Trying Again at Age 27

[Savagesauce]

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.

 

[Fappy]

sounds like a plan! its really good to keep a journal and wirte things down to keep them on your mind. but yeah, keep it simple, dont over analyse and stick to your plan

 

[Savagesauce]

Day 1

I'm doing fine so far today without porn. I still have problems with masturbating to fantasies of porn I used to watch. I don't know what to do about besides take a break from masturbation for a while, which seems impossible because of my high sex drive! It's just habit to do it every time after I wake up in the morning pretty much. Some articles online have suggested wearing multiple layers of clothing in bed to reduce temptation, which has helped a little bit, but I don't sleep as well. So I guess I'll try that again, and then use journaling and mindfulness to cope with urges. After that, I need to figure out what I will do to handle the sexual tension that comes from abstaining, because as mentioned, I have a very high sex drive.

 

[Savagesauce]

Day 2

I'm still in the habit of masturbating every morning, but at least I wasn't fantasizing about porn this time, but instead about real people. This habit eventually leads back to porn use, so it will help to change it. It's just so damn difficult.

I'm keeping on top of challenging my thoughts that lead to depression. A big cause of depressive thoughts is distorted, "all-or-nothing" thinking, thinking I can read other people's mind and predict the future, and jumping to negative conclusions about events. I'm more okay with uncertainty, and not knowing what other people think about me, and that my self worth doesn't depend on the judgments of others. I feel pretty good.

I'm also feeling more focused because of the bullet journal. My focus tends to be scattered on lots of different goals (I might have ADHD), and making sure I keep a written page with a bunch of goals and only prioritizing one short-term and long-term goal at a time helps. The long-term goal for me is going back to school and getting my degree in computer science or math, and the short-term goal is reviewing calculus so I'm ready for school again.

 

[Savagesauce]

Day 3

Going strong with not using porn! Compulsive masturbation in the morning is still a stubborn problem. I'm tracking my behavior in my journal to analyze it better. It looks like this habit is just me going on autopilot every morning because I'm not thinking clearly, with no pause. I'm going to try to throw a 1 minute pause before I give in and masturbate tomorrow, and then try to journal for 1 minute to distract myself. Baby steps.

Through bullet journaling, I'm getting a handle on my ADHD tendencies and realizing how sprawling and all over the place my mind is. This awareness has helped me find my focus. I'm putting my focus on reviewing math and getting ready to go back to college.

I'm also realizing how stress is affecting me, and making sure I take time to destress by doing some deep breathing and going for a walk, and not stringing too many intense activities together in my daily schedule.

 

[Savagesauce]

Day 4

I masturbated to fantasies of porn this morning. This habit of compulsive masturbation is extremely difficult to stop and don't know what to do. I may have to try leaving my window and blinds open, wearing multiple layers of clothing, and sleeping on top of my comforter so that I don't give into temptation right away. It's just that every morning when I wake up I am not thinking clearly, feel aroused, and go on autopilot. I notice that I tend to masturbate every morning around 6:30, so I will start setting my alarm for 6:30 in another room and plan to wake up every day at that time to reduce my odds of giving in. If I don't get a handle on this I can be headed toward a full relapse. I'm already part the way there with the porn fantasies.

 

[Savagesauce]

Day 5

Stubborn morning masturbation habit is stubborn. It seems like my key out of this habit will be getting up earlier, and getting out of bed quickly. I have set an alarm in another room of the house to help with this, so hopefully that goes smoothly tomorrow. I tend to masturbate every morning around 6:30, so getting up at 6:15 might help me avoid that. I've tried this strategy this morning, but I lost sleep last night because of an eczema attack where I got incredibly itchy. I had to eventually take an antihistamine, and didn't fall asleep until after 1pm. Next time this happens and I end up needing more sleep I will adjust my alarm forward instead of turning it off, making sure I don't stick around in bed in the morning, no matter what situation arises.

 

[Fappy]

Yeah good idea, get up and get moving and get your hands away from your cock! The longer you lie around in bed, the more danger youre in!

 

[Savagesauce]

Day 0 (56 pts)

I find a streak reset to be demotivating, so I am going to try an idea to keep motivation up. In my recovery, I am going to "keep score".

• Any day where I at least learn something from my mistakes and write it down is worth 1 point.
• A day where I abstain from porn is worth 10 points.
• A day free of masturbation is 100 points.
• Achieving a recovery milestone is 1000 points.

Going from having a streak back to zero is discouraging, and doesn't reflect the reality that every day where you learn something is a day where you're improving, even if you have setbacks.

I'm at 56 points right now since I started "keeping" score, because I achieved 5 days without porn, and every day I learned something. I earned another point today because I wrote about my relapse and am learning from it.

I think moving too quickly in changing my sexual habits, being unrealistic and unpragmatic led to my setback. I successfully woke up at 5:30am this morning and got out of bed without masturbating, and then a few minutes later I went into the other room, grabbed my phone, and took it back into bed to watch porn. I woke up aroused, and wasn't thinking clearly. Giving up on porn and masturbation together can also lead to an all-or-nothing mindset where I tell myself, if I'm going to masturbate, it may as well be to porn. Maybe just cutting out porn for now is a better idea instead of being perfectionist. I can be content for a while just masturbating less, because when I just cut out porn I go from doing it multiple times a day to once a day or less. And instead of letting my fantasies roam wild while I masturbate and entertaining fantasies about porn, I'll try keeping a counter, and keep track of the times where I just focus on sensations instead of fantasizing. I'll try to let go of fantasy, and cut myself some slack if the fantasies are realistic and not pornographic.

 

[Fappy]

OK, so clearly morning time upon waking up is your danger zone (and not in the cool Top Gun meaning of the word). Its fucked you up again, even with the phone being in another room, you went into that room and got it for the purpose of looking at porn. Youre going to really have to focus on this morning time if you want to make progress. Your system is good, the points system is a little overcomplicated for me, but whatever you gotta do. But for now, that tiny window of sleep-fog when you just wake up is what you need to fight first.

 

[Savagesauce]

OK, so clearly morning time upon waking up is your danger zone (and not in the cool Top Gun meaning of the word). Its fucked you up again, even with the phone being in another room, you went into that room and got it for the purpose of looking at porn. Youre going to really have to focus on this morning time if you want to make progress. Your system is good, the points system is a little overcomplicated for me, but whatever you gotta do. But for now, that tiny window of sleep-fog when you just wake up is what you need to fight first.

Yeah, points are over-complicated. Let's just count total clean days instead.

Let's try this tomorrow morning: get out of bed ASAP, and then walk around the block outside.

 

[Savagesauce]

Total Clean Days: 5 no PMO

I used porn again this morning and last night. I've fallen back into my unhealthy patterns a bit and relapsed. It started with watching porn last evening, which was probably triggered by stress: I normally work swing shift, and evenings before my morning shifts are stressful. Going for a walk tends to relieve stress, so maybe going on walks after work will help.

 

[Fappy]

OK, well, as soon as you feel you are getting stressed do something else immediately. PMO will cause you more stress than working hours.

 

[Savagesauce]

Day 1

• 5 total days no PMO since starting this journal
• No PMO this morning
• MO this morning

I woke up this morning and still ended up masturbating again. I'm going keep my focus though on not using porn.

I did an exercise on Recovery Nation where I list my life values. Writing out the values that went into my decisions to use porn was illuminating, and I will see if there are ways I can meet these values without porn. Those values are: experiencing euphoria, altered states of consciousness, losing my sense of self, sexual pleasure, orgasm, being excited, letting go of control, not fighting myself, and seeing beautiful women. I tend to want to repress my sexual desires that lead to using porn, which seems to lead to a sort of sexual bulimia, with binges and purges. It's hard to admit to myself, and maybe it's my religious upbringing that conditioned me, but I really value orgasm and sexual pleasure, and I really like seeing pretty women. Acknowledging this, it's going to be difficult to take a break from masturbating. It seems unrealistic at this point, whereas just giving up porn does seem realistic. I can let go of masturbation and do it less though, so maybe that's what I will try to do.

 

[Dantes]

Great effort! Please keep posting here, even if you would relapse again. Keeping yourself accountible for PMOing makes you more mindful of the bad habit and you'll remind yourself more easily upon relapsing that this isn't good. Keep making observations on what works and what doesn't and try to distract your thoughts away from porn. Best of luck in your journey!

 

[Savagesauce]

Day 0

• 5 days no PMO since starting this journal
• PMO last evening and this morning

I relapsed again. I was doing some work out of Recovery Workshop this morning, and I think I am beginning to actually understand why. I think my religious upbringing may something to do with it, as I have long suspected. There is a dissociation between my porn-using identity, and my regular day-to-day identity, an addict's double-personality. One thing that drives this divide between the two identities is not bringing my desire to intimacy into my sexual life, but also in my regular life I repress my desire for sexual pleasure and attraction by not actively valuing it. In truth, desire and attraction are important to me as a biological being with a sex drive, and part of me still unconsciously believes that I shouldn't value sex, and just see it as an "animal desire" that isn't part of my "higher self". This fuel the split in my identities, and repression tends to lead to sexual acting out.

So what to I do about my sexual repression? Well, for one, it will not be solved by acting out with porn. That isn't authentic sexual desire. I want to experience attraction and pleasure with real people. As much as I dislike dating apps and the process of online dating, it appears to be one of my more realistic options for connecting with women during COVID. I would love to attend some offline groups too, but I'm going to also do some online dating even if it isn't my ideal. A lot of rebooters warn about online dating, so if it's a dangerous and slippery slope, I wonder then, what's a realistic option for meeting women during this pandemic?

 

[Fappy]

Again with the morning thing! Youve really gotta get that under control. You have an urge to fap in the morning and you know it, so thats the easiest one to overcome!

 

[Savagesauce]

Day 0

It's been a busy and stressful couple of days at work. I haven't check in a couple of days. My morning routine is still not under control. It's not easy to overcome. Tomorrow morning, I'm going to try getting out of bed as soon as possible and listen to music instead of fapping.

 

[Escapeandnevercomeback]

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.

 

[Savagesauce]

Day

Still masturbating... every morning. I don't know how to stop.