It's not quite that simple. Pornography actually acts fairly similar to drugs and alcohol, in that it can be physiologically addicting. No, you aren't ingesting addictive chemicals, but the body does start to "need" the endorphins that are released when a person masturbates (if they're really doing it a lot). People who have been heavily addicted to porn or masturbation have even been reported to have withdrawal effects similar to those a recovering drug addict would have. Sexual "addiction" isn't just an allegorical word to describe someone who's majorly horny all the time...it can be an actual addiction.

Keep watching, they're just trying to get through med-school

Get yourself a hobby such as gaming

Have heard it all before in other arenas.

If you want to stop something, stop it. No mystic elves are afoot, other than those that come with denying another temptation that came to be.

Granted, some may need help, but most can simply develop their own fortitude and kick these things in the proverbial ass.

I take it you have never struggled with an addiction?

OP, is it actually negatively impacting your life? If this is just a "guilty conscience" sort of thing, get over it. That's just dogma fucking with you and you'd be far better off finding a healthy way to interact with dogma than curing a pretend addiction.

And when I say negatively impacting, do you masturbate and look at porn instead of doing your work, engaging with your family, and engaging with your friends? If not, that's not an addiction. If a spouse or girlfriend is going to leave you for it then she may not be in touch with reality. If you have time invested in the relationship then the kindest thing you can do is quit making your problems into her problems (quit letting her find out about it, this is why I hate all the "confess your infidelity" stuff, it's just about the most selfish shit you can do, following up selfish with selfish by turning your angst into their angst and abdicating all your power to change the situation), i.e. rub your brain cells together and learn how to hide non-problems that stress her out.

If you have real addiction (and let me be clear, sex addiction has been removed from almost all diagnosing manuals and for good reason) then you need actual addiction treatment, not some pastor advising you to ring your computer monitor with pictures of your kids (cause seriously, if that shit works, you didn't have any kind of addiction).

You whack off because you're an animal, just like we all are. It's pretty common in primates, but a lot of mammals do it. Bats give themselves blowjobs. We're here because our ancestors had a high sex drive and the good genes to act on it. As for porn, many higher order primates have public sex and it increases sex drive in other group members, again, pretty normal.

So before you go wringing yourself out over this and convincing yourself you have a problem you need to assess what problem you really have. You may simply have a relationship problem or perspective problem.
There's no porn addiction in the DSM. Your issues sound rooted in religion and dogma.

Well, I knew it would only be a page or two before this started :P

What, mentions of sanity and medical science? Next time you get cancer I expect you to rely on dogma if you're rejecting science for addiction.

Well, now... it seems that you have a sore spot, there.

I am simply observing that, as usual, a porn-related thread has begun the rapid deterioration into an orgy of porn-defense, as executed by people with gigantic chips on their shoulders. I look forward to again hearing all of the reasons that my personal wish to avoid pornography makes me a vile mutation of humanity's evolution.

Kind of, I did.

I know it feels best, and is better for your self esteem, if you can do it yourself.

No-one was ever around to help people in the past, and what do you get now? Someone's big idea on how to make you this or that? Hell. I'd rather keep doing what I was doing if it wasn't hurting anyone, and he isn't! Maybe himself, but you learn from that. Did touching a flame hurt you, yes.. did it hurt your mom, no, not in the same way. You can point for another, but not do; knowledge always comes from inside the person.

Helpers are good, necessary at times, but sometimes deprive those they are trying to help. No idea here, but know what I did when I was worried, I put the brakes on.

You're a good guy, I'm not a mean one, but when someone is struggling, I don't think the easy out out solves anything. Sometimes you need to just face shit, defeat it, and move on.

If you have escaped this lesson, you are indeed lucky.

Basically yes, I do agree.

Get a women.
Solved my problem for about 4 years...and now she watches with me...

I think you might want to deal with that beam in your eye before you worry about the mote in mine. Rather than an "orgy" of defense I stated that what he's experiencing is biologically and medically normal and suggesting what he's experiencing probably doesn't meet the medical definition of "addiction".

I know it's du jour to call everything an addiction but not everything is and wanting to engage in behavior that doesn't cause you to neglect your responsibilities and ruin your life isn't actually an addiction. The DSM is how we diagnose mental problems, including addiction, guess what, porn addiction isn't in there and there's some pretty good reasons it's not.

If, on the other hand, he does have an addiction (a real one) of any kind, he needs actual medical help, not some cockamamie forum BS.

Don't you have any Porn Anonymous or Porn Rehab in there?

If it is a serious; like watching and masturbating anytime you want or doing it everyday and every minute, it would be considered as a serious addiction and probably you need some medical or physical help.

Anything excessive trait would be bad for health, same thing if your a game addict.

Caught in the pornado, huh? Yeah, i'm there myself, perhaps it doesn't help, but, You're not alone in it.

Hopefully you're a psychiatrist and are simply on the fence regarding porn addiction since there isn't enough study on the subject to classify it as an addiction within the DSM yet because in 1.5 years, my wife is going to obtain her license as a Physician Assistant and is actually looking at specializing in psych, and during their psych module, which just occurred two months ago, they went over sex and porn addiction. So you can quote all you like from the DSM because in a university setting, they're teaching this to students that will be practicing medicine in the near future.

You do however make valid points. I never said the experience or reaction to sexual/visual stimuli is bad. It is programmed into us to react to it naturally, and it's this impulse that makes the porn addition all the more severe. Essentially and biologically, there is absolutely nothing wrong with being turned on by visual stimuli, however it is the method of how this is occuring through the medium of porn in which it's being delivered that erases the natural physical reaction to somebody close to you and robs a person of this through mental/psychological slavery. How do I personally know this? Because after years and years of porn addiction, real-life interactions with women wouldn't stimulate me. Once I got rid of it, the natural stimulation returned.

Your point on whether this is a true addiction or not rings loudly though and I do thank you for making that point clear to the OP. If this is something that is destroying one's life, then yes it's something that someone needs help with. This is why I believe, again, even though there isn't enough evidence yet supporting that video gaming can be classified as an addiction, I fully believe that there are people severely addicted to it because it's destroying their lives, and if you've read some of the stories of the truly addicted, there are people that've played for 80hrs straight and died from it. No, you won't find it in the DSM and it's being hotly contested as to whether it's to be classfied in a book as an addiction, but the signs are all there, same as with porn.

I won't argue with you on whether or not you believe that you're more than a piece of flesh since from the sound of it, it appears you do not believe in anything spiritual. I've never been a prosletyzer and sure as heck won't start on a gog.com forum. To each his own. I just don't understand why you'd mock belief in two posts, and then quote one of Jesus's sayings in a reply to another post.

And though I do agree with your final comment that if the OP does indeed have an addiction they shouldn't be looking for help on a forum, if the OP doesn't trust anybody but people on a game forum on gog.com and felt this the best place to start getting a handle on something they feel is a serious problem in their life, he/she shouldn't be put down for it.