My first experience with porn was from a magazine my nanny masturbated to in front of me when I was 8 years old.I was curious and shamed to see her do that. I realized it was something taboo and from then onwards, I always sneaked into her room to look at those images thrilled, not sexually-but by the illicit feeling an 8 year old gets by looking at naked bodies doing these…strange things to each other. Well, I got addicted to the thrill and it was all fun and games till I hit puberty and discovered masturbation.I was instantly hooked and consumed porn copiously all through my teens.
About nine years ago, as a sophomore in college, I tried quitting pornography and masturbation when I realized that I could only go out on dates and be confident around women when I hadn’t masturbated or watched porn for over a week. Desperately wanting to date more women and get into a relationship, I experimented with abstaining from pornography for longer and longer periods. It worked, till I made a decision quit it completely. To my dismay, I couldn’t. Six years later I was still trying. Each time I failed myself, I could feel my low self esteem digging its roots deeper and deeper into my psyche.
Needless to day, my college dating experience was terrible. Longs nights of striking out ended consistently with me going online for my fix. As I experimented with drugs and alcohol, I got deeper into my addiction, requiring more and more bizzare scenes and niches of porn to satisfy my dulled senses. I read every book I could find on quitting, got counseling, confessed at church(yes,I was a Catholic) Masturbation and pornography became as common to me as taking a leak. Work, school, church, a friends house, now where was off limits. Whenever I felt stressed or let down, I knew I could count on a quick fap session to set me straight.
When I graduated and got a fulltime job at a prestigious communications firm, porn followed me. By this time, I was only sporadically trying to quit and had more or less come to terms with living with porn. Shortly after landing a job, I got into a relationship with a smart, funny and beautiful woman. As sex became routine for me, the true ramifications of my “porn hobby” came to light. I began to see flaws in my girlfriend whom, when I first met was one of the most attractive women I’d ever been with sexually. Little imperfections were regularly under the magnifying glass of my porn trained mind. Everything snowballed from there and before I knew it, I was in bed with another woman performing the very same acts I had viewed on some website. When I came and the exhilaration of illicit sex had passed, I felt absolutely disgusted with myself. Nevertheless, I continued with this philandering behavior till I was almost murdered one night while trying to solicit anonymous sex.That was my wake up call. I knew I had crossed the line into full blown addiction and maybe even sex addiction. I resolved there and then to quit pornography for the last time.
There’s a quote floating out there that says “anyone who says pornography addiction does exist, hasn’t tried quitting.” Altogether, it took me eleven years of quitting and relapsing to understand porn addiction, come to terms with it and eliminate it from my life. I discover a I had already lost so much inside me, that I couldn’t bear to lose those close to me by revealing my debilitating condition.
Quitting pornography for a lot of men, in the long run, is a lifestyle decision. Personally, it has been one of the greatest challenges and yet one of the most fulfilling experiences of my life. Perhaps it will be the same for you. I have been porn and masturbation free for four years now.
LINK – Ending a 12 year struggle in 30 days.
BY – ChrisHaven
UPDATE – 10 Super Powers I obtained after I Quit PMO (10 year anniversary edition)
Ever wondered what almost 10 years off pornography and masturbation looks and feels like?
Next month(November) will mark my 10th year off PMO.
I tell all my clients that being addicted to porn is one of the best things that could ever have happened to them. Countless great men had hidden addictions- a lot of them were sex related. Most of them harnessed them and used them to reach the greatest heights in their fields. Some changed the world. One of the dirty secrets of the most successful is that they have addictions for which they CHOOSE not to get diagnosed- they know very well what propels their success.
This post neither condones nor condemns the habits and addictions of the successful. I’m just laying out some of the things that have happened to me- not all may be “good” for everyone.I hope this inspires some of you who may be feel frustrated with the journey.
Here are handful of high achievers(more famous/prominent than the thousands of highly sexed achievers in the world today), who, when not having more sex than the average man, were changing the world or excelling and breaking boundaries in their respective fields.
Arnold Schwartzenegger: Extremely high sex drive- possibly sex addiction. Was notorious for sleeping with hundreds of women. After his marriage to Maria Shriver, he continued having sex with multiple women outside of his relationship, culminating in having a child with his housekeeper. This is a man who came to the United States of America as a penniless immigrant, dominated in this field, became a millionaire before he made his first movie through his mail order and real estate businesses, became a top box office draw despite his thick Austrian accent, became the governor of California and now in his 60’s still pumps out movies, maintains an amazing physique and constantly creates new businesses.
Martin Luther King: A great civil rights leader, but what is less known about him was his penchant for sleeping with women outside of his marriage.On a regular basis. It is common knowledge that during his tour of Europe with his entourage, they frequently engaged in group sex with white women.
Mahatma Gandhi: When Gandhi embarked on his mission to free India from colonialism,he became celibate. He probably knew about the power of sexual transmutation. What is less known are his practices of testing his resilience to sexual arousal. It was reported that he would have young women sleep naked next to him to test his ability to withstand arousal. Gandhi had planned to write about these experiments, but was prevented from doing so by his entourage.
Tiger Woods: Need I say more? It is no coincidence that men of great drive and ambition also have sex drives high enough to channel into amazing achievements. From my study of Tiger Woods, I don’t believe he had “sex addiction”, but he definitely had an enormous sex drive which could be channeled into his sport.
I guarantee you that if high speed streaming online pornography was available to half these men, many of them would not have impacted the world the way they did.
Till today, I still get weird looks and awkward silences when I mention to friends, acquaintances or even clients that I don’t watch porn or masturbate.
It seems so absurd to them.
I have a dirty little secret though:
I feel superior to everyone else.
What does this mean? It means, I experience a sense of overwhelming confidence and superiority to other men because I know I’m doing something which they cannot, or are not committed or self disciplined enough to do.
This feeling grows every single year and quite honestly, it has made me a much happier person.
You can experience that feeling too.
Apart from super-confidence, there are a lot of other amazing things that have happened in my life since I gave up pornography. Most took a few years to develop while some appeared in a matter of weeks.
Here are 10 “Super Powers” I gained from quitting porn.
1) I became happier: Ridiculously happier. I used to be so depressed, angry and reactive while I was on pornography. I constantly felt sorry for myself and has a terrible “woe is me” little bitch attitude going on.
Now I feel a constant baseline happiness or rather, JOY flowing through me daily. Of course, I still have bad days and challenges are always showing up in my life.
The difference is that when I “check-in” with myself, the joy is always there.
2) I became financially independent: I don’t talk much about money on this blog-there are plenty of sites that cover that(www.financialsamurai.com), but surveys have show that most guys stuck on PMO are in bad financial situations- especially the men who use cam sites and prostitutes. I spent a lot of money on porn, alcohol, weed, and other bad habits when I was addicted.I never seemed to be able to hold on to money, had no idea how to budget or balance a check book , had credit card debt and my back account was always overdrawn.
Having a shitty budget and financial problems always comes hand in hand with porn addiction.Sure, there are well off men whose net worth and income is high enough to not be dented by their addiction, but its only a matter of time before the problem escalates financially.
It took a few years to build this super power, but I became obsessed with three things:
a) Increasing my earning potential by learning highly marketable skills
b) Saving
c) Investing
Of these three, saving had been the single most effective means of increasing my “money superpower”. I became a saving fanatic. Not for the sake of saving, but for the rush I would get each time I would look at my saving account and watch the balance grow. Saving at a ridiculous rate allowed me to have money to invest when opportunities came my way. The discipline of saving allowed me to be cautious and always research an opportunity thoroughly before committing to it financially. I wanted wealth- for one simple reason: freedom. I wanted to live wherever I could, and not have to answer to anyone- ever.
3) My standards improved: During the years I was hooked on pornography, my sex life was dismal. It slowly improved as I dedicated time to learning how to meet and attract women.The women I had sex with during this time were either unattractive, or had serious personal issues. Some were bipolar, many more were very promiscuous. As time went by, and my experience with women increased, I became very picky about the women I dated and had casual sex with.
This eliminated drama from my life and I surrounded myself with only quality women. Of course, when I was stuck on porn, “quality” was only determined by looks. Now, there are very strict criteria for women in my life.
4) I developed self discipline: Quitting porn will teach you how to restrain your actions. It will teach you how to train your impulsive instincts and choose rational actions all the time.
Self discipline set me apart from everyone around me and it will do the same for you. I hate sleeping 4-5 hours a night. I hate working 80 hours a week. I hate studying endless scholarly journals and research on the effects of pornography and sex addiction. But every morning, I wake up to a dark sky at 4am, workout, go for a run, meditate, visualize, write my goals out, read for an hour and sit down at my laptop to work. Every single day without fail.
5) I became a sex machine: This is one “super power” that I am still currently researching. Like most men who were addicted to porn, when I resumed having regular sex, I experienced embarrassing issues with porn induced erectile dysfunction.
However, I kept on having sex, while working on it. Maybe my brain rewired itself differently, maybe its the endless kegel variations I perform daily, but I can on occasion, ejaculate on command and in every sexual situation, except if I am extremely exhausted, ejaculate multiple times- my record being sixteen times in one session(without the help of any drugs).
6) I lost my Anxiety: Everyone is born with anxiety. The difference between people with seemingly low anxiety and people with a lot of anxiety is their awareness of their anxiety and whether they have a positive or negative history with anxiety.I personally suffered from crippling social anxiety and porn made it infinitely worse. There were months where I was literally a hermit.
While I took deliberate steps to overcome my anxiety, quitting porn and masturbation literally made me horny enough to talk to women. There were days when I was so aroused, that I would meet women in the day and try to bring them home with me( key word is “try) . It was a while until I was able to pull this off successfully, but once I did and learned how to do so consistently, my self confidence soared.
7) I found purpose:
I’ve never been a fan of the airy-fairy bullshit promoted by self-help gurus that you need to find your “passion and purpose”. If everyone found their passion, there would be no one to pick up our garbage, serve us food, clean the streets and offices, or make iphones in China and designer clothes in a sweatshop in Bangladesh.
Purpose and passion are luxuries. Quitting porn will give you the freedom to DECIDE what you want as your purpose. You can literally pick any field of work, find good enough logical reason to pursue it, and channel your energy into it. Quitting porn taught me that ACTION CREATES MOTIVATION.
You may read this article and get motivated, but make no mistake- the action you will take after the article is what will fuel the motivation for the long term. As the weeks of my recovery from pornography turned into months, and the super powers became more obvious, I became motivated to reveal more of these powers. My action was propelling me forward. My action was making me passionate. My action revealed a new purpose, which was becoming the best person I could become- something I always WISHED for but was never driven enough to accomplish.
8 I became stronger:
Not just stronger, but more aggressive. I learned how to channel the now higher levels of testosterone I had allowed into my body into emotion. Sometimes the emotion was rage, sometimes it was desire and sometimes it was joy. Whichever it was, I was a beast in the gym and I realized that the energy that made me act out and watch porn no matter the cost. That formula of trigger-adrenaline spike-emotion could be channeled into building my physical strength.
I remember guys in the gym stronger than me wondering how I was so strong even though I didn’t have as much muscle mass as they did.
9) I stopped giving a fuck:
Once I became stronger, created a purpose for myself, mastered my anxiety, started making more money than I had ever made in my life, became a born again sex machine, and stopped having sex with women below my looks and attitude threshold, I automatically unlocked the” don’t give a fuck” super power.
So what exactly is not giving a fuck? Well, it not bravado- false bravery. Its reaching a state in your life where you’ve decided to achieve certain things or DIE. I knew that if I didn’t quit porn, I might as well be dead. Confidence is gained by beating your craving for porn thousands of times.I built up enough skills and superpowers to have the INNATE confidence that I could handle anything that life threw at me. I had paid the price- and I am still paying the price to stand among MEN
When I started writing about quitting porn, some of my friends though I was insane to talk about porn addiction- especially mine. They thought I was crazy to do “internet stuff like blogging”. When I sold my shares in the sales training company I was involved in to focus on helping men quit pornography full time, my entire family was sure I had gone nuts.
I didn’t care. Quitting pornography gave me access to the only things that mattered in life-why would I care about what the world thinks?
10) I became capable of loving: This was the most painful and powerful of all the superpowers.
As the years flew by, I began to see how my porn use had closed me off to others. I wore a thick armor around my emotions to protect me from being hurt. I thought it made me a badass.
I was wrong. Deep inside all men is the power to love- to care for other beings unconditionally. This is the most misunderstood superpower of all. “Love” is a word thrown around callously. Quitting porn allowed me- for brief moments, at least- to empathize more deeply with the pain than other human beings felt.
When I was addicted to porn, I didn’t care about the people on the screen engaging in porn- all I cared was that it got me off.
If you’ve ever wondered how a human being can violently rape and kill another human, look no further that the mirror. Pornography is systematically desensitizing you to critical parts of your biology which promote bonding, family and healthy social interactions. It is hyper-sensitizing the parts of your brain which respond to violence and sexual violence.
To truly be a man, you need to be able to balance both the dark and the light in your life.
As the years go by perhaps I will uncover more “super powers”, but for now I say with much confidence that my addiction pornography was a blessing in disguise.
What are some of the “super powers” you have gained from quitting porn?
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