Thank you for the thoughts teaandbiscuits. That's a lot of great points to mull over. Now, you mention that if you were doing something that you truly believed in and were passionate about, then porn and alcohol would not ensnare you. I think you're right. Being unable to start a task means that there may be some other task that is more suited to one's deeper inclinations, or maybe there's a more interesting way of approaching the task one wants to keep putting off. That being said, addictive mindset is one step before you get into the state of passionate engagement with something you believe in. Know what I mean? I am passionate about certain kinds of scientific research. In the past, I have found the attention span and the energy to astound myself by completing an entire semester's worth of work in a few marathon sessions. I somehow found myself in a positive feedback loop that fed itself, and things just worked out. Can I get such a positive feedback loop working at any point in my life? I think I can. So why don't I? I think this is where all of the addiction psychology work comes into play. Even though I know how amazing accomplishment as I described above feels, it is a long term reward. My addictive fix (which was PMO, and is currently TV shows and cookies) is a short term reward. Due to a lopsided view of my sense of self worth, I have wired up my brain to prefer the short term to the long term. A lot of the journey, as I see it, is balancing this lopsided view.
