Three years + 1 day porn-free: Thank you everyone for your well wishes. I couldn't have made it this far without your love and support. Here is my very first post:
"Here is my story: 42 years old, first discovered porn/masturbation around age 12, went from magazines, to video, paid streaming porn, then free and highly addictive porn sites. What was a flirtation became a full-on obsession in 1994 and heroin-like addiction in 2005. I'm starting this journal on day 23 of my recovery with a goal of hitting 90 days initially before stopping forever. My addiction has now cost me: my career, my business, my marriage, and was well along to destroying my relationship with my three kids. On October 30th, I finally said "f*ck this". I've not watched porn since and never will do it again. I've started a reboot with no-fap and no television. I've also read pretty much everything I could about my addiction, namely it's harder to give up than meth. (Scary!) But there are temptations, particularly in the form of rock-hard erections at night and geyser-like pressure because I haven't had an orgasm in roughly two weeks. I'll post daily to keep motivated. Glad to have found this site and very happy to share with others."
My addictions are like icebergs: 9/10ths of my real problems were below water. I reckon porn was just the visible tip. After all, I had recovered from my porn addiction in just a few months but I still felt an overwhelming need to use some other "crutch" to manage my emotions. So the hard work began post-porn addiction. That's when I didn't have anything to distract me from working on the root causes of my addictions to porn, masturbation, and sex. And these root causes were fear, shame, and a total lack of self-esteem.
I believe porn was nothing but a drug, a distraction from my real problems. So what I'm about to share is how I overcame my porn addiction and remained porn-free for the past three years. I'm going to divide this into three phases: phase 1 was when I stopped porn; phase 2 was when I addressed the root causes of my addictions; and phase 3 was about bettering myself (or becoming the man I truly wanted to be).
PHASE 1: REBOOT (3-4 months)
I did the classic "hard 90" which I believe was more like the "hard 100." That meant no porn nor masturbation for the first 100 days. Here is how I made it through the first 3+ months porn-free:
1. Adopted a 'PORN IS NOT AN OPTION' mentality
2. Posted here daily, almost to the point that recovery became a new addiction
3. Joined www.pornddictsanonymous.org (or "PAA"), a 12-step program for porn addiction
4. Through PAA got a sponsor and sobriety buddies to contact in case I felt triggered or close to relapse
5. Exercised daily
6. Gave up TV
7. Read "Your Brain on Porn"
PHASE 2: EMOTIONAL REBOOT (first 18 months)
This was the most challenging part of my reboot. Why? For some reason, I never really learned to properly feel nor express my emotions. I was completely incapable of just honestly experiencing and sharing my feelings. From a very young age, I denied my emotions which caused me a lot of self-hatred, pain, and shame. Later when these negative feelings risked overwhelming me, I'd turn to food, TV, then later porn and sex to artificially "feel better." While porn initially made me feel better, over time it just made me feel worse due to porn-induced f*cked up brain chemistry (insomnia & anxiety for example), deep depression, and PIED/erectile dysfunction. This is how I made it through my emotional reboot:
1. Healthy living: exercise, sleep, and eating well.
2. Therapy: I found an incredible therapist and did about six months of regular therapy.
3. Reading: Books like "Breaking the Cycle" about addiction and "Loving What Is" to re-learn how to express my feelings to avoid falling back into denial.
4. Coming out: I came out as gay to my (then) wife, my parents, sister, and extended family.
5. Improving Relationships: I separated and divorced from my wife, met a boyfriend (now together 5+ years), and started the slow process of detaching from everything toxic in my life.
PHASE 3: SELF-IMPROVEMENT (1.5 years porn-free to today)
This is where I am today. I see this phase as a period of self-improvement. As a recovering addict and formerly closeted gay man, I'm trying to find the inner strength to live a happy and fulfilling life. While in active addiction, it was all about trying to find happiness via external means. For example, the first four years of my new (gay) relationship were very rocky because I wanted my boyfriend to love me; an impossible task because I was incapable of loving myself. I've spent most of my life hating myself for being gay while also feeling resentment towards others, mainly because I wanted what they had or I wanted them to do for me what I was incapable of doing myself. In the past, I just gave off this "fix me!!!" aura whereas now I'm slowly learning to fix myself. This is how I'm working through my current recovery phase:
1. Healthy living: exercise, sleep, and eating well.
2. Healthy relationships: I read "The Velvet Rage" which is the best book about the coming out process and then worked very hard on self-acceptance. For a time I joined CODA (co-dependents anonymous) to get over my lifelong people-pleasing. This helped me lovingly detach from all the toxic people in my life while also detaching from my toxic thinking.
3. Fear Management: I'm currently working through a hit list of lifelong fears in an attempt to better myself. For example, I've always feared violent team sports so I joined a gay rugby team in a nearby city. It's been painful but ultimately a great experience.
4. Self-Esteem/Integrity: I read and re-read "The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem" and "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" to re-learn the value of honesty, integrity, and hard-work. These books also helped me with communication and boundary setting. For example, now that I can pro-actively set boundaries in my personal relationships, like with my boyfriend, I'm much happier.
I want to stress that I'm not the perfect rebooter, so my recovery from addictions to porn, masturbation, and sex has been rocky at times. I've detailed a lot of these struggles in previous posts. For example, I can still lose myself in Facebook or YouTube. This is something I need to monitor because losing myself in screens can look a lot like a porn substitute. After decades of darting around the internet, I continue to have trouble concentrating. This has negatively impacted my business (I'm self employed). And under the guise of an "open relationship", I have often used anonymous sex/hook ups to avoid feeling negative emotions (such as loneliness and fear). So yes the road to recovery is rocky, but these secondary problems (or middle circle behaviours as we call them in 12-step programs) continue to melt away. So I feel I'm on the right track.
Thanks for reading my rambles friends. I also wanted to thank Gabe Deem and all of you for making Reboot Nation such an integral part of my recovery from porn addiction. PORN IS NOT AN OPTION.
