Addicted to Porn? 43 Signs & VERY Effective Ways to Stop Watching Porn

Do you think you might love porn a little too much? Learn the negative impacts of porn, the signs you’re truly addicted, and how to stop watching porn.

If you’re wondering how to stop watching porn, you must hate the amount of time you spend watching porn. Let’s be clear – porn isn’t terrible in moderation.

But if you feel like it’s taking away a lot of your time and leaving you frustrated, we can help! Here’s what you need to do to get your furious hands under control and wean yourself off the habit. [Read: Why do men watch porn? The answer may not be what you think]

How porn affects the brain

If given a chance, practically any activity seems to have the ability to hijack your brain.

Addictive behaviors often develop because of our neurological reward system. Sexual acts release dopamine, which is a chemical released in the brain to make you feel good. Masturbation is an act that already feels good, so you’re essentially rewarding yourself with feeling good for feeling good.

Your brain begins to develop a preference for the things that make you feel that way, which leads to potentially addictive behaviors.

Chasing the feeling of those extended dopamine releases can literally change the size, shape, and chemical balance of your brain.

When is watching porn NOT problematic?

Porn itself is not the absolute devil. In moderation, it’s perfectly fine and normal to watch legal and adult content made with consent. [Read: Alternatives to porn – 16 ways to get hot and wet without porn]

If you’re in a relationship, watching porn with your partner can actually improve your communication in and out of the bedroom. Couples often feel more confident expressing their sexual needs and can increase their sexual satisfaction because of it.

Even if you’re not in a relationship, watching porn solo isn’t harmful as long as it’s not in excess. If it’s not interfering with your daily life, altering your views on what sex should be like, or skewing your ideas and emotions, a modest amount of porn might be right for you.

It’s just important to be mindful of how you’re feeling before and after and how it affects you personally.

Signs you’re watching too much porn

“Too much porn” looks a little different for everybody, and there’s no concrete number of hours that’s definitively “too much.” An acceptable amount of porn for you might be too much for somebody else.

If you’re concerned that you’re watching so much that you think you need to figure out how to stop watching porn, pay attention to whether or not you’re experiencing any of these ten signs that you’re watching too much. [Read: Why ditching your porn habit could improve your life]

1. You don’t have time for anything else

If you find yourself so preoccupied with porn or even thoughts of porn that you can’t seem to get anything else done, you might have an issue.

Pay attention to your to-do list.

Is your work getting done? Are your household chores caught up? Or, are you struggling to complete your daily duties because you want to watch porn now and play catch-up later?

2. If you’re frustrated as soon as you come to your senses

You might love the feeling of your dick in your hand while it’s happening, but as soon as you’re done, do you feel frustrated or angry with yourself for doing it? Perhaps it’s time to restrict the habit and focus on how to stop watching porn. [Read: Uncovered secrets about the female porn industry]

3. If you feel helpless all the time

Do you feel like you don’t have a choice? You just love porn and are addicted to it.

You miss porn when you’re not watching it. More than anything else, your hands itch to type a few adult websites into your browser when no one’s around. You’re completely uninterested in doing anything else.

4. You can’t wait to get some alone time

You love spending time by yourself so that you can jack off.

While most people hate being alone for too long, you can’t wait to get some alone time with your porn collection. When you’re around anyone else, you’re just consumed with the desire to get away.

5. You spend more than an hour a day watching porn

Tons of men and women watch porn, but most do it with limitations.

Do you spend several hours a day watching porn? Whether it’s on your phone, TV, or computer, you probably shouldn’t be watching porn like you watch movies. If you think it’s too much, it just might be. [Read: Do girls watch porn? 20 reasons to start & why they lie about watching]

6. You have intrusive thoughts about porn

Do you find that porn constantly invades your thoughts? Maybe a thought about porn pops into your mind because you see somebody who looks like one of your favorite porn stars, or maybe you had a completely spontaneous thought that wasn’t brought on by anything at all.

Either way, if you feel like you can’t control how often you think about porn, you could be addicted.

7. You’re experiencing money issues caused by porn

With as many free ways to obtain porn as there are, it might sound strange to hear that porn addiction can wreak havoc on your finances.

However, free porn is limited and often just isn’t enough to satisfy an addict’s needs. Subscriptions to OnlyFans or more extreme porn sites can be costly. Many even find themselves in positions where they lose satisfaction with the paid sites, so they shell out even more money to watch live cams.

Aside from money paid to view porn, if your addiction interferes with your productivity at work, you could lose money. To make it worse, if you’re caught watching porn at work, you could lose your entire job.

8. Your relationships are suffering

If watching porn is negatively impacting your relationships at all, you should really consider learning how to stop watching porn. [Read: How to watch porn with your girlfriend & get her to enjoy it with you]

If you’re agitated with others because you’re not watching porn at the moment or you’re unintentionally placing your sexual needs above the needs of your friends and family, porn is definitely causing your relationships to suffer.

Within intimate relationships, if you’re keeping your porn addiction secret, it’s a problem. If your actual sex life isn’t living up to your fantasy sex life, it’s a problem.

When porn starts to change your expectations of sex or make you feel negatively toward your partner because of their “inability” to meet your unmeetable expectations, it’s a real problem.

9. You fail to keep commitments

Any addiction can get in the way of your everyday life.

Be mindful of whether or not you’re choosing porn over going out with your friends. If you have a lunch date scheduled, but your screen is calling to you so hard that you think, “Who needs lunch?” you might be addicted to porn.

10. You watch it during work hours despite the risks

There’s not a job in the world that’s cool with you watching porn for pleasure during work hours. [Read: Sex in the office – pros & cons of banging in the workplace]

You’ve probably seen plenty of porn that starts with the sexy receptionist walking in on a male employee having a good time with himself. In porn, the receptionist takes the opportunity to get her rocks off, too. In reality, however, this scenario has a wildly different ending.

How to stop watching porn

While it’s easy to wean off porn for most, there are still a lot of people who have an incredibly hard time kicking the habit.

If you feel like you have a problem with porn addiction, use these tips on how to stop watching porn all the time.

1. Try to finish yourself off as soon as possible

The biggest drain of being addicted to porn is the amount of time it sucks out of your life. Porn can be fascinating, and you’ll never realize how fast time flies.

Going cold turkey can be excruciating, so instead of avoiding watching porn completely, learn to finish yourself off quickly to limit the amount of time that you’re watching it. [Read: 25 secrets to make a guy cum fast, hard, & explode his load In minutes]

2. Limit your videos

Give yourself a set number of porn videos to watch per day before you shut your device for the night. Don’t exceed the number of videos, though. Finish yourself off even if you don’t like what you’re watching.

3. Keep yourself busy

Don’t be idle. It’s the easiest way to avoid spending too much time watching porn.

4. Get a girlfriend

This might not be the best advice because several happily married men are addicted to porn, but it’s worth a shot! Get a girlfriend, or just try to divert your porn interest to your partner. [Read: Why men like watching porn instead of making out with their woman]

5. Watch so much that you get sick of it

Beat yourself off so many times over a weekend that you feel sick and tired of it. It may not work all the time, but overindulgence can help you beat the habit.

6. You need a distraction

Every time you feel like masturbating, do something else you like that requires your undivided attention.

7. Have sex and watch porn at the same time

If you have a partner and are still having a hard time dealing with porn addiction, watch it with your partner while having sex.

It’ll help you have a better and more open sex life, and it might help you beat the addiction at the same time. [Read: How porn saved my marriage]

8. Play games on your console

Guys love playing games. It keeps you involved and distracted, and with the adrenaline buzz of a good game, you may end up feeling tired with little energy left in your hands.

9. Don’t spend too much time alone

Alone time is fun time for a guy who watches too much porn. Avoid isolating yourself. Meet your friends, or step out of the house for a while when you feel like watching porn.

10. Time yourself

If you’re frustrated by the amount of time you lose to porn every day, time yourself. Give yourself fifteen to twenty minutes for the first few days, and reduce that time to a few minutes after that.

You’ll save time and experience less sexual satisfaction through porn, which will definitely help you when you’re trying to figure out how to stop watching porn.

11. Masturbate to a few boring videos

You enjoy porn because it feels good. If the excitement that you’re building starts to wear off, so will your addiction. [Read: How to get a girl to have sex with you]

12. Restrict yourself to one porn website per week

By the end of the week, if you’re a quick porn surfer looking for the best of sex, you’ll run out of good videos that you enjoy and have nothing left to watch.

13. Avoid your favorite obsessions

Do you like drunk sex, violation, fetishes, moresomes, lesbians, or any particular niche? Go for the typical one-on-one.

It’ll be less exciting, and you’ll eventually get bored of watching the same routine all the time.

14. Limit the hands in the pants

Restrict the number of times that you masturbate. If you’re a chronic jerker who cums several times a day, limit yourself to doing it in the morning and at night ONLY.

You can take porn off your mind for the rest of the day. When you’ve mastered that, move to only once per day. [Read: Chronic masturbation – 30 side effects, signs, & ways to stop masturbating]

15. Change your surroundings

A big part of addiction can be the comfort, so make yourself uncomfortable. Rearrange your furniture. Get completely new furniture if you want to.

Paint your walls or hang up new posters. Do anything you can to shake up your space so that you don’t continue to associate your surroundings with watching porn.

16. Accept that you have a problem

This is the first step to any type of recovery, and it’s often the hardest.

But if you can admit to yourself that you have a serious problem with porn, it’ll be so much easier to buckle down and use some of these other ways to learn how to stop watching porn.

17. Understand what you’re trying to avoid

Don’t look at it like it’s a bad thing! You aren’t ending the joys of masturbating or cutting yourself off from any sexual pleasure. [Read: The most powerful ways to stop being horny – no masturbating or sex]

You’re avoiding all the nasty side effects of porn addiction. You’re keeping yourself from losing your days and your money to porn and no longer letting porn affect your relationships. Think of the fact that you’re avoiding all the little negative things that piggyback on a porn addiction.

18. Explore your sexuality in other ways

If you watch porn because you’re trying to fulfill sexual needs that haven’t been met outside the screen, try to explore those in real life. If you have a partner, talk to them and see if they’ll consider watching porn with you so that you can explore those things together.

Sex doesn’t have to be vanilla! A little safe bondage or roleplaying can work wonders!

19. Use a porn blocker on your web browsers

Sometimes, the rules and boundaries you set for yourself are just too easily ignored. Enlist the help of browser blockers so that when you even try to access adult content, you’ll be shut down. [Read: Don’t want to have sex? 16 reasons & ways to make sex feel exciting again]

20. Avoid your triggers

Take notice of whether or not you experience specific things that trigger your need to watch porn.

Is there a certain place, TV show, or activity that triggers your desire to watch porn? Be mindful of any repeated concrete things that you associate with your addiction, and try to avoid those at all costs.

Often, triggers are more emotional than physical. It’s nearly impossible to just avoid emotions, so work on redirecting those types of triggers instead.

21. Replace the habit

A smart practice is to pick something that you can do instead of watching porn. Any time you have the urge to fire up your favorite website and pull your pants down, just do something else! Clean up around your house or play games. [Read: 52 habits and ways to find happiness within yourself & feel better]

To make a smart practice even smarter, pick something healthy that could yield the same dopamine release that masturbating does.

Go for a run! Get in the gym. Just hit the floor and do some pushups. Physical exercise releases dopamine and endorphins and can make you feel even better than you do when you get off.

22. Join a support group or seek porn addiction counseling

You’re definitely not alone in your addiction.

There are countless other sufferers seeking help, too. Consider joining a support group to surround yourself with others who can relate to your struggles.

If you’re uncomfortable with a group of people, try individual therapy. With porn addiction as prevalent as it is, there are tons of counselors equipped to treat it and help you through it.

23. Try meditation

Meditation is a mindful practice that yields control. It trains your brain to focus and eliminate destructive thoughts.

Proper meditation can have clearing and calming effects on your mind and has also been shown to increase dopamine levels significantly, which means that you can still get the feel-good chemical release. [Read: Everything you need to know about orgasmic meditation]

The negative impact and why you should learn how to stop watching porn

We’ve mentioned several of the ways that porn can have a negative impact on your life, but the truth is that there are so many more.

Porn addiction is a real addiction and can have devastating effects on every aspect of your life. It can destroy your well-being, confidence, relationships, health, and career. There are countless things, both big and small, that this addiction can impact!

1. Porn and masturbation addictions

We can be honest: masturbating feels good. Getting yourself off is perfectly normal and healthy within reason.

However, an obvious side effect of watching an excessive amount of porn is that you end up masturbating more often than you probably should.

This can cause a whole host of issues that we’ll touch on, but you should also know that excessive or vigorous masturbation can actually cause injuries to the penis or vagina.

2. Decrease in sexual arousal and increase in erectile dysfunction

The more you jerk off, the less sensitive you become. [Read: 37 secrets to get hard & keep it up longer]

It becomes more difficult to be sexually aroused, and excessive masturbation has been known to play a role in erectile dysfunction. It can impair your ability to get and maintain an erection.

3. Sexual performance anxiety

Porn can cause some serious anxiety when it comes to sexual performance.

For one, excessive masturbation can lead to decreased sensitivity, which means that you need more and more sexual stimulation. In layman’s terms, it’s harder to keep it up.

Second, porn can actually cause you to be anxious about your sexual performance in comparison to what you watch. It can cause feelings of disappointment in your appearance and make you concerned about your sexual abilities.

4. Decrease in desire for sex, which can negatively impact intimacy in relationships

As we mentioned, watching too much porn can have detrimental effects on the brain.

Your brain begins to associate porn with sexual arousal and makes it the preference. You start to become stimulated less by the actual act and more by simply watching it. [Read: Vanilla sex – what it is & 26 hot ways to go from boring to OMFG in bed]

5. Increase in tolerance

Studies aren’t so sure about this one, but the logistics of it definitely make sense. Eventually, your brain is going to become tired of the same old thing.

It’ll tell you that it needs something different or that it needs moreto feel stimulated, and you’ll listen because you want to feel the dopamine high that you get from rubbing one out.

6. Preoccupation and an increased need to give in to urges to watch porn

When you feel like you need to watch porn and masturbate, you really feel like you HAVE to do it, and it keeps getting worse.

You feel strong urges that you can’t ignore, and they’re getting in the way of your daily life and routine. Your cravings to watch porn are interfering with your work life and productivity, as well as relationships and activities outside of work. [Read: How to not cum fast – 24 must-know tips to last longer & satisfy her]

7. Decreased self-esteem

Comparison is the enemy, but it’s an unintentional side effect of porn. Porn can make you question your body, your performance, and your general worth.

8. Decreased interest in once pleasurable activities

Any addiction’s goal is to isolate you, even from the things that you used to enjoy. Porn can do the exact thing and leave you feeling uninterested in your favorite activities.

It can take away your motivation to do those things or replace the need to do anything else with the urge to masturbate.

9. Decreased quality and quantity of sex in a committed relationship

As discussed, watching porn and masturbating too often can really screw up your actual sex life.

Your brain develops a preference for porn over sex with a partner, and maybe you find normal sex to be less interesting than porn. It doesn’t live up to your standards, so you opt for porn instead. [Read: Is watching porn cheating? No, but it can make or break your sex life]

10. Pornography becomes a supernormal stimulus

Porn is a trick. It’s artificial and literally made to seem better than the real thing.

Because of that, your brain receives it differently as a stimulant and makes it more exciting than sex.

After a while, though, your tolerance builds and your stimulation decreases. You find yourself needing even more porn to keep up with yourself!

If you need to figure out how to stop watching porn, use these signs to help you decide if you’re addicted, and use our tips to slowly help you kick the habit!