What about rehabilitation via Cue Exposure Cognitive Behavioral Therapy?

[as_si_pe]

So I was thinking... if the assumption is true that porn addiction works just like all other major addictions, wouldn't it be beneficial to try to incorporate some major rehab strategies they use for other major addictions?

Here's one the first things I've found that sounds promising, growing in use and that makes a lot of sense for getting rid of porn addiction: http://gettingstronger.org/2010/04/overcoming-addictions/

Unlike AA therapies that work on the assumption that you will never be able to not get addicted to alcohol again and therefore the end state you should be striving for is total and permanent abstinence, CET/CBT works on the notion that you can regain control of how much and when you consume and that the normal life you're looking for is one where you can occasionally consume the "substance" (in this case artificial sexual stimuli) or consume it in some form of moderation (e.g. fantasies about real sex only / sexual memories only) without automatically slipping back into addiction.

Thoughts?

 

[as_si_pe]

See also: http://www.csc-scc.gc.ca/publications/litrev/treatmod/lit6e-eng.shtml

The general approach is to expose drug or alcohol users to cues for using (e.g., expose a cocaine abuser to white powder or an alcohol abuser to a beer bottle) while concurrently addressing and attempting to lessen the desire to use. It has been argued that cue exposure has many advantages: (1) cue exposure in the absence of drug or alcohol use can reduce the desire to use that was caused by the cue; (2) cue exposure provides the opportunity to practice coping responses (e.g., relaxation) realistically; and (3) cue exposure can increase self-efficacy, which will increase the likelihood that the response will be utilized in future real-life cue exposures (Monti, et al., 1989). Cue exposure as a treatment technique recognizes that it is impossible to avoid drug/alcohol-related cues and it is better to prepare patients to handle these cues outside of treatment in real-life situations (Chiauzzi & Liljegren, 1993).

Important distinction: porn itself is not the cue, porn here is the dopamin-raising substance of abuse; cues are random horniness, random images off billboards, boredom, that hot chick at work etc. - the things that appear before the porn use as triggers for it. So applying CET in the case of porn would not involve looking at porn and making some kind of willpower effort to draw oneself away from the porn but rather intentionally exposing oneself to the subtle cues and preconditions that usually lead to seeking out porn and intentionally exercising methods of redirecting oneself to other behaviors in those same situations (like one YBoP article said, it's about replacing porn as a vehicle for satisfaction rather than just quitting it).