Get educated, get tools, and learn to love withdrawals

Thanks for posting M.D.. Reading posts and replying are part of my recovery. For me to quit, I had to actually be quit. Maybe the 8 hardest words I have said to myself, rhetorically: "I am addicted. I am quitting porn, forever."

Until I said those words and meant them I was just continually quitting, failing, quitting, failing. I see a lot of guys in here who enter the forum, announce they are quitting, say "Let's go do this!", and fail 1,2, 7, days out. It's painful to watch. As you know I have a mantra: get educated, get tools, and learn to love withdrawals. They work for me.

Congrats by the way on putting 13 in. From what I can tell, like many guys here, you may be on the front end of the withdrawal period. That sucks, but if you can get through it, you will return to a place where you feel level and the want to use PMO is on the other side of the room sitting quietly, so to speak, rather than being like a yappy little barking dog continually in your face trying to get your attention. Eventually, it won't be there with you at all, if you get clean. Until you get clean, it will find ways to constantly remind you it is there to be abused.

The only way to quit is to get porn completely out of there, there being your brain. A lot of guys here are trying hard to keep it in. They love the dopamine rush of porn, even if its taken some of us to a dark place. I love it too, but I can't use it, it is a drug too powerful for me to control. I had to learn that to get clean. Until that time I, like many here, just switched on a PMO counter and put porn in a box high up on the shelf where we could not reach it easily, in a manner of speaking. I quit a number of times, but I needed the comfort that knowing I could use porn anytime--even if I did not--brought me. We think we are controlling it, but it controls us.

Of course, I could use it now, access it, in three seconds, but it's not like it was before. I know I will NOT use porn. Won't do it. If porn is a thrill, it is a thrill I will not experience again. If it is a crutch or a comfort, it is a crutch or comfort I will not experience again. You have to get there to get clean. You have to learn that porn is not a toy you can take down from the shelf now and then and play with, only to have the power to put it back up when you wish. If you are a porn addict you have to realize you don't, no longer, decide to play with porn like a toy; rather, your brain is demanding porn as a mechanism to release dopamine. If you are an addict porn is in control, not you. I decided to take control.

Well, M.D.., again thanks for posting. If I sound preachy, sorry. I try to teach here, but it's not really you I am teaching, it is myself. I take these opportunities to remind myself how and why I quit.

Good luck on your journey.

 

Hi Hank, thanks for posting. Reading posts and replying are part of my recovery.

Let me say whatever works for each guy here to quit porn, more power to them. Porn is a mind trick, and because of that we have to use mind tricks to beat it, so to speak. My trick: get educated, get tools, learn to love withdrawals. Anyone with a better or different trick, I would love to hear it.

Our minds are literally tricked into rewarding porn the same way it rewards sex. If you have read the post, you have seen the science, so I won't bore you with it. I will say that until I realized I could not control porn, until I realized it was controlling me, I could not quit it. For me, any approach to the problem that involves the illusion I am controlling porn is just setting me up to fail. Any religious or philosophical approach that does that, therefore, is not something I can use to fix my problem. If it works for you, more power to you, but it won't work for me. I wish it would, it would be easier.

As far as the eastern philosophical approach, it's great if it works for you and I think it does for a lot of guys. Candidly, before I got educated, I tried it. But, it did not work for me. It may have slowed me down a bit, but before I quit porn, I found a lot of ways, a lot of philosophies, a lot of rationalizations, that allowed me to keep porn in my life. As a species we have had to deal with sexual energy, sexual anxiety, lust, horniness, call it what you will, forever. I was listening to a public radio show yesterday in which the origins of Fritos was discussed. It was created by a guy named Herman Lay. As in Frito Lays, as in potato chip and snack creator. He had some ideas about health too, including some ideas about using or directing or controlling "nervous energy". Sound familiar? This was all before we had the slightest clue about the brain science involved. My point being that we (the humanity) have struggled with this for a long time, but recently, another factor has been placed in the mix, something that was never there for the last five thousand years we have developed the tools and philosophies to deal with what came before: high speed internet porn. We have had pornography of various sorts from the beginning; you can find it on cave walls if you want to go back that far, it was graffiti on the walls of Rome, all the way up to the early nineties, where we had Playboy, Penthouse, Hustler, and even adult movie theaters. As a species we are engineered if you will (or made, or evolved, pick your poison) to be fascinated with sex. We dealt with that type of porn abuse in various ways, philisophical and religious. But we never had to deal with high speed internet porn until recently, and it has been even more recent that we have science showing how high speed internet porn rewires our brain, how our brains cannot distinguish between actual sex and HSIP, as far as rewarding itself with a dopamine release.

So, Hank, I guess what I am saying with respect is that if the philosophical approach works for you, use it.

That said, I have found that using this site to narrowly fix the problem, meaning using this site and the science on YBOP to deal with porn addiction exclusive of trying to fix any other problems, is the most effective way to fix the problem. I see a lot of really decent men on here trying to bring a lot of really decent ideas to fix the problem, but, often, those very decent ideas sort of get in the way of fixing the problem. These are decent men trying to become better men by eliminating the problem, when, if they would focus simply on eliminating the problem and not on being better men, they will have more success in eliminating the problem and thus become better men. My advice: don't try and be a better man, first, eliminate porn from your life and you will become a better man by extension.

Eight words were helpful for me: I am addicted; I must quit porn completely. The last four were the really hard ones.

Good luck in your journey.

 

Hi M.D., thanks for posting. As you know reading posts and replying to them are part of my recovery. This is a way I re educate myself continually, so, thanks.

You made a couple points and I will try and respond to them.

The first question is one we don't discuss enough here, and that generally might be stated as "what is porn?" I have defined porn as far more than just seeing it, experiencing it, or PMOing to it, as you know. Technically, though porn is a mechanism involving (usually) hypersexual imagery that causes the release of dopamine and other chemicals in the brain's reward center, it can be exposure to things I never considered porn before getting educated. If you watch the TEDx talk by Gary Wilson you will hear him discuss a guy addicted to watching lingerie models, that is models who might not even be considered soft core porn, but merely models in an ad. Think Victoria Secrets (Stop! Don't think it, just recognize what the guy is into).

Therefore the question is not really "is that porn?" The question really for each of us, individually, is "is that porn, to me?" Does it, whatever "it" is (being a sexual image or thought) trigger a dopamine release? If it does, it's porn, if it does not, it is not. I, personally, do not believe Monica Belucci is a trigger. I didn't know who she was, so when I looked her up I realized she was an actress in The Matrix (oddly appropriate). I don't think the question is whether it's porn or not, per se, but whether watching it is triggering you. Only you can know that. I will say that while I think Monica Belucci is a very beautiful woman I do not associate her with porn, however, if you were to look her up on Google images (and I don't want you to do that), you would see hundred of images of her in hypersexualized poses, nude, semi nude, etc. This seems to be required for fashion models these days. Going there and staying there for me would be a trigger. If I went to that page, that benign search engine, went to images, put her name in and searched it, that page would trigger me, especially if I stayed there for a while. There are very many sexual images on that page, and once I see them, they are in my brain. What we see goes inside, it does not stay outside. That is not to say it would cause a relapse, but it would be the kind of thing that if I were not committed to quitting could result in me surfing her pics for some significant time and feeling awfully bad about it, physically, mentally, and emotionally, later.

I will say M.D., and I speak for myself, that one of the rationalizations I used before I quit (which allowed me to continue using porn) was that I had quit watching hardcore vids and was only watching bikini models, lingerie models, soft core women posing but not in hard core sex acts, and therefore was making progress. It's healthier, I told myself, to look at a Victoria's Secret model than to watch hardcore vids, and toward the end more shocking hardcore vids. But...for me that was just my dopamine addicted brain rationalizing to get me to use the softer images to release the dopamine I crave. Be careful of rationalizations, they are our dopamine soaked brain's way of begging us, reasoning with us, threatening us, blackmailing us, punishing us in to accessing porn. That could be your brain's way of talking you into a dopamine release: "It's not porn, it's OK, you just love to look at beautiful women, but it's not porn, beautiful women are just God's art." I doubt there is a rationalization you have had that I have not had myself many times. Brother, if it releases dopamine, then looking at Donald Duck is porn.

It is really quite a dilemma, isn't it, because we know that when we get back to "normal" we are going to have normal sexual feelings for women. Normal is not feeling nothing, it's just getting that dopamine release the old fashion way, with actual sex with an actual woman. Let me ask, do you have withdrawal symptoms, at all, while watching the images, or immediately after, are you allowing them to become fantasy, do you remember them and let them roll around in there well after they are no longer on the computer screen? If so, they are porn, or a porn substitute. The problem with those images are that you are accessing them through high speed internet; at some point I think we begin to associate most sexual imagery we see on the net with porn, because of that--assuming we have become addicted to porn. For me I will tell you there are many "art films" that are essentially just porn wrapped up in a romantic wrapping. I cannot speak for you, only you can know what triggers you.

Next point, I totally agree that getting PMO free can better your life, in huge ways, even down to the little things. It is merely my opinion that this site is most efficiently and effectively used to eliminate porn when its purpose is, and primarily if not only is, to eliminate porn from one's life; and not to better one's live overall. If getting porn out effects a betterment of one's life, all the better.

I hope this helps. Thanks again for posting. Your posts help me. Thank you.

Good luck in your journey.

By the way, Gary Wilson, who may be the origin of the concept of porn addiction and the ability to become addicted, posted a link to an article over on yourbrainrebalanced.com. You might want to read it, very insightful.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/26/brain-scans-porn-addicts-sexual-tastes

 

Gentlemen, you have to move past "quitting" and you have to get to quit. I was "quitting" for a very long time until I got to "quit". I am quit now. Getting quit for me involved essentially one thing, become porn free. I had to get it completely out of my life, out of my head, out of my brain. In hindsight I see that operates on two levels. First, the practical level, is making a conscious decision to not see it again, not use it, not succumb to it, ever again. It is not a toy you can passively put down but leave in the room with you, because sooner or later it will become the biggest object in the room, you have to throw it away, and walk away from it. You have to give it up, completely. You have to reach a place where you say to yourself--and embrace it--"I am never watching porn again". That was the second thing, telling myself I won't experience it again. I had to move past not watching it, and had to get to wanting to not watch it. That is a very hard thing for any of us addicted to porn to do. We love it. It is the best mechanism in the world to effect the release of dopamine, the best drug most of us have ever taken. It is a hard thing to walk away from, but we have to do it.

I say three things: get educated (understand the problem); get tools (find things outside your self, your will power alone, to help you fight it--such as porn blockers, using this site, etc.); and learn to love withdrawals (there is a reason we fail, and that is our dopamine soaked brains wanting us, begging us, threatening us, reasoning with us, punishing us, to get us to use again). Each and every one of you can do this, it can be done, I promise you. Make a plan. Don't be passive. Make a plan on how you are going to quit it. But it has to be "quit". Porn is not a thing you can put in a box and keep somewhere in your house while telling yourself you won't use again. To quit porn you have to throw it out of your life completely.

Good luck on your journey. And, good job on your streaks. I think if you can get to day 30 with NO porn, it does seem to get easier. That said, I am 5 months porn free and still have difficult days. Getting porn out of your life will make your life easier, but if you think it will make your life easy, you will be disappointed; so don't think it is a cure all. It will be better for you when it is gone, but we all still have to deal with the burdens life throws at us. I am afraid that those of us with addictive personalities will always have difficult days. I don't look at those days as bad anymore; I embrace them as the price of quitting porn. I am done with it, I won't experience it ever again. You know, it is hardly a big thing to give up. It is, in and of itself, valueless. It's just something I cannot control, so, to control it, it had to go.

Peace.

 

Damn straight jilted. I started watching high speed internet porn before it was understood it could be addictive or before it was known guys could get addicted to it. It was just a toy I picked up and played with from time to time, once every two weeks, once a week, twice a week, four times a week, then every single day multiple times and if the real world made me miss a day I was punished with withdrawals. But, at first, it was a toy for me. It amused me on some level to have a dirty little secret that made me feel a bit like a bad boy. Because I did not know I was addicted or that such was possible, when I first tried to quit it was very casually. I see a lot of guys make that mistake. I have learned to be "ever vigilant" as you say. Especially in the very beginning, we have to understand what has happened with us, get a bit of outside help, and understand our brain loves that dopamine fix and is not going to let it go without punishing us--going through withdrawals.

Just saw a guy on here earlier today who relapsed after 120 days. I feel sorry for him, but he found himself in a position we all do and will if you have quit porn but continue to use the internet or watch television; he was exposed to hardcore pornography and he allowed himself to linger on it for a few minutes, which in turn turned on the dopamine dispensers, which led to him using again. When you say "ever vigilant" you are not kidding. Even more that 150 days out for me, I still have to remind myself I cannot imagine hypersexualized imagery. Even today, driving down the street, I saw an attractive woman on the street and had to stop my imagination from kicking in. It was not porn, and some would say it was not even an unhealthy thought, but for a guy like me, imagining porn (literally imagining sex) causes problem, temptations, and risk of trigger.

OK, jilted, thanks for posting. As you know reading posts and replying are part of my recovery. It gives me an opportunity to tell myself what I am doing, how I am doing, and why I am quitting porn. I am quit. I won't see it again, ever, never. It's over and I am never going back.

 

I woke up this morning. The sun is shining. It is a beautiful day. I don't have the slightest desire to see porn. In the old days, before getting clean, I thought I needed porn with my coffee in the morning just to wake up. Guys, get porn out of there, and after a while, I promise you, it won't be begging you to get in there. Thanks for keeping this post relevant.

Peace.

 

Until recently, porn addiction was not recognized. Now we understand that our brain's chemical reward center sees porn as sex, it makes no distinction; to that part of our brain, it is one and the same. Yes, on one level we know porn is not sex, but on another level, it is rewarded exactly the same way, with the release of a very addicting brain chemical called dopamine. I don't know if you are addicted or not, but I do know porn is highly addictive, so, if you are here asking questions, I suspect you are addicted. I am addicted to porn. That said, I will never watch it again, and in fact there are many days, including today, when I haven't the slightest temptation, but I had to start with A before I got to Z. This, by the way, understanding I was addicted, is no death sentence. It simply means I/you have a problem to solve. The problem is dopamine addiction, and porn is the button we push to release dopamine, so you need to quit pushing the button.

I suspect that of all the addictions, this one is the one most easily beaten. Says I, five months out, as opposed curled up in a ball 5 days out. It does get easier.

One question I see a lot of porn addicts ask before they get clean, aka before they accept their addiction, is: What amount of porn consumption is healthy? Now, from where I sit, clean, it's a funny question. My question is: What amount of porn do you think actually could be healthy? Ask yourself the question. Stop reading this and ask: how does viewing porn, PMOing, benefit me? The problem is not porn, generally, but high speed internet porn specifically. But seeing it, using it, has no positive value at all in one's life, meaning it has no positive health benefit at all. Whether you use porn once a month or 10 times a day, there is no such thing as a healthy amount of porn to use. So, no amount of porn consumption is healthy, no amount of porn consumption improves us, therefore giving it up diminishes us in no way. You do not benefit from using porn, you will not be harmed by giving it up.

I see the alcohol analogy in here a lot. But it is not a good analogy. Porn affects/effects us in a very specific way. It causes a dopamine release. People abuse alcohol for any number of reasons, rather than one specific. We use porn for one specific reason: the dopamine release. It's a nice high, but if you want to give up porn you have to accept you are giving up that high.

There is no "normal" use of high speed internet porn. Anyone using it is playing with fire, if they are not already simply on fire but in denial about it. I suggest you quit using and never go back.

Good luck to you on your journey.