All references to researches are provided in the underline text. I do not profit from any of the links, as this is only my contribution to society. I hope you benefit from my work.

Ifyou were to ask for one reason why porn is terrible, I would ask you to look at image 1.

Porn is considered by experts as an addiction like drugs, gambling, and alcohol because the reward system plays the same.

Advancements in SPECT brain imaging has allowed scientist today to confirm if porn is an addiction. Furthermore, research on a large scale has allowed us to learn the process of porn addiction, its side effects, and the benefits of quitting porn.

Experiments have shown that porn addiction works similar to drug and alcohol addiction. Several researchers — including one conducted by the University of Cambridge took 19 addictive pornography users who felt they were not porn addicts.

But when these users were shown explicit content, the MRI scans showed similar brain activity as alcoholics do when they are shown a drinking advert (see image 2).

Understanding the reward system

To simplify things, let’s take a first-time driver’s analogy.

When you first take up driving, you will feel overwhelmed by all the traffic rules you need to remember. Not enough string of words can describe how nerve wreaking first time driving can feel. This is when the Pre-frontal cortex is in charge.

As the month’s pass and your experience increases, your driving will seem seamless, as if you not even trying. This is when the pre-frontal cortex hands over the reigns to the limbic system. And that, in summary, is how the brain works.

The driving analogy makes it easy to understand that your brain has two main parts. A rational decision-maker called the prefrontal cortex.

Then there is the gratification part of your brain. The part that makes you love the easy life and target quick rewards in life instead of long term goals that require sacrifice and discipline. This part of your brain called the limbic system.

The rational decision-maker makes — well — rational decisions. To study or not to study, that is the rational decision-makers question.

But! There is a twist. Because the limbic system is sometimes more powerful than the pre-frontal cortex. So if you procrastinate a lot, this is the guy to blame.

However, the limbic system is very important. Imagine you are standing on a grass field, and you suddenly notice a snake near your feet. This is where the limbic system overpowers the boss and makes you jump to safety.

But what do the pre-frontal cortex and Limbic system have anything to do with porn addiction? Let’s find out in the next chapter.

Why is quitting so hard? A visual analogy on the reward system

I tried to quit, but my body doesn’t listen to me. Its as if my hand goes against my brain’s decision to my phone or laptop, and before I know it, I am unwillingly watching porn.

So this is a complaint from many porn users, why is it so hard to quit?

Your brain has a reward system that is necessary for you to survive and procreate. When you do the good stuff that is eating, sex, and general pleasures, your brain creates new neural pathways with a chemical called dopamine. But dopamine is released in limited supply (see a visual likeness in image 4).

For example, If you drive consistently, more neural pathways are created to the limbic system by bypassing the pre-frontal cortex. This makes your driving more effortless every day.

However, watching porn bypasses the pre-frontal cortex every time and goes straight to the limbic system in huge supply (see a visual likeness in image 5).

Because watching porn, masturbating, and edging has no limits, the chemical dopamine creates more neural pathways to the limbic system by overriding the pre-frontal cortex, which is why sometimes an addict feels like his actions are involuntary.

But dopamine doesn’t work alone. It has a partner called DeltaFosB (ΔFosB).

In the marvel universe, If dopamine is Loki, then is ΔFosB is Ultron.

Build up of DeltaFosB

Numerous research from yourbrainonporn shows that ΔFosB accumulates with overconsumption of natural rewards (sex, high-fat diet, etc.) or chronic use of any drug (including internet addiction).

Whatever you have been over-consuming, it will rewire the brain to acutely remember it, even long after the event has transpired. This leads to compulsion and cravings for whatever you were consuming in excess.

For overconsumption of porn, the following happens

• Chronic overconsumption of porn and massive overflow of dopamine causes ΔFosB to accumulate in critical parts of your brain.
• ΔFosB brings significant physical changes to the brain (see image 6). Beginning with hyper-reactivity to specific cues that affects the brain reward circuits to the developing addiction
• A new cycle is developed where ΔFosB makes you over-consume internet porn — which would, in turn, increase the layers of ΔFosB. The new rewiring would create more physical changes in the brain, making you even more dependent on internet porn.

But is porn stronger than real sex?

You may be wondering, is porn a bigger influencer than real sex? Why am I not addicted to sex but addicted to porn? The answer is simple:

1. Pornography has an unlimited supply of original content (novelty)
2. And the brain loves novelty.

What is the novelty?

Have you ever wondered why porn users open up multiple tabs? Addicts report that most of the time, they aren’t even interested in finishing the video; they just jump from one video to another. Why isn’t an addict finishing one video or enjoying the same image over and over again? The answer — the brain loves novelty.

An article from yourbrainonporn describes an Australian experiment that took several adults and showed them erotic pictures. The spike in image 7 shows the rise in arousal when users were shown an erotic picture they had never seen before. However, every time a similar image was repeated, it was less appealing for the user.

It’s not so much interest in nudity as is an interest in novelty

To make things simpler, imagine going on Instagram, TikTok, or Snapchat and seeing the same post every single day. I bet you would quit social media in a heartbeat. But the success driver of social media is to allow users to produce new content every time.

Porn works the same way, although it stimulates a stronger impulse. Because cat videos cannot drive the same stimulus as strippers.

Internet as a 21st-century culprit

While a husband and wife commit to being loyal to each other until the end of their days, evolution is laughing in the background. Because evolution doesn’t care about your life-long commitments. Evolution only cares about passing your genetic code to as many females as possible. Therefore, the brain is designed to want no female to be left unfertilized.

But porn is not the same as sex. With sex, you can perform, get exhausted, and finish the act.

With high-speed internet, a user can access millions of new content (novelty) and overload his brain with dopamine without getting exhausted.

Image 8 shows the rise and fall of dopamine when a user sees an image. Each time a person sees an erotic picture, dopamine surges in his brain for a short period and then subsides. The brain in panic would burden you to swipe to the next new image to continue the dopamine supply.

How bad can it get?

Several kinds of research have shown that people who are porn addicts are more likely to lose interest in the general pleasures of life. This can also lead to

1. Brain fog
2. Erectile disfunction
3. Lack of motivation
4. Lethargy in any personal projects
5. Emotional numbness
6. Loss of interest in spouses
7. Social anxiety
8. And probably the worst, loss of taste in soft porn that would eventually escalate to more violent porn to match the user’s fetish.

Why don’t people seek professional help

Knowing how dangerous porn addiction can be (like seriously, look at image 1 again), a bigger problem comes when a person wants professional or family aid to treat porn addiction but refrains from it.

Why? Because most people (including a chronic user) do not know that the consumption of porn can lead to porn addiction. For example, a user of porn may suffer from anxiety problems. But he or his doctor may not know it is the side effects of porn. Heck — a user may not even tell the doctor that he watches pornography.

In the end, a user’s doctor may prescribe unnecessary medication to treat his anxiety when the real cure can be achieved by simply cutting the addiction habit.

Another reason a person may avoid medical help is because of social humiliation. A person may hide his addiction problems and avoid family or professional treatment entirely in fear of being labelled a porn addict.

What are the benefits of quitting porn?

This is the best part. The good news is that the changes that porn does to the brain can be reversed. Since the brain is plasticity, avoiding porn would eventually waste away the neurons that bypass the prefrontal cortex and head straight for the limbic system. But this is easier said than done as you will see in the heading off “and the side effects.”

Countless testimonials of people leaving porn to reveal something known as — A rebirth of men. Here are a few testimonials from yourbrainonporn website

Guy 1: [Early twenties] Day 43 now, I am definitely seeing a girl as the source of my arousal now, rather than seeing her as an image that I can store up for later use…

Guy 2: I always thought my compulsive masturbation habits were a consequence of a high libido, among other lies young men are told so often. But after experiencing the benefits of abstaining firsthand, there’s no way I can go back. Being away from the porno grind makes me feel confident, charismatic, and creative. It makes me feel a zesty vitality, energy, and most importantly it lets me feel deep emotions, the kind which I haven’t felt in years

How do I quit?

The brain can be restored to its normal state by refraining from PMOE (porn, masturbation, orgasm, and edging). The general standard for the timeline mentioned in different research is 90 days to reboot your brain.

You only need to commit to yourself to pull long enough for 90 days. Actually, you may just need to pull on for two to three weeks for your willpower to be strong enough to carry you on to the next 90 days.

However, for some people, it can take shorter while for others, it may take longer. Depending on how severe it is, it will take time to unwind and break all the porn connections in your brain.

However, willpower is a finite resource, and you will need all of it if you are going to break years of bad habits in a few months. To help you, I have made a chart in image 10 that shows several stages an addict goes through before he ends up with multiple open tabs.

• Think — When any cue or memory hits you that causes a sudden burst of arousal
• Look — When you start browsing on the net for porn
• Touch — The fapping
• Multiple open tabs — You know this part

It would be best if you established the willpower to stop yourself at difficulty level easy and do something else when temptation arises. Maybe start exercise, spend more time with friends, develop a new hobby. But whatever happens, DO NOT REACH DIFFICULTY LEVEL MEDIUM!

And the side effects?

For those who do not know, quitting porn causes withdrawal syndromes (WS). Each person’s WS can vary depending on severity. But the common symptoms are as follows

• Anxiety
• Irritability
• Fatigue
• Depression
• Mood swings
• Headaches
• Severe loss of libido
• Losing all your motivation, energy and sex drive at the same time (also known as flatline)

This is because your brain has seen a sharp drop in dopamine supply that it used to get, and it doesn’t like it.

Your brain would start cutting, snapping, and tearing all connections that were built during your chronic consumption of porn. Leaving pornography won’t be easy because an addict will be hyper-reactive to the cravings and cues of internet porn. It will be as if porn itself is fighting back (see a likeness in image 11).

What is the timeline?

While the symptoms are universal, the timeline can vary based on several variables such as duration of intake, age, etc. Here are three people (we will call reboots) with there timelines, experience, and research.

Rebooter 1

This user started watching porn at the age of 14 and fapped about 2–3 times a day for 8 years. The experience constantly fatigued him, made him lose his self-esteem. He was also desensitized to sex and women. In his own words, he felt like a “beta-male piece of shit with no goals.”

Eventually, he decided to turn around his life and invest the time he spent from fapping into more useful activities such as exercising, reading, and talking to real girls.

Thankfully, he managed to record his ‘nofap’ journey in the chart above (image 12) in a lot of detail. Let’s summarise it.

1. The stars are casual sex with a partner.
2. Week 1–2. All of the variables rise for the first few days, including his energies and sleep quality.
3. Week 3–5. All variables became inconsistent as the brain starts to readjust with the absence of the overflowing dopamine. His primary pointer in this period is the burst of urges that seemed to happen every 4–6 days. This is similar to what rebooter 3 experienced between 4–8 weeks.
4. Week 6–7. The evil flatline appears. Similar to rebooter 1 between weeks 1 to 3 and rebooter 2 on days 22, 37, and 43. Not only did his motivation and energy tank, but so did his sex drive.
5. End of week 7 onwards. He gets the surge. All his variables climb once again.

Towards the end of his journey, he says

“…I actually felt physically stronger, and more capable…”

“I noticed more female attention from the 5–7 day mark. This was likely also linked to my new-found confidence, but I noticed more looks from women and more intensity in eye contact.”

Rebooter 2

This user managed to put a raw mood score, which you can see in image 13. Rebooting is far from a linear experience since most of the time, your brain is trying to bring your dopamine to normal levels.

Note the following from his chart.

1. He was unable to score his mood for the first 5 days as it was all over the place.
2. His mood started to get better from day 6 to day 21
3. On day 22, flatline smacked him on the face, and his mood dropped to 0
4. It significantly improved in the following days.
5. From around day 28 to 34, his moods were swinging from good to bad.
6. Then he suffered from two major flatline on day 37 and day 43
7. By day 51, he gets the surge. His mood was raised higher then it was before his porn addiction life.

Rebooter 3— From husbandandhelphaven.com.

This rebooter used to make progress by quitting porn for long periods and then relapse again. But after two years of trying, he managed to make a four-month streak that became the turning point for him. Below is his timeline explained.

1 to 7 Days Without Porn — Your dopamine takes a nosedive (image 14). You become grumpy, your anxiety may increase, and your mood swings will be more rampant (like image 12). You will get headaches; in short, all hell is gonna break lose.

You will also be hypersensitive to pornographic thoughts and any cues that encourage you to porn or fap. If you used to see porn on your laptop, then merely looking at a closed screen can be enough as a cue to trigger arousal. This is because your limbic system remembers where all the good stuff used to be and wants you to go back for more. Don’t listen to the limbic system! (remember image 10)

1 to 3 Weeks Without Porn — Congratulations, you have passed the first week (which was frankly the easy part). Now be prepared to become a cast in the walking dead. That’s right — you will enter a zombie-like state where your motivations and energy have dropped. In a race, even a zombie may overtake you.

During this period, you won’t have urges even if you are married. At this point, only porn can excite you. You may be in this state from a few weeks to a few months.

4 to 8 Weeks Without Porn — By this stage, some men begin to feel their energies seeping back. Although this is far from over, you experience several episodes of bursts of energy on some days and flatline, depression, and sluggish zombie-like state on other days.

Don’t give in, because it’s working. Your brain is physically rewiring itself by collapsing all the layers of DeltaFosB that were made by overdosing the brain with dopamine.

One of the main things to look out for in this period is a burst of sudden temptation. Because you are confident of leaving PMOE for such a long time, you may not be aware of the sudden overwhelming burst of porn urges. This is also a period where a lot of addicts who are trying to recover relapse to day 1.

Insomnia, depression (again), and random emotions that can make you tear up are also common. But be strong, there is light at the end of the tunnel.

2 Months & Beyond

Depending on each individual, from two to three months (for some even 6 months), you may feel the following.

• You feel happier
• No more erectile disfunction
• Your wife looks gorgeous.
• You focus has sharpened, and you have more energy then you could imagine
• Your libido is back and fully functioning.

You will feel like you have been reborn and cast out of the foggy life that made you tired and demotivated at all times. Congratulations!

Success stories

We come to near the end to see if leaving porn is worth the effort. You might have figured it out based on the content above, but if you need more reassurance, here are a few more.

Guy 1: “NoFap has drastically changed my life considering sexuality, willpower and being comfortable in my own skin and I can say that after a year, I am so very thankful to you guys, words cannot describe it. With the help of NoFap I’ve had a great relationship to a girl that before I would never dare to start up a conversation with, was comfortable to have fun with girls when I was single, and am currently in a relationship. I now also exercise daily as a rule, am learning to play the guitar, and generally feel better and am more positive.”

Guy 2: “Energy- This is not an exact science, but I do feel more vital and clear throughout the day. Before I would walk around with a thick glaze of fog in my eyes, unimpressed and unenthused with everything around me. It sounds a little strange, but it felt like I was trapped or shoved into a box when I frequently PMO’d. Now my movements feel unrestrained and free- unimpeded by some shameful feeling that I don’t deserve to move about as I like or that I fell weird in my own body.”

Guy 3: “My motivation to do stuff has increased by so much. Just simple things like doing the dishes immediately have become so easy. My ability to focus on tasks has also improved and I finally gained the ability to properly study which is something I never really needed to do and so it was really hard for me adapting to that since I needed to for my finals. I finished school with a grade I am more than happy with.”

You can read thousands of success stories by clicking link 1, link 2 and link 3.

Some reoccurring confessions in these success stories are the following.

1. After quitting PMOE for a given period, motivation and energies skyrocket.
2. Relationship with real spouses becomes much more enjoyable.
3. Quitting PMOE is not linear. There will be ups and downs (terrible downs) in the days ahead. However, the frequency and magnitude will reduce as time passes by.
4. You become happy with little things.
5. Confidence gets a considerable boost.
6. No more erectile dysfunction.
7. Your focus becomes sharper, and you come out of brain fog.
8. You find that you have massive cash of free time to pursue other interests.
9. Your anxiety goes out of the window.

Am I addicted?

This is addressing the elephant in the room. If you are sure that you are an addict, then go to the next chapter. If you need more certainty about your addiction, then there are several websites with questionnaires that will answer your questions.

1. Psycom — https://www.psycom.net/quiz-results/?qid=52_4
2. The center for internet and technology addiction — https://virtual-addiction.com/online-pornography-test/

Note: These websites are not a replacement for proper assessments from health officials, and you should see an expert if you need to.

Final warning

DO NOT — subscribe or pay any website to help you break the chains of porn addictions. You have the power, like millions of others, before you do it on your own.

Porn websites are mostly free, and so are anti-porn sites.

If you wish to read more, below is a shortlist of the best sources I could find to give you extensive knowledge of porn addiction.

1. The core of attraction
2. Ocean recovery
3. TEDx: The great porn experiment

“I am, indeed, a king, because I know how to rule myself.”
― Pietro Aretino