I will make it -- Looking forward to taking my life back

First_step_thousand_miles

Well-Known Member
I love it.

Seeing ladies as people first is one of the the greatest things about quitting porn.

Almost to a 30 days!
Yessir! Can't tell you how grateful I am for your support & encouragement throughout all this. We will both make it. I think my 100 days will roughly coincide with your 1yr! So psyched for us to reach our respective milestones
 
Hey guys -- This is my 2nd and last attempt (I only say last because I KNOW I will succeed). My first is documented here (https://forum.rebootnation.org/index.php?threads/22148/) as I want to be totally transparent, but wanted to start a new journal as psychologically feels better for me. You can read other threat if interested but quick background: I'm a 26M, have fapped since age 18. Got scared when last yr (25) I had sex for first time and could barely get it up unless I really drove up the fantasy in my mind and found YBOP (and even then the erections were really poor). After listening to Gabe Deem's videos, I sort of tested the waters a few times but without any real commitment to stop before making the decision as of last month to 100% quit.

Reason for my relapse was I got a workout injury and felt like absolute crap -- I felt scared that even if I made it to the end of all this I wouldn't be able to even pull a girl. I've always equated working out as the ticket to my living a happy life. Some of this mindset change definitely needs to happen, so that even if I don't end up jacked up at the end, even losing 15-20lb of fat (via cardio) will help with my confidence a lot. Here are the list of reasons I want to do YBOP, I want to document this so I can take a hard look at them if I feel tempted:

1. Solving PIED (obviously). I want to look back and be content, with a woman I love and one day kids who look up to me and admire me. I don't want to end up a broken shell of a person years from now wondering 'what if'

2. Increasing my happiness. Little history here -- I'm more attuned to this I feel than many others as I went through a 6-8 month period of mild anxiety / depression when I was 23. Most of this was rooted in my close friends moving away and I didn't have a wide enough social circle so I felt very alone. My parents and my best friends were always there for me and helped me climb out. I solved this by making more new friends, reconnecting with old friends, making deeper connections with existing friends, and being the one to reach out (which most people reciprocated). While I definitely want to make more friends today and am in the process of tapping every avenue (work, family friends, events, etc) I'm in a good state here and I have ~15 or so friends who I call regularly (not living in my city) and have half a dozen I hang out with fairly regularly (trying to double this #).

  • So what do I mean here with increase my happiness? While I'm not anxious / depressed these days, what I have noticed and I've remarked this to my mom many times in the past 3-4yrs is how dull life seems to have gotten. I'm not unhappy but I don't feel that unbridled sense of happiness I remember even in the early days of college. Some of that is just entering the working world & the struggles that come with that (vs being a relatively carefree kid in high school or college) but some I think really is related to P use. YBOP mentions specifically that some of the changes that come out of this are music sounding better, food tasting better, feeling joy at a deeper level, enjoying life more. And many others have corroborated this as quitting P brought them out of depression! And why wouldn't it? We're flooding out addicted brains to stupid levels of dopamine with P so nothing else can compare. Other stuff like exercise, spending more time with friends, etc also helps but P is a big thing holding people back. I'm really looking forward to feeling that again, to be honest increasing my joy out of life is almost just as important as solving PIED.

3. Becoming a new man with more confidence & seizing life by the throat. Read tons of success stories where people post the 90 days have become more confident / more outgoing / more 'alpha' nonverbal (don't like this word much but it conveys what I mean) signals like eye contact, body language, etc. Along with losing my excess fat (I'm a 24.5 BMI right now, would love to get to 20 BMI or even stay at 24 but recomp the fat with muscle) I think this should help enormously with my confidence levels.

In my old thread, you can also see some more context (if interested) as to what sorts of changes I'm making this time around as I tackle this challenge of quitting P forever. Much, much love to those who supported me as my first step including: @SmokenMirrors @cookiemonster @Blondie. I will not let you all or myself down.
I love your confidence and motivation! You have some great goals and I wish you the best of luck!
 

First_step_thousand_miles

Well-Known Member
4 weeks -- Finished up 4 weeks end of day yesterday! P-free since May 15, lezgoooooo. My dong looked really shriveled up, feels like part of the flatline but weirdly I keep staring at girls when I go out (gotta stop this, never used to be like this while using P). Anyway, happy to make this milestone. 2 more days till I'm 1/3 of the way through the initial program!
 

Blondie

Respected Member
Fantastic job First Step on your first 4 weeks.

And have no worries about your junk, a shriveled dick is what we do best here!;) Just keep chugging along and it will climb that mast soon enough!

Keep at it, it's always worth it in the end.

And thanks for your encouragement a few days ago, much appreciated.
 

First_step_thousand_miles

Well-Known Member
Fantastic job First Step on your first 4 weeks.

And have no worries about your junk, a shriveled dick is what we do best here!;) Just keep chugging along and it will climb that mast soon enough!

Keep at it, it's always worth it in the end.

And thanks for your encouragement a few days ago, much appreciated.
Thanks my dude, more I learn & more I experience through this program the more I'm convinced that it's worth it as you say. Haha shriveled dick seems to be a sign that the reboot is working so not too worried, just a bit disconcerting as you might imagine

And of course my man, I've got your back. You've had mine without even asking since Day 1, it means the world to me
 

First_step_thousand_miles

Well-Known Member
Heya fellas -- on Day 33 today. Unfortunately caught Covid right as I came home so it's been a tough couple days recovering from that. Thankfully seem to be getting on the mend & seeing the other side. New drug called Paxlovid is helping a lot, look into it if any of y'all get Covid.

Anyway, I've felt pretty much 0 urges since I got Covid which makes sense & honestly is a silver lining. Had a dream last night about P again, was dreaming I was watching this video. Seriously, how weird is it that it wasn't a sex dream but rather a dream about watching porn (second dream I've had like this in the reboot so far)? Woke up and was glad I hadn't relapsed. Anyway, not much more to share. Just focused on recovering from Covid & getting back into the swing of working out. Stay strong fellas! Onwards to 6th week mark, the next milestone in this journey
 

First_step_thousand_miles

Well-Known Member
Keep rocking it First Step!

Sorry to hear about your Covid, but glad to hear it's getting better.

Stay strong my man and congrats on day 33.
Thankee my friend, feels wonderful to have made this step. Honestly feels like with every week it's getting easier and easier to escape the black hole of P. You know that study showing it takes 66 days to build a habit? Feels like the longer we build the habit of avoiding P, the stronger those neural pathways are getting. Anyway, just my random pontification -- gotta wait until at least Day 90-100 before getting too sure on all this. Glad to hear all the improvements you're going thru in your thread as well!!
 

First_step_thousand_miles

Well-Known Member
Dah 35 -- 5 week mark ends today. I feel kind of asexual rn haha, part of it is back home and quarantining and just not interacting with any girls for the past week. But I don't really feel urges for P at all. Sometimes I'll think about it and a scene might pop up but even that's just a mild urge. This reboot feels a little weird, my last time and the times I was just testing, within the first 1 week or two weeks there were massive urges. This time not so much. Willpower is HUUGE but even so it feels different. Anyone else have multiple attempts and feel a different cadence of urges / flatlines each time? Just curious

Anyway, onwards. This is part of the process and we must go on
 

First_step_thousand_miles

Well-Known Member
Something I've been meaning to write in this journal --

Grandpa just got out of the hospital, had a mild stroke but he is ok. This is not new, happened a week ago but it led to realize something. He's making a fuss about spending too much because when he passes, he wants to pass on what he has left on to me. My grandpa had a HARD, HARD life. I cannot understate this. He has been a farmer all his life on pretty poor land, not much rainfall. His mother died when he was 9. His own wife passed away when he was in his early 50s. His son dislikes him because he refused to partition away the entirety of the farm to him. My family is all he has left. He grew up poor, learning to pinch pennies at every opportunity as otherwise they wouldn't make it through another season.

This is bringing tears to my eyes writing this as even despite all of what he's been through, he is still thinking of his grandson. He didn't go through such brutal struggles for nothing, he went through so much & worked so hard so that his daughter (my mom) and his grandson wouldn't have to. He didn't go thru all this shit so that his grandson would be trapped in a porn addiction (what a 1st world problem) and be unable to live a happy life. For that matter, neither did my parents who both also grew up poor and they worked so hard to bring the family up to the middle class. They worked infinitely harder and led infinitely harder lives. What the hell am I doing addicted to this crap? I have a decent desk job, am able to eat out when I want, have free time for myself, etc. So blessed to have all of this, it's waaaaay better than anyone in my family has ever had

I owe it not just to myself, but all of them to fix this and live my best life. It's nothing less than what they want from me and it's by far the best way I can thank them for everything they've done. Frankly it would be spitting on their sacrifices & struggles right now for me to fail. I WILL succeed

The other thing is that I often think nostalgically about the past, when I had those carefree days in high school and college. This is natural to a large extent but I sometimes I do it too much. I'm realizing the reason is because I'm not happy with my life NOW. And it goes back to those things I wrote about in a previous post (mainly my body / body image and girls / PIED). I'm going to resolve this. It won't fix everything, but these are the two things that are keeping me clinging to the past vs. looking forward and being excited for the future. God bless all of us
 
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Blondie

Respected Member
He didn't go thru all this shit so that his grandson would be trapped in a porn addiction (what a 1st world problem) and be unable to live a happy life.
This my man - truth.

I sometimes use this thought pattern, not only for inspiration, but just for a kick in the nuts as well.

Let's face it, if you're starving to death or have no running water, you have no time to be a wanker. Period. Getting over porn and (OMG the withdrawals are so hard!) got nothing on that shit!

It's a good reminder when we're feeling tempted to get our heads out of our asses and see the big picture.

Keep killing it, I love your thinking here.

Best.
 
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