Day: 140!
Today is 140 days without P, PMO, or MO (-1)!
What is the significance of this day? This officially beats my personal best since rejoining Reboot Nation back in November of 2020.
My prior personal best was 139 days, accomplished between November 6, 2020 and March 25, 2021. I had gone 19 days beyond my 120 day abstinence challenge at that time.
I've done longer streaks, having gone over 300 days between March 2019 and March 2020, when I began to slip back into old habits based on the pandemic and other issues. But during that time I had a lot of bad habits regarding p-subs related to social media.
After my previous best last March, I had an ambivalence toward p-use, and was toying with p-memories, and anticipated lapsing to them. I had been using ASMR videos to help sleep, and some weren't a very wise choice for me, and it 'awakened' urges I hadn't dealt with for a while... Needless to say, I lapsed on March 25th.
It has now taken me about 5x tries to beat my latest (90+1 day) abstinence challenge on September 2nd. But here we are, way past that now. I've only MO'd 1x during this current streak.
How do I feel?
I feel good about my abstinence, and count this time as a real recovery effort, despite recent struggles. Part of this is in remembering the whole reason why I rejoined RN to begin with. Also helpful was challenging certain lies I've believed that encourage p-use.
Early in August, I had been dealing with p-subs and edging on and off, and this had only increased (and became somewhat of a habit) in September.
But now I feel fine regarding this. For many nights now, I've either had no urges or easily dismissed urges to either behavior. I'm also no longer in that strange place of anticipating a lapse toward P, PMO, or MO.
Regardless, I'm going forward as a different person, and leaving behind a decades old struggle.