If you, your spouse, or someone you care about is in the destructive cycle of porn addiction, it may feel like there’s no hope. Curing porn addiction is possible, and it may not take as long as you imagine. Recovery is a lifelong process, but moving into recovery can take as little as two weeks.
Begin Again Institute offers specialized 14-day intensive programs to accelerate healing. Men dealing with all types of problematic sexual behavior, including porn addiction, can get treatment and start recovery in as little as two weeks.
Understanding Porn Addiction
Pornography addiction is the uncontrollable desire to view porn, despite the negative consequences to yourself or others.
You may be addicted to pornography if you:
- Spend increasingly more time watching porn
- Continue viewing pornography, even though it’s causing problems in your marriage, relationships, or life in general
- Use porn to help yourself feel better or to cope with negative emotions
- Take risks to engage in pornography, such as watching it at work
- Don’t enjoy sex if you don’t watch porn first
- Neglect other responsibilities or even your own well-being to view porn
- Feel shame or frustration after viewing porn but continue to do it
- Spend large sums of money on pornography
If you want to stop viewing pornography but are unable to do so, you may be addicted. Addiction is a medical condition that causes changes in the brain. Continuing to partake in a habit that is causing you harm is a sign of addiction.
Every individual is unique, and addiction is a complex issue. There is no single cause of addiction, but some of the main issues that lead to porn addiction include:
- Biological factors, such as brain chemistry
- Underlying mental health conditions, including substance use disorders
- Unresolved trauma
If the inability to control your use of pornography is hurting your life, you may benefit from pornography addiction treatment
Factors Affecting the Duration of Porn Addiction Recovery
How long does it take to cure porn addiction? The answer is different for everyone. Many factors affect an individual’s recovery time. The severity of a person’s addiction is the first consideration.
People who have spent hours a day for many years engaged with porn will likely have a more difficult time stopping the behavior. But the frequency and duration of use isn’t the only factor.
Those who have co-occurring mental health conditions, such as depression, anxiety, or substance use disorders, may have a more complicated recovery experience. It is important to treat co-occurring conditions at the same time for the best chance of recovery.
A person’s support system and willingness to access professional help also affect recovery. Participation in formal treatment programs like those offered by Begin Again Institute provides access to both.
The combination of therapies used in a treatment program can help heal past trauma, reorient the brain, and teach new skills for coping with stress and other difficult feelings.
Curing Porn Addiction: Understanding the Recovery Process
People go through many changes as they overcome porn addiction. In the early stages of treatment, those changes can be difficult. Even though your body is not withdrawing from a substance, you may feel physical and emotional symptoms of withdrawal.
Pornography withdrawal symptoms may include:
- Cold or flu-like symptoms
- Insomnia
- Depression
- Mood swings
- Cravings
- Irritability
- Body aches
- Anxiety
In most cases, symptoms are mild and last only a few days, but some people experience more long-lasting or severe symptoms. Taking care of your physical and mental health is the best way to combat porn withdrawal symptoms.
Self-care plays a crucial role in all of recovery. That may include adopting healthy lifestyle habits like eating nutritious meals or getting enough sleep every night. Self-care can also mean asking for support when it’s needed. These new habits can help improve physical and mental health and allow your body and brain to repair itself.
Programs that include holistic and trauma-informed approaches are especially effective in promoting positive physical and psychological changes.
Holistic health care considers the mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of each individual. Holistic care recognizes that all aspects of your well-being are affected by addiction. A combination of traditional and complementary treatments may be appropriate to address all of an individual’s needs.
Trauma-informed care is an approach that recognizes that addictions often stem from unresolved emotional trauma. By recognizing the potential role of trauma, care providers can help you better understand and heal from that experience, then equip you with tools to change your behaviors..
Combining traditional therapies, holistic therapies, and a trauma-informed approach to treat porn addiction helps create a safe and nonjudgmental environment where effective treatment happens.
The Stages of Recovery
Recovery is often seen as something that happens in stages. There are five basic stages of addiction recovery, regardless of the substance or behavior in question.
1. Precontemplation
Precontemplation describes the stage before an individual becomes aware that their behavior is causing problems. Other people in their lives may begin to notice there is a problem, but the addicted person does not yet have any desire to change their behavior.
2. Contemplation
Contemplation is when you begin to realize there are some negative consequences to your behavior. At this point, you probably are interested in making a change, but you aren’t ready to commit to treatment yet.
3. Decision
The decision phase is when you begin to make a serious plan for change. This is when you begin discussing goals or set a date to start treatment.
4. Action
During the action stage, you seek out help. You contact a doctor, find a peer support group, or enter a treatment program.
5. Maintenance
Maintenance is the longest stage of recovery. During maintenance, you continue learning new behaviors to replace old, dysfunctional ones. The desire to remain “sober” gains momentum and becomes permanent.
Duration of Porn Addiction Recovery
There is no definitive timeline for curing porn addiction. A person’s sexual history, age, and other factors affect how quickly they can respond to treatment. While it’s possible to break a habit quickly, recovery is an intentional, lifelong experience.
Matt Wenger, Clinical Director at Begin Again Institute, said pornography addiction changes who you are and who you’ll always be.
“It must be attended to in some form for the rest of your life,” Matt said.
Recovering from porn addiction is about more than eliminating pornography from your life. Just as with recovery from a substance use disorder, stopping the harmful action is only the first step.
The larger goal is to live a healthy life using coping skills that lead to positive outcomes. Maintaining high self-esteem, meeting educational and/or career goals, and building functional relationships are some of the benefits of curing porn addiction.
Becoming abstinent from porn and maintaining that abstinence are two different things. One can be done quickly, while the other is a lifelong process.
Matt said that a person recovering from porn addiction should continue to stay in therapy and receive support from someone who understands the addiction.
“Cravings and the change of relapse can go down significantly, but upkeep is recommended if not required,” he noted.
Seeking Help
When seeking treatment for pornography addiction, residential programs are an excellent option. These programs provide a change of environment, allowing you to steep yourself in the treatment process.
Specially trained therapists help patients learn new coping skills. Exploring the causes of porn addiction and healing past trauma are essential to long-term recovery. The support of peers allows you to practice the new skills they learn in therapy.
Long-Term Recovery and Relapse Prevention
Long-term recovery doesn’t just happen. You must plan for recovery and protect your mindset throughout the process.
Nate Geyer, Primary Therapist at Begin Again Institute, said recovery is a way of life, just as much as addiction.
“Recovery requires authenticity, vulnerability, intimacy, and trust in self and others. It’s a perspective shift that fundamentally differs from addiction,” he said. “Where the addict shrouds himself/herself in shame, those in recovery embrace their vulnerabilities and strive to realize healing for themselves and others.
“A person must be willing to examine the good, the bad, and the ugly within themselves with compassion and empathy while realizing the need/desire to change.”
One important step in maintaining recovery is identifying your triggers and developing the coping mechanisms you will use when you think you might be about to relapse.
Triggers for porn addiction aren’t necessarily related to sexual activity. Stress, feelings of low self-esteem, traumatic memories, or other emotional or physical experiences can trigger the urge to use porn.
Instead of waiting for these triggers to happen, you can prepare for what you’ll do when they occur. This preparation includes identifying triggers, avoiding them when possible, but having a plan to enact when you can’t. Your plan may include calling on a trusted other to help guide you through the experience or having a go-to positive activity to do when you want to watch porn.
Treatment at Begin Again Institute
Pornography addiction can be destructive to your life. If you want to quit using porn but are unable to stop, you may have an addiction that needs professional support.
At Begin Again Institute, we can help you identify the root cause of pornography and heal from it. We’ll then equip you with new knowledge and tools to assist in stopping harmful behaviors like viewing pornography.
You can receive treatment through our 14-Day Men’s Intensive or 14-Day Christian Men’s Intensive, moving you into recovery as quickly as possible. Matt said the programs work because they are so focused.
“There’s no distractions,” he said. “Your only thing to do is to be in this work. You don’t have to think about what’s going on in the world. I’m in the work with these other people and that’s the topic of conversation.”
Because of this focus on treatment and recovery, intensives are more targeted than regular therapy.
“In week-to-week therapy, you can have a profound moment between you and the therapists, then when you get in the car and click the seatbelt, you’re back to the regular world,” Matt said. “It takes time to integrate that into your life. You’re integrating when you’re talking about it all the time for a week or two. It’s an immersive experience.”
Are you ready to cure pornography addiction? Contact Begin Again Institute today to learn more about our intensives or to start treatment.
Edward Tilton is a proven behavioral healthcare leader with an established track record in the recovery industry space. As an accomplished healthcare leader, Ed has diverse management experience including clinical and business operations, expansion of program development, and clinical service offerings.
