PMO Addict for 17 years :/ Serious About Quitting This Time!

Recognizing something is addictive can be helpful in understanding why it has such a hold over people. It can help u be empathetic towards urself and others to see that something was engineered to be highly addictive to ur brain. For example, heroin addicts. Many people consider being addicted to heroin a "moral failure" of some kind, like its ur fault for being weak and not having willpower and u deserve no sympathy. But that is a toxic and outdated mindset. Its much more complicated and difficult than that because of how addictive heroin is on a biological level to the brain. But I agree u cant just stop at calling it an addiction and then do nothing about it. At the end of the day those people still have to make the choice to stop doing heroin, and they should be given the support to do so because of how complicated fighting an addiction can be. Same with P: P addictions are real, it fucks with your brain on a biological level, but ultimately it is still up to u to stop and to break that cycle of addiction. I think on a base level u and I agree that we are in charge of our lives, but that doesn't mean that these things aren't addictive. It means that just because something is addictive doesnt mean u have to give in to it. Hope that makes sense.

 

Do you find yourself experiencing any positive mental/emotional changes?

 

For me, the urge to look at porn is a compulsion over which I don't have control. I've tried stop, gone a few weeks, even a couple of months once, but always went back. I've been doing this for 50 years, knowing full well it could destroy my marriage (which it might be doing at this very moment), endanger my job, which is fairly public, a lot folks in my community would sure find out. If my PMO habit were discovered somehow, I know I could literally loose everything. Yet I still do it. It's been progressive too. Frequency of use, intensity of the images. Doing it all this time, despite knowing full well the consequences of my actions, trying stop but can't - these are classic symptoms of addiction.

Although I've tried 12-step programs, therapy, spiritual traditions and practices, nothing really worked because I never made the decision - really made a decision - to stop. Until now. I've really decided to stop and have fully commitment to doing everything it will take stop. I'm grateful for this community. Honesty is the opposite of addictive behavior, and I'm inspired by yours.