Is forcefully quitting porn the only option?

You're going to have to recognise that addiction often takes matters out of your hands. Now i don't know how bad your addiction is but for many people having the availability is way too much to resist. That said, porn is everywhere so you will eventually have to deal with it.

If you really want to quit i would advocate leaving it entirely. Throwing off addiction means not feeding it for a significant amount of time. It tends to be a 100% quit, or not at all when it comes to successful addiction recovery.

 

With addictions it tends to be a "do or die" or "all or nothing" kind of situation.

My friend is an alcoholic and when he gets a sip of beer he ends up drinking +20 beer cans and passing out at the end of the night. He is also struggling to be one week without alcohol. I drink only sometimes like when there is a big event somewhere or something like that and I don't feel the need to, I just sometimes want to, but it doesn't make me uneasy if I don't get to. I think it's pretty safe to say, that I'm not an alcoholic.

I tried to handle porn the same way. Like once a week or something like that. It always spiraled out of control. I always ended up going all in and found myself at the bottom. 1 time a week became 5 times a day quickly. That's how I know I'm addicted and I also know that it has to be quit altogether for it to work.

Try to limit it and your limits grow until they don't exist again. So yeah, I think it's the only option to quit forcefully.

 

There is no successful way to be a porn addict. Justification and rationalization will delude you into belieiving otherwise. Thinking I can have a "little bit" is usually the lie I TELL MYSELF right before I jump off the porn cliff. Each time I try and quit I may be getting closer to the real answer on what I need to do to quit. It's like a pendulum - with each swing the distance gets shorter and shorter. Everytime I would hit the reset button on my no porn/maturbation counter, I would discover one more method I was using that did not work. I had to get to the realization that I could not THINK myself out of this addiction/behavior. Many of Nofappers will try this method and fail. You can't beat your mind with your mind. So what I started doing was reading a ton of information about the subject. I begin reaching out to guys on this site and others. I implemented a WhatsApp group. I started texting a couple of guys daily and we helped each other stay sane. Porn addiction is not a problem that someone else can solve for you. The solution is drastic. It means you will have to lean into discomfort, learn how to heal from, and overcome that stuff deep inside you that you were using porn/maturbation to numb out. Stopping only scratches the surface of the problem. It would be like if I break my leg and only took pain medication to take care of the pain from the break.. it doesn't take care of the source of the pain "the break".

 

Interesting Thread. I really think and believe that forcefully quitting porn is not the only option. I noticed that porn addiction is somewhat similar to other addictions. Their was a period in my life when I had serious problems with alcohol and light drugs in my life. I conquered these problems. It was not easy, it took many time, and I failed a lot. But I did It. And In the final stage I didn't need to use any will power. Now, when somebody try to drink with me(It happens very often) I'm not struggling to give the answer. It is always no. I give the answer very easy and without any struggle because I deeply inside know what is alcohol and how it works. I know that it won't give me anything it will only take, that my life without it will be much better. I read the Allen Carr's books many times, and they where the real thing that helped me to get to this state of mind. I believe that I could reach the same state of mind with porn addiction! All addictions are the same. Porn never changes. Im really interested to find people on this site to develop this idea.

 

None of us want to have urges to look at porn. Those urges are a result of messed up brain chemistry (If you have accepted that you are an addict you can by association accept that your brain does not function theway it would were you addiction free).

You have to keep yourself away from porn forcefully in order for your brain to repair itself. Only then will you find that you don't really want to look at porn.

You will have to accept that, being an addict, you may still get momentary urges every now and again, even after your reboot. Those will not be the same urges you are feeling now however, every guy gets horny fap or nofap.

 

question:
is forcefully quitting porn the only option?

answer:
yes

 

Short answer: Yes.

Slightly longer answer: Every time I quit in the past, I felt like I had mastered myself and that I could just have a "little bit" without going over the edge. But no, I can't have a little bit, because I go right back into my habits. You might have to learn this the hard way; I am that kind of person. I have to learn everything the hard way by not listening and finding it out for myself. But now I'm finally convinced. If you're on this forum, then the answer to your question is yes.

Besides, who wants to look at porn anyhow? It's gross.

 

In the '80s, I quit drugs. At the end of the '90s I quit smoking. In 2012, I quit drinking. I left all these things behind me because they were screwing up my life. Now, I realize that Porn has screwed up my life, also. I cannot smoke one joint or just eat a few 'shrooms and expect to to stay off drugs. Nor can I smoke "just one" cigarette, or have "just one" glass of scotch. In the same light, PMO "just once in a while" won't work. You have to replace the unhealthy habit with a healthy one, one you can do whenever the urge for PMO hits. I have settled on learning some rather difficult classical pieces on Guitar. I'm working on Bach's "Minuet in G" right now. No matter what time of day or night it is, if the urge hits I can pick up the Guitar and keep my hands and mind busy. You have to replace the habit. You cannot think of the process as something negative, like leaving behind an old friend. You are leaving behind a degrading, destructive, soul-sucking relationship with digital images.

 

Dragonslayer, what do you mean by "forcefully quitting?"

Are you asking if you have to approach this as something you "don't want to do" but "have to do?" Or are you asking if you need to fully abstain?

If the former, my answer is - absolutely not. I believe you'll be much happier and quit much more easily if you first flesh out the desire to quit, and really solidify deep down why you want to quit porn.

If the latter, then the answer is yes. What little research we have on this subject suggests that the addiction comes from your brain rewiring itself to demand more and more novelty in sexual stimulation, and to become more and more desensitized to dopamine. Exposing yourself to porn on even just an infrequent basis floods your brain with dopamine, and keeps it from re-wiring to be sensitive to smaller doses (like the kind you would get from successfully washing all of the dishes and feeling proud of fulfilling your responsibilities).

If you'd like a tool to help you want to quit porn, I've been kind of spamming links to this mp3 across many of my posts: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002RRLC42/ref=dm_ws_sp_ps_dp?ie=UTF8&qid=1414247125&sr=8-1.
It's been one of the most useful tools in helping me improve my life (including losing 50 lbs of fat, hitting the gym on a regular basis, and finally losing my virginity).

When he asks the question How are you different now, spiritually? I answer, I am replacing porn and masturbation with real women.

 

sometimes it really feels like leaving behind an old friend - i know that was not a friend.

the guitar is a great substitute. started three months ago. now i am playing some easy pieces (with notes). playing bach will require very (very very) hard training! that is motivation for me!

 

Perhaps forcefully quiting porno isn't the only option, but it's certainly effective. If your intention is to be rid of pornography's clutch in the first place, then I'm not sure why you wouldn't want to go cold turkey? Seems like unnecessary risk to me!

 

If "forcefully" means getting rid of all the possibilities of seeing P instead of relying at least partly on your will power to stay clean then I would say no. On the other hand that would pretty much require going to a remote island with no Internet access.

If you just mean stopping it completely, cold-turkey instead of gradually reducing the amount of PMO per week then definitely yes, at least for me. All my attempts to do so have failed miserably.