My thoughts on web filters, other techniques and how to reduce the overbearing weight/ guilt of porn addiction (long post)

Hi all, just wanted to give a few tips and thoughts that I've learnt along the way to cutting out porn, hopefully some of you will find this useful!

 

Web filters:

 

Now this may be different for some people, but I don't find web filters useful at all. I find in the same way a drug addict will do anything to get a hit, porn addicts quickly realise it's very easy to de-activate or uninstall their filters if needs be.

 

However, those who browse reddit a lot will hugely benefit from Reddit Enhancement Suite or similar. If you're like me and browse r/all but don't want to see 100s of highly upvoted porn subreddits crop up, just add them to the filter list as you see them. I've found this completely stopped me from the casual aspect of looking at porn, as those subreddits are just out of my mind now. It's also useful as so many subreddits use the NSFW tag as a spoiler alert, which is a pain when you don't mind seeing the spoilers and so don't want to tune out all NSFW posts.

 

Finding another addiction / filling your idle time on the internet:

 

Porn addiction to many people is the easiest and simplest form of addiction that an addictive person can have, it becomes less about the act itself and more about committing several hours to finding the perfect video etc. often due sheer boredom more than anything else.

 

A way around this can be to find something else that you can form an addiction for, this can be almost anything so long as it's not more detrimental to your life than porn. Note though, for the best results you really need to get almost obsessed with what you're interested in. I've been virtually porn free since I started taking working out seriously, I've found that I spend all of my idle time on the internet looking up technique videos and articles, diet and other fitness related materials, instead of being bored enough to check out porn.

 

Hell for a while I even got into horse racing gambling (it's quite a big thing in the UK), not enough to impact my life in anyway, just almost ridiculous £1 accumulator bets spread across many horses throughout the day. This way I was keen on checking progress on the horses instead of looking at anything else.

 

No Fap:

 

While some people may benefit from going completely cold turkey on fapping too, I think this is detrimental to the real factor, which is porn addiction. As others mention at most it may benefit you going a week or two without fapping, purely so you can then train yourself in the short term to fap without porn, or crucially, thinking about porn.

 

Essentially you want to get to the point where you can masturbate by touch alone, when you organically feel horny (not frustrated!), and with a clear mind (thinking about real life situations or partners is fine).

 

Masturbation isn't the enemy, in fact it's a healthy activity as a general rule, and it can be used to sideline porn itself if done correctly.

 

Deleting your porn collection:

 

There were two main turning points for me within my recovery, firstly when I was able to confess to my girlfriend (who already clearly knew!) about my addiction, and secondly when I was able to delete my porn collection. This was the hardest thing to do as I'd spent money on some of it, but it was a necessary step. If there's anything you can do to make yourself realise you're in this for the long haul, it's deleting your stash.

 

Failure:

 

Just a quick word on failure, which ties in with guilt below. It doesn't matter if you've lasted a day or a month and you look at porn again, don't make a big deal out of it. Instead, be pleased with how long you lasted, and vow to last longer next time. Turning the failure into a positive is a key step in reducing the guilt behind porn, and therefore is a crucial step in side lining it's influence upon you.

 

Reducing the weight/guilt behind porn addiction:

 

There are two huge issues with how people deal with porn addiction, first being the weight they give to it. I've understood what it means to have an overbearing weight behind the addiction, how it invades every aspect of your life, both physically and mentally. It affected my relationships, my confidence and made me paranoid about others finding out about it, like a demon constantly there in my life.

 

An important step in overcoming the addiction is to try and sideline all of this. Realise that yes you're addicted, but the guilt and anguish behind it is a negative factor, and try to forget or ignore it, just don't give any thought to it. Now this is easier said than done and I guess falls under an 'advanced technique' i.e. after you've already conquered a small period without porn, but in my opinion it's the final step toward fully recovering. After you're able to go a period without porn, stop visiting this subreddit, stop defining yourself by your addiction, and stop giving a single thought to any of it, just live your life, but without porn as a part of it.

 

Sorry for the almighty long post! I hope some people found it useful at least, feel free to message me if you want.

 

TL;DR: Try to reduce the guilt and weight porn addiction lays upon you, work toward side lining it so it's no longer a defining aspect of your personality. Find another addiction you can obsess over instead. Don't beat yourself up over failures, instead be proud of the progress you've made and vow to do better next time. If applicable, delete your porn collection and install RES to filter out NSFW subreddits.