@alisdaily I am going to be directly honest with you. I hope this is OK. Some people, especially here, addicts, do not like direct honesty. Who am I kidding, no one really likes direct honesty. It's too close to beomg comfortably asleep, in a warm dry bed, when someone rudely dumps a tub of ice cold water on you. Direct honesty can suck, like that, sometimes. So here goes. Your quote: I can not stay away for more than one day. That is a lie. That is a lie the addiction has told you, that is a lie you have told yourself, and it is a lie you have now told the rest of us. I doubt anyone was more addicted than me, and that was a lie the addiction told me too, and, I, in turn, told that lie to myself. So, let's be clear. You CAN stay away for more than one day, if you choose to. You can stay away for life, if you choose. Let's be honest: If you are using every day, it is because you are choosing to use every day. Granted, you cannot help it when you want it and miss it, it being the dopamine hit it brings, but admit to yourself, when it comes to using, that is a personal choice. It's not like the addiction is forcing you to use, or holding a gun to your head. I understand that choosing not to use, especially for a newby, in the quitting phase, hurts. It is painful to quit. In a sense, when quitting porn addiction, you are choosing pain. If you want to quit this, you have to choose pain. Not a very attractive choice, but that is the choice that everyone who gets free must choose. The pain does not last forever, it recedes, then goes away, but you won't get out of here without first walking through that door.
You have been aware of your problem before you joined this place, in 2014. You are aware of your problem in 2018. For some, it does take years to overcome the problem, but you cannot overcome your problem with your mindset, so your mindset must change, now, first. So, lesson one: you own you. The addiction does not own you. Say it, find a mirror, look into it, and say: I own me, the addiction does not own me. Maybe say it over and over for a half hour or so. Convince yourself of its truth. This will not make quitting the addiction less painful, but it will make taking the pain more bearable. Why? Because, once you own you, the pain is under your control; it is not something being done to you, it is something you are doing to yourself, for a purpose, the purpose being taking off your chains, of becoming unaddicted. Porn addiction did not just spontaneously happen to you. You did it to yourself, like all of us, by training your brain to use porn to get that thing we are truly addicted to, the dopamine high it produces. It took years to get addicted, and it was a fun ride, until it wasn't anymore. It will take, at least, months to get unaddicted, and that ride is no fun at all. As pleasant as the porn ride was, when you quit, it will be doubly painful. But, you own you. When you experience that pain, just know, it is because you are giving it to yourself. You own you. This is part of the process.
Also, don't be distracted by the category of porn button you are pushing to reach that dopamine high. By the time most of us are addicted and are ready to quit, we are no longer watching porn we see our own sexuality in. We have desensitized to whatever vanilla porn that was, and have moved into categories that often involve things that are shocking to us. By that time on this trip, we need that to trigger. Yeah, that is the human brain and the mechanics of porn addiction. So, you think you are stuck on one category, but the category is irrelevant. You have to look behind the veil to understand that porn is just a mind trick, a little thing we have figure out how to use to trigger a dopamine high, and is has nothing to do with our actual sexuality, whatever your sexuality is. The addiction, and the category you are watching, is all about using sexual imagery to make sexual thought, to trigger a dopamine reaction. All 100% in the brain, 0% in reality. You have been here since 2014. Whatever you are doing, if your purpose is to overcome the addiction, it is not working. Your first and most obvious mistake is that you are still listening to the addiction, talking to it, communicating with it. The addiction lies, it wants you to use it forever, to never give it up, and it has no respect for you. The addiction tells you lies so obvious that it is pathetic that you have listened to it, such as, I can't go a day without. Lie! You have to defriend the addiction, expel it, excommunicate it, hate it, destroy it, offer it no quarter. You have been holed up paling around with it for far too long. It is time for you to get comfortable with discomfort, time for you embrace the pain of quitting, which you can do, because once you accept you own yourself, it is something you are doing to yourself, and not something being done to you.
Ok, end of lecture.
Today is day 31, of this month at least. In July, I will be 5 years clean. I quit porn addiction for one reason only. I had developed the inability to reach O during sex. I could reach it every time, multiple times a day, with PMO, but, with a real partner, I could not. This made my real partner feel inadequate and inferior to porn. Pathetic. Like @alisdaily the addiction lied to me and told me I could not stop, could not go one day. The first thing I had to understand is that the addiction lies. If you are reading this and take nothing else away, take this: When you doubt that you can stop, it is only the addiction whispering into your ear, and that lying piece of shit wants you to fails, and never wants you to quit. You may think you have found a friend in the addiction, but it is the opposite of your friend. It is the crutch that tells you you have to use it and limp, despite the fact that without it, you can run. Don't listen to it.
This completes this January challenge. If you are a slave, I invite you to take off your chains.
I want everyone reading this to succeed. I know you can, because I, and many others, have. If we can do it, you can too. It can be done.
Much love.
Will I AM.
PS: Now I reach O with sex, always, and I never PMO. Success.