Get educated, get tools, and learn to love withdrawals

Porn abuse is a very solitary, self focused, activity. But, it also helpful to remember that it affects our sexual partners by diminishing our desire for them and warping what we expect of them. A good article on that.

http://www.alternet.org/sex-amp-relationships/my-ex-boyfriend-was-porn-addict

 

I randomly stumbled across this web site, but found it interesting. If you have a half hour I would recommend surfing it. Some good info. One of the things the link illustrates is that porn spikes dopamine levels slightly higher than actual sex, but, also, allows that level to stay higher, longer. I suspect that is because porn, much more so than sex, allows for a never ending search for constant novelty.

http://pornographyaddiction.com/porn-viewing-effects-on-dopamine-levels-infographic/

 

A member just PMed me to ask a question. The question translates roughly to: After I am rebooted, can I now watch porn again. My response.

I just posted a link on my thread. The speaker there talks about "atrophy" of neurological pathways. This has to do with brain plasticity. That is our ability to change what our brain's reward. He says directly what Gary Wilson implies: We can change what we "like" by consciously identifying it, and choosing to reward, or enjoy, only that. Wilson calls it "brain plasticity", or the ability of the brain to be molded, either consciously or unconsciously. We have trained our brains to reward porn with a dopamine spike. We did not do that consciously, but we did do it. The speaker on the link is referring to what Gary Wilson calls "desensitization." Crudely speaking, we love porn, because it gives us a dopamine high, one of the ways we overcome that, is by denying ourselves that path to a dopamine high. Eventually that reward pathway becomes desensitized, or, atrophied. To answer your question, yes, in various forms, be it hardcore P on the internet, or softcore P on cable, I have experienced pornographic visuals after my reboot. I am desensitized to them now. This means they are still interesting, but far less, than when I was an active consumer. Those pathways to a dopamine high have atrophied. Still, we, the species, swims in its sexuality. Like it or not, good or bad aside, sex is very interesting to us because we have evolved for it to be one of the most interesting things in our existence. That is nature's way of encouraging something nature has determined is an excellent trait; the ability of the species to mass produce. As for P, during the reboot I absolutely avoided it, like the plague. In fact, probably fair to say I feared experiencing it. It had to be that way. Now...I am indifferent to it. I know it could trigger me, though it will NEVER trigger me to relapse. I can still find it interesting, because, being a member of the species, I will always find sexual thoughts interesting, but I am never going back to that lifestyle, and it was a lifestyle, a porn lifestyle, a PMO lifestyle. I used to need porn with coffee in the morning just to get motivated. I did not understand, back then, that P gave me a "feeling", the feeling felt great, but it was, and only was, a dopamine high. Again, nothing morally wrong with dopamine highs, but they can lead to adverse consequences in the real world. Like Wilson says, if P did not cause problems in our lives, we would not quit it. But, it does, at least for some of us, so some of us have to quit it. Prior to my reboot, for years, I got "high" from seeing porn, a dopamine high. A dopamine rush is a natural, evolved, response, to sexual thoughts. High Speed Internet Porn made that response, potentially, and ultimately, addictive. I did not know that was possible. Now, a long time after my reboot, if I experience porn, I still find it interesting, because a dopamine high is interesting, it is the definition of interesting, but that response is much dulled from back then. It is dulled because I have consciously chosen to atrophy that reward pathway. I consciously changed what I "liked" so now, though I find it interesting, I pretty much "dislike" it. Molding our brains that way takes at least months. I got hooked on porn unconsciously, but got unhooked very consciously. I consider it unhelpful to judge using porn to get hypersexual thoughts, to get a super dopamine high, to get a feeling of euphoria. I consider it helpful, however, to understand that is what we are doing, when we do that.

 

This is an interesting article. The future is now, sex sells. The neuroscience of dopamine is now, consciously, being utilized in the advertising business. It has been used, unconsciously, for a few thousand years. We knew we liked sex, we knew, as a species, we were fascinated with sex, and thoughts of sex. But, only in the last five years has it been established that thoughts of sex produce a dopamine rush. And, nothing makes one have thoughts of sex more than porn. If you have any feedback on this article, I would love to read it.

**Interestingly, the article points to a study which says something very important when understanding what the addiction really is. The addiction is about anticipation, and that is about thoughts, as in thoughts of sex. A lot of us think we have to be touching ourselves to get a dopamine rush, but, no, just thinking about sex, imagining it, anticipating the possibility of it, is what gives us a dopamine rush. This is 100% in the brain, above the belt.

Peace out.

Billy the Kid.

http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2015/10/21/adwords-ctr

 

Yeah, Porn messed up with my brain and my soul. Probably i saw it as an easy way to get that pleasure, but its not real. It destroyed my thinking, making me think like a prevert all the time and creating difference between me and my self image. I respect women, i don't like to see them do horrible stuff they do in those videos but i was training my brain to search exactly that. Man, i am telling you it reached a tipping point when i searched for rape in the porn and ejaculating to that, that feeling i can't forget, i felt huge stress in my forehead, and it really shook my moral compass. I am never returning to this now, ever.

And yeah admitting the problem is a part of the solution itself. I made all kind of excuses to myself, that it is good, everybody does it, it is necessary for a man, etc,.. all crap ...

Started hard mode, and continuing forever now...

Thanks for the above video and info, really helpful in getting to know the problem.

 

Hello Gentlemen. Now we begin. This is the Gary Wilson video that changed everything. Gary does not love this video because he thinks it is simplistic. It is. That is why it is so effective for us. Porn addicts pretty much need simplistic. I am almost three years clean now. Almost every day is easy for me when it comes to not being a slave. That does not mean I don't have moments where I miss the little death that the addiction gives us all. If you are reading this, if you are a slave, in the darkness, where you feel there is no way out, I say to you: Choose life, choose light, there IS a way out. Keep going. Porn is not an option.

Much Love.

 

I wish I had something profound and deep to say about the reboot. I don't. Porn addiction is, really, a very, very, simple thing, a brain reaction to High Speed Internet Porn. Watch it=dopamine high. Watch it hours a day, every day, for years=porn induced dopamine addiction. No one became addicted the first time. It took us years, and we had no idea it was even possible. That said, nothing you took years to become addicted to is going away in a day. It's going to take time, and effort. You are going to have to, in the words of Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin, going to have to "consciously uncouple" from porn.

I look at the reboot as an exercise. It is a chore. It is work. It takes effort. To be done right, it takes a LOT of effort. It is not enough to merely understand that quitting is going to be painful; to be successful, you have to want the pain, embrace it. It cannot be a side gig. If you want to get clean, it cannot be done casually. But, you can get clean. 90 days is not a magic number, but, many of us who have gotten clean have gotten clean by first putting in the hard 90. The only thing I can say about the hard 90 is, once you actually do it, you know it can be done, you know you can do it, forever, which, in the beginning, for the porn addict, is the impossible thought. If you are reading this, and you have had that horrible moment of self honesty, that moment when you concede you are addicted, you have to embrace the impossible thought. The impossible thought for a newbie is, "I can quit this." At the beginning of the hard 90 you will say I lie. At the end of the hard 90, if you can swim that far out, you will be telling disbelieving newbies the good news.

Keep going. Porn is not an option. Porn is death worship. I invite anyone who is reading this, who is addicted, to take off your chains and worship life.

Much love.

PS: On a completely unrelated note, I have recently seen a totally brilliant, weird, and totally fucked up film, which I recommend you watch. If you are in this place, you will get the humor. Trigger warning, there may be a sex scene. This is the feature song from the film Frank. I share its general sentiment. I have absolute confidence anyone reading this will become totally clean. I KNOW you can do it. I know it. The trick is, you have to know it too. Once you get that trick down, it becomes SPAM REMOVED (spam code #001) - REPORT TO MODERATION. Peace.

Copy and paste. Skip ad. Facial expression, open, embracing, wry, seasoned, with a hint that all reality has a hidden punchline that we will inevitably find, but whether we laugh or cry...is yet to be seen.

 

Thank you WilliamOneAndDone! Let me swim far out

 

Hi Guys, thanks for the kind words.

I think that if you don't have dark humor in the beginning of the reboot, you will find ample reasons to find it, as well as make fun of yourself, during the reboot. It is a method of coping with the pain and the withdrawals. It is no shame to admit the ridiculousness of our situation, and laugh a bit at it.

One of the first things most of us feel, when admitting to ourselves that we are addicted, is despair, depression. Just admitting that sucks, and, as anyone in the reboot knows, the pain of withdrawals only makes that worse. But, if you can push on, push on through to the other side, it gets much better.

Jon talks about a formula. The formula is this: Get Educated. Get Tools. Learn to Love Withdrawals. It goes something like this.

Get Educated. Study your problem. Yes, porn addiction only looks like your problem. It can, and usually does, in the beginning, look like a HUGE problem. But, if you study it, you understand it is not. Sexual thoughts lead to a dopamine high. The dopamine high from sexual thoughts is just about one of the best feelings we can have. We love it, it feels great. Liquid bliss. So, first thing, understand the problem only looks like porn addiction. It is not. You are addicted to riding the dopamine high sexual thoughts give you. And, nothing allows for non stop sexual thoughts like porn. This phenomenon only became possible with the invention of High Speed Internet Porn. Older forms of porn, while creating a sexual thought, and a dopamine high, were fascinating to us, but, were finite and limited in how much of a dopamine high they could give us. High Speed Internet Porn allows for the constant search for novel, never before seen, sexual imagery, leading to, potentially, a non stop dopamine high. That is where the addiction forms. You must understand that you, unconsciously, for years, trained your brain to reward those thoughts, fed by porn viewing, by giving you a dopamine rush. Point being, you bent your reward pathways to reward porn. This also means you can bend it back by deadening that reward pathway, aka, desensitizing your brain to porn. Understand what I just said: YOU CAN CHANGE, YOU CAN DO IT, QUITTING THE ADDICTION CAN BE DONE. There are a lot of tricks to this but, bottom line, you have to quit using porn to have hypersexual thoughts, meaning you have to shut the dopamine drip off by eliminating artificial sexual stimulation from your life for a time, which time we call the reboot. Study the problem, read about it, go to YBOP. You may ask, how does studying the problem help? For one, in the beginning, in ignorance, you might attribute things to your condition, you might judge yourself, in terms of morals, or religion, or personal failings, or weakness, and in the beginning the problem seems HUGE, overwhelming. But, once you understand you are just using a mind trick, using porn to trigger a sexual thought, to get a dopamine high, the problem, so defined, becomes much smaller, more contained. It is no longer the thing that defines your existence, but becomes a small thing in your universe. Huge problems are difficult to solve, small problems are much easier. Take time to study what is going on in your brain, and you will see your problem as much smaller than it looked before you understood what was happening. In studying the problem, you will also come to understand why the problem hurts when you kill it. You have unconsciously wired your brain to reward hypersexual thoughts. When you deny yourself that pleasure response, your brain does not like it. Those are called withdrawals.

For an excellent discussion of what withdrawals look like, read this:

http://yourbrainonporn.com/what-does-withdrawal-from-porn-look-like

Get Tools. In addition to taking no time to study the problem, just saying "Hi, I am here and I am quitting", one of the biggest reasons I see guys failing is not utilizing tools outside themselves. Don't try to quit this on sheer will power alone. You will need will power, but you need to find things outside of yourself to aid you in quitting. One of the biggest tools is porn blockers. Put them between yourself and the thing that triggers a dopamine rush. When quitting, avoiding artificially produced dopamine rushes IS the thing you have to be doing. Most guys use K9. I did, but there are a lot of other such tools. For me, and probably you, nothing could stop me if I was determined to access porn. However, the blockers, even if I could get around them, slowed me down, and reminded me that I was quitting porn, and no longer using it. The blockers stopped easy access, stopped, instantaneous access, stopped compulsive, almost unconscious, access. In the middle of the addiction it takes two seconds, or less, to access porn, and, often, the addict does it almost unconsciously, just while surfing, we just detour to porn. The blockers are a stop sign. You can run it, but, even if they slow you down, they help. For me they helped, because they were reminders, notes to myself, of what I was doing, and what I was not doing. I was a man quitting porn, therefore, I was not accessing porn. The main way you overcome the addiction is to abandon it. In the beginning you are highly sensitized to porn, meaning you have trained your brain to reward seeing porn with a dopamine rush. You have to desensitized your brain to that reward pathway, and the only way to do that is not use it. Eventually your brain quits wanting it, badly, but between the beginning of the reboot and the end of the reboot, it wants it, badly, and will punish you for depriving it of its daily, multiple daily, dopamine rush. This leads us back to withdrawals.

Learn to Love Withdrawals. This is not possible, by the way. It is tongue in cheek. What it does mean is, know going in that quitting is hell. It is painful. It is time of great displeasure and self doubt. You will want to go back. When you abandon the addiction, I promise you, you will want to go back to it. Withdrawals are physical, mental, and emotional pain. The addiction will punish you, meaning, you will punish you. If it was easy to quit, it would not be called an addiction. You have to know this going in, and, you might as well take a calendar and block at least three months. You might as well mark them as "The Hell Months", because, during that time, you are going to feel like you are going through hell. You will feel like you are dying, you may even want to, but, just know, quitting the addiction will not kill you, or harm you in any way. The addiction will lie to you, it will tell you that unless you use again, you will die. Do not believe it. Eventually, this pain passes, but for me, and I suggest for you, rather than attempt to avoid withdrawals, or ignore them, or hide from them, I embraced them. I told myself, this is the worst feeling I have ever felt, and I can make this go away by giving up, but, because I will never give up, I am prepared to feel this hell, each and every day, all day, for the rest of my life, if that is what it takes to beat the addiction. Don't run away from the pain, and understand what the pain is. The pain is your brain healing. The pain is your brain resensitizing to reality, and desensitizing to artificial sexual stimulation. The pain is a good sign, because it means you are doing the thing you must do to defeat the addiction: You are not feeding it.

I am clean. Many others are clean, an have gotten clean. If you are a newbie addict, you are thinking, no fucking way can I quit watching porn. I tell you, porn addiction is a mind trick. You have to use mind tricks to fight it. If you are a newbie and think you cannot quit, I invite you to think, to embrace, the impossible thought: I am quitting, I am going to quit, this is it, I will never watch porn again, ever. You can do it. I have absolute confidence you can do it. I know you can.

Much love.

WILL.

 

Why do you emphasize how hard abstaining from porn is? Why do you compare it to dying? Aren't you overdoing it? Or have you really gone through such a hardship?

My longest streak was 23 days. Most of the time I stay clean about a week. My experience so far isn't, that my brain/addiction makes me feel bad but that it just makes me watch porn. Like a little devil that distracts me, lies to me, entraps me. And my strategy is to block this little devil on his way, long before he has come to my ear.
Also I try to make my life better, enjoy what I'm doing, stay active.

When it comes to "feel like dying" I rather can relate to this quote of yours:
QUOTE="WilliamOneAndDone, post: 420757, member: 26613"]I feel like I am dying. Every day I feel like I am dying, like total hell. And, if this is what I have to feel like, every day, for the rest of my life, to avoid going back, then I am feeling it, every day, for the rest of my life, because I am NEVER going back.[/QUOTE]

 

Hi, Jodukus. Good question. The death analogy is not completely an analogy. That "feeling" of hell is withdrawals. If you have not felt them, pray you don't, but, they are the reason guys have great difficulty quitting. If it was easy to quit, a place like this would not exist. Go to the forums, read the title threads.

What should I do?
Did porn make me transgender?
Help me! What is Mental Stimulation while Masturbating?
porn is ruining my life
Help!
I'm starting to cry over it...
Rant & small cry for help
Strange HOCD addiction (warning! Triggers!)
HOCD HELP PLEASE
how to cure porn addiction and sex and masturbation addiction
The hardest battle of my life | Pleas help me
I'm suffering from porn induced ED
HOCD Blackhole!
Can only fantasize of sadistic porn
Overcoming withdrawal
Hey all just need some help !
Just seems impossible to stop now
LIFE OR DEATH SITUATION!!!! I NEED HELP

These members are in pain. That pain is not imaginary, though, especially in the beginning, most of us don't know what or why it is exactly. We, some of us, just feel we cannot stop, because when we stop, we feel misery. These are not phantom pains. A porn addict uses artificial sexual stimulation to get a dopamine high. A dopamine high is just about the best feeling a human can experience. In fact, feeling "good" is a feeling we get, quite often, from doing something that gives a dopamine high. It feels like being alive in the best way possible. The opposite of that feeling is, yep, feeling like dying. In the reboot, the addict must deprive themselves of that feel good feeling dopamine gives them, at least via artificial sexual stimulation. You say, my experience so far isn't, that my brain/addiction makes me feel bad, but just that it makes me watch porn. You hit the dilemma on the head. The question is "how does the addiction make you watch porn?" What motivation must the addiction use to get you to watch porn? Is it the carrot or the whip? For guys like me, who have it pretty bad, it is the whip, because we are no longer fooled by the carrot. The momentary pleasure of a dopamine release, using porn, is overshadowed by the pain that we caved. The porn addict's problem is 100% a brain problem. We have conditioned our brains, via porn, to pump out, literally, one of the greatest feelings we can feel: A dopamine high. The bad feelings that come when we remove that are not imaginary, and for many of us, myself included, quite severe. Those horrible feelings are our brains readjusting to the new reality, or, literally, to reality itself, and away from artificial sexual stimulation. Take another look at those thread headings. Those guys are going through hell, but they want out. They simply perceive that the pain of quitting is too much. I have left out the many references to suicide that members have posted, members who say they would prefer death, to the feelings they have in attempting to quit, but perceiving they are unable. A life has to feel pretty much like death, if death is considered one way of escaping it. My message is that the pain of quitting is not too much. On a scale of 1-10, it is about an 11, but though, for many, it feels like dying, it will not kill you. But, you have to embrace that pain, know it for what it is, and eventually that 11 comes down to 0. You are 7 days in now. There will come a day, maybe a week, maybe two, when your addiction is going to tell you, you have to use, or else. The addiction will not tell you, exactly, what the "else" is, but for most of us it is the nightmare scenario of having to live with the horrible withdrawals we then are experiencing, because, at the time, it is impossible for many of us to believe they will never end, as in, if we give up porn, we have to experience that horrible feeling, forever. What I say is: don't believe it, because they won't last forever, but, also, it is helpful to quit looking for them stopping, quit praying for them to stop, and, during the reboot, embrace them as if they never will. Trust me, it is easier that way.

Hope this answers your question, and, thank again for the post and the kind words. You have the right attitude, that you are NEVER going back. That is the only attitude that gets a guy out of here.

Will I AM.

 

Thank you very much for your answer, William, it was good to read it and I think it's about an important issue for me, which I haven't attached importance to before.

I don't know if you posted the link or if it was a coincidence, but afterwards I read about withdrawal symptoms on YBOP. I thought: As with an package insert of a prescription drug I better don't read it too carefully, but it's good to have it. I refuse to be scared, or change my positive, proactive attitude only a bit. But I have some worries.

It's not true that I have never felt bad with urges. But I associate the bad feeling more with the aftermath of a relapse or a binge. But I understand now that the determined addict who goes for a full reboot is concerned with whatever the lack of the rush releases.
As we all know, replacing the drug with good and fun activities will help us here. I will continue to put together the puzzle and I'm willing to navigate my ship through every weather and every storm.

But I can't tell before I'm done.
Hopefully I can tell a little different story soon.

 

OK. Back to basics.

One of the first things most of us feel, when admitting to ourselves that we are addicted, is despair, depression. Just admitting that sucks, and, as anyone in the reboot knows, the pain of withdrawals only makes that worse. But, if you can push on, push on through to the other side, it gets much better.

There are many ways out of here. One is this:J Get Educated. Get Tools. Learn to Love Withdrawals. It goes something like this.

Get Educated. Study your problem. Yes, porn addiction only looks like your problem. It can, and usually does, in the beginning, look like a HUGE problem. But, if you study it, you understand it is not. Sexual thoughts lead to a dopamine high. The dopamine high from sexual thoughts is just about one of the best feelings we can have. We love it, it feels great. Liquid bliss. So, first thing, understand the problem only looks like porn addiction. It is not. You are addicted to riding the dopamine high sexual thoughts give you. And, nothing allows for non stop sexual thoughts like porn. This phenomenon only became possible with the invention of High Speed Internet Porn. Older forms of porn, while creating a sexual thought, and a dopamine high, were fascinating to us, but, were finite and limited in how much of a dopamine high they could give us. High Speed Internet Porn allows for the constant search for novel, never before seen, sexual imagery, leading to, potentially, a non stop dopamine high. That is where the addiction forms. You must understand that you, unconsciously, for years, trained your brain to reward those thoughts, fed by porn viewing, by giving you a dopamine rush. Point being, you bent your reward pathways to reward porn. This also means you can bend it back by deadening that reward pathway, aka, desensitizing your brain to porn. Understand what I just said: YOU CAN CHANGE, YOU CAN DO IT, QUITTING THE ADDICTION CAN BE DONE. There are a lot of tricks to this but, bottom line, you have to quit using porn to have hypersexual thoughts, meaning you have to shut the dopamine drip off by eliminating artificial sexual stimulation from your life for a time, which time we call the reboot. Study the problem, read about it, go to YBOP. You may ask, how does studying the problem help? For one, in the beginning, in ignorance, you might attribute things to your condition, you might judge yourself, in terms of morals, or religion, or personal failings, or weakness, and in the beginning the problem seems HUGE, overwhelming. But, once you understand you are just using a mind trick, using porn to trigger a sexual thought, to get a dopamine high, the problem, so defined, becomes much smaller, more contained. It is no longer the thing that defines your existence, but becomes a small thing in your universe. Huge problems are difficult to solve, small problems are much easier. Take time to study what is going on in your brain, and you will see your problem as much smaller than it looked before you understood what was happening. In studying the problem, you will also come to understand why the problem hurts when you kill it. You have unconsciously wired your brain to reward hypersexual thoughts. When you deny yourself that pleasure response, your brain does not like it. Those are called withdrawals.

For an excellent discussion of what withdrawals look like, read this:

http://yourbrainonporn.com/what-does-withdrawal-from-porn-look-like

Get Tools.

In addition to taking no time to study the problem, just saying "Hi, I am here and I am quitting", one of the biggest reasons I see guys failing is not utilizing tools outside themselves. Don't try to quit this on sheer will power alone. You will need will power, but you need to find things outside of yourself to aid you in quitting. One of the biggest tools is porn blockers. Put them between yourself and the thing that triggers a dopamine rush. When quitting, avoiding artificially produced dopamine rushes IS the thing you have to be doing. Most guys use K9. I did, but there are a lot of other such tools. For me, and probably you, nothing could stop me if I was determined to access porn. However, the blockers, even if I could get around them, slowed me down, and reminded me that I was quitting porn, and no longer using it. The blockers stopped easy access, stopped, instantaneous access, stopped compulsive, almost unconscious, access. In the middle of the addiction it takes two seconds, or less, to access porn, and, often, the addict does it almost unconsciously, just while surfing, we just detour to porn. The blockers are a stop sign. You can run it, but, even if they slow you down, they help. For me they helped, because they were reminders, notes to myself, of what I was doing, and what I was not doing. I was a man quitting porn, therefore, I was not accessing porn. The main way you overcome the addiction is to abandon it. In the beginning you are highly sensitized to porn, meaning you have trained your brain to reward seeing porn with a dopamine rush. You have to desensitized your brain to that reward pathway, and the only way to do that is not use it. Eventually your brain quits wanting it, badly, but between the beginning of the reboot and the end of the reboot, it wants it, badly, and will punish you for depriving it of its daily, multiple daily, dopamine rush. This leads us back to withdrawals.

Learn to Love Withdrawals. This is not possible, by the way. It is tongue in cheek. What it does mean is, know going in that quitting is hell. It is painful. It is time of great displeasure and self doubt. You will want to go back. When you abandon the addiction, I promise you, you will want to go back to it. Withdrawals are physical, mental, and emotional pain. The addiction will punish you, meaning, you will punish you. If it was easy to quit, it would not be called an addiction. You have to know this going in, and, you might as well take a calendar and block at least three months. You might as well mark them as "The Hell Months", because, during that time, you are going to feel like you are going through hell. You will feel like you are dying, you may even want to, but, just know, quitting the addiction will not kill you, or harm you in any way. The addiction will lie to you, it will tell you that unless you use again, you will die. Do not believe it. Eventually, this pain passes, but for me, and I suggest for you, rather than attempt to avoid withdrawals, or ignore them, or hide from them, I embraced them. I told myself, this is the worst feeling I have ever felt, and I can make this go away by giving up, but, because I will never give up, I am prepared to feel this hell, each and every day, all day, for the rest of my life, if that is what it takes to beat the addiction. Don't run away from the pain, and understand what the pain is. The pain is your brain healing. The pain is your brain resensitizing to reality, and desensitizing to artificial sexual stimulation. The pain is a good sign, because it means you are doing the thing you must do to defeat the addiction: You are not feeding it.

I am clean. Many others are clean, an have gotten clean. If you are a newbie addict, you are thinking, no fucking way can I quit watching porn. I tell you, porn addiction is a mind trick. You have to use mind tricks to fight it. If you are a newbie and think you cannot quit, I invite you to think, to embrace, the impossible thought: I am quitting, I am going to quit, this is it, I will never watch porn again, ever. You can do it. I have absolute confidence you can do it. I know you can.

Much love.

WILL.

 

Hi William, I'm doing this again and here I am. I just went 14 days then found myself looking and edging. I stopped midway through and didn't finish it disgusted with myself. I feel worse than ever now. Do you think I can still make it? Everytime this happens it ends up being a downward spiral for me. I want freedom soo bad.

 

Hi Landon. To answer your question, you can make it. This can be done. I have absolute confidence in your ability to do it. Quitting porn is always a choice. I see a lot of guys here who say things like "I can't do it," or "it is impossible,", or "it cannot be done." If you are going to succeed, you must banish those "can't do" thoughts from your head, and start thinking something like "I am going to do it, even if it kills me, I am going to do it, even if I die quitting." An addict has to take time to study their problem. So, what are we doing? We are using sexual thoughts to get a dopamine high. A dopamine high is the best feeling in the world. You don't have to reach O, you don't have to M, you don't even have to view porn. If you have unconsciously wired your brain to porn, then just thinking about sex causes a dopamine rush. Even if a guy is not addicted, thinking about sex gives a dopamine rush, but addicts are acutely effected. So, when you looked and edged, you were giving your self a dopamine rush. Understand that. The thing about us is, we can choose to use, we can choose to look at porn, choose to experience it, but...if we make that choice, we have no choice but to get a dopamine rush. That rush, once we have a sexual thought, is, for us, automatic, and very powerful. The other thing we have no choice about is withdrawals. I have seen guys say they never experience them, but that is hard for me to believe. When you chose to get your dopamine rush, it was to kill a withdrawal symptom. When quitting, the addiction punishes us with withdrawals. It is not just that we miss the high, it is that the brain, being deprived of a chemical reaction it likes and has become addicted to, makes us feel horrible for depriving it of that rush. That bad feeling you have, from watching, is partly a withdrawal, but, also, partly a good sign, because once we seriously start to ween ourselves off that neurotransmitter reaction for a while, when we get it, it almost makes us feel nauseous and sick, like a hangover.

I have learned to embrace the withdrawals, though I no longer feel them. But when quitting, I told myself every day, sometimes many times a day, "I feel like hell. I feel like death. I feel like I am dying, that I am going to die unless I use porn, but if I have to feel like this, every day, for the rest of my life, I will feel that, rather than ever go back." That feeling and that thought, for me, started to seriously recede after about 90 days, and I no longer struggle with it. You can be where I am, but you are going to have to be willing to say no to one of the best feelings a dopamine addict can feel. I promise you this struggle will not last for ever.

Much love.

WILL

 

This is so motivating! I wanna make it like the greats with years away from PMO. The most I've made it to was 7 days. And it's just been such a rollercoaster. I wish you guys could take me with you :']

 

William, your words were literally like a breath of fresh air to me. I was walking back to my house this morning feeling all the withdrawal symptoms and like I was going to use and now I'm sitting here on my couch listening to some calming music thinking about my goals and writing this. I can do this, it's gonna suck but I'm already well on the journey and there's no point prolonging the inevitable. Thanks again man.

 

Hi Guys, thanks for the kind words. Now for some homework.... Part of quitting the addiction is understanding the mechanics of the addiction, the cause and effect of it: (porn=sexual thoughts) (High Speed Internet Porn + The Coolidge Effect=hypersexual thougts) (sexual thoughts=dopamine rush) (HSIP=endless potential for effortless dopamine rush) (effortless, infinite, dopamine rush=formation of addiction potential). SPAM REMOVED (spam code #001) - REPORT TO MODERATION.

Immediately below is a link to a Skeptic publication by Phil Zimbardo and Gary Wilson. Read it. It is important. Everyone here must watch The Great Porn Experiment by Gary Wilson as well, it is the bible of quitting porn addiction.

http://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/how-porn-is-messing-with-your-manhood/

A guy named Marty Klein, kinda, sorta, challenged it. Here it is.

http://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/skeptical-of-the-porn-skeptics/

Klein is wrong, as every porn addict knows, because every porn addict knows the addiction is real, it exists, and it is a major pain in the ass to get that monkey off our backs. But it is important that, if you are here, struggling, you read up and be challenged on fine points of the addiction.

By the way, Gary suggested I post a reply to the Klein publication, which I did, at the end.

Peace out.

Much love.

Billy the Kid.

 

In the article Martin Klein criticizes that "Zimbardo and Wilson hypothesize effects of porn that science does not support empirically" and he states that "peer-reviewed studies challenge the idea that porn use leads to addiction, or sexual dysfunction, or worrisome brain changes"

I'll tell you what I think of this: thank god that I've found this forum and don't have to wait for some scientists to make more studies to prove or unprove my condition!
I'm rebooting and I'm feeling great and I couldn't care less, what that means from a scientific point of view. But I just had to laugh when I read this:
"Besides, our brain responds in this same observable way when we cuddle a grandchild or enjoy a sunset."
Maybe they should make a survey and ask some guys: have you ever felt like banging a sunset?

 

Thank you to everyone who has posted on this site. I have been trying at recovery for 3 years and have had some good periods of sobriety but have recently realised that where I thought I was in the maintenance stage of recovery I was actually still in the active addiction stage. That's how difficult this addiction is. HSIP for me is MOing to fantasy, PMOing, searching for substitutes online. The fact that I still relapse and have now not MOed for 19 days means that I still am having withdrawal symptoms. These have been so hard to deal with but through acceptance of them I can overcome them. I have felt things like complete disinterest in a lot of things, sleep issues, anxiety(couple of panic attacks), depression which is something I have dealt with concurrently with addiction. I have felt irritable, angry, have had intrusive thoughts/images. I have also been seeing a psychologist to go into some of the root issues and have been attending meetings like SAA and SLAA that have helped in a big way so far. Today I am feeling quite anxious and vulnerable but that is ok. My brain is returning to a more balanced state and this is to be expected. I am grateful for this community and need to try and isolate less and be more active on here.