Your Brain on Porn (21 page)

aaaand you're done. Most likely the orgasm won't be very intense. You will feel a sense of
relief more than anything else. ‘Now I can go back to my work’, you will say. ‘That wasn't so

bad. I don't feel any shame. There's really no point denying yourself to such an extreme’.

When you sit down to work, it will be almost as if nothing happened. In about an hour, you

will start feeling the energy drop, the onset of a mental fog. This will develop into anxiety.

The anxiety is not because of the fapping. It's your natural response to the energy drop.

Nothing bad happened to you. No one told you off. You didn't have any bad thoughts.

Everything was ok until an hour ago. Now, you're feeling slightly unwell. You can't
concentrate so well. You wish you didn't have to get any work done. You just feel like sitting
back and watching TV.

By the end of the day you will have not completed your tasks for the day. Your defence
mechanisms for procrastination will kick in. Your mental state is now completely at the mercy

of external factors. How much work can you accomplish the next day? Will you run into any

roadblocks? Depression kicks in. Your mind does not want to engage with anything in case it

makes things worse. You don't want to meet people. Your brain is in shutdown mode. You
decide not to give in again.

Next, make a list of what you will do instead of use porn when The Urge arises. Some people prepare by learning the ‘Red X’ technique:

I totally stopped fantasizing about porn about four weeks ago. Whenever a porn flashback

enters my mind I visualise a big red X over it and imagine a loud ambulance siren. If the porn
image is insistent, I visualise exploding it in my head. The key is to do it immediately. The
technique becomes more automatic with time.

If you don't know what else to do you can always wait and do nothing. Think to yourself, ‘Here are cravings. They came out of nowhere and they have no real power over me. I am not

my thoughts; I did not summon them; I do not want them; and I do not have to act on them.’

Typically, the thought will vanish without a trace (for a time).

The fact is that all urges die down eventually, usually within quarter of an hour. And if you

can get through The Bad Urge you can do anything, as this guy points out:

Once you learn that you are bigger than your urge and it always passes by, you'll be well

on your way to ridding yourself of porn use. In my previous attempts, I would always give in

to the one bad urge. Once I finally fought it I realized that I could fight any bad urge that
comes. In that very moment when you feel you're weakest, when you feel like the urge is gonna

defeat you, that's the moment in which you need to stay strong. On the other side of that urge
is your breakthrough. When you beat that one bad urge, you realize you can beat them all. The

key is to live one day at a time and stay diligent.

Here are other tips that work for some people:

Don't discuss the situation with your brain. Your brain will try to rationalize porn use
because it desperately wants it. The key here is not to argue with your own brain, but instead
to simply acknowledge that you're having the thought, or to answer with one word: ‘No’.

*

I just kinda hung my junk over in the sink and ladled cold water over it with my hands. It

definitely kills the cravings. Also helps with blue balls.

*

I try to focus on drawing the sexual energy upward, into my chest and upper body to ease

the pressure in my pants. It makes me feel really powerful. It relieves the need to masturbate,
and kind of gives me this super ‘ready for action’ feeling. Like I could tear down a house if I
needed to, or throw a girl around and have my way with her, in a consensual, playful way of

course. I like it.

*

Do you keep giving yourself an excuse like ‘I will do it one last time’ or ‘Today is the last

time’? Change it to ‘Just today I am not doing it’.

*

You will be able to go long periods of time without porn when watching porn is no longer

an option in your life. Live as if porn didn't exist. Completely forget about it. Don't spend
your day fighting urges. Don't ‘try hard’. Be OK with the idea that you will never watch porn

ever again in your life.

When The Urge shows up, and you feel like you have no control, turn off your device and think things through before acting on it. Even if you act on it afterward, you will do so consciously and that is the first step to changing behaviour.

Ultimately, the most important thing you can ever do is to never quit. I don't care if you

reset every other day for a whole month or two. Even if that's the best you can do, you're now
using porn half as often as you did. The most inspiring story I ever saw was of a guy who had

a 15-day streak...after 3 whole years of trying. As long as you keep coming back, because you

know how important it is for your own good, you cannot fail. It is only a matter of time until
you reset your neural pathways and break free.

Common Questions

How long should I reboot?

Many websites that link to www.yourbrainonporn.com say it prescribes 60 or 90 days, or 8

weeks,
etc.
In fact, YBOP doesn't suggest any set amount of days, as the time is completely dependent on the severity of your porn-related problems, how your brain responds, and your goals
.
Time frames found in rebooting accounts on YBOP are all over the place because brains are different, and some men have stubborn porn-induced ED or DE.

Think of a reboot as discovering what is really you and what was porn-related, whether it be

sexual dysfunctions, social anxiety, raging sex drive, ADD, depression, or whatever. Once you

have a clear understanding of how you were affected by porn, you can steer your own ship.

Can I have sex during my reboot?

It's up to you. Some people find a temporary time-out from all sexual stimulation gives the

brain a much needed rest and speeds recovery. On the other hand, daily affectionate touch is always beneficial, with or without sex. If you feel like the chaser effect is knocking you off balance after sex, you might try gentle lovemaking without the goal of orgasm for a while. It gives you the benefits of intimacy while still allowing your brain to rest from intense sexual stimulation. However, if a reboot is taking a long time, some rebooters report that sex with a partner helps return their libido to normal.

If you think you are experiencing porn-induced ED, you may see better results if you don't force any sexual performance until you feel like your erections are arising spontaneously in the

presence of your partner.

Should I reduce masturbation?

Not necessarily. You can try cutting out porn, porn fantasy and porn substitutes first. For some people that is enough to allow a return to balance. Others find that masturbation is a powerful trigger for activating porn pathways, so they do better if they give it a rest for a while.

Whenever I told myself I would only masturbate and never go back to porn, it wasn’t long

before masturbation became kind of boring to me. I would fantasize about real-life memories

in the beginning, but my brain would quickly jump to memories from porn scenes and
unrealistic fantasies. From there it would lead to erotic fiction, to amateur images, and then
straight back to the hardcore porn videos.

On the other hand, when porn-induced ED is present, the
majority
of men find that they need to drastically reduce masturbation and orgasm (temporarily). When you have a pathology, you usually need to do more than just eliminate the cause – in this case porn use. For example, you

don't generally break a leg by putting weight on it. However, once it's broken you have to cast it, use crutches and eliminate walking while you heal. Same goes for porn-induced ED. You don't

have to wear a cast, but you need to give your brain time to heal, free of intense sexual stimulation.

Note: You don't want to force yourself to masturbate using fantasy or other aids if it isn't yet

happening spontaneously.

How do I know when I'm back to normal?

Obviously, there's no simple answer to this question as goals differ for each person.

Common goals include: return of healthy erections, normalizing libido, diminishing of porn-induced fetishes, reversal of porn-induced sexual tastes, ease in managing cravings, and so forth.

It's not uncommon for younger men to experience continued improvements long after the end of

their rebooting phase.

These are some encouraging signs:

- You feel like flirting with potential mates, who look a lot more attractive.

- You are getting morning wood (or ‘semis’) frequently.

- You can orgasm without an intense chaser effect.

- Intercourse with a partner feels fantastic (Note: You may have a bit of premature ejaculation or delayed ejaculation early on. Practice makes perfect.)

- Your libido changes:

My libido went missing on and off for 6 months. Yet when it returned, it was a more
wholesome libido. The desire for porn perving and sexually staring at woman disappeared
completely.

Understandably, the men who reboot to reverse porn-induced ED tend to use their erectile health as a barometer.

How do I know that I don't just have a high libido?

Give up porn and porn fantasy and see what your libido is like a few weeks later. It has been

surprising to witness that most rebooters have an easier time eliminating masturbation
than they
do porn
. For many guys, masturbation is simply not that interesting without porn, and they are amazed to discover that porn, not high libido, was driving their constant search for relief.

Certainly, if you cannot masturbate without internet porn, or have a partially erect penis when you do, you are not horny or in need of ‘release’. You are being driven by cravings. Your

brain is seeking a fix: the relief of a temporary dopamine high.

How can I get excited by real partners? (ED)

Some young people started on internet porn early and wired themselves to screens and kink

so thoroughly during adolescence that when they finally connect with a real partner they don't respond sexually. It can take months of no porn, porn fantasy or porn substitutes before their brains begin ‘looking around’ for other sexual stimuli and ‘rewiring’ to real people.

Obviously, it helps to spend time around real potential partners and limit all sexual fantasy to

real people and realistic sexual scenarios. This young guy shared his strategy for ‘rewiring’:

I'm trying to put down a new pathway. I really want my brain to realize that the only way I

get any sexual pleasure is through real women. If I don't actually have a sexual encounter
with a real woman, I have to go to bed frustrated, and that's all there is to it. I don't allow
myself to make up scenarios about women, but I do allow myself to reflect visually on women

I have seen. Now, if I remember a woman's smile, I know that it's someone I met in real life. I
have been going to bars and checking out/talking to women. Hopefully not in a creepy way. I

get a good memory full of plenty of nice girls. Then I come home and just go to bed and try to
sleep.

Concluding Reflections

Nothing ever becomes real 'til it is experienced.
John Keats

If you suspect your porn use might be adversely affecting you, by all means make a simple experiment: Give it up for a time and see what you notice for yourself. There's no need to wait until experts reach a consensus. Quitting porn is not like engaging in an untested medical procedure or ingesting a risky pharmaceutical – situations where definitive research is not only possible but necessary.

Quitting internet porn is the equivalent of removing refined sugar or trans-fats from your diet. It is simply the elimination of a form of entertainment that no one had until recently, and everyone got along without. As one porn user said,

Here is the schema:

1.

Exciting, but bad-in-long-term behaviour is introduced for money.

2.

People get hooked.

3.

Precise, scientifically backed-up research takes decades to kick-in.

4.

Hooked people start to get educated.

5.

They start behaviour-elimination.