03-28 Timing

Timing

Apart from the obvious point that as it is doing you no good, now is the right time to stop. I believe timing is important. Our society treats internet porn flippantly as a slightly distasteful habit that can not injure your health. It is not. It is drug addiction, a disease and a destroyer of relationships in society. The worst thing that happens in most PMOer’s lives is getting hooked on that awful addiction. If they stay hooked, horrendous things happen. Timing is important to give yourself the right to a proper cure.

First of all, identify the times or occasions when PMO appears to be important to you. If you are a businessman and use it for the illusion of relief of stress, pick a relatively slack period; a good idea is to choose your annual holiday. If you PMO mainly during boring or relaxing periods, weekends etc. do the opposite. In any event, take the matter seriously and make the attempt the most important thing in your life.

Look ahead for a period of about three weeks and try to anticipate any event that might lead to failure. Occasions like a conference trip, partner out of town etc. need not deter you, providing you anticipate them in advance and do not feel you will be deprived. Do not attempt to cut down in the meantime as this will only create the illusion that being denied is enjoyable. In fact, it helps to force yourself to watch and have as many PMO sessions as possible. While you are having the last session and that last time, be conscious of the disappointment due to satiation, unfulfilled expectations (porn can never satisfy you), any bodily pain or pain in the genitals, the withdrawal effects, the peevishness and the melancholy. Think how marvellous it will be when you allow yourself to stop doing it.

Remember you aren’t giving anything up. On the contrary: you are about to receive marvellous positive gains.

For years the medical profession viewed porn is harmless without knowing the difference between the tame static porn of yesteryear and the latest VR streaming porn. The problem is this; although every PMOer uses internet porn purely to relieve the brain chemical craving for dopamine, it is not the addiction to the brain chemical itself that hooks the PMOer but the self-brainwashing that results from that addiction. An intelligent person will fall for a confidence trick. But only a fool will go on falling for it once he realizes that it’s a confidence trick. Fortunately, most PMOers aren’t fools; they only think they are. Each individual PMOer has his own private brainwashing. That is why there appears to be such a wide range of different types of PMOer, which only serves to compound the mysteries.

With the benefit of the original book that used this method to stop smoking, which dealt with nicotine addiction (one of the most quickest and addictive drug known to man) and bearing in mind that the personal logs that I collected from Reddit, NoFap and YBOP blogs and forums, I was agreeably surprised to realize that the philosophy propounded in the original book was still sound. The accumulated knowledge that was acquired by the original author Alan Carr and by myself the hack-author is how to communicate that knowledge to each individual PMOer. The fact that I know every PMOer can not only find it easy to stop but can actually enjoy the process is not only pointless but exceedingly frustrating unless I can make the PMOer realize it. The original author of the quit smoking book explains some controversial advice:

“Many people have said to me: ‘You say, “Continue to smoke until you have finished the book.’’ This tends to make the smoker take ages to read the hook or just not finish it. period. Therefore you should change that instruction.’ This sounds logical, but I know that if the instruction were: ‘Stop immediately,’ some smokers wouldn’t even start reading the book. I had a smoker consult me in the early days. He said, ‘I really resent having to seek your help, I know I’m strong-willed. In every other area of my life I’m in control. Why is it that all these other smokers are stopping by using their own willpower, yet I have to come to you?’ He continued, ‘I think I could do it on my own, if I could smoke while I was doing it.’”

This may sound like a contradiction but I know what the man meant. We think of stopping smoking as something that is very difficult to do. What do we need when we have something difficult to do? We need our little friend. So stopping smoking appears to be a double blow. Not only do we have a difficult task to perform, which is hard enough, but the crutch on which we normally rely on such occasions is no longer available. It didn’t occur to me until long after the man had left that my instruction to keep smoking is the real beauty of my method. You can continue to smoke while you go through the process of stopping. You get rid of all your doubts and fears first so when you extinguish that final cigarette you are already a non-smoker and can enjoy being one.

So this book on PMO will also keep the same advice intact. No matter how much I say it will be easy there will be a vast majority who will not be able to accept it due to their personal brainwashing on how difficult it is to quit.

The only chapter that has caused me to question my original advice seriously is this chapter on the matter of the right timing. Above all, I advise that if your special occasions are stress situations at the office then pick a holiday to make an attempt to give up or vice versa. In fact, that isn’t the easiest way to do it. The easiest way is to pick what you consider to be the most difficult time to do it, whether it be stress, social, concentration or boredom. Once you’ve proved that you can cope with and enjoy life in the worst possible situations every other situation becomes easy. But if I gave that as a definite instruction, would you even make the attempt to stop?

Let me use an analogy. My wife and I intend to swim together. We arrive at the pool at the same time but we rarely swim together. The reason is that she immerses one toe and half an hour later she’s actually swimming. I cannot stand that slow torture. I know in advance that at some stage, no matter how cold the water is, eventually I’m going to have to brave it. So I’ve learned to do it the easy way: I dive straight in. Now, assuming that I were in a position to insist that if she didn’t dive straight in, she couldn’t swim at all. I know that she wouldn’t swim at all. Do you see the problem?

From feedback I know that many PMOers have used the original advice I gave on timing to delay what they think will be the “evil day.” My next thoughts were to use the technique that I used for the chapter on the advantages of PMOing, something like: “timing is very important and in the next chapter I will advise you about the best time for you to make the attempt!” You turn the page over and there is just a huge, “NOW!” That is, in fact, the best advice but would you take it? This is the most subtle aspect of the porn trap. When we have genuine stress in our lives, it’s not the time to stop yet if we have no stress in our lives, we have no desire to stop. Ask yourself these following questions:

1. When you got porn the first time, did you really decide then that you would continue to depend on it the rest of your life every day without ever being able to stop? OF COURSE YOU DIDN’T!
2. Are you going to continue the rest of your life every day without ever being able to stop? OF COURSE YOU AREN’T!

So when will you stop? Tomorrow? Next year? The year after? Isn’t this what you’ve been asking yourself since you first realized you were hooked? Are you hoping that one morning you will wake up and just not want to PMO any more? Stop kidding yourself. I waited many many awful years for it to happen to me. With any addiction you get progressively more hooked, not less. You think it will be easier tomorrow? You’re still kidding yourself. If you can’t do it today, what makes you think it will be easier tomorrow? Are you going to wait until you’ve actually started to feel getting out of bed is harder than just masturbating? That would be a bit pointless.

The real trap is the belief that now isn’t the right time - it will always be easier tomorrow. We believe that we live stressful lives. In fact, we don’t. We’ve taken most genuine stress out of our lives. When you leave your home you don’t live in fear of being attacked by wild animals. Most of us don’t have to worry where our next meal is coming from or whether we’ll have a roof over our head tonight. But just think of the life of a wild animal. Every time a rabbit comes out of its burrow, it is facing Vietnam the whole of its life. But the rabbit can handle it. It’s got adrenalin and other hormones and so have we. The truth is, the most stressful periods for any creature are early childhood and adolescence. But 3 billion years of natural selection have equipped us to cope with stress. Many people who have had hard childhoods grew up to lead normal lives.

We are all able to cope with unkind people and the unpleasant parts of life. I don’t believe any of my life adversities have left me with any permanent scars; on the contrary, I believe they have made me a stronger person. When I look back on my life there has only been one thing that I couldn’t handle and that was my slavery to that damned internet porn.

A few years ago I thought I had all the worries in the world. I was suicidal - not in the sense that I would have jumped off a roof but in the sense that I knew that this mental tug of war would soon kill me. I argued that if this was life with my crutch, life just wouldn’t be worth living without it. What I didn’t realize was that when you are physically and mentally depressed everything gets you down. Now I feel like a young boy again. Only one thing made the change in my life: I’m now out of the porn pit.

I know it’s a cliché to say, “if you haven’t got your health, you’ve got nothing,” but it’s absolutely true. I used to think that physical fitness fanatics like Gary Player were a pain. I used to claim there’s more to life than feeling fit; there’s sex, booze and tobacco. That’s nonsense. When you feel physically and mentally strong you can enjoy the highs and handle the lows. We confuse responsibility with stress. Responsibility becomes stressful only when you don’t feel strong enough to handle it. The Richard Burtons of this world are physically and mentally strong. What destroys them is not the stresses of life or their jobs, or old age but the lying crutches they turn to which are just illusions. Sadly in his case and for millions like him those lying crutches kill.

Look at it this way. You’ve already decided that you are not going to stay in the trap the rest of your life. Therefore at some time in your life whether you find it easy or difficult, you will have to go through the process of getting free. PMOing is not a habit or pleasure. It is drug addiction and a disease. We’ve already established that far from being easier to stop tomorrow, it will get progressively harder. With a disease that’s going to get progressively worse, the time to get rid of it is NOW - or as near to now as you can manage. Just think how quickly each week of our lives comes and goes. That’s all it takes. Just think how nice it will he to enjoy the rest of your life without that ever-increasing black shadow hanging over you. And if you follow all my instructions, you won’t even have to wait five days. You won’t only find it easy after closing down your bowser: YOU’LL ENJOY IT!