56 Freedom from Porn with Sathiya Sam
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[00:00:00] Right now, the world needs great men who will stand up and lead with honor, serve with purpose, and courageously fulfill their God given roles as husbands, fathers, leaders, and men. I'm your host, Franklin Swan, bringing you practical tools and powerful conversations you can use every day to build yourself into the man God is calling you to be.

This is The World Needs Men. Let's go.

All right, welcome back to The World Needs Men podcast. I'm your host, Franklin Swan, and I have got a really special guest on today, Sathya Sam. He is a husband, father, coach, and an international speaker and author. He was formerly a university researcher turned pastor turned coach. And he is the creator of a program called Deep Clean and Liberated Man program.[00:01:00]

which are effectively programs that help men overcome pornography addiction. He's guided over 10, 000 men to freedom from addiction to pornography, and he is on the show, uh, today to speak to all things related to this topic that are destructive to men, to marriages, to families. literally to probably every element of our lives.

And so, Sothea, it's a, it's a pleasure and honor to have you on and I just appreciate your time. I love what you're doing, man. And it's an honor to be here today. Perfect. Well, uh, let's just kick it off. Tell us a little bit about your story. Uh, bring us up to speed on where you are today and we'll start diving in from there.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, nobody, of work necessarily because they wanted to from a young age, I had a story. I got exposed to pornography when I was 11 years old in the computer lab of my Christian school. And uh, I was not, not the person who grew up with a ton of trauma or had a bad upbringing. In fact, uh, everything was set up for me to have a pretty good life and I still stumbled into it.

And you know, this is, In 2001, as it were, [00:02:00] so, you know, before smartphones and even just around the advent of broadband internet, uh, I got exposed and it's not like I was addicted to pornography overnight. It was really just a seed that got planted and, uh, little by little, I started to watch more of it, started to become more interested in it.

And it was in my twenties that pornography really became a full blown addiction. I was a university researcher. I was working in a lab. I was also studying. I was volunteering with children with autism and I had a little bit of a side hustle on the weekends. And I was just trying to juggle everything in sort of my high achieving, over performing kind of life.

And pornography was the only solution I could think of. And I mean, I didn't make it to every single lecture, and sometimes I was late for, you know, on a commitment. But I never, never missed a session with pornography. That was, that was always the priority for me. And I think that was a season where I thought, Man, you know, I wonder if this is a problem.

I kind of had in the back of my head, like, This is probably a little bit too dependent, but I was just in survival mode. So it kind of didn't [00:03:00] matter. And then there came a point in my life where I was ready to quit. And I figured this would be easy. You know, I've quit other bad habits before, and that's when I realized this was not a bad habit.

This was actually a very destructive addiction. And, uh, it took me another five years. From when I made that decision to actually figure out how to recover. And that was in large part because there weren't great podcasts like your show. There weren't a lot of resources or materials out there to help guys who were struggling with this issue.

And so the first few years I kind of spun my tires. I piecemealed solutions. I had a bit of a lone wolf mentality and tried to do it all on my own. And it left me just stuck, stuck in a binge per cycle every couple of weeks, every couple of months. The last couple of years is where I really got results.

And I made a decision in those couple years. Which is that if these results were actually going to work for me, if I could actually truly figure this out, it was actually a prayer. I said, God, if you would, if you helped me figure this out for myself, then I'll do everything in my power to help other guys figure it out for themselves as well.

And so February, 2016, I had my last relapse. I had been [00:04:00] clean for longer periods of time prior, and then, you know, fell off the wagon one way or the other. And so I really wanted to wait and make sure that I was actually in a good spot. Spot, and it was almost three years. It was the end of 2018 that I launched Deep clean, and uh, we've been off to the races ever since.

You know, I've helped 1500 men personally. We've had another, another, I think your interest at 10,000, but we've had another, it's over 12,000 now. Wow. People that have gone through our system and learned the deep clean process. And our platforms have just grown tremendously. I think when I first started out in this space, everybody kind of gave me a slow clap with a little bit of a wince, like, Oh man, I hope that works out for you.

I hope you're able to actually help people because it's such a private and taboo subject, but really the last couple of years it's gained a lot more traction and we've just, we've reached people in ways we never could have dreamed of before. It is such a challenging subject, like no one wants to talk about this.

Yeah. But yet it's, it's easy. Other than you and I, I guess Yeah. Right. . Right . But it's, it is literally eroding. If, if you really were to pull back the curtains, so to speak, and, and look at this, it is eroding every element of our society. When [00:05:00] it's, I mean, because like you said, you're 11 years old when you get exposed to this, most, most people your age and up, like, and down, like, it's not like they come across this when they were 25 years old, it's when they were young, and what child is going to, like, make the decision, oh, this probably isn't good for me, like, they're, they're not even going to have any ability to really resist this or, or do anything productive about it, I wouldn't think.

No. And I mean, I knew that porn was not good or I knew there was something bad about it. But my 11 year old brain did not have the wherewithal to, you know, put up some guardrails and to avoid it. You know, you, you just fall into the traps of like, it's just one more. It's harmless. It's not that big of a deal.

And the difference though, like it's interesting. We're talking about, uh, first exposure, right? Cause I mean, how old were you when you were first exposed to pornography? Yeah, probably I'd have to say middle school, somewhere in middle school. So somewhere between like 10 and 12 years old, somewhere in that range.

Yeah. [00:06:00] So the interesting thing is the age of first exposure hasn't changed a lot. I mean, there's some studies that show maybe it's as young as eight, but most surveys come back around the 10 to 11 year mark. Yeah. But the difference now is when, uh, when I first got exposed, it was digital content, but it was a computer in a computer lab.

I couldn't go home and watch it on my smartphone. And in fact, when I did start watching pornography, I had to be very strategic about how I would access the family computer and watch there. There were barriers to entry, right? And, you know, for generations prior, it's physical material. It's your dad's stack of playboys, or it's a VHS that got left around.

It's. It's, it's, you know, physical material where there's barriers to entry, those barriers don't exist today. You know, porn is what they call the three A's. It's affordable, accessible, and anonymous. And when an 11 year old has those three A's working in their favor, quote unquote, it can really wreak havoc because the level of dependency and addiction develops a lot younger and it becomes a lot harder to break out of it as a result.[00:07:00]

Is there any addiction that is got you talking about those three A's? Is there any addiction that that is quite is the word sinister or just Is there anything that quite compares to what pornography is when it comes to the addictive nature of it? I haven't found one. I would say that every addiction has its unique qualities.

I've done quite a bit of, you know, deep diving into the research and some other spectrums. You know, gambling is really interesting because gambling is an addiction where There's a positive social element. There's, there's tons of people around, everybody's doing it. And so one person could be gambling and it's the only time he showed up to a casino all year and the other person's really addicted, right?

You know, cocaine is a really interesting one to compare. Cocaine is a very extreme addiction. And we know for sure that when people do like, if they go that far to consume cocaine, very, very hard, like a switch, flips off in your brain, very, very hard to break out of that. The withdrawal symptoms can be really nasty.

The interesting thing with pornography, and I think what separates it is, [00:08:00] well, there's two things. Number one is the early exposure. Most 11 year olds are not snorting cocaine for the first time. Most 11 year olds are not gambling for the first time. But for some reason, you know, 11 year olds still to this day are getting exposed to pornography like it's kind of normal.

And that's a huge problem. I think that the second part though is sexual stimulation is processed 20 percent faster in the brain and the body. So if we compare how a line of cocaine would match up to, uh, in a pornography video, I mean, that sounds like a really obscure comparison. And surely the line of cocaine is a lot worse.

But that stimulation is actually processed faster from pornography than from the cocaine and cocaine has actually a very rapid uptake, right? So I think these unique qualities of pornography make it just a standout and not everybody who watches necessarily gets addicted But the impact it's having on the brain the body.

I just don't think there's anything like it in this world We haven't seen anything like it. So I want to ask a question on this It seems to me, if you look at all [00:09:00] the other addictions that, that you could have, there are none that come close to having a, a stigma of guilt and shame attached to them, which I've got to think keep people stuck in it even more and, and keep it, you know, keep people from seeking help from, from men like you or from programs.

I mean, if you've got an alcohol addiction, that, that's not nearly to me is, is big of a problem from a social standpoint or a. Like how you feel about that than if it's like, Oh, I've got a porn addiction problem. Yeah, I would agree. I think, I think all addictions have at least a degree of both guilt and shame.

I do think what's different you, you hit on something really interesting there. Like with alcoholism, you tell people that I'm going to AA. And they applaud you, right? And if you're addicted to cocaine, you tell people, I'm going to rehab, and they say, good for you. We're cheering you on. But you tell people that you have a porn addiction and they look at you like, what the heck is wrong with you?

You know, you wouldn't actually tell somebody that because it's so taboo. [00:10:00] So I think the very private nature of it really plays into the guilt and the shame. And I also think pornography addiction is playing into something like our sexual desires, which is incredibly personal, incredibly private. And so the shame is at a much deeper level.

You know, there is a study that came out a few years ago. It was a big group of men, I forget how many, but they surveyed them. And what they found was that men who view pornography were more likely to develop eating disorders, such an obscure study. But the linking piece was watching the pornography was causing this body dysmorphia in them.

They felt like something was wrong with their bodies. So they would binge and purge and they would avoid food and all that kind of stuff to try to have, you know, these perfect, they were more prone to those kinds of behaviors. Interesting. The, the point I'm making here is these are the, the, the private messaging that pornography sends us even is incredibly shame filled and it really can keep you stuck and there's a lot of shame based recovery approaches out there that people have [00:11:00] tried to quit pornography that have just left them more stuck as a result.

So yes, shame is, is a huge part of it, not just in the addiction development, but also on the recovery piece. Even you mentioned a minute ago, even an 11 year old knows there's not something right about this. I would say so. So I don't think anyone who's going to be listening to the podcast is, you know, I mean, maybe someone thinks it's an okay thing, but most of the men listening to this are going to have that intuitive sense that it's not something that's beneficial for my life.

I'd love to make this a very practical and applicable conversation. So if there's a man listening to this and he's got this problem, but he's terrified of how to even like talk to somebody about it. Like what do you, like he maybe he's a church going man, he's got a family, he's got a job, like where is a safe place and how can he find a way to get some help without and get over that fear?

Yeah, so I think there's two layers to this question. Some people aren't even maybe ready to reach out and ask for help. Some people [00:12:00] just want to maybe see if they can start the conversation. Yeah. So for that person, I would say to you, or I would ask you actually, who is the person in your life that you trust the most to share private information with without being judged?

Who's that person? Usually there's one person in every person's life that they can share that kind of stuff with and I would say that's where you start. The dark things must come to light. You just can't do this on your own and a lot of guys have tried. Some guys have even achieved it, but to actually sustain it long term, it very, very rarely happens on your own.

And to be honest, even if you could do it on your own, it's a lot more enjoyable to do it with other people. You know, a lot of the addiction research and you know, I'm a man of faith. And so even if you look into the Bible, there's always a huge emphasis on relationship and connection and community with one another.

And, uh, the research adage is the opposite of addiction is not sobriety, it's connection. So I think even just having one other person who knows what's going on in your life and they know it, you know, in relatively good detail, that really goes [00:13:00] a long way for de shaming like we were talking about earlier, but also for starting to recover.

I think, you know, with a little bit more time, or if, if maybe there's something major on the line, I mean, clients are going to, are going to come to us when, you know, their marriages are on the line, the wife is ready to leave. Some guys have lost jobs over watching pornography on work laptops and that kind of thing.

If you have something at stake and you need to reach out and get some help, the most important thing is that you find somebody that you trust. like that nothing matters more. I mean, they should have a track record. It's I think a bonus if they have their own story, they should have a knowledge base.

There's definitely some criteria there. You have to trust them because recovery does require you to do things that you haven't done before to learn things that you haven't learned before. And if you don't trust that person, you're just not going to commit to the process and you probably won't get the results you want.

So that's why I always encourage people like there's lots of podcasts out there. You know, there's lots of Instagram pages now, you know, like anywhere that you can find people talking about this. Go find somebody that you trust, consume their content, and then those are the people that you should be [00:14:00] getting help from.

For men listening, can you take us through some of the kind of the, the higher level impacts that men might not be aware of, whether that's how pornography impacts their physical health or maybe their mental clarity, relationships, ability to produce at work, like these areas of life that for, for most men, they would say are very important.

Can you connect and link up? Like when you're looking at porn, how, how those things, how it impacts those areas of our life. Yeah, for sure. So, you know, I, like I mentioned, faith is a huge part of my life, but I also was a university researcher. So I will, um, I'll merge these two things together and I'll talk to you about the four changes that happen in your brain when you watch pornography.

And at least one of these will click for most of your audience of, okay, yeah, I've experienced this. The first thing is called desensitization. So desensitization is when the things that you used to watch no longer cut it, so you look for something new or something more intense. And if you were to study your viewing history, I can guarantee you the stuff that you watch [00:15:00] now compared to the stuff that you watched before is a lot more something.

The stuff that you watched before is probably relatively vanilla. That's because your brain has built up tolerance. And when enough tolerance gets built up, no longer do you just watch mainstream, but you might start to watch some obscure niches. We have a lot of heterosexual men who watch same sex porn.

Very, very common one. And part of it is this desensitization thing. It's that the stuff they just used to watch didn't cut it, and then they got onto this, and there was a novelty to it. There was something that kept them kind of hooked, and they keep watching it. Another, even funnier thing is, furtherance of this would be people who no longer watch, but they have affairs or they buy sex, that kind of stuff.

And if you don't engage in any kind of insidious behavior like that, a different manifestation would be a sexual misperformance. So there's a lot of data now that would suggest that erectile dysfunction is at an all time high in young men. And there's multiple reasons for this, but actually a huge part of it that most don't discuss is internet pornography.

[00:16:00] Because pornography increases that threshold and pornography is hyperproduced and the reality is no real person could actually compete with what you view in pornography. And if you watch enough of it, you might get into a real life situation and find that it's just not, Giving your body the level of stimulation that it's accustomed to to experience arousal.

So desensitization is a really, really big one. That's why I kind of gave a few examples there. The second thing that could change in your brain is what they call hypofrontality. And this is basically where the Prefrontal cortex is the front part of your brain that makes executive decisions. It allows you to think long term and it's also where you develop your sense of self.

When you have hypofrontality, that means reduced activity in that part of your brain. So this is where you'll see brain fog, you'll see low self esteem, you'll see that people start to become a little bit more impulsive and they're not thinking long term as much. Worst decision makers. There's sort of a trail of bad decision making when people experience hypofrontality, especially from [00:17:00] watching pornography addiction.

The third one is a reduced stress response. So you just don't have the same capacity for stress and different stressors in life. That one's fairly self explanatory. And then the fourth one is really interesting. The fourth one's called self care. And you might hear that one and go, wait a minute, didn't you say desensitization was one?

That was the first one. Sensitization is when your brain gets triggered or cued to watch or desire pornography from things that are non sexual. So for me, you know, like I mentioned, I was addicted to porn for 15 years and I used to watch a lot of pornography on this white desk. So if I ever walked into my room and my laptop was open, And it was sitting on that white desk.

My brain would just go there like, like just reactively. And so that's an example where a laptop on a desk has, there's nothing sexual about it, but my brain had built that association and that became a cue. And so, uh, people often find this, they, they meet people and they, that person reminds them of something they used to watch, or they hear certain words that are just ordinary words, but they've heard it in a [00:18:00] very sexual context.

And so that triggers it. So there's those kinds of cues are very good indicators that, you know, your brain has actually been changed because of the pornography you're watching. Wow. So those things become effectively triggers that shouldn't for a normal, you know, Human beings shouldn't be triggers.

Exactly. Exactly. So, on the hypo frontal Am I saying this right? Hypo front Explain that a little bit more. So, it sounds like it just literally shuts off or just numbs out that thinking part of our brain. Does anything Is there anything else that does that like pornography for a Uh, those are two really good questions.

So the first thing I would say is it to say it shuts off is probably a little bit of an overstatement. It's just that it's reduced activity in that part of your brain. And that part of your brain is what makes you a smart, intelligent human being. So again, like reduced activity, there's not something that we want.

We want to become better decision makers. And [00:19:00] ultimately, we want to make use of our brain. Prefrontal cortex as much as possible. Is there anything else that has that same effect on the brain? Definitely. Like there, like there's evidence that, um, like substance abuse, you know, um, alcoholism, cocaine, some of the things that we listed earlier that can definitely cause the hypofrontality.

Yeah. There's a couple of different things that would cause that for sure as well. Is there anything else that causes all four of the things I just mentioned in your brain? that I'm not aware of. And I kind of said at the beginning that most of your audience has probably experienced one of them. I was being very generous and conservative.

The reality is most people in your audience have probably experienced multiple of those things that we mentioned. And that is, that would for sure be an indicator of porn consumption specifically. Okay. So it reduces your thinking capacity. It desensitizes you. And it decreases your ability to handle stress, so it sounds like it on multiple levels, just decreases your ability to be a healthy functioning human.

Yeah, I think that would be pretty accurate. And [00:20:00] we could kind of go to the next layer of this, like, the first layer would be the brain, how it affects the individual. And then if If we went to kind of like an outer ripple, as it were, we could start talking about how this affects relationships. You know, 56 percent of divorces cite the partner's porn use as the reason, the main reason that they, that they initiate the divorce.

Relationship satisfaction, you know, they did a study where they measured relationship quality. Based on 31 different metrics, and they found that when somebody was watching pornography, 30 of the 31 metrics were negatively affected, so they could basically, you know, pretty confidently say that pornography is affecting someone's capacity for relationship, and it's affecting their overall quality, the way they're showing up.

There's another study that shows people who watch pornography have reduced capacity for empathy. And they were able to actually show this in the neurology of that individual. So the point here is like you just talked about how it affects everything in a man, right? Everything in a human being. And it's not just them, but it's their relationships.

It's the way they're showing up at work. We haven't [00:21:00] even talked about the productivity one, but man, we have so many clients who lost a job because they were watching porn at work. And we have a bunch of other clients who have gone through a program successfully. and have gotten promotions or they went and started a business or, you know, they got all this time and energy back and they were able to do something way better with it for society.

So there's a lot of good indicators that the ripples are maybe more devastating even than just the individual effects when you watch porn. When you take and carry this problem out 20, 30 years. Like, is there any, anything that's been done to look at, like, what are the long term impacts on our society? I mean, because this is destroying our ability to be good functioning humans, destroying relationships, breaking apart families, like, crushing men left and right.

If the trajectory in the current, like Tide doesn't change what happens to our society in 20 or 30 years. [00:22:00] Wow. I mean, that is a research study that I would fund with all the money in my bank account. Right. 'cause I, I think it, I think it's a really important question. You know, I, I don't, I don't have a, a full comprehensive answer to that, but I can tell you two things that, that we've observed for sure.

In our, in our practice, I think number one is, uh, I'm, I'm a big believer that the family unit is, uh, the backbone of society. And so when, you know, fatherlessness is at an all time high in our society. And when that happens, the family breaks down and I believe society breaks down as a result. And I think if we took this from a different angle, let's not talk about fatherlessness.

Let's talk about a father. who simply doesn't show up for his kids. He's just, he's not present either. He's not present physically, or maybe he's not present emotionally or psychologically because he's got that hypofrontality going on and he's really impulsive and he's just seeking his next dopamine hit, that sort of thing.

That can really start to mark a child because then the child grows up with this deficiency Maybe that affects the way that they show up in their relationships and they show up in society. And now we're not just [00:23:00] talking about society, uh, currently, we're talking about future societies as well in the next generation.

I think that if families are the backbone of society, then a marriage is the backbone of a family. And when guys aren't showing up in their marriages, when the intimacy is lacking, when When they're not being the husbands that God's designed them to be. I think that creates huge problems as well. And so I think, I think pornography's effects are actually very systemic.

It's, we've kind of glossed over it a little bit because it seems so harmless or it seems like there's bigger fish to fry, but I would agree with you. I think it's a massive, massive, massive problem. And the productivity piece is another really big one. But let me, let me say this. This is the second point I wanted to make on this.

I'm also. of the conviction that if you change the man, you change the world. And I really do believe that when men pursue integrity, when they really take their integrity seriously, when they're willing to pay a price for them to become everything God's made them to be, even if it does require an intense recovery period or giving up some things that are very pleasurable [00:24:00] for them so that they can have a better life.

I think the world gets better. And I I realized this a few years and I actually I, uh, I became a father in the last year and a half. Congratulations. Thank you so much, man. And you know, I had some time off and I'm very fortunate to just have a team. Uh, you know, I have a full team of coaches now and a bunch of people who could run things for me when my son was born.

So I was able to take some time off. And while I was off, I had this realization, which is that I'm not really that passionate about helping guys quit porn, although I'm sure you can feel the passion a little bit coming out in this interview. But what actually fires me up. is what happens on the other side.

When guys do quit, when guys do break free of the grips of pornography, the world just gets better. You know, the marriage is stronger and the families are more connected. And if the families are more connected, and if that kid can have an actual sex talk with his son, well then his son gets to grow up differently and doesn't repeat the same sins as his father.

And you know, the list goes on and on and on. And so I think not, I want your, your audience to be encouraged in this, that. [00:25:00] Even if, even if pornography has wreaked havoc on your life and the people around you, you have the power to, to change your life and to actually change the world in the process. And that's not an overstatement because when you get better, your marriage gets better, your family gets better, your community gets better, and society gets better as a result.

That's such a great point because it's easy to focus on the. on the one side of this coin, right? The impact of it, the guilt, the shame, the lost jobs, broken marriages, destroyed families. But what I think would probably be more enticing to men is to show, hey, look at what is possible if you're willing, as you say, to pay that price of what I would call paying the price of being a man.

Which is to get rid of things that don't serve you and that destroy your ability to show up as a good husband and father. But, like, look at the abundance and the benefits that lie on the other side of your willingness and decision to take action on that and get rid [00:26:00] of it so that you can show up as a healthy man for your family.

Oh man, it's such a big deal. I mean, we, and we were hearing these stories a lot in our community these days, just because our client base has become quite large over the years. But I mean, every week we're hearing about somebody who, you know, has a marriage restored, uh, somebody who's taking better care of their bodies because they've quit pornography.

Somebody who, uh, you know, is finally plugging in at church a bit more because they don't have to, you know, be afraid of being a hypocrite or found out guys who are being more productive at work starting those businesses. We just had somebody recently reach out to us. He's, uh, he's been clean for, I think he said, 18 months since he did our program.

And in those 18 months, he's run 2200 miles, including a couple of ultra marathons. You know, he's just like, think about, he got all that time and energy back and look at what he's doing now. And he's inspired. He's got 7 kids. He's inspiring all of his kids. He's sharing a little bit of his journey online.

And so other people are being inspired like he's changing the world. You know, he's making the world a better place and all of it started because he quit pornography. And the guy's only a year and a half in, [00:27:00] I mean, wait till this guy is five, six, seven years in 25 years from now, 35 years from now, the ripples are going to be massive.

And I think people lose sight of that because quitting pornography is not, not easy. You know, if your audience is listening and they've had a struggle with it, They've probably tried a few times, you know, and they tried really hard. It was with an earnest effort and maybe they weren't able to get the result they want.

It's, it's not an easy thing, but man, it is, it is well worth the effort because on the other side of it, the possibilities are endless for, for how your life can change and how the world can change. I love that. Let's talk real quick about, about our kids and how we lead them. I think the first thing to recognize is one, you're not going to be able to lead your kids in a productive way to know how to handle this.

if you're not handling it yourself. So you, you know, for the men listening, I guess the women too, like, like if this is something that's in your life, you got to get it out of yours first. Otherwise you can't lead with any level of integrity. But then from there, like, how do we, you know, not just protect our kids, which we obviously have to do, [00:28:00] like limit their, their ability to access this.

But one day, like say you're going to be 18, you'll be an adult, you get to make your own choice. How do we prepare our sons Like for the coming war that this is against them and how do we prepare our daughters? Because one thing to tear I've got a son I got a daughter and one thing that terrifies me is knowing that my daughter is stepping into a world where the vast Majority of the boys that will be out there have all been Exposed to this at some level.

And so how do I help her navigate that reality? Yeah, okay. Well, actually, the answer to that question, you kind of answered it at the beginning there. So, this is what I would say to fathers. You are the template that your daughter will marry, and you're the template that your son will copy. And that includes pornography use.

Right. And sometimes we think that because they don't know about our porn consumption, that it's not going to affect them. But I think that's, that's a [00:29:00] gross misunderstanding because porn is fueled by faulty thinking. You know, It's fueled by perceptive perceptions and perspectives. You don't think that your son sees you checking out the grocery clerk.

Trust me, he does. He, he sees it all and all those little micro behaviors that your son observes, he's going to start to pick up and he's going to start to copy whether, whether he wants to and he realizes it or not because you're, you're setting the bar, you're setting the standard of who he's supposed to become.

So I cannot emphasize this enough for folks. You quitting porn is bigger than you and it's, it's actually bigger than you and your wife, even though that in of itself would be a good enough reason, but this is actually about your kids as well. And if you can become that example and you can not only just show them like, Hey, this is the standard, you're not just talking to talk, but you're actually walking the walk.

That's going to send a signal louder than anything else. And so I, I really think if you're a father listening, it is so imperative for you to, to get free. And, and if you're not going to do it for yourself, then do it for your kids. I think the other thing that I [00:30:00] would say to fathers is, you know, when it comes to, and to mothers, I know you have some women listening as well.

When it, when it comes to having this conversation with your kids or how do we protect our kids, there's, there's a couple things that come to mind. So the first thing is we have to acknowledge this is no longer a question of if your kids get exposed to pornography. It's a question of when. So we want to be really proactive.

I don't mean that to be like defeatist about the whole thing. Like they're just going to get exposed to porn. So who cares? No, they're going to get exposed to porn. So let's, let's actually set them up for success in this regard. And I think there's two things. The first thing is, and, and you can only do this at certain ages, but the earlier you have the conversation, the better.

I mentioned I became a father. My son's 14 years old, and he knows what his penis is. If I say, Judah, where's your penis? He knows exactly where it is. Well, I'm just, I'm just trying to basically get any of the weirdness about some of these conversations out of the way early, because that way, when they do start to encounter sexual content online, whether they try to or not, we can have a conversation [00:31:00] about it.

And there's already a history of, I've talked to dad about this kind of stuff before, and he's not, weird. He doesn't get this weird look in his face. His jaw doesn't get all cleansed. We can just have conversations and it's normal. So if you can set that foundation, that really goes a long way. There's obviously going to be some parents listening who are, who are going to say, well, that ship has maybe sailed for me a little bit.

Like my kid has already been exposed or they're already, you know, in puberty or whatever it is. And it's still more or less the same thing. If, if you know, your kid's watching pornography or you think they're watching, or you're trying to broach the subject a little bit, the biggest thing is that your kid doesn't want to lecture They, they don't want to be condemned and they want to know that if they can talk to you about these things, they can actually be honest, uh, without any huge ramifications because generally, like we said earlier, that first exposure, you usually know, like, this is not a good thing.

And so they don't need to be reminded of that. What they probably need is some support to know that somebody is there with them and to know that you don't think any differently of them, despite the fact that they've maybe watched some pornography or seen it. So the main [00:32:00] message really here, Franklin, is you just, you want to be active on this conversation because if you're not the voice in their ears about sex and pornography and everything else.

then their peers will be the voice, their teachers will be the voice, or worse, the media will be the voice, and they're going to get the wrong message. So I think those are the main things for parents to be considering. Sometimes parents can get very narrow sighted, like, I just want to make sure he never watches, or I know he's watching and I need to make him, let him know it's wrong that he doesn't do it again.

It's like, actually, let's just try to zoom out a little bit and see how can we empower your kid to just make good decisions and learn how to have a healthier relationship with sexuality. How would you describe the wrong way to go about having that conversation? It's, it's a little bit circumstantial. I think if you're just trying to like bring up the conversations, let's say, let's call it pre puberty and maybe before they've likely been exposed to pornography.

There's not really a wrong way to do it, uh, or there's fewer ways you can screw it up. I'll put it that way. But you just having conversations about sex, even if, I mean, I, [00:33:00] I was, uh, interviewing a researcher on my podcast one time and she said something she learned to do with her kids when they were young is if there was ever even any kind of innuendo in a movie or that sort of thing, or, or if there was a sex scene afterwards, she would talk to them about it.

She'd just say, Hey, what did you guys think about that scene? And just start to kind of create this communication history between the kids so that then when you give them a device and you say, Hey, you know, when you watch this. When you have this device, you might come across pornography and pornography is, you know, is XYZ.

You can give a brief explanation. If you find this, just let me know. You're not going to be in trouble. Uh, but I just want to know if you come, if you come across it and they're going to believe you if you've built that history. And so I don't think there's necessarily a super wrong way you could do it unless you're just very condemning about it or like really shame, shame inducing.

If you're very rule heavy, that I think if you're trying to have the conversation with kids who have already probably been exposed to pornography and maybe you're not sure you are sure, I think the worst thing you could do is try to come on to them with some sort of disciplinary [00:34:00] action or even, like I said, a lecture about why porn is bad.

It's not to say that you, as a parent, your job really is to educate and inform them. It's just that when you do it in that moment, they're going to feel really bad about themselves and they're going to, they're going to tune you out. All they're going to hear is I'm bad and I'm in trouble and something's wrong with me.

They're going to want to cover it up more. So alternatively, the best thing that you could do for your kids, if you want to help or support them is just show them unconditional love and show them that you're a safe place to have these conversations. And if you're not, then become that, that like, do your work, you know, and become that person because your kids need it.

And you only get a small window of time before they're out in the world. Like you said, they're 18 years old and they get access to everything that they want and they start to make decisions on their own. Okay, a little bit of a shift. How do you help women whose husbands are struggling with this? Or do you?

Great question. So, my work is specifically with the men who are struggling. We have built partnerships with, uh, really what is an [00:35:00] emerging field in psychology called betrayal trauma. Have you heard of this? Are you familiar with the term? I'm not. Okay. Betrayal trauma is, well, it's what it sounds like. It's when you, uh, you experience betrayal at a level that causes a traumatic experience in your body.

And generally for the spouse of a porn addict, what they experience is betrayal trauma. It is a sense of betrayal. They're traumatized by the experience. It's overwhelming. They are blindsided. Uh, sometimes I mean, actually, oftentimes the women suspect something is wrong. Something's going on. Maybe they couldn't quite put their.

But there's still, there's still a trauma piece. There's still a sense of betrayal that needs to be worked through. So for women who are dealing with that, you know, you may have bought into the lie that your husband is the only person with the problem here and he just needs to do his thing and once he's cleaning a porn, then we can have a healthy marriage.

That's just not how it works. And the studies would suggest that. And anecdotally, I can tell you, we've had lots of guys who have quit porn and then their wife still doesn't trust them because she's dealing with betrayal trauma and she doesn't know how to [00:36:00] handle it. So. If you're a partner and you have been impacted by your husband's porn use, what I would say to you, number one, is it's not your fault.

And that's not, I'm not trying to say it's, it's your fault. It's your responsibility. And this is all on you. It is his fault. And he made those decisions. But what I'd like to suggest to you is if you're in a marriage, the two have become one, you're in this together. And that means you're also affected.

And if you really want to set your marriage up to be as healthy as possible, then I mean, again, just simple research would suggest that what stacks the odds in a couple's favor of actually making it through is that the husband does his work and the woman does hers. So, that would be my encouragement.

And the woman's work looks very different. Betrayal trauma is very, very different. It's, it's usually that the trauma a woman experiences, uh, from their husband's porn use actually lands on, Traumas that happened earlier on in life, experiences that happened earlier. So a lot of betrayal trauma is actually working through those earlier experiences.

And as you work through those, you're then able to work through the betrayal that you experienced from your spouse. So that'd be my main [00:37:00] recommendation. But again, I would say start slowly, go find some content on betrayal trauma, try to understand it, learn about it, see if it makes sense. And then if you can find some people that are talking about it in a way that, you know, that makes sense to you and that you trust, then, then you start to explore their services and that sort of thing.

That's really interesting. This may be anecdotal, but in your experience, like, so what are the stats on, on how big the porn industry is in the U S or my guess world or whatever? The top three porn sites get more traffic than Netflix, Amazon, and X or Twitter combined. So it's, it's guessed to be a hundred billion dollar industry.

They're all privately owned companies. So, uh, nobody knows exactly, uh, the, the amount, but that's just a kind of a guesstimate. And this is, you know, these numbers are actually pre like AR, VR, and some of those things. things. I just spoke with a guy in our program. He just joined our program and he had an emotional affair for three emotional affairs for about a year and a half.

And he found out that they were all with bots. And so that, that industry is emerging. Yeah. And you know, it is [00:38:00] laughable. And at the same time, these stories are becoming way more common and the numbers I just gave you don't include any of those burgeoning industries. So it's, it's probably a lot bigger than that.

Golly, literally with a computer. Yeah, literally with the computer. A bot. I mean, not a person behind the screen who's pretending to be someone they're not. A bot. A piece of code.

How many men, like Is it like 99 out of 100 that got the, like, at some level, like, are there any numbers at that? 80%? 70%? Like The numbers are hard. Like, I mean, I can tell you there's tons of surveys, right? Like, there's one survey that suggests it's about 70 percent of men, uh, you know, like I said, I'm a man of faith.

In the church, the number's about the same. There's a survey that shows 50 percent of pastors, etc., etc. The problem with these surveys is we have to assume that People are telling 100 percent the truth, right? And that's probably just not the case for something that's so taboo and maybe has some risks associated with being found out.

So I would guess it's, it's probably pretty high. You know, I have a friend who says that, uh, 99 percent of men, uh, struggle with [00:39:00] pornography or yeah, what is it? 99 percent of men struggle with pornography and 1 percent lie. you know, something like that. Like, I think we're all affected by it. But yeah, I don't hit too hard on those numbers just because I feel like they're maybe not the most reliable metrics because they're actually probably higher than how they're reported.

But it's very, very high. Is there anything that men need to understand? Like, I think awareness and understanding goes a long way. Yeah. You know, so there's this industry that has figured out the greatest way to hook men. You know, into this addiction that's very profitable for them. Does it help men to understand, you know, beyond that, like, where does some of this come from?

Because it can make you, I think, feel, just feel like a, like a terrible human being. And yet how many, like, 50 percent of pastors Like 70 percent of men, like there's some really solid men in there that are struggling with this. So how can we understand it a little bit better so that we can also maybe detach from, again, that guilt and shame that comes along with it in a lot of the labeling that we [00:40:00] probably put on ourselves from it.

There's a famous study with, they did with rats drowning in a bucket of water. I don't know if you've heard of this. I don't know if you've seen this study before. Yeah, please tell. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, basically they time how long it takes for a rat to drown in a bucket, which sounds like a very cruel study, but it's going somewhere.

And uh, what they observe is that right before the rat starts to give up, so the rats just swimming around the bucket, it has a couple of cues that indicate like, okay, it's time It's letting go and it's just going to basically fall into the water to its death. In the second round of experiments, what they do is when the rat starts to show those cues, just before it's about to give up and drown more or less, they pull it out of the bucket, they dry it off.

And what I can only assume is a little rat shaped towel and, uh, and they kind of settle it down and then they put it back in the bucket and they just want to see if, If having a taste of that, that being rescued affects how long it swims, and the rats go from swimming for, you know, 15 to 20 minutes to swimming 25 to 35 hours in the bucket the second round.

And the, the point of the study, what they were [00:41:00] illustrating is the power of hope. What it actually means when you have hope that somebody will come and get you, or you have hope that your desired outcome is possible, you behave very differently and you are resilient for a lot longer. So I think the best thing that people can do is actually fill themselves with stories of recovery.

I mean, we have a whole page on my website just dedicated to success stories that I'm wanting to be a resource to the world to show this is possible. And whether you work with us or not, that's not really my prerogative. But I just want people to get in their heads it's possible because So many guys have tried to quit on their own, or they installed an internet filter and they dusted their hands off and thought a chintzy little, you know, solution like that was going to fix everything for them.

And they wound up worse off and they think something's wrong with them. People can actually recover. And it's just not true. We've helped so many people from young and old, all around the world, different walks of life, different careers, we're, we're exceptionally effective with guys who are professionals 25 to 45.

That's sort of our sweet spot. But the point is, [00:42:00] if you keep hearing stories of recovery, every time you listen to a story, it's like, it's like you pulling yourself out of the bucket, just giving yourself a little taste of, okay, this is possible. Now, nobody can swim for you. You still have to do your work, but I think that's the best place to start.

And the second thing that I would say for people is, you know, we're very, very quick to consume knowledge in our day and age. We have everything at our fingertips. There's, you know, over 3 million podcasts out there, tons of Instagram pages and YouTube channels. And I think people buy into this lie, which is that knowledge is power.

And there might've been a time where that was true, Franklin, but I really don't think it's true today just because there's too much of it. I think knowledge is potential. Yep, but it's knowledge with action. That's real power. And I think when people start to act on what they learn, that's what, that's what really changes the narrative and starts to shift things.

So for somebody who's listening and is, you know, trying to maybe figure out a next step or figure out how to actually push things forward, that would be, that's the biggest piece of encouragement I can give somebody is, man, just, [00:43:00] just act. Try something, try, try journaling or try talking to someone like we talked about today.

Try plugging into a community. Try doing something. That maybe you haven't done before that's going to move you a little bit closer. And if you're willing to keep doing that every single day, man, you'll look back in a year or two and your life could look very different. That's great advice. So remind me how many years you've been doing this work.

It's been six years now at the time that we're recording. Okay. Have you seen anything shift or change during that time? Like when I first started, I noticed this, but now here's what I'm seeing. Definitely. I mean, the bot thing that I mentioned just a few minutes ago, that's, that's new. That was not a thing when I first started out.

Actually, it might have been a thing, but it definitely was not a thing the way it is now. You know, the second thing, this is a little bit broader, but this is kind of interesting. When I started and I told people what I was doing, obviously I didn't tell a lot of people. You're not just broadcasting to the world necessarily when you first start out.

But a lot of people kind of gave me like the, Hey, good luck, man. You know, it was sort of like the, ah, [00:44:00] I don't know if this is going to work, but I'm cheering you on. And that's because this was a really, it still is, but it was a really taboo subject. But just in the last two and a half years, you have people like Jordan Peterson, really talking about how bad pornography is for you.

You have Dr. Andrew Huberman, you know, one of the world's most reputable neuroscientists talking about the harmful effects. And so I'm seeing that there's a shift in society and in culture that's happening where to the point now where, you know, I was hosted earlier. I got to guest on one of the world's biggest fitness podcasts called Mind Pump.

You know, they literally ranked number one, you know, for fitness in America. And we were talking about how the fitness influencers online are like, you know, You know, don't eat refined sugars, lift three times a week, and don't watch porn. Like all of a sudden, like skipping pornography has been put into sort of this set of healthy lifestyle behavioral habits.

And that's new. That was not the case five, six years ago when I first set out. I think just the larger narrative around pornography is starting to change. There's a lot more research. There's a lot more [00:45:00] stories coming out. I think people always had it in the back of their head. Like this feels a little bit like the Wild Wild West because it's still early internet days.

And I think it might be a little bit like the modern day cigarette, you know, there's doctors advocating for it and it takes the load off. And then a couple of years later, it's like, okay, it turns out this causes cancer and it's really bad for you. And we're going to ban it. And I don't know exactly how pornography plays out, but I do think culturally the narrative is going to follow a similar trajectory.

That's actually a, Like talk about hope because when we were talking earlier in this conversation, it's like, how does this not just destroy our world in 30 years? But if you look at it, cigarettes is a good example, like back in the fifties or the forties, nobody like everyone, your doctor told you, you should go, you know, light up a pack of cigarettes.

But if there can be enough awareness by really creditable people like Andrew Huberman to start bringing to light the destructive element of this, well, maybe there's regulations, maybe our kids start getting better protections, uh, which, uh, It's crazy that that's not in [00:46:00] place and maybe, you know, you, you pull up a website and it's like, warning, watching this content could destroy your marriage and, uh, ruin your career.

Like if you had, you know, and so maybe there becomes this shift of awareness of just how dangerous it is, no different than cigarettes and, and that tide begins to turn. Yeah. And I, you know, what I would love to see, and this is again, based on the research, but also based on our clients, for sure. The number one predictor of whether or not somebody will develop a porn addiction is early exposure.

Like if you, if you got exposed to pornography early, then the odds are tremendously stacked against you. So the, the first step, what would be really nice to see is just better protection of minors. You know, once you turn 18, like I'm not the guy who's like, we need to. shut the industry down, even though I would love to see that.

I think it's not step one. I actually think step one is we just protect minors. And if once you're 18, you can make a decision. First exposure happening at 18 is really, really different than it happening at 15. And that's [00:47:00] really different than it happening at 11 or 8. And actually at the time of this recording, don't quote me on the number, but it's in the teens.

I think it's 15 states have actually banned pornography. Um, I think it's 15. It's something like that. And it was only like one or two just about a year ago, a year and a half ago. So that number is all together or sorry. I, yeah, I knew I misspoke that and I couldn't remember why they've implemented age verification laws, which means you can't just check a box to say I'm 18.

You actually have to submit proof like a driver's license or something like that. So those age verification laws are a great step in the right direction. And like anything, there's always a workaround the same way that a 15 year old could go smoke a cigarette if they want to. But the point is, if you start to institute these barriers and the narrative culturally starts to change around pornography, you'll start to see people's behaviors change as well.

So I think things are moving in the right direction. And I don't think 30 years from now, we're in dire straits. because porn has decimated our society, I think we could actually be in a much better spot because we're more informed. We're more [00:48:00] educated. There's more laws that are kind of governing our behaviors and at least protecting us.

And hopefully people are making a decision about pornography much later on in life, not in those early formative years. That I think would be a huge win. I live in Texas and I think I heard you on a podcast actually mentioned that Texas, decided not to go through with this. Can you, like, tell me any more about that?

Just for my search. Oh, Texas, that narrative, that's been a little bit of a saga. Basically, Texas was one of the first states to, uh, to want to institute the age verification laws and Pornhub got really upset about it. And basically I was pushing back and was saying this is unconstitutional and presumably Pornhub has a huge user base in Texas.

So I think that's why they were particularly upset about it. And Texas said, no, we're going to, we're going to kind of, we're going to do our thing here, but thanks anyway. And Pornhub basically said, fine, well, then we're not going to let people access our site in Texas. And Texas said, Awesome. Thank you so much.

So it just kind of backfired on them. So I don't think Texas actually, I don't think [00:49:00] they changed their decision. If they did, it got reversed and they, they've actually been one of the front runners basically saying like, yeah, we, we didn't just add age verification laws. We're actually not even allowing pornography, uh, to be, sorry, we're not even allowing Pornhub to be accessed on our platforms or on our IP addresses that are based out of the state.

Okay. Okay. Well then I, I didn't hear that full explanation. So Texas is one of the I guess they're doing a good job in terms of what they're trying to do on, on this. Definitely. Yeah, no, they're going in the right direction. Okay. And maybe more states will follow suit and, and do this and, and you start seeing some real, uh, some real action take place.

Yeah. That's great. Okay, we've got just a couple minutes left. Anything that we haven't covered that you would love to share with the audience and get out there as we start to kind of wind this thing down? I want to be respectful of your time. Yeah, no, I appreciate that. I think the one thing that I really need your audience to hear is if you're, if you're going to be serious about a recovery, what you really want to do is have a roots based approach.

A [00:50:00] lot of the mainstream solutions out there, like an internet filter or, uh, willpower or. White Knuckling Knits, Spiritual Disciplines, Counting Streaks, Balancing the Eyes. All of these things are little tactics that fall in the category of behavior modification. And porn addiction, if porn addiction was an issue, a logical issue, then a logical solution would be enough, like an internet filter, because it stops you from seeing the thing that you're trying to see.

The problem is that porn addiction is actually an issue of the heart. And if you really want to heal the heart, you have to get to the root of the problem. And so, you know, deep clean, we're, we are a roots based approach. We kind of, uh, pioneered that, that sort of language around porn addiction recovery.

And there's a couple that I know of, at least that are out there that have a similar approach. And I would just say, you want to make sure you're really getting to the roots because that's where lasting freedom actually exists. You can count your streak and get to three months of freedom, but I don't really care what you can do in three months.

What can you do in 30 [00:51:00] years? That, that's much more interesting to me. And if you're willing to play a long term game, then you have to get more to the root. So I would just encourage anybody who's really serious about recovery. You really want to quit porn for good. Make sure that you channel all of your energy and your resources and your time and your money and whatever else into a roots based approach.

That's going to get you the best outcome in the long run. That's great advice. If you, uh, you can cut your grass today and next week, it'll not be cut again. Kind of a thing. So. Yeah, exactly. Exact same concept. Yep. You got it. Sophia, this has been a really, really awesome conversation. I appreciate you having the courage to step out there, like you say, and, and step into a conversation in a topic that is not popular.

And most people don't want to talk about it, but it is so important because of the devastating impact it's having under the surface to our whole country and our communities, families, men, marriages. If someone, uh, resonated with you today and wanted to connect, how would they find you? Where would they reach out?

Yeah, the [00:52:00] best place is probably just my website, sathiasam. com, and you can find out about our services if you're looking for something a little bit more serious about quitting porn, or you can check out my podcast, The Man Within. We got over 800 episodes on there just detailing different pieces about recovery.

So if we didn't talk about something today, you can look through our podcast and I'm sure you can find some content on it. Those are probably the two best places to start. And then from there, we got lots of resources. We have a free book, very active on Instagram. All those are great places to find us as well.

Perfect. Well, we'll include all of those things in the show notes. And again, thank you for your time today. Thank you for the work you're doing. And, uh, and we'll keep leading the charge, trying to help men level up so that our, uh, we got good marriages, good families and a great country. Absolutely, man. Hey, I love what you're doing.

Thanks for letting me be a part of it. Absolutely. Thanks for coming on today.

If you enjoyed today's episode, please subscribe to the podcast. Give us a rating and review and share this. episode with one man, you know, needs to hear this message. We want to [00:53:00] encourage as many men as possible to show up as the strong leaders, loving husbands, and intentional fathers their family deserves.

And until next time, be the man the world needs.