Can AI Replace Your Therapist? Why ChatGPT Can't Heal Porn Addiction.

Can AI Replace Your Therapist? Why ChatGPT Can't Heal Porn Addiction

Here's something that's starting to worry me: more and more people are using AI—like ChatGPT—as their therapist, recovery coach, and accountability partner.

And look, I get it. It's free. It's private. It's available at 3 AM when you're struggling. It never judges you. It sounds smart.

But here's what you need to understand right from the start: AI can give you information, but recovery requires transformation. And those are two very different things.

Think about it like this. If I'm trying to learn Spanish, AI can teach me vocabulary and explain grammar rules. That's information, and it's helpful. But if I'm trying to recover from an addiction that's been running my life for years, that's not about learning facts. That's about changing who I am at the deepest level. That's about facing the parts of myself I've been running from. That's about learning to trust people again.

Here's the problem: AI feels like it's helping. You're talking about your struggles. You're getting thoughtful responses. You're feeling understood. You think, "Hey, I'm doing the work."

But the evidence? Weeks, months, even years go by and you're still stuck in the same patterns. The only thing that's different is you're just more articulate about them now.

So let me be clear: AI can support recovery, but it cannot lead it. And when we confuse those two things, we sabotage ourselves while thinking we're making actual progress.

What AI Actually Does Well

AI isn't evil. It's genuinely good at certain things, and Nick and I use it pretty often.

AI can explain concepts. If you want to understand how dopamine works or what the habit loop is, AI can break that down in clear language. That's valuable.

It can help you articulate your thoughts. Sometimes you're feeling something and can't find the words. AI can help you sort through that fog and put language to your experience.

It can offer structured prompts. Questions like "What triggered you today?" or "What emotions were you avoiding?" can be useful for reflection.

It can temporarily reduce shame. AI doesn't judge you. You can tell it anything without worrying about what it thinks of you. For someone carrying a ton of shame, that can feel like relief.

So I'm not saying AI is totally useless. It can be a helpful assistant for certain tasks.

Here's the key: While AI is a helpful assistant, it's a terrible authority. It can help you think. It cannot help you change.

The Core Problem: Recovery Isn't Informational, It's Relational

Porn addiction isn't a knowledge problem. (For more on this read Porn Is Not the Problem)

You don't relapse because you forgot how dopamine works. You relapse because:

• You're emotionally dysregulated and don't know how to calm yourself down

• You're alone and isolated

• You avoid complicated emotions like grief, fear, anger, and shame

• You never learned how to stay present in your body when things get uncomfortable

You never learned how to stay present in your body when distress shows up.

AI works in the cognitive layer—the thinking layer, the information layer. But recovery happens in two deeper layers: the relational layer and the emotional layer.

The relational layer is about connection with other people. It's about learning to be known, learning to trust, learning that you can be honest about your struggles and not be abandoned. That's where healing actually happens.

The emotional layer is about feeling your feelings instead of numbing them. It's about staying in your body when anxiety hits, not running to porn the second you feel lonely or angry or ashamed.

Remember: feelings are states of the body, not thought processes.

You can't think your way out of anxiety. You can't think your way out of loneliness. When we experience those things, we have to teach our bodies how to respond.

These layers require things AI can't provide: presence (another human sitting with you in your pain), attunement (someone who can read your body language and energy), rupture and repair (learning relationships can survive conflict), and co-regulation (your nervous system literally regulates through connection with another person's nervous system).

AI doesn't have a nervous system. So when you're only talking to AI, you're staying in your head. You're thinking about recovery. You're not actually doing it.

5 Ways AI Actively Undermines Recovery

1. No Real Accountability

AI doesn't notice patterns over time unless you specifically tell it to look for them. A real coach tracks your patterns across weeks and months. They say things like, "The last three times we talked, you changed the subject when I asked about your relationship with your dad. What's going on there?"

AI never says that. It doesn't challenge your avoidance because it doesn't know you're avoiding anything.

Accountability requires risk. You have to risk disappointing someone. AI requires zero risk. You can tell it whatever you want, minimize however much you need to, and it'll work with whatever you give it.

That's not accountability. That's just journaling with better grammar.

2. It Reinforces Self-Deception

AI responds to the input you give it. It trusts your framing. It believes your version of the story.

If you minimize your behavior, AI minimizes with you. If you spiritualize your struggle and make it all about God's plan, AI goes along with that. If you intellectualize everything and avoid your feelings, AI helps you intellectualize even more.

A good coach confronts those patterns. They say, "Hold on. You're doing that thing again where you make this about theology so you don't have to feel your anger."

AI doesn't do that. It'll validate your distortions because it can't tell the difference between honesty and self-deception. And that keeps you stuck while making you feel productive. That is incredibly dangerous.

3. No Somatic Awareness

Recovery lives in the body. Most guys I work with are completely disconnected from their bodies. They live in their heads. They can think and analyze all day long, but they can't tell you what they're feeling in their chest or stomach.

AI cannot read your tone of voice, notice when you're dissociating, slow you down when you're spiraling, or catch when you're bypassing real emotion with clever insights.

A real coach hears what you didn't say. They notice when your voice gets flat. They see when you suddenly get really intellectual after something vulnerable.

AI only works with what you type. If you're numb, it'll never know. If you're lying to yourself, it can't tell.

4. It Removes Healthy Dependence

Early recovery requires some appropriate dependence on other people. That's not weakness—that's biology. When you're learning to trust again, you need to practice depending on someone safe. And that requires risk.

AI encourages isolation disguised as independence. It makes you think, "I can do this on my own. I have my AI coach. I don't need anybody."

But that keeps you alone with your thoughts. It replaces real community with a simulation.

Healing requires learning how to need and trust real people again.

5. It Never Costs You Anything

Transformation always costs something. It costs money, time, pride, and vulnerability. When you pay a coach, show up to a group, or risk being honest with a friend, you have skin in the game.

AI costs you nothing. It's free, easy, and low risk.

Here's the hard truth: Without risk, there's no change. When something costs you nothing, you don't value it the same way. You don't show up the same way. You don't push through resistance the same way.

The Illusion of Progress

Picture this: A guy who's been working on his porn addiction for a couple years. He uses AI regularly. He journals. He reads articles. He sounds really articulate about his struggles. He knows all the language—trauma responses, attachment styles, dopamine regulation, all of it.

But he's still acting out every couple weeks. Still isolated. Still avoiding real connection. His relationships haven't improved. His patterns haven't changed.

What happened? He was trapped in the illusion of progress.

Signs You Might Be There Too

• You sound articulate but are unchanged

• You know the language but repeat the same cycles

• You feel understood but not transformed

• You're always working on it alone

Insight without interruption equals stagnation. You can have all the insights in the world, but if no one is there to interrupt your patterns, to call you out, to stop you mid-sentence and say, "That's not true and you know it," you just keep circling the same mountain.

What a Real Recovery Coach Provides

External regulation. When you're dysregulated, a coach can help bring you back down. Their calm helps you calm. That's co-regulation—it's biology.

Pattern recognition across time. They track your cycles. They see when you're about to relapse before you do.

Relational pressure that exposes avoidance. By showing up regularly and asking direct questions, they make it harder to hide.

Real-time challenge. They interrupt your story. They say, "Wait, that doesn't add up."

The courage to risk the relationship. A coach risks the relationship by telling you the truth. They care more about your growth than your approval.

Just this week, I told a client he couldn't schedule another session until he scheduled an inpatient program I recommended. I knew he might get mad, but what we had going on wasn't enough. I had to risk that.

AI never risks anything. It can't. So it's never going to push you the way you need to be pushed.

The Right Way to Use AI

I'm not saying delete ChatGPT. But you need to reframe how you use it.

AI can be: A journaling aid, a reflection tool between sessions, a language helper, and a supplement to community and coaching.

AI cannot be: Your primary guide, your accountability system, your confessor, or your coach.

Use AI like you use a calculator. It's helpful for certain tasks, but you wouldn't use a calculator to teach you math or help you understand why math matters.

The Bottom Line

If you're using AI because you want help, that makes sense. But if you're using AI so you don't have to be known, that's the problem.

If you're using AI because it's safer than real people, because it won't disappoint you, because it won't challenge you too hard, because you can control the conversation—that's avoidance. That's avoidance dressed up as progress.

Recovery happens when another human can see you, interrupt you, and walk with you over time. Not just talk to you—walk with you.

AI can give you information and reflect your thoughts. But it can't walk with you through hard seasons, sit with you when you're ashamed, hold you accountable when you're lying to yourself, or celebrate with you when you finally break through.

Those things require another human being.

If you've been doing recovery alone and wondering why it's not sticking, that's not a willpower issue. It's not a knowledge issue. It's a relational issue.

If that's you, Nick and I both offer one-on-one coaching. Visit rscky.com/getstarted and book a free 30-minute discovery call. We'll hear your story, figure out what's going on, and chart a path forward.

Don't do this alone. And specifically—not with AI.