Not a success story, but committed to changing that

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fapstronaut007

Member
It’s been about 10 and a half years since I joined this forum, and it pains me to say I am in currently in the lowest point, mentally and physically in my life.

If you are someone struggling, I want you to warn you that there is no happy ending in this post, so proceed with caution. I am writing this to get everything out of my chest as there is not a single person in this world I have the courage to share everything I want to say, I would prefer if they didn’t know about it.

To give a brief overview of the last 10 years,
  • Had severe HOCD at 17, came to this forum for help. Knowing my problem was universal helped, made me believe it’s okay and that I will overcome this eventually.
  • Spent the next year struggling with sever social anxiety and HOCD(self diagnosed, never been to a mental health expert to date), but the symptoms were, unable to speak, low self confidence, no interest in social engagement due to fear of rejection, and ofc being afraid I was gay (FYI I think gay ppl are the coolest, just that I was in constant fear and confusion about my sexuality even though I clearly am not gay).
  • Found a messed up way to overcome this by switching to transsexual pornography, which def made me realize I am attracted o femininity, but left me with a crippling mind ducking addiction that lasts to date.
  • The last 8-9 years have gone with me going back and forth with trying to quit, and I’m the last 4 years , I just stopped trying.
  • Until 4 years ago, I used to count days of no FAP, have serious regret and guilt after a relapse, try very hard to quit. But the last 4 years, I’ve trained my mind to be numb, relapse, oh that’s okay let’s keep relapsing. No regret or that feeling of guilt we get after fapping, it’s just gone and I don’t feel it anymore.

Okay now why I think I am at the lowest point in my life,
1. I just spend a few hundred dollars on a porn website on transsexuals. I am indulging in degenerate behavior by watching and doing something morally wrong just to do get a kick out of it. This by far is my biggest problem. No mental control of my self harming actions.
2. I am in the worst shape of my life, gained a lot of weight and am the heaviest I’ve weighed in my life. 3. Zero exercise, I order and eat the most unhealthiest food, going to get my blood work done cause I am certain something is going to be off. It is almost uncontrollable indulgence in junk food like a glutton.
4. I was always a genuinely caring and kind hearted man with a lot of empathy and genuine care for others, now I see myself lying more, to cover up my activities mainly, which contradicts the person I used to be, open and honest. I also feel like I don’t genuinely care about people anymore, I feel jealousy and contempt, and not wanting good things for others, rather for myself. Never was the case before.
5. Zero motivation to do anything productive, I doomscroll away when I get any time, else I am slogging for an abusive over working employer. The only reason I stay is cause the pay is good.
6. A very serious issue I’ve been seeing off late, memory loss. I can’t remember shit, names of people, songs, places, movies, plot of movies, events etc. this is really scary cause I can’t imagine living life with such bad memory.
7. I completely forgot to mention that I got addicted to vaping about 4 years ago, the longest I went was about 8 months, then I fell back into it the last 6 months. Currently a vape addict on top of pornogrphy.

That is pretty much it, I am currently in a 3 year relationship with an amazing girl, who I want to marry, but don’t have the heart to ask her to with my current sorry state of mental health.
She knows about my addiction, but only barely. I don’t give details, and hide about the type of porn and frequency. She hates vaping, and I lie about having quit that too (this Iam trying very hard to quit actively and am currently 10 days clean). She will leave me if Iam 100% honest. Also to add, I am a virgin, yes I know, this is my second relationship. The first time I wasn’t ready and said no, but now my current gf is conservative and wants to wait until marriage. Which I am 100% okay doing, but given that I am getting my sexual needs satisfied elsewhere like porn, is just sad. Also she is real, I swear.


Coming to what’s next.
I have gotten everything I wanted to say out of my chest. I will come back here to this forum in about a year or two with an update. I’ve been doing this for that past 10 years and things have not been positive. My 17 year old self would be ashamed. You may wonder how I continue to live with myself, I’ve just fallen so down in the depths of porn and addiction, I treat that part of me as someone else and lie to myself that that person is not me.

My plan from now,
I am going to talk to my doctor about therapy in a few days when I get my bloodwork done. I am going to try and replace triggers with running and quick sets of push ups and sit ups. Going to reduce screen time as much as possible. Going to incorporate 10 minute meditation in my day.

Am I going to be successful? I really hope. If I am not, I will come clean to my girl in a year. I will not marry until I am satisfied with myself as a person.

For anyone who did read this, thank you. And if you are struggling too, I genuinely hope we overcome this together.
 
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fapstronaut007

Member
It’s been about 5 months since my last update, and things have been going in the right direction since.

I quit my abusive job 1 month after making that post. I started work at a place that is great, and I haven’t felt even a little stressed about work since.

I also made some huge lifestyle improvements. I quit vaping, stopped eating sugar and eating out (cut it down to few times a month, I used to eat out almost twice a day before). I stared working out and focus a lot on running.

When I started running in April, I could barely jog 200 meters before feeling like I am about to die, but since early May to now, there is a HUGE improvement. I ran an in person 5k early June. I ran a 10k almost non-stop a few weeks ago on a treadmill. I lost ~22lbs in ~3.5 months. I eat clean and try to stay away from social media, tho I do tend to go back for a few days once every few weeks.

Quitting vaping was probably the hardest thing I have done to date. I don’t want to start acting like I have been clean for years (cause I did go 8 months clean before restarting about 2 years ago), the truth is I am not and there is a non zero probability that I will go back to it. But I feel different on the inside this time, I know I will succeed and stay clean. I threw away my vape away sometime after writing my previous post, then the first 2 weeks were like a nightmare, every second I craved it and it was a short drive to the store to get a new one. There were multiple instances where I would fight so hard to control the desire to feel the hit, but after long hits of mental battles, I’d lose, then drive to the store, spend $30 , take a hit , feel it and then feel instant regret and helplessness. All the hours and days of mental battles lost with a single breath of nicotine. I would then in a rage throw away the vape again. To emphasis how bad it got, there are atleast 5 instances I can recollect where I pulled the vape out of my trash bag after I threw it, I washed and sanitized it and used it for few days before throwing it again. I even recollect doing this a few times in my work place restroom where people throw their used hand wipes next to the sink. I feel disgusted even thinking about it now, but back then it seems logical and reasonable. I would throw the vape after frustration from relapsing in the office restroom, then after a few hours, the urges would be so strong that I don’t care where it is, it was logical to recover it and use the vape after some cleaning (I now think any amount of cleaning is not acceptable).
I somegow was able to slowly quit vaping by fully leaning into my other two vice (junk food and porn). I knew vaping was probably the most detrimental to my health immediately so I had to stop it, so I put all my energy into the other two vices and stopped vaping. The initial days and weeks were torture and urges were very hard, couldn’t do anything other than eat, sleep and fap. But after that I could feel the urges fading and eventually I had the mental capacity to ignore the urges. Now I have no urges, even if they do manage to appear, I can quickly dismiss them and never think about it again.


Currently, I spend a lot of time with my girlfriend and I feel happy being around her. She is sweet, innocent and doesn’t spend any time online, so is unaffected by the sexual, gore and other negative aspects of it. I really wish that was me, I wish 10 year old me never discovered pornography, but no point dwelling in the past, we must deal with the hands we were dealt.

Coming to the most important topic, pornography consumption. I would say it did reduce as in no onlyfans or paying money anymore. I feel puke-ish even thinking that I spent money and texting other people. Feels like I cheated, I have no excuse, only reason I have for myself is that I felt uncontrollable desire to do something novel and forbidden that I did what I did 5 months ago. But I did still consume porn from the usual free websites. Including transsexual pornography.

It’s a very tough battle, even though I struggled to stop vaping (which I think is the hardest thing I did to date) and lose weight (have been on a calorie deficit and not eating junk was sooo hard), nothing compares to the control pornography and masturbation has on the mind. Not even close. Even running was torture, but with pure will power, I was able to slowly progress from 200 meters to 10k so far.

But porn, is in a league of its own. I have started comparing my girlfriend to online models. Physical appearance, looks, sexual acts they are ready to perform. Compare this with my GF who is not comfortable going beyond 2nd base. It’s a tough battle, I have urges, amplified with years of porn usage and masturbation, trying to quit is very hard. One thing I am certain about, I will not marry her or anyone until I break this choke hold porn has on me.

During the past 5 months, I have watched pornography almost everyday, including transsexual pornography. My mind is still messed up with all the sexual fantasies and desires, and I struggle everyday with thoughts and urges. Will I ever be free of this torture, only time will tell.

I have restarted NoFap hard mode and it has been about a week now. I feel a lot more confident this time will be better, more hopeful than anytime in the past half decade. Mainly because I am in the best shape of my life, which I turned around after being in the worst shape of my life with pure determination and hard work. I quit vaping which I thought was impossible (the same way I feel about porn right now). I am going to register to run a marathon in May 2027. Let’s see how this goes. I will be back in a few months to provide an update.
 
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fapstronaut007

Member
Please ignore the grammatical issues and spelling mistakes, typed this on a phone at 1 AM straight from the heart. Wanted to get this off my chest cause I don’t think I can share whatever I shared here to anyone in person, yet.
 
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fapstronaut007

Member
A quick update. I have been putting my all into quitting PMO. I haven’t looked at porn or masturbated by myself since my last post about a month ago. That brings the total tally to around 40 days. I had a lot of withdrawal symptoms like mood strong swings and taking it out on my partner, but she was understanding which greatly helped. I have now been traveling for the past week and will be away from her for a few months, the real test has begun. I still get triggers when I see other attractive girls, my mind goes to comparing my girlfriend to them and trying to find faults. Sometimes it’s pretty bad, I am unable to breath looking at other attractive women, the thought process is something like I will never date/ have sexual relationships with such women. And my girlfriend’s faults are highlighted and kind of exaggerated in my head. To clarify, my girlfriend is fit and attractive. But she doesn’t follow the social media standards of attractive such as makeup, extra curvy, hairstyles etc. I may be threading into ROCD (relationship OCD) at this point. But I don’t want to give it names. It’s sad that such shallow thoughts seem to over shadow the amazing women she is. I sometimes wonder if I am extra susceptible to these OCDs. It was HOCD before, now symptoms of ROCD. Anyway, my goal is unfuck my brain from pornography. Be at least 1 year clean and then, I truly believe I will be in a better state of mind. My running and overall fitness is still pretty good, tho I find myself dwelling a lot more into video games and not focusing on work. Need to lock in! Will be back in a few weeks (or months). Keep at it!
 
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fapstronaut007

Member
This update will be an unfortunate dark turn on the great progress I have been making for the past few months. I am still hurting and have so much regret and hatred for myself right now, wishing I could’ve done differently last night.

A friend was visiting, threw his bachelors party at a strip club. I have never been to one before, but was curious to see what’s going on there. I asked my girlfriend for permission and she says okay (tho she said she is against it, but will be okay for one time). I go, sit there for an hour, girls dancing around, I was least interested in anything, a lot of them tried making me spend money but I wouldn’t budge. But 30 mins before the club closed, I finally did. I told one of the older strippers I don’t want to cause I have a girlfriend, she asked if she knew and I said yes, then she said think of it as supporting someone working hard, then I was like okay (this wasn’t obviously the only thing that convinced me, my friend going in and out and forcing me to “experience” it atleast once and the countless other women played a role). So I ended up getting a short lap dance, and then shortly after another one in the space of 10 minutes. It was way too much touching than I anticipated, but I went along with it. I felt disgusted throughout the way back but also oddly turned on thinking about all the attractive women. I went home and decided to masturbate, but here is when things took a dark turn. My mind went on the self destructing mode, I suddenly wanted to pay a cam girl and masturbate to it. It was something I thought of months before but decided not to do it, now I was like let me “wrap everything up” tonight and start clean from tomorrow. Before I know it I am venturing further into degenerate behavior and I spend $250 on a private session with a trans cam girl from an Asian country. YES, I said it , a TRANS CAM GIRL, PRIVATE SESSION for $250. The girl lied about being from the US, and kept extorting more money from me, I knew this from the start, but I wanted to throw money away (like I said, self destructive mindset), in fact that was the selling point to me, that I can burn money and make someone do stuff that’s what turned me on. I ended up ejaculating on call. I felt very disturbed right after. Like a fucking loser. I haven’t moved out of the bed since. Been almost a day. I am going to meet my girlfriend tomorrow, I can’t face her. I told her I’ll only proceed with the next steps if I overcome all this, but it’s getting bad. I CANNOT believe I did this. If I search online people say I cheated. I feel like beating myself up , literally.

I am trying very hard man, I have been trying so hard to get in better shape and quit this addiction, and that is going great. But these episodes come out of no where and are so overwhelmingly powerful and I end up going further into the depths of it. I am crying while typing this, I just can’t do this to her.
 
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