I think a lot of people, especially those who were cut in infancy, you don't have a frame of reference, so you don't really know what it would have looked like. And for me personally, I was fortunate to have a pretty long foreskin. I had overhang when I was intact. So my goal is to get back to where I was, and I'm kind of there flaccid right now. I'm pretty close. The Intact Again podcast is an oral history project where we share stories from men who have been circumcised and
are working to restore what has been taken from us. Our hope is to inspire each other with our collective stories of loss and recovery. Welcome back to the Intact Again podcast. In today's episode, we're talking to Jack, a 35 year old cisgender man from Vermont. He was circumcised at age 13 and immediately suffered the negative effects of the procedure, including losing his self confidence. At the age of 18, while attending college,
he discovered foreskin restoration. And after 17 years of careful, dedicated work, he is now fooling doctors into thinking he's intact and experiencing full body orgasms. He has gone all the way to a CI eight, and he says that his current equipment is 85% of what he lost. But one of the biggest changes of all is that through restoration, he has regained that spark of self confidence that he lost all those years ago. This is Jack's story, or as we like
to call it, his restory. Let's take a listen. I'm Roland with CI eight. I kind of just hit that a few months ago, and I, like, just updated the flare for myself on the subreddit. So that's what I'm rolling with, and been doing it for 17 years. 17. Do you know the exact date you started? I can set the scene. I mean, I was in college at the time, in my first apartment. I would have been 18 at the time, and I had, like, my first bank account with my
own money in it. And I was like, you know what? I'm gonna buy a device and see how this goes. What was that first device? It was a Gen one TLC Tugger, one of the handmade ones that Ron Lowe was making. That was my first one, too. I feel like everybody either does the DTR first or the TLC. I feel like this was pre DTR almost. I mean, this would have been 2007. That is pretty far back. We once had a guess that started in 1989, but that's still
pretty far back. Oh, 89. That's a year after I was born. How do you think your background, education and otherwise plays a part in your restoration journey? I don't know. I mean, I think I was always kind of a Diyer at heart, and that is one of the things that led me down the educational path that I took. I like to do things myself. I like to be creative, and im also kind of a critical thinker. I like to solve problems.
This kind of presented itself in both of those areas. It was a way for me to do something myself and take control myself and also kind of creatively solve a problem. Where were you born and raised and where do you live now? I was born in Tucson, Arizona. I was adopted there. So I only spent like nine days in Arizona and then I was raised in Massachusetts. I grew up there, and I've spent my whole adult life in New England. In college. I lived in Florida briefly, and right
now I'm in Vermont. You mentioned that you went to Pride recently. If you don't mind me asking, what's your orientation? Were you going as an ally or as a member of the community? As a member of the community? I am gay 100%. It doesnt get much more percent than that. Yeah, I knew pretty early on. I came out sometime between my sophomore and junior year of high school. So everybody who knows me knows that about me for sure. When did you first become aware of circumcision?
And I realized that this because you have a unique story from most of the people on the show. This could be before you were actually circumcised? Yeah, it was the first time I ever noticed was when I was a little kid. Boys will be boys. So there's kind of like, you show me yours, I'll show you mine. And there's a lot of curiosity when you're young. And I grew up in a heavily jewish influenced area, so most of my friends were circumcised. It was a lot of like, well,
why does yours look different? I didn't really fully have the answer to that in my head, but I knew pretty early on that I was the outlier. How did that make you feel, being the outlier? At that time, I actually weirdly liked it. It made me feel special. It made me feel different. And as I got older, I started to kind of realize why I was different and the gravity behind that. And so I always really kind of appreciated it. It always was a way for me to increase my self esteem and confidence.
How did that affect when you did become circumcised? Because I know that came later in your life. So it happened when I was 13, and it was the analogy that I use is like, there was a record playing, and then someone lifted the needle off the record. Audio stopped. It was like a giant pause button on my life. Everything got more difficult for me. Initially, I felt violated. I felt modified. I felt that self confidence that I just mentioned start to fade very quickly. I got very insecure, and I
started to get bullied for it, too. It was bullying that I had never experienced before. Why were you bullied for it? How did it even come up? The way I put it is bullies like to find the crack in your armor and exploit it. So if you don't have a crack in your armor, you're kind of well prepared to, like, let stuff bounce off of you. And that's how I was up until that point. I just sort of was, like, confident in my body, and I was cool with myself, so there was no crack in the armor for
anybody to find. And after it happened, a I was insecure. I started to really hate my own body. And so, for example, in gym class, instead of changing in the open, I started changing in the bathroom stalls because I was ashamed and I didn't associate with my body. And, of course, that's, like, an easy target for bullies. Oh, you don't want to. What are you ashamed of? What are you afraid of? I sat out of gym class for two semesters with a doctor's note for good reason.
But it's embarrassing when, you know you're in the middle of puberty and you're the only boy sitting on the bleachers with the girls who just got their period. So I was an easy target. I started walking funny afterwards for a while, and I got a lot of looks and side conversations about that.
It was such a weird thing to experience because how are you making fun of somebody for something that they have no control over, for something that, at the time, I was kind of gaslit into thinking was, like, a valid medical procedure. It took me years to come around to realizing that it wasn't necessary. That must have been soul crushing. Yeah, I mean, I kind of had that sense because at the time of the procedure, I personally wasn't experiencing any major
issues with my foreskin. I didn't feel like there was anything wrong with it. But during the kind of lead up to the procedure, all the staff at the urology office were so persistent with the rhetoric of, you'll be so much more comfortable after this, and it'll be so much cleaner, and it'll be so much easier for you. And, like, this is a normal routine thing. It'll be great. They really pushed it. So I kind of came out of the procedure being like, well, I guess it was a good thing.
And once I got to high school, I had my first boyfriend, and he just happened to be intact, and everything came crashing down. The first time we were intimate, I just immediately realized, oh, all of those things that they told me weren't true. What excuse did they use to try to convince you and your family to undergo the procedure? So that's a point of contention for me, that I'm actually right now in the process of kneeling down with my mom,
because I didn't really know. I spent a long time, up until, like, two days ago, thinking that there was. It was an issue with an adhesion that I had had. And during this past weekend, after pride, I had a conversation with my mom, and she basically was like, no, there was nothing wrong with it. We just did it. The way it kind of played out was at the pediatrician's office. I went in for a routine physical checkup for summer camp.
Summer camp just kind of required kids to get their vaccination records and have paperwork on file that said that they were okay to attend summer camp. So I went to this routine thing that I had done every year prior, and the pediatrician noticed that there was an adhesion, or so I thought, and she gave us a referral. She was like, oh, we should have somebody take a look at this. And so we got a referral to a pediatric urologist, and I
wasn't told what was going to happen. For the longest time, I wondered if my parents even really knew what they had signed off on with the paperwork. So there kind of was no real, like, concrete answer. It was weird because I was in the dark for the whole thing psychologically. We came out of the initial pediatricians meeting, and it wasn't mentioned to me there was going to be anything
serious happening. I vaguely remember, like, a quick offhand mention, like, oh, we've got an appointment with someone else in a couple weeks. No big deal. And it was like, okay. I went through the whole summer, and it was fine, and I thought nothing of it. And then in between the end of summer camp and before the beginning of my 7th grade year, we went to the urologist. On the car ride there, the terminology used was a minor procedure, and so it was like, oh, you're just going in for,
like, a minor procedure. It's just going to be, like, really quick. Don't worry about it. The word circumcision was not even uttered until I was in the consultation room minutes beforehand. Was this a private clinic? It was a pediatric urologist who had an office in the middle of town in one of those office parks with like a dentist and a bunch of different multidisciplinary kind of things. It was just a very, like, nondescript building in an office park.
We were on particularly high quality health insurance at the time. My mom had a great job in the nineties, in the early two thousands in corporate America in Boston. So we had Aetna, a very high quality aetna healthcare plan. And im pretty sure that health insurance paid for this whole thing. And I have a lot of strong opinions about how that financial incentivization
trickled down. Ive Long had the impression that that urologist was leveraging a higher payout from a higher quality health insurance plan. And when, I don't like the term above and beyond because it wasn't good, but I think he, let's say, overcomplicated the procedure and added some extra steps to reap the benefits. Because you weren't circumcised at the beginning, like most of us. How were you initially saved to be sacrificed later? I guess you could say I
was. Adopted, and I'm pretty sure that I just kind of slipped through the cracks. My parents were in Massachusetts and I was born in Arizona to a mother from California and a father from Virginia. And there was like a nine day period there where, because I was born a little bit premature, so there was a period there where my parents didnt come down and I was just sort of in the system. I dont know if the paperwork was never signed or if, because I was in a gray area,
it didnt happen later in life. I've talked to some people in Arizona, and I've heard that it's not as common down there, so that might have played a role. Another thing that might have helped you. I've heard this from other people, oftentimes premature babies, just because they're focused on actual important things are spared. Yeah. And once that baby's been there for a little while and you've seen them in their little innocent state of perfection, it's harder to cope with modifying that.
I know you don't know your biological family's view on it, as you've said, but what is your current family's view on circumcision, and how do they feel about your restoration? If they know, they don't know about my restoration. Although there was a time a few years ago when I was staying at my parents house, and I got out of the shower, and the door opened itself, and my mom was in the hallway, and she was kind of shocked at what
she saw. Really know why? And I don't know if the fact that I had a foreskin was the shocker there or not. I don't know. But pulling from the recent conversation that I had with my mom, everyone in my dad's family, everyone in my mom's family was cut. My mom said that my grandfather knew somebody who was uncut, and he had problems with it. And I do remember very distinctly one really awkward conversation. It was a family dinner, and we had
a close friend's family come by. We were very close with these people. And he was irish. He's also my godfather. And so he made some kind of irish joke. I forget what it was, but it was some kind of really funny, off brand joke. And the punchline was, well, we're gonna have to get you circumcised for that, son. And my dad just interjected, and he was like, don't worry. We already took care of that. And I was
like, hello. I'm sitting here. Hi. That gave me the impression that I think my parents kind of always wanted it done, and they were just kind of following through on something that should. Have already happened in their mind. Right. So now that I'm restored, and I don't like to use that term in the past tense because it's an ongoing journey, but I now have people who see it, and they're like, oh, you must not be american. Oh, you're definitely not jewish, or something like
that. They'll always make a remark on that because it's so ingrained into those two sections of culture. Yeah, it's a weird situation. You felt special to begin with when you were intact, and then later on you felt out of place, even though you were more like other people, which is very interesting.
Mm hmm. That was a very odd experience for me because I was keenly aware I was now like all the other boys that clipped my wings, so to speak, like, that took the air out of my sails, and it really made me much more self conscious of my own body. Was sex openly discussed in your family? No, it was the opposite. I didnt get to talk about the birds and the bees. My mom got me a puberty book, and she was like, you can read that and then you'll know, right? Very hands off. What were their opinions
of nudity? It was pretty puritanical in that regard. My parents are like, a slightly older generation than most of my peers. They were born in the forties, and I think just generationally speaking, like, nudity wasn't okay. Sex was not very openly discussed. It was very taboo. Oh, on a similar topic, since they are of an older generation, did that cause any issues with you being gay? Initially, yeah, initially, that was really tough for them to understand. And I had some pretty turbulent teenage
years. High school was rough while I coped with that. I mean, I came out in a public sense to my peers well before I told my family about it, so they kind of figured it out when I brought home my boyfriend and I was like, hey, look at this. They were really kind of shocked by it, but they came around pretty quick. My dad was the first to be really understanding. The summer after my junior year, I got broken up with, and I had my first real heartbreak.
And my dad was like, doesn't matter whether it's a boy or a girl, heartbreak is the same, and I'm here for you, son, which was great. And my mom was always kind of in her head about it up until very recently. And when I say recently, I mean, like this month, I put my pride flag out and I sent my mom a picture, and she came back with happy pride, which was a big deal for me. Sometimes it does take a while for people to come around when it comes to that, especially since
they're an older generation. I mean, where were they born and raised? Yeah, they're both from the New Jersey, Pennsylvania area, working class, bottom of the barrel, pick yourself up by your bootstraps kind of thing. So they both came from a tough background. They both had parents that served in World War Two. And, like, it was just a very strong ironclad generation. How did you find out about foreskin restoration?
I did. I guess I'm going to date myself now. But back in the day when we had 56k modems and stuff, I remember shortly after I got cut, I was probably, like 14 when we got good Internet in the house and I was able to start surfing the web. So the first thing I did was look up what had happened to me and what this meant. And still living at my parents house, I found some message board somewhere that mentioned, oh, tape and a film canister and an alligator clip. And I was like, great, let's do it.
So I did it. I found a film canister because we still had those. And I got the tape and I gave it a shot, and it was insanely uncomfortable and very cumbersome and difficult. But I remember even at that early age, being like, this is gonna get me somewhere, and this is something that I need to explore. Were you trying to keep it a secret from your parents, the restoring and was it a challenge to do so? It wasn't that much of a challenge. I did sort of keep it a secret,
but it wasn't like, an active secret. I just sort of did it passively on my own time. And my parents were very, like I said, hands off. I was given a lot of time to just hang out and roam free with my friends or spend time online on my own. They would always knock on my door before they came in. I had a lot of time to myself to kind of research things on my own. Did you have a computer in your room, or was there a central computer that you. You'd be like, oh, they're away.
How can I repair the damage that. We had an office computer downstairs, at least initially, I got a laptop, like, my senior year of high school. But I was always very conscious about. Clearing my history for a different reason than most teenagers. Yeah, absolutely. Was there a moment that you decided, oh, I'm going to restore. I don't know. I'm trying to think back to, like, whether there was a tipping point for me, but I really think I was just so intensely motivated by
the loss. And also there was so little information out there that I was grasping at straws. If I could identify any path forward, I was going to hop on it. It was really never a question for you of restoring, it was just, if it exists, I'm going to do it. Absolutely. Yeah. That was my thought process. As the community grew and as the technology came along, I tried to stay on top of it, and I tried to fold more and more new techniques
into my method as it went along. Can you walk us through the journey of the different devices and techniques you used throughout the years? It's not super complicated. I get a lot of questions about it because people see my results and they're kind of like, oh, he must be onto something, or he must have some secret sauce. And it's like, not really. It's just time and dedication.
So it was the film canister thing for, like, a little bit, and then I took time off and really thought about it until I got to college. When I got to college, it was manual until I found that device. So I was doing manual stretches every day pretty much through all of college until I got the tugger. Once I got the tugger, it was like anytime I was off class in college, I was tugging. I would, like, play video games on my couch. And I had, like, a hook
on the wall that I screwed in with the bungee cordental. And I remember I could tell that I was making progress because I was having to move my couch further away from the wall over time. So I was like, okay, this is working. But I also had a lot of issues with pinching and localized swelling and stuff. And not to knock Ron low because he's a pioneer.
This wouldn't have been possible without that. But at the same time, it was a very rudimentary device, so I stuck with that for a long time, took a few years on and off, and then I moved into an apartment, like, gosh, now it must have been like seven years ago now, back in Massachusetts. And I just decided, what the heck? Let's look up online. Let's see what the new technology is. What is there a new device that I'm not aware of? And, like, I found the hyper restore,
and that got me into inflation. I did a lot of research on the hyper restore because it was going to be my first new device in like a decade. So I was like, this better be the right thing. And I fell in love with the way it was designed. I really, the research behind it resonated with me. So I got one, and that skyrocketed my progress. I'm now on my second one. It wore out. Yep. The valve started to go in it, and so I replaced the valve, and then
the second valve started to go in it. I had to kind of Diy a different valve for a while, and then the silicone started to just not have the grip that it used to have. I really used that thing. How did you decide when you're deciding to restore, how did you figure out, this is real? Were you afraid? Oh, this is just somebody trying to scam me or.
I was never afraid of the scam. And I think it's because when I was doing my initial research and I ran across Ron and all the stuff that he was talking about online and like, brother k and stuff, like, there's such a great community out there. And all these people seemed so earnest and so honest about everything that I was like, there's no way that this is a scam. So I was motivated by the people in the community who were making headway.
But the real game changer for me was when I started retaining with o rings and I started being covered 24/7 that started giving me very powerful flashbacks to when I was a kid and how it used to feel. And that really had, like, a profound psychological impact. Did it remind you of what you're getting back, or was it more of a what you lost? It was very much a double edged sword. Like, it was both. It was more a positive experience. I remember after the first two or three days of retaining,
I got really emotional. I started having a hard time dealing with the way that it felt because it was overwhelming. It was really powerful for me to experience that, but I didn't dwell on the loss too much because the comfort was so high. Just the differences that I started to experience in my life, the lowering of my baseline stress levels and the fact that I was so much more calm and comfortable through the day.
It was just such a motivator. I'd imagine that would be when you actually see progress, like the magic moving couch. I wonder if anybody wondered why it was over a few centimeters different each time. I wonder that too. What were the kind of biggest challenges or even minor challenges that you've had when it comes to getting to the CI level you're at now? And I account both physical challenges and emotional challenges. There's been a few. It was more emotional stuff at
the beginning. It was kind of just technical, pragmatic, logical life stuff. I fully understand when I see people online talking about struggling with motivation and taking time off and kind of the mental mind game of doing restoration. I struggled with that a little bit when I got out of college, so there was a lot of forcing myself to do it, and that was a hurdle for a while again
until I started retaining. And once I started retaining and I started really feeling the difference, I quadrupled down on my routine. Was that when you first started retaining 24/7 was that when you first achieved decarotonization? Yeah, that was when it started, and it's still an ongoing process. I started retaining shortly after I got the hyper restore, so it hasn't been all that long, actually. It's maybe six or seven years that I've been retaining,
and that was such a big deal. So, yeah, the decaratinization started then. It's a tough word. It's one. You can go say that three times fast. Yeah. But I had a moment, actually, yesterday where I just, I happened to look down and I retracted the skin, and it was the shiniest it's ever been. And I just sort of had, like, a moment of joy to myself. I was like, wow, I've hit another level of decarbotinization.
And that was very satisfying. That reminds me, what would you say were the big milestones in your journey because decarbonitization is a huge one. Are there other ones in your journey you can think of? Yeah, rollover is like the big turning point for a lot of guys,
and I'm no different. Once you have those first few experiences where you don't have a device on, you don't have a retainer on, maybe the weather's cold, or maybe you just worked out, or maybe you just sat at like the right angle and it happens spontaneously and it just blows your damn mind. So that was a really big deal for me, actually. You asked earlier what was kind of like a tipping point, and that was probably one of them. That was a big game changer. Also retaining.
I harp very long and hard about retaining, and I think I get a little bit of skepticism from people, but I've seen so many benefits from that. That was huge. I'm sure you've noticed that as you decarotinize eyes, does it make it easier for the skin to stick, the glands sticking to the inside of the skin, kind of keeping it in place? Sometimes, yeah. I mean, more during hot weather, shall we say, in specific circumstances. It's actually, for me, it's been more contributing
to the gliding action. It glides a lot smoother now. That is fantastic. Yeah, it's a really great feeling. I'm still having new realizations about it. I'm still having Eureka moments. I'm still posting these giant aha. Discoveries on Reddit. It's an ongoing journey. You have to constantly keep restoring. It's as opposite to the process of circumcision as it can be.
One's a quick thing that is damaging and the other one's a healing thing that takes, in some cases, like the two of us over a decade. Yeah. You know, I just said yesterday to someone on the SubRedDIt, I ended a post by saying it takes them mere minutes to remove it, but it will take you years to grow it back. And it's definitely a lifestyle decision. Like, you can't just kind of casually be like, oh, I'm going to restore.
And if you really want to see the results that you're looking for, then it's a journey that you have to really walk. Yeah. There's not really casual restorers. There's restorers or there's not restorers. Yeah. I meAn, if you're looking to get to the finish Line, for sure. We've talked to a lot of people and there always seems to be that one gap in restoring. Do you have a gap or gaps in the time that you're restoring. Yep, there's always that one. And. And it's usually right around the
same time. It's like you start strong and then you. You hit a plateau and then you either drop off or you accelerate from there. Yeah. And during that plateau was when I took a lot of time off. That was probably from, like 24 age 24 to 28 or so. Just kind of a time in my mid to late twenties where I had so many spinning plates. Like, I had so many things going on in my life that I was trying to balance. And as motivated as I was to make progress on my journey,
I just couldn't. It's not like you can tell the difference from one day to the other. So missing one day can turn into missing two days and three days. Well, I mean, that's the lifestyle component. It's like working out. I try and run 2 miles every morning, and if you take one day off from running, it's kind of like, okay, that's fine. But then that following day where you have to. You took that one day off and you have to run again. It is the hardest thing in the world to
start running again. But likewise, you're like, well, if I can keep running, then I'm not going to notice a huge loss. But if one day turns into two, turns into five, and now you've broken the habit. I like to call it dicker size. Yes. Yeah. That's one stereotype I fit into. I love my puns. You touched on this a bit before, but how has the way that you feel about your body changed as you've restored? This has been the single biggest, best decision that I've made in my entire life.
And I mean that in an overarching sense. But when it comes to body image, this has been the game changer. This has been the single point of inflection for me. I hesitate to say I feel whole again because that's kind of been, like, my theme here. When I talk to, like, my therapist about it and stuff, we use the term like I'm trying to feel whole again. It's my journey to feel whole, but at the same time, I do feel more whole now.
I went through a long time in college where in my apartment in Florida, I had a floor to ceiling mirror in the bathroom, of all places. So I'd get out of the shower and immediately be, like, faced with my physicality, head to toe. And it was really hard for me to look at myself in the mirror because I didn't identify with my body. I had a lot of kind of classic dysmorphia, looking down at my genitals and feeling like I didn't take ownership of them. And now I do.
I feel so much more confident. My self esteem has gone up so much, and that's been compounded lately in the last year, because I've spoken to enough people who have encouraged me to take on the title of uncut. I've been very fortunate that I've been accepted in that circle. Everyone that I've spoken to has been like, yeah, that's a badge you can wear with pride. And so now every time someone refers to me as uncut, my self esteem goes up just a little bit, and it's a
huge deal. I feel like you've earned that. It's the same way I feel about an immigrant. If somebody comes to a country and they chose to be in a country, and in some ways, that almost makes them more of that country than somebody that just happened to be born into it. Right. Because you can really take ownership of the whole experience and it's
your decision. So, yeah, I really. I feel like something that I. That I say a lot, that's a theme in a lot of my posts, is it's an act of taking control of your body back. And that's really how I feel. Was it a challenge getting a supportive therapist? Because I've heard a lot of people get dismissive comments. Did you have to go through
a few? Or what was that like? I've seen a lot of different therapists over my life for, like, a variety of things, and it actually took me a shockingly long amount of time to really understand the effect that my circumcision had had on me. The first therapist that I went to to talk about this with was they were not supportive at all, and they were a very classically trained, academic type
of counseling. It was research oriented, and they were very much aligned with current best practices in medicine. And so when I came to them with this, they were very much like, well, we don't think that's the issue here. We don't have a lot of evidence to correlate that with trauma responses. So I got a lot of hate from them. And after I disclosed that to them, I don't think our therapy continued for more than a couple months after that. That really broke my trust in them.
But after that experience, I found another therapist who was LGBT friendly and did alternative treatments and was much more in tune with trauma therapy. And as soon as I mentioned what had happened and how I was feeling about it, she latched on. She understood and started asking really difficult questions, but questions that I needed to answer, and I've been fortunate now
since her. I'm now working with a therapist that I've been with for the past year, and he, not only has he been supportive, but he's been like encouraging me to further my research, further my journey. He's encouraging me to start this podcast. He's on board with me engaging with the community, so I can say that having a supportive therapist is a huge deal. That's fantastic. We've heard from other people that finding a therapist
is very difficult. It's tough to find someone who's compassionate to the issue, especially in America, and especially even though it shouldn't be, it being a men's issue. Did you ever seek out help from the medical field for physical ailments? Did you ever go to urologist to try to figure out solutions? No, I had a hard time with that for, I think, kind of obvious reasons. I think a lot of people have a hard time trusting the medical establishment. After that, my procedure was done poorly and
it left me with some complications. I struggled with those complications for a really long time before tackling them myself, which is something I don't recommend that people do. But yeah, it took me until this year and this therapist to be like, oh, maybe I should talk to a professional and take control of this myself. Just so we understand the struggle you went through, do you feel comfortable describing the extreme lengths you had to go through to get past that?
Yeah, I mean that. I'm planning on making a post about it in the future to summarize it, because I've gotten questions, but essentially my procedure left me with a giant skin bridge, and I think it was left over from the adhesion that I originally thought had triggered this whole thing, which was such a slap in the face because it meant that the procedure didn't even accomplish what they set out to
do, making it even more pointless. This skin bridge got to the point where it was really interfering with my progress, and it was becoming uncomfortable. The more I would inflate and the higher the pressures I would get to, the more of a tension discomfort situation I was
in. So I reached out to some of the body modification communities and did a lot of research, a lot of research, and essentially self surgically released the adhesion on my own, using quality tools and in a sterile environment and with local anesthetic. But I still don't recommend that people do this. I highly recommend that you seek professional treatment, but I also understand that that's difficult for a lot of people to trust, so.
And it is also hard, in the same way it's hard to find a therapist that will take you seriously. It's hard to find urologists that will actually help. Yeah. I mean, one of the hurdles that Im running up against right now, because now that Ive reached this stage in my progress, Im looking to urologists for the final 10%
surgeries, if you will. And one of the big hurdles that Im running up against right now is that often you wont even get past the receptionist desk because they just dont want to take you seriously. Even some of the most preeminent health organizations in this country, if you have a problem with your foreskin, they just want to remove it, and they're not used to fixing it. It's as if every other part of the body is in the modern day and the foreskin is stuck in the lop it off era of medicine.
Yeah. Yeah. For sure. And it's to the point where, like, my current therapist, again, is. He's shocked. He can't believe that modern medicine is turning such a strong, blind eye to this. He is stunned. I remember when I tried to get my adhesion taken care of, the receptionist dismissed me and said, oh, just go to the doctor that did your circumcision to fix it. Hey. Oh, yeah. Things. He's probably dead because I'm kind of old. Well, not kind of old. I'm 38.
That's not old. But they. How would you even. What? Is that so unrealistic? And also, why would I go to the guy that made the mistake in the first place? Right. Oh, my God. That is asinine. That was kind of crazy. The actual urologist was good, though. They just told me it was too minor, that the scarring would have caused more damage. So it was in that kind of uncanny valley.
If they had cut it, the scar would be bigger than the adhesion, but it was still causing me problems, so I just had to use air for, like, eight years to take care of it, to just stretch it out enough. Anyway, this is not about me, but I just want you to know you are not alone. Yeah. No. I've just talked to a guy last night who is struggling with adhesions, and it's insanely common. It's one of the top complications of this procedure.
A lot of people suffer with them. How close would you say your current equipment is to the original? The figure I use is, like, 85%, and that's how it is for me. And that comes with a really heavy asterisk, because every body is different, every cut is different, every person will respond differently to their routine, and everyone's routine is going to be different. So I say that I got to 85% based on what I
remember and how it feels. Now my frenulum is gone, and so I feel like, had I had that still, that number might be higher, but that's the figure I use that's still. Extremely encouraging to people that might be listening to this, that are missing their frenulum and are wondering, is this worth it? Will I get enough back? And to know that you can get something close to 85% even with a missing frenulum, is very important to hear from somebody that was and then wasn't
and then was again. Yeah. I kind of feel like that gives me a bit of a unique perspective here, because I've got some pretty clear memories of how it used to feel. It is shockingly close in terms of appearance, in terms of the way it feels, in terms of the hygiene situation and everything else that comes with it, you really have to treat the restored foreskin like an intact one. Every time I go in the shower and I wash it, I'm like, thank God I'm in this situation.
I'm glad. And also, I chuckle a little bit, because I'm like, really? This was the thing that everyone thought was so hard. Turns out that it's like what Penn and Teller said. Oh, I'm sorry. Do we not have soap? Yeah, it's funny. Like, I joke about it because I have two college degrees, okay, like, you trusted me to be smart enough to go and learn all of these great, wonderful things, but I'm too stupid to clean my own body. That's a weird dichotomy, since you were.
Intact for a good portion of your life, at least compared to most of us. Did the doctors at any point do that dumb. We have to retract it. We've got to retract it. No, but there were attempts. I had adhesions, which are common. Most people do, and they usually resolve pretty early. Mine stuck around for a little while. Still had that one when I was 13. It resisted attempts by itself, so I was never forcibly retracted or anything. But I think had it been more looser or
easier to do, an intrepid doctor might have tried. The people that society considers very smart do very dumb things. Has this shaken youre confidence in other medical professionals? Not really. That's the crazy thing, because I see a lot of global distrust of medicine. Like, once men find out about this damage that was done to them. There's a quick knee jerk reaction to discount all of modern medicine to an extent, I kind of see where that's coming from. But I'm a very science based
person. I'm a very logical, thought based person, evidence based. And so I believe in modern medicine. My ex's father had a heart attack a couple years ago and I watched modern medicine work miracles on that man. And he's alive and well and he's doing great. I've had enough experiences with medicine to trust it. How have your family and friends responded? The ones that know, if there are any that do know really, really well. Really well. My last partner was incredibly supportive
and still is. We still talk about it. I share milestones with them and they're always really cool about it. They encouraged me to get that first device, the hyper restored device, and stood by me as I made progress. It's kind of weird now I'm in a bit of a gray area at this point because now that I've started going by uncut, I get a lot of people who just assume that I am and then I'm like, oh, no, I restored. And that brings with it a whole flurry of new questions.
Yeah, people weren't used to it going that direction. Yeah, it flip flopped. As soon as I took on that moniker, that label, everything changed. I know that when you're a kid, being intact made you feel special and unique. Would you say that now that you're restored or uncuthenous, has that returned in the same way? It came right back? I feel very similarly to the way I did. I have this weird kind of imposter syndrome right now that I'm fighting through where it's like,
am I really uncut? Because I perceive scarring and stuff that most people who aren't familiar with the issue don't see. So I think a lot of it's in my head. I have learned through this process that as a gay man, I really, really enjoy being sought out for that specific quality. There are a lot of guys out there that seek that out and I like being the object of that seeking.
I would imagine so. And you earned it because what a lot of people don't realize is they go, oh, it's just a little extra skin or whatever excuse they make for it. They don't realize not only does it reduce sensation, it also reduces functionality. I mean, there are things you can't do when you're circumcised. Yeah, it's kind of crazy to me. We have a procedure that is so normalized and so routine and yet so prone to complications and error. Like, this is a risky procedure.
And mine came with those complications. I mean, I had the skin bridge. I had issues with my stream being straight. A lot of people have a lot of issues with this. How has sex changed for you, if you're okay with talking about that night and day? For me, I mean, if I can get graphic, like, oh, you can get. As graphic as you want. Awesome. Oral sex is phenomenal. People have a lot more to play with. People enjoy it
a lot more, and therefore I enjoy it a lot more. It's a lot more comfortable, it's a lot smoother. And from the pleasure standpoint, orgasms now are like a full body affair, a whole, like, toe curling eyes roll into the back of your head kind of thing. And I struggled with achieving orgasms of that intensity while I was cut. I know a lot of people that have restored discover that there is a difference between orgasm and ejaculation.
Have you experienced that, where you discover. Yeah, it's a multidimensional thing. So I find that when I was cut, it was sort of like a means to an end. Masturbation, there's a finish line, and I gotta get there, and I'm gonna work to achieve that finish line now. There are all these subtle nuances and all
these little sensations and feelings. And you can edge for hours, you can go for a very long time and experience all these little tiny things that won't push you over the edge but contribute to this building of intensity. When it comes to the buildup, I've found and other people have found, is that you're able to build up to the, to a plateau. When you're circumcised, it's just a mountain, it's just a peak and then
goes down. And when it comes to being restored, you build up and then you hit a plateau, and then you can kind of control, oh, I want to go over that last edge. That's a good way to put it. I find a lot of pleasure now, psychologically and physically, from hanging out on that plateau for a long time, because I find the longer I hang out there, the more intense that final drop off is. It's a good place to be. It's awesome. Pleasure plateau.
I guess it's an area that I'm still kind of exploring because I feel like I lost out on a lot of time that I had to hang out there. So I'm kind of making up for some lost years now. Have you had partners through the experience, like, ah, this is a little different. Or, yeah, there was the one partner that I was with through the biggest hump, so to speak. Once I switched to inflation and my progress skyrocketed after that, that person noticed. That person saw the change
over time. Just recently, I actually had the opportunity to be intimate with someone from my high school years. That person was shocked, but in the best possible way. It was a really cool moment. That's wonderful. It was an x from my senior year and it was just a fling. I was down there visiting family and we happened to run into each other and sparks flew. And as soon as the moment the reveal happened, he kind of took a step back and he was like, did I like,
forget something? I could have sworn that you were cut. Are you? And then we had this whole conversation and he was like, so blown away and so impressed. And then we had a lot of fun with it. Fantastic. What would you say is your end goal when it comes to restoration? When will you say you're done?
That's what a moving target, right? I mean, I have gotten to a point where, like, when I first started, when I was first kind of embarking on this process, and just for the record, I started around CI two when at that time it was like, well, I just want coverage. And then you achieve coverage and youre like, well, lets reassess our goals and lets see if we can go a little further. So then it was like, well, I want to hit CI seven or eight, and now Im at CI eight and Im like, well,
I could go further, right? So ive just reassessed my goals again. I hear a lot that, I think the most common goal that everyone wants is like CI Ten with overhang. I think everybody wants that. It's kind of like everybody wants a Ferrari. You want the best, you want the top of the line. So for me, it's just a moving target. I tell people now my goal is CI ten, but I will honestly probably
never stop. I'm addicted to it now. I know a lot of people when they're circumcised before they have conscious memory of it, often have a goal in mind. And the goal is a certain foreskin that they saw or they were exposed to. Is yours what you had. That actually touches on a good point because I think a lot of people, especially those who were cut in infancy, you don't have a frame of reference, so you don't really know what it would have looked like. And for me personally,
I was fortunate to have a pretty long foreskin. I had overhang when I was intact. So my goal is to get back to where I was. And I'm kind of there flaccid right now. I'm pretty close. But the greater thing here is that I think a lot of people have a hard time realizing that you were born with a specific foreskin, and your goals for what you want may or may not align with what it actually would have been like. There's such wide variety in natural foreskins. Some are long, some are
short, some are tight, some are wide. There's so much variety. And so I think it's easy for people to just go, I want the best, without stopping to think about, well, what would I have actually had and what is appropriate for my body. Have you ever fooled anybody? Have you ever been in a situation you just dont tell them and they think youre intact? Yeah, it happens all the time now. It happens more often than not now, which is contributing to the imposter syndrome
a little. But again, its one of those things where its a good problem to have, I guess. And my big victory was last year I had another physical, and I went to my doctor, and she did the hernia check, and she just made a note. She said, oh, it says here in your patient profile that you're circumcised, but that's clearly a mistake. So I'll
just make a note on that. And to her, that was like such a small, little trivial thing, but I walked out of the office and I was like, yes, it was such a victory. I tricked a doctor, and now it's on my paperwork. It's official. Doing these interviews, I've seen such a connection between different groups, and I have to imagine that's very similar to when somebody that's trans finally gets that m turned to an f or that f turned into an m on their driver's license. Like, finally I can. There it
is. It's right there. It's in my wallet. I've got my official card. That made it feel very real. That was like a very salient thing that it felt tangible. I could take more ownership after that. If you could, would you have that on your driver's license? I wouldn't be opposed to it, but at the same time, just ask and I'd be happy to show you. I brag about it. I like showing it off every chance I get. In all consenting circles, I say, go for it. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. That's been
part of why I'm posting so much on Reddit. Lately. It's a way for me to really get back in touch with my body. And share, and it's very good for other people to do so because there aren't as many people that actually go all the way through and achieve something as much as eight. There's a lot of sixes out there, a lot of sevens, but eight, that's something. Well, thank you. And it's really cool. And I reached a point where I kind of had that realization.
I was like, I'm at a level of my progress now that it gets rarer and rarer as you get further down the road. And I feel like it's almost my duty as someone in the community who has walked that far down the path to share the roadmap with other people who are also walking the journey but are maybe further back than me and show them, hey, there is a path forward. It does improve, and you can go all the way. What would you say you like the most about restoring? I like
feeling whole again. I like looking at my body in the mirror and going. I like that. I identify with that. That feels like me reaching my goals, I think has been a big deal. More so than that. I'm starting to really enjoy engaging with the community. I'm getting a lot out of talking to other people and sharing my experience. And so I don't think there's one part of it that I like the most. I enjoy the progress. I enjoy the people. I enjoy the sense of community.
It's a really good space, and I think it carries a lot of benefits beyond just the physical ones, too. It has forced me to ask a lot of difficult questions of myself and kind of interrogate myself a little bit. And so I've learned a lot about myself and my psyche and my ego and my sexuality. And beyond that, it's inspired me to build a lot of other really positive and productive habits around restoring. When I started restoring,
I just sort of wanted to get the foreskin. And, like, over the years, as I've gotten more into it, like, I've started taking supplements to dial in my blood work and I've started exercising more and my diet has improved. And these are all sort of like, ancillary things to help my progress, but they really also improve my quality of life. Trey, what would you say you like. The least about restoring the time?
The sheer length of time? It is a bummer that it takes this long, but at the same time, its a love hate relationship with time, because the longer you do it, the more you realize its an exponential process and you just have to keep investing. Its like someone who actually invests money. Like the biggest pain in the ass about investing money is waiting for the payoff or not. It would be nice if you could just see an instant return on your investment,
but not a lot of things work that way. Most things dont. It doesnt seem like it. Looking back, is there anything you would do differently when it comes to restoring that gap? I kicked myself in the butt a little over lost time, but at the same time, I see a lot of other people kicking themselves in the butt over lost time. There's a lot of fomo in the community. I try to tell those people to not let it get you down. So I guess I should take my own advice.
This next question might be different for you than a lot of the people we've talked to about this, but how does forgiveness and resentment kind of factor into your journey since it did happen later in life and until like two. Days ago, I had a pretty clear cut and dry answer to this and now im kind of in turmoil a little bit based on my moms response the other day and finding out that I was kind of destined for this anyway. I got the impression that my mom and dad would have made this decision
anyway, kind of regardless. That has affected my viewpoint recently, but I don't think there are very many parents out there that would consciously make a decision for their child that they know is against their best interests. I think the vast majority of parents out there want to do what's right for their kid, so they do this thinking that it's the right choice. That is ill informed usually,
but they don't know any better. So I don't fault my parents in that sense because I felt like they were acting on the advice of the medical establishment or whatever. They did their research and they determined that it was in my best interest. But I don't think that they wanted to actively harm me. And also, I think if they had known the severity of the impact that this would have had moving down the line, they probably wouldn't have done it. So I
don't resent my parents. I'm still coping with that right now. Like, there's a little bit of fresh resentment because the wound was just opened and I'm kind of dealing with that now. But I I'm angry at the pediatrician. I think I will always harbor a lot of anger at the initial pediatrician who said at
the beginning, I think we should have a second opinion. That to me, shows ignorance on behalf of the doctor because there were other alternative treatments that could have been looked into or she could have just straight up said, everything's fine, we'll see you in a year. So I fault her. And for the record, she ended up closing her practice down years later amidst other accusations of fraud and malpractice. I'd imagine that might be a confirmation of
what you thought or. Yeah, I mean, it pissed me off because I was like, yeah, no kidding. But at the same time, it was good to see that end because it was like a little piece of the cycle of abuse just broken because she would have been perpetuating that. She certainly did with me. So that's one less non compassionate or ill informed doctor that's practicing and she can be replaced by someone who might be compassionate and educated. What is
next for your restoring journey? So right now I'm exploring surgical interventions. It's not so much to make progress because as far as coverage goes, I'm kind of okay. So Im looking into really experimental, not experimental is the wrong word. Not yet researched procedures. So things like frenulum reconstruction on a physical level, im looking into things like nerve reconnection, microsurgery so that we can reinnervate the frenulum is something that Im looking into.
I'm looking into implantation of silicone thread to mimic a ridged band. There are a lot of really interesting new breakthroughs in tissue surgery as a result of some of the pioneering work in the trans community and other areas like burn treatment, skin grafting medicine has come a long way very quickly in the last ten years. And weirdly, these are normal skills for many urologists that are just not being applied to the foreskin. It's fascinating how many
things medically can help different groups of people. A lot of the procedures that were developed were developed to help veterans reconstruct the penis. And then those kind of reconstructions are then maybe going to help us. So you never know where the help is going to come from. Yeah, it's really been encouraging to me. Like I'm on Reddit.
In addition to being tapped into all of the queer communities and the foreskin restoration communities, I keep an eye on the trans world because they are really pushing the boundaries of what medical science can do for the better. And it's good to see the medical industry responding to that. It's like there's pressure on the medical industry to push the science forward and they're saying, okay, we're going to push the science forward to improve patient outcomes. And I just think on
the one hand that is great, and that's a beautiful thing. But on the flip side, it's weird that we're not applying that to men, and I feel like there's a lot of space here for that to happen. Yeah, there is. It's really, it's a fascinating area. There's some really, really cool new research that's being done. I have found some very good urology
departments off the top of my head. Perelman Institute for Urology at Penn Medical and the urology center at Johns Hopkins University are both compassionate to the cause, and theyre kind of two big institutions that im working with to try and develop this. That is encouraging. I didnt know that somebody was actually working on this other than some people that claim theyre going to be able to just do the stem cell thing.
I have views on the stem cell thing. All I'll say on that is that I hope it works and I think it's fantastic. I will believe it when I see it. I'm hoping for human trials, but in the meantime, we have methods that we know work and I'm going to stick with those. What advice would you have for someone that's struggling with motivation or having issues? If you're struggling, it's probably because you're in the fog. You're having a hard time seeing the finish line.
And part of that is because it's a moving target and you may need to kind of reassess where you want to go and what your goals are. But the bottom line is, as long as you keep that goal in mind and you keep pushing towards it, 1 minute of restoration is better than zero minutes of restoration. So if you put in just an hour, if you put put in just 15 minutes of manual tugging in the shower every day, you will eventually see gains. There is no such thing as a bad investment in yourself when
it comes to this. Don't get down on yourself for losing time. Just keep trying. Keep going. You'll get there. It's all about diligence. This podcast is hosted by Dick Guyver and edited by Openroads. If you enjoyed this episode, please hit the subscribe button and share it with your friends. Want to join our weekly video chat? Click the link in the show notes for details. We also need your help to keep this podcast going.
For just $3 a month, you can help us pay for the podcast and inspire others in their foreskin restoration journeys. Thanks for listening and look for new episodes coming soon. Here's the restoring car. It's very long, Craig. All right, let's try a few more.