XXI has come with many different challenges for mental health given the amount of exposure to easily accessible pleasure with instant gratification, but I would dare to say nothing comes close to pornography addiction and all of the consequences of it. Kids since the late 90s generation till now have lived in an extreme hedonist world like never seen before. Not that older adults do not have this problem which they also could have, but a young mind gathering all kinds of degeneracy can perturb a life forever. If you think you are struggling with this addiction let me tell you you’re not the only one and probably most of your close friends are quietly having it too. For those who are just starting out and you think you can stop whenever you want then prove it to yourself and stop now, you’ll thank yourself later in life. For those who got to a point where you think there’s no hope and there’s no way for you to get out of the black hole you once crossed when you were younger, you can and you will.
Before anything let me tell you that: yes, there is hope. It is absolutely possible to break the cycle, rewire your brain, and return to a healthy baseline. You can build a life you are genuinely proud of. Many people have been there, and have found a way out. It starts right now, not with one giant leap, but with a single, small step. If you commit to this process, you can accomplish it.
Let ‘s get started.
I would suggest reading the entire post since I believe it is worth the time, but you can skip to the solution if you want (it probably will sound out of context if you do). That’s where I lay out what worked for me and could also work for everyone, with their own adjustments.
- Why to change?
- Solution -> You need to have a life worth living, an appropriate environment and a way to track your progress
- How we can help you -> Sapientia Labs
Why to change
There’s so many arguments. I will lay down just a few since I think this post is for people who already are at a stage they recognize they want to step out of this cycle once for all. I think at some point if you don’t stop you eventually will but at an unprecedented cost by accumulating pain and suffering (trauma). Hopefully you don’t get to that point. These four main reasons are:
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Neuroplasticity, the young mind: How the brain works in a nutshell and how you’re screwing it.
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Life becomes meaningless: Dopamine.
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Trauma.
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Leading up to degeneracy.
I will explain only the first two, which will hopefully be more than enough to convince you to change. We can deep dive into the others in future posts.
Neuroplasticity, the young mind: How the brain works in a nutshell and how you’re screwing it.
The first one is related to the pathways of your brain. Our neural paths are the way we memorize behaviour. If we get a reward after an action we are essentially reinforcing that behaviour, you can see this more easily with children. When we learn a new subject, skill or see something new for the first time our neurons are creating new pathways by interconnecting with each other. This ability of our brain to adapt to these changes is what we call neuroplasticity. The problem with the plasticity of our brain is that it decreases overtime, that’s why it is important to develop good habits early in life. Basically the more you engage with something, your brain will adapt to it and the more it would be hard for you to change this behaviour later in life. When you get to a point where the neural pathways of bad behaviours are so consolidated, the effort for you to reset your brain will be much harder.
To keep the post optimistic remember that harder doesn’t mean impossible.
Life becomes meaningless: Dopamine.
The second one is related to the dopamine system which is really important for our daily activities, memory, focus and much more. To not overcomplicate things we will use a simple analogy. When you feel hungry your brain releases dopamine providing enough ‘motivation’ in order for you to stand up and go get something to eat. Once you eat then you release serotonin (and a bunch of other signals) which makes you feel satiated, that’s a complete cycle. This is the exact same mechanism with pornography addiction as well with any other activity. You first feel an urge just like when you’re hungry so the brain releases dopamine, then once you’re finished you release a signal in this case the ‘orgasm’ signaling to your brain you had enough.
The problem is that dopamine is required for all of the activities in your daily life and not all of the activities will give you the same level of reward: brushing your teeth, taking a shower, making your bed, doing exercise, talking to people, eating, studying, working are all basic things that require some level of dopamine, some of them more than others. The key to have healthy levels of dopamine is that effort and reward have to be somewhat proportionate, meaning that any activity with low effort with huge increases in dopamine will essentially condemn your life. While an activity with a lot of effort with a small/medium amount of reward is what we aim for.
From time to time we would have a huge spike for special moments of long term effort like a graduation, winning a final in a tournament and so on. Those are fine, but in order for that to happen we have to do the small things everyday, training, studying and so on which are not necessarily fun.
The cycle is simple, the greater the reward after an activity is completed the more likely your mind will feel the urge to repeat it again. That’s awesome for a good habit but our brain doesn’t differentiate what’s ‘good’ or ‘bad’, it only cares about what brings him excitement as immediate as possible. Since every activity requires a certain level of dopamine to at least feel enough motivation to engage with it, we need to have healthy levels of dopamine to be able to complete each one of our daily chores (That’s life at the end of the day).
At any time of our day the brain has a list of possible activities you can engage with, if pornography is one of the options available then Why not to do that? if it’s the one that will make me feel satisfied in a shorter period of time. That’s why porn is one of the most difficult addictions to overcome, because the availability is everywhere since we all carry a phone nowadays in our pockets. Not only that but even other apps that don’t relate directly end up hitting a neural pathway that later will make you engage with porn, like scrolling on social media, watching a video, reading a news article, anything that somehow correlates within your brain to sex.
Solution: You need to have a life worth living, an appropriate environment and a way to track your progress.
At the end of this post I’m offering a service that implements this solution in a strategic way but the solution itself is completely free, meaning you can start applying these things to your life and molding it to your needs. I wanted to separate the general basis of the solution and the service itself since I don’t want you to feel that I’m just writing this to sell you something when in reality you can work by yourself .
These three things are simply: Build a life worth living, surround yourself with an appropriate environment and have a way to track your progress. What does each one of them mean?
I will start in reverse and leave the building of a worthy life at last since it could be seen as the most subjective one.
Tracking your life progress and having someone to rely on
First we need to start tracking the progress of our life, it takes more effort than you think. We can subdivide our life in 4 main pillars: Our job/work, relationships, hobbies and health. We will add a fifth one in our case which would be the recovery from the addiction. Life is a grind. Without even realising it we are grinding each one of those pillars. The problem again is that the gains from each one of those grinds are so negligible that we do not appear the majority of the time to be making any progress in each one of them. In a videogame for example we can instantly see and even measure our character progress and see what we have achieved so far, but the daily ‘victories’ of life are not visible until a fair amount of time. Keeping track of each gain periodically will give us an immense perspective of what’s going on. You can start right away with anything you want, a journal, a spreadsheet, whatever. The point is to keep track of our daily wins so we can know if we are actually on track of the life we want.
You will also need somebody who can check on you, someone you have to answer to by providing your progress with your addiction and pillars of life. This is a huge thing to do for the majority of people because pornography addiction doesn’t have anywhere near the same stigma that alcoholism or other addictions have. People celebrate recovery from drugs and alcohol, but porn addiction doesn’t receive the same social treatment making it a silent burn for those trying to get out of it. On top of that, having that person that listens to you and doesn’t judge you because of it, it’s not something that everyone has in their lives. While we have our parents and close relationships to turn to, some might view this conduct with reluctance.
The software we use at Sapientia is specifically designed to address these needs in a simple and efficient manner plus having someone to help you review your progress once a week. Having that companion is key to keep track of what you have achieved so far in your recovery process, celebrate the small wins, and guide you to what comes next. You will have somebody who understands the magnitude of the issue without judging you for it.
Environment
Environment is one of the factors we do have control over. If you happen to be in your room by yourself a big chunk of the day, you’re putting yourself in a position where there is a constant battle that shouldn’t even exist in the first place. This would be the equivalent of trying to quit alcohol and being in a bar most of the time. Especially for the first couple of days and weeks you need to recognize the places where you fall into the behaviour and start avoiding them as much as you can. For instance, if you usually can’t resist the urges when going to bed at night, make sure you spend the whole day outside and only go to bed when you’re tired enough that your mind can only think in sleep.
You will eventually be able to revisit those places and resist the urges more easily, especially when you find a life worth living which is what comes next.
Life worth living
One of the problems with this addiction nowadays especially for young men is that they don’t know yet what is in reality a life worth living. They are still in that process and haven’t reached their full potential. Whereas some people already have built a life and they know what they’re screwing. So again if you don’t feel like screwing anything why to stop? In the case of young men, one of the first things we do in the service is an exploratory phase where they are proactively trying things so they start to find their purpose and work towards it. Once they figure out something important they want to achieve over everything else, then they will realise that their chance of getting it is significantly reduced if they engage in this poor behaviour.
Losing a life worth living is the cost of not overcoming this addiction. This addiction in particular makes you think that you are not losing anything and you can carry on with your life normally as long as you do this behaviour silently, but the reality is the complete opposite. You could be everywhere like you’re normal, that’s true. But even though you could be present wherever you are, you are not in reality. This is because as we talked earlier, everything in life needs dopamine in order for you to enjoy it. So essentially nothing will excite you, everything will feel mundane since there’s nothing from a normal life that can bring you the same mental excitement as watching porn.
Building a life worth living takes effort. You need to imagine how you would like your life to look like. As Naval Ravikant says “The only real test of intelligence is if you get what you want out of life”.
How we can help you: Sapientia Labs
I built Sapientia Labs to accelerate recovery for those damaging their lives and the lives of others due to addictive behaviors. Many people can eventually quit because of trauma—painful experiences that deeply hurt them and act as a catalyst for change. However, hitting rock bottom and pain doesn’t always have to be the answer. We’re confident that a lot of people can quit before major disruptions in their lives and that’s what we’re looking for with this program.
In summary, the service provides a companion for you in this hardship process of getting your life back to normal. By following the phases of the program, each week will become a win. You will compound small victories over time and eventually you will get your life back. Having somebody who you can count on to see what were the moments where you relapse and how to avoid them creating a customized plan and also help you to organize the goals for your next week is something that can be really powerful and is actually something that we all know that we have to do but we don’t. Nowadays, given the amount of distractions, we don’t even take a couple of minutes a week to organize our lives and review what’s going on.
Figure 2. The program looks to create an upward spiral to get back to baseline levels after three months of abstinence. Reviewing each past week and setting goals for the one ahead for each one of the aspects of your life while accomplishing the time off from the addiction. This is all done in hand with someone that will help you to review each week and organize the following ones.
The first session is totally free. You can book a session with us where you essentially can determine if it’s worth it for you or not. Remember that you can start applying all of these tips by yourself and improve your life by making small steps towards your goals.
Wish you nothing but the best!
If you’re interested, book your first meeting below, or simply email us to get in touch.