It's now midnight in Europe and this marks 500 days since my last PMO. (The exact last day I watched porn was October 29, 2014.) I am humbled. Mine was a 20-year porn habit that almost killed me. In fact, it would have absolutely killed me had I not joined a 12-step program for porn addiction (www.pornaddictsanonymous.org) and then Rebootnation. Here is my first post on November 21, 2014:
"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."
I'm not sure what exactly I can share that I haven't already shared in my many many posts but here goes. I'm going to write a few things that I wish I'd known back in October 2014.
1. This isn't about your d*ck, it's about your brain:
Like most porn addicts, I wanted to get my mojo back. Decades of porn abuse left me with severe erectile dysfunction. While I started my reboot because I wanted a stiff penis and explosive orgasms, I failed to realize that wanting these things was just an extension of my addiction. I've come to learn that I wasn't healing the flesh, but more mind and soul.
2. Porn isn't the addiction, dopamine is:
Through reading books like "Your Brain on Porn", I learned about my true addiction: dopamine. Learning about my true enemy better equipped me to overcome how I got my dopamine fix through screen stimulation. Understanding the science of my addiction was an integral step. Had I gotten bogged down in the morality of my addiction, I would have relapsed due to a toxic cocktail of guilt and shame.
3. I used addiction to avoid pain:
I believe that anyone who suffers from long-term addiction like I have has deeper problems that just jerking to a computer screen. That seems so obvious now but I didn't grasp that at the start of my reboot. Just like a cough can be symptomatic of lung cancer, my porn addiction was due to deeper problems. I've detailed these issues in this thread but there was no way I could prepare myself for the ordeals that I went through without my drug of choice: dopamine.
4. This isn't a reboot from addiction, it's a life reboot:
I think of my life as a table with a very delicate table setting on top. And the life I'd created had addiction as one of its legs. Without that leg, everything came crashing down. Without porn propping things up, family and career were just two of the shattered things I had to glue back together. I now see that my life wasn't ruined because of addiction, but rather than addiction was the inevitable coping mechanism for my ruined life. Without porn, I had to put myself and my life back together. It was necessary but damn if it wasn't pretty.
5. Get ready. This is a life-long commitment:
When I started this process, I naively thought I'd stop PMO for about 100 days, then SHE-BANG my life would be perfect. WRONG! It took me decades to dig this hole. And at the bottom of that deep hole, I simply installed a computer, chair, and lube for a thrice-daily tug to porn. Once I stopped the porn, guess what? I was still at the bottom of a really f*cking deep hole. It took me a relatively short period of time to overcome the porn addiction, but it's going to take me many years to change the broken thought process, bad habits, toxic relationships, and secondary addictions that resulted in my dopamine addiction. I'm getting there but porn addiction is a bit like a dysfunctional family: yes I can get away but this will always be a part of me. And like a f*cked up family, there will always be some reason to go back and try again. Just this past week I was tested by some family issues and I could feel myself inexorably going down the path to a relapse. Thankfully I've resisted because I've learned a different way of thinking and acting. But a two-decade-long habit doesn't die easily.
The above are all fairly clinical and perhaps a wee bit introspective so let's focus on something more practical. Through some exchanges with another rebooter, I'd urge everyone starting their journey or re-starting after a relapse to begin with the end in mind. That means completing the following sentence threads:
1. "Reboot/recovery for me means..."
2. "The root cause of my addiction is...."
3. "I get a dopamine high from..."
4. "Before relapsing, I start to feel..."
5. "The conditions that lead to relapse are always..."
6. "My safety plan before a relapse will now be..."
And here were my answers:
1. Reboot/recovery for me means loving myself unconditionally, being my true self, and surrounding myself with kind, caring, and loving people. I can only accomplish these things and attain my life goals while addiction-free.
2. The root cause of my addiction is poor self-esteem and a burning self-hatred.
3. I get my dopamine high from the following:
a. Any artificial screen stimulation, mainly porn, but also from darting around YouTube, and Facebook.
b. Meaningless 'hook up' sex with strangers.
c. Edging/masturbation.
d. Fleshy and mindless television
e. Creating chaotic 'life or death' situations in my life.
f. Conflict & confrontation.
4. Before relapsing, I always started to feel: stressed, angry, frustrated, worthless, and ashamed. I rarely felt horny before abusing porn.
5. The conditions when I relapsed were almost always when I was alone and online, particularly in the evenings. My relapses would start with some mindless web searching, then risky still photos, then I'd automatically type in a porn-tube website and click away.
6. My safety plan before I feel triggered or about to relapse is to fully accept when I'm feeling negative emotions like stress, anger, frustration etc. I share these feelings openly and honestly with this forum. Then I call members of my recovery network to work through them.
I want to thank the kind members of RN for supporting me these past 500 days. I couldn't have made it this far without you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you. And yes my friends...PORN IS NOT AN OPTION.