How to Deal With Porn Withdrawal Pangs

So today, guys, we're going to discuss withdrawal pangs. Okay, a lot of people have been asking me, Samir Gardner, how do I deal with withdrawals? How do I deal with the desire to come back to it when I've been free from porn or masturbation for a few days or a few weeks, right? And if you read, for example, the book Easy Peasy, it is a concept which is often talked about that you're going to experience withdrawals whenever you leave a behavior like porn or masturbation within the first 1 to 2 to even 3 weeks, right? And then apparently it's going to disappear. Or for example, NoFap often claims that it takes about 90 days for you to move on from your behavior and basically remove those withdrawals. But all of that, I'm gonna tell you right now, is false. Let's dive in into what really happens with withdrawals, and I'm going to shock your perception, okay? I'm going to really present to you information you never really came across before, and it's going to make you realize that withdrawals are not a pathological issue, meaning they're not disease, like something that comes from your body, but rather they are something that you created just like a placebo. And once you understand why, it's going to be extremely easy for you to just deal with that sensation of withdrawals. So first we need to understand how withdrawals happen for drugs, for example. So if, for example, if you were to read about opiates, opiates withdrawals, which are narcotics, right? They are painkillers. When you use opiates, what happens is if you constantly consume it, your body has to adjust to it, which is normal. You know, your body, like your brain and your nervous system is going to try to like balance out the constant supply of opiates that you're putting inside of your body. And if you know how your body works, your body wants to constantly be in a balance. Whenever you give to your body something constantly, it's going to have to balance itself out, which is pretty normal. We call this process allostasis. So we all know about homeostasis where your body essentially wants to balance itself out, but then allostasis comes in to adapt. So then your body can be balanced, if that makes sense. So for example, if I were to go and run on a treadmill, my heartbeat would increase. But then if I stay for the next few minutes, right? right? Let's say I'm 10, 15, 20 minutes in at the same pace. My body is going to adapt and go back to a baseline. So what happens with drugs like opiates, the moment you stop consuming them, your system is out of balance, which is pretty normal because if you've been constantly doing something and then you stop, especially with a thing such as a drug which has different chemicals, you will have side effects. So you will feel sick, you will have sweating, nausea, shaking, your, your muscles might ache, you might have anxiety, insomnia, so many different side effects, you can say. So withdrawals can be simplified to the body reacting to the absence of the drug. Pretty simple, right? Now, of course, we don't have that with porn because porn is not ingested inside of the body like drugs, alcohol, nicotine, or so on. It is something that you watch, right? And so what would the porn recovery experts would claim is the reason why you have withdrawals is because of dopamine deficiency. And so there's this whole narrative that dopamine is like at the center of everything. It's— I would claim personally that the so-called recovery experts are portraying this idea as if like we're living on instincts and that we don't have a psyche, we don't have developed cognitive functions, and that we're just ran by our dopamine. And still to this day, when I coach people or I talk to people that want to get out, they tell me, oh, look, for example, I want to read books, but I can't because of my dopamine, right? And instead of simply having reasons to read books, which they don't have, They just think, no, it's because of dopamine. It's just because I'm watching too much porn, so I can't read books. I can't do this because porn gives me all of that dopamine. And it limits our ability to make decisions that might be better for us because we think that dopamine is essentially going to be driving us at the end of the day. So we need to get rid of that. So then we can do activities that are boring but productive and fruitful. Or those claims like dopamine just hijacks your brain. And I've made videos on these in the past. And I'm not saying that dopamine doesn't exist. Of course not. But as we know, dopamine works for the most part when it comes to these behaviors is that dopamine is actually released in the anticipation of the behavior because you think that you will be rewarded from doing that behavior. And so what does that mean? That means that— and you can do your research, by the way— but then that means that you release dopamine doing things which you think will reward you. And so that's what most— where most people, they make a huge mistake of never changing their perception around a behavior. Meaning, for example, if I go and watch a video or read a book on why exercise is going to help me with certain goals I have in my life, such as getting married. And let's say I really want that. And it's going to help me be a role model for other people. It's going to help me with my leadership. And let's say that these 3 things are things I deeply desire in my life that I have goals around. And I read books or I watch videos that talk about how exercising is going to help with those things. Then surely I'm going to be motivated to go to the gym to a certain extent. The same way, if you tell me, oh, waking up at 5:00 AM in the morning is hard. You can claim that it's hard, right? But if I told you I'm going to give you $2,000 every single time you wake up at 5:00 AM, would it still be hard? You see, it's not a question of how hard the behavior is. It's more a question of the internal conviction that you have for that behavior. And most oftentimes that's not developed. So every activity that the rest of society claims to be productive and important and almost an obligation, like for example, being productive, reading books, working on projects, going to the gym, which you feel like you have no motivation to do. Sometimes it's just a question of inner conviction because the moment you'll see all of these rewards in those behaviors is the moment you'll start releasing dopamine the moment you think about doing those behaviors. I swear to God, I'm about to go to the gym after this video. I am, I am excited to go to the gym. Would it be hard? 1000%. I'm going to do hard deadlifts. I'm going to go for a PR. And then at the end of the workout, I'm going to do some very hard, at least for me, cardio HIIT exercise like the assault bike for 7 minutes. And every time I do that, I'm out of breath and I don't like that feeling. But in my mind, I associate so many rewards to exercising, to going to the gym, that I anticipate that. I think that first of all, not to go on a tangent because right now we're kind of going on a tangent, but I think that if I go to the gym, I'm going to be a better leader, I'm going to have better influence, I'm going to be a better coach, I'm gonna build my body and make a good example of my body for God and for other people, that I'm going to feel better in the exact moment that I'm exercising because I'm going to be building mental resilience with every exercise I do. I'm going to build physical strength with every exercise I do. I'm going to feel better after the workout. I'm going to perform better when it comes to coaching people and my different projects. And so I have like this huge list of reasons that just makes me release dopamine in anticipation of going to the gym and getting all of those rewards I think I'm going to get. Do you see how dopamine is not just about, oh, apparently just because you see so many women on the screen when you watch porn that you release so much dopamine because you get to reproduce with all of these women. You're not an animal, right? You don't live on instincts where you can't tell, where you can't decide what is true or not, where you just fall for illusions. Okay, because think about it, right? I always say to people, if porn really gave dopamine no matter what, and it gave a huge amount of dopamine. What if you watched the video, right? You start watching this porn video, and then you come to the middle of the video, and you realize as they get undressed that these are men having intercourse with each other, but they were dressed as women. Like, you still release dopamine in the anticipation of watching that video, even though they were not real women. And so what does that show to us is that, again, dopamine is just dependent on your perception and not dependent on just your body reacting that way without your own will, okay? So this whole concept of withdrawals or dopamine deficiency is a whole lie because you can release dopamine for everything. Do you say, oh, I have withdrawals because of a dopamine deficiency because I used to watch movies all of my life and now I stopped watching movies for a week? Most people don't think that way. And because they don't think that way, that doesn't happen. There's no self-fulfilling prophecy. And that's the thing. The withdrawals just become a pure self-fulfilling prophecy rather than an objective reality. And this is where you gotta be careful with what you feed yourself and your beliefs that you have because Things can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. For example, we all know the typical example of imagine that you have this belief that you're ugly, right? And so you take that to the point where you kind of like block off all possibilities of women finding you attractive. And so the reality is, the objective reality is that maybe there's a woman that actually finds you attractive. Maybe there's multiple women that find you attractive even if you think you're ugly. But because you hold onto that belief that you're unattractive, then you don't see them. You don't see those women. But if you were to hold that belief that yeah, you're attractive, then the likelihood of you going out your way and finding out that these women actually find you attractive by either talking to them or whatever is going to be much, much higher. And it's the same thing here. And so Alfred Lindsmith, who you can say is a pioneer in the addiction field, talks about how withdrawals are actually formed within opiate users. And we're going to see how that applies to porn, because if it applies to drugs which are ingested inside of the body and actually causes imbalance within the body, not just within the mind, within the body, because it is literally ingested, then it can definitely apply to porn. So let's look at it. So you can read this book called Opiates and Addiction. It's a very, very interesting book on why addiction is mostly psychological rather than physiological or pathological. But basically he says that there needs to be 3 things that needs to happen based on research and based on his experience treating people and years of, years of experience in that specific field with opiates. He says that first you need to experience the withdrawal symptoms, right? So for example, for opiates, that might be insomnia, that might be you vomiting, having nausea, and having all of these physical side effects, right, which happen because of the, the drug, right? Okay, now the second thing is the cognitive phenomenon. This is where you essentially worry about the withdrawal. You're like, what is this? And you start being fearful because he saw that those that did not worry about the same withdrawals, for example, okay, there's a very popular example for opiates because they're known as painkillers. When they're used recreationally, meaning like in streets, like for recreational purposes, like pleasure, whatever, escapes, and medically, meaning like, for example, you undergo surgery and then you get opiates. We see two different reactions to the same exact physical phenomenon, to the same exact withdrawals, which are, for example, the pain that they feel, the insomnia, things of that nature. Those under medical care, right, that go back on feeling those withdrawals after the surgery and after being prescribed opiates, right, and they stop taking opiates because the surgery is done, they feel the same withdrawal where they feel they, where they get insomnia, where they get nausea, where they get all of these side effects. Yet because they don't interpret such side effects as a desire to go and take more, to compel them to take opiates again, then they don't do, right? Just like the famous story I talked about in my last video where a woman who used to consume opiates and was an addict, as she claimed, she told the doctor before a surgery that she didn't want opiates because she was in fear that she might get hooked on it again, right? And that she's going to experience withdrawals. And so they done the surgery, but at the end of the surgery, the woman was in deep pain. And so the doctor said, you know what, I'm going to give you opiates, but through a different form. Because usually when people consume opiates, it's like a, either a pill or a powder version. And instead he gave her a liquid version of opiates. So she couldn't recognize that it was opiates, right? And she didn't know. And he gave her the liquid opiates. She instantly felt better, right? And she thanked the doctor, not only for the surgery and for giving her painkillers, but for giving her painkillers that did not contain opiates because she thought she did not receive opiates even though she did. And so she just went on and after the surgery, like nothing happened, like she didn't consume opiates because she didn't know. This is where we see the whole self-fulfilling prophecy and the mind is very powerful in that sometimes it's just a question of beliefs and not actual withdrawals. And so those though that consume the drug, the opiates recreationally, for example, in the streets or with their friends, they're often around other opiate consumers who tell them about withdrawals are a sign that they need to take more, that they're hooked, because that started to become the narrative. And then came things such as the Harrison Act, which kind of like made opiates illegal, but there was this belief that you had what they call a yen. A yen is like the withdrawals that you feel, the same side effects, were interpreted as a desire to take more. And those that didn't come across such concept just endured the side effects because they didn't know that opiates would solve that, and just after a few days came back to normal, the body balanced back to normal. And so that's the cognitive phenomenon. Now the third phenomenon is simply the behavioral phenomenon where it's like you use the opiate so that you can get rid of the withdrawals essentially, or at least in your mind. And once that process is done where you first feel the side effects, second, you worry about the side effects and you interpret those withdrawals as a desire to take more. Third, you take more, which confirms your belief. Then you become what people call addicted or hooked and someone that's going to constantly face withdrawal pains, for example. And so if we apply the same to porn, what happens with porn is people first feel some type of physical phenomenon. And oftentimes it's not even physical, it's purely psychological where they think, I have the desire to do it again, right? They feel like this very strong desire within them to just go back to it. But at the same time, they tell themselves, no, I don't want to do it. And so some people call that physical phenomenon. Other people might face some type of stress or anxiety or some form of emptiness. And they're like, these are withdrawals, right? It's, it's still like mostly psychological. It's not like you're getting insomnia or you're getting, or you're sweating or you're getting any bodily effects. And so let's say that's the physical phenomenon, even though it's not even physical. Then the cognitive phenomenon comes when someone starts to worry and is in fear that he's going to go back to porn, right? And that he's facing this strong desire which will be either hard to get rid of, and so he needs to watch porn in order to stop that desire, in order to stop stop his mind from focusing on these sexual thoughts. And so he starts just having anxiety around that. Essentially, he's like, I'm going to relapse again. And, or if I don't deal with this, if I still have these, this desire, it's just going to overpower me and it's going to like take over my mind. And we're just going to think about sex. I said, I'm just going to think about it and I have constantly strong urges. And so the person is in a position where they are in fear essentially. And then third, we have the behavioral phenomenon, which is where people say, you know what, I'm going to watch porn. And then they watch porn and then they don't have the desire to do it anymore. So they're like, oh look, well, porn satisfied those withdrawals. Or maybe they feel different. I wouldn't say better because a lot of people feel shame and guilt, right? But they feel different. They don't feel that same tension. They don't feel the same desire to do it again. And so they're like, oh look, it satisfied my withdrawals. Yes, I feel bad. Yes, I didn't want to do it, but it satisfied my withdrawals. But then it's like, all of this started with just your— this— you interpreting the desire to do it again as a withdrawal rather than just you deciding to stop doing something which you to do for specific reasons. And so you desire to do it because those reasons now, let's say for example, you used to do it for stress relief or to escape from your life. Now it's like when you need that stress relief, when you're under stress or you want to escape from life and you tell yourself that porn is not an option and you tell yourself, I'm not going to watch porn, what happens is maybe that was the only solution you had in your mind. So you start feeling fear. It's kind of like when someone is in a relationship, let's say someone is married to someone and then suddenly that person decides to divorce. Let's say you're the man and the decides to divorce for whatever reason, at first reality is going to be maybe a bit harder, right? Because now you don't have a partner by your side whom you used to do certain things with, who used to share love, share many— maybe they used to be the motivation for you to work harder and all of those things. And then it's like suddenly you lost that. And at first it might be hard for you to adapt to that reality, and you'll maybe even fantasize about, you know, how good it was that you were with that person. But these are not withdrawals, right? This is just just you missing something in relationship that used to give you certain things in your life. If let's say, for example, you constantly dealt with an addict and the only remedy you knew about was this one pill, right? Let's say this one random pill, which would always cure your symptoms for your addict. Well, if one day you run out of these pills, you might desire those pills very, very much, but that doesn't mean that these are withdrawals for the fail, but rather maybe in your mind that was the only solution to cure your headache in that moment being, and maybe you don't know about any other solutions, right? And same thing with porn. Yes, we know that, for example, reading books is a better distraction than watching porn, but for most of us, we spent our lives watching porn. We spent our lives distracting ourselves with porn and masturbation for years. And so at one point, if that's all you've been doing for years, or mostly, or that's mostly what you've been doing for years, then of course in your mind you're probably going to think that is, if not the only solution, it might be the best solution to deal with those challenges or emotional problems, right? Emotional pain, depression, stress, anxiety, and such things. Because also, at the end of the day, it's like you don't have what we call withdrawals when you feel happy. You have what we call withdrawals when you feel sad, when you feel negative, when you feel down. So what does that show to us? It is not a bodily reaction. It's not like withdrawals like for drugs. It is simply a psychological reaction. And that means that if it's psychological, then it comes from you. It doesn't come from your body, which will react to something without you having too much control over, because your psychology is you, your psyche, your, your mind, your cognitive, and that's what you have fully control over because that's literally you, your soul. There's also the Lee-Robin study, which is pretty interesting, where there were American soldiers in the Vietnam War who got hooked on heroin, right? A lot of them got hooked on that drug, and so that sparked fear within the Americans back home because they thought, well, if they have this dependence on that drug, what if they just come back home and they're just like drug addicts, right? But over those 20 years that they've done that research, they realized that most of the people that consumed the drug back in Vietnam, when they came back to America, they didn't consume the drug anymore, right? I think it went from 50% to 1 to 2% met the criteria for dependence when they came back to America. And so it's like, where are the withdrawals here, right? Are the withdrawals— they certainly felt some type of withdrawals if they consumed a lot of it, right? They literally met the criteria for dependence. So it's certainly actually felt those withdrawals, but the way that they interpreted it might have been different where they're like, oh yeah, these are just side effects, they will pass. And sometimes I like to give this analogy of imagine, okay, you have a bad life at home, okay? You don't like your life at home, you don't like your environment. And so one day you decide to travel, let's say to Thailand, and you have such a fun time in Thailand. You go to the beach, you meet like-minded people, you do some martial arts, you feel more healthy, you eat good food, life is much better, you get the sun in, whatever. And it's like that life in Thailand is like much better than your life back home. Because back home, maybe you're doing a job that you hate and you just spend most of your time alone in your house. You don't do much. There's nothing really meaningful, purposeful. You almost feel depressed and apathy just being here. And then once that vacation is over and you come back home, you feel those negative emotions. Like, you feel like almost depressed and lonely. You feel like life is meaningless. Would you say that this reaction I just described is withdrawals because the guy is not in Thailand anymore. Like Thailand was a drug and then he got withdrawals. And because of that, he's getting those what we call withdrawals of like depression, anxiety, apathy, emptiness. You see, like it's not always just about the chemicals, the withdrawals, the dopamine, the serotonin. You need to understand instead the psyche, right? As Carl Jung would say, you need to understand instead that withdrawals are simply a question of interpretation. If you think you're facing withdrawals when it comes to watching porn. These are not withdrawals. These are just normal— a normal maybe desire to do it again because you're taught all of your life that this was the most pleasurable thing or this was the best thing in order to cope with your emotions. And if you were to just not worry about that and just move forward with your life, you'll realize that within a few days or weeks, it's like you'll start adapting to life and you'll find better ways to either cope with your emotions or to have pleasure, which will then make porn irrelevant, to be honest. And then that's how you naturally move on from, from porn. And so don't interpret your desire or whatever side effects you might face as withdrawals that come directly from porn, because this might just be a false attribution. And instead, I want you to stop using the word withdrawal, withdrawal pains, whatever, and understand that they're basically nonexistent because they can't even apply to PMO. If you want to learn how to quit masturbation, I made a full guide. Click this video now.