BrassBalls707
Active Member
Day 67/90
Unbusting my balls
- Thread starter BrassBalls707
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BrassBalls707
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Day 68/90
BrassBalls707
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Day 69/90
BrassBalls707
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Day 70/90
BrassBalls707
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Day 71/90
BrassBalls707
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Day 72/90
BrassBalls707
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Day 73/90
BrassBalls707
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Day 74/90
BrassBalls707
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Day 75/90
BrassBalls707
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Day 76/90
BrassBalls707
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Day 77/90
BrassBalls707
Active Member
I won every day for 77 days, today I lost. PMO, the whole nine yards.
I feel like there is more at fault than my decision to endure fatigue, so I'm taking some time to think on it. My thoughts, concentration and impulses are completely fried from usage and relapsing.
I really need this to end.
Back in the saddle tomorrow.
Onwards.
I feel like there is more at fault than my decision to endure fatigue, so I'm taking some time to think on it. My thoughts, concentration and impulses are completely fried from usage and relapsing.
I really need this to end.
Back in the saddle tomorrow.
Onwards.
BrassBalls707
Active Member
I believe the relapse was caused by a few things. First would be fatigue, known to lower my resistance and investment in rebooting. I caught myself thinking often: "I don't care for x or y." and that should be a sign that I need to sit myself down. Second is my emotional state. I experienced several setbacks, like being called "negative" after a job interview despite my best efforts to sound enthousiastic and two other denied applications. Third, I found myself coping in the evenings and at night with excessive technology use, more phone more laptop etc and it started eating into my bedtime and sleep. I felt lethargic and somewhat depressed the past days, and because I didn't address these (not even in meditation) a relapse was the result. A fourth issue would be the combination of the nighttime technology use, the emotional state and fatigue overlapping with my medication's duration running out. Side effects of my ADHD medication include depression and lethargy if you are to stop using. I knew this, and I should have known better than to be negligent with screens on top of this. They facilitate and exacerbate these behaviors...
I'm glad I took the 30 minutes to journal here about this instead of procrastination like I intended. I knew full well that if I didn't do this now, I'd forget about it or postpone it and feel ashamed for not doing as I said I would do yesterday. It may even downspiral into not coming back to my journal here, but I may be catastrophizing. So what now? I'm going to get my necessary rest and think further on what I can do to increase my hopefulness and lift my spirit. I'm also going to think further on how to rearrange my night routine. What to do after dinner and right before sleeping that is. I hope to pinpoint what activities and times of day are no-goes, and what to replace them with and how.
Looking forward to day 1. Continuing to be better than I was before.
Onwards.
I'm glad I took the 30 minutes to journal here about this instead of procrastination like I intended. I knew full well that if I didn't do this now, I'd forget about it or postpone it and feel ashamed for not doing as I said I would do yesterday. It may even downspiral into not coming back to my journal here, but I may be catastrophizing. So what now? I'm going to get my necessary rest and think further on what I can do to increase my hopefulness and lift my spirit. I'm also going to think further on how to rearrange my night routine. What to do after dinner and right before sleeping that is. I hope to pinpoint what activities and times of day are no-goes, and what to replace them with and how.
Looking forward to day 1. Continuing to be better than I was before.
Onwards.
Hi, Brass. 77 days is a good run. You're asking all the right questions, and analyzing what went wrong in a productive way. Your self-awareness is key to your life transformation.
You got this, brother!
You got this, brother!
BrassBalls707
Active Member
Day 1/10
I still find it hard to believe I relapsed when I did. It felt like a dystopian nightmare, something that wouldn't happen to me. But I did. Surreal.
I'm goalposting for 10 days, the end of this month.
Onwards.
I still find it hard to believe I relapsed when I did. It felt like a dystopian nightmare, something that wouldn't happen to me. But I did. Surreal.
I'm goalposting for 10 days, the end of this month.
Onwards.
Blondie
Respected Member
I get this, @BrassBalls707. Something sounds so great, and then we do it, and we're like, I can't believe I went back there again. If it helps, I often try to reflect on that feeling and store it up so I can remember it again when I "forget" in the future, which is very easy to do.
You got this man.
BrassBalls707
Active Member
Another day, another relapse. Fatigue was not the issue this time, it was unprecedented phone use and scrolling. Exhausting my dopamine and then having no motivation besides PMO. "I'll just look and punish myself to condition myself to unlearn the behavior!" Yeah right, my addict brain is using what I've learned about behavior change to manipulate me...
I think my next steps are simple, no phone = no relapse. I dislike the "all-or-nothing" thinking but I don't think I have a choice. I can not give myself leeway. With my last relapse, I crossed my own boundary of "PMO is not something I do.". By crossing that boundary, it became worthless.
I stopped trying to get ahead of my urges. As soon as that decisive moment of "Am I gonna do it?" and "I'm gonna do it." occupied me, I was actively trying to convince myself to stop but it's like that voice was put in the backseat and lost its steering privileges.
The frustrating thing is, I didn't PMO at night or cause I was fatigued or hopeless. Not even cause my meds may have run out. It was the opposite this time and only a result of the previous relapse. There's little to learn here, but like before I will keep my guard up until it's easier. Then focus on not suffering fatigue and the cocktail of other issues I did before. That should work.
Onwards and upwards, out of this hell.
I think my next steps are simple, no phone = no relapse. I dislike the "all-or-nothing" thinking but I don't think I have a choice. I can not give myself leeway. With my last relapse, I crossed my own boundary of "PMO is not something I do.". By crossing that boundary, it became worthless.
I stopped trying to get ahead of my urges. As soon as that decisive moment of "Am I gonna do it?" and "I'm gonna do it." occupied me, I was actively trying to convince myself to stop but it's like that voice was put in the backseat and lost its steering privileges.
The frustrating thing is, I didn't PMO at night or cause I was fatigued or hopeless. Not even cause my meds may have run out. It was the opposite this time and only a result of the previous relapse. There's little to learn here, but like before I will keep my guard up until it's easier. Then focus on not suffering fatigue and the cocktail of other issues I did before. That should work.
Onwards and upwards, out of this hell.
BrassBalls707
Active Member
Day 1/8
I changed the password on my applocker again and wrote it down somewhere. I can get it if I really want to go through all that effort. I never do, and I use the phone less while still being available for received calls. It's working well. I also set a reminder to change the code each week. I tend to memorize or guess right after a few days to a week. Maybe I need to do it twice a week. I'll have to wait and see.
Onwards.
I changed the password on my applocker again and wrote it down somewhere. I can get it if I really want to go through all that effort. I never do, and I use the phone less while still being available for received calls. It's working well. I also set a reminder to change the code each week. I tend to memorize or guess right after a few days to a week. Maybe I need to do it twice a week. I'll have to wait and see.
Onwards.
BrassBalls707
Active Member
Day 2/8
BrassBalls707
Active Member
Reading about the link between ADHD, procrastination and overcommitment, I learned that I may gravitate towards behaviors that raise my wakefulness in an otherwise understimulating world. Where procrastination and overcommitment raise adrenaline, porn undoubtedly raises dopamine. It provides a tremendously appealing visual input and just like raising adrenaline, makes me feel alive.
In other words, I believe my brain recognizes porn as an opportunity to satisfy the need to engage with the world and to feel alive. Although it's digital, artificial, destructive and unsustainable, continued relapses occur. Through this lens, it must be because I do not feel alive.
By determining the moments I tend to feel alive the least (suffering fatigue, when medication runs out, after dopaminergic activities like media use...), I should be able to accurately predict when urges will occur. It's a craving for aliveness, which my brain has learned to respond to with the easily attainable PMO.
To make relapse less likely, I must also provide myself with easier, healthier alternatives to satisfy this need to feel alive. This craving is the result of (relative) understimulation. Superstimuli are hard to avoid but may be key to reducing the impact of contrast between excessive dopaminergic activities and normal life.
I think bodyscan meditation satisfies (or atleast calibrates) a stimulation-seeking mind, as it focuses on tactile sensory experiences. I think triphasic breathing or 'om' chanting cultivates a focused mind, which benefits a stimulation-avoidant mind because the latter allows for withdrawing yourself from the world. In other words, when coming down from high stimulation or medication I should practice bodyscan meditation. When medicated, I should practice triphasic meditation.
When medicated, I take great pleasure in my tendency for stimulation-seeking because it's all amplified. But now I think this is the wrong way to go about it. I worry that it increases my baseline stimulation (or awareness) and makes the gap between medicated and unmedicated states even larger. It is a short term solution, good for ADDers with no agency. My situation is different, I have the agency to change my life. I don't want to keep taking medication. It facilitates getting stuck in a life my brain does not function well in. I want to build a life that doesn't rely on a drug to be liveable.
Porn addiction is teaching me that I cannot do without specific stimulation. Rebooting isn't only about resetting my brain from porn addiction. My addiction sensitivity is wired by merit of ADD. Rebooting is about learning and applying what porn addiction is teaching me. The need for stimulation. It sounds deterministic, so I will think more about how to reframe this in a more positive and hopeful way. Continuing to read relevant literature will help.
It's my responsibility to design my environment and life to attain optimal stimulation in a sustainable manner. I believe it is best that I accept that intense and repetitive music is key to retaining my concentration. Until now it has felt like a special needs aid but Thom Hartmann's book "ADHD: A Hunter in a Farmer's World" has convinced me this must the adjustement I made to exist in an unsuitable environment with inappropriate expectations (to concentrate and perform on understimulating tasks like neurotypical 'farmers'). I attribute this to the concept of stochastic resonance (addition of stimuli increases psychological arousal and therefore passes the threshold requirement for keeping attention). Numerous workplaces aren't accepting of this need. I begrudingly recall my disappointment when I was told I was not allowed to listen to music at my last job. I will think about this more and how this should best affect my decision for a career.
I translated this rant to bullet points. They are things I need to do out to make this insight actionable (and ultimately valuable).
- Make undesired activities less dopaminergic. Less sugar in food, greyscale my phone and computer. Avoid complex and/or intense music unless it facilitates concentration.
- Make desired activities more dopaminergic. Furnish and decorate a reading space, pick and evolve challenging workout exercises, make a habit (on my habit tracker) to remove grayscale when working on the computer and play complex or intense music, set a priority to-do to buy and place fidget toys on my desk (to compensate for lowering medication dosage).
- Reduce medication intake (in consultation with a medical professional) and experiment with adding sensory stimuli to tasks that do not retain my attention (fidget toys, scented candles, healthy beverages and snacks).
- Make a habit (in my habit tracker) to process and appreciate finished, non-dopaminergic tasks. It's like gratitude journaling, but without writing and more focus on self-appreciation.
- Make a habit (in my habit tracker) to practice bodyscan meditation after a dopaminergic activity to prevent PMO cravings when returning to mundanity. I believe the focus on intensifying the tactile sensory experience will provide a better gradual descent stimulation-wise.
- Make a habit (in my habit tracker) to practice triphasic meditation when medicated or nudging myself towards overstimulation. This should reduce my tendency to overwhelm myself.
- Continue to read literature about ADHD, addiction and positive psychology.
In other words, I believe my brain recognizes porn as an opportunity to satisfy the need to engage with the world and to feel alive. Although it's digital, artificial, destructive and unsustainable, continued relapses occur. Through this lens, it must be because I do not feel alive.
By determining the moments I tend to feel alive the least (suffering fatigue, when medication runs out, after dopaminergic activities like media use...), I should be able to accurately predict when urges will occur. It's a craving for aliveness, which my brain has learned to respond to with the easily attainable PMO.
To make relapse less likely, I must also provide myself with easier, healthier alternatives to satisfy this need to feel alive. This craving is the result of (relative) understimulation. Superstimuli are hard to avoid but may be key to reducing the impact of contrast between excessive dopaminergic activities and normal life.
I think bodyscan meditation satisfies (or atleast calibrates) a stimulation-seeking mind, as it focuses on tactile sensory experiences. I think triphasic breathing or 'om' chanting cultivates a focused mind, which benefits a stimulation-avoidant mind because the latter allows for withdrawing yourself from the world. In other words, when coming down from high stimulation or medication I should practice bodyscan meditation. When medicated, I should practice triphasic meditation.
When medicated, I take great pleasure in my tendency for stimulation-seeking because it's all amplified. But now I think this is the wrong way to go about it. I worry that it increases my baseline stimulation (or awareness) and makes the gap between medicated and unmedicated states even larger. It is a short term solution, good for ADDers with no agency. My situation is different, I have the agency to change my life. I don't want to keep taking medication. It facilitates getting stuck in a life my brain does not function well in. I want to build a life that doesn't rely on a drug to be liveable.
Porn addiction is teaching me that I cannot do without specific stimulation. Rebooting isn't only about resetting my brain from porn addiction. My addiction sensitivity is wired by merit of ADD. Rebooting is about learning and applying what porn addiction is teaching me. The need for stimulation. It sounds deterministic, so I will think more about how to reframe this in a more positive and hopeful way. Continuing to read relevant literature will help.
It's my responsibility to design my environment and life to attain optimal stimulation in a sustainable manner. I believe it is best that I accept that intense and repetitive music is key to retaining my concentration. Until now it has felt like a special needs aid but Thom Hartmann's book "ADHD: A Hunter in a Farmer's World" has convinced me this must the adjustement I made to exist in an unsuitable environment with inappropriate expectations (to concentrate and perform on understimulating tasks like neurotypical 'farmers'). I attribute this to the concept of stochastic resonance (addition of stimuli increases psychological arousal and therefore passes the threshold requirement for keeping attention). Numerous workplaces aren't accepting of this need. I begrudingly recall my disappointment when I was told I was not allowed to listen to music at my last job. I will think about this more and how this should best affect my decision for a career.
I translated this rant to bullet points. They are things I need to do out to make this insight actionable (and ultimately valuable).
- Make undesired activities less dopaminergic. Less sugar in food, greyscale my phone and computer. Avoid complex and/or intense music unless it facilitates concentration.
- Make desired activities more dopaminergic. Furnish and decorate a reading space, pick and evolve challenging workout exercises, make a habit (on my habit tracker) to remove grayscale when working on the computer and play complex or intense music, set a priority to-do to buy and place fidget toys on my desk (to compensate for lowering medication dosage).
- Reduce medication intake (in consultation with a medical professional) and experiment with adding sensory stimuli to tasks that do not retain my attention (fidget toys, scented candles, healthy beverages and snacks).
- Make a habit (in my habit tracker) to process and appreciate finished, non-dopaminergic tasks. It's like gratitude journaling, but without writing and more focus on self-appreciation.
- Make a habit (in my habit tracker) to practice bodyscan meditation after a dopaminergic activity to prevent PMO cravings when returning to mundanity. I believe the focus on intensifying the tactile sensory experience will provide a better gradual descent stimulation-wise.
- Make a habit (in my habit tracker) to practice triphasic meditation when medicated or nudging myself towards overstimulation. This should reduce my tendency to overwhelm myself.
- Continue to read literature about ADHD, addiction and positive psychology.