Hello Gentlemen, thank everyone for the kind words. As you know I am consciously posting less and less. Now that I have taken the cure for porn addiction I am attempting to cure the cure, by that meaning thinking less and less about the topic. In the beginning I hit the forums multiple times a day, and some days posted as many as 20 posts. I suppose, in a way, I replaced porn with posting and it helped keep me clean, but not so much now. This is a good thing for me, and for all of us, as we can look forward to a time in our lives where not only are we not fighting the addiction, it simply does not occur to us, and even thinking about it becomes a distraction.
jkkk, porn totally fucks up our relationship with women on so many levels, you already know. Of course, at the time I became addicted I did not know that porn addiction, aka dopamine addiction, was possible. Like most of us, I saw porn as an amusing little roller coaster ride, it distracted me from life. What I did not know was that it became a substitute for life. I did not know the anxiety I thought porn helped me deal with was a withdrawal symptom that I only had because of porn. Porn gave me false expectations and desires of women and totally warped what I thought was "sexy." Porn objectifies women, meaning puts most of them in a class in our heads as just sexual beings when of course they are beautiful full persons in their own right; porn makes us see women as smaller than they are, when in fact they are great, and many of them much better people than we are. Any one reading this, don't let porn deny you the great opportunity of getting to know women in the full sense; there is so much more about that half of the species than sex.
@AoMSentme, education is key. It is one thing to go through withdrawals in ignorance, having no idea why this hellish feeling is tormenting you and wondering if it could last for ever, it is another to know it is your dopamine levels falling and if you can just keep going for the hard 90, it will stop or radically diminish. Understanding we are dopamine addicts is not the best news anyone is getting, but at least if we get that news, we know there are ways to get clean and free of it.
@ Poker--Peter Gabriel or Arcade Fire?
@lyon--75 days brother, you are so close to free you can probably taste it. Stay strong, do not lose focus, do not pat yourself on the back or tell yourself you can handle it now. You will have plenty of opportunity to see how strong you are on the other side of 90, don't fail now and keep going strong. You are proving to any one reading this that it can be done because you are doing it.
@ Madnote and username--I will give you some very simple advice: don't over think it, don't ask the big questions, don't ask the small questions, don't even ask questions; after you get past the hard 90 if you want to become a psychologist, more power to you, but during the hard 90 allow yourself no distractions. Asking about the underlying root cause of porn addiction is a distraction from the underlying root cause of porn addiction which is 100% one thing: porn leads to hypersexual thoughts, hypersexual thoughts lead to a dopamine high, a repeated dopamine high multiple times a day, for years, leads to the addiction. I am not saying that you can never ask the big questions, but don't let them distract during the hard 90. Once you get clean of the addiction, well, ask them then. You see, the addiction is tricky. It will try and talk you out of quitting by getting you to start asking questions like what really is the problem. Implied in the question is that porn is not the problem, but in reality, it is, it is the problem. Don't worry about testosterone, don't worry about blue balls, blue balls are a myth. You are 5 days in, and it just about now for you that the withdrawals will start tapping you on the shoulder and shouting in your ear that just a little bit won't hurt. Well, it won't hurt, it would just impede your quest to be free. Focus and stay concentrated on what we are doing and what we are not and know that on the other side of the hard 90 you will own you again, maybe for the first time in a decade, you will own you, porn won't any more, but you are not free, you are going to have to pay the price of years of abusing your reward system, and that is withdrawals. Just be aware, and don't let anything distract you.
@Fapplemage--PMOing and the addiction are probably the most selfish self absorbed activities we can engage in, they are the opposite of social, and therefore are antisocial. We don't need to interact with others in the midst of the addiction because we can get to our drug of choice in a dark room with the door locked and a computer in front of us. When quitting porn it helps to re-engage, consciously, with others, to single someone out and do something nice for them. Walk their dog, help them with groceries, be needlessly polite. How do we help ourselves? We help ourselves by helping others. By getting clean I pretty much guarantee you are helping others.
Keep posting. Remember, porn is not an option.
Will I AM.
