Attempt number one thousand? A 22 year old's latest attempt at rebooting

MapleSyrup

Member
Day 36

PMO/Urges

This week was smooth sailing, until a few days ago. I had a random wet dream, even though I don't remember having a sexual dream. It kick started a mini series of urges over the past few days, and I once caught myself starting to fantasize and I wanted to browse risky sites. To resist the urge, I had to go wash dishes, and by the time I was done, the urge had passed. Freaky to realize how finicky my brain is, that intense urges can just come and go, and how it can even mess with my sense of reason.

At any rate, I'm hanging on and weathering the storm. The next few days I've got a lot of outings with friends in the evenings, so things should be smooth for a while.

Life/Benefits
Been feeling pretty down the last week. Research progress in grad school has not been good, and my supervisor mentioned that I might not be able to graduate on time. I also got my hopes up a bit regarding a girl I met a couple months ago, but the conversations would just go dry and the vibes didn't seem to be there.

I found that while my mood was down, I also slipped back into social withdrawal, not wanting to start conversations with people, especially strangers, and I also couldn't work up the courage to go to a couple social outings and missed out on them. Not sure if it's coincidental that these feelings also coincide with my PMO urges acting up.

At any rate, I absolutely refuse to let my urges and poor mood beat me. I've come too far to give up after one bad week, and I know that the urges will pass if I refuse to entertain them.
 

MapleSyrup

Member
Day 2

PMO/Urges
Another frustrating update - Slipped up with another MO on Monday morning. Just woke up with urges out of nowhere, and made the mistake of doomscrolling first thing in the morning on Reddit/Insta. Didn't see anything overtly pornographic, but saw a few posts that were stimulating enough that it got me fantasizing about old porn-related memories and losing my higher reason. Ended up MOing. Felt kinda crappy for the rest of the day.

But once again, there's nothing I can do but get back up and keep going.

On the bright side, it's been 165 days since my last full PMO relapse, or about 5 and a half months. In that time, I've also only had 3 MOs, the last of which was 41 days ago. Compared to my previous years of reboot attempts, I'm still doing fantastic.

Life/Benefits
My mood was a lot better this week - Had a bunch of fun social outings, and the weather is finally starting to warm up around Toronto.

I've gotten so used to my current lifestyle - having a healthy social life, multiple friend circles, not doing weed or playing video games, not PMOing - that it's hard to imagine that 5 months ago, I was a bit of a loner, and struggled to make friends, and was anxious all the time. While it's still frustrating sometimes when I have a bad week, or mess up chances with girls I'm interested in, I just have to remember how much progress that I've made.

I refuse to fall back into porn addiction, or weed/alcohol addiction for that matter.

Just need to dust myself off and keep going.
 

TryingHarder

Well-Known Member
Didn't see anything overtly pornographic, but saw a few posts that were stimulating enough that it got me fantasizing about old porn-related memories and losing my higher reason.
These momentary lapses of reason are bound to happen in the early days, Maple. In time, things will get better. I've always thought that an important part of rebooting from a porn addiction is to also seriously limit your time on the internet. The whole world spends way too much time scrolling, scrolling, scrolling...looking for what, exactly?
 

MapleSyrup

Member
Day 1

Full blown PMO relapse yesterday, twice. First time looking up actual porn in 6 months : (

Not much to say right now, I'll write a proper post once I gather my thoughts.
 

MapleSyrup

Member
Day 10

Wow, didn't realize it's been a month and a half since my last update.

Unfortunately, it was relapse after relapse the whole time. Had a couple week long streaks separated by days of binging. Almost feels like I'm back to square one.

My mood has also been pretty crappy. I've felt lethargic, unmotivated, and my anxiety has been returning. I think the big trigger is that in April I started taking accutane, which is known to mess with mood and can cause depression.

In the past couple weeks things have gotten a bit better. I think my body has gotten more used to the accutane, and I'm doing my best to manage my mood by taking up running as much as possible. I've logged 75 km in May alone. For some reason, I can't get back in the gym for weight training though. Somehow my body just has no will to move the weights anymore. Luckily, I don't have the same issue with running.

I really want to get back on track, but some of these bad days just knock me flat and wipe out my willpower and motivation.

Anyway, I've somehow made it over a week without really thinking about it, so that's a start. I'm gonna try to keep running whenever I have time, since that seems to be the best thing for my mood and motivation at the moment.
 

TryingHarder

Well-Known Member
Accutane: been there, done that. 🙃 Relapses (and near relapses) are part of the process. Don't be too hard on yourself, but always think: what circumstances led you back to porn? What will you do differently next time?
 

MapleSyrup

Member
Day 16

Thanks @TryingHarder, I appreciate the encouragement. Out of curiosity, did you also have issues with mood on accutane?

This week was much better. I was actually pretty stressed out and in poor mood, but I kept busy with friends or running and didn't entertain the idea of porn at all.
 

MapleSyrup

Member
Day 22

Another smooth week. Didn't think about PMO at all, except a few small urges this morning. The key for me really seems to be staying busy socially, and/or exercising.

I think when I feel socially or physically unfulfilled, I start to spiral and that leads to PMO as a coping mechanism.

Unrelated to me, but it's weird that the forum has been so quiet and inactive lately. I hope everyone's doing well and have stopped logging on since they don't need to anymore. Maybe closer to November we'll have another influx of people.
 

MapleSyrup

Member
Day 0

Was doing not great for June, maybe about 5 relapses in the month. Unfortunately not starting July out great, as I'm on a bit of a binge right now. A number of things are not going great in life right now, which really puts down my motivation to fight urges and stay clean.

Writing this in the hopes of sorting out my thoughts and getting back on track. Each of my last relapses in the past week have come from a sense of boredom and seeking distraction while procrastinating. At night, some of them were while trying to fall asleep and not looking forward to the next day. In the morning, they've come from not wanting to leave the house, and indulging in pleasure instead of facing my fear and getting out of the house.

It's just so hard to keep up my motivation too, especially when things in my life aren't going well. Even when I'm in a good mood during the day and swear that I'm not going to relapse, that resolve is gone by night time.

At any rate, I'm gonna try to spend more hours outside the house this week, try to get back into my exercise routine, and hopefully end this rut.
 

MapleSyrup

Member
Day 0

Another one month update, unfortunately not a great one.

The rest of July was mostly okay, maybe 3 relapses in the first few weeks. The last week of July and first week of August, I completely fell into binges. Once the first relapse happened, it felt like there was no point in resisting urges anymore, since I was already down so to speak.

I've gotten triggered by the tiniest things the last few days. Any slightly provocative thumbnail on YouTube has been enough to send me browsing for porn.

I feel like I've lost my original motivation that propelled me to go on my 6 month streak earlier this year. Back then, I learned to hate and be disgusted by PMO, which helped me to stay away from it. Later in the streak, I was motivated by the improvements in my life and mood that I saw along the way, and I wanted to keep that momentum going.

Somehow I no longer feel the same hate for PMO, and things have slowed down for me in terms of life improvements. My life is objectively still far better than where I was last year. I feel more stable in my mood and my social life is better. But I'm still struggling with social anxiety and taking initiative in my social life. There was a girl I was interested in who I couldn't bring myself to take any sort of action with, even though I thought we had good vibes, and now I'll be graduating and moving to a different city. Even with friends, I feel a weird sense of inferiority that prevents me from reaching out to people and asking them to hang out.

I need to focus on the wins and not the losses, and focus on gradual improvement rather than beating myself up over lack of progress. Also been getting back into working out after a slump.
 

TryingHarder

Well-Known Member
Somehow I no longer feel the same hate for PMO, and things have slowed down for me in terms of life improvements.
I'm sure you have thought of this already, but PMO certainly isn't a life improvement. Whatever the situation or problem, PMO is never the answer. Get back in the saddle and ride on, Maple.
 

MapleSyrup

Member
Returning Update (Day ~45-50)

Hi guys, another very overdue update.

Like I mentioned in my last post, summer 2024 was really bad for my PMO addiction. Things sort of got a bit better in September, but very on and off.

Current streak
In October, I got really busy with some weekend trips and just a lot of social events going on. There was also the same annual church retreat that I mentioned in my October 2023 post. It gave me the chance to have no time to think about PMO, and so I went the rest of October completely clean without having to think about PMO at all. I don't remember exactly which day my last relapse was, but I estimate it was somewhere 1st or 2nd week of October, putting me at 45-50 days currently.

The momentum carried over into November, and I honestly haven't thought about PMO at all until the last week. Unfortunately, things are getting EXTREMELY busy and stressful since I'm wrapping up my Master's Thesis within the next few weeks. On the one hand, I'm happy to challenge myself and finish my grad school career on a high note. But the stress also makes me more prone to look to PMO as a release, so I have to really fight the urge to look at anything tempting.

Life-wise, a few life changes have happened: In some ways, it feels like my life is stuck on a yearly cycle. The exact same thing happened last year, where I suddenly forgot about PMO and went clean from mid-October, and then carried the momentum forward. Not just that, but the same sort of life events are happening again, at the exact same time of year.

If you re-read my October and November 2023 journals, you'll note that I had a crush on a friend from work for months, and right around end of October 2023 I was trying to make a move, right when she started dating a guy. Well, the exact same thing happened at the end of October 2024. There was a different friend who I've been interested in since the beginning of the year (see August 2024 post). We slowly got closer over the course of the year, and right around end of October, I was planning on telling her how I felt. Then a mutual guy friend who she was super close with, suddenly gained feelings for her despite never feeling that way for her before. I always had a weird suspicion that she had unreciprocated feelings for him, and it looks like I was right, since they're now in a situationship and figuring out the transition from friends to a couple. Once again, I find myself in the position of trying to move on from my feelings. Reading this out loud, I can see that my issue probably stems from lack of initiative, and not being upfront with my feelings earlier on in a friendship.

On the bright side, the last few months have been an absolute highlight in terms of my social life. I joined two new social groups at the beginning of this year, but the past few months have really seen those friendships deepen. I feel like I've gone from a participant in my groups, to an integral and irreplaceable member. I spend almost every day around at least a few of my friends, and have hardly ever had the chance to feel lonely, which is something I've always struggled with.

Next Steps

I have a massive challenge and life transition ahead of me. At the end of December, I'll be finishing grad school and moving back to my home city. I'll be leaving behind my uni city, which is where my closest friends are, and where I feel like I finally found a place to belong.

I'm gonna be living at home with my parents, with no school or job, for the first time in over 6 years. I'll have to build new friend groups and circles from scratch, and I'm really not sure how to do that without school clubs or coworkers.

My biggest fear is that I will fall into old habits, get consumed by social anxiety and laziness, and end up feeling stagnant and lonely. It's so easy for me to get stuck in a cycle of dissatisfaction and apathy, which just leads to worsening anxiety, and eventually PMO.

This is going to put my mental resilience, initiative, and social ability to the test. If anyone else in their mid-20s has advice for making friends, and keeping up personal growth, I would love to hear it.
 

Scottie_B

New Member
Next Steps

I have a massive challenge and life transition ahead of me. At the end of December, I'll be finishing grad school and moving back to my home city. I'll be leaving behind my uni city, which is where my closest friends are, and where I feel like I finally found a place to belong.

I'm gonna be living at home with my parents, with no school or job, for the first time in over 6 years. I'll have to build new friend groups and circles from scratch, and I'm really not sure how to do that without school clubs or coworkers.
Great post @MapleSyrup , just curious if there was anything stopping you from staying in the city of your grad school and making it work?

Given that is where your closest friends are (and based on your post), it feels like that's where you'll be most happiest right now?
 
Top