Hey, it's Tom here. Founder of the Beyond Compulsion Academy. In 2024, me and Mari Paulus (the amazing woman who taught me how to get out of porn addiction) set up the Beyond Compulsion Academy to help others also get out of porn addiction. In 2024, we worked with over 35 clients from all over the world. After our clients have watched our program and taken their notes, we jump on what we call a "liberation day call" to set up their personalised script, based on what they've learned, so they can deal with urges and change their neural pathways correctly. On this liberation day call, we often ask "at what age did you start watching porn?" and the answer is almost always between 11-13. I was 12 personally. For some guys it is even younger.
This is in line with England's Children Commissioner's 2023 report which found that "Pornography consumption is widespread among children. The average age at which children first saw pornography was just 13 years old."
You could read Your Brain On Porn and better understand the ins and outs of addiction and learn about how the brain changes due to transcription factors like Delta FosB and CREB. Or you could learn more about dopamine, brain maps, and how neurons that fire together wire together. Learning the neuroscience can be really interesting (I still continue to learn more as it fascinates me) but it is unlikely to help you change your neural pathways correctly. And essentially what it comes down to is that porn can be highly addictive and the brain can develop a psychological / emotional dependency on it. When you try to stop watching it, that can be really difficult. And so what we need is a way of dealing with desires correctly.
I hope this blog can help you avoid making some of the mistakes that I did. These are the same mistakes the majority of people living with a porn addiction are making.
"Displacement Activities and Avoidance Techniques"
On Reddit there are a plethora of well-intentioned posts on how to overcome porn addiction.
However, most are very detrimental. The first 18 tips on this popular NoFap post (below), all completely miss the point of porn addiction recovery.
I am sure whoever created the post genuinely means well, but these tips don't just skirt around the real problem (dealing with compulsive desire) but they are actually detrimental. They are all built on the premise that you don't have control over yourself and as such you need to stay busy or avoid triggers for porn. By taking this route, you create neural pathways of helplessness and will feel exhausted by the constant demand to stay active. And then eventually, when you do experience urges (because your brain is addicted because you unknowingly got hooked at a really young age) you'll go and relapse because you have not learned how to deal with urges.
The "Fall Down / Slip-up" Approach
This "Big List of Tips & Tricks" post ends with some of the worse advice imaginable. It sounds great and it certainly feels good to read when you are struggling and need some motivation, but just like this post, it ends disastrously.
Listening to advice like this is one of the main reasons I stayed stuck in addiction for so many years. If I could change that post to have some truth in it, it would look like this:
Fall down. Intermittent reinforcement.
Fall down. Intermittent reinforcement.
Fall down. Intermittent reinforcement.
Fall down. Intermittent reinforcement.
Fall down. Intermittent reinforcement.
Fall down. Intermittent reinforcement. Stay stuck indefinitely.
I know this probably isn't what you want to see if you are struggling right now. But, this stuff needs to be said. Using the term "Fall down" is completely consenting to helplessness. People don't just fall or slip and end up watching porn. That doesn't happen. Watching porn is a choice. But, people choose to use this language because it has become normalised, it is rarely questioned, and above all else - they are in an addiction. The addicted part of the mind wants you to feel helpless.
Furthermore, simply getting back up and moving on isn't what actually happens. Choosing to watch porn is not an isolated incident. Choosing to watch porn is what creates the desire to watch porn again in the future. It is only through choosing an alternative route, repeatedly, that you actually ever change the brain and get free of the addiction.
Back in 2022, I was still doing the whole NoFap thing myself. And sure, I managed to hit the glorious 90+ days through building great habits like meditating, journaling, and running, but it did not last long.
Eventually, I chose to engage. I relapsed. And I was back in the addiction indefinitely. Believing that you can "just do it once and get away with it" is classic junkie thinking (any excuse, rationalisation, justification to engage in your compulsive behaviour). "One peek won't hurt" is bullshit from the addicted part of the mind. But, it is the bullshit I convinced myself of to avoid facing my own reality, resulting in me staying stuck in addiction. What is the alternative?
I got stuck in a porn addiction for years and years because I believed the following:
"Self-improvement is key to overcoming porn"
"There is a lesson in every slip-up"
Nowadays, I realise I got addicted to porn because I live in a society where it is normalised and I first got hooked at 12 and continued to watch it (rewiring my brain) for many years before ever realising the consequences. I then sought information to stop by people I felt I could relate to. So, mostly people in their teens and 20's. These guys meant well, just like I did when I created that 90 days of NoFap YouTube video. But, also, these YouTubers had no real idea or experience on how to deal with addiction. Neither did I back then.
The alternative to self-improvement, continual learning, and inevitable relapses is to learn how the addicted part of your mind works, and use a specific script to rewire addicted neural pathways correctly. I learn all of this from Mari Paulus who has worked in addiction recovery for over 35 years. The key to unlocking the freedom you wish for is knowing how to deal with absolutely any urge, at any moment. When you can do this, you realise that everything else you ever tried did not work for a reason. It may have been useful in other areas of your life or worked for you temporarily, but until you can deal with urges - you will remain in your addiction.
We teach our clients a specific 5-fact script based on the truth of addiction. This enables the guys we work with to think through those inevitable moments of compulsive desire, each time, and make choices they are proud of so they can change the brain correctly and feel good whilst doing so. If you are sick of the cycle of ups and downs, doing streaks, but always returning to porn - start by facing the reality of your addiction. Take the Compulsion Test.