The Sweet Smell of Success
How to truly become successful in your battle against porn addiction.
My bare feet step nimbly on the freezing floor as I walk across the apartment naked, carefully removing the condom that’s still attached to my now half-erected penis.
I tie a knot in it (a little skill I’ve gotten better at with practice) and throw it into the trash before I enter the bathroom.
Sitting on the toilet, I get to experience one of the great pleasures in life: peeing after sex. It feels as if the stream is cleansing my body and spirit, carrying with it the stress of the day and allowing me to flush it away.
As post-nut clarity hits me, I get a sense of calm and contentment. I’m feeling tired, but good tired — the kind of tired you experience after a nice workout session.
I look up from the sink into the mirror while I wash my hands and find in there a friendly face. A good-looking face with confident eyes, a few lines of maturity, and a full beard.
Behind me, reflected on that mirror, a girl enters the scene. She hugs me from behind and as I turn around to embrace her, our naked bodies come together lovingly.
We kiss and I leave the bathroom to her, my image disappearing from the mirror as I walk away.
During the more than ten years that I struggled with my addiction to porn it wasn’t always easy to picture success, but if I ever did then it looked like that.
A man that’s sexually active, healthy, happy, full of confidence. For a long time, I doubted I could ever become that man (and indeed it took me quite a while to even get close to that picture), but now that I am I’ve got to say… it feels fucking great.
Sex, once a chimera, is now part of my day-to-day life. Not only do I get to do it on a regular basis and pretty much whenever I want, but I actually get to enjoy it. Sexual encounters no longer feel like a battle against my mind and body — they are now a chance to relax and have fun.
The crippling self-hate and anxious thoughts that would besiege me are now gone. I’ve learned to accept who I am, owning up to the parts of me that I don’t like and putting in the work to make them better. I can be more in touch with my emotions: there is no need to hide from myself anymore.
And porn, for so long a relentless companion, cause of and solution to all of my problems, now has no place in my life. Long forgotten are the days of crazy hours-long binges, endless searches, and desperate coping. I haven’t watched porn in two years, and I don’t miss it a tiny bit.
I am extremely proud of the person I have become, and I don’t mind saying it loud and clear. It’s taken me way too long and I’ve shed way too many tears, sweat, and blood to not celebrate my success now… but don’t be mistaken: this picture that I so much strived for didn’t just materialize.
It’s a picture built on top of many other successes that came before it, each one of them equally important and necessary — and I wouldn’t be here without them.
I still remember my first success over porn.
It wasn’t when I got rid of my giant stash, the first time I went a month without it, or when I hit the one-year mark. No, my earliest success happened the day that, feeling sad and stressed, and craving a chance to forget about it all for a while, I decided to say no to porn.
That small unprecedented decision showed me that porn could be overcome, even if just momentarily. It was thanks to this brief rush of willpower that I caught the scent of success for the very first time… and as it turns out, success didn’t smell like a crumpled ball of cum-splattered tissue thrown into the trash, no, success smelled sweet like a fresh baked cream pie.
Following that scent I began to accumulate victories — small ones at first, bigger and bigger ones as time went by. Like the day I put an early stop to an emerging long binge. Or the evening I realized how strong of a trigger being left home alone was, and avoided porn by just going out for a walk.
Learning from a relapse was one of my greatest successes early on. When I first reflected on what had happened the day of a relapse — the events that led to it as much as the feelings I had felt through the process — I took a monumental step in the right direction. With time, I understood how emotions like anxiety, stress, and sadness were the underlying issue behind my porn habits — a major breakthrough that only set me up for further success.
Each and every one of these victories built on top of the ones that came before it. This is how, little by little, a socially awkward teenager with low self-esteem and acute shyness managed to land his first date, then had his first kiss, then failed at his first sexual encounter, only to eventually conquer his problems with erectile dysfunction years later.
It took a long time for me to become the man in that mirror, but it wasn’t a period plagued with failure — it was one that reeked of success.
Success is a tricky thing.
Picture something too ideal, like a perfect life free of porn, and the image will look so unattainable that it will completely kill your motivation. Picture something more practical, like a 60-day porn-free streak, and you’ll relapse on day 61, complacent after having achieved your goal.
That’s why I prefer to picture my recovery more like a continuous process. It’s not a race towards a goal, but an everlasting journey. Along the path are milestones, and they are great: they help you track your progress and they keep you motivated, but they are not the ultimate goal. Your goal is to improve yourself and become a healthier and happier person, and that, my friend, is the work of a lifetime.
Success within this mindset is more relative. Its picture will keep morphing as you grow and figure things out. Yet that doesn’t make it any less worthy. Every accomplishment in your recovery is a huge success just the same, and it deserves to be celebrated as such.
Be proud of yourself for everything you’ve done so far. Be cocky, even, if that’s what you want. You earned it. There’s nothing wrong with feeling great for the great things you’ve achieved. Quite on the contrary, you’ll find that having this positive attitude only reinforces the virtuous circle.
I am nothing but grateful for the position I currently find myself in, having accomplished many of the goals I originally set for myself when I started this journey. My life is radically better than the one I had all those years ago, and I don’t take that for granted, believe me, but at the same time I know this is not over.
Success isn’t the end of my path. To me, success is just a sign that I am moving in the right direction — and if there’s something I know, after all these years, is that I’m not planning to stop.
(Ten years earlier…)
My bare feet step carefully on the squeaky floor as I leave my room and sneak into the bathroom, trying not to wake my parents up in the middle of the night.
I turn the faucet on slightly (a little trick I use to mask my sounds, just in case) right after I enter the bathroom.
Sitting on the toilet, a montage of hundreds of videos flashing before my eyes, I finally get to end this eight-hour binge by ejaculating on a piece of tissue.
As post-nut clarity hits me, I get an overwhelming sense of emptiness and regret. I’m feeling absolutely exhausted, and my penis looks like it endured the most brutal of workout sessions.
I look up from the sink into the mirror while I wash my hands and find in there a mean face. A hideous face with bloodshot eyes, a sulky expression, and acne all over it.
Behind me, hidden from the mirror by two doors, rests my computer, twenty-two tabs still open in the browser, waiting for me to come back and erase every track of what I’ve done.
I turn the light off and leave the bathroom, my dark image disappearing from the mirror as I walk away.
What’s in your math folder?
What does success look like to you?
What are some accomplishments that you can celebrate today?
Being successful in your recovery isn’t just chaining day after day without porn to build a long streak. Success is about staying involved in the process and everything you learn from it.
Celebrate your victories, no matter how small. Be proud of the improvements you’ve made. Let your picture of success be not an obsession, but a motivation to keep going.
Share your insights in the comments below, on social media, or in your favorite porn addiction community, and if you know others that are struggling with porn, help them by sharing a link to this story.
Let’s start a conversation!
Hi, this is James! Thank you for reading!
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