- Frugality & reduced consumption, even anti-consumption.
- Denial of the body desires:
> Eating less and fasting.
> Total Sexual abstinence: No masturbation and even refusal to want or desire sex.
> A tough physical regimen: strength training, swimming in ice cold water, cold exposure.
> Meditation and prayer.
> Refusal to eat sugar.
> Refusal to engage in consumerism. No videogames, technology, no TV, no superfluous objects like multiple cars.
> Living a simple tough rustic life.

Seeing that this forum is populated by the opposite of this population & behavior, namely sexually frustrated & hungry men with enormous appetites for all kinds of desires and consumption of modern tools/technology, this might be the wrong place to post. But I still want an opinion.

Do you think asceticism is...
- a cope for addicts?
- a cope for people who cannot get those things (women/sex or material goods)?

Or do you think it's a legitimate philosophy for men wanting to ascend to higher state of being?

Personally, I am drawn to asceticism because I'm deeply unsatisfied with the soft life we have in the West.
I can't stand many of the luxuries of the modern world, from technology, internet, videogames, pornography.
Even sex and the way lust for a woman works disgusts me because I realised its nothing more than a dopamine addiction.
I'm looking for a deeper more calming satisfaction that I may find through spirituality/religion/prayer or pain induced by cold water immersion and such.
The sense of peace & calm I get from these activities are so much satisfying that something pleasure based like sex with a woman I am attracted to.

Thoughts?