Where are you located orbiter? Yes, porn is a tough bitch to beat. I started my first journey towards the end of 2015 and by mid of 2016 I was cured, then relapsed early 2018. Now trying to recover in 2021. This time I want to recover for good. At 36, I don't have much time left.
Orbiters Journal of Recovery
- Thread starter Orbiter
- Start date
Day 1
I should mention I relapsed yesterday morning. I'm not sure if that makes this day 1 or 2 but I guess it doesn't really matter. What happened was I stayed over at a friends place in the spare room after drinks and, with inhibitions & mood low, I looked at P for some time on my phone. I went home and PMOed almost immediately. Clearly two things went wrong:
* Too much alcohol in a vulnerable mental state
* Phone in room late at night
So there will be no more alcohol for the next 30 days. This shouldn't be a problem as i'm feeling far too down & fatigued to enjoy it anyway. If there's no alcohol, there's no need to crash at friends places so I will be able to easily cement a healthier night time routine.
Going from what Imsorry was suggesting earlier, i'm going to challenge to pro-actively focus on rebooting for the next 30 days starting from today. I took the suggested list and slightly modified it to my own needs. It looks as follows:
30 DAY P FREE CHALLENGE
FROM 27th JAN - 26th FEB
- eliminate triggers. Absolutely no phone or laptop in bed in evenings or mornings
- update journal daily for accountability & support
- mindful browsing ? be mindful of internet activity/browsing behaviour to avoid auto-pilot (limit hours if necessary)
- no alcohol or drugs
- exercise 2-3 times a week
- cold shower when urges appear (possible daily morning routine as it clears the head and it's too hot here at the moment)
- meditation and accepting urges + discomfort. Sitting there and let go
- plan for the weekend to limit idle time & triggers
- picture new self, the new man Orbiter
Lets do this!
I should mention I relapsed yesterday morning. I'm not sure if that makes this day 1 or 2 but I guess it doesn't really matter. What happened was I stayed over at a friends place in the spare room after drinks and, with inhibitions & mood low, I looked at P for some time on my phone. I went home and PMOed almost immediately. Clearly two things went wrong:
* Too much alcohol in a vulnerable mental state
* Phone in room late at night
So there will be no more alcohol for the next 30 days. This shouldn't be a problem as i'm feeling far too down & fatigued to enjoy it anyway. If there's no alcohol, there's no need to crash at friends places so I will be able to easily cement a healthier night time routine.
Going from what Imsorry was suggesting earlier, i'm going to challenge to pro-actively focus on rebooting for the next 30 days starting from today. I took the suggested list and slightly modified it to my own needs. It looks as follows:
30 DAY P FREE CHALLENGE
FROM 27th JAN - 26th FEB
- eliminate triggers. Absolutely no phone or laptop in bed in evenings or mornings
- update journal daily for accountability & support
- mindful browsing ? be mindful of internet activity/browsing behaviour to avoid auto-pilot (limit hours if necessary)
- no alcohol or drugs
- exercise 2-3 times a week
- cold shower when urges appear (possible daily morning routine as it clears the head and it's too hot here at the moment)
- meditation and accepting urges + discomfort. Sitting there and let go
- plan for the weekend to limit idle time & triggers
- picture new self, the new man Orbiter
Lets do this!
stepbystep
Active Member
Hi Orbiter, yes good to see you positive and making a plan. It looks great. One thing that has helped me a lot is to stay busy with activities and hobbies. I find that urges are less powerful when my weekends and weekday evenings have clear plans. Hang in there and keep going strong.
I like your list, Orbiter!
Also, if you can identify little (even if innocent) habits that may lead to the more unwanted habit, and tweak your behavior in manageable ways, and that may also set you up for success.
You got this, man!
Also, if you can identify little (even if innocent) habits that may lead to the more unwanted habit, and tweak your behavior in manageable ways, and that may also set you up for success.
You got this, man!
Thanks everyone for dropping in and for the continued support! It's really keeping me going at the moment.
Aussie_85 - Cheers! I'm running on fumes at the moment so I honestly don't think I could even bring myself to relapse at the moment. I know i'll feel better if I can lay low, look after myself over the next couple of days & stick to the 30 day play. Just have to stick with it.
Stepbystep - Activities & hobbies are the way to go. The irritating thing is I have many of them but the time, motivation & energy to engage in them is always so low. It's crazy isn't it how we can justify PMOing for hours at a time & trawling through pointless garbage on the internet but our brains immediately rebel at the thought of doing something actually worthwhile that requires a bit of effort & discipline for even half an hour. I guess this is where an adulthood of instant gratification gets us...
Phineas808 - A good idea and certainly worthy of further thought. I actually didn't go into too much detail intentionally with the plan and the reason for this was there are just simply too many! Too many little habits to avoid & too much to worry about on top of everything else. Though it is important to be aware of them, I just feel I should focus on eliminating the fundamentals and building my urge control at the moment, otherwise I don't see how this can be sustainable for me for the whole month. Needless to say I hold your opinion in very high esteem and if there's anything about this you perhaps don't entirely agree with, I am always open to hear it.
So it's day 2 today and i've just finished with work for the week. Exhausted but still very determined to stick to the plan. I feel I can reasonable achieve this in the boundaries that have been set. I just need to be consistent and make sure I have plans to fill the weekend for this first, tenuous week of the process to keep me out of trouble.
Aussie_85 - Cheers! I'm running on fumes at the moment so I honestly don't think I could even bring myself to relapse at the moment. I know i'll feel better if I can lay low, look after myself over the next couple of days & stick to the 30 day play. Just have to stick with it.
Stepbystep - Activities & hobbies are the way to go. The irritating thing is I have many of them but the time, motivation & energy to engage in them is always so low. It's crazy isn't it how we can justify PMOing for hours at a time & trawling through pointless garbage on the internet but our brains immediately rebel at the thought of doing something actually worthwhile that requires a bit of effort & discipline for even half an hour. I guess this is where an adulthood of instant gratification gets us...
Phineas808 - A good idea and certainly worthy of further thought. I actually didn't go into too much detail intentionally with the plan and the reason for this was there are just simply too many! Too many little habits to avoid & too much to worry about on top of everything else. Though it is important to be aware of them, I just feel I should focus on eliminating the fundamentals and building my urge control at the moment, otherwise I don't see how this can be sustainable for me for the whole month. Needless to say I hold your opinion in very high esteem and if there's anything about this you perhaps don't entirely agree with, I am always open to hear it.
So it's day 2 today and i've just finished with work for the week. Exhausted but still very determined to stick to the plan. I feel I can reasonable achieve this in the boundaries that have been set. I just need to be consistent and make sure I have plans to fill the weekend for this first, tenuous week of the process to keep me out of trouble.
Aussie_85
Active Member
Well done on 2 days Orbs!
On the activities/hobbies topic - bro. this is one of the hardest things about addiction.
It's well documented that brains addicted for long periods of time start to see symptoms such as extremely low motivation, nothing else seems pleasurable...it's just such a drag. Things we used to love, now just seems like a full on effort and doing them with low energy just makes it harder - then we use porn.
I saw a doco a few years ago on the methamphetamine crisis in Australia - forget what it was called - anyway a shrink or addiction specialist stated something along the lines of:
Ice is so hard for people to quit because when someone stops, for 12+ months they cant get pleasure out of anything (Sound familiar?) so the relapse rates are huge. With other drugs the recovery of the brain tends to happen much quicker. think about if a reboot was 30 days of hell - then done, man that would be a piece of cake. It's the long drawn out day after day month after month of basically no improvement and enjoyment in life (for me anyway) that it only takes one really bad day and a "fuck it" moment and your gone, the odds are stacked against us for sure.
Keep up the good work mate and never hesitate to message me if your struggling.
On the activities/hobbies topic - bro. this is one of the hardest things about addiction.
It's well documented that brains addicted for long periods of time start to see symptoms such as extremely low motivation, nothing else seems pleasurable...it's just such a drag. Things we used to love, now just seems like a full on effort and doing them with low energy just makes it harder - then we use porn.
I saw a doco a few years ago on the methamphetamine crisis in Australia - forget what it was called - anyway a shrink or addiction specialist stated something along the lines of:
Ice is so hard for people to quit because when someone stops, for 12+ months they cant get pleasure out of anything (Sound familiar?) so the relapse rates are huge. With other drugs the recovery of the brain tends to happen much quicker. think about if a reboot was 30 days of hell - then done, man that would be a piece of cake. It's the long drawn out day after day month after month of basically no improvement and enjoyment in life (for me anyway) that it only takes one really bad day and a "fuck it" moment and your gone, the odds are stacked against us for sure.
Keep up the good work mate and never hesitate to message me if your struggling.
Thanks Aussie, I appreciate it and i'll definitely take you up on the offer if things get too tough. Though it's never good to not feel the passion for the things you love, it at least serves as another motivator to get some control and take some life back from this rotten addiction.
Day 3 and still feeling low. The only way out of this is through though and i've done it a million times before. No reason I can't now.
Early night tonight I think.
Day 3 and still feeling low. The only way out of this is through though and i've done it a million times before. No reason I can't now.
Early night tonight I think.
Good job on day 4, Orbiter!
Yeah, I didn't intend for my suggestion to be worked intricately into your already intricate plan! I meant in passing. One thing is to make our plan workable, and nothing too burdensome or overwhelming. To make this process as relaxed and natural feeling as possible (with all it's dead-dog seriousness and focus) is what we want to attain.
You're doing great, brother!
This is basically what I struggle with all the time. Vicious cycle. One thing that has helped me is reading a book called Atomic Habits. Basically the author says to worry less about setting goals and more about changing your daily structure to 'feed' the goals you want to achieve. So if you want to learn Spanish, start by doing 5 minutes a day, and slowly build it up over time. In terms of the problem above, you want to start adding other hobbies and activities in a small way at first so they don't seem too much. This has worked okay for me so far. About a year ago I really wanted to get into music production but basically had done nothing, even though I had spent a fortune on gear. It was really frustrating. But since reading that book, and starting with a few minutes a day, I'm now up to an hour or two a day and am making real progress. It's now a proper hobby for me and is taking up a fair amount of my free time, which I might otherwise be using to look at porn.Orbiter said:
It is really weird and dumb that we need help to enjoy our hobbies, but I think that is a result of the porn numbing our enjoyment for things like this that aren't so instantly gratifying.
DAY 1
Back again.
Several hours after I last posted, I relapsed. I decided after this I would take a break from the forum for a week, focus on life & building some healthy routines to get through the first week and come back with some momentum under my belt.
Bad idea! This did not happen and I relapsed through most of the week. Most times the relapsed happened were total autopilot situations where I was half-way through before it even clicked what I was doing. I've got to say, it's been a disappointing beginning to the year so far. I was hoping to be in a better place by now.
Thinking of triggers and what not, I don't think there's anything bothering me that wasn't bothering me say, two or three months ago. Smoking withdrawals have been under control for awhile now so I don't think there's any additional dopamine seeking behaviour around that right now. All the usual stressed & irritants are, if anything, less than they were in the recent past.
I know my urge control is super weak at the moment and by weak I mean non-existent. At least in the months past, I was able to identify points that I could stop myself from it but now it feels instantaneous.
I suppose this is why, at least for a little while, I have to remove as many triggers as possible and change my routine, which brings me back to why I drafted the 30 day challenge in the first place. I can't really think of any solutions other than to dust myself off and go for it again.
It feels like the only way out of this is through at the moment.
Back again.
Several hours after I last posted, I relapsed. I decided after this I would take a break from the forum for a week, focus on life & building some healthy routines to get through the first week and come back with some momentum under my belt.
Bad idea! This did not happen and I relapsed through most of the week. Most times the relapsed happened were total autopilot situations where I was half-way through before it even clicked what I was doing. I've got to say, it's been a disappointing beginning to the year so far. I was hoping to be in a better place by now.
Thinking of triggers and what not, I don't think there's anything bothering me that wasn't bothering me say, two or three months ago. Smoking withdrawals have been under control for awhile now so I don't think there's any additional dopamine seeking behaviour around that right now. All the usual stressed & irritants are, if anything, less than they were in the recent past.
I know my urge control is super weak at the moment and by weak I mean non-existent. At least in the months past, I was able to identify points that I could stop myself from it but now it feels instantaneous.
I suppose this is why, at least for a little while, I have to remove as many triggers as possible and change my routine, which brings me back to why I drafted the 30 day challenge in the first place. I can't really think of any solutions other than to dust myself off and go for it again.
It feels like the only way out of this is through at the moment.
imsorrynotsorry
Active Member
This is the cumpulsive need. The more serious you are about quitting, the stronger the compulsion gets. It is what it is for now and i tell you that's ok to not have control all the time. For now, i like to think that acceptance can help you dealing with the compulsion psychologically.
You can prepare yourself for the next reboot and start again. Everyday is the right day to battle this.
It might sound weird, but maybe selling all your electronical devices will change something?
You can prepare yourself for the next reboot and start again. Everyday is the right day to battle this.
It might sound weird, but maybe selling all your electronical devices will change something?
If you tend to relapse in autopilot situations, there is only one way: Break the routines your brain is going through in autopilot. Make them stop working. It's like driving your car: Your brain does everything automatically, you don't need to think about any of the stuff you learned in driving school. You just do it. Unless something unexpected happens. In that case, you get back control over the situation. If you're in IT, you can compare it with an interrupt which forces the CPU to stop executing the current process and switch to something different. You can force your brain to switch to something different, too, if you make it as hard as possible to follow its practiced routines.
When I quit smoking (the first time I did for a long time) I used to store as little money in my wallet as I could. I did this because there is a cigarette machine accessible only in five minutes by foot. So I wouldn't be able to get some cigarettes from it in the short run. I would have to get some money first. And as soon as I realised that I was about to get some money to buy cigarettes, I would do something completely different, like going for a run. That actually stopped the craving pretty fast.
I use this experience for fighting my PMO addiction, too. Before I started my reboot, I deleted all of my porn and set a filter in place which prevents me from browsing to porn sites in autopilot. Figure out what your routines are and make them stop working. Prevent your brain from acting against your will. You can do this.
When I quit smoking (the first time I did for a long time) I used to store as little money in my wallet as I could. I did this because there is a cigarette machine accessible only in five minutes by foot. So I wouldn't be able to get some cigarettes from it in the short run. I would have to get some money first. And as soon as I realised that I was about to get some money to buy cigarettes, I would do something completely different, like going for a run. That actually stopped the craving pretty fast.
I use this experience for fighting my PMO addiction, too. Before I started my reboot, I deleted all of my porn and set a filter in place which prevents me from browsing to porn sites in autopilot. Figure out what your routines are and make them stop working. Prevent your brain from acting against your will. You can do this.
Thanks for your support guys. It's day 3 for me, i'm still clean and I have every intention of being by the end of today.
SebNZ - Thanks man. One of these days...
Scott.84 - Thanks for dropping by. In your example there's preventative steps but also habit replacement which is important. Filters & whatnot have not worked well for me in the past as I find a way around them and have found that finding ways around the filters, peeking at borderline content etc. seems to make the cravings stronger & the relapses more severe. It almost becomes like a weird fetish in itself.
The urge control, habit replacement & also greater emotional regulation are what I think I need to work on.
With that said, everything i've said above is all well and good but I have to be honest I may not even be able to tackle that at the moment. I think at this point I need to return to the basics and do what I can to avoid PMO even for just a week until I can think straight about all of this.
Imsor - Unfortunately I need my electronic devices for work at this point in time. Besides if I deprived myself, I feel like it would most likely make the urge stronger and i'd find another way to act out. I do need to break the cycle i'm in right now though, which does involve a routine around these devices that is not healthy. It's interesting the idea of the compulsive need becoming stronger. Maybe cracking down on the laptop in the morning & night habit might have something to do with the urges being so strong at the moment?
SebNZ - Thanks man. One of these days...
Scott.84 - Thanks for dropping by. In your example there's preventative steps but also habit replacement which is important. Filters & whatnot have not worked well for me in the past as I find a way around them and have found that finding ways around the filters, peeking at borderline content etc. seems to make the cravings stronger & the relapses more severe. It almost becomes like a weird fetish in itself.
The urge control, habit replacement & also greater emotional regulation are what I think I need to work on.
With that said, everything i've said above is all well and good but I have to be honest I may not even be able to tackle that at the moment. I think at this point I need to return to the basics and do what I can to avoid PMO even for just a week until I can think straight about all of this.
Imsor - Unfortunately I need my electronic devices for work at this point in time. Besides if I deprived myself, I feel like it would most likely make the urge stronger and i'd find another way to act out. I do need to break the cycle i'm in right now though, which does involve a routine around these devices that is not healthy. It's interesting the idea of the compulsive need becoming stronger. Maybe cracking down on the laptop in the morning & night habit might have something to do with the urges being so strong at the moment?
Day 5 - I feel like i'm just beginning to build up some momentum again. Feels good to be getting closer to a week clean. I am catching up with a neighbor for a couple of drinks this evening so i'm doing this journal entry now. The computer will stay packed away for the rest of the day.
Hope you are all going well.
Hope you are all going well.