offaxis said:
I agree strongly with you about asking the right questions of yourself and your motivation for using porn. That I think is critical and very important. Why particular things attract you in that way and what you get from it or are otherwise missing in your life etc. Personally for me porn wasn't much of a reward ever. It was an avoidance and coping mechanism.
In my case I don't even know what the hell it was. When I first started as a 16 year old kid, it was for pleasure. It was tempting. Later on it became a habit and eventually an addiction. In the last years of my addiction I always hated myself for doing it, thinking that I look ridiculous while doing it and that it was a necessary evil given that I was single. But I never made the connection between my PMO habits and my lack of libido towards real women, even those hot ones that I actually desired and who sometimes showed interest in me. Gabe filled the biggest gap in my knowledge.
offaxis said:
I prefer to talk to my group friends IRL meetings etc. regularly to keep accountable. That will likely be part of my life now for many years ahead and I really value it.
I wish you the best of luck!
offaxis said:
If you're able to detach and do that then I applaud you. That is really great and I can imagine you feel free and unburdened. It is brilliant and I suspect you have worked long and hard to reach that point, it hasn't come from nowhere but from much effort and sometimes difficult learning experience.
The burden of porn is finally off my shoulders. I can hardly believe that I ever was an addict. Now I'm working on something else: the ability to stay on hard mode indefinitely, like saying that I want to go hard mode 6 months or a year if I wanted to and without effort and then be able to really do it if I really wanted to. Once I enter that mood and feel that level of control, my abilities will be limitless.
It's been difficult indeed. I never thought that it was possible be so cool and detached and uninterested when it comes to porn. But perhaps there are a few notable details in my history of porn use that helped me to arrive at this stage:
First I didn't become a regular user until the age of 16. Yes... internet came to my house as late as 2007 and I'm so happy about it! This delay was a blessing perhaps. This must have been a game changer. Previous to that I didn't PMO much due to the fact that porn was not available in my house except on cable TV, only from 1 AM to 5 AM and the TV was in the room where my parents slept. When my parents left, they took me with them, so there were very few occasions for me to watch it. Starting with the age of 14 and until 16 when I got internet, I literally PMOed only a couple of times (perhaps no more than 10 times in 2 years). Not enough to get wired to porn. These were still happy days. Girls in school, girls on the street looked great. Then the darkness came. But now I'm starting to go back to these days. I really am out of the dark again!
I discovered Nofap and its many benefits by myself as early as 2009. Didn't know if other guys did it and I thought I was a lunatic. At the time I didn't believe in what I was doing and I thought the bad I felt after PMO was due to an inherent weakness /sensitivity of mine and not due to porn being bad. At the time everyone spoke about how good it is and how normal it is and how everyone watches it and when I tried to talk to my high school classmates about Nopaf / No PMO I got ridiculed, deemed a weirdo and I thought that people generally feel good after watching porn, that only I need days and weeks of abstinence to recover, thinking that I have a weakness towards sex. I continued to try to quit MO / PMO nevertheless.
Although at the time I was too young and didn't have the strength and the will power to go more than 1-2 weeks, I more or less continued this trend until I discovered Gabe's channel. One day in November 2015, an unknown force within me told me to write the word porn on YouTube, with the express intention of learning more about it, about what it means to society and to other people. And surprise! I found Gabe's channel. Such a respectable channel followed by thousands of people, where Gabe was already dealing with the problem and his approach was based on the scientific method. Within minutes I knew that I was saved and felt such joy. It was the joy of a big discovery. But more than joy and happiness, it was a huge, limitless relief. A guarantee that new times will come. All of a sudden, after 8 years, I had the answers that I thought would never come, that I thought were not possible. There was nothing wrong with me. It was the porn!
Last but not least, during the later stages of my reboot, I was actually able to go exactly 5 weeks with no O and no wet dreams. I recommend this type of superhard mode to anyone. It's not that difficult. If you can not piss in bed when you are unconscious, then you can also train your brain not to O in bed.