War of the cycle

[Will Stalwart]

Day 1
I find myself again in a familiar place. Porn has consumed so much time and energy of late, I have to remind myself it is a problem.

Ever day I find some time, some space to make room for the habit. Yet this only skirts the edges of the problem.

Hours go by, as days are wasted. And what do I get from all of this?

I’m here, not for the first time, to commit to ending this and to discover who I am without it.

 

[Androg]

 

[Will Stalwart]

Day 2

Mornings can be tough. Often first awake, I am alone with opportunity and time, a perfect storm of failure. But today I am here.

In the past, each successive failure has been my own mental gymnastics taking hold. Excuses and get out clauses. An exception to the rule which leads to the familiar spiral.

On the surface I have always seemed to have everything together. Coving up my habit to the closest people to me. Yet I myself know and hate the extent of the problem.

The truth is porn has carved out a whole part of my life that I will never get back. I promise myself, just five minutes, and then I can do something more meaningful. Just to scratch the itch. But five minutes turns to ten turns to an hour turns to two.

I have wasted whole days on porn during over a decade of addiction.

This is an uphill battle to overcome years of deep conditioning. Even now I can feel the scratch of the craving at the edges of my consciousness, as I have to actively refuse that feral part of myself its fix.

Today I am spending with my family. A day trip out where I can enjoy myself without this clawing urge.

I just need to make it past the morning.

 

[Androg]

Day 2

Mornings can be tough. Often first awake, I am alone with opportunity and time, a perfect storm of failure. But today I am here.

In the past, each successive failure has been my own mental gymnastics taking hold. Excuses and get out clauses. An exception to the rule which leads to the familiar spiral.

On the surface I have always seemed to have everything together. Coving up my habit to the closest people to me. Yet I myself know and hate the extent of the problem.

The truth is porn has carved out a whole part of my life that I will never get back. I promise myself, just five minutes, and then I can do something more meaningful. Just to scratch the itch. But five minutes turns to ten turns to an hour turns to two.

I have wasted whole days on porn during over a decade of addiction.

This is an uphill battle to overcome years of deep conditioning. Even now I can feel the scratch of the craving at the edges of my consciousness, as I have to actively refuse that feral part of myself its fix.

Today I am spending with my family. A day trip out where I can enjoy myself without this clawing urge.

I just need to make it past the morning.

You can do it!

 

[Will Stalwart]

Day 3

Despite past efforts, I never feel like I have fully committed to the process. Today I made a step to fix that.

Through previous reboot attempts I have always kept a small stash of my favourite content. A safety blanket that I always go back to. In retrospect it is unsurprising I failed.

They are now gone. Hoarded pictures and videos that have done nothing for me wiped and gone forever, with no way to recover them.

I feel liberated.

This is not just another attempt for me. I will not repeat my mistakes. This is a new life, and a new me.

 

[Will Stalwart]

Day 4

Four days, and this is likely the longest I’ve been without for a year. It has undoubtedly been a habit that was out of control.

Cravings come in sharp bursts now. Intense but fleeting feelings, they show me how easy it would be to cave.

Despite this, I know my motivation is strong enough to get me through the day.

 

[Androg]

Day 4

Four days, and this is likely the longest I’ve been without for a year. It has undoubtedly been a habit that was out of control.

Cravings come in sharp bursts now. Intense but fleeting feelings, they show me how easy it would be to cave.

Despite this, I know my motivation is strong enough to get me through the day.

It's good to realize that cravings do pass, if you just observe them and move on with your day. At first, you may have to do this multiple times a day.

 

[Will Stalwart]

Day 5

Cravings came on strong yesterday. It’s amazing to see how hard your own brain can work against you. Get you to give up on something you care about for the most pathetic of things.

But as androg said, they did pass. And here I am with another day clean.

Looking back without the craving, the excuses seem so pitiful. So small. Yet they hold so much weight when coupled with the gripping need.

This is a battle with myself. And I know it’s going to get harder before I get to where I want.

 

[Will Stalwart]

Day 6

Giving up would be such an easy thing. There is a lot going on in my life right now so why is this such a big deal?

I think the difference between success and failure is how you cope during these challenges. Yes I have bigger things in my life than this. But that does not take away from this goal. And isn’t the goal itself to have a life that does not revolve around porn.

I am still in the early stages of this process and it is tough. Tougher than I remember. But my resolve is still strong.

 

[Will Stalwart]

Day 7

Today is my first week mark. A seemingly small thing for some, but for me it feels like a real achievement.

Honestly, when starting this thread I half expected to quickly fall into old patterns. I doubted I could last a couple of days without my will crumbling against my cravings.

I wanted to thank the supportive people of this forum for helping me over this first hurdle. I can’t stress enough how much something even as simple as a thumbs up has helped keep me motivated. Shown me that I’m not in this alone.

We’re all in this together. We came here so we do not have to face this alone. And this community gives us strength to keep pushing.

 

[Will Stalwart]

Day 8

With my minor success comes two thought processes.

The first and more destructive congratulates me. It tells me I’ve done well to make this progress, and that surely I deserve a reward. One look now wouldn’t hurt. In fact, I’ve earned it.

The second recognised this for what it is. A trap that would slow me down, hinder my progress. Yes the streak would be broken, but this in itself is trivial. The real damage would be in undoing the effort and hard work that has been put in so far.

The duality of my own mind shows me just how much my conscious brain has to fight against the baser impulses. We need to choose the thoughtful path rather than allow these impulses to take control and drive us.

 

[Will Stalwart]

Day 10

Yesterday was a day that started well. No craving or thoughts of porn. Then I had my first slip. I’ve no idea what happened or how, but I found myself opening a website I have used in the past. Berating myself I quickly closed it. The whole thing lasted less than a minute.

While happy that I could pull myself away like that, the after effects were surprisingly potent. One glance and I was left with intense craving for the hours following.

This small instance showed me just how easy it is to err from the path. And why it is vital to stay vigilant especially when you feel you have a grasp on it.

 

[Androg]

Triggers fire up our dopamine pathways more than actually using, according to research

 

[Will Stalwart]

Day 11

I’ve been very lucky to start my current journey during my holidays. That means there is so little time when I am not around my family.

Craving still come, but often it is easy to find a distraction or something else to do. And when I can’t, I jump in here and read some posts. The stories here are excellent reminders of what we are doing.

Alone time has always been the biggest risk. Time when there’s no one around and I’ve little else to do. My hope is that I can reach a place where I am less reliant on porn before I return to the daily grind. Optimistic? Maybe. But I do feel I have made strides already and any improvement is welcomed.

 

[Will Stalwart]

Day 16

I’ve had some friends staying for a few days making for an easy time to keep myself busy. They left yesterday, making things tougher to stay on top of again.

Cravings are fluctuating day to day. Some easy, some tough. Right now I’m sitting here and needing to remind myself what I was doing. A few seconds ago I was very close to slipping, my fingers ready to type a familiar address and fall into a familiar pattern.

This has already been a bigger success for me than I had anticipated and I do not want to lose that progress. My current risk is my free time. It makes it too easy to fall into old patterns, a trap I have fallen into in the past.

There are undoubtedly things that I could do that are constructive, things that I want to do and enjoy. But they require motivation and focus, something I am struggling with of late. I know I need to fill this void of time with something. Right now I am relying on other poor habits, video games being one, to fill that void.

I do not want to trade one bad habit for another, but right now getting through without porn is my priority. Once I am on top of that I can focus on building better habits.

 

[Androg]

When, in doubt, do push-ups!

 

[Will Stalwart]

Day 17

Maybe I should have done some push ups...

In short yesterday ended in failure. It seems my free time caught up to me in the worst way and bad habits kicked in.

But I have not started my count again at day zero, which I feel I should explain. For me this has never been about keeping tally of days. This hasn’t worked for me in the past. One failure easily led to another and so on until I gave up entirely.

I am choosing instead to see this as one singular journey. While I can acknowledge it sets me back, one slip does not undo everything I have done so far. I am still on day 17 of my journey and not day 1.

It is important I view it in this way as it helps me frame this differently in my mind. It is easy to give up if I have only a couple of days work under me. The reality is that I have worked hard to reach even those 16 days. And I am proud of them. They are an achievement to me, that I aim to build upon.

I do not intend to wallow in self pity, but instead choose to move forward. There are things I need to rethink. Change certain ways I approach my free time. But this is something to think on over the next couple of days.

Ending a streak is not failure. Giving up is failure.

 

[Will Stalwart]

Day 18

The war of the cycle continues.

The aim for all of us is to never need porn again. To break the cycle of self pity each time we fail. To regain time wasted. To regain ourselves.

After succumbing yesterday, I feel the itch much harder today. It is this itch that has led me to failure time and again. I’d leave here and not come back for months or years, after allowing myself to fully indulge in the addiction.

If it were as simple as watching porn now and then I would not be here. If I was able to moderate my consumption I would not be here. The lie I told myself is it wasn’t a big deal. Everyone watches it. And it was something I enjoyed. Surely it couldn’t be so bad.

Deep down I always knew the truth. Porn can be all encompassing. It soaks up whole days of my life. When I start I cannot pull myself away. I would tell myself just a quick look, then I can do something more productive. But that quick look would spin out to hours until all of my free time was lost.

I want that time back.

One of my biggest regrets is how much this has impacted my favourite hobby, writing. I have always loved books and stories, and creating my own has been a goal of mine for some time. But writing is hard. Or at least harder than watching porn. It is easier to scroll through webpage after webpage, video after video, than to sit down and do something worthwhile.

As I get older I can recognise how valuable this lost time is. If I continue my goals will be lost to this habit that brings me nothing but a short term fix of some pointless craving.

I cannot truly get my lost time back. But the rest of my life is ahead of me. I can reclaim that time now before it sucks away more of my life forever.

 

[Will Stalwart]

Day 21

True to habit I only managed to last a handful of days before I succumbed again.

This is a familiar trend that has happened over past reboots. I will have a streak of success, then one failure rolls into another. So while this was not a surprising result, it was certainly a frustrating one. But I endeavour to keep myself honest and accountable. If I am not accountable, nothing stops me from repeating the pattern again.

As for how and why this happened, it is hard to say. I suspect a lot had to do with the chaser from my earlier relapse, combined with a somewhat low mood. It is an easy trap to fall into after all.

My mental state is something that can easily slip, and I have needed counselling to get through the worst. So it is important I stay optimistic and see the good even in the bad. I have already shown improvements from my previous patterns. This is no longer a daily thing for me. I am also still here. Still on the road to recovery.

I can see where I have gone wrong, see how old habits are too easy to slip back into. But I will not let these stumbles break my resolve. I am in this now. The only true failure would be to give up.

I refuse to give up.

 

[Will Stalwart]

It’s over

I have just finished reading the easy peasy method which I saw someone suggesting in another thread. I was surprised at how much the core message spoke to me, and how it resonated.

If you have not read this yet I highly recommend it. It is a free resource and relatively short, so no excuses not to!

As such I am no longer a porn user. Done are my days counting. Done are my days pining and wishing I was consuming that rot. Done are my days lying to myself.

I will not spoil the book for those who have not read it, but I have just clicked through some of my usual porn (as suggested by the book) for the last time. The experience was entirely different, and I was able to see what it does and how we allow ourselves to fall into that trap.

My perception has shifted for the better and I feel equipped to go about my life without feeling I’ve given something up.

I cannot say for certain what will happen in the coming days and weeks. I cannot say if the message will hold. But I will endeavour to drop in and share my thoughts on how it is working for me.