Fail Better

[El Goodo]

Today was super hard. It's taken everything in me not to masturbate/PMO* and still is. There's a specific thing I can't get out of my head and want to look at, and it feels like all my cells are screaming COME ON, JUST THIS ONCE. Dealing with some serious chaser effect from last night. I spent a great deal of today just cruising various articles and videos on this site and other porn addiction sites because it felt like the safest place for me, but my brain also feels kinda pummeled from that.

Thinking about the effect porn addiction and dopamine flooding has had on my relationships (romantic and otherwise) and my ability to achieve my goals. I don't feel like I explicitly ever chose looking at porn over sex with a partner or an afternoon of PMO over accomplishing some activity, and maybe I didn't directly ever do that, but in the long term, it totally has retarded my development. I do need a great deal of alone time, but I think that my addiction has caused me to prioritize that and jealously guard it just because, whether I actively look at porn or not, my brain knows that's where the relief from anxiety will come from. Where it will get that dopamine flood. And it probably has caused me to be much less focused, much less driven, much lazier, and much more restless, irritable, and discontent in other areas of my life where I didn't even know I felt that way and just "accepted" myself to be a curmudgeonly, asocial, miserable failure because I haven't seen the world through any other eyes than ones that have been saturated in porn an average of three times a week for the last seventeen years. And maybe nothing seems fun or interesting or cool to me not because I actively would rather be looking at porn, but because prolonged PMO has just warped my mind so much (what do they call it, hypofrontality?) that it doesn't know how to truly enjoy or what contentment is.

Not the most elegant description of what I'm grappling with right now, but there's a lot I'm considering at the moment.

Still though, my life has looked remarkably better just since I've been engaging this at all. I may not have the raging erections and thriving social life and clear goals and cash and prizes a thorough reboot can offer yet, but I'm putting in some work. Here's how it's looked for me.

10/22: Last time I edged. Last marathon PMO sesh of open-ended length.
10/28: PMO, 10 mins or so.
10/29: Sex, great difficulty getting/maintaining erection and achieving orgasm. Chalked it up to having PMO the previous night, but could also have been mixed feelings about partner/I didn't much feel like having sex but didn't want to disappoint her.
Made conscious decision of no more porn.
Continued to masturbate without use of porn a few times a week. Rationale being that masturbating without porn made it less likely that I would PMO. I'm still weighing that logic.
11/22: PMO, short.
11/24: Masturbated, looked at porn briefly, pulled away and finished without porn.
12/2: Joined RebootNation, intended hard-more no PMO.
12/9: Wet dream
12/12: Masturbated
12/15: Looked at porn while masturbating, very brief, intended to properly PMO, stopped short, disconnected, no release. Resetting clock.

All in all, I'd call it progress, and in the words of Ian MacKaye, "at least I'm fucking trying".




*For some reason I was under the impression that you were advised to use the P-M-O letters so as not to potentially trigger folks, but no one really seems to adhere to that. So I'm gonna mostly scrap it except for where it's economical, but if it's poor etiquette, by all means let me know.

 

[El Goodo]

Day 2 of return to no PMO after a messy week. Feeling equally torn between really wanting to PMO and never wanting to PMO again. Wish the dialectical synthesis of good old-fashioned MO was an option right now, but I need this time to put in some work and some effort and try to truly reboot.

Everything feels like a trigger these days. I can't seem to turn anywhere without my brain finding some way to translate whatever I'm seeing or experiencing into a reason to just give in.

I have mixed feelings about the self-help guru founders themselves of these programs, but I liked a thing I heard the Church guy say in one video about having no cherished memories of looking at porn. That's real. There's no there there. But for some reason I spent so much time doing it and am disgusted by it having its hooks in me today.

 

[El Goodo]

Last night was a very bad one. The thing happened, yet again, where I had been dozing and the next thing I knew, I found myself at my computer going at. I hadn't yet pulled up any porn. In my mind, I had decided I didn't care and was going to do it. But I couldn't bring myself, thankfully, to do it. Spend the next few moments, dick in hand, wrestling with whether or not to go ahead and finish. But once again, I collected myself and thought better of it. I pulled myself out of it and read for a while, but I was tortured for the rest of the night (of which I slept about three hours) with unwanted, obsessive sexual fantasies.

At one point, in sheer agony, I decided this whole thing just isn't worth it. It just isn't worth the fight and I'm not doing this whole reboot thing right anyway and I may as well give up. But I've ultimately decided, as they say, that if you're going through hell, keep going. It's going to be a long, slow, rough road. And I'm not going to do it perfectly. But it seems my main problem is what happens to me in that semi-conscious state. That even though it sucks in my conscious, fully-waking life, I can pretty much control it. So it's scary to think that whatever's going on with me might be a deeper issue than porn addiction; that porn addiction might just be a symptom of something else.

But for all practical purposes, I am hooked on PMO, so having to wake up in the middle of the night and stop myself short is just going to be a fact of my recovery. There's nothing I've found about it on the forums or articles on this or similar sites. I'm not going to reset my counter unless I actually PMO. If I can pull myself away within seconds, as I've done a few times now, then it's a success. I am successfully interrupting the cycle and causing a disruption. And that might mean frustrating, sleepless nights. But it is still better than a sleepless night and the reality of having PMO'd. I have not intentionally, properly PMO'd since the end of October. I have only masturbated once since the beginning of this month. And yeah, maybe all of this isn't helping ease the withdrawals; maybe I'm tying off but not shooting the junk. But waking up and starting to do it is evidently out of my control. But stopping it IS within my control. So all in all, I'd call it progress. Bloody, ugly, warts-and-all progress.

Anything is better than where I was at not so many months ago.

 

[El Goodo]

Feeling a lot less crazy today, but the tradeoff is that I just feel really depressed. I know a lot of what I'm going through is the fact that feelings are coming up and I'm not avoiding them by making myself feel different with a distraction, a dopamine flood, and then the attendant manic episode of trying to make up for the time I lost.

Still feeling the vestiges of "what's the point?" and just giving in. And maybe that's fine, maybe there is no point and I'll just go back to my old ways, but isn't it at least worth giving it a chance? At least seeing if my life has the possibility of looking and feeling different, even better rather than continuing to do a thing I know from experience never really offered me anything and I felt bad about? It's worth trying.

Just hope I can make it through another night.

 

[El Goodo]

Feeling restless, irritable, and discontent at the moment. I suppose it's a step up from the hopelessness and loneliness I was feeling hours ago. I guess when you quit a thing, the emotions come up. And it seems silly to thing that I can just masturbate deeper-seated discomfort away, but it's what my lizard brain is telling me.

I'm really missing my most recent ex right now. She dumped me a little over three months ago. We were together for 9 months before that. I had my misgivings, one foot in and one foot out of the relationship over the course of it, and I sometimes doubted how suited to one another we actually were, but she honestly was a very good and very special person, and I would say we had a pretty special relationship. It was also immensely satisfying sexually. I'll go ahead and say it was the best sex of my life. She was very open, very game, and very, I dunno, sexual.

Even though I've been more or less ok since the dumping, managing reasonably well in any case, it's been hard for me to stop fantasizing about her sexually. About things we did, things I wish we did, and things I still want to do. And I suppose on paper that's pretty normal behavior, it feels pornographic and triggering to me. It seems like it comes from my brain's desire to get off rather than coming from a true place of missing her, even just missing her sexually.

The last week or so, these thoughts and feelings have been in the extreme. Like I've lost sleep over them and over battling the attendant desire to masturbate (also for fear that would lead to porn). And I've become very consumed with missing her, desiring her, and also jealousy in the extreme at the (as yet unfounded) thought that she's with somebody else now. I dread the thought of that coming up in my social network feed, for example. And in my right mind, I'm quite aware that my brain is desperate. My brain is screaming for orgasm, for masturbation, for porn, for the rush, the high, the dopamine, and it's magnifying what might have normally been unpleasant thoughts or feelings into screaming, overwhelming urges and fears.

Would MO or PMO a couple of times tamp them down and numb them out? Yeah, probably. But then how would I feel? How would that affect my self-worth in the long run, or how would that affect my anxiety around performance and PIED if I'm to meet a new sexual partner? Delaying instant gratification for long term self-growth is the name of the game. Easier said than done. My rational mind sees the whole game very clearly, but the monkey on my back drives a hard bargain.

 

[ajcoals]

Hey friend -

So glad you're on here, and sharing your thoughts and struggles. I read through your thread - I would encourage you in light of your previous relationship.  You'll need to consider past thoughts of what you did together as fantasy, and thus things that need to be stamped out of your thoughts. This is extremely difficult, considering the intensity of them, but you'll need to lay them to rest in the same way you'd put out thoughts of previous porn you watched.  Since it's not a current partner, it's not going to help you reboot. 

Stay strong - keep fighting! Day 13 is tremendous success - but from experience I know day 10-20 are brutal. Keep pressing on, and have a great Christmas!

 

[El Goodo]

Missed posting yesterday, but still hanging in there.

About to head to my mom's for the holiday. I'm sure the interruption of my usual routine will do me some good and help me feel less preoccupied by my particular porn rituals, and I'll certainly have less privacy and less computer access, but going there and traveling can also be stressful. And I hope I can face that stress without using porn or masturbation. I'm also worried about coming back home, because my usual method of returning to my space and being at home is a sesh. That's gonna be a tense one too. One day at a time, I guess.

Buhh. I'm depressed.

Thank you to anyone who's taken the time to read or respond to this journal. Even if I didn't reply back directly, I am so, so grateful for your words and your showing up to support me. It hasn't been an easy go of things, but I know I'll look back on this with pride at having put in the hard work, and I'm grateful for this community and for the journals, posts, stories, and shares of all you guys.

 

[El Goodo]

Still fighting the good fight. Still failing better, but at least the cycle is being continuously rethought, disrupted, and steered a different direction.

I haven't masturbated to orgasm for two weeks. When I was home for the holiday, I had the half-asleep thing happen, this time with my phone, which I've never used for porn before. Once I was fully conscious though, I did keep going, which took some intentionality, because doing it with your phone (one-handed) takes some focus. Didn't last long. Managed to stop myself, turn off the phone, and turn off my body. The next day I felt foggy and somewhat rough when I woke up. Made me realize that even a little bit of that kind of porn-focus goes a long way. But I came out of it as the morning went on; at least it wasn't an all-day, hit-by-a-truck exhaustion, which I'm grateful for. Last night it happened again; no porn, but still woke myself up masturbating and stopped myself. I know all the research on here cautions against edging, and I believe it, but it doesn't feel like that's what I'm doing as edging takes focus, intention, and persistence. I just wake myself up going at it and put on the brakes. Consciously, even though I miss it and want it, I manage never to start.

Been thinking I should read some books on sleep/the sleep cycle/sleep disorders to see if I can get to the bottom of this. I've found some clickbaity pop-psychology articles on sexsomnia, but the most scientific thing I've been able to take away from any of them is that what's going on with me may be a form of OCD and can be relieved with medication. Not really sure how to take this to a medical professional or psychiatrist, let alone if I can afford it.

I'm deee-pressed. Maybe it's mourning the dopamine rushes. Maybe I'm lonely (it's alienating to be working hard at recovery but not be able to talk about it with friends). Maybe I'm just a basic bitch and get bummed out around the stupid fucking holidays just like lots of people and it's not that exciting.

But the big picture looks good: I haven't had one of my standard porn-seshes in over two months and haven't intentionally and productively masturbated in two weeks. So at least we got some traction here.

 

[El Goodo]

As I've mentioned, I've been feeling really lonely, depressed, and isolated lately. I know part of the reboot "program" is the suggestion to get active and be around people. It's not easy for me; I struggle with crippling social anxiety as well as pretty well-defined anhedonia. A lot of the research this site/program points to suggests that my long history of PMO has been a major contributing factor to it. Whether that's completely accurate scientifically or not, I'm sure there's some wisdom to it. Still, I've been a loner, even by my standards, the last couple months.

In a way, it's been nice to have the chance to take a time-out and focus on self-improvement, getting rest, reading, and just having some time to reflect. But when I talked about how depressed, lonely, and isolated I've been feeling at my other support group tonight, another member suggested that if I'm anything like her, I've probably been doing a lot of thinking and been spending way too much time in my own head. In the moment, it felt like proselytizing, but honestly, I think I have been thinking too much, and I think it's been contributing to some of my more delusional thought patterns lately, particularly with regard to exes. I have no idea what I'm doing for New Year's (apart from cleaning my bathroom with a new method I've heard about that I'm actually quite excited to try - am I cool or what?), but maybe I oughta bite the bullet and extend myself to some folks, because a depressing holiday spent inside my own head could certainly spell disaster for my reboot.

Another thing, re. "subs". I'm an artist and I have an account on social media where I post my art. In my downtime at work, I spend some time scanning the suggested feeds and search section, and for some reason, the algorithm seems to translate "art" as erotic art. There can be an awful lot of nudes, suggestive art, models, body parts, etc in my suggested searches. There's other stuff too, but I've found I have to be very intentional and skip over things I know could lead me down a pornographic rabbithole. Probably be wiser if I didn't look at all. But it's nice to know that, consciously at least, I can filter out stuff I know's not good for me. It can feel like it's everywhere sometimes. But it's been nice having some intentionality behind not allowing that in and not allowing myself to be triggered.

 

[El Goodo]

Hey folks. Still here.

The unfortunate news is that I'm fresh from a relapse. I PMO'd last night. There was kind of a long build to it over the course of a couple of weeks. I went through a difficult emotional time around new year's, and I decided that not having the option to MO was more than I could handle, so I did, and continued to here and there. And I felt weird about talking about it on here because I didn't know how and I didn't want to admit I failed (ironically, considering the title of my journal points to the idea of acceptance and learning from your setbacks). I still had my half-asleep glances that I was still able to pull away from, and finally yesterday I had a bad day and was out of energy to fight, and so I did. And it felt great until I realized how after a very short amount of time, I just wasn't into it and was hunting around in vain for something to really get me juiced and that I wasn't finding it and knew what I was doing and didn't care to continue.

The good news is that this program works. I have been a porn user for 20 years and an internet porn user for 16, so it's something that's well-established and built into me. It's going to take a long time and a lot of chipping away before I finally stop it, but just having engaged with this forum and this method is enough to have put a huge dent in my habit and probably disrupt the cycle irreparably. Which is great, because even if I PMO, I will never have to passively accept it again. This knowledge will always be there as a speed bump, and hopefully I'll hit so many bumps that eventually the car stops.

Two schools of thought around addiction and recovery are abstinence and harm reduction (there are probably others, but these are the big ones I'm aware of). As I've mentioned before, I'm in a different support group for abuse of another substance. For that, I need to apply the abstinence model. There is no measured amount I can handle, and because it's a toxic chemical, if I continue to use it, I will die from it. With porn, I can use harm reduction. It's not good for me psychologically or doing any favors for my erections or self-esteem, but I'm also not likely to die as a direct result of using it.

So I will keep failing, and trying, and failing again, and just keep getting better and better at failing, and gradually, I'll be released.

PS, I never stopped reading these posts, so thanks everyone for being here and helping be examples for me.

 

[El Goodo]

Three days back on the ball. I can usually go within the space of a week anyway, so I'm ok now, but who knows where trouble will lurk. When I first started this in early December though, I was crazy itchy for the first couple of days, so maybe the attention I've been giving this addiction and what work I've done is helping to normalize not just giving in whenever I want or whenever I have some downtime.

I'm really bothered about how when I PMO'd on Saturday, I started my usual junkie-like searches for a thing that I'm into, trying to find that perfect thing and trying to hit the jackpot. It must be like scratchers for some people. But I found it after not long, and I watched it, kinda went "ok cool" mentally, and kept hunting for my fix. That's where I'm an addict. It should have been enough to find that very thing I was after, register that high, and be done. But I wasn't. I needed to keep digging.

Porn doesn't even seem cool to think about. Used to be I could think about stuff I saw or wanted to see when I'm just doing my thing, walking down the street or at work or whatever, and it sounded super hot and great. But now it sounds gross and boring and sad. It sucks that it's such a struggle, but I also just know, in all honesty, that there is simply not room in my life for porn anymore.

 

[Lord Byron]

Congrats on your three days.  Keep going and all the best!  I enjoyed reading through your journal.  Take care.

 

[El Goodo]

Relapsed again, after exactly one week. It wasn't porn per se, but the fact is I MO'd to 2D erotic visual stimuli, so I may as well have used, despite the fact that there was no hunting or edging involved. All in all, it was pretty quick.

I considered not saying anything here out of embarrassment, but I've realized that part of this struggle is humility, along with honesty and accountability.

It happened again in that spot between being awake and being asleep I seem to have so much trouble with. I honestly think when that happens, I may just have to MO for the sake of harm reduction. The most important thing is clearing porn from my life (although I would really love to understand what this sexsomnia is for me and what I can do about it).

I hope it doesn't sound like a rationalization, but I am at least grateful that since I've been working this program since the beginning of December, I've only once properly PMO'd and even that wasn't an hours-long marathon like it used to be; it was like 15 minutes maybe. And last night's was far shorter and didn't look like my typical habitual porn use. So something is changing in me, however gradually. It's some kind of progress.

 

[Lord Byron]

Hello El Goodo.  Great journal.  In regard to your latest relapse, it seems that much of the literature on YBOP points to high-speed internet videos being the most damaging, as opposed to more vanilla regular pictures.  These are what we are more likely to encounter in daily life, so even building up a degree of immunity to these is useful.  At the end of the day, it's up to us as individuals to decide what is a relapse, and what is not.  Additionally, it is up to us how we will reach our desired goal.  I know what the moment you describe feels like, that the sweet spot between being awake and sleep moment.  Perhaps I experience the same in reverse, this being from sleeping to wakefulness.  This is my most vulnerable time.  If it was me, I believe MOing - as a preventative harm reducing exercise (keeping away from porn) - would do more harm than good, as I know it would eventually lead me to porn.  Still, as I wrote earlier, we are all different, and part of this experience is to find out what works for us and what doesn't.  Good luck in finding out, and I look forward to reading further updates from you.  Don't be too despondent from the latest relapse.  Cheers, CL.

 

[El Goodo]

Thank you for reading and for the support, CL. I really appreciate you for hearing that.

I agree that only we can know if a certain behavior feels like it has an edge of addiction. I've had verbal encounters with people that somehow felt "drinky" to me just because of where it was coming from. And while this relapse was indeed not marked with the manic frenzy of gobbling up as many videos or images as I possible could, what happened still felt "porny". It still felt like I was indulging that demon in ways that other times I've MO'd has not.

I also think you're demonstrating another principle to me. That I need to put the hammer down and stop beating myself over the head with it, because that isn't going to help me. I made a mistake. I looked at something pornographic because that's what we porn addicts do: we look at porn. I'm trying to learn the skills here to start interrupting that desire when it comes knocking and start to remove porn and my behaviors around it from my life. But it could have been worse.

Would MO lead to more PMO and more self-harm for me? I don't know. But I know I want to stop damaging myself and that PMO will only do just that. And I want to do the work to start to accumulate more healthy time.