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Get educated, get tools, and learn to love withdrawals

Discussion in 'Porn Addiction' started by William, Dec 16, 2013.

  1. 1ANDDONE

    1ANDDONE Fapstronaut

    @Rayder4Life @Rayder4Life

    I am jacking your first post. Fasten your seatbelts, it going to be a bumpy ride.



    You said:

    So i started doing this like a week ago, but i cant seem to go past day 2, usually i last for a day but the next day i relapse, i dont know what is wrong with me, i just find myself watchin something on the internet that i dont even conscionsly recognise and i start touchin myself without bein aware, next thing u know im deep in it and after i cum i realise, omg what happened i just relapsed again. i dont know what to do to stop this, its like im a zombie that does things without his will. all i want is orgasm orgasm, like a zombie needs brains, i felt that i had more energy and focus after 1 day or 2, but i cant seem to go past that, everytime i relapse i feel so fatigue and without any purpose, no ambition nothing, i just dont do anything, i cheated my way out of life and this is life's punishment on me, because sex is the reason why we do things in life, we wanna get rich so we can get a girl, we wanna flashy car to get a girl and to get attention, we want that big house to get the fuckin girl, we do stuff that are inherently about a woman that we want to have a family with, but the side effects are that this selfish thing is what propelled humanity so far ahead, ambition starts with this, purpose starts with this, jacking off is the cheat to all of this, after u do it, u dont want the flashy car anymore, u dont wanna get rich anymore, u dont want the big house anymore, ur life purpose was fullfilled and ure worthless now. u got nothing else to exist for, so u deplet ur energy with which u could do wonders for nothing. i dont know what to do to stop this now and forever, i wanna have a purpose in life, i want to stop cheating on life, i want to live life to its full potential. but its so hard to stop...

    First post.

    Day one.

    I had 14 months of day one, before I got to DAY ONE.

    I am going to try and speed it up for you.

    Loving, wanting, seeking, getting.

    We like that. It is hard wired. It is OK, just recognize it, know it, know yourself.

    Oh, and jacking off only seems epic until you understand what it is; jacking off is, actually, about as profound as taking a hit off a cigarette. In fact, it is exactly that profound. Not so profound. The problem can seem HUGE when it is up close and in your face, but, once you understand what it is, it is, essentially, a hygiene problem. Not watching porn is sort of like brushing your teeth every day; once you get into the habit, it's just something you DO NOT do every day. By the way, quitting porn does not magically make your life better. Your life can still suck after quitting porn. But...I do think it makes having a better life quit a bit more likely. If you are here thinking quitting porn will magically make your life better...well, you can kill that illusion. But you can, and you should, quit using P, if it has taken over your life like you say. One of the better purposes of a place like this is to own yourself. You need to own you; P should not own you. OWN YOURSELF.

    We like that because of a neurological event that happens, naturally, and healthily, in the brain. It can be described as a lot of things, but let's call it a dopamine reward, a dopamine rush, a dopamine high. So, first thing is quit asking "why" you want it. You want it for the reason I just said you want it. Period. Enough of wrestling with the why of why you want it, you want it because we all want it, because our brains are built to want it. I probably owe Gary Wilson a copyright fee, but watch this video, and start to Get Educated. WATCH THIS VIDEO, THEN WATCH IT AGAIN, THEN WATCH IT AGAIN.



    Understand P, and PMO, is a tool. We invented it not too long ago. In fact, in evolutionary terms, we invented half a second ago. We (us, you, me, humanity), are figuring out how to deal with the invention of the internet, and, then, shortly after, the invention of high speed internet, and, then, shortly after, the invention of HIGH SPEED INTERNET PORN. Think of HSIP as a button. It is a means to an end. No, really, think of it as a button, a tool, something you can use to achieve...wait for it....a dopamine high. Dopamine is, probably, the reason we get up in the morning. It is a neurotransmitter, that has been called a "motivational" neurotransmitter, and a "reward" neurotransmitter. It is one of the reasons why we do what we do, whatever it is what we do. It has a very profound role in encouraging reproduction in the species, and in all mammalian species.

    Rule one. Nature wants us reproducing. The most successful species make a lot of copies of themselves. Those copies we call children. Offspring. So, that desire to make babies is hard wired, in the brain. Dopamine rewards sexual thoughts. We figured out, about 12 years ago, via HSIP, that we could generate off the charts sexual thought, and thus, off the charts dopamine rewards, dopamine reactions, dopamine high, and we will throw in endogenous opioid reactions. Yep, it ALL happens in the brain.

    One of the first things you must abandon is any self pity. You cannot quit P while feeling you were a victim of P. So, own it. U used P, P used you, you had a relationship. The relationship has to end. No judgment.

    Quitting. You are quitting P and PMO, but, really, you are quitting using P and PMO to achieve a dopamine high. If you are addicted, you are addicted to the dopamine high. Essential you understand that, intellectually. You are giving up an artificially produced dopamine high. THAT IS GOING TO HURT. Once you have trained your brain to get that high daily, cutting it off produces withdrawals. I don't know who it was, but someone said withdrawals suck. Oh, yeah, it was me.
    For me, intellectually, I had to say this, to myself, every day, for many months, to get clean: "This feels like dying. It may be that I am dying. I don't want to live feeling like this. I would not mind if death just took me. But, if this is what I have to feel to give up P and PMO, then this is the feeling I will have, every day, for the rest of my life." Smiley face emodicon, right? Withdrawals fade, then go away, but between now and then, you are going to face a grim reality.

    If you want to give it up, you can do it, and you will survive, then be just fine. But, pain is the price you will pay. Don't feel sorry for yourself, but don't beat yourself up, either. No one becomes addicted to this shit knowing we can become, and are becoming, addicted to this shit. We do it as a pastime, as a distraction, like playing a video game, then, one day, we say to ourselves, "I want to put this down", but have the very uncomfortable realization, that we can't. Truth is, we can, but we have to know what we are putting down. It's not just porn, it's the neurological reward we use porn to generate.

    This is me, on this side of clean, holding a hand out, to you. Come on over. It's really just a matter of training your brain to live without it. The training hurts, but it is worth it. Thanks for letting me jack your post.

    Much love.

    1ANDDONE.




     
    over50 and icebreaker polarstern like this.
  2. Hello @1ANDDONE I have a question:
    when I MO once (without media) during hard mode it is obviously a reset but how do you see it in regard to (recovering from) porn addiction? Will streaks of hard mode be enough when you stick to no-porn and no-subs all along?
     
  3. 1ANDDONE

    1ANDDONE Fapstronaut

    @icebreaker polarstern

    Before answering your question, first, you are going to be OK.

    Your question is loaded, and, be warned, I have not had my first cup of coffee....

    The question is loaded because it uses words that are new words, or, words that are used in a relatively new way. I like words, by the way.

    You use the word "reset". "Reset", as used in this place, has a meaning, but, at the same time, is somewhat vague. It is a word, used in this place, only for the last few years. We have to go back to, about, 2010, when we, humanity, invented something some of us find really, really, interesting: High Speed Internet Porn. Prior to that we did not have phrases and words like "porn addiction," "reset", and "reboot."

    So, here is your question: Will streaks of hard mode be enough when you stick to no-porn and no-subs all along?

    Answer: Yes.

    Porn is not addictive. The neurological reward we use porn to achieve, (dopamine high and endogenous opioid release) probably is, but the experts are debating it, and, most "experts" think it is not. I think it is.

    You will always be human. This means your brain will always like thinking about sex, and nothing gets us thinking about sex like porn. Even sex does not get us thinking about sex as much as porn does, that is, for those who have this issue.

    When I say "like" thinking about sex, let's be very specific: Thinking about sex results in a neurological reward. This is nature's hard wired way of encouraging reproduction; the more we think about sex, the more likely it is we do that, and nature wants the species reproducing. Just that simple. It is really quite simple.

    Don't beat yourself up for obtaining a neurological reward for sexual thoughts, just be self aware of what is happening, and be in control, and not a slave to it.

    You are going to be fine. We were rubbing one off a long time before we invented HSIP. It can be done to excess, of course, but leave P alone, keep it under control, and accept you are just like everyone else: Human. That is your burden: You are a human being with hardwired biological mandates; your brain keeps tapping you on the shoulder. It is going to be OK, just be in charge of yourself. Own you.

    Hope this helps.

    Much love.

    W.
     
    icebreaker polarstern likes this.
  4. 1ANDDONE

    1ANDDONE Fapstronaut

    Pot addiction triggers a lot of the same neurological reward mechanisms as porn does. Some of the people I feel most sorry for here are the people who smoke pot and PMO all fucking day. Read and learn. Gabe Deem says: Read everything, as in everything you can find on addiction. He ai'nt lyin.

    https://getpocket.com/explore/item/america-s-invisible-pot-addicts?utm_source=pocket-newtab

    Think of quitting porn as quitting being pathetic. If you are reading this, do not be pathetic....well...commit to being less pathetic. I am far less pathetic now, once I quit porn. Smiley face emodicon.

    Much love.

    Will I AM.
     
  5. 1ANDDONE

    1ANDDONE Fapstronaut

    Andrea Kuszewski wrote a series of article in, what now, is the ancient past; 9 years ago. She pretty much hit it out of the park.

    There is a group of guys in here who think they are addicted to porn, because, hey, its a "Porn Addiction" forum. They are not addicted to porn; porn is not addictive.

    There is another super, really, off base, group of guys, in here, who think they are addicted to a genre or category of porn. NO.

    The addiction is to a neurological brain event, a dopamine high, dopamine reward, that a small percentage of the population can use porn to spike so high and so often that our brains come to expect it, every day, multiple times a day, and when we shut it down, punishes us with withdrawals for not letting it have it. By the time you reach that point you can say the three suckiest words in the world: "I am addicted." Did I mention sucks, and not in a good way? Artificial sexual stimulation is a super stimulation that, probably, is significantly better at spiking those motivational and reward brain events than sex does. It's OK, just take time to understand it. GET EDUCATED. Make a pot of coffee, get a cup of tea, something, hopefully, with not a lot of sugar, and take 20 minutes to read this series of articles. you will not quit porn passively. If you are here, waiting, hoping, that one day you just will wake up and not want it, you are failing. Quitting porn must be done aggressively, purposefully, and with real effort. That effort starts with educating yourself about what you are quitting, and it is NOT porn, I mean, sure, it is, but, more correctly, it is about quitting using porn. For people like us, porn is a took we use to get to what we really, truly, love; a dopamine high. Remember, dopamine highs are about loving, wanting, seeking, getting. Read on.

    https://www.science20.com/rogue_neuron/science_pleasure_part_one_allure_asymmetry
    https://www.science20.com/rogue_neuron/science_pleasure_part_ii_your_brain_sexual_imagery
    https://www.science20.com/rogue_neuron/science_pleasure_part_iii_neurological_orgasm

    I know what you are thinking, but NO: WilliamOneAndDone is not Andrea Kuszewski. But we do think alike, and you think just like us. All of our brains are, essentially, at the time of our birth, identical, preprogrammed computers. We can add software and experience after that moment, resulting in different personalities, likes, and dislikes. We can also jack our computer software via drugs and behaviors that result in the naturally occurring dopamine reward circuitry lighting up. All of this is OK, meaning, you, reading this, if you take time to study your problem, will figure it out and be just fine. On the other hand, if you think you are addicted to a genre of porn, and do not study and figure out your problem, you will get be stuck here for a very long time, possibly a life sentence. There is no easy way out, but there is a way out, and the way out is, relatively short, if painful. You are going to have to give up your high. Let's put it another way, you are going to have to give up artificial super stimulation to get your high, and you are going to have to live with diminished naturally occurring highs. It's not so bad, sex still works.....hint hint, nudge nudge, winkn wink, women in the water, know what I mean?



    William 1ANDDONE

    You are welcome. And, thanks Andrea.
     
  6. 1ANDDONE

    1ANDDONE Fapstronaut

  7. 1ANDDONE

    1ANDDONE Fapstronaut

    Gary Wilson posted this today.

    Some on this forum are aware of YBOP, Aex Rhodes of Nofap, and even Gabe Deem, being relentlessly harassed and defamed by pro-porn PhD's. In July, I posted numerous relevant links and an interview I did with Mark Queppet: http://www.rebootnation.org/forum/index.php?topic=17372.msg179263#msg179263
    On October 23, 2019 Alexander Rhodes (founder of reddit/nofap and NoFap.com) filed a defamation lawsuit against Nicole R Prause and Liberos LLC. See this page on NoFap.com: https://nofap.com/defend-alex/

    In the last few days two articles and a video were published exposing Nicole Prause's behaviors:

    5-minute video: Is Porn Addictive? by Diana Davison -

    Article by Diana Davison, on The Post Millennial: "Porn wars get personal in No Nut November" - https://www.thepostmillennial.com/porn-wars-get-personal-in-no-nut-november/

    Article by Megan Fox, on PJ Media: "Alex Rhodes of Porn Addiction Support Group ‘NoFap’ Sues Obsessed Pro-Porn Sexologist for Defamation" - https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/rel...gist-for-defamation-by-megan-fox-of-pj-media/

    Really good article came out a few days ago:
    Watching Pornography Rewires the Brain to a More Juvenile State - by Rachel Anne Barr, PhD student, neuroscience, Université Laval.
    https://theconversation.com/watching-pornography-rewires-the-brain-to-a-more-juvenile-state-127306

    High Speed Internet Porn is a relatively new invention. Our brains have not evolved, yet, to deal with it. The best thing we can do, to deal with it, is Get Educated. It is just a matter of taking time to understand how we use porn to achieve a brain reward. Sort of like eating candy, as in a two pound chocolate bar. With ice cream. With whipped crème and cherries on top. With sprinkles....wait, sprinkles are for winners....



    Better grow a sick sense of humor too, because if you have abused porn to the point of addiction, you are going to have to work hard for those sprinkles.

    Much love.

    Will I AM.
     
  8. 1ANDDONE

    1ANDDONE Fapstronaut

  9. 1ANDDONE

    1ANDDONE Fapstronaut

    Dopamine withdrawals are difficult........Who the fuck knew?

    https://psychcentral.com/news/2018/01/13/dopamine-withdrawal-is-difficult/10721.html

    Oh, yes. WE DID.



    That goes on for an hours, so, watch 10 seconds, that is plenty, then move on. Unless you are psychotic, then, please, watch it over and over and over. True, the FBI profiles us in an effort to understand cereal killers. I hate Captain Crunch. I want to kill every box of it.

    If you have become addicted to dopamine highs, not the end of the world. BUT, you better grow a sick sense of humor, because you are going to need it to get out.

    Get OUT.

    WillIamOneAndDone.

    Anyone and everyone who has the problem can fix the problem. It is a problem with a solution. Fixing it is going to hurt, don't run from that; embrace it. Pain is the price you pay for freedom.

    Pay it.

    Mother bitches. Inside joke.



    1ANDDONE
     
    Last edited: Dec 1, 2019
  10. 1ANDDONE

    1ANDDONE Fapstronaut

  11. Jerry Edwards

    Jerry Edwards Fapstronaut

    44
    49
    18
    This is a great thread, many of the posts here really help me to be aware of what is going on in my brain during the days and nights when withdrawal hits me really hard.
    Thanks for your contributions, keep them going! :)
     
  12. 1ANDDONE

    1ANDDONE Fapstronaut

    Hi Jerry, thanks. VERY important to understand what we are quitting. Peace.
     
    Jerry Edwards likes this.
  13. 1ANDDONE

    1ANDDONE Fapstronaut

    Sarah Fader just published this article. Let's break it down.

    https://www.betterhelp.com/advice/medication/dopamine-addiction-what-is-it-and-how-to-overcome-it/

    Is dopamine addiction real? Is addiction real? If addiction is real, what is it?

    Dopamine, naturally, is about loving, wanting, seeking, getting. That can be for a lot of things, but everyone pretty much agrees it happens most intensely with seeking sex and seeking food.

    Sarah says addiction is a chronic brain disease. I don't know if I agree with that. I don't think a brain has to be diseased to be addicted. I conceive of addiction as the result of a conditioned expectation for a neurological reward. Once a person conditions their brain to expect a neurological reward, especially one involving orgasm, the addiction (if addiction occurs), can form.

    Dopamine helps us feel good. Maybe more true: Dopamine MAKES us feel good. As we evolved, nature placed a carrot and stick in our brains; dopamine is the carrot. We get a hit of it for doing something nature values as a survival behavior, like reproducing and eating.

    She says:

    Dopamine is released in anticipation of the desired reward. When we receive the reward, the feeling of the reward goes away soon after. We want to get that feeling again. Does that mean it's the dopamine we want? In a way, it is, but more scientifically, what we seek is substances or behaviors that give it to us. It's these substances and behaviors we're addicted to, not the dopamine itself.

    This is where we need to jump forward, about 1,000 years, where neuroscience has had far more study. In terms of evolutionary biology, addiction is a relatively new thing. It does not occur naturally, because, in nature, in the state we evolved, it is a negative survival trait. Sarah makes the distinction between "dopamine addiction" and the substance/behavior that results in the dopamine high. Not sure I agree with that, not sure we have developed the language or science to make the distinction. I have said before, I don't agree that "porn" or PMO is addictive, but, rather, the neurological reward that happens as a result. A dopamine high is what is addictive, so I would say it is not the thing that we use to cause the high that is addictive, but the high itself. Could be semantics.

    We did not evolve with High Speed Internet Porn. It is a super stimuli we are learning to deal with.

    Low dopamine can lead to depression. For a person quitting PMO, you are going to have lower dopamine levels, and depression. That is part of the withdrawal process. Know that going in. It is part of the process.

    She talks about the escalation model. Sensitization, to porn, desensitization, escalation, sensitization, desensitization, escalation, over and over.

    She discusses dopamine and various substances that can be abused.

    I won't summarize the rest. I will say we are early days in brain study, but we know enough to have a fairly grounded understanding of the brain processes involved in what we call porn addiction. Porn addiction is giving monkeys sugar cubes. If you are a monkey who loves sugar cubes, better learn to live without them.



    Much love.

    Will I AM.
     
    Indurian likes this.
  14. Summer Son

    Summer Son Fapstronaut

    Hi William! Please keep posting. I really appreciate when you post here, a lot of people quit using porn addiction recovering websites after they have recovered. Do you think should we use? I don't know. I have a question actually: How should we avoid relapse especially after huge streaks like after 90 days, after months or years of abstinence(is recovering the right word IDK.) etc. ? How do you know, how can you sure about you will never gonna relapse again? Is this commitment becomes your/our/someone's promise while recovering or you already knew that starting to recover?

    Thank you!
     
    Last edited: Dec 10, 2019
    icebreaker polarstern likes this.
  15. 1ANDDONE

    1ANDDONE Fapstronaut

    @Summer Son

    Hi Summer, thanks for the kind words. I learned, a long time ago, that not relapsing is a choice. I use the word relapse loosely, because too many say they have relapsed after a couple of days; they have not, they have just cut back a bit. I do think you need to be at least 90 days clean before you can "relapse."

    That said, I have understood for a long time that using P and PMO is choice; use it to get a dopamine high, don't use it to get a dopamine high. On day one, for me, I probably made that choice about 1,000 times. I was in a hotel room, alone with my laptop, withdrawing, and I had to tell myself about 1,000 times that day: I am not using P, I am not watching P, I am not PMOing, I am not Ming. Long fucking day.

    For someone who has gotten to the state this place calls porn addiction, understanding that it is a choice, that is not inevitable, that it is possible, is the first jedi mind trick we must learn: I can quit P. It is not a choice I made today, because using did not occur to me, but it might in the future, some day, and I already know my choice is NO.

    That takes time and training. We train our brains to get that high. We have to train it not to.

    Much love.

    W
     
    Last edited: Dec 8, 2019
  16. Hey Will,
    I just wanted to thank you for your nice answer to my question. I liked it! Honestly I was a little surprised, because I rather expected you to say something like this "No, masturbation is out of the question! You have to do the hard-90! Embrace the pain!"
    But you said this
    Nevertheless I didn't give up on hard mode (only because of you and that's the truth). My experience to this point is that it makes the reboot easier - sexual fantasies wane much faster, the libido drops.
    Unfortunately "bodily urges", as I call it, hit me more often than porn cravings. And there are no masturbation-blockers.

    I guess what really makes hard mode hard is that the masturbation habits are much older than our pmo habits (at least for an relatively old guy like me)

    True!

    A thousand likes! Surprisingly you don't see something like this often in the forum: someone who had the same problem but now is beyond it tells you how difficult it is, how tiring and how persistent you have to be. Gives you a simple formula.
    I just need to repeat these words. Repeat it in my head, with my voice and in the forum.

    Thanks for repeating the important lessons you found out over and over again! Persistently. We need people like you. Thanks for still being around!

    by the way:
    I am quitting not using.
     
  17. 1ANDDONE

    1ANDDONE Fapstronaut

    This is an article published by Mary Mycio, in 2013. Trigger warning: it turns out humanity has been creating porn for at least 3,000 years. Don't be afraid of the human sex drive, just be aware of it, what it is. Know yourself. Get Educated. Porn has not only been fascinating to a huge part of the population, since the time we could scratch on cave walls, but, in some cultures, has been central to depicting their history, and socio-political structure. Move forward to, about 2007, and the invention of High Speed Internet. A second later, High Speed Internet Porn. New invention, new way of using/depicting sex, new way of getting high that if far more efficient than cave etchings, or porn that came before it. It was about that time someone coined the term "porn addiction." It is no coincidence that while porn has been around forever, no one put it together with the concept of addiction until just after the invention of HSIP. Turns out a very small percentage of the population that likes porn, can, via HSIP, use it to get hooked on the dopamine and neurological reward highs watching it, and PMOing, can produce.

    This ability to become addicted to HSIP means this relatively small percentage of the population shall eventually dominate the servile masses. OK, the last sentence was a lie, I just said it to see if you were still reading. Porn addicts as inevitable rulers of the world; I have to say a small part of me likes it....

    Smileyface emodicon.

    W.

    Read on. Study humanity's history with porn. The more you know, the better off you will be.



    Prudes shouldn’t go into archeology. The patina of antiquity may make a carved ivory phallus, Venus figurine, or vulva painting on a cave wall priceless, communicating to us from a mute, distant past. But transplant those images to the modern world and you get dildos, Playboy, and Georgia O’Keefe. Still, most prehistoric erotic art is abstract, disembodied. It doesn’t explicitly depict sex-crazed ancients screwing their brains out for fun and fertility.


    But one little-known, mysterious archaeological site does. The Kangjiashimenji Petroglyphs are bas-relief carvings in a massive red-basalt outcropping in the remote Xinjiang region of northwest China. The artwork includes some of the earliest—and some of the most graphic—depictions of copulation in the world.*

    Chinese archeologist Wang Binghua discovered the petroglyphs in the late 1980s, and Jeannine Davis-Kimball, an expert on Eurasian nomads, was the first Westerner to see them. Though she
    wrote about the carvings in scholarly journals, they remain obscure. Google retrieves only a few results, depending on the spelling. The petroglyphs deserve more attention.

    The cast of 100 figures presents what is obviously a fertility ritual (or several). They range in size from more than nine feet tall to just a few inches. All perform the same ceremonial pose, holding their arms out and bent at the elbows. The right hand points up and the left hand points down, possibly to indicate earth and sky.


    The few scholars who have studied the petroglyphs think that the larger-than-life hourglass figures that begin the tableau symbolize females. They have stylized triangular torsos, shapely hips and legs, and they wear conical headdresses with wispy decorations. Male images are smaller triangles with stick legs and bare heads. Ithyphallic is archeology-talk for “erect penis,” and nearly all of the males have one. A third set of figures appear to be bisexual. Combining elements of males and females, they are ithyphallic but wear female headwear, a decoration on the chest, and sometimes a mask. They might be shamans.

    The tableau is divided into four fully-developed scenes beginning at a height of 30 feet and progressing downward. In the first scene, nine huge women and two much smaller men dance in a circle, seemingly admonishing their viewers. This is the only scene without ithyphallic men—though to the side, a prone bisexual has an obvious erection. Two symbols near the center look like stallions fighting head to head.

    The second scene is packed with weird happenings. Women and men dance in a frenzy around a large ithyphallic bisexual about to penetrate a small hourglass female with an explicit vulva. His breastplate depicts a female head, with a conical headdress just like his. On the left, a second bisexual in a monkey mask is about to penetrate a small, faceless female. Nearby, a pair of striped animals lies prone amid bows and arrows, while at the other end, a giant two-headed female seems to lead the ritual. Disembodied heads abound, perhaps indicating spectators.

    The next scene is smaller and cruder. A chorus line of infants emerges from a small female being penetrated simultaneously by a male and a bisexual while three more ithyphallic males await their turn. Another figure holds a penis longer than he is tall, pointing it at the sole large woman in the scene. She stands in front of a platform on which a faceless body lies prone, wearing what looks like the striped animals’ fur. The body resembles the females copulating in this and the previous scene. It is the only figure shown with its arms lowered, probably indicating death in a ritual sacrifice. A small dog is also at the center.

    The last full scene contains no obvious women at all, though the floating bodies on the upper right may be female. Ithyphallic males and a bisexual take part in a frenzied dance. One male seems to have his arm around another while a loner near the bottom seems to be masturbating as a parade of tiny infants streams from his erection. It looks a lot like a frat party.


    There are four additional scenes that seem more like sketches. Two include a pair of dogs and another depicts male and female torsos with multiple heads. The last figure has a very long penis but the body of a woman and seems to be wearing a conical hat. I think of it as the artist, though no artist could have carved such a large, complex, and detailed tableau in a single prehistoric lifetime.

    While fascinating in themselves, the petroglyphs also reveal a great deal about the earliest human settlement in China’s westernmost region. The intricately carved faces all display the long noses, thin mouths, and defined eye ridges of the Caucasian face. The people in the petroglyphs came from the West.

    While unprecedented in Central Asia, the iconography echoes images far to the west. Triangular female figures with the arms held like those in the petroglyphs often appear on Copper Age pottery from the Tripolye culture in what is now Ukraine. The dog symbols are also strikingly similar.


    Could the cultures be related despite a distance of 1,600 miles and an untold number of years? The answer depends on who created the petroglyphs. While Chinese scholars attribute them to nomadic cultures from 1000 B.C., Davis-Kimball points out that nomads generally create portable art and not huge tableaus. The makers of the petroglyphs had to have been a sedentary people, since the elaborate artworks appear to have been carved over a period of centuries. This narrows the potential candidates down considerably. The only time in prehistory when sedentary people are known to have populated the region was during the Bronze Age, the millennium prior to 1000 B.C.

    The faces of these settlers are known to the world from desiccated corpses, perfectly preserved down to their eyelashes and the weave of their clothes. These mummies have been
    excavated by the hundreds from Xinjiang’s dry and salty desert sands since the 1980s.

    The oldest and most intriguing bodies came from a 20-foot-high, man-made sand mound about 300 miles south of the petroglyphs. Known as Xiaohe, or Small River Cemetery No. 5 (SRC5), it was found in 1934 but then forgotten. The site is in a remote, restricted desert where China conducted nuclear tests. Rediscovered in 2000, the site had to be completely excavated in the following years to protect it from looters. Under the sand lay five layers of burials, from which 30 well-preserved desiccated corpses were recovered, the oldest dating to 2000 B.C.

    The discovery proved politically explosive because most of the Bronze Age SRC5 mummies had long noses, eye ridges, and red and brown hair, none of which is typically Chinese. The Caucasian features seemed to contradict the official government view that the Han Chinese had the oldest historical claim to Xinjiang, dating to the second century B.C.


    The question of which ethnic group lived here first is a serious issue today. Most of Xinjiang’s inhabitants are not ethnically Chinese but Uyghur—they belong to a Turkic-speaking, Muslim nationality that numbers 9 million and gives its name to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. They are indistinguishable from typical Europeans, and their ancestors first settled in Xinjiang in the ninth century. Uyghur nationalists, who want greater religious and cultural freedom and more autonomy from China, latched onto the ancient Caucasian mummies to claim deeper historical roots in the region.

    The political conflict hampered research for a while. But when a 2010 genetics study concluded that the oldest mummies weren’t Han Chinese but weren’t Uyghur either, both sides backed down, leaving the subject to scientists and scholars where it belonged.


    The cemetery where the mummies were found was unique in the world for its time. The site bristled with nearly 200 poplar posts, up to 12 feet high, and it required extravagant amounts of lumber. Some of the posts, painted black and red, were either torpedo-like or resembled oversized oars. The bodies lay on the sand, covered with boat-like coffins wrapped in cattle hides.

    Viktor Mair, a professor of Chinese language and literature at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the foremost experts on the mummies, writes that SRC5 was “a forest of phalluses and vulvas … blanketed in sexual symbolism.” The torpedoes were phallic symbols marking all the female graves, while the “oars” marking the male burials represented vulvas. Many female burials contained carved phalluses at their sides, and the mound also contained large wooden sculptures with hyperbolized genitalia. “Such overt, pervasive attention to sexual reproduction is extremely rare in the world for a burial ground,”
    according to Mair (pdf). DNA from the male corpses shows Western origins, while females trace to both East and West. Mair and other scholars think that the mummy people’s ancestors were horse riders from the Eastern European steppe who migrated to the Altai in Asia around 3500 B.C. After 1,500 years, some of the Altai people’s descendants, herding cattle, horses, camels, sheep, and goats, ventured south into what is now the Xinjiang region. Squeezed between the Tien Shan Mountains and the hot Taklimakan Desert, it is one of the world’s most hostile environments—a place so harsh that the Silk Road would later detour north or south to avoid it. But satellite photographs show ancient waterways in what is now barren desert, allowing those pioneers to survive in green oases in 2000 B.C.

    It must have been a precarious existence, with staggeringly high infant and juvenile mortality. Perhaps that explains the exaggerated attention to sex and procreation at the cemetery and the high status of certain women. The largest phallic post at SRC5 was painted entirely red and stood at the head of an old woman buried under a bright red coffin. Four other women were buried in rich graves that stood apart from the others.

    The fact that the world’s most sexually explicit graveyard was located a few hundred miles from the most sexually explicit petroglyphs can’t have been a coincidence.

    The fact that the world’s most sexually explicit graveyard was located a few hundred miles from the most sexually explicit petroglyphs can’t have been a coincidence.

    When I asked Mair if the petroglyphs could have been created by the people who buried their dead in SRC5, he said it was plausible. Perhaps the new immigrants carved the scenes to record their most important rituals for posterity.


    Mair also noted that Caucasian features and a cultural obsession with sex aren’t all that linked the two sites, both of which are in the areas of Bronze Age settlements. Almost every one of the SRC5 mummies—as well as Bronze Age mummies from other locations—was buried with a flamboyant conical hat, made of felt and decorated with feathers. Though stylized in the petroglyphs, the headdresses on the female figures are also
    conical with wispy decorations that could be feathers.

    The implications are tantalizing. Could the earliest scenes in the tableau represent fertility rituals originally brought from Europe by the migrants’ ancestors in 3500 B.C.? Do the large females represent high-status women like those buried in SRC5’s richest graves? Does the smaller size of the copulating females signify lower rank? If the two sites are indeed linked, why are men bare-headed in the petroglyphs but all wearing hats in the graves? Could they have been the bisexual shamans in the tableau? Or, as one Chinese scholar has suggested, were penises added to some of the female figures later, possibly signifying the shift from matriarchy to patriarchy? And is the iconography really linked to the Tripolye culture in the West or is it just parallel cultural evolution?


    These are just some of the mysteries surrounding the Kangjiashimenji Petroglyphs. Hopefully, now that the political pressures have abated, the site will receive deeper study. But whatever the answers, if any are ever found, the tableau is at the very least a spectacular demonstration of sex as one of the driving forces behind the creation of art.





    The next scene is smaller and cruder. A chorus line of infants emerges from a small female being penetrated simultaneously by a male and a bisexual while three more ithyphallic males await their turn. Another figure holds a penis longer than he is tall, pointing it at the sole large woman in the scene. She stands in front of a platform on which a faceless body lies prone, wearing what looks like the striped animals’ fur. The body resembles the females copulating in this and the previous scene. It is the only figure shown with its arms lowered, probably indicating death in a ritual sacrifice. A small dog is also at the center.
     
  18. well well .. how many sex fetishes of the ancients do we find in this article?
    And how long until your post will be banned?
    lol

    very interesting indeed!
     
  19. 1ANDDONE

    1ANDDONE Fapstronaut

    When I was watching porn, I had no idea about how it influenced my brain. I did not think it did. I knew I liked watching porn, but had no idea why I liked it. When the day came I decided to quit watching it, because I did not want to watch it anymore, I failed. That day, and many others, for a long time. What I did not appreciate was that while one part of my brain wanted to quit watching porn, another part of my brain wanted, very badly, to keep getting that dopamine high (which I had never heard of, prior to the Gary Wilson vid).

    When I see people here discussing being addicted to a fetish or category, or, even to porn itself, it saddens me, because I know, now, that porn is a tool; porn is a tool we use to trigger a neurological response we perceive as being pleasurable and satisfying.

    When we evolved to, more or less, our current form (we being us, humanity), we were hardwired to seek two thing, primarily: sex and food. For us, as with most species, nature does not really care about us doing anything other than surviving and making more of ourselves. After that, if we want to go out an make great art, literature, technology, whatever, nature is fine with it, so long as we are making babies.

    But, we are clever monkeys, and we have figured out a lot of ways to artificially produce a neurological reward. We can produce those neurological rewards naturally, as well, and some of that can be unhealthy.

    We call it porn addiction because that is what it looked like, shortly after we invented High Speed Internet Porn. HSIP allowed for the search for and consumption of that neurological reward that sexual thoughts produce, in a way far more efficient, prolonged, and profound, than anything that came before it, excepting, possibly, drugs. For a relatively small percentage of the population, they can use HSIP, to achieve a high, sufficiently often, that seeking and getting that high can become addictive. Are you addicted to P? No. You are addicted to the neurological reward you can produce using HSIP. That neurological reward feels very good to us, which is what evolution intended. Way before the invention of HSIP, we got a neurological reward, when we thought of, and had, sex. That reward, that dopamine high, is nature's carrot, to encourage to do what nature cares about--making, breeding, more of us.

    This problem is simply fixed, even if the fix hurts very bad. Understand that this addiction is not like a disease you caught. If you are addicted to the use of HSIP to achieve a neurological reward, you did it to yourself. It takes time and effort to bend the brain to expect that high every day, to the point of when it does not get it, you feel withdrawals. Forget about the type of porn you are watching. It is irrelevant. You are watching porn to get high, and you may hate the fact you are watching porn, but, you love the high it gives you, and to overcome this problem you are going to have to do something that TOTALLY SUCKS. You are going to have to give up that high. Put another way, you are going to have to learn to live with getting it via naturally evolved actions that produce it, like, er, actual sex. That is the simple solution. It is going to hurt, of course. Once you have conditioned your brain to get that high, it does not want to live without it. It's going to punish you when you say "no." And, you will have to say no about 10,000 times before it quits asking you for it, begging you for it, punishing you for not giving it, reasoning with you to get it. I feel sorry for those of you who are going to quit, but not that sorry, because I have already gone thought it. There is no other way out, so to those of you, sticking around in this place, hoping for an easy way out, forget it. The pain you feel, when quitting, all the things you hate feeling, the fog, the anxiety, the depression, the feeling that living is hell, all eventually fade, to be replaced with bliss (LIE!), to be replaced with a life not reliant on artificial super stimulation to get a high from. Quitting porn fixes no problems in your life except your reliance on porn problem, but I do think that getting clean makes fixing other problems more likely.

    You can do it, just be aware of what you are doing. Are you quitting porn? Sure, but what you are really quitting is getting high from using it. Know yourself, understand what you like and why you like it. Gabe Deem: Read Everything. Get Educated. Don't be afraid of the pain. Quitting hurts. Period. Like getting addicted, quitting porn be a mind game. I embraced the pain. The pain means you are not giving your brain the thing you have conditioned it to want very badly. Like some asshole here once said, you have to learn to love withdrawals.

    Fix it now, don't waste another year on it.

    Much love.


    Will I AM 1ANDDONE.
     
  20. Summer Son

    Summer Son Fapstronaut

    Hi William thanks for posting! Can I ask you some questions? I understand the "Porn is just a button to get dopamine high" sentence. But something out got my attention. And you said that:
    Firstly, I did not understand exactly this, why the porn category that we watch is irrelevant? For instance we wired our brains some or main one category or categories, and we condition ourselves to watch exact same category for many years, a lot of addicts do this. He know his category, he knows the pornstars names of the special porn category, he knows how can he reach these kind of category etc. There is actually these kind of categories have their own websites. Some porn producers create websites for specialized categories, probably most of viewers share similar tastes. One user watch the category "A" and other person watch a different category "B" instead. I actually thought it is some kind of conditioning like just watching porn. I personally obsessed one of porn category for many years.

    And for the second: Do you think "Once an addict, always addict" thought is true or beneficial mindset to recovering? I know we have to quit completely because we hardwired our brains to pixels instead of reality or we have a lot of porn neural pathways in our brain and it is not 'cure' that completely but isn't it a depressing thought? I always thought: If you decision better, in time you will better.

    So, how do you feel now? How it feels years of sober from porn? I remember your saying in 5 months clean: "Today I'm clean for five months and I feel unbeatable" What is difference between 5 months clean and years of clean from your porn induced 'dopamine addiction'. I personally had 5 months streak this was my best and I had too much times 90+ or 120+ days. And I am curious about it. I never had 1+ years of sobriety. And I want to break this cycle completely. Forever. I never even thought controlling my porn use, I always wanted to be free forever.

    Thanks!
     
    Last edited: Dec 20, 2019

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