Why Most Addicts Don’t Succeed

I’m going to embark on an ill-advised attempt to engage the youths through ancient memes. Let’s see, how do we do this…


Yep, there we go.

Speaking of realistic expectations, most addicts won’t like the content of this post. But

They do self-censor so the post can get through the mods
​

What expectations are unrealistic? There’s two kinds. The expectation that quitting porn is going to be easy, and that quitting porn is going to solve all your problems. For more experienced fapstronauts, they’re thinking they are missing one ingredient, one thing they can change that will make them successful and quit porn for good.

Don’t be stupid.​

Some are thinking “Not me. I’m taking this seriously, I know it’s not going to be easy.”
But I’m not just saying it isn’t going to be easy. I’m saying it is going to be hard.
“Yeah, I know that, I know that.”
But you’re going to M as soon as it gets painful. Literally painful, when your balls start aching, you’re going to say you “have to relieve the pressure.” When it’s 2am and you still can’t sleep, you’ll say you can’t afford to be groggy at work or school, and you’re going to fap. When you get a reprimand or a rejection, or a bad grade, when you’re sick, when you’re bored, when you’re browsing your social media and see a model in skin tight clothes grinning coquettishly into the camera (that’s how you know I’m old, I said “coquettish,” look it up). Each of those old triggers, at some point you’re going to fall for every one.

“Not me, man, not me. You don’t understand, you don’t know me. My situation is different, I’m tough, I have too much to lose, I’m special.”

​

Are you not hearing me? Quitting addiction is hard. You don’t succeed in hard things the first time you try. Or the second. Or the eighth. Some people drop the proverbial ball more than others, but we all drop it. A lot. The question is if you’re going to get up, slightly alter your approach, and try again, or if you’re going to point fingers and avoid responsibility.

You’ve got this impression that “hard” means “a training montage I can play some motivating music over and gloss over the pain.”

Eye of the tiger, baby
​

You know why they do training montages with motivating music, instead of showing the actual training in real time? Because training is boring and miserable and it would make the movie a solid thirty days of just watching a guy groan and gasp and sweat. Because training means exhausting yourself in a short time, then looking to the side and seeing another guy so much further ahead. It’s demoralizing. Then working hard and investing a ton of time and mental effort for a month, and still not seeing substantive progress. Training means stewing in negative emotions for hours and days, wondering if all this energy spent on this thing that doesn’t seem to be making a difference at all except to make you even more miserable, is worth it. Training means having an intense day of trigger after trigger, and all you have to show for it is one more day on your streak when you deserve to add at least three. Training is resetting to day 0 over and over again, slowly learning for yourself that what I told you in this post is true; quitting porn is hard.
I’m sorry it has to be this way, but it is.

As you wish
​

The second unrealistic expectation is a derivation of the first: there’s a magic bullet that’s going to make everything better. This one bifurcates into two applications. Sometimes we think one change is going to make us quit porn for good. If only we can figure it out, we’ll be safe and free. Sometimes we believe if we can only quit porn itself, our entire lives will be fixed and we’ll be happy.

Some things have to be said over and over again

Some magic bullets porn addicts believe in​

1. If only I got a wife/girlfriend and could regularly have sex
2. If only I didn’t have a wife/girlfriend and wasn’t expected to have sex
3. If only I could block all the porn on my phone
4. If only I could keep myself from fantasizing
5. If only I found the right motivation guru
6. If only I got a job
7. If only I found the right dopamine replacement

Maybe you need all of these things. Maybe none of them. Don’t pretend it’s a simple problem with a straightforward solution.

Porn abuse, porn addiction, is not a mere bad habit. Any addiction is a maladaptive coping mechanism created in response to a real problem in your life.

Are you hearing me?

Some addicts are going to get pissed at me. Some SOs, if they read this, are going to get very pissed at me. I’m going to say it anyway.

Porn isn’t the problem*. Porn is a symptom of a bigger problem that’s causing you even more problems. Once you quit porn, the pain of that other problem is going to make itself known until you find it and fix it.

This is hard to understand and harder to apply. Well what is your problem, then? I don’t know. You are a complex psychological being with all kinds of layers of trauma, like a fabulous freakin’ pride cake. But made out of anger and fear instead of sugar a dye.

​

There’s no one reason you use porn, and no one activity or belief or quote or anything that will put you over the top and get you to quit. If I’m going to start a good long streak I have to take my meds, and run every day, and eat good food regularly, and go to therapy, and use positive self talk, and avoid sensory triggers, and actively monitor my thought life, are you getting the picture? Quitting porn is about dozens of modifications to the system, and I haven’t even addressed the deep reasons I started using porn in the first place, or the profound lies porn has told me that I need to undo, much less what I’m going to do to replace it all.

It goes back to that first unrealistic expectation that quitting is easy. One of the reasons quitting is hard is because there is no magic bullet. It’s complicated. You’ll need a multifaceted system to fix it.

Sorry. I know you just came in here to get your PIED, or your PAWS, or your marriage, or whatever it was back under control real quick. The reality is, though, if you’re in so much trouble that you’ve self-diagnosed porn as the problem and you’re even considering quitting, you’re already in way deeper than you know. The official line from NoFap is a 90 day reboot, and my official response is, that’s laughably optimistic. I’ve hit 90 days, before, I’m nowhere close to rebooted. Psychologists and AA members know it takes a while to get free of an addiction. Odds are strong extracting yourself from porn is going to take a lot longer than three months, might as well start getting used to the idea, and maybe you’ll not ever be completely free. Maybe freedom is going to look like keeping that demon chained and starved, but you’re going to have to keep your eye on it at all times. Sound exhausting? It is. Worth it, though?

Yeah. Yeah it’s worth it.

​

Now we get to the final reason most addicts won’t succeed. They point fingers instead of investing time in figuring out what they can do about their problem.

It feels good to make excuses. It means you don’t have to do anything, and also it means you didn’t make choices that turned you into a complete spudtugger.

Can I say that, mods, am I allowed to say “spudtugger?”

Making and believing in your excuses also robs you of all self-agency, and turns you into an abhorrent little person. Yeah, I know for sure I can’t say “person.” It’s because other fapstronauts abused the word, like a bunch of abhorrent little persons.

Excuses I Have Seen, or Used Myself​

1. Porn needs to be illegal
2. Western values
3. Capitalism
4. ADD, baby
5. The Internet
6. Porn industry
7. Porn stars
8. Women in general
9. One woman in particular (wife, girlfriend, ex, rando girl at the gym, somebody that you used to know)
10. COVID
11. Saw something nasty in the woodshed**

Listen, I wish the Internet didn’t have porn on it and people didn’t glorify sex and social media didn’t lie and life wasn’t so stressful, too. While I’m at it, I also wish I had a rocket pack and a sweet helmet with all kinds of cool stuff in a HUD so I could fly around with my underwear on the outside and fight crime, but this is the reality I live in. This is the hand I was dealt. And past me, he didn’t play that hand the way present me would have.

Well boo-freakin’-hoo. There ain’t jack I can do about it now.

What I can do is identify problems and address them today.

There’s a line, and I don’t know if it’s a thin one or not but I frequently cross it, between identifying a problem and making an excuse. The truth is, I do have ADD. The truth is, social media is a trigger for most people, if not for soft porn showing up all the time, then at least because it’s a terrible source of dopamine that leaves you craving more. Having ADD, or social media being terrible, is beyond my or your control, but if you stop there and say “that’s the life we have and it’s not fair,” that’s an excuse.

What are you going to do about it?

Take meds. Quit social media.
“What? No more Instagram? No more Twitter? No more TikToks or whatever it is the kids are doing these days?”

Yeah. No more of that. Nearly every fapstronaut who sticks with it beyond a month or two figures this out. Every other week there’s a new thread asking “Is Instagram a relapse?” and the answer is basically quit abusing the word “relapse” but yes, and there’s also threads saying “OMG you guys I finally figured it out U haev 2 quit social media!” and there’s seventeen views and three responses which say “whoa, really?,” “good job, you figured it out,” and “actually I think that’s too extreme because I have this whole list of justifications because I’m not that serious about quitting porn.” I paraphrased. Few people are that self-aware, or honest with themselves, but we know the truth.

Take responsibility for your life. Take control.

​

So that’s why most are unlikely to succeed. We underestimate how much trouble we’re really in, we underestimate how long and difficult this process is, and we don’t like the pain and suffering it takes to change. But maybe you do have the gumption and self-honesty, you’re just lacking good direction. I’ve been that person, too.

Thanks for hanging with me this long. If you’re looking for shortcuts here’s some bonus wisdom.

1. If you think it might be a P sub, it probably is
2. If you think you might need to reset, you probably do
3. Nature abhors a vacuum. Replace your lost, cheap dopamine from PMO with positive behaviors
4. That said, don’t try to revolutionize your entire life all at once. One small, positive change, integrate it into your lifestyle, make it a good habit, then pick up another. Otherwise you’ll burn out fast
5. Start with exercise. I run because I’m a skinny, long legged weed. Most guys lift, because they’re good at it. Most women do yoga, because they’re good at it. We do the things we’re good at
6. Fantasy is a P sub. Have a train of thought pre-loaded, so that when an erotic thought comes up, you don’t waste time trying to figure out something to think about instead
7. A stray erotic thought is really your brain asking for dopamine. Try and find a way to give it a nice dose from a healthy source, sooner rather than later
8. Seriously, quit social media
   
9. Porn lied. It lied to you about sex. It lied to you about women. It lied to you about men. It’s hard because you’re not even aware of what you believe that comes from porn, but you need to work on figuring out the truth
10. No, you can’t stop just the P, the M, or the O and expect to reboot. That’s your addiction talking. Don’t be stupid
11. If it comes down to it, down the street, not across the tracks okay?

Don’t do drugs, brush your teeth, say your prayers to the deity or spiritual essence of your choice, and stop touching yourself at night. I’m out.


*SOs, I didn’t say you were the problem, either. Don’t put that stink on me. You are not the problem, you didn’t cause any of this, and if your addict or another addict says you are or did, he’s a misinformed wanker making excuses
**Apologies for all the obscure references to songs and books you haven’t heard or read. I’m not changing anything

 

So, my original draft was more... acerbic? I called people in general a lot of names. The post wasn't going through right away, and I assumed it was because of some of those pejoratives, so I weeded them out. On hindsight the post was probably delayed because of all the pics. Some people think fapstronauts are losers and/or bad people, and should be trolled with P in the forums.

The real reason I run and don't lift is because I just put on my shoes, throw a kid in the stroller and go. Way easier than driving to a gym and putting up with their BS music and avoiding visual triggers etc., but usually when I tell people about the convenience they're like "you couldn't pay me to run." Turns out I'm also built for it. But the tone of this post isn't positive, "I run because I am a majestic antelope, leaping across the Serengeti." No, I'm a skinny weed. But I don't care. I can not possibly express to you how much I do not care about how my body looks, because then I'd have to think about it and I'm already bored with this topic. I barely even care about athletic capability. The treadmill the other day said I ran 2 miles in 12:22. That's incredible, I've never run the 2 mile that fast in my life, and... nothing changed. I get no cookie. I get no trophy. In terms of qualities that actually matter, I am no different from the guy who runs it in 16 minutes, or walks it in 25. I run for the dopamine, that is all, because if I don't get a substantial dose on at least a semi-regular basis, I go crazy. Like literally, dissociative disorder. Now, I might do that even if I do run, but I'll definitely go crazy if I don't, so I run.

 

Dang I forgot I wrote this. Had a bee under my bonnet, I guess.

 

You can try to be disciplined about using social media in a restricted sense, see how that works out. No browsing, just responding to DMs, that kind of thing. Or you can tell everyone, including yourself, “tough.” There’s going to be missed opportunities because you’re not on social media, but it’s worth your mental health to not do it.

Sometimes you have to decide what’s most important, and make sacrifices.