Trying again

I've been trying to quit watching P for at least the last 5 years. I'm really willing to give anything a go now to try and beat this P and M addiction. Apologies in advance for the length of this intro, just needed to get all this on paper.

I have lost count of the number of times I have hit rock bottom and felt so completely useless. I am sitting at work right now with a face like thunder and appearing as unapproachable as possible. Today is a day when I want to limit my social interaction with work colleagues (or anyone else) as much as possible. The last few weeks have been the worst for a long time so I have decided to try and seek a different approach by hopefully getting some support from people who are facing the same battle as me. After being clean for the whole of Feb (30 days), I have relapsed 5 times in the last 6 days. The relapses have all been extremely long binges and have left me feeling defeated, exhausted and completely numb. I have been here so many times before and P has done nothing but create misery in my life, but that still does not appear to be enough to make me stop.

P and M have been present in my life since at least the age of 12 and I am 25 now, so that is effectively an addiction that has lasted over a decade. I first realised I was addicted to P, when I tried to stop due to some serious performance issues with my first ever girlfriend at the age of 19/20. I genuinely had no idea that watching P and M could have this effect on men physically and after a while I finally realised that this is what was causing my performance issues. I didn't tell my gf about the P but did tell her about the M side of things and made a promise that I would never do it again. I kept that promise for a few weeks and everything started working again, much to mine and my gfs relief. However, I was never going to be able to keep this promise as the addict inside me was too strong. Shortly after this, he won and kept winning at least once per week for the next three years. I was able to perform enough times to prevent her from suspecting of this double life I was leading, but other times I had to make excuses like I was not feeling well, or was too tired/stressed to have sex tonight. I was stuck in a viscous cycle and I didn't know how to break free from it. I was too embarrassed to tell anyone about my problems and I was generally a very closed off person in this time.

I researched online to see if anyone else had this problem and remarkably they did. I came across a few websites and of the varying reasons people gave for watching P, the one that seemed to appear most frequently and struck me with the most fear, was that people use P as a form of escapism and to numb emotional pain. I thought about my life and from watching the mess of my parents marriage fall apart to watching my Dad suffer from epileptic fits and eventually die from a cancer when I was 17, I realised I had talked to literally no one about any of this stuff. No one in my family talked about it, I had no counselling, I wasn't allowed or chose not to feel the pain and grieve for my Dad when he died. Despite the emotion screaming inside me, I refused to cry and pushed it all down in order to pretend I was 'strong' or that I was 'ok'. I think the only way I was able to do this was to use P to numb the natural pain that I should have been feeling. P is like any other addiction and it allows you to escape from the problems you are facing in your life, but unfortunately this has some serious consequences in the long run. Despite realising this was probably the reason I couldn't stop watching P, I still tried to fight the battle alone for at least another year. However, eventually I did seek help in the form of counselling about 2 years ago. To begin with this probably made everything worse as I was facing all that pain I had been running away from for so many years. As my pain levels increased, so did my desire to watch P and for a while I was stuck in my weekly cycle. I became very depressed and ended my relationship (which was somehow still going after 5 years), as I selfishly needed the space to work on this stuff. After this things did become easier, at least if I relapsed when single, I was only failing myself, which helped a bit with the guilt side of things. I think also understanding that you are an addict and you cannot control what you are doing, also helps with the guilt. Logically none of us want to be watching P, but for whatever reasons we have become addicts and our brains desperately need that rush of dopamine to feel ok again.

Sorry the above was all too long and detailed so here is where I am now. Unfortunately P is still a problem for me, at the moment the most I can manage without relapsing is 30 days, but the relapses are really bad binges like the one I described at the start. In the past year I have got into a relationship with a Christian girl, which led to me asking myself numerous questions about God ect, so I am exploring my faith. She broke up with me three weeks ago as she has a lot of crap going on in her life right now and kept on doing stuff to hurt me like getting too close with other guys and cheating on me once last year (this is her addiction). This is probably the reason my P use is really bad right now, I am running away from the pain of the break up ect, I guess old habits die hard.

I am probably on about attempt 1000 so for the 1000th time here is what I am doing to stop me from watching P and M again:

- Only access to internet is on Iphone and only browser available is K9 (it is shocking the amount of apps now have built in browsers - I have deleted all these apps)
- Sign up to Nofap - read and post as regularly as possible - possibly get an AP
- Regular exercise - sign up to a triathlon to give myself something to train for.
- Stay out of the house at the weekends - this is when the majority of my relapses happen.
- Once per week counselling sessions - face the break up.
- Talk to friends and family.
- Continue studying for exams.
- Stay single - I personally have vowed to myself to be single for the rest of 2015 and I would like to be celibate during this time.
- Continue exploring faith - God help me..
- Continue using Brainbuddy app (pretty good - for learning about damage P does and keeps track of relapses, triggers ect - need to pay for it though).


I am so sorry that this was so long and probably went into way much detail - going back to that route cause of the P issue and writing this stuff down really helps me. Thank you for anyone who reads this. Good luck to you all.

 

Thank you for your kind words and advice, I really appreciate it. After just a day I am feeling 100x better than the day I relapsed and I think signing up here has been a big part of that. I'm trying another new method to try and beat this and I'm proud of myself for that. No matter how many times we fail we will never be defeated and together we give ourselves the greatest chance of winning the battle. Take care of yourselves