Brock Savage
Member
Well done and thanks for sharing your success!
-Brock Savage
-Brock Savage
SIX+ YEARS PORN-FREE!
- Thread starter lyon03
- Start date
balancewannabe
Member
INSPIRATION!!!! THANKS AND KEEP IT UP! 
Brooklyn Jerry
Active Member
You sure are a great inspiration to keep off the porn. I made it for a stretch of four months a while ago, and now just passed a 50 day marker. I do know not watching porn has allowed me to have sex without Viagra. I sure blame the Internet for this PMO epidemic,it made it too easy to view prom at a moments notice. I hope to be one of the people to beat this demon.
lyon03
Respected Member
Good morning nation. I'm writing with a 400+ day update. I think I've pretty much shared everything about my journey to this point so no more lists! But I did want to share that my life is so much better without porn. Today I'm writing about my current state of mind/well-being. Like many fellow rebooters, severe erectile dysfunction was a huge motivation for my reboot because I wanted to regain normal sexual function. After a 15+ year porn habit, I could no longer get hard, even to the most deviant and shocking pornography. I was masturbating daily but got no pleasure from it - just shame. In the final stages of my addiction, I also suffered from some other side effects of porn addiction like migraines, depression, and an inability to concentrate (something I still struggle with).
Reboot/recovery from porn addiction became my new obsession and I'm proud to share that I haven't watched porn in over a year. In the depths of my addiction, I couldn't go three minutes without a porn fix. I know because I timed it. In early reboot (0-90 days porn-free), I continued to obsess about sex, my d*ck, boners, orgasms, etc. But as I learned reboot is much more than just these mechanics. What started as a boner reboot transformed into a life reboot at about the 9-month mark.
It was then that I read several statistics that changed my life. Did you know that the average person spends:
- 19 hours a year having sex (0.2% of a year)
- 48 days in a lifetime having sex (0.2% of a life)
- 1460 hours a year watching TV (16.6% of a year)
- 11 hours a day exposed to screens/digital media (45.8% of each day)
- 2 years of our lives watching commercials (2.5% of a life)
Why did these statistics change me? There were several reasons. First, porn was killing me. Sex, masturbation, porn and sexual thoughts were all obsessions, even though actual sex with another person represented just 0.2% of my time. This was a phenomenal waste of my time...a waste of a life really. Second, I had switched TV time with porn time so at the end of my life, I would have spent between 15-20 years watching pornography. How sad. Imagine what we could all do with our lives if those years were used for more noble pursuits (like family; careers; health/exercise; or the arts). I realized that my porn, sex, and masturbation addictions were like any other addiction: more would never be enough.
Now porn-free, it feels like life has colour again. What started off as a quest to have bigger, stronger, and more powerful erections, turned into wanting more from life. So how has my life changed? I no longer suffer from many porn-related problems like insomnia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, social anxiety, depression, and migraines. Most importantly, I have found true love and for the first time in my life experienced true intimacy with my boyfriend of 3.5 years. Porn brainwashed me to believe sex was everything, when it represents a small but important part of a relationship. But to find a partner, you have to get out there which means getting off f*cking screens and living life! Love ain't gonna come knocking at your door my friends. I've also made more friends and have been more social in the past six months than in the past six years. In brief, I'm living again. But life ain't all unicorns and rainbows. I still struggle with concentration, particularly at work, but see concentration as mental muscle and am confident that daily exercise will bring my concentration back.
Reboot became more than not watching porn. For me, it was about rebooting my life. Thanks for reading everyone. Be well. PORN IS NOT AN OPTION.
Reboot/recovery from porn addiction became my new obsession and I'm proud to share that I haven't watched porn in over a year. In the depths of my addiction, I couldn't go three minutes without a porn fix. I know because I timed it. In early reboot (0-90 days porn-free), I continued to obsess about sex, my d*ck, boners, orgasms, etc. But as I learned reboot is much more than just these mechanics. What started as a boner reboot transformed into a life reboot at about the 9-month mark.
It was then that I read several statistics that changed my life. Did you know that the average person spends:
- 19 hours a year having sex (0.2% of a year)
- 48 days in a lifetime having sex (0.2% of a life)
- 1460 hours a year watching TV (16.6% of a year)
- 11 hours a day exposed to screens/digital media (45.8% of each day)
- 2 years of our lives watching commercials (2.5% of a life)
Why did these statistics change me? There were several reasons. First, porn was killing me. Sex, masturbation, porn and sexual thoughts were all obsessions, even though actual sex with another person represented just 0.2% of my time. This was a phenomenal waste of my time...a waste of a life really. Second, I had switched TV time with porn time so at the end of my life, I would have spent between 15-20 years watching pornography. How sad. Imagine what we could all do with our lives if those years were used for more noble pursuits (like family; careers; health/exercise; or the arts). I realized that my porn, sex, and masturbation addictions were like any other addiction: more would never be enough.
Now porn-free, it feels like life has colour again. What started off as a quest to have bigger, stronger, and more powerful erections, turned into wanting more from life. So how has my life changed? I no longer suffer from many porn-related problems like insomnia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, social anxiety, depression, and migraines. Most importantly, I have found true love and for the first time in my life experienced true intimacy with my boyfriend of 3.5 years. Porn brainwashed me to believe sex was everything, when it represents a small but important part of a relationship. But to find a partner, you have to get out there which means getting off f*cking screens and living life! Love ain't gonna come knocking at your door my friends. I've also made more friends and have been more social in the past six months than in the past six years. In brief, I'm living again. But life ain't all unicorns and rainbows. I still struggle with concentration, particularly at work, but see concentration as mental muscle and am confident that daily exercise will bring my concentration back.
Reboot became more than not watching porn. For me, it was about rebooting my life. Thanks for reading everyone. Be well. PORN IS NOT AN OPTION.
B-RYE
Member
lyon03 said:
Lyron03,
I'm new here and just discovered your original post. First of all, congratulations! Your story is so inspirational. I can also relate to what you said about porn being your only gay sexual outlet. I, too, was married to a woman and recently came out as gay. We were in a relationship for 8 years total, married for a year and 8 months, but I was closeted and in denial about my sexuality. I finally came out to her this year and we got a divorce. It's nice to see someone else on here going through the same thing. I'm only on day 4 since I last PMO'd, but reading stories like yours gives me hope that I can make it from 4 to 400!
Cheers!
-Bryan
lyon03
Respected Member
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.
"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.
Hi lyon,
I've read your first few posts and look forward to reading the more recent ones. thanks for the great story, and well done for doing so well ;D
Just wanted to say - Cheers for the reading recommendation. All the reading I've done has made me think and helped me. 'The Willpower Instinct' comes to mind about how we're programmed to have urges and are programmed to make ourselves resist them. So thanks to you, just started reading 'Breaking the Cycle' - fantastic stuff, and it's funny the author mentions 'The Power of Now' which I just finished reading. Keep on trucking!
R
I've read your first few posts and look forward to reading the more recent ones. thanks for the great story, and well done for doing so well ;D
Just wanted to say - Cheers for the reading recommendation. All the reading I've done has made me think and helped me. 'The Willpower Instinct' comes to mind about how we're programmed to have urges and are programmed to make ourselves resist them. So thanks to you, just started reading 'Breaking the Cycle' - fantastic stuff, and it's funny the author mentions 'The Power of Now' which I just finished reading. Keep on trucking!
R
lyon03
Respected Member
Good day friends! It's been a very long time since my last post so I thought I'd check in on the eve of 700 days porn free. Given my 20-year addiction to porn, masturbation, and (later) sex, living without my addictions is nothing short of a miracle. And none of this would have been possible without the kindness and loving support of my fellow rebooters. So why am I back? I'm writing to encourage those who are just starting their reboots and to encourage those who continue to struggle with porn-related dopamine addiction. [If you don't know what dopamine is, get a copy of "Your Brain on Porn" stat!] My message is: don't give up. As I've shared in this thread, I know that porn would have killed me. On October 29, 2014, I decided to make a change and stop watching porn...forever. I won't lie to you. It was hell. Reboot was hell. But the rewards - like happiness, honesty, and intimacy to name a few - are well worth it. Giving up porn, porn subs, and all of the addictive behaviours that fed my two-decade-long addiction to dopamine was the most difficult and yet the most rewarding thing I've ever done. No matter where you are along your journey my friends, please don't give up.
Reboot is a bit like learning to walk again. It's all or nothing. Either you're up or you're down on your *ss crying. I was thinking about how my own reboot was like learning to walk (porn-free) all over again. I thought to myself: after a toddler stumbles, I've never seen a child throw a fit, refuse to try walking again, hide/isolate, blame their crappy childhood/spouse/boss, rationalize "I'll just crawl for one more day before giving it another try." No. The kid just b*lls out tries again and again and again until he/she walks. This was pretty much my approach to reboot. I came ready to do whatever it took to live porn free. I obsessively posted here. I joined www.pornaddictsanonymous.org, a 12-step programme for porn addiction. I participated in weekly phone-in meetings for porn addicts. I read 30+ books about porn addiction, sex addiction, and self-improvement. I got a sponsor and created a sobriety network. My motto remains: PORN IS NOT AN OPTION. This also meant giving up fleshy TV. It meant giving up all of the lies, the blame, the resent, and the rationalizations. It meant giving up masturbation, meaningless hook ups, and meaningless relationships. This is what worked for me after trying, and failing, for years to stop watching porn. No matter what our paths, we can only find freedom without our drug of choice: dopamine.
After 700 days without porn, life has taken on a colour and texture that I never thought possible. Perhaps like me, you started your reboot to once again have big, beautiful erections, lots of steamy-hot sex, and porn-like orgasms. But I've learned that reboot was never about my d*ck. It was always about mind, heart, and soul. Once porn-free, I learned it was just the start of another set of challenges. But I was now up for those challenges. I'm now ready to face whatever life throws at me. I may not always succeed, but I'm always going to get up again and again. In brief, reboot gave me my life back. And reboot will give you back your life as well. Good luck my friends.
Reboot is a bit like learning to walk again. It's all or nothing. Either you're up or you're down on your *ss crying. I was thinking about how my own reboot was like learning to walk (porn-free) all over again. I thought to myself: after a toddler stumbles, I've never seen a child throw a fit, refuse to try walking again, hide/isolate, blame their crappy childhood/spouse/boss, rationalize "I'll just crawl for one more day before giving it another try." No. The kid just b*lls out tries again and again and again until he/she walks. This was pretty much my approach to reboot. I came ready to do whatever it took to live porn free. I obsessively posted here. I joined www.pornaddictsanonymous.org, a 12-step programme for porn addiction. I participated in weekly phone-in meetings for porn addicts. I read 30+ books about porn addiction, sex addiction, and self-improvement. I got a sponsor and created a sobriety network. My motto remains: PORN IS NOT AN OPTION. This also meant giving up fleshy TV. It meant giving up all of the lies, the blame, the resent, and the rationalizations. It meant giving up masturbation, meaningless hook ups, and meaningless relationships. This is what worked for me after trying, and failing, for years to stop watching porn. No matter what our paths, we can only find freedom without our drug of choice: dopamine.
After 700 days without porn, life has taken on a colour and texture that I never thought possible. Perhaps like me, you started your reboot to once again have big, beautiful erections, lots of steamy-hot sex, and porn-like orgasms. But I've learned that reboot was never about my d*ck. It was always about mind, heart, and soul. Once porn-free, I learned it was just the start of another set of challenges. But I was now up for those challenges. I'm now ready to face whatever life throws at me. I may not always succeed, but I'm always going to get up again and again. In brief, reboot gave me my life back. And reboot will give you back your life as well. Good luck my friends.
lyon03
Respected Member
Hey 'nation. I'm checking in with a quick post on my two year anniversary. Since posting on my thread in the over 40 section, I've received a number of private messages asking about 'the secret' to my success. Mine was a 20+ year addiction that would have killed me. Here is how I made it this far: hit rock bottom October 28, 2014; set a goal (a life without porn) October 29, 2014; posted here daily for my first year; joined a 12-step program for porn addiction (www.pornaddictsanonymous.org); brutal honesty with myself and others; no more isolation/hiding by encouraging fellow rebooters; read EVERYTHING about porn addiction, addiction, and self-improvement; and attacked my addiction from every f*cking angle until I prevailed. There is a member of my 12-step program who also stopped watching porn. Why? Because the police caught him with child pornography and all of his online time is now strictly supervised. This man ended his porn addiction because to relapse would mean going to jail. Why am I sharing this? My addictions to porn, sex, and masturbation almost drove me to commit suicide. So for me the stakes were very clear: porn = death. For my fellow rebooter: porn = jail. We both chose freedom because we didn't have a choice. If you are still struggling with porn addiction, it's time to get very clear about how porn is killing both you and your loved ones. For me, porn addiction was more than just a limp noodle. So recovery for me always meant more than just ending ED. I got very clear in October 2014 and understanding the full consequences of my addictions forced me to deal with them. My 'secret' is that I had two choices, live a porn-free life or die fapping in front of a computer screen. I'm glad I chose life my friends. Things are good and I wish everyone a lifetime without insidious porn addiction. I hope that helps someone get just another minute, hour, day, or week porn-free. PORN IS NOT AN OPTION.
lyon03
Respected Member
Happy New Year Reboot Nation! I wish everyone a happy, healthy, and addiction-free 2017. It's been a while between posts so I'm thrilled to provide an update. Tomorrow marks 800 days porn-free for me and life is so much better addiction-free. By way of background, I was a gold-star 20-year porn addict. Before my reboot, which started on October 29, 2014, I would PMO (porn, masturbate, orgasm) three to four hours daily, if not longer. I was addicted to porn, masturbation, and sex (mostly hook ups). While addicted to porn, I suffered from severe erectile dysfunction, insomnia, depression, anxiety, bouts of anger, and a whole host of porn-related problems. While I haven't watched porn for 800 days, in early reboot I struggled with my addictions to masturbation and sex. Now 800 days later, I'm a changed man. I probably MO about 5-6 times a year, most often the day after very passionate sex which I guess is my own form of chaser effect. Most of my life I used masturbation as a stress reliever and quite honestly now I find it pretty boring. I'm also in a long-term and loving relationship with my boyfriend of 4.5 years. While we have an open relationship, as many gay couples do, sex without intimacy is a bit like masturbation...not really worth it.
What I'm about to share is my own personal opinion, based on my own experience. There is no perfect way to reboot in my opinion because we're all different. Now 800 days porn-free, I believe there are two types of recovery from addiction: people who are simply overcoming bad habits like watching porn, drinking, doing drugs etc; and people who use addictions in order to cope with underlying emotional issues. I fall squarely in the latter category. I used porn to hide my homosexuality and I believe my reboot was successful because I'd come out, separated from my wife, and got therapy all before joining this forum. In my case, rebooting would have been impossible had I continued to deny my homosexuality and remained unhappily married to a woman. Once I came out, I'd mostly dealt with the emotional cause of my porn addiction...or I should write gay porn addiction. This then freed me to deal with my porn-induced dopamine addiction starting October 29, 2014.
The other thing I've learned is there is no failure until I give up. While I stopped watching porn in October 2014, my addictions to masturbation and sex took a little more time to overcome. I white-knuckled and went about 100 days (I think) without masturbating and about the same amount of time without hooking up with guys outside of my long-term relationship. It's proven science that we need between 90 to 120 days to break the cycle of addiction so I'm a firm believer in doing at least a "hard 90" to stop an addictive behaviour. However, it took me a while to learn that masturbating or hooking up from time were simply part of my journey, not failures. I could have easily struggled with porn relapsing time and time again but as long as I have a goal and I'm trying, I firmly believe I'm winning. What knocks so many people off the wagon and perhaps off this forum, is the shame associated with relapse. So please don't give up if you're relapsing. Just keep sharing here and attacking your addiction from every angle possible. You'll inevitably prevail.
One final point I wanted to make is this journey was never about my d*ck. Yes I started my reboot to have lots of porn-like sex, powerful erections, and geyser-like orgasms. Porn conditioned me to see sex the wrong way. How can I explain this? It would be like learning to drive by only watching car chases in action movies. Porn sex and porn bodies are about as close to reality as Hollywood car stunts are to my daily drive. Porn is unattainable fantasy. What I needed was intimacy. Now when I'm having sex, I don't even think about orgasm because I'm enjoying myself so much. Intimacy is about touch, laughter, eye contact and being present among other things. While addicted to porn, I was too focused on body parts rather than intimacy. So my reboot was never about my junk. It was always about my brain.
I'll close this rambling post by sharing that porn was like pea-soup fog. While a porn addict, I was lost and couldn't see anything clearly. Quitting porn was like a fog lifting. But that only exposed the broken landscape of my life. When I started to see my problems more clearly, I could have run back to porn for cover...but didn't. So I guess my closing argument is that quitting porn was just the beginning of a journey to better myself. But ending my addictions put me on a clearer path in life. I recently went back through some of my previous posts. This forum was a huge help in overcoming my lifelong addiction to porn...both through sharing and supporting others. So please keep posting and supporting others no matter what. Your fellow members learn from both ups and downs. Thanks for reading friends.
PORN IS NOT AN OPTION.
What I'm about to share is my own personal opinion, based on my own experience. There is no perfect way to reboot in my opinion because we're all different. Now 800 days porn-free, I believe there are two types of recovery from addiction: people who are simply overcoming bad habits like watching porn, drinking, doing drugs etc; and people who use addictions in order to cope with underlying emotional issues. I fall squarely in the latter category. I used porn to hide my homosexuality and I believe my reboot was successful because I'd come out, separated from my wife, and got therapy all before joining this forum. In my case, rebooting would have been impossible had I continued to deny my homosexuality and remained unhappily married to a woman. Once I came out, I'd mostly dealt with the emotional cause of my porn addiction...or I should write gay porn addiction. This then freed me to deal with my porn-induced dopamine addiction starting October 29, 2014.
The other thing I've learned is there is no failure until I give up. While I stopped watching porn in October 2014, my addictions to masturbation and sex took a little more time to overcome. I white-knuckled and went about 100 days (I think) without masturbating and about the same amount of time without hooking up with guys outside of my long-term relationship. It's proven science that we need between 90 to 120 days to break the cycle of addiction so I'm a firm believer in doing at least a "hard 90" to stop an addictive behaviour. However, it took me a while to learn that masturbating or hooking up from time were simply part of my journey, not failures. I could have easily struggled with porn relapsing time and time again but as long as I have a goal and I'm trying, I firmly believe I'm winning. What knocks so many people off the wagon and perhaps off this forum, is the shame associated with relapse. So please don't give up if you're relapsing. Just keep sharing here and attacking your addiction from every angle possible. You'll inevitably prevail.
One final point I wanted to make is this journey was never about my d*ck. Yes I started my reboot to have lots of porn-like sex, powerful erections, and geyser-like orgasms. Porn conditioned me to see sex the wrong way. How can I explain this? It would be like learning to drive by only watching car chases in action movies. Porn sex and porn bodies are about as close to reality as Hollywood car stunts are to my daily drive. Porn is unattainable fantasy. What I needed was intimacy. Now when I'm having sex, I don't even think about orgasm because I'm enjoying myself so much. Intimacy is about touch, laughter, eye contact and being present among other things. While addicted to porn, I was too focused on body parts rather than intimacy. So my reboot was never about my junk. It was always about my brain.
I'll close this rambling post by sharing that porn was like pea-soup fog. While a porn addict, I was lost and couldn't see anything clearly. Quitting porn was like a fog lifting. But that only exposed the broken landscape of my life. When I started to see my problems more clearly, I could have run back to porn for cover...but didn't. So I guess my closing argument is that quitting porn was just the beginning of a journey to better myself. But ending my addictions put me on a clearer path in life. I recently went back through some of my previous posts. This forum was a huge help in overcoming my lifelong addiction to porn...both through sharing and supporting others. So please keep posting and supporting others no matter what. Your fellow members learn from both ups and downs. Thanks for reading friends.
PORN IS NOT AN OPTION.
lyon03
Respected Member
Good day nation! I'm writing with a 900+ day update. I haven't watched porn in 900 days, or roughly 29.5 months, or just about 2.5 years. Here is my first post (Nov 21-14) on this thread:
"On October 30th, I finally said "f*ck this". I've not watched porn since and never will do it again."
Amen to that. I know that my addictions to porn, masturbation, and sex would have led to suicide. So for me reboot was more than just giving up a PMO habit. It was a life or death choice. For anyone struggling with porn addiction, there is hope. There was a time when I couldn't go three minutes without a porn hit. I know because I timed it. And not too long after realizing I couldn't go three minutes without watching x-rated videos on my computer, I stopped watching porn forever.
Addictions are like rusty bolts...the older and rustier they are, the more effort it takes to wrench those f*ckers loose. Looking back, I have had an addict brain all of my life. My addictions were the unnatural results of my screwed up thinking. There was a time when I needed to post 2-3 times a day here. Why? Because it took that level of effort to learn how to live addiction-free. It was like undoing all of those years I wasted my soul in front of a computer screen. When posting wasn't enough, I joined www.pornaddictsanonymous.org and worked their 12 steps. When that wasn't enough, I got a sponsor. When that wasn't enough, I attended weekly 12-step meetings. When that wasn't enough, I joined a gym. When that wasn't enough, I got therapy. When that wasn't enough, I read everything I could about my addictions. When you're fighting for your life as I was, you don't bring a dull butter knife. You bring a f*cking bazooka.
So I didn't just stop watching porn, I made recovery/reboot my obsession. I adopted a "porn is not an option" attitude and worked my ass off to live porn-free. I blew all of my addictions and my addictive thinking to smithereens. I've spent the last two years breaking myself down and methodically rebuilding myself into an honest, addiction-free man. Why? Because life is too short to live it virtually.
So how are things today? Much better thanks. I'm not going to lie to you. Reboot isn't some magical band aid to change your life. Most people who have spent decades fapping to internet porn don't have the best lives. In fact, my life was pretty sh*tty (just read my thread if you don't believe me). Porn is like a fog and once you stop using porn, yes the fog lifts but only to expose a broken landscape of a life. Then begins the real challenge and we're faced with two choices: go back to porn for comfort or start fixing our lives. I chose the latter.
My life isn't perfect and yes it still has its challenges, but I'm much more capable of facing my problems without having to jerk to internet porn every day just to feel normal. My health is better; I can concentrate; I work harder; I sleep better; sex is much better without a porn movie playing in my head; and I'm more engaged and engaging with people because I'm not giving off a pervy "I watch porn all day long" vibe.
So that's me at 900 days my friend. If you're still struggling, adopt a "porn is not an option" stance, and keep attacking your addiction until you prevail. Addiction never makes anything nor any relationship better. I hope that helps my friends. Love to all.
PORN IS NOT AN OPTION AND IT'S NO LONGER PART OF MY LIFE.
"On October 30th, I finally said "f*ck this". I've not watched porn since and never will do it again."
Amen to that. I know that my addictions to porn, masturbation, and sex would have led to suicide. So for me reboot was more than just giving up a PMO habit. It was a life or death choice. For anyone struggling with porn addiction, there is hope. There was a time when I couldn't go three minutes without a porn hit. I know because I timed it. And not too long after realizing I couldn't go three minutes without watching x-rated videos on my computer, I stopped watching porn forever.
Addictions are like rusty bolts...the older and rustier they are, the more effort it takes to wrench those f*ckers loose. Looking back, I have had an addict brain all of my life. My addictions were the unnatural results of my screwed up thinking. There was a time when I needed to post 2-3 times a day here. Why? Because it took that level of effort to learn how to live addiction-free. It was like undoing all of those years I wasted my soul in front of a computer screen. When posting wasn't enough, I joined www.pornaddictsanonymous.org and worked their 12 steps. When that wasn't enough, I got a sponsor. When that wasn't enough, I attended weekly 12-step meetings. When that wasn't enough, I joined a gym. When that wasn't enough, I got therapy. When that wasn't enough, I read everything I could about my addictions. When you're fighting for your life as I was, you don't bring a dull butter knife. You bring a f*cking bazooka.
So I didn't just stop watching porn, I made recovery/reboot my obsession. I adopted a "porn is not an option" attitude and worked my ass off to live porn-free. I blew all of my addictions and my addictive thinking to smithereens. I've spent the last two years breaking myself down and methodically rebuilding myself into an honest, addiction-free man. Why? Because life is too short to live it virtually.
So how are things today? Much better thanks. I'm not going to lie to you. Reboot isn't some magical band aid to change your life. Most people who have spent decades fapping to internet porn don't have the best lives. In fact, my life was pretty sh*tty (just read my thread if you don't believe me). Porn is like a fog and once you stop using porn, yes the fog lifts but only to expose a broken landscape of a life. Then begins the real challenge and we're faced with two choices: go back to porn for comfort or start fixing our lives. I chose the latter.
My life isn't perfect and yes it still has its challenges, but I'm much more capable of facing my problems without having to jerk to internet porn every day just to feel normal. My health is better; I can concentrate; I work harder; I sleep better; sex is much better without a porn movie playing in my head; and I'm more engaged and engaging with people because I'm not giving off a pervy "I watch porn all day long" vibe.
So that's me at 900 days my friend. If you're still struggling, adopt a "porn is not an option" stance, and keep attacking your addiction until you prevail. Addiction never makes anything nor any relationship better. I hope that helps my friends. Love to all.
PORN IS NOT AN OPTION AND IT'S NO LONGER PART OF MY LIFE.
lyon03
Respected Member
Good day forum. I'm writing with a 1000-day update. I've now gone 2 years 9 months without porn which is about 1000 days. As I have often shared here, there was a time when I couldn't go three (3) minutes without a porn/screen hit. I know because I timed it. I don't have a great deal of advice to share because each journey is different/unique but I can share that I'm much happier without porn in my life. If you haven't read my thread, here is a brief summary. My dopamine addiction started in my 20s and would have killed me. Before joining this forum and www.pornaddictsanonymous.org, a 12-step programme for porn addiction, I was addicted to porn, sex, and masturbation. I would surf porn for 3-6 hours every day and masturbate daily, often twice daily. In addition to the porn and masturbation, I was also addicted to sex (and a gay sex app called Grindr) so I'd have 1-2 hook ups with men a day. I suffered from severe erectile dysfunction, depression, insomnia, and anxiety to name a few. I was also suicidal. Had I not overcome my addictions, I know for certain that they would have killed me. So reboot/recovery wasn't a choice for me, it was a question of life or death.
When reading over my early posts, it feels a bit like reading a diary from high school. I'm now at a place in my recovery where I'm learning honesty, authenticity, and a self-awareness that I never thought possible. In the past, porn conditioned me to believe that unless I had a perfect body, massive penis, and face of a model, I was somehow unloveable or perhaps undeserving. How sad. Now that I've thrown off the completely false notion that I have to look like a porn star and have sex like a porn star, recovery has allowed me to develop an incredible sense of inner peace and self-awareness. This allows me to connect with people almost instantly. Case in point I've had countless people just say to me spontaneously, "You're a good man" or "I've never worked with someone like you" and so on. I find that complete strangers now grab my hand or touch my shoulder when speaking with me because they somehow feel comfortable around me. Rather than feed my ego, I now get that people are drawn to who I am as a person rather than some false sexual identity I'm putting out there. This is all new to me and a wonderful experience that's spilled over to my love life as well. I've been with the same boyfriend for over five years and our relationship has improved as well. Up until last September, he was closeted with his family and told me he wanted to remain closeted. I told him that I disagreed but respected his decision as I would never live in another man's closet. I left him in June 2016, he told me he wanted to get back together and I did so because I loved him...but on the condition he come out in 90 days (his family all knew anyway). He's been out since last September and we recently went to a family reunion where he put me on his family tree as his partner. I was floored because none of this would have been possible had I not had the self-esteem to stand up for honesty and authenticity in my relationship.
I'll now end this rambling post with my favourite TS Eliot quote: "We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." This is where I am today. I have and always will be me. For a time, I needed my addictions to porn, sex, and masturbation to cope. Reboot taught me the skills to live porn-free, but that was just the beginning of my journey. Porn was nothing but a distraction. What I needed to do was find out why I needed porn and then fix that. It's taken A LOT of time and effort to reach the essence of who I am and, most importantly, to truly love that person. I now truly love myself and this beautiful, authentic, and honest self-awareness allows me to connect with the beautiful people in my life, while deftly avoiding those who would put this hard-earned serenity at risk.
Porn was simply the tip of iceberg my friends. What got me to 1000 days porn-free was understanding the 9/10ths of my problems that were under water and dealing with them. Thanks for reading my rambles friends. I wish you all a happy and healthy day porn-free. Love Lyon.
When reading over my early posts, it feels a bit like reading a diary from high school. I'm now at a place in my recovery where I'm learning honesty, authenticity, and a self-awareness that I never thought possible. In the past, porn conditioned me to believe that unless I had a perfect body, massive penis, and face of a model, I was somehow unloveable or perhaps undeserving. How sad. Now that I've thrown off the completely false notion that I have to look like a porn star and have sex like a porn star, recovery has allowed me to develop an incredible sense of inner peace and self-awareness. This allows me to connect with people almost instantly. Case in point I've had countless people just say to me spontaneously, "You're a good man" or "I've never worked with someone like you" and so on. I find that complete strangers now grab my hand or touch my shoulder when speaking with me because they somehow feel comfortable around me. Rather than feed my ego, I now get that people are drawn to who I am as a person rather than some false sexual identity I'm putting out there. This is all new to me and a wonderful experience that's spilled over to my love life as well. I've been with the same boyfriend for over five years and our relationship has improved as well. Up until last September, he was closeted with his family and told me he wanted to remain closeted. I told him that I disagreed but respected his decision as I would never live in another man's closet. I left him in June 2016, he told me he wanted to get back together and I did so because I loved him...but on the condition he come out in 90 days (his family all knew anyway). He's been out since last September and we recently went to a family reunion where he put me on his family tree as his partner. I was floored because none of this would have been possible had I not had the self-esteem to stand up for honesty and authenticity in my relationship.
I'll now end this rambling post with my favourite TS Eliot quote: "We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." This is where I am today. I have and always will be me. For a time, I needed my addictions to porn, sex, and masturbation to cope. Reboot taught me the skills to live porn-free, but that was just the beginning of my journey. Porn was nothing but a distraction. What I needed to do was find out why I needed porn and then fix that. It's taken A LOT of time and effort to reach the essence of who I am and, most importantly, to truly love that person. I now truly love myself and this beautiful, authentic, and honest self-awareness allows me to connect with the beautiful people in my life, while deftly avoiding those who would put this hard-earned serenity at risk.
Porn was simply the tip of iceberg my friends. What got me to 1000 days porn-free was understanding the 9/10ths of my problems that were under water and dealing with them. Thanks for reading my rambles friends. I wish you all a happy and healthy day porn-free. Love Lyon.
justsomeguy
Member
What a great story. Thanks so much for sharing! I was having a weak moment, and this thread gave me the confidence not to dip back into P.
