Man_in_30s_trying_to_quit_from_last_10years

[GeminiMan]

Hello all my dear Rebooters,

Glad to be here with someone trying to achieve the same thing as I.

I am a man 34 years of age. I was introduced to Porn at the age of 15 by my friend in an internet cafe and ever since I am a porn user.
I am into sexting a lot and followed by porn. I would like to get out of this poisonous habit and lead a clean/green/life that is fulfilling and peacuful. Recently my porn addiction has started causing financial downs its small but it has started, and i believe if I don't get out now I will sync myself and my family completely and hence I decided to join here.

The longest I have made so far in last 10 years is 25 days without porn/sex/sexting/MO.

hope to meet great people who are rebooters and successfull and make friends along and acheve a lot of peace and happiness by rebooting in life together.

Cheers,
Man_in_30s_trying_to_quit_from_last_10years

 

[GeminiMan]

I am starting a new reboot from today and I will come back and update whenever I can . hope we can all do this together !
may God/ Mother nature/Universe/Mother Earth Bless all rebooters with success !

 

[Lord Byron]

Good luck!  Wishing you all the best for this.  I have a similar story to you, I think, being the age we are.  I am 35, so did not grow up on what material is available on the internet today, yet everything has still left its - negative - mark.  Once more: good luck and I look forward to reading updates.

 

[GeminiMan]

Thanks for your encouraging words Clown Loach. yes we were not introduced to internet the best way. yet, we have to make best use of it going forward. The fact that you are 35 and in a similar boat makes me feel we can do it together by partnering/competing/pushing each other towards the finish line . and also reading that you have made it past 60 days at once is a real game changer to me . I will try to accomplish that or better before 2019 ends. acknowledging that only 150 days or so left this year i will be looking to achieve atleast 2 25 day or better streaks if not one full 60 day streak to close this year with a decent number.

here is my past 5 year performance -
Relapses in last 5 years -

2016 - 95 relapses
2017 - 97 relapses
2018 - 71 relapses
2019 - 48 relapses as of today (my target for 2019 was 46 which i blew it last week and i need to own responsibility for that ).
2020 - Target (15 Relapses)
2021 - Target (5 Relapses)
2022- Target ( 1 Relapse)

I am tracking down my progress in an excel spreadsheet which gives me a bird's eye view of my performance and its encouraging to see decrease in number of relapses from 2017 into 2018. I encourage every rebooter to set targets and track their yearly/monthly performance like this as it has helped me in my life.


Cheers and Glory to Rebooters !!!

 

[GeminiMan]

I am on day 3 today and hoping to make it past 25 (my previous best).

i've been here before many times , its usually 9th or 10th day i succumb. let's see how i do this time on crossing the 9,10,11 line !

Victory to rebooters ! Victory for humans who want to be humans in the true sense !

 

[GeminiMan]

Only at day 4 today but was alone at home working from home today when I felt the trigger to sext and went and started on the phone . I was able to fight my way back and finally abandon the phone did the breathing exercises and a walk outside. Saved my day . I feel it?s different now that I am sharing my progress here I feel the responsibility and accountability to be successful now. That?s the welcome change I see . 

see you guys again as I continue my fight I will update further.

Goood luck to all rebooted . On to day 5 hopefully. Yes I?m gonna make it

 

[GeminiMan]

I succumbed today. I lost it on day 4.
I am going to start over from tomorrow. Good luck to all

 

[GeminiMan]

starting at Day 1 today .
yesterday I succumbed to sexting and I sexted for about 90 mins and then i thought I have lost it today. i need to start over from tomorrow. so here I am on day 1 .

To me .. I am aiming at complete abstinence like no Porn, no sexting , no thinking about girls/women as objects first of all.
to me that is real reboot and I want to be an expert in that level of abstinence. Last year this time i had felt like there should be atleast one 50 day clean streak in 2018 but that never happened. so here I am aiming for a 50 in 2019 starting today .

my main tools I have been using to attain abstinence are below. I have been finding them helpful to some extent -

1. breathing exercises and prayers in the morning.
2. Focus on limiting the food intake and focus on increasing taking in less junk and more greener veggie food.
3. Decreasing lonely time with phone or other internet facing gadgets and increasing productive lonely time where I am doing something i love doing like learning new things (including online trainings/engaging online reading), reading a book or just watching a nice movie/game which is not A rated.
4.Exercising during the day so I can get tired by evening and i go to bed straight without lurking in the late evenings with bad thoughts in my head.
5. lastly when i am in a trigger situation then walk out of the house for some fresh air/ if not able to get out then do slow controlled long breathing for about 25 - 50 times with eyes closed and then move on to something else that distracts me from the trigger and save my day.

I know I am not doing these 100% effectively that is why I have not been a success story so far. but i plan to be one this year on this forum. Good luck to myself and all who are with me in this ! I wish each one of us are winners soon !

- Bye now. onto day 2 tomorrow. ( i may not come back every day but i will come in and write atleast once a week or so or when i succumb to get more motivation from you guys.

Gentlemen and Brave Ladies !!!
Thanks for being with me and reading this.
Let us join and grow the legion of a few good humans on this planet.

-Cheers

 

[GeminiMan]

I am down in swamps today . I again sexted for about 2 hours. probably the urge from yesterday taking me over completely today as i had not Masturbated yesterday after 90 mins of sexting. I will be starting over tomorrow a new reboot.
feels so low and helpless.

-Thanks for reading . Happy Rebooting .

 

[GeminiMan]

so i am looking bad already on the relapse tracker now .

2016 - 95 relapses
2017 - 97 relapses
2018 - 71 relapses
2019 - 51 relapses as of today (my target for 2019 was 46 which i blew already !!! need to slow down this year now - big time ).
2020 - Target (15 Relapses)
2021 - Target (5 Relapses)
2022- Target ( 1 Relapse)

 

[J01]

Don't know much about sexting but I hope you can find a way or plan to limit it from the start of the urge so that it doesn't blow out of control.  the stat approach is probably useful but remember it is a daily battle, and the focus is on today, right now!  Keep going and don't give up!

 

[GeminiMan]

@Jixu, yes i agree. stopping before the desire ignites you is the best , second best would be stopping yourself just as the desires ignite in your mind . the last and toughest would be to stop yourself 2-5 mins or later after you have started pursuing the desires by acting out .
Trigger you are trying to combat could be sexting (my problem), porn (many others here) , or just any simple fantasy.

while I also strongly agree that you need to focus on the day in hand (today), it is also very helpful to see your past performance and kind of get into a habit of breaking your own records, that can be a real confidence booster !!

The desire to break your own best past record  is the best motivation for me and many others.
But totally agree , focus on the day to even start marching towards your goal.

completing 3rd clean day without sexting/porn or acting out. feeling better and hope this continues. I will need to keep myself busy and eliminate any or all lonely time with internet facing devices to keep this up. I found this is working for me now , the trick of eliminating lonely time with internet enabled devices works well . but let's see how far it takes me .

-Good Luck to all !

 

[GeminiMan]

6th day after last relapse and going clean , no Sexting, no porn , no looking at females with that bad eye in public places.

I feel no desires, no temptations and a slight fear at this point. I am feeling hungry for a big streak of clean days this time.
Let's see how long can I keep going .

Good luck to all who are trying . keep trying . never feel that you have lost it . even if you are feeling lowest and totally devastated.
No worries. try one more time to make yourself happy, to make yourself clean and recovered.

if you are feeling low, start over again .
if you are feeling high with success, please remind yourself that failure is right around the corner and be careful.
if you are somewhere in the middle , please tell yourself you have a long way to go and you have just started.

-Let's go. Let the Reboot do its wonders on us, let's keep learning from our past pitfalls.
Let's attain the ultimate goal of life and see our best human selves by practicing abstinence.

 

[Pdub]

It sounds like you have some good ideas on how to deal with the urges you have.  Have you thought about your triggers and what causes them?

For me it is anger, loneliness, and worst of all boredom.  If I know I'll be put in a situation where I have to deal with those, I'm more likely to relapse.  So far I've been pushing myself to go to the gym when I feel bored or lonely, which puts me in a public place and forces me to do physical exercise.  By the end of my hour at the gym, I feel a lot less prone to relapse.

 

[GeminiMan]

@Pdub

its the same for me too. my triggers are loneliness in a internet accesible zone, eating a lot is definitely all time trigger. I have relapsed 99% of the times when i eat more than what my body needs. also frustration when i can't get something done it triggers me to act out in search of pleasure.

I think to kill these triggers we can .
1. eliminate lonely time with unprotected internet facing devices.
2. try to eat less than you need (and then we may end up eating only as much as we need because we tried , atleast in my case that is true)
3. when frustrated may be go out for a walk in fresh air/do long breathing and then get back at it .

Today's my 7 th day and i was lonely in afternooon when i had a trigger to sext.
I opened the phone and started off. after a few minutes slowly gained sense of what is happening and repeatedly told myself that this will be a relapse if i don't act now. finally after few minutes i was able to put away the phone and started listening to music and got back to work . so it was a scary moment that could have led to relapse. I managed to not get involved and pull myself out in a few minutes and then i am cruising again . hopefully i see this through and make it to 8,9,10

 

[GeminiMan]

into 8th day today and doing okay.
Urges and triggers have started bothering me i had to fight one on day 7.

the trigger on day 7 was to sext and i was able to convince myself to put away my phone before any real damage was done.

one thing i do need to share for benefiting others here is that once i was triggered and i was on my smart phone I had to forcefully convince myself that this isn't for me and as my fingers typed away (almost not under my control) I closed my eyes repeatedly and meditated where ever I was and this cycle of looking back at phone and then closing my eyes and meditating a few minutes happened about 3-5 times before i could regain control over my aggravated mind to think positive and finally was able to put away the phone . at the end of this mental battle i felt exhausted as if the top of my head was exhausting smoke . i calmed down and was able to focus on my work while i tried to divert my attention with some music i like.

as you see I needed 3 things to fight my way back into sanity -
1. meditation even as i was under the influence of trigger and telling myself repeatedly that this is not for me until i regained control.
2. deep breathing when under attack.
3. music and work to divert my mind from going back to the trigger and regain focus.

you may have a different preference of the way you protect against a trigger so write them down , think them through, put those tools that work for you into use in the moments of a trigger or if you smell a trigger in next few moments in your day to protect yourself and prevent your triggers from catching you.

 

[GeminiMan]

day 9 i have lost it . I will reset my counter to 0 from august 04 and try again from august 05

fought a lot this time but lost it to triggers today . I need to learn to manage my triggers better.

 

[GeminiMan]

Starting fresh after my relapse over the weekend.

Day 1 today -
feels very bad i am on number 1 after all .
i wish it was a 100 or a 1000 or a 10000.

after introspecting what let to my relapse over the weekend . i feel its two things i didn't do , that i have never done in fact without fail consistently , that may have helped me take my clean streak into teens.

1. ate a lot of food on saturday night.
2. allowed my triggers to act me out to get a smart phone and start sexting since friday .

one thing i was able to keep myself off was the P . but my main and big trigger is sxting.

so for me to hit that dream number 100 after the 10 i need to keep a check on my eating quantity and should not allow my triggers to get me started off to go for my smart phone or other internet device for sxting.

Salute to all those who are cruising along in a clean streak you guys are the heroes i look upto.

 

[GeminiMan]

I made it until day 4 this time and relapsed on day 4 as I was alone on 4th night with internet facing devices.

and on 5th night the binge continued. so starting fresh at day 1 today.

Lesson learnt : Loneliness and not being busy is making yourself highly vulnerable for a very very likely relapse . As much as possible avoid loneliness and not having anything to do at hand. in other words keep yourself busy until you hit the pillow at night.

Starting over today : Day 1.

 

[GeminiMan]

I relapsed again today so day 0 today . will start day 1 from tomorrow.