5 Reasons Why You Always Relapse To Porn

Do you find it hard to stay away from porn?

Well, you're not alone.

Every week I get emails with questions like…

Why do I always relapse to porn?
Why is it so hard to quit porn?
Can you really be addicted to porn?

So in order to be able to answer more people at the same time, I decided to write an article about it.

Why do I always relapse to porn?

Reason #1 Years of porn use has created addiction related brain changes…

To answer the last question there, yes, you can really develop a real porn addiction.

Let's kill a common misconception; when people hear this, a lot of them may get an image in their head of someone watching porn for several hours every day of the week while there life's falling apart…

Sure you'll find a lot of porn addicts like that, but that does not necessarily have to be the case. Far from it.

Addiction is not an on/off thing. It is a spectrum. I.e. it can range all the way from having just a very mild addiction to a very severe addiction.

Some guys can develop a severe addiction even with just one or two porn sessions a week…

This may sound strange, but if it does, that's that misconception speaking again. Millions of men, from all around the world, are suffering from a porn addiction so severe that they haven't been able to quit even after years of trying.

Many of those had only been watching once or twice a week, yet still developed a severe addiction.

I myself was in that category…

I almost never watched more than once a week. Sometimes twice, but never more than that. Yet I struggled for 7 years before I finally managed to stop watching. Granted, my sessions were sometimes very long. I sometimes had binging session that lasted for hours at end.

What exactly are the brain changes that happens…

The easiest way to explain this is to show you two vides I created about the addiction related brain changes that can happen if we keep consuming online porn on a regular basis…

Take a look right now because you will discover some very interesting things for sure…

What happens inside your brain – PART 1

What happens inside your brain – PART 2

The webinar I mention in the end of the video can be found by clicking here right now!

Short summary of the two videos…

The 4 fundamental brain changes that happen in all addictions…

Sensitization
Desensitization
Hypofrontality
Malfunctioning stress system

Sensitization…

Sensitization is basically a super memory of pleasure. When you are hit by a trigger, the sensitized pathways in your brain light up and give you a strong desire to act out.

Yes, these are what causes those insanely powerful urges.

What's so nasty about this is that exactly in the moment your sensitized pathways fire up, your hypofronality actually becomes worse. If you remember, hypofrontality was the third brain change discussed in the videos. It basically means less blood flow to the front part of your brain. The very part that is responsible for self control.

Kind of makes it a deadly combination, right?

Powerful urges in combination with less self-control.

It is when this mechanism sets in that you tend to go into “autopilot mode” and lose all control over yourself. This is why you always relapse to porn.

Desensitization…

Desensitization is also nasty because it gives you less enjoyment out of every activity you can think of in your day to day life.

It's a general dialing down of your pleasure response.

You basically have a numb reward system, giving you less and less enjoyment. This is one big reason why depression is so common among addicts.

Desensitization is also the reason behind why so many guys start escalating their porn use. Because they are desensitized they have to seek out harder and more extreme stuff in order to get the same arousal they previously got.

This, escalation due to the numb pleasure response, can become so bad than no amount of the hardest hardcore stuff can deliver any arousal whatsoever. At this point it is also almost impossible to feel any enjoyment out of normal day to day activities. The reward system is just too desensitized for that.

Hypofrontality…

Hypo means “less than normal” and frontality refers to the front part of your brain called the prefrontal cortex (PFC). So what we have here is basically an under-performi.ng PFC

The PFC is responsible for planning, pondering consequences of your actions and for giving you self control.

If your PFC is under-performing, you'll have a hard time not just staying away from porn relapses, but also from not going for that second donut while you're on a diet. You'll also have a much harder time making yourself do stuff that takes effort. E.g going to the gym, doing homework or writing a blog post. Procrastination often becomes an issue here.

Malfunctioning stress system…

You may perhaps have wondered why it is that NoFap can give guys less social anxiety and less anxiety in general?

Well, now you know.

It is because porn addiction causes a malfunctional stress center in your brain. This is making some guys react with way too much anxiety for what's propriate in the giving situation (whatever that situation may be).

Then when guys go on a NoFap journey, and tear themselves away from the screen, the malfunctional stress center starts healing. As a result they start experiencing lower social anxiety and lower anxiety levels in general.

Reason #2 You're longing for connection…

The second reason why you keep relapsing to porn might be that you're longing for connection.

Now, before you brush this off, here me out here. I'm not just talking about sexual connection here, although that is a big part too.

Did you know that the root cause of many addictions is exactly this?

A longing for connection.

Deep down the individual feels that his core need for connection is not being met. It's hard to make an estimate here, but if you were to twist my arm and make me do it anyway, I would say that maybe 55% of porn addicts are addicts precisely because of this. Maybe even more.

Did you know it is only possible to make rats addicted to cocaine if they are isolated? No? Well, now you know. If they are in a healthy social environment it is literally impossible to make them use cocaine of their own accord.

Reason #3 You're drinking too much alcohol…

If you're drinking too much alcohol then giving up porn becomes almost impossible to do.

So, be honest with yourself here. How much do you drink?

If you know that the answer is “a bit too much” or worse, “way too much”, then this might very well be the reason for why you always relapse to porn.

Why?

It's pretty simple really: alcohol significantly weakens your prefrontal cortex – remember, the part of your brain that is responsible for self control.

This is especially true when you have alcohol in your bloodstream, but even after you're done, your PFC can be under-performing for a couple of days. Particularly if you binge drink large amounts.

Suggestion: ditch the alcohol. At least during the first 3 months of your porn reboot!

You can >>Download<< my Quit Porn Guide for FREE right now!

Reason #4 You're not filling the void…

When we give up a bad porn habit it is absolutely crucial that we fill the void with some other productive activities.

Let's say you been spending 9 hours a week on fapping to porn. Well, if you think you can just stop doing that and instead spend those 9 hours with aimless browsing online, your are sorely mistaken.

Well, one should never say never, but most people can not. Let's put it that way.

You need to put the same amount of time (preferably even more) that you spent on porn on doing something else, away from the screen.

It's by browsing online that you get exposed to 99% of all the visual triggers you get exposed to in your life. Now, it's a bit different with emotional triggers, as those can hit you both on as well as offline, but spending time online if you're a porn addict is almost like spending time at the bar if you're an alcoholic. Sooner or later you're going to cave in.

Reason #5 You're lifestyle is too messy in general…

If you're spending almost all your free time on things like…

Netflix
Playing video games
Surfing on social media
Partying
Eating junk food
Sleeping in late
Not having any goals or ambitions…

…well, good luck getting rid of a porn addiction then.

It becomes almost impossible!

You need to clean up your lifestyle, up to living a pretty clean and decent way, before you can even start thinking of not relapsing to porn.

If your life is so messy right now that you don't even know where to start, take a look at my article, NoFap – Lifestyle Change, for an easy, step by step approach to get your act together.

In that article you'll also discover why eating a lot of junk and engaging in a lot of other shallow ‘instant gratification stuff' won't work if you want to give up porn. And why you need to have goals in life.

What to do about these reasons…

If you think longing for connection may be your biggest problem, then obviously reaching out to people will help you in the long run. If you have a messy life in general, then start on cleaning it up.

Ditch the alcohol completely. At least until you get to 1-2 month into your reboot. This, obviously because the first two months are the absolute hardest part.

As far as the addiction related brain changes go, I recommend you get my free quitting porn guide for more info on how to deal with those.

5 Reasons Why You Always Relapse To Porn (And The Solution)