NEW RESOURCE: YOHO’S APOCALYPSE ALMANAC tells how to treat many diseases. It is a little tongue-in-cheek, but it has references and links. HERE are links to download my CV, ebooks, the best recent posts, and instructions on searching my archives. Please review Judas Dentistry; the direct link is HERE.
HERE is the Rumble video link for this interview.
Yoho prologue
Relationships are everything in psychotherapy. I know—I had a nine-year treatment between the ages of 35 and 44 and saw my therapist two to five times a week. Virtual treatment did not exist back then, so mine was in person.
My father was emotionally distant, and my mother had a bizarre, antisocial personality. This left holes in my parenting that seemed to be filled by this relationship. When I started, I was alone in Los Angeles after being kicked out of a dermatology program on the other side of the country. I was in a new medical residency, had a deteriorating marriage, and had recently found my brother’s body after he had hung himself.
I got along with my therapist, and he seemed to care about me, although we had our ups and downs. During this period, I met my wonderful current wife, Judy, who viewed the psychologist as a con man. Several years later, with the security she provided me, I felt the treatment was over, so I quit. Judy is a wolverine when she believes she is right, which is most of the time.
The whole experience was so subjective that it was hard to remember or describe, but because my therapist and I had a rapport, I benefitted.
I am telling you this to show that I speak Michael’s language and have the skills to judge him. Good therapists try to avoid imposing their values on their patients, and his point about maintaining boundaries is the most telling idea in our talk. He is sincere and far more intellectual than the average psychologist. Our interview was a pleasure.
The Evolution of Modern Addictions, by Michael Wenisch
I grew up in a conservative Catholic household where my father, a philosophy professor, was a protégé of 20th-century Catholic philosopher Dieter von Hildebrand, whose thought continues to inform my thinking and clinical work. Initially, I studied electrical engineering, but I eventually realized that my passion and talent lay in philosophy. This led me to obtain a PhD in Philosophy from Catholic University. For about twelve years, I taught at various colleges and universities while building a modest record of academic publications. However, I never secured a tenure-track position, which prompted a career change approximately twelve years ago.
With the generous support of my wife Michelle, I pivoted to the mental health field, completing my studies ten years ago. Since then, I've been a practicing psychological counselor specializing in sex addiction. This wasn't necessarily a field I was passionate about, but I chose it for practical reasons. My background in philosophy, Christian theology, and related areas equipped me well to address issues in this domain. Furthermore, I recognized it as an underserved area in mental health. Many people struggle with these problems, and the vast majority of mental health professionals lack the knowledge to help them.
As I've continued this work over the years, it's become clear that screen addiction represents an even larger-scale problem. While sex addiction and screen addiction are distinct, screen addiction is often a gateway to sex addiction. Addiction to phones, endless scrolling through social media, video games, and platforms like TikTok and Instagram frequently precede and facilitate the development of sex addiction.
Understanding Sex Addiction
This typically begins with a crisis. A client will contact me saying, "I am in serious trouble. I think my marriage is falling apart. My wife caught me looking at pornography," or using OnlyFans or visiting massage parlors. In our initial conversations, I reassure them they're not alone and that addressing such crises is my specialty. The early sessions focus on establishing goals, usually involving some combination of saving the marriage and overcoming addictive tendencies.
Approximately 75-80% of my clients are married, though I work with single men who have become aware of their problems. Internal motivation to recognize and overcome the situation is more effective than external motivation driven by a spouse's anger. Part of my approach involves helping clients realize the harm their behavior causes them, regardless of their marital situation.
There's an essential distinction between engagement with images for sexual pleasure versus engagement with live partners. During periods of intense sexual arousal, people enter a trance-like state of quasi-drunkenness where judgment is impaired. They pursue increasingly stimulating sexual activities and often cross the line from viewing images and videos to engaging in chat rooms with live individuals. For married people, this represents a qualitative shift into a form of infidelity, as they're engaging in sexual activity with someone other than their spouse.
Based on my experience with the sample of people in my practice, over half of sex addiction clients eventually seek sexual activity in a live online setting, such as through chat rooms. About a quarter progress to physical sexual contact through massage parlors, escorts, or affairs.
The Psychological Framework
Sex addiction is not currently recognized in the DSM-5 as a psychological disorder despite evidence demonstrating that it causes the same changes to the brain's dopamine-mediated reward system as other addictions. The behavioral sciences generally adopt the posture that sexual pleasure between consenting adults is morally neutral, which makes them reluctant to classify any sexual behavior as addictive or problematic. This perspective helps explain why so few practitioners are equipped to help people with these issues.
My approach differs from mainstream practice in that I try to help clients understand the moral, psychological, and spiritual harm they do to themselves through these behaviors. This approach requires working within each client's frame of reference, belief system, and level of psychological maturity. I've found that younger clients in their early to mid-20s often lack the life experience to fully appreciate the harm they're causing themselves.
The Progression of Addiction
One characteristic of sex and pornography addiction is the development of tolerance—needing more and more of the addictive agent to generate less and less satisfaction. With sex addiction, tolerance manifests both quantitatively and qualitatively. People find more of their lives consumed by thinking about and engaging in sexual behaviors, sometimes spending hours viewing pornography. They seek increasingly severe forms of sexual transgression, moving from pornography to escorts or, within pornography, pursuing more bizarre and extreme content.
This progression can lead people down unexpected and dangerous paths, sometimes involving illegal content such as child sexual abuse material. Some individuals develop serious legal problems. I've inadvertently developed a subspecialty in helping people who have encountered legal troubles related to these behaviors. I've witnessed both tragic outcomes and stories of redemption and recovery.
The Screen Addiction Epidemic
Screen addiction is the compulsive use of electronic media involving viewing a physical electronic screen. I believe screen addiction arises from a state of agitated distraction. People seek relief from this uncomfortable state by engaging with screens, whether through social media, games, or other digital content. However, the algorithms behind these platforms are engineered to provide short-term psychological rewards that impair executive function, making users even more distracted and agitated beneath the surface.
In this trance-like state, people pursue the dopamine hits from likes on social media, advancing in video games, or falling down rabbit holes of interesting content. After hours of this mindless pleasure-seeking, they feel empty and unsatisfied because none of it relieves their initial state of agitated distraction.
This phenomenon isn't entirely new. In the late 1970s, Jerry Mander wrote "Four Arguments Against Television," arguing that television had harmful effects on viewers. Today's electronic media are far more sophisticated and insidious than what existed then. Screen addiction might affect the majority of the population.
Treatment Approaches
When helping clients with screen addiction, I often begin by having them monitor their usage through apps or built-in phone features. Many are shocked to discover they spend seven to nine hours daily on their devices when they estimate only two or three hours. Once clients recognize how much time they're losing to screens and understand how this perpetuates a state of agitated distraction, they're typically motivated to change.
For sex addiction, my approach varies by individual. Generally, I use a Socratic method to help clients discover for themselves the interior harm they're accruing through sexual transgressions. While I don't impose my value system on clients, I try to lead them toward recognizing that even masturbation without pornography can be harmful.
I've worked with clients from diverse belief systems—atheists, Muslims, Orthodox and liberal Jews, and Christians of various denominations. Regardless of religious background, almost all have a conscience and a basic sense of morality that can be appealed to. With experience, I've learned to engage with their ethical beliefs in ways that help them recognize the harm of their behaviors without violating the therapeutic principle of meeting clients where they are.
My approach represents an interplay between pre-modern, modern, and postmodern approaches to counseling. Pre-modern approaches involve traditional religious belief systems. Modern approaches are based on scientific materialism and hold that reality is objectively knowable through empirical science. Postmodern approaches are relativistic, suggesting that scientific outlooks are merely unproven dogma alongside religious dogmas.
I borrow from all three perspectives, shifting between them as situations warrant without violating Carl Rogers' principle that therapists must provide clients unconditional positive regard.
Conclusion
The digital age has created new forms of addiction that intertwine with age-old human vulnerabilities. Both screen addiction and sex addiction produce serious psychological and spiritual challenges that require nuanced approaches to treatment. By understanding the root causes of these addictions and helping clients recognize the harm they cause, recovery becomes possible. While the path isn't easy, many individuals have successfully overcome these addictions and rebuilt their lives and relationships.
Yoho epilogue
Michael has strong religious beliefs based on his Catholic upbringing and subsequent training and study. These afford him perspectives that are somewhat different from mine. We discussed this briefly when he called my viewpoint “scientific materialism.” I did not correct him, but my ethical structure is influenced most by Stoicism.
I have more flexible beliefs than Michael about the topics we discussed. For example, I do not believe most masturbation is pathological. I would probably be more judgmental if I spoke to people with these addictions 45 hours a week like him. His typical client wastes many hours a day in this activity.
Despite our different views, I am not critical of his ideas and am sure he is an effective therapist. The point of bringing this up is that you may do better under his care if you have a Christian perspective.
Footnotes:
SSRI antidepressants suppress sexuality and could be used as a “treatment” to suppress it. For example, taking even a single Prozac can have permanent adverse effects on libido. However, given their proven addictive, violence-inducing, and other malignant qualities, prescribing SSRIs is never ethical.
Psychiatrists who give this garbage to their patients are solely responsible for the actions of school shooters, other mass murderers, and a panoply of aberrant behaviors caused by the drugs. Check the Yandex search engine if you do not believe me. The Decades of Evidence SSRI Antidepressants Cause Mass Shootings by AMD came up first when I did.
Psychiatrists prescribed Lupron to castrate one of Michael’s patients chemically, and he said it “helped a little.” This is a testosterone and estrogen blocker, which means that it makes its victims feel terrible and die sooner with heart attacks and other chronic diseases.
This drug is given by injection, which qualifies the prescribing doctor for a 25 percent kickback from the drug company. If two doctors were involved, this would be a felony called “capping,” but Pharma companies, the largest lobbying group in the US legislature, must have bribed many people to make it legal. This massive financial incentive destroys doctor-patient relationships and kills any pretense of objectivity.
Michael says he also has two patients who were prescribed Naltrexone, and it had a minimal effect on one of them.
He also wrote to me, “I am not a psychiatrist, so this is all above my pay grade, both literally and figuratively.” I replied:
Don’t ever tell me that knowledge of psych drugs is out of your pay grade. It’s not hard and I will summarize the whole thing for you. Like vaccines, NONE of these drugs have had placebo controlled trials because they would have outed them as frauds. None should EVER be used—and prescribing them is unethical, for they all do far more harm than good. The shrinks are the third most corrupt specialty after pediatricians and dentists. And prescribing Lupron is a criminal act. See the “Welcome to Psych World” chapter of Butchered by “Healthcare” for more.
References provided by Michael Winisch, LCPC
Here is a link to my ad in Psychology Today: Michael Wenisch, Counselor, Hillsdale, MI, 49242 | Psychology Today
Today's discussion was drawn from these notes on sex and screen addiction:
The tradition of prayer and meditation described below is the single best remedy available on an earthly plane for common mental health problems. Here is a description:
Michael shares his favorite art image, the ecstasy of St. Teresa of Avila:
Italian Baroque sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini captured this moment of ecstasy in what is considered one of the sculptural masterpieces of the Baroque period. The sculpture, painstakingly carved from Carrara marble, depicted the 16th-century saint stabbed in the heart by an angel holding an arrow.
Located in the Coronaro Chapel inside the Baroque church of Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome, the life-size marble was completed under Pope Innocent X between 1647 and 1652.
Parting shot #1: I just got shingles (varicella zoster)
Zoster is caused by a recurrence of a chickenpox infection that has somehow persisted in a sensory nerve root ever since. I recall my childhood chickenpox infection as a pleasant novelty, but shingles is a painful viral illness mainly affecting older people.
A one-sided, painful rash is the tipoff for the diagnosis. My zoster centers around my left shoulder. This was two days after the rash appeared:
For such an insignificant-looking rash, it hurts a lot. Magnify the red areas and examine them. It starts as these 2-millimeter pustules on the red base. These crust, dry, then heal within two to four weeks, but in about one person in five, the area may burn and remain tender for far longer. This is “post-herpetic neuralgia,” and the pain can ruin your life.
Fever, headache, and fatigue are also common. If it affects your face, you should see an ophthalmologist for antivirals, or you could go blind.
Doctors traditionally prescribe three weeks of acyclovir or other antivirals and steroids such as oral prednisone. Although these may relieve early symptoms, they do not decrease the chance of the significant issue, long-term pain.
I’m pinning my hopes for a pain-free tomorrow on a tablespoon of oral DMSO in a glass of water twice daily. Follow the links in my article HERE for references. I use 600 mg of Motrin for pain control and avoid Tylenol, which is a toxic Pharma atrocity. Aspirin does not help me.
Until the rash crusts, zoster may transmit chicken pox to others who have never had it. It does not cause other cases of shingles. There is a shingles vaccine, but if you think that is a good idea, you are a naive new reader. And the chickenpox vaccine increases the risk of getting shingles later. The following is Wikipedia, honest for once:
Multiple studies and surveillance data, at least when viewed superficially, demonstrate no consistent trends in incidence [of chicken pox] in the U.S. since the chickenpox vaccination program began in 1995.[92] However, upon closer inspection, the two studies that showed no increase in shingles incidence were conducted among populations where varicella vaccination was not as yet widespread in the community.[93][94] A later study by Patel et al. concluded that since the introduction of the chickenpox vaccine, hospitalization costs for complications of shingles increased by more than $700 million annually for those over age 60.[95] Another study by Yih et al. reported that as varicella vaccine coverage in children increased, the incidence of varicella decreased, and the occurrence of shingles among adults increased by 90%.[96] The results of a further study by Yawn et al. showed a 28% increase in shingles incidence from 1996 to 2001.[97]
Since thirty percent of us get zoster during our lives, I view it as a rite of passage. I have never had a pain-free life, and am grateful I am still around to feel it.
Parting shot #2: More on Kim Rogers, the Worm Queen
The parasite post linked immediately above inspired my great friend Kelly to do a worm cleanse using 32 mg of ivermectin for three days. He found flukes in his toilet and was convinced he got them from duck excrement on the golf course. I reminded him that his root canal had likely suppressed his parasite immunity.
He is scheduled to get the root canal replaced with a titanium implant, but I told him this was a mistake. Ceramics require more expertise to place but repel bacteria, do not create electrical currents, and are biologically inert. I referred him to David Sun, DDS, a biological dentist in Irvine, California, who has experience using this material. His number is (949) 552 0941, and I have been to his office and think he is excellent.
I first heard about worms from Christian Elliot’s post. He and his wife used Kim Rogers’s herbal cleanse, which ejected various creatures from their colons. Christian’s wife has four root canals, and they are trying to decide who should extract them.
Kim must continuously use her proprietary herbal system to suppress her pesky parasites and maintain her health. She has nine root canals that I hope she will get extracted soon. I had the feeling, however, that she DFL to me.
I know some of you are still wondering how our nice dentists could be doing this to us. Sometimes I do, too. But with all I have seen, including my wife’s life saved after her root canals were removed, I have begun to hate those ignorant fools. Root canals were discredited in the mid-20th century, but are still performed for the money. About half of Europeans and Americans have these unhealthy time bombs inside their mouths.
If you are new to this, watch the Root Cause video HERE on Rumble as your first step to learning about this, then read Judas Dentistry.
Kim kindly sent me her herbal worm removal kit, which I threw on my bed in line with the other treatments I am trying. I am doing the ivermectin three-day cure now, but so far, no squirmy things have emerged from my backside. I have taken months of chlorine dioxide, so maybe that took care of them already.
Share this post