Chapter 12: What Am I Giving Up? — Absolutely Nothing
“So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” — John 8:36
This is the most important chapter in this book. If you understand what is written here — really understand it, not just intellectually but deep in the place where your fears live — you will be free. If you miss it, you will struggle. So read carefully. Read slowly. And if you need to, read it again.
The question every porn user asks when they contemplate quitting is: What am I giving up?
It seems like a reasonable question. After all, you’ve been using porn for years, maybe decades. It’s been part of your life. Part of your routine. Part of how you cope. Part of how you relax. Part of how you deal with stress, boredom, loneliness, insomnia, anxiety. It feels like you’re being asked to surrender something — to make a sacrifice — to give up a companion, a comfort, a crutch.
This feeling is so strong, so deeply embedded, that it keeps millions of people trapped. They want to quit. They know they should quit. They can list a hundred reasons to quit. But underneath all the logic, there is this gnawing fear: My life will be worse without it. There will be a hole. I will be deprived.
Let me say this as plainly as I can:
You are giving up absolutely nothing.
Not “almost nothing.” Not “very little.” Not “less than you think.”
Nothing.
And until you understand this — not with your intellect but with your whole being — the fear will remain, and the fear is the only thing keeping you trapped.
The Nature of the Fear
Let’s examine the fear itself. What exactly are you afraid of losing?
Think about it. What does porn give you? What positive thing does it add to your life?
“Pleasure,” you might say. But we’ve already examined this. The “pleasure” of a porn session is simply the temporary relief of a craving that porn itself created. A non-user sitting in the same room, at the same time, with the same life circumstances, does not feel deprived. They don’t feel like something is missing. The only reason you feel that something is missing is that the little monster in your brain is creating a craving, and the craving feels like a void. Porn fills that void the way a tight shoe creates foot pain that is “relieved” when you take it off. You wouldn’t say the tight shoe gives you pleasure. You’d say it gives you pain and then offers you the temporary absence of that pain.
“Relaxation,” you might say. But we’ve examined this too. Porn doesn’t relax you. It creates a neurochemical rollercoaster — a dopamine spike followed by a crash, a brief opioid glow followed by prolactin-induced lethargy, and then the return of craving within hours. Your baseline stress level as a porn user is higher than it would be as a non-user. The “relaxation” you feel during a session is simply the temporary quieting of the additional stress that porn added to your life.
“Coping,” you might say. But we’ve seen that porn doesn’t help you cope with anything. It makes everything worse. Stress? Porn adds the stress of addiction, shame, secrecy, and self-contempt on top of whatever original stress you had. Loneliness? Porn deepens loneliness by isolating you and damaging your capacity for real intimacy. Boredom? Porn creates boredom by downregulating your ability to enjoy ordinary activities. Sadness? Porn adds guilt and self-loathing to whatever sadness was already there.
Strip away every illusion, and what has porn actually given you? What tangible, positive thing exists in your life because of pornography that would not exist without it?
The answer is nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Porn doesn’t fill a void. It creates one.
Make sure this is clear in your mind. Engrave it there. Tattoo it on the inside of your eyelids if you have to.
The void you feel — the emptiness, the restlessness, the sense that something is missing — that void was created by the first porn session and deepened by every subsequent one. It did not exist before porn entered your life. It will not exist after porn leaves your life. The void IS the addiction. And you are being asked to “give up” the very thing that manufactured it.
Fearfully and Wonderfully Made
The Psalmist writes:
“I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.” (Psalm 139:14)
Your body is a masterpiece of divine engineering. Consider just the brain: a hundred billion neurons, each connected to thousands of others, forming a network of such staggering complexity that the most powerful computers on earth cannot simulate even a fraction of it. This brain was designed — designed — to experience pleasure from real things: food, rest, exercise, beauty, love, work, music, nature, worship, sexual intimacy within marriage.
It was not designed to handle supernormal stimuli. It was not built to process an endless stream of novel sexual imagery at the click of a button. There is no precedent for it in all of human history. There is no biological preparation for it. When you flood this exquisitely calibrated system with stimulation it was never meant to handle, it breaks. Not dramatically — not like a bone snapping — but slowly, insidiously, like a river eroding a canyon. The fail-safe mechanisms kick in: tolerance, desensitization, withdrawal. These are your body’s warning systems, screaming at you that something is wrong.
If God had intended you to handle this kind of stimulation, He would have equipped you for it. He didn’t. The fact that your brain rebels against it — the fact that tolerance develops, that receptors downregulate, that the prefrontal cortex weakens, that you need more and more extreme content to achieve the same effect — these are not bugs in the system. They are features. They are alarms. They are your body saying, in the only language it has: This is not what I was made for. Stop.
You are fearfully and wonderfully made. And the wonderful machinery of your brain wants to return to its intended function. All you have to do is stop pouring sand into the gears.
The Gains Are Enormous
Now let us flip the question. Instead of asking “What am I giving up?” — which we have established is nothing — let us ask: “What am I gaining?”
Here is a partial list. I say “partial” because former users consistently report that the gains exceed what any list can capture.
The Return of Confidence and Courage
Porn erodes confidence like acid. Every secret session, every lie, every furtive glance at a screen chips away at your self-respect. You begin to see yourself as weak, pathetic, out of control. You avoid eye contact. You feel like a fraud. You wonder if people can tell. This low-grade shame becomes so normal that you forget what confidence feels like.
When you quit, the shame evaporates. Not gradually — surprisingly quickly. Within days, you begin to feel… clean. Lighter. You can look people in the eye. You can speak with authority. You feel like yourself again — or perhaps like yourself for the first time. Former users describe this as one of the most profound and immediate benefits of quitting.
Freedom from Slavery
Right now, you are not free. You are controlled by a craving. It dictates when you wake up, when you go to bed, how you spend your evenings, what you do when you’re alone. You have arranged your life around feeding the monster. You may not realize how much of your mental energy goes to managing the addiction — planning sessions, hiding evidence, calculating when your next opportunity will come, feeling the pull during meetings and conversations, fighting the urge at inappropriate times.
When the monster dies, all of that vanishes. The mental space that was occupied by the addiction is suddenly, gloriously, empty. Available. Free. You can fill it with whatever you want — or leave it empty and simply enjoy the peace.
This is freedom. Real freedom. Not the “freedom” to consume whatever you want — that was never freedom; that was slavery wearing a mask. Real freedom: the ability to live your life without a parasite directing your steps.
No More Dark Shadows
Every user lives with a shadow at the back of their mind. A background anxiety. A fear of being discovered. A dread of the next relapse. A vague, constant sense that something is wrong with them, that they are broken, that they are the only ones who struggle this way.
The shadow lifts when you quit. And you realize, perhaps for the first time, how much mental and emotional energy was being consumed by carrying it.
No More Self-Contempt
This may be the most painful cost of addiction: the way you feel about yourself. The self-loathing after a session. The disgust. The broken promises to yourself. The sense that you are fundamentally flawed, weak, pathetic.
This is not who you are. This is what the addiction has made you feel. When the addiction dies, the self-contempt dies with it. In its place grows something you may have forgotten was possible: genuine self-respect. Not arrogance. Not pride. Simply the quiet knowledge that you are living with integrity — that your private life matches your public life — that you have nothing to hide.
Better Relationships
Porn poisons relationships in ways both obvious and subtle. It creates unrealistic expectations of partners. It reduces emotional intimacy by providing a counterfeit substitute. It breeds secrecy and dishonesty. It diminishes sexual responsiveness with real partners. It generates guilt that manifests as irritability, withdrawal, or overcompensation.
When you quit, your relationships begin to heal. You become more present, more emotionally available, more genuinely interested in the people around you. Sexual intimacy with your spouse improves — not just physically but emotionally. You have more to give because less is being stolen.
More Energy, Better Concentration, Genuine Capacity for Pleasure
We covered these in detail in the previous chapter. The neurochemical recovery from quitting restores your brain’s capacity to concentrate, to feel energized, and to experience genuine enjoyment from ordinary activities. Life gets its color back.
The Cumulative Effect
Add all of this together. Confidence, freedom, peace of mind, self-respect, better relationships, more energy, sharper focus, the ability to enjoy life — and the absence of shame, secrecy, self-contempt, slavery, fog, lethargy, and fear.
This is not a marginal improvement. This is a transformation. Former users consistently rank quitting among the best decisions of their lives. Many say it was the best decision, after coming to faith.
And the question you’ve been asking — “What am I giving up?” — suddenly looks absurd. You are giving up a disease and gaining health. You are giving up chains and gaining freedom. You are giving up a counterfeit and gaining the real thing.
The Gospel Parallel
If you are a Christian, you should recognize this pattern. It is the pattern of the Gospel itself.
What do you “give up” when you come to Jesus? Your sin. Your guilt. Your self-destruction. Your futile attempts to save yourself. Your bondage to the Law. Your slavery to death.
Is that a sacrifice? Is the prisoner “sacrificing” his chains when the governor issues a pardon? Is the sick man “sacrificing” his disease when the doctor provides a cure? Is the drowning man “sacrificing” the water in his lungs when someone pulls him to shore?
Of course not. That’s absurd. You don’t mourn the loss of what was killing you. You celebrate your deliverance from it.
“So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” (John 8:36)
Jesus doesn’t ask you to sacrifice something good. He is taking from you something that is destroying you and giving you something infinitely better. The transaction is so lopsided in your favor that it barely qualifies as a transaction at all.
And yet people resist. People walk away. Just like the rich young ruler.
The Rich Young Ruler
In Mark 10:17-22, a rich young man approaches Jesus and asks what he must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus tells him to sell his possessions and follow Him. The young man goes away sad, “for he had great possessions.”
Generations of readers have sympathized with this man. “That’s such a hard thing Jesus asked!” But think about it. Jesus was offering him treasure in heaven. He was offering him eternal life. He was offering him the privilege of walking with the Son of God. He was offering him everything.
And the young man turned it down because he couldn’t let go of money.
Was the money worth more than what Jesus offered? Obviously not. Was the young man making a rational decision? Obviously not. He was making a decision distorted by brainwashing — by the cultural and psychological conditioning that had taught him that wealth was the most valuable thing in the world, that giving it up would be an unbearable deprivation.
The brainwashing blinded him. He couldn’t see that what he was clinging to was worthless compared to what was being offered. He walked away from infinite treasure because he couldn’t release his grip on finite trinkets.
Porn users are in exactly the same position. The brainwashing says: “Porn is valuable. Porn gives you something. Life without porn will be gray and deprived.” And so they cling to it, unable to see that what they’re clinging to is poison, and what they’re being offered — freedom, health, genuine pleasure, self-respect, real relationships — is worth infinitely more.
Don’t be the rich young ruler. Don’t walk away from freedom because you can’t let go of chains. The chains are worthless. The freedom is priceless.
But What About the Genuine Pleasure?
Someone reading this might object: “Okay, I understand that most of the ‘benefits’ of porn are illusory. But surely there is some genuine physical pleasure involved. The orgasm itself is real, isn’t it?”
Let’s address this directly.
Yes, orgasm is a real physical experience. But you are not giving up orgasm by quitting porn. You are giving up porn-induced orgasm — the kind achieved through artificial stimulation while staring at a screen.
What you gain in return is the recovery of your sexual responsiveness to real intimacy. Many porn users suffer from some degree of porn-induced sexual dysfunction — difficulty achieving or maintaining arousal with a real partner, difficulty reaching orgasm without pornographic imagery, reduced sensation, emotional disconnection during sex. These problems reverse when porn use ends.
So even in the narrowest physical sense, you are not giving up pleasure. You are trading a degraded, artificial, shame-soaked version of it for the real thing — the kind that comes with genuine connection, emotional presence, and no guilt whatsoever.
And for those who are single or in a season without sexual intimacy: the restless sexual energy you currently waste on porn is energy that, when redirected, fuels creativity, ambition, social connection, and spiritual vitality. You will not be climbing the walls. You will feel more alive, not less.
The Fear Is the Only Enemy
Let me return to where we began.
Porn is difficult to quit not because it provides something valuable, but because of fear. Fear that you’ll be deprived. Fear that life will be joyless. Fear that you won’t be able to cope. Fear that you’ll be different from everyone else, sitting in the corner at the party while everyone else is having fun.
Every one of these fears is a lie. They are the echoes of brainwashing, nothing more. They have no substance. When you examine them in the light — as we have been doing throughout this book — they evaporate.
The non-user does not feel deprived. Their life is not joyless. They cope just fine. They are not sitting in a corner. They are fully alive, fully present, fully capable of enjoying the genuine pleasures of life.
And that is what you are becoming. Not someone who has given something up. Someone who has been set free.
“For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” (Galatians 5:1)
The Declaration
So let us make the declaration that is the heart of this entire method:
There is nothing to give up.
There is no genuine pleasure that will be lost. There is no coping mechanism that will be missed. There is no benefit — none, zero — that porn provides which will not be more than replaced by the gains of freedom.
You are not making a sacrifice. You are escaping a trap.
You are not losing a friend. You are killing a parasite.
You are not surrendering a pleasure. You are recovering the capacity for all pleasures.
You are not giving up anything. You are gaining everything.
When you see this — really see it — the fear dissolves. And when the fear dissolves, quitting is not just easy. It is joyful. It is the best decision you have ever made.
And you will look back, as thousands of former users have looked back, and you will say: “I cannot believe I was ever afraid of this. I cannot believe I waited so long. I cannot believe I ever thought that thing was worth keeping.”
A Meditation
Consider the prisoner who has lived in a dark cell for twenty years. One day, the door swings open. The guard says, “You’re free to go.”
Does the prisoner say, “But what about my cell? I’ve grown attached to it. The walls are familiar. The darkness is comfortable. What if I can’t handle the sunlight?”
Some prisoners do say this. It’s called institutionalization. And it is profoundly sad. But it doesn’t make the cell a good place. It doesn’t make the darkness a gift. It means the prison has so distorted the prisoner’s mind that he can no longer recognize freedom as freedom.
The cell is not your friend. The darkness is not your comfort. The chains are not your security. They are a prison, and the door is open, and the sunlight is real, and you have nothing — nothing — to lose by walking through it.
Lord Jesus, You who came to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners — open my eyes to see that my chains are worthless, that my cell is not my home, that the sunlight beyond the door is not something to fear but something to run toward. Take from me what is killing me and give me what You have promised: life, and life abundantly. You have set me free. Help me to believe it. Amen.