No More Porn For Me

Funny that you mention overeating and porn use together. Seems they both have the same affect with regard to our brain’s reward circuitry and dopamine levels/receptors. I also was reading one site that refers to porn as "sexual junk food". That’s a really interesting way of looking at it and there’s a lot of truth to that.

Check this out:

http://www.reun iting.info/has_ … on_food_and_sex

"Explained researcher Paul Kenny, the brain releases dopamine in response to enjoyable experiences such as eating cheesecake, having sex or snorting cocaine. But, too much pleasure skews the brain’s reward pathways by overstimulating the D2 receptor and causing it to shut down. For the rats addicted to junk food, the only way to stimulate their pleasure centers was to eat more high-fat, high-calorie food. "They’re not experiencing rewards the way they should," Kenny said."

Thank you a lot for that. I was really worried about reception.

Soon I am starting college at 21 years old (2 years late. I had health problems).

Maybe there I will “improve” myself, though I will not be living in a dorm. One thing is sure, I won’t be getting privacy to watch it as much as I did/do.

Thank you again for your support.

Regards.

18 days in. The temptation is still there but at this point it’s turning into a case of, “If I’ve gone this far, how about another week?”

I didn’t mention earlier…I had something of a wake-up call in 2006 or so when I was reading a letter in a fitness magazine where a woman related that her husband seemed to watch a lot of porn, and that she sometimes found that he’d been up most of the night watching it without really thinking about it. The article then went on to say that more than five hours of viewing a week was excessive. At that point in time, there were days where I would easily hit five hours of viewing within a single 24 hour period. It didn’t really seem compulsive…like one of the previous posters said, I would usually just watch porn to fill time in the same way that some people casually eat out of boredom. It led to a lot of wasted time, and some of the rougher (but pretty tame compared to the crazy/illegal shit out there) stuff that I have in my collection bothers me. There was a clip where a now deceased porn star would deep throat a guy and he would hold her nose shut while she did it. The fact that it turned me on in the least (even if it is a staged, consensual S&M thing) freaked me out, and still does a bit.

The other weird thing is that porn addiction seems to be a male thing, but I’ve also read stories from women (usually college and high school girls) who have said that they were introduced to porn at some point and eventually just started watching porn constantly in their down time because it was stimulating.

Well done man. Keep it up! :-)

The good news is that its been three weeks. The bad news is that I accidentally broke the streak yesterday (and didn’t even realize it until TODAY) when I looked at a NSFW email attachment without it even registering that it was porn. So….

Porn Movies viewed in 3 Weeks: 0
Porn Pics accidentally viewed: 1
Intentional Porn Consumption: 0

I’ve now gone just over 3 weeks without porn. My previous longest streak was 1 month, so I aim to break that. Funny thing is, this time I don’t miss it and realize just how boring some of the the stuff I watched was, and how anti-social an activity it is.

I also like to look at the opportunity cost of watching porn. Say you watch 1 hour a day, that’s 365 hours a year, or about 23 full days assuming 16 waking hours in a day. What else could I have done with 23 full days? Learned a new skill, worked on learning a new language. Image if you work out an extra 365 hours every year instead of watching porn. How many extra books could you read, probably about 100 books.

If you watch 2 hours a day, just double the numbers and your lost time becomes even greater. This is what motivates me to cut out porn, so that I can pursue more productive things.

Wow…that’s some food for thought. It’s even scarier to try to apply that to all the other time-wasting activities in my life…although, if you don’t waste some time here and there, you’d probably go crazy.

I don’t really “miss” porn either in the sense of needing it (I survived on my imagination and female company long before porn-on-demand), but I’m still at the point where I’d be perfectly cool with watching some if I wasn’t intentionally trying to break the habit.

Gaah…I have more time on my hands now that my girl found a job and has started working again. We had mismatched schedules in the past (I had class in the evenings, she had class during the day), so my prime porn viewing time was usually when she wasn’t there. One of the things that helped to keep me in check was the fact that I was working or with her most of the time for the last three weeks. Now, there are blocks of time when I’m on my own again. I’m handling it mind you…but it makes the temptation worse even so.

Hey,
BossNova(others too), don’t avoid thinking about it or looking at porn completely. There were studies at uni of London regarding addictions and dumping them. Apparently complete avoidance only aggravates the problem.
Want to quit smoking? Then think about cigarettes | Daily Mail Online

I have decided to quit it fully now. I will devote all that time to studies/workouts.
We’ll see how it goes.
Good luck guys.

I understand the part about giving up porn for sure, but why give up masturbation?

First of all if I did that then my mind will naturally become crazy about women all around me, I have to release every now and again to have a “clear” mind.
e.g You have to sleep every now and again, or all your going to think about all day is going to sleep in your lovely bed. You have to eat every now and again or all your going to think about is food food food.

Keeping a balance is one of the keys in life.

For me, it’s about self discipline & being able to control myself. Another is that I’ve come to consider masturbation wasted time & kind of adolescent. Masturbating is fine when you’re learning about your body, learning what you like, experimenting etc. But I’m 23, & well past that phase. If I’m going to spend a few hours doing something sexually, I want it to be with another person- much more fulfilling that way.

I find if I give myself the outlet of masturbation, it can come to replace a person- if I abstain I’m much more likely to find someone to fuck. if I masturbate, I’m much more likely to … just keep masturbating. Alone, for hours at a time. Which doesn’t make me happy.

Lastly, I find myself being & feeling far more passionate during sex … but I think that’s more due to the giving up of porn than masturbation. When you’ve gone from spending hours watching women getting DP’d to for 3-4 days seeing at most some nice cleavage … it’s amazing how your libido changes.

The giving up masturbation bit is only temperary while dopamine levels and receptors return to normal. This thread is all in the context of porn addiction recovery. After that period, it’s game on again as far as masturbation goes. Although cutting down masturbation will make you hornier for the real thing.

Not sure that even counts as a slip up in terms of your recovery…unless you dwelled on it, or masturbated to it. Just brush it off and keep going.

Hmmmm makes sense. :)