When porn is no longer giving you negative consequences?

You have to develop a skill of being honest and dedicated. Addiction and relapses point to a set of very specific issues with personality. Lack of self esteem, self respect, honesty and commitment to what you do.
These qualities are not binary, no, they are developed by the individual as a result of consistent behavior.
The more you do what you say to yourself you want to do, the more self esteem you build. This consistent behavior is what cements willpower, resilience and perseverance.
This is what makes you a strong character that is able to resist temptation to stay on track towards more important goal you defined.

It may surprise you, but in psychology people are trained these skills, and sometimes people are so fragmented they have to start by saying - i will pickup this pen and then pick it up. And woala, they just did what they planned, so they gain a tiny bit of condense, that they can do what they want and they may find it easier to take the next step.
Set goals and achieve them, pat yourself on the back when you do, do things that help others and their gratitude will lift you even higher, be honest with yourself and others and soon you will discover that you have a muscle that can be used to deal with temptation and doing so will feel no more difficult than 20 pushups.

 

You faced withdrawal symptoms already, so this means your brain was already damaged. If you arent facing negative effects from relapse currently, dont think it cant happen again. The brain is fantastic with recovery, but also very easy to break in with bad habits again. Why would you want to enter back into the beasts dungeon and taunt him? Why not work towards staying away from pmo now completely and continue to build new healthy neuro pathways. I dont think many are here to reboot, just to start back up the habit. Many here have vowed to slay this beast entirely so they can live full, fruitful lives of regaining complete control. Dont let yourself slip back down the slope after you achieve greatness. What would the older you say to the younger you had you not learned while you were still young? I wish I would have learned the first time around a decade ago. This was my first reboot and let me tell you.. it was a walk in the park compared to the hellish nightmare this reboot that I'm currently on is. Last time I had minor depression, a little anxiety, minor headaches, a little bit of sleep loss ... this reboot has had periods of extreme crying, trembling and shaking, migraines, major sleep loss, nausea, lack of appetite, extreme demotivattion with fatigue and some periods of feeling numb. I would suggest you don't try to use pmo "responsibly." That's what may think they're able to do until years later... they're back down the hole.

 

It's simple. If you don't need it any longer, you don't need it. You relapse once or twice and it doesn't seem to be doing any harm. But when those few relapses lead to hundred more relapses, you will start getting old problems back in a few months, years. Why would you want that? I am trying to get freedom for so long. Once I get it, I will never go back. Never.

 

Let me also add that I've been in a situation analogous to yours; for whatever reason, years ago I had a period of something like 8 months where I just didn't watch pornography.

Whatever triggered a return to it - don't know, but I occasionally consumed porn, seemingly without compulsion - no effects. Many/most people want to credit addiction, I think sheer inertia and boredom are some of the reason I (maybe you, too) decide to watch again.

You might not have that compulsive/addictive personality or maybe there's a longterm process here, whereby the slippery slope analogy applies...

 

You faced withdrawal symptoms already, so this means your brain was already damaged. If you arent facing negative effects from relapse currently, dont think it cant happen again. The brain is fantastic with recovery, but also very easy to break in with bad habits again.

 

Don't fool yourself. Poking a sleeping dragon in a hope that he died is never a good idea. I can tell you from my own experience what will most probably happen if you continue on this path… You'll do it more and more often, maybe some stressful event will happen in your life and you'll do some more and before you'll know it, you'll be hooked again. The same thing happened to me in May 2018 after +6 months of monk mode. I thought I was finally "cured", went to long holidays to reward myself, holidays turned to shit (arguments, lost friends etc.) and when I came home all stressed out with shattered self-esteem, I thought to myself well watching a bit of P to calm my nerves down will do me no harm. I PMOed once that day, then again once or twice the next day and the next all without compulsions. Step by step down the road, thinking I have everything under control, until a month later I realized I'm in binge PMO rabbit hole again and I can't stop. It wasn't until August (3 months later) until I gathered enough mental strength to stop the binge and force myself to start rebooting process again and another 5 months of tries and failures before I was able to start my current monk mode streak. I needed to go through all the acute withdrawal symptoms hell and PAWS all over again, like my previous half year of abstention didn't existed.

I later learned what happened. When you binge PMO your brain create deep learned behavior (addiction). In physical form this behavior manifests itself as neurological pathway literally physically engraved in your brains. Neuropathway makes this behavior automatic, excluding part of the brain that is in charge of rational thinking (tunnel vision). Behaviour becomes preconditioned; you get stressed out you PMO, see P you MO without thinking about it. When you abstain for a certain amount of time from PMO behavior (abstention) the pathway enters in dormant state. It's still there and it will most probably stay with you for life, but it's inactive. Compulsions and cravings stop. BUT as soon as you PMO again you start playing with fire, because you risk "waking up" dormant pathway. The other problem is that addiction pathways are REALLY strong and wide, think of them as information highways and the neuropathways you created to replace old PMO pathway with are narrow paths. Over the years of practicing these "good" habits will become highways themselves, but you're not there yet. IF you reactivate PMO neuropathway your newly established behaviours you developed to battle addiction will have no chance against it as brain's electrical impulses always choose the widest road possible. You will be back on PMO autopilot before you know it. That is why people who had addiction problems need to stay humble and vigilant all of their lives.