Hey Hey,
Back again. I was here with a very similar name, but I've been doing extraordinarilly badly since my last posts. I posted the forum introduction just as a reminded to myself as to what to do.
I'm still 49 years old, based in the UK, and a work-from-home content writer.
The last thing I posted in my old journal was a copy of the forum introduction as a reminder to try to start again properly.
So, I'm going to try to do it.
This is my first post:
I have been using porn compulsively for a long time. In fact, long before I had access to high-speed internet I was buying and hoarding large amounts of hard-copy porn.
The first time I ever went onto the web I tried to look at porn. But it only really became a problem beyond having a secret when I moved to where I now live with full-time, high-speed fibre internet.
I'm wary of psycholanalysing myself (though also extremely attracted to so doing!), but I do see some "issues" in my past that have helped to lead me down this path. I had a very delayed puberty, and was - as a result - scared of intimacy for a long time. My parents were conservative and even puritanical around sexual matters and I got no sexual education as a youngster: there was no "talk".
I've had two long-term relationships. Both with wonderful women. Really, I was (and am) very lucky.
I tend to think of my porn use, having been around another recovery forum for a while, as rather vanilla by some standards. That may be true in terms of escalation and that my porn use has stayed in relatively mainstream waters. That's how I like to think of it, but it's not entirely true, and there are parts of my sexuality that I am not comfortable with and don't fully understand.
I also went through a spell of visiting sex workers. This was mostly in a relatively short period of time concentrated around the breakdown of my first long-term relationship and is now firmly in the past. I genuinely believe that.
I was tremendously self-destructive for a while (and, indeed, I have made several suicide attempts in my life, though only one was serious enough to hospitalise me). I'm now in recovery when it comes to drugs (largely alcohol, but I don't use any drugs now), and I haven't drunk for nearly 7 years, smoked cannabis for a similar period, or smoked tobacco for around 3 years.
I am still in my second long-term relationship. We are not married, but the hope and expectation is that we will spend the rest of our lives together. I have told my partner once - tearfully, in the wake of discovery - that I was "addicted to porn" (this was back in the old DVD days). She disapproves of pornography entirely.
The longest period of time I have managed to stay off online porn is less than 30 days. I used the NoFap forum for a while, but found that I started to use that rather addictively.
I have broader problems around internet use more generally, and social media use, and news consumption most specifically.
I gave up Facebook in June 2016 (the proximity to the Brexit referendum in the UK when the site became extraordinarilly toxic is not coincidental). I would use the site for hours every day. I have succesfully stayed off Facebook. But I found Twitter. I have been on and off that site for the past year or so. I really would describe my relationship to it as addictive - I'm scared of deleting my account even now. I largely use it for political content, I've never really had a great deal of an issue with sexual content on social media fortunately, and I've never engaged too heavily with any other social media sites.
However, as I quit them now I'm concerned that I will run into exactly that problem.
Since around 2010 I've been working from home doing various sorts of content writing and editing. I am fortunate not to have any pressing financial or housing concerns.
I'm doing poorly though. I'd switched my concern around addiction to social media and excused porn use as a lesser issue for the moment. YouTube is also an issue with me.
I'm disengaged from my work and from the world. My work has gone completely to pot. I dislike most of it intensely (it is unrewarding and some of it ethically questionable (to me - it's gambling content, I know I'm feeding an addictive business) and I simply don't bother to do it a lot of the time. The house. Gardening. Our relationship. They're all neglected.
I'm nearly 50. I'm really so lucky and blessed in a lot of ways. And really a complete failure in others.
This is familiar territory I'm sure. There is an element of what would be recognisable as a mid-life crisis in this whole situation, I'm sure. I've been treated for depression and anxiety since my early 20s, but for the past few years (really since stopping drinking), that picture has been much more positive: I haven't taken any medication for a few years now.
The small bits of success I've had in the past have been greatly helped by using K9 as a blocker. That seems to be gone as an option now. I tried Cold Turkey but it caused me tech problems. I have Freedom now, but it's not got a comprehensive adult filter that I'm aware of and it's easy to get around. I've also been using a programme called FocalFilter that is quite a good blocker.
My sticking points are:
Having to be online all day every day for my work. Which bores me and which I dislike. I get behind with the work. I get worried and angry. I look for something to make me feel better. . .
My goals are simple. I want to give up porn forever.
This is quite a negative-sounding first post. There are lots of positives for me though:
I've got experience with recovery
I'm quite well-informed in this area already. I spent a long time round NoFap (I even wrote and researched some content for them), I've gone through all the Gary Wilson material and read Noah Church's book.
My life has been improving generally. I have ups and downs but since quitting alcohol (and to a lesser extent other drugs, largely canabis) has put me on an upward curve. I started to exercise, I took up meditation, and I've done tai chi and yoga classes. I write music and I'm learning how to record. I did a creative writing course and a song-writing course online.
I have a fairly clear idea of what I need to do, that at various points I've put into writing. It really boils down to:
Daily exercise,
Daily meditation/comtemplation,
Finding meaningful work,
Getting outside every day.
That's a sort of daily routine. In the longer term I need to address isolation and find something that will give me some sort of purpose.
That's a lot of words. I enjoy writing. I might well post too much. I might run off again. When I first got interested in really escaping I registered a website that I had hoped to use as a job of sorts. I've done nothing with it.
It's nice to meet you all. Please call me Owain.
Thank you.
Back again. I was here with a very similar name, but I've been doing extraordinarilly badly since my last posts. I posted the forum introduction just as a reminded to myself as to what to do.
I'm still 49 years old, based in the UK, and a work-from-home content writer.
The last thing I posted in my old journal was a copy of the forum introduction as a reminder to try to start again properly.
So, I'm going to try to do it.
This is my first post:
I have been using porn compulsively for a long time. In fact, long before I had access to high-speed internet I was buying and hoarding large amounts of hard-copy porn.
The first time I ever went onto the web I tried to look at porn. But it only really became a problem beyond having a secret when I moved to where I now live with full-time, high-speed fibre internet.
I'm wary of psycholanalysing myself (though also extremely attracted to so doing!), but I do see some "issues" in my past that have helped to lead me down this path. I had a very delayed puberty, and was - as a result - scared of intimacy for a long time. My parents were conservative and even puritanical around sexual matters and I got no sexual education as a youngster: there was no "talk".
I've had two long-term relationships. Both with wonderful women. Really, I was (and am) very lucky.
I tend to think of my porn use, having been around another recovery forum for a while, as rather vanilla by some standards. That may be true in terms of escalation and that my porn use has stayed in relatively mainstream waters. That's how I like to think of it, but it's not entirely true, and there are parts of my sexuality that I am not comfortable with and don't fully understand.
I also went through a spell of visiting sex workers. This was mostly in a relatively short period of time concentrated around the breakdown of my first long-term relationship and is now firmly in the past. I genuinely believe that.
I was tremendously self-destructive for a while (and, indeed, I have made several suicide attempts in my life, though only one was serious enough to hospitalise me). I'm now in recovery when it comes to drugs (largely alcohol, but I don't use any drugs now), and I haven't drunk for nearly 7 years, smoked cannabis for a similar period, or smoked tobacco for around 3 years.
I am still in my second long-term relationship. We are not married, but the hope and expectation is that we will spend the rest of our lives together. I have told my partner once - tearfully, in the wake of discovery - that I was "addicted to porn" (this was back in the old DVD days). She disapproves of pornography entirely.
The longest period of time I have managed to stay off online porn is less than 30 days. I used the NoFap forum for a while, but found that I started to use that rather addictively.
I have broader problems around internet use more generally, and social media use, and news consumption most specifically.
I gave up Facebook in June 2016 (the proximity to the Brexit referendum in the UK when the site became extraordinarilly toxic is not coincidental). I would use the site for hours every day. I have succesfully stayed off Facebook. But I found Twitter. I have been on and off that site for the past year or so. I really would describe my relationship to it as addictive - I'm scared of deleting my account even now. I largely use it for political content, I've never really had a great deal of an issue with sexual content on social media fortunately, and I've never engaged too heavily with any other social media sites.
However, as I quit them now I'm concerned that I will run into exactly that problem.
Since around 2010 I've been working from home doing various sorts of content writing and editing. I am fortunate not to have any pressing financial or housing concerns.
I'm doing poorly though. I'd switched my concern around addiction to social media and excused porn use as a lesser issue for the moment. YouTube is also an issue with me.
I'm disengaged from my work and from the world. My work has gone completely to pot. I dislike most of it intensely (it is unrewarding and some of it ethically questionable (to me - it's gambling content, I know I'm feeding an addictive business) and I simply don't bother to do it a lot of the time. The house. Gardening. Our relationship. They're all neglected.
I'm nearly 50. I'm really so lucky and blessed in a lot of ways. And really a complete failure in others.
This is familiar territory I'm sure. There is an element of what would be recognisable as a mid-life crisis in this whole situation, I'm sure. I've been treated for depression and anxiety since my early 20s, but for the past few years (really since stopping drinking), that picture has been much more positive: I haven't taken any medication for a few years now.
The small bits of success I've had in the past have been greatly helped by using K9 as a blocker. That seems to be gone as an option now. I tried Cold Turkey but it caused me tech problems. I have Freedom now, but it's not got a comprehensive adult filter that I'm aware of and it's easy to get around. I've also been using a programme called FocalFilter that is quite a good blocker.
My sticking points are:
Having to be online all day every day for my work. Which bores me and which I dislike. I get behind with the work. I get worried and angry. I look for something to make me feel better. . .
My goals are simple. I want to give up porn forever.
This is quite a negative-sounding first post. There are lots of positives for me though:
I've got experience with recovery
I'm quite well-informed in this area already. I spent a long time round NoFap (I even wrote and researched some content for them), I've gone through all the Gary Wilson material and read Noah Church's book.
My life has been improving generally. I have ups and downs but since quitting alcohol (and to a lesser extent other drugs, largely canabis) has put me on an upward curve. I started to exercise, I took up meditation, and I've done tai chi and yoga classes. I write music and I'm learning how to record. I did a creative writing course and a song-writing course online.
I have a fairly clear idea of what I need to do, that at various points I've put into writing. It really boils down to:
Daily exercise,
Daily meditation/comtemplation,
Finding meaningful work,
Getting outside every day.
That's a sort of daily routine. In the longer term I need to address isolation and find something that will give me some sort of purpose.
That's a lot of words. I enjoy writing. I might well post too much. I might run off again. When I first got interested in really escaping I registered a website that I had hoped to use as a job of sorts. I've done nothing with it.
It's nice to meet you all. Please call me Owain.
Thank you.