November 30, 2025

"[Theo] Von introduced C.K. to Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, where he began working to address his addiction..."

"... to masturbation. He practiced abstinence—it was, he said, a 'crazy idea to me. . . . Don’t have sexual release for several months in a row'—but, eventually, he 'got out of the cycle.' His emotions started coming back. 'I saw everything really differently,' he said. 'I saw that everything that had happened with me was because of me. And, by the way, that’s great news, because that means you could do something about it.'... [And] this is what enabled him to write his book. He recently finished a second one. 'I’m writing novels because I don’t jerk off every fifteen minutes,' he said. 'It’s really all it is.'"

Writes Tyler Foggatt in "Louis C.K.’s Next Chapter/In a new standup special, and a début novel, the comedian navigates murky, post-#MeToo terrain: not quite exiled, not quite welcomed back" (The New Yorker).

That reminded me of the old after-sex punchline. Attributed to Balzac: « Là… encore un roman de perdu ! » (“There… another novel lost!”). There's a line in "Annie Hall": “I read a thing about Balzac. He used to, uh, after he’d have sex he’d go, ‘Oh, there goes another novel.’”

59 comments:

Yancey Ward said...

He became master of his domain.

Lazarus said...

Baudelaire said “Plus l'homme cultive les arts, moins il bande.” The more a man cultivates the arts the fewer erections he has.

Nietzsche: "The reabsorption of semen by the blood is the strongest nourishment and, perhaps more than any other factor, it prompts the stimulus of power, the unrest of all forces towards the overcoming of resistences, the thirst for contradiction and resistence."

Lazarus said...

Louis' TV shows were pretty good. His backstory is interesting. When his parents divorced he went from being rich in Mexico to not well off in the US and perhaps confused about whether he was Mexican or American, Catholic or Jewish, Hungarian or Irish. Good starting place for a comedian as messed-up lives tend to be.

Lem Vibe Bandit said...

CK fought mano a mano his addiction and his addiction lost.

Unless; were he to pick up again...

"If your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life crippled or lame than to have two hands and two feet and be thrown into the eternal fire." -- Mathew 18: 8

Steve said...

I wonder if he will apologize to that Christian woman that he weaponized his masturbation against? Does MA have an apology tour like AA does?

Rabel said...

"You’re reading [The New Yorker's] Critic’s Notebook, our weekend column looking at the most interesting moments in the cultural Zeitgeist."

Sure thing.

Peachy said...

No one is telling you not to pleasure yourself. Just do in private. How hard is that?

Dave Begley said...

TMI.

FormerLawClerk said...

His friends ENABLED his addiction. He'd frequently ask his women friends if he could jack off in front of them and they allowed him to ... especially the very evil Sarah Silverman.

With friends like her, you won't need any enemies.

She'd crack up at him, the laugh behind his back to her friends.

Dave Begley said...

Is this guy funny in any realistic sense?

Will Cate said...

Also Annie Hall: "Hey don't knock masturbation... it's sex with someone I love."

mccullough said...

What a comeback

Lem Vibe Bandit said...

More on addiction combat 👆🏽:
"...in the book Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions (often referred to as the 12&12) on page 22, in the discussion of Step One: "Few indeed were those who, so assailed, had ever won through in singlehanded combat".

Actually. All kidding aside. The answer to recovery is to surrender. Surrender to win.

AI: "Surrender to win" is a paradox suggesting that by relinquishing the struggle for control over something unmanageable, one can achieve a greater, more meaningful victory or a better outcome. The concept is prominently used in addiction recovery and can also be applied to personal growth and strategic situations."

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

Seeing a strong link between the urge to masturbate and the urge to defecate after eating, I searched the internet to see if there is such a thing as Poopers Anonymous (because the standard advice is to hold onto it until the urge passes) and suffice it to say you can look for yourself and you'll find it on reddit but it's not what you think it is or would want it to be.

FormerLawClerk said...

DO NOT GOOGLE ANONYMOUS POOPING.

Narr said...

Every fifteen minutes?

Day-um. Jizz-o-matic.

baghdadbob said...

Like Brig. Gen. Jack D. Ripper, he's now denying women his essence.

Iman said...

He was a wanker, not a banker
He’s not afraid to take a risk
It is the thing all ‘bators ask for
When they suffer a worn out wrist

But when the well cries out for water
It is a need that must be filled
It goes beyond the laws of nature
It takes a triumph of the will

h/t Mothersbaugh/Casale

John henry said...

"Love ain't nothing but sex misspelled" - Harlan Ellison

John Henry

Wince said...

"Put all hope out of your mind. And masturbate as little as possible, it drains the strength."

"Someone once said, 'A temptation resisted is a true measure of character'."

Milo Minderbinder said...

I have no words....

Bob Boyd said...

He has also regained his eyesight but his friends keep telling him, don’t look down.

Aggie said...

Dang, those are Epstein numbers.

Bob Boyd said...

Now he keeps asking women if they’ll come to his room and watch him write.

john mosby said...

Peachy: "How hard is that?"

Must be quite. CC, JSM

FullMoon said...

Big deal. Quit smoking and we will be.impressed

Iman said...

Cleveland Sucks!

Kevin said...

This article was timed to simultaneously release with no fap November. Althouse blog gets the money shot.

Achilles said...

Porn addiction is destroying a generation of men and women and will lead to a generational crater in our demographics.

Most addiction studies use a successful sexual encounter as the baseline for measuring dopamine release. Men who masturbate to online porn release 4-10 times as much dopamine as a successful sexual encounter. That is in the same range as meth and heroine.

These men are thus unable to get excited about the real thing and develop physical symptoms such as impotence and anxiety.

The same thing is happening to women but it is not being treated as a mental illness because women cannot handle being described as mentally ill. For women it is romance novel porn.

Women's porn started out with Twilight, then became 50 shades of gray. Now the shit that millions of women are reading is getting truly ridiculous.

If you can watch that video and pretend women are not just as messed up by porn as men you are probably a woman.

Louis CK was not even an outlier of the problem, just a slightly different flavor of fucked up.

I used to be a Libertarian. Countries who use libertarian forms of government to build a social contract will go extinct in the near future. Our lizard brains cannot deal with the myriad of ways they have found to cause dopamine to flood our brains.

Joe Bar said...

Well, I hope it helps him. Also I hope it doesn't affect his humor. I enjoy it, although it appears many here do not.

Valentine Smith said...

It’s a long way from Augustine’s Confessions but still in the same vein or vain. Rousseau is more CK’s direct descendent.

Valentine Smith said...

They don’t call it the little death for nothing

Valentine Smith said...

Yeah, pornography needs to be outlawed

RCOCEAN II said...

Amazing how some showbiz folks get "cancelled" and you never hear from them again. Goodbye and Goodluck. Others take a hit, like they're being sent to detention, and then they're back in showbiz. Like nothing happened.

Wasn't CK pressuring women (he was their boss) to accept him jacking off in front of them. If rape is really just about power, what was CK doing?

But you can't keep him down. Guess he has friends in high places. And now he's getting positive write ups in the MSM. Gosh, he's solved his problem!

RCOCEAN II said...

Personally, I have no desire to see the guy on TV again. I don't see a funy comic, I see a sexual abuser and werido sex freak. Once I see it, I can't unsee it.

Wince said...

Does this remind you of the first time you had sex?

narciso said...

I liked when he got beaten by bradley cooper in american roulette

Michael Fitzgerald said...

"Most addiction studies use a successful sexual encounter as the baseline for measuring dopamine release. Men who masturbate to online porn release 4-10 times as much dopamine as a successful sexual encounter. That is in the same range as meth and heroine."
Mark Twain made a notable speech 'On the Science of Onanism' which concluded: "As an amusement, it is too fleeting; as an occupation . . . too wearing; as a public exhibition, there is no money in it. It is unsuited to the drawing room, and in the most cultured society it has long been banished . . . It has at last, in our day of progress and improvement, been degraded to brotherhood with flatulence. Among the best bred, these two arts are now indulged in only private–though by consent of the whole company, when only males are present, it is still permissible, in good society, to remove the embargo on the fundamental sigh."

buwaya said...

Achilles, thanks for the ShoeOnHead link. I laughed so hard I worried about my cardio condition.

Narr said...

"fundamental sigh"

You can't love Twain enough. Thanks Michael F.

Saint Croix said...

The thing about masturbating my cock is that I can do it so much better than any woman alive. It's not even fair. I can read my own brain. I know what I like. I don't have time to train the virgins. Freshman year, Georgia, there was this girl who thought a handjob was...

SQUEEZE and release
SQUEEZE and release

"By God, never again," said I. "Are you reading feminist literature? He's not a snake. Up and down, up and down."

Saint Croix said...

Every fifteen minutes?

Day-um. Jizz-o-matic.


A lot of Viagra, I suspect. You stop feeling emotions for girls. Your heart doesn't get excited. The blood is not surging. So you take a pill to replace your feelings. And then you've got the problem of sociopaths with lots of boners.

buwaya said...

"The thing about masturbating my cock is that I can do it so much better than any woman alive. "
You haven't got, I think, enough experience with women.

buwaya said...

Freshman girl in Georgia? And you a college boy? She don't have to do much at all, less'n there was somethin' WRONG with you.

Blair said...

"The thing about masturbating my cock is that I can do it so much better than any woman alive. "

Suggestion: Try using their vagina, and get back to us.

Narr said...

"Feeling emotions for girls."

Been there, done that, moved on.

Rosy Palm, my first and last partner . . .

Michael Fitzgerald said...

Narr said...
"fundamental sigh"
You can't love Twain enough. Thanks Michael F.
11/30/25, 3:54 PM

You're welcome, Narr. Twain is underappreciated in our day and age, we all know why. That short speech is worth searching for.
http://www.textfiles.com/etext/AUTHORS/TWAIN/onanism.txt

Achilles said...

Blair said...

"The thing about masturbating my cock is that I can do it so much better than any woman alive. "

Suggestion: Try using their vagina, and get back to us.

This is the problem though.

As far as our brains are concerned masturbating to a video of a man with an unusually large penis having sex in ways women rarely allow and with women that are far more attractive than any woman most men are likely to ever have sex with is far more rewarding than sex with an actual woman.

4-10 times as rewarding.

Although it is far less researched I am sure the same holds true for written rape/animal/vampire/werewolf porn in women.

Without an objective moral framework usually provided by religion neither men nor women can really deal with this.

The result will be removing at least half the population from successful breeding and cause a calamitous drop in demographics.

buwaya said...

"far more attractive than any woman most men are likely to ever have sex with"
Speak for yourself man. Ok, maybe I'm not "most men", that is possible.

Marcus Bressler said...

Kevin for the win!

Joe Bar said...

"Looks it's me and you again tonight, Rosie."
https://youtu.be/ew5J8wWsYEs?si=Kipd26KxbmN2q87s

Achilles said...

buwaya said...

"far more attractive than any woman most men are likely to ever have sex with"
Speak for yourself man. Ok, maybe I'm not "most men", that is possible.

We found our angels that no other woman could compete with.

But that is because we grew up in a world that had relatively normal dopamine systems and our brains were able to form relatively normal human connections. When we pair bonded there were fairly complicated chemical reactions that involved normal social interactions releasing a series of oxytocin and serotonin and dopamine at appropriate intervals.

In order to bond like that our brains have a particular set of circuits.

If you are in your bedroom at the age of 13 under the covers every night with a phone and Pornhub you are fucked. Your brain is literally rewired in such a way that you cannot have normal human interactions without a lot of work to rewire your brain.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

I wrote a very long not very good novel once. And I was already married.

bagoh20 said...

Wealthy, a comedian, famous, with connections and in contact with many beautiful women and yet this is how you do sex?
Can you be any more of a pathetic loser?
For comedy, would you consider telling yourself knock knock jokes. Yea, it's that lame and that far from the real thing.

bagoh20 said...

My own sexual release is the least interesting or exciting part of the whole exercise. I can't imagine settling for only that. Do you fantasize about your own masturbation? I hope not, and if you fantasize about something else to get off then go do that thing instead. Then again, maybe not. That's probably illegal.

Iman said...

Come for the beautiful photos… stay for the detailed, onanistic confessions… 😁

Saint Croix said...

“You haven’t got enough experience with women.”

I am the king of third base. I do not need any help with third base. You women who think you can help me with third base? No. The point of third base is to get off third base. You don’t want to die on third base.

Saint Croix said...

Some people (in the damn American League), think sodomy is third base. And thus, they stay on third base for decades. Maybe their whole life. That's a third base debacle.

I play National League sex baseball. (Semi-retired). Classic rules. French kissing, tits, and finger-fucking. Okay? For you sex fiends out there, stuck on third. You're doing it wrong!

Saint Croix said...

Blair at 4:11. Thanks, Coach. I'm going for it. Not telling you about it, though. Perv.

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