Trying Again at Age 27

Day 1

I managed to wake up and get out of bed without masturbating so far this morning. I did it by sleeping with an extra layer of pants, leaving my window open, and leaving my bedroom door open a crack so I'd be less tempted. It's still difficult, because I wake up with sexual tension, but it normal goes away throughout the hour.

My goal is to reduce masturbation, but I don't know what a healthy amount for me is yet. Abstaining isn't realistic, and makes relapse with porn more likely, but so does daily compulsive masturbation. Gotta find that balance. Some rebooters suggest not using your imagination to, so I will try that, but fantasizing is a habit for me that's a lot like using porn.

Throughout all this, I am trying to keep an open, curious, optimistic mindset and not give in to anxiety. That's been helping.
 

Tango

Member
Day

Still masturbating... every morning. I don't know how to stop.
The first thing I do every morning is to check if I had morning wood, check if it lasts when I stand up. Then I make my daily entry on my journal, I take a re-look at my streak, I realise that I have a long way to go and my problem is not fixed yet.

May be checking your journal and making an entry will help, then you could make it a habit to workout or meditate.
 

Tango

Member

I have problems with the mornings too. I have a long habit of edging/masturbating in the morning to porn fantasies and flashbacks. It's hard to get out of it but I must. Sometimes it happens on autopilot and I catch myself edging thinking about porn, especially when I'm tired/sleeping only for a few hours and waking up. I work in shifts and night shift is the hardest. But we must fight to overcome this.
Pick the morning to update your journal, let it be the first thing you do after waking up. After you get the success feeling of extending your streak, there is less chance that you will immediately follow it up with a relapse. Plus you start your day with a goal to engage with life and break this degrading habit.
 

Tango

Member
Day 0

I am currently recovering from another porn binge, and am feeling fatigued. I've been dealing with a strong addiction for about 7 years now, since about 2014. I've tried quitting lots of ways, and haven't found permanent recovery yet, but I'm not done trying. Here's another attempt.

What I'm doing now:
  • Keeping a bullet journal, where I
    • Track my urges, how long I did meditation to cope with them, and what I did to distract myself afterward.
    • Challenge thoughts that lead to depression
    • Organize my life, and overcome procrastination
  • Daily meditation for at least 5 to 10 minutes
  • Weekly therapy
I will keep it simple now to not overwhelm myself. Over time I'll throw in more positive habits so I can keep growing and improving. I hope I can overcome this.
I have gone through some anxiety and depression like period several years ago. I found physical exercise very helpful, especially the ones that are done outside, like running, walking, cycling, keep introducing novelty by mixing it up. And don't forget to take vacations (places with natural scenic beauty), go for sight seeing with your friends or family. Have a bonfire, one beer wouldn't hurt in bonfire. Vacations will help appreciate life, you truly begin to beat PMO only when you start to realise the value of so many other things in life, and there is very less room for PMO while sharing rooms with frnds or family.
 

Escapeandnevercomeback

Respected Member


Pick the morning to update your journal, let it be the first thing you do after waking up. After you get the success feeling of extending your streak, there is less chance that you will immediately follow it up with a relapse. Plus you start your day with a goal to engage with life and break this degrading habit.
I definitely need to jump out of the bed and do the first thing that I need to do. But sometimes I'm not in the mood when I'm tired :LOL: Anyway, quitting porn should be my no 1 priority and I need to do whatever it takes, even if it means getting up after 3 hours of sleep and feeling tired and stuff. Although with this energy pilling up from the streak, I'm definitely less tired after less sleep.
 
Day 0

My porn habit is getting me again. And in response to my porn problem, I'm getting anxious and overthinking things. This isn't helping... I need to quit, but also chill out about it and not complicate things. I'll just move on with life and check in here, keep it simple.

I need to work on my stress too. It's difficult to balance work, quitting porn, and trying to review math for school. Self-care is important so I will prioritize that. School will be much more doable once I get rid of this porn habit and manage my stress, otherwise I'm setting myself up to fail again.
 
Day 1

I've quit porn, and am sometimes feeling tempted to go back to it. That's my mindset. I am not trying to quit, I have already quit.

Some ladies' Tinder profiles have been tempting last night. Part of me would like to hook up, but it doesn't feel emotionally safe to me, so I'd prefer not to. I'll just stick to dating and look for an intimate relationship.
 
Day 0

I relapsed again this morning. Tinder was a trigger for me. Time to delete the app.

I feel powerless. Quitting seems impossible.
 
Day 1

I woke up and masturbated to porn fantasies. It feels like I'm running out of options, and I'm thinking of taking supplements to lower my sex drive.
 
Day 2

After going on my last porn binge a couple of days ago, I tried something I hadn't tried before: beginning my new streak with a 24 hour technology fast. That actually helped a lot. I'm working on building my discipline up again. I'm using the tech fast as a consequence for slips with technology overuse and porn, and I'm going to make myself start getting up on time again in the morning by denying myself my morning coffee if I oversleep. I have a feeling I'm going to be going in a good direction again. Simple self-discipline seems to be the key.
 
Day 4

Building self-discipline works. I'm getting out of bed on time, not sticking around in bed and masturbating, and I'm now on day 4 no porn. It's simple: just learn to parent myself. If I break the rules, impose a consequence. If I follow through on my plans, reward myself. All without judgement or harsh self-criticism.

I'm going to try to focus on studying more. I want to build good study habits now while I'm reviewing math before I go back to college.
 
Day 5

I'm staying on top of my recovery for the most part. I did masturbate today with some fantasies that weren't pornographic, but the whole thing didn't feel ideal either. I don't know if I should try to avoid masturbation entirely, but at least I'm not doing it every morning. Would I be better off I just stopped entirely for a while?

I'm feeling much more disciplined now. I'm staying on top of my math review, aiming to work on it 2 hours per day. I've also made time to go out on Saturday for a bit, but drinking just didn't feel right. It's not what I want to do, so I think I'll quit drinking.
 

Escapeandnevercomeback

Respected Member
When it comes to masturbation, it must be masturbation without porn. If you think about porn while doing it, it's part of the "porn behavior". It's how the addicted brain tries to obtain dopamine, the food that it loves. I personally don't like to do it because it has never been beneficial while being an addict. I would start masturbating without porn but masturbation without any form of porn doesn't release the same amount of dopamine for my addicted brain and eventually I would switch to thinking about porn while doing it and this defeats the purpose of staying out of my porn behavior. I don't know but it always feels to me that it's my brain's attempt to make me go back to porn. "Masturbate without porn, man, cause it's healthy" and then I switch to porn... I decided to stay away from it until I'm done with porn. Nobody dies if they don't masturbate.
 
Day 6

I've decided to just stop masturbation for a while, because it will often be a trigger for porn. I masturbated to fantasies about porn this morning, so I am disciplining myself by not consuming any media for 24 hours (except with others). Tomorrow morning I'll be able to read my news magazine again! I'm looking forward to it.

Staying on top of my studies, and making progress on life goals.
 
Day 0

Failed again. I'm going to start being more diligent about logging relapses in my journal and writing details about them. Also considering trying an accountability partner again.
 

Escapeandnevercomeback

Respected Member
Examining the relapses is actually a good idea. Write down what made you relapse and put that on the "Mistakes to avoid" list. Make an effort not to repeat that no matter how intense the itch gets.
 

Phineas 808

Moderator
Staff member
Moderator
Failed again. I'm going to start being more diligent about logging relapses in my journal and writing details about them.

This will be a very helpful thing to do. It will help you track what moments you're more susceptible, what moods you were in, and identify any habits that you can change to help you break any established patterns.

Personally, I journal here, but also keep a 'hard journal' I actually write in. This has served me over the years.

Best wishes!
 
Day 0

Ended up using porn again this morning. Later today though I had strong urges, and I thought: "this time, I'm not going to try to distract myself. I'm going to fully feel this urge and accept it." I spent about 45 minutes feeling the urge to PMO grow stronger, and weaken. Over time I saw shifts in my awareness: paying more attention to sounds in my environment, and I had shifts in my desires: I began to get hungry and want food. I had an insight then: PMO is fucking me so hard it makes me lose my appetite. I am seeing first hand how my reward system in my brain is messed up.

Maybe trying to distract myself all the time from urges does more hard than good. Sometimes paying attention to them for a long time can give insight.
 
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