Speaker 1 (00:00:01) - So here's the million dollar question. How are men like us who work hard, have good motives and a God given purpose supposed to fulfill the calling on our lives and the dreams in our hearts, all while establishing sexual integrity, thriving relationships, and a meaningful connection with God? That is the question and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Sathiya Sam. Welcome to Unleash the Man Within. Yo, yo. What's up everybody? It's Sathiya Sam here. Welcome to Unleash the Man Within. Thank you so much for listening. I'm so glad you're here. I'm honored that you would take a little bit of time out of your day to listen in, and I promise we will make this absolutely worth your while, in whatever way that we possibly can. We're going to talk about the physical symptoms of porn addiction today. And no, it's not just that you're floppy and you can't get it up. We actually have tons of evidence, not necessarily academic evidence. They're still working on that, but we have some indicators of what might be caused by pornography.
Speaker 1 (00:01:07) - And some of them are simple, like a headache. So I'm going to jump into all of that today before I do very quickly. We still have some spots open in our program. And for those of you who are really struggling with pornography, what I mean by really struggling is you're watching more than twice a week. You have tried to quit multiple times and have been unsuccessful, and you are aware that pornography is wreaking havoc on at least one area of your life. If that's you and you're sick and tired of being sick and tired, I want to invite you to consider our program. We have spots open. We focus on helping people get to the root of the issue. Our program takes a little bit more time. That's because we're a lot more effective. Most programs are 90 days. We are minimum 120. Often we'll even take a little bit longer depending on the client. And we really want to make sure that you get all the help that you need to make a full recovery. And so if that's something you're interested in, there is a link in the notes.
Speaker 1 (00:02:06) - You can book a time. We would love to speak with you, and we'd love to see if it makes sense for you to be a part of what we're doing here. So go ahead, book a time and we'll talk to you. Then let's jump into the physical symptoms of an addiction of porn addiction specifically, and also recovery, because the reality is they exist during both stages. Um, I'm just going to kind of like bullet point this and I might pick 1 or 2 to just expand on a little bit more, and then I'm going to transition over to the recovery part of it and talk about some of the physical things that you can expect during recovery on that side. So when you have a porn addiction, physical symptoms can vary. They can go all the way from a headache, okay, a headache to sexual performance. And so we've talked about that before. That would be erectile dysfunction premature ejaculation. Those are probably the two big ones. There's a couple others. But those are the main two that I would say are worth noting.
Speaker 1 (00:03:08) - The in-between symptoms of porn addiction are harder to gauge. Like like symptoms of any disease. Really. The symptoms could be caused by porn, they could be caused by something else and worsened by porn, or they could be caused by something else. And porn has nothing to do with it. And so in this middle ground, we don't know for sure. But these would be things like irritability. This would be things like a mood swings, inability to cope with stress, disconnecting, or kind of closed office isolation. All of these things are indicators or possible indicators, I should say, of a porn addiction at play. Other things would be doing things that used to be really exciting, but they're not anymore. You know, feeling a lack of interest in relationships. You know, this is especially if you're married and suddenly your spouse just doesn't really seem to be that interesting to you and doesn't seem to be worth pursuing. And the idea of being intimate together is not really that exciting to you. All leading indicators that a porn addiction very well could be at play.
Speaker 1 (00:04:17) - Now, the one thing that I want to comment on that is a newer, it's a newer issue that has surfaced is infertility amongst amongst men who are struggling with porn addiction. And I did a whole episode about it talking about what happens or what they've observed happens to the sperm quality. Sorry, the sperm count and the semen quality of people who view pornography on a regular basis. Now get this what they consider to be a regular basis is twice a week. And we know I mean, she's I know when I was struggling, I was watching like ten, ten times a week. I was going to say ten days a week. And that's when you know, you're making stuff up seven days a week, probably ten times a week. I mean, again, like, it's hard to say for sure what the direct impact could be. It takes time for these physiological effects to even have any kind of place. But what they're basically finding out is that when men are viewing pornography regularly, so two times a week or more when they've been exposed at a young age.
Speaker 1 (00:05:24) - And then the third thing is that they couple pornography with masturbate. Patient, the rates of infertility skyrocket. And so we're talking about even the way your body prepares itself to reproduce can be affected by porn consumption. Absolutely crazy. Now some of you listening are on the other side. So you've made the decision to recover. You're maybe doing a program, you're doing our program or you're doing someone else's. You're going through some sort of system. Maybe you're smelling it together. I always cringe a little bit when I hear people are doing that, but if that's what you're doing, that's okay. There's physical symptoms that you experience on this side as well. So headaches is another popular one. Now, the reason headaches exist, by the way, in this context is very much related to dopamine, because you have to remember that your body becomes very reliant on those dopamine hits. And so when there are alterations in the frequency of those dopamine hits, your body starts to experience kind of a withdrawal symptoms. Headaches can be one of them.
Speaker 1 (00:06:33) - Shakes is another one. We've had several clients who, when they begin to go through a program, they start to experience shakes in their body. That's the nervous system trying to find a way to regulate without that hit of dopamine. So again, this is very common, a very common experience, something to be aware of. The other one that's a little bit more sexual in nature would be nocturnal emissions or more frequent arousal. That kind of an arousing times. And these are very common experiences as well. Guys often will be 2 or 3 weeks into the program. They'll be totally clean after struggling regularly for a very long time, and then they will start to have wet dreams. And they will they will kind of confess, like I had a I had a wet dream. I'm so sorry and I'm so annoyed at myself. I was doing so well and were like, bro, number one, wet dreams don't count as a relapse. It's like, oh, they don't know. You didn't make a conscious choice to watch.
Speaker 1 (00:07:30) - So no, that's not a relapse. Number two, this is your body literally like getting things out of its system because it's physiologically starting to make some changes. It's like, okay, I guess we're not getting the orgasm anymore. So that means we're not getting the dopamine. We're not getting the serotonin, we're not getting the oxytocin. So I guess we need to make some adjustments. Now, sometimes those adjustments mean that you have very sexual dreams and your brain is trying to get aroused. It's just saying, okay, fine. If we're not going to do it the way we normally do it, then I'll take matters into my own hands. But if you fight through this little window on the other side, you find a lot of freedom. This is where your brain really starts to rewire. And what we usually look for in people who are in recovery is somewhere around the 2 to 4 week range is the sort of regression where it's like, I'm having wet dreams, the temptations are stronger. My ex that I used to always kind of fool around with, even after we broke up, is suddenly reaching back out.
Speaker 1 (00:08:28) - You know, there's something, something comes in that tries to derail and there's a spiritual element. There's a physical element. They both come into play. But the point here is, if we can push through on the other side of those physical symptoms is glorious rewiring of the brain and glorious relief of the body. Now, here's what I want you to get from all of this, okay? Whether you have not begun recovery. All right, so you're just stuck in your addiction, you're experiencing physical symptoms, or you're in recovery and you're experiencing physical symptoms. What I want you guys to hear today is that physical symptoms are manifestations of what is taking place in, at a deeper levels of the brain and body. And so if you take care of your brain and body, the physical symptoms will look after themselves. Which is why one thing that's really cool is when people do our program, we notice that a lot of them start to take better care of their bodies as well. They eat better, they exercise more.
Speaker 1 (00:09:25) - And again, it's not like it's not a causal thing. It doesn't always happen, but it has happened. It happens enough that it's worth mentioning and that that kind of stuff is really powerful. It sends a powerful signal to your brain and your body of like, hey, we're valuable. Where we're treating, we're worth investing, we're going to do it. But then all the more so it actually makes your body healthier. And so when you have stress and those kinds of things, your body has healthy ways of coping and processing and being able to reach those places without any kind of orgasm or addiction or whatever it might be. So I want to encourage you guys, this is a useful part of your recovery. The symptoms are annoying, but it's your brain and your body signaling to you, hey, there's something going on here. And sometimes it just means that, like you know, it's like, hey, something's going on and it's actually your brain and body adapting to life without those, like, daily orgasms.
Speaker 1 (00:10:19) - Or sometimes it's your brain and your body saying, hey, you know, start taking better care of me. Let's let's start relaxing a little bit better when we're stressed out and not rely on the porn so much. Either way, pay attention to them. They're normal. If I mentioned something here that you're experience or that you're sorry if I didn't mention something here that you are experiencing, don't be alarmed and say, oh, he didn't mention it, so something must be wrong with me. There's a there's an individuality here. And every month, probably we hear about something new where it's like, okay, that's that's different. We we didn't know that people could experience that from porn. But now that we're hearing it. Yeah, okay. That makes sense. Or maybe the recovery part. Yeah, that makes sense. If that would be like a withdrawal symptom, we could I could see that. So don't worry about that. And on the flip side, if you did hear something today where you're like, wow, I am going through that.
Speaker 1 (00:11:08) - I didn't know that was normal. Well, rest assured you're in good company and make sure that you are getting guidance on how to navigate these symptoms and frame them in the correct way so that you make a full recovery. So look that's everything for today guys. Thank you so much for listening. Much love to you. Appreciate you stay clean. We'll talk soon. Bye bye. Hey, everybody, it's Sathiya again. Thanks for listening to Unleash the Man Within. I wanted to take a quick moment to let you know about a free e-book that I wrote for you, called The Ultimate Guide to Porn Recovery. It provides a basic framework for the recovery process and a few of my top tips completely free of charge. You can get it now at WW Recovery guide.com. That's w WW Ultimate Recovery guide. Com. Now if you've been impacted by the podcast and you want to show some support in less than 60s, there are three ways you can do that. First, you can leave a rating or review on your podcast platform.
Speaker 1 (00:12:10) - This lets people like you know that the content here is valuable. Secondly, you can share this episode with someone in your life that might benefit from the content. If you're passionate about helping other people experience freedom and success in their lives, this is one of the easiest ways to do that. And lastly, you can subscribe. I personally only listen to the podcast that I subscribe to. If you're seeking daily encouragement, guidance and insight in your recovery journey, I highly recommend subscribing to Unleash the Man Within. Thanks for listening. I look forward to connecting with you very, very soon.
Speaker 2 (00:12:44) - The information, opinions and recommendations presented in this podcast by Sathiya Sam and his guests are for general information only and should not be considered medical, clinical or any other form of professional advice. Any reliance on the information provided is done at your own risk.
