Hello Gentlemen. Now we begin.

[fightforlife]

Woah, big thread.
Cannot say that I have read every single post here, but I plan to do so over the next time.

Anway I read some of your posts William and I can say that I can identify myself with a lot of what you said. I am a serial relapser. But it?s time to stop this, I want to have a better life. I will seriously commit to this now and get more informed. I will change my life and become a better person.

I thank you for supporting us all by sharing your experience and also for explaining the situation from a scientific angle.

It?s time for healing.

 

[William]

Hi A-Ron. I saw your post. "All or nothing." The thought is absolutely correct. When it comes to dopamine addiction, the "cure" is all or nothing. There is no middle ground, there is no gray area. I don't know if you have thought it out, but you have to plan on the hard 90. It is not called the "easy" 90, or the "somewhat difficult and annoying" 90, it is 90 days of pure hell. If you are not willing to suffer, don't even start. The hard 90 is 90 days of consciously avoiding your triggers, and 90 days of avoiding not just porn but porn substitutes, anything that your dopamine soaked brain will trigger on during the withdrawal period. You have wired yourself to porn, you have given yourself a porn high for years, many times a day. You like it, your brain likes it. We love the dopamine high that artificial sexual stimulation gives us. You have to make a decision, you have to make a choice. You have to quit coming here "hoping" that enough tries will result in you quitting porn, and you have to commit to "quitting". Period. Not cutting back, not controlling it, not being able to use it casually from time to time when you want, when you need an escape from realty. You have to do the hardest thing an addict can do, planning on never escaping from reality. Quitting porn, aka dopamine addiction, giving it up, excommunicating it, de-friending it, making it you enemy, hating it; this is what you have to do. You have to embrace the "impossible thought", that being that you can live totally porn free, that you want to live porn free, that you are willing and want to give up the dopamine high it gives us. You see, porn is a crutch a lot of us come to rely upon, to get us through the tough times. Over years of using we forget though that we are not cripples. We don't need that crutch. You are walking through life with a limp and a crutch, when you can drop the crutch and run. Porn has lied to you, porn has whispered in your ear that you are a gimp and you need it as a crutch. Don't believe a word it says. You need to get focused, you need to get tough, you need to quit playing with the addiction, and you need to kill it. Don't cure it, cures take time. Kill it. Porn addiction can be starved to death. It hurts a lot to do it, but it can be done. But if you feed it, even just a little, it can linger for years. You need to ask yourself, do you want to live now, or do you want to die slowly over the next decades, showing back up here to post your latest 10 day run and relapse. When it comes to the addiction there two types of guys, those using and those free. You need to figure out which side of the line you are on. I invite you to free. I have absolute confidence you can take off those chains. The question for every slave is, will you settle for happiness in slavery or will you break out of your prison. I say...go for it. Time to get free.

Peace.

Will I AM. 

 

[Budfox]

Thanks for this, it was a very good read and i learned a lot from reading your post. I just happened to delete all my porn 5 minutes before reading this. I'm not going to lie it was hard to delete everything i accumulated over the course of 7-8 years and i didn't want to let it go but i knew the only way back for me was to delete everything.

 

[lyon03]

Great post William. I felt the need to sit up straight while reading it.

 

[KennyPrester]

William,

Your posts are very helpful to me, and I thank you much. I'm in, for the long haul. And I have a sensitive question you might be able to address.

When I make love with my wife, she loves fellatio and facials. No, she doesn't watch or even tolerate porn. But intra-vaginal ejaculation is not an option for medical reasons that would be complicated to go into.

I used to have PE, but over came it with Kegels. But during fellatio, I have difficulty ejaculating unless I have mental fantasies. Usually, they are about an affair I had long ago which is thankfully over, but sometimes about porn scenes. Unless I do this, I feel my wife has to work harder and longer to achieve the results that she desires and needs, and this is unfortunately happening all too often late at night when we have an early morning ahead.

Will this use of fantasy alone derail my success? Somewhere I thought I read on YBOP that fantasies about real women were preferred to porn fantasies. Perhaps I should alter the sexual dynamic sufficiently to render this mental activity unnecessary?

This is the only time I deliberately entertain such thoughts. Do you have a suggestion? I don't want my wife unhappy, nor my reboot derailed.

Kenny

 

[William]

Hello Gentlemen, thanks for the kind posts.

Hi Kenny, you ask about using fantasy during the reboot.  I went back and read your posts since January 7, 2015, your first "Starting" post.  25 posts. 

Since you are posting here in the addiction forum I presume you own that you are addicted. 

There are many guys who have asked this question because for a lot of addicts reaching O without P is impossible.  By "P" I don't mean just porn but also porn fantasy or hypersexual fantasy.  That is even during sex; there are a number of addicts, (I was one myself), who could have sex all day, who could get it up, who did not suffer from PIED, but do to the addiction, could not reach O unless they were thinking of porn or hypersexual thoughts.  The reason?  We had desensitized ourselves to reality, to a real, live, breathing person with a heart beat, and had sensitized our reward center to reward only porn or hypersexual thoughts, with a dopamine high.  I have spoken to many guys who have asked the question and I have usually told them the question is just the addiction whispering in their ear, telling them they must continue to use, giving them some argument for why it is impossible to stop.  In your case, however, I understand you and your wife have some sexuality issues not everyone shares, so I don't consider this the addiction trying to talk you into keeping it in your life.

That said...for a successful reboot you must eliminate fantasy during the reboot because otherwise you are just feeding that reward pathway, keeping is sensitized, when the goal is to desensitize that pathway and rewire the reward pathway that rewards actual sex.  I am sorry that this is so black and white but it is.  The addiction is literally the result of us unconsciously creating a reward pathway for something other than sex, as in porn and fantasy.  For addicts, and especially for addicts in the quitting phase, we trigger swimsuit models, just the thought of them, which is actually feeding the porn pathway because it is something not real. 

The good news is many guys report that, if they are successful in the reboot, around day 90 the process gets easier.  While many successful rebooters advize absolutely "hard mode", no P, no PMO, no MO, no O, and no porn substitutes (which fantasy is, especially in the reboot period) I believe having sex, real sex with a real partner and achieving O with them is fine so long as you are only thinking of them, and not porn or fantasy.  .  Why?  The purpose of the reboot is to reset your brain's reward pathways back to factory settings as they say, which is another way of saying you want to teach your brain to reward real sex and quit rewarding porn.  But that process does not have to be first A then B.  If you can eliminate rewarding porn, and porn is rewarded with a dopamine hit whether we are seeing it, watching it, or just imagining it (fantasizing), and start rewarding real sex, then you are strengthening the pathway you are here to strengthen.  It sounds easier than it is because once you have desensitized to real sex and have sensitized to porn it is hard to go back but...according to your post you can do it without fantasy, it just takes longer, meaning the side effects of the addiction are, for you, less than many guys who A) cannot get it up unless porn is involved or B) cannot reach O unless porn is involved.  You can get it up and can reach O during sex, it just takes a bit longer without fantasy, which is actually fantastic, you are well ahead of the game. 

Eliminate the fantasy and all porn during the reboot, focus on the object of your obvious affection, and gradually, over time, it should become easier for you to reach O focusing only on your wife and having no fantasy at all in your head.  When that happens, you will be "rewired".

My opinion.

Peace.

Will I AM. 

Remember, if done right this is a limited 90 time in your life to achieve long term results, and if you successfully complete the reboot you should be OK there after. 

 

[KennyPrester]

Thanks, William. I appreciate your response, and I look forward to following through. I used to fantasize about porn all the time during sex, but Sexaholics Anonymous helped me stop that. This is the last little remaining tidbit of porn fantasy intruding in that way, and it will be kind of a relief to let it go.

Thanks again.

Kenny

 

[TMO]

Thanks, William, I sincerely appreciate all of the advice you have given. Does anyone know why the video located at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_RIm9ZMN1I is unavailable? Neither Google nor Bing have a cache of it. I'm sure that the sentiments of the video have been conveyed through the nine pages of this thread, but I was interested in watching it all the same.

 

[William]

Hi TMO, that link is an old link to the Gary Wilson vid which is found on the home page of this site.  I have changed my intro page to give a new link.  It is here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSF82AwSDiU

Keep going, porn is not an option.

Peace. 

 

[EverettSmith14]

Hi William,

As usual, I can confirm your advice and experience.  I continued to have sex with my wife through my reset.  It did indeed reset my brain to "factory settings". My sexual experience with her became better and better as my resting dopamine levels came down due to no Porn.  The chemicals in my brain acted just as they should in bonding me to her.  To her body, to her face, to her heart.  I don't think I ever fell out of love with her in my heart but my body needed to bond to hers.  It happened and sex became so so much better.  Better that any porn bing I have ever been on.  Our bodies were designed to bond to another's . Not to a flatscreen.  It all seemed to happen so naturally .  Well da!  That's because that how it was designed to be.  No fantasies, no head porn, just be in the moment with a real live woman who is loving you and making love to you.

My wife and I are still reeling from the issues in my past.  The consequences of my past actions are still very very real.  Out future is uncertain.  But I can tell all of you William is right.  Go the 90 days of no PMO.  If you have a spouse, rebond to her.  Both emotionally and physically.  If you get that done, porn loses a lot of its attraction as real life is so much better in so many ways

Everett

 

[jkkk]

Hi A-Ron. I saw your post. "All or nothing." The thought is absolutely correct. When it comes to dopamine addiction, the "cure" is all or nothing. There is no middle ground, there is no gray area. I don't know if you have thought it out, but you have to plan on the hard 90. It is not called the "easy" 90, or the "somewhat difficult and annoying" 90, it is 90 days of pure hell. If you are not willing to suffer, don't even start. The hard 90 is 90 days of consciously avoiding your triggers, and 90 days of avoiding not just porn but porn substitutes, anything that your dopamine soaked brain will trigger on during the withdrawal period. You have wired yourself to porn, you have given yourself a porn high for years, many times a day. You like it, your brain likes it. We love the dopamine high that artificial sexual stimulation gives us. You have to make a decision, you have to make a choice. You have to quit coming here "hoping" that enough tries will result in you quitting porn, and you have to commit to "quitting". Period. Not cutting back, not controlling it, not being able to use it casually from time to time when you want, when you need an escape from realty. You have to do the hardest thing an addict can do, planning on never escaping from reality. Quitting porn, aka dopamine addiction, giving it up, excommunicating it, de-friending it, making it you enemy, hating it; this is what you have to do. You have to embrace the "impossible thought", that being that you can live totally porn free, that you want to live porn free, that you are willing and want to give up the dopamine high it gives us. You see, porn is a crutch a lot of us come to rely upon, to get us through the tough times. Over years of using we forget though that we are not cripples. We don't need that crutch. You are walking through life with a limp and a crutch, when you can drop the crutch and run. Porn has lied to you, porn has whispered in your ear that you are a gimp and you need it as a crutch. Don't believe a word it says. You need to get focused, you need to get tough, you need to quit playing with the addiction, and you need to kill it. Don't cure it, cures take time. Kill it. Porn addiction can be starved to death. It hurts a lot to do it, but it can be done. But if you feed it, even just a little, it can linger for years. You need to ask yourself, do you want to live now, or do you want to die slowly over the next decades, showing back up here to post your latest 10 day run and relapse. When it comes to the addiction there two types of guys, those using and those free. You need to figure out which side of the line you are on. I invite you to free. I have absolute confidence you can take off those chains. The question for every slave is, will you settle for happiness in slavery or will you break out of your prison. I say...go for it. Time to get free.

Peace.

Will I AM.

Amen.

Hi William,

As usual, I can confirm your advice and experience.  I continued to have sex with my wife through my reset.  It did indeed reset my brain to "factory settings". My sexual experience with her became better and better as my resting dopamine levels came down due to no Porn.  The chemicals in my brain acted just as they should in bonding me to her.  To her body, to her face, to her heart.  I don't think I ever fell out of love with her in my heart but my body needed to bond to hers.  It happened and sex became so so much better.  Better that any porn bing I have ever been on.  Our bodies were designed to bond to another's . Not to a flatscreen.  It all seemed to happen so naturally .  Well da!  That's because that how it was designed to be.  No fantasies, no head porn, just be in the moment with a real live woman who is loving you and making love to you.

My wife and I are still reeling from the issues in my past.  The consequences of my past actions are still very very real.  Out future is uncertain.  But I can tell all of you William is right.  Go the 90 days of no PMO.  If you have a spouse, rebond to her.  Both emotionally and physically.  If you get that done, porn loses a lot of its attraction as real life is so much better in so many ways

Everett

I notice the same thing as a married man. My perspective on my wife have become what it should be. My body and brain get aligned with my heart and soul in my love for her. That is just... unbelievable. It's a treasure that should be protected.

I keep my fingers crossed for us that we continue on this path and in this quest. Forever.

You might find this thread very interesting. A recommended read in my view: http://legacy.rebootnation.org/index.php?topic=3805.0

 

[TMO]

Hi TMO, that link is an old link to the Gary Wilson vid which is found on the home page of this site.  I have changed my intro page to give a new link.  It is here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSF82AwSDiU

Keep going, porn is not an option.

Peace.

Thank you very much for the link, I'll watch the whole thing a little later today. I had no idea that this addiction has been talked about in a TEDx Talk. That is very reassuring.

 

[sunshine]

Oh my god. I completely 100% identify with the videos you posted. I'm having a lot of fear about not making it through and relasping or whatever. But knowing that others have gone through this and experienced "the light" so to speak is really encouraging. Thanks a lot William. I hope to update every now and then. Officially on 4 days no PMO haha, but its a start.

 

[DragonSlayer]

I wish everyone who read this past the second paragraph luck on their journey.

Much love.

lol, well then damn

Very inspirational post. Much love back!

 

[Jatt]

Hi William,

I am watching porn for last 3 years very regularly. My problem is my brain become numb while watching porn or fantasizing about nude  girls. I am unable to relate and realize those porn videos and pictures(sort of low libido) and because of that i got just 60-70% of hardness, but when i combine fantasize with porn pictures i get lil better erection.

i am also suffering from PE.

In past i went to a doc and he did all the tests and told me that i have physically no problem.

What you think it could be

Jatt

 

[William]

Hi Jatt.  Thanks for posting.  To answer your question, you have the classic symptoms of dopamine addiction, aka porn addiction.  You describe losing your erection somewhat, but that it is better with porn.  If you mean you are not getting it up with ladies but it works better with porn, that seems to me to be partial or early stage PIED.  And DE is a classic porn addiction symptom, which merely translates to "you can only get off to porn."  Gabe Deem described not being able get it up and not being able to MO without P, meaning in the latter stages of the addiction only porn works for us, sex does not work at all.  By then we have totally desensitized to real sex and are only sensitive to porn.  Your doctor is probably correct.  You don't have "physical" problem, you have a "psychological" problem, one you, me, and most other guys here created for ourselves ignorantly, unwittingly, unknowingly, unconsciously.  You have conditioned your brain's primitive sexual reward center to reward endless exposure to porn with a non-stop dopamine high.  It feels great until it doesn't or, in a case like yours, where it starts to interfere with performance.  Watch the Garry Wilson vid on this site's home page, "The Great Porn Experiment".  It describes perfectly in non judgmental scientific terms the effect of long term exposure of porn on the brain, and how it will affect adversely your ability to perform sexually, to have sex, or get it up without porn.  Then I suggest you put on K9, or other porn blockers, and commit to the hard 90, no porn, no PMO, no MO and no O for 90 days.  After that I say take it out for a spin and see how everything works.  I have never heard any one here who did the hard 90 say it would not work much better after 90 days hard mode.

Hope this helps.  Peace.  Will I AM 1 and done. 

Hi William,

I am watching porn for last 3 years very regularly. My problem is my brain become numb while watching porn or fantasizing about nude  girls. I am unable to relate and realize those porn videos and pictures(sort of low libido) and because of that i got just 60-70% of hardness, but when i combine fantasize with porn pictures i get lil better erection.

i am also suffering from PE.

In past i went to a doc and he did all the tests and told me that i have physically no problem.

What you think it could be

Jatt

 

[Jason]

Hello William,

I am surprised because I had thought you had left the community.  I am almost in tears in discovering that you are still posting.  In large part do I credit my recovery to your post's!!!!!  I read awhile back that you were leaving us and so I have been doing my best to reach out to others as they have reached out to me on this site.  Once again my friend thank you for being like general Patton motivating us the troops to charge the gates of hell!!!!

 

[Dopamine]

Hello William,

Why sex is really healthy but watching porn is addictive ???
Hope you can help me answer questions . Thank you .

Sorry for the english is not my language (I'm Asian)

 

[mtaha2015]

I answered your question in thread.
William please go ahead , and give your comments on this topic too.

 

[EverettSmith14]

Hi William,

Let me add a "ditto" to Jason's post above.  Without your help, I would still be drowning in the deep end of a dopamine pool.  You were the right voice, at the right time, with the absolute right message  communicated in an understandable, inspiring way.  You showed me the path to freedom.  I am free! 
I'm sure there are many, many more here and many long gone from here who feel the same way.

Thank you , thank you, thank you!

Everett