Free At Last

Hey Achilles,

I'm glad you're staying strong, even if it brings you to your knees. Are you masturbating at all?

I'm just getting caught up with everyone else so I'll update my own journal this weekend. Stay frosty.

-The Faptain
 

vigilantwarrior

Active Member
Hey man, first of all I appreciate the support shown on our pages, and we don't mind if you're being repetitive, because that's how habits form anyways, right? A while back you talked about breaking out of that vicious binge circle, and of course staying committed at this point will keep yourself from feeling that despair. It's just not worth it.

I love the recovery workshop's description of the early recovery process, and you may be closer to "Crisis Resolution", but currently the effort that you're putting in is invaluable, and your strategies with this journal or anything else you have in place is key for maintaining this progress.

Stay focused my friend.

-siphus
 

achilles heel

Well-Known Member
Faptain America said:
Hey Achilles,

I'm glad you're staying strong, even if it brings you to your knees. Are you masturbating at all?

I'm just getting caught up with everyone else so I'll update my own journal this weekend. Stay frosty.

-The Faptain

Thanks for your reply, Faptain! As the M almost led me to the P last tuesday/wednesday, I decided to stop it. Too dangerous, at least at this early stage of recovery. I already had it decreased to once a week, now I'll leave it out completely. We'll see for how long, as my goal is to quit "just" porn.

siphus said:
Hey man, first of all I appreciate the support shown on our pages, and we don't mind if you're being repetitive, because that's how habits form anyways, right? A while back you talked about breaking out of that vicious binge circle, and of course staying committed at this point will keep yourself from feeling that despair. It's just not worth it.

I love the recovery workshop's description of the early recovery process, and you may be closer to "Crisis Resolution", but currently the effort that you're putting in is invaluable, and your strategies with this journal or anything else you have in place is key for maintaining this progress.

Stay focused my friend.

-siphus

Great link, once again, siphus! When I read the information you shared about the recovery-relapse-circle I realized what I was stuck in for almost half a year now. And reading the detailed process I see that the end of my longest streak due to complacency after 75 days is something common too. Thank you for all the useful information, I don't think I would have made it through this week without being aware about the circle, but I did!

Update is about to follow later or tomorrow, your support really helped me!
 

achilles heel

Well-Known Member
Day 25: Clear weather in sight!

I'm so happy I didn't give in to the cravings and made it past the most critical stage. When I refer to "hard mode" it means not allowing myself to be curious at all. It's impossible not to stumble upon lingerie ads or bikini pics and I used to allow myself to just have a peek within my early reboot intents. During the last 25 days I actively forbid myself to keep looking every time I stumbled across anything that could work as artificial stimulation.

Last week I almost went insane. My addicted brain desperately craved for pixels. I read an article about Donald Trump and it contained an explicit picture of his wife almost leading me to give in. I can laugh about it now, but there was nothing funny to it when I sat at home, unable to focus on anything and just hoping for the days to pass. As I had nothing scheduled for today, I expected everything to worsen, but instead the most critical stage seems to be over a few days earlier. I finished all my tasks at home, returned to my work-out-routine and prepared healthy food for today and tomorrow. No cravings and I was able to concentrate again.

Of course I will stay aware, but now I can return to focus on improving my life and prepare myself for the following stages. I do need a long term strategy and a plan for critical situations. And although I'm convinced on never relapsing again, I do need a plan for the case of a relapse.

1. Long term strategy

A very important, porn-related aspect of life is procrastinating. I can tell from my inner peace of sitting at a clean home with no depending tasks for the day. My mind is not used to a healthy lifestyle yet and tends to be careless if I don't make exact plans on my daily routines. Absolute discipline is and will be necessary even when the addiction seems to be solved already. I won't stop drinking alcohol or eating sugar forever, but I can and will control consume, maintaining a healthy life without total abstinence.

The next task to face is my internet-addiction. If I can change and control my online habits, I'm less likely to relapse. This will be a tough challenge. I will start on monday and my first step will be just to analyze my urges for social media or my favourite pages. How long and how often do I visit them? What's the best way to decrease my online-time? Anyone got experience on this?

2. Emergency plan

There are always unexpected situations like relationship problems, trouble at work or health issues. I'm quite sure I will be able to keep up with my long term strategy if everything works out as expected. But I need a plan B if I feel exposed to some event that might emotionally destabilize me. If this happens, I will not stay alone at home, but go out and meet my friends or my family. The next thing will be to write on here about what happened and read all my journal to realize that a relapse won't solve, but just numb the situation and the problems will be stronger afterwards.

3. In case of a relapse

It happened before and the most important thing would be to not relapse again, but to analyze rationally and avoid a mental breakdown afterwards that would set in the downward spiral. Basically I would need to follow plan B.

The most important aspect is to stay active. Staying away from tits on a screen doesn't improve my life. Improving my life does improve my life. I always need short term motivation. There are still 5 days of complete sugar/alcohol abstinence left. I will stick to my workout/sports routine at least 3 times a week and analyze my internet behavior to initiate some changes. Until day 30 I will prepare a plan for the second month with increased work out and less internet. I also need to read more books and hope to improve my ability to concentrate.
 

vigilantwarrior

Active Member
achilles heel said:
1. Long term strategy

A very important, porn-related aspect of life is procrastinating. I can tell from my inner peace of sitting at a clean home with no depending tasks for the day. My mind is not used to a healthy lifestyle yet and tends to be careless if I don't make exact plans on my daily routines. Absolute discipline is and will be necessary even when the addiction seems to be solved already. I won't stop drinking alcohol or eating sugar forever, but I can and will control consume, maintaining a healthy life without total abstinence.

The next task to face is my internet-addiction. If I can change and control my online habits, I'm less likely to relapse. This will be a tough challenge. I will start on monday and my first step will be just to analyze my urges for social media or my favourite pages. How long and how often do I visit them? What's the best way to decrease my online-time? Anyone got experience on this?

2. Emergency plan

There are always unexpected situations like relationship problems, trouble at work or health issues. I'm quite sure I will be able to keep up with my long term strategy if everything works out as expected. But I need a plan B if I feel exposed to some event that might emotionally destabilize me. If this happens, I will not stay alone at home, but go out and meet my friends or my family. The next thing will be to write on here about what happened and read all my journal to realize that a relapse won't solve, but just numb the situation and the problems will be stronger afterwards.

This is great man. I absolutely believe in keeping a healthy routine each day. And also, reducing random internet usage is a huge factor to help my mindset. I'm not sure if you can apply what I do, because I leverage some accountability partners. But I have a stopwatch near the laptop, and when I'm doing something unimportant (social networking, shopping, browsing), I get the stopwatch going. For a day, I keep this usage under 1 hour. If I exceed an hour, I'll give one of my accountability guys a quick call about it. Anyways, it helps tremendously. I wonder if a version of this could help.

And your emergency plan is dope. I'd like to implement something like that myself.

Glad to hear about your successes, count the wins and keep the progress rolling :)

-siphus
 

CrowMagnum

Active Member
From your initial journal entry:

At some point of recovery my brain (I know, this sounds schizophrenic) convinces itself, that remaining clean more than X days proves I wasn't addicted and therefore could allow myself a little, controlled dose. But not anymore! There isn't such thing as "control", there is no "little bit". More than anything else I need this journal as a reminder to myself, how damn serious I am about quitting porn forever. How good I feel during most steps of recovery. How proud I am of being stronger than my addiction. How bad every relapse makes me feel. How happy I am in life and that every time I reflect about it, the only thing I would have made undone is becoming a porn addict at age 14. I can't make it undone, but I can quit. Now.

Wow.  I gained some perspective from this.  It will help me on my journey.  Thank you.
 

achilles heel

Well-Known Member
As always, thanks for your support, siphus!

siphus said:
And also, reducing random internet usage is a huge factor to help my mindset. I'm not sure if you can apply what I do, because I leverage some accountability partners. But I have a stopwatch near the laptop, and when I'm doing something unimportant (social networking, shopping, browsing), I get the stopwatch going. For a day, I keep this usage under 1 hour. If I exceed an hour, I'll give one of my accountability guys a quick call about it. Anyways, it helps tremendously. I wonder if a version of this could help.

The idea is great, I made use of it today without stopwatch, but by simply deciding before how much time I'd give myself for social media. After 10 minutes I switched off Facebook and observed my own behavior.

First of all, I have a routine of turning on my computer before I even know what I want to do. I start the browser and then decide which site to go on first. Usually Facebook. Also I'm visiting the same sports and news pages at least 10 times a day. I could miss out something important. Same goes for Facebook.

After shutting down Facebook I felt the urge to log in again. I opened the browser again and thought about for a second which page to visit instead. I did realize how this is quite similar to my porn behavior and thus switched off my laptop. Instead I read a book and actually managed to concentrate.

I used to be a part of different communities and posted a lot when I was younger. During the last years I successfully decreased my activities everywhere but still remain a "lurker" due to the feeling of missing something if I don't constantly check for news. I never related this to the novelty-effect until understanding my porn addiction. There are so many books I want to read and I hope to replace the random internet usage by a new reading habit. There's a long way ahead...
 

vigilantwarrior

Active Member
Achilles, your awareness is incredible on this, and that last post is really encouraging, seeing you trying things and taking initiative to look for ways to improve. It's great to see you empowering yourself in this way. Always got your back bro.

-siphus
 
you mentioned your internet addiction... it's quite a long time that I feel the same.

The good news is that I reduced the time spent online just by avoiding porn or porn substitutes (like nude art)

Just give me a few weeks and I will try to be online only when I need to (eg.: booking a hotel for my next holiday
or getting info about the opening hours of a certain shop, etc). Too much Internet is ruining out lives.

I like your attitude about this problem: you see stopping porn as part of a bigger goal: IMPROVING YOU LIFE  8)

same same for me.
 

achilles heel

Well-Known Member
Day 27: Man up!

I was going to self-pity for some personal problems of minor importance that appeared today and how it might become more difficult now to fight my addiction. I felt the urge to drink, because being drunk is a wonderful solution to fast-forward depending problems and decisions. Just like porn. It's the coward's solution to escape from conflicts a real man wouldn't even call "problems".

I felt weak and just wanted to go to sleep skipping my work-out to spread a load of self-pity on here tomorrow. Then I had to remember the clever advice I'm giving to others who have a bigger cross to bear than I do and entered a personal conflict that ended up with me being angry at myself.

I was going to whine about some unexpected monetary problems that might put in danger my year end vacations, not realizing how this must be a slap in the face to the vast majority of people all over the world who work their ass off just to survive the following week. I was going to complain about some relationship problems and how I wasn't sure on how or if there was a future without thinking a single second about how lucky I am to have a girlfriend despite 15 years of porn-consumption and how there is tons of desperate new journal entries of people who'd give their life to experience "relationship problems" once.

Yes, regarding my life, relationship, work and bank account not everything is working out as initially planned. But these are not "problems", this is life! I belong to the lucky few of a generation full of opportunities. Technological advance and social development allow me to connect with people all over the world within seconds, visit and enjoy every part of the earth, listen to every piece of music and every book ever written, see every piece of art. I'm not facing hunger, epidemics or war. I'm free to do and be whatever I want. And yet I choke on opportunity. Instead of facing uncomfortable situations and making decisions, I cave in and hide. I press "pause" and numb myself. And I could already imagine myself leave the healthy part of routine just to return to the excuse-filled self-pity-path of failure.

If I count the hours I spent watching porn I could easily fill a whole year of 365 days without sleep of just sitting in front of a screen. It's not just that I absolutely want to change it. I have to, it's a debt to life. I owe this to myself and to all of those who don't have any of the many opportunities in life that I've got. I'm not sure on purpose of life and deeper meaning to existence, but I can exclude 100% that skipping through browser tabs deciding what pixel constellation to shoot a load into a tissue has anything to do with it. The sheer thought of ever returning to this behavior is completely absurd, it's not even a choice, it's a no-choice. Something so negative I should get angry at every millisecond I even think about it and turn this anger into energy to achieve a life worth living.

They might sound a bit pathetic and over the top, but these thoughts obliged myself to grab the bar-bells, work out even harder than scheduled before and eat a nice meal of spiced sea food. I channeled all the negative energy into a work out and found inner peace for now. I'm completing a month without alcohol and as a reward I will go for another one. There are no excuses to leave my path and although I might not be happy with this entry by tomorrow, I will leave it written down to remind myself everytime I accumulate self-pity of any kind.
 
What's the best way to decrease my online-time? Anyone got experience on this?

Siphus had a good idea. I generally give myself similar timers. On image apps/sites i'll set a countdown like 20 or something and stop when I reach zero. You can also put a watch next to your keyboard to remind yourself of the time.

One of the biggest things I did when I was battling my anxiety was set business hours. Sometimes a task or unknown would pop up late at night or my wife would ask about money (god damnit) less than an hour before bed and it would set me off and i'd have trouble sleeping because of it. As a result I set business hours so that it wasn't okay to think/talk about that stuff outside of certain time frames. This could easily be applied to internet usage as well.
 

achilles heel

Well-Known Member
Day 28: It's all about balance

I reached the first four weeks of abstinence from porn and porn substitutes being 2 days away from my intermediate goal of 30 days, but still within the first half of beating my longest streak of 75 days. It's a great start and I do feel proud of staying strong, also in regards of leaving out alcohol, sugar and fast food. I feel like this journal is the final key to success as I'm able to reread my own thoughts and analyze my state of mind.

Yesterday I used a very drastic method educating myself and felt save afterwards. I turned my negativity around and today already caught myself thinking that maybe my addiction problem just wasn't that big anyway. The thought came in as something positive and turned out to be dangerous. I warned myself on here about this trick my mind is playing on me, but it's creeping in. While during the last two days I switched off Facebook immediately after checking my messages, today I allowed myself a little mindless browsing.

I checked the page suggestions and the page of an underwear model appeared. Her profile pic caused a rush of blood through my whole body and I felt the urge to click to just allow myself a little non-nude gallery. I could stop myself, log off and now have to analyze that in first place I (my addicted brain) was searching for this "coincidence".

At the moment I feel like a ticking time-bomb, I'm vulnerable and emotionally unstable. I have to avoid dangerous situations by any means and limit my random internet use in quality and quantity. I just turned off images at my browser on laptop and phone to avoid further triggers. Control is a necessary part of my reboot, as just living a healthy can't be enough. The key will be to find the balance between healthy habits and discipline.
 

vigilantwarrior

Active Member
achilles heel said:
I reached the first four weeks of abstinence from porn and porn substitutes being 2 days away from my intermediate goal of 30 days, but still within the first half of beating my longest streak of 75 days. It's a great start and I do feel proud of staying strong, also in regards of leaving out alcohol, sugar and fast food. I feel like this journal is the final key to success as I'm able to reread my own thoughts and analyze my state of mind.

You're my hero 8) Keep this up, and it sounds like this journal has been crazy beneficial for ya. And I dig that you've cut out the other things as well. Your awareness of noticing that you're thinking about the addiction as no big deal is an important realization that we need to remind ourselves of all the time, especially in these early stages. Once I'm 2 weeks in, I start thinking that I don't have to be careful anymore... which is when I need to be 5x more careful, lol.

Don't beat yourself up about the gallery, but just re-commit yourself, seriously, and be honest with yourself. Are there any extra precautions you can add on, or are there any habits that you are forgetting to keep up with?

I got loads of support for you, keep it honest and keep it healthy, and I look forward to your next posts.

-siphus
 

achilles heel

Well-Known Member
siphus said:
You're my hero 8) Keep this up, and it sounds like this journal has been crazy beneficial for ya. And I dig that you've cut out the other things as well. Your awareness of noticing that you're thinking about the addiction as no big deal is an important realization that we need to remind ourselves of all the time, especially in these early stages. Once I'm 2 weeks in, I start thinking that I don't have to be careful anymore... which is when I need to be 5x more careful, lol.

Don't beat yourself up about the gallery, but just re-commit yourself, seriously, and be honest with yourself. Are there any extra precautions you can add on, or are there any habits that you are forgetting to keep up with?

I got loads of support for you, keep it honest and keep it healthy, and I look forward to your next posts.

-siphus

Yes, this journal is very beneficial and I'm glad and thankful for your support. With the scientific explanations on your journal and the always supportive words on mine you definitely got credit on my initial success! I've been reading on here for quite a time and completely underestimated the positive dynamics of actively participating. I feel committed to a greater project and get a better understanding of my own behavior. While trying to reboot before I never got the "Now or never" feeling of this journal. It's the principal objective of my life to get rid of this addiction and by repeating it I keep reminding myself that porn is not an option. It's totally excluded from my life forever and I'm not going back to this path ever again.

And to clarify the thing about the Facebook-gallery as I wrote kind of mistakable: I didn't click on it, I didn't even open up the page. I just thought about it for a second. If had gone through a non-nude gallery, it would have been a relapse within my definition. My extra precaution is that I browse without images now, I'm still able to read my messages and newspaper but don't get exposed to triggers. Mindless browsing without images gets boring, so as a side effect I've got that under control too.

Day 30: Entering the next level

30 days done, hooray! No time to celebrate, because there are 45 days left to equalize my longest streak and reach my goal of 75 days without porn or porn-substitutes. And although things aren't getting necessarily harder, they get different. The key to success will be to maintain my long-term motivation and my awareness. My addicted mind knows all kind of tricks to try making me leave my healthy path and I need a good strategy to respond absolutely merciless. I will prepare myself with a little FAQ of common thoughts coming up and what to respond.

"You made it X days in, you're not an addict! And even if you don't want to go back to hardcore porn and infinite binge sessions, there is nothing wrong about a little look at non-nude galleries..."
WRONG! I try to overcome this addiction for over three years now and I relapsed a hundred times. I told myself to only go back to controlled porn consumption. It escalated every single time. I am not able to control any sort of artificial stimulation and I never will be. If it's something on a screen, it must not cause sexual arousal. If I get confronted with it by chance, I have to immediately turn my back on it. No exception, no excuse!

"You felt so much better during first steps of reboot, if you relapse now, you will experience euphoria of the first two weeks in again."
WRONG! Maybe I will suffer certain stage of depression from time to time, but there is a bigger picture. And this bigger picture is to break free from an addiction that controlled my life for 15 years now. It may be a temporary desire to overcome depression the easy way, but it's the biggest wish of my life to never return to porn. I repeat: Overcoming porn-addiction is the absolute priority of my life and no temporary mood swing shall risk fulfilling the biggest wish of my entire life.

"You won't make it anyway. It's part of your personality, you lived with it 15 years and you're not going to change within a range of months of abstaining. Don't keep torturing yourself and just give in."
WRONG! My porn-free self is the person I want to look at in the mirror. This is me. This is who I really am. This is my personality. I regret looking at porn and any of its substitutes every single second outside of these horrible binge sessions. The suffering is worth it, I rather go through hell and back than ever experience another relapse.

"You didn't really change a lot and porn wasn't that damaging to your life. It's not worth the effort."
WRONG! I'm a lot more self-confident because I don't have to hide my shame. Porn did consume lots of time and energy of my life that I can fill with actual life. A life that offers me a long-term benefit of being a happy person. I don't skip meals and sleep anymore, I'm not constantly tired or out of shape. This finally feels like a life worth living and I'm not going back anymore to this poor imitation of a life that's porn addiction.

Well, that's the most common kinds of thoughts coming up. I will have to struggle with doubts and carelessness, but they both won't stop me. I had to work really hard to get through the first level and I'm not willing to risk this progress, so I'm going to work even harder, put more effort in and stick to all those healthy changes of the first level with some special additions for the second.
 

achilles heel

Well-Known Member
Day 32:

Without this journal I would have relapsed yesterday. I did prepare myself the FAQ and I get the feeling of this journal being my last bullet at my fight with porn addiction, thus I didn't give in. But somehow I feel desperate. My enemy is omnipresent. Out of nowhere I remember porn scenes I watched 15 years ago when this whole shit started and need to concentrate on something else to distract myself. How are they still inside my mind? Will I ever be able to overwrite them?

I see how the addicted part of my mind is trying to trick me back into the relapse-recovery-cycle and offering me a "little relapse" with just some softcore stuff that wouldn't damage me. I know that this is wrong, but it's really hard to not give in because the follow-up trick is "If you don't give in today, you will feel the withdrawal the next day again, and the next day again, and the next day again."

And while I don't give in I think about drinking a beer and eating a pizza or some sweets. I will make an exception from my healthy food habits once in a while, because otherwise I'll burn out myself. This journey is hard, but some benefits are already there. I want to finally make it to the "other side" and won't reset my counter. I don't know how, but I will make it all the way through.
 

dennis

Member
You got this man! I think indulging in a pizza or junk food is totally okay for desperate situations, considering those guilty pleasures please the brain. So I say go for it! Your journal is inspiring dude.
 

achilles heel

Well-Known Member
Day 33: Unknown heights

Just a little reminder to myself that today the withdrawal symptoms have passed. They will return to appear, but it's totally worth it to not give in. I'm happy and exhausted in a positive way, because almost five weeks of healthy food and sleep and without porn, alcohol or sugar allowed me to push myself to unknown heights in terms of my sports performances. This journey pays off in so many ways! I'm more convinced than ever before that I'm finally going to make it.
 

CrowMagnum

Active Member
Word of advice: Don't get lulled into a sense of safety. It can sometimes be easier to relapse when things are going good.  Keep this in mind as you transition out of a flatline phase. 

Without this journal I would have relapsed yesterday. I did prepare myself the FAQ and I get the feeling of this journal being my last bullet at my fight with porn addiction, thus I didn't give in. But somehow I feel desperate. My enemy is omnipresent. Out of nowhere I remember porn scenes I watched 15 years ago when this whole shit started and need to concentrate on something else to distract myself. How are they still inside my mind? Will I ever be able to overwrite them?

For the moment, I suggest seeing this as an opportunity to refine your ability to intentionally switch your focus, your frame of mind, from something enticing but harmful to something healthy and rewarding (as opposed to seeing it as something you have to wait out to not happen in the first place so you won't feel or be at the mercy of it).  If done consistently it becomes a useful everyday skill.

I see how the addicted part of my mind is trying to trick me back into the relapse-recovery-cycle and offering me a "little relapse" with just some softcore stuff that wouldn't damage me. I know that this is wrong, but it's really hard to not give in because the follow-up trick is "If you don't give in today, you will feel the withdrawal the next day again, and the next day again, and the next day again."

It is difficult to reason with such feelings.  Well done for not giving into them.  Having safety nets in place is crucial and allowed you to remain on the track you wish to be on.  Having a value-based outlook helps significantly in those scenarios as well.  If an action will harm you in the long run it is categorically unacceptable, if an action benefits you in the long run, it is accepted and embraced as good (even, and sometimes especially, if said thing is uncomfortable in the moment).

Keep up the good work.
 

achilles heel

Well-Known Member
Thanks, Crow, I'm aware of the problem of carelessness as it killed my longest run. It won't happen again because I changed my conception of reboot. I know that there is no line of finally breaking free from addiction, but that breaking free is and will be an active process throughout my entire life. "Thanks" to modern technology, porn is always and everywhere available and every day, every moment I have to decide to not seing it as a valid option. It's not a choice and it will never be one again, no matter how good I feel, I keep reminding myself of the danger that's just a few clicks away.

Regarding the decision on not giving in to cravings due to long term damage, I'm trying to understand suffering as progress. To understand every rush of blood caused by a swimsuit ad that I successfully opress as one further step out of my vicious circle. I'm not having an easy time, because sometimes my brain is desperately screaming and willing to accept every porn replacement available, but this will lessen, hopefully.

Day 37:

I'm halfway through my longest streak, still doing well and will be very busy for a week. While this normally helps keeping me away from possible relapse situations, I have to take care of my personal stress level. I know that stress and cravings are a dangerous combination. I will not browse mindlessly during the next week to avoid triggers as much as possible.
 
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