You are not an addict.

Hello brothers and sisters. After toiling in the mud for five years - I have found freedom from porn and the label of addict.

It's pretty simple.

I'm 28, and I had been trying to stop since I was 24. So four years of off-and-on. I went to 12 step fellowships, and carried the identity for such a long time. I paused my career, and turned away from every romantic and professional opportunity because I wanted to be fixed before I could do those things.

For me, reading the Freedom Model for the second time, and truly running my experiences through it allowed for a level of insight that has truly freed me from the life I used to live.

I pulled from what I had read in the freedom model, and my own life experiences, and ran it all through Google Gemini, which would respond with further questions and gave me a safe space to interrogate everything. And it worked.

I don't struggle with urges anymore, I don't count days or live in fear of 'relapses'. The monkey on my back has gone, and I am truly free to live life on my terms.

This is what helped me break free.

• Self Image

My self image was shot to pieces. As an 'addict', I believed I was broken, rotten, a waster. I thought so low of myself, that I stayed in toxic situations with people who were overtly rude and horrible, but I believed that I deserved it. And the most toxic situation that I put up with was with my porn habit. I was living in fear, thinking it was only a matter of time before the next relapse. Hiding away from the world because I thought I was a monster. I projected this unto other people as well, and ran for the hills when girls would show interest, or when new people in my life wanted to explore friendship.

• Demystifying recovery

The 12 steps were good for self auditing, and gave me a lot of insight into my behaviour in social settings. It helped me to take accountability for some of these situations and let go of a lot of resentment that I'd carried around for ages. And I'm grateful for that. But it did not help me get 'sober', not from porn. I was waiting around for my higher power to come and free me, and that never happened. I realised I would have to do the work myself. 12 step recovery posits that freedom comes from a daily practice of spiritual actions. I was doing those actions and found that I still watched porn. I became disenfranchised at the idea that I had to go 100% every day if I were to make it. I knew I didn't have 100% to give every day, and this was not a life that I was happy to live. All of this was distracting me from the real work, and that is to look inside at this preference and ask WHY would you want to do it.

• It's a choice

In recovery, you learn that it isn't a choice. That you are compelled by this 'disease'. But, I never quite believed that. Even doing the 12 steps, which I have completed, I was not only still watching porn - but it felt like a choice. I still chose to get on my laptop, or my phone, head up to my room and lie on the bed. I still chose to open up that first tab, thinking that I was intoxicated by lust. After watching Porn after completing the 12 steps, I knew that it wasn't working, and that I had to address the choice. This isn't to shame ourselves that we chose so we must be immoral. I did the best with the resources and knowledge I had at the time, but we were living under the illusion of P addiction, so we should be patient with ourselves. I had agency, even when I believed that I didn't.

• Prop and Misattribution, brain vs mind (Shatter the Illusion)

This is an important cornerstone to all of this work to realise. Because, aside from the physical impacts of porn, the neurological impact and the sensation of orgasm, everything else is misattributed. I thought porn was taking away my pain. IT WASN'T. That's the power that I endowed it with. Even the sexualisation of these women was something my mind was partaking in. I ran an experiment where I watched a bit of porn, but mindfully, letting go of all the lustful thoughts that I had previously endowed it with, and the experience was totally different. Suddenly I was just looking at a pretty vacuous and fake act. Without me throwing the sexual stuff on to it, I realised that I had always given it that power. Yes it has a neurological impact on the brain, but that never takes away the power of choice we have. The brain is one thing, but we are governed by our mind, which is a separate consciousness entirely. Without the power that I was granting it, they were just videos that I could choose to watch or not. Pornography is an illusion. It's just pixels on a screen that we endow with power and magical abilities that it simply cannot have. It doesn't have sentience, nor do drugs or alcohol. The power is in our hands.

• Reasons why I watched, fetishes & excuses

This is really when things started to fall into place for me. I used Google Gemini to run these thought experiments and explorations into why I would choose to watch pornography. And I discovered a hell of a lot. Because porn was never using me, I was using it. SO what was I using it for? Well, for many reasons. Firstly, an excuse. I used it as the ultimate get out of jail free card, whenever I wanted to skip out on work, or commitments that I had promised, I would watch pornography and excuse myself from these things. Sometimes I wouldn't even cancel, I would just watch it all the way through the day, and tell myself that my 'disease' was responsible. And it wasn't.

When I was younger, I was physically, emotionally and sexually abused. All of my fetishes, from feet, to BDSM, to wrestling were a reflection of that abuse. In IFS therapy, there's an idea that a part of us will enact our abuses when we grow up in order to feel safe from them. And porn was my avenue for that. Watching these videos was a way for me to relive these traumas, but in the safety of my room, behind the monitor. I kept myself trapped in these traumas by watching porn that reflected them. But the porn didn't do that for me - I did it. I kept myself traumatised. My trauma wasn't leading me to it - that's a huge distinction which really liberated me. Again, I'm not trying to shame myself here either. I never chose to be traumatised in the ways that I was. But I have to take responsibility for myself now. And a big part of that is taking responsibility for how I'm contributing to it now. I don't want to keep myself traumatised anymore. I'm 28 and have wasted enough time living under this illusion as it is. I want to reclaim my sovereignty, and take life back into my hands.

No more waiting for a saviour to free me. No more running away from a demon, or trying to get a monkey off of my back. No more 12 step religious dogma.

I spent years believing I was broken. I outsourced my agency to a disease model. I organised my life around fixing myself, halting everything from starting until I eventually did. But then, I realised I wasn't waiting to be liberated from something—I had been participating in a story about myself that I no longer believed. Now I get to build a life.

Get on the freedom model, run it with your own experiences through Google Gemini. Be honest with yourself, compassionate and stern. And watch as the web of illusion untangles itself.

Freedom doesn't feel like entering a mythical, dramatic paradise; it simply feels normal, quiet, and grounded. And now, the real task of building a life I can be proud of starts. And it's bloody lovely lads and ladies.