Hello, fellow brother in arms against the demon that is adult content.
In this post I’ll explain how I dealt with my addiction. First a bit of background: from the age of 11 I started watching adult content and became severely addicted, I’m talking from a minimum of 2x a day to sometimes 7x a day.
Needless to say, I was in a deep pit in my life so I decided to take action for once. If you want, you can read about my journey so far on my profile. Summary: since about march 2023 not doing the deed and only minor peeks (maybe about 6 times opening the site, not watching videos) to see how my reaction to adult content had changed. But how have I gotten this far? In short: after I relapsed after my first try I made my own method based on an elementary understanding of neuroscience and how dopamine and brain connections work (I recommend Andrew Huberman’s videos about this).
Now the part which you are reading this for: my actual method.
Part 1: the start
Pick the most random day where you’re certain that nothing of importance will be happening. A day like any other. This will be your starting point from now on. From this very day forward, you cannot watch any content even remotely concerning your addiction, not even motivational content.
Why?
The goal of this method is to essentially force your brain into forgetting about your addiction (in scientific terms: weakening the connection in your brain that rewards adult content use with dopamine). This is why you start on a random day, so that you forget your starting date so you physically cannot count a streak. If you pick a day of importance, say your birthday or new year, you will remind yourself every day that you are an addict. This is why counting a streak is detrimental.
There is also less obvious content that reminds you this, like videos about how to beat your addiction. Don’t worry though, you can resume watching positive content once you have completely forgotten your starting date, which should roughly be 2 to 3 weeks into the method.
Part 2: how to deal with urges
Depending on how bad your addiction was, the number and intensity of urges will vary. For me they were frequent and intense. Once you get an urge, immediately distract yourself: preferably go to a different room and do anything that you absolutely know will distract you long enough for that urge to pass. Ideally this activity will be something productive like going to the gym, running, reading or studying. Though it can also be something different like playing a videogame or listening to music for an hour if you know that this will distract you for long enough.
Why?
Again, the method is based on forgetting about your addiction. If you’re busy doing something else, you’ll forget about your addiction.
Part 3: my results so far and what you can expect
Right now, I have been on retention since march, so about 5 months in. The first day was pretty tough, but days 2 and 3 are absolutely the hardest. From that point forward, it will start becoming easier and easier to uphold the plan. You will start to notice a rapid decline in both number and intensity of urges. About two weeks in I felt incredibly energized to just do stuff, which helped me in the gym. There was a period of stagnation in my second month though, where I didn’t feel that incredible energy anymore. This is another crucial moment where you have to keep pushing and stay busy. Over this period of time, I started viewing women more like people than pleasure objects. It sounds cliché but it’s true, I was able to hold a normal conversation for once without getting too nervous. I still get urges but I can easily ignore them with basically no effort. The biggest change is that I no longer feel depressed, which is a common side effect of being an adult content addict.
Final part: tips and tricks
A few tricks I used along the way:
- When you get an urge or think about your addiction, physically tell yourself: ‘I’m not that person’. Scream it if you need to.
- Get a hobby where you are physically active so that you can dump all your excess energy and rage, for me that was the gym, but right now I’m also starting to run to improve my cardio.
- If you relapse, don’t beat yourself up because you ‘failed’. You didn’t ‘fail’. You tried and will keep trying. Big difference.
- Especially in the beginning, notice what triggers your urges and remove them to the best of your ability: obvious ones are thumbnails designed to attract views, but it can also be more subtle things like boredom (this was a big one for me).
- Read David Goggins’ book Can’t Hurt Me if you can. The tools described in the book such as the ‘cookie jar’ may help you. It also gives you a dose of relativism and show you what’s possible if you conquer your mind.
- Don’t do what I did and peek at sites, even if it is to ‘see how your reaction to adult content has changed’. It’s not worth the risk. Luckily for me it didn’t lead to relapse. I am very aware that I might come off as a hypocrite because I broke my own method since I gave 99% instead of 100%.
I’ve still got a long way to go, but that concludes my method and what I have learned so far, hope this helps. I’ll gladly respond to any questions.
Never give up brother, you’ll make it, I promise you that.