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Sounds great. Well done on the milestone, and yes - always beware the gateways. With enough experimenting, we become aware of the lies we tell ourselves about these gateways and what we should and shouldn't allow ourselves.

Sounds tough, mate. The trials of real life - or a 1000% more-than-our-brain-can-handle dopamine drug pleasure spike. It's a tough battle. A book that's helped me recently is: Being Zen: Bringing Meditation to Life - Ezra Bayda. It's not all: get zen and meditate as the title suggests, but...

Hi all - thanks so much for the messages and support. I lapsed since my last message to ero-literature, but I am on day 6 of a fresh streak. Lapse was a good learning curve - I awoke really hungover (only after a couple of drinks!) and wanted to escape the pain. I had another hangover a couple...

Illness is a huge cue that can take us back to an addictive habit that was central in our lives for so long. Some advice from a course I'm listening to is fresh in my mind. I'll try to paraphrase it here: We're lifelong addicts. I don't say that to sound awful - but P affects us a certain way...

That's when we need to take stock, regroup, change something about our recovery plan and start again. The best time to plant a tree is 20years ago, the second best time is right now. Hope you're well, my friend.

So sorry, Guit. That sounds so tough. Will have to read more of your thread to remind myself of your longer story. Sounds like you had 6 months 'sober', but then the real life that you were escaping and numbing yourself too was too much to take. I've gotten there and have been knocked back to...

Hi all, Thanks for the support Squid, Guit and Phin. I've been in the to and fro since my last post, but have enjoyed some good 'clean' living in that time. I haven't looked at HCP for a while, but MO'ing with P in my head recently. behaviour on the weekend calls for a reset of my streak and...

Hope all is well, Phin. Thought the 18 principles post was great. Best

Hi all. I've been relapsing since the first of this month after a couple of months happily clean. I delayed coming back to the forum - so many things i wanted to analyze, combined with completely blocking the internet. Now a month of 'to and fro' has happened, so I just wanted to come here and...

Thanks, Phin. Yes, experiencing the same pattern over and over for years has taught me that much! Got this advice from a friend, made good sense: Don't feel guilty about taking the time for self-care. You don't have to be "productive" every day, and a day is much better spent like this than...

Good stuff, Phin. Noah Church speaks highly of Esther Perel's book Mating in Captivity. I'm reading it at the moment. You may want to ask him about it. I'm doing okay with fantasies at the moment. It took a lot of work, but now i can step back and say, 'Why would I want to objectify a person?'...

Thanks, Guitar! A follow up on my last post, a few days later I was home alone and didn't plan my time. I got low, bored and depressed. Must plan my time, especially when I'm low and don't feel like doing anything. It's not about keeping busy, it's about being intentional. I'm allowed to lie...

Thanks, guys. Things are going well and I coasted through my thirty-day goal to here - a porn free lifestyle. Just had a week 'holiday' (tricky during a lockdown - but a holiday of sorts). Good habits were hard to keep up away from home (eg exercise), no porn issues, but it definitely felt like...

Thanks, guitar! Day 25 and I'm feeling great. I'll stop counting days at the day-30 milestone and focus on a P-free life. This is just a personal preference borne out of my experience and knowing how effective counting is for me. EFT (tapping meditation) has been so effective for me getting...

Thanks a lot, guys! I haven't had a huge trigger day myself yet. That's what happens when you're bought in, Guitar. When you're not in a tug of war, there's no need to pull at anything! Wife went away for the weekend and I didn't want to post here - I didn't want to wrote a 'uh oh! I'm...

Thanks, Phin. So true. I won a struggle yesterday. It was quite an epiphany. Lots of stress in the day. Then a P memory appeared in my head - it was very appealing. The stress turned into a serious urge. (stress translates to urges for us PA's - and having P urges triples my stress levels)...

Thanks, Guitar! Just journaled the below and thought I’d share it. Might be a little disjointed. I’ve been in the porn back-and-forth for over 5 years, trying to stop but not giving it up, knowing it derails my life, career, relationships, etc. A low point for me includes missing a family...

Thanks, Gracie. I'll take a look at those resources. No serious urges yet. In fact, the P content that seemed so urgent that I decided I had no choice but to confess 2 weeks ago has faded. I had an amazingly 'normal' weekend - a walk with a friend, time and talks with the wife, and we went out...

on day 9 and working through an online recovery course. Mood and energy have dipped again. Having issues with my work productivity - so tired and unmotivated, it makes me so frustrated. I remember hearing the advice once - early days of reboot are like gear 1, we can't take too much on or expect...

Thanks, Phin. Very happy to say my mood and energy picked up in the afternoon. I did a EFT (tapping) meditation on an app I'm paying for. They talk about 'instant shifts' - I certainly didn't feel that. But after I did it, I calmly decided to do something I'd previously decided not to do. I went...