Sobriety for Millennials and Gen Z in the Digital Age, with Sako Barbarian

When a person is recovering from alcohol abuse, we generally advise them to avoid the beer and wine aisles in the markets. When a person is recovering from cocaine or meth use, or other drugs, we generally advise them to avoid that one street corner or back alley, or few blocks of downtown. When a person is in recovery from problem gambling, we’d find it wise for them to avoid casinos.

If the pattern holds, then when a person is in recovery from problematic pornography use, we should advise them to avoid the internet…

…but for younger folks, millennials, Gen-Z, and tech natives, we might as well ask them to pluck out their eyes. 

Tech natives are those people who have never known a world without the internet. Much if not all of their social lives, jobs, dating, and recreation takes place online. To a large degree, they experience their world through a screen, not as an aberration or a novelty or some new-fangled thing, but as the norm.

When this norm also becomes a vehicle to compulsive use of pornography, what do we do with this?

The problem isn’t limited to younger people. There are older folks as well who, may have had internet-less childhoods, but in adult hood, have built their lives around the internet. Minimally, we have people working entirely from home - through a computer screen. Often these individuals are alone in a room, alone in a house, or sometimes even alone in an office building for many hours a day. The nature of their livelihoods drives them away from in-person connections.

Isolation like this is prime breeding ground for addictive and compulsive behaviors. 

If the job is stressful, the drive to seek escape through digital self-soothing is even greater.

So then for these folks who are driven to isolation, day after day, who also struggle with compulsive pornography use, what is the solution?

Is the problem the internet? A hyper-object offering both a person’s basic needs, and their primary vices?

Or is the problem with the young people? A whole generation conditioned to see this level of technology as normal?

Or is the problem with the older people? Folks who knew the world before the internet and can have an instinctive appreciation for simply enjoying non-screen peace and quiet. 

Or is the problem the current, capitalist job market that demands people compromise any number of personal values to capture the sustaining dollar?

Sako Barbarian is a counselor at the Begin Again Institute in Colorado who specializes in recovery from compulsive sexual behaviors and problematic pornography use. He works closely with internet culture and the people trying to make their way in it, especially the Millenial and generations and those who have never known a world without the internet. He and I discuss the challenges facing today’s “Tech Natives,” the role of technology in our lives, and why compassion and connection are the things that save us and our sobriety.

This podcast relies on the partnership of listeners - especially with dollars! Please visit www.patreon.com/outercircle to learn how to partner with the vision of this show!

Rhys Pasimio can be found through www.patreon.com/outercircle and on instagram at @newpattrencounseling and is always happy to dialogue with listeners bringing honest questions!

Sako Barbarian can be found through the Begin Again Institute at www.beginagaininstitute.com. The Begin Again Institute is one program in the Integrative Life Network, a “Family of Trauma Focused Treatment Centers,” in Colorado - https://integrativelifenetwork.com.

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