As far as I understand, Vipassana meditation trains attention and equanimity. Both sound as great skills to have in order to battle addictions. However, after having attended a 10-day Vipassana course, I still don't fully understand how this technique can be applied to overcome a strong addiction to *FMO and **PMO. I mean, the technique, as teached in the 10-day course, pretty much trains you to be equanimously aware of your breath and the physical sensations in your body through continuous body scans. However, I'm left clueless about how that technique can be somehow generalized and applied in the concrete case of facing strong, compulsive cravings of PMO/FMO. In fact, the 10-day retreat forced me to go in such an abrupt, extreme cold-turkey abstinence that the cravings started to build up and during the middle and end of the course I was multiple times overpowered by the urge to fantasize, during the breaks and even during the meditation sessions. Thinking in hindsight, the urges to fantasize became stronger because in those days I experienced a lot of frustration due to reasons which had nothing to do with sex. I experienced back pain and also annoying breathing problems due to nasal congestion, and I guess that made me lose motivation and made me vulnerable to the urges to fantasize. I want to make clear though that I didn't masturbate nor watched porn during the whole retreat, because it was pretty much impossible due to the inexistent privacy (I was surrounded by people all the time, and the bathrooms were not very private either), and of course I didn't have access to any electronic device. So I didn't break the shila, unless you consider sexual fantasies as shila breaking.
After I came back from the retreat, I was immediately and magnetically drawn back to PMO/FMO, overpowered by the urges built up by my last day's constant sexual fantasies. On the bright side, though, this retreat was an excellent opportunity to learn more about myself and showed me how impressively strong my addiction to FMO/PMO is. In fact, even in a retreat environment and deprived of privacy and access to internet, I am still very vulnerable to sexual fantasies.
So, I would be very grateful of any practical advices on how to apply Vipassana to overcome PMO/FMO addiction. Has any body faced this addiction and successfully managed to break free from it by applying Vipassana? Is Vipassana meditation enough to overcome the addiction or should I resort to other meditation techniques, or other life style changes for that matter? Any practical tips/suggestions/help will be deeply appreciated.
*FMO = Fantasizing, Masturbation and Orgasm
**PMO = Pornography, Masturbation and Orgasm
I borrowed these handy accronyms from the NoFap community.
