thousandth first day

i'm no stranger to addiction. more than three years ago, I quit drinking booze because I wasn't able to control the cycles of drinking, wasn't able to stop at a reasonable amount, and it became clear that it would be easier, and i'd get a lot of my life back, if i just stopped drinking.
i've been shocked at how much harder it is to quit porn and masturbation. i have a few theories about why: in the first place, masturbation, unlike drinking, i can justify as an entirely 'natural' habit, which is to say that i've been taught my whole life that masturbation is healthy, and not something i should be ashamed of; second, while drinking led to direct conflict with friends and loved-ones, and often put me in dangerous situations, pmo can be done in secret, and can be managed so as not to disrupt in any obvious way the rest of my life. i've tried quitting porn while continuing to masturbate, but that just doesn't work. i'm still anxious about not masturbating- i worry that it will screw with my relation to sex, that i may become puritanical in some way. i have a girlfriend - our sex life isn't what it used to be, but it's still there - and i'm so used to balancing sex and masturbation, i worry that cutting out masturbation will somehow screw up the balance.

the reasons i masturbate to excess include depression, boredom, anxiety, feelings of despair; but i can't deny also that i'm driven to watch pornography because it quenches some desire i have in way that nothing else does - something similar to what drinking quenched, namely, a desire to be bad, to break the rules, to ignore the standards of deceny imposed on me by society, which i'm able to cast off when i spend hours doing something illicit and frowned up, watching porn... the idea of living a good life - i want it, but honestly i'm conflicted about it; i've always admired scumbags and dirtballs, writers like henry miller, etc, and the idea of getting rid of all my outlets for dirtbaggery sounds lonely, alienating from myself, in a weird way. being a non-drinker, i already feel buttoned down, stiff; i know that quitting porn might well open up a life in which i could more freely pursue my own weirdness outside my masturbating quarters, but like any addiction, it's just hard to let go of that safety blanket.

that said, i know, i feel deep down, with terror and urgency, that porn is sucking my life away, that it's stealing my time, my self-respect, my dignity, which has obvious impacts on my social life, and especially my work life. i'm a writer, a very poor one, so spend a lot of time at home, writing - where that used to be code for drinking, now it has often become code for watching porn. the thought of the number of hours i've wasted and the opportunities i've lost that i can't even imagine, is sickening.

the long and the short of it is, however, that, though i've tried innumerable times to stop, i just cannot fucking do it. it's embarrassing and frankly feels tragic.

is there an alternative to cold turkey? i'm terrible at following programs - i quit drinking by force of will, and i regard my success there as nothing short of a miracle. that said, it worked because it was cold turkey, i think. i've tried to just put an end to it, but some tugging anxiety, fear, or something, keeps pulling me back into pmo over and over.

i've often speculated that one of the most terrible appeals of pornography is its limitlessness, the fact that you could spend a life time watching every facial video and still not see them all - as a writer I have an enormous curiosity and thirst for knowledge, for experience, which has been directed, sadly, toward pornography: taking in as much of it as I possibly can. does this ring true to anyone? how have you dealt with it.

i'm giving this a try, and - i'll take a deep breath - i'll try to be committed to it. i'm not good at journaling, or keeping a blog, i'm a scattershot person. i know that my superego wants to stop (forgive the dull freudianism) and my id obviously wants to keep going - but i can't fully tell what my ego wants; when i feel good, i want to stop, but i don't feel as though i've reached, at the level of the ego, a genuine desire to stop - i still consciously want it - which was ultimately what allowed me to stop drinking, a conviction at the ego-level that it had to end. without external pressure, without my success in stopping being a matter of public record, in one way or another, i'm not sure i'm strong enough to stop; i'm vain, and so what people see in me influences me, but in the secrecy of porn, i have none of that motivation... so, i suppose, i'm looking for friends here, a community that i can be held accountable to - maybe that will work.

i apologize for this rambling introduction. Hi! I'm Dagmar, a writer - let's be friends and help each other be better!

 

Thank you for your response, it's much appreciated. I believe you're right.