How to Quit Porn Addiction?

Nowadays the number one question all the youngsters have in their minds is how to quit porn addiction. Many youngsters face a lot of trouble because of this single addiction, they lose their ability to focus or concentrate on work, also they lose their mental peace and decision-making ability.

Watching porn has a huge negative impact on your life. This single addition can completely destroy your mind. Everyone goes through the worst consequences of this addiction in day-to-day life.

That’s why many of them want the solution on how to quit porn addiction so that they can get their mental stability back. In this article, we are going to understand the root cause of porn addiction and its bad consequences on our minds.

We will also discuss how one can quit porn addiction by using some powerful techniques. In the end, you will get a permanent solution to overcome this addiction problem and you will also understand that your life is much bigger than these small sexual desires. So let’s begin…

 

How does porn addiction impact our life?

Before understanding how to quit porn addiction let’s understand how this worst type of addiction impacts our life. During human civilization, pornography was present in the form of art and communication.

But after the invention of the internet, it becomes easily accessible to everyone. Nowadays we are just a few clicks away from more than 1000 porn sites.

Porn addiction is a real problem that badly affects our thought process, life, and even our desires. This problem has been continuously increasing every year amongst the youth.

As per one research study, most young males and females face this addiction problem at a higher level during their puberty period.

This single habit or addiction creates problems in your relationship with your partners, and in your social life, and also it creates a huge impact on your career. Many times you don’t even know about this problem and sometimes you are unable to control this addiction.

Sex drive is a powerful motivational force that is important to evolving the human race but pornography destroys this human connection and makes it unproductive with time.

Because of this, it becomes difficult for people to make real connections with their partners. Porn addiction is the number one reason in today’s world why people are not happy in their relationships.

 

 

The author of “Your brain on porn” book Gary Wilson says that the impacts of porn addiction are a threat to our emotional wellbeing and we need to accept this fact before it becomes dangerous.

The heavy consumption of porn reduces grey matter and sexual responsiveness in the human body. Grey matter is made up of our neuronal cell body and it completely developed in our 20s.

Grey matter deficiency reduces our ability of decision making, memory, self-control, and emotional stability. Even Oxford University concluded from one research study that “porn addictive people not only harm others but can also harm themself.”

Because during that research study, one person shared his experience that he was an athletic, smart, and sociable person before porn addiction, he was enjoying the healthy and peaceful life he had so many good friends.

But when he started watching porn at the age of 24, after some time he got depressed. He told that his next 15 years were the worst, he used to spend most of his time alone, not interested in talking with others, and he completely lost his social connection.

He accepted that all this happened because of porn addiction. Because of High-speed internet, most people worldwide watch porn and they overstimulate the brain as well as release dopamine at a higher level.

Related content –Top 10 signs of porn addiction.

Because of this, they are facing problems like mental illness, stress, anxiety, depression, relationship disturbance, poor quality of life, lack of motivation, low self-confidence, lack of focus and concentration, etc. in day-to-day life.

So nowadays, porn-addicted people are using medications to overcome these life problems. That’s why how to quit porn addiction? it becomes the most important question for youngsters. Before that, it’s important to understand why people love porn and why they become so addicted to it.

This is very common, people think that watching porn is the solution to problems like boredom, stress, loneliness, sexual frustration, etc.

Because while watching porn they forget their life problems completely and in excitement, they release dopamine at a higher level to experience the pleasurable sensation.

After some time, brain circuits become addicted to this experience and neuroplasticity changes start happening. Because of this people become so addicted to watching porn again and again to get that pleasurable experience.

Over a period of time, this addiction destroys the way people think about the opposite sex. Now you understand the bad effects of watching porn and how it destroys your mind completely. Let’s explore the benefits of not watching porn

 

Benefits of quitting porn addiction – 

It’s not impossible to quit porn addiction, with practice and good habits you can quit this worst addiction and take control of your life back. We will explore the different ways to quit porn addiction but before that let’s see the benefits of quitting this addiction.

• If you quit porn addiction or stop watching porn, it becomes easy for you to connect with other people and make a strong connection with them. 
• Your self-esteem will increase. You become emotionally mature and also build up a good sense of humor automatically.
• Once you quit porn addiction you feel good about yourself, you feel confident and optimistic about your life.
• The biggest benefit when you quit porn addiction is you don’t feel social anxiety. It becomes easy for you to maintain proper eye contact while talking with others.
• Quitting a porn addiction also makes you mentally sharp and focused. You easily concentrate on your work and also you feel energetic while working.
• One of the best benefits of quitting porn addiction is you experience the emotions like happiness, and enjoyment of the things outside of the porn. That improves your relationship with your friends, family, and your life partner.

These benefits of quitting a porn addiction have been studied and observed by the world’s top psychologists and doctors. Quitting this worst addiction can completely change your life and help you become physically and mentally fit.

Related content – How to become mentally strong?

 

How to quit porn addiction – 

As we discussed, Porn addiction changes brain activity, our behavior, and our ability to deal with others. The more you become addicted to it, the more negative consequences it has on your daily life.

You excessively watch porn because when you watch porn it gives you instant pleasure and to fulfill that need for instant pleasure you start watching porn again and again. Then over a period of time, it becomes an addiction.

The level of this addiction is the same as drugs and alcohol, if you do not control this addiction before it becomes late then this addiction can create huge problems and disturbances in your life.

Now let’s see what can be done to quit the porn addiction. Let’s see some practical tips to overcome this problem and take your control back. – 

 

1. Reset your brain – 

The most important tip to quit porn addiction is to Reset your brain. What does resetting mean? see when you go through this addiction problem you continuously watch porn and all your mind is get filled with sexual thoughts only.

So in order to make your mind free from sexual thoughts, resetting your brain is important. It’s like cleaning your house every morning. When clean your house/room every morning you feel good and energetic throughout the day.

Similarly, in order to clean your mind, you need to reset your brain. During resting time, keep yourself away from sexual things like porn, masturbation, sexual behavior, and talk.

Follow this for at least one month, you have to be consistent in following these things because it may take more than one month to reset your brain or recover from sexual thoughts.

In this period, you need to rediscover who you are without porn. This process makes your mind restart again with a new pattern of thoughts (like restarting your mobile phone). It actually helps you understand that you are bigger and stronger than this addiction.

 

2. Remove all porn – 

The 2nd tip is you should remove all porn collections and sites from your mobile phone, computer, and laptop. By doing this you are actually signaling your mind that you are ready to change yourself.

In order to quit porn addiction, it is very important that you should work on your environment also and make sure that your environment doesn’t have any porn resources.

Environment means the area where you spend most of your time every day, should not have any resource that triggers the sexual thoughts in your mind. This you need to take care of in the initial days of your overcoming addiction process.

You must realize the fact that porn is a passion killer, intelligence killer, and knowledge killer. So remove all the porn and fill your environment (mobile, laptop, computer) with some meaningful content that is valuable for you.

 

3. Engage yourself in different activities/tasks – 

Generally, people get easily addicted to any things when they have so much time available to waste. With more free time you have a higher possibility that you get addicted to things like porn.

Because the human mind needs something to engage, it’s difficult to control the mind without engaging it. The moment you keep your mind empty it will go here and there so it is very important to keep your mind engage with some meaningful stuff.

See when you are on the path of quitting a porn addiction, make sure you should never keep your mind empty. Give something to your mind to work on it can be reading a book, learning new skills, creating something, writing journals,

Watching some good content (movies, youtube videos, listening to podcasts), following hobbies that you love, traveling with friends/family, etc. Keep your mind engaged in doing these things.

So the point is don’t sit idle keep yourself engaged every moment in doing things that are adding value to your life. By doing this you actually not allowing your mind to engage in irrelevant things like porn addiction. This single tip can help you a lot to quit your porn addiction.

 

4. Channelize your energy towards your goal – 

You must understand the fact that you are not just mind and body complex, you are more than that, you are energy. The energy that can either destroy you or it can empower you. That’s why it’s important to channel your energy to do things that are important in your life.

But when you get addicted to porn you completely waste your energy in watching and experiencing things that are not even a reality. You waste your energy on getting that instant pleasure and happiness. 

People watch porn because they are more interested in sexual pleasure.  But the fact is that sex is just a 5 to 10% important part of your life, it’s not a 100% important part of your life. If you make sex a 100% important part then soon you will destroy your life completely.

In life, you can give 5 to 10% importance to the sex and that’s ok, the remaining 90% important part of your life is your relationships, your family/friends, your goal and vision, etc.

This 90% part of your life will give you long-term pleasure and happiness. You must understand that the happiness you get from these things is 100 times more than you get through porn. 

So to quit porn addiction, first set a goal for yourself, create a long-term vision for yourself and start taking action towards it. Invest your energy to work on your long-term vision, don’t waste it on porn.

Because short-term pleasure will give you hard life later (pleasure you get through porn) while long-term pleasure will give you overall satisfaction and happiness in life later. 

 

5. Don’t forcefully avoid porn – 

When you are in that addiction zone, it’s difficult to quit the porn at the initial attempt because the more you try to quit it the more urge comes in your mind to watch the porn.

So during the initial time of quitting this addiction make sure you should not forcefully stop yourself from watching porn. Go with step by step approach.

You can start with reducing the amount of time you watch porn throughout the day. You can create a time block and properly set a time for your work, like from 9 Am to 6 pm don’t watch porn.

Even if that urge comes into your mind, tell your mind that I will watch it once my work is finished. That way you are postponing the urge and the more you postpone it, the high chance that the urge to watch porn goes down.

You can also use the ad blocker on your phone, or laptop so that you can’t easily access porn sites. Make access to porn sites difficult, this will help you cut down the urge to watch porn.

Then use the postponed strategy to postpone that urge every time, whenever it comes to your mind. This way you are not forcefully avoiding this addiction but you are actually killing that urge to watch porn by postponing it every time. This technique can help you quit any type of addiction.

Related content –Why do I get easily distracted?

 

6. Give yourself a reward for not watching porn – 

As we discussed in the last point, postpone the urge to watch porn every time and create a time gap for your daily work. As per the last technique, every time when you become successful in avoiding porn, just celebrate it and give yourself a reward for that.

A reward can be anything which you love the most like eating your favorite dish, watching your favorite comedy show, talking with friends and family, etc. Giving a reward to yourself is nothing but you are celebrating your victory over a devil (porn).

Every time you give a reward, you actually shift the focus of your mind to something else which is more important than porn and you are giving a better instant pleasure to your mind than the porn. 

This simple practice is telling your mind that you can get happiness from other things also. This will automatically motivate your mind to engage in other meaningful activities than porn. Over a period of time, this technique will reduce the amount of time you spend watching porn.

This technique is popularly used in corporate in order to motivate employees so that they must perform well at the workplace. Same reward system you can use on yourself to quit the porn addiction.

 

7. Start doing regular exercise – 

Exercise is the best way to overcome any type of addiction. It not only helps you improve your physical health but also makes you mentally fit.

It builds strong self-confidence in you and creates positive energy in your mind that can help you win over any irrelevant urges like watching porn.

When you are in that recovery mode (from porn addiction), you must start doing regular exercise (at least 5 days a week and 30 to 45 min a day, you can do cardio, stretching any type of exercise).

This habit of regular exercise makes you feel good about yourself. Every day when you finish the 30 min of exercise, you feel happy, energetic, and satisfied.

At the start of the day, you feel a sense of achievement that builds self-confidence in you. This will help you shift your focus from porn towards something meaningful activities, that way exercise helps you quit porn addiction.

 

8. Start meditating every day – 

Until now we discussed all the techniques which are effective at a physical level to quit porn addiction. Now this powerful technique helps you overcome this addiction at the mental level i.e. Meditation.

In day-to-day life, you all go through different problems which can be related to health, money, relationships, career, etc. Due to these problems, most of the time you feel stress and anxiety which causes you to turn to watching porn to feel instant happiness.

It’s natural that you turn toward something pleasurable (porn) instead of dealing with life problems. Because for a short time period, you easily get that instant pleasure from porn which makes you feel relaxed and reduce your stress as well as anxiety.

But in the long term the more you do this the more you start feeling anxious and stressed. That’s why you need to replace this (watching porn) habit with 5 min of daily meditation.

Meditation reduces your stress and anxiety in the long term and you feel more relaxed after 5 to 10 min of meditation. Relaxation through meditation is 1000 times better than watching porn.

The easiest type of meditation you can do is to focus on your breath for 5 to 10 min, slowly you can breathe in and breathe out. This will reduce your stress level and anxiety. Once it is reduced you don’t need porn to reduce your anxiety and stress. 

You have to do meditation consistently, that will help you build up strong self-control and willpower. With that habit, you can easily overcome the urge of watching porn. That’s how you can overcome this addiction with the help of mental power.

Along with that, you can also practice positive affirmation on a daily basis like telling yourself every morning that

” I am bigger than porn addiction, I have control over myself and I watch those things that are important for my growth, I was born not just for instant pleasure rather I was born to do something meaningful in my life,

My life is so precious and I don’t want to waste it on things like porn, To feel good and happy I don’t need to watch porn because happiness is with me I just need to experience it.” etc.

Along with meditation, these powerful affirmations will also help you quit the porn addiction. Do this on a daily basis, Just be patient in this entire process and believe in yourself.

Related content – Which type of meditation is right for you?

 

9. Get outside of your home and explore – 

Most of the time people get addicted to things like porn, alcohol, etc. when they spend most of their time Alone. Spending time alone is good to know about yourself but don’t do it more. Because sometimes it turns into loneliness which is dangerous to your mind.

So whenever you get free time try to get outside of your home and visit natural/historic places. Travel more and meet new people and places, and learn about them. It’s good practice to engage yourself in good things rather than digital devices and this will help you quit porn addiction as well.

 

Conclusion – 

Overcoming any addiction is challenging but once you realize that you are more powerful than your addiction and you take your control back then it becomes easy for you to quit addiction like porn.

Addiction becomes a problem when you lose self-control. Building self-control is possible with the help of 9 techniques that I shared with you in this article. Just remember one thing “you are more powerful and stronger than any addiction.“

Throughout the article, we discussed the impact of porn addiction on your life, the benefits of not watching porn in your life, and also the practical techniques to quit porn addiction.

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