SIX+ YEARS PORN-FREE!
- Thread starter lyon03
- Start date
need to get better
Active Member
How do you know you're cured have you been having sex regularly without problems? ..
lyon03
Respected Member
Good day nation! I'm writing with a brief 8-month update. I've now got over 240+ days porn-free and I'm a new man...or perhaps getting back to my former self. Life without porn is so much better. I've worked, played, and loved more in the past 8 months than I have for the past 20 years. I was a closeted, married, father of three wonderful kids. Now happily divorced, I'm out, have found love again, and most importantly have reconnected with my kids, my friends, and my family. It's a wonderful feeling. We all start reboot with a d*ck obsession, "Will it ever work again?" is a common question. Now 8 months PMO-free, I realize reboot is more than just getting back normal sexual function (which does indeed return). Reboot is more about healing mind, body, and soul. There are 8760 hours in a year and the average person spends about 19 hours a year having sex (0.0021% of our time). This made me re-think my priorities. I spent the majority of my time fantasizing about something that truly occupied about 0.002% of my year. I've started to focus on real life. Yes good sex is a part of it, but it's no longer my obsession. As a former porn addict, I also logged thousands of hours a year in front of a screen with many of those hours jerking to filth. Our bodies and brains just aren't designed to take that much sexual stimulation which is why our junk shuts down. So stop the porn, keep your hand off your d*ck, and go live your life! Good luck to everyone with your reboots. Be well my friends. PORN IS NOT AN OPTION...AND IS NO LONGER PART OF MY LIFE.
Kurall_Creator
Active Member
You rock Lyon!
Keep it real for the rest of us, and someone to aspire to, like Gabe!!!
Truly, there is great testimonies in a congregation of such a great multitude!
Keep it real for the rest of us, and someone to aspire to, like Gabe!!!
Truly, there is great testimonies in a congregation of such a great multitude!
alexstroil
Member
tried nude tanning before?
lyon03
Respected Member
Good morning nation! I'm writing with a brief 9-month update. I haven't been very active on these forums the past few months simply because I'm starting to move on. This is, I believe, a very good thing. I've been porn-free for 270+ days now and it's completely changed my life. My reboot/recovery had the following phases:
1. Decision (October 29, 2014): porn is not an option
2. Withdrawal/Doubting (Months 1 & 2): brain went a bit haywire, wondering if my penis would work again etc.
3. Emotional Withdrawal (Months 2-3): learning to live life without my drug of choice (porn)
4. Emotional Recovery (Months 4-7): putting an end to toxic self-pity/self-centredness, letting go of the past
5. Life Reboot (Months 8-9): realizing life is more about honesty, loving others, being loved, and contributing rather than endlessly fapping to a screen.
My reboot was first about kicking the habit and getting sexual function back, however, those were merely the mechanics. Long-term reboot is so much more. Today porn has very little to offer me and I no longer need the escape as I've dealt with the painful issues/memories that fed the habit. Porn is simply no longer part of my life. I'll probably write again next month or on my one-year anniversary. I wish you all good luck in your personal journeys. Don't give up! Life without porn is so much better my friends.
1. Decision (October 29, 2014): porn is not an option
2. Withdrawal/Doubting (Months 1 & 2): brain went a bit haywire, wondering if my penis would work again etc.
3. Emotional Withdrawal (Months 2-3): learning to live life without my drug of choice (porn)
4. Emotional Recovery (Months 4-7): putting an end to toxic self-pity/self-centredness, letting go of the past
5. Life Reboot (Months 8-9): realizing life is more about honesty, loving others, being loved, and contributing rather than endlessly fapping to a screen.
My reboot was first about kicking the habit and getting sexual function back, however, those were merely the mechanics. Long-term reboot is so much more. Today porn has very little to offer me and I no longer need the escape as I've dealt with the painful issues/memories that fed the habit. Porn is simply no longer part of my life. I'll probably write again next month or on my one-year anniversary. I wish you all good luck in your personal journeys. Don't give up! Life without porn is so much better my friends.
sodonewithit
Active Member
Nicely done.
regguyinpa
Member
Lyon,
I reread your posts and they are really helpful. Thanks for being open. We all think about our dicks working. I am in day 27 and wondering if and when it will come back. I have had one episode where i masturbated without any aides or porn or anything. Just to see if it would work. I regret doing it candidly. I really like how you have taken a lifestyle approach. I find the most successful people have. Thanks again!
I reread your posts and they are really helpful. Thanks for being open. We all think about our dicks working. I am in day 27 and wondering if and when it will come back. I have had one episode where i masturbated without any aides or porn or anything. Just to see if it would work. I regret doing it candidly. I really like how you have taken a lifestyle approach. I find the most successful people have. Thanks again!
GettingBetter
Member
This is an awesome journal. Really enjoyed reading your first few posts. Very inspiring and well-written (which I appreciate as an editor 
I hope your life is still going well. I'll plan to employ some of the techniques you mentioned in my own journey. Take care.
PORN ISN'T AN OPTION!
-GB
I hope your life is still going well. I'll plan to employ some of the techniques you mentioned in my own journey. Take care. PORN ISN'T AN OPTION!
-GB
lyon03
Respected Member
Thank you for your kind posts. I too went through the, "Will my d*ck ever work again!" phase and I'm glad it's over. I wasted a lot of time counting boners, obsessing about morning wood, etc. There was a very good post on this website that I'll paraphrase that went something like this. "I no longer obsess about my d*ck working. Without porn, it now gets hard before sex, stays hard during sex, so worrying about my d*ck the 99.9% of time when I'm not having sex is kind of pointless." I agree. Where am I going with this? Porn made me rather d*ck obsessed and I think porn makes us all a bit d*ck obsessed. After 20 years of hard-core porn abuse and marathon masturbation sessions, I obsessed about size, hardness, orgasms, and every other useless detail porn brainwashed me into thinking was important. Now closing in on 10 months porn-free, I've discovered that sex is just one part of something much more important: intimacy. In my experience, porn is to intimacy what action movies are to real life: pure fantasy. So your average porn movie represents intimacy about as much as an X-Men movie represents real life. This statistic may shock you. The average person spends 19 hours a year having sex with a partner. That represents 0.002% of each year. I'm now obsessing about being a better person rather than being a bigger d*ck. So let's build better lives rather than stronger boners. PORN IS NOT AN OPTION.
regguyinpa
Member
its so true. We do get obsessed. Thanks again
GettingBetter
Member
lyon03 said:
Very good points, Lyon. It really makes me laugh at myself thinking how obsessed I can be about my dick and it working well. How foolish. And another great point: sex representing approximately 0.002% of a year but causing strife that devours weeks of our time. It's something that can really dominate your consciousness and cause so much grief. It makes me feel pretty childish and reminds me that I still have a lot to learn about sexuality and love.
In addition to being dick obsessed, porn (and more so my decisions to consume it) seems to have made me so isolated and self-centered in a sense. I shut out to world to get myself off. I would rather focus on myself ? by myself ? than be with friends or family. I thought about my dick constantly and how I should be using it like guys in pornos. Damn this shit is toxic. I thought my parents didn't want me to look at it solely because I was raised hardcore Catholic. But what they should have been saying is that this can screw up your sexual development, perception of a partner and your psyche.
Thanks again for posting.
PORN IS NOT AN OPTION!
Dream_nofap
Member
Great going...... Even i too get tingling to do MO but I know I have to resist till the end..... Your posts are a great motivation..
Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for sharing!
lyon03
Respected Member
Thank you everyone for your kind posts and encouragement. Today marks 300 days porn-free for me so I wanted to check in with an update. My initial goal was to try a year porn-free. Now almost ten months without PMO (porn; masturbation; orgasm), porn is no longer part of my life. It has absolutely nothing to offer me and represents a phenomenal waste of time. Getting down to more specifics, my reboot had three distinct phases:
Phase I: Physical Reboot
My first 100 days of reboot involved ending an almost 20-year porn habit. I made the decision to stop watching pornography back on October 29, 2014. Roughly a few days later I decided masturbation too was an addiction (or perhaps a compulsion) that I also had to stop. Around week three, I experienced heavy withdrawal with night sweats, shaking, and some paralysing migraines. Around week four, I flatlined with a shrunken and lifeless penis. My flatline lasted about ten days. Strangely I had almost no urges to watch pornography during the first 100 days of reboot. I spend most of my days working on several computers so I installed a K9 porn-blocker on my desktop computer but have nothing on my laptop which hasn't been a problem. During this period I stopped watching television (just too sexual), continued exercising daily, read everything about porn addiction, and got lots of sleep. Researching this addiction and leading a healthy lifestyle helped my body heal. But next I had to heal my mind.
Phase II: Emotional Reboot
During this second phase, the porn fog lifted only to expose the broken landscape that was my life. Now 43, divorcing, with three kids, I believe that we mature rebooters are different. While a 20-year-old reboots to stop a habit, if like me you've been abusing for decades, you've probably built an entire sh*tty life around the guilt and shame of addiction. This emotional phase of reboot is where I believe most seem to relapse. I personally used porn as a (safe) virtual outlet for my sexuality. I was a closeted gay man trapped in a straight marriage who occasionally surfed gay porn. However, once I had high-speed internet I was completely hooked. No longer satisfied by just the virtual experience of increasingly hardcore pornography, my brain needed novelty. So I ventured into the real world of gay escorts and hook ups through apps like Grindr (the gay sex version of Tinder). I think of my life like a garage which I endlessly filled with junk only to close the garage door. During the first phase of reboot, I learned to end a habit. Yes I was getting physically stronger, however, I still had to open that garage door and start working through 20 years of clutter. For me that meant: therapy; separation; divorce; and generally dealing with the emotional causes of my addiction.
Phase III: Long-Term Recovery
Porn was just a nasty habit, like smoking. I've learned that ending a habit is just one part of having a better life. My recovery involved more than just stopping a habit, I wanted to be a better and happier person. Look at it this way: you can stop smoking, but that's meaningless if your wife is a smoker, all your friends smoke, you're fat, you're trapped in a terrible marriage, hate your job etc. For me I needed a life reboot or else I'd just find myself using pornography as an escape again. How did I accomplish this? First, I had to accept responsibility for my porn addiction. For years, I blamed everything and everyone for my addiction. This was the wrong path. I've followed a fellow rebooter who started posting around the same time as me. He continues to relapse while blaming his wife for his porn addiction. I could only recover once I fully accepted responsibility for my addiction which then forced me to deal with it. Second, I joined Porn Addicts Anonymous (www.pornaddictsanonymous.org) which is a 12-step program for porn addiction. Having a peer group, a sponsor, and weekly meetings was exactly what I needed to work through my addiction. I've starting moving on from this group and the Reboot Nation which I believe is are natural and healthy steps - after all I can't obsess about addiction all day long as this too becomes yet another addiction. Third, I relearned honesty after a lifetime of almost pathological lying. Denying my homosexuality and lying about my porn addiction were all to easy for me. I came out to my ex-wife three years ago, my family last year, and my three children about a month ago. This was a long, painful, and yet necessary step in my long-term recovery. I've just returned from a week-long holiday with my three kids. This is the first holiday I've had with them solo since separating from their mother. My youngest is six and I can only describe him as pure love, joy and happiness. Looking at him swim, laugh, and play, it struck me. Like him, I was born with everything I needed to be happy and yet f*cked it all up. Symbolically I was five or six when I first mentioned to my sister and her best friend (Brenda) that a male lifeguard at camp was 'handsome.' Brenda shamed me, 'That's wrong!' and then I let society influence me into believing I was a freak for liking boys so I hid it. I used porn as an artificial means to be happy when during this third phase of my reboot, I realized that true happiness can only come from within. This is what I'm learning now.
My Recommendations
Here are a few things that helped me get to 300 days porn-free:
Phase I (90-100 days):
- Read 'Your Brain on Porn' by Gary Wilson. Knowing the science of porn addiction really helped me beat it.
- No Screens: Stop watching television and start reading again. Most TV these days is just low-grade porn anyway.
- Exercise: You're going to have a lot of time on your hands so you might as well use it to get healthy.
- Journal: Share here daily. Having a peer group saved me.
Phase II (100-200 days):
- If you are still struggling/relapsing, join a 12-step program like www.pornaddictionsanonymous.org. Get a sponsor, attend meetings, and start working through the emotional muck of addiction.
- Get professional help through therapy, counselling, etc. Far from a failure, this is a necessary step.
- Read "Breaking the Cycle" by George Collins.
- Be prepared to end (or at least redefine) all toxic relationships that feed your addiction. This may include your own family.
Phase III (200+ days)
- Define 'recovery' and live that definition every day.
- Be brutally honest and accountable with yourself and others.
- Set long-term life goals and start fulfilling them.
- Start connecting with friends and family again.
- Continue living a healthy lifestyle with lots of sleep, exercise, and healthy eating habits.
Me Today
Porn makes us all a bit d*ck obsessed so I'll gladly talk about my junk. I suffered from PIED which improved around the 90-day mark. From about day 120 until now, I have masturbated from time to time (about 1-2 times/month) but nothing like the 2-3 times/day habit I had before reboot. Typically I masturbate the day after having sex which is often described in this forum as the 'chaser effect.' My genitals when flaccid also now look larger and generally healthier. Unlike most muscles, I believe my privates suffered from the daily abuse (and perhaps overuse) during my porn addiction. During the first 60 days of reboot, I counted morning wood and generally obsessed about size/strength of my erections and orgasms. Now I've come to accept that intimacy is more important than the mechanics of sex so my d*ck obsession has largely ended. As I wrote before, on average we spend 0.002% of our year (or about 19 hours) actually having sex so why spend 99.9% of our time obsessing about it? My boyfriend and I recently celebrated our three-year anniversary and we're now talking about him meeting my kids - albeit slowly. My career reboot continues (I'm self-employed) and I'm looking forward to new projects/challenges for the rest of my professional life. Sadly I decided I could not be friends with my ex-wife, we're too toxic a mix, so we're more co-parents than buddies. But we can still enjoy a meal together and have weekly chats about the kids. We are after all co-parents for life and it's important for our three kids to see us interacting like responsible adults. So that's me my friends. Just back from holidays, I'm off the to the gym and then back to work. I'll probably check in next month or perhaps when I've celebrated a year porn free. PORN IS NOT AN OPTION.
Phase I: Physical Reboot
My first 100 days of reboot involved ending an almost 20-year porn habit. I made the decision to stop watching pornography back on October 29, 2014. Roughly a few days later I decided masturbation too was an addiction (or perhaps a compulsion) that I also had to stop. Around week three, I experienced heavy withdrawal with night sweats, shaking, and some paralysing migraines. Around week four, I flatlined with a shrunken and lifeless penis. My flatline lasted about ten days. Strangely I had almost no urges to watch pornography during the first 100 days of reboot. I spend most of my days working on several computers so I installed a K9 porn-blocker on my desktop computer but have nothing on my laptop which hasn't been a problem. During this period I stopped watching television (just too sexual), continued exercising daily, read everything about porn addiction, and got lots of sleep. Researching this addiction and leading a healthy lifestyle helped my body heal. But next I had to heal my mind.
Phase II: Emotional Reboot
During this second phase, the porn fog lifted only to expose the broken landscape that was my life. Now 43, divorcing, with three kids, I believe that we mature rebooters are different. While a 20-year-old reboots to stop a habit, if like me you've been abusing for decades, you've probably built an entire sh*tty life around the guilt and shame of addiction. This emotional phase of reboot is where I believe most seem to relapse. I personally used porn as a (safe) virtual outlet for my sexuality. I was a closeted gay man trapped in a straight marriage who occasionally surfed gay porn. However, once I had high-speed internet I was completely hooked. No longer satisfied by just the virtual experience of increasingly hardcore pornography, my brain needed novelty. So I ventured into the real world of gay escorts and hook ups through apps like Grindr (the gay sex version of Tinder). I think of my life like a garage which I endlessly filled with junk only to close the garage door. During the first phase of reboot, I learned to end a habit. Yes I was getting physically stronger, however, I still had to open that garage door and start working through 20 years of clutter. For me that meant: therapy; separation; divorce; and generally dealing with the emotional causes of my addiction.
Phase III: Long-Term Recovery
Porn was just a nasty habit, like smoking. I've learned that ending a habit is just one part of having a better life. My recovery involved more than just stopping a habit, I wanted to be a better and happier person. Look at it this way: you can stop smoking, but that's meaningless if your wife is a smoker, all your friends smoke, you're fat, you're trapped in a terrible marriage, hate your job etc. For me I needed a life reboot or else I'd just find myself using pornography as an escape again. How did I accomplish this? First, I had to accept responsibility for my porn addiction. For years, I blamed everything and everyone for my addiction. This was the wrong path. I've followed a fellow rebooter who started posting around the same time as me. He continues to relapse while blaming his wife for his porn addiction. I could only recover once I fully accepted responsibility for my addiction which then forced me to deal with it. Second, I joined Porn Addicts Anonymous (www.pornaddictsanonymous.org) which is a 12-step program for porn addiction. Having a peer group, a sponsor, and weekly meetings was exactly what I needed to work through my addiction. I've starting moving on from this group and the Reboot Nation which I believe is are natural and healthy steps - after all I can't obsess about addiction all day long as this too becomes yet another addiction. Third, I relearned honesty after a lifetime of almost pathological lying. Denying my homosexuality and lying about my porn addiction were all to easy for me. I came out to my ex-wife three years ago, my family last year, and my three children about a month ago. This was a long, painful, and yet necessary step in my long-term recovery. I've just returned from a week-long holiday with my three kids. This is the first holiday I've had with them solo since separating from their mother. My youngest is six and I can only describe him as pure love, joy and happiness. Looking at him swim, laugh, and play, it struck me. Like him, I was born with everything I needed to be happy and yet f*cked it all up. Symbolically I was five or six when I first mentioned to my sister and her best friend (Brenda) that a male lifeguard at camp was 'handsome.' Brenda shamed me, 'That's wrong!' and then I let society influence me into believing I was a freak for liking boys so I hid it. I used porn as an artificial means to be happy when during this third phase of my reboot, I realized that true happiness can only come from within. This is what I'm learning now.
My Recommendations
Here are a few things that helped me get to 300 days porn-free:
Phase I (90-100 days):
- Read 'Your Brain on Porn' by Gary Wilson. Knowing the science of porn addiction really helped me beat it.
- No Screens: Stop watching television and start reading again. Most TV these days is just low-grade porn anyway.
- Exercise: You're going to have a lot of time on your hands so you might as well use it to get healthy.
- Journal: Share here daily. Having a peer group saved me.
Phase II (100-200 days):
- If you are still struggling/relapsing, join a 12-step program like www.pornaddictionsanonymous.org. Get a sponsor, attend meetings, and start working through the emotional muck of addiction.
- Get professional help through therapy, counselling, etc. Far from a failure, this is a necessary step.
- Read "Breaking the Cycle" by George Collins.
- Be prepared to end (or at least redefine) all toxic relationships that feed your addiction. This may include your own family.
Phase III (200+ days)
- Define 'recovery' and live that definition every day.
- Be brutally honest and accountable with yourself and others.
- Set long-term life goals and start fulfilling them.
- Start connecting with friends and family again.
- Continue living a healthy lifestyle with lots of sleep, exercise, and healthy eating habits.
Me Today
Porn makes us all a bit d*ck obsessed so I'll gladly talk about my junk. I suffered from PIED which improved around the 90-day mark. From about day 120 until now, I have masturbated from time to time (about 1-2 times/month) but nothing like the 2-3 times/day habit I had before reboot. Typically I masturbate the day after having sex which is often described in this forum as the 'chaser effect.' My genitals when flaccid also now look larger and generally healthier. Unlike most muscles, I believe my privates suffered from the daily abuse (and perhaps overuse) during my porn addiction. During the first 60 days of reboot, I counted morning wood and generally obsessed about size/strength of my erections and orgasms. Now I've come to accept that intimacy is more important than the mechanics of sex so my d*ck obsession has largely ended. As I wrote before, on average we spend 0.002% of our year (or about 19 hours) actually having sex so why spend 99.9% of our time obsessing about it? My boyfriend and I recently celebrated our three-year anniversary and we're now talking about him meeting my kids - albeit slowly. My career reboot continues (I'm self-employed) and I'm looking forward to new projects/challenges for the rest of my professional life. Sadly I decided I could not be friends with my ex-wife, we're too toxic a mix, so we're more co-parents than buddies. But we can still enjoy a meal together and have weekly chats about the kids. We are after all co-parents for life and it's important for our three kids to see us interacting like responsible adults. So that's me my friends. Just back from holidays, I'm off the to the gym and then back to work. I'll probably check in next month or perhaps when I've celebrated a year porn free. PORN IS NOT AN OPTION.
lyon03
Respected Member
Good morning nation. I provided an update at 300 days and have just cracked 10 months (305+ days). This is a huge milestone for me and one year without porn doesn't seem so far away. As I wrote from the beginning, PORN IS NOT AN OPTION. I've been wondering, "What's next?" for the past week and found incredible strength and terrific advice from the book "Stage II Recovery: Life Beyond Addiction" by Earnie Larsen. lf you've moved from battling the urges to thinking about the rest of your life, I highly recommend it. I don't have a lot to share today but would like to quote Reboot's very own Yoda: "William" of the thread "Hello Gentlemen Now We Begin." His latest post is pure genius:
"Let me say that again so I am clear, "If done right, quitting porn will be the most painful thing you have ever done." If you are not embracing the pain of quitting, you are not quitting, you are trying to keep it in your life, but control it. Porn addiction cannot be "controlled"; it has to be eradicated, it cannot be coddled, it must be murdered. You have to plan on the pain, expect it, anticipate it, know its coming, and even learn to want that pain. That pain is your brain readjusting to the new reality and the new reality is you are not giving yourself a dopamine high every day, repeatedly, through exposure to artificial sexual stimulation. That mindset does not have to last forever, but it does have to last for at least 90 days. Don't try and quit casually, don't do it in your spare time. During the hard 90 quitting must be how you define yourself, it must be your occupation, your religion, your reason for living, the reason you get up in the morning, the reason you go to sleep at night. Those who most successfully quit porn are consumed by quitting, it is their passion, their reason for living. Not forever, but for the hard 90. Once you get clean you can focus on other things like...reality. Take a look at your hand. Literally, hold your hand up and look at it. Is that what you want to be married to for the rest of your life, is that what you want to come home to with good news, or bad? Is that what you want to take out to dinner and have vacations with? Your hand? If you have any chance of reconnecting with reality you have to destroy the addiction, destroy it. It will not be easy, and it won't be pretty, so plan on hard and ugly right now. This is my advice to you."
Amen to that!
"Let me say that again so I am clear, "If done right, quitting porn will be the most painful thing you have ever done." If you are not embracing the pain of quitting, you are not quitting, you are trying to keep it in your life, but control it. Porn addiction cannot be "controlled"; it has to be eradicated, it cannot be coddled, it must be murdered. You have to plan on the pain, expect it, anticipate it, know its coming, and even learn to want that pain. That pain is your brain readjusting to the new reality and the new reality is you are not giving yourself a dopamine high every day, repeatedly, through exposure to artificial sexual stimulation. That mindset does not have to last forever, but it does have to last for at least 90 days. Don't try and quit casually, don't do it in your spare time. During the hard 90 quitting must be how you define yourself, it must be your occupation, your religion, your reason for living, the reason you get up in the morning, the reason you go to sleep at night. Those who most successfully quit porn are consumed by quitting, it is their passion, their reason for living. Not forever, but for the hard 90. Once you get clean you can focus on other things like...reality. Take a look at your hand. Literally, hold your hand up and look at it. Is that what you want to be married to for the rest of your life, is that what you want to come home to with good news, or bad? Is that what you want to take out to dinner and have vacations with? Your hand? If you have any chance of reconnecting with reality you have to destroy the addiction, destroy it. It will not be easy, and it won't be pretty, so plan on hard and ugly right now. This is my advice to you."
Amen to that!
lyon03
Respected Member
Hello Reboot Nation! I'm writing with an eleven-month update and will likely write again for my one-year anniversary (October 30th). For those who have never read my thread, I am 43 years old, have used porn on/off for almost 20 years, was married (now divorced), and have three kids. I initially used pornography to explore my closeted homosexuality but am now out to both friends and family. Porn almost killed me back in December 2013 when I very seriously contemplated suicide. I am now 333 days porn-free and will never use/view it again. As I've often written: porn is not an option, and is no longer part of my life. September was quite easily the most challenging month of my reboot because I finally figured myself out...and it wasn't pretty my friends. You see, porn was simply a habit that quickly became an all-consuming addiction. In my case, I used porn to try to drug (or perhaps fill) a burning self-hatred because of my homosexuality. I've known I was gay since the age of five and yet always thought I was a deviant/freak. Now out and happy, I no longer needed the addiction and have spent most of this year rebuilding my self-esteem. But enough of the psychology, I'd prefer to share a brief roadmap to recovery.
STEP ONE: Find a mirror, look at yourself, and repeat: "I am a porn addict and my addiction is out of control." Keep repeating this until it evokes an emotion. Once it does, have a good look at your masturbation hand. [This 'hand' technique is thanks to a post by William.] Really take a long look at your hand and then imagine yourself walking down the aisle with a giant hand, exchanging rings with a giant hand, raising children with your hand, and sharing a lifetime of memories with your jerking hand. Accept that unless you kill your porn addiction, your masturbation hand will be your only friend in life. Ask yourself: "Is this what I want?" If the hand isn't working, imagine spending an entire life with a computer screen, or jizz rag, or dirty magazine. The point is I had to be mentally ready to move on and to do so I needed to be fully conscious of the wasted life I'd lead as a porn addict.
STEP TWO: Get ready for the hell that will be step three. This won't be a walk in the park. This will be a heroin-withdrawal-like experience. Read "Your Brain on Porn" by Gary Wilson. Knowledge is power.
STEP THREE: Do the hard 90. Keep repeating: "Porn is not an option." This means 90 days without porn/masturbation/orgasm. It's not going to kill you but it will be one of the hardest things you'll ever do.
STEP FOUR: Post hard 90, determine whether you're simply ending a bad habit (like a bad diet), or battling a lifelong addiction similar to alcoholism/drug abuse. These are two completely different creatures. If you're battling a bad habit, after about 120-180 days porn-free, your life should be returning to normal and you probably won't need to keep posting on this website. So how do we determine if porn is an addiction? After your hard 90, here are some signs you're battling an addiction:
1. You continue to relapse.
2. You're still stuck in depression, guilt or shame.
3. You're using porn substitutes like Youtube, fleshy TV, dating sites/apps, constantly masturbating, or you edge "but not to orgasm."
4. You've changed your counter several times in an attempt to rationalize yourself out of a relapse.
The above isn't an exhaustive list, but you get my point. If you've stopped the porn, but still feel like sh*t and aren't really seeing an improvement in your life, your porn habit was an addiction and you now need to undertake an emotional reboot. If however you're feeling better and feel like you can move on, you've beaten a nasty habit and probably don't need this website anymore.
STEP FIVE: Prepare yourself for an emotional reboot. This will be longer, harder, and more torturous than your 90-day porn reboot. This means fully accepting that porn was not the root cause of all your problems. It was simply a means to hide from the root cause. Emotional reboots like mine meant accepting that something deeper caused me to act this way. Now you need to identify and deal with the real problem. Start by reading "Breaking the Cycle" by George Collins. This will go a long way to help you identify the problem or "original wound" as Collins calls it.
STEP SIX: As an addict, you've surrounded yourself with people who somehow feed your addiction - including coworkers, your spouse and/or children. You need to accept that you've built an entire existence around hiding from something (bad memories, abusive parents, fears, guilt, shame etc). This means you'll need something or someone outside of your self-constructed 'comfort zone' to help you break free of it. You now have to accept that you can't overcome your problems alone, nor can you do so by blaming/abusing or being abused/used those around you.
STEP SEVEN: Get a reboot buddy, sobriety partner, or sponsor and tell them everything. Every secret, every lie, every bad habit, every bad memory, EVERTYHING. If you're holding on to secrets, they'll just result in relapses so it's best to be honest/thorough so you can start healing. If you need more structure, try joining a 12-step programme like www.pornaddictsanonymous.org. If that porn-itch starts again, it's simply because you haven't exorcised the root cause of your porn habit so you need to keep digging. This may also require professional help.
STEP EIGHT: Stay proactive. The minute you stop going forward in recovery, you slide back towards addiction. Using myself as an example, I've read over 25 books (and counting) about pornography addiction, addiction, addiction recovery, long-term recovery, self-esteem, and I could go on. The point is I spent over 20 years getting myself into this hole so I had to accept it would take years to dig myself out again. Some other things you can do to remain proactive: exercise; learning; socializing...just balls out living again! You have to get out of the habit of feeling like sh*t in front of screens which requires both mental and physical movement. There will be aches and pains like when you start exercising again, but it's worth it.
The above is a brief roadmap to recovery based on my experiences so far. Please feel free to add to my list as many people on this website have more time porn-free than me. In closing, what started for me as a porn reboot truly became a life reboot. Now eleven months porn-free, I am not the same person I was when I last watched porn on October 29, 2014. Life is so much better without porn my friends so I can only encourage you to stay hungry in recovery...hungry for life really. Life is too beautiful to live it virtually. PORN IS NOT AN OPTION.
STEP ONE: Find a mirror, look at yourself, and repeat: "I am a porn addict and my addiction is out of control." Keep repeating this until it evokes an emotion. Once it does, have a good look at your masturbation hand. [This 'hand' technique is thanks to a post by William.] Really take a long look at your hand and then imagine yourself walking down the aisle with a giant hand, exchanging rings with a giant hand, raising children with your hand, and sharing a lifetime of memories with your jerking hand. Accept that unless you kill your porn addiction, your masturbation hand will be your only friend in life. Ask yourself: "Is this what I want?" If the hand isn't working, imagine spending an entire life with a computer screen, or jizz rag, or dirty magazine. The point is I had to be mentally ready to move on and to do so I needed to be fully conscious of the wasted life I'd lead as a porn addict.
STEP TWO: Get ready for the hell that will be step three. This won't be a walk in the park. This will be a heroin-withdrawal-like experience. Read "Your Brain on Porn" by Gary Wilson. Knowledge is power.
STEP THREE: Do the hard 90. Keep repeating: "Porn is not an option." This means 90 days without porn/masturbation/orgasm. It's not going to kill you but it will be one of the hardest things you'll ever do.
STEP FOUR: Post hard 90, determine whether you're simply ending a bad habit (like a bad diet), or battling a lifelong addiction similar to alcoholism/drug abuse. These are two completely different creatures. If you're battling a bad habit, after about 120-180 days porn-free, your life should be returning to normal and you probably won't need to keep posting on this website. So how do we determine if porn is an addiction? After your hard 90, here are some signs you're battling an addiction:
1. You continue to relapse.
2. You're still stuck in depression, guilt or shame.
3. You're using porn substitutes like Youtube, fleshy TV, dating sites/apps, constantly masturbating, or you edge "but not to orgasm."
4. You've changed your counter several times in an attempt to rationalize yourself out of a relapse.
The above isn't an exhaustive list, but you get my point. If you've stopped the porn, but still feel like sh*t and aren't really seeing an improvement in your life, your porn habit was an addiction and you now need to undertake an emotional reboot. If however you're feeling better and feel like you can move on, you've beaten a nasty habit and probably don't need this website anymore.
STEP FIVE: Prepare yourself for an emotional reboot. This will be longer, harder, and more torturous than your 90-day porn reboot. This means fully accepting that porn was not the root cause of all your problems. It was simply a means to hide from the root cause. Emotional reboots like mine meant accepting that something deeper caused me to act this way. Now you need to identify and deal with the real problem. Start by reading "Breaking the Cycle" by George Collins. This will go a long way to help you identify the problem or "original wound" as Collins calls it.
STEP SIX: As an addict, you've surrounded yourself with people who somehow feed your addiction - including coworkers, your spouse and/or children. You need to accept that you've built an entire existence around hiding from something (bad memories, abusive parents, fears, guilt, shame etc). This means you'll need something or someone outside of your self-constructed 'comfort zone' to help you break free of it. You now have to accept that you can't overcome your problems alone, nor can you do so by blaming/abusing or being abused/used those around you.
STEP SEVEN: Get a reboot buddy, sobriety partner, or sponsor and tell them everything. Every secret, every lie, every bad habit, every bad memory, EVERTYHING. If you're holding on to secrets, they'll just result in relapses so it's best to be honest/thorough so you can start healing. If you need more structure, try joining a 12-step programme like www.pornaddictsanonymous.org. If that porn-itch starts again, it's simply because you haven't exorcised the root cause of your porn habit so you need to keep digging. This may also require professional help.
STEP EIGHT: Stay proactive. The minute you stop going forward in recovery, you slide back towards addiction. Using myself as an example, I've read over 25 books (and counting) about pornography addiction, addiction, addiction recovery, long-term recovery, self-esteem, and I could go on. The point is I spent over 20 years getting myself into this hole so I had to accept it would take years to dig myself out again. Some other things you can do to remain proactive: exercise; learning; socializing...just balls out living again! You have to get out of the habit of feeling like sh*t in front of screens which requires both mental and physical movement. There will be aches and pains like when you start exercising again, but it's worth it.
The above is a brief roadmap to recovery based on my experiences so far. Please feel free to add to my list as many people on this website have more time porn-free than me. In closing, what started for me as a porn reboot truly became a life reboot. Now eleven months porn-free, I am not the same person I was when I last watched porn on October 29, 2014. Life is so much better without porn my friends so I can only encourage you to stay hungry in recovery...hungry for life really. Life is too beautiful to live it virtually. PORN IS NOT AN OPTION.
lyon03
Respected Member
I made it! It's midnight here in Europe where I live. I've just made it to 1 year porn-free. This is a huge milestone for me. I'm tired so I might post more tomorrow. But before heading to bed I wanted to share two things: first, I want to thank all the RN members who have encouraged me over the past 365 days. Words cannot express my gratitude. Your stories, struggles, successes, advice, love and compassion all helped me get here. Second, I want to encourage everyone who is still struggling to keep fighting. There is no future as a porn addict. When I started this journey a year ago, I was a depressed, angry, wreck of a human being. Porn would have eventually killed me. I know it. Today my life has completely changed. While there are still struggles, mainly with self-esteem, life is so much better. This year saw me travel to Israel, Italy, and all over France. I've just come back from trips to Toronto (to see my family), NYC (business) and next weekend I'll be heading to London. Tomorrow I'm attending an early morning entrepreneurs conference, then an evening symposium put on by the European Union, and finishing with a romantic dinner with my boyfriend of three years. Am I bragging? Maybe a little but I'm also trying to make a point. None of this would have been possible if I were still stuck in front of my computer for yet another marathon fap-session. Porn = death. It's a simple as that. Granted it's a slow death, but porn would have killed me. Reboot = life. So I encourage all of you to keep fighting. You will beat this addiction. Fight it for your kids. Fight it for your wife. Fight it because life is too f*cking short my friends. And with that I'll leave you. Until tomorrow brothers. PORN IS NOT AN OPTION. AND IT'S NO LONGER PART OF MY LIFE.