Gay Man, 49yo Ending PIED After a 90 Day Reboot.

[Phase2]

After much thought, I am going to attempt another try online/app meeting site --with a very wary eye this time. I know it's dangerous territory but remains the only way I know to meet other men in town--and on a trip next week. I was off it for 72 days. I've signed up for one month and goal is to find a rewire realtime partner. Time will be limited and no webcam/JO. Stay tuned. If it gets out of hand I will delete. Otherwise things going well. PIED seems less of an issue now and I still have no interest in watching porn or PMO.

Other friends have recently come out to me as struggling with ED, so I'm happy to give them all the information we've learned here.

 

[Phase2]

Wow, I hit a year no-pmo this week and almost didn't notice. Just wanted to post a 'hip hip hooray' out into the world. And to any of you new guys who might be struggling in your first weeks, I'm here to tell you it can definitely be done. I was a hardcore PMO guy--a couple times a day for many years and those first few weeks of abstention were pretty unreal to me (read my first post on this thread for a more detailed account). I thought it couldn't be done. But after buckling down and getting through the initial hard part, the desire and habit slowly faded away. By six months I rarely thought about porn. At one year, I doesn't really factor into anything.

My PIED is doing a lot better and I have a much better grasp on sexuality and attraction and what it means to be a man. All our journeys are different, but if you are thinking about tackling this, I strongly encourage you to do it. Learn as much as you can & commit 100%. You can do it!

 

[marsturm]

Yahoo, Phase2!! Well done. I'm so happy for you. You've been an invaluable part of my journey, and I'm glad I met you here. I wish you constant success and happiness You're right, the desire to watch P dwindles away the more we stay away from it. What a relief! Please keep on posting.

 

[Gambit123]

Phase2, thanks for posting and keep up the great work. Thank you for supporting me and the others on this site.

I think we all need to realize here that everyone's reboot is different and while Gabe and the community have done a great job with providing us with known information, there are a lot of unknowns. Some reboots may take weeks, others years. Some may need rewiring to get to the finish line, others may not. Some need to orgasm, some orgasming hurts their reboots. Lets just all remember to be patient, stick with the program, and live life. One thing I have learned in my last year of rebooting is that there is so much more to life to then picking up women online or at the bar and trying to sleep with them.

 

[Phase2]

Random thought last night:

When I started this, my thinking was I had one problem: I couldn't rely on an erection during sex and I needed to fix that. So I went at this 100% and it's been a long but rewarding journey. Things continue to evolve and I'm feeling really glad that I tackled this head on. I'm pretty far along now, 450+ days. I don't count or worry about any of that anymore. I don't stress about porn either and really don't even get tempted to MO very often. Recently, I have noticed one imporant thing: it's my thinking about sex that has changed. Now that porn (and porn substitutes like dating apps-- Scruff--in particular. And now Twitter and Facebook) have been removed from my world, my anxiety and obsessions about sex have changed dramatically. My life is no longer ruled by my dick. Where before I spent pretty much all my time scheming for my next sex partner, or preparing for the encounter once it was booked, I just don't do that anymore. Every meal I eat is not scrutinized about how the fat or calories will affect my body or how I look in order to catch a mate. The gym is something I do now less to please others during sex, but more for myself. Vacations are not primarily focused as hook-up weekends. I don't even think I'd freak out about a less than stellar erection as much as I once would have. I'm just more relaxed about it. And I have time now to pursue other interests. Suddenly I am excited to make money, I'm looking to buy a new house, I've signed up for a community garden--all things that sat on the backburner as I sat whacking my dick in front of a computer for years. It's not perfect. I'm not a saint. I don't want to be. But I am better.

So now I realize, to fix my dick, it was my brain that had to come along with it. And it happened simultaneously and on it's own-- so I just want to encourage everyone to START the process. Everyone's journey is different. You will learn what works for you, and you will evolve along the way. Yes you will have setbacks, but you learn from them and as long as you keep moving forward, keep fighting, progress is at hand. I'm still moving forward. I still want to get better and I'm sure I still have more to learn. But I started and things are going well. If you are reading this and wondering if you should start a hardmode no-PMO reboot, with 100% commitment, the answer is YES, today. Do it!

 

[lyon03]

Outstanding!

 

[Phase2]

So...I went down to Fort Lauderdale this weekend which for a gay man is pretty much hook up central. I had debated whether or not I should get on Scruff, for a limited, away-from-home situation, so that I could indeed find a rewire partner ( the days of finding them in bars for me, are over). I discussed this with Harry and it remained a possibility even though I know how dangerous these P-subs are for me.

I did reach out to an old fuck buddy from a few years ago and was able to have an excellent rewire session where everything worked on Saturday morning. Having done that, I decided to remain Scruff free for the rest of the weekend. Two things to note:

My friend who was traveling with me was on Grindr pretty much the entire weekend. He told me stories about how many times he has conflicts with other guys on Grindr, and I watched him act fairly obsessed with his phone most of the evenings struggling through the frustration of the ever elusive hook up. He also didn't get laid. So it increased his agitation tenfold and he got no sex out of it.

Second, I was sitting by the pool waiting for some other friends and I had a nice 10-15 minute quiet moment. I spent time admiring the foliage, the pool, and just thinking my thoughts. In the past, when I was using Scruff, I would have NEVER had 15 minutes to just quietly let my head work out thoughts and daydream. I would have been hard and fast on Scruff, scheming, texting, swiping. I caught myself having that nice moment and I was really glad I had not gotten back on Scruff. I think everyone needs to consider all the things that these social media apps and websites are doing to us, as well as what we are not getting because of them--like relaxing, letting our brains wander, having quiet time, mellowing out. These quiet periods might be essential for our sanity-- and the high speed internet craze is stealing them from us.

Stay true, men!

 

[marsturm]

What a wonderfully inspirational post, Phase 2. It gives me hope. Thank you.

 

[Phase2]

Ok, so I have a new thing I'm fine-tuning. For about, oh, say 40 years I have a long standing getting-to-sleep tradition of laying on my stomach with my dick humping my fist and thinking about sex (if I hadn't just jerked off and put myself to sleep with a dopamine surge). Well, I don't MO anymore, but I still do the thing where I grind my fist a bit and think about sex. Like "ok, if I could chose anyone on Earth, who would I have sex with right now?' or 'choose two guys you'd like to see having sex and imagine them doing it.' That sort of stuff. My mind would wander around...Ben Affleck, Grizzly Adams, the hot bearded writer on House of Cards, etc...and I'd fall asleep thinking about sex.

I've just started 'Breaking the Cycle' and it came to me that all this hypersexuality and emphasis that I  put on sex, always thinking about it, is contributing to the anxiety I have about sex--and that anxiety is what kills my boners. I just have to relax! Constant obsession equals anxiety (and is a waste of time). So, last night I made myself think about other things: food, my garden, money, trips, etc. Anything but Ben Roethlisberger's butt. I made it through and I'm going to continue with this. Stay tuned.

 

[Phase2]

Hey guys. I've been off of here for a month or so. Not a whole lot to report: I went on a long vacation and made the calculated decision to get back on Scruff for two weeks in order to meet guys to rewire with. It worked. And as predicted it also acted like a total drug and I slurped it down like a hungry addict--so I still know it's a serious psub and I have little control over it as long as its on my phone. But I made the vow to only use it while out of state, and now that I'm back home I've deleted it and will continue on. I did meet a few guys on Scruff (as well as a couple old fuck buds) and had a nice time and no major PIED issues, so I think I'm coming along with that. I did on a couple occasions use small amounts of Cialis, so I'd say overall my status quo remains about the same. But still no PMO, I'm off Facebook and Twitter and now free of Scruff since I'm back home. I did have the chance to rewire with one of my RN buddies on my trip and that was cool. We had a good time hanging out and our dicks worked and the rewire was successful.

I think I'll have an easier time giving up Scruff this time. I've been off it a day and it's hold on my brain seems pretty minimal. Carry on, men!

 

[Phase2]

Little update. So took a quick trip up to NYC to stay with a guy I have been interested in. Even though I was out of town, I had real plans and decided I would remain off Scruff and stick with my no p-sub program. Which was smart. However, our meeting plans changed and on my first day I had the entire day to myself and two things happened: I started a little sexting with a guy in another state on Instagram, and reached out 'for coffee' with a guy I had met on Scruff (but never in person) a couple years ago. So, even though I was going to stay with a guy that I've met and actually really like in just six hours, I spent several hours fucking my head up with 'possibility'. A few naked pics were exchanged and, I could tell, the dopamine was surging. Nothing happened other than that but by the time I did meet my date, my head was definitely in a confused, scattered state.  My focus was in a several different places. We started to  have sex (I had taken my maximum Cialis of 5mg to make sure things went well) and things were going fine when, gee what a surprise, all of a sudden that old flash of anxiety swooshed through my brain and my dick went from hard to flaccid in about fifteen seconds--the kind of change that you know damn well you're not going to recover from. I'd like to be able to describe it better so other guys can chime in, but for me it's like I am no longer present in the bed. My primal 'sex brain' turns off and I become a 12 year old neurotic again. My thoughts are flying around like bats and I guess what is happening is the opposite of the dopamine surge I was enjoying earlier. It's a dopamine deficit. There's fear in it, a sickening knowledge of failure and hopelessness. All enjoyment of the sex plummets and I don't want to be there. And the mechanics are definite: your plump dick is done--shriveled and retreating. Ok, so that happened. I was horrified but I back offed, worked on him for awhile and then I suggested that we take a shower together and thankfully, somehow, with a little time and redirect, I recovered and it went very well for the next thirty minutes. But the damage was done. Sex as pleasure changed into sex as work for the rest of the weekend. Bummer. The only good thing is I know what happened as opposed to the old days before RN when I didn't. My stupid flirting with the porn substitutes, flirting and sexting online hijacked my horniness for an actual person. I paid the price. So, I'm back to buckling down. Learned my lesson, got it, stupid me.

What works for me is this: no sexting, no porn, no flirting with possible mates. I pretty much need to live a simple life where a significant amount of time goes by between sexual encounters (5-10 days) so that my horniness is heightened, and then have sex with someone I'm attracted to by contacting them without sexting them.

Stay smart, men. I sure didn't this weekend.  :-\

 

[AndyNJ]

Very insightful post (though sorry it was an unpleasant experience for you).

It's also true for me that any porn can cause PIED because I'm not wiring myself for pleasure with an actual human being.  To get the dopamine going with an actual person, I need deliciously slow foreplay, which conjures up the dopamine.  It's all about having and understanding and intuitive lover!

 

[Phase2]

New York Times article today on Alexander Rhodes, the founder of an anti-porn website.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/08/fashion/mens-style/anti-internet-porn-addict.html?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share

 

[RuntoSpirit]

Hey Thanks Phase 2 for showing us that the cravings do change.  YOurs is an inspiring story to the rest of us who are starting out in the process.  YOur story helps strengthen the committment,.  CHeers.