head and how my brain thinks of things and shit like that.

So let me ask you guys a question. Why is it so hard to have a hole in you? Right? Like, I don't know how else to ask the question, but like we're using this kind of terminology that you have, you have this like hole in your heart that is in the shape. of God. So like what makes like why is that a bad situation? Like why does some like you know, what about your life has is intolerable so that you heard it's more in the first place. Yeah, I've heard describe also as like being like a shell of a person and like you almost feel empty inside. It's kind of like a similar idea to that. I mean, you don't want to feel empty inside or a shell

of a person. You want to be your whole true self. And so what what makes like what is that feeling of being a shell of a person? I like that terminology a lot. It's almost like just living life on autopilot. You just kind of like, you know, you wake up, you do your shit. You kind of don't really think about things. You're kind of like in the constant state of like being almost like, I guess sedated in a way, not really sedated, but like you're not really checked into reality. You're kind of like living. It's like the brain fog like we were saying earlier.

You're not really like seeing clarity and you're not like trying to improve yourself. You're kind of like, it's like surrendering and being okay with being less than normal. And like, you know, I'm not happy with where I'm at. But because I use porn every day, I can ignore that. And I'm okay. Even though on the inside, I'm fucked up. On the outside, I can be okay. I feel like while you're relapsing, like, or while you addicted, you don't really notice that whole, like, at all.

Like, you think it's like you're fine and your emotional status, like, really fine. but once you quit, you just realize that there is a hole. And because you have been like numbing your emotions for such a long time, it is even harder to deal with that hole than it would have been if you just learned how to deal with things that don't work out as well or something like that. So let's talk about that for a second. So how did you guys come to NoFAP? And how did you all make a decision to try to stop masturbating?

Probably your brain on porn. I don't know how many people here have heard about that. A website, right? It's a website. Well, it was a video by this guy, Gary Wilson, and he has a whole presentation on it and everything. And it just really got it in my head that, you know, I noticed the emotional and physical and,

perceptual distortions, but I didn't think about it in terms of like an actual addiction. And after that, I went to the subreddit. And I mean, really, it had been five to six years of trying to stop relapsing, rationalizing, trying to stop again, that sort of pattern. For me, a friend recommended to me for my depression. It really helped him. And I didn't think much of it at first. I thought it was kind of just more of a challenge.

But I realized for me in my journey that escapism is the worst thing for me because I'm just avoiding all my problems that I need to be facing in my life. And porn is easily one of the easiest ways to escape. So I made it, I wanted to, I'm trying to get rid of all of my escapism, like in video game, escaping mechanisms like video games, Twitch, or limit them. And porn is just, one of them and I thought, well, what can I do to not use porn as an escaping tool? Nofap is what came to mind, says a friend recommended to me a while ago.

And what has been y'all's experience of NoFAP? Well, I'm sorry. Yeah, go for me. Yeah, for me, at first I didn't really feel anything. I felt like I'm just doing a stupid challenge. But over time, of like a week of relapsing and a week of not being, of being on NoFathe, Um, while I'm doing nofap, I felt very energetic and I felt very, um, I felt more alive and I felt like I'm, I'm starting to take action more. Um, and, uh, when I'm relapsing, uh, I just felt horrible. I felt like I'm being consumed.

So while on nofap for me in my experience, I felt more free. I feel like I'm not being controlled. My, I'm taking my own actions. I'm myself, right? Uh, and it's, it's the same. with any other escape design thing. Yeah. This one, to me, seems especially strong because it's so, like, it's so carnal,

and it's so obsessive. I think the first week, usually I notice for most people, the first three days to the first week, tends to be the hardest, and it'll usually fall in that pattern. They'll feel like a boost of energy.

I'm starting to feel normal again. And then from a week to two weeks, that, you know, that dopamine thing starts to go down and there starts to be that withdrawal feeling again. And that seems to be whenever all the negative feelings start coming up again. And this will go in waves. So once it comes to like two weeks to four weeks to six weeks, that's when you'll start to feel and see some perceptual healing like motivation to be around friends, not sexualizing people. Like a lot of those things get better. The farthest I've gotten so far has been like 45 days, moon, 45 days at size 70.

Flow, believe it or not, like a year, right? Yeah. It was one year, basically one less day, so 364 days. Because I thought, like, why celebrate a year if you can just fuck it up on the last? day. But that's when I realized that like basically masturbation wasn't the issue for me because I didn't make a year without pornography, but I made a year without masturbation. So I realized that that wasn't like the fight I had to go through. I want to say go ahead. finished first

um like the effects um like the main effects were that i got very emotional um it was like the first time that i cried in a few years that i was able to even experience good days and bad days because before and i had just like the same shit every day and it

really didn't didn't feel any different so um i had some ups and some down which was really exciting. And I would cry to like, I don't know, I think like, stranger things, like series fineries and stuff like that because it was just like overwhelming seeing like emotion in like a series or something. And at that time I got together with my girlfriend right when I stopped.

And I think I still like, oh, that time to her because like my whole like a part of my whole is not like feeling like loved and respected and I got that from her and so it went really well like for the first few months because I

didn't really need to deal with those issues because I felt loved and I felt respected. Yeah definitely for me there are two things. First of all I wanted to say most people assume when they try

to quit. That's what I heard from many friends, that it just builds up, builds up, it's up, and I don't really feel the benefits of feeling more confident. They just feel really, really horny, extremely, and it's really uncomfortable for them. And I felt the same, but at some point, your brain realizes that it doesn't get any more porn and just starts to focus on other things. And for me also, that was the time when I really felt like connected to my emotions and I could really show my emotions because I always wanted to talk to people and laugh and like show, yeah, basically show my emotions to people and that was possible in that time. And also, I think you can't just quit porn and then like if you are addicted, it has already taken. like a seed in your brain and you need to fill that seed with something because I know from that time it was the feeling of God and like like you said flow like the feeling of love like with

God it was just like an infinite source no matter where I go and I was bike riding a lot in nature and just seeing a tree was for me like a symbol of the creative power and love of God. And so I really had a good replacement for the porn addiction. I can agree with that. I've, I mean, as far as like, if we're going to separate this from like psychology and trauma and just talk about the spiritual side of it, it's like, if you're doing it along with different practices, it's fantastic, it's beautiful. It's a very, very wonderful thing. Go ahead. Go ahead. Okay. Yeah, I think there must be a reason why you should be doing no fat.

Like, I don't think you're going to succeed if you just say, oh, I'm just going to try it. I think you've got to have like a like a passion, I guess, almost like for me, it's to better myself in general, right? To battle my depression and my anxiety. So for me, I find more success when I think about like how I'm trying to help myself. So let me ask you guys a question. What, when you guys start to do nofap, what comes up? I felt like a huge loss of identity when I stopped. Like I remember that I was like sitting on my bed crying with my girlfriend next to me

because I had like no idea what my Dharma was. Like I had like no sense in life and I didn't know who I was because I just like there were like these emotions that I couldn't figure out and they overwhelmed me and I actually feel like at that point I stuck to like the sense that overcoming the addiction is now like the plan I'm going to go with like my identity and I feel like that makes like the real. relapse especially hard and the shame that comes with it because I'm basically doing something against my personality if I relapse. Yeah, kind of like a flow of saying is like I'm currently on like day 50 of NOFAP and I felt like some more like energy and motivation and like search for Dharma like search for purpose to like you know, you know, I'm like young 20s. So I'm kind of like finding where I'm going to go with my life. And I have more energy in life just to, like, I've been doing all these things that I've been putting out for years, like meditating, working out, things like that.

And I'm also like looking for like a future life goal and life purpose and not just like sitting in the same spot and, you know, in my own self, you know, hate or self sadness. I'm actually moving forward in life. But I mean, I thought like negatives, like you guys are. You guys are sounding so positive. Yeah. I'm going to find my purpose and life. Like, right?

I can talk, bro. But, you know, it doesn't sound like it's a fun ride. Can I play something, which happened to me very recently? It's not long. But very recently, for me at the moment, my hurdle is like seven days. And recently I got to 13 days. But starting at day seven, I just cried every single day for around 30 minutes to like, an hour and it was just I felt like it was just all the stuff I've been pushing away and for me

that would be like a lack of connection to another human because for me also like Zizi I've never been in a relationship and it was something that it's like constantly on my mind and I've always pushed that away especially in that time where I had this long streak even beginning like the long streak broke for me because also that time started to like in my mind there was just idea, oh, you know, you need to get a partner, you need to get a girlfriend. And I had some bad stuff happening in that area. And so it has been always something that I pushed away all the time. And also like with Miktao, like that was like, oh yeah, I'm just a perfect independent man. I don't need a woman. I just stay away from that. But I know.

for myself, I feel like that for me is escapism. Like I know in my heart there's the desire for a relationship, but I've just ignored that all my life. And I feel like now it is just all hitting me in the face. I will say the very hard thing about NOFEP is, it takes you out of the loop, right? It takes you out of what you're escaping. So first few days or weeks,

you will have to face your problem. and it's very, very hard. And it takes a lot of willpower. And also, when I relapse for me, I get devastated. It's horrible. It's one of the worst feelings I've ever had in my life. Every time, every seven days or whenever I relapse, I can't. It's horrible.

It makes me feel very depressed. I feel like I'm not taking action. I don't have any willpower. I'm not capable. It is very devastating. Bob, did you want to say something? we were talking about negative emotions on a streak right yeah so like i agree with everything that they've said um it's the feeling is like there's that emptiness but there's also um like grief

from my dad came up like um frustration uh you know loneliness like outside i was talking about you know like all these things that were um that were pushed away or not processing and definitely the more you do it and the longer it goes, like the deeper you can get in there, you know, and kind of pull some of that stuff out. So, yeah, Zizi. Oh, I would say that a lot of what the negative emotions are like, it's kind of like when you bottle something up, like a carbonated drink like this. It's like every time you, well, I mean, that's literally bad. But like every time you like shake it up, it like, bottom. them up even more so that when you do release, like if I were to take the cap off of this after

shaking it, it explodes and you feel all these emotions come to you at once and you're like, so this is what anger and grief and sadness feel like. And some people call that the flatline. Some people call that. There's a lot of different things to call it. Flatline is normally like a depression or something, but it does refer to the negative emotions that you can experience. But I do find that if you're able to overcome those negative emotions, that I become

a lot more productive and happy for the most part. It's just that every now and then I have to feel. I think Flatline is a different thing. I think what I heard from experiences from other people, Flatline is a state where your brain basically shuts off the sexual area or something like that. And you have people report that they have no libido. And they feel like after they have, they have the feeling when they like after they have just relapsed. for a certain period of time. And people say that it's a time where the brain just shuts everything down.

And you have like this sort of numbness again, but it's just that the brain can really heal itself. And I never had that personally, but it's just like just with the wording because that is something also people report. So how do you guys, so Zizi is saying, you know, if you can overcome the emotions.

how do you do that how does that actually happen all this like you guys are opening up you know all this past trauma feelings of sadness loneliness this goes back to like friday's stream but a lot of it is like finding a therapist can really help i know i actually have a therapist and talking with her helps me deal with a lot of my emotional shit um as far as like by myself what i can do is sit with the emotion and understand it, either like, you know, meditate, be mindful, be with it, and try to resolve it or realize if it's not really an emotion that I'm actually feeling. It's just a thought that I think is an emotion. Just let it go. How do you sit with an emotion? I guess normally my instinct is to go like watch Twitch, YouTube, you know, watch porn and

avoid it. But instead, what I can do is just do nothing. Just sit there and like, you know, observe, like, other my mind or my body or how I react to it and almost just, like, understand what it really is and not just instinctually avoid it. Yeah, learning to meditate has really helped me with that for meditating for like two years now. And just being able to see the emotion arise is like so powerful already. sometimes when you don't have any option to numb yourself you basically just sit there like I was sitting with my girlfriend in the car

and something came up and I was just like really trying to feel what it felt like to be sad and yeah just started crying and didn't stop myself basically but just waited and saw what it was. What helps me at the moment is just giving my past, just seeing myself and all the things that have happened to me as sort of like a story.

And so because I was always very afraid of like talking to girls and approaching them and it has been a really big problem. But when you actually try to fix such a deep problem of yourself, it feels extremely good and extremely meaningful. And I think that is also like, it gives the whole, let's call it journey, a lot more spirits. And it's,

there's something definitely that has helped me. For me, I feel like I'm still in a journey trying to understand my emotions. And I have tried seeking therapy, but it's kind of very hard because of like trust issues. But what's, has helped me is taking action. So I've been doing cold showers and I've been exercising and running

and it really helps with willpower and that's what's helped me kind of like understand your emotions. I'm trying to understand my emotions and then take action to solve them or face them or you know, at least kind of embrace them in a way rather than avoid them with porn. doesn't it hurt to face your emotions though? This is something I was about to say. I think of it like when you're sitting with like a really negative feeling, I think there's something courageous about it because you have to have it dwell inside of you.

Like if it's grief or if it's pain or if it's anxiety, you know, there also seems to be like an element of like self-forgiveness is really useful. Just like understanding that like this is not wrong necessarily. It's just it is what it is. It's part of you. And so speaking of self-forgiveness, what's it like to relapse? How does that happen? How does it happen or how does it feel? Both. What leads to a relapse? And then how do you feel afterward? I'm going to run off real quick and come back. I drink too much water. Sorry. For me personally, I would say it is when I lose focus because currently I have, I would say I have a Dharma and I have a clear reason why I want to stop this.

And it happens in times of boredom when I just lose focus on what I want to do with my life and I just sort of, and most of the times I am just like mindlessly browsing on YouTube videos or watching YouTube videos. and that is a time like when relapses happen the most for me. Is this in times where I lose a side of the big picture, I would say? Yeah, I agree with losing focus. I think it's for me is I'll find myself always relapsing on a day where I don't kind of do the habits that I said I would do. So if I said I'm going to wake up early and take a cold shower and go for a run, And if I wake up at 2 p.m. instead of 8 a.m. and don't take a cold shower. Take a cold shower. I'll find myself saying, oh, I'm okay. I won't relapse a day.

But then eventually I will. So taking action and staying consistent. Not being consistent and losing focus really goes into, makes me relapse a lot. For me, it's different because even if I have like the greatest day and I did everything that I wanted, there's still like the same chance that I will relapse. It's very much like automatic. There are things that trigger me. For example, like seeing like thumbnails on YouTube or something like that. It often comes with being tired, being exhausted, being stressed,

experiencing feelings that I want to numb, basically. like feeling sad or feeling lonely. And the relapse itself, once I've done a certain step for me, probably if I type in something in like my URL bar, it's already too late. Like I still have thoughts like, I need to quit now. I don't want to do this, but there's no point because it's like one step too late already. and like while I'm relapsing feel great don't feel anything don't need to worry about anything

and then right afterwards like it's lots of shame lots of feeling like I've just it's like pure failure, basically, because, yeah, disappointment. I've disappointed myself. I've disappointed my girlfriend, like everyone, basically, and it really messes with your day. But, for example, the last time that I relapsed, I was able to call people from the chat and was able to have a really great afternoon

because I was able to share those emotions with them and all of them know exactly what. what I'm talking about. How do you feel about yourself when you relapse? Can you say that I was just going to say, how do you feel about yourself when you relapse? Like, what are the thoughts that you have? Yeah, go for me.

Since, for me personally, since when I feel like I'm not taking action, when I relapse, I just blame myself very, very much for not being responsible, not taking responsibility and not taking action. It's a horrible feeling. I feel like I'm the only one that could have prevented it and I did nothing about it. My parents describe me as a generally shameless individual. I don't know why I'm like that. Or maybe I just found that shame isn't really useful to prevent relapse.

So some people feel very ashamed and that's okay. But I'd say that sitting in that feeling can cause you to relapse more often. So really, there's a rocky quote where he says, Like, it's not about how hard you get hit. It's about if you can get hit and keep moving forward. So really and truly, it's all about every time you relapse, there's this thing called like a relapse autopsy. And there are stages of a relapse.

I think Bob can expand on that more, like the desire, the trigger, or something like that. And you can look at it like, what caused me to relapse? Well, what normally causes me to relapse is I use a system called blast, which is bored, lonely, angry, sad, or tired. And sometimes tired is thirsty. And there's also another one, which includes hungry. And I'm always, I'm normally tired, angry or lonely. Like, oh, the girl I like didn't text me back while she works like 72 hours a week.

Like, of course she doesn't have all this time. She can't like, you know, give all this time to you. But even then, like my, the irrational part of my brain is like, oh, you got to. it's just like well whatever like she's she's whatever just go you need to find some other form of digital companionship and that's what causes me to relapse yeah a relapse is a long chain i would say it's not just like you type it's it's not just typing in the URL it's for me it starts even before that sometimes when i come home from work and i sometimes start to eat foods i shouldn't be eating, that is when I feel like I crumble a bit and then I just can't keep the discipline up.

And then most of the time, it starts like this. Okay. So let me ask you guys a question. Are you going to relapse? Yeah. Yeah. No. I say no.

I believe in you mean. So if you know you're going to relapse. how do how does that correlate with shame or control right because up here we have any saying I'm the only one that can do something at these like I'm definitely going to relapse how do we sit with those two thoughts I would say that relapse is part of recovery relapse is a part of most people's recovery and like as I was saying earlier do the relapse autopsy figure out why like and and the things thing is, my friend in the addiction community, he said, put up a defense. You need defenses. And

as Flo was saying earlier, a good defense is a community. Because I would say there was one video I watched which said the opposite of addiction is connection. So find a group. Find if you like 12-step programs, find a sponsor. There's stuff like SLAA that can help. Or just find an accountability partner. Find like things that help you set your street. like I use Dunn, that's an app on the app store. And it helps me a lot to keep pressing that button each day. It's kind of like the replacement. Like every time I press that button and it says,

oh, you've made it two days, you made it three days, you made it four days. It's really all about defense and trying to find ways to root out the causes that make you relapse. Well, I'm going to add to that and say that in my experience in that channel, It never seems like shame helps very much, but I try to reorient it towards you should learn about the process, what you're feeling, why it happens during the time. It's not entirely your fault because it's part of your being and part of the culture that you're inside. You do have some control over it, but you can forgive yourself.

But I was like that too. Like I was, there was a period in which I went from a great deal of shame to feeling neutral about it like it was going to happen and I just needed to watch it to not really feeling that much shame anymore. And this is a point where I have the most control over it. I think it's important to know, to understand that relapsing is part of the process. And for me, I found myself that the more and more relapse, the more and more I understand why I shouldn't be. like I'm facing my emotions more and more. And I know I, and I feel like every time there's less shame. Last time that I relapsed, there was less shame than the time before.

Because I understood, I took more time to understand why I'm relapsing. And last time because of emotions, the emotion became too much. And I understood that, okay, well, I'm doing what I can. I'm starting to face my emotions more. So, okay, I understand that if I start to face my emotions more. So, okay, I understand that if I start facing my emotions more, next time I won't relapse as much. And I won't be as shameful because I know I did. I tried.

Right? Yeah. Yeah, it's not the end of the world. So I'm going to try to just shift a couple topics because we're actually almost out of time. So we've got maybe about 15 minutes left. So let me ask you guys, what is your understanding of like what's a brahmacharya? Sad guru, it's on the path to the divine. It's like the first stage of life, I think, from like, it ends at the ages of 20 to 25.

I just read the Wikipedia article, but my understanding is, is one, on the path to the divine is that is what a Brahmachari is. And for me, it means avoid, it's like abstinence from, from things that are pleasurable and the pursuit of joy. You described it as big chilling the last time, last stream, I think. Yeah. What's that mean? You said it Okay Um

At the end of like I think the second porn stream Okay Yeah so So okay I'll explain what I mean by the minute Is somebody else want to offer a definition or their understanding Um I think about it as sort of like a universal discipline Um

Of all sensory desires and apparatus trying to pull away from being pulled outside of yourself and trying to cultivate inner strength and I guess nature. Okay. I have a more secular view of it. For me it's just like the age around 2025 is just the time where you give up your childhood pleasures and need to start to face reality and live in reality and start to become a member of the society, I would say. And giving up the pleasures to fulfill some duty in the society

is like my current understanding of it. For me, it's kind of like not being a slave to pleasure and or pleasurable desires and kind of more like. seeking gratification and fulfillment from like long-term goals. So like porn is like, I'll just do it for a few minutes and I'll get like an instant pleasure. Whereas it's like reading a book, it might not be pleasurable at the moment, but you get more more of a fulfillment over time or gratification over time. Those are all good definitions. So I have some thoughts to share, but before we get to those or if you guys want me to go first time, it might be too. I guess the last general question that I think we should explore is like where do you go from here now if you guys

have thoughts about that I'd love to hear them otherwise I can try to sum up some stuff but I want to give you guys kind of a platform like what's next yeah well um can I can ask you a question about that because like I know that all of us have like some kind of trauma and um I'm not even sure if we are able to deal with our emotions without like getting therapy and like figuring out what our whole in the heart is and dealing with that because sometimes it feels like a fight that I can't win right now and that's really frustrating and I yeah I just want to know if we can even do it because I would rather know that it's something that I can face after having like 20 years of therapy then like fighting every day and not being yeah not knowing if we can handle it yeah so what I'm hearing from flow is is there hope for victory yeah anybody else have I would say this is something which is a huge cliche in the 12-step programs that I've been in.

But just one last thing basically is, don't give up until the miracle happens. And what is the miracle? Who knows what it is? Your life has changed completely. After the first week, you might find that things really and truly have changed. And a lot of the things you might perceive as negative at first will become, will slowly and surely, it's not about superpowers. It's about returning to baseline.

It's about removing the symptoms of your addiction. Because the thing is, you don't know what water is until you're out of it. So you don't know what brain fog is until you don't, until you feel what brain fog, like what it feels like not to happen. So does anybody else have questions about like where to go or thoughts about where we go from here? Otherwise, I'll collect my thoughts and then try to answer close question. Bob, you can go first. Thank you. I was going to say that it's a process.

You know, this is all not, these aren't discrete things. I don't think of it as, like, there's a specific endpoint. Every day has potential for analyzing your emotions, for trying to grow and be in the present moment. It just takes work, and you should be honest with yourself that it may take a lot of work, but you can get there. You can feel better. Yeah, for me, the whole story thing is a big, is helping me in a big way because I know the things that have happened in the past and I can't change them. But I want to make sure that I can overcome it because it's really is beneficial to my Dharma.

And I want to be an example of that it is possible to overcome the problems yet in the past. And many great people have big issues in the world. their childhood and they didn't have a perfect childhood. And I think in a way, overcoming hardships gives you meaning. It gives you the feeling of power and moving forward. And I would say that focusing on the future and building a future is something that I want to do. And I would even go so far as to say that it's something anyone should do with regards to that. Because it takes time to accept the past and sometimes you have to battle with traumas for the rest of your life but i think giving it some kind of place where it has some meaning and where it feels like very

personal and where you can maybe even even help people with that that it is something that is like very holistic and good in a sense any go ahead Yeah, I think, so you ask what's next, and I think for a lot of people, it should just be therapy. I feel like there's a lot of people in chat right now that need it and are not taking action to take any therapy. And that's me. That's me. I'm not doing it, and I've been avoiding it. And I think it's also finding a Dharma, in my opinion. It's really, it really helps. The journey is much easier if you have a purpose and you have a reason to keep going. And I just want to make that clear to chat.

If you guys need help, you know, I think it's important to. Okay. So I'm going to just think for a little bit, okay? Try to collect my thoughts because I want to highlight a lot of stuff. So overall, this has been incredibly helpful. This is my notes from the page session. So there's a lot to say. That bogey.

So give me just a minute. Okay. So the first thing that I want to point out to people that are watching is I want you guys to pay attention and maybe go back and watch the bod. I want you guys to pay attention to the language that people here use. So like the first thing is that if we think about porn addiction, what I'm hearing from you guys is like almost like y'all are zombies. It's like, barn, barn. Like there's no like awareness. Right?

It's like you guys use these phrases like autopilot. my life is revolving around this. Like you guys really sound like zombies like from movies where they just want one thing. And it's interesting because there's a certain like neutrality. Like is a zombie unhappy? Like it's a little bit unclear. Are they unsatisfied?

Are they hungry? Absolutely. They're always hungry. But it's not like they're sad. They're just hungry. And what we hear from you all about sort of like, you know, pieces that are like, missing within us.

Like that's what you try to fill with like porn or other addictions. Because there's that hunger. And even in Buddhism, there's this idea of like between earth and hell. There's like this middle layer, which is the realm of hungry ghosts, which isn't quite hell. But it's just for souls who are always hungry and they never get filled up. So they seek pleasure. They seek pleasure.

They seek pleasure. And they never become satisfied. And so if you listen to like what these people are saying, if you guys like really listen to you guys. I'm talking to Twitter chat now. A lot of the questions that we get asked, like how do I dot dot dot, how do I find

internal motivation? How do I be less depressed? How do I get in touch with my emotions? Like these are the questions that people from our community ask. And the interesting thing is you guys should listen to what they're saying because they've actually y'all have done all of that. Right? You guys have found

actually bizarre. You all have found the answers because what we hear from you guys is, you know, like Annie is talking about, you know, taking cold showers every day. People are talking about like, you know, finding relationships, talking to girls, sitting with your emotions, learning how to deal with your emotions, finding purpose in life, like grappling with finding purpose in life, getting connected to other human beings. Like this is what our community is missing. They don't know how to feel their emotions.

They don't know what they're feeling. And you guys are like, I feel shame. I feel like I've fucked up. I can understand flow earlier with. was saying, sometimes you think it's an emotion, but it's actually just a thought. Right? Like, that's what the people in our community need to understand. That understanding.

The other thing is that you guys talk a lot about understanding. Right? So, like, you guys aren't solving any problems, which is one of the really confusing things for our community is like, they're like, what do I do? And my answer is you don't do anything. What you do is you notice. And notice creates change. and it's kind of like what Zizi was saying that there's a relapse autopsy like what's the value of that what do you do

the value is not about like figuring out what the value is not about doing the thing it's about figuring out what to do that's where the change happens when your mind studies yourself and you understand yourself that's what gives you the power to do because the problem with our community isn't that they don't know what to do Everybody knows what to do. They just can't do it. And he's saying, like, we all need to see a therapist. I'm included. Like, he knows he needs to see a therapist.

Why isn't he doing it? It's not a lack of what to do. It's a lack of, like, understanding how you work so that you can't do the things that you should do. And so how do you guys, how have y'all succeeded? Because I actually think of y'all largely as success stories, which may sound weird. Because I hear you guys, I hear it in your language.

And it's interesting because what you say is, like, why do you relapse? It's a loss of focus, which is bizarre. Right? That's not what we would expect. It's not just a trigger, but it's a loss of focus. And if we think about, you know, how do you move forward in life? How do you find internal motivation? How do you do things every day? Like, this is what our community needs. It's a loss of focus. It's not a, it's actually not a lack of motivation. This is something that's subtle, but like needs to be understood. You know, on January 1st, when you make a New Year's resolution that you're going to lose 10 pounds and you're going to eat healthy and you go to the grocery store and you buy like all this

healthy food, that's not a lack of motivation. You have plenty of motivation. The problem is that your mind wavers. You lose focus on your motivation. The motivation's there. It's just your mind starts thinking about other things. And as you start to think about other things, then bad behaviors start to arise again. So the key here is about the focus of the mind, because when y'all's mind is in the right place, then you can control the behavior. And when your mind wanders, then the behavior controls you. Which gets to this other idea of, like, who are you and what is the behavior? Because you guys are talking about this thing, right? Like, you use the phrase, like, people were talking about this thing. You guys are like almost like, you become porn elementals.

And this is my favorite, like, thing that I've stumbled upon in stream recently, that you become one with the thing. And even if we, if we, if we, like, listen to, like, like Flo, flow saying that, like, I've lost the battle before I even type in the URL. Right?

So you become, like, one with this thing and then you lose control. And then the scary thing is that there's actually, I don't know if you guys, like this makes sense,

but Flo is actually trapped and he's watching it happen. There's a part of his mind that is doing something, but Flo's true as self is watching it. And he's screaming. He's like, don't do it.

Don't do it. But his mind is like, fuck you, Flo. We're doing it. You know it's happening and you know that you don't want it to. And the real flow is there and he's watching. And he can't stop it. And that boat is sail.

So now this like gets to an important thing about like, okay, how do you control this thing? So the first thing to understand is that there's like, there's a brain, but that's not necessarily you. Right. So there are issues of like dopamine and stuff like that, which let's just talk about that for just a second. so like y'all said so human beings have evolved to procreate that's why orgasm is so pleasurable

right like it's it's pleasurable because like if we didn't have a drive to orgasm we like wouldn't procreate so it's evolutionary that like procreation and orgasm is like the most like the highest goal of like a being and so it's really really dangerous when you guys have a shortcut to that

feeling because that's the end goal. And if you guys can watch porn on your on your computer screen or a mobile phone or, you know, whatever. And like, why do you need to do anything? So if you guys are thinking about like, it's interesting because a community, a question that we get from our community is like, how do we get motivated? And now we can kind of see because it's almost, I think it was Andy who was kind of saying that like when you, like, you don't feel like doing anything after you masturbate. And when you do it a ton, you get this brain fog. And what does that even mean?

It's like, it's sort of like this complete lack of motivation. Like I almost kind of think of you guys as sort of like pothead zombies, right? That's what brain fog is. It's like you're just jerking off all the time and like you're not really doing anything. And you're sort of like you're not really even alive. You're like some sort of weird half-life kind of creature. And so, you know, it's tricky because there certainly is dopamine. And then like, you know, as you orgasm.

So this is like just now talking a little bit about spirituality. So the interesting thing is that a blissful state is actually a no mind state. And one of the quickest ways to get to a blissful state with awareness is an orgasm. So that's why tantric sex is actually such a powerful technique. It's because it's a meditative practice that brings you to like a point of no mind. So you're aware, but you have like no thoughts. You have no emotions. You have no feelings.

You just exist purely in that moment, which is what orgasm is, which is why it's so addicting. And so meditation is actually the process of cultivating the mental state of orgasm at all times. And when you have that state, that's what Mokshah is. Mokshah is liberation or enlightenment. It's essentially a state of perpetual orgasm. And not to say that it's actually perpetual orgasm, but it's the state of consciousness that orgasm creates for a few moments.

That's what Mokshah is. And that's why people use, so Sattgur uses this word joy. So the word is anand, it's bliss. And now we get to something kind of interesting, which is like when you meditate, you start to do this stuff, as you start to feel feelings like, how is that good? Like, isn't that bad? Isn't that what you want to escape from? And someone said something about like, there are ups and downs, but it feels good to feel them. And now we get to a really, really important point about spirituality, which is that the enlightened person is not free of pain.

they have a certain tranquility with respect to the ups and downs that allows them to somehow appreciate the bad things in life. And that shit is OP. So that's your ultimate salvation. Imagine for a moment that a good thing in your life and a bad thing in your life is something that you can deal with in the same way. That you don't have to retreat from badness. That is the most OP buff you can ever get.

because suddenly things that are boring or shaming are not things that restrict your behavior. They don't control you anymore. And ultimately, what I see you guys doing is a journey of control. That's what this is. It's understanding and control. It's a journey of how to control the self. And so now we get to brahmacharya.

So brahmacharya means to dwell in God. Brahman, really, which is cosmic consciousness or universal consciousness. And it means to have your mind focus on things on the divine, as opposed to get lost in desires. So brahmacharya is sometimes translated as celibacy. But really what it is is non-lustfulness. You can still actually have sex and be a brahmachari. It's just you're not allowed to be horny. So it's control over, it's about not losing your mind in the desire.

right so like even even when we think about like i'm kind of envisioning like this this scenario where flow is like he's opening up his browser and he's like typing something into his URL bar and in that moment his mind is lost in that desire even though flow is aware of it but like that the mind is kind of like on autopilot at that point there's like autopilot autopilot autopilot autopilot that's what we've heard from you guys over and over and over again so the value of on Macharya is that, you know, as you guys grapple with this, and I want everyone who's watching to really, like, understand this.

These guys have grown immense. Like, they understand this shit in a way that very few people in our community do. And bizarrely, like, that's because they've been grappling with themselves for a long time. This is what happens. This is what spiritual growth actually looks like. It's grappling with yourself.

Right? And it's, like, sort of saying, like, okay, like, this is what my mind is doing. And then we see all these kinds of effects, like an appreciation for negative emotions, which is bizarre. The ability to sit with it. The ability to feel better afterward. The ability to like process and be somewhat past it.

Yeah, like there's just so much stuff about like being on autopilot, like the same shit every day. Like that's the problem of our community. And what I'm hearing from you guys is when you all know fat for a while, you don't, it doesn't feel like life is the same shit every day. And that's what living a life with awareness is. And so bizarrely, I think that nofap is a wonderful spiritual tool because you guys are constantly looking at yourself. Because that's the only way that you can succeed with no family.

You have to be watching your desires. Like you have to be aware of your boredom, your not laziness. What was it? Bortem. Whatever the blast. Angry. Angry. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Blas. Right. Right. So like you guys are watching yourself. And all you have to do is watch yourself. And then you'll start to gain control.

and then as you gain control, like suddenly you get these buffs, which is like sadness does not impact your action. That is one of the most OP buffs. Shame does not impact your action. You're able to sit with it. And that too, even when we use the phrase, sit with it,

you're no longer an elemental at that point. Because you can't, when you're, when you are it, that's when you're an elemental. Literally the process of sitting with it is for flow, to be there, and then the emotion or the desire or the urge to be here, and you're just chilling with it. And it's there with you, but that means that you are not it. It creates separation, and over time, you'll control it. That's what happens. So when Zizi said that

addiction is a spiritual malady, like, I completely agree. It's also a biological malady. It's also an energetic malady. But it's absolutely a spiritual malady. This is what I think is basically lost in Western understanding of the mind, is that we think of it as exclusively psychiatry. Is there dopamine stuff? Is there addiction stuff? Is there escapism? Does therapy help?

Is there trauma? Like, absolutely, all of those things. And that doesn't explain all of it. Because there's also this level of like hungry ghosts where there's something within you that just wants to like eat and eat and eat and it never gets filled. The more you masturbate, like it doesn't work.

Yeah, so like where do you like is there hope for you guys? Absolutely. You guys are way further along the path than you realize. I mean, the flow is here asking the question, is there a hope for me? And like the dude has gone 364 days without relapse it. And relapse, I agree, is part of the process? Like, you know, so is there a hope for you? Absolutely.

I think you guys are further along than you realize. and at the end of the day, because like you said, it's not, you know, this thought pattern that arises in your mind is porn addiction is separate from actual sexuality and connection with another human being. And over time, if you stop feeding it, it'll die out. The problem is that like it's grown into a pretty big tree because you guys have been fertilizing it and watering it and feeding it since the age of 10 to 12. Right. So it's going to take a couple years for it to completely die out. you don't have to wait a couple of years to start making significant progress. What I'm hearing from you guys is that y'all are looking for your Dharma, you're finding motivation,

you're learning how to relate to women. Like even with Zizi says, I see my insecurities. Like that's what this community is about. And like he sees his insecurity. And once he sees it, then he can start to like deal with it. Right. He's like, oh, she works 72 hours a week. It has nothing to do with me.

And that's how you start to be like comfortable in a relationship when they don't like text you back. It's because you acknowledge that your insecurity doesn't prey on a normal occurrence in the outside world because this is what our mind does. It finds something completely normal and it prays on it. Oh, they didn't invite me to the party. I'm the only person who didn't get invited. Oh, shit. I changed my cell phone number. No one had a way of getting a touch.

No hold of me. But we don't care. Our mind doesn't care because the insecurity is what we believe. When we become the insecure elemental, everything around us, feeds are insecurity and we just can't see it. So overall, I think you guys are doing fantastic. You know, I think, I think just keep at it. And the last thing is, I mean, as you guys have already said,

it sounds like the community has been helpful. And so like keep engaging the community and like, you know, it sounds like you guys hang out on our Discord, which is cool. I didn't know that shit like this happened. I mean, I've always wondered whether we're actually helping people or not. And after hearing you guys, I actually feel pretty good about the work that we're doing

because y'all have grown immensely. It's crazy. I never thought I would be able to talk about this kind of stuff on, like in, like these are higher level discussions about like brahmacharya and like what it means and sort of building awareness and how like that's going to happen. Like everyone's wondering, how do you process your emotions? You guys are processing your emotions. Y'all are doing it.

Everyone's like how? Like I don't know exactly how, but y'all are doing it. When, when Flo is sitting there in a bed prying next to his girlfriend, and he's being the ultimate beta cuck, like that's, that's processing your emotions. And then like over time, those emotions will burden you less.

And they like won't weigh on you. And once they stop weighing on you, then you guys will be able to like move forward without that shit on your back. And people were talking about, you know, great people suffered from, like some of them suffered from great things. I think that's the reason they're great.

That's where greatness comes from. It comes from overcoming challenges and triumping and understanding yourself. And the last point that I'll say is like, Dharma. So everyone's asking, like, how do I find my Dharma? You guys, I've really done a bad job of explaining this. You don't find your Dharma, your Dharma finds you. Right? So like healthy gamer, like, I didn't, I didn't like wake up at the age of 20 and say, like,

I'm going to try to help gamers understand no fat. That's absurd. It's dumb. Even six months ago, it was like, we're going to help gamers with no fat. It's absurd. So the best thing that you can do

is exactly what you all are doing. Which is that you're not ready for your Dharma. Your karma will give you your Dharma when you're ready. And if you guys continue living like a zombie on autopilot, your Dharma will never present itself. It's kind of like saying, like, where's the final boss?

like the final boss is in the final boss room. But if you just hang around in like the starting zone, AFK, then you're never going to find the final boss. So your first dharma is to yourself. This is what the Brahmacharya, the stage of life that Zizi was talking about. The first stage of life is brahmacharya, which is weird because it's kind of got a double definition. But what this means is like it's kind of the student base,

that you should prepare yourself. And once you guys are ready for a relationship, a relationship will happen. Once you guys are ready to save the world, the world will need saving. But y'all aren't ready yet. So continue doing the work that you're doing. Continue working on yourself. Continue leveling up. And then eventually, the final boss will show up.

And when it shows up, you all will either be ready or you won't be ready. Right now life has given you guys a little bit of a pass because it's not like you're not an agro yet, which is good. Because you're not ready. And as someone, I can tell you guys, you don't find Dharma, it just dumps itself in your lap. Like, when you guys are ready, thousands of people on the internet will start asking you for help. And right now, there are people asking you for help.

It's crazy, right? Because, like, y'all have had struggles, and y'all have been there for each other. So that's your Dharma. How did you find that? Through your streams, actually. I would say through all the, through all the pain and negativity and suffering,

it led to that understanding. Yeah. So our streams are karma, right, Flo? So you were ready to help someone. And when you were ready, the stream showed up and sent you to our community. But ultimately, it's you who decided to join the Discord. It's you who decided to hang out in the Brahmacharya section. And it's you who decided to both share and support other people.

So that's exactly what I'm saying. like Dr. Kha rose because you were ready for that next phase of your growth. And so when you guys are ready, someone will show up. And this is the whole point that we've been talking about is like, it's not, it doesn't have to be me. You guys are doing the work and just keep doing it. And there's like, dude, so much hope. So much hope. You guys have no idea, like how far, like, y'all are killing it.

That's the greatest thing I've heard ever. Yeah, seriously. I don't think, I don't think you guys understand. I don't think you guys understand how you actually sound. Like, you should go back and watch the Vod. Because you guys have behind you what half of our community thinks is the end goal. And so, like, yeah, like, I know FAP for 364 days and I felt motivated and started to get in touch with my emotions and, like, you know, had my girlfriend and, like, cried in front of her and maybe she dumped you. We don't know.

But it sounds like she didn't. She's still there. Right? So, like, what the fuck? You know? And it's like people are like, you guys have a history of trauma and then we have like, you know, at size like roller coaster of like atheism, spirituality, religion and self growth. Like that's what people want.

Right. It's like I want to wake up and be able to take a cold shower every day. Like, and go running. Like that's, you guys are living representations of the goals of most of our community. And you ask me is there a hope? Fuck. That's what the shame really does to you. Like it really leaves you helpless.

Yep. So good. So, Flo, that's why there's hope for you. Because now you're able to see that your lack of hope is not a truth. It's your mind and it's the shame. And it's not actually that you don't have hope. Like that's it right there. That's the understanding. I don't know if you guys saw that. That's the shift. She just did it. That's what the shame does to me. Right? His earlier question was, do I have hope? And now he says, that's what the shame did to me. He's now separate from the shame. He's separate from the hopelessness. And it's in that space that growth happens. And that's the space in which you get control over your life. Fantastic. All right, are we meditating?

Yes, please. Yeah, let's do it. Okay, so, all right, so we're going to, this may be something that you guys are actually good at. We're going to do something that's a little bit more open today, which is just how, to sit with yourself. Okay. So like this is what I want you guys to do. I want you to sit up straight. Not going to even do any like breathing or anything like that. Actually, yeah, let's do this one. Okay. So what I want everybody to do, we're going to play a fun game. So everyone asks a question, you know, how do I change on the inside? And then what I always say is like, all you have to do is

be aware and notice. And that's sufficient for change. And then everyone scratches their head and is super confused. So we're going to teach you that right now. So I want you guys to close your eyes. I want you to put your palms face up on your knees and focus on the sensation of your palms. And now notice that you have a certain pattern of breath. And I want you to focus on your breathing, but don't change it. Don't control it. Just observe it. So what's happening to your breath as you begin to observe it? Now I'd guess that if you guys are trying this practice, that your breath changes as you observe it. Stop changing it. Let it go back to normal. And try as you might, the breath will likely change if you observe it. So now what we're going to do is focus on any

sensible. Your body will be sending you signals. Learn to sit with them. The signal may be a thought, it may be an itch, it may be attention. There may be a demand. a desire to change position. Watch that impulse. Now let yourself come back. So was anybody able to observe the breath without changing it? So I'm seeing some people shake their head, no. Some people are saying yes.

It's very, it's like a razor's edge. You can feel, you can feel get to a point when it's, when you're doing okay, and then it'll snap back again and try to, control it and you can feel that movement of the mind or the will or whatever it is. It's very subtle. I feel like I started noticing my breath and I started controlling it, but the more and more I kept noticing my breath, I kind of like stop focusing on it and I kind of like started calming down. And then the moment like I started having a thought about my breath, that's when it started changing again. So by

itself, like when I, just by trying not to control it, I stopped controlling, like, thinking about controlling it, it started like, kind of taking me in and when I thought about it, started controlling again. I think, yeah, Flo, go ahead. I think what

Bob said was basically, like, meditation summarized, that you, like, you notice this line that you can, that you are able to cross and you do like reps, like you notice that you get lost. That's basically like meditation and you do it again and again and again and again. Yeah. So my natural breath was pretty shallow and whenever I gave

it awareness, I started actually breathing deeper and longer breaths. Same of me. So I think that the main point here is that like first of all, what was or were you, how did you guys feel when you were meditating, when your mind was focused on the breath? I'd say content is how I felt in that moment. There wasn't really like a worry on my mind. I was kind of just okay. Very peaceful. Yeah. So it's interesting because sometimes in order to get that focus,

you have to have a task that's difficult. And so to retain your focus very quickly, to observe the breath but don't change it, because that requires effort. And then the other interesting thing, is, you know, Annie was kind of talking about how, like, the more he focused on it,

the more it changed, but the more that he let go focusing on it, the more natural it became. And then, but at the same time, like, like, it sounds like, letting go focusing on it was shattered by the presence of a thought. And then he tries to control it again.

And so now I'm going to turn, that's a very important principle that very few people understand. in. So now I'm going to go back to flow. Do you have hope? Absolutely. All you need to do to keep on progressing is stop worrying about progressing. That's deep. Right? It's exactly what Annie said, which is like when you're trying, you're like, am I doing it? Am I doing it? Am I doing it? And then your shame is going to say no. But how did you go 364 days by focusing in the present and not trying to go 364 days.

When you say to yourself, I'm going to be sober for a year, you're fucked. I feel like with meditation, though, there's like this way you can have not enough focus. Like, there's like that. You can be too relaxed and you can have too much focus. And you need to realize both of them in order to get at like the point that you need to be to meditate. So that point is best translated into English is transcendence. There's an axis of focus on focus. And when you move beyond that axis, that's what transcendence is.

So it's not that there are good days and bad days. We prefer good days over bad days. But sometimes we can actually appreciate both of them for what they are. So we move beyond the axis into transcendence. And that's where tranquility comes from, right? Because that's your money state. Yeah. I've spoken to the other guys about it, but I'll be attending a retreat, my first retreat,

and I'm really looking forward to it. I think it's going to be a lot of pain of a Pasana retreat. And as we've already been talking about meditation, is there anything like you want to give me for the retreat, like any advice or something? No. Okay. I expect it.

Yeah. I mean, if you're doing a repassionate treat, you're doing a repassionate retreat. There's nothing that I say now that is going to influence your experience of the retreat. Trust me. Okay, that's fine. Can I ask a question? Yeah, Andy, go ahead. What do you think of like dopamine detoxing?

So I was actually thinking, I was finding myself like being more like not relapsing by controlling my environment more. and I was thinking maybe taking a week of removing all my electronic devices. Maybe that's a bit too much, I'm thinking, but maybe just like a call and text phone and just that so I can just communicate with people if I need to. But I don't know, what's your thoughts on that? I mean, I think a dopamine detox is a really good idea, but it's hard to do and should be set up properly. So I think the hardest thing about a dopamine detox is people just sort of like start doing it. But like, I think that your environment is very, very, very. important. So just for people to understand. So you're dope, like just like any other

receptor in your brain, you have a certain amount of like dopamine tolerance. And so like if you think about if you haven't played games for a while and you sit down and you play a game, it's like a ton of fun. And the more you play, the less fun it becomes. But then you don't even know why you're playing it. You can't stop, but it's not actually fun. That's when your dopamine tolerance sort of builds up. Right. And it's just like caffeine tolerance or nicotine tolerance or alcohol tolerance, where you can get a certain amount of dose, and it doesn't create the particular effect. And then you can grow dependent on a minimum dose. So if you're addicted to caffeine, or if you're dependent on caffeine, you know, it's not that caffeine actually like wakes you up. It's just you become dependent on it

to function normally. So dopamine detoxing is the idea of like resetting your dopamine circuitry, which actually takes like honestly around two weeks, three weeks. And so I think the biggest thing is that you have to set up activities that you can do. Like, you can't just, like, replacement works way better than abstinence. Yeah, so I was kind of thinking of for the week to kind of focus more on reading books. Like, I was going to buy a book, I bought a book. And I was kind of, I kind of read the book and the week and run, focus on just running and reading the book. Yeah. So, like, how many hours are you going to run? A day. anywhere from about

I'm like an endurance runner so I like to run like anywhere from six to eight miles in a day and probably I don't know anywhere from two to four hours with a bunch of breaks in okay and how many hours are you planning on reading?

Hopefully anywhere from two to four hours maybe I mean I don't read at all but I think reading like the first few days was probably going to be something like I'm just going to sit in my bed all day and stare at the ceiling because I have nothing else. Yeah that sounds like that's not going to work well

right so so like if you're going to run for two hours and you're going to read a book for two hours then i think it's optimistic to think about what you're going to do for the other 12 so so like this is where like i think good dopamine detoxes involve a bunch of stuff right so like sometimes people will do meal prep they'll learn how to cook cooking and cleaning and take a long time like i think about a couple of projects like are the things that you want to work on i was going to work on some music as well yeah Okay, so like, like, you know, the last thing about a dopamine detox is it, it's good if you do it with someone. So you can check in with, like, I recommend checking in with someone like, you know, find two or three people.

Check in with people like for 15 minutes a day and say like, hey, how's it going? Like, what's your plan for the day? Things like that. And then, and then, I mean, I think dopamine detoxes are like sort of semi-naturally done. Like when you go sometimes on like vacation and stuff. Like if you go hiking or something like that, like I, you know, I know COVID. tricky and depending on where you are and stuff. But I'd really think about like packing your day

because your enemy is going to be boredom. Right. So meal prep, cooking, reading is great. And then think about other things that are also like somewhat stimulating. And the last thing about a dopamine detox is understand that reading is going to be hard. Right. It's not going to be fun at the beginning. I think about an audiobook too. That's something that you can kind of do that's a little bit besides reading.

Sound good? Yeah, I kind of thought that it's a bit too extreme to just, you know, read a book and just run. I think I would succeed it anyway. That's why I wanted to get it. I mean, I think it's fine to try, right? So you don't have to succeed to learn and grow. And then like you can, I mean, at the least maybe in three days you'll relapse, but at least for three days, like, you'll be better at reading books.

I'm just trying to change, like, I feel like I have such a dopamine. fix that I need every day on YouTube on or Twitch or whatever. So I'm kind of trying to transition slowly to like, because I don't like if you're going to play video games all day and then you're trying to read a book in my case, the book is unreadable. I can read a paragraph because it doesn't give you as much dopamine. So I'm trying to kind of train myself to good. Enjoy the simpler things, right? So guys, we're more gratification. Absolutely do. So we're a little bit past time, guys. So we got to call it. But thank you all so much for coming and sharing your stories and continue doing strong work that y'all are doing.

Yeah, thanks for you. Yeah, thank you. It was awesome. Take care and good luck to y'all. Thank you. Thank you. My chat. Okay.

So we're going to thank you guys very much for coming. On Wednesday, we have QD Cinderella. And hopefully that was helpful. Take care and best of luck.