Using Blockers to Quit Porn

Blockers are an immediate and quick measure to quit porn. Imagine yourself on a deserted island without technology, and I can guarantee you won’t give in to temptation (you literally can’t!). But if temptation is always just a click away, you’ll give in eventually.

There are many different blockers out there. I tried a bunch of the free ones, and I didn’t find them very effective, but maybe they’ll work for you. I use SafeSurfer, and it works pretty well. (For the record, I don’t make any money if you choose this one, I just recommend it).

Making the Blocker Effective

In my resource guide, I make two recommendations for making blockers effective:

1. Set the password and pin to something you will never remember. Mash your keyboard with your palm and make that the password if you need to. You will need the password to modify your settings, but you don’t want to have it right at your fingertips to disable the blocker. Instead, write the password on a piece of paper or text document on a flash drive, then put it somewhere extremely inconvenient (maybe in a safe, or a drawer far away from your computer). That way you can access it when you need it, but it’s far enough away that you won’t use it when tempted. Block loopholes immediately. If anything you discover makes it past the filter, or you’ll be forever tempted to exploit that loophole.
2. At some point, you might accidentally find something that the filter missed (or worse, you may be actively looking for a loophole). No blocker is perfect. Take immediate advantage of SafeSurfer’s ability to add individual websites to the block list. Block it at the earliest opportunity and move on. As soon as you know there’s a way around it, you will be tempted to give in.

I cannot emphasize the importance of this method. If you go hardcore and choose to avoid technology entirely instead, then that’s great. But if you are like me, and technology is a requirement for your job, then the blocker is the best route.

Will this be inconvenient?

To an extent, yes. The blocker might accidentally block other sites, or you might have to use it to block NSFW social media sites. But what level of inconvenience are you willing to deal with? How far are you willing to go if it means breaking free for good?

If there are some social media sites with NSFW material that you refuse to give up, there’s always the option of using a SFW “instance” too. An instance is a different website that loads accesses the same content. For example, if you want to keep using reddit, but don’t like how easy it is to enable the NSFW option, you can use SafeReddit.com, which is nearly identical to reddit, but lacks anything NSFW.

Don’t settle for just one approach. Throw everything you have against your temptations. Implement blockers to quit porn, yes, but use other tools as well. If you want more tools you can implement to quit porn, get my free resource guide, 5 Tools to Finally Beat Porn.