Only 4 percent of men will truly overcome NoFap. Only 20 percent beat the 90-day mark. This isn’t a claim that I’m pulling out of thin air, it’s actually a statistic from my private group where we sampled hundreds of guys. The sad thing is, we noticed they’re all making the same mistake.

As you know, there are two sides to every story. When it comes to NoFap, most information you’ll see out there focuses on the benefits and the bright sides of NoFap. Superpowers, insane energy, motivation, goal setting, and sexual transmutation…

The truth is, if you can leverage the dark and insidious side of porn – you’ll have motivation forever. This is what works for me and is the one thing that helped me quit for good years ago.

If you don’t think of porn as a purely evil monster that sends you into oblivion and takes your life apart – think again. There’s actually an overwhelming amount of studies that prove this claim.

Seigfried-Spellar and Rogers’ article labeled “Does deviant pornography use follow a Guttman-like progression?” attempted to see if the onset age of porn use had any correlation to the type of porn consumed as the personages. They conducted an online anonymous survey with over 630 people and what they found was extremely alarming. About 40 percent admitted to watching some sort of deviant pornography, while 8 percent admitted to watching Beastiality and 5 percent admitted to watching child pornography.

There was a direct positive correlation between the onset of the age of watching porn and the amount of deviant porn watched. Basically meaning, the earlier you watch porn and the longer- you watch it, the more you tend to watch more novel and disgusting types of porn.

Why does this occur? The answer has to do with habituation and dopamine dysregulation. Psychologically, heavy porn use may foster a vicious cycle of avoidance and poor skills for coping with stress, much like drug users. People may use porn as their escape from real-life stress and anxieties. Zoning out into the fantasy realm becomes the preferred means of dealing with what life throws your way.

The habitual pursuit of going towards immediate gratification and sexual pleasure really harms your delayed gratification. The user becomes increasingly impulsive, spending more and more time sitting in front of their computer in a disinhibited state of chronic sexual arousal. Goals and plans are often side-tracked and he feels worse about himself – now this leads to depression and in turn, creates a stronger urge to view more pornography and the vicious cycle occurs.

Minimal habituation makes it harder and harder to receive gratification. What you used to find exciting and what would get you up and off turns into something quite boring. At that point you need more of the novel stimulants to really get off and the only way to get that is to go to more taboo and unique fetish types of porn.

The ever-helpful statistics of porn use on popular porn sites show that viewers aren’t satisfied with vanilla erotica and they are searching for wilder and wilder fantasy. With the endless menu of novel sexual stimuli available via the mere click of a mouse, this process of habituation sends heavy users spiraling down a rabbit hole, sampling evermore hardcore themes.

So who’s really to blame for this? Absolutely, you should be taking responsibility for your own actions, but the regulations on porn are minimal and truly laughable. It’s like giving children an endless amount of sweets and junk food and expecting them not to indulge.

Blaming yourself or others won’t help you quit though. The best way to go about this is by changing your identity. Change the foundation of who you are and slowly build up from there. Imagine your higher self – that’s who’s waiting on the other side of that journey.

Here’s a fantastic quote from James Clear that explains exactly what I’m talking about: “The ultimate form of intrinsic motivation is when a habit becomes part of your identity. It’s one thing to say I’m the type of person who wants this. It’s something very different to say I’m the type of person who is this.”

Quitting heavy porn use and changing your identity can be lonely, lifelong battles. Join our supportive community led by licensed therapists who specialize in overcoming porn dependency and make sure you get all the help you need to fully transform your life. Click here to join!