I want the second chance for normal life

[Iwantthesecondchance]

Unfortunately, I broke my promise. It rarely happened to me before, but now it happens more and more often. I did not do any exchange between good and bad habits. It lasted only one day when I started slowly moving things, but the second day was the same as old bad days...
Throughout the whole week, I almost did not do anything useful. And I did not do any sports the last two days. I just spend my days looking at the phone screen. The only positive thing that I have now, is that I am still without PMO. This is the only area of my life where inaction is actually better than action...
For the last couple of days, I had thoughts to masturbate, even without porn. Especially I could feel it during yesterday, as I was very tired and fell asleep during the day. When I woke up, my brain did not turn on with 100% efficiency, and I still was half-asleep. I had a hard penis, and started touching it to make sure that it is hard. Then, instinctively, I had the thoughts that I needed to try to masturbate now, and that I did not even need porn. Luckily, I was able to control my actions. Also, as soon as I stood up, my erection disappeared almost immediately. So, I guess, there is still a long road ahead before the recovery.
Sometimes, I imagine sex in my head, I think this is the side-effect of porn, which has been my main source of entertainment for the last twenty years or even more.
So, to sum up, nothing spectacular happening in my life. And I have some bad foreboding (not related to PMO or sexual life though), but I will write about it in later posts. Do not feel ready to talk about it now.

 

[Iwantthesecondchance]

Yesterday I woke up, and I did not want to play one of the two games I play. I felt like if I were looking like a zombie while playing the game. And all of a sudden, I lost the interest in all of the achievements, all collections and weekly rewards. I will not lie, I still played a bit, but if compared to the previous exposure, it was significantly less. I did not even acquire the biggest part of the daily achievements.
I do not know what had happened, whether it was something related to my unconsciousness during my sleep, which had such an effect on me, or it was the gradual effect of doing the same repetitive action again and again which finally fed me up, but my desire to sit all day long in the phone and just push the screen like a robot for multiple hours a day reduced dramatically. And I hope to take benefit of it.
Yesterday I played a bit because I wanted to stay loyal to my goals and to get some of the achievements which are only achievable if I execute the particular tasks non-stop during a year. But honestly, this is crazy. I should stop it, too.
Yesterday, I met my friends, and I barely said a word during our meeting, because I did not have any news to share except my game achievements, and as the games take most of my time, I am not interested in anything else and cannot hold many of conversations related to politics, world events, etc. Also, yesterday I learnt from our conversation that some of the people I knew and who I considered not good in what they do, achieved really important milestones in their professional careers, and it demotivates me to see that I am still incapable of doing the first step while others (especially not good ones) have already progressed so far. At the same time, I am quite ambitious and do not like mediocracy somewhere inside of me and it gives me additional fuel to move forward.
I have 2 months of no PMO but there are no noticeable results. This can be quite normal because 2 months is not a lot compared to 20+ years of self-destructive behaviour, and I remember someone said in this forum that you need 1+ year to start seeing results, but I think that the games slow down my progress because of dopamine levels increase associated with video gaming. So, it would be a good idea to stop playing games at all. While I do not feel ready to do that, I think that I can at least try to stop playing one of the two games, the one which does not actually have almost any strategical thinking involved, is not interesting, and takes much more time than the other one. The only reason why I play this game is the sense of achievement that I get from completing different stages in the game, collecting different rewards, etc. I compare it to the drug addiction.
Furthermore, the main topic of the forum is PMO, but, at least now, I do not have serious problems with it. Instead all my problems are with another addiction. So, I do not want to spam.
The only thing that I am scared of is that my PMO addiction would remind me of itself once I stop playing games because I won't be able to make myself productive and busy enough.
But let's not jump forward and do one thing at a time. Now, the goal is to reduce the gaming time by not playing one of the two games. I will use the momentum and actually uninstall it just after writing this post. Hope not to install it back for a long time.

 

[Iwantthesecondchance]

I want to play so bad! As soon as I got home, I wanted to open the game, but then I remembered that I had deleted it. Hope that urges will go down a bit very soon!

 

[Iwantthesecondchance]

I read before comments from some users including @Blondie talking about constant progress, and not perfection. I also watched tons of motivational videos on this topic, and even though I understood what the meaning of this idea is, I actually did not comprehend it to 100%.
As I told before, I deleted one of the games, and I had urges to download it once again, and complete the daily and weekly tasks. Luckily, I found some willpower not to do that, and added some exercises to my exercise routine instead. And yes, yesterday, I played another game much more than I used to, and this is why I went to sleep late. Today, when I woke up, I felt terrible, and I thought that it was an early morning, while, in reality, it was already 11:00 AM. I did not want to do sport exercises today, but I persuaded myself to give it a shot taking into consideration that I had a long enough sleep, and there was no strong argument not to do exercises. And even though I struggled throughout the training and my body hurt more than usual, I completed every exercise and every set that I planned.
I have been training for some time now, but when I look at myself in a mirror, I do not see any changes. I think, one of the reasons is that I do not go to the gym, I do not have weights, and my training program is limited to body-weight exercises only, which I perform in my room. Another reason is that I am physically weak, and cannot perform many effective body-weight exercises, and my pull of exercises is quite limited. Add here my poor diet, my inconsistency of sleeping habits, my age, my poor technique in performing exercises, and many other reasons, and you can explain the lack of quick results. Yet I feel better knowing that I am on a right track, and slowly making the exercises routine my usual habit. It is much better than to play video games or watch porn for hours on a constant basis, and you do not need to be ashamed of it.
Taking a look back at my 2-months+ journey of battle with PMO and just trying to become a better version of myself, I can definitely tell that I was not perfect in many aspects. I definitely failed in addiction to video games. I had many other setbacks. However, if we make a graph of how my actions during these two months have impacted who I am today, I think that still there might be a slight increase in the trend. Some days were good, some other days were worse. I missed some training days, was not applying to jobs many days. Of course, if you always go to sleep at the right time, do not ever miss a training session and do the right things every day, this is great. But we all are not perfect and have some weaknesses. Yes, we will not come to our ultimate goal as quickly as someone who mastered perfection, but, eventually, we also will.
So, sometimes, I think you need to make yourself perform the necessary actions even if you do not want to. Yes, of course, you need to love yourself, and if you feel very bad, you can take one-two days off, but as soon as you feel better, you need to go back on the track again. So, now, I think that perfection is, unfortunately, unattainable for the most of us, with exception of some individual sportsmen and other distingueshed persons, who are known to the whole wide world. I do not consider myself one of them. Otherwise, I would not need this forum. Still, today, when I made myself complete my training session while I did not want to, I understood that this is the way to progress things. Hope to stay on this track long enough to finally see the results of my journey and be motivated to do even more!

 

[Orbiter]

I think sometimes, the most important time to do something is when we want to the least.

So great job Iwant! Keep doing the work, don't worry too much and have faith in what you're doing. It will get you there in time.

 

[Iwantthesecondchance]

For now, I am very comfortable with PMO as I have not had a morning wood for a number of days. On the one hand, it helps me to stay away from undesired content. On the other hand, however, I am not sure if this is a positive sign not to have a morning wood.
I hope that it is a part of a healing process, and that I will get my erections back. It might be more challenging to withstand the urges once I get my erection back, but I hope that I will manage.
Thus, my major concern now is the increase of productivity. I put time limits on the social media apps a couple of days ago, and even though they are quite generous, I constantly reach them. Additionally, I have social media websites open on my PC, and each time I try to work, I notice how I end up talking to some of my friends instead of focusing on the work. As I still need the social media websites open on my PC sometimes, I will try at least to change to another tabs not to see the conversations as soon as I switch the windows. I hope it will work.
There is not much to mention, this is why I do not post often.

 

[Iwantthesecondchance]

Yesterday in the evening I was listening to music in YT. One of the songs was lyrical, and, I started to read the comments, where people usually write that they lost their husband, wife, or close people having associations with this song. Suddenly, I burst into tears. I could not help myself and was crying desperately for several minutes. I remembered my family, I remembered all the bad things that I said and did as a child and a teen to them, and wanted to turn back time to never make it happen. Then, I remembered my childhood which was far from easy, and I wanted to hug myself as a child and to calm young myself down, to say that it is gonna be alright and I would always be there for him.
I remember my childhood dreams of becoming an adult. I always portrayed myself as a very successful man, with a lot of money and with a happy family. Although I was very successful in some areas of my life not long time ago, with some other areas really crying for help, I have a feeling that I subconsciously wanted to ruin my life completely, and deliberately made some choices which inevitably made my life even more challenging.
Now, I have to start over again. I do not know how far I will be able to go, but at least I have more time to self-reflect, and I hope that it will help me to understand what I truly need, what are the things that I should not care about, to better know myself and to bounce back and to become successful in the areas where I had and still have big problems.

 

[Iwantthesecondchance]

Hi, everyone who is reading my journal. Thank you for all your support and involvement.
I am still moving on, although I had to reduce my workout intensity due to becoming sick. Again, productivity is far from optimal, but at least I started applying on a daily basis and it already continues for 3-4 days and I hope to keep it like this.
I do not apply a lot throughout a day, but still consistency is more important in the long run.
I am still porn and masturbation free, even though I undeliberately saw some posts with half-naked girls here and there in IG. Two days ago I had a half-strong erection during the day, which happens to me really rarely (I do not have even morning woods for more than a month I suppose), and I had a thought to masturbate. I knew that it would happen really quickly because of my long abstinence from any kind of semen release. When I stood up, the erection (even though it was not hard enough) did not disappear quickly. Nonetheless, I was able to control myself. I do not know how long I still need to continue before seeing the results and if there will be any results, but for now I am surely going through a plato.
I still play video games, but only one, and I reduced the number of playing hours in comparison with the time when I played the two games. At least, now, I am able to concentrate on smth else except the games.
Will post in future if there is anything to talk about.

 

[Iwantthesecondchance]

This night I had a dream with a LOT of sex. Or maybe it was a dream in my dream that I had it. I already do not remember the details. But I do remember that it was more than enough. And I wanted to ejaculate but somehow I managed to do nothing.
Nevertheless, when I'm not sleeping, I usually do not have sexual desires. Even if I do, I think it is related to my psychological habits rather than to my physical needs. Speaking of needs, maybe I need to ejaculate from time to time because too long abstinence can be harmful for prostate. However, I do not get natural erections, so I do not know how to cause an erection without porn and erotica. Besides, in this case, I will need to masturbate since I do not have a woman. And I do not want a woman because if I have one, sooner or later we will want to have sex, but I do not feel ready at all.
Today passed without anything special, I did not do anything useful, just home errands.

 

[Iwantthesecondchance]

Yesterday I was determined to go to sleep earlier than usual to start my productive week refreshed and full of energy. Especially I wasted my weekend on gaming, home errands and did not do anything useful including job applications or sports, so I wanted to end this cycle and get back to the productive curve. But I decided to play a game before going to bed. And it started like this. Soon, I decided to play more, to get some achievements, to play another mode, and another one, and so on and on.
I ended playing at 2:00 AM and was tired, demotivated and disappointed. As a result of this uncontrolled gaming, today, I woke up at 10:30 and I am just starting my day now. So guess what? Today is another non-productive day because I already wasted half of it.
And here is the correlation that I want to talk about - I notice that as soon as we bring some bad habits into our lives, and we overindulge in these destroying activities, we start attracting some other bad behaviors. I do not know, maybe it is the case only for me, because in my childhood this was the mix that I usually did - porn & gaming. So, now, once I game a lot, I notice these urges to watch porn, to masturbate on a whole new level. Yesterday I was really close to give up my two-month efforts and just let it go. Also, I had dreams full of sex again. I am still clean, but I need to change something in my behavior patterns or I will not endure.
So, I guess, the only solution for me is to try to control the time I spent playing video games and on social media. I hope that it will help to get back on track.

 

[Iwantthesecondchance]

Some people are great strategists and are very good in planning. They set their goals for next twenty years and have a clear picture in their head of how to get there. They grind continuously to achieve their goals and get everything they want.
I also tend to build plans for years ahead. And when I think of something, I usually think long-term. But unlike these people, I do not have vision, I absolutely do not know how to get to these goals and I am not a hard worker - I tend to sway toward quick pleasures and work only when I have to, be it an approaching deadline or similar imposures.
For the most people, I think, long-term planning does not do a good thing, because things change so quickly that your long-term plan might never be applicable in future and you need to adapt it all the time. So, many people just live their lives and plan short-term.
I had some big setbacks because of planning long-term. I did not study the real implications that these long-term goals would cause, did not explore pros and cons of the possible situations where I was going to appear, and did not have a clear action-based plan that I needed to adhere to. Instead, I was just going with the flow, and, of course, did not achieve my goals.
Yet I always think long-term. Yesterday I had a contact with two very young ladies, probably between 20 and 25. With one of them I was flirting for thirty minutes, it was our second encounter, and in the first one we barely talked.
I met another girl online yesterday, and she accelerates things a lot. She wants to have a video call where we will masturbate.
In both cases, I thought about the sexual side of things, what would happen if we have any kind of intimacy. The first thoughts that I had was a fear that I would fail. And I can feel that I am not ready physically for these types of exercises. I do not know what to do and how to navigate in these two situations with these two girls.
Should I write to the girl who I flirted with and continue our flirt? Or should I just ignore her because I am not ready for anything in bed?
The second girl waits for my call, should I ignore her as well? Or should I give it a try and most surely to fail and just to add to my frustration?
I mean, both girls are in their early twenties, and I do not think that they want just to chat and have a relationship with me based on our deep conversations and interest in each other and not having any intimacy. I am not sure that they want to have relations with me, I think that I am going too far again, but I think they have some kind of sympathy. The second girl might not want to meet in real life, but she already wants some intimacy!
I do not know how I need to proceed now and my mind is not clear at all.

 

[Iwantthesecondchance]

Yesterday, I read my first post in the thread, and I was thinking that I had started writing here almost 3 and a half years ago. And even though I had a good beginning, then, I quit as I usually do in life. Later, I read the comment of casanova, and looked through his journal. It was not long, so I looked through it entirely. And my analytical mind chipped in immediately; I started comparing us two. Of course, we are on the different sides of the river at the moment, because he literally was casanova in real life, and his porn-dependant period was quite short in comparison to mine. I also do not get to the question as seriously as he does - I use my phone probably at least 10 hours per day, including the use before going to sleep, I do not do sports everyday and I do not have a mindset of a winner. Finally, my physical form is quite far from his - I still cannot do push ups, while he did 40 in a one go.
As I said, we are not at the same playing grounds, and, taking into consideration my long addiction, I will need more time to heal. However, I need to accelerate my healing period, so it might be a good idea to start using my phone less, going out of home at least everyday, even for 30 minutes, and to continue doing sports.
The girl still insisted on video calls, so I had to ghost her.
I had some morning woods in the last week, but not every day.

 

[Iwantthesecondchance]

Although I write about prioritising sleep, for the last days, I go to sleep very late, maybe at 5 in the morning. I notice how difficult it becomes to control my desires to enter porn websites and masturbate, especially during the nights.
This is defitinitely destructrive. I need to stop and take everything back under control if I want to continue healing.

 

[Iwantthesecondchance]

I had some negative news in the recent days, nothing serious for now, but it brings new challenges for me which I hoped to avoid. I do not know why, but each time I feel bad, I want to make it even worse. So I had a will to masturbate.
But then I thought that I won't hit 100 days mark, and that I would postpone my recovery by an uncertain number of days / weeks / months. So I avoided doing the wrong thing. I'm happy that I did not drink alcohol so my mind was clear and I could take the right decision. So the journey continues!

Merry Christmas, everyone!

 

[Orbiter]

Your post re Casanova gave me some food for thought regarding advice & examples others have set for us to follow. We're often inspired by these quite appealing examples of success but I sometimes think to 'transplant' their advice into our own journey disregards that we're all coming from different starting points with different lives, habits, problems & circumstances.

Some successful rebooters might consider this an excuse or a belittlement of their achievements but it's not. Casanova was athletic, popular, successful and in a mutually supportive relationship before, during and after his reboot, the same goes for Gabe Deem etc the list goes on honestly. Fighting this addiction is a blip on the radar for them because...well, it was. They got clean and resumed their good habits & good lives.

For those who are deeper in the quagmire, dealing with trauma, alcohol & drug abuse, mental illness, sex addictions, unemployment, dysfunctional romantic or family relations, screen/social media/video game addictions, physical health problems or any other conbination of the above, it's more complicated. Rather than just porn addiction, it's a whole tangled network of habits, problems, bad coping mechanisms & destructive mental patterns that all feed into each other.

I mean, how long is someone going to be porn free if everything that drove them to it is still there? It seems to me it's just an exercise in holding our breath.

I think there is a solution to this though. It just means we need a plan of action to tackle more than one of these issues at a time. And I think we need to focus less on the elimination of bad habits and more on formation of new, positive ones. If we can stay clean but also get ourselves and our lives up to scratch, then there's no room for the bad stuff in our lives and those habits will eventually weaken, wilt & rot away.

That aside, sorry to hear of the bad news. Take care & look after yourself during the holiday season.

 

[Iwantthesecondchance]

Great comment, @Orbiter ! Thank you, brother.
I totally agree with you and I think that we are not the same as Casanova because we are not at the same starting line. This is why it is harder for people like us to recover and to change our lives in a better way. And yes, we can remove our bad habits and change them with good ones. It will certainly help. But, in the first instance, we need to understand why we were attracted to these bad habits.
I do not think that we are just more addictive than other people. For example, I do not smoke. I tried many times, but I just do not like it, I do not want to smoke. There was a time in my life when I smoked continuously, but it was more due to the fact that all my friends at the time smoked and that I thought that I looked cooler when I smoked. Same goes with alcohol. I do not like to drink and I am not addicted. Nonetheless, I became very addicted both to porn and to video games. So, probably, there were reasons why I did not want to meet other people and wanted to stay alone and do this stuff instead. And since I am still suffering from it, the reasons are still here. Thus, of course, in the first instance, it is better to understand the reasons and work on yourself to ensure that you know how to deal with these reasons. In my particular case, I cannot afford the professional help, and I try to deal with many things simultaneously, this is why I postpone it, but I certainly need to prioritize it sooner or later.
Of course, if you cultivate new good habits and quit from bad habits, you might end up being a totally different man who no longer needs to address those reasons because they are no longer associated with him, but my gut feeling says that it is better to start from understanding the reasons and addressing them or both that and cultivating good habits at the same time.
My new problems can be addressed if I bounce back with methodical and consistent approach, but the problem is that my efficiency and productivity are almost at the zero level. So, this is what I need to work on now.

 

[Orbiter]

All good points. Obviously I'm still figuring out what the best personal approach myself but either way great going.

You must be past the 90 day mark by now yes?

 

[Iwantthesecondchance]

Hi, @Orbiter, yes, I am at 98 days now.


For the last week, it went totally out of control with my gaming addiction. I go to sleep between 4:00 AM and 6:00 AM every day and it has a negative effect on my mood, my physical wellbeing and my productivity. I literally did nothing useful for the last week. I even paused sports because after going to bed so late it is impossible to have a good sleep unless you wake up at 2:00 PM and I feel tired all the time. Even my neighbour noticed that something was wrong and told me that I looked tired. Yet, I still played the game till 4:00 AM.
I do not see the meaning of being porn free if I just change one addiction with the other one. The fact is that no matter which addiction out of these two, they both ruin my life. And if I do not take it under control, I won't go far in life.
Also, I notice how weak I become in my desire to continue with PMO fight after these gaming sessions - I am very close to failure each time.

So, today I am going to try to break the cycle. Will try to have a walk and to study a bit with a minimum use of the phone (compared to my latest time usage of 10 - 15 hours a day). But I will try not to enter the game today.
I cannot deny that gaming helped me to switch from PMO in the first month maybe, but now it is not doing me any favor. So I think how much better I would be today without gaming if I religiously woke up early and went to bed early, did sports, walked every day and were productive in my job search / studies?

 

[Iwantthesecondchance]

I failed miserably on the day 99 of my journey under quite suspicious circumstances. Even though there was no O, and I stopped even before getting hard, there were both M and P. I do not want to go into the details, but I am sure that I could easily go till 110 or even more, I had it in me. Nevertheless, I failed. Failed again. As usual. I failed because of my stupidity.
Now, after recent years full of poorly-thought action plans, the acts difficult to explain logically, failures and emotional breakdowns, I am at the point of my life, where I do not have neither any self-esteem nor any self-confidence. The things that I was proud of disappeared in the realm of slowly marching time. I feel like on the bottom of the human hierarchy. I feel miserable and I hate myself.
I wish I had a cold mind all the time and did not do the illogical things that I regret afterwards and think how I could be so stupid. Yet I do one stupid act after another.

 

[Orbiter]

Sorry to hear of the recent stumble but on the other hand, great work with 99(!!!) days clean!

From where I'm standing, someone who has never gone longer than 78 days, that's really impressive. I'm sure even if you can't feel it right now, that's a whole lot of healing you've got in during that time.

Also it sounds like, on the severity of lapses, it was really brief, light and miles from what I would personally call 'failing miserably'. As you said, you don't wish to go into detail and I won't pry but still.

If you did it once, you can do it again and if you were to repeat it, that'd be 198 days with one brief stumble. That's no small feat as we all know too well.

At the end of the day, the number is but a construct that is supposed to motivate us so if it isn't, just forget about it and keep moving forward.

This doesn't have to be the end so don't give up, this could be the beginning - one last stumble before the next part of the journey, a journal that may very well change your life.

Don't give up or give in, we still believe in you!