More frightened of what could happen if I don't.

Hi guys,

I was listening to Jordan Peterson this morning.

He talked about fears and their important place in setting up your life's goals.

Anyone else here listen to Dr. Peterson?

Anyway, he talked about having to place some fears behind you.

To have them right hot on your tail.

So they chase you.

Kind of haunt you.

Kind of like a Governor pushing you forward to "stay the hell away from" that bad place you came from or might go back to if you let yourself slip up and get sloppy.

He said, that in fact, the fears scared-you-straight.

Put you on the path.

The Right Path.

As Jocko Willink would say.

Like many things from JP, I think he's absolutely right: that the idea, or vision or haunting possibility of what I might become, if I don't do this, scares the living hell out of me.

It would be Hell.

And maybe I have already been there.

Maybe part of my life right now is Hell, and I don't know it yet.

Like a frog in some lukewarm water, slowly boiling up.

Or one of Dante's many levels of Hell.

It's been a shock and it's difficult to bring myself to write this, I have spent the last couple of days, a few hours each day reading the stories on here.

And by God, you guys are great.

Who would have thought. That by having the courage to share your stories, you really are changing people's lives.

Like mine, one day at a time.

What is freakishly scary to me?

How blind I have been.

How Godawful the effect that porn (and by that I mean the easy-wifi access, HD, cam-world, over-stimulated, pro-casual-sex life) has had on so many of us.

I think about what Theo Von said recently: any Theo fans out there?

He was talking about Chris Delia - the comedian who was accused of grooming underage girls and having sexual relations with an underage females.

Theo said (and this is inaacurate from-memory quote): "I would say that I would have liked to get to know Chris D, and maybe become more like buddies, become closer friends with him, y'know, but I always found that Chris was always kinda distant - he was always just on his phone man, just I feel it was like an addiction, and I know about addiction and kinda what it looks like, and he was always texting these girls on that phone, always texting or sexting and when I look back it reminded me of how a herion addict is when they're just jonesing for another hit man, they're just not there man, and for me when I think about it - with what I know now about sexaddiction and all that, I would have to say that I definately see that he was an addict."​

The weird and scary thing is, I can see that phone-attached-zombie-like-sexting-texting-trying-to-pickup-a-girl-and-get-the-day2-mindlessness in myself.

What with hinge and dating sites.

Even before that.

Just regular picking girls up in bars and getting their numbers and trying to get them home.

The worse thing is, that when it was done it was like it was something proud to do. All the self-congratulatory, puffed up bravado - talking like I was some kind of hero, that I had done something significant in my life.

Yet each interaction was similar.

It's always the same thing, almost.

The same need, the same drivers, the same outcome.

It's nearly enough to question split personality.

If someone can illicit someone else to behave a certain way, be a certain version of themselves, then it's like you always create the same girl out of every girl.

Nothing changes.

Life just spins on the spot.

It gets boring and I wonder why the relationships get discarded.

Sure I've definately had great and original dates and had long term girlfriends that have been incredible.

But how much have I molded those experiences, sexually and otherwise - to be what I think I wanted which was just feeding this addiction?

It makes me sick to contemplate.

The cost this addiction has had is a cost I hate to reckon up.

But that is what I am going to do.

And set this straight.

And I have had stints of up to 3 months without any PMO.

They are likely the greatest three months of my life.

Their memory is freshest.

The relationships and events there are of the best.

But the times (most) of being in this addiction, have been less vivid, some deleted.

I have had long term relationships that started off great, but just like I read on here, a few months, days, years down the road the PMO starts.

And it fucking destroys everything in it's path.

The relationship, happines, energy, future.

So now, I have started to think.

What could my life have been if I never picked up that hustler magazine under my dad's office drawer at 12?

What if it wasn't so easily accessed?

I wonder about my brain.

My school experiences and struggles.

College and opportunities won and lost.

Jobs, gotten and quit.

And I think about my old friends, and their actions - the kind of people they were/are and the bad decisions they made - now based on this new knowledge and understanding.

My head starts to spin with realisations.

I wonder about an almost parralel life.

That if PMO addiction it is an addiction (which it is and leads to other addictions) which is powerful enough to make me look just like a herion addict, just as Chris Delia does in Theo Von's eyes...

Then fuck.

Who am I?

Really. Who the fuck am ?

Who have I been thus far?

Or what shell of myself have I become?

Who's wagging who?

What have I lost?

Fuck.

And worse, what will I lose if I do not quit now?

I am scared that if I do not quit pornography and the addiction to masturbate as the alleviation of stress or pressure or boredom (which may be self generated to create PMO conditions) and give up these damn un-thought-out stories that I have told myself, (with ofcourse the societal, liberal, bromides like "it's okay to masturbate, it's only natural, everyone does it" and other similar b.s. that obviously leads to a truly horrible, relationship preventing, work annihilating, life killing addiction....

then I will lose my future.

and I do not regain anything that I may have lost blindly in the past.

I am 33.

I have a child.

A baby girl.

I don't want to damage my family further.

I don't want to be a bad father.

I am scared that if I do not go on this journey now, I will lose the potential for a good life.

I am scared that I will lose the possibility to strive towards and attain what I really want to do in my life.

I am scared that I will be a negative and small and bitter and malevolent, as Jordan Peterson says, monster that is left thinking that life is meaningless, because everything is broken and incomplete and unfulfilled because I was too busy looking at porn and dating-as-a-distraction instead of taking on my responisiblity fully and going for my greatest goals in life.

I am scared that I will become twisted and sexual peverse person that has a net-negative impact on women and my relationships with friends.

I and deathly scared that I will not attract the kinds of people I dearly need in my life to go where I want to go.

I am scared that I will have let my family down.

And that if I do not get this under control, and learn to overcome it, then I will eventually turn on myself.

Reading the stories on here, and thinking about what has come of people's lives around me and reflecting on the culture of algoritms and how they are impacting our most personal stories, who we meet, how we interact, makes me I feel like throwing my phone throw the wall.

When I listen to Jordan Peterson, and hear him talk about human potential, and of God as a Judge above us: that setting an ideal means holding yourself accountable to a higher moral tablet, which means that if you do not treat yourself right, and be honest with yourself and instead you lie and decieve yourself then little by little, your life will descend into darkness and suffering.

I get a choked up feeling inside my throat that threatens to come out my eyes.

It makes me almost shake with fear.

With self conciousness.

I have never been a man to regret.

I am not going to let this addiction fuck up my life.

You want to be more frightened of the wretched bloody monster that you might well become if you abandon yourself and your goals; the vengeful person you will turn into if you give up on the striving of your vision for yourself, to become what you could best become in your life if you really just let yourself go, unchecked. So have you goals which are pulling you forward and and write down and set out for yourself the imagine of what you might become if you don't set your self straight and take deliberate steps on the path to becoming what it is that your highest parts of yourself wants you to be, you you stay bloody hell away from ever becoming it, ever. Make the collection of fears of not trying to reach your goals worse and more unbearable than the fears or anxieties you might have to overcome on the way to getting the life you really want.

Thanks guys,

4:30am