Reclaiming the present

Dannybou

Active Member
[Day 3]

I've been regularly watching porn since the age of 13. My dad was an alcoholic and chain smoker so I'd been careful to avoid overindulging in those behaviours. But porn is supposed to be a rite of passage for every teenager right? It was weird that my friends were watching it and I hadn't yet so I gave it a shot.

It happened so slowly that I didn't notice, but I'd slowly transitioned from an alert, smart, and social kid to someone who is described as "zoned out", unfocused, and emotionless by my friends and family (in a nice, concerned way ofc). This coincided with me masturbating to porn very regularly. I obviously don't know if this stuff was caused by the porn, but I'm 27 and wonder how many opportunities I've missed due to this habit. Things like meditation etc. have helped but I've always feel a constant lack of energy and drive, which has affected my personal life as well as me reaching my goals.

Sex has always been difficult, where I'd previously have to picture a porn scene or fantasise about something else when fucking. I've struggled with PIED and would secretly take cialis before having sex which is such an embarrassing thing to do for someone in their 20's. Sometimes even that wouldn't work. I haven't been in a relationship in years.

As I grew up I'd reduced the frequency of consumption to 3-4 times a week, but my porn had escalated to dom/ tranny videos. This was making me question my sexual identity. I have a hunch that this was just my brain craving the novelty and shock value of the videos.

I've gone to a psychiatrist and described my problems, and he stated that I might have ADD. He didn't really draw any connection between porn use and things like paying attention and concentration. Before I meet him again and ask for a prescription, I really want to make sure that it isn't just the porn affecting my mind, considering the number it's done on my dick lol.

Though I'd heard of sites like Your brain on porn and the nofap/ pornfree subreddits I didn't really think that porn could have that much of an impact, maybe because it's such a normalized thing in society. Listening to the Your brain on porn audiobook has really opened my eyes to the number of potential problems that pornography can cause.

I'm just angry at the idea that fucking pixels on a screen could do so much to mess with my body and mind. Seriously, fuck porn. I don't want to die wondering if I wasn't my "natural" self because I was so overstimulated and desensitized due to this habit. My plan is to avoid porn and masturbate to thoughts of real-life sex if it's really necessary.

I've tried quitting before but had always slipped up due to not taking it as seriously as I should. I hope this helps me. Writing all of this down together really puts things in perspective.

Here's to positive change.
 

Dannybou

Active Member
[Day 5]

I'm definitely feeling the urges to watch some porn. Holding it off by trying to keep myself occupied. On the positive side, I had that extra energy to speak to a bunch of relatively new people who were friends of friends today, which isn't something that I would have done in the past.

Normally, I'd have been too drained and numbed out to do anything like this. I just have to focus on staying the course.
 
Hi, Dannybou. I have read your story and it reminded me of myself. My story is very similar to yours in a way that I was one of the three smartest kids in the class, had good results in sports, had a good development of my body till I was introduced to porn. Then all my progress slowed down, and eventually I also became "zoned out". And though it is true that we missed a lot of opportunities, the only way to avoid losing them in future is to change our habits and quit porn. I am sure you can do it this time, and the thing that I like about this website is that it has this journal where we can share our thoughts and look for support.
The best advice I can give to you is try to be more sociable, and try yourself in different activities. I know it can sound a bit optimistic during pandemic, but at least invest in it as much effort as you can. By doing this you will be off your mobile phone or computer and do not even have enough time to think about porn.
I also have the extensions blocking adult content on my browser, but the problem is that previously I always turned it off to watch pornography, and then would turn it on again. I did it because I was in depression, to release my stress, but I did not understand that it was putting me into even bigger stress. So, we need to remind ourselves that we do it for good and if we will relapse, we will have to wait for longer to improve our conditions.
 

Dannybou

Active Member
Thanks for the support, iwantthesecondchance. It's interesting that this has affected so many different people this way. You're right, we have no control over the lost past opportunities, we can only focus on the present and future and stay off the porn.

Your advice on being more sociable makes sense. I'm putting in the effort to talk to more people and stay connected since that seems to help. Yes, I had the problem with deleting my blocking extensions too. This time I've also promised myself that if I relapse with porn, I have to donate money to a political organization in my country which I really hate 😅. Hopefully, that thought keeps me from even thinking about doing it.
 

Dannybou

Active Member
[Day 6]

I've had dreams with sexual themes today, I'll take that as good sign that my mind is starting to think more about real-life women again. Another thing I'm trying to do right in the morning is to try the Wim Hof breathing techniques since they take less time and give me a boost of energy to start my day. The cold showers he recommends are probably good for limiting the MO as well.

Onwards and upwards.
 

Fappy

Respected Member
Day 6! well done! a few more days and youll be at ten days. I have no idea what Wim Hof is, but if it works for you use it!
 

Dannybou

Active Member
[Day 7]

I'm feeling great today. it's like I have a really nice, clean bubbly energy going through me when what I'd normally feel is numb, empty and craving distraction and release. I've also started supplementing creatine which might be giving me a bit more energy than usual.

No urges to look at porn today.
 

Dannybou

Active Member
[Day 8]

I ended up masturbating today, which is not ideal, but it was to recollecting a previous experience I had, so it's not as bad I suppose. I'm not planning on counting this as a relapse. The one thing to be cognizant of is the chaser effect. Hopefully, it doesn't show up.
 

Dannybou

Active Member
[Day 9]

The chaser effect feels very real right now. I'm just trying to keep myself busy so that I can ignore it.
 

Dannybou

Active Member
[Day 10]

Survived yesterday, but the temptation was very intense. Strangely, didn't think about porn at all today, and I'm feeling zero libido right now. Not sure if this is the start of the flatline or whatever. Let's see how it goes.
 

Dannybou

Active Member
[Day 11]

Looks like I'm in flatline city. Lol just as I was thinking of downloading tinder again. Normally this is the time the shitty part of my brain would convince me to look at porn just to make sure everything is still functional. Can't argue that now, all I can really do is tough it out.
 

Dannybou

Active Member
[Day 12]

Today was much less flatliney. Had a very intense desire to go out and get laid, which might be rather rather hard to do during a pandemic. But I'll take having this sort of energy over the porn-induced numbness I normally have.

Speaking of rather hard, I currently don't have a ton of confidence in Dannybou Jr.s ability to have sex just yet. I probably defer getting back on the dating scene until day 30-45 at least.

I have a lot of energy today as well. I've read people talking about how not jerking off all the time keeps all that energy in your body, which I do feel. But the challenge is channelling it towards useful things. Anyone have any ideas/ tips on how you'd go about doing this?
 

Dannybou

Active Member
[Day 13]

The urges are so fucking bad today. Why is it that when I slowly feel my erections returning my brain's automatic reaction is to want to find some porn?

Fucking bullshit. I hate how this nonsense has dug a hole deep into my brain and is keeps giving me these intense periods where all I want to do is smoke a joint and binge to porn. Yuck.

All I have to do is survive, one day at a time. Just need a cold shower.
 

k-fff

Well-Known Member
[Day 12]

Today was much less flatliney. Had a very intense desire to go out and get laid, which might be rather rather hard to do during a pandemic. But I'll take having this sort of energy over the porn-induced numbness I normally have.

Speaking of rather hard, I currently don't have a ton of confidence in Dannybou Jr.s ability to have sex just yet. I probably defer getting back on the dating scene until day 30-45 at least.

I have a lot of energy today as well. I've read people talking about how not jerking off all the time keeps all that energy in your body, which I do feel. But the challenge is channelling it towards useful things. Anyone have any ideas/ tips on how you'd go about doing this?
Make an active effort to leave your house. Staying in is what gets me. I only start going crazy on porn when I am just at home browsing the internet.
 
Hey man it is sad that you relapsed, but we all are human beings, and not machines. You brought this habit up for years, and it is not surprising that you have difficulty in getting rid of it. First of all, do not blame yourself. We all make mistakes and these mistakes make us who we are. Second, donate money to that political organization, you have to do this! :) Actually, I watched a video today on this topic in youtube, you have to break the reward system in your brain and attribute pornography to something you dislike, like that political party. It might help you to avoid watching porn in future. Third, start over, and try to get a new hobby, friends, whatsoever. k-fff gave you a really good advice about leaving the house, I remember in past I had a lot going on during several weeks and I did not think about porn at all because of that.
Remember that you are doing it for a good purpose, and you do not want to prolong the period before you come back to normal life.
 

Dannybou

Active Member
Thank you guys for the support. Yes I'll try and get out of the house more and get more activities to do. This might help especially when the cravings hit. I donated to the organization, it was horrible! 😅

It's day 3 now. I got vaccinated recently and my body was out of commission for a couple of days. While I was lying in bed all day an idea struck me, not sure if I should test it or not with respect to porn.

For context, besides porn, I generally have pretty addictive tendencies with respect to sites like reddit, youtube, Instagram, netflix etc and waste a lot of time on them. I read up on how sites like these spend a lot of time and resources to make their content as appealing and dopamine triggering as possible so that you keep coming back for more. Effectively, they're training your brain to keep returning to these websites so they get clicks.

What I've tried in the past is to go "cold turkey" and just cut them off or block them completely. But I inevitably fail at some point, maybe because youtube has useful content that I need sometimes, or a friend wants me to look at something on Instagram, whatever.

So instead of going cold turkey, what I thought was that I could try a sort of reverse conditioning of my mind to resist the sites instead. I could do this by opening the application, and not clicking anything at all. Like for example whenever the reflex to open youtube hits, I open it, but now I stay mindful and I don't click on anything, then I close it. I repeat it whenever the urge hits, and try and get my brain to unlearn the habit. It ties in with what I've generally been reading about how the brain works, where it can adapt and get better at any stimulus you give it, but the adaptation works better if the stimulus is specific; i.e. if you want to get better at something, you have to do that specific thing or something that directly supports that thing.

I'm definitely going to try this with "softer" addictions like Reddit, youtube, etc. I'm not sure about porn though, since it may be too hardwired into my brain and the only solution is cold turkey. On the other hand, I don't want the same situation to happen - I stay off it for a couple of weeks, get super horny then relapse, so perhaps I should do something positive to try and unlearn the conditioning. What do you guys think?
 
So good to hear that you try to bring changes into your previous life, which will definitely have an impact on your journey with nofap.

I think that you can try to substitute your hobbies with new ones - i.e. instead of youtube and reddit start reading books, working out. Also, there are tonnes of useful stuff in youtube, you can start watching these videos and gradually the recommended content will be updated in the app. Additionally, if you watch it from your phone, there is a feature in new phones to limit the time in the app, so you can limit it to let us say 1 hour per day.
I also have this kind of behavior, have many groups in whatsapp, and everytime check messages from those groups, either stupid videos or just unimportant messages from my friends. It disturbs me, I lose concentration and it takes time to get back to business again. The best thing to do is to limit the use of your phone I believe.
And you need to meditate, at least to think occasionally that lapse will increase the length of your recovery.
 
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