Hello Gentlemen. Now we begin.

W

William

Guest
jkkk, thank you brother, and bacatcha.

Will I AM, broadcasting from this side of free to those who are close to making it, to those who don't think they can make it, to those who want to, to those who are struggling, to those who think they can't:....YOU CAN.  I was a slave once.  Then one day I took off my chains.  Today was easy. EASY.  Today was EASY.  It can be for you too.  Those chains you are wearing, you made them one link at at time.  Take-them-off.  Choose life.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOowaRxD2Oo

The above is David Grey.  Nothing profound.  Nothing deep.  I just love the guy.  You will find there are soooo many things to love other than porn, once you leave porn.  In fact, you will find you never loved porn. 

Much Love.



 
W

William

Guest
A guy, Everett, whom I have a lot of respect for, just posted this:

Day 182. 6 months of Nofap. Six months ago I wasn't sure I could go 6 days. PMO had become an ever present part of my life for so long. I thought it was natural. I thought it was what every man did. I thought it was just part of being a guy. I was wrong. I was so wrong. My error cost me plenty in respect, dignity, and time with the people I love the most. I still have work to do. I still have urges and over the past 6 months I have had my slip ups with brief " peaks" so I know I am not done yet. I am well on the road to recovery. I am dedicated to putting this completely out of my life. I have resolved to maintain a vigilance for at least 18 more months. 2 years to rid yourself of something that has been part of your life for over 40 years seems OK to me.

My wife, and my life, are recovering. In time, I hope the wounds will heal and this will be a distant bad memory. For those of you starting this journey or struggling to continue all I can tell you is its worth the fight. Life is, indeed, better. My time and efforts are spent on more productive and more important things than PMO.

I am breaking chains that seemed so comfortable before....but now I know they were chains non the less.

Get out from behind your laptops. Get out from behind the closed doors and the secrecy of PMO

I'm worth it and so are you. Learn from successful people here and elsewhere. Be cautious of those who continue to reset again and again. They want company, not success.

Keep going, always keep going.

Everett


Keep going, porn is not an option.

Peace. 

Will I AM
 
W

William

Guest
Radio Will I AM, broadcasting to those where I used to be, addicted to porn.  Because some of the newbies have not figured it out yet, let me make it clear:  Porn is not your friend, it does not give a damn about you, it does not know you.  Porn is a crutch you use to make it though the day, then the day becomes days, then months, then years.  If you are addicted to porn you have probably lost at least a year of your life to that leach.  And, you are not lame, you only limp because porn is a crutch you like to lean on, but you don't need to lean on it.  You can stand up straight and run, but you can't run until you get rid of that crutch.  Porn does nothing good for you, but it will keep you from having a healthy relationship with anything but pixels on a screen. If you want to eventually end up trying to fuck a computer screen, keep watching porn, if you want to have a real relationship with a real person, porn has to go.  Porn is just a button you push to get a dopamine spike.  You love dopamine, best drug in the world, but highly addictive.  For you to quit porn you have to abandon it, defriend it, put it on your enemies list, maybe even learn to hate it.  It will be like walking away from an old friend, one who has always been there when it got hard, but now, by this point, porn is one reason why your life has become hard.  Porn never really helped, but not it is hurting.  Time for it to go. 

Get Educated.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSF82AwSDiU

Who am I?  I am just a guy who quit porn.  It was hard, now it is easy.  Think of it as doing hard mode for a short period in your life so that the remainder of your life can be "easy mode."  I invite you to this side of free.

Peace. 
 
W

William

Guest
So, the 18th.  I don't really mark the time any more.  I used to, but, honestly, it just occurred to me, it almost slipped by, that today is the 18th.  I mark the 18th as one more month clean.  I really did not remember how many months, I had to go back and look, but today is 15 months clean for me.  I feel totally in control now.  I suppose I am back to normal, normal being the average screwed up human being with the average problems and challenges, just not one going through life addicted any more. 

Anyone out there reading this, overcoming porn addiction won't solve all your problems, but it will make solving your problems much, much, easier. 

Much love.

Will I AM. 

PS:  If you are a slave and you are reading this, I invite you to take off your chains. 
 

vispren

Active Member
Taking them off, brother. Thanks for your posting and help. You are an inspiration to those of us, still fighting the fight.
 
W

William

Guest
Thanks vispren, appreciate the kind words.  Good to see you taking them off.  41 days is legit, it is good, strong run.  Finish out the rest of the hard 90.  DO NOT get complacent, do not get comfortable, don't have that "I can handle it now" moment, and by the time you get to 90 most guys report being back in control.  Does not mean you won't be tempted, you will; we love dopamine, but at a certain point you are in charge of you, completely. 

Good luck in your journey.

Peace. 
 
Hello guys. I have not been a regular poster since joining a few months back, but I am now at day 106 - no P and no MB in that time.
I would like to say that my life is now awesome and that I feel fulfilled in every single way but that is not the case! :-\ I have taken away the crutch and, not surprisingly, the limp is still there!
Positives - generally, my temperament is a little more balanced and I don't fly off the handle as much as before. I also eat less junk food now as acting out used to make me crave this more than I normally would.
Areas where I haven't really progressed - I have not become a more affectionate and romantic husband and I still have the mindset of a P addict, ie: feeling nostalgic for P and being wowed by the sight of certain women, be it at work or on the TV.
I have a long, long way to go and 90 days certainly hasn't proved to be the magic number for me.
 

Promise

Well-Known Member
May I ask you a couple of questions, Dona?

1. How old are you.
2. When did you first start using P?
3. How bad did it get before you attempted to quit?

Young people with long exposure to porn tend to take longer to reboot.
 
Promise said:
May I ask you a couple of questions, Dona?

1. How old are you.
2. When did you first start using P?
3. How bad did it get before you attempted to quit?

Young people with long exposure to porn tend to take longer to reboot.

1. I am 35.
2. I was 16 when I started using.
3. My worst spell (in terms of hours spent in front of the PC) was between the ages of 20 and 25 where I seemed to lose whole days just surfing for the perfect image. Since then, I have got married and started a family so other commitments have given me less time to waste on P. However, I was still using P around 3/4 times a week before I started this period of sobriety. I was looking at some stuff that, although perfectly legal and available on all the commercial TUBE/HUB sites, was certainly not what you would call "normal"!
 
W

William

Guest
Hello Gentlemen.  By "Gentlemen" I really mean anyone reading this, man, woman, or child.  "Child?"  Yes, there are guys here right now who are only 12 years old.  They did not intend it to happen, but they woke up one day and realized they were in the clutches of something that had them, something they did not like, something that was defining them as something they disliked.  Charlie Clear, if you are reading this, it is time.  You are not 12 anymore, you are 13, and it is time to get clean.  Tick tock.  You don't want to be here ten years from now, posting about your 8000th 7 day streak and relapse, you want to get CLEAN now.  Clean now. 

I want you Gentlemen to watch a video, but not just now.  Wait.  I want to to plan on watching it.  I want you, right now, to plan on watching this video, and I want you to make a pot of coffee or tea, get a beer if that is what you need, maybe just a glass of water, and take 16 minutes of your life to get educated about our common problem.  So, what do we have in common?

Having been here for a long time I see a lot of us sharing common traits.  For one, most of us are above average IQ and we are very creative, even artistic.  We have the ability to almost turn imagination into reality.  That is one of the reason we become dopamine addicted, we can look at pixels on a screen, or even just use our imagination, and that thought, that perception, almost becomes real for us.  There are people in this world who watch pornography and do not become addicted to it; it does not affect them at all.  Believe it or not it takes a special sort of mind to have our problem, and that has a lot to do with creativity and heightened imagination ability.  I think it also has to do with a higher than average IQ.  I don't see a lot of stupid people here.  I see a lot of very smart people doing stupid things, but that's different, that is the addiction.

I think all of us are a bit OCD.  We have short attention spans.  It is not that we do not find anything interesting, just the opposite, we find EVERYTHING interesting.  It is hard for any one thing to hold our attention, which is part of the problem when endless, novel, new, never-seen-before-porn provides an endless dopamine rush.  We like that rush. 

That is why most of us here are also risk-takers.  Out in the real world, a lot of us take risks.  We jump out of airplanes and parachute to Earth, we climb sheer rock walls, we push our machines way too hard.  Me?  Motorcycles.  I have had many wrecks trying to push the machines way outside their design specs.  If the bike comes with instructions "do not", then I probably have tried to do it.  I have seen, literally seen, people die on bikes doing what I was attempting to do, or, after I saw them die, what I then tried to do myself.  I have had multiple crashes pushing the machines way out beyond what they were supposed to do, I have broken my arm and leg in two separate crashes, drove a piece of metal through my leg.  Did I feel pain?  Yeah, but the truth is it got me high, and amused the fuck out of me.  When my friends pulled the metal out and one passed out, it was amusing.  When I had to get back on the bike and ride it away from there, it was amusing.  Why do I tell you this?  I tell you this because that feeling of being amused was just dopamine abuse.  I did not know it at the time, but it was.  Here is a great article on risk takers and dopamine.

http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1869106,00.html

You need to study the problem we have.  Like Gabe says, "read everything".  Understand what is going on in there.  It won't cure the problem, but it makes taking the cure possible.

OK.  Now, go make that pot of whatever you are going to drink as you watch the video.  Gary Wilson has a new video out, it is approximately 50 minutes long and it is as usual brilliant but...Gary really does not understand how much we want instant gratification when we click on a link, so I think the shorter 16 video is something you can get through.  Watch it, think about it, watch it again, and watch it every day until you can start putting back to back days together with no P and no PMO. 

This problem is not always fixed in the hard 90, but if you can do the 90 hard mode, them most report being back in control.  It does not mean you will never want that dopamine rush again, it just means you will choose healthier ways to get it, and be satisfied with a lot less of it. 

Here is the vid:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSF82AwSDiU

I want every man, woman, and child reading this to have what I have:  freedom.

Peace.

 
 

Workman

Member
William...wow. You put into words something I have been thinking, and gave voice to a few things that I hadn't given thought to. Well done and thanks for that.

You're right, at least speaking for myself. I am a quiet introvert, highly imaginative with artistic tendencies. I'll leave to to someone else to decide if I am intelligent. I'm also a risk taker...I have gravitated towards high risk career fields, and for recreation, apart from distance running (not very risky) I rock climb and have skydived in the past.

Dopamine...it's a hell of a drug.

Off to make some coffee and watch that vid. Thanks again.
 
W

William

Guest
Hi Workman, thank you for the kind words.  We are all here trying to be helped and offer help.  Everyone who reads this, ask yourself, why is this place here?  Do you think Gabe makes money from this?  Gabe was a guy who was a slave to porn, then he took off his chains, and he made this place to help us, so everyone who gets anything from this place needs to PM Gabe today and thank him.

Workman, what you said about distance running is interesting.  It may not be risky, but it has something in common with it, and that is pushing one's self out side one's comfort level.  I do it to, distance running that is.  One of my heroes is a guy named Steve Prefontaine.  He died a long time before most of us were born.  You know how he died? He died pushing a little convertible around a corner so fast it flipped and he lost control.  Sound familiar?  Workman, this is one of my favorite Pre vids.  Hope you like it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xesXzetlrE

Much Love. 
 

Workman

Member
"Somebody may beat me, but they are going to have to bleed to do it."

I've always loved that quote. Thanks for the link. He was an amazing man.
 
William said:
This problem is not always fixed in the hard 90, but if you can do the 90 hard mode, them most report being back in control.  It does not mean you will never want that dopamine rush again, it just means you will choose healthier ways to get it, and be satisfied with a lot less of it. 

Here is the vid:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSF82AwSDiU

I want every man, woman, and child reading this to have what I have:  freedom.

Peace.

Good video and filmed not too far from where I live in Scotland.
I am delighted for the guys who report being on top of the world after 2 months, but I think that it's important for newbies to know that this will not always be the case. I am over 3 months sober now and I certainly don't feel on top of the world.
For some, there will only be mild life improvements when giving up P and MB.
The reason I point this out (and I apologize if it sounds negative) is because many would be tempted to return to their old ways when they realize that giving it up doesn't dramatically cure all the ills in their lives.
ED was never an issue for me, so the things I was hoping would disappear would be the low self esteem, depression and social anxiety - none of these have left the building unfortunately!
I have had to resign myself to the fact that P and MB addiction was a by-product of the low self esteem, depression and social anxiety rather than the other way around.
 
W

William

Guest
Hi DonaNobisPacem.  Peace.  Everyone who reads this thread needs to take what DonaNobisPacem says seriously.  Quitting porn is not really about bettering your life, however, it makes bettering your life possible.  Still, all the problems that life throws at us, we still have to face them.  But I have found that facing them is easier when I am not using porn. 
 

jkkk

Well-Known Member
Hey Dona,

Congrats on the 90 days.

But I have one thing that I want to tell you regarding you not feeling better.

I think I saw it between the lines - you vaguely report spotting other women, "at work" or elsewhere.

You must know that this is essentially dopamine addiction.

You gave up P - brilliant. You gave up M - very good. These are fantastic feats.

But you still can be using. Drop looking at women. Sounds crazy, I know. But otherwise you will not start off. This is  very heavy addiction, it needs extraordinary means to get rid of it.

Sorry if I put things too bluntly. I just feel that I know where you are, and I've been there for a long time: standing still, not moving forward.

And I am married as you are. And I have a theory that this oggling, staring at, spotting women is more often married guys' problem. If you read the thread from the very beginning there is plenty of stuff on porn substitutes that are essentially as bad as porn.

Go on, fight. Keeping fingers crossed for you.
 
jkkk said:
But you still can be using. Drop looking at women. Sounds crazy, I know. But otherwise you will not start off. This is  very heavy addiction, it needs extraordinary means to get rid of it.

Jkkk, your post has made me ask myself a question that I am not too sure of the answer to, so I will ask the forum:

Since giving up P and MB 107 days ago, I have still had a sexual outlet through being a married man, but in recent times, I have been doing certain things (in the marital bonding, let us say) which is strongly associated with a P fetish that I had. Could this delay my recovery? And do you think I have essentially conned myself by transferring some of the filth which I used to view into my married sex life? It is easy for me to say, "oh, at least it is with a real human being that I have made a life long commitment to", but maybe I am kidding myself on!

Any thoughts on this would be much appreciated!
 
W

William

Guest
Hi Pacem, good question.  I have no problem saying that in my opinion you are delaying your recovery in this practice.  Our problem is above the belt, not below it, it is between the ears in the brain.  When we talk about "rewiring" we are literally talking about rewiring our brain's reward center to reward the real deal.  The real deal, while satisfying, does not involve hypersexual thoughts or sex that result in hypersexual thoughts.  Your problem, as I see it, is that you are using hypersexualized thought by importing P into your sex life.  I am not saying that on the other side of rebooted you cannot have that kind of fun, if it is fun for you, but I am saying that during the reboot you want to focus on avoiding any hypersexualized thought, and if your fetish produces that, if it gives you a boost of dopamine, a dopamine high, during sex, you are defeating the purpose.  Before I got educated I had a similar problem.  First I had DE, then, trying to fix that, I imported sexual thoughts and pornographic memory into my sex life.  I got past the DE but not the addiction because I was still using thoughts of porn to produce a dopamine high.  I think it is perfectly fine to have sex during the reboot, but the thoughts you have during sex, for the reboot to be successful, must be of, and only of, the one you are with, and not porn or porn related. 

 

vispren

Active Member
DonaNobisPacem,

Will is right.

One of the best things reboot can give you is a chance to rediscover. To rediscover about yourself, your SO, your sexuality, the closeness and the intimacy.

Porn will stop you from rediscovering anything.

I also have a fetish. A strong one that used to define me. Haven't fed it since I started and I certainly don't plan to in the future, because for me it would be just letting porn slither back in.
 
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