Reposting from the megathread since it's slow atm and wanted to share the good news!
I have some good news to report. I've made some headway in cutting porn out of my life. I haven't looked at it in days! I consider this some progress as I needed it to get off. So instead I'm using drawn smut as a substitute and I don't feel the same self-loathing for getting off to stuff I'd normally not be comfortable with. I've also cut down on getting off all together, down from every day to every 2-3 days, again progress!
Next up is to quit smoking/vaping and start incorporating some exercise into my life. I'm thinking about getting back into walking again as I used to do it a lot.
Not really. Becoming a writer and getting off to whatever you write isn't really an effective way to quit porn for most people, I wouldn't think. What writing smut can be instead is a way to reflect in a somewhat structured and absolutely creative way about what sex/porn/masturbation/fetishes/whatever actually mean to you — that's why I call it "meditative". It's a complete blank canvas with no-one to judge you but yourself, and what better way to unlearn your own brainworms about sex than by giving yourself that sort of a quiet space to confront them? So for instance the key themes in the story that I'm writing for myself are things like beauty, shame, self-acceptance, identity, and connection, because these are the sorts of topics which have impacted my own relationship to sexuality the most.
...But I guess I've just always been the type to hyper-psychoanalyze every facet of my own sexuality, and felt like most other people by comparison tend not to be nearly as interrogative of their own internalized attitudes to sex, even when a bit of introspection probably would do them good.
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O ye of little faith.