The 180 page/18 days challenge

Yes, this is a challenge with reading. You can choose anything related to P addiction, btw Your Brain on Porn is 184 pages so that's perfect - you'd be finished by the time the challenge is over. Not only is there a number of days goal, the reading part of course supports that.

It has to be pages numbered by the publisher, there's no way to measure text from a web page so we're looking at books only.

It averages 10 pages a day if you use YBOP, which when I do the math is 24 locations a page for the Kindle versions so 240 locations - since this one doesn't have real page numbers.

Lets also post a quote from your reading each day, here's one from mine today - which happens to be a quote from an article available online:

Day 1/18 quote: (I'm obviously using YBOP and all quotes during the challenge will be from there)

"In a 2014 article, Norman Doidge wrote, ‘We are in the midst of a revolution in sexual and romantic tastes unlike any in history, a social experiment being performed on children and teenagers … This level of porn exposure is quite new. Will these influences and tastes turn out to be superficial? Or will the new porn scenarios deeply embed themselves because the teen years are still in a formative period?’"

 

Day 2/18 quote:

"Already, some 230 brain studies on internet addicts reveal the presence of the same core brain changes seen in substance addicts.[179] If internet use itself is potentially addictive, then it’s evident that internet porn use is too. Sure enough, brain studies on internet porn users themselves now affirm this.

"the addict’s loss of pleasure or depression that can often linger for several months."

 

Day 3/18 quote:

"The medical profession is far behind the times. I spent thousands of dollars on doctors, including a well known urologist specializing in ED (had to travel hours for that one); thousands on tests; thousands on pills. ‘Erection to porn means it’s in your head ... take some V--gra.’ Not once did any health care professional say to me, ‘Hey, watching porn too much can cause sexual dysfunction.’ Instead, they offered other explanations, which are not proven to be linked to ED and typically did not apply to me anyway (e.g. anxiety, stress...even though you don’t show any indication of either; diet...even though your weight is normal and you eat a balanced diet; low testosterone...even though low T hasn’t been linked to ED except in extreme cases, and your T is not really low). Then there’s absolutely horrible advice from ‘sexologists’ who are so bent on being ‘sex positive’, they not only deny the potential negative consequences of porn use, they actively ridicule the notion of porn-induced ED.[228] So, though I feel stupid for not making the link between porn and ED myself, the fact is I sought professional advice and porn was never brought up except in a positive light: ‘Everyone does it, it’s normal...in fact, it’s healthy.’ I evaluated the possibility of surgical intervention. It would be between $25k and $30k out of pocket and the results are not encouraging (penile revascularization). The day after that appointment I stumbled on this information. Oh my god...what a revelation and relief. And it works. I’m not 100%, but I’ve improved dramatically and things keep getting better. All I had to do was quit fapping to porn. Unreal."

 

4/18 quote:

"You can’t expect to live the exact same lifestyle you’ve been living, (i.e., get up, do a little work, surf web, do a little more work, surf web, surf NSFW, do a little work, surf web, etc.) and expect anything to change. That pattern won’t magically disappear without conscious effort."

 

Day 5/18 Quote:

"When you become exhausted, your brain and body enters sleep mode (that we call flatline) in order to recover so it can react to stimulation again. If we had let it rest back then it would probably been a flatline of only a few days before things returned to normal. But we didn’t let it rest. Despite being in a flatline, we used porn to continue until we reached rock bottom. So now it doesn’t take a few days for things to recover. It takes a few months or even longer in some cases. But it passes."

 

6/18:

"When you have a pathology, you usually need to do more than just eliminate the cause – in this case porn use. For example, you don’t generally break a leg by putting weight on it. However, once it’s broken you have to cast it, use crutches and eliminate walking while you heal. Same goes for porn-induced ED. You don’t have to wear a cast, but you need to give your brain time to heal, free of intense sexual stimulation."

 

7/18:

"Big Tobacco’s campaign to cast doubt on the link between smoking and disease is now a classic case study in a science called agnotology: the study of the cultural production of ignorance. Agnotology investigates the deliberate sowing of public misinformation and doubt in a scientific area. As Brian McDougal, the author of Porned Out, put it, It’s hard to imagine that a whole generation chain-smoked cigarettes without having any idea how harmful they are, but the same thing is happening today with online pornography."

Reminds me of Thank You For Smoking, so it'd be Thank You For Fapping..

 

8/18 - I finished YBOP and started Recovery: Freedom From Addictions by Russell Brand:

"Those of us born with clear-cut and blatant substance addiction are in many ways the lucky ones. We alcoholics and junkies have minimized our mystery to tiny cycles of craving and fulfilment. Our pattern is easier to observe and therefore, with commitment and help, easier to resolve.

If your personal pattern happens to be the addiction equivalent of the ‘long form con-trick’, as opposed to a ‘short grift’, it can take ages to know just what your problem is. If you’re addicted to bad relationships, bad food, abusive bosses, conflict or pornography, it can take a lifetime to spot the problem, and apparently a lifetime is all we have. This book is not just about extremists like me. No, this is a book about you."

 

9/18:

"Incidentally here’s how I actually solved the ‘problem’, I left the hotel at daybreak. I wish I could say I moved into a ‘community of indigenous peoples down by the river’ where we grew our own veg and sang songs about our ancestors and an elder gave me a tattoo of a rabbit God on my groin and told me I had real spirit and gave me a tribal name, and it was then I knew my purpose – ‘to connect with the Great Unknown’, to weave the consciousness of man and the consciousness of nature into a perfect tapestry, to tell the story of oneness with such clarity that God herself would come to the aid of the good and nature would rise through torrents and branches, flames and feathers and flood, and deliver us unto heaven. The still and ever-present heaven within.

But actually I just moved to a better hotel with a balcony."

 

Bonus:

Here is how I look at these steps now, and it’s how I invite you to look at them too. It certainly demsytifies it. I’ve probably overcompensated with the ‘f’ word, but my point is that this is a practical system that anyone can use.   

1  Are you a bit fucked?   
2  Could you not be fucked?   
3  Are you, on your own, going to ‘unfuck’ yourself?   
4  Write down all the things that are fucking you up or have ever fucked you up and don’t lie, or leave anything out.   
5  Honestly tell someone trustworthy about how fucked you are.   
6  Well that’s revealed a lot of fucked up patterns. Do you want to stop it? Seriously?   
7  Are you willing to live in a new way that’s not all about you and your previous, fucked up stuff? You have to.   
8  Prepare to apologize to everyone for everything affected by your being so fucked up.   
9  Now apologize. Unless that would make things worse.
10  Watch out for fucked up thinking and behaviour and be honest when it happens.
11  Stay connected to your new perspective.
12  Look at life less selfishly, be nice to everyone, help people if you can.​

 

10/18:


"God help the trainee perverts of today as they stand Kleenex in hand on the brink of a Niagara of every conceivable kink, accessible with any smart device they can cram into their clammy palms. Porn is a clear example of how our culture is feeding the disease of addiction. The natural impulse to have sex becomes a compulsion to masturbate. The attraction to connect is culturally translated by pornography into a numb and lonely staring strum at broken digital ghosts. The most physically creative thing we have, reduced to a dumb shuffle that’d embarrass a monkey."

 

11/18: (yes catching up)

 

12/18: (this is a nice one)

"A counsellor at the treatment centre where I got clean, herself a woman in recovery, surprised me when she said, ‘How clever of you to find drugs. Well done, you found a way to keep yourself alive.’ This made me feel quite tearful. I suppose because this woman, Jackie, didn’t judge me or tell me I was stupid or tub-thumpingly declare that ‘drugs kill’. No she told me I’d done well by finding something that made being me bearable. Addicts talking to one another are apt to find such means of connection. To be acknowledged as a person who was in pain and fighting to survive in my own muddled-up and misguided way made me feel optimistic and understood. It is an example of the compassion addicts need from one another in order to change."

 

13/18 / Tue (yes I'm a day behind)


‘My life in active addiction was an unexamined matrix of disturbances held at bay by addictive behaviour. The stimulus–response relationship between me, myself and the world was like this: “I’m lonely – have sex”, “I’m sad – get drunk”, “I’m bored – eat a cake”. It probably wasn’t even that articulate.’

 

14/18 Wed - not really into the book but I'll finish the challenge:


"At this point in the exercise we are reminded that we have to let go of our opinion of how other people, places and things ought to be. My mum, my girlfriend Laura and the government of North Korea are not obliged to moderate their reality in accordance with my whims. If I make my happiness contingent on them behaving in a certain way, I am fucked."

 

15/18 Thu


"Are there things about yourself which you have never told anyone? Way back upon the creaky floors of your childhood, in your solitude, the shadows of your private mind, the things you’ve done and said and thought that compound and contain you: shameful things, sexual things, often solitary acts, but sometimes not, sometimes agonizing stabs of cruelty you’ve inflicted on people you love, or the moments where reality itself seemed to tear as they looked into your eyes and told you ‘you are nothing’. And for a moment you stand there adjusting to the pain, the pain that someone could say that to you, and what that must mean about who you are. Or what it means to be cruel, to have hurt someone, to feel the cords of love that bind, split and flail and to fall away, into yourself, engulfed but absolutely alone. And you do what humans do: you accept and you adapt. You build the pain into the story of who you are until it isn’t pain anymore, it’s just another piece of who you are."

 

16/18 Fri


"To see the pattern of repeated behaviours that dominated my life was enlightening. I began to see how I already lived by a program. A repeated pattern is a program."

 

17/18 Sat:


"Like most of us, I previously saw romantic love as the last repository for divine intention and worship. I thought that a woman could save me: Miss Right, The One, My True Love. This form of idolatry can call upon centuries of romantic love for support but the idea that another human can ‘complete’ us is built upon the assumption that we are incomplete, inadequate, flawed. I find this yearning of mine will happily ride upon the tide of romantic love."

 

18/18: Kind of out of context but:

"To see that it is all bullshit and not to clock off, that requires faith. Only faith will do. Only faith. Even if you’re double certain that there is nothing but space and dumb molecules out there, clattering about into symphonic and faraway futures, if you believe that’s all there is and don’t check out, you are hardcore."