I'll admit that I'm thinking of watching porn on the weekend. I'm not gonna do it today. I'll sleep on it at the very least. I'll stay open to the idea that I feel different tomorrow. I have other things to do as well. But the thing is, I'm not sure what I want. The case may be that I genuinely do want to keep using. If that is the case, I don't think it makes much sense to hang in here. I don't know. What I do know is that I don't like having to spend so much time thinking about it. There is something about that whole recovering addict mindset that makes my life revolve too much around porn whether I'm using or not. Definitely I don't want to be in that pit either, where I'm watching it constantly. Maybe some kind of harm reduction approach would be the only way: accepting that I'm not gonna quit completely, but also acknowledging that having my binges less frequently is a huge change for the better. As I said, I'm not gonna do anything today. I'll sleep on it at least.
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Started taking this seriously
- Thread starter Emmen
- Start date
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escapeandnevercomeback
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Emmen said:I'll admit that I'm thinking of watching porn on the weekend. I'm not gonna do it today. I'll sleep on it at the very least. I'll stay open to the idea that I feel different tomorrow. I have other things to do as well. But the thing is, I'm not sure what I want. The case may be that I genuinely do want to keep using. If that is the case, I don't think it makes much sense to hang in here. I don't know. What I do know is that I don't like having to spend so much time thinking about it. There is something about that whole recovering addict mindset that makes my life revolve too much around porn whether I'm using or not. Definitely I don't want to be in that pit either, where I'm watching it constantly. Maybe some kind of harm reduction approach would be the only way: accepting that I'm not gonna quit completely, but also acknowledging that having my binges less frequently is a huge change for the better. As I said, I'm not gonna do anything today. I'll sleep on it at least.
Don't plan watching porn because this builds anticipation and anticipation releases dopamine that is hard to resist. Don't ever make such plans, your plan is to quit porn, not to watch porn. Also, reduction doesn't get rid of porn. Reduction helps you... reduce porn, but not get rid of it completely. The only thing that gets rid of porn is complete starvation, complete abstinence. I've tried to reduce and thanks to this I'm still not done with porn. My new approach is complete porn starvation. This is the safest and quickest way to beat this. I know guys who are done with porn. I don't know them personally, I know them from the Internet, and they've done it because they've applied the complete starvation method: No porn at all. I've never heard them say: "I reduced porn and then I reduced a little more until it went away". This is not an ice cube.
I do appreciate your comments and I do understand where you're coming from. But still, I decide my goals and right now abstinence isn't one of them. I did watch porn on Saturday. Can't say I was particularly happy about it afterwards, can't say I expected to be either. Having a binge on the weekend is better than having it during the week. Having it just on one day during the weekend is better than both days and having binges once every two weeks is better than once a week. Even once every two weeks seems a bit much, to be honest. That's mainly because I should use the weekends to recuperate from work, you know, exercise, healthy food, sleep, relaxation, whatever social contact the pandemic allows. Porn does the opposite. I'm not claiming this isn't a problem. I'm not even suggesting I will get to a point where it's no longer a problem. I doubt my porn use could ever completely harmless. But it's not a black and white type of thing. It does make a difference how much I use, how often and so on.
The question is, how much sense does it make to journal here if my goal is harm reduction rather than abstinence? I'm not saying they're wrong and I'm right. I do understand where they're coming from. I abstained for a couple of years and I do see reasons to prefer that. I'm not saying abstinence will never be my goal, but neither am I saying it will be. I don't know. One thing I do know is that getting fixated on solving the porn problem hasn't lead anywhere. That's partially because I use it as an excuse not to move forward in life. That needs to stop, regardless of whether I use porn. I can't keep seeing porn or the struggle against it as the central point that my life revolves around. That just gives it more power. So the plan is to do what I can to make changes for the better, even if that means no change in my porn use.
I think I will post less from now on. Posting just for the sake of posting won't get me anywhere, so I'll post only when there are some thoughts worth writing down.
The question is, how much sense does it make to journal here if my goal is harm reduction rather than abstinence? I'm not saying they're wrong and I'm right. I do understand where they're coming from. I abstained for a couple of years and I do see reasons to prefer that. I'm not saying abstinence will never be my goal, but neither am I saying it will be. I don't know. One thing I do know is that getting fixated on solving the porn problem hasn't lead anywhere. That's partially because I use it as an excuse not to move forward in life. That needs to stop, regardless of whether I use porn. I can't keep seeing porn or the struggle against it as the central point that my life revolves around. That just gives it more power. So the plan is to do what I can to make changes for the better, even if that means no change in my porn use.
I think I will post less from now on. Posting just for the sake of posting won't get me anywhere, so I'll post only when there are some thoughts worth writing down.
Yesterday's binge was exceptionally bad. Not in terms of duration, but for whatever reason, I felt absolutely terrible for quite a while afterwards. Not just mentally, I mean physically terrible. I drank a lot, so that certainly is one cause. I also had lots of caffeine which might cause some strange reaction with the alcohol. Then there's the junk food. But anyway, in the evening I just had to go outside and walk around a bit just to clear my head. I went into panic and started feeling paranoid. Whenever people walked past me, I really started to worry about someone attacking me. I've had these paranoid thoughts on rare occasions, not in a long time, though. I'm thinking it was a multitude of things, including all the stress from work.
An interesting difference between porn and junk food is that with porn, there is that attempt to get as much as I can. I want my binges huge. That's why I drink while watching porn, being drunk makes it last longer. That's why I only binge on weekends nowadays, that way you can do it longer. With junk food, it's not like that. Even when I do eat too much, I don't feel like eating as much as I can. I think one reason for this difference is that with food, it's always gonna be there. It's not like I'm gonna quit eating, so obviously the solution to overeating will a different way of eating, not abstinence. But with porn, I still tend to think in that mindset where it's one HUGE binge and then abstinence.
An interesting difference between porn and junk food is that with porn, there is that attempt to get as much as I can. I want my binges huge. That's why I drink while watching porn, being drunk makes it last longer. That's why I only binge on weekends nowadays, that way you can do it longer. With junk food, it's not like that. Even when I do eat too much, I don't feel like eating as much as I can. I think one reason for this difference is that with food, it's always gonna be there. It's not like I'm gonna quit eating, so obviously the solution to overeating will a different way of eating, not abstinence. But with porn, I still tend to think in that mindset where it's one HUGE binge and then abstinence.
I've been on the verge of a mental breakdown for the past few days. I feel a bit better at times and then the panic strikes again. I'm only now realizing how badly the pandemic has affected me. Now is the time to make good decisions, whatever it takes to keep my head intact. No porn, healthy food, fresh air, some exercise. I'm glad I have a close friend to whom I can talk to about at least some of these things. Perhaps surprisingly, porn is not on my mind right now, really it's the opposite. A porn binge is a part of what triggered this meltdown. I'm sure it would just aggravate it further.