How to Quit Porn: Specific and Actionable Guidance for Overcoming Porn Addiction

Tech Lockdown Team

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Updated March 30, 2024

If you are suspicious that your porn use is having a negative impact on your well-being, it's finally time to quit porn. Contrary to popular belief, watching porn often becomes an unhealthy habit that negatively impacts your well-being and interpersonal relationships.

In my own journey to live a porn-free life, I've spent a considerable amount of time and effort figuring out the best ways to quit porn. In fact, this is the entire reason why I created techlockdown.com!

In this article, we'll discuss my recommended approach to quitting porn, including understanding porn addiction and actionable strategies you can use to be successful at quitting porn.

Learn How Porn Changes the Brain and Can Become an Addiction

It's crucial that you invest some time into understanding porn addiction. On my own journey to overcoming porn addiction, I read the book  Your Brain on Porn about a dozen times.

Your Brain on Porn by Gary Wilson

Understanding the topic in more detail helped me feel encouraged and prepared. It was particularly helpful to read the testimonials from people who managed to quit porn and reverse its effects.

Having a fundamental understanding of what you're up against is critical when trying to overcome an addiction. 

Understand the Negative Effects of Watching Porn

If you're looking into quitting porn, you might have some suspicion that long-term porn use has harmed you in some way. 

I'm often surprised when I receive emails from Tech Lockdown customers who want to remove the strict porn-blocking system that we provide so that they can return to watching porn.

To me it's obvious: porn is so toxic to a healthy life that ridding yourself of it is a massive benefit.

It's important to understand the negative effects of porn use so that you have a clear understanding of why you need to cut it out of your life and so that you don't change your mind two weeks into your recovery process. 

1. Porn addiction often leads to embarrassing and stressful sexual dysfunction.
2. Long-term porn users are often diagnosed with mental health issues and have social anxiety, low self-esteem, concentration problems, lack of motivation, depression, and performance anxiety.
3. Because porn addicts become desensitized to familiar content, long-term porn use inevitably leads to watching more extreme and disturbing content to achieve the same level of arousal.

Focus on the Reward of a Porn-Free Life

Once a person understands that porn can actually cause sexual dysfunction and lead to other distressing issues, it's much easier to say "no" the next time the urge arises.

As we'll discuss later on, the only way to reverse porn-related dysfunctions is by completely cutting porn out of your life.

You'll gain so much by quitting porn:

• Regain healthy sexual function so that you can pursue true, rewarding intimacy in a relationship.
• Build your self-esteem and improve your confidence in social situations, so you can build meaningful and lasting connections with friends and family.
• Find motivation that you didn't have before and pursue your dreams unhindered by porn addiction.

I hope you won't be emailing me to get help removing content filtering from your internet so that you can return to your old habit.

How Porn will Try to Get you Back

Most long-term porn users don't know that they are addicted until they try to quit and discover that it's easier said than done. However, you don't need to quit porn before knowing if you have an addiction. Usually, there are clear signs of porn addiction .

You should have a clear understanding of  why you might struggle to quit porn .

Once you understand the tricks porn uses to keep you coming back, you'll be better equipped to stay on course. 

1. Porn tricks the brain into thinking it's more attractive, valuable, and important than other activities or goals, and can override rational thinking and self-control. 
2. Long-term porn use can lead to desensitization in all areas of your life, making you less responsive to things that you should find enjoyable. Porn tricks you into feeling like the only way to achieve a baseline level of joy is to return to porn, but this is a lie.
3. Porn can train you to prioritize short-term rewards over long-term goals. You need to be focused on long-term goals when quitting porn and long-term goal setting is critical for a fulfilling life.
4. Porn addiction can trick you into thinking that it's a healthy coping mechanism for stress and anxiety. In reality, porn addiction actually causes mental health issues.
5. High-speed internet makes it easier to get addicted to porn, so you should set up guard rails with your internet usage and tread carefully. 

Be Prepared for the Side Effects of Quitting Porn

This sounds crazy to people who haven't experienced it before, but quitting porn can actually lead to some odd withdrawal symptoms .

These withdrawal symptoms are temporary but are also one of the main reasons that people return to their old porn habit. 

Common side effects include irritability, depression, fatigue and insomnia, and an inability to focus.

The most surprising side-effect is a period that some people encounter called the flatline.

It's a temporary period of a complete loss of libido.

However, this libido magically returns if you revert to viewing porn again.

This tricks many people into falling back into their porn addiction cycle in an attempt to recover their libido.

Don't fall for the trap! Use this "flatline" period of time to focus on your goals and remind yourself that your libido will come back (and better than before).

How to Recover from the Effects of Porn Addiction

In order to recover from the harmful effects of long-term porn use, you have to completely eliminate porn from your life and stop watching it entirely. 

The timeline for reversing the effects of porn addiction varies depending on different factors.

For some people, 30 days of complete abstinence from porn can produce notable improvements.

More commonly in younger people, 60-90 days of complete abstinence is the point where major changes can be observed.

It's crucial that you hit these milestones where you can see positive recovery signs.

This includes any kind of substitute, including recalling what you used to watch. This means no surfing for "soft-core" content or even mentally fantasizing. 

Get Control over Your Technology

One of the most important things you should do in order to increase your chances of achieving long periods of complete abstinence from watching porn is to set up guardrails with your technology.

It's worth the time and effort settings up your own system for blocking content because you'll reduce how often you are "cued" to think about watching porn. Furthermore, you'll find it difficult to compulsively engage in your habit because it will take significant effort to get around your blocking setup.

Learn how to block porn with my free guide , which provides specific and actionable advice to setting up a strict blocking system that is difficult to bypass.

Block Harmful Content and Prevent Bypass

In my personal experience as someone who works from home, configuring my devices to effectively block porn and prevent bypass was critical for my own recovery.

Once you build a habit, especially a bad habit, you might find that you perform the habit without even thinking about it. 

Cues

A habit starts with a cue or a “trigger” that prompts you to follow through on the associated routine. 

Common cues related to porn use: 

• seeing an attractive person on Instagram
• boredom and procrastination
• stress and anxiety
• time of day
• roommate leaving to run errands

Routines

In response to a cue or trigger, you “follow through” on the habit by performing a routine (a specific set of actions).

The critical thing to understand about habits is that once a habit is hardwired into your brain, you perform it without consciously thinking about it.

In response to a cue, maybe you automatically open a private browser and navigate to a specific site, then mindlessly browse. If this is a habit for you, you probably don’t even realize when you’re doing it.

Adding friction between you and a private browser window makes it difficult to compulsively engage in a habit and causes you to think twice about what you are doing.

I've spent years perfecting the ideal system for blocking porn and preventing bypass. Check out my free guide to blocking porn to learn more.

Take a break from Social Media

I recommend taking a break from social media while you are focused on reaching 30-60 days of complete abstinence from watching porn.

Taking a break means: deleting the apps from your phone, deactivating the accounts, and blocking them using any of our blocking techniques:

1. Block App on iPhone
2. Block Apps on Android
3. Computer Blocking Techniques

Social media usage can cause problems for a few reasons:

1. Browsing Facebook, Instagram, or dating apps will trigger similar addiction pathways in the brain and slow your progress.
2. It's easy to find soft-core alternatives, which trigger similar addiction pathways and prompt you to seek out pornography.
   
3. Social media can cause you to "stuff" on too much dopamine (a reward chemical in the brain) and become bored, leading you to seek out a different source of dopamine. This can easily lead to watching porn as a way to override boredom or to cope with the negative feelings associated with procrastination. 
4. Social media can elevate your level of anxiety due to the nature of these platforms. For example, you might read negative social media posts that cause you to feel stress or anxiety. Porn is a common coping mechanism for negative emotions.

Customize Websites to Reduce Cues

If you need to continue using social media websites like LinkedIn or Youtube, I recommend customizing these websites to make them less harmful.

I recommend blocking these websites on your smartphone and only using them on your computer. Social media apps are particularly harmful when combined with a smartphone because they can be accessed compulsively. At a bare minimum, you should only use them on a computer.

Hide Social Media News Feeds

The dangerous side of social media comes from the endless content feeds and not necessarily the ability to connect with people you already know.  

In order to use a social media website 

I personally don’t use any social media apps on my phone — only on my computer. This allows me to use social media and grey-area websites like Reddit without a News Feed.

You can download  News Feed Eradicator  for your web browser, which replaces social media feeds with an inspirational quote. It works on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Reddit, and even LinkedIn.

You’ll be surprised how much that cuts down procrastination and compulsive browsing. You can still directly talk to friends or look up profiles, but you won’t be algorithmically manipulated to consume endless content.

Remove Thumbnails on YouTube

Consider switching from YouTube to Spotify so that you can continue listening to podcasts and music without having endless access to videos.

However, if you must use YouTube, here is how I recommend customizing the platform.

Block media preview thumbnails on websites like Youtube. Thumbnails are typically a source of dopamine. They are designed to "hook" you and get you to watch more videos. By blocking thumbnails on Youtube, you can significantly reduce the addictive nature of this kind of website.

Furthermore, you can reduce the chances that you'll find inappropriate content.

Some websites like Reddit are helpful, but can cause problems due to the mixed nature of the website. I also recommend blocking content on reddit  if you don't want to block the website entirely .

Adjust the Content you Listen to or Watch

If you’re like me and you have formed a habit of listening or watching something while you do other things, you don’t need to necessarily stop this habit. If you live alone it’s useful to have background noise.

One huge mistake I made during my recovery was listening to content that focused on negative things. News organizations know that people are more likely to pay attention to something that produces anxiety rather than something wholesome or positive.

Anxiety is a common cue associated with addictive behaviors like smoking. 

Alter your content choices from negative things to neutral or positive things.

Disable Unnecessary notifications on your phone, especially for apps.

A smartphone is designed to create a habit loop and to intentionally create anxiety that isn’t necessary.

Your brain doesn’t know the difference between fake and real anxiety.

One of the best ways to reduce your overall anxiety level is to become less informed by your technology.

Smartphone notifications generate fake anxiety and then reward you with a reduction of fake anxiety it created in the first place!

Update your smartphone notifications so that you only receive critical alerts. The games on your smartphone shouldn't be harassing you with notifications.

Staying Focused Through Consistent Journaling and Tracking

Create a habit of daily journaling and habit tracking.

Habit tracking can help remind you of how far you've come and deter you from breaking a solid streak of being porn-free. You'll also realize when you are going through a period of withdrawal, commonly seen between 30-45 days of complete abstinence. 

During my own recovery, I found great comfort in journaling and prayer. I would focus on the following:

• Gratitude and thankfulness. I reviewed my past and current circumstances and focused on everything I could think of that I was thankful for. I discovered so many ways that I was blessed that I didn't tend to think about before.
• Hope for the future. I would think about my future wife and kids and how I wanted to be a husband and father that they could depend on. I reminded myself of how porn addiction was a huge liability to my future family. Achieving a porn-free life would greatly impact my future family.
• I reminded myself of the benefits of quitting porn and how watching porn is one of the most harmful things you can let into your body and mind.
• I read verses in the Bible  that talked about similar topics and wrote down my thoughts.

Focus on Building New Sources of Dopamine

When you quit porn, you will leave behind a dopamine gap that you need to fill. You can’t expect to live the exact same lifestyle you’ve been living and expect anything to change.

It's crucial that you start building healthy sources of dopamine so that you don't feel the need to return to your old lifestyle.

Exercise is a great source of dopamine, but can be intimidating to some people. You don't necessarily need to join a gym and start exercising regularly. Here are some ways you can start small and gradually build:

1. Join a rock climbing gym. Rock climbing is fun and you can climb by yourself either by bouldering (climbing small walls) or using an auto-belay for tall walls. It's a great way to have casual social interactions while also working out in a way that doesn't feel like you are working out.
2. Go on bike rides. Find a nice trail near you to start casually biking on. Biking doesn't have to be strenuous and it's a great way to enjoy nature.
3. Go on a walk in nature while you listen to a podcast or audiobook. You might enjoy listening to a podcast or book, but you can build a habit of only doing this activity when you go on a walk. By pairing something you already enjoy with a new activity, you have a better chance of building a habit with that new activity.
4. Friendly interaction. "The opposite of addiction is connection". You can start simply: hang out and read in a library or bookstore, or take a magazine to a coffee shop or park bench. Attend group events with a set structure (meetups, church, toastmasters).
   
5. Join a local co-ed team to regularly play a sport like soccer, volleyball, or pickleball. You can usually find these groups at a local church or by joining a meetup group.

Increase your Accountability

One of the best ways to add even more friction between you and your old porn habit is through accountability.

There are a few ways to add accountability into your porn recovery process:

1. Make a habit of using your technology in public spaces. If you work from home, consider renting a small office in a co-working space so that most of your day is spent in a public environment. Build a habit of using your laptop at a coffee shop.
2. Tell a close friend about your mission and ask for help with accountability. This might involve sharing access to your blocking setup.
3. Disable incognito mode and prevent yourself from deleting browser history. This is useful if you have an accountability partner who lives with you and accesses the same computer. In fact, you can even let an accountability partner monitor websites you've visited without living in the same house or disabling private browsing features.
4. Join a church group that focuses on providing support for this problem. These groups typically meet once a week and read through material that can be helpful for overcoming this problem. Furthermore, it's a great way to stay consistent and accountable with other people who are on the same mission.