Get educated, get tools, and learn to love withdrawals

Awesome job! This is the unofficial NoFap guide, surely.

 

Thanks for your response. Now, here is the official NoFap guide I think if there is a function like "thread owner only" which shows us the only the author's posts it could be better for functionality. Also, these posts can help for others like a porn addiction recovery book. I personally, read William's posts again and again and I always wanted to read them all without clutter and distraction. In my opinion there are several resources which are highly valuable for porn addicts. Some user's posts on the internet like William, some Youtube channels, yourbrainonporn and nearly I discovered this amazing website:
http://www.recoverynation.com/recovery/recovery_workshop_contents.php

It is a bit old website but I think it is highly efficient.

The reason I put together and organize William's post on these forums with a PDF file because in my opinion, as an ex-user William did great job. Some people also helps us to understand the science behind addiction but they don't know what is the addiction exactly. But ex-users know and they can empathize with us as who the users suffering with addiction, for many years, desperate to quit... And they gives us hope. They gives us the opinion "It can be done." Because in some point of the addiction we start to think like "This is impossible to quit." With years of years conditioning we start to think the addiction is the thing part of us. No, it is not. And these guys like William, Gabe, Noah, Alex, Mark and a lot of others shows us.

My life consumed with lots of recovery efforts, so please if you decide to quit porn, never look your back, never turn your behaviour and never feed your addictive patterns. This is the way of quitting.

William, you turned our heads with science. And of course your highly valuable perspectives, aspects, and encouraging posts of quitting porn. So thank you. I hope one day, I can control over my life again and hope create effective posts to help others.

 

Hi William! I just wondered what do you think about circumcision, this is pretty common in the USA and a lot of countries. Can this surgery effect sexual life or even can it create porn related problems or sex related problems? I am searching about this topic and I felt miserable. I read articles like how important is foreskin etc. I know pornography addiction is about 'brain' but I am curious about your thoughts. Even I search foreskin restoration, my porn related brain doesn't stop, it fires up because the contents are too graphic, but I'm not gonna let a full blown relapse.
Thanks already!

 

Hi Summer. I have no thoughts on circumcision. As you point out, this problem is 100% in the brain, 100% above the belt, and 0% below it. Humanity is obsessed with its sexuality because that is the way nature wants it to be, because that obsession leads to reproduction. Even without High Speed Internet Porn, which is the problem this place deals with, we were obsessed with our sexuality. The neurological reward event which pushes this and all other successful species to make more of themselves preexists HSIP. Perhaps the most successful survival trait there is in any species is the drive to reproduce. In humans this translates to obtaining the neurological reward event, aka dopamine high, via sexual thoughts as well as sex itself. The disconnect, for purposes of this forum, is porn, and specifically the recently invented High Speed Internet Porn. We have always achieved the reward event via porn, but HSIP is different. It is far more efficient than older versions of porn at achieving that event. In that sense, HSIP is about the most efficient "tool" we have invented to achieve the reward event, and for some, it is even more efficient than sex itself.

In this place the conception of porn must begin and end in the brain. Don't let your dick get in the way. Peace.

 

hello

thank you very much for your words, to me is really worth to work hard to understand, really understand how my brain is connecting the dots!!
peace & love

 

@choloteco Hi choloteco, thanks for the kind words. People with this problem usually out think it, and have all sorts of wrong ideas about what the problem actually is, at first. Once it is understood this has almost nothing to do with sex or porn, but 100% a brain issue, the problem becomes a small problem. This problem has nothing to do with your character, morality, prior bad life experiences, etc. We are born with brains that are pre-wired to make us think about sex, and love thinking about sex, just prior to puberty, and then almost every day until we die. That is nature's natural and healthy way of encouraging reproduction. The most successful survival trait in any species is the ability to reproduce. In humans that means thinking about sex, looking for sex, searching for sex, anticipating having sex, and good old fashioned sex, results in a lot of neurological rewards, but the dopamine high is a whopper. Many people are not conscious that the ONLY reason porn is interesting is because of the dopamine hit it produces. We call it "porn addiction" but that phase is incorrect. We, humanity, invented that phrase around 2007 when people who had begun watching High Speed Internet Porn began to notice problems quitting. In truth, if anything is addictive it is the neurological reward (aka dopamine high); and that is true for all things we identify as addictive. Think of porn as a tool you are using to create sexual thoughts, and thus a dopamine high. Porn may be the most efficient tool we have ever invented to do that, possibly more efficient than sex itself. You have to do 2 things to fix this problem: 1) put the tool down, and I mean absolutely down, and 2) sweat it out until you don't miss it anymore. Just that simple.

Much love.

Will I AM

 

Thanks for this, I agree with you, P is a tool to get high, is a toxic technology that depends of my use and my will : !Put the tool down!

 

@1ANDDONE : I took your words to translate the message and keep it in my journal in spanish, thanks again

 

De nada. Muchas gracias. Paz, hermano.

 

wtf, a 9 8 year old post

 

Hi Guys. This post is dedicated to Gary Wilson, who I just learned had passed.

I don't post here much anymore. Have gone months without scanning the site. Last post was in April, this year. I overcame this problem year ago, but the problem is still of interest to me.

First post, as @Infidel.48 recently pointed out was December 16, 2013. No shit, WTF? This was, I think, my first post.

https://forum.nofap.com/index.php?threads/get-educated-get-tools-and-learn-to-love-withdrawals.2402/

Like most, I did not think of porn as a problem for a long time. I probably conceived it as about as problematic as video gaming, until I tried to quit it. I mean really quit it. That is when I knew I had a problem, but I did not really know what the problem was. I just knew that stopping viewing porn and quitting PMO seemed impossible and painful.

Like most of you, once I conceived of this behavior as a problem, I got very serious about researching my problem, and that is when I found Gary Wilson. His Great Porn Experiment video opened my eyes, like when Neo takes the pill....

https://giphy.com/gifs/OTHERCOLORS-matrix-illusion-already-been-made-VbEloWwOz3QqYBsqIZ

Yes, the solution to this problem is CHOICE.

By the way, The Great Porn Experiment. Newbies ought to be required to watch it and test into the site before being allowed to become members. Here it is:



If you do not understand the basic concepts in the above video, you will not overcome this problem. If you do understand the basic concepts, you might find a way out.

I remember finding myself alone in hotel, on a trip, struggling, when I found the video, and suddenly my eyes were opened. It allowed me to understand why I, and you, and every other homo sapien on the planet, are motivated by instinctual urges that are hardwired to motivate us to do some very simple and necessary things, like, reproduce, and how we (us, humanity) had found ways of triggering those neurological reward events via artificial stimulation, in this case artificial sexual stimulation, the way we can use drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, food, gambling, and, of course, porn.

It was still hard to quit, but once I understood what I was quitting (using porn to get high), it was suddenly, for the first time since I recognized the problem, doable.

Gary Wilson's studies of this problem, and his publications on the topic, may, actually, have saved my life, and on some levels undoubtedly did.

If you are reading this and you are serious about quitting, read Gary Wilson. If you are not serious about quitting, don't bother, because to quit, you have to be serious.

Shout out for Gary Wilson.

Thank you Sir. You helped.

WilliamOneAndDone.
WillIAM
Billy the Kid
WILL
1ANDDONE

 

William, you’re a legend. Thank you so much for your time and efforts.

Your posts have helped me immensely in my life.
And I hope to do the same for others.

 

Sorry man , I didnt know you were the op.

 

Thank you for inspiring us! Nofap really works.
I also got to know about porn addiction from Gary Wilsons video. He was a legend. RIP .

 

I just wanted to give this thread a bump. William if you’re still out there you don’t know how much this one helped me to get where I am right now. This entire thread is loaded with solid gold. “I’m not quitting porn. I quit porn! “

 

Old thread and great it's been resurfaced . Sometimes your brain needs is acknowledgment . And this is exactly right . This is not easy , it is not going to be easy. It is going to be hard and you better get used to that fact

 

Thanks for the information, it's an interesting study.

 

I don't post here much anymore. My first post here was in 2013. Back then we were just starting to figure out the neuroscience of porn. We, as a species, are really pretty new. The planet is 4 billion years old. We only learned to speak about ten thousand years ago, and only learned to write about five thousand years ago. Just before that time we learned we could use porn to elicit a neurological response that we liked. Call it a dopamine high. So, think of porn as a "tool" which the species learned it could use to achieve a high, because, as a species, we like to invent tools to get high. We have done that many times, with alcohol, drugs, gambling, gaming, etc. We can abuse sex in that way as well. That "high" is a naturally evolved event, the purpose of which is to encourage sex, which leads to reproduction, and the ability to reproduce is probably nature's most prized and successful survival trait in any species. But that is the BIG picture. The SMALL picture is that you need to study yourself and understand you are just using this tool to get the high. That is the first step, understanding what you are doing, how you are using the tool, what you are using the tool for. Understand as well there is no moral element to liking that high; we are programmed by nature to love it. OK. That is the fact. Porn, though, is a relatively new tool we have invented to get to the high, so our understanding of that is relatively new as well. We did not invent the tool to give us the high, but once we invented the tool, we came to understand that it was a very efficient means to achieve the high. Porn is a means to an end, and the end is a dopamine high. When you give up porn what you miss is not porn, is it the high porn gives you--translation, it is the neurological reward event that porn results in, which feels like, well, good, satisfaction, euphoria. Food does this as well, but not quite as efficiently. So, what you are doing when you are quitting porn is not really quitting porn, (though, yes, you are quitting porn); what you are doing is quitting using porn to get high, so you are quitting getting high. You can look for my older posts by searching William or WilliamOneAndDone. I went 12 months without porn before I said I was fixed. I probably did not have to go that long, but, back then, porn addiction was a brand new concept and we did not really understand it. Probably, if you seriously abstain from getting that high in that way, you are over it in about 90 days, or what we used to call it: "the hard 90". That is 90 days no porn, no porn substitutes, no using sexual thoughts to get that high. 90 days not high. Yeah, the withdrawals suck. They feel very bad to you because to you, the person quitting, they are up close and personal, especially in the beginning. But, they fade, and one day you wake up and porn, and the fact you are quitting it, does not even occur to you. It's just gone. Quitting porn only takes time, effort, commitment, and pain. Pain is the price of freedom from this. Be willing to pay it or be a slave for life. I paid it. You have to consciously be aware that you will experience withdrawals, and you have to embrace the fact that withdrawals are your brain re-adjusting itself back to pre-porn normal. You have to "Learn to Love Withdrawals." Sucks, there it is. Quitting porn requires you to embrace the pain of quitting porn. Know that going in, and you will probably be successful. The pain passes, but no way out of here without the pain. One of the side effects of quitting porn is that, once you have, you will never break under torture. OK, that may or may not be true, but it is OK to have a sense of humor about this absolutely ridiculous situation you, and me, and many others have found ourselves in. Hope this helps. By the way, you can go to Youtube and look up Gary Wilson, the Great Porn Experiment. He is our Morpheus. Understanding your brain is the first step to freedom. Much love. Willam. AKA WilliamOneAndDone. AKA 1ANDDONE.

 

I love that you continue to come back and post here.