Frequently Asked Questions
about porn use and how to stop
Most therapists and coaches who help men stop watching porn assume that watching it is not inherently harmful or wrong. But like any substance or activity, watching porn can become compulsive or impulsive and lead to other significant problems in one's life--like financial problems, relationship conflicts, and legal trouble. So quitting porn becomes necessary to eliminate or address these personal consequences.
But this is a matter of debate. Many feminists, religious thinkers, and other critics regard porn as inherently harmful and wrong, and so they think nobody should ever watch it, even if it doesn't seem to be causing problems in one's life.
At After Vice, we treat this question as being a matter of the client's personal ethical judgment. Our goal is to help you live and act in accordance with your values--whether you believe porn is inherently wrong, or that the problem is with the particular things you are watching (but not porn as a whole), or that it's only a problem to the extent that it is causing you other problems.
And if you're unsure of what you believe, we will work together to figure it out. This involves an ongoing discussion about ethics and values, as well as careful reflection on all the ways porn may be affecting your life. Our goal here would be to help you identify your values, form goals that are consistent with them, and then work toward accomplishing those goals. Whether that means eliminating or changing your habits is up to you.
Many people assume that a porn habit, or even having the desire to ever watch porn, is a reflection of something pathological or toxic. At After Vice, we don't look at this issue in psychiatric or ideological terms, but instead adopt the view from evolutionary psychology and cognitive science.
This says that over the past two million years of human history, it has been been adaptive for human males to pursue novel sexual opportunities. This pursuit requires seeking out sexually receptive, fertile females. Men who followed this pursuit were more likely to reproduce, so their children were more likely to have the genes that made them also follow this pursuit. Men today are their descendants, and they have inherited these same genes.
But because the brain evolved in an environment in which anything we saw was actually right there in front of us, our brains are not instinctively capable of distinguishing between real-life sexual opportunities and the depiction of sexual opportunities on a screen. So the brain essentially treats internet porn as an endless stream of easily available and novel sexual opportunities among a seemingly infinite number of sexually receptive, fertile females. (And this is true whether we're talking about mainstream studio porn, amateur porn, sexually suggestive social media content, AI/animated porn, etc.) From this perspective, it's no wonder that a man could get hooked.
But of course, rationally speaking, we know that the images on the screen are not real. We know that these are not real sexual opportunities. We get emotionally and physiologically swept up in the fantasy, and then once we've ejaculated, we often feel shame or guilt or disgust at having spent time and money on something obviously fake. So while the allure is porn is entirely psychologically understandable, it is also understandable why, afterwards, we would feel like there is something wrong with us.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), which is the text that psychiatrists use to diagnose mental illness and addictions, does not have an entry for porn addiction. Because it is not treated this way, therapists are generally not trained to treat "porn addiction" and scientists generally are not able to secure funding to research "porn addiction".
Even if the medical and mental health professions do not regard "porn addiction" as real, it might still be. There are other kinds of addiction listed in the DSM that were once not considered addictions, so it's possible that "porn addiction" is real, but has simply not been recognized as such yet, and could still be regarded as an addiction in the future.
Whether or not "porn addiction" is real, it is the porn user himself who knows best about the degree to which his porn use has become a problem--how frequently he watches, how long he spends watching, how much money he spends on it, how dependent he feels on it, how much emotional distress it causes him, how much it interferes with the rest of his life, and what sorts of risks he's taking by watching.
At After Vice, we don't think it matters whether one's porn use "really" constitutes an addiction. Even if it did, we treat addictions not as illnesses but rather as deeply entrenched habits--and that is exactly how we treat your porn habit. Rather than viewing you as sick or helpless, we regard porn use as a bad habit (i.e. a vice) that can be overcome by forming new perspectives to avoid continuing it and by cultivating good habits.
Most approaches to quitting porn involve developing strategies to minimize temptations: Delete your social media apps, impose restrictions on when you can use your phone or computer, avoid going places where you'll likely face temptations, and so on. But these approaches only work to the extent that you have the self-control to quit. And research continually shows that self-control, on its own, is not an effective way to quit a pleasurable habit or avoid relapses.
At After Vice, our approach doesn't start with quitting porn, but instead with adding other activities to your life. We take this approach because, following the research, we believe that porn habits (like other addictions) are ultimately a consequence of 1) not taking adequate care of your physiological needs, and 2) lacking a deeper source of meaning and satisfaction in your life.
Until you take proper care of your body and mind, and focus on your life on what you find most meaningful, you will always be tempted to turn to quick, easy sources of pleasure--whether porn, drugs, alcohol, food, or anything else. We don't want quitting porn to just become a short-term fix that is ultimately replaced by some other bad habit.
So we start by focusing on improving your exercise, nutrition, and sleep, and helping you develop habits that allow your body to relax. Taking care of your physical health improves your mood and reduces the discomforts that often lead us to pursue easy pleasure. We will also put more emphasis on your social life and the time you spend engaging in the sorts of activities you find meaningful and deeply satisfying. And if you don't have much of a social life, or don't know what you find meaningful and deeply satisfying, we will work together to figure that out.
While we work on that, we will also discuss your attitudes about porn. This includes a discussion of what you think the role that sex and masturbation (and pleasure in general) should play in your life, and the kind of relationship you want to have both with technology and with women. By clarifying and refining your beliefs about these issues, you will feel more committed to pursuing what you really care about. And you will come to find it easier to avoid watching porn--not to resist it, but to actually feel less and less of a desire to watch it.
This is the tough position that most men and boys are in. Almost everybody watches porn, and almost everyone, at least at some point, has faced some kind of problem as a result. Men generally don't like to talk to other people about their problems, and with porn, it's even more uncomfortable. Overwhelming sexual desire can feel like a kind of weakness, and men are not usually comfortable to talk about feeling weak, especially with another man, and sometimes especially when he is a stranger.
At After Vice, we understand this all too well. This is why we make every effort to offer different kinds of resources to men depending on their level of comfort. For those not comfortable or ready to talk openly, we offer perspectives and some generalized support on our Reddit page. We also have some recommended resources for those interested in a self-help approach.
For those who would like to talk about their difficulty with porn, we offer different options depending on your level of comfort: audio-only Zoom calls, or encrypted email exchanges. In either case, we keep our conversations focused less on the porn problem itself and more focused on the development of good habits and the formation of more useful perspectives around pleasure, sexuality, women, and technology. In addition, our perspective on porn habits is non-judgmental. We understand the allure of pornography and how easily it can take over one's life. So rest assured that we do not judge or condemn or blame you for your habit.
We also understand that, for some men, a problematic porn habit can go hand-in-hand with legal problems. If this is your situation, please contact us. Rather than do anything to compromise your legal situation, we also offer, as an alternative to our usual method, a more impersonal and educational approach. Instead of talking about you and your circumstances, we discuss general principles about male sexual psychology and holistic health, as well as discuss hypothetical situations and thought experiments. This allows you to develop a better understanding of how to address your challenges with porn, without disclosing any sensitive personal information.