Quitting Porn

Starting today, I’ll stop watching porn for the remaining of my life.

Why?

1. Time/Life Consuming: Since I was 14 I had about 3,500 porn sessions. Now I want to put that time and energy into something else.
2. Addictive: It has fucked up my dopamine baseline. Some days my brain can’t do anything else other than watching porn or playing video games.
3. Social Impact: It distorted my relationship with women. It makes me incredibly anxious in social settings.

How?

1. From now on every porn session will cost me €200.
2. That money will be split into 4 friends (Sam, Anna, Carsten, and Verena) who will use the money for their social/romantic life.
3. Every relapse will be reported here and shared on social media.
4. Both, my laptop and phone, are now fully blocked against porn.
5. I wrote down a list of alternatives that should help me deal with my craving such as: deep breathing, going for a run, or calling a friend.
6. Now I use Instagram and Dating apps only on my laptop where a Chrome extension will block all forms of sexual imagery.

Rationale

1. Making porn porn the most expensive activity in my life will heavily discourage me from seeing it.
2. The desire to watch porn is often correlated with poor social/romantic connections. Making my friends spend the money that way, should serve as a reminder that I’m choosing to ruin my life while helping my friends improve theirs, for free.
3. Making me publicly accountable on social will make it quite shameful to even try it in the first place.
4. Porn being so accessible is a problem. Those app blockers should keep me away from it.
5. In my case, the craving to watch porn is often a symptom of anxiety, not sexual desire. Those activities should help me address it.
6. Instagram or dating apps are full of pictures of attractive women wearing bikinis. That's ok but a lot of sexual imagery can very quickly lure me into watching porn.

Final Thoughts

Porn might not be intrinsically bad but I had enough. I want to put that energy into something else and clean my brain from it.

Updates

68 days later

No relapses. I discovered Dipsea, a platform with narrated erotic stories that could serve as a non-addictive alternative to porn. I like it, it's not perfect, but could work if I really need inspiration.

51 days later

No relapses. It’s gotten easier as I discover new ways to deal with anxiety. Had a couple of mild cravings after stumbling upon erotic content on Twitter, but stepped out of it.

17 days later

No relapses whatsoever. Two times I craved it, but it was rather mild, and I was able to distract myself.