Support the podcast through Buy Me a Coffee! https://buymeacoffee.com/drlizbonet

Jeremy Lipkowitz joins us on the podcast to talk about porn addiction and recovery from a Buddhist perspective rather than 12-step recovery. We talk about:

  • When a habit crosses over from a problem to addiction
  • How to approach a partner about a problem behavior or addiction
  • Key buddhist concept for recovery from addiction
  • The men’s porn recovery group Jeremy runs based on Buddhist principles
  • Mindfulness and meditation for the meditation averse and ADHD mind

See more about Jeremy and his online group for porn addiction recovery at https://https://www.unhookedacademy.com

Take an online quiz to see if you have a sex or porn addiction at https://www.saa-recovery.org

————–

Support the Podcast & Help yourself with Hypnosis Downloads by Dr. Liz! http://bit.ly/HypnosisMP3Downloads

Do you have Chronic Insomnia? Find out more about Dr. Liz’s Better Sleep Program at https://bit.ly/sleepbetterfeelbetter

Search episodes at the Podcast Page http://bit.ly/HM-podcast

———

About Dr. Liz

Interested in hypnosis with Dr. Liz? Schedule your free consultation at https://www.drlizhypnosis.com

Winner of numerous awards including Top 100 Moms in Business, Dr. Liz provides psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, and hypnosis to people wanting a fast, easy way to transform all around the world. She has a PhD in Clinical Psychology, is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC) and has special certification in Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy. Specialty areas include Anxiety, Insomnia, and Deeper Emotional Healing.

A problem shared is a problem halved. In person and online hypnosis and CBT for healing and transformation.

Listened to in over 140 countries, Hypnotize Me is the podcast about hypnosis, transformation, and healing. Certified hypnotherapist and Licensed Mental Health Counselor, Dr. Liz Bonet, discusses hypnosis and interviews professionals doing transformational work.

Transcript

Dr. Liz 0:00
Good morning, everyone. My interview today is with Jeremy lipkowitz, and we’re having a conversation about addiction with the focus on porn addiction, because he runs a group for porn addiction for men. We talk about more than porn though. Talk about addiction as a process, and also Buddhism as a path to recovery. Essentially, I do want to say right here that a lot of women struggle with sex and porn addiction as well, and they tend to hide it even more so than men. There’s such shame and repercussions, I would say for them to speak out about it. Even want to attend, let’s say, a recovery meeting where they may be the only woman there, and that doesn’t feel comfortable or safe to them. So I do want to let people know that there are female only recovery meetings through SAA and slaa, and you can go to SAA dash recovery.org to access some of those, or slaa.org those that will be in the show notes as well. I know the vast majority of my listeners are women, and that’s why I am bringing it up. So if you’re facing it yourself, versus in a partnership with someone who’s facing porn or sex or love addiction. There are resources out there for you. I am thinking of starting a group myself for women with porn and sex addiction specifically, and not a 12 step group, but using Buddhist concepts as a path to recovery. So feel free to reach out to me. Dr Liz D, R, L I, z at Dr lizhypnosis.com, if you’re interested in that, and be at peace. Be assured that I would keep your name and communications confidential if it feels safer to call my work phone and leave a voicemail, that’s an option too. 954-309-9071, or and you can do that through the US service or on WhatsApp too. I’m on WhatsApp with that number as well for international people, all right, I hope you are healthy and safe, and let’s jump into this interview. Peace.

Dr. Liz 2:29
Hi, Jeremy, welcome to the hypnotize me podcast. Happy to be here, yes. So happy to see your email come across my desk. I think we’re going to talk about a really important topic today, and porn addiction. And let’s jump in with with your own personal story. How you got into this work?

Jeremy Lipkowitz 2:52
Yeah, so I got into this work just through my own experience with porn addiction. You know, I started watching porn when I was a young boy, I think I first got introduced to to porn, maybe around eight or nine years old, and maybe a little bit before that, through things that were sexual media, but not necessarily porn. So for me, it was the lingerie catalogs coming in the mailbox and certain comic book characters. And I just remember, you know, those kind of being things that activated me. But then, you know, I got access to porn, and eventually got access to the internet, dial up at first, and then at some point, high speed internet. And it, it slowly escalated. You know, it wasn’t anything noticeable day to day, but over time, it just slowly built up and became a deeper and deeper part of my life. And it got to the point where I noticed in college, you know, I was watching it every day, every night, for one to two hours, I would go into my room, lock the door, and log on to porn sites. And at some point I woke up to what that was doing to my life, to my relationships, to my well being and mental health. There were a lot of things that I noticed, and I’m happy to talk about about that, if you’d like, Yeah, I noticed it was a problem.

Dr. Liz 4:14
Was there a critical thing, incident that happened? Or is more a couple of things that happened, or over a couple of years, sometimes

Jeremy Lipkowitz 4:22
there was one day, there was one incident that really kind of shined the light on the issue for me, and made me realize, hey, this is a problem, and I have to change, and I can’t keep living like this. So for me, it was, I was around 2223 years old. I forget exactly how old I was. I had just finished my undergraduate degree at UC Davis, so my background is in the sciences of studying genetics and genomics. I had finished my undergrad degree, but I stuck around on campus for about a year to do research in one of the laboratories. And so I was a young man, you know, to. 223, years old, living a really good life. You know, I had good grades in school, I had a lot of friends, I had a kind of an active life, and a lot of things to be proud of. And I remember walking down the street one day and seeing these young college women walking in front of me. And I remember being so consumed by this feeling of lust, this feeling of objectifying them, lusting after them. And a few really important things happened to me in that moment. The first was realizing that that experience of lust was a state of suffering, that when I was looking at what I didn’t have and what I wanted it. I was not focused on all the amazing things going on around me. I wasn’t feeling gratitude for the connections in my life or my friends. I was having tunnel vision. Just focused on thinking I need to have that thing, and unless I talk to them or touch them or go watch porn, then I can’t be happy. And so it was this real, visceral experience of noticing what a lot of us in recovery know as this, this void inside of us that we’re trying to fill with our substance or behavior. And I felt that void the moment I lusted after these girls and objectified them. It felt like this big black pit opening up inside of me, and I realized that I was a slave to this lusting behavior, and that every time I lusted it, you know, made me feel empty inside. So that was the, the first key insight

Dr. Liz 6:37
that I just a moment of clarity there, yeah, of

Jeremy Lipkowitz 6:41
realizing, hey, my mind is a slave to this behavior, this lusting behavior, and I am not in control, and it’s a miserable way to live life, focusing on what you don’t have, and yes, and of course, objectifying women, and we can talk about all that later. But the other really important thing that happened to me that day was I saw the path that I was on. I saw where my behaviors were leading me, and I had this moment this was probably the most important is I saw my future, and I realized, if I don’t change the way I’m living, if I don’t stop watching porn and stop this objectification and sexualizing every woman I see. If I don’t change, I’m going to end up as some 65 year old man who’s hitting on girls at college bars, and I’m going to be like, I really saw that because I was, I was living in a college town, you know, so it was a small college town in California, and I realized that, you know, hey, I’m getting older, but I’m still just sexualizing young, 18 year old girls. And I realized this is a result of the porn that I’m watching, because every time I log on to porn, I am ingraining in my mind that what I’m lusting after is 18 year old girls, yeah, you know, and right, what they Yeah, exactly. And I just realized that, you know, on top of just, you know, being a perverted old man at college bars, hitting on girls, you know, I would just be empty inside, chasing, chasing relationships, chasing women, you know, not living a deeply fulfilling, value driven life of integrity. And I realized in that moment what I really want is a fulfilling life with fulfilling relationships and a sense of integrity and inner peace. So that moment really shook things up for me, because it scared the crap out of me. I mean, it made me realize, Hey, I’ve really messed up my my brain with all this porn that I’m watching and all the ways that I’m sexualizing everyone that I see. And so that sent me down this rabbit hole where I started questioning, what is happiness, and is real happiness even possible? And I ended up going to this bookstore and finding some books on positive psychology and then some on neuroplasticity. And I found this one book that really blended together, kind of Eastern Buddhist philosophy with modern day neuroscience and neuroplasticity. It was a book called happiness by metsu Ricard, who’s a Tibetan monk, and that book just completely opened up my eyes to what, first of all, what real happiness is. You know that it’s not just gratifying all your sense desires and having more stimulation. It’s it’s about practicing compassion and being of service and all these things that we don’t focus on. But the more important thing is it taught me about neuroplasticity. And one of the key phrases that I remember reading in that book was this phrase, neurons that fire together, wire together,

Dr. Liz 9:51
yes, very common phrase in neuroplasticity, yeah, yeah.

Jeremy Lipkowitz 9:57
And I just I realized that every time I was like. Logging on to a porn site, which, again, at that point, was every night, unbeknownst to me, like I didn’t realize it, but every time I logged on, I was hardwiring in the neural pathways of lust and objectification and suffering. I was the one causing my own suffering, and that was a really groundbreaking moment for me.

Dr. Liz 10:19
Yes, the day before I stepped into my first recovery, meeting my a good friend at the time said to me, you are now causing your own suffering. That’s exactly what she said. Is that phrase, because I was suffering so much for so long and and I was like, Okay, that was the moment of clarity for me, actually,

Jeremy Lipkowitz 10:41
yeah, yeah. When you realize you’re the one, you know, causing all the damage, your own inner saboteur, your own actions, yes, it’s what’s doing the damage, exactly.

Dr. Liz 10:54
So very interesting. It’s is, was that your first exposure to Buddhism?

Jeremy Lipkowitz 11:00
Yeah, yeah, it was, you know, it’s really interesting, because for me, I had always, I had all these misconceptions about Buddhism. I thought, Oh, you have to believe in rebirth, and it’s all about karma. And I had all these ideas about what it was. And that book really opened up my eyes to the, you know, the truth, which is that Buddhism is much more of a philosophy of the mind, yes, and a way of training your mind and cultivating wholesome mind states and and letting go of unwholesome mind states or unskillful mind states. So it made me realize that Buddhism is much more secular than I realized, and it’s just a good way to train the mind, which is what I needed, because my mind was out of control. So, yeah, it was. It wasn’t necessarily my first, you know, taste of Buddhism, but it was the first time I really understood what it actually was about.

Dr. Liz 11:53
Okay, got it, yeah. I mean, a book often it’s, it’s a pretty structured way of presenting a system of thinking really, like, I I love Buddhism. I’m not taking the vow yet, but, but I love Buddhism. Identify as mainly Buddhist. And so recently I was listening to is either podcast or something I was reading where they said, like, where did the ISM start to come into it like it really did. Used to be called like a system of thinking, right? Like more so than, let’s say, a religion or philosophy even. And so it was just discussing that concept, which I think when we put the ISM on it, sometimes people do, you know, put it in a category, right, versus as something that could be a really useful tool in their lives, definitely.

Jeremy Lipkowitz 12:46
I mean, you know, it’s, it’s so fascinating, because the Buddha was, was just a guy. He wasn’t like, you know, the Son of God. He was literally just a guy, just like you or me. And he just was really curious about his own mind and the way that his mind works, and started working with his mind using some of the tools of meditation, and he figured out how to uproot, you know, his own self imposed suffering. And it’s really that simple, you know. And so that doesn’t matter if you’re Christian or Jewish or Muslim or Hindu or atheist, like you can benefit from Buddhist philosophy, because it’s just a way of cultivating more genuine happiness.

Dr. Liz 13:27
Yes, yes, it is. I agree. I agree with that wholeheartedly. So when you decided at that point, but it sounds like a decision came to you too, like I I need to stop this behavior, or decrease the behavior or something like that. Did you go to recovery as well? Like no, most people don’t even know it exists. There’s sex and love addiction, recovery. SAA, sex, sex addicts. Anonymous, there’s slaa, Sex and Love Addicts. Anonymous. Elizabeth Gilbert, I have not read her new book, but apparently she talks about it in her new book that just came out. This is we’re recording this in December of 2025, that you know, just to put that out there for people. Of it’s anonymous, it’s free. There’s phone meetings, there’s video meetings, and depending on where you are, there in person, meetings. But you didn’t know about that at the time. It sounds like,

Jeremy Lipkowitz 14:25
yeah, I didn’t know. You know, I didn’t know about anything recovery or even really addiction related for many years. So my pathway of what I now call recovery and breaking free from my addiction almost had nothing to do with, quote, unquote, traditional recovery, or addiction recovery, my pathway was really through Buddhist meditation, a lot of mindfulness, of going on retreats, ordaining as a monk, like it was really much more through you did ordain as a monk? Yeah, yeah, in Myanmar. Okay, yeah, yeah. So for me, like Buddhism and Buddhist philosophy just totally changed my life, and I dove head first into that. And because, you know, it’s maybe probably a lot of the listeners of your show know it’s not just about porn addiction, it’s about everything. I mean, it’s not whether you’re if you’re an alcoholic. It’s not just about the alcohol. It’s about all the ways that we run away from emotions, try to escape, numb out, hide, and it’s about, you know, living a more you know, a deeper life is what recovery really is, and Buddhist philosophy really is. And so for me, it just opened up my whole life where meditation became really central part of it. And I realized that one of my biggest addictions among many other addictions, you know, I was addicted to porn, but I was also addicted to validation and junk food and, you know, all kinds of things, porn was one of the biggest ones for me. And so yeah, it was a very circuitous route to recovery.

Dr. Liz 16:07
Okay, yeah, but it, I mean, I always say there’s all kinds of ways to get sober. So yeah, in in live in recovery. It’s not just getting sober, but live in recovery and live a life that’s full of meaning, that’s worth living. So I’m trained in dialectical behavior therapy. DBT, and the tagline is really like, how do you create a life worth living? She’s no longer living. But the original Marsha Linehan, creator that system combined cognitive behavioral therapy, CBT with Buddhism, basically. And so the manuals and the books are full of Buddhist concepts without people really realizing that that’s where they came from, unless they really read the history of it. But it really does focus on, how do you create a meaningful life without you know, people often think it’s through substance, whatever that substance is, or addiction to something that validation, behavior, pleasing, yes, cute, perfectionism, that type of thing. The Buddhist I know, they call it the realm of the hungry ghosts. Can you talk about that some? Because I think it’s really relevant here, and it just puts it in a different way. I think, yeah, people typically think about it totally.

Jeremy Lipkowitz 17:32
I mean, it’s so funny, because when you when you really go deep into Buddhism, you realize it’s Buddhism really is about addiction recovery.

Dr. Liz 17:41
Yeah, it’s,

Jeremy Lipkowitz 17:43
it’s intertwined. It really, it’s for addicts, essentially. And you just realize that we’re all addicts. Everyone’s addicted to something to greater or lesser degrees. But the realm of the hungry ghost is, it’s so funny. I literally just did a podcast episode on it this morning and released it. It’s one of my favorite concepts, because it just really, it really nails what addiction feels like. So for people who aren’t familiar with it, in Buddhist cosmology, Buddhist, you know philosophy, there are these different realms of existence. There’s the human realm, which we live in. There’s the heavenly realm, where everything is pleasant and wonderful all the time. There’s the hell realm, where everything is just pain and suffering non stop. There’s the animal realm, where it’s, you know, animals and primal desires. And then there’s this one interesting realm called the realm of hungry ghosts, and it’s filled with these creatures, these ghost like creatures, that have these massive bellies, these huge stomachs and tiny pinhole mouths, or these very narrow throats. And so they wander this existence with a huge amount of hunger, but their mouths are so small that they can never eat enough to satisfy their hunger. So they wander their existence just constantly hungry and never feeling satisfied. And that is what it feels like to be an addict. It’s like you’re just always hungry for more, and no matter how much you eat, no matter how much you ingest or shoot up or whatever you do, it never feels like it satisfies that craving. It’s, I mean, it’s so apt for addiction.

Dr. Liz 19:24
It really nails it, great. Yeah, the image is very striking to me. It really, you know, people who are more visual, which I am, it’s like, it’s striking, yeah, wow. Just never being filled up, really, if you pursue that addictive substance, again, substance, quote, unquote, if you continue to pursue that addiction.

Jeremy Lipkowitz 19:47
And important for people to know, it’s not just substances, I mean behaviors as well any any behavior can be addictive. You know, anything that gives you comfort or pleasure and you. Makes you numb out or escape or temporarily. You know, fill the void can be an addictive behavior. So for people listening to this, you know, it’s not just porn, it’s not just alcohol, it can, you know, people can get addicted to validation and success. People can get addicted to money. You know, exercise can be an addiction, like, really, anything can become an addiction. So we have to really look at the way we’re relating to these things.

Dr. Liz 20:26
Yes, recently I heard the term misery stabilizer. Interesting, isn’t that great? It’s from Terry real. He’s, he’s big in the couple’s world. And so I, I was reading about this in the couple’s therapy kind of realm of a misery. Stabilizer is something that you use to numb out. And it could be a game on your phone. It could be an actual like, you know, outside kind of addiction. It could it could be anything, who knows where it’s like you’re numbing out. You think you’re protecting yourself, like, ultimately, we’re all trying to protect ourselves in some way, but really, you’re stabilizing the misery in your relationship. Instead of being present, present for happiness joy, present for repair, present for maybe problems you need to fix, you’re numbing out. And so they call it a misery stabilizer. And I think that’s just such a wonderful like term. It captures it. Yeah, yeah, that could be anything like you’re saying, but ultimately, if you’re using it to not be present in your life, then you’re just continuing the misery. You’re sort of like trying to push it down the road, right? Like you’re gonna get this temporary relief, but really, you’re creating more misery down the road.

Jeremy Lipkowitz 21:50
Yeah, yeah. Cuz often, you know, whatever we resist persists, right? Like, that’s such a common phrase, and the more we resist it or push it under the rug, it just comes back stronger. And, you know, unless you learn how to relate to it in a healthier way, which, again, a lot of Buddhist practices are around healthy relating to uncomfortable emotions, you know, unpleasant emotions. Yeah, yes.

Dr. Liz 22:15
So talk some about what Buddhism recommends for what I don’t even know if I would say recommends, but let’s talk about some of the pathways out of addiction, out of craving, out of that suffering. I mean, most people think about meditation right as a pathway out of that. Is that where you would recommend people start? Or what would you say?

Jeremy Lipkowitz 22:42
Yeah, it’s great question. It really depends on what somebody is dealing with. I mean, you know, for somebody out there could be that if they’re dealing with porn addiction, you know, whether they’re a man or a woman, you know, it can be there for for both sexes, both genders. So whether they’re struggling with porn addiction, substance abuse, or kind of just your everyday. You know uncomfortable emotions, sadness, grief. You know frustration, stress and anxiety. So when it comes to recovery, if somebody is in some kind of recovery, whether it’s a full blown addiction or just a bad habit that they want to kick. Practicing mindfulness and cultivating that mental muscle of mindfulness is one of the best things you can do. It’s one of the fastest, most effective things you can do for recovery, because it gives you the ability to start to work with what’s going on in your mind, which is where the addiction is happening. And so mindfulness is a superpower there. It gives you the ability to pause before reacting, to notice when a strong emotion is arising, and then the ability to actually choose differently if you don’t have any mindfulness. You know, one of my favorite quotes is you probably heard this from Viktor Frankl, between stimulus and response. There’s a space, and in that space is your power to choose your response, and in your response lies your growth and your freedom. So for everyone out there, you know, between stimulus and response, between some thing happening in your life and you responding, there is space there, but if you don’t have access to that space, you there’s a stimulus and a reaction, and usually the reaction is based off of preconditioned habits of avoidance or fear or fight, flight or freeze or some not necessarily skillful coping mechanism. But if you have awareness and some stimulus happens, you actually get the ability to pause in that space and say, Okay, how do I want to react in this moment? Do I want to run away and hide? Do I want to lash out and write a nasty email so I want to open up the porn site and numb out? Yeah, or do I want to choose differently? Do I want to have a conversation with this person? Do I want to sit with my sadness or take a nap? You know, there’s, there’s so many ways of living more skillfully, but we need that ability to choose in the moment, because otherwise you’re just, you know, trying to play catch up.

Dr. Liz 25:22
Yeah, absolutely. So it’s taking that pause to choose how to show up, because we do have those habitual patterns, right? One of my habitual patterns is to go to anger and revenge. Wait, that’s the fantasy of my mind. Like, Oh, my God, I’m gonna do this thing, like calling, you know, like, ah, watch this, yeah. But it’s like, if I pause, I don’t really want to show up that way. I know that’s going to create shame later for me, and I’m going to feel really bad about myself and shameful. And then like, Oh man, I’m like, the worst person in the world, you know, and I don’t want to be in that state. Actually, recently I listening to Pima Sharon’s book, actually, a couple of them, but anyway, she talks about shimpa, you know, like, what goes on in your mind? Yeah? Question where someone says I’m having shimpa parties, basically in my mind, because it’s like, oh yeah, I got him. I got him. I’m there, you know, I’m at the shimpa party where those thoughts start forming, those reactions, those habitual patterns start forming, and then the pause for me, I’m actually counting to 90 seconds, back to the neuroplasticity. There’s some researcher came up with, like, oh, that addictive thought, or that addictive pattern only lasts for 90 seconds in your mind. And for me, I was like, well, that’s 90 seconds, and then another 90 seconds, and then another 90 seconds. So it’s like, that’s not very helpful. Until I started counting to 90, I was like, Okay, I’m going to create this pause here by counting to 90. Like, really picturing the numbers, like trying to put all of my attention there, because if I don’t you know, all this stuff can run in the background while I’m counting to 90. And this is just an audio interview, but if you could see, my hands are sort of in a swirl here. They’re creating the hurricane, right? They’re creating that tornado. So it’s like, Alright, back to mindfulness. It’s like I’m really going to mindfully, concentrate and count to 90 to create that pause about how do I want to show up? What do I want to create? Do I want to create compassion? Do I want to create kindness? Do I want to create connection with somebody. So for me, it’s like, that’s been really helpful, that pause. And, you know, sometimes people hear meditation, they’ll say, I can’t do that. You know, I can only make it 90 seconds. Let’s talk about the 90 seconds, right? What do you recommend for, like, the Add world, where they’re like, right? You know, I can’t meditate, yeah,

Jeremy Lipkowitz 28:04
a lot of it is based on misconceptions of what it means to meditate. I mean, it’s the same. If somebody says I can’t, I can’t go do a yoga class because I’m not flexible, yeah? Or I can’t, I can’t go to the gym because I’m not strong, or I can’t take a Spanish class, because I don’t speak Spanish, and it’s missing the point that, like, the point of doing these practices is to get better at those things. And so if your mind is all over the place, that’s fine. I mean, that’s that’s the place we all start at. And it’s also just a natural human condition. Even if somebody’s been meditating for 40 years, their mind will still jump around. It’s called the monkey mind in Buddhism. It just goes everywhere. So getting, you know, out of this idea that you have to be a quote, unquote, good meditator and have a stable mind in order to meditate, because it’s not even really about concentration, that’s the other thing people mistake a lot. A lot of people think a good meditation is one where I’m concentrated, I follow the breath, and I can, you know, count to 90, or any of these things, and that, that is what some kinds of meditations are about. But it’s not what mindfulness meditation is about. So mindfulness is one particular style or technique of meditation, and it’s distinct from concentration based meditation. So many people have heard of Transcendental Meditation, that is a kind of meditation where you’re repeating a mantra, and the point is to be concentrated. But what Buddhist meditation is the Buddha one of the things he was kind of really revolutionary with was understanding and developing this concept of mindfulness, and it has nothing to do with concentration. It’s about the way you’re relating to what’s happening in your experience. So you could be totally lost in thought and have one. Moment of really noticing an emotion that’s arising, and if you can really be present with it in in this non judgmental, clear, seeing, kind hearted way, that’s a solid moment of mindfulness. And then your mind might go all over the place for another 20 minutes, and then it might land, just for a brief moment, on another moment of awareness. And that’s good mindfulness. So that’s one other thing that can really help people. It’s you don’t have to have a lot of concentration. Your mind can jump all over the place. It’s about how, first of all, what you’re noticing and how you’re relating to what you’re noticing. That’s what mindfulness is really about.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai