Simply stated, Gary Wilson changed my life. For reasons unknown, I had harbored a weakness for pornography from an early age. When Internet pornography came into existence, I found it all but impossible to resist. With a simple explanation of what was happening in the brain, I was able to gain perspective on the process and effectively counteract the cycle in which I had been trapped.
Now, in and of itself, deciphering this process was a major accomplishment on the part of Gary Wilson, but it doesn’t stop there. Gary Wilson saw fit to make this information readily available to others, and at no charge, via his website. Beyond that, he stood up to opposition from people that sought to mischaracterize his efforts as some sort of censorship.
One significant element of Gary Wilson’s work was that he didn’t seek to moralize the problem. Instead, it was presented as simple, factual data, which explained why pornography could be addictive and he left the moral aspect of the matter to the individual. I never felt that I was being preached at, or condemned to shame, and absent this effect, I was able to deal with the matter without feeling the need to become defensive. In my case, the effects were almost immediate; from the first time I read the information on Gary’s site, to the point where is began to break the yoke of porn addiction was effectively instantaneous. I had moments of relapse, but meaningful progress began as soon as I visited Gary’s site.
I mention this, only because it illustrates the power of accurate information. In my case, I had tried all sorts of approaches to combat the problem, but a simple explanation of how Dopamine works and how the decrease of Dopamine receptors occurs was enough to make sense of a phenomenon which had puzzled me for most of my life. In my case, anything even remotely pornographic seemed to alter my state of mind and I almost felt as if I was being led by pornography. That, the altered state of mind, was the enemy I fought. By understanding the role of Dopamine and Dopamine receptors in this process, I came to understand that this altered state of mind was an illusion caused by a reduction in Dopamine receptors. It was that simple, and it changed my life.