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Thank you for your response. > Unfortunately I think you would need to lock yourself in a room to achieve the kind of solution you're trying to get at. While

Thank you for your response. > Unfortunately I think you would need to lock yourself in a room to achieve the kind of solution you're trying to get at. While addictions can be so extreme as you described, this doesn't describe me, and I don't think (correct me if I am wrong) it is very typical of someone who would consider themselves addicted to pornography. Typically before my session, I would be in a worse than normal mood, or just really wanting to release. If my computer suddenly locked up for an hour, I would likely "sober up" and go do something else. > You need to replace the stimuli you're currently using with other stimuli of some kind. Just flat-out removing it absolutely stupid and not going to work. I agree that is very hard to remove a pleasure source all at once, and a plausible route would be to go incrementally. Reading the other comments, I would agree that spending more time with people in general (not just romantically) would be a healthy alternative.

i336_ 10y ago
Woops, took me a bit to get back to this. Hm, I think I got completely sidetracked with the concept of addiction when I was composing my initial response. It's completely reasonable to say that I described a statistically unlikely worst-case scenario, and I'm glad to hear your situation isn't that bad! Looking at it from a different angle, removing high fructose corn syrup and other forms of highly concentrated sugar from your diet is an extremely healthy thing to do; HFCS can become addictive. What we're describing is exactly the same thing, if you ask me; just remove the concentrated/hyperoptimized stimulati, and everything will balance itself back out. Yeah, it'll be a huge adjustment and kind of depressing to begin with but it's for the best. As I said in my previous comment, actual sex is what's enjoyable, and everything else is just a means to an end. IMO, guilt-tripping people into thinking "running the photocopier" (if you will) is unconditionally wrong is itself a hugely imbalanced view to have. Also, /r/NoFap focuses on "short periods of abstinence" - these might be weeks/months long, but they aren't permanent. I'm honestly not sure how people would abstain, myself. Spending more time with others sounds like a great idea, but IMHO it cannot be a full replacement for what I describe in the previous paragraph, and trying to treat it as such may cause you to wind up in some suboptimal situations (continuous distraction leading to, uh, unexpected relationships, etc).

i336_ 10y ago

Woops, took me a bit to get back to this. Hm, I think I got completely sidetracked with the concept of addiction when I was composing my initial response. It's completely reasonable to say that I described a statistically unlikely worst-case scenario, and I'm glad to hear your situation isn't that bad! Looking at it from a different angle, removing high fructose corn syrup and other forms of highly concentrated sugar from your diet is an extremely healthy thing to do; HFCS can become addictive. What we're describing is exactly the same thing, if you ask me; just remove the concentrated/hyperoptimized stimulati, and everything will balance itself back out. Yeah, it'll be a huge adjustment and kind of depressing to begin with but it's for the best. As I said in my previous comment, actual sex is what's enjoyable, and everything else is just a means to an end. IMO, guilt-tripping people into thinking "running the photocopier" (if you will) is unconditionally wrong is itself a hugely imbalanced view to have. Also, /r/NoFap focuses on "short periods of abstinence" - these might be weeks/months long, but they aren't permanent. I'm honestly not sure how people would abstain, myself. Spending more time with others sounds like a great idea, but IMHO it cannot be a full replacement for what I describe in the previous paragraph, and trying to treat it as such may cause you to wind up in some suboptimal situations (continuous distraction leading to, uh, unexpected relationships, etc).