55 Seconds to Freedom
Discover the Porn Cure Process, an incredibly effective protocol
that will free you of your porn compulsions in one minute or less!
By Thomas Kaye
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2005, 2011
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to www.Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.
A Word To The Spouse of the Porn Addicted Man
Are you afraid pornography is destroying your marriage?
Does your husband promise to stop accessing porn on his computer but then doesn’t? And when you catch him, does he offer no explanation? No rational reason for refusing to stop?
Is his porn use undermining your confidence in him as a man you can respect? Are you contemplating divorce because you just can’t accept the idea that “pornography is no big deal”? Or because you won’t accept the entreaties from friends, family, psychologists and the popular media insisting that you are the one with the problem? That every man does it and it’s the most natural thing in the world, so just deal with it?
And does the thought of giving in to this spirit of the age leave you feeling defeated, alone and near despair?
There is hope.
55 Seconds to Freedom works.
It is based upon a simple, easy to perform technique I call the Porn Cure Process and it will break the ironclad grip pornography has on your husband’s mind and body. The Porn Cure Process can free your husband of all the mindless and irresistible compulsions he feels driving him to watch pornography.
That I guarantee!
However, I cannot guarantee that your husband will choose to apply the Porn Cure Process to all the compulsive triggers for pornography he unintentionally created and now cannot stop giving in to.
By ‘unintentional’ I mean, at one time he freely chose to view pornography; that is true. But it never occurred to him it could become an irresistible compulsion. Nor did he foresee all the negative consequences he’s now suffering as a result. Like Adam and Eve, he thought he could have the apple and the Garden of Eden, too!
But perhaps you can show him The Way to Freedom. You can give him this book and ask him to at least try it. Then he can choose to do it or not.
If he does try it, he will experience freedom from his porn compulsions. I guarantee it!
God’s best to you.
Thomas Kaye
February 5, 2011
Las Vegas, Nevada
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: “Patient, Heal Thyself!” Curing Yourself of Internet Porn Addiction.
Chapter 2: Are You Really Addicted? Infected? Plagued?
Chapter 3: The Keys to The Cure.
Chapter 4: The Porn Cure Process.
Chapter 6: The Need for Precision.
Chapter 7: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back?
Chapter 8: Anatomy of an Addiction – Part 1
Chapter 9: Anatomy of an Addiction – Part 2
Chapter 12: Clearing Out Your Lust Locker.
Chapter 13: Of Fetishes and Freaks.
Chapter 14: Preparing for Backsliding.
Chapter 15: When Everything is About Porn.
Chapter 16: What About My Pain? Re-Creating a Life that Satisfies
Chapter 17: Tips for Further Transformation.
Chapter 18: Finally! Nothing But Lust.
Chapter 19: Where Did All This Stuff Come From Anyway?
Chapter 20: Where Do We Go From Here?
Introduction
Are you a good man with a bad porn problem?
Or bad, not too bad?
Maybe just a little bit out of control?
Are you a religious man, a Christian maybe, and you feel like a hypocrite because he can’t seem to stop porning?
Would you like to break free? Get cured even?
Well, if you can pat your stomach and rub your head at the same time you can free yourself of your increasing compulsion for pornography. And you can do it without telling anyone in your life about your struggles with pornography.
That’s right. You can free yourself of your porn habit without an accountability partner. Even without filtering software.
Most important of all?
You can do it 100% in the privacy of your own mind and heart. No one else need ever know about your secret struggles.
Sound too good to be true? It’s not.
Imagine this:
Every thought and feeling you have in your head that sends you looking for porn is downloaded onto a computer hard drive. You give it a command to search for specific porn memories. Then, as the drive begins to spin, searching through your mental history, you lift the hard drive high above your head and drop it to the ground, permanently scrambling the drive, making recovery of any of the information on it impossible.
Or how about this:
Imagine every porn-inspired fantasy you ever had is burned onto a stack of CDs and you are given a hammer. You take that hammer and shatter each and every one of those CDs into a thousand pieces, never to be played again.
In both these metaphors you would no longer be able to access those memories, those fantasies, those thoughts and feelings; meaning you would no longer get any sexual charge from those thoughts. Nor could your mind ever again toss those images up at you. Never again could it entice you to pornography with them.
You would be free of your porn compulsions, cured of your porn addiction.
Now how about this scenario:
You’re sitting at your computer late at night.
Suddenly, out of nowhere. . .wham! You’re blindsided by a Category 5 Lust Storm and the next thing you know you’re in the middle of a full-scale porn attack.
Faster than you can say, “I can’t come to bed yet, honey, I have a ton of work to do,” you’re surfing over to a porn site whose address you know by heart and in moments you’re lost to all reason.
What can you do?
Nothing, you say. There’s nothing to do. I just have to let nature run its course. I can hate myself in the morning.
Not this time. Not since you learned the secrets of the Porn Cure Process.
This time you are not helpless. This time you are not a passive victim of your lust. This time there is something you can do about it.
As you sit there, watching transfixed the images on your monitor, you realize you still have the presence of mind to execute the Porn Cure Process (PCP). And as you do, something amazing happens.
Even as you’re seeing what you’re seeing, your eyes never leaving the screen, against nature it seems. . .your lust level starts going down.
You repeat the PCP and your lust level goes down some more.
You repeat the PCP again and your lust level drops some more. Again. A little more.
Soon, before you can say the word, Impossible! you’ve broken the porn trance you were in. You have returned to your senses!
You are now free to choose to close that site, clear your cache and go to bed.
Sounds impossible, doesn’t it? It’s not.
Next, imagine going back through your personal sexual history, including your childhood and adolescence, and identifying each memory that still haunts you, shames you, excites you or pulls you to use pornography. Imagine you have a secret code, like a computer worm that seeks out and eliminates the thoughts and emotions that trigger your brain to endlessly playback these memories. Memories, emotions and bodily sensations that bind you with chains to the past and to your pornography habit.
The torments of your past would be a thing of the past, wouldn’t they?
But that’s still not all!
Utilizing this secret code further you clean out all the other mental and emotional clutter in your brain, eliminating your past emotional baggage and emotionally freeing yourself to become the person you truly want to be. With this secret code to erase all those pestilent thoughts and feelings, fears and limitations, you can finally become the master of your own mind.
A Jedi Warrior over your own soul!
My friend, the day I discovered the secret to The Cure is a day I will never forget.
Occasional use of porn was bad enough for a Christian and a husband. But over the years my porn habit just seemed to grow and grow until it was impossible to deny it was out of control.
I felt so defeated, so helpless to stop I nearly gave up hope of ever finding an answer.
The cynics say, “A man is only as faithful as his options.” But with the internet, pornography is always an option. Porn offers us men an easy orgasm; and how can a man say no to an Easy ‘O’?
Especially when he’s already said yes too many times before?
I felt trapped by porn.
Lost in lust.
But one thing kept me going, kept me hoping against hope for help. Hoping against my feelings, hoping against my lust, hoping against my history, hoping against all reason that there was help and freedom possible for me.
My faith.
I believed the Bible’s promise: “Where sin abounds, grace does much more abound.” So I knew there had to be something, somewhere that could put an end to my irresistible compulsion for pornography and cure me of this mind virus; cleanse me of this soul plague.
And I found it!
Overnight the Porn Cure Process changed my life forever.
Suddenly I was no longer a slave to pornography. Overnight I was no longer a hapless victim of the porno plague sweeping over this world.
Instead, I became a slayer of porn dragons!
It took me less than one hour to learn the essential elements of the Porn Cure Process. I then used this knowledge to identify the two strongest compulsions I had at that time: Irresistible Urge and Undeniable Compulsion.
That was what my porn addiction felt like to me. That the compulsion to seek out porn was undeniable and the urge irresistible. Whenever it reared its ugly head (which was becoming more and more frequent) I gave into it at the very first opportunity – no matter the risk. Regardless of the danger of discovery. On the job. At home. The temptation to porn seemed to be everywhere.
Does that sound familiar to you? How’s your porn use? Is that what it feels like? Has it become irresistible to you? Undeniable?
By following the Porn Cure Process and spending less than one minute on each compulsion (just 55 Seconds to be exact) I eliminated the irresistible urge and undeniable compulsion to do porn from my life for good.
It’s more than six years later, my friend, and those urges have never come back.
Too Good To Be True?
In the days and then weeks that followed I continued to be amazed that the irresistible urge to porn did not come back (can we use “porn” as a verb? Seems easier to say, don’t you think?). I reveled in the emotional freedom I felt. It seemed too good to last.
But it did last. And like I said above, it has lasted to this very day. Now more than six years and counting.
Except. . .
After about three weeks or so I found myself inexplicably being pulled back to pornography. I didn’t understand why. I no longer felt compelled and compulsed and driven to porn. I seemed to be choosing to do it. But I didn’t want to choose it, I thought. Yet I was choosing it. I didn’t understand it. I was confused and deeply discouraged.
Until I figured out the answer.
The reality was although I had completely erased the two strongest triggers I had for using pornography there were still many, many other things in my mind, in my heart and in my environment which could trigger a run to pornography in me. Almost anything in fact (or so it seemed).
Thoughts, feelings, memories, situations, sights, sounds – even smells – could grab hold of my mind and send me back into pornography’s grip, swept along by my lust like a paper cup in a tsunami.
You know something of this experience, don’t you? Every guy does.
You’re walking down the street and some hot looking lady walks by and the wind catches her hair, the movement of her dress catches your eye and you notice how smooth her skin is and how large her breasts are and. . .wham! Your engine is off and running!
Perfectly normal for a guy, right?
But what happens when you’re habitual response to this kind of everyday lust is to go porning? What do you do when nearly everything in your life triggers in you porn-seeking behavior?
You admit you’re addicted, that’s what.
But to what? What are you addicted to?
Not to pornography, my friend. You’re addicted to what pornography gives you. You’re addicted to lust.
LUST. That neuro-chemical cocktail that your very own brain serves up to you whenever you think about sex (or when you don’t think about sex for too long). Thanks to pornography lust has become a drug to you. A Class II Narcotic*. One you just don’t want to say ‘no’ to.
(*A Class II drug is a drug with a legitimate medical use but with a high chance for both abuse and dependency. With pornography so easy to access these days, lust addiction in men is almost inevitable.)
Lust is your drug of choice and pornography is your supplier. Your drug dealer.
Realize something, my friend. When you seek out pornography, it isn’t porn you want. You want what porn gets you.
And what does it get you?
It gets you high, that’s what.
The sight of naked people having sex injects a lust cocktail directly into your brain. Lots and lots of lust! And you love lust! We all do. Lust is one of the greatest, most exciting, most wonderful feelings a man can ever feel.
And thanks to pornography and the internet we can feel it instantly, anytime we want for as long as we want.
And we want - a lot.
So even though I no longer felt an urge that was irresistible or a compulsion that was undeniable I still wanted what pornography could give me. I still wanted to get high on lust. What could be more normal than that?
But I believe using porn to get that fix is wrong. A sin.
Or, if you’re not a Christian, you’ve discovered pornography is a slippery slope or a gateway behavior that just might take you places you know you don’t really want to go.
Like addictive behavior. Like freaky, perverted fantasies you will despise yourself for having even as you start looking for justification for them.
Like acting out these fantasies.
So what was I to do? What can you do?
I had no desire to try to eliminate all lust from my life. That would be impossible, I’m pretty sure. Besides, who would want that?
Nor did I want to go so far as to have my testicles cut off! Become a eunuch? No way!
Besides, the heart of the problem isn’t lust. Lust is a good thing when used and experienced in the appropriate contexts.
The problem is pornography-induced lust.
Why?
Because with porn there are no limits to your lust. No boundaries either. Not even imagination.
Right now, at this very moment, there are thousands and thousands of porn producers all over the world who are spending their day doing nothing but thinking up ever-new, ever-changing and situations to expose us men to in their efforts to offer fresh lust `to us so we give them our money.
“Find a need and fill it.” The heart of capitalism.
Or is that, “Find a weakness and feed off of it”? The motive of a parasite.
So how did I end my craving for pornography-supplied lust?
I went to work on myself.
I discovered that a porn trigger can be anything. Absolutely anything.
It can be a thought, a feeling or a memory. It can be a situation, a sight or a sound. And yes, I learned even a smell could trigger me to seek out pornography.
I dug deeper into the heart of the Porn Cure Process until I mastered it. I learned how to recognize when I was being triggered and to accurately name the trigger (the most critically important skill to acquire, by the way). Then I’d eliminate that trigger - for good.
One by one I uncovered these triggers. And one by one I applied the PCP to them.
The result?
I eventually wiped out each and every trigger I had for my porn use until I was confident I’d eliminated my habit completely. Later, if a porn trigger popped up unexpectedly, from behind an emotion or a forgotten memory, and tried to pull me back into porn, I simply identified the source of this new trigger, named it and applied the PCP quickly and efficiently, eliminating the compulsion from my mind.
Day by day, one by one I eliminated these triggers to pornography that I’d spent years creating and installing in my brain.
Yes, that’s right. I created the chains that bound me to pornography, much as Jacob Marley of Charles Dicken’s, A Christmas Carol, forged in life the chains he wore in death.
And so did you.
Each and every trigger we have for porn we created and installed in our minds by our freely chosen actions. We didn’t know that’s what we were doing, but we did it to ourselves nonetheless.
The good news is, your past doesn’t have to equal your future. Your past doesn’t have to matter any all. With The Cure in your hands, you hold the power.
The only question is: What are you going to do with it?
Thanks to The Cure Process. I permanently eliminated pornography from my life. Now I can proudly and boldly proclaim:
I am a man for whom
pornography is not a problem!
Got Lust?
Given the power I’m claiming for The Cure, it’s natural to wonder, “Are you saying you never feel, you know. . .horny, anymore?”
The truth?
Absolutely!
Just about every day, too. And so will you even after learning to eliminate your porn habit. Nothing in The Cure changes the fact that you are a man and men naturally and normally feel lust.
Thank God for that!
But I am no longer a slave to the mental triggers that used to send me mindlessly searching for pornography. I no longer feel compelled, compulsed and driven to seek out pornography. And neither will you.
These days, when I feel perfectly normal lust, it’s not a problem. I no longer feel driven to act on it. Instead, I’ve trained my brain to automatically switch my attention toward other things important to me. Goals and projects and plans. Things that inspire me and fill my life with energy and fun.
Or else I switch my mind to comfortable thoughts of the mundane, the familiar. The comfortable and routine.
Or else I turn my mind to my lust’s appropriate object. My wife.
Imagine that! A Christian man lusting for his wife. In this day and age? What is the world coming to?
Does it always work?’
No. But when it doesn’t I hunker down and face my feelings head-on. I don’t try to repress what I’m feeling. There’s an adage I learned during this struggle that’s doubly-true with lust: What we resist, persists. And what we repress, we express. Eventually.
But that doesn’t mean I have to act on my lust. I face it. I acknowledge it. I use the Set-Up Phrase from The Cure Process. And I win. Instead of being mindlessly driven to seek out pornography, using all the tools available in The Cure, I effectively manage my lust. And that management begins with mastering The Cure Process.
Like Kryptonite!
After ensuring myself that I could truly and honestly say, without any reservations, that I was cured of my addiction to pornography, I tried to share my experiences with some of the men in my life.
Let me tell you, it was not easy.
If you ever want to clear out a room full of guys, just bring up the subject of pornography. . .as a problem! Especially if it’s a room full of Christian men. Any talk of pornography is like Kryptonite to them! And trying to bring up the subject one-on-one was worse than pulling teeth. Without Novocain!
But it’s not hard to understand why, is it? Seriously, how eager are you to admit to a friend, or worse, someone you know only from church, that you have a problem with porn? Probably the only reason you’re even reading this book now is because of the perfect privacy the internet gives you.
But that perfect privacy is also the reason you’re having such a problem with pornography in the first place, isn’t it? Perfect privacy is the reason pornography has exploded all over the world and become the problem no man can escape.
And it was this realization that showed me what I had to do.
I had to take what I’d learned about curing myself of pornography addiction, everything I’d learned about triggers and anchors and everything I’d learned from The Cure Process and put it all into an eBook anyone could download off the internet and use to cure themselves of their addiction to pornography just as I had.
All in perfect privacy.
Ironic isn’t it? The privacy that helped grease the skids of your slide down to Porn Hell will now help you break free of pornography. As William Shatner observed in the classic movie, Airplane 2: “Irony can be pretty ironic sometimes.”
Ain’t it cool?
The instrument of your slavery, the internet, will be the tool of your deliverance.
Keep reading. Your deliverance is just minutes away. . .
Chapter 1
Patient, Heal Thyself!
Curing Yourself of Your Porn Addiction
You caught that, didn’t you? In the heading there?
‘Cure yourself.’
That’s right. You will do it.
I’ll teach you how to do it, but you will be the one to actually do it.
How? By following the directions contained in this book and taking the action prescribed. If you do, you will cure yourself of your compulsive and unwanted use of pornography.
How can I make such a claim and expect you to believe me?
I don’t expect you to believe me. I only ask that you to suspend your disbelief long enough to follow my directions and put this Process to the test. See if it works for you. Your personal experience of freedom from porn will be all the proof you will ever need to know The Cure worked for you.
That’s my promise. Follow the directions for performing the Porn Cure Process. and you will free yourself of your porn habit, no matter how mild or severe it is.
You Say ‘Tomayto’. I Say ‘Tomahhto’
This talk about a “cure” for porn addiction begs the question: “What do we mean by a cure? How are we defining the word?
The word “cure” as I'm using it means, 'to restore to health, soundness, or normality; to bring about recovery from a disease or addiction.' It also means 'a course or period of treatment; especially one designed to interrupt an addiction or compulsive habit.'
Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? That's from Merriam-Webster’s Medical Dictionary, by the way.
A phrase not used in the medical dictionary but found in the regular dictionary is, “A course of treatment expected to be effective.”
Did you get that? A course of treatment.
A cure is rarely a silver bullet. A one-shot wonder.
Consider the use of antibiotics to treat infection. If you’ve ever taken antibiotics you know you’re supposed to take all the pills you’re given, usually enough for seven to ten days. You have to follow the entire course of treatment to ensure you are completely cured of your infection. If you don’t the infection could come back, stronger than before.
The Cure is effective, but only if you diligently follow its course of treatment; only if you consistently and persistently apply the techniques I’m going to teach you to your porn infection. If you do, you will be cured. That’s my promise.
One Caveat
Oh, there’s just one more thing I need to say about this whole cure idea. It’s the closest thing to a disclaimer I’ll use in this book but I want to be clear on the following point.
Human nature being what it is and pornography being what it is, I want you to understand this:
The Cure will totally break your compulsive and addictive use of pornography and you will be amazed to finally be free of the incessant, coercive compulsions of your porn-fueled lust;
however. . .
Nothing in The Cure will change your nature as a man. Nothing in The Cure will remove, eliminate, annihilate or destroy your normal male sex drive.
Instead, through The Cure will you will gain the ability to completely stop using pornography to gratify this normal and natural, but persistent and insistent, bodily sensation of lust.
And that’s a good thing, don’t you think? That The Cure can’t eliminate your sex drive? Don’t you agree that it’s good to be able to feel your sex drive? To still be a normal guy, capable of feeling hot and horny and full of the energy of lust, but free of the compulsion to use pornography to satisfy it.
I hope you think so, otherwise you are in for a lifetime of pain and frustration because your sex drive will never go away.
Thank God for that!
Seriously. As much trouble as our lust has caused us in the past, continues to cause us in the present and will cause us in the future, would you really want to live without it? To never again feel the wonderful energy, power and thrill of sexual excitement?
You would?
Too bad. You can’t. Your lust is as much a part of you as your heart, your belly, your eyes or your ears.
Can you stop the beating of your heart? Your gut from digesting? Your eyes from seeing or your ears from hearing? Can you stop yourself from feeling emotions? Of course not.
Nor can you stop your body and brain from generating lustful feelings. None of us can. It’s part of who and what we are. We are men and our lust, what we call our sex drive and psychiatry calls the libido, is a major source of the energy that moves us through life.
Lust flavors or poisons everything we do depending on how we respond to it. Whether we choose to be its master. . .or its slave.
A man who learns to control, direct and channel his lust-drive finds he has the equivalent of a nuclear power plant within him, fueling him with all the energy and passion needed to live his life to the fullest. To pursue his dreams. To accomplish his goals.
A man who doesn’t learn to control his lust squanders his life, stumbling from one easy pleasure to the next, never accomplishing his goals, sacrificing relationships and friendships. In some cases even sacrificing his career (think Bill Clinton, Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker, Ted Haggard, New York Governor Elliot Spitzer and U.S. Senator Larry Craig to name just a few examples. Or going Biblical, how about King David? His son, Solomon? And what about Samson?).
And what about you? Will you be the master of your lust or its slave?
Me? I prefer to be the Master.
The Possibility of Failure
But what if The Cure doesn’t work for you? What if it turns out you’re immune to the treatment protocol central to The Cure? I’ve never heard of such a thing, but for the sake of argument, let’s consider it.
There are two things you can do.
1. Just drop it. Decide I’m full of crap and give up the struggle.
Or,
2. Don’t give up. Instead, take advantage of the my free email coaching program. Use the contact email address in Chapter 19 and drop me a note describing the issue you’re struggling with. I’ll provide you with personalized, concrete suggestions and ideas on what you can do to adjust your application of The Cure that can increase its effectiveness. I will work with you to help you achieve complete remission of your porn infection. For free!
You are, of course, free to follow either one of those suggestions, but I hope you’ll follow No. 2.
Chapter 2
Are You Really Addicted? Infected? Plagued?
In Chapter 1 we defined the term “cure.” Now let’s look at the term ‘pornography addiction.’
Just what do we mean by that term?
You may be surprised to find there is no accepted definition in the medical and counseling communities for the experience we normal men call porn addiction. In fact, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders - Fourth Edition (known in the trade as the DSM-IV), the bible of the mental health world, doesn’t even have a category for ‘sexual addiction’, let alone one called ‘pornography addiction.’ It does recognize certain sexual ‘disorders’ like exhibitionism, fetishism, voyeurism; even one called ‘Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder’, meaning a deficiency of sexual fantasies. (Wow! I didn’t know there could be such a thing.) However, there appears to be no recognition of any form of ‘hyperactive sexual desire disorder.’
So it would seem hoping for an acknowledgement that one could be addicted to pornography is asking a little too much.
Crazy.
(There’s an internet rumor that this deficiency will be corrected in the next edition, the DSM-V, to be released in 2013. We’ll see.)
In spite of that, however, there are some diagnostic tools available we can adapt to the problem of pornography addiction. Let’s take the simple idea ‘addiction’ and see what the DSM-IV says about it. This is the accepted medical definition of addiction:
To be classified as addicted to something you have to meet at least three of the following seven criteria. I hope no one minds, but I took the liberty of replacing the words ‘drugs’ or ‘alcohol’ with ‘porn’ and ‘pornography.’ After taking this quiz, you tell me if you think pornography ought to qualify as a legitimate type of addiction.
“Answer the following seven yes or no questions. Most questions have more than one part, because everyone behaves differently in addiction. You only need to answer yes to one part for that question to count as a positive response.
Tolerance. Has your use of [pornography] increased over time?
Withdrawal. When you stop using [porn], have you ever experienced physical or
emotional withdrawal? Have you had any of the following symptoms: irritability, anxiety, shakes, sweats, nausea, or vomiting?
Difficulty controlling your use. Do you sometimes use [porn] more or for a longer time than you would like? Do you sometimes [porn] to excess? Do you stop after a few [pictures or videos] usually, or does one [video] lead to more [videos]?
Negative consequences. Have you continued to use [porn] even though there have been negative consequences to your mood, self-esteem, health, job, or family?
Putting Off or Neglecting Activities. Have you ever put off or reduced social, recreational, work, or household activities because of your [porn] use?
Spending Significant Time Or Emotional Energy. Have you spent a significant amount of time obtaining, using, concealing, planning, or recovering from your use of [pornography]? Have you spend a lot of time thinking about using? Have you ever concealed or minimized your use? Have you ever thought of schemes to avoid getting caught?
Desire to cut down. Have you sometimes thought about cutting down or controlling your use? Have you ever made unsuccessful attempts to cut down or control your use?
If you answered yes to at least 3 of these questions, then you meet the medical definition of addiction. (Reference: www.AddictionsAndRecovery.org)
Ha, ha! You’re busted!
Pretty good test, huh?
So what did we learn? I think we learned enough to come up with a pretty good definition for porn addiction.
‘Pornography addiction’ means that your exposure to and habitual use of pornography for sexual excitement and gratification has created in you a compulsion, an obsession and an urge for pornography which is now so strong and so persistent you believe it to be undeniable. It feels completely irresistible to you so that now, any chance you get, any chance you can take to use pornography, you take it regardless of the consequences.
How do you like that definition?
Personally, I like the ‘irresistible’ and ‘undeniable’ parts, cause ain’t that the truth?
So, to make things plain and clear, The Cure is an effective protocol which, if followed diligently and applied courageously, will free you completely from your compulsive desire for and use of pornography.
That’s my promise.
Why do I keep saying that? Promising The Cure Process can free you from pornography?
Because I really mean it and I want you to believe it! To believe you can be free of your pornography addiction.
My reason for writing this book is to help every man out there struggling with pornography to cure himself of his compulsive porning (‘Porning’ is a term I coined. It’s the verb form of the word ‘porn’ describing the action of accessing, seeking out and using pornography for the purpose of sexual gratification. I had to create a number of terms for this book to describe our shared experience with pornography. I hope you find them useful.).
So if The Cure doesn’t work for you, let me know. Give me a chance to e-coach you, e-counsel you and e-encourage you in your struggle to be free of even your desire for pornography. Working together, you will gain the freedom you seek.
Chapter 3
The Keys to The Cure
The Most Important Thing
I hope you are not so cynical or jaded that you throw this book into your virtual trash can when I tell you the first key to curing yourself of compulsive porning is, “You have to choose to be cured.”
“Well. . .Duh!” You reply. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
Well? How ‘bout it? Have you chosen to live free of porn? Decided that you will be free, no matter what?
You have? Great! (I’m assuming your answer is yes, otherwise, why’d you buy this book?)
Now did you notice what I didn’t say there? I didn’t say, “You have to want to be cured.”
Why?
To put it simply, you don’t want to be cured. You don’t want to be free of your porn habit. If you wanted to be free you would be free. I am a big believer in personal freedom and responsibility and I know the only reason any of us uses pornography is because we want to.
Of course, we don’t want to use porn, either.
And at the same time, too.
As with so many things in life, we want two opposing things at the same time.
We want to use porn and we don’t want to use porn. We want to lose weight and we don’t want to lose weight. We want to fight with our wife and we don’t want to fight with our wife.
We are literally of two minds about scores of things at any single moment in our life.
But that’s not quite accurate either. We are not of two minds at the same time, but sometimes in dozens of minds at the same time. We have so many needs, wants and desires clamoring for attention and satisfaction, all at the same time, each with shifting degrees of intensity depending on our moment to moment experience.
Welcome to the human race, my friend!
But hey! It’s O.K. In fact, it’s fantastic news! It means your healing from pornography does not depend on your desire. It doesn’t depend on your feelings at all. Only your Will.
Not will power, mind you, but Will.
What’s the difference?
Putting it simply, Will is that which you consciously and deliberately choose. Will power on the other hand, is your relative ability to carry out what you have consciously chosen.
Not the same thing at all, is it?
“Relative ability” means at different times your ability to do what you have Willed to do is different. It fluctuates over time and with a multitude of factors. On a ‘good day’ you can say ‘no’ to porn. On a ‘bad day’ you feel you can’t say ‘no’ to porn and you don’t.
One day you’re feeling great! You’re energy is high and porn is, if not the last thing on your mind, it’s third or fourth and ignoring it is easy. You are THE MAN! You are Super-Christian. Husband of the Year! Ignoring your lust for porn is like swatting flies.
But on another day, you have a cold and your body is weak. Without a single shred of resistance you go surfing the ‘net, looking for a jolt of lust-energy; a bio-neural pick-me-up.
Or on another day, a Sunday, your pastor preaches a great sermon that makes you feel strong and powerful, competent and successful as a husband and father. Right there in church you make a fresh commitment to God and to yourself: The last thing I will ever do, ever again, you tell yourself and God, is use porn.
Yay for you!
The very next morning (not even the afternoon), your boss trashes you for something that was only partly your fault and threatens to fire you. In minutes you’re thinking, To Hell with him! and you’re on your computer, searching, searching, searching for something, something you know will make you feel better - porn.
See what I mean? Relative ability.
Now this alleged distinction between will and want that I’m insisting exists has been the subject of intellectual, philosophical, psychological and theological debate for thousands of years and I have no intention of trying to prove my point in this little book. I will let it suffice to say the truth of my position is a fact (ha!) proven by the conscious experience of every person who has ever walked this planet, save One, or whoever will walk this earth in the future. It is a truth undeniable that we humans constantly and continuously do things we do not Will to do and do not do things we do Will to do.
How many times have you consciously chosen to do something (go on a diet, abstain from pornography, go back to school to get your degree, etc.) and then not done it? And how many times have you decided not to do something (not eat that entire carton of ice cream, not go to porn sites at work, not scream at your kids, etc.) and then done it just the same, in spite of your sincere decision? That’s the real-life expression of this distinction I’m making between Will and Want.
And you always, ultimately, do what you Want to do, not what you Will to do.
Want and Will are frequently in conflict in us. And, for a while, through great and glorious efforts, Will might seem to be winning. But such victories are always temporary. In the end Want always wins.
Why?
Because Will is what we think we need to do, ought to do and should do in order to be good, moral, righteous, decent, caring, loving, upstanding members of the human race; whereas want is what we know from our very own experience will get us the feelings we want to feel, the pleasures we want to taste and the things we think will satisfy our desires.
Will and Want are not always in conflict - thank God! - But when they are we can be certain Will is being generated by our conscious mind’s evaluation of what is the right thing to do in this particular situation based on information culled from every available source except a personal experience of the willed behavior satisfying our felt-need. Will doesn’t care about felt-needs, desires or wants. Will cares about us doing what we think we ought to do in this particular situation. Will cares about what is the right thing to do, what is the proper thing to do, what is the moral, the righteous, the appropriate thing to do.
Want on the other hand doesn’t give a damn about facts or figures, anecdotes, morals or ethics. Want doesn’t care about right or wrong, goodness or badness. Want arises purely and completely from our personal experience of what has worked for us in the past to satisfy the feeling of a want, need or desire. And because it is based on our own experience of what we know works, we feel it is true and we cannot make ourselves, by will power, feel otherwise about it.
Does that make sense? I certainly hope so. I’m trying to use bolding, italics to convey the proper emphasis on each of these words. I hope you can read it the way I’m trying to say it.
Let me smack this dead horse one more time. A Want is a feeling you have that draws you inexorably to repeat a past behavior that led you to obtaining a feeling of need satisfaction. Depending on what that need was, a brain-body sensation of satisfaction of some kind is now attached to that memory. It is that memory, reinforced and strengthened by the experience of the brain-body sensation of satisfaction, that now draws you to choose what you Want over what you Will.
Take masturbation, for example.
Masturbation?
Sure. Why not?
This is a program dealing with pornography, right? And you certainly can’t have one without the other, can you?
You’d better not say “Yes, you can.”
From the time a boy is old enough to control his own arms and hands he starts gripping his penis. Why? The first time is by accident but he quickly discovers it feels good. Then later, when he is a few years older, sometime when he is nervous or upset and doesn’t want to feel that way, wants to escape those feelings and feel good, he grabs hold of his penis. It feels good all over again and as a result his anxiety level goes down.
Eureka! The little boy has discovered an effective behavior for reducing anxiety. Grab your penis and hold on!
Let’s introduce some conflict into this scenario.
His mother sees him holding his penis and slaps his hand away (after all, it’s not polite to hold your penis in public. Damn!).
The little boy is confused. Holding his penis made him feel good but by slapping his hand his mother is telling him it’s the wrong thing to do (we could get buried in a discourse on whether the boy thinks it’s ‘bad’ as in ‘wrong’ or ‘evil’ or ‘sinful’; or just ‘wrong’ as in ‘not appropriate behavior at this particular time and place’. It would be a valuable discussion, but one we don’t have time for it here).
This conflict between what he wants to do, hold his penis, and what he ought to do according to his mother (or father or teacher or older brother, someone with authority) - not hold his penis - will set off a struggle in the boy to find another behavior that will soothe his anxiety as effectively as penis-holding.
If his mother wisely tells him, “Don’t touch yourself in public, it’s not polite,” the little boy may pick up on the distinction between public and private behavior and may draw the conclusion, ‘I can’t hold my penis in public but I can hold it in private.’ He now only has to find a public behavior that can reduce his anxiety, saving penis-holding for when he needs to reduce his anxiety when he is alone.
If his mother does not make this distinction for him between public and private behavior or if he fails to draw the conclusion for himself, his challenge is much more formidable. He must now find a behavior that can reduce his anxiety both in public and in private. In either case, even if the boy finds an acceptable pubic behavior for reducing his anxiety in public, he will not stop holding his penis in private. Why? Because he knows from undeniable experience that penis-holding feels good and reduces his anxiety levels. A two-fer!
With this important distinction - don’t do it in public.
The boy who believes it is not O.K. to hold his penis either in public or private may grow up believing he ought to be able to do what he thinks is required of him socially; that is, not hold his penis in public or private.
But he can’t. At least not in private.
Why not?
Because he knows from personal experience holding his penis calms him down, relieves his anxiety and makes him feel good. He wants to hold his penis because penis-holding works at reducing and eliminating his distress. Penis-holding is known absolutely to be a need satisfying behavior for him.
But both boys stop holding their penises in public, right? Yes. So why can’t the second boy succeed in not holding his penis in private? Especially if he believes it’s wrong to do? Because holding his penis when he is anxious satisfies his need to not feel anxious. Holding his penis is a need-satisfying behavior. And he knows, even if only subconsciously, that there is no good reason for not holding his penis in private. After all, who is he hurting when he does it? Who is he embarrassing? Who offended? No one.
Don’t ask. Don’t tell.
But not all little boys can reason this out. Perhaps this little boy believes everything he is told by his parents and the other authority figures in his life. Subconsciously he wants to hold his penis because it is a need-satisfying behavior; but consciously his morals, his religious training, his sense of himself as a good boy may be telling him he should not hold his penis at all, in public or private.
Yet he does it. Over and over again. Whenever he is alone and feeling anxious he holds his penis even though he knows it is wrong to do so.
“But it’s not wrong,” you say. And you would be right!
But the little boy doesn’t know that. He believes it is wrong, therefore, he feels it is wrong. And he is wrong for doing it.
So he begins to wonder: What does this weakness, this lack of self control say about the kind of person I am? The kind of man I’m going to be? He questions: Am I a good boy or a bad boy if I can’t control myself enough to not hold my penis when I’m alone?
Hopefully, and thankfully in most cases, I think, little boys facing such a conundrum just decide to let it go and to ignore the whole mess. To not worry about it. After all, even if it is wrong and even if it makes God mad (as he himself may deduce even if his parents or pastor never tell him any such thing), no one in this world knows he’s doing it so it’s no big deal for now.
Children are very malleable. Adapting to the world as they experience it is what they do. It’s what growing up is all about.
Do you remember when you were little? Watching television in the evening? Perhaps with your hands down your pants?
I do. But perhaps I’m the only one.
I had three brothers and two sisters and can remember laying on the floor in the living room watching Batman with my hands down my pajamas. My parents never said a word unless I started to get a little obvious about it. Then my father would reach down, tap my head and say, “Hey! Stop that.” Nothing more. Just that. Do you have any experiences like that? Whoops! Guess I’m the only one!
Or remember the character Al Bundy from the television show, Married With Children? To demonstrate to his family that he was in charge and doing exactly what he wanted Al would make a big deal out of sitting in front of the television and triumphantly putting his hand down his pants, but stopping long before he reached his crotch by hooking his thumb on the outside of his belt. Because of course it’s not polite to hold your penis in public - not even on the FOX Network!
And the audience always laughed at this behavior. Why? Because the truth is funny!
Now let’s introduce another conflict in the little boy. Let’s have him grow up, reach puberty, get slammed with all the hormones of horniness we men know so well.
One day while he’s by himself, holding his penis to relieve anxiety and make himself feel better, he inadvertently discovers masturbation.
Whoa! What a minute! What the heck just happened! Man, Oh man!
Cool! Totally awesome!
Far Out!
This is great!
Except. . .
From somewhere, perhaps from some authority figure in his life or perhaps even from his own moral reasoning the young boy has concluded, “If it’s wrong to hold my penis when I’m anxious, so much so that people will tease me and laugh at me if I ever do grab myself in public, what the heck would they say if they knew I had just done this?”
And this feels so good there must be something wrong with it!
Oh, crap!
Perhaps he feels actual guilt. Did you feel guilty the first time you masturbated? The Christian writer C.S. Lewis didn’t (as he reported in his autobiography, Surprised by Joy) and he chided religious people who presumed any normal child would feel guilty the first time he masturbated without being first taught that it was wrong.
But perhaps our young man doesn’t feel guilty, but he does feel embarrassed. Embarrassed at what he’s done and what has happened as a result. The pleasure, yes. But also the mess.
Or perhaps fear. Fear of getting caught doing something with his penis that feels so good.
Let’s say he feels guilty. Not just a little guilty, but a lot guilty. Let’s say he concludes if it was wrong to hold his penis in private this must be really, really wrong.
So I’d better never, ever do it again!
So our little man Wills. He determines. He sets his heart and his mind to never masturbate again!
And he succeeds!
For a little while.
And just what does exercising his will power over the next few days or weeks get him?
Not much.
Maybe a little pat on the back and a mental “Atta boy!”
But is that enough? He’s in the middle of puberty remember.
Does feeling good about not masturbating reduce either his lust levels or the day after day anxieties of growing up? Does it do anything to make him feel good when he feels so bad all the time?
Not at all. He still feels horny and anxious. What he wants is to feel good.
And nothing makes a boy feel gooder-faster than stroking his penis!
And he knows this from experience.
So eventually, no matter how hard he exercises his will power, no matter how firm his resolve, at some point in time when he is alone and either horny or anxious, or both, he will take hold of his penis and start priming the pump, against his will.
Yes, against his Will. But not against his Want.
Why?
One more stroke on this dead horse: Because he knows from experience that massaging his penis will reduce his anxiety levels and very, very quickly make him feel really, really good.
How good? You know how good. We all do. Orgasm is the single most pleasurable bodily sensation a man will ever experience. Nothing else even comes close. Other experiences may bring more overall satisfaction and even joy to his life, but nothing feels better.
But is it against the law?
So what about the conflict caused by what his authorities have taught him? Mother, father, pastor?
The boy has two choices. He can decide they are full of s**t and give up even trying to control his penis-stroking in private and really go to town. Or he can decide it is still wrong even if he can’t seem to help himself, and he can determine to continue his efforts to not stroke his penis at all, or maybe not too much, or maybe just once or twice a week or maybe if he just prayed harder or read his Bible more or went to church more or. . .
Or maybe he decides he’s just not going to worry that much about it. After all, no one can see him doing it (except God and so far He hasn’t punished him for it) and he’s not hurting anyone.
He may conclude the answer to why he can’t do what he wills to do is a mystery he just isn’t smart enough to figure out. So he chooses to live with this conundrum, the contradiction between what he wills and what he wants, between what he’s been told is right and wrong and what he nevertheless feels he can’t stop doing.
This is the choice a lot of us made because we were unwilling to reject the wisdom of our elders or our faith and replace it with the truth of our own limited experience. A very wise decision, by the way.
Did you face this dilemma when you were a teen? Younger? What did you decide? How did you resolve it?
So, that is the First Key: To be cured of pornography addiction you must Will to be cured.
What’s next?
You Must Kill All Your Darlings.
The second key to curing yourself of your pornography addiction is you must believe to the point of unquestioned knowing that there is no need you have in any part of your heart, mind or body for which pornography is ever the answer. You cannot harbor the smallest belief in any corner of your soul that pornography is ever an o.k. thing to do.
Why not?
Because, just like the drug addict or the alcoholic, if you do, if you covet even one self-justifying reason to use pornography, some time when you are feeling under special pressure, bored, burned-out, lonely, hungry, angry, afraid, stressed out or tired and a lust storm slams you in your gut, moves down to your crotch, quickly filling your head with images of sex, you will seek out that tiny self-justifying thought and say to yourself, “Maybe, in this particular case, a little porn might be o.k. After all, I need release, I need to feel that extra energy I get from porn. And besides, I deserve a little pleasure in my life, don’t I? Just this one time. . .?”
No. You don’t. You really don’t.
(A lust storm is when your lust is so strong, so powerful, so overwhelming you are blindsided by it. You don’t care what happens or what you have to do. You only know you want sexual excitement and release now and pornography is the way to get it! Special Note: It’s at this point we men make our stupidest decisions!)
You cannot allow any such thoughts space in your head. You cannot entertain, protect, nurture or cherish even the seed of such an idea.
No one needs pornography. It’s not like food or water, without which you’ll die. With pornography, it just feels like you’ll die without it!
And no one needs pornography to live a sexually satisfying life either. Just the opposite in fact, according to the latest research.