Here are my thoughts on how you can beat this problem.
You can be fee!
You are caught in a trap.
And what a clever trap it is.
The buyers and sellers of the world have ingeniously subverted your sexuality, mind and life for their own financial gain. They’re getting rich while you are risking your job, family and marriage and very likely losing your ability to feel the emotions that keep us all going.
I am writing to bring good news from the other side. You can be free. Think about that. Freedom. I KNOW this because I am. And with every passing day, I love my freedom MORE AND MORE. More than I loved pornography. More than I love almost anything! Don’t dwell on that defeatist nonsense that you will “always be an addict.” It’s a lie! Yes, you heard right, “IT’S A LIE!”
You will always remember what it was to be an addict. You will always realize that addiction is a path you could choose. For a long, long time, your body will remember the pattern you’ve spent countless hours instilling.
But you are no more addicted to something you no longer do than you were BEFORE you did it. You simply are more aware that addiction is a choice, whereas those who have never been addicted have the luxury of not truly understanding that reality. Like Adam and Eve, you have knowledge of addiction that the non-addict does not have; but that doesn’t mean you are still an addict. I am intimately aware of the sick, selfish, self-loathing feelings and thought patterns that made me an addict.
They’re gone.
So please, don’t tell me I’m still an addict and don’t let anyone tell you that either. Damn it, these people take the most empowering thing you have going for you, your desire to be free, and then tell you; “You will never be free. You will always be an addict.”
And then they wonder why so few ever escape the trap, why their failure rates are so high. Fools.
Books could and have been written on this topic but it all comes down to a very simple subject: TRUTH. Climbing out of addiction will be a search for truth, and a reconstruction of your ability to act on the truth you perceive.
What is a porn addict
A porn addict is more than a frequent viewer, though frequent viewers are often on the pathway to addiction.
For the purpose of this article, I’m going to define a porn addict as someone exhibiting some or all of the following behaviors, which I try to identify in terms of the way they most typically “present.”
1. Looks at porn daily or almost every day, sometimes several times a day.
2. Masturbates to porn more than five times a week.
Some will think this number is low, but that’s because they are focused on a MIRAGE. They foolishly believe you can warm your hands by the fire and not get burned. We know better. Even as addicts we still have some innate, God-given sense of what it is to be healthy and we know masturbating to porn subverts healthiness. Even people who masturbate to porn, but feel they aren’t addicted are likely just a job loss, death in the family or marital problem away from addiction
3. Goes into “brain haze,” in which they can easily shut off their rational mind and let the addiction take the wheel. I remember how, when the urge hit, I could just enter this brain haze, and have loaded my credit information into a website and downloaded porn without any inner debate occurring.
4. Masturbates to the point of brain drain.
If you’re like most porn addicts, you will likely masturbate to the point that you feel as though your mental acuity has slipped. That’s because of the dopamine that is drowning your brain, relaxing the rational centers that would allow you to generate the will power to stop the cycle. You’re never weaker than immediately after you’ve succumbed to addiction. Even though you feel empowered because the need is fulfilled, you have locked in the urge-response pattern.
5. You aren’t really satisfied until you’ve masturbated to porn.
I have a beautiful wife. Really. I rationally, know that if she were one of the women on my old porn sites I would have lusted after her. But I got to the point where I almost had to turn our sex into a porn scene of some sort in order to ejaculate. And I would even have the urge to go use porn right after our sex!!!! The real thing wasn’t good enough anymore. Real sex was just bad porn, in my eyes.
6. Increasingly drawn toward harder, more kinky porn
At first, women your age having sex with men your age was enough. Then maybe you got into older women, or extremely young women. Maybe then you started to have fantasies about incest, maybe you hyper-sexualized interracial sex, lesbian sex or gay sex.
Maybe you began to turn YOUR life into another fantasy, installing characters from your world into these fantasies. Where will this cycle stop….possibly with you in jail if you take the wrong turn.
7. Looks at porn when getting caught is a possibility.
I look back at my addiction days and marvel at the fact that I was never caught. In my office?!?! At home, just a room away from my wife..!!! The porn addict will eventually be caught. If you’re reading this before that day has come, you are so very fortunate. Take heart in that fact if nothing else. You still have the option of beating this on your own terms.
How do you escape?
A. The False Paths
Look, as a former porn addict, there are mountains of bad advice out there, some of which actually works to reinforce an addict’s tendencies. That’s because much of the common wisdom is still built around trying to “trick” you way out of addiction by controlling the chemical release patterns of your brain.
I’ll be honest about who I am. I have a background in health studies and consider myself to be a spiritual person….I come from the Christian faith but have become a martial artist who is also well versed in the tenets of Buddhism. That being said, I think what I’m about to write would be helpful for anyone of any faith or no faith.
1. Bio-chem or Brain Surfing
If you are an addict _ not just a frequent viewer _ then you must know that you will never “trick” your brain out of addiction.
There are many false prophets out there, who believe that the biochemical reactions that are connected to pleasure, pain, shame and lust can be manipulated in favor of the addict.
For example, one help book stipulates that the only way to beat addiction is to deprive the addict of the guilt they feel over their dirty little secret by redefining porn as “okay.”
After all, guilt is part of the downward cycle that occurs after a dopamine bomb is released post-porn. Newsflash: Many porn addicts, aren’t guilt junkies. That’s 90s era psychobabble. Guilt, I feel, played a very small role in my addiction. It made me want to hide the addiction and it left me feeling as though I was not powerful enough to fend it off. But it wasn’t WHY I sought out porn daily.
Imagine if we redefined most porn as a great and wonderful thing. Would that stop your addiction? I don’t believe so….indeed, even for guilt junkies who come to believe that there is nothing wrong with most porn…they’ll eventually just find porn so harsh that it DOES trigger their guilt response. Again, if use our imagination and pretend that most of our spouses actually just accepted “Barely Legal” porn as a harmless diversion, its still absolutely possible for the addict to simply shift to cuckold porn, rape porn, gay porn or child porn. If guilt is the active ingredient it CAN ALWAYS BE HAD through porn.
TRUTH: You can’t drown an ocean and you can’t strip the guilt away from porn addiction.
2. Some suggest you build up to stopping by cutting back porn to twice a week or by not ejaculating because this will reduce the body’s dependence on the erotoxins.
While they are technically correct, my personal experience was that any opening of Pandora’s box quickly led to a complete relapse. Porn is so powerful, so consuming that MOST of us simply won’t be able to warm our hands by the fire without getting burned.
The images are too delicious, too seductive to be kept in a nice cage. That was our problem in the first place????? That luscious blonde or curvy brunette is just too well-versed at breaking past our resistance. That’s what she was designed for. Not to mention the fact that when an addict acts out, they shut down their rational mind. For most, not ejaculating, not re-upping with another hit, isn’t even a choice once Jezebel is on the screen.
TRUTH: The road out isn’t just a reverse of the road in. The only way out is to forge a NEW path.
3. Tell everyone about your addiction and wallow in loathing
I know I will be blasted for this, but I don’t think the serious recovery candidate has to tell anyone he knows about his addiction. I didn’t. Here’s why…
There is something in the field of health known as the “professional addict.” Its an extreme version of a phenomenon that is easy to get wrapped up in. The Professional Addict fully buys into the idea that they will “ALWAYS BE AN ADDICT” and also believes that if they just tell enough people about their addiction, they won’t be able to access porn because they’ll be too closely monitored. This, often, just makes it more and more delicious a sensation when they do inevitably succumb…and thus relive the guilt, confession, porn-using cycle.
If you dissect this idea you see the truth that this pathway is a trick. Instead of dealing with the core TRUTH that YOU and YOU alone will one day have to choose life over porn, this path seeks to just throw a wrench in the works by giving you an endless number of untrusting “handlers” in your personal life.
The problem isn’t your wife. It’s YOU. She’s fine. She can’t save you. You must save yourself. Regaining your normal life is one of the principal motivators to quit…and becoming a professional addict, always under the eye of a wondering wife ELIMINATES that possibility.
Some will say I’m peddling dishonesty. Wrong. I’m simply suggesting that we are going to CHANGE the truth. You don’t have to tell your wife you are an addict because you’re not going to be one anymore. The fact that she doesn’t know is motivating you to regain your old life. Would she rather know about your addiction or have you beat the addiction?
Telling the spouse also inevitably invites them to wonder if there is something they aren’t providing you. Its one of the worst things you can do to a woman. It causes all sorts of discord within them for which THEY BEAR NO RESPONSIBILITY. I’m so sick of “come clean” peddlers telling everyone to make their problems EVERYONES problems. Man up. Stop whining. You broke it…you can fix it without putting your wife through hell.
Here’s what I told my wife. “Honey, I’ve been dealing with some things emotionally and psychologically that have made me feel like I’m not bringing all that I need to be bringing to our marriage. I’m changing that right now and I want you to know that I’ve never been more committed to you as a husband.”
Intimacy, isn’t just blathering on and on about everything going on in your head. Its bringing your best self to the table so that your marriage blossoms. If you commit to that right now, today, you don’t need to tell your wife about the past…because it IS THE PAST.
4. Cut off all access to the Internet
Of all the false paths out there, this strikes me as the silliest. If it is working for someone out there, great. But in this day and age, most of us can’t avoid the Internet either at work or home.
You don’t have to hide from the enemy, my friend. It is NOT more powerful than He who created you.
Following this path is just putting off the inevitable reintroduction of a source of porn in your life. Resisting porn and the reality that porn could always be your if you wanted it, is part of accepting the truth of your condition. Again, these tricks will all fail over time, in my opinion.
The Path that Led Me Home
It was like a fever breaking, when the spell was finally broken. I could feel it in my body, my mind was clearer, my passions returned.
I remember hugging my wife while still in the throes of addiction and wondering if I would ever again feel the surge of emotion I used to remember. I did, three weeks into my “recovery.”
I took my life back. I decided which emotions were important to me, and I reclaimed them. SO CAN YOU.
Here’s what my journey was like.
1. Re-establishing True Sight and True Memory
You’ve forgotten so much, my friend. When you are an addict, you are only capable of truly appreciating the positives of what you addicted to. You can give lip service to the negatives, but let’s be honest, deep down you don’t truly spend time recognizing or meditating on what you are being stripped of by pornography.
Step one is committing to spending time every-day writing, talking or thinking about how porn has changed your life for the worse. I mean it. I want you to do it for at least an hour a day.
If you’re shaking your head because this sounds like nonsense, or if you’re simply equating what I’m talking about to feeling guilty then you aren’t listening, damn it.
You spend countless hours looking for that one model that reminds you of the girl from college that dumped you or that you never “bagged.” Or seeking the best re-enactment of some dirty, humiliating pose or situation. Why? Because somewhere within you lies the deep biological need to “hunt” and “feed.”
But as you give in to your base nature you lose the ability to truly appreciate the higher order emotions of the super ego. You may think you still do, but trust me, if you’re a porn addict, your higher order emotions are like the set of an Old West town in a 60s TV show. A façade based on a memory, with no real substance.
Spend time every day remembering what life was like before porn. Remember the things you used to do, remember when sex was an emotional act, remember what it was like to be with the person in an intense moment of physical intimacy.
Remember the surge of emotion and affection you used to feel when you hugged an old girlfriend or even your spouse. Likely, addiction is making you feel dead inside….
Recognize and mourn what you have lost. Talk about it out loud to yourself.
Give voice and name to the things you have lost and could lose. Talk and think about what would happen if your were caught at work or home.
It has nothing to do with guilt. Adding this process to your daily life will build within you the will to change. I remember talking to a porn addict about why they wanted to change. The young man started to speak, but his answers were of the most superficial nature. It became clear to both of us that he only really wanted to change because he felt he should want to change, not because he DID want to change.
He couldn’t really speak convincingly, on why he wanted to beat porn addiction. There was no depth to his understanding of what he was losing out on with his wife.
Let me establish this right now:
TRUTH: Most addicts will never beat porn addiction unless or until they truly gain a strong desire to have back what they have lost!
2. Will Power Building
Maybe in your minds eye you are still a strapping young man, or successful businessman.
Actually, you’re a slave. Your spirit is weak and frail. You walk in chains, and whenever the slightest tug of those chains occur, you roll over and wallow around in filth like an animal.
Does that bother you? Does it sound mean? Undignified? Good.
Porn has eaten away at your ability to steer your own life. You’re something less than a man when you’re an addict.
You need strength. And you have to build it from the ground up. Some people talk about exercise as being a great distraction from addiction. They’ll tout it for releasing some of the same endorphins your body receives during porn-use. Again, the idea is a solid one but the recovery experts somehow manage to miss the point.
Exercise is helpful because unlike porn and masturbation:
1. It is a real activity based in the real universe
2. It builds up your spiritual will power.
When you exercise, you are essentially resisting the forces of physics. The more intense you work out, the more you are in essence, fighting physics. Building that mental ability to overcome a challenge, willingly, when no one is watching is step two in your path to recovery. We need you strong and fit in mind and body, because make no mistake, you are going to war. Porn addicts often gain weight, lose interest in hobbies and become mush minds because porn saps their will power. It turns people into doormats. I certainly was. Amazingly, one of my “fever-breaking experiences” was buying a punching bag and beating the living devil out of it every time I felt like the addiction was calling. I was angry about being owned, controlled and dominated. I wanted to be free. I went down to the basement and started punching the bag, the next thing I knew I was rocking the bag like never before, yelling “I don’t want it anymore.” I was so angry…I had so much pent up frustration and humiliation…I literally didn’t know what was inside me until that moment.
That moment of strength was a sword I carried by my side until porn addiction was a distant memory. If there is a Devil out there, that was the day when he knew he had lost me for good. And it was the day that I knew I was strong enough to resist.
So….pick up an exercise, I would suggest one that utilizes aggressive energy not passive energy. Weightlifting, martial arts, punching bad workout, running intermixed with sprinting.
TRUTH: In this war the enemy lives within and without and will fight back. What are you prepared to do? Will you fight?
3. Build your strength, then go Cold Turkey!
Quit. Not this afternoon. Not tomorrow. Right now. How.
Go work out, go running, lift weights, punch a bag, think about what porn has taken from you emotionally, mentally, spiritually and romantically. When you’re ready…when your’re wise enough to understand what it has taken from you, you’ll get angry. Visualize that anger as a sword and shield. Take that sword by your side and slay the demon. Quit every site, throw away every dvd, erase every file beyond recovery.
Destroy it all. Listen closely and hear the demon scream. You may have done this time and time before only to replace every last piece of porn you discarded. That’s okay. This time is different. This time you know what you’re fighting for. And you know that no matter how many times you fall down, you’re becoming a warrior. You’re reclaiming the fighting spirit. You are calling the enemy by name and pledging to fight again.
The more quickly you quit, the more quickly you will feel pride and spirituality return to you. The more quickly that happens the more power you will have to resist. The stopping-in-stages approach usually is just a way of asking your slave master for a brief vacation.
Is that all you want from your master? A vacation.
Have a plan for you’ll do when the demon calls. Are you going to punch a bag? Go running? Go to a movie? What’s your battle plan? This is war.
4. Re-establish your passion for your partner
I and others I have spoken with believe that emotional deadspace is common for porn addicts. That surge of endorphins that you used to get from hugging your wife or being kissed goes away due to porn use. As you fight the battle (continuing to meditate on what porn is taking from you, building your will power through tough exercise, staying cold turkey) you will begin to feel some of these old emotional responses return. Lord, I remember what it was like to not have them. Thank God, it wasn’t too late to reclaim them!!!
As you feel the warm feelings return, take your wife on dates, have conversations in which you dream about the future or remember old trips that you have taken. Remember why you married this woman and make a CONSCIOUS effort to reestablish contact with that WOMAN. What I mean here is, your porn addiction, whether you realize it or not, has hurt your relationship and has probably put you and your wife in a distorted relationship.
Part of YOUR RESPONSIBILITY as a man who became an addict is to acknowledge that your wife may have become distant from you, in part because YOU sold her out for porn. Stop whining about it and be willing to humble yourself and treat your wife like a Queen regardless of how she responds initially. Just keep pouring it on.
“But…but….how long do I have to keep it up when she keeps treating me like..”
Shut up. You have totally betrayed this woman whom you made the most sacred of all promises to. Imagine her mother or Grandmother’s reaction if they could see you masturbating to the images and fantasies your harbor. Imagine the shock and betrayal that everyone who thought you meant those words you spoke at your wedding would feel.
Guilty?
Good. This is what guilt is for. Now get back to being your wife’s “knight in shining armor.”
Depending on how bad things have gotten…you can feel free to begin to sexualize your ife or significant other. Give a stare when they bend over. Watch their curves as they come out of the shower. Its okay…this is what sexual appetitie is for!!
If the warm feelings are there and she is responding to your overtures, go for sex…real sex. Look into her eyes. Make love to HER! No fair closing your eyes or picturing yourself in some weird scenario. Try to focus your passion on the love you feel for this woman. You’ll be shocked at how this unlocks even greater hunger for real intimacy.
The first time maybe rough, but keep at it. It won't take more than twice if you remain porn free.
5. Staying Clean
After you have succeeded in staying clean for some significant portion of time, you must continue to devote the extra time you now have to other pursuits. Some should definitely go toward the continued romancing of your wife.
Learn to love your freedom. Revel in how good it feels to be able to let your wife, friends or family use your computer when you’re not present.
Take pride in what you’ve done and make sure you sex life keeps you occupied.
Best of fortune. I know you can do it.
