I can’t stop watching porn.
No really, I want to.
I have made promises and tried fresh starts in the New Year. I have even gone forward in church, gotten down on my knees, and begged God to help me stop watching it.
But I can’t quit porn! What is the real problem? Will I ever be able to stop watching porn? Because based on my past it seems impossible.
Porn addiction is an extremely complex issue with no simple answers or cookie-cutter solutions. But most people I talk with fall into what I call the “Zap Trap”—praying that God would just heal them or looking for some other instant solution. They want to stop watching porn without having to fight the fight for recovery.
However, in working with hundreds of men over the past ten years, I have learned that instant healing in this area is rare. So, let’s look at three main reasons why it is so hard to quit looking at porn.
How Hard Is It to Quit Porn?
Editor’s note:
As Dr. Alvin Cooper noted many years ago, the anonymity, affordability, and accessibility of digital porn make it much easier for people today to become addicted.
Not everyone experiences the pull of pornography in exactly the same way. However, some former drug addicts and alcoholics attest that pornography is more difficult to overcome. This is not everyone’s experience. Many factors contribute to the severity of an addiction, such as the age of first exposure and how many years they’ve been consuming pornography.
Additionally, pornography addiction often begins when porn is consumed out of a desire for genuine intimacy. As John Doyel notes below, isolation fuels addiction. Part of the challenge, however, is that pornography often feels like a substitute for real relationships.
3 Reasons It’s So Hard to Quit Porn
1. Porn is addictive.
Apart from the spiritual battle you are in by simply being a Christian, you are in a physical battle with a physical addiction that traps you into watching porn. You have literally become a drug addict. The drugs you are addicted to are those released in your brain when you become sexually aroused.
God designed those drugs as a wonderful part of His plan to bond a husband and wife as one during times of sexual intimacy. They all have a distinct purpose and are marvelously effective. However, your brain does not differentiate between having sex with your wife or having sex with porn. The same drugs are released with the same effect. Pleasure, focus, energy, release, and other things happen that make having an orgasm one of the most enjoyable things God has given to us.
We can’t quit porn because we like it. We like it a lot. So, we want it again and again. With that experience accessible in a five-minute trip to the bathroom with your smartphone, we start using it more frequently. When we get stressed. When we get angry. Or when we want to escape from problems, we can easily get a fix that does not fix anything.
Dopamine, testosterone, norepinephrine, oxytocin, and serotonin flood our brains, and we feel good for a while.1 Then shame and fear return, and it is not long before we want another escape. It’s hard to escape porn when porn is your escape. Scientific research shows that porn warps the brain like any other substance.2
Those who can’t stop watching porn do not like it when I tell them they are drug addicts, but that is the truth. The drugs are between their ears. They don’t need a pusher. Their drugs are basically free of charge and are extremely effective. We can now access whatever things we want to view and get a quick fix within a few seconds.
Also, we can walk out of wherever we just acted out and seem fine to everybody. No hangover. No trace of what you have done unless you forget to delete your history. Breaking free from this addiction takes a lot of work, and most men are not ready to fight that battle. Especially due to reason number two.
See Why Is Porn So Addictive?: 4 Reasons It’s Tough to Resist.
2. We remain in isolation.
How many people know about your secret struggle? You can’t quit without telling someone about it, but you feel like you can’t tell anyone. Telling means risking your job, your friendships, your wife, and your family. People will drop dead in shock because everyone thinks you have it all together, and so that pressure keeps the truth buried deep in your darkest places. You feel trapped because you are in a prison of your own making.
I know this from experience. As a pastor for 26 years who struggled with sexual addiction for eight long years, I hated myself. I committed many sexual sins, and there was no way I could just say to my wife and my board, “By the way, I am addicted to sex.”
However, God in His mercy revealed my secret life and my recovery began in September 2005. Talk about a train wreck and painfully injuring my wife and our four adult kids.
See Understanding the Shame Cycle.
Remaining in isolation makes it seem impossible to stop. Recovery demands confession, disclosure, coming clean, and genuine repentance. If I had been a better and braver man I would have stepped forward and asked for help. But I lived in denial and minimized my actions by telling myself I knew enough to be able to stop watching pornography.
We like to say that a lone sheep is a dead sheep. If you remain in isolation, you are a dead man and won’t be able to break free. Porn has its hooks in deep, and you will need a team of people to help you pull the hooks out and stop watching porn.
To make it through a withdrawal period of about 90 days, you need people available to you on a constant basis. You need to learn how to reach out to them when the whole temptation process to watch porn begins. We like to say reach out before you reach in. Reach out to your team before you reach into your pants.
The opposite of isolation is community. Scripture has a lot to say about community and our ministry was founded on this passage in 1 John 1:
“This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.”
Secular research conducted outside the Church likewise underscores the vital importance of accountability:
- One study found that having an accountability partner can make you 95% more likely to accomplish your goal.
- Gallup Business found that accountability is a key component in employee engagement. Businesses with highly engaged—and highly accountable—employees reported up to 17% higher productivity, 21% higher profits, 10% higher customer satisfaction, and 59% lower turnover rates for employees.
- One study suggests that accountability can even help people treat one another more fairly.
Fellowship is community. It is being daily connected to other men to help you fight the battle. How many armies send their troops out alone to fight the enemy alone? None. Stupid question. So why are you trying to fight it alone? Lone sheep are dead sheep.
3. We don’t take it seriously.
It is so easy to say to yourself that everybody is doing it. It is not such a big deal. Are you kidding me? Porn use is destroying families and marriages at an alarming rate.
God says sexual sin is a big deal. He calls us to purity and holiness. He has started a good work in us and plans to finish that work, but if we are walking in sexual sin like porn, we grieve and stifle the Spirit within us and will continue to be pulled into deeper areas of sin.
Every Monday night, about 100 men gather at our church because their sexual sin has been and is ruining their lives. They cannot stop and are heading into very dangerous and dark waters. We lie to ourselves when we think that we can handle it. If you could handle it on your own, why are you reading this article?
Not only should we take it seriously because God does, but we should take it seriously because of the effects porn has on us and society.
Did you see the cover of Time on March 31, 2016? They found that Millennials who have used porn over the years are experiencing erectile dysfunction because they have trained their brains to see sex as something you do online. So, when it comes time to have a real relationship, they fail to answer the call.
Are you aware of the rise and prevalence of sex trafficking around the world?
We Need Daily Encouragement to Stop Watching Porn
I believe with all my heart that God’s Word holds the path to stop watching porn. He calls us to community with no condemnation. He wants all of us to be connected and truthful with one another (and Covenant Eyes can help with this). We need to do as James says. We need to confess our sins to one another and pray for each other, and then healing can begin to come. Lastly, we need encouragement. Look at this passage in Hebrews 3:
“See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.”
We need encouragement every day or we will be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. To start your journey, check out How to Quit Porn: 6 Essential Steps.
1 William Struthers, Wired for Intimacy: How Pornography Hijacks the Male Brain (Downers Grove: IVP Books, 2009).
2 Frederick Toates, “A motivation model of sex addiction – Relevance to the controversy over the concept,” Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 142 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2022.104872.
I would like to take this all in a step further, I am suspecting a common lie, this lie is that people blend in our scientific nature as a way to naturalize and defuse the intensity of this problem of porn addiction. This is what you practically see when reading the bible. When certain tribes of Israel get lost in there covenant with God, they began making exceptions to there rule and things become more permissible, prostitution is fine, the worship of other gods is fine, homosexuality is fine, taking the lord’s commandment in vain and allowing people to do what’s fine in there eyes have been a consistent problem among the Israelites. Cookie cutter allegiance to God devises and they are destroyed. God is not someone you can manipulate and put into what you think is true. In regards to the sin of lust I would say this, its about the freedom from not doing it, not how much I can get away with, with a very forgiving God. Geeze please give me a break. A false church miles away from where I can see it.
I have read lot of comments from people which is quite Encouraging.
I fall under the Categories of Porn and Masturbation, I have prayed and fasted several times, shared my problem with people but still it is all unproductive and futile.
I don’t view porn often but when I do and already satisfied, the bitterness will be greater than the first urge and I will become depressed.
It’s really difficult to stop. People says “it doesn’t take a day to stop”, then I do use that Phrase to do it another day which really piss me off often.
I need prayers.
Hi Timilehin,
I am glad to hear that you have found encouragement from others who are commenting! Although porn addiction is a difficult struggle to overcome, it can be very assuring and motivating to know that you aren’t alone in this struggle!
I want to encourage you to keep pressing on in the fight to quit. No human is exempt from temptation, and porn is very tempting. Do you have a trusted friend or mentor whom you can talk to and ask for accountability? I have found that when struggling in sin, I am much more equipped to overcome it if I am accountable to another believer.
Above all, be fervent in prayer and in Scripture. God is our strength!
Blessings,
Moriah
I need the strength from God to overcome this addiction please pray for me.
Hi friend,
I am praying for you! Please be encouraged by James 1:2-3, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.”
Keep fighting, and keep turning to God for strength!
Blessings,
Moriah
“ For a man becomes a slave to whatever becomes his master.” ( 2Peter 2:19). Putting the blame on a smart phone or a computer for our porn pastime is about like putting the blame on guns for killing people. Guns don’t kill people, people kill people. I’ve had a gun in my drawer for 20 years and that gun hasn’t killed anyone. In ( 1 Corinthians 9:27) the Apostle Paul says of himself;” For I discipline my body and subdue it in fear of preaching to others I too will be cut off.” Notice he did not say, I discipline my body and at times give in to it. Do you want to be set free from porn? Just say no!! Or at least, that’s what Jesus expects us to do. He tells us; “ Let your yes mean yes and your no mean no, anything in between is from the evil one.” ( Matthew 5:37). Life is short, and Jesus tells us that Hell is real and last for an eternity. Ask yourself, how do you want to be remembered. A good good holy person? A good father, mother, husband, wife, son or daughter? Or the person that fooled everyone? The person locked in the bathroom or hiding in the basement that just died of a massive heart attack with porn images on their smartphone or computer, with their private in their hand. Jesus tells us in Luke12:2-3; “ Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known…what is hidden in secret will be proclaimed from the rooftops.” Something to think about the next time we click on porn.
Please I urgently need your prayers please, I have been battling with porn addiction for over about 10yers now, everytime I try to overcome something will come up, please I need your prayers and will God ever going to forgive me for this
Dauda,
I am praying for you! Please find peace knowing that you are not alone. Overcoming porn is not easy, and it must be met with perseverance. So, keep fighting, and keep praying! Romans 5:20-21 says, “But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Blessings,
Moriah
Thank you so much for this article. I have been struggling with this for as long as I can remember from junior school, over 10yrs. Been in this platform to read alot of articles on how to deal with addiction.
I have also thought of telling someone about it. But each time I try to, I’m scared and don’t know how to say it Because the only person I’m more closer to is my Pastor. He is my friend and we have a good relationship when it comes to ministry and family.
I don’t know how to tell him. I’ve prayed to God to help me get over this. I really want to quit in other to focus on what God has called me to. This would be my greatest miracle and I will tell the world my story someday when I’ve survived this pain I’m going through. Please pray for me.
Thanks
David,
I am praying for you! You are not alone. Telling anyone about your struggles can be very intimidating. Pray and ask God to give you the strength and peace to talk to your Pastor about this. Once you are able to, I think you will find that there is a huge weight lifted off your shoulders.
Blessings,
Moriah
I’m no longer guiltless about it, or ignorant about it being sinful for a reason (you turn another person into an object to be traded,used,discarded at minimum) and it devolves into worse things in the world and alone in it.
Doesn’t do the trick though to make me stop. I can at best muster 3-4 days before nature, or my nature,whichever has me back at it.
I mean I’ve tried every mental justification possible to loophole it to not feel bad about it as I once didn’t, like maybe if it’s a fictional character/ 3d model/cartoon. The chastisement is there and not going anywhere, and that’s for the best.
Something I’m in, not proud of, but it’s got a very strong button to press. I hope I’m not fighting this at age 70 or anything. Does it NEVER tire? That fire of lust never burn out? Seems to only do it when you give into it, let it have you for a bit, and then like embers it restarts.
The crazy thing is, in real life, I control myself perfectly fine. I’ve turned down offers for little bits of fun from very appealing women, just enraging/hurting their feelings. I’m able to say sure, you’re pretty, but not worth the headache/consequence/guilt of it. I don’t want to be sleeping and waking up next to a stranger, I don’t like that feeling,worrying if you are as healthy that way as you are pretty. No thanks. Not worth it.
Come fantasy, porn,etc.. no such strength exists in me.
Its worse than any cocaine there is.
Masturbation usually comes along with pornography. I discovered how to masturbate when i was 9 years old. It was like a new secret game to me and i did it nearly everyday not knowing what it actually was.
A few years went on and i had discovered porn stories, pictures and videos with my first mobile phone. These encouraged my masturbation and i became more addicted to it. Very few days could go without masturbating.
At the age of 15, i found out that what i was addicted to was called masturbation and that it was a sin. I didnt know all these years and it was taking over me.
I tried many times than i can remember to break away from it but sooner or later, i still came back to masturbating. It still happened whether thee was porn or not.
I have prayed to God to help me with this addiction but i am still tied to it. I have been trying hard to get rid of it but with no avail.
I am 18 years old, still a virgin that is being weakened by this sin but i will keep on fighting.
Lord please come to my aid.
Please I need prayer help, I promise myself to stop watching porn but am still can’t stop it.😭 since 2015 till now
Friend,
I am praying for you, and I would encourage you to share your struggle with a trusted friend and ask them to pray for you as well! An ally is an incredible part of overcoming pornography addiction.
Blessings!
Moriah
I’m a 30 year old Christian women who is addicted to porn. I watch it once a day and after I feel so bad. I gone months without watching in the past but I fell again. It’s a sin and there’s no way to justify it. I’m ashamed of myself. I’m finding myself watching worse and worse types of porn. I been looking at porn since I was 4 years old and than at 13 I started to watch it on dvds I would steal from my father and than I watched it the computer when we got one in the house. I been in this addiction for 30 years. I hate myself. I hate that I don’t say no. I hate that I can’t say no. I hate myself for believing the devils lie that it wont harm anyone. It’s harms Jesus because he nailed that sin to the cross: I’m ashamed of myself and I feel dirty and unworthy to be in Gods presence. Please pray for me.
Hey Alice,
Your suffering just breaks my heart. I’m so concerned to hear you say that you’ve been looking at porn since you were 4. No child is porn-seeking at age 4. The only way you would have access to porn at that age is if an adult gave it to you, and if an adult gives pornography to a child, that is included in the definition of child abuse.
I would really like for you to find a therapist who can help you with this as childhood trauma. You’ll be looking for someone who is professionally licensed, and includes “trauma informed therapy” and optimally “EMDR certification” in their list of qualifications. I truly do think that if you approach this as childhood trauma, you will find relief from the overwhelming nature of this difficulty.
You are absolutely worthy. You are precious, whole, beloved, and safe as the most precious child could ever be. I hope you will find hope and healing.
Peace to you,
Kay
Hi Alice. First of all, you’re not alone. I’ve been severely sexually abused since around four years old as well. Pornography was basically shoved down my throat at a very early age by a parent and her boyfriends. I am now 61 years old and have been struggling with porn and masturbation for around 50 years. God is a God of mercy, he knows our struggles. When it no longer becomes a struggle, rather an enjoyment, that’s the problem begins. Scripture says in ( 1 John 3:3) “ for those who have hope in him makes themselves pure as he is pure.” Alice, notice the word “makes” it does not say “is.” So to become pure it takes work and lots of it. Alice, never give in to despair, fight the good fight even though porn may kick your butt now and then. ( Romans 12:22 tells us; “ Rejoice in hope, endure in suffering and persevere in prayer.” And remember, Jesus chose the apostle Paul for a mission, but what does the apostle Paul say of himself? “ I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate…for I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.” ( Romans 7:15-25). So you see Alice, you’re not alone. It’s a daily battle, don’t give up, fight the good fight…you can do it sweetheart!! God bless you and please pray for me as well.
We make love once or twice a month but my watching of porn never stops. With the access of high speed Internet this porn watching and resulting in masturbation is my routine since long I mean very long it’s been over 25 years. After each episode I bow down to my Lord ask for forgiveness feels sorry for my sins but the circle repeats itself after every 72 hours without fail.
Ravi,
Thank you for sharing your struggles. Have you considered installing Covenant Eyes? Our software will actually monitor your online and offline activity and hold you accountable to what you are viewing online. Do you have a person that you can trust to help hold you accountable as well?
Blessings,
Moriah
Hey, just sort of decided to write in, instead of just passively reading some these sinful struggles that most of these people here are facing. I guess it really is human nature that facilitates these explicit sins to be committed repeatedly. Yes, as a Christian, it is right to feel remorseful and wanting to repent of this particular transgression against God. It does feel as though that this is probably the strongest clutch of the many apparent strongholds that seem to bound people in these acts of shame, guilt of iniquities present. I hope that may the Lord our God grant us a clean and contrite heart at last…