This is a the laziest addiction

It's part of what makes a porn addiction so dangerous, we already know porn desensitizes and alters your brain, it causes PIED and a myriad of other issues from confidence and self esteem issues to even financial if it's starting to make you buy memberships to porn sites, cam sites or even going to see escorts in real life.

I would be nice to go back in time and somehow warn my 12 year old self to just go outside and do something else instead of make those initial searches I did that began a decent into a porn addiction. I do feel the worst is behind me now though.

 

Man, when my addiction started it was just like any other addiction. Even when I was underage I went to sex shops to buy magazines and videos. I used to travel like an hour by train so I would get to someplace that no one would recognise me, I guess even that was a dopamine rush, then the anticipation on the way home for another hour. By the time the streaming sites came I was already deeply hooked and it just made things worse. What I'm saying is that it really is a sinister addiction wether you need to work for it or get it lazily. I'm just thankful now that I really think I'm turning the corner now, this is one of the few times I've gone this far (36 days) and still feeling pretty confident. I smoked cigarettes for 10 years and I think it was after the 5th year I started trying to quit. Sometimes it was a few days, a few times I quit for a few months. People used to actually make fun of me 'are you quitting again?' and laughing at me. I think I tried to quit like over 100 times. But I never quit on quitting and it's been over 10 years now since I quit. So hopefully this is that time for me with PMO, I think I've hit the limit for trying where it may actually stick, but even if it doesn't I'll try again. Because there's no downside to trying to be better.

 

“Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I've done it thousands of times.”
― Mark Twain

That is why this addiction is so dangerous, it is so easily accessible you have unlimited amounts of it and on top of that with smoking,drinking,heroin even gambling (and all classical addictions), you are exposing yourself to workmates and family. With porn it is often done in a secret manner unless you are caught of course. I really get annoyed at people who say "just quit it" I have a friend like that who doesn't have a serious problem with it. Well that is like saying to the alcoholic "just stop drinking it's not that hard" I've stopped drinking since the start of this year and it's incredibly easy to me. Why? Because I'm not an alcoholic and also I have 0 cravings for alcohol. My brain simply does not crave it. So it's incredibly easy for me to say "hey I'm not drinking just stop drinking" Porn - I've tried to quit for more than a decade and it still plagues me to this day. The rush every time you get when you look up exactly what you want at your fingertips... it has overwhelmed me dozens... hundreds... thousands of times. Some people are genetically predisposed to get easily addicted to smoking, others to drinking and us on this forum... PMO mostly which in some extreme cases leads to sexual dysfunction,escorts etc. All I know is that I'm an addict and what I've done so far has not worked well. Underneath the addiction there must be some emotional need we are all mending with porn or other addictions. One would say that the rootcause must be addressed to figure out why you are addicted and got where you are. But I've found this is easier said then done. Even if you go to therapy and uncover why you are the way you are no one is going to battle the addiction for you and no one is going to make stuff happen for you but you yourself... I don't like the idea of quitting but that's what it feels like after so much failure. One can only hope I can truly kick this habit and improve my life

 

So even after 500+ days PMO free you still feel just as addicted as before you started this streak?

 

Yup. In my opinion, addiction to porn and addiction to overeating are the worst addictions because you can't really constantly, consistently, avoid all aspects of either of these addictions every single day.

 

Yes dude but what mess up my mind most is the guilt I feel within

 

On one level this is all true but on another porn addiction can be both the most time consuming and require the most effort.

You say that for things like alcohol or cigarettes you need to leave the house and buy the stuff but this is something you will already be doing anyway when you go buy groceries. And Sex addicts might need to find other people to have sex with but mostly it is going to be other sex addicts equally interested in easy sex and facilitated by either dating apps or sex workers. Even then though the sex session will last maybe 10min? 30min? Or an hour?

Now if you are just a “casual” porn addict by which I mean you mainly pmo to short videos regularly then yes it is very easy and require no real effort, apart from the fact that unlike alcohol or cigarettes you need to use some degree of imagination or engagement and physical activity to stay interested. For a hardcore porn addict however that is not enough, for one thing 10 min or even an hour is way too short, a hardcore addict will need at least 3+ hours and often multiple time a day.

But the biggest one for me is that not only must I have a full film, I must have every single one the model I am interested in featured, by which I mean downloading them and doing so for free. Of course you are limited by space so once you go through the trouble of finding all the scenes they were in and that you like they must be carefully catalogued(and often maintained with regular updates) so you can find them later on. Something I even find some random scenes from an unknown model and must track them down using the limited informations available.

Craziest thing is inevitably, as life go on, you become more concerned with what is missing from your collection rather than what you already have. That scene from XXX was a hard-won souvenir, sitting proudly next to the one from XXX. But the moment it was obtained, it lost its value. And now all you thinks about is that empty space, right there. Right next to XXX. It eats at you. It is a totem to everything you did not accomplish. Your failures. You stares at it, sometimes. That space. That damn, empty space. All you wants is to fill it.

That is both the curse and the driving force of Porn addiction.

 

Also unlike cigarettes and alcohol you can get it free of charge. I'm sure sites like

Spoiler: Potential trigger

Pornhub

has damaged a LOT of people.

 

Absolutely.

Spoiler: Potential trigger

Pornhub

and all the free porn sites do so much damage to so many people. The addicts, of course, but also the people in porn as well as their families and loved ones!

 

Sadly and very unfortunately the counter is fake, I have been relapsing almost every day since the start of pandemic. I just stopped bothering resetting the counter, it was years ago and the change has changed alot since then, not sure even how to do it now... Just like @SethLCU I download my favorite scenes and know most of them by name even... Just as the Mark Twain quote I've deleted the stash thousands of times but always come back and redownload it. Hope dies last and hopefully I can kick this addiction for good no matter how long it takes.

 

you need to fill the hole of porn addiction with something else, try to improve your life, burn videogames, burn porn, if necessary buy a dumb phone and use internet only in your computer. I feel lucky because download porn wasn’t an habit for me, btw I had many games and shopped on them more than 500 bucks so I know the pain, since I deleted all my accounts.

 

Absolutely NO ONE can expect to defeat a full-on addiction by asking for help on a forum and just basically hoping the problem goes away by avoiding a website or two. You have to go out there and get help, period. You have to do A LOT of hard work for a long time. There is no quick-fix, or "short & easy path" to win this thing. You need to get into CSAT therapy, you need to find a local SA meeting and go at minimum one per week. (To find a local meeting, cisit www.sa.org/f2f) You need to get a sponsor from that SA meeting and call him at least daily, and you need to work the 12 steps. In my experience, this is EASILY your best chance of beating this addiction, period.

 

I'm sorry to hear that brother. Do you ever imagine what 500+ days may feel like? I'm not far into this myself, i think 60 days was my best, I'm on 39 now. But probably for the past year or two I've been having about 14 day streaks. Before that weekly streaks. I used to have favorite scenes too, hearing someones name my mind would revert to a pornstars name in my head but slowly the memories are fading. I still get a few pornstars pop up in my mind but now I only see a few seconds of porn in my mind. I feel like this last streak for me something has changed within me and I feel like this streak will be long as now I don't see porn or fapping as a reward anymore. I think for me understanding that PMO has been the thing that holds me back from achieving everything else in my life has really helped me to change the views I had with my addiction. So now I try to take the energy from PMO and apply it to the other things I want to chage in my life.

So, all in all, hold onto the hope you have for yourself but don't just rely on it. Start small and work your way up. As our other brothers have said you need to find avenues that work for you. It may be accountability partners, or SA, or therapy. You may need all three to make progress, you may need something bigger than you to make progress. You have us here to lean on too. We can do this together.

Good luck my brother.

 

Well I personally dont see any special value in counting days. The underlying misconception is, that porn and masturbation is seen as the whole problem. Therefore it should only be logical that abstinence is the whole solution which is measured by time, right? Well, I dont believe so. I think the problem is our own wrongly learned behaviour, addiction patterns, false coping strategies, incorrect self image, harmful lifestyle,.. dont understand me wrong, abstaining from porn and masturbation is still part of the solution, but not the solution by itself. In fact I dont even believe that a "good long streak" should be a goal, it will be the automatic consequence when the problem is faced correctly. Trust me, there are people with 500+ day streaks who still struggle with their addiction or are in danger of falling back to the beginning. And on the other hand there are people with only short streaks who make great progress and will quit sooner or later for good.

I am myself right now in a stage of recovery where abstaining from porn is no problem. I can make those so called magical 90 days without a problem. I implemented a lifestyle and strategies how I can live my life without falling to my personal triggers. However as I said this does not mean that I am completely done. I have still many wrongly learned patterns/behaviours/beliefs I have to adress and it takes more than just abstaining and waiting for them to leave.

What I want to say: Dont meassure your progress on days. Especially dont idolize any number of days. Often this includes redefining your own goals.

 

Maybe you are correct. For me, I'm not good at completing tasks, so having measurable targets, albeit in it's simplest form seems to be working for me. I need the feeling that I'm achieving to be able to delve in to the harder topics. I don't even know if my approach is correct, but I've lived in my head and questioned and procrastinated for too long, so having an arbitrary number to work is what propels me at the moment. It seems like the only thing I have are numbers. I can see the numbers increase on the bar when I'm lifting, I can also see the numbers decrease when it comes to blood pressure and so forth. I can see the number of calories I eat and how it affects the numbers on the scale. I can see the number of pages that I have read and consequently the number of hours I haven't spent on social media. Is this approach correct, I don't know. Have these measurable numbers helped with the number of times I think or crave about PMO, I believe they have.

If you have any insights in to what you described as 'our own wrongly learned behaviour, addiction patterns, false coping strategies, incorrect self image, harmful lifestyle' I'm all ears. It would be great if there was a systematic approach one could take for recovery, is it taking the principals for other addictions and just applying them to PMO? Or is this a very personal journey with differing modalities to recovery for individual needs?

 

I totally understand what you're saying. I think when people talk about their number of days sober, it's something to be proud of rather than status within the sobriety ranks, or whatever. In the 12 step SA program, coins are given for specific milestones just as a little congratulations. It's not now, and never was designed to be a way of saying that anyone is better than someone with fewer days. In my opinion, it should be used most by those with terrible self-esteem, low confidence, and especially those who self-loathe.

 

Thanks for the reply. I also understand what you are saying. At the end of the day recovery is a personal approach for an individual problem, so Im not in the position of judging wether something works for people or not. I get that counting days can be a motivation, especially in the early stage. When writing I was more focusing on a glorification some people tend to do regarding very long streaks. Nothing wrong with seeing them as a milestone. However I would still add some other milestones other than days too into account.

I can clearify it if it helps: I started to understand, that porn and masturbation itself was not the problem. Those two things exist and do not have to bother me, my real problem was the relation I had with to porn and masturbation. I just started questioning it on a deeper level. My problem was the lack of self control that made me feel helpless against my addiction, that I felt ashamed for doing things against my moral standards and therefore had low self esteem, that I suffered from cravings that were not leading to any statisfaction, that I did not understand my emotions and had not any other way of adressing them other than porn, that I did not know how to handle my personal triggers,... and so on. Its not something I figured out in one day and Im still in the learning process. Journaling helped me a lot, also reading real books about addiction and podcasts. And while abstinence itself contributes to the solution of course, I realized it takes more than solely that.

For example: In my own recovery one of the biggest relapse occasions was when I discovered a loophole in my filtering software on my phone or laptop. One time I remember I downloaded the reddit app and realized afterwards, that it has access to pornographic material. Suddenly without any more indulging I left the app and deinstalled it immediately. Afterwards I felt more proud than having any amount of days on my counter, because I knew I could have 1000 days on my counter, but if I maybe would find a loophole I might fail anyway again. I managed to face my problem in a positive way and not just locking me out of it until it eventually falls back on me. This was a positive milestone that had nothing to do with days.

I hope I could get my point across and help. Im German and its not so easy for me explaining complex topics in English.

 

@Onuphrios Thanks for replying. What books would you recommend?

 

If I would pick 3, I would say the all time classic "your brain on porn" by Garry Wilson, "Unbroken Brain: A Revolutionary New Way of Understanding Addiction" by Maia Szalavitz, and "love and responsibility" by John Paul II. The last one is very philosophical and more about love and sex in general than addiction, but its the best explaination why porn is intrinsicly a problem.

For Podcasts I recommend Porn Reboot with JK Emezi (he always wants to sell his program, but appart from that he is maybe the best expert on the topic and you cant miss him), Love People Use Things with Noah Be Church and Matt Fradd and consider before consuming by the fight the new drug movement.

However as I said, recovery is individual and everyone will have their own most valuable sources. I wish you the best! You can always write me in private if you have any further question.