You might be wondering why the best thing that has ever happened to me? When I discovered I am porn addicted I was devastated. I never had a clue that something like this even exists and I definitely didn’t want to become addicted. Who would like to? But when I discovered am addicted I knew it was all my doing and it is also my responsibility to beat the addiction as well. Nobody will do that for me.
This approach is what helped me to become a better person.
To be honest I never intended to live without porn ever again. The way I see it humans will be bombarded with sex even more because sex is something that sells. And it sells a lot. My intention was to learn how to live with that, because I didn’t want to live in constant fear when I see something sexy I will fall back into addiction.
Also there is one thing that porn taught me. Although it caused me a lot of negative things it also showed me there are numerous ways how partners can pleasure each other sexually. And I want to explore my sexuality.
If that didn’t discourage you, let’s get started:
1. Admit you have a problem
„When we hit our lowest point, we are open to the greatest change“- Legend of Korra
There is a big difference between looking at porn once in a time and watching it every day, having multiple tabs in your browser, seeking various forms of kinks for hours in order to get off.
If you don’t believe you have problem with porn, why would you want to get rid of it? Why would you go through that pain, bad feelings, suffering and more? Admitting problem is the most crucial point in your recovery.
If you are not sure, test yourself. Stop using porn for 14 days or just masturbate without porn. If you can do it without problem, good for you. But if you can’t do it at all, you probably have symptoms of porn addiction.
I know it’s hard to admit it. I never considered the problem could be me. These days when I want to blame everything else, first I ask myself: Isn’t problem in me? And in most cases it is.
Why would any porn loving guy give up porn? I’ll also share my two cents on this question. Porn won’t touch me back, porn won’t hug me back, porn won’t kiss me back and the most important thing porn won’t love me back. Still don’t believe me and consider that using porn is “normal” that everybody does and nobody gets hurt? Well than look how this normal behavior affects your significant other!
2. Learn about addiction
“Knowing is half the battle.” – G.I. Joe
You will face many uncomfortable situations when facing porn addiction (or dopamine addiction to be more precise). But if you know what’s ahead of you, you won’t get scared so easily or misplace these situations for something else. I recommend starting with The Great Porn Experiment. In this short video you will learn about the most common symptoms of porn addiction.
The best source of information about porn addiction is http://www.yourbrainonporn.com. This website contains many scientific studies, articles and videos, even a book. All of that gives you understanding of what is happening in your brain and what will you face during your reboot.
There are also other good sources as well. There are Gabe’s videos, Addiction or NoFAP academy. Take your time and study it, it will ease your reboot.
3. Make environment work for you
“The things you own end up owning you.” -Tyler Durden
In order to reboot, you need to get rid of everything associated with porn. Magazines, DVDs, videos and so on. Everything has to go. Because if you keep them, you will be tempted to use them. We all have tendency to have some kind of backdoor. But backdoors leads you away from your goal.
When I discovered I am porn addict, I wanted to recover. But I naively though I am strong enough to manage on my own. I was too afraid to delete my porn stash thinking I will lose something precious. For my first run I stayed 14 days before I relapsed.
After that I was relapsing every week mostly during the weekends, sometimes shorter. I decided to delete 1 porn video every day as a reward for staying clean. I deleted everything after a week. But I was still watching porn online.
Filters
“You can’t get enough of what won’t satisfy you”
For some reason I thought that if I install web filter I will lose information. I was too afraid for that. It took a few relapses and I installed K9 software. Funny thing, it wasn’t that bad as I thought.
But all this steps took me 4 months, before I really got rid of most available porn. I had to experience it by myself. Here is good post talking about filters: http://www.rebootnation.org/forum/index.php?topic=6377.0
What worked best for me was registering it to somebody else; create a password containing random numbers and letters and forget it. Then you will have it much harder to find anything.
Filters block a lot of porn, but not all. You may try to bypass them or go around them and there is a chance you will succeed. But if you really want to recover, don’t rely on filters. Think about them as a warning.
I also did a few other adjustments. I changed my wallpapers to be more motivating, I am bombarded with at least half of the quotes from this article and Rise and Shine is my alarm clock.
4. Your real enemy
“I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies, for the hardest victory is over self.” ― Aristotle
For all of us this is the hardest thing we have ever done. It’s because you will face the most cunning, vicious enemy you can ever face. Yourself! It will be very persuasive voice in your head, promising you sweet things, convincing you that you need porn.
You used porn as a medicament. It was your place to hide from the world. A method how to deal with problems and emotions, which were bothering you. It became a part of your life for years. Don’t expect it will pass overnight.
Mindset
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t–you’re right.” ― Henry Ford
Your mind is a very powerful tool. Problem is when you are using this tool against yourself. When a homeless guy tells you “You are no good.” you don’t believe him. But when your mind tells you same thing, you believe it without a word. This is the problem.
Chance is you hate yourself. I was there too. I hated myself so much I let myself live to suffer more rather than kill myself and be free. I was like this for more than 6 years and each year was worse and worse. Believe me when I tell you there is a way out. You can beat not just this addiction, but this mindset as well.
For start you need to change is how you explain situations you get into. For example when you face something you didn’t know don’t say: “I am stupid.” Because this seems like it’s a permanent thing that you can’t change. This is not true. Instead explain this situation: “I didn’t know that”, because this is temporary and something you can change.
Know this. Terry Crews beat this addiction (yes THAT Terry Crews), Gabe Deem beat it and you will beat it too. For the start say this loudly: “I will beat this!” Even better repeat it every day.
“As you think, so shall you become.” – Bruce Lee
By the way for me Rocky Balboa’s speech to his son is the best definition of life I have ever heard. Go ahead and look at it, I’ll wait…
You are back? I really liked the last phrase: “Until you start believing in yourself, you won’t have a life.” Well I can’t give you any universal plan how to do that; I can only share things, which helped me to believe in myself. But before that I’ll bore you with my theory:
Law of attraction
“’The secret of attraction is loving yourself“- Lao Tzu
For me this is the core of success in all aspects of your life. But by that I don’t mean narcissistic self-love like I have a nice car, lot of money and so on. I understand it more likely when I stand in front of mirror I can look myself in the eyes. I like the person in front of me and also the direction I am taking to become a better person.
Success isn’t something you pursue; it’s something you attract by becoming an attractive person. A question to you: How do you want to really love another person if you can’t love even yourself?
5. Two approaches
„I’m trying to free your mind, Neo. But I can only show you the door. You’re the one that has to walk through it. “– Morpheus
Abstinence approach is probably first way you will try. You set a 90 days goal and leave everything as it was before. You will focus on number of days you stayed clean, measure your dick hardness, wet dreams, successful penetration and so on.
There is a chance you will succeed. But at the same time what you can feel after this threshold will be void. Emptiness. You will feel so empty it will be unbearable. In order to fill that void may fall again to porn, alcohol, cigarettes etc… You won’t help yourself much.
„Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. “- Albert Einstein
But more likely you will relapse several times in the process. You get mad at yourself, punish yourself for that and try it again harder. What will you resolve? Same result as before. In order to get out of this circle you need to start doing things differently, because when you do what you always did, you will get what you always got.
In my starting days as a rebooter I was trying to reach higher and higher number of days. But I wasn’t much successful in that. Something had to change if I really wanted to successfully reboot. I had to change.
“Your life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change.” Jim Rohn
Recovery approach
Recovery approach focuses on different areas than your penis. It focuses on your life and things that are relates with it. Underdog made two valid points clear in his Thoughts:
Abstinence is NOT a recovery.
Porn addiction is not the cause of your shitty life. Porn is a symptom.
Your problem is you firmly believe that life awaits you after reaching 90 days. Until then you are waiting for an opportunity, magical moment, anything like that and your life will be great afterward! I hate to disappoint you, but this opportunity will never come. Or to be more precise, it won’t come in form you hope for.
Snatch from Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill:
When the opportunity came, it appeared in a different form, and from a different direction than Barnes had expected. That is one of the tricks of opportunity. It has a sly habit of slipping in by the back door, and often it comes disguised in the form of misfortune, or temporary defeat. Perhaps this is why so many fail to recognize opportunity.
So instead seeing porn addiction as something bad, ask yourself: What if porn addiction was a gift?
6. Who do you want to become?
“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” ― Socrates “
Rather than thinking about porn focus on yourself. Sit down, take a pen and paper and write down, what you want to accomplish in your life. You are the most important person of your life and you are the only one who can change it!
Being obssessed with porn addiction won’t help you either.
Don’t fancy of writing? Take it as a necessary evil to become a better person. Because when you write it down, you will feel more committed to accomplish things.
In these days we have so many opportunities who we can become. Yet we are not happier. It’s because when you have too many options you have problems to decide. It’s also known as analysis paralysis or decision paralysis.
In order to get somewhere you need to limit yourself and cut some of these option to become happier. But don’t focus just onto one thing. Diversify your identity onto more things.
Write down your life vision. It may take a day, week or a month maybe, but it’s necessary. You need something to focus on, a direction out.
Here are some tips, which helped me to write down my personal vision:
• Why do you want to beat this addiction? I know it sounds like a silly question, but reason for that is simple. Because your mind will play many tricks upon you, you want your answer as a reminder. When you don’t know why to continue, remember the reasons why you started.
• Personal analysis – How good do you know yourself? For the start write 10 of your strong suits and 10 of your negative suits.
• Personal achievements – there must be something in your life that you are proud of. And I don’t believe there is nothing. Things like graduating from college, having a driving license, kissing a girl. No matter if they are big or small, they are yours.
• Who don’t you want to be like? –There must be somebody around you, who is repelling you. Why so? What does this person do?
• Skills you want to learn – playing instrument, martial art, speaking two languages (I can recommend that, it saved my life) and so on
• Job or career
• Family life
• Your legacy, contribution to society – what will preserve after your death? What do you want to be remembered for?
• Is there anybody who you envy? Or do you want to be like somebody? Why so? What does this person have/know/do and you would like to?
• Amount of money you want to have or earn annually. The greatest value is not what you get, but what will you will become. We live in society, where money unfortunately plays a major role in our life. I would like to be financially independent and don’t have to stress out because of money.
But for me personally there is a catch: “Some people are so poor, all they have is money.” I don’t want to be poor, but I don’t want to be THAT poor.
Use all these things to write down your personal vision. I have a favor to ask. Don’t try to write a perfect dream! Otherwise you will never be satisfied with it. Perfection is just an abstract form no one knows like it looks like. What is worse, this perfect form in probably not even yours.
I am not perfect, you are not perfect and this article is not perfect as well. That is all right, because you won’t find happiness in a final destination. You’ll find happiness in the process of becoming the person you want to be.
“Do what you feel in your heart to be right- for you’ll be criticized anyway. You’ll be damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
When you have your personal vision written down, ask yourself very important question:
Am I willing to suffer for this vision?
If you are not sure or if it just doesn’t feel right, do something for it. It’s the only way how you can be sure. You can always make adjustments during this process.
There is always a price to pay. You won’t get something for nothing. It’s actually the pain and struggle which decides what you are worth of.
“Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor.” – Alexis Carrel
It won’t be an easy fight. Not by a long shot. It’s always worse before it gets any better, but it will be worth every second.
“I ask not for a lighter burden, but for broader shoulders.” – Jewish Proverb
I would like to thank the following people:
Gary Wilson. Your research and work helped me to find a problem, which has been bothering me for a long time.
Gabe Deem.
Your contribution about spreading awareness about porn addiction is amazing. Also Thank you for creating the community of RebootNation.
Last but not least I want to thank members of Reboot Nation, who directly or indirectly helped me in my fight with my addiction. For me the most influential members were Sunborn, zaraki888, Dareius, Lapper, William, Gracie, Objectified1 and last but not least Emerald Blue. Your contribution helped me drastically and made this article possible.
I need to warn you in advance. English is not my native language and MS Word is not almighty, so there will be mistakes.
I wrote this article in order to sum up my experiences as a rebooter. It will contain a lot of quotes, links and a wall of text. Because of that I did my best to make it as readable as possible. It also contain some triggers. If you have problems to read long articles, just read a chapter every day.
Therefore I have to warn you, this is not the only way how to successfully reboot. There is a chance I got crazy along the way so rather use this approach:
“Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.” ― Bruce Lee
LINK – Porn addiction is the best thing that has happened to me
BY – Hablablos
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