You were always in control
This porn addiction problem has been my perennial issue. It has eaten away at my soul loads over the years, with seemingly millions of failed attempts. I cannot express how done I am with the state of being as a 'porn addict'. Like I'm over it so hard.
If you have been wandering around you might have seen The Melodrama, which is a rather extreme emotional sort of page, haha. Let me balance it out, I promise I'm not crazy.
Beating this addiction does mean a lot to me though :)
They say it gets easier
But for the longest time I didn't really believe it. It always felt when I relapsed, no matter how long I had been abstaining, I'd slip up once and then I'd be right back to daily porn sessions, swimming in guilt and self-loathing.
It's one thing to change your habits in the short term. Ok, so you won't use porn for one or two months, cool challenge.
It is quite another thing to change your underlying psychology.
This is basically what I missed in the 'it gets easier' camp. If you still believe pornography provides some sort of actual benefit to your life, makes you overall happier etc, you will fail. Every single time. Seriously.
If this is you right now, you need to go read the EasyPeasy method right now. You need to believe, with every fiber of your being that pornography provides you no benefit and is a net negative in your life.
Then, it can actually get easier ;)
Timelines
You may not fully believe that pornography provides you no benefit on first reading. I read the EasyPeasy method and ideas similar to it over a year ago from today. Unlike as promised, I certainly did not quit pornography on the first try. I have been to the shadow realm after reading that book a lot actually.
BUT, once the book plants the seed of 'pornography provides you no benefit' in your brain, you begin to think about that idea more. I slowly began to internalise that message after every long slip-up and porn binge cycle. Maybe it's learning the hard way. Nothing is really stopping you from quitting porn entirely from the moment you put down the book and understand the idea on day one.
Heck, you can finish reading this article here and quit porn for the rest of your life. You can choose whether you want this addiction to continue in your life at any point. That's kind of the whole point of these 'revolutionary ideas'.
What revolutionary ideas?
Well, let's look and examine the mainstream ideas of addiction psychology.
- You have a disease called 'addiction'
- You will always be an addict in some way
- If you slip up once you will be back to being a mega addict
- You must avoid triggers because if you see a trigger you will relapse instantly
You need to buy our expensive rehab course
Basically, you are always a helpless victim, doomed to fail in some way forever. Trapped in your porn addiction that isn't your fault in any way.
There are so many people out there who decide they just don't like watching porn that much. If you are reading this article, chances are that on some level you also don't like watching porn that much. Yet you feel conflicted, you feel that cognitive dissonance. You might tell yourself excuses.
You don't have to be trapped in your made up prison of a porn addiction. These mainstream ideas are actively harmful to your recovery. I'm not just saying that to be contrarian for the sake of it either. You are not a victim, you don't have a life-long addiction. You can be 100% cured!
Pro choice
If you don't have the fluff of 'addiction' this and 'compulsive' that stuck inside of your brain, you are left with a rational choice between using a lot of porn, using porn in 'moderation', or abstaining entirely.
If you are not addicted, you can actively weigh up whether pornography is genuinely providing value to your life or not.
Bear in mind scientific studies and your current blindspot though. If you are hypersensitised to porn, then you will respond strongly to pornography over all other rewards in your life. It may be rationally worth it to take a long step back from porn and see what a porn-free psychology feels like for a while, with less hypersensitisation and fixation on pornography.
If after doing that, you decide you want to continue using porn in some way, by all means go for it. At the end of the day it is your choice.
The choice model is powerful, because it does not assert that pornography is some all defining evil (it still is in my eyes) and it puts you in control to make a decision. It's the opposite of the 'addiction' idea where you are some sort of slave to a behaviour.
Never forget that you are the one manually engaging in the behaviour each time you choose to do so.
Rolling snowball
Regardless of what I'm saying though, your starting point to actual recovery is definitely like a tiny snowball that you only just posted. Although you do only begin to make the snowball once you start actually analysing, rationally whether you think pornography provides any benefit in your life. If you still have a 'No Nut November' or 'NoFap 90 day challenge' mindset, you don't even have a snowball.
These ideas are now in your brain, that you are not actually addicted. And you might go back and forth between using porn or not. Just now, hopefully, you will be thinking and questioning your choice as a person each time you engage in the behaviour. This is your personal choice. You can reinvent yourself. You can become the person who just doesn't watch porn because they don't want to. No resistance from temptation needed.
Like, the 90 Day Don't Drink Bleach challenge doesn't exist because that's obvious. Over time, with the right mindset adjustments, there won't be much difference between not drinking bleach and not watching pornography.
Your brain eventually physically changes. The addiction pathways do literally shrink. Use it or lose it. DeltaFosB something something transcription factor. These changes can take years. It might even take you a couple of months to lose the hypersensitisation to porn, I know it did for me.
But it is always getting easier. Hopefully you notice the time in between porn sessions becomes longer and longer each time. Don't let anyone, I mean anyone tell you that is not progress. Using PMO twice a month for four hours total is miles better than once a day for 60 hours total. Massive improvement. You will feel better in general, and it will become psychologically even easier not to watch porn going forward from then.
Eventually your snowball grows too big. It's out of control. You enjoy your porn free life too much. You have seen too much of the outside world. You can't go back to a pornography filled life, even if you tried.
The above might seem like a pipe dream, but when it happens to you, you will be in awe.
All of your reasons to use porn are actually reasons not to
The above video is gold. In summary, if you remove the tug of war in your head, whether you want to actually watch porn or not, not watching porn becomes effortless and one of the easiest things you can do.