A reason to live

Movonnow

Member
Hi everyone.

I live in France. It's 01:22am here, and I wake up at 5:30am to go to work at the factory until 6pm. I'm 22 years-old.

I just relapsed. Again.

So, what's my story? Around 4 years ago, I understood faping was harmful to me. So I decided to quit. It took me one year to achieve two 7-days streaks. Then, I found a French online forum where I would get help and help other addicts and I managed to reach a 44 days streak. It took me another year. Then, I found Nofap. I moved to another city, changed my lifestyle completely and reached a 80 days streak. I then got a girl friend.

The relationship were awful. I let her disrespect me and I sacrificed myself to make her happy (didn't work). At the same time, I was betrayed by my "friends", I got some troubles in college. I was diagnosed with severe depression. Now it is summer and I am  slowly building myself up again.

After the break up however, I relapsed. A lot. I managed to reach another 30 days streak and a few 15-days streaks but now I'm relapsing every 2 or 3 days. I'm on a binge. I've been for months now.

Yesterday at work, I decided to make a plan. I will work, work out and practice Taiji Quan whatever happens. And that will help me build my life again.

But as for what is concerning fapping, porn.....I am completely lost and I don't know what to do.
 
W

William

Guest
Hi Movonnow.  There are 3 things you must do to get clean.  1) Get educated, study your problem, understand it.  2)  Get tools, find things to help you, don't rely on will power alone. 3)  Embrace withdrawals.  You won't get clean without feeling them, so, don't try to avoid them. 

Gary Wilson says this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_RIm9ZMN1I

Watch it.  Watch it again.  If you have already watched it, watch it again. 

Take time to understand what is happening in there, and understand that porn addiction is above the belt, in the brain, and not below it. 

Also, over on yourbrainonporn.com , the site Gary Wilson runs, I came across another great video which hits the same points as Gary's Ted Talk, but in a quicker, and a bit lighter way. It is here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ya67...ature=youtu.be

And don't forget to read a success story by a nofap hero, Gabe:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JReh...8T-Ef2tuADCZOA

I actually originally posted a post directly by Gabe, whereas recently, on 3-30-14, Dogwood posted the story about Gabe here, and this story is so compelling for younger guys with ED issues. Watch it, learn. You CAN overcome this.

Understand that overcoming porn addiction takes preparation, advance planning, and an understanding that between here and there is a marathon you will have to run.  You don't have to win that marathon, but you do have to run it, to complete the race, and that involves effort and some suffering. 

Above is the education. Getting educated about the addiction was the biggest step for me in quitting it. I thought I had a problem below the belt, when in fact it was always in my brain, above the belt. We talk about being PMO addicts or even porn addicts, but in reality we are dopamine addicts, it's the greatest drug in the universe, and we carry it around in our brains. Dopamine, is released in response to porn, and our brains come to love it. Your PMO cycle will never be broken so long as you've got porn on the brain, literally running around inside it. A lot of guys slow down when starting to try to quit, but they will never be quit if they keep porn in their head.  You have to completely eliminate porn from your existence. 

Tools: Porn blockers. Don't just quit, don't just passively stop and sit there, take affirmative action to change your online habits by making it difficult to access the problem. This will help you in various ways. Stopping your ability to access porn will help you stop accessing porn, and accessing porn is the underlying problem here. Maybe blockers won't stop you, but for me, they slowed me down and acted almost like a reminder that I was stopping. Like a tap on the shoulder. Also, taking these steps means you are taking steps to control your situation, which is a bit empowering. K9 is a great blocker.  I suggest you get it NOW.  I also post here, it helps, and there are other tools out there from accountability partners to therapy to 12 step programs.

Withdrawals suck. We don't talk enough about them here. They are why we fail. They are our brain's dopamine drenched chemical reward center begging us, threatening us, punishing us, pleading with us, rationalizing with us why we need to PMO. Withdrawals are painful, they are physical, mental, and emotional pain. They are the jitters, the shakes, the sweats, odd pains in odd places, the brain fog we feel when quitting, and our brain's way of telling us all that unpleasantness can go away with just a little harmless fix. When going through withdrawal I felt I had a sinus infection and my teeth actually hurt. I did not have a sinus infection and my teeth were fine, but my brain, at some level, had to make me feel bad to try and make me feel good through a porn induced dopamine release. The good thing is, if you are having withdrawals, it means your brain's dopamine levels are on their way back to normal. Once you get back to normal those things stop, but you can't get back to normal until your brain re-balances, and that takes, depending on who you speak to, between 11 and 90 days. I usually guestimate between 11 and 40. Newbies must be told this will not be easy, it will be hard, and they have to expect this pain, endure it, embrace it and even want it to accomplish our task, getting dopamine production back to normal.

In my opinion, there are two type of guys here. Most of us don't know that, nor do we necessarily think we are in one category or the other. On the one hand are guys who are trying to control their porn use, don't want it out of their lives, but want to find methods where they control porn and porn does not control them. In my opinion they are addicts in denial. That is not meant as anything negative toward those guys, but for me three words were necessary: I am addicted. On the other hand, there are the guys who know they are addicted. I am in this group. We came to understand porn controlled us, that we cannot play with it or learn how to pick it up and put it down whenever we wanted, and that, consequently, to be free, we had to get porn completely out of the brain. We are addicts in recovery. Might help if you figure out which side of that you are on. I suppose, statistically speaking, there is a third group, being guys who watch porn all the time but can quit at will, or maybe a fourth, guys who have never seen porn in the first place, but I don't think guys in those last two categories are here.

Lastly, porn is not just porn, it is any sexual imagery that sets off dopamine release. Porn is seeing it, watching it, perceiving it, hearing it, thinking of it, imagining it, remembering it. It is having an orgasm while thinking of it, whether with a partner or during MO. It is edging. It is PMOing. It is using porn substitutes like chat rooms or soft core imagery that triggers a dopamine release.

Moveonnow, it is time to move on. 

Peace. 
 

Movonnow

Member
You are right bro : I can't stop myself. I mean, I don't know anymore if I want porn in my life or not. I know intellectually it's a bad thing for me but...it is there. It is just there. And this knowledge of the harmful effects of porn and masturbations and the reasons why  I need to stop are hidden behind the addiction that drives me crazy. I don't want to keep on living like that but....it just seem there is no other way to live. I can not even imagine what a life without masturbation and porn would be. To me, my lifestyle is there and it is the way it is. I do not even believe anymore in not needing that shit and recovering from this addiction. I do not even ask myself if this is an addiction. Still, I know deep down things have to change.
My dick is dead and it still wants some material. My body is aching but begging for more. My soul is burried and can not do anything.
I simply don't know what to do. When an urge arise, there is nothing I can do to stop it. Every day, I see triggers everywhere : beautiful women, memories of the sex I had in the past, rememberances of the pleasure I had last night. I get random boners for no reason and suddenly, I can't help it : I'm seeking for some material or edging or entertaining the idea of masturbating. This is something I now do on auto pilot. I do not think about it anymore, there is no arguing, no ?what if I didn?t do it??, I just do it because?.because. It?s a part of my life and it is how things are. Period. I don?t even want porn anymore. I just watch it. I don?t even know why I do it anymore. There is no reason. It is just a compulsive behavior. An automatic response.
My life is shitty and I can see everyday the negative effects of this addiction on my life but I am powerless and it seems to me I can't do anything to change it -although I've already done it in the past.
I?ve been binging for so much time now (litteraly 2 months) that I can?t imagine life being different. Yet, I know I am not being myself in those times of struggle. I am not this wimp. Understand : I am at a very difficult point in my life and I just can?t seem to be able to get my fire back. I?ve lost taste in everything, I have no motivation even to do the most important things. Actually, I?ve been diagnosed with severe depression. I?m doing everything I can but I can?t see even the beginning of the path of recovery. YBOP, Nofap, recovery in general seems to be a very distant world with too much information and I don?t know where to begin with. I am LOST. I feel like going onto yourbrianonporn or any website and searching informations is an impossible task. I can?t muster up the force or the courage to do that. I swear to you, it?s beyond my reach. I do not even have the force to read a few pages written on internet. I need a quick article or a summary or anything but I just can?t muster up the force to spend hours on the internet searching for answers or advices. I don?t have the force to move very far from where I am. I can?t do it! It?s too hard. It seems like an impossible task. When I said I was lost, that means I don?t know if life would be better without this addiction, I don?t know if I can do it, I don?t know where to begin, I don?t know what to do when a urge arise?In fact, yes, I know what to do : cold shower, run, go to a crowded place, do push ups?.I have too many tools! I don?t have a plan and I need a simple one. Like one phrase to describe why I wan?t to do this and a few phrases on how I?m going to do this. And, most important of all, a phrase about why I can do this. Seriously.
I disabled my web browser. I'm using my uncle's computer. Unfortunately, although I have K9, I have an access to porn with my mobile phone. And I use my uncle computer to see some porn. Curiously, after a few relapses involving porn I feel more stable. Not better. More stable. Emotionnaly speaking. I think it?s because after withdrawal, the massive relapse makes things seems to be okay for a while.

I'm lost. Completely lost. Please, help me.

So I would like to list all the issues I?m having right now. I will be able to see if no PMO solved this when I will have reached 90 days. This way, I will be able to tell for good if those were caused by PMO or not.
Clinically depressed
Social anxiety : I don?t want to see people, to talk to them. When they tease me in a playful way, I don?t know how to respond. It is scary to me because I?ve always been an outgoing person who is used to talk to everyone easily. I always interpret things people do as something they do because they hate me while it is really not true.
I am sad and angry all the time, at everything and for no reason. Even when someone is being nice to me, I feel like punching him in the face.
Physical pain, in the stomach and the lower back (I?m sure you all know what I mean). I also feel like there is a void inside my stomach, even if I ate a lot of food.
I don?t sleep well. I wake up in the middle of the night with a boner and I just masturbate.
I am lost : I don?t do what I know I have to do. I have no more sense of priority. It seems to me that there is no point in anything, that the whole world want me dead and that I will never know any beautiful moment anymore. I feel like giving up on everything. I?ve forgotten on all of my projects. Seems like there is no future.
I need more sleep to be rested. Actually, right now, I think I would need a whole week of rest to go back to a normal state of tiredness.
Instead of talking to girls without any anxiety, holding hand naturally with them, touching them and teasing them in a playful way, I can not even say a proper ?hello? anymore.
I can?t get a boner for a real girl. I feel less and less pleasure everytime I touch my dick and even the touch on my dick doesn?t turns me on or even give me the smallest boner.
The way I look at female is different.
I haven?t laughed for months now. There is no more joy. None.
From time to time, addiction seems to go away and I go on and live my life without thinking about porn or masturbation. But it has been a long time since it last happened. Now, I?m HAUNTED by thoughts of masturbation, fantaisies etc.
I began to check out yourbrainonporn. I read a few paragraphs there and there. I can?t do more, really. It?s weird, because it looks like my situation and the issues I?m having are the same those guys healed from recovering from PMO addiction. So maybe, there is a hope for a better future.
 

daedalus

Member
Hi Movonnow,

Thanks so much for sharing your story.  And also, thank you for your input, William.  That's helping me too =).

The great thing is that you remember your successes from before, and that means you can do it again!  Don't be afraid to embrace the frustrations and to be honest about your feelings; however, also don't forget to think of each setback as an opportunity.  When I'm struggling with something, I try to reframe it in this way.  So instead of thinking, "I'm relapsing every 2-3 days," I might think "I relapsed 2-3 days.  But I am not relapsing right now."

Best of luck!

-Daedalus
 

Movonnow

Member
I feel better !

Today was a difficult day. I identified some trigger and succeeded in avoiding situations that could have led to a relapse. Also, I listed the negative points in my life right now. It's the first step toward recovery.

I will keep you informed of how it goes.

- Movonnow
 

daedalus

Member
Hey movonnow,

It sounds like you're already making some awesome improvements!  Hope all is going well with your recovery.

-Daedalus
 

Movonnow

Member
Well, I relapsed. Woke up in the middle of the night and found myself masturbating.

I need a plan. It can't go on like that. I don't have the willpower to say no to the urges.

Up until then, I've been dealing with my recovery by following a simple strategy : I would do things to avoid urges coming. But I would have nothing backing me up in case an urge was there.

So I want to do some things :

  • I want to get ridd of internet. Unfortunately, it's not possible. I will get ridd of my smartphone and I've already disabled my web browser on my computer but I'll have access to my family's computer. Well, it's better than nothing. I think I will try not to know their password.
    • On one hand, I want to adopt a daily routine that will make relapses unlikely. This routine will consist in practicing Taiji Quan everyday and in running or working out or biking or swimming every day in order to exhaust the body.
      • On the other hand, I want to have a safety routine that I will do I an urge arise. What should I do if there is an urge? I don't know yet..I may print this thread http://www.yourbrainonporn.com/i-relapsed-what-now, go for a 5min walk and read it outside.

      My goal is to reach 3 days. I just want to reach 3 days. 3 mother-fucking days. From now on : sunday, monday, tuesday without any P,M or O.

      I'm going to reflect on my relapses : why did I relapse? What are the dangers? What are the situations that creates the urges? I will post here my thought on that.

      Edit : I got a counter.

      edit2 :
      This is it. I know why I want to get ridd of PMO. I am an addict. PMO makes me unhappy and it prevent me from living the life I want. I think I don't need any other motivation...

      Now, the question is : what do I do when an urge arise?
 

Movonnow

Member
So, I've been experiencing urges for the last few hours.

I've also checked out the symptoms of an over use of porn at yourbrainonporn. Here they are :

  copulatory impotence (can get it up for porn, but not partners)
    growing erectile dysfunction, even with extreme porn.
    frequent masturbation, little satisfaction ("feeling like a lust-ball all day")
    morphing porn tastes that don't match sexual orientation (HOCD)
    severe, worsening social anxiety
    fatigue, irritability
    lack of motivation, depression, anxiety,
    inability to concentrate, brain fog

    distress about escalation to more extreme porn

In red are the ones I suffer from.

Also, the counter is a pretty awsome thing. I remember waking up this morning, it was at 6 hours. Now it is at 14 hours, it feels like I'm making progresses !
 

skrodriguez

Member
Mey Movonnow!

For me day two was generally tough. At the beginning that was when I actually got shivers! Sometimes I would actually go like 3 even 4 days without MOing the past and never thought twice about it but when I sort of decided I was going to start with the reboot (this was back some months) it hit me numerous times. Days 2-3, 7-10, 18-21, 27-30. For me those were the tough periods. It's stimulus related. Less stimulus, less impulse. Forknowledge of triggers and certain situations and a plan to deal with them as well as impulse control in the moment are key. But have a plan, otherwise you'll relapse. I'm talking about a plan for when the urge hits. Science on anger impulse says that we have about 1/4 of a second to control an impulse in the moment it arises, so you have to be ready for it. Outbursts of anger are a bit quicker than the urge to MO but in certain situations the urge to look at P if it is available could follow a similar pattern.

Go for it man!
 

Movonnow

Member
Hey bro, thanks for your encouragements. You are right, I need to get a plan. But which one?

I relapsed again.

It has been a pattern during those last days : I go to bed and wake up an hour later and relapse because I've been edging massively into my sleep (it's what wakes me up) so I wake up extremely horny.

I've also understood I don't like the person I become when I PMO : I recently began to masturbate to some of my ex-girlfriend photos (cheated on me numerous times, treated me like shit) and God does it hurt. The pain after the orgasm is much more intense. I also begin to have weird fantaisies that does not match with my sexual orientation. I am not happy. I am sad!

So, I need to :

  • Find a counter-measure when I wake up in this situation. I need to have a plan to avoid relapsing.
  • I need to find something to do before I go to sleep so that the night goes on well.

Actually, I worked-out today, I ate well, socialized, practiced martial arts....I can't think of anything more to do to avoid getting urges during the night.

I may go monk mode, guarding my mind against fantaisies, not looking at women's ass or tits or any photo or sex scene in the movies.

I am going to make a few changes :
  • I will take my medicine against depression. It's boring because I have a lot of pills to take but I will do it.
  • I will keep up with my martial arts training every day and my work out twice a week.

I edited my counter : I want to reach one day. One day. That should be possible, right?

Anyway,  I'm going to do what I need to do. Work, work out, martial arts training, learning...despite of PMO. I will not give up my life to PMO.

Btw, it is not clear in my head why I'm doing this exactly. I need to write it down iin a few sentences.

Also, I'm borrowing Vincent's method of getting back on track after a lapse/relapse (http://legacy.rebootnation.org/index.php?topic=1226.0) :

EMERGENCY PLAN FOR LAPSES :
1. Stop, look and listen: pay attention to what you are doing at this moment. Then stop everything - switch off!

2. Activate Emergency plan: go to another room, do a different activity, distract yourself from the lapse related stuff immediately

3. keep calm: a lapse is not a relapse. It is a mistake but not failure of your reboot. Use it to improve your methods.

4. renew committment: Usually, after a lapse the motivation is at a low. DO NOT USE THAT AS AN EXCUSE TO FALL INTO RELAPSE. The best thing you can do is to tell yourself again why you are doing this reboot, brace yourself and be more committed then before.

5. Review the situation: why did you lapse? where? when? which device? hungry? bored? all of that matters.

6. Start again. Ok. Counterwise it may be a start from "0" again. But it is not. If you learned from this opportunity, you will emerge from a lapse even more committed to your goal than before.


 

innergothkid

Active Member
Hey, dude. Sounds like you're in pretty deep, but I have faith that you can make it through this thing.

I've never tried this technique myself, but I've read of some guys wearing rubber bands on their wrists and snapping themselves with them whenever they get an urge or start to fantasize, etc. I'm not sure that I feel particularly great about that solution, but it sounds like it could benefit you to develop a negative association to PMO. So, if you wake up in the middle of the night, snap yourself with the rubber band. If you start fantasizing, snap yourself with the rubber band.

You have to be dedicated to it, though. If you allow yourself to say "I'm not going to snap myself this time; I'm only going to MO this one time" it's just going to be a downward spiral.

Also, I'll reiterate what I've said to others: adult content filters are your friends. Just knowing that I'll have to go to a bunch of extra work to get to P discourages me from trying to get any. Filter out P, or anything else that will trigger you. I just added Tumblr to my filter because I know there's a lot of P there that I've gotten lost in before. Block everything.

You can do this. I'm rooting for you.
 
W

William

Guest
Hi Movonnow,

I can tell a few things about you from your posts.  Among them--you really, sincerely, feel you have a problem; you really, sincerely, want to find a solution, you would love to think yourself out of it.

I am going to give you some advice.  Understand that I know what I am talking about.  I have been where you are.

You are on the wrong sign of the line with porn.  You need to get to the right side.  The right side of the line with porn is committing to totally giving it up, detaching from it, defriending it, excommunicating it, avoiding it completely...forever.  This is difficult for all of us to do, but, intellectually, you must come to that place before you have a change at getting free from the problem.  It is difficult for us addicts to totally give porn up.  When I say you are "on the wrong side of the line" I can tell from your relapses that you are playing with your triggers.  A lot of people here mistakenly think that merely watching, seeing, porn, in and of itself is harmless, but in reality, we don't need to PMO to perpetuate the problem because merely seeing porn shoots our dopamine levels out the roof.  If you are relapsing this much it is because you are using porn here and there every day, just popping in to see it.  I know, I have been there.  That has to stop.

Porn is a crutch we have used to lean on, porn is a friend when it feels like we have no friends, porn is a comfort to us when sometimes, without it, we think all we will feel is pain.  But, if you want to get clean, it has to go.  Understand, porn is not a drug, porn is the button we push to get our drug of choice, dopamine.  An addict can choose to look at porn or not, it is a personal choice, but if an addict chooses to look at porn, the response is automatic, not voluntary, if an addict chooses to look at porn an addict gets a dopamine high.  Period.  Feels great, doesn't it.  Best drug in the world, dopamine.  Did you know heroin is synthetic dopamine?  Yep, heroin addicts have it easy, they are hooked on the fake version of the real thing.  That is what you are fighting.

One of the big lessons I had to learn is that porn addiction, really dopamine addiction, is actually a very small problem with a very small solution.  I can tell from your posts you genuinely want to beat this problem, but you are in danger of falling into a very common trap, over analyzing the problem. 

Here is the simple problem:  A certain type of visual stimulation, porn, causes a chemical reaction in your brain.  Very simple problem.  The very simple solution:  avoid the visual stimulation.  The purpose of the exercise is simply this:  quit getting high on dopamine and bring your dopamine levels back down to normal.

One of the other traps in the over analysis sense is thinking you can think your way out of this.  You can't.  When we, addicts, tell ourselves we can think ourselves out what we are really saying we can avoid the pain of quitting.  I am here to tell you you cannot avoid that pain.  You want to, but you can't.  You must go through withdrawals, there is no way to avoid them.  You probably have not said it to yourself so directly but "thinking your way out" is just another way of hoping you can avoid withdrawals.  Withdrawals manifest as physical, emotional, and mental pain, they are the result of starving your dopamine habit to death.  Porn addiction cannot be quit in stages or by cutting back.  It has to be totally starved to death, no way around it.  A lot of guys look for the easy out, but it does not exist.  If you have used porn to shoot your dopamine levels off the charts for years it's going to feel like dying when you bring them back down.  I feel great now, better than ever, but that did not happen until a few months clean.  In the meantime I literally felt like I was dying some days.  The reason porn must be starved to death is that feeding it, even a little, is just keeping it alive, and you have to kill it to beat it.  The reason it feels like dying is that on some level dopamine feels like life, like vitality.  When your brain is soaked in it and you start to dry it out, so to speak, the feeling is the opposite of life, the feeling is death.  Movonnow, I do not advise you to passively experience that feeling, I advise you to anticipate it, learn to want it, embrace it, understand it for what it is, and be willing to experience that horrible feeling for a few months until you get clean.  Once clean you won't experience it and you won't want porn in your life any more. 

This, by the way, is meant to be encouraging, not discouraging.  I am telling you you can do it, it is doable, it can be done.  But it will take effort, and you must be willing to suffer for it. 

Peace. 
 

daedalus

Member
Hey movonnow,

I can see that you've already beaten your new goal twice over.  That's a great reset!  In terms of your difficulty with waking up MOing, I have a suggestion.  From the sounds of it, it seems like you're starting it in your sleep?  If that's the case, maybe you could wear some gloves/mittens to bed to keep the sensitivity down (and thus, either stop altogether, or at least keep yourself from waking up horny and continuing the process).  It sounds really random, but I learned this when I had an awful bedbug problem in my apartment.  Who knows, it might work!

Anyway, assuming that you're still going strong, you should extend the goal in your counter a bit!

-Daedalus
 

Movonnow

Member
Hey brothers,

First I would like to thank you. Especially you William. Your posts are incredibly helpful. It feels like they they bring more light to the problem and they dissipate some of the fog I walk through.

Unfortunately, my counter is not accurate. I haven't been having internet during the last week so I couldn't update it. The good news though is that I couldn't watch any porn during this week. I also managed to go three days without PMO and it was really hard. This ended up this night. I woke up, hornier than ever and I went downstairs to watch porn. I didn't, though. I masturbated however, three times.

I now know why I want to get ridd of that addiction. It is because of one fact : I am a slave. Yes, it makes me unhappy, unenergetic but most of all it is the fact that I am a slave that lights up this fire  in my stomach and which make me want to break free of it. However, I came to the realisation that I was not only a slave of PMO. During my previous relationships, I would transfer my PMO addiction to the girl I was with so that I would become addicted to the sex I was having with her. I am a slace of my sexuality and I want that to change.

In fact, since masturbation is not that appealing, arousing or exciting anymore, I use now some new ways to get pleasure. I am ashamed of those. They consist in litteral sexual perversion. Moreover, they are not even pleasurable. It's just the high of doing something more extreme that make me do it. I want that to change too.

I was feeling better during those three days. So now, I want to get educated. Unfortunately, I don't have an internet access on my own. I will soon have a new smartphone though so I will be able to suffer. However, I will need some filter to block the sites I used to visit on my previous smartphone (I litteraly destroyed it a week ago because I was so angry and desperate that I couldn't manage not to use it to look at porn). The sites I would like to block are, of course, porn sites but also youtube and facebook and google images, which I all used at least once to get arousel or material. So if you have any advice on how to block all of that feel free to tell me, I would love it.

In fact, I began to live in a more healthy way : I picked up acupuncture and Tai Chi Chuan (a kind of chineese gymnastic that is really good for the body and mind). I found this helped me to stabilize myself emotionnaly so that my emotions or bad news, criticism would not trigger me in PMO-ing. Plus I was feeling more in control. The only thing that was left that were trying to make me do it was this precise dopamine rush that I was seeking. So it is a great progress : I know that with Tai Chi Chuan and acupuncture, I will be better equiped to kill that thing.

Now, I have to find ways to deal with those nights relapses. When I don't relapse during the night, I can go through the day without problem but when I relapse I'm usually horny for the next few days and the only choice is to masturbate until exhaustment. So, when I wake up in the middle of the night, having edged and being hornier than ever, what do I do? I think I should just go and take a walk. Yes, at 2 am. If I relapse I will get up to PMO anyway. Then after my walk....I'll see then. Your idea of sleeping with some gloves is excellent daedalus and I thank you for it. I will try to borrow some of those kitchen gloves.

As soon as I will have my new smartphone I will get educated like you advised me earlier William. I want to take a look at those videos. It's true that when a light urge arise, it's quite easy to resist. But when you are driven insane by an urge powerful enough to make you cry or yell, you better know why you do this, why what you're going through is normal and how to make this urge disseapear effectively. Otherwise, you are just lost in the middle of a horrible urge, not knowing what it is, why it is there, how to deal with it...you don't know why you do it, you don't know how it will improve (or not)....you understand nothing....I think it will be more helpful to see this kind of urge arise and to acknowledge calmly that this expected step is finally here, and that this is the real one opportunity to get better, and that you just have to push through it for a given time that you know for it to disappear for ever, because the next urges will be less strong.

I also need tools. God, do I need them. I used to have plenty of them. I read everywhere good examples or tools but I don't have any that belongs to me. I also understood I was always using porn. Always. Even when I wasn't on the computer or any electronic device. Thinking about the sex I used to had, thinking about the feelings of masturbation, thinking about beautiful women I see in the street. I am always getting this little high. Fortunately, though, I was able yesterday to successfully avoid any of those mind triggers during all the day. I kneww one slippery thought would make me relapse and I kept this mental discipline during all the fucking day. So that means I can do it, and that there is hope.

Honnestly, I can not yet imagine quiting porn for ever. It has always been there. It has always been a part of my life. But being here gives me help and hope.

- a slave.
 

Movonnow

Member
Okay guys so I just engaged in a thirty days challenge. It means no pornographic material and no masturbation during thirty days. I am panicking : what do I need to know and to do to keep up with this challenge?
 

Movonnow

Member
Here is the first step of preparing my recovery according to http://www.nofap.org/forum/showthread.php?3549-Action!-or-not!!!-Have-you-actually-Prepared-for-it

My decisional balance sheet

Emotions : I've already reached a few streaks. When I don't watch porn or masturbate, I feel fantastic. Of course, there are moments where I feel angry or sad, but I am never powerless. On the contrary, I always feel like I have no control after I PMO-ed. I become lazy, I have no more energy.

Relationship : I don't have any SO, nor do I plan on having one soon. I've always had ED. With the last sexual partner, I didn't though, but it was after a 80 days streak. Still, the first time I had sex with her I couldn't get a boner. I don't care how my SO would react if she found out that I watch porn regularly. I don't do that for someone else, I do that for me.

Family : How do I think my parent would react if they were aware of my porn addiction? Well, I already know. They don't know it but there was a time where I was so ashamed of it that my family began to suspect I had a problem. One day I refused to open my computer to my dad because I didn't remember if I had changed the wallpaper after a PMO session. The look on his face. It was like he was doubting whether or not I was involved in porn and like he was now realizing I was involved in it. All the shame and pressure that resulted from my parents' reaction to my addiction didn't make things easy.

Work/school : Well. Brain fog. I litteraly almost failed some finals at university last year because I was truly unable to think. When I spend my nights PMO-ing, I also have less time to work. Plus, the shame, the procrastination, the sadness, the pain makes it more difficult to work.

Spiritually : I'm a Christian so masturbating is a sin. Porn and the sexual acts I've been involving in are sexual perversion and I think I might go to hell because of that.

Sexually : Before last year, where I could get a boner for a real woman for the first time in my life, I never had a boner for a woman. However, I used this sexual partner as a sex object which meaning was to allow myself to masturbate in something warm. I litteraly did the things I was used to do when I was PMOing. I won't go into details here but I realized this later : everything from intercourse to orgasm was the same rituals I used to PMO but with an actual vagina. I don't want to do that anymore. I'm not a big fan of love and pedastilizing women but I want to be able to actually have sex with a woman, REAL sex, and not to masturbate within her. Hey, it wasn't even more pleasurable than MO alone. What king od fucked up is that?

Second step : get rid of all porn -> DONE !

Third step : prevent yourself from accessing porn in the future -> DONE! There is only my smartphone to secure with K9 once I get it (I ordered it yesterday). I disabled my web browser on my computer. I don't need a computer to do the things I really need to do on internet, a smartphone is enough. I'm sick of wasting hours on you tube videos.

Fourth step : get rid of the smartphone -> nope. If I got rid of it I would have to unable internet access to my computer and it would be far more dangerous. Furthermore, I will install K9 on my smartphone. And if it ever becomes a threat to my streak I will smash it to the floor like my two previous smartphone (when I'm serious about something, I do what it takes).

Seventh step : learn about the dopamine and reward system : as soon as I will get my smartphone I will go read YBOP on a daily basis.

Eight step : learn to accept the withdrawals -> I guess I can only do that when withdrawal arise.


Plus, I've understood something : porn isn't just videos on the internet. Porn is in fact much more than that. It's images, erotic texts or even fantaisies. In fact, since PMO addiction is a dopamine-based addiction, porn is everything that release dopamine.

My main motivation is that I don't want to be a slave anymore. I am a slave to porn. I am a slave to my brain. During my "relationship" with my last sexual partner, I was a slave to her vagina : I couldn't control myself and I was always asking for more. I want to have real sex with women and I want to remain free. I want to remain free of leaving any woman like I now leave porn : feeling it's of a nasty influence on me, I can leave it.

I choose to go hard mode. That means women are of no importance to me now. Until I successfully complete my reboot, I will not have sex with any woman, even if she is astonishingly beautiful/sexy. Why? Because it would destroy all of my efforts and I am more important than getting a cute girl's pussy. One thing at a time. That's cool because it takes all the remaining pressure off so that I can focus on my carreer and on myself.

EDIT : I went out tonight and I saw a lot of beautiful girls. I caught myself thinking "I can't become a monk for the time it takes to reboot, look at all those girls!". However, the sad fact is that I don't have the inner drive to talk, seduce them. I only go through my day contemplating them. That is another form of pornography and it is forbidden. So I will not check them out. Instead, I will make eye contact. So that's it : not only should I go hard mode, I also can not go soft mode because porn and masturbation took away my ability to interact and flirt with women. Once it will be restored, I may think about flirting with them again but for now, it's impossible.
 

Movonnow

Member
I'm at day 3!

My body feels weird. I'm exhausted and I can feel it shaking slowly without stopping.

I've been using internet too much.

I did my 100 push ups, my 100 squats and my 100 abs and tonight I will do my work-out. I also want to jog and do some martial arts practice.

Sadly, it has been a very unproductive day. I wasn't able to wake up. Too tired, too lazy to do anything. I know it's due to my internet binge : i haven't been using it during more than one week and the,, yesterday, I spent my whole day on it. Today also. So I will reduce internet use.

Moreover, tomorrow I will receive my smartphone. I will be able to visit my favorites websites from my phone. And it doesn't give me all this fatigue. And I waste less time. Of course, I will have to download K9 and configure it. I will make a list of the websites I need to have access to and of the website I don't want to have an access to. Because I will set a random password to K9 and I don't want to be unable to visit ybop or reddit while I don't want to be able to go to some sites.

So, 3 days ago I relapsed. After the first relapse, the cravings were so intense that I went on a binge of 4 masturbation to empty myself. The goal was not to feel the cravings anymore, and it worked. However, the negative effect of this is that 3 or 4 days later, when I will be a little more "full", cravings will come back and they will be even more powerfull than the urges I got after the first relapse, because of the 3 other masturbations that followed it. So I expect urges to come in the coming day. In fact, THEY ARE HERE! I got a shoot of dopamine by thinking about some porn scene. I quickly shifted my mind but the dopamine shoot happened.

So, what am I to do when there is a dopamine shoot?

Anyway, I'm going to go through the urges. Right now, I'm resisting and it's quite easy I must say. I will do my work out, run a little and practice martial arts, it will help to be back in balance. But right now, I'm reading some material of yourbrainonporn.com that I printed. Finger crossed! I hope to see you tomorrow and to be able to say that I'm still clean!
 
W

William

Guest
It does not sound like an unproductive day to me.  You have not relapsed, meaning you are one day more into your recovery, and every day you go without relapsing is a day closer to this thing becoming more than just easy, it becomes second nature, you won't even think about it.  I think keeping busy, keeping distracted, is helpful, but there is no way to avoid dopamine withdrawal.  It is going to happen, know that, understand what is happening, and understand that is just the addiction trying to talk you into relapsing.  Before it gets easier I promise you your addiction will begin to whisper in your ear why relapsing is a good thing, a healthy thing, something that is natural and should be done.  Don't believe it.

One of the things Gabe advises is:  read as much as you can about porn and dopamine addiction.  It helps to understand the problem.  As for the shakes, if you have not already, take a look at this link to a YBOP page about porn addiction withdrawals.  It helps sometimes to know we are not alone in the pain of withdrawal. 

http://yourbrainonporn.com/what-does-withdrawal-from-porn-look-like

Much love. 
 

Movonnow

Member
Hey William, thanks for the link.

So today is actually day 3, I was at day 2 yesterday.

I understood one thing : recovering is about facing urges and telling them no. That's the main thing. That means too that at one point or another, urges will come and that I will have to defeat them. Good news though : I know urges are only temporary. Moreover, I know they will be the opportunity to recover, to rewire my brain.

I just have to prepare. What am I going to do once the urges will be there? I'm putting lots of efforts into preventing urges to arise = having a balanced lifestyle (doing sports, eating healthy, sleeping as much as I need) but while it certainly helps, it will not prevent urges from arising.

So, what am I going to do? .... honnestly, I don't really know. I don't have a set of tools in place to use when an urge arise. I printed the yourbrainonporn.com page's "help I'm in the danger of a relapse" but I feel like it's not enough. Usually, when I have an urge, I'm lying on my bed helplessly, feeling no energy and  no drive to do anything. I think I will first pee to relax myself, then eat some bread and go out with my running shoes and if I feel like it I will run a little bit.

TRIGGER : I miss having human contact with a girl. Skin t o skin. I don't know why this idea is so much in the back of my head today, it may be an urge so I will do my best keeping me busy thinking about something else. Anyway, I'm sure it has to do my 3 days of non-PMO-ing. For the first time in months I am able to feel an emotion!

EDIT: I define an urge as a time where I get a dopamine spike. The thing that caused that dopamine spike is not irrelevant, what it is is of no importance. The important thing is that if I don't react correctly to this little dopamine spike, others will happen and lead me to a relapse. Therefore I must be aware at all times of what's going on inside and I must react before it escalates. Moreover, it is easier to react when the little spike arise than it is when numerous little spikes added up to form a big one. So, in a nutsheel, be aware and at ANY sign, EVEN IF I'M UNSURE WHETHER THERE WAS OR NOT A DOPAMINE SPIKE, apply the choseen pattern of action (pee, bread, go out and run if I feel like it). By the way, being "unsure" if it was an actual dopamine spike may be the addiction trying to give me excuses "don't react, it wasn't what you think it was" or it may be that there is e genuine doubt whether or not it is a true spike but, whatever happens, I will choose the safe road and apply the pattern of action that I defined before. Wish me luck!
 
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