Jim,

I have said it many times, a plan of abstinence from porn addiction is not successful without a plan of attack. You will be in this compulsion hamster wheel all your life if you fail to make an air tight plan.

If that does not work, then a recovery program that is structured so you learn to live without it altogether may be in the cards for you. There is no shame in it, I had to admit to myself that I needed help because I could not do it by myself, for a self sufficient critter as myself it was very difficult to do so but I saw as a helpful idea and it worked.

I was given tools that I use to this day, some things I improvised and tweaked because all recoveries are not alike but I kept the basic foundations and lo and behold, they were tools that would carry me way farther that I thought, also the tools I already had from cognitive behavioral therapy were also extremely useful during me recovery as I incorporated them into my recovery and also the tools from quitting smoking I applied as far as stopping the compulsive aspect of the addiction.

Let us be honest, the truth is that it feels like it is hard to resist and that is because you have trained yourself to react to the visual input and subsequent act of compulsive behavior, so yes it would seem that is hard to resist yet in reality is it not. You just have told yourself that it is. It is truly that simple.

Nothing outside of yourself has power over you unless you allow it. Once you realize that, you can take steps to recover and live addiction free. We have three basic needs, lest we die: Food, air and water, everything else is an option. Once you understand that, your journey of recovery will be made less painful.

I remember when I was talking to my mentor about the difficulties as I was having with the withdrawal symptoms, he wrote back something very powerful; "It is happening because you think you need to watch porn to be happy and when you realize you've been living a lie for 30 years, you will get angry but you will be free from it for the rest of your life" And he was right and that was just beginning of the one of the gazillion lies porn had told me or as I put, I allowed porn to tell me.

All and all, the decision to get better is all yours, no one else's. So are you going to allow porn to lie to you for more years or are you going to get your life back? The choice is always yours

Hope this helps,
Wolf

Understanding why is the very first step to recovery.

www.yourbrainonporn.com

This is the most valuable website in helping addicts understand the brain chemistry of this addiction and why this makes you feel so much better.
Please check it out and see how you can recover.

Similar to what Wolf shared, cognitive behavioral therapy helped me a great deal in recover. And the website shana mentioned, yourbrainonporn.com, offered a lot of insight that helped me as well.

Tying those two things together, I realized that pornography and masturbation WOULD be very hard to resist -- and especially so for the first 90 days, as you'll find out if you read through the "reboot" plan described on yourbrainonporn.com.

But CBT has helped me learn to look past my present mood at my longer term objectives. (This is crucial for coping with depression as well!)

It's been more than a year since I quit using porn. Early in my recovery, there were many things that would trigger a strong desire to use pornography -- seeing a pretty woman, feeling stressed, feeling bored, etc. I learned to look past how pornography and masturbation would feel in that moment and at how I would feel afterward -- more depressed and more helpless. Resisting the urge would lead to me feeling empowered and more confident in the long run. In the mean time, I looked at positive options for addressing emotions instead of trying to bury them with pornography, alcohol or something else.

This is going to be especially challenging for you early on, as your brain is conditioned to you acting out, but Wolf, I and many others have beaten this, and so can you.

I relapsed as well. After more than a week into recovery I looked at porn for a couple hours. At least I didn't let it get as bad as before, and now I am back on the road to recovery. I am starting out from a better place than where I started originally, so I look at it as two steps forward, one step back. Now to avoid taking any more steps back.

When you want to look at porn, please remember the way it is makes you feel afterwards. You will get some temporary relief from your depression by watching it, but until you quit watching it, you will ALWAYS be depressed. I know, I developed this addiction out of depression as well, and now I am over what originally had me depressed, but the addiction has kept me depressed. I am getting better, but I think it just takes time away from porn. The more time away, the better you feel, and the easier it is to control yourself.

I wanted to add, that it certainly is getting easier for me after time. Despite my failure and relapse, I was able to say to myself, "what are you doing, this is not what you want to do", and stopped myself after only a couple hours(a very short time for me).

I wish you the best of luck. The first few days are the hardest, and you just have to be determined that you are going to make your life better. After that it gets easier, but you still have to be mindful of triggers, as I have just learned.

you are an addict with no support system. That is why you are not succeeding. You need to get a support system, or you will continue to fail. You cannot do this alone.