How to Quit Pornography Addiction

Quitting pornography is not about abstaining from normal sexual activities, but rather about breaking the habit of consuming pornographic content.

Introduction: Why Quit Pornography

You "want" porn, but don't "like" it

Often, people ask, why quit pornography? I understand the real thoughts inside people's minds. Compared to other forms of entertainment, pornographic content is so easily accessible. All you need is an internet-connected device, and there's an endless supply of pornographic content available online. No matter your preference—whether you like same-sex or opposite-sex content, exaggerated or realistic plots, dark or light skin—whatever your unique taste, you can easily find content that "suits your taste." As a result, you spend your entire day in a state of extreme mental excitement, obtaining countless pleasures from the unlimited supply. And as you consume pornographic content more frequently and for longer durations, it may seem like you're growing to "like" it more. But scientifically speaking, you're just becoming more and more "wanting" without actually "liking" it more, meaning porn addiction makes you unable to resist browsing, but it doesn't significantly add happiness to your life.

To explain the difference between "wanting" and "liking," let's first clarify what each state means. "Wanting" is when all your thoughts are occupied by desire before you have something. You feel your life would be bleak without pornographic content, and you're willing to do anything to consume it. This state is "wanting." But when you're actually consuming pornographic content, you find that you don't receive the huge pleasure you expected. Instead, you find yourself mechanically repeating some actions, unable to enjoy the content you're viewing. You just want to fast forward to what you think interests you, but even when you fast forward to that content, you again feel unable to immerse and enjoy, so you want to fast forward again. You don't enjoy the pornographic content; you're just satisfying your "want." What truly "liking" something means is that you're very satisfied with what you're viewing, fully immersed in it, enjoying the content.

Thus, we can define addiction as: "Your want far exceeds your like."

In the case of porn addiction, even if you feel physically exhausted, you still force yourself to continue browsing pornographic content, even if your reproductive organs can no longer secrete a single drop of fluid...

All addicts will discover a fact, whether it's consuming pornography, drugs, or alcohol, the purpose of these behaviors is no longer to obtain pleasure but to alleviate pain—the pain of not being able to satisfy the "want."

Scientists have distinguished the chemicals associated with "want" and "like." "Want" corresponds to dopamine, while "like" corresponds to a series of substances such as endorphins, serotonin, oxytocin, and endogenous cannabinoids. So, when dopamine is rapidly secreted in your brain, your "want" level sharply increases. And if substances like endorphins are secreted in your brain, it proves you like your current state. In fact, almost all addictions show a deepening of the addicted state without a significant increase in "liking," even for nearly harmless behaviors like caffeine addiction.

German scientists conducted an experiment, dividing subjects into two groups: one that drinks at least three cups of coffee a day and another that drinks little to no coffee. They used the "Implicit Association Test" (IAT) to detect whether addicts liked coffee more than non-addicts. The results, as shown in the image below:

Image alt="wanting and liking test"

From the image, you can see that heavy addicts did not increase their liking for coffee compared to those who drank little to no coffee, but their craving for coffee significantly increased.

The worst part is that addiction is a process of continuous positive feedback reinforcement, known as the incentive-sensitization theory. Initially, you might need to see nudity to feel sexual desire. Then, seeing exposed skin on someone might trigger associations. The most exaggerated case is that eventually, hearing a sound or a word can trigger associations. At this point, you have become a slave to dopamine, with almost no chance of quitting through willpower alone.

Pornography is Harmful

Aside from the fact that pornography actually doesn't bring you great happiness, there's a solid reason to continue quitting porn: pornography addiction causes significant harm to your physical and mental health, including but not limited to:

Changes in reward and motivation mechanisms
Diseases of the reproductive organs
Loss of expectation for normal sexual activities
Destruction of appearance
Social disorders and mental illnesses
Decline in work and study capabilities

Many people find this hard to believe. If you've been addicted to pornography for years, recall the state before addiction and after. Have these problems gradually appeared after addiction? If so, the harm of pornography is self-evident. If you feel these problems haven't occurred yet, you can temporarily stop browsing. But please bookmark this site and reopen it when you feel something is wrong to reassess the correctness of this content. A more detailed explanation of these harms will be provided in the next chapter.

If you're still skeptical and can't let go of the pleasure brought by consuming pornographic content, doubting the positive significance of quitting porn on your life, my response is:

Before success, people can never imagine what success looks like

There are some things you can only truly understand after you've done them; you can never gain firsthand experience without doing them. Just like ordinary people can hardly understand the thoughts of billionaires, only when you become a billionaire do you know what it feels like. So, I ask you to trust me once. If you successfully quit porn, for example, for more than 100 days, you will clearly know the benefits quitting porn has brought you and how porn addiction has destroyed your body and brain. You will experience at least the following changes:

Abundant energy, a lot of time, improved focus and creativity
Bright eyes, smooth skin, soft and shiny hair
Better sexual performance...
Improved interpersonal relationships, more popular with the opposite sex
Appreciation of oneself and unparalleled confidence

If you hope these changes happen to you, then let us officially start the journey to quit pornography.

Ⅰ. The Harm of Pornography Addiction

If you ask people who are currently viewing pornography whether it harms them, most will deny it, even denying that pornography can be as addictive as drugs. But if you observe and track carefully, you will find that their consumption of pornography gradually increases from once a week to twice, and finally, once a day is still not enough. The time originally allocated for work and study gradually decreases, eventually leading to constant thoughts of various pornographic contents during work or study.

Therefore, I think it's necessary to clearly list the harms caused by pornography to people, as a warning to those who have not been exposed to pornographic content for long. As for those who have been addicted for a long time, they should have already realized some problems.

However, I need to make it clear here that listing these harms is not meant to instill fear. I don't want you to be overly afraid of pornography because excessive fear can lead to immense guilt after failing to quit, and even lead to a defeatist attitude and repeated relapses. I only hope you recognize the potential harms caused by pornography. So, approach this with an attitude of gaining knowledge. The symptoms vary from person to person; porn addicts might only exhibit a few of the following symptoms.

1. Destruction of Reward and Motivation Behavior Mechanisms

There are two types of chemicals in the human brain, one controls the craving for future things, and the other controls the feeling for the present. The dopamine mentioned earlier controls the expectation for future things, while endorphins, serotonin, and oxytocin control the feelings of the present, their specific functions are as follows:

Dopamine: Controls people's expectations and desires for things, not satisfaction, and is involved in planning and setting long-term goals. It can lead to addiction but also give people extraordinary resilience in pursuing goals.
Endorphins: Essentially a painkiller, produced during long-term aerobic exercise, such as running, giving people a sense of pleasure.
Oxytocin: The "love hormone" makes us have more friendly memories of others, more empathy, more willing to maintain the reputation of the group, while reducing prejudice. Women produce it in large amounts during childbirth and breastfeeding;
Serotonin: Gives a calm and peaceful sense of pleasure.

Porn addicts secrete a large amount of dopamine urging the body to seek pornographic content. However, there are two circuits for dopamine in the human brain. One is the reward circuit, mainly enhancing humans' cravings for essential things for survival; the other is related to the prefrontal cortex (especially the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex) involved in advanced cognitive functions such as decision-making, planning, inhibitory control, and social interaction, helping to enhance resilience in pursuit of goals.

Under normal natural conditions, both circuits can work normally, such as when humans see delicious food, the desire circuit stimulates people to eat, prompting actions beneficial for survival. But pornographic content is not a normal natural behavior, leading to an overly enhanced desire circuit, excessive secretion of dopamine, while the prefrontal cortex gradually atrophies due to frequent disuse. Simultaneously, parts of the brain, such as the striatum, become less sensitive to dopamine stimulation, leading people to seek more pornographic content for stronger stimuli. However, when they actually get pornographic content, people feel anxious and uneasy and cannot enjoy the current content, because hormones controlling the feeling of the present, like endorphins, oxytocin, and serotonin, are not secreted.

Eventually, addicts cannot set or achieve any long-term goals, and even porn addicts develop to the point where they can skip meals just to view pornography, completely unable to immerse in the present, unable to feel any happiness or joy. For porn addicts, there is no longer anything in the world that can make them feel happy except for pornography.

2. Diseases of the Reproductive Organs

Pornographic content easily leads to sexual climax. When watching porn, the brain is frequently in a state of sexual excitement, the reproductive organs repeatedly become engorged, and viewers habitually masturbate, which can easily lead to the following problems:

Urethritis
Prostatitis
Cervical inflammation
Varicocele
Frequent urination, urgency, and incomplete emptying
Sexual dysfunction

If porn addicts also engage in various high-risk sexual behaviors, they may also cause the following diseases:

HIV
Gonorrhea and syphilis
Cervical cancer

3. Loss of Expectation for Normal Sexual Activities

Due to the excessive secretion of dopamine, brain regions such as the nucleus accumbens and striatum are no longer sensitive, requiring viewers to seek more, more intense, and more unusual pornographic content to stimulate dopamine secretion and obtain pleasure. Many pornographic films exaggerate sexual experiences, completely different from real sexual experiences. Many people become depressed and lose interest in normal sexual life due to not achieving the sexual experience they imagined in real life, leading to psychological problems such as sexual repression, and also causing disharmony in relationships with partners.

4. Destruction of Appearance

Due to extensive viewing of pornography, viewers often have unhealthy habits such as staying up late and sitting for long periods, leading to endocrine disorders. Frequent sexual climaxes can lead to a deficiency in some trace elements and physical energy loss. Thus, the appearance of porn addicts changes greatly, such as oily face, acne, blackheads, dry and frizzy hair, no longer shiny, bad breath, and a listless appearance, overall lacking confidence and vitality.

Afraid to make eye contact with others, sensitive and self-conscious, unable to give any public speeches. When meeting someone they like, they dare not engage in normal communication, lacking the courage to invite. At the same time, their personality becomes more irritable, pessimistic, and more frequent loss of emotional control, further leading to an inability to build good interpersonal relationships. Especially for adolescents, whose minds are not yet fully developed, porn addiction causes them to be unable to accept any rejection in the real world, and any small setback will drive them to seek "comfort" in the virtual world of pornography.

6. Decline in Work and Study Capabilities

Due to addiction to pornography, a significant amount of time and energy is consumed every day. Even when not viewing pornography, pornographic content continuously replays in their minds, unable to concentrate on current tasks. At the same time, the brain's memory capacity severely declines, unable to remember any effective information. Porn addicts also face a decline in energy, intelligence, and focus, further affecting their performance in work and study, leading to low self-confidence and mood, and in more severe cases, depression and neurasthenia. These symptoms are also related to the atrophy and damage of the brain's amygdala, hippocampus, and prefrontal cortex.

Ⅱ. Different Stages in the Process of Quitting Pornography

The process of quitting pornography is not smooth sailing. In fact, severe withdrawal reactions similar to those experienced when quitting drugs can occur initially. Thankfully, it's somewhat easier than quitting drugs, but the whole process is still one of bitterness before sweetness. To boost your confidence, I'll outline the difficult challenges you may encounter.

1. Withdrawal Reactions

The first week of quitting pornography is often the hardest because your body has already become accustomed to masturbating daily. However, since you're no longer viewing pornographic content, your brain doesn't secrete the large amounts of dopamine that used to make you happy. You feel uncomfortable all over, your body constantly craves dopamine, and you find that neither eating your favorite food, playing games, nor exercising can fully suppress the intense desire. Then, the thought "pornography will make me happy, pornography will make me feel relaxed" pops into your mind, leading to relapse. But there's a fatal error in this thought: if you had never encountered pornography, then you wouldn't need this kind of "relaxation."

Pornography imposes on you something you didn't need in the first place.

Remember this: pornography imposes on you something you didn't need in the first place. So never think that pornographic content can relax you; it's just another form of Stockholm Syndrome. During this stage, you might experience, but are not limited to, the following withdrawal reactions:

Frequent nocturnal emissions
Fatigue and lack of energy
Shivering, sweating easily
Irritability, restlessness
More frequent daydreaming
Toothache, headache, dizziness
Depression, despondency

2. Plateau Phase

After surviving the initial withdrawal reactions, the subsequent withdrawal reactions will weaken a lot. Then you'll find yourself possibly going a week, a month, or even practicing for 100 days without viewing any pornographic content. You'll gradually notice an improvement in your memory and learning abilities, a more peaceful personality, and you'll start to believe that quitting pornography is truly beneficial, not just seemingly so as before.

3. Complacency Phase

After achieving a certain milestone, such as successfully quitting pornography for 100 days, you begin to relax and even feel a bit tired. Then you start looking for some fun and begin browsing various borderline videos, watching different people making various sexual suggestions, engaging in different teasing behaviors. Your will begins to dissolve, you forget why you wanted to quit pornography, and you inevitably fall back into the realm of sin.

After relapsing, you feel extremely annoyed and regretful, wishing you could slap yourself. Then, to soothe the pain in your heart, you choose the easiest method: continue viewing pornographic content, successfully masturbating multiple times in one day, browsing until late at night, even skipping dinner. When you wake up tired the next day, you find that your physical and mental state has deteriorated, you start forgetting things, and you feel listless all day... Then you remember why you wanted to quit pornography.

4. Vicious Cycle

You keep repeating the first three steps, with a bit of luck, you might quit for a longer period; with bad luck, you relapse repeatedly. You're stuck in a vicious cycle but can't find a way to break out of it.

5. Success at Last

Finally, after continuous reflection and perhaps an accidental insight from the outside world, you understand the key to success:

Reduce your "want" for pornographic content, lower the sensitivity of your brain to pornographic content, and the secretion of dopamine.

When you realize you no longer look forward to pornographic content, you have succeeded. Some people like to count their days, such as considering it a success if they don't watch pornographic content for 100 consecutive days. But the real success isn't about reaching a milestone but about forgetting you're engaging in this endeavor.

The only sign of success is forgetting that you're quitting pornography.

Ⅲ. Methods for Quitting Pornography

Before discussing methods, it's necessary to issue a reminder: Are you truly committed? If you are still hesitant up to this point, then it might not be the time for your awakening; you can wait until you're fully determined. If you still think quitting pornography equates to sacrificing happiness, then you need not continue reading. Only if you believe that quitting pornography is a path to happiness and joy will the following methods be beneficial to you.

1. Relying on Willpower Is Just a Transitional Method

You'll find everywhere the notion that self-discipline leads to more freedom. However, self-discipline essentially relies on willpower, using it to force oneself to move in a better direction. If willpower alone could achieve everything, I would recommend quitting pornography through willpower. But reality often falls short of our wishes; any task that needs to be sustained long-term cannot rely solely on willpower. If you depend on willpower, you'll come to realize:

Quitting through willpower can only last for so long.

Why is this? After visualizing a person's willpower, like the health bar in a video game, it's clear there's a maximum value. And once the tasks controlled by willpower become too numerous, you'll find yourself with zero willpower. This moment might not occur often, but it is inevitable, which I believe is a basic fact. At that point, a slight sexual stimulus from the outside world can throw you back into the arms of pornography. Thus, quitting through willpower, no matter how long you've abstained, is doomed to fail, a foreseeable fact.

Those who quit through willpower often set a milestone. Among them, a few with strong will can abstain for 30 days, 60 days, 100 days. However, once they reach their goal, the thought of "wanting to take a break" emerges, and the so-called willpower vanishes in an instant, leading them back to old habits.

There's a variation of quitting through willpower, which involves keeping oneself busy. However, you're bound to encounter idle moments eventually, and these are when relapses occur. Any state that needs active maintenance will one day become unsustainable.

Although relying on willpower can only sustain abstinence for a short period, I don't mind beginners using this method at the start. After all, quitting for a short while is better than endless indulgence.

2. The Goal of Quitting Pornography

Before discussing the ultimate method of quitting, we need to align on the final goal. In fact, if your goal isn't this, you still harbor some hope against hope.

Your only goal in quitting pornography should be:

Never watch any pornographic content again.

Don't believe in the so-called moderation is harmless theory, because no one can achieve moderation. The so-called moderation actually requires you to use your willpower to control, and as mentioned before, willpower is not reliable. You might manage moderation for a week or two at the start, but you will gradually increase your standards of moderation, evolving from once a week to once a day. As for the notion of harmlessness, it's even more misguided. The reason such views exist is that the harm from pornography isn't apparent initially, akin to a frog being boiled in warm water. Once the frequency surpasses a certain threshold, you suddenly realize the extensive damage pornography has caused you, only you're unwilling to admit it. Therefore, unless you decide to quit pornography permanently, it will quickly become addictive and destroy your life.

3. The Method to Quit All Bad Habits: Meditation

This time, my title is about the method to quit all bad habits: meditation.

That is to say, once you master this method, you can easily quit pornography, smoking, drinking, drugs—all the habits you thought you couldn't live without, those you believed brought you infinite happiness but are actually harmful. You can quit all these habits through this method.

I think it's necessary to first explain why meditation can solve the ultimate problem. Simply put, meditation is akin to contemplation, but different from ordinary contemplation in that it requires keeping your eyes open and includes additional steps like chanting mantras and making vows. So, why can meditation help people quit various addictions? Remember what was mentioned before? The so-called addiction is actually people excessively "wanting," and meditation helps people observe their own minds, eliminate unrealistic expectations and desires, and bring their attention back to the present. From the perspective of neuroscience, it inhibits the dopamine reward circuit and restores the function of the cerebral cortex, prompting the secretion of substances like endorphins and serotonin.

So, how does one meditate to achieve the above effects? Meditation is divided into object-focused meditation and objectless meditation. Objectless meditation involves placing your attention on thoughts that spontaneously arise and disappear in your mind, without clinging to the rise and fall of those thoughts. Object-focused meditation, on the other hand, involves placing your attention on visual, olfactory, gustatory, auditory, and tactile sensations, experiencing these sensory stimuli without making any judgments.

Object-focused meditation can help you maintain inner peace when exposed to various sexual stimuli, experiencing various sensory stimulations without being dragged along by them. You are the master of these sensations. For example, if you accidentally see an erotic picture, you might feel a physiological response, but at the same time, you're able to calmly close the picture.

Objectless meditation helps you not to be led by the various thoughts arising in your mind, ensuring you're not influenced by those dirty thoughts, helping you psychologically return to being a normal person.

So, how does one perform meditation? First, let's understand the sitting posture, called the seven-point posture in meditation. Sit with legs crossed; place hands below the navel, palms up, one hand on top of the other; keep the spine straight; shoulders slightly relaxed; head straight, chin tucked in; tongue slightly touching the palate; eyes open. The reason for keeping eyes open is twofold: practicing meditation aims to maintain inner peace in daily life where you keep your eyes open, so don't create a false sense of peace by closing your eyes; secondly, object-focused meditation practice requires the use of eyes.

You can find various sitting posture tutorials online, which I won't elaborate on here, as the posture isn't the most crucial part, but how to meditate is.

Objectless meditation is actually very simple, just place your attention on the thoughts flashing through your mind without clinging to any particular thought, not getting attached to the birth and disappearance of thoughts, even if your mind goes blank. During this process, you'll notice the various dirty thoughts that arise in your mind, but don't blame yourself, just observe these thoughts. As you practice more, you'll find these dirty thoughts occur less frequently. In this process, you're actually training your brain, promoting the development of your cerebral cortex. Yes, that's right, even adults' brains still have plasticity. You're gradually taking back control of your brain, unleashing your potential. People often have the misconception that they control their own brains, but when you practice objectless meditation, you'll realize that many thoughts arise that you don't want, but the brain generates them anyway. You'll also discover many thoughts were actually instilled in you by others, not truly your own. So, I wish you gradual mental health recovery through objectless meditation, becoming a better you.

Object-focused meditation, then, is about using your senses to experience the world, also without making any value judgments. For example, when practicing visual meditation, focus on the shape, color, layout, and position of objects; when practicing auditory meditation, focus on the tone, timbre, and volume of sounds, and so on. With enough practice, when you encounter erotic images or videos in daily life, you'll be able to stop browsing these contents more peacefully, turn away without any lingering affection, instead of stirring up turmoil in your heart, uncontrollable. After reaching this state, you don't need to rely on willpower; these erotic contents become as mundane as air to you.

During meditation, you can choose to chant mantras like "OM, AH, HUNG"; some believe these mantras help achieve inner peace, but whether to silently chant these mantras is up to you.

However, there is one thing you should do, which is to dedicate the merits at the end of the practice. The purpose of this is to dissolve the differences between yourself and others, allowing you to see a broader world. The method for dedicating merits is simple, just chant the following verse:

For all sentient beings with this merit, May they attain the fullness of merit and wisdom, With this merit and wisdom, May they attain the two supreme bodies.

Of course, it doesn't matter much if you don't remember it, the important thing is to make lifelong wishes, you can make any wish. During the entire meditation process, if formal meditation is possible, then do it; if not, you can practice objectless and object-focused meditation anytime, anywhere. There's no time requirement, just keep practicing. You can practice object-focused meditation by being aware of your tactile sensations while walking, listening to the sounds around you, or practicing objectless meditation by observing the thoughts in your brain while sitting on the subway. So, don't put too much pressure on yourself.

IV. Common Misconceptions

1. The Harmless in Moderation Argument

The internet is full of the harmless in moderation argument, constantly telling you that moderate masturbation is harmless to the body. This statement seems reasonable but actually has inherent logical flaws. If you can do it once a month, I believe it definitely won't cause any harm to your body. But this is just an ideal reality, not the actual situation. As we've already discussed in previous articles, so-called moderation means you need to use your willpower, and willpower is destined to weaken one day, turning your moderation from once a week to once a day.

Thus, almost no one can achieve moderation, especially for teenagers whose brains have not yet fully matured. During winter and summer vacations, it may turn into masturbating several times a day. So, there is no such thing as moderation; all moderation will eventually turn into excess.

Another issue is that pornography is harmful. Its harms are twofold: the first is physical harm, which doesn't show at first because your masturbation frequency is low. But once your frequency reaches a certain threshold and this behavior continues for a while, you will gradually notice changes in physical energy, appearance, etc. So, please stop consuming pornographic content before actual harm occurs. The second harm is mental and psychological; it warps your cognition, objectifies people, but leaves you with endless, unerasable dirty thoughts inside. You feel ashamed of being one way on the surface and another way inside, and this inconsistency between online and offline personas becomes more severe. Some people become trolls online, harassing the opposite sex, or even sending their private photos to others, but try hard not to show it in the real world. Normal people don't think sexual harassment is normal, but still, many do it, driven by the desires in their hearts, their psychological state is undoubtedly unhealthy.

2. Masturbation Helps Relaxation and Sleep

Sometimes, people feel immense pressure and choose to relieve stress through masturbation before sleep. They believe this helps improve sleep quality and relaxation. Is this true? It's only partially true. When you masturbate, you indeed feel excited and relaxed. But what about afterward? You feel incredibly empty, your brain still in a state of excitement and fatigue, and you find it takes longer to fall asleep than usual, disrupting your biological clock. The next morning, you wake up feeling groggy, with desires attacking again, even wanting to start another round of masturbation, falling into a vicious cycle.

3. Testing Willpower and Sexual Function Through Pornography

You can't imagine how many excuses people find to view pornography. Some, after quitting for a while when desires resurface, want to test their current progress, comforting themselves by saying they don't want to masturbate but just see if they can control their desires. Without a doubt, they inevitably fail in this repeated testing process. Some extreme cases among men keep themselves in a state of genital congestion without ejaculation, deceiving themselves that they haven't broken their vow. Little do they know, this could lead to diseases like prostatitis.

Some people only realize the huge harm of pornography to themselves after becoming impotent. So, they want to check every so often how their sexual function is recovering. Sometimes, due to the short time, it doesn't have any effect, after all, porn addiction might have lasted for years while quitting porn has only been for a few days; Rome wasn't built in a day. And some people, after persisting for a while, see some effects, but this little progress could be lost because of relapse. So, there's only one piece of advice for these people: don't start with this mindset, otherwise, you'll keep failing. Forget about it.

4. All Problems are Caused by Pornography

People often harbor unrealistic fantasies, always thinking that quitting porn will make all problems disappear. This is a wrong notion. Quitting porn can only help you gradually return to a normal state; if you have diseases, you should see a doctor. If you have life goals, you still need to solve them through your own efforts.

So, quitting porn only helps you return to a normal life. If you want a better life, you still need to exercise, learn, and do those things that make you secrete endorphins.