Every second, more than $3,000 is spent on pornography. Viewing pornography can become an addiction that affects your mental and physical health, job performance, self-esteem, and relationships with loved ones.
Personally, I’ve been addicted to porn for 10 years, and these are the steps I’ve developed myself that really helped me break free:
1) What does to me addict?
First of all, congratulations on acknowledging that you have a problem or an addiction. Fully admitting actually gives you more power down the road to quitting pornography.
Ask yourself the questions: “What makes me addicted? What are the triggers for my addiction? When do I tend to view pornography and what behaviors surround my addiction?”
Sometimes people don’t see that they watch porn at specific times or after certain events. For example, you may tend to watch pornography only late at night, or if there is nothing to do and you are really bored, or on the other hand, if there is work to be done and you are procrastinating. It is also common to masturbate to pornography as a “reward” or “relief” after handling a difficult situation or going through a stressful time.
Identify these types of situations and start writing a porn diary. Start with a post about how you got addicted and what the addiction triggers are. After viewing porn, keep writing posts about the observations you’ve made about yourself. Example: “breathing became heavier, could hardly concentrate on anything else, heart was beating faster.”
Trust me, developing self-awareness of this behavior is very crucial.
2) Recondition your mind
Porn is like drugs: Studies have shown that porn users tend to view more and more hardcore porn. Studies on the brain compare this phenomenon to drug addicts who use harder drugs like cocaine or heroin.
Therefore, it is critical that you condition yourself to “wean” yourself off of hardcore porn and into more softcore porn. Start by looking at content that is softer and do your best to migrate to looking at images. The goal is to decrease both the intensity and the time you spend with the hard media. Finally, strive to reach a level where you can read erotic stories and still feel stimulated.
3) Self-stimulation is important
This may be controversial advice, but it has worked wonders for me. After your success with the previous step, aim to climax on your own, without any visual aids.
Pornography has waged a war on people’s ability to fantasize and use their own imagination for self-stimulation. In fact, we have become a generation where we need to turn on the computer to power up. Don’t let this be you.
Start getting aroused first: take the time you need and don’t take it too hard if you stumble at first. Then document each success in your journal.
4) Create action-oriented goals
Of course, other resources will tell you to stay busy and active, which is extremely important. But let’s take it a step further: what is something you’ve been wanting to do or achieve for a long time? Learn to play the guitar? Get those ripped abs? Run a marathon? Make more friends or date more people?
Pick a singular goal to start with. The more social the goal, the better – surrounding yourself with people while staying involved and active in your community goes a long way. And once again, I’m going to tell you to write this down in a journal.
And there you have it: the 4 fundamental steps I have personally used to conquer my decades-long addiction to pornography. Remember the day you thought to yourself, “no, I don’t feel like watching porn.” It’s an amazing feeling to regain that control in your life.
Congratulations reading this, because that means you are doing something with your addiction.