30 days into a better life! (20 years old)

Hello guys,

I have passed the 30 day mark and am currently on day 31 of abstaining from PMO, so basically I'm in hardmode.

This is going to be a long one, I want to reflect, conclude and hopefully motivate you!
I am not a native speaker, so excuse some akward formulations, but I think overall it should be readable.

1. Introduction of myself
2. Past streaks and background information
3. Current streak

1. Introduction of myself:

• 20 years old
• from Germany
• suffering from PIED
• former weed, alcohol and porn addict (I was not the guy sitting on the streets drinking alone all day long, but I would go binge drinking at least twice every weekend, had some binges through the weekdays too, and standard was a beer or 2 on a normal day)
• had a big self-identity crisis, but slowly coming out of that
• social anxiety (not extreme but existent)
• the reason for my self-identity crisis is that I was not sure about my sexual orientation for a long time. Meanwhile I am 99,9% sure that I am into boys
• know about nofap since about the 20th december of 2020
• I have gone through about 1,5 years which felt like hell most of the time

2. Past streaks and background information:

I had a girlfriend until november 2019, I ended the relationship because I wasn't able to function as I would have been supposed to during sex. My head already subconsciously knew that I was not straight and I thought this was also the cause for not getting it up with a girl. I guess the relationship only worked for 7 months or so because I had a good emotional connection to her. So what happened is that from the moment on when I was pretty sure about not being straight, my life started going downhill. This was in the beginning of 2020. At that time I was already addicted to weed since about 2 years and also since I was about 15 years old, I was binge drinking every weekend. Social anxiety massively increased, mainly because 'faggot' is one of the most used insults in my social environment. I was fapping to gay porn, and not vanilla porn it was some extreme stuff, and as I don't want to trigger anyone I won't go into detail here. What followed was the lockdown because of covid-19 and I started drinking more. I was now drinking and smoking weed daily, socially anxious but managed to find people with whom I could consume. My memory was functioning as if I had dementia. I couldnt remember what I did in the morning of the same day sometimes. I was pretty sure that I was not straight and it burdened me. I had lots of friends earlier but I avoided having contact to many of them because it was just not bearable always getting insulted indirectly and not being able to take position because I would have let out my secret then. So I was permanently hiding something. I also didn't manage to get clearness on my sexuality which I could have just done by meeting a boy (Its not hard with all those gay dating sites) but I was feared. The fact that I already had performance issues with my ex girlfriend also made me fear if I could even perrform with a boy because i completely didn't know what was the problem with me. While masturbating I also had a few problems when my dick wasn't getting that hard. I never thought that porn was the reason for that. During summer until november of 2020 I managed to tell my closest friends that I think I am gay. They actually accepted it pretty good but there are still problems (if those problems interest you you can take a look into my thread). At this time I finally also met up with a boy and we also had sex after 4 dates. I liked it, it felt right but I didn't have an orgasm becuase I was not hard enough and he had some pain taking my dick lol. Well I was convinced that I am gay then, but when I met up with another boy and it came to him giving head, I was not really able to get and maintain an erection. It was embarassing. Then I had a huge problem. My friends now knew about my sexuality but my sexuality doesnt work... so fucked up. I was really depressed and I jerked off all the time. Until about 20th of december when I started googling for my symptoms. I realized that I was only having problems getting it up with real boys, but most of the time while watching porn there was no problem. I found YBOP and I found this website. Then my self diagnosis followed: PIED! Damn what the fuck, I'm 20 and have erection problems because of excessive masturbating about 3 times daily.This was a shit feeling but it was ovverweighed by the feeling of "finally I found the cause for all of this, finally I can change my life to the good." I was relieved and directly started with no PMO. From then on I think overall everything got better. My first streak (not sure if i remember right) was about 17 days or so. And I already felt bettering by getting random erections and so on. So thats how it went until about 3 months ago. I had several streaks of about 2-3 weeks and my longest one was 26 days, then followed by 19 days and now on my current streak. But I have done some things wrong all this time until this streak started. I was not consequent enough, at about day 15 I started peeking or following some other triggers, this ended up being on dating sites and othe porn subsitutes. And this of course led to a relapse sooner or later, and it reduced the real benefits of doing nofap. Anyways I was making progress in total and I learned a lot of things in this time.

3. Current streak:

So as I said already, before this streak I already had a few streaks with day counts that weren't to bad. And I learned from the mistakes of the past. I deleted all social media since at least 3 weeks now, this eliminated basically 90 percent of the triggers which lead to not having big urges except for very few during this streak. I take cold showers every morning, I only take hot showers when I need to wash my hair. I learned that a relapse doesn't start when you pull your pants down, it starts much earlier. I guess for me the time span of a relapse is abouzt 5 -10 days. on the first day of relapse I used to follow some dumb trigger (for example stalking profiles on instagram), then the next days I would do something like use dating sites again, then use other porn substitutes like looking for sex toys, and finally reading a sex stroy. Then I had my first orgasm to a sex story and of course my brain couldn't get enough of that and I watched porn. In earlier streaks this often led to a week of binging or so. in the last 3 streaks or so, I managed to at least not binge, instead I got up immediatly and started a new streak. So it is really important to eliminate as much triggers as you can in the beginning. (Social media is bullshit anyway, it only pulls you down looking at others staged "perfect" lifes, also its a big waste of time, and you dont live in the moment when you permanently check snapchat). I journal almost everyday, this helps me a lot to. It has the function of a reminder to my commitment of never wanting to watch porn again, also when I go to sleep and write down all my thoughts before sleeping. I sleep better, because I don't make up any weird scenarios which wont happen anyway. Bringing down your thoughts to paper sort of makes your brain end the endless thinking about what could happen. What also really helps me is my accountability group, where we have weekly tasks to do (like writing down the reasons why we do nofap or things like that), we help each other, we keep track of our streaks and it just feels nice not being totally alone. It also functions as a reminder of my commitment of course.

This streak basically started with a flatline from day one until day 28. On day 28 I had big urges but resisted them. now I went back into flatline, not a bad flatline like it was in the first 3 weeks, more of a neutral flatline. My mood is approximating a normal level. I used to have big moodswings, but those have less of an amplitude as earlier when my mood went from really happy to fucking depressed. so I would mark less moodswings as one of the main benefits I have noticed. Another benefit I realized while studying is, that my focus/memory and mental clarity is getting better all the time. Learning things by heart is so much faster now. Also I feel able to make connections and bring things in context. So a better focus and mental clarity are also a huge benefit for me. The next to thing smight be imagination but I think that my eyes glow more (looks like they reflect) and my facial hair grows faster, I am pretty sure about that. Some of these benefits also correlate with the fact that I haven't drank alcohol or smoked weed since almost 8 weeks now. I feel more secure in social situations, which makes it a lot easier to meet people and will also be helpful when i do my first job soon. I feel like I am more in control over myself. There is only one thing that I have not been succesfull with yet, and thats smoking tobacco. I actually hate it but I was yet not able to quit., I am planning on doing that after my exams though. Day 28 was a peak of what is waiting for me: massive erections and PIED fully cured! I can't wait to never watch porn again


Thank you for reading to the end!
Feel free to ask me anything, I hope this was motivating and maybe you can learn by some of my tactics for a long streak.

Also if you want to read my journal or follow me in future, you can find the thread "20 year old, cleanest streak, making this a lifetime process" on my profile. I am happy about any interaction and experiences of others!

Keep going you can do this!


*I will correct grammar later, I am in a bit of a hurry right now

 

Thank you man! I hope your right about getting rid of all damages that I have done by those addictions.
I also wish I knew earlier about this but I guess I can consider myself as lucky that I found it half a year ago. I don’t know where I would be or if I would even still be if I hadn’t found out about nofap..
I wish you all the best on your path to freedom mate!

 

Hey @IGY it makes me feel very good to hear that from someone who has already mastered eliminating pornaddiction and is already working on achieving other goals! Thanks for that! every time I post in my journal au already think about what IGY‘s opinion on my feelings or actions are. You are also a base element of where I am currently at. I don’t think I would be where I am if you wouldn’t have replied to my posts and gave me advice, I know I can count on you and it sort of makes me proud that even I (a person that has done many things wrong earlier) can motivate you. I wish you all the best.


Ps: if you followed my last post on my journal, I wrote that I won’t post until Thursday, well I wasn’t quite consequent on my challenge but I guess it’s not that bad. I will have to get away from making this my everyday topic, but for now I think it should be alright.

 

I guess your right, I will think about reducing the time I spend on this topic when I have done my 90 days again!