Taking back control - My Journal

Metaphy

Member
Hello everyone, you can call me Metaphy. As you all can probably guess, I'm here because I'm addicted to porn. It seems so crazy for me to think that but it's true.

So here's my story.
I'm 24, 25 next month, and I'm from the Caribbean but currently reside in the UK to attend university in which I'm in my final year of. I've watched porn from since I was a little child, often sneaking peaks at soft-core cable porn on Showtime and Cinemax as a child but it wasn't til I was about 13 that I started masturbating to it when I got Kazaa on my computer which resulted in me downloading loads of it. Thankfully I went through about a year without a computer so that prevented me from watching excessive amounts however I did masturbate everyday, sometimes multiple times a day. I'd often come home from school and knock out an orgasm and always before bed. Some Saturdays, when my mother and aunt would go out to do various things, I'd go to my aunts house who had pirated Dish and as a result had the adult channels open (yes Pirates of the Caribbean is very much alive in this day lol) At some point my family got back a computer, when I was about 15. From there my porn usage rose to multiple times a day and that carried on for ages. At 17, I lost my virginity with my girlfriend at the time, a big moment for any teenage boy. You know how the say your first time is over way too quickly? That wasn't the case with mine, it turned out that I never actually came my first time. In fact, it wasn't till about the 3rd or 4th time that I managed to ejaculate with her. This didn't really concern me cause it made me feel like a stud to know that I could go for so long. What did concern me however, if only little bit, was the fact that I had little feeling in my penis. I didn't know how it was supposed to feel, but I knew it ought to be more than what I was experiencing else I'd truly have to wonder why people were so entranced by sex. To be honest with you, I never had much feeling with any of my partners and if they asked me I'd often lie and tell them how amazing they felt, now this is something I've never told anyone before. Sex, has never felt heavenly amazing to me. The feeling was better with some girls than with others and that includes oral but it never felt like it ought to. Despite this, I carried on with masturbation/porn habits despite this, though I think intuitively I knew the two things were related. It wasn't till about 18 or 19 though that I had confirmation when I learnt that it was due to excessive masturbation and my death grip style of masturbating. I then resolved to  try and stop for a month or so to give myself a chance to heal back but I never got very far with it and ended figuring to cut-back would be just as well (though that often didn't go as planned either). I think I was worried that if my sensitivity came back I'd no longer be able last long in bed. I didn't want to become a ?1-minute man?. To me, sex was much more about giving and if I couldn't last long I wouldn't be able to pleasure my partners, because to be good in bed meant you had to have a massive penis and be able to fuck non-stop for ages, you know, like a pornstar. I wonder where I got that idea from....?

At 20, I moved to England for university. The first time on my on, independent with my own room and my own laptop. You can have a guess at how I spent a lot of my time. That's right, watching porn. It wasn't the only thing I did. I had friends and I hung out with them a lot and went out and so forth but I was watching porn multiple times per day. Fortunately, in my 2nd month I'd gotten a girlfriend and we practically moved right in with each other (in hindsight that was not the wisest of things) but it did stop me from watching a lot of porn. I only watched maybe 2 times a week. During this time, feeling gradually got better with her than with anyone prior most obviously due to the reduction of masturbating and porn usage. Still though I don't quite think the feeling was where it ought to be, there was still a degree of numbness to it. My 2nd year came and it turned out that I would have to transfer to another university in another city, we decided we'd try to make things work long distance. We'd mostly only have sex on the weekends when we'd visit each other, so as result my porn usage went back up to multiple times per day. Sure enough, my sensitivity dulled again and I began to lose feeling with her. Eventually we broke up in 2012, which when I think about it now should have happened a lot sooner.


Now, 2012  became a sort of turning point for me. That year one of my best friends, whom I've had feelings for for years but circumstances always seemed to keep us from getting involved, joined me at university and I felt like this was our moment. It turned out she just wanted to be friends, which admittedly was kind of crushing for me. But I figured maybe it was a good thing, considering I hadn't been single almost my entire time of university up to that point. I figured I'd put the unrequited love behind me and make the use of the time to grow as a person. The past 2 years has had ups and downs, my growth that I set for has been staggered, I won't go into it but it hasn't been as well as I'd hoped and I found myself some depressive sates at times. My best friend and I have grown closer than we've ever been and that's made things a bit but I've managed to keep myself strong in that regard. However, what has maintained through this period has been my porn usage and for these past 2 years its been at its highest, with being single and sporadic hookups I've kept my sexual desires satisfied with porn. I figured I just had a high sex drive and this just was normal for me to satisfy it, though now as I write this I note that my high sex drive never was intense with real women. I noticed them of course and would remark about how attractive they were, but you'd think with how I was masturbating that a mere glance at an attractive woman should have set me into overdrive. At some point last year I came across various articles on the ills of porn usage, all leading back to yourbrainonporn.com. It moved me somewhat, I didn't think I was addicted cause by definition addiction is something that is negatively affecting how you function within the world. I wasn't having to leave lectures to knock out an orgasm in the bathroom, so I couldn't be addicted but I thought it couldn't hurt to give myself a break. So I tried it. For like a week. I'd break down, ?well masturbation is healthy for you, it's normal? and this happened a few times through out the year. It still wasn't apparent to me that I had a problem.

Well it turned out that my best friend had to drop out of uni this year, due to various reasons. It was a bit sad to separate but it's life, plus I'd be back home at the end of the academic year anyway. Plus, I thought time apart couldn?t hurt anyway. She  came back with me to collect her stuff and she left in the beginning of October. At this point, I don't have a lot of friends left at university. A lot of them were in higher years than me and have since graduated, others I've fallen out with. So I've been alone for the most part these past 2 months, occasionally hanging out with my housemate and one of our friends who I actually met through my  best friend. What I noticed in these past 2 months, was how much I was masturbating. It was a lot. It's crazy to think one person can masturbate can do it so much. I'm talking, maybe 10 times a day. Wake up, porn. Come home from class, porn. Have dinner (tea for you English people), porn. Take a break from coursework, porn. Go to bed, porn. Can't sleep, porn. I think you see the trend. At the beginning of November I began to try to masturbate without porn, I couldn't even get it up. Never had that problem before, despite all my sensitivity issues, not once did I ever have a problem getting an erection. This no doubt, weighed heavily on my mind. I was sure I wasn't addicted though, I still wasn't running to the bathroom during class to knock one out. But I really start to wonder if I was doing it too much. Hanging out with my friends that I mentioned before, and somehow we ended up talking about the movie Don Jon. I had seen ads for it and knew what it was about, but it never interested me that  much. But it really put the thought of me having a problem in my mind. I went back to yourbrainonporn.com read stuff, like actually read stuff to try and understand it not just read it as a piece of interesting info.

It shook me a bit to learn some of the things that were being reported by Nofappers . Not just the sexual ailments but also the mental side effects. I'd have these depressive bouts throughout the past 2 years, lack of confidence even despite the ?fake it to make it? attempts, anxiety issues, lack of motivation. The sexual side shocked me too, I thought my issues just stemmed from masturbation but to learn that it was more than that, that porn was literally reshaping my brain was major. So I watched Don Jon and after decided that I'd give a real hard attempt to go 30 days porn and masturbation free. That was the 14th of November, I made it a week and 4 days. What became apparent to me that week, was that I was most definitely had a problem. On day 4 I was scrolling, through my bookmarks looking for something to do with my time since I wasn't masturbating (it also became apparent to me most of the masturbation these past two months, stemmed from boredom, I mostly masturbated simply because I could) I came across a bookmark of a video that I had missed when deleting the others and it was a fight to keep from watching that video. It was a fight to get myself to delete it. I realized from that point I had a problem. I resisted and got rid of it. But on day 11, I relapsed and that video was the first I watched. I figured hey this is just a slip up, I'll get back on the horse. I realized though that December was right around the corner. Now, this may be a bit OCD of me but it kind of nags me when things are not done in line with the time of day, week, month etc. It's one of the problems I have with working out, I get motivated to work out but if it's say Wednesday, I'll postpone it to Monday instead of starting right then and there so my work out plan will be perfectly planned throughout the week. That may be an excuse, but it's something I'm always doing. So I thought ?Hey, why not just wait to stop on the first, I'll make my official start date 12:00 December 1st ? So I continued to binge for the remainder the past week. Till December 1st from 12:00am to 10:00am. Then I said, ?Well it can be 12:00pm December 1st ? I made it 1:00pm  December 2nd , 25 hours. Yesterday, I made the decision that I was going to beat this thing. 12:00 December 3rd would be my starting point to 30 days of no porn, the first step to getting this out of my system. Yea, it's midweek and that nags me a bit, but that's my addiction's fault and that's just another indication to beat it, I won't let that be another reason to relapse.

Today went well enough. I kept myself busy by cleaning and going into town to run errands. I stopped at Krispy Kreme and treated myself to doughnuts and coffee and tried to relax a little. At first it helped, but slowly for no apparent reason I began to slip into another anxiety attack. My throat and chest began to feel tight, I came home and began to write this. Since unloading all of this I've calmed down. I've never felt so anxious in my life, never felt like this before. Now, maybe this goes beyond the porn, but for damn sure the use of it isn't helping. I really need to beat this, I'm actually sacred of what will happen if I don't. I'm scared about a lot of things it seems like. But I really need to feel like a normal human being and by all indications this seems like as good a place as any to start. Over the course of the past 2 yeas I've felt like my growth has gone no where, porn maybe one the reasons why, so now it's time to find out.

30 days to start out with. This is Day 1.

I realize that this is a really long post, I apologize for that. I really didn't intend to make it this long but as I wrote it all just kind of poured out of me. If you've made it this far, I just want to say thank you.
 

sisyphus

Member
Hey Metaphy,

I'm about to set off on a reboot myself. I relapsed a day after my first journal on this site only a few days ago. I'm not entirely experienced with this whole reboot game but I think it's safe to say the first days are the hardest. Expect a stutter start and definitely keep at it!

I've had a few anxiety attacks myself, for me they came around when my brain was strained. Example being when i was just gonna nearly pass a class and would have to get a hell of a mark on the final to pass. That was always on my mind, and i started losing sleep but that only made it worse! So maybe its the addiction that is racking your brain. You mentioned coffee and donuts to relax, maybe next time ditch the caffeine and sugar for an alternative. Those ingredients can really alter the mental state of a stressed body!

I've also had the lack of confidence and bouts of depression. I've restrained from PMO in the past for a "significant" amount of time and truly felt like a new man. For me it was at about the 30 day point when i came to realize this. If you read some detailed reboots you'll hear of extreme ups and downs in attitude throughout the reboot. So stick with it, I bet you'll notice the difference!

I can't really say much more. I hope you stick with it and experience the benefits. You're not alone here. You've got this, keep going! :)
 

Metaphy

Member
Day 1 Completed
I finished out Day1 relatively well. After making my first post I calmed down quite a lot and was able to function much better. I had to do a whole reinstall of Windows on my PC so that kept me busy and I hung out with my housemate watching TV, then had an early night. So far so good, the journey of thousand miles begins with a single step so I just need to continue putting one foot in front of the other and take it day by day.


Hi Sisyphus!
Thanks for your reply, I really appreciate the words of encouragement. I'll definitely keep at it! I'm going to set aside some time this week to dig into some of the journals on here, looking forward to it  :).

I didn't even think of the caffeine/sugar thing and it makes so much sense, thanks for pointing that out to me!
 

Metaphy

Member
Day 2 Completed
Day 2 went well with little fuss. My mood was pleasant throughout the day and didn't have any urges. Though while I slept I had one or two vivid sex dreams that woke me up some what through the course of the night, no morning wood though. Which I only realized that I hadn't had morning wood in a few years  after doing more reading last night.

Day 3
Today has been an up and down day. I was a bit worried about today as it's one of my days off so I was hoping I'd be able to cope with all the free time. I woke up feeling rested and got myself some breakfast and cleaned my room a bit and was in a really good mood while doing so. By the afternoon rolled around I started to feel fatigued and burnt out, I tried reading but couldn't focus and then decided to watch some Netflix but couldn't even keep my attention focused on that for very long. I ended up taking a nap, I've woken up and still feel burnt out. I'll find something healthy to occupy my time and keep myself away from any possible triggers.
 

sisyphus

Member
That's awesome! Just another day in the trenches hey. Kind of sounds like you may just be bored to me. So long as you're not consciously fighting the urge in week one, i'd say that is a good day. Good work Metaphy. Smart thinking with the trigger awareness. As far as your sleep disturbance goes, that sounds pretty par for the course. I wouldn't sweat it if its not a regular occurrence. Stay strong Metaphy!  You've got this. 
 
R

Robert20

Guest
Best of luck mate. You can do it!  :) Remember all urges you get are not your real libido. It's your brain trying to say to you, "I need my fix of dopamine right now". This caught me out a few times  :(
Also, don't be to hard n yourself if you relapse, this is like my sixth attempt at the reboot so it's really hard, just start up right away again  :) I find not been in the house much helps too, try to focus on work and sports and going out with friends, things like that  :)
Keep going!
 

Metaphy

Member
Day 4 and 5
Day 4 and 5 went really well without much fuss at all. My old housemate from my 1st year who graduated last year was back in town. Ended up with him and his cousin from Friday night straight till Sunday night. As a result I was kept quite occupied so didn't have to deal with urges. Which I'm happy about because I think it would've been tough to go through the weekend on my own. I had some trouble falling asleep on Day 5 but otherwise no notable withdrawal symptoms which is good.

Day 6
Today was relatively good as well, full day of classes kept me out of the house so that was fortunate. Though I did find that my head was a bit foggy today and suffering from a dull headache. Not sure if it is entirely the reboot but worth noting.

Thanks though Rob and sisyphus! Really appreciate the encouragement. So far this run has been going much better than the previous one and I'm feeling pretty confident  :D I think it does have a lot to do with boredom though, that's why I've began thinking of things to do to keep myself occupied. Healthy things too, cause I don't want to be using the time I'd be watching porn to watch netflix or play video games which i gathered is fairly usual occurrence with people rebooting. So I've decided to start working out again and start back my martial arts training by starting judo lessons. That's just to start with but I'm sure I'll add more cause you're right Rob, I am finding it easier when I'm not in the house, something a lot different than my last try, found myself on the inside for most of the time.
 

Metaphy

Member
Day 6 Completed
Man, since my last entry last night I've been fighting some serious urges to watch porn. Not long after my last entry I was having the urges. I had been invited to a charity gig by a friend but I didn't really plan to go but when the urges came on I got dressed and headed over there. However, when I got back home after it was finished the urges came back again. I went to a porn website, my brain rationalized it to me as "Just to have a look". I went on there scrolled through the first page of thumbnails and then told myself I wasn't missing anything and got myself out of there and re-engaged the porn filters on the browser and went to bed, no M or O occurred. The night was filled with sex dreams, loads of them. Woke up with morning wood as well, no where near the strongest I've had but quite a solid erection for  someone who hasn't had morning  wood. The urge is still here this morning, maybe even intensified so posting this is kind of trying to make myself accountable to everyone for today, which is Day 7 so I'm very keen to complete a week. Before I posted this entry I made myself a little list of the reasons why I'm doing this, like the benefits that are my reward for staying PMO free. It helped a lot to focus my mind and strengthen my willpower. So now it's back into the trenches! I've got this!

Does my looking at a porn website count as a relapse? Like I said it was just scrolling the thumbnails not actually watching any videos and no MO.
 

Metaphy

Member
Relapse

I made it through Day 7 but this morning I woke up and decided to surf around on my tablet and I somehow came across a picture of one of my favorite actresses. Next thing I know, I'm checking out videos of her and boom! I feel terrible, upset with myself, just really bad now. I realize that this is just a bump in the road that a week without porn is an improvement from multiple times a day, everyday. So I prevented myself from going on a binge, so just the one video. Which is still an accomplishment despite it not feeling like it. When I came, I just looked at the video and realized how stupid this is, I was. Here I am, throwing away my mental health and well-being to blow my load for some pixel woman that I'll never fuck in my life, that I can't hold in my arms, kiss, taste, smell or gain any real form of comfort from. I felt so disgusted with myself, and seeing my tracker reset just intensified it. I know I can't be too hard on myself and I know it won't be easy but I really just feel so lost with myself right now, I'm not even sure I could look at myself in the mirror. I won't be defeated though. I just have to keep telling myself it's a bump in the road. The tracker is reset and I'll continue on my goal to 30 days PMO free and I WILL reach that goal, even if it takes me 100 tries, I will make it.

Day 1 Commenced
 
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