I used to wonder why I felt depressed after a porn viewing session ending in orgasm. I discovered it was for a few reasons. First off I would just feel down because I slipped up yet again. Second I would feel physically low because my dopamine levels were very high during the porn viewing but they dropped off after orgasm. Third I found that the orgasm that came from viewing porn just did not compare to an orgasm during healthy sex. This is because there are a lot more emotions involved in healthy sex which means a release of the right balance of neurochemicals which cause a longer state of euphoria after orgasm with healthy sex as opposed to orgasm after viewing porn. I even found that I was less depressed after masturbating without porn because I engaged more parts of the brain to reach orgasm. Porn does all the thinking for us and therefore requires less imagination or emotion.

There have been girls I have seen in every day life that I have lusted and fantasized about. However I noticed something very interesting. Whenever I got a chance to talk to, get to know, and even become friends with the her I would stop fantasizing or fantasize less about that particular girl. It was because I developed some sort of connection with her and she was no longer just an object or specific body parts I lusted after. There is power in connecting with the opposite sex that causes us to rise above a simple carnal state of mind. It doesn’t mean we lose physical attraction for the person however its as if we’re seeing the whole picture now and activating several parts of our brain instead of just the pleasure center. It is in this more whole state of mind that we develop fulfilling relationships.

So if we have the opportunity we should attempt to connect with the person we are feeling lustful towards so that we have a more wholesome view towards them. Applying this can be difficult sometimes since we can’t always connect with every person we see, especially if we’re viewing porn online. However, we can take the time to ask ourselves some questions about the person so as to make them more than just a sex object. Here are some example questions:

1. I wonder what type of music she likes.
2. I wonder what her life goals are.
3. I see she is working out in the gym. being healthy must be important to her.
4. If she was a good friend of mine would I want her doing porn or would I want her to get out of it.
5. I wonder if she is close to her family.

These are just some examples to humanize someone and try to connect in your mind. There are endless ways to do this in your mind. Practicing is key.

I wrote about this before but I had some more thoughts on it. I can’t tell you how many times my looking at porn started with looking at pictures of women who were either fully clothed or in a bikini or lingerie. Almost without fail the next step would be looking at naked women or watching sex scenes. Why is that? Well through some self awareness I discovered I had a different mindset when I would purposely seek out pictures of non-nude women. You see there is a difference between seeing beautiful women throughout the day in normal life settings and seeking women out to lust about them. There is a completely different mindset when we seek out women to lust for them as opposed to seeing a beautiful woman, appreciating her beauty in a healthy way, and moving on with your daily life. Men and women were designed to have sexual urges and use them in healthy ways that lead to finding someone attractive and getting into a committed relationship with the opposite sex. There is long term satisfaction in that scenario but lust is never satisfied. So when we seek out pictures of even non-nude women we are naturally starting a cycle of lust that will most likely end in looking at porn as the appetite of lust demands more and more exciting material.

We’ve all felt stuck in a rut and I’m not exception. There have been times when I really wanted to change something in my life but I really felt stuck and lacked any good ideas to get started. For example, I wanted to stop viewing porn but I felt like I could not even get one day of sobriety behind me. I was surrounded with internet, tvs, and a phone with internet. I just felt like the odds were against me and I didn’t have a fighting chance.

The thing about viewing porn is it takes time away from it to have enough strength to face even normal temptations again without falling. What I mean is if you just viewed porn and want to start a new goal to not look at it then it may take a day or two to recover and have enough strength to face normal temptations like being in front of a computer or seeing a sexy advertisement on tv. However, because most of us are surrounded by so much media it can seem like we’re in a miserable cycle of never really being able to start recovery or not getting more than a day or two into it. I have felt this way and here’s what I came up with.

Try a media fast. My idea was to do my best to go without viewing any media for a week. The hope was that this would give me enough time to gain some strength to have some serious momentum for abstaining from porn. So I wouldn’t watch any tv, even if I was at the gym or anywhere. I wouldn’t use the internet at all. I would only use my phone to talk to a hand full of people I needed to stay in touch with. Some of us work with computers for a living so taking a vacation might be necessary. However, the result of this media fast is you give yourself a fighting chance to break the porn viewing habit. By the end of the week a lot of confidence is restored and you believe you can do it for an even longer period of time. Couple this with using the Candeo method and you have a winning combination.

I will speak from personal experience here. I found that it was difficult to overcome porn addiction while having a problem with alcohol at the same time. It actually took me years to realize this because I was convinced they were separate and unrelated. However, I learned that they were related and making the recovery process more difficult than had I only struggled with one of them. So I gave this some serious thought and here is what I came up with.

1. Every time I would drink my inhibitions and judgment were lowered and I would more easily justify looking at porn instead of thinking more logically and staying strong.

2. Drinking also caused my neurotransmitter levels to be low. I actually got tested to see what my levels were and they were way low. So this in turn made me not only want to drink but look at porn to get a rush of dopamine and other neurotransmitters to feel normal or excited. Of course with proper diet, exercise, and allowing yourself to go through the withdrawal period, these neurotransmitter levels can return back to normal making it easier to abstain from porn.

3. Because I had developed a weakness for alcohol, anytime I would look at porn and then feel down afterward I would turn to alcohol to temporarily feel numb and forget about how bad the porn viewing made me feel. Of course this only made both problems worse.

I believe this effect could apply to any drug of choice. Its certainly not going to help you to overcome porn by turning to another substance.

This post, in a way relates to my prior post in which I discussed weaning yourself off of porn. I said that from experience it is better to go cold turkey than to try weaning yourself off because its too easy to justify looking at more explicit material when you start looking at less explicit images or videos. What I want to discuss here is how long it can take to completely overcome porn addiction compared to other addictions.

I had a problem with alcohol at one point and decided to quit. At first it was hard but after a month of sobriety I found it very easy to abstain. In fact it was so easy that I could literally stare at alcohol in the grocery store and not be tempted to buy it. However, porn seemed a lot more difficult to overcome. A big part of this is because viewing porn is a more intense chemical rush than drinking alcohol. So the withdrawal period can be a lot longer. Not only that but it is easy to make sure there is no alcohol around but it is difficult to get rid of years of porn images in your head that you can refer to anytime.

What I found is that overcoming porn, in many cases, is a lot more gradual. This means that if you’re doing what you need to be doing to overcome the addiction and persevering every time you slip up then the slip ups should become fewer and fewer overtime. Don’t mistake this for weaning yourself off which implies just lessening the level of explicitness of the material overtime, which I do not recommend. What I’m saying is that you quit cold turkey every time you slip and the slips will become fewer and further apart until you aren’t slipping anymore. The key to this method is having a great attitude and persevering no matter what. It is easy to get discouraged and binge but force yourself to start again after the slip up.

The short answer is yes but it is a risky approach. Yes you can look at less porn, as far as quantity, over time. Also you can look as less graphic things over time. The problem comes when try to decide what the completely free of porn point is. Not only that but it is easy to justify to oneself that looking at a little every now and then and non-graphic pictures is not that bad. However, it always leads to a binge where you look at it for hours and get into the more graphic pictures and videos. So I’m not saying that weaning doesn’t work however it can be more difficult this way.

Going cold turkey is the hardest approach in the beginning but probably has a better success rate as you force yourself to go through the withdrawal symptoms that will inevitably come as you resist the urge to have a chemical rush from porn viewing. I don’t have scientific data to support that this approach is proven to work better, only personal experience and experience watching friends do the same.

One of the reasons I used to enjoy viewing porn was because I believed the actors and actresses were really enjoying themselves and the lifestyle that comes with working in porn. It turns out I was very wrong and the truth changed the way I look at porn forever. I was really living in a false fantasy world when I viewed porn with my old perspective. Here is what I found out.

Most porn actors would rather be doing another occupation if they could find another one that made them the same amount of money. Its similar to prostitution and stripping. They grow accustom to making a certain amount of money and then get stuck. Most say themselves “I’m only going to do this for a little bit to pay off some bills and buy some nice things”. However, they typically get stuck in it a lot longer than they meant to.

Many porn actors have serious regrets when they get older. They mature more in their older age and wish they never participated in porn movies. They certainly don’t want family or friends to associate them with that industry for the rest of their lives. They use a stage name while their involved in porn in hopes of no one ever knowing they did it when they move on from it.

Many porn actors are depressed because of their porn involvement. So they turn to drugs, alcohol, and other harmful things to cope. The average death age of pornstars is much lower than the general population because of suicide, STD’s, and a risky lifestyle.

They get paid per scene. Some will do hundreds of scenes in their career. That means having sex with hundreds of different partners. In the mean time most of them would like to fall in love with someone and be in a monogamous relationship.

Some porn stars will turn to prostitution to supplement their income between movies since it does not seem so different than what they already do in front of a camera.

These are just some of the things I learned.

I used to think I was addicted to porn because I just had a crazy sex drive or loved looking at women. That was until I started to quit viewing it and experienced withdrawal symptoms. So I looked into the brain chemistry behind being hooked on porn and I was surprised at what I found. It turns out there are similar things happening in the brain when someone is doing drugs. Basically there are unhealthy spikes in certain neurotransmitters, mainly dopamine, that give you a sense of excitement and euphoria when you’re viewing porn. These chemicals serve a healthy purpose when used correctly. In fact, during healthy sex, there are normal releases of these neurotransmitters. This is how we are designed but like anything it can be misused. I found out that viewing porn releases more of these chemicals for a longer period of time especially as you jump from new picture to new picture and video to video keeping the chemical rush high.

After awhile your brain will start to decrease the number of receptors to try and keep dopamine consumption at healthy levels. So when you decided to stop looking at porn you must go through a withdrawal period just like drug addicts. This withdrawal period is the time it takes your brain to adjust the neurotransmitters and receptors back to normal. During this time everything will seem dull and boring as if nothing could excite you but porn. However, over time, after the withdrawal phase, you start to enjoy the wholesome things in life again, such as friends, family, and hobbies.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve told myself I can just look at pictures of girls that have clothes on instead of porn and I eventually end up looking at porn anyway. I mean I would rationalize that looking at girls in bikinis or skimpily dressed celebrities was not as bad then that would eventually lead to viewing full blown porn. We’ve all went to Google images and typed in something innocent just to see if anything bad would pop up. It always, eventually, leads to porn. Maybe it leads to porn within minutes, maybe it takes a week before you look at it. The point is you’ve started yourself down the rationalization road and it just gets easier to rationalize the next thing.

I have often wondered why I couldn’t just look at pictures of sexy women with clothes on and just keep it at that. I finally came to the conclusion that of course I am supposed to find women attractive but it is my intentions that matter in the end. For example, I go to the gym to workout and I see beautiful women all the time. Its perfectly normal for me to see them, acknowledge them, and find them beautiful. This is healthy. However, it is a totally different mindset to go to the gym purely to check out women. And so it is with looking at images on the internet. If I’m innocently surfing around and come across an ad with a sexy woman in it then it is fine for me to find her attractive and move on. However, when I have the mindset that I want to go look at women to lust and stare at their body parts of course it is going to lead to something worse.

So there is the healthy way to look at women and there is the lustful way that will eventually lead to porn. There is very rarely a healthy reason to go out hunting for pics of women on the internet.