Lamenting over lifetime of addiction

First of all, welcome! Admitting you have an addiction is the first step towards recovery. We've all been there with PMO and playing video games all day long to escape from reality, in fact WoW was one of the worst video game addictions I've ever had. It was designed from the ground up to be one, to keep one hooked and play for months or years, one could easily lose most of their waking hours to that.

What is done is done. Don't dwell in the past, but don't think too much about the future either, instead focus on the current moment. Nofap is a wonderful thing and it's the most helpful community I've witnessed. Be active, help other users as that will help you too and start writing your own journal. I'm sure you have very interesting stories and opinions to share and it'd be interesting to hear them!

The bad news is that you're most likely in for a very rough ride judging by the heavy usage of PMO. Withdrawal symptoms are no joke as they have killed drug users and can be quite severe with a longtime PMO addiction. Search up kindling/PAWS on the forums. So don't be upset if you're not feeling good even a few months down the line as there are people nearing the 2-year mark who still haven't totally recovered.

All the best to you and keep up the good fight!

 

It's very mature to admit all of your mistakes. This is the first step in recovery and you did pass it.

Just avoid any porn material, do not run away from addiction to another addiction "alcohol".

All recovery symptoms will fade away. just give it some time and you still have a long life ahead of you.

 

You'll get through this man. Stay strong!
And keep posting to this forum.

 

It seems that you and I share many parallels. I also got started on PMO during adolescence and lost all my teen years and most of my 20s to it. I was in a relationship from age 19 to 22, but my PMO addiction destroyed that, and I spent the rest of my 20s engaging in PMO and substance abuse. I'm 32 now and literally have nothing to show for it.

I really want to quit PMO for good, and I've never felt this motivated to quit something before, but I'll also get discouraged sometimes and think to myself, "What's the point of going through all this if my life will always be incomplete anyways?!" And to be honest, I really don't know why I'm doing all this, but there's a persistent voice in my subconscious that compels me to persevere through the adversity despite there being no apparent hope on the horizon.

 

Sorry for not replying sooner; I didn't even get an alert or anything. Must've been some website glitch.

It's great that you've decided to enhance your education. It's also great to hear that you got started on AA. In August, it will be exactly one year since I last consumed alcohol or took pills (I used to abuse prescription painkillers). I'm also currently in the process of quitting nicotine, which is actually a little easier than I expected it to be. Quitting PMO made me realize that you can't just pick and choose which addictions to quit; you have to pull all of them up by the roots if you want to be fully in control of your own mind.

I can relate to you 100% in regards to the driver's license/car/job thing. I've also never had a driver's license or car. I've had two jobs in my life, which I had between the ages of 17 and 21. Once I got to around 21, I began to spiral out of control and haven't really done anything useful since then. The prospect of attempting to reimmerse myself in this contemporary workforce after doing next to nothing for eleven years (and having a pathetic résumé) is so daunting that I regularly lose sleep over it.

When you say that sometimes it feels like taking care of your PMO problem doesn't have any point, I can really relate to that. I tend to go through these depressive phases for about five hours a day where I keep thinking to myself that I'm sustaining all this anguish for nothing. "I already destroyed my youth anyways. It's far too late to be a normal person and lead a normal life. And even if I could live a normal life, I'd eventually find myself in a mid-life crisis anyways because I destroyed my youth." Most, if not all, of those things are probably true, but for some reason I still have this urge to persist, and I don't really know why. Probably just the survival instinct kicking in. I started getting frustrated back in April because quitting alcohol and drugs didn't seem to help me as much as I wanted it to. It was around then that I happened to be on 4chan one night and clicked on some link that somebody posted. The link was an article from the Your Brain on Porn website. After reading that, I was horrified to learn that porn could actually do this much damage to the brain and knew that I had to get started on NoFap ASAP.

Whether there's any point to it or not, I think we all know deep down that we can't just carry on that way. Even the physiological ailments that PMO causes are enough of a reason to quit it entirely. A good friend of mine killed himself three weeks ago, and I didn't cave into any of my addictions. That really tested my willpower.

 

You have plenty of life to live brother! The best version of yourself is right around the corner. Now is the time to change your life and make the money, fall in love, and have the body you have always wanted. It’s up to you to get there. Nobody can make you do it. It’s up to you. The benefits and healing of NOFAP aren’t for everyone. Some people just dont have the will-power and determination to be the best.

 

I can totally relate to this. I've had these moods where I question myself the same things. But a good thing is, no matter how hard it gets, we've acknowledged the existence of nofap and we can't really go back to our secluded sedentary lifestyle anymore. What is even better, after going through these emotions, a person comes out as stronger, a better man that understands that giving in to pain and instant gratification isn't going to do the trick anymore, but instead we need to embrace the pain and grow as adults, even if we've wasted all our youth watching a bunch of pixels on a screen. It's through this cycle we can really quit the addiction and see things from a clarified perspective. Persistence is the keyword here, never give up.

 

There are guys in my group in their 50s and 60s before they came to your realization. Think of it this way - you saved yourself two or three decades of a downward spiral. Good for you!