I’m currently reading The War of Art, and it’s proving to be an enlightening journey. It’s not specifically about pornography or addiction, but the words of author Steven Pressfield are striking chords with me on every page.
It’s a straight-talking examination of resistance - the obstacles that we create for ourselves to stop us achieving, being creative and making positive, scary changes to our lives. I’m firmly of the opinion that for so many people, porn addiction is a form of procrastination. As much as we loathe the habit, it’s a comfort zone distraction from the more pressing urgencies of life. Steven Pressfield puts it like this:
“Sometimes resistance takes the form of sex, or an obsessive preoccupation with sex. Why sex? Because sex provides immediate and powerful gratification … resistance gets a big kick out of that. It knows it has distracted us with a cheap, easy fix and kept us from doing our work.”
As he explains, the same principle can be applied to shopping, masturbation, TV, alcohol and chocolate. These things aren’t always forms of hollow procrastination, of course, and that applies to watching porn too. The author suggests that it depends on the measure of hollowness you feel afterwards - that’s the clearest indicator. The more empty you feel, the more certain you can be that your true motivation was procrastination and resistance. You’re clinging to a predictable routine instead of creatively living.
For me, this is an important point. The impact of porn addiction is often much more subtle than the fall-out of divorce, redundancy, bankruptcy or spiralling depression. It’s the easy procrastination that will prevent you from learning something new, making another friend or starting that small business idea. Addiction hijacks these little things in life, the little things with potential to change the direction of your future.
It goes without saying that The War of Art is very much recommended.
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This blog sums up my porn addiction experience quite well as I’m not getting right out of control but it does stop me from doing the things that I know deep down I should be doing. Its more about what porn stops me doing than what it makes me do. An example is my website programming, as I know that I am good at it and could make some good money but I sit at the computer and surf porn sites instead. Then I run out of time and feel like shit. Thanks for the tip about the book.