CountingGoodDays
Member
Hello Rebooters,
I am a long-time viewer of these forums. Some of the success stories have helped me greatly during previous reboots.
I have recovered twice and regressed twice by allowing porn or porn fantasy back into my life without monitoring it, without knowing fully the extent of my addiction or triggers. This time, I know what to look for and what I can and cannot do. Last year I began journaling my progress in intricate detail. Considering I have been through this before, I decided I would cover all aspects of my life, my mood, my motivation, my symptoms, the list goes on.
I am here to share with you my rise, fall, and rise again to overcoming this addiction and making a full recovery of all my porn induced sexual dysfunctions. To hopefully educate, answer some questions, and help someone else like these success stories helped me.
A little about me:
29-year-old male. Had healthy relationships most of my life but throughout them, since a youngish age (15?) I have allowed porn into my life. Over the last 5 years or so the porn use got worse, and I began developing PIED. There were a few failed attempts with some women and warning signs, but I thought it was just due to my sex drive going down with age or alcohol. I fully recognized it when I had to fantasize about porn to stay aroused during intercourse, upon reflection I realized it had been slowly getting worse for nearly a year.
Last year I quit masturbation (and ultimately porn accidentally) and ended up in a healthy sexual relationship for 6 months. Not realizing it was the porn that was the problem in the first place. The second time I quit the withdrawals were intense and I was aware of what was happening. Again, I made a recovery but had not decided to quit porn forever here. After some big nights of drinking and recreational drugs, the porn came back and so did my lack of desire to pursue women and ultimately PIED.
So here I am again. Still deep in a flatline. But with experience, I have detailed this journey extensively and will continue to do so as I recover. This time, I know my downfalls, I know my triggers and most importantly, I know the damage allowing porn back into my life can do.
Below I will add a summary of my timeline and will begin writing my journal entries for the entire journey below in the hopes that this can help someone as much as these journals have helped me.
November 1st – Went out drinking for Halloween, had a big binge session when I returned home. Instead of staying out and pursing girls I deemed it easier and better to go home and fap. After, I knew that this was a habit I had to stop. I made myself a promise here.
Days 0-1
Day 7
Day 8-22
I am a long-time viewer of these forums. Some of the success stories have helped me greatly during previous reboots.
I have recovered twice and regressed twice by allowing porn or porn fantasy back into my life without monitoring it, without knowing fully the extent of my addiction or triggers. This time, I know what to look for and what I can and cannot do. Last year I began journaling my progress in intricate detail. Considering I have been through this before, I decided I would cover all aspects of my life, my mood, my motivation, my symptoms, the list goes on.
I am here to share with you my rise, fall, and rise again to overcoming this addiction and making a full recovery of all my porn induced sexual dysfunctions. To hopefully educate, answer some questions, and help someone else like these success stories helped me.
A little about me:
29-year-old male. Had healthy relationships most of my life but throughout them, since a youngish age (15?) I have allowed porn into my life. Over the last 5 years or so the porn use got worse, and I began developing PIED. There were a few failed attempts with some women and warning signs, but I thought it was just due to my sex drive going down with age or alcohol. I fully recognized it when I had to fantasize about porn to stay aroused during intercourse, upon reflection I realized it had been slowly getting worse for nearly a year.
Last year I quit masturbation (and ultimately porn accidentally) and ended up in a healthy sexual relationship for 6 months. Not realizing it was the porn that was the problem in the first place. The second time I quit the withdrawals were intense and I was aware of what was happening. Again, I made a recovery but had not decided to quit porn forever here. After some big nights of drinking and recreational drugs, the porn came back and so did my lack of desire to pursue women and ultimately PIED.
So here I am again. Still deep in a flatline. But with experience, I have detailed this journey extensively and will continue to do so as I recover. This time, I know my downfalls, I know my triggers and most importantly, I know the damage allowing porn back into my life can do.
Below I will add a summary of my timeline and will begin writing my journal entries for the entire journey below in the hopes that this can help someone as much as these journals have helped me.
November 1st – Went out drinking for Halloween, had a big binge session when I returned home. Instead of staying out and pursing girls I deemed it easier and better to go home and fap. After, I knew that this was a habit I had to stop. I made myself a promise here.
Days 0-1
- Extremely motivated to change myself.
- Began monitoring all aspects of my life, weight, mood, how many times I meditate, diet etc
- Feeling amazing here, still riding the dopamine high it seems.
Day 7
- Anxious, stressed, unhappy, mentally fragile. (Very depressed and fapped here without the use of porn) This is before I had decided to go into hard mode. Realized that this was the flatline. Made a mental note to be prepared next time.
Day 8-22
- Mood all over the place but on average increasing. A few bad days but nothing too bad.
- A couple days here reminded me of why I started this journey, amazing nights with friends, some happiness in places that I wouldn’t normally find like admiring plants on the way to work, things I wouldn’t normally have cared about.
- Libido starting to go but still some sparks.
- Flatline.
- Sleeping for 12+ Hours
- Very depressed
- Unable to sleep
- Keep waking up at 12AM and 2AM every
- Absolutely 0 libido
- Some morning woods
- Diet and fitness are coming along well
- Taking all my anxiety and uncertainty and learning to control it
- Meditating
- Feeling outgoing in waves but still having depressed days
- This was a very bad day for me, aches, pains, a headache. Thought I had covid.
- I noted this as the worst day of flatlining I have ever had.
- Cleaned my apartment and took that as a win this day as I was not motivated to do anything else. Truly feeling depressed here but I understand why, and it has made me even more motivated to complete this journey.
- Mood is a 2/10
- Super stressed, even my dreams are waking me up making me feel stressed
- Keep waking up at 12 + 2 AM no idea why.
- Mood is a 5/10 today at least.
- Much better than the last 2 days but nothing crazy.
- Motivation returning a little bit.
- Sickness symptoms again, sore throat headache
- Very depressed
- Mood 3/10
- Positive affirmations and meditation here.
- Going on nightly walks to clear my mind.
- Mood all over the place but on average its improving daily.
- Some days feeling good
- Some days depressed with intrusive suicidal thoughts.
- note, I did not want to act on them as to why I wrote intrusive, but I would find myself enjoying something then my mood would suddenly change and make me feel as though I will never be happy again. This was very difficult but, as you know, I have educated myself on withdrawals and understood what is happening to me, reassuring myself everything is fine and to keep going is how I beat this. I even wrote it on my whiteboard to look at every day. This is wild as I am probably one of the more positive, happy individuals you will meet in life. If you take anything from this journal let it be this the flatline is not a joke.
- Flatline felt like it was coming to an end here
- Attraction to women
- Mood much better
- Got a random erection in the day and due to the excitement, I fapped without porn or fantasy. (mistake)
- My mood today was an 8/10. This is a drastic improvement over last month.
- Incredible week
- All positive days
- Almost euphoric due to the fact I had been so depressed for a month.
- Libido is completely gone again after that 1 happy moment, however, due to my mental happiness it doesn’t feel like a flatline, more like the rewiring. Due to experience, however, I know another flatline is coming.
- Got covid, was very sick but mentally felt great.
- I was physically a 2/10 but mentally a 9/10 and enjoyed my week off so much. Decided that I would quit my job here too as it’s stressful and now I am porn free and thinking clearly, I have realized it is not an environment I want to be in.
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