90 days of sharpening the axe :P

This is my 90 day entry from my reboot journal (can be found here: https://www.nofap.com/forum/index.php?threads/sharpening-the-axe-so-to-speak.113057/)

Day 90!!! Fucking yes!!

.. or 92 the day im posting this XD

All right, this is a milestone, so I’m gonna try to recap my experience throughout these 90 days.


JUST BEFORE I STARTED THIS JOURNEY:

I started this summer in a bad mental state. I had experienced a genuine anxiety attack during my exams at uni, where there suddenly were so much at stake. Long story short; I potentially could become homeless if I didn't pass a specific exam. Yes, this is true. And I did pass this exam, so fuck 'em. During this period of panic and anxiety, looking back, I learned a great lesson in the power of ritual and habit. I had gone into my exam period 'going all in', or so I thought. All my habits of doing regular heavy ass workout, eating clean (80% plant based diet), meditating, etc, went out the window, because now it was time to focus on studying. AND... of course this threw me off completely! I wasn't used to the ‘macro-behavioural pattern’ at all. And now I remember the quote from the Slight Edge by Jeff Olson; "Once I got a little way above survival and was starting to head up into the warmer waters of success (this is me cultivating empowering habits), without realizing it or thinking about it, I would stop doing the things that had gotten me there (this is me stopping these habits, to 'focus' on the exams). Naturally, I would then start sinking back down again, back down toward survival and beyond, back down toward the failure line. And I did that every time.".

Damn, I hit the ground with a hundred miles an hour. I was looking for therapists, because suddenly, all these feelings and issues came bubbling up to the surface. I was talking to my mom about this a lot, how felt like I was suffocating and being crushed by some mental and emotional weight.

And then... I passed the fucking exam. AND barely. And somehow, this entire panicking washed away. It was like it never happened. I mentioned this in another entry; me forgetting the emotional states that were brought on by certain behaviour. Forgetting to the point where the thing I knew needed changing, suddenly felt foreign and distant. Like my mind went; "Phew... that was close. Okay, back to the same old same old behavioural patterns" (that created the problems in the first place).

AND THEN I STARTED DOING NOFAP FOR REALZ:

Approximately the 20th of June, probably around midday, was the last time I looked at pornography. I think it was because of me being aware that I tend to forget the disasters in my life (like the exam period) and I knew that this would be a proactive thing to do. I have tried quitting PMO for 3-4 years and I remember the day I realized that porn was the root of most of my problem (at least the sexual ones). A friend of mine from Uni showed me ‘The great porn experiment’ by Gary Wilson and it hit me like a bus. I had no idea that watching something could affect you that much. I’ve always suspected the porn could be to blame, at least partly, but never to this extend. Fast forward 3-4 years, 100s of attempts… and here we are.

During these 90 days I’ve experienced a number of ‘benefits’, which is kind of a misnomer, since its just the return to the normal state. But these include:

• Increased motivation
• Mental clarity
• Better mood
• Being genuinely horny
• Return of morning wood
• Increased self-discipline
• Being stronger, i.e. increased rate of progression in the gym
• Waking up well rested
• Had sex on a few occasions (I attribute this to nofap, since I would have been scared shitless of no-boner before this)
• There are probably more, that im just so used to now, that I forgot, but i'll edit whenever i think of some.

There have also been some down-sides, I guess these could be attributed to withdrawal or the so-called flatline, and these include:

• Moodiness
• Anger
• Days of being almost depressed
• Days of zero energy and focus

But the positives outweigh the negatives by far, no competition. This is one of, if not the best decision of my life. The only real competition for the first place was me quitting a drug addiction spanning many years, 4 years ago.


AND NOW:

Well, nothing magically happens at 90 days, obviously. But it just felt good to hit that milestone; 3 months! To be honest, I haven’t had much energy the last 1-2 weeks, been tired a lot. I’ve also not been able to focus a lot, but I’ve also not been meditating, which I more than likely the reason why, so this is within my control and its fixable. I just have to keep going. I still get ‘flashback’ to pornographic material, but this is extremely rare and when it happens, I project in onto a canvas, take the canvas and rip it apart and ball it up, then toss it on the ground and light it on fire (in my mind of course). This seems to be very effective!

I still have a ton of personal stuff to work on, a ton of material that I know I should read; and I will. But overall, my life is so much better than before, and writing this up made me appreciate that. You know, you get sort of ‘used to it’, so sometimes you need to look back to see how far you’ve come.


Stay strong brothers!