Health
This is the area where the brainwashing is the greatest. PMOers, especially the young and single, think they are aware of the health risks. They are not. Even in my case, when I was expecting my head to explode any moment and honestly believed I was prepared to accept the consequences, I was still kidding myself. I didn’t in those days have an app that started a red beeper to flash and sound every time my internet router hits a porn site, followed by a warning voice saying, “OK, this is the one!” Fortunately you do get a warning, and this is it. That warning would say, “Up to now you have got away with it but if you stay another minute your head will explode,” do you think I would have PMOed?
If you are in doubt about the answer just try walking up to a cliff, stand on the edge with your eyes closed and imagine you then have the choice of either quitting PMO or walking up blindfolded before your next PMO.
There is no doubt what your choice would be. I had been doing what every internet porn PMOer does all his life: closing my mind and keeping my head in the sand, hoping that I would wake up one morning and just not want to PMO any more. PMOers cannot allow themselves to think of the health risks. If they do, even the illusion of enjoying the ‘habit’ goes.
This explains why a shock treatment is so ineffective in the first stages of quitting. It is only non-users who can bring themselves to read the destructive brain changes. It also explains why PMOers, influenced by their little monster, wrongly recall that filthy room mate who PMOed everyday and was still remaining ‘horny’ 24 hours a day – they will ignore the thousands of people who are brought “down” in their prime because of this poisonous ‘habit’.
About six times a week I have the following conversation with PMOers (usually the younger ones):
ME: Why do you want to stop?
PMOer: I read in a PUA guru’s blog that it is good to stop for 4 days to amp myself up.
ME: Aren’t you worried about the health risks?
PMOer: No, I could step under a bus tomorrow.
ME: But would you deliberately step under a bus?
PMOer: Of course not.
ME: Do you not bother to look left and right when you cross the road?
PMOer: Of course I do.
Exactly. He/she goes through a lot of trouble not to step under a bus and the odds are hundreds of thousands to one against it happening. Yet the PMOer risks the near certainty of being crippled by this ‘habit’ and appears to be completely oblivious to the risks. Such is the power of the brainwashing. The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist. Especially when you are younger or single. So is internet porn - it is the wolf in sheep’s clothing.
I remember a friend of mine who would not drink or smoke. Yet he would argue with me that internet porn is not different than older safe porn and that it is fun. Isn’t it strange that if, for example, we felt there was the slightest fault in an airplane, we wouldn’t go up in it, even though the risks are millions to one against death. Yet we take more than a one-in-four certainty with internet porn with its PMO addiction and are apparently oblivious to it. And what does the PMOer get out of it? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!
Another common myth about PMO is the depression or peevishness. Many of the younger people are not worried about their health because they do not suffer any of the depression or melancholy. The depression or stress itself is not a disease; it is just a symptom. Younger people in general don’t feel the irritability or depression created because of their body’s natural capability to produce more dopamine and also the vigour and cheerfulness of their youthful activities masks those depleting reservoirs. As they age or if their lives experience serious setbacks the depleted resources are overworked and then they will experience full blown symptoms.
When non-younger PMOers feel stressed, depressed or irritated it is because of the normal dopamine levels are not being effective and or due to excessive ‘flooding’ and its reactionary cutting down of the receptors. It is a reactionary step brain takes to protect its nervous systems from excessive dopamine ‘flooding’ as the dopamine receptors close up. It is one of nature’s fail-safe methods. They also develop other neural changes that will keep them in the rut.
Just think of it this way. If you had a nice car and allowed it to rust without doing anything about it that would be pretty stupid, as it would soon become a heap of rust and not be able to carry you anywhere. However, that would not be the end of the world; it is only a question of money and you could always buy a new car. But your body is the vehicle that carries you through life. We all say that our health is our most valued asset. How true that is, as sick millionaires will tell you. Most of us can look back at some illness or accident in our lives when we prayed to get better. (HOW SOON WE FORGET). By being a PMOer, you are not only letting the rust get in and doing nothing about it; you are systematically destroying the vehicle you need to go through life and you only get one.
Wise up. You don’t have to do it and remember: it is doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING FOR YOU. Just for a moment take your head out of the sand and ask yourself; if you knew for certain that the next PMO session would be the one to trigger off a process in your body that will make your penis fall away like a hair strand, would you then actually go ahead and do it? Forget the ‘disease’ idea (it is difficult to imagine it) but just imagine you are on your bed, with your partner and your penis is not responding. Or if you are a woman, you are not feeling in any way responsive with someone you deeply love? Now you are not in the beginning of a happy endeavour but instead a tug of war in your mind and in your partner’s mind too. “Is it my PMO or is it just stress? Can I spot who the culprit is 100%? Or for her, is it me? Am I not sexy enough for him? Or worse, am I losing my ‘appetite’ too soon due to ageing?” What do you think is going to happen?
I often speak to the people that it happens to. They didn’t think it would happen to them either and the worst thing about it isn’t the disease itself but the knowledge they have brought it on themselves. For a very long time as PMOers and abusers we are saying, “I’ll stop tomorrow.” Try to imagine how those people feel who “hit the button.” For them the brainwashing is ended. They then see the ‘habit’ as it really is and spend the remainder of their lives thinking, “Why did I kid myself I needed to masturbate to internet porn? If only I had the chance to go back!”
Stop kidding yourself. You have the chance. It’s a chain reaction. If you engage in the next PMO session, it will lead you to the next one and the next. It’s already happening to you. At the beginning of the book I promised you no shock treatment. If you have already decided you are going to stop, this isn’t shock treatment for you. If you are still in doubt, skip the remainder of this chapter and come back to it when you have read the rest of the book.
Volumes of researches and studies have already been written about the damage that internet porn causes to our sex lives and to our mental well-being. The trouble is that until the PMOer decides to stop he doesn’t want to know. Even the forums and mentor groups are a waste of time because the PMOer puts the blinkers on. If he inadvertently reads it, the first thing he does is to open an incognito tab and visit his favourite tube site. PMOers tend to think of the happiness, stress and sex hazards as a hit-and-miss affair, like stepping on a land mine.
Get it into your head: it is already happening. Every single time you browse to your tube site you are triggering dopamine flooding and the opioids get to work - the neural pathway water slides get greased and the ride takes you smoothly through the next steps that you have already given to the script. The nervous system is now flooded by dopamine and since it is its umpteenth time, it is going to let some of your dopamine receptors to close up. The ‘little monster’ in you is using this slight dip in the pleasure compared to the last time to encourage you to “cross the red line” towards more shocking porn or behaviour in order to release more dopamine. In the process just hit on the ‘novelty’ button that triggers dopamine again. “Let’s keep going,” says the little monster, because you deserve it and you are entitled to this. Now the streaming of so many pictures and videos on a single tab… that triggers another button called ‘supernormal’ stimulus, injecting more amines.
All this time your receptors are receiving infomation to shut down inversely proportional to the flooding. Then you get to the orgasm stage. More dopamine, more shutting down of receptors. After this comes the withdrawal, Oh and since you are an ex-PMOer go get one. And why not pour a glass from the fridge of that leftover whiskey? Internet porn kills your sex life and thus it kills your private and public lives as well. If you are not aware of the addiction process or even if you are, you are in denial since the “little monster” craves for its fix because there was no real pain and you could handle the discomfort.
I confess that the thought of having ED terrified me, which is probably why I just blocked it from my mind. It’s amazing how the fear of the horrendous health risks attached to PMOing are overshadowed by the fear of stopping. It’s not so much that the latter is a greater fear, but that if we quit today the fear is immediate, whereas the fear of getting ED, PE and OCD related mental illnesses are a fear of the future. Why look on the black side? Perhaps it won’t happen. I’m bound to have quit by then anyway.
We tend to think of PMOing as a tug-of-war. On one side is fear: it’s unhealthy, filthy and enslaving. On the other side the pluses: it’s my pleasure, my friend, my crutch. It never seems to occur to us that this side is also fear. It’s not so much that we enjoy them but that we tend to be miserable without them.
Think of heroin addicts deprived of their heroin: the abject misery they go through. Now picture their utter joy when they are allowed to plunge a needle into their veins and end that terrible craving. Try to imagine how anyone could actually believe they get pleasure from sticking a hypodermic syringe into a vein. Non-heroin addicts don’t suffer that panic feeling. Heroin doesn’t relieve the feeling, on the contrary, it causes it.
Non-PMOers (those who don’t ‘need’ or have access to internet porn) don’t feel miserable if they are not allowed to PMO. It’s only PMOers that suffer that feeling. Internet porn doesn’t relieve it, on the contrary it causes it. The fear of ED or PE didn’t make me quit because I believed it was rather like walking through a minefield. If you got away with it - fine. If you were unlucky you stepped on a mine.
You knew the risks you were taking and if you were prepared to take the risk, what had it to do with anyone else? So if a non-PMOer ever tried to make me aware of those risks, I would use the typical evasive tactics that all addicts invariably adopt. They are….
“You will eventually get old and lose your sexual prowess anyway…”
- Of course you do but sexual prowess is not even the point, we are talking slavery here. Even if that is the case, is that a logical reason for deliberately cutting yourself short?
“Quality of life is more important than just living.”
- Exactly but you are surely not suggesting that the quality of life of an addict is greater than that of someone that isn’t addicted? Do you really believe that the quality of a PMOer’s life is better than a non-PMOer? Surely the PMOer loses on both counts his life is spent in trying to cover his head in the sand and being miserable.
“I am single and am not planning to ‘settle down’ in the near future so why not?”
- Even if that were true, is that a logical reason for playing with the brain structure dealing with impulse control that is needed in other areas of life? Can you possibly conceive of anyone being stupid enough to strip naked wherever one is going to be alone? No matter how sure you are that you are not expecting anyone in your life? THAT’S WHAT PMOers EFFECTIVELY DO!
I can understand why the ED and the risks of ruining one’s mental health didn’t help me to quit. I could cope with the former and block my mind to the latter. As you are already aware, my method is not to frighten you into quitting but the complete opposite - to make you realize just how more enjoyable your life will be when you have escaped.
However, I do believe that if I could have seen what was happening inside my brain, this would have helped me to quit. Now I’m not referring to the shock technique of showing a PMOer the effect of the hidden attribute of internet porn on the reward circuit of the brain. It was obvious to me from my unreliable arousals, fading penetrations, lack of energy, unemotional sex (as in just a muscle twitch), hit-seek escalations of porn search for novelty and shock that something is not going right. None of these are catastrophic for me as I have trained myself in cognitive behavioural techniques as discussed before but I did experience them quite often enough. Practising CBT/REBT gave me enough grounding and stability to look at my addiction in a different and better way than I’d have if I were not aware of the cognitive biases. Provided I kept functioning, even at a mediocre level, they were less of an embarrassment than a lost tooth - at least nobody could see my mind.
What I am referring to is the progressive gunging-up of our reward circuits with excessive stimulation, making them incapable of handling the normal stresses of life. Closing up of dopamine and opioids receptors does not help me in enjoying my life with enough vigour. Porn and masturbation has replaced the natural sexual appetite, like a candy bar replacing real food. The brain has no idea to differentiate one from the other. I don’t like the thought of a virus in my smart phone or my laptop. Could you imagine buying the latest one of these gadgets and letting a virus to run every line of the software code but repeat it thrice? That’s what we effectively do to our bodies when we become PMOers.
Many researchers and doctors are now relating various mental health problems in addition to the physiological ones caused by internet porn and PMO in general. This is no surprise to me. The mainstream medical world has laboured that PMO has never been scientifically proven to be the direct cause of the issues reported by self-confessing individuals. Admitting one’s sexual inability in public is such a shame triggering event, why would anyone do that unless they are really concerned? And probably many have found the cause and have eliminated it. This book is going to help you to get rid of it and also become a happy ex PMOer. No porn whatsoever, no porn aided masturbation. And of course no unnecessary orgasms. The only aid will be the touch, smell and voice of your partner. Like whole wheat bread after a well developed appetite, you will produce enough juices to break down the hard bread and it comes as a beautiful refreshment. No high fructose corn syrup injected fake food. The evidence is so overwhelming as not to need proof. No one ever scientifically proved to me exactly why, when I bang my thumb with a hammer, it hurts. I soon got the message.
I must emphasize that I am not a doctor but just like the hammer and the thumb, it soon became obvious to me that the periods of my life outside of sex that were marked by low levels of irritation tolerance, lack of energy, temper, moody thoughts, zoning out of social scenes etc. were directly related to my masturbation and especially the supernormal stimulus of IP1. However, I truly believe that the greatest hazard that IP causes to our health is the gradual and progressive deterioration of our sex life caused by super-substitutes. The novelty, shock, variety in size and nature of internet porn can slowly take away the magic of the real sex. Worse, the RC2 reward circuits are flooding unnaturally and at high abnormal levels so that they close up the receptors and also diminish any potency and effectiveness of normal de-stressors that work in the RC. This predisposes one to be depressed and become needy to lot more other ‘crutches’ of life such as cigarettes and alcohol or even causing the host to think of committing suicide. Even the real vagina will not be a match for the death grip of masturbation - and the little monster is kept alive.
Our lives are ‘blessed’ with challenges – yes, ‘blessed’- they are needed to keep us strong and make us better. If our nervous systems is pre-disposed to making a molehill out of a mountain it will seek a ‘fix’. When it seeks a hit or a mountain out of a molehill, it interfaces with reality then is it worth it? Our body and our brain is designed to make use of optimal levels of these brain chemicals. I don’t think a man who fails in satisfying a woman should consider himself worthless.
You will do well accepting yourself unconditionally and as an extension others and of life in general as well. It needs practice - but you won’t practice unless your brain rewards you. External rewards are iffy and most of the time are not forthcoming. If your internal brain chemicals and the reward circuits are humming even a little external reward will go a long way and the lack of external approvals won’t even matter at all. If you want to you can be the king of your life. Think about this as one of your greatest benefits.
Several of the adverse effects that PMO had on my health, some of which I had been suffering from for years, did not become apparent to me until many years after I had stopped. The good news I have for you is this - all of this is reversible. You are the jailer and you are also going to set yourself - the prisoner - free!
It didn’t even occur to me that I was already suffering from ED and PE3 myself. Upon my first observation of the damage I quickly attributed it, with the help of my little monster, to (a) the occasional opposition to foreplay by my partner, (b) to the ‘less-than-ideal’ partner (my brain ‘tolerance’ is so high that even if I were with the most sexy one imaginable it’d still be not enough), (c) some silly grudge about my past stopping me to ‘prepare’ us to mood setting or (d) my boss, customer etc. etc.
When it happened again my little monster brain gave me a BS mix of the above combo which I don’t even want to waste your time with. It never occurred to me that none of these would have stopped me before? So, I decided that I need ‘stamina practice’ since I figured that a toy which comes close to real vagina will ‘train’ me in getting hard and to avoid PE. I later came to read about PE being the result of poor training of the reward circuits. If one’s goal is orgasm then getting hard is not a requirement with masturbation. That being avoided enough times sets up waterslides in your brain and you grease it real nice every time to ride the slide. You can dispute this but I am going to take the Pascal’s Wager and quit - I lose very little, gain big and avoid losing big.
When you don’t get hard or have unreliable erections, it’s a signal that your mind wants it more than your body - most times. Also of note is my peevishness and melancholy (anger/irritability and moodiness/depression). I told myself that I am a negatively oriented Virgo. While many Virgos are predisposed to think and act ‘negatively’ I failed to notice that actually I am a pretty optimistic guy.
In fact, the many times I had not gone along for the porn water slide ride, due to external events, even though I had wanted to, I noticed that I did not get affected big time - remember again Pascal’s Wager. But looking back at my life, I have to say that I have been an achiever, in spite of the self-sabotage of PMO and its constant drag. That must be due to the training of tempering my pre-disposition and keeping the negatives to toned down healthy negatives of disappointment, sorrow, concern, annoyance, sadness, regret, frustration, caution, vigilance, irritation etc. I am sure that I am an optimistic and positive guy, how else could I explain that I kept going in spite of my tripping myself with PMO?
I have been in the stock market and have advised my friends and colleagues. I would show my hands - in real investments and trades. Most of the macho guys would not bring themselves to pull the trigger at those times when I did with no fears but of course with due vigilance and caution.
I know a person close to me who would masturbate every day at least once. He had no access to porn and was using static magazines and his own imagination. Now, looking back I wonder if this person lost his life’s joy to PMO. He would always be quick to anger and his irritation trigger levels are always very low. Any day-to-day stress will tick him off. He had a secure government job that demanded little from him and so he was lucky to survive until his retirement. Lucky? Maybe not. Anyway, I am sure his RC2 had long sent shutdown signals to his receptors and his dopamine and opioids have much diminished effectiveness.
You might conclude that I am something of a hypochondriac. I believe that I was when I was a PMOer. One of the great evils about addictions such as these is that it fools us into believing that the cigarettes, alcohol, PMO etc. give us courage, when in fact it gradually and imperceptibly dissipates it. I was shocked when I read about a confessor who felt suicidal at 19 due to PMO. Little did I realize that twenty years later I would have exactly the same lack of joie de vivre. You might conclude that this chapter has been one of necessary, or unnecessary, doom and gloom. I promise you it is the complete opposite. I used to fear death when I was a child. A bit later I used to believe that smoking, drinking and porn removed that fear. Perhaps it did. If so, it replaced it with something infinitely worse: A FEAR OF LIVING!
Now my fear of dying has returned. Yet it does not bother me. I realize that it only exists because I now enjoy life so much. I don’t brood over my fear of dying any more than I did when I was a child. I’m far too busy living my life to the full. The odds are against me living to a hundred, but I’ll try to. I’ll also try to enjoy every precious moment!
There were two other advantages on the health side that never occurred to me until I had stopped PMOing. One was that I now wake up refreshed in the morning. The subtle well-rested feeling is something sort of what you’d experience after a fever had left you. I get that almost every day but of course some nights are not going to be perfect. I had accepted that there is nothing outside of us that we need to enjoy or cope in our lives.
The other was the acceptance of the Void in our lives. Those insecure feelings. The emptiness. From what I learned - that is after removing PMO from my life, I could see that these three are present in everyone’s lives. Yes, that includes the playboys and the PUA macs as well. I think they are like the nights that serve to enhance our days. Yes, it is a well known ‘insight’. But then I know of many insights which have never translated to any value to my life. After I quit, it all fell into place. Look, I am not a saint or a guru. But I am not panicking and seeking substitutes when I feel the void, or insecurity or emptiness. There are no outside things that will be a pleasure or crutch.
Here is a thought experiment for you… let’s say a woman comes to you and says she doesn’t necessarily want an orgasm but however, she very much wants to make love. Even penetrative. And she wants to do it for as long and as far as you can go without an orgasm but if it happens then its fine. I assure you of a great new experience, far better than anything in your life if you even get that offer. Try it.
PMOers also suffer the illusion that the ill-effects of internet porn and PMO are overstated. The reverse is the case. There is no doubt that internet porn is the major cause of PIED and other problems. The trouble is that in many cases where PMO causes the ED or is a contributory factor, it is not blamed on PMO in the statistics. It has been estimated that more than 25 per cent of men experience ED or PE and yet I wonder how many divorces have been caused by PMO? There are no reliable ways to know the number of Internet Porn users within the study group. The studies usually mix up traditional and internet porn users and has no way to account for the starting age of the participants, years of use, duration and frequency of usage. There is no way to conduct blind or double blind methods either.
I was a ‘safe’ user of internet porn - if there is anything ‘safe’ about it. However I noticed that I invariably projected porn fantasies on real life women. Like the episode in Friends where the guys, who were receiving continuous free porn on TV, started to wonder to each other why the pizza delivery girl didn’t ask to check out their ‘big bedroom’. Imagine what ‘careless’ or even ‘accidental’ porn exposure on the darker sides the internet would do to someone who is already at a tipping point in his or her life? Fighting against these ‘porn induce thoughts’, PIT4, is going to be a major drain on his or her mental health.
The effect of the brainwashing is that we tend to think like the man who, having fallen off a 100-storey building, is heard to say, as he passes the fiftieth floor, “So far, so good!” We think that as we have got away with it so far, one more PMO session won’t make the difference. Try to see it another way, the ‘habit’ is a continuous chain for life, each session creating the need for the next. When you start the habit you light a fuse. The trouble is, YOU DON’T KNOW HOW LONG THE FUSE IS. Every time that you give up to a PMO session you are one step nearer to the bomb exploding. HOW WILL YOU KNOW IF IT’S THE NEXT ONE?