Unhooked: Breaking Porn Addiction Podcast

Jeremy Lipkowitz
  • 4.7 (102)
  • Sexuality
  • Updated Weekly

Unhooked is a podcast dedicated to helping people break free from porn addiction and other compulsive behaviors related to the internet, sex, and intimacy. Rooted in Buddhist wisdom, neuroscience, coaching, and mindfulness, the show explores practical strategies for lasting recovery and personal transformation. Each episode features leading experts, scientists, coaches, and individuals in recovery, sharing their insights, experiences, and expertise to guide listeners on their path to healing and freedom.

  1. 12h ago

    Sobriety Isn’t Recovery: Mindfulness, Choice, and Rewiring the Brain

    🔵 Want to break free? Join Unhooked Academy now: https://www.unhookedacademy.com/ Interested in the Unhooked App? Join the waitlist here:  https://unhookedapp.co/ Jeremy Lipkowitz reshared his appearance on The Therapy Brothers podcast, where Brendan and Tyler Patrick interview him about how meditation and mindfulness can support recovery. Jeremy explains why mindfulness does not have to conflict with religious faith, and why it is better understood as a practical way to train attention, awareness, and intentional choice. He breaks down the space between stimulus and response and how learning to access that space can help interrupt automatic reactions like craving, anger, fear, and judgment. The conversation also explores neuroplasticity and Jeremy’s “meadow” analogy for how repeated thoughts and behaviors strengthen mental pathways over time. They unpack the meaning of equanimity, why groundedness matters when facing both discomfort and temptation, and how even a simple breath-awareness practice can begin strengthening concentration, self-compassion, emotional regulation, and the ability to respond rather than react. Chapters: 00:00 Why mindfulness matters in recovery 04:10 Welcome to the episode 04:54 Is meditation against religion? 06:40 What mindfulness really is 09:30 The mindset behind mindfulness-based recovery 13:36 How mindfulness helps with urges and reactions 14:14 Neuroplasticity: how the brain changes 17:01 The meadow analogy explained 18:22 What is equanimity? 20:29 How to begin meditating 23:09 Closing thoughts

  2. Sep 7

    How to Rebuild Trust After Betrayal and Porn Addiction | Brannon & Tyler Patrick (The Therapy Brothers)

    🔵 Want to break free? Join Unhooked Academy now: https://www.unhookedacademy.com/ Interested in the Unhooked App? Join the waitlist here:  https://unhookedapp.co/ Jeremy Lipkowitz hosts Brannon and Tyler Patrick on Unhooked to discuss why sobriety and recovery are not the same thing. The brothers are licensed clinicians with about forty years of combined experience treating porn addiction and betrayal trauma, and they host The Therapy Brothers podcast. They explain why a heavy emphasis on sobriety is a prelude to relapse, why focusing on inputs beats chasing a streak, and why recovery worked for a spouse always collapses. Tyler breaks down their trust equation for rebuilding trust after betrayal: shame resiliency on both sides plus rigorous honesty, empathy, and consistent action over time. They also cover what real humility is, the hero's journey framework behind their men's program, healthy disclosure versus probation officer check-ins, and what a betrayed partner is really asking underneath the questions about details. Chapters: 00:00:00 The energy that actually sustains recovery  00:01:01 The cave you fear to enter  00:01:50 Episode intro and the Unhooked app waitlist  00:04:35 Welcome Tyler and Brannon Patrick  00:05:42 Taking men from untrustworthy to trustworthy  00:06:55 What twenty years changed about their approach  00:10:32 How each brother found this work  00:14:08 Sobriety versus recovery  00:17:31 The paradox: does that mean relapse is fine?  00:20:28 Guys who do not know their sobriety date  00:22:17 When sobriety becomes a weapon  00:23:38 Trap one: getting humility backwards  00:24:54 Trap two: recovering for your spouse  00:28:31 Resentment, and turning your partner into your god  00:28:57 Why the instinct to perform makes sense  00:30:39 Corrective experiences and the challenges they run  00:35:30 The hero's journey  00:36:25 Tyler's map of energies, from coercion to love  00:39:05 When a man will not step over the threshold  00:42:26 The parable of the snake and the apples  00:44:53 Where rebuilding trust starts: rigorous honesty  00:46:11 When your partner draws a hard line  00:48:39 Disclosure, lines of defense, and check ins that work  00:49:03 The trust equation  00:51:43 What a betrayed partner is really asking  00:52:58 What actually needs to be disclosed  00:56:35 Harnessing sexuality instead of killing it  00:58:30 What they want couples to hear  01:03:03 Where to find Tyler and Brannon  01:03:45 Closing The Therapy Brothers, for Unhooked listeners: therapybrothers.org/unhooked  Unhooked Academy: unhookedacademy.com  Unhooked app waitlist: unhookedapp.co

  3. Aug 31

    Why Most Men Are Still Boys: The Boy-to-Man Framework | Alessandro Frosali

    🔹 Want to break free? Join Unhooked Academy now: https://www.unhookedacademy.com/ Jeremy Lipkowitz hosts Alessandro on Unhooked to discuss his mission of helping men become husbands, fathers, and human beings they admire, inspired by what he lacked in role models and his marriage. Alessandro explains Dr. Arne Rubenstein’s boy-to-man framework, contrasting boy traits like self-centered power, emotional reactivity, blame, and wanting a “mother” with mature ideals such as service to the team, emotional humility, integrity and ownership, and equanimity in relating to the feminine. They explore how Western culture lacks rites of passage, and Alessandro outlines four initiation components: shared stories, challenge, honoring, and vision for the future. The conversation also covers why men avoid ownership, how men’s circles help disclose porn struggles, distinguishing ownership from shame, stream-of-consciousness journaling, and why being a better husband often means reconnecting with oneself while nourishing the household. 00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro 00:32 Mission Beyond Alpha 03:21 Conscious Masculinity Basics 04:22 Boy to Man Framework 10:54 Applying Traits to Marriage 14:11 Understanding the Feminine 17:19 What Initiation Means 19:41 Rites of Passage Four Parts 27:12 Why Ownership Is Hard 30:34 Handyman Trigger Origins 31:54 Owning Your Feelings 32:36 Recovery Check Ins 35:23 Beyond Performative Apologies 36:24 Resistance And Hard Talks 39:16 Mens Circle Confession 41:37 Ownership Versus Shame 42:22 Shoveling The Shit 48:53 Morning Pages Practice 51:29 Stop Appeasing Your Wife 54:51 Mission Nourish Household 58:34 Lightness Without Excuses 01:01:14 Walking Forward Balance 01:04:29 Final Takeaways And Outro Connect with Alessandro on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alessandro_frosali

  4. Aug 24

    Mindfulness and Recovery: Insights from Jeremy Lipkowitz on Pornography Addiction on the Darren Magee Show

    🔹 Want to break free? Join Unhooked Academy now: https://www.unhookedacademy.com/ In this episode, Jeremy Lipkowitz—former genetics researcher, ordained Buddhist monk, mindfulness teacher, executive coach, and founder of Unhooked Academy—shares his personal journey from early exposure to pornography through daily use in college and into recovery. He discusses how porn’s accessibility, affordability, and anonymity fuel addiction, while underlying drivers often include boredom, loneliness, disconnection, and emotional avoidance. The conversation explores how novelty and endless scrolling train dissatisfaction, how porn can reshape intimacy and create secrecy and shame, and why sobriety alone isn’t the same as recovery—unaddressed roots can lead to cross-addictions. Jeremy highlights the role of community, mindfulness, self-compassion, and present-moment awareness to create choice between stimulus and response, and warns that AI-generated porn and AI companions are already accelerating these risks. He also points to porn’s exploitative underbelly and invites listeners to assess whether harms outweigh perceived benefits. 00:00 Meet Jeremy Lipkowitz 00:26 His Recovery Journey 01:27 Triggers and Three As 03:17 When It Became a Problem 07:01 Sobriety Versus Recovery 08:14 Compulsion or Addiction 10:02 Why Porn Hooks You 13:48 Roots of Addiction 17:10 Connection and Environment 18:41 Men Versus Women 20:23 Slow Burn Consequences 23:06 Signs You Have a Problem 25:28 Porn Warps Intimacy 27:47 Shame and Taboo 28:13 Courage to Reach Out 28:45 Wedding Trigger Story 30:53 Self Deception Narratives 32:33 Powerless vs Powerful 34:56 Beliefs Shape Outcomes 36:13 Stress Anxiety Reframe 37:37 AI Porn Future Risks 40:49 Recovery Community Work 43:31 Presence and Choice Space 46:07 Equanimity with Discomfort 48:30 Porn Industry Reality Check 51:18 OnlyFans Dopamine Escalation 53:39 Cost Benefit Clarity 54:45 Where to Find Jeremy 55:36 Final Wrap Up Connect with Darren Magee here: https://www.youtube.com/c/DarrenFMagee

  5. Aug 17

    How Porn Rewires Your Brain (And What Buddhism Has to Say About Healing It) | Jeremy Lipkowitz Interviewed on An Evolving Man Podcast with Piers Cross

    🔹 Want to break free? Join Unhooked Academy now: https://www.unhookedacademy.com/ Jeremy Lipkowitz joins Piers Cross on An Evolving Man to discuss how porn addiction is driven and worsened by craving, shame, and avoidance of unpleasant emotions like boredom, loneliness, anxiety, and lack of purpose. Jeremy shares his own history of early porn exposure, how Buddhism and Matthieu Ricard’s book Happiness helped him understand neuroplasticity (“neurons that fire together, wire together”) and craving as suffering, and why recovery requires more than willpower. They explore why modern porn is uniquely addictive through affordability, accessibility, anonymity, and infinite novelty, and why taking distance from porn reveals impacts on clarity, confidence, and integrity. The conversation emphasizes mindfulness as awareness across the “six sense doors,” community and men’s groups to dissolve isolation and shame, skillful moral shame/dread (hiri and ottappa), and how the attention economy and tech design mimic slot machines to capture attention. 00:00 Shame And Escape 01:18 Rebroadcast And Themes 02:40 Meet Jeremy Lipkowitz 03:54 Porn Habit Origins 06:41 Buddhism Changes Everything 08:46 Neuroplasticity And Craving 12:29 Beyond Meditation Recovery 14:17 Porn Culture And Taboo 16:57 Smartphone Porn Explosion 21:04 Why Porn Hooks Us 24:50 Reclaiming Healthy Sexuality 26:49 Triggers And Emotional Avoidance 29:33 Feeling Emotions In The Body 31:56 Slow Down The Urge 32:59 Mindful Smoking Insight 33:48 Mindfulness In Recovery 35:21 Shame And Community 39:40 Porn Shame Stigma 42:39 Healthy Moral Shame 47:42 Four Truths Reflection 49:31 Attention Economy Trap 55:24 Reclaiming Your Attention 57:31 What Mindfulness Means 59:28 Six Sense Doors Practice 01:01:22 Closing And Resources

  6. Aug 10

    Porn, Shame, and the Hungry Ghost: Jeremy Lipkowitz on Addiction, Integrity, and Mindfulness | My Conversation with Jonah Primo on The Overexamined Life Podcast

    🔹 Want to break free? Join Unhooked Academy now: https://www.unhookedacademy.com/ This rebroadcast from Jonah Primo’s The Overexamined Life features Jeremy Lipkowitz (former Buddhist monk, meditation teacher, executive coach, and host of the Unhooked podcast) discussing pornography as a lens for addiction, shame, and compulsive behavior. They cover how widespread porn use is among men and increasingly women, early exposure in childhood, and how porn’s normalization alongside taboo can fuel addiction. Lipkowitz argues porn is often used for emotional regulation (boredom, loneliness, anxiety), can distort expectations of intimacy, train novelty-seeking dopamine patterns, and contribute to a shame-driven double life. They address ethical concerns about performer exploitation, whether moderate use is defensible, the distinction between porn and masturbation, and rising risks from AI-generated porn, non-consensual deepfakes, and related technologies. Treatment emphasizes mindfulness, men’s groups, integrity, and Viktor Frankl’s “space between stimulus and response” over reliance on blockers; Lipkowitz recommends abstinence first if moderation is attempted. 00:00 Rebroadcast Introduction 01:34 Meet Jeremy Lipkowitz 04:19 Who Watches Porn 05:28 Taboo Meets Normalized 07:04 Kids And Early Exposure 12:49 Porn Scripts And Consent 15:47 Porn As Emotional Coping 20:11 Shame Fuels Addiction 26:52 Making It Less Shameful 28:01 Men's Groups Explained 33:44 Performers And Exploitation 39:36 Is Any Use Safe 42:55 Subtle Long Term Effects 47:11 Hungry Ghost Origin Story 48:43 From Catalogs to Tube Sites 49:30 When Lust Becomes Suffering 50:46 Hungry Ghosts Explained 52:26 Pros and Cons of Quitting 54:59 Masturbation Without Porn 56:50 Engineered to Be Addictive 59:52 AI Porn Pandora Box 01:05:15 Skillful vs Unskillful Desire 01:07:55 Life After Porn Benefits 01:12:54 Relapse and the Three As 01:15:58 Mindfulness Space to Choose 01:20:01 Abstinence vs Moderation 01:22:13 Rapid Fire and Farewell

  7. Aug 3

    From Homeless & Rock Bottom to 1,000 Days in a Monastery: How Piers Cross Found His Way Out

    🔹 Want to break free? Join Unhooked Academy now: https://www.unhookedacademy.com/ Piers Cross on Trauma, Addiction, and Self-Compassion Most men walk around with stones in their shoes their whole lives. They don't know the stones are there. They just know something hurts, and they've learned to keep walking anyway. That's one of the most powerful things Piers Cross said in this conversation. And it captures something I see all the time in the men I work with — unprocessed trauma quietly running the show, showing up as compulsive behavior, isolation, a relentless inner critic that won't let them rest. Piers's own story is one of the more remarkable ones I've encountered. He grew up with an alcoholic father, ran away to boarding school, watched a friend die by suicide, and was then sexually abused by the priest the school sent them to for support. He suppressed all of it, built a successful career in finance, and slowly fell apart. At his lowest point he was homeless, struggling with drugs and alcohol, and tried to take his own life. What turned it around was ending up at a Buddhist monastery — where he stayed for over 1,000 days. He's been sober for 24 years. In this episode we talk about: How suppressed childhood trauma shows up in adult addiction, even when the connection isn't obviousWhy going back to touch trauma can re-traumatize you — and what to do insteadWhat EFT tapping is, how it works neurologically, and why Piers uses it with every clientThe three ingredients Robert Moore says are required for real initiation to happenWhy the monastery was a rite of passage from boy to man — and what that has to do with recoveryThe inner critic loop that keeps men stuck, and how to step out of itWhy alcohol and porn relapse are more connected than most people realizeA five-minute safety meditation practice you can start todayWhat Piers wants every man struggling with addiction to hear before anything elseThe self-compassion piece in this one is worth the whole conversation. The image Piers uses — of picking a child up 100 times when they fall — is the kind of thing that stays with you. Connect with Piers Cross: Coaching: piers-cross.com Leadership work: compassionateleadersglobal.com Podcast: An Evolving Man Documentary: Boarding on Insanity Resources from Jeremy: Unhooked Academy: unhookedacademy.com 14-Day Slip Reset: unhookedacademy.com/reset

  8. Jul 27

    Why "If I Just Had X, I'd Be Happy" Never Works (ft. Lawrence Dunling, Enter the Lionheart Podcast)

    🔹 Want to break free? Join Unhooked Academy now: https://www.unhookedacademy.com/ This week's episode is a conversation I had on the Enter the Lionheart podcast with host Lawrence Dunling. Lawrence was kind enough to let us reshare it here on Unhooked. We get into my own unusual path: leaving a PhD program at Duke, training as a Buddhist monk in Myanmar, and eventually building my coaching practice in Thailand. From there we dig into the trap almost all of us fall into, the belief that the next zero in the bank account, the next win, the next relationship will finally make us happy, and why that chase never actually delivers. We talk through some core Buddhist concepts and how they apply to everyday life: the bliss of blamelessness, the eight worldly winds, and the middle path between renouncing everything and chasing pleasure. And we spend real time on porn and compulsive behavior specifically: why the consequences are often subtle and easy to miss, how it rewires your brain's relationship to novelty and intimacy, and the Rat Park experiment, one of the clearest illustrations out there of why addiction is about an unmet need, not a moral failing. We also get into modern dating, OnlyFans, the loneliness underneath a lot of it, and why community and close male friendships matter more than most guys realize. Resources: Unhooked Academy: unhookedacademy.com 14-Day Slip Reset: unhookedacademy.com/reset Connect with Jeremy: 🌍 Website: JeremyLipkowitz.com 📷 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jeremylipkowitz/ 🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@JeremyLipkowitz 📩 Email: jeremy@unhookedacademy.com Jeremy’s Online Course: Unhooked – Step-by-Step Guide to Quitting Porn: https://www.unhookedacademy.com/

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4.7
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Unhooked is a podcast dedicated to helping people break free from porn addiction and other compulsive behaviors related to the internet, sex, and intimacy. Rooted in Buddhist wisdom, neuroscience, coaching, and mindfulness, the show explores practical strategies for lasting recovery and personal transformation. Each episode features leading experts, scientists, coaches, and individuals in recovery, sharing their insights, experiences, and expertise to guide listeners on their path to healing and freedom.

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