I am a 28 year old male who has been addicted to porn for several years now. It was my drug of choice after marijuana. Let me tell you this, quitting marijuana was far easier than quitting porn.
But that is a story for another time. Around 9 months ago I realized that I was hurting my body, and was in pain emotionally and physically from excessive pornography and masturbation, and hated the person I had become. I stumbled across noFap, and while I do not agree with everything in noFap’s ideology, such as the fact that masturbation on occasion in a non addictive manner is harmful for you, I do agree with noFap’s main premise, that pornography and erotica use should be discontinued without a doubt in my mind.
So here goes. When i first realized i needed to stop, I tried doing it the extremely hard way. I made resolves I knew I could never complete every time I finished looking up porn and masturbating (sometimes upwards of 4 times a day). I told myself I would NEVER masturbate again, and this INEVITABLY FOR MOST PEOPLE will NOT WORK. If your willpower is as hard as a rock, you may succeed. But for the vast majority of us (99.99% of humans), you will probably fail. I am not trying to discourage anyone, I am simply speaking my opinion on this through my experiences over the past 9 months.
Over time I realized that masturbation is NOT the issue. I tried doing pornfree for a while and realized that it was much much easier. I still failed and looked at porn maybe once or twice a week but I had cut down my masturbation from 3 times a day to 3 times a week. A massive improvement Im sure any of you could appreciate in your lives. I then realized that it was not the masturbation that was the problem it was the LINK between porn and masturbation that was the issue and that I had to defeat it. I started to look for people I knew in my own life and see how they went about this issue. Real people that I knew and had a first hand account of that I knew would never lie to me, people I am lucky to have in my life. Yes thats right, I bit the bullet, and I told my father about my addiction. And I have to say he has been incredibly supportive and the decision to tell him has been one of the best ones of my life.
Tip #1: Tell someone you can trust if possible.
Without getting into too many specific details, my father is a very successful, strong willed man who is very healthy, happy and enjoys life to the fullest. He told me something that would change the way I viewed both pornography, masturbation and sex in general. That anything sexual is in the mind. He also told me that while noFap is a good start, unless you are having routine sex (by routine I don’t mean 3 times a day, I mean more like once or twice a week), it is not healthy to without ejaculating for excessive periods of time. Anyone who knows my father would definitely agree he has very high levels of testosterone (by facial appearance, bone structure, hair, energy etc) while still routinely taking care of sexual needs, proving at least in my mind that normal amounts of masturbation without pornography does NOT reduce testosterone levels or cause any ill effects. It is only excessive masturbation that I feel lowers your energy levels, be it testosterone related or otherwise. He told me there is NOTHING wrong and in fact it is beneficial to masturbate once a week or every two weeks. I took his advice to heart. I never put myself down if I masturbated from this point on. I only did if i had used porn during the session.
Tip #2: Stop everything for a few weeks at least before starting a normal masturbation routine.
This is the part of noFap that I completely agree with. Porn has been making you masturbate so much that your body needs at the very minimum a few weeks to a month to heal. Give it this very vital rest so that it can resume its normal function.
The next tip I have is the hardest part but it is so necessary that you need to hear it again.
Tip #3: Understand that you sincerely want to stop this addiction and that it is harming your life. There can be no excuses and you cannot have conflicting thoughts about whether you want to quit or not.
Although you will get them for the first couple weeks while fighting off the cravings, in which you will rationalize all sorts of things, power through this phase, it WILL pass.
The final and in my opinion extremely essential part in beating the addiction:
Tip #4: Start doing other productive, healthy things instead of porn so that you will get accustomed to spending your time doing them instead of porn and over masturbation. This is where the real work gets done and your brain alters its pathways, and you will become a normal person again.
An example: you get home at night and are tossing and turning. Instead of getting up to look up porn, instead watch the news, drink some milk, finish up some extra work, etc (but don’t overdo these things as well). Trust me, it is hard at first but within days, weeks you will change your brain and find something else to do.
I essentially used these 4 tips and succeeded. I am now out of the porn addiction phase for almost 3 months. I have not looked at pornography or erotic material at all. But I do masturbate about 2 – 3 times a month as I do not have a sexual partner at the moment and I believe it is essential to relieve yourself. Wet dreams may do their part as well, but not everyone gets them and wet dreams mostly occur AFTER the person has been sexual frustrated for quite some time. I rarely if ever have erotic flashbacks anymore and they are still fading quickly.
Another random tip: You know that feeling in the back of your head? The one where you think you are just turning on your computer for 5 minutes to read about something somewhat related to something sexual? (Thats how it always started for me), or that you are about to go on Facebook to look at something semi sexual such as pictures and that would be all? It is precisely at those moments as SOON as you get those thoughts, that you need to immerse yourself in another activity. Over time it will become an automatic reflex where you will eventually stop having those thoughts.
LINK – How I beat my porn addiction, and what I think will help you do the same. (IMPORTANT IN BOLD).
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