I've been practicing something new the last few days. I realized that I have been using my walks around school to look at women. There are lots all around, and I've been using my single status as an excuse to look. But I'm not looking because I'm actually going to ask any of them out or anything. They're just strangers on the street. I'm just looking to look.So, in the last few days, I've been saying to myself, "It doesn't matter," sometimes out loud, when I feel my eyes wandering to a woman that I'm walking by. Because, you know, it doesn't matter. Even if she's the most attractive person in the world, it doesn't matter because it's not a situation where I'd talk to her. It's not like I'd run into her again. It's not like I'm looking at her for any reason other than my porn addiction. So I just tell myself it doesn't matter. I don't have to look. It's been helpful for me. I'm not missing out if I don't look. It really doesn't matter. Telling myself that a few times every day has helped me realize how much my porn-addicted eyes were active even during the day and even on days when I thought I was staying away from porn-related behaviors. I've spent a lot less time this week staring pointlessly at the women who walk past me every day, and I think that's a good step forward.
I identify with it because in recent months/years I have difficulties finding happiness and other types of pleasure in my day to day. This frustrating feeling makes increase the urges to practices that offer immediate pleasure like porn or bad food. For sure if I was in a better emocional moment it would be a lot easier to deal with this addiction.
There's always hope to revert back even if you don't remember the time where it wasn't like that. Your brain remember it and even if it doesn't the brain is plastic, so he can learn. Remove something like PMO and he'll reorganize himself to feel pleasure in something else after trowing your mood all over the place, but whatever...You just have to make sure it is something healthy, otherwise you're not really a "better self" than when you were on PMO. That's why I decided to stop everything that could more easely cause an addiction, like internet, social media, video games, etc...
It's not realistic, or even really healthy, I think, to say that we'll flip a switch and never look at porn again. That's not how it works. But we can decide to try a little more each day. Maybe we stop looking at certain genres. Then we quit looking nudity. Then we quit using the internet for sexual stimulation at all.
Sadly, from everything I've read about addiction that's not how it works! Just switching from porn to alchool for the exemple.You won't tell a heavy drinker to progressively lower his alcool intake. You ask him to control his intake, but he's where he's at precisely because he have almost no control over it! He has to cut it out completely in order to recover otherwise the temptation will be to strong to resist.After that he can't go back to it ever, because the pathway of that addiction will always be there! The brain doesn't delete it, it just shrink it to the extreme degres when you don't use it for a long enough period of time. So if he drink even one drink, then he have a really high risk of going back into the pit, because that will fire the old pathway. It will start with a drink and, eventually, "ah I'll just take another one"... imagine what happen next.That the thing with addiction. You can't just lower the dosage otherwise you'll never get out of it. That's why it's called an addiction. Because always remember that when you "beat" an addiction it's always next door even years or decades after ready to creep back in. That's why even out of it you have to be careful. Not paranoid just careful!Just telling you my understand of everything I've read about addiction!I wish you a great day my friend!
Yes @changemylife I've read you journal. Additionally, I know a couple of previously alcoholic and they all had to stop on the spot on.That's why I want to warn him. I could just watch a "softer" video one day, but I know that a couple of days later I would end up binging in the extreme I was when I decided that it's too fucked up to continue like that...
Quote from: Rebooter2019 on February 08, 2019, 01:16:53 PMYes @changemylife I've read you journal. Additionally, I know a couple of previously alcoholic and they all had to stop on the spot on.That's why I want to warn him. I could just watch a "softer" video one day, but I know that a couple of days later I would end up binging in the extreme I was when I decided that it's too fucked up to continue like that...Yeah, you go back to how you used your drug of choice while fooling yourself that you're reducing to 0.
Yep! So I just stop everything and since then I had more progress in 2 month than the 2 previous years
Sadly, from everything I've read about addiction that's not how it works! Just switching from porn to alchool for the exemple.That the thing with addiction. You can't just lower the dosage otherwise you'll never get out of it. That's why it's called an addiction. Because always remember that when you "beat" an addiction it's always next door even years or decades after ready to creep back in. That's why even out of it you have to be careful. Not paranoid just careful!Just telling you my understand of everything I've read about addiction!I wish you a great day my friend!