I see the same questions asked over and over again. I also post the same answers over and over again.
No one is addicted to porn, never has been. No one is addicted to masturbation, never has been.
Give or take, around 2011-2014, humanity invented High Speed Internet, yet another modern marvel. Sort of like an atomic bomb. OK, that is cynical, because HSI has many helpful uses. But, the second we invented HSI, we tacked porn on to it to stream HSIP (High Speed Internet Porn), because we like porn. As a species, we like porn because porn produces a sexual thought, and sexual thoughts are rewarded with a dopamine rush. Dopamine is a reward and motivational neurotransmitter. Google it. Oversimplification? Yes, but good enough for people with the problem. Thinking about sex feels "good" to us, due to that brain reaction. But, in our history, there is a before and after HSIP. Before HSIP we had porn, and we liked to use it to get that dopamine rush, even if we did not understand that was what we were using it for. But HSIP is different. It is a far more efficient and available button to push to get that dopamine high than was available before. Sure porn has been available to us since we lived in caves. We have been drawing dicks and tits and cunts and ass on cave walls for 100,000 years. But, only around 2011-2014 did we invent HSIP, which allowed us to do something the prior porn did not: Now we can sit for hours, every single day, searching for the never before experienced porn video, which allows us to have he never before experienced sexual thought, which allows us to feed or trigger a dopamine high, for hours, every day, for years, thus forming the addiction. The addiction is technically an addiction to the brain reaction the sexual thought triggers, which, crudely but correctly, is a dopamine response, dopamine high, dopamine buzz.
Understanding the brain mechanics goes a long way toward fixing the problem. If you think your problem is just porn or MO, rather than using them to produce a brain reaction, you are trying to fix wrong problem. Yes, PMO contributes to the problem, and yes you are going to have to give that up, but as is true in ALL addictions, the addiction is a brain problem, period. Look up, to the top of this page, and what image has Gabe posted? Yep, a brain, because this begins and ends in the brain. Go to the home page here and watch the Wilson vid; he explains it all.
After, give or take, 8 years of experiencing HSIP, a lot of the world is realizing it can be abused, and it can be addictive. Dopamine addiction, via porn consumption, is a trained brain condition. We like porn the first time we experience it, but using it to become addicted to the dopamine response takes training, as in daily, repeated use, for months or years, IMO. You do not have to understand you are training your brain to become addicted, and most do not understand that is exactly what they are doing or have done. But, if you are taking hours from your day, every day, to watch porn, you are training your brain to become addicted. Truth. Places like this are a warning that that can form a problem. Once the problem is formed, what you are really giving up is your daily dopamine hit. That sucks, because by the time your brain comes to expect it every day, it does not want to give it up. Your brain interprets that dopamine rush as momentary euphoria or happiness. Same as if you smoked crack.
So, quitting porn sucks because quitting porn means quitting using porn to get a dopamine rush, and the dopamine rush it allows for feels fucking great. Only reason we watch porn is to get that rush. Without that porn would be about as interesting to us as washing dishes. Not so much. Take time to study our problem. "Porn addiction", aka porn induced dopamine addiction, is 100% a brain problem. It sucks, but fixing it is is doable. A lot of us have fixed it. At the beginning, fixing it sucks, but, eventually, over time, months or years, if you are dedicated to fixing it, it gets fixed and it gets easy.
Am I very worried about porn addiction worldwide and in the future? Not as much as I used to be, for cynical reasons. While porn is a very efficient and available means to obtain a dopamine rush, we are beginning to invent even more efficient ways to obtain it, as in direct electrical brain stimulation to treat pain and depression. We do not have to PMO anymore to get the reaction, we just have to have a brain implant, and push a button, literally. There are reports of early experiments where the patients are allowed to push the button when they feel pain or depression, and some of the reports have the patients pushing the button until their thumb is rubbed raw. Sound familiar? We are clever monkeys, and HSIP is not the last way we have figured out to abuse our brains to the point of addiction.
If you have the problem, just know, study it, and it can be fixed. But you are going to have to put as much effort into quitting the problem as you did in forming it. That's a lot of effort.
You can do it. I know you can.
Much love.
Billy the Kid.
