Managing porn cravings and buying time to think - T's tip

Submitted by a reader on Mon, 12/10/2009 - 21:48

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I've never enjoyed watching porn with other people, for me it's always been a hidden/embarrassing addiction. I found myself feeling more and more out of control with it.

I've tried quitting before, with mixed success, by deleting all of it and trying not to look at more. Recently I've tried quitting again with more success. I've found that clearing my browsing history, deleting all porn on my computer, then starting a file with just the day that I last used and a tally of the times since.

Every time I have the urge to look at porn again, I open the file and look at the day last used and it helps me to see the results of my efforts to quit, and that I'm doing a good (not perfect) job with my willpower.

Thank you T for sharing your progress here. It's great to hear that you are developing a strategy that is proving helpful for you. Rather than focussing intensely on not acting out the habit, it is the positive actions that get results. Just small tactics like keeping a log and tracking progress can really make a difference.

We've all tried to do a perfect job of quitting. "Never again, tomorrow will be different, this is the final purge...". We've all gritted our teeth and tried to reply on sheer willpower.

But for the vast majority of us, it proves to be an impossibly unrealistic challenge. It's an ideal of quitting that just doesn't reflect reality. And when we do struggle to meet our own high expectations, things really backfire. We tell ourselves that we're powerless and weak. So we might as well watch some more porn.

In reality, breaking a porn habit is a longer term journey, with small steps forward and occasional steps backward. We experience mini setbacks and victories all along the way. But once we embark and taste even small success, it's actually quite difficult to stop the momentum of change. Our confidence and awareness builds, and our efforts really begin to pay off.

Addiction cravings often seem to come out of the blue, and we instinctively rush to satisfy them, or start making plans to satisfy them, before we quite realise what's happening. By looking at your file, you are buying yourself time to move from emotional response to rational mind. Within minutes, the craving seems much less overwhelming and you can let it pass by. That's a very useful tactic.

Hi T,

I think you have developed a really good strategy & if it works for you that's all that matters. As Jason has said defeating a porn habit is not a simple or quick process, nor does cold turkey work (don't I know it!!!). I have struggled long & hard with my own relationship with using porn over many years, I have now reach a point of 98-99% free porn but I still have to be careful & ever aware not to slip. You may well have slips along this road but whats vitally important is to forgive yourself & not to beat yourself up when such things happen. Then just move on.

**I have really found using OpenDNS a massive help in avoiding porn online. OpenDNS offer a free account (you have to register but that's free too) with this you get access to your own dashboard. The dashboard gives you access to advanced settings>>on these advanced settings you can add your router, or IP address (system) >>>Here you can select free content filtering. There are numerous filtering categories from very simple to quite complex, also a custom level which enables you to choose what you wish to exclude. Such as pornography, violence, drugs, firearms,etc. I have porn, nudity, adult themes, swimwear/bikini, etc. Once its set up and working if you try viewing a site with porn on it OpenDNS will block it and throw up a message telling you the site has porn,etc. This is one way to prevent slippage and because you yourself choose to filter this it removes temptation.

See: http://www.opendns.com

**its important to use what ever tools work in the fight against porn.

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The more you can avoid porn the easier it starts to become to escape the siren call of porn & porn sites online. Of course its all good & well me saying this, but faced with the reality its more difficult & more problematic than nice reassuring words. Why? because porn triggers a purely irrational reaction and despite my logical rational words, its the bodies emotional & sexual responses on an irrational level that drive us back to porn time & again. However, the more you can avoid porn and the longer you can go without viewing it, the more distance you can gain from porn the better. Why? because the rational mind starts to have more sway over the past habits, the more you can set your focus away from doing porn into other activities in the outside world. Gradually porn assumes less & less grip on us and the less important porn becomes. At the same time the more you can start to rebuild that sense of self liking & self confidence once again. YES! there is a lot of life beyond porn.

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I have been trying out some different ways to cut down on porn, as I'm finding myself seeking it out every day. This is so easy to do when there is so much free porn online. It just sucks you right in.

I have used the Bubbletimer website (http://bubbletimer.com) to track exactly how much time I waste every day, and it's quite a good tool if you have the self control to stick to it. I have also been keeping a record like T, just recording when I last looked at porn and trying to make the gaps between longer.

There's still a long way to go, but it is reassuring to read a site like this. I have read some other porn addiction websites in the last few weeks but they didn't really help.

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Hi again,

The problem I have found with many porn addiction websites is that they seem to treate people as victims or as totally passive and powerless people. This kind of victim mentality I think is very unfortunate as it doesn't help people with the core problem. To me if you use porn in any format it is actually a choice, OK! it might be driven by a deep almost unconscious kind of choice but using porn I still content is a choice. This may sound like I'm just being perdantic here, might sound like I'm splitting hairs here but I'm not. The point is I don't see using porn as an addiction (porn obsession, porn compulsion, porn dependency) at all, call porn useage an addiction is an error of thinking, it treats porn usage as a medical condition which I don't think it is. If porn usage is not a medical condition like alcohol addiction then this has massive ramifications as too how you treate this problem. I don't believe 12 step addiction programs are helpful because its not looking at the problem in an accurate way.

Porn is NOT an addiction, if you wanted firm proof of this then why is it that the American society of Psychriaty does not define porn useage as addiction either (they the psychtrists couldnt agree to call porn use an addiction in their manual of mental health conditions).

Porn useage in my view is a) obsession or obsessionality or b) compulsion or c) porn dependency its NOT an addiction. To call porn use addiction is not helpful and is also not helpful in trying to reach a solution or healing.

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To escape the siren clutches of porn especially online porn you can use anything (any method or tool ) that works for you personally. I just found that setting up OpenDNS works for me because it takes 99% of gross porn temptation away from me whilst online. And even if I'm feeling randy & sexual as hell its no good I'm just not getting onto those old sites I used to use, so then I have to deal with my feelings minus the comfort blanket of porn which is what I used to reach for in an instant. Things have really improved a greart deal since I started using OpenDNS it works for me personally, it allows me to use the web without the worry of slipping back to those old porn sites. I feel much happier because of this, its keeping me away from porn constantly, its a strong reliable safety net. :-) Oh! and its 100% free too which is nice.

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