New Guy - Just Getting Started

Pheonix

Member
Hi,

I am a 42 year old internet porn addict. I have been using porn since I was about 12. Things have become unmanageable in recent years and I am ready for recovery (I have quit before, but always relapsed). I know, familiar story! I am glad I found this site.

In previous abstinence periods, I have continued to masterbate (average once per day). I think the problem with this is I always called up images from my memory and this made it likely that I would relapse. This time, I am going to minimize masterbation and orgasm during my reboot period.

Thanks to everyone for your help.
 
W

William

Guest
Pheonix said:
In previous abstinence periods, I have continued to masterbate (average once per day). I think the problem with this is I always called up images from my memory and this made it likely that I would relapse. This time, I am going to minimize masterbation and orgasm during my reboot period.

Sometimes I fear being too direct when I post, but I figure you are here because you recognize you have a problem, you are looking for a solution, and you are willing to take the medicine straight to fix things.  So, here is the straight medicine, and if this is too direct, please know  my purpose in writing is to offer help, and only that.

Phoenix, you are 42 years old.  You are posting in a porn addiction forum, so I believe you recognize yourself as a porn addict.  You talk about masturbating during the reboot, and you talk about minimizing that, but you acknowledge that you are using memories of porn when you MO.  I don't know how serious you are about quitting, but your approach is a formula for continued failure.  Porn addicts cannot keep porn in their lives--in any form--and expect to recover.  Porn is not just porn, it is seeing it, watching it, listening to it, remembering it, imagining it, fantasizing about it, and using porn substitutes, things that give a dopamine high.  Understand that the reboot is a limited time in your life, it is 90 days to allow your brain to rewire to reward something other than porn.  If you are lighting those brain reward pathways up via hypersexualized thought of any kind during the reboot, you are prolonging the problem, not fixing it.  A lot of guys ask  whether they can MO without porn during the reboot and reboot successfully.  My answer is, yes, hypothetically, but unless you are thinking of changing a flat while MOing, you are probably using hypersexual thoughts, probably pornographic thoughts, during MO, and that is still just abusing your brain's reward center, it is using hypersexual thoughts to get a dopamine high, and the high is rewarding something other than what you want rewarded, that being reality, as in real sex with a flesh and blood partner. 

I know you are here because you want to get clean, but are you willing to pay the price?  There is no easy or painless way out of porn addiction, aka dopamine addiction.  The addiction can be starved to death, it can be killed, by you cannot starve it to death if you are feeding it, even if you are feeding it very little compared to what you were feeding it before.  If MOing during the reboot is crumbs to what you were feeding it before, you are still feeding it.  A lot of guys don't understand that porn itself really is not addictive.  It is just the button we push to get a dopamine high, it is the delivery system for the drug.  But in reality, any hypersexualized thoughts can be the button pushed to get the drug.  For an addict rebooting, it is not just that actual porn be avoided, but also indulging in hypersexualized thoughts must be avoided.  You can abuse your brain's reward system without even touching yourself if you dwell on sexual thoughts. 

My advice, go hard mode for 90 and be done with it.  By then, for most, the hardest part of the addiction recovery process is behind them and many report totally rebooted and rewired.  If you are serious about quitting, this is my advice.  If you are serious about staying addicted, keep feeding the addiction. 

Peace.

Will I AM.
 

Pheonix

Member
Thanks William. I think that is good advice. I am committed to 120 days without porn. And I appreciate the direct approach. When I wrote the sentence about minimizing, I had in mind another post that I have seen here that you shouldn't consider it failure if you masterbate because it is porn that is the enemy. But I realize you are right, if I am activating those pathways, it is not going to work. Message received!

Thanks,

P
 

savingmysoul

Active Member
Definately with William on this one.

You have to make the choice to commit to ridding your life of all P & M, forever. 
 
Top