Hello Gentlemen. Now we begin.

joepanic

Respected Member
Hi Enigma Man

        Thanks for the bit of insight  I'm just beginning to learn all about this addiction  I'm glad you answered also as  its important to me to get varied ideas and opinions
 
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William

Guest
Hello Gents, and thanks for the kind words, malando, EnigmaMan, and joepanic.

@ Enigmaman:  You taught yourself a valuable lesson, one you will not forget, a lesson newbie addicts find very difficult to learn, and that is:  you can quit, you can go without, you do not have to use.  That is really the purpose of the hard 90, which are training wheels for life.  Even when you went back you understand it was something you were choosing to do, even if unwise.  You recognized what you were doing, and recognized it was a choice.  Learning that using is a personal choice, as opposed to an inevitability, is a huge part of overcoming the addiction. Teaching ourselves we can life without it, for ever, is the first step toward getting clean.

@ joepanic:  The future is now, for porn addiction.  By this I mean that the first porn addicts, persons addicted to High Speed Internet Porn, persons using HSIP to achieve a dopamine rush, born before, say, 2000, are a dying species.  That group of people, mostly men, but some women too, were born in the 1940' through about or after, 1995.  They had an opportunity to experience real life, as in real sex, before being introduced to, and becoming addicted to, HSIP.  Might even be guys born a bit later.  But for guys born, say, after 2000, and certainly after 2007, their first experience in obtaining a dopamine rush via HSIP, was, for many and most, via HSIP.  The older generation of porn addicts, actually porn-induced-dopamine-addicts, found it a bit easier to take off their chains, because their brain had sexual reward pathways to return to.  Their brains were aware there was an alternative to HSIP to achieve that dopamine rush.  Unlike today's porn addicts, the older ones did not experience a dopamine rush first with HSIP, but, rather, had experienced it first via actual sex.  From now on out, forever, as far ahead as we can see, many, perhaps most, young men will get their first dopamine rush from sexual thoughts triggered by HSIP.  That is one reason the addiction is growing, and one reason why the new generation finds it more difficult to take off their chains; their first "sexual" experience, so to speak, is via HSIP, and they never experienced real sex before they experienced HSIP.  They became addicted to HSIP before they experienced sex. 

To answer your question, for most guys, who ask the question, the answer is:  No porn, no porn substitutes, no vanilla porn, no bikini mags, no Victoria Secrets, no masturbation, no orgasm, no sex, and no sexual thoughts, for, at least, 90 days.  Of course, eliminating all sexual thoughts is impossible, but developing, in advance, a distraction technique to prevent a two second sexual thought from becoming a dopamine drenched hour long sex opera in your head is helpful. 

Cutting all that out is, for many here, hardly giving something up, because a large percentage of guys here are virgins, or cannot have sex at all due to PIED, so, they are not really giving much up in taking this advice. 

But...if you are married, and you can still rise to the occasion, then admiring your wife, flirting with your wife, and having sex and reaching O, with her, is perfectly acceptable.  That requires two things though:  that you do not have PIED, and that you can reach O during sex, while thinking only of your wife.  The two, main, physical symptoms of porn addiction are Porn Induced Erectile Dysfunction, (your boat is not floating), and anorgasmia (you cannot reach O during sex, but you can, and only can, with P).  Those physical symptoms are the main reason guys quit porn.  So, I  have to ask, do you have either of those symptoms?  The other thing to be cautious about is using porn-fantasy during sex to make sex possible.  That has to be avoided, because, if you have to do that to have sex, then you will just be using your wife's body as an extension of your hand, and you would worsening your condition, not making it better.  Hope this helps.

I would advise avoiding the pictures during the reboot, as the core concept of rebooting is to avoid all artificial sexual stimulation that leads to a dopamine rush, and the pictures, are, by definition, artificial sexual stimulation. I believe EnigmaMan has addressed it.  What you are really attempting to do, during the reboot, is to train your brain to live with a significantly reduced number of dopamine highs.  Dopamine is not the enemy, we, the species, got dopamine highs prior to the invention of High Speed Internet Porn, and it works very well to encourage us to make babies, but, via HSIP, we figured a way to use P to ride that high for hours, daily, for years, thus forming the addiction.  In the reboot, you are consciously attempting to alter your brain so that you can comfortably live without that. It is difficult, but it can be done.  Hope this helps. 
 

joepanic

Respected Member
Wow  William    thanks for the informative response    I'm 46  and discovered porn long before hsip.  I have no side issues and when my wife and I make love  I think only of her  To be honest  the more she does walk around like that  the less I find porn on my mind  But  I understand it would be asking too much of her to live that way constantly although  alot of fun  sometimes it lead to sex other time not  as for the photos  she had fun posing for them and i had fun taking them  I suppose I will put them on the flash drive and lock them in the trunk of the car or something  I dont  have any other porn stored on the computer  so that wouldnt be an issue  I'll be reading lots  about these topics in the next little while  and trying to fill my free alone time with other hobbies(music and my houseplants to start  But as questions come up  be sure to post them  A big thanks to Enigma man for his insight too    I'm quite excited about the possibilities  in life from taking this new path
 

sender

Active Member
William said:
The most important part of the method, the method of quitting porn, is becoming self aware. 
<snip>
What is relapse? What happens when we relapse? For a porn addict, actually, a porn induced dopamine addict, we relapse when we choose to use again.
Really well said post and totally true.  I don't mean to co-opt this thread, but I'd like to add something that may be helpful (I hope). As part of becoming aware, I think it's useful to examine this moment of choice a little closer because in the early days of getting clean, it can come up often, and how that particular moment is handled separates success from failure (obviously).

In the case of a relapse, this was the moment things went wrong, the moment when they could have gone right, but didn't.  From my own experience, once the decision to use has been made, it's hard to unmake it, so it's a good idea to surround that moment with trip-wires that set off a kind of alarm, something like, "Hey!  Watch out!  You're about to fall in!!"  Perhaps it's different for everyone, but for me, this moment was always preceded by a justification; a lie I told myself so I could believe it was ok to use.  It's never ok for me to use porn, so anything I tell myself that leads to the thought "it's ok to use porn" is a lie.  The awareness part comes in by setting the trip-wire around that lie.  The moment I hear that thought / lie emerge in my mind, I need that alarm to go off immediately. 

The point is, the decision to use is always preceded by a justification.  As long as I can spot the lie forming in my mind before it leads to a decision to use, then I can redirect and make the right choice.  Awareness is key...
 

profapper

Active Member
Awareness is key, your absolutely right. I caved last night. For me the awareness was their but i did it anyway, i dont have a girlfriend and i just wanted to experience a women. That seams to be my most common downfall. Like you said, once you make the decision its hard to back out and once i made the decision i felt nervous. bad emotions and i felt like i was shivering when it wasent cold. Whats that all about?
Ive got a new plan to just stay in constant motion and put my awareness into whatever im doing. since the law of vibration states that everything is moving and vibrating at a high rate of speed anyway its not too bad.
 
E

EnigmaMan

Guest
The Blue bus is calling me, I'm gonna get on.
See you in the back.
I quit, The End.

 
Been reading through a few pages of your thread William - a superb effort and very much appreciated by people just starting out such as myself. To understand WHY I have done what I have done, and that there is a genuine scientific reason for it, gives me hope that I am not the depraved, disgusting person that I was starting to feel I was. I will beat this and threads such as yours are the best source of knowledge and encouragement there is on getting through the initial toughest times
 
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William

Guest
Hi Guys, thanks for all the kind words from everyone.  Including Member X, an EnigaMan off the old block...  See you in the back of the Blue Bus. 

My relationship with porn is radically different now, than it was back in 2012-2013. Back then, when I started the reboot, what we now call "the hard 90", was not a phrase being used much, if at all. There were some guys talking about how 90 days changed things, but, back then, "quitting" porn was not, actually, a defined goal, because "porn addiction" was not, actually, an accepted concept. Back then, it was more of a ha-ha game, see how long you can go without, rather than what we now know is the only way out: absolute abstinence, quitting, for life. Back then it was like a game, see how long you could hold your breath, but the concept of quitting , that one could, that one should, that one would want to, did not exist. In the beginning, when places like the reddit Reboot Nation, and Nofap started, porn use was seen as, at most, a harmless, funny, but annoying thing the members would play at avoiding for relatively short periods. Thus, the challenges, which are helpful is understood as training wheels for quitting the addiction, but are unhelpful if, at the end, the member rewards themselves with a relapse.  For a newbie addict, taking off their change, that is quitting the addiction, the hard 90, if you can do it hardmode, really do it, will not cure you.  However, the hard 90, if done right, can allow you to have "the impossible thought":  I can quit forever.  Every addict has to have that thought, to quit.  Quitting porn, as in quitting porn induced dopamine addiction, really did not exist as a concept at the very beginning. Gary Wilson had started talking about it a few months before, I started attempting to quit, but, generally accepted? No. Many of the concepts we now use and throw around did not exist when I first started trying (and failing) to get free. Therefore, when I did my reboot, I did not think of it as a reboot, I just knew I was quitting, and I did not do "the hard 90", because the hard 90 did not, really, exist as a first step.  When I finally decided to quit, I QUIT.  I really did not feel I had conquered it until about 4 months in, that is four months after I went clean and made the conscious decision to never watch porn again, which is another way of saying never use porn, aka artificial sexual stimulation, to get a dopamine high, again.To be honest, prior to that point in my life I thought I had a problem with porn, as in watching it too much, not being able to control my use of it, using it compulsively, but until the second I thought "I am addicted", I had no success with the problem.  Prior to that I struggled, like a lot of guys do, with trying to control it, cut back on it, but keep it in my life.  During those first 14 months I was trying to control my porn viewing, when I should have been struggling to destroy it.  For the first 14 months I failed, because I failed to understand what was only beginning to be discussed:  No one has ever been addicted to porn; it is just a button we push to cause a dopamine high.  Until that is understood, until the mechanics of porn induced dopamine addiction is understood, the addict is fighting the condition like a boxer with a blindfold on  At that point, before I understood the "why" of porn addiction, the concept of "quitting" was alien to me, so alien, the thought of it would have caused me to recoil.  Like most of us here I had the thought:  "Gee, I need to get in control of this thing, but I am never giving it up.  I like it too much."  What I did not understand then was that it was not porn that I liked, but the dopamine response it created. 

Once the mechanics of what is really happening in the brain, why we watch it, why we like it, what that feeling is, and why it can become an addiction, is understood, quitting becomes possible. With understanding, and self awareness, you can overcome the addiction.  I promise. 

Gentlemen. Porn induced dopamine addiction is death worship. I want everyone reading this to go out in the world and embrace life, worship life, worship being alive. Revel in it. Get out in it. Swim in it. Get the glory and the dirt of it on you. Life is wonderful. Worship life. It will kick your ass, along the way, too; you will have split lips, black eyes, and scars. You will give some too. This is the nature of being alive. Don't hide from life in the addiction. Life: TAKE IT.

Shakespeare: "All things are ready if our minds are so."

Stay positive.  How do we help ourselves?  We help ourselves by helping others.  Get outside the addiction and help yourself.

Let's all have a great 2018.

Much love.

Will I AM. 

 
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William

Guest
Gabe Deem, of Reboot Nation, penned this article.  Alexander Rhodes, of Nofap, is referenced, along with Wilson and Zimbardo.  You took time out of your life, years, to get addicted.  You worked at it.  It took effort.  If you had spent as much time in the gym as you did searching porn, you would be a world class body builder; if you had spent as much time in class as you did searching porn, you would be a doctor.  Take a little time to study your problem, and, I promise, you will find a solution. Read it.  Get Educated.  Time to take off your chains.  Tick Tock.  You don't want to make it to "old" being addicted.  Time. 

Hello Gentlemen.  Now we Begin. 

http://digitalcommons.uri.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1075&context=dignity

Much love.

William
 

TruthSeeker

Member
Wow... thanks, that's a great encouragement. I've just started my recovery after many false attempts. I'm on day 2 and needed to hear this. Bless you brother
 
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William

Guest
Thanks for all the kind words.

Someone on Reboot mentioned a documentary titled Over 18.  I had never heard of it.  It is, apparently, in the making.  This link is a 3 minute promo for it.

http://www.scorpiontv.com/over-18

This is what porn education will look a bit like in the future, minus the ominous music. We, society, needs to understand what porn addiction is.  The 13 year old who is the subject-porn-addict-in recovery, said something everyone here should pause a moment to appreciate and understand:

"A lot of the time you don't just pick one picture, and then just stare at it, you just keep going, and going, and going, and all the pictures are different."

We have all been there, clicking, clicking, clicking.  Understand why.  Porn addiction is arousal addiction.  Arousal addicts do not want more of the same, like a drug addict wants.  Arousal addicts crave different, different, different.  This constant search for the novel, never before seen porn scene results in a dopamine hit.  It is not just seeing the pic, then thinking the thought, then getting a dopamine rush.  If there was only one porn vid in the world, we would become bored with it, and the addiction would not form.  Part of this addiction is searching for something never seen before. 

The second concept I found helpful in the video is the distinction between static porn of the past, and porn post mass broadband.  Insert the term High Speed Internet, or more specifically, High Speed Internet Porn, and the people making the documentary have come to realize there is a BC and an AD for porn addiction.  The thing that makes porn addiction possible and prevalent is the creating and widespread use of High Speed Internet Porn, which makes it possible to constantly search for the never before seen scene.  We liked porn before HSIP, because it gave us a dopamine rush, but that dopamine rush was limited because our access to never before seen porn was limited.  Now, with HSIP, we can click, click, click all day, every day, and we never have to see the same scene twice.  That ability to constantly search, for an arousal addict, who needs new, new, novel to feed their dopamine habit, is an ability we created when we created HSIP.  Education is key.  You have to study what is going on in your brain if you are going to be most successful fixing it. And, if no one told you can fix it, I am here to tell you, you can.

Much love.

Will I AM
 
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William

Guest
lyon03 posted this on 1-2-18.  He says it clean.  He says it clear.

Happy New Year friends! Hey SMS...great hearing from you brother. Congratulations on 4+ years porn-free. What an accomplishment. I'm now at 3 years and 2+ months porn-free, just another 10 months before celebrating 4 years porn-free. In the beginning, I counted my recovery in days, weeks, and then months. I never thought I'd be counting my freedom in years but here I am. I welcome all of the new members and encourage the long-term members to keep coming back. There is no secret to my recovery:

1. Doing the hard 90 (or 100 in my case)
2. Daily posts and encouraging others
3. Reading everything I could about porn addiction, addiction, self-esteem, self-improvement, etc.
4. Attacking my addictions to porn, sex, and masturbation from every angle until I prevailed.

To give you a snapshot of where I was, I was heavily addicted to dopamine [read up on it if you don't know the term] for about 15-20 years and masturbated to porn 1-2x daily for about the final ten years. There was a time when I couldn't go three whole minutes without a porn fix...I know because I timed it. Because of my screen/dopamine addiction, I suffered from depression, erectile dysfunction, anxiety, anger, and a whole host of other porn-related problems. Around Christmas 2013, I seriously contemplated suicide as my only way out. Had I not stopped watching porn and using hook up applications like Grindr (often while driving), I know I'd be a dead man. 

I joined this forum in November 2014 with a "porn is not an option" mentality and have not watched porn since. But I didn't do it alone. This forum and its kind members were a lifesaver. I also joined www.pornaddictsanonymous.org, a 12-step program for people with porn addictions, got a sponsor, now sponsor others, and still participate in their weekly phone-in meetings. So what's my point? If you attack your addictions from every possible angle, you will eventually prevail. It might not happen immediately and you might stumble from time to time, but you'll eventually get there.

Thanks for reading friends. Be well and remember...PORN IS NOT AN OPTION.
 
You are a big inspiration to me! I've read through your long, long journal and I am currently on page 4 - I read a little from your Journal every day.

But I have one thing, that keeps popping up in my head.

I am currently on day 5 - so I have nothing to be proud of yet! But I am very determined this time.

But I imagine a future when I'm all rebalanced and have not watched any P for, say, a year. I have no longer cravings, I no longer have to fight myself to stay away from "the bad things"..

You say over and over again, that we are not addicted to actual P - P is the button we push to get a dopamine high. I understand this - and I agree with you - even though the limbic system finds it difficult to fully believe at this point!!!

But if I were no longer addicted to dopamine highs and my brain's dopamine levels were rebalanced would it be a problem to enjoy P once in a while? I think that I've used P with my wife maybe 10 times in the 23 years we've been together. It has turned us both on and lead to great sex. 10 times in 23 years - will not get anybody addicted... Would you consider using P in that way a problem??

----
Some cigarette-addicts who have quit smoking are able to smoke a single cigarette once in a while - without getting re-addicted. And they enjoy doing so.
Other's know that they can NEVER again smoke a cigarette because it'll instantly lead to a total relapse, even if they're 10 years clean.
I've never had any addiction to drugs or cigarettes so I don't know what it would feel like!

Could it be the same way with P?! Once your brain is rebalanced you can enjoy it once in a while without relapsing and getting re-addicted. There is a chance that I may not WANT to look at P once I'm rebalanced, but I find it hard to believe. Nature have programmed us to want new bodies - we are not programmed to stay with the same mate forever. So I find it hard to believe in a future where I don't WANT to look at any naked woman, whether as pixels on a screen or IRL - that would just be against human nature.... And it seems that you, Gabe and Gary Wilson pretty much agree that watching a naked body is NOT the problem. The problem is the HSIP wtih its endless novelty that hijacks our dopamine reward system.

----
I think there is one major difference between addiction to dopamine-high caused by P and addiction to cigarettes/drugs:
Cigarettes/drugs is a few hundred years old at the most. We have not evolved during millions of years to get a dopamine-reward from smoking a cigarette.
However we DID evolve through millions of years to receive a Dopamine reward from having sex / looking at naked bodies...

In my world that is a huge difference between the two things: No matter how many years I stay totally away from P my limbic system will still be programmed to - through millions of years - to reward looking at a naked body on a computer screen.

I do not have any craving towards smoking a cigarette because I've never been smoking an I've not evolved to crave nikotin!
But even if internet did not exist at all I would still have evolved to receive a dopamine high from lovely ladies.
 
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William

Guest
Hi chat.  Thank you for the kind words.  You have taken a huge step in understanding that we use porn, like a tool, like a button, to trigger a dopaminergic reaction.  It is simple cause and effect.  It is that reaction, the dopamine high, we are addicted to.  If watching porn did not cause that reaction, porn would be boring to us, and unaddictive.  As for your question about using porn in the future, as in, beyond the reboot...let's get you rebooted FIRST.  The reality for all humanity, from this point forward, is that porn is ubiquitous.  If you are online, porn is a click away, for all us, forever.  Once you are rebalanced, you won't miss porn, as a daily habit.  At that point, you are not fighting the withdrawals.  It's a good place.  Still, you can use porn to trigger that old dopamine high.  You are right.  You, me, and every other homosapien on the planet, now and forever, really, really like a dopamine high. I think that you must get rebooted first, and then ask the question you have asked.  Can you, in the future, use porn to get a dopamine high?  Answer: yes, now and forever.  Is it safe or healthy, in any way, to do so?  Answer:  get rebooted first and ask the question then.  You may find that, once rebooted, that is fire you never want to play with again. 

As for dopamine and sex, yes, but one of the intuitive assumptions many porn addicts make, that is 100% wrong, is that porn is the same as sex.  It is not.  Porn is sex negative.  You are right that obtaining a dopamine high based on actual sexual pursuit is millions of years old.  However, using porn to obtain that reaction is only a decade, more or less, old.  This is where we (you, me, everyone) need to become very self aware:  we did NOT evolve , over millions of years, to get a dopamine high from computer porn, because computer porn, internet porn, High Speed Internet Porn, has only existed, more or less, for a decade.  As a stimulus, for humanity, for the human brain, HSIP was practically invented yesterday.  It is something completely new that we have figured out a to high jack a brain reaction that is millions of years old.  That part of the human brain, the primitive sexual reward system, is the same now as it was millions of years ago.  HSIP did not change the human brain.  However, HSIP is a new super stimuli that we are now dealing with, that we did not deal with, all those millions of year, prior to now.  Now we are dealing with it. 

So:  dopamine high from reality is millions of years old.  But, dopamine high from HSIP is brand new.  That dopamine high was, always, potentially addictive, but only recently has technology made that potential readily available to billions of people. 

My advice:  Get clean first.  Take off all your chains.  After that, free, you can ask yourself if you want to play with the thing that, I promise you, will hurt taking off.  But, ask the question clean.  Get clean before asking the question.  Clean, your perspective will change 

Hope this helps.

Much love.

Will I AM.  Again, thanks for the kind words. 
 
THank you for your response - You are right - as you always are.

I want to tell you just HOW right you are: When I wrote the other post, I deleted it 1/3 through, thinking: Why would anybody listen to a guy who?s 5 days clean. I am going to wait at least a month and ask this question later. But the question is in my head - and so I rewrote and finished the post!!

But here is why I am asking:
When I was 14 I was very shy. I was also curious. Shy AND curious. One day curiosity won. Internet did not exist. But I dared to go to the other side of the town and buy a p-magazine in a place where I was sure that no one I knew would come buy. For more than one year I owned ONLY that magazine - I was too shy to buy a second one :)  I would PMO while looking at the girls in the magazine. Of course some of the girls were more attractive to me than others. Especially one! (I can still see the pictures clearly for me!) So I almost always PMO?ed while looking at her. There was no endless novelty it was the same girl over and over. I enjoyed looking at her, but I was not addicted.

When I was 16 I owned 3 magazines. I went away from home to study in another country - and before I left, I threw those 3 magazines away. I didn?t want my mom to find them, while I was away :) I threw them away and it didn?t cause me any withdrawals because I was not addicted to dopamine highs.

Today I am addicted - and I know that. But I can remember back in time, when I enjoyed watching P withour being addicted. Maybe I want to go there again. Gary Wilson says in the ?Great P-experiement? video that he is not against P.

??
But I guess it is the same with cigarettes: Two guys both quit a cigarette addiction. One of them keeps smoking, say, one cigarette every month. He enjoys it and it does not get him re-addicted.
The other guy also smokes one cigarette. It instantly causes him to relapse and become re-addicted. I think I would be the second guy.... :( at least I?m afraid that I would be the second guy

??-
But, William, you say that you will never relapse, you don?t WANT to relapse, and you don?t WANT to look at P.
I don?t know you - but I know me, and I find it hard to believe that I would ever not WANT to look at P. Because I wanted to look at P when I was 14 and not addicted.
?-
Oh, one more thing: You?ve written a lot of times: There are two kind of guys here: Those who want to quit for good, and those who want to keep P in their lives and control it. You say that you have nothing to say to the second group - that they should leave this site..

I?m sorry - but I don?t know which group I belong to. I know that I want to rebalance my dopamin reward-system, meaning a cold turkey for at least 90 days. I am VERY determined to do this. But once I?m rebalanced I honestly don?t know which group I belong to.

??
But I?m on day 5 and that?s nothing to be proud of. I?ve experienced the great benefits of 2-3 weeks clean. I want to explorer what?s on the other side of the 90 days. I want to go there. I truly admire those who have succesfully beaten an addiction, whether it be p, gambling or smoking
??
William, sorry for asking, but how old are you? You are such an inspiration for a lot of us. But are you a young guy who grew up with HSIP or have you lived your youth without the internet?
 
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William

Guest
Hi chat, I think you are walking the right path.  Having beaten the addiction, I will never go back, ever.  The pain of quitting the first time is a sufficient deterrent to ever risk having to do it again.  When Gary Wilson says he is not against porn, that is the scientist speaking.  However, I think if asked point blank, "are you against porn addiction?", Gary would say he is. Gary is on the leading edge of scientists who have identified, put a name to, and understanding of, the pathology of the addition. 

During the reboot the addiction talks to us.  One of the things it tells us is that it is, or, eventually will be, OK to use porn. That is the addiction trying to talk you into using, if not now, then later.  My advice is do not listen to the addiction at all.  You have the right idea.  Get clean first, then start asking questions.  Your perspective will be different. 
 
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William

Guest
@alisdaily I am going to be directly honest with you. I hope this is OK. Some people, especially here, addicts, do not like direct honesty. Who am I kidding, no one really likes direct honesty. It's too close to beomg comfortably asleep, in a warm dry bed, when someone rudely dumps a tub of ice cold water on you. Direct honesty can suck, like that, sometimes. So here goes. Your quote: I can not stay away for more than one day. That is a lie. That is a lie the addiction has told you, that is a lie you have told yourself, and it is a lie you have now told the rest of us. I doubt anyone was more addicted than me, and that was a lie the addiction told me too, and, I, in turn, told that lie to myself. So, let's be clear. You CAN stay away for more than one day, if you choose to. You can stay away for life, if you choose. Let's be honest: If you are using every day, it is because you are choosing to use every day. Granted, you cannot help it when you want it and miss it, it being the dopamine hit it brings, but admit to yourself, when it comes to using, that is a personal choice. It's not like the addiction is forcing you to use, or holding a gun to your head. I understand that choosing not to use, especially for a newby, in the quitting phase, hurts. It is painful to quit. In a sense, when quitting porn addiction, you are choosing pain. If you want to quit this, you have to choose pain. Not a very attractive choice, but that is the choice that everyone who gets free must choose. The pain does not last forever, it recedes, then goes away, but you won't get out of here without first walking through that door.

You have been aware of your problem before you joined this place, in 2014. You are aware of your problem in 2018. For some, it does take years to overcome the problem, but you cannot overcome your problem with your mindset, so your mindset must change, now, first. So, lesson one: you own you. The addiction does not own you. Say it, find a mirror, look into it, and say: I own me, the addiction does not own me. Maybe say it over and over for a half hour or so. Convince yourself of its truth. This will not make quitting the addiction less painful, but it will make taking the pain more bearable. Why? Because, once you own you, the pain is under your control; it is not something being done to you, it is something you are doing to yourself, for a purpose, the purpose being taking off your chains, of becoming unaddicted. Porn addiction did not just spontaneously happen to you. You did it to yourself, like all of us, by training your brain to use porn to get that thing we are truly addicted to, the dopamine high it produces. It took years to get addicted, and it was a fun ride, until it wasn't anymore. It will take, at least, months to get unaddicted, and that ride is no fun at all. As pleasant as the porn ride was, when you quit, it will be doubly painful. But, you own you. When you experience that pain, just know, it is because you are giving it to yourself. You own you. This is part of the process.

Also, don't be distracted by the category of porn button you are pushing to reach that dopamine high. By the time most of us are addicted and are ready to quit, we are no longer watching porn we see our own sexuality in. We have desensitized to whatever vanilla porn that was, and have moved into categories that often involve things that are shocking to us. By that time on this trip, we need that to trigger. Yeah, that is the human brain and the mechanics of porn addiction. So, you think you are stuck on one category, but the category is irrelevant. You have to look behind the veil to understand that porn is just a mind trick, a little thing we have figure out how to use to trigger a dopamine high, and is has nothing to do with our actual sexuality, whatever your sexuality is. The addiction, and the category you are watching, is all about using sexual imagery to make sexual thought, to trigger a dopamine reaction. All 100% in the brain, 0% in reality. You have been here since 2014. Whatever you are doing, if your purpose is to overcome the addiction, it is not working. Your first and most obvious mistake is that you are still listening to the addiction, talking to it, communicating with it. The addiction lies, it wants you to use it forever, to never give it up, and it has no respect for you. The addiction tells you lies so obvious that it is pathetic that you have listened to it, such as, I can't go a day without. Lie! You have to defriend the addiction, expel it, excommunicate it, hate it, destroy it, offer it no quarter. You have been holed up paling around with it for far too long. It is time for you to get comfortable with discomfort, time for you embrace the pain of quitting, which you can do, because once you accept you own yourself, it is something you are doing to yourself, and not something being done to you.

Ok, end of lecture.

Today is day 31, of this month at least. In July, I will be 5 years clean. I quit porn addiction for one reason only. I had developed the inability to reach O during sex. I could reach it every time, multiple times a day, with PMO, but, with a real partner, I could not. This made my real partner feel inadequate and inferior to porn. Pathetic. Like @alisdaily the addiction lied to me and told me I could not stop, could not go one day. The first thing I had to understand is that the addiction lies. If you are reading this and take nothing else away, take this: When you doubt that you can stop, it is only the addiction whispering into your ear, and that lying piece of shit wants you to fails, and never wants you to quit. You may think you have found a friend in the addiction, but it is the opposite of your friend. It is the crutch that tells you you have to use it and limp, despite the fact that without it, you can run. Don't listen to it.

This completes this January challenge. If you are a slave, I invite you to take off your chains.

I want everyone reading this to succeed. I know you can, because I, and many others, have. If we can do it, you can too. It can be done.

Much love.

Will I AM.

PS: Now I reach O with sex, always, and I never PMO. Success.
 
W

William

Guest
We are a long way from understanding the brain mechanics behind porn addiction.

So, let's start at the beginning.

No one has ever been addicted to porn. Porn is a button. We love pushing the button, because when the button is pushed, we get something we love very, very much: a dopamine rush.

Let's understand what dopamine is. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter in our brains. You have it, I have it, everyone has it. It is so important to our existence that, without it, our species would not exist. All mammals have it. It is a motivational and reward neurotransmitter. Dopamine is the"why" behind why we do, and want to do, a lot of things we perceive as loving to do, but, also, are necessary to do for the promulgation of the species. Dopamine is the evolved reason why we want sex, why we want food, and as we have figured out, why we want porn, drugs, etc. Dopamine is a good thing, but, we have figured out how to abuse it, because that is what humans do.

It is also important to understand that porn addiction is an arousal addiction, as opposed to a substance addiction. Substance addicts can, and often do, overdose. That is because substance addicts need "more" of the thing they are putting into their body to reach their high, over time, as they desensitize to the amount that originally worked for them. Arousal addicts do not need "more", they need "new, different, never-before-experienced" in order to get off. This is why porn addicts move through the categories, over time, and why porn addicts cannot over dose. We don't need more porn to get off, we need different categories, over time, to get off. For arousal addicts, it is the new that produces the dopamine high. Dopamine, of course, naturally, is an evolved brain mechanism that encourages sex, as in reproduction of the species. Without it, there would be no human species.

So, let's imagine sex without dopamine. Let's imagine sex without a neurotransmitter that does not translate to us really, really liking sex. Imagine trying to have sex without it being pleasurable.

Guy to woman: I have been thinking about creating a replica of myself....

Woman: Ok, why are you telling me this?

Guy: I have done some research, and it turns out that if I mix my genetic material with a females, it could, long term, produce a replica.

Woman: That sounds so horrible. How would you do that?

Guy: There is this thing here, called a penis. Guys have them, women do not. It turns out that with a bit of effort, I can make this thing get hard, and, if I can find a willing female, I can insert this into their body, and transfer my genetic material into their body...

Woman: Wait, wait? What the fuck, you want to put what where?

Guy: Well, having done the research, turns out female bodies are receptive to this. They are made to receive a penis, in order to transfer genetic material. That is why you have that opening there in your body.

Woman: Hold up. In "my" body? First, it is called a pussy, and second, ain't no one putting any penises in that. That is disgusting. But, just say that you did, what would happen then?

Guy: Well--just hypothetically speaking--if I did put it in, and I did transfer genetic material, technically sperm, that might reach a woman's eggs, and that might produce a zygote...

Woman: WTF

Guy: a zygote...a coming together of her genetic material with mine, which, if successful, could produce a baby, in about 9 months.

Woman: What happens in the meantime, where is this baby for that 9 months.

Guy: In the woman's womb, of course.

Woman: (puzzled look, silence).

Guy: It would grow inside you, for nine months.

Woman: Ok, goodbye.

Without a dopamine high, without that motivational and reward neurotransmitter, sex would be a negotiation that would almost always fail.

Nature short circuited the above exchange by just making sex feel good, via the dopamine high we get from thinking about sex. Without that dopamine high, then thoughts of sex would not lead to sex, because without that dopamine high, thoughts of sex are not very sexy.

You might think you "love" ice cream. You don't. You love the dopamine response thinking about it produced. It is essential to understand this is 100% a brain issue. Dopamine is not produced in response to an act, either sex or eating, it is produced in response to thinking about those things. We are clever, and self destructive, monkeys, and we like riding highs. We have figured out many ways to abuse our brains to ride highs, none of which are helpful to our existence, some of which are deadly.

If you are addicted to porn, you are not addicted to porn. You are addicted to the dopamine rush it gives you. Lesson one, know your brain.

Lesson two, go with the dopamine response when seeking sex. Nature has made that easy for us. It is a lot easier than trying to rationalize it to a female. Trying to talk anyone into staying pregnant for 9 months is not a strong argument. Get off porn, get into the game of life.

Much love.

Will I AM.
 

bob

Respected Member
I got a chuckle out of your dialog between man and woman who are discussing this biological act of procreation..

William said:
Guy to woman: I have been thinking about creating a replica of myself....

Woman: Ok, why are you telling me this?

Guy: I have done some research...

Woman: That sounds so horrible. How would you do that?

Guy: There is this thing here, called a penis. Guys have them....  and if I can find a willing female, I can insert this into their body, and transfer my genetic material into their body...

Woman: Wait, wait? What the fuck, you want to put what where?....

It brings things into perspective.

Without dopamine life is not going to happen. Its a integral part of life. But, p hijacks this process. It puts dopamine in charge. It gives dopamine the power and the control. However, without p one can take back their life. One can break the connection that puts dopamine in charge. Without p, dopamine backs down into that natural process where it is a part of life, not in control of ones life.

At that point, life is worth living.

Thanks for sharing

Peace
 
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