Hardest Part Is Restarting

MashuSan

Member
The hardest part about stopping your porn addiction is restarting.

I’ve been on this forum in 2015, 2018 and now again. For almost 10 years I’ve been trying to quit and I still haven’t been able to get through a whole year without porn... lol can’t even get through 8 months.

my life has changed a lot since 2015. I don’t just want to “f*ck girls” anymore, I have a girlfriend, I want kids, and I still haven’t been able to stop porn. How am I going to tell my kids not to watch porn when I can’t even do it??!!!!

I feel shame and guilt when I masturbate to absurd things. I want that to change. The worst part is that it doesn’t go away instantly, it takes time to forget, time to measure your success then time to feel good about yourself.

I would say that I have to put in the work, but I’ve been doing it for nearly ten years!! I’ve been trying over and over again and I still can’t last. There’s always one point where my brain just gets overrun. I completely forget all the shame and guilt I’ve experienced in the past, or will experience after coming and I still go for it. Sometimes ruining my streak.

I’ve tried several ways but I haven’t tried therapy. I’ve tried journaling, willpower, counters with increasing increments, studying, trying to change my mindset, reaching out to others, telling some people in my inner circle, but in the end no one really cares or follows up and a lot of methods didn’t end up working.

It was easier to quit smoking.

I actually read a book called’The easy way to stop smoking’ by Allen Carr, and he applies two principles which worked for me: decide on the day you’ll quit and stick to it, and whenever you’re confronted with the urge just mentally celebrate in your mind that you’re not indulging and be inwardly and outwardly happy about.

I don’t know... maybe I should try harder to apply those principles, or maybe I just just do all of the above in tandem. Who knows.
 

Fappy

Respected Member
welcome back! i too had stopped and started many times when i was rebooting, and i totally agree that quitting smoking is easier! the withdrawals were easier to manage anyway. you have got to isolate and catalogue all of your triggers, over the ten year period there must be a pattern there somewhere, a reoccuring trigger that you can remember.
 

MashuSan

Member
welcome back! i too had stopped and started many times when i was rebooting, and i totally agree that quitting smoking is easier! the withdrawals were easier to manage anyway. you have got to isolate and catalogue all of your triggers, over the ten year period there must be a pattern there somewhere, a reoccuring trigger that you can remember.
What happens after? Let’s say I find all my triggers, what do I do after that. Just try to avoid them?
 

Fappy

Respected Member
What happens after? Let’s say I find all my triggers, what do I do after that. Just try to avoid them?
Well, youll become more concious of them and youll be able to distance yourself from whatever trigger it was before it can take hold. It might sound lame, but writing them down helps. It gets them out of your head and onto something tangible, and you can keep adding to the list. Jesus Christ i had a looooooong list!
You have to imagine this as something that is constantly trying to attack you, a malignant entity - which it is - and as you progress it will get more and more sneaky and dirty in its attempts to get you to feed it. After a while of telling it to fuck off, it will get bored and find another host because it knows it cant beat you.
 

MashuSan

Member
Well, youll become more concious of them and youll be able to distance yourself from whatever trigger it was before it can take hold. It might sound lame, but writing them down helps. It gets them out of your head and onto something tangible, and you can keep adding to the list. Jesus Christ i had a looooooong list!
You have to imagine this as something that is constantly trying to attack you, a malignant entity - which it is - and as you progress it will get more and more sneaky and dirty in its attempts to get you to feed it. After a while of telling it to fuck off, it will get bored and find another host because it knows it cant beat you.
Hah that's excellent, I've started a list and I've been adding to it. I only have four so far but those are the ones that've struck me in the last few days, I'm definitely sure there'll be a lot more to come. I'm ready though 💪💪 gonna upper cut that son-of-a-bitch in the jaw like a Mortal Kombat finisher.
 

yogi

Active Member
Hi MashuSan
Like you, I too have been struggling with the relapse-guilt-motivation-reboot cycle for nearly 8 years. I perfectly understand what you are going through. But I have recently started reading books on philosophy and self-improvement. I would like to suggest an interesting thing that I discovered, and which I believe can change the way we all approach this addiction.

I read a book called "THE POWER OF HABIT by Charles Duhigg". The most wondrous discovery I made was that addictions are, in fact, habits taken to self-destructive extremes. I recommend you read the book, and you will understand that porn addiction, at its very core, is a hard-wired habit that has sunken into our sub-conscious mind.

Previously I used to think about concepts like "battling" and "conquering". This book has entirely changed my perspective on rebooting. In fact, what we are expected to do is not "fight" but rather "replace" a bad habit with a good one.

Do keep updating your journal. Let us continue to inspire each other to break free from this addiction.
 

zaraki888

Active Member
Hello Mashusan, so you did manages to reach a streak of 7 months? That is impressive! Don't be hard on yourself. May I ask you something? I wonder if in those 7 months, did you at least had a streak of 4 months monk mode? No p. No p-subs. Nothing. That means everything that arouses you,
must be considered as watching p. Not counting a girlfriend. I didn't know this before. It can be watching a cover of a magazine and brain releases dopamine. Perhals you do peek or do things which keeps the addiction pathway alive. Or fantasize about p scene during reboot. We must rewire the brain so delta fos built up returns to normal level or we get stuck in this cycle going back and forth. Or perhals asking yourself the question why do you turn back to p?
 

Fappy

Respected Member
Hah that's excellent, I've started a list and I've been adding to it. I only have four so far but those are the ones that've struck me in the last few days, I'm definitely sure there'll be a lot more to come. I'm ready though 💪💪 gonna upper cut that son-of-a-bitch in the jaw like a Mortal Kombat finisher.
Yeah! Sneaky son of a whore thinks it can get one over on you? Kick it right in the cock, then yes, do the uppercut thing.
 

MashuSan

Member
Hello Mashusan, so you did manages to reach a streak of 7 months? That is impressive! Don't be hard on yourself. May I ask you something? I wonder if in those 7 months, did you at least had a streak of 4 months monk mode? No p. No p-subs. Nothing. That means everything that arouses you,
must be considered as watching p. Not counting a girlfriend. I didn't know this before. It can be watching a cover of a magazine and brain releases dopamine. Perhals you do peek or do things which keeps the addiction pathway alive. Or fantasize about p scene during reboot. We must rewire the brain so delta fos built up returns to normal level or we get stuck in this cycle going back and forth. Or perhals asking yourself the question why do you turn back to p?
Hey Zaraki888, I must admit yeah I was able to do a good 2-3 months worth of 'Monk Mode' during those 7-8 months I did my streak. It started creeping up on me though, I didn't know my triggers and I was really horny most of the time, but then there would be other times where I would be completely disinterested in anything. It was weird. But when one of your triggers get triggered, it's an instant frenzy of dopamine rush you get and it's so powerful I was easily pushed into just 'browsing' porn. I did that a few times, I'd get curious like 'mm I've never search for this specific thing, I just want to see if it's out there', you know? Then by searching I've find a video or two, or five, open all tabs, speed watch them then quickly shut everything and put it away. But hours later, I'd get curious again and it eventually it led to me touching myself, then stopping and putting it away, to masturbating a bit then putting away, eventually to masturbating, coming, relapsing, shameful feelings but then feels great but will do just once, then next day do it again, then twice after that and then the streak officially has crashed. That's more or less how I can describe my descent into sadness after that glorious streak lol... I know I need to reprogram my brain, I don't think I was aware of my triggers back then though and that led to my ending the streak.
 

MashuSan

Member
Hi MashuSan
Like you, I too have been struggling with the relapse-guilt-motivation-reboot cycle for nearly 8 years. I perfectly understand what you are going through. But I have recently started reading books on philosophy and self-improvement. I would like to suggest an interesting thing that I discovered, and which I believe can change the way we all approach this addiction.

I read a book called "THE POWER OF HABIT by Charles Duhigg". The most wondrous discovery I made was that addictions are, in fact, habits taken to self-destructive extremes. I recommend you read the book, and you will understand that porn addiction, at its very core, is a hard-wired habit that has sunken into our sub-conscious mind.

Previously I used to think about concepts like "battling" and "conquering". This book has entirely changed my perspective on rebooting. In fact, what we are expected to do is not "fight" but rather "replace" a bad habit with a good one.

Do keep updating your journal. Let us continue to inspire each other to break free from this addiction.
Hi Yogi, just wanted to thank you and let you know I found a downloadable pdf and gonna go through this book in the next few weeks. Thanks. What made me want to download it is the language you used when describing those terms, I'm a firm believer in reframing and language is a huge tool for reframing a believe, so if you think it's worth it I'll give it a read.
 

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zaraki888

Active Member
Hey Zaraki888, I must admit yeah I was able to do a good 2-3 months worth of 'Monk Mode' during those 7-8 months I did my streak. It started creeping up on me though, I didn't know my triggers and I was really horny most of the time, but then there would be other times where I would be completely disinterested in anything. It was weird. But when one of your triggers get triggered, it's an instant frenzy of dopamine rush you get and it's so powerful I was easily pushed into just 'browsing' porn. I did that a few times, I'd get curious like 'mm I've never search for this specific thing, I just want to see if it's out there', you know? Then by searching I've find a video or two, or five, open all tabs, speed watch them then quickly shut everything and put it away. But hours later, I'd get curious again and it eventually it led to me touching myself, then stopping and putting it away, to masturbating a bit then putting away, eventually to masturbating, coming, relapsing, shameful feelings but then feels great but will do just once, then next day do it again, then twice after that and then the streak officially has crashed. That's more or less how I can describe my descent into sadness after that glorious streak lol... I know I need to reprogram my brain, I don't think I was aware of my triggers back then though and that led to my ending the streak.

Hello MashuSan, my apologize for my late respond. I do not use rebootnation much anymore. What you describe is what I and most of us are facing. My last streak was 81 days. I made 1 mistake peeking and I haven't been able to surpass 32 days. I did become much stronger with 81 days. Perhaps you will defeat this addiction with at least 3 months of monk mode and just to be sure add another month. I am sure for myself I need 4 months. It really looks like we as rebooters should never go back when we finally made the 90 days. Take care and good job you managed to reach 7 - 8 months. Proof you can do this.
 

Escapeandnevercomeback

Respected Member
The hardest part about stopping your porn addiction is restarting.

I’ve been on this forum in 2015, 2018 and now again. For almost 10 years I’ve been trying to quit and I still haven’t been able to get through a whole year without porn... lol can’t even get through 8 months.

my life has changed a lot since 2015. I don’t just want to “f*ck girls” anymore, I have a girlfriend, I want kids, and I still haven’t been able to stop porn. How am I going to tell my kids not to watch porn when I can’t even do it??!!!!

I feel shame and guilt when I masturbate to absurd things. I want that to change. The worst part is that it doesn’t go away instantly, it takes time to forget, time to measure your success then time to feel good about yourself.

I would say that I have to put in the work, but I’ve been doing it for nearly ten years!! I’ve been trying over and over again and I still can’t last. There’s always one point where my brain just gets overrun. I completely forget all the shame and guilt I’ve experienced in the past, or will experience after coming and I still go for it. Sometimes ruining my streak.

I’ve tried several ways but I haven’t tried therapy. I’ve tried journaling, willpower, counters with increasing increments, studying, trying to change my mindset, reaching out to others, telling some people in my inner circle, but in the end no one really cares or follows up and a lot of methods didn’t end up working.

It was easier to quit smoking.

I actually read a book called’The easy way to stop smoking’ by Allen Carr, and he applies two principles which worked for me: decide on the day you’ll quit and stick to it, and whenever you’re confronted with the urge just mentally celebrate in your mind that you’re not indulging and be inwardly and outwardly happy about.

I don’t know... maybe I should try harder to apply those principles, or maybe I just just do all of the above in tandem. Who knows.
I know. A lot of us have been through something like this. Except for a few unicorns who stopped porn and never relapsed, the majority of us relapse like crazy, some of us too much even. It's definitely very frustrating to relapse after a few months. To me a few months is crazy because my best is 50 days and I've been trying to quit watching porn and masturbation since I was 18 or 19. It wasn't until approximately mid twenties that I learned about porn addiction, some time later I found Reboot Nation and I really thought I started to put together a plan (for the first time because before that I only tried to abstain from watching porn, with no plan) and I'm still not done with this shit, I'm on day 3. It's very depressing. But I want to try one more time, I think I got some motivation back. Since my relapse after 50 days, it's only now that I could find some strength to really try again. It's absolutely annoying. Your streak could be months long then a mistake and you end up PMO-ing like crazy for the next days and it takes maybe another few months to feel like you can get a longer streak. I can't even describe how annoyed this makes me. Sometimes I wonder what it really takes to quit porn and stay porn free forever, without coming back. I know people like that and I wonder how they've really done it. Was it just basically following the plan that we all know? Sometimes I feel I'm missing something, something subtle.
 

Escapeandnevercomeback

Respected Member
Hello MashuSan, my apologize for my late respond. I do not use rebootnation much anymore. What you describe is what I and most of us are facing. My last streak was 81 days. I made 1 mistake peeking and I haven't been able to surpass 32 days. I did become much stronger with 81 days. Perhaps you will defeat this addiction with at least 3 months of monk mode and just to be sure add another month. I am sure for myself I need 4 months. It really looks like we as rebooters should never go back when we finally made the 90 days. Take care and good job you managed to reach 7 - 8 months. Proof you can do this.
Same, man. 50 days, made a mistake and Boom! My best streak after that was maybe 7 days or so. I don't know about the 90 days, will urges go away by then? Cause on day 50 I had massive urges.
 

Escapeandnevercomeback

Respected Member
Hey Zaraki888, I must admit yeah I was able to do a good 2-3 months worth of 'Monk Mode' during those 7-8 months I did my streak. It started creeping up on me though, I didn't know my triggers and I was really horny most of the time, but then there would be other times where I would be completely disinterested in anything. It was weird. But when one of your triggers get triggered, it's an instant frenzy of dopamine rush you get and it's so powerful I was easily pushed into just 'browsing' porn. I did that a few times, I'd get curious like 'mm I've never search for this specific thing, I just want to see if it's out there', you know? Then by searching I've find a video or two, or five, open all tabs, speed watch them then quickly shut everything and put it away. But hours later, I'd get curious again and it eventually it led to me touching myself, then stopping and putting it away, to masturbating a bit then putting away, eventually to masturbating, coming, relapsing, shameful feelings but then feels great but will do just once, then next day do it again, then twice after that and then the streak officially has crashed. That's more or less how I can describe my descent into sadness after that glorious streak lol... I know I need to reprogram my brain, I don't think I was aware of my triggers back then though and that led to my ending the streak.
I know this behavior very well, as I've indulged in it too many times. What happens is this: Porn is the button we push to get a dopamine release. Once the dopamine gets started, it's difficult to tame it, it's possible but we complicate ourselves by peeking and stuff like that. This addiction needs to be starved to death and dopamine is the food we feed it. Call it "porn dopamine" if you want, I call it that. Porn dopamine is what porn addiction eats. "Just 5 minutes and then I'll quit" sounds good but I've never stopped at that. This addiction asks for complete abandonment of visual porn and anything related to it like subs plus management of thoughts and fantasies, they release dopamine too. Once the dopamine gets going, it asks for more. I'm sure we all know that when we think about porn too much we get massive urges. Those urges are the dopamine.
 

Gigili

Member
I know. A lot of us have been through something like this. Except for a few unicorns who stopped porn and never relapsed, the majority of us relapse like crazy, some of us too much even. It's definitely very frustrating to relapse after a few months. To me a few months is crazy because my best is 50 days and I've been trying to quit watching porn and masturbation since I was 18 or 19. It wasn't until approximately mid twenties that I learned about porn addiction, some time later I found Reboot Nation and I really thought I started to put together a plan (for the first time because before that I only tried to abstain from watching porn, with no plan) and I'm still not done with this shit, I'm on day 3. It's very depressing. But I want to try one more time, I think I got some motivation back. Since my relapse after 50 days, it's only now that I could find some strength to really try again. It's absolutely annoying. Your streak could be months long then a mistake and you end up PMO-ing like crazy for the next days and it takes maybe another few months to feel like you can get a longer streak. I can't even describe how annoyed this makes me. Sometimes I wonder what it really takes to quit porn and stay porn free forever, without coming back. I know people like that and I wonder how they've really done it. Was it just basically following the plan that we all know? Sometimes I feel I'm missing something, something subtle.
This is a familiar pattern for me. When you do it once after a streak, it is very difficult to limit it to just that one time. You will end up PMO-ing the next days/weeks. It takes some time to again get the motivation and start over again.
 

Gigili

Member
Hello Mashusan, so you did manages to reach a streak of 7 months? That is impressive! Don't be hard on yourself. May I ask you something? I wonder if in those 7 months, did you at least had a streak of 4 months monk mode? No p. No p-subs. Nothing. That means everything that arouses you,
must be considered as watching p. Not counting a girlfriend. I didn't know this before. It can be watching a cover of a magazine and brain releases dopamine. Perhals you do peek or do things which keeps the addiction pathway alive. Or fantasize about p scene during reboot. We must rewire the brain so delta fos built up returns to normal level or we get stuck in this cycle going back and forth. Or perhals asking yourself the question why do you turn back to p?
Is the monk mode really possible these days?! I feel everything around us is sexualulized. Unless you lock yourself in a closet, you will encounter something during the day. Either on the internet, on street, on TV, etc. We can limit it though. But it won't take long until you see something. When I have urges, sometimes even some ads on the billboards are arousing. I have no idea how I can eliminate these. Any suggestions?
 

Escapeandnevercomeback

Respected Member
Is the monk mode really possible these days?! I feel everything around us is sexualulized. Unless you lock yourself in a closet, you will encounter something during the day. Either on the internet, on street, on TV, etc. We can limit it though. But it won't take long until you see something. When I have urges, sometimes even some ads on the billboards are arousing. I have no idea how I can eliminate these. Any suggestions?
That's right, this is a big problem for me. Anytime I leave my house, I come back ready to relapse. We can't really eliminate those, maybe only if we could go out there and change the world. I blame social media for a lot of this. Social media made those type of pictures not be seen as softcore porn in disguise, now the "threshold" is higher, now people don't consider those things "indecent". The boundaries have been crossed. Stuff like that was for Playboy magazines and stuff like that. I mean, seriously, I don't want to bring triggers here by detailing what pictures I've seen on Facebook. On fuckin Facebook. Anyway, like I said, we can't eliminate them we can only manage how we react to them. We need a strategy to deal with the urges and looking away when we see something. I don't know what else to do.
 

jonazo91

Active Member
I actually read a book called’The easy way to stop smoking’ by Allen Carr, and he applies two principles which worked for me: decide on the day you’ll quit and stick to it, and whenever you’re confronted with the urge just mentally celebrate in your mind that you’re not indulging and be inwardly and outwardly happy about.
Maybe someone's already mentioned this, but there is actually a version of this book that's been "hacked"/updated to be for porn addicts, called the "Easy Peasy Method" and it's proved very helpful to a lot of people. It's pretty easy to find it for free/in audiobook version online as well.
 

Escapeandnevercomeback

Respected Member
Maybe someone's already mentioned this, but there is actually a version of this book that's been "hacked"/updated to be for porn addicts, called the "Easy Peasy Method" and it's proved very helpful to a lot of people. It's pretty easy to find it for free/in audiobook version online as well.
Yes, the book is a good addiction to the rebooting process. It discusses what they call "brainwashing" or how porn enters our subconscious and make us feel like we need it and that it's something important for our lives, The book is the process of de-brainwashing, we need to reprogram our subconscious to understand that porn is a garbage we don't need for absolutely anything related to our lives.
 
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