What works to be free of the addictions that block us from having the happy life we work so hard for? How do we become honest enough to admit the dependence is real? Where do we find help with actually quitting instead repeated promises to stop followed by boring and epic relapses or switching to another equally bad behavior? Why does continuing to carry the message and serve others that share our struggles provide such complete relief?
Would you read this post to hear what has finally worked for me to give up addictions to alcohol, porn, sex, money, gambling, food, and video games? After three years without alcohol or gambling, two years without porn, and almost six months without video games, life is better than ever for me today because I keep working to share what I have learned with you! With money I still struggle sometimes because I still need to pay bills but quickly transition into wanting to rule the world whenever I have enough to feel financially secure. At least I give more generously today and am not a total slave to how much money I have. With food, I still need to eat and am doing better than ever at less compulsive eating. Maybe with sex I am finally getting enough for the first time meaning not too much or too little?
However imperfect my life remains, it is way less painful and more filled with joy than I can ever remember! What I will share here with you today is what I've learned based on what works for millions of other people to give up any addiction today from my personal experience, much of which is learned from others.
Read this post or watch the original video from YouTube, which is Day 130 of the Happier People Podcast! If you would prefer the full story, would you take my free Speaker Meeting 2017 class at http://u.jerrybanfield.com/courses/speakermeeting2017?coupon=steem because it has 12 hours of stories from my life in addiction and recovery with shocking honesty?
Thank you very much to @gmichelbkk for converting the transcription of the YouTube video from GoTranscript into this beautiful post for Steemit, which is much faster to read than the video and has all of the highlights in screenshots!
Here's the best of what I've learned about how to quit any addiction.
First, I found that I need to have a complete experience, really notice and pay attention to every different phase of the addiction.
This was very apparent to me with my porn addiction. I remember being single when I was about 25 years old, getting up first thing in the morning, turning on the laptop, firing up the free porn and thinking, "You know what, this might be a problem someday, but for today, hey, why not?"
Then, when I'm married several years later, have a wife and a very healthy sex life, it's not fun to go watch porn anymore. It felt more like a compulsive behavior, like I had to go do it, that if I felt a certain way I had to go watch porn.
That wasn't fun.
What I had to do was notice the whole experience because in my mind it was like, "Oh man, wouldn't it be so good to see some hot naked girls? Oh, yes! Oh, that'd be great! Wouldn't it be good to do something about that? Oh yeah, it'd be really good. Oh, that sounds great. Let me get to it right now."
What I usually didn't pay any attention to was the process afterwards. After I was done watching porn, I was deleting it from my history on whatever device I used. I was cleaning up the mess and I usually just tried to kind of hurry through that part.
I didn't really pay much attention to how disgusting I felt afterwards, like that horrible sense of shame, like I was a bad person. I didn't pay much attention to that. I just got what I wanted out of it, that little moment of euphoria, that little high, and then, "All right, let's quickly clean up the mess."
Just like I'd been doing since I was like 11 years old: "Let's have a little fun, all right. Now, put everything away and act like it never happened."
What I tried to do is paying attention the whole time, paying attention just as much to the before process, which in the mind gets all excited about, and paying attention to the after process just as much.
A lot of us skip through trying to hurry through some of our tasks that are mundane or that we do all the time, and with addiction we often hurry through the pain or we use other things to cover up the pain.
What I did was pay attention to all that after process, and then associate that with the initial experience.
Do you want the whole experience? Because the initial part might sound fun even, "Do you want to see some pictures of naked girls?"
"Yes, that sounds like fun."
Today that still sounds like fun.
What doesn't sound like fun is, "Do you want to feel like crap about yourself for several hours afterward?"
"Do you want to feel that sense of your disgusting inside for several hours afterward?"
"When you are then in the chance to actually have some real sex with your wife, do you want to be remembering that porn you watched and feeling horrible about it?"
"No, I really don't want to be doing that."
When I integrate the entire experience together, it is like poking myself in the eye. There's no temptation to just poke myself in the eye. I'm not tempted to slap myself around or punch myself in the face because I know that hurts. There's no temptation to do something I know hurts.
With addiction, it's really important to see the full experience because you've got to see the pain in it as well.
For me with alcohol, I struggled with trying to drink and manage it, and stay sober, and then trying to have just a drink here and there. I tried to do that for 11 years. My dad was an alcoholic and I knew damn well I shouldn't ever drink.
I went to college and all of the sudden I thought alcohol would help me with my sex problems. I couldn't figure out how to get laid without drinking and I'd watched enough commercials to see, "Uh, if I have some alcohol maybe that'll help me have sex."
So that's how I started drinking. I just would try to breeze through or numb the pain of the hangovers. Finally, the last hangover, I really looked at how awful it was: the whole day in bed, throwing up blood, the remorse, the shame and the hopelessness.
Then, the next time I thought about drinking, I also thought about that.
"Is that what you want to get?"
Then you'll have to stop lying about it saying, "Well, I'm just going to have two drinks this time," or with another addiction, "I'll just have one cigarette," or, "I'll just look at one porno today," whatever your addiction is, "I'm just going to have this one doughnut."
The second key thing, after you've noticed the full experience, is to work on helping others, and that's what I'm doing here today.
I realized that I haven't quit drinking alcohol, gambling, smoking, watching adult movies and having irresponsible sex habits, or overeating, eating things that are bad for me. I haven't stopped any of that for life. I only get a day off based on my willingness to help others. I had a miracle happen the last time I drank, after I had a hangover I realized that I needed to go help others.
I desperately prayed to God to quit drinking after 11 years of trying to stop.
The second time I drank I had a brutal hangover, an horrible sickness and I was throwing up, and guess what? A couple of weeks later I thought, "Well, I'll do a better job this time. I won't drink quite that much." In other words, I'll avoid the consequences. I'll get what I want out of it and I'll avoid the consequences.
You don't get to avoid the consequences in life unless you don't do the behavior to start with.
Once you're in that hopeless feedback loop, then you can get stopped by the consequences.
See, the fourth time I smoked marijuana I got lucky. The consequences were the same as the second time I drank. I got horribly sick because I'd also been drinking and I think it might have been laced with something.
I got horribly sick.
I had some kind of trip, I didn't know who I was anymore. It was awful.
Then anytime I thought about smoking weed after that, I couldn't help but remember that last time where I got horribly sick. I couldn't lie to myself and say that it might not happen again.
If you have the experience of having an awful time doing whatever you did before and you can't quit even with that experience, it's absolutely essential to go help other people.
Why?
Because other people are all struggling with this stuff around you. A lot of them are trying really hard to hide it from you. The alcoholic next door is doing things like stuffing his liquor bottles, his handles of vodka in the bottom of the recycling bin so that he doesn't look like such a drunk to his neighbors. The guy who's trying to quit smoking next door is sneaking cigarettes out on his back patio, meanwhile he's telling you about having nicotine patches and getting gum.
The guy who's watching porn secretly in his bedroom, the other neighbor over there who's trying to hide it, tells you, "How are you doing today?"
"Oh, I'm great," he's cutting the grass and you don't realize that he's right next door in his bedroom every three hours watching porn.
Most of us are struggling with some kind of addiction or lots of us are struggling with some kind of addiction, rather it's to a substance, rather it's to a person, rather it can be even things like work. Another neighbor you have, he's never home because he is working 60-70 hours a week. He goes to work even when he hates it, even when work beats him up and treats him horrible.
Helping others is essential for my ability to stop.
Why?
Because it's not enough for me to just remember, "Well, last time I watched porn it wasn't very enjoyable." My mind will lie me into thinking it is a game. My mind, when I get a little uncomfortable, says, "Well, you know what? Fix this. Fire up a porn now. You'll forget about everything else. Why don't you have a drink too? Sign up on another website you can gamble with Bitcoin now." My mind will lie me into doing all these things again.
When I help others though, it doesn't have the power to lie as completely effectively. These lies start to sound like lies instead of sounding like the truth.
I was driving by on the way home from Disney with my family the other day, and it was an absolutely perfect day. The thought came as I drove by and saw the hard rock casino on the right, which I have not been to since 2009. That's seven years and I haven't been to it since I've lived in Florida.
I was driving and my mind said, "You have to pull over right now."
"Just pull over, drop yourself off there. Let everyone else, your wife, daughter, in-laws, let them figure out how to get home. You just pull over, walk on in, you can have a drink. You can sit down, and look, there's a new poker room. You saw that billboard before. You can just have a really nice time in the casino."
Today, because I help others, I recognize what a huge lie that is. My mind's literally trying to lie me into a place of misery. Luring me there like in the Odyssey, the main character gets lured to this island by these singing nymphs. I can't remember the story hardly at all, but it's that sound of temptation.
When I help others I learn to recognize the sound of temptation.
I learned to recognize the full experience, because I didn't even know how to integrate the full experience. I didn't know how to integrate all the effects of drinking and all my other addictions into a memory that would be available for me right when I wanted to do the addiction.
The key is when you go to have that liquor bottle in your hand or you're just about to fire up the cigarette, or go to the gas station and grab a pack, or you've just hit the search on your phone "hot naked girls" or whatever you're looking for, when you go to fire that up you need the whole memory right then.
Not ten minutes later after you've already taken that first drink or you've started puffing on a cigarette, or you're halfway into the porno. You really need the memory before you start because then it's really consensual. Do you want to consciously walk into the misery that comes with the addiction?
I realized that Alcoholics Anonymous is probably a good place to help other people with alcoholism. There are all kinds of other places you can help with other specific addictions.
If you're trying to quit smoking, there are all kinds of groups today you can go and be with other people who are trying to quit smoking. For other addictions there are all kinds of places you can go to help with that.
When you're getting into an addiction, there is really something good there. There is some kind of need you're hoping to have met underneath everything else. The key with helping others in seeing the complete experience is that then you get an alternative to have the same need met.
I'm not suggesting that you just try and use your will powers. I've tried so many times to stay sober. I've tried to use my willpower and just said, "I'm going to stay sober. I'm going to not watch porn, I'm not going to gamble, I'm not going to play video games, I'm going to be a better person."
Then all of the sudden I was doing everything at the same time.
Yes, it is possible to gamble, drink, watch porn, and play video games all at the same time. Wow, that's a lot of addictions all at once.
I'm grateful that it's been almost three years now that I had my last drink, which is a miracle. I never could put together more than a few days, weeks or months trying to just, "I'm going to use my will power," and basically not do it, but not replace it either.
I had the stomach flu the other day and I was sitting on the couch. I'd been throwing up for eight hours off and on. I was just sitting on the couch thinking, "Wow, how did I do this to myself so many times with drinking?" No amount of fun is worth this amount of sick.
I remember seeing my wife in bed after I'd been sober about a year, and she was sick from being pregnant. It looked like a hangover, and according to her, it felt about like she imagined I had experienced. I looked at her and said, "She's doing this to bring another life into the world." I used to do that every week or several times a week. I'd have a hangover so bad I couldn't get out of bed, or I would take pills to numb the pain and try to push through the hangover and go to work.
Yes, as a police officer, I'd often times get drunk and would just be throwing down pills to be able to go to work the next day. My dad told me I should have been a bartender if I wanted to live like that. Thankfully, I couldn't keep being a police officer very long and being an alcoholic.
When you see the experience as it really is it looks sick. My God, no amount of fun is worth poisoning myself over. No amount of pleasure, and you can look at it for eating, no amount of momentary pleasure of having something in my mouth is worth feeling like a disgusting fat person for the next several hours, days, weeks and months.
I had a big problem with eating for much of my life. I would eat to change how I felt. I was obese for most of my adult life and I'm grateful today to have a healthier relationship with eating, because some things you can't just quit.
You may not be able to just quit eating, probably not. You can't just quit working.
Today I'm grateful for any addiction that I can just stop. I don't need to drink alcohol. I don't need to watch porno by myself. I don't need to smoke. I don't need to gamble. I'm really grateful today that I've got this experience because I have something useful to share with you today.
What happens when helping other people is that I don't forget what I've learned, because my mind will always remember how to lie to me. It will remember how to pitch and you can think of a sales pitch in business.
My mind knows how to pitch a drink a thousand different ways. "Well, Jerry, you've had a really hard day today, aren't you thirsty? Why don't you have a drink? That'll fix that. Well, Jerry, you didn't like what that person said. Why don't you have a drink?"
In hearing and listening to other people's experience it helps me today to stay quit.
My problem wasn't that I couldn't use self-will and discipline because I could easily use willpower to stop drinking and give it up for a day or a week, or a couple of weeks. You may have found this with things like smoking or other bad habits, you can quit for a little while, but the next time that lie comes in can you stay quit?
"Well, you've had a hard day today, a cigarette, that'd really help, wouldn't it?"
"Yes, that'd take the edge off, wouldn't it?"
What I've found is that I must replace all the needs that were satisfied by the addiction because my alcohol drinking wasn't all bad. In fact, there was a lot of needs that were met by my drinking. If I just simply gave up drinking and didn't replace that with anything that met those same needs, then it would continue to look attractive to go back to.
The other times I tried to get sober just by willpower alone, I didn't try and help anyone, I didn't integrate the full experience, I just said, "I'm going to stay sober. I swear to God I'll stay sober." I did it a lot of different ways.
I wouldn't meet the same needs. The normal way I was sober, I didn't laugh a lot, I didn't often do things very playful or have much fun. I didn't relax.
One of the things that I was horrible at for most of my adult life was relaxing, which is why I was prone to alcoholism. When you take a drink you relax a little bit. I had a really hard time relaxing. I was always on edge, "I'm going to get things done." That made me prone to overworking as well because that energy is great. You go to work and feel like, "Yes, I'm going to work and power through stuff."
One of the only ways I knew how to relax, besides drinking, was to have sex or porn and related activities, or to go to the gym, or exercise, and I just put myself down so much that I couldn't hardly do anything else. I used to do these workouts where I'd get my heart rate up to 190 and keep it there for 45 minutes or an hour. That's how you have a heart attack at the gym. I would be so exhausted then that I would have to relax.
Those workouts were tough because it's unpleasant to keep your heart rate at 100% for an hour on the gym, but it's easy to get it up that high when you're fat, which I was most of my adult life. It was pretty easy to get my heart rate going fast. It's a little more challenging now.
What I've learned is if I want to stay free from my addictions today, I have to see that there are legitimate needs the addiction is fulfilling, that I want to laugh, I want to relax, and I need to learn from other people how to do that.
I drank for 11 years and I didn't know how to laugh, have fun or play and mess around, and not be such a tight ass without drinking.
I had to learn from people:
How do you laugh without a drink?
How do you have some fun?
How do you let go a little bit without a drink in you, without marijuana, without prescription drugs or without illegal drugs?
How do you let go a little bit without that stuff to help?
How do I dance without drinking?
How do I date without drinking?
Then the addiction could be a person, you may find out that you've got some abusive relationships in your life and it's like an addiction.
When you've done an addiction long enough, you don't know what to do without it, but when you're without it, you've got to have it back, and when you've got it back you can't stand it anymore.
You may say, "How do I do anything without this person in my life who even though they abuse me, I don't know how to live without them."
That's where helping other people comes into play, because when I help other people I receive the same help back. When I offer my experience to you, I get your experience back. When I offer my love and support to you, I get yours back. It's taken a lot of people explaining a whole lot of things to me for me to learn.
"Oh, you know what? I can go get a massage that will help me relax."
Or another way I can relax is to sit down and meditate or read a book or just sit in an AA meeting and listen. If I want to laugh, AA meetings tend to be really good for laughing because there are some sick people like me who go and share their stories.
If I want to have the experience of intimacy, of feeling good about my body, that comes with watching a porn and adult movies, then I'm able to get that today by healthy eating, by taking care of my body and by honestly and openly sharing with others, by seeing others not just for their sexual characteristics, but really looking at and seeing every other person around me.
When you're seeing they're watching adult movies, you really want to be connected more with other people. You really want to be loved and seen more by other people. You want to be not objectified so much. Then I find that I'm not tempted to go look at that stuff if I'm really seeing and connecting with other people.
Even things like being addicted to social media. You're on Facebook or Instagram all the time: "How many likes does this have? What photo can I post?"
You are on social media so much that you can't even enjoy the world around you. That's a desire for connection with other people. Often it just takes a different approach, but you may not be able to figure it out on your own. You may have to see someone actually doing it.
The main way I learn is to see what people are actually doing. This is the main way I teach, I just share with you what I do because that's easy and honest. I don't have to sit here and make a script. Sure, I might have forgoten what I was going to say for 30 seconds and didn't have a clue and stopped for a minute, but I don't need a script to tell you the truth. I don't need to plan out and try to make a perfect lecture to tell you what I'm already doing in my life.
The most powerful learning I give to my daughter as a parent is what I do. She crosschecks everything I say with what I do. If I tell her to do something different from what I'm doing she learns hypocrisy.
That's what I learned when I was taught and raised to not cuss, by people who cussed a lot. I learned hypocrisy. I didn't learn not to cuss, I learned hypocrisy, that you say one thing and do another. In raising my daughter I try to simply be who I'd like to share with her. I simply am whatever I'd like her to be able to learn from.
I'm very happy to share this experience with you because my compulsions to do many types of unhealthy behaviors left me feeling hopeless and suicidal for lots of different times in my life. The day after a binge, all night at the casino, drinking and gambling, and waking up the next morning just not even wanting to go through all the pain again.
There's hope, you don't ever have to go through the pain. The pain you've been through already with every addiction is enough.
If you can't see it, help other people and you'll be able to see it. As they share their pain, you'll start remembering all these pains you've buried under the rug. A lot of us are really good at burying stuff under the rug. Some of us are so good that there are things buried so deep that you can't even get to them without digging and digging. There are things I've remembered back to like three years old that it took me a year of looking at all the different issues I was experiencing. Digging deeper, "All right, why am I like this? Where does this come from?"
Then once you go back far enough you don't need to keep going back anymore. Once you experience and heal those original hurting things, often that happened before you were addicted, then you don't have to keep letting them run your life today.
Now I'm getting hypnotized by the sound of my own voice a bit. So I appreciate you listening to this today.
My exercise is to keep practicing what I've shared with you here. After all, the main reason I'm doing this is so I remember it. I don't want to forget all these stuff I'm telling you. It is good for me today, that's why I've shared it with you.
So thank you for reading, I hope you have a wonderful day today.
Question: What do I do when there's no groups around?
Answer: Well I'm surprised, there are lots of groups. I can't believe how many groups there are. If there aren't any groups around, you often will be able to find people you know directly, and the more you start talking about your own issues, people will start bringing them up.
It's a big leap of faith to start talking with the cashier at the grocery store and when they ask, "How are you doing today?" instead of BS-ing them with saying, "Great, thanks," saying, "You know what? I'm struggling with trying to quit smoking today. It's like the 15th day in a row I've tried to quit and I'm still smoking."
You might be amazed to find that if you want to help, the universe will stick people essentially in your way. That's what I've done with about everything, I go to Alcoholics Anonymous, but I don't have any group I go to for gambling, the sex issues or overeating. What I do is I just talk about these things all the time now.
What I've learned in Alcoholics Anonymous is to just share this stuff even if it makes me look bad, even if occasionally I say something the wrong way to just get it out there wherever I'm at. Amazingly, you'll find the people in your life who are struggling with similar things. What also can help is to find people who've already done what you want to do. If you're trying to quit smoking and know someone who's quit smoking, go to that person and say, "Look, I want to quit smoking. What did you do to quit smoking, and tell me, who else do you know that quit smoking?"
I find if I need something, the universe will put it my way. You might even be able to just watch videos online, to get started, from people that quit smoking that have put them up and then they'll start telling you.
I found the universe consistently puts people in my path that I need. Often it'll put people on my path that I'm able to help. There's a man in my life now that I see when I go to meetings and he shares with me about some of the addictions outside of alcohol that he's working with in his life. That helps me then. He thought to talk with me because in the AA meeting I shared about some of these other addictions a little bit. There's all kinds of places that are possible.
There's a Zen saying, I think, "When the student is ready the teacher will appear."
When I'm ready to help the people who need my help will appear. When I need help the people who are there to help me will just randomly be in front of me. The main thing I've got to do though, I've got to open up. I can't keep my secrets. That's why my mom's like, "I can't believe you talk about all these stuff."
I talk about all these stuff because I want help with it. I don't want to be grabbing my iPhone and firing up the porno search again on it because I don't want to feel like crap afterwards, I don't want to miss out on the full depth and beauty of my relationship with my wife anymore because of all the porn I've looked at.
So, even though I don't go to a group for that, I just talk about it all the time; even if it's embarrassing, even if it makes me look bad.
Comment: I'm addicted to League of Legends and I want to convert it to my source of living.
Answer: If you want to be able to be a professional at it, I would say a lot of these other self-help personal development things can be very helpful. A lot of the professional gamers, especially the coach in the better League of Legends players I've seen, they also tend to have a lot of wisdom about life generally, like getting along with other people.
If you want to be a pro League of Legends player, what you really need to be is a good teammate in addition to a good League of Legends player. I think just constant improvement playing every day, you have the chance to do it.
If you truly love playing the game, you'll get good enough at it to make money. If you're trying to use the game to make money, there are other things you can learn that will allow you to make money much easily if you'd rather just have the game as a hobby.
I don't know if that's helpful or not. I quit playing League of Legends because I realized that I would need to give up other things in my life to get good at League of Legends.
I wasn't willing to give anything else up. If you want to be a pro League of Legends player, you might need to find a couple of other things in your life to give up to make that happen. Maybe you might need to give up school or getting an education.
I appreciate everyone watching and each comment I get because every one of those helps the videos to get found by other people, and it helps me to stay honest, to realize that I'm not some great person, that I'm just an average ordinary person. Anything you want to do that I can do, there's no reason you can't do it too, because I'm ordinary.
Comment: When I'm stressed I cannot control to not smoke.
Answer: I had an experience with smoking that was really helpful for me. My dad smoked and I have other family members who smoke. My dad never quit, he died going with smoking.
Even though his father died from lung cancer and my dad died from things that are related to smoking, even with those things I still thought I should try to smoke cigarettes. If I dated a girl who smoked, I'd often smoke with her.
The one thing that really helped me with smoking cigarettes was the next day when I woke up and I had that disgusting cigarette taste in my mouth. I hated that so much that I wouldn't smoke another cigarette that next day.
I hated that, it was disgusting, yuck! The nice thing is that I didn't get that far in, but still I would go for a while about smoking, and then I'd buy a cigar. I got lucky because I used to be a casual smoker. You can see with my tendency to addiction, I certainly had the ability to pick up a nicotine habit.
The last time I smoked, I was going down the direction of either smoking more or smoking less. I had cigars at home and I'd smoke a cigar to relax. Well, I smoked a cigar and walked around my apartment complex trying to relax. One of the things you might say I either did correctly or incorrectly depending on how you look at it, is that I used to inhale quite a bit when I smoked. Amazingly, it didn't make me that sick most of the time.
When I first smoked a cigar I'd inhale it, take a big deep breath trying to get all the smoke in my lungs and it didn't have that much of an impact on me. I consistently would inhale when I smoked.
I got sick a couple of times doing that while drinking, but I didn't think much of it. The last time I smoked a cigar I was sober and I was walking around my apartment complex. Normally when I'd smoke I would be standing up or sitting down. Well, this time I was taking a walk. I was inhaling and taking a walk. I was breathing even deeper than normal and I smoked for a longer time than normal.
I smoked down most of the cigar walking around my apartment complex. Oh, man, I got sick that time. I didn't throw up, but I was dizzy, I felt terrible.
Now, whenever my mind still thinks of smoking and I walk by a cigar store and, like, "Why don't you go there and take a look?" All I can think about is that disgusting feeling I had of being dizzy the last time I smoked.
If you haven't had a bad experience from smoking and if you really want to smoke and nothing else has worked, try smoking so much that you can't stand it anymore.
Now, I'm no health professional, I'm no doctor, don't kill yourself doing this. I'm just throwing things out there that have worked for me like the last time I drank, I drank for something like 14-16 hours. I had something like 20 shots of vodka, 12 cans of diet Dr. Thunder from Walmart. I had a lot last time, so much that it made me deathly ill, I was throwing up blood and just horribly sick. With smoking, the last time I smoked, it was the same thing, I got sick.
If you've never got sick smoking or if you have a hard time stopping smoking one of the things that can be helpful is to change the context of it. Maybe smoke so many cigarettes that you make yourself sick. If you are really trying to stop, but can't, have all the cigarettes you can stand. Just keep smoking, smoke them until you get sick. Now you might say, "Well, that's crazy. I wouldn't want to make myself sick." What you want to do is make a very painful association with that behavior.
When I think of drinking, I think of throwing up blood, of a god awful headache, hangover and nausea, of barely being able to get any food down and barely being able to walk to the kitchen to get a can of soup to eat.
I had the same thing happen with porn and with the doing it yourself element that comes with porn. The last time I watched porn, the last time I did it myself to conclusion, because you could argue, "Well, what about if you actually touch yourself once or twice, does that count as masturbating?"
I don't know.
The last time I went all the way through with it was at a doctor's office.
It was not exactly a fun moment you might say, because it put it in a different context. It made the idea of watching porn and messing with myself feel more medical. That was not so hot, not so exciting.
So, the last time that I engaged in that, you might say, it was also for a good reason, perhaps the only time in my life that I've ever looked at porn and played with myself for a good reason.
Now, thinking of it being in a medical setting, I got to admit, I was sitting on that chair in the doctor's office and I was like, "This is like the Olympics for me. I've never practiced for anything else in my life so much as I've practiced for this right now."
Then after that, I realized, "All right, that was like the Olympics. You actually did it because someone needed you to do it. That's a valid reason. Any other time you do it it's not."
I'm not saying I wouldn't ever look at porn again. I would hope that I wouldn't. I share this experience with you so I don't forget because I'd much rather see an actual naked body than to see pictures of them. It is kind of disappointing to look at the pictures compared to the real thing.
These are three of my big addictions. The last time, gambling was also very painful. It was on the same night I drank. I was drunk. I hadn't gambled online in years before that, and I thought I'd never do it again.
I was standing there talking to customer service at 4:00 A.M., drunk, trying to let them put me more money on the site and again it was very painful.
For me, it helps a lot to have a very painful experience as the last experience engaging in something. It's the same thing with food, I was motivated to eat better after I had a very painful experience overeating. I was able to have a painful experience overeating simply because I was more sensitive.
I'd had that experience many other times in my life, but from not drinking, from not watching porn, from not gambling, from not doing that for a while, I was sensitive. I had this huge disgusting breakfast. It had all kinds of different meat in it. It had all these fats, oils and sugars. I overate way too much, too.
My mind was in a great mood, then it dipped down around suicidal depression within 15 minutes after eating all that. I realized, "My God. What I just ate gave me that mood. What I just ate was the cause of that mood."
Now, when I consider eating a bunch of these things, when I consider eating some huge rich meal with a bunch of meat and animal products in it, I think about that last meal I had. Do I want to feel filthy, disgusting and depressed again?
Most of the time, the answer is no, but sometimes I do, and I'm like, "Why do I want to feel that way?"
That's when helping other people comes in.
Thank you for asking about these things. I hope what I've shared is helpful.
Question: How can I raise my IQ?
Answer: For me, personally, I've learned that intelligence, being wise is so much more than I ever imagined. Just doing good on a standardized test including an IQ test is fairly irrelevant. One of the best ways to reach your full potential is to stop getting in your own way, stop poisoning yourself with alcohol and drugs, stop eating foods that slow you down and stop getting in relationships.
Often, it takes recognizing that if anyone's going to get in my way, it'll most likely be me, that other people and other things in life aren't the problem as much as I get my own way, that if someone's got to screw my business up, it will be me. In other words, if someone's going to lower my IQ, it will be me. So, for me, it's been a huge exercise to simply not getting in my own way, and not making myself stupider. Another big thing with IQ in learning is a similar programming concept.
Garbage in, garbage out.
If you watch a lot of garbage or consume a lot of garbage like if you watch a lot of TV, whether it's just drama, I'm not going to point anything out in particular, but you'll know what I mean. If you spend a lot of your time essentially putting garbage into your mind, you're going to get garbage out.
When I used to watch a bunch of drama, violent movies and porno and all these nasty things, I got a bunch of nasty things out as well. Now, I try and read helpful books. I just started reading the Bible. I'm reading a course in miracles. I try to read helpful books.
I try to listen to and learn positive things. I try to consume things that I want to then share out again. I realize that if I take something in, it's going to come back out. If I get into a bunch of drama with someone, then it's going to come back out even more.
I hope that helps.
Porn decreases my IQ as well. It's been two years since I've watched any porno. I say, "by myself," because to me, that's the context. I don't remember if I've watched any with other.
Is watching "Game of Thrones" on HBO a porno? That's what I watch, with my wife.
All these definitions get a little arbitrary. I know what watching porno by myself is like. I haven't watched any porno by myself for a couple of years, and I still remember these things from pornos. I can probably quote a bunch of them to you and half of you guys would been nodding your head like, "Yes, that's from that video." I still remember songs that people put in pornos. If certain songs come on, it brings me right back to a porno.
It's amazing how long this stuff lasts in my mind and that's what motivates me. Just watching one porno might not seem like a big deal. I don't want to have that porno stuck in my head for two or three more years because after a couple of years now, finally my mind is starting to not go to porno by default, and to not repeat these lines from porno and see all of life as a porno. 😀
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Love,
Jerry Banfield
