Problems with Porn: True Stories of Heartache and Healing

“Problems with Porn: True Stories of Heartache and Healing”

a lightly edited Girl Boner Radio transcript

Brooke: I was falling into a depression for weeks at a time. It was a very scary time for me. I wasn’t sure if or when I would come out of these cycles of depression. And when the last drug failed me, I was at the end of the road. And so I prayed for a healing miracle. It was like leaning over the edge of a cliff and diving into the deep blue ocean below. I didn’t know what was gonna happen. 

Erica: It was almost as if I had become just as addicted to the shame element as I had to the pleasure that I was seeking inside. And so that just led to a big disconnect… And as far as sex goes as well, I found sex really unfulfilling unless I was either touching myself or thinking about something else or I needed to be watching porn while I was having sex. There was just this barrier between me and my partner all the time.

[encouraging, acoustic music]

August (narration):

How do you feel about porn? If you use it, how do you feel about your habits? Does watching porn enhance your life and relationships? Or change things up in a not-so-sexy way? 

Since starting Girl Boner, I have heard from many people with strong opinions about porn — people who love it and find it strengthening or empowering. People who create it. And people who’ve struggled deeply with their relationship to it…or the impact it has on their lives and wellbeing. 

Today’s you’ll hear from the latter — two folks who’ve been in dark places in terms of porn and have since found their way out.

First, the story of organic farmer and lifelong athlete, Brooke Hazen.

[acoustic, encouraging music]

Brooke: Well, it’s been the most unbelievable, unexpected and beautiful journey for me. It didn’t start out that way, but a few years ago, I first started experiencing the symptoms of erectile dysfunction. 

August (narration):

Today, Brooke doesn’t like using that word — dysfunction.

Brooke:

…because it creates a feeling of disempowerment and fear when there’s nothing further from the truth. 

I was in a relationship and I was experiencing these symptoms at that time and, and it really woke me up. I really had gone through a pornography addiction for decades. It started benignly with, you know, I mean, when I grew up, it was, seeing my dad’s Playboy magazine the first time or a snippet in a newspaper; that was what we had then. But today it is a completely different world. 

I sort of grew with the evolution of pornography on the internet. So when it became more common on the internet and I became more familiar with virtual tools, it grew with that and it started slowly, but it’s a growing addiction.

I don’t think it was a moment. I think it was a process over a number of months or even years that I realized that I was not performing well. There was something wrong. There was actually something wrong with my neurology. I didn’t know at the time. It was something that evolved slowly for me that I started realizing I had an issue and I wasn’t performing well.

I wasn’t getting aroused and I was sort of pretending like, I didn’t wanna have sex. [half laugh] I was actually, inside, terrified that I couldn’t. But I noticed, even with my masturbation, things were not working optimally.

August: Did you talk to your partner, at that time, about your challenges?

Brooke: I did not. It’s a little embarrassing to say at the time, but later on I did. 

And, once I started understanding what it was, there’s so much shame and taboo around what’s supposedly organic erectile dysfunction. But what is largely neurological and energetic-based ED.

August (narration): 

He used the word supposedly there, because when Brooke sought help from a doctor, he was misdiagnosed. And as is often the case with misdiagnosis, the treatment he was offered wasn’t helpful.

Brooke: I was actually later I found out I had what’s called porn induced erectile dysfunction. This is a neurologically based form of ED. 

So I was essentially being misdiagnosed and mis-prescribed cardiovascular function, ED, when I didn’t have a blood flow issue.

August (narration):

As Brooke points out, this type of scenario isn’t uncommon. 

One study, involving over 3,000 cisgender men, looked at porn use and erectile dysfunction. The researchers found that 30% of the men under age 35, and 40% of the men aged 35 – 45  who watched 300 minutes of porn per week had diagnosable erectile dysfunction. The same research team found an even stronger link between porn addiction and ED. 

To assess porn addiction, a questionnaire is often used. One common one lists a true and false list, with things like:

Sometimes, I feel unable to control the watching of porn sites, I have continued watching porn sites despite some negative consequences, and I get sexually aroused only when I watch online pornography.

Brooke’s experience mirrors those things. On top of his erection challenges, he was really struggling emotionally.

Brooke: What I was suffering through was several enormous burdens. One of ’em was the Scarlet letter of erectile dysfunction which creates a feeling of humiliation and disempowerment and confusion. 

And at the time I was praying deeply to God. I’ve always been very spiritual, but especially at such desperate times in my life, and I was praying for either a pharmaceutical or a natural drug which worked and, didn’t cause side effects, but my prayer was never answered. I’m actually glad it wasn’t, because it wasn’t a very high bar I was setting.

Also the dopamine, the constant dopamine cycle, of my addiction to pornography with the fatigue, mood imbalance and distancing in the relationship. 

And then this added burden of the pharmaceutical side effects that came from the ED medications and their exacting mechanical nature and also the diminishing and failing effects of it. This all created such enormous burdens for me. 

August (narration):

Instead of relief from his erection issues, Brooke ended up with those side effects. Some of the most common side effects of ED medications include body aches, headaches, digestive problems and vision changes. Headaches are the most common side effect, and they stem from sudden change sin blood flow from high levels of nitric oxide. A European Urology study showed that higher doses of these medications cause side effects about 22% of the time.

The most intense part for Brooke, though, seemed to be the emotional toll of the whole experience.

Brooke: I was falling into a depression for weeks at a time. It was a very scary time for me. I wasn’t sure if or when I would come out of these cycles of depression and when the the last drug failed me, I was at the end of the road. 

And so I prayed for a healing miracle. It was like leaning over the edge of a cliff and diving into the deep blue ocean below. I didn’t know what was gonna happen. 

August (narration):

While he didn’t realize it at the time, he was at the start of a journey of natural healing that he advocates for now. He’s even written a book about his philosophies, called You Are Not Broken: A Holistic Guide for Men and Women to Heal the Pathways of Sexual Dysfunction and Restore Relational Harmony Together. And he’s deeply passionate about the cause.

Things started to turn around, he said, after he came upon the website, Your Brain on Porn, created by the late Gary Wilson. It’s described as a “clearinghouse for the latest research, media, and self-reports on pornography’s effects and potential harms.” And it lists all of the latest studies about porn and the brain.

Brooke said the site helped him see…

Brooke: …the enormous power that our sexual behavioral choices have on either creating massive dysfunction or massive positive transformation in all areas of our life.

We’re now at the end of a two decade long massive experiment on the minds and neurology of the global population. We’re seeing the results now and they are harrowing and they’re terrifying. We’re seeing young men and women unable to have the first sexual experience of their life and engage in any meaningful relationship. And I know men that have gone through this. My coach has gone through this. 

August (narration): Brooke believes that pornography is destroying our neurology, relationships and ability to function normally as sexual beings. 

While some research supports this, for certain people, there’s a lot of controversy surrounding this topic. Many sex educators and therapists believe that porn itself isn’t the root problem—but rather, a lack of comprehensive education about both sex and porn. In either case, getting people the support and resources they need is inarguably important. I think everyone in these communities agrees with that.

Currently, porn addiction is not recognized as an official diagnosis—although compulsive sexual behaviors is. And Brooke believes that needs to change.

Brooke: We don’t recognize pornography as an addiction. We would not expect a cocaine or morphine or alcohol addict to be able to relate optimally in a relationship, to be able to peak physical conditioning to have all their mental and emotional acuity and perform well sexually. Would we? No, we wouldn’t, we wouldn’t expect that, but we do expect that because we’re totally unaware and not classifying porn and de erectile dysfunction the way it should be as an epidemic addiction.

At the point it’s at for a lot of men, they’re actually not getting satisfied as their dopamine levels crash. And sexual energy crashes. They’re actually pushing themselves further away from satisfaction, from their goals, from meeting real beautiful, connected partners. And they’re settling for a fantasy. They’re replacing real life, real connected partners with pixels on a screen pixel by pixel.

And that’s the whole thing, in moving past this addiction, is getting mor einto the dance. Into the smelling the flowers, the process. Rather than a singular, goal-driven act. 

August: Do you recall a time when you really noticed that you were getting better? 

Brooke: Well it’s interesting because there’s sort of different elements to it. There was the sexual performance part, and then there was the actual mental and emotional aspects. 

Right away, within weeks, I was transforming massively. My mental acuity and my emotional balance was coming back. My creativity, my passion, it was like I was a whole different person, a total transformation that takes place by simply restoring the dopamine and the chi sexual energy that I’d been depleted for decades and unaware of.

When you quit this addiction and to both those elements, you find out just how addicted and down in the dumps, you were the whole time -diminished and replenished and depleted. So the sexual part took a little bit longer and I had a lot of trauma around it still. I was still very insecure.  

August: I really believe that healing takes however long it takes, you know, everyone’s journey is different. I also think so many people who may be struggling want to know how long it’ll take to get an erection again. Could you give some thoughts on timeline? 

Brooke: Well that’s a great question and a natural question because of the desperation. They wanna know when can I get this confidence and identity back? When can I get an erection? Well, it’s not just about getting an erection. It’s also about regaining vibrant relationships and new behaviors. We have to change these behaviors in order to holistically transform ourselves. 

It’s a beautiful process that takes place. And we see ever increasing benefits taking place as we successfully go through this process of simply refraining completely from pornography and even similar virtual imagery, which includes, you know, women that are maybe not in pornography, but that are gonna trip that dopamine hit again in us.

We’re trying to placate and to rebuild and rewire, re-sensitize our neurology. So basically we we wanna look at recovering our neurology. And this takes place, I saw my own results and this is very common, within three to six months, I was seeing definite changes in my ability to get aroused, get an erection.

And then really I was sort of, getting close to a hundred percent after about a year or, at the worst, it could take a couple years, but we’re so trained to want results. That’s why we get in, in the West, we’re so addicted to getting a pill. So we want immediate results.

So like you said, we wanna be patient. It takes as long as it takes. And when you include your partner in this process, like I did, then you’re not in a rush. Your partner is on board.

August: What would you say most helped you heal from the trauma around everything? 

Brooke: Well, for me, it was just a process of talking to myself, praying, meditating, and really just trusting that I’m safe now, that I have solutions, and that what I went through before, I don’t have to go through anymore.

I don’t have to ever deal with pharmaceutical ED drugs again, and I don’t have to ever feel that loss of confidence and identity again. Now that I have these solutions, all I have to do is focus on practicing them.

August (narration): 

Brooke also practices things like eating a plant-based diet for managing and preventing erection issues — that can help by improving blood flow, which promotes both sexualand cardiovascular health. 

Since his spiritually plays such a big role in his life, I was curious how that had changed, if at all, over time.

August: Was your relationship to God as strong before all of this?

Brooke: That’s a great question. Um, I don’t believe it was. I think that this has deepened it. I think that sometimes when we go through these really intense periods like this, it’s a catalyst, it’s an opportunity that we can seize to have massive transformation. And I’ve transformed on every level. I mean, I think it’s hard to connect spiritually when you’re in a dopamine addiction.

So not just sexually, but spiritually, mentally, emotionally, relationally. I wasn’t able to do any of that during those times, but now, yes. I have a very much closer relationship with God and, and, I communicate with God every day. 

[spiritual music: “morning prayer”]

August (narration):

Given that Brooke sees his previous challenges as a full on addiction, he hasn’t gone back to porn.

Brooke: This is an addiction. It’s a dopamine addiction. And I have never gone back and I never will. It’s a complete lifestyle change. Basically what we’re doing is we’re, rather than watching our life spiral into fantasy and pulling us away from reality, we’re actually choosing life. We’re choosing reality. We’re choosing real connected partners, real relationships, rather than this dopamine fantasy kick that we’re getting from a virtual imagery, not even reality. It’s just, it’s all fantasy and virtual. 

Because of what I’ve gone through with the damage, the dysfunction, the trauma of this, you know, fantasy of pixels on a screen, this addiction, I only choose healthy behaviors now. I choose to deepen relationships. I choose to get my satisfaction from real relationships and from healthy sexual behaviors. 

August: Is there a piece of advice that you’d like to share related to all of this, to people who might be listening to this and they’re struggling themselves. What’s in your heart to share for them?

Brooke: There are so many things I’d like to share actually. But I think it’s to be willing to take a chance, to be willing to put your faith in a higher source, being willing to let go of your fears, to strip yourself, bear of your addictions and your negative habits, the myths and misconceptions and peer pressure that are surrounding you, to lay that all bear, strip it, bear and follow your own heart and the science, and what you know is best for you. Start making decisions that are best for your health. 

[encouraging, acoustic music]

August (ad): So I gave up on energy drinks years ago. They never did what they promised for me, and often contained super iffy ingredients. Well, I recently tried Magic Mind and I have to say, I was happily surprised.

Magic Mind is designed for productivity, to help you do more and stress less. I read up on the ingredients before trying it and was delighted to find that the benefits hold up in studies. Each little bottle contains natural ingredients like tumereric curcumin and Ashwagandha, for better moods, energy and concentration. 

Magic Mind also has a pleasant taste—another fun surprise for me, since I have loved the idea of green juices, but not so much the taste. I especially love how it’s felt knowing that I’m doing something proactive for my health and brain by sipping this little drink. It makes me feel…uplifted. 

I added it to a smoothie the other day and felt like it gave me a little edge as I worked toward a work deadline.

And get this. For the next 10 days, you can get 40% off your subscription Simply go to magicmind.co/boner and enter the code boner at checkout. Again that’s magicmind.co/boner with code boner to save 40%. After 10 days, you can still save 20% on your first purchase!

Next, Erica Garza’s story. For this one, I’m dipping deep into the archives, with an interview I recorded back in 2014. I reached out to Erica after reading her compelling essay published in Salon called Tales of a Female Porn Addict.

August: You wrote that your compulsion started when you were 12 years old. Could you tell us kind of how that began?

Erica: Well, the compulsion started at 12, but I have definitely been interested in sex way before that I remember being about eight or nine and I was just constantly interested in sex even before I really knew what sex was like, how it worked. Exactly. I was always staring at men’s crotches and women’s breasts and, rubbing my Barbies together at home. I was just constantly turned on.

 It wasn’t until I was 12 that I started masturbating and had this outlet for all of that built up sexual frustration. I’m not saying I had an addiction right away, but I definitely was fascinated and I was just a hormonal horny, normal girl but I wish I knew that.

 The fact that I didn’t know that kind of turned it into an addiction for me. I felt a lot of shame tied up in that and I think because of two reasons. My parents were very young when they had us, me and my brother. And so they didn’t really give us any kind of sex talk. I didn’t have any kind of point of reference to turn to.

 And I figured they thought I would just learn at school, but I was raised in a very Catholic school and it’s kind of cliche, but it’s valid too, that we’re kind of repressed in Catholicism and everybody kind of knows that. So I learned early on that sex was something that happened between a man and a woman who are married, not a girl in her hand.

And that masturbation aside from being a sin is, something meant for boys. And so it became very charged with this kind of shame. And so I started turning to, besides fantasy, that’s how it started with is fantasy, I started turning to soft core porn on Cinemax and Shannon Tweed was my hero at night.

 The internet came about and it kind of started with just downloading pictures. And that took like an hour cuz I had dialup and then, um, streaming started coming into play and I started looking at porn sites and there were cyber sex and it just kind of progressed from there. 

August: I also was there in the dialup age, I was a teenager and I can’t imagine if, I mean, I would’ve been watching porn in kindergarten if it was on my little smartphone device, whatever.

Erica: Right. 

August: Because there is that curiosity and I love that you described it as normal because it is. 

Erica: Oh, definitely. 

August: And it’s incredible how our society really believes, you know, that sex is a negative thing and also not to be even spoken about for children though, we’re born sexual creatures. And especially for girls. 

So how did the compulsions early on affect your life, your emotional wellness, that kind of thing?

Erica: Well, I definitely started spending more and more time with the screens. I would self soothe and I should also mention at 12 I was diagnosed with scoliosis. And so I was outfitted with this big, bulky back brace. And so that also led to me feeling very insecure and withdrawn. And I used, um, masturbation and porn as an escape method and just to get away from it.

And I learned to rely on that kind of crutch in order to get through any of the hard issues I was facing around those times. And because I didn’t hear other girls talking about it and because I felt this was something that was wrong with me and something very unique and bad, I didn’t have anywhere to take that.And so I just kind of sat with that and turned it into a story of me being bad, something, being wrong.

And it led to this belief that I was so different from other people, there was no way I was gonna connect with other people. And that was just a belief that I held with me for a really long time. I mean, up until I started actually talking about these kind of things, openly and honest, did I see that, you know, other people do feel this way and I’m not so unique. I mean, it’s great to think you’re unique once in a while, but when it starts to become like I’m so unique and so different from everybody that there’s no way I’m ever going to connect with anybody, then, you know, it becomes something kind of dangerous.

It’s interesting because after I wrote the article for Salon that you mentioned, I got all these emails saying, ‘Oh, well you must have been sexually abused as a child. Like there’s no way  that a girl would think about sex that much or masturbate that much.’ Which is crazy to put into a head of a young girl or a woman, you know, that there’s something inherently wrong. It’s almost saying that this is for men, so we’re not human because it’s a human feeling to be sexually aroused and sexually attracted to something. And I say, you don’t question young boys who are masturbating under their covers. You know, when they’re 12 or 13, they just say boys are being boys. But to say that a girl, you know, doesn’t feel that way and shouldn’t act that way. That’s just, um, it’s sad. 

August: It’s very sad and very hurtful and it hurts everyone. It hurts boys, too, because there is sort of that boys will be boys mentality and women are either seen as, there’s that kind of dichotomy, we’re either slutty or kind of pure nuns.  

So then moving on into adulthood, how did it start affecting you as far as, after high school and into, you know, your romantic relationships? 

Erica: Well, I think shame has been a big factor in it. So because I found pleasure with shame you know, I thought there was something wrong with me, I carried that into my relationships. And so I was always, you know, stuck in my head fantasizing. I would fantasize about things like my boyfriend’s cheating on me all the time or he wants somebody with different body features that I don’t have, you know, body features that I saw on porn.

And all these things that would just make me feel bad. And it’s because I needed that sort of element in order to get off. It was almost as if I had become just as addicted to the shame element as I had to the pleasure that I was seeking inside. And so that just led to a big disconnect. I feel like that has been the biggest negative outcome of watching so much porn for me, and turning to it as an escape method, is just feeling disconnected. 

And as far as sex goes as well, I found sex really unfulfilling unless I was either touching myself or thinking about something else or I needed to be watching porn while I was having sex. There was just this barrier between me and my partner all the time.

August: Wow.

August (narration):

Erica reached a turning point a couple of years before we spoke, when she reached her 30th birthday. She’s taken a trip to Bali, with high hopes for the coming decade in her life. Those hopes struck quite a contrast to the stuck-ness she was finally starting to recognize in her life, and the habits and dependency that she said were “hindering [her] relationships and progress as a person.”

Erica: So I was in Bali for my 30th birthday, and I was doing a lot of meditating and yoga and in this state of mind, really open. 

I met my husband at that time and I’ve gotten a lot of criticism for saying, oh, I’m saying in my work that my husband saved me. And I really think it’s all about timing.

Every relationship is there to kind of teach us a lesson and being in that open space that I was, I opened for that kind of big love that I was really craving in my life. The thing that was different about this relationship was that we just made a pact with each other to be completely honest with each other.

 I had never really had that before in my other relationships. I was always doing a lot of hiding, a lot of pretending. And being honest, about everything, even the most, you know, shameful, humiliating parts of myself I really think that just allowing myself to really get vulnerable like that and be open with another person when I had been hiding.

And this is like the thing I’ve been hiding forever and the biggest scariest, darkest thing. Being able to talk about it just really opened things up for me. And I really started asking myself new questions, wanting to live differently and writing about it. 

And I had been writing about a lot of different things for a long time, but it wasn’t until I was writing about this topic, because it was so meaningful to me and had such a history and it kind of just flowed out of me and it came really naturally. Whereas in other topics, I had felt all this writer’s block. And I was like, oh, I really need to be writing about this because this is something I really need to be working on in my life.

 And once I started, you know, asking myself this questions and getting open and honest only then did I start to feel really authentic and more comfortable with myself and confident and all these big changes in my life. And I was like, whoa, well, I guess there was a lot tied up in this. 

August: Yeah, you were really onto something. That’s fascinating. And I can see the desire for authenticity and, and deep connection that you had been missing was a huge motivation. 

Erica: Right. 

August: How did your husband, or then I guess boyfriend respond to your admittance that you had been addicted to porn? 

Erica: I think that he was kind of already aware by the kind of sex we were having, which was a little disconnected and all my old little habits were still there only now there was this willingness to kind of work beyond it.

And so he was just…wonderful. Really patient and willing to talk to me about these sorts of things. And when he’d feel me kind of holding back a little bit, he’d push a little further. And so there was just great communication. I think that’s what’s been so different about this relationship is that there is that ability to really connect , which has been really enriching for the both of us.

August: That’s beautiful. 

And how have other people responded? Have you heard from other women who are also struggling? You may have heard me mention that women who’ve talked to me, there’s there’s so much more shame around it it seems. uh, for them to talk to anyone and once somebody starts the conversation, I imagine it’s easier. 

Erica: Oh, definitely. Yeah. 

I’ve gotten quite a few emails from women who are just really grateful that I’m talking about this sort of thing. So many times I’ve heard, you know, I’m going through the same thing and I’m really happy that you’re talking about it. I thought it was just something wrong with me. 

I started writing about it as a therapeutic tool, but now that other women are reaching out to me and telling me that they’re really grateful I’m talking about it, I’m really hoping that it helps to encourage other people. 

Because I had wished when I was around 12, that I could have just done a Google search and found all these other stories of people talking about this sort of thing so I wouldn’t have felt so alone and maybe then I wouldn’t have learned to depend on the addiction so much.

So I really hope that other people can find my stories and be able to connect in that way and feel that, nothing’s wrong with them and I’m doing okay so, so are they. 

August: Beautiful. And I’m so glad that you are doing well.

Do you recommend that people who feel that they’re struggling with addiction or, or concerned about it? I know that some people aren’t sure, necessarily, if their porn habits are interfering with their lives or not, do you recommend a complete abstinence from it?

Erica: I mean, that used to be my view about two years ago when I had decided this was a problem for me. I started going to some 12 step meetings and I wanted to. Put porn away completely and get away from it, which, you know, may be the healthy thing for me, but it’s still a learning process for me. So I’ve definitely relapsed in the past few years, plenty of times.

And I think I’m still kind of holding onto this idea that maybe there is some hope for some moderation, because I don’t wanna completely abstain and block myself from any kind of desire, any kind of external desire. I’m an open minded person and a sexual being. And I don’t wanna just completely close off that part of myself.

 Unfortunately for me, when I watch a clip, it turns into two and three and four clips, and then I start binging. But I’m really hoping that in the future I’m able to find a way to have some kind of moderation when it comes to it. But I’m not there yet. So I’m still learning. 

[encouraging, acoustic music]

August (narration):

Earlier this year — so 8 years after that conversation — Erica was interviewed for a Vogue article on female porn addiction. She brought up important complexities around porn challenges. 

She mentioned the different ways they can play out, from relationship problems or sexual dysfunction to “a kind of emotional malaise.” She said, quote, “the line between enjoying porn in a ‘sex positive’ way and finding that one’s consumption has become more a hindrance to life isn’t always clear.”

Erica also shared that she has a different relationship with porn today. She said, quote, “Now I know when I’m looking at porn as a form of escape and when I’m doing so just because I want to. It’s weird to get to this point, but I actually find porn a bit boring now.” 

Erica also said that now, as the mother of a five year old girl, she’s preparing to talk to her about these matters. I don’t know about you, but that gives me a lot of hope.

[acoustic chord riff]

August (narration):

To learn more about Brooke Hazen and his take on holistically managing erectile dysfunction, visit his brookehazen.com. He told me he’s focused lately on his YouTube channel, where you can hear a complete reading of his book, You Are Not Broken

A few years after Erica and I first spoke, her powerful memoir was released by Simon and Schuster. Find Getting Off: One Woman’s Journey Through Sex and Porn Addiction on Amazon or most anywhere books are sold. Find direct links to the book and her essays at ericagarza.com. 

[acoustic chord riff]

And, if you’re enjoying Girl Boner Radio, I would so appreciate a rating and review on Apple Podcasts or the iTunes Store — and if you’d share links with your friends. You can also support the show, and get fun extras, by joining my community at Patreon.com/girlboner.

Thanks so much for listening (or reading!).

[outro music that makes you wanna dance…]

***

You can also support the show by supporting our sponsors!

For the next 10 days, you can get 40% off your subscription Simply go to magicmind.co/boner and enter the code boner at checkout. And you can still save 20% after 10 days on your first purchase.

And get a soothing dose of nature by ordering Ontario Wildlife Photography by Noah Cole!