No one who quits porn says, “Oh, I regret learning how to quit porn addiction!”
You know what the people who quit porn addiction actually say?
“I wish I could go back in time and quit sooner, before so much damage was done.
Porn addiction only knows how to hurt you. It doesn’t matter if you manage to watch it less often—if you’re an addict, keeping your addiction alive will always have consequences.”
There are many advantages of quitting porn—but quitting porn is a massive challenge. The steps and strategies are simple, but actually practicing them is a demanding task. Because porn rewires your brain and creates a habit loop.
In order to break free of the porn addiction cycle, mere willpower is never enough. You have to fight against your own biology and rewire your brain with a combination of personal commitment and support.
So, how to quit porn addiction forever? Let’s find out.
Why Quit Porn?
If you are a casual porn watcher, know that internet porn is designed to be addictive.
Initially it might feel harmless, but over time, the addictive patterns creep in. You will start to spend more time watching porn or just begin to search for more and more intense or edgy content. Escaping the porn trap early saves you a lot of trouble later.
If you are struggling with porn addiction, you will feel the benefits of not watching porn more. You get back all that time and energy spent on porn. Mental clarity returns, sleep gets better, and real-life sex becomes interesting again.
What Is Porn Addiction and Why Is It So Hard to Quit?
Porn addiction is a compulsive pattern of watching porn where porn causes you distress and interferes with your life. You try to quit porn but keep relapsing because you feel that you cannot control your porn cravings.
We all know about the benefits of quitting porn, and we have a fair idea about how to quit porn addiction. But, when we actually try to quit porn, we often fail!
As a user on the Reddit forum put it, “I have been struggling to stop watching porn for many years. I have tried many things, from putting blockers on my phone and computer to disabling web browsers. However, I still end up disabling/deleting them and going back to square one.”
Why Is It So Hard to Quit Porn?
Why is it so hard to quit porn addiction? The answer lies in how porn alters your brain.
There is a neurochemical in our brain called dopamine. Its purpose is to motivate us to eat or have sex—activities that keep us alive. A surge of dopamine activates our brain’s reward pathways and tells us, “This is great! Go find more!”
Porn not just stimulates dopamine but puts it into overdrive.
When you watch porn again and again, your brain gets exposed to high levels of dopamine. Over time your brain develops a tolerance for high dopamine levels and becomes less sensitive to lower dopamine levels.
Now, even if you don’t enjoy porn anymore, you feel compelled to watch more and more of it—because only it can give such an intense dopamine high. When you try to quit porn, your reward pathways are deprived of the dopamine. The discomfort feels so intense that you have to get back to watching porn for relief.
How do you know that your casual porn habit has crossed the lines and you need to quit porn addiction? Here are the signs of porn addiction:
1. You Can’t Stop
You want to quit porn addiction—you know the advantages of not watching porn and how to quit porn addiction. So, you try again and again but cannot stop. Every time you try to quit, you end up watching more porn.
2. Want More Porn
No matter how much time you spend watching porn, it’s just not enough. You sneak away from work or cut your time with your family to watch porn.
Also notice the type of porn you are watching. When you are addicted, you will keep searching for more extreme types of porn.
3. Lost Time
You often spend so much time watching porn that your days and weeks become a blur. You lose track of time when you are watching porn. Porn occupies so much of your emotional energy that you have no enthusiasm for real-life things.
4. Loss of Interest in Sex
Compared to porn, real-life sex can feel messy and slow. Over time people do reach a stage where they need porn to get aroused during sex with a partner also—a condition known as porn-induced erectile dysfunction.
5. Unrealistic Demands in the Bedroom
The sex acts in porn are designed for camera aesthetics and to create an instant sexual arousal. When you get used to the sex in porn, you may start trying to replicate similar acts in real life.
6. Losing Attraction to Your Partner
People in porn have certain physical attributes that are not the norm for an average person. When you look at how they behave during sex, women are often submissive and willingly accept humiliation.
In real life, people neither look like porn actors nor do they behave like them during sex. If you are influenced by porn, this contrast can make you lose interest in your partner.
7. Pain
If you are staying up late watching porn, you will feel eye strain and fatigue. If you are frequently combining porn and masturbation, strain from repetitive movement of masturbation can cause pain.
8. You Cannot Stop Thinking About Porn
Your thoughts keep drifting back to porn even when you are working or spending time with family and friends.
9. Anger
You feel angry and frustrated with yourself about your porn habit. But anger does not motivate you to quit porn. It distresses you so much that you go back to porn for relief.
11 Benefits of Quitting Porn
In my clinical experience, I have often observed that, if a person is struggling with porn addiction, quitting porn can be life-changing.
As a recovered porn addict shared, “I’ve become a better son, friend, lover, coach, leader, and man overall. I’m truly living an entirely different life than I was before.”
The medical research on the benefits of quitting porn is limited.
But, we can refer to the 2021 qualitative study into the subjective experience of quitting porn. The study looks into lived experiences shared on online forums to understand the benefits of quitting porn.
Mental health benefits of quitting porn addiction:
1. Reduce Depression and Anxiety
When you quit porn, your mind becomes free from the pervasive thoughts and cravings about porn. So, quitting porn addiction will relieve the anxiety about loss of control one feels about compulsive porn use.
2. Relief from Guilt and Shame
You don’t have to hide your browsing history anymore. You don’t have to worry about being found out as a porn addict.
3. Mental Sharpness
Porn hijacks your attention and creates a kind of brain fog. When you quit porn, focus returns. You will feel more clarity of thought.
4. Impulse Control and Willpower
Porn addiction can weaken your impulse control.
When you quit porn addiction, you rewire your brain to reverse this effect. Quitting porn is hard—so when you succeed at this, it builds your confidence and strengthens your willpower.
5. Better Emotional Regulation
When you quit porn, there is an immediate ‘flatline’ period where you will feel withdrawal symptoms. But, after a couple of weeks without porn, your mood swings and irritability settle down.
6. Greater Life Satisfaction
Quitting porn gives you more time to spend on things that actually nurture you. So, you will feel more in charge of your life and satisfied.
Physical health benefits of quitting porn addiction:
7. Better Sleep and Less Tiredness
When you are addicted to porn, you often stay up late watching it. Watching porn at bedtime also harms the quality of your sleep. When you quit porn, your sleep naturally gets better, and daytime fatigue is reduced.
8. More Energy and Better Physical Health
People who quit porn feel that they are more consistent with exercise and feel better energy during workouts.
Relationship & sexual health benefits of quitting porn addiction:
9. Better Sex with Partner
Porn numbs you to real-life sexual experiences. When you quit porn and real-life sex, you become more sensitive during real-life sex.
10. Solve Sexual Performance Challenges
Porn can cause challenges like porn-induced erectile dysfunction. Some people cannot get aroused or climax at all without porn. When people quit porn, they find that it helps to address such issues.
11. Deeper Emotional Connection
When you quit porn, you have more energy and attention to spend on your real-life partner. Also, quitting porn frees you from the objectification of your partner so that connections are more emotional and deeper.
How to Quit Porn Addiction
Quitting porn is not a game of willpower. It is all about building systems that enable a porn-free life. Here is the roadmap that will help you learn how to quit porn addiction.
1. Understand Your Why
When a strong porn craving hits you, a reason like ‘I want to feel better’ will crumble like a house of cards. You need stronger, more emotional reinforcement to keep you going through such moments of craving.
Try this exercise: write down the three things that porn has robbed from you—your relationship, your confidence, and your time. Read this list every morning and whenever that urge hits you.
2. Clean Up Your Space—Physical and Digital
If it takes only two clicks to watch porn, you are going to break sooner than later. If your phone is just next to your bed, you will struggle to control the urge to watch porn and masturbate.
What’s the solution?
- Delete all saved porn from your computer and phone.
- Install a porn blocker like BlockP to prevent convenient access.
- Keep your phone out of your bedroom.
3. HALT Your Triggers
HALT is an acronym for emotional or physical states that trigger the relapse. When you feel the porn cravings coming on, ask yourself, “Am I feeling:
H – Hungry?
A- Angry?
L – Lonely?
T – Tired?
This helps you understand what you actually need and what need you are trying to fulfill with porn.
4. Replace Porn
When you quit porn, your brain goes into shock because there is a huge hole where it used to get intense dopamine hits. How to cope?
- Immediate replacements: cold shower or HIIT exercise
- Long-term strategies: meditation, journaling, reading, music, sports
5. Find Support
Trying to quit porn alone in secrecy creates a stressful environment. Find support from:
- Offline support communities like Sex Addicts Anonymous
- Online support communities like the BlockP support community
- Counselling from sex addiction specialists and CBT—Cognitive Behavior Therapy
- Medication to manage conditions like anxiety or depression that you are struggling with along with porn addiction.
Why Most People Fail to Quit Porn on Their Own
As you have seen, the strategies for how to quit porn addiction are simple enough. But most people who try to quit porn on their own end up relapsing.
Why does this happen? What makes the process so challenging?
1. Behavior vs. Willpower—The Mismatch
Porn is a behavior problem; when you are trying to quit porn addiction on your own, you are using willpower—there is a mismatch.
When you are quitting porn on your own, you don’t have accountability and feedback. So, you don’t really know what’s working and what’s not. Moreover, when you try to quit on your own, you still have to hide. The secrecy around porn creates shame that keeps you stuck in the relapse cycle.
2. A Hostile Digital Environment
Most importantly, think about your digital environment—it is not designed for self-control.
Your phone and social media are designed to hijack your attention and control. You have private and all-time access to porn. There is a constant stream of sexual content no matter where you go online.
It’s like trying to quit sugar while living in a bakery.
When you try to quit porn on your own in such a digital environment, there is no friction to stop you or mechanism to keep you safe.
BlockP: The App That Helps You Quit Porn for Good
BlockP is the best free porn blocker to quit porn addiction. Here is how BlockP is helping millions of users:
Removes the Easy Access to Porn
As long as porn is easily available on your phone or laptop, you are at risk of relapse. BlockP becomes your digital barrier that keeps you safe from porn online:
- Instantly blocks all adult websites. You can even add specific websites to this blocklist. It also lets you block custom keywords that trigger porn cravings in you.
- Network-level blocking—so, you cannot sneak porn using a new browser or in incognito mode.
- Uses AI-powered filters to detect and block porn on all websites and apps. It blocks porn on social media and messaging apps also.
Accountability partner
In moments of strong craving, you may be tempted to bypass BlockP and watch porn. BlockP protects you from relapse during those moments with its accountability partner feature. Your spouse, trusted friend, or parent can be your accountability partner on BlockP.
They can:
- Lock the porn blocking settings with a password. Prevent you from uninstalling the porn blocker, as it is protected with a password.
- Your accountability partner can not see what you normally browse. But, if you try to access porn, your accountability partner will get a notification, and they can intervene.
Manage Cravings
BlockP helps you manage porn urges and regain emotional control with:
- Online community support
- Meditation prompts
- Focus mode for restricting distracting apps
- Motivational quotes
FAQ on How to Quit Porn Addiction?
Is porn addiction real?
Yes. The medical research into porn addiction is ongoing. However, experts are increasingly recognizing it as a real behavior challenge worth treating.
Can BlockP really help me quit porn?
Yes. BlockP acts as a digital barrier between you and the internet porn that is so easily available. People who try to quit porn find that it is much more sustainable when they don’t have to constantly resist the triggers on their phones and computers.
Is BlockP private and secure?
BlockP uses AI-powered filters to detect and block porn on your device itself. It does not share your browsing history or screenshots with another server. Even your accountability partner can not see your data.
What if I relapse?
Relapse is actually a normal part of your recovery. Treat it as data—identify what made you relapse and find a healthy coping strategy. Don’t punish or shame yourself for it.
How long does it take to see results?
Once you are past the first three-week mark, you are likely to see benefits like better mood and energy. Results like improvements in sexual performance take longer—say 90 days or more.
Why should you quit porn?
Quitting porn makes your life better. You will have control over your emotions and your time. You can experience a more fulfilling lifestyle, better work performance, and improved relationships.
