My First Week Without Porn

When I was in college, I had a serious problem. It didn’t have anything to do with alcohol or drugs, very little to do with lack of sleep or lack of a social life, or anything else one might commonly associate with college students experiencing their first taste of freedom outside of the nest. My problem was porn, and I was hopelessly addicted to it.

I was homesick, my dating life was non-existent, and as a music major I felt constantly stressed in keeping up with my courses, performances, and other classmates. The only way I directly dealt with that stress was through porn. Night after night (and sometimes in the morning, if classes weren’t too early) I would open up my laptop and visit my favorite sites. I was in to many types of porn, and the subject matter got more dark and unusual as I went further down the rabbit hole. I knew my mind was not at 100 percent and I wasn’t happy, but I really couldn’t put my finger on why. Every once in a while I would think that I was watching too much porn and should quit or dial it back, but surely that’s not the cause of my depression. It’s supposed to be healthy, good for you… right?

One evening, alone in my apartment on a Saturday night, I practiced my usual porn ritual. After I was done though, I had this nagging thought. “Man… I really to do something about this. I should be having fun, seeing friends, and here I am, by choice, alone and masturbating.” I decided to google something to the effect of “quitting porn” and came across an article online of a guy’s first hand journey of acknowledging and letting go of his addiction to porn and how it changed his life. Like me, he spoke of always turning to porn under moments of stress or boredom, and how it affected his relationships with women and held him back personally and professionally. Upon quitting (and he emphasized how difficult it was) he listed numerous benefits, including improved confidence, a sharper mind, and just a profound sense of wanting to treat everyone with respect and being a better human. “That’s it” I said to myself. I have got to try this.

The first day was pretty easy. I had a big performance with the percussion ensemble, and with the time spent in preparation and the performance itself I wouldn’t have time to devote to porn if I wanted to. The next day, after I went through my round of classes and found myself once again alone in my apartment, I knew this would be the typical time where I’d turn to my old friend and “relieve” my stress. But I was not going to do that—not this night. In just the first week of abstaining from porn and masturbation, I experienced these benefits:

A Sharper Mind

“Brain Fog” is common terminology among many people who feel they are addicted to porn, and I definitely could relate to it. I felt sluggish and out of it for large parts of the day, and since I was getting decent amount of sleep I couldn’t explain why. It varies from person to person, but when abstaining from porn, this inexplicable brain fog begins to lift. For me, I started feeling different around the third or fourth day. I was able to practice and concentrate on homework for longer periods of time. I reacted to things quicker, and completing technical tasks or tackling big projects no longer seemed like such a chore. I found that escaping from a porn induced haze, even if you only a few days removed, can greatly increase cognitive ability.

More Energy

I don’t consider myself a morning person. Even when I went to bed at a decent hour I struggled to get out of bed and get ready for the day. On day five however, I woke up naturally, alert, energized, and ready to take on the day after just 6 ½ hours of sleep. I could do more throughout the day without getting tired. Science is not my subject, but there has got to be something to retaining semen and harnessing that energy towards other things, because I had a certain amount of vigor and vitality that simply wasn’t there when I was watching porn on a regular basis.

I began to see women differently.

As I mentioned before, I wasn’t dating at the time and it had been well over a year since my last girlfriend. My conversations with women were platonic at best and usually awkward. Rather than seek a relationship, I was more interested in getting a glimpse of a girl’s ass or fantasize about the blonde I saw in the courtyard that night. As I went through this week of “NoFap,” I started seeing women less like objects and more like human beings. I became less nervous about holding a conversation. I noticed their real beauty—not just their physical features but their voice, demeanor, and cute quirks. Porn and objectifying women are nearly synonymous, and once that leaves your brain you begin to notice and appreciate something as simple as a silly conversation or a smile. About six or seven days in, a cute girl passed me in the hallway, we made eye contact and she gave me a smile. It was subtle and otherwise insignificant, but something I rarely got before, or was too in my own porn induced haze to ever notice. When you stop watching porn, you begin to want to actually build relationships with women, rather than worshipping them from afar.

Well, on day ten I succumbed and decided to masturbate. I was disappointed that I didn’t go longer, but I was proud of myself to finally have the motivation and discipline to abstain for a period of time, and the benefits that I initially read about I experienced for myself, and they were very real. Porn addiction is not unlike many other addictions, and is something I still struggle with from time to time. But that first week without porn showed me what life could be like if I focused my energy in real life and not on pixels on a computer screen, and it’s a life that is second to none.