May is Mental Health Awareness Month. It’s time to talk. Thirty-five percent of men are being treated for mental illness, but that number may be low because too many men don’t seek help. This is exactly why we’re spotlighting men who are getting guys to open up about mental health in provocative, engaging, and sometimes hilarious ways. Next up is Jeremy Lipkowitz, who uses meditation to help men break free of their sex and porn addiction. Here, Lipkowitz’s own story of addiction and recovery.

You know how you don’t really notice yourself gaining weight, because you look at yourself in the mirror every day?

I had no idea that over the years I was developing an addiction to sex and porn.

It started when I was nine years old, fantasizing about comic book characters, like Psylocke. Next I’d flip straight to the lingerie section of a Macy’s catalog. By the time I got to college, porn was just like the internet had become—high speed and hardcore.

From freshman through my senior years, I was watching porn for two to three hours at a shot, every day. I became a zombie, a mindless slave held captive by insatiable lust and craving.

“I became a zombie, a mindless slave held captive by insatiable lust and craving.”

At night, I would scroll through pages and pages of video thumbnails, trying to find the “right” video. But no video was ever quite right. Over time, my mind developed a sort of tolerance for “everyday” porn, and I cultivated a need for more extreme things to turn me on.

I didn’t realize until much later, the connection between my porn addiction and my problems with relationships and my general well-being.

With relationships, it made it hard to relate to women on a real, human level, because porn got me hooked on novelty. When you’re scrolling through porn sites, every time you see a new face, a new video, it gives you a little dopamine dump that makes you feel good, and then you want something different. It became the same for my relationships. After a week, the same girl no longer excited me.

I was never really happy. Sometimes I would masturbate four to five times in one day or I would masturbate until it hurt. But no amount of sex, porn, or masturbation would ever truly satisfy me.

My breaking point was on sidewalk outside a Peet’s coffee in Davis, CA. It was the summer after my senior year of college and these two freshman-aged girls were walking ahead of me. This screaming animal urge inside me said, “WANT. MUST HAVE. LOOK. TOUCH!” In that moment I was reduced to a miserable pile of steaming shit.

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I remember thinking clearly, “I can’t keep living like this. If I don’t change something fundamental about my life, I’m going to end up a lonely, miserable, perverted old man who tries to pick up college girls at bars.” And then I had what felt like a nervous breakdown. I truly realized that if I didn’t do something, I would always be a pervert just looking for sex.

After that moment on the sidewalk, I knew something had to change. I went to a bookstore for books on positive psychology, which lead me to the book Happiness by Matthieu Ricard.

The concept in his book that really changed everything for me was neuroplasticity. It’s essentially the understanding that what you think, do, and even pay attention to, will literally change the structure and function of your brain.

I can’t tell you how much this blew my mind. I realized that all those hours I had spent watching porn, I was hardwiring lust into my brain. It’s like that 10,000 hours rule, except that instead of becoming an expert violinist, I was an expert horn dog.

“Through my meditation training I tasted what real happiness is.”

Soon after reading the book, I traveled to India for three months in 2011.

Jeremy Lipkowitz

This became my path to freedom. I learned how to meditate, and became a Buddhist monk, just as Ricard had done. When I came back, just before starting graduate school at Duke University, I started teaching meditation.

Through my meditation training I tasted what real happiness is, and it had nothing to do with pleasure. Real happiness was about gratitude, connection, and service.

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After about four years of teaching meditation, I realized that I was more passionate about mental health and wellness than I was about the research I was doing for my Ph.D. (which was genetics and genomics). In 2014 I left my Ph.D. program and decided to devote my life to teaching people how to find genuine happiness and inner peace.

I didn’t open up about my past addictions until 2018. It’s a scary thing to talk about publicly. But talking about this topic with other men has been a huge relief.

So a friend and I started hosting in-person meet-ups and online communities focused on topics around cultivating healthy sexuality. From those group experiences, I started working with men one-on-one around issues related to porn and sex addiction, and also how to live more mindfully.

“When it comes to training the mind, you simply have to put in the work.”

All in all, I don’t think porn is evil, and it might even be possible for some people to have a healthy relationship to porn. But my mission is about helping people understand that, whether they’re aware of it or not, porn has consequences on your life, and your mind. And for those of us who have developed addictions to it, those consequences can be more serious.

Jeremy Lipkowitz

We don’t change our lives overnight. When it comes to training the mind, you simply have to put in the work. You can’t just read a book or listen to a guided meditation and expect your problems to go away. This practice is about rewiring your mind. That takes time, consistency, and perseverance.

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