So you’ve tried to quit porn and failed. Several times. You’re not alone. By my estimation, hundreds of thousands of men have tried and will continue to try and fail dismally in the years to come. Search online and you’ll find hundreds of men in different forums documenting their journey to quit porn. You’ll be hard pressed to find a handful of men who have stayed off porn for more than 3 years.

Research shows that your porn-addled brain has the ability to rewire itself and return you to a state of grace which existed prior to your porn addiction. What research does not explain is why, despite the fact that you’ve “rebooted,” if you are exposed to porn again for a certain period of time, you promptly become addicted again.

The true test of whether you have quit porn is your level of equanimity towards it. What this means is that you can view porn without having any sexual reaction towards it. Scenes that turned you on either elicit reactions ranging from disgust to compassion for the porn actors/ actresses to an absolute lack of reaction. Any sexual reaction that occurs within you is 100% within your control, and you know it.

To understand why you may never quit porn, we have to briefly go back to the basics of porn addiction.

The characteristics of porn addiction are:

1. an overpowering desire or need (compulsion) to continue viewing porn and to gain access to it by any means.
2. a tendency to increase the amount or variety of porn over time
3. a psychological and physical dependence on the effects of porn
4. a detrimental effect on the individual and society

Porn addiction is both a psychological and a physiological addiction coupled with a main characteristic which is an irresistible urge to compulsively seek out and watch porn. In my struggle to quit porn for over a decade, I have discovered that unless you thoroughly understand the underlying cause of your porn addiction, you will be addicted to it indefinitely, regardless of how many times you attempt to reboot.

One of the oft overlooked situations among those quitting porn is that they have a tendency to replace their addiction with another when porn is no longer available. This is regardless of whether they quit for a month or a year. Notable replacements for porn have been prostitutes, anonymous sex/ browsing for anonymous sex online, masturbation, and erotic stories. What this proves is that the problem with quitting porn is not the chemical process involved, but also your reaction to it.

Porn addiction does not come from porn; it comes from you, your situation and your search for a particular experience. When you initially watch porn, its is a very pleasant experience, giving you the feeling of being relieved from anxiety, when in reality, those things in your life which cause anxiety grow more and more severe in proportion to your continued porn use.

The Progression of Your Porn Addiction

1. Porn addiction starts as a very pleasant experience and you avoid unpleasant experiences in your life whilst pursuing the awesome sensations you get from watching porn. It truly becomes an addiction when the experience stops being pleasant, but you instead increase its intensity by watching more risque scenes such as violent, rape themed porn, gay porn (if you’re straight) or even bestiality/necrophilia-themed scenes.
2. Porn Addiction becomes a lifestyle: repetitive, habitual, routine, and repetitive. Porn-addicted men and women gradually begin to question their ability to set goals and create positive results in their life. When you do not believe you efforts to set and achieve life goals will be rewarded, you quit and give yourself the only reward now available in your life: more porn.
3. Due to the new lifestyle you have created, which includes maintaining an online or offline porn stash as well as memberships to porn sites, you behavior slowly begins to spill over into the rest of your life (family, social circle and society). You are paranoid when family uses your computer, your relationship and sex life deteriorates, you cant have platonic friendships with a girl without fantasizing about having anal sex with her and ejaculating on her face, you start looking for ways to act out the scenes you see online by soliciting prostitutes and seeking anonymous sex.
4. All these activities eventually clash with the values in which you were raised. As a result, you develop strong feelings of self loathing and guilt associated with watching porn and masturbating, which causes you to rely even more heavily on porn. You’ve created a vicious cycle which keeps perpetuating itself unto infinity.

What does this progression mean? It means that your porn addiction is a compulsive and obsessive over dependence which affects all aspects of your life- physical, emotional, psychological and social. It also means that a one dimensional treatment strategy is not enough to help you quit. By one dimensional, I mean using feats of willpower such as abstinence for 90 days or more.

Recovery from porn addiction has to be based on a system that will take all aspects of your life into consideration.

The best system for this would deal with porn addiction from three perspectives:

1. Porn addiction changes your personality and character so subtly, that you have no idea how much you have changed. First of all, you have to be motivated to believe that whatever it is that is missing in your life which caused you to turn to porn can be gained. You have to believe that you can truly be happy without porn. Counseling can help at this point.
2. Porn addiction is best treated at its deepest level. Some people get addicted to porn and some don’t. Whatever it is that lies deep within you that causes your repeated,compulsive addiction, lack of self control and continued porn use in spite of negative consequences has to be eradicated. Those deep rooted psychological flaws have to be removed. This eliminates the occurrence of a relapse, forever.
3. Quitting porn requires a support system that takes care of you after you go through steps 1 and 2 above, providing guidance during the process of adjusting back into society. This is where “rebooting” or abstaining from porn, masturbating or orgasm for a certain amount of time becomes useful.

Most men skip the first and second step, diving straight into willpower themed action without discovering the true cause of their addiction. This leads to a long cycle of quitting and relapsing.

To truly quit porn, you have to eliminate it at the root. The root lies deep within your mind. Getting rid of the root cause of porn addiction cannot ever happen by changing your outer circumstances or by acts of great willpower. It only happens in a methodical manner- finding the psychological cause that drives you towards porn addiction and getting rid of it.

Doing this accomplishes two things. You permanently eliminate your need to watch porn and you increase your happiness by realizing that that the power to completely eliminate your addiction and habits at their root lies in your hands. A powerful tool indeed, for navigating life.

This post originally appeared at Quit Porn Get Girls.