I hate being negative about my journey, but I feel like I'm close to the end of my rope. I'm 19 days clean from masturbation and nearly 6 months free of full porn use, but I can't seem to stop peeking. I've never gotten to the point where I "commit" to viewing porn (basically meaning that I've never gone all in and looked at everything I want), but the peeking is getting worse and it just won't stop. I should know better, I should be stronger, I should try harder, I should remember my progress and what addiction does to my brain and what this could do if I ever get married. But all of that just falls out the window when I get the urge. Failing at this makes me feel weak and useless, and that only makes me want to give in even more. How do I preserve the motivation to keep going when I feel like there's no point?
Hi Computernaut, forget about all the "should dos" and "shouldn't dos" and ask yourself why you want to be porn free. Being porn free is not a punishment that you somehow have to get through. It is a better way of living. It is free of compulsion, it is more innocent, it is healthier. But it also needs to be earned. Without conviction it cannot work. Conviction comes out of insight. The insight is: life is nicer and richer and more enjoyable without porn. Once you have this insight, trying harder will not be a concern of yours anymore. As you rightly say, "all of this falls out of the windows when I get the urge". This is because the "should dos" and "shouldn't dos" are the voice of morality, but pleasure does not care about morality. Pleasure is only concerned about "How can I get it?" As long as you harbor the belief that porn is the ultimate satisfaction, no amount of effort will ever get you to being porn free. So I suggest to go deep inside and ponder about what you actually WANT. Be honest with yourself in your contemplation and then start from there.
You’re white knuckling it, but you’re missing something in the equation. It seems like you’re thinking, if your desire to stay clean outweighs your desire to peek, you’ll stay clean. So it’s very simple; all you have to do is maintain your desire to stay clean and you’ll be fine. But you’re running into a common problem. Desire to peek occasionally spikes, your thought is, you need to find a way to never, ever let your pure desire to dip, even a little. That’s a good thought but it’s exhausting, and not sustainable. It’s like doing one more pushup, through sheer willpower. Sometimes it can’t be done. The self-talk discipline and prioritization alignment Terence123 suggests is solid. I do support that. I further suggest searching for a way to not only maintain high motivation for mental and physical purity, but to also reduce desire spikes. These might seem like they are completely out of your control, but with knowledge and practice they can be managed. Not eliminated, but reduced in frequency and intensity, and that will give you the edge you need. Spikes occur because of a dopamine deficit in your body. Dopamine is central to addiction theory, and it can get a bad rap. About six months ago “dopamine fasts” were popular, but dopamine itself isn’t bad. It’s a natural part of how we evolved and/or a gift from God, either way it’s an integral operation for human beings. A basic function. We ignore it, or try to eliminate it, at our peril. The problem with porn or any other addiction is that it’s a “cheat code” to get more dopamine than we earned. If you play with a cheat code, you become reliant on it. You don’t acquire the skills necessary to play the game correctly, you feel like the game is impossible to beat without it. It’s the same way with dopamine. You need it for mental stability, that’s why you go a little crazy when you don’t get enough, and when you spend a long time not getting enough, you go a lot crazy. The problem with addiction is, we become reliant on our addiction to secure an adequate dose of dopamine. There are alternatives, we just haven’t trained our brains to seek them out. You want to peek because you want dopamine. You reduce the urge to peek by keeping yourself supplied with better sources of dopamine. It’s a rewards system, you get dopamine correctly by doing good things for yourself. Eating supplies dopamine, for example, because you need calories. Sugar provides more calories, so more dopamine, because we spent a significant amount of time as a species warding off calorie deficit. Some people find it extremely difficult to stop overeating, because they have come to rely on that outdated rewards system. Mating also supplies dopamine, and we find a lot of dopamine in mating related activities, such as looking at what we believe to be high value mates. When you get the urge to peek, it might be worth considering if you’re hungry. Eating might distract you from the “need” to peek, and sufficiently satisfy the dopamine request. However, you don’t want to exchange a porn addiction for an eating addiction, so you shouldn’t eat if you’re not hungry. A better solution is to figure out exactly what is missing in your life, what need is currently being met only by porn. Then replace the way you meet that need. For me, it is affirmation that I am a decent human being. Seeing women on sexual display makes me feel like I am a good person, because I somehow earned it, even though there’s a surplus of women on display and it’s not true. My lizard brain is like a person who overeats; I don’t recognize the surplus on a basic level and have a difficult time recognizing the truth. I do in my intellectual side, but my emotional side is screwed up and will not listen to reason. So, being around people who do treat me like I’m a good person, like I am meeting expectations, has drastically reduced my urges to PMO & I’m a happier person. Since I’m getting that dopamine by engaging with people in mutually beneficial relationships instead of gawking at and objectifying women, I really am being a better person, and my emotions are in better alignment with reality. Choosing positive, pro-social behaviors and meeting your needs through legitimate means will drastically reduce your impulses to peek. That may require some deep reflection, so you can optimize and plan, but I guarantee it’s worth the effort.
Because addiction (any real one) is some tough shit to deal with. Have you tried an accountability partner?
Thumbnails like this are very triggering. To the O.P. - I used to think of looking at P as a reward, now I see it as a punishment - this addiction took my health, my time, the woman I loved, two careers, best years of my life. I believe that when a person suffered enough they become ready to dump the addiction. I am 190 days PMO free today by God's grace
These guys all give terrific advice. I can only add a small thing, which is... Once you're clear on your motivation, find ways to remind yourself at least once a day. Perhaps more to begin with. If you're as worried as you sound, there are clearly some good reasons you want to stop. What are they? Write them down, and decide what the most important ones to you are. How will you remind yourself of them? Will you go over the list you made? Will you go write it in your journal and read it every day? What will you do? Make the next choice the right choice. ~Orf
Oh God i wish that was possible. The addiction is there regardless if i am happy or miserable. Seeking instant pleasure and self harming behaviors seems to just follow me. It feels like all i can do is learn how to live with that.
As Frank Herbert once wrote, "fear is the mind-killer." Try to build up your motivation - reframe this whole scenario in your mind. YOU are not afraid of PMO. PMO is afraid of you. It's afraid of the time you wake up, and unplug yourself from it, because it knows once you start down this road and see it to the end, it's going to die. PMO is trying to scare you or wear you down into a constant feedback loop of "damnit, just one more fap", so it can take over again. Will you let it? PMO gives you just enough to keep you coming back, and it will steal everything from you for that momentary good feeling... and eventually, it won't even give you that one day. When you fear it, or engage with it, it will beat you. It is stronger than you, and it knows everything you know. The way to beat it is to get out of the game. Don't confront the thoughts... in your early days of recovery, drown them out by filling your mind with the good advice @Terence123, @Meshuga, @Prophet Harry and @Be Inspired are giving you. Study that advice and see what could work for you. After you've armed yourself with that advice, then made a plan and made a way to be reminded of it... you will run into more urges. Walk away from them, by walking towards the good things you've learned here. First thing to ask yourself - "what got me into PMO to begin with?" Then with that answer, work your way through the suggestions in this thread. One more day, or more "day one"? Make the next choice, the right choice. ~Orf
Thank you. This means a lot. My trouble is that, while I know in my mind that life is better without porn, I don't feel that life is better. Like you say, merely knowing is not enough, but it's all I have when I can't seem to feel it. It's the same with porn feeling like the ultimate satisfaction. I know it isn't, but I don't feel like it isn't because nothing else seems to bring me as much excitement. Thank you, these are some excellent insights. I know what I'm doing is not ideal. I know that trying to fight tooth and nail with nothing but conviction isn't effective, but it's all I have. I can never seem to feel good about resisting. Even my streaks feel meaningless to me now. I wish I could find better sources of dopamine, and some days I do, but a lot of the time, life is boring and lonely and uninteresting, and I get restless. Sorry if this sounds like excuses, I know I need to work on it, just trying to parse through this. Similarly, I wish I could address what is missing in my life, but like many here, I struggle with loneliness. That isn't easy to fix, not only because I struggle with being attractive (also very common), but because I have great difficulty socializing and relating to people. Again, not making excuses; I know this is something I need to work on more. Thanks again for your encouragement and advice. Thank you for the practical advice. I used to use more reminders, but it's slowed down a lot. I should have thought of getting back into it. I think to myself that I'm going to do more, learn more, meditate more, but it's difficult to follow through with these things. Something else I need to work on going forward.
This was impossibly difficult for me because my porn use was a symptom of deeper rooted problems within me. I wasn't paying much attention to these problems. And by ignoring them while trying to stop the symptoms, they would continue to subconsciously work against me to undermine and sabotage my conscious efforts to stop using P. So my focus has shifted from avoiding lust to solving my main root problems. For me, that includes solving my lack of connection, addressing my toxic shame, fixing my broken relationship with God, having proper boundaries, addressing the brainwashing that assigns great value to porn that @Terence123 was mentioning.
Time and distance from PMO are required before unmet needs can be discovered. This close to the addiction, you’re just craving it regardless. Everyone is different, but for me it’s about two weeks to a month of a streak before any of that deep rehab work can be done. I know it sucks.
My latest streak lasted 80 days, but i had several long streaks in the past, the longest lasting over half a year. What always seem to happen is that i discover that living in abstinence does not mean freedom - i am equally enslaved by the efforts to NOT acting out as i am enslaved by the urges to do it when i am in a relapse phase. If you are into fitness, it is comparable to becoming ultra shredded before a competition. You have to obsessively work out to get into a winning shape and being in a caloric deficit in order to lose the last fat percentage. It is stressful and you are constantly battling the urges to eat and relax. That's why nobody can maintain a winning physique after a competition, the effort is unbearable. Regarding unmet needs - i am also struggling to find meaning and connection, like most people in the modern world, even though i have a job that i like and a steady relationship with my gf. If i allow myself to imagine the perfect life it would be a loving community in some beautiful place where we create our own mini society where meaningful projects and connections to the land and each other are in abundance. But that is a fantasy, even if i could somehow create it, i am sure that i will remain a sex addict, dealing with urges to acting out. Forgive me if i sound a bit pessimistic at this moment, i am sure my state of mind will change once i am out of my current relapse period. I prefer battling the urges than keep numbing myself with PMO (or alcohol / drugs / other self harming behavior for that matter).
“The more joyful you become, the less need for pleasure in your life. When you are not joyful, there will be desperate activity, and compulsive sexuality is one of these.”
That speaks to unusually high willpower. I mentioned the need for sustained abstinence because you’re not running a counter, and it’s common for newer members to not use counters & also to think 7 days should be enough. That’s not you. Even so, you’re currently in a continuous reset cycle that you need to break out of. A sustained streak makes an impact on how I think & feel about recovery, even retroactively. I’ve learned that from my journal. I’m not calling you a liar, regarding your reporting on how much you struggle, even on a streak. Far from it. I also experience the frustration of being defined by addiction, whether actively using or actively resisting, and the difficulty of sustaining that abstinence. It does feel different outside the malaise of active abuse, though. Inside, it feels hopeless so you might as well give up. Outside, it does feel possible that you can find that missing element , the unmet need, and meet it. I don’t know how to break out of the cycle. I’ve also done it several times, but it’s always been an external shock to the system, a “rock bottom” event that jolted me out. I don’t know how to bootstrap out of the cycle on my own, so I can’t suggest a course of action for you to do it. I can offer reassurance, though, perhaps a reminder, that you’re not always going to feel this way, and there’s a chance that next time you’ll find a way to grow beyond addiction, and even beyond forced abstinence.
