Block it at the device level on every screen you own tonight, and give the passcode to someone else so you can't quietly undo it at midnight. Then tell one person. Those two moves do more in a day than a month of resolving to be better. If nothing shifts over a few weeks, that's the point to find a therapist rather than to try harder.
What you're actually dealing with
Worth ten minutes before you start, because the internet will sell you two wrong stories about this.
The first is that you have a recognised addiction. You may not. A review in the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law puts it plainly: ["the concept of a sexual addiction is not included in the DSM-5, either as a diagnosis or an emerging measure and model."](https://jaapl.org/content/50/4/552) What is recognised is compulsive sexual behaviour disorder in ICD-11, deliberately filed under impulse control disorders rather than alongside gambling and substance use. The working group explained why in World Psychiatry: ["a relatively conservative position has been recommended, recognizing that we do not yet have definitive information on whether the processes involved in the development and maintenance of the disorder are equivalent to those observed in substance use disorders, gambling and gaming."](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5775124/)
The second wrong story is that any use at all is a problem. The ICD-11 entry rules that out. Distress ["entirely related to moral judgments and disapproval about sexual impulses, urges, or behaviours is not sufficient"](https://www.findacode.com/icd-11/code-1630268048.html) to meet the criteria, and people with high sexual interest "who do not exhibit impaired control over their sexual behaviour and significant distress or impairment in functioning should not be diagnosed."
Hold both halves of the research at once. A 2015 study in Archives of Sexual Behavior found religiosity and moral disapproval strongly predicted *perceived* addiction ["while being unrelated to actual levels of use among pornography consumers."](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24519108/) But in a nationally representative sample of Polish adults, ["frequency of pornography use was the strongest predictor of both self-perceived addiction and problematic pornography use"](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31818724/), and religiosity didn't predict self-perceived addiction at all. Anyone telling you it's all religious guilt is as wrong as anyone telling you every use is an addiction.
The useful question is smaller. Is this costing you sleep, money, work, or the person you live with, and have you tried to stop and failed? If you can't tell yet, [is my porn use a problem](/guides/pornography/is-my-porn-use-a-problem) is built for that fork.
Tonight, in about twenty minutes
Do these in order. Setting one block today is enough. You don't have to do all of it at once.
- **Turn on content restrictions on your phone.** iOS calls it Screen Time, Android does it through Family Link. It blocks at the operating-system level rather than in one app, so it survives you switching browsers at 1am.
- **Give the passcode away.** Set it, have someone else type it, and don't watch. A block you can lift in eight seconds is a speed bump you've agreed to ignore.
- **Do the laptop, the tablet and the old phone in the drawer.** People rebuild access on the device they forgot about, usually inside the first fortnight. [Blocking on every device](/guides/pornography/blocking-porn-on-every-device) has the full stack.
- **Clear the paths in.** History, saved sites, autofill, any subscription with a card attached, and the social accounts that deliver it without you searching.
- **Name the hour and fill it.** Almost everyone has one. Late, alone, tired, house quiet. Decide now what happens in that hour instead, and give it a start time.
The door matters more than the resolve. Take it away, then have something ready to do while the urge passes.
If you'd rather not administer that, [Shield](/shield) is the part of Renovyn that holds it across phone and laptop. A passcode held by a friend does the same job for nothing.
The one person
The secret is part of the pattern. Saying it out loud is part of the change.
You need one contact. Not a whole confession tour. Pick someone who won't panic and won't lecture, and send a message today that says roughly this: *I'm trying to stop using porn. I'm not asking you to do anything except pick up if I text you late.* That's the whole ask.
Agree what you'll send when you're mid-urge, so you aren't composing a paragraph in the worst ten minutes of the day. Agree too that telling them afterwards is allowed. A contact you can only message when you're winning is a contact you stop messaging.
Getting real help in the UK, honestly
Here's what nobody tells you. There is essentially no NHS pathway for this. An NHS sexual health service in Oxfordshire says it outright: ["We are not able to offer services for sexual addiction and sexual compulsion problems, including porn use."](https://www.sexualhealthoxfordshire.nhs.uk/services/psychosexual-therapy/sex-addiction/) It signposts outward instead.
Which drops you into a private market with no statutory gatekeeper. In the UK, "counsellor" and "psychotherapist" are not protected titles. The Professional Standards Authority says so: ["Psychotherapists are not regulated by law, but can choose to join an Accredited Register."](https://www.professionalstandards.org.uk/practitioners/psychotherapist) Anyone can print either word on a website tomorrow.
So check before you pay anyone. Ask which register they're on, look them up on it yourself instead of trusting a logo, and check the Professional Standards Authority has accredited that register. Then ask whether their approach treats any porn use as the problem. If it does and that isn't what you believe, keep looking.
On what therapy delivers, the honest version: a 2025 meta-analysis of 20 studies and 2,021 participants found people in psychotherapy, mostly cognitive behavioural therapy and acceptance and commitment therapy, ["improved significantly more than controls on PPU, frequency/duration of pornography use, and sexual compulsivity, with large effect sizes"](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40126561/), while noting "these findings are limited by methodological issues, including the high risk of bias identified." Evidence-based, then. Not proven.
You're not unusual for finding help hard to reach either. Across 42 countries and 82,243 people, ["only 4-10% of individuals in the PPU+ group had ever sought treatment"](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38413365/).
Fellowships, and the difference that matters
Free, and mostly online now. They differ on one thing that will decide whether the room works for you: who defines sobriety.
**Sex Addicts Anonymous** hands that to you. Their own programme says "it is necessary for each member to define his or her own abstinence", worked through three circles you draw with a sponsor. The UK helpline is 0800 917 8497.
**Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous** covers a wider range, including romantic obsession, fantasy, and the avoidant side, which they call sexual and emotional anorexia. Meetings run in person across the UK and online.
**Sexaholics Anonymous** does not let you define it. Its published sobriety definition is fixed: no sex outside marriage, no masturbation for anyone, and ["the term 'spouse' refers to one's partner in a marriage between a man and a woman."](https://www.sa.org/) That excludes a lot of people by design, and you deserve to know before you walk into the room. Read any fellowship's own sobriety page first. [Picking between SAA, SLAA and therapy](/guides/pornography/saa-slaa-or-therapy-picking-support) goes through the differences.
When it goes wrong
It probably will, at least once, and the hour after matters more than the episode did. Shame reliably triggers the next one, so shorten the gap between what happened and telling someone. [You watched again, what now](/guides/pornography/you-watched-again-what-now) is the piece for that night.
If you're somewhere darker than frustrated, Samaritans is 116 123, any hour, any reason.
Common questions
**Is porn addiction real?** It isn't a DSM-5 diagnosis. Compulsive sexual behaviour disorder is a real ICD-11 diagnosis under impulse control disorders, and it requires impaired control plus genuine harm to your life. Distress that comes only from disapproving of the behaviour doesn't meet the bar.
**How long does it take to stop?** There's no reliable timeline, and anyone quoting you a fixed number of days is quoting a forum rather than research. What people do report is that the difficulty clusters around specific hours rather than spreading evenly across the day.
**Will blocking software fix this on its own?** No. It removes the easy path and buys you the ten minutes in which most of this gets decided. What changes the pattern is what you put in those ten minutes, which is why [getting through the urge without watching](/guides/pornography/getting-through-the-urge-without-watching) is worth learning while you're calm.
Sources
- [Nassif et al., Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law](https://jaapl.org/content/50/4/552). Sexual addiction is not in the DSM-5 as a diagnosis or an emerging model.
- [ICD-11 compulsive sexual behaviour disorder entry](https://www.findacode.com/icd-11/code-1630268048.html). Moral distress alone does not meet the criteria, and high sexual interest without impaired control is not the disorder.
- [Psychotherapy meta-analysis, Journal of Behavioral Addictions, 2025](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40126561/). 20 studies, 2,021 participants, large effect sizes alongside a high risk of bias.
- [Professional Standards Authority](https://www.professionalstandards.org.uk/practitioners/psychotherapist). Psychotherapists are not regulated by law in the UK.
