Hi rebels8, welcome to a great resource for those of us quitting. Thanks for posting. Reading posts and replying are part of my recovery. Since you are new you may not have as much education and knowledge about the problem as some of us who have struggled with the problem for a while. An excellent video explaining how you got to where you are is found below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_RIm9ZMN1I
Once I understood that the PMO (porn, masturbation, orgasm) cycle was difficult to break because high speed internet porn had caused changes in my brain's reward circuitry, I learned I could reprogram my brain back to normal. It was then that I quit trying, by willpower alone, to stop the problem, and began using tools to help. I have been PMO free for some time now. But it took getting educated on the problem first; before then I just said I was quitting and tried, but always failed. I did understand that years of high speed internet porn caused my brain to reward pornographic thoughts over real sex. The video above will help explain how this happens, and it happens to hundreds of thousands of guys. You are not alone here. There is a whole generation of guys your age who have realized they have a problem and are working to fix it. You see the brain does not distinguish between images of porn and actual sex. It cannot. Yes, you and I know when we are watching porn, engaging in PMO, as opposed to real sex, but the brain's chemical reward center makes no distinction between the two. That is where the problem arises; the brain's chemical reward center has evolved to reward sex with the release of certain chemicals, dopamine first and foremost. We love dopamine, whether we consciously know it or not, we love it. It is an addictive chemical, the purpose of which, biologically, is to encourage things such as having sex or even eating. The problem is, since our brain's chemical reward center cannot distinguish between seeing porn, imagining porn, thinking of porn, remembering porn v. actual sex, the brain comes to overly reward porn over sex. Why? Because in the real world that our brain's evolved in, actual sex is actually relatively rare. Even if we were getting it on a very regular basis, we evolved getting it with usually only one partner, and only once a day or less. But our brain's chemical reward center likes giving that dopamine reward much more than that. It rewards multiple partners and new sexual experiences, and since it cannot distinguish between porn and an actual partner, the brain reacts to porn as if it has suddenly been given twenty new girlfriends a day. Of course, that is fake, porn is not actual new girlfriends to have sex with, but our brain's chemical reward center can't make that distinction. It rewards porn all the more. If you think of your brain as a computer, conceive of it having loaded malware onto it. Once you understand that porn has altered your brain's software, so to speak, you will understand that like software on a computer it CAN be rewired back.
Now, this is a process, not an event, so don't kill yourself if you don't run before you walk or crawl.
Once I understood that perceiving porn was the problem I learned that avoiding it at all costs was necessary for my recovery. I did not know that at first and just stumbled along like a lot of us in the beginning. Once I understood that porn was a drug my brain craved, I realized I had to take steps to get rid of it completely. In fact, at the beginning, most of the experienced guys here will tell you to try and have no sexual thoughts at all, and completely eliminate your exposure to porn. For me, using porn blockers was helpful. I can get around them but they give me a moment of pause to remind myself why and what I am doing. I have also blocked certain websites that were pornographic in nature, and I try and not watch even non pornographic images that are sexually suggestive, so no bikini shows, and I even try and not look at cheerleaders during the games. Those things trigger my brain to want PMO, so I avoid them.
I think your idea about staying health is great, but you can find other tools to help as well, so I encourage you to look for them here and other sites.
If you have not yet found it yourbrainonporn.com is an excellent starting place to get educated. Most of all I advise against just going cold turkey on will power alone. Get educated, get some tools. Also, although this site emphasizes abstinence, that is going for long periods not PMOing, for me and a lot of other guys a more long term approach has been to conceive of our brains being addicted to P and of ourselves in recovery from that addiction. For me at least having that thought made it so much more easy to understand what had happened to my brain and that I needed tools outside myself to fix it. I have been PMO free for a number of months now and though stress triggers my desire to do it, the longer I go PMO free the easier it actually is.
I will say your comments about not being in a serious relationship with a girl is a common problem with PMO addicted guys your age, more so than older guys. Why? Younger guys have only known PMO, they have never had a time when real sexual activity was the basis for the brain's chemical reward release. As a result, for those guys, P has become more real and attractive to their brain's chemical reward center than something they have never really experienced--sex--is. Once you get your brain back to normal--and this can be done, I swear--your brain will begin reward the real thing. But you must totally eliminate P from the equation, and that is hard at first so I suggest you allow yourself to use tools to help in that.
Good luck to you on your journey.
