Trying a gradual method for kicking the habit

I have all the knowledge necessary to kick the habit but have still been unable to do so after multiple reboot attempts. I always fall back.

Recently, I read about a method some have used to abstain from porn by breaking they're behaviors down into subgoals that are accomplished over time. I'm going to use this thread to track my goals and give updates on my progress to see how it works for me. I'm not going to list every reason for trying this method other than I think it might work better for my personality type than quitting cold turkey.

Here are my subgoals:
1 month no porn videos, only porn images
3 months only nude images, no explicit sex
3 months separating masturbation from image viewing (never at the same time)

I will continue to avoid pornography. But if I do relapse, I stick to the rules outlined in my subgoals. I may modify these goals over time. If I have a hard time with a particular goal it might just mean it needs to be broken down further.

 

Actually I am a software engineer, haha! That's probably why this method appealed to me.

 

I've heard this too. I definitely took that into consideration before beginning this program.

 

So it's been 12 days since I've started. I gotta say, I'm starting to believe this might work for me. My first week I did look at pictures for a few days, but found that constraining myself to pictures was still satisfying but made it hard to really "get into it". It was enough to satisfy the porn dragon, but lacked escalation. I would get bored of the pictures and then just "finish" my session. No more drawn out sessions that last until 2 in the A.M. I've discovered that pictures are not even in the same ballpark as high quality streaming video in terms of stimulation. Also, there were no feelings of shame or guilt involved because I was still meeting my stated goals. If I started to feel guilty or ashamed, it's really easy to say... "Hey, it's still better than last week because I'm not watching videos".

After doing this for 2 or 3 days, I found that indulging my addiction was MUCH less satisfying. Still somewhat satisfying, but much less. After the first few days, it didn't seem worth it to me to keep doing it (because it's a bit boring compared to streaming videos) so I haven't looked at any P images since. That's huge for me. It's only been over a week without P, but that is a rare occurrence for me. And it was easy.

Now, I don't want to get ahead of myself. I had a vasectomy a few days ago, so I've been hesitant to do anything sexual while I'm healing. So it'll probably be a few more weeks before I can really start vouching for this as an alternative method for others who've also struggled with quitting cold turkey. But initial results are going as well as I had hoped.

I should also note that I've been studying philosophies of stoicism which may be contributing to my success. This has been extremely helpful in terms of learning how to regulate my responses to emotions. It's basically the practice of setting aside emotions (both positive and negative) and opting to use reason and intellect when dealing with situations. I think this is a must for anyone with an addiction, so I would highly recommend watching some videos on stoicism. This is the video that got me interested:

and I'm currently reading Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.

Also, because these are long-term goals I will probably not be logged in as frequently, but will try to post updates weekly as well as if I fail any goals.

 

It's been a while since I've posted here so I thought I'd share an update and some thoughts on this method. It was working great for me for a while, but I recently relapsed into watching videos again so I'm going to share what I think went wrong and what modifications I'm going to make to my "program".

Who this could work for
Previous commenters have said cold-turkey is the best way to quit PMO. And I completely agree. I think if you can quit cold-turkey, you are going to see the positive effects of quitting much more quickly. The method I'm proposing here I think would be most helpful to those people, like myself, who have attempted to quit cold-turkey multiple times only to find it gets more difficult with each attempt.

My results so far
I've found that just by cutting out streaming porn I was able to experience a number of the same effects as quitting P entirely. The dopamine hit is mild compared to streaming porn, so there's less of a desire to relapse. When I began exclusively looking at images, I found that my desire to look at porn began tapering to the point where I stopped looking at it completely for a good amount of time. Part of this I think was because it would help me avoid the "withdrawal" symptoms that would always bring me back to P such as anxiety and insomnia.

I would compare this method to giving a meth addict methodone instead have having him come down cold turkey.

What went wrong
When I switched from pictures only to nudes only after the first 30 days, I found the "thrill" wasn't strong enough to satisfy me so instead of going back to my previous goal I gave up all together. Instead of switching to nudes only after 30 days I should have stuck with images only for a full 90 to give myself time to adjust before cutting out P entirely.

Pitfalls
There are lots of sites that contain both video and image porn. I will restrict myself to a few sites that contain only image porn so as to avoid the temptation watch videos.

It's easy to get bored with images only, so escalating to videos is a strong temptation when starting out.

Modified 6 month program, starting today:
90 days with no video porn, then
90 days no PM