I Am Addicted

Breaking a habit such as masturbation or porn addiction isn’t easy. The reason is to give you an idea about the amount of effort you will have to make.
Fortunately, the methods we are going to discuss are very powerful but they will only work if you apply them. And to apply those methods you will have to have a very serious intention to break that habit.

Photo by Josh Nuttall on Unsplash

After all, if you aren’t sure whether you should quit that habit or not then it would become very hard to convince yourself to do all of the tough things described in this newsletter.
If on the other hand, you are 100% sure that you want to break that habit for good then you will have the needed energy to apply the tips in this newsletter and as a result, it will work for you.
Bad habits result from so many factors but in many cases, a certain negative belief that is deeply buried inside the mind can be the main reason you are constantly failing to break a certain habit. For your mind to get motivated to help you stop a certain habit both your conscious and your subconscious mind need to be convinced that this habit should be broken.
But what if there was some kind of a negative belief in the subconscious mind that makes it work against you instead of working with you?

If for example you wanted to wake up very early on a certain day but a certain belief in your subconscious mind states that you are a night owl then in such a case waking up on time might not be possible. So you might be wondering what does this have to do with Masturbation or Porn addiction?

There are some false beliefs that almost every person in the world has that makes getting over porn addiction almost impossible. When you recognize those beliefs and realize that they are anything but true then getting over such a bad habit will become 100% possible.
Now let’s examine those false beliefs together.

1st Myth: Masturbation releases sexual frustration
Yes, that’s right. Masturbation releases sexual frustration for a few minutes!
So many people believe that when they masturbate their sexual desire will weaken and they won’t be interested in watching porn or having sex but this only happens for a very limited amount of time which differs from one person to another.

In all cases, a person will have his sexual desire fully restored within a short period that ranges from half an hour up to a few days depending on many factors.
In other words, you are not releasing sexual frustration by masturbation but you are delaying the problem a few more hours if not a few more minutes
Some so many people masturbate more than once a day and had masturbation been a way to release their sexual frustration those people would have only done it once every few days or even weeks.

2nd Myth: My body needs to get rid of extra semen
This is another very popular myth. So many people mistakenly think that unless they release their semen through masturbation then health problems might happen or sexual frustration might occur. The body knows exactly when this needs to be done and this is why people get wet dreams. People get wet dreams because the mind finds that it’s the proper time for semen to be released and also for the maintenance of the reproductive organs.

Your body already comes with a protection mechanism that keeps your reproductive organs working properly even when you don’t masturbate or have sex. In short, your body will do for you what you want to do intentionally, you just have to give it back control. People who masturbate regularly usually don’t get wet dreams as they don’t allow the protection mechanisms in their bodies to work properly.

3nd Myth: watching porn reduces sexual desire
Watching Porn and masturbating increases sexual desire. Novelty is a very important element when it comes to porn addiction. If you had one pornographic picture that you used to look at every day then probably you will get bored of it.
This is why porn addiction is all about finding new stuff that you haven’t seen before. Now the more new stuff you come across the more excited you will get and the more will the process of watching Porn be associated with pleasant emotions.

After masturbating you might calm down for a few hours but your mind won’t stop thinking about those new and novel images you saw. Your mind then will become motivated to seek new novel images and as a result, you will find yourself returning to porn then to masturbation. In addition to that as you watch new kinds of porn new kinds of pathways get created in your brain. You will hardly have enough of that new kind of porn in one session and as a result, you will always feel like wanting to watch porn again.

When you watch porn a chemical called dopamine is released. Dopamine is a chemical that gives the person a feeling of pleasure as the brain expects a certain reward, in the case of porn that reward could be a novel image. Now as you keep watching porn your brain keeps increasing the production of Dopamine in such a way that the things that used to affect you in the past stop affecting you. This is exactly why you get bored of the images you once considered very hot.

I am pretty sure you have seen an image before and believed that it’s the hottest thing you have ever seen then weeks or even days later you saw that image again and felt nothing. What happened here is that your brain got used to a certain level of dopamine in such a way that it needs more dopamine to get stimulated. This is exactly what happens in the brain of a drug addict. The addict gets used to a certain level of arousal then as a result he desires a stronger dose.

Those are scientific facts and as you can they all point out to one conclusion. Watching porn results in a more intense desire to watch porn. So by watching porn and masturbating you are increasing your level of addiction and not helping yourself stop or experience relief.

4th Myth: I watch Porn because I am sexually aroused
So many people believe that they only feel like watching Porn when they are sexually aroused but in fact, so many other factors can make a person feel like watching Porn that have nothing to do with sexual arousal.

The chemical produced in the brain when a person expects a reward can be the main reason why some people watch porn. You might be looking for any way to fix your wrecked mood and use sexual arousal as an excuse. Other factors such as the desire to escape from problems, the lack of a good social life or even the desire to evade a bad mood might be the main reason some people feel like watching Porn. Don’t blame sexual desire all the time for so many other reasons can be involved apart from sexual desire.

5th Myth: Masturbation is healthy
So many people mistakenly think that masturbation is healthy while the healthy thing is sex and not masturbation. Research has shown that the brain realizes the difference between actual intercourse and masturbation and that all health benefits associated with sex only happen during real intercourse and not masturbation.

If you are masturbating for health benefits then you are doing it for nothing. While there are conflicting results about the harmful side effects of masturbation still it was ruled out that masturbation and porn addiction are seriously bad for the brain as they turn the person into a dopamine addict.

6th Myth sexual frustration builds up
This is a false belief that almost every porn addict has. People mistakenly think that sexual frustration builds up as they don’t masturbate or watch porn while the opposite happens.
As you watch more power your brain learns to get rewarded by dopamine and as a result, it craves more porn in the shorter term. In addition to that some of the images you see might lie at the back of your mind and force you to come back and watch porn once again, especially if those images were highly provoking. Now as you come back to porn you will see new images, because of your dopamine cravings, and as a result, a new image might lie at the back of your mind. This of course leads to a vicious cycle that never ends. Sexual frustration builds up when you watch porn not when you abstain.

Here is a very simple exercise that can help you realize that this is a myth and it’s also the first practical thing I will ask you to do.
Create a chart and record your level of sexual frustration from 1-10. Each day write down the number before you sleep. What you will notice is that on some days the number might be as high as 8 or 9 then on other days, the number might be as low as 1 or 2 even though you didn’t masturbate or watch porn.

The explanation here is very simple. Testosterone goes up and down depending on many factors in your daily and the fact that it goes up one day doesn’t mean that it will remain up for the next day. This is why masturbating on such a day, when your desire is high, is one of the biggest mistakes you can make because the next day you might find yourself free of that desire.

Is masturbation psychologically healthy?
If you believe that porn and masturbation are great things then probably you would have never read this newsletter to this point. After keep reading because a part of you, even if that part was small, thinks that those habits are really bad.
And because a part of you thinks that those habits are bad the following horrible psychological effects will happen to do when you do any of those habits:

1. Loss of self-confidence

You might wonder what’s the connection between self-confidence and porn addiction but there is a very powerful connection. If you think that a certain habit is wrong and if you are constantly failing in stopping that habit then your mind will believe that you are weak, incapable and helpless. Those new beliefs will get stronger each time you do both habits and as a result, your self-confidence will keep going lower each time you do them. With each new repetition of both habits, your self-confidence will get crushed even more as you will be more sure that you are a weak person.

2. Feelings of Helplessness

The feelings of helplessness a person experiences when he fails to break a habit, that a part of him dislikes, can slowly be transferred to his other life areas. In the beginning, you will only feel helpless when you do those habits but shortly after that those feelings will expand to span other life areas and you will believe that you are a helpless person. This feeling won’t just make you feel sad but it will also make you feel helpless whenever you decide to achieve any goal in life. After all your subconscious mind only trusts you based on your history and not based on your future. If your history has nothing but failures then certainly it will hardly make you feel confident.

3. Depression

Anxiety is all about worrying about something in the future but depression is all about feeling sad about something in the past. When you constantly fail to break those habits you will remain more attached to your bad past, which is full of failures, and as a result, you might get depressed.
In addition to that, if you believe that porn is really bad because of your religious beliefs for example, then the depression you will get will be even worse.

4. Feeling inferior

I am pretty sure you sometimes feel socially anxious around people a day or two after you masturbate. No, I am not talking about any chemical changes that happen in your brain but I am talking about feelings of shame.
When a person believes that he has done something very shameful he will automatically feel inferior. After all feelings of shame are nothing more than believing that you disgraced yourself.
Those feelings can make you feel inferior around others, prevent you from being confident and ruin your social connections.

What should you do if you're always addicted to something?

The truth is that we’re all addicted to something. The real addiction that underlies all addictions is the addiction to our thinking. Most of us don’t realize this is because we all see addiction as one of two kinds of problem:

Problem 1: How can I get what I want and crave? What must I do to get my fix?

Problem 2: How can I get rid of my addiction? What must I do to overcome it?

Regardless of which camp you fall into, seeing addiction as a problem makes us miss what is happening. It skews our perspective and distracts our attention. That’s why we struggle with addiction for years or decades. Most of us have no idea what addiction itself feels like because we’re too busy seeking or resisting what we want. But if you allow yourself to crave something without doing anything about it, you begin to learn new aspects of addiction. A space begins to open up. You learn how exactly it feels to want something and still not do anything about it - the intensity of the feeling and how it affects your thoughts!

It’s very similar to learning to enjoy a new taste that you don’t like. At first, your mind is filled with “I don’t like this” thoughts, but after a while, you start to realize it isn’t actually all that bad, that there’s something there that’s kind of interesting or intriguing (or at the very least, not terrible).

This is your door to the other side. When you realize that wanting something doesn’t kill you, it stops playing such a central role in your life. Your life no longer needs to revolve around what you should want and what you can get.

Instead, you become free to participate in all of it. Addiction is ultimately an attempt to push the negative part of life away, to suppress it so that we don’t have to feel it. But whatever you suppress keeps coming back up again, so we end up playing what looks like a game of emotional basketball where the pain gets pushed down only to pop up again later to be pushed down again.

So what I am suggesting to you is this:

Become an explorer or documentary maker on your addiction. Rather than trying to fix it or feed it, let it be. Feel it. Allow your mind to scream that it needs to have what it wants. Let the tension in your body come and go. Let all of it be just the way it wants to be while you just pay attention and make notes as if you were a scientist out to study your addiction. What you will discover is that simply paying attention to that painful part of yourself that wants addiction to soothe it is the beginning of true healing.

Awareness is the ultimate healer, so shower your pain with it.