Is a pmo urge really the brain just saying: give me some dopamine?

Yes..
For some the problem might be deeper than that. They need to change something in their daily schedule.

 

It’s true to a large extent. But remember the dopamine from porn is the highest form of dopamine hit. That is why porn habits escalate to more dark sides because after some time the dopamine from normal porn is not enough.
To get as much dopamine as you get from porn through non pmo ways, you might need to do more than one thing.
But really even some little dose from other non pmo ways is enough.

 

This is very true. Take a break and do something fun for a while that's not porn.
For me, it can be something as simple as reading a comic book for 15 minutes or listening to favourite music.

 

The answer is....yes. Flip it around. But for seeking that dopamine hit, you would have no interest in PMO and would find it boring, as interesting as watching paint peel. Seeking that dopamine hit is the reason, and only reason, humans engage in PMO. We do a lot of other activities that do not result in that hit, but the only purpose of this activity is to get the hit. If you did not get that hit you would not do this activity.

 

Yes. Important to understand that the thing you are really avoiding is a dopamine rush. You get that with PMO, but you get it from merely thinking about sex. That is why in the quitting phase you need to develop distraction techniques such as reading, if that distracts you. Plan now on what distraction techniques you will use when, in the future, you need a distraction to, say, keep a two second sexual thought from becoming a twenty minute dopamine drenched sex opera in your head. This is very true in the quitting, aka rebooting, stage. On the other side of rebooted you can let your guard down. When I was quitting I would close my eyes during something as simple as pretty vanilla sex scenes in movies or television. It is very important, and helpful, to be self aware of what the problem is, and knowing the solution, while painful, is as simple as learning to live without the super stimulation of P which leads to an unnaturally pronounced and profound neurological brain reward.

Besides, who does not love LOTRs?