Get educated, get tools, and learn to love withdrawals

Thank you for the message. I appreciate the support. I never thought of the addiction as a dopamine high, I just have porn in my life and routine. It makes sense to study the causes as opposed to the addiction itself

 

Hey Bad Guy, thanks for the post. It is VERY IMPORTANT for everyone here, fighting the problem, to understand that our problem is a brain problem. It is not a sex problem, it is not a porn problem. The problem comes down to a perception problem. It is difficult to understand because it is difficult to conceive that one part of our brain can perceive something as A, whereas another part of our brain can perceive something as B. The part of the brain that actually thinks knows porn is not sex. However the part of the brain that rewards porn with a dopamine hit cannot distinguish porn from sex, thinking of both are rewarded with a dopamine spike, but with porn, that dopamine ride is potentially endless due to the endlessly searchable images online and the fact that we get a dopamine hit not just in response to artificial sexual stimulation, but new, different, artificial sexual stimulation, ala the Coolidge Effect.

Though not exactly the same phenomena take a look at the dress in this link.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/28/b...on-about-a-dress-and-the-world-weighs-in.html

I am sure some of you have seen this. My mind perceives the dress as white and gold. But, I have a number of friends who swear the dress is blue. Point being it is the same dress, but different minds perceive it differently. For humans, perception is reality.

The problem we have is that though consciously we know there is a difference between reality and porn, that part of our primitive brain which rewards thoughts of sex or pursuing sex does not make the distinction. Thoughts of sex and pursuing sex is, in that part of the brain, rewarded with a dopamine high (because it feels great) as a means of encouraging reproduction. It is that primitive part of the brain that operates for a basic, necessary, and primitive purpose, to reward sex as a means of perpetuating the species. But we did not evolve with High Speed Internet Porn. Even the older forms of porn, while fascinating to some of us due to a dopamine high, are not addictive like HSIP. Why not? They are finite. Even a great porn magazine is limited by something HSIP is not, that being a beginning and an end, covers, a finite amount of artificial sexual stimulation. HSIP is for practical purposes infinite. You could spend a lifetime in front of your computer and never see the same image twice. Because of that, the primitive part of your brain that rewards "hunting" for new sex with a new partner never has to quit rewarding you with a dopamine high. And from that comes the addiction, which is actually dopamine addiction, porn is just the button we push like lab rats to get our drug of choice.

The good news is you can change it, but it is incredibly helpful to understand it first. I tried and failed to quit porn for over a year. The day I understood porn was just a button I was pushing to get my real drug, dopamine, I quit shortly after and forever. Almost two years clean. You unconsciously, unwittingly, unknowingly, in ignorance, trained your brain to love porn induced dopamine highs. That took months, for most years, for some decades. It will take you at least 3 maybe 4 months of total abstinence to get clean, aka the hard 90. But if I can do it, you can do it.

Peace.

Billy Bones.

 

Edit 4-10-14. I began this thread in 2013 because I kept watching newbies visit and post the same questions over and over. I wanted to start a thread that answered most of those questions in one place, and I wanted to give an example of how many of us have become free, and have taken off the chains of porn. This thread is for porn addicts for whom porn has caused problems in their lives, who compulsively search porn, over and over, and on some level believe it is impossible to quit. I am here to tell you, it can be quit, you can quit it, you can take off those chains. Now, it took you years to get addicted, so, take time to get smart about the problem. If you are serious about quitting porn, read this post entirely. Reading this thread will not cure you of porn addiction, but it will allow you to begin your journey armed with important knowledge. Where we end up often is dictated by where we begin. Do not begin in ignorance. Get educated. Now, go make a pot of coffee, make a pot of tea, get a water, and block about 1 and 1/2 hours to read this post--and all the links--to the very end. That 1 and 1/2 hours could potentially take years off fixing the problem we share. If, at the end, you take anything positive away, please repay the favor by posting something positive and helpful.

William. Peace.

Above, my first post on this thread.

My first post on this forum was November 17, 2013.

So, here we are again. That time of the year, again. What time of the year again do you mean, you may ask. It's that time of the year where I post another year clean post.

I know what a lot of newbies are thinking about this post because when I was a newbie I had much the same thoughts, because the addiction is sooo fucking frustrating. Those thoughts go something like this: Fuck you William, fuck you you mother fucker, you fucker you fucker! you fucker, goddamit, who is this asshole, what the fuck, what the fuck!, what the fuck, how does this asshole go two years and I have problems going two days, he can go fuck himself, fuck him. Fuck him! Why is he posting this??!! That smug SOB. I think he's a lier. Asshole.

It is helpful to be humble in quitting, and it is helpful to be self deprecating and to have humor. In the beginning of quitting we are caught in a trap. You can despair of this or...you can think "I am fucking caught in a goddamn trap, fuck! I am not as smart as I thought I was...OK, not so smart guy, how do we think ourselves out?"

Truth is, even I don't know how long I have been clean. I go back and look at my old posts, and it varies from the 17th to the 18th of the month. I do know that on the 18th of July, 2014 I posted one year clean and done. Honestly, as I write this, I don't know how many days my counter says I have been clean. I don't care. I am way past counting. My message is not about seeing how long you can go without, it is about quitting it forever, period. My counter is just there to tell newbies it can be done. I did not put a counter on until well after a year clean. For me this was never about seeing how long I could hold my breath, this was about a lifestyle change, about seeing if I could quit breathing. Obligatory Matrix reference follows.



You see you have trained your brain to mistake porn for reality. You have to train it back to rewarding what is real.

When you have done it, you will take your counter off. You will quit counting. The counter is just training wheels, when you are ready to roll, you won't need it anymore. So, for fun, I thought I would answer some questions that I have gotten over the last two years. Remember--and this is very difficult--to be most successful in quitting porn, you have to make it fun, and on some level that means laughing at the pain quitting causes. We are all ridiculous on some level. Own that and quitting will be easier.

1. Who are you really?
I am a Young American.

2. Have you really never, ever, relapsed in 2 years?
Never.

3. No way, really??!!
Really, really, really.

4. Are you selling something?
No.

5. Do you ever watch porn?
Avoiding porn is actually easier than most addicts think in the beginning. If you are not looking for it you probably won't find it, but an addict tells themselves it is everywhere, and thus unavoidable. That is the addiction talking. So, no, I have seen it, but I don't watch it. Watching it hurts, like edging, like getting hungry, but with nothing to eat. So, I don't watch it. That said, our culture is drenched in porn substitutes, which we must avoid, but also cannot completely avoid, and so must plan on dealing with.

6. How do you like the auto save function of this site?
Hate it. It makes typing this message practically impossible.

7. Have you never relapsed?
The counter is accurate, even if I don't know what it says.

8. Do you ever edge?
No, hate that feeling.

9. Do you ever MO?
At 13 months clean I experimented with it. Found it difficult. It was no longer a reward pathway that was easily accessible. It was unhelpful, and so, have I during the last 2 years? Yes, a few times after 1 year clean, but now, no. I advise once you get clean, don't look back, stay clean. Make this a lifestyle change.

10. Do you have sex, can you have sex?
Yes and yes. I quit for my SO. I could not reach O without porn. This hurt her self esteem, which of course hurt me. It came down to a choice: make her happy or continue being a slave to porn. The decision to quit porn was easy. Quitting it, on the other hand, was one of the most difficult things I have ever done. They don't call it an addiction because it is easy to quit.

11. How much sex have you had, how many women have you slept with?
I honestly wish I had only been with one.

12. Have you been with guys?
No, but to each there own.

13. Did you ever watch gay porn and do you think it makes, you gay if you do?
I have watched every genre of porn this side of legal. Never watched anything illegal, thank god. Part of the addiction is seeking out things that are novel, new, strange, or different. Has to do with the Coolidge Effect. You must understand your porn tastes, what you watch, has very little to do with your actual sexual tastes. We watch porn to get a dopamine high. If watching gay monkey sex or alien animated hentai rape sex is what it takes for you, after you have desensitized every other reward pathway in your brain, an addict will watch it. What porn we watch to get a dopamine high has nothing to do with sexual orientation. My advice: Get clean first, then figure out who you are. Then be it.

14. Are you really William? He said he was "done". You don't write exactly like him, and some of the guys say you are not him.
In William's first year here he posted 692 times. Since that time I have posted 62 times. If you look at my name it has "done" in it. I like to think of William as an idea, an idea you can get free.

15. What is the most important thing in quitting?
You have to embrace the pain. You have to Learn to Love Withdrawals. You have to laugh at the ridiculous place you find yourself in.

Peace.

Will.

PS: Shout out to Coco, my favorite fapstronaut.

[

 

I'm interested @WilliamOneAndDone in knowing how many days you went without sex, MO, PMO, etc. Or did you not do hard mode?

 

@headedup. Hi. To understand my story it is important to understand I first started to quit approximately 3 and 1/2 years ago, in the first quarter of 2012. At that time I had never heard "porn addiction" put together as a phrase. The concept of "porn addiction", while being explored a bit by psychologists, was still a long way from being something most people had ever heard of or actually believed existed. Being as few had identified the condition as a sickness, even fewer had identified any method of fixing the problem. I now know porn addiction does not really exist as such, but the problem is actually porn induced dopamine addiction, porn is just the button we push to get a dopamine high. So, understand, this forum, as it exists now, did not exist then, nor did a lot of the concepts we now use. Initially, in 2011, nofap was started on Reddit, but initially the emphasis was on not masturbating, rather than dealing with porn as an addictive habit. It was almost a joke, let's see how long we can go without MOing, rather than achieving a life style change. The first post, I think, which I think was by Alexander, is this:

* Absolutely NO fapping. No self pleasure AT ALL throughout the month of July. We will post starting / finish line threads to let you know when the challenge begins and ends.
* Female Redditers are 100% welcome.
* It is up to you whether you want to allow yourself to have sexual intercourse or not. Please state this in your original post.
* Keep us updated! Make a reply to your original post at least every couple days.
* I strongly encourage you to also create a punishment for yourself if you do not complete the challenge. Preferably a punishment which you can film and post here
* Help motivate your fellow non-fappers! Also, if anybody posts pornography, they will be banned.

From Reddit, Alexander began this forum around April 8, 2013. At least he is the first poster in the Newbies section and that is the date he posted his introduction. So, if you do the math you will see this forum began almost 3 months prior to my "going clean" date, of July 17, 2013. The search feature on this site as it currently exists is not the greatest, so when I searched the words addict, addicted, and addiction, I got no hit prior to this year, which I know is wrong because I was posting back in 2013. Point being I don't know when anyone here first used those words "porn addiction" to describe the problem they were having. Same with the word dopamine, the search engine of this site says it was first used in 2015 when I know it was being used in 2013. Interesting, when I searched this forum for "the hard 90", it appears I was the first person to use it, in October, 2014. On May 16, 2012, The Great Porn Experiment was published on Youtube, I believe. It is a great explanation of how the addiction starts, or can happen, on how dopamine is released in response to porn and artificial sexual stimulation. I saw that video on or around July 17, 2013, and went "clean" then. But I did not go "hard mode" because I was unaware of hard mode, I had never heard of it, and if the concept existed, I was unaware of it. Understand that by the time I found this place, I was already past 90 days clean, no porn, no PMO, no MO. I recommend the hard 90 for most newbies which for most is OK because they cannot or are not having sex, so most are not actually giving an act up they are actually engaging in, however, for most, the ability to have sex is the long term goal of the reboot. If a guy is having sex he is not as bad off as some because at least he has not developed PIED. For that guy I suggest the hard 90, but if it would damage their relationship, then just caution them not to think of porn at all during the reboot, especially during sex.

So, given the history and development of these concepts, I will answer your question. I have gone, now, 2 years with no PMO. I have gone 2 years with virtually no porn, and no searching out and watching porn. I spend 4 hours a day on the net, so a few times I have seen it. For the first year I might not even have seen it at all as I was avoiding it like the plague and still had filters on. After year one I took my filters off, lightened up, allowed myself to see R movies, etc. Still cautious and aware, but absolutely certain I was never going back. "Back" was PMO, at its worse, multiple times a day for years. I had sex throughout the last two years, but I had developed DE, which is a misleading phrase that or addicts should be called inability to reach orgasm unless with porn. This bothered my SO which is why I decided to quit. I did not know it at the time but I also was developing PIED, and was only functioning at about 85% down there. When I first began quitting it took real effort to reach O without thinking of P. Prior to then I was having sex but was unable to reach O during it. Now everything works 100% and I only think of my SO during sex. As I mentioned in my prior post I did experiment with MO around 13 months in, and found that I could do it, but no longer enjoyed it. I had desensitized that brain reward pathway, but as Gabe Deem says, the ability to MO without porn (and I did not PMO or use porn during that experiment) indicates the addiction has left or is under control, or alternatively, PIED is on its way to being cured. One of the "tests" for the addiction, not science, but common experience, is the inability to reach O unless with porn. I can do that now, though I don't. Along the way I saw mention of hard mode. If you look at my first post on this thread, December 16, 2013, you will see I don't mention "the hard 90". I did say it won't be easy, and I said it takes between 11 and 90 days, which I now know is wrong. No one gets clean in 11 days, and most are still struggling at 90, but at 90 days it is common experience that the struggle becomes much easier. That first post was my 4 months clean attempt at helping others, and by then my philosophy of quitting was almost where I am now, but was still developing a bit as my education proceeded. If you go back and look at my older posts, from November, 2013, you will see I was still struggling to conceptualize the problem, and my initial posts are me struggling with whether porn or MO is the problem. I see a lot of Newbies still struggle with that question, but I cam to realize the question is a distraction from the cure. The cure is not struggling through some journey of self exploration in an attempt to understand the mechanics of the addiction, the cure to the addiction is not overthinking it, but, rather, not thinking about it much at all, and implementing a radical and difficult life change which I call the hard 90. 90 days of avoiding artificial sexual stimulation to get a dopamine high. There is no part of this method that I did not rip off from other guys who posted before me, but I think from the number of people that have read this thread that I put them together is an interesting and compelling way. I hope this answers your questions and gives you a bit of history on the development of both identifying the problem and one guy's attempt at reasoning out a method to cure it. I am not a scientist, just a guy with a problem who found a way out. I want to see every other person here with this problem to find a way out, too.

Much love.

Will I AM

 

Thanks for the long and helpful post @WilliamOneAndDone . If you don't think 11 days is sufficient, you may want to consider making an edit to your post. I remember seeing that post when I was a newbie, and thinking that it would be possible to do in 11 days. This is a pretty well-read thread, so that stat might affect a lot of people.

 

Going through a really horrible time. PMO multiple times in a day have left me weak and frustrated. Feels like all the life has been drained out of me but the addiction won't go away. Really need help. Someone please give practical suggestions to cope with this nightmare.

 

Jay, I would honestly carve out an hour or so and read this WHOLE thread, beginning to end. A great place to start.

 

Agreed

 

Hi Mates. Sacrosanct| just sent me this link: http://www.thecoreofattraction.com/online-porn-induced-ed-how-to-fix-it-now/

It is an important link. Read it. Especially is you are a newbie and you want to know what is going on in your head. First, make a pot of coffee, a pot of tea, plan on about 20 minutes of uninterrupted time to read the link. It is IMPORTANT for you to understand what is going on in there. Thanks Sacrosanct |.

 

I thought this thread was lost in the site move! Glad to have found it -- I remember it being a treasure trove of information when I first came here a year ago!

 

Hello everyone! I'm new in here and gladly want to say that I made a decision to fight with this addiction! I'm glad about finding this great community and really hope this time is the final one, this time is the time I'm winning the fight, I had no idea there are so many people like me and reading success stories made me strong today.. Thank you Fapstonauts for sharing these stories here and on reddit too.. I'm so down on myself for being here.. I was so much time in denial but now I realized "I am addicted!" but this needs to change. It's really hard not being able to talk to anybody about this.. At least I wasn't able to do it until now.. Nobody knows I'm an addict of PMO and an online community where people support you in quitting but still being anonymous is great.. Why have't I thought about it before? Idk but this is the time I quit.. Thank you all and especially @WilliamOneAndDone for the PM

 

nothing's working for me at all. I've tried almost anything and everything to ward off my PMO but to no avail. My health, both physical and mental, is in ruins because of this devilish habit. Please help someone.

 

Hi Jay. Everybody here, everyone, including me, is or was where you are at some point in the recovery. It would not be called an addiction if it was not hellishly hard to quit. You need to take a deep breath, so to speak, back up, and make a game plan. No one shows up here and just quits. Everyone shows up here and says "I am quitting". We all make that announcement. It feels great to make that declaration. "I am free." No one gets free the first time. No one passes the "jump program" the first time. No one.

You need to quit trying to "ward off" your PMO habit. It cannot be warded off. It can be quit, painfully, not easily, but it can be quit. But there is no easy way to quit it, no way to ward it off. When you quit it, it is going to hurt. That is the first thing you must not only understand, but accept, embrace. You, like all of us, have had a great time, over years, thousands of times, abusing our brain's dopamine reward circuitry. It is important for you to understand that is what you have done. On the surface it looks like you have been PMOing. And you have, but that is not really what you have been doing. Porn is a button you are pushing to get your real drug. Your real drug is dopamine. Dopamine is the best drug in the world. We, as a species, have learned how to get it through artificial sexual stimulation. If a drug can be abused, we, humanity, will find a way to abuse it. We have always used porn to get a dopamine rush. Always. But, this is important for you to understand, porn induced dopamine highs were never addictive before the advent of High Speed Internet Porn. HSPI offers us something we never had before, "we" being humanity. HSIP offers us endless novelty, endless newness, endless and eternal ability to search out and see new sexual imagery. There is no front and back cover to the internet. You can sit in front of your computer 24/7 and search for--and find--images your brain has never seen before. When you do, you get a dopamine high. You see Jay, dopamine is not released only to sexual imagery, though it is, but it is released also, to never-before-seen sexual imagery. I don't want to bore you but this has to do with the Coolidge Effect, which is why rats will, given the chance, fuck themselves to death if given an uninterrupted supply of new partners, and why humans will (some of us anyway) sit in front of a computer or smart phone and endlessly search for a new sexual image to experience, "experience" meaning, getting a dopamine rush.

This is cause and effect, Jay. Very important for you to understand this. PMO is not something that is happening to you, it is something you are doing to your self. You are not the victim here of PMO or porn. You are seeking out porn and PMO for one very specific reason: It gives you a dopamine high. Period. Dopamine is the only reason you find watching porn interesting. If you and I and the rest of us here got a dopamine high from mowing the grass, I promise you every lawn would be mowed. So, let's stop conceiving of the problem as something that is "happening to you", and start, first, conceiving of the problem as something you are doing to yourself, and understand you are doing it because, even though you hate the problem, a dopamine high is the best feeling in the world. You will not fix this until you understand and accept what is going on, what you are doing, that you are using porn and PMO as a means to get a dopamine high.

OK. Now what? You are addicted to a dopamine high. Welcome to dopamine's high anonymous. There is only one cure for dopamine addiction, and that is quitting watching porn. This has to be a lifestyle change for your Jay. You need to make a plan for a new Jay, a different Jay, a Jay that does not compulsively watch porn, over and over, does not PMO, over and over, on a daily, probably hourly, probably multiple times an hour, for the rest of your life. That is the big picture and is a bit intimidating, so, rather than be intimidated, I suggest the hard 90. That is your goal. Will 90 days totally sober fix you? No. You will struggles after that, but...if you can get 90 days in, your porn consumption will become a choice, not a compulsion. It will not be something you automatically do, almost without thinking about it. At 90 days out, if you can make it that long, and many of us have, you will think first before using, and when you think first before using, you will probably choose not to.

So. Jay, here is the plan. You are going to picture a future in which you are 90 days clean. It may not start today, but it will start. 90 days of no dopamine highs via artificial sexual stimulation. Does not sound very interesting, but it has to be done. Will you have dopamine highs in that time? Yes, dopamine highs occur naturally, but artificial sexual stimulation is not "natural". This means no porn, no PMO, no porn substitutes, no MO, no O, no sex, no vanilla porn. When you want to spank the monkey you slap your hand. Anticipate now that you will really, really, really, REALLY want to use in those 90 days, and figure out ways now, in advance, how you are going to NOT. You have been giving yourself a dopamine high, multiple times a day, for years. You like it, we all do, but you have to anticipate your brain is going to punish you when you turn off the dopamine spout. This is the downside of being addicted to the best drug in the world. When you quit it, you WILL go through withdrawals. Can't be avoided, don't even try, don't try to think your way out of it, accept it, embrace it, it will be hell, you will suffer. At some point you will think to yourself "if this is what life is like without porn, I don't want to live." Everyone who quits has that thought. But, it does not last forever. I will go through today, for instance, and not even want to watch porn. I don't need a dopamine high anymore. My "habit", these days, is NOT getting a dopamine high. You will call me a liar when I tell you the truth: these days I find porn boring. Porn consumption is, unconsciously, a learned habit. Porn abstinence is also a learned habit. Not watching porn is sort of like an exercise. Something you have to do every day. In the beginning it is terribly hard. But, if you do this right, by 90 days out, it becomes your new habit, your new routine. Not watching porn, not wanting to watch porn, will actually become easy to you. I know, you think I am lying, but I am not. Am I saying you will never want to watch it again? No. We will miss that dopamine high, the one we got through porn and artificial sexual stimulation, forever, but the longer we go we miss it less and less. When you first begin you will miss it about ten times a minute. In fact, in the beginning, "missing it" will be your reality as you struggle every moment of every day not to go back. But when you get free of it you will miss it every few weeks, then months, then years. One day you will wake up, go through your day, and go back to sleep without even thinking about PMO. I promise you, this can be who you are. Who you can become. I promise you.

Will.

 

Will, great post as always. I had some binges last weekend but I'm trying a couple of new techniques I learned from the Reboot camp to try and shut this down for good. Thanks as always for your inspiring words.

 

Thanks Will. I'll not let so much inspiration go waste. Thank you so much.

 

Hello Gentlemen. Thank you for the words of encouragement. Very soon I will be taking my counter off because it is totally irrelevant to my porn free life. A friend PMed me today and this was my response, which I hope helps a bit. Much love. WilliamOneAndDone.

It is important to have a reason when quitting, a good reason, a reason that is important to you. Gary Wilson, of YBOP, asks the very legitimate question: why quit? Point being, this habit is a habit we probably would not quit unless it had some bad repercussions in our lives. Cigarette smokers would not quit if it did not affect them adversely. They lose lung capacity and eventually get cancer. There are all kinds of bad results from using porn all the time. From PIED to social interaction problems. I saw your post from earlier, about not being able to go more than two weeks. When I quit, I quit. I did not count the days, I woke up every morning and said to myself I am never going back. I think that is the mindset you must have. Quitting was horrible, an unpleasant time in my life, incredibly hard. I see you are a very positive person, and I think that is great. Now, don't take this the wrong way. You need to stay positive, but, ultimately, you have to get mean. You have to HATE it. Porn cannot just be a toy you are trying to put down but having difficulty walking away from. You have to want it dead. You have to want to kill it. You cannot keep porn in your life, even just a little bit, and quit the addiction. With the counters, a lot of guys approach this like seeing how long they can hold their breaths. Problem: no one can hold their breaths forever. Solution: you have to learn how to quit breathing. You have to expel porn from your life, defriend it, excommunicate it, loath it, hate it, reject it. The big mistake a lot of guys make is thinking if they can go on a few three week periods without porn it will get easier. It does not. There is only one extremely difficult, unpleasant, hurtful, mentally, physically, emotional torture-ous way to beat the addiction, and that is to starve it to death. If done right--and this sucks, I know--quitting porn will be the most painful thing you have ever done in your life. Let me say that again so I am clear, "If done right, quitting porn will be the most painful thing you have ever done." If you are not embracing the pain of quitting, you are not quitting, you are trying to keep it in your life, but control it. Porn addiction cannot be "controlled"; it has to be eradicated, it cannot be coddled, it must be murdered. You have to plan on the pain, expect it, anticipate it, know its coming, and even learn to want that pain. That pain is your brain readjusting to the new reality and the new reality is you are not giving yourself a dopamine high every day, repeatedly, through exposure to artificial sexual stimulation. That mindset does not have to last forever, but it does have to last for at least 90 days. Don't try and quit casually, don't do it in your spare time. During the hard 90 quitting must be how you define yourself, it must be your occupation, your religion, your reason for living, the reason you get up in the morning, the reason you go to sleep at night. Those who most successfully quit porn are consumed by quitting, it is their passion, their reason for living. Not forever, but for the hard 90. Once you get clean you can focus on other things like...reality. Take a look at your hand. Literally, hold your hand up and look at it. Is that what you want to be married to for the rest of your life, is that what you want to come home to with good news, or bad? Is that what you want to take out to dinner and have vacations with? Your hand? If you have any chance of reconnecting with reality you have to destroy the addiction, destroy it. It will not be easy, and it won't be pretty, so plan on hard and ugly right now. This is my advice to you.

 

Make this thread a sticky. So many answers here for the daily questions that appear on this forum.

Brilliant work William

 

Hi Booster, thanks for the kind words. I don't think it should be a sticky, but that has been discussed. I think it is much more effective as a "living thread" when people like you take time to post on it. Truth is there is no information in this thread that can't be found on a lot of others or sites. The main thing for me, when I first posted it, was to talk about something that really was not being talked about back then, being withdrawals. Gary Wilson, and YBOP, had gone to lengths to prove High Speed Internet Porn was addictive. **Important to note and understand--High Speed Internet Porn is addictive, your father's porn stash of Playboy and Penthouse, very interesting to our brain's dopamine reward center, but not addictive. The culprit is High Speed Internet Porn. That was a revolutionary idea for me and many others because it suddenly explained our sever compulsion to watch it and PMO. Until I got that information I, like many of us here, felt my problem was a sexual problem. As Gary would say, I thought my problem was "below the belt". But it was not. I and every other porn addict's problem is a brain problem, above the belt. The thing is, while you and I on one level know there is a difference between what is on the screen and reality, one part of our brain does not distinguish. That part of our brain rewards any sexual thought with a dopamine hit. That is the first thing that any one wanting to quit must understand. Everyone reading this must ask, seriously ask, yourself: Why do I love it so much, why do I want it so much, why does it feel like I need it, why is t so difficult to quit. The answer: Dopamine is the best drug in the world, every time we have a sexual thought we get a hit, and High Speed Internet Porn allow for something that was never before possible, endless, novel, sexual thoughts that allow for a non stop dopamine high.

This site was initially created as, literally, a "nofap" site. Pretty obvious, right? It was also a bit tongue in cheek with the nofap "challenge" seen almost as a friendly, fun, way to try and adjust what to some had become problematic. But it was only around that time, historically, that we were beginning to figure out that fapping was a much, much bigger problem than just the physical act itself. Something is different about the practice now versus then, "then" being before we were fapping with the assistance of High Speed Internet Porn. As a species we are wired to be fascinated with sex. Translated, we are fascinated with thoughts of sex. The reason those thoughts can feel intoxicating is because they literally are--via a dopamine rush, perhaps the most powerful motivational brain chemical there is. Dopamine feels great. It is the result of a few million years of evolution and is there to compel us, motivate us, to procreate. Why? Simple, to promulgate the species. It is the brain drug that makes us want to have sex and without it we might not ever have sex. Never having sex = bad for the species. But High Speed Internet Porn was not a phenomena that was present in our evolution. Truth is, most drugs were not, so we are susceptible to them primarily because we never developed, in an evolutionary sense, a defense against them.

But when I started this thread, while that basic truth was recognized: sexual thoughts = dopamine high, High Speed Internet Porn = super addictive dopamine high, not a lot of people were talking about the other side of quitting, which was withdrawals. If huge doses of dopamine feels like the best thing ever, then taking it away feels like hell. That is why people have difficulty quitting. It is not because they don't want to, they really, really do. But many think the problem is a sexual problem, many do not acknowledge they are addicted, many still do not believe porn-induced-dopamine-addiction is a real thing or that it could be happening to them. And some fail to appreciate that while the "challenge" can be helpful to quitting, quitting completely is the only cure. An addict cannot pick up his addiction and put it down like a toy. For an addict it has to be completely abandoned. That thought was not fully developed when this site began because the concept of porn induced dopamine addiction was not fully developed. Now it is. Take a look at this:

http://www.nofap.com/news/the-nofap-academy/

Hit the vid. Alexander and Mark Queppet are talking about "quitting porn", not a 30 day challenge, a lifestyle change. A before and after you. A porn free you. Changing your brain's dopamine reward pathway to eliminate porn as a button you push to get high. These guys are great. Their approach is a bit broader than I espouse. They are talking about quitting porn to improve your life, whereas I prefer to preach "quit porn first, then improve your life", but different approaches may work better for different guys. The one thing everyone agrees with is "Get Educated". Knowledge is power. Knowing what is going on in your head is essential.

Much love.

Will I AM

 

Gracie just posted a link to Kevin Skinner's writings on Rebootation. This is the link and it is full of insight. Gary Wilson of YBOP asks the always relevant question, "why quit?" I mean, really, it is a totally valid question, that anyone reading this needs to ask themselves every day, why quit? Stop what you are doing and ask the question. Don't ask why you watch porn, we all know the answer: a dopamine rush feels great, easy answer. Ask the question: Why do I need to quit, why do I want to quit, why must I quit? If you cannot come up with an answer, you are not ready to quit. There is only one reason to quit and that is because porn induced dopamine addiction has caused some negative consequence in our lives. If it made our lives better, we would not quit it. In some way, it has made everyone reading this worse, there has been some negative consequence. One of the ways they define addiction is doing something compulsively, despite it having a negative consequence. This series of articles by Skinner tends to focus on the effect of porn abuse on our SOs. That is the reason I quit. My SO felt threatened by the attention I was giving to porn, as opposed to her. At the time, I had no idea why, no understanding or empathy that being focused four hours a day on hypersexualized imagery and pixels would bother anyone. I was clueless that it could have a negative effect on her image of herself or how I saw her. Looking back, I was a dick. It was only when I first started trying to quit, and started getting sweats and chills, major depression and anxiety, flatling sexually, that I realized "this is a major fucking problem for me." That scared me, because I realized, only then, that porn was defining who I was as a human being. Guys, you have to quit porn if for no other reason than you cannot let it define who you are. You define you. You define you, not porn. This is the way it has to be. You have to man up and don't let this thing define you, don't let it stay on top. You have to realize the party is over, time to get sober.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/inside-porn-addiction

Peace.

Billy the Kid.