Why can't I stop?

Because it isn't a willpower problem

You have plenty of willpower. You've used it a thousand times. Every one of us stopped, over and over; one of us says he stopped "thousands of times, and almost every time was the last time." Staying stopped was the problem, and no amount of trying harder touched it. If you could have stopped by deciding to, you would have years ago.

Because it was never about the porn

Ask what it does for you. It makes the loneliness stop for a while. It takes the edge off fear. It covers something you don't want to feel. It's the one time you feel alive, or the one time you feel nothing. That's the hook, and it was set long before you understood what you'd found. The screen is the delivery system. The hunger under it is real and human, and it's looking for something the screen has never once delivered.

Because it grows

What was enough at fourteen isn't enough at twenty-five. Every line crossed makes the next one easier, and the shame after each one demands more of the thing that caused it. The fellowship's book calls this the medicine becoming the poison. You already know the shape of it from the inside.

What actually worked for us

Not fighting it. One of us calls it an eighteen-foot giant: you don't win a fair fight, so you stop fighting and hand it off. We say the specific thing out loud to another person who has done it too, and the secret loses most of its power right there. We go to meetings, we make phone calls before we act instead of after, and we work a set of steps with someone who's been through them. It is slow, and it works, and it is free.

Answer the twenty questions Read how it starts and where it goes Find the meeting

Sexaholics Anonymous in Springfield, Missouri, the only SA meeting in southwest Missouri and the Ozarks. People drive in from Nixa, Ozark, Republic, Branson, Bolivar, Lebanon, Joplin, and the towns between. A closed meeting; members are primarily men, and anyone who calls is welcome. Nothing on this site is professional or medical advice.