Let's call it "the final thread"

new reality

Active Member
Definitely keep a list of real life activities or friends to call on the weekend. 👍

Sunday in specific can be a pain.. although not always. At other times, it's been Friday or Saturday night, or even Monday to Wednesday.

It's not just from not being "busy", it can be the associations we may have with certain times. If we think we should be socially fulfilled at certain times, and we're not, that can lead to trouble. If we're simply unhappy midweek, despite being "busy", that can lead to trouble too.

Anyway. Currently a little unhappy about certain things, but this too shall pass!
 

new reality

Active Member
Messing up a bit lately, after a decent 12-day streak. Usually I've been getting back on track quickly after resets, but not so much this week. I've been a bit down due to mood swings and some interpersonal stress. Feeling a lack of motivation and so on.
 

Androg

Administrator
Admin
Moderator
Yes, problems seem to become cumulative rather quickly if you don't double down on your recovery. Annoying. :cool:
 

new reality

Active Member
15-day hardmode streak ended, new streak beginning.

Quality of old streak: mostly good apart from one instance of chat room use. End of streak wasn't too bad all things considered.
 

new reality

Active Member
I'm currently suffering from a health issue which may have been more or less caused by this addiction. It's a bit like if you had back pain for some time after sitting in a weird position for a long time while "using". That's not my current problem, nor is it something to do with my
genitals
, but it gives you an idea.

Is this the "rock bottom" that finally gets me to quit this stuff for good? That would be nice.
 

new reality

Active Member
Fortunately I'm now doing something which is helping a lot with that health issue. We can solve "some" of our problems, no matter how hopeless things can seem.

I had a pretty stressful day yesterday but I managed not to reset. Maybe I wasn't that strongly tempted anyway. I did have too much alcohol instead, although I drink at quite a slow pace so at least things don't tend to get too messy.

I did MO
in the shower
today, but I think I'll allow that as long as it's only once a week at most. Maybe I'll gradually reduce the frequency or something.

Edit - also got round to working on some stuff today which should hopefully reduce some of my stress
 

new reality

Active Member
Right, so I did suffer from the chaser effect after the MO I mentioned in the previous post. Generally speaking I don't try "healthy" MO when I'm doing recovery (and I'm basically always attempting recovery, I don't really take any breaks from recovery despite my resets / relapses). But I do often wonder if it might be a good idea. I usually just try and hold out however, then a reset will gradually happen due to consistent high libido, random fantasies, my motivation not being as high as it maybe should be, being distracted by other problems, rationalising.. then the reset usually starts with chat of some kind, then
P-subs or P might happen too (plus chat is often full of P-subs and P anyway, or at least it can be).
. But "healthy" MO often leads to chasers anyway, so maybe going "hardmode" or whatever is the only way to go.

You might notice I'm using a lot of spoilers lately. I don't want to trigger anyone even if it's perhaps unlikely that I will.

Perhaps that last sentence brings me to my next point. I often feel alone (or triggered lol) when I read other posts on forums like this (but this forum probably isn't the worst for this feeling). It seems like I have little in common in people. Maybe I just happen to click on the wrong stuff, or maybe my background and issues just make me feel alone. Maybe modern life is the problem, although frankly I've lived in more old-fashioned, traditional enviroments (to an extent anyway) and I still felt different. One consolation is that modern life can allow us to find people we have things in common with.. but they usually live far away from us and it's tricky to see them. Another point is that the loudest voices often don't represent what the average person is actually thinking (there may be exceptions if you live in certain places or do certain jobs or activities etc. - I don't think I'm in those exceptional environments too often though). Perhaps the rest of us who aren't so shouty should express ourselves and our opinions more often. Who knows.

Edit - oh yeah and blockers, I'll talk about them a bit next time.
 

new reality

Active Member
Blockers. If you want to block some sites on your Windows computer, ColdTurkey isn't a bad choice. Don't bother paying for it and just get the free version (based on my anecdotal experience).

On my Android phone I've gone for BlockSite. I'm reasonably happy with it overall. This isn't a "proper" review in a sense for various reasons. I currently have it set up with a password lock. I'm not sure if this is completely reliable. I did this before and it's possible that sooner or later it just stopped looking for a password. Or maybe I unlocked it deliberately (my method is to write the unmemorable password on a bit of paper and hide it somewhere awkward). It's better than nothing anyway (I think, I'm honestly not sure yet lol), and I'm paying money for it, but it was pretty cheap at the sale price (if you're buying it, quickly agree to any good looking sale offer, or you might have to contact them to get the offer again etc.)

Life's been throwing a lot at me lately, well life and my "issues", but anyway, I'm doing pretty well at responding to a lot of it, I hope! Of course, working on one thing can lead to neglecting something else, but I'm trying to avoid that side effect.
 

new reality

Active Member
Update. Doing pretty well at the moment, although this post might be controversial to some..

In terms of avoiding the bad stuff such as P, P-subs (especially deliberate viewing rather than accidental) and chat, I'm doing very well.

As for MO, I've been doing it about once a week on average, generally when I'm feeling very "high-libido" and what have you. I have been using some mild fantasy, and it tends to be about a woman I've had a fairly recent interaction with, and who seemed to be flirting with me a little. Some might say I shouldn't do this for various reasons, and maybe I'll change tactics at some point, but for now it seems like a good way to help avoid worse stuff and train my mind to focus more on real women that I've actually seen with my own eyes in real life (and they've seen me etc). I've noticed my dreams are more about real women now too. Blockers have still been useful at times, although I haven't felt the need for them for at least a week.

Incidentally there's another forum of this kind that I use more regularly. Unfortunately it's been down for a week or two now, and even before that it's recently been in read-only mode (but PMs were working, at least PMs that had already been started). If anyone was a user of that forum feel free to let me know here or in a PM.
 

new reality

Active Member
Another update, after almost two months.

Here's a tip. If you're like me, you may have more than one YouTube account for some reason (everything is complicated these days). I thought I was good at making sure YouTube wouldn't suggest triggering stuff to me (up to a point), and deleting the history if I did click on, or look up, anything triggering. Well I was good at that stuff with regards to one of the accounts.. not so much the other account. So now I've completely deleted the history in that other account. This is worth bearing in mind in these days of Smart TVs and Chromecasts etc.

Recently I've been dealing with low moods as a result of a disappointment in my life (well, that was the trigger anyway, it's more complicated of course). Luckily I seem to have recovered fairly well in the last 24 hours or so, seemingly due to remembering something I was into a few years ago and getting "inspired" by it somewhat. Maybe I'll write more soon.
 

new reality

Active Member
If you feel like having "one last look", that's a sign that you're addicted, in my opinion. Think of a bad habit you might have overcome in the past. If you weren't particularly addicted, there was little or no temptation to indulge "just one more time". If you were properly addicted, however...
 

new reality

Active Member
Hello again.

Incidentally there's another forum of this kind that I use more regularly. Unfortunately it's been down for a week or two now, and even before that it's recently been in read-only mode (but PMs were working, at least PMs that had already been started). If anyone was a user of that forum feel free to let me know here or in a PM.

That site never came back. Most of you probably know of the "big" forum along these lines as well - that forum hasn't been working very well lately. Perhaps it will go too. I've been posting there recently, when I can. Maybe I should just stick to this forum.

(Edit - removed sentence)

Blockers. If you want to block some sites on your Windows computer, ColdTurkey isn't a bad choice. Don't bother paying for it and just get the free version (based on my anecdotal experience).

On my Android phone I've gone for BlockSite. I'm reasonably happy with it overall. This isn't a "proper" review in a sense for various reasons. I currently have it set up with a password lock. I'm not sure if this is completely reliable. I did this before and it's possible that sooner or later it just stopped looking for a password. Or maybe I unlocked it deliberately (my method is to write the unmemorable password on a bit of paper and hide it somewhere awkward). It's better than nothing anyway (I think, I'm honestly not sure yet lol), and I'm paying money for it, but it was pretty cheap at the sale price (if you're buying it, quickly agree to any good looking sale offer, or you might have to contact them to get the offer again etc.)

My blocking attempts were successful for the most part. However, I'm a bit nerdy and I have a lot of different devices. I recently sold the most problematic device (or traded it in to be more precise). Another device required a WiFi dongle to work - I hid the dongle somewhere and basically "lost" it. It's much harder to reset now but it's always possible, blocking alone isn't enough for me I don't think.

As for that old question, is some form of occasional MO permissible? At the moment I don't really think it is, for me anyway. Maybe an exception might be if I happen to be doing a lot of flirting with women and I'm getting a bit triggered that way. Well I'm not doing that very often these days so I don't have that excuse.

More soon I expect.
 
Last edited:

new reality

Active Member
Reset on Day Eight. Didn't use P but used other stuff which is similarly bad.

I probably need to "fix" a psychological issue or two if I'm ever going to fully quit. And of course many of these issues affect the rest of ourselves as well, it's not all "just in your head".
 

new reality

Active Member
I had some urges today, maybe not extreme ones but anyway. I thought of the HALT factors at one point: am I Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired? I noticed that I was pretty tired and decided to try and have a nap, and I did. I felt a lot better afterwards.

Also I've done a lot of cleaning and tidying both today and yesterday, which needed to be done.
 
Top