u/Ok_Effective_6869 and u/SeekingTheWay19 asked how I actually did it in my previous post, so here's the full answer in all of its glory..
This may sound strange, but stopping was never the hard part. Every session ends, so in a sense I'd "quit" hundreds of times. The hard part was actually day two, or ten, or ten thousand, when a weak moment turned into "just one peek", then another, and I was right back where I started. I'm sure everyone reading this has been in the same situation many a time. It can sometimes be literal turmoil. The worst part was every time it happened, I blamed my willpower, which only wrecked my inner peace and made everything worse.
What finally clicked is that porn isn't a mere habit -- it's drug addiction. The more I read about how the brain works, the clearer it got.. We're wired to get a dopamine reward for sex, and internet porn completely hijacks that system. In fifteen minutes you can flick through more potential mates than our ancestors saw in several lifetimes, and the endless novelty keeps the dopamine flowing far longer than nature ever intended. Our brains simply aren't built for this, so they adapt by trimming back their dopamine receptors, the same ones that keep you motivated and let you enjoy ordinary life. Everything else starts to feel flat and stressful unless you've had your fix.
In my experience, I've come to know that there are two parts to it. Firstly, the physical craving, or as I like to call it, "the little monster". It's your brain crying out for that dopamine: an empty, restless feeling, a bit like hunger, with no real pain, and it fades away surprisingly fast. Secondly, and more predominantly, the belief that porn gives you something -- relaxation, a reward, a way to cope. I like to call this "the big monster", though it's really just brainwashing.
The little monster is easy to live with. It's so mild, just a faint restlessness in the background that most of us never even notice. We think we're going to porn because we enjoy it, when really we're just trying to quiet that restless feeling.. The big monster is what actaully kept me stuck for years, because it convinced me I was giving up something good. So every craving felt like a sacrifice, I'd start moping and doubting, and eventually I'd give in.
This is why willpower alone leaves so many people stuck, and why even those who never go back often never feel truly free. If you quit without dismantling the big monster first -- the brainwashing -- you will carry the craving in the back of your mind for years to come, convinced you're missing out on something. It's like choosing to walk uphill for the rest of your life. You might still pine for "just one last time" on certain occasions, long after you've stopped, and slowly you start to believe you'll never be free, "that this is just how it is." Plenty of people will tell you exactly that -- perpetuating the worst lie there is: "once an addict, always an addict." Most of them mean well. They're just repeating what they were told (even I used to tell my friends this), so they pass it on as fact, and the fear spreads like wildfire, to others and back into themselves. But that belief isn't the truth. It's the brainwashing rearing its head again, and it's exactly why it has to be removed first. Believing it is what ensures your own imprisonment; the fear that you'll never be free is the very thing that pushes you back toward porn, and that's exactly how the trap is designed to work.
So I focused on killing the big monster first and asked what porn was actually doing for me. The answer, I found, was ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. I reached for my porn fix in many different states: when I was bored, when I needed to concentrate, when I was stressed, and when I wanted to unwind or "release tension". But think about how little sense that makes.. Boredom means you want more stimulation, while trying to concentrate means you want less. A pill can't both wake you up and put you to sleep. If porn were really helping, it would help one of those situations and make the other worse. Instead I used it for all of them, and it never fixed any. All it ever did was scratch an itch it had put there itself. It was like wearing tight shoes all day just to enjoy the "pleasure" of taking them off. The shoes were that empty, restless feeling the last session left behind, and starting the next session was just me taking them off again, with the shoes getting a little tighter each time. In other words, porn doesn't fill a gap, it creates one, and then, through the brainwashing, we try to fill that same gap with the very thing that created it. A never-ending cycle -- or, as I call it, PMO-limbo.
That's why I refuse to say I "gave up" porn. There was NOTHING to give up. I escaped, and the gains have been glorious: my confidence and courage came back, I got my energy and focus back, and that awful black shadow of guilt and self-contempt at the back of my mind lifted. Honestly, I think the biggest gains are psychological -- but I've also found I'm far more sensitive to intimacy now, which is something I have come to be very grateful for.
After removing the brainwashing, I made one decision and made it final. I looked at it like Pascal's Wager: I had nothing to lose and everything to gain. If it failed, I'd be no worse off than I was. If it worked, I'd win my life back, along with all the virility I'd lost along the way. So I stopped hoping my decision would stick around and simply knew it would, and instead of moping around for the rest of my life, I rejoiced! Beginning with a sense of elation makes all the difference. The moping was what made quitting so painful and pitifully hard before, because it kept convincing me I'd lost something and sent me straight back to porn. And no peeks! I found that there's no such thing as a harmless peek... "Just one peek" is how most of us got hooked in the first place. How foolish was I, resuscitating the little monster just to test whether I'd actually kicked it a few weeks in? For the same reason I stayed away from substitutes, cutting down, or softer stuff. You can't cure a drug dependence with a smaller dose of the drug. All that does is prolong the little monster's life, and the brainwashing along with it.
When cravings came, I stopped treating them as a sign that I was being deprived of something. I thought of each one as the little monster crying out for its fix and trying everything it could to get it. I ignored every single one and counted each as a small win, thinking "good, I'm starving it and it's on its last legs. Soon it'll be gone forever." Then I got on with my day.
Another important point that may feel a bit backward is that I never tried to forget about porn. Most advice says to keep your mind off of it, but I found that's like lying in bed anxiously telling yourself to fall asleep. The harder you try to forget about porn, the more it takes over, and you spend the whole day tensing your jaw waiting for it to vanish from your head. You can't forget it anyway. In the early days the little monster keeps reminding you, and phones and laptops are everywhere. But know that nothing bad is happening to you. On the contrary -- something marvellous is! So when it crossed my mind, even a thousand times a day, I didn't push it away. I savoured it. I reminded myself how good it feels to be free, and each thought became a small moment of pleasure instead of a struggle. Before long, I'd forgotten about it without even trying.
I also didn't wait for some magic day when I'd suddenly feel different. The little monster takes about two to three weeks to die off in my experience, but don't rely on that number because, ultimately, nothing special happens on day 21, or 30, or 90, or whatever milestone people celebrate (no disrespect, I used to do the same thing - but whatever milestone 'reward' I'd give myself never lived up to the porn the little monster knew about, so it always fell flat). The point I'm making is -- you don't have to wait around to feel free. Rejoice now! Doubt is what makes it hard, so I stopped doubting. The urges that showed up in familiar situations were just old reflexes, like reaching for the windscreen wipers when you meant to indicate in a new car. They simply fall away once you stop obeying them. And most of mine are completely gone already.
Another thing that sounds pretty backward: I didn't change my life in any way, shape or form, or start hiding from the situations that used to trigger me. I went out and enjoyed myself straight away because it was never the occasion that needed the porn, it was the itch. Once the itch was gone, those nights were more enjoyable than ever and the stressful ones got easier. (Within reason, of course. There's no need to pile on extra stress for no reason.) I know it sounds completely counterintuitive to what we know about how addiction works, but dodging them out of fear just turns it into a sacrifice again -- confirming the false beliefs the big monster so desperately wants you to believe.
The scariest part for me was the start. It felt like standing on a diving board that looks six feet high when it's really one. The fear of jumping was the hardest thing to overcome, not the jump itself. Once I was in the water, I wondered what I'd been so afraid of in the first place. In other words -- my fear of the cravings was far worse than the cravings themselves.
And I want anyone reading this to know that quitting can be easy, and even enjoyable, whoever you are. It was for me, and I was severly addicted for more than 14 years (since I was 9 onwards). I don't believe it matters whether you're a casual user or a heavy one, young or old. If anything, the deeper it has dragged you down, the bigger the relief when you climb out. Even the cravings stopped feeling like a struggle and became little moments I almost looked forward to, because every one meant the little monster was dying and I got to hear it's pitiful attempts to cling onto life.
Please do note that bad days still happen to everyone, and porn never fixed them anyway. I like to make that a point because it shouldn't surprise anyone that life is full of unforeseeable troubles, whether you're an addict or not. As they say, it rains for both the Pope and the murderer. Now I just think, "today's rough, tomorrow will be better, and at least I've kicked that awful addiction."
And if you slip, I'd avoid calling it a relapse. That word makes it sound like you're back at square one and it was all for nothing. All that really happened is you fed the little monster with its hit of dopamine, and that wakes the big monster up, which loves to whisper that you'll never be free, that you're weak, that you're hopeless. Don't listen. A slip doesn't make you a weak person or a failure. It means you made a poor decision at that moment, and that's all it is. Failing at something and hating yourself for it are two very different things. So treat it the same way a good coach treats a mistake from a star player -- accept it, work out where your thinking went wrong, and carry on. Beating yourself up over it only hands the big monster the proof it's looking for, and.. welcome back to limbo, please leave your life at the door.
One last thing. Quitting is easier than you think, but that's the catch: if it's easy to stop, it's just as easy to start again. Many people get free, feel invincible, and foolishly (like I did many, many times) test themselves with "just one peek". So I made it a rule for life never to go back, and I stopped sulking about it for good. And if you're consistently struggling with the brainwashing and with the fear -- there are many porn-specialised therapists who understand this and can help you break free.
If I can do it, you can do it too. And I'd love to help you along the way.
-David