Porn — The super-stimulus of the 21st century? [Part 3 — Final]
In the last post, I discussed about superstimuli, how they hijack the reward circuitry, and explored a lot of recent studies that show the darker side of porn. Also, there is a huge industrial impact on research because research needs money and money comes from institutions in this research (like industries). In this part, I’ll give some advice for quitting porn, what worked for me and some famous people who did NoFap.
Still not convinced? Do a “trial version” of NoFap!
You still might say, meh, it doesn’t affect me, I don’t feel porn impacting my life at all. I believed that too for a long time because I didn’t see any part of my life getting affected. Then I tried it as an experiment for 30 days, and my mind was blown! I would suggest you to try not watching porn and not stimulating yourself for a month.
If you believe that porn is not an addiction, you shouldn’t feel compelled to watch porn in these 30 days of abstinence. Try it! Be conscious of how you feel over time. You’ll immediately see a lot of changes, especially with your mood, consciousness, awareness, and lack of confusion. If you do not feel any improvement, then feel free to drop NoFap, I’ll not try to convince you any further. If you are convinced that porn is a problem and want to quit it, read ahead.
Getting started with quitting porn
There are a lot of places where you can get started. Now a lot of people might go ahead and just join the NoFap subreddit. The subreddit provides a platform for recovering addicts to share their experiences, look for motivation, seek accountability and so on. However, there is a substantial amount of repetitiveness and cringe in the subreddit, and not many interesting insights from people who are recovering. I’m not saying that people on the subreddit act out of malintent, but the environment is not very informative for the newcomer. You can still join the subreddit and take part, but refer to a place with more organised content. I’m linking some resources that I personally found useful:
- NoFap website: This is not the subreddit, but the official NoFap website. It contains resources for porn addiction, blogs, weekly support calls. Also contains a useful FAQ for beginner questions.
- NeverFap Deluxe: This site provides guides, articles, meditation sessions, podcasts about the nofap experience, and even has a discord and subreddit for community interaction. The meditation section is good for beginners. The idea behind the website is that people usually resort to unhealthy coping mechanisms which crumble over time, and the website provides a link of healthy coping mechanisms to use to beat this addiction.
- FitTuber: This YouTube channel takes a sustainable approach to making healthy lifestyle choices and is therefore a “fitness channel”. Vivek Mittal, who runs the channel, has made excellent videos on porn addiction — Why should I No Fap?, Is Masturbation Good or Bad? and How to Actually Get over Porn Addiction. I highly recommend you check these videos out!
- Captain Sinbad: This is another great youtube channel where he discusses about productivity, NoFap, brahmacharya, stoicism, and self-discipline. I highly recommend checking out this channel.
Famous people on quitting Porn
Giving up “quick-n-cheap” pleasures in life is not easy, ours brains are primal and will always seek the quickest way of getting the most pleasure. Access to quick pleasures will always result in lack of motivation (why struggle when I can get instant gratification from my laptop?). Here is what famous people have to say on this:
- Terry Crews: He revealed in a famous video that he had been addicted to porn for years, and it messed his personal life. His wife left him due to porn-induced relationship problems and he went to rehab to get rid of his addiction. He mentions that porn changes the way you think about people and how they become objects in your perception.
- Muhammad Ali: Muhammad Ali, the famous boxer abstained from sex for six weeks before a boxing match. Abstinence can make you more aggressive for that dopamine, and channeling it into boxing is a genius idea.
- Steve Jobs: Steve Jobs’ first girlfriend Chrisann Brennan mentioned that “He explained that he didn’t want to climax so he could build ‘power and wealth by conserving one’s vital energies’.” Steve Jobs did semen retention to channel his creative energy into work, and Apple turned out to be a very successful company under Steve Jobs.
- Russell Brand: He mentions that he personally doesn’t indulge in viewing porn, because consumption of porn tunes you too much into people’s capacity of being sexual objects. Porn also commodifies sex and women, which is not very spiritually positive. It biases opinion on human beings and how to treat each other.
- Kanye West: He discusses how Playboy acted as his “gateway drug” to a lifelong porn addiction and recently he has decided to quit porn. He says “Some people drown themselves in drugs. And I drown myself in my addiction”.
- Elon Musk: In his podcast with Lex Fridman, he speaks about how a lot of computation and thinking has gone into sex, without the purpose of procreation, just to “keep the system happy”. He calls it absurd. Indeed, the system is kept happy, the brain is given the dopamine it craves, at the cost of mental health and reduced motivation.
There are a lot more famous personalities who say that “we’re spending too much time on porn/sex”. It’s difficult to speak up front about it in public without creating controversy, but its possible that more famous personalities might have habits like this in their lives as their “secret to success”.
My personal experience
Now I’m nowhere near a famous person, but I’ll share my story anyway. As usual, when I heard about NoFap and all, I was very dismissive about it. I had top grades as a student, didn’t have much of social anxiety problems, and everything was more or less well. So I never even thought that I was an “addict”. But I was open to trying it, so I tried No Nut November and realized that I may be more dependent on porn than I thought I was. I immediately researched about it more, and quickly jumped on the NoFap bandwagon.
After that, I’ve realized what was wrong in my life. Mental clarity and motivation. My motivation blew out of proportions and my brain fog significantly decreased. I also found it more enjoyable to workout and eat clean food. All these things have led to a healthier lifestyle for me overall. Now, I’m active in SR and NoFap since more than a year and have started to write blogs as an experimental creative outlet.
Conclusion
This concludes the series on porn as a superstimulus. I tried to cover all aspects of porn and masturbation from a mental health perspective and not a moral high ground. I hope you found this series useful, and let me what else I could blog on. Thank you for reading!
