Turned my life into a hell

Hello all,

For about three decades I've been wallowing in my sickness. Only this year did I come to understand that I am ill. I want to face forward and start focusing on solutions rather than on my symptoms.

Since I can remember I've made my life purely about the physical. From prepubescence into adulthood I lived as an egoist and narcissist. My delusional behavior escalated to the point where I quit a job that I loved because I wanted to travel and seek thrills like a child. Now I am jobless. The only girlfriend I had, I was unfaithful to. Much like with my job, my head was in the clouds and instead of appreciating the beautiful thing in my life, I grasped at novelty. There was a sweet woman who loved me, a job that I loved in a city that I loved, and I threw it all away because of my childish fantasies. I ran out of savings and had to move into the suburbs with my sister. Definitely not a great environment, but I'm trying to abstain from escapist activities as much as I can.

PMO entered my life when I was thirteen or fourteen. Back then I surfed fetish sites searching for the 'perfect' erotic material. Many of my dreams were erotic and I had numerous nocturnal emissions. I didn't experiment with actual masturbation until I was 23, and after that discovery it became an instant addiction. It was a real destructive habit that has stayed with me until about two weeks ago.

I am 31 years old. Throughout October and November this year I went about two months without P or M, but I engaged in lustful fantasies almost every night and morning, with two or three wet dreams thrown in. I am now, I believe, on day 15 of a proper cleanse. Somehow I have managed not to fantasize this time. The past few days I have been feeling despair, hopelessness, crushing loneliness. Is this part of what they call the 'flatline' stage?

I've been having nightmares for as long as I can remember. Indulging in sense pleasures throughout the day does not make for a good night's sleep. But I don't know how to stop. Life in the suburbs is extremely boring. I play pickup soccer twice per week, but other than that I have nothing to look forward to. I can't even meditate properly because I don't have nearly enough hip flexibility to sit cross-legged. So I go through the day feeling extremely restless. I eat and watch Netflix just out of sheer boredom. Is there anything I can do about this?

I know that different states of mind are attainable. I have gone into the mountains and taken MDMA. I don't know if any of you have experience with it, but during the 'roll', all the stupid thoughts that run through my head are like water, and I become a rock. I simply observed my thoughts and realized that I am not my thoughts - I am the earth, and this body is a temporary garment. It's remarkable how obvious that reality becomes when you're not in this idiotic low-vibration state that society people in.

It was at that moment that I realized I've been ill almost all my life, having fought so hard every day to seek instant pleasure for my body. While this ecstatic state of consciousness seems like something incredible, I suspect it's the way any living thing naturally experiences life when not beaten down and poisoned by the dopamine-overloaded, Brave New World-esque society that we have created. I believe we are all equipped to attain this without ingesting chemicals - the human body is a chemical factory in and of itself. We just need to brush away a lot of residue. I suppose my main obstacle to eradicating the low-value dopamine bullshit from my life is boredom.

Food is another problem. I have been eating a lot of garbage since I was a toddler, and since I've always been active and have a high metabolism I never had much motivation to stop. Now I'm realizing that the physical consequences are not the real detrimental aspect to eating sweets and pointless junk food. It's just that having lost everything, having no hope of rising up again, and having no hobbies or even transportation, I have nothing else in my life except eating. I can't complain about it or play the victim, because I'm fully cognizant of the fact that I brought all this upon myself.

I've read lots of accounts of rebooting and recovery. What's stood out to me is that people report living inside their heads less after reaching the 90 no-PMO mark. Is this accurate? Does one identify less with their thoughts simply by abstaining from PMO? The chatter inside my head has been a huge hindrance to me, especially since I went to university and developed an overly active intellect.

About external factors I cannot do a thing. My responsibility is what's happening within me. I have to keep believing that if I can stick to the no-PMO (including fantasies), things will fall into place. I just want to feel like myself again. Apart from my MDMA trips, I haven't been myself since before society started feeding me all of its bullshit, probably since I was two or three. It's time to turn this around.

 

Any particular stoic philosophers you would recommend reading? What I have read of Epictetus has resonated with me.

All right, that's good to know. I need to keep at it even when it's not perfect.

Thanks for your responses guys.