Confessions of a Porn Zombie
by Kevin Behan
“Poooooooooorrrrrrn . . . . . Pooooorrrrrrrrrrrrrrnnnn ….. Porrrnnnnnnnn ….” . . . I grunted as my lifeless corpse limped closer to what it needed most. Shuffling, slow, and primal I fixed my gaze on the “food” glowing off my computer screen, . . . calling me . . . I called back, “poooorrrrrrrnnnn.” Now sweating, my heart beating faster then it did all day all day, I knew relief was coming, that I would feel again. “Pooorrrrrnn.”
I saw nothing else in the dark musty room. My lust was insatiable, I could not quench my thirst. Porn was the center of my life. “PORN!”
I was a “Porn Zombie” – a lifeless bag a skin not much different than the zombie made famous by George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. In this 1968 horror film classic, the dead came back to life as lumbering corpses hell bent on feeding their insatiable craving for human flesh.
Ugly, unaware, vacant, and sad . . . that was me, the “porn zombie.” In my case, however, the flesh I craved was in the form of pixels on my computer screen – the most incredible combination of “1s” and “0s” mankind has ever invented – Internet porn.
The Porn Zombie is a great analogy to my struggle and I want to use him to highlight a couple of things.
Before you jump in consider reading my first blog post where I talk about my sex addiction, how I ended up connecting with George Collins of Compulsion Solutions, and how I’m dedicating my life to helping other sex addicts – click here. And speaking of infected, here is a video where George Collins talks about a client who did not get help when he first called and suffered a life changing predicament – click here.
OK, back to the two things. First I want to share with you my life (or lack thereof) as a Porn Zombie and how I put that bastard out of his misery years ago – I actually learned to listen to him – he’s my greatest teacher . . . more on that in a future post. Second, I want to share with you a great online resource to help you with your porn addiction. This amazing resource is the social bookmarking site Reddit, and specifically the subreddits /r/pornfree and /r/nofap.
Me The Porn Zombie
I was a Porn Zombie slumming in the haze of pornography addiction excited only about my my next feed. I got particularly excited to plan my Porn Parties. Of course, I would have my normal porn meals throughout the week, once, twice a day, sometimes three if I had discovered something new to beat off too . . . but nothing burned alive like the anticipation leading up to a Porn Party.
Unlike Romero’s Zombie, I possessed sufficient cognitive functioning to plan my pathetic porn parties and plan I did. It was an instant shot of dopamine to my brain when my wife told me she was going away for a few days. I would plan weeks in advance for that porn beat off orgy.
I’d collect party favors like alcohol, chewing tobacco, cocaine, and Adderall. I wouldn’t do all of this together, usually, but I wanted the option just in case I needed to get higher, and I often did. I did have on steady favor that would always accompany me to my Porn Parties — chewing tobacco. Can you imagine the smell? I can.
So instead of hanging out with friends and living, I was stuck to my jerk off chair, alone, in front of my laptop with my pants down. The house was dark and stank like funky ball sweat produced by my lots of solo sex. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING else mattered during this time, not my kids, wife, friends, job, NOTHING. I was a Porn Zombie.
Part of me convinced myself that I thought I was enjoying this; that this, sitting alone masturbating, was what I really wanted to do. The physical urges, the pleasures, the pains, the pulls were all computing like this was something I enjoyed. It helped me relax, it was my alone fun time, and it helped put me to sleet at night. This was my quality alone time.
This addiction had infested my brain, re-wired it and wrote me a new program and that program was “porn can help you with anything.” My thinking had become corrupted, I was plagued by obsessive thoughts. I no longer had control, and this is important, I could not remember a time when I did have control – when I wasn’t a Porn Zombie. Not remembering this gave me the the sense that I have always been messed up, that I’ve always been this way.
That is a lie that the porn brain wants you to believe, the porn brain wants you to die for that belief and it will protect it at all cost. The porn brain needs it’s fuel and in my case and in many others “shame” fed the fire. It was a cycle I thought would never end, because it had been so long since I knew different.
Now that I do know different I can promise you that there is hope. If you don’t believe me then check in with the 14,000 Fapstronauts on social media site Reddit. Here is a nice summary of Reddit that does a great job of explaining what it is.
According to Brent Bowles of (http://blog.purevisibility.com/2012/03/what_is_reddit/):
Reddit is the juggernaut of social media sharing, and though it feels like a nice small community of friends while you’re on it, there are over 30 million unique visitors on the site each month (and rising!). The topics that you view are customizable based on your interest, and the top-news is based on peers voting items up or down (upvotes and downvotes). And like any good social network, the content refreshes rapidly, bringing you an endless stream of very targeted and interesting articles, images, information, questions, comics, etc.
Subreddits (think of them like rooms) in my opinion is what makes Reddit different from other news and message boards. This feature allows people that are interested in certain topics to isolate their conversation from junk, keep the focus dialed in, and most importantly connect with others for support and information.
Pornfree and nofap, have thousands of subscribers and followers that are trying to break the zombification caused by porn. These communities have stepped up where researchers and politicians are afraid to venture. It’s a community of men trying to better themselves, relying on each other and technology to end their compulsive porn use and masturbating. Both were inspired by and groundswell of need and creativity and inspired by Therapist Gary Wilson, which is incredible. This community grew organically.(edited 5/30).
Alexandra Katehakis, M.F.T., a sex addiction therapist just wrote a nice article in the Huffington Post where she talked about Reddit – click here to read it and Gary Wilson’s Your Brain on Porn Experiment. Check out what she says, it’s perfect:
Gary Wilson tells us that most boys begin seeking porn by the age of 10, due to a brain that is in a massive growth phase. We’re hunter-gatherers, so novelty seeking in the form of the next mate is a genetic imperative, and it releases dopamine. This is hardwired into humans. When dopamine is released largely in relation to pornographic images, however, then the brain literally rewires itself, and all things associated with porn are sought: being alone, isolated, and voyeuristic; surprise, novelty, and shock; not to mention incessantly clicking a mouse.
Wilson explains that our brain’s reward system is designed to move us toward rewards that give us pleasure, like food and sex. But what happens when there’s too much dopamine in the system?
Think of the last time you ate too much. What happened? Did you binge on a great dinner and then have a big piece of dessert afterwards? If so, dopamine was building up in your brain so that you couldn’t read the satiation signal that said, “Stop, you’ve had enough.” Instead, you got into a cycle of wanting more, leading you to eat the entire desert. If you have to hoard a lot of food for a long winter’s nap, then you have to override the satiation signal, or if mating season only comes along once a year, then you’d better get busy. Since we’re supposedly civilized creatures, why do we keep overriding the satiation mechanism? In part, because we can, and when we do, addiction ensues.
When there’s too much dopamine buildup in the brain, a chemical called Delta Fos B accumulates in the reward circuit. This buildup alters the brain and promotes a cycle of binging and craving, and that’s what eventually leads to brain changes in addicts. For porn addicts the equation is that excess consumption of porn equals an excess production of dopamine-creating Delta Fos B, which leads to brain changes.
Reddit is an amazing place and I want to acknowledge Gary Wilson for leading this charge. His site Your Brain on Porn is an incredible place to learn and start recovering.
Fapstronauts as they call themselves (and there are over 14,000 of them) document their success and failures and pass on valuable information to those interested in wanting to break the spell. I wish I had a community like this when I was battling my addiction to porn, the support, and compassion. You can track your days of sobriety with a counter and instantly chat with others looking for support. I strongly suggest you get familiar with these sites.
As so many Fapstronauts can attest, the Porn Zombie can be stopped. It’s not easy , it’s a lot of hard work, but it can be done. One of the first techniques that George Collins taught me was to dis identify with this Porn Zombie or my porn brain, he had me start doing what we call dialoging where I talked to my Porn Brain.
Porn Brain was strong and here I was talking to this, what felt like an impenetrable force. At first I felt crazy, talking to myself, only to hear nothing in response. I said “this is nuts.” But when Porn Brain started to talk back, wow, that was powerful. I knew this guy was on to something. Engaging in these conversations with myself, one, gave me space between me and the addiction, two, I could see that I’m not the addiction and I’m not my mind, and three, I found an opportunity to experience who the real me was.
George calls it “being in your essence.” This was a relief because white knuckling it was not working for me. The dialog work, along with a number of other skills I learned helped me to unveil the mystery about Porn Brain, and how to help convert that porn energy into healthy, positive things in my life. I also learned about the real F word Fun, something I had lost the ability to have.
Life is amazing – the Porn Zombie groans no more.
Thank you for reading.
– is a deeply personal issue that everyone decides for himself. Sometimes the price is high, sometimes low. But this is not very important for life. Life is an interesting thing. And the price on Viagra – too.
