Erotic novelty of the internet porn is a mental ‘drug’ and internet porn beats anything that is known to mankind and its streaming straight to your home for free ! We are not even talking VR virtual reality here. Porn triggers the ‘flooding’ of dopamine in our brain. Dopamine amps up the brain reward circuitry to produce experiences and feels of cravings and pleasure by locking themselves into ‘receptors’. More dopamine more wanting. Less dopamine no wanting. New experiences, tasty food - more dopamine - more wanting. Sex and sex related stuff gives the biggest injection of dopamine in the reward circuits. Dopamine is not the final pleasure stuff, if it were you would feel happy when you are done with it, but it is only a brain chemical that encourages seeking and action in you. The real pleasure is produced by opioids. More dopamine more opioids more action more happy feelings.
So the first time you see porn - dopamine injects itself - you act - you orgasm. All of which will now be stored as a script in your brain for easy access next time. I call this a ‘water slide’. Next time at the cue - a sexy commercial or alone time or stress or feeling a little down - you are ready to take a ride on the ‘water slide’. One more thing is that every time to repeat this you are ‘greasing’ it as well - so it is active, alive and more easier to slide the next time. As time passes you are most probably not excited as before of the same clip - the reason will be explained shortly - but of similar type, genre, shock-level, our dopamine seeps into the brain but this time lesser than before. Now you feel less arousal, lesser motivation. This low motivation feeling in itself will trigger a feeling of lower satisfaction as our minds engage in constant rating. Then you seek more motivation. Then you ask for more novelty. Then you click on that amateurish, ugly looking, low quality, but high shock valued clip thumbnail which you had confidently said you won’t on your first time. My Own Online Harem! This cycle of novelty, escalation, satiation, desensitization etc. is not the same as the old porn magazine? Neither can you do that in real life with your partner. Maybe if you own a harem? One of the pros of owning a harem is novelty and the cons are desensitization, escalation and of course the cost. Going back to the earlier discussion - in this cycle as you crossed the ‘red line’ you also trigger emotions such as guilt, disgust, embarrassment, anxiety and fear - which in turn raise dopamine levels as well. Now the brain may mistakenly associate feelings of anxiety and fear as sexual arousal. This perpetual cycle is only broken by natural causes - fortunately sooner or later. With its free access and privacy it provides boundless harem-like novelty. The dopamine can be theoretically kept very high for a very very long time. I can be satisfied with one lobster once in awhile. But Internet porn is different. It is even worse than drugs. Don’t let me make you nervous. I will shortly show you how to be free from this slavery. Now our human body has a self-correcting system by which the number of dopamine and opioid receptors are cut short when frequent and daily ‘flooding’ of dopamine is detected. Unfortunately - these receptors are also needed for receiving dopamine and to keep us even and balanced to handle the inevitable and normal day-to-day stresses. But this natural nominal amount of dopamine will not be absorbed efficiently with decreased receptors and you will feel more stressed and irritated than normal. “For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed”
- Kahlil Gibran. A fleeting feeling of security is all that is needed to get through a rough spot in life - but will your brain be able to catch that drop of de-stressor that a non-PMOers’ brain is able to catch and use? This dopamine flooding, like a quick-acting drug, falls quickly to induce withdrawal pangs. I must at this point dispel a common illusion that PMOers have about withdrawal pangs. They think that withdrawal pangs are the terrible trauma they suffer when they try or are forced to stop PMOing. These are, in fact, mainly mental; the user is feeling deprived of his pleasure or prop. I will explain more about this later. The Little Monster The actual pangs of withdrawal from PMO are so subtle that most users have lived and died without even realizing they are like drug addicts. When we use the term ‘porn addict’ we think we just ‘got into the habit’. Most PMOers have a horror of drugs, yet that’s exactly what they are - drug addicts. Fortunately it is an easy drug to kick, but you need first to accept that you are addicted. There is no physical pain in the withdrawal from PMO. It is merely an empty, restless feeling, the feeling of something missing, which is why many think it is something to do with their hands. If it is prolonged, the user becomes nervous, insecure, agitated, lacking in confidence and irritable. It is like hunger - for a poison, INTERNET PORN. Within seconds of engaging in PMO the dopamine is supplied and the craving ends, resulting in the feeling of fulfilment and pleasure that the action gives to the PMOer. In the early days, when we first start PMOing, the withdrawal pangs and their relief are so slight that we are not even aware that they exist. When we begin to masturbate regularly to internet porn we think it is because we’ve either come to enjoy them or got into the ‘habit’. The truth is we’re already hooked; we do not realize it, but that little monster is already inside our stomach and every now and again we have to feed it. All PMOers start seeking porn for stupid reasons. Nobody has to. The only reason why anybody continues PMOing, whether they be a casual or a heavy user, is to feed that little monster. The whole business of porn and PMO is a series of confusing conundrums. All sufferers of PMO know at heart that they are fools and have been trapped by something evil. However, I think the most pathetic aspect about this is that the enjoyment that the PMOer gets from a session is the pleasure of trying to get back to the state of peace, tranquillity and confidence that his body had before he became hooked in the first place. The Annoying Burglar Alarm You know that feeling when a neighbour’s burglar alarm has been ringing all day, or there has been some other minor, persistent aggravation. Then the noise suddenly stops - that marvellous feeling of peace and tranquillity is experienced. It is not really peace but the ending of the aggravation. Before we start the next PMO session, our bodies are complete. We then force our brains to pump dopamine into the body using PMO, and when we are done orgasming and the dopamine starts to leave, we suffer withdrawal pangs - not physical pain, just an empty feeling. We are not even aware that it exists, but it is like a dripping tap inside our bodies. Our rational minds do not understand it. They do not need to. All we know is that we want porn and when we masturbate the craving goes, and for the moment we are content and confident again just as we were before we became addicted. However, the satisfaction is only temporary because in order to relieve the craving you have to get more porn. As soon as you orgasm the craving starts again and so the chain goes on. It is a chain for life - UNLESS YOU BREAK IT. The whole business of PMO is like wearing tight shoes just to obtain the pleasure you feel when you take them off. There are three main reasons why PMOers cannot see things that way:
- From birth we have been subjected to massive brainwashing telling us that internet porn is simply just another modern development that replaced the print version of porn. Why should we not believe them when it hides behind the truth that masturbation is not bad? (However, I won’t recommend you take up masturbation). Why else would they waste all that time and energy and take such horrendous risks?
- Because the physical withdrawal from dopamine injection involves no actual pain but is merely an empty, insecure feeling, inseparable from hunger or normal stress and because those are the very times that we tend to seek internet porn. We tend to regard the feeling as normal.
- However the main reason that PMOers fail to see internet porn in its true light is because it works back to front. It’s when you are not masturbating to it that you suffer that empty feeling. Because the process of getting hooked is very subtle and gradual in the early days, we regard that empty feeling as normal and don’t blame it on the previous PMO session. The moment you fire up the browser and reach a tube site, you get an almost immediate boost or buzz and do actually feel less nervous or more relaxed and internet porn gets the credit. It is this ‘back to front’ reverse process that makes all drugs difficult to kick. Picture the panic state of a heroin addict who has no heroin. Now picture the utter joy when that addict can finally plunge a needle into his vein. Can you visualize someone actually getting pleasure by injecting themselves, or does the mere thought fill you with horror? Non-heroin addicts don’t suffer that panic feeling. The heroin doesn’t relieve it. On the contrary, it causes it. Non-PMOers - say a 14 year old in 2008 - didn’t suffer the empty feeling of needing internet porn or start to panic when they are off- line. Non-PMOers cannot understand how PMOers can possibly obtain pleasure from two dimensional videos with muted sounds and abnormal body proportions. And do you know something? PMOers themselves cannot understand why they do it after some time either. We talk about internet porn being relaxing or giving satisfaction. But how can you be satisfied unless you were dissatisfied in the first place? Why don’t non-PMOer suffer from this dissatisfied state and why, after a no-sex date, when the non-PMOers are completely relaxed, are PMOers completely unrelaxed until they have satisfied their ’little monster’? A Pleasure or Crutch? Forgive me if I dwell on this subject for a moment. The main reason that PMOers find it difficult to quit is that they believe that they are giving up a genuine pleasure or crutch. It is absolutely essential to understand that you are giving up nothing whatsoever. The best way to understand the subtleties of the PMO trap is to compare it with eating. If we are in the habit of eating regular meals, we are not aware of being hungry between meals. Only if the meal is delayed are we aware of being hungry, and even then, there is no physical pain, just an empty, insecure feeling which we know as: ‘I need to eat.’ And the process of satisfying our hunger is a very pleasant pastime. PMOing appears to be almost identical. The empty, insecure feeling which we know as: ‘wanting or needing an PMO orgasm’ is identical to a hunger for food, although one will not satisfy the other. Like hunger, there is no physical pain and the feeling is so imperceptible that we are not even aware of it between PMO sessions. It’s only if we want to masturbate and aren’t able to reach internet for porn that we become aware of any discomfort. But when we do PMO we feel satisfied. It is this similarity to eating which helps to fool PMOers into believing that they receive some genuine pleasure. Some PMOers find it very difficult to grasp that there is no pleasure or crutch, whatsoever to PMO. Some argue: “How can you say there is no crutch? When I orgasm up then I’ll feel less nervous than before.” Although eating and PMOing appear to be very similar. In fact they are exact opposites:
- You eat to survive and to energize your life, whereas PMOing dims your mojo and cuts down your energy.
- Food does genuinely taste good, and eating is a genuinely pleasant experience that we can enjoy throughout our lives, whereas PMOing involves self-sabotaging the happiness receptors and thus destroying your chances to cope and to feel happy.
- Eating doesn’t create hunger and genuinely relieves it, whereas the first PMO starts the craving for dopamine and each subsequent one, far from relieving it, ensures that you suffer it for the rest of life. PMO is a Habit? This is an opportune moment to dispel another common myth about PMO - that it is a habit. Is eating a habit? If you think so, try breaking it completely. No, to describe eating as a habit would be the same as describing breathing as a habit. Both are essential for survival. It is true that different people are in the habit of satisfying their hunger at different times and with varying types of food. But eating itself is not a habit. Neither is PMO. The only reason any PMOer fires up the browser is to try to end the empty, insecure feeling that the previous orgasm and the PMO session created. It is true that different PMOers are in the habit of trying to relieve their withdrawal pangs at different times, but PMO itself is not a habit. On the internet they frequently refer to PMO as a habit and in this hackbook, for convenience, I also refer to the ‘habit’. However, be constantly aware that it is not habit, on the contrary it is no more nor less than DRUG ADDICTION! When we start to PMO we have to force ourselves to learn to cope with it. Before we know it, we are ‘escalating’ * - we have to then have more bizarre and more shocking porn. The thrill is in the hunting… not in the killing. If we don’t then panic sets in and as we go through life we tend to novelty-seek more and more. Worse is when this seeking of higher shock level get into our real life. Have you heard about people suffering from PIED, that too in solo? How about wet dreams and fantasies where you are not even there but only involving others? There is no performance stress but I am not even getting hard. Great!
- Escalation - a practice that is the result of our brain’s novelty and curiosity seeking to get more dopamine in our reward circuitry. Crossing The Red Line This is because, as with any other drug, the body tends to develop immunity to the effects of the same old porn clips and our brain wants more or something else. After quite a short period of watching the same clip it ceases to relieve completely the withdrawal pangs that the previous PMO session had created. You want to stay on the safe side of your own ‘red line’ but your brain is asking you to click on that ‘forbidden fruit’ clip. There is a tug of war occurring in this supposed porn paradise. You feel better than you did before starting this PMO session but you are in fact more nervous and less relaxed than you would be as a non-PMOer, like someone who is living in Loma Linda or in an Amish village, even though you are actually PMOing and living in your supposed “porn paradise.” This position is even more ridiculous than wearing tight shoes because as you go through life an increasing amount of the discomfort remains even when the shoes are removed. Once the orgasm is achieved, the dopamine rapidly begins to leave the brain, causing a mood dip. Which explains why the PMOer wants to ‘edge’* and switch through multiple browser windows as they seek and search. As I said, the ‘habit’ doesn’t exist. The real reason why every user goes on using internet porn is because of that little porn monster inside his stomach. Every now and again he has to feed it. The PMOer himself will decide when he does that and it tends to be on four types of occasion or a combination of them.
- Edge - to stay longer in pre-orgasm stage. To delay orgasm. These occasions are: • BOREDOM/CONCENTRATION - two complete opposites! • STRESS/RELAXATION - two complete opposites! What magic drug can suddenly reverse the very effect it had minutes before? If you think about it, what other types of occasion are there in our lives; apart from sleep? The truth is that PMO neither relieves boredom and stress nor promotes concentration and relaxation. It is all just illusion. Apart from being a drug, PMO is also a destroyer of happiness and virility. In case you have ideas of toning down to other more ‘realistic’ or ‘soft’ genres of porn and such, I should make it quite clear that the content of this book applies to all porn, yes, that includes, print, webcams, pay-per-views, chat, live shows etc. that is on high speed internet where ‘novelty’ and ‘shock’ is the nature of the game. Imagination goes farther than reality. The human body is the most sophisticated object on our planet. No species, even the lowest amoeba or worm, can survive without knowing the difference between food and poison. Brain Reward Circuit Mechanics Through a process of natural selection over thousand of years, our minds and bodies have developed techniques for rewarding actions that multiply and sustain humanity. Yet our minds and bodies are not ready for the supernormal stimulus that is bigger, brighter, colourful, edgier and more shocking than the one we have now. We are attracted proportional to the degree of how far the outlier is from our individual normal. It can be two dimensional clip - and a muted one at that - we will get aroused. Look at the same clip again and again and you won’t be. You just moved your red line close to the outlier and in no time you will enclose it in your normal consciousness. It is natural and it is so that you can multiply and grow this human race. In real life there are checks and balances in place so you take a break and go away do something else. With internet porn you there are no such checks and balances and you are living in a virtual harem! When we took a ‘peep’ at internet porn the first time, a few images were titillating but most were disgusting, causing you to avert your eyes away. Like you would if had accidentally glanced a feeding mother’s breast. And some of us are even revolted with what they saw when the star reminded them of someone dear to their heart or a scene which recalled their own instance of being the victim. Some don’t feel like it to browse and masturbate at the same time. It may be hard to believe for you but the non-PMOs, who don’t PMO after their first time, are the lucky ones. They actually decided that it was not their cup of tea. It must be hard for you to believe but stay with me. How many of us don’t visit brothels - even when you are far from home? Why not? It’s not the social stigma? How many of us did not bring home a bottle on your way back from work - even after a hard day? Why not ? You ‘deserve’ it after that big deal you made? You just decided, after your first instance, that it’s not your cup of tea. That’s all. Are PMOers Mentally Weak? It is a fallacy that physically weak and mentally weak-willed people become PMOers. The lucky ones are those who find that first instance repulsive and they are cured for life. Or, alternatively, they are not mentally prepared to go through the severe learning process of fighting the obstructions of self-talking themselves to get hooked, fear of ‘getting caught’, not technical enough to create an online cache, operate privacy settings in the browser etc. To me this is the most tragic part of this whole business. How hard we worked to become hooked, and this is why it is difficult to stop teenagers. Because they are skilled in seeking and finding material, they know online privacy options and can clean their tracks - if they still feel some stigma and they (wrongfully) believe they can stop whenever they want to. Why do they not learn from us? Then again, why did we not learn from our PMOers and addicts? Many PMOers believe they enjoy online internet porn. It is an illusion. What we are actually doing when we jump from genre to genre is to keep our ‘novelty’ monkey within the ‘red line’ of ‘safe’ porn genres to get our dopamine fix, like heroin addicts who think that they enjoy injecting themselves. The withdrawal pangs from heroin are relatively severe and all they are really enjoying is the ritual of relieving those pangs. The High From The Dance Around The Red Line Even with that one clip on which he lingers longer - the PMOer constantly teaches himself to filter out the bad and ugly portions of a porn clip. Even if it is solo, you still do the ‘filtering’ on the body parts that appeal to you the most. In fact some even take pleasure in this game to find an excuse to declare that they like ‘soft’ stuff and are not addicted to supranormal stimuli. Sometimes even this constant dance around the red line in itself produces a sort of high as well. Ask a user who believes that he sticks to a certain actor or genre - only because he likes something about the star or the theme (if any) of the clip: “If you cannot get your normal brand of porn and can only obtain a poor or unsafe brand, do you stop masturbating?” No way. A PMOer will masturbate to anything rather than abstain and it doesn’t matter if he has to switch to escalating themes, different sex-orientation-themes, look-alike actresses, dangerous settings shocking relationships etc. To begin with they taste awful but if you persevere you will learn to like them. Most PMOers will also try to seek masturbation even after having real sex (unfulfilment, porn- induced unrealistic expectations etc.), or after a long, stressful work day, fever, colds, flu, sore throats and even when admitted in hospitals. Enjoyment has nothing to do with it after the initial few minutes. If sex is wanted then it makes no sense to be with your laptop. During my conversation some PMOers find it alarming to realize they are drug addicts and think it will make it even more difficult to stop. In fact, it is all good news for two important reasons:
- The reason why most of us carry on masturbating to internet porn is because, although we know the disadvantages outweigh the advantages, we believe that there is something in the porn that we actually enjoy or that it is some sort of prop. We feel that after we stop PMOing there will be a void, that certain situations in our life will never be quite the same. This is an illusion. The fact is the masturbation and especially PMO gives nothing; it only takes away and then partially restores to create the illusion. I will explain this in more detail in a later chapter.
- Although internet porn is the most powerful trigger for ‘novelty’ and ‘sex’ based dopamine ‘flooding’ - because of the speed with which you become hooked, you are never badly hooked. The actual withdrawal pangs are so mild that most PMOers have lived and died without ever realizing that they have suffered them. You will quite rightly ask why it is that many PMOers find it so difficult to stop, go through months of torture and spend the rest of their lives pining for it at odd times. The answer is the second reason why we use Internet porn - the brainwashing. The brain-chemical addiction is easy to cope with. Most PMOers go days without online porn - when they are on business trips or travel etc. The withdrawal pangs don’t affect them. Their little porn monster knows that you will open your laptop as soon as you return to hotel room or your den. Ah, you can even survive this obnoxious client and your megalomaniac manager - just ‘knowing’ that the fix is there for your take. It doesn’t bother the PMOers. The Smokers Analogy A good analogy is the situation of smokers - if they went ten hours during the day without a cigarette they’d be tearing their hair out. Many smokers will buy a new car nowadays and refrain from smoking in it. Many will visit theatres, supermarkets, churches, etc. and not being able to smoke doesn’t bother them. Even on the trains there have been no riots. Smokers are almost pleased for someone or something to force them to stop smoking. PMOers will automatically refrain from using internet porn in the home of their parents while visiting for family get togethers etc. with little discomfort to themselves. In fact, most PMOers have extended periods during which they abstain without effort. Even in my case I would quite happily go a week or so without a PMO incident. In the later years as a PMOer I actually used to look forward to these days when I could stop choking my penis (what a ridiculous ‘habit’). The brain chemical addiction (little monster) is easy to cope with, even when you are still addicted, and there are thousands of PMOers who remain casual users all their lives. They are just as heavily addicted as the heavy PMOer. There are even heavy PMOers who have kicked the ‘habit’ but will have an occasional ‘peek’, and that keeps them addicted. You are ‘greasing’ the ‘water slide’ of the brain only to see you slide down at the next dip in your mood. The Big Monster - The Brainwashing You are smart enough to know (aside, I will explain shortly why PMOers are in fact a strong willed and hard working bunch) that not all porn workers get a W-2 with 401k and stock options. Only a very rare actor and that too for a very short period of time of their career may be. Not all the amateurs are ‘amateurs’ on these tube sites, oversized body parts and overcharged scenarios are the norm, aided by a bit of the ‘viagran’ help. As I say, the actual porn addiction is not the main problem. It just acts as a catalyst to keep our minds confused over the real problem: the brainwashing. It may be of consolation to lifelong and heavy PMOers to know that it is just as easy for them to stop as casual PMOers. In a peculiar way. it is easier. The further you go along with the ‘habit’, the more it drags you down and the greater the gain when you stop. It may be of further consolation for you to know that the rumours that occasionally circulate that the neural pathways created are there for life, and so at the right (or wrong) time and with strong stimuli you will be sliding again down the ‘water slide’ of internet porn and masturbation to permanently destroy your real life sex are untrue. Do not think the bad effects of internet porn are exaggerated. If anything, they are sadly understated but the truth is there are different levels of dependency on PMO and masturbation in general. However, these bodies of ours are incredible machines and have enormous powers of recovery. If you stop now, your body and brain will recover within a matter of a few weeks. As I have said, it is never too late to stop. You can see many who have stopped not only porn but masturbation as well. Naturally with any obstacles that humans face some have even taken this addiction recovery to the next level in learning about differentiating amative and propagative sides of sex. They have not only rebooted their sex lives but have made their partner happier than before as well. The further it drags you down, the greater the relief. When I finally stopped I went straight to ZERO, and didn’t have one bad pang. In fact, it was actually enjoyable, even during the withdrawal period. But we must remove the brainwashing about internet porn regardless of your status as single or partnered and also of masturbation.