Let’s not start the cult of /r/nofap here. And no, you are not suddenly more charismatic and confident. You are just not reeking of cum all the time, something achievable with regular showers as well.
Nofap and celibacy cults are pretty toxic, but there is some virtue in self restraint.
I can only speak for myself, but my mood tends to be better after a week or two without orgasm.
If it just takes a month to break, it’s not an addiction. It’s a habit.
Really hate the way that the word addiction is watered down by people who just look at porn a lot.
I’d like to agree with you, but I don’t think there are fixed periods where stopping something turns it from being addiction into habit.
Addiction is an inability to stop using a substance or engaging in a behavior even though it may cause psychological or physical harm.
I think porn can come within that definition, just as much as smoking or drinking can be called a habit.
And I’m saying that what’s described in the OP is a habit, not an addiction.
‘Addiction’ is very overused when it comes to porn because people don’t have any concept of what addiction actually is. Half the time the harm doesn’t come from looking at porn, it comes from the purity culture that we’re inundated with in western society. Being abused by puritanical ideology does not make looking at porn an addiction. Neither does having a strong sex drive that makes us want to engage with sexual content.
Porn addiction is real, and watching porn can have more harm than just puritanical bullshit. Most people that I’ve watched looking at porn don’t just find a video a watch it start to finish. They watch multiple videos, fast forwarding to their favorite parts. Delayed gratification is good for you. Also, porn doesn’t accurately depict what sex is like. It can give you fucked up expectations of what sex should be.
If you watch so much porn that you can’t have an orgasm without watching it, if you are only aroused by porn that can’t exist in real life, if you stop having sex with a partner to instead only masturbate to porn, if you find yourself constantly watching porn even at inappropriate times, if the amount of porn you watch decreases your quality of life… That’s addiction.
I think that masturbating is healthy and good for human sexuality, but I think a lot of people could benefit from masturbating differently. Try reading or using your imagination or even just masturbating meditatively, focusing on sensations.
Never said porn addiction isn’t real. I’m saying it’s less common than people think and that most people who say they’re addicted to porn aren’t.
Dude porn addiction is such a real thing. The damage comes in your relationship. Not being able to stop watching porn causes all kinds of issues in your day to day life including fatigue and erectile issues.
Never said it wasn’t a real thing. Said most people who say they’re ‘addicted’ aren’t.
And I’m saying that what’s described in the OP is a habit, not an addiction.
‘Addiction’ is very overused when it comes to porn because people don’t have any concept of what addiction actually is. Half the time the harm doesn’t come from looking at porn, it comes from the purity culture that we’re inundated with in western society. Being abused by puritanical ideology does not make looking at porn an addiction. Neither does having a strong sex drive that makes us want to engage with sexual content.
To be fair, everyone handles habits and addictions differently.
“It’s just a heroin habit!”
Didn’t take me more than a month to quit smoking, is that just a habit rather than a real addiction in your eyes?
You’re going to have a tough time arguing that compulsive behavior that the individual has difficulty stopping and often performs when they otherwise didn’t intend to isn’t addiction, just because they found a way to stop.
Again, I’m not saying porn addiction doesn’t exist.
I’m saying that the use of ‘addiction’ with porn is extremely overused and most people who claim to be addicted aren’t.
And for what it’s worth, I quit smoking after three years of up to 2 packs a day in a single day. Just made the decision and never craved them again. Every body handles substance dependencies differently. But porn addiction is different and the comparison is apples and oranges.
I don’t masturbate because I’m horny. I masturbate because I’m bored.
I masturbate because im horny and bored
I masturbate because there’s nothing else to do on the train.
i dont masturbate because just cus
😏
/s
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Borney
~ Konfuzius
bro
Good for him.
Porn addiction isn’t a thing. People with addictive personalities always out here trying to blame whatever they are hyperfocusing on, instead of getting some therapy and addressing their neurodivergency.
I think I’m confused here. Would it not be true that porn addiction is a thing, just that porn isn’t the root cause of it? Like, addictive personalities result in addictions but they have to be addicted to something and that addiction is the {insert vice here} addiction.
Gambling addiction, porn addictions, gaming addictions etc. Just because the personality is the cause I thought it would still be helpful to get them away from whatever they hyperfocus on in order to start working of the addictive traits.
I have a friend who isn’t addicted to cigarettes and only smokes with buddies but never alone or with me. And me who isn’t addicted to alcohol but only drinks if really good friends want to go out and get a bit (been years now but used to be months)
yea exactly then that’s not an addiction, but if one does it compulsively then it is
I would say that’s not addiction at all, that’s just partaking in things that aren’t good for you in a social setting. Addiction is when it takes over your life isn’t it?
Genuine question, it’s hard to convey curiosity over sarcasm on the internet.
I’m using a few real examples but we are a tiny minority compared to most of our other friends who can’t stop one or the other
This is a refreshing comment thread compared to reddit these days. You just get shouted at saying something like this. There are chemically addictive things and then there are things that are addictive and habit forming because they are fun. Totally separate things. One takes self control, one takes outside help.
Accurrate comic though minus the being able to go over a week part!
Mental addiction is a thing.
Those addictions are only addictive because of underlying issues.
Fix those issues, and you will not be addicted anymore.
Those issues are much harder to solve and play a much greater role in “hard addictions” than chemical dependency does.
The problem is, that line of thought isn’t very useful conditioning is a thing very much so, and you can absolutely be addicted to the dopamine release. Just because it’s downstream doesn’t mean the porn isn’t the ultimate addictor.
You can also self control your way out of addictive substances like nicotine. Only a scant few need medical intervention. Unless you’re going to tell me heroin and alcohol are the only actually addictive substances that exiat. It’s INCREDIBLY reductive to reduce anything that doesn’t have a specific chemical addiction mechanism to “not an addiction get help lol”. Yes, get help. Probably from these things called addiction therapists, that deal with things like porn addiction and gambling addiction.
True. There is no chemical part of porn itself to make it “addictive.” Orgasm just releases dopamine that feels good.
If you are addicted to meth, it’s not easy to give it up because you are chemically addicted to it.
If you are “addicted” to porn, it’s moderately easy to give up, if you have self control
But you just stated yourself, porn, which leads to an orgasm usually, leads to dopamine release.
Dopamine release feels good.
Big dumb animal brain associates porn with feeling good.
Brain wants to feel good, brain watches porn.
We’re all animals, we’re all conditioned. If you want to say technically there’s no addiction mechanism for porn itself, sure whatever, but that’s not actually very useful is it? Just because the addictive (replace it with ‘conditioned to seek’ if you want) bit is a little downstream from the porn itself doesn’t mean the porn itself isn’t the problem.
Also, if self control was so fuckin easy, you wouldn’t have anyone with any real problems, they’d just self control them all into solved.
I never said self-control itself is easy, giving up watching porn once you have it, is.
You don’t have withdrawal symptoms from not jacking off unless you count craving to masturbate as one. The craving is felt by literary anyone who gets horny.
Drugs, on the other hand, can have very severe withdrawal symptoms that require the person to seek help and cure his addiction.
Not to mention, you get dopamine from many things. If we treat all of them as severely as actual addictions, the word itself just loses all its meaning.
Withdrawal symptoms aren’t the only thing that signifies an addiction. A very quick look at the definition includes “the condition of being habitually occupied with or involved in something.” On the strictest definition level, you’re just wrong.
That’s not a super useful metric, though, so in addition to those, almost any real discussion of addiction includea a requirement for it to be negatively impactful to your life. Sure, physiologically addictive substances obviously have a negative impact on your life. It’s pretty clear that there are many ways things that aren’t physiologically addictive, when used habitually, can cause issues.
Further, not all physiological addictions require professional or medical intervention, or have you never heard of someone quitting smoking cold turkey?
I did and it usually takes way more than jusf self control to quit it. Some people are just built different.
What I was trying to show by mentioning withdrawal symptoms that masturbation does not change physicochemical make up. All it does is release dopamine (hell, not even masturbation, the orgasm itself), and its not the only activity that does that. Eating, sports, donating, receiving compliments… all of those give you dopamine.
Actual addictions change you inside, sometimes severely enough that you need professional help.
I just don’t think its useful to call both of these an addicion, given how different in nature they both are. I think there should be a difference between an addiction and a habit. But thats just my opinion and I don’t force anyone to agree with it
You’re sure making a lot of bold, definitive statements for “that’s just my opinion bro!” And what I’m trying to say is that, fundamentally, you’re wrong. Further, it’s actually a bit dangerous to say to someone struggling with a very real thing that they just need to have some self control. Don’t rub one out for a week! You’ll be fine!
Psychological addictions have a lot of the same impacts on your life as physiological ones. People employ addiction-seeking behaviors to get what they want. It can be INCREDIBLY difficult to stop. Often times you can’t without psychological help or group support. Hell, psychological addictions can even come with withdrawal symptoms.
All things point towards this being an addiction. What do you lose by extending the empathy towards these people struggling that you do to those struggling with other addictions? It’s more convenient, I suppose, to say that the problem and solution all rest within the other person’s head, nevermind that what’s inside someone’s head is literally their entire existence.
Gratz on quitting smoking, though, any addiction is hard to kick.
There are two kinds of addiction, physiological and psychological. Addictive substances are physiologically addictive because of how the effect they have on the brain and body, but that doesn’t mean you can’t form a physiological dependence on something and have similar issues not “using”.
You will not have withdrawal effects from not jacking off. Urge to do it is not a withdrawal effect and can be overcome with self-control. With actual withdrawal symptoms, they can be extremely severe in some cases, even deadly. If you are addicted to drugs, you need to seek psychological help to overcome it, not with porn addiction
The Goonless
rare anon w
Porn addiction isn’t a thing. It’s made-up bullshit by people that buy into Judeo-Christian morality regarding sexual “purity”. There are reasons that it didn’t make it into DSM-V, and won’t make it into DSM-VI either. The porn and masturbation isn’t the problem, it’s how people feel about it, and how they reconcile it with their own beliefs in morality, which is not even remotely the same as being addicted to opiates or nicotine.
The masturbation definitely is not the problem, the porn might be. It just gives a wrong picture of intimacy and sex to inexperienced teenagers.
And some frankly bonkers ideas about what real sex is like.
But when I think about my youth in pre-internet days, when you relied on a trucker flinging his jazz mag into the bushes and being lucky enough to find it before the slugs, I’m not sure learning about real sex was any easier then.
Still not an addiction. But yeah problematic porn can be an issue.
Oh fuck off.
Found the Christian.
Not Christian. An atheist.
And yet you’re the one following Judeo-Christian beliefs about morality.
Huh.
Lol. This is a real thing. I suffered from this. Labelling this ‘Christian’ doesn’t make them false.
No, you didn’t. You believed you did, because Judeo-Christian fundamentalists convinced you that you did, in order to sell you their cure. You’re actively promoting their talking points, as well as the talking points of the alt-right.
How many people can you find that are licensed clinical psychologists, that are trained and specialize in sexual disorders, that use an evidence-based approach to treatment–not a spiritual-based or spiritually-aware approach–that promote the idea that there is “porn addiction”?
Found the reductionist! Every problem has to be because of your preconceived enemy figure, doesn’t it?
You can just ask why the person labeled it as an addiction. What if he was regularly missing work, social gatherings, or other things due to his urge to masturbate? Is that not an addiction? If a person’s life is worse because they can’t stop doing something that’s an addiction.
