Porn addiction is a serious problem for thousands of men around the world. I know this is true because I’ve worked with many of them in my almost 15 years of building the Porn Reboot program. It’s something that can destroy a man’s life and strip him of everything worth living for when it gets bad enough.
Pornography is a growing issue, especially for men who are exposed to it during their younger years. Excessive porn use alters natural brain chemistry and causes a wide range of negative effects. Are you wondering whether your pornography use might be a problem? Over the next few weeks, I want to cover 10 of the most common porn addiction symptoms I see among men seeking help in the Porn Reboot program. These include:
Loss of concentration
Depression
Lack of romance
Lack of achievement
Low energy
Erectile dysfunction
Premature ejaculation
Unusual porn fetishes
No attraction to real-life partners
Loss of ability to orgasm during sex
Loss of concentration is one of the most common porn addiction symptoms. It’s also one of the most debilitating because it affects almost every area of your life. Your mind cannot focus on people, places, and experiences in front of you when it’s preoccupied thinking about porn, sex, or masturbation.
You may notice that loss of concentration affects your performance at school or work. It often holds you back from fully engaging with your spouse or children. Loss of concentration from porn addiction impacts your friendships and relationships with colleagues, coworkers, or business partners, too.
If you notice you struggle to focus on tasks for long periods, have ADHD-like symptoms, or find yourself zoning out constantly, this may be a loss of concentration caused by your porn use. The longer you go without working through your porn problem, the worse your concentration problem will become.
Thankfully, you can rebuild your concentration skills over time. It won’t happen overnight but there are different ways to strengthen your attention once you end your out-of-control behavior with porn, sex, and masturbation. Learning to concentrate fully on the people in front of you and the tasks at hand makes for a more enjoyable, fulfilling life.
Porn addiction is a serious problem for thousands of men around the world. I know this is true because I’ve worked with many of them in my almost 15 years of building the Porn Reboot program. It’s something that can destroy a man’s life and strip him of everything worth living for when it gets bad enough.
Pornography is a growing issue, especially for men who are exposed to it during their younger years. Excessive porn use alters natural brain chemistry and causes a wide range of negative effects. Are you wondering whether your pornography use might be a problem? Over the next few weeks, I want to cover 10 of the most common porn addiction symptoms I see among men seeking help in the Porn Reboot program. These include:
Loss of concentration
Depression
Lack of romance
Lack of achievement
Low energy
Erectile dysfunction
Premature ejaculation
Unusual porn fetishes
No attraction to real-life partners
Loss of ability to orgasm during sex
It’s no secret that dating women or finding a girlfriend in this day and age is a challenge. The rise of dating apps and the decline of interest in commitment make for a brutal playing field. It is a disheartening game to play and men often feel like they’re at a disadvantage from the start.
This especially difficult dating world is to blame for the lack of romance in many different circumstances. But if you also have a problem with your pornography use, your lack of romance might be better attributed to porn addiction.
Exposure to pornography has serious effects on how attractive you find potential partners. Men who view lots of pornography frequently compare women they see in real life to women they watch on the screen.
Some studies suggest that pornography can help relationships but my experience as a porn addiction recovery coach reveals the opposite. I’ve found that excessive exposure to pornography torpedos existing relationships or limits the possibility of developing intimacy in a new one.
Porn is completely void of romance. There is nothing intimate or romantic about pornography. And comparing women in real life to the women you see on the screen will only destroy your likelihood of finding and developing a romantic relationship. If you notice a lack of romance in your life, it might be time to reconsider your porn use.
Porn addiction is a serious problem for thousands of men around the world. I know this is true because I’ve worked with many of them in my almost 15 years of building the Porn Reboot program. It’s something that can destroy a man’s life and strip him of everything worth living for when it gets bad enough.
Pornography is a growing issue, especially for men who are exposed to it during their younger years. Excessive porn use alters natural brain chemistry and causes a wide range of negative effects. Are you wondering whether your pornography use might be a problem? Over the next few weeks, I want to cover 10 of the most common porn addiction symptoms I see among men seeking help in the Porn Reboot program. These include:
Be honest with yourself – how much did you accomplish in the last year before finding the Porn Reboot system? I’m guessing you didn’t do much with your life outside of the bare minimum needed to meet your responsibilities. Most of the men who arrive here have very little going for themselves other than what they have to do in a day.
I know that I honestly didn’t achieve anything when I was hooked on porn. Sure, I worked my butt off for years. Anyone who regularly reads the blog or listens to the podcast knows about my extensive experience in door-to-door sales. I showed up almost every day and worked as hard as I could while I was there, but I didn’t have much to show for it.
All of my free time was spent watching porn and that carried over into every other area of my life. I didn’t excel in anything; I merely achieved average results at best. My mind was preoccupied with my out-of-control behavior so I couldn’t give my all to anything outside of that.
On the other hand, once I quit pornography and stayed off it, I achieved more than I had in several years. My productivity was amazing, my business expanded rapidly, my interpersonal skills soared, and my spiritual growth deepened. I could focus fully on what was in front of me and concentrate for longer periods which helped me accomplish more than I realized I was capable of.
If you notice a lack of achievement in your life, it might have to do with your porn use. Limited or no achievement comes as a result of poor mental strength and a limited capacity for success. You’ll continue struggling until you learn to control your behavior with porn, sex, and masturbation.
Porn addiction is a serious problem for thousands of men around the world. I know this is true because I’ve worked with many of them in my almost 15 years of building the Porn Reboot program. It’s something that can destroy a man’s life and strip him of everything worth living for when it gets bad enough.
Pornography is a growing issue, especially for men who are exposed to it during their younger years. Excessive porn use alters natural brain chemistry and causes a wide range of negative effects. Are you wondering whether your pornography use might be a problem? Over the next few weeks, I want to cover 10 of the most common porn addiction problems I see among men seeking help in the Porn Reboot program. These include:
The tenth and final symptom in our series on porn addiction symptoms is losing the ability to orgasm during sex. This might be one of the worst symptoms of all. Finding no real pleasure from sex is an emasculating and alarming experience. And it likely means you’re close to developing erectile dysfunction if you haven’t already.
It’s time for you to eliminate pornography from your life if this is something you’re dealing with.
Several things occur during the onset of losing your ability to orgasm. Signs that you’re on the way include decreased sensitivity in your penis, a sharp decline in arousal with your regular sexual partners, and developing strange or unexpected fetishes. The most common indicator that you’re losing the ability to orgasm during sex, though, is needing to think or fantasize about porn while you’re actively with a woman in bed.
Once you’re at this point, brother, there’s no reason to continue watching porn. You likely have a full-blown pornography addiction at this point, whether you want to acknowledge and accept it or not. No healthy sexual being requires a virtual stimulus to perform and neither should you. Compulsive pornography use is a detriment to your life and only holds you back from everything that awaits you.
Wondering how to end your out-of-control behavior with porn, sex, and masturbation? The Porn Reboot system can help. We provide a clear-cut path to ending your compulsive sexual behavior, rewiring your brain, and building a life that is worth living.
The Porn Reboot system is unlike anything you’ve tried before. We don’t rely on counting days, on white-knuckling, or on forced abstinence. Instead, we have a method that works with your brain and biology, not against them. If you’re ready to end your out-of-control behavior and change your life, we’d love for you to join us today.
I often hear from guys in our Porn Reboot groups who were doing well for a period then fell off seemingly out of nowhere. Everything was going right: they were eating well, they were on a good trajectory in their career, their family life was calm, and they were staying away from porn and masturbation. But all of a sudden something happened, a little unexpected twist, and they slipped.
I know I have some experience with that, too. There were times in my life when my gym routine was on point, I could take rejection from women without batting an eye, I was eating well, and my performance at work was top-notch. Then a little thing would happen and completely throw me off.
I have this concept that I think describes these situations perfectly. I call it the three modes of reboot progress. These three modes include:
Survival Mode
Thrive Mode
Impact Mode
If you keep struggling with taking three steps forward and three steps back, this might be helpful for you. I encourage you to read this post and then do some journaling to determine which mode you may be in at the moment.
So, what does each mode entail?
Survival Mode
The dictionary defines survival as continuing to exist or remaining intact. Living in survival mode means doing just enough to get by without completely breaking down. From what I’ve noticed in over a decade of working with men and observing general human behavior, the majority of people live their whole lives in survival mode. They spend the entirety of their time on this planet doing what they can scrape by but never moving beyond this.
When you’re in survival mode you lack clarity, purpose, or aim; you’re simply doing all you can to make it through the day. You’re treading water trying to pay the bills, support your family, and make ends meet. Maybe your ideal weight is 175 but you’re sitting at an overweight 230 pounds doing what you can to keep the scale from climbing higher, but nothing to bring that number down.
People living in survival mode are terrified of taking risks. They aren’t willing to bet on themselves. They’re not willing to step out of their comfort zone (no matter how uncomfortable it looks from the outside) and do what it takes to rise above. And if you’re in survival mode, you’re going to stay stuck in the same miserable cycle of three steps forward, three steps back.
Men living in survival mode feel entitled. They believe the government should take care of them, that women owe them sex, and that they deserve compliments for completing even the most basic of tasks. If you’re stuck in survival mode, chances are you’re too busy blaming others for your problems or looking for shortcuts to take responsibility for your actions. But realizing and accepting personal responsibility is necessary to escape the survival mode cycle.
I don’t work with men stuck in survival mode. There’s nothing I can do to help them. Until they are willing to step up to the plate and take responsibility for their lives, there isn’t a single thing I can do to make them see what they need to do. If this is you, I suggest you swallow your pride, own up to the truth of your reality, and get ready to make some changes as soon as possible.
Thrive Mode
The next mode is thrive mode. Men in thrive mode have escaped survival mode but are now stuck in a different type of downward spiral, and often can’t understand why. These men are experiencing growth in every area of their reboot, doing well in their careers, rebuilding their families, and getting their health in order, but they don’t know when to stop. It’s like the pendulum swung from one extreme to the other.
Thrive mode is deceiving because it feels like you’re in a good place. You make good money, you have nice things, you don’t need to worry about your bills, and you can often afford to do whatever you want to do. Sure, you still experience challenges but they are different types of challenges than those you face in survival mode.
The men in our implementation and intensive programs typically tend to be in thrive mode. Men who make the financial commitment to our group have usually escaped survival mode and recognize the worth of investing in themselves. However, they still can’t seem to make it over the final mental hump. They still have an empty pit inside that they try to fill with this insatiable hunger for success, but no matter how far they move up the ladder they still feel like they aren’t winning.
Does this feel familiar? If so, there’s one final piece of the puzzle that you’re missing. The seeming strengths that brought you this far will continue to be your weaknesses. You can continue building your business, expanding your stock portfolio, adding 0’s to your bank account, and showering your family with everything they could possibly need or want, but you won’t fill that emptiness inside of you until you move into the final mode.
Impact Mode
Impact mode is the third and final mode of reboot progress. It’s the most difficult one to come to terms with but it’s also the most rewarding. I didn’t get there myself until just the last few years but I believe it’s something that every man should aim for. You transition into impact mode once you recognize that you didn’t move from survival mode to thrive mode alone, no matter how self-made you believe you are.
People paved the way and lifted you up in different ways along your journey. It happened with a little bit of kindness here or an important bit of well-timed wisdom or advice there. Now you’re at a place surrounded by abundance, every area of your reboot is thriving, and you have more than you could ever need. Your life is so full that you have almost no choice but to help other people, but if you choose to continue amassing things trying to fill that empty pit then you miss the beauty of impact mode.
Once you realize that true joy and fulfillment come from helping others, you cross the bridge from thrive mode to impact mode. It’s a wonderful gift to turn around and help others the way you were helped along the way, too. You’re not consumed by the fear of not making it in life or the fear of losing everything; you know that you’re in a good place and you want to share the path to this place with others.
What Mode Are You In?
So I want you to ask yourself, brother, what mode are you in? Put your ego aside, look around you, and answer honestly. If you’re in survival mode, stop blaming other people. Start hanging out with those doing better than you are and set some goals. If you’re in thrive mode, start asking yourself what you can do to remove the focus from you and shift it to others.
Set some time aside, do some writing, and figure out which mode you are in. Once you can answer honestly, start doing the work to move into the next phase, with the goal of ultimately arriving at impact mode. And on the off chance that you are already in impact mode, what can you do to create more impact? Can you turn up the volume? Can you do more?
As men who have learned to control their out-of-control behavior, I believe we have a responsibility to help others. Aside from meditation, I feel most fulfilled when I’m working with other men. Maybe you disagree with that, but I know it’s the case for me. And maybe it’s because you haven’t reached impact mode yet, brother, because there is so much more to life than simply amassing things. We have the opportunity to impact the world for the better.
“I’m struggling not to relapse right now. I need some help.”
“I’m tempted to masturbate right now but reaching out to stay accountable.”
“I find this so difficult and challenging. The urges are overwhelming.”
The comments and messages I receive most frequently on our YouTube channel or in our groups are along these lines. If you’re one of those brothers who can relate to these types of statements, your old habit pattern is to struggle. It’s to use willpower to keep your behavior under control.
But these are exactly the types of old habit patterns you need to let go of to successfully reboot. I want you to ask yourself, what exactly is the struggle? I even use the phrase in my send-off on our podcasts, referring to myself as your brother in this struggle. So what is the struggle?
From what I’ve seen over the years, the struggle is your fight on how to stop porn addiction by relying on willpower. It’s finding an accountability partner and leaning hard into them instead of taking responsibility for your behaviors and your life. It’s the way you battle your biology while trying to reboot instead of working with your brain. These bare minimum approaches will keep you trapped forever.
The Porn Reboot system is just that, a system. It’s set up to keep you from relying on your willpower. It’s a system that teaches you to overcome your addiction by working on yourself instead. It removes the emotional toll that a struggle implies and instead offers you a clear, direct path to a life free from porn and compulsive sexual behavior.
For example, I see men who come in and put a lot of weight into their slips or relapses. They get all worked up and consumed by what relapse means in their mind. But the Porn Reboot system doesn’t turn them into emotional experiences; slips are data, plain and simple.
The longer you hold onto this habit of a struggle mindset, the longer you’re going to struggle. Viewing your reboot as something excruciating and impossible will keep it that way so long as that’s the way you view it.
I suggest that you shift your perspective on your journey toward a porn-free life. Your process doesn’t need to be a struggle. Applying the Porn Reboot system to your life is a straightforward way to leave your compulsive behaviors behind.
Here’s the way I see it, brother. You are worthy of love. You are capable of giving love. You are not worthless. You are not hopeless. You are not incapable of rebooting. You don’t have to struggle because you’ve stumbled upon a way to overcome your behavior in a way that works with your mind.
You don’t decide to quit using porn or acting out on your compulsive behavior and then stop completely the next day. Most of the time it takes a while for you to recognize that there’s a serious problem in the first place. The recovery process is just that: a process.
The five stages of change (sometimes called the five stages of recovery) describe the process of changing a compulsive behavior. You’re probably familiar with it by now if you’ve spent time in any recovery circles or read much on the topic. It’s a helpful outline for understanding how change happens when you struggle with compulsive behavior or addiction. These stages are:
Precontemplation
Contemplation
Planning
Action
Maintenance
Although quite a few men are aware of the five stages of recovery already, I’ve also noticed that plenty have yet to hear of them. I want to give you a quick outline of each stage to help you determine where you’re at in your process.
Precontemplation
Precontemplation is the initial stage where you don’t recognize that you have a problem. Your world hasn’t caught on fire yet. Porn Addiction Effect hasn’t had a significant impact on your life yet. You might feel some residual discomfort or experience a few consequences but it hasn’t gotten out of control.
Maybe you’re making justifications for your actions. You truly believe you could stop if you wanted to. If your partner confronts you about your porn use, you’re convinced that they’re overreacting and making a big deal out of nothing. All of your buddies watch porn and jerk off, what’s wrong with you doing it, too?
But the difference between you and your buddies is that your behavior is compulsive. You’re not simply watching porn, you’re using it as an unhealthy coping mechanism. Your porn use and compulsive behavior have been getting progressively worse over time. The problem is actively escalating but you still haven’t noticed that there’s an issue.
Contemplation
Contemplation is the stage where you start to experience and recognize some of the negative effects porn has on your life. Sometimes it’s the amount of time you spend watching it or how distracted you feel when you aren’t. Perhaps it started affecting your sex life. Maybe you notice that you can’t have sex without watching porn first, or you fantasize about scenes during intercourse.
The contemplation stage is when you begin thinking this might be a real problem. The cons start to outweigh the pros. You start thinking about making some changes. You might consider trying to masturbate or watch porn in moderation. For example, instead of jerking off every day, you might cut it back to once a week.
Once you try cutting back, though, is when you realize how trapped you are. You may be able to stay off of it for a few days or weeks or months, but you inevitably find yourself back where you started. Maybe you find yourself in an even worse situation than before. So you’re back to the idea that it might be time to do something about this problem.
Planning
Once you’re ready to commit to making some changes, you’ve reached the planning stage. It doesn’t mean you’ve fully committed yet but you’re starting to look for solutions. You’re searching online for resources, watching videos, listening to podcasts, and reading blog posts like this one.
But the planning stage is the stage where the distinction between two types of men becomes clear: Type A and Type B. I’ve talked about the differences between Type A and Type B men before. One type will move through the planning phase and into the next phase. One will get stuck in the planning phase and spin his wheels endlessly.
Type B men are ready to make changes. They do a ton of research but aren’t ready to do anything about it. These men consume tons of content online but never implement it in their lives. They might even reach out and email us about their problem, but they never follow through on their request.
Type A men are also ready to make changes. They do the same sort of research that Type B men do but they decide on a plan of action. These men don’t just read, watch, and listen to things online; they take the content they consume and determine how they’re going to apply it to their lives. Then they move into the next stage of change.
Action
If you’re reading this blog post right now, you’re most likely in the action stage. Men in the action stage have identified that there’s a problem, researched how to address it, outlined a plan of action, and are now in the process of following through on their plan.
A ton of work occurs during the action stage. This is the time when you need to establish your routine and commit to it. At some point, the initial alarm and fear that led you to seek a solution will wear off. The action stage is when you build your new behaviors into lasting habits so you can persist through these lulls in motivation.
The action stage can take quite a while. You begin to make different choices than you would have before. Sure, you might experience a slip or two during the action phase but you continue moving forward. But you use these slips to understand your triggers, learn to manage your urges, and build up new coping skills. Over time, these slowly become your new way of doing things.
Maintenance
When your routine and habits are set in place, you’ve reached the maintenance stage. This stage is exactly what it sounds like: you continue maintaining the progress that you’ve built from the beginning.
Your self-image begins to change during the maintenance stage as you recognize how far you’ve come. You’ve built up many areas of your reboot capital, from your spiritual life to your social life, your finances to your health. The maintenance stage is when you finally begin to feel like you’re on the right track, that you’ve overcome your compulsive behavior.
And you will, brother. You’ll no longer be the man you used to be. By the time you reach the maintenance stage, you’ve built an entirely different life than you had before, one that’s worth living. So long as you continue taking action and moving through the five stages of change, a life free from pornography can be your reality, too.
I have clients who don’t recover from their porn addiction.
That’s the reality.
6 years of recovery mentoring and a few hundred clients in, I’ve seen men in their mid to late twenties who choose to keep on watching porn enter their thirties and totally f**k their lives up.
While, as a professional, my clients do have the highest porn addiction recovery rate out of all the options out there, I still fret and stay up late trying to figure out how and why some clients don’t recover. Not everyone can be saved and this frustrates the hell out of me sometimes.
Not to sound all “zen” and deep- but today, during my morning meditation, I figured out a few reasons why. (this also means that my meditation session sucked, lol)
Don’t get me wrong, though. This process took about 5 years and today was the day I experienced my “revelation”.
The first thing to understand is that YOUR BRAIN DOES NOT WANT TO CHANGE.
The older you get, the tougher it is to recover. If you are over the age of 26, your brain has made enough sense of life and society that it doesn’t really need to change that much. You’ve created mental models for most things in life and complacency sets in. The human brain naturally resists rewiring of any sorts and prefers comfort and familiarity.
This process is called homeostasis.
This is one reason why recovery from porn addiction is not as easy as “staying away from porn for 90 Days”.
There are MANY things that our brain doesn’t want to change- not just watching porn and masturbating to it. I’ve compiled them into three main things which I call the three enemies of recovery.
Enemy #1: Confirmation Bias
Confirmation bias is the way your brain goes through information and discards anything which doesn’t fit the way you see the world. Remember- the brain resists change. Confirmation bias keeps us comfortable and prevents us from rewiring our brains neural pathways.
You can see confirmation bias demonstrated online where different people have polar opposite reactions to a video or article.
Another example is religion or some sort of ideology. Your ideology comes from two things: your beliefs and emotions.
Your beliefs are formed from a neural pathway in your brain being used over and over again- for years. Your emotions are neuro-chemical reactions. When combined, you get an ideology- like a religious conviction, political belief, radical feminism, socialism, radical veganism (this is apparently a thing), and so on.
The problem is that confirmation bias makes it difficult to analyze anything which is different from your belief or emotions. This is why many men cannot accept the fact that they are “porn addicts”. Your idea of an addict is not linked to pornography. Your beliefs about quitting porn hold you back.
Here’s an example you can probably relate to:
When you are experiencing a streak of not watching porn and masturbation, you begin to believe and tell yourself that “I’ve got this under control”- then you start getting sloppy with the things that kept your off porn in the first place and next thing you know, you are relapsing to something like a very light sex scene in a movie.
This happens OVER and OVER again…but you never change. You never change and keep thinking you have it under control because you haven’t changed your belief to something more realistic such as: “I don’t have this under control until my brain rewires itself AND it takes more than a few months to recover from porn addiction.”
Enemy #2: Technology
Many men- especially millennial men, use technology irresponsibly and there is a price to pay for that. The cost is damage to their ability to synthesize information and to think independently.
My research into my clients revealed a few things:
The more you watch T.V, the less likely you are to recover from your porn addiction. Men who watch T.V, Netflix, and Youtube as entertainment for more than 10 hours a week have a HIGH relapse rate.
Men who are most likely to relapse consume information via technology without discipline. They look up anything they don’t know on their phones before thinking for themselves. They would rather watch a video than read a book about recovery.
See, the majority of modern humans cannot deal with boredom or lack of satisfaction in their lives simply because every time they feel bored, they tune into T.V, Social Media or….porn.
We have not trained ourselves to sit and think in silence. As a result, many men cannot sit still and evaluate their emotional state- a necessary step in recovery.
They don’t THINK enough and as a result are not only prone to relapse but are prone to being unfulfilled and unsuccessful.
In our current world, success is not determined by how much manual labor you can do, or how hard you can work. It’s predicted by your ability to think and be creative.
Enemy #3: Lazy Thinking and Beliefs
Lazy Beliefs are basically beliefs which you formed to make life easier for you and make you feel better when you don’t achieve your goal.
Easy thinking makes you soft and fragile because it often puts the responsibility of your situation on someone else.
Here are a few examples:
a) “This time will be different because____________ will happen!”
This is the belief that something positive will happen in the future that will change your life without any effort on your part. For instance:
“I’ll stop watching porn and masturbating when I have sex /get a girlfriend/to get married to the right woman .”
“I’ll become more attractive/ stop being stressed when I get a good job/ become very successful ___years from now.”
“I won’t slip or relapse this time because I got a therapist/ recovery coach/ joined a group.”
b)”I’m ___________ therefore ____event probably won’t happen to me.”
This happens when you believeyou are exempt from something happening to you because you are “special”.
Let’s start with my favorite:
“I watched 70 videos about not fapping on Youtube and I am a Level 5 Black Belt with 500 Days of not fapping. so I’m going to recover for sure!”
Reality: You can remain in the early stages of recovery from porn addiction with no relapses for months and even YEARS only to relapse 2 years later because you still haven’t rewired your brain or dealt with the underlying issues that made you addicted to porn in the first place.
The ugly truth is that many men who claim to have recovered from porn addiction have not. They simply regressed to a stage of their addiction where they can go months without watching porn or masturbating- but they eventually slip and binge for a few days, then get back on the horse. This pattern will likely continue throughout their lives.
“I’m a strong Christian/Religious person- my faith and belief in Jesus Christ/ religious deity will pull me through”
Reality: God helps those who help themselves. Faith is an amazing thing to have in your arsenal against addiction, but Faith without a realistic goal, faith without doing the necessary recovery work, heck, even faith without a filter installed on your devices will NOT work.
” I won’t be unemployed and lonely in my thirties because I’m in college now and I have some friends.”
(Actual quote by a twenty-something-year-old porn addict who is an “introvert”, has no close friends, is failing his sophomore year in college and is broke because of his severe addiction to live cam sites).
Reality: As I mentioned earlier, I have followed the lives of dozens of my clients over the years. If you don’t fix your porn addiction and any other unhealthy behaviors in your twenties, it only gets tougher as you get older.
It is heartbreaking to speak to men in their 40’s who literally watched all their dreams slip away because of their effects of pornography on their lives:lack of focus, complacency with their career, lack of friends and an encouraging network, never attaining any form of financial independence, never being in a fulfilling long term relationship, or choosing porn over their one relationship.
“I can’t wake up early because I need at least 9 hours of sleep to function”
Reality: Sleep is important, so sleep as much as you need, but if you consistently go to bed at 2 am because you’re up watching Youtube videos, catching up on TV series, edging to porn or juggling 5 dead-end conversations on Tinder, you are only fooling yourself. Try going to bed at 9:30 PM if you can and see how many hours you really need. Some of you will literally solve 90% of your problems by being in bed by 10 PM every night.
“I would be more successful/ have more money if not for the____(blame someone else) who keeps me down!”
Reality: Who is the scapegoat in your life? Your parents? Your wife or girlfriend? Trump? The porn industry? Take 100% responsibility for your life.
Here’s what I mean by 100% responsibility: If my car gets rear-ended while I’m rushing to an important meeting and I am late as a result, its MY responsibility, not the idiot behind me who was texting and driving. If I wasn’t rushing and had left 30 minutes earlier, I would not be the victim in the accident.
If I am in a bar with friends and some drunk pick a fight with me and I get knocked out, it’s 100% MY RESPONSIBILITY because I could have
1) Not reacting in a way that resulted in a fight
2) Not been as easy to knock out (taken my martial arts training more seriously)
3) Not been drinking in a bar
One last one since I’m on a roll (this will probably lose me some subscribers- but whatever): if you are in a relationship and your girl cheats on you, its 100% YOUR RESPONSIBILITY.
1) There were probably warning signs that she was not long term material, but you ignored them because “she was the One”.
2) You got comfortable in your relationship and didn’t give her what she needed, so another guy swooped in.
3) Your relationship game wasn’t great/you weren’t experienced enough and some other guy who was better suited to her seduced her. In which case, she wasn’t long term material in the first place and most likely not the right woman for you.
The point is- take full responsibility for your life and trust me- you’ll be a much happier man.
There you have it- the three enemies of recovery.
It is my hope that bringing these to your awareness will prevent you from falling into this trap.
Do you have a resistance to admitting that you have a porn addiction?
I admit- when I began my journey to end my out of control porn and masturbation behavior, I simply refused to categorize myself as an addict. After all, I came from an educated, moderately religious family with conservative values. I experienced a relatively happy, and memorable childhood. I never tried any hardcore drugs, and in early adulthood, I tried to live my life by the book.
Yet, I would find myself acting like a possessed heroin junkie anytime I went without porn or masturbating for three days.
Many men find it really difficult to admit they have a problem with pornography because it simply hasn’t been labeled an addiction by the mainstream media or society in general. That’s going to change over the next few years, but in the meantime, I’d like to point out why porn and masturbation addiction is so much trickier to beat than other addictions.
In fact, some of my clients who recovered from alcohol and drug addictions confirm that porn addiction effect, sex, and masturbation are harder to quit than those substances.
There are two simple criteria when it comes to identifying where a person’s porn use is addictive:
1) You have no control over it. This means you’ve made a firm decision to quit, but gave in several times.
2) Negative Consequences. It is affecting your emotions, career, relationships, productivity, academics or lifestyle in a negative way.
BOTH criteria must be met for porn, sex or masturbation to be classified as an addiction.
But the LEVEL of loss of control and the level of negative consequences must also be considered when trying to stop this behavior.
In my experience, the LEVEL of porn addiction varies depending on different factors in your life.
This is one crucial fact that many things all the quit-fapping influencers on YouTube, and even therapists don’t understand.
Excuse me while I rant for a moment.
This is not a game or a challenge – it is a serious problem that destroys lives.
A handful of techniques, tips, and philosophies MIGHT help a 21-year-old who spends 80% of his day glued to his smartphone or computer- but it will do nothing for the 28-year-old young professional who is trying to succeed at his career, or the 33 year old who realizes that he’s thrown away his twenties, or the 40-year-old who feels that he sabotaged his career and serious life relationships perhaps losing his kids to divorce, or the 52-year-old who feels that its pretty much over for him.
Just because a high testosterone 21-year-old feels guilty about masturbating twice a day doesn’t mean that a 27+-year-old man going places in life has the same problems as he does.
Some young men don’t know what it like to go through a break up (because they are so stuck on porn, that they can’t get in a relationship), deal with real-life stress such as paying mortgages, keeping employees on payroll, juggling work and kids, taking care of aging parents, paying taxes, deal with workplace politics- the list goes on.
Any 18 to 24-year-old reading this email is without a doubt above average and has some big aspirations in life. Take your problem with porn seriously, handle it and start living your best life instead of spending years playing 90 Day challenges.
[Rant Over]
Ever wonder why sometimes, you binge watch porn for weeks and sometimes you have the ability to 100% abstain for months or even years?
I used to wonder the same thing as well.
This happens because your level of porn addiction and your COMMITMENT to quit varies depending on life circumstances such as your : 1) Emotions 2) Stress 3) Relationships 4) Financial situation 5) Family
Next time you are watching a video, reading a book, or looking for a counselor to help you with your porn addiction, screen them to find out if they understand this.
Here are the levels of behavior with pornography:
Level 1
This is the person who watches pornography three or four times a year. In fact, if you can count the number of times you’ve watched porn in a 12 month period on one hand, then this is the level you are at.
Due to the highly sexualized world we live in, there is of course always a risk of increasing involvement with pornography. If you have well established healthy ways of managing your emotions, stress, and family life, you are in a good place.
Level 2
At this level- you are not addicted either. However, you have watched porn and masturbated to it 6 to 12 times a year. In some of those cases, you were not simply aroused.
One or more sessions may have been triggered by curiosity due to something you came across online or perhaps because of a reference someone made. At this level, you may have watched porn to medicate/feel better about some undesirable situation in your life.
Level 3
At this point, pornography is quite likely to become a problem. You are viewing porn at least once a month, possibly for a few months or years. You know you are at level three when you try to stop yourself each month, but no matter how hard you try, you always end up slipping. Usually, you binge for a while, then try to quit again.
This is the point where many men begin to use their will power and count down the days which they have spent off porn. It’s not an out of control problem yet, but it does take an effort to quit since the porn you are watching at this point is no longer soft core porn- your tastes are gradually changing.
FANTASY is what moves you from level 3 to level 4.
At Level 3, when you are not watching porn, there is a very high chance that you are fantasizing or sexualizing your encounters with other people.
When you fantasize intensely for prolonged periods of time- away from your device, you release chemicals which make you feel good- a feeling that only gets better by watching porn.
Level 4
At this level, pornography is having an obvious effect on your life. You may start noticing that porn is affecting your career, your family or your school work.
Your fantasies are out of control at this point. When you are not watching porn, you often find yourself fantasizing about porn and sex. You are watching pornography a couple of times a month and you have been trying to different ways to stop. Usually, nothing works at this point and you start getting worried about why it seems so difficult to quit. This is the point where you may search for how to stop watching porn online.
In my experience, this level is also your final chance to end your porn use on your own. Beyond this, your entire life, whether you realize it or not, will begin to be dictated by your porn addiction. The reason why is that left unchecked, your behavior with pornography begins to generate deeper psychological issues.
Over the years, I’ve realized that there are only TWO responses to level 4. For the purpose of simplicity, I’ve divided these responses into two groups of men which we will call Type A and Type B.
Type A:
This is an already accomplished person who understands what it takes to achieve success on a consistent basis. They have usually established themselves in their career, and have a relatively balanced lifestyle. This means that you have friends, close bonds with family, take care of your health and know how to go about getting most of the things you want in life. If you are a student, you are also relatively successful in your academic life.
Type A men, once they understand that they have a problem, see it as an obstacle to their life. Their natural reaction is the same as it is to every other obstacle in their life- to get rid of it by any means necessary because they have places to go. They will usually visit a counselor, get a mentor or invest in something actionable to get back their edge on their own.
When searching for help online, they screen everyone for results and success – that is, whomever they seek help from must be moving forward in their life as well. Action has always worked for them and thanks to this habit, they usually experience positive results in their recovery.
Some of my most successful clients are driven lawyers, engineers, students in law school, student-athletes, salespeople, doctors, and business owners.
It must be noted that some Type A people do not seek help- usually because they are never informed that one could have a compulsive behavior with porn, they are misdiagnosed by a counselor or they are at a level of financial success that insulates them from the true impact of their problem.
Type B:
This person has usually not achieved their goals or is lagging behind for one reason or the other. Typically, they have good intentions but already have problems motivating themselves, have developed bad habits such as social media/smartphone addiction/internet addiction, bad diets, play video games compulsively or a minor drug/alcohol problem.
They may have a career or be in college, but they would not rate themselves at anywhere near their potential. Some have a genuine desire to be successful and have tried, but their repeated failures have left them with a lot of self-doubts.
As is sadly the case of most men seeking direction, I have noticed that Type B men were often diagnosed with depression, ADD/ADHD or some other disorder at some point in their life. This diagnosis then served as a subconscious crutch throughout their lives- frequently sabotaging their attempts to excel in life.
Type B men, once they understand that they have a problem, will respond as they have to most things in life. Typically, they will seek the opinion of someone who is similar to them. They gravitate towards influencers on social media who are entertaining or are in a similar demographic to them. They are more likely to accept popular opinion as fact as opposed to doing their own research.
The popular way, of course, is usually the easy way. In the case of quitting porn use, it is:
1) Stay off porn for 90 Days and count REALLY HARD
2) Improve your lifestyle and be a man
3) Watch more videos about not masturbating and the more you watch, the more you will understand
Type B men take massive action- but their action is typically limited to watching a lot of videos or reading a lot of articles, comments, and opinions. When they do try to curb their behavior with porn, they usually fail since they don’t have a definite plan.
Their self-doubt, reinforced by underachieving in other areas of their lives kicks in. When the effects of porn addiction on their life become too unbearable, the Type B man start seeks help, but unfortunately, because he doesn’t believe in investing in himself, seeks cheap and quick fixes which usually makes them prey to scams and hustlers looking to make a quick buck online.
If you fall into the Type B category or are a Type A person with a few character traits of Type B showing up in your life, don’t get discouraged.
I was in that category as well till I was fortunate enough to find a mentor who opened my eyes to my self sabotaging way of thinking.
Level 5
At this point, viewing pornography is a daily habit and a major part of your life. You are watching porn and masturbating just to fall asleep. You sexualize every single woman (and sometimes even men) you see.
Level 5 is when you stop growing and developing as a person. Your career, your relationships with people- everything is set up to maximize porn use.
For instance, you spend a lot of time alone in front of your computer or phone. You never initiate a social meet up of any sort for dinner or a movie. All your hobbies are solitary and you never step out of the comfort zone of those who were already in your life when you reached Level 5.
Anytime I speak to a man at Level 5, I find that he has paid a heavy price for his porn addiction.
Some of the things he has sacrificed at this point are:
1) Career: He has lost a job, or severely underperformed at his career due to his porn use. 2) Relationships: Intimate relationships have ended. Either due to his partner leaving him because of his incessant porn use or due to him sabotaging the relationship due to his inability to fully commit. He always feels that there is a better woman out there..always wondering if perhaps he can upgrade. 3) Education: Mediocre to failing performance in academics
When you try to quit at this point, you begin to experience strong withdrawal symptoms such as erectile dysfunction, irritability, extreme daytime fatigue, headaches, problems sleeping and social anxiety- worrying more than often about peoples opinions.
By this point, you quite literally do not know how to stop. Both Type A and Type B men realize that they need help at this point. Again, their responses at Level 5 are quite different.
If you are a Type A person, you will usually disclose your struggle to a trusted friend or some sort of mentor. This is usually a good step, as it brings your porn and masturbation use out of secrecy. You then have the courage to share it with more people. Many Type A men are surprised to learn at this point that the person they shared it with faces the same problem!
If you are a Type B, you will do one of two things.
Break psychologically and ignore the problem-effectively incorporating Level 5 into your life. You might find rationalizations to back up your decisions such as everyone does it, sex/porn addiction does not exist, on and on…
At this point, you fall for the ideology of sex-positive counselors, MGTOW, or some group with relieves your guilt and shame for viewing porn.
The second thing a Type B man does is send desperate emails, comments, and one-liners to others online asking for advice. Since you haven’t developed the habit of taking action like the Type A man- which involves a small element of risk, you take action any way you know how- by seeking help in the most risk-averse way.
Level 6
This level is characterized by feelings of being completely out of control. Every single day of your life involves thoughts of pornography and in an age of free porn, you are spending money on porn in the form of paid sites and cam sites.
Depression and hopelessness are two common feelings at this level. This doesn’t mean that you have no desire to quit, on the contrary, you do want to quit, but your self-doubt and lack of hope are overwhelming. Many men at Level 6 continue using pornography, even after being caught with it.
The type of pornography you are viewing has drastically escalated to violent material including bestiality, gore, snuff ( death), incest, rape, extreme violence, and other depraved material. These are the only genres of pornography that can elicit an orgasm and sometimes even an erection. Staying in Level 6 leads to acting out.
This means seeking real-life sexual encounters to satisfy your addiction. This can range from seeking female, male or transgender escorts via different websites and apps, searching for random hookups, or in some cases, predatory behavior towards vulnerable people.
At Level 6, every aspect of your life is filled with lies as you need to do so in order to cover up your secret life. A man at Level 6 can maintain this behavior for years-even decades. When discovered, there is always a very high price to pay. Relationships fall apart in traumatic ways, careers are destroyed, sometimes, men end up in jail.
The good news about Level 6 is that the stakes are so high when you get caught, that it can trigger a very strong emotional desire to quit.
The bad news is that in Levels 5 and 6, you are delusional in your beliefs- that is, while you may acknowledge that your behavior is out of control, you don’t see its true impact on your life. You have also incorporated compulsive lying and manipulation into your day to day life since your behavior must be maintained in secrecy.
Breaking The Armor
Over the years, I’ve developed an exercise which I call breaking the armor. The purpose of this exercise is to help a man at Level 5 or 6 drop his conditioning for a brief moment and actually see what his life could look like without porn.
In my opinion- this is VERY important. After years of porn use and masturbation- let’s say you started between the ages of 8-14 and carried on for 12-15 years, you truly have no concept of what a life without pornography looks like.
Porn is your first “relationship”.
Its comforted you as a teen when you were anxious.
It kept you company when you were lonely.
When you were stressed and overwhelmed, porn was always there to take off the edge.
On restless nights it helped you fall asleep.
It taught you about sex and perhaps even gave you some sexual confidence.
It was always there for you when your heart was broken.
Unfortunately, porn overstayed its welcome…
But how do you let go of the one thing you could depend on for years?
What would life look like?
That where Breaking The Armor comes in.
Through a series of coaching questions, we gradually remove all your emotional armor or conditioning. This is a temporary process- but for a brief moment, you are free of your shame, your guilt, your lies, and your rationalization.
You are YOU.
This is a powerful moment for many men.
When some of my clients at Level 5 and 6 see the incredible damage porn has had on their families, finances, careers, relationships, self-esteem, social life and on their emotions, some break down and cry.
It’s like being possessed against your will and knowledge by a different personality which pretended to be you for years…and one day realizing who you really are for the first time.
The loss, self-betrayal, and lies you told yourself become evident. You see the man you COULD have been if porn didn’t get out of control in your life.
At that moment, most men decide that they are done for good. This is when the recovery process truly begins- when you have actually FELT what it’s like your greatest self.
Understanding these levels are so important to your recovery. This is why I have never paid much attention to all the fapping/not-fapping movements. It is a willpower solution that only helps men at Level 3 or below.
To effectively recover, you or the person guiding you in your recovery must first determine what level you are at.
Once I determine what level a man is at, I know the exact steps needed to help him recover.
He will be able to identify his boundaries, develop the right amount of self-awareness, control fantasies, dialogue with himself, anticipate urges, deal with strong emotions of sadness, loss or hopelessness, accurately examine his rationalizations and much more- depending on the Level he is at.
Withdrawal symptoms are also experienced differently at each Level. The effects of withdrawals are physical and emotional. In the past 7 years, I have not met a single client out of 400+ who could identify more than two withdrawal symptoms. They are able to identify them weeks later.
Now, at this point- a Type B man will be thinking:
“J.K…man, I really want to quit, but you make it sound so complicated and even impossible.”
If that is you, understand that your habit of taking the easy way is kicking in right at this moment. Fight it.
The Type A man will be thinking of how he can best put this information to good use.
I could keep going, but I’ll end up writing a book. The point is – take the first step of identifying your level of addiction to pornography.
Bookmark and review this blog post again and ask yourself whether you have moved from one level to the next (up or down) over the years.
Honestly identify whether you are a Type A or a Type B kind of man.
There is nothing wrong with either-such is life, although the Type B man is clearly at a disadvantage. As I mentioned earlier- I was a typical Type B guy with a few Type A traits until I broke my armor and dedicated several very painful years to change my life.
If you want to hear a little bit about how I changed myself to more of a Type A man, watch this Video:
Enemy #3: Lazy Thinking and Beliefs
