I recently received a mail from a woman (we’ll call her “Jennifer”) asking me for advice about her husband’s porn addiction.  I don’t normally answer personal emails asking for advice — I get too many of them to answer and also would prefer questions answered on the blog, where other people can learn – but I empathized with her situation and thought I’d help her out. Also, she said it was okay to post it on the blog.

Here is the email she sent. If you want just the questions and my answers scroll down or click here.

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Hi Brian,

I am writing with a question I am struggling with. My husband and I have been married for 7 years and have a nice marriage. I actually “caught” him watching porn and masturbating while on our honeymoon. We had a lot of major conversations but he assured me this would stop and was not a problem. I have always suspected this might still be happening at times and recently discovered that is still visiting endless porn sites everyday. He knows he has a problem and says he is almost relieved for it to be out.

I do truly believe he wants to change. Although I am so angry at him I love him and believe he wants to stop this. The question is will he be able to? Can you please answer the following quick questions for me so I can plan my next step to regaining trust? I appreciate it.

1. In your opinion is it ok for him to continue to have sex with me? His addiction was limited to pornography and didn’t involve straying sexually. In some ways I feel he has to abstain to reboot, but at the same time in this vulnerable time it is a perfect opportunity for sincere deep intimacy in our rebuilding. I long for that.

2. Is it imperative to stop viewing porn cold turkey altogether. He says this is his strategy; I just want to make sure this doesn’t set him up for failure because it is too drastic. Do you recommend the cold turkey or the weaning approach?

3. How much should I ask him about his addiction? All trust has been broken and I feel to start to heal I need a firm grasp of what was going on. Or do I? It feels so intrusive to ask him down and dirty questions.

Thank you for your time. I know it is valuable. I appreciate you sharing your knowledge so others may relate and be helped along their journey. I am hopefully ours will be a successful recovery story as well.

Sincerely,

Jennifer

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Here’s my response to Jennifer’s questions:

1. In your opinion is it ok for him to continue to have sex with me?

This really depends on one major thing:  is your husband simply addicted to pornography? Or is he also experiencing porn-induced erectile dysfunction (i.e. has difficulty getting or staying hard for real sex).  In the case of porn-induced ED, I would recommend no touching/masturbation/anything for the first phase of the reboot to help rewire the brain to normal levels of stimulation. After the first phase of the reboot (when erections start occurring naturally again) then slowly introducing sex and sexual play — without any pressure to have erections.  If it is kept low-pressure and fun, things will continue to get better until you forget what the problem ever was.

If your husband is simply addicted and has no erectile difficulties, then I think it’s definitely okay to have sex while he’s quitting. The idea is for him (and you too!) to get back to pleasure from real sex, not artificial stimulation. In fact, one of the things that helped me the most when I was quitting, was to explore things sexually with my girlfriend at the time — trading sensual massages, trying new positions, role playing, etc.

This could be a great opportunity for you two to reconnect and explore things sexually.  Maybe buy a few instructional books and experiment in (or outside) the bedroom. The Guide to Getting It On! is a great book to start with.

2. Do you recommend the cold turkey or the weaning approach?

I would recommend coming up with ways to make it easier on him to quit — like installing porn blockers on the computers, downgrading to a “dumb” phone if possible, and keeping busy with other activities. When someone quits something cold turkey without anything to replace it with (like for instance going to the gym), it makes it that much harder. Without something new in your life, you end up with all this free time — and boredom leads to porn use.

As for the question of weaning off vs. cold turkey, I would say cold turkey — and let him chose the date to stop. But be aware that cold turkey will be tough and there will likely be relapses.  You have to be understanding of that and not take it to heart. My friend Mari wrote an article that covers some of this: http://rebootblueprint.com/category/partner-of-a-porn-addict/

And also, I would recommend that he have some strategies to deal with cravings.  You can read more about that here:

http://rebootblueprint.com/recover-from-porn-induced-ed/

http://rebootblueprint.com/7-healthy-no-fap-replacement-habits/

3. How much should I ask him about his addiction?

This is the toughest question to answer, because I don’t know you and your husband and every situation is different. My gut tells me that it’s better if you can talk openly and help him with it, but he may not want this. In my experience (and that of Mark Queppet, a great blogger on the topic of porn addiction– see the video below), it was incredibly healing to be able to talk to my girlfriend about it and work together.  I had been hiding things for so long, it was good to get everything into the open. Ultimately, you’ll have to be the judge of whether you think he is ready to talk about it.  Also, there is no shame in getting help (a therapist) to work and help you two move forward.

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If anyone reading has a question that you would like answered, you can leave me a comment below or on this page.  I’ll do my best to answer it.

Okay, I suspect that some of you will dismiss this article just from reading the title. Meditation? Really? How is Meditation going to help me with quitting porn and rewiring my brain for real sex?

Glad you asked.

New research shows that regular meditation practice helps people quit smoking, lose weight, kick a drug habit, and stay sober.

-Kelly McGonigal, The Willpower Instinct

Meditation is a very powerful tool you can use to train your brain and increase your willpower (willpower that you can use to resist the temptation of porn). It lowers stress levels, teaches you how to handle negative inner dialogue (anxiety, worry, cravings), and deal with external temptations (images, sounds, smells).

The Willpower Instinct

Let’s rewind a bit. In previous posts, I’ve written about habit change and some of the success factors. We’ve already identified that according to the most recent scientific research one of the most important things you can do is choose a replacement habit. This way of thinking was inspired by reading The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg – essential reading if you’re serious about overcoming a porn addiction (or changing any habit).

A related but often overlooked areas in relation to habit change is that of willpower.

In doing research for creating my first Reboot Blueprint product, I’ve been re-reading a lot of the books that originally helped me make big changes in my life. One of the most influential and important books for me was The Willpower Instinct by Kelly McGonigal.

(Note: If you want to be notified when my first product is released — a step by step reboot program — join my mailing list)

In her book The Willpower Instinct, Kelly McGonigal, a Stanford professor who teaches a course called The Science of Willpower, looks at the most up-to-date research on willpower. It turns out that willpower, though a combination of faculties based in our pre-frontal cortex, acts in a very similar way to a set of muscles. If you use these muscles too much in a short period of time (if you metaphorically ‘lift too much’), your willpower can become exhausted. But also like a muscle, with proper use and training it can become stronger.

Let me just repeat that for effect: With proper training, your willpower faculties can become stronger.

This is huge. I hear from a lot of guys out there that have difficulty summoning up the willpower to overcome their porn addiction. Well, I’m about to give you a proven technique to systematically increase your willpower. And to start off, it can be as little as 5 to 10 minutes per day to see big results. I’m talking about meditation.

Here is what McGonigal has to say about why meditation is so amazing:

Neuroscientists have discovered that when you ask the brain to meditate, it gets better not just at meditating, but at a wide range of self-control skills, including attention, focus, stress management, impulse control, and self-awareness. People who meditate regularly aren’t just better at these things. Over time, their brains become finely tuned willpower machines. Regular meditators have more gray matter in the prefrontal cortex, as well as regions of the brain that support self-awareness.
(Kelly McGonigal, The Willpower Instinct)

It also doesn’t take years of living at a Zen monastery to see the benefits.

One study found that just three hours of meditation practice led to improved attention and self-control. After eleven hours, researchers could see those changes in the brain. The new meditators had increased neural connections between regions of the brain important for staying focused, ignoring distractions, and controlling impulses. Another study found that eight weeks of daily meditation practice led to increased self-awareness in everyday life, as well as increased gray matter in corresponding areas of the brain.
(Kelly McGonigal, The Willpower Instinct)

Our brains are incredible organs, capable of rewiring to whatever we spend our time doing. (If you have experienced porn-induced ED, you know this can work against us as well.) The brain reacts to exercise in a similar way that muscles do – by getting faster and stronger in the areas that we train. Think of meditation as your gym to build a better, stronger brain.

So now that we know that meditation is a tool for strengthening our self-discipline and willpower muscles, how do we do it?

Thankfully, McGonigal gives us a great step-by-step tutorial as well.

Simple but Effective 5-10 Minute Meditation

Here is a summary of a simple, five to ten-minute meditation technique from Kelly’s book:

1. Stay still.

Sit cross-legged on a cushion or on a chair with your feet on the floor. You should try to be still during the meditation — try not to move around, fidget or scratch any itches. This is one of the ways this exercise is so effective in building those self-control muscles — you’re learning to put distance between the urge to do something and the act of doing it.

2. Focus on your breathing.

Close your eyes or focus on one spot directly in front of you. Bring your attention to your breathing. As you breath in, silently say to yourself “inhale”. As you breath out, in your mind say to yourself “exhale.” You’ll notice that your mind will wander (everyone does), but just bring your attention back to your breath. Don’t beat yourself up for letting your mind wander, just bring it back to your breath each time.

This practice of coming back to the breath, again and again, kicks the prefrontal cortex into high gear and quiets the stress and craving centers of your brain.
(Kelly McGonigal, The Willpower Instinct)

3. Notice what your mind is doing.

After a few minutes of saying “inhale” and “exhale”, try focusing on your breath without the these words. Just notice how your breath feels as you’re breathing in and out. The feeling of the air flowing in and out of your nose and mouth. Or the feeling of your chest or belly expanding with each breath. If you notice your mind wandering, bring your attention back to your breath. You can go back to step 2 if you need to refocus.

This part of the practice trains self-awareness along with self-control.
(Kelly McGonigal, The Willpower Instinct)

That’s it. Simple, but not easy.

I’m telling you: don’t dismiss this exercise because it sounds hokey or new-agey. This is a powerful tool for building your willpower muscle. In addition to the improvements in self-control, I’ve noticed a ton of other benefits in my life:

- Increased focus and concentration.
- Lower general level of stress in my life.
- More energy.
- Feel healthier.
- Feel more in the moment.
- Lower levels of anxiety.

Start with 5 minutes a day and when that becomes a habit, try moving up to 10 or 15 minutes. The more you do on a REGULAR BASIS, the more you will build your willpower muscles. I recommend doing this first thing in the morning to start your day on a strong note.

If you enjoyed this, consider supporting Kelly and purchasing her book. It is required reading for overcoming any addiction.

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On a related note, guided meditation did wonders for me in terms of teaching me to relax. You can read about that here.

I have a secret to share with you:

I am a hard case when it comes to habit change. It is a real struggle for me to make positives stick changes in my life.

There, I admitted it.

But because I am naturally such a hard case, it led me on a quest to find the best techniques for making changes in my life.

The Fighter

Here’s an analogy. In MMA (mixed martial arts), you might have a really strong fighter with so-so technique. Sure, he’s gonna win a certain amount of fights just because he’s damn strong.

Then you’ve got the fighter who has a small frame and isn’t naturally very strong. That’s me. But because he isn’t naturally big or strong, he learns the best techniques from the best teachers.

He knows the most effective Brazilian Jiu Jitsu submissions. He knows how to get into an ezekiel chokehold from any angle.  He knows how to quickly take the fight to the ground where he has a chance at winning. Okay, so I’m getting a little carried away with my analogy…

The point is, I’m not naturally strong. My natural state is that of low willpower.

It is difficult for me to change habits. I become addicted to things very easily. If I didn’t do anything about it, I’d be shy and physically weak. All of that — that’s what I had to work with.

But because of that weakness and my intense desire to be strong, I’ve gone to the best teachers and studied the best advice.

And it has made me into a different person: confident, strong, productive, and full of willpower.

My Teachers

Some of my best teachers have been books.

Consider the amount of wisdom in one book. Imagine, for example, that it took 10,000 hours for someone to become a master in their field, and another 1,000 hours to write a book containing the sum of their important knowledge in that field.

And you can read and absorb that information in as little as 10 or 20 hours reading. That is AMAZING.

I think it’s crazy that there are so many people who don’t read after finishing school. It’s like saying “No thanks. I don’t really want to improve myself or my life.”

You are the average…

Jim Rohn famously said that you are the average of the 5 people you spend most of your time with.

If your friends are low on ambition and give terrible advice, consider spending some time with people who really want you to change and can help you. If you can’t find awesome people to keep you motivated and improving in your life, maybe you should read more books.

5 Books That Will Supercharge Your Reboot and Make You a Better Man

Here are my top suggestions for books that will help you man up and kick ass on your reboot:

1. The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

This book, along with The Willpower Instinct are two of the most important books I’ve read in the last 5 years. People are creatures of habit, and to make changes in our lives, it’s key that we understand the habit loop.

Bottom Line: Charles Duhigg shows how the habit loop works and how to apply the knowledge. The book is entertaining to read and contains many examples of people making big changes in their lives with little ‘habit hacks’. A must read.  You can buy it here.

2. The Willpower Instinct by Kelly McGonigal

As I said in number 1, this was one of the most important books I’ve read in the last 5 years. And I read a lot. In contrast to The Power of Habit, Kelly McGonigal focuses her writing on the concept of ‘willpower’. What is it, how it works, and how we can strengthen it.

If you’re like me, you’ve found yourself in situations where your willpower falters. In the book, Kelly references scientific studies and gives exercises that show you how to build your willpower and become a stronger man.

Bottom Line: This book has the potential to not only help make your reboot easier, but make your life a whole lot more awesome. You can buy it here.

3. The Way of the Superior Man by David Deida

A lot of young guys I hear from who are wrestling with porn addiction also have problems with low self-esteem and don’t know how to act around women. While this book doesn’t really focus on the specifics of what exactly to say to women (for that I’d recommend RSD’s Flawless Natural – which is what I used to get better at meeting women), it does give you the mindset or inner game foundations.

Bottom Line: We’ve been raised in a time where men are weak, uncentered, and are taught to give our power away to women. This book will help you understand sexual polarity and attraction, and how to live your purpose and be your best self. You can buy it here.

4. The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod

If you’re like me, you have trouble making new habits ‘stick’. The most important habit I’ve developed in the last few years is hands-down, my morning routine. If you can start your day right, with meditation, exercise, reading and journaling, you’re setting yourself up for a productive, kick-ass day. After years of staying up till 3 or 4 am watching porn, I never thought I’d consider myself a morning person. But here I am, getting up at 6am and loving it. I get more done and feel better than I’ve ever felt, and a lot of it is because of my morning routine.

Bottom Line: I had my morning habit before reading The Miracle Morning, but this is by far the best book about creating a morning routine and it’s helped me really dial mine in. You can buy it here.

5. The 4-Hour Body by Tim Ferriss

Want to lose 30 lbs and work on getting a six-pack? Or maybe you want to gain 30 lbs of muscle in a month and get jacked?

Want to increase your testosterone naturally? Learn about legal mind-enhancing drugs? Hack your sleep? How to reverse “permanent” injuries? How to give your girl a 15-minute orgasm? If so, this is your bible. Tim Ferriss has spent tons of money and time being his own guinea pig and testing the latest available science. Though I don’t agree with everything he says, just adopting his attitude of “experiment and find what works best for you” is a game changer.

Bottom Line: If your body is your temple, this book is your bible. You can buy it here.

My question to you is: What books have made your life better? What books have helped you in quitting porn? Or rebooting from porn-induced ED? Share it with us! Leave a comment below.

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News: Recently, I commissioned a professionally recorded mp3 to help you when you’re craving porn. It’s called “The Craving Crusher”.  Yeah, cheesy. I know.  :)

You can download it here for free:

==>>  Craving Crusher mp3   <<==

So you’ve read and implemented my advice about finding a replacement habit and using that to reprogram your habit cycle.  And it works, some of the time.  But it’s not foolproof, and it’s not easy.

I’ve been studying and experimenting with habit change for some time now. I know what works well and what doesn’t.

If you’re a human being and not a robot, you probably find it incredibly difficult to do your replacement habit on a consistent basis when you’re first starting off.   Well, from my own recent experiments and reading on habit change, I think I’ve figured out how to make it easier on you to solidify your replacement habit.

Until a few months ago, I’ve been focusing on the intrinsic rewards of the replacement habit.  For example, lets say that the reward you get from PMO (porn-masturbation-orgasm) is physical excitement. So you decide to make push-ups your replacement habit, because it gives you a physical reward (endorphins, dopamine), thus completing the habit loop.

But then sometimes things don’t go smoothly and as you planned. You find that you don’t feel all that motivated to do push-ups each time you get a craving to PMO.  What do you do then?

The Old Way: Brute Willpower

What I used to do in this situation was to just use “brute willpower” to make myself do the push-ups.  I would just basically yell at myself internally until I finally did it.  And the physical craving would be satisfied.  But this takes a huge amount of willpower, and some of us just starting out with improving ourselves don’t have access to enough of it to constantly deal with the cravings.  And as Kelly McGonigal points out in the great book, The Willpower Instinct , willpower is a finite resource within us. So once you’ve exhausted that resource, it’s like your defenses are down.

I’m sure you’ve experienced this.  When you just don’t have enough energy to combat the rationalizing voice in your head that says “just one more time – it’s not a big deal. This will be the last time.”   And you give in and suddenly you’re set back weeks in your reboot.

How do we let this part of our brain — the lizard brain – beat us?  How does it win?   This part of our brain – the part that controls desires, pleasure-centers and addictions, is incredibly powerful. That’s why we have to outsmart it and use it’s own weakness to overcome our addiction.

The New Way: Extrinsic Motivation

Here’s what I’ve learned in the last few months:  use the replacement habit, and also give yourself an external reward.   This means, in addition to getting the physical reward of endorphins from the exercise, you’re going to augment it by adding something extra.

An example:  I’ve always had a problem building the habit of waking up early. I could get it going for a few weeks, but then something would happen and I would lose momentum.  In the book The Now Habit, the author suggests rewarding yourself with external rewards to solidify habits.  So, when I wake up early, I reward myself immediately with my favorite breakfast food — unsweetened Greek yogurt with a little bit of fruit.  The intrinsic rewards of waking up early (getting more done in a day, feeling productive, seeing the sunrise) are still there, but I’m making the habit even stronger by adding the external reward of my favorite breakfast.

It’s also important to NOT give yourself these things unless you do the task.  What I means is that I don’t allow myself to eat my favorite yogurt unless I wake up before 6:30am.

How can I apply this to my struggle with PMO?

So, how can we apply this to quitting PMO?  First, you want to decide on a replacement habit that will satisfy the craving. In my case, I used to watch porn out of both boredom and to satisfy the physical craving.  I chose an exercise routine as a replacement habit, which I sometimes change up to keep from getting bored.

The next step is to add to it. Have a favorite television series? Allow yourself to watch one 22-minute episode if you do the pushups.  Directly after you’ve done the pushups.  This is to give positive reinforcement and solidify the push-ups as habit.  It’s important that we make it so it will be painful to renege on the change, so don’t cheat with rewards.

See, as with many addictive “substances”, porn has an advantage on most replacement habits. It has the dopamine market cornered.  It’s exactly because our brains are pre-wired to want sex, novelty, and speed (I want it now!) that the current range of high-speed Internet porn is so powerful.  When you PMO, we’re talking massive amounts of dopamine, squirting through your brain.  So we need some bigger, better tools to overcome it.  Not guilt, not shame, but reward.

A better carrot

Have you heard of the Carrot and the Stick approach?  It’s named in reference to a cart driver dangling a carrot in front of a mule and holding a stick behind it. The mule wants to move towards the carrot because it wants the reward of food, and moves away from the stick behind it, since it does not want the punishment of getting hit.  Thus the cart moves forward.

I know that for many guys the ‘stick’ (knowing the negative effects of PMO –  in this case porn-induced ED, sexual anxiety) is not working to keep us clean.  So we need to make the ‘carrot’ (external rewards) more appealing.  It’s time to start using external rewards to make quitting more attractive than using.  What will your reward be? Let us know in the comments!

Now time to man up!

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News: Recently, I commissioned a professionally recorded mp3 to help guys who have cravings for porn. It’s called “The Craving Crusher”.  Yeah, cheesy. I know.  :)

You can download it here for free:

==>>  Craving Crusher mp3   <<==

“I have Porn induced ED. How long will my reboot take?”

This is maybe the most common question I get in emails and blog comments. And I understand why:  you want to know what to expect.

While some guys with mild cases of porn-induced ED can reboot within 3-6 weeks of no PMO (no porn, masturbation, or orgasm), for others it can take up to 4 months. And in some extreme cases, it may take up to a year or more to fully recover.

So how long will your reboot take?

While it’s a complex question and impossible to give exact timelines, what we can do is look at factors that influence the length of time a reboot will take.

I will do my best at a thorough answer, based on:

1. My own personal experience.

2. Reading many, many (too many to count) reboot accounts on various internet forums, in emails I’ve received, and in online surveys I’ve conducted.

From these sources, I was able to boil it down to 8 important factors.  How long your reboot will take depends on:

1. Your age and past sexual experience. 

In general, younger guys without much sexual experience outside of porn tend to take longer to recover than older guys. This is because younger guys usually discover internet porn before they have sexual experiences with a real partner.

On the other hand, older men who learned to masturbate with their imagination, images (say, a Playboy magazine) or soft-core porn, and had sexual partners before internet porn came around, may find they have a faster reboot.  Having had this past encoding in the brain with real sex seems to speed up the recovery process.

2. How many years you were into PMO.  

If you have been using internet porn heavily for 10 years it will be more difficult and take more time than if you just discovered porn last year (but really, who just discovered internet porn last year?)

3. How long your masturbation sessions were and how often.

Five-hour sessions vs. 30 minute sessions.  Three times per day vs. once every two days.  Longer and more frequent sessions equal a longer reboot time.

4. How extreme your tastes escalated to. 

If you escalated to more extreme genres, you will take longer to reboot.  More extreme = more time. Your brain will need time to rewire to the physical stimulation and “normal” sexual situations. And to answer the question: will I every be able to get off to “normal” sex again? Many guys have been there and recovered – but be prepared for it to take time.

5. How severe your ED is.

There are different levels of severity of ED.  For example, a guy who can regularly get 70% erections (without porn) will likely recover faster than a guy who (in the same situation) can’t get erections at all. Being honest with yourself about where you are now will help you prepare for the road ahead.

6. Whether or not you abstain from all three: porn, masturbation, and orgasm. 

From my own experience and many guys’ reports, recovery seems to happen quicker with abstention from not just porn, but masturbation and orgasm as well.  Some speculate this may be due to the “re-sensitizing” of a desensitized brain/penis, the fact remains that no-PMO provides the best results.

7. How CONSISTENT you are in your reboot.  

Relapsing after 20 days or 50 days — like I did when I started — will set you back.  If it happens, don’t beat yourself up about it.  But know that it will set you back and create a plan to make sure it doesn’t happen again.  Also, be warned — according to many rebooting reports, testing your erections before you’re ready may set you back.

8.  Other less tangible factors.  

There are other things that are less concrete that will affect how long your reboot will take.  For example, your attitude towards rebooting and your thought patterns.

Guys who worry more are going to take longer. Do you find yourself worrying a lot about things like “is this normal?”  “Will I ever be able to have sex again?”   This constant worry might make you more anxious about sex and even lead to performance anxiety – a common pairing with porn-induced erectile dysfunction. I was one of these worriers and it led to a lengthier reboot process.

How not to worry so much? For one, you have to have faith that the process will work.  Many guys have gone before you and overcome porn addiction and porn-induced ED. Trust that your recovery will happen too. Don’t beat yourself up for thinking these things, but they will set you back in your progress – especially if you’re dealing with performance anxiety, which is a common pairing.  To cut down on worry (and relax and clear your mind), I recommend a daily diet of meditation or progressive relaxation.  I’ve written about how I overcame this here.

 

My Story: How long did my reboot take?

I’m Brian, 31 years old. My reboot was four years ago.

In the end, I feel like it took about four months straight of no PMO to recover.

The first four times I tried to reboot ended in BIG porn relapses that set me back a lot.  Like, we’re talking more porn in a week than I would have normally watched in a month.  (I now see that this was because I didn’t have effective coping strategies in place, like a replacement habit for example).

My Timeline:

Reboot Attempt #1

5 days:  I wasn’t really committed.  Felt like shit when I watched porn again after 5 days of clarity. I vowed I would do better.

Reboot Attempt #2

18 days:  big relapse for one week. Watched more porn in one week than in an average month before my reboot. Felt like shit.   This is where I started reading about habit change, willpower, and the psychology of quitting.

Reboot Attempt #3

50 days:  another big relapse. Realized my strategies needed some tweaking.

Reboot Attempt #4

90 days:  started having sex again with the help of relaxation exercises to help with the heavy anxiety I had about being able to get an erection.

At around 120 days in my reboot, I started masturbating again.  (I believe this is important to train your body how to react to touch.  Also, correct masturbation habits train your body to last longer by mimicking the simulation of sex.  Caution: make sure you’re ready (morning wood is back; turned on by ‘real’ girls; and you think you are strong enough to withstand the draw of porn).

Currently I’ve lost count at over 1000 days, without a relapse.  In the year before I started this website, other than helping a few friends (and friends of friends), it was fairly rare that I thought about porn.  I believe this is because I had structured my life in a way that it just didn’t come up.  I built an active social life (including an active dating life), cut out unnecessary computer use, and had essentially used strategies to replace those old destructive habits.

On a side note: the interesting thing is, now that I started this blog about my recovery from Porn-induced ED – reading and answering questions in the comments and writing about what I went through, I actually find myself thinking about and craving porn more often.  The difference is now I have the strategies to help me overcome the urge. This highlights why I went mostly offline for a while during my reboot and why I recommend it as a starter strategy.

So, to answer the question: How long will my reboot take?

In conclusion, it depends on many different factors and it’s difficult to say before you start.  From my own experience, I think it’s best not to focus too much on the outcome, but instead focus on the process and on stacking the cards in your favor. And there are plenty of articles on my site that can help teach you strategies for change!

Was this article helpful? Please let me know in the comments! I try to respond whenever I can.

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Have you been struggling with porn addiction for more than a year?

I want to tell you EXACTLY why you’re failing, so you can pick yourself up and overcome this.

What I say below might sound harsh at times, but it needs to be.

This is a wakeup call, and wakeup calls are not meant to be ‘nice’.

So without further ado…

The Truth About Why You’re Still Addicted To Porn

1. Responsibility.

My inbox is filled with mails from hundreds of guys who desperately want to get over their addiction.

Their reasons are many and varied:

They want to overcome porn induced ED or performance anxiety.

They want to have real-life relationships.

They want to stop wasting their life away in front of a computer screen…

Among many other great reasons.

I can tell you who will fail.

Usually just from reading the first paragraph of an email, I can tell whether a guy has what it takes to overcome his issue — with reasonable certainty.

Roughly 60% of the emails that I get fall in the category or what I would call the woe-is-me complainer.

The woe-is-me complainer is a victim of his circumstances.

The odds are stacked against him. It’s not fair.

He found porn at a young age, so ‘it will be more difficult’ for him.

He needs to use his laptop all the time for school or write reports for work, so it’s “impossible” to stay away from the internet (and temptation).

He is ‘unattractive’ and ‘bad with girls’, so he knows that even if he somehow manages to quit porn, he’ll still never get a girlfriend.

By seeing himself as the victim, he transfers his responsibility — his very power to dig his way out of his problems — to his circumstances.

And by doing this, he’s failed before he’s even started.

Another common characteristic of this guy is that he wants an easy way out; he wants someone to ‘fix’ him.

This guy’s email might say something like: “so here’s my unique situation (which is very similar to thousands of other guys) — what should I do?”    And I have to stop myself from writing:  ”Well, have you read the five articles on my website about this very topic? Maybe you ought to start there??”

No, this guy wants someone else to do the hard work for him.

The thing is, the real way to overcome porn addiction is SIMPLE.

Simple, but not easy.

The success formula:

Look at the guys who successfully turned around their lives, and do what they did.

And the one thing that all the successful guys have in common is that they first took 100% responsibility.

I myself only started making progress when I realized:  “I am the one who got myself into this situation: this porn addiction, porn induced ED and performance anxiety are MY problem… And I’m the one who will get myself out.”

All the information is out there — on my blog and others like Your Brain On Porn, Porn Enlightenment, and many others.

You have to take responsibility, and ACT ON IT.

Finally, this quote from Strength Coach Taylor, whose writing inspired this article, sums it up neatly:

“In a mere two minutes I can tell you if someone will be successful in their quest for a leaner physique. And two minutes is being safe. It is probably closer to about 30 seconds. And this applies not just to fat loss but also to the rest of your health and fitness goals.

If you blame yourself — success. If you blame everything else — no success. Period.”

– Coach Taylor, strenghtcoachtaylor.ca

2.  You aren’t prepared to make a sacrifice.

It really amazes me when guys say “this is the 5th time I’ve relapsed in the last three weeks.”

Like, you can’t go ONE SINGLE WEEK?  Really??

If that’s the case, maybe you’re doing something wrong.  Or you need to question your commitment and your strategy.

Some questions to ask yourself about strategy:

Are you using a replacement habit?

Are you avoiding triggers?

When do you usually relapse and what causes it?  What are you feeling just before you give in?

Without diving into these questions and doing the work beforehand, you’re going to find yourself in an uphill battle.

I’m not going to sugarcoat it: Quitting porn is incredibly difficult for many guys, myself included.

But the person you will become through this hardship will thank you for sticking to it and cleaning up your life.

Again, in the words of coach Taylor:

“Life isn’t fair. Life is hard. You will get out of it, what you put into it.

And when you decide to make real changes, when you make a commitment to yourself to make a difference, YOU HAD BETTER STICK TO IT.”

– Coach Taylor, strenghtcoachtaylor.ca

3. You want results immediately, without putting in the necessary work.

What do you think is the most common question I’m emailed?

I’ll tell you what it is — by a landslide:

“How long will my reboot take?”

Despite writing a thorough article on this, explaining that it depends on many factors, including your porn history, age and strategy, this is the number one question.

And the reason is that people want to just get it over with.

They want to ‘be normal again’ RIGHT NOW, and without any of the pain and suffering.

They want a magic bullet.  That’s why viagra and cialis are multi-billion dollar drugs.

I understand the urgency. But a reboot takes time and it’s hard work.

Changing your life for the better generally doesn’t happen overnight. It comes with small, incremental changes and adapting your strategy to your problem points.

A reboot from serious PIED can take time, from a few weeks on the short side, to many months.

Escaping from the underlying root of your addiction can be an even longer process, but a rewarding one:  leading you to become a more patient, mindful, strong-willed man.

So. Are you ready to make a commitment to yourself?   Feeling inspired to make changes?

Sign up for my newsletter to get inspiration and tips delivered straight to your inbox.

##

This article was inspired by Strength Coach Taylor’s Article, The Brutally Honest 6 Reasons You Are Still Overfat.

While reading his post, I couldn’t help but think: these are the same exact reasons that I see in guy who fail in their PIED reboots, or can’t seem to quit porn.

I recommend you check out his post as well. It’s an amazing read.

A while back I wrote a post called 5 Books That Will Supercharge Your Reboot and Make You a Better Man, which received a ton of great feedback.

Many of you read the books and reported some real, positive changes:

“Understanding the habit loop really helped me to remove destructive routines from my life.”  –John

“I created my own Miracle Morning routine and I find I have so much more energy to fight my porn addiction.” – Anonymous

So I thought I’d add to the list MORE books that helped me get where I am today – completely recovered from porn-induced ED and performance anxiety.

“Reboot” Your Life

Is it really just porn that you’re struggling with?

For many of us, porn addiction is just a symptom of a deeper existential crisis. A lack of CONTROL in our lives.

A different way to look at this challenge is not just about overcoming your porn addiction, but as an OPPORTUNITY to make big, lasting changes in your life.

Getting fit, finding new hobbies, becoming more social, finding a lifelong partner…  These are some of the great things that can happen – IF you get serious and work on improving yourself.

The books listed below are the best place I know to start.

1. The Brain that Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brian Science

This revolutionary book helped overthrow the centuries-old idea that the human brain was static and not malleable.

Norman Doidge, M.D., gives us both the interesting back-story of the scientists researching neuroplasticity (the ability of the brain to change and adapt to new situations), as well as inspiring case studies of people whose lives have been completely turned around.

Dr. Doidge also looks specifically at what happens in the brain with porn addiction and gives insights into how we can overcome it.

This book will change the way you look at your brain, and most importantly, will take away that old excuse: “but that’s just the way I am, I can’t change.”  The reality is we can, and this book is part of a roadmap for that change.

Read the Amazon.com reviews here.

2.  Personal Power II

This is one of the most motivating and inspiring books I’ve ever come across (though it’s an audiobook).

If you’re looking for a manual on how to live an exceptional life, look no further. Tony nailed it. This is the P90x of mental conditioning.

If you can afford it, get the audio program, which is 25 CDs. The music is cheesy and feels very 80s, but the content is TIMELESS.

I’ve gone through the complete program from start to finish three times over the last 10 years, and listen to my favorites tapes when I’m feeling in a rut.

Read Amazon.com reviews here.

3. Cupid’s Poisoned Arrow: From Habit to Harmony in Sexual Relationships by Marnia Robinson

Why do relationships become stale sexually?

How can we create loving, sexual relationships that last longer than the initial passion?

Why is it that even with more education about sex and how to give our partners orgasms, the divorce rate is still high?

This book skillfully blends scientific studies on the neuroscience and evolutionary biology of sex, with spirituality and cultural history, to give you practical advice for creating long-lasting, loving relationships.

Reading it just might change the way you look at relationships, sex and healing in your life.

Read Amazon.com reviews here.

4. The NOW Habit by Dr. Neil Fiore

This is a great book that changed the way I looked at procrastination. Dr. Neil Fiore has created a program to beat procrastination by systematically changing our relationship to work and play.

By scheduling our free time, we are able to de-stress and actually enjoy our “play” time, rather than get more stressed about what we’re not getting done.

This is a great read for those trying to overcome stress and anxiety caused by work.  Stress and anxiety which, like it or not, can play a part in how you perform in the bedroom. 

Read Amazon.com reviews here.

5. Your Brain On Porn by Gary Wilson

If you’re struggling with porn addiction or porn-induced ED, this is a book you need to read.

Gary Wilson, creator of the website Your Brain On Porn released an e-book which covers the science of your brain’s reward circuits and how to take back control of our habits.

Knowing the science behind what happens in your brain during addiction is an important step that many guys ignore.

Here’s the link to check it out:

Your Brain on Porn: Internet Pornography and the Emerging Science of Addiction

The profits from the sale of this book go towards research about porn addiction.

Time for BIG changes

I know you’re sick of spending hours a day in front of a computer screen, wasting hours upon hours of your life to watching porn.

If you’re fed up and ready to make changes, today is the best day to start.

Have a book that helped you overcome porn addiction?  Share it in the comments!

**This is a guest post from a reader named Dylan, who went 230 days without porn. — Brian

##

Porn can really ‘bust your balls’, excuse the harsh words.

Something that was once considered a normal, private activity is now being noted by scientists, with studies being devoted to learning more about what a porn habit or addiction really means for your body, mind, and intimate relationships.

There are plenty of people still divided on the subject and even more who have no idea what the NoFap challenge is all about. But before we get started with the definition of NoFap, it’s important to first understand just how porn can be harmful.

Your Brain On Porn: Dopamine and Addiction

As with other addictive substances (did he say addictive??), porn releases a chemical inside the brain called dopamine. You’ve all heard of it by now. It’s the fun chemical, the one that makes everything exciting, that gives you that rush, or that kick out of what you’re experiencing. It also happens to be a chemical that can be induced unnaturally by the use of external stimulation, such as drugs, porn, and gambling. So yes, as with other habits, the way a porn dependence forms is still largely based on a person’s individual character. However, men are hard-wired to be visually stimulated, which means that we’re already pre-disposed to becoming hooked on something as visual as internet porn (or any kind, for that matter).

The problem, though, is that over time your brain builds up a tolerance and less and less dopamine is released through the original stimulant. What this means is that before, where a little erotica was more than enough to get you going, you now have to turn to the super x-rated hardcore stuff. Essentially, you’re handing over the control of your own body and its desires to the people of the porn industry (insert evil laugh from somewhere on the internet here).

“Ok, what’s so wrong with that?” I hear you ask.

Well, it’s this need that stands in the way of good, healthy, strong and intimate romantic relationships. But it’s more than that, it’s that the loss of control ultimately results in a myriad of problems which can, and have for many, led to porn-induced ED or performance anxiety down the line.

What Is NoFap?

In short, the word “Fap” is onomatopoeia. That is, it’s the written sound of masturbating. NoFap, however, refers to a website which hosts NoFap challenges for the sake of dumping the porn addiction for a better, healthier and all-around happier sex life. Really what NoFap aims at doing is to assist you, through their programs, to keep the spark of great sex alive with any romantic encounter you have.

 To be 100% clear, NoFap does not encourage indefinite abstinence from masturbation or sex, quite the opposite. The NoFap challenge was designed to ensure that you are able to experience a deeper connection with a deeper sense of intimacy with your partner by eliminating the need for porn or PMO (Porn and Masturbation to Orgasm). It aims at re-wiring one’s brain, which has, over time and exposure to hard porn habits, become so dependent on the stimulation that porn provides. This means that you get to decide where to set the balance after your NoFap challenge is finished. But if you choose to abstain because you know it may lead to a relapse, then you can choose to do so, as many others have done too.

Cue the scores of comments about how non-release is bad for you and you stand at risk of contracting prostate cancer if you do not release yourself. It’s absolutely true that studies have shown that release can be extremely good for your health. But note that the emphasis is on release and not self-release.

Many a time a porn addiction can get in the way of building good relationships, and can lead to dependency. And that is the focus for the NoFap challenges: kicking the PMO habit.

NoFap and Reddit

There is an entire sub-culture dedicated to NoFap and its challenges. NoFap is a huge sub-reddit, with pages that span far and wide where one can get advice, find a support system and read all about how and why the challenges have helped so many people. It has grown to such a point where many are calling it a movement, but as the NoFap website likes to put it, the only common goal between its users is the desire to tackle their own fapping addiction. Further than that, it cannot be constituted as a movement because people are not technically taking a stand against anything or for anyone other than themselves.

But really, there’s no other word to use than movement. It encompasses what the NoFap challenges mean to the many who have taken part in them. Something to work towards, fight for even, alongside a group of people who are all doing the same. It’s an anti-movement movement.

There are a large number of people who have worried about the religious undertones to the NoFap movement, but they have made it clear that it’s not religiously affiliated and based solely in the desire to help people from across the world, regardless of their race, cultural backgrounds, gender or sexual lean.

A quick history of NoFap

We have Alexander Rhodes to thank for the movement, a web developer and well-known “redditor” who saw the harm that porn and masturbation were doing in his life and others. He believes that sex is a healthy part of life and should be celebrated in its full potential, and that porn can become an obstacle to this. It’s this idea that Rhodes supports and would like for all the fapstronauts around the world to experience for themselves.

NoFap Benefits

As the NoFap movement has grown, there’s been a notable variety of benefits reported by the fapstronauts themselves. For some, the effects are astronomical, for others the benefits are minimal but long-lasting. Whatever the case, if you are dedicated to “rewiring and rebooting” you should have success and see positive results.

Here’s a quick list of some of the benefits of taking on the NoFap challenge

The following benefits are all from people who have taken the challenge themselves and struggled through the 90 days of no fapping.

Life changing emotional benefits

• Increase in Confidence

Many fapstronauts have noted an increase in confidence when approaching women and that they no longer felt awkward when talking to them. Some even mentioned that their confidence has improved overall thanks because they no longer have to hide something they were initially ashamed of. This brings us to the next point…

• Social life improves

Not everyone factors this as a major improvement, however there were a large number of people who did mention that social situations which had been the cause of anxiety pre-NoFap challenge were now actually quite enjoyable and exciting after doing the 90 days. Some even saw immediate differences after just a few days. This could be a huge part or be the direct result of the next point…

• General and Sexual Anxiety dissipates

Porn really puts a limit on your ideas of healthy social interactions and expectations. It causes objectification of women, even if we don’t mean for it to happen. Everything in a porn movie is just…so…easy. The expectations put huge amounts of strain on a person to perform well sexually and if this doesn’t happen, well, then you could start developing serious anxiety. Thankfully, as many fapstronauts have confirmed, all of this can be reversed with a zero PMO period.

• Motivation and inspiration increases

So many men have made mention that their desire to talk to women and initiate flirting has increased exponentially after taking the challenge. Possibly the best part of it all is that flirting seems to happen more spontaneously and easier for many of the men who mentioned motivation as one of their biggest NoFap benefits. However, this motivation is not only isolated to flirting with women, it’s a general motivation which increased the drive to take on projects or situations and be productive in them for longer periods of time.

• Respect

Many feel that they are now receiving more respect from men and women alike. This may have something to do with the increased confidence, but it could also have something to do with the increase in testosterone, which is suggested to increase after the seventh day of the challenge.

• Enhanced connections

To really appreciate your partner during sex, you have to put aside what you’re thinking of and rather experience her than the sex. The fact that the 90-day period enhances your connection to women, and other people is one of the more mentioned benefits along with some of the physical benefits like being more present during sex, enjoying it much more and experiencing quicker arousal that was more pleasurable than the arousal received from porn. The more pleasurable arousal makes for a more pleasurable release.

• Deeper emotions

Not as common on the thread, but still common enough to mention is the fact that there were many who listed deeper, clearer emotions as a benefit.

Among those deeper emotions were:

Less frenzied interactions with people, but also a less frenzied interaction with the self.

A clearer mind, which meant clearer reactions to situations

a greater capacity for compassion, empathy and care.

A sense of calm throughout the day.

Some of the physical benefits:

Again, these are benefits that Reddit users themselves have mentioned throughout the NoFap threads.

• More energy to tackle new experiences and finish old projects
• Clear(er) skin
• Harder erections
• More pleasurable sex
• PIED eradication
• Increased strength and endurance when it comes to physical activities
• Mental clarity as opposed to the brain fog pre NoFap challenge

To really gain from the full spectrum of benefits, it’s suggested to stick to the challenge 100%. Not easy, for sure, but perhaps it helps to remember that your goal is not to abstain from fapping indefinitely. Your goal is to re-wire your brain in order to keep your focus on the connection and intimacy of being with another person and experiencing real euphoria as opposed to experiencing a temporary rush of dopamine that’s not rooted in reality (and leaves some feeling guilty).

The NoFap Challenge

Probably the best thing about the NoFap Challenge is that you really don’t have to guilt-trip yourself if you have a relapse. However, a relapse means starting from scratch. Guilt-tripping yourself is not going to do you much good, but making sure you have a good support team behind you (i.e. other fapstronauts) and a dedicated bookmark to the NoFap Reddit pages that offer help, insight, and extra tips will be a sure-fire way of cementing your success. Also, this getting started guide is a great place to start before taking the challenge.

Even if you don’t make it through the entirety of the challenge without a relapse, the fact that you’ve started means you’re already moving forward in the right direction, and the fact that you’ve not completed it yet, means that you still need to keep trying. More importantly than making it all the way to the last day of the challenge, is your frame of mind.

A quick word of advice:

Keeping with the program is 100% up to you. No-one will watch you and any checks that you have to pass all rely on your honesty. So how you prioritize the challenge is going to be the number 1 factor in your success. If you’re going to do it, make the most of it by taking the challenge seriously and not laughing it off. When you’ve attained success, give credit where it’s due: you.

How does ED, PE and performance anxiety all fit into this?

It’s starting to become a well-known that excessive porn use can lead to erectile dysfunction and it can be the catalyst for anxiety disorders down the line with regards to sexual performance. Porn can also contribute to a lack of drive, arousal, and curiosity.

So, before trying the multitude of drugs out there to fix an ED, DE or PE problem, many are suggesting to first try cutting out the factors that may be the root of the problem. As mentioned in our recent article about overcoming your performance anxiety, it’s highly possible that there’s a combination of elements responsible for any PEID problem.

So it makes sense to try something that is completely free, all-natural and is proven to work well and deliver the desired results. If it doesn’t work, hey, then you move on and try something different, but you can never say it didn’t work if you never give your all at making it work.

One commenter said: “Where your focus goes, energy flows.” I leave you with that excellent piece of advice.

Do you have experience with NoFap?  Did you gain super powers?  We’d love to hear about it in the comments.

Do you have an inspiring reboot success story to tell and a talent for putting it into words?

To celebrate 2 years since starting the website Reboot Blueprint, I’m giving away $175 in Amazon Gift Cards to the best reboot success stories.

Entry Deadline:  September 15^th, 2015

September 30^th, 2015

• First prize: $100 Amazon gift card

• Second prize: $50 Amazon gift card

• Third prize:  $25 Amazon gift card

Details:

Entries should be at least 800 words (no upper limit – long-form is fine if you need it).

Email your entry to brian (at) rebootblueprint.com  (NOTE: entries can be “anonymous” or a pen name, but I need your email to send the gift card).

Some example essay titles to get you thinking:

“My reboot success story”

“How my life has changed since I quit porn”

“The 5 things that really helped me get through my reboot”

“Why some reboots fail and why mine succeeded”

“10 reasons my reboot was a success”

Winning entries should be…

–Motivational and inspiring

–Have useful and helpful information

-Checked for spelling and grammar

-Not copy/pasted from elsewhere (I’ll check!)

-Honest, REAL stories, with real struggles. No need to gloss over the hard parts. People want to read that too.

I will publish all entries that I feel are worthwhile (not only the winners). Entrants agree that their work may be published on www.rebootblueprint.com.   (Please note only the winners will be compensated)

Why am I doing this?

I want to inspire writers to write some amazing, helpful, motivating content for all the guys that are struggling with their reboot.  And while there’s plenty of guys out there writing their stories for free, I hope the prizes will motivate some of you to go above and beyond.

Best of luck, and I hope to read some great entries!  

-Brian

There’s plenty of great information out there to help you quit porn or overcome porn-induced ED, but it can get lost in the signal-to-noise ration of the web. So here’s a list of 5 videos with great info to help you.

**Important Note: I recommend watching these videos on this page, as the suggested videos in the sidebar on YouTube can trigger a relapse.

1.  #NoWanks: Quitting Porn and masturbation has changed my life

This blunt and humorous video by Gavin McInnis on the Rebel Media YouTube channel highlights the many reasons why too much porn and masturbation can be harmful. It’s a must watch and shares some interesting perspective. McInnis is a Generation X man himself who lays out the facts in a brilliant, no-nonsense way for just about anyone to understand.

At 1:57 he talks about the problem millennials are having with porn today and why it’s becoming such a huge problem.

Possibly the greatest thing this video does is tell the truth, but with a comedic twist. It takes a lot of the serious strain that comes with recovery off, while still offering quality insight into how the brain works on porn, why porn is becoming such a massive problem for the younger generations, and finally what you can do about it in order to heal from the process of Porn and masturbation and vice versa.

“I’m not against porn. I don’t think it should be banned. I don’t want to arrest pornstars… But, YOU are beating off too much and it’s hurting your life.”

–Gavin McInnis

Of course, he doesn’t suggest the banning of porn but merely thinks that investing your time in personal relationships will not only benefit your life but enhance it in every way.

2. The basics of rebooting

Gabe Deem of Reboot Nation tackles the problem of porn in this rebooting introductory video. If you’re unfamiliar with rebooting, how to go about it, or where to start, then this will be helpful in many ways.

He jumps right in at 00:34 with the question “What is a reboot?” For those of you who simply can’t imagine WHY you’d want to give up porn and reboot your brain, Gabe explains it quite well at 1:19.

Understanding how your brain works when it’s exposed to high levels of porn helps you to come to terms with what may be happening in your body. This video is educational in nature and draws on the results of studies conducted on the topic of porn and masturbation. If you struggle to follow the science of things, Gabe puts it out in an easy-to-understand and follow method.

At 4:35 he opens up about the benefits of reducing your porn and masturbation habit by rebooting, and they are numerous. Some seemingly unrelated areas of your life are affected by porn also and in this section, it’s clear to see that the advantages are numerous.

Some of the most frequently asked rebooting questions are answered in this 13-minute long video. If you’re looking for answers, this video is a great place to start.

“(With porn) you become sexually conditioned to become aroused by a certain stimulus in a certain way. You become aroused by pixels on a screen and novelty
rather than a real person.”

-Gabe Deem

3.  The science of pornography addiction (SFW)

To be fair to the skeptics, an innocent-until-proven-guilty approach is perfectly acceptable when it comes to the topic of porn and masturbation. This offering by AsapScience will open your eyes and educate you on how the brain reacts to porn. So why do you need to know this kind of stuff? Well, if you’re considering, or have already taken up the challenge of quitting porn, then you need to understand the fundamentals of how the addiction is lodged into your being in the first place.

For many people, the addiction of porn is as real as a substance-abuse addiction and the addiction origin lies less in the substance and more in the way the brain reacts to the substance. In order to be successful in retraining your brain to love healthy sex, it helps to know what to look out for – your triggers — and why you should look out for them.

“The truth is, pornography has dynamically changed over time, ultimately molding our tastes and desires.”

-ASAP Science

It’s a short video that gets right to the point using interesting charts and illustrations to visually outline what a porn addiction does to the brain. As the video highlights, the effects of porn is much the same as gambling and even running. Your brain craves that feel-good release and will encourage you to continually seek out the cause of this excitement.

4.  Porn Myths: the truth behind addiction and sexual dysfunctions, by Gabe Deem

Right from the inception of [internet] porn, there have been popular untruths which have birthed misconceptions. We’re seeing some of those misconceptions pop up now in response to the growing concern over porn-induced ED. This is another video by Gabe Deem that aims at debunking some of those myths and putting things into a solid and healthy perspective again.

The fact is that porn-induced ED is on the rise and it’s an issue that can no longer be ignored. Of course, simply watching porn does not mean that you’ll get porn-induced ED. But it should be noted that prolonged use of porn CAN lead to a myriad of other sexual and social dysfunctions.

As Gabe debunks 10 of the greatest myths surrounding porn, the idea of quitting this habit in order to regain your sexual balance, begins to make sense on a completely natural level.

Here are the 10 myths he tackles:

1. Our sexual taste can’t change

2. Young guys ED is caused by something other than porn.

3. Only people predisposed develop problems from porn use.

4. It’s the type/genre of porn we watch that causes the problems.

5. Porn addicts have high sex drives or hyper sexuality disorder.

6. Porn didn’t cause ED “back in the day”, so we should be fine.

7. Only guys develop porn-induced problems.

8. Porn addiction and sex addiction are the same thing.

9. Guys watch porn because of how attractive the girls are.

10. Porn addicts are trying to avoid responsibility.

Gabe’s video offers food for thought while it tackles some pretty interesting views that have become cemented in our society today. It’s the perfect go-to video if you’ve got someone who just doesn’t get why quitting porn is relevant, or is spouting some of the misconceptions above.

Perhaps what’s most important to take away from this video is that the no porn movement has its skeptics, however, the studies and experience from hundreds of thousands of people speaks for itself.

5.  Porn Sex vs Real sex: The differences explained with food

Right, so here’s another slightly humorous video that tells it as it is. A well-indulged porn habit can start to change your view on natural sexual experiences – often, if not always, for the worse. Most porn films, scenes, and images are based on fantasy rather than reality and are intended to be extremely alluring. So, of course, after some time, you develop a warped image of women and sex that needs a bit of re-tuning.

Kbcreativelab brings an extremely thought provoking video filled with stats to give you a clear image of the direct contrast between porn sex and real sex. And while this video is light-hearted compared to the rest on this list, it’s not lacking in important information.

It may also not directly touch on the issue of quitting porn, but it does help you to understand the sheer impact porn has on your view of healthy and natural sexual encounters. Of course, if your view on things like women is distorted, you’ll have a pretty hard time kicking the habit. If you’ve already watched the first few videos, you’ll have a clear understanding as to why this is so.

Arming yourself with knowledge is always the first step to recovery.

Need some inspiration? Here’s 50 Reasons To Quit Porn For Good.

Stay clean, stay strong.

When you start your reboot, the two biggest questions you likely have are: “how long will my reboot take?” and “how will I know when I’m fixed?” The fact is that there is no rock-solid answer to this – at least not yet. That’s because each person’s experience is unique. Each person’s reboot starts off with a different set of goals and timeframes. For many who are suffering porn-induced ED, the “back to normal” goal will be when they can successfully have an erection WITHOUT the aid of porn and enjoy sex with a partner. For others, it may go even deeper.

So, as usual, the first step is to identify what YOUR goals are and then diligently work towards those goals.

How Long Is My Reboot Going To Take?

As for timeframes, your full recovery will certainly depend on the stronghold of your addiction, how well you deal with your anxieties surrounding your addiction, and the positivity you feed yourself. There is a vast amount of information suggesting that rebooting will help you. For many men, it certainly does, but as it’s such a personal issue, there are a number of other considerations when it comes to measuring the success of your reboot.

For example:

1. Do you know your triggers?

Triggers come in all shapes and sizes, they’re often subconscious and it’s not always clear when you’ve set one off, so you may not even realize that you have. Knowing your triggers can help you steer clear of a relapse, and in turn speed up your recovery.

2. Do you know WHY you use porn?

For many people, there are underlying problems that are both the cause, and the product, of a porn addiction. Much like many of the other psychological addictions that stimulate the reward system, there may be deeper reasons why you gravitate towards porn. If the cycle is not broken, this can pose as a threat to your recovery and can definitely keep you from feeling the positive effects of your reboot.

3. Are you able to dedicate your body and mind to the reboot?

Much of your recovery [if not all] depends on your view toward the recovery process. If you set out to reboot but feel discouraged and unmotivated, you may not notice the same success rate as someone who remains motivated and seeks out inspiration along the way. Keep an arsenal of information, and inspirational people around you to keep you going through the toughest times.

4. Do you fully understand what a reboot is?

I find that knowing all the facts helps me to stay focused and make informed decisions. When it comes to rewiring your brain to love natural sex again as opposed to porn-fantasy-sex, it’s always a good idea to fully understand WHY porn habits aren’t good for you. If you haven’t already, take a look at these five excellent videos that explain just why porn can be harmful, the effects a PMO habit has on your life, what a reboot is, and how to go about it.

5. Lastly, what are you doing to fill the space that PMO took up in your life

Let’s be honest, I’m definitely not going to tell you that kicking the habit is as easy as letting it go and never looking back. Filling the space that porn once occupied leaves it no room to edge its way back into your life. Let’s use the analogy of renting out your home. If you’ve got tenants that are breaking your property leaving burn marks in your furniture and never cleaning the place, you’ll want to kick them out sooner rather than later. Leaving the place empty, however, opens up the opportunity for vagrants to make a home there. The best thing you can do is to find tenants who will look after your home (ie. replacement habits) and make it even better than it was before.

So with that self-Q&A underway, we can get down to the important questions surrounding the topic of this article. Thankfully there are scores of people who have been through the process of rebooting and their personal experiences can help us to understand how to measure normalcy again.

Now’s the time to jot down your original goal – if you haven’t already and consider that goal as you read through the next section of this article.

Some of the reasons guys choose to reboot are…

• Eradicating porn-induced ED
• A Lack of enjoyment of physical intimacy with a partner
• A Lack of desire towards a partner
• The inability to enjoy life
• Feelings of depression
• Feelings of anxiety (general as well as performance)
• A desire to take back the control over their own passions and desires

So it’s been established that the success of a complete reboot is dependent on your original goals, and it stands to reason then that you’ll be back to normal when you’ve realized those goals. There are, however, a number of physiological and behavioral signs that clearly show your reboot is working.

Signs you are winning in your reboot

Gabe Deem from rebbotnation.com has a comment thread on Reddit where he describes his reboot experience and helps other NoFappers recognize when they’ve returned back to normal.

Among some of the things mentioned in that thread and from the personal accounts of others along the way, a list of physical signs has been developed.

You know your reboot is reaching success if you experience the following:

• Wake up regularly with morning wood
• You no longer experience ED while having sex
• A stronger sex drive that tends to lean toward natural situations rather than porn or fantasy situations.
• Less anxiety both socially and generally
• Less performance anxiety
• More confidence in yourself in and outside of sexual situations
• More ability to get through daily tasks with increased motivation
• Increased energy and drive (both sexually and in general)
• Enjoy sex on a deeper level. That is to say that the sex is no longer just physical release but that you can connect to your partner on various levels.
• Enjoy new experiences as opposed to shying away from or shunning them
• Enjoyment of the smaller things in life
• A feeling of being more aware
• Your feelings of guilt, shame or depression are replaced with a new virility
• You are open to more communication and you no longer feel the need to hide
• The sex that you have with a partner feels amazing, even when it’s not accompanied by porn or fantasies
• Your energy levels maintain or spike after an orgasm and don’t diminish.
• You feel more productive and more capable
• Sleep issues, if you had any, begin to lessen

While you may not experience all of these things, it’s not uncommon to experience more than one, if not a majority combination of the above. There are more subtle tell-tale signs too that you can note in other areas of your life, that may tell you you’re on the right path.

Some related success signs to look out for are:

• A happier spouse, partner or family

If you’re able to connect on a deeper level and spend more time with your family/partner, then it’s guaranteed they’ll be more contented.

• Being more effective in your work and personal affairs

Productivity can certainly make you feel better about yourself. Concluding old projects or business does give the feeling of opening up more time for other things. This in turn could spike your feelings of overall efficiency.

• A general sense of happiness

There are so many changes that take place during a reboot, it’s hard to pinpoint exactly where that feeling of fulfillment actually comes from. But yes, if you’re feeling a little brighter every day, I’d take it as a sign that your reboot is well on its way and your thought patterns are returning back to normal again.

• Feeling more masculine

This is a fairly interesting point to take note of. Many rebooters mentioned that they received more respect from men and were more comfortable approaching members of the opposite sex after staying clear of PMO.

• A very different view of women and what is and isn’t attractive

Porn sets an unrealistic view of beauty and sexuality. If something less favorable [attractive] happens, you have the opportunity to quickly switch off the TV, or navigate to a new video, or turn the page. Therein lies the problem. Real sex is often nothing like porn sex. What porn stars are willing [and capable] of doing is mostly far-removed from reality. Your expectations of a natural situation may be much different than what your partner is willing to do.

• A sudden interest in things that you previously were not interested in

What with having more productive time on your hands, a need to fill a previously occupied space and a general increase in energy, you could find other experiences more attractive. Do you have a friend who’s been begging you to go mountain climbing and you’ve always said no? You may fell more interest in things like this and it’s a good thing. Taking on new experiences not only broadens your horizons, they’re excellent confidence boosters too. Plus, each new experience is an ice-breaker with the ladies. Go for it!

Strikingly the most interesting thing that almost all of these accounts have in common is that there are “on” and “off” periods to every reboot. Some of the accounts are very positive, with people experiencing progressive results as early as three weeks while others find their success at three months or later. What is important to note is that this is an ongoing process. For those of you who are not experiencing your desired results yet, keep pushing forward. It does not mean that there is something wrong with you, or that you’re doing it wrong, but likely has to do with the various factors in your personal porn habit.

For example, a young man of 21 who has been addicted to porn since the age of 13 may find that returning back to normal will take longer than a man of 41 who has been addicted to porn for the same amount of time, but has a solid foundation of healthy sex before his addiction. The type and frequency of your porn use are also deciding factors. If you’re struggling, feel free to comment in the section below, or contact me directly.

Another account from one of our very own readers noticed that only three months into his reboot he could clearly feel his sensitivity coming back.

Conclusion

There are days where you barely have to think of your efforts, and there are days when you will have to make choices to turn away from your urges, the good news is the choice gets easier along the way. As mentioned before, triggers can and do make it a little harder along the way, but as you get to know yours you’ll be able to steer clear, or learn how to successfully deal with your triggers. Overcoming a porn addiction starts by identifying WHY you want to make a change and then keeping that motivation very much alive and well.

Each reboot is in a sense tailored, as is each success. While the guidelines are much the same for everyone, the driving force behind the rewiring process is very much different. If you’re not seeing any clear results, it’s possible that you’re missing something along the way, I encourage you to keep a diary, or a get a buddy who you can rely on as you go through your reboot.

Revisiting your goals every few days can help you track your own progress. Take a look at the accounts of the many people who have been through this before you to give you a good idea of how they’ve dealt with their periods of flatlining and how they’ve celebrated their ultimate success. By the way, that reminds me, celebrating your success is, in fact, a big part of your recovery and in the end you get to do it with a bang.

In this inspiring reboot success story, Fercho shares how he woke up to how serious his porn addiction was, and the strategies that helped him overcome it.  This story won 3rd place in the 2015 Reboot Success Story Contest hosted by Reboot Blueprint.

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I am 51 years old. I started having fantasies with boys from school when I was 11, I understand now that this was because I was bullied at school and was not “popular”: I was shorter, fatter, used glasses, and did not know how to play soccer (very important to be popular if you are a boy in Argentina). I started fapping fantasizing with these boys.

I changed completely when I was a teenager: I grew up, got a girlfriend and became very popular in my social environment. Nevertheless, I “kept” my secret gay fantasies inside my brain.

When I was 18 I got the guts to buy my first gay porn magazine, later I started renting porn VHS, later buying DVD’s.

My “underground” desires were always gay, while in my real life I was straight. This gave me a lot of stress and felt confused.

When I was 21 I spoke up to my girlfriend, telling her about my fantasies with guys. She was supportive, and we continue our relationship and got married three years later.

Very soon I had my first sex encounter with a guy in some sordid xxx movie theatre, quite disgusting environment for a “first time”.

A couple of year later, the creation of Internet made things easier for closeted gays. I started meeting guys in chat rooms first, later with meeting sites like Manhunt or

Gaydar. It was always like a “parallel” life: I just wanted to have fast sex, not a relationship with men. Eventually I discovered that hiring escorts in Rentboy was easier:

I could pay for half an hour of sex, no strings attached.

High Speed Internet made my life “easier”. I could start watching gay porn all the time, without risking being discovered buying xxx movies, without needs of hiding them in some corner of a closet (specially during the VHS age, because they were bulky and hard to hide). I could also switch from one scene to the other, jumping from one movie to the other just with a click. I started browsing the names of my favorite porn actors, watching and downloading their movies. I built a library of more than 500 of my “favorite movies”, classified by actor, story, type, etc.

I started dedicating more and more of my time to this. I used to stay one or two hours at home when my wife left to the office (we worked together), watching porn and fapping. I stayed also at the office late, until 7.30 or 8 PM, so I had the opportunity to PMO once more before going back home.

I started taking more and more risks: PMO in my office when my partner or some employees were still in next door offices, PMO in my bed while my wife was sleeping next to me; pretending that I have meetings outside the office to have the chance to meet escorts, etc.

Sooner than later I started having ED. First I could not get hard with my wife anymore, so I was recreating porn movies inside my head while having sex with her, trying to stay aroused. Later it started happening also when I was with guys: instead of thinking about what was going on, I decided to become passive, while I have been active until that day (you do not need an erection if you are passive).

I started feeling more and more sad and depressed. I was all the time feeling like a hand pressing on my chest, I could not focus in my job if I did not fap 3-4 times a day.

During the last months before starting my reboot, I realized that watching porn was not making me horny anymore. It was ridiculous: I was not getting aroused but I could not stop doing it.

That was not the only contradiction: I never enjoyed my encounters with those escorts: all the excitement disappeared as soon as I met them, I did not enjoy the sex (specially since I became passive, because it was very painful), and I got even more depressed when the “session’ was over. But what I was doing when the escort left the hotel room?

I connected to the Internet to watch more porn and fap! I even filmed a couple of my encounters with escorts (with a hidden Ipad), so I could watch my own custom-made porn videos and fap later. By doing this, I became a porn actor on my own videos.

I realized I was in some state of delusion, but could not stop.

This started changing in April. I hired a famous porn star from BelAmi, a very popular European gay porn studio. For some reason, instead of the typical fast encounter, this guy was in no rush. We sat down and talk for 40 minutes, and he told me his story. He came from a very poor family in Hungary, he was straight and started working in the porn industry to feed his family. He had a girlfriend, and was not even gay. He told me things that made me feel pity for him: the owner of the studio has “the right” to sleep with any of the actors whenever he wants, most of the actors (that you see so self-confident and happy in the movies) are drug junkies, they have some pimp who takes the biggest share of their money, etc.

He told me that they are being forced lately to have sex without condoms, and that they get AIDS tests that are usually fake. This is when he decided to leave the studio.

But do you know what was worst? Instead of saying goodbye and leaving, I still had sex with him, and I was active this time. I know he was suffering and in pain, but I could not stop.

When I left his apartment I felt like a monster. I sat down inside the car for two hours with my mind in blank. This triggered something inside. I knew I needed help, but did not know how to get it.

One week later, my subconscious “asked for help”. I paid a porn website with my credit card, knowing that I could be discovered: my sons usually check the credit card App to see how much they are spending, and we share that card. I knew I could be discovered, but I did it anyway. And of course my son discovered me. He called me and said: “Your computer has been hacked…unless you are paying to watch gay porn. Be more careful, we do not want to hurt Mom”. I think he knew the truth, but he was a gentleman and pretend he did not.

I was overwhelmed by this situation, I started crying and praying God for some help…and this help came.

I do not remember what I was browsing in the Internet, when I found by chance Gary Wilson’s Ted Talk Glasgow. I started listening to him and I was shocked. It was like he was talking to ME! I felt like crushing against a wall at 200 miles per hour. Suddenly I realized that I WAS A PORN ADDICT. Ten minutes earlier I did not even know that there was such an addiction. I understood that all my sadness and depression was due to my porn addiction, while I was always thinking that it was because of my bisexual feelings. I read testimonials of straight porn addicts and they all sounded like me.

I started googling and found a test to “know if you are a porn addict”. In the middle of the test I already knew what the result would be: I was in the highest grades of porn addiction.

I entered in a state of panic:

• I started deleting all the porn movies I have been saving with so much love during years.
• I threw out all my all DVD’s to the trash (they were still hidden in my closet).
• I deleted and blocked all the escort contacts from my cell phone (I had A LOT).
• I deleted every e-mail that could lead me to more sex encounters with guys.
• I installed K-9 to block all the escorts’ sites, and the porn movies.
• I had a paid subscription to BelAmi (that porn studio were this escort worked), I wrote to ask them to cancel my subscription although I had still 7 months left.
• And in the Sixth Day…I found NoFap. (No religious pun intended, lol).

I cannot emphasize enough how this site changed my life. I could have never gone though the pains of withdrawal without Alexander and this great Fapstronauts community.

The first weeks were hell. I had a terrible blue ball ache, I felt like crying out of the blue, and I started shouting during a business meeting in front of 12 people, without being able to stop. I know that it was wrong (although I was right in the reason to be upset), so I ended up leaving the room and going to the bathroom to cry).

I could not have done this without the help of the NoFap community, I was asking for advice all the time to other fellow Fapstronauts. When I read some of my posts now I laugh. On my second week I had a trip to Boston, where I usually visited one of my “favorite” escorts. For some stupid reason, when I started the reboot I was still planning on visiting him during that trip. Fortunately I asked the opinion in the Forum and everybody told me it was a crazy idea, so I did not do it.

That first trip was a big challenge: I always took advantage of my trips, far away from my wife, to have a great binge of porn. I was afraid of relapsing, but the good advice of some Fapstronauts gave me the tools to cope with it.

• I did not pay the Internet of the hotel, so I would not be tempted to watch porn in my room;
• I made a busy agenda, especially when I was not working, so I stayed outside of the room all the time;
• I went to my favorite coffee stores in town to read a book and sip a cappuccino: a fulfilling activity that helped me feel better;
• I rode bicycle like crazy all over town, I visited so many of my favorite places in town, and steamed away all the stress and dopamine.
• One night that I had no plans, I booked a table in a cool restaurant I’ve seen in TV, and I “rewarded” myself with great food in lieu of PMO.
• I even accepted an invitation to a Red Sox baseball game, to stay away from being alone in my hotel (I am Argentinean, we find baseball very boring, lol).

There were many other challenges the following weeks. My favorite escort in Miami (where I live) texted me during the second week, and I was almost tempted to accept his invitation. Fortunately, I used some of the tools I was starting to develop thanks to

NoFap: I waited 5 minutes, did some meditation, and started an “inner dialogue” between my rational part of the brain and the porn addicted one, the first one giving the other the reasons why it was a very bad idea to see him. I remembered some advice from the forum:” having sex with an escort is watching porn in steroids.” With my heart pounding, I wrote him that I was not leaving in town any longer, that I would never come back, and said goodbye forever. It sounds stupid, but it was like letting a boat to go away. I was half happy and half sad; it was such a strange feeling.

But the big step was talking to my wife about my addiction: I asked the question to the +40 forum if I should tell her or not and there was a big debate about it.

Finally, I spoke out to her during my fourth week. I had practiced a lot my “speech”, but when I wanted to start speaking, nothing came out from my throat. I started crying, and she hugged me. I could start talking then, and she was very supportive.

This took away a big pressure from my chest, and a new stage in my reboot started.

The last push was registering in NoFap Academy. This site gave me the tools to fight my addiction in a more structured way. I have not missed one Monday videoconference since I started 3 months ago. It helps me to stay with my feet in the ground, never forgetting that this is a battle I need to fight every day.

During the next months, I started feeling better and better. The sadness and depression disappeared around the 60th Day.

I created an “Emergency Toolbox” that helped me a lot during my recovery. They were some things I wrote and some things I copied from other posts, and I saved them in my cellphone to have them handy to read when I got an urge. You can read and use them if you want:

http://www.nofap.com/forum/index.php?threads/emergency-toolbox-that-helped-me-a-lot-during-my-first-100-days.45178/page-2#post-318947

One of the most powerful sentences which helped me cope with the urges is:

“To figure out if something is good for you, you have to ask two simple questions: where does it lead me? And how will it leave me?”

It helped me put the foot in the break when the fogginess started invading my brain (we porn addicts know that feeling too well).

I also put in another post several videos that gave me inspiration for the tough moments of the recovery:

http://www.nofap.com/forum/index.php?threads/inspirational-videos-that-help-me-a-lot-during-my-reboot.39774/page-2#post-326695

And lately I did a post for those guys who are starting and ask for tips about how to start:

http://www.nofap.com/forum/index.php?threads/tips-that-helped-me-to-start-my-reboot.46617/#post-321470

Today is my 126th Day. I still cannot believe it. I would have never dreamt about being clean for so long. I have not been without fapping or watching porn for more than 4 days since I was 11.

I can say that I was born again on May 8th. 2015.

I will always be grateful to Alexander Rhodes and Mark Queppet to help me change my life. These guys are changing the world one person at a time, and there work should not go unrecognized.

Keep fighting

Fercho

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Do you have a success story you’d like to share with hundreds of daily readers?  Email me: brian (at) rebootblueprint (dot) com

In this reboot success story, Dominic shares how the “three-headed Hydra of sugar, video-games and porn” slowly destroyed his life — and his subsequent journey to reclaim it.

This story won 2nd place in the 2015 Reboot Success Story Contest hosted by Reboot Blueprint.

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I have used porn since the very inception of my sexual awakening in adolescence. My birth-date is 1989, so the internet was really coming of age at around the time I started to get those first chronic erections that just won’t go away. What’s a shy and embarrassed 13-year-old attending a Victorian-era all-boys school to do in that situation? Shut myself away at the computer at every opportunity.

In the beginning I looked at pictures: topless models, pop-stars, actresses… anything I could get my online ‘hands’ on. If for whatever reason those weren’t available, I had highly sexualised music videos constantly circulating on television and a pin-up supermodel calendar under the bed, so my options weren’t exactly limited. I never had to invest even a little bit of energy, nor face any discomfort whatsoever, in accessing this stuff. Needless to say, very little was left to my then-childlike imagination. Once I found out how to stream porn videos for free, without leaving any trace of culpability on either my Mum’s or Dad’s computer, my addiction was in full swing – well before I had even held hands with a girl.

Even before I entered into puberty, I had fallen hopelessly victim to two of the most prevalent (but culturally-sanctioned) addictions for children today: refined sugar and video-game consoles. These two behavioural addictions were essential in making my life bearable – even enjoyable – from very early childhood, to the extent that I was never able to live without them for prolonged periods. And society never obliged me to.

I was unable to save money as a child because all of my allowance would be impulsively splurged on sweets on the way home from school or wandering through town on Saturdays. I used to start fantasizing 6 months in advance about Christmas and birthdays, and what video-games (or even consoles) I would ask for as presents. It’s no wonder then that porn went on to become an addiction, given how far past the point of return I already was with these other two dependences.

As previously mentioned, I was naturally introverted as a youngster: I wasn’t the best-looking, fittest nor the most confident of my peers by any stretch of the imagination, and the very limited opportunities I had to meet girls were mostly squandered through my own insecurities – some of which were down to my tumultuous family situation. Most frustratingly however, once by some fluke I did finally manage through a friend of a friend to meet a special girl and began magically conjuring various incentives for her to be my girlfriend seemingly out of thin air, we weren’t able to copulate.

The first few times, the alcohol and the excitement mostly covered up any sense of disquiet – but when we just couldn’t make it happen over a course of several months, I started to have severe doubts about my manhood: “am I secretly gay?”, “do I not love my girlfriend?”, “is there something wrong with me?”, “is my member too small?”… “am I just a complete f**k-up in general?” At that age, the peer pressure to lose one’s virginity as quickly as possible – and my inexplicable failure to do so, even when given a clear-cut opportunity – put a tremendous strain on my teenage psyche. Somehow the one question that never entered my mind was “am I a porn addict?”, and it wasn’t until some 8 or 9 years later that that question became a real fixation for me.

Once I had left home for university and began doing something I was truly passionate about (music), I was at great pains to discover, quite early on, I just didn’t have sufficient self-exploration tools for devoting myself wholly to my craft. I didn’t know how to abandon all irrelevant concerns and give myself over to practicing my instrument, because I had always been so distracted as a child. Situations like the sheer boredom and automaton-like social programming of school, not fitting in with my peers, the phobia of girls detesting me and the often rocky dynamics of my family had led me always to crave distraction rather than mindfulness. Once at music college, away from childhood memories and in my own element, I saw that I had a way out of all of that, but it required a focus that I just couldn’t find anywhere inside myself.

A few Hermann Hesse novels, books on Oriental philosophy and inspiring talks with my Dad later, I gave up alcohol and began meditating most days. I was able to curb video-games and porn whilst at music college, though my sugar consumption was as bad as ever: away from home and with no knowledge of (nor willingness for) cooking. When I came home from University I would eat better, but old habits would flood straight back: in my old bedroom, away from prying eyes, I would revert to those tried and tested methods of satisfying my starved dopamine receptors – inevitably leaving me depressed and estranged from the new self I had slowly started developing as an adult.

It took me a good few years of meditation and self-discovery – and, more recently, a steady loving relationship – before I was really able to take on the three-headed Hydra of sugar, video-games and porn that had so routinely sabotaged my life. Sugar was the first to go as I learned how to cook and eat healthily. I still fought long battles of attrition with porn and video-games however, abstaining and abstaining for what felt like long periods but then, when unable to deal with some mood swing or troubling news, reverting to the only ways I knew of easing the pain, or tragically congratulating myself for my self-control by indulging in the very things I was trying to avoid.

6 months ago I was on my way to a gig when some friends and I started to discuss porn. One of my closest friends and I had begun a dialogue a year earlier, culminating in an agreement that masturbation to porn was an insidiously self-destructive habit. He’d had a difficult break-up with a girl who he really loved because he couldn’t get over the feeling of wanting a ‘fitter’ girlfriend. I’d asked him about porn and he told me he was masturbating to it once a day throughout the relationship. By this time I was in a serious, sexually active relationship of my own and had started trying to wean myself off porn for the sake of my girlfriend and our mutual sex-life. He had managed to quit streaming porn videos, but was still prone to looking at pictures of girls on Facebook. I would go through weeks, sometimes months without porn, but something would always come up and it was always just way too easy to relapse. I had cut my porn consumption down significantly but just couldn’t seem to cut it out. It started to become like a bad smell or an infestation in one’s house that’s impossible to get rid of.

One of our friends in the car mentioned NoFap. It was around the time that I had started taking cold showers every day, writing my dreams down every morning and getting into a fixed schedule of meditation; I decided “If I can get all these things together, I must be able to quit porn.” and with that in mind I proceeded to check out the site. I found the all of the advice and background research enlightening and helpful in the extreme, immediately subscribed and found myself reading out segments of the newsletter to my girlfriend every week, meditating on the concepts and even trying to apply them to other aspects of my life. Since then, I admit I have relapsed a couple of times, but it never resulted in an all-out binge. This is because after the act was done I was able to forgive my awareness for being outfoxed by the formidable combination of dopamine cravings and high-speed internet. Then it was just a matter of pulling my trousers up, observing what had led up to that and getting on with my day as best I could.

I can safely say now that I am done with watching porn, and I owe my thanks in no small part to Mark Queppet, the NoFap Academy and the Sacred Sexuality project – all of which have combined to help me in viewing my addiction to porn in a serious and pragmatic way. The power-journaling and methods for overcoming discomfort have proved immensely helpful to me with other addictions too.

Since quitting porn I have been on a steady incline towards downloading a new – one could say Alpha – operating system for myself. I feel more alive, and the small things – whether it’s taking a walk, cooking for my girlfriend, listening to music or something else – all make a big impression on me. My life-goals have also changed: from wanting to get certain things to wanting to be a certain way. I realise how, intrinsically, I have everything I need to live every day fulfillingly.

I don’t want to ‘escape’ from life into porn anymore. I have in fact been striving to escape from porn back into life, and that means no more objectification of women. No more relying on digital images for sexual arousal. No more spying on the intercourse of other people (we wouldn’t feel right about it if they were in the room, would we? so why is it OK through a computer screen?). No more comparing 8-10 different pornstars in order to get off. And most importantly: no more instant gratification; a gratification so instant that the urge is satiated before you even have the chance to notice it. That certainly was the case with me: before I even knew I was entering puberty, masturbating to digital prostitutes online became a primary reflex to stress.

In the words of Aldous Huxley, “Conditioned reflex: – it seemed, I remember, to put the lid on everything. Whereas actually, of course, it merely restated the doctrine of free will. For if reflexes can be conditioned, then, obviously, they can be re-conditioned. Learning to use the self properly, when one has been using it badly – what is it but re-conditioning one’s reflexes?” NoFap has helped me to restate my free will, re-condition my reflexes and start conforming to my ideal vision of myself, and I’m eternally grateful to them.

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Have a success story you’d like to share to hundreds of daily readers?  Email me: brian (at) rebootblueprint (dot) com

“Commitment, Consistency and Method.”  In this reboot success story, Giuliano shares his thoughts on quitting porn. It’s a long, raw and challenging read, but I promise you if you stick with it there are plenty of ‘lightbulb moments’ that will change the way you think.

This story won 1st place in the 2015 Reboot Success Story Contest

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This is going to long. I warned you. And it’s also going to be uncomfortable, even painful and scary. Hope is scary. And one of the main reasons people struggle with addiction is because they are scared of what’s inside themselves.

I would also add that I have written this in one go, in five hours.

I touch on many things, because I believe the holistic method to be the best.

I have successfully removed addiction from my life once and for all, and I have sealed its door behind me.

However, I have had to go through a lot in order to accomplish this, and it’s not like my journey is over.

“Addiction” is not something which you can neatly, surgically “remove” from life; it’s much more complex than that.

Life is vast and complex, and beautiful. My journey will end with my last breath, not before.

But addiction is no longer a part of my life, and here I want to spend two (maybe a little more) words on this.

There is power in sharing.

Truth be told, I am not a particularly sociable person. Whenever I talk or write, I get to the point very quickly, and can’t really stand beating around the bush.

Is this a good thing? Wrong question. The right question would be How can I use this to the best? There are so many different ways one could tackle any possible subject, and addiction is a particularly complex matter. Honestly, I think that there are no simple matters at all, but that’s for another episode.

The issue is, there are as many people struggling with addiction as there are paths out of it. And just as many ways to talk about this matter.

But let’s try to make some order, for the sake of having a foundation to start with.

There is the straight-forward, purely theoretical “scientific” (ironical brackets) way of going about it.

Then there is the caring, healing approach.

Finally, there is the “tough love”, in your face method, based on deep personal experience, which is as painful as it is effective.

So be forewarned : this will be a no-nonsense talk. Results is what you want, hopefully.

And it’s about getting results that I will be talking. Not about soothing your fears or cuddling you.

Life is real. Addiction is real. And so are you, with your one life. The single greatest problem people with addictions face is that they are alienated from reality, at some level. They live an internal disconnection in their lives; they are fragmented, and consequently stilted in all they do. They are not whole.

As a result, they are in pain, which may or may not be one of the many things they are in denial about.

Understanding you have a problem is the first step; it’s not the last, it’s not the hardest. It’s just the beginning.

You will have to face yourself if you are to quit PMO, or any other addiction. That will entail pain. There’s no way around it.

You’ve used/still use addiction as a way out of pain.

It’s simply impossible for you to step out of addiction without some amount of pain, because your relationship to pain is the root of the problem.

Otherwise, you would have already stopped the moment you knew addiction was the cause of some pain in your life.

And if addiction is causing you no pain at all (read no “stress”, “issues”, “difficulties”, “anxiety”, “grayness”, whatever you wanna call it), then I would ask myself why are you here in the first place. Don’t think you can quit addiction without understanding it. You can’t. This is not a walk in the park, don’t treat it as such.

Better safe than sorry. Rome was not built in a day, nor without hard labor. Carve that in your head.

This is what I am going with. Why? Because it’s the way I did it. This is the only thing I can talk about. Direct experience. All else is irrelevant.

Which brings up the other question : if personal experience is the only way to truly understand the subject of addiction, how can anything I say help anyone else?

Is there any real power in sharing?

Yes and no. There is power, but it’s not in the sharing. It’s not in my words. It’s inside you, and that’s the only power that can give you the strength to grow out of addiction.

All I can do is write some words, so that you may read them. But the fact of the matter is, this is not about what I may or may not say.

This is about what you will to do with what I say.

This is simply a forewarning to say : many people will not like much of what I am going to say here. Yet, the fact of the matter is that, this is not about being popular.

It’s about being real. Reality holds both great joy and terrible pain. This is just how it is.

What people call “addiction” is really nothing but an extreme manifestation of the desire to deny this reality. And it is precisely because of denial that some people, if not most, will shun what I am going to say. “Strong words”. “Extreme views”. “You’re trying to fuck with my mind”. “Who do you think you are?”.

I am a human being. A human being who looked inside himself and at his life and found things he did not like, and that chose to change them.

And yes, of course, I made a “reboot” as well. I curb-stomped addiction. I grew myself out of it.

You may choose to do the same, or not. It’s up to you. It’s also up to you whether you will read up past this point or not.

Do you want to change? Then read on. This is how I did it, this is what I think.

If you don’t like it, that’s just as fine. I sincerely hope you will find your own path. I also hope that you are not bullshitting yourself, though.

This is not some mental trick to convince you to agree with me. I may well be “wrong”, if you want to use that word. But this is not about me.

It’s about you. I may be wrong. But seriously, how can you know what’s right and what’s wrong until you see it for yourself?

And if you don’t want to find out what really is the best way to “defeat” addiction, then I honestly wonder why are you even reading this.

I am trying to be of help. But ultimately only you can help yourself, by using the tools which are at your disposal.

What is the first of these tools?

Reading articles on rebooting?

Searching for scientific sources on the nature of pornography addiction?

Recovery programs?

Physical exercise?

Meditation?

Nutrition?

Reducing stress?

Psychotherapy?

No.

It’s you.

All of those thing are indeed very useful, each with its own nuances and in its own way.

But you are your most powerful tool. Look at yourself. Your mind. Your body. Did you ever stop to think about the fact that you are a representative of the most advanced and sophisticated thing that we know of in the whole universe?

And yet, with all of this, there you are jerking off to a computer screen. Don’t you find this a little strange?

I’m not trying to make you feel bad or anything. Guilt and shame are nothing to me. I have no more use for this stuff. What use do you have for them?

But I have them! Well duh, so did I. Until I shifted my perspective, and they simply dissolved like morning mist.

At the beginning I said that there is power in sharing, and I do believe this. The truth is, the whole of human culture is based on sharing. Pornography, too, is based on sharing. And no, I’m not talking about “that kind” of sharing. I know what the thoughts of a PMO addict are, what did you think? Or maybe I am still a pervert. That’s up to you to decide.

At any rate, the only reason humanity was able to go from the animal stage of swinging through the trees bordering the Savannah to having internet pornography is because of our capacity to share knowledge, information. Two brains are better than one, it’s that simple. The inflated ego may protest to this, but it’s just the how things are. Sharing is the root of culture. This is not rocket science.

I am what many would call an individualist, some would even call me a straight-out egoist. I don’t mind, honestly. After all, it’s between them and their heads.

However, I am writing this. I am doing this, really, because as much as I may be tempted to pride myself in having been able to do this “on my own”, the truth is that that’s not how it went.

I “struggled”(more on that word later) with addiction for about 2 years. Before that, I had been engaging in PMO day in day out for some 5-6 years.

Now I’m 19 (*duh, so young, what can you tell me that will be of use to me?* – shut up and listen), and have been porn-free for 84 days.

But that’s not a full reboot, you idiot! Yes it is. Numbers are just that, numbers. The quicker you free yourself of the idea that abstractions dictate the course of your life, the better.

For about one year, I kind of played around with the matter of rebooting. Oh sure, I was trying my best. Or wasn’t I? I was giving it my all. Was I?

I did all the right things, after all. I read articles, I posted on forums, I read books, I watched videos, I kept my streak. And I always relapsed between the first and second week. Only thrice did I go over two weeks, and then relapsed between the third and fourth. Sounds familiar?

Then, at one point, I decided that I had enough. That’s what we say, right? Durr, I’m fucking angry, I’m gonna smash this shit up!

Yea, right.

So, I started using a “Recovery program”, and on top of that, I removed all of my access to the internet. The only things which remained were a few choice “safe” sites, and e-mail. Other than that, I was in fact unable to surf the internet. Why did I do that? Because I could not control myself (picture this with a dramatic, whiny voice), and so the only thing which I could do was to block everything. I could not trust myself. TRUST MYSELF? ARE YOU KIDDING? I either give it my all and overcome this bastard by force, or I will never be free of this.

So, I did 156 porn-free. Great, right?

Wrong.

What I did was that I made a lot of drama, and accomplished exactly nothing.

Mind you, I did very well with keeping up my streak.

But there were two problems : first, I still thought in terms of “streak” (which, you may have already suspected, is quite a self-defeating concept which inherently ties you to addiction); second, while I did very well with not engaging in PMO, my life was a mess, even though I was not even aware of it. And it only worsened and worsened in the last months.

Finally, I relapsed again in December 2014. I simply could not sustain what my life was without porn, and went back to it, after 156.

I stress this in order to dispel the idea, still very popular, that in order to “quit porn” one needs to “reach” 90 days of no usage. That’s bogus, really.

The only thing that “rebooting” does is put your brain in a new situation (porn-free); as a result the brain adapts to that situation of lower sensory stimulation, it “reboots”.

I don’t think I have to explain here the details of how the brain works in relation to addiction, pleasure and habit.

If you don’t know anything about it I’d point you to yourbrainonporn.com, a site which treats that area in a specific way. Regardless of the specific topic of PMO addiction, I believe every human being ought to get a solid understanding of how his own brain, his own mind and body, function. Then again, you’d be pressed to find 1 in 10 people who is even remotely interested in this stuff, right?

Yet, that’s what you’ll need to do in order to “get out” of addiction.

So, that’s reboot. The thing is, even if you do “reboot”, there are two critical things to understand :

1) nothing gets “deleted” in the brain; rewiring does happen, mind you, but keep in mind that the addictive neural circuitry doesn’t simply get eliminated; it weakens.

2) you did get addicted in the first place, starting from a “natural” state; which means, you can perfectly get addicted again after you “reboot”.

Am I saying this in order to discourage you? No, I am saying this because it’s true, and I’ve lived it.

As i said, after 156 of no PMO I still relapsed. Rebooting doesn’t give you superpowers, by itself. All it does it restore your brain to a healthier state, which generally means that you do experience various benefits and improvements at a physiological and psychological level; this can then extend and branch in every area of your life, of course.

Does strength training (or physical exercise in general) give you superpowers? No, but it does give you various benefits. Does meditation give you superpowers? No, but it gives you various benefits. Does eating better give you superpowers? You get the idea.

I choose words carefully. I said “healthier”, not “healthy”. Rebooting will not  “solve all of your problems”.

I understand why many people who want to promote the anti-PMO thing say this : they do because it’s a good way to get people’s attention; it is, in fact, a form of advertising.

Now let’s be clear. These people have good intentions.

But they create unreasonable, and ultimately untrue, expectations.

It’s just like with fad diets : lose 50 pounds in one week! People may well flock to these promises, but they are setting themselves up for disappointment.

Rebooting will not do anything for you.

Making the choice to no longer live a life of addiction will.

And yet, it’s not even that.

What you have to understand is that quitting addiction will not cause your life to improve. Improving your life will cause you to quit addiction.

Am I advocating that you stop trying to quit PMO? NO!

What I am saying is that PMO is not the reason you use PMO. Confused? You shouldn’t be.

When someone says that their problem is addiction, they are essentially saying that the reason they are addicted is….because they are addicted.

But addiction is not the problem. Addiction is the symptom. And yes, I say “addiction”, not “PMO addiction”; a quick look at the research will show you that they are all variations of the same patterns.

Again, I talk from experience.

(to be clear : read, and see what you can take from what I say; don’t fool yourself by thinking that I got it better than you, or that your problem is much lighter than my was; let’s get to the heart of the matter : is this about you proving something, or about getting help on how to stop engaging in PMO? your choice)

Throughout my adolescence, I have suffered from a plethora of “behavioral” addictions : internet addiction, love addiction, PMO addiction, video game addiction.

For most of my key growing years I have lived stepped in a seamless sea of escapism; I have never escalated to weird fetishes, and I only experienced mild PIED (I was unable to get much pleasure out of touch alone, let alone orgasm), but my whole life has been, for at least 5 full years, a loooooong string of highly ritualized addictive behavioral chains, which literally completely occupied my every waking hour. Zero social life. Zero emotion outside of escapes activities.

So yea, I can safely say that I know a thing or two about addiction. And how to dissolve it.

I should rather say “stop engaging in it”. Not “defeat”, “conquer”, “destroy”, “get out of”, “overcome”, or even “dissolve”. All of these expressions assume one thing : that addiction is something that you have to fight.

Everything we experience, we experience through our mind. As a result, the way we frame things shapes the way we act in relation to them.

If you believe addiction is something outside of “you” which you have to fight, you’ve already lost. Because all addiction is is a pattern of behavior used to manage your emotion, which you turn to because you are emotionally immature.

Addiction is a symptom. A symptom of emotional immaturity, of a lack of self-mastery, which all result from a lack of self-knowledge and self-understanding.

Addiction is something that you do. You do it. Addiction doesn’t have a life of its own. What is called addiction is just a behavioral pattern, a habit. A dysfunctional habit, yet still just a habit. A potentially very strong habit, but still a habit. Which has shaped your mind and your body, just like every other habit, really.

At a functional level, the difference between what is normally called a “bad habit” and what is normally called an “addiction” is just a matter of degree. Everything you do induces certain reactions in your brain, in your mind, in your emotions. Behind all the superficial layers, it’s all about the same thing : pain and pleasure.

Bad habits develop because you are emotionally immature, that is, you haven’t learned how to master you feelings; you are effectively enslaved to them, and let the quality of your life be dictated by arrangements of pixels on a screen.

You are walking down the street and you see a girl jogging with tight-fitting leggings that reveal everything. You feel a surge of sexual desire. You start fantasizing. You get hard, and uncomfortable. Throughout the whole period of time you spend outside, you think on and off about jerking off while fantasizing about this girl, or looking at pornography on the internet. Once you get home and everything’s quiet, you sit in from of the computer and masturbate for two hours straight while frantically searching for pictures which remind you of this girl. You finally orgasm, maybe even with disappointment with yourself because you wanted to go on but couldn’t even stop yourself from orgasming at that point. You caught a glimpse of something sexy, and your whole afternoon was warped and shaped by that. You now have to study until late because you’ve got a test the next day.

Emotional immaturity.

That is just one example, but I think it won’t be hard for anyone who’s got problems with this to recognize this pattern.

And to see that it basically means that you are, in fact, a slave to your fleeting feelings.

Why is that you have developed this habit, this addiction?

Because you don’t know any better. Why is that you don’t know any better? Because you don’t know what you want. And that’s because you don’t know yourself.

Honestly, I don’t believe anyone will ever be able to achieve lasting change from a life of addiction to a life of health without embarking on a journey of self-discovery. At best, all you’re gonna do is to “clean up” your brain, only to fall back into the same issues later on, because you haven’t changed anything. You may fall back into PMO addiction, or maybe some other form of addiction; maybe it won’t be an addiction, but it will be some other dysfunctional pattern of behavior aimed at managing your emotions, emotions you can’t control because you are living a life you don’t like.

That’s really the bottom line.

Wanna know why people fail in quitting PMO? Because they don’t know how.

They think that addiction is some kind of enemy that’s threatening their lives (or rather it’s actively destabilizing them and lowering the quality of their lives).

What they don’t understand is that their only real enemy is themselves. 

Addiction is something that you willingly choose to engage in, because it’s easier to give in to it rather than suffer the pain of denying your urges. Oh sure, you do enter “autopilot mode”. After you give your permission to its activation.

Because addiction is about your choice, it doesn’t matter how long you go without it.

This is purely about your choice to take control of your life, or not.

You can quit addiction forever on the first day of a “streak”.

I have been free of addiction for 84 days. I should rather day, probably it’s been a little less than that. Why? Because during the very first week, I understood at a deep level that I was going to stop engaging in self-destructive actions.

At that point, it was just a matter of dragging my brain behind me.

Your reptilian and limbic brains may be deeply warped by PMO addiction, but what about your rational self, your higher functions of purpose, reason and choice?

What about you?

You, are your own problem. In fact, you crated your own addiction. Don’t blame anyone. You were ignorant, of course. And immature, of course.

But now you are an adult (if you have just reached puberty, then this is exactly the time where you have to stand up for yourself and embark on the path to become a mature man).

As an adult, you are capable of making choices for yourself.

So many people today, the vast majority in truth, undervalue themselves too much.

HEAR ME OUT : YOU ARE MUCH STRONGER THAN YOU THINK YOU ARE.

This is not a slogan. This is not wishful thinking. The truth is that people don’t get results because they are too busy thinking about whether they are effectively able to get results or not, instead of busying themselves with actually doing what they need to do in order to get results.

You are a human being. You are man, damn it!.

I am not trying to be to a macho here, to impress anyone, and yet that’s what many will think. I know, because I used to think that too. “it’s easy to act like a big man when you don’t have my problems”. Seriously, I wish I were able to reach my arms through your screen, pull you in, grab you by the shoulders and shake you while screaming in your ears WAKE UP!

That’s what I am tempted to do with most people I meet, really.

Wake up.

Life is so incredibly beautiful.

You cannot see that from a place of addiction. You can’t even imagine it.

Hell, you cannot see that even if you don’t have any addiction but are living life through the same patterns, albeit more “low-key”.

Here’s the thing.

One day you will die. Do not turn away from this idea. It’s reality. One day you will DIE. Everything you’ve done up to that point will be fixed. You’ll have lived your life, and expended your chance. You won’t get another turn. This is the one life you get. You’re not Mario, you are a human being, made of blood and flesh and bone, and one day you will die.

Contemplate this. Feel this. Understand the unfathomable and enormous significance of this. Every moment matters. It will never come back.

KNOW THAT YOU WILL EITHER LIVE YOUR LIFE TO THE BEST NOW, OR NEVER.

THERE ISN’T GOING TO BE ANOTHER CHANCE.

The reason I managed to quit addiction is because I chose to. Not because addiction let me. Because I chose to.

Because I chose to make the most with the time that I have here on this earth.

When I relapsed in december, my life was already growing more and more chaotic. In the following nine months I underwent an overwhelmingly powerful journey that changed everything in the way I looked at life, at the world, at human beings, at myself, at my life.

Between February and May, I feel back into all of my old addictive patterns. Internet, video gaming, pornography, everything came back. Or rather, I went to back to it.

The way you choose to interpret what you experience is fundamental; the use you make of words is of utmost importance.

So, for about three months, I engaged in all of my previous addictions and unhealthy habits.

Then something clicked. It was a subtle thing, a little, feeble thing at first, but something that had remained despite everything.

I wanted to live, and to feel better. And I understood that that was all I wanted. I was never going to stop, because I knew what I wanted. No matter the pain I would need to go through, if I could just feel better by enduring it, I would.

“Duh, that’s it?”.

Yes, it’s the core of who I am, and truly I believe this is the force which moves everything. But I don’t think offering you my views on the deeper truths of life would be of use here; I could, but I have to economize on words..

Some may simply call it survival instinct. Now that alone sends a shiver down my spine and awakens something deep inside of me. Something deep inside my human, animal being, inside my brain inside every cell of my body, inside every string of DNA, inscribed in each of the pulsing, beating, alive particles that make up .

But I think there’s even more to that.

We humans don’t only desire survival. That’s the first thing, and that’s what stopped me from suicide. Yes, several times in the last year (in my darker period, before summer) I harbored suicidal thoughts. And you know what stopped me from doing it?

I FUCKING WANTED TO LIVE, AND I CHOSE LIFE OVER DEATH, I ACCEPTED THE PAIN EVEN THOUGHT IT HURT LIKE HELL.

You may think this is not “what you wanted” out of a “reboot” account. Get this : this is reality. This is LIFE. 

The reason you still whack it to a screen instead of going out and getting a flesh-and-blood, warm, alive and moving woman, is because you are a pussy!

I was a pussy. I was a weakling, in fact!. I was incredibly weak, mean and petty. My life was a terrible mess, through and through.

But you know what?

You know what?

You are weak?

THEN BECOME STRONG.

You are slow?

THEN BECOME SMART.

You are immature?

THEN BECOME MATURE.

You are insecure?

THEN BECOME CONFIDENT.

How? Through other people.

You know, I can’t help but feel elated when I look at websites like reboot blueprint, nofapacademy, yourbrainrebalanced, and I could go on.

They are a testament to the strength of the human spirit. They are a shining example of the fact that people are, indeed, much stronger than we would give them credit for.

The simple fact that you have chosen to remove addiction from your life clearly says that you are not satisfied with your current situation. You want your life to improve. You want to live, more.

This is the root of everything. And this is also what brings human beings together, this is what gives birth to communities such as those.

People are not sheep. People have dreams, and the power to make them true.

They only need to be shown that they can, indeed, succeed in achieving what they want.

We come back to the starting point. Sharing. I wouldn’t be writing this now if I had not been helped by other people.

Humanity’s strongest asset is our capacity for communication. This capacity is the basis for all of culture. What do you think culture is, by the way?

Brief ancient latin lesson, for those who are not into languages : culture comes from the latin verb colo, to cultivate, to tend to.

Everything you have has been handed to you, but for a very few things. The device you are using to read this, are you the one who created it? Who invented it?

The food you eat. Did you raise your own poultry? Did you cultivate your own fruit? Did you manufacture your own soda?

No, it’s all thanks to other human beings.

You see, we are one. Not in a literal sense, mind you; even then, whether you see it as a literal or non-literal interpretation really comes down to….interpretation of the word “one”. And yes, I you hadn’t yet taken up the hint, I study language and literature.

I am a decidedly individualistic person, and yet at the same time I also deeply feel this connection between all things, and most especially between all human beings.

I can’t say that I personally care for every single human being. Care is an emotional and psychological sensation which is, by its nature, limited in scope.

Yet, here’s how I see it : the world is my home. The whole universe, really, is my home. This planet is my home, and I share it with an astonishing number of other beings just like me. I deeply feel my individuality, yet I can’t deny my indestructible tie to humankind. I am humankind, and so are you.

And if what I do can help make this place a nicer place, I am here.

Otherwise, I wouldn’t have taken the time to write this.

I wrote this knowing that words are desperately limited; meaning, there is no way that I can let you see what I see, know what I have learned through my journey, feel the sheer beauty of all of this, the joy, the peace, the roundedness, the unity, the happiness, the….words just don’t cut it.

This is the thing.

Do you want to live a happy, fulfilling, beautiful, healthy and FULL life?

That is the question. Nietzsche said “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how”. This is not in order to make a random reference to Nietzsche, but to highlight this : if you really look inside yourself without fear, seek what it is that you want in life and commit EVERY SINGLE DAY to making a reality out of that, then there is NO WAY addiction will be a problem for you.

I mean really. Addiction? Pfft!

I know some of you may find this preposterous, but that’s just how I feel about it? Wanking to a computer screen? Pah, fuck that!

I’m out of that shit, I want to feel warmth against my skin along with sexual pleasure.

Pornography simply is no longer a threat to me. Because reality is so much better.

As long as you fear addiction, as long as you fear “triggers”, you are still in a star where you have not yet made a decision.

And as a result of that, no matter how hard you may try, you will fail. Over, and over, and over.

PMO is nothing else than a way to escape reality, as with any other addiction. You may not be able to see it now, but thingsare that much better on the other side.

Mind you. This does not mean that quitting PMO will by itself  “fix you”. Absolutely not.

But I believe that the only way to truly kick addictive patterns out of your life is to start from your very deepest being, from your very deepest desires, and growing outwards from that. Addiction simply gets swept away by the tidal wave of your will to LIVE.

UNDERSTAND THIS : ADDICTION IS A WIMPY, PITIFUL, PATHETIC LITTLE THING IN COMPARISON TO THE TRULY HEALTHY STATE OF THE HUMAN BEING.

The life of addiction stands to the life of health like a soccer simulation game stands to playing real soccer. It can’t fucking compare! I may swear a lot, but I fully mean it!

Swearing does have a point. And yes, I do believe you are prudish if you balk at some emphatic swearing. Language is alive, as I am alive!

Wanna feel alive? Get your life back! Get back in the driver’s seat of your life!

What you do by letting addiction rule your life is choosing to give your power over your life to it. You are, in fact, selling yourself for immediate pleasure.

ADDICTION HAS NO POWER BUT THE POWER YOU GIVE IT. THE POWER IS YOURS, TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR LIFE AND GET BACK IN CONTROL.

Duh, I am ranting, am I not? I’m restraining myself, I swear it, and you better believe it.

We were talking about getting help from other people.

Here’s the deal : people are not stupid. Our cynical selves may get a kick out of saying they are, but the really aren’t. Why do I say this? Look around. Again, look at what we’ve accomplished. Look at this very site, and to the multitudes of others, dedicated to helping people break free of a toxic, self-destructive malady.

We have created pornography, we have created pornography addiction, and we have created ways to grow out of it (I stress, grow out; you don’t win addiction, you grow out of it; addiction is simply a result of human immaturity; grow, work on improving your life all-around starting from your deepest being, and your organism will simply spit addiction out); do you see the beauty of this?

We are self-regulating, just like any other living being on earth. “Society is going to shit”. Not really, if you really go beyond “what people say” and “what television say” you will rather find that things are improving, and at a quick rate.

Again, just think about the existence of this very same website. 

And if you don’t feel the power of all of this, of the rising tide of people waking up and raising their heads high to march to better lives and better futures for themselves and for the whole of humankind and the Earth itself, then I guess you really need me going there and giving you a good shake!

You cannot do this on your own. In fact, you depend on others for almost everything. Otherwise you’d have to be a hermit living in the wilderness, and even then you’d depend on nature. 

Do not refrain from asking for the help you need. We all need it, and you will find that just as you are much stronger than you think you are, people are much more well-disposed towards each other than you might think. You just have to see it for yourself. But you have to ACT. 

Stop bullshitting yourself. Move your ego out of the way.

If you were able to succeed by doing it the way you’ve been doing it until now, you would have nailed it by now. But if you are reading this, chances are that you haven’t.

Let other people help you. You are not alone. You don’t NEED to isolate yourself.

Remember that even when you are just reading a book you are communicating with an other. Just, stop trying to figure it all out on your own in your own mind, without adding any new data. You’l only keep churning out the same answers. If something doesn’t work, change approach.

Don’t look at “quitting PMO” as “THE THING THAT WILL FIX EVERYTHING”. Look at it as the litmus test of how committed you are to living a beautiful life, pain and hardship be damned!

I don’t know what you will take from this long monologue of mine. I tried to give it all, but the truth is that I could go on writing and writing for whole days (I already write daily, in fact); yet, that would be totally pointless. In the end, my wall of text would just scare the sit out of you and you’d end up not even stopping to read it all. So yea, we must part.

But I am excited for you. Why? Because I don’t care how deeply steeped in pain, misery or even “simple” staleness (which is akin to a slow death) you are, I am certain that today I have passed something to you. I don’t care how much. It may be just one little idea. Ideas are powerful.

You are powerful. You have all the power you need. And all the support you need. You just have to look. I am not christian, but it is true that He who seeks shall find.

You may fail 100 times. That means that you’ve done it wrong 100 times, and you know 100 more ways that don’t work. When you fall, fall forward. Get up, and try again, differently.

Yet, you don’t need to put yourself through all of that. You don’t need to stumble around for years.

Remember, you don’t fail because you are not trying hard enough; you fail because you try to do it wrong, and you need to try smarter.

So look for people who can help you. Look for resources,

Work on yourself.

Work on your bodily health, on your mental health, on your emotional health.

Want to have a list of the things I have done since I started this path three months ago?

– I took up meditation; I mean to keep doing it for life.

– I took up strength training; I mean to keep doing it for life.

– I started to improve my diet, increasingly and bit by bit; I don’t mean to ever stop.

– I learned German, studying two hours a day, before starting university.

– I worked on increasing my self-awareness, my control on my thought, emotions, beliefs, reactions.

– I started planning my year, my months, my weeks and my days in a careful and purposeful way.

– I spent 2 hours a day by working on active recovery through the Recovery Nation Recovery Workshop and NoFap Academy GetClean! reboot program.

– I worked with a Gestalt psychotherapist one hour a week.

– I worked on improving my posture.

– I started using my ergonomic chair more and more over my normal one, and then worked up to working and studying while standing up.

– I set specific goals for every aspect of my life, planned with discernment and then acted on them.

My life has improved to an extent that I simply could not even expect. From a skinny fat wimp who had never done any physical activity in his life, I can now do 5×5 pull-ups, and I my bodily appearance simply exploded.

I desire women. I have no trouble at all with blocking off any kind of suggestive imagery I may come across while on the internet.

I am much more focused and quick-minded. My creativity has improved, and I ma writing more than I have ever done.

Really, you name it, and I have improved on it.

Now of course, it’s not like this all thanks for quitting PMO.

Did I quit PMO thanks to doing all of this and experiencing all of these benefits, or did I do all of this thanks to quitting PMO?

It’s both.

Because, you see, it’s not about what you do. It’s about what you want, it’s about who you think you are, and who you want to be.

You are not an addict. You are a human being who doesn’t yet know how to healthily manage his life.

I chose to live the best life that I could live. And in that life, addiction had no place. Addiction has no place.

And in fact, addiction no longer is a part of my life, and I know it will never be.

Why do I know this? Because I changed. You can’t quit any addiction without growing as a person.

Let’s be clear here. All of that is just a fraction of what I have done and accomplished. And it’s not just about what I have done. I am still doing much of that. Because this is not about doing x in order to get y.

I grew out of addiction because I understood its source, that is, denial of reality and rejection of pain, and I worked on myself, from all areas, from all angles.

If I were to break it down, these are my goals, described in a very general way for sake of simplicity, which are the same I started with, and the ones I mean to work on til the day I die :

– Achieving mastery over myself. This entails mastering my mind and my body, as a cohesive and whole unit.

– Achieving financial prosperity.

– Becoming a full-time writer, fully expressing my being through living for what I most love doing.

You can see how each of those branches out to cover the whole spectrum of human existence at its core.

I didn’t care about how long it would take. I don’t care about the how, because I have an indestructible why.

I have quit addiction.

And, to be truly honest, it’s been easy.

Because what I focused on was not on removing something that I didn’t like, but on creating something better with what I had, my mind, my body, my life.

Truth be told, when I started this, quitting PMO was something that I simply took for granted, and I tacked it onto the end of the Vision I created and wrote for my life.

Because my clarity was that strong. There was no doubt I was going to quit PMO. It was just one of the first, little steps I needed to take in order to create from the ground up the life that I wanted.

My goals are not short-term. They are not even long-term.

They are life-term. I look at my life, and I see a line with a beginning and an end. I mean to map the most out of this, and it is from this perspective that I act, that I look at y thoughts, my emotions, my experiences, my desires, my goals, my plans, my actions. This is how I act, this is how I live.

And it’s how I quit PMO.

I am not saying you should do everything I have written, or even anything of that.

Look, three months are a lot, if you are living your days with purpose. You’d be amazed at how much a human being is capable of accomplishing in a single week.

Three words : Commitment, Constistency, Method.

You need to know what you truly want, commit to getting it and renew that commitment every day.

You have to be absolutely, 100%  in the enactment of the actions you need to take in order to further your goals.

You must find out for yourself what works best for you, and then act on that basis.

Mountains are not climbed in a single bound. Step by step, there is nothing a human being can’t accomplish.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. But you have to keep putting one foot after the other! He who stops is lost.

You see, I understand that there may well be quite a dissonance between what I’m telling you and what you think about addiction. You may tend to think that addiction is this enormous monster which is destroying your life.

And here I come and tell you that it’s all in your head and that it’s your choice whether to change your life or not.

But that’s how it is, on all levels.

The thing is, over time, through your free actions, you have built a network of addictive neural pathways which now cause you to intensely crave PMO.

Just as well you can, over time and through your free choice, create new pathways which support the life you truly want to live.

It’s up to you.

What is that you truly want? As long as you can’t answer this, you will never have anything to say in the face of your urges with full conviction, and as a consequence you will give in.

Who are you? Who do you want to be? What do you want to be?

Once you know that, ask yourself : what can I do in order to get what I desire?

And if you don’t know, look for answers. We live in the information age, and the vast majority of those who are reading this are first worlders. Use the infinite opportunities that you have at your disposal.

Once you know what you want, you know how to get there, and you’ve created a specific, detailed plan for how to get there (and if you don’t know how to do that, look up “how to crew plans”; seriously, what’s stopping you from this if not your own ego? You can’t do something? Learn how to do it! Train! Listen! Read! Seek! And once you find what you need, get to work), you have all you need.

Now it’s just a matter of doing the thing. Regardless of how you feel about it.

The difference between those who succeed and those who fail is that the former keep doing what they know they have to do (because they’ve planned it) regardless of whether they feel like doing it or not.

In order to grow and become a mature human being, a mature man, you MUST go through pain. The pain of growth.

But to do this you need to want to grow. If you are still stuck in an immature Peter Pan mode, like the vast majority of men today, thinking that “growth is bad”, then of course you won’t want to grow. Trying to do something you don’t want to do is asking for failure.

As I said, what do you want? There are no limits. You may think you prefer addiction over health. Fine. It’s your choice. The only thing is, you have to accept all of the consequences of your choices. The good ones, and the bad ones. Otherwise, again, denial of reality.

Stop looking for excuses, because that’s exactly what’s stopping you from succeeding.

Do not take this just as an “inspirational” thing. I am trying to help you. I can’t do that if all you’ll seek to get from my words is emotional stimulation. I want you to get results, not to soothe yourself throughout “powerful words”. That’s not my aim, and I hope you will be wise enough not to do that, and instead to think on my words and seek your own answers.

We all have our own unique path. I told you a little about my story, a little about the way I see things and the way I went about “quitting PMO”. This is it

Know yourself. Know what you want. Then go and get it.

You will find that addiction is but a wimpy thing compared to the strength you gain from moving from a place of deep internal clarity.

This doesn’t mean that you should not curb out the behavior. You have to, indeed.

Internet filtering system, accountability softwares, I don’t have to feel you about this. Seek what you need.

But that’s just addressing the superficial system. You need to pull this thing out by the roots, and in order to do that you will need to get down and dirty with your own “mud”.

You are a human being, not an “addict”, not a worm crawling in the mud. A Human Being, standing tall.

You have in you the strength to succeed in this. You just need to unearth it.

Why would you want to press on regardless of the pain?

Because you were born into this world to live in freedom, not in bondage.

Only you can choose to claim your life. 

It’s up to you.

The only one stopping yourself from succeeding is you.

A man is not defeated until he gives up. Be strong, and use your head.

I can’t say what you will need to do in order to succeed. What I know is that as much as no path is 100% secure, doing nothing is a 100% guarantee of failure.

Do you want it? Then find a way. Make it work, for you. 

Use the help others can give you, but know that this is about you.

I don’t believe in luck.

Create your own luck. Take control of your life. I have done it, and so can you.

I wish you a good journey.

“My 365 days of porn freedom” by PL

September 15, 2015 will be a year since I masturbated to porn (PMO). The journey was not easy and painful at some points; however the rewards gained through abstaining from porn are life changing.

History

I have been watching porn since I was age 12, I am currently age 32. My father gave me my first porn magazine at 13; however I did not start masturbating until age 14. Seriously age 14 is when I started PMO. I grow up with my grandmother being really religious and saying sex is a sin. The thing is I would watch porn at age 12-14 on the Playboy and Spice channel; my family had the box with all the channels.

The problem started when I first masturbated; which created a downward spiral. I would wait until mid-night when the Robin Byrd Show would come on along with all the 900 number commercials or watch the cable in the living room when no one was in the house.

At that point of chronic PMO (Porn Masturbation Orgasm) everyday unknown to me I was becoming a withdrawn youth. Now that I look back at my High school years, I can understand why I was emotional broken and shy. I was an attractive youth; however being an attractive youth is nothing without confidence. I was also having a lot of family issues which may have contributed to my constant PMO.

I had no internet in the house from 1997 until 2001 where the PMO came from magazines which I stole a lot from my brother who came home from jail (he had a Gym bag filled with porn magazines), cable channels (Adult and Playboy), and late night television, and bootleg porn dvds. In 2001 I finally got the Internet dial up, so to get a nude picture it took over a minute sometimes longer to download a Jpeg.

Looking back now I can see my early PMOing was my way of dealing with stress. It would be every day. It also contributed to my social anxiety and lack of aggression/sex drive.

When I got to college I lost my virginity at age 19. I was still PMOing but I had no problem putting on a condom which I will talk about later. Sex was great with a condom. She was my girlfriend for about close to 2 years.

Then I got DSL and this is when all the problems started to happen. I became hooked on free Internet porn which was easy to access. My PMO escalated from once a day to 5 if it was possible. It became a ritual. The problems with my erections and sex drive started getting lower gradually. I remember having sex with this girl in my grandmother’s building and I did not feel anything wearing the condom. I had delayed ejaculation and just thought this was because of bad sex. However, I was becoming more attracted to porn and less to real women. People were questioning was I gay because I was not chasing women like regular guys in their early 20’s. The constant PMO was killing my drive as well as feeding my depression and social anxiety. I felt awkward around women like I had no social skills.

Then I moved out and was renting rooms. I would have girls come over with no desire to have sex. My hand gave me more pleasure. I was making no moves with a girl on top of me. I did not understand why I had no interest. Then came the moment when I failed to have sex with a condom. I was able to be stimulated from oral sex; maybe it was more of the visual. However, I would lose my erection because of the condom. I did not understand, I continued to only be aroused for oral; however a condom destroyed my erection. I just thought the girl was not attractive enough and I would PMO when she left. I don’t know how she stayed with me for 6 months. I cursed her out disrespectfully because of my own short comings which was stupid; we are still cool to this day even through that was about seven years ago. All other girls it was the same thing but I could still receive oral sex.

Rewired without knowing

I continued to PMO when I met my current girlfriend of almost 7 years. We got a little drunk and had unprotected sex (WHICH I DO NOT RECOMMEND NOR AM PROUD OF); I do remember when we were having sex I was not enjoying it as much; I was happy we had sex but it did not feel great, I did not ejaculate. In the morning she wanted to have more sex, I said I was tired and passed her some cab money. Two more days pass and I go to her house and had bad premature ejaculation and I was having problems maintaining an erection when having sex in doggie position, which took about two months until no problem with any positions. I guess she really liked me. The problem was I continued to PMO with regular sex. However, I still enjoyed PMO more. My depression still was present and continued to grow.

The pre reboot

In august of 2014, I and my girlfriend had an issue of infidelity on her part. I started to go out to Meet Up groups and a little day game. One day at a bar downtown Manhattan I’m talking to a nice good looking Brazilian women. I’m grabbing on her butt and we are getting along with a great vibe. The thing is I did not purse sex when we left, it was late like after mid night and she looked disappointed because I did not pursue sex. I just had no desire; I should not have mislead her by squeezing her butt.

Then some weeks later I started dating two other women I met during speed dating, yes I was still with my girlfriend (don’t judge me I’m laying out how I got to doing a reboot). One of them I was so attracted to I was getting an erection just from kissing her, I tried to take her home but she wasn’t with it; but we continued dating. However, the other one I felt nothing not even kissing. At this point I was having unprotected sex with my girlfriend and still major PMOing. The reason for the infidelity may have been because I was more interested in PMO pixel girls and not her.

Then one day while PMOing my erections became weak and I tried on a condom which I have bad experiences with and I could not put on the condom. I quickly started to google why I could not wear a condom and keep an erection (I was also PEing and DEing a lot). The information lead me to this site and other sites that told me about the problem of Porn use. It was September 14, 2014 that I found this information out. I decided to not PMO and do the reboot. I wanted to fix my sexual problems.

The One year reboot

When I started the reboot day one being September 15, 2014, I was having a lot of sex with my girlfriend I’m talking about everyday almost. However, I noticed I was getting massive brain fog every time I ejaculated and she was loving the delayed ejaculation (DE) which I was only using to prove my ego that I was a great lover, but I was not enjoying the sex at the level I am currently enjoying which I would have never imaged (you know you are getting better when the stimulation and quality you feel on your penis increases). However, with no PMO I was getting bad headaches after ejaculation. Then on Columbus Day, I experienced the flatline (I believe I was in flatline for years just because of the low sex drive). My penis just stop working, this is about a month with no PMO.

I confessed to my girlfriend on that day that I was rebooting from PMOing and the problem I had for years. I had to tell her, my penis stop getting hard even in her mouth and that is damaging to a woman. She through it was because of the other girls I was dating but I stop trying to pursue sex with them because I did not want to bring them into my reboot and PMO problem. She said she will support me in my reboot. I also sent her links to the websites on PMO. I had no libido, I was super depressed, and I started crying out of nowhere on some days. At that point I got in contact with a therapist and starting going once a week. The depression was crazy and sex was being failed at half the rate, with bad semen leakage and brain fog. I even had a terrible violent outburst in November. Things started to get better around February which was the last time I failure at an erection. I was always tired as well. Then by April I started to feel better and was going to therapy every two weeks.

I did not PMO or MO (Masturbate Orgasm) at all during my reboot or currently up until today. However, I was reading to keep away from Orgasms (O); however I continued to Orgasm which may have been my reason for bad brain fog and withdrawal symptoms.

By the spring I was having sex 100% with a little PE. The PE went away in the end and the stimulation is great that I feel during sex. I tell people that I have not MO or watched porn in a year and they can’t believe it.

Points to take away

You will feel super worst before things get better. The withdrawal and flatline are real. The depression was the worst. I will tell you that I wish I have never PMO because I would have avoided this bad depression I had. Now that I don’t PMO my social anxiety and depression faded away.

I understand that I am still susceptible to PMO and will always be an addict. This way I do not test myself with porn. Porn is not an option; treat it like a recovered Alcoholic treats beer and wine. It can no longer be a part of your life.

Don’t waste money on supplements — people will try to cash in on your problem. Trust me I wasted money in the beginning. Your brain has to heal and weaken the porn pathways.

Even though I did not slip during the year, don’t give up if you do. And again things will get WORSE before they get BETTER.

##

“On Earning Your Orgasms By Giving Up On Your Porn And Masturbation Addiction” by Josh

I was still in high school when it started. I had just gotten my first girlfriend and jumped into all kinds of different sex early on. As a teen, it’s obvious that I never struggled with erectile dysfunction. Every time we were together I knew I was going to have sex. Then, once I’d come home, I would watch porn and masturbate.

I’d been masturbating to porn every day since I turned 13. Sometimes twice a day. Sometimes three times. All was well with that lifestyle until just a couple months after getting together with my girl. While lying naked on her bed with her on top of me while we were alone in her house, I had my first taste of porn induced erectile dysfunction. I could feel my erection getting weaker with each passing second and within just a few minutes, I had nothing left to work with.

When I reached home, I pulled out my iPod, went to my favourite site and locked the bathroom door. Miraculously, I was able to achieve and maintain my full, hard erection. If I had seen the connection right then and there, I may have saved myself 8 months, two relationships and thousands of taxpayer dollars wasted on ultrasounds and expensive tests attempting to figure out why a horny young kid couldn’t keep it up.

Shortly after experiencing erectile dysfunction, my girlfriend called to ask me about our relationship. She asked me if she was too ugly, too fat, lousy at sex and any other possible insecurity a teenage girl might have. As much as I tried to assure her that this was a problem with me, she had trouble buying it. From an outsider’s perspective, a teenage guy should always get an erection in the presence of a girl unless he is gay or she is lacking something sexually. There was no doubt in either of our minds regarding my sexual orientation, so instead I tired myself night after night coming up with possible excuses for my weak erections. With nothing changing after multiple months, we decided it was time to end the relationship.

Very quickly I found myself moving forward with a new person. I was scared that when the time came, I wouldn’t be able to perform and may repeat this entire cycle. Unable to build the courage to confront my family about my condition, I scheduled an appointment for my doctor. I bussed for several hours to my doctors office where I was subject to a full check-up. My doctor, an older man with years of experience in health-care, said that he’d never seen anything even similar to my case in a person under the age of 25. He gave me his word that he would get me better and scheduled regular appointments over the next few months to see my progress and recommend new treatments, medication and procedures.

Still trying to hide my condition from my parents, I bounced from test centre to test centre multiple times a week. I’d received sperm counts, ultra-sounds, X-Rays, brain scans and physical evaluations. When each test came up normal, I was told to meet a number of experts on male sexual health and erectile dysfunction. Luckily, as a Canadian citizen, I didn’t have to pay a dime. Had I been an American, I would’ve wasted thousands of dollars trying to solve a simple problem.

Although prohibited, during one appointment my doctor slipped me three Cialis pills along with 10 Viagra. He instructed me on how to take them, to not bring his name up and to check back with my results. Once again, after 5 months without sex, I attempted sex with my new girlfriend. I took my pills a half hour before I visited her and proceeded to have sex with no issues or surprises. I checked back with my doctor less than a week later and he was able to conclude that my erectile dysfunction was not related to a physical issue but instead an underlying psychological one.

Although I was still unable to reach a natural erection with my partners, I took comfort every night in the fact that I could still masturbate to porn. Slowly, though, the type of porn I found myself watching was becoming more specific to my tastes. I became increasingly interested in girls of a certain type, with certain appearances and certain voices doing certain things. I could no longer watch amateur videos in poor quality, with short girls or curvy bodies. When I tried, I would quickly lose my erection. I was used to top quality porn and my body wouldn’t settle for less. I connected the dots, took a quick Google search for porn related erectile dysfunction and found Brian’s blog.

Brian’s blog was in its early life. I read up on the few existing articles, Brian’s story and put his advice to the test. Within 3 months, I was experiencing an awesome sense of virility, forgotten levels of libido and the hardest erections I’d ever had in my life.

So how did I do it?

Brian’s blog was the first look into the stories of others like me. From reading it, I’d determined that my erectile dysfunction was either a result of performance anxiety or PIED.

1. I fully committed myself to the program.

In the beginning, I attempted to just give up the porn. Time after time, my masturbation would lead me to “need” porn, and I would be back at ground zero. When I fully gave up PMO, I was unpleasantly rewarded with a lack of morning wood, no boners from women passing on the street, it was as if I had no improvement at all. More painfully, however, I gave up sex with my girlfriend until I was fully healed. As a result, I ended up losing her.

As hard as that was for me, I stuck with it and after just a couple weeks, I had flickers of life back in my penis.

2. I put together a library of articles that inspired and motivated me and made them my Bible.

3. Take advantage of the resources available.

There are plenty of blog posts out there to help: Reboot Blueprint, YourBrainOnPorn, etc. I also used Brian’s Craving Crusher to help me day to day.

4. Stick with it.

I had a bumpy three months of no PMO. I had to start over a few times and you likely will too, but when you see the results come back with so much momentum you will regret every wasted effort on your journey.

After just three months I had back my erections, libido and, as predicted in previous success stories, I found myself exuding an outstanding level of confidence and swagger. I’d reached my most successful ever social stage going on dates with multiple women per week, being in control of my life and succeeding mostly with every woman I met. It wasn’t long before I had a new partner to whom I explained my story. Soon after, I experienced some of the best most meaningful sex in my life. It was a milestone that reflected my struggle. I knew I was cured.

So, on behalf of myself and my partner:

THANK YOU BRIAN! And to everyone else out there struggling with PIED, you’re not alone and no matter your age or your experiences, there is help out there.

Good luck!

##

S’s Story

Dear Brian,

Today has been my 30^th day since I have had looked at pornography or masturbated! This is the longest I have ever gone in my 31 years of existence without doing this. It is a more significant achievement for me than running the marathon, completing my MBA, moving to U.S., getting my Engineering degree, getting my first job and getting my first paycheck.

It might look like an overstatement from an outsider’s perspective, but to the people on this website and the people who are trying to make a change in this aspect of their life this is an important milestone. My story was similar to others, I always watched porn or masturbated when I was feeling rejected, depressed or angry, it was my release. I never considered porn to be the drug it actually was and didn’t realize the affect it was having on my life.

My low-point came when I had to use my computer for a work presentation and someone typed up something on my Google Chrome browser, the results were not decent and although no-one noticed anything, I came very close to losing my job. Even then, I was so addicted to porn that I bought another computer and used that for my porn needs. The feeling of helplessness finally came on my 31^st birthday, when I was looking at a letter which I had written to myself as an 11 year old boy in school. I realized 90% of the items in the list are incomplete and was getting depressed. I turned on the computer to get my usual release and saw myself in the mirror, the man who stared back was not me and I was scared of myself.

I then started looking at websites and forums to help me quit this drug. The first thing I noticed was that websites like nofap.com, rebootblueprint.com, fightthenewdrug.org and others were few and far between. Almost 85 to 90% of online traffic liked porn and wanted to force people in that direction.

I have learnt a lot about myself during these 30 days of not masturbating or watching porn and have enjoyed time with myself. My advice to anyone trying this would be the following:

1. Get an accountability partner, it is more important than you think and helps you succeed
2. Get rid of all your porn — yes all of it including the pictures
3. In the initial days, make sure you don’t spend time alone (it’s dangerous and risky)

I then decided to setup an accountability partner in the form of my best friend and ex room-mate, by giving her all my passwords for porn blocking software. I also decided to investigate the size and volume of pornography industry and had the opportunity to meet an ex-porn star in San Francisco recently, I realized by watching and paying for porn people everywhere are directly contributing to the growth of the human trafficking industry. This realization further turned me off porn, although the temptation to go back was strong.

I decided to hit the gym with a vengeance , I had realized that my triggers generally happened after I came back from office and before dinner, so I made sure that I worked-out during that time 5 days a week. I also got triggers on week-end afternoons, so I went on long walks on Saturdays and Sundays, by doing this for 20 days continuously, I started noticing changes in my personality and demeanor.

Although I am not generally shy, I have never been the first to approach a girl in a bar or coffee shop, I find it slightly cheesy and generally I am scared of rejection. Recently, I got the balls to talk to a girl in a meetup and I genuinely enjoyed the experience. I was very shocked, when she gave me her phone number and asked me to give her a call, as that rarely happens to me. I did call her next day and we went out a couple of times after that. I asked her why she gave me her phone number and she told me that I was giving of a good vibe and appearing confident.

Although I am not married as of now, I have had two long-term relationships a couple of years ago. I was always bitter about the way things ended and didn’t make any attempt to be friends with my ex-girlfriends I have sent both of them emails seeking closure.

Ultimately, I intend to rewire my brain’s reward center completely till that one day when I don’t feel the need to seek consolation from pornography and I am not afraid of people looking at my private life.

I wanted to thank you Brian for the material you have put up on your site and the personalized messages. You and other people like you are waging a war against the entire internet and it is incredibly brave.

I want to be by your side and I hope I will be worthy.

Thanks,

S

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“Endurance” by Willing7

I was eleven years old when I first came across a pornographic image. It was a video case that me and my younger brother had found in the back of the trunk of our silver Ford Aerostar. Even after all these years I can clearly recall the image of this pornographic material plain as day. It is like a permanent imprint that was made upon my brain. The video case belonged to my Dad who carelessly kept it hidden wanting nobody to discover it. When telling my story of the very real struggle against pornography and masturbation, I must start with my childhood memories that I experienced in my home. Throughout most of my childhood I experienced many negative moments. Along with the bad memories there are several great memories as well. A pretty normal up bringing with a very loving and sheltering home. But there was a lot of severe lows within my family. My parents were constantly getting into terrible fights. The loudness of screaming and yelling still echo in my mind. Where this becomes relevant into my observations of just how damaging pornography can be, is reflecting on the impact it had on my Dad. And how it ultimately rippled into his role as a Husband and a Father. Life throws a lot of challenging obstacles at you, so to say that all the problems in my family were caused by my Dads pornography addiction would not be accurate. But without a doubt I know this stronghold in my Dads life was contributing to the dysfunction in many areas of his life. Such as being a good husband and father. Leading with character and integrity. Pornography has brought on a great deal of trouble and has taken him right out of the game in several areas of his life, just as pornography does to all the thousands and thousands of men today. Now being a 25 year old and dealing with my own personal battle with pornography I have learned even more about the effects it has on one’s life. This leads me nicely to my own personal account and struggle with pornography.

Being addicted to pornography is something that lives in the dark. It’s a secret that is kept from everyone. It takes place in the moments when nobody is watching. It lures you in with the heavenly escape of pleasure that only lasts for a short moment and quickly passes by. Why risk being shut down by a pretty woman when you can go look at thousands of beautiful woman online with no fear of rejection. Pornography keeps you isolated and disconnected from reality through the counterfeit and fraudulent feeling of euphoria that comes with each orgasm. This rush of stimulation conditions and trains your brain into this cycle of escape followed by always seeking another hit when the cravings come back.

I am 25 years old and I have known about the negative effects of pornography right from the start. The problem is that knowing and actually doing something about it are two completely different things. During my teenage years I was right in the middle of the great technological advancements our society was making. Largely the introduction to cell phones and the internet. This has opened the doors to great possibilities in our world and has had an impact on the very way life is lived by millions today. For the individuals who are hooked on pornography, the internet has profoundly changed the way a person can view and consume pornography. Instead of walking into sleazy adult stores and risking your reputation to being seen by someone you know, now you can simply and easily access pornography in the comfort of your own home at no cost. At least that’s what you think. I’m not making excuses for our generation or saying we are any different from our predecessors. Sex and prostitution have been around right from the beginning. But I do believe this is the perfect storm for our young generation growing up today. The loss of true intimacy and the natural way of things, for exchange to the perversion of pornography.

My involvement with the nofap academy started way back to when they first started developing into a community. I remember deeply struggling and feeling so alone.  So one night out of complete curiosity I searched online for help in overcoming pornography and masturbation. What I went on to find was a complete surprise to me. There was a website dedicated to offering support and calling out the issue of pornography and masturbation. Learning that there was this group of people that were aware of the negative effects that pornography could have on a person’s life gave me a real lift in motivation. It brought me out of the mindset that I was the only one in the world struggling with this. This mindset had a powerful grip and influence on me and brought about debilitating shame. It gave me hope that if this problem of indulging in porn was also hurting others in similar ways it was hurting me, then maybe there really is something destructive about doing this. I see it all the time on the nofap community about how nofap alone will change our life and give you superpowers. A lot of times these posts get shot down as over exaggerated placebo effects that hold no merit.

While I do believe that there is a combination of factors that must be addressed and confronted, I believe one hundred percent that nofap really is a liberating step in changing your life in ways you never thought possible. On streaks as little as two-three weeks there is an overflow of emotions that I have experienced. It’s like all the life and energy that has been wasted on using porn as a way to escape from reality, all comes surfacing back into my life. It’s like a raging sea of energy. Desires to live and connect with real people becomes important again. The closest feeling I can give to this experience is that it feels like you are AWAKE again. You don’t realize how all those sessions of indulging in pornography and masturbation for all those years has kept you handicapped and has taken so much from you. It’s like you have been taken right out of the game and placed on the sidelines watching life pass you by. Slowly isolating you and robbing you piece by piece everything that once was important to you. Zapping you of your precious energy and motivation to make a difference in your life or in the life of others. Your ultimate joy in life, whether you want to believe it or not, becomes the time spent far away with you and your computer or phone screen searching the never ending novelty of porn.

Currently I’m still struggling and I have failed miserably hundreds of times. But I will continue to stand back up. A streak here a streak there brings new insight and strength. Trying to free yourself from this is as difficult as anything this world can throw at you. But with each failure the sun will rise again and you will find your strength time and time again. That is one of the keys to finding success, the enduring effort to keep trying. My final thoughts to conclude this story is to get out there and live. Be so busy living and loving others that the thought of returning to your old ways never have the chance to put you back in the prison.

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“First time sharing my story” by KC

Well I don’t know from where to start. I will take you back to the first time I hit puberty, I had no idea what was going on and I found the vast ocean of internet to welcome me. You know what might happen. After a few years I was in college and still an addict to porn, I used to ditch my friends in order to watch some porn and have that rush that comes with it. It all came to that point when I got diagnosed with cancer, I somehow considered that my porn addiction is linked to what got into me. I tried my hardest to stop but I failed over and over again. I remember one time I was taking the freakin’ chemo and wanking it to porn. I was miserable. I felt so bad at that time and I was unable to call anyone for help, it is considered taboo to ask someone for help with porn addiction stuff from where I come from, I was completely lost.

I know my story might sound full of failures and it looks like I had no control of my life at that time but things started to change a couple of years ago. I must mention that the NoFapAcademy helped a little bit but I relapsed while I was watching their videos and letters, I believe if no one is keeping an eye on you, you are destined to fail, or so I have thought.

I decided to make a diary of my abstinence days, you know as a mood of encouragement and I love Grey’s Anatomy so much, so I told myself that each five days of abstinence will get me one episode of Grey’s Anatomy and if I want to watch another episode I must have ten days and so forth… I must say that I failed at that too. I don’t know what gets into me when I am alone in front of the laptop screen, I just zone out and I can hear this little voice in the back of my mind telling me to stop but I chose to ignore it each and every single time.

In the middle of June this year, my mum got diagnosed with Carotid Stenosis and my sister had an ovarian torsion and I was struggling to get a job and stand on my feet, at that moment I just took a second and prayed really hard in order to be supported with a force bigger than mine because God knows I have failed so many times and it is obvious that it is not in my powers to control my addiction. And I have no idea how that happened but I have been clean ever since. I feel great and I feel so proud of myself, I must say I am afraid of relapse especially when I am alone and I reach this point every once and a while when I am so close to slip but I snap out of it luckily.

Please note that I have attached a pic of my agenda or diary or whatever it is in order to verify my story.

This is the first time I write my story and share it with someone.

At the end I would like to thank you for giving me the opportunity to share my story with you.

A growing 21^st century problem for many young men

Porn-induced ED is no longer a myth. People all over the world are starting to realize just how toxic a porn addiction can be and it’s hitting a certain group of men harder than others.

It’s no joke: porn induced sexual dysfunction is on the rise and those most at risk are young men. Millennials are being severely affected by their porn addictions and their recovery rates are significantly lower on average than those of middle-aged or older men. That’s not to say that the older generations are home-free of the same devastating problems caused by too much internet porn. Rather, it’s that older men with a history of healthy sex are often recovering much faster from their porn-induced sexual dysfunction.

To get a better picture of the problem at hand and for those of you who are only just learning about the problem of PIED, we’ll start at the beginning.

In the 1970s, studies showed that less than 1% of young men aged 19 were having problems with erectile dysfunction. However recent studies in Italy and Switzerland found much higher numbers, with as many as 30% of young men (median age 19) battling erectile problems.  (further reading)

It’s clear this is a very real problem that is growing by the day. Doctors and patients around the world are starting to agree that there is more to the new generation of ED than the traditional physiological causes. And there are scores of people out there from all walks of life and all over the world who are starting to notice that their porn habits are interfering with their intimacy. 

WHAT IS PORN INDUCED SEXUAL DYSFUNCTION?

In short, it’s the physiological fallout of watching too much porn and masturbating to those porn habits. Porn has an uncanny way of changing the way the brain views and receives stimulus. To be more concise, the brain is doing what it does best, looking for the best possible outcome in every situation and ensuring that you keep getting more of what makes you feel happy and fulfilled. The problem is that on a functional level, the brain can often outdo itself.

Each time you’re visually stimulated and you feel an enjoyable feeling, whether it’s food you’re enjoying, a steamy erotic movie, or the embrace of your partner, your brain is releasing a hormone called dopamine. By now, you’ve heard of dopamine as being the “reward” chemical of the brain and it’s enjoyed the spotlight for many years as one of the driving forces behind addiction. Drug addiction, food addiction and yes, even porn addiction.

More recent studies have shown that while dopamine is the driving force behind addiction, it’s slightly different to what we originally thought it was. If dopamine was simply the reward factor there would be little problem but it’s how dopamine reacts and is released on desire rather than reward that leads us to believe that dopamine is, in fact, more of a psychological chemical than a physiological chemical. Which brings us right back to the beginning point: the rise in porn induced sexual dysfunction is most definitely an emotional one.

Here’s how it works:

When you’re intimate with a partner, the brain releases natural dopamine that tells your body you’re really enjoying this experience. Next time you come across a beautiful woman, your brain consciously or subconsciously remembers that glorious occasion and begins to release dopamine when your desire kicks in.

The porn-watching dopamine-release process is no different. However, with the rise in latest technology making internet usage easier, faster and more accessible to people of all ages and walks of life, there is now boundless opportunity available for continuous and extensive porn viewing.

Right, so I know many of you would say that this is a benefit and not a disadvantage, but the research shows that the more you watch, the more desensitized you become to what you saw a week ago, or yesterday, or just a few minutes. If you take a look at the porn internet trends and read some of the comments left by average people who are struggling with this problem, it’s clear to see that many of the young men have crossed their boundaries by taking their porn choices to a degree that they would have been disgusted with. This is because each time you watch your chosen channel, less and less dopamine is released. Your brain is desperate to keep those dopamine levels steady, if not rising.

Why increased dopamine levels could eventually lead to PIED

Porn feeds the brain novelty experiences which are designed to excite and arouse in sometimes shocking ways. All of these experiences desensitize the viewer. The problem is that when you DO want to be intimate with a real partner, your desire-stimulus reactions are completely upside down, leaving you at the mercy of your own body.

This problem is way more complex than in increase or decrease of the happy hormone, though. It’s, in essence, a problem of desensitizing your desire for the natural aspects of sex, as well as creating unrealistic expectations that lead to worry and fear of your performance capabilities.

This is just a small list of the various side effects that can sometimes come bundled with a serious PMO habit.

• Increased general and sexual anxiety
• Decrease in general and sexual energy
• Depression
• Lack of motivation and drive to accomplish everyday tasks
• Lower productivity levels
• Less confidence
• Lowered social confidence, especially when approaching the opposite sex

HOW DO I KNOW IF I HAVE PISD/PIED?

There are a number of reasons for ED and it’s always a good idea to be sure that your problem does not have a physiological origin. Visit your urologist and have him check for physical complications. If no causes can be found, the next step is to check if your ED is from sexual anxiety, and whether the anxiety is porn related. Alternatively, you could do this simple test first in order to give you an idea of where the problem could lie. Take it from there if you do not relate to the results found in the test.

Do you notice any of the following?

• Decrease in sensitivity during sexual intercourse
• Only being able to achieve an erection with porn/fantasy
• Erections are not as hard with a partner as they are when viewing porn
• The growing need to turn to harder porn in order to achieve/maintain an erection

If you’re experiencing any of these problems and you find you don’t have a problem maintaining an erection while viewing porn, but you just can’t get it up during one-on-one experiences, then rebooting is definitely worth a try. 

WHAT IS THE SCIENCE BEHIND IT?

An understanding of the science, even on a basic level can actually help your recovery process and encourage the success of your reboot.

In order to understand the science behind PIED, you have to take a look at the nature of addiction. The way we view addiction has certainly changed over the past decade and it’s become clear that addiction doesn’t happen ONLY with the intake of chemical substances.

The brain is hardwired to keep the body alive. That means establishing certain patterns, like finding food that helps the body feel great and work great; or doing something that is physically beneficial to the body. These patterns, or habits to put it more in context, can range from being extremely positive to extremely negative.

Porn unnaturally stimulates the mega release of dopamine in the body. This is about the time when the body takes a back seat and says; “well now that that’s covered, I guess I don’t have to make any more.” Slowly but surely, the body’s natural dopamine release is lessened through external stimuli.

As this happens, addiction begins drawing a neural pathway through your brain. Consider it a conditioning of the brain to seek out more of what encourages the dopamine release.

So here you can see that addiction is not always tied to the stimulus itself (ie. Porn, food, illicit drugs) but to the FEELING that said stimulus presents, and the chemicals that action releases in the brain.

Studies that support the science behind PIED

While Porn induced erectile dysfunction has not been directly studied with control groups, there are hundreds, if not thousands of living case studies; all of which point to porn as the main cause of their ED. In these cases, simply removing the use of porn brought back the ability to achieve an erection, whereas reintroducing porn meant a return of sexual problems.

There is a great forum here that talks about the science behind PIED, and while it is over 2 years old at the date of this publication, the information is highly relevant and eye opening. The fact of the matter is that while the world waits for scientific endorsements in order to yay or nay this topic, the experiments ARE being conducted daily and are being tested by real people, with real ED problems.

One member of the above-mentioned forum says it so well:

“For those seeking scientific studies…I hear ya, you want your logical questions answered, graphed out, measured and weighed, tied up into a nice sturdy theory. But, before you exhaustively search for such knowledge — try no PMO for 90 days. After 90 days clean, I doubt you’ll care about seeing scientific studies. You’ll have true knowledge, the knowledge of subjective experience.”

Let’s look at science for a moment, when does a theory become a finding?

Science is, in its nature the organized categorizing of asking questions, doing experiments, finding answers and then validating those answers. If you consider this, then it’s clear that science is already backing the theory that many young men, particularly millennials are suffering from ED as a direct result from the over usage of porn.

But for those of you who are still unconvinced, here are a few studies that support the idea that too much porn can be harmful:

• Too much internet porn may cause impotence

Urology Professor Carlo Foresta

Italian study 2011

• Neural Correlates of Sexual cue reactivity in individuals with and without compulsive sexual behaviours (yourbrainonporn.com overview)

The actual study

Conducted by Valerie Voon and associates

U.K study 2014

• Norman Doidge on pornography and neuroplasticity

Excerpt was taken from Chapter 4 of the book: The brain that changes itself

Psychiatrist Norman Doidge 2007

• Cambridge University: Brain scans find porn addiction

In fact, there’s an entire page on yourbrainonporn.com dedicated to the experts who recognize PIED and have formed studies around the topic.                                                                                                                                         

WHAT IS THE SCIENCE AGAINST IT?

I am yet to come across an article or study that really resonates with me as to why porn is NOT the problem for many ED sufferers who have ruled out all other causes. However, there are certainly a number of professionals, and porn users, who don’t share the views of the growing number of men with chronic ED. One such professional is Doctor David Ley over at psychology today.

In his article opposing porn induced sexual dysfunction Dr. Ley outlines the findings of an unpublished study where it was found that (and I quote); “Sexual desire, not hypersexuality, is related to neurophysiological responses elicited by sexual images” Ironically, Dr. Ley’s stance on the subject is against the idea of porn being the cause of the problem, however, the study he has chosen to base his view on actually supports the notion that porn can become an addiction.

At its core, addiction is about desire rather than the overuse of the substance. The overuse of the substance is rather an effect of the growth in desire and the need to continually fulfill the craving.

Nonetheless, it is noteworthy as being a contradictory study and has certainly garnered plenty of both good and bad attention from the public.

Here’s another article published earlier this year in the LA Times. This article is based on this study conducted by Nicole Prauss and James Pfaus. While the study is aimed in the right direction, one of its immediately noticeable key flaws is that the study does not actually make use of internet porn that is already native to the individual who is taking part. There is a general level of porn that is being used throughout the research and for all the participants.

The headline of the study reads as follows:

“Viewing Sexual Stimuli Associated with Greater Sexual Responsiveness, Not Erectile Dysfunction”

The aim of the study was to determine whether the viewing of sexual stimuli is associated with sexual sensitivity with a partner, or in a lab environment.

The study found, as the headline suggests, that viewing sexual stimuli actually increases sexual arousal.

Our thoughts on these studies

Both of the studies mentioned here are somewhat vague and lack a view of the full scope of the problem. It would be great to see a study that encompasses more natural settings which allow the porn user to view the types of porn he naturally would when at his computer in the comfort of his own home.

The crux of porn addiction is that it is ever evolving and it never actually remains the same. The vice continually requires harder porn types to fulfill the user’s needs. This is more like an inter-drug addiction than an addiction to one drug on its own.

In my opinion, and that of many scientists and medical professionals, these studies do not refute the notion that porn can and does interfere with a healthy sexual capacity with a partner.

HOW TO RECOVER FROM PIED?

The good news in this story is that PISD/PIED is completely reversible in many cases. As for how long your reboot will take, results are found to vary depending on the sexual history, porn use, and age of the individual.

Generally, though, and this might sound strange, going cold turkey in this situation seems to be the best way to experience measurable results through your reboot.

What is rebooting?

Rebooting, or rewiring as it’s also known, is what we refer to as the process of resetting to the brain’s natural state. It can last from anywhere between 21 days and 2 years, but most guys find success within 90-120 days. The whole reboot process is dependent on your input and dedication.

How to reboot 

It’s actually pretty simple, and the best thing is that there are no rules or regulations. You drive the bus here, so to speak. The idea is to stay away from external and unnatural sexual stimuli. Porn, masturbation and fantasizing are some of the things that could cause you problems and many guys choose to refrain from all of them at the same time.

In order for your brain to weaken the dopamine pathways to porn and begin to recognize the desire for natural sex again, you need to undergo a period where it is not being fed unnatural stimuli (ie. Hardcore porn). The focus of the reboot is not necessarily on quitting masturbation (though abstaining from masturbation during a reboot seems to help speed the process), rather it’s on quitting porn, erotica and other sexual stimuli along those lines.

There are helpful guidelines to be found on question and answer pages and forums written by the men who have been through the process of rewiring themselves, so there is plenty of guidance and advice to get you through the confusion.

How long will it take?

To quote one forum user:  “As long as it takes.”

The fact of the matter is that the process varies from person to person, habit to habit, variable to variable. There are a number of people who experience success within as little as 21 days, and there are people who take months to recover.

This is where it gets tricky for a lot of people. When you set out to do anything in life, you want to be sure you’ll see results, otherwise it was a waste of time. With a reboot, you have to be actively involved in your recovery process — it’s not a passive recovery.

Passive vs active recovery

While the most basic part of rebooting is simply eliminating porn, erotica and other artificial sexual stimuli from your daily life, it’s not the only part of it. Let’s take this back to the basics of addiction. If you simply remove the alcohol from an alcoholic’s life, trust and believe that the rehabilitation effort will not be successful – you must WANT and work toward achieving his goal of kicking the habit.

Recovery is about wanting to see the results and making sure that you do. This requires self-discipline, motivation, and determination. These qualities don’t sound so easy to garner when you’re not feeling 100% at your best already, but I can assure you that with the right mindset, your rebooting process will be a thousand times easier.

At the end of the day, the simple difference between passive recovery and active recovery is the will to put things in motion so that you DON’T end up fighting your cravings at each corner and every opportunity.

Flatlining

This is normal for the recovery phase and is a period of time through recovery where the libido drops exponentially in many cases. It can be very worrying to some, especially if it lasts weeks or months. The good news is that there is light at the end of this very dark tunnel and most people make their way out of the unsettling lifelessness very quickly.

Flatlining at a glance:

• Recovery periods vary greatly, as do flatlining periods
• You may experience it only once throughout your recovery, or you may experience it a few times

• Longer flatlining periods have been noticed in younger men who have a longer history of internet porn, and especially where PMO has been the primary source of orgasm.
• It can be experienced whether you have porn induced erectile dysfunction, delayed ejaculation (DE) and, of course, a porn addiction
• This is the point where your recovery may be in jeopardy – many guys relapse during their flatlining periods because they feel the need to “test” their erections
• There are both physiological and psychological changes that happen to the body during flatlining
• Many rebooters notice that after the flatline period, their erections are harder and stronger than ever before
• Many younger men report that an ejaculation in the middle of a reboot can spark another flatline
• After rewiring and after experiencing a period (or two) of flatlining, ED usually disappears completely (assuming that natural causes were not present and were ruled out in the beginning)
• Some men report feeling depressed, with a decrease in physical energy during this time that dissipates after the period is over. These “blue” feelings may not always last the duration of the flatline.

Getting through flatline periods

Just keep pushing through like this guy did. Staying motivated can help you see the bigger picture that a sense of hopelessness causes you to abandon. It’s very easy to consider just giving up when you don’t see immediate results or if the results you do see seem to be negative. As Thomas A. Edison said; “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”

Flatlining is a sure fire way of measuring progress in your reboot and many men do, in fact, see this period as something completely positive. Some use it as a time to strengthen their social skills and concentrate on other areas of their lives.

To masturbate or not during your reboot

This has actually become a bit of a hot topic among the skeptics of the rebooting process and even some rebooters feel that completely quitting masturbation is too extreme. You’ll have to find what works for YOU.

The NoPorn movement is entirely different from the NoFap movement, and yet, at the same time they’re linked. The thing is the generation who are currently struggling the most with PIED are not simply masturbating, most times the habit is a full PMO habit and therein lies the problem. This may be why many of the men who undergo the rebooting process choose to simply forego masturbation as well.

It might help to remember that the goal here is not to abstain from experiencing an orgasm or intimacy with a partner; the goal is to get your body and brain back into its natural glory so that you can experience a healthy libido again that is not linked to artificial stimulants

Underdog from yourbrainrebalanced.com had this to say:

Avoid at all costs the trap of thinking “If I’m going to fap, I might as well fap to porn“. This was in response to the low level of success rate measured on the forum site among the users there. Relapse regarding masturbation more often than not comes from this very idea.

REBOOTING ADVICE

Arm yourself with information

There is nothing like mapping your own rebooting process out because you know what to expect, or at the very least what to look out for.

But don’t forget to rely on others when you need to

Everyone hits a snag now and then, you can ask for advice, and if you’re not so keen on sharing your story, you can browse, and browse and browse some more to find the answers you need.

Know your triggers

This is an important part of the process. In order to steer clear of your vice, especially in the beginning, you’ll want to be able to avoid triggers or at least be prepared should you be faced with one. I suggest taking some time out to really dig deep and identify each and every trigger. Go ahead and put some preventative measures in place. If you have to get a blocker for your browser; do so. If you should ask a roommate to put passwords on your porn channels on Cable TV; do so. If you have to throw out all your old magazines; do so.

Change your mindset

What one forum user pointed out was that this problem has more than one face and it’s quite possible that psychological ED also plays a huge role, if not overlaps in some areas. Society, media and personal reflection all add to the compound problem that is erectile dysfunction. But therein lies the key to recovery.

“Result? “Porn Induced” Erectile Dysfunction. Or, in my opinion: “Induced by Porn, but Maintained by The Media” Erectile Dysfunction. The most effective cure for this would be to reject not just porn, but also the unhealthy hypermasculine ideal that the media glorifies every day, particularly in action movies, comic books, action movies adapted from comic books and video games.”

Taken from a yourbrainrebalanced.com comment

Set goals and stick to them

Despite your main goal being the relief of ED, you’ll likely have a number of other goals related to the process. For example, you may find you’re struggling with performance anxiety and you’d like it to improve – that’s a goal to work towards.

Be kind to yourself, this is a process of re-discovery and re-setting and no-one is perfect. If you do relapse, it shouldn’t be the defining factor of your recovery process, it’s not always a setback and often it allows you to take note of small things. Did you relapse because of an unknown trigger? Write it down! Did you relapse because you were feeling bored? Take note and start filling your time with productive and exciting experiences.

REBOOTING ALTERNATIVES 

The majority of men who go through the rebooting process go cold turkey and swear by it, but as mentioned before, there are no hard rules regarding your recovery process.

Possibly the most important thing to remember is that you do what brings success and results for you.

Some, for instance, prefer to stagger the recovery and break it down into smaller [and easier to handle] sections.

Here’s a guy who’s gone one step further and really thought about what rebooting means to him, and how he can make it work for him in his situation. This is his strategy for an alternative method to the cold turkey reboot:

“Approximately 40 days ago I had my last orgasm from PMO. At that point I started the reboot (because of severe ED), but unfortunately I couldn’t commit myself to full PMO abstinence. So I watched P and M to it quite rarely… every 2nd or 3rd day, and for short periods of time (~5 min). I always had a full, good erection during these short “sessions”. What I managed to do, however, was to not edge and don’t get close to Orgasm.

Interestingly, about 10 days ago (so 30 days into the no-O “reboot”), I felt into a terrible flatline (no libido, no erections and no interest in porn or women). During these last 10 days I didn’t watch porn because I started to hate it ! I tried to watch and couldn’t for more than 10 seconds. It’s as if my mind did a 180 degree turn around due to not getting the orgasm reward at the end of each PM session.

Now it’s very, very easy to abstain from PMO entirely and I strongly believe that this is one of the easiest ways to get rid of this problem. It’s like building repulsion towards porn, a little, day-by-day (gradually limiting the orgasmic reward possibility. Your mind just gives up, it seems, if no-O is reached after about 30 days). During these 40 days, I didn’t struggle and I had little or almost no withdrawal symptoms (maybe a bit around the 7-10 day mark of no-O).”

Another forum user posted an interesting view on an alternative strategy, but what’s possibly more important are the informative replies from fellow forum users who are a little divided on his strategy.

Let me know in the comment section if you’ve come up with any alternatives that have proven to work for you, or someone you know – would love to add it to the list.

LINK BETWEEN PIED AND PERFORMANCE ANXIETY

WebMD mentions a number of causes for sexual performance anxiety that can help you to understand just how much of a role external factors play in intimacy.

Relationship problems, general anxiety, depression and a bad body image all form part of these possible causes. But they go on to mention a number of factors that the overuse of porn could affect quite directly.

For example:

1. The worry that your penis isn’t big enough, long enough, hard enough, etc

Porn creates an image that is far removed from the truth. It’s not all about the penis, though, it’s about the general performance of the man [and woman] in porn scenes that can really change the way we see natural sex and put a whole variety of complicated expectations on the table, or the bed as it were.

2. Fear of a weak performance in bed

This is almost covered in point #1, but worth its own spot on the page. Let’s be honest, the men in porn scenes NEVER let a woman down, ever. It’s just not a realistic view, so if you’re engaging in chronic porn watching, you’ll surely be feeling the pressure whether you know it or not.

(As a side note – very few porn stars actually experience real intimate pleasure while shooting these scenes. In fact, many female porn stars have claimed that it’s actually quite unpleasant and painful!)

3. Worry over premature ejaculation, or taking too long to ejaculate

Again, the porn scenes are always so perfectly choreographed that neither partner is ever left to feel wanting. Is this reality, though?

It’s not about making sure that intercourse is long enough, or short enough from both parties perspectives; it’s about diving in deep and immersing yourself in pleasure.

Often, if you’re worrying about the technicalities because of things you’ve seen online, in magazines, or on other mediums, you’re going to take the pleasure out of sex completely and it’s highly possible that it could lead to sexual performance anxiety (which by the way could lead to erectile dysfunction). Learn how to relax and let go.

4. The way you view women after years of porn

If you’ve been watching porn for the last few months or years and haven’t been with a real, live partner for some time, you’re likely expecting a 10 – all around, and I do mean all around. The fact of the matter is that unless she’s a porn star, she’s not going to meet those expectations you’ve unconsciously built up.

Again, it’s a case of unrealistic expectations that could affect your performance and increase the chances of the development of anxiety regarding your sexual prowess.

THE FINAL SAY

It’s a lot of information to take in in one sitting, I highly recommend making the time to categorize the information that you find important. If you have questions, ask them here so that you can get the help you need. There is a huge support system surrounding the topic of sexual performance anxiety as well as porn induced erectile dysfunction and you’ll never be alone in your experience. The best thing is that if you’re experiencing something, it’s likely someone else out there has already experienced it too.

I notice as I go along that there are a lot of people who confuse this with a moral issue. The fact is that while many do have a moral stance on pornography, that’s not what this site is about. The idea here is to get you – your body and your brain, back to the most natural, healthy state of sexuality that it can be, and to help you enjoy your intimacy with a partner again.

Remember, sex is messy, loud, fun, intimate, personal and different with each and every partner. The best way to enjoy sex is to get to know your partner through discovery — discovery that you’ll finally have enough energy and time for again. Doesn’t that sound amazing?

**This is a guest post from a reader named Dylan, who went 230 days without porn. — Brian

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The post What I Learned Going 230 Days Without Porn appeared first on Reboot Blueprint.

This is a guest post by Apostol, creator of SlaveToHero, a website dedicated to helping men heal from porn addiction.

Relapsing. That’s one of the major problems that everyone faces while trying to stop porn. Pardon me. It’s not A major – it’s THE Problem that’s stopping everybody from quitting porn. After all – if you stopped relapsing you’ve effectively stopped using porn altogether.

On the other hand – we’re all intuitively accepting relapsing as a problem and a negative thing. “I really tried to stop porn but I relapsed – therefore I’m a failure!” But if you think a little bit deeper into the understanding of what relapsing is – we’ll find out that relapsing actually became a “thing” only when we decided to stop using porn. Before that we had no concept of “relapsing” at all.

But why do we accept it as a negative? Why do we start feeling bad about ourselves when we relapse? Why do we start feeling that guilt, shame and helplessness?

Because we don’t understand it and we have unreasonable expectations about ourselves and the whole process of recovery. You see – relapsing can not be a problem if you think about it as a part of the solution. The fact is – if you really have porn addiction and you’ve had it for a long while(if you’re like me – for years) – you won’t be able to stop it all at once. Chances are that the brain circuits that make you unconsciously want to watch porn have developed for a long while and have become so strong that you won’t be able to weaken them all at once. So maybe – just maybe – relapsing is not the problem that you think it is – but it’s more a part of the solution – it’s part of the healing process. So my tactic no.1…

Accept Relapsing as part of the process

Relapsing is part of the process towards recovery. Just accept that and don’t feel bad about it. That doesn’t mean that relapsing is a good thing. It merely  means that we should not focus on it as being bad. Don’t feel bad and shameful that you relapsed. Instead of that – focus on how many days you did without porn before that. How many more days would you do next time? What would you do different this time? That leads me to the second tactic.

Understand why you relapsed at all

Understanding yourself and your life is a big step towards recovery. So after you relapsed – try to understand what happened. What led you to relapsing? What happened between your last relapse and the current one? How many days? What events did occur? What was your daily routine at that time? How could you change that routine to avoid relapsing in the future?

While we’re talking about the daily routine let’s look at some of the things that you could include in it to make relapsing more and more rare

Start Exercising

It doesn’t matter if you get some weights at home, get a gym membership, start doing cross-fit, start playing tennis or start jogging. Including exercise in your routine is essential to build a better looking body, be healthier and more attractive to women. And it’s actually not so hard to do – you don’t have to become a pumped up fitness maniac. What I did was actually to buy a pair of dumbbells and set aside 20 min a day to exercise with them. I don’t have large muscles but I feel great inside my body. There’s also a lot of online info about exercising so search on! NerdFitness.com is a great website if you’re more introverted or you don’t know where to start. The bottom line is – do whatever it fits you best as long it’s something that creates both muscles and confidence in yourself.

Start eating healthier

I know I know. Everyone wants to eat tasty food and that broccoli is not-exactly-tasty. But the fact is that certain types of food can also be addictive. There are actually some studies that show sugar and fat can influence the dopamine receptors in the brain making you crave them more and more and making other – otherwise pleasurable activities – less and less appealing. Including more vegetables and wholegrain foods in your diet will help you reduce your weight, making you more attractive, more healthy and may even improve your mood. I myself am a vegetarian for more than 3 years and feel great about it, but I understand that’s not for everyone. So if you don’t want to – don’t stop eating your favorite foods – just start increasing the amount of healthy foods you eat beside the unhealthy ones and be mindful about it. Changing your diet a little bit can be a great way to improve your overall health and wellness.

Start taking cold showers

I found the cold shower therapy a few years ago and have been doing it ever since. It’s one of the best tools to visualize your comfort zone in the physical world. It’s also one of the best ways to train yourself of getting out of your comfort zone trap and start doing the things that you always wanted to do and being the person you aspire being. The whole idea is that you can’t do anything extraordinary in this world if you don’t go out of your comfort zone. You can’t do anything exceptional if you don’t start being comfortable in being uncomfortable. That’s the whole idea when taking cold showers (and leaving porn) – leave the comfortability behind and do what you really want in this life – however hard and uncomfortable it might be.

Delete your porn collection

Well that seems obvious – when you want to quit porn you should delete your porn collection. But we don’t think of doing it. As tblueflash777 says

“I just hit my one month streak and I realized that I seemed to be hanging onto my video library without much reason…almost like my brain LIKED the idea that I could defect at any time.”

So – don’t hesitate – hit that DELETE button and don’t look back. The collection was a part of your old self that you don’t actually need anymore. What do you really need? Real life women to talk to, to laugh with and to make love to. That said – the next tactic is

Start talking to real women

If you’re not married or have a girlfriend while you’re addicted to porn – chances are you don’t get much sex in your life. To be able to change that you need to start feeling more comfortable with talking and being around real women. You need to stop objectifying them and accept them as real human beings with wants and needs just like us. Being comfortable around women shouldn’t be that big fancy thing that you do. It could be as simple as talking to the girl next door as OlympicRunner did

“So there is this girl next door same age as me (19) in the university student residence. I for some reason took tea and cookies and knocked on her door. Took a lot really. She smiled, let me in, and we talked and laughed for about an hour. Great experience.

Enjoying the simple positive changes in my life.”

The idea is – take the chance if it presents itself and find the courage to overcome your fear of women. A great resource on how to to attract women through honesty is the book “Models” by Mark Manson. Check out what this man had to say about it

“The things in this book worked way better for me than regular ‘pick-up’ advice. Basically it’s about being honest to yourself, acting on how you feel and what you want, taking chances and being vulnerable. I’m now dating an amazing girl because of it.”

That sounds like a great thing to learn and a great place to be in. Wouldn’t you want to be in it yourself?

Relapsing in it’s essence can be both a positive and a negative thing. What it is depends on the way we perceive it. We can feel bad about it and try to control it or we can feel good about it and integrate it as a part of the process. Hell why not even step one step further and make it a marker for your progress of leaving porn and changing your life for good? A marker that makes you stop and analyze the situation. A marker that makes you think long and hard about what you’re doing right and what you’re doing wrong in your life.

A marker that transforms the whole experience of porn addiction from the powerless, weak and regretful state that we all experienced into the tool and framework of “What should I change next in my life to go further down the path of my dream life”

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Apostol had a nearly 20 year long relationship with porn (discovered it at the age of 10). A year ago he realized how porn was hurting him and discovered that it was not that easy to quit. In his journey towards quitting porn he understood that when we develop an addiction – we do it to escape the otherwise unbearable situation of our life – loneliness, poor physical health, alienation, lack of purpose. He understood that to successfully quit porn you’d ideally start from changing all the behaviours that led you to crave it – starting to take care of you own body, your own mind and your own life. Recently he created the website slavetohero.com in order to help other men take control of their life and find their purpose.

The post 7 Tactics to Stop Relapsing and Start Living Your Dream Life appeared first on Reboot Blueprint.

So you’ve been trying to give up porn, and you’re realizing… Actually, this is pretty tough.  I’m with you. I went through the struggle.

So let me start by asking you a question:  

How long have you been trying to give up porn?

Take some time to think about your answer, and be honest with yourself.  Has it been more than a few months? A year?

Now I’m going to be honest with you:

If you’ve been trying, unsuccessfully, to quit porn for over 6 months, you’re doing it wrong.

I know that’s tough to hear, but you need to hear it. You’re going to have to make some big changes in your life to get this taken care of.

How do you successfully give up porn for good?

So what sets people who are successful from those who aren’t?  What is it that you should be doing that you’re not?

Well, based on my own experience, and the experience of thousands of guys I’ve talked to on email, here are the 5 most important factors or quitting porn:

1. Replace the habit.

Because ‘quitting’ something difficult like porn or smoking isn’t actually about erasing the habit, but about replacing it. Once you understand this, and learn about the habit loop, you hold one of the main keys to your unwanted habit.  If the urge you’re satisfying is physical, your replacement habit should be physical. A good example (and one that many people have used successfully) is using push ups or a short exercise routine. In this case, every time you feel the urge to look at porn, stop that automatic impulse and exchange it for push ups. Read more about replacement habits, and decide what yours will be.

2. Have a support group or accountability partner.  

This can an online or in-person group, or just one person that knows you and keeps you accountable.  My views on accountability are a bit extreme, in that I advocate it be 100% offline (we already have enough trouble online, don’t we?).  So find a friend that you can really trust, and keep each other accountable on your goals.  Another option is to find an accountability partner online, but to use email or SMS (not forums) to stay in touch. 

3. Become self-aware.

Learning to be aware of your triggers, your unhealthy patterns of thinking, and digging deeper to the underlying reasons of your addiction… these things are game-changer.  How can you become more self-aware? Start by writing a journal. Daily journalling is an inexpensive,  powerful way to self-awareness. Here’s further reading about how understanding your triggers can help you break through your addiction. 

4. Build Keystone Habits.

Keystone habits are habits that help you build other positive habits in your life. For example, exercise is a keystone habit.  This means that exercising daily can have a huge positive impact — not just on your waistline. People who exercise are much more likely to adopt (and stick to) other positive habits.  Other keystone habits include: making your bed every morning; having a morning or before-bed routine; meditating; and even having regular family dinners.

5. Make it easy on yourself.

Do you sleep in the same room as your laptop or smart phone?  Do you keep a stash of porn somewhere in your room or on a hidden hard drive?  Do you refuse to use porn blocking software  because you feel it’s embarrassing or inconvenient?  If you answered yes to any of these questions, you’re sabotaging your success. What successful people do is make it easy on themselves by removing temptation (ie. buying an alarm clock so they don’t have to sleep next to their phone).

So if you’re really serious about beating this thing, it’s time to make some changes in your life. (Need extra motivation? Sign up for my newsletter in the sidebar, and get regular motivational emails directly in your inbox)

Bonus Secret Jedi Mind Trick: the Bet Switch Mechanism

Here’s a little-known, but super powerful way to associate pain with your addiction.   It’s a trick that ultimately helped me overcome my porn habit.  

A few years ago, after trying a few times to quit porn and relapsing, my accountability partner and I decided we needed to raise the stakes.  We agreed that every time we relapsed, we would have to pay $500 to a charity that we really disliked.  So instead of rationalizing ‘I’ll just watch porn this one last time’, it was ‘it’s going to cost me $500 to watch porn!’  Needless to say, it worked, and six months later we celebrated our achievement.  

You can read more about the bet-switch mechanism here. 

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Did I miss anything?  Have you tried any of these techniques?  Let us know in the comments

The post How to ACTUALLY Quit Porn:  5 Success Strategies To Give Up Porn and Change Your Life appeared first on Reboot Blueprint.