If you’ve listened to our show you have heard Chris talk about the dangers of sex and porn addictions. We’ve done two shows with Joshua Shea who shared his experiences with porn and sex addiction.
But what about the casual porn user; someone who looks at porn but is not addicted. What impact does that have on someone’s mental health? Or does it have any impact at all?
In this show we explore and answer those questions.
Tune in to see Pornography and Mental Health Through a Therapist’s Eyes!
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Episode #103 Transcription
Chris Gazdik: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to another edition of Through a Therapist’s Eyes. I am Chris Gazdik. He is Craig Graves. I am a mental health and substance abuse therapist, and he is a life coach an Unbeatable Mind life coach. I’ve got a book coming out soon, Rediscovering Emotions and Becoming Your Best Self. Craig, you have a website where they, you can find your unbeatable mind coaching services you are available.
If you’re anywhere in the country. I think you can work with somebody in Idaho, right?
Craig Graves: [00:00:47] Yeah. Yeah. I can go global basically.
Chris Gazdik: [00:00:49] Right? I thought so when you start mentioning that a little bit, what the heck is an unbeatable mind coach, but we’ll get there someday and get a little bit more into that. We welcome you to Through a Therapist’s eyes.
Where we see the world through the lens of a therapist and a coach being aware that this is not the deliver your therapy services in any way. Check out our website, where we have an announcement. Speaking of this is not the delivery therapy services. Anyway, you can get full show transcriptions, check out all the shows on a particular topic through a very easy category search.
And you’re going to have a plethora. That’s a good word. Isn’t it? Mr. Graves,
Craig Graves: [00:01:26] that’s a good word.
Chris Gazdik: [00:01:26] A plethora of information on the topics that we talk about through that category search. I think that’s just, I think I mentioned that because it’s a cool tool. I think it’s a really cool tool to make our website Through a Therapist’s Eyes, honestly, different than what you can get on Spotify and stuff.
Craig. Because you know, I don’t know about you, but I, you know, podcasts that I listened to on, on Spotify, I want. Like, I like to start talking. I’d kinda like to be interested in black holes and I can’t scroll down through, you know, 150 shows that they’ve done on star talk and, and find all the shows on black holes.
I can’t do that. So I did drive. This drives me nuts about the podcast world. You know, I’m a little bit new to podcasts. I think you’re more long term on it. He’s shaking his head. All right. This is the human emotional experience. Let’s figure this thing out together. Now. I said announcement. I want to know what the announcement is, man.
Let’s hear it. Can I put you on pins and needles? Are you really
Craig Graves: [00:02:23] excited about the audience? Can’t wait, they’re dying.
Chris Gazdik: [00:02:28] We have reached an agreement for a little bit of a sponsorship with a organization called BetterHelp and that is a counseling service. So I think we’re going to have some stuff on the website.
We’re recording so it’ll be developed really soon. Then you can kind of hit a button on there. It says counseling, we’re going to have a launching page. It’s a way to support the show, because if you go through our site to get it, you know we get some benefit. That’s the promotionary piece, that we’re straight forward with, but BetterHelp is really cool.
We’ll talk about it more. In time to come.
Craig Graves: [00:02:56] so better just to go a little bit deeper, it’s actually a counseling service. So you contact better help than they will or better help. And they will hook you up with a mental health counselor.
Chris Gazdik: [00:03:08] Yeah. You get a survey when you click through our link and they hook you up with not just any counselor, but one that is specifically kind of surveyed, so to speak, through your responses, to some questions to match you up a little bit, which is really cool.
Really, really cool stuff. All right. Is pornography good or bad? For a mental health. Hmm. Should I just load you up right here at the beginning and say, what says you, Mr. Graves?
Craig Graves: [00:03:35] I’d say it’s bad.
Chris Gazdik: [00:03:36] Yeah.
Craig Graves: [00:03:37] Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:03:39] Hmm.
Craig Graves: [00:03:40] Hmm. Well, so you, Mr. Gazdik,
Chris Gazdik: [00:03:43] I don’t know
Craig Graves: [00:03:46] you blacklisted man.
Chris Gazdik: [00:03:48] I know, right? Boy, what a loaded topic we have here a little bit tonight.
I’m not going to totally evade the question. I think that it’s got some very damaging and devastating realities that are a part of it. That that’s the way I’ll respond to that. However, I think that we get, and we’re going to, we’re going to talk about it tonight, right? I think that we get a little bit, Hmm.
Loaded with fear about it. That is a little over cooked and. To try to go a little deeper into that thought in the, in this moment and we’ll get into it. But you know, through the show wants you to very much be aware of, there is a very big difference between sexual addictions that we’ve talked about and we’ve had guests on and we’ve kind of gone through addiction on this show.
It’s one of our primary topics that we cover that is very, very different than the use of pornography from non addicted people. Okay, it’s like two totally different worlds in my mind. And, and, and because of the way technology has exploded, you know, in the last 20 years with the internet it has changed the dynamics and.
Let me give you a bit of a metaphor or an explanation of that off the, off the cuff here. So, so you, so maybe Craig, you listened to me and see what people are hearing. If this, if this makes sense to further explain what I was just saying, you know, is pornography bad or not? Well, obviously, yes, it has detrimental concerns.
I mentioned that on the other side though, it’s not given the fear that we have the level of fear that we have. Okay. Here’s what I mean. alcohol is always been a concern for societies. Right back down in the middle ages, dark ages, whatever. Okay. We tried to, we tried to make stronger alcohol as human beings and we didn’t know how to do it.
We tried to freeze wine and take water out of the beer that was fermented and we’d freeze it and get to the leftover’s and, you know, we kind of, I don’t know what else they did to, to try to figure out how, how can we make good, strong beer? You know, we got microbrews now. They’re like 12% alcohol.
Okay. That’s strong. We couldn’t do that before. We couldn’t do that before. You know, you know, when we figured it out, how to really make good stuff around turn of the century, we figured out how to distill alcohol. And it’s fascinating in the history of alcohol. Okay. So we are, we were able to get the distilled flavor.
You know, that’s when the, you know, people cook their alcohol and make their moonshine up in the hills. We didn’t know how to do that in the middle ages or up until about the turn of the century. And now we can make stuff that’s 80 proof. 90 proof or green alcohol, the wicked horror stuff will make you blind.
Right? We couldn’t do that before. So when do you think alcohol became a huge concern for our society. Around the same time? Guess what we did?
Craig Graves: [00:06:43] We had prohibition. That’s right.
Chris Gazdik: [00:06:46] That’s right. So when you synthesized alcohol, we became synthesised with our concern. Well, guess what we’ve done with sex? Well, we’ve synthesized it.
It is so amazingly available now, in the internet is the primary reason for that. That’s the tool. That’s, you know, if you think of alcohol Craig as being distilled we’ve distilled sex in a porn, through the internet. The availability, that the topic, you know, the depth of it.
I mean, you know, before the internet, do you think he could get very easily a detailed, you know, movie for an hour on orgy. It existed with VHS tapes. Don’t get me wrong when you could get stuff. But how many times did you watch that one VHS tape?
Craig Graves: [00:07:39] Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:07:40] Or what was before VHS? I was talking about this with somebody and show prep.
Craig Graves: [00:07:44] The beta.
Chris Gazdik: [00:07:45] Yeah, exactly.
Craig Graves: [00:07:47] Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:07:50] You got thoughts or
Craig Graves: [00:07:52] I have thoughts, but I’m not ready to speak. Go ahead.
Chris Gazdik: [00:07:54] Okay. Okay. I wasn’t sure, man. It’s like, there’s pause on you. Well, which, which buzz? What’s your head doing? What do you, what are you thinking? Not, not where you were going to go and raise, speak, but let me, let me tack in with where you’re at.
Craig Graves: [00:08:05] I’m not sure there is. Is there a fear about pornography? In society, is it, is there a fear? I mean, most of the time when I hear talk about pornography, people are joking about it or laughing about it, or, you know, just in some offhand, stupid comment, making a joke. And you know, I don’t know that there’s a fear of it.
I know that there are in certain circles, people are like, Oh, pornography’s ruined in, our lives. But most of the things that I hear about it or not. I wouldn’t say, I wouldn’t say are fear-based,
Chris Gazdik: [00:08:43] I’m going to do something right now. Okay. Don’t think about this. And we’re going to, we’re going to rapidly go at it and I’m going to say something to you.
Okay. Don’t answer this question. Do you watch porn? How many times a week? Right. Okay. I told you not to answer that question, but if I didn’t say that and I said, Do you watch porn and how many times a week, we’re on national or worldwide broadcast right now, right?
Craig Graves: [00:09:12] Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:09:13] What did you feel? Cause I’m gonna tell you, if you asked me that question right now, I’ll be like, Whoa, yo, I don’t know, man.
Like I not going tell you right now. Right? Did you feel anything like that?
Craig Graves: [00:09:28] I don’t think I did. I don’t. I don’t know. Yeah. Yeah,
Chris Gazdik: [00:09:32] Did I go too fast. Well the question.
Craig Graves: [00:09:34] Yeah. No.
Chris Gazdik: [00:09:35] Okay. Yeah, because I submit to you that. If, when we asked that question, there is incredible amount of shame. There’s an incredible amount of twisted feelings that people have just about sex in general.
Oh man, I didn’t, give the qualifier. If you got little kiddos in a car, I don’t think we’re going to be talking about too racy of a topic.
Craig Graves: [00:09:55] Well, if somebody sees the title, they’re going to know this is not for children,
Chris Gazdik: [00:10:00] right? Hopefully. So I feel guilty. I should’ve should’ve put that, That disclaimer in the beginning show.
But nevertheless, I submit to you that there there’s, there’s, there’s a little bit of shame that goes into that. There’s a little bit of guilt that goes into that. How many men, and it goes the other way too. How many women, how many men engage in pornography and do not want their wife to know that they did that night?
Craig Graves: [00:10:28] Okay. Is that a question to me?
Chris Gazdik: [00:10:30] It’s a statement. It really, you know, I mean, I’m curious what you think about it, but I’m gonna submit to you, like most of the time.
Craig Graves: [00:10:35] I don’t know. I have no knowledge or, Expertise on any
Chris Gazdik: [00:10:41] You’re not a porn expert?
Craig Graves: [00:10:42] Well, I mean, I just don’t know. Is it good or bad for mental health? I would assume that it does things to the brain. We don’t want it to do. And I’ve heard those comments made by people that I respect, but I don’t know details about. About it. Yeah. I can tell you what the breath does to the parasympathetic nervous system and how deep diaphragmatic breathing.
But I can’t tell you anything about what pornography does to a person’s mental health or their brain or anything like that.
Chris Gazdik: [00:11:04] Yeah, that’s interesting. Really?
Craig Graves: [00:11:05] Yeah. I mean, I don’t know any science behind it.
Chris Gazdik: [00:11:10] So what I get from that is the listening audience is probably really kind of thinking, of course it’s bad.
I don’t know why, but it’s bad.
Craig Graves: [00:11:20] Yeah. I would say that’s probably what most people would say. I don’t know why, but it is bad. It really, yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:11:27] Wow.
Craig Graves: [00:11:28] You know, if you think about it being bad, I think about the people who engage in it, you know, and you have people who are probably on drugs and, you know, I don’t know, man, you know, you hear bad stories.
I think there was some documentaries on
Chris Gazdik: [00:11:44] people that, that are users that are
Craig Graves: [00:11:46] created, that are in it individually, creating women who were exploited and
Chris Gazdik: [00:11:51] in the bad
Craig Graves: [00:11:52] oppression. Yeah. Sex trafficking, the bad impressions that it gives young people who were watching it. Was it Joshua Shea?
Chris Gazdik: [00:11:59] Somebody said,
Craig Graves: [00:12:00] somebody said, I think it was a guest on our show that, That the young girls do not like taking virgins, the virginity of a young man, because they’re slapping these girls around and, you know, beating on them and stuff like that.
Chris Gazdik: [00:12:18] Yeah. That was Josh.
Craig Graves: [00:12:19] That’s their, that’s their experience from watching, From watching pornography. They think that girls like that.
Chris Gazdik: [00:12:25] Yeah. And that’s one of the, yeah, you’re right. I know exactly what you’re talking about. And that’s one of the things I was going to talk about here. And, you know, I think that what, I’m, what I was trying to get at with asking you that quick question, the reason why I asking you to do people.
If people think it’s bad and don’t kind of know why, and I think you’re onto something there, I think you’re right. Then you feel bad when you do it. Is that a fair, can we make that assessment?
Craig Graves: [00:12:52] Yeah. So if you think it’s bad, you don’t know why then you feel bad when you do it. Yeah,
Chris Gazdik: [00:12:55] right? Yeah. Absolutely.
The fear that’s in pornography is great fear. The fear that my spouse might do this, the fear that my spouse might, you know, engage in it. And I don’t like that. I don’t want to talk about last week, we talked about expectations. What is your expectations of this, that and the other, right. Like, I think I’m just trying to drive it there.
This, this is an issue that has been kinda. Hotly debated hotly type pun, not intended hotly debated and hotly discussed in way of even like, you know, sensory and going through, laws and creating statutes about, we’re not, we’re not going to have this in our society. We’re not going to have this in our community, you know, and we’re going to ban it.
You ever hear of people banning pornography, right?
Craig Graves: [00:13:46] I think I’ve heard. Talk about that, you know,
Chris Gazdik: [00:13:48] It’s out there censoring, you know what we have available, right? It’s the Internet’s made it just so hard to do it. I want to frame our conversation around. What’s the danger points. Why is it of concern and get us away from what I submit to you or fear-based feelings or shame-based feelings, if that’s a better word, because you think that it’s bad and you do it, do there’s a lot of people that use it.
It is by far, the most heavily clicked on sites on the net, but did not, it’s not even close. I don’t have stats, but there’s not a stat show, but we know that to be true. Right.
Craig Graves: [00:14:32] You know, I heard Joe Rogan say that they could stop making pornography today. And it would be enough for wherever the rest of human history, but they keep, they keep turning it out.
Right. And that tells you that to keep doing it because people keep. Keep consuming it.
Chris Gazdik: [00:14:46] That’s an amazing quote. I think that’s an awesome Joe Rogan quote. Yeah. And I think it’s totally true. Okay. Let’s back up and get in deep with this stuff a little bit here. Get in deep. It’s another pun that came out wrong.
What’s going on? Oh, hot, deep. Geez. Am I losing it?
Craig Graves: [00:15:05] Yeah, you might be,
Chris Gazdik: [00:15:08] what is pornography? Right? It is that a simple question? You know, we like to do definitions and understand what it is that we’re talking about, you know, on this, on this show, what is the definition of pornography? What is it says you?
Craig Graves: [00:15:26] Well, I read your show note definition there, but before I read that, I would have said, people engaging in sexual activity on, on camera or on video or print.
I wouldn’t have said, well, I guess print would be the same.
Chris Gazdik: [00:15:43] Absolutely.
Craig Graves: [00:15:44] Yeah. I think this definition goes further, but that’s what my initial thoughts on that would be.
Chris Gazdik: [00:15:50] So you go and say, if you’re going pretty broad.
Craig Graves: [00:15:53] No, I think this goes even broader. I think the definition you’re getting ready to read to us is more.
Chris Gazdik: [00:15:59] Yeah, you’re broader. Is that?
Craig Graves: [00:16:02] No, I think I’m more, I think I’m thinking about. A man and a woman, or I guess you could go women on women or men on men, but engaged in sexual activity and video or print.
But his definition you got here says printed or visual material containing the explicit description or display of sexual organs or activity intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic or emotional feelings. So that could be a picture of a girl or a guy or whatever, but I think about pornography being two people engaged in sexual activity.
Chris Gazdik: [00:16:42] Interesting.
Craig Graves: [00:16:43] Playboy magazine would be pornography by that definition.
Chris Gazdik: [00:16:46] Yeah. Yeah. But Hmm. Well, it’s interesting because you know, another one that I came across and these are not, my definition is listening audience, please, but know that, but the depiction of erotic behavior as in pictures or writing intended to cause sexual and excitement, actually the second definition is kind of what you just said, isn’t it?
Yeah.
Craig Graves: [00:17:10] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, not, maybe not, you know?
Chris Gazdik: [00:17:13] Well, the depiction of erotic behavior as in pictures or writing it’s I think that’s kind of what you said, pictures or writing intended to cause sexual excitement that they add that last piece, which broadens it out a little bit.
Craig Graves: [00:17:25] Yeah, I guess, I guess in an, a.
And your first description, their first definition just could be a naked person.
Chris Gazdik: [00:17:31] Yeah, right?
Craig Graves: [00:17:32] Yeah. B could be, what I said a couple or it could be a single person if they’re engaged in some kind of explicit. Something. Yeah. I thought this was interesting. What I’m saying for using some kind of toy or doing some other kind of erotic thing to themselves.
Yes. And that would be a single person, but I would probably fall into the, at least my definition of pornography.
Chris Gazdik: [00:17:55] Yeah. Well, but you didn’t say that to start with you. It’s a couples sexual act.
Craig Graves: [00:18:00] Yeah. That’s a couple sexual act. Right. But I think B could be just a single person.
Chris Gazdik: [00:18:06] is it pornography or not?
Pornographic too, to do this, I heard, what was this Stein? What was the New York radio guy now? He’s not even on the air. He’s on the, the car radio, Howard Stern. That’s his name?
Craig Graves: [00:18:22] Remeber Howard Stern. Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:18:24] It’s I think he’s still doing his thing.
Craig Graves: [00:18:26] He may be
Chris Gazdik: [00:18:27] thing where he was a we’ve qualified our thing for listening on his, I guess at this point.
Yeah. He was doing a thing where he, he had a woman, you know, call in and I actually happened to see this, like one of the only Howard Stern things I’ve ever seen, to be honest with, you had a woman get on top of the speaker at hall and he was going to engage with her, you know, for. The sexual act.
Right. And she was getting on top of the speaker. I’ll let your brain just go with it. No, what I’m talking about. Is that pornographic? It wasn’t on the radio. It was like on and on an air.
Craig Graves: [00:18:59] Yeah. I’d say you would say no, I’d say no, but I don’t know. And this next one that you got here, in light of these remarks and it’s about Marilyn Monroe.
Chris Gazdik: [00:19:13] Yeah, she was, she was debatable on the cover of life magazine and,
Craig Graves: [00:19:18] in pornography, that’s the case.
Chris Gazdik: [00:19:19] Right?
Craig Graves: [00:19:20] Then a lot of the people that I follow on social media or engaging in pornography, by some of the pictures they post
Chris Gazdik: [00:19:28] this, let me, let me take it.
Craig Graves: [00:19:29] Cause I’m Marilyn Monroe on the cover of life magazine was pornographic than shit.
Excuse my language. Then, you know, there’s a lot of women out there engaging in pornography.
Chris Gazdik: [00:19:36] They said it was debatable.
Craig Graves: [00:19:38] That’s ridiculous man,
Chris Gazdik: [00:19:39] In light of these remarks. And that’s what they were talking about, about Marilyn Monroe and I, and I think he checked this show note out. I think that you’ll be interested as you read the whole thing.
Cause it was kind of curious to me, it made me this, this, I think, I think this stuff is just, I’m trying to make you think. Right. Trying to make you think. And I’ve, I got some clear lists in this show. So if you, if you stay tuned into what the ding damaging effects can be, but it, they say it’s easy to see why there’s off the lamented, that the definition of pornography is as elusive as the referral is pervasive.
The fact of the matter is this is pervasive issue. It’s all around our society. Okay. There’s no doubt about it. And it’s elusive to really kind of understand if we go deep into a conversation just based on what it is pornographic. Well, it can be debatable. It’s tough. And that’s why when we got into censorship, there was a lot of lashback on it.
I don’t think you hear as much about censorship now, but I think you and I, growing up in the eighties and nineties, we did, when this was all new and Marilyn Monroe was out. But now you don’t because you know what, you can’t, you pretty much can’t censor it.
Craig Graves: [00:20:44] Well, you know, look at this, man. I’m looking at the, if you’re in, when you get home or wherever you are listening to this Google Marilyn Monroe life magazine, that is not pornography.
My friend, she can see there’s, there’s a bunch of different photos, but she’s completely clothed. Or either the pictures of her from like the neck up that is not pornography sir.
Chris Gazdik: [00:21:06] I can’t really see your screen, but, that’s funny. I did not, I didn’t do that in show prep. Well, I, you know, I remember the one in the black dress there.
That’s pretty racy.
Craig Graves: [00:21:18] It’s racy and sexy, but it’s not pornography. Come on.
Chris Gazdik: [00:21:21] That’s in the white dress when there is, you know, she’s so in a lot of cleavage, I remember when that came out. Okay. I remember when that came out. I remember that discussion.
Craig Graves: [00:21:32] Do you, this was like 1962. You don’t remember that?
Chris Gazdik: [00:21:36] Okay.
Well then you’re okay. Well then get up to the eighties. You can get it, get up to the eighties in some of these pictures in life and whatnot. I
Craig Graves: [00:21:43] think so. Marilyn Monroe died before that. Didn’t I wrong? Yeah. Marilyn road died before 1980s.
Chris Gazdik: [00:21:50] Oh, you knew what I’m talking about. I’m talking to, I was thinking of another singer, the, who, who was it that, played off of Marilyn Monroe and, and I think she did nude pictures and stuff.
I’m just blanking on it now, but there’s another sexy actress that kind of came after Marilyn Monroe. That would make you think of her.
Craig Graves: [00:22:07] Dang. Yeah. Marilyn Monroe, Madonna.
Chris Gazdik: [00:22:11] I was thinking Madonna. That’s what I was thinking.
Craig Graves: [00:22:13] Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:22:13] And that was, that was, certainly racy stuff with Madonna, you know, having a picture with her armpits and hair.
And I think that was in Playboy and stuff. I don’t know, but it’s funny in the sixties, those pictures you just looked at were debated, were hotly discussed. You know what that is? That is pre internet.
Craig Graves: [00:22:31] It is, it is.
Chris Gazdik: [00:22:33] That was pre-internet. And now it’s kind of like the desensitization that has occurred over pornography, which is one of the big factors.
I will point out in my concerns about the harmful effects of pornography. We are desensitized. I mean, people can see an, an exotic array, deeply on the internet over and over again with movies and it’s unbelieved
Craig Graves: [00:23:00] well, that’s what, that’s what I’m saying. If these pictures of Marilyn Monroe are debatable pornography, then there’s a lot of people engaging in pornographic pictures on it, on social media, my friend,
Chris Gazdik: [00:23:14] you know, I think it would be, yeah, well, you know, it’s but that’s.
That’s part of what’s happened. I would, I would argue that that’s that’s part of what’s happened. We have gotten so, accustomed to, I don’t know. I mean, I definitely ain’t know anybody that knows me knows I’m not a fashion expert, but even the fashion choices and stuff, you know, that probably the roaring sixties, is that the way they refer to the sixties,
Craig Graves: [00:23:40] that was the twenties,
Chris Gazdik: [00:23:41] the roaring twenties were, what was the sixties?
The sixties were something like
Craig Graves: [00:23:44] that. I don’t know what they were.
Chris Gazdik: [00:23:46] Right. I’m just tired, I guess then there’s the racy 60
Craig Graves: [00:23:50] drugs and love. And
Chris Gazdik: [00:23:52] I thought there was, yeah, I don’t know what they call it, but. You had a revolution.
Craig Graves: [00:23:56] I called it the, the sixties. I think
Chris Gazdik: [00:23:58] you had a revolution of kind of, you know, women’s live sexuality in a seventies and everyone’s peace, love and harmony and, and being very sexual openly, you know in public, I mean, Woodstock people were having sex.
I mean, it’s
Craig Graves: [00:24:11] the middle of the thing.
Chris Gazdik: [00:24:13] Right. You know? Right. Jeez. And, and, and from that, the internet comes and we’ve just gotten more and more progressively. you know, it’s, it’s a part of what, what we see and accept for good or bad. And that’s part of what we’re talking about tonight. Is that good? Or is that bad?
Craig Graves: [00:24:29] Well, I mean, it’s probably began even before the internet, and with magazines and like you’re saying the videos and stuff like that, and I’m sure there’s a progression of racy ads and. Swimsuit issues and stuff like that. So we’ve just continued to go down that path. Pornography is still not accepted though.
It’s not like a, it’s not like a, the people probably look at a swimsuit model on the cover of my magazine. Don’t think anything. You know, but if you threw a people have a picture of two people having sex on a cover of magazine, that’d be a problem.
Chris Gazdik: [00:25:00] Yeah. Right. Right. The thing is here in where it becomes a concern of mine is the synthesization creation of sex.
If I said that, right, the synthesization of alcohol created a major uproar and a major rise in intensity with alcoholism. And such the same that we see with the incredible synthesization of sex. Meaning you can get a lot, you can get it very clear. It’s high Def I mean, you see stuff now that you just couldn’t see when, before we had all of that.
Yeah. And for addiction, it has just spiked it. And we’ve talked about it before. It was just spiked it to all, all different levels. We’re not talking about addiction tonight, right? We’ll make that point again. But in that synthesization, you know, there’s a lot of people that don’t have alcoholism and started drinking liquor in the twenties, thirties, forties, whatever, and they didn’t have addiction.
Was that good or bad? You can have the same conversation there. Right? So we’re talking about pornography this way, but I just think there’s an interesting overlap and a, an interesting sort of, overplay between, you know, the two of those issues, right. They play off each other. You can understand the newer issues with sexuality and pornography.
If you look at the older issues of how we dealt with alcohol and whatnot in this country, but around the world. So let’s do a little segment on yeah, what’s going on with the brain, man.
Craig Graves: [00:26:35] Yeah, what is going on with the brain?
Chris Gazdik: [00:26:36] You said you just straight up flat don’t know you,
Craig Graves: [00:26:39] you know, I’ve heard, I’ve heard things, rewires the brain and you know, I heard Ben Greenfield one time say that it wasn’t good for you, but I never heard his explanation of why.
So I don’t, I don’t know. Yeah. So I have no knowledge on this stuff.
Chris Gazdik: [00:26:51] You know what I think? Cause we don’t know. We kind of know
Craig Graves: [00:26:55] that we, there have been some studies done surely by now.
Chris Gazdik: [00:26:58] Okay. I think that we know that we don’t really know. Right. As science goes, That sentence came together. Well,
Craig Graves: [00:27:06] we know that we don’t really know
Chris Gazdik: [00:27:07] as science goes, because we’re learning about neurology.
We’re learning about the brain. We’re learning about the rewiring. We just figured out that the brain head plasticity, you know, not to dag-gone long ago in the history of the human race,
Craig Graves: [00:27:19] that’s a good point. So we didn’t know the brain changed until recently. We sure as hell don’t know what pornography does, right?
Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:27:25] Right. You know, absolutely. So, so I think that we’re really learning and we’re figuring it out context of addiction and what happens with that. But, we do have some stuff out there. We do have, you know, some understanding, I think we’re developing, you know, when I talked to Gwen wild, I was talking about how frustrated I was with not really understanding neurology.
And she told me, yeah, that’s true, but we’re learning. I said the same thing with sleep with Dr. Stafford when he was on. Right. And I was like, man, I want to know more about this and do better. My clients that I’m was there. And he’s like, I know Chris, I do too. But we’re learning. So stay tuned because I think this is one of the big areas too, that we’re learning.
You know, what are the, what are the effects, you know, on our dopamine level, what are the effects on our neurotransmitters? What are the pleasure centers in our brain really doing? When we, when we, as non-addicts again, the whole rest of the show is going to be non addicted individuals. Okay. Not talking about addiction.
What is it doing to our brains when we check this out and we opened the pleasure centers in our limbic system, you know, to feel excited or feel good, you know? Cause when you have orgasm, I mean, you feel good.
Craig Graves: [00:28:42] There’s some chemical release too, right?
Chris Gazdik: [00:28:44] Yeah, absolutely oxytocin. And you know, the probably other hormones and all sorts of.
Oh, man. I mean, it’s an explosion of feelgood chemicals, dopamine and oxytocin are probably just the start. Okay. So we know there’s this stuff going on, but we don’t really understand the intricacies of it. We don’t really understand. I think very well, the rewiring of it and the way the brain learns how to operate, given what we expose it to.
I think we’re getting better, but we just don’t know terribly so. So if we look at it, What is this a fightthenewdrug.org. That’s what the last fight is a little bit of a random Google searching that I did, but fightthenewdrug.org.
Craig Graves: [00:29:29] A new drug is pornography.
Chris Gazdik: [00:29:30] It’s this case. They came up with how pornography changes the brain.
And they said the repeated consumption of porn causes the brain to literally rewire itself. Okay. That’s what we’re talking about. It triggers the brain to pump out chemicals. Okay. Well, we, you, and I just said that. And for new nerve pathways, I almost kind of said that leading to profound and lasting changes in the brain.
I mean, what does that tell you?
Craig Graves: [00:29:56] Just doing something,
Chris Gazdik: [00:29:59] right.
Craig Graves: [00:30:00] Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:30:01] Right. And I guess they’ve probably been able to take brain imagery. And, did some studies about, like, we’re going to picture your brain in 2020, we’re gonna expose you to daily pornography or. Five times a week pornography, give yourself a break and rescan your brain in a year in 2021 and see what it looks like.
Maybe they’ve done some of that.
Craig Graves: [00:30:27] I don’t know if they do that or not. That kind of wouldn’t be ethical, would it?
Chris Gazdik: [00:30:30] Absolutely. I think it would probably why not.
Craig Graves: [00:30:33] If you took an average, Joe’s not consuming pornography and.
Chris Gazdik: [00:30:38] You sign up, we paid for the study. I’ve had the guarantee. They probably have done brain imagery on the effects of pornography.
I don’t know for sure. I would be shocked if they didn’t. I would be shocked if they didn’t,
Craig Graves: [00:30:47] I would think maybe they could take a person who’s already watching it and see what areas that are blank brain
Chris Gazdik: [00:30:52] light. How do you get baseline?
Craig Graves: [00:30:55] I know what you’re saying a hundred percent, but
Chris Gazdik: [00:30:57] all right, well, we should do this study.
It’s going to,
Craig Graves: [00:30:58] if it’s going to alter the brain in a negative way.
Chris Gazdik: [00:31:01] Well, we don’t know that.
Craig Graves: [00:31:03] Well, I know. Right. But it’s possible that it could,
Chris Gazdik: [00:31:05] I think you’re afraid to do this.
Craig Graves: [00:31:07] We’re going to take a straight guy, clean guy, and we’re going to shoot him up with heroin every day for a year and see how it changes his brain.
Chris Gazdik: [00:31:13] Wow. Wow. Yeah, that’s a good point. That’s a good point and interesting. I did not think of it as the same thing.
Craig Graves: [00:31:24] Yeah. You know, it’s rewiring in a negative way. You’re going to mess somebody up. That’s why I said it couldn’t, it might not be an ethical thing to do.
Chris Gazdik: [00:31:32] Yeah. It’s interesting. That is I would not have, I would not have thought I’m pretty sure they’ve done studies where they’ve, you know, scanned people’s brains to see the effects on it, particularly as it lives up to that.
Craig Graves: [00:31:41] And I’m sure that they wouldn’t be able to make these statements right here,
Chris Gazdik: [00:31:45] but a longterm study where you take people that don’t and put them in to do. And then, yeah.
Craig Graves: [00:31:50] Thank you. My gosh. Destroying your life for $500.
Chris Gazdik: [00:31:54] All it’d be five grand, maybe 55 grand. I don’t know. But, the effects on the brain and porn are hard.
I mean, I look at it on a basic level, Craig between me and you and our basic brains, right? The pleasure centers in our brain, we know are formed by what we do. You know what we expose ourselves to, you know, I know you’re going to think through this with me and kind of see that it’s not, not too difficult to realize that we do.
I mean, there’s evidence, we know what we know don’t really know. Right. Or I said that wrong. We kinda know that we don’t really know, our palette changes, you know, not just every seven years. I, when we did a nutrition show, it was a really good show. I think people really enjoyed that one. That’s got high listenership show on nutrition and mental health.
Right. You talked about pallet changing every seven years. You remember that? Yeah. Right. Well, think about this when we change what we’re exposed to, we know that the pleasure centers of your brain change such that babies drink milk as when they come out drinking and then in water pretty quickly, or act the same time.
And they would, they could, we could live on that, but you know what we do, we give them. Chocolate milk. Right?
Craig Graves: [00:33:08] And
Chris Gazdik: [00:33:08] now they love it. Then cows milk. Yes. And they love it because the sugars in there in that sugar introduction, I know you can go off on that. We’re not going off on another diet nutrition show right now.
Right. But. That triggers dopamine centers in our brain. We know that. And then your preferences are changed. What are your preferences? Your preferences? What I do makes me feel good. So I’m going to drink chocolate milk instead of regular milk. See how we expose our brain and we, we rewire it and it operates differently after we expose it to chocolate milk.
Right. Right. Our muscles have the same thing. Am I correct? To say you’re more knowledgeable about muscle memories than I am. If I work out as a kid and I have good strong leg muscles, I wrote a lot of bike when I was a kid. I don’t ride right now very much. But if I got back into it, my muscles would boom.
They would remember that. And it’s easier to build them back. Is that not so
Craig Graves: [00:34:10] that’s true. Yeah, but I think it must have the muscle memory we’re talking about here would probably come to the fact that. Even though you hadn’t ridden a bike in 10 years, you jumped on one. You can ride a ride, right?
Chris Gazdik: [00:34:21] Well, that’s the, yeah, that’s a little bit different.
No, I am talking about, I don’t understand why my muscles would remember that. Hey, when I was 15 to 25 years old, I did, I rode my bike a lot. Literally Chris Gazdik, I don’t now. And my legs were probably not anywhere near in shape what they were. But I think they would be pretty quickly, right.
Craig Graves: [00:34:39] Possibly so,
Chris Gazdik: [00:34:39] right.
I think that’s so, and I don’t, and I’m not an expert in that, but listen, cognitive therapy has proven super well through all kinds of studies that we can rewire our brain positive thoughts as does, as you said, breathing, you know?
Craig Graves: [00:34:56] Yeah. So but you don’t know if the rewiring that we talked about earlier is positive or negative.
Chris Gazdik: [00:35:04] With porn. Yeah. Oh, it was probably gotta be negative,
Craig Graves: [00:35:08] but we don’t know for a fact.
Chris Gazdik: [00:35:10] Well,
Craig Graves: [00:35:12] I mean, what does it do and is it changing the way we view sex? Changing the way we view women? Changing the way we view? I mean, what does it, I mean, I wonder what’s happening there. That’s
Chris Gazdik: [00:35:22] so I guess you’re on a you’re you’re saying that don’t want to biomechanical level. I mean, you’re, you’re
Craig Graves: [00:35:28] neurologically rewire the brain and, you know,
Chris Gazdik: [00:35:31] yeah,
Craig Graves: [00:35:31] yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:35:32] That’s what we’re saying, I think we know that we don’t really know, but we know that there’s rewiring is the case I’m making with this idea of, of it. And I, and I think to answer your question, just kind of what I believe and what I see from a sort of, not even an educated, but a non-educated guess on it.
I am, I’ll say educated guess, but the limbic systems involved, our dopamine levels, our oxytocin levels are, you know, what orgasm creates chemically in our body. We feel good. And then when we use porn for that, our body gets used to having porn to create that. I think there’s a lot of good data behind that.
That’s I don’t know if that answered your question, but, I think we made the case. We are on a simple level. We know that metabolism changes. It can occur related to eating and even obesity and stuff such, you know? and you, you talked about breathing, I think. Yeah. Why don’t you one just kind of go into if you could, I mean, you know, breathing changes us metabolically, right?
Craig Graves: [00:36:30] Yeah. But I’m not sure if it, how it changes the brain or if it does
Chris Gazdik: [00:36:33] It has too. And maybe that’s exactly what we said. We know that we know it does, but we don’t know how it does. Cause you, you were talking about breathing. We were going to do show a whole show on breathing and we did it part of our mental health tips instead.
And did a segment on it. Yeah. Where it changes neurologically the book, you’re reading and stuff. Right. I mean, We didn’t say neurologically, but you said, I don’t know what you said. What’d you say
Craig Graves: [00:36:58] there’s lots of health benefits from nasal breathing, but I don’t recall rewiring the brain being one of them.
Chris Gazdik: [00:37:07] Interesting. You don’t
Craig Graves: [00:37:08] Not rewiring. I know that the, that, He talked about how some therapists are using breathing techniques to treat anxiety and even schizophrenia, but he didn’t mention the way that that rewires our brain,
Chris Gazdik: [00:37:21] but that is rewiring the brain.
Craig Graves: [00:37:22] Potentially.
Chris Gazdik: [00:37:23] Anxieties in the brain. I know that there’s a new neurotransmitter system to numb you know, The brain scans that we see where stuff’s lit up and where it’s not.
Craig Graves: [00:37:32] Yeah, I’m going to read, I’m going to read that book. There’s so much good information. Breath by James Nester is the book we’re talking about. There’s so much good information in there. I plan on rereading that because it was such a good one. So I’ll have an update for you. Okay.
Chris Gazdik: [00:37:46] That’s cool.
And you know, and just as a listening audience on the website, we do have that. I saw Neil’s actually already got that up. I think. So it’s an affiliate link that helps us with, you know, when go through that,
Craig Graves: [00:37:57] I highly recommend that one. It’s a fascinating book
Chris Gazdik: [00:37:59] that I might have to get it. You should. Yeah.
So if I click through, I can give myself,
Craig Graves: [00:38:04] I don’t know how that works. Amazon might gain.
Chris Gazdik: [00:38:07] Yeah,
Craig Graves: [00:38:07] you think it might, who knows?
Chris Gazdik: [00:38:10] let’s see. So let’s, let’s move on in so far as, actually we made a, we made a big point on that segment already. Haven’t we differentiate from porn addiction. I mean, you know, we’re not gonna cover that anymore.
I think we covered it because, you know, we need to understand the difference between addictions and not listening on is if you’re only listening to this show, you found us on this show only we spell that out in prior shows pretty well. I think the differences between regular use and addictive use of substances and such, and I think that’s important for you to understand so that we don’t have the fear factor that we have as we talked about earlier here today about.
You know, not shame, but the fear factor of, Oh my God. If I use porn, I’m going to be addict, you know, don’t do you think people I’m curious, do you think people say or teach or purport the myth that if you listen to porn or if you’re a porn user that you’re, you have addicted behavior? I kind of feel like that’s something people would say.
Craig Graves: [00:39:14] I don’t know.
Chris Gazdik: [00:39:15] Yeah.
Craig Graves: [00:39:16] I don’t think a lot of people probably realize that sex can be an addiction.
Chris Gazdik: [00:39:21] Well, okay. Yeah. Yeah. You’re right.
Craig Graves: [00:39:23] So they probably that’s the furthest thing from their mind.
Chris Gazdik: [00:39:26] Yeah, I think you’re, I think you’re probably right. so that doesn’t hit. Yeah, no, I think you’re probably right. the dangers of, and the potential harmful effects that seem clear to me.
Okay. This is just my brainstorm, on what I’m thinking, you know, whether you think it’s good or bad, these are the proponents, I guess, would say that it’s bad. I don’t think of it as good or bad. I think of it as something, you know, that we, that you do. And what are the effects?
Craig Graves: [00:39:50] I don’t think it’s good.
I don’t think anybody would say it’s good. All right. I think you need to watch more porn Mr. Gazdik, it will help you with your issue.
Chris Gazdik: [00:39:58] Do what
Craig Graves: [00:39:58] I said. I think you need to watch more porn, Mr. Gazdik, that would help you with your issue. You know, who’s ever said that? Nobody. Right.
Chris Gazdik: [00:40:07] I, you know, I don’t know, Craig, hold the phone just a little bit.
I think people would say, Hey, you know what, to masturbate, to pleasure yourself, to have sexual outlets. You know, it can be good for your marriage. I could see people kind of proporting the notion. Yes. It can be, you know, say you don’t have the pressure to have your sex be sexual, your partner to be sexual.
I think that people would say, you know, to a certain extent, you know, it’s okay to fantasize about, in fact, I’ve heard many years ago, I read this somewhere in a therapy context or in a mental health context. and because I was learning, I think I was like, I was very green. I have no idea where I read it.
But there was a suggestion somebody made, I don’t want to say it was a therapist, but it may have been a therapist. I mean, I’m going back 25 years now. Honestly, I think. Where somebody said, when, when you’re having sex with your spouse, imagine a fantasy that will help spice up your sex life. And that is a cool thing to do.
Craig Graves: [00:41:06] Are you serious? Yeah. Is that a good idea in your and your professional opinion?
Chris Gazdik: [00:41:14] No, I guess to say to put it short, but in the longterm, you know what you got to think about? What are the effects? I mean, you talk about spicing up your sex life. Well, what does that mean? Get toys. Yeah, let’s get
Craig Graves: [00:41:29] objects
Chris Gazdik: [00:41:30] therapist while I’m trying to be careful because I mean, I’m going back, I’m going back
Craig Graves: [00:41:36] fantasize about another woman, why he’s having sex with his wife.
Chris Gazdik: [00:41:41] I’m going back really far, but it was, it was in a mental health context. And I feel like it may have been somebody that reported themselves to be an expert that did give that advice. Yes. I’m going to say yes. Geez. You know,
Craig Graves: [00:41:54] I would never tell somebody I’m not a therapist, but I would never offer that advice.
Horrible.
Chris Gazdik: [00:42:00] We have had conflicting, very difficult to understand conversations for years about sex and pornography. I feel like, and by the way we, I haven’t planned it and I’m don’t know that we’re going to or have time to, but boy, you know, how do we deal with that questions of religion in this, you know, and moral components of this.
Yes.
Craig Graves: [00:42:29] Right,
Chris Gazdik: [00:42:29] right. Where does that play here? I hadn’t, I don’t know.
Craig Graves: [00:42:33] Right, right. Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:42:35] It’s a big factor though.
Craig Graves: [00:42:36] Yeah, definitely is. I mean, cause this lust, right? I mean, if you looked at it from a religious perspective, that’s definitely lust. Yeah. You know?
Chris Gazdik: [00:42:47] Right. And shall not covet thy neighbors goods. It lusting and being into craving, you know, a dopamine limbic system, supporters of dopamine and different hormones and oxytocin that blows up in our brain when you have an orgasm don’t lust after it. Yeah. Yeah. It’s well, you know, There are factors that all go into that. Huh? Okay. Let me, let me, let me, okay. I don’t know where I feel like we did a bit, a little bunny hole, but that’s okay. Dangers that I see my brainstorm. Right. You know, these are the real realities whether you think it’s good or think it’s bad.
It’s probably somewhere in between is the reality of it. But the fact is, you know, These are things that in a relational sense, in an emotional sense internally in my brainstorm that I’m kind of seeing that, Oh, do offer, you know, kind of concern areas. Okay. first of all, definitely, we can say this is a negative coping mechanism, right?
It’s not necessarily, it’s not going to be a part of my definition of self care. Remember my definition of self care, Mr. Graves. Yeah, fun, relaxing, enjoyable activities that aren’t self destructive in any way. And aren’t work related tasks. Cause this is not a self care item. This is a negative coping mechanism.
Got it. Right. It’s gives the user unrealistic expectations, like for sure.
Craig Graves: [00:44:20] We talked about that earlier,
Chris Gazdik: [00:44:21] right? Yeah. And I, we referenced this in the very last show. Did we? Oh yeah. I didn’t, I don’t think we spent a time into. We kind of got away from it. You know, when you, when you talk about expectations from our last show, sexual expectations are a huge part of how we go through that’s,
Craig Graves: [00:44:40] you know, I didn’t even think about that last show, but that, that definitely ought to be something that you speak about, right.
Chris Gazdik: [00:44:46] It intended to, we intended to. Because sexual expectations in the middle of a marriage are huge.
Craig Graves: [00:44:56] You want to do what?
Chris Gazdik: [00:45:06] Yeah. You know, we’re, we’re laughing, but I can’t even look at you in the face right now. Yeah, man. I mean, you were laughing, but dude, like I, Oh my God. I’ve had clients to have that. In the office with me that they ask their partner to do X and they got broked up. That’s happened.
Craig Graves: [00:45:29] Wow.
Chris Gazdik: [00:45:29] You know, and that’s what I’m saying with like holy, if you watch porn and you know, what’s on there, man.
Oh, unreal. Freaking listic. And I’ll tell you something else. This isn’t always guys watching porn, wanting to do something. This is women watching porn and wanting to do something also at those rates. Joshua Shea talked about increasing a lot,
Craig Graves: [00:45:53] yeah, we talked about that too. I’ve heard that in other places, that pornography is becoming more common among women, you know, female viewers or whatever.
Chris Gazdik: [00:46:03] Yes, yes, yes, yes. And, I mean, it probably affects men more than, than women. I think women, you know, don’t have as much exposure to porn and have a little bit more realistic, you know, idea about what, you know, can we say that women have a more realistic idea of what men want with sex than men have a realistic idea of what women want from sex?
That’s an interesting bar stool conversation. Maybe we won’t have it here.
Craig Graves: [00:46:33] Let’s not, but I think it is a interesting question,
Chris Gazdik: [00:46:36] right? The second area that, now the audience is like, no Do that Craig. What do you think? The second thing that I have concerned with that I see that it conditions the user to new and more risky behavior.
I mean, like, I think we talked about that with a, what was it? Marilyn Monroe going down to Madonna, you know, Can you imagine Madonna’s pictures and behavior and whatever in 1955 or four, when Marilyn Monroe was taking those pictures that were racy and pornography.
Craig Graves: [00:47:11] Yeah. That’s what I’m, that’s what I was kinda.
I didn’t, I didn’t say that earlier, but that’s where I was going with. So like, if Marilyn Monroe on the cover of life was, was bad. I mean, now you got women in swimsuits and you know, God knows what on the cover of magazines. Nobody thinks anything about it.
Chris Gazdik: [00:47:28] There’s a triangle on a breast that covers, and there’s nothing else around the back or the top or
Craig Graves: [00:47:36] anywhere you had pictures today like they back in the 1960s on a cover of a life, man, it would have been,
Chris Gazdik: [00:47:42] yeah, right.
Craig Graves: [00:47:45] It would’ve been on. So it goes back to that desensitation comment you made.
Chris Gazdik: [00:47:49] More risky behavior as well. A lot of affairs.
Craig Graves: [00:47:52] Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:47:54] Not only, again, all, everything, wherever I said that a half hour ago or whatever, they’re not about addiction behavior, but many affairs have happened with this stuff too. That aren’t as sex addict.
Craig Graves: [00:48:05] We haven’t said this, because our conversations have been around pornography in general, but you made the point about technology makes it more accessible and stuff like it also makes finding a real person a lot more accessible with some of these apps and dating sites and stuff like that, you know?
You might get on an app tonight and meet somebody and have sex and that’d be the end of it, you know, never see them.
Chris Gazdik: [00:48:26] Yeah. We’ve said this before, when we were talking about sex addiction that, I mean, conference I went to was, I mean, it’s probably 10 years old now. Gosh, I mean, at least five years, but not more, more than five.
And the stuff that you were telling me, I was blown away. I came home and I talked to my wife. I’m like, honey, at least, you know that they have apps that you could find somebody literally as a dot on the screen that is five miles away. Then it says they want to have sex with you.
I was blown away.
Craig Graves: [00:48:58] Yeah. Yeah. Right.
Chris Gazdik: [00:49:00] Like he, you know their address.
Craig Graves: [00:49:03] Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:49:03] Right now.
Craig Graves: [00:49:05] It was bizarre. Right.
Chris Gazdik: [00:49:06] It’s still trips me out. Yeah. And they’re, and they’ve made a connection. They’ve made the statement on that app that they want do that have sex right now. I still, even as moment, it’s just like, I don’t have a category and I don’t have a category for that. This is crazy. so yeah, more risky behavior. I mean, sexually transmitted diseases, let alone relationship troubles and all that type of stuff. So C takes energy away from the spouse. Okay. Or the marriage, where did we need high amounts of energy?
Did we talk about expectations and longterm relationships? Anytime recently, Mr. Graves? Yeah.
Craig Graves: [00:49:46] Well last show last week. Yeah. Right.
Chris Gazdik: [00:49:48] And the week before marriage takes a lot of energy to maintain in any kind of healthy way. Anything that directly takes energy away from that, which your sexual energy towards, you know, an object in pornography.
I think it’s an easy case. You just say that’s a concern. That’s not helpful to the marriage. It’s not going to be helpful. It takes energy away.
Craig Graves: [00:50:13] Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:50:13] Any doubt there
Craig Graves: [00:50:17] any doubt there that it takes away energy? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I was just curious, you know, when you’re, when you’re talking about expectations, when the sex conversation comes up, I mean, what do you, you talk about frequency and stuff like that.
Cause I I’m imagining in my mind that, you know, a lot of affairs happen because. One or the other person isn’t getting what they need in the relationship. And somebody else provides that board or sex or whatever. So in a lot of relationships, you know, you hear about when you first get married or get together or whatever, there’s like sex every day, two and three times a day.
And then it just slowly starts to come become once a week, once a month, once every couple of months. So in that situation, I would think that some people might turn to pornography as an outlet, right. And so, I mean, how would you advise people as a therapist to talk about sex frequency in a marriage
Chris Gazdik: [00:51:10] directly
Craig Graves: [00:51:11] kind of going back to our last show.
So this doesn’t happen directly. So just have the conversation. Hey, how many times are we going to do it today? Yeah,
Chris Gazdik: [00:51:18] the day. Yeah. Day. How many times a day do we want to hook up? Yes. Is that even possible? Well, it’s possible.
Craig Graves: [00:51:29] I mean, not realistic.
Chris Gazdik: [00:51:30] You know, I mean, it’s, absolutely just a direct conversation.
I think it is. It’s absolutely right in line, which is why I meant to mention it last week. Sorry, listening audience. I didn’t, but everyone listens to every single week and they will hear this and go back there and connect on to the idea that you just have to talk about it. Yeah. I think you have to connect on it and, and say, Hey, I have a higher sex drive.
I mean, sex drive is a biological thing to, and everyone listening out there and not every man has a sex drive. I have many men in my office, they just don’t have a sex drive. They just don’t. They don’t want it. See his eyebrows their audience, his eyebrows just contorted one eyebrow line went in four directions.
It’s true. It’s absolutely true. It’s funny that you reacted that.
Craig Graves: [00:52:21] I think most people think, with what I just said about the guy, but it could be the other way around. Absolutely.
Chris Gazdik: [00:52:27] Absolutely.
Craig Graves: [00:52:28] Got it.
Chris Gazdik: [00:52:29] D creates guilt. Okay. I think that pornography, whether you admit it or not, when you use it, there is a factor.
And it’s why I asked that weird sort of quick question at you earlier in the show. Right. Don’t answer this. Do you use pornography and how often do you use it? Right? Like that’s a provocative, very difficult. Weird emotional kind of, I don’t want to tell you that, you know, it’s uncomfortable, because I think that they’re by nature of the fact that society generally sees this as negative.
On some level and you did it, so you did a negative thing.
Craig Graves: [00:53:14] yeah, I think that guilt could go a lot deeper than that. It’s societal, you mentioned religious, religious implication,
Chris Gazdik: [00:53:21] morally wrong.
Craig Graves: [00:53:23] If you’re doing it and you know that your spouse don’t like it, but you’re continuing to do it. Then you feel bad that you’re horrible, you know, you’re sorry.
But, and so there’s, there’s more than just society. I think that’s definitely one of them, but yeah. There’s there’s lots of factors playing into that.
Chris Gazdik: [00:53:39] I think so. I think there’s fear in that what we were talking about before.
Craig Graves: [00:53:43] Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:53:44] You know, and I think maybe you see that a little bit, because I think you were like, I don’t think people are fearful of it.
Like, you know, again, maybe the wrong word, fearful and shameful and guilty and bad, they feel bad kind of, but, Anyway, terrible item of self care often serves as an emotional outlet. Like alcohol, not good to have alcohol as a coping mechanism for your feelings. Not good to have pornography as a coping mechanism for your feelings, right?
Yes. So interestingly enough, on the other side of the notion. Is pornography bad or is pornography good? interesting article. What is this old, what did I find this on? Is this made me think about this issue? Craig medicalexpress.com, right? lot porn, mental health. Well, I don’t know what that says.
What does that the name of the article? A lot porn, mental health issues. I don’t know. Frequent viewing of porn is a bad thing. Can it lead to psychological problems, feelings like distress or depression and mood disorders or in some cases hypersexuality. So in general, these guys are
Craig Graves: [00:54:57] clearly, that’s a question, but it’s frequent viewing of pornography a bad thing cannot lead to psychological problems, feelings like stress, depression, or mood disorders in some cases, hypersexuality.
Chris Gazdik: [00:55:08] And they say in general, no, they say no. Yes. That’s what this article said. No. According to new international study led by this person? I don’t know. They got apostrophes above their letter, so I think they come from France or another country.
If I kind of skimmed to this article and checked it out,
Craig Graves: [00:55:25] it says he’s Hungarian. Oh, that’s right
Chris Gazdik: [00:55:27] there. It is right there yet. Hungarian researcher doing postdoctoral work in laboratory for study on sexual health, part of the department of psychology at the Universite de Montreal. Right? So you let’s say rather the data tends to show that both clinically and scientifically viewing frequency is not necessarily a reliable or sufficient indicator of problematic or compulsive use of porn.
And I got to thinking about that as like, you know, I don’t know, man, really like. Do we know what’s going on with the brain. I just listed the brainstorm I had about the concerns. Right. So we’re saying, you know, frequent use, I think is what it even said. Right. So I don’t know. I thought that I thought it was fascinating.
They, they cited three types of users. Okay. porn infrequently used with 68 to 73%. Those who are frequent users without any troublesome incidences was 19 to 29% and infrequent users with whom porn has become a problem. It’s three to 8%. Now, what I thought about interesting about those percentages and whatnot is, do you remember the percentages of alcoholism in our society, drug addiction, right?
10% or so. Okay. I like to say 10 to 15%. So this was three to 8% and they’re like, whatever study and that, I just see a correlation there. I see those numbers. We’re not talking about the 10% of people that have addiction here in the and the problem creation of the rest of the 90% of peak might not be so bad.
It might not be. I mean, it’s like alcohol people drink alcohol. You know, it’s not, it’s not so bad. but it’s not like healthy. It’s not, you know, like
Craig Graves: [00:57:16] arguments that alcohol consumption can be healthy.
Chris Gazdik: [00:57:19] Well, that’s true. Wine beer.
Craig Graves: [00:57:22] I’ve heard beer cleans out the kidneys, whatever
Chris Gazdik: [00:57:24] does it.
Craig Graves: [00:57:25] I’ve heard that. I don’t know how true that is.
Chris Gazdik: [00:57:26] That’s really good news to me.
Craig Graves: [00:57:27] It’s funny. I was going to make a joke and a new international study paid for by the porn industry led by. No. Yeah. So it’s just interesting. If there are other. Contradictory research items out there that say that, that it does indeed do damage. So I don’t know, man,
Chris Gazdik: [00:57:44] Satan in here, this boss person, what is a two dots above a zero, an ODU for the word?
Craig Graves: [00:57:50] All those. I don’t know the answer to
Chris Gazdik: [00:57:53] that. B O T H E with a dot dot above the, O, how do you pronounce that?
Craig Graves: [00:57:58] So, Chris, let me ask you a question.
Chris Gazdik: [00:58:00] Well, let me go grow here real quick. Is it more of an interaction between individual personality characteristics is what they’re saying and social, societal context, right.
That’s what they’re saying is that what creates problematic use of pornography versus, you know, other things? It was, it was an interesting, You know, notion about is this good or bad? And it’s almost kinda like you don’t, you don’t find much that says it’s not bad, but I did find this.
Yeah. What’s your course.
Craig Graves: [00:58:26] So what do you think? I mean, the title of our show is, is pornography good or bad for your mental health? What say you, Mr. Gazdik
Chris Gazdik: [00:58:33] it’s average,
Craig Graves: [00:58:34] average.
Chris Gazdik: [00:58:39] I’m going to say it’s a negative coping skill. I don’t think it’s good for you. But I think that the fear that is, you know, that is out there about it is not, you’re not going to become addicted, you know, when you use porn. And I think it’s very corollary to alcohol. I think it does. It creates, particularly in relationship to other people, potentially high level concerns with its use, particularly in a marriage.
interesting question that just hits me in the moment. I’ll return it back to you, Mr. Graves, while you’ve already said bad, I guess start off didn’t if you’re not married. You have no obligations to anyone else with fidelity, you stay single until you’re 40 or whatever. Is pornography bad for you?
Hmm.
Craig Graves: [00:59:29] Well, again, we talked about religious implications. You know, if you’re a strong believer in a particular faith that looks down upon that kind of thing, then that’s between you and your God, I guess, you know,
Chris Gazdik: [00:59:43] He’s avoiding the question.
Craig Graves: [00:59:46] Well, I’m not afraid to question. I’m just bringing up the point.
There still could be some of the same things you talked about in there. You know, you, you might think that,
Chris Gazdik: [00:59:53] yeah, it’s definitely my thing. Yeah. I’m saying realistic
Craig Graves: [00:59:56] I’m not dating anybody, and I can do whatever I want to, you know, if you still answer to a higher power that there’s, that, you know, and like we said earlier, there’s some documentaries on Netflix about these women who’ve led a life in the porn industry and how they got treated.
Where they are now. And it’s, you know, so are you supporting the exploitation of these people when you watch that stuff? I mean, there’s, there’s still some questions you have to wrestle with, even if you’re, even if you’re completely, unattached.
Chris Gazdik: [01:00:25] Yep. You know, I’ll answer the question you popped me there and it’s the title of the show in the end.
And the way I went in is this quote, right? I think this is a good quote. if you listen to this whole conversation, you’re going to understand this quote, that “Addiction is the true beast. Though pornography can cause problems.” How’s that as an answer to your question in simple terms,
Craig Graves: [01:00:48] I think that’s pretty well said, man, right?
Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [01:00:50] Addiction is the true beast, though pornography can cause problems. I think that’s where I landed when I was thinking about this in depth for the show. so yeah. Summary, thoughts, questions, concerns. I think it’s time to get on out of here. Mr. Graves,
Craig Graves: [01:01:08] What’s next brother, we’re going to do next.
Chris Gazdik: [01:01:09] We’re going to get some guests back involved.
I’ve got, I just kinda got lines and stuff going on and it takes a little bit to organize the coordination of guests on the show. So I got some people that have written books and then we’re going to cover,
Craig Graves: [01:01:20] when are we going to do the psychedelics?
Chris Gazdik: [01:01:23] That’s one of them I got, yeah. With that. Maybe next we’ll hit that soon
I’m looking
Craig Graves: [01:01:29] forward to doing that.
Yeah. Learning more about it. I guess
Chris Gazdik: [01:01:32] I am looking forward to learning about that too. I’m a skeptic. I will tell the doctor so when we approach him, Hmm. Mostly because I don’t understand it. I don’t, I don’t understand what freaking, you know, horse tranquilizers stuff we’re going to do to help our brain grow developed ketamine.
There’s a lot
Craig Graves: [01:01:52] going on in there, man.
Chris Gazdik: [01:01:53] Right. Hope you guys have a good week. Enjoy the show. We enjoy doing it with you. Let’s continue next week with, probably some guests coming over and have a great week guys.