Why I Stopped Watching Porn-- A Young Man Speaks Out at TEDx Talks

One of the potential liabilities of doing counseling in this field is the susceptibility to feeling discouraged; consciously one has to work to offset the effects of feeling defeated by the depressing realities of sex addiction's rise. I am well aware that as the hypersexualization of our culture increases, PoSAs (partners of sex addicts) encounter more and more triggers, as do the sexual addicts/compulsives we share our lives with. That, in and of itself, can be incredibly challenging for all of us and asks us to maintain rigorous boundaries around how we live, what shows we watch, etc.

So, when I find news about someone who is making a difference by asking the mainstream public to question their consumption of sex as a commodity, I am incredibly heartened. To be honest, I'm overjoyed. When that person appears from outside the sex addiction recovery community, I'm highly intrigued (not that those inside the recovery community don't add a lot to the discourse happening more frequently). 

Here, then, is a TEDx Talks presentation given by a young man who quit porn. In this twenty-minute presentation, he speaks about his motivation for giving it up and it wasn't addiction. It also wasn't a result of his girlfriend or wife issuing him an ultimatum.

And this young educator apparently wasn't so far gone in a porn habit that he couldn't see pornography for what it was, in truth.

His courage to speak up about his humanist observations in as public a space and with as much viewership as the TEDx platform will likely yield him plenty of scorn from the oftentimes vicious Pro-Porn Activists. I wish him a thick skin for any negativity to roll off of and the ability to transmute it into more activism.

While there are one or two points he misses on, overall, I believe he deserves a lot of credit for his fearlessness in speaking out and encouraging other porn users to consider the effects of their usage on the wider world. That he can consider the purview beyond his own smartphone or laptop inspires me and puts a smile on my face.

Knowing what I do about the Internet's incredible ability to habituate a porn user to novelty, and in the process, alter the brain's arousal template and create addiction, this young man in the video helps me hold onto some hope for the generation of youngsters who grew up with the Internet.

Watch this video and be inspired yourself. Share it with loved ones and spark your own "Meaningful Film" discussion, as we do here at Camp PoSARC all the time.

And definitely share your thoughts with us below in the Comment box- we always want to know what our readers are thinking about!