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Sex Addiction · Why We Do What We Do

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You're listening to Why we do what we do. Welcome to Why we Do
0:16
what we do. I am your libido host Abraham, and I'm your nonexistent
0:23
host Shane. Oh bummer. Yeah, we'll say that. I know,
0:27
surprise it goes. It's just me talking to a reflection of myself on the
0:32
other side of the country, which means you're not a vampire. Oh that's
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good. Yeah, that's a good point. We are actually a psychology podcast.
0:38
We talk about all of the things that people do and sometimes maybe for
0:42
a long time, we talk about various dependencies that people may have, or
0:46
aspects of dependency and addiction. That's currently where we find ourselves in the middle
0:51
of a suite of episodes dedicated to that very topic. Yes, so today
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we are talking about sex addiction. And I think this is something that is
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I'm gonna say right now. I think the label is very charged, sure,
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and I think that in the United States, sex is very confusing,
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also fair, And this is gonna be one of those topics that as we
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unpack it, you're gonna go, huh okay, this's my favorite kind uh
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huh. Yeah. And there's a lot of people that have a lot to
1:18
say about it that don't know what they're talking about. So that's fun too.
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Okay, well, that is a great setup and intro for this very
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i think provocative discussion that we are about to have. And if you're joining
1:30
us for the first time, welcome. We're so happy to have you here.
1:32
And although as I said, we are in the middle of several episodes
1:34
dedicated to the topic of addiction, we really did specifically design and have in
1:40
mind that each of these would stand on their own. Now I think that
1:42
they've I've been really pleased with how they've turned out so far, so I
1:47
do think that it would be worth checking out those episodes, but you really
1:51
don't need them to be able to follow along with any of the discussions that
1:55
we're gonna have today or here after anyway, So welcome, thank you for
1:57
being here. If you do like what you hear today and you would like
2:00
to support us, and you haven't already, then you can pick up some
2:02
murch You can join us on Patreon, you can leave us a rating and
2:05
review, share us with a friend. Maybe you can make up a different
2:08
type of addiction and call it why we do what we do? Don't do
2:12
that. I'll talk about all the ways that you can support us at the
2:15
end of this discussion. In the meantime, we have to acknowledge that it
2:20
is May first, which means Happy May Day. Yay. It's also Agriculture
2:23
and Labor Day and Couple Appreciation Day. It is also Frequent Flyer Day,
2:30
the opposite of that. It is Global Love Day. One of my favorite
2:36
holidays is the Great American grump Out. Hm. I'm curious to know more.
2:40
Just be grumpy, okay. It is International Sunflower Gorilla Gardening Day,
2:46
and gorilla in this case meaning just sort of go out and plant sunflowers on
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random places, unasked and unwanted. Uh huh, yes, grow them up.
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I love it. It's learned to write a bike Day. Love that.
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It is National Black Barber Shop Appreciation Day. Fantastic, love it.
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It feels like that should be in February, but I'm good with it here.
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I'm good with it here too. It's National Chocolate Parfe Day. Hmmmm.
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It is National Infertility Survival Day. Have you survived being infertile? So
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it's your day, Today's your day. It's National Interpreter Appreciation Day, which
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you know. I love interpreters, especially Oh yeah, sign language interpreters.
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Oh yeah, there's so much fun to watch. Oh my god, there's
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so much fun to watch. I had a learner one time that I worked
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with who would call his girlfriend and they would have phone sex using a video
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interpreter. And that is probably one of my favorite things that I ever thought
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about, like that there had to be an interpreter that would go back and
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forth and interpret the raunchy things they would say to one another. It's so
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great. That's so relevant to today's topic as well. Yes it is,
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and sort of relatedly, I guess it is Choose Privacy Week. Yeah,
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I mean, and I guess depending on what your kink or your fetish is,
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it's go diaper free Week two. That's pretty good, all right.
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It is International Mariachi Week. Love that for that one. Go listen to
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the band El Mariachi if you'd like, or listen to an authentic mariachi band,
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but El Mariachi if you like the bronx, it's just a bronx.
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El Mariachi is National Auctioneers Auctioneers Week, sorry, Auctioneers Week right, National
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Small Business Week, and then it is also a Jewish American Heritage Month.
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Ooh, that's a loaded situation right now. I would say, yeah,
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given what's going on with the world. It is Global Employee Health and Fitness
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Month, I think that, yes. And it is National Foster Care Month.
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Ooh, love that. Love our foster care folks that are doing good
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job out there. You know that is so good. I am. I'm
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so for so all for that. Now. We like to share these holidays
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because there's I mean, every day is just packed with some kind of thing
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to acknowledge and celebrate, and some people are really into that thing and it's
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fun I think to share that. So we do that at the front of
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these discussions. But it's not what we're up to today, and not at
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least primarily what we are talking about, as we said, as sex addiction.
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Sexual addiction probably just sex addiction. And it's important to think to couch
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this inside of the fact that so far, when we've been talking about addiction
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in these various episodes, we have pretty much focused it almost entirely on chemical
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dependencies. We've talked about alcohol, We've talked about various other drugs and harm
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reduction, heroin and cocaine, and the War on drugs. A lot has
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been focused on chemical substance type addictions and dependencies that exist. And now we're
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starting our foray in a little bit. I mean, we're not going to
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go too heavy into this, I don't think, but there are a lot
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of things to talk about inside of behavioral addictions. Yes, and so today
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we're going to specifically focus on sexual behavior and what that looks like, which
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we already know that sexual behavior is very complex. I do want to share
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a quick just kind of a fair content warning, maybe not necessarily trigger warning.
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There are to be some discussions on just kind of the general idea of
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trauma related or abuse and neglect stuff that happens inside of this, maybe some
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sexual assault stuff. We're not going to go into details on what those things
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are, but we are going to talk those terms are going to come up,
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so we just want to kind of give a fair content wording around that.
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Oh so glad you said something. Yeah, that's a really good point.
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Some of this is going to be if you're in the space of being
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sensitive to those kinds of discussions. That will be at least part of today's
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As you said, we're not planning on going into the gruesome details, but
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we will be touching on those topics, just so people know if you find
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that that's something that you are not comfortable listening to, or the people that
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you're around, maybe small children, it's possible that that will be something you
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would want them to hear. So just just keep that in mind as you're
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making your decision moving into this. But as I said, the behavioral addiction
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piece of this is, I think it's interesting because whereas the others, I
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think most people understand and have at least some kind of empathy toward chemical addiction
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because it creates, I think, a feeling of necessity that seems inescapably out
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of control. Sure for the person who is using that substance, and behavioral
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addictions they don't seem they don't create noticeably the same kind of chemical withdrawal that
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I think a lot of people expect to see in spaces around chemical type addictions.
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And so instead, with behavioral addictions, you're looking at more things that
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are patterns and habits of behavior that are happening at such intensity and frequency that
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they result in harm and persist despite that harm. Presumably, right, So
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let's talk a little bit about what a sexual addiction is according to the current
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research, the current field, current practices around this specific topic. So when
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I say sexual addiction, I am referring to what is described as quote,
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excessive sexual thoughts, desires, urges, or behaviors that can't be controlled and
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cause distress and harm to your relationships, finances, and other aspects of your
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life end quote. Sometimes it's referred to as hypersexuality, compulsive sexual behavior,
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sexual dependency, et cetera, et cetera, etcetera. But the thing is
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is what we just described kind of alignes to what we've talked about so far
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with addictions in general, right right, distress, harm, and it kind
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of impacts these other areas of your life in some way. Yes, And
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I think one of the other things that's interesting about this behavioral addiction and others
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is I think you could sort of group them into camps of like behavioral addictions
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of things that are necessary but are done to excess, and things that are
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unnecessary and not harmful unless done to excess. And so like, for example,
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eating and sex I think are things that are necessary and can be done
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to excess, and then things like gambling and social media and video games are
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things that are not inherently harmful but are also not necessary and can be done
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to excess. And so a key characteristic described by many sources with sex addiction
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and primarily focuses on the sort of compulsive engagement and sexual activity. This inability
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to control one's will to decide not to engage in this and it's mostly sexual
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intercourse is basically the focus on this and the negative consequences of this heightened sort
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of as you had mentioned, hyper sexuality, right. Absolutely, so,
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just to kind of provide a little bit of clarity on the topic, there
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is no formal diagnosis for sex addiction, Like you're not going to find it
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like their substance abuse disorders and stuff like that. That's important. Yeah,
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that's really important. That's kind of huge. Actually, that's actually kind of
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the biggest thing that we're going to unpack, and we're kind to kind of
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unpack why there isn't. But it is important to note that as of right
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now, at the time of this recording, the ICD eleven diagnostic criterion around
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this includes something called compulsive sexual behavior disorder. I want to point out that
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it is only the ICD eleven and no other diagnostic manual that has this specific
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thing in here. What's interesting about this is it's classified as a behavioral disorder.
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It's not actually described using an addiction model inside of the ICD eleven,
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so there is no addiction kind of overlay with it inside of that manual.
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So I think the way that I'm interpreting this and correct me if I'm wrong,
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then is to say that, like this calling something a sexual addiction,
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there doesn't seem to be support from the national or international psychological community that the
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addiction framework is appropriate for contextualizing sexual behavior of this nature. Does that sound
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right? So? Yes, and so yesterday, and there is just very
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little agreement on specifically what this looks like or what it entails. Okay,
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got you. Yeah, So, like there's not really a good model to
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apply to it. And really what you're going to find is that a lot
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of it is actually kind of a brief spoiler here. A lot of times,
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like hyper sexualization might be the result of other mental health things going on.
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Yeah, I could see that, and might also be a self medicating
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coping skill. So we're going to kind of unpack all that as we go.
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It's not likely that it's an actual addiction in and of itself. Okay,
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I think that is a that is a very important piece of this.
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Then, all right, so then let's talk about the ICDs compulsive sexual behavior
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disorder. So this is characterized by a persistent pattern of failure to control intense
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repetitive sexual impulses or urges, resulting in repetitive sexual behavior. And I think
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in this case the repetitive means at a rate higher than would maybe be considered
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an appropriately adaptive level. Oh man, that is, if that isn't vague,
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I don't know what it is. So there's also a pattern of failure
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to control intense sexual impulses or urges and resulting in repetitive sexual behavior. And
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that's manifested over an extended period of time, for six months or more.
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And then there causes of marked distress or significant impairment and personal, family,
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social, educational, and then any other areas of sort of typical functioning in
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daily activity, if you will. And then the distress that is entirely related
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to moral judgments and disapproval about sexual impulses, urges or behaviors is not sufficient
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to meet this requirement. So just because you're having some distress about like,
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oh I don't like this, this is uncomfortable, morally, this is wrong.
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That's not part of this issue. So it's actually kind of like the
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repetitive engagement that's impacting your life. Now that being said, I want to
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kind of point this this out too. When you look at a lot of
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diagnostic criterion, they're going to have similar criteria, right right, Definitely,
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how did the behavior that manifests over a period of time that causes distress,
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that is in and of itself kind of the blanket definition of mental health disorders
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as we go, like, those criterion meet almost every diagnosis that we talk
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about, right, That is depression, that is bipolar disorder, that is
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anxiety, that is OCD. All of those things have similar criteria to that,
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even autism even like even those yeah diagnoses have the rule in criteria.
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And it's actually funny as you say that, because I was looking at this
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and I always like to try and specifically pick apart definitions in criteria like these,
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because it's so important to consider what does it rule in, what does
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it rule out? What does it maybe include that it's not trying to include.
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Because I look at this list and I think I could quite easily point
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to a sex worker, maybe someone who performs in pornography or someone who works
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in like a sex work space where they're actively taking on clients, and like
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this meets the definition of their behavior. And I don't think that we would
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say that they have a compulsive sexual behavior disorder, right, but they do
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have like a persistent pattern of there's a lot of repetitive sex going on,
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and it happens. If you were to just look at the frequency and rate
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of it, I think it definitely happens at at a rate that it looks
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compulsive, even though I'm not necessarily sure you would describe it that way,
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and maybe it is, though maybe they do. I don't know, so
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I think it's just worth considering. I'm not sure that this adequately rules out
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situations whether are external like motive motivation. I guess is where really where I
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was going with this, And I think you know, when you start getting
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into stuff when it talks about a market distress or significant impairment in these other
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areas, I think there is a line where it starts to kind of reach
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that for some folks, like I know that when they talk about that with
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like pornography addiction, there's a point where it's like costing people their jobs because
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they can't stop accessing it and stuff like that. But I think ultimately what
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we're gonna find is, like you know, on the surface and kind of
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like, as a general rule, this compulsive sexual behavior disorder is also not
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something that exists in any other diagnostic manual except for the ICD nine, right,
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because as we kind of start to go through the history and kind of
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where this stuff comes from, you're gonna start discovering that like, oh,
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maybe this isn't as bad as everybody thinks it is. Yeah, And I
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actually know that you did sort of raise a point in that that I think
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is important is that I do think that most sex workers, and I don't
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know, I have an inventory them, but I'm not sure that I would
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say that they say that it causes them mark distress or significant impairment. It
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probably does make certain social activities more challenging, depending on the kind of circles
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they're running in. You know, when someone asks what do you do for
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work? Which I think is an extremely common small talk type of question to
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ask, Yeah, that someone who is in that space, if they don't
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know you, especially, they're not likely to say like, oh, yeah,
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I'm a sex worker. I mean, maybe they are. I think
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it depends on where they come from on that, but I think they tend
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to not want to share that part of themselves because I think and more or
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less, we live in a culture that has punished that type of even reporting,
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let alone action. So yeah, anyway, a thing to consider as
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fu as far as that, Yeah, I mean, could you imagine being
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in a space where like somebody asks you what you did for work, and
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like you either had to tell them that you were a sex worker or that
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you were doing ads. All right, so we are back, and to
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answer your question, I think I would rather say that it was a sex
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worker. So anyway, same, let's get into some history here about this
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I guess conditions. Since it's not I diagnosis this condition of sex addiction,
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and where the term even comes from. Let's unpack this a little bit because
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I think, you know, I am so glad that we did some of
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the like kind of like the episodes that we've done in this suite earlier,
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because it all comes back. Right. So, the term sex addiction actually
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began to emerge in the mid nineteen seventies as like an official like kind of
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like problem, and it actually came from none other than our friends in Alcoholics
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Anonymous. So they actually started looking at the applications of the twelve step program.
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Members of AA specifically began to look at applications of the twelve step program
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and aim to apply those strategies to folks who engage in serial infidelity and other
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unmanageable compulsive sexual behavior. Oh no, so that's kind of where it started.
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I know, they twelve steps but here instead. And so they actually
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created some other groups around this that were similar to AA. So there are
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sex Addicts Anonymous, there's sex aholics anonymous, their sex and love Addicts Anonymous,
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and there's sexual compulsives anonymous just the name of you. Do you know
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if all of those have the same sort of religious background and orientation to alcoholics
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Anonymous. I didn't do a deep dive on them. I would imagine that
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at least some of them do, Okay, I definitely did not know how
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pressing it was for us to begin with our discussion on alcoholics Anonymous at the
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beginning of this suite of episodes. So if you are interested, we just
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and if you haven't already listened to that one, I recommend going back and
17:37
checking it out. Because it has come up multiple times now and it seems
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like it's likely to come up again. Yeah, isn't that funny? Yeah,
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that's good to know. Much of the discussion around sex addiction was further
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conflated during the nineteen eighties, because remember we were this was sort of starting
17:55
in the nineteen seventies, So in the nineteen eighties, this is getting conflated
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with cultural anxieties and tensions, and this sort of evoked this response of this
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moral concern and a movement to medicalize the disease and move toward the medical treatment
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model. And again we've talked about previous episodes about I guess talking about addiction
18:15
as a disease, so worth again also revisiting that I didn't think that we
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would do this much back referencing, But point being, it doesn't really matter.
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You can go back and check it out. I think it's a good
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episode if you haven't heard it yet. But I think just the point being
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that, like around the eighties, is when we get this move to let's
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call anything that we are putting in the sphere of addiction a disease, and
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that really did come from the alcoholics anonymous sort of orientation Yeah, I mean
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that really kind of changed the entire way that we look at this, or
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at least people look at this in the United States. But you know,
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as we go, you'll see kind of as we unpact more so. Now
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a quote from ray Atwood and Gooder in twenty twelve, there is a book
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that kind of talked about sexual addiction and stuff. But this specific quote was
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pulled from this book and it said, quote, those essentially mythical creating a
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problem that need not exist, sex addiction has to be taken seriously as a
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phenomenon. Rarely has a socio psychological discourse taken such a hole in the public
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imagination and proven an influential concept in academic circles too. End quote. And
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so basically what they're saying is is that even if even if sex addiction is
19:23
a mythical thing that does not exist, the conversation around it has become a
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of such social importance that we have to study the phenomenon. We have to
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start looking at this from some way. And this kind of happens all the
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time. You know, some fad thing will come up and scientists have to
19:38
study this, or you know, something has become kind of taken hold of
19:42
the public, and now we've got to kind of spend some time either I
19:45
mean studying it in the space of like debunking it and demystifying it and doing
19:51
those things too. And that's kind of what happened here, is is people
19:53
were really upset by this thing and so and very worried about it and very
19:57
very very worried about it. Especially in the eighties when you started seeing HIV
20:00
and AIDS start to rise and some of the stuff that goes along with that.
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You see this kind of worry around sexual behavior, and that's kind of
20:07
always been the case in the United States, and so it makes sense that
20:11
it turned into this kind of mythical problem that has turned into an industry around
20:17
trying to cure sexual addiction. You know, it makes me think of and
20:22
sort of reminds me of like flat earthers. I'm like, the Earth isn't
20:25
flat. But it's interesting to figure out exactly what kind of brain damage leads
20:30
to you believing that the Earth is flat, Like at what point along your
20:33
developmental trajectory does logic just break down and all of a sudden you can sort
20:38
of do mental gymnastics to make that nonsense cohere in your language, right,
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and so it's sort of like, it is interesting to study even if it's
20:48
nonsense, because there's a contingent of people for whom this has been affected.
20:52
Anyway, I don't want to compare sex addiction to flat earthers. Obviously,
20:56
flat earthers is way further on the spectrum of like this is nonsense, right,
21:00
matter of fact, almost the archetype of like, how wrong can you
21:03
be? Let's start it at flat earth. So, as you said,
21:06
there are these detractors that argue that it doesn't exist. John Money, quoted
21:10
in the book Sex Edition, a Critical History, is quoted as saying,
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quote, sexual addiction is a newly coined term for disorder as fictitious as thirst
21:18
addiction, hunger addiction, or reading addiction. Sexual addictionology does not address the
21:25
specificity of addiction. Instead, it decrees that the only non addictive form of
21:30
sexual expression is a lifelong heterosexual fidelity and commitment in a monogamous marriage. End
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quote. Wow, that is I mean, it's not that I'm taking a
21:41
firm stance on this right now, but it's not the first time that some
21:45
standard in the United States that is sort of referred to as normal expected appropriate
21:55
has been linked to like a very specific sort of white cis under heterosexual platonic
22:02
orientation to the world as being the right orientation to the world. So drawing
22:07
that parallel is immediately concerning, and you're gonna find as we go through this
22:11
a lot of the quote unquote problems that come up in sex addiction are absolutely
22:17
because there's a comparison to heteronormative viewpoints of the world. But I want to
22:22
take a little side quest here because we mentioned this man. His name is
22:26
John Money. Okay, I was gonna ask about this. Yeah, so
22:29
who is John Money? Listeners you may ask, he might sound like a
22:33
porn star, that is a one hundred porn star name, but he was
22:37
a New Zealand American psychologist and a sexologist. He was also responsible for coining
22:41
the terms gender role and sexual orientation. Now to be clear, he did
22:45
not coin the term gender identity, okay, because he's actually kind of an
22:49
enemy to the trans community. He was an advocate for what he called surgical
22:53
normalization of genitalia of intersex infants because he believed in the first two years that
23:00
gender was still kind of which is like this is like a weird roundabout way
23:03
to get to where he got. He was like, God, gender is
23:07
fluid, but only the first two years, so you can actually reassign people
23:11
before they turn two. Like so he had kind of like the idea of
23:14
gender fluidity, but like totally used it for nefarious purposes. Right, Yeah,
23:18
Yeah, that's not the only problematic thing he's done as far as like
23:22
gender identity and stuff. So he's kind of an enemy of the trans community
23:26
for a lot of reasons. But it's just one of those things where and
23:29
I actually have noticed this quite a bit. This is totally anecdotal that when
23:32
you start getting into the sex education sexology community, there are still a lot
23:38
of really complex, really challenging debates around which you know, shouldn't be as
23:45
much of a debate as I think it is. But like you have these
23:48
people who are on these kind of like these camps that are like non trans,
23:52
that are non homosexual, like all of this stuff that still exists inside
23:56
this place that's supposed to be sex positive. It's really fascinating to see that
24:00
kind of come up and go, oh man, we have got so much
24:03
further to go on this. I mean, more than people realize even inside
24:07
of the communities they are supposed to be like the support of communities. It
24:11
does speak to a bit the fact that this is very, very new.
24:17
I think that people have been aware of and struggling with addictions like alcohol for
24:25
about as long as we've had alcohol, which seems to be about as long
24:29
as we've had any kind of civilization at all, like tribes, it seems
24:33
like any other natural drug. That even could be the case that like people
24:40
who have struggled with excessive use of those drugs, right, this seems to
24:45
have popped up within the last century, and presumably, as far as I
24:49
know, human beings have been having sex for longer than that, as far
24:52
as I can tell, Yeah, I think you know, citation needed,
24:56
But as far as I know that it has been going on for some time.
25:03
So if it's just emerging, that would be surprising, particularly given that
25:11
the actual practice of monogamy is also like probably on the newer end of things.
25:18
So anyway, we'll talk about this. So let's talk about some types
25:22
of sex addictions, because I think part of where people might have some yeah,
25:27
but or even just know you're wrong, because they might be thinking about,
25:33
well, what about this, what about this? What about this?
25:34
And they'll have all these examples of like what about people who have these impulses
25:38
toward the various fetishes and family members or something, you know, something where
25:44
it's obviously very problematic for various reasons. Sure, what about those? I
25:48
just want to do a quick note as we go through this section. I
25:52
went through website after website after website to try to find anything scientific on whether
25:59
there were actual types of sexual addiction. What I found was there was not
26:03
any agreement on this. Okay. What I did find was something kind of
26:06
similar to what I would describe as like a best of list, like you
26:08
know, or like a top ten type of list multiple times, and so
26:12
what this next section is going to talk about. They all varied in length
26:15
and description and a lot of stuff, but we're going to describe are some
26:18
of the ones that are across kind of multiple lists. So I found that,
26:22
like, Okay, this particular example was on three or four different lists
26:26
that people kind of talk about in a way that is maybe a professional space
26:30
and maybe give some framework, but doesn't necessarily have any sort of empirical backing
26:34
whatsoever. So I just want to kind of prime everybody for that piece here,
26:40
it does make sense that given that this is not a formal diagnosis,
26:45
there would be relatively little consistent taxonomy dedicated to the sort of boundary conditions of
26:53
what you might call types of sex addiction. Yeah, and so the borders
26:56
that define this are nebulous. We find people that ten to come up with
27:00
sort of their own categories as they see fit. So there are, as
27:03
you said, there's sort of few consistent types. So I guess we can
27:07
go through those. Yeah. The first one is a biological sex addict or
27:11
addiction, which means that the person in anybody who is described as a biological
27:15
sex addict has developed a dependency on some part of the biological process that involves
27:21
sex. And in this space, what the key characteristic here is that it's
27:25
purely the biological process. There is no sexual or psychological trauma involved with this
27:30
person's kind of history. They just go, I really like this thing.
27:33
I like this thing a lot. I like this thing so much that it's
27:36
causing me to stress. That's kind of what the biological part of this is.
27:38
They have a dependency on having sex with biology. Yuh huh, yep,
27:42
those watch out textbooks abuse and neglect sex addicts, and it is reported
27:49
that eighty percent of sex addicts have some sort of abuse or neglect in their
27:53
past, which is sort of cited as the root cause of their then current
28:00
addiction. Right, there's also spiritual sex addicts, and these are folks that
28:04
are described as having a condition that they in define spirituality through sex. Basically,
28:10
they have a God sized hole in their soul and in their body,
28:14
and they're trying to fill that God sized hole with something something God sized,
28:18
if you will. But they're basically they what they say here is they have
28:26
a spiritual appetite that is not fulfilled through church or other forms of spiritual practices,
28:30
and so they are looking for quote, a spiritual connection in all the
28:33
wrong places by just having a lot of sex for God. Okay, sure,
28:37
sure, all right. So then the next one is a trauma based
28:41
sex addict. So this makes the argument that folks with trauma in their history
28:45
seek to fantasize or aim to reenact that trauma, and I think, I
28:48
guess a sort of sexual based way. Yes, there's also I saw this
28:52
one come up a lot, and it came up from this guy, Doug
28:56
Weiss, who I looked up and he was on Fox News in Oprah multiple
28:59
times. So I don't know that he's the most trusted source on this,
29:02
you know, we'll leave it at that. So he describes something called intimacy
29:06
sex addicts, and basically any of the behavior, the patterns that they engage
29:10
in, the patterns of sex they engage with, or the dangerous sexual behaviors
29:11
they engage in are intimacy seeking. They're seeking closeness, so they're trying to
29:15
connect with people through that, and that's like the way that they find close
29:19
connections with people. But they also include the subcategory of intimacy and erexia sex
29:26
addicts, which basically says they are withholding intimacy from their partners and choosing to
29:30
engage in risky sexual behavior elsewhere, maybe through infidelity, maybe through you know,
29:36
some type of sex work industry type of service, and they give their
29:41
intimacies elsewhere, they don't give it to their chosen partners. That whole thing
29:45
is very confusing to me. Yeah, for one thing, if you're an
29:48
intimacy addict, then is specifically ischewing the opportunity for intimacy that you have cultivated
29:55
already Essentially is an oxymoron in relation to that hair split designation. Sure,
30:00
and then like people who are not faithful to their partners being seen as essentially
30:07
being intimacy anorexic seems like it's creating a category for the sake of having something
30:14
fancy to call it sure, when it's sort of like, I think it's
30:17
fairly common that people who are being unfaithful to their partners are also not doing
30:22
a lot of sexual things with their partners, right, like right or other
30:26
intimate things. That's maybe even part of the reason that they're sort of they're
30:30
moving on in the first place. So anyway, the last one that we
30:33
have is mood disorder sex addicts, and this occurs when someone who already has
30:37
an existing mood disorder may use sex as a form of self medication, which
30:42
also feels a little bit like hair splitting and thinking about like any motivation that
30:48
you could come up with that could be like a I have bad thing,
30:53
therefore I heal with sex and then call that an individual thing. Again,
30:59
it's just like it's getting to the point of everybody's got their own version of
31:04
this disorder, right, and then it's sort of like, what's what's the
31:07
point of even giving it a name anymore. You know, Yeah, it
31:11
doesn't really make any sense to land on something that's like try to create something
31:15
out of a thing that already exists. It's kind of like when you start
31:18
seeing disorders split up in the multiple disorders and you're like, you didn't need
31:21
to do that because it's kind of all the same thing. It's just like
31:22
different kind of indicators or characteristics of that. And that's kind of the way
31:26
that I look at this is like, well, couldn't you you know,
31:30
like let's say, you know, you can pick any disorder that's got like
31:33
a risky behavior inside of it, Like could you not argue that, like
31:37
some type of sexual engagement that is risky is maybe part of the symptoms of
31:44
that larger disorder. And I mean that's again we're not even talking about like
31:47
the problems with things like the DSM or like disorder and stuff like that in
31:51
general. But like I think that you're kind of like people are kind of
31:53
going, yeah, but it's its own thing, and it's like, actually,
31:56
no, it's not its own thing. It's this it's this thing specifically
32:00
or to set it behave I don't know, it just it doesn't make any
32:01
sense to split it all the way down this far. It doesn't offer very
32:06
much utility. There's there's very little and I think understanding the variables that contribute
32:09
to any one of these things when it's just an infinite split and it just
32:14
becomes completely like everything's got its own little category but only applies to like this
32:19
one tiny little situation. I'm like, you know, and that was part
32:22
of the issue that we had the DSM. Like the DSM, it was
32:25
being every addition that came out too one, two, three, four.
32:29
There are more and more and more and more diagnoses. Presumably humans weren't coming
32:35
up with more and more and more different ways to have mental health disorders.
32:37
They were just slicing them up into smaller and smaller chunks, right, Yeah.
32:42
And eventually DSM five did actually rein it in a little bit and it
32:45
started doing like these sort of spectrum disorders. And now sex addiction isn't one
32:51
of them, but if it was going to be, it would be like
32:52
a spectrum of sexual disorder or diagnosis that would span all of these possible things.
32:59
I think that would be my hop hypothesis about that. You know,
33:01
Ultimately, the problem is is you're getting down to toothpicks for firewood, right,
33:06
Like the log is already there, Like, just use the log you
33:08
like, you don't like? Why would you use one hundred toothpicks when you
33:12
could use one log? You know? I think that's kind of my bottom.
33:15
That's good. Yeah, splitting a log down to the toothpooks for firewood,
33:19
splitting a podcast in a sections for ads. I think this whole time,
33:29
we've had a little bit of weighing in on the controversy on sex addiction,
33:32
and it's the difficulty in classifying this and understanding it and trying to bring
33:37
some science to it. So let's break down the controversy a little bit.
33:40
You might be going, well, why is this even controversial to begin with?
33:44
Well, it's for all of the obvious reasons that you think in terms
33:47
of Western medicine and psychology and systems and all that stuff. Right, Heteronormative
33:52
comparisons are a problem Puritan views on sex. Big problem over generalization of treatment
33:57
models like taking drug addiction models and apply them to sexual behavior not a very
34:00
great way to do this. Americans needing to be number one in everything that
34:05
includes creating disorders, because what we found is that sex addiction and sex disorders
34:07
are most often specifically sex addiction related things are most often an American problem.
34:15
Everything that everybody else is like whatever, it's fine, like, So it
34:17
just sounds like it's more of a moral, a moral issue than anything else.
34:21
And you know, here's the thing. Compulsive sexual behavior has been observed
34:24
in humans. It's also been observed in people under the influence and seen in
34:29
animal models. It happens across many organisms in different contexts. So I don't
34:35
know, I think there is this sort of as you said, are we
34:38
pathologizing somewhat normal human experience? Are we creating a pathology by publicizing this where
34:47
one may not have existed? Yeah, and that's actually a big thing that
34:52
we're going to kind of keep unpacking in this controversy. So now, when
34:55
it comes to sex addiction in general, we've kind of already made the point
35:00
that a lot of what has happened since the eighties is that a drug addiction
35:04
model or a substance abuse model has been kind of overlaid with sex addiction.
35:08
It's not a really good match. Actually, the drug addiction models are not
35:13
very good for compulsive what are described as compulsive behaviors. In general, compulsion
35:17
and addiction involve two unique mechanisms, behavioral mechanisms, different biological processes, all
35:22
that stuff, different psychological processes that make them entirely different phenomenons. So you
35:27
can't compare compulsion and addiction to being the same thing, because they're not at
35:32
all the same thing. By definition, they are very different things. That
35:36
is an important distinction. In some instances, sexual addiction has been classified as
35:40
a form of obsessive compulsive disorder or OCD. In other cases, is argue
35:45
that the use of sex addiction is a means to quote project social stigmas onto
35:51
patients end quote. And this comes from Marty Klein in American sex therapist,
35:54
who specifically goes on to state that a disease model of sex addiction only worked
36:00
against the interests of healthy sexuality. And he goes on to say that quote
36:04
the concept of sex addiction provides an excellent example of a model that is both
36:08
sex negative and politically disastrous end quote. So this is coming from someone who
36:15
I think is in the space of specifically trying to support people who are dealing
36:19
with sexual issues, and I think based on this, I would interpret his
36:22
point to be that calling it sex addiction, or at least treating it as
36:29
a sort of the disease model of addiction is counterproductive. Yeah, one percent.
36:35
And when he brings up this idea of being politically disastrous, it comes
36:38
from that's a values based argument. Most often somebody who's described as being a
36:43
sex addict is being described as being a sex addict or sexually deviant based on
36:50
moral judgments or moral argument. That's a good point. Yeah, yeah,
36:52
that are often found, and usually some kind of spiritual we'll just say a
36:57
very popular spiritual book or two. Fair you know. But there's an additional
37:04
layer to this controversy, that compulsive sexual behavior disorder that we mentioned in the
37:07
ICD eleven earlier, not even based on current research. Like that's a big
37:12
thing to kind of unpack that too, is like people are talking about it,
37:15
but there is no current research to support this behavioral disorder to even exist
37:20
to begin with. Okay, so we're waiting with baited breath, I think,
37:23
to unpack as much as we possibly can the sort of scientific and behavioral
37:29
view of what is going on here. So, what is happening behaviorally in
37:35
the space of sex compulsion or sexual addiction. A lot is potentially happening.
37:43
Yeah. I mean, you've got competing contingencies, right, You've got,
37:45
like, you know, one thing is more reinforcing than the other. You've
37:49
got powerful reinforcement systems or reward systems related to sex. You've got high risk
37:53
and high reward types of behaviors. Some people really enjoy that high risk in
37:58
the payoff that comes along with it. There's variable rewards. Sometimes sex with
38:01
one person is better than sex with another person. That is true. That
38:06
is true. There is there is inconsistent negative outcomes right when people say like,
38:09
oh, if you do this, you're gonna get pregnant or you're gonna
38:13
get an STI, And that doesn't happen as often as people think it does
38:15
in some of those spaces. So there's a lot of things that influence on
38:20
top of the fact that, you know, some types of sexual behavior are
38:22
highly reinforcing for a lot of people. And so it's just the nature of
38:27
sexual stimulation tends to be reinforcing in and of itself. So I think there's
38:30
a lot to unpack within there, just from a behavioral standpoint for why people
38:34
will do this and we didn't. I'm not gonna talk about this too much,
38:37
But there is this issue of I think what people are often talking about
38:40
when they're talking about sex addiction is behavioral excess. Right, They're worried this
38:45
behavior is happening above what would be it's happening at a level that has become
38:50
harmful for somebody, right, And that's really kind of the concern. And
38:53
that is a real thing that happens, Like somebody engages in some behavior that
38:58
has become a detriment to them. That is true of any behavioral excess.
39:02
Yes, I would not call behavioral access an addiction, though. That's such
39:07
Yes, exactly right. That's such a good point, is that like,
39:09
and you look at the spectrum of like, there are gonna be people who
39:12
are on one end of the sex is just not reinforcing. They do not
39:16
seek it out, they do not engage in it. It is not a
39:19
part of the world that they live in all the way to like, sex
39:22
is one of the most powerful reinforcers that they can that they can have,
39:27
right, and so on that spectrum, you're gonna have a wide variety of
39:30
people who engage in it to various degrees that are largely modifiable or at least
39:36
specifically, I guess, affected by the variable of how motivating that is for
39:40
them. And as you said, what happens then is you will have There
39:45
are plenty of behaviors that you may engage in that are at such a high
39:47
level that they become I think, first and foremost, and maybe most importantly
39:52
for this conversation, they look like compulsive behaviors. They look like addictive behaviors.
39:59
And I think, you know you I talk all the time about how
40:00
how much I love playing board games, and we even did an episode on
40:04
board games, and I'm recommending board games and like that. I think has
40:07
a lot of features with what looks like compulsion and addiction in the sense that
40:12
compared to like the average, my level of engagement is with this is much
40:15
higher than most people. Is it pathological? Is it inescapable? Could I
40:21
like not quit it if I tried, you know? And that's definitely not
40:24
what's going on in this situation, And so I think that's that's probably the
40:29
case here, is that there are people who like they like it so much
40:32
that they do it to excess, and they even probably engage in some above
40:38
recommended levels of risk to get at that reinforcer, right, but calling it
40:44
an addiction is probably not the most productive way of conceptualizing that excess, right
40:51
Exactly, It's likely that the increase sexual behavior, those things that we've been
40:55
talking about, it looks like an addiction. It might be related to some
40:59
other factors. Right, So, like, if you want to, if
41:00
we want to kind of like, you know, spin this thread and talk
41:04
about mental health for a second, I think that the comment about self medicating
41:08
actually makes more sense if we talk about it less from like an addiction standpoint
41:13
and more from like an avoidance behavior standpoint. Right, Like, I engage
41:16
in this behavior because one it's a better replacement than doing Heroin. Two I
41:21
get to kind of escape for a little bit and not worry about kind of
41:23
my problems for a while. Totally, I get attention from another person.
41:28
I get there's a lot of kind of like in the moment factors that apply
41:31
to that. And I think, you know, you could make the argument
41:34
that like sure, quote unquote, self medicating is as a decent way to
41:37
look at it, or maybe a fine way to look at it, but
41:39
still self medicating would suggest that you are treating some kind of like ailment and
41:45
or disease and not like an actual like behavioral concern or you know, well
41:50
being issue. There was a joke that someone made on a movie once that
41:52
I think is actually probably reflects the exact reality that some people have or do
41:58
experience, where they were like, we never fight because as soon as we're
42:01
about to fight, we just have sex instead. So it's like, rather
42:05
than have a real relationship where you get into the nitty gritty of having a
42:08
relationship and sharing responsibilities in a life with someone, it's like, as soon
42:13
as things get tough, the escape for both of them, the avoidance for
42:15
both of them is have sex. And so like, I think that that
42:19
is a good way to account for the circumstances view of behavior, which is
42:23
like, what is going on for you now? What would be going on
42:27
for you now if this wasn't available, what's going on for you when you're
42:30
not doing this thing right? Right? And so more likely sexual activity is
42:34
stigmatized due to a few factors that then have people look at this as being
42:38
a disorder, as being an addiction. And I think part of that is
42:42
there's this misunderstanding and myth about sexuality that have been perpetrated from that as you
42:46
said, sort of puritan moral orientation to what is appropriate and what is not.
42:54
Yeah, And I think that's actually a big thing. So when we
42:58
talk about sex addiction, most what they are talking about are stigmatized socially stigmatized
43:04
types of you know, like like concerns, right. So, yes,
43:07
like just to a couple examples, right, So, misunderstanding or myths around
43:10
sexuality that have been perpetuated. That is a reason why something around like a
43:15
fetish or aphelia, a paraphilia, like those types of things become part of
43:21
the sex edition issue because it's misunderstood, a dislike of non heteronormative ideas of
43:27
sexuality. I mean, if the United States isn't rife with that, I
43:30
don't know what is. The US does not like gay couples as all,
43:34
and you know, which is a problem because like a lot of that's just
43:36
a misunderstanding or just a dislike because of some kind of values that they've established
43:40
around that. Well. And then even like historically the US has had a
43:44
problem with interracial couples, and I think even some people have expressed problems with
43:49
that even contemporarily on some of the more sort of right leaning discussions. But
43:53
you know, I mentioned earlier that like there is an aspect of this definition
43:57
of the behavioral disorder of compulse of sex that did not rule out sex work.
44:02
And I think that that's almost intentional because another misunderstanding here, or a
44:08
stigmatization that has occurred, is this criminalization of sex work. And we did
44:12
an episode on sex work a long time ago that I think we were specifically
44:15
trying to unpack, like why this is not this thing that people need to
44:20
be afraid of, and how problematic it has been to stigmatize people who are
44:24
in that workspace, who for whatever reason that they're there, it kind of
44:29
doesn't matter, Like we don't need to stigmatize people for working at McDonald's,
44:31
for working at Walmart, for working at an oil company, or for being
44:36
sex workers. Like we're all just trying to get by here, you know,
44:38
and so treating any one of those is being more morally valid than another.
44:43
And I would certainly rather hang out with a sex worker than an oil
44:45
executive. But right, so, like that's just another thing to think about
44:52
here, is that criminalization. And then I think all of this, I
44:54
think also is wrapped up in politics in a way. I think that people
44:59
lean on these morality based issues to try and fear monger and to entice and
45:05
coerce people into believing the same things. And there's this political this politicization of
45:09
sexuality, and that's to cater to a voter base, to like tell them
45:15
we're right there, wrong, this is good, that's bad, and we're
45:19
trying to say there's not bad, it's just, you know, it's just
45:22
normal human things that people do right right. As a case in point of
45:27
like kind of the stigmatization or the politicizing of sexuality, let's talk about some
45:31
disorders that existed, memphi mania, which was like an appse like people were
45:37
really upset about that different what they described as perversions or not too long ago,
45:44
homosexuality. Yeah, it's only a few decades since that got removed,
45:46
That's what I'm saying. That was in the DSM. So as we kind
45:50
of unpacked that a little bit, it's worth just kind of going in and
45:52
saying, yeah, there are times where sometimes mental health can quote unquote concerns
46:01
or something that is socially maybe disliked by a lot of people. It gets
46:08
pathologized, it gets put into some medical journal, and now it gets treated
46:14
as if it were an actual problem when it's not. And that's actually you're
46:16
seeing that happen right now with the trans community and gender identity. I mean
46:21
that is we're watching that unfold right now before your very eyes as we watch
46:27
people politicize trans folks. We have turned their stories into what some people will
46:32
say medical problems or mental health problems, and they've they've stigmatized it and tried
46:37
to medicalize it and turn it into something that's treatable versus something that requires support,
46:44
which is every human being that exists needs some level of support that meets
46:47
their current needs. It's fascinating to watch from like an objective standpoint, it's
46:52
infuriating the watch from an emotional standpoint because people just misunderstand it so much,
46:58
and like a scientific standpoint, Yeah exactly, it's you know, I almost
47:01
blew past this too because it's infuriating that we have to pause for ads.
47:05
Oh okay, So there's a couple of points that I think we need to
47:15
make, and let's talk about I think treatment for this, because there are
47:20
people. I think one thing that I don't want to have people walk away
47:22
from this is saying that nobody suffers from a behavioral excess of sexuality. That's
47:27
not our point, that's not what we're saying. That might be a thing
47:30
that happens, and certainly some people do have an excess, even to the
47:32
point where they would like that access to be reduced. And so I think
47:36
that that's a very real experience that some people have. Treatment does exist related
47:39
to concerns around this sort of idea of quote unquote sexual addiction, but mostly
47:44
entail interventions around other potential causal factors, because, as we've said, likely
47:50
this is a behavioral excess occurring in the context of some other issue worth unpacking.
47:54
So is family therapy, couple's therapy, CBT, DBT, dialogtical behavioral
48:00
therapy, sex education, et cetera. These are all possible pathways to help
48:04
increase knowledge around this behavior, to demystify the concept of sexuality, and to
48:10
provide language and skills around healthy sexual behavior patterns that are relevant to the person
48:17
rather than being based on these sort of social stigmas and heteronormative platonic norms that
48:25
set in an unnecessary, impractical, and often unrealistic expectation and standard for people.
48:32
Yeah, and I think one of the ultimate questions we're trying to ask
48:36
is whether or not this exists. And I think that to me, when
48:39
I land on this and I think about kind of the scientific view, we
48:44
could make the argument that no, sex addiction does not exist. Sex addiction
48:47
is the symptom of social and political influence for things that people misunderstand or dislike.
48:55
Right, But that does not mean that people are not impacted by behaviors
49:00
in this space. Right we talk, I mean, you'll hear people talk
49:02
about porn addiction and how that has influenced their life and is it an addiction,
49:07
Maybe not so much, but there is a behavioral excess issue that is
49:10
definitely impacting them folks that have like we mentioned earlier in the episode from our
49:15
Alcoholics, Anonymous serial and fidelity, Right, this issue of people going out
49:20
and engaging in these behaviors that are damaging to their relationships and stuff, and
49:22
so like, are people impacted by sexuality related behaviors that are risky behaviors?
49:29
Yes? Absolutely. I don't think that the addiction model is the way to
49:32
look at it. And there's nothing in the evidence that supports using an addiction
49:36
model to not only evaluate, but treat this type of concern that somebody might
49:42
bring to a therapeutic environment. Yeah, very good point. I want to
49:45
make sure also that I leave with I think we have some other sort of
49:49
interesting things to unpack a little bit before we wrap this up. But I
49:52
want to make sure that we have more or less come out in pretty sex
49:55
positive way on this show multiple times, and I think in including this discussion
50:00
in this episode today, and I want to always make sure I'm really clear
50:05
with people understanding. We draw a line at consent. Rape does not qualify
50:10
in this. Child molestation does not qualify in this. Animal abuse sexual animal
50:17
abuse does not qualify in this. These are not people who provided or can
50:21
provide consent in these spaces. So like we are not in any way advocating
50:25
that people do whatever they want with anybody at any time. We are only
50:30
advocating for people who have who are engaging in this in a way where there
50:36
is consent and it can be done safely, and that can be at a
50:39
much higher rate than what you might expect from average. That can be a
50:43
safe, healthy, perfectly fine way to orient to that. Again, as
50:46
long as there's little harm and there is consent, it's very easy I think
50:51
for people to point to people who advocate for moving away from the sort of
50:57
platonic, heteronormative sexual structure that exists and say, you know, these are
51:00
the child's molestation. You know, they're all in favor of that sort of
51:05
thing, and these rapists and whatnot. And I think we're really clearly not
51:09
at all. We're very anti any kind of abuse to anybody, harm,
51:15
trauma, anything is bad. I think we would specifically say don't do those
51:19
things. And I think that arguably taking the sex addiction angle can cause sort
51:22
of harm and trauma. But the important line to draw here is that,
51:27
like we draw the line at consent, children and animal and unwilling participants do
51:30
not and cannot consent. Therefore they do not qualify as that that kind of
51:36
behavior being considered acceptable in any any way, shape or form. Right,
51:39
right, right, absolutely, Okay. So there's a couple of other things
51:44
I wanted to add underneath this that I thought were really fun as I was
51:46
researching this. One is that terms like love addiction were actually used a lot
51:52
in early pornography as a means the market porm in a less scandalous manner.
51:57
So like they would basically like describe something as like, oh, they've got
52:00
a love addiction, and then that was like some of like the you know,
52:02
the pulp magazines and stuff that would go out at the time. That
52:05
is such a good euphemism. I love that, right, oh man,
52:09
and you know that you'd say that and it'd be like the sort of raised
52:13
eyebrows like love addiction, love pick yep, yep, yep, yep exactly.
52:21
Evidently, Michael Douglas and Rob Low were both deemed sex addicts when they
52:25
entered rehab in the past, So why bring them up here, Well,
52:30
some consider them the first sort of quote unquote celebrity sex addicts. However,
52:35
this was a media issue, and why did they both going into rehab alcohol?
52:40
Yeah, yeah, they they did not go They did not go for
52:44
sex addiction. They went to rehab, and the media was like, they're
52:46
sex addicts. It's like, no, they went for alcohol, that's why
52:50
they went. And it got turned into this big thing. So I thought
52:52
that was really fascinating that they were like considered the first celebrity sex addicts,
52:55
but it had nothing to do with sex addiction at all. All Right,
52:59
Hey, I think we're going to be on the shorter end of episodes for
53:01
the series of addiction we've been doing. Do you have anything else to add
53:05
or anything we need to say before? I think what we've done a really
53:07
good job. I think of couching our sort of main points inside of this
53:09
discussion as it's played out, But I definitely want to have you have the
53:13
sort of the final monologue, if you will, of what people need to
53:17
know before they leave this discussion. Yeah, where I would land on this
53:21
is that does sexual behavior excessive sexual behavior impact people? Yes? Is it
53:27
an addiction? I would argue no, based on the current field that we've
53:30
got. Do people need help around kind of navigating these conversations and navigating these
53:36
behaviors? Absolutely, because these behaviors are very impactful for people, And so
53:39
I definitely think if you are curious or unsure or need support, then please
53:44
seek the appropriate folks that can help, because they will help guide you around
53:49
healthier behavioral patterns around that. But otherwise, I think that calling it a
53:53
disease or an addiction is not quite where we need to be with this.
53:58
I think a lot of it's we've kind of kind of already said it,
54:00
But I think a lot of it's kind of misunderstood stuff. That's fair.
54:04
I think that's a great point to end on. I don't think I could
54:07
expand on that any better. Well, thanks, I appreciate that all right.
54:09
If you would like to write in and tell us about your sex addiction
54:13
or your other addictions, or anything else that we said on here, or
54:15
just to tell us how much you like listening to our podcast, we love
54:17
hearing that stuff. You can reach us directly by emailing us at info at
54:21
wwdwwdpodcast dot com. You can also reach us on the other social media platforms,
54:27
and of course leave us a rating and review and share us with a
54:29
friends. We like to actually close with some recommendations in case you're joining us
54:31
for the first time, but before we get to those recommendations, and want
54:35
to make sure that, as I said, you can support us on Patreon.
54:37
When you do that, there's all kinds of things you might get,
54:38
depending on the level at what you sign up, all kinds of perks and
54:42
benefits, and it really helps us just keep being a show. So like
54:45
you get something, we get something. There's a win win situation here.
54:47
If you're interested and available and want to help us out, you can jump
54:51
on over to Patreon. We've got this lovely group of people that we really
54:53
enjoy having around, and they're just so generous and kind that that that's even
54:58
an option, And that dudes, Mike, m Megan, Layla, Mike
55:01
T, Justin Kim, Joshua, Brad, Stephanie, Olivia, Brian,
55:06
Ashley, Kiara, Christy and Michelle. Thank you all so much for your
55:09
continued support. Yes, we love you so much, like so so much.
55:14
Of course, thank you to my team who really make this happen.
55:16
Writing and fact checking from Shane, Jess and myself. We've got editing,
55:22
an audio production from Justin and our social media coordinator is Emma Wilson. Is
55:28
there anything that I left out or anything that you would like to add before
55:31
we move to our recommendations. No, okay, let's recommend some things.
55:36
Yay, recommendations. All right, I am recommending a TV show now.
55:47
To be fair, I have not finished watching this TV show yet, and
55:52
it is so good at the point that I've gotten to that I'm like,
55:55
there's almost no way in my mind that they could even mess it up.
56:00
And it is completely available to like the whole things available to stream, and
56:04
this is the new TV show Fallout, which is streaming on Amazon or Amazon
56:07
Prime, and it is based off of just a legendary series of games by
56:13
the same name that have There's been various Fallouts. There's even a board game
56:16
that was developed from the video game. These are all all sort of computer
56:20
based video games. And then I think they're also on like Xbox or something.
56:23
I don't know. Anyway, it's a video game. Yeah, and
56:24
they've developed this TV show. And I would say historically video game based properties
56:30
were not very good, true, and they have started to get very very
56:35
good. Huh. So this is written directed by Jonathan Nolan. The last
56:38
name may sound familiar. He's the brother of Christopher Nolan. And man,
56:42
I am just I am just loving this show. I mean, I'm excited
56:45
to finish it. And it's a little premature for me to jump the gun
56:49
and make the recommendation, but I'm just like, it's so good. What
56:52
the hell check out Fallout. I love that. I've heard it's actually really
56:54
really good from people who like like the game too. Yeah. Definitely a
56:58
lot of East Eggs in there, and I don't even I know enough to
57:00
recognize that they're Easter eggs. I don't know enough to recognize what they all
57:04
are, sure, but some of the leads in this Ela Pernell and Walton
57:08
Goggins, who I think is one of those actors who's been in everything and
57:13
then you don't really recognize him. I mean you recognize him, but you're
57:15
like, wait a minute, was he in that? And he's just been
57:17
in a lot of stuff, and he actually gets to have a more leading
57:20
rule in this, and he's just fantastic. He was an ant man and
57:22
a gosp as the sort of villain in that. So anyway, it's yeah,
57:28
it's really good. I'm so glad it's good. I'm so glad you're
57:30
enjoying that. Yeah, mine's a book. I'm also not done with this
57:32
book. I'm about halfway through, but I am loving this journey. I've
57:37
had this book for twenty years and never picked it up to read it.
57:39
Wow. It's just one of those things where it's like I borrowed it forever
57:44
and finally I'm getting around the reading. It's the Bible. It's the Bible.
57:46
I'm just oh, man, Like the earth came from nothing and now
57:51
it's something and there's apples and there's snakes. Oh man, it's wild.
57:54
Time riveting. I heard there's dragons at some point. So the book back
58:00
reading is Dracula by Bram Stoker. Have you ever read Dracula? I actually
58:05
never have. I've always wanted to. I have it, probably have had
58:07
it just as long as you and time for it, so I should.
58:12
You know what, It's really great and it's definitely different than I thought.
58:14
So I went in kind of like, you know, knowing a little bit
58:16
about Dracula's lore, like you know about red and Field, and you know
58:20
about like he drinks blood and you know that he hates garlic and stuff like
58:22
that. Sure, and you know that Van Helsing is like kind of the
58:25
family of the Van Helsing family is like the vampire hunter monster hunter family that
58:30
exists in that world. But man, it is so engaging because you think
58:35
that, like I personally have a hard time kind of picking up older literature
58:38
and going like because I have to like really think about how something is written
58:42
and like the languaging around stuff to like follow along. And it's just so
58:45
different than literature today. You know, which you know it's it, that's
58:49
just it's not anything other than it's just a difference of reading. But this
58:52
is written as an epistolary and it's really cool. And for those of you
58:57
who don't know what an epistolary is, the entire story is through letters and
59:00
journals. Okay, there's not like a narrator like that is like a dedicated
59:05
narrator that's got like an omnipotent kind of view of everything. It is literally
59:09
just you're reading captain's logs from ships and diary entries and letters to friends,
59:15
and it's telling the story of like Dracula kind of coming into London from Transylvania
59:20
and kind of how he arrives and and man, it is done so well,
59:24
and it like happens quickly, like you know, within the first fifty
59:28
pages you've got wolves and you've got blood sucking, and you've got you know,
59:34
like and then like you know, you've got Redfield shows up, and
59:36
it's it's it happens pretty quickly, and it's a really great read. I'm
59:39
about halfway through and I am absolutely loving it. If I recall correctly,
59:44
the book World war Z was actually written as as that pistolarias it was called,
59:49
Yeah, World Warz. He has written like that too, Yeah,
59:51
and uh man, I thought that was so cool and so creative. Man,
59:53
you really really, because this is one that I know a lot of
59:57
people have spoken highly of that has been a lot of people's like sort of
1:00:00
top one hundred or top ten even favorite books. And I've always thought like,
1:00:04
oh, yeah, like I like classics, I like, you know,
1:00:06
sort of the well respected old literature, and you really, I think,
1:00:09
have enticed me to want to check this out. So that's really good
1:00:12
to hear. I went into Franken sign with kind of the same the same
1:00:15
viewpoint and just loved that, like fell in love with that, and I
1:00:19
think this is I'm having the same kind of experience around this one. So
1:00:22
it's been really cool. Cool all right, fall out for you people video
1:00:24
gamers in particular, but anyone really interested in watching really good TV Dracula for
1:00:29
you readers by Bram Stoker who are interested in picking up the classics and then
1:00:34
really being glad that you did. Yeah, anyway, that is the episode.
1:00:37
I think that's all we have to say. So thank you so much
1:00:38
for listening. This is Abraham and this is Shane. We're out. See
1:00:42
ye you've been listening to why we do what we do. You can learn
1:00:45
more about this and other episodes by going to WWD WWD podcast dot com.
1:00:52
Thanks for listening, and we hope you have an awesome day.