Zero to Hero
July 23rd, 2020 - ReflectionMy name is Sal; this is the story of my most recent (and final) journey towards being the man that I want to be, the man that I need to be.
Before we jump into what's going on with me today, we'll need to shine some light on times come and gone.
I started masturbating after puberty, probably around the ages of 12 or 13 - right when Myspace became a thing. My first "artificial" stimulus was printed pictures of my hot classmates that I ripped off Myspace. I understand (now) that Napster and Lime-wire had a plethora of sketchy internet porn to download at that time, but I never got that far. My dad grew up riding wave after wave of new PC technology, and always had an iron grip on all things "internet" in the household. I didn't quite grasp the boundaries of what internet activity my dad was able to monitor, but I was too terrified to try searching for hot babes, let alone download anything from sketchy P2P networks like Lime-wire or Napster. This apprehension likely saved me YEARS of unnecessary porn use, and I'm very grateful.
Somewhere down the road (maybe age 17?) I grew past that fear and had a pretty good idea about the things that my father would or would not know about in regards to my internet activity. I started watching porn, discovered 4chan, and started climbing down the rabbit hole.
When I was 18, I got my first girlfriend. A relatively new porn user, I hadn't been corrupted long enough to have penis problems, so we had sex ~10 times a week for a couple years, and it was awesome. All this time, I was watching porn, and slowly but surely my brain started to prefer pixels over pussy. By the time I was 20, we were still having plenty of sex, but I became more absent when we were together, and would often watch porn after she fell asleep. The porn beast cometh!
My girlfriend was very sex-positive but definitely didn't approve of me getting off to random girls on the internet. A few times she caught me in the act, got very upset, and I'd spend a day or two convincing her that it was a one time incident. Our sex started to be less intimate, and eventually she sat me down and explicitly told me that we would have a deeper connection if I didn't jerk off to other girls when she wasn't around. If I had a time machine, this would be the very moment I go back to and change things forever.
This conversation was the first time in my life that anyone had ever suggested that watching porn was bad in any way, and it really made me mad. I defended myself aggressively, and made her feel like shit for even bringing it up. How dare she presume that I watched porn too often, and that it might be affecting our relationship! Looking back, this was one of the most embarrassing moments in any relationship that I've ever had. I had a beautiful loving girlfriend who was smart enough to figure out that I had a problem (she figured this out with mostly just her intuition, women are wonderfully intelligent creatures), and had the balls to confront me in hopes of repairing our diminishing relationship. To say the least, I fucking blew it.
Time goes by and I continue to watch porn, masturbate, and sabotage my once-beautiful relationship. We moved across the country together, lived together for the first time, and eventually our relationship fell apart. My porn use ultimately led to the end of our relationship, but I was clueless. It was a pretty vicious cycle.
Porn use addled my brain --> sex became less interesting --> less sex meant less intimacy --> less intimacy meant more porn to compensate --> back to square one
This cycle had been creeping along for years, and eventually our relationship fell apart. Our lease ended, we started living out of our vehicles, and then eventually she broke up with me. At this point I was so addled by porn that I didn't even give a shit (I rationalized this by saying "this is normal after such a long time together").
There were some other factors that contributed to our separation, but years of consistent porn use drove us slowly apart, there's no doubt about it.
The next few weeks I binged super hard, trying to cope with the loss of a relationship that I realized I wasn't ready to give up. I was still living out of my car, so I was alone quite frequently. I would get an urge, get off to porn (cars can be mobile masturbation chambers, you know), then continue on with my day. The amount of times that I jerked off in my car is, to say the least, disgusting. I was working and had friends and a social life, but I felt completely hollow inside. Most of you probably know this feeling. That was a pretty low point in my life.
One fateful day that summer I was at the local laundromat playing PUB-G on my laptop (free Wi-Fi is a godsend when you're living out of your Hyundai) when between games, I discovered the subreddit "NoFap". Oh.. My... GOD!!!The clouds opened, angels landed on my shoulders, and the light bulb turned on. You mean to tell me that there's an entire community of people who have sworn off porn, and they're becoming gods among men? Porn was the reason why I felt like shit every day, and all I have to do is NOT watch it? Sign me up, buddy!
Through that subreddit I discovered the classic book "Taoist Secrets of Love: Cultivating Male Sexual Energy", which is a book entirely dedicated to the ancient technique of semen retention.
This book became my bible for a short time. I was hooked. I was pretty thoroughly convinced that if I didn't ever cum again, I would transcend mortality and become the Thunder God, or something absurd. I told all my friends that I would never cum again, that they shouldn't either! Together with our combined full ballsacks, we can rule the world!!!!!!!!
I lasted like ten days. Needless to say, that is a battle I'm still fighting.
That September I went backpacking in SE Asia for the first time, and was able to abstain for a month or two. I had fun with some beautiful women, developed some amazing relationships, but eventually relapsed when I got back home. The following autumn I left the country again (this time for an entire year) and continued to fight. Periods of abstinence were always followed by tremendous social success and fulfillment, periods of relapse were always followed by self-isolation and feelings of sexual emaciation. One of my longest periods of abstinence happened when I was living on an island in Malaysia, volunteering for a hostel. Without porn addling my brain, surrounded by young people every day, I crushed it. I had sex with beautiful women, made lasting relationships, and loved almost every minute of every day.
That was the longest period of abstinence I've ever been able to maintain, but obviously things went downhill some time after that. After that eventual relapse I was so devastated, I became completely obsessed with giving up porn (I eventually gave up on the obsession with semen retention, I just wanted porn out of my life). This need to quit porn became almost as toxic as the addiction itself - relapses were followed by periods of extreme self-hatred and isolation. If I relapsed after a week of success, all of my energy would be focused on my failure, not on the progress that I had made. It took me almost six months to understand my toxic relationship with my need to quit porn, and slowly I pulled myself out of that pit of despair. Eventually I made it back to just needing to quit porn, without the added stress of hating myself if I failed.
Time went by, and here I am today. I'm 26, very healthy, have much to look forward to in life, but still fighting that same fight. I've had some pretty embarrassing binges recently, and it's time to dig in for the long haul. I also had my first experience with PIED this past January. Girls don't like impotence. That was pretty fucking embarrassing, maybe I'll talk about it more later.
I'm treating this thread as a safe space for me to compile my thoughts, and express how I feel. This will most likely manifest in the form of a journal (like most of the threads here), but might end up being kind of nebulous.
. If anybody wants to pop in here and ask questions or participate in discussion, I'm all for it! I don't expect anyone to respond, let alone read. This is a safe space for me, but everyone is welcome to join
Cheers!