How to overcome illicit sexual viewing

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ServantStrike

Guest
#41
Easing off porn addiction little by little, I imagine, would be easier. Porn addiction is similar, it really is. Because there is a psychological need as much as there is a physical one. I haven't struggled with that, but I understand it.

I wonder if any of these critics ever struggled with porn. How did you two fix your problem? If you never had the problem, how can you relate to the frustration and lure of it? I'm not pulling the "if you haven't been there, don't say anything" but there is some truth to the tendency of people oversimplifying a problem they've never had and it's magical, instant solution.
Not sure why this thread got bumped, but either way, easing off it is a terrible idea.

You just stop.

You're not going to die if you stop looking at porn - you're not even going to get sick. You might find you have too much free time and you don't know what to do with yourself - that's pretty much the worst case scenario.

Why would you continue to engage in a behavior that is detrimental when you can just stop it?
 

jamie26301

Senior Member
May 14, 2011
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#42
Not sure why this thread got bumped, but either way, easing off it is a terrible idea.

You just stop.

You're not going to die if you stop looking at porn - you're not even going to get sick. You might find you have too much free time and you don't know what to do with yourself - that's pretty much the worst case scenario.

Why would you continue to engage in a behavior that is detrimental when you can just stop it?
For the same reason that a heroin addict shouldn't just stop heroin. The body has come to expect it, and literally needs it. Just stop, and the addict dies. He needs to wean off of it.

Masturbation/porn addiction has physiological responses just as taking a drug does. People who get addicted to porn often started "small" and end up looking for more and more extreme samples because they cease to get the high (arousal) they did from the last. Their body got "used" to the type they were watching, because they watch too danged often. I think it's wrong, but I'm expressing why it gets out of control.

Again, how do you know that "just quit" is the best approach? Have you ever had an addiction, much less a porn one? Maybe you have. But just quitting seldom works, unless the void the addiction was filling is filled with something healthy. Like the other poster said, unless you deal with WHY you fell into the addiction in the first place, your abstinence form it won't last long. You will have a cycle of quit start again, quit start again.

But that would also depend on the severity of the problem. If someone could "just quit" it wouldn't be an addiction. In that case, I agree. However, go tell a smoker to just quit. Tell an alcoholic to just quit. 9 out of 10 they can't without some sort of support and/or self-searching. Because it's become a physiological need, and must be dealt with more than just willpower. Now, the consequences of porn addiction are horrendous... just like black lungs, or liver problems with the other two. There are damaging long-term effects for engaging on unhealthy levels.
 

seoulsearch

OutWrite Trouble
May 23, 2009
14,939
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#43
For the same reason that a heroin addict shouldn't just stop heroin. The body has come to expect it, and literally needs it. Just stop, and the addict dies. He needs to wean off of it.

Masturbation/porn addiction has physiological responses just as taking a drug does. People who get addicted to porn often started "small" and end up looking for more and more extreme samples because they cease to get the high (arousal) they did from the last. Their body got "used" to the type they were watching, because they watch too danged often. I think it's wrong, but I'm expressing why it gets out of control.

Again, how do you know that "just quit" is the best approach? Have you ever had an addiction, much less a porn one? Maybe you have. But just quitting seldom works, unless the void the addiction was filling is filled with something healthy. Like the other poster said, unless you deal with WHY you fell into the addiction in the first place, your abstinence form it won't last long. You will have a cycle of quit start again, quit start again.

But that would also depend on the severity of the problem. If someone could "just quit" it wouldn't be an addiction. In that case, I agree. However, go tell a smoker to just quit. Tell an alcoholic to just quit. 9 out of 10 they can't without some sort of support and/or self-searching. Because it's become a physiological need, and must be dealt with more than just willpower. Now, the consequences of porn addiction are horrendous... just like black lungs, or liver problems with the other two. There are damaging long-term effects for engaging on unhealthy levels.

I'm curious about the "weaning someone off porn" approach and am genuinely curious as to how this works? I understand that with smoking, there are things such as the nicotine patches, but what act as a "patch" for porn addiction? Would a person go from, let's say, watching "live action" to just pictures of undressed people and then down to nothing?

I'm not criticizing here... I'm just curious as to what the weaning process would look like, exactly.
 

jamie26301

Senior Member
May 14, 2011
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#44
I'm curious about the "weaning someone off porn" approach and am genuinely curious as to how this works? I understand that with smoking, there are things such as the nicotine patches, but what act as a "patch" for porn addiction? Would a person go from, let's say, watching "live action" to just pictures of undressed people and then down to nothing?
Well, let's remember what arousal is... you're talking about body chemicals, brain chemicals, blood moving, etc... most people seem to be approach this from a purely mental disciplinary standpoint, but the body is involved here, in a way it's not in some other decisions we make to not sin.

You don't combat biology with willpower. You will lose, almost every time. Ask the millions of Americans who have tried to lose weight this way - they usually gain it back and then more. You know that junk food stimulates the same part of the brain as crack? With arousal, you are getting a feeling - a good one. Persistent in watching porn, (I don't advocate it) and you will condition yourself to become more and more used to the stimuli, and will need more intense and higher quantities to get the same feeling.

Dopamine is involved here - it is also involved in the pleasure of eating comfort food, and the high with using drugs. Some people get hooked on the feeling, the high. Now, not that broad and simple, as with food and drugs there are psychological underpinnings that need to be addressed. And like I said, the porn likely got started to fill a void. Perhaps it was just tons of free time. Perhaps it started with curiosity.

The difference with this is that it is something you inflict on yourself without exterior substances. "Just stop thinking about it." Ok, just stop thinking about a pink elephant. Don't picture a pink elephant. You probably did, however. Simply putting it out of your mind will likely make it worse. You can drive out a demon, and sweep your house, but if you don't replace his presence with more guests, then that one and ten more demons will intrude your house. Your last state will be worse than the first.

I have never struggled with this - I'm not sure exactly how to go about it. But with what I am familiar with other addictions, in reading I mean, that involve the same kind of pleasure that is repeated for the pleasure - that is impulsive. I agree with the earlier poster - perhaps leave the porn and just masturbate without restraint (within the restraint of privacy, of course ^_^ ). I read in a book that one way you could beat cravings of chocolate is to just eat NOTHING but chocolate for a few days. You will be sick of it, and probably won't want to touch it again anytime soon if ever.

And like I said before, if it's not bad enough and relatively easy to just quit, then it probably wasn't an addiction. Because addiction is compulsory, and it is in such a degree that it inhibits your day to day life in some fashion (like hurting and neglecting a relationship, for example). But if it is an addiction, demanding one to "just stop" is WAY oversimplifying the struggle, by claiming it not a struggle with the permeant ease the advice promises. Anyone can quit anything for a period of time, usually. That's not the issue - how to quit FOR GOOD, is the issue. "Just stop" isn't the issue, as I'm sure the poster stopped to write the post... to remain halted is the issue, and "just stop" doesn't advise how to remain pure once stopped. It is an extremely temporary solution, parading as a long-term one.

I'm not criticizing here... I'm just curious as to what the weaning process would look like, exactly.
Not sure I know exactly what I mean! ^_^ Only that thinking from a scientific standpoint, the instantaneous decision to not sin again, and then expecting to not sin again, is not most productive (and hey, it may work for some - some, it probably won't. There should be options, in any case). I know that it is seen as "permittance" and "condoning." But one is not advising to continue AS WERE (which would be permittance, as that is detail of THE SITUATION that would be "permitted"), but advising to gradually step down.

If you want to be consistent, then people who smoke, drink excessively, etc, should be able to just quit, and need nothing beyond that. This is an addiction because of what it does to the BODY. It is compulsory, not because "gee, I'd just love to see how many whips in hell I can rack up today; I'd just love to be stigmatized by everyone at church and I dearly hope they find out, etc" but because of the physiological response the body has come to EXPECT.

So you need strategies to tell the body, "I don't need this much any more" and finally "I don't need it anymore." Dieticians say to introduce a vegetable with your meal. No dietician is going to expect someone with a junk food diet to overnight become a vegan or such. Certainly won't last. But that's essentially the same thing as expecting one to just drop this whole thing cold turkey, if indeed we are talking about a serious addiction.
 
Feb 7, 2015
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#45
I'm curious about the "weaning someone off porn" approach and am genuinely curious as to how this works? I understand that with smoking, there are things such as the nicotine patches, but what act as a "patch" for porn addiction? Would a person go from, let's say, watching "live action" to just pictures of undressed people and then down to nothing?

I'm not criticizing here... I'm just curious as to what the weaning process would look like, exactly.
It has no "look", because it simply does not work.
 

seoulsearch

OutWrite Trouble
May 23, 2009
14,939
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#46
It has no "look", because it simply does not work.
Yeah... I was curious about what kind of regimen it would require because I've never heard or or read of a "weaning off" treatment for such an addiction. Granted, it's been a long time since I was in grad school, but I don't remember anything in my addiction/ethics/psych classes that talked about a "gradual weaning" off porn.

Not that there isn't one out there somewhere, it was just something I wasn't familiar with.
 
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Sirk

Guest
#47
Well...if you into the sadomasachistic stuff you would stop looking at that and go for just straight up live action porn, then still porn, then just naked ladies, then scantily clad ladies, then fully dressed ladies, then ladies in hijabs......I'm just illustrating the absurdity of "weaning off of porn".
 

jamie26301

Senior Member
May 14, 2011
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#48
Well...if you into the sadomasachistic stuff you would stop looking at that and go for just straight up live action porn, then still porn, then just naked ladies, then scantily clad ladies, then fully dressed ladies, then ladies in hijabs......I'm just illustrating the absurdity of "weaning off of porn".
Very nicely, seeing how that's not how I described it... at all, nor the other who mentioned it. But you did a good job making your extremely exaggerated interpretation of the advice look absurd. ;)

And no one against this idea has even touched why the idea exists - which is the biological compulsion of the matter.
 
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Sirk

Guest
#49
Well, let's remember what arousal is... you're talking about body chemicals, brain chemicals, blood moving, etc... most people seem to be approach this from a purely mental disciplinary standpoint, but the body is involved here, in a way it's not in some other decisions we make to not sin.

You don't combat biology with willpower. You will lose, almost every time. Ask the millions of Americans who have tried to lose weight this way - they usually gain it back and then more. You know that junk food stimulates the same part of the brain as crack? With arousal, you are getting a feeling - a good one. Persistent in watching porn, (I don't advocate it) and you will condition yourself to become more and more used to the stimuli, and will need more intense and higher quantities to get the same feeling.

Dopamine is involved here - it is also involved in the pleasure of eating comfort food, and the high with using drugs. Some people get hooked on the feeling, the high. Now, not that broad and simple, as with food and drugs there are psychological underpinnings that need to be addressed. And like I said, the porn likely got started to fill a void. Perhaps it was just tons of free time. Perhaps it started with curiosity.

The difference with this is that it is something you inflict on yourself without exterior substances. "Just stop thinking about it." Ok, just stop thinking about a pink elephant. Don't picture a pink elephant. You probably did, however. Simply putting it out of your mind will likely make it worse. You can drive out a demon, and sweep your house, but if you don't replace his presence with more guests, then that one and ten more demons will intrude your house. Your last state will be worse than the first.

I have never struggled with this - I'm not sure exactly how to go about it. But with what I am familiar with other addictions, in reading I mean, that involve the same kind of pleasure that is repeated for the pleasure - that is impulsive. I agree with the earlier poster - perhaps leave the porn and just masturbate without restraint (within the restraint of privacy, of course ^_^ ). I read in a book that one way you could beat cravings of chocolate is to just eat NOTHING but chocolate for a few days. You will be sick of it, and probably won't want to touch it again anytime soon if ever.

And like I said before, if it's not bad enough and relatively easy to just quit, then it probably wasn't an addiction. Because addiction is compulsory, and it is in such a degree that it inhibits your day to day life in some fashion (like hurting and neglecting a relationship, for example). But if it is an addiction, demanding one to "just stop" is WAY oversimplifying the struggle, by claiming it not a struggle with the permeant ease the advice promises. Anyone can quit anything for a period of time, usually. That's not the issue - how to quit FOR GOOD, is the issue. "Just stop" isn't the issue, as I'm sure the poster stopped to write the post... to remain halted is the issue, and "just stop" doesn't advise how to remain pure once stopped. It is an extremely temporary solution, parading as a long-term one.


Not sure I know exactly what I mean! ^_^ Only that thinking from a scientific standpoint, the instantaneous decision to not sin again, and then expecting to not sin again, is not most productive (and hey, it may work for some - some, it probably won't. There should be options, in any case). I know that it is seen as "permittance" and "condoning." But one is not advising to continue AS WERE (which would be permittance, as that is detail of THE SITUATION that would be "permitted"), but advising to gradually step down.

If you want to be consistent, then people who smoke, drink excessively, etc, should be able to just quit, and need nothing beyond that. This is an addiction because of what it does to the BODY. It is compulsory, not because "gee, I'd just love to see how many whips in hell I can rack up today; I'd just love to be stigmatized by everyone at church and I dearly hope they find out, etc" but because of the physiological response the body has come to EXPECT.

So you need strategies to tell the body, "I don't need this much any more" and finally "I don't need it anymore." Dieticians say to introduce a vegetable with your meal. No dietician is going to expect someone with a junk food diet to overnight become a vegan or such. Certainly won't last. But that's essentially the same thing as expecting one to just drop this whole thing cold turkey, if indeed we are talking about a serious addiction.
This is a really great post. The deal with addictive behaviors is that they are a "broken mechanism" for dealing with trials of life, insecurities hurts and hang ups. The way to stop addictive behaviors is to identify and process the pain that underlies them while carving new neural highways "good mechanisms" in your brain, when insecurities, pain and the trials of life arise.

You dont get good at something by wishing for it. You get good at something by training and hard work to make your go too mechanisms as natural as breathing. Just like you did in the reverse without even knowing it.
 

jamie26301

Senior Member
May 14, 2011
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#50
This is a really great post. The deal with addictive behaviors is that they are a "broken mechanism" for dealing with trials of life, insecurities hurts and hang ups. The way to stop addictive behaviors is to identify and process the pain that underlies them while carving new neural highways "good mechanisms" in your brain, when insecurities, pain and the trials of life arise.
Thank you, I appreciate that.

You dont get good at something by wishing for it. You get good at something by training and hard work to make your go too mechanisms as natural as breathing. Just like you did in the reverse without even knowing it.
Very true. Only those who run will receive the prize! :) (1 Cor. 9)
 
Apr 22, 2015
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#51
Hi hi , new member here ... very interesting thread ..... doesn't the bible give a simple solution to this issue ? .......... Get married .... I could be wrong , lol ....
 
Apr 15, 2014
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#52
You are right about being wrong. Do you think that the addiction to pornography would end because there is access to regular sex?

And would you want your sister or your daughter to get involved with a man who is porn addicted? Would you want her body to be a replacement for some thing like that? Isn't marriage SO MUCH MORE than the solution to lust?

I just cannot even.
 

Lynx

Folksy yet erudite
Aug 13, 2014
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#53
From what I've heard, being married doesn't stop a porn addiction. But a lot of guys seem to get married thinking it will - and then the very problem they thought they were taking care of breaks up their marriage. I've seen it happen much more often than I would like.
 
Apr 15, 2014
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#54
Please deal with your issues - whatever they might be - before getting involved with another person. Relationships are like money - the just make the problems that you already have bigger and more obvious.
 
Apr 15, 2014
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#55
And I in no way want to demonize or shame the OP, or anyone who is dealing with porn addiction. I am absolutely positive there is freedom in Christ with this (and all of our) issue(s). No one thing is worse than another, we all struggle with sin.

I'm sure there are a bunch of support groups and resources for Christian men, but I know of the one linked below as a dear friend is dealing with this issue and has had a lot of help from this group.

Email questions: Ending porn habit, foul-mouthed worker | Band Of Brothers For Christ
Free Resources
 

Oncefallen

Idiot in Chief
Staff member
Jan 15, 2011
6,027
3,228
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#56
Hi hi , new member here ... very interesting thread ..... doesn't the bible give a simple solution to this issue ? .......... Get married .... I could be wrong , lol ....
Marriage will not resolve a pornography (or other sexual) addiction. In any addiction be it sex, porn, alcohol, drugs, etc the addiction is a symptom of a greater problem, not so much the problem itself. Sex and porn addictions routinely have their root in a person's lack of ability to develop proper intimate (non-sexual) relationships with other people. Porn and sex become a cheap substitute for what the person really craves and invariably becomes an addiction.

Unfortunately like all addictions there is a constant degradation in which the addict requires more in order to get the same high. In the case of sex and porn addicts this ends up meaning perpetually requiring more disgusting and degrading acts which for some degrades to the point of sexual crimes in order to become aroused. Yes, studies have showed that almost all sex offenders have a history of either sex or porn addiction.

Severe porn addicts typically end up rejecting relations with their wives, or expect their wives to reenact the degrading acts they've seen in porn videos. No woman in her right mind would EVER marry a man with an ongoing porn issue.
 

DuchessAimee

Senior Member
Apr 27, 2011
3,922
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#57
Someone with a porn or sex addiction doesn't necessarily mean they have deep seeded emotional issues. It doesn't mean they grew up in a broken home, it doesn't mean they were sexually abused. The same goes for those who are addicted to drugs. Sometimes people simply make bad choices. Either way an addiction is established by repeatedly choosing the same action over and over due to the preference of the changed brain activity. Anyone can become an addict, and anyone can become addicted to anything.


Porn and sex is one of the top four of the easiest things to become addicted to because it's free and socially acceptable. The other other three are food, exercise, and work. Something to keep in mind. When an addict (and we're all addicts, btw) leaves one drug, they go to another. It's extremely common because we're sinners. It's sin that makes us addicts to begin with. So if you're going to leave porn, sex, heroin, food, meth, rage, shopping, chasing cars, or whatever it may be, a close relationship with Christ is your only hope. Otherwise you will return to your greatest love. Yourself.


And I'm not preaching out of self righteousness. I'm speaking out of experience. Lots and lots of experience.
 

jamie26301

Senior Member
May 14, 2011
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#58
"Isn't marriage SO MUCH MORE than the solution to lust?"

Unfortunately, it seems to be taught in some circles that the primary purpose of marriage is sex and babies.

Pair this with taking away adversarial laws judging the two parties, the soceitial stigma, and financial hindrances, then you start to see divorce rise - and it's still a problem, because many young people are not taught the proper things to seek in a relationship and proper reasons to get married.

Sure, our grandparents stayed together, but they had incentives that are not in place, anymore. Not saying those incentives are right or wrong. But while this emphasis on sex and children for marriage is not the only culprit of divorce, it lurks in the Church - and she condones it, pastors marrying people they full well know are divorced frivolously, and then demonize anyone who is even the most slightly sexual with their loved one they aren't married to.

We really need to teach our youth that marriage is more than being virgins the night of your wedding. Being virgins is not going to seal your marriage and make it successful - love and committment will and even athesits are capable of that. I don't think enough emphasis is placed on developing healthy relationships - it is focused on repression. That makes a great marriage, is being a virgin. Sorry, but that won't hold it together.

The Church won't hold it together - she regularly sanctions adultry, or as Jesus defined it. Forinacation, which is no longer a problem in a monogomous marraige of faithful partners, gets all the hype while divorce is brushed off. Seeing how Jesus went out of His way to touch on THAT more than sex outside of marriage, I think that's more important. Break a vow to God and witnesses, "no big deal" Sin against your own body, " you better
get right with God!"

Like said, youth needs to be taught to build relationships, not focusing on torturing themselves by seeing their urges as God's gift, only for later. He's just going to dangle it in front of you, maybe a decade, or two or three, so you appreciate it.
 
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May 3, 2013
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#59
"Isn't marriage SO MUCH MORE than the solution to lust?"

If it was SO Jesus wouldn't have called ppl, His life time, adulterers... The problem of lust (and covetting) goes on, til the time He comes.
 
May 3, 2013
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#60
Since you mentionioned marriage... I have the hunch many want to be dressed up for that party, their reception and their investing more money on that stuff, rather than investing TIME or money to receive counceling... Just count me in those lists, who married to get "legal" sex, basically.