People that had relapsed after a long streak, how it felt?

Why would you ruin 90 days of good on purpose? The point of this I thought, IS to lose the joy of jacking off. Or it is for me, anyways. I want to build intimacy with my spouse, not my computer or my hand.

 

Nothing really, by the time i hit that mark i had accomplished my mission but was facing something which was on a whole new level. It became a battle for my life, and by this i mean struggling against depression and fighting off a desire to commit suicide. My streak became the least of my worries. One hell of a ride.

 

I relapsed after a 6 month streak a few months ago and felt terrible instantly. As soon as I did it I knew I had messed up and couldn't believe I'd let it happen. I wrote it down to remind myself what it feels like:

"Lethargic for days
Feel like I am in a 'bad world'
Feel weak
Feel like everything is against me
Feel exploited
Self esteem low
Becoming anxious about small things
Overthinking everything
Can't make decisions
Feel like withdrawing
Worrying about the future and feel guilty about the past
Feel dishonest"

Seeing it as a challenge is part of the trick your brain plays as it craves the hit of porn. That's why it's an addiction and that's why the 90 days thing is a bit of a gimmick. "You've done 90 days; one session won't harm you", "you've proven you can live without it; you can watch it now and just give up again when you like". It's all part of it.

 

I don't get it.

 

Lol why though?
It’s not supposed to be a one-time challenge.
Its a lifestyle.
Is that why you’re here? For a challenge?

 

Thanks for sharing your experiences, I relate all of that. Relapsed after 175 days, nearly 6 months and it felt so terrible.(After reboot, I firstly did MO, but after that I felt weaker and my motivation dropped, then I watched too many porn, this binging period continued notice that just doing MO can reinforce your porn pathways so I don't recommend it.) And my porn use increased after that relapse because of the chaser. I used porn again, again and again... My discipline, motivation, focus, happiness all went away and I was unable to get back to my way, unable to get a momentum again. Now I am learning from this mistake.

When you come back to porn, your brain really wants to stay high.

Bro, snap out of it! If you are thinking like that, you don't understand exactly how can porn affects you, how is bad for your mental health, how it can be highly addictive, how it effects relationships and how can ruin your life. This is about your life, don't engage this 90 days, if you don't change your mindset 90 days not gonna recover you. There is a sickening obsession about '90 days' or 'day counters' among some members on this forum. This is a real addiction, not a joke. Prepare yourself to end this addiction, quit for your life. Otherwise you are preparing yourself to a failure.

I hope you a good journey through life!

 

What's the point then? You'll just stay an addict then. The goal is never to go back to porn. It's in no way good for you.

You will feel like shit. I assure you.

You'll lose this anyway if you watch too much porn. Or an even worse situation is that porn and jacking of will seem to be the only joy you can get.

Relapsing at 90 days is like destroying something you worked hard to make. Don't do it. It will never be worth it.

 

I relapsed yesterday on day 123 without PM. It’s totally NOT worth it!

I can relate to the thought of ”having done 90 days”, as a goal and challenge. But it isn’t. For me day 90 didn’t differ at all from day 20 or 40 or 89. It was just an ordinary day of urges to be fought. But after day 90 I stopped counting and then it went much better: the urges almost dissapeared, I think because I didn’t count the days anymore. Sadly, around day 115 the urges came back stronger than ever, and yesterday I gave in to them. As I said: it’s totally not worth it!

 

What did you experience during such an urge? Do you know what triggered it? And did you experience any feelings or emotions you wanted to get away from? Those kinds of things made me want to go at it unconsciously but severely. Was there any emotional or external trigger at your end?
And @JagerMeister: What was your trigger? Was there any?

 

Also. It is not about surpressing these thoughts I think. I think it is about knowing that its there and feeling the things that lay underneath and being capable of doing so while knowing that it will change and it will pass.

 

by the way: I am still on day 0 on the counter, but have challenged myself multiple times + relapsed multiple times as well. In the meantime I have gotten into therapy. And while I know the mechanics of my own brain, doing this alone sucks balls. So I am here for the joined effort to live healthy with sexual urges and deeper emotions.

 

I’d stop this addiction right now. You don’t want to end up doing some irreparable damages in the future that you’ll soon regret because of this addiction.

 

Not good man, not good.

 

The urges just came suddenly. For weeks I had almost no urges for porn and masturbation at all. Then I started reading forum threads here on NoFap with ”trigger warnings” in the header. I think every things started when realizing that my wifes pregnancy is soon coming to an end (that is, our fourth child will be born). So I started thinking about having sex again: ”not next month, but maybe in two or three”. That made me think more and more about sex, and then I started reading those triggering threads.

And some days ago - don’t ask me why - I just stumbled on a thread about transwomen, and it just made my thoughts spinning. I have watched some of that before, but not much, but my brain just locked and I got these cravings and urges.
And than it happened...

 

The problem with porn is that it damages many things in your life that you don’t even realise. Do you really want to train your brain to think it is more pleasure to fuck a computer instead of a human?

For many years it may not feel like a problem, it didn’t for me. It slowly damaged my life and relationships. I only noticed the damage when I was in my 30s and I start age 8. So for 22years I thought there was nothing wrong with it.

Eventually it ruined all my relationships and now I am 43 with no one, no girlfriend, no wife, no kids, few friends. Stopping porn I am starting to rebuild my life.

 

The last time I relapsed I felt so depressed and borderline suicidal that I walked to the hospital and told them I needed a psychiatrist. I've been back on anti-depressants ever since. I remember it being so horrible that I never want to see porn again.

 

Ninety days is not a long streak, it shows a mindset disjoint: to the active addict especially one trying to quit one his/her own will power ninety days send like forever. Partly because of what you mentioned, belief in "the joy of jacking off.". Wrong word by a long shot, masturbation gives pleasure not joy. Many people have rarely if ever felt joy or even happiness, I know in active addiction I definitely didn't know the difference between these things. I also thought it was obvious that "I wanted to use pm+" to "feel good.".
One way we can start to get the proper definition of words is by answering wise questions. How often did I laugh like Santa Claus just before it after using pm+? During? In my case I know the answer very accurately, and it's important to note that mean laughter, sniggering, guffawing in front of so called friends to showboat and try to prove to self and others that one is cool none of that shit counts . Laughing like Santa Claus means really happy, shaking like a bowl full of jelly, a belly laugh that rings merrily in the air and makes others unable to not smile. To make it a lot simpler: not laughing AT or for anyone else just ones self. That is the mark of joy.
Another way to get to the same helpful place is to see what I look like when I'm using. Is my brow furrowed, is my jaw clenched, are my shoulders tight, am I smiling? There are other things one can inventory and look for causal patterns in but that's a good start.
Any way to finally answer the question, when I had been free from pm+ for a year the first time (currently at seven) I got prideful resentful etc etc ad nauseum and stopped doing my daily practices so I used pm+ again and it was awful. I found myself in a particularly extreme case of one of my more extreme forms of masturbation but that's not why it was so terrible. It was a lot of intangibles. I had actually started to enjoy not having to pm+ for one thing and now I was back on the hook. I saw a photo once in national geographic of a man in a parade for some cultural festival with a dozen fishhooks in his back attached to lines, I felt a little like that it wasn't all at once that day it was the discomfort of "back on the twisted merry go round of pm+ addiction, how many years will I be hooked this time".
I didn't like it.