How To Avoid A Relapse As A Porn Addict

But a porn addiction isn’t easy to stop. If an alcoholic wants to break their addiction, they remove all alcohol from the home. If a smoker wants to quit smoking, they can avoid going places where people smoke. But how is the porn addict supposed to separate themselves from their addiction?

You need a smartphone and laptop for work, social and other purposes. Yet on these very same devices can be found the addictive supernormal stimuli of pornography. This addictive stimuli can be accessed in approximately 2-3 seconds at any time; the only barrier to accessing pornography is needing to be in a private space.

What chance then does a porn addict have of curing their addiction? How can someone cure their addiction when the substance is so easily accessible and hard to separate from? By understanding and controlling the relapse.

The Stages Of A Porn Addict relapse

To avoid a relapse as porn addict, it’s often not good enough to simple avoid watching pornography. Instead, whenever you have relapse, you need to retrace your steps backwards. Think of the minutes, hours or even days leading up to the relapse.

When an alcoholic relapses, it might go something like this: 1. They had a fight with their spouse and are feeling angry. They call their friend (the one who likes to drink) for emotional support. 2. The friend invites them out to a bar to talk about it. The alcoholic rationalises and thinks to themselves: I’ll just order a water. 3. While hanging out at the bar, letting their emotions out to their friends, they order a half-pint of beer. They think to themselves: It’s just a small glass, it doesn’t really count. Anyway, it’s weird to go to a bar and order water. 4. The alcoholic has now drunk 6 pints of beer, and is shouting at the barman for another. The relapse is complete.

When did this alcoholic relapse? Was it when they drank the 6 pints of beer? Was it when they went to the bar? Or maybe, it was when they called their friend who often likes to drink. The alcoholic needs to retrace their steps all the way to the beginning, and notice the early signs of a relapse, and the porn addict needs to do the exact same thing.

A porn addict’s road to relapse might look something like this: 1. Instead of immediately getting out of bed on a Sunday morning, they decide to lie in and play with their phone for a while. 2. They decide to start browsing Instagram, a platform where softporn is often present. They tell themselves I’ll just browse for a few minutes. Inevitably, they encounter a highly sexual image from a “fitness” influencer and get triggered into arousal. 3. They access Pornhub .com and start flicking through various videos. Even at this stage, they think to themselves I’m just browsing, I’m not going to masturbate. 4. They start masturbating to the pornographic media. And the relapse is complete.

If the porn addict wants any chance of preventing their next relapse, they need to pay attention to every stage of their relapse, not only the final stage. And they need to pay close attention to the greatest enemy of all addicts: rationalisation.

Rationalisation

Rationalisation is the most insidious trick that addiction pulls on addicts. You create a story in your mind and you justify the behaviour. On some level you know the story you’ve told yourself is bullshit, but on another level you want to believe this story.

Rationalisation occurs with all addictive supernormal stimuli: Pornography, video games and eating sugary foods. Each of these modern addictive products have one thing in common: they all mimic our evolutionary desires. Because your brain believes engaging in these habits is evolutionarily beneficial, it will create a story that encourages you to do so.

The rationalisation will carry with it a logic that seems to make sense: It’s ok to eat Mcdonalds twice a week. Lots of people do it, it’s normal. I’ll burn off the calories later at the gym. Cooking is time-consuming and I’m a busy person. These rationalisations appear to be logical, but in reality these are stories your brain creates because it wants the sugar and fat inside the burger.

Porn addicts have their own set of stories that lead to a relapse: Watching porn is a normal thing to do. I’m just going to browse and not masturbate. I’m exploring my sexuality by watching lots of different genres. I’m single right now, so what am I supposed to do. I’ll watch one more time, then stop for good.

Learn to watch for rationalisations. Once the pattern of rationalisation beings, you can hit the off switch and break the cycle. Say “NOPE” out loud to yourself, or immediately leave your room and go outside (pulling up your trousers first if necessary).

All Types Of Porn

All sexual stimuli on screens are porn. There are no exceptions.

Aside from going directly to porn sites, the following types of media count as porn:

• Camgirls

• Chatrooms

• Findoms

• Google Images

• Chat roulette sites

• Erotica

• Instagram models

• Tiktok girls

• Sexy Twitch streamers

• Online dating profiles

• Erotic cartoons/comics/manga

• “Fitness” content

There is no “this doesn’t count because..”. Each of these types of media can give you dopamine highs and prolong your porn addiction. If you switch from videos to still images, it doesn’t mean you aren’t looking at porn anymore. A relapse is a relapse.

Porn addicts often attempt to find new and novel ways to satisfy their addiction. Once normal porn videos don’t interest them anymore, they move onto more extreme genres. Then they switch to camgirls, then to online chatrooms, then to hentai manga, then to erotica. The brain enjoys novelty, but each type of porn creates the same dopamine rush in the brain, and ends in the same result for the porn addict: A relapse.

Now this is far from a full guide on how to prevent a porn addiction relapse. For a more comprehensive guide to stop watching porn, I recommend PornReboot.

To the porn addicts out there: Good luck.