20 years lost to porn. Wound up in hospital. Then suicidal. Now I want to live.

I could make the argument I'm someone for whom porn is okay, and I used to make that argument. Abused growing up. Physically disabled in a way that isolated me socially. Many health problems. No real social skills or support group. Never had a girlfriend.

But I wasted 20 years to internet porn crap. I kept trying to get away from it. I used to spend hours downloading crap I erased in disgust afterwards. Miserable in so many ways and accomplishing so little in my life. Despite a physical disability I used to at least do volunteer work. I haven't done that in over a decade.

And I don't remember the last time I had a normal hard on. Years? Even when fapping to porn I was only semi-hard for the last several years.

My health was getting worse, and the strain from all this wasn't helping. A couple months ago I relapsed to degraded internet porn crap again and had another physical health crisis, winding up in the hospital for several days. After that I couldn't sleep or eat. I lost 20 pounds in a month. I was suicidal, wrote a suicide note, had a suicide plan, barely managed to muster up the energy to clean my apartment a little, so my brother wouldn't have as much to deal with after they found my body.

But every day I thought: I'm ready to kill myself, so I can take another walk. Despite physical pains, personal misery and many blisters on my feet, I can walk one more day. Even if I have to drag myself along, I can walk. So I did. I walked for hours at a time. Up and down hills. I also ate some healthy food and took lots of nutritional supplements. The three people I had email interactions with I wrote back and forth.

On one of my walks I realized I had writings and music I wanted to share with people. Maybe it would help someone. Maybe it would help me. I used to build computers but hadn't figured out social media. I'm learning it now. I posted some of my work online. Since then I haven't been suicidal.

I also started hanging out in my apartment meeting room downstairs, just to be around people. It's mostly older people, but they are so sweet. I joined a a few exercise groups, started talking to people in the elevator and hallways and finally went to a local games store's board game night. (I love board games but hadn't gone for some reason until now.)

I've been shy and awkward most of my life, and I thought porn made a bad problem slightly worse. I didn't realize it made it gigantically worse. I've met more people in the last month than in the previous 10 years. People eager to shake my hand, say a big "Hello!" to me, people who don't know English but want to learn my name so they can say it when they see me in the hallways. My goodness there's a lot of good people in the world.

I've got other personal and health issues, but internet porn has made everything more miserable. I'd tried to get over porn for almost the whole 20 years I lost to it, but the longest freedom streak from porn I'd had before was 15 days last spring.

Currently I've been internet-porn-fap free for 62 days, magazine-porn-fap free for 47 days, fantasies-of-real-women-fap free for 31 days, fap-with-just-sensation free for 12 days. The internet porn is the only one I really care about, but it's nice to have gotten further away from the others as well.

There's some emotions I'm learning to deal with. All sorts of things. I've been dealing with anhedonia (no pleasure) mixed with emptiness, irritability, frustrations, misery, sadness, loneliness, emptiness, low-drive, tiredness, poor sleep, aches and pains, anxieties, worries, fears, terrors, anger, porn cravings, low hope, emptiness, etc. And did I mention emptiness? Holy crap!

I'll work it out. I want to live. Really live.

I continue walking hills.

Best wishes to everyone on their own adventure.

 

Thank you myrecovery. Thank you very much.

 

Thank you 2525. I love that list of 50 helpful habits.

 

Fantastic smeerlap. Onward Adventure!

 

Thank you ozengineer. After weeks of hell (and walking a lot, which kept me alive), I started hanging out where people were. It was miserable at first, playing solitaire while other people talked in their own groups around me, but then an older lady asked if I wanted to play dominos and I said, "Yes!" Since then I've started asking various people and groups if I could join them. I found out that 90% of them are happy to have me. They had thought I didn't want to socialize before.

 

Thank you kp3ad. I lurked a long time. I'm glad I finally posted an intro.